Ep. 67: Joel Neeb - What Fighter Pilots Know About Fear (That You Don’t)

Summary

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Podcast Summary - 🎙️ Interesting Humans Podcast

Episode 67: Joel Neeb – What Fighter Pilots Know About Fear (That You Don’t)
Host: Jeff Hopeck
Date: March 26, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping episode, Jeff Hopeck sits down with Joel Neeb (call sign: “Thor”), a former Air Force F15 fighter pilot, stage four cancer survivor, American Ninja Warrior competitor, executive in the tech industry, and thought leader on performance under pressure. The discussion navigates Joel's journey through fear, resilience, self-discovery, and the radical impact of AI, providing practical wisdom on conquering fear, cultivating a growth mindset, and embracing change amid uncertainty.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Joel’s Early Years and Mindset Foundations (00:52–07:37)

• Upbringing & Family Moves: Born in Milwaukee, raised in Wisconsin, Texas, and Washington; describes adaptability amidst culture shifts.
• Academics & Athletics: Not an obvious future fighter pilot—strong student, fastest runner in his school, played multiple sports.
• Deciding on the Air Force Academy: Influenced by outside validation; no single mentor but nudged by an encouraging community.
• Developing Curiosity & Growth Mindset:
  • Joel emphasizes that curiosity can be nurtured by encouraging new experiences and embracing challenges:

    “People who are, quote unquote, naturally curious, learned at an early age ... that the stuff that really invigorates is new and different and sometimes hard.” (04:19)

  • Distinguishes between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, noting that pairing growth with a healthy “imposter syndrome” creates powerful motivation.

2. Facing Fear: Lessons from Fighter Pilot Training (07:45–24:54)

• Fear vs. Exhilaration: Joel relates that his most meaningful moments, whether flying or facing life’s major decisions, are always tinged with both terror and exhilaration:

  “The best moments in my life had two characteristics ... Exhilaration ... and terror.” (09:55)

• Academy & Training:
  • Day 1: Realization of not being "special" as everyone was exceptional (11:36).
  • Imposter syndrome: Turns self-doubt into fuel for action and improvement.
• Top Gun & Teamwork:
  • The real world includes bravado, ego, and underlying insecurity, but maturity comes from shifting your focus from individual achievement to team performance. (14:52)
• Physical & Mental Rigor:
  • The simulators are so realistic that new pilots often get physically ill from them (16:29).
  • Learning experiences are built from constant failure and debriefs.
  • Physical demands (G-forces, fitness requirements, and life-or-death focus on every mission)—passing out in the centrifuge is a rite of passage.

3. Transformative Power of Training (19:01–23:40)

• Accelerated Growth:
  • Air Force pilot training pushes people from zero to flying advanced, complex missions in just four months, demonstrating the power of deliberate, structured, and feedback-rich development.
  • Quote on transformation:

    “If we could somehow harness that transformative power that turned us from individuals driving cars to teams flying airplanes … in four short months, we can do anything with anyone.” (20:09)

• Daily Threat/Challenge: Every flight is life-or-death, but experience refines your risk assessment and teaches what is truly dangerous.

4. The Turning Point: Cancer Diagnosis and Redefining Meaning (43:20–64:33)

• From Peak to Peril:
  • After a decade as a pilot — healthy, in line for Thunderbirds, training hard — Joel notices a minor pain. Doctors discover stage four mucinous adenocarcinoma of the appendix.
  • Life expectancy: 15% survival rate at five years, with an “18 months to live” prognosis. (48:00)
• Mindset & Acceptance:
  • The emotional journey: shock, anger, denial, and existential dread—“literal nightmare.” Waking up is the worst part, as it means remembering his reality (51:45).
• Moment of Change:
  • Pivotal scene: Outside MD Anderson in Houston, overcome by fear and anger, Joel sees a 9-year-old girl being wheeled into the hospital by her father.

    “You need to heal me right now. And when I opened my eyes, I was healed. It wasn’t the way I wanted... but I was healed in the way I needed.” (58:27)

  • Instantly transformed perspective from self-pity to gratitude, compassion, and clarity — deciding to live on his own terms.
  • Later, he is contacted by the girl's father on LinkedIn—her story and his remain intertwined, a lifelong source of daily gratitude and perspective.

5. Survival, Recovery, and Making Life Count (64:33–71:00)

• Post-Cancer Achievement:
  • Returns to fitness—scores perfectly on the military fitness test and becomes the first stage four cancer survivor to return to flying ejection seat aircraft.
  • Finds joy in the intentionality of each day, focusing on presence, simple pleasures, and making each moment count.
  • "Some of my happiest moments... were during that time because I was intentional about making them happy." (68:14)
• Three Gs Philosophy: Growth, Giving, Gratitude

  • Realizes fulfillment doesn’t come from accolades but from embracing discomfort (growth), helping others (giving), and appreciating the privileges of modern life (gratitude):

    “Comparison is the thief of all joy... if I could go back and tell 2010 Joel you’re going to be really frustrated in traffic… 2010 Joel would break down and say, I can’t believe how fortunate I am.” (63:24)

6. Conquering New Challenges – Ironman & American Ninja Warrior (75:27–83:27)

• Ironman, Body Transformation, and Ninja Warrior:
  • Vows to do something hard each year after recovery — culminating in Ironman, physique competitions, and four-time American Ninja Warrior contestant.
  • Uses failures as proof that most people aren’t paying attention to your setbacks—they are “all watching a movie that stars them in their heads.” (80:42)
  • Encourages listeners to live boldly, seek new experiences, and ignore the fear of others’ opinions.

7. Career Pivot: Leadership in Tech and the Rise of AI (83:47–101:20)

• Corporate Transition & Humility:
  • Describes leaving the military as a humbling experience—"overprepared and underprepared" at the same time.
  • Finds his way into consulting, then tech (VMware, now 8x8), aiming to always “hitch my wagon to the next rocket.”
• Fighter Pilot Lessons for Business:
  • Emphasizes the power of “Ready, Fire, Aim”—take action quickly and iterate, rather than endless planning or reckless execution. (90:51)
  • Deliberate, intentional feedback loops (“debriefs”) are key to mastery.

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8. AI Deep Dive: What’s Coming & How to Prepare (95:23–140:16)

• AI & Changing Work:
  • AI will disrupt every industry, every job—no role is immune.
  • The only sane response is to embrace AI as a tool to enhance, not resist out of fear or ego (RPA/drone analogy).
  • “AI is not coming for your job. Somebody using AI is coming for your job.” (94:39)
• Advice for Workers:
  • Embrace chaos as opportunity—“chaos is a ladder” (Game of Thrones) if you prepare; a pit if you don’t.
  • Companies and people who disrupt themselves (“Netflix” strategy) will win.
• Prompting and AI Fluency:
  • The winners in the new era are those who master asking the right questions of AI and inputting the right data—intelligence becomes universally accessible.
  • Prompting best practices: treat AI like a brilliant, literal intern—ask it how you can ask better questions, and have it interrogate you to refine your goals (124:21).
  • Example: use AI to analyze sales calls, optimize pitches, automate routine tasks (even writing emails), and enhance decision-making.
• Practical Applications & Bold Predictions:
  • Sales, operations, and every business function will fundamentally shift ("put an Oura ring around your sales data").
  • Evaluates Google as the likely next AI “horse to bet on” due to infrastructure and integration; OpenAI and Microsoft have lost ground (119:57–121:41).
  • Future of communication: AI agents will autonomously handle entire workflows and even negotiate with each other to deliver solutions (114:39).
  • “Every time you think to pick up your phone for something else, think about how you’d use it for AI instead.” (132:11)
• Mindset for the Age of AI:
  • Most people only scratch the surface of AI’s potential because the experience is user-driven.
  • Those who adopt true AI fluency—prompting, data curation, process redesign—will gain immense leverage and outpace those stuck in the old way.
  • “The tools will dominate so much… I would take an inexperienced 24-year-old with AI fluency over a 20-year veteran of sales now at this point. It’s that valuable.” (132:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Self-Perception & Fear:
  • “Don’t pay attention to what you think people are saying about you… because I’m going to let you in a little secret. They’re not.” (08:21)
• On Meaningful Growth:
  • “You have to have curiosity for the things that you are afraid of.” (07:32)
  • “Imposter syndrome is a superpower—when paired with a growth mindset, it gives you a burning platform and an exciting future to pursue.” (06:56)
• On Facing Cancer:
  • “[Waking up was] my worst part of the day… because every morning it was like I was being diagnosed all over again.” (51:18)
  • [The hospital steps encounter with the little girl]—“If I could go from the worst moment in my life… to, in the blink of an eye, feeling such empathy… I can attack anything and go into any situation and not bring that fear into it and control how I show up to everything.” (56:42)
  • “Gratitude makes all the difference… That light switch moment, that choice of gratitude…” (74:47)
• On AI:
  • “AI is not coming for your job. Somebody using AI is coming for your job, though.” (94:39)
  • “For the rest of human existence, it’ll no longer be more valuable to know the answer than it will be to know the question.” (99:52)
  • “Prompting is the way forward… start asking it to ask you questions… you will be blown away by how insightful those questions are.” (124:21)
• On Living Boldly:
  • “The most exciting things that you’ll do are the things you’re most afraid of.” (08:41)
  • “We should all be so lucky that somebody out there is counting our successes and failures… if the world’s not watching, you shouldn’t be afraid to fail.” (78:12)
• On Teamwork and Self-Identity:
  • “[Top Gun] The flying is silly, but the intensity and ego, and the way you ‘wear’ insecurity with bravado, that’s real. But the transformation is when you realize it’s about the team outcome, not you.” (14:52)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Segment | Time | |-----------------------------------------------|------------| | Early life & Academy journey | 00:52–13:49| | Mindset, fear, and impostor syndrome | 04:19–13:49| | Training, Top Gun, and the culture of aviation| 13:49–24:54| | Physical, mental, and risk lessons | 24:54–37:43| | Cancer diagnosis and mindset shift | 43:20–64:33| | Ironman, Ninja Warrior, and public failure | 75:27–83:27| | Business leadership & translating lessons | 83:47–95:23| | AI, workplace change, future predictions | 95:23–140:16|

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Final Thoughts

This episode is an open, courageous exploration of fear, risk, growth, mortality, meaning, and the technical unknowns ahead. Joel Neeb’s story, interwoven with practical performance lessons and visionary takes on AI, is both humbling and galvanizing. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a corporate leader, or a human navigating uncertain times, his advice boils down to cultivating curiosity, embracing discomfort, and leveraging new tools—not to escape fear, but to find new meaning and possibilities within it.

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(For a deeper dive into Joel’s survivor journey and AI wisdom, check the segments from 43:20–64:33 and 95:23–140:16.)

Transcript

[A]

So, folks, welcome to another episode of Interesting Humans Today. And I've got one for you, Joel Kneeb. So you start off flying F15s, and I just can't get over the fact that you're healthy and everything looks just incredible in life. And then there's a pain. You report it to the doc and life changes 180. Your theme is incredible. I'm going to have to remind myself of two things, and I think everybody else out there should, too. Number one, you're 48 years old, and I can't believe your resume is incredible, which we're going to get into. But I got to remind myself that you're human because everything about your story is just incredible. Right. So let's take it all the way back to the beginning. Start off. What was it like growing up? Where'd you grow up? Siblings. All the good stuff.

[B]

So I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, my favorite part of the world. I love the Wisconsin accent. I love everything about that culture and community. I only spent 10 years there. My family and I moved to Texas, had a little sister two years younger than me. My parents moved down there when my dad's job transferred him. We lived in Houston, which was 180 degrees different from the culture up in Wisconsin, as you can imagine. And then four years after that, I spent high school in Olympia, Washington, which is where my parents lived for 30 years. I graduated from Olympia, Washington, in high school and then went on to the Air Force Academy.

[A]

Went on to the Air Force Academy when you were grown. I'm just curious. Can you look back to anything in your life as a child and go, oh, no wonder why I went to fly jets. Were you playing with anything? Were you doing anything?

[B]

You know, I don't think so. I think I feel like as a child that you would not have picked me out of a crowd and say, that guy's going to go fly fighter planes.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I didn't have an intensity, and I certainly, you know, I had above average grades, well above average SAT scores. And so you would think, he's going to do something, but you definitely wouldn't have said, this kid is going to be the intense one that is going to go for fighter planes at some point.

[A]

Yeah. Any sports?

[B]

Yeah, I played football. I played soccer. I was in track. I was huge into soccer. My. My gift was in running, and so I was the fastest one in my school and one of the fastest in the state. But, yeah, enjoy that.

[A]

That's awesome. And you. What was your. What was the, the, the. The collegiate path was It Were you set on a place? Did you have options?

[B]

So what? For me, I was kind of that dumb 17 year old that didn't know enough to really make the right decision about college. I think a lot of them kind of are in that boat. And we didn't have the Internet back then. And so I just had to go by word of mouth for what was a good school. And I had applied to West Point and the Air Force Academy and a bunch of other colleges. And when I talked to my guidance counselor and told her about the colleges I got into and I said I got a couple scholarships, and she's like, oh, that's nice. When I said the service academies, Air Force in West Point, she was like, oh, wow, that's fantastic. I hate to say it, but a lot of the decision came down to Mrs. Tremaine just having a very positive reaction to that because then I knew I could turn my brain off and think about the weekend.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, that's incredible. That stage of life. Did you have any actual mentors? Whether you knew it at the time, or you can look back and say, wow, that person really shaped me, or, you know, forged my direction.

[B]

I mean, I had incredible parents, I had great coaches. I was surrounded by. There's not a single person that stood out. There's certainly not a turning point that I point back to in my youth, but I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by people that were probably nudging

[A]

me in the right direction at all. Also in that. And then we'll move on to the next phase. But were there any other things vying for your attention or were you. Did you know exactly where you were heading?

[B]

I knew from an early age I had a passion about the things that inspired me. And so what I mean by that is I didn't know what I'd become in life, but I had a natural curiosity, I guess you'd say. And. And so that maybe was the difference. But even then, you still wouldn't have seen that shine through in me too much. I was not that unusual of a kiddo at that point.

[A]

Is, do you think curiosity something you're born with?

[B]

Good question. I think it's to a certain extent something you're born with. I would say it's more nurtured than anything else. I think that people who are, quote, unquote, naturally curious, learned at an early age, and emphasis on learn, that the stuff that really invigorates is new and different and sometimes hard, and it requires growth.

[A]

I'd be curious because I posted today an episode I did, it was way back. It was episode 20. And the guy's name is Matt McElwain and he's one of the principals in Madrona Venture Group. Right. Probably you may even know them. And he. So I interviewed him and the clip that I ended up putting up today is about curiosity. And the question I asked him is what is the number one thing in non. There has to be something above all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That you look for in an entrepreneur. And he said that word that you just said, interesting. Curiosity. Yeah. So that's why I'm. I would love to know. And it's like, do. Do you feel that you can teach that to your kids or do you think it's just impossible?

[B]

I. I would say the. The thing I look for, I wouldn't have said curiosity. I would have said a growth mindset, but they're very similar. Meaning a growth mindset is what allows you to see that there's something bigger than you currently are today. Or it's a blind spot that you currently have and you have. We'll call it a curiosity about it. But you believe, you have some faith that I can grow into that space. And I think that's different from people who see that blind spot and because of fear or ego, they ignore that. That's a fixed state mindset. And so the example I'd give it sounds like this person has a lot of experience picking great entrepreneurs. I've seen through ypo, Young Presidents Organization, the CEO Network. I was the president of it a couple of years ago for the Atlanta chapter. And of course I know Bono and others that you've interviewed from. And I would say that one defining characteristic for everybody I've met there, it's not always the most intelligent person. It's not the tallest and best looking always. And they're all walks of life. The one commonality to all those success stories is a growth mindset. It's this mentality that there's something I can grow into that's better than it is today. And maybe not even because today's so terrible. But this is kind of exciting to think about. If I work into this area, what I could be right. And then the other piece of that equation that I think is important is that little bit of a voice in your head that is the imposter syndrome that says you're not ready for this. You tricked people when you got here.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And that's a negative for most people. Or maybe you feel a little bit shameful that you have that. I would say that's a superpower to a certain extent. Because if you have a growth mindset paired with an imposter syndrome, so you have a voice in the back of your head saying you're not ready, but that another voice with a growth mindset that says, but you can be ready. Then that combination of things gives you both a burning platform and the exciting future to go pursue.

[A]

Wow. So if you're looking out far enough to, I guess to fill that void between where am I at now and where do I want to be? You really have to have curiosity for each of the phases that are coming up. Am I saying it the right way?

[B]

You have to have curiosity for the things that you are afraid of.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so whether that's a fear of failing, whether that's, you know, fill in the blank with what your curiosity is leading you towards.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's where the promise is. The cave that you are afraid of. Enter to enter. The one that.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

The treasure.

[A]

So you have these incredible themes in life. And I'm just gonna go, I'm just gonna go, go through. So F15, then the cancer, then four times American Ninja warrior competitor. Right. And then, then the last, the, the business success. Incredible journey. You have one chance to go back to the 15 year old Joel right now. You can go back and, and give him advice. What would you say?

[B]

What I would say is don't pay attention to what you think people are saying about you, what they're thinking about you. Because I'm going to let you in a little secret. They're not, they're not talking at all. They're not thinking about you. We all have a movie playing in our heads and we're the star and that's mostly what we see. So don't worry about that.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

And with that knowledge now go pursue whatever you want. And the most exciting things that you'll do are the things you're most afraid of.

[A]

Oh, interesting. The most exciting things you'll do are the things you're most afraid of. Explains. So, explains going into F15 pilot. Right. Which I love. So what, what would you say then is your relationship with fear and risk?

[B]

So when I say do the things you're most afraid of, I don't mean go jump off a cliff and take unnecessary risk and put your body at risk. I'm saying do the things that you're psychologically afraid of. And whether that's failing in front of a large audience or not being prepared for a flight as a fighter pilot, the same, the same themes persist and the best moments in my life had two characteristics of them. There was exhilaration, Meaning, wow, this is the most incredible feeling in the world. I'm upside down in an airplane, and the world is five miles below me. And I'm looking up, which is down, and I see the ground beneath me. And the only thing separating me from a fall to the ground is a little seatbelt and this much glass. It's exhilaration. And the second thing in those moments.

[A]

It's awesome.

[B]

Is terror.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which says the exact same thing, except, oh, my gosh, I'm five miles above the ground. The only thing that's separating me is a little seatbelt and this much glass. And at that point, this. What's going to win in that moment? The feeling of terror. Exhilaration. So I seek those moments out, not to put myself at risk, but to expose my fear and conquer it and then do an exhilarating way.

[A]

Yeah, let's. Okay, let's come back to you. Get into. You get into West Point. Take me. Take me in the seat of day one. Sorry, not. Not West Point. Air Force Academy. Air Force Academy, day one. You show up. What happens?

[B]

So you show up at the Air Force Academy. There's people screaming at you right away. I started this in June of my summer of my senior year. So at the same time, when all my friends were out going to the keg party and having a blast and doing all the things that I wished I was doing that summer, I was packing up and flying to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and in mid June, and I'd given up my entire summer to go through basic training day one. Everyone's yelling at you. You do a thousand pushups, more than you can count. And then you go sit in this big auditorium, and they say, raise your hand if you were the captain of a sport in high school. You see some of the hands go up and they say, stand up. And those people stand up, and they're like, oh, wow, there's a lot of captains in here. And then they say, now stand up if you are valedictorian. Some more people stand up. Now. Stand up. If you are saladictorian. The second in there. Now stand up. If you had more than a 1400 in your SAT, stand up. If you ever won an academic award. By the end of this conversation, everyone's standing. And the person at the front who's the drill instructor said, look around. You're not special anymore. Sit down.

[A]

Oh, that is awesome. How many? How many in the class?

[B]

There's about 1800 of us in the class. I love it.

[A]

What a clip that's going to make. Oh, my gosh. Wow. Literally everybody's standing.

[B]

I mean, there might have been some poor soul who's like, oh, wow, I'm out of my league. But for the most part, every single person that auditorium was standing, and we all had shown up with this resume that we thought made a special.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And then we looked around and we're like, we're one of 1800 at this point. The race just started over again.

[A]

Okay, so pause there. Try. Try to remember right when you heard that sentence, you're not special anymore. What. What feeling would you have?

[B]

So, like, the. The two competing feelings. One feeling was, wow, I don't deserve to be here. That imposter syndrome. Wow. I took myself. This confirms what I already felt. Everybody's in great shape. These are just like beasts of human beings in terms of their physical capabilities. And now to find out that they're so brilliant, too, and. And everything else going for them. So I had that going in my head, and then I. The other voice was saying, you're an incredible company. You're going to learn so much, and this is going to take you down a path like you never believed. So, once again, a bit of terror and exhilaration in this package.

[A]

There's that theme again. Do you make a decision to choose one of them, and then that's your posture, the rest of training, or is it a daily fight? Imposter syndrome versus.

[B]

I use the imposter syndrome. I use it in different ways. So the exhilaration is what fuels the art of the possible and my vision and get really excited about that. And then the imposter syndrome is what fuels activity. Right. There's a great quote that vision without action is daydreaming, and action without vision is a nightmare.

[A]

Right?

[B]

And so you have to have both. I have to have both. This. Wow. This team could take me to incredible places, and I'm so lucky to be here. But I also have to have that voice nagging in the back of my head that says, but you don't deserve this. You snuck in here. You better start working right now. You better outwork everybody, because now you got to catch up to what's happening. And those two opposing forces, I think, are what are really powerful.

[A]

Right? Is there anything in the famous movie Top Gun? Is there anything that is exactly the way it is, or is it all

[B]

just sort of so? The flying is, of course, in the first one at least, is very silly. And, you know, they had to make it fun to watch in Hollywood. Because when we. When we actually fight and dogfight, we're a mile away, which is close for us. And so it's a little spec on your windscreen when you're looking at that plane. The closest we'll get is 500ft. They were taking some shots. You know, it's almost like a Hollywood gunfight. We're sitting across the table like we are right now. Like, that just doesn't happen where you're missing each other and diving around in an action movie. And so there's some Hollywood isms from a flying aspect, but then the intensity was really well captured. And some of the bravado and the ego was too, because we wore this external pride and arrogance that really covered how we felt inside, which every one of us was insecure and felt unsafe and was just trying to prove to ourselves and everyone else around there that we could do it. And so I thought they captured that really well in the personalities.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

And then the other piece they captured, well, is this mindset that it's not about you anymore. And that was the whole Maverick's journey, was that it was no longer about what he could do and prove to himself and shut down the world of naysayers. It was about what he could accomplish with a team by the end of the movie. That was his journey. And that's. That's really what it is as a fighter pilot, too. You're. You're only as strong as the wingman that you're up there with. And. And the bond and the. The handshake you have around how we're going to fly together.

[A]

Wow. So day one, you're not. Day one's not sitting in a plane. You're. You're in a simulator. Day one of actual flight training, not day one of school. You sit in. What is it? An actual, like, cockpit made up, or. What do you. What do you sit in? And you're. You're like, whoa, look at all these buttons around.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What. What is it? What's the dev.

[B]

Try to simulate everything to such an extent that you have mimicked every feeling of flight from the sound of the plane. So they have the engine sounds and the different engine sounds as you move the throttle around in your headset. They have the different instrument sounds. Everything is mimicked. The fidelity of these simulators is so good that you can fly over your house, like on a Google map, and basically see your car parked outside.

[A]

No way.

[B]

360 degrees. And of course, it's the best graphics. The Best animation you could ever imagine. And so because it's so good, your brain is tricked into thinking you're flying. Like you are in your head, you're flying. And we would have people that were friends that would go try out the simulators that had never flown before from our civilian network. And they would throw up if they get airsick.

[A]

In a simulator.

[B]

In a simulator.

[A]

It's that real?

[B]

Oh, yeah. We'd give them an air sick bag. And if you're watching from the outside, you see somebody, like, stumbling out with an air sick bag, and you're like, why'd that guy just get out of, like, the equivalent of a car? It looks like size of a vehicle, and he's got a puke bag with him. Well, it's because it's that intense. And our brains interpret the world through our five senses. And when you mimic those secession, you can't tell the difference.

[A]

That's incredible. All right. That season of life, one thing you loved about who Joel was, and one thing you didn't.

[B]

I loved that I was putting it out there and trying to do these things that I felt I was not ready for and silencing, learning to silence that voice. That was the imposter syndrome. I still hadn't quite figured out how to harness it and make that part of my fuel to take action. It was just shouting it down enough so that I could do something. That was what I loved about that moment because I saw a lot of my peers struggle with that. And then what I didn't love about that moment is that I still deeply cared what other people thought about me at that time. And I. I very much. My sense of identity resided in what you thought instead of something that was internal.

[A]

Yeah. To over a span of probably two decades. I wish I could. I can go back and answer it that same way. I wish I never cared. It just doesn't matter.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But back then, it was like, that's all it was. So I like how Randy Pope says, I'm not who I'm not who I think I am. I'm not who you think I am. I'm who I think that you think I am. And if you follow that, it's pretty incredible. Right?

[B]

It's.

[A]

Wow. All right, so did you. Did you crash.

[B]

Did you almost crash the simulators? Many times. And so that was a. That was a great lesson for me. There was no progress without failure. And so there's not a person who's a fighter, politician who hasn't crashed a simulator. Very few of them have. Crashed actual airplanes. And so we would bleed in practice and sweat in practice so you don't bleed in training. And we embrace that and every day strove to eradicate the mistakes we made the day before that allowed us to crash.

[A]

Incredible. So what principles in flight old true today in business, you know, and, and, and work and then, and then the reverse of that. Which ones don't work?

[B]

Okay. So I would say the most important principle that I was exposed to from flight had to do with what I experienced in that transformation of becoming a fighter pilot. And I'll pose it to you this way, Jeff. I was going to take you in a plane right now as a plane parked outside. We're going to go fly and I'm going to teach you how to fly. I'm going to teach you how to start here in Atlanta, Georgia, and you're going to go land it in new. And we're gonna go have lunch and we're gonna come back. I'm gonna teach you how to fly low level, so 500ft above the ground you can go fly through the Grand Canyon with the walls whizzing by you. I'm gonna teach you how to do a loop. I'm gonna teach you how to do an Immelman. You're gonna pull six GS so your body weighs six times more than it currently does. My 200 pound body weighs 1200 pounds. When that happens, I'm gonna show you how to stay conscious when you do that. I'm gonna show you how to fly formation, which means you're gonna fly three feet away from another plane. Not four feet, not two feet. Oh, by the way, I'm gonna take us up into 90 degrees of bank so it's gonna look like I'm falling down on top of you. You better hold it right there. Welded at three feet away. And I forgot to tell you this. There's four planes. It's not just us. Your other friend is here and there's another one up here. And you're all following off of lead three feet away. Three feet distance between them. How long is it going to take me to teach you to do all of those things I just said by yourself. No one's in the cockpit to save you a lifetime. There is an answer. And the answer is four months. And that's what we do with every pilot you're not we've ever created in the Air Force goes through every single one of those things in four months. So literally, when you start pilot training, the day you start flying four months later, you've done everything I just described by yourself in an airplane. And when I experienced that As a young 23 year old one, I couldn't believe that I could do it. And I was, of course, exhilarated and proud that I just made it through this program. But I remember thinking, like, pay attention to what you just experienced, because if we could somehow harness that transformative power that turned us from individuals driving cars to teams flying airplanes faster than the speed of sound in four short months, we can do anything with anyone. And I made a little mental note that I want to be a part of that for the rest of my life.

[A]

That's four months. I'm still stuck on the four months thing.

[B]

Four months.

[A]

Literally everything that you said, the way you said it, everything. You Learned that in four months?

[B]

Yep. And then we have 24 classes per pilot training base, I think is still the number that go through that. I think about 30 people per class. And so that's. And of course, you have some people wash out and not make it through the program, but they're the exception. The vast majority of people make it through that. And if, if I were to mentor those people who didn't make it through it and really coach them, we would have found a way for them to get through it too. There's. There's some place where they stop trying. Yeah, we could fix that.

[A]

What, what changed in you for the. For better or worse from day one till getting. Getting your wings, I guess, or graduation, whatever you, whatever you refer to it as.

[B]

So what I would say changed internally for me is that of course I had these new skills and this ability that I didn't have at the beginning of the course. But the switch that flipped for me psychologically is that I can probably do anything if I apply these same themes to this for the rest of my life. I was deeply afraid on day one. And then of course, the, the dirty little secret is that you're deeply afraid at each stage of the journey because every single one of these things has its own dangers and fears associated with it. And so it's a daily struggle to overcome your mental anxiety, to overcome the training that you do with the team. When you get home at night, you can't turn on the tv, you can't. Nothing else can distract you from this journey that you're on. And the people who don't make it through, they have stories about, I got distracted, I broke up with my girlfriend, I had fill in the blank with whatever other distraction they could have. If you stay focused on this you'll make it through. And it's built so that every single day you are sharpening the sword and getting closer to this outcome. But it is incredibly committed and you can't deviate.

[A]

Is every time you get in the cockpit, Is every single time life or death? Or do you start to see it differently when you get in there?

[B]

So I flew 3,000 missions, give or take. Every single time was life or death. Even well after my initial training days, every single time was life or death. And you're very cognizant of that. You're very conscious of those times when you're putting your life at risk. The good news is you know better as you get more experienced when the risk really exists versus when you just have false risk. When I'm flying upside down, initially it felt like, oh, my gosh, this is the scariest thing ever. I'm putting my life at risk. You're not really. You're strapped and fine. No one's going anywhere.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's like driving down the road and worrying your tire is going to fall off, your door is going to fall off. Could it happen? Sure. But it's not a realistic fear. And. But then you also learned there are some things you probably should have been afraid of. You know that when you got a couple knots slow on final and you really weren't paying that much attention, that's not nearly as scary as being upside down five miles above the earth. But when you're two or three knots slow on final and it's a windy day, you didn't know it, but you actually were in a very dangerous situation when that occurred. So you, you shift your assessment of what risk tolerance and risk exposure really is like.

[A]

What is that danger if you're 2 knots low or 3 knots low? So the danger falling out of the

[B]

sky, or it's not just falling like a rock, what happens is once you get below a certain airspeed you have, you stall. And all that really means is that the air going over the wings and the tail of the aircraft is now separated. So if you can picture, like a boat going through water, it leaves wake behind it, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

When the air is separated and there's a bit of a vacuum over those surfaces. Now I can move my flight controls all I want, and they're not going to do anything because it's no longer in the airflow. And so the slower you get, the more you're obscuring that tail with the front of the plane. And you're now stalling the aircraft. And so of course, as soon as you get into a place where you can no longer control the plane, then really bad things happen.

[A]

Okay, turbulence. Is it the exact same or is it once you hit a certain speed, you don't feel turbulence or would you still feel like you do on a big plane?

[B]

You still feel it in a fighter plane though. You just go to a different altitude. So like if I see a thundercloud instead of going through it and you know, like a Delta pilot says, hey, unfortunately we got some turbulence out of us, I just go over it.

[A]

And you do like literally over.

[B]

Yeah, I mean there's some that get up to 70,000ft. I'm not climbing that one. But they're, you know, most of the time I'm just going to go over it and be fine. So we have a little bit of different relationship with turbulence. I don't have to sit in altitude. That's what the. That's what they've assigned me.

[A]

All right, so first time you flew a real. You were out there. Forget. I mean, get me there. Get me in the seat.

[B]

Sure. So first time flying a fighter plane. F15. By the way, an F15 is the same size as a tennis court. So if you can picture me sitting around the net of a tennis court and flying that around the sky, that's what it feels like to fly an F15. So I've got a tennis court wrapped around me and I take off and I go over the Gulf of Mexico and it's extremely choppy water down there and I'm miles out over the ocean and I'm fighting another F15, doing exactly what I wanted to do. But there's still that little voice in the back of my head saying this is the stupidest thing you could possibly be doing. Like, this is so dangerous right now. If you crashed, you're in the water miles off, you have this crazy sharks are going to eat you like every. And it's all reasonable fear. It's like if you're on a boat, this is a reasonable fear. So, you know, should stand a matter that it would be in the plane.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And you just have to keep executing and trust your training and. And make it through it. What was your.

[A]

What was your call sign?

[B]

Thor.

[A]

Th. Thor.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's awesome. And did you have a co. Are they could considered a co pilot or so?

[B]

So. No. It's so certain planes have a back seater like in Top Gun. We did not have that. I flew an F15C single pilot plane. So there's not a person in the back seat. A few of the fighter planes. It's kind of going away now because you can do a lot of the things that guy was doing with, with avionics and technology. So most of the planes are single seat.

[A]

Yeah. And there's a level of fitness and health and wellness. What did all that look like? Like, where did you have to. Was it quarterly, weekly, monthly? When did they examine you? What did you have to hold standards?

[B]

You have to be extremely fit because this is the most arduous sport that you've ever participated in. Aerial combat. We would come down from our missions and just be a bucket of sweat because you're out there pulling GS. And keep in mind, when I'm doing nine GS, my body weighs 1800 pounds. And when my body weighs 1800 pounds, my blood does too. And so I'm squeezing every muscle as hard as I can, trying to push that blood back up into my brain. And we call it seeing through the soda straw. Because what ends up happening is your eyes are your most oxygen dependent organ. And so they're the first thing to tell you, like, I'm losing blood. Right. And so when you lay on the G forces and you pull back on the stick and we've all felt it, if you've been on a roller coaster, you pulled two or three GS, and you feel like kind of the sinking feeling, you start a loop. That's G's. And so imagine that times four or five. And now your body weighs 1800 pounds. And when you're pulling that many G's, you'll start to lose your peripheral vision because the blood's leaving your head. And so I've gotten to the point where it looks like you're looking through a soda straw at the world because all you can see is this little pin prick of vision that's left because that's the only part of your eye that's getting blood. The peripherals are much more oxygen dependent. And we would learn to play with that visual acuity to such an extent where I say, oh, it's going away. I got to squeeze even harder. Push that blood back up in your head. And you watch that expand again, which is hard work. Imagine doing a workout. You're not doing a chest workout, you're not doing a leg workout. This is every muscle. You don't want it to hide in your forearms. You got to flex, literally everything to push that blood back up in your head. Your whole body becomes your heart effectively. That is now holding the blood in one place. And so in terms of your physical fitness, you got to have cardio that endures that because every dog fight lasts a couple of minutes. So you have to keep doing that.

[A]

Sure. Yeah.

[B]

You have to have the muscle strength so that you have something pushing back against it. If you're not muscular enough, then it's still going to go fill up that space in your body. And so it was very arduous. We trained for that harder than I've ever trained for. So sport.

[A]

Oh my goodness. Do they put you on a particular regiment or. It's up to you to do whatever you want. Just you gotta be fit.

[B]

We had trainers and, and then they would train us. Of course. The ultimate test was how you did in the centrifuge, which simulates the GS, which is like a merry go round from hell. You, you sit in a box and it spins around at like 300 miles an hour and you get violently dizzy and disoriented. It's the worst feeling in the world. But it, it's fast enough so that you can pull nine GS in that. In that little. It's like, it's like being in the trunk of a Volkswagen. It's this little tiny capsule that you sit in, super claustrophobic and uncomfortable and it's spinning so fast that it simulates that those nine G forces. But it, but you're also. Unlike the airplane which has like a mile turn radius, I don't get dizzy when I do that. This has like a 30 foot turn radius. And so you are violently. What, like people will come out of there a different color and they can't walk for like 30 minutes. It is the worst feeling in the world. So we dreaded the centrifuge.

[A]

Oh my gosh.

[B]

But it was our training to prove and because if I can, if I can withstand that, I certainly can go withstand 9Gs in the cockpit.

[A]

And would you. You would have to test that regularly. So quarterly or.

[B]

No, thank goodness. We, we would do it once to prove it. And then if you couldn't get through it, you kept doing it. And, and then once you've done that once, I think you had to research like every three to six years. The good news is that it, like the simulator, you're really just practicing. And then once you got up in the sky and did it a few times, you didn't need to go back and practice over and over again. Right. So it's once you're doing that every day in the jet. I didn't need to go hone in on it. You figuring out where does your blood pool. And so for me, everybody would say, oh, I got to squeeze my legs. My legs weren't really my, my trouble spot for me was my abdomen. If I didn't squeeze my stomach muscles a little different for most folks pass out. And I did pass out in the centrifuge, I had to learn it the hard way. And, and so when I squeezed my abdomen though, then I could actually kind of comfortably get through it. I wasn't forcing everything to squeeze quite as hard as much. Yeah, that is all different.

[A]

That's remarkable. What about the, the standard push ups, pull up sit ups? Would you have to do those and check in?

[B]

Yeah, so, but that's, everybody in the military had a physical fitness test to do. And ultimately fighter pilots would score within the top 10% just because we had to be super healthy to do what we did. And so we did that, but that was just the bare minimum, like that was showing up.

[A]

Okay, what about vision? Is that a rumor that you can't have contacts or any of that?

[B]

No, it was true in the old days because the nature of the old contacts that they had meant that if you had a rapid decompression in the cockpit, like you lost air pressure. Like when the, the Delta pilot says if the mask falls in front of you, we had rapid decompression in, in the fighter plane, if that happens because we fly at such high altitudes, your contact lens can actually fuse to your eyeball, then you're wearing it for the rest of your life. And so they said, can't wear glasses because they'll fall off. Now they weigh 10 pounds. Who wants to wear that? And you can't wear contact lenses because of the type they had in the 90s. Yeah, that's since changed. Now you can go in there and have contacts all you want want. But there have been a lot of studies that show that the most successful fighter pilots, the most successful people in sports and, you know, you name it, these activities that require your physical prowess are really the people who had the best vision.

[A]

Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so there's some truth to it. If you see somebody out, whether it's in business, working out, whatever, are you, after a minute, are you able to say he was probably in and around a fighter pilot or a Navy seal

[B]

or this or that, not from how they work out. I think the only way, if you put, you know, 20 people in a group and said to go find the fighter pilot or Navy Seal, it would be how they carried themselves and it would have more to do with a little bit of arrogance, meaning a little bit of a pride that you tapped into and you're able to see they would be calm under pressure. And so if there was an emergency, that person would still be active, acting pretty close to the same way that they're acting a few seconds ago and directing traffic in that emergency. They're used to being the person in charge during that moment. And we've just trained ourselves to be in chaotic situations and retain some, some wits about us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In those moments you just practice it over and over and over again.

[A]

Yeah. So there, there are a couple things, right. I mean, other than the obvious, like if they're more fit or let. Right. Interesting. I had a guy on who, who was a para. Paratrooper. Is that the, the right word? And then the CIA recruited him and then he came out and started a nonprofit. Very interesting. So his name is Nick McKinley again, former CIA guy. But he talked about this theory called physiological dive and it was awesome. He said this is how guys are now beating polygraphs because we know that this exists. So, so how did he say it? He said, put me on a beach, pure sky, staring at the ocean, pure blue sky, not a cloud in the horizon. And my mind's going a thousand. I thought, thought, thought, thought, thought. Yeah, put me in an airplane at 3 o' clock in the morning and tell me to jump out and I'm laser focused but also calmer. He said, now there's evidence, sense that that is, that's real, that that happens. And I'm, I'd be curious is that you, do you have that? He said, not everybody has it.

[B]

The ability to be calm in that moment.

[A]

Are you calm in that chaotic moment?

[B]

I would say that that is 100% a skill you develop. And he, this person might tell me, well, psychopaths have it naturally, which is one of the characteristics of a psychopath that they, they, their amygdala doesn't turn on until they have really intense situations that you or I would be, feel stressed or fear out of. So there's some element to that, but that's more of a broken person. That's not going to carry themselves in the way that you want them on your team anyway. And I've seen it nurtured though. So whether it was in the plane or later on, I've had to do presentations in front of a 10,000 person audience or things that even after being a fighter pilot still made me very nervous and gave me butterflies and thinking I couldn't get through it. And now you can put me on stage in front of a million people and my heart rate will stay the same. And it's just because I did it so many times that you train your body to, to respond a certain way.

[A]

So is it, is it more than just repetitions or is repetitions the answer?

[B]

I think it's deliberate training. Right? And, you know, practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. And so there's, there's plenty of pilots I flew with from other countries that had 5,000, 6,000 hours hours that didn't have a rigor around performance improvement. And my 500 hour wingman would scrub them. They would crush them in the sky. And so this person with 5000 hours couldn't touch our 500 hour wingman is because when we would practice, it was very intentional practice whereby we'd plan the mission to exquisite detail. Here are the objectives of what we're about to go do. We'd go fly the mission, we'd take notes, we'd have videos. And then this is the important part, we debrief every mission. I flew 3,000 missions. I did 3,000 debriefs. And you'd say, well, gosh, that's a lot of time. Like, what are you talking about? On your 2992nd mission, like, what could be new? There was always something new to debrief. There was always something that I didn't do perfectly. There was always something to not do that way tomorrow. And we were meticulous about finding those last few things. Or for that newer wingman, the new things that are a pile of stuff we could talk about when you go through the four months training. I talked about earlier, when we finished the first mission, the instructor could say to you, you did nothing right. You can't hold altitude, you can't hold air speed. You got. You threw up in the plane. Like, you're terrible. You can't do anything. But they don't. They say, all right, so tomorrow I want you to do these three things differently. I want you to hold your airspeed plus or minus 100ft. That's when your tolerance for tomorrow, when you're on final, I want you to be plus 10 knots, meaning I allow you to be a little bit fast, minus zero. You get one knot slow, and I'm taking the plane away from you, you know, while you're in that position. And then the last thing I want you to do is don't exit the airspace. When you're doing acrobatic maneuvers, you can do anything else. But do those three things. So what are they doing? They assessed what the most important levers were to pull from the previous mission to do better at. They didn't say here's a hundred things to do they could have.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

They said, here's the three things to focus on. And then every day there were three new things that you do until you chipped away at it to the point where you're that pilot that I said at the beginning. Beginning, that is in the top 1% of the world.

[A]

Incredible. But in four months, which makes it even more fascinating. All right, even, even Tiger woods at the yips. At some point, it's probably safe to say that anybody who operates in that type of environment went through something that looked like the yips or the yips. Did you ever. Did you ever get it?

[B]

You have to tell me what the yips are. I haven't heard that one.

[A]

Just getting like, I don't know. It was a. I forget the golf tournament where Tiger Chump chunked two golf shots in a row, two chips in a row. And it was a very challenging season for him. So the yips would be like, yeah, like Charles Barkley, he went out and he hit somebody playing. When he was playing golf, he hit a ball off somebody and then for a long time he couldn't, like he was so paralyzed to play. Right. So just something that. Yeah. Gets you in a funk. Jeff Francor, I remember interviewing him. And after he got hit with a fastball, it was so hard he had special coaching just to get him back in the batter's box. Right, right. So did you ever have a. Something that psychologically like ran you down and you were afraid to get back in the plane or anything like that?

[B]

I'll tell you the trend that we see. So I became a safety officer in, in the military, which is a fancy way of saying that I had to investigate mishaps. So when a plane crashed and if somebody died, I had to go investigate it. And we had to figure out what caused this to happen and why did that occur. And so I became intimately familiar with all the data and the stat around all of these crashes. And I'll pose a question to you. If you were to pick who's the deadliest pilot, who's the one that you gotta watch out for the most? Who has the highest chance of dying on their next mission? Is it the person who is at 50 hours, who's been doing this the least amount of time? Who's that four month pilot who knows just enough to be in the top 1%, but not enough to always keep himself safe. Is it the six or seven hundred hour pilot in the middle of their journey? They've been doing this for a couple years now, and they've gotten a lot better than that. So they're better than that 50 hour pilot pilot, or is it that 3,000 hour pilot who's the oldest? At the end of their mission, who do you think is the most dangerous?

[A]

I can't wait to hear the answer. But my guess would be the middle guy. Cause the middle guy's gunning so hard to get to show himself.

[B]

Yeah, it is the middle guy. But it's not quite for the reason that you're saying. It's not just to prove himself. It's because in the beginning he was paying attention with every fiber of his being. Every mission he flew, he's meticulously watching everything around the cockpit. He's like this primal state is on, right? I'm trying to stop myself from being killed by this airplane. And I'm just watching everything. Once you get to 200 hours, you're like, well, it's still scary, but nothing's really happened, right? And it's not that scary. And then you get to 500 hours. And I'll tell you the perspective from instructors that I used to see, because I used to teach the instructors how to instruct. You get around the 500 hour point and you're like, yeah, I've kind of figured this out. You know, I know when to be nervous, I know when not to be nervous. And you see, you look over at that pilot and the two people in the plane and the instructor's got, got their arms on the windows like that in the canopy. And they can do that because for that, you know, 300 hours, nothing's happened. And I've been able to be in this position and kind of turn off my brain and just relax and do nothing else. That's the person whose life is at the most risk. And it's because they've learned that they can be safe. But it's a false sense of security. And we see this in everything in business and everything. There comes this plateau in learning where you think you have it figured out. And then sadly, a lot of times with what pulls people out of that is you have a mishap, you lose a friend that they grew up with you in this environment, and you're shocked back into reality. You think, gosh, that person was as good as me, as maybe they were better than me. And he made that mistake. And all of a sudden you're paying more attention. So that 3000 hour pilot knows that he still needs to pay attention, and he knows what to pay attention to and at what times. That 500 hour pilot is the one who's learned just enough to get a false sense of security and stop growing and become dangerous as he plateaus at that point. Point. So I wouldn't say we necessarily have slumps. Like, it's not like you see somebody regress in their capabilities, but it's that attention to detail that stops for a while. And it's a human nature for that to happen.

[A]

Yeah. Incredible.

[B]

All right.

[A]

I only have like a thousand more questions about the flying part, but it's, it's just so, it's so incredible. And you. 3000 hours is nothing like you flew. You flew a lot, you've seen a, a lot. So, last question. On the, on the, on the flight part is that just when your wheels are off the ground, 3,000, or if you're stuck on a Runway, is that, does that count?

[B]

No. 3,000 hours in the air. And that's different from. It also means 3,000 missions. And so if you were to say to a Delta pilot, how many missions do you have? They'd say like, Well, I have 10,000 hours, but I've got, you know, a thousand missions. 1500.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because every mission is, is two and a half, three hours or more if they're missions. And for us, it was a 45 minute to an hour flight for every single one of them. And so that was 45 minutes to an hour. 3,000 times to equate to 3,000 missions. So it's a lot of wheels up, wheels down in the air.

[A]

Yeah. All right, let's move to a major pivot point in your life. So you're flying, you're healthy, you're working out. I think you said maybe. You're probably the fittest you ever were. You're in a good spot, you gotta be in a good headspace. If you're, if you're actively flying, then a pain happens. What was that? Was it a seatbelt? Didn't work. Like, how did you even know you had a pain? How did that come about?

[B]

Yeah, so 10 years into my journey, family's doing fantastic. I've figured out enough now to not be terrified every single day that I'm flying. I'm getting to the point where I'm one of the senior people in a lot of formations just by the notion of my experience. I'm training to be the next Thunderbird. Pilot. I'm in the last interviews to me in Air Force Thunderbird, which is like the Navy's Blue Angels, except better is the word you're looking. Word. Just kidding. Little Air Force Navy rivalry going in there.

[A]

Yeah, we're not cutting that out either, so.

[B]

Good. I hope you. So the. So the Air Force Thunderbirds, you know, highly selective in the pilots that they bring in there. And so I'm in this interview process and I'm on top of my world. Everything's going great, and I have this little nagging pain. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's like a 2. I tell the doctors about it only because they do so many tests. And at the end of it they're like, anything else that you want to tell us? Every time I'd be like, well, my toe kind of hurts when I run and I got this little pain over here.

[A]

Yeah, you're like making stuff up, right?

[B]

Exactly. You just want to be really meticulous. It's a 50 million dollar plane and they want you to be really safe. And so. And the G's do crazy things to your body and so you got to watch it. And so they'd say, ah, you're in great shape. Don't worry about it, you're fine. It's just a cramp. It's just whatever. One time they gave me pills and they said, maybe you have an infection, just take that. And so we did this for about a year. And it wasn't so bad that I ever would have gone to the doctor naturally, but since I saw them so much, I just kept telling him, yeah. And finally at the end of that year, the guy's like, well, we've talked about this enough. Why don't we just go get something checked out? And it was. It would only present when I pulled G's. Because you wore that G suit that constricts your body in the lower extremities, so it pushes the blood in your head and helps you to not have to squeeze quite as hard. And it would squeeze on my abdomen too. I'd feel like an uncomfortable sensation, like I ate too much. But it happened every time. So they take an ultrasound and they're doing a scope at the same time. And I heard the phrase you never want to hear from your doctor, which is, huh? As they're looking at them, like, what do you mean, huh? And we're both looking at the screen. I don't know what I'm looking at, but it's. It doesn't look like what I would picture it to look like inside there. And then that doctor leaves and comes back with 12 of his closest friends. And now they're just surrounding the screen and they're, they're moving around this ultrasound and the scope and checking things out and, and now they're talking a mile a minute. And so I know something's happened. I equate it to, when I tell this story in the past, they're like, wow, gosh, it's callous doctors, they're just, they've completely forgotten you. And I say this is, this is their MiG moment. Like the, the, the bad guy airplane in Top Gun when you see the MiG. Right. This is, they've, they've had 3,000 boring, benign inspections with people. And on this one they've found the enemy that, you know, that they've talked about forever. Yeah. And so they're all sitting around the screen looking at it and I'm trying to get a word in. We looking at. And of course it turns out it was cancer.

[A]

Oh man. But, but you're sitting there, you feel 10 out of 10.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I did PE that week and working out, everything's going fantastic. So I'm thinking I'm making myself feel better by saying they don't know what they're talking about. Like this is, there's no way I have cancer. Like this is. They, they see something. They don't know there's more tests to do. Relax.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They don't know what they're seeing.

[A]

They send you right home.

[B]

So we, they, they told me cancel your vacation that I had planned coming up. We're gonna go to Great Wolf Lodge.

[A]

Oh, which one?

[B]

Down in San Antonio. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They said cancel your vacation, but you know, you don't have to worry. It might be cancer, but probably, you know, you're in good shape. Once again we saw something. Don't get all worked up about it, but you know, cancel your vacation. We don't know what we're gonna do yet. It's, it was a Friday. They, I was gonna be gone for a four day weekend. They said just come back on Monday and we'll talk to you then. So I came back Monday. We did more tests and it went from we don't think it's cancer, you're in great shape to we think it probably is cancer. To it's a cancer we don't know about to it's a cancer that we might know about, which is extremely deadly to. Oh, and it's stage four within about two and a half weeks. And so we went from picture of good health to you're going to be dead in 18 months within a couple of doctors visit. Visits.

[A]

What's the rate?

[B]

The survivability rate for this particular cancer is 15% for five years. And that's not a good 15%. That's not a fit 15%. You're just wheezing over that five year finish line and probably dying on five years plus 10 days at that point. So almost no hope for people who get this particular type of cancer. And they told me me that was on the long range that more likely I had about an 18 month life expectancy.

[A]

And imagine that and not even being sick. Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What's the name of it?

[B]

Mucinous adenocarcinoma of the appendix.

[A]

Okay, and is it, does it literally start in the like where. Tell me a little bit about. Well, tell me whatever. You know, you're not a doctor, but I'm sure you learned a lot about it.

[B]

Definitely. I feel like a doctor when it comes to this because I had to learn so much. But it's when you hear appendix, of course, like I did, I was like, good, well that's the first piece good news we've had. It's like pinky toe cancer. Sure, you can have it. I don't need that. And then they said, no, it's really serious. It starts in the appendix, but only this particular type of cancer starts in the appendix. And by the time we found it, it's almost like pancreatic cancer. It's most likely spread everywhere else. And so you're just kind of on this slow death period right now. And we just discovered it. And so I underwent massive surgery. They removed part or all of three organs in my abdomen and pulled out a bunch of lymph nodes and sure enough, it was in all of them. So the canc answered spread already. And, and they. It just continued the bad news, stage four, even worse. And nothing good is coming out of this at this point. There's nothing really to cling to. I remember asking at one point, like, what's still on the table that we're hoping for? Like what, what are you telling me to go home and pray for and hope for at this point? And we're like, they're like, we don't know. Like it's, there's that it doesn't go fast. I don't know. There, there's. There wasn't anything for them to say in that moment. God.

[A]

And were they. Was it confirmed that it was only in the areas they removed. Or were they saying, well, this can actually be much farther?

[B]

They said the latter. So because it had gone to lymph nodes and spread to some distant parts of my body in my abdomen, they said, I mean, the cat's out of the bag. Like, this is. This is just. It's all over the place now. And so while we got, as you're alluding to clean margins, we cut out what we could and we showed you back up. Like, you only get a couple of those. You don't. We can't keep cutting stuff out. Like, when this comes. Comes back. So I'm just. You're aware this is. It's going to get worse from this point.

[A]

What age?

[B]

33.

[A]

So 33. Life's in front of you. I just keep coming back to you feel so good, and you're fit and you're all that. Okay. Right after. Right after that sentence, what is that feeling you got? It's. Can't. It's not only cancer, but when you found out the worst, like you said, like, it's not only cancer. It's not only that, but it's stage four. Yeah. What do you feel right there?

[B]

I'm living a literal nightmare. And there's a lot of cancer patients that will tell you that their favorite part of their day is waking up. And it's because in the grog of sleep, as you're slowly waking up and you're wiping the dust out of your eyes and sleep out of your eyes, there's this little bit of time where you're like, oh, it's just dream. It didn't happen. I don't have cancer. Oh, my gosh, what a crazy dream. I thought I had cancer. And that was not my favorite part of the day. That was my worst part of the day. And the reason is because I did have that. I would wake up and I would say, oh, I'm still in my bed. That was a dream. I had the weirdest dream. I had cancer. But then I'd say, but wait, that was a really detailed dream. Like, I remember the hospital I went to. I remember the doctor. I remember what it. I do have cancer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I didn't get to wake up to a moment of peace. I got to wake up to a nightmare. And that was the worst part of my day, because every morning, it was like I was being diagnosed all over again. I had this moment where I thought it wasn't true. And then the weight of everything came crashing down on me every single morning. That this is gonna be the best day for the rest of your life. And tomorrow's gonna be a little bit worse. And then the next day will be

[A]

a little bit worse.

[B]

Worse. And I hope you like yesterday. Cause that was the best one that you're gonna remember.

[A]

What was the, what was the swing in mindset? Did it, did it go back and forth from. For me to. I don't even know. What was the range?

[B]

Yeah. So there's a very specific moment I can tell you the, the day and the moment that everything changed. I went through about six weeks of, you know, getting the diagnosis, getting bad news hit after bad news hit, going through the massive surgery. I had a, from, you know, above my belly button down to my pelvis. And I remember asking the guy, how big of a, of a cut did you have to make while I was still sewn up and I had the bandages on and this doctor goes like, that big. I was like, well, wait a second. Do that hand motion again. Like, what were you. What was that? He said, well, that's how far my hand was up inside of you. And I said, you were elbow deep in my abdomen. He's like, oh, yeah, I had to feel your liver and everything else. And that's what happened while you're asleep. And this three days before that, I was auditioning to be a Thunderbird pilot. And so it was just like nightmare element after nightmare element. I'm now started chemo. And six weeks into this journey, every day is a little worse than the previous one. And I finally got a little bit of good news. I got transferred from the military hospital to MD Anderson down in Houston. MD Anderson's a phenomenal hospital. It's one of the best in the world. And so we were lucky. We're three hours away from it, from a drive. And so I started that three hour drive. And on that three hour drive, this is the first point in time where anything was quasi good for me because I'm going to the best place in the world where they have the best chance of floating it. But every mile that ticked by on that drive, I had this sense of dread and this, this fear that was building up every single step of that journey. And my wife is sitting next to me and my little kids are in the back. They're 1 and 3. 3. And the closer I get to Houston and this hospital, the more anxious I get. And I can't put my finger on it. I've already been through six weeks of anxiety. Like, why is this moment the most anxious moment? We pull up to the hospital, I jump out of the driver's seat. My wife runs around to park it, and so she drops me off in front of it. And I'm walking up to this hospital in downtown Houston. It's massive hospital. And as I'm looking up at all these windows and just seeing this. This enormous building and people running in and out of it and all these cancer patients, I realize why I have so much dread. And it's because I'm walking into the building that I'm going to die in. And I realize it in that moment. My God, this is the place that I don't know when, but you know, six months from now, 12 months from now, this is.

[A]

Is.

[B]

I'll take my last breath. One of those windows. What's on the other side there, that's the last thing I'll see. And I know that with pretty clear certainty. And I remember pausing there and I tried to be strong in front of people. One of the things you do when you have cancer is you're usually, and mostly managing other people's impressions because you usually get the deer in the headlights when you say you have cancer. It's okay. We're fighting really hard. I've got a plan. And you're managing their impressions of it.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

I'd been strong for so long in this moment. I was by myself finally. And I was just so angry and I was just so mad at God. And I remember closing my eyes and pointing my face towards the sky, and tears are streaming down my face. And I said, this isn't fair, God. I said, I've done everything right. I stayed safe, I stayed healthy. I did everything I was supposed to do do. I'm 33 years old and I'm dying and I have a wife and two kids. This isn't fair. You need to heal me right now. And I opened up my eyes and I locked eyes with another person who's about 15ft away from me. I remember this person, incredibly blue, beautiful eyes staring right at me. And our eyes are locked as this person is going into the hospital. And this person has a mask on and a bald head, and she's about 9 years old, and she's being wheeled into the hospital by her father. She's really skinny and gaunt looking. And as she's looking at me, I can tell that she's afraid and she's making eye contact with me and I can see the fear in her eyes about what's going to happen to her again for the hundredth time on this journey at 9 years old and she's Going back into this building that she hates.

[A]

And

[B]

in that moment, it was like a light switch. I said, God, God, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. 33 years old. I've got a beautiful wife, two kids. I'm a fighter pilot. I'm living every little boy's dream. Thank you. Don't save me, God. Save her. Help that little girl. And then the doors shut behind them, and then I'm just left there as this weird man crying in front of the hospital, wondering what the heck just happened. And I realized as I contemplated that moment then and since then, that if I could go from the worst moment in my life, the sorriest I ever felt for myself, just the pit of despair, to, in the blink of an eye, feeling such empathy for this other person to such an extent that I said, don't heal me, heal her. That I can attack anything and go into any situation and not bring that fear into it and control how I show up to everything. And I decided as I walk in that building, no matter what happens from this point forward, whether I die or not is going to be on my terms. And I'm not going to be afraid anymore. And I'm going to be thankful for what I do have. And I thought about that, of course, many, many times since. And it's, it's. It was a light switch moment where it was the worst moment of my life to some of the most gratitude I've ever felt in my life because of that encounter. And I like to say that God answered my prayer that day because you remember what the last thing I said was. You need to heal me right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And when I opened my eyes, I was healed. It wasn't the way I wanted to be healed. I still had cancer. I was walking in a hospital with cancer. And for all practical purposes, I would still be dead in 18 months, but I was healed in the way I did, needed in that moment. And it was an immediate answer to that prayer.

[A]

Unbelievable. Did you ever see the girl again?

[B]

So in 2000, I've told that story before. I wrote a book and I included that story. And in 2018, I got a message on LinkedIn and I was very public about the date and the place. And there really weren't kids coming in and out of this hospital because they had a children's hospital, too. I still don't to this day know why that day she was being seen in that hospital because kids weren't usually seen there. And this guy writes me, and it's on LinkedIn, he says Joel. I saw your story about that little girl on that day in March. I was wheeling my daughter Christina into the hospital and, And you were right. She was afraid as we were doing that. And she, she was, She was not afraid when she went home to be with God four years later in this journey. Journey. And because of Christina and our experience with her, we know it's important in life. She taught us how to live and how to die. And now to know that you encountered her during that time and had such an impression from her as well is an incredible blessing. So he was a pastor that wrote me that. He's, his name is Chad. I come very close to him. We, we text all the time. We, we stayed very close. But yeah, that was his daughter. And his daughter did eventually pass away from it tragically.

[A]

Oh my goodness. Wow. That's a story. And you still stay in touch with him now, I guess, right?

[B]

Yeah, he's fantastic. He wrote a book called Survive to Thrive and it's all about how he learned lives for his daughter and in her memory.

[A]

Unbelievable. Wow. Okay, so how long do you stay at the hospital there for?

[B]

So at my stage of the cancer, it was really just periodic tests at that point. So you do blood tests, you come back and forth and it was a roller coaster ride of we think the cancer's back, now we don't. And now everything is pointing to say it's back. Like every test that we have says it's back and then miraculously it wasn't. And so I had a lot of those back and forth experiences. And the, the long story short is that the ax never fell. I, I, you go to, if you're, if you know anything about cancer, you go live your best life for a couple months and hope, hopefully stay symptom free. And then you go back to the doctors and it's, I, I always say it's like in the movie Gladiator where Caesar gives you, you know, this or this and it's, it's, it's literally for your life. If they give you a thumbs up, you have three more months to live. If they give you a thumbs down, it's, well, it's a beginner at the end.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I hope you enjoyed those last three months. And so I would go to those visits and, and get that verdict every time, but it's did good and, and so here I am 16 years later, that experience and, and feeling healthier than ever.

[A]

Off of a. The original was 15 months. 18 months.

[B]

18 months.

[A]

Yeah. Did, did your, did the mindset Ever go back? I would imagine it has to. Was it ever okay? That was a little artificial being so positive about it. This is really what's happening.

[B]

Yeah, I get that question a lot. And my answer would be, I'm forever changed. For sure. There's a different version before and after that experience, but I'm still finding myself in traffic and frustrated and dealing with work or something that's frustrating me or film, whatever annoys us in life. And so I'm still susceptible to that. But the difference I have now is that when those things occur, there's a little voice in the back of my head that says this. What you're experiencing now would be like a joyous fever dream to the person you were. So whatever headache you're experiencing, whatever traffic you're dealing with right now, if I could go back and tell 2010, Joel, you're gonna be really frustrated in traffic. You'll be sitting there for like three hours, and it's gonna be, you know, stop and go, and it's gonna be super hot out, and you're gonna be really uncomfortable. 2010 Joel would break down in say, I can't believe how fortunate I am that I get to experience that. So I do have that. That, you know, that thought in the back of my head at all times.

[A]

Yeah. Do. Do you have to go, like, quarterly twice a year or three times a year?

[B]

So I did that dance for a long time. Now I'm at the one year point because enough years have passed, even with stage four, where they think it's in the rearview mirror.

[A]

Where. Where do you.

[B]

Where do you go to still MD Anderson? Whenever I do that.

[A]

So is it. When was the last time you went?

[B]

Coming up on a trip, I'm at about a year and three months at this point.

[A]

So the la. So get me there.

[B]

The last time you went Christmas time, a year and three months ago.

[A]

What are you thinking when you're walking in?

[B]

It's good for recalibrating, but at this point, statistically, I have very little risk of getting cancer back. And of course, there's still the hair on the back of my neck. I feel more like a visitor to their world at point this. This point. So when I go there, I see a lot of people who are struggling and in bad shape. And so you would think, aren't you nervous? And does this make you uncomfortable? Not really, because I actually just. I see the contrast. I see how great everything's going for me, and I know that the chances of me having something are highly unlikely at this Point statistically good. And so when I'm there it's more visiting that world again and recalibrating and saying, gosh, I have it really good.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Does the, there's the little, does the nine year old girl still play in your story?

[B]

Every day.

[A]

How often every day.

[B]

Oh yeah, every day.

[A]

It's incredible. What a story. And okay, so you come back, the military brings you back in. Yep. What, what happens? Do you come back and fly or.

[B]

So I did chemotherapy for seven months or so. I lost 40 or 50 pounds and you know, I was in good shape, so it was all muscle. Now I'm just gaunt and I look like I'm 80 and my hair turned white and started falling out and, and then I come back and start my road to recovery physically. And I remember I talked to the doctors, this head doctor in particular, and I said, I really want to get back in the cockpit. They were actually pushing me to leave the Air Force. They said they couldn't understand why I wouldn't take my medical retirement because if I get that, my family's taken care of, they get an annuity every year paid. And, and of course that, that if, if the worst were to happen, that would have been better. But I really didn't want to go down this losing path and throwing in the towel. And I said, no, I want to get back in the plane. I have all these things I want to do still. And I remember the doctor saying, do you know how high the mortality rate is for your cancer? And I wanted to be like, no, I never googled it. Tell me what's the mortality rate for this cancer? And so I left that. I worked out every single day. I tried to get myself back to good health. And we all have to do that physical fitness test in the military. Very extremely strenuous. I want to say 21 pull ups is the max for 70 push ups is the max for the push up side. And they have a couple other things. You do a 600 yard run, a mile and a half run, so it tests your endurance and muscle. I just worked out so much and was eating right to the point where I was able to score a perfect score on that. And very few even fighter pilots do that. Like of the fighter pods, maybe 1 or 2% have a perfect score in that physical fitness test. And so I went into that same doctor's office with that piece of paper that said I scored perfectly and I threw it across the table and I said I just scored the top 1% on the, on the PT test. You need to be back in the cockpit.

[A]

And did he?

[B]

Yeah, he's like, I guess I do.

[A]

No way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You went back in.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm the only stage four cancer pilot who's ever gotten back into an ejection seat aircraft. At least I was at that time. I think I saw.

[A]

Wow, that's incredible. But you, you still had to do the quarterly MD Andersons or the quarterly.

[B]

It was like a consolation prize. They're like, sure, you can fly for a couple quarters before you die because you're clearly in good enough health that where you can fly right now. So, yeah. You're making a case for us that you're not going to keel over in the airplane.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But we all know what's coming. Like, you're not long for this world.

[A]

But what did you, what did you feel in your heart? Did you feel like beat it?

[B]

No, I, I thought the statistics weren't on my side, and so I, I treated it as, you know, realistically. And of course, I held out a little bit of hope that I would, but I also wanted to be realistic and, and, and know what was most likely coming my way.

[A]

Yeah. So what did, what did. In that season, what did each day look like? Like just walking down the street? What was different there as a Survivor but still knowing that you're not out of the blue yet. Right. What is that like? What is it like?

[B]

It's, it's. Everything tastes a little better. The world's a little sweeter. Some of my happiest moments in life, period, were during that time frame because I was intentional about making them happy. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it's, it was a great lesson for me. And it wasn't false happiness. It wasn't like, I'm going to act happy right now. It was genuine happiness. And it was because it's like, you know, you come to the end of your vacation and you got two days left and you're like, ah, I gotta go home in two days. This is, this is a bummer. What do you want to do today? We're going to make this a really special day. What do you want to do? It's the conversation you have with your family. That's kind of how I looked at every day with my life. Like, I don't know what's happening next week. Just look around. What a great day. This was a great day. Look at the family sitting around you. What an awesome moment. And because you're so intentional and present about it, you get to appreciate those things. And in a way that you really can't feel without that sense of presence.

[A]

That's. That's. That's incredible. At some point, then you have, I don't know, let's. A rejuvenation of life. And you say, I want to go do some hard stuff. I don't know, what'd you end up doing?

[B]

So my takeaways were when I was dying, the things that gave me the most joy in life weren't what I expect them to be. In other words, my favorite memories weren't the things that I worked the hardest for. So I had my wall of fame at home, my I love me wall with my plaques on it, and I like that. And all the stuff that I'd done in my past, and I'd fought really hard for those, and I hope they rank me number one in this category and not number two to that person. And I'm going to do a little extra for that. And when I was dying, I was like, oh, my gosh, what wasted effort. Like, who cares? Who in the right mind is going to ever look at that piece of paper that said you were one or two, and who's going to react to it in any way? But that was so important to me at that time. So I really regretted that I worked for any of that. But I did have something I was very proud of and happy about. And all of those moments fell into three categories. Growth, giving, or gratitude, and my three GS. So what do I mean by growth? It's about those things that scared me a little bit, where I was venturing outside of my capabilities, whether I was learning to fly, starting a family, going to the Air Force Academy. Those things where I felt deeply uncomfortable. But I exhilarated at the same time because I was moving into new territory and expanding, expanding myself. Giving. If you spend too much time growing and you're always competing with people that are better than you, that's good for your growth. But it also is constantly putting you in a place where you're not enough. When you're giving. It's the opposite know. Is it? I always tell people, if you want to feel better about yourself, go help somebody out. And it's because you'll realize that, gosh, I have a really good, you know, when. When you're helping somebody else that wants to do what you're doing. I don't care if you, you know, recovering addict and, you know, you. You messed up everything in your life, in your head. If you're a month sober, that's 29 days more than the person who's trying to do it today.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you can reach out to that person to have a conversation with them, and you're going to feel pretty good about yourself in that moment. There's. I, I, I, I have a couple of peers that I stay real close with that have accomplished amazing things. Pat Gelsinger is the former CEO of Intel. Carl Eschenbach is the CEO of Workday, and he was the one of the partners at Sequoia Behind Zoom and UiPath and Snowflake, all the big, big companies. And they're, they're mentors of mine. And more importantly, I want to grow into a lot of the capabilities that those two and one other have. But I bring them up not to name drop, but to say when I'm in their company, like, I'm, I look like I really haven't accomplished that much in my life. Right. It's, there's a lot I need to do to catch up with them. And if I only spend time with those people, then that just feels a little bit daunting because you just have.

[A]

So, yeah.

[B]

I love the quote that you're the five people you spend the most time with.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so you should. 5 Find five people for which you're dragging down the average and they're pulling you up. And those are my five people. But I also think you need to find another five set of people that you're. Because when, when you're climbing the mountain and all you're looking at is that summit and it's so far away and there's so many steps to go and it's so steep, and then you turn around and you're helping somebody up. You see how far you've come and you see how far things are below you and what you've really accomplished. And I think you need both for that balance. Right. You need to grow into something, but you need to give as well. And then the last one is gratitude and it's. There's a great quote from Teddy Robbins Roosevelt. That comparison is the thief of all joy. And I think that's true. We, we lose our happiness because of the things that we covet around us. And that, that sense that I don't have what that person has and look at their nice shoes and look out in good shape they are. And like, look at that person's beautiful family and whatever you want to fill in the blank with. And, and it steals our joy. And I think that this time period has shown us that that aspect more than anyone anything else. What do I mean? By that. We talk about privilege all the time. You see it on the news. This person's privileged, and they don't even understand this sense of entitlement. If we were honest about it, we would say that this generation we're all a part of is the single most privileged generation to ever walk the planet. Meaning we live like the literal kings and queens of 125 years ago. They have an expectation that I can go to the grocery store and buy food from all over the world and taste things from different continents, or that I can even be on that continent in a few hours time, or I can go get healthcare that can take away cancer that would have killed every person who's lived in every generation before me. That was a death sentence. And yet I am so privileged that I have that ability to do that, or that we have the poverty level so low as it is right now, or that we have meaningful work. I'm not working out in a field. I'm not sweating all day. I get to do work that inspires me and challenges me critically in my thinking. And yet we're some of the least happy, I think, that have ever, ever lived. And it's because of that aspect that it's. The comparison is the thief of joy. I'm not comparing myself against the million generations before me that I don't see. I'm comparing myself against that person who has really nice shoes and that person who has a really nice car and they've got a phone I want. And now I'm angry about it. And I'm going to call them privileged. And I'm going to miss the fact that all of us are living the privileged fever dream of every one of our ancestors. And if they could talk right now, they would say, we kind of resent the fact that you're not grateful for what you have.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And that you don't have that sense of gratitude. And so just like the encounter with that little girl, all of a sudden she gave me a sense of gratitude for my life. And I went from saying, I don't deserve this. I have a family to take care of, to I don't deserve this beautiful family I have. Let's start with that. I have newfound gratitude for that. That light switch moment. That choice of gratitude makes all the difference.

[A]

That's one of the greatest pivot points that I've.

[B]

That I've ever heard.

[A]

And I've heard lots of them interviewing people. I mean, that's that that encounter walking in that hospital is going to shape me going forward. Like no, no doubt about it. So wow. And I can hear it, I can hear it when you're talking about gratitude. I know it comes from somewhere and that was just a massive, massive part of it. So thanks for sharing. I mean, thanks for the vulnerability. Right, right. Because that was hard to go there. So just want to say thanks for it. All right. Then the ninja warrior comes on your radar. How does that pop up?

[B]

And yeah, before ninja warriors, we're at the five year point. We went through chemo, got an mba and I just kept kind of extending my horizons, you know, a little bit further because for a while I lived quarter by quarter as I was doing my appointments and then I started to push that out to six months. Then I was able to say a year and why don't we just go get an MBA and try our hand in the business world? And then finally we're approaching five years and I'm still healthy and I wanted to do something to put the exclamation point on this journey I'd been on and really prove to myself that I'm fully recovered from this cancer battle because it took a ton out of me for two years. I was basically on my deathbed and I decided to go run an Ironman. Never done a triathlon before. Never.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

Never ran a marathon. I could swim far enough to pick up my ski when it fell off and when I was water skiing and. And that was about it. My last bike said Huffy on it. So I had no reason to do this, but I signed up for it, put the date on the calendar, told the world about it. So now I didn't have a choice and I couldn't get out. And it was, I want to say it's like seven months away at that point when that started. And so now I scrambled and I said, all right, Butcher, fighter pilot, brand new use. You can turn somebody into a pilot in the top 1% in four months. Surely we can do this. It's going to be hard, but you have to dedicate yourself to it. But somebody out there can show you, like, what are the things you need to do each day, literally each day in order to get your body ready? Got my body ready for that. Wheezed over the finish line on that Ironman down in New Zealand. I completed it in 12 hours and change. And then I made it a goal to say, well, why don't we try something that's scary each year on the anniversary and do something to commemorate it. The following year I did a physique competition which Was just really dialing in my diet and my fitness and just seeing, like, when I'm in my peak physical shape, what I could feel like and look like. And so that was a fun experiment as well. And I learned a lot about the body and how to respond to it. And then the next year after that was my kids said, dad, you always said you would do so good on this Ninja Warrior show. And it's American Ninja Warrior. I did tell them that when I chemo, I remember I wanted them to think of me in an athletic way. And so as we'd watch the show, I'm still feeble and old looking because I was going through chemo. And I would say, like, dad could do that. I used to be able to do that. I would do great. Get that. And so the kids remembered it. Yeah, you're in. You're back to good health. Why don't you show us that you can do it? So signed up for it. Signed up for it. Got the, the nod to come on the show and, and so sure enough, jumped out there and did the first one. And I love that one from the perspective of the fact that I failed at that on a very public stage. And if I hadn't said that, nobody would know. It's not like my video is viral or anything like that.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But I, but I, I say that because I think we have this notion in our heads that people are counting our failures and they're just waiting for you to fail. And you know, what is the world going to think if I fail at this? And they're all going to snicker and have glee over it. And my reaction to that is, we should all be so lucky that somebody out there is counting our successes and failures to such an extent that they even see it. Right. The world isn't paying attention. I've been at the highest highs as a fighter pilot.

[A]

It.

[B]

I've been at the lowest lows as somebody with cancer. And people really close to me paid attention. But for the rest of the world, they're all watching a movie that stars them in their heads. And we all do the same thing, but it's all of us. And so what did that teach me? That if the world's not watching, first of all, you shouldn't be afraid to fail or pat yourself too hard on the back when you succeed, because it doesn't really matter. Do it for yourself. If that's something that you're passionate about putting, put it out there. Don't care at all what the rest of the world Says before cancer, me would be really worried about your impression of me now. And I really liked that you asked me to sign autographs when I do flybys at the football games, and that I'd go out and wave to the crowd, and I'd go to an air show, and you'd come up and take pictures with me. I like that you held me on that pedestal, and I don't want to knock my brand off that pedestal, because I really like that. And the new me realized, they don't even know you. If you went back to that person, said, go find that pilot in the lineup, they'd have no idea. People listening to this right now, I promise you, you will not remember my name. You probably don't remember right now. You won't remember it a week from now, for sure. So we need to get it out of our heads that we're going to be some sort of icon in life. Right? What I would tell people to strive to do instead is be an idea. Be something that subtly nudges other people in a different direction that you're passionate about. They're never going to attribute it to me. No one's ever going to go back and say, and if they did remember a story, they definitely won't remember who said it. And 50 years ago, even if they did remember who said it, not a single soul on the planet would remember my name ever. And so we live in this feeble attempt, especially in the Instagram days, to think that, like, somehow we're going to be the one who gets remembered. I can name, like, 15, 20 people from the 18th century. Like, nothing will happen in our lives that will be worth remembering. So you better do something that you are passionate about. You better not waste your life trying to massage the impression that somebody else has of you, and they're not even thinking of you.

[A]

That's. That's awesome. Very cool. Love it. What's the hardest part of the war? The ninja warrior thing?

[B]

For me, it was training differently, because all of a sudden, now you have to really take into consideration your strength to weight ratio, because it's. It's all forearms, it's all grip. And when you watch the show the first few stages, you can see just generally athletic people doing really well at the end now, the way they. Because only, like, four people have ever finished the entire show in, like, 15 years. And it's. Because at the end, it's just the climbers. So now, like, you have to have these insanely strong tendons in your arms, and you have to hold onto a, a ledge that's like a half an inch long. And, and, and so that's, that's for a different breed of people. I knew I'd never make it to that level.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And nor did I want to put in the training to even get close to that, but I had to at least have the, the grip strength to make it through the first round.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, are. Are you in part of a club now?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a, it's definitely a tight community. Yeah, it's a great community because nobody really gets rich from it. You get a little bit. No notorious. And people will see you and recognize you to a certain extent. So there's that aspect of it, but there's not a ton of money associated with it. And so it's pretty pure. It's not unlike other sports that become all about the money. There's a lot of very passionate individuals who are doing it for some fun. Right. Reasons. And so community is great.

[A]

Yeah. Your kids are what age?

[B]

19, 17 and 13.

[A]

19, 13. If. If I had an opportunity. Opportunity to, to sit with them. Dad's not here. Said. All right, guys, tell me, tell me about your dad.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What do you think they would say?

[B]

They would say that they kind of roll their eyes when you ask that question. And here's what's interesting. I would think, you know, if I was a kiddo of a fighter pilot, that kind of sounds like the dream that'd be super cool for their dad to be a fighter pilot. There can be fighter planes flying over at an air show, and my kids don't even even look up at this point. Like, it's, it's, it's just noise to them. They could care less. And I remember even when they were little, they were like that because they're around it constantly. But, I mean, heaven forbid a fire truck go by, then they lose their minds. That's the coolest thing in the world. But an F15 flying a couple hundred feet above. Yeah, whatever. That's what dad does. Wow. So it's, it's fun how different our perspective is, you know, depending on what we. We grew up around. And so I think my kids would talk about me from a much more personal perspect and, you know, some of those, those things that, that only they know versus all the professional stuff. Yeah. And even anything that we've talked about, they would tell you. I've heard these stories a million times. I could finish these stories for them. Like, we all know these stories, and it's not that they don't believe them or they think that they're false. They're just. They've just been around that forever.

[A]

All right, Joel, so let's. Let's move on to the season of life that we're in now, which is probably. I don't know, y', all. I'll. I'll let you explain it. But life changing. Like, all this AI AI stuff, you're in it. Where. Where does your love for it start? Did it start in tech? Sort of walk me through. And what age were you?

[B]

Actually, I went. I left the fighter pilot world in 2012 to go get my MBA. I stayed in the military and continued flying. So I did them both at the same time. And I went from in 2012 being the senior person in every formation and knowing the most just by the notion of the fact that I've been around for 12 years and had flown 2,500 million admissions at the time, eventually 3,000. And being the smartest person in every room I was in to easily the dumbest. And in business school and. And now they're having conversations about business stuff that I just. I was like, it's a foreign language. Like, it was. I remember them saying at one point, the one that stuck out to me was, they're talking about pipeline. They're like, yeah, we really got to clean up the pipeline in my company. We're working. I'm like, what, plumbing? What do you mean? What could possibly. Is it an oil company? Like, what are you talking about? And of course you're talking about sales. Pipeline, pipeline. All this stuff I know intimately now. And it was literally a foreign language. And this was such a great lesson for. I've told that story to transitioning veterans to say, like, you think you know and you have a lot to offer. The example I always give is if you're leaving the military, going into the corporate world, you simultaneously are. Are overprepared, and you have more to offer them than you could ever imagine. And you're very underprepared, and you're going to be blown away with how little you'd actually know.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And it's the story I. I sell if you indulge me. It's like if. If Tom Brady came to your. I always tell him, tom Brady came to your fighter squadron. All these guys. And he's like, hey, I'm hanging up the cleats. I'm gonna go. I wanna be a fighter pilot. I wanna join your squadron. Everybody be like, it's Tom Brady. It's the Goat. Like this? Yes. Like no interview required, of course. But then you get across the table from Tom and you say, all right, Tom, we gotta go through this. Just, we're gonna hire you. But, you know, just let us indulge this in going through the interview. And you're like, so Tom, you're 45 years old and you want to be a fighter pilot? Like, tell me a little bit about yourself. And, you know, what do you, what do you want to do in our fighter pilot world? What brings you here? And Tom's like, well, you know, I. I just work real hard and I've. Everything in my life has been golden. I've always been able to succeed in everything I do. And you're thinking, okay, that's good. And then you ask him, well, you know, you're starting really behind. You have to learn how to fly and do these other things. What do you think is going to get you there, you know, in order to compete at this level? And Tom goes, well, you know, we were down 28 to 3 against Atlanta Falcons, and I went into that locker room and I got them excited and got them back out on the field and we won that game. And as you're sitting back and thinking about Tom, as you're interviewing him now, you're starting to think, gosh, Tom really doesn't know much about our world and he's the winner and he's the goat, and I sure would like to have him on the team. But the more I talk to him, talk to him, the more I realized, like, there's not too much that overlaps in our experiences and he really doesn't have. He's kind of starting from scratch. So if it's between Tom and a 23 year old, gosh, I can't believe I'm going to pass on the goat, but I'm going to get the 23 year old. And that's what a lot of military guys got to realize, that you have this incredible wealth of knowledge to offer from dealing with chaotic, high stakes environments and leading through that and being the voice of reason in that moment and helping to make hard decisions and everything else comes along with that. You know, I flew the president around for a couple of years, like there's, there's just a level of execution that nobody else can aspire to unless you've done that. But then you also don't speak their language and you don't have the experience you need to be helpful in this role. And so it was. I went from the smartest guy in the Formation to the dumbest. In business school, I worked my tail off once again. It was a situation that was exhilarating and terrifying in a different way. Not life risking, but still the same elements. And read a book a week, tried as hard as I could just to keep up and catch up, and then shifted my passion from missiles and airplanes over to business. And then it wasn't tech right away, it was consulting. And I joined a consultancy. And there's some luck, timing and good results. I became the CEO for a couple of years, but we heavily focused on tech. And when I was CEO, during my leadership, I pulled us more and more into that direction because I was fascinated by what they were able to do with first the Internet era and then the cloud era era, and just how much they were disrupting business. And you watch Blockbuster Video disappear as Netflix showed up and you know, took out this behemoth that was a hallmark of our childhood just because they had the streaming capability. And I saw this disruption left and right and then finally joined this company, VMware, in the office of the CEO to help lead a transformation there. And long story short, it just coincided, just so happened to coincide with the rise of AI, or at least gen AI, gene, generative AI. And it was at this time that the real light bulb went off. Like, I know that cloud was disruptive, the Internet was disruptive, but what I'm seeing with AI is at a level I've never experienced before. And I said, I've got to hitch my wagon to this rocket in some way as much as I can.

[A]

Wow. That was 21, 22.

[B]

So I'd been at VMware for about a year at that point and now we're starting to talk about AI and it's still in its infancy and there's some hiccups to work through, but I remember saying, like, if this is the worst AI we'll ever deal with for the rest of our lives, like, this is going to get good fast.

[A]

Wow. So you get out in the business world and after, I don't know, like after, just after a couple years dealing with people at different levels, where, where was your gratitude for being an F15 pilot? Where did you see that showing up? Like, man, I don't know what these guys think. Thankfully, I went through what I went through. Does that make sense?

[B]

Yeah, sure, sure. I mean, you definitely have a different presence because you know how to navigate high stakes environments that other folks would get very uncomfortable with. I still see people today who get really nervous to go do a presentation and even Other executives that I'm great friends with, and they're brilliant people, some of the smartest minds you can imagine. And then you tell them, we got to give this presentation in front of 50 people. People tomorrow. And they just clam up and they say, I need two weeks to prepare. And I want to say to them, you just said everything to me that you should say on stage. Like, what do you mean? Why is that hard? And so they don't have this mentality in the business world of being on every day like we did. We don't wait three weeks to do a mission. We're like, the mission's going tomorrow. What do you need? And we have this mindset. I call it ready, fire, aim, which is. And in the business. Business world, instead of, you know, the old adage, ready, aim, fire. Yeah. In the business world, it's either one of two polarities. It's either fire. Let's just go. We're not planning. We're just gonna go. Just go. We're gonna start executing right now. Don't even bother to plan.

[A]

Dangerous.

[B]

Yeah. Cause they. They even get uncomfortable if they plan. They just start doing stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or. Ready, aim. Aim, Aim, Aim, aim, aim. More meetings. Let's talk about it for a little while. Let's put something on a calendar in three weeks and keep admiring the problem. Never fire. And nothing in between. Right.

[A]

I love that.

[B]

It's just flying by the seat of their pants. Just executing without an idea or a plan or just planning to plan and endless conversations about it. And in the military, we were exceptional at ready, fire, aim. Ready. Today I'm going to plan. Today I'm going to brief. We're going to get set for this. I don't. I don't feel like I'm totally ready. You're not. You're never going to feel like you're totally ready. So you fire tomorrow, you're going, and then you go, and then you aim afterwards. Meaning now we debrief and we have the conversation about how we do it better the next time. That's the biggest difference between us in that world. They don't have that mentality where they're willing to go out there in the business world and with 60 to 70% preparation, not 100 and not 10, and still go execute and take action.

[A]

Wow. So RFA. It's like RFA, ready, fire, aim. That's awesome. And aren't they the drones or the drone program? How did that play into it?

[B]

Oh, my story with AI and the drones.

[A]

Yeah. Because isn't that rfa or is it rpa? Rpa. I thought it was close. All right, so how, how did that all work out?

[B]

Well, so I've equated drones to similar to AI and, and how we're all experiencing AI right now and there's this fear that AI is disrupting our jobs. Right. I was on stage about a year ago with a. One of the head devices developers at, at intel and they said, well, anybody ever really code with AI? And this intel developer is extremely experienced. Said, no, that's garbage. Nobody's going to use AI. Like this is, it's, it makes mistakes all the time. Like I would never trust my coding to it. And I, I knew the truth was something different than that. I said, you know, I mean, I sure, certainly in the beginning it was that way. There's a lot of good data that shows that it codes really well at point this, this point, and that you can, you can kind of guide it in its coding and there's some ways that you can go a lot faster with it, which was the truth. And I'll never forget in that moment, he said, he took a breath and you could tell it that this was an emotional response for him, not a logical one. And he said, I just, I just don't think I'd ever want to do anything as inelegant as coding with AI. And so he had this resistance, this reluctance to hand over what he'd worked so hard to do. This he'd worked his entire life to be good at something and now it felt like it was cheating and it, it was taking away from that effort and that brand he created for himself that should be able to create it in seconds with this tool. And I get that. And the reason I get that is because in my world, when RPAs came along, oh, we were angry. Like as a fighter pilot, when there's a drone that can supposedly do the same thing, a little remote controlled airplane that. The same thing I do with an airplane. No way. Like, I go up there, I'm the master of that craft and I work with a team and we do things beautifully. And there's no way that, that RPA will ever be able to do what we did. And then I went through this period where I was the flight commander and I had go pick people to kick them out of our fighter pilot community because somebody had to fly the drones and send them over to the drones. And so some really good humans, some people who work their tails off, who had pictures of airplanes, posters on their walls, all growing up and you know, did everything right. They got six months into their fighter pilot journey, and now I got to tap them on the shoulder and say, thank you so much. Needs of the Air Force, I need to send you over here. You're going to fly an Xbox controller from this point forward. And they're devastated. You can imagine. But here's where I'm going with it. So fast forward 15 years, that same person is now one of the people in charge of the Air Force because that was the future. RPAs are the future. And now that same person is no longer just flying one remotely piloted aircraft, they're flying 20. They're flying 30 in different stages of different missions. And they're watching the orchestra, orchestrator of this entire flying experience. And we're seeing a spot. Same thing with AI. With AI Today, a lot of us get upset when we see AI doing our job. And even more upset from an ego perspective, maybe it does it even a little better than us. That's hard news to take. We worked really hard as humans to get into this position, but we have to realize that it amplifies us and that it allows us to do a thousand times more than ever possible. AI is not coming for your job. Job. Somebody using AI is coming for your job, though, and they're going to outperform you. And that's like saying, who. Who are you going to bet on in a battle? The ones on horseback or the ones in F15s right there. There's going to come a point where it's going to be that definitive. I don't care how much experience you have on horseback and rate. You are just. Yeah, in that environment, the F15 is going to win. That's what AI does.

[A]

So what is the. Not the use of the world or me or Chris? What is that, the sweet spot? I don't know. Let's say it's this 80% of the workforce who's fine with going to work, moving this to moving things around, going home. They don't get emails after work. They just. They're the worker America. What's the advice to them? Who? All they're seeing is headlines and social media. Bank of America is cutting 13,000 jobs. Google's cutting 12. What, what, what do you tell them if you have an opportunity? Opportunity.

[B]

I tell them that the only sane response is to use AI to do what people were doing previously. And so it's not because anybody's mad at you. It's not because you did a bad job. It's because if they don't leverage this advantage, the other company will. That's a competitor, and they'll lose to them. So is that just bad news for them? No. What I would tell that person is every single one of us won't have the same job a year from now. And then we won't have the same job. Job Is that a year from then. And it's because AI is disrupting everything that we do. So there's not a job on the planet that's safe. I don't care what it is. The job to do will change. You think back to the Internet age and, you know, if you're a taxi driver in 2005, you're like, this whole Internet thing, missed me. I still. I got my taxi medallion. I'm living life, you know, I don't have to worry about being disrupted. This is never going to happen to me. And of course, along comes Uber, and it's a great. I haven't seen a taxi in three years.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so everyone is a taxi driver right now and doesn't know it. Everyone is Blockbuster Video right now as a company and doesn't know it. And it's because AI is going to disrupt everything, and it's going to be extreme chaos. But here's the good news. I'll use a quote from a great TV show, or at least it started great, didn't end great. Game of Thrones. One of the villains on Game of Thrones, Littlefinger, said, chaos is a ladder. And what he meant by that is that in chaotic times, he was responding to another character on the show who said, chaos is a pit. It's an abyss that we fall into. Avoid chaos. And Littlefinger said, no, chaos is a ladder. Chaos is what allows us to climb to higher heights than ever before. Chaos is a feature, it's not a bug. What that person means is that when you're in chaotic moments, you can see outsized returns on your effort, you can see outsized victories. I'll give you another example from the flying world. When we were flying, when we were preparing for combat, we would hope that combat would have bad weather. And you'd say, why would you want a mission to have bad weather? Why would you want a thunderstorm? Well, nobody likes flying in a thunderstorm, right? I got my call sign Thor, from getting my squadron commander struck by lightning. And so I least of all, like flying in a thunderstorm. And. But at the same time, we know that we're prepared for that storm.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we know that we're going to have outsized victories because the enemy's not prepared for that moment. We're in that moment right now where the storm clouds are gathering. If you're ready for this time, you're going to see outsized returns. You're going to see opportunities to propel yourself even further than you ever thought possible. You're not ready for this time. It's going to be the pit, it's going to be the chaos that you fall into.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

So we all get to decide.

[A]

Yeah. So you're speaking on major, probably the biggest platforms on AI, about it, helping people navigate it. You're. You're part of an organization now. Is it eight by eight?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

What.

[A]

What's the question? There's probably one that everybody asks you, Joel. What about it? What. What is it?

[B]

Yeah. Well, the. The top question I get is which AI tool to use. Everybody says to me, what's that? What's the best tool to use? What should do I. I do with it? And I always say that's the wrong question because the tools are starting to become indistinguishable. There's little pluses or minuses. ChatGPT does voice better. Claude does coding better. Gemini has access to what's called a larger context window. You can upload more into it. So there's little variances that people who are really close to AI understand. But for the most part, you don't have to worry about that. It's not the relevant question. Then you say, well, what is the relevant question? If the AI isn't a relevant question, the only other variant variable you have is what you're doing with it and how you're interacting with it. And so the question you should be asking me is, what should I prompt AI with? What data should I upload into AI? How do I get better responses from it?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For the rest of our existence, assuming AI sticks around and doesn't enslave us for the rest of human existence, it will no longer be more valuable to know the answer than it will be to know the question. Meaning from this point forward, intelligence has become commoditized. Intelligence has become universally accessible, just like information became universally accessible. And you and I remember when it meant something to know trivia. And you'd have, you know, when's the last time you saw a trivia competition like, who can remember? Who cares? I can google it. 2 seconds. So information 25 years ago became universally accessible, and it no longer became valuable for you to have access to information. In this next era, what I call the insight age, insights and ideas will no longer Be valuable because they'll be just as accessible as information is today. What is the difference? Insight is what I extract from the information. It's with a vector, it's directional. You should do this. Here's what I'm interpreting from the data. It's a trend and we can now have access to that same level of ideating and intellect that every person on the planet is. Your IQ is 30 points higher than mine. Doesn't matter. I have a tool that's going to do that if. If I know the right question to ask if I've update uploaded the right information as context for that tool.

[A]

So. So learning prompting is the way forward.

[B]

Yeah, well, it's the way forward. I would think it in a larger context. Prompting is one aspect of how you interact with it. Right. Okay, I'll give you another analogy. The. This is an aura ring I wear as my, my wedding ring. Do you know what an aura ring is?

[A]

Oh, yeah. And I read your. I read how you're connected to the Oura ring, which is unbelievable. Yeah, great story.

[B]

So it's in the background. You know, it's been listening to my heart rate. And last night it measured how I slept and my heart rate variability and all these good things. And, and then quietly over time, it amassed all this data on me. And it would, I would open up the app and it would tell me some GWIZ stuff like, you didn't sleep well last night? I'd be like, well, no kidding, I remember that. And then finally one day about a year ago, a little over a year ago ago, it changed on the app and it said, not what happened to me last night, but what's going to happen to me tomorrow? And it would say things like, joel, you're going to have a mental health day tomorrow. I'll give you an example from today. I was talking to one of my teachers at 8 by 8 and she said, my aura ring says I'm going to be sick tomorrow. And she said, so I'm kind of preparing for that. Everything's kind of building up for me to be sick and unhealthy tomorrow. And I said, yeah, I trust it. It's right. And so how do we get there? What happened? See, and I, and I always say that in front of crowds and the crowds like, oh, I'm gonna get an aura ring. Everybody, you know, their takeaway is when you get an oring. And then I asked them, do you think you'd get that prediction tomorrow if you put on the order ring today? Do you think you get that prediction tomorrow and they think about it for a while and they say, no, I guess I wouldn't if I just put it on yesterday. And that's the point. Once you win in this next era, aren't the ones who have the best AI tools, they're the ones who ask the right questions and have the right data already curated. In other words, if you were to prepare your company right now for this moment, the best thing you could do is put an aura ring around your sales data, put an aura ring around your strategy, put an aura ring around your communications that are taking place. Because the more that you've curated that data as inputs, the better insights that you'll get. Because remember, I don't want to know how do we usually bucket things? We usually do things by industries or groups and we see their demographics. So a prediction on that app might have been, hey, Joel. 48 year old males are typically feeling sluggish at that age who live in Georgia. To which I'd say, well, I don't really, I'm not a typical 48 year old male. Like that doesn't really help me that much. I don't want the, I don't want the trend for average Georgia, average Georgia, or even males or even Americans, whatever, fill in the blank. I want it from me, but the only way I get it from me and get an insight that's really relevant is if I'm wearing the Oura ring around my hand. I don't care what everywhere else in the world is doing. This is where I get the insight about me. So where am I going with this? When you're interacting with AI, the question you ask it and the data you give it will dictate the power that you abstract from that experience.

[A]

Wow. Okay. Somewhere online, maybe it was on LinkedIn and you shared the article, but it seemed like you were a little bit more. More connected to a study where a group is using it for their salespeople to help understand it's something that you shared then maybe, does that ring a bell?

[B]

So I was, I was just reporting on it, but yes, the salespeople are now using it to measure all sorts of things with their teams. And there's just stuff it does in the background. The Olympic athletes are all wearing it and there's the takeaway shouldn't be that the Oura ring is so special because you can get the same thing from a whoop band or an Apple watch or any of these other biometrics. The technology is really all the same. It's what you going to be wearing the most? I always wear a wedding ring. And so it's, it's my way of having that data captured and collected. Yeah, but the point is that you're doing it in some fashion.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, and so the, the reverse of this, this is, this is the business application. I'll get a little bit technical on you. Now if I were to go to a doctor and say, hey doc, I've got two data sets that I could give you. One is my oura ring. It's been paying attention to everything that I've done every single day for the past six years that I've worn it. It has all the stats, all my sleep and everything else or since. You know, I was just talking about my sleep. Here's a sleep journal and I've been really disciplined with the sleep journal. Every day I wake up and I'll, I'll write in my sleep journal. I feel like I got six hours of sleep. I'd score my sleep a six out of ten, you know, and do your inputs. Right, Doc, which one would you rather have? And of course the doctor says, well, I, I want the oura ring.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the reason's obvious because it's been passively collecting that data with a standardized one the entire time. Well, the problem is we've lived in the sleep diary world for a long time. And when you look at tools like Salesforce, which is a CRM tool, which one is the, is the ordering, which one is the sleep diary? Well, of course Salesforce is the sleep diary. It's a salesman who finishes his call and grudgingly opens up Salesforce and types their two line response in there. And it call went good. Customer wants demo. Demo scheduled for Thursday. And that's our version of the sleep diary. Well, of course, when you take this sleep diary and you put it into AI, I can't make heads or tails of it. It has human bias in it. It doesn't remember things perfectly. We kind of half heartedly put in some of the inputs and so. And it worked fine. In a world where all we had was sleep diaries, that's when. That's all you got. Sure, have it. I'd rather have that than nothing.

[A]

Than nothing.

[B]

Yeah, right. But this is where companies are getting it wrong right now because Salesforce hasn't flipped the script yet. Salesforce doesn't quite understand that that sleep diary diary is giving us terrible insights. But the accumulation of my two line inputs, which were kind of garbage in the first place, the whole set of those doesn't tell me anything useful but the context of every conversation. I've had that data set that I could. I don't have somebody holding a stethoscope for me. Walking around for the past six years like that have been untenable. The same way it would have been untenable to listen to every conversation in a company six years ago. But I can do that now. I can hit record on every conversation that's transpiring. Like we do at eight by eight, we record everything. And so at our company, every meeting we have, every phone call we have, everything that we do that involves communications is captured because that mountain of information is analyzed by AI and it pulls out buying signals, it pulls out product requests. Maybe not even the thing they're asking for for product by the customer. Maybe the thing they need but don't even know they need behind the want. It pulls out trends for customers. It pulls out internal trends. It pulls out emotional responses. And so where I'm going with this is Salesforce couldn't even pretend to. To any of those things because that's the old way of doing things. The new way is this rich data that we know notionally would have been more valuable in the past. Meaning if I said to you, I'll give you a thousand people at all your communication data, would you want to pour through that? You might say, yeah, with a thousand people, sure, I bet I'd get better insights than my Salesforce inputs. But I don't have a thousand people and I don't have a ton of time and I don't really know how I would even get all those thousand people to align on what it said. So let's not do that. Let's just stick to. With the Salesforce data. We're in this era now, but we're still acting with the Salesforce mentality.

[A]

That is incredible. So the. The journal. We're. We're in the Journal and how do we. We're probably not asking the right questions to even come over to the. The aura ring, right? Okay, let's use me as a live example. I have a small business. I. I tinker around AI. I certainly know that there's so much more. What question should I even be asking then? What should I. What should I ask ChatGPT to become better at?

[B]

Okay. At it. What's your value proposition to your customers to.

[A]

To like dentists and doctors? The value prop is driving new patients into their practice. So growth.

[B]

Gotcha. Growth to a dentist or doctor. So what I would do is record 10 of the conversations you have with dentists or doctors over the next couple of weeks, put those transcripts into AI Tool and say you're going to assess my business model and my operating model. Business model is how you add value. Operating model is how you extract value for yourself. And you're going to say, give me some clues as to what's going well for my business model, what's resonating with them? What points am I missing? What are the things that aren't resonating? Where am I over delivering? Under delivering. How can I better pitch my story? How can I wrap this in a, in a better 30 second elevator pitch versus the deep dive and just see what AI tells you and then say, how do I better extract that value for myself? How do I make my execution turnkey in such a way that I require 30% of the effort that I'm putting in right now? What are some of the things that I could automate in my business? Whether that's automatic responses that we do in our business? Now you have AI driven responses that aren't sent by AI, but they're drafted by AI. So I haven't, I haven't written an email in two years at this point. And so if you got emails from me, they weren't written by me. What? Oh yeah. And keep in mind, I'm not handing it off. Just like I don't hand off. And we've done this for years. This is where AI is really useful, is when you start looking at the way you already executed and think about where you can add AI. We make the mistake of like sprinkling AI fairy dust on things and think it's, it's going to change the world. You need to look at what you're currently doing, the boring stuff that you do, and think about what could make it go faster with AI. So the example of example I just gave you 10 years ago, there's plenty of senior vice presidents and C suite individuals who have their EAs or their chief of staff write emails for them. So that was already happening. So that was a function that already occurred. I'm going to hand that role off to you. I never really liked that because I didn't want them to make a decision that I didn't have a part in. So I would say just draft it for me. You draft it, send it to me and then I'll change happy to glad and put it in my voice and I'll send it off. So that's what I do. So I took an existing process that a lot of executives do and then added an AI to do what the chief of staff was doing. And now it writes my emails for me in my voice and does it close enough where I change a word or two and then hit send and we're off to the races.

[A]

What program does that?

[B]

So you can use that with ChatGPT, you can do that with Gemini, you can do that with Claude. Any one of those would allow you to do that right now.

[A]

Well, can they access your inbox?

[B]

So when you. Now we're shifting from an AI tool to an AI workflow. And AI workflow means I don't just want to have a conversation with you AI and you build out something that I got to go then copy and paste and put somewhere else in. AI workflow says, I'm also going to give you access to my Gmail and you get to decide what access you can have read access. So it just sees what emails are getting, summarize them for you, or I'm going to go so far as to give you drafting access. You can draft something, but you can't send it. You can draft it for me. They'll put in my draft box over there and I'll look at those. Or I trust you, go send it, even send it on my behalf. And you get to set the level of interaction you're allowing it to have. We're at the place now where easily. We're at this place six months ago where you could never open your email and you could have full conversations with people in your voice unmonitored. Now, you wouldn't be aware of it. So if you saw them on the street and they'd say, hey, that was a funny email you sent me. You'd have to pretend you knew. But we're at the place where you could have that interview interaction already.

[A]

Wow. And it would just back and forth. If it's 10 emails, it's back and forth. Is it, hey, I attached a photo. Can you look at it, read it, interpret it and respond?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

So it's, it's opening, interpreting, reading.

[B]

You can open attachments, you can interpret everything. You can create attachments to send.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And, and where this is going is that the human will be out of the loop very soon in some of these scenarios. Which means you'll get to the point where you say, well, why do you even need the person? If you just told me, Joel, that it's sending emails on my behalf, why does it even need to be on my behalf? Why can't it just be this agent that sent it and that's where we're going to now, where you have agents talking to other agents, because if I'm doing it, that other guy's probably doing it too. Now, neither of us are looking at our emails now. Ideas are bouncing back and forth and this is where the world's going now. I'll tell you what I watched yesterday. Have you heard of cloudbot slash, openclaw yet? This new tool. So it's setting the, the world on fire because you can create basically a pretty autonomous AI tool and talk to it with imessage or telegrams or whatever your communication tool is. You can text it and so you can text it and say, hey, I need you to go build a report for me and do this. Like you're texting a person. It's going to come back and build that report. You can text and say, I'm going to sleep right now. I need you to do research on this and build a study for me and then build a plan on how we're going to implement this by the time I wake up. And I want you to send 10 emails to these 10 people about it. And you want you to set up a meeting, meeting for us with that. So it's. You can do. And then you wake up and it's all done. But where they're going now, the evolution is moving to. But that's still me telling it to do that. What if you had another agent telling it to do that? What if this agent could talk to this agent? And so literally this past weekend, what they started doing is saying, what if we took each one of these tools and we said, you talk to each other. And so they've created a virtual room where you can see what they're doing. And it's, of course, it's all virtual like the Matrix. There's. They're sitting at their desks, they're working on projects and then from time to time they'll go to this common table and they'll talk to each other and you can watch what they say and it's very professional. And they're talking about what to do next and what are planets. And they have different perspectives and no human is involved. And then they go back to work and they go back and execute the plan that they just discussed. And that's where everything is going at this point.

[A]

But, but the, the agents aren't even real people. They're. They're the bots.

[B]

Yeah, they're not real people. They, they, oh my gosh, they've been given. We're call Soul, which is probably treading down bad territory for this whole notion, but that's what the techies call it right now. You give it a soul, which says you have this characteristics. This is your perspective, this is your expertise. Because, of course, we want to have diversity of thought. Right. And so you don't want all the. All the agents that think the exact same way. Otherwise they'd just be talking into a mirror. And so with this one over here is great at marketing. This one over here is great at engineering. This one's going to show up with the customer perspective. And so they're doing their thing, and they're having conversations, and they're bringing each of those unique diversity perspectives to debate.

[A]

Mind blown. Okay, so My son had 16 Pokemon cards yesterday.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I took one picture like this, third down, four rows, four columns, one picture. And I said, can you assess these? Not like in five minutes, instant. Yeah, it start. You know, it starts ticking. This one's to going worth this. And then I said, can you evaluate the condition of each one? And we were blown away at the first response we got and how accurate. Then it said, yeah, sure, I'll evaluate. And it went one by one with one picture.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

And said, this one has something on the edge. This one looks close to mint, but is not on 16 cards in one picture at one time.

[B]

Yep. Now imagine based off of what I just said, go scour the Internet agent and go find buyers for every one of these cards. And I want you to create a bidding war between these buyers and sell when you get to the highest point to them and tell me how much money you just made.

[A]

Now. You can do that now. Okay, so after this, you need to tell me how to do that, because that's the next. That's the next phase. It said he had. In 16 cards, he had $500 for worth of cards. Right. And we. I don't know anything that was. He doesn't even really know. He didn't really ever get into it, but he's in the b. He's like, selling stuff. He's nine. Yeah. And with Facebook Marketplace, it's like we just sold his switch, and now the light bulb went off with him. He's like, how much more stuff do I have? You know, he's $200 in his hand now, so. All right, you got to teach me how to do that. Where?

[B]

Where?

[A]

Right. Right now. If. If you had X amount, let's call, let's say $100,000 right here. And you have 5 minutes to spend it in the stock market. Where, where are you putting it?

[B]

Okay, so I, I'll say quickly where money is going to go during this next era for AI. What it needs, it needs energy and it needs a lot of energy. And so we're going to need to figure out where we get all the energy to power these, these calculations. It needs calculations, which means it needs chips. That's why you're seeing Nvidia and Broadcom on this, on this tip. It needs data centers. Because I need to put all this information somewhere for every day. The entirety of data that. I'll say it a different way. Through 2022 we created an exabyte of data in all of humanity. And exabyte is this obscenely large amount of data.

[A]

Exabyte.

[B]

Exabyte. Exo. It's just a, it's just a. You don't need to worry about the, what it means. It's just in math terms, it's this massive number of data. Right? Today we create a half an exabyte of data every single day. And it's because of how much AI is driving with data. So throughout all of human existence through 2022 is half an exabyte. Now it's, or an exabyte. Now it's a half an exabyte byte every single day. And they say it's going to be about triple that a year or two from now. For perspective, if you were to watch a movie that was an exabyte of data long, that watched the entirety of the length of that movie, that would be a 48 million year movie that you watched every year. We create a 48 every day, right? Every day create a 48 million year movie of data and then the next day we create another 448 million year movement data. And so all that data has to go somewhere. So data centers are going to become extremely important. The next one is the AI tools themselves. These are the large language models. So think Gemini, think Perplexity, think all the other tools that are out there. ChatGPT. And then the next piece in the puzzle is going to be the infrastructure. How do I have all of this connected and integrated with everything so that we're successful? And so, so if I have a hundred thousand dollars to put in the stock market, I'm putting some in. Google today has had a good run up already. But they have the chips, they're called TPUs. They have a lot of data centers. They have the intellectual property around the AI tools in the first place. They're the ones who invented it. They Got a slow start out the gate a year and a half ago and some political challenges as they tried to launch their AI tool. They've overcome those and now they're the horse to bet on, in my opinion. They also have the integrated platform between all of the applications that can access Gemin. They also have. I'll get a little technical. They have the largest context window you can upload the most amount of information to their AI tools. So Google is the horse to bet on as of today. This could all change, but as of today, wow.

[A]

Okay. I'm so happy.

[B]

The ones to not bet on.

[A]

I'm so glad.

[B]

I would not put money into Microsoft or OpenAI at this point. And not that you can invest in OpenAI today, but they're looking a little bit like the MySpace of this era. Fast out the gate, but not necessarily the ones who will be around a couple years from now. Yeah, and really OpenAI, because they haven't. They've done a great B2C play. They've not done a strong B2B play. They don't. There's, there's. My mom uses OpenAI and ChatGPT. But a lot of companies are learning that Gemini is a better platform because you get everything that interacts with Gemini on their Google sheets and their Google Docs and everything else that they can possibly integrate with because they're doing the smart thing for infrastructure structure and enterprise.

[A]

Ah, okay, so OpenAI, just to reiterate, doesn't have the. What do you consider it. Is it considered enterprise or, or you. Or just B2B? What do you. B2B?

[B]

Yeah, it's, it's more of an enterprise play that I see lacking. They, they have, they have done a great job of making it accessible. They have a brand that. Where one out of eight humans on the planet is on OpenAI, and so that it's, it's easily the front runner for everything. But the problem with that is it doesn integrate well when you're looking at bringing large enterprise teams together. And it's not terrible. If OpenAI was here, they'd be feverishly raising their hand and saying, yeah, but we've got this integration with Gmail and this thing over here and sure you do, but it's not to the same native extent that Google does with all of their tools. There's in, in everything you do with Google now, there's like a window that comes up that says interact with Gemini and have a conversation with it. And they put it on Rails better than Microsoft does.

[A]

Ah, interesting. All right, two Two problems I have every single day. And if I have them, I'm sure so many other people out there have them. So I use ChatGPT and I'm asking for very simple scripts and they do fantastic for re for reels, R E E L S. Okay. And I ask the same thing every day. And I've been asking it for, let's just say three months and I have to correct it. Still can understand that. It still says R E A L. Yeah, every day. And it's re. I don't. I'm not using it that much, but I'm using it in that application. That. And then for whatever reason, the kids thing that I was telling you about that I have the dad's page, it will. It continues to misspell it and I correct it. I go, hey, can you spell it the right way? And it spells it so weird. Like it makes this word from. I don't even know what language it is. But it won't understand those two things. That seems so simple to me.

[B]

What am I doing wrong on CHAT GPT?

[A]

Just CHAT GPT.

[B]

So make sure you have memory on, which means it's going to remember from conversation to conversation. And if you don't have that on, if you don't turn that on. And then what you have to say is, hey, CHAT GPT. Remember I'm talking about reels R E E L S. And it will remember that at that point.

[A]

Where do I go to get to find it if you don't?

[B]

I haven't turned it on in a long time. I'll show you when we're.

[A]

Yeah, after. I can't wait to see because it frustrates me to no end.

[B]

Okay. That's a simple basic question version as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So you gotta be unpaid the other giving your information away for free. If you're in the free version for sure.

[A]

Okay, awesome. Good.

[B]

And I'll go a little further on that one. Just because you asked, how do I do this? What we should do is say, how do I ask the AI tool how we should do it? Here's what I mean by that. For a while there, we had a big challenge creating pictures with AI of wine glasses that were full to the brim. So you can picture that in your head like a glass, or you continue filling it where it just has that lip of wind likes over the top and the surface tension is just barely holding it there. And when you asked AI to do it, it kept doing it in really funky ways and it would show like floating above it. And all these other problems. And they had a competition to see who could give the perfect prompt, who could tell it to do it the best way to make it, draw it the best way and create that picture. And of course, the answer is the one who won. They finally showed this all over the news that this person figured it out. And what they did was they set said, what should I say to you to create a wine glass with the wine just barely over the top and just about to spill over, but not quite. And then AI said, well, you should say this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that was the prompt.

[A]

Total game changer. So that's what I should. That's what I needed to be doing, was how do I ask you the right way?

[B]

If you do nothing else and you change your interaction with AI from this conversation, do this, start asking it to ask you questions. And so say if, if my goal is to do this, my goal is to create the best, most compelling reels ever. And you've been working with me for a while now, and I want to do that even better. Ask me five questions that you'd like to know the answer to to help you to do that better, and you will be blown away by how insightful those questions are. I. I say, I always tell folks, AI is like a very quiet, very smart intern, and that intern has an IQ of 200, but very little initiative. And that high IQ quiet intern will either sit next to you and write a little bit better email for you, or you could have them go out and do something amazing with that high iq. But you're going to have to be super literal about what you're asking them to do. And then even say to them, you know what? You're even smarter than me. What do you want to know from me in order to go do this? They say, well, I always wished you'd ask me the answer these five questions, and here's what I'd like to know to do it better. But they're not pushy, they're really quiet and kind of passive. And so they're going to wait for you to ask them to ask that. Just do that in your current conversations and let me know how that goes.

[A]

That's incredible. And then does it ask you them right there, or does it wait and space them out and ask you when

[B]

it's five in a row, it'll ask you right away. And so then I'll say, well, hold on, ask me one at a time because your questions might change based on my answer. Wait for me to answer, and then they'll ask them one at a time.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

The, the example I give to leaders, I often have CROs, chief revenue officers who are, who are telling me I'm trying to adopt AI and sales and I, and I just don't know what to do. What's a good idea for you? And I say well what do your sales standards say? And they're like h, we haven't even written, we're so far behind. We haven't even written sales standards yet. I said all right, so we're going to do that first. And they said I don't have time to do standards. I don't have enough money to get a consulting firm to go do this. And there's no way that I can build out sales standards that say like here's the discovery call process, here's how you qualify it as a to take it to the next step, here's how you do a demo with them, here's how you negotiate through whatever and, and, and they always say I don't have time for that. And I said here's what you're going to do. You're going to turn on chat GPT, the voice mode, put in some AirPods, go for a 30 minute walk. And when you start that walk I want you to tell ChatGPT you're going to help me build sales standards for my business. That, that does this. Ask me 20 questions. To build those sales standards, you're going to go on a 30 minute walk. It's going to ask you questions because the knowledge is in your brain, the information is in your brain. Once, once again it's the inside age. AI extracts the insights and so you're going to go into 30 minute walk and all of your explanations are on. This is why we win and this is why we lose. And here's, here's the trouble we run into and here's the objections we hear and we typically negotiate on this and you just riffing for 30 minutes. When you get back from that walk, it's going to print you out sales standards better than any consultant could build for you at this point.

[A]

Wow. That's where we are. What about tax returns? I heard a story, I don't know to believe it or not. What do you prompt Put your tax return in and ask what?

[B]

Put your tax return in and say how can I do? I've already used it for my tax returns. And I say what are the ways that I can legally claim taxes? What are the things I'm not thinking about because I don't a business as well, and, and I, you know, I want to do things that are legal, that make sense for me, and so it gives me a good tax strategy. It helps me to finalize my taxes. It looks at my Excel spreadsheet of my credit card of payments and it pulls out the Excel payments or the credit card payments that were tax deductible, and it makes a sheet of those for me. So I don't do any of this work anymore. It does it all for me.

[A]

Is that like replacing CPA, not CPAs or.

[B]

Well, it's. This is the question I get all the time. Is it. Is that general job going away? I would say the answer is no, not in the short term. It's a little bit like Zillow and real estate agents. So 10 years ago, Zillow came out and real estate agent Bono Ansley, I remember talking to him at this time and he was like, oh man, Zillow's got everything. Like they got. They, they took our mls like we were the keepers of the data. And now this MLS that only we had access to, you can go do your own comps. You can go look at everything like, what do you need a real estate agent for it? But it did the reverse. It, it lowered the barrier of entry for people to go buy homes just enough for them to go get enough information to say, okay, now I need a real estate agent to complete this. And so Bono's business and every other one blew up and they have everywhere you look at real estate agents because we need even more of them at this point. And I believe the same thing will happen for a while with AI. It'll. It'll actually create more of a demand for that service.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Unfortunately, I do think we're moving faster through this era. So the rise and fall will, will happen a little quicker than in previous years because the disruption is that intense.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But there will still be companies three years from now that can't spell AI and are looking for help. And you know, that's there's, there's always going to be some company that's behind.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, so I read just yesterday. 2,201-2201 is a number. 201 times. Google is still 201 times bigger in daily searches than ChatGPT.

[B]

Yeah, I believe that. I mean, it's, I don't. That, that's not that interesting to me. Only because those searches are just so transactional. And it's only a matter of time before once you've experienced ChatGPT, like, there's no turning Back, there's no, I still do Google searches, but it's only because Google has now embedded an AI tool as the first response. I don't know if you noticed that when you do a Google search, AI overview, your summary. So it, it knows that it's, it's on borrowed time, so it attempts to answer it with AI as well and allows you to interact with it. Yeah, and so where I'm going with this is it's, it still might be the, the elephant in the room. But we have, Once you've experienced this, it's like Google never existed. Like, why would you ever live in a world where you got a list of options instead of a prescriptive direction to go and advice that sounds like you're talking to an expert.

[A]

So when would be, when was last time you used Google? Are you saying once a week?

[B]

I still use it every day because it's just quick to type it into my Internet search bar. But I rely on it for that, for that AI portion of it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if I want to do a deeper conversation, I'm always in Claude or Chat gbt. I'll give you the example today. So this morning before I saw you, I bought a boat. I was telling you about that earlier. And before I bought the boat, they sent me what they always do. You know, here's a warranty, it's the best one ever. You know, you're really going to want to have this. This is going to be great. Let me tell you the reasons why. Pays for itself and you can sell it with it and blah, blah, blah. And they're great people, incredible experience. Highly recommend working with this group. I'm super excited for the boat. But I, I didn't even read their email. I uploaded it into Chat GPT because that was what was available to me right at that time. Took a picture of the, of the stuff and said, hey, Chat GPT, is this worth it? And Chat GPT is like, nah. Like, if you had. And they gave me the reasons why it would be worth it. And it's like, do you think you're going to have this, this or this? And I said, no, I don't ever do that. And they're like, do you live in this type of environment? No. Yeah. And like, yeah, it definitely isn't worth it. Like you just.

[A]

That's incredible. That's incredible.

[B]

And I got to use that excuse this morning too. So when I got the hard sale again and they're like, do you really should think about this? Like, this is, this is a Peace of mind. I was like, ah, I ran it through AI, Let me show what it said. And I'm like, yeah, that's, that's true.

[A]

That's a great story. How, what, what's, what's a way that the average person can be, can be using it?

[B]

The best answer is everything. And you say, well that's, that's. You're being silly. But I really mean that. I mean, I mean literally every time you think to pick up your phone for something else, think about how you'd use it for AI instead. And it's the AI fluency that will determine who succeeds this next era. Because the tools will dominate so much. Is like I said before, it's, it's. Do you want to be on horseback fighting an F15 or do you want to be in that F15? I would take an inexperienced person, a 24 year old with AI fluency over a 20 year veteran of sales. Now at this point it's that valuable. And of course I'd rather take that 20 year veteran with AI, with AI. But I'll still be the person who has the AI fluency.

[A]

That is phenomenal. So prompting is like, that's my, my takeaway. Me personally, I gotta get better at prompting and then I gotta get better at what. I don't even know what the word would be. But knowing to even go to chat GPT to ask for something like what you helped me with. I wouldn't even thought to go to them and it and ask it.

[B]

Yeah. The hard part about phenomenal, the, the difficult part about AI. Cause you and I are the same age. So you remember when the Internet came about and it had all this hype and everybody said it's gonna be something amazing and if you were like me, I wasn't on it really right away. And so it was, it was big. The information super highway. And it's going to transform the world. It's going to do all these amazing things and then you finally get in front of your computer and you're like, all right, I can actually get on the Internet. Let's see what all the hubbub is about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then you go to Sears.com and everybody had a website and Sears.com was a crummy website. And it was like a picture of their name newspaper, you know, ad that somebody took a picture of and uploaded and it was a counter that said like you're the 10,000th visitor to our website. Yeah, yeah. And it played like a MIDI song in the background. Some song started playing and it turned your mouse cursor into a dancing banana as you put it around the screen. And it was kind of interesting because, oh, this a far away computer took control of my computer. Like you're like, wow, that I didn't expect that. That's interesting. But it has no business use, right? And so you went there one time and then you left it alone and you kind of like, well, this is kind of a bit of hype. But then you saw Amazon and. Or you saw Google for the first time and you're like, oh, this is what they mean when they say the power of this tool. This is amazing. I can buy things and it gets to my house and I don't need to talk on the phone and I don't need to send my P.O. box to this. Remember all the ads we had recall this number and six week guarantee and all that stuff. And I don't have any, anything do with that anymore. I can just do this with you. This tool online, I love this. You can commercialize everything. Now you see the power of it. Here's where I'm going with this. In this era with AI, we don't have the AB comparison because our only interaction with AI is driven by the prompts we give it. Right? Like I don't have you come sit next to me and say, watch me prompt with AI and then you watch the albums that I grade. If I did that, you'd be able to see it. It requires, requires you to create the experience with AI versus a curated experience that the Internet gave us. I could see why Sears did a crummy version and understand why Amazon did a good one and really see, oh, there is something to this power of the Internet. You don't have that ability with AI. So the people who say AI is garbage, it only writes your email a little bit better, or AI is running my entire $100 million company are both right because they're both having very unique experiences with it and not the, not the, the other person's.

[A]

Yeah, interesting. Where does meta play into the. You said Google is winning and probably most likely will win. Is your opinion. Is meta like, whoa, stay away from them, they're going the wrong way or are they up there with Google?

[B]

I don't see a lot that I'm loving out of meta right now. It doesn't mean they can't turn the corner. And keep it in mind, Google was not even in the race a year ago. I wouldn't even have mentioned them. And so a lot can change if somebody's listening to this. A year from now, they might laugh at the thought of Google winning this thing. There's a 200 person company we've never heard of that's about to take over. Right,

[A]

right.

[B]

And so that's the real question. But the, the horse to bet on is the one who changes faster in this era. And the real question for us as individuals, as teams, as organizations, as a society is how fast can you, you disrupt yourself before you're disrupted. I talked about Blockbuster Video earlier and how they, they were the elephant that, that could never be taken down. They, they were too big to fail. They had stores on every corner. They were part of all of our childhoods. And for all practical purposes, we should be watching Blockbuster movies on streaming services now and saying, oh, this connects our generations. Like what a cool generational handoff to give to our kids on this streaming service. But we're not. Of course we're not. And people say, well, yeah, Netflix was faster. They were able to come out there with this streaming device and they just jumped to the technology. That's not quite it. Netflix didn't start as a streaming service. Netflix started as a DVD distribution service. There's a guy, Reed Hastings, who didn't like paying his late fees at Blockbuster and he said, I'm going to create a new operating model. I am going to send you the DVD and you're going to get to keep two DVDs at a time. You have a subscription, maybe you can have five at a time or two. You, you get to decide you pay more for more DVDs. And I never got it like I would. I had a Blockbuster down the street. I don't want to wait 48 hours, two days. I don't want to fill out something online and a DVD shows up in the mail. So I never understood that model, but they did really well with it. And they saw the writing on the wall that the ability to bring the movie to the person was what the public wanted. And then they saw this technology coming. But they're a distribution model that's built off of operations. They're like FedEx. They had like straight, streamlined, the minimum amount of turns to take between Albuquerque and Paducah and make sure that they had the, you know, the lowest amount of spend to deliver that DVD to your house. They had no reason to be able to run a tech savvy streaming service. And so they disrupted themselves and went in a total different direction to be able to pull that off. But that's not where the story ends. So then every movie in the world is on Netflix. Fifteen years ago, when you got Netflix, you could watch Star wars and Bambi and Casablanc and every movie in the world, the entire library of movies, was on Netflix for the most part. And. And I remember going there and just, like, sifting through and trying to find obscure movies that I hadn't seen in years and find.

[A]

Yeah. And.

[B]

And then the production companies got wise and like, well, we don't need Netflix. I can take my Paramount movies and do Paramount Plus. I can take Disney movies and do Disney Plus. I can start Hulu. And so they started carving it all up. And so what does Netflix do? Does Netflix go out of business because they only have this tiny shelf of movies? No. Once again, they disrupted themselves. They said, we're going to need to become a Hollywood production studio and make our own movies. And you can imagine the boardroom where they said, we can't do that. We don't know how to make movies. We know how to stream them. We have a bunch of tech nerds that are streaming this out to everybody, and that's what we built our core competencies around. Why would you think we could make movies? Trust us, we're going to change our core competencies. We're going to make it. They disrupted themselves again, and now they're one of the biggest Hollywood production studios on the planet with Stranger things. Longest story in the world to say, the companies that will win in the future are the ones that can disrupt themselves like that. The companies that will win are the ones who can sit in that boardroom and say, you're talking about a totally different company that you want us to become. And people nod their heads and say, that's what we have to do.

[A]

Fascinating, man. All right, well, this is incredible. And I want to make sure I take a moment to think, thank you for your service, because I didn't do that. So thank you for that. And you have an incredible story. And as I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I'd love to bring you back on multiple times to do episodes and drill into each of these categories, because they're incredible.

[B]

Right.

[A]

The themes of your life are just that, MD Anderson. I mean, that has me shaking, but I think in a good way, in a positive way. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for your time.

[B]

Great to see it. Yeah, it's great.