Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on How To Narrow The Focus and Increase The Quality | Full Interview

0:00 three two one zero you have now arrived at your destination frank i've wanted to see this one for a long time i've heard so many good things from douglas square and mike at sutter hill so thank you so much for joining me today absolutely glad to be here let's have some fun indeed but i want to start with a little bit from the book actually and when we normally start we start with some contacts and you said we

0:28 all need to be careful which elevator we get into early in our career what did you mean by this well some elevators go up some go down some don't move and you have no control over you know what the elevator is doing and uh you know if you're going to a really good company i mean you're an elevator that's going up um and if you joined and that's a good company the elevator may not be moving it

0:56 doesn't matter you know what you did or didn't do your individual merit is is irrelevant um it's sort of like being a card player you know when you maybe really get a car play or you have a bad hand of cards you know the outcome is going to be you know not that great so it's you really gotta choose carefully because your your individual marriage cannot overcome you know the circumstances of your choices and uh you

1:20 know i have unfortunately lived the consequences of this little bit of wisdom over and over to the point where okay you know um it's pretty important that uh you make wise choices and not just think oh i'm really good i can you know i can't will myself to uh you know incredible outcomes i had a chat with a ceo a very large software company uh not long ago and he said i can't figure you out do you just know how to pick it

1:46 maury you really could see you know and uh hopefully a little bit of both you know um because that's those those are the things you need i absolutely love that well speaking of picking them tell me in terms of the question how did you come to see your snowflake for basically well i was on the board of pure storage with uh with mike spicer for uh many years and i i know mike before then as well because uh a day of the language

2:15 was the first company uh you know like the shutter hill so that was one of our investors so um we we would periodically uh get together after a board meeting and just talk about the state of affairs and what's up what's going on uh you know that kind of a thing and we always talked about snowflake you know me observing from the distance not knowing all that much or caring because i was actually off in those days doing other

2:39 stuff uh but obviously mike was very very involved with snowflake uh in those days and you know uh at one point he thought actually i joined the board and then what not to feel about let me know never heard anything um you know i'm not really paying attention and then one day it's like it was march of uh 2019 he's like you know by the way you know i'm i'm i'm not working i'm not talking to anybody i know certainly i'm

3:07 not making noises about wanting to re-enter the freight you just out of the blue stuff what would it take for you to take the helm i think he also likes nautical terms you know um you know it's snowflake and i was like what um i just i just i just was completely unprepared for that mentally or or otherwise um but you know i've been also two years at that point and it kind of ignited spark and uh

3:37 you know things just sometimes just happened it wasn't an organized thought process there wasn't an organized process at all i never talked to anybody else uh about anything this is the only company uh that that was that was a consideration obviously you know we have no regrets uh you know sometimes you know your impulsive moments where you're just going i i do wanna say you know mentioning that entry into the three year old snowflake this is the third rocket ship

4:06 company you've been a part of frank that is abnormally accurate for a hit rate like no one has done that other than you and so when i spoke to doug leone he said to me how did he do it what enabled you to do this simply oh you know i got it i don't really know um it's not something that sort of puzzles me on a daily basis is not a question that's on my on my radar

4:31 obviously like i just said choosing elevators wisely is kind of a big deal um so you know because there's so many things that you can't change about the about the circumstance right um i mean you may be you know really good operator and of all these qualities but uh you know you really have to look hard at what you've got i didn't always have that luxury you know when i when i joined data domain i had no idea what i was getting

4:56 into i mean there was no revenue there were no customers there were 15 people you know i had two good investors which was sort of you know what inspired me uh but everything else uh came after that was sort of a leap in the dark there were hundreds of companies back in those days um and that that one you know i'm actually very proud of the work we collectively did there um because it became such an outlier

5:21 of a company but you know at the time i mean that was far from from obvious or clear you could argue if snowflake was already uh an outlier you know one when i joined it was far easier far more obvious to make that determination um you know servicenow was not that easy a determination either i remember you know when i i knew nothing about that space or next to nothing about that space and i started making some

5:48 inquiries and you know analysts here and there they're like oh yeah that's the sleepy business you know the last battle lots of disparaging comments uh you know about about servicenow but i the company had high growth and you know high growth is high growth i mean you can stay where you want but high growth is high growth and it means something there's something going on okay so you got to get your arms around it and and and really you know figure out

6:13 you know where's that coming from uh but high growth is rare okay it just that just doesn't happen um so you know obviously you know servicenow was replacing legacy uh ticketing systems help desk management from bmc and ca and hp and all these companies and uh yeah it was not terribly exciting business at all um but uh you know obviously we we dramatically changed um what that how that company uh conceptualized itself what it was i

6:44 mean it was became clear to me during during the the process of getting to know the company that this was not a help desk management tool this was a generic workflow uh platform that was just aimed at an opportunity because the the founding team knew that business they just took you know a platform technology and they aimed it at that particular use case and that was very successful but the applicability of the technology was much broader that was apparent to us from the

7:10 beginning or even before we uh we got there if it was just help this management i'm sure we would not have uh you know we would not have gone there can i ask you said something before and i think to it every day literally and you said um narrow the focus increase the quality can you talk to me what did you mean by this and how do you think about applying it to execution today so i said it again harry i blinked that

7:36 narrow the focus increase the quality what does that mean how do you think about applying it today well the issue of focus is that uh you know we have a tendency uh as human beings to you know operate a mile wide and an inch deep and it gets worse and worse over time we pile more and more thanks on and we ask people what their priority is you know you get like ten you know you might as

8:01 well have none right we have no ability you know to to really think through what what matters what really matters um and what matters not at all um i i often for an exercise ask people if you couldn't do anything for the rest of the year um what would you do and and why um i'm not asking them to drop everything and say if you had to pick one what would it be and why now this is a

8:25 really hard question because now you got to give up everything except one thing and uh people have a monstrous time answering uh that question but it's a super important question because that's really the high leverage uh if you get that wrong uh then it's it's the intellectual laziness that we said well i have five priorities the the good ones are probably in there somewhere i hope you know uh as opposed to you know let's think really really

8:50 hard about this um because that's really what we have to do because if you're not you know connecting to the correct set of things i mean what do you think is going to happen you know magic you know no i mean you're just going to be frittering away resources kind of hanging around the issues but that's that's not you know how you move the dial that's not how you advance companies you have to be very very

9:12 thoughtful and and systemic about how you focus how you deploy resources how you spend your time and most people are incredibly lazy that way and not much happens nothing the reason that not much happens is because there is literally no focus there is there's no directed effort to what really matters so a lot has to happen you know we have a tendency to very quickly rush to conclusions about what we're supposed to be doing and it

9:36 really requires a lot of considerable thought about what are we doing what are we not doing um you know i've often made this analogy about in medicine you know medicine is a very diagnostics analysis oriented uh profession right we spend almost all our time on trying to figure out what's wrong with you and then once we do that and we've eliminated all the possibilities it's actually really easy to to to prescribe a therapy right the problem is it's really hard to do

10:01 the diagnosis now in business it's literally inverted i mean business we spend like two seconds you know figuring out what the problem is and then we spent all our time on figuring out what we're going to do about it right and and the reason often is you know a lot of the nba types i mean they're sort of schooled you know to kind of have these knee jerk you know very quick i know what's going on here i've seen this

10:22 before i read about it i've seen it before um and then boom boom boom you know and that that level of certainty is completely misguided and misplaced right i often take conversations back from what are we going to do about it too how do we understand this problem to begin with right and it totally changes the the our understanding of it what we might do about it uh and and and so on so i'm really big on leading with

10:48 analysis and not leading with solution but let's let's understand the problem let's not rush let's not yet rush to what we're going to do about it you know that'll become obvious by the way i mean the better you get it analyzing you know problems the odds that you are going to effectively address it obviously go way up because if your analysis is wrong whatever you're planning to do about it there's not going to be effective either

11:09 right that's obvious you know it's a good decision made today better than decision made tomorrow um no actually i think you know people have sort of an unnatural uh you know rush to to judgment you're but because if you're wrong i mean you're losing even more time and more resources and more confusion and opportunity costs and so on so it really behooves you you know to be thoughtful about you know understanding you know what you're dealing with that that's the

11:36 time to really not rush okay there are many times to you know have an extreme urgency but knee-jerking and jumping to conclusions is uh is though is not what i would recommend you do how do you evaluate your decision making today you know in the book you you talk about speed of execution being so important how do you think about and evaluate your own decision making style and process today yeah well it's not so much the speed of

12:01 decision making it's just a general urgency uh it's really a tempo and and a pace at which things happen which i think is way too slow um there's just there's just all this slack that exists in the system that it it's just an attitude adjustment that will speed things up it's all ticks uh we're just naturally slow no we're glacial you know if you let us right uh it's really important that people step up the damn page they're like can i get back to

12:29 you next week well how about tomorrow what's wrong with tomorrow you know and then they have to think about it why it has to be next week versus tomorrow in other words they just want to buy themselves some time well no i mean i i really want to go faster you know let's iterate you know quickly even if you know we meet tomorrow and we still have a lot of remaining questions fine well we'll meet again the next day

12:48 right but just let's create that tempo on that pace and that urgency and everything we do it doesn't mean that we rush to judgment or make stupid positions it just means that we we build urgency and pace into the way we go about stuff you know so i love that urgency and pace my question to you is when you have a company now the size and scale of snowflake how do you instill that same urgency and principle of

13:12 urgency across such a distributed but also large workforce well you uh you do it in every single interaction every single message every single meeting um you know every basically every waking moment uh you have to have that filter on can this be faster can this be quicker um you know i i've always used this example of walking into a california dmv which arguably the worst servers experience on the planet um

13:42 there's no urgency there that that's that's sort of the human condition played out to the absolute worst you know um you can spend two hours for uh you know standing in three different lines with i don't know hundreds of people just to get your driver's license renewed how does it get that bad okay um because nobody cares right so it all it all starts with somebody has to care you know about the quality and the pace and and the way these

14:07 things happen and there's so much room up and that's the whole point of the book you know it's called amp it up why because there's all this room you know in the margin you know to do things faster to do things better to do things more effectively and uh it's just free money is what they call it you know and speaking about pace and amping it up one of the ways that one can amp it up

14:28 and you say this in the book is the element of when there's doubt there's no doubt can you talk to me about how you think about this and i always i always struggle on this one honestly frank because i'm like sometimes people just need time and you doubt them but they just need time and sometimes they're just [ __ ] sorry um well how do you think when there's doubt there's no doubt you know doubt doubt tells you

14:51 everything you need to know okay because when they're that's what the saying is when there's it's a tiebreaker when there is doubt you have your you have your answer there should not be any doubt that's the whole point right i mean you need to when you make decisions there should not be any doubt so when there is doubt you know you shouldn't be doing it right when you're traveling i mean i often have this in hiring decisions people

15:12 have doubts well you have your answer don't hire a person that you have doubts about don't okay and it's a tiebreaker like because people get confused in their minds and they go around and around and they just they just can't get there okay fine let's not do it though you know in other words we it's a tiebreaker it's a way of thinking about breaking the tie um and it's it's it's it's also a safe way because when there's doubt there's

15:35 reasons why the earth does we we may want to go and examine those reasons and talk about it at infinite or you just say well the hell will this there's doubt so we're not doing it it's understood we need to have high conviction we by the way driving towards high conviction is very important um you know when you do something you need to have this overwhelming sense that this is the right thing you know to do and we want to do it and we're

15:56 excited about it right then you know you know the asset you're you're you're having a good decision go way up when there's doubt you're probably already screwed you you push something through that you're doubtful about odds are not going to work out you know so that that's why that's where that saying comes from you know there's no doubt when you let someone go this is a i think so many startup founders struggle because it takes way

16:16 too long for them to let the person go now i said if it's a sales rep in enterprise sales you could doubt me but i could just be working on super long sales cycles frank and you need to give me a bit of time here my friend like how do you balance between every relationship's got a bit of doubt kind of give them a bit of time but that's uh look you know it's not so superficial

16:39 that we just look at the top line results and uh that tells everything because we're gonna go inspect you know your activity levels you know and uh you know in other words we're going to find out everything and it may well be that we're like no we will we will get conviction based on the level of effort and the progress we're making in the things we're doing that that's just fine it's not just like okay you know you're

17:02 not getting to the desired outcome and therefore it's it's it's it's in the story uh that that's not how it is uh but you know when you start peeling back to layers and there's nothing there then you also get to your answer okay because now that's the explanation for the lack of results you know when you when you peel back the layers talk to me about calibration sessions you write about this in amp it up and i love this

17:25 part how do you think about calibration sessions what are they how do you structure them who comes coming all well i mean we do uh we don't do uh mbos for example i've killed off mbos in every company i've ever been and if they had them um that's an easy call i don't want people running their own show i mean if i gotta pull them off a project they start negotiating with me for relief i mean it's the biggest bunch of

17:50 bull i've ever seen and people are not running their own show okay we're we're all part of the same show here so um but we also don't do performance reviews so that's another thing we don't do um when the written performance reviews end up being used against you you know it's it's like a legal trap so what we do instead is um you know we have a quarterly uh you know performance compensation uh model if you will

18:15 and what it means is that everybody who is not in sales because salespeople are on commissions uh plans of course but everybody who's not in sales gets a conversation a money conversation and a performance conversation every single quarter and the way we do it is uh you know the company first needs to earn the bonus money so we have the company goals they get communicated everybody knows what they are and based on our performance there we

18:43 fund the the bonus pool for the entire company then we take that money and we start allocating it to the management ranks each manager gets their amount of money and then they now have to go and attribute that money to their staff that's the calibration process and what we're asking for is a bell distributed bell curve distribution in other words you know you're not get you're not going to peanut butter that money out like everybody gets the same

19:10 amount that's that's typically what people do because they don't want the confrontation with you know who's good is bad or somewhere uh in between but the real is the real reason that we're doing this is not so much that i want to take money away from from non-performers or marginal performance it's really that i want to overcompensate you know the top people in the company i don't want them to feel like [ __ ] i'm getting the same

19:30 you know bonus as the next guy who is like you know can't even hold a candle to what i bring to it right so that i want to have high differentiation between top people and average uh and and the rest of the gang so the bell curve is really important so we ask these managers you know whatever your bell curve is you know we want to see it you know we want to see the distribution of how you are

19:52 allocating that money that we made available to you and they do it uh it's a bit of a learning uh experience in the beginning because like god how's an engineering manager going to you know chat with with with their entire team one-on-one about well why are you getting this well i'm not getting dead well how do i get more next quarter well those are exactly the types of conversation we want them to have uh you know with people right so they

20:14 become much more critical evaluators of people's performance during the quarter because they know you know the calibration process comes around every single quarter and and conversations are there to be had and they need to be credible and legitimate and they need to be accepted right um so it's uh the great thing is you know if we do have to separate you know with somebody you know the first thing we do is we go look at you know what's what's the bonus

20:40 history for this person because if if we're going to separate we would expect to see substandard bonuses there over the the proceeding periods right uh if that's not the case now you have a real problem because somebody is basically you know being compensated really well and you would expect that uh to be for really strong performance and now you want to separate so that would reflect very very poorly on a manager you know if uh if that were the

21:05 case but almost all the time as you will see substandard bonus uh and and performance um if when it comes time to separate the nice thing is uh it becomes a very fast and uh cost efficient process to go through the separation as well because you know we don't get lawyers in and all this kind of misery um because there's a very clear record yeah we have communicated to you every single quarter and the money talks to talk okay so it's not

21:32 like you know you weren't informed every step of the way one period after another what was going on so it uh it all works and it's particularly important as i said for for your top people because i really want them to feel singled out as top people and not being thrown into the into the pile with everybody else in other words you're not special no you are special and we're gonna we're gonna reinforce that with the money

21:57 conversation that goes with that you know and we do the same thing with equity by the way because we have it once a year and an equity refresh process as well we do the same thing managers get certain amount of equity now you make a recommendation how you want that equity allocated to your team okay frank if we think about those as kind of two compensatory levers so single out the best i spoke to karl aschenbach and

22:20 doug before the show and they said that frank is simply the best leader when it comes to getting the best performance out of team members in particular what do you think you do forgetting the money side to get the best out of people in a way that bluntly very very few other leaders can well we we have a very uh empowering style what that means is we really want to turn them loose you know i mean one

22:46 of the biggest frustrations uh early on in my career and i talked about that in the book by the way is that you know i was always on the short leash i don't belong on the shortlist person like me should not be on the short lease but i was because that's just the stage mentality and culture of the times right and it's not an accident that my career took off once i got my first ceo job because now

23:10 i have my hands free i was off the leash you know and i was running wild okay but uh and by the way that that went off for a long period of time okay i didn't get my first ceo until i was like whatever 43. so i lived a long time you know on the short leash and i find that incredibly debilitating for for good people right so good people i i have this very strong reflex when i have

23:33 good people i am going to turn them loose and i'm going to give them everything that they are asking for they will be held to account but i'm going to give it all right so great people you know they're going to do great in that kind of an environment empowerment is the most intoxicating thing you can possibly do to people you know and that the good people you know who really want to run hard you know

23:57 so i i just eliminate all the all the you know the things that are going to hold them back how do you think about the tough balance between giving them the freedom to let them loose but also making sure that they don't feel [ __ ] if i make a mistake i'm going to get fired so like the freedom but also not the fear of being fired if they go too big yeah you know and by the way uh you know

24:20 scott mcneely uh used to say uh you know fail fast in other words you can do really well by being a very fast course corrector meaning that you acknowledge your mistakes and you fix them and then you move on that's actually a very acceptable way of doing things now i make mistakes in hiring and uh i make a show of it to let people know i [ __ ] this up and uh i'm fixing it because i'm

24:42 basically giving everybody else permission to do exactly that the last thing i want you to do is defend your bad decisions okay because you're afraid of the the consequences if you acknowledge the fact like oh i screwed this up no it's actually good when you when you actually know quickly that no this is wrong and and we we have to correct you know we have to course correct course correction uh if you can do it fast is uh man i mean that that's the

25:06 next best thing after making perfect decisions well nobody makes perfect decisions okay so you know something that i spend a lot of time with farmers on that funny it's kind of um a little bit of silicon valley new age culture where it's like we need to create these environments of safety and everyone's so loved and cherished and i'm kind of like all right great but let's also move movement speed and that's also be deliberate i'm worried that we're getting into this

25:31 kind of too fluffy culture where everything's too nice do you see that too and how do you think about that kind of new age fluffy culture compared to the hard driving execution of getting [ __ ] done yeah i think that that what you're describing i am absolutely recognizing it it's definitely something over the last uh i don't know what how many years it's just uh it's not a culture that i subscribe to um you know i mean it being in business

26:02 is like being in professional sports we're here to win and uh you know great performance gets embraced and and not so great performance gets rejected and repelled uh we're not we're not congratulators uh we're not doing victory laps um it's just not our uh our style it's like you know when we score a touchdown we're not going to do a celebration in the end zone we're just not because we're supposed to score touchdowns it's just the absurdity of you know of

26:30 celebrating things that you're supposed to do and constantly reinforcing what a great job people are doing i think that's just complete nonsense you know um there is a time you know to recognize but it's not all day long you know you don't get recognized for finding the bathroom you know uh in the building okay it's just the true reality and also has no meaning anymore because people get patted on the back at every turn because they're feeling so insecure well

26:57 you know we all feel insecure that's that's a normal state you know embrace it you know do you feel it i mean disrespectfully do you feel insecure right now offense you've done this three times you're you're a bit of a season for that he's seen it all now we uh we feel insecure and high anxiety uh all the time i mean i often tell ceos if you're feeling anxious congratulations because you you pass the intelligence test you should be anxious

27:23 people are trying to kill you you know you'll be you'd be insane if you weren't anxious okay uh that's a normal state right that's where that saying comes from you know get comfortable being uncomfortable because uncomfortable is your normal state you know do you ever worry that discomfort or insecurity is driving decision making which you can very easily do yeah and it should you know because you should be by the way if you're overconfident about your decisions you you're probably an

27:49 idiot because how do you know you don't know so you should be you know you should be very nervous and anxious about what you're doing now obviously you're going to acquire you know feedback over time whether you're doing the right thing or the wrong thing uh but you know being overconfident stupid you know you should have you should be highly skeptical about everything constantly so that that doesn't mean that you lack conviction you know we're not going to

28:10 sort out you know revisit you know what we're doing every single day but we are watching right are we getting the feedback that we're expecting and if not why not you know and if we do good you know we'll do more you know um but at the same time you know we don't have this this sort of mindless you know oh this is great it's all going to work no i mean you'll be insane ask any military leader you think they

28:32 approach the battlefield that way they'd be crazy you know you said people are trying to kill you now i always say when it comes to competition row your own race keep your head down in the book you mentioned competition and reference it to war how do you approach competition today then given the war efforts well it's really it's really a modern uh form of warfare business right and that's a good thing because you know i mean people have been at war because

28:57 well that was the only sport that was available to them historically um so now we're in business and at least that's a war where you know at least we don't have personal casualties we do have you know companies that become casualties all the time uh but we basically we basically take that dynamic and that that aggression that exists in people and we are directed towards you know commercial uh pursuit which i i think is outstanding because it raises you know

29:25 the raises everybody up you know prosperity in society and it makes makes everything work so we we take that that those aggressive tendencies that exist in the human condition and we focus them in a way that they actually you know bring a lot of benefit to society as a whole but it is true we are pursuing uh business because there's going to be casualties not personal casualties but you know some companies are not going to make it

29:51 [Laughter] many of them are not going to make it so have you changed as a leader over time um sure i mean of course you changed i mean that that's just everything changes right nothing you know nothing stays the same you know the the advantage of having done this stuff you know a few times is that you know you're not second guessing yourself as much you are faster to pull triggers you're more certain that what you're

30:17 seeing is exactly what you're saying that was a much more reasonable person when i was a younger man you know because i waited things out i tried to help people and then in the end you know i was i was i was reasonable but i also i was also wrong [Laughter] that's what i learned so now now i'm unreasonable but i'm right you know so i i i love that and for you being kind of unreasonable and right often uh

30:41 decisions are made in in board meetings and at least conveyed in board meetings how would you describe your style of board management frame because it's a it's a difficult one i always feel sorry for first-time fans how [ __ ] meant to know how to manage your board when you think about your style of board management how do you think about it yeah you know that and yet that's a topic i i often talk about with with

31:04 founders who are sort of new to uh new to that dynamic uh but you haven't been around boards for a long time by the way i made all those mistakes uh myself i was delusional as a as a younger man as well as to what the relationship what the board really is and what it is and yeah but the the reality is a board needs to be led okay i mean i always tell people the worst thing you

31:25 can possibly do is go into a board meeting and go what do you guys think you just created a vacuum okay and typically you know on the board you got people that are uh you know i call them the old tycoons people that used to have a big job but now they're retired but they still have the need to assert themselves but what do you think they're gonna do you know they're gonna they're gonna step into the vacuum

31:47 and try and dominate a conversation now you've lost control over the conversation so you never go out there what do you guys think no you're gonna go out there and you're gonna tell them what you think you know um and then obviously there can be debate and discussion and challenge that's okay but you have just filled that vacuum okay and now it's a matter of okay uh discussing it vetting it tweaking it you know whatever right but you lead the

32:10 board you do you don't create a vacuum that you know they're not your boss because you're on the board yourself um they're not your friends they could be your friends but that's sort of inconsequential or it really doesn't matter whether they're friends or not because then the divorce relationship is the fiduciary they're a check on you you know they're they're making sure that uh there is alignment with investor interest um and you know obviously they're there to

32:35 hire and fire you so but the reality is um you know ceos don't get easily fired okay that's obviously last resort uh it's also a trigger that doesn't get pulled that much because it's very very consequential to take a ceo out so most ceos are far more you know uh timid than they should be based on what their role really is and the reality is the ceo has enormous power but most ceos don't realize they have it and they don't exercise the full

33:04 measure of the power that they've been handed because they think that you know there are there are they are interpreting that there are constraints around them that they should observe that really aren't there you know um and uh as a result they're more way more timid than they should be you know advise me i'm on board today as board members as a board member sorry what can i do to be the best board member to you

33:27 the ceo as possible and what advice would you give younger people assuming their early border roles yeah you know i uh one of the things i i do uh when i'm acting in an advisory capacity that could be on the board or or something else i i try never to prescribe to people like do this or do that okay instead i say here's a way to think about it so that that's much more of a you know you

33:55 decide whether it makes sense if you try it on for size um and by the way i'm not saying this is the right way to think about it i just said this is a way to think about it right and you use that as part of your process you know of determining you know how you want to deal with the situation now sometimes there are situations where where i draw a hard line um some things that are so glaring so insane that it

34:19 it's it's it's it's amazing never even having a conversation about it but sometimes it's like it's nuanced and there's just like look here's how i would look at it but you decide for yourself it doesn't matter to me whether somebody agrees with me or not because they need to make their own decisions it's not my decision just there so why would i care i'm just giving them an input and they can use it as they see fit

34:42 but you become a good board member that way and the reason is people will seek you out for your point of view because they know you know you're not going to be pissed you know if they decide to do something else right they will not come back to you if they think that they you know you expect them to do exactly what you tell them right so the good relationships are the ones that are that are highly consultative but at the

35:03 same time you know maintain my distance i don't own a position they do and i want them i i want them to own the decision not me right so if they become strong owner strong decision maker then then then i am achieving my objective now rather than i'm stepping into their shoes which is absolutely the wrong reflex you know i i i totally agree especially in terms of the positioning of your thoughts there i do want to move into the quick fire on

35:26 their friends i see a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts does that sound okay wow okay so yeah obviously i loved amp it up my new favorite book when you think about books that had a particular impact on you what books stand out well there there are many um you know some from years ago uh and then i read new books constantly as well actually in terms of new books i just i

35:51 just read uh ryan holiday's uh courageous calling which i highly recommend to especially to young people because it's all about how do you muster courage and and you need courage in every walk of life but you know not many people have really thought about it understood what that means and a lot of people back away from from mustering courage because that's just a natural uh reflex courage is rare um i think you really need it especially as

36:22 a young person in business especially if you're a ceo or entrepreneur you need tons of it so that's why i like that book and ryan holiday's written many things by the way that i i find uh you know quite inspiring and i think it helps people you know calm themselves down and think rationally through uh situations the book i had many years ago that i still talk about is a book called the speed of trust by stephen covey

36:47 and uh you know basically trust is the core currency of any human endeavor and it's one of those most underrated underappreciated uh ideas concepts and currencies and learning about trust is incredibly important because you know when you have trust with employees everything gets better in organizations just everything and by the way if you don't have it everything gets worse okay um and by the way trust is either something you have or you don't have

37:17 there's nothing in between okay so you need to really pursue it otherwise you won't have it and then it has detrimental consequences the same is true with customers when when customers feel that you have their back they're just going to hand you their business with their eyes closed they're not even thinking about it they're just signing for because i trust you and when they don't it becomes the most high friction you know endeavor and most frustrating thing

37:45 so trust is something that you really have to pursue and understand you know rather than well it'll just happen well you know it might if you have the right instincts and and reflexes but for most of us it's something that we really have to think about you have to behave in certain ways you know to engender trust it doesn't just it doesn't just you know fall off the log uh so that that's why i love that book

38:07 um and i've i've reread it um the concepts are are very simple but the the implications of it are they're everywhere constantly you know see again what three traits would you most like your children to adopt um well courage would be would be number one um you know because that's it's very hard to to live uh whatever and not many people have it again because they don't think

38:37 about it and they just sort of reflexively you know behave because we all do that as as humans the the second thing is and i i like this in everybody is a is a measure of male content you know people that are not satisfied uh with the status quo just because they always have this this needs and they always see the variance between what is and and what could be i mean that's essentially the description of drive okay

39:04 drive comes from somewhere and it comes from the the gap that exists between the status quo and and what could in other words you know it's a reason to get out of bed in the morning you know um i still just get asked a question you know what kind of people are you trying to hire employees ask that question what kind of people are we looking for i'm looking for male adjusted people people will have a chip

39:23 on their shoulder people will have something to prove versus people that you know they are so well balanced they have to think about a reason to get out of bed you know i mean so we we like the people that have that high variance you know between where they are and where they where they need to be and uh that propulsion and drive is very very powerful i like to bet on that and most of the entrepreneurs that i

39:47 know that are very very successful i mean there is a deep seated imbalance with these people that's that's where it comes from you know and uh so i i and it's it's also uh immensely satisfying um you know i think people like that become very valuable asset they may also be difficult to be around you know my whole idea um but that's just the cost of doing business right so yeah but at the same time you know

40:15 the third the the third thing is you know you need to have people that have empathy empathy is really really important um you know if you don't care about how other people you know are feeling or how are they relating um you know i i think i think it's people really need to sense you know your your your empathy it's very very important they need to sense that you're not a you know sort of a cold-blooded

40:42 you know uh executor and you know they don't sense the importance of you know what they're doing i mean one of the things i talked about in my own house meeting um actually it was last week um you know people ask me why are you here because they think that you know we work for a living with which we don't at this juncture and i said look you know i says whatever i do here you know i can't really move

41:07 my own dial but i can move yours okay and uh you're you're counting on me you know to make the most of your investment in the company because you know you hired on you you show up every day with the best of what you've got so you know the deal is you know i'm going to do the best i can for you you know i i want your family you to be in a different station of life as

41:32 a function of you having been here not just your career but your entire uh you know circumstance and the great thing is because we've had these three great companies over the last uh you know 20 years there's hundreds thousands of people who have been profoundly moved uh you know by the experience they're in different places today um massively different uh than they were uh before they joined their companies and that's sort of the enduring reward that we get it's a very it's it's the

42:03 most treasured thing of these uh of these experiences is the fact that you change people's lives you know as a function you know of uh of what we did and uh that that's just the the the gift that keeps on giving you know i sometimes get a text from somebody late on the saturday night obviously they've had a few glasses of wine but they're emotional because all of a sudden they're you know they're coming to terms with

42:27 you know where they are they never thought they would be there and they just want to express their their gratitude and appreciation for the fact that they were part of this experience and how it has changed everything you know for them and people people uh uh forget about that because a lot of good gets done in silicon valley and in other places you know where we built these companies um and the the incoming tide floats all

42:50 boats and that's literally true i mean everybody gets lifted you know by these successful uh companies and then you know they become really important people in their families in their extended orbits they become a backstop you know economically to tons and tons of people so lots and lots of good is coming off this and i think a lot of people think like oh you're just buying a lot of boats and houses and all that but the reality is

43:14 uh it is much more uh there's a much more thoughtful way of thinking about the effects that wealth creation has through these kind of companies yeah final question for you frank how do you think about your own relationship to money you know you've gone from bluntly you know um not having money to obviously being very successful how do you feel about your own relationship it's something that i struggle with well it has completely changed uh obviously in the beginning you know

43:40 everybody has natural uh you know economic insecurity some people more than others obviously because i got having been on uh you know having dealt with compensation for people uh for a long time i've seen every flavor of that um but you know but once you sort of you know get a few degrees of separation from uh from economic hardship um you know that relationship changes to the point where you know it it's sort of a topic that is

44:09 you know i look at money it's just a number to me you know it's like math it's like how many comments i mean it's like it has no meaning because it has no consequence on a day-to-day basis you know i mean uh how many bottles of wine can you drink you know that kind of thing so that relationship just uh goes away and i also don't don't view money as a scorekeeper like oh i got more than you

44:32 do i mean it's that's so not interesting uh to me you know those those types of conversations um you know the nice thing about um you know having done this you know a few times is that you know you become you know more enlightened and more balanced and more more thoughtful i would say you know about those those kinds of things so listen i i love the book i absolutely am thrilled with this thank you so much for

44:57 joining me today and it was so much fun having you on the show good bad terrific good to see you