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)

0:00 Get clear on your objective function. And one way th that I've gotten clear on is like trying to think about it from future me'cause like Five years from now, I'm not gonna give a shit if I made the presentation slightly better. I'm gonna care a lot about what kind of relationship I have with my daughters. And like that means that the the next action, the next thing I do today and tomorrow.

0:19 those will translate into the relationship with her, right? Not to be like morbid, but just again, most of us just aren't really tuned into an awareness that our lives will come to an end. We try to pretend like we're gonna live forever and just not think about it. And the horror of it is that we succeed, right? We mostly manage to just Go live our life and eat ice cream and go to work and go on vacation and do what we do, to me an awareness and mindfulness that our lives will come to an end punctuates reality in a way that requires me to

0:49 Rethink. My priorities. Today my guest is J M Nichols. JM has been a product leader at Waymo, DoorDash and Uber.

1:02 He was also an engineering manager at Groupon, and before that an equity trader at GetGo. At Uber, he built and launched the very first version of Uber Pool. and then went on to lead the team responsible for the infrastructure and algorithms powering the economic and logistics brain behind Uber's matching and pricing systems. At DoorDash, he was head of product for DoorDash Platform, At Wamo, he led product for the commercialization of autonomous ride hailing and last mile delivery. And he recently returned to Uber to lead product for the mobility team.

1:30 This conversation is a unique and beautiful mixture of hard skills, soft skills. Tactics and emotions. I won't give away too much about the conversation, but this is a powerful one. Tears are shed, stories are shared. And I am confident you'll become a better leader and human, having listened to Jam's insights and lessons.

1:50 If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it on your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that I bring you JM Nichols. Jam, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Lenny. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

2:12 really appreciate your dedication to helping product managers kind of like improve their craft and up level. There's not a lot of great resources out there for that. And coaching and development, as I'm sure we'll get into, is a a passion of mine as well. So we have a lot of shared interests there. Oh, I really appreciate that. I wanna start with

2:29 A phrase that Came up. Again and again when I asked people. What to talk to you about from your colleagues? And this phrase is

2:37 Conscious leadership. What is conscious leadership? What does this phrase mean? To me, leadership is uh broadly defined as having influence in the world. And so by that definition, to me

2:49 Everyone. is a leader, right? Because we all have influence in some way. You know, it's not about whether you're a manager or not. It's like I have influence on my kids or my partner or my community. Right, the world, the way I vote, the way I show up. Right. So we all have influence. We're all co creating.

3:06 you know, uh kind of uh influences of each other. So That's the leadership piece. So just like The the conscious piece then is becoming more aware, waking up, right? To me it's like Learning more about my interior world. You know, what um

3:20 you know, my background is my biases, you know, we all inherit sort of kind of certain belief systems from our parents or our church or community. And a lot of times they kinda go unfunded and then they end up in conflict and So it's really just about um becoming more aware and then taking responsibility. Or the influence that I have. So yeah, taking responsibility.

3:39 For my influence in the world. As you talk about this, something that came up and something that I thought about as I was preparing for this episode is this idea of Soft leadership, the power of soft skills, and just how important that is. In success. Is there something there that comes up when I say that? There's the power of soft skills and the importance of those in being successful.

3:59 Yeah, yeah. It's uh but what is it Theodore Roosevelt speak softly and carry a big stick. Yeah. Yeah, I think I've evolved in that department. I think when I was younger in my career, I thought it was really important that

4:12 You know, we gotta show up to the meeting and have the right slides and be the Loudest, rightest voice in the room and you know, that's sort of the way the way to have influence and uh You know, there's certainly a place for, you know, having leadership in a meeting and presenting a point of view and hoping guide the narrative, but

4:27 To me it's uh yeah, I I would say I've evolved more towards Sitting back. It's also as I've become a more senior leader, I'm aware that There's there are power dynamics there. There's imbalances, right, where junior folks don't feel as comfortable speaking up or I say something's not a good idea and then we're well, I'm gonna disagree with JMs, you know, so it's like

4:46 back to being more aware of my influence in the world. Like I really try to spend more time being mindful of that and say you know, I want to hear from other people first. I want to create space. And like I don't need to win. the argument in the meeting, right? Like I there can be a follow up. Right. There's it's not like

5:01 Yeah, but my last chance to say something. But that's also more true when you're more senior, right? Because when you're more junior, it's like, Well, this is the one presentation I have with Dara for the next six months, right? Really gotta nail it. And so the pressure is a little bit different. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Pendo, the only all-in-one product experience platform for any type of application. Tired of bouncing around multiple tools to uncover what's really happening inside your product? With all the tools you need in one simple to use platform, Pendo makes it easy to answer critical questions about how users are engaging with your product, and then turn those insights into action.

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7:35 There's a couple of threads I want to follow here, but first I'm I was thinking as you're talking. When people think uh Uber And people that work at Uber, I don't think they imagine people like you. Yeah.

7:47 And I know you were there early and then you joined again. Is that was that ever like a would him Is this a place for me? Did you ever go through that struggle, or is it just Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I would say I have been fortunate to experience probably free Ubers at this point. You know, we joke about Uber one point oh, the Travis era and You hear a lot about you know in the media, the kind of bad parts of that, but there were some really good parts too. I mean, I think, you know, there was a lot of Like

8:10 When I joined in twenty fourteen You know, the there's this mission of making transportation as reliable as running water. For anyone anywhere. Which is, you know, bold, audacious, and maybe even a little bit um pretentious from a little bit of Silicon Valley, uh

8:22 Edge, but uh But but you could feel the electricity in the air. There was this like energy and this excitement like we're doing something transformational, like economy's coming, you know, car ownership will change. And it just like it just it's um feel like my vibration, you know. And then yeah, I think the good parts of that era were like, you know, Travis was a very great visionary product leader. And we started ATG and Elevate and sort of these sort of feature forward things and Yeah, the way he would conduct product reviews, I learned a lot, but he

8:50 Yeah, it was stressful. At the time, but like looking back I was like wow, I learned a lot. But yeah, I would say it was not a very conscious leadership sort of place. You're right. It was a it was like organizations that run on fear because that, you know, courage and sticks do work. But actually that's kinda how I found this work is it was like in twenty fifteen. And I was a

9:10 Very junior product manager at that point. you know, kinda in over my head in a fast growing place and In these weekly reviews, Travis uh as we were building out Uberpool. And uh I had a six month old daughter, my first born, and a

9:23 We had just moved to San Francisco from Chicago. So my whole life was kind of in flux and it was yeah, very stressful. place and I was like, I I think I'm gonna snap. I don't think I can handle this. And that's kind of what led me to start to Explore the sort of inner work and Yeah, meditation and sort of

9:38 Like finding a way out of that. 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, driver pricing and incentives and How we up bring certain pricing and all that together and like it's very You know I'll go heavy

9:55 And and and we have all these PhDs in the room, right? Some of the best minds in the world. You know, we we were able to hire You know, people like Garrett Van Ryzen who like this you know the Or most or a person, right? From Columbia and other people. But everyone's like uh back to Livingbrain. Everyone's like arguing. They're like, Well no, I think we should do it this way. We should do it this way. And I was like

10:13 Huh. It's like as much as I enjoy the content of this, like believe me, I'm an Algo PM In the end, I love that stuff. But I've like I don't think this conversation actually needs Another like uh you know, PhD or I'm not even PhD, but content expert, right? It's like what we need here is a way to like

10:31 You know, like ship again back, you know, out of that fear threat. uh righteousness sort of state into a more co creative, collaborative, open minded, curious Trusting sort of space. And that what that got me interested in kind of pr you know, pursuing more skills and coaching Uh of individuals and teams. So

10:49 But yeah, to your Uber question, yeah, the Uber one point oh was crazy. Where two point oh was kinda like You know, Travis is out, the board is You know, kind of the peacemaker and

11:02 And then try sustain wise, but the IPO is rocky and And so now I would say we're in Uber three point oh, which You know it's Full pirate ship to Navy, in V. Hoffman's words. uh you know, profitable company. We're printing

11:15 free cash flow or in this and be five hundred, right? Like You know, we've we've we've kind of established um independent contractor model, right, in a lot of states and jurisdictions and uh You know, it's like there's less kind of you know. risk of that model changing and

11:28 And and yeah, we're I would say we're in a area uh an era now of Cambrian explosion of different types of transportation. You know, the company kinda really just built the Uber X model and scaled it out to the world. That's

11:40 Primarily how we got here. And now it's like, you know, we're going out for 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, right? Like it's it's not just contractors, right? We have a lot of fleets on the platform.

11:56 We got a lot of taxi drivers in the platform. We've seen we've signed deals with Waymo and Cruz and other autonomous players. So Like I feel like we're now at the beginning of a another era of Uber, right? And transportation that you know, the next decade or two. It's gonna be like super exciting. One quick tangent, Uber X, a previous guest shared that the name Uber X came from it was just like the internal code name.

12:17 Uber because it will figure out a real name later and then it just it it stopped. And no one had a better name. Is that true? Yeah, that's right. That's right. When I joined, we were already scaling Uber X rapidly. I joined in early twenty fourteen. But I did uh help name Uberpool Uberpool, which I I what I selfishly like to bring back uh Uh it got renamed to share uh during my uh external APM rotation. Okay. I want to come back to the kind of the thread that we that I've pushed us off of.

12:45 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 previous guests.

12:57 So you say that when you have So we're in this meeting, you're stressed, there's a lizard bane kicking in, something's like, Oh, Dara's gonna think I suck and it's gonna really screw my career if I mess up this presentation. Your advice there is very counterintuitive, I think, for a lot of people, which is accept. That emotion.

13:12 Because When I feel like stressed and nervous in a meeting, I'm not embrace the nervousness, let it out. It's more I'm just like No, it's fine. Gonna be okay. Don't worry about it. Talk about why that is actually more effective.

13:28 Yeah, yeah. 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 and I was like I said I said you can't. Don't try to stop the thought. Just allow it. You know, I think show you why it doesn't work. I said Don't think of a pink elephant.

13:49 What did you just think of? A big elephant! And then now I think it's a Larry to tell you just don't think of the pink elves. But yeah, I think you're right. It is a little counterintuitive, but like one of my first coaches actually had a great phrase, uh

14:01 What you resist will persist. And what you fear will appear. And so in my experience This is why another reason why becoming more aware of my internal world is so uh been so important. I have more agency than I realize on the output of my experience.

14:16 Right. And so when I think a thought like Dar might think I suck, and then I have a thought that I suck. That can become a self enforcing negative feedback loop. Where I have a thought. That creates stress, anxiety, fear.

14:30 And then that triggers more thoughts. And we call it a 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. And so One way to break that, yeah.

14:44 Just Allow it. And not try to Fight it with other thoughts. Mm.

14:50 So the advice is Like very tactically. It's you're in a meeting with Dara, you're stressed about something, just Allow it. Let it be. Don't try to pr pretend like it's not there or don't try to convince you. Well that would be the first step is just to allow whatever fear, thoughts, and emotions are arising. It's uh you know, they come and they go, uh they're transient. It's not permanent, right? It's um

15:10 There's a lot of wisdom, I think, in the Buddhist lineage around those those concepts. And then uh the next piece for me, once I can take a breath and uh relax a little bit, is Coming home to the fact that I Uh, this is a little more radical for some people. I don't actually need Dara to approve of me. in my presentation in order to be okay.

15:29 Right. Like what I'm up to over here. Is trying to s Force. Um self worth and self love. From within.

15:37 And so, you know, we talk about like approval, control, and security. It's very easy. for that from the world. Right, do you approve of me? And if not, can I control outcomes to get approval or get security and get you know, the job, the bank account, the house, whatever it is.

15:52 But what I kind of uh woke up to at one point was that as long as I was going out there looking for all that stuff. to try to complete something inside of me that was missing. It was like I was like a hungry ghost. It's like it doesn't matter how many This one star meals and promotions and money and title and whatever.

16:09 Right. It's like it's never enough. It's like you kind of enjoy it for a little bit. And then you get back to like Yeah. You know? So

16:15 It's it's like a never ending like sugar addiction. And so that's kinda the next step for me is like Allow it. Yes, allow the emotional allow the thought. Come home to I I am okay, even if Darth does think I suck. And then also uh

16:32 It's not You know, it's not Permanent, right? Like I mean, it's like sure, there might be some high stakes things in life where you only get one shot, but the most part it's like you know, if I screw it if I didn't do a great job in this presentation. You know, we'll be another one. Right? Like

16:44 Okay. You know, it's and think of his practice. The other thing is like from the fear Threat state, I'm like Uh oh, this is a risk. Alarm bells, right? You know, like my career could be over. Whereas if I'm in that trusting, curious open space

16:57 It's like This is an opportunity for feedback. You know, how can I learn? How can I get to become a better presenter? You know, it's like the feedback. uh from others it's no longer a threat. It's actually a gift.

17:10 It's like, you know, I it's like uh you know, information, right, uh that I can use or not use. to uh you know alter how I show up in the future and the sculpted development and all that good stuff. I imagine some people may hear this and feel like if Dara Or Travis Harvers like thinks I suck. My career is at stake and that really matters and everything's gonna fall apart in my life because I get fired.

17:33 You know, there's like stakes involved messing up. Is there anything that helped you get past that? And not worry so much about just like this trickle effect of all the things that could go wrong if you mess something up in an important high stakes meeting a presentation.

17:46 Yeah, again and maybe it is a little paradoxical, but what I found was um The more I focused on uh yeah, the how I show up and optics and having a good deck and all this. The less I got promoted. And then the more I dropped focusing all that. Because like for my first few years of Uber, I was like, Hey, I was a senior PM and then I finally got my group and started kind of you know, moving through the the product ladder.

18:08 And it was really like correlated to me at least, uh, maybe causal with um Yeah, dropping a lot of the focus on the on the presentation and how I show up and whether you know, people like this or not, but and just really focusing on the work.

18:22 It's like you know what? I am here to be a conduit. to from what wants to happen in the world. of transportation and mobility and shared rides is like one that I Oh, the trippy pressure and Basa that's a good example.

18:35 And then How can I kind of, you know Uh get present and listen to like what wants to happen next in the world of shared rods, right? And there's lots of different ways we can take the product and all that.

18:45 And it's just it's really about I wanna make Fucking awesome. Product. Right.

18:50 It's like Whether people like me or think I'm a good piano presenter. As long as I manifest you know, a great product into the world that makes

19:00 Rider's better off, drivers better off, city's better off, less congestion, all these things. Like that to me is the reward. And sure, in order to manifest that, it is often helpful to communicate things, present, align, all those sort of things, but Those are a means to a more powerful and transformative end than just my career.

19:18 I'm tapping into a larger purpose. And sense of belonging and identity and sort of meaning. And from that place It's like I I'm just I'd I've just dropped the kind of egoic, self centered focus on You know, whether I did good in the presentation or not. And then

19:34 Yeah. Maybe paradoxically by doing that It actually goes better. And and we do great work and it gets recognized. Wow, that is fascinating. To make that work, you need to really connect it with the mission of the company you're working at. Like you really need to believe this is very important and very meaningful.

19:50 So maybe that could be an issue for people if they don't really care about what the company's doing, it's gonna be hard to Allow for that approach. Oh wait. Oh. It's interesting that you say that optics aren't uh

20:04 as important. I think the reason I I think about this is you talk about a lot of people Feel like There's the work and then there's like Talking about the work, making the work, like the optics of what you did. is really, really important.

20:14 And I love to hear like nobody wants to do that. But they always get this advice. So important. Optics, how you share the impact you've done, how you represent yourself. I guess is there anything else he can share there about just helping people relax about that aspect of

20:29 their job and that being so critical. Yeah, and 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? Like there does need to be a balance there. And I think it does change, you know, depending on the size of the company and the level of seniority. Right, when you're an I C you're probably hopefully getting more actual work.

20:49 And uh, you know, uh leaders are supporting them and presenting and communicating that work so that They get. I mean the optics d does matter, right? Like at some senior level you do spend more time on that. And it does have inputs, back to the inputs piece, right? Which is like, you know, the how will I communicate an idea and the need for engineering resourcing and so forth.

21:09 might mean that team gets more engineers or does it get more engineers or we do this project or we don't, right? Because at the end of the day executive kind of resource allocation is largely based on the quote unquote optics layer. So it does matter. I wanna be clear. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. But to me again it's more about that's a means to an end. It's not about the optic itself.

21:28 It's like don't it's like the what the Buddha say, don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon. And the finger pointing at the moon could be the presentation, the OKR, you know, whatever. And it's like that's not the actual outcome we care about, right? Like that's an input to the output that really matters. Which is the work, the product. Okay. I'm gonna shift this to

21:49 Hard skills and another kind of direction. So another thing that came up a bunch when I was asking people what you're amazing at and what you're really good at w Uh is uh Strategy and vision. I have this quote from one of your colleagues, Brent Goldman.

22:04 Jam thinks big has lots of great ideas, will yes and to other people's ideas will inspire everyone around him to be more creative. Ambitious and hard working. He doesn't climb hills, he finds bigger mountains and will bring you there. So along these lines, say someone comes to you and wants to build these skills, wants to get better at strategy, wants to get better at vision.

22:25 Which is something basically every product leader is trying to get better at and every leader wants to get better at. What advice do you generally share? How does one improve in these areas. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the compliment. Thank you, Brent. That is a great quote. Wow. Um Yeah, I mean uh

22:42 There's no like magic tool kit or manual, you know. I I've 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. And uh there's obviously lots of books about strategy and You know, we get into all that. I guess for me, uh

23:01 A couple of things have been helpful. Um, one is uh you mentioned earlier finding a mission that you're really passionate about. Like I think it would be hard for me to come up with a strategy for improving the healthcare system. Like it's like I bet sure, it's important. I hope someone does it. and figures out how to deal with HIPAA and whatever, all the stuff, but It's like it's just not for me. It's not my purpose, mission, and vision in life.

23:24 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,'cause for me, that is the fuel and the motivation that helps me break through to getting the strategy. That's like the the first step. So That's where I feel enormously lucky'cause again, like this

23:41 you know, revolutionizing transportation and car ownership and what happens with economy and for factors in future cities. is something that I'm super excited about. I think about My daughter's growing up and having a you know, a different world to live in that's safer and more environmentally friendly, all this stuff, right? And like I get really jazzed when I think about

23:59 Wow, the work I do could actually impact their future lives and other people. It's like, whoa, I can feel the chills right now. It's just like super motivating. So That's the first place just getting myself in fire now. Then the next thing I guess that's been helpful is you know, I've deeply immersed myself. You know, I have it's also, you know, I haven't really

24:16 Jumped around between You know, crypto and gen AI of this stuff. And a lot of people do that. It's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you know, I've been in this, you know, um uh largely focused on uh mobility. you know, space for for ten years now. With some stensa over in the

24:31 restaurant tech and delivery side, but but very related in terms of last mile logistics. And so, you know, I think it's hard to come up with a great strategy if you've only been working in a area for like six months. It's like It's like especially things like this, which are nuanced. Like shared rides isn't a good example where it's a Super hard problem to crack and like

24:49 You know, it's like going deep on that for a long time is uh is a precursor to being successful. The other thing I would say though is like you know people always talk about first principle thinking, but Uh if there's truth in it, I think, you know, that's like You know, with and like with Ewan's like, Well why what does the rocket cost

25:05 you know, gazillion dollars to launch and you know, like there's no reason they have to throw away the materials and you know, it's all blah blah. You know, one example might be Why do we need a four thousand pound vehicle? To move a human three miles. Okay. Well um

25:23 Or even a couple humans, right? We do a lobber pool or a share, right? And you move two humans or pre humans, even then, like that's Pretty inefficient, right? Like you think about like the Just the physics there, like the energy expenditure, right? It's like and that's where I think, you know, you might come up with bikes and scooters and little other things, right? And and sure it's not always it's raining maybe you want the car, but That's sort of an example of why questioning

25:43 Like Why Are things the way they are? And then Or is the way they are like super inefficient or like not Optimal.

25:51 From in some sense, right? And that is often a doorway to opportunity, right, to see, okay, well, maybe things should be different. And so I can extend that. you know, at a larger level to the future, you know, my my general thing is just like yeah, the the mountain thing is like I I try to like

26:05 Close my eyes. And imagine the future. As far out as I can. Yeah, it's like five years from now, ten years from now, whatever. And it's like develop a really

26:15 Salient. picture of what that looks like. You know, it's like It's like okay, so we can do this right now, it's okay. You know. Ten years from now, what could San Francisco look like?

26:23 Yeah, or some city for the hit. Wha what happens to the parking spaces? Are there still parking garages? Are those parks? Now Um Yeah, what are the modes of transport? Are there are there like bus flight things that are autonomous that are connecting people to bikes and scooters and You know, how are people

26:37 living 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 actually? Unpack things, blah, blah. Yeah, it's not even about having the right one, it's more just like

26:51 kind of developing some sort of you know, picture of the future. That Gets you fired up. Right. And then

26:58 Yeah. You gotta go like, you know, articulate that and communicate it and get people to Come on the journey with you. But like from that picture it's like, Well, what first principle what's gonna be true, you know, ten, twenty years from now? Well Tonomy is like the given. I think most people would probably agree with that. And uh, you know, we'll probably solve it with just cameras and we'll need LIR because humans don't have LIDAR and

27:16 uh, you know, the cost of vehicles and fences will come down, remote support will come down and at some point it'll be super cheap. And it's like okay, like an extrapolate that will be a thing. Separate from which player wins. I'm not saying I can predict, you know, the ecosystem of companies that will win here. More about just the underlying dynamics, right? And and then you know, that would be one. And then the other one would be Yeah. Sharing away. It's like, Well, a lot of people are like, Oh, well, once we have cheap autonomous cars, like

27:40 Everyone can just have their own super cheap Uber or Tesla, whatever it is. You're on the city and you're like, Well, that doesn't work because then we're gonna hit this induced demand concept, right? Which is like on the scalp and like Yeah, you used to When text messages cost fifty cents a piece, how many did you send? Right. Versus now if it's free, it's in a million. Same thing when they add a lane to a highway, right? The traffic just gets just as bad as before'cause more people drive and so forth. So

28:04 If we flood the streets with super cheap autonomous cars. with single occupancy. uh we're just gonna have even more good luck than we do right now. Now maybe we'll do the boring company thing and dig tunnels and but see the likely So so then that from for me it's like well, from first principles, shared rods is is going to continue to be an important part of the future transportation.

28:23 And and other modalities where yeah, back to the three mile thing. It's like well there probably will be various form factors of bikes, scooters and little mini golf cart things and whatever we in the building, right? And so that's kinda uh hopefully an example of how I try to think about right like

28:38 What are the likely things to be true in the future. And then how does that lead to a potential kind of ecosystem and strategy around what we might build, you know, towards that future.

28:50 This is great. Because this is something everyone can do. And There's all this talk of like creating a vision, painting a vision, communicating a vision and What you're describing is how to actually

29:00 Sit there and The Think about what it might look like. Like sit there, close your eyes, and in your head visualize in the next five or ten years, what does the future actually look like? 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 gonna go, most likely.

29:20 Yeah, it's a good question. I think you could probably do either. I typically like to start with the form, which is just like what will the World. move towards absent me just trying to take out, you know, kind of bird's eye view. What I think is the trajectories are and trends and what's gonna happen. And then yeah, you could apply a lens of

29:38 Okay, if we were to build product XYZ. Or did they have the strategy? How might we influence the outcome? Or benefit from it, or you know, is it in congruence with that, or is it, you know, rubbing against that and trying to change that? Either could be good, right? You might say we're gonna

29:52 It's a tailwind or a headwind. You know, both are overcomable, but like having some awareness of The relationship between those things is is good. Yeah. And I think like you know Transportation Uber way mode's like in theory it might be easier to visualize that future and how exciting that might be versus a B2B SaaS payroll.

30:09 app or some like s photo sharing thing, but on the other hand, not not necessarily, right? They're but in the future. Ten years, how are people gonna be paid? How do people work at companies, like I think there's an opportunity to do that no matter what you're building. How how do you actually is this something you actually do? 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 like how do you actually

30:29 Practice this. Yeah, it's not like something you can just schedule thirty minutes for in the middle of your day of packed OKR reviews and random one on ones and meetings, you know, it's like Uh I like do it on my own first, uh if I you know, unless it's something that I already have a kind of outline for and I'm ready to move into a team.

30:47 Based on For me it's like yeah, like can I get into a quiet contemplative space. Right. Yeah. So yeah, I like to go for a run and that obviously gives me ideas or I'll go for a hike up and You know, Moran.

30:58 And sometimes I'll just like think of stuff or drop something down or make a voice note while I'm doing that. you know, it's kinda get things going. Um, but Yeah. Like the first step for me is just getting out of the craziness of day to day. Like to me it's still insane like how many product manager, leaders of all kinds, right? Just run the schedule of like

31:16 Back to back meetings. you know, thirty minute review, the big meaty topics, run out of time, run to the next thing. Answer a bunch of emails. And then cram some PRDs in there and like it's like, you know, y it it doesn't work, right? And so I'm uh

31:29 Big fan of carving out time. Again, first for myself. A couple of hours, you know. Whatever I can just like get out of the Day to day craziness and you know, get into that headspace of five, ten years from now, right? It's just a different

31:41 Place. So you need to transition to that. And then yeah, bring that to teams. Like if I have like an outline of that kind of future of transportation in my head, I might share that with uh with a group of folks and And and we'll come together also for some extended period of time. Like we recently had an all day

31:55 uh Monda thing where oh eight of us came into the office to talk about future of marketplace. And uh it was super productive. It was like, you know, laptops down, we're gonna spend all day together on a whiteboard. It's like a lost art. People don't even use the whiteboards anymore. So uh but yeah, and then from there it's like getting more people and then and then you can kinda iterate on it, right? It's like I had some vision of the future and someone points out something that, you know, is a little bit you know, off with it or it has a better idea or you know, you kind of you're then you move into code creation. But I love that. It's like you know the

32:25 But Pixar calls the brain trust. Right. When if you read uh Mole's book, right? Where like how they come up with Toy Story and inside out and all these things, right? It's like they have this group of people That just sits around riffing on ideas.

32:36 And again, there's there there's no judgment, there's no attachment to being right, there's no you know, they're in a co creative sort of space where they're just like Co exploring and and riffing with each other. And I I love to be in that space with Yeah, with other PMs and engineers and and data scientists.

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33:31 Unify risk management, and streamline security reviews. Get one thousand dollars off Vanta when you go to vanta.com slash plenty. That's V A N T A dot com slash Lenny. Something I've started to do which is hard. But I find really

33:49 valuable is when I'm driving to not play anything on the radio, not listen to any podcasts. Mm-hmm. And it's so unnatural and it's like Oh, this is hard. Like I just I don't want my brain to just go like it you don't want You don't trust your brain to go to a place that's fun.

34:03 But always does. It always ends up being like oh that was so interesting just to like think of this idea that just came up. I've been trying to do that and that's Uh such a simple thing to do. Just don't cost it. Well it's not really good for your podcast business to tell people not to do it. Okay, everyone We're cutting this.

34:20 What I find really helpful is playing Lenny's podcast every time I'm out and about. No, but there's something to what you said, which is um There's always a lot of content out there to pursue and I have been in that mode where I'm like, Yeah, more content, more and then But yeah, actually similar to you spend a lot of time now, like uh not listen to anything. You know, go on a hike where you don't listen to a podcast or music or yeah, your commute.

34:41 And see what happens. You might be surprised. Yeah, and it always ends up being like, Oh, that was cool. And you know, that's where shower ideas come from and all these things. Maybe just to see if there's something here, is there in this meeting that you have this I ideation brainstorming meeting?

34:56 Is there anything that came to the case? out of that that was like really surprising or new from A recent experience. Is there anything there just like, Oh wow, we really uncover this potential wrinkle of the future that we really need to Think about differently. Well, uh it wasn't maybe a specific wrinkle, but one of the things that we're thinking a lot about, I got I'm fortunate to be involved in trying to um help uh develop and articulate kind of a multi year

35:18 Three years for me. product or even overall three tech strategy for the mobility business speaker. And w one of the I guess big aha's for us is uh You know, uh w as we move away from the kind of um in some ways some poor world of Uber X right being the predominant product which is

35:33 You know, it used to be pretty simple, right? You Um, it's kind of like a taxi meter on the driver's side, right? There's a time and distance rate that everybody gets And then on the writer's side it's like sure, there's some surge pricing based on supply and demand, but You know, it's one product, it's pretty straightforward. And so you know, this future of multimodality and and and uh on the both demand side and the supply side.

35:55 Is what makes marketplace like even Uh more complex. And uh and challenging to build. And so It's gonna hover us around like, Okay, well You know, now that we have taxis on the platform and we have fleet providers

36:06 We're starting to add Waymo's and crews and other things. You know, we have to have a marketplace that's aware of those different types of supply 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 trips and all that.

36:21 And then on the demand side, it's like yeah, we've got all these different products like shared rods and Reserve rides and you know, comfort and X and you know, priority and It's like how do we think about how to price those relative each other? Right. 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?

36:39 And uh and then that all has, you know, feedback loops into the to the pricing and match as well. So the the the dynamics of the thing when I think about the future of marketplace Uber Is like Whoa. You know, it's like and I don't think it's ever built that. That's the the super cool thing about it. I think we have The buff.

36:56 Logistics marketplace tech on the planet. And we built something that no one else has ever built. And uh Yeah, you know, relative to like digital marketplaces, for example. Uh just different uh physical world requirements. And then this next part of what I described of thinking about, you know different types of supply and different kind of demand channels. Just adds even more.

37:14 A bunch of that. So Um Yeah, the a but the aha was like uh I guess Yeah, we gotta Think about all that stuff.

37:21 And think about how the supply and demand relate to each other and Um oh my god. Yeah, it's gonna be cool. It's just a infinitely cited marketplace now. That's wild. One last nugget I wanted to just reinforce that you shared about how to

37:35 become better at strategy and vision developing great and interesting and innovative strategy and vision is going really deep. on a topic. So you you've been in the space for a long time. There's this idea that Paul Graham talks about, I think they call it the your top idea or something like that that When you have one like whatever your top ideas The more you can just

37:53 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 gonna come up with new interesting ideas because your brain's gonna keep working on it when you're Driving around listening to Lenny's podcast.

38:07 I'm just kidding. We're going in hike. 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. Part of it might just be you're not spending enough time in that space, you're not going deep enough in the problem area. One approach is just spend like a decade in that space. Is there

38:23 There anything else just comes up as I say that I've just had to do that. Yeah, well there's also the that's at the macro level, maybe spitting ten years in a space, but at the micro level back to kinda like don't Yeah, defrag your day. Don't just do the thirty minute meetings. you know, twenty, thirty minute meetings on on twenty different topics. Like it sure, sometimes it's breath first and like you gotta do that. You have a large team, like I do obviously reviews across teams. I'm not saying I don't do that on some days.

38:46 But it's like Yeah, like what are my top few things, right? Like I think You're right. I think it was Peter Thiel from the early PayPal guys talked about that too, right? Like having going really deep and having a person or a leader like really responsible for one core deep thing for the company and that's like something they immerse themselves in. And so in the micro that wa that to me again translates to Yeah, I don't have a to list of twenty things.

39:08 Right. I try to have a to list of three of the most important highest leverage things. That could you know kinda. have impact broadly across the company. And then try to just like You say like let that one top thing marinate and and and chew on it.

39:22 I love that. And I I recently had a post about how to be All these productivity tricks and one of the Things that I find really helpful is at the beginning of each day. And also at 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. Like I might have this really long list, but here's the three things. If I get done, life will be good.

39:39 I've done a lot. I've accomplished really great important things. Totally. I tried to do the David Allen GTD thing once, you know, the super complicated uh you know, organization system and it's like it was too much structure for me. Like I couldn't do it. It's like at the end of the day when you're just right. There's basically three things that I need to do next. And then there's like just some random backlog that they can just scan through periodically and that's it. That gets you most of the way. It's crazy. I read that book like twenty years ago at this point. And There's just like elements that still make

40:07 things like I leverage and benefit from. Like even if you don't process do the whole thing. Like that book I recommend people read. Because there's just like if you pick a couple things from there. uh your life gets better. The things that have stuck with me, 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.

40:26 Just like note. Waiting for Dan. To review design. And just having that thread

40:33 written down and not in your head really helped me. Totally. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not gonna go to the wheel. I think the most powerful takeaway from that book for me was

40:43 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 come up with future transportation and remember to pick up something for the pharmacy. It's like there's a it's just not it's a recipe for disaster. Like this whole idea of like empty mind, you know, beginner's mind with well, you have to empty the mind of all the to go's first. Just get them out of the head. Absolutely. I think it was Mine Like Water. That's the one that stuck with me. Yeah. Where nothing you need to remember can be in your head. It needs to be written down.

41:12 Anyway, and let's not go into a whole productivity podcast here. Uh. So we talked about vision strategy. So there's kinda like Classically to problems people have with vision strategy. One is

41:23 How do I get better at it? The other is just like I need to actually get shit done. I can't spend all my time thinking about vision. Uh You have a really good Take on how to find this balance.

41:33 And you've seen it work well and not well, just Vision versus execution. When do I go big vision, how much do I spend vision versus just get shit done, execute, execute, execute. What can you share about just what you learned about how to find that balance and what you've seen work and not work? Yeah, I think uh you can't go too far either direction, right? You could uh it's like

41:53 Everything in life is about balancing the polarity between two. Opposing forces. Um, and so in this one it's like yeah, you go too hard into vision and fury land. You know, I've seen that go off the axle uh we were where again back to the future of pricing. It's like, you know, we have all the data scientists and PhDs. Walked in a room for two weeks.

42:13 There's a beautiful whiteboard diagram. What did it look like? And then it's like, Why do we actually build this thing and engineers are like Like it was like boiling the ocean, you know? Uh And like uh you just get wrapped around the axle of like, well, that sounds really good in theory, but I have no idea how to even start executing on this. So that's probably an example of like we tilted a little too far towards You know, the vision theory land.

42:34 And this was you're describing like the original plan to make a really good surge pricing algorithm. Yeah, this was a a plan to try to bring together you know, say how we do driver pricing, you know, time and distance rates, but also, you know, we do incentives for drivers where it's like if you drive this many hours a week, you get a bonus. And there's also third pricing. And like how to tie all the systems together in a very sophisticated sort of way.

42:55 Um, this was gonna be back in twenty seventeen or something and it was just uh It was winged a little too hard into theory land. Um And and we we still have that bias sometimes, you know, we we joke about the marketplace. You know, uh, especially when we talk about with other teams.

43:10 you know, they're trying to integrate in the marketplace. Like say they add, you know, fleets or uh you know teams with a big new product, right? And then marketplace people would be like, Well Have you thought about this one random problem that could happen two years from now? If uh teen become this much of demand and blah blah blah, you know, whatever. And it's just like we we do get wrapped around the axle on that on that sometimes.

43:30 But yeah, so the the future price is for the good example where you wouldn't go too far into three one. But you get you could probably go too far into execution land too. And I'd say, you know, DoorDash. in my experience would do that sometimes where we used to actually even half joke there, some of us leaders would be like it's like Ready fire aim.

43:46 And it was like people would be like, I'm just gonna run through a wall. I have no idea if that's the right wall to run through. But at least I know I'm running through a wall. Yeah.

44:01 Yeah, I think it's it's about balance. Um and it's you know, can you can you adjust? Again, it's dynamic. I think there's times where you're in a soul searching sort of What is our product strategy? You know, we got to pivot. Maybe you're a startup but you're not working and you want to think about And then it's like okay. Well, after Pull off the gas a little bit.

44:19 We'll ease up on the execution. And let's lean into You know, uh uh the strategy vision piece. And then there's times where the strategy and vision's pretty baked.

44:28 At least for the next whatever, six months, year. And it's like, okay, pedal to the metal, let's just go execute. Let's get it done. I just went to this uh acquired podcast. event at the Chase Center with and Zuck was there. And the CO of Spotify was there too. And there's two two quick uh

44:43 Anecdotes that you remind me of. Zack. Talked about how once Facebook and Zuck and the team A line on Here's where we're going.

44:53 No matter how many walls appear in front of them, there's gonna be a mark. shaped uh hole in the wall. Very soon. Because they're just gonna run through And get things done that they need to get done.

45:06 And I really love that mentality of like once we're Sure where we're going. We're gonna bust through these walls. That's awesome. The other is a really interesting

45:13 Value at Spotify. So Daniel X shared this. He said Is that at Spotify? We have this core value. Talk is cheap. And when you hear that, you think it's saying talk is not valuable and it's actually they look at it as a virtue.

45:26 Talk is cheap. We can talk and it costs us no money, very little money compared to building something. So they actually spent a lot of time at Spotify. refining their ideas and discussing until they're really sure something is right. And I guess any reaction to that,'cause I thought that was a really interesting Yeah, I love that. It's a almost a a different flavor of I think the Bezos saying of you know, he's like I like a crisp.

45:47 A crisp doc and a messy meeting. Right. The whole Amazon thing or you have the you know the three page or seven page narrative that's You know, written with the Clarity of angels singing from on high. We've you know describing the problem statement or feature or whatever.

46:03 Um and so it's like super crisp and organized and you know well articulated. And then you might have a meeting where you pick it apart and you talk a lot, you know, that's what made me think of that. So yeah. Awesome. Okay. Couple more things I wanna spend some time on.

46:17 One is You worked at a lot of really Interesting successful hyper growth companies. DoorDash Uber Waymo you're also in finance for a while. I wanna

46:26 pick on a few of these and just see what's a lesson you took away or what's an experience from that time that might be interesting or helpful to people. Sure. So you talk about DoorDash a bit. What uh what did you take away from your time at DoorDash? What's something you saw there that either is like, wow, that's a really cool thing I want to do in the future or There's something they weren't amazing at that I learned not to try to avoid.

46:47 Yeah, yeah. It's really amazing to get to see different places and kind of pick the best of what you like and and Yeah. Also there's a the other thing is back to like for me it's no right or wrong. It's just like Differences like have pros and cons, right? There's always like two sides of the coin, right? Um So like what's interesting I think about Uber and DoorDash is first back to the mission.

47:05 And the strategy. They started with different DNA. Right. So like You know, uh Uber started with uh you know, it was to like utilize spot cars at you know, at the airport that were like not doing trips.

47:17 But it was More about the writers, right? It was like whatever Ordinary Believe, you know, Travis and whoever Uh, you know, if you get a ride in Paris, right? And so then it was about like, you know, better than taxi and all this stuff, right? But it was very rider centric. Consumer centric in that sense, right?

47:31 And so, you know, uh for a long time I think Uber kind of took that too far. We got to the polarity is like drivers are commodity, you know, blah blah blah. And had to flip that back and start, you know, really investing more on the driver's side of the marketplace. But you look at DoorNash and it's like, you know, Tony grew up in his parents' restaurant kitchen and you know, the DoorDash thesis was how can we help small businesses be more successful? And delivery was just the first instantiation of that sort of meta purpose of DoorDash.

47:57 Right, and so they're much more merchant centric. As opposed to consumer century, right? By way, the consumer centrism of Uber that started with Rides, then translated to Eats, right? I think when Uber started with Eats, it was like, Well We just want Lenny to have some great Thai food and

48:11 you know, sushi and have some options, but selection is uh is a means to Lenny having a great you know, eater experience. Whereas DoorDash with their merchant focus is like we want every Thai restaurant in this city to be successful. and beyond DoorDash. So their motivation for selection is we want all the merchants to thrive and survive.

48:29 And so that happens to give you better selection as a result. But the motivation was very different, right? So The analogy I use is like Uber is to Amazon as DoorDash is to Shopify. If that makes sense, right? Amazon or Consum focus, Shopify is obviously very merchant focus. And by the way, either of those, again, there's no right or wrong, is a fine strategy. They're both great companies.

48:51 And I actually don't know if you could do both. Right? Like is it possible to be Amazon and Shopify? to really focus on you know, consumers and build all the merchant restaurant tech and You know, maybe with with enough resources and time, but uh

49:04 It that that would lose focus. So it's like there's a trade off there. Yeah. Yeah, that's like at Airbnb there's always this should we optimized for hosts, should we optimize for guest? And there's always this like This time guests are most important. All right. Right now, host more when you make you know and make these trade off decisions in marketplace. So it's interesting that at Uber Your insight there, Zuber, is always very

49:23 Writer focused and DoorDash was From its DNA was very merchant focused. You also talk about a door dash, there's this mentality of just like going Before figuring out where to go. Is there anything more there that might be helpful either as a cautionary tale or as a lesson?

49:37 Yeah, I think it's uh it's a balance. It's back to like I don't wanna deliberate uh and partiplicate for weeks on end. about which door I should run through. And I don't want to go to the other extreme and just like Mm. You know.

49:50 Spend thirty seconds thinking about what to do and just go go go. Um so it's like finding that that kinda happy medium. If I had to pick one, I'd rather bias towards running through a wall than not doing anything because you still get learnings from that and you either make progress or you don't. And that gives you feedback and you can run through another wall as a result. So I think the biggest failure case is probably

50:10 uh airing on the other side of uh deliberating too long without action. What about Wamo? What's something that you took away from that experience as a thing that you want to do? More of or something you want to try to avoid? You know, Waymo is uh you know, I you've probably seen the people in San Francisco, right? They're they're quite uh prolific now in terms of you know, they're all over San Francisco and

50:30 You see him all the time and Uh I'm I'm not sure. I I can't remember the last time I saw one toad, so you know, they I don't want to say that uh Yeah, they've solved self driving, but they are you know, obviously driving uh at scale with very minimal At least real world intervention, like, you know, you can't tell by looking at the cars how many humans behind the scenes might be

50:48 you know, helping provide guidance of the car or whatever. But but yeah, I would say what's really interesting about Waymo is they've they've largely solved Uh the self driving piece, right? Uh however they've done that, right? And we and in a complex environment like San Francisco and they you see them driving in fog and rain and puddles and like you know, it's like That's pretty cool.

51:06 But I think what what what Waymo uh was learning and I was trying to help them learn is that You know, uh building a self driving car on a test track. is a very different problem statement than uh scaling a fleet of thousands of cars and how do you operate them, clean them, charge them, maintain them. And then how do you build the Rightshare Network?

51:25 Okay, we gotta build an app and And we gotta acquire users and do classic growth stuff and You know, think about Yeah, marketplace and matching and pricing and You know, those are like very different skills, right? And so

51:37 It's like, you know, w uh warning that that those are those are different things. And um Trying to um hire for that and build culture around that, it was probably was was hard, honestly. You know, it's just like you're kind of A a different uh you know.

51:52 thing than the host organism. The most of the host organism is just obsessed with like Perception and planning and you know, kind of all the core economy pieces. And you're like the the commercialisation people over there said, Well, I'm gonna make money with this thing. I so I think you know it it's

52:07 That that's an example where like your overall vision with say Waymo is is to build Waymo one. You know, it's like You gotta just be mindful that it's more than just one that there's multiple pillars of that, right? There's the self-driving piece. There's You know, getting

52:21 A lot of cars at scale, financing them, operating the fleet. Getting the demand, filling the cars with people. Right. And then You know, it has to all come together. Right. Right. Yeah, it's so interesting that you were uh your your title is Leap Product for Commercialisation of Automas Autonomous Right Hailing.

52:38 at Waymo and now it's come full circle we're at Uber, it's that's gonna be In a sense the way that people Call Waymo. And so it's so interesting that you've seen both sides of this. Yeah, well we'll we'll see what happens. I think um

52:52 You know, the yeah, Uber uh got out of the autonomy business right when it divested the autonomous technologies group. A technology group. Um and right now, you know, our kind of stated uh you know, strategy uh is to be an aggregator, right? So it's like we are partnering with Waymo, with Cruz, Motional, others in China. Yeah. Et cetera. And then you know, the idea is to have every vehicle on the platform, really, right? It's uh it's uh

53:17 Um, and then yeah, use the power of the platform. We have as big demand based, we have a lot of writers. And so I think uh the the you know what you're seeing is you know, Waymoon crew and others are okay, now that we've developed autonomy you know, what what's the path like to to, you know, profitability for us, right? And so they can go it alone and try to build a rideshare network.

53:37 And you know Waymo is doing that with Waymo one. And uh but You know, it might uh it turns out it takes a while. You know, it's funny, people I feel like engineers too are always like Skeptical of why other people's engineering problems take so much work.

53:50 Right. Like, you know, there'd be engineers at Lemo'd be like Why does Uber have so many thousands of engineers? How hard can it be to build a ride share app But you know, when you look at what made Uber successful, you know, what we've been perfecting for the last decade, A the marketplace tech that I alluded to earlier. But also, yeah, like how we manage a large writer base and doing writer support and driver support and

54:11 Logistics and you know, all the you know, helping finance electric vehicles and working with regulators and cities and making sure we have safe and Accessible pickup points. On and on and on, right? And it's like You know, y those are all the the the depth of the iceberg that you don't really realize or think of when you're like, Oh, I can just pull the right share up, right? You know, it's publishes their

54:31 Sigma design and some you know earnings report and everyone goes crazy. Like Wow. Well, uh I don't want to bet against Elon,'cause that sounds scary, but but there is more to it than just uh

54:44 They happen. Yeah, So yeah, I think these companies will have an interesting question, right? Like Do they go it alone, build their own ride share network to capture all the value? Or do they say, Well, I could just work with Uber and

54:55 uh you know, uh you know, have a faster path to you know, high utilization of the vehicles, which unlocks financing and more vehicles and right like that gets them to scale faster. And so, you know, if you look at the landscape right now, it's a bit of both, right? Like Waymo is obviously working with Uber and Phoenix. And we just announced cruise, we'll come back to some city next year, I think. And then Way but Waymo's also still bullying their own thing, right? So they're kind of edging their butts at the moment.

55:18 I wanna Take us to a recurring segment. on the podcast that uh I call Contrarian Corner. I feel like you're gonna have a good answer here. What's something that you believe? That

55:29 Most other people don't believe. One is uh uh back to kind of being aware of your internal state and allowing emotions and thoughts is um you know, emotions in the workplace. You know, a lot of people have the the thing of like, Well, there's there's no need for emotion in the workplace, right? We're gonna be logical. We're gonna be data driven, you know, like

55:48 You know, keep your feelings at home. Just you know, show up and Presentation JM mode. And I guess in my experience, um There's this thing around like whole body intelligence and like whole body yes, which is yes, there is signal from the head.

56:03 And logic and data and you know, left brain reasoning are amazing and it could be great. But there's also like Like heart. And like gut.

56:10 Right. And like there's Yeah, to me, um I mean what is an emotion? It's just energy moving on the body. Right. And often it's correlated with

56:19 a thought too as well. You know, I might have a thought that creates fear and and so forth. But like to me there's wisdom in emotion. Right. And I can and and I can start to access like noticing them more, like where do I feel sadness in the body? I notice I feel Fear. You know, in in the kind of center of my chest. And then sadness is like a sinking feeling in my stomach.

56:38 And I notice when I'm angry, my jaw gets tight, my eyes furrow a little bit, right? And so, you know, those are common ones, but you may have your own little signatures of like you pick up. You know, where where is joy? Where is creative energy? Where is fear, sadness, anger? And then noticing those in a meeting or in a conversation or review and actually If you're if you're willing to even just voice it other people, that's like the next step. Let's start with just you know, acknowledging it to yourself.

57:02 And so for me, the wisdom of emotions is You know, fear is Something wants to be paid attention to. Right. Like if there whether there can be the saber tooth tiger, you know, is not really Dara disapproving of me, whatever, but I shouldn't be afraid of that. But there are times where fear is playable.

57:17 There might be fear around like, you know, let's say back at Waymo, you know you're You wanna be really intentional about safety and you wanna be super you know, they're that's one of the things I love about Windows, they're very committed to having a super strong safety record. And so there might be fear around did we really consider all the edge cases of what might happen if a dog runs in the street or a ball or a child or whatever and you might Wow. It's like

57:39 Great. That's the wisdom of that is something wants to be paid attention to. And and and listen to. Okay, great. Right. Sadness for me is Uh something wants to be let go of.

57:50 Right. They're the morning, they're the letting go of like I had an idea or vision for the future. That will no longer be because, you know, whatever, something happened Other people don't want to do a This or that. But it could be a vision of a relationship. It could be a vision of You know, what you thought your life would look like, you know, whatever we all go through.

58:07 Those sorts of things and and And but there might be micro moments of sadness of like, wow, that feature didn't work. You know, it's like a really wanted it to be successful. Yeah, just let go of that. Right.

58:17 Anger to me is um something is not of service. To me. or my people or my mission or whatever I'm up to. And so again, that can be uh a great signal that to like, okay. I'm paying to that. I want to change that.

58:30 And enjoy is like something wants to be celebrated, right? Like, you know, we had a great win. We nailed the OKR, we had a great product launch. Like, you know, it's a lot of times we spend too much time moving back into the next Okay, let's set another goal, you know, it's like it's okay to stop and celebrate. And then like creative energy is like something wants to be born into the world, right? It's like what

58:49 Some of like I'm gonna birth an idea or a vision or Yeah, some new product thing. And then you know that you know, uh just tuning into that. So yeah, I would say welcome emotions. Maybe even talk about them, God forbid, in the workplace. You know, like I imagine it instead of having a Okay, our review where like you're behind target.

59:06 And everyone's like blaming other people and like you know, you can tell everyone's kinda fearful. Yeah. If you if Someone was just like wow, I I noticed that um I just feel fear around this. Everyone was like, Wow, I I feel fear too, right? Like

59:18 That would just totally change the tone of the conversation. The advice here is Bring your emotions into work. Like don't let emotions The can the what most people believe is leave your emotions at home, don't bring emotions into the workplace. And what you found is they actually can make you

59:34 Uh More effective and it makes Make your teams more effective and you even talked about it helps you make decisions. And more intelligent, right?'Cause your gut and lizard brain almost tells you things that you should pay attention to.

59:46 Call it. I love that. Okay, so I'm gonna close with a question. that is rooted in something that you shared with me when we were

59:54 chatting about this podcast that I think is gonna be helpful to a lot of people. What have you found to be keys to a successful impactful Rich, fun life. It's a great question and I think lots of people have, you know, different prescriptions for that and I don't

1:00:10 claim to have, you know, the The one truth around that. But w I the first thing I would say as a meta observation is um You know, I I spent a lot of time thinking about objective functions, right? We designed algorithms to do matching and pricing and Think about short term effects and long term effects and

1:00:27 And so I I really uh ingrained in this idea of like we have an objective function for our life. And then I like Problem is that a lot of us aren't um conscious of it. It's just kind of like an implied O F that you you know, inherited values from your church or community, or what your parents valued, or what you kind of learned to be good at. And you know, I do this for work and blah, blah, blah. I'm just kind of bobbing along.

1:00:48 That's why I love like Ray Dalio's principle thing where it's like, Hey, write down your values. And your principles and get you know, clear on what they are. And uh and uh you know, or like Clayton Christians w wrote a great book. He's less known for he's obviously known for interviewing Flum.

1:01:02 But he wrote a book called How Will You Measure Your Life. And like he was trying to answer this question of like He teaches whatever, you know, MBA students at Harvard and uh He's like wow. All these executives are super successful, they're like Fortune Five Hundred Execs, they're like, you know, must

1:01:17 Super successful. But they're all like divorced and their kids hate them and They're personal wise like Very What's happening?

1:01:25 Right. And so like uh you know, one of the key insights he comes to is like It's Sunday night. And you have the choice of You know, uh playing with your daughter.

1:01:34 You know, you're reading a book, you're playing a game. And and you have a presentation to Dara, you know. The brew, you know, on Monday and well, I could make those slides a little bit better and you know I could go practice or you know, knock out some email or whatever it is. And so the what he basically found was like the type A execute you know successful people are very short term OF driven. They're like, well

1:01:56 Presentation's tomorrow and that can either go great or okay based on Sunday night. Whereas like my daughter will be here, I'll play with her next week. Yeah. And the problem is there's been the cycle where it's like, Okay, you start working every Sunday night And then years and years go by and suddenly you don't have a relationship with your daughter who's now a teenager.

1:02:15 And It's like but like I think We're just not conscious of that. So to me the the first piece of advice would be Get clear on your objective function.

1:02:24 And one way th that I've gotten clear on is like trying to think about it from future me. Right. Five years from now, I'm not gonna give a shit if I made the presentation slightly better. But I'm gonna care a lot. about

1:02:35 what kind of relationship I have with my daughters. And like that means that the the next action, the next thing I do today and tomorrow the the those will translate into the relationship with her, right? Like that And I think a lot of us aren't. Yeah, just tune into that. Yeah, this you know, I love the stoic stuff, you know.

1:02:51 Uh, you know, being mindful of death. Yeah, Seneca, Marcus Rulius, all those great ones. Not to be like morbid, but just like Again, most of us just aren't really tuned into An awareness that our lives will come to an end.

1:03:04 And we try to avoid that, right? We and we we try to pretend like we're gonna live forever and just not think about it. And the horror of it is that we succeed, right? We mostly manage to just Go live our life and eat ice cream and go to work and go on vacation and do what we do. And and that can lead us to doing things that

1:03:23 uh ultimately don't matter in the long run. Right. And like, you know, focusing on the wrong things. And so to me It's like, you know, an awareness and mindfulness that our lives will come to an end. um punctuates reality in a way that

1:03:36 you know, requires me to rethink my priorities. You know, stop wasting time. on things that don't matter with people who matter. You know?

1:03:46 Like This relationship. This this this journey it it will come to an end. Yeah, I'm actually just cheering up and feeling tingly just saying that. It's like Even right now, come back to it.

1:03:57 Mm. How am I gonna spend my afternoon? Am I gonna hug my daughters? Am I gonna spend time with them after work or am I gonna Do email all night. What would I w wish I had done?

1:04:10 When I'm And my last breath. Hm. Yeah. There's a there's a quote that I

1:04:20 heard once that really stuck with me that I think is gonna hit a lot of people really hard. Which is the the only people that'll remember you working late. Every night is Your kids. Mm-hmm.

1:04:31 Wow. Yeah. Yeah. An important reminder. Um

1:04:40 Jam. We've covered a lot of stuff. Is there anything else that You think it might be helpful for people. that you want to leave listeners with. We just uh

1:04:51 Yeah. We're gonna have a lightning round coming up, but before we get that, we ended on a really powerful Impactful note. Is there anything else along these lines that you think might be helpful for people? You wanna leave them with. The one thing I'd encourage folks to do out of all of these we talked about is to

1:05:06 See if you'd be willing to commit to breaking out of Victim consciousness and mentality. Right. And it's not to say there aren't victims of the role, there are real Justices and things happening, but

1:05:17 most of us, uh, you know, I've experienced, you know, I I often can fall into a trap of living my life at the effect of Right. I'm at the effect of other people and what they do. I'm at the effect of circumstances like Covet or Trump or whatever, I'm at the effect of you know, the conditions and uh and circumstances of of life. And I feel like life is happening to me.

1:05:39 Right. And so To me, the most empowering and radical kind of transformation that I've been able to cultivate and develop is Shifting from that to a state of I am willing to take responsibility

1:05:50 For how I see the world. And I may not be able to change the weather of the election or all that. But I can change how I'm being in relationship to it. and choose to see it as a growth opportunity of learning. How am I co creating it, even things that I play a small part in, injustice in the world, how am I

1:06:05 you know, perpetuating that and being willing to to see the world as uh, you know, I am the painter of my existence, right? Like I think You know, uh Victor Frankel's manstruct for meaning is Probably the best example of that. Like he's in a super oppressive You know, a situation that is very horrific and tragic.

1:06:21 And the way he described his relationship with the people in the camp and the guards and and he was given he gave talk to after he was free. the amount of compassion and empathy he had for his oppressors. It was like Just like Amazing. So I'm like, Well, if he can do that in the face of those conditions.

1:06:37 I can show up. Differently in a in a product review or you know, in a conversation with my partner or meeting or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah, I think just that skill alone is such a powerful unlock for a lot of people instead of

1:06:52 Here's all the things that I don't give and here's all the things that are setting me back and all the things that are hard for me versus other people. Shifting to here's Like I need to take responsibility for my own Success. And no one else will and

1:07:05 Just taking agency is is a really powerful thing. It's e har easier said than done, you know. There's a lot of hardships people have, a lot of Things that they don't have that other people have that are Harding there. career and hurting their ability to be successful. But still.

1:07:19 The more you can take responsibility and Have agency. And unless you have this victim mentality. I one thousand percent agree. There's so much power there. So That's an awesome Listen to end on.

1:07:29 With that we reached our very exciting lightning round. Jam, are you ready? I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay, first question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people? Uh in the realm of the soft skills and conscious leadership, um uh the the best one is uh the fifteen commitments of conscious leadership. I uh Daniel Chapman and Jim Duffner and those were my

1:07:52 kind of early coaches and teachers, um, you know, almost ten years ago. Uh and I still Diana is still my coach. Um so I think that's a A fantastic book that we'll go into more detail about some of the things we talked about around You know, fear and threat versus trust and Drama Triangle and all that great stuff.

1:08:07 Um that'd be one that I'd definitely recommend. First. Another one uh more in the content world is um I think you had Nancy Dwart on your podcast at one point. But I love Or Dorchase, sorry. I love her book Resonate.

1:08:19 And then she has some other ones too on Like design set. Like what was so cool about that, I give it to PMs all the time when I'm trying to help them develop their communication, storytelling, and presentation skills. Yeah, and she goes uh through like those Ted talks and Martin Luther King, I have a dream and Yeah, go to the moon and basically, you know.

1:08:35 make the sparkline against it. to uh understand, you know, this constant resonance with the audience, right? And it's actually a great skill for like uh You know, uh back to vision and North Starring, you know, she said what all these things do is right, they alternate tension between the world as it is.

1:08:51 And the world as it might be. And it's like You know, here's that beautiful future of transportation, San Francisco, blah blah blah. And then But the here's why it sucks today. Like all these problems and this and that.

1:09:03 But here's how I could look in a few years and then you know, you're creating that tension and the audience at the end is like Sweaty palms and like I I wanna help build that future, you know? What do you need? You need money, time, resources, money to join your company, like great. You know? So anyway, resonate Nancy Duarte, great book.

1:09:20 Those would be the uh some of the top two that I recommend. There's not one specific book, but I really love Alan Watts' books. If you're into like You know, uh he was one of the first people to articulate and and and kind of import Buddhism and that that sort of uh eastern thinking into into the West and uh

1:09:37 He just has a very satirical, comical sort of not taking myself too seriously style, and just like the way he explains A lot of those concepts. So Um That'd be another one. He also has an amazing voice if you listen to recordings of him with music, it's just just so funny. Totally actually Sam Harris's Waking Up App, you know, now has the entire he worked with I think his son.

1:09:57 So the waking up out has all like eighty hour or hundred hours of Recorded Allen's lectures. Oh my god. I've been there's YouTube videos. There's some awesome YouTube videos of him. That uh

1:10:08 Or with watching, we'll get to some of those in then. Nancy Duarte, she shared exactly that lesson on the podcast. that she ha that we had together. So if you don't want to read the book and Listen to her give us tactic of this way to communicate a vision.

1:10:21 Uh you can listen to that episode, we'll link to it. Next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you have really enjoyed? Yeah. Um The last movie I really enjoyed was Inside Out Two. My kids, which is very important.

1:10:36 Yes, uh consistent with the emotional awareness and uh allowing the different emotional parts and uh don't want to spoil the movie maybe for no one hasn't seen it, but Uh it's uh very sympathica with that lesson of like you can't just let one emotion run the show. They all have wisdom, you know, and the first one, right? Sadness. Joy learning that sadness is Necessary. Right.

1:10:55 Um it's all about integration and and kind of, you know, and but it was beautiful the way kids can understand it. And it's like a it's a way to teach emotional literacy to your kids. So I think what they've done there with those inside out movies is just like brilliant. Do you have a favorite? product you've recently discovered that you really love. It could be an app, it could be some physical Yeah, so eight sleep, you know, is a smart mattress company, they're on their third or fourth route now.

1:11:15 But it has like uh it's like a Timber P mattress or you can put their cover on any mattress, but it has a cover That has little like tubes of water. And then it has like a little computer thing and you fill the water in and an app. And basically what you do is you program it and it learns. It has sensors. It can measure your heart rate, your HRV. Body can control that.

1:11:32 And it but you're basically trying to program a temperature curve. uh to help you maximize your kind of RM sleep and deep sleep and get more value out of the sleep that you do have. And so for me it's like, you know, super cool early for deep sleep and then it warms you up as you want to wake up, which is like You know, or the alarm and all that. Um but it's uh

1:11:50 You know, back to my thing about like wanting to, you know, show up with the you know, the right mindset and energy and aliveness. Uh having really high quality sleep has been a really Key part of that is like

1:12:00 If I don't sleep well. Uh you know, didn't get enough sleep or didn't say, Well, like you're already starting off on a bad foot. So yeah, if you haven't checked out Eat Sleep. Uh great product. No no endorsement fee for me.

1:12:11 Uh and it what's what's also cool about it is it tracks your sleep. It gives you all these stats, like instead of wearing a ring and it gives you all the stats about your sleep quality. And uh There's a guy Brian Johnson now if you follow him, he's like this Help. The g this guy that's trying to stay alive as long as possible and he

1:12:26 Get a perfect sleep score for six months in a row. We set the record. Yeah, he's uh He knows what he's doing over there. Okay, uh two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto?

1:12:37 that you often come back to think of find useful in work or in life. Yeah, I probably uh have had different ones over the years. The one right now that really serves me is um There is a There's this uh uh tra uh track called Sit Around the Fire. Uh if you uh John Hopkins but but it's um

1:12:56 uh it's on Spotify Apple music, but it's basically music with uh one of Ram Doss's talks. What's our name talks? And so the monster that's been really serving me recently is the very first part of that. Which is uh he says Beyond all polarities. I am.

1:13:14 What the judgments and opinions of the mind be the judgments and opinions of the mind. And you exist. behind that. Awesome.

1:13:28 So Uh sometimes I have a abbreviated version of that where I'm noticing I'm activated, I'm clinging to an opinion, I'm arguing with somebody. And then like I'm just like Beyond all polarities.

1:13:43 Yeah. I do it in front of my kids and they laughed and be like, Daddy is so weird sometimes. The old polarity skids. That's so funny. Oh man. I

1:13:55 There's another Rom Das uh line that I often use with my wife Be Here Now, which is the title of his book. That everyone sees with the blue cover and I I do that when she's like on her phone and we're doing some. I'm like, Be here now. J'ai like okay, okay, I'll put my phone away. Yeah. Yeah.

1:14:10 Yeah. Final question. I was gonna ask you about the line tracking and what you learned from that. You already shared an awesome lesson from that time, so let me ask you something else. Ask you about Travis. Crazy fun memorable stories of working with Travis. Call Kalanic. However he says last name, Kalanik Kalanic. Travis Kallanet, yeah. Yeah. I'll I'll share a quick one that's uh short but but sweet, uh or hilarious to make.

1:14:34 Maybe what's been known. Um, so what we were we used to have the Uber office at fourteen fifty five market. Right. And so there was a one conference room where we'd off often do reviews with Travis and there wasn't the war room whatever I don't want to take it. Um that was interior and no windows. But so this room had windows overlooking uh What what was that? Eleventh Street, right? So kind of eleventh in market.

1:14:54 And so we'd have like a presentation up on the projector, you know, some big screen. We're about to go through some of the Travis. And reliably every time you come in. He would close the blinds. Uh the windows. I might crap we doing like it's not'cause there was glare, like they were orthogonal to the screen.

1:15:09 And then one day I was like, W why are you doing that? He's like I'm pretty sure Lift has drones. outs the windows of our office. And they're spying on our presentation.

1:15:21 Wow. Your parent your competitor paranoia runs deep, man. Okay. Ha ha

1:15:30 Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to mention a lift doing that. Uber doing that to Lyft. Old Uber. Uber one point oh. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing.

1:15:41 It's like coaches in s you know, in the NFL that are covering their lips always when they're telling giving plays. Just like I wonder if people actually do that. That's amazing. I like Yeah, I get that. You know, it's like high stakes. You never know. Might be a drone out there. Right.

1:15:54 Amazing. Jam, what a roller coaster of a conversation. We covered so much ground. Oh, I don't I can't even um Name all the things we covered. So let me just ask you two final questions. Where can folks find you online and reach out if they want to

1:16:07 Work with you, I know you work with folks, talk about that. And then finally, how can listeners be useful to you? Yeah, yeah. So uh I I am uh Occasionally on Twitter at Nichols JM. Uh, but I don't tweet a lot, but uh may maybe I should start.

1:16:22 Um, but the best place to find more about my kind of thoughts and uh uh you know, thinking on on the soft skill stuff is uh a website called rhythmofbeing.com. And uh You know, uh I've got some blog posts and stuff there that go into detail on some of these things. And yeah, I do a little bit of coaching on the side with folks. I do very little now. My day job at Uber and my night job with my kids takes up most of my waking hours.

1:16:45 But uh you know For the right person and if you select spots I I can I can make time. But yeah, that's uh that's the best place to find to find me is rhythm of being dot com. And then how can listeners be useful to you? Well, uh in the spirit of welcoming and uh embracing feedback.

1:17:02 Uh you could most be useful by uh you know Yeah, reaching out, telling me what resonated, what didn't. What was useful? Where did your energy go up? When I talked? And where did your energy go down?

1:17:16 Does that to me is a signal of where I'm You know, back to tracking the life, right? We're we're Where's the juice? And then that way in the future, when I do other versions of this or other conversations, um Oh.

1:17:28 pay more attention to the R V up stuff and kinda go more there and the energy down was like okay, maybe that wasn't as interesting or didn't resonate. Right, no problem. Jam, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, thank you for having me. Bye, everyone.

1:17:42 Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show. at Lenny's podcast dot com.

1:18:01 See you in the next episode.

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