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Becoming a conscious leader: Leading without fear, finding your life’s objective function, and getting better at vision and strategy | John Mark Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)

Summary

In this episode, JM Nickels explores the concept of conscious leadership, which he defines as becoming aware of one’s internal world—biases, beliefs, emotions—and taking responsibility for one’s influence. He contrasts this with leadership driven by fear and optics, sharing personal anecdotes from his time at Uber under Travis Kalanick, where stress led him to explore meditation and inner work.

Nickels discusses the importance of allowing emotions like fear and anxiety in high-stakes situations rather than suppressing them, framing feedback as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat. He emphasizes connecting deeply with a company’s mission to shift focus from personal career optics to creating meaningful impact.

On strategy and vision, Nickels advises immersing oneself deeply in a domain over time, questioning first principles, and visualizing the future vividly—like imagining cities transformed by autonomous and shared mobility. He advocates for carving out uninterrupted time for strategic thinking and co-creating visions with teams in collaborative, judgment-free spaces.

He reflects on lessons from DoorDash’s merchant-centric focus versus Uber’s rider-centric DNA, and Waymo’s challenge of scaling commercialization beyond core autonomy tech. Nickels concludes by urging listeners to define their life’s “objective function” by considering what future selves will value most, and to move from a victim mentality to one of agency and co-creation.

Recommendations

Books

  • The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership — Recommended by Nickels as a foundational book on conscious leadership, covering concepts like fear/threat vs. trust states and the drama triangle.
  • Resonate by Nancy Duarte — Nickels gives this book to PMs to develop communication and storytelling skills. It analyzes great speeches (like MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’) to show how to create tension between the current reality and a possible future.
  • How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen — Cited in the discussion about life’s objective function. The book explores how successful executives often neglect personal relationships and offers frameworks for prioritizing what truly matters.
  • Works of Alan Watts — Nickels enjoys Watts’ books for their humorous and accessible explanations of Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, helping to not take oneself too seriously.
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — Referenced as the ultimate example of choosing one’s attitude and finding agency in the most oppressive circumstances, illustrating the shift from victim consciousness.

People

  • Diana Chapman and Jim Dethmer — Authors of ‘The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership’ and Nickels’ early coaches/teachers in conscious leadership.
  • Nancy Duarte — Author of ‘Resonate’ and an expert on presentation and storytelling structure.
  • Ray Dalio — Referenced for his practice of writing down principles and values to clarify one’s objective function.

Products

  • Eight Sleep — A smart mattress cover Nickels uses and recommends. It regulates temperature throughout the night based on biometrics to improve sleep quality, which he considers foundational for energy and mindset.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:02:41 — Defining conscious leadership and its core principles — JM Nickels explains conscious leadership as becoming aware of one’s internal world—biases, beliefs, emotions—and taking responsibility for one’s influence. He contrasts this with leadership driven by fear and optics, emphasizing that everyone is a leader because we all influence others. The discussion touches on moving from a ‘lizard brain’ state of argument and threat to a collaborative, curious space.
  • 00:09:06 — Personal journey into conscious leadership at Uber — Nickels shares his stressful early days at Uber, working on UberPool with a newborn daughter, which led him to explore meditation and inner work. He describes a meeting with PhDs arguing over pricing algorithms, realizing the need wasn’t for more technical expertise but for shifting the team from a fear/threat state to a co-creative, open-minded space. This experience sparked his interest in coaching individuals and teams.
  • 00:13:28 — Embracing emotions and reframing feedback — Nickels advises accepting emotions like fear in high-stakes situations rather than fighting them, using the analogy ‘what you resist persists.’ He explains how to break cognitive-emotive loops by allowing thoughts and feelings to be transient. He shifts the perspective on feedback from a threat to a gift for learning, reducing dependence on external approval for self-worth.
  • 00:22:01 — Developing strategic vision and thinking big — Lenny cites praise for Nickels’ ability to think big and inspire ambitious creativity. Nickels shares that passion for the mission is foundational fuel for strategy. He advocates deep immersion in a domain over years, questioning first principles (e.g., ‘Why do we need a 4,000-pound vehicle to move a human three miles?’), and vividly visualizing the future—like imagining cities without parking garages—to uncover opportunities.
  • 00:30:38 — Practical tactics for strategic thinking and focus — Nickels emphasizes carving out uninterrupted time for strategic thinking, away from fragmented meeting schedules. He recommends going for runs or hikes without podcasts to let ideas emerge. He also discusses the importance of having a ‘top idea’ that your brain works on subconsciously, and keeping a focused to-do list of only the highest-leverage items, citing David Allen’s GTD principle of getting tasks out of your head.
  • 00:41:50 — Balancing vision with execution — Nickels discusses the polarity between visionary planning and relentless execution, cautioning against tilting too far toward either extreme. He shares examples from Uber (over-theorizing future pricing) and DoorDash (‘running through a wall’ execution bias). He advises dynamically adjusting the balance based on context—leaning into strategy during pivots or soul-searching, and focusing on execution when the path is clear.
  • 00:55:57 — Contrarian belief: welcoming emotions at work — Nickels challenges the notion that emotions have no place in the workplace. He describes ‘whole body intelligence,’ where emotions like fear, sadness, anger, and joy carry wisdom and signal what needs attention, release, change, or celebration. He suggests that acknowledging and even voicing emotions in meetings can transform dynamics, using the example of admitting fear during an OKR review to shift from blame to shared concern.
  • 01:00:04 — Defining your life’s objective function — Nickels urges listeners to consciously define their life’s ‘objective function’—what they truly value—rather than operating on inherited or unconscious values. He recommends considering what your future self will care about (e.g., relationships over slightly better presentations). Citing Clayton Christensen’s ‘How Will You Measure Your Life?’ and Stoic mindfulness of mortality, he argues that awareness of life’s finitude clarifies priorities and reduces time wasted on things that don’t ultimately matter.
  • 01:05:05 — Shifting from victim consciousness to agency — In his final advice, Nickels encourages moving from seeing oneself as at the effect of circumstances (‘life is happening to me’) to taking responsibility for co-creating one’s reality. He references Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ as an extreme example of choosing one’s attitude in oppressive conditions. This shift empowers individuals to show up differently in challenges, seeing them as growth opportunities rather than injustices.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Lenny’s Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
  • Author: Lenny Rachitsky
  • Category: Technology Business Entrepreneurship
  • Published: 2024-10-06T11:01:00Z
  • Duration: 01:18:05

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] get clear on your objective function and one way that i’ve gotten clear on is like trying to think

[00:00:04] about it from future me because like five years from now i’m not going to give a shit if i made

[00:00:09] the presentation slightly better but i’m going to care a lot about what kind of relationship i have

[00:00:13] with my daughters and like that means that the the next action the next thing i do today and tomorrow

[00:00:19] those will translate into the relationship with her right not to be like morbid but just again

[00:00:23] most of us just aren’t really tuned into an awareness that our lives will come to an end

[00:00:28] we try to pretend like we’re gonna live forever and just not think about it and the horror of it

[00:00:33] is that we succeed right we mostly manage to just go live our life and eat ice cream and go to work

[00:00:39] and go on vacation and do what we do to me an awareness and mindfulness that our lives will

[00:00:45] come to an end punctuates reality in a way that requires me to rethink my priorities

[00:00:50] today my guest is jm nickels

[00:00:58] jm nickels

[00:00:58] jm nickels

[00:00:58] has been a product leader at Waymo, DoorDash, and Uber. He was also an engineering manager at

[00:01:03] Groupon, and before that an equity trader at Getco. At Uber, he built and launched the very

[00:01:09] first version of UberPool, and then went on to lead the team responsible for the infrastructure

[00:01:13] and algorithms powering the economic and logistics brain behind Uber’s matching and pricing systems.

[00:01:19] At DoorDash, he was head of product for DoorDash Platform. At Waymo, he led product for the

[00:01:23] commercialization of autonomous ride hailing and last mile delivery. And he recently returned to

[00:01:28] Uber to lead product for the mobility team. This conversation is a unique and beautiful mixture

[00:01:34] of heart skills, soft skills, tactics, and emotions. I won’t give away too much about

[00:01:39] the conversation, but this is a powerful one. Tears are shed, stories are shared,

[00:01:44] and I am confident you will become a better leader and human having listened to JM’s insights

[00:01:48] and lessons. If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite

[00:01:52] podcasting app or YouTube. It’s the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the

[00:01:56] podcast tremendously.

[00:01:58] With that, I bring you JM Nichols.

[00:02:05] JM, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:08] Thank you, Lenny. Thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

[00:02:12] Really appreciate your dedication to helping product managers kind of like improve their

[00:02:16] craft and up level. There’s not a lot of great researchers out there for that.

[00:02:19] And coaching and development, as I’m sure we’ll get into, is a passion of mine as well. So we

[00:02:24] have a lot of shared interests there.

[00:02:25] Oh, I really appreciate that.

[00:02:28] I want to thank you for having me.

[00:02:28] I want to start with a phrase that came up again and again when I asked people what to talk to you

[00:02:34] about from your colleagues. And this phrase is conscious leadership. What is conscious leadership?

[00:02:41] What does this phrase mean?

[00:02:42] To me, leadership is broadly defined as having influence in the world. And so by that definition,

[00:02:48] to me, everyone is a leader, right? Because we all have influence in some way. You know,

[00:02:53] it’s not about whether you’re a manager or not. It’s like, I have influence on my kids or my

[00:02:58] partner or my community, right? The world, the way I vote, the way I show up, right? So we all have

[00:03:03] influence. We’re all co-creating, you know, kind of influences of each other. So that’s the

[00:03:09] leadership piece. So just like the conscious piece then is becoming more aware, waking up, right? To

[00:03:15] me, it’s like learning more about my interior world, you know, what, you know, my background

[00:03:21] is, my biases, you know, we all inherit sort of kind of certain belief systems from our parents

[00:03:26] or our church or community. And a lot of times, we’re all kind of like, you know, we’re all kind of

[00:03:28] unquestioned and then they end up in conflict. And so it’s really just about becoming more aware

[00:03:34] and then taking responsibility for the influence that I have. So yeah, taking responsibility for

[00:03:39] my influence in the world. As you talk about this, something that came up and something that I

[00:03:45] thought about as I was preparing for this episode is this idea of soft leadership, the power of

[00:03:49] soft skills, and just how important that is in success. Is there something there that comes up

[00:03:54] when I say that? Just the power of soft skills and the importance of those and being

[00:03:58] successful? Yeah, yeah. It was Theodore Roosevelt, speak softly and carry a big stick.

[00:04:06] Yeah, I think I’ve evolved in that department. I think when I was younger in my career, I thought

[00:04:10] it was really important that, you know, we got to show up to the meeting and have the right slides

[00:04:14] and be the loudest, rightest voice in the room. And, you know, that’s sort of the way to have

[00:04:19] influence. And, you know, there’s certainly a place for, you know, having leadership in a

[00:04:23] meeting and presenting a point of view and helping guide the narrative. But to me,

[00:04:28] it’s, yeah, I would say I’ve evolved more towards sitting back. It’s also as I’ve become a more

[00:04:33] senior leader, I’m aware that there are power dynamics there. There’s imbalances, right, where

[00:04:38] junior folks don’t feel as comfortable speaking up or I say something’s not a good idea and I don’t

[00:04:43] want to disagree with JMs, you know. So it’s like back to being more aware of my influence in the

[00:04:48] world. Like, I really try to spend more time being mindful of that and say, you know, I want to hear

[00:04:52] from other people first. I want to create space. And like, I don’t need to win the argument in the

[00:04:57] meeting, right? Like, I don’t need to win the argument in the meeting. I don’t need to win the

[00:04:58] argument in the meeting. Like, there can be a follow up, right? There’s, it’s not like, you

[00:05:01] know, it’s my last chance to say something. But that’s also more true when you’re more senior,

[00:05:05] right? Because when you’re more junior, it’s like, well, this is the one presentation I have

[00:05:08] with Dara for the next six months, right? I really got to nail it. And so the pressure is a little

[00:05:12] bit different. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the only all-in-one product

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[00:06:35] This episode is brought to you by the Enterprise Ready Conference,

[00:06:42] a one-day event in San Francisco bringing together product and engineering leaders

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[00:07:35] There’s a couple threads I want to follow here, but first, I was thinking as you’re talking,

[00:07:39] when people think Uber and people that work at Uber, I don’t think they imagine people like you.

[00:07:46] And I know you were there early and then you joined again. Was that ever like,

[00:07:50] is this a place for me? Did you ever go through that struggle or is it just, yeah, I don’t know.

[00:07:54] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say I,

[00:07:57] I’ve been fortunate to experience probably three Ubers at this point.

[00:08:00] You know, we joke about Uber 1.0, the Travis era, and you hear a lot about, you know,

[00:08:04] in the media, the kind of bad parts of that, but there were some really good parts too.

[00:08:07] I mean, I think, you know, there was a lot of, like when I joined in 2014, you know,

[00:08:12] there was this mission of making transportation as reliable as running water for anyone anywhere, which is,

[00:08:17] you know, bold, audacious, and maybe even a little bit pretentious from a little bit of Silicon Valley edge.

[00:08:23] But, but, but you could feel the electricity in the air.

[00:08:26] There was this like energy.

[00:08:27] And it’s excitement, like we’re doing something transformational, like autonomy is coming, you know, car ownership will change.

[00:08:32] And it just like, it just, it, it’s, I’m feel like my vibration, you know, and then, yeah, like the good parts of that era were like, you know,

[00:08:40] Travis was a very great visionary product leader and we started ATG and Elevate and sort of these sort of future forward things.

[00:08:46] And, you know, the way he would conduct product reviews, I learned a lot, but he, you know, it was stressful at the time, but like looking back,

[00:08:54] I was like, wow, I learned a lot, but yeah,

[00:08:56] I would say it was not a very.

[00:08:57] Conscious leadership sort of place.

[00:08:59] You’re right.

[00:08:59] It was a, it was like many organizations that run on fear because you can do that, you know, carriage and sticks do work, but actually that’s kind of how I found this work.

[00:09:06] Cause it was like in 2015 and I was a very junior product manager at that point, you know, kind of in over my head and a fast growing place.

[00:09:14] And in these weekly reviews, Travis was, we were building out Uber pool and I had a six month old daughter, my first born.

[00:09:22] And we had just moved to San Francisco from Chicago.

[00:09:24] So my whole life was kind of in flux and it was, yeah, very stressful.

[00:09:27] And I was like, I think I’m going to snap.

[00:09:29] I don’t think I can handle this.

[00:09:30] And that’s kind of what led me to start to explore this sort of inner work and yeah, meditation and sort of like finding a way out of that.

[00:09:39] And that’s what got me interested in bringing it to teams too, is because like, I remember I was in one meeting where we were working on this future pricing thing, which is like, you know, rider pricing and driver pricing and incentives and how we bring surge pricing and all that together.

[00:09:51] And that gets very, you know, I’ll go heavy and, and we have all these PhDs in the room, right.

[00:09:56] Some of the best minds in the world, you know, we, we were able to hire, you know, people like Garrett Van Rysen, who like was, you know, the foremost for our person right from Columbia and other people, but everyone’s like, uh, back to lizard brain, everyone’s like arguing, they’re like, well, no, I think we should do it this way.

[00:10:10] We should do this way.

[00:10:11] And I was like, huh?

[00:10:13] It’s like, as much as I enjoy the content of this, like, believe me, I’m an Algo PM end to end.

[00:10:18] I love that stuff.

[00:10:19] But I was like, I don’t think this conversation actually needs another, like, uh, you know, PhD or I’m not even a PhD, but I’m like, okay.

[00:10:26] But content expert, right.

[00:10:28] It’s like, what we need here is a way to like, you know, like shift again, back to that, you know, out of that fear of threat, uh, righteousness sort of state into a more co-creative, collaborative, open-minded, curious, trusting sort of space.

[00:10:43] And that was, that got me interested in kind of, you know, pursuing more skills and coaching of individuals and teams.

[00:10:48] So, but yeah, to your Uber question.

[00:10:50] Yeah.

[00:10:50] The Uber 1.0 was crazy.

[00:10:52] Uber 2.0 was kind of like, you know, Travis is out.

[00:10:55] The board is.

[00:10:56] Feuding there’s leaking to Mike Isaac, whatever.

[00:10:59] And then Dara comes in and, you know, kind of the peacemaker and, and then tries to state wise, but the IPO is Rocky.

[00:11:05] And, and so now I would say we’re in Uber 3.0, which, you know, is it’s full pirate ship to Navy and be Hoffman’s words, uh, you know, profitable company we’re printing free cashflow.

[00:11:15] We’re in this and be 500, right.

[00:11:17] Like, you know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve kind of established, um, independent contractor model, right.

[00:11:21] And a lot of states and jurisdictions and, uh, you know, it’s like, there’s less kind of, you know.

[00:11:26] Really.

[00:11:26] Risk of that model changing and, and, and yeah, we’re, I would say we’re in an area, an era now of kind of Cambrian explosion of different types of transportation.

[00:11:35] You know, the company kind of really just built the Uber X model and scaled it out to the world.

[00:11:40] That’s primarily how we got here.

[00:11:42] And now it’s like, you know, we’re going after all these different new sort of modalities, whether it’s reserving a ride in advance or shared rides or, you know, renting a car or buses and then different, um, supply types too.

[00:11:53] Right.

[00:11:53] Like it’s, it’s not just contracted, right.

[00:11:55] We have a lot of fleets in the platform.

[00:11:56] We now have a lot of taxi drivers in the platform.

[00:11:58] We’ve seen, we’ve signed deals with Waymo and cruise and other autonomous players.

[00:12:02] So like, I feel like we’re now at the beginning of, uh, another era that Uber, right.

[00:12:06] And transportation that, you know, the next decade or two is going to be like super exciting.

[00:12:12] One quick tangent, Uber X, like previous guests shared that the name Uber X came from, it was just like the internal code name, Uber X, and we’ll figure out a real name later.

[00:12:19] And then that just, it stopped and no one had a better name.

[00:12:22] Is that, is that true?

[00:12:23] Yeah, that’s right.

[00:12:24] I think that’s right.

[00:12:24] That was the way it was before.

[00:12:26] When I joined.

[00:12:26] We were already scaling Uber X rapidly.

[00:12:28] I joined in early 2014, but I did help name Uber pool, Uber pool, which I, I selfishly like, like to bring back, uh, uh, it got renamed to share, uh, during my external APM rotation.

[00:12:41] Okay.

[00:12:41] I want to come back to the kind of the thread that we, that I’ve pushed us off of, which is, um, you talked about, you made this really interesting point about emotions and that’s something I’ve been learning myself recently with having a kid and also a couple of

[00:12:56] previous guests.

[00:12:56] So you say that when you have, so you’re in this meeting, you’re stressed, there’s lizard brain kicking in.

[00:13:00] Something’s like, oh, Dara’s gonna think I suck.

[00:13:03] And it’s gonna really screw my career.

[00:13:05] If I mess up this presentation, your advice there is very counterintuitive, I think for a lot of people, which is accept that emotion.

[00:13:12] Because when I feel like stressed and nervous in a meeting, I’m not embrace the nervousness.

[00:13:19] Let it out.

[00:13:20] It’s more, I’m just like, no, it’s fine.

[00:13:22] Good to be okay.

[00:13:23] Don’t worry about it.

[00:13:24] Talk about why that is actually my thing.

[00:13:26] It’s actually more effective.

[00:13:28] Yeah.

[00:13:28] Yeah.

[00:13:28] It’s like, uh, my daughter the other day was, uh, you know, had some nightmares and she was like, dad, how do I stop, uh, thinking thoughts that, you know, kind of, you know, uh, about the nightmare or whatever.

[00:13:38] And I was like, I said, I said, you can’t, don’t try to stop the thought, just allow it.

[00:13:43] You know, I was like, let me show you why that doesn’t work.

[00:13:45] I said, don’t think of a pink elephant.

[00:13:49] What’d you just think of?

[00:13:50] He’s like a big elephant.

[00:13:52] And then now I think it’s hilarious.

[00:13:53] You tell me, don’t think of the pink elephant.

[00:13:55] Yeah.

[00:13:56] I think you’re right.

[00:13:56] It is a little counterintuitive, but like one of my first coaches actually had a great phrase, uh, what you resist will persist and what you fear will appear.

[00:14:05] And so in my experience, this is why another reason why becoming more aware of internal world is so, uh, it’s been so important.

[00:14:12] I have more agency than I realized on the outcome of my experience.

[00:14:16] Right.

[00:14:16] And so when I think a thought like, darn, I might think I suck.

[00:14:20] And then I have a thought that I suck.

[00:14:21] That can become a self-enforcing negative feedback loop where I have a thought.

[00:14:26] That creates stress, anxiety, fear, and then that triggers more thoughts and we call it cognitive, emotive loop, where you’re kind of in this cycle of like thinking stressful thoughts and then having unpleasant, you know, anxious, fearful feelings.

[00:14:40] And so one way to break that, yeah, is to just allow it and not try to fight it with other thoughts.

[00:14:50] So the advice is like very tactically, it’s you’re in a meeting with Dara, you’re stressed about something.

[00:14:54] Just allow it.

[00:14:55] Let, let it be, don’t try to pretend like it’s not there or don’t try to convince.

[00:15:00] Well, that would be the first step is just to allow whatever fear thoughts and emotions are arising.

[00:15:05] It’s, uh, you know, they come, they go, uh, they’re transient.

[00:15:08] It’s not permanent.

[00:15:09] Right.

[00:15:10] It’s, um, there’s a lot of wisdom, I think, in the Buddhist lineage around those, those concepts.

[00:15:14] And then the next piece for me, once I can take a breath and relax a little bit is coming home to the fact that I, uh, this is a little more radical for some people.

[00:15:23] I don’t actually need Dara to.

[00:15:25] I don’t actually, I don’t have the money.

[00:15:27] I don’t have the authority to do it, but it is.

[00:15:28] It is.

[00:15:29] I’m a man of wisdom.

[00:15:30] It’s very easy for me to look at it from the outside.

[00:15:32] I’m very, very confident in it.

[00:15:33] I’m, I’m very confident in what it is, but I’m not a person who’s allowed to, to do it from the inside.

[00:15:38] That’s the, that’s kind of the big помощью.

[00:15:40] When I talk to people, I’m not saying that you have to be independent of them, but I want to see the future of a little bit more, of a lot of other things in the future.

[00:15:50] So,

[00:15:51] It’s very easy to look at.

[00:15:53] What do you approve of me?

[00:15:54] in my presentation.

[00:15:55] But as long as I was going out there looking for all that stuff to try to complete something

[00:16:00] inside of me that was missing, it was like I was like a hungry ghost.

[00:16:03] It’s like it doesn’t matter how many Michelin star meals and promotions and money and title

[00:16:08] and whatever, right?

[00:16:09] It’s like it’s never enough.

[00:16:10] It’s like you kind of enjoy it for a little bit and then you get back to like, you know,

[00:16:14] so it’s like a never ending like sugar addiction.

[00:16:18] And so that’s kind of the next step for me is like, allow it.

[00:16:22] Yes, allow the emotion, all the thought.

[00:16:24] Come home to I am OK.

[00:16:27] Even if Darth does think I suck.

[00:16:29] And then also it’s not, you know, it’s not permanent, right?

[00:16:34] Like I was like, sure, there might be some high stakes things in life where you only

[00:16:37] get one shot.

[00:16:38] But the most part, it’s like, you know, if I screw it, if I didn’t do a great job, this

[00:16:40] presentation, you know, will be another one, right?

[00:16:43] Like, OK, you know, and it was practice.

[00:16:46] The other thing is like from the fear threat state, I’m like, oh, this is a risk alarm

[00:16:51] bells, right?

[00:16:52] You know, like my career could be over.

[00:16:54] Whereas if I’m in that trusting, curious, open space, it’s like this is an opportunity

[00:17:00] for feedback.

[00:17:01] You know, how can I learn?

[00:17:02] How can I get to become a better presenter?

[00:17:05] You know, it’s like the feedback from others is no longer a threat.

[00:17:08] It’s actually a gift.

[00:17:10] It’s like, you know, it’s like, you know, information, right, that I can use or not

[00:17:15] use to, you know, alter how I show up in the future and the skill I develop on the good

[00:17:20] stuff.

[00:17:21] I imagine some people may hear this and feel.

[00:17:24] Like if Dara or Travis or whoever is like thinks I suck, my career is at stake and that

[00:17:29] really matters and everything’s going to fall apart in my life because I get fired.

[00:17:33] You know, there’s like stakes involved messing up.

[00:17:36] Is there anything that helped you get past that and not worry so much about just like

[00:17:40] this trickle effect of all the things that could go wrong if you mess something up in

[00:17:43] an important high stakes meeting or presentation?

[00:17:46] Yeah, again, and maybe it’s a little paradoxical, but what I found was the more I focused on

[00:17:53] yeah.

[00:17:54] How I show up and optics and having a good deck and all this, the less I got promoted

[00:17:58] and then the more I dropped focusing all that because like for my first few years of Uber,

[00:18:03] I was like, hey, I was a senior PM and then I finally got my groove and started kind of,

[00:18:06] you know, moving through the product ladder and it was really like correlated to me at

[00:18:11] least maybe causal with yeah, dropping a lot of the focus on the on the presentation and

[00:18:18] how I show up and whether, you know, people like this or not that and just really focusing

[00:18:21] on the work.

[00:18:22] It’s like, you know what?

[00:18:23] I am.

[00:18:24] I’m here to be a conduit to from what wants to happen in the world of transportation and

[00:18:30] mobility and shared rides is like one that I’ve always been pretty passionate about.

[00:18:33] So it’s a good example.

[00:18:34] And then how can I kind of, you know, get present and listen to like what wants to happen

[00:18:40] next in the world of shared rides, right?

[00:18:42] And there’s lots of different ways we can take the product and all that.

[00:18:45] And it’s just it’s really about I want to make a fucking awesome product, right?

[00:18:50] And it’s like whether people like me or think I’m a good PM or presenter.

[00:18:54] As long as I manifest, you know, a great product into the world that makes riders better off

[00:19:00] drivers, better off cities, better off less congestion, all these things like that to

[00:19:04] me is the reward.

[00:19:06] And sure, in order to manifest that, it is often helpful to communicate things, present

[00:19:11] a line, all this sort of things.

[00:19:13] But those are a means to a more powerful and transformative end than just my career.

[00:19:18] I’m tapping into a larger purpose and sense of belonging and identity and sort of meaning.

[00:19:24] And from that place, it’s like I’m just I’ve just dropped the kind of egoic, self-centered

[00:19:30] focus on, you know, whether I did good in the presentation or not.

[00:19:33] And then, yeah, maybe paradoxically, by doing that, it actually goes better and we do great

[00:19:39] work and it gets recognized.

[00:19:40] Wow, that is fascinating to make that work.

[00:19:43] You need to really connect with the mission of the company you’re working at.

[00:19:46] Like, you really need to believe this is very important and very meaningful.

[00:19:50] So maybe that could be an issue for people if they don’t really.

[00:19:53] Care about what the company is doing.

[00:19:55] It’s going to be hard to allow for that approach.

[00:19:58] Totally, totally.

[00:20:00] It’s interesting that you say that optics aren’t as important.

[00:20:04] I think the reason I think about this is you talk about a lot of people feel like there’s

[00:20:08] the work and then there’s like talking about the work, making the work like the optics of

[00:20:11] what you did is really, really important.

[00:20:14] And I love to hear like nobody wants to do that, but they always get this advice.

[00:20:18] So important optics, how you share the impact you’ve done, how you represent yourself.

[00:20:23] I guess, is there anything else you can share there about just helping people relax about that aspect of their job and that being so critical?

[00:20:31] Yeah.

[00:20:31] And to be clear, I do think it’s important, like it can’t be all work and no optics or all optics and no work, right?

[00:20:38] Like there does need to be a balance there.

[00:20:40] And I think it does change, you know, depending on the size of the company and the level of seniority, right?

[00:20:46] When you’re an IC, you’re probably hopefully getting more actual work and you know leaders are supporting them and presenting a

[00:20:53] community.

[00:20:53] You’re probably communicating that work so that they get, I mean, the optics does matter, right?

[00:20:58] Like at some senior level, you do spend more time on that and it does have influence back to the influence piece, right?

[00:21:04] Which is like, you know, the how will I communicate an idea and the need for engineering, resourcing and so forth might mean that team gets more engineers or does it get more engineers or we do this project or we don’t, right?

[00:21:14] Because at the end of the day, executive kind of resource allocation is largely based on the quote unquote optics layer.

[00:21:20] So it does matter.

[00:21:21] I want to be clear.

[00:21:21] I’m not saying it doesn’t matter.

[00:21:23] But.

[00:21:23] To me, again, it’s more about that’s a means to an end.

[00:21:26] It’s not about the optic itself.

[00:21:28] It’s like, don’t say the, what the Buddha say, don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon and the finger pointing at the moon to be the presentation.

[00:21:36] The OKR, you know, whatever.

[00:21:38] And it’s like, that’s not the actual outcome we care about, right?

[00:21:41] Like that’s an input to the output that really matters, which is the work, the product.

[00:21:46] Okay.

[00:21:48] I’m going to shift this to hard skills and another kind of direction.

[00:21:52] So another thing.

[00:21:53] They came up a bunch when I was asking people what you’re amazing at and what you’re really good at, uh, is, uh, strategy and vision.

[00:22:01] I had this quote from one of your colleagues, Brent Goldman jam thinks big has lots of great ideas.

[00:22:06] Well, yes.

[00:22:06] And to other people’s ideas will inspire everyone around him to be more creative, ambitious, and hardworking.

[00:22:12] He doesn’t climb Hills.

[00:22:13] He finds bigger mountains and we’ll bring you there.

[00:22:17] So along these lines, say someone comes to you and wants to build these skills, wants to get better.

[00:22:22] It’s strategy.

[00:22:23] He wants to get better at vision, which is something basically every product leader is trying to get better at.

[00:22:27] And every leader wants to get better at what advice do you generally share?

[00:22:31] How does one improve in these areas?

[00:22:34] Yeah.

[00:22:35] Thank you.

[00:22:35] I appreciate the compliment.

[00:22:37] I think you brought, that was a great quote.

[00:22:38] Well, um, yeah, I mean, uh, there’s no like magic toolkit or manual, you know, I, I, I’ve long ago given up on the notion that, uh, I’m one book away from the, the perfect elusive answer to whatever, you know, plagues you in life.

[00:22:53] And, uh, there’s obviously lots of books about strategy and, you know, you get into all that, I guess for me, uh, a couple of things have been helpful.

[00:23:02] Um, one is, uh, you mentioned earlier, finding a mission that you’re really passionate about.

[00:23:08] Like, I think it would be hard for me to come up with a strategy for improving the healthcare system.

[00:23:13] Like it’s like, I bet.

[00:23:14] Sure.

[00:23:14] It’s important.

[00:23:15] I hope someone does it and figures out how to deal with HIPAA and whatever, all this stuff.

[00:23:19] But it’s like, it’s just not for me.

[00:23:21] It’s not my purpose mission.

[00:23:23] Yeah.

[00:23:23] And so step one is like, am I working at a place and in a product area in which I have a tremendous amount of passion, right?

[00:23:33] Because for me, that is the fuel and the motivation that helps me break through to getting the strategy.

[00:23:37] That’s like the first step.

[00:23:38] So that’s where I feel enormously lucky because again, like this, you know, revolutionizing transportation and car ownership and what happens with autonomy and form factors and future cities is something that I’m super excited about.

[00:23:49] I think about my daughters growing up and having a, you know, a different world.

[00:23:53] I think about my kids growing up and having a different world to live in that’s safer and more environmentally friendly, all this stuff.

[00:23:56] Right.

[00:23:56] And like, I get really jazzed when I think about, wow, the work I do could actually impact their future lives and other people, you know, it’s like, whoa, I can feel the chills right now.

[00:24:06] It’s just like super motivating.

[00:24:07] So that’s the first place, just getting myself kind of fired up.

[00:24:10] And then the next thing, I guess it’s been helpful is, you know, I’ve deeply immersed myself.

[00:24:14] You know, I have, it’s also, you know, I haven’t really jumped around between, you know, crypto and gen AI, other stuff.

[00:24:20] And a lot of people do.

[00:24:21] That’s great.

[00:24:21] Nothing wrong with that.

[00:24:22] But, you know, I’ve been in this, you know, largely focused on mobility, you know, space for, for 10 years now with some stints over in the restaurant tech and delivery side, but, but very related in terms of last mile logistics.

[00:24:34] And so, you know, I think it’s hard to come up with a great strategy if you’ve only been working in an area for like six months or so, you know, it’s like, it’s sick, especially things like this, that are super nuanced, like shared rides is another good example where it’s a super hard problem to crack.

[00:24:48] And like, you know, it’s like going deep on that for a long time is.

[00:24:52] Uh, is a precursor to being successful.

[00:24:55] The other thing I would say though, is like, you know, people always talk about first principles thinking, but, uh, there’s truth in it.

[00:25:00] I think, you know, that’s like, you know, with, and like with Elon’s like, well, why, why does the rocket cost, you know, a gazillion dollars to launch?

[00:25:06] And, you know, like there’s no reason they have to throw away the materials and, you know, blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:11] You know, one example might be, why do we need a 4,000 pound vehicle to move a human three miles?

[00:25:21] Okay.

[00:25:21] Well, um,

[00:25:23] or even a couple of humans, right.

[00:25:24] We do an Uber pool or a share, right.

[00:25:25] And you move two humans or three humans, even then, like, that’s pretty inefficient.

[00:25:29] Right.

[00:25:29] Like you think about like the, just the physics there, like the energy expenditure, right.

[00:25:33] It’s like, and that’s where I think, you know, you might come up with bikes and scooters and little other things.

[00:25:37] Right.

[00:25:37] And, and sure.

[00:25:38] It’s not always, it’s raining if you want the car, but that’s sort of an example of like questioning, like, why are things the way they are?

[00:25:46] And then are, is the way they are like super inefficient or like not optimal from in some sense.

[00:25:52] Right.

[00:25:52] And that is often a doorway to opportunity, right.

[00:25:55] To see, okay, well, maybe things could be different.

[00:25:57] And so I kind of extend that, you know, at a larger level to the future, you know, my, my general thing is just like, yeah, that’s the mountain thing.

[00:26:03] It’s like, I, I try to just like close my eyes and imagine the future as far out as I can, you know, it’s like five years from now, 10 years from now, whatever.

[00:26:12] And it’s like, develop a really salient picture of what that looks like.

[00:26:17] You know, it’s like, it’s like, okay, so we could do this right now.

[00:26:19] It’s okay.

[00:26:20] You know, 10 years from now.

[00:26:21] What?

[00:26:22] San Francisco with like, or some city, what, what happens to the parking spaces?

[00:26:26] Are there still parking garages?

[00:26:27] Are those parks now?

[00:26:29] Um, you know, what are the modes of transport?

[00:26:31] Are there, are there like bus, like things that are autonomous that are connecting people to bikes and scooters and you know, how are people living?

[00:26:38] Do they live in the far suburbs even more because autonomy and they have a nicer house and they come in or, or is all the space repurposed and actually it’s cheaper to live in the city because compact things, blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:49] You know, it’s not even about having the right one.

[00:26:50] It’s more just like.

[00:26:51] Okay.

[00:26:51] Developing some sort of, you know, picture of the future that gets you fired up.

[00:26:57] Right.

[00:26:57] And then, yeah, you gotta go like, you know, articulate that and communicate it and get people to come on the journey with you.

[00:27:03] But like from that picture, it’s like, well, what first principle, what’s going to be true, you know, 10, 20 years from now?

[00:27:08] Well, autonomy is like a given.

[00:27:09] I think most people would probably agree with that.

[00:27:11] And, uh, you know, we’ll probably solve it with just cameras and multi-light arc as humans don’t have LIDAR and, uh, you know, the cost of vehicles and sensors will come down, remote support will come down and at some point.

[00:27:21] It’ll.

[00:27:21] Be.

[00:27:21] Super cheap.

[00:27:23] And it’s like, okay, like an extrapolate, that will be a thing separate from which player wins.

[00:27:26] I’m not saying I can predict, you know, the ecosystem of companies that will win here.

[00:27:30] It’s more about just the underlying dynamics.

[00:27:32] Right.

[00:27:33] And, and then, you know, so that would be one, and then that one would be, yeah, sharing a way.

[00:27:37] It’s like, well, a lot of people are like, oh, well, once we have cheap Thomas cars, like everyone could just have their own super cheap Uber, Tesla, or whatever it is you’re on the city.

[00:27:45] And you’re like, well, that doesn’t work because then we’re going to hit this induced demand concept.

[00:27:49] Right.

[00:27:49] Which is like what economists call it when like.

[00:27:51] You know, you used to, when text messages cost 50 cents a piece, how many did you send versus now within sprees and the million, same thing when they add a lane to a highway, right?

[00:28:00] The traffic just gets just as bad as before because more people drive and so forth.

[00:28:03] So if we follow the streets with super cheap, autonomous cars with single occupancy, uh, we’re just going to have even more gridlock than we do right now.

[00:28:10] And then maybe we’ll do the boring company thing and big tunnels, but it’s even likely.

[00:28:15] Right.

[00:28:16] So, so then from, for me, it’s like, well, from birth principles, shared rides is, is going to continue.

[00:28:21] It’s going to be an important part of the future transportation and, and other modalities where, yeah, back to the three mile thing, it’s like, well, it probably will be various form factors of bikes, scooters, and little mini golf cart things and whatever we end up building.

[00:28:33] Right.

[00:28:33] And so that’s kind of an example of how I kind of think about, right.

[00:28:37] Like what are the likely things to be true in the future?

[00:28:41] And then how does that lead to a potential kind of ecosystem and strategy around what we might build, you know, towards that future?

[00:28:50] This is great.

[00:28:50] Because this.

[00:28:51] This is something everyone can do.

[00:28:53] And there’s all this talk of like creating a vision, painting a vision, communicating a vision.

[00:28:57] And what you’re describing is how to actually sit there and think about what it might look like, like sit there, close your eyes and in your head, visualize in the next five or 10 years, what does the future actually look like?

[00:29:10] And do you do this in a state of, if we were to do this product and change, or is it just, even if we’re not around, here’s where the future is going to go most likely is which, which direction do you usually take?

[00:29:20] Yeah, that’s a good question.

[00:29:21] I mean, you could probably do either.

[00:29:22] I typically like to start with the former, which is just like, what will the world move towards absent of me?

[00:29:29] Just trying to pick a, you know, kind of bird’s eye view of what I think is the trajectories are and trends and what’s going to happen.

[00:29:35] And then, yeah, you could apply a lens of, okay, if we were to build product XYZ or have this strategy, how might we influence the outcome or benefit from it?

[00:29:45] Or, you know, is it in congruence with that or is it, you know, rubbing against that and trying to change that?

[00:29:50] Either could be good.

[00:29:51] Right.

[00:29:51] You might say we’re going to, it’s a tailwind or a headwind, you know, both are overcomable, but like having some awareness of the relationship between those things is good.

[00:29:59] Yeah.

[00:30:00] And I think like, you know, transportation, Uber, Waymo, it’s like, in theory, it might be easier to visualize that future and how exciting that might be versus a B2B SaaS payroll app or some like photo sharing thing.

[00:30:10] But on the other hand, not, not necessarily right there.

[00:30:13] What in the future, 10 years, how are people going to be paid?

[00:30:15] How do people work at companies?

[00:30:17] Like, I think there’s an opportunity to do that no matter what you’re building.

[00:30:21] How do you actually, is this something you actually do?

[00:30:23] You just sit there in the office, close your eyes and just imagine, is this more of an iterative process where you get with your team?

[00:30:28] Like, how do you actually practice this?

[00:30:31] Yeah.

[00:30:31] It’s not like something you can just schedule 30 minutes for in the middle of your day of packed OKR reviews and one-on-ones and meetings.

[00:30:38] You know, it’s like, I like to do it on my own first.

[00:30:43] If I, you know, unless it’s something that I already have a kind of an outline for and I’m ready to move into a team space.

[00:30:47] So for me, it’s like, yeah, like, can I get into a quiet content?

[00:30:51] So, yeah, I like to go for a run and that obviously gives me ideas or I’ll go for a hike up in, you know, Marin.

[00:30:58] And sometimes I’ll just like think of stuff or jot something down or make a voice note while I’m doing that, you know, to kind of get things going.

[00:31:04] But yeah, like the first step for me is just getting out of the craziness of day to day.

[00:31:09] Like to me, it’s still insane.

[00:31:11] Like how many product managers, leaders of all kinds, right?

[00:31:14] Just run the schedule of like back-to-back meetings, you know, 30-minute reviews, a big meaty topic.

[00:31:19] You run out of time, run to the next thing.

[00:31:21] Answer a bunch of emails and then cram some PRDs in there.

[00:31:25] And it’s like, you know, it doesn’t work, right?

[00:31:28] And so I’m a big fan of carving out time.

[00:31:30] Again, first for myself, a couple hours, you know, whatever it is where I can just like get out of the day-to-day craziness and, you know, get into that headspace in five, 10 years from now, right?

[00:31:40] It’s just a different place.

[00:31:41] So you need to transition to that.

[00:31:43] And then, yeah, bring that to teams.

[00:31:44] Like if I have like an outline of that kind of future of transportation in my head, I might share that with a group of folks.

[00:31:50] And we’ll come together also for some extended period of time.

[00:31:54] Like we recently had an all-day Monday thing where eight of us came into the office to talk about future marketplace.

[00:32:00] And it was super productive.

[00:32:01] It was like, you know, laptop’s down.

[00:32:03] We’re going to spend all day together on a whiteboard.

[00:32:05] It’s like a lost art.

[00:32:06] People don’t even use the whiteboards anymore.

[00:32:09] So, but yeah.

[00:32:10] And then from there, it’s like getting more people.

[00:32:12] And then you can kind of iterate on it, right?

[00:32:13] It’s like I had some vision of the future.

[00:32:15] And someone points out something that, you know, is a little bit, you know, off with it or it has a better.

[00:32:20] Then you move into co-creation.

[00:32:23] But I love that.

[00:32:24] It’s like, you know, the Pixar calls the brain trust, right?

[00:32:27] If you read Kamal’s book, right?

[00:32:29] Where like how they come up with Toy Story and Inside Out and all these things, right?

[00:32:32] It’s like they have this group of people that just sits around riffing on ideas.

[00:32:36] And again, there’s no judgment.

[00:32:38] There’s no attachment to being right.

[00:32:39] There’s no, you know, they’re in a co-creative sort of space where they’re just like co-exploring and riffing with each other.

[00:32:45] And I love to be in that space with, you know, with other PMs and engineers.

[00:32:50] I love being a scientist.

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[00:33:44] Something I’ve started to do, which is hard, but I find really valuable,

[00:33:49] is when I’m driving a car.

[00:33:50] I’m driving to not play anything on the radio, not listen to any podcasts.

[00:33:54] And it’s so unnatural.

[00:33:56] And it’s like, oh, this is hard.

[00:33:58] Like, I just, I don’t want my brain to just go.

[00:33:59] Like, you don’t want, you don’t trust your brain to go to a place that’s fun.

[00:34:03] But it always does.

[00:34:04] It always ends up being like, oh, that was so interesting just to like think of this idea that just came up.

[00:34:08] So I’ve been trying to do that.

[00:34:09] And that’s such a simple thing to do.

[00:34:12] Just don’t turn anything on.

[00:34:13] Well, it’s not really good for your podcast business to tell people not to look at your podcast.

[00:34:15] Okay, everyone.

[00:34:18] We’re cutting this.

[00:34:20] So what I find really helpful is playing Lenny’s podcast every time I’m out and about.

[00:34:25] No, but there’s something to what you said, which is there’s always a lot of content out there to pursue.

[00:34:29] And I have been in that mode where I’m like, yeah, more content, more of it.

[00:34:32] And then, but yeah, actually similar to you spend a lot of time now, like not listening to anything, you know,

[00:34:38] go on a hike where you don’t listen to a podcast or music or yeah, your commute and see what happens.

[00:34:43] You might be surprised.

[00:34:45] Yeah.

[00:34:45] And it always ends up being like, oh, that was cool.

[00:34:47] And, you know, that’s where shower ideas come from and all these things.

[00:34:50] Maybe just to see if there’s something here.

[00:34:52] Is there in this meeting that you have this ideation brainstorming meeting?

[00:34:56] Is there anything that came out of that that was like really surprising or new from a recent experience?

[00:35:01] Is there anything there just like, oh, wow, we really uncovered this potential wrinkle of the future that we really need to think about differently?

[00:35:08] Well, it wasn’t maybe a specific wrinkle, but one of the things that we’re thinking a lot about, I’m fortunate to be involved in trying to help develop and articulate kind of a multi-year, three-year sort of product or even overall situation.

[00:35:20] And so, you know, it’s one product that’s pretty straightforward.

[00:35:22] And one of the, I guess, big ahas for us is, you know, as we move away from the kind of, in some ways, simpler world of UberX, right, being the predominant product, which is, you know, it used to be pretty simple, right?

[00:35:35] You, it’s kind of like a taxi meter on the driver’s side, right?

[00:35:38] There’s a time and distance rate that everybody gets.

[00:35:41] And then on the rider’s side, it’s like, sure, there’s some surge pricing based on supply and demand.

[00:35:45] But, you know, it’s one product that’s pretty straightforward.

[00:35:47] Right.

[00:35:47] And so, you know, this future of multimode applications.

[00:35:50] And, and, and on the both demand side and the supply side is what makes marketplace like even more complex and, and challenging to build.

[00:36:00] And so it’s kind of an aha that’s around like, okay, well, you know, now that we have taxis in the platform and we have fleet providers and we’re starting to add way modes and crews and other things, you know, we have to have a marketplace that’s aware of those different types of supply.

[00:36:13] And, you know, which ones might be available for what trips and how to think about cost and quality and kind of allocation of, of, of.

[00:36:20] And then on the demand side, it’s like, yeah, we’ve got all these different products like shared rides and reserve rides and, you know, comfort and X and, you know, priority.

[00:36:29] And it’s like, how do we think about how to price those relative to each other?

[00:36:33] Right.

[00:36:33] How do we think about which ones to show which user, you know, how do you think about the ranking and the, and so forth?

[00:36:39] And, and then that all has, you know, feedback loops into the, to the pricing and matching itself as well.

[00:36:44] So the, the dynamics of the thing, when I think about the future of marketplace Uber is like.

[00:36:50] Whoa, it’s like, and I don’t think I’ve ever built that.

[00:36:52] That’s the super cool thing about it.

[00:36:54] I think we have the best logistics marketplace tech on the planet and we built something that no one else has ever built.

[00:37:00] And, uh, you know, relative to like digital marketplaces, for example, uh, just different physical world requirements.

[00:37:06] And then this next arc of what I described of thinking about, you know, different types of supply and different kind of demand channels just adds even more combustion to that.

[00:37:15] So, um, yeah, the, but the aha was like, uh, I guess, yeah, we got to think about all that.

[00:37:19] Yeah.

[00:37:20] Think about all that stuff and think about how the supply and demand relate to each other.

[00:37:24] And, um, yeah, it’s going to be cool.

[00:37:26] It’s just a infinitely sighted marketplace now.

[00:37:29] That’s wild.

[00:37:31] One last nugget.

[00:37:32] I wanted to just reinforce that you shared about how to become better at strategy and vision developing great and interesting and innovative strategy.

[00:37:38] Vision is going really deep on a topic.

[00:37:41] So you, you’ve been in the space for a long time.

[00:37:44] There’s this idea that Paul Graham talks about.

[00:37:45] I think all of your top idea or something like that, that.

[00:37:49] When you have.

[00:37:50] One, like whatever your top ideas, the more you can just think about that and keep that top of mind as you go about your day and just have one core focus, the more likely it is, you’re going to come up with new, interesting ideas because your brain’s going to keep working on it when you’re driving around, listening to Lenny’s podcast, uh, just kidding, or going on a hike.

[00:38:08] So I think that’s a really important point is like, if you’re finding you can’t, you’re not coming up with a great strategy or vision and just like having struggles.

[00:38:16] Part of it might just be, you’re not spending enough time in that space.

[00:38:18] You’re not going deep enough in the problem.

[00:38:19] Area one approach is just spend like a decade in that space.

[00:38:23] Is there, is there anything else just comes up as I say that I’ve just had to do that?

[00:38:26] Yeah.

[00:38:27] Well, there’s also, that’s at the macro level, maybe spending 10 years in a space, but at the micro level is back to kind of like, don’t defrag your day.

[00:38:33] Don’t just do the 30 minute meetings, you know, 20, 30 minute meetings on, on 20 different topics.

[00:38:38] Like it sure.

[00:38:39] Sometimes it’s brought first and like, you gotta do that.

[00:38:41] You have a large team.

[00:38:42] Like I do obviously reviews across teams.

[00:38:44] I’m not saying I don’t do that on some days, but it’s like, yeah.

[00:38:47] Like what are my top few things?

[00:38:49] Right?

[00:38:49] Like, I think like you’re, I think it was Peter Taylor from the early PayPal guys talked about that too, right?

[00:38:53] Like having going really deep and having a person or a leader, like really responsible for one core deep thing for the company.

[00:39:00] And that’s like something they immerse themselves in.

[00:39:02] And so in the micro that, that to me even translates to, yeah, I don’t have a to-do list of 20 things, right.

[00:39:08] I try to have a to-do list of three of the most important highest leverage things that could, you know, kind of have impact broadly across the company.

[00:39:17] And then try to just like you said, like, but that one top.

[00:39:19] Thing marinate and, and, and chew on it.

[00:39:22] I love that.

[00:39:22] And I, I recently had a post about how to be all these productivity tricks.

[00:39:25] And one of the things that I find really helpful is at the beginning of each day.

[00:39:29] And also the beginning of each week, just write down here’s the one to three things that I need to do and get done and everything else.

[00:39:35] Like I might have this really long list, but here’s the three things.

[00:39:37] If I get done, life will be good.

[00:39:39] I’ve done a lot.

[00:39:40] I’ve accomplished really great, important things.

[00:39:42] Totally.

[00:39:42] I tried to do the David Allen GTD thing once, you know, the super complicated, uh, you know, organization system.

[00:39:49] And it’s.

[00:39:49] Like, it was too much structure for me.

[00:39:50] Like I couldn’t do it.

[00:39:51] He’s like, at the end of the day, when you says, right, is it, there’s basically three things that I need to do next.

[00:39:55] And then there’s like just some random backlog, but that can just scan through periodically.

[00:39:58] And that’s it.

[00:39:59] That gets you most of the way.

[00:40:01] It’s crazy.

[00:40:01] I read that books like 20 years ago at this point.

[00:40:04] And there’s this like elements that still make things like I leverage and benefit from, like, even if you don’t do the whole thing, like that book, I recommend people read.

[00:40:14] Because there’s just like, if you pick a couple things from there, uh, your life gets better though, things that have stuck with.

[00:40:19] Me.

[00:40:19] The main one is this waiting for concept of if you’re waiting, if you like email your designer and like, Hey, I need you to review this product, just like note, waiting for Dan to review design and just having that thread written down and not in your head really helped me totally.

[00:40:36] Yeah.

[00:40:37] Anyway, I’m not going to go to the, like the, not whatever structure you use.

[00:40:41] I think the most powerful takeaway from that book for me was if it’s in your head, you’re screwed because it’s like, you’re trying to keep track of stuff and be creative and.

[00:40:49] Come up with the future transportation and remember to pick up something to the pharmacy.

[00:40:53] It’s like, it doesn’t, it’s just not, it’s a recipe for disaster.

[00:40:56] Like this whole idea of like empty mind, you know, beginner’s mind, what, well, you have to empty the mind of all the two dudes first and just get that out of the head.

[00:41:03] Absolutely.

[00:41:04] I think it was mind like water.

[00:41:05] That’s the one that stuck with me.

[00:41:07] Yeah.

[00:41:07] Where nothing you need to remember it can be in your head.

[00:41:11] It needs to be written down somewhere.

[00:41:12] Anyway, and let’s not go into a whole productivity podcast.

[00:41:15] Here.

[00:41:15] Um, so we talked about vision strategy, so there’s kind of like.

[00:41:18] Yeah.

[00:41:19] classically two problems people have with vision strategy one is how do i get better at it the

[00:41:24] other is just like i need to actually get shit done i can’t spend all my time thinking about

[00:41:28] vision uh you have a really good take on how to find this balance and you’ve seen it work well

[00:41:34] and not well just vision versus execution when do i go big vision how much i spend vision versus

[00:41:39] just get shit done execute execute execute what can you share about just what you learned about

[00:41:44] how to find that balance and what you’ve seen work and not work yeah i think uh you can’t really

[00:41:50] go too far either direction right you could uh it’s like everything in life is about balancing

[00:41:55] the polarity between two opposing forces um and so in this one it’s like yeah you go too hard

[00:42:00] in division and theory land you know i’ve seen that go off the axle at early uber we’re again

[00:42:06] back to the future of pricing it’s like you know we have all the data scientists and phds

[00:42:10] walked in a room for two weeks there’s a beautiful whiteboard diagram

[00:42:14] what it could look like and then it’s like well how do we actually build this thing and engineers

[00:42:19] are like like this is like blowing the ocean you know uh and like uh you just get wrapped around

[00:42:24] the axle of like well that sounds really good in theory but i have no idea how to even start

[00:42:28] executing on this so that’s probably an example of like we tilted a little too far towards

[00:42:32] you know the vision theory land and this was you’re describing like the original plan to make

[00:42:37] a really good search pricing algorithm yeah this was a web client to try to bring together

[00:42:41] you know say how we do driver pricing you know time and distance

[00:42:44] rates but also you know we do incentives for drivers where it’s like if you drive this many

[00:42:48] hours a week you get a bonus and there’s also third pricing and like how to tie all those

[00:42:53] systems together in a very sophisticated sort of way um this was you know back in 2017 or something

[00:42:58] and it was just uh it was winged a little too hard into theory land um and we still have that

[00:43:04] bias sometimes you know we joke about marketplace you know uh especially when we talk about with

[00:43:09] other teams you know they’re trying to integrate in the marketplace let’s say they add you know

[00:43:12] fleets or you know teams there’s a big

[00:43:14] product right and then marketplace people would be like well have you thought about this one random

[00:43:19] problem that could happen two years from now if uh teams become this much of demand and blah blah

[00:43:24] blah you know whatever and it’s just like we we do get wrapped around the axle on that on that

[00:43:29] sometimes but yeah so the future pricing for the example rewing go too far into three one but you

[00:43:34] get you could probably go too far into execution land too and i’d say you know doordash in my

[00:43:39] experience would do that sometimes where we used to actually even half joke there some of us leaders

[00:43:44] would be like i’m just gonna run through a wall i have no idea if that’s the right wall to run

[00:43:54] through but at least i know i’m running through a wall so yeah i think it’s about balance um and

[00:44:03] it’s you know can you can you adjust again it’s dynamic i think there’s times where you’re in a

[00:44:07] soul searching sort of what is our product strategy you know we got a pivot maybe you’re

[00:44:12] a startup but you’re not working and you want to think about you know what’s going on and you’re

[00:44:14] and then it’s like okay well off the pull off the gas a little bit ease up on the execution

[00:44:20] and let’s lean into you know uh uh the strategy vision piece and there’s times where the strategy

[00:44:27] vision is pretty baked at least for the next whatever six months year and it’s like okay

[00:44:32] pedal to the metal let’s just go execute let’s get it done i just went to this uh acquired podcast

[00:44:37] event at the chase center when zuck was there and the ceo of spotify was there too and there’s two

[00:44:44] remind me of one is zuck talked about how once facebook and zuck and the team align on here’s

[00:44:51] where we’re going no matter how many walls appear in front of them there’s going to be a mark

[00:44:56] shaped uh hole in the wall very soon because they’re just going to run through and get things

[00:45:04] done that they need to get done and i really love that mentality of like once we’re sure we’re going

[00:45:08] we’re going to bust through these walls that’s awesome the other is a really interesting value

[00:45:14] daniel x shared this he said he said at spotify we have this core value talk is cheap and when

[00:45:20] you hear that you think it’s saying talk is not valuable and it’s actually they look at as a

[00:45:26] virtue talk is cheap we can talk and it costs us no money very little money compared to building

[00:45:30] something so they actually spent a lot of time at spotify refining their ideas and discussing

[00:45:35] until they’re really sure something is right and i guess any reaction to that because i thought that

[00:45:40] was really interesting yeah i love that it’s a almost a different flavor of i think

[00:45:44] bezos saying you know he’s like i like a crisp a crisp doc and a messy meeting right the whole

[00:45:51] amazon thing if you have the you know the three page or seven page narrative it’s you know written

[00:45:55] with the clarity of angels singing from on high at least you know describing how the problem

[00:46:01] statement or future or whatever um and so it’s like super crisp and organized and you know well

[00:46:06] articulated and then you might have a meeting where you pick it apart and you talk a lot you

[00:46:11] know that’s what made me think of that so yeah awesome okay

[00:46:14] a couple more things i want to spend some time on one is you’ve worked at a lot of really

[00:46:19] interesting successful hyper growth companies door dash uber waymo you’re also in finance for

[00:46:25] a while i want to pick on a few of these and just see what’s a lesson you took away or what’s an

[00:46:29] experience from that time that might be interesting or helpful to people sure so you talk about door

[00:46:35] dash a bit what what did you take away from your time at door dash what’s something you saw there

[00:46:40] that either is like wow that’s a really cool thing i want to do in the future or here’s something

[00:46:44] that i learned not to try to avoid yeah yeah it’s really amazing to get to see different places and

[00:46:50] kind of pick the best of what you like and and also there’s a the other thing is it back to like

[00:46:54] for me there’s no right or wrong it’s just like differences like have pros and cons right there’s

[00:46:58] always like two sides of the coin right um so like what’s interesting i think about uber and

[00:47:03] door dash is first back to the mission and the strategy they started with different dna right so

[00:47:09] like you know uh uber started with uh you know it was still like utilize block card and then

[00:47:14] so you know at the airport that we’re like not doing trips but it was more about the riders

[00:47:19] right it was like whatever origin story bleed you know travis and whoever uh you know can’t get a

[00:47:23] ride in paris right and so then it was about like you know better than taxi and all this stuff right

[00:47:28] but it was very rider centric it was consumer centric in that sense right and so you know for

[00:47:33] a long time i think uber kind of took that too far we got to the polarity it’s like drivers are

[00:47:36] commodity you know blah blah and they had to flip that back and start you know really investing more

[00:47:41] on the driver’s side of the marketplace but you look at door dash and it’s like you know

[00:47:44] tony grew up in his parents restaurant kitchen and you know the door dash thesis was how can we

[00:47:49] help small businesses be more successful and delivery with just the first instantiation of

[00:47:54] that sort of meta purpose of door dash right and so they’re much more merchant centric as opposed

[00:48:00] to consumer centric right by the way the consumer centricism of uber that started with rides didn’t

[00:48:05] translate to eats right i think when uber started with eats it was like well we just want lenny to

[00:48:09] have some great thai food and you know sushi and have some options but selection is is a means to

[00:48:14] lenny having a great you know eater experience whereas door dash with their merchant focus is

[00:48:19] like we want every thai restaurant in this city to be successful and be on door dash so their

[00:48:24] motivation for selection is we want all of the merchants to thrive and survive and so that happens

[00:48:30] to give you better selection as a result but the motivation was very different right so the analogy

[00:48:35] i use is like uber is to amazon as door dash is to shopify if that makes sense right amazon

[00:48:42] more consumer focused shopify

[00:48:44] obviously very merchant focused and by the way either of those again there’s no right or wrong

[00:48:48] is a fine strategy they’re both great companies and i actually don’t know if you could do both

[00:48:53] right like is it possible to be amazon and shopify to really focus on you know consumers and build

[00:48:59] all the merchant restaurant tech and you know maybe with enough resources and time but uh

[00:49:04] that would lose focus so it’s like there’s a trade-off there yeah yeah that’s like at

[00:49:09] airbnb there’s always this should we optimize for hosts should we optimize for guests and

[00:49:12] there’s always this like this time of year i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know

[00:49:14] guests are most important all right right now host more when you make you know make these

[00:49:18] trade-off decisions in the marketplace yeah so it’s interesting that at uber your insight there

[00:49:22] is uber is always very writer focused and door dash was from its dna was very merchant focused

[00:49:26] you also talk about a door dash there’s this mentality of just like going before figuring

[00:49:32] out where to go is there anything more there that might be helpful either as a cautionary

[00:49:36] tale or as a lesson yeah i think it’s uh it’s a balance it’s back to it i don’t want to deliberate

[00:49:41] uh and pontificate for weeks on end about which

[00:49:44] door i should run through and i don’t want to go the other extreme and just like you know

[00:49:49] spend 30 seconds thinking about what to do and just go go go um so it’s like finding that that

[00:49:55] kind of happy medium if i had to pick one i’d rather bias towards running through a wall but

[00:50:00] not doing anything because you still get learnings from that and you either make progress or you

[00:50:04] don’t and that gives you feedback and you can run through another wall as a result so i think the

[00:50:09] biggest failure case is probably uh erring on the other side of uh deliberating too long without

[00:50:14] action

[00:50:14] what about waymo what’s something that you took away from that experience as a thing you want to

[00:50:19] do more of or something you want to try to avoid you know waymo is uh you know you’ve probably seen

[00:50:24] people in san francisco right they’re they’re quite uh prolific now in terms of you know they’re

[00:50:28] all over san francisco and you see them all the time and uh i’m not sure i can’t remember the last

[00:50:33] time i saw one toad so you know they i don’t want to say that uh you know they’ve solved self-driving

[00:50:38] but they are you know obviously driving uh at scale with very minimal at least real world

[00:50:43] intervention like you know you can’t do that you can’t do that you can’t do that you can’t do that

[00:50:44] you can’t tell by looking at the cars how many humans behind the scenes might be you know helping

[00:50:48] provide guidance to the car or whatever but but yeah i would say what’s really interesting about

[00:50:52] waymo is they’ve they’ve largely solved uh the self-driving piece right uh however they’ve done

[00:50:57] that right and we and in a complex environment like san francisco and they you see them driving

[00:51:02] in fog and rain and puddles and like you know it’s like wow that’s pretty cool but i think what what

[00:51:07] waymo uh was learning and i was trying to help them learn is that you know uh building a self-driving

[00:51:12] car on a test track is a very difficult thing to do and i think that’s something that’s really

[00:51:14] very different problem statement than uh scaling a fleet of thousands of cars and how do you

[00:51:20] operate them clean them charge them maintain them and then how do you build a ride share network

[00:51:25] it’s like okay we got to build an app and and we got to acquire users and do classic growth stuff

[00:51:30] and you know think about that marketplace and matching and pricing and you know those are like

[00:51:35] very different skills right and so it’s like you know uh warning that that those are those

[00:51:40] are different things and um trying to um hire for that and and and and and and and and and and and

[00:51:44] and build culture around that it was probably what’s hard honestly you know it’s just like

[00:51:49] you’re kind of a different uh you know thing than the host organism you know most of the host

[00:51:54] organism is just obsessed with like perception and planning and you know kind of all the core

[00:51:59] autonomy pieces and you’re like if the commercialization people are there it’s like

[00:52:03] well i’m gonna make money with this thing that’s what i think you know it’s that’s an example like

[00:52:07] your overall vision would say waymo is is to build waymo one you know it’s like you gotta

[00:52:13] just be mindful of that and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

[00:52:14] and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and

[00:52:15] mindful that it’s more than just one there’s multiple pillars of that right there’s the

[00:52:18] self-driving piece there’s you know getting a lot of cars at scale financing them operating the

[00:52:24] fleet getting the demand filling the cars with people right and then you know it has to all come

[00:52:30] together right so yeah it’s so interesting that you were uh your your title is lead product for

[00:52:35] commercialization of autonomous autonomous ride hailing at waymo and now come full circle we’re

[00:52:40] at uber it’s that’s going to be in a sense the way that people

[00:52:44] call Waymo. And so it’s so interesting that you’ve seen both sides of this.

[00:52:50] Yeah. Well, we’ll, we’ll see what happens. I think, you know, the, yeah, Uber got out of

[00:52:54] the autonomy business, right. When it divested autonomous technologies group or advanced

[00:52:58] technologies group. And right now, you know, our kind of stated, you know, strategy is to be an

[00:53:04] aggregator, right? So it’s like, we are partnering with Waymo, with Cruise, Motional, others in

[00:53:09] China, et cetera. And then, you know, the idea is to have every vehicle on the platform really,

[00:53:14] right. It’s autonomous or not. And then, yeah, use the power of the platform. We have this big

[00:53:20] demand base. We have a lot of riders. And so I think, you know, what you’re seeing is, you know,

[00:53:26] Waymo and Cruise and others are like, okay, now that we’ve developed autonomy, you know, what’s

[00:53:30] the path like to, you know, profitability for us, right. And so they can go it alone and try to

[00:53:36] build a ride share network. And, you know, Waymo is doing that with Waymo One. And, but, you know,

[00:53:41] it might, it turns out it takes a while, you know, it’s funny, people,

[00:53:44] I feel like engineers too, are always like skeptical of why other people’s engineering

[00:53:49] problems take so much work, right? Like, you know, there’d be engineers at Waymo that would be like,

[00:53:53] why does Uber have so many thousands of engineers? How hard can it be to build a ride share app?

[00:53:58] But, you know, when you look at what made Uber successful, you know, what we’ve been perfecting

[00:54:02] over the last decade, A, the marketplace tech that I alluded to earlier, but also, yeah,

[00:54:07] like how we manage a large rider base and doing rider support and driver support and logistics

[00:54:11] and, you know, all of the, you know, helping finance electricians.

[00:54:14] Vehicles and working with regulators and cities and making sure we have safe and

[00:54:18] accessible pickup points and like stuff on and on and on. Right. And it’s like,

[00:54:22] you know, those are all the, the depth of the iceberg that you don’t really

[00:54:25] realize or think of when you’re like, oh, I can just pull the ride share up. Right.

[00:54:29] You know, Tesla publishes their Figma design and some, you know,

[00:54:33] earnings report and everyone goes crazy. Like, wow. Okay.

[00:54:37] Well, I don’t want to bet against Elon because that sounds scary, but, but there is more to it

[00:54:43] than just the app.

[00:54:44] and the autonomy. So yeah, I think these companies will have an interesting question, right? Like,

[00:54:49] do they go it alone, build their own ride share network to capture all the value? Or do they say,

[00:54:53] well, I could just work with Uber and, you know, you know, have a faster path to, you know,

[00:54:58] high utilization of the vehicles, which unlocks financing and more vehicles and right, like that

[00:55:02] gets them to scale faster. And so, you know, if you look at the landscape right now, it’s a bit

[00:55:07] of both, right? Like Waymo is obviously working with Uber in Phoenix, and we just announced

[00:55:11] cruise will come back to some city next year, I think. And then wait, but Waymo is also still

[00:55:15] building their own thing, right? So they’re kind of hedging their butts at the moment.

[00:55:18] I want to take us to a recurring segment on the podcast that I call contrarian corner. I feel like

[00:55:25] you’re gonna have a good answer here. What’s something that you believe that most other

[00:55:30] people don’t believe? One is back to kind of being aware of your internal state and allowing

[00:55:36] emotions and thoughts is, you know, emotions in the workplace, you know, a lot of people have the

[00:55:41] thing of like, well, there’s, there’s no need for emotion in the workplace, right? We’re going to be

[00:55:45] logical, we’re going to be data driven, you know, like, you know, keep your feelings at home. Just,

[00:55:51] you know, show up and presentation JM mode. And I guess, in my experience, there’s this thing

[00:55:57] around like whole body intelligence, and like, whole body, yes, which is yes, there is signal

[00:56:02] from the head, and logic and data and, you know, left brain reasoning are amazing, and it could be

[00:56:06] great. But there’s also like, like heart and like gut, right? And like, you know, like, you know,

[00:56:11] like, there’s, you know, to me, what is an emotion, it’s just energy moving on the body,

[00:56:16] right? And often, it’s correlated with a thought to as well, like, you know, I might have a thought

[00:56:21] that creates fear and so forth. But like, to me, there’s wisdom and emotion, right? And I can,

[00:56:26] I can start to access, like noticing them more, like, where do I feel sadness in the body,

[00:56:31] like, I noticed, I feel fear, you know, in the kind of center of my chest, and then sadness is

[00:56:36] like a sinking building in my stomach. And I noticed when I’m angry, my jaw gets tight,

[00:56:41] eyes furrow a little bit, right? And so, you know, those are common ones, but you may have

[00:56:45] your own little signatures of like, you pick up, you know, where, where is joy, where is creative

[00:56:49] energy, where is fear or sadness, anger, and then noticing those in a meeting or in a conversation

[00:56:55] or review. And actually, if you’re, if you’re willing, even just voice of other people, that’s

[00:56:59] like the next step, but start with just, you know, acknowledging it to yourself. And so for me,

[00:57:03] the wisdom of emotions is, you know, fear is something wants to be paid attention to,

[00:57:08] right? Like, if there, whether there can be the saber tooth tiger, you know,

[00:57:11] it’s not really Dara disapproving of me, whatever, I shouldn’t be afraid of that.

[00:57:15] But there are times where fear is applicable. There might be fear around, like, you know,

[00:57:19] let’s say back at Waymo, you know, you’re, you want to be really intentional about safety,

[00:57:22] and you want to be super, you know, they’re, that’s one of the things I love about Waymo is

[00:57:25] they’re very committed to having a super strong safety record. And so there might be fear around,

[00:57:30] did we really consider all the edge cases of what might happen if a dog runs in the street or a ball

[00:57:35] or a child or whatever, and you might see, wow, fear, it’s like, great, that’s the wisdom of that

[00:57:40] is something wants to be paid attention to and, and, and listen to, okay, great, right?

[00:57:46] Sadness for me is something wants to be let go of, right? There’s a morning, there’s a letting go of

[00:57:52] like, I had an idea or vision for the future that will no longer be because, you know, whatever,

[00:57:56] something happened, other people don’t want to do it, this or that, but it could be a vision of a

[00:58:01] relationship, it could be a vision of, you know, what you thought your life would look like, you

[00:58:05] know, whatever, we all go through those sorts of things. And there might be micro moments of sadness

[00:58:10] where you’re like, wow, that feature didn’t work. You know, it’s like, I really wanted it to be

[00:58:14] successful. I just let go of that, who opened the sadness, right? Anger to me is something is not of

[00:58:20] service to me, or my people or my mission or whatever I’m up to. And so again, that can be a

[00:58:27] great signal that to like, okay, I’m paying attention to that I want to change. And enjoy is

[00:58:31] like something wants to be celebrated, right? Like, you know, we had a great win, we nailed the OKR,

[00:58:36] we had a great product launch, like, you know, it’s a lot of times we spend too much time moving back

[00:58:40] into the next.

[00:58:40] Okay, let’s set another goal, you know, it’s like, it’s okay to stop and celebrate. And then like

[00:58:45] creative energy is like something wants to be born into the world, right? It’s like what it’s almost

[00:58:49] like, I’m going to birth an idea or vision or yes, a new product thing. And then you know, that, you

[00:58:54] know, just tuning into that. So yeah, I would say welcome emotions, maybe even talk about them,

[00:58:59] God forbid in the workplace, you know, like, imagine it instead of having a OKR review where

[00:59:04] like you’re behind target, and everyone’s like blaming other people. And like, you know, you

[00:59:10] know, if you if someone was just like, wow, I, I noticed that, um, I just feel fear around this. Everyone was like, wow, I feel fear, too, right? Like, I would just totally change the tone of the conversation.

[00:59:20] So the advice here is, bring your emotions into work, like don’t let emotions that can the what most people believe is leave your emotions at home, don’t bring emotions into the workplace. And when you found is they actually can make you more effective, and it makes like your teams more effective. And even talked about it helps you make decisions.

[00:59:40] And more intelligent, right? Because your gut and lizard brain almost tells you things that you should pay attention to.

[00:59:46] Totally.

[00:59:47] I love that. Okay, so I want to close with a question that is rooted in something that you shared with me when we were chatting about this podcast that I think is going to be helpful to a lot of people. What have you found to be keys to a successful, impactful, rich, fun life?

[01:00:04] It’s a great question. And I think lots of people have, you know, different prescriptions for that. And I don’t

[01:00:09] claim to be.

[01:00:10] have, you know, the, the one truth around that. But the first thing I would say as a meta observation

[01:00:17] is, um, you know, I, I spent a lot of time thinking about objective functions, right?

[01:00:21] We designed algorithms to do matching and pricing and think about short-term effects and long-term

[01:00:25] effects. And, and so I really ingrained in this idea of like, we have an objective function for

[01:00:31] our life. And then like, the problem is that a lot of us aren’t conscious of it. It’s just

[01:00:37] kind of like an implied OF that you, you know, inherited values from your church or community

[01:00:42] or what your parents valued or what you kind of learned to be good at. And, you know, I do this

[01:00:46] for work and blah, blah, blah. And I’m just kind of bobbing along. That’s why I love like Ray

[01:00:49] Dalio’s principle thing where it’s like, Hey, write down your values and your principles and

[01:00:54] get clear on what they are. And, uh, and, uh, you know, or like Clinton Christensen wrote a great

[01:00:59] book. He’s less known for, he’s obviously known for innovative dilemma, but he wrote a book called

[01:01:03] how will you measure your life? And he’s like, he was trying to answer this question of like,

[01:01:07] you know, he teaches whatever, you know, MBA students at Harvard. And, uh, he’s like, wow,

[01:01:12] all these executives are super successful. They’re like fortune 500 execs. They’re like,

[01:01:16] you know, most super successful, but they’re all like divorced and their kids hate them and

[01:01:21] their personal life. That’s like very, what’s happening. Right. And so like, uh, you know,

[01:01:27] one of the key insights he comes to is like, it’s Sunday night and you have the choice of,

[01:01:32] you know, uh, playing with your daughter, you know, you’re reading a book or playing a game.

[01:01:37] And, and you have a presentation to Dara, you know, on Monday and he’s like, oh, I could make

[01:01:42] those slides a little bit better. And, you know, I could go practice or, you know, knock out some

[01:01:46] emails or whatever it is. And so the way he basically found was like the type A executive,

[01:01:52] you know, successful people are very short-term OF driven. They’re like, well,

[01:01:56] presentations tomorrow. And that can either go great or okay. Based on Sunday night,

[01:02:01] whereas like my daughter will be here. I’ll play with her next week. You know, and the problem is

[01:02:07] it’s like, okay, you start working every Sunday night and then years and years go by and suddenly

[01:02:11] you don’t have a relationship with your daughter who’s now a teenager. And it’s like, but like,

[01:02:16] I think we’re just not conscious of that. So to me, the first piece of advice would be

[01:02:21] get clear on your objective function. And one way that I’ve gotten clear on is like trying to think

[01:02:27] about it for the future of me. Right. Cause like five years from now, I’m not going to give a shit

[01:02:31] if I made the presentation slightly better, but I’m going to care a lot about what kind of

[01:02:35] relationship I have with my daughters.

[01:02:37] And like, that means that the next action, the next thing I do today and tomorrow,

[01:02:43] those will translate into the relationship with her. Right. Like that. And I think a lot of us

[01:02:47] aren’t, you know, just tuned into that. You know, I love the stoic stuff, you know, uh, you know,

[01:02:51] being mindful of death, you know, Seneca, Marcus Julius, all those great ones, not to be like

[01:02:56] morbid, but just like, again, most of us just aren’t really tuned into an awareness that our

[01:03:02] lives will come to an end. And we’ve kind of avoid that. Right. And we, we try to pretend,

[01:03:07] like we’re going to live forever and just not think about it. And the horror of it is that we

[01:03:11] succeed, right. We mostly manage to just go live our life and eat ice cream and go to work and go

[01:03:18] on vacation and do what we do. And, and that can lead us to doing things that ultimately don’t

[01:03:24] matter in the long run. Right. And like, you know, focusing on the wrong things. And so to me,

[01:03:29] it’s like, you know, an awareness and mindfulness that our lives will come to an end, um, punctuates

[01:03:34] reality in a way that, you know, requires me to, you know, I’m going to live forever and just not

[01:03:37] to rethink my priorities, you know, stop wasting time on things that don’t matter with people who

[01:03:44] matter, you know, like this relationship, this, this, this journey, it, it will come to an end.

[01:03:51] You know, I’m actually just tearing up and feeling tingly just saying that it’s like,

[01:03:54] even right now, come back to it. How am I going to spend my afternoon?

[01:04:01] Am I going to hug my daughters? Am I going to spend time with them after work? Or am I going

[01:04:04] to do email all night?

[01:04:07] What would I wish I had done when I’m in my last breath?

[01:04:17] There’s a, there’s a quote that I heard once that really stuck with me that I think is going to hit

[01:04:23] a lot of people really hard, which is the, the only people that’ll remember you working late

[01:04:28] every night is your kids. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:04:35] Yeah.

[01:04:35] An important reminder. Um, jam, we’ve covered a lot of stuff.

[01:04:44] Is there anything else that you think might be helpful for people that you want to leave

[01:04:49] listeners with? We just, uh, or we’re going to have a lightning round coming up, but before we

[01:04:54] get that, we ended on a really powerful, impactful note. Is there anything else along these lines

[01:04:58] that you think might be helpful for people that you want to leave them with?

[01:05:01] The one thing I’d encourage folks to do out of all of these we talked about

[01:05:05] is to, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh.

[01:05:05] To see if you’d be willing to commit to breaking out of victim consciousness and mentality.

[01:05:12] Right. And it’s not to say there aren’t victims of the world. There are real justices and things

[01:05:16] happening, but most of us, uh, you know, I’ve experienced, you know, I, I often can fall into

[01:05:21] a trap of living my life at the effect of right. I’m at the effect of other people and what they

[01:05:27] do. I’m at the effect of circumstances like COVID or Trump or whatever. I’m at the effect of,

[01:05:32] you know, the conditions and circumstances of life.

[01:05:35] And I feel like like is happening to me. Right. And so to me, the most empowering and radical

[01:05:42] kind of transformation that I’ve been able to cultivate and develop is shifting from that to

[01:05:46] a state of, I am willing to take responsibility for how I see the world. And I may not be able

[01:05:52] to change the weather or the election or all that, but I can change how I’m being in relationship to

[01:05:56] it and choose to see it as a growth opportunity of learning. How am I co-creating it? Even things

[01:06:02] that I play a small part in and justice in the world, how am I perpetuating that and being willing

[01:06:07] to, to see the world as, uh, you know, I am the painter of my existence, right? Like I think,

[01:06:12] you know, uh, Viktor Frankl’s man search for meaning is probably the best example of that.

[01:06:16] Like he’s in a super oppressive, you know, situation that is very horrific and tragic

[01:06:21] and the way he described his relationship with the people in the camp and the guards. And,

[01:06:25] and he has given, he had talked after he was freed and the amount of compassion and empathy

[01:06:30] he had for his oppressors.

[01:06:32] It was like, just like amazing. So I’m like, well, if he can do that in the face of those

[01:06:36] conditions, I can show up differently in a, in a product review or in, you know, in a conversation

[01:06:43] with my partner meeting or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. I think just that skill alone is such a

[01:06:48] powerful unlock for a lot of people instead of here’s all the things that I don’t have.

[01:06:54] And here’s all the things that are setting you back and all the things that are hard for me

[01:06:57] versus other people shifting to here’s like, I need to take responsibility for my own

[01:07:02] success and no one else will. And just taking agency is, is a really powerful thing. It’s

[01:07:08] a hard, easier said than done. You know, there’s a lot of hardships. People have a lot of things

[01:07:12] that they don’t have that other people have that are hurting their career and hurting their ability

[01:07:16] to be successful. But still the more you can take responsibility and have agency and the less you

[01:07:23] have this victim mentality, I 1000% agree. There’s so much power there. So that’s an awesome

[01:07:28] lesson to end on with that. We’ve reached our very exciting lightning round.

[01:07:32] Jam. Are you ready? I’m ready. Let’s do it. Okay. First question. What are two or three

[01:07:37] books that you’ve recommended most to other people? Uh, in the realm of the soft skills

[01:07:42] and conscious leadership? Um, uh, the, the best one is, uh, the 15 commitments of conscious

[01:07:47] leadership by, uh, Diana Chapman and Jim Duffer. And those were my kind of early coaches and

[01:07:53] teachers, um, you know, almost 10 years ago. Uh, and I still, Diana is still my coach. Um, so I

[01:07:58] think that’s a fantastic book that we’ll go into more detail about some of the things we talked

[01:08:02] about.

[01:08:02] You know, fear and threat versus trust and drama triangle and all that great stuff. Um, that’d be

[01:08:07] one that definitely recommend first. Another one at more in the content world is, um, I think you

[01:08:13] had Nancy Dwart on your podcast at one point, but I love her book resonate. I know she has some

[01:08:20] other ones too on slide design and stuff, but like, what was so cool about that? I give it to

[01:08:24] PMs all the time when I’m trying to help them develop their communication, storytelling and

[01:08:27] presentation skills. You know, and she goes, uh, through like those Ted talks and Martin Luther

[01:08:32] King.

[01:08:32] I have a dream and go to the moon and basically, you know, make the spark line against it to

[01:08:38] understand, you know, this constant resonance with the audience. Right. And it’s actually a

[01:08:42] great skill for like, uh, you know, uh, back to vision and North starring, you know, she said,

[01:08:47] what all these things do is right. They alternate tension between the world as it is and the world

[01:08:51] as it might be. And it’s like, you know, here’s that beautiful future of transportation, San

[01:08:56] Francisco, blah, blah, blah. And then, but here’s why it sucks today. Like all these problems,

[01:09:02] and this and that, but here’s how I could look in a few years. And then, you know, you’re creating

[01:09:06] that tension. The audience at the end is like sweaty palms. And like, I want to help build that

[01:09:10] future. You know, what do you need? You need money, time, resources, join your company. Like

[01:09:15] great. You know? So anyway, resonate Nancy Duarte, great book. Those would be some of the top two

[01:09:21] that I recommend. There’s not one specific book, but I really love Alan Watts’s books. If you’re

[01:09:26] into like, you know, uh, he was one of the first people to articulate and, and kind of import,

[01:09:32] uh, Buddhism and that sort of, uh, Eastern thinking into, into the West. And, uh, he just

[01:09:37] has a very satirical, comical sort of not taking myself too seriously style. And it’s like the way

[01:09:42] he explains a lot of those concepts. So, um, that’d be another one. He also has an amazing

[01:09:47] voice. If you listen to recordings of him with music, it’s just, just so fun. Totally. Totally.

[01:09:52] Actually, Sam Harris is waking up at, you know, that now has the entire, he worked with, I think,

[01:09:56] Alan Watts’s son. So the waking up out has all like 80 or a hundred hours of

[01:10:01] recorded lectures. Oh my God. There’s YouTube videos. There’s some awesome YouTube videos of

[01:10:07] him that, uh, or with watching, we’ll link to some of those. And then Nancy Duarte, she shared

[01:10:11] exactly that lesson on the podcast that she had that we had together. So if you don’t want to read

[01:10:16] the book and listen to her, give this tactic of this way to communicate a vision, uh, you can

[01:10:21] listen to that episode. We’ll link to it. Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie

[01:10:25] or TV show you have really enjoyed? Yeah. Um, the last movie I really,

[01:10:31] really enjoyed was inside out to my kids, which is very good to see why you’d love that. Yes. Uh,

[01:10:36] consistent with the emotional awareness and, uh, allowing the different emotional parts and, uh,

[01:10:41] don’t want to spoil the movie maker. No one hasn’t seen it, but, uh, it’s a very simpatico with that

[01:10:46] lesson of like, you can’t just let one emotion run the show. They all have wisdom, you know,

[01:10:50] the first one, right? Sadness, joy, learning that sadness is necessary. Right. Um, it’s all

[01:10:56] about integration and kind of, you know, but it was beautiful the way kids can understand it. And

[01:11:00] it’s like, it’s a way to teach them.

[01:11:01] Emotional literacy to your kids. I think what they’ve done there with those inside out movies

[01:11:04] is just like brilliant. Do you have a favorite product you’ve recently discovered that you

[01:11:08] really love? It could be an app. It could be some physical. Yeah. So eight sleep, you know,

[01:11:12] as a smart mattress company, they’re on their third or fourth route now, but it has like a,

[01:11:16] it’s like a Tempur-Pedic mattress where you can put their cover on any mattress, but it has a

[01:11:19] cover that has little like tubes of water. And then it has like a little computer thing and you

[01:11:24] fill with water and then an app. And basically what you do is you program it and it learns,

[01:11:28] it has sensors. It can measure your heart rate, your HRV,

[01:11:31] body temperature, all that. And it, you’re basically trying to program a temperature curve

[01:11:35] to help you maximize your kind of REM sleep and deep sleep and get more value out of the sleep

[01:11:40] that you do have. And so for me, it’s like, you know, super cool early for deep sleep.

[01:11:44] And then it warms you up as you want to wake up, which is like, you know,

[01:11:46] or the alarm and all that. Um, but, but it’s, uh, you know, back to my thing about like wanting to,

[01:11:52] you know, show up with the, you know, the right mindset and energy and aliveness,

[01:11:56] uh, having really high quality sleep is a really key part of that is like, if I don’t sleep well,

[01:12:01] uh, you know, they didn’t get enough sleep or didn’t sleep well, like you’re already starting

[01:12:04] off a bad foot. So yeah, if you haven’t checked out eat sleep, great product, no, no endorsement

[01:12:09] fee for me. Uh, and what’s, what’s also cool about it is it tracks your sleep. It gives you

[01:12:14] all these stats, like instead of wearing a ring and it gives you all the stats about your sleep

[01:12:17] quality. And, uh, there’s a guy, Brian Johnson. I don’t know if you follow him. He’s like this

[01:12:22] help that get this guy that’s trying to stay alive as long as possible. And he,

[01:12:26] he had a perfect sleep score for six months in a row. He set the record. Yeah.

[01:12:31] He’s a, he knows what he’s doing over there. Okay. Uh, two more questions. Do you have a

[01:12:35] favorite life motto that you often come back to think of find useful in work or in life?

[01:12:42] Yeah, I probably, uh, I’ve had different ones over the years. The one right now that really

[01:12:46] serves me as, um, there’s, uh, there’s this, uh, uh, track track called sit around the fire.

[01:12:53] Uh, if you, uh, John Hopkins, but, but it’s, um, uh, it’s on Spotify, Apple music, but it’s

[01:12:58] basically music with, uh, one of Ram Dass’s talks, lesser known talks. And so the mantra

[01:13:04] that’s been really serving me recently is the very first part of that, which is, uh, he says

[01:13:08] beyond all polarities, I am let the judgments and opinions of the mind

[01:13:17] be the judgments and opinions of the mind. And you exist behind that. Awesome.

[01:13:26] Awesome.

[01:13:28] So sometimes I have a abbreviated version of that where I’m noticing I’m activated. I’m

[01:13:33] clinging to an opinion. I’m arguing with somebody and they’re like, I’m just like

[01:13:37] beyond all polarities.

[01:13:43] Abbreviated version.

[01:13:44] I’m really in front of my kids and they walk me. Daddy is so weird sometimes.

[01:13:50] Beyond all polarities, kids.

[01:13:52] It’s so funny. Oh man. I, there’s another Ram Dass, uh, line that I often use with my wife,

[01:13:58] be her.

[01:13:58] Now, which is the title of his book that everyone sees with the blue cover. And I do that when she’s

[01:14:03] like on her phone and we’re doing some, I’m like, be here now. And she’s like, okay, okay. I’ll put

[01:14:07] my phone away. Yeah. Yeah. Final question. I was going to ask you about the line tracking and what

[01:14:13] you learned from that. And you already shared an awesome lesson from that time. So let me ask you

[01:14:17] something else. I’ll ask you about Travis, any crazy, fun, memorable stories of working with

[01:14:22] Travis. Call Kalanick, however you say his last name Kalanick Kalanick. Travis Kalanick. Yeah.

[01:14:28] Yeah. I’ll share a quick one. That’s a short, but, but sweet, uh, or hilarious to make maybe

[01:14:34] less renowned. Um, so what we were, we used to have the Uber office at 1455 market, right? And

[01:14:39] so there was a one conference room where we’d often do reviews with Travis and it wasn’t the

[01:14:43] war room, whatever. I don’t know why it was taken on those interior and no windows. But so this room

[01:14:48] had windows overlooking, uh, what was that? 11th street, right? So kind of 11th and market. And so

[01:14:54] we’d have like a presentation up on the projector, you know, some big screen or us to go through some

[01:14:58] Travis. And reliably every time he’d come in, he would close the blinds of the windows and

[01:15:05] like, Travis, we doing like, it’s not because there was glare, like they were fogging up to

[01:15:09] the screen. And then one time I was like, why are you doing that? He’s like, I’m pretty sure

[01:15:13] Lyft has drones outside the windows of our office. And they’re spying on our presentation.

[01:15:19] Oh my God. Whoa. Your parent, your competitor paranoia runs deep, man. Okay.

[01:15:28] Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it’s hard to mention the Lyft doing that. I could see Uber doing that to Lyft.

[01:15:36] Old Uber, Uber 1.0.

[01:15:38] Old Uber. Yeah. Wow. That’s amazing. It’s like coaches and, you know, the NFL that are covering

[01:15:43] their lips always when they’re telling and giving plays, just like, I wonder if people actually do

[01:15:47] that. That’s amazing. Like, yeah, I get that. You know, it’s like high stakes. You never know.

[01:15:52] Might be a drone out there. Great. Amazing. Jam. What a rollercoaster of a conversation.

[01:15:57] We covered so much.

[01:15:58] I can’t even name all the things we covered. So let me just ask you two final questions.

[01:16:04] Where can folks find you online and reach out if they want to work with you? I know you work

[01:16:08] with folks. Talk about that. And then finally, how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah. Yeah. So

[01:16:14] I am occasionally on Twitter at Nichols JM, but I don’t tweet a lot, but maybe I should start.

[01:16:22] But the best way to find more about my kind of thoughts and, you know, thinking on the soft skill

[01:16:28] is I have a website called rhythmofbeing.com. And, you know, I’ve got some blog posts up there

[01:16:35] that go into detail on some of these things. And yeah, I do a little bit of coaching on the side

[01:16:38] with folks. I do very little now. My day job at Uber and my night job with my kids takes up most

[01:16:43] of my waking hours. But, you know, for the right person and a few select spots, I can make time.

[01:16:50] But yeah, that’s that’s the best place to find to find me is rhythmofbeing.com.

[01:16:55] And then how can listeners be useful to you?

[01:16:57] Well,

[01:16:58] in the spirit of welcoming and embracing feedback, you could most be useful by,

[01:17:04] you know, yeah, reaching out, telling me what resonated, what didn’t, what was useful. Where

[01:17:10] did your energy go up when I talked? And where did your energy go down? Because that to me is

[01:17:16] a signal of where I’m, you know, back to tracking the life, right? Where, where, where’s the juice?

[01:17:22] And then that way in the future, when I do other versions of this or other conversations,

[01:17:26] I’ll, I’ll,

[01:17:28] I’ll pay more attention to the energy up stuff and kind of go more there. And the energy down

[01:17:32] was like, okay, maybe that wasn’t as interesting. It didn’t resonate. Right. No problem.

[01:17:35] Jam. Thank you so much for being here.

[01:17:37] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[01:17:39] Bye everyone.

[01:17:42] Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show

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[01:17:58] More about the show at Lenny’s podcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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