← This is Gavin Newsom
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- [00:01]
Jim Collins
Childlike enthusiasm is the best way I can describe it. There's a constellation of encodings inside of it.
- [00:07]
Gavin Newsom
And then I opened my first business and I never worked again.
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Jim Collins
This is Gavin Newsom and this is Jim Collins.
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Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:20]
Jim Collins
Guaranteed Human do you want to find
- [00:23]
Gavin Newsom
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- [00:35]
Jim Collins
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Gavin Newsom
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- [00:55]
Podcast Host
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- [01:56]
Gavin Newsom
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- [01:59]
Jim Collins
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- [02:01]
Gavin Newsom
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Jim Collins
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Gavin Newsom
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- [02:25]
Jim Collins
Price void in Florida Jim Gavin I know. I'm enormously curious about this whole conversation and I'm kidding.
- [02:33]
Gavin Newsom
Are you kidding?
- [02:34]
Jim Collins
I'm curious to know what you're curious about.
- [02:36]
Gavin Newsom
I'm just. I, I, I. This is you've, you've had too many touch Points in my life where your damn work has had outsized influence, like next level, level five influence, in fact, in terms of just, you know, breaking my consciousness and all of my limiting beliefs. And so it's. It's a hell of a gift for me to be able to first thank you for your decades and decades of extraordinary contribution to, you know, so many of us that you. I can't even imagine. You know, not just business leaders, but people that. Just trying to be better human beings. Better, you know, better. Better citizens, dare I say. So it's great gift for me to have you on.
- [03:22]
Jim Collins
Yeah. No, and I could just tell that you're a very curious person, as am I. And I would imagine that whatever, we would just have a marvelous conversation. So I kind of view this as a marvelous conversation. And by the way, congratulations on writing yourself. And as you now know, it's an arduous journey. And I am curious what the process of writing was like for you. You've always loved taking in from books, but I'm curious what it was like for you to create one.
- [03:59]
Gavin Newsom
You know, it's interesting, Jim, just. I thought. I was really touched you begin and end your new book. It's not dissimilar to the way that I began my book, which was really a journey of discovery. It was a memoir of discovery, and it was really a love letter to my parents and to my grandparents. And you dedicated your book not only to your wife, but to your grandma. But it begins with just that powerful opening with your father and trying to connect with your father and realizing that you weren't going to be able to connect with your father. And it would be a great. I'd love to just kick this off because you wrote a book called what to make of a Life. That's, you know, to me, it just. It touches on so many themes that are so resonant in terms of my time of life, but it also, I think, is resonant in the context of the lives of those we've lost and loved as well, and how they imprint on us and how we are an extension of them. And so my own writing journey, you, of course, extended to this new piece of work that in contribution, your relationship to your father in a way you hadn't in the past.
- [05:08]
Jim Collins
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm happy to pick up there. And as you know, from the beginning of what to make of a Life, the seeds of this work really begin with the recognition that my father could never really be a father. And as you know, there's a California Connection to it. Because when I was in about first grade, he took me and my brother and my mom off to San Francisco and we lived right, kind of ground zero of everything that was happening in the Haight Ashbury. We were a number of houses down from Haight street on Ashbury. And my father was sort of into the whole beat scene. And I think he was really lost in the fog of life. I didn't have words for that at the time, but I think he was in a fog for most of his life and never really emerged. And finally when my mom sort of just said that's it. And they eventually separated and divorced, I always just. And maybe you can relate to this as well with just different people that you hope for things from them in life. And what I really hoped is that my father would somehow become a father. Right. I just kept hoping that he would step out of this fog and be a father and provide guidance. And I had no clue how to think about life. And then in early high school, there really was this moment that's really seared in my experience. We were back in Colorado at the time, my mom and my brother and myself. And I got this idea that I would take one of those prepackaged turkeys. And my father was living in an adobe hut with a dirt floor north of Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I rode a Greyhound bus down. I brought this turkey and was going to share it with him and had this image he would emerge as a father. And what happened that weekend was this shattering realization that he was mainly self absorbed into the question of why his mother had made his life so difficult and, and mainly tried to get me to convince her to give him money. And when I got back on the Greyhound bus heading north back to Colorado, I just had this, I mean, is. I mean, I can still visually picture I, you know, looking at. It was November, there were these kind of New Mexico, Colorado, swirling clouds that were sort of descending. I had this just whole sort of sense of darkness almost. And I felt like I was just heading into the fog of life with no idea how to do it at all. And I certainly wasn't going to get it there. And so I think the real seeds of wrestling with these questions, even though I went off and did all this stuff on my great company's work and all that, that's where it really began. And then by the time you get to the end of the book, as you know though, I've. I ended up, even though my father died when I was only 23, ultimately reconciling psychologically and emotionally with my father.
- [08:13]
Gavin Newsom
So you've, over the course of decades of work in intense research, you've, you've, you've spent I think, what is it, 10 years on this book, which is just extraordinary. And we'll get to that in a moment. Two years writing it. Ten years research. You know, the books that you know, just, just knocked me on the floor and just knocked me in the core. Talking about the core core values, core ideology. You know, as a, as a young entrepreneur coming right out of college, pen to paper, and I was writing business plans, opening a little wine store in a restaurant and someone says, hey, you got to read this book. Built to Last. And I start, you know, this, this language begins to shift because of your work and research. And I think, what was that, six years or five or six?
- [08:59]
Jim Collins
Yeah, that was a six year project
- [09:00]
Gavin Newsom
which I thought was extraordinary in and of itself that you would take that much time to research a subject matter. And you're talking about this notion of being a clock builder versus a time teller and you're talking about the genius of and versus the tyranny of or. And boy did that open up my mind in so many ways. This notion of stimulating progress but maintaining the core core values. Again, core ideology. I end up writing a core ideology, a book for my business. And I had a restaurant, a few little hotels and a winery. And I became my HR book. PlumpJack, Core Ideology and Ram notes, but literally taken from you. And then good to great. And I'm like, come on, can't get better than good to great means built to last and learning about level five leadership and these larger concepts that you don't have to be a charismatic leader. It's about humility and you know, just shifting all of these, these mindsets. And I read, well, it was another five years of research or something. And so here this book comes along and, and to me it's even more extraordinary. But it all connects. Forgive me. Yeah, because you write about leadership, management, visionary companies, what makes companies become good to great. And you pair things up and here you start to pair up not just stories and storytelling, we're going to get to dozens and dozens of those. But you know, I think you pair up a larger meaning of life. It's not, you know, you say this, it's not a self help book, but it's about self knowledge and it's, it's about these things that we all share in common. These, these sort of moments in life, these, these, you know, as we navigate fog and we'll get to that as we navigate cliffs in our lives. But it's also about who we are in discovering this notion of, you know, you talk in terms of encoding. Yeah. And, and so I, I just forgive. I just wanted to. That was a long winded preamble just to explore my own bias towards you, but bias towards this work in particular and how it hit me like a ton of bricks. Perhaps it's again my time of life, my state of mind, my state of, you know, of being as a termed out politician perhaps more specifically, but also as a father in the journey of discovery that we're all on and figuring out who we are. So let's talk about this book, what to make of a Life. It's three and three fundamental books, isn't it?
- [11:30]
Jim Collins
Well, go ahead. I just, I just want to, if it's all right with you and let's go right, we'll go into what to make of life. I want to, I just want to put a little comma from what you said before and then let's go right into the three parts of the new book. But first of all, I'm so tickled that you found Built to Last when you were starting as an entrepreneur. And the beauty of writing is you never know where it's going to go and to know that it was affecting you. And I wanted to highlight one thing in that which has a lot to do with my own journey, which is the marvelous people along the way that have had such an impact on me in such generous ways. And with Built to Last I have one of these great strokes of who luck in my life. We write a lot about who luck in the new book, but it was my co author on that book, Jerry Porras. And Jerry was the one who came up with the idea of not just studying success cases or just studying a set of companies, but this pairing process, the match pair methodology really came from Jerry. He was my great research mentor and we first used it and developed it in and Built to Last. And, and just one little thing about Level 5, you mentioned this notion of people who lead with a great sense of humility and it doesn't need to all revolve around them in some way. And, and there's just one beautiful data point. Jerry was a very senior professor, he was a dean, he was massively tenured. I was just, you know, I mean why he partnered with me is still just a marvel to me. But then when it came time to publish the book, he said we should put our names on it alphabetically. And so it's my name, you know, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. And he never was like, well, I'm the senior person here. I mean, you think about it. How beautiful is that?
- [13:33]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, he's 20 plus years older than you. As you say, tenured beyond words. He's the guy. He's the man.
- [13:40]
Jim Collins
Yeah, exactly. And then, and just the beauty and the generosity of that and how much he trusted that we could be great partners when we were so separated by age and experience. And so I just wanted to share that with you because I think it's, it's a wonderful part of what you experience. If it weren't for Jerry, you also wouldn't have had Built to Last and, and its impact on you and all that it taught me to do. So we can go to the new book.
- [14:05]
Gavin Newsom
But hey, to be fair to you, you know, but Jerry wouldn't have been inspired had you not been writing those little articles in the San Jose.
- [14:11]
Jim Collins
That's true.
- [14:13]
Gavin Newsom
And he says, hey, this kid's got something, let's pull him in. He did.
- [14:18]
Jim Collins
That's true. Yeah.
- [14:20]
Gavin Newsom
So you, you, you, you. So you've been on this, I mean, you know, getting back to, I mean, just, you know, a lot of business, what would be perceived as business books, I think they're much more impactful than that. I, I continue to remind you, all of my friends that I've, you know, they bought dozens and you'll see Good to great all over my offices and Built to last everywhere. And, and I make everyone in political context read them. And notably, I think it's had a bigger impact in me in terms of my political consciousness than it has from a business perspective. But, but, but this notion of, you know, just this journey again that this notion of life and you know, is it the. Is you got other mentors, not just Jerry. We talk about John Gardner who wrote and it's inspired by this book. I went back and read that self renewal speech he wrote.
- [15:06]
Jim Collins
Oh my gosh, classic.
- [15:08]
Gavin Newsom
Oh yeah, come on. How good is that going to seed and all of that. But what was, you know, what was the inspiration for this? What was what, what got you into this mindset and this 10 year journey on this book?
- [15:19]
Jim Collins
So, yeah, so I, there's the early seeds from trying to kind of figure out what to make of my own life when I was a kid. And those were in there. And I've always been interested in people as you know, from, from all the prior work. Built to Last and Good to Great and so forth. There's so much in there that I mean, great companies don't build themselves. People built great companies and I was always interested in the leaders and the people and their story and how what they are as people ended up being reflected in the kinds of companies and organizations and institutions that they built. And so I always had this interest in just the people side of things, really the center of things. And then when I had done about, oh gosh, over three decades of work on what makes great companies tick, I had finished this two year appointment as the Class of 1951. I was sponsored by the Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point. And I sort of felt like a whole bunch of things had kind of come to, towards a conclusion. And I was thinking, what am I going to really work on next? I didn't want to just do another book on match pairs of companies and so forth after three decades of that. And so I kept thinking and I came back to this question and three seeds fused at once. One was the early journey, the Greyhound bus, the whole deal. A second seed was John Gardner and, and his inspiration to me about self renewal and that he felt that the question of how we make the most of the later decades of our life was really worth putting more research into. And John had an impact on me with that. And the third seed, which kind of came in the middle was my wife. Joanne was a world champion triathlon when we lived in Palo Alto in the 1980s and she won the Hawaii Ironman. And but her athletic career, as you know from the book, came to an end and prematurely because of an injury. You had an injury as an athlete, right? And there's, it's very, you know, if you're an athlete and then it's taken away from you because you get injured that when, and I remember we're sitting at a little table in our, in our little townhouse in Palo Alto and the late 80s, once you realize it was coming to an end and, and you know, she would no longer be able to hold that identity. And she just said to me one day, you know, I feel like I'm dying. And I didn't have an answer.
- [17:53]
Gavin Newsom
And Jim, how old? She's, she's young.
- [17:56]
Jim Collins
I mean she's, yeah, she's like in her late 20s at this point, mid to late 20s. She won the Ironman in 1985. So she was 24.
- [18:03]
Gavin Newsom
And just to put in for specific people note, not only won the Ironman, but she was, I mean Nike, you know, just do a campaign, I mean she was. You. You were out there hustling for her sponsorships, right? I mean, she was. That's right. And all these other. That.
- [18:16]
Jim Collins
That's right, exactly. In fact, I was very much Joanne's support team. And this is all before I got back to teaching or got the opportunity to teach at Stanford, connect with Jerry, do build, floss. All that was in the future and what I quit all of my jobs and all of that and focused on just supporting Joanne's athletic career. She was the first female athlete in the famous just do it campaigns. And so she really. I mean, yeah, she was the world champion, Ironman champion with all of this stuff that surrounded it, and then her injury was going to take it away. And I think that all those seeds came together because I realized I didn't have the words for it at the time. But the question of what to make of a life. Well, she had to answer the question again. I mean, what she's making of a life, she's an athlete now. That's being taken away. And you have to ask the question again. And I think what happened is all those seeds came together in this idea of we all face the question at multiple times in our life. We don't just answer the question of what to make of a life only once. In all likelihood, we actually have to answer it and then re answer it. And then maybe we get hit with what, you know, I describe as a cliff event like Joanne's, an event where it radically changes or alters your life and you have to sort of refigure it all out in some way. And there's all different kinds of cliffs, disease cliffs and career cliffs and personal cliffs and even success cliffs. Right. What if you reach the very peak of something and that's over? And I came up with this idea of, well, you could really get insights if you could look at how people go through the whole phase of life, but in particular, how they reprocess the question at multiple times when they're young, when they're going through a cliff and have to come out the other side, and when they're looking at the later decades and years of their lives so that they don't squander those years and leave them on the table. And that ultimately led to I got to do this project in some form, and then 12 years later I emerge blinking in the sunlight. So it was a heck of a journey.
- [20:40]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah. I mean, but when you start these journeys, 5 years, 6 years for build lesson and good to great and 12 year, I mean, 10 plus 2 is that you don't really have an end in mind, do you? You just have. You just. You're just committed to the journey. You're working on a project and it runs its course.
- [21:01]
Jim Collins
Yes, exactly. In fact, there's kind of a fun story with this one of. Of how much I was just on the journey of doing it. Had a number of years I was trying to figure out how to do it right. And so often in the early stages of a research project, there's. Well, I kind of getting the questions, but I really need to develop the methods. And then you got to find the study subjects, and that can take years. And finding pairs of people matched at the same cliffs, there was a whole lot. So if you could. Even before you could even get into studying individual lives, you had to find the pairs you were going to look at. So it was just this. And I'm oddly put together in such a way that I can get lost in something like that. And I don't need any external pressure of any kind. I just love getting up in the morning and having a project that's like a giant friend. I mean, it's just sort of like you look across the room and there's this giant friend and it says, good morning and you're on your way. But my publisher. I was able to just pursue this on my own path. My publisher didn't even know it existed until it was done. And so I'm. They didn't have. They didn't even have any ideas working on. On a book like this. They knew I was probably doing something
- [22:17]
Gavin Newsom
because I'm always paying advance. 10 years in advance.
- [22:21]
Jim Collins
Yeah, there was no. There was no advance, nothing. Like, I'm just marching. And then my. I have a wonderful partner that been my literary agent for years, and Peter Call. I finished the book. We actually. It's actually written. It could maybe use a little polishing, but it's basically done. And agent calls my publisher in New York that I've worked with for many years and said, on Monday morning, you will receive a box. In that box is Jim's new book. And my executive editor, my publisher, she's like, book?
- [22:57]
Gavin Newsom
What book?
- [22:58]
Jim Collins
What are you talking about? And she had no idea even what it would be about and opened the box and there's the title, what to make of a Life. And she's like, oh, boy, we're not in Kansas anymore. And away we went. So I can't explain why. I can just. If it takes 10 years or six years or whatever, I think the magnitude of it, I Find I just, once I start, if it's a really good project and it's something I've got to get to the end of satisfying my curiosity, I just can't stop. And I actually, I get to a certain point where when I start getting really conservative in my choices so that I don't have an unfortunate accident before it's done right. I so much want it to get done so I drive slower. You know, I make sure that I look both ways.
- [23:54]
Gavin Newsom
Oh my gosh.
- [23:54]
Jim Collins
Because there's just this sense of momentum that comes from the magnitude of the projects. Like, oh no, I can't get 80% of the way of this and then have an accident. Right. I've got, I've got to get it done well.
- [24:05]
Gavin Newsom
And that gets to fire and purpose, which we'll get to in a moment. But you just, just to underscore so people have a better sense of who you are. I mean you're a 4am guy, right? When you.
- [24:15]
Jim Collins
That's my.
- [24:15]
Gavin Newsom
Wake up your mornings. So people understand we're not talking about 7:30 and you know, you, you're looking out the window with a cup of coffee. You're 4am and you're sometimes up earlier wishing it was 4 so you can get moving on the day.
- [24:30]
Jim Collins
Yes. So especially when I'm in the middle of a project. So when I, when I had this giant friend in the room that would greet me every morning, my favorite time to get up is right around 4. And especially when I'm in the big, you know, big project in the big writing mode and all that. And I'm at work by. I walk, you know, I stumble downstairs. I have one really good cup of coffee during the day. I have it, then wake up, bang. And I am at work by like 4:11 or 4:12 or 4 very quickly. And there's just something about. And I really will. I wrote this in the book. Kind of describing a little bit of the writing process was really true. I'd wake up sometimes you just think, oh please, please, please let it be at least 4am so I can get up and get going and, and then, you know, and do it and just, just sort of the day after day after day aspect of it. And it's not, it's not a form of regimen. It's not a form of, of like self imposed grinding discipline. It's not like that at all.
- [25:33]
Gavin Newsom
Right.
- [25:34]
Jim Collins
It's this sense of childlike enthusiasm is the best way I can describe it. And it's just, oh my goodness. I, you know, and and, and there's tricks though, like if you're writing something end in end during the day, end partway through a paragraph, because then when you get up at 4am in the morning, you're already have the momentum of being partway through that paragraph. And so when you pick up, you can get this snap click when you hit the pages.
- [26:09]
Podcast Host
Wow.
- [26:10]
Gavin Newsom
I like. That's an interesting hack. So the first look, the first and most difficult part of this, and it goes back to the work that Jerry and you did, is the pairings. And I mean. And therein lies the decade. I mean, is how you explore the lives and really uncover thousands of years of lives in the aggregate. And the lessons distill sort of the essence of the lessons. And so I imagine, or perhaps you can illuminate the process begins there. Or does the process begin with the frame? And the question is it. I mean, you really. You talk about the power of questions. And so how did. What was the. I mean, give us a way. Give me a sense of how you architected this process in the beginning.
- [26:51]
Jim Collins
Yeah, so. So I had these questions, right, that were. That were in my mind and probably initially they were tilted a little bit towards the. The seed from Joanne and her cliff and. And John Gardner's question of self renewal. And I'd always been inspired by those and those two kind of went together because you had John, really. I saw my notes from him sitting down with me many, many decades ago. And, you know, we talked through some possible ways that you might actually look at the question of how people remain renewed over. Over the entire arc of life. But then I kept thinking, how on earth would you study that? And then what became clear to me is Joanne's experience came flooding back to me. And I realized that when you have one of these cliff events, these times in life when life as you knew it before in some significant way has ended, and you have to. It calls for new questions. You have to answer the question again of what to make of a life. And Joyce, Cliff is a very painful cliff. And that all of a sudden gave me the idea. It's like, wow, I could really learn a lot about how people renew themselves if I could find people going through cliffs and having to answer the question of how to renew themselves coming out of a cliff and then go through the rest of their lives. And so then came Jerry's thing about always learn from having. If you can have pairs that are facing similar circumstances and you can learn from how different entities handle those different circumstances. So then the idea became very simple. Well, what if I could find pairs of people that are matched at a very similar cliff and I could look at their lives up to the cliff, into the cliff, coming out of the cliff, and then over the rest of their lives and then became a really long journey of. You had to find these wonderful pairs that became very hard. I had wonderful researchers, and we searched and we searched and we searched. And sometimes you'd have one side of the pair, but you'd really have trouble finding the other side of the pair. And sometimes they were obvious once you found them. So, for example, I mean, you know, some of the pairs that are in there, I mean, classic, like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. And, you know, really, I mean, they were so tightly together, playing on stage. Lead guitarist, lead singer, and John Bonham. The drummer dies and you have a cliff. The end of Led Zeppelin. And now what? Our two suffragists, Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. Their cliff was. I mean, they had dedicated their lives for quite a number of years where they were trying to get what became the 19th Amendment. They were trying to get women's suffrage. And then they won, right? And Alice Paul probably had already written the first word of her obituary in terms of what. How others would write her life. Architect of the 19th Amendment. And so you face the question of how. What. We won, and we have people who tragically lost their spouse and had to then were cast into roles for which they had never prepared or envisioned. Professional athletes. We have two Olympic gold medal winners. What do you do after you've won a gold medal? And you were the first and second women ever United States from the United States, to win gold. And you need to figure out the rest of your life or. Or your NFL players like Alan Page and Carl Eller from the Purple People, leaders of the 1970s of the Vikings. You're, you know, that's like Joanne's club. End of an athletic career. What. What. What comes next? And so there were all these pairs and these different walks of life, and it was years. Like, we'd find one side of the pair sometimes. Or I. I thought it'd be really interesting to have Benjamin Franklin, a great example of renewal over the. Over the course of a life. And I thought, what a cliff, the ultimate cliff. The time of revolution and your entire world being ripped apart, right? And I thought, but how could I find a match to Benjamin Franklin? And we ended up doing this thing where a researcher, member of my research team and I came up with this idea, which is, let's just take all the members of the people who were at the Constitutional Convention and all of people who signed the Declaration of Independence, which Franklin had done, and then work backward exploring all those lives to see if there was anyone whose life up to that point was parallel enough to Franklin's that you could match him. And you find Roger Sherman from Connecticut and they are the two oldest at the Constitutional Convention and their lives were defined by that time and what they dedicated themselves to and so forth. And we had our match. But that was probably just to find Roger Sherman was months Amen.
- [31:54]
Gavin Newsom
It took me six decades to find him and I found him in your book. I didn't know anything about him, but now. Now I know a lot about him. And of course the personality contrast between the two is next level and you explore that in detail.
- [32:07]
Podcast Host
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- [32:37]
Jim Collins
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- [32:54]
Podcast Host
That's it.
- [32:54]
Jim Collins
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- [32:59]
Podcast Host
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- [33:06]
Gavin Newsom
See terms a burst pipe, a dead water heater, the AC calling it quits. Who do you call?
- [33:13]
Jim Collins
HomeServe is an easy way to handle
- [33:16]
Gavin Newsom
unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff
- [33:18]
Jim Collins
basic homeowners insurance usually won't.
- [33:21]
Gavin Newsom
Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust home servers. Go to homeserve.com podcast for 50% less your first year. That's homeserve.com podcast savings compared to renewal Price void in Florida Nix.
- [33:38]
Podcast Host
That's K N I X Leak proof underwear isn't just for one moment. It's for all the everyday moments you didn't realize leak proof underwear could make easier. Maybe it's day one of your period, maybe it's a long travel day, maybe it's hot outside, you're on the move and you just want to feel fresh. Their leak proof underwear comes in a range of absorbencies from light to ultra and helps protect against periods, light, leaks, sweat and everyday surprises. And because they look and feel like real underwear, they're soft, invisible under clothes and machine washable. No extra hassle, no complicated routine, just dependable protection. You can wash and re wear. See why millions have made the switch to leak proof underwear? Visit nyx.com that's knix.com and use code flow15 for 15 off. That's knix.com code flow15 so much to unpack.
- [34:36]
Gavin Newsom
I'm thinking about a 20 year old skater the rest of her life. You mentioned obituary and the fact it barely even is registered in her obituary. The most important defining moment of her life yet she continued on. So let's unpack all that.
- [34:50]
Jim Collins
This notion.
- [34:51]
Gavin Newsom
So cliffs, you know, obviously Joanne, this notion of a cliff becomes sort of the central question. And as you're mining that and you're figuring out these pairs, then you start to explore the aspects of cliffs. You get into these three frames or three words that I want to dive deeper. This notion of encoding, this notion of fog that often follows the cliff and then this notion of fire. Maybe you can unpack some of those and sort of orient them in the context of how you and the journey of discovery, answering the simple question about your wife's own journey, the cliffs of these matched pairs, how encoding plays an outside role, what fog represents. And then let's talk fire.
- [35:33]
Jim Collins
Yeah. Okay, great. So this, so the, the, the, the book as you know, breaks into three parts, right? And the first part is called Coming into Frame and the second part is Navigating cliffs and Fog and the third is Feeding the inner Fire long and late and they, and, and there's integration across all of them simply because life isn't, you know, a simple three stage process. The thing that happened as I began to do the research is that I began to realize the book shed light not just on the cliff and pass, but also just even how they found their initial paths in life. I mean, how did Robert Plant end up as a singer? Or how did Barbara McClintock end up as a geneticist? Or how did John Glenn end up as a fighter pilot and an astronaut? Right. It's really interesting. How do people come out of the fog of youth and find their way? And so this notion of the encodings is that what we found is that you can kind of think of times of life when they were. Let me just back up for a moment. Notion of encoding. So let's just quickly define encoding so anybody listening knows what we're talking about. Encodings, as we came to understand them are these durable capacities that of our intrinsic construction that lie within, awaiting discovery through the experiences of life. And they're there. But our life is like, at any given time, like looking through a telescope or a window, and it's like there's a constellation of encodings inside us. But at any given time, you can only see a portion of that constellation based upon what you're doing. So if you're in business, maybe a set of encodings are coming through the window really well that suit that really well. And you're in frame as a business person. But if you shift the world and the frame shifts to a different walk of life, as, for example, you've done, then it shifts and a different set of encodings are coming through the window. And so the first is that there isn't just kind of one thing that you're encoded for. It's not that it. You could only be encoded to be a singer, or only encoded to be in leadership roles, or only encoded to be a geneticist. Any person has a constellation of encodings that's pretty vast and that you might be able to go through. And this is what looking through Cliffs teaches us is you can go through times in life where you might be in frame over here with a set of encodings for, say, being a defensive lineman like Alan Page. And that comes to an end, and then the frame shifts again and captures a different set of encodings that he has inside. As a Supreme Court justice in the state of Minnesota, he's the same person, but the frame has changed, and it's activating different encodings, and it might activate some overlapping encodings, or they might be just radically different parts of the constellation. Writing Supreme Court briefs and terrifying quarterbacks are really different parts of the constellation. And what really became clear to me is that these encodings are things we could all potentially relate to, because it could be like the encoding to, I'm just encoded to solve puzzles, like Barbara Clintock, the geneticist, or I'm just encoded to want to figure out how gadgets work, like Grace Hopper, when she was a little girl, couldn't stop herself from taking Apart all the clocks in her house, she's about this tall and, and running around taking apart all the clocks. Why? Because she just has this encoding for, I gotta figure out how gadgets work and make them work better. And that eventually came fully in frame when she worked on the first computers, right. And brought software to us and all of that. So the essential idea is that our lives move right through different frames. And there are times when we're in frame, which is a big bright set of those encodings are coming through the window, and then there might be a time when we're out of frame, meaning what we're doing doesn't capture a lot of those encodings and we're the same person, but somehow we're just kind of over here we're a lightning bolt and over here we're a lightning bug. And then the lens shifts again and a big bright set of encodings comes through the window and I'm back to being a lightning bolt and it's maybe a different frame. One of my favorite little details in the whole book, Gavin, is this little one about John Glenn. In frame as a test pilot, fighter pilot, astronaut, later in life, in frame as a senator. But he spends about 10% of his life as an executive at Royal Crown Cola. And even though it's about 10% of his life, he only puts about 0.2% of his memoir about it. And what that tells me is that in that time of his life, it's not that he was failing, is that that was lightning bug, astronaut, test pilot, fighter pilot, lightning bolt, executive, lightning bug, senator, lightning bolt. And much of the task of life is we're actually going to ebb and flow. We're going to have times when I sort of feel like I'm a lightning bug right now. And we're going to have times when it's like, wow, I'm in frame, It's a lightning bolt. And that's when your encodings are in frame.
- [41:09]
Gavin Newsom
And Jim, when you think of encodings, it's not necessarily just what you're good at, it's strengths, sure, but it's not necessarily just what your strengths are. Is it bliss? Is it just instinctual? Is it flow? Is it joy? How would you best describe when you're in that state, that bolt, that lightning bolt versus bug.
- [41:34]
Jim Collins
So it's capturing a capacity that is very natural, that when you do it, if other people look at it, they might say, how do you do that? How do you have the instinct to do that? And you go, well, I don't really think that much about it. It's instinctive for me. And that's an encoding. And let me just maybe the encodings again, they don't have to be grandiose encodings like I'm encoded to win a Nobel Prize or something. It's not anything like that. Go back to our friend John Glenn. And Glenn, one of his encodings was checklists. I mean he would just, he was just intrinsically drawn to operating off of checklists. They were natural for him. He would go about life with checklists. He's packing his car for a trip across the country. They're going to be checklists, right? He just loves checklists. He's working by checklists now. It turns out that when he becomes a pilot, fighter pilot and all of that, an astronaut, I mean, think about the countdown sequence and it's the ultimate checklist. So there's this marvelous match between being check happy and you know, you don't want to miss a check on your checklist when you're about to take off in a fighter jet into combat over Korea.
- [42:58]
Gavin Newsom
Right.
- [42:59]
Jim Collins
Those go to well together. But let's think about this for a moment. If you think about that was an encoding that he then harnessed to being in his role as a test pilot and an astronaut. But what if I'm not encoded for checklists? Well, I could learn the skill of checklists and I could probably even make checklisting a strength by just practice and discipline. So here's, I've come to understand the basic difference. If you have the encoding and then you multiply that times training and discipline and focus it go, it becomes kind of a super strength. And if you're not encoded for it, through training and discipline and learning, you can turn it into a strength. And, and so it doesn't mean that it might not become a strength or a skill, but it's when it's layered, when it, when it stems from the encoding that's there, the encoding to solve a puzzle, I just can't not solve puzzles. And when the, when the lightning goes off, I think what happens is it's very natural for people. But there's also a sense of just when you do something that feels that natural, it's intrinsically compelling. It's not the adulation that would come from it. Or like our geneticist Barbara McClintock, one of my favorite things about her is she was just, she really was, she had to solve puzzles. She was just a puzzle solver. And when she was at the University of Missouri, she gets locked out of the lab on a Sunday. And she's so intrinsically compelled to solve puzzles that she can't waste the time to go back and get her keys. So she climbs up the outside of the building and in through a window so she can work on the puzzles. Okay. So I think when, when the lightning goes off, it's. It's like that. And then later in life, when she wins a Nobel Prize, she says it's kind of unfair in a way, it's a great honor, but it's unfair to reward someone for simply having had so much pleasure over the years. And so when, when sort of when it's a combination of like the fire and real fire for doing it. Just like it's intrinsically feeds my fire, but also it's resting on this encoding that you turn into a super strength. That's when it's like, wow, no, this isn't that hard for me, Jim.
- [45:37]
Gavin Newsom
It's so resonant with me. I remember I was working for Walter Shorenstein, downtown San Francisco and doing property management right out of college. Lasted about nine months. And I went to work every day and I remember going to work every day. And then I opened my first business and I never worked again. I don't remember a day of work. I don't remember seven days a week. So it didn't matter. And in this notion of just being it, it was back to just sort of finding that space, that pleasure, where it just. It becomes almost transcendent. And so I deeply resonates with me this notion you're being recognized for something that you would. You would. You would do in your sleep. And so this notion of uncoding, though, is hard for a lot of us because a lot of us have a mythology that it's the one thing that you have to find the one thing. Yeah, we would. Haven't we been nurtured to believe that? And that's our real. To find our purpose and our bliss and passion, and then we pursue that passion. Sort of Maslow version of life.
- [46:34]
Jim Collins
Yeah, so. So you mentioned Maslow. And I have, of course, I've always loved Maslow's basic definition of self actualization, the discovering what you're made to do and committing to pursue it with excellence. Okay, but. And I still believe that, but with a giant asterisk, which is you can't take that sentence as there's this one thing you're made to do, because first of all, imagine how dispiriting it would be to believe there's only one, and you never found it. And then you can sort of feel like you're on this unicorn quest to find it. And then maybe you're a young person and something doesn't feel quite like it. And so then you think, I haven't yet found it. And it's almost like an existential doom loop. Right. The search for it. And so what this study showed, because people had to often change the frame. Right. A different fighter pilot to. To senator, football player to Supreme Court justice. Sometimes it's one walk of life. Like Katherine Graham, who never envisioned herself as a business leader, went through a terrible cliff, lost her husband, ended up the CEO of the Washington Post, and then all of a sudden discovers that she has these encodings she never knew she had for. For leadership, and then encoding for writing that she didn't know she had. And so what really changed for me is that within any one of us, over the course of a life, and some of our people did two or three or even four things in a life that were really big, that the constellation is vast. And if you don't find this one, well, you might find that one or this one here or that one over there. And it's not the thing. It's just. You just need to find a thing that fits your encodings, that feed your inner fire and where you can make the economics work to pursue it.
- [48:44]
Gavin Newsom
And you went through your own process. You talk about Jim's bugs, where you.
- [48:49]
Jim Collins
Yes.
- [48:50]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, so tell us about that. I mean, so. So if someone's listening to this, what's the pragmatic advice? Because it won't get to fog. Because a lot of us are in that fog. After a cliff, something wonderful happens, something bad happened, you get what you want, and then you don't feel like it matters. You know, I finally made a million dollars, and, you know, my life's the same. And so we have these cliffs, then we get in these fogs of sort of despair and discomfort, disappointment. Yeah, And. And start questioning our lives. But you went through similar process. You talk about fog in your early days. You talk about the fog of youth. You referenced that a few times already. Talk to us about your own journey on the encoding side and maybe introduce this notion of fog.
- [49:30]
Jim Collins
Fog. So let's first define fog a little bit upfront, because I knew cliffs would be important in the study because it was the study construct. And then, of course, we got into it. It discovered when we tried to find lives to study that didn't have cliffs to see if the patterns were different, we didn't find any lives without Cliffs. So I concluded kind of cliffs are us. We'll all have cliffs.
- [49:51]
Gavin Newsom
By the way, that's important point because a lot of people don't think that it's just that. So my, my lot in life, I'm not as lucky as those folks that they never had those cliffs. And you just call BS on that. That every universal human.
- [50:04]
Jim Collins
It was certainly. I'll just put. I can't say for certain it's 100% universal. All I know is this. We spent two years of our research team trying to find really interesting lives that didn't have cliffs, all on the way to study. We were unable to. So maybe we just missed them. But I don't think they're out there. That's my conclusion. But what surprised me is some of these, they're really remarkable lives. And we had remarkable lives because we needed lives well covered so I could study them. Quite visible lives. That's where the data is. These lives in net, in total, when you go across all the decades are very impressive lives. And yet all of them had episodes of what we called fog. A time in life when you are lost, confused, disoriented, reeling, uncertain, unclear. And there was this huge sense of exhale I got from that because I all of a sudden realized fog is, is not a defect. There's nothing wrong with you when you're in the fog. All there's fog throughout this study. There's fog in the wake of cliffs. There can be the fog of youth. But fog, especially in the wake of cliffs, there can be the fog of retirement, the fog of success and the fog of disappointment, the fog of grief. And so I just take this exhale of okay, we're all going to have fog. I've had fog. I'm going to have fog. And it's part of the human condition. And I'm actually curious, if you don't mind me asking, have you ever had a time, did the fog chapter resonate with you? Of like there was a time when you were like, I'm in the fog now. I have a word for it for it.
- [52:06]
Gavin Newsom
But that's where I was how many times.
- [52:10]
Jim Collins
Yeah.
- [52:10]
Gavin Newsom
Might be living through it. Jim, full disclosure, you know, I mean I've, you know, you come to an end of, you know, a long career in politics and long, you know, but defined not just by politics but by being an entrepreneur but in a business that I started that you know, will be difficult to go back to. So, you know, those are two identities that don't necessarily go with me. And then we get into larger, longer conversation. That's why the gardener piece really resonated with me on self renewal, time of life, the anxiety around time of life. And, and boy, was it calming reading your book about some of the just, you know, we'll get to Toni Morrison and go back to Franklin a moment and, and their lives and how they lived them out loud beyond their 60s. So no, it was deeply resonant and, and, and there's grace in that. I mean, it was, it was nice to see that change shared so universally.
- [53:02]
Jim Collins
Yes, yes. And so, and, and, and I, I am, you know, I was reflecting back on my own life and I have had episodes of fog, and my 20s were very much an episode of fog. I, I had a lot of energy. I've always had a lot of energy, but it was energy in the fog.
- [53:24]
Podcast Host
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- [53:56]
Gavin Newsom
A burst pipe, a dead water heater,
- [53:59]
Jim Collins
the AC calling it quits.
- [54:01]
Gavin Newsom
Who do you call?
- [54:02]
Jim Collins
Homeserve is an easy way to handle
- [54:04]
Gavin Newsom
unexpected home repairs with plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust HomeServe right now. Go to HomeServe.com podcast for 50% less your first year. That's HomeServe.com podcast savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Hey, everyone, it's the Jonas brothers. This week on the podcast.
- [54:28]
Jim Collins
Hey, Jonas.
- [54:28]
Gavin Newsom
We're hanging out with the one, the
- [54:30]
Podcast Host
only, the only and the one Michael Buble.
- [54:32]
Jim Collins
You guys, I'm, I'm genuinely a huge fan.
- [54:35]
Gavin Newsom
Like, it's funny, you know, I made a whole thing about doing this tik
- [54:38]
Jim Collins
tok where I got you guys to sign the guitar and I.
- [54:41]
Gavin Newsom
But it was real for like we
- [54:43]
Jim Collins
listen to you in the car all the time. Like it literally is hanging up with all your signatures.
- [54:47]
Gavin Newsom
Wow, I am so honored.
- [54:48]
Jim Collins
After Kevin's recent, let's call it interesting confession about Michael, I had a feeling
- [54:53]
Podcast Host
this wasn't going to be going away.
- [54:54]
Gavin Newsom
We figured there's only one thing to do.
- [54:56]
Jim Collins
We must invite Michael Buble on the podcast and we want to know what's on his sexy time playlist. You know, I did an interview and
- [55:01]
Gavin Newsom
they're like, have you heard about this Jonas Brothers thing? And they're like, what did you think of it?
- [55:05]
Jim Collins
I was like, well, I mean it's
- [55:06]
Gavin Newsom
reciprocal, like what a man got to
- [55:07]
Jim Collins
do, what a man gotta do. We talk about Kevin's confession, Michael's reaction,
- [55:14]
Gavin Newsom
and a whole lot more.
- [55:15]
Jim Collins
Do you have a hockey rink in your house?
- [55:17]
Podcast Host
I do.
- [55:18]
Gavin Newsom
I do. Our conversation with Michael Buble is out now.
- [55:20]
Jim Collins
Listen to hey. Join us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
- [55:23]
Gavin Newsom
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:26]
Podcast Host
Nyx that's K nix. Leak proof underwear isn't just for one moment. It's for all the everyday moments you didn't realize leak proof underwear could make easier. Maybe it's day one of your period, maybe it's a long travel day, maybe it's hot outside, you're on the move and you just want to feel fresh. Their leak proof underwear comes in a range of absorbencies from light to ultra and helps protect against periods, light leaks, sweat and everyday surprises. And because they look and feel like real underwear, they're soft, invisible underclothes and machine washable. No extra hassle, no complicated routine, just dependable protection. You can wash and rewear. See why millions have made the switch to leak proof underwear? Visit nyx.com that's kn I X.com and use code FLO15 for 15% off. That's knix.com, code FLOW15.
- [56:23]
Jim Collins
But part of how I got out of the fog was a wonderful teacher named Rochelle Myers suggested to me she co taught the creativity course at Stanford Business School when I was was there and she suggested to me that, that I get a start. What I ended up calling the bug book. And the idea behind the bug book was to take one of those lab notebooks right that we used to have in lab class and, and, and right on the front of it, the name Jim. The idea being that it's not that the book is owned by Jim, is that the subject under study is Jim.
- [56:58]
Gavin Newsom
I love it.
- [56:59]
Jim Collins
And, and, and so, and then you, and then take this lab notebook and carry it with me wherever I would go and study myself like a bug and I'm the bug named Jim. And, and I would be, I would just make notes all the time that were simple observations with, without judgment you don't say, gosh, you know, I think I'd Be a better bug if I had eight legs rather than six. Well, you just make. Observe the bug has six legs. And so I would begin to make observations about, for example, being in meetings in a large corporation that I was working at in the 80s. I had made the mistake of following the advice of my professors and who thought I should get experience at a big, well run company. It was a wonderful big, well run company, but I was really out of frame there. And there are a lot of notes in my bug book about sitting there in meetings. And the meetings could have been much more productive. I didn't really see the point of them. And then I would say something that would not be helpful to the meeting because I would be critical of our particular perspective or whatever, but I would be making notes the entire time. The bug Jim is really doesn't fit in these kinds of meetings and conversations. But I would also make notes about when things would click. Yeah, and so there are, I bet if I went back and looked that there are bug book entries about when I wrote those early articles, before I ever met up with Jerry to do the research about the bug. Jim enjoyed trying to make sense of something and share it in words. So. And then I got input as well from other people. I had mentors who made observations about me and putting those things together. Eventually I was able to see for myself. I didn't have the words for it. I didn't have the word fog. I didn't have the word that I was taking small simplex steps to get through the fog. I didn't, I didn't know that I was essentially searching to put my finger on my encodings. But that is what I was doing. And through that process, eventually that led through a series of steps to stumbling upon what I ended up spending so far the rest of my life on research and writing and teaching.
- [59:14]
Gavin Newsom
And you brought up Katharine Graham. And it's such a powerful story. I didn't fully appreciate it and I've gotten to know Katherine and her son, but I never really appreciated the, I mean, what happened with her husband. I mean it was, that was, that was powerful. And this notion of simplex steps and, and her sort of reconciling it, it's not a great leap that you necessarily have to take. It's this notion of sort of, as you suggest, stepping off a curb and realizing you're still standing up. And eventually over time and through iteration, you, you ultimately start to come out of that and you start to discover those encodings.
- [59:56]
Jim Collins
Yeah, exactly. And that's, it's Very interesting. And isn't. Isn't the, the story of Catherine Graham just marvelous?
- [60:02]
Gavin Newsom
Of course. I mean, you start to realize she's still with us. And what a blessing, right? I mean, what an extraordinary life.
- [60:11]
Jim Collins
Extraordinary life and an extraordinary leader. And I think what, what for me is so very powerful about Katherine Graham. She comes in the chapter that's after the fog chapter, which is about these small steps as you're moving through the fog where you can't see clearly. So you just take a step off the curb, you just take a step forward, the best one you can. And if you keep taking these steps step by step by step, eventually the fog starts to clear. But also what's happening at the same time is that what's happening is you're starting to move the frame, that frame capturing encodings. And through that stepping process, you begin to see encodings that start to light up. And in the case of Katherine Graham, she didn't just step off the curb. And all of a sudden I'm a great CEO. She's one of the greatest CEOs of all time. Just period, full stop.
- [61:02]
Gavin Newsom
And for you to say that, I hope people are paying attention, that's a hell of a statement from of all human beings, you.
- [61:08]
Jim Collins
Yeah. And I really.
- [61:10]
Gavin Newsom
That's what you do.
- [61:11]
Jim Collins
Yes, exactly. And, and I. It's, it is, it's an amazing. On so many dimensions and. But it took her years of stepping and part of that stepping was learning things. Right. She was always first learn, then lead. That was very much her approach. She learned from Warren Buffett and others in her circle that as he had invested in the company, but a lot of else what was happening is as she was taking those steps, it's like that frame was opening and all of a sudden those encodings for leadership that she had kind of came through the frame. There's this one wonderful moment I related in the book, but it really sticks with me when in the middle of the Watergate story, she meets with one of her reporters, Bob Woodward, and says, do you think we'll ever get to the full publishable truth? And he said, I'm not so sure. And she goes, don't ever tell me. Never. And his response to it was, she had this perfect managerial pitch, do better. She wasn't going to meddle. She wasn't going to over direct. She wasn't going to micromanage. She was just going to be, we can do better. And he put this term on it of she was able to raise the bar gently but relentlessly.
- [62:29]
Gavin Newsom
Love it.
- [62:29]
Jim Collins
And isn't that just wonderful? But you see, what's interesting about that is I think that was in her all the way along. And the process of kind of coming into frame brought it to the fore and then became part of her being such an exceptional leader. And that's why I think this idea, I mean, her story is such a marvelous journey of discovery every step along the way.
- [62:57]
Gavin Newsom
I love it. And so then we get to this notion once we, you know, these frames encoding, we sort of work our way out of the fog after this sort of life event that alters things and cliffs defining this fire and fire, you know, purpose, passion. What, how do you define fire? And what is it, what is it that you know in your process of discovery coming out of this was when did this start to appear and merge into your research and you start to realize the connective tissue here?
- [63:28]
Jim Collins
So, so I. Okay, there's a couple ways we could come at this. And let's come at it from, from the perspective of keeping the fire burning really bright over the entire long arc. And let's talk about that there, because I think that you and I were separated by about a roughly a decade in age, I think your late 50s, is that right? Yep. And, and so you're two years away from having finished your warmup. That's kind of how I look at this.
- [64:02]
Gavin Newsom
That's. I love the warm up.
- [64:07]
Jim Collins
But also that's not particular to you. I think of that as that thing with Benjamin Franklin when he hit age 60. And you look at the biographies of Franklin, on average, 53% of the pages were yet to be written in the books. So if you think of it as that when you hit 60, more than half of what a life might add up to has yet to be written. And it's just a, it's a, it reframes what these, these years are. And so I'm 68. And, and I think about this too, right? It's how, how do you, how do you keep the fire really bright and, and, and burning all the way along? Now, one of the things I'm very clear on is this notion of when you're in frame, it's not just that you're encoded for it, it's also something that really also ignites and, and feed your fire. You don't have to justify it. You don't logically prove it, you just feel it. Right. I can't, it's almost like I can't help myself from doing this. Now, what really became interesting to me, and I would love to Just kind of bat back and forth with you on this because I find that we live often with an assumption that energy, creativity, entrepreneurship, creative breakthrough is the province of the young. And that somehow it has to be something else. The province of the old is something else. And what I came away from this study really seeing in their lives is that your younger self doesn't have to tower over your older self. In fact, your older self can be sometimes the most fire filled part of life where you are full of ageless zeal, you are meaningfully engaged, you are growing and adding new, discovering new capabilities all the way along. And if we sort of reframe things that way, just all the details that are in the book, I am pay, right. Giving us the Louvre pyramid in his 70s. Toni Morrison, the great novelist who didn't, she didn't even come fully into frame with all the pieces in place until her 40s.
- [66:44]
Gavin Newsom
Right?
- [66:45]
Jim Collins
Beloved, published at 56. Jazz, stunning, published at age 61. And a huge portion of her work comes in the later phase of her life. You look at Robert Plant continuing to be creative in his music many decades after, after Led Zeppelin and it just kind of basically says, well wait a minute, if you're sitting here looking at years out there, we ought to think about it the way Franklin's life unfolded or these other people I studied lives unfolded. So maybe you and I could kind of talk a little bit about. Because you're going to face this question too one time or another, right? What would you like to know about this? You've read the book, but what would you be really curious to know about this, Jim?
- [67:31]
Gavin Newsom
I mean, did you come. I mean, and I appreciate the frame that you open up. The question is sort of this notion of back to time of life from an entrepreneurial, creative mindset. And you know, I mean we can get to, you know, a number of, you know, the great breakthroughs of discovery and physics or something and you feel like Jesus, I'm washed up. Or the fact that even some of as we're celebrating the best of Roman Republic and Greek democracy, that declarations drafted by a 33 year old and you think boy, you know, what the hell have I done in my life? But did it come to you? And it's more of a Socratic frame here. I'm curious. You when you were doing, when you, when was this, in the process of doing this, you started to discover this or did you intuitively understand it? Or were you even more self selective in terms of your pairing that there was some intentionality around including or Incorporating people that you knew sort of had an extended narrative that they had more chapters in their life than, than some of these others or just, just with the research presented it.
- [68:32]
Jim Collins
Yeah, no, it's a great question. Because of John Gardner's influence on me, I think I always had in the back of my mind that I was just intrinsically curious about why some people are able to keep themselves so renewed and so full of fire and so creative and so potentially impactful, whether it's on a private basis or on a more public basis for year after year, decade after decade. And, and, and I just, I wanted to understand that. And, and when I. And I don't know why that was so intrinsically interesting to me when I was young, because I sought John Gardner out when I was in my 30s. I was many decades away from where I am now. But it just struck me as an interesting question. And I think that part of the reason it struck me as an interesting question is if you think about, if you take the assumption that health permitting, right, that's the great wild card of life, that we don't know what happens with health, hopefully you get a good card. But if you take health permitting, the idea that 60 to 85, 90, whatever, can be just as creative and impactful and energetic as 30 to 60, and if you take that idea and then you take. And you ask yourself a simple question, what would happen if all the people who sort of thought of it as. That they were sort of done at 60, changed it to, no, I'm beginning. And then they made the most of those coming decades. And if instead of those decades being sort of lost, they were captured as inflections, and you multiplied that across thousands or millions of people who did that, the unleashing of human capacity would be immense. So I think that's why it appealed to me. Right. I just was picturing all these late inflection points and lightning bolts going off, and what would happen if there were millions of them? I think that's why I was interested in the question. I don't think at 30, I was worried I was going to run out of steam. Maybe as I got further along, I would question that. But then I wanted to understand, but for those who do that, how's it happen? And so I think my first side of the pairings and my first thought in all of this was I want to find people that after a cliff, after partway through their life, even if they stayed in one field, they were able to really have these accelerating decades. And so the study is tilted towards those that do that and then trying to understand why they were able to do that beyond just. They're energetic people.
- [71:43]
Gavin Newsom
So why, why Jim? I mean, you know, 65, you're quote unquote retired. You're supposed to enjoy your retirement. You're getting Social Security checks, you know, you're a member of AARP. Hell, I think I was at 50 or something. They start sending you stuff and it feels like you're already checking out. Your kids are saying, oh, it's okay, dad. You know, they're patting you on the head and you know, you become, I mean, so, so it's so, you know, so it's, we're habitualized, right, to that, that this is, you know, sort of the, you know, youth and your middle age and then, you know, senior status.
- [72:21]
Jim Collins
Yeah.
- [72:21]
Gavin Newsom
And it's wisdom. You know, we're supposed to impart our wisdom, but not necessarily our energy. But you, you discovered something different. What, what was, what is the secret sauce? Obviously, it's mindset. Right. Besides the physical belief system.
- [72:35]
Jim Collins
I'll point to three things, one of which we've already covered, which is that you can still be in frame in your later decades. Right. And so we don't have to, I mean, think about, we were talking about John Glenn earlier. He went back to space at 77 and he served in the Senate for 25 years, starting at about midlife. And they were fire filled years for him. And so, but you know, there's this incredible sense of energy. Sure, he's got many more decades, but is like double in frame. And so part of it is you can be in frame young and midstream and late being in frame is a big part of it. Right. And then it becomes compelling. Will you keep writing Toni Morrison? Oh, yeah, right. I mean, why would I stop? She had this wonderful line. One of my, one of the people that I, I really enjoyed learning about because as a writer, I was fascinated in my pair of writers, her and Barbara Tuckman. And she said at one point of all the publishers disappeared, I would still keep writing.
- [73:39]
Gavin Newsom
There you go.
- [73:41]
Jim Collins
And so no matter where you are in this sort of chronology of life, if you're in frame like that, you kind of are going to almost not be able to stop yourself. But then there's, I think, applause.
- [73:54]
Gavin Newsom
You don't need the paycheck, you don't need the external validation.
- [73:59]
Jim Collins
Right, exactly. The, the two things though, that I would point to that were for me, the uncoverings of how they did it. What, what I learned from how they did it. One is this thing called extend out, circle back. And. And the idea being that you sort of would tend to think that the way they would keep themselves renewed is always some sort of radical self reinvention. They would sort of break with their past and like, shatter themselves and create something entirely new. But. But that. But actually it was this very organic process of they were always doing two things, right? One is kind of extending out to push the edges, to sort of find new things to. To discover and to learn and all of that. And of course, that makes sense for keeping the fire alive. But what I also found interesting, I was they also circled back to things that encodings they discovered earlier strengths that they'd built, earlier experiences they'd had earlier things they loved doing earlier as kind of like a rocket ship going out in ellipses, where extending out takes you out further, but then you kind of come back not as deceleration, but to use those earlier things as like a planet accelerating a rocket ship out further. So you're like circling back, extending out, circling back, extending out. One of my. One of the favorite. My favorite ways to illustrate this is with Robert Plant. And he stays a singer, of course, but throughout his entire musical adventure, and it is an adventure after adventure for Robert Plant. He's always extending out. He's going off to the festival in the desert and wandering around, you know, out with all these camels to go play music out there at this festival in the middle of the desert, way off in Africa with nothing around for miles. And he goes and explores new genres of music like bluegrass. And he's pushing things always, always stretching himself out there. It's always an adventure. But along the way, if you notice, he'll come back and he'll weave in Led Zeppelin songs. And one of my favorite little images in the whole study is he does this marvelous extend out where he'd always been the front singer, right? You can picture his voice, and he's Robert Plant on stage with Led Zeppelin, and he's the front person. And then he hears Alison Krauss voice. It sounds like an angel to him. Him. And he comes up with the idea of, what if I could extend out to learn how to blend my voice with a voice that sounds like an angel? And they connect up and they do this beautiful bluegrass album, Raising sand, which is not Zeppelin 4. It's a very different album. It's a beautiful album. And it's in bluegrass and it's the two of them. And there's this. There's a famous song you probably know. It Black Dog from Led Zeppelin. Hey hey Mama right. Begins a bang full on classic blues rock. Wham. And he and Alison Kraus do this thing at the, the CMT crossroads gathering. It was a country music gathering where they do Black Dog in bluegrass. And it is this beautiful melodic slow and seductive and mature and it just, it's. It's the same song. The circle back is Black Dog's a great song from the Zeppelin days. And then he brings it into a new genre, blending his voice and the process of that feeds the fire because he's both extending, circling back and extending out. And so what's interesting is if you look across the lives, there's these chances to like. I don't have to break everything from my past, but I also can't just get stuck in the past. And that's the extend out circle back.
- [78:15]
Gavin Newsom
I love that. I love that. And I can't, I mean, and forgive me, she may not be the natural segue to, to the plant frame, but I can't get out of my head just the, the description. The 20 year old figure skater.
- [78:33]
Jim Collins
Oh, yes.
- [78:34]
Gavin Newsom
Outside. Speaking of sort of melodic voices.
- [78:37]
Jim Collins
Yes.
- [78:38]
Gavin Newsom
The voices of the crowd tell the story. It's too good.
- [78:41]
Jim Collins
Oh, come on. If you don't mind me telling the story, I get very excited about sharing this.
- [78:46]
Gavin Newsom
I need to hear it.
- [78:47]
Jim Collins
Oh, this story. So, so the, the, the person you're referring to is just this really exquisitely beautiful life of Tenley Albright. And Tenley Albright became the first American woman to win gold in figure skating. And she won it in Cortina, Italy in 1956. Her match is Carol Heiss, who won in 1960. Tenley had this amazing experience and this, this so stays with me. So first of all, if anybody, if you've been to the Dolomites, you know what this is. But even if you haven't been to the Dolomites, So this is spectacular. Yosemite is spectacular, but the Dolomites are like massively everywhere spectacular. These jagged peaks. And it's wintertime and the stadium for the skating is an outdoor stadium at that time. And she's skating for the gold medal. She's doing a free skate for the gold medal. And as she's skating, she all of a sudden realizes she's hearing a sound and she doesn't know what it is. You have the Olympic cauldron and you have the Dolomites and they're somewhere out there is the, you know, kind of the sense of just the grandeur of the entire Olympic Village and Everything. And she's skating the skate, focused just on the divots and the ice and everything being perfect. But then the sound again. Every time she'd get by the boards, and all of a sudden she realized something. She'd selected the baccarol from the opera Tales of Hoffman. And the audience knew the music, and she realized the in a stadium was surrounding them, surrounding her as they hummed her music while she skated her gold medal performance. And just imagine, I mean, so then the thing that I come away with is how on earth could the rest of life compare to that? Of course, I mean, it's not only just winning the gold medal, but those moments in Cortina with the humming. And you would think that it would be, this is the peak of life, and everything from here is going to be inferior to that moment. And then as I began to study her life, she went on and became a surgeon, had a marvelous medical career, and then founded this thing called the MIT Collaborative Initiatives, where they're solving big problems by collaboration. And I downloaded her bio off of the Collaborative Initiatives website when I first began studying her life and I started reading the bio, in the first paragraph, there's no mention of the gold medal. And you read on further and you get to the second paragraph and there's no mention of the gold medal. Then you get to the third paragraph, there's still no mention of the gold medal. And finally you get all the way down, and it feels almost like an afterthought. Is this sentence at the very end. Earlier, she was Olympic gold medal skater, something. I got it basically right, but it's about 2% of her bio, and it's not because she doesn't view it as a really significant part of her life, but it's this part back here and her instead of her life being this, it was this, and her life was this.
- [82:30]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [82:31]
Jim Collins
And that sense of her life rising from that point, for me, that's the image that I carry of how so many of the people we studied went about their lives. Whatever peaks came before, they just became smaller relative to what came later.
- [82:51]
Podcast Host
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- [83:21]
Gavin Newsom
Hey, everyone, it's the Jonas Brothers. This week on the podcast.
- [83:24]
Jim Collins
Hey, Jonas.
- [83:24]
Gavin Newsom
We're hanging out with the one, the
- [83:26]
Podcast Host
only, the only, and the one Michael Buble.
- [83:28]
Gavin Newsom
You guys, I'm.
- [83:29]
Jim Collins
I'm genuinely a huge fan.
- [83:31]
Gavin Newsom
Like, it's funny, you know, I made a whole thing about doing this TikTok where I got you guys to sign the guitar and I. But. Right.
- [83:37]
Jim Collins
It was real. Like, we listen to you in the car all the time. Like, it literally is hanging up with all your signatures. Wow.
- [83:43]
Gavin Newsom
I am so honored.
- [83:44]
Jim Collins
After Kevin's recent, let's call it interesting, confession about Michael, I had a feeling
- [83:49]
Podcast Host
this wasn't going to be going away.
- [83:50]
Gavin Newsom
We figured there's only one thing to do.
- [83:51]
Jim Collins
We must invite Michael Buble on the
- [83:53]
Gavin Newsom
podcast, and we want to know what's
- [83:54]
Jim Collins
on his sexy time playlist. You know, I did an interview, and
- [83:57]
Gavin Newsom
they're like, have you heard about this Jonas Brothers thing? And they're like, what did you think of it?
- [84:00]
Jim Collins
I was like, well, I mean, it's reciprocal.
- [84:02]
Gavin Newsom
Like, what a man got him.
- [84:07]
Jim Collins
We talk about Kevin's confession, Michael's reaction, and a whole lot more. Do you have a hockey rink in your house?
- [84:13]
Podcast Host
I do.
- [84:13]
Gavin Newsom
I do. Our conversation with Michael Buble is out now.
- [84:16]
Jim Collins
Listen to.
- [84:17]
Podcast Host
Hey.
- [84:17]
Jim Collins
Join us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
- [84:19]
Gavin Newsom
Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [84:22]
Podcast Host
What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'?
- [84:26]
Gavin Newsom
All?
- [84:26]
Podcast Host
It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I. Women's Sports. Because, let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline and the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going. All week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest
- [84:48]
Jim Collins
stories across women's sports.
- [84:49]
Podcast Host
We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments,
- [84:56]
Jim Collins
and get into what's happening on and
- [84:57]
Podcast Host
off the field, sport, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it, because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan or
- [85:09]
Jim Collins
you're just getting into the game, there's
- [85:11]
Podcast Host
a seat for you right here. Listen to Everyone Watches women's Sports on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Nix. That's K N I X. Leak proof underwear isn't just for one moment. It's for all the everyday moments you didn't realize leak proof underwear could make easier. Maybe it's day one of your period, maybe it's a long travel day, maybe it's hot outside, you're on the move and you just want to feel fresh. Their leak proof underwear comes in a range of absorbencies from light to ultra and helps protect against periods, light leaks, sweat and everyday surprises. And because they look and feel like real underwear, they're soft, invisible under clothes and machine washable. No extra hassle, no complicated routine, just dependable protection. You can wash and re wear. See why millions have made the switch to leak proof underwear? Visit nyx.com that's knix.com and use code flow15 for 15% off. That's knix.com code flow15.
- [86:20]
Jim Collins
There is one last piece I think, though I would really love to chat about and I'd be very curious how you reacted to it. Is this the. A big revelation for me was the importance of choosing responsibilities.
- [86:33]
Gavin Newsom
I was just gonna go there, Jim. I was gonna go there because that's something else they had in common. I mean, you talk about, you know, you had this, you know, impact with a professor who sort of reggie the riot act about asking the wrong question. And you have the saddle and the horseback frame. And it is that frame of not looking necessarily back, but this notion of chasing responsibility. Oh, come on. Too good. I read that. Knocked me off that horse.
- [87:02]
Jim Collins
Yeah.
- [87:02]
Gavin Newsom
And was it, Was it Toni Morrison? That was. It was. That's where it came from.
- [87:07]
Jim Collins
Yes, it was. So I had saved my pair of writers, Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuckman, for my last par set to personally digest.
- [87:18]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [87:19]
Jim Collins
Because as a writer, it was like a treat for myself to learn about writers. And so I'm reading everything about. I mean, there's a ton on both of them. But one of the things that Toni Morrison did over the course of her life was she gave a lot of interviews and talked a lot about her process of writing and how she thought about it, read all of her books in sequence. And that was a wonderful experience in and of itself. Same thing with Barbara Tuckman. But in the 1985 interview, there's this one little line that essentially is the idea that freedom doesn't mean having no responsibilities. Freedom means you get to choose the responsibilities. And when I hit that line, all of a sudden all the other people in my study that I'D studied all of them at this point. They're like dominoes that fell because I saw all their lives through the lens of that sentence. And I realized that powerful idea that freedom does not mean the absence of responsibilities. It means we get to choose responsibilities. And when I looked at all the people in our study, that's what they were doing. Now, the responsibilities were very different from person to person. But it's the idea of choosing a responsibility that, one, fits with your encodings, two, it feeds your fire, three, it might not happen, but for you, four, it doesn't matter to you if you get credit. And that if you choose responsibility, it might be simply the responsibility to honor the musicians that came before you. It might be choosing the responsibility to. As Tenley Albright we were talking about, she would practice with surgical conscience, something she'd learned about as an idea, as a practicing surgeon, but for her was a sacred responsibility that every patient under her care, she had to operate with the highest level of surgical conscience and care. And it went back. She was a young girl with polio, and there was a moment in her life where they were going to put this big needle in her spine, and she was terrified. And she asked for somebody to hold her hand. And after a lot of hesitation in the room, a medical professional came and held her hand while they put this painful needle. And that notion of health care has to have care in it, and it. That was part of her. And when she became a surgeon, she made sure somebody was holding the patient's hand during surgeries, not because there's a prescription manual that says you have to do it that way, but because she saw operating with surgical conscience as a responsibility that she just held at the highest, most sacred level. And. And when I looked at the people in the study who then were able to keep themselves. Franklin didn't need to do what he did in his 60s and 70s. He didn't have to. He could have just said, I'm done. Like, I'm tired. It's over. But he felt the responsibility, as did Roger Sherman at the founding of the country. You have responsibilities. And all these different places where people would say, I choose this. And I believe after doing this study, that one of the ways the fire goes out is when we stop choosing responsibilities. And the question, not, what do I want to do next? Is a very different question. Or, how do I want to retire? That's a very different question than, well, now that my life has changed, what responsibilities do I now want to choose that I will hold myself to account for
- [91:27]
Gavin Newsom
you can't stop. Well, you know, I'm going to end on that because it is the right damn question. I mean, you know, master class Jim Collins, what to make of a life. This is just, you know, if I were a professor, signed reading and anyone who hasn't already picked it up and picked up these other books, they, you know, with all due respect, they're not chasing their responsibilities, dare I say. And by the way, just, I, I can't help but you know, I, I'm thinking when you talk about chasing responsibilities and I, I kept going back and forgive me, I, I just, I kept thinking of you slowing down and driving a little slower because you, I guess I imagine that reflected you, right? Just the sense of response where you had to birth this book. That's right. You, you have an obligation. You're, you know. Right.
- [92:18]
Jim Collins
Yeah, that, you know, it really, that's. I don't mean it in any morbid sense or anything like that. Right there just, there comes a point and I, I remember this, this, this also happened with, with my, with like, I remember with good to great. It happened. It's like there's a certain point where I just reach a point where I feel responsible for two things, multiple things. But in, in, in bringing it out, one is I just want to fulfill the responsibility of bringing it out the best it can be for those who will read it. Once a book's in the world, it's not yours anymore. Yeah, it's your readers. It's not yours. You don't make a bestseller. Your readers make a book ultimately what it is because a book is what happens in the relationship between the reader and the book. And eventually the author goes away anyways. And so when you know you have something that it's your responsibility to finish it, to get it out there and then let it be its thing. And so I really, there's a beginning of good to great. I really did, I wrote this in the preface, but I really did do this. I went running up one of the mountains here. One of my favorite winter trails that I, when I used to run. I mainly ride a bike now because it'd be hard to run as much, but running up. And I had this favorite sitting place where I could sit and look over the mountains. And it's winter, right? It's probably like maybe January and I'm finishing up writing good to great. And I'm looking out on the snow covered Rockies from this perch where I could sit in that late, beautiful like you, like 4 o' clock afternoon where you Start to get that glowing sun in the winter hitting those. Those snow peaks. And a weird question popped into my mind. How much would somebody have to pay me to not publish? Good to great. So I'm about three months from done with the writing, and so I started playing the thought experiment in my mind. I'm sitting there on this rock looking at the mountains, right? And this is, you know, Joanne and I, as you know, we didn't. Our lives have turned out really well now, but we didn't come from having a lot of resources. And so I just started playing around with the numbers. So I go to like, 10 million. I'm like, there's no wait. I mean, well, 10 million to change your life. Doesn't matter. I got to get this done. And finally, I'm starting to get cold in the afternoon. By the time I'd crossed over a hundred million dollars, I thought, I'm just not going to. Yeah, no, I still wouldn't not publish it. If somebody, right then it said, I'll give you $100 million to not publish this, I'm 100% confident that I would have turned it down. And that's because at some point, it just almost has, like a life of its own. And your responsibility is to bring it out. The second thing is to be very true to what you found in this one. Also. Just really feeling responsible to the lives of the people that I studied. What I. Most of them have passed away, but I envisioned in my mind them reading what I wrote about them. And what I would want is for them to feel that I handled their lives very responsibly In.
- [95:49]
Gavin Newsom
In, you know, Forgive me, chapter 13 is your life. I mean, yes. That. Your own assumptions, you know, you. The things that you, you know, you evolved, you. Your positions, your feelings, your things that changed in the process of writing this book.
- [96:09]
Jim Collins
Yep.
- [96:10]
Gavin Newsom
As well.
- [96:10]
Jim Collins
I really did.
- [96:11]
Gavin Newsom
And. And so it's not just about the reader. It was about you. This. You. You came out a different person. I mean, it. Book ends. I mean, come on. How about that last chapter?
- [96:21]
Jim Collins
Well, the. The last chapter gives questions to the reader, which I believe are more powerful than just giving them answers in the end. But really what happened for me. And maybe you had some of this with your own writing. You. You discover.
- [96:37]
Gavin Newsom
Right.
- [96:38]
Jim Collins
The part of the purpose of writing is to discover what you think. What I didn't expect was to discover and then change how I feel. So in the process of writing this, there are so many things that I used to believe that I no longer believe about the way Life works at its best. I used to really believe about, you know, you have to have a super clear purpose at all times and you follow that. And, and actually I, I now believe you need to have ever deepening and expanding understanding of your encodings and then trust that they will lead to something that almost in retrospect looks purposeful. It's a very different way to understand things. So there are lots of things like that that changed, but emotionally I changed. And I came away with much greater compassion for people going through the inevitable cliffs and fog of life. I came away with feeling seeing in other people the marvelous, wonderful ways that they're put together and feeling ever grateful for what people are in my life rather than feeling frustrated with what they're not. And that happened because of doing this book. And then as you know, the book ends with a massive transformation. Because it was only by doing this book that I finally understood why my father, where we began this conversation, could never, never got out of the fog of his life. And his life ended without him ever getting out of the fog. And it was the last paragraph of the book where I finally realized all of this in writing. When I wrote it, I sat there at my home office desk and I cried for an hour after I wrote it. And I literally sat there for an hour and just cried because it was like this. I can't, I don't even know what word to put on it. It was, wasn't just like relief, it was tremendous sense of sadness that my father never was able to understand or have the framework that I, that this, that this book could have given him. But he didn't have it. And as a result, his life was fog filled to the very end.
- [99:17]
Gavin Newsom
And you didn't know, but did you, when you put down that pen and that paragraph and hell of a description of the next hour, did you know that was the end of the book?
- [99:31]
Jim Collins
So, so what happened is. And as somebody now, as you've, you've, you know, begun to experience this process of writing, you realize that you're always sort of, you know, you're, you're, you don't write purely linear or you don't start with sentence one. And right to the end, there's looping backs and there's editings and all kinds of things. And so sometimes you don't really know the ending or even necessarily the beginning when you're starting or when you're ending. And what happened was I decided to write the story at the end of the book of my grandmother, who I dedicated the book to her husband, Jimmy Collins, who I'm named after my grandfather, a test pilot who died at age 30. And to write that story as the. Casting the shadow over my father's life and the shocking realization that I had, that my grandmother had. They. I mean, you know, the story, it's in the book, but he. They were. They were really tightly bound together. Married after four days of meeting. He was the dashing test pilot, she was the beautiful Oklahoma farm girl. But he dies tragically in this test accident. And my grandmother, after the service, he. Well, during the service, she told me years later, she sat there and she just gripped the arms of the chair and just held it and held her. Just willed herself to not cry and willed herself to hold it together as a single mom in the depression with two kids, having just lost her husband in this test crash. And, And. And I asked her to tell me all about the story. And, and, you know, my grandmother cried at that point. And she said, thank you for that. And I said, thank you for what? For you never told the story of Jim and the aftermath and his death and him writing his own chapter about his own death, which he did in his own book, Test Pilot, because he thought he might die. So he wrote his last chapter before he died so I could complete the book. And she said, no, I've never cried. And this. I asked. This was. She was 94 at this point, I think, and she'd held her tears in for seven decades. And that was. And I want. And I just was writing this story about that, and that's. All of a sudden it just realized, my goodness, my grandmother had this horrendous cliff. She carried my father and his sister over the cliff with her. My father went into the fog as a toddler when it happened, and he never, ever got out of the fog. And I'm just writing this story, and then I write this last paragraph. And when I wrote the last words of the last paragraph, I all of a sudden just realized I wasn't planning that this is the last paragraph. It's just all of a sudden it was there and I knew that's it. That'll be the last sentence in the book. And that's when I broke down and cried.
- [102:40]
Gavin Newsom
Yeah, well, it's. As I say, it's. It's not good. Dare I say it's great. And. And it's. You know, you continue to. For guys like me, it's. It's just a marvel, the work you're doing and. And how different and unique and insightful it is. And and how impactful it is and Snowshoe and Jim of chasing responsibilities is just, you know, come on.
- [103:03]
Jim Collins
Yep.
- [103:03]
Gavin Newsom
If that doesn't hit you. Well, I mean, come on.
- [103:09]
Jim Collins
Yeah.
- [103:10]
Gavin Newsom
If nothing else.
- [103:11]
Jim Collins
Yeah. Well, it, you know, I have to say it's, I, I was enormously curious for our conversation and, and to know that you have followed our work and that it's influenced you at all these different phases of your life. I mean, seriously.
- [103:27]
Gavin Newsom
So come on.
- [103:28]
Jim Collins
I didn't know every phase. I knew that you liked Bill Telescope. I saw a reference to that. But it really, it's, it's just.
- [103:38]
Gavin Newsom
Jim, you don't know. I mean, come on. Just the, the bhag frame. I mean this notion of big hairy, audacious goals like, come on. Every, every corner of my every, it explains everything. Every, you know, you may love or hate me. It's, he explains more things and more ways and more days about my motivations, my, my why and this notion of, of just, you know, of having a core, but also sort of the notion of stimulating progress, changing my. Not, it's not just about, you know, the guy or go on the white horse to save the day and the notion of just institutional change. Come on. These are, these are these, you know, I've read a hundred business books and I've never read a political book that expresses those fundamental values in a more profound and important way. And there may not be a more important political book. Should be a requirement for every damn executive. Those books should be because I don't think we live by them. So forgive me, I'm just, I don't want to belabor it, but I'm not going to under sell you. Well, you're not going to get away with getting undersold here.
- [104:45]
Jim Collins
Jesus.
- [104:46]
Gavin Newsom
Come on, man.
- [104:48]
Jim Collins
Well, I, I, I, I'm, I'm honored that you have been such a wonderful reader. And in the ultimate end, I mean I, I've always said I'm much less interested in best sellership than I am in best readership.
- [105:06]
Gavin Newsom
I love it.
- [105:07]
Jim Collins
And so it's a great joy to engage in this conversation with you and about so many ideas. Right. So we'll be forward in the saddle and choosing responsibilities of that I am certain.
- [105:23]
Gavin Newsom
I love it. No honor. Truly. And I know you don't do a ton of these things and, and you sure as hell don't want to do them with politicians. So I, I even more grateful in that respect. And so it's, it's been, been a hell of a hell of a hell of a gift and I'm grateful. And I'm grateful, especially with a lot of the folks in this podcast that go all over the damn map. For those that haven't discovered Jim Collins, I hope you understand why I've been such a raving fan. Dare I say. And and and you will be as well, after you pick up what to make of a Life. Jim, thanks for joining us.
- [106:00]
Jim Collins
Thank you so much. Have a great rest of the day.
- [106:08]
Podcast Host
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