← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about? You insane Hollywood. So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch $45 upfront.
- [00:26]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan.
- [00:28]
James Rhee
Only Taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 gigabytes ET Details.
- [00:32]
Farnoosh Tarabi
This episode.
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Of so Money is brought to you.
- [00:35]
By Sparrow, the service that makes it easy to claim money from class action lawsuits.
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Start claiming what's rightfully yours today. Visit use sparrow.com Farnoosh to see what you're eligible for. That's Use Sparrow as in the bird.com Farnoosh so Money Episode 1771 the ROI of being a Good Kindness Pays off.
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You're listening to so Money with award.
- [01:39]
James Rhee
Winning money guru Farnoosh Kharabi.
- [01:42]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coupons.
- [01:55]
James Rhee
Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life.
- [02:00]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Welcome to SO money.
- [02:03]
James Rhee
I'm reminding all the economists in my life that economics is a social science. It's never been meant to just be numbers. It used to be economics. Used to be the purview of like Jane Austen, Herman Melville, like used to write about wellness and use numbers and we need that right now. And I worry with AI that we're going the opposite way.
- [02:24]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Welcome to SO Money everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Happy 2025.
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As we step into a new year, I know A lot of us are.
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Thinking about fresh starts, big goals, and.
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How we can make more meaningful contributions, whether that's in our lives or at work. But what if the key to achieving all of that isn't about working harder or chasing success in the ways that we think? What if the secret lies in something as simple and as powerful as kindness? In today's episode, we dive deep with James Rhee. He's an educator, impact investor, CEO and author of Red A Parable for Our Times. James is best known for his transformative leadership at Ashley Stewart, where he not only revived a struggling retail brand, but turned it into a community driven powerhouse by weaving kindness, empathy and purpose into every decision. A Harvard Law graduate and former high school teacher, James has a remarkable ability to bridge the worlds of high finance and human centered leadership. We discuss how a childhood experience with a red helicopter shaped James's lifelong philosophy, his journey from teaching to private equity, and the surprising parallels between math and creativity. James also delves into the role of AI in shaping society and why now more than ever, leaders must embrace humanity and creativity to drive lasting impact.
- [03:52]
James Rhee, welcome to SO Money. Happy New Year.
- [03:54]
James Rhee
Happy New Year.
- [03:56]
Farnoosh Tarabi
I'm so grateful to have been connected to you through our friend Emily. And I want to first begin by talking a little bit about your childhood, which is, I think for many people in hindsight, when a lot of we see. Oh, that's where I got that idea for you. Your book Red Helicopter was in part inspired by an experience in kindergarten where you received a toy red helicopter. What did that helicopter end up symbolizing for you? Eventually, then, we can get into the genesis of your actual book. A Parable for Our Times is a subtitle. It's a national bestseller seller. I'm a little late to interviewing you. You've done a lot of interviews, but better late than never.
- [04:42]
James Rhee
No, I love that we're talking now because the true meaning of the book is becoming apparent to people because it is a parable. It takes time. I love we'll flesh that out. Yeah, I was, you know, born first, born in the U.S. immigrant parents, caregiver parents and like for me, the red helicopter, it's a literal story, but for the reader, hopefully it's metaphoric. For me, quite simply just represents truth, like good and bad, sad and happy truth. And it was a story where I got a toy for doing something. Not every day, but often. I would share my lunch with my friend in kindergarten just because he was my friend and he didn't have any and not expecting any reward it was just so obvious to do it. And you know, and my parents got very emotional because they thought that I had stolen the toy. They then thought they were bad parents because in America they didn't know the customs and they thought that I was the only one who didn't give a toy. So there's a lot of sadness in the story too. But I just remember sticking to my sort of opinions. My dad challenged me, which he often used to do in a Socratic way. He's like, why would you share half your lunch when mommy wakes up every morning and makes it so painfully. And. And I thought he was accusing me of being, you know, just not appreciative or we didn't have a lot of money, so maybe it was also that I was sharing scarce resources. I remember just sticking out my chin and saying, why wouldn't I? Like he didn't have any. And. And it's just that courage to speak truth and to act in that way. It's something that I admired my five year old self boy for being. And it's ironic that as you get older and you have all these degrees and knowledge, you become less courageous about being truthful. And that's what the story represents for me.
- [06:42]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Who, who gave you the red helicopter? Was it your teacher?
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James Rhee
No, it was my, my friend's father. And he came in with. I remember him being the youngest of four kids. My friend and the two brothers came and the dad and I had thought that the whole family had come, but my, I was five. My parents corrected me and said the reason why he would. He didn't have lunch was because your friend's mommy died this summer. And that's why the dad is just, you know, the single dad. Four kids at the age of 10 in 1976. And I just remember, just sitting there, I wrote in the book that my chest hurt, that I felt like, oh, this is right. It's that intuitive feeling. And as you know, over the course of the book there's a lot of loss because there is no growth without loss. And sadly, the protagonist of the book is a lot of women, but particularly my mother. And so my mom dies at. Over the course of the book and it's me understanding truly what she stood for. You know, I tended to underestimate my mom.
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Farnoosh Tarabi
I think one more question about that kindergarten experience. So there was this friction, there was this appreciation of what you had done and you internally recognizing the good in helping your friend at lunch, at home. The lens through which your parents saw this was very different. And so how did you reconcile those two? I mean, they're both truths, right? Your parents were not incorrect. But how did you as a young boy sort of grapple with those two polar opposite reactions?
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James Rhee
Well, in the beginning they were polar opposite, but then when they found out why I got the helicopter that the boy's mom died, then it wasn't polar opposite. My dad just sort of put on a straight face to see it was like a morality play. He just like, do you understand what you did? And so my, my dad was a pediatrician and my mom was a nurse. I was raised as a caregiver. And that's the greatest irony, is that I have that in my blood. And you know, but I been in private equity and CEO, private sector guy. It's really, this book represents a lot of me reconciling both and coming up with a system of behavior and measurement that, you know, I've done quite well in financial terms because I give care. It's not in spite of. And so I think that for that mindset, it's just we tend to. The book is a metaphor for our country in a mindset of scarcity. We were living as a family in scarcity in 1976. It wasn't easy to be the re household. And I think the poignancy of the story is my dad looking at me and saying, wow, my bowl cut five year old son, you know, who's barely tying his shoes, lives so abundantly like that. We didn't have a lot but that he just said, why wouldn't I give half my sandwich? Like I'll, it's okay. And we lose that as adults and during times of difficulty, as I think a lot of people are living through now globally, the book is actually nudging politely to say, try not to do that.
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Farnoosh Tarabi
Your career began as a high school teacher before you emerged into the financial world in private equity. But first, touching on this topic of kindness, which is a central theme in your book in your leadership philosophy, you know that it's seen as a sort of a softness in corporate settings. So how do you challenge that misconception? And maybe there's an example where kindness has led to measurable success beyond that red helicopter.
- [10:37]
James Rhee
Well, I think. How about the entirety of the United States of America? I mean, so when you know, like we tend to. The book is a lot about me challenging people's assumptions that they take for granted. Right. There's a lot of things that we are taught incorrectly and, and it's getting increasingly that way because we have the attention span Less than a goldfish at this point. So, you know, in 18th century, when America was formed and you had these like crazy ideas called free markets and like liberty, these were heretical ideas. And the two men most responsible, let's just say, espousing these ideas, like Adam Smith, Rousseau, they wrote prolifically about secular kindness. Because fundamentally what kindness is, you can't have a society or a company without a sense of mutualism amongst your fellow citizens or fellow employees or whatever that is. Right. So kindness is, I define it in the book. And it's really misunderstood now because we have these silly YouTube videos, right? But we all know kindness. You don't use that word a lot. When you see it, you say, well, that's. It's really an investment in someone else's agency, Right. When you're investing in someone else, like a teacher often does it, a coach does it, a parent, aunt, uncle. And so, you know, kindness is the ultimate form of leadership. It's really a lot of self control. Can you sort of curb your most selfish, most narcissistic tendencies, which we all have to create something for the greater good? And in corporate terms, you would say the greater good is stakeholders. Right? Including shareholders. And so it's the strongest form of leadership. I think that as a country, not just in business, but just generally, we have sorely watered down what it means to be a leader at this point. And so much of the book is about that.
- [12:51]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It's hard to imagine in the private equity world where these two principles of kindness and roi, let's just say, or capitalistic endeavors can work in harmony. Can you talk about being in that particular industry, in the financial world, something surprising that maybe you experienced over and over again, but it's misunderstood or it's not understood enough of just how kindness and the pursuit of profit can work in harmony?
- [13:21]
James Rhee
Sure. So number one, the way private equity is structured as a general partner, me, I manage someone else's money, Right. And we use the F word as a fiduciary. Right. So we water that down too. Okay? So being a fiduciary means you are putting someone else's interests in front of yours. That's number one. All right, that mindset. Number two, when you create companies, most great entrepreneurs, they are not looking to make a quick buck. They're looking to solve a problem, whether that's in the pharmaceutical industry or even in the technology industry. Like great entrepreneurs, it's too difficult to start a business otherwise. It's so easy to quit, it's almost impossible. You're driven by Solving a broader problem. So they may not use the word kindness, but it's there. There's a broader problem, a greater social good, and you're just dead set on fixing it. Number three, I spend a lot of time in the book without boring people, but I eviscerate accounting, right? So in private equity, the language is money. And part of the language of money, it's summarily summarized in accounting. We need to be able to compare numbers. Accounting does not measure many of the most important things that are integral to creating true value. It's agility, creativity, the way collegiality, teamwork, innovation, these are not quantifiable enough for accountants to actually feel comfortable putting them in earnings per share. In my investment career, I've been compliant with GAAP and accounting, but why wouldn't I measure all those other things, which I do? Right? So I have metrics that I measure prospective companies, companies I invest in on these, quote, soft things that are not very soft. They're actually quite difficult, as we're all finding in our society today. Right. Like we have a real dissolution in social compact and motivation and people are angry. And I think it's the greatest form of leadership to be able to get people to create something beyond themselves. Right. Otherwise you're not really creating value.
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Farnoosh Tarabi
But then you think about Amazon and you think about some of these other companies where their leadership at least has been very vocal about their strictness and their lack of compromise with regards to the way they treat their employees. How would you explain that in the context of the red helicopter paradigm?
- [16:02]
James Rhee
Yeah, I think that there are different. The book also explores how differently we treat people that are in our office versus on the front lines that you don't see. Right. So there are a lot of aspects of Amazon's culture, Apple's culture. No one has ever accused me of being a shrinking violet. Right. This is a very high performance environment because we're talking about kindness and math. The key to this is how do you reconcile the two? It's the process of reconciling these two things that create value. It's not an easy exercise in high performance cultures. And I write about this. I'm very direct, very direct. I don't tolerate tomfoolery. I don't tolerate not disclosing things or sabotaging the team. It's not greeted particularly well in a kind culture. So that's why there's no performance reviews in a lot of my companies every day. There's no, like, specific, oh, at the end of the year, you Get a report card, your report cards every day. So that said, yes, I agree with you that sometimes kind cultures like Bezos, you brought up Amazon, right? These, he's famous. I ran my meeting. Similarly, no computers, no laptops, no iPhones. You come prepared on Monday to discuss the entire business and you write an essay about it. It is a free flowing, very flat org. He has his most junior people talk first. It's that type of culture. I think that's a very kind culture. You may not think Steve Jobs was particularly nice, but I think that his culture was incredibly kind. He was monomaniacally obsessed with designing excellence for users and to solve problems where I have an issue with companies like Amazon. And like I ask this in my classes that I teach or in the CEOs I work with, is there a price per hour? Meaning, like if I paid you X per hour, that it justifies you having to urinate in your pants in order to keep your job in the distribution center. Is there any price that that's justifiable and that's the way I couch that is that. And obviously, you know what? I think the answer is no. And that's, that's a flaw. I believe in their culture. And ultimately it's a, it's happening all over the country in the world right now where people are starting to rightfully question the price of humanity. It's degrading and we shouldn't allow it. It has ultimately long term consequences for our society to allow things like this to put a price on this. So people like Michael Sandel, who's a renowned philosopher at Harvard that I took a class from when I was in school there, they're much better equipped to talk about all the different philosophical str underlying what I'm saying. But kindness in math is a very simple answer. Like math could justify that 25 bucks an hour. Then James should be able to keep his job and he should be able to, he should pee in his pants, keep his job. I think kindness, which is the first other flag, would say that there's no math that justifies that, which I don't think there is.
- [19:11]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Stay tuned as James shares how he bridges the gap between high performance corporate environments and the transformative power of kindness in leadership. Plus his take on why kindness might just be the strongest form of leadership we have.
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We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [19:26]
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- [22:28]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about? You insane Hollywood. So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch.
- [22:53]
James Rhee
$45 up front payment equivalent to $15 per month.
- [22:55]
Farnoosh Tarabi
New customers on first three month plan only.
- [22:56]
James Rhee
Taxes and fees, extra Speed slower above 40 gigabytes.
- [22:58]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Details.
- [23:03]
Hmm.
- [23:04]
So I'm the daughter of a scientist. Math is a big part of my DNA guess, although it wasn't my passion. I pursued a creative field. But I do, I do appreciate firsthand just the two disciplines and how they enrich each other. So just to zoom in some more on this relationship between math and creativity, James, how has math informed your own creative thinking and vice versa? And how can we do this for ourselves?
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James Rhee
Yeah, I think one math is. We describe it wrong too. I think math is. My mathematician friends are some of the most. It is a creative field. And so it's something that.
- [23:46]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Tell me more about that. I never really thought of math as a creative field.
- [23:50]
James Rhee
Yeah. We discover math. Math exists whether or not humans exist or not. We may not call it two plus two equals four if there was no human beings. But two plus two would be four a priori. Right. So. And you know, like even the. That's why so much of this narrative, right. I changed the narrative of a lot of things. Asian guy, black women, the business. Like the world didn't understand it correctly. And I worked hard to get people to see it without yelling at people. There's a way that I got people to change their mind, right? Which is how the book is written, but part of it in the math it's like Einstein. You know, I always at mit, I put up Einstein quotes without giving the name of Einstein, and people don't know who said them. It sounds like it's Rembrandt, like it sounds like it's Mozart, but it's Einstein. Einstein. I think if he were here on this podcast, he would describe himself as a creative. You find things that no one else sees by definition. And in true functioning capitalism, you get rewarded. You should be rewarded very generously for creating new value. The issue is, and I'm speaking as a private equity guy who's benefited a lot from the financial markets. So much of our financial system, which is what the founder of Vanguard used to rail against before he passed, is that the financial system is not rewarding creativity as much anymore. It's rewarding skimming. Right? It's rewarding transactions. And that doesn't really create true value. It creates spending power for a very small few. So, like, for me, the book is written. It may not. There's original music. I don't know if you saw it on the website, but I wrote, I think in terms of music. That's how my brain works. And math is. Music is nothing but a collection of mathematical sound waves. It's all it.
- [25:47]
Farnoosh Tarabi
This is key, I think too often, particularly women. I can speak for myself. Maybe we felt like we had to choose either a path that was math, which we see as technical, or a creative role. We don't always think we're good at math, but I think to hear you say that it is inherently creative. And you've also said that math is like a language. You've written that it is a language, a way to communicate.
- [26:16]
A way to communicate.
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So talk a little bit more about that. I just want to get this idea spread because I think it's important for especially young people to see math as empowering rather than intimidating, or a skill they're either just born good at or not.
- [26:32]
James Rhee
Yeah, I think that I will. And then I'll infuse a little AI in terms of calculations. So Einstein was notoriously bad at calculations, great at math, Right. So he had computational mathematicians who did a lot of the dirty work, but the theory and the creativity of how things connect and how it could be plausible that this could be much more in the realm of physics. So, yeah, I, I, I'll answer that question also from the vantage point of a man who Al. And an Asian man, right. Who was in a quantitative field. And, you know, I think Asian men also get pegged to be not creative. I am A super creative guy. It took me a long time to understand that being creative. I used to wince when people said that to me because I thought it was like some insult that it was like weak. But as I've gotten older and creativity is the ultimate form of, I think, wisdom, of creating true value for things. So, yeah, there's a great book called the Divine Language, which is about math that I would encourage you to read. It's, you know, math is both deductive and intuitive. Right. Math describes the relationship between different people, bodies, organisms, atoms, molecules. It's literally there's a structure that we're just discovering. And so I think where we are, particularly now, where every 80 years there's an inflection point of systems, where the world outlives the functionality of certain systems. I think that creativity is at a premium right now to be able to have a vision above the system. So sort of detach yourself Buddha style to sort of see what's truly happening. And in the book, it's not a math book I wrote, it's a little math where I'm making the main distinction is that we are measuring things about wellness, of our society, profitability of things through accounting. But if you really use math, like, what is the future cost of Alzheimer's, which is not in our GDP calculation, What is the future cost of the fact that suicide rates are increasing and depression's increasing? There are other ways to measure how well our economy is doing. And that's what you're having right now. You have a split in GDP type data and then real data. And I'm reminding all the economists in my life that economics is a social science. It's never been meant to just be numbers. It used to be economics, used to be the purview of like Jane Austen, Herman Melville, like, used to write about wellness and use numbers. And we need that right now. And I worry with AI that we're going the opposite way, that we're just going to try to really define things in a very narrow way. And feelings, which is so much of what the book is about too, the neuroscience of feelings, which a lot of leading women neuroscientists, thank God, are changing the discourse on that too. And saying feelings, it's neuroscience, right? This isn't. It's not coming from your heart, it's coming from your brain. Like, well, it's.
- [29:39]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It's also important for women doctors and neuroscientists because women's health is so understudied. And often if you do go to the doctor and you say I don't feel well. They'll say, well, it's midlife. As opposed to actually studying what's happening in your brain, in your body, as a recipient of that, of that data. I'm very. I'm very appreciative. I do want to go back to talking about your beginnings as a high school teacher, then transitioning to private equity. That's a big pivot. Or maybe it wasn't from your experience. Tell me. I'm sure, though, teaching is such a foundational experience. Take me back to that time and what you. What was going through your mind?
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James Rhee
Well, I think in a lot of ways, even though I'm Gen X, I've lived a Gen Z life, really, like my attitudes, my friendship bases.
- [30:28]
Farnoosh Tarabi
You're not even a millennial. You just went to Gen Z. You, like, skipped a generation.
- [30:33]
James Rhee
Yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's. I've just. Part of it was also cluelessness. You know, my parents didn't grow up here, so I had to discover things myself and. But I'm like, when I put it up, piece it all together, like, just to snap to start with the conclusion. Like, I love studying people, and I love people. It's just how I am. And sometimes it was annoying to me that I cared about people so much, particularly in certain cultures I was working in, in Boston. I'm like, I can't do that. I'm sorry. And you know that. And I would say, oh, that's weakness. And I'm like, no, it's not. Like, I fundamentally have come to the conclusion. Like, I'm really proud. I care about people. And so. And sometimes I, you know, I've been studying people, whether It's. I studied PP&E, politics, philosophy, economics, history, literature. In college, I went to law school. You know, I've coached, I've taught. I'm just, I.
- [31:31]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Music. You're a frustrated musician as you write in your money.
- [31:34]
James Rhee
You know, I run a company, different races. I live at Howard, mit and do it. I just been fascinated with, like, why do sometimes people make the decisions they do? What are the systems that nudge people to make worse or better decisions for themselves? Why do they listen to really selfish, narcissistic people who clearly are taking advantage of them? And I've come to the conclusion it's just like so much of what the book covers. How do we expect people to make good decisions when we don't even teach them how their brain works? We don't teach them about money, we don't teach them about capital. Markets, you have to go to law school to understand the tax system. So I'm not. How do we. How do we expect people to have agency if we don't even. It's. We don't even teach them some things. And so particularly the way they relate, the way they nudge your behavior, it's like, you know, it's like a ping pong ball. Like they have different nudges for your brain. And so, yeah, for me, like teaching high school, and I'm still a teacher, as you know. And even when I was in running a private equity fund or running Ashley Stewart and even now, I've always been a teacher. And I've always felt that it flips the script. It's useless to know things. If you can't communicate them in a way that everyone can understand, then your knowledge is not scalable. And it's not their fault if they don't understand. It's your fault. You're not doing a good job communicating. And it goes back to what you said about communication. And so that's why the book in and of itself, the way I wrote it and the journey of it, the symbols, the words, like, I pained myself that everyone could read this book. There was a door in for everyone. And if I didn't do that, then I didn't do a good job. And that's why it ended up being a parable, because I didn't intend to write a parable. But I think when you try to write universal language and characters and stories, it tends to sort of gravitate toward a parable type story. So anyway, that's why I teach. It really forces me to say, do you really understand what you're doing? Can you teach it? And if you can't, then you don't really understand it.
- [33:53]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So it sounds like although you left high school, the passion for teaching has been infused in all of your work. And you call your book a parable, which is absolutely true. It's also full of takeaways. Before we leave, James, I would love some action advice from you. I know that part of what you share in your book is just some of the small scalable acts that we can perform to bring some of that change into our life, that transformational change that we want. Where would you say we could start? And then you did mention AI. And I think it's important to still discuss this because although you seem to be a little skeptical of it, I do think the applications can be helpful in some ways. But what are some smart ways to use AI?
- [34:40]
But first, Small scalable acts.
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And then maybe talk a little bit about how we can be smart with AI.
- [34:45]
James Rhee
Yeah. So number one, in terms of your first question, there's a chapter in the book about the lemonade stand that is you. And I teach people accounting and finance through operating lemonade stand, along with some civics. You know, I would start with that chapter and really think about what are your assets and liabilities and lay them out. And it forces you to be accountable to yourself. And it forces you to look at the accounting of your life, your balance sheet. Because, you know, balance sheets don't lie. They reflect the accumulation of all of your actions. Where do you spend your time? Who are the relationships that are your assets, even your financial net worth? Like, show me. Put it down. I think that exercise of really being honest and being truthful, which is the first question you asked me, what does red helicopter mean? I'm asking people, just be honest with truth to yourself is very difficult. And I found a lot of things about me I didn't like so much during the course of the book. And I had a group of friends who really helped me be better.
- [35:55]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Like what? Like what? What did you find?
- [35:58]
James Rhee
I think one of them was the fact that I just buried a lot of my Korean identity for a long time. A lot of that book is like me understanding, like my own genetics. So it was sometimes not easy to be proud to be Korean in 1970s and 80s. And I know that I couldn't have done what I did if I didn't understand what it meant to be Korean and could sing. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run. Like, you know, with my guitar, like, I'm a lot of different things. So the concept of musical counterpoint that happens later in the book is a very important thing for your readers. It's not. It's A and B and C and D. It's not A or B. And at MIT we would call that systems dynamics. So that's the thing that I would sort of encourage everyone is that lemonade stand balance sheet is the most practical chapter in the book. But to get at it before and after is important because it seeds your brain. There's a bit of A. There's a lot of philosophy to it, too. And to be willing to do that for yourself, I think we're all going to need it. And your points about creativity and agility, about what we need over the next 10 years, is, I think, particularly women, they are taught to not trust their intuition. And that's just. I think it's patently a disservice and false. And so that's why also the book is not prescriptive. I hate books that say, Here are the 12 things you have to do. I'm like, it's so. It's arrogant.
- [37:35]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Did your publisher want you to do that? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, it's the publishers.
- [37:42]
James Rhee
My whole life has been that people have wanted me to not sing Bruce Springsteen. They wanted me not to be like, compassionate, Honestly, like I, it's. This book is a lot about me. Just, just, I'm like this, who I am.
- [37:56]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah.
- [37:56]
James Rhee
You know, and like, if you don't like it, that's okay too. But I'm not here to hurt anyone, so just leave me alone too. So your other question about AI. Yeah, clearly I'm commenting about the future of humanity in the book. Right? It's parable. Yeah, I agree with you. AI is awesome in many ways. I think that for mincing and churning through and analyzing a lot of patterns in data, holy cow. Particularly, I hope it's really used in a munificent way in medicine, in science, where I am skeptical is where it's going to be used in business to consumer. It's consumption and it already has been used that way. It bothers me how it's used in social media. It's deliberate. And they've gotten advice from the top neuroscientists for decades and those top neuroscientists should be advising people, not these companies. And it's troublesome to me. And I know that everything that happened in the book, from my parents immigrating from me, my life, from the friendship that I had with these black women, that what we did at Ashley Stewart, there's not a single piece of artificial intelligence that could have predicted anything that happened in this book. And that's my cautionary tale to people. We are in a point of our civilization where creativity is at a premium to sort of refigure, rethink about systems. If you're using AI, which is using all the historical data still, you're going to repeat the same patterns. And if that were the case, Ashley Stewart would have liquidated 10 years ago and I would never have shown up. And so it's also the, yeah, I'm not a troglodyte, I'm not a Luddite. Like, we used technology very effectively at Ashley Stewart. We, you know, we keynoted Salesforce in two and a half years. So I'm a technologist, a math guy, but I always go, kindness. Why am I using this?
- [40:01]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Right?
- [40:02]
James Rhee
Why am I doing it?
- [40:04]
Farnoosh Tarabi
It's, as the saying goes, you can, but should you?
- [40:08]
James Rhee
Yeah, you know, and I worry the. Should you. It's worrisome. And, you know, that's, you know, maybe in another podcast we can talk about this. The, the affiliations I have between Howard, MIT and the boards I'm on, it's not unintentional. I'm creating a consortia of like people and organizations that normally don't work with one another. I'm having them meet me at Red Helicopter. I'm saying let's talk here. And you should know each other. And it crosses ethnicities, race, disciplines. It's, and that's what I'm doing with my life right now. It's not, it's not just a book, as you know, it's a real, like, how do you get people to think differently? And then that's what I'm doing.
- [40:55]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Well, I'd love to have you back and I appreciate the time you spent with us today talking about how to be successful and kind mind blown a little bit in this 35 minutes with you. I appreciate that so much. James Re. Thank you.
- [41:12]
James Rhee
Thank you.
- [41:16]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Thanks so much to James Re for joining us. His book again is called Red A Parable of Our Times. Joining me on Wednesday, we'll hear from Anthony O'Neill, financial author, speaker and educator on his new book take your seat at the table.
- [41:30]
I hope your day is so money.
- [41:45]
James Rhee
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- [42:06]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [42:45]
James Rhee
Com.