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Hey everybody, welcome back to The Parallel Entrepreneur. I'm Mark Cleveland,

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your host, and today I am excited to introduce a guest who's truly a catalyst

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for growth and innovation in the business world and a great resource for The

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Parallel Entrepreneur.

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Jason Putnam is a two-time award-winning executive celebrated as the Globie

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Executive of the Year and a Silver Stevie Award winner in 2021,

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but most recently named in 2024 as Inspiring Leader by Inspiring Workplaces.

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Jason has an impressive track record and a lot to share about scaling online

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and SaaS businesses while building top-performing teams, creating positive, lasting impact.

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As Chief Revenue Officer of Plum, we're going to talk about what is Plum.

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Jason is in the forefront of transforming talent decisions through psychometric

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data, helping businesses make smarter and more inclusive hiring choices.

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So I can't wait to dive into Jason's journey and hear his insights that have

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fueled his success. Welcome, Jason Putnam.

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Thanks, Mark. What a good intro. I appreciate it. I'm excited.

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I'm definitely hitting this one with high energy. I

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want to ask you um i guess my

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first question is people will sometimes get an

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introduction like that and then the listener is like well now what

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is plump so take us through this value

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proposition and why it's so important for the parallel entrepreneur people people

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are what helps grow companies i think they're the most important thing that

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you can have and even if you have a great idea without the people to help you

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do it it's not going to work and what we do at plum is is revolutionary from

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the perspective of we're able to look at the whole human,

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those things that get them out of bed and motivate them every day and align

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that to a job that they're going to go into.

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So when they're in that job, they are happy and fulfilled.

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And when they're happy and fulfilled, they are going to stay longer.

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They're going to be more productive. And ultimately, the benefit back to the

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company is you have somebody who's going to be there a long time,

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they're going to be happy, and they're going to be exponentially more productive

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than somebody who when they close their laptop, at the end of the day, they go pour two drinks.

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In this situation, they get up, they're happy to go to work.

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When they close their laptop and they're done, they're celebrating their day

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as opposed to resenting it.

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We're going to talk about celebration. We're going to talk about pace of change.

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And I'm hearing already in your voice this passion. And I know you to be passionate

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about fitting the right people in the right place and how that impacts an organization.

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Talk to us a little bit about how entrepreneurs in the plum universe are leveraging

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your tool to do exactly that at scale.

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Yeah the at scale is is really the the important part and

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when i say at scale it could be you're scaling a business

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right which is my my passion helping other people scale their

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businesses but it could be really large companies like city banks a client of

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ours and whirlpool and hyundai really really large companies what they're able

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to do is when you're when you're building that from the ground up they're able

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to not only bring the right people into the organization again who are happy

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who are doing the job but it's helping them align their culture and when you

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look at it as an entrepreneur,

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whether that's a founder starting something new, or whether it's a CEO of a Fortune X company,

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they kind of have three main goals, in my opinion, as a founder or a CEO of a large company.

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Number one, you have fiduciary responsibility. Do you have enough money to grow

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the business? Do you have enough money to pay your people? Are the revenues

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there, all the typical things that we would think about?

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Number two is, are you providing a safe and a growing environment for your people?

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So do your people feel safe when they come to work, but also are you setting

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it up to where they can grow and in their career, whether it's with you or without?

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And then the third is culture.

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Do you have the, there's not a good or a bad culture, right?

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But are you aligned with culture to make sure that all your people can help

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you in that up into the right journey with an aligned culture?

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And that's what they use Plum for. They use it from a selection perspective

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to make sure the people who are coming in are going to be the most productive.

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And they're using it both on that selection process, but also in what we would

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call talent management, not just talent acquisition.

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How do you make sure you're providing everything you need for the people who

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are currently at your business to be the most productive?

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And then from a culture alignment, is everybody aligned on that culture that's

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coming from the top down?

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And our mantra is that when people flourish, meaning the people in their roles,

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the business will thrive.

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And there's many, many reports out there outside of Plum that prove that to be true.

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I love it. Now, you are an entrepreneur, you are a leader, and you have been

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at multiple organizations.

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And I think one of the common themes at Parallel Entrepreneur is how are you

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recognizing the patterns from one experience that you're importing to the next,

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this opportunity of synergies between organizations,

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synergies between clients,

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synergies in the marketplace that align talent. Let's speak to that.

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Yeah, so my passion, and I know we'll get into passion a little bit, but I really want to help,

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make people's dreams come true. And that's, you know, most founders,

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that's what they started out trying to do.

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So that's a common theme across all of them, right? They had this idea,

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they want this thing to be true, whatever that is, a for-profit,

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a non-profit, a bake sale. It doesn't really matter what it is,

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right? You did it for a reason.

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And as you mentioned, right, like a lot of the guests you have on here are founders. I'm not.

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My passion is helping those founders scale and exit and bring their dreams to life.

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And when you look at it that way, some of the patterns that I see are really,

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they had this great idea.

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They were most likely an inventor type founder.

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And the idea is fantastic. The product is fantastic, whether it's something

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tangible or software or whatever it may be.

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And they're missing some of those elements to be able to get there.

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And they need to surround themselves

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with people who know how to take the business to the next level.

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And when you're a founder, especially like a startup founder,

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again, whether it's a tangible piece, like Bill, one of your guests with his

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e-bikes, or it's like a piece of software, there are experts out there who can help you do that.

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And just understanding when it's time to pull those levers on people,

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when it's time to take a business from not just that, hey, it's this idea that I had.

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Okay, now that I have this idea, is it repeatable? Are people not just buying

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it as a one-off? Are they buying it multiple times?

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And then once it's repeatable, then how can I take it to be scalable?

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And that repeatability to scalability and ultimately sustainability,

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that's really where my passion comes in.

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But that pattern is almost at every company I've ever been a part of and multiple

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companies that I'm a part of today.

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So, Kaitlin McGregor is the founder of Visionary that created Plum,

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and you are a part of the team that is executing that vision at scale.

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And I'm curious, how did you meet and how are the two of you slaying dragons

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in this relationship of co-executor?

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I met Caitlin. It's an interesting story to me as we talk about kind of my passions

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for helping other people.

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And the way that manifests sometimes is just running into people.

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And I've been in the HR tech space for a long time.

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As you mentioned in the bio, I feel very blessed and honored for the success that I have.

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But I happened to be exited one company, going to another company.

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I hadn't made a decision of where I was going to land yet, but I was at an industry

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event and a bit of an inner circle.

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A PR firm at my previous company was also the PR firm at Plum.

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And our a great PR firm called The Devon Group. Their team's amazing.

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And the team there said, hey, will you please go to this industry dinner?

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Because Caitlin, who's our client, doesn't really know anybody.

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And we're a Canadian company.

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So she was coming into the US, small company that had been around 10 years,

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but wasn't really where anybody wanted it to be.

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Not a lot of people knew it. So we sat down, had dinner with her,

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huge table, and it was myself.

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And at the time, a woman named Michelle Meehan, who ran brand marketing for

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us. She's now our VP of marketing over here.

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We were at PandaLogic together. And as we sat there, I looked up,

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I don't know, three hours later, and it had only been the three of us talking.

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And she was sharing some of those things. She was sharing her journey.

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She was sharing the struggles she had had. And just the person in me of wanting

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to make people's dreams come true and help them, we bantered back and forth

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about, hey, this is how I would do it.

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Because everything I do is really, I'm a pattern person, right?

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So I'm able to kind of see the forest through the trees and use the same patterns

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and the same approach I've always used to kind of go there.

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So as she's coming up with these struggles that she's had for a decade,

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it's like, well, here's what you should do about that. Here's what you should do about this.

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And by the end of dinner, she had offered us both jobs and Michelle and I are

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here today. So that's how we ran it ran.

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That's how the origin story met as, as one would say. And then it was about.

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Taking somebody who is a founder and saying, yes, you've done this for a long time.

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And yes, there are things that worked really well and there aren't things that worked really well.

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And it's now time for you to separate yourself from some aspects of the business

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and give those to people who are going to be able to take it to the next business.

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So as we're talking about slaying dragons, we went from a company that had been

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around 10 years and was thinking, dabbling into enterprise, going from like

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SMB to bin market to enterprise to fast forward three years later.

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In the last two years, we've won 100 awards, over 100 awards.

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We've grown the business hundreds and hundreds of percent.

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We're now fully baked in enterprise.

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Some of the biggest enterprise companies in the world use us.

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And we're really viewed as really the darling in the industry when it comes to what we do.

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So we have really big dreams. And it's not just trying to build a company to

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exit, like that's my job, but we want to do things for good.

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And there's a lot of people every month, frankly, 50,000 people a month who

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take Plum as part of an application process or an employee or even organically

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to learn more about themselves.

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And although we don't make money on that side, that's the thing we celebrate

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a lot because we're giving people the opportunity to learn more about themselves.

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We've democratized access to this really, really helpful data,

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the psychometric data that people have.

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And we're helping people find jobs and we're helping people change careers and

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we're helping people build upskilling and coping mechanisms to be better,

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to be feel more fulfilled in their job. And when they're fulfilled in their

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job and we're aligned, right, then they're going to flourish in what they do.

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You know, a common theme in the parallel entrepreneur podcasts experience for

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me is how founders view recruiting.

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And I'm a human talent tracker. I recognize talent when I see it.

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What a great story about how Caitlin met you and the change makers,

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good cultural fit, and the humans are good at making these judgments.

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But there's also there's bias, there's undiscovered bias in the process of bringing

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people at scale into your organization.

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You know, clearly it was a good decision for her to recruit you and you to recruit

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other people on the team.

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So the attitude towards recruiting is key.

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Talk about what happens in this unconscious bias and how do you free your entrepreneur

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clients, your growth companies?

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How do you free them from that restraint?

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It's an interesting world to me because there is intentional bias.

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But there's a lot of unintentional biases, as you talked about.

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And the older you get, the more set in your ways that you get,

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the more that comes to light that, hey, all salespeople have to be this way.

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All accountants have to be this way.

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Or they went to the same school that I went to, the same university that I went

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to. So they're probably this.

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Or they were the captain of the football team. Or they were the head cheerleader.

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Whatever it may be, there's that bias in there.

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What you find is when you start looking at patterns around people,

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you're leaving out so many diamonds in the rough. So not to be a commercial

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about Plum, but I just want to tell a story that talks about exactly the question you asked, Mark.

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Scotiabank, which is a really, really big Canadian bank. And for years,

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they went about it like this.

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And very unintended consequences and I would say unintended bias.

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So they say, hey, for our early career, recent grad program,

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here's how we go about bringing people in and recruiting them into the organization.

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They say they had to go to these five universities. By the way,

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they're the same five universities that probably the CEO, CFO all went to.

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They have to have a business degree or a finance degree, right?

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So you have kind of two buckets that if you weren't one of those, you're out.

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And what they ended up finding out was they would make 10 offers or 100 offers,

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but about 20% would say yes.

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And the other 80% would go out to, they'd go work for Deloitte or another bank.

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So they couldn't bring in enough talent that matched those really specific gating

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functions and the ways you would screen people to commit.

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So they took a really novel approach and they said, we're going to eliminate

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resumes for recent grads and early entry, and they're going to only apply with Plum.

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So we're looking only at what we call durable skills. Think of it like soft

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skills, your ability to innovate, work well with others, determination,

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all those things that go into psychometric data.

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And when somebody applies, they're matched to, let's say, 16 different jobs

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at the bank. And that's what they use to bring them in.

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So even though one of those people may be a 98 out of 100 for Plum,

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that person may have not gone to one of those five schools.

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They probably didn't. They may not have a business or finance degree.

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Well, if you fast forward to now, they're now hiring for that program from 32

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different universities.

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40% of their hires have STEM and art degrees, and 60% of their hires are underrepresented minorities.

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And these are now, they're bringing in the top, top, top talent.

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We ask the internal team every year, of the people you brought in,

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would you rehire them again? And it's nearly 90% they would rehire again.

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So those are people they never would have even seen before. And we've taken

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out that unconscious bias to say, there are people, especially now when you

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think of the world of AI, everyone can apply to a million jobs and every resume

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is going to look the same.

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You really got to get it down to what makes that person special?

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How does that align with what we need at the organization?

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If it doesn't align personality-wise, psychometric-wise, they're better off

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not coming to work for you, for you and for them. So let's bring in the people

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who are going to be able to really flourish here at the right time so we can thrive as a business.

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Yeah, what a terrific insight. They stopped. They re-evaluated their process.

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They threw out the resume, and I think that is a game-changer re-evaluation

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of how you recruit and determine what and what is not talent,

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what is and what is not a match.

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Are, and I would like to believe this question is a laydown,

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but are there enough companies who are willing to throw out the resume and take

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advantage of the match of talent to the requirements of talent for success?

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The answer is no, which you're probably not surprised today,

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because number one, HR tends to be, it's a long answer, Mark,

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HR tends to be, has become more of a risk aversion kind of department.

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Like, let's make sure we don't make a mistake to protect the company.

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So by nature, you don't have a ton of innovators or early on adopters.

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There are some, I don't mean to be that to sound derogatory,

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but by nature, they're at their bottom of the P&L type people, right?

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They're not people who are like me or you, who's like, I'm willing to take a

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risk, even though I may fail at that risk. By nature, they have to do that.

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So as a department, that makes it hard. And the bigger the company,

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it also makes it hard because the change management is hard.

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Where I see change coming is based on, we talked about the pace of change, the pace paradox.

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They're going to be forced to do it. And that's really where change happens

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at companies. You're going to have to be forced. And here's what I mean by that.

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It used to be that the companies had all the power.

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So if you were a big company or a small company, you were in charge and you

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controlled how much people made unless it was minimum wage. And you said,

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here's who I'm going to hire.

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And as a company, I didn't just have the power because I was writing the paychecks.

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I had the power because I had a technological advantage. I could put an ad in the newspaper.

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I eventually have an applicant tracking system. I can have all these ways to

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be able to attract you and then say yes or no.

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Well, as soon as generative AI happened, that has now even the playing field.

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And it's a long answer, but I think it's really important for even early on

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founders or small companies to understand this.

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So now the human, me, if I'm an applicant or I'm an employee who's going to

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look for a job somewhere else, I have the exact same technological advantage

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as a company or a corporation does.

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So now it used to be, again, the company struggled with looking at a thousand

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resumes and determining the one person they're going to hire through whatever their process is.

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But as a human, I could only apply to so many jobs because it was arduous.

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Now there's tools out there that I can match my resume to any job description

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and be a perfect fit with AI and apply to a thousand jobs a day.

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So because I have this technological advantage, the juxtaposition between the

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two is an even playing field, like I said.

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Then when you layer on what's going to happen with generative AI and the pace

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paradox that we're talking about, the things that can be automated are going to be automated.

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So if you think about a programmer today, those things that went into being

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a programmer, do you know this particular programming language?

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Do you know this? All that's going to go out the window because now the skills

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needed are going to be much more of these durable skills. Now a programmer's

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most important talent is can you communicate well when you're writing these prompts?

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So there's going to come a point when the only thing that's going to be left

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to differentiate people is who they are as humans.

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And those hard skills, right, do you know Excel? How well do you know Excel?

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Those are all going to be automated. So it's going to be forced that you're

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going to have to look at it this way.

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And what you did on a resume, so if you think about it like LinkedIn,

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LinkedIn says what you've done.

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You're going to have to figure out a way to match people on what they can do, not what they've done.

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My, and I love this great leveling that AI represents. You've talked about pace of change paradox.

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Let's dive into that just a minute, because when you say it's going to happen,

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and we all, in my own work, studying AI, implementing AI systems,

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managing pace of change specifically at an organization's state of readiness for change.

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I'm not sure people really understand just legitimately how fast this is happening.

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So let's address that topic.

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Yeah, there's a futurist. His name's Ira Wolf. I recommend everybody go read some of his work.

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He has this concept called the pace paradox.

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And I'll summarize it. So if you don't want to go read this,

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you don't have to. But of all the things we're talking about today,

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at least for my opinion, I think it's the most important. It's also the scariest.

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But it goes into, hey, why do I feel the way I feel? And we all kind of feel

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weird right now. Like, oh, that seems different. Let me tell you why it is.

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So the Pace Paradox says this. From 2000 to 2004, so a five-year period of time,

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the amount of change that happened in that year, those five years,

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has already happened this year.

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So you have five years worth of change crunched down into one year.

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20 years from now, that same amount of change that happened in five years is

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going to happen in a month.

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So now think about how fast things are going to change.

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So keep in mind, the generative AI we have today, as game-changing as it is,

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is the most expensive it'll ever be and the worst quality it'll ever be.

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It's only going to get cheaper and better and faster.

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So as it gets cheaper, better, and faster, the speed of change is going to even

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get faster than probably what he predicted.

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So what does that mean? If I'm used to running a business, I'll say typically,

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you have a CEO at the top, he or she says, here's my soldiers,

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all the other C-level executives. Here's what we're going to do this year.

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And then those C-level executives take it to their VPs who then take it to the

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directors, right? Big corporation.

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By the time the message gets to the manager, the pace of change has already happened four times.

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And the same thing's going to happen with hiring and retaining people.

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So as an entrepreneur with three employees or yourself or a huge corporation,

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you're going to have to understand that everything's going to be changing so

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quickly that you're going to have to reimagine how business is done.

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Yeah, I've got that experience in my own companies where in 2019,

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it took me 19 people to execute a plan. Today, it takes me two.

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And, you know, all those people have used those learning experiences in my organizations

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and others to amplify their effectiveness.

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And I hire for culture. I've always hired for fit.

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Let's just say if I was to reflect on who I am, I am a connector.

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And so people will reach out to me and they're saying they're looking for a

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job. They're looking for an opportunity.

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So there's two questions. One is everybody who's working for you right now is

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able to put out a million applications.

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It's not just unemployed people looking for the right fit and a better job opportunity.

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It's everybody that's on your team today, number one.

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Number two, you have described a change management attitude based on old paradigms

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that can't change fast enough.

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So that inbound inquiry that I've received from friends, from people that used

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to work with me and are looking for opportunities and staying in touch, I'll point them to Plum.

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I'll say, go take, go to Plum and take the Plum ingesting experience.

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And they'll come back to me and say, I didn't know that about myself. Holy cow.

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So I want you to address this.

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Everybody's available at the pace of change. We can barely recognize or sustain.

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And what are people learning about themselves from this tool that you're offering

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for free? Great question. Thank you.

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What you described from an experience perspective, people come in with preconceived

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notions because if you're an applicant, let's say, to an organization,

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the way things used to work was you uploaded where you found your job,

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wherever it is, you uploaded your resume.

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And if they asked you to do something else, it was very much they were in control,

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right? It was this black box, whether you were taking a disk assessment or other

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assessments who are out there.

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And you then, at some point in the future, if you got a response,

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it was like, you're not a fit, but you didn't know why, and now you're mad.

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And let's say you're a company like Citibank or Whirlpool.

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They have tens of thousands of people applying, and they're hiring one or five.

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All those other people who got rejected are either current customers or potential

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future customers, right? So their candidate experience is awful.

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So what we did was we really wanted to say, hey, let's make it about the human

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first. Let's build a product for the human.

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So even though they may be an applicant or they're coming organically or they're

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an employee at a company, let's give all the value on the front end to the human,

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even if they don't get the job.

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And if you think of those 50,000 people a month who take it,

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the majority of them as applicants don't get the job that they applied for.

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But what they leave with is what we call Plum Flourish, which is this full career management platform.

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So they can figure out not just other jobs. We actually don't serve them up

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jobs. We serve them a kind of career pathing or, hey, here's why a particular

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job may not be a fit for you.

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Right. This company is from you talk about culture a little bit, Mark.

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This company is very, very innovative and very fast. So they're going to require

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people who are, again, innovative.

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High in communication and really high in adaptation. If you're somebody who's

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low in adaptation, it doesn't mean you can't adapt.

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It just means if you had to do that all the time and that pace of change was

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constant and your job was changing every day, you're going to go find another

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job because you're just going to be burned out.

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Whereas if my job was about adaptation innovation, which it is at Plum,

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I hop out of bed every day looking for the next challenge that comes in front of me.

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So being able to just bring that light to people to say, there's nothing wrong

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with you, this is why you feel that way.

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And if you're next time you're talking to your spouse, this is why this happens.

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Next time you're talking to a colleague, try talking to things about this.

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And if there's certain areas that you want to get quote unquote better at,

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it's not that they're going to make you more fulfilled, but we can build some coping mechanisms.

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So for me, you know, I'm an executive. I have to be really good at teamwork.

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Teamwork is the thing that drains me the most, right? So if I have a to-do list

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or somebody says I have an idea, I'd rather spend time talking to that person

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about their idea or how to make their dreams come true versus going to a happy

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hour, which is to me like a complete waste of time.

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But as an executive, I have to build coping mechanisms that say,

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cool, once a month, we're going to do this for our team.

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And I'm going to do team check-ins these days and these days.

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And I'm talking to my team all the time, but these are much more at the human

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level and it's just draining for me. So I have to build those.

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So we let people know that, hey, you can't be driven by everything.

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There are going to be things you're really driven by. There's going to be things

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you're really drained by.

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And there's something you're kind to neutral with understand what those are

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understand why you feel the way you feel and then let's figure

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out how you can overcome some of them so you've just touched on one of my favorite

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questions which is you know there are things that drain us there are things

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that energize us how do you personally i think our listeners are interested

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in in understanding your personal journey as well how do you restore energy when you feel depleted.

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I don't know if the word depletion is right. Here's what I find kind of as a catalyst.

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And a catalyst is somebody who's, you know, again, driven by change,

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driven by innovation, typically brought in to drive that change.

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And what ends up happening is you go really, really, really fast.

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And you, because of these patterns being able to see patterns,

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you're the one who comes in sometimes as a bull in the China shop and you know what needs to be done.

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And you want to be able to pull people along with you. Sometimes they can't

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go as fast as you, or they may not agree with where you're going.

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And that is the thing that ends up depleting me. Sometimes it manifests as burnout.

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Sometimes it manifests as resentment.

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So what I have to do is kind of like bring myself back to say.

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Okay, how do I refill that cup?

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And inherently, I'm an introvert, but I really want to help people.

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So I get motivated by working with people. It's why I have these other things

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around me and I'm helping in all these ventures because I want to be able to sprinkle that around.

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But I want to be able to, the thing that really fills me up every day is working

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with really good people, but especially those with kind of diverse backgrounds

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and diverse perspectives.

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So I find that inspiring because if you're working with really,

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really dynamic groups, it brings that other kind of thing that fills me up,

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which is solving really big problems that seemed unsolvable before.

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So even if it's outside of where I am or a company I'm working for,

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I want to go help solve a problem.

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The other thing that really helps me and if I need to recharge is learning something new.

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And I don't mean like tangentially learning something new. I I mean,

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going very, very, very deep into something new.

435
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So I remember four or five years ago, we were talking about,

436
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somebody was talking about quantum mechanics. I didn't know anything.

437
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I ended up sitting through hours and hours of MIT lectures on it, right?

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And not that I'm an expert on it, but I wanted to know enough to be able to

439
00:26:28,140 --> 00:26:31,520
have a conversation with somebody, not be the smartest person in the room,

440
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:35,000
but be the dumbest person in the room when it comes to that and just learn more and more every day.

441
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:38,020
And if I could then pass some of that knowledge on or it becomes applicable

442
00:26:38,020 --> 00:26:40,140
in something else I'm doing, it's really, really motivating.

443
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:43,540
And so that deep dive helped you learn how to ask better

444
00:26:43,540 --> 00:26:47,140
questions in that environment yes so

445
00:26:47,140 --> 00:26:50,560
how do you stay agile then open to experimentation when

446
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:55,560
success is elusive it's uh maybe it's my definition of success i i don't find

447
00:26:55,560 --> 00:27:00,300
it elusive again the thing that motivates me is i want i want i want other people's

448
00:27:00,300 --> 00:27:03,880
dreams to come true when it's all over someday i want i want people to look

449
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:08,780
back and say jason help me do this even if it was a small tiny thing right i

450
00:27:08,780 --> 00:27:10,240
i say tell the people all the time.

451
00:27:10,340 --> 00:27:13,980
I really care much more about what people say at my funeral than what my resume

452
00:27:13,980 --> 00:27:15,100
and my bank account says.

453
00:27:15,420 --> 00:27:19,960
And that's where I find success, right? If I have people who work at Plum with

454
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:22,560
me, we've been at five companies in a row together, some two companies,

455
00:27:22,700 --> 00:27:25,220
some three companies. To me, that's the definition of success.

456
00:27:25,420 --> 00:27:28,840
Here's what I have found though, when you put those people first and you work

457
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:35,580
with them and you solve big problems, that success ends up being the success of the business.

458
00:27:35,740 --> 00:27:38,740
And I haven't failed yet. And I don't think I will because of that.

459
00:27:38,880 --> 00:27:41,560
We are all of us learning from patterns.

460
00:27:41,740 --> 00:27:44,820
You spoke earlier about patterns, pattern recognition.

461
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:50,320
A part of that is what AI is doing at scale and helping us sort of get better

462
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:53,140
at even those of us who aren't any good at pattern recognition.

463
00:27:53,140 --> 00:27:56,220
We have a new tool to enable us to flourish.

464
00:27:56,420 --> 00:28:00,920
I want to ask you a question about AI because I don't think we're done with

465
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:03,060
that conversation. It's moving fast.

466
00:28:03,340 --> 00:28:06,940
It's in your product. It is learning to be.

467
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:13,120
Effective and learning to communicate. Right now it's hallucinating, as some people say.

468
00:28:13,340 --> 00:28:18,480
And I think so many of us as humans, perhaps we hallucinate a little bit and

469
00:28:18,480 --> 00:28:22,540
aren't really honest with ourselves about circumstances,

470
00:28:23,000 --> 00:28:30,380
conditions, patterns that we see and things that suck us into a less than joyous state.

471
00:28:30,620 --> 00:28:36,200
So I am curious about, can we individually, You've talked about how an organization

472
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:38,540
needs to adjust to the pace of change.

473
00:28:38,780 --> 00:28:46,540
Are people able to adjust to the pace of change? And where does that line cross in giving us hope?

474
00:28:47,740 --> 00:28:50,660
Very, very hopeful on AI, just so you know.

475
00:28:50,940 --> 00:28:53,200
I mean, worst case scenario, it takes over the world and kills us all.

476
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:55,720
But I don't think that's what's going to happen. So let's embrace it.

477
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,620
As we've gone through all these things in history, we've all kind of been there.

478
00:28:59,740 --> 00:29:03,360
I remember, you know, I'm old. I remember one of my first jobs was at a newspaper,

479
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:05,220
and it was right when the internet came out.

480
00:29:05,380 --> 00:29:08,060
And they're like, you're young, help us figure out the internet,

481
00:29:08,300 --> 00:29:10,640
right? And how many people actually read a newspaper now, right?

482
00:29:10,660 --> 00:29:11,620
It didn't take people's jobs.

483
00:29:11,740 --> 00:29:15,140
It made people's jobs better and easier and more productive.

484
00:29:15,460 --> 00:29:20,340
But there's this conflation point to your question mark where I need AI in my

485
00:29:20,340 --> 00:29:23,140
personal life, which everyone's using it already. They don't realize it,

486
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:25,280
but they have this weird feeling about their work life.

487
00:29:25,820 --> 00:29:29,440
So people have Alexis in their home. They They talk to Siri on their phone,

488
00:29:29,820 --> 00:29:32,180
right? They've been using AI for a really long time.

489
00:29:32,380 --> 00:29:35,280
It's getting smarter and it's getting better, but they see it's like kind of

490
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:37,880
okay in their personal life, but they're terrified of it at work.

491
00:29:38,020 --> 00:29:41,080
And the reason, again, opinion, the reason they're terrified of it at work is

492
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:45,020
they think it's going to take away their job, but it's just going to make them more productive.

493
00:29:45,220 --> 00:29:48,660
The people who are going to be left behind are the people who don't adopt it.

494
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:52,060
And what I find is if people will actually start adopting it more and more at

495
00:29:52,060 --> 00:29:54,020
home, it makes it way easier at work.

496
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,580
So I don't think there's anything to be scared of, but it needs to be pushed.

497
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,360
You're going to have some individuals who just own it and they're going to be

498
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,040
superstars, even if they weren't superstars before, because they're going to

499
00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:06,220
be exponentially more productive to my point with AI.

500
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:10,180
But companies also need to push it. I'll give you, we talked about Caitlin, who's our founder.

501
00:30:10,420 --> 00:30:14,240
You know, we're not a huge company, but as generative AI came out,

502
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:19,800
we shut the business down for a day, entire business, and everyone did nothing but learn about it.

503
00:30:20,500 --> 00:30:23,360
And once we left there, we knew, hey, it was okay.

504
00:30:23,560 --> 00:30:26,380
We learned the do's and don'ts. So we learned what hallucinations were.

505
00:30:26,500 --> 00:30:28,900
We did all these different exercises and we split up departments.

506
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:32,140
You had a salesperson and a marketing person and a developer on one team.

507
00:30:32,260 --> 00:30:34,360
And we had all these little mini teams. So we shut the company down.

508
00:30:34,540 --> 00:30:39,740
And when we left there, we have a bunch of people who on that adoption curve

509
00:30:40,140 --> 00:30:43,040
are really forward thinking when it comes to change.

510
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,740
And we have some who just wanna keep using their piece of paper.

511
00:30:46,060 --> 00:30:49,880
And those are the people we monitored, those people who kinda just wanna do it the old way.

512
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,600
And those were the people who adopted it first because they knew it was okay.

513
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:56,520
They knew they could do it in a safe environment where nobody was going to feel

514
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:58,280
judged and they knew it wasn't going to take their jobs away.

515
00:30:59,130 --> 00:31:04,190
I love it. And I think at the heart of humanity, we are explorers.

516
00:31:04,390 --> 00:31:08,750
Definitely a consistent thread throughout the parallel entrepreneur and entrepreneurship.

517
00:31:08,850 --> 00:31:11,110
In my own experience, we're exploring.

518
00:31:11,350 --> 00:31:16,690
I can't help but notice, and for the listeners that aren't watching us on YouTube,

519
00:31:17,010 --> 00:31:28,630
there is a terrific collection of Star Wars theme paraphernalia in your library behind you, Jason.

520
00:31:29,030 --> 00:31:36,870
And I think that this idea that we could explore, we could be faster and better

521
00:31:36,870 --> 00:31:42,710
and not waste time, but experience more with these tools at hand.

522
00:31:43,230 --> 00:31:47,790
We're seeing it in our entertainment. We're seeing it in our imagination.

523
00:31:47,790 --> 00:31:52,470
We're seeing it in the fiction we read, which is rapidly becoming the truth

524
00:31:52,470 --> 00:31:54,310
and our lived experience.

525
00:31:54,730 --> 00:31:59,710
Tell me why you have the Star Wars collection, What wisdom did you pick out

526
00:31:59,710 --> 00:32:03,830
of Star Wars that made you such a fan? Because I need to hear that story.

527
00:32:04,610 --> 00:32:08,310
Yeah, I mean, age-wise, right? It was the original Star Wars were big for me

528
00:32:08,310 --> 00:32:09,610
as a kid. So that was where I got in there.

529
00:32:09,690 --> 00:32:15,990
But the thing I like a lot, and this goes into, it's very applicable to this podcast, I think, is...

530
00:32:16,630 --> 00:32:19,810
Star Wars really nailed the three-part epic to me.

531
00:32:20,070 --> 00:32:24,270
So it could have been about anything, but what I see in life and what I see

532
00:32:24,270 --> 00:32:29,010
in really successful trilogies and what I see in businesses is people just think

533
00:32:29,010 --> 00:32:31,290
it's one long movie and it's not epics.

534
00:32:31,530 --> 00:32:34,590
And what does Star Wars do? It's really cool in the beginning and the good guys,

535
00:32:34,770 --> 00:32:37,330
quote unquote, won in Empire, right?

536
00:32:37,810 --> 00:32:41,510
The bad guys won. And then the third part epic, the good guys win again.

537
00:32:41,710 --> 00:32:44,970
And it's just this testament. It was a really good, big part of my life to understand

538
00:32:44,970 --> 00:32:48,230
that whether you look at it to seasons or whether you look at it at epics,

539
00:32:48,390 --> 00:32:50,650
if you're walking through hell, just keep walking.

540
00:32:50,850 --> 00:32:55,910
And that's the wisdom I got there. But also the exploratory nature that you

541
00:32:55,910 --> 00:32:59,230
brought up, the world is going to change and the world's going to become an

542
00:32:59,230 --> 00:33:01,170
even smaller, smaller place,

543
00:33:01,770 --> 00:33:06,330
because the speed by which we can even explore outside of the earth is going to be so much faster.

544
00:33:06,550 --> 00:33:09,010
I mean, it took us forever just to launch into space.

545
00:33:09,350 --> 00:33:12,850
And then we had this decades long journey where we really didn't do really much.

546
00:33:13,030 --> 00:33:16,450
And then Elon Musk came and look what he did. And 20 years from now.

547
00:33:17,070 --> 00:33:21,110
What's going to be going on?

548
00:33:21,250 --> 00:33:23,450
It's going to be insane. And again, I love it.

549
00:33:23,830 --> 00:33:28,310
And I don't think the technology that's in Star Wars will be around in my lifetime,

550
00:33:28,310 --> 00:33:30,970
but I certainly think elements of it will be around in my kid's lifetime.

551
00:33:31,070 --> 00:33:33,830
Well, you talked earlier about participating in exits.

552
00:33:34,130 --> 00:33:38,210
You are building a company for an exit because it's a plan. It's an outcome.

553
00:33:38,370 --> 00:33:40,750
It doesn't have to happen. It can happen.

554
00:33:40,990 --> 00:33:45,670
You're planning for it. You're scaling for it. Talk about some of the lessons

555
00:33:45,670 --> 00:33:51,250
that you've learned participating in driving exit stories in technology businesses.

556
00:33:51,250 --> 00:33:56,610
What would you do more of or a little bit less of as you continue to refine

557
00:33:56,610 --> 00:34:01,810
that skill and that experience and bring your team with you through it?

558
00:34:03,100 --> 00:34:09,000
Yeah, it's an interesting journey, right? And a couple of lessons I would tell

559
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:10,220
people kind of out in the streets.

560
00:34:11,900 --> 00:34:16,140
Most of the stories you hear about exits are the really good ones or the really

561
00:34:16,140 --> 00:34:19,080
bad ones. And those are very few, if far in between, right?

562
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:23,040
My friend worked at Google and he or she made $10 billion or whatever the story

563
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:24,920
is. We put money in this company and it failed.

564
00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:27,740
But most of the stuff that happens is in the middle.

565
00:34:28,380 --> 00:34:31,240
When you think about it through an entrepreneurial lens, again,

566
00:34:31,380 --> 00:34:33,460
I'm going to build this product and I'm going to take it to market.

567
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:35,400
And I think all these things are going to be true.

568
00:34:35,660 --> 00:34:38,300
But the journey is never what you thought it's going to be.

569
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:42,880
Sometimes it's way worse. Sometimes it's way better. Sometimes it takes a lot longer.

570
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:46,580
But understand that you're still on a journey. And that goes back to kind of,

571
00:34:46,660 --> 00:34:48,580
you know, the epics that we talked about.

572
00:34:49,140 --> 00:34:53,120
And the biggest lesson, and this is where, again, I get my passion from,

573
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:57,940
is understanding when it's time to bring the right people in to do the thing.

574
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:02,080
So if you build a new widget and somebody buys it once, cool,

575
00:35:02,180 --> 00:35:05,880
that doesn't mean a billion people are going to buy it. So now 12 people buy it.

576
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:08,440
Cool, that doesn't mean a billion people are going to buy it.

577
00:35:08,780 --> 00:35:12,480
So if you're not an, let's say you're an inventor and you're not an expert on

578
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:16,260
go-to-market, what's the right point to bring a go-to-market person and team

579
00:35:16,260 --> 00:35:18,740
in? What's the right time to bring a CFO in?

580
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:21,640
Oh, you're going to be selling to enterprise companies. When's the right time

581
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,060
to bring a chief compliance and security officer in?

582
00:35:24,660 --> 00:35:27,520
So lesson one, know when to bring the people in. Lesson two,

583
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:28,840
know when to get rid of people.

584
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:34,800
And then another lesson for me is also know that not everyone's your friend.

585
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:38,200
And just because somebody tells you something doesn't mean it's always true.

586
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:41,440
And as an entrepreneur, what you say is so-and-so said this and it's great,

587
00:35:41,500 --> 00:35:43,040
or they're going to help me here, or they're going to do that.

588
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,400
A lot of people just want to be surrounded kind of in that orbit of doing it,

589
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,880
but understand you built this for a mission and it's time, you know, it's time to go.

590
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:53,420
And the final lesson is just kind of be okay with good.

591
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:58,200
I know it's really hard for entrepreneurs, but there's a great quote that great is the enemy of good.

592
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:03,020
Sometimes you don't have to be perfect. And yeah, if you're building a new drug

593
00:36:03,020 --> 00:36:04,820
that goes out in the market, sure, you have to be perfect, right?

594
00:36:04,860 --> 00:36:06,320
If you're doing something that people are going to be driving,

595
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:08,540
sure, there's a level of perfection, but that's few and far between.

596
00:36:08,900 --> 00:36:12,900
And I've seen so many entrepreneurs, even currently, who want things to be so

597
00:36:12,900 --> 00:36:16,220
perfect that they don't make progress. And I'm a big fan of,

598
00:36:16,220 --> 00:36:17,940
you know, progress without perfection.

599
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:21,260
Just keep going. Just keep going. It's never going to end the way you thought

600
00:36:21,260 --> 00:36:23,840
it was going to end. But if you do it the right way, you're going to have an

601
00:36:23,840 --> 00:36:24,980
end and you're going to be happy with the outcome.

602
00:36:26,220 --> 00:36:30,600
You know, this experience of getting into podcasting, preparing really to write

603
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:35,340
a book, things that I have resisted for a long time, self-talk.

604
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:41,760
I'm uncovering my own self-talk as I'm experiencing this journey with you and

605
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:46,640
other parallel entrepreneurs. And I'm out on the edge of what feels comfortable.

606
00:36:46,900 --> 00:36:50,760
I'm moving myself intentionally outside my comfort zone.

607
00:36:51,340 --> 00:36:57,380
And then I still find my perfectionist tendencies are going to be the death

608
00:36:57,380 --> 00:36:58,620
of me, as my wife would say.

609
00:36:58,900 --> 00:37:04,260
How would you do an assessment? Your company is helping people self-assess.

610
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:08,660
Your company is helping companies assess what their real needs are,

611
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:13,980
not what they have been doing, but finding, identifying, uncovering their real needs.

612
00:37:14,140 --> 00:37:21,900
Talk about assessment. Talk about the decision to innovate in the historic discipline

613
00:37:21,900 --> 00:37:28,180
of self-deception or self-talk that is your self-limiter.

614
00:37:28,940 --> 00:37:30,620
These, I think, are true on the

615
00:37:30,620 --> 00:37:35,340
corporate side and in the personal side of living the lived experience.

616
00:37:36,380 --> 00:37:40,580
Yeah, keep in mind a corporation is just a sum of a bunch of people.

617
00:37:40,860 --> 00:37:43,600
A corporation is a thing. It's not a person.

618
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:47,480
So if the leader of that corporation is a perfectionist, guess what's going

619
00:37:47,480 --> 00:37:48,900
to happen to the business, right?

620
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,780
That's just the nature of how things are, right? Now, as you get bigger and

621
00:37:52,780 --> 00:37:56,800
bigger and you have a board and you have C-Levelin sex, then you have a little more variety in there.

622
00:37:57,060 --> 00:38:02,340
And I don't think being a perfectionist is necessarily a bad thing because it

623
00:38:02,340 --> 00:38:05,080
takes a perfectionist to get a certain thing to a certain place.

624
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:07,800
But then there is times where perfection is not always there.

625
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:10,280
Like self-talk, I'm very, very guilty of doing that, right?

626
00:38:10,300 --> 00:38:12,280
Oh, I could have done it this way or I can't do it that way.

627
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:16,140
If you're using it correctly, it can be very motivating.

628
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,100
But there are things just that, so I'll give you a great example.

629
00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:22,740
We measure something called decision making. It's got a whole bunch of competencies under it.

630
00:38:23,570 --> 00:38:26,750
And you can be very, very driven, my guess is you are, Mark,

631
00:38:26,890 --> 00:38:30,130
by decision making, meaning you're good at it. Not that somebody's bad at it,

632
00:38:30,190 --> 00:38:31,330
but like, that's your thing, right?

633
00:38:32,050 --> 00:38:36,190
But just because you're driven by decision making or your score high in decision

634
00:38:36,190 --> 00:38:39,510
making, you could be patterned two different ways.

635
00:38:39,690 --> 00:38:42,310
For example, I'm very high in decision making.

636
00:38:42,530 --> 00:38:46,350
That doesn't mean I always make great decisions. That means a high percentage

637
00:38:46,350 --> 00:38:49,770
of the time I make really good decisions, but I make decisions really quickly.

638
00:38:50,350 --> 00:38:53,410
So in an innovative environment, right, progress without perfection,

639
00:38:53,730 --> 00:38:56,890
I'm going to make some mistakes, but time is not going to be my enemy.

640
00:38:57,130 --> 00:39:00,810
I'm going to make them fast. You can also be really high in decision where when

641
00:39:00,810 --> 00:39:04,750
you make a decision, it's the perfect decision, but it took you two years to

642
00:39:04,750 --> 00:39:06,210
make the decision, right?

643
00:39:06,370 --> 00:39:09,330
So, hey, I need to go get, yeah, I need to go get a new car,

644
00:39:09,750 --> 00:39:13,490
right? I know people who spend six months researching a car, right?

645
00:39:13,670 --> 00:39:17,490
Down to the most minuscule detail. When they buy that car, they're like,

646
00:39:17,590 --> 00:39:19,230
this is the best decision I've ever made. Great.

647
00:39:19,830 --> 00:39:23,550
I don't buy a car that way. I'm like, I kind of know what I want. That sounds good.

648
00:39:23,730 --> 00:39:27,670
Let's do it. So we're both high in decision-making, but I'm also okay if,

649
00:39:27,930 --> 00:39:30,290
oh, I thought this car had this, but it didn't. I'm okay with that.

650
00:39:30,410 --> 00:39:33,890
So I'm not judging myself on perfection. Where I really want to get it perfect

651
00:39:33,890 --> 00:39:37,190
is aligning people to work, especially people who are on my team, right?

652
00:39:37,270 --> 00:39:40,290
Because I want to make sure that number one, they can be the same person at

653
00:39:40,290 --> 00:39:43,230
work that they are at home. They can feel trusted.

654
00:39:43,410 --> 00:39:46,410
I'm really big on transparency, really big on loyalty,

655
00:39:46,410 --> 00:39:49,430
right i want to get that decision right but everything else as long as it's

656
00:39:49,430 --> 00:39:54,210
a decision you can redo just make it quickly right like hiring somebody's really

657
00:39:54,210 --> 00:39:57,770
hard like take your time to do that firing somebody right that's really hard

658
00:39:57,770 --> 00:40:01,430
there's decisions out there that you can't be undone take your time on those

659
00:40:01,430 --> 00:40:04,730
but if there's something that can be undone just make it fast and move on.

660
00:40:05,670 --> 00:40:11,450
We've talked about the explorer in each of us. We've talked about space travel.

661
00:40:11,810 --> 00:40:16,230
I love this conversation. We've talked about Elon Musk and SpaceX.

662
00:40:16,650 --> 00:40:20,330
And again, perhaps the apex parallel entrepreneur.

663
00:40:20,770 --> 00:40:25,350
And one of the things that we just touched on was this idea of,

664
00:40:25,470 --> 00:40:30,130
it's kind of been summarized in popular business books by fail fast.

665
00:40:30,130 --> 00:40:34,570
But one of the things that is obvious and true, if you get out underneath it,

666
00:40:34,990 --> 00:40:38,430
is that Elon Musk didn't invent space travel.

667
00:40:38,570 --> 00:40:40,790
He didn't invent the rocket.

668
00:40:41,010 --> 00:40:45,390
He didn't invent the idea of a reusable space vehicle.

669
00:40:45,870 --> 00:40:51,330
He did some things in the area of practicing

670
00:40:51,330 --> 00:40:59,290
intentional, professional decision-making and adjusting quickly.

671
00:40:59,290 --> 00:41:04,610
The story goes, he began with his team to launch.

672
00:41:04,850 --> 00:41:08,510
Let's just launch. And what did we learn from the launch? Okay,

673
00:41:08,630 --> 00:41:12,490
what did we learn from the second launch? And a lot of rockets blew up on the launch pad.

674
00:41:12,730 --> 00:41:19,330
But eventually, every single thing was disassembled and analyzed and the lessons

675
00:41:19,330 --> 00:41:25,750
learned, implemented in the fastest fail-forward space development project in history.

676
00:41:26,150 --> 00:41:32,110
What is that teaching us? That's an entrepreneurial, that's a discipline that

677
00:41:32,110 --> 00:41:38,970
is adventurous, it's risky, and we live in a world where so many people are afraid to fail.

678
00:41:39,190 --> 00:41:44,190
How do we draw from that lesson in our, maybe applied to our daily lives and

679
00:41:44,190 --> 00:41:49,350
maybe applied to our business life when it comes to risk-taking and learning quickly?

680
00:41:50,450 --> 00:41:58,330
Yeah, what he did was he made it okay and was very, from a leadership perspective, encouraged failure.

681
00:41:58,550 --> 00:42:00,770
And I know that sounds like, why would you encourage failure?

682
00:42:00,890 --> 00:42:04,030
Because when you fail really fast, you progress really fast.

683
00:42:04,130 --> 00:42:08,090
And versus sitting back and engineering a rocket for a decade and then launching

684
00:42:08,090 --> 00:42:09,170
it, what if it would have failed then?

685
00:42:09,330 --> 00:42:13,390
Then you wasted a decade, right? So in every company he has and everyone who

686
00:42:13,390 --> 00:42:17,030
works for him, whether you like his culture or not, some people love it or they

687
00:42:17,030 --> 00:42:19,690
wouldn't be working for him. his whole thing is celebrate failure,

688
00:42:20,110 --> 00:42:21,030
not intentional failure.

689
00:42:21,190 --> 00:42:24,930
But if it fails, that means we may have learned one thing from it or two things from it.

690
00:42:25,190 --> 00:42:29,070
And instead of taking five years to learn those one or two things in a laboratory

691
00:42:29,070 --> 00:42:32,310
or in a classroom or an office building, let's just do it when we're out there.

692
00:42:32,510 --> 00:42:35,170
And to me, that is like the ultimate entrepreneurial spirit.

693
00:42:35,350 --> 00:42:36,370
Just go and let's see what happens.

694
00:42:37,230 --> 00:42:41,190
So there's a couple of questions that occur to me, Jason, with so much going

695
00:42:41,190 --> 00:42:44,590
on, failing fast, failing forward, I like to say it.

696
00:42:45,670 --> 00:42:49,310
But how do people, how do you live in the moment?

697
00:42:49,610 --> 00:42:52,230
It's hard. It's actually, it's very, very hard for me, right?

698
00:42:52,330 --> 00:42:59,830
So I am somebody who wants to move forward, right, in that explorer type way.

699
00:43:00,990 --> 00:43:06,390
I look at my historic wins and failures to learn from them.

700
00:43:06,690 --> 00:43:11,170
And I then take that little nugget of time and say, okay, in the moment right

701
00:43:11,170 --> 00:43:14,150
now, what's tomorrow going to bring?

702
00:43:14,270 --> 00:43:17,430
And what did I learn from yesterday? And yesterday could be a decade ago.

703
00:43:18,530 --> 00:43:23,270
And no matter when I try to sit down in the moment, I find myself pulled in those two directions.

704
00:43:23,710 --> 00:43:28,010
So what I really have to do is say, okay, I'm going to focus on something that

705
00:43:28,010 --> 00:43:30,370
is not a thing I'm working on right now.

706
00:43:30,810 --> 00:43:35,110
So that may be spending time with my family. That may be I'm really disciplined

707
00:43:35,110 --> 00:43:37,510
when I work out every day at five in the morning, right?

708
00:43:37,670 --> 00:43:41,590
And I use that time to kind of just turn my brain off to where I'm not being

709
00:43:41,590 --> 00:43:43,010
pulled in all these other directions.

710
00:43:43,410 --> 00:43:47,150
So I've built these coping mechanisms over time, like a really,

711
00:43:47,270 --> 00:43:52,390
really rigid schedule to say, I'm giving myself permission to have these times

712
00:43:52,390 --> 00:43:54,650
in my day where I don't have to worry about my day.

713
00:43:54,810 --> 00:43:57,610
I know that sounds weird, but like, these are the times where I could listen

714
00:43:57,610 --> 00:44:00,650
to a fiction book or read a fiction book and not be worried about that.

715
00:44:00,790 --> 00:44:03,930
These are the times that I could be talking to my friends about nonsense.

716
00:44:04,170 --> 00:44:06,790
These are times I could watch stupid cat videos, whatever it may be,

717
00:44:07,190 --> 00:44:10,330
like giving yourself permission, which is really hard as an entrepreneur and

718
00:44:10,330 --> 00:44:14,250
somebody who scales, but giving yourself permission each day to have that time

719
00:44:14,250 --> 00:44:16,250
to not be worried about yesterday or tomorrow.

720
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:21,980
I love it. And I think giving yourself permission is important on so many levels,

721
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:28,940
particularly in the experimentation and exploring and recalibrating and evaluating progress.

722
00:44:29,240 --> 00:44:35,880
Maybe there's times where we as humans really should be doing nothing and practicing a meditation.

723
00:44:36,260 --> 00:44:40,600
How are you practicing mindfulness when you're in it?

724
00:44:40,900 --> 00:44:46,560
Is it just turning off or what? Part of it's turning off, right?

725
00:44:46,700 --> 00:44:52,500
And then there's the, you know, part of that morning routine for me is like,

726
00:44:52,580 --> 00:44:53,500
I spend part of it in prayer.

727
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:55,540
You may spend part of it in meditation, whatever your thing is like,

728
00:44:55,680 --> 00:44:59,580
being able to turn your brain off and then mindfulness towards other people as well.

729
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:02,600
So I want to, you know, again, I talk about helping people a lot.

730
00:45:02,780 --> 00:45:07,900
I truly want to help them in a non-self-serving, in a non, you know, self-serving way to me.

731
00:45:08,420 --> 00:45:12,020
So just being able to sit there and listen actually helps me turn my brain off

732
00:45:12,020 --> 00:45:15,400
because it's not about solving my problems. It's about solving other people's problems.

733
00:45:15,720 --> 00:45:19,900
I probably spend four to five hours a week talking to people,

734
00:45:20,260 --> 00:45:21,820
just helping them solve their problems.

735
00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:24,820
And it may be people I've known. It may be a board I'm on. It may be somebody

736
00:45:24,820 --> 00:45:28,460
who's, you know, their washing machine broke and they don't know how to fix it.

737
00:45:28,720 --> 00:45:33,060
Just being mindful of other people really actually helps me not worry about

738
00:45:33,060 --> 00:45:35,800
the things that are in my brain every day because there's a lot of them.

739
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:40,280
Excellent. So now this rapid fire section I love so much.

740
00:45:40,420 --> 00:45:44,700
Jason, tell me, what's the last book you read? Last book? I'm reading one now.

741
00:45:45,020 --> 00:45:50,160
So we'll start with that one because it's very applicable to the conversation we were having about AI.

742
00:45:50,380 --> 00:45:53,700
It's called Scythe. So like a scythe, like a sickle. It's fantastic.

743
00:45:53,840 --> 00:45:57,140
It's actually an audio book. I like reading real books, but this one's only available in audio.

744
00:45:57,340 --> 00:46:00,880
And it's fast forward hundreds of years from now and what has happened in the

745
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:02,660
world of AI. And it's fascinating.

746
00:46:03,220 --> 00:46:06,580
The last business book I read was, and I recommend everybody get it.

747
00:46:06,580 --> 00:46:08,860
It's called The Talent Fix. It's by Tim Sackett.

748
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:14,520
Okay. The talent fix. Thank you for that. And the next book you're going to

749
00:46:14,520 --> 00:46:15,800
read, what's on your nightstand?

750
00:46:16,040 --> 00:46:18,700
Yeah, I've had this book for a while and I have not opened it,

751
00:46:18,760 --> 00:46:21,280
but I believe it's going to be the next one. It's called Spartan Up.

752
00:46:21,420 --> 00:46:24,860
It's by Joe DeSina, who's the gentleman who founded the Spartan races.

753
00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:28,800
And I love to do those. It's been a while pre-COVID before I've done them,

754
00:46:28,940 --> 00:46:30,520
but just how he built that business.

755
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:34,240
And just like Elon Musk, there was a bunch of people doing adventure races and

756
00:46:34,240 --> 00:46:38,620
how he revolutionized that from a go-to-market perspective to really be the industry leader there.

757
00:46:38,960 --> 00:46:44,220
Yeah, that's a terrific book. I personally have some experience as a co-founder of Swiftwick.

758
00:46:45,200 --> 00:46:49,680
We manufacture the world's best compression socks for athletes and aimed at

759
00:46:49,680 --> 00:46:53,680
that group of people out there trying to challenge themselves to take it to

760
00:46:53,680 --> 00:47:00,980
the next level who would look at that sock as a tool to achieve their competitive objectives,

761
00:47:00,980 --> 00:47:05,580
not just a sock you could have really low expectations for. I'm a big fan of them.

762
00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:11,220
So tell me, what's your perspective on charity? How do you approach giving?

763
00:47:12,340 --> 00:47:16,320
Love the question. So to me, there's two forms of it.

764
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:20,880
There's obviously financial giving, and then there's giving of your time or your knowledge.

765
00:47:21,020 --> 00:47:25,640
And I really try hard to do both. Up until not that long ago, I sat on two boards.

766
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:27,860
So I have my youngest daughter, I have two daughters, 14 and 10.

767
00:47:27,960 --> 00:47:30,820
My youngest daughter has Down syndrome. So I was a vice president of the Down

768
00:47:30,820 --> 00:47:32,360
Syndrome Association here in Texas.

769
00:47:32,580 --> 00:47:35,540
And I also sat on the autism board. So for me, that was like,

770
00:47:35,700 --> 00:47:39,560
not we gave them money too, but it was just giving my time and giving my expertise there.

771
00:47:39,860 --> 00:47:43,540
And then we sit down and really think about where we can, where our money will

772
00:47:43,540 --> 00:47:47,640
go the furthest, if that makes sense, and have the biggest impact kind of outside of ourselves.

773
00:47:47,820 --> 00:47:50,620
So there's a lot of places you can donate from a nonprofit perspective,

774
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:54,160
but there's actually only a few where you look at and it's like,

775
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:56,240
oh, more than 80% actually goes to the cause.

776
00:47:56,380 --> 00:47:59,720
So I'm not going to name any of those, but that's where we really sit down and

777
00:47:59,720 --> 00:48:02,520
are very purposeful in where we give them.

778
00:48:03,710 --> 00:48:06,890
On the theme of giving, what's the best gift you've ever received?

779
00:48:07,070 --> 00:48:09,790
It's not the best gift I've ever received, because I'm sure there's things that

780
00:48:09,790 --> 00:48:12,450
are bigger and more expensive, but you can't see it on my shelf.

781
00:48:12,490 --> 00:48:16,370
I have this bell on my shelf, and this bell was given to me by the woman I mentioned

782
00:48:16,370 --> 00:48:19,210
earlier, Michelle Meehan, who we were together at the previous company.

783
00:48:19,310 --> 00:48:22,550
She's our VP of marketing now, and it showed at my house, and it's very heavy.

784
00:48:22,650 --> 00:48:27,110
It's not cheap, and it's engraved, and the engraving just has FFS.

785
00:48:27,710 --> 00:48:30,190
Michelle is right again, so every time she's right in a meeting,

786
00:48:30,350 --> 00:48:33,630
I have to pick it up and ring them, which I ring it a lot every day.

787
00:48:33,710 --> 00:48:36,110
So it's a very thoughtful, yet funny, yet practical.

788
00:48:36,990 --> 00:48:39,670
So what's the best gift you've ever given? Best gift ever.

789
00:48:39,770 --> 00:48:42,810
I'll tell you the most impactful to me and hopefully the most impactful to the

790
00:48:42,810 --> 00:48:47,550
other person. I have a very good friend of mine who at the time was waiting for a heart.

791
00:48:47,730 --> 00:48:49,930
He was very sick and he was waiting for some other things as well.

792
00:48:50,150 --> 00:48:52,310
And at the time he was also getting married.

793
00:48:52,710 --> 00:48:57,170
And this was also during COVID. So they had to get married and they wanted to go on a honeymoon.

794
00:48:57,450 --> 00:49:00,990
And we're very blessed to have a place in Florida that hadn't been rented out

795
00:49:00,990 --> 00:49:05,470
for a while. So we made sure they did a really, really extensive cleaning there

796
00:49:05,470 --> 00:49:08,830
because he couldn't, you know, he couldn't have any germs, not just from COVID,

797
00:49:08,890 --> 00:49:10,210
but with everything he was waiting for.

798
00:49:10,390 --> 00:49:13,570
And we provided that as a safe haven for them so they could have a honeymoon.

799
00:49:14,350 --> 00:49:16,610
I love it. That was, that's brilliant.

800
00:49:17,530 --> 00:49:21,030
What are the three words that define your life? In no particular order.

801
00:49:21,170 --> 00:49:24,590
I would say innovation because I'm really driven by it.

802
00:49:24,890 --> 00:49:28,990
Determination based on, you know, not mostly from how I grew up.

803
00:49:29,130 --> 00:49:31,610
And love, like it's important to love other people, all people.

804
00:49:31,610 --> 00:49:35,990
So if you could talk to your younger self, and I think we, at least for myself,

805
00:49:36,230 --> 00:49:42,170
I'm my own most ruthless critic, and I've had to set that down and accept myself

806
00:49:42,170 --> 00:49:46,950
and meet myself where I am, which I think is a strength. I try to meet other people where they are.

807
00:49:47,070 --> 00:49:50,670
But if you could talk to your younger self, what's the first thing that you would say?

808
00:49:51,210 --> 00:49:55,370
Yeah, I'll give you just a slightly long answer. Like I grew up saying a blue

809
00:49:55,370 --> 00:49:57,930
collar family is probably being very generous. So, you know,

810
00:49:58,070 --> 00:50:00,470
it wasn't this unlike Bill, who was one of your guests, you know,

811
00:50:00,570 --> 00:50:01,970
his dad invented the CD-ROM.

812
00:50:02,090 --> 00:50:04,110
I didn't grow up in that type of family from like an innovation.

813
00:50:04,110 --> 00:50:06,410
It was very, very, I'll call black collar family.

814
00:50:06,710 --> 00:50:10,190
So I had to work for everything I got and still do that day.

815
00:50:10,310 --> 00:50:13,210
But what I found early on in life, I was pattern recognition.

816
00:50:13,450 --> 00:50:16,070
I was doing pattern recognitions of other people. So if I saw somebody who was

817
00:50:16,070 --> 00:50:18,650
successful, I kind of tried to emulate those people.

818
00:50:18,890 --> 00:50:22,790
And it was later in life where I was just like, hey, two things were a catalyst for me.

819
00:50:23,190 --> 00:50:26,530
There is a book called Move Fast, Break Shit and Burnout. It's about being a catalyst.

820
00:50:26,990 --> 00:50:29,230
And when I read it, it was like looking in a mirror. It was like,

821
00:50:29,230 --> 00:50:31,730
stop trying to pattern other people.

822
00:50:32,350 --> 00:50:35,270
And there's nothing wrong with you. Like, this is who you are. Embrace it.

823
00:50:35,450 --> 00:50:38,310
So the advice I give to my younger self is like, be yourself and don't worry

824
00:50:38,310 --> 00:50:39,330
about what other people think.

825
00:50:39,510 --> 00:50:41,530
Like, there's a lot of value in what you bring to the table.

826
00:50:41,630 --> 00:50:44,950
And if people don't see that, that's okay. Move on and go somewhere else or talk to other people.

827
00:50:46,070 --> 00:50:51,210
Yeah. Terrific advice. I wish I'd have had you talking to my younger self a long time ago. Same.

828
00:50:52,790 --> 00:50:58,310
What question, Jason, did you expect me to ask that I have not asked?

829
00:50:58,470 --> 00:50:59,630
Well, that's a great question.

830
00:50:59,850 --> 00:51:02,530
Favorite quote. How about that? What's your favorite quote?

831
00:51:03,370 --> 00:51:07,130
So my favorite quote, and it goes to what we were talking about today,

832
00:51:07,270 --> 00:51:08,890
and it's from Mother Teresa.

833
00:51:09,170 --> 00:51:11,770
If you can't feed 100 people, then feed just one.

834
00:51:12,250 --> 00:51:16,110
So if you think about that, if I can't help, it doesn't just have to be feed, right?

835
00:51:16,290 --> 00:51:19,470
Everyone looks at it to say, I want to end world hunger. I want to have world

836
00:51:19,470 --> 00:51:21,870
peace. I wish there was no poverty. Whatever the big thing you're trying to

837
00:51:21,870 --> 00:51:23,530
do globally, it seems so overwhelming.

838
00:51:23,930 --> 00:51:28,070
But if I can't feed 100 people or I can't solve world hunger, I can feed one person.

839
00:51:28,230 --> 00:51:32,150
And if everyone who could feed one person fed one person, there would be no more hunger.

840
00:51:32,590 --> 00:51:35,510
And that's the same approach I want to take with humans in my life,

841
00:51:35,610 --> 00:51:38,730
with business. If I can just solve that problem that's in front of me and everyone

842
00:51:38,730 --> 00:51:41,070
can have that same approach, the world will be a significantly better.

843
00:51:41,970 --> 00:51:47,690
I love it. I want to ask you this question because I think you are thoughtful.

844
00:51:48,730 --> 00:51:52,270
And maybe we ought to be asking better questions.

845
00:51:52,830 --> 00:51:58,590
What is the question that we should be asking all of us? First of all, I love that question.

846
00:51:58,790 --> 00:52:02,210
To me, COVID brought a lot of things to light and it wasn't COVID,

847
00:52:02,330 --> 00:52:05,270
it was that everyone was locked in their houses and they realized that their

848
00:52:05,270 --> 00:52:06,870
life wasn't exactly what they thought it would be.

849
00:52:07,030 --> 00:52:10,110
So the question I always like to ask people is like, are you okay?

850
00:52:10,290 --> 00:52:13,970
And I know that seems so simple, but just there's a lot of people who aren't

851
00:52:13,970 --> 00:52:16,630
okay and they're just, nobody's ever asked them if they are.

852
00:52:16,630 --> 00:52:20,990
And if they say no, what can I do to make it better?

853
00:52:21,270 --> 00:52:24,190
Like, that's what I would ask everybody in the world. Because everyone has a thing.

854
00:52:24,590 --> 00:52:28,670
Everyone has something they're wrestling with that you may end up being that

855
00:52:28,670 --> 00:52:31,590
person who can help them solve it. You may not be, but you may know the person.

856
00:52:31,870 --> 00:52:34,850
And even if you don't know a person, at least they feel like somebody's seen

857
00:52:34,850 --> 00:52:38,430
them or heard them. Well, you've been seen and heard today, Jason.

858
00:52:38,670 --> 00:52:41,930
Thank you for joining me on the Parallel Entrepreneur. Ladies and gentlemen,

859
00:52:42,290 --> 00:52:49,410
you're listening to a 2024 Inspiring Leader winner from Inspiring Workplaces.

860
00:52:49,750 --> 00:52:54,570
I continue to be inspired by the work that Jason and his team are doing at Plum.

861
00:52:54,670 --> 00:53:00,950
And I just want to really just express my gratitude for your contribution to our conversation.

862
00:53:01,510 --> 00:53:03,790
Thank you so much for having me, Mark. I appreciate it. Appreciate you.

863
00:53:04,650 --> 00:53:06,230
Love it. G'day.