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You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

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If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts.

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So it's all acting like safe haven.

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I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their

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currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

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I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

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If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

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Case Coke, welcome to the show.

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Thanks, Marty.

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I appreciate you having me on.

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I'm honored to have you on, as we've been discussing over a couple of conversations over the last few months.

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We've implemented Coke Industries principle based management system here at TFTC.

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And it's been wonderful.

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Is it working?

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It is. I think it is working.

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I think it is.

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That's good, man.

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Yeah.

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What have you found is like the most helpful, like right out of the gates to you guys?

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I think for us, we did a, we probably spent three months doing PBM implementation with a consultant.

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And through that process, we realized that we had a bunch of knowledge gaps in the company.

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and we have a relatively small team and I think that was the most surprising thing is since we're

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so small it should be relatively easy to get information and data to every member of the team

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but through the process we noticed that there are some knowledge gaps and mainly because I've been

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running the company I ran the company as a solo founder for like six six or seven years and we've

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grown the team over the last two and there's a lot of embedded knowledge that I built up in my own

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head over the course of the first seven years that I just took for granted and needed to

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open up to the rest of the company. Well, good. Well, I appreciate you

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experimenting with it, you know, and the principles, like what you're talking about

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on the knowledge side. Also, there's the framing of trying to have a republic of science. So,

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well, you know, Polanyi's idea of a republic of science, whether it's a very small team

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or like Coke, we have 140,000 employees and growing to try to get knowledge on a specific

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problem to try to get the best knowledge we can from the talent that we have around the world.

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And then make the best decisions at scale with the knowledge we have. It's always been the,

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one of our biggest challenges, right? But it starts with a mindset of having a Republic of

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science and not thinking about an organization in silos, which I think is a trap that many

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companies have, is that if you have four or five different companies or even capabilities,

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right, sales versus marketing versus operations, whatever the, however your company's set up,

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how you can work as a team and design knowledge systems to make knowledge move as quickly as

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possible to where it's needed most. And we are actually talking about this yesterday because

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all of the innovation in AI that we're trying to experiment with, and it's been amazing over

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the last year just to see the company from the bottom up experiment with some of these models

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and not do that from the top down.

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Sure, we have a vision of leveraging technology

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and driving transformation with it.

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But where you get the magic,

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at least in our experience and learning,

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is when you can create a bottom-up culture

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where it's spontaneous order,

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where someone has an idea,

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let's say two businesses in our fertilizer business,

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and then we have Georgia Pacific,

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where someone says,

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you know what, I think some of these folks

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over in Georgia Pacific and operations

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can also benefit from this knowledge.

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And that knowledge automatically transfers to those people,

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and no one's telling them to do it.

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No one's from the top down waving some magic wand.

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It's like, oh, you need to tell this person that there's no way you can do that

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in a really large company.

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So back to what I was saying, like yesterday we were in a meeting,

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and we were thinking, how do you create a faster republic of science with technology?

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and so there's so many new models that are being spun up um like in with you know anthropic for

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example or even a microsoft copilot we use all the all these different technologies and

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um there's amazing models that are being built but back to the how do you make it so it's not

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stuck in silos and groups in the cfo group are just you know applying it in their group and like

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how do you get that over to Georgia Pacific or to our fertilizer or energy

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business or whatever,

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so that not all these groups are making the same model right Over and over and over because that drives your cost up and there also waste and inefficiency in that So we just talking about how do you how do you build like a

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it's almost like an app store, a Coke app store where people can see these are the,

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you can see the trends within the company of these are the ones that are being used the most

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and are adding the most value. And Hey, why don't you try it on your business instead of starting

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from scratch, this one's probably 80% all the way there. So back to your point on knowledge,

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this is one of our key principles, knowledge and transformation, and then also creative destruction,

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having every employee have the mindset of one, how do I transfer knowledge across the organization,

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but how am I innovating with these models and how fast they're moving and staying ahead to

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create a competitive advantage for the company. So what you, what you're working on within your

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shop, we're, we're working on in spades as well. So I think what's cool about principles and like

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knowledge as an example, or creative destruction, it can work for one person. It can work for a

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10 person shop or 140,000 person company. That's what, that's where we're, we, we see,

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we're so excited about what these principles can do.

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And that's going to, that's going to be, you know,

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kind of make or break Coke in the future.

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Are we still, are we going to keep applying these principles and innovating or,

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or not? Right. And that to me, to, to us, that's like,

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that depends on the results and the future of Coke and where we go as a

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company.

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Well, that's what really drew me to principles-based management when it was

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originally pitched is that it's really seeped in Hayekian, Mises, Austrian principles of

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grassroots. I mean, on the macro scale grassroots development of an economy, but you can apply that

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to the micro too. And I think information and being the source of the inputs that go into the

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decision making, whether it's a bleak, grown economy or a business is something that I've

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believed very deeply in on the macro side for years. And so it was very intuitive.

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Once I found principle-based management, so just apply this to your business. And

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to your point about AI, I think it was very serendipitous that we started our PBM journey

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when we did, which was November of last year when Opus 4.6 was coming out.

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And then in January, we were still going through the process and OpenClaw was becoming popular.

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And we hopped on that right away and actually helped us solve this knowledge gap.

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And I think it was a combination of PBM, the agents, and then the paper that Jack Dorsey

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and Roloff from Sequoia put out about businesses becoming this intelligence layer and sort of

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flattening the hierarchy that most businesses follow with a managerial executive class,

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managerial class, and then underlings between them in these silos and identifying that we had

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this knowledge gap and then having the tool of these models and then the harnesses that make

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them very powerful has enabled us to solve those those knowledge problems that we had pretty quickly

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because now we've built up this agentic system internally with a company brain and instead of

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people having to communicate even with each other they can just ping the company brain the

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intelligence layer to figure out okay who do we have coming on the podcast for the next week what

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uh is there a headshot that we need to get is there uh yeah need to insert and it's interacting

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with the agent. I mean, obviously we're still interacting with each other, but you can sort of

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solve that knowledge problem with the agent as well. Well, I mean, it's so exciting to hear that

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you're, you're practicing these principles and experimenting with them. Like for us, you know,

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the reason my, my father and I just wrote this book, it's called, um, becoming a principle driven

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leader. It's the first book I've ever been a part of. It was my dad's fifth. Um, and, but not just

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to get these ideas out to Coke employees,

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which we feel like we have so much opportunity

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just to empower people with these principles

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to continue to transform the company.

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But we want to get it out to society too

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because we feel like we will all be much better off

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if we can solve problems in a principled way

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and not only get better business results,

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but interact in a way in society that takes us out of this divisiveness.

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And I mean, look, we are all living in unprecedented uncertainty, right?

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Whether it's economic uncertainty or the stuff we're just talking about with AI,

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you know we have to place jobs all of those things or just divisiveness in general So the whole reason why we think a principled approach wins is that you have to have something to navigate all of this uncertainty

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If you don't have like a principled approach and a framework to kind of work with, I think too many people, unfortunately, like blow with the wind.

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Right. And whatever is trending or whatever is the most popular, then you can apply that to business and just chasing the trends.

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Or you can apply that to like what you believe at your core based on what you read in social media.

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Right. So our hope is that this principle based framework and the way we're kind of organizing this and then communicating it to the world gives people a navigation tool to that unprecedented uncertainty.

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So big picture. I know we started like right in the business, but this is for us.

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It's much more of a societal thing.

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I know you've studied all this stuff and I did as a kid to a Hayek,

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von Mises, Milton Friedman,

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all of the core philosophers that really my father learned these principles

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from, but it's more than just transforming a business.

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It's like transforming your life, right.

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And transforming society at large.

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So anyway, just as for your audience,

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It's just more of like a broader picture of, you know, why we're so excited to get these ideas out into the world.

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That's the reason why.

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To your point, I think they're very important to get out there because I think the principles that you've laid out in becoming a principle driven leader.

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And the book that I read when I first started getting into PBM was Good Profit, which Father Charles wrote.

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And it really helped orient myself as we're beginning to go through this process.

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And I think to take that step back, Coke's been around since 1940, 86 years.

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And I believe our conversation in May or June that we had our first call, one of the ideas that's been stuck in my mind since I've read Good Profit is it seems very clear to me that Coke Industries has paired patient.

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patients, just in general, patient capital, risk-taking, and creative destruction in a way

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that the very few companies have done over the last century. And I think that particularly that

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idea of patient capital, taking long-term bets, staying private so you can take those long-term

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bets is something that is underappreciated these days, particularly in a world where we like to say

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on this show that we live in a world of a high-velocity trash economy where everything's

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driven by quarterly financials and really just thinking day to day, not taking a step back and

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thinking long term. And I think Coke having been around for 86 years is a testament to

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the other way of doing things, which is long term principles, seeped in principles,

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immorals and taking the time to actually do things in a calculated way.

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Well, Marty, I appreciate what you're saying about the company. And you're right. I mean, it's up to the last almost 90 years. It's been an enduring business, to your point, because of this principle-based approach. That is the differentiator and where it started.

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And but I will tell you, a lot of people think that the Coke story is like this, like up into the right.

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And if you've read the book, you've seen the story you've heard.

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You read the story that it has been a rocky road, rocky road.

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I mean, there was almost like two bankruptcies in there in the story that but but the way we framed the storytelling of the book that we hope is most helpful to to the world is through the lens of failure.

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And I think that's one of the biggest differentiators on how we tell the story is that we learn a hell of a lot more from our failures than we do our successes.

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And back to this principle-based approach, all of those failures, the consistency comes to ignoring one or more of the principles where we just ignored it and we just plowed ahead and we didn't challenge ourselves with that.

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And all of our successes or where we've transformed and dug ourselves out of the ditch is because we really focused on the principles to dig ourselves out.

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So, you know, um, Rocky road, lots of failures, but it's how you learn from those failures and then internalize the principles at a deeper level and then share those stories with others so they can learn from your mistakes and, um, and keep growing, you know, from, from that standpoint.

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So but yeah, I mean, it's a it's a crazy story.

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It's, you know, like I said, it's a rocky road, but it's been a nine thousand X growth since, you know, the early 60s.

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Something that my father never does never in his goals you know to build a company that but he just kept learning from failure but also studying the principles of human progress and what worked in society what made countries successful what made countries

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fail, and then kept adding these principles and then just like empowering great talent with those

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principles and getting out of the way. Um, and I think like just, uh, I don't know. I like

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celebrating my father, not only because he's my best friend and mentor, but he leads by example.

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Right. I mean, that's the only way this works. And you have the story that you do is that he

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looked at his own, you know, his own gifts and where his own weaknesses were. And instead of

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kind of thinking about himself as a typical CEO that top down, you know, making a lot of the

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strategic decisions, he thought about himself more as a chief philosophy officer because his

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core gift was these abstract principles. He learned them, he understood them. And then how

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do you communicate that into a large organization where if people can understand the principle,

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they can go empower it in their own way, not in a rules or formulaic basis. A lot of companies are

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run that way, very process driven. And we've always done it this way. We're going to do it that way.

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He wants it to change daily, right, in terms of what are the new systems and processes?

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How do we leverage AI in a new way?

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I used to do it this way.

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How can we blow that up and start over, right?

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And you and I talked about this before, but one of the key principles that is core in our vision statement is creative destruction.

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And that's, you know, as you know, Joseph Schumpeter's principle that he coined in 1942, that if you're not disrupting yourself from within, the market will disrupt you and turn you into a dinosaur.

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Right. And we're seeing that, you know, his whole idea of the ground is always crumbling beneath your feet.

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My father always says, well, now it's earthquakes. It's not crumbling.

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Like you were all dealing with earthquakes all the time.

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And, and so that's why creative destruction is in every meeting and every conversation of what we're what we're doing to transform ourselves and disrupt what we've done in the past.

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And there's no sacred cows at Coke. Even though my grandfather started the company in pipelines, crude oil pipelines and energy and refining, none of that's sacred.

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We're investing in all sorts of alternative energies, right?

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Because we believe that the energy stack of the future is we need all of it to power the world, right?

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We need fossil fuels, natural gas and crude oil.

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We need solar.

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We need nuclear.

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And so a lot of people, I think, have a misperception that, well, Coke's just focused on fossil fuels because that's where they started.

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that's like four percent of the capital that we have in the business goes towards that

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and why because we believe in creative destruction and constantly investing in the next technology

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um and make experiments make investments that we we know have low probability of success but

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if we're not in the game testing and learning and driving that principle of experimental discovery

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will eventually become a dinosaur.

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And so a combination of creative destruction

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and experimental discovery,

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you've got to live and breathe that every day, right?

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And not just the top, right?

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We need the whole organization to be thinking that way

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and innovating in their day-to-day roles,

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their jobs, all their tactics.

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And yeah, it's core to what got us here

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and it will be core to see if we can keep this going for multiple generations.

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And I think another sort of list of values or principles that you've talked about in the book

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and just having observed from going through the process that we have here at TFTC,

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is there a level of humility that's necessary for the individual within Koch Industries,

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even at the top, and meritocracy that exists based off of that humility?

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humility to notice what you're good at and focus on that what you're passionate about because at

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the end of the day that will benefit the company overall and you went through this personally

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yes i did within the time and time again many many times and yeah how did you

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recognize that you need to step back i believe you were the head of the um

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the fertilizer division yeah yeah so um maybe just to give your audience just kind of a high

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level framing on the company. We have nine, we, we touched the majority of the economy.

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You know, I mentioned we have 140,000 employees, one of the largest private, privately owned

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businesses in the U S and we're,

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You know, it's in one of those businesses, one of those nine operating businesses and fertilizers.

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So we're wood products with Georgia Pacific. We're in technology with, you know, Molex connectors, global business in force, very large ERP software company.

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We're in glass manufacturing. So anyway, a lot of different things that were very broad and we own and operate those platforms.

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that I spent about a decade in the fertilizer business. And this goes back to one of the

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principles that you're talking about, whether it's humility, you can say intellectual honesty

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about who you really are, but also the principle of comparative advantage. What have you demonstrated

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your gift is relative to what everyone else can do on the team, right? And that's a very important

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point and what you can do relative to others, what you're good at, but relative to what

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the, what others are good at on the team. I think a lot of people mistaken comparative advantage

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for absolute advantage. It's like, what am I best at in a vacuum? And if you're not looking at

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trade-offs of what you could be doing relative to your alternatives and relative to what others

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can be doing, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. So that just as kind of a pre,

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just to tee up my story and looking at my father and how he recognized his comparative advantage

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was abstract concepts and really organized his role and his job around being more of a chief

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philosophy officer and really challenging with principles and empowering people with principles.

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I realized in the fertilizer business that I was a much better builder than I was operator.

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And, you know, I had a great opportunity to be president of the business. It was third,

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third largest profit driver of Coke, huge business operating in 30 countries and three or 4,000

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employees. But I realized that I was not, it was not my comparative advantage after about nine

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months. And frankly, I was, I was miserable on the role. You know, most people think that,

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oh, you got the big job, you're running the whole thing now. You know, why would you ever

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step away from that? And it's because one, my father taught me humility and intellectual honesty

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to really look in the mirror and understand who you are. But the second thing is I really understood

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comparative advantage. And I looked at the guy, Scott, that could have been running. He was a

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great operator and he, I knew he was going to be a great president as well. And he was operating

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a smaller part of the business. So his opportunity cost of not running the whole thing, but then my

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opportunity costs back to the trade-offs and what I was giving up as a team member was focusing on

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building and looking at innovation and what we can do to drive creative destruction. Is that if I was,

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I was honest with myself, even though it was cool to have the CEO title and like what everyone thinks you should want.

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I wasn't happy and I wasn't doing a good job relative to the alternatives we had in the business and someone like Scott running it.

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And we are missing out on this big opportunity to go invest in new technologies.

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And so once once I met with leadership and we talked about all the different trade offs, I've I've you know, I've called it like firing myself before.

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That's really that it doesn't really articulate the principle itself, because if you look at it objectively, it's just about wrong person, wrong role and too many trade offs for all the people involved.

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Right. So think about everyone's comparative advantage, just like a sports team.

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Get everyone in the right positions, quarterback, wide receiver, lineman, tight end or what that relative to what they could be doing.

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Other roles on the football team and and go get the best results overall and go win the championship.

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Right. And so that's what we did. And we started getting better.

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The business performed better. And then I got to ultimately start Coke Disruptive Technologies.

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That was a whole new arm for Coke.

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And then everyone, if they're in their comparatively advantaged role and they can look in the mirror and say, this is my sweet spot.

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You start to see the results follow that.

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Right.

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And so to me, like, you know, we talk about 41 principles in the book.

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Comparative advantage is one of the most powerful.

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And I think it's one of the most misapplied principles.

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And I think the reason why for that is too often we worry about what everyone else thinks

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about our job, you know, our own ego or how many people report to me.

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And that's some kind of measure of success when the measure of success is, are you maximizing

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how much value you can create as an individual towards the overall vision of the business Right And I just think so much is missed in that across so many businesses that I mean what is

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what is societal transformation we can make if we just all apply,

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think about what the world would look like.

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If you just,

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we all applied comparative advantage and people would be self-actualizing

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because it's like,

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I'm killing it every day and I'm not in the wrong role.

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You know it's,

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a really big one. I know I probably over explained that one, Marty. Sorry, but I'm very passionate

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about that one because I've seen it misapplied so much. And I'm example number one on that.

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Yeah, that was a know your role is a concept that's been in my mind since high school. I played at a very I played on a very good lacrosse team. We were we were number one in the state. We were very good coaches. And that was the one thing that they beat. I know your role. You don't need to be the star. You just do your your role perfectly.

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For some reason, it's easier to apply in sports.

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It's more obvious.

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But then when you apply that in business, for whatever reason, it's just more gray, I think, in terms of who does what.

329
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So we have a lot of people working on the wrong things.

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Yeah.

331
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Well, I mean, it seems clear that you're enamored by creative destruction.

332
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And I think that can lead into a couple of other principles from the book, too.

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Because with creative destruction, you're venturing into the unknown in a way to figure out what's new and how you can apply it to your business.

334
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That comes with a lot of experimenting and a lot of failure as well, which could both be expected.

335
00:30:33,768 --> 00:30:48,948
And that's another thing in the book that I really appreciated is the normalization of failure and rapid experimentation, which is necessary for actually going to be able to successfully creatively destruct your incumbent business.

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Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, just to kind of to jump on that one, whether it's creative destruction or experimental discovery, I mentioned that before, but those are two of the 41 principles as well.

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And I go through this one because it also an illustration of if someone like reading the book or trying to get their head around the principles it can be daunting to say oh my God there 41 Why does there have to be so many

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But the reality is like, these are, and why 41? These are just the ones that we had the stories

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that we thought were most powerful that could help the most people. And, but you really only

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need like one or two to get started. And if you take the story, the comparative advantage story

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that I applied to my own role.

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And it was one of the most important decisions of my life

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because it set my life on a completely new trajectory.

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And I also enjoyed my life a lot more.

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I was having more fun.

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I was adding more value.

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I even had a better relationship with my kids

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because work was going bad.

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It all ties together, right?

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But then when you take experimental discovery

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and creative destruction,

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The next role of starting something like Koch Disruptive Technologies, which was basically our venture capital to growth equity platform, we had a gap within Koch.

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If we're going to drive creative destruction, to your point, we have to be able to see what technologies are coming at us.

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Otherwise, we're going to wake up one day and wonder what happened.

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We have to be able to see around corners.

356
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And as you know, now with all your work in AI, that's more important than ever.

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But then how do you apply experimental discovery to areas that we don't understand and but we need to be in the game?

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And so this this goes and this is a learning.

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And I think I talk a little bit about this in the book of the early days of KDT.

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we were, because of me, we were violating experimental discovery in some cases,

361
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meaning we were making like in healthcare, right? That's an area we didn't have a lot of expertise

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in, but we saw it as 20% of our economy. We need to really start to set some experiments in there.

363
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Well, we were writing $100, $200 million checks into these companies without a lot of knowledge

364
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around that specific company. And so when you think about, okay, what have we learned from that?

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To apply experimental discovery, even in venture, and you can apply this to any element of your

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business, it's like bet your knowledge size. The size of your bet should be equivalent to

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the size of your knowledge on that. And make some bets and you're going to lose. But

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a great experiment we define as the value of the learning exceeds the cost of the loss.

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So you can approach anything like that, whether it's a venture capital bet

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or trying out a new vendor for AI as an example, that you know it might fail,

371
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but you need to put enough experiments out there on the board to say, all right,

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we got to try new things. We got to figure out who our preferred partner is that we want to work with.

373
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And so I share that just so your audience understands.

374
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You mentioned experimental discovery.

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I had to fail a number of times with experimental discovery to understand what good looks like in applying it.

376
00:34:33,604 --> 00:34:38,364
And so I just encourage your audience that think about like, OK, where am I stagnant?

377
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And where have I not made any changes?

378
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and how do I put some responsible experiments in place that where I can bet, basically make small

379
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bets that are relative to the size of my knowledge and to figure out how I can learn from them,

380
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knowing that a couple of those will be failures. Yeah. And I think, um, one of the examples in the

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book is not necessarily a creative destruction, but after the acquisition of Molex, I think

382
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from where I recall

383
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the pure

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KPI was revenue growth but that wasn't

385
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really leading to increased

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profit margins so you had to do a deep dive

387
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on the different products

388
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that Molex was spinning

389
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out and you found some

390
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interesting things that came in with

391
00:35:23,784 --> 00:35:25,484
some assumptions and they proved to be wrong

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particularly about which products were

393
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the most successful

394
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and where you should focus on new initiatives

395
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and I think

396
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a lot of from what I recall

397
00:35:35,564 --> 00:35:42,244
reading the book. One of the problems was you just had this, or the managers of Molex had this

398
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assumption that we've been running this for a while and it's a popular product. But after going

399
00:35:47,404 --> 00:35:52,724
in and dissecting exactly what was going on, it became obvious like, oh, this actually isn't the

400
00:35:52,724 --> 00:35:59,124
right way to do things. No, I think that's right. And Molex has always been a fantastic company,

401
00:35:59,124 --> 00:36:09,664
But I would say that like that's a great example of the challenge of M&A and doing an acquisition and bringing a new very large company.

402
00:36:09,824 --> 00:36:11,964
I think when we bought it, it's 50,000 employees.

403
00:36:12,364 --> 00:36:21,204
So you can imagine, you know, that took Coke from 80 or 90,000 to, you know, 130, 140,000 employees overnight.

404
00:36:21,404 --> 00:36:36,220
That is a that is a large gulp to integrate and to take on And to your point you right on the story is that you know Molex had been public for decades And so this is where you started the conversation back

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on one of the key principles of our principle-based culture is long-term thinking versus

406
00:36:45,460 --> 00:36:50,400
short-term. But if you're thinking top line, and a lot of public companies have this problem,

407
00:36:50,400 --> 00:36:54,800
You're thinking quarter to quarter and making sure that you hit your numbers for the analysts.

408
00:36:56,080 --> 00:37:00,760
It's very, very difficult to make the capability investments you need for the long term.

409
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,340
And so that was one thing that culturally we had to overcome.

410
00:37:06,060 --> 00:37:10,840
But I'd say it was top line thinking versus bottom line, to your point.

411
00:37:10,980 --> 00:37:14,540
And that took many years to start to turn the corner there.

412
00:37:14,540 --> 00:37:20,480
But it was also some top down thinking versus bottom up empowerment.

413
00:37:21,460 --> 00:37:30,300
And so I think that's been one of the biggest transformations in Molex is, you know, empowering people here.

414
00:37:30,420 --> 00:37:38,520
Let me back up a little bit. And, you know, you I think you benefit from having experimented with PBM in your own organization.

415
00:37:38,520 --> 00:38:00,500
For your audience, though, if you take a principle-based management culture and what we've tried and developed within Coke over many, many decades, if you boil what that is basically down to a nutshell, I always tell people, what if you had a business where people knew what to do without being told?

416
00:38:00,500 --> 00:38:11,680
And that is the simplest way I can describe all of these principles, all of our frameworks of like what you're you're never going to get there perfectly.

417
00:38:11,680 --> 00:38:14,880
Right. But that's what you aspire to be. And that's your vision.

418
00:38:16,100 --> 00:38:23,500
Then you can start designing and running your business with that operating system with a bottom up empowerment mindset.

419
00:38:24,200 --> 00:38:30,100
It's just like what I talked about with my dad. He tries to empower people with principles and let them run.

420
00:38:30,500 --> 00:38:38,200
It is not him at the top saying, well, you guys need to go do this and you need to do this with this strategy.

421
00:38:38,200 --> 00:38:40,080
He challenges all the time, right?

422
00:38:40,180 --> 00:38:45,560
But it's more of, you know best, you're closest to the opportunity, you're closest to the problem.

423
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:47,620
How can I help you?

424
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:49,160
How can I remove barriers?

425
00:38:49,800 --> 00:39:00,180
And just on your point on Molex, the last quarterly business review or last board meeting we had, I remember, you know, they're really performing well.

426
00:39:00,500 --> 00:39:06,020
right now across all their businesses, automotive, healthcare, their data center business,

427
00:39:06,720 --> 00:39:15,640
their consumer business, all of them are growing. More things need to be connected in this IoT

428
00:39:15,640 --> 00:39:23,460
world that we live in, and especially with AI, driving transformative demand. But our data center

429
00:39:23,460 --> 00:39:30,360
business in particular, we can't keep up with demand. We make the connectors that connect all

430
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:34,900
the data centers and the cables and products like that.

431
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:38,340
So, but I remember in the quarterly business review,

432
00:39:38,700 --> 00:39:44,540
instead of going through a 40 page PowerPoint on just a page turn and what are the results

433
00:39:44,540 --> 00:39:50,520
and asking a bunch of detailed questions, his approach and most of our senior leaders are

434
00:39:50,520 --> 00:39:52,840
just what are the top problems?

435
00:39:53,020 --> 00:39:54,960
How can we help you remove constraints?

436
00:39:55,380 --> 00:39:59,700
And let's talk about what principles are, you know, are either we're not applying

437
00:39:59,700 --> 00:40:08,380
there that we should be. Change is a whole dynamic of the culture, but also how businesses are run.

438
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:15,880
Right. So I think it's like that kind of mindset, culture, and leadership that enables you to go

439
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:24,600
from a top-down kind of control and dependency of leadership to bottom-up empowerment. And when you

440
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:30,320
have leaders doing that, what that does is it gives everyone else permission downstream to say,

441
00:40:30,480 --> 00:40:37,640
oh, well, I need to do that too, right? I see how that's empowering me. How am I empowering my people

442
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:42,780
instead of operating as a supervisor, a leader, and just telling them what they need to be doing?

443
00:40:43,220 --> 00:40:47,280
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478
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Well, this ties into the next thing I wanted to talk about, and I think really builds on that,

479
00:43:13,457 --> 00:43:19,677
like other principles you talk about in the book are incentives are much more than money. It really

480
00:43:19,677 --> 00:43:24,917
comes down to motivation and how you create an incentive structure internally that motivates

481
00:43:24,917 --> 00:43:31,737
people to do better. Yeah. Boy, I mean, that is a big one. And I would say, you know, we,

482
00:43:32,177 --> 00:43:39,157
one of our, one of our frameworks at Coke is around motivation. We call it five dimensions.

483
00:43:40,157 --> 00:43:46,197
It's like a problem solving tool, problem solving framework and motivation. It used to be called

484
00:43:46,197 --> 00:43:52,077
incentives. We now call it motivation because it's much more, people think incentives, they think

485
00:43:52,077 --> 00:43:59,237
money. But to your point, it's much broader than that. And motivation is about motivating

486
00:43:59,237 --> 00:44:05,597
long-term value creation, right? So, and you may be motivated by different things that I'm motivated

487
00:44:05,597 --> 00:44:12,797
by, right? You may be motivated by what teams you get to work on, who you get to work with,

488
00:44:13,197 --> 00:44:17,737
which exciting projects do you get to be a part of? It's not just about, okay, what's my total

489
00:44:17,737 --> 00:44:22,437
compensation at the end of the year. There's all these different things, right? So I, to,

490
00:44:22,597 --> 00:44:26,797
to break it down, like for your audience and like how we think about motivation, there's kind of

491
00:44:26,797 --> 00:44:33,377
four key areas that we want to motivate every employee to, to unlock their potential on.

492
00:44:33,617 --> 00:44:38,057
And it's not, you know, the first thing you'd say was like, how, how much money are you making

493
00:44:38,057 --> 00:44:44,637
right now? That's not the first thing that we look at, right? It's more about cultural alignment

494
00:44:44,637 --> 00:44:50,457
to these principles that we're talking about is are you as an individual, like if Marty works at

495
00:44:50,457 --> 00:44:57,937
Coke, are you advancing the culture or are you taking away from it? Right. And we, we have a 360

496
00:44:57,937 --> 00:45:03,937
process where the, we'd ask the people that you work with your supervisor, even your customers,

497
00:45:04,097 --> 00:45:10,297
your vendors, your coworkers, Hey, how's Marty doing on that? And you get very specific, um,

498
00:45:10,297 --> 00:45:16,357
examples of what's going well and what's not. And so then it's like, okay, let's see what Marty's

499
00:45:16,357 --> 00:45:23,897
doing on culture. But then the other thing is on capability building, right? And thinking about

500
00:45:23,897 --> 00:45:29,137
what's Marty doing to innovate and building for the future for his role and for his business.

501
00:45:29,557 --> 00:45:35,897
That's highly subjective. There's no like, you made X dollars, so therefore you get Y,

502
00:45:35,897 --> 00:45:40,617
Right. But then and then we think about long term value creation.

503
00:45:41,017 --> 00:45:48,017
Like, you know, what are you doing to advance the long term value of Coke or whatever business that you're in?

504
00:45:48,997 --> 00:45:51,697
And then leadership is one, too.

505
00:45:51,817 --> 00:45:56,197
And it doesn't mean that you have to have people reporting to you to be a leader.

506
00:45:56,337 --> 00:45:59,457
Right. It's like, are you helping others around you succeed?

507
00:45:59,977 --> 00:46:02,017
And it's like, how's Marty doing on that?

508
00:46:02,017 --> 00:46:08,297
And then, of course, there's the more objective thing is like, well, how's Marty's like P&L and how's his results?

509
00:46:08,997 --> 00:46:19,017
But that's a very, again, a very different approach than most companies that if you're a salesperson, well, I brought in $10 million of business this year.

510
00:46:19,157 --> 00:46:24,637
And so I made X. Therefore, I get why you got to put all these subjective factors.

511
00:46:24,817 --> 00:46:28,877
Otherwise, you're not motivating people on a principle based culture.

512
00:46:29,477 --> 00:46:31,497
So you have to have all those factors in it.

513
00:46:31,757 --> 00:46:32,757
It's harder to do.

514
00:46:32,897 --> 00:46:34,077
It takes more time.

515
00:46:34,077 --> 00:46:41,517
And we put a lot of, we put all that leadership back on supervisors of their people to really

516
00:46:41,517 --> 00:46:47,377
make recommendations on bonuses and base salaries based on those factors.

517
00:46:48,197 --> 00:46:59,573
And so I think that one of the key elements of our secret sauce to build the culture that we have You have to hire based on that culture You have to fire based on that culture

518
00:46:59,793 --> 00:47:03,413
You have to motivate day to day based on on that as well.

519
00:47:03,833 --> 00:47:07,673
And it's it's just like having read the book.

520
00:47:10,353 --> 00:47:14,273
You Coke has like the internal process.

521
00:47:14,273 --> 00:47:19,553
what I like about your principles and your view on the world and how a company should operate

522
00:47:19,553 --> 00:47:23,173
in that is that it's seeped to mutual benefit too, which I think is,

523
00:47:23,893 --> 00:47:31,073
which I think can tie into this. You create this cultural, this culture internally, but then you're

524
00:47:31,073 --> 00:47:35,613
making sure that you have partners and that you're actually doing good to your counterparts as you're

525
00:47:35,613 --> 00:47:39,913
doing business throughout the world. I think particularly in today's day and age, I mean,

526
00:47:39,913 --> 00:47:45,533
AI is the big topic right now, but if you're looking at the AI race right now, many of the

527
00:47:45,533 --> 00:47:50,833
leaders in that space view it as a zero-sum game. And I think one of the core principles

528
00:47:50,833 --> 00:47:55,793
of Coke is that it's not a zero-sum game. There's mutual benefit to be had.

529
00:47:56,533 --> 00:48:03,693
Yeah. And I think you hit on what we don't want in society is a constrained pie thinking.

530
00:48:03,693 --> 00:48:08,633
We want to grow the pie together. And if you pick the right partners to do that,

531
00:48:08,633 --> 00:48:13,373
And you have, like, let me hit two principles in here because I think they're very important.

532
00:48:13,513 --> 00:48:16,253
One is preferred partnerships.

533
00:48:16,853 --> 00:48:22,393
This is one that I've learned because the nature of my role is I'm, you know, I'm pounding the pavement a lot.

534
00:48:22,593 --> 00:48:29,953
I'm trying to find the next disruptive technology, the next, you know, family-owned business that we can help with a capital solution.

535
00:48:30,093 --> 00:48:32,153
I'm in that, like, flow every day.

536
00:48:32,993 --> 00:48:37,573
And this, I think this is one that is very important.

537
00:48:37,573 --> 00:48:48,893
And one of the principles that I think is a big differentiator for Coke as well and how we select and how we choose what we're going to work on and who we're going to partner with and who we want.

538
00:48:50,493 --> 00:48:55,293
Creative destruction is one of those principles that we learned from Joseph Schumpeter back in the 40s on.

539
00:48:55,413 --> 00:49:00,373
But preferred partners, we learned from failure internally and we created our own principle around that.

540
00:49:01,173 --> 00:49:02,833
So this one's a good example.

541
00:49:02,833 --> 00:49:06,773
But a preferred partnership requires three things.

542
00:49:07,573 --> 00:49:09,393
One, an aligned vision.

543
00:49:10,213 --> 00:49:11,833
Two, aligned values.

544
00:49:12,093 --> 00:49:13,873
And three, complementary capabilities.

545
00:49:14,513 --> 00:49:25,353
And when you have all three of those in place, you have the best, the highest probability of creating the most long-term value and having a long-term growing partnership with someone.

546
00:49:25,353 --> 00:49:29,493
And again, that applies to business and a customer, a supplier.

547
00:49:29,753 --> 00:49:32,733
It applies to an M&A deal.

548
00:49:33,333 --> 00:49:36,713
It applies in your personal life, your girlfriend or your wife.

549
00:49:36,713 --> 00:49:42,973
I mean, it is a principle that applies to everything that we found.

550
00:49:44,173 --> 00:49:49,653
And anytime when you pull one of those out, you don't have an aligned vision, right?

551
00:49:50,053 --> 00:49:55,933
Because one partner is thinking long term, the other one's thinking short term.

552
00:49:56,373 --> 00:49:58,273
That's just vision misalignment, right?

553
00:49:58,293 --> 00:50:00,373
You see that at board levels all the time.

554
00:50:00,733 --> 00:50:04,093
Someone wants to sell, the other one wants to hold on and keep growing.

555
00:50:04,093 --> 00:50:09,353
I mean, that's just a misalignment that's going to break the company or align values.

556
00:50:09,493 --> 00:50:16,673
Right. Do you operate with integrity? Do you, you know, how you treat your customers?

557
00:50:16,873 --> 00:50:22,473
Are you compliant or do you cut corners with rules and regulations and that sort of thing?

558
00:50:22,913 --> 00:50:25,413
And then the third one around complementary capabilities.

559
00:50:25,673 --> 00:50:29,573
If you and I are partnering, do you bring something to the table that I don't have?

560
00:50:29,613 --> 00:50:31,633
And do I bring something to the table that you don't have?

561
00:50:31,633 --> 00:50:37,493
and then because if we both bring something to the table, then there's synergy.

562
00:50:37,933 --> 00:50:39,253
And then that goes back to this.

563
00:50:39,513 --> 00:50:40,773
We grow the pie together.

564
00:50:41,733 --> 00:50:43,453
And you're right.

565
00:50:43,633 --> 00:50:46,093
I mean, the alternative to that is zero sum game.

566
00:50:46,793 --> 00:50:51,493
So do you want to have a zero sum game thinking of which there's a story?

567
00:50:51,493 --> 00:50:56,053
I won't belabor it here, but there's a story where I learned mutual benefit through failure

568
00:50:56,053 --> 00:51:00,513
because I was I was running the trading group and Coke fertilizer.

569
00:51:00,513 --> 00:51:06,953
And I basically took one of my trading partners to the mat where he didn't make any money on the trade.

570
00:51:06,953 --> 00:51:08,553
And I did really, really well.

571
00:51:08,613 --> 00:51:19,073
And we're all high-fiving on the trading floor, only to find that three months later, he competed with me and set up a whole business that destroyed everyone's business.

572
00:51:19,353 --> 00:51:20,973
And then there was nothing for anyone.

573
00:51:20,973 --> 00:51:38,673
Because I thought, because I applied short-term zero-sum game thinking to one trade, like what could have been this amazing long-term partnership where everyone won, I left that on the table and I'll never forget that, right?

574
00:51:38,673 --> 00:51:54,413
And so thinking about how you help the other person win, if you have a preferred partnership and you have the aligned vision, values, complementary capabilities, and you have the mutually beneficial mindset where I'm going, how am I helping my partner win all the time?

575
00:51:54,473 --> 00:51:55,933
And they do the same for you.

576
00:51:55,973 --> 00:52:09,889
That is a beautiful long relationship where you going to grow the pie and everyone going to win and everyone going to get results So so many examples where we screwed that up as a company and we paid for it Right

577
00:52:10,009 --> 00:52:14,829
But those, those failures in the early days are almost blessings because you learn from

578
00:52:14,829 --> 00:52:19,649
them and it's like, boy, mutual benefit is so core to everything that we do.

579
00:52:20,129 --> 00:52:20,609
Yeah.

580
00:52:20,649 --> 00:52:22,709
It goes back to the patience, right?

581
00:52:22,749 --> 00:52:24,469
The low time preference that's necessary.

582
00:52:24,969 --> 00:52:25,289
That's right.

583
00:52:25,709 --> 00:52:26,209
That's right.

584
00:52:26,309 --> 00:52:26,549
Exactly.

585
00:52:26,549 --> 00:52:34,649
Trade-offs conceding some upside in certain parts of the relationship to make sure that the ultimate upside is there in the long term.

586
00:52:34,649 --> 00:52:39,869
And again, I can't stop thinking about the high-velocity trash economy.

587
00:52:40,049 --> 00:52:43,349
And I'm very happy that you and your father decided to write this book.

588
00:52:43,349 --> 00:52:45,409
and you're putting a concerted effort

589
00:52:45,409 --> 00:52:48,289
to spread these principles outside of Cook Industries

590
00:52:48,289 --> 00:52:53,689
because I do look out at a lot of the modern economy

591
00:52:53,689 --> 00:52:56,729
and the giants and exist today.

592
00:52:56,809 --> 00:52:58,149
And again, bringing it back to the AI sector,

593
00:52:58,869 --> 00:53:01,889
there's too many people that view the world as zero sum

594
00:53:01,889 --> 00:53:05,309
and it's very cannibalistic in the long term

595
00:53:05,309 --> 00:53:09,069
and not good for the health of the individual companies

596
00:53:09,069 --> 00:53:11,009
and the economy broadly.

597
00:53:11,009 --> 00:53:20,169
And so on that note, what would you say are the biggest mistakes that companies that exist today make?

598
00:53:20,349 --> 00:53:28,569
Or what changes could they make coalescing around principle-based management to get everybody rowing in the same direction?

599
00:53:29,229 --> 00:53:29,469
Wow.

600
00:53:29,649 --> 00:53:32,709
I mean, we've hit on a bunch of them, right?

601
00:53:32,709 --> 00:53:40,029
I think if you just took a step back and said, what if we have a culture of mutual benefit?

602
00:53:41,009 --> 00:53:49,929
And we just think of that one principle. You think about every interaction, whether it's a customer, a vendor, a supplier, every decision.

603
00:53:49,929 --> 00:54:01,769
And we have that in our DNA, every employee. And you think about think about how the results that you could get and also just like how the world would work.

604
00:54:03,269 --> 00:54:09,089
I think that's a big one. I think the comparative advantage one where I told my story about being in the wrong role.

605
00:54:09,089 --> 00:54:22,489
What if everyone just really thought about their own role and their own comparative advantage and we had the right people in the right roles in society, right?

606
00:54:22,649 --> 00:54:31,129
I mean, not just in your business, but across other businesses and other nonprofit organizations, right?

607
00:54:32,509 --> 00:54:34,969
Sports teams, you can apply it to anything.

608
00:54:34,969 --> 00:54:43,829
I think those are those are two that are just really, really significant.

609
00:54:44,169 --> 00:54:48,929
And then to your point on time preference, thinking long term versus short term.

610
00:54:49,309 --> 00:54:56,729
So much of our decision making is as a society is short term versus what's best for everyone long term.

611
00:54:56,729 --> 00:55:03,869
Um, and I, but I think the overarching principle for all that's almost like, I think about like

612
00:55:03,869 --> 00:55:10,529
this umbrella principle for then take this to society and how we think about the institutions

613
00:55:10,529 --> 00:55:18,649
across our economy, whether that's our education system, um, our government systems, um, are like

614
00:55:18,649 --> 00:55:25,969
how business works bottom up versus top down bottom up empowerment.

615
00:55:25,969 --> 00:55:52,009
And if we actually believe in people and we empower them with principles and we believe that people that are closest to the problem are the ones that should be solving those problems, as opposed to the alternative and where so much of our society works today and we're trending in the wrong direction, top down control and dependency.

616
00:55:52,009 --> 00:55:59,329
to where the government keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, more regulations,

617
00:56:00,249 --> 00:56:06,289
more telling people how to live their lives, and more, sadly, more people, especially the

618
00:56:06,289 --> 00:56:11,389
next generation that believes, when we've done the research on this, that that is the answer.

619
00:56:11,709 --> 00:56:17,249
We can't solve our own problems anymore. We need someone else to come in and solve them for us.

620
00:56:17,249 --> 00:56:23,869
that's a very scary place to be. And it's a very scary trend. That's why I say bottom up

621
00:56:23,869 --> 00:56:27,709
empowerment and just that mind, that one mindset alone, and that one principle,

622
00:56:27,929 --> 00:56:33,909
what that could do for us to start to strip back more of the layers of bureaucracy,

623
00:56:33,909 --> 00:56:43,289
red tape barriers that we're putting on ourselves as a country and, um, believing in people to go

624
00:56:43,289 --> 00:56:47,829
like help people improve their lives, apply mutual benefit, help their neighbor,

625
00:56:48,209 --> 00:56:52,149
make a contribution, not just in business, but in your community as well.

626
00:56:52,929 --> 00:56:58,149
We need to get back. We need to get to that. And that's where the country started. Right. I mean,

627
00:56:58,149 --> 00:57:04,409
the Declaration of Independence and it's all about like grit and entrepreneurship and making

628
00:57:04,409 --> 00:57:10,849
a contribution to your community. That's that's where we got it. We got to turn the tide on that.

629
00:57:10,849 --> 00:57:28,846
I completely agree And I happy you brought this up because that where I wanted to go And if you think of the federal government how big it gotten the Federal Reserve how important it become It a complete derelict of the knowledge process and the principle that you talk about

630
00:57:28,846 --> 00:57:47,806
Because from an information theory perspective, there's no way that people congregating in Washington, D.C. and in the Eclis Building and in New York City can get all the local information necessary to make decisions for small towns across the country and cities across the country.

631
00:57:47,806 --> 00:58:03,806
It literally does. You're right. But but what we've done a bad job on the people that believe in bottom up empowerment and like where we're like what made the country such a like a beacon of entrepreneurship and hope and everyone wanted to come here.

632
00:58:03,806 --> 00:58:10,386
was because there's the fewest barriers in their way to go, you go chase the American dream.

633
00:58:11,166 --> 00:58:17,266
And so what we try to keep putting more barriers, so it's, it's less attractive and let fewer and

634
00:58:17,266 --> 00:58:24,206
fewer people. It's like the system is rigged against them. So they can't. Right. So we,

635
00:58:24,206 --> 00:58:29,946
what we've done a bad job of is get the stories out there so people can connect to the principle

636
00:58:29,946 --> 00:58:34,766
of bottom-up empowerment as opposed to top-down control to fix problems.

637
00:58:35,186 --> 00:58:37,646
I'll just hit two quick examples if I could, Marty.

638
00:58:38,546 --> 00:58:44,146
I talked about education as one of the key institutions of our society.

639
00:58:44,146 --> 00:58:50,586
So many of our problems are downstream of our broken education system,

640
00:58:51,406 --> 00:58:53,246
K-12 as an example.

641
00:58:53,246 --> 00:59:00,726
and um but what we're seeing in terms of the transformation of the opportunities

642
00:59:00,726 --> 00:59:06,866
of where that trend is going is very exciting so i don't want to be someone that comes on doom and

643
00:59:06,866 --> 00:59:10,806
gloom and say everything's so screwed up or whatever what are we going to do about it right

644
00:59:10,806 --> 00:59:15,486
how are you going to drive change and this is one of the things we have an organization called stand

645
00:59:15,486 --> 00:59:22,406
together we've talked a lot about business we apply all those same principles into our non-profit

646
00:59:22,406 --> 00:59:29,086
organization called Stand Together. And I'd encourage any of your audience to dig in and

647
00:59:29,086 --> 00:59:33,506
check us out. But I'll give you two examples of just some things that some problems that we're

648
00:59:33,506 --> 00:59:38,606
working on where we're seeing some very exciting results. Education, back to that.

649
00:59:40,446 --> 00:59:50,086
Bottom-up empowerment vision for education is one where you basically have individualized

650
00:59:50,086 --> 00:59:54,986
education and understand that every kid is different. Every kid has a different gift.

651
00:59:55,186 --> 01:00:01,026
Every kid learns differently. So why do we have this broken system that's one size fits all?

652
01:00:02,646 --> 01:00:08,506
You know what I mean? We're, we're treating our kids like an assembly line with this teach to test

653
01:00:08,506 --> 01:00:15,126
model where everyone's on the same. They have to, and then they don't understand, you know,

654
01:00:15,126 --> 01:00:20,406
basic math, but then they go on to the next grade without having that fundamental understanding.

655
01:00:20,606 --> 01:00:25,586
Right. So we have to we have to look at every kid as an individual in our education system and figure

656
01:00:25,586 --> 01:00:33,526
out how we help support them and move at their speed. And now we have the tools to do that.

657
01:00:33,526 --> 01:00:38,766
I mean, you look at Sal Khan with Khan Academy, what he's done with technology, with his mastery

658
01:00:38,766 --> 01:00:46,826
system. Look at Joe Lehmont with his Alpha School concept and leveraging AI. He's taking failing

659
01:00:46,826 --> 01:00:53,186
students out of the broken system and by thinking about new ways to motivate them and meeting where

660
01:00:53,186 --> 01:01:00,886
they are and helping them with AI to A students in three to six months. So this is the exciting

661
01:01:00,886 --> 01:01:06,986
stuff to me. And one of the things that Stand Together has really invested, and we work with

662
01:01:06,986 --> 01:01:12,426
the Walton family on this, we have a Vela fund. And so basically think about venture capital for

663
01:01:12,426 --> 01:01:20,566
education, right? So writing very small checks to what we call education entrepreneurs that

664
01:01:20,566 --> 01:01:28,686
have are sick of the existing system. It could be a pissed off parent, a teacher that says,

665
01:01:28,686 --> 01:01:32,406
this system is failing my kids. I got to get out and I have a better way.

666
01:01:32,406 --> 01:01:40,246
And then so we fund those people to go build like micro schools and new concepts or new software, right?

667
01:01:40,306 --> 01:01:41,386
Like, like a Sal Khan.

668
01:01:41,626 --> 01:01:51,026
And so over the last since COVID, we've built, I think now we're at like 5000 new schools across the country.

669
01:01:51,186 --> 01:01:57,066
And we thought it'd be like venture capital where 70% of them would just fail and it wouldn't work.

670
01:01:57,066 --> 01:02:00,766
But those 30% would be really like awesome new models.

671
01:02:00,766 --> 01:02:04,426
what we're finding is more than 80% are succeeding.

672
01:02:04,426 --> 01:02:06,846
This is a crazy result, right?

673
01:02:06,846 --> 01:02:10,466
80% of those are succeeding and don't need more capital

674
01:02:10,466 --> 01:02:14,106
because they're sustainable and like the market wants it

675
01:02:14,106 --> 01:02:15,846
and the market's willing to pay for it.

676
01:02:15,846 --> 01:02:19,806
And it's priced in a way where even the least advantage

677
01:02:19,806 --> 01:02:24,806
are benefiting from these new microschool concepts.

678
01:02:24,806 --> 01:02:28,526
So education transformation is underway,

679
01:02:28,526 --> 01:02:29,946
but one of the things that enables

680
01:02:29,982 --> 01:02:36,942
that was really changing the whole regulatory framework for education.

681
01:02:37,522 --> 01:02:42,082
And now I think there's 30 plus states that have gone through education reform.

682
01:02:42,202 --> 01:02:46,002
A lot of those are school choice reforms in these states.

683
01:02:46,462 --> 01:02:51,622
And so when I talk about barriers that are stacked against kids in our society, those

684
01:02:51,622 --> 01:02:53,202
are the barriers we need to remove.

685
01:02:53,362 --> 01:02:59,202
So they have options and then we can have a new system where they can learn and self-actualize,

686
01:02:59,202 --> 01:03:04,022
understand their gift, get the right job, and then go start the right business or whatever,

687
01:03:04,202 --> 01:03:11,362
right? I mean, it's that one thing alone, I think is one of the most exciting things that's happening.

688
01:03:11,602 --> 01:03:17,482
And from a society standpoint, I'll leave you with this. We did all the research pre COVID in

689
01:03:17,482 --> 01:03:25,202
terms of families that were open to new models for their kids. And it was like 20% or something

690
01:03:25,202 --> 01:03:31,322
like very, very low. And then post COVID, because families saw how wrecked the system was,

691
01:03:31,322 --> 01:03:37,422
and seeing some of these models emerge now more than 80% are open to their kid going to

692
01:03:37,422 --> 01:03:43,562
a new innovative kind of school model. So to me, it starts there. It starts with

693
01:03:43,562 --> 01:03:48,122
completely transforming the education system and we're making progress.

694
01:03:48,302 --> 01:03:52,602
I completely agree. Sal Khan helped me dearly in college.

695
01:03:52,602 --> 01:04:00,322
and uh i mean his con academy was i leaned on heavily in college uh and then alpha school we've

696
01:04:00,322 --> 01:04:04,682
actually had an alpha school student on on the podcast that's one thing i love that go

697
01:04:04,682 --> 01:04:15,122
great and one of the they gave her a hard problem she made a she made a her like semester project

698
01:04:15,122 --> 01:04:20,002
she had to go out and find a way to get on a podcast and talk about it and she did that's

699
01:04:20,002 --> 01:04:24,442
And we talked about Alpha School, what the process is like, and it's incredible.

700
01:04:24,562 --> 01:04:33,582
Then on top of that, like shout out to Corey DeAngelis, who's really been on the tip of the spear of school choice, which I think is a no brainer option.

701
01:04:33,582 --> 01:04:38,662
Give parents the ability to take their tax dollars and spend it how they want on their children's education.

702
01:04:39,702 --> 01:04:42,622
So, you know, hopefully you get more like what you're doing.

703
01:04:42,742 --> 01:04:44,722
You put one of the kids on your podcast.

704
01:04:45,022 --> 01:04:46,522
People see the results.

705
01:04:46,622 --> 01:04:48,402
They see it's a show versus tell.

706
01:04:48,402 --> 01:05:07,458
I think we got to do that across all these and bad regulations that are holding people back We have to get the stories out that show people there is a better way and empowering people and like removing barriers is what is going to transform all of our lives and make society better off

707
01:05:08,358 --> 01:05:14,838
So anyway, but I'm glad you're doing what you're doing by getting these ideas out there.

708
01:05:14,898 --> 01:05:16,098
It's it's it's great.

709
01:05:16,198 --> 01:05:16,958
We need more of that.

710
01:05:16,958 --> 01:05:30,598
Well, the feeling is mutual. I'm glad that you're doing what you're doing and for taking the time. I know you're an extremely busy person, but principle-based management has been great for us at TFTC.

711
01:05:30,598 --> 01:05:37,138
becoming a principle driven leader is a book I highly recommend if you're looking to reorient

712
01:05:37,138 --> 01:05:45,698
your philosophy of business and how to apply free market grassroots principles to what you're doing

713
01:05:45,698 --> 01:05:52,258
to get the best results. And I'm very happy that you're out there beating the drum, getting this

714
01:05:52,258 --> 01:05:57,378
message of PBM out there, because I think the world would be a better place if more companies

715
01:05:57,378 --> 01:06:03,938
adopted this and hopefully it would prove to the government that we don't need, we don't need them

716
01:06:03,938 --> 01:06:09,738
as much. And we can, we can have a flourishing economy that, that the founders envisioned when,

717
01:06:09,738 --> 01:06:15,218
when they started this country. Well, Marty, like it's a great opportunity for me to,

718
01:06:15,318 --> 01:06:21,338
to be on your, your podcast. So I appreciate you thinking of me, but I wanted to, to leave

719
01:06:21,338 --> 01:06:26,758
your audience with a real practical way that they can like leverage the principles. So I don't want

720
01:06:26,758 --> 01:06:32,438
to miss this opportunity. And so to, and something that you're working on, um, and very focused on

721
01:06:32,438 --> 01:06:41,018
is AI. Um, the combination of principles with AI to me is one of the biggest opportunities that we

722
01:06:41,018 --> 01:06:48,818
have. And so our first experiment was with this book where we created an app that was, that was

723
01:06:48,818 --> 01:06:56,138
basically powered with these principles to solve very specific problems. So, um, if, so we have an

724
01:06:56,138 --> 01:07:03,258
It's called Principal Companion, and you can get it on any of the app stores, Apple Store,

725
01:07:03,258 --> 01:07:06,258
Google Play, all the platforms, and it's free.

726
01:07:06,258 --> 01:07:11,558
So if you download it, you can put any problem you're having, not only in business, whether

727
01:07:11,558 --> 01:07:25,793
you run any type of organization a sports team you having problems with your kids it just like a chat GPT field type your problem in and it coaches you to think through that problem with two or three of these principles

728
01:07:26,113 --> 01:07:30,493
So instead of the alternative is saying, well, I got to go learn all these 41 principles.

729
01:07:30,733 --> 01:07:36,313
And you feel like you got to eat the elephant all at once. Start with a problem that you have right

730
01:07:36,313 --> 01:07:42,373
now today. Take five minutes and engage with it. And to me, then it's like you start to see and

731
01:07:42,373 --> 01:07:47,193
connect, it's like, oh, wow, I can think about that problem differently. And this is very effective

732
01:07:47,193 --> 01:07:53,673
in helping me get to an answer through a principled approach. And then what happens is you get momentum,

733
01:07:54,033 --> 01:07:57,633
right? It's like, oh, I learned about mutual benefit there. I'm going to put in another problem.

734
01:07:57,713 --> 01:08:01,673
Oh, it's telling me I need to really think about creative destruction, or maybe my own role was

735
01:08:01,673 --> 01:08:09,113
comparative advantage. And so we started there and we've had some really good success internally

736
01:08:09,113 --> 01:08:12,153
and externally of people solving problems.

737
01:08:12,333 --> 01:08:14,133
Like that's one of the most rewarding thing for me

738
01:08:14,133 --> 01:08:16,373
is me getting the emails and texts like,

739
01:08:16,513 --> 01:08:18,873
oh dude, I tried this and like,

740
01:08:18,893 --> 01:08:21,853
it actually transformed the way I'm looking at my team.

741
01:08:21,993 --> 01:08:25,453
Or I tried this with my wife or my kids or whatever.

742
01:08:26,093 --> 01:08:27,793
And so like, those are so rewarding

743
01:08:27,793 --> 01:08:31,593
because it's actually, you see people transforming

744
01:08:31,593 --> 01:08:34,373
and like getting real results with it.

745
01:08:34,833 --> 01:08:36,573
But the next step of what we're doing,

746
01:08:36,573 --> 01:08:42,993
I love your ideas or anyone in your audience that has ideas of how to combine principles with AI.

747
01:08:43,613 --> 01:08:49,633
We're taking that same brain that we have that we've been building that feeds the principal companion.

748
01:08:49,973 --> 01:08:52,453
And we want to apply that to more surface areas.

749
01:08:52,673 --> 01:09:02,713
So, for example, the one of the next steps within the company is, you know, we use Microsoft Copilot, you know, and almost all more than 100,000 employees are using this.

750
01:09:02,713 --> 01:09:15,653
So to get these principles and problem solving tools into the flow of their existing work and meeting them where they are, much different than having them go download an app, right?

751
01:09:15,773 --> 01:09:25,893
So how can we open source these principles in a way that it really helps people solve problems in a principle driven way?

752
01:09:25,893 --> 01:09:34,933
So any ideas that you have that we want to experiment with in your shop or anyone that listens to this, we are wide open on this.

753
01:09:35,053 --> 01:09:50,309
And I thinking about this much more than just what helps cope transform I thinking about this at the societal level And we just so excited We just like scratching the surface and what possible because of AI and the power of this technology

754
01:09:50,309 --> 01:09:58,869
So principal companion one, go try it. That's out there now. But bigger ideas on this that you or

755
01:09:58,869 --> 01:10:07,489
anyone on your team or your audience has, please ping me, reach out to me. Would love it. Put it

756
01:10:07,489 --> 01:10:12,269
in the chat and we can we can discuss you know big opportunities because this is going to change

757
01:10:12,269 --> 01:10:18,009
the game yeah i'll leave you with one um that's been very helpful for us we have the principle

758
01:10:18,009 --> 01:10:22,649
based management we have a bunch of skills but the most helpful one has been uh the after action

759
01:10:22,649 --> 01:10:28,449
review so we'll do a launch or um a webinar or something like that and immediately after we have

760
01:10:28,449 --> 01:10:33,669
a pbm skill after action review how'd it go where'd you mess up what do you want to do better oh that's

761
01:10:33,669 --> 01:10:40,549
beautiful. We need to take notes from you. I don't apply this within Coke. I love that though. I mean,

762
01:10:40,569 --> 01:10:45,769
the more any organizations applying this and then back to that Republic of science, you share

763
01:10:45,769 --> 01:10:51,289
knowledge, what's working. That's, that's how we're going to keep transforming. So very exciting.

764
01:10:51,289 --> 01:10:57,709
And thanks for your interest in the principles. Well, thank you, Chase. Um, and thank your father

765
01:10:57,709 --> 01:11:01,689
for me for co-writing the book with you. Uh, it's been like a great pleasure. Hopefully we can do

766
01:11:01,689 --> 01:11:05,749
this again at some point. Yeah, thanks, Marty. Appreciate you, man. Thanks a lot. Peace and love,

767
01:11:05,809 --> 01:11:10,709
freaks. Okay. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. If you've made it this far,

768
01:11:10,889 --> 01:11:16,369
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769
01:11:16,369 --> 01:11:21,369
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770
01:11:21,509 --> 01:11:28,049
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775
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