The Tim Ferriss Show - #403: Tony Fadell — On Building the iPod, iPhone, Nest, and a Life of Curiosity

Starting point is 00:00:00 At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seemed the perfect time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Super Fat Nut Butters. I've got two boxes of them actually sitting within 15 feet of me in a cabinet. These little beauties are great. I've been using them

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Starting point is 00:03:58 they're not that expensive anyway. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you'll be disappointed. So try them out. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. Lange nicht gesehen, or maybe lange nicht gehören, and久しぶりだね,久しぶりじゃ. That means long time no see, basically in Japanese, but we're in audio here. So I can't say, for instance, and that phrase, long time no see, is taken from Mandarin, I think. I'd have to say something like, something like that. Anyway, back to the episode. I'm a little slap happy. Haven't had a lot of sleep, but I've had a lot of caffeine. My guest is Tony Fidel. I'm really excited about this one. This was a conversation

Starting point is 00:04:45 I've been looking forward to for years. Tony has been called the father of the iPod for many, many good reasons. But let's go to the current stuff first. He's an active investor and entrepreneur with more than 30 years of history of founding companies and designing products that profoundly improve people's lives and certainly products that have fundamentally changed the world. He is a principal at FutureShape, which you can find at futureshapellc.com, an investment and advisory firm coaching deep tech startups. We do talk about that. Currently, FutureShape is coaching more than 200 startups innovating game-changing technologies. He is the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the Internet of Things. Tony was the SVP of Apple's iPod division and led the team that

Starting point is 00:05:30 created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career, Tony has filed more than 300 patents for his work. In May 2016, Time named the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPod, and the iPhone as three of the 50 most influential gadgets of all time. And we recorded video for this episode. Even before we started recording, I had learned something because I noticed that Tony had blurred the background in his video. It was very surreal. And that is a feature that is built into Skype. You just click on the three dots for more features and you can blur your background. Who knew? So you can check that out

Starting point is 00:06:11 by going to tim.blog forward slash Fidel, F-A-D-E-L-L, or you can just go to youtube.com forward slash Tim Ferriss. Either one of those will have the video of this conversation if you want to check that out. You can say hello to Tony on Twitter at TFadell, T-F-A-D-E-L-L. And we talk about a lot. It is wide ranging tools, tricks, routines, rebooting yourself, seeking boredom for insight, all sorts of stuff. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Tony Fidel. Tony, welcome to the show. Hi, Tim. Great to be here. I am so thrilled to finally be having this conversation. We have a bunch of mutual friends, and of course, the good man, Scott Belsky, is one of them. So thanks to Scott for making the introduction. Great guy, great guy.

Starting point is 00:07:08 And I have some suggested topics from him that we'll get to at some point. But I thought that we could begin with something that came up before we started recording. I mentioned that I needed to open up my caffeine. I have some yerba mate here sitting in front of me. And you said that you don't do caffeine. And one of the questions I plan on asking you is about alcohol, because my understanding is that you don't do alcohol either. Could you describe or explain why that is in both cases? Well, the caffeine thing and the alcohol are obviously my daily habits or lack thereof, but they happened at different times. And so for me, the alcohol was really an outpouring of when I went to Saudi Arabia for

Starting point is 00:08:02 two weeks to be with a friend there and I stopped drinking and I, it was just before I was 40, uh, 40 years old. And so I was there for two weeks and not drinking. And all of a sudden I started feeling completely better. I was sleeping better. I was, you know, I was waking up better. You know, you're like, oh, I'm not in this fog. It didn't take until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock to, you know, to actually be, you know, I was waking up better, you know, you're like, oh, I'm not in this fog. It didn't take until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock to, you know, to actually be, you know, present. And so for me, it was really about that feeling much better. And then I was thinking, wait a second. So if I drink alcohol, well, there's the calories from the alcohol. Then it's what it makes me do, which is usually eat too much dessert or any dessert at all. You have less control there.

Starting point is 00:08:46 And then I wake up in the middle of the night because I get happy heart because I can't process the alcohol sugars. And then I feel like crap the next morning. I'm like, why am I doing this to myself when I feel so much better? And I'm like, I'm getting older. It's not getting any better. So let's just cut it out. And literally it was overnight and just cut it out. Wow. So that was the alcohol piece, which was triggered by the trip to Saudi Arabia. And what about the caffeine? Well, the caffeine, you know, I basically overdosed on, you know, on sugar water or aspartame water back in my twenties when I was at a company called General Magic.

Starting point is 00:09:29 And so I was probably drinking between eight and 12 Diet Cokes a day, right? Loaded with caffeine. And that was just before the times of those crazy drinks with all the extra caffeine and everything. But that's what kept me going. but it was, it was killing me. And so I just then in there just said, I'm, I'm stopping the caffeine and I'm stopping the sodas, whether they were sugared or not, and just, just wet cold Turkey on it. And, uh, you know, and that helped a whole process. That was the beginning of a whole process of life changes that I made from the time I was 24, 25 to again, get to this point today. So we won't dwell on this too long, but I have a feeling there's some good stuff to

Starting point is 00:10:12 unpack here. So the cold turkey with caffeine has some repercussions, right? There are some, generally some physical withdrawal symptoms, even a very, very low daily doses of caffeine. So two things that popped to mind. Number one is why that particular day, right? What made that day different from the days before it and what was the catalyst? And then number two is how did you handle the detox period or acclimation period afterwards? Well, and we can get into this more later, but the impetus, the reason why I did that was I basically pressed reset on my whole life when I was, I think, about 25. When a company that I was working at 80, 100, 120 hours a week at called General Magic totally failed. It became my entire life. I didn't, I shunned even, you know, my family to a certain

Starting point is 00:11:14 extent. I just wanted to make this company General Magic happen. And so when it was an utter failure and a disaster, I kind of went away on my journey. And then I started rethinking all kinds of things in my life. So that was one big thing. But the withdrawal, the withdrawal was literally three weeks of insane headaches. It was continual headaches. You had to pop the Advil or the Tylenol or whatever it was. But it was continual headaches. And it just made me realize how much it was affecting me and that I'm glad I got through it.

Starting point is 00:11:53 But, yeah, it was painful. I'm sure it wasn't not as hard as a typical drug addiction. But caffeine is a drug. Okay. Caffeine is a powerful, powerful drug. And I never drank coffee either. I probably had two cups, three cups of my life. That's it.

Starting point is 00:12:11 And if we rewind the clock and go way back to childhood, of course, in prepping for this, I've done a fair amount of reading. And I've read that from the tinkering perspective, from the building perspective, which we could get into, your grandfather comes up a lot. I'm curious where you developed or how you developed your ability to sell, to market, to present. Because you're not only a good builder, you're also very good at presenting ideas in very persuasive ways.

Starting point is 00:12:48 So where does that come from? Well, great question. So my dad was a salesman for Levi Strauss. He was a head sales guy. He was selling jeans. For 33 or 34 years, he was with the company. And so he started there just, I think, when I was two years old. And so I watched him all the time going and selling, you know, clothes.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And he gave me little tips along the way. Sometimes I'd actually go with him to a sales, you know, a sales meeting where he would be talking to a retailer and telling about the latest line or what have you, or about sales goals or what have you. So I got to watch him do his work and ask him questions about that. And he gave me some really big tips on that. That was the first one, which is just, it must be built into my DNA because that's, you know, my dad has that skill. But then over time, it was really after the general magic phase, then and then, you know, starting to understand other people's

Starting point is 00:13:54 languages, you know, the language of marketing, language of finance, business, and trying to really understand those languages beyond engineering and blending those together and saying, wait a second, every single thing is about communicating in other people's languages, right? How would they understand? And then the other one is then coming from a place in the heart that's really meaningful when you are talking the other person's language about what you're doing. And then ultimately over time, through failures and all these other things, it's really understanding, talking to them about what they need and what their problems are and how you're trying to solve them. And so the more you put yourselves in their shoes. So I think it was a continual thing. And then, you know, being,

Starting point is 00:14:38 being, you know, mentored by Steve Jobs, you know, just kind of drilled it all home, right? To watch him, the absolute master do it. Then I picked up more tips and techniques and refined and refined after that. Okay. So we'll probably come back to that as it relates to two specific projects. General Magic has come up a couple of times and I have heard it described as the most important company to come out of Silicon Valley that no one's ever heard of. Now, it's not quite true that no one's ever heard of it, but it's not as recognizable as a lot of other names, of course. How did you end up at General Magic and in explaining that, what was General Magic?

Starting point is 00:15:21 And you can tackle that however you like. Sure, sure. Well, first, there's a movie out now uh called the general magic movie so you can see it it has the filmmakers told my story of how to get to how i got there but beyond um uh beyond that for me it was really i was i was a passionate geek since the 70s uh with an. Well, first with a, you know, a computer that was a paper. It had a paper display and it had punch cards. Right. So I started there and then an Apple 2 and what have you. And so I was always an Apple fan. I was a fan since I think a 79 or 80. And and then the Mac came. And so then I was a fan of the Mac. And I started to learn more and more because I was really diving in deep.

Starting point is 00:16:09 It wasn't just using. It was learning about it, learning about the craft and learning who's behind it. And that was all about the Mac team. Because before that, before Apple, before the Mac, Apple was really, you know, it was just about the product. It wasn't even about Steve Jobs at that time. It was really just about Apple too. When the Mac came, it was a whole set of the product, Steve Jobs, as well as the team behind it. And you were able to read all kinds of articles about the team. And that's when I started to really just go, who are these people? What are they all about? And so I kept tracking them and watching where they went. Some some stayed at Apple, some left, some went back to Apple and back and forth. And when I was getting out of school, there was a in the back of Mac Week magazine, there was a little column that was always about the rumor mill. It was the rumor mill. And I would read that.

Starting point is 00:17:05 And it said, the founding team from the Mac has gone off to do this project and this company called General Magic called Pocket Crystal. And I was like, what is that? And so every week, you know, you'd look for those little nuggets. And that week I found it. And so after that, when I read that, because there was no internet back in the day, right? I read that. I was like, okay, now it was tunnel vision, whatever it does. I need to go figure out what this company is doing. And I need to see if I could go work there. Cause I was, I was graduating at a startup at the time, but I was like this, it wasn't working. I was a, I was a, it was a tiny pond I was in, in Michigan at the time. Cause it wasn't the mobile revolution we have today. I was in in Michigan at the time because it wasn't

Starting point is 00:17:45 the mobile revolution we have today. And so I had to get to Silicon Valley. I had to go see that team and then ultimately knocked down the door, I should say, kicked in the door to get to work there. And to add some color to that, so I did watch the documentary. Oh, cool. And you basically, I don't know how to put this, harassed, I think, is probably not too far off, the head of HR, and just called and called and pestered and pestered until they finally paid attention. Can you add a little bit of detail to that? Sure. Well, first it was pestering the people inside Silicon Valley to find the people at General Magic to talk to. So first was, okay, I was determined to find a person at the company I could talk to. So I had to talk to various people. I wrote letters. I literally typed letters and sent them to various VCs and various people saying, who do you know at blah, blah, blah? Who do you know at? So I had to find the person. And so then I ultimately found that person, which was Dee Young, and started stalking both the

Starting point is 00:18:58 company from sitting at the doorstep, trying to get in in the mornings to meet somebody, as well as placing calls to D to get that interview, to get response from the interview, all those things. It took probably six, let's see, I started in, I think, April that year, and then I landed the position in November that year, and that was 1991. Now, my recollection of the film, which is really all I know of General Magic, is that you were not the only person who was, say, sleeping outside or trying to get a position at this company. What did they see in you? What were the elements in your approach or resume that got you a job do you think well you know i can't i can't i can speculate yeah i can

Starting point is 00:19:55 only speculate speculate but it was so well first i had already you know at that time, I had a startup company in high school with another guy doing educational, selling Apple II peripherals and writing software for the Apple II for those peripherals. That was called Quality Computer. Joe Gleason was a great guy, and he was just two years my senior. And it was the two of us doing that. And then after that, in school, in college, I created a chip firm with another guy. And we reverse engineered and made a new version of the 65816 processor in school for the Apple IIGS, literally a 16-bit version of the Apple II, because we loved it so much. So we made a processor and actually had it fabricated. And then I also had that software startup called Constructive Instruments with my professor, Elliot Soloway at the University of Michigan.

Starting point is 00:20:56 And we were doing educational multimedia software at the time. So I think those few entrepreneurial endeavors, you know, chips and software and sales and retail Okay, let's hire him for a pittance, which it was, and we'll give him a try. Why did General Magic, with this all-star team, I mean, just the superstars of the time, and soon to be, or I would say, yeah, sure, soon to be superstars of the later times, fail? Why did it not? What were they doing? And why didn't it work? Well, General Magic was trying to create what was in essence, the iPhone about 15 years too soon. Okay. So, you know, we know the iPhone today, but back then there were no digital telephone networks or mobile networks. They were all analog. There was no Internet there. There was almost no multimedia. And there's most people didn't even use email yet.

Starting point is 00:22:20 Right. And so what we were creating was this iPhone too early, but it was a picture of what was to come. So we were too early for the technology. Even the processors weren't fast enough and the battery life was too short. It just so many elements. We were well ahead of the future. Let's put it that way. And so, so that was one piece, but then the other piece that really, really cut general magic down was I would think it was a lack of discipline, a lack of discipline about who our customer was, what the product was we were making, what the, um, the timeline was and how we were going to get it to market. It was literally an amazing sandbox to create this next generation platform with almost no bounds. We created everything from scratch. We didn't leverage almost anything that was already built at the time. We decided to make our own chips and everything. And from that point, well, I shouldn't say from that point, but could you describe your first contact with Steve Jobs?

Starting point is 00:23:33 My very, very first contact? Yes. Was at Andy Hertzfeld's birthday. Andy Hertzfeld had his birthday. I don't remember which one it was. And for people listening or watching, could you just define who that figure is? Andy Hertzfeld was one of the principal software developers of the Macintosh. So he and Bill Atkinson and Susan Kerr and a bunch of other people created the Macintosh, and they were all at general magic. And so Andy, you know, he was having his birthday. And so he invited the team from general magic to come to his birthday

Starting point is 00:24:11 at his house. And lo and behold, who shows up, I think he was riding his bicycle at a time with Steve who was literally, I think like living five or six blocks away. And so he just, you know, rolled up on his, on his, uh, on his bike and there he was. And we were all gathered around, um, cause Steve was obviously, uh, you know, busy at next at the time. And, uh, um, Andy and Andy and Steve had a really close connection. Um, and they would always talk about, you know, different technologies and things. And then that was the time when I first got to meet him, you know, meet Steve. What were your impressions at the, at the time? You know, you're starstruck. You're absolutely starstruck. Oh, that's Steve. Oh my God. I,

Starting point is 00:24:55 you know, and I'm, you know, I was, I think I was 22 at the time, something like that. So I was just, you know, you, you know, it's like when you go up to your, you know, favorite rock star or something, you just don't know what to say. You know, you're like, he probably just looked at me weird instead of this crazy kid. But that was it. But the impression was he was he was he was very definitive in the way he spoke. You know, he made sure, like, this is my opinion and that's what it is. And then you could argue with him or whatever. And was great.

Starting point is 00:25:23 It was a great banter. That was fun. But I also, you have to remember at General Magic, I would hear Steve's stories every day. Every day you'd hear about something that happened on the Apple II or something that happened Apple or on the Macintosh team. And so I had this vision of Steve and these stories of Steve from the people who were with him in the most intense times and the most celebratory times and what have you. So, and I'm sure a lot of those stories were, you know, larger than they really were and, you know, and what have you. But so I had this picture and in times you were like, oh my God, absolute genius. And other times you're like absolute madness. And you're like, ah, should I cower in fear? You know what I mean? So you don't really

Starting point is 00:26:09 know what to make of it because you have this incredible impression of a person before you've really met them. Yeah, I can imagine, you know, the fish was this big type stories and all the elaboration that comes with dramatic storytelling, especially when you have such good raw material to begin with in Steve. So I will ask you more about Steve. But before we get there, I want to talk about your reboot. Sure. Post, I suppose it's post General Magic. So you were, let's call it. Just at the end and just, you know, and then about a year and a half after. A year and a half after. Two years after that, yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:47 So what were the elements of your reboot? And then the consequences of the reboot, if you look then, say, a few years after that? Sure. Yeah. Sure. Well, look, it started, you know, and I know you've interviewed Jim Collins and it was kind of this. I started on the yeah. You know, I'm still on the I'm still on the good journey. Hopefully one day I might get to the great journey. But, you know, it first started with, you know, individual contribution. Right.

Starting point is 00:27:18 So I was like, oh, I'm an individual contributor. I'm doing well. You know, I'm, I think I'm performing at the team. And then when the bottom fell down, general magic, right? Just everything happened and you were working night and day and all you have is this tunnel vision. And you're like, what am I doing? What am I doing with my life? And, you know, every time you talk to your parents or I talk to my parents, I'd be like, I got to go. I got to work on this. Boom. You know, it was just it was always just shutting everything down for one sole purpose. And then when that time happened and it's very dark and lonely time, you say. And I had luckily a friend who actually worked at General Magic. She came, Sondra Card, and she came and just sat there and talked to me and just helped me try to get through it.

Starting point is 00:28:13 And it was just, you know, no, this is valuable and this wasn't all just you and don't worry about that. And, you know, and just, hey, let's and get me out of that element and let me see beyond. Because when I was in Silicon Valley at that moment, it was probably four years. And I literally probably did not go further than a couple of miles radius away from General Magic and where I lived. You know, I didn't go to San Francisco. I didn't go out to the ocean. I was just, it was a sole purpose in life was just that. And so she helped me kind of take the blinders off and see more. And then as I saw more, I started saying, well, wait a second. What's the right thing for Gentle Magic? Where would the product go? And so I started thinking about that. And then I also started, where does my life go?

Starting point is 00:29:01 Where do I need? I have to start to understand balance. And I started reading and I started, you know, designing and thinking about the customer and thinking about marketing. So you start to see all of these things that were breaking down at General Magic. You go, oh, I should have been involved in that. I should have learned about those things. And so, so during that, that time was all about, um, redesigning a product for General Magic that I thought was a success. And so I did that. I was learning more about myself through that.

Starting point is 00:29:32 And at that moment, when I thought I had something, I took it to the General Magic powers that be. And I said, hey, this is what I think is really great. And they said, that's nice, Tony, but we have other priorities. And I was like, and then, of course, it hit me. And I'm like, oh, this thing I'm working on, I can't get these. They have different things they want to do. I can't make this thing real. So on the journey of good to great, I decided to go to be a manager slash leader.

Starting point is 00:30:03 And so I went and took that design and I went to different ones of the licensees of General Magic. We had many, many big companies who were working with General Magic to create this device and the service. And it was Sony and Panasonic. And another one was Philips,

Starting point is 00:30:20 who I was working closely with. So I went and pitched my device to CEO of Philips at the time. And I went and pitched my device to CEO of Phillips at the time. And I said, this is what we can do with this general magic investment you made. And they were like, that's great. Let's do this. Okay, now you're going to come on and do it for us. I was like, whoa, what? And so literally, I was 24, 25 at the time. And now, you know, through a whole set of things was I was now the lead of this project and this new team that I had to build from scratch in Silicon Valley for Phillips to create this device.

Starting point is 00:30:57 And so, so there was the failure of general magic. And now all of a sudden, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it. And so I, I've never managed people. I never did anything. So I started hiring people, people I knew and started building this team. And then I was probably the worst manager under the sun for the first six months. You know, you're just like, do it this way, do it that way, blah, blah, blah. You don't know what you're doing. And so I had to go back and I'm failing miserably. You know, and I'm in this big company with these dark offices. It's old. It's not a startup. It's nowhere near like General Magic. So I left everything I knew to go to this big company

Starting point is 00:31:35 to do this thing. I had no clue what I was doing and I was failing at it. And so then I had to go on another journey of like, okay, what am I? Who am I? What's a great manager? What's a great leader? How do I learn about these things? How do I reflect and see what I'm doing? How do I get feedback? And so that was another step, right? And then all through that time was also a physical journey. Because if you saw the movie, you probably saw me in the movie. I don't look quite like I look like today. Very different. And so I'm playing the long game. I wanted to look as horrible as I could in my twenties. So I can only look better as I got older. So, so there was that mental

Starting point is 00:32:19 journey and emotional journey, but then there was a physical journey of healing in every which way, of moving up through that pyramid of trying to kind of right the ship and get whole again, but then move well beyond it and take all those really negative experiences and turning them into something positive. Let's explore your process for a second, or maybe more than a second, as it relates to what you might call phase shifts or chapter changes. When you're asking yourself, what's a great manager? How do I get feedback? What does the actual process look like when you did that? I mean, are you going to the bookstore and buying 10 books and reading 10 books? Are you trying to pin people down to grill them about how they manage? What did you actually do? What was the process? Well, you hit it on the head,

Starting point is 00:33:18 nail on the head. There was books, a lot of reading. Another one was talking to people who I trusted, who could give me feedback. And then I started kind of going to a couple of classes, you know, and just doing that. And then... Sorry to interrupt. What type of classes? Oh, they were just kind of like management classes or, you know, doing little like questionnaires of your management style and what's working, what's not. And then I, as I got deeper and deeper, I was like, wait a second, I need to get deeper into myself. I need to learn much, much more about myself. And so how do you do that? You know, athletes go off and get a trainer and they start working on the training and they, you know, like you, you know, work on their food, you know, what they eat, how they sleep, how they work out, all that stuff, maybe even their mental abilities.

Starting point is 00:34:14 And so I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, I got to know myself really well. And I'm and given a lot of the stuff that happened growing up because I went to 12 schools in 15 years, I was, you know, a transient kid in a way. And so I didn't. So there was all these social interactions that I had or I did not have because I wasn't with a group for very long. Right. Sometimes sports gives that to kids because they learn how to work on teams. But I never had that because I was always moving. And so I decided that what's the best thing to do is I'm going to act because I was reading all these books about psychology, you know, the road less traveled.

Starting point is 00:34:57 I was reading, you know, I was also a philosophy minor in college. So I was also going back to some of that, going back to some psychology and things. So I said, okay, I'm just going to go find a person that I can go and talk to about everything. So I went to a psychologist. I wasn't crazy. I just decided I'm going to go talk to somebody who should know something about this. So I literally went to one and a half to two hour sessions twice a week for almost a year and a half and literally just diving deep into everything and said, I had this experience today. I had that experience today. And it gave me the time for me to process it myself.

Starting point is 00:35:46 Right. And just, you know, the person would ask me questions. The doctor would ask me different questions. But then and then I was like, oh, oh, I didn't think about it that way. I didn't see it from that angle. Oh, OK. And so I got to go really deep into so many pieces of my life that that was just, wow, it was just like huge lights were flashing. And you're like, oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:36:12 And all of a sudden, the changes started occurring. It wasn't just doing, but it was learning the fundamentals and learning not just by reading a book, but actually seeing it in your day to day-day so I could bring examples from every day into the sessions and just talk about them. Does that make sense? It does make sense. How did you find the psychologist? How did you pick this person? Oh, geez. Wow, how did I do that?

Starting point is 00:36:41 Or how? I think it was just a recommendation from a friend. Yeah, it was a recommendation. What were some of the results that you saw outside of the sessions, some of the outcomes for you? I think it was empathy. There was a lot of empathy, putting yourself in other people's shoes and understanding what they were thinking, how they're acting, how they might be reacting to certain words that you're saying. Different approaches to leading and motivating. Certain things about the decisions I made every day and how I could go about making different decisions. How about just re-enabling social interactions? Again, like I said, I was the

Starting point is 00:37:32 geeky kid in the corner. I was the new kid all the time, right? And if you're the new kid all the time, you're going to have certain tendencies and you're going to fit in really fast, but you're also not going to make deep connections. So it's those kinds of things that you had to grapple with and really tease apart and learn about yourself. And so that was where the physical change, the mental change, the leadership change to allow me to really propel beyond and not just, you know, learn through lots of mistakes. I learned through mistakes, but it was a quick iteration because you could learn the, it wasn't, you're not learning about the symptom, but you're learning about the root cause or trying to fix the root cause or at least manage it. Why did you go through 12 schools in 15 years?

Starting point is 00:38:27 Well, because of my dad's job. Because of your dad's job. Yeah, my dad. So he was wherever the business at Levi's, because it was taking off. If you remember in the 70s, Levi's, oh, you're too young. You don't know this. Levi's was literally like, was a precious, precious commodity. Like they were trading Levi's jeans as currency in Russia on the black market. It was that sought after thing. Maybe like Supreme is or was, you know, it was that kind of thing. And so my dad would always go to various places where they were either starting and rolling out Levi's because it wasn't everywhere. It was just in certain places. So starting up new

Starting point is 00:39:10 territories or propping them up or fixing them in some way. So we would move from place to place because my dad was ambitious and he was really good at sales. And so they kept promoting him and moving him up the ranks and giving him harder and harder work. That's what happens, right? When you're successful, they only give you more and harder. Yeah. As a friend of mine put it, he said, your reward for winning the pie eating contest is more pie. I know that we're going a little memento nonlinear with the way that I'm asking questions, but I wanted to ask this earlier. What made your dad so good at sales?

Starting point is 00:39:49 What are some of the things that made your dad so good? Well, he's a very personable guy. So he gets along, and you can see it in his face. He is not a guy who can lie, all right? And neither am I. And I got that from him as well. And he said to me one day, um, after the meeting, I, there was some meeting, he was in a sales meeting. I was there and I saw him and he laid out the whole line of clothes and showed this. I think it was,

Starting point is 00:40:19 I don't remember. It was Bloomingdale's or Macy's at the time, something. And he said, okay, these are the hot sellers in our line. These aren't so good. I wouldn't recommend you buying these, blah, blah. And I was like, dad, what are you doing? You're supposed to sell everything. And he goes, no, I'm not supposed to sell everything. I'm supposed to sell the things to what the customer really should have and they're going to be successful with.

Starting point is 00:40:44 And if I don't have what they're going to be successful with, I'm going to recommend my competitor and tell him that they should go there instead of this piece of apparel or whatever, because I'm going to earn the trust and respect. And it's not about a transaction. It's about a relationship. And they will come back to me every day, every week and know that I'm the person they want to talk to. And I'll be first. And if I have the best stuff, I'm going to get the biggest orders. But if I always sold all the stuff that was dog, you know, and just to make my quarter to quarter, whatever nut it was to crack, I am going to lose that relationship. And everything in life is about your relationships and how you treat them and how you, you know, whether the times are down or

Starting point is 00:41:25 whether times are good or times are bad. And so that was a key piece that I took away from that day and will never forget. That is a great story. What a great story. What a great lesson too. Man, what a gift. When you later in your career were giving advice on managing, because you talked about developing empathy, you talked about this personal transformation. Later on, when people would come to you as novice managers who are kind of trying to build the plane while they're mid-flight, what type of advice do you give to new managers

Starting point is 00:42:06 who are maybe good product people who have somehow been promoted into a management role, but never prepared for it? What type of advice or training or recommendations do you give those folks? Well, what always inevitably happens with all new managers is they have a difference with another manager somewhere, whether customer, their supplier, whatever it is, they have a difference with a manager that's inside the team. And usually they'll come and complain to me about that person or whoever they're having a problem with that team. And then usually the other team member will come up. And I always would say to them, I'm like, look, I can sit here and I'll give you some advice. But at the end of the day, I am not going to rule on this. I'm not going to sit here and take a side. I said, because whatever side I take, you won't be happy or the other

Starting point is 00:42:55 person won't be happy. It will never go well. I said, the best thing you can do is whenever you have these issues is you to get in a room and speak like adults instead of complaining, you know, whiny children. And you get in a room and you hash it out and you try to speak like adults to each other and try to work it out. And if you still can't work it out, come get me. But don't, what most people do is they rant over here

Starting point is 00:43:21 and they rant over here, but they never try to make a bond with that other person to try to find common ground and work from that. Kind of like the polarization of our politics today, right? And you got to get in the room, you got to get, and that's the biggest step for conflict resolution and to build your relationships inside the organization so that you can go further because you're going to always, you all need to work together. This is, it's not a zero sum game. Maybe some companies are, but in the ones that I've had was never zero sum game.

Starting point is 00:43:52 We needed each other and we need to work each other and you can't always get your manager involved to do that. And so I was always about, sure, I'm always about learning by doing and then doing the education on the back end. In other words, have the failure moments, work through it and try to figure it out yourself and then go read about it and go, oh, now I get it. So it kind of locks it in. So a lot of people learn, then do. I like to do, fail, then learn. Are there any particular books that you have found useful or recommended to people related to management or communication, anything like that?

Starting point is 00:44:36 Management and communication. Yeah, or communication. I'm just wondering if somebody came to you hypothetically and they said, Tony, I want to hash it out with this guy, but I'm a miniature version of you. I'm running red hot. I'm in sixth gear. And I think I'm just going to not have the tools to, say, have this conversation without getting really excited or managing it in a way that they won't be as, as productive as it should be. So how should I prepare for it? Right. Sure. What, uh, where might you point them or what might you say to them? Well, I think that there's one book, which is really does a, there's two, there's two books, actually one book, which is Getting to Yes. If you've ever read that book, Getting to Yes.

Starting point is 00:45:26 Yep. William Ury and other guys. Yep. Right. Getting to Yes is one. And that's all about telling a story, right? And being there and telling a really great story for why people should say yes to whatever you're proposing.

Starting point is 00:45:39 So building that. The other one is Who Moved My Cheese? Yeah. Right? That's another really simple book. You don't have to go through all of this psychological kind of heavy books to get to very simple lessons. And so Who Moved My Cheese is when basically something's changed and you don't like it anymore and it's out of your control. And then getting to yes was all about trying to find the common ground and getting someone to see your side and hopefully getting them to say yes.

Starting point is 00:46:10 So those two things are very simple books, but they're a good starter place to get people to work together. Thank you. So I'm looking at, normally I would apologize for this. I'm looking at, this is going to get meta for a second. So I'm looking at my iPhone, which normally I would apologize for, but it seems very appropriate here. And I'm going to look at my notes because there's a text from our mutual friend,

Starting point is 00:46:37 Scott Belsky, with a few suggestions. And this is going to be the return to Steve in a way. So he mentioned, I'll just read a few things. So he's one of the rare people I know who can work across atoms and bits, as he describes it. And then he said he has a ton of Steve stories from early days of iPhone and iPod, how decisions were made, counterintuitive bets taken at the time. So could you tell a story about any decision or counterintuitive bet from the Steve days? Counterintuitive bet. Well, you know, Apple was fighting for its life on the iPod days, right?

Starting point is 00:47:16 So that was pre-iPod. So a counterintuitive bet was specifically Steve saying, we are going to build iPod. That was called dulcimer. Literally, the company at that time frame was 200 and I think it had $500 million in debt and $250 million in the bank. And it was breakeven quarter to quarter. Right. And Steve was like, we need to

Starting point is 00:47:47 do this thing. It was a code name called dulcimer, which ultimately came iPod, but we need to do this project. And he, he said, okay, I was, I was a consultant whipping this thing up. And then he was like, okay, you're going to come on board and you're going to make this happen. And the people in that room, he said, look, this is going to happen. And if anyone gets in your way, have them call either someone in this room or call me and we're going to take care of it. And so literally there were people who put roadblocks in,

Starting point is 00:48:18 you know, we say it's the corporate antibodies that set in and say, wait a second, we're struggling for our life, right? We're struggling for our life for the Mac. We got to put all of our resources in the Mac. We can't be, you know, going in a different direction. We have to like, I'll be, you know, and you're just, you're a consultant. Who are you kid? You know? And I'm like, I need these, you know, I need some people to help. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. And then literally I'd call in the air cover. Hey, I need some help. Whoever that was. And then, you know, that person and that

Starting point is 00:48:49 person, whoever was in the way, you know, after about four or five calls, it got around the company. Like if I ask you, I need help. You just say yes. Don't because you don't want to know what's going to come. You know what bomb's going to come and hit you otherwise. And so that was a very counterintuitive thing. And it was totally guarded by Steve and the management or part of the management team at the time. What gave him the confidence to make that type of decision? Or maybe confidence is the wrong label to apply to it, I'm not sure. But whether you have to speculate or if you know, what gives or gave him the ability to make that type of commitment and decision? Well, you know, I saw a lot of decisions and a lot of stuff after the first iPod, you know, kind of green light to start to keep going,

Starting point is 00:49:52 right? So I'm going to speculate based on those, you know, 10 years of decisions I saw, what I think happened at the iPod thing, which was literally almost every time we had to make a big bet, a very big decision that would be, you know, kind of high, high risk, put the company at high, high risk. It was always because we were under threat. Yeah. Okay. So the iPod was because they tried everything to get the Mac to go over three years and it wasn't going. And it was, we have to try something different. We've tried everything on the Mac. No one wants to move off Windows PCs. What are we going to do differently? And so this looked like the first thing that could happen. MP3s were taking off. All the MP3 players at the time were just horrible and itunes at the time after apple bought itunes

Starting point is 00:50:48 with jeff robin um uh basically started gaining traction and macs were just starting to sell as multimedia machines you know you could do your music on them and he's like okay now if we get an ipod maybe it will cause more people to want to, because it's differentiated. It's not just burning CDs or something. People will buy more Macs because this iPod will allow them to do something that nobody else can do, especially definitely not on the PC side. So we were under threat, right? Michael Dell said to the world, like, oh, Apple should pack up and go home, give all the money left over to the shareholders and stop.

Starting point is 00:51:29 Right. So that's the situation it was. And he didn't want that to happen. So he was looking for anything that could possibly break out. And he's a lover of music. We were all lovers of music or are lovers of music. And so I think he made that bet. And it wasn't too expensive to go off and do.

Starting point is 00:51:45 Yeah. What is the timing for, just as one piece of it, iTunes within Apple when it's first being sort of prototyped and developed inside of Apple? What would have the timing been on that in terms of year but that like 2000 2001 yeah so so itunes i believe was bought um in late 2000 it might have been no no you know middle of two early to middle of 2000 it was bought and and then it was it was quickly rejiggered to be at apple product to be itunes and then they started seeing it taking off. And they wanted it to work with MP3 players. And that's when it all, that's when Apple said, oh, we need a device. And that's when I got the call and, you know, everything came together.

Starting point is 00:52:37 So it was early 2000. And then we had the discussion about the iPod. I was brought in in late January 2001. And then Steve signed off on it in the third or fourth week of March of 2001. And then we shipped it in the first week of November that year in 2001. So it was that fast, built the whole team, built the whole thing. It was crazy, crazy, crazy schedule. So just as a small world story of sorts, so 2000, I had just moved to Silicon Valley and I was working in San Jose, living in Mountain View. And I had this tiny, tiny, tiny bedroom, which costs like $5 million a month in rent. I was driving my mom's hand-me-down piece-of-shit minivan. This thing was a disaster.

Starting point is 00:53:34 And in my apartment complex, there was this guy sort of across the way. And there's this little concrete pond. I mean, it was really a pretty hilarious, but perfectly comfortable place. And this guy, I don't want to get anybody in trouble, so I won't mention where he's from, but he would always be smoking late at night. And I was a night owl. So, I'd be up at like two, three in the morning working on this first company and be like, hey, how's it going? And we'd talk for a few minutes. And it was sort of our nightly chat. And I saw this guy, he worked at Apple and he got progressively more and more haggard looking. And it turned out at the time, he didn't give me any name or anything, but he's like, look,

Starting point is 00:54:16 I can't even make sense of this anymore. Can you come over here and give me your thoughts on this interface? Because I've just been looking at it for like 20 hours straight. And I later realized a very early sort of mock-up of iTunes. And it is so wild to look back. But this guy, he was working so hard. He was a good employee. I mean, he probably, I'm sure, wasn't supposed to show me, but he needed a second opinion.

Starting point is 00:54:44 And it's just reflecting back on what that has become. Does it still hit you? Your TED Talk is wonderful, talks a lot about habituation. some of these products nest that you've been so critically involved with does it ever still just kind of stop you or is it so you are these are these things so ubiquitous that it's become invisible to you well you know when it becomes everywhere and it becomes mundane basically you know just like whatever and then you kind of look back and go, oh, yeah, I forgot I was involved in that because you're just using it every day. To me, in our business, whatever you did was ancient history. It's always about what you're doing or what you're planning to do.

Starting point is 00:55:39 We could never, as we said on the team, we'd only celebrate for a nanosecond and move on. And if you look at iPod, we were fighting for our life with every generation. iPod wasn't successful until this third generation. Right. So the first one was like, cool. And then it was nobody bought it. Second one, cool, for a little while. Then a few more people bought it.

Starting point is 00:56:04 The third one is where it started happening. And then when iPhone happened, you know, we had lots of success underneath our wings at that point. But then it was like, we're taking on these monster companies, just like we took on Sony is like, yeah, and this is really hard. Can we do this? And like, and we did it. And then, but we're like, but that's not enough. We got to do the next one and the next one. And so it's a breathless journey that you have. And then finally, when you're there, you're like, oh yeah, we did all that. And then you go and try to like write down the history and like, wow, we sure did a shit ton of stuff, you know? But you know, it's after having that general magic experience and 10 years of failure for me in the valley,

Starting point is 00:56:46 it was always a hope we would be successful, but never a, it's going to be, because I already went through that. And I went through that physical and emotional pain. So I never got to that point where, yes, oh my God, we champions. Like that left my body. It was always about climbing the next part of that hill or that mountain to then ultimately get to, you know, making something that's really great. And, you know, those things today in the conversation that you learned a lot from Steve. What are some of the things that you learned from Steve or picked up from Steve? Anything at all? The biggest one was storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. Always, whatever you're doing, have great stories and great analogies because you need to relate to people on their level. And if you can give them great analogies. So if you're trying to, whether it's a product story or software story, but even if you try to change the way, you know, you're doing a process at work or who are the right vendors we should be working with. You need a great story behind that

Starting point is 00:58:08 so you can get people on board and understand the facts through a fun way of learning about the facts, if you know what I mean. We went through this and here's the step one of our journey, step two of our journey. This is what we learned and now we're at this decision today. Here are the things that we want to make sure we avoid from the past, but we need these things in the future. It's going to be risky, but telling those stories. And then, and if you can find the analogies by which everyone can relate and it makes it really just drop dead simple. Do you have any examples of analogies, whether from Steve or from your own journey later, that you could use to illustrate? Sure.

Starting point is 00:58:53 You know, like Steve had this perfect one he did with Walt Mossberg on stage, which was like, you know, the Mac was like bringing, you know, a glass of ice water to somebody in hell. Yeah. Right. You're like, oh, yeah, of course. You're like, oh, it's so refreshing. I need this. I've been dying for so long. You've now saved my life in a way. And so that was one, just a classic example of that. But, you know, we try to do that all the time in our marketing. You know, when we were at nest in our marketing, we try to do that in, um, at, at iPod iPhone. But I, you know, sometimes you don't even need an analogy though, if you can really get it crisp. And that was the first tagline for the iPod, which was a thousand songs in your pocket. It is probably the shortest, most concise, most dramatic tagline of any product ever in

Starting point is 00:59:47 existence. And when you hear that, we always use that, we hold that up as kind of the measuring stick for everything we do after that. How do we get to that point with our marketing? Or how do we get to that point with whatever we're trying to say to get it so crisp, so understandable for everyone that it's like, oh my God, duh. Yeah. And it's such a beautiful, elegant example of the benefits versus features, right? Instead of what you saw a lot at the time, which was the specs, right? The megabytes or the- Feeds and speeds the feeds and speeds, exactly and man it's also the type of tagline that

Starting point is 01:00:30 hits that sweet spot of perfectly understandable and shareable, right, which is it really did just thread that needle perfectly One other thing on analogies One other thing on analogies.

Starting point is 01:00:46 Yeah. One other thing on analogies is if you can have a great analogy for someone, they will continue to repeat that to everyone else. So even if they didn't get all the details and everything else, and they can't articulate exactly the story or all the how's, why's, and what's.

Starting point is 01:01:06 They can tell the analogy and everyone goes, oh, now I get it, right? For the most part. And so that's another thing is trying to give the people, your listeners or the people you're trying to persuade a superpower. Give them that key line to make them feel like they really know what's going on. And then they can reiterate and then like, yes, I like they really know what's going on. And then they can reiterate. And then they're like, yes, I'm in the know. And it's cool. Totally.

Starting point is 01:01:34 And that single analogy or that single line, that one memorable phrase, at least in my experience, also often acts as an anchor for other pieces of information, right? But they need that first anchor in order to access that chain of recall that gives them the other details. Exactly. Because they go, oh, now I'm listening. I get it. Now I'm listening. Tell me more.

Starting point is 01:01:54 Yeah, you're right. You're right. Now, in all the videos that I've watched of you, and certainly just having this conversation, you seem like a guy who's very comfortable at high RPMs. And I read, and certainly you can't believe everything you read on the internet, so feel free to fact check, but I read that upon leaving Apple, your goal was to get bored. And they put it in quotation marks. This is from The Guardian. And then he traveled around the world with his young family for a year and a half,

Starting point is 01:02:19 put his children in French preschool, et cetera. Was the goal to get bored? And if so, could you explain what that means? So getting bored and a lot of people who come to me for career advice, so people who worked for me, worked with me, whatever, they come and say, Tony, I'm thinking about doing the next thing. And you get a point in your career where you have the ability to take time to make decisions. Most people very early on their career, you know, you have to, you have to eat, you know, you have to jump from, you have to jump from lily pad to lily pad and you have to make sure it's going to be solid, stable and everything else because you're worried about it, worried about your life or your, perhaps your family. You get a certain point in your career

Starting point is 01:03:05 where you can actually take a pause. You can breathe and you can think again and you can get inspired and you can. And so when I say get bored, which is get out of the process you're in, the day-to-day grind, and just saying, okay, I've taken as much information as I can in this week

Starting point is 01:03:24 or these two weeks of figuring out where I'm jumping to. And I'm just going to jump to it. I'll, you know, damn the torpedoes. It's just going to I'll make it work kind of a thing. And so what I say to people is, no, don't. You know, they're like, oh, I have this great position now in title. If I stop, I'm going to have if I stop now and I don't take a job over there, I'm going to lose it all. And I'm going to have to start from zero again. And I'm like, no, you don't. What you

Starting point is 01:03:50 need to do is if you do your career right, between every eight to 10 years, you're going to have a, a different chapter of your life, of your career. If you, if you want to do anything substantial, it's probably between eight and 10 years. Um, Some people think it's four to five. I don't think that if you're doing something that's really important and different. And so when you, when those pauses come up or when those big transitions happen, you need to think very clearly because you are about to get married for 10 years or eight years to something else that you're going to put your heart and soul into. It's going to, if you're, if you're choosing correctly, right? It's not about the money. It's about the mission and what you want to learn and what you want to challenge yourself with and

Starting point is 01:04:36 deliver to the world and whatever that is. And so you should take the time out, get bored, get out of the rat race, get out of that. And I got, you know, a sliver of time to think about the future. I think about, you know, I've made my future is today, two weeks, two months, maybe after that, it's a blur. It's maybe holidays. But other than that, it's like, okay, I don't even know what's out there. Get the time to get bored. Spend three, six months if you can, or at least two or three weeks outside of that. Get bored. Just put away all of your things. Maybe go clean up the garage or whatever it is. And through that, you're going to start to think differently. You're going to act slightly differently. And your mind might open up to other sources of inspiration, other problems, other things where you start to go, oh, now I see differently.

Starting point is 01:05:33 I'm not just going to go and go to run to the competitor because I understand the space and run to the competitor and go work for them because they're going to give me a better job. But I want to go to a whole different thing that I want to learn about that's going to challenge me. So I'm not just checking in every day and doing my work, but I'm actually growing through that. This is great. I'm going to keep going with this theme. Could you give me a personal example from your life of doing this, whether it's current day past anything that, uh, that, that comes to mind that you think is makes for, makes for a good illustration. Well, you, you brought it up already, which was, you know, the time that we went around the world for a year and a half and traveled. Okay. The whole goal there was to get out of the same place at that point I had been for, let's see, 18 years, 19 years, was Silicon Valley, you know, was to get out, see the world with our kids who were one and two at

Starting point is 01:06:37 the time. And they were, we didn't see them very much because my wife also worked for Steve, right? My wife worked for Steve, I worked for Steve. So we were busy, busy, busy helping Apple. And so when we had kids, we came home one day and we weren't with them. You know, we learned that we weren't with them. They were like running to the nanny when they had a problem instead of us because they didn't know who we were. So we were like, this is not working. So we said, we're going to change everything and go out and understand other things in life and try to be with a family. And through that, we went to many different countries and lived in different houses, lived in Spain and France and Hawaii and different parts of California. But anyways, moved all around. And through that journey,

Starting point is 01:07:26 and going to different art museums and talking to people living in different houses, that's where the idea for Nest came up, was literally we're living in all these homes around the world with all the same problems. So you're living in Spain, and you're living in France, and you're living in Hawaii, and you're living here. And you're like, wait a second, they all have the same fundamental problems with their home controls and things. And at the very same time, I was designing a house in remotely in Lake Tahoe. So between Lake Tahoe designing, you know, I was, that was a great way to like distraction, right? It was, it was something I always wanted to do. So I was working on that and then living in these different places and experiencing the same problems in that design

Starting point is 01:08:09 here and understanding that i saw different ways of living all around i was like wait a second i think we can fix this problem and step by step that nest was Nest was created over kind of a nine-month gestation, thinking, reading, learning, experiencing, to then come up with that solution that if I was still in Silicon Valley, I would have never came up with. Where are you now? Right now, I'm in Paris. In Paris. And where do you spend most of your time these days? And I suppose along with that, why Paris? So Paris happened during that trip, that year and a half travel. Paris

Starting point is 01:08:56 was only supposed to be a two week kind of quick adult. We're going to come here and be in Paris. It's going to be a great parents experience but the kids not so much and we got here and then we started looking around and really living you know in those two weeks just going to this the various uh jordan's and things of that nature we're like wait a second this is great kids especially in their age and i was like oh this is wonderful my wife's like this is great let's just stay just stay. And we just, because we had that ability, we just stayed. We just continued to stay in Paris. And then through that, we met all kinds of very interesting people, learned about the culture, learned about the language, and just fell more and more in love and i was going to you know various museums and learning about those artists and learning about their periods in time so like oh certain you know picasso at his blue period and his next period his next period and each time they take these breaks

Starting point is 01:09:56 i was like oh wait a second we're on those breaks getting inspiration just like they did it was like this is cool and so paris just became part of us. And then the other piece of the puzzle was we're like, well, wait a second, we can go back to Silicon Valley, but what are kids really going to learn? We're like, they could learn a language. It was always my dream to learn a second language. Growing up in the Midwest, growing up in the US, you know, you don't really think a second language, at least in the 70s and 80s was important. Today, obviously it's more and more important, especially in California and other states, Texas and those things. But I always wanted to do that. I was like, well, we could give that to our kids. They could learn

Starting point is 01:10:33 that. They're going to learn socialization, of course, but they can't learn math and history and science, but they could learn a language. Let's do that. And let's give that gift to our kids that I always wish I had. And so that was the Paris connection. And then we kept coming back every summer. Our kids always stayed in French programs and became fluent in French. And then ultimately we bought here. And then after I got done with Google Nest, my wife just said, hey, we have a place in Paris. Let's just move. I'm like, let's do it. Done. That's how it all, that's all that happened. But since then, since that happened in 2016, yeah, 2016, we've also decided to branch out further. And now we spend a lot of time in Southeast Asia and in Paris, and we go back and forth and put our kids in school there, have homeschoolers that help our kids when we're in different places and those things.

Starting point is 01:11:25 Just because as you've said so many times, experiences are incredibly powerful things to learn from. So it's knocking the parents off the foundation just like the kids are learning for the first time. And we learn as a family unit. And we figure out things like when you're in Indonesia, what's the currency? Why do they act this way?

Starting point is 01:11:45 Why is it this way? Oh my God, that's really cool. Why don't we do that in the developed world? Why don't we do it? So all of these different things, it just helped to build, I think, our family and the way our kids see the world. It's such an incredible gift that you're giving of course yourselves but your kids as well as uh an entirely different lens through which to view not just the physical world but the

Starting point is 01:12:14 sort of constructs and concepts and labels and language that make up our realities it's uh it's it's really exciting makes me excited for them. In some of your episodes, you talk a lot about language, and I think you also had that in one of the papers you wrote in school or something about language. And when I was listening to some of your podcasts, I'm like, yes, you are absolutely right. There's these containers that's called language.

Starting point is 01:12:40 And when you see how differently they speak in a different language and what words are meaningful and what words they don't even have in that language, you're like, oh, that shapes the culture in a dramatic way. And that's the kind of things where, you know, it's like brain food, at least for me, where you're like, oh, my God, I've never thought of that problem that way before. Oh, it brings such clarity or brings such resolution to how you see the world in many ways in different respects so it's cool so this might seem like a 90 degree turn i don't i don't think it is but i want to bring it up um and i was planning on bringing it up anyway plastics plastics uh plastics why why are you so interested in plastics? Plastics. Well, when you live in Southeast Asia, you start to really understand plastics because they're all around you on the ground, in the water, even in the air,

Starting point is 01:13:40 and you see it everywhere. And you start saying, why do they have this problem? And in other parts of the world, we don't seem to have that problem. And so as over the journey of the past year and a half, I've come to realize a lot of interesting pieces about plastics. And so for me, plastics are a problem that we all have. It just is hidden in many parts of the world from us because there is waste management, management in quotes. It's taken away and we don't see it any longer, but it is still an incredible problem. And it's in some ways a blessing that there is not waste management in many of these places. So you can see the damage we're doing to the environment firsthand.

Starting point is 01:14:32 And it's not just about gathering it up. And it's not just about recycling, which everyone tells you about. It's really a problem with our usage and the material itself and how we use it and how we design with it, that we are burying our future generations in this toxic mess. We talk about CO2 all the time. We talk about coal plants. We talk about climate change. We have all kinds of things behind climate change that are going to be problems for future generations that we also have to pay attention to. And in some cases, some of these other things, just like plastics, is actually contributing to our climate change issue

Starting point is 01:15:09 as much as its environmental damage for 500 years. And so being in Indonesia, you really feel it viscerally. And you're just like, where there's a big problem, this is what I love. This is when I get like my brain turns on like, this is a big problem. How can we solve it? And this is not a problem with like a societal problem. This is truly a design problem. This is we designed this mess.

Starting point is 01:15:35 We got to design ourselves out of it, just like we have to do a climate change. So I'm like, that was it. It hit me so hard that I'm like, okay, how are we going to design our way out of it? And so I spent the last year and a half learning about it. Okay. So. So I can, you know, that's a leading thing. No, it's a great dot, dot, dot. I want to pursue that dot, dot, dot. Sure.

Starting point is 01:15:58 I want to talk about possible solutions or directions for solutions. But before we get there, because I'm so interested in how your mind approaches something like this, how do you begin to dissect a problem that could have such a broad umbrella, right? There's so many possible directions to go. How do you even begin as someone who knows how to build from a design perspective or other perspectives? How do you begin to deconstruct that? Well, let's just, I'm going to just go back through the plastics thing. You know, I'm not a plastics expert by any means, or at least I wasn't, I'm trying to get there. Even though the products that I helped to create had plastics in them. I really didn't know a lot about the end of life of plastics and that stuff. So I was like, okay, there's all this waste everywhere in Indonesia.

Starting point is 01:16:52 Well, why don't we just do what we do in the US? We'll just recycle it, right? And we'll just make sure there's good collection. And then you kind of dig in and you start learning about that and you go, so you try to just model saying, oh, we're just going to fix it by doing what we do there. And then you start asking more questions. So where does that go exactly? And so you just kind of dig deeper and you just dig deeper and you just keep saying, you know, I always say, you know, you can usually get to a great answer or a really great question by asking why about five times, why this? Why that? Why this? And so literally the process for me about plastics was why, why, why, why? And you just kept, and you never just took anybody at face value for the answer. You just kept digging.

Starting point is 01:17:36 And so for me, it's been all research. And then I got to the point where I was like, wait a second, this, all logic does not apply here. Wait a second. This, all logic does not apply here. Wait a second. Someone's giving us a, you know, selling us a story about how plastics are really used, how plastics are really treated at the end of life. That's not what happens. What really happens?

Starting point is 01:17:59 And you keep diving deeper and deeper. So for me, it's really about that. You start to apply things and just never give up till you find the real root cause and then unwind. Right. Don't just try to patch. So that's that's how that's how I got to, you know, and I'm still asking a lot of whys, but I got to a really, I think, a good point, at least on some pieces of the plastic issue that we have. Can you talk about where you are now in your thinking? Absolutely. So it first started with collection waste management and let's just collect it all and make sure it just doesn't get there. And then we'll recycle it then. And so what I'm mostly talking about now is there's two types of plastics. There's plastics that are durable things, things like, you know, your car bumpers and they last for five or 10 things like, you know, your car bumpers, and they last for five or 10 years. And, you know, and they serve a purpose and they're, and the material is really good for that. Okay. Then there's another purpose, which is we call ephemeral or single use or very low use

Starting point is 01:18:57 plastics, where we're using this product once or a couple of times, and then we discard it. Okay. So there's still a lot of things that need to be done on the durable side, and it's not perfect by any means. But if you look at what's growing exponentially is packaging and single use and these ephemeral applications that are going wild. And in fact, many of the petrochemical companies like the petroleum companies, right, they're actually not worried about electric vehicles taking away all the gas because they see these petrochemicals, all these plastics and these things being consuming oil over time. And so you're like, wait a second. The petrochemical guys aren't scared because we're using so much plastic in packaging and it's growing crazy.

Starting point is 01:19:44 So let's talk about that. So is it really recycling? So I'm talking about packaging and recycling. And I'm like, okay. So I dig deeper. And I started recycling at University of Michigan back in the 80s. And so when you start to learn about it, you find out that just because it has the recyclable label on it, it's not recycled. It's literally buried or burned, setting off toxic gashes. Literally, it's buried or burned, or it ends up in the environment like we see, you know, as litter or in the oceans.

Starting point is 01:20:21 And you're like, wait a second, just because it has a recycling label doesn't mean it's recycled. And very, very few of them are actually recycled. And you're like, okay, this is a problem. And it's growing exponentially. And even the best countries in the world with all these resources cannot afford to recycle, like, because it doesn't make any economic sense. So I go, wait a second. So what happens to all this stuff once it's burned or buried? Then you find out it turns into micro and nanoplastics that remain in the environment for 500 years. And then you learn it's in everything we drink. It's in the air we breathe. It's in the soil. It's in the water. it's in snow it's it's it's falling down as rain or snow in the on the polar caps you're like wait a second this plastic is everywhere it's

Starting point is 01:21:13 going to it's going to be everywhere for 500 years and it's these tiny nanoplastics just because it goes away it's still there and you're like well what does that do? It goes into our body. And typically those nanoplastics pick up bioaccumulative toxins and those toxins literally latch onto it. And then they go into our bodies and then they go into our bloodstreams. And so we have very, very early research. It isn't published yet, but I've talked to a lot of researchers that when those nanoplastics get into us, it's like asbestos and it causes inflammation in the body and the body attacks it.

Starting point is 01:21:45 And it could cause all kinds of things. We still have to do the correlation. So people are like, oh yeah, it's nanoplastics. Don't worry about it. It's in your water, but it's small parts per million. But look, I think it's just a lot of people telling us these things don't matter. Just like they said, cigarettes don't matter or other sugar doesn't matter. It matters. And it's in us and it's in our environment and we're polluting for generations. So, okay. So now we have this nanoplastics problem. It's going to be there for 500 years. Packaging's going crazy.

Starting point is 01:22:15 It can't be recycled. So what do we do? So we have to come up with new materials and new designs for all this packaging to allow us to live like they do. And this is the great thing in Southeast Asia. When you order something, you get takeout or you get anything, it comes on a banana leaf or it's wrapped in a banana leaf. And you're like, oh, cool.

Starting point is 01:22:33 And you take the banana leaf and you can just chuck it. You should, you know, obviously you put in a compost bin, but if you don't and it just ends up on the street, it goes away in, you know, 30, 45, 100 days. So we need to get to that type of packaging. So guess what? There are packages like that out there that are cost-effective from different materials. Some of it's called PHA.

Starting point is 01:22:56 There's other ones out there that can come from waste product, bio-waste, to create this, whether it's a film, a bottle cap, a bottle, these different things that can then be consumer compostable. So literally you can just drop it. If you litter it, it goes away. If you put it in the ocean, it goes away in 45, 120 days. No nanoplastics, no microplastics, just goes away. And that is the holy grail. And there are companies that are doing that today.

Starting point is 01:23:26 And we're trying to find them and help them and try to get people to design with them. And that's what we need to do. In the meantime, we need to stop all this single use stuff. We need to literally ban it because we are creating a huge mess on this planet. And we just don't realize it. Thank you for that description. No, that's great. I want to add one more thing.

Starting point is 01:23:49 You can add three if you'd like. So recycling, just because it's recyclable doesn't mean it's recycled, okay? So don't trust your recycling labels. If you do recycle, you should still recycle, but for the most part, it's probably not going anywhere to be reused. Recycled plastics, even if they are recycled, are only good for two to three uses, and then they become bad plastics because they're mechanically recycled. The long chains of plastic become short chains, and they can't make things with them. They become too brittle.

Starting point is 01:24:21 So literally, you can only recycle them a few times, unlike aluminum and glass and paper. The next thing is, is that people say, oh, if you don't recycle, you can compost it. Maybe you saw these boxed water thing, you know, like boxed water. They're like, oh, it's great. They say that you can recycle it. You have to go to a special facility in the middle of nowhere. Like it doesn't really get recycled. You hear things about compostable things. What that means, it has to go into an industrial composting facility and it needs to get a special heat treatment and air treatment and all this stuff to be able to break down. That doesn't work either. So we have been greenwashing, recycling, compostable, all of these different languages used to say plastics are green or they're bio-based. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The only thing that really matters now

Starting point is 01:25:11 is bio-waste-based plastics that are consumer compostable. That's the only thing that we should be selecting. And if we can't select that, pick a different material. Do not use plastics. Okay. I know that was a diatribe. It's long-winded, but I'm trying to get that message out to people. It's really important. That's why we have long-form conversations, so we can unpack some of this stuff, so to speak. You mentioned finding companies, helping companies.

Starting point is 01:25:43 Is that done through FutureShape, or is that done through a different vehicle? And for people who don't know FutureShape, could you describe what it is? So FutureShape. FutureShape is an investment vehicle from our family to find great entrepreneurs and companies trying to do really hard, hard developments, create deep technologies to help fix our planet, fix our societies, fix our communities, and get us forward in a green way, in some way green, or to enable small and medium-sized business owners to then be able to flourish and get out from underneath the system in some way that they've been subject to for a long time. So we try to find these things.

Starting point is 01:26:35 And we don't call ourselves venture capitalists. We don't call ourselves angels. We call ourselves mentors with money. We are mentors first. And we come and we put our money where our mouth is to help these entrepreneurs, to help these companies, to realize these goals, these dreams, these technologies to help our world. And they take time to build, right? They take time, effort and belief in what's going on. So that's what we do. We've invested in over 200 companies around the world and we mentor them at certain parts of their life cycle and just try to be that team that can help them with the confidence when they're down,

Starting point is 01:27:15 when they're doing the right thing, or help them find whatever resources they need, or help them when they're trying to learn leadership, how to do leadership or find the right person or do the hiring. All those kinds of real things that if you haven't done them a long time, for many years, you may not feel confident about.

Starting point is 01:27:35 And so it's that nudge to help them. Maybe we act like big brother or big sister sometimes. And is future shape where you're putting most of your energy these days or what are you're putting most of your energy these days? Or what are you personally spending most of your energy on? So FutureShape has been going now for about eight years, maybe 10, depending on how you count. And I spend almost all of my time on FutureShape and my team, our team together. We all work on these companies because what we've learned over the time is we could do one thing and start another company, but we take all of the experience, the knowledge, the resources that we can bring to bear anywhere

Starting point is 01:28:22 in the world and help these other 200 companies to thrive and really make the change that we can bring to bear anywhere in the world and help these other 200 companies to thrive and really make the change that they want to make in this world. And so we want to use leverage model. So we're really trying to leverage it. And for us, it's incredibly fun. And our curiosity is peaked all the time when they're going after tough problems and we get to dive in and be it to be beginners with them in a way or get to learn from them. And then we get to take our expertise and then, you know, combine it with their expertise. And so it's incredibly rewarding. And, you know, if people didn't mentor me when I was growing up and going through that thing, I would never be here today. And so at some point I looked around and go, wait a second, I guess that's me now. It's time to, you know, try to live up to what the mentors taught me.

Starting point is 01:29:07 Try to live to that ideal and pass the baton now and instill this art, this craft with these other people that we try to help. Because it's really important that we try to pass this stuff down to try to make it better for other generations. That's important work. And you mentioned being beginners, and that's something that came up in your TED Talk within the context of Steve and looking at things with beginner's eyes. Are there any particular skills that you're currently focused on personally or new behaviors, either ending or starting behaviors within the personal realm, or I should say individual, probably a better way to put it? Is there anything that you're currently working on? Well, I think, you know, from a beginner standpoint, in many ways, I'm in the plastics, right? I'm just this, I'm this little

Starting point is 01:30:03 guy calling up researchers saying, can you help me? I'm trying to, I'm this little guy calling up researchers, say, can you help me? I'm trying to get this. Why does it work this way? You know, and reading research papers and really going back to school and, you know, being an undergrad in a way and learning hopefully from the best. So I try to put myself in a position where I'm incredibly curious and I don't, I have skills of analytical skills to understand maybe what they're doing, but I don't really have the data to really understand it to that level. And so for me, I'm always trying to put myself in a uncomfortable position to make big decisions. Like, should we invest? Should we do whatever? Because that kind of tension makes things, I think, really, really

Starting point is 01:30:42 fun and really exciting. For me, I call it brain food. So I try to do that every day with the companies and the, you know, we're doing, we help to invest in impossible foods. I didn't know anything about food science, know anything about that. So go learn about that. Or we're doing, you know, modern meta, which is leather without a cow, right? How do you grow skin without an organism, you know, without a, you know, a larger organism? What does that mean? So, all of these things are just putting yourself in that point where you're like, I got to learn this thing and I got to be successful, you know, I got to try to be successful and keep up with these experts in the field. And so every day is like that.

Starting point is 01:31:26 So for people who are listening or watching, by any objective measure, certainly people would consider you successful. And what I like to do in these conversations, and fortunately in your bio, it's very clear that it wasn't a linear path from kind of bottom left to top right. I mean, you followed a very jagged path, in a sense.

Starting point is 01:31:52 What do you struggle with? What are things that you struggle with that you find difficult? Difficult for me? Difficult for me, I think, is just, just heavy duty analytics, just anything that's very analytical. I just, ah, I gotta, I gotta feel it. I gotta, I gotta see, I gotta feel it. I can't just sit there and stare at numbers. You know, another thing that's really hard for me is any kind of long form writing, you know, any kind of just, oh no,, I can't, you know, that that's really hard. I'm I struggle with impatience. You know, these things take longer than you'd like. And, you know,

Starting point is 01:32:33 you just you can see it, you can feel it, you can grasp it. But you got to go, no, I can't. No, no. Come on. Let's just get there. And you're like, no, OK. And you just got to be in the, you know, in the passenger seat waiting for things to happen. And so, you know, I try to augment, obviously the things I don't like to do with people who like to do that, you know, like Mike on our team is an amazing legal guy and this is what he loves to do. And so I'm like, Mike, just go do it. Like, uh, you know, I, that's not my thing. So we make sure we do that. But then when it comes to the real kind of emotional stuff of like, I want the future to be here now, that I struggle with all the time.

Starting point is 01:33:10 Like, I just don't want to wait. Why should we wait? Especially when we know now is the time. You know what I mean? There was a general magic. It wasn't the time. It was way too early and all that stuff. But when you see it, when you can see it perfectly, you see the moment, you're like, let's go. We got to get this done. Take the time. It was way too early and all that stuff. But when you see it, when you can see it perfectly,

Starting point is 01:33:25 you see the moment, you're like, let's go. We got to get this done. Take the hill. Come on. That's the most frustrating thing. There's always science fiction and future stuff. But when you see it and you can feel it, yes, go for it. Let's get it done. Let's dig into impatience a bit because impatience has been, I would like to think, and maybe this is delusional, but one of my greatest assets and also one of my greatest handicaps. impatience or work on your impatience so that you get the benefits of feeling a sense of urgency and pushing when those pushes are helpful without being just an insufferable pain in the ass who leaves scorched earth everywhere. Because I've certainly been the latter at points where people are just like, God damn it, Tim, like shit doesn't happen that fast and you're pissing everybody off. Uh, how have you thought about finding the, the middle

Starting point is 01:34:31 path with that? If there is one, I struggle with it every day. You know, it's, it's, you know, there's times when you're working on things and working with people when you know, you've been there and it should go faster. You know, like, You know, like, okay, why aren't we doing blah faster? It's just like, get the stuff out the door. It's not like researching and trying to engineer and find the right, correct, you know, widget for X, Y, Z. It's really just the process of getting it done. It's like, come on, guys.

Starting point is 01:35:02 You know, I understand you don't want to, this is a big risk and you're tentative about it, but we just got to move on. Right. So you don't want to have this, um, what do you say? Analysis paralysis. Right. So you got to bucket it. You got to say, okay, this is just their mental state. Okay. And we got to coax them through it and give them a help them or help myself to get through that phase and educate them that we got to get faster. Then there's the other phase, which is, you know, we're just, it's the process of discovery, the process of getting to insight, those kinds of things. And yeah, those always take longer. And then there's another one, which is out of control is, you know, working with other external teams that you can't really push, right? And you just have

Starting point is 01:35:45 to kind of grin and bear and you keep reassessing the partnership and should we be doing with them and all those things and communicating them in a very positive but very direct way. Like, let me tell you what we're grappling with now. It isn't all rosy. And these are the kind of decisions we have to make because you are delaying or this is happening or this is what's happening in our business. You know, those kinds of things. And you have to be really upfront, just like I was talking about the two managers or the two people who had to get along and figure out. We got to be upfront and honest about our partnership and how it's not working and going, what are we going to do to get over it, right? And so I think it's those types of bidding, and then also just taking a step back, and you tense up your neck, you're like, ah, and you just go, breathe, make sure I get my yoga done, make sure I do what have you to,

Starting point is 01:36:42 okay, just to try to calm down in certain instances. So my next question was going to be related to self-care. So the yoga is a perfect segue. So what are some of your self-care practices, whether on a daily or weekly basis? Well, the diet's the first one. The diet's the most important, right? So that's that. And what is your diet? Well, it know, it's vegetarian, without caffeine, without alcohol. And, you know, it's the hardest thing in the world, you know, is refined sugars, right? Trying to just stave off that beast is, you know, I like it too much. You know, it just is what it is. So you try to do what you can to minimize that as much as possible. So that's that eating healthy, eating whole foods, that kind of stuff. Then there's exercise. So exercising at least an hour a day,

Starting point is 01:37:38 six days, maybe seven days a week, right? Maybe two hours or three hours or breaking it up with a hike and this or whatever, but always exercising. So whether that's, you know, I've always, I've been doing yoga, I think 25 years now. That was also part of my reboot yoga for 25 years. And it is, I hope it will be the only exercise I will be doing when I'm 75 or older, because I think it's the right balance of mental and strength and toning and those kinds of things. So yoga for sure. Do you practice a particular type of yoga? What are the characteristics of your yoga? I'll do, basically, I just have to do something, whether it's hatha, ashtanga, bhikram, you name it. I'm not going to be, I'm not religious

Starting point is 01:38:27 in that way because I always think there's more things to learn about and do try different things, all right, and work with different instructors and that stuff. Then there's, you know, weight training, right? Weight training and stretching, which I should be doing more and more stretching, not doing enough, but weight training for sure. Uh, I love to run. So, you know, this is my best way of exploring a new city is whenever I go to a city, you know, four and five or six in the morning, getting up, putting on the shoes and just running and just seeing what the city's really like. Um, biking. So road biking, um, for long distances or even short distances, um, altitude as well. Um, skiing. So doing that, uh, hiking.

Starting point is 01:39:15 So those kinds of, uh, basic sports is, you know, what I, I, I it's, I call it Tony time. I don't have any music with me. I won't have music with me. It's almost moving meditation for me. Right. I, it's not just sitting there, but it's moving meditation. So I, I think start coming in my brain and start, you know, flowing over it. And all of a sudden problems that had gone unresolved for days, all of a sudden seemed to like, because I'm not ruminating over them anymore. It just, they, all of a sudden the answers come to you, which is great. So that's another thing. And then there's sleep and on the sleep side, you know, I've, I think you've talked about it as well,

Starting point is 01:39:56 but you know, I have this device called the Uller, which is, I think the next generation chili pad. Right. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh, it is a lifesaver. And so now I pad. Right. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, it is a lifesaver. And so now I swear by it. Now I buy him his gifts for friends and have him try mine. I'm like, you got to try this. But, you know, you got to try to get good sleep. And that's also important as much as possible. I, to sort of bookend, we're not totally done yet, but to sort of bookend something you mentioned in the very beginning, alcohol and sleep.

Starting point is 01:40:30 I've been astonished looking at heart rate variability and resting heart rate and so on, which I've tracked with different devices, Oura Ring and a number of others. Two drinks or more and my sleep is garbage. It is such a binary change. What time in the early morning does it happen to you? You know, I have, I've looked at this spike. There are a number of different spikes. I have to go back and look at the data. I think they're also making some algorithm changes with Aura specifically. And I was using a number of sleep devices concurrently because I wanted to compare data and try to correlate a few different things. So I don't remember the exact time. Do you recall when?

Starting point is 01:41:16 Yeah, it was around, well, depending on when you went to sleep and when you had your last drink, but it was always seeming to be about four to four and a half hours after that last drink. And you went to sleep when, at least for me, my heart would race and then you would wake up and then you, and then because you're, you're, you know, you're just a type A personality, you start thinking and you can't go back to sleep and you're sweating and then you have a horrible night's sleep. And then, you know, yeah, but that was it for me. So you mentioned that you buy the Ulera's gifts for friends. Are there any other devices or books that you regularly gift to other people?

Starting point is 01:41:56 I regularly gift the book called In Praise of Shadows. Oh, man, you are the first person. Yes, I know this book. Okay. It's a very, very, very small book. It's like 80 pages. Yeah. But it is an insight when we talk about staying beginner and looking at details and seeing it through other people's eyes. When you read that little book, again, you don't want these big tomes. You give your friends something and they're like, oh, this feels like an obligation. But they go, oh, it's so small. Okay, I'll read that. And they can do it in an hour and then they go, oh! So the book is, you can explain the book if There's one that especially stuck with me. But what's more interesting to me, because I get bored hearing myself talk, why do you find this book interesting?

Starting point is 01:42:50 I find it absolutely fascinating because I only grew up... So the book is all about Japan before pre-industrial era and how they lived at home and how they lived when Western technology entered the home afterwards. And he was comparing his life before and after. And I was never able to do that because I only lived in this world, you know, in this post-industrial world. We had wooden spoons before metal spoons and we had wooden bowls before we had porcelain bowls. And just the sound of the of the spoon hitting the bowl when it was wood on wood versus metal on porcelain and how that would be grating to your ear and how soothing it was when it was wood on wood or artificial light versus natural light and diffuse light and how your eyes and how your mental state would be very different under these two conditions. So it was, it was literally comparing this pre-industrial and post-industrial life through, uh, uh, through an incredible writer who could encapsulate it. And you start to go, wait a second. I never considered those details

Starting point is 01:44:04 in my life to this level. And you're like, that's about staying beginner, right? It's like, oh my God, I've never even thought about that. And this makes me rethink so many things that I never thought of. And it takes you to a whole other world. Yeah, the piece of it that stuck with me most concretely was the, because I used to live, I lived in Japan for a year in high school as an exchange student and lived with three families. So I got to see different rooms in the house and different styles of home. talks about how gaudy certain types of, you could consider them sort of Chinese-influenced

Starting point is 01:44:46 Japanese, say, bowls and furniture are because they're covered in gold plating or painted to look very bright and gold. Lackered. Lackered, exactly. And one of my gifts to myself after finishing my second book, which is definitely not short and is more of a homework assignment, was a lacquered Japanese saddle, actually, which kind of typifies this. And the point in the book was that it looks gaudy because things were lacquered in those types of materials due to dim lighting. They were intended to be looked at in very dim lighting. And as soon as you put incandescent modern lighting on it, it looks terrible. And I was like, wow, I've never even considered the source and strength of lighting.

Starting point is 01:45:40 And then it just totally changes how you look around at different objects, different historical objects, right? You kind of take as a given that the lighting is a constant, but of course it's not a constant in retrospect. Exactly. And now that we've gone to LED and beyond, it's even more so, that kind of brilliant stuff. So no, it's great. I'm glad that we share that love of that book. That's awesome. Yeah, this is definitely the first time

Starting point is 01:46:11 that this book has ever come up on the podcast. How cool. I'm really glad you brought that up. It's a weird little book, too. It is a strange, strange book. Especially for that author, right? He wrote all kinds of novels and everything. It was just like a little weekend project, it seemed, strange book. Especially for that author, right? Who wrote all kinds of novels and everything. It was just like a little weekend project, it seemed, for him.

Starting point is 01:46:29 Do you have any other books that you recommend often or have reread yourself? So, yeah. I think I always go back to it because it makes me think about the ideas in the book, but also makes me think about my life, which is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. And, you know, a Nobel laureate, amazing, amazing guy. And, you know, when you read that, you really get to understand how your brain works. And then you also, if you can relate it to yourself and how you make decisions. And a lot of it is about, you know, depressing the emotional part of your body and about your decision making for the more logical, rational part.

Starting point is 01:47:16 And then I also go, well, that's good for some decisions, but not all decisions. So because he really is advocating for taking, getting rid of one of the system, the emotional system. And I'm like, I like it because the book, because I can really choose which one I want to use because sometimes there's fact-based decisions and other times there are opinion-based decisions, which are emotional based decisions. And you have to really understand which type of decision you're making for that given point in time. Thinking fast and slow. I was, believe it or not, a subject as an undergrad in some of Danny Kahneman's experiments. We got paid, whatever, $4 an hour to press space bars for various experiments. On that thinking fast, thinking slow separation, if we look at the emotion-based decisions,

Starting point is 01:48:17 whether that's, I don't want to say impulsive, but very quick decisions that are sort of made with a few million years of evolutionary input, like pre-procon list. Whether to retweet something very quickly without reading it. Yeah, right, right. But are there any examples that come to mind from your life where you've made very, very good snap decisions where if you had tried to analyze it, you would have made the wrong decision. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the best decisions I ever made in my life was to ask

Starting point is 01:48:53 my wife to marry me. And I didn't know literally 15 minutes, 10 minutes before I was going to do it that I did it. Wow. I didn't even know. I had no, I had no clue. It was an amazing weekend. That was after 11 weeks of dating. And then literally it was in a span of 15 minutes from the time I said, I'm going to, or 10 minutes from the time I said, I'm going to do it till I did it. I wasn't prepared. I didn't even know that. I wasn't even prepared for her to say no okay so walk me walk me there you go no no walk me through this a bit so yeah what happened i mean in the sense that did it just randomly pop into your head or was there more to it on that day well there was a you know it was actually a monday morning of all things real romantic right um no? Um, no, it was, so what

Starting point is 01:49:47 had happened was I had some very, very close, I have some very, very close friends and they came down and I said, Oh, I met this wonderful woman, uh, you know, and, and, and they were coming in time. So, Hey, I would love to get you guys to, to meet her. And, you know, I'd love to just see if we can all hang out because the worst thing that ever happens, I don't know get you guys to meet her. And, you know, I'd love to just see if we can all hang out. Because the worst thing that ever happens, I don't know if you've had any friends like this, is, you know, you have a girl or a guy friend or something. And they're the really great friends of yours. And then they meet somebody and they fall in love. And then all of a sudden you're like, and then you try to meet that person that they love so much.

Starting point is 01:50:21 And you're like, I just don't click with them. And it's like, oh, I almost lost a friend. Oh,. Oh no. You know, whatever, you know how that goes. It's happened. Yeah. Right. It's happened. And it's, it's, it's heart wrenching. So you just go, okay. I wanted my friends to like, cause I used 11 weeks in and we're having a great time. And I'm like, am I in some crazy fog? You know, and I was older at the time. So I had a lot of, and they saw some of my other relationships and they, you know, they gave me feedback on them. So I was like, okay, so come on over. And so we hung out the whole weekend together and we had an amazing time. And so that morning I was driving, I was driving them to, you know, they said goodbye to Danny's my wife and they

Starting point is 01:51:00 said goodbye to her. And then I was going to drive them to the airport and all night long it was pouring rain it was crazy rain and it's raining all the time till i take him to the thing and on the in the car uh sanny and daniel my friends they said oh my god she's amazing oh god you guys are so in love it's so amazing you know head and shoulders over any any woman you've ever dated before blah blah blah i'm like oh my god yeah and so i was like yeah that's how i feel and i was in cloud nine and so i drop them off and then i turn around to come back because i was going to pick up my wife we're going to go to work or not my wife my girlfriend's time who's going to come and and drive to uh uh work together with her and so i come back and as i'm coming back uh the clouds open up a rainbow opens up and literally this brilliant sky comes into view and i'm like and

Starting point is 01:51:55 i'm thinking the whole time like well when's the right time how do you know when do you know it's the right time that this is the right person given given my, you know, 15 years of dating history at the time or whatever? I'm like, and I'm like, it's never felt like this before. You know, and I can. And I drive up and I had a rose bush in the front of the house and they're great roses often, but it was raining so hard that night. I looked at the rose and I always clipped one and gave it to her. And, you know, and so I looked at that and I was like, that survived the night. It was the most beautiful rose I've ever seen and all this stuff. And I took off the thorns and I clipped it and I was going to just give it to her. So I walk in the door. And I'm like, and she's coming down the stairs with a basket of laundry.

Starting point is 01:52:52 Literally a basket of my laundry. It's 11 weeks since she's coming. I'm like, what's going on? And I was going to take her to work. She's coming down the stairs. And I'm looking at it. And I go, here's a rose, honey. And then I took the, you know, and she said, oh, that's very nice.

Starting point is 01:53:04 And I said, wait, wait, wait, no, no. Give me the basket. Give me the rose. And I got down on one knee while she's on the stairs. And I said, will you marry me? And it was like, literally like that. It was, I was blind. I just said, will you marry me?

Starting point is 01:53:15 Right there. And that was the whole, that was the whole, on a Monday morning with a rose. I had no ring. I had nothing. Wow. That's an incredible story. That is just incredible. So that's the kind of craziness, you know, that, you know, when you know, you know, and the same thing happened

Starting point is 01:53:31 in different parts of my life like that, like taking the job at Apple was just like that as well. It was crazy. Crazy. When you know, you know. Amazing. Tony, I want to let you get back to your day, but this has been so fun. I really appreciate you taking the time. And I certainly hope it's not the last time that we get to have a conversation. Perhaps we'll meet sometime in the future. Sure, anywhere. I'm in different places in the world. I will be sure to stay in contact.

Starting point is 01:53:59 And thanks. This has been a lot of fun. And we went to all kinds of interesting questions that no one ever asked. So thank you. Oh, my pleasure. And people can find FutureShape at futureshapellc.com. Is that the right URL? That's correct. And what is your best social is on Twitter? Is that the best place for people? Twitter at T Fadel. T F A D E L L. And I'll link to all of that and everything

Starting point is 01:54:24 else that we discussed in the show notes for people so they'll be able to find you very easily. Is there anything that you'd like to say, recommend, conclude with, suggest? Any parting comments or anything at all before we wrap up? You know, I think the biggest thing

Starting point is 01:54:41 is that we all go through all of these changes in our lives. We go through failure. If you just are open to learning and you're open to the failure and pushing hard, I didn't have the best start. I tried really hard, but I didn't have the best start. But it can end up happening if you really keep pushing, whether it's a failure or a success, keep pushing even beyond success and keep staying a beginner, trying to stay humble and trying to work with others because, you know, that's your superpower at the end of the day. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 01:55:19 And, you know, in your TED Talk, you talk about seeing the invisible problems instead of just the obvious problems. And it strikes me that you've done that looking out at the world, but also looking inward at your own subjective experience, as in working with that psychologist to become more aware of your internal processes. And it's just such an incredible and inspiring story. And I mean, for the purposes of helping people, I think it's so wonderful. I'm sure it was difficult at the time that you had so many challenges

Starting point is 01:55:56 at various points in the road. It's- Yeah, absolutely. There was, and there's always challenges and I'm still learning and I'm still growing and all those things, but you're going to go through them, too. Everyone's got to go through them. And just embrace them. And just because you see success doesn't mean they didn't go through them as well. They most likely did, or if they haven't, they will at some point. Everyone does. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Keep going. Keep going.

Starting point is 01:56:28 Everyone's fighting or has fought battles that you know nothing about. Everybody's got their own stuff. Thank you so much, Tony. Good. Thanks, Tim. Thanks. Have a great day. Looking forward to staying in touch.

Starting point is 01:56:37 Likewise. All right, my man. Cheers, man. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday.

Starting point is 01:56:47 Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up

Starting point is 01:57:11 in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic, founded by the genius Finns who lit the internet

Starting point is 01:57:47 on fire. And you may have heard of their mushroom coffee, which features chaga and lion's mane, which is taken Silicon Valley by storm. I use it pretty much every day, either that or the chaga, which is decaf for the separate version. And I use both of these primarily for focus and productivity. They just get you going, light you up like a Christmas tree. So you should definitely check it out.

Starting point is 01:58:14 People are always asking me what I use for cognitive enhancement. And for right now, this is the answer. I try to force this on all of my house guests. It is a hell of a thing. If I have employees or people come over who are working on projects with me, I always try to feed it to them because I'm going to get the limitless effect

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Starting point is 01:58:55 get in a regular cup of coffee. I don't get any jitters, acid reflux, or any stomach burn, any of that. It's very unusual and very, very cool. So if you don't like caffeine, they also offer very strong, but caffeine-free mushroom elixirs, which I will sometimes have in the evening. I find Chaga specifically to be very, very grounding and earthy. So that is another option. And I have a cupboard full of their products at the moment, which is right around the corner of my kitchen. You can try something right now by going to foursigmatic.com forward slash Tim. That's foursigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com forward slash Tim and use the code Tim, T-I-M to get 20% off of your first order. And they're not that expensive anyway. If you are in the experimental mindset, I do not think you'll

Starting point is 01:59:41 be disappointed. So try them out. This episode is brought to you by Super Fat Nut Butters. I've got two boxes of them actually sitting within 15 feet of me in a cabinet. These little beauties are great. I've been using them as quick mini breakfasts, that's one use, and as on-the-go fuel for a few months now. I was pretty slammed this afternoon. I had a Wi-Fi debacle and I was preparing to record a podcast. So I didn't have time to make something to eat or buy something

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #403: Tony Fadell — On Building the iPod, iPhone, Nest, and a Life of Curiosity

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #403: Tony Fadell — On Building the iPod, iPhone, Nest, and a Life of Curiosity

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