As you get older, you realize that age is not the real thing

that should be biased against.

It's curiosity.

You can actually learn anything at any age if you're passionate

and curious about learning it.

And if you're passionate and curious about learning a topic such as AI,

and you have the experience and the wisdom to know how to learn and how

to process and curate knowledge, you can become extremely powerful.

Was in the admin.

may know and have heard of the Shrek team.

our 301st episode, are inviting back one of

Um,

knowledge.

I love having conversations with Jim.

In this episode, we're probably going to speak about insights from the

past five years, The evolving tech and leadership landscape, possible

predictions for the next five years.

Jim, welcome back to Seek Go Create.

Thanks, Tim.

This is going to be awesome.

Excellent.

Excellent.

That's crazy.

said, you know what?

I'm kind of getting tired of doing special stuff every time we hit these.

But.

I think I'd like to revisit, and when I looked at the calendar, it was

almost five years exactly, that I had

Um,

the most famous guest we've ever had, and

roll, drum roll, please.

I'm gonna, with two letters, I'm gonna tell you who it is.

AI.

You had, you had a.

I did a live interview.

Well, I've got to clarify here.

I actually had it scheduled before I was going to talk to you.

We haven't done it.

Oddly enough, AI rescheduled on me.

so that's kind of weird.

Something about, chat GPT said Elon Musk was doing a hostile

takeover or something like that.

And so, but anyway, I think I'm scheduling that later.

So later I might, I know you and I are going to talk a little bit about AI.

So.

So that's where we are.

300 was AI, 301 Jim Cook, 302 Mike Baer, and I think if

were three episodes that I wanted to package together and tell people,

maybe even put it in a time machine or something, these would be them

from 2025 to put a stamp on this.

Tim, you're you're AI 300 episode where you interviewing yourself and

doing one of those avatar things.

Is this what's going on?

It was just like this, but where you're sitting, Jim, was the, live

version of ChatGPT, and we were having a conversation just like this,

nice.

I've got questions, you know, I didn't really train a lot.

I've done a few tests on this.

Again, you know, we've had it rescheduled, so this is kind of

odd that 300 Is recorded after 301.

So I might ask you later, if you've got a question that you want me to ask when

I'm interviewing So, you know, so five years ago, we wouldn't even be probably

discussing much about AI, would we?

No, AI dropped in November of 2022.

Yeah.

I remember it.

Well, at least it was released.

they've been working on AI, otherwise known as machine learning,

artificial intelligence for 30 years.

it was all an offshoot of the deep mind center out of Google.

but everything came to fruition and they finally launched it in November, 2022 and

look at the journey we've been on since.

Ooh, yeah.

We, I do want to circle back.

I want us to have an AI conversation because I think it feeds into

leadership and business and what's going on, but before we get too

far into this, man, catch me up.

January of 2020 was when our last episode dropped and seems like yesterday, but

it also seems like a long, time ago.

what have you been up to since then?

I mean, catch me up, you know, get a little bit of family, a

little bit of business, just.

I remember wanting to follow in your footsteps and get

into the coaching business.

I had one client who had called me up and said, I think you'd be a great coach.

It was at a time when coaching went from being this scarlet letter.

I call the scarlet letter like, hey, I think you need a coach because you're

not, you're not doing so well to you.

To kind of what I call the Oprah of coaching.

You get a coach and you get a coach and everyone gets a coach and we're handing

out coaches and HR, but I was starting to get all these calls in around that time.

because I, you know, I'm a CFO.

I've been a CFO in the Valley for 30 years.

I was still an operator.

I was still in a job.

but nobody knew who to call to be a CFO coach.

I took one and then I did your podcast in January, 2020.

I remember about 30 days later going up to Breckenridge and we

saw you and Gloria Breckenridge, in February, mid February of 2020.

And we came back, you left and about three days later, listen, I

were the most sick we've ever been.

This is February of 2020.

Remember COVID wasn't actually announced as, hitting the U S until March or

late, we didn't do the shutdown.

Sorry.

It was announced, but we didn't shut down the US until March 13th, 2020.

I also remember that well, but, but I'm pretty sure we had it.

which was a Friday, by the way, it was Friday the 13th.

I'm pretty sure we had it because I could barely breathe

unless it can barely breathe.

a lot has changed since then.

we learned a lot of lessons that the world wasn't going to.

Go away.

Zoom came into our, our being a lot more.

We learned how to work from home.

We, you know, I think it showed us how resilient we can be as,

as a people around the world.

One of the things I was talking to someone recently and I was just

kind of looking back and listen, there's many places we can dive.

I'd love for you and I, especially because of your expertise in leadership

and that part of the world that you have been in for your career.

but I do think with COVID.

was one of the first, what I'll call a catalytic event, you know, let's,

Okay.

And when I say people, I mean large groups of people.

You know, there used to be some things like 9 11.

You and I have memories of that, that I think people thought about things

Silence.

There you go.

but what's your observation?

I mean, is that sort of accurate because I still see people trying to figure out

what they want to do But there's a lot of people now that are pretty strong.

I don't want to do this.

I'm never doing this again

Well, I think you nailed it.

you and I are big students of history.

I know we've had lots of conversations about history and I'm a big

student of history and I like to learn lessons from history.

So it reminds me of what many of us in Silicon Valley talk about a lot,

which is Crisis events like the dot bomb era or the savings and loan crisis

or the 2009, mortgage crisis, COVID these points in crisis do give people

clarity because crisis gives people what I call gives them permission

to do what they've always wanted to do because what do I have to lose?

The world might end.

And so the, you know, I think crisis gives people this, well,

it's going to be really bad.

I may as well try what I'm going to do now because you know, the world might

be different when I wake up tomorrow.

And so there's a much bigger fear out there than the roommate in your head fear.

That's what that usually holds people back from doing what they want to be

doing because they might lose their status in society or lose their job.

But when you've got a bigger fear, You know, people just,

it gives them permission to try what they haven't tried before.

And so you see this kind of Cambrian explosion of innovation

right after crisis events, right after the dot bomb era, web 2.

0 came on board and Facebook was developed.

And Google launched in 2004, really.

I mean, went public to us before, but it launched 2002, right?

right after 2009, you know, you saw the Airbnb and the Uber and, Let's,

let's try to just couch surf and rent people's homes and sleep on their couch,

which was the first version of Airbnb.

Let's, have the limousines come to you through an app on a mobile phone.

What do we have to lose?

These were crazy ideas at the time.

And most, even venture capitalists, thought they were crazy.

You know, after COVID, we saw this huge explosion of the ability to

use Zoom and to work productively if you look at the history,

productivity went through the roof.

Much to people's surprise, you know, working from home was actually quite

productive, not having to drive, not having to go and spend an hour

on the road, in traffic each way.

So, yeah, I think it's been pretty exciting.

your old company, you were on one of the original six at Netflix.

We probably won't get into that here.

We're going to include a link back to our conversation five years ago, because

we did a deep dive into some of your experience there then, but Netflix,

I don't know if the word critical mass would be the right term, but.

when COVID hit, it seems as if they were in the right place at the right time.

I really haven't followed much since then, but, what comments do

you have about what went on with Netflix during the COVID years?

Well, you can look, so this is for anybody who runs a business and Netflix was

actually, so that, by the way, so when we started Netflix for the audience's sake.

It was 1997, 27 years ago.

So it's a much, much different company now, but Netflix, when you peel behind

the scenes, what was going on during COVID was actually quite worried of

losing tremendous amounts of market share.

Because if you look back at the history, everyone was at home

and glued to their computer.

Disney spent billions of dollars on their streaming platform and Apple spent

billions, maybe a hundred billion dollars on their Apple TV streaming platform.

You know, you had paramount plus, you had everybody and their brother saying,

we got to get into streaming now.

And, you know, they're fighting the big giant Netflix, but

Netflix really was fearful.

They were gonna become the blockbuster to Disney or to all these.

That they were going to lose market share.

And so that's a lesson for anybody who holds a leadership position

and competition just rushes in.

This has happened many times in technology.

We, you know, when I was at Mozilla, we held the market share leadership

position for four years before Google Chrome browser came in.

Microsoft held many leadership positions in software before they finally got

taken down across their categories.

So Netflix thought they were going to be kind of the next Microsoft or the next,

IBM but it turns out that if you lean into your business and you produce even

more content and you just pay attention to your customers and you make customers

happy, then it's what Intuit days that we coined a term of, this happened at

Intuit with Quicken and QuickBooks, everyone tried to create their accounting

software when you're the market leader.

And, we coined a term called try the best, try the rest, and then

you'll come back to the best.

So I think that's what happened.

Everyone had six or seven subscriptions.

Some still have three or four.

They all tried it and like, there's not a lot of content

here, or that's kind of clunky.

I can't find my shows.

everyone got brought in to a streaming platform that was

lagging up into the time.

So now the whole universe got bigger.

So competition is good because it creates awareness.

So anybody who's dealing with competition in their local small town

and someone's coming in, lean in hard because they're going to bring in

your customers, your future customers that you haven't brought in yet.

So that's when you have to lean in hard and actually be

better than you've ever been.

And that's what Netflix did.

And then everyone started saying, well, Disney, I'm going to

cancel that one at Paramount.

But They're going to stay with Netflix.

Competition is a customer generating thing if you really frame it right.

Looking back on it, this is my observation.

Yours might be a little different.

I like positioning that Netflix had created to be where they were in 2020.

And, you know, could they have guessed what was going to happen?

No, to me, that's leadership too, is just being positioned for

when those opportunities, I hate to say COVID is an opportunity.

Some people would be upset by that, but it was, you know, it was what it

was a situation, an event, whatever.

Well, let's reframe that, Tim.

Let's say change and crisis is always an opportunity.

That life is about change and you can make choices of crawling in a hole when

change hits you or crisis hits you.

Or you can just come out fighting with your sword and shield up.

Yeah.

And I think one of the words I like to use now, I've been communicating it

more and more is the word resilience.

I think that's how I want us to talk about leadership towards

the tail end of our conversation.

Jim is

Nice.

do to be resilient?

To be prepared for the next opportunity crisis situation, whatever.

But I, there's a question that's rolling around in my head and I have

to get it out before it disappears.

You know what I mean by that?

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

but gray hair.

And you said, I want I want to bring someone from outside this

culture in to be my assistant and help me do what I'm doing.

That was a beautiful thing because it also opened the door for me to storm

in and say, oh, hey, Jim, I'm here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

because it is somewhat of a

Um,

What are some pros and cons about the way Silicon Valley functions and operates

that you saw over the last five years?

And some things that you observed, because I know you reach outside that bubble to

keep a fresh mind, but not everyone does.

if we look back now, the city of San Francisco, Has changed tremendously,

some of the politics around that whole Region not they haven't changed

tremendously, but it's adjusted.

Anyway, there's been a lot of things go on.

There's an argument that the politics have changed pretty

tremendously in Silicon Valley.

yeah, I mean I I listened to an interview a long form interview

with You know, what's his name from facebook and i'm like going.

Well, he's Bouncing around a little bit.

Maybe he's an opportunist.

Maybe he is changing his team But anyway, don't it doesn't have to be political

even though that's probably part of

Yep.

talk about That culture over the last five years and i'd love for you to

talk about it to people outside the culture That are going what do you mean?

Yeah.

so I guess I'll start with Silicon Valley.

This is obvious as a very technical culture, but what does that mean?

It means some of the smartest people that you went to school with who,

and technical means computers, you know, we call ourselves the

nerds and the geeks, we weren't.

The sports athletes, right?

Or the popular, people at the dance, you know, these are the

people that we're game playing.

I'm not, I'm trying not to be too pejorative, but

it's not pejorative at all.

It's just like people have their different likes.

You know, they're a little bit more inside their own head.

They're very technical, very smart.

And whenever a new technology comes up like AI, they're the first to use it.

And they're the first to figure it out.

This has produced great things for America,

except there's a problem is that we forget how great, you know,

Silicon Valley has been for America.

And because, this technical, this tech community, this community of entrepreneurs

don't really pound their chest too much.

They just put their heads down and work and create the Googles and the Facebooks.

They don't really connect to real people.

Probably up through about 2022 or 2023, you could actually feel the

backlash outside of California against this tech community.

You can actually, if you paid attention, you could feel like

they are different than us.

You know, they're, they're the elites.

You know, it's all, it was always they, they, they, and there

wasn't much of a realization of.

Yeah, but look how, we brought trillions of dollars into the US

from Google and Facebook and Apple, and these are the people in the

mag seven of the stock market that everyone else was investing in.

And so it was kind of a double-edged sword.

And this is my opinion at least, because the community is still very insular, they.

Are interested in what they're interested in.

They try to put it out to the world and they stumble over the first three

versions of the first three versions.

Almost any tech.

It takes 3 versions and we all know this because.

The technical engineers and the technical people really, for the most part, don't

know how to connect with regular people.

And so they just assume people can use chat GPT.

They assume that a white box on a screen in 2004 from Google, people are going

to figure out what to type in that thing that we now know is a search box.

But when we all first saw it, people were like, what do I do with this?

We were just barely getting used to the internet.

Right?

And now a white box appears in this page and says we can get any answer you want.

And we just stood there and didn't know what to type.

And then Google tried to help, right?

Remember when Google tried to help with their little question mark?

And they said, Oh, all you got to do is a Boolean search.

and we're like, if you do these characters and your search

is better, we're like, what?

This is the same company that said, you know, after a while we're going to

produce a better email called Gmail.

And then people started using it.

And eight years later, they were still.

Beta written across the top of this enterprise product.

And they're like, Oh yeah, we forgot to take the beta off.

Cause these, you know, they're not out there talking to their customers a

lot, but the successful Silicon Valley companies, actually successful, any

company starts with their customer first and builds a product for them.

Silicon Valley starts with the product and then tries to find customers.

And so there's, it's a long winded way of saying there's a

mindset of not being connected to.

Anybody who's not in that kind of digging for gold all the time.

If you imagine if you were in the gold rush and everyone around you was digging

for gold, some are finding it, some weren't, but you were in this bubble

of everyone's a miner, everybody's got a pick and everybody's got an ax.

And it's like, and there's a whole country out there that is not digging for gold

is some of that?

is it jealousy?

I mean, I think

I don't think it's jealousy.

political

as,

we

no,

maybe now

I don't think, I don't think so.

you know, I grew up in the Midwest.

I think it's just a lack of understanding when no one talks to

you and people are different, right?

When people are just viewed as different then, then a divide happens.

But what's happening now, which is really interesting to me, is people don't change.

They just kind of hide for a while.

there's stats of like 35 or 40 percent of what was considered

the blue zone of California.

San Francisco is pure blue.

Like everyone thought it was 98 percent democratic and liberal

and hippies and free love and, you know, these techies that are just

billionaires that don't get us.

It turns out about 35 or 40 percent of all the leaders and even all the techies.

Started coming out of the woodwork when Trump got elected and they're Republican,

maybe not far right Republican, but they've always been there because

that's just how statistics work.

and they were just quiet about it because they could have been

i'll i'll use the term beaten to a pulp literally or figuratively

Had they communicated about it?

Well,

going on right now

yeah, for sure.

Because now you see for the first time ever, not to bring too much

politics and do it, but Elon Musk is being invited into the white house

and doing things and Peter Thiel and these, but so for better or for worse.

The techies and some of the smartest techies are being brought in to

hopefully fix and introduce some of these technologies in the government.

It's going to create a lot of, I mean, nobody can argue that

the government's not broken.

It's very broken, right?

There, there's no technology, no real technology to speak of.

It is probably 20 years behind.

So something good is going to come from it, but it's going to be very messy.

Silicon Valley was never really invited to a seat at the table in Washington,

So, for better or for worse, we have some really, really smart people who

understand technology introducing some of these business leading concepts.

Into this place called Washington DC.

We're gonna see what happens from it.

I think you need to shake things up.

It's 52 card pickup and then you start sorting the deck out again.

but hopefully, that shift, that psychology shift is changing because,

you know, the same people that some people outside of California called a

leader, like now they're their heroes.

I just find it really interesting.

The same people that thought Elon Musk was evil and, driving these new cars.

And now he's a hero.

this is just human nature, right?

Yeah, and there's a weird thing since you brought this up.

I did I did think about this See one of the things that I love You

the Silicon Valley culture is speed.

Yeah.

a, you know, speed, and if it's, you know, break things fast, fix them,

move on, And one of the things that you and I can say about government

is speed is nowhere in their, DNA.

And one of the things that's fascinating to me, and I'll just mention this and

you can say something then we'll move on is at the time of recording this

Elon musk has a handful of what seem to be brilliant tech guys Literally

raking some systems over the coals and there are a lot of people that

Um,

the speed because, because I think that what we've got is a new president

that's moving at a pretty rapid pace, and I think it's because of people

around him like Musk and some others.

What, what are you seeing?

Let me reframe the word speed into something that you and I talk about,

and I talk about my clients a lot.

For me, it's less about speed and more about risk.

Willingness to take risk.

risk by going fast.

it's okay to fail.

Silicon Valley is all about high risk, high reward.

That's what the venture capital community is all about.

High risk, high reward.

Only 2 or 3 out of 10 companies, that venture capitalist funds actually

make it and 3 go out of business and 3 just barely get their money

back or lose money for the VCs.

but it's those 3 that we hear about.

We never hear about the 7.

So when you take a ton of risk.

The 10x reward you get from 1, 2, or 3 of those companies with 100x

returns far outweighs the 7 failures.

You know, when Edison created the light bulb, it was 10, 000

tries before he found one, right?

And so this, there's a level of risk associated with silicon, or

sorry, willingness to take risk.

And I've, it's really important to think about this willingness to take risk.

Reaps the more risk you're willing to take, the more

reward you're likely to get.

Well, Washington DC is, you know, yeah, it's slow.

It's slow because it's not willing, in my opinion, not willing to take risks.

So to bring all that together, the willingness and the ability to take

risks is what Washington DC is facing.

And what happens when high risk meets low risk, Is things break, right?

And so we're going to see some breakage and then when things break,

you have to rebuild them and things rebuilt, they get built better.

One example that people are talking about in Silicon Valley that I'm a

huge fan of because it's not political at all is putting lots of parts of

the government on the blockchain.

I'm not talking about Bitcoin.

I'm talking about just the technology called blockchain.

Where we put in a read only format, the transactions that

are occurring that are immutable.

They can't be changed.

it's a distributed ledger.

And if you want transparency, Elon Musk just may bring blockchain technology

to certain parts of the government and say, you want to know what's going on

the government, read the blockchain.

Now there's software that reads blockchain.

So you don't have to read the ones and zeros.

It can unpack it and put it on a webpage.

But you can actually audit along with what's going on in the government.

How far are we willing to take that?

I think a lot of people want to see, but there's technology that can help, right?

blockchain is secure.

Can't be changed.

once it's on there, it's on there forever and you can go see the history.

so I think there's a lot of very interesting things that are

going to come from taking a lot more risks than the government.

things are going to break and people are going to get upset when things break, but

then they're going to be rebuilt better.

Yeah, I'm excited about it.

And I think even if people have different, core political beliefs people that think

like you and I do, it's like, you know what, we need to be improving things.

We need to be making them better.

We need to be maybe breaking some things, adjusting, changing, et cetera.

I was on a social media platform and I was just saying, you know, whether

you're for this guy or against this guy, it doesn't matter to me, am all

for the status quo being questioned and

Yeah.

questions and poking at it a little bit.

And someone said, well, if, if, People can't eat while it's going on.

I said, listen, people can't eat today.

People that are not eating today.

We need to do better with all of that, but that's not the point.

You know, let's,

Yeah.

let's

Well, there's one thing we know about, Sam, there's one thing

we know about technology, right?

And there's one thing that's probably unarguable about technology.

It has made everyone's lives around the world much more efficient

and much more productive, right?

Just getting people on the internet.

People in Africa have a mobile phone as their phone.

before they have a car or a house.

Being connected is due to technology.

The technology is deflationary.

Prices go down.

It makes things more efficient and more productive.

And AI is just the next version of this.

Now we're going to have an influx of technology, which is going to make

things more efficient, more productive.

It's hard to argue.

the only tool the government surround the world, especially

Washington DC has had to fix anything or to try to improve anything.

There's only been one tool they've ever used.

It's money.

If there's a problem, throw money at it.

Money is a very blunt instrument that creates a lot of waste.

And so we're going to uncover a lot of waste because instead of throwing

money at the problem, We're going to throw technology at the problem and make

the inner workings of the government a lot more efficient, a lot more

productive, and a lot more transparent.

and you know what I like, I like that, that may attract different

type of leader in the future.

into that system because, and boy, I don't think I want to get off on this topic.

I think we have a leadership deficit in a lot of places.

You and I could have this

Yeah.

all day long.

we may want people to listen and we may not, but definitely if we are to look at

and model some of the leaders that we see, In that government system and it's because

it's such a sludge of just quagmire slow As we were talking a little bit about

earlier, you know low risk And then some people get in there and they start

profiting and then we can't get them out.

I do think it might attract some people if we get a little bit more

effective efficient More technology.

What are your thoughts?

When you were talking and leading up to this question, I was in my head

thinking that leadership is about leadership requires incentives.

So the reason why people don't go into Washington, D. C.

There's no incentive to do so.

In fact, there's a disincentive to do so.

Right.

I can have a lot more impact.

Thank you.

The minute and make money outside of Washington, DC, this is what we've seen.

The minute that you tell these young people, they can make

a difference in the world.

And this, this, you know, so people are railing, there's a 19 year old with a,

with a name, like inside of Doge, right?

It's like, there's some young people going in following along around.

We're really, really smart who are only doing it because they think

they're actually making a difference.

And they probably are.

But that's what leadership's about is like, do I have an incentive to do this?

Am I going to make a difference?

Can I make a difference?

Am I incentivized to do so?

That's how you attract leadership.

But up until now in Washington DC, it's been the opposite.

There's been no incentive for really smart business people or

technologists to go to Washington.

In fact, there's been a disincentive because there's not enough

money and there's a quagmire of you can't get anything done.

So hopefully we attract some young people who can move fast,

break things, get things done.

I mean, heck, what's the worst that can happen?

Our government gets less efficient?

to imagine what that might look like.

I don't think anybody can argue that no matter what happens, it might not get

as efficient as fast, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to get worse.

Sure.

Shouldn't people say, Oh no, no, no.

We want it anyway.

Well, let's move on.

There's something you brought up right when we started that I went, huh.

There's a question there.

And I want to, I want to dig a little bit.

You brought up.

That when you went from operator and you know, you, you were with into it,

you were with Netflix, you were with Mozilla, Firefox for a number of years

and other things that I know are in there.

But you said that when you decided to move from operator to coach, that it

may not have been looked upon by people.

Tell me more about.

How that Silicon Valley culture at coaching.

And I'm also going to throw a name out here.

The name, Bill Campbell, that you know, is one of you interact with him.

You knew him.

I only know him because the model that was shared in a book about him is who I

perceive myself to be like, not at that level trillion dollar coach, but about

coaching in a world because you almost said it like apologetically, like you

were going from to, Oh, now I'm going to.

We've got a lot of coaches listening in.

So tell

Yeah, I didn't.

Okay.

Yeah, I didn't mean to.

So Bill Campbell just for the record was my coach, but he wasn't, I

worked for him at Intuit with him at Intuit before that book was,

well before that book was written.

yeah, I didn't mean it to be, disrespectful to coaches.

It was more of how HR departments viewed it, viewed coaching,

like this person needs help.

We're going to get you a coach.

That whole mentality has now changed because if there's one

great thing about Silicon Valley, and there's a lot of great things.

But one great thing is this concept of everyone shares

their knowledge with everybody.

There's this give back culture.

There's this pay it forward culture that really I've only seen exist here.

I've had lots of conversations in people in LA, New York, in LA, in Hollywood.

I wouldn't give my idea of my movie script to anybody.

In New York, I wouldn't give my algorithm on how to add up to anybody.

It's, it's a secretly guarded secret.

Right.

In Europe, it's much of the same, but in Silicon Valley, there's something,

one thing people need to know about it.

It's a, the idea is not the hard part.

The execution is the hard part.

Ideas are a dime a dozen.

And everyone wants everyone else to, to be successful and they just want to compete

on a, on a, on an equal playing field.

And in a very interesting way, everyone who's been there for any period of

time just shares and gives back.

And if you call somebody up like Bill Campbell, he's no longer

with us, but he's passed away.

But, you know, he'd give you the time of day.

And as long as you made the effort, this is a culture in Silicon

Valley, which is ripe for coaching.

And I think zoom to bring it all back COVID brought back

this huge vacuum of loneliness.

People were in their house.

They didn't, they weren't surrounded by people who they could look up to or

talk at the expresso bar at your office.

And I think that just exploded this, I need to surround myself with

people that are smarter than me.

And so I'm going to go get a mentor, go get a coach,

company started paying for it.

but I, you know, what you and I love about coaching is, This ability to take

all the lessons that we've learned and pay it forward and to give it back.

And I write about this in my cook's playbooks about why I'm doing this, why

I'm writing, on Substack, and why I'm coaching is it really is gratifying to

pay it forward to the next generation.

and I think if you're really sincere about that as a coach, that's why you do it.

It's about impact.

It's about.

The ability to really leverage your knowledge and turn

that knowledge into wisdom.

I read a great quote, um, down here.

I'm down here in the Baha for a little while, but wisdom

is simply shared knowledge.

I think it's wisdom is simply knowledge shared.

If you think about that, wisdom is not a one person thing.

Wisdom is a community of people all sharing their knowledge together.

I love the thought of that because it's others focused.

It's not us focused, know?

and I think there's a certain degree.

in our culture of people.

I think some of this being changed, maybe COVID helped with this, that if it's,

you know, if it is to be, it's up to me.

Hustle culture, et cetera, things like that.

And one of the things that I've noticed, and I don't know if it's an age thing

or, you know, some situations I've gone through in my life and all that, but

I do think that maturity is a word I like to throw around a little bit more.

and fortunately or unfortunately, maturity really sometimes

does fit with people that are.

moving along in life, right?

think there was an article in the wall street journal recently

that said something about an investor that's focusing on 50

and 60 year old startup people.

What are you thinking?

I mean, you and I are, I think we've got a ton of years ahead of us, but no one would

confuse us for, you know, 20 somethings.

What's your thought now on people that are moving into our age bracket?

I'm at the tail end of boomers.

I think i'm a few years ahead of you, but what is your thoughts about age?

Maybe you know, what do you see even in the valley with age and what's your

thoughts when I make a comment like that?

there used to be, there's still a pocket.

And if you talk about just Silicon Valley, there's always been this

age bias, older people, age bias.

the young techies who are 22, 23, 25, 27 years old, let's just call it under 30.

that cohort definitely has an age bias because they don't trust anybody.

How could they know anything about AI if they're over 30?

as you get older, you realize that age is not the real thing

that should be biased against.

It's curiosity.

You can actually learn anything at any age if you're passionate

and curious about learning it.

And if you're passionate and curious about learning a topic such as AI,

and you have the experience and the wisdom to know how to learn and how

to process and curate knowledge, you can become extremely powerful.

for anybody who's in our age group, stay curious.

stay in learning mode, because that combined with your maturity and your

wisdom can really help the next generation who hasn't become self aware yet.

You don't become self aware until I think you're over 30, quite frankly.

Let's, let me just say that from a, from a person way older than 30, you don't

start looking at yourself and you don't start admitting that you're vulnerable.

You don't start it.

You, you stop faking it until you make it, you stop trying to impress

people and you just become real.

And when you become real, as you get older, people get

more comfortable around you.

They're not threatened by you.

And yet you have all this wisdom and knowledge.

As long as you stay curious and you process it and curate this knowledge

and this wisdom to actually say, you know, have you thought about this?

And you pose things in terms of questions, not statements.

You don't pound your chest as much.

Let's look at every culture in history.

who is the age group in every culture of every historical

society that has been revered.

And for the most part, it's been the older generation who people would go up

to the mountain and ask for their wisdom.

Why is that?

Because they were safe, they weren't the warriors, they weren't threatening, but

they learned a lot throughout their life.

So, I think these things all come full circle.

You know, for any under 30s out there, I would encourage you to definitely reach

out to people that are older than you.

As long as they are curious and passionate.

If they're not, they're stuck in their ways.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Discard them.

But if you can hold a conversation like this with a 40 year old, a 50

year old, a 60 year old, and they are energized, passionate, they're

curious, hook your wagon to them because they are very smart people.

Who can propel your knowledge as an under 30 year old much faster.

How does Jim Cook stay curious?

What is some practical either day to day, how are you staying curious right now?

I read a lot and I use all the tools of the trade of searching.

I scan headlines.

When I see a headline that I'm interested in, I use some of these

tools, some of these AI tools to say, bring me more, right?

It's getting easier to search.

It's getting easier to use AI to learn.

So I ask, I start with asking a ton of questions of myself.

what don't I know about this?

what do I want to know about it?

Where could this apply?

I realized I can just ask those questions of the computer instead of me

trying to figure out where it applies.

Why don't I get 80 percent of the answer done for me by asking chat

GPT and speed up my learning process.

So I'm thinking what I'm experiencing in the AI is helping me significantly

increase my own learning process.

But AI can't be curious for me.

See, AI is a answer provider.

It's not a question provider.

So if you're going to be successful in your life, stay

curious, keep asking questions.

The great stuff, the great news is, There's somebody now on the other end of

that screen or of your computer that's really, really good at giving answers.

But they're not so great at giving questions.

And questions come from curiosity, and curiosity just comes from

being interested in the subject.

You don't have to be interested in every subject, but the ones that you're

interested in, write down your next 10 questions and ask the computer.

It'll be amazing.

It'll be amazing what you learn if you just stay curious and ask questions.

The cool thing about it, and you know my life, Glory, we were sitting just

this morning with our coffee, and yesterday I spent some time AI, and

on my browser, I almost wish I could share my screen, I've got one three,

four, that one might be a semi AI.

I've got five tools, not counting the one we're recording on, that

this will then load up to later, would be in that, you know, large

language model, machine AI category.

And I told Gloria, I said, you know, I would love to just block 60 minutes a

day to sit down and just have dialogue.

Because for me, it's a brainstorming tool.

It's a writing assistant and I, you know, you and I are in the same category.

I love questions.

I love it.

Do you think we've got a deficit?

I know you wrote an article on your, playbooks recently about asking questions.

Do you think we've got a deficit?

Do we not train people well how to ask questions?

Because I,

That's it,

I'm

We aren't training people to ask questions first and ask for

help and that needs to change.

Hopefully these tools.

will help us train us to ask better questions.

But in school, we're asked to give answers.

We're asked to get A pluses and 1600 as our SATs.

We're asked to fill in multiple choice questions and to figure out

the answer and not ask for help.

This is a real problem.

Learning how to ask for help in the form of learning how to ask

better questions is the way out.

Now let's come back to these things that you call tools.

I would encourage everyone who's not a techie, which is most people.

It's every time you hear the word AI, which is puts a block up.

It's like, well, I don't know anything about that to change that

word in your head to just another tool, all artificial intelligence is.

I mean, I'd rather just, we got rid of the word entirely.

It's just another piece of software.

We don't talk about, I use the PC, right?

We, in the old days, it was PC, it was Ram, it was CPUs.

And we used all this language for two.

Have technique techies make themselves seem important.

Doctors do it all the time.

They come up with Latin words for names instead of telling you what it is.

You know, all these people try to put a barrier between their knowledge by,

by separating us with language like AI.

All it is is a tool to make you more efficient.

It's just a better tool.

So don't, don't be afraid of a better tool.

I think most people, in the world, when you hand them a better tool to do

something, they're like, this is great.

I'm using it.

But when it comes to technology, it's like we put this language and we want to

like artificial intelligence and LLMs and all of this stuff to separate us from,

well, I'm never going to be that smart.

You just need to ask a question.

The software will do it for you.

Just think of AI as software.

That's all.

One of the things that's interesting and this, I love how this is coming

together because we brought up earlier.

the risk, embracing risk that occurs out of Silicon Valley.

And then you mentioned just a few minutes ago to really be curious,

you need to just kind of put aside what other people think about you.

And I'm sitting here and it's just kind of like ringing in my head as

you're talking Those go together.

I mean, I don't know if we could you and I we thinking like models Like I don't

know if that's like a you know, three things on a stool or whatever But number

one you have to take risk to open up a new tool and ask questions You have to

not really care what other people think about you Maybe not totally not care

But not let it drive you and not let it be a part of who you are and then

you just, I love that curiosity thing.

So you want to mash those together, risk, not being concerned about

other people, which are sort of related and then being curious.

Well, we'll mash them together into that word that you started

with, which is maturity.

When you're older with maturity, you realize that you have less years to

live, so why not take more risks?

You start taking a lot of risks as you're young.

You get really conservative between the ages of say 30 and 50 and believe

it or not, after 50, you actually, a lot of people start taking more

risks because what do I got to lose?

Maturity, that's risk maturity.

You brought it up.

Also gets not caring as much as what anybody thinks about you.

So if you want to bring together all the things that you've talked about,

It's your word maturity, not mine.

It's risk, not caring what people talk about and asking a lot of questions.

I just want to connect with people more.

I think being curious creates connection.

You can't be really keep being curious by yourself on a desert island.

That's great.

But what am I going to do with it?

When you're curious?

I think most people are curious because they want to share their

knowledge with somebody else.

And when you share your knowledge with others, because you're curious,

you create community wisdom, you create a wisdom across the community.

well, and you also attract people because people that are also somewhat

curious are going to be attracted.

That's I think where the age thing comes in and and man, it all

just kind of comes together here.

Agreed.

Before we finish up here in a bit, I want to ask you about your playbooks

and some of the things you're doing over on Substack and all of that.

I'd love, there's a couple of things that I want to ask and I think I'm

going to them all at once and then let you just answer it in whatever

way you want First question is how are you defining success right now?

And then I'm going to layer that into what are you looking at into the future?

And you can either do micro like, hey, here's, here's what's going

on with Jim and our family, or you can go macro and say, here's some

big picture things that I see.

So, so, so the two topics are success and the future and, just go.

Yeah, so I currently in my maturity level, I'm defining success as

my ability to make an impact.

Across larger groups of people, I'm going to use any tool possible to do that.

I'm going to take all of my curiosity, all of my stored knowledge and

try to just pay it forward without caring about what people think.

That's why I'm writing Cook's Playbooks and Substack.

If I'm curious about something, I'm going to write about it.

It's going to probably be in the lens of leadership and scaling

operations, which is what I'm good at.

But every once in a while, I'll write about AI, just because I want

to share this knowledge with others.

Making an impact across a larger and larger group of people, I'm just on a

mission to figure out how to do that.

I'm on the very beginning of that.

That's, that's what I think success is for me right now.

And, and I, you know, and in terms of, The future, your second question, and

I can go macro and macro because I've got a 23 year old and a 20 year old.

So I'll focus on them, teaching them how to ask better questions, teaching them to

stay curious, helping to remind them to stay curious so they can improve faster.

When I can improve my clients faster, when they can come back

and say, you just changed the way I approached my CEO, my board, my peers.

You know, I feel like you've just increased my, my knowledge of

how to be an executive and you've just escalated it by three years.

That's, that's making an impact.

That's speed.

so that's kind of the macro version of success, but I think

looking out three to five years,

just the way my brain works, but I'm going to encourage anybody whose brain works

this way, like mine and probably yours, Tim, I know yours, because if you could

stay curious about technology and not be.

Not think it's above you or it's smarter than you yet.

We all learned how to use a computer once upon a time.

We all learned how to use software on the computer.

We all learned this thing called the internet.

Some adopted it slower and now it's a daily part of our lives.

We all learned how to use a touch screen and an iPhone in 2007 before,

like this is never going to work.

need a keyboard.

We're learning how to talk to the computer.

Learn how to use these tools that we're talking about to make your

life better and then ask yourself what tool can make it better, right?

There's a couple that I'm looking at right now, which I'm just fascinated by.

So OpenAI has released two particular tools.

One is called Operator.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago.

And the other is called Deep Research.

Both are incredible beta versions, 0.

1, not even a, not even a release version for the consumers.

They're like, we've got something here.

We're just going to share it with the world and we can figure it out together.

It kind of works, but expect a lot of bugs.

What is Operator?

Operator, OpenAI's Operator, is simply a tool that you can attach

to a web browser that allows you to have operator, the software,

type the letters on your keyboard.

You give it one question, one prompt, and it actually starts operating your browser.

I want to research, I'm not sure which mountain bike to buy.

Can you go to five different websites and bring me back the

best prices, the best comparisons?

Okay, let's talk about that as an example for operator.

If you use that, We would sit down with our keyboards today without Operator.

We'd be on the web on a piece of software for about an hour.

We'd have done 20 different searches.

We'd click on 10 different links.

We'd open up five different tabs, get to the five things, you'd start opening up

different windows and comparing and you're probably, if you're like me, copying and

pasting into a separate notebook to kind of like compare because it's just kind of

the information is there but it's clunky.

What is operator?

One prompt.

Same thing.

I want to buy a mountain bike.

Can you, go compare five of the best sites, five of the best models, bring

me back everything you can on it.

an operator then starts on your browser and starts typing.

You can hands off keyboard, watch it typing.

And it actually gets, and it shows you what it's doing.

So anything that you're doing with the browser inside of a business, an accounts

payable clerk, somebody downloading a CSV file from their bank statement every day,

like all this inefficiency, even in tech.

I got to go to the, you know, somebody closing their books.

I'm going to bring it back to CFO has to Go to their bank.

It's a clunky thing.

They've got a would you like to download your monthly transactions and csv?

Sure, click here 10 clicks later.

I've got it in excel file.

It downloads to my download file I got to open the download.

I've got to translate the csv into a pivot table I've got to like sort it

and so I can actually close my books.

What is the operator?

Hey, go get my bank statement and put it in a pivot table.

That's one question You It then does all of those keystrokes for you.

Imagine that.

Just imagine if you can do, if you're doing something constantly,

a lot on your browser, you can ask the computer now to do it for you.

And it's just the beginning.

So that's operator.

Deep research just got announced four or five days ago.

Deep research is operator on steroids.

Doesn't necessarily use the browser, but imagine an investment banker.

A junior investment banker trying to write a research report across an industry.

Deep research is asking a question to do deep research on a subject

you know nothing about and it will produce you a professional paper

which will blow your mind out.

It'll go get every single subject and it'll keep probing and asking

questions and prompting you back would you like me to go deeper on like

now the computer's working for you you're not working for the computer.

It's asking you, would you like this in a graph?

Yes.

And it produces your research paper and I would just encourage people to try it.

It's not, it's not mystery black box science.

It's pretty cool.

Deep research.

mean, you met, you know, I love the thought of all that is, you

know, an industrial and systems engineer kind of at my roots.

like, if, if you do anything more than once, can you automate it?

How can you, you know, offload it or, or whatever?

And my mind sitting here going, okay, you know, we're pulling up

info for taxes at this time of year.

We're doing this.

It's like, And again, we're going to come back to the maturity and curiosity

that you brought up, Jim, because

who is risk averse would be going, well, I'm not going to

give my keyboard up to anybody.

I get it.

I get it.

I had Joshua, my son, you know, Joshua, he took me to the airport last week.

I had to fly to Sarasota to meet up with some business people and we're going

along and I look over and there's a Waymo beside me in Phoenix, and I'm That there's

nobody driving it and i'm like going, huh?

I said, you know what?

I haven't where i've been ridden in one of those I need to I need to get the app

because I need to ride in them and people are going Oh my gosh, you you're going

to get in a car that nobody's driving.

I go listen.

My son's awesome He's a great driver, but he's a 30 year old driver.

I'm like going, you know what?

I don't see a lot of difference between it's better really right?

So I mean I just think there's a mindset That

Yep.

Yep.

adjust Some this is this i'll say this is again I'm going to pose

this as one of my last questions for you Because I think it feeds

Okay.

on things for whatever reason with all that's gone on over the last five

years I think it's getting easier and easier to know when you and I have these

conversations we're getting excited Probably no one's listening at this

point if they're not But the people that are shutting down the people that

are not taking risks the people that are not matured i'm not talking about

age I, I think it's going to be harder and harder for us to hang out together

and I want to hang out with them.

I like to move them along.

What are your thoughts?

These cohorts of people who are high risk takers, low risk takers has always

existed way before technology, right?

Whether we go back the industrial revolution or airplanes or

automobiles, there were always the earliest of adopters and there

were always the latest of adopters.

And this was always, this would always be.

Displayed in, in the movies as the old, as the old guy sitting in his rocking

chair saying, no youngsters don't know what they're doing while the youngsters

were off driving their Ferraris, right.

Or, or learning how to surf.

What are these people on boards on the waves?

There people aren't meant to be on the ocean on a board.

These people are crazy.

So there's always been this cohort of risk takers, early adopters, late adopters.

But history has taught us that even the latest of adopters eventually adopt.

They want to, they just don't know how to, their brain's not wired.

It's okay.

They just come along slower, right?

How many of, how many of people that we know that are 85 and 90 years old

are carrying off cell phone and they're touching their screen and they figured

out how to use an app on their iPhone.

Almost all of them.

There's very few that are now saying to us, those iPhones are evil.

those mobile devices, I'm never using one of those.

There's, there'll be a small percentage of people, right?

But for the most part, people just have their different rates of adoption.

That's okay.

I think you just got to meet people where they are.

You know, tone down your excitement a little bit, because it turns

off the latest of adopters.

And just bring them along one step at a time, because They do actually

appreciate you for it and they will thank you for it over time.

But if you take the same level of excitement I've had to learn

this to the latest of adopters, it really turns them off.

You've got to tone it down to instead of being at level nine on

10, you got to one or two and take what's the next step they can make.

Always

are you, optimistic and excited about the future?

Sure.

future.

I mean, if you're not, you might as well just go live, you know, as a hermit

somewhere, but yeah, future's great.

I think about that some, you know, Gloria and I right now we're hanging

out in a 55 and older community, which is kind of different for us because

I don't, Feel like I'm old enough to be there, but Glory reminds me

that, yep, I'm old enough to be here.

of people, you know, their daily thing, there's nothing wrong with this, okay,

I'm not judging this, but, you know, play a few hours of pickleball is it.

And there's even some of them now that they're probably looking in

at my light and all that, going, what are you, what are you doing

on your computer and all that?

I said, well, I've got a podcast.

So, anyway, I I'm optimistic and excited too Jim, tell me about

what you're doing over on substack.

Let everybody know we're going to include links and maybe give an article

for someone to go to first if they

Sure.

You know, I haven't gotten started with you yet.

So I started in June of 2024, taking all the things that I was talking with.

Mike, I have about 12 clients right now.

I coach them one on one.

They are CEOs, CFOs, VPs of finance, predominantly across Silicon

Valley, how to scale their startups.

So this was born out of my coaching practice.

My practice is a bunch of lessons learned, what I call frameworks

for going faster, playbooks inside those frameworks to go faster.

And I realized that I can take a summary of, you know, these are, I spent three,

four, five, six sessions at a time with clients going over one of these

articles, but I can do a summary of this article and at least get people

interested and want to read more.

And hopefully start a community talking about this.

An example would be my current series, which is leading with powerful questions.

One of the things that you and I have talked about a lot that I really

honed and learned at Mozilla was how not to lead with statements,

how not to lead with answers.

And this ties back to what we're talking about here.

It's interesting.

You lead with questions.

You actually, a leadership style is asking more questions.

Not just curiosity for yourself, but you can actually turn this

into a leadership style, especially when you know the answer.

we get to a leadership position and the people that are very junior, or even,

if you're a head of finance or a head of sales or head of engineering, they're

going to come to you for an answer.

But what you really want them to do is not ask that question in the future.

And if you really want that, you want them to learn.

What you're going to talk about.

And if you really want them to learn, you have to engage their brain by asking

them a question, because if you give them the answer, they'll just come back

and ask you that question again, and they'll want the answer again and again.

And you're not helping yourself or anybody else.

If you ask them a question to lead them down the path to enlightenment,

you know, it, it's a very powerful.

So this is my three part series.

I've broken it up into three parts.

There's several articles like this every once in a while, I'll throw in AI.

I'll talk about operator at deep research.

So I'll talk about other things, but I'm just trying to get a summary

of how to think about leadership, scaling operations, differently.

You enjoying it?

I am enjoying sharing that info.

I will tell you it is hard to put things down in writing and, to make it to

my own standards of professionalism.

Are you using some of the tools to help you though?

I've started to,

this is a

I've started to.

but that's what these tools are for, right?

Yeah, so I've started to, draft something first in my own writing.

I ask ChatGPT to look at it and refine it.

It does do a much better job of correcting my grammar, correcting

my spelling, organizing my thoughts in a much more structured way.

But what it doesn't do for me is It gives me the structure, but if I just took what

it gave me, it would not be my voice.

I can tell when someone's written in AI.

Everywhere across, if, now that I've been using it for a while.

it has to be my voice.

It has to be how I would talk to you, how I would verbalize it.

I have to rewrite it.

I love the structure it gives me.

I love how to think about it.

I love the new ideas, but then you spend a lot of time cleaning it up.

So it's a cycle.

Yeah.

And I, the clue for me, if you see the word delve in anything that I've

created, that means I've used AI, delve, because I do not use that word.

And Gloria says, no, that's a real word.

I said, not for me.

I don't use delve.

But anyway, no, I, and I think there's times for it and times not.

Well, I've read them and I agree with you that that three part series on asking

questions is a great place to start.

In fact, what we'll do down in the notes on YouTube and also on the

podcast platforms, we will include a link to that and then you can subscribe

and I actually get Jim in my inbox.

And Jim, I gotta tell you, I don't get a lot in my inbox anymore.

I keep it really good and clean.

You know, I declutter that.

So Jim Cook comes into my inbox once a week with Cook's playbook.

Cool.

let's not make this an every five year thing.

We should probably do this a little more often, I think.

Maybe every 100 episodes.

Something like that.

You just gotta go faster, Tim.

you know the thing I want to do, I joked with someone recently, I said, you know

what, I really do, I, I envy Joe Rogan that he gets to sit down with someone

in a studio for three and a half hours.

And just kind of talk you and I could do that for days We could

do that for days and have what I believe would be incredible content.

if you want to experiment with that, I'm in.

Like, I know Joe Rogan smokes cigars, I don't smoke cigars, but I have a

feeling that you'll sip a whiskey every once in a while, so If you feed me some

whiskey, I don't know if you do that.

Maybe you don't, but, but you know, Yeah, maybe a glass of wine, but if we have

a glass of wine, you can get me taught You won't shut me up for three hours.

it would be fun.

Jim.

Tell the family that glory and I said hello.

I appreciate you being a part of this And we're gonna, we'll

include links down below.

we're continuing our five year, 300 episode series next week will

be episode 302 with Mike Bair.

He's one of the pioneers of business as mission.

He and I did consulting and coaching back in the nineties and he was

about our second or third guest.

make sure you listen in on that.

We're going to have a great, additional conversation, just like we did here.

When we first spoke with Mike, just like with Jim, It was in early

2020 and the world, of course, was on the verge of massive change.

He's going to talk about what's happened, how faith driven business is evolving,

and where he sees it heading next.

If you're passionate about leadership, mission, and marketplace

impact, make sure you tune in.

We will see everyone next week on Seek, Go, Create.