Occasionally, you can't copy

something that hasn't been

invented yet. What I want the

world to understand is that, all

of us, if we're ready to do that

little bit of innovation the two

or three times in our life when

it matters, the world's going to

be a better place.

That's Jim McKelvey, a pioneer

in the payment space. 10 years

ago, he sketched out a design

for a credit card reader that

attaches to a mobile phone. He

then teamed up with Jack Dorsey

to launch a new payments company

called Square. His simple idea

sparked a business revolution

that put the power of credit

card payments into the hands of

small merchants. Today, Jim

serves as a Director of Square,

which sees almost $5 billion in

annual revenue. In addition to

his role at Square, Jim is also

an author. Last year, he

published a must-read book

called "The Innovation Stack --

Building an Unbeatable Business

One Crazy Idea at a Time."

Filled with stories from the

early days at Square, the book

has been called a thrilling

business narrative that's a

first-person look inside the

world of entrepreneurship and a

call to action for all of us to

find the entrepreneur within

ourselves. In this episode, Jim

talks about building a company,

what it takes to beat Amazon,

and why a steady stream of new

ideas is so critical for success.

This is Daniel Saks, Co-CEO of

AppDirect, and it's time to

decode the innovation stack.

Welcome to "Decoding Digital," a

podcast for innovators looking

to thrive in the digital economy.

I'm your host, Daniel Saks, and

I'll sit down with other

founders, CEOs, and changemakers

to decode the trends that are

transforming the way we work.

Let's decode. I'm going to kick

it off with the how we met story.

If you recall, a few years ago,

we were both invited to the UK

Prime Minister's Office at 10

Downing Street. I recall walking

up a big, famous staircase with

portraits of the past prime

ministers. There was a crowded

room on the right. I turned

left and went into a relatively

empty room with two wing-back

chairs, sat down on one of the

chairs, and in the other chair

was you, Jim. We had, I think it

was an hour, maybe two-hour

conversation, ranging from

everything from urban geography

to the state of San Francisco,

to technology, to politics. I

remember being so fascinated

with your approach and passion

for those conversations and

excited to share some of those

stories with the audience today.

It's good to see you again. That

was a great conversation. I

remember it well. I was

expecting a boring, stuffy

British cocktail party and got

anything but.

Fascinating times, and let's try

to bring back some of those

stories. I recall, when we

chatted, you talked a lot about

how, at the early days of

founding Square, there was a

passion for solving the retail

merchant story and figuring out

ways of providing entrepreneurs

with tools to succeed. Can you

tell us a little bit from the

impetus of how you came to that

thesis and how you scaled Square

in the early days?

It was less of a thesis, more of

a personal problem when we

started. I was a small merchant.

I still am, actually. I'm a

glassblower. It's been a hobby

of mine for years. It used to be

a former profession, but I still

make stuff that nobody needs and

try to sell it whenever I can.

That was the situation I was in

when Jack Dorsey and I decided

to start a company together. I'm

also a computer engineer, and

Jack used to work with me at

another firm. Jack and I

rekindled our business

relationship after he got kicked

out of Twitter. He wanted to

start a new company with me, and

we were looking for ideas.

That's what became Square.

Tell me about the pain of a

glassblower and then how that

evolved into Square.

The pain of glassblowing is

profound, both in terms of burns

and cuts sometimes, but mostly

that you're a small merchant,

and you have to take what they

give you. I was sick of taking

it. Specifically, I was sick of

the abuse I was getting from the

credit card companies. There was

this very abusive system for

small businesses at the time.

Note that we're talking about

2008, 2009. At that time, it was

commonplace for us to get rates

that were triple, quadruple, or

more than medium-sized

businesses. We were a small

business. We couldn't fight this.

I was pretty upset because I

knew it was going on, but I was

powerless as an individual to do

anything about it. Once Jack

and I decided to focus a company

on that, we were able to gather

the resources and make it fair

for everybody.

Obviously, there's been a

commerce revolution of the last

decade, going from 2009, height

of the Great Recession, and the

future of entrepreneurship

potentially looking bleak. Can

you tell me, the movement that

occurred over the last 10 years,

is it what you anticipated when

you were starting Square?

I wouldn't say we anticipated it,

because it was already happening.

What we saw was an acceleration.

As tools became more available,

and remember the iPhone landing

en masse around '08, sparked a

revolution that had begun with

BlackBerry. It was definitely

going to continue. The online

revolution had already started.

None of these were new trends,

especially if you're a

technologist, but we saw an

increasing rate of change. We

saw an acceleration of all this

change. For the last year

during COVID, we've seen

probably a doubling again of

that rate of change. This

happens when there is new

technologies, when there is new

opportunities, but then also

happens when there are crises.

Right now, being in a pandemic,

we're seeing a lot of change

that probably we wouldn't see

for another 10 years, happening

immediately.

How does that impact merchants?

It kills some of them.

Change to those who don't adapt

is death. To a lot of others,

and fortunately, a lot of small

businesses are showing great

adaptation skills. What Square's

been doing for the last year and

a half is shoveling out these

tools so that small businesses

can very rapidly adapt. In the

last half-year, we've really

upped the pace at which we're

shipping tools because the small

businesses are very nimble. That

said, it's been really tough. My

studio has been shut down for a

year. We're mostly an event

venue. We call ourselves the

glassblowing studio, but we make

most of our money off a bar.

Without being able to sell

drinks to people who are having

parties and weddings, we

basically lost all our income in

the last year. Now, fortunately,

we've been able to scramble and

sell some other stuff. When we

put up an online gallery, we've

been able to do some things

virtually that we hadn't focused

on previously, but it's been

very tough, and it's been tough

for millions of small businesses,

and I know a lot of friends

who've lost their business

because of COVID.

This digital divide has become

more pronounced, particularly

since COVID. There are some who

have been beneficiaries, but

some who have been challenged.

What do you think the role is of

the technology industry in

supporting merchants to make

that transition to be able to

adopt services that will help

them?

It's super important that the

technology industry continue the

trend of making tools that were

once only available to the

elites available for the masses.

Square is certainly in that

business, but there are hundreds

of companies that are doing this.

I would argue the Amazon, for

all the bullying they've done in

the market and for the beating

that we got from them, is still

doing some good things as far as

enabling small businesses in

some ways, but they're also

bulldozing others. Walmart

basically killed Main Street in

a lot of small towns, and I have

a love-hate relationship with

what they've done. The

technology businesses, in

general, are more likely to

bring opportunity to companies

that are smaller than companies

that are large, so that's a good

thing.

One of the things that I've

observed and it's a key theme of

the podcast is that

transformation takes a certain

type of innovator and someone

who has certain characteristics

to have the vision, the tenacity,

the ability to learn, the

ability to change. What

patterns have you seen over the

last several years that allow

essentially small merchants to

succeed through embracing this

innovative change versus, let's

say, the mindset of not being

able to embrace technology and

not being able to transform?

It's a platitude, and I would

imagine pretty boring for most

of our listeners to hear me

spout off about how everybody

needs to embrace change and get

with the tech program. Duh, OK.

Let's assume that that's been

said...

and has put half your listeners

to sleep already. The question

that I would ask is what's

interesting? What's interesting

to me is the stuff that's

unexpected or that you wouldn't

think would happen, but happens

anyway. If you asked me that

question, the way I'd answer it

is I'd say you've got two

different classes of innovation.

One, I focused my book on which

is this transformative massive

change that leads to new markets.

That to me is really interesting

because it's very rare, and also

because it has a totally

different set of rules. Which

is to say if you think of the

other type of innovation, which

is iterative stepwise

incremental innovation, which is

also super important by the way,

and where most human progress is

incremental, but you use a

different set of rules in that

world. The reason I wrote the

book, and the reason I made so

many mistakes in my early career

was that I didn't understand

that there was a different set

of rules that applied in each

world. What we're seeing right

now in large part is the

boring type of innovation. The

stepwise innovation that is just

being accelerated. Now that's

not to say, it's not super

important. If you don't have a

website, you might want to get a

website. If you haven't started

using social media, you might

want to do that. If you haven't

learned how to do a Zoom meeting,

guess what? You're going to be

left out. Saying you need to

embrace that innovation should

elicit the thud of somebody

falling asleep in the middle of

your podcast. That's what I

would not want to talk about

because we should all be doing

it, and if you don't think you

should be doing it, why the heck

are you even awake and listening

to a podcast right now?

Let's forget that. What I'd like

to do is talk about this stuff

that was never explained to me,

which is this different type of

innovation that comes from

basically not being able to copy

what everybody else is doing.

When you and I met at 10 Downing

Street a couple of years ago, I

was basically deeply focused on

this area, which is the stuff

that I never understood. That

innovation, it turns out, is

accelerated by crisis. If you

look at breathtakingly new

innovations, not just Square,

but dozens of companies

throughout history, hundreds of

companies throughout history,

that have changed entire markets

and created an entire new

markets. In almost every case,

and certainly in every case

study that I put in "The

Innovation Stack." In every case,

there was some giant cataclysm

that accompanied it. The biggest

bank in the world was built in

San Francisco after the San

Francisco earthquake. Was that a

coincidence, or was that

causative? Did that earthquake

mean that the Bank of Italy

became the biggest bank in the

world? I don't know. IKEA, I

studied them in great depth, and

they had to deal with a bunch of

crises, not the least of which

being World War II and the

aftermath there. What I think is

really interesting is that

massive societal crisis also

goes hand-in-hand with these

transformative businesses that

10 years later are the biggest

in the world.

Tell me a little more about the

thesis of The Innovation Stack,

and how it applies in that

transformative element?

I like to use the word thesis.

It makes it seem more academic

than it really was. The

Innovation Stack with a homework

assignment that I got from

Herbert Kelleher. The way it

went down was not some academic

exercise. I was curious as to

how Square survived an attack by

Amazon. Amazon copied our

product, undercut our price, and

we expected that would kill us.

There was literally no other

company that has ever survived

an Amazon attack like that back

in 2014 when Amazon did it to

Square. When we looked at the

world, we thought, "This is

really bad." It turns out that

Amazon was the one who retreated,

and a year later, they gave up.

That was great news for me, but

it also made me really curious

as to why that happened? I had

this weird version of survivor's

guilt, which is to say, "How the

hell are we still standing?

Nobody beats Amazon as a startup,

and yet we did. What went on

here?" I spent this better part

of two years researching other

companies that that had happened

to because it's a very rare

event. It's a very rare thing

for startups to survive an

attack like that. Then I found

throughout history, there were

these companies, who did it and

not only had they survived this

existential threat, but they

then grew up later to become the

biggest in their business. The

biggest bank in the world, the

biggest furniture company in the

world, the biggest airline in

the United States, the biggest

frozen foods' company in the

world, the biggest automaker. I

was like, "Holy shit. There's a

pattern here that's more

powerful." The problem was, I

did not do an academically

rigorous study. I was just

mining history, and everybody I

was studying was dead. The only

guy who was alive when I'd

finished my work was Herb

Kelleher. He was the founder of

Southwest Airlines. I took

everything to Herb, and I was

like, "Hey, Herb. I don't want

to think I'm delusional here,

but thinking I've stumbled onto

something that might just be

selection bias." Herb sat down

with me, and he got really

excited about what I found. He

said, "Yeah. This explains what

happened to me at Southwest, and

I never really thought about it

this way." He's like, "How are

you going to share this with the

world?" I was like, "I

wasn't necessarily going to do

that," but Herb was legendary.

He inspired me to get out there

and write eight versions of a

book. The thesis is basically

this. If you are in a situation

where you are unable to copy

what everybody else is doing,

you are forced to survive using

a different set of skills. Let's

talk about this in something we

understand and probably fondly

remember which is travel -- back

when we used to travel. If I

said, "OK, Daniel. I'm going to

send you to a country. Why don't

you prepare for travel?" You'd

probably pack a suitcase. You'd

probably pack a passport. You'd

probably pack some forms of

currency and some electronics.

You'll be really upset if I

dropped you in an uncharted

jungle, and that was where you

were going to travel to. You

would have to have a totally

different survival set. Like the

little wheels on your suitcase

are not going to do you any good

at all in the jungle. You might

have wished you'd brought a

knife, or a gun, or maybe a hat.

If you pack for the wrong trip,

you're going to have a bad time.

What happens is most of us pack

for a trip in business, which is

very similar to the one

everybody else is taking. A

little more tourists than

explorers. Occasionally somebody

gets dropped in the jungle,

usually unexpectedly. These are

not usually, interestingly, bold

adventurers. These are not guys

wearing khaki and have full

beards when they depart.

They're people who, for some

reason or other, get put in a

very hostile environment and

then just don't die, and the

process of not dying is what I

study in the book. It turns out

to have this repeatable pattern,

and that's what I call an

innovation stack. That was the

thesis behind all this research

and writing that I've done,

which is, "Hey, man. I wish

somebody had told me when I was

20 and starting on business.

That there was a totally

different skill set that I was

going to need if I was going to

do something truly innovative."

How much of this comes down to

certain characteristics of the

individual, and how they react

to, for example, an attack on

Amazon?

It's interesting. We tend to

glorify the individual too much.

It is a basic human trait, which

is to survive. Even the most

passive, polite, meek person

doesn't want to succumb to death.

If you try to drown somebody,

not that I've tried. That's a

bad analogy. In the

times I've seen people who've

had their lives threatened, that

I've been in maybe only three

instances in my life where there

was a life-threatening situation

going down around us. I was once

in a restaurant that got shot up.

Somebody burst into a restaurant...

Surprisingly, this is not in St.

Louis. I'm an St. Louisian, but

this actually happened in France.

I was in France. I was at a

restaurant. Some lady comes in

with a gun starts shooting at

them. I don't know, it was all

in French. I don't know what the

hell they were fighting about,

but the fact is, I watched the

reaction of all the restaurant

patrons, and we all behave in

the same way when our life is

threatened. It seems to be this

thing that we share as humans.

Was it like you'd see in the

movies?

No. It's not like in the movie.

People were diving under the

tables. I was the closest to the

shooter, and I had a chance to

take her out. If I'd been some

bold person, I probably could

have tackled her. My first

instinct was to dive under a

table when somebody whipped out

a gun and started blasting away.

I wish I had been a hero. It

turns out I'm not a hero. I'm

just a guy who wants to save his

tail. Maybe somebody else would

have done that? I'm sure there's

somebody else on the planet who

would have done that, but most

of us share this dive-under-the-

table survival instinct because

basically, that's what

everyone in the restaurant did.

It's one of my three instances.

That's how we all reacted, at

least in that sample set. In

that sample set, I can tell you

that the fear that kicks, the

survival instinct you have when

somebody is firing bullets at

you, is very similar to the

survival instinct we felt when

Square was attacked by Amazon.

According to Herb Kelleher and

the other people that I

researched for the book, when

the US airlines all banded

together to drive Southwest out

of business, and were blocking

fuel pumps and suing them,

torpedoing their ITL, and doing

all sorts of crazy stuff, it

created this warrior instinct

that permeated his organization.

Herb was one of the reasons

Southwest became so successful.

Back to your big question, which

is do you have to be some sort

of a special, not dive-under-the-

table person to be a successful

entrepreneur? My answer is, "No,"

because I'm the guy who dives

under the table and my

tail look like it went out of

shape but is pretty good, right

now. It's this thing that we

all possess. The trick is

learning how to trigger it in a

business setting, when you don't

want to put yourself in an

existential threat situation.

One of the ways to bring this

characteristic to the surface is

to put yourself in a situation

where your literal life or your

business life depends on a

certain set of actions. That's

probably a bad way to do it.

People don't voluntarily sign up

for that mission. What I found

is that a lot of these hyper-

successful companies, and I put

Square in this category, signed

up for what they thought was

going to be an easier mission,

and then through a circumstance

found out that they'd ended up

in the jungle, like welcome to

the jungle. That was

certainly the experience of all

the companies that I studied. In

other words, you don't have to

be a hero.

When you look at IKEA and

Southwest and your experience

with Square, was it one defining

moment that built this

resilience and the culture that

then enabled it to be easy later,

or would you say they were

repeated moments through

Square's history even maybe

recently that were that life-

threatening opportunity where

people have to die behind?

It's something that happens more

frequently when you're a startup.

Square was pretty freaked out

when the pandemic hit because

all of our merchants, most of

whom have stores and face-to-

face human commerce...The device

that I created was a thing that

plugs into your iPhone and

swipes your credit card while

you're standing within two feet

of me when that happens. The

basis of a lot of our products

was this in-person commerce,

which was going to get wiped out.

Yeah, there was that fear. The

good thing is that Square's a

very resilient company with lots

of resilient merchants. It was

easy for us to keep going and

building tools that our

merchants requested. That turned

out to be not too hard to

rekindle. It's tougher in

organizations that have less of

an entrepreneurial DNA set.

Square still thinks of itself as

a startup. We still act the same

way. God knows, we still dress

the same way. We certainly have

a culture that's more akin to a

30-person company than a 3,000-

person company, even today.

In 2013, you founded LaunchCode,

a nonprofit that makes it

possible for anyone to learn

programming. Why is it so

important to teach people to

code?

It's important to get them jobs.

It's important that we have

people that can fill these jobs.

The companies of the US and the

world are not growing because we

can't get programmers to fill

necessary slots. You say, "Why

does a bank need a programmer?"

Let me tell you. If you're a

bank and you don't have some IT

strength on your staff, you're

not going to be a very

successful bank. It turns out

that all companies, to some

extent, these days are, like it

or not, technology companies.

These companies need programmers.

They need folks who can wrangle

the computer. We have this huge,

growing deficit in the United

States. I looked at this, and I

said, "This is silly, because it

doesn't occur anywhere else in

the economy." If you look at the

shortage of welders, we, from

time to time, have shortage of

welders or nurses or stuff like

that. It turns out, we can

train welders. We can train

nurses. We can train these other

skill sets. We were never able

to train programmers. That's

proven out by the numbers. I was

like, "What the hell's going on

here?" It turns out, the problem

is not training programmers.

It's the way we place

programmers who have been

trained and don't have

credentials that the market

respects. There's a bunch of

reasons for this, but the basic

thing is, you can be totally

competent as a programmer and

still not get a job. The reason

is because, unless your resume

looks a certain way, employers

are never going to give you a

chance. If you never get that

chance, then who cares if you're

a good programmer? What we did

in LaunchCode was, we said, "OK.

Forget education. Let's figure

out how to solve the job

placement problem." We, I would

say, uniquely in the United

States, have solved the job

placement problem, which is to

say, if you come in to

LaunchCode and you can pass our

test, I guarantee you'll get a

job. I have maintained that

guarantee now for seven years.

You come in, and you pass our

skill set, which is not that

high, but if you pass our

threshold, we'll get you a job.

That's because we've negotiated

with all these companies who now

respect the LaunchCode

credential. I keep that

credential tweaked to the point

where we never disappoint the

employers. Yes, LaunchCode is

an education center. One of the

things, you come in. You take

our test. You say, "Sorry, Danny,

you don't cut it." We'll also,

at the same time, offer you free

education to the point where you

can pass the test. We never turn

anybody away. The basic idea of

LaunchCode is job placement,

which seems to be the thing

that's broken in computer

education. Let me put that

another way. If you know

somebody who's about to give $15,

000 to some bootcamp or about to

sign away a couple years of

their life to some accredited or

unaccredited program with the

hopes of they'll get a

programming job, watch out,

because a lot of those

educational institutions don't

deliver on the promise. That's

the thing to be careful of.

You've led and inspired many

different ecosystems. You have

the ecosystem of merchants

across Square. You have

engineers and programmers that

have been through LaunchCode,

and then you've interviewed and

profiled many entrepreneurs of

innovative companies. What

common themes do you see in

these different groups?

I see the pattern that I talked

about in the book a lot which is

that most people, including

myself, I'm not saying I'm any

different, are very good at

copying, and we're very good at

ambulating success systems. We

are less good and less

comfortable when we have to

think differently, when we're

forced to innovate. The thing

that I always tried to do is

prepare my organizations and my

fellow co-workers to be ready in

case innovation becomes

necessary. I'm not the one in

these innovation T-shirt guys

that says, "Hey, we innovate

every day here." No, screw it.

That's a last resort. Innovation

is the thing that you do.

There's a hammer and a big pane

of glass over the innovation

lever because generally, it's

better to copy something that

you know works as opposed to

invent something that, "Hey, it

might not work." In all the

organizations that I've run or

being part of, what I see is

this ability from time to time

as it becomes necessary to be

able to pull that lever. The

reason I wrote the book, I wrote

the book, I dedicated the book

to somebody who I thought was

incredibly competent. She's

brilliant. She's got a Master's

Degree from probably the most

prestigious educational

institution on the planet. You

got a list of superlatives down

the line. You have hardworking,

charming, blah, blah, blah.

I've watched her work over the

years, and whenever she

encounters a problem where she

can't see that somebody else has

solved it or she doesn't know

that there's a known solution,

she stops, and she says, "Well,

I have to get qualified. I'm not

qualified to do this." My

answer to her which is now 300

pages, is, "Look, the first

person on the planet to do

something is always unqualified.

I don't care what you're doing.

You're the first person to land

a double backflip. You're not

qualified to do that because you

haven't been trained." "A

double backflip will kill you.

If you're the first person in

humanity to land that sucker,

guess what? You've done it as an

unqualified person." My message

to my friend and to everybody

who reads the book is you can

spend most of your life, or all

your life, and have a very happy

life, copying what everybody

else has done. That's probably

what you should do. Occasionally,

life is going to give you some

opportunity to do something

where you don't get to copy the

solution. At that moment, you

have a choice. You can either

say, "Well, I'm going to do it,"

and use this totally different

skill set that I've never been

trained to use and is really

unfamiliar and weird. It's the

explorer, not the tourist skill

set, or, "I'm going to choose to

not do it." My message to my

friend is, "Look, you've got

this fantastic set of skills,

and you might be the person who

gets it done, even though nobody

has done it before you. That

still doesn't mean you can't do

it, it just means that if you

succeed, you will have succeeded

as an unqualified person."

I tend to think of an innovator

who would thrive in that

situation as a hero, but I'm

really intrigued by that jump-

under-the-table analogy and your

thesis around, it's not that

people are heroes, it's maybe

the opportunity that presents

them to actually innovate and

think uniquely.

That's a great point, Daniel.

I'll tell you who one of my

heroes was. It was Herb Kelleher.

I grew up thinking Herb Kelleher

was the biggest badass on the

planet because, during my

formative years, Southwest was

not only the best airplane stock

in the country, it was the best

stock in the country for a

decade running. They were the

best small business, and they

had all these superlatives. When

I finally got to meet the legend,

and he gave me this homework

assignment of basically, "Hey,

take your research and make it

in some digestible format." I

thought I would impress Herb by

doing something abnormal, which

is to say, I wasn't going to

write a business book, I was

going to write a comic book. I

did the comic book. As a matter

of fact, the first draft of "The

Innovation Stack," it is a

graphic novel. It's all cartoons

and some stories mixed in, but

it turns out that these stories

of entrepreneurship make good

graphic novel stuff because

there are shootings. There are

shootings, and bleedings, and

frontal nudity, and

there's all sorts of great stuff

that makes a comic book go. I

wrote this thing up as a comic,

and I told Herb, I was like, "

You're going to love this. I did

it all as a graphic novel." He

was pissed. He was not happy. I

was surprised, but Herb's point

was that by telling the story of

entrepreneurship in a format

that lends itself to comic book

portrayal. There's a Chapter 9

in the book, which I couldn't

resist. Chapter 9 was such a

badass comic that I just made it

a comic book. Have you seen this

yet?

No. I haven't seen that version.

Go to jimmckelvey.com and you

can get it for free. I printed

up 10,000 of these things. It's

a great comic. There're Nazis.

There is destruction of a major

city. There's that guy yelling

at you. It's totally badass. I

wanted to have the whole book

this way, but here's why Herb

was such a genius. They're not

hero stories. The comic is the

way you tell a hero story. The

hero in the comic is some larger

than life, bolder than I am,

tougher than I am, smarter than

I am, younger than I am, older

than I am, wiser than I am. It

appears she has some superlative

or some superpower that I don't

possess as a normal flow, and

because of that I read a comic

book and I watch all these

heroic antics, and I say, "Oh,

that's good for that person with

superpowers, but bullets don't

bounce off Jim Mckelvey, so I'm

just not going to try that." It

was the wrong format. I

basically took all the comics

out of "The Innovation Stack,"

and rewrote the whole thing as a...

It still reads like a

comic book in some spots.

I feel that. I get that.

The graphics are gone. The point

is, it's not a hero story, it's

an everyman story. The people

that I studied are not heroes.

They are people who, in many

ways, are very shy, they're meek.

I'm no bold adventurer. They're

folks who just, for one reason

or other, ended up in these

weird situations where they had

to become adventurers. They had

to learn how to survive in the

jungle, and learning that

survival skill set is something

that we're all capable of.

I feel I'm fortunate to meet so

many interesting people like you

and others that have these

incredible stories, and there's

so many interesting themes that

you can bring to others. When I

look at my community, whether

it's a small merchant, whether

it's an enterprise merchant,

whether it's someone in our

ecosystem, they're all these

people are passionate and you

want to inspire them to be

heroes. I like that contrarian

view which is, "Hey, we're all

on one level playing field, and

we all have the secret sauce to

be a hero, but who cares about

being a hero. We're all just

here to react and innovate," and

it's humbling. It's interesting.

I think it's empowering. I want

people off the sidelines. I

don't want people to feel they

have to spend their entire lives

only replicated with what other

people have proven works. That's

the real tragedy. Unfortunately,

we've put this hero label on the

behavior that doesn't have a

guaranteed outcome. We say, you

are so bold, or you have vision,

or whatever superlative you want

to hang on it, and that tends to

discourage people who really

have what it takes, but have

been trained their entire lives

to do nothing, but copy. Don't

buy the damn book, but just

listen to the following two

minutes. You've been schooled

your entire life. Actually, for

the million years before you

were born, your genome evolved

to replicate what works. That's

how we educate. That's how we

procreate. That's how we do

everything that's successful.

With one little exception, and

that is occasionally, you can't

copy something that hasn't been

invented yet. What I want the

world to understand is that all

of us, if we're ready to do that

little bit of innovation the two

or three times in our life when

it matters, the world's going to

be a better place because right

now, we got a bunch of problems

with a disease. We got a bunch

of problems with the environment.

We got a bunch of problems in

society. I don't want only the

heroes or people who think

they're heroes, on that problem

set because there may be 100

people in that category on the

planet. I want eight billion

people to think that they have

the skills. I go through a very

boring mathematical analysis of

what those skills are, how to

apply them, and how you already

possess them. Then, I think

pretty candidly about how

uncomfortable, at least I felt,

and the people that I studied

felt when applying. If you do

this stuff, and you still feel

bold and empowered, you're

probably psychotic, or at least

in some way, delusional. Most of

the folks that I studied, the so-

called heroes, were afraid. I

read Kamprad's diaries. The guy

was crying himself to sleep at

night. This is the most powerful

furniture builder on the planet,

probably in the history of

humanity. There's never been a

person who had put more

furniture in the hands of more

people than Ingvar Kamprad, and

he admits to crying himself to

sleep at night during the early

days of IKEA. There's your hero

crying himself to sleep on a bed

that was put together with a six-

millimeter Allen key. Whatever

it takes to get someone off the

bench, fine. You want to think

yourself the hero, that's what

would get you off the bench,

fine. I prefer to think of it

as, "Wait a second." As just a

normal human who doesn't give in

to death. I possess these

qualities that lie deep in

reserve, but sometimes have to

surface, and he wrote the

circumstances where they surface,

and here are the feelings that

surface along with those

circumstances. I don't want

people quitting because they

feel uncomfortable when they're

doing something new because,

believe me, if you're doing

something new, something truly

new, you will feel uncomfortable.

I've never found anyone who

doesn't.

That is inspiring to everyone. I

really appreciate your speaking

from the heart there because

anyone has the potential to step

up to an opportunity, and that

vulnerability is something that

I feel. In fact, sharing my

personal experience, the first

time I did a podcast interview,

I was terrified. Even now, I'm

speaking to the founder of

Square and there's a nervousness,

but I think that exposing more

of that vulnerability is

important today.

Talk to anyone who is a

performer, talk to the lead

singer of a band, or a stage

actor, or even the TV actor,

you'll find that most of them,

even if they've been in front of

this crowd a thousand times,

still get nervous before they

get on stage, and I'm not

surprised by that. It's

unnatural to play the hero, and

it triggers a different set of

physiological responses. I

wrote a chapter on fear. What it

feels like, and how to deal with

it? I was a little weird. You

don't usually put a fear chapter

in a business book. If we're not

honest about it, then what

happens is that people feel

weird. They get in the situation.

They go, "Oh, I shouldn't feel

this way. I'm probably not

qualified." Then they quit. No,

you're going to feel unqualified

because you are unqualified. The

other thing that I discovered is

that none of the so-called

heroes that I studied, including

Jack and me, were qualified to

do what we did. Jack and I

didn't know anything about

payments. Kelleher was an

attorney. He didn't know

anything about airlines.

Kamprad, hell, he even started

IKEA when he was 19 or 17, he

wasn't qualified to do anything.

That's for sure. What

are the qualifications here?

You're not going to be qualified

to do something for the first

time anyway, so who cares.

Jim, I want to thank you for

coming and sharing your passion

and being vulnerable. To me,

this was super inspiring to hear

from yourself and so many

impressive people who I would

consider heroes, but hear about

how they're just like many of us.

That's truly inspiring to give

anyone, whether it's the

listeners here, or readers to

your book, the tools to be able

to innovate and succeed. Thank

you.

Awesome. Daniel, thanks so much.

Good seeing you again...

and thank you for helping us get

the word out.

Well, thanks. On the next

episode of Decoding Digital...

Digital heroes need to be both

inspired, empowered, and

supported. If you can do both of

those, almost at least 70

percent can be a digital hero.

We can build them.

Professor at Boston College and

author of "The Technology

Fallacy," Gerald Kane.

Thanks for listening to Decoding

Digital. Make sure you never

miss an episode by subscribing

to the show in your favorite

podcast player. To learn more,

visit decodingdigital.com. Until