Episode 9: Ron Johnson & Greg McKeown
Jobbing with Steve with Ron Johnson (&Greg McKeown)
Episode 9: Show Notes
Steve Jobs is one of the most influential people of the century, maybe even ever! But his ideas, values, and approach to life have often been skewed and mutilated by the media. Today, we wish to bring you the truth about Steve from a man who knew him better than most, Ron Johnson. Ron worked with Steve as Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, and in this episode, he explains how the tech juggernaut enticed him into a job when he was already flourishing at Target and before Apple had gained its notoriety. We hear all the details of Ron’s first conversation with Steve, how he had to adjust to a new role and industry, how Steve was never tyrannical by nature, and how Steve inspired Ron and everyone else around him to raise their standards to the highest level. Ron also explains Steve’s flexibility in hearing and working on new ideas, the character traits Steve held most dear, how his philosophies are being misunderstood and misused in the modern corporate environment, and everything that his famous Stanford speech reveals about his character. Finally, after sharing the intimacy of his final moments with Steve, Ron reveals that there is no doubt that he was loved by the benevolent co-founder of Apple. Tune in for all this and more on the Paint and Pipette Podcast!
Key Points From This Episode:
• Today’s co-host: two-time New York Times best-selling author, Greg McKeown.
• Introducing renowned businessman and infamous Apple alumni, Ron Johnson.
• How Apple enticed Ron to join the team before it became the juggernaut it is today.
• More details on Ron’s first-ever conversation with Steve Jobs.
• The way he adjusted to his new role at Apple and being in a new industry.
• How Steve Jobs was not the tyrannical leader the media painted him to be.
• Understanding how working with Steve inspired Ron to raise his standards.
• How bad ideas become great ideas (and vice versa).
• Kindness, authenticity, and other traits that Steve Jobs valued.
• The clarity not present in most modern corporate cultures that Steve offered Ron.
• Adjustments Ron made to communicate better with Steve.
• Insights on Steve’s character from his carefully crafted and now infamous speech at Stanford.
• The last time Ron Johnson saw Steve Jobs.
• Why Ron felt absolutely loved by Steve.
Quotes:
“At Target, whenever I wanted to innovate, I had to push really hard because it was way beyond what Target was comfortable with. It was the opposite with Steve.” — Ron Johnson [0:08:41]
“The best stores are intuitive; you just understand them from the moment you walk in.” — Ron Johnson [0:12:34]
“[My] phone rang every day at 8 o’clock. I'm sure there are nights that were missed, but I'd say, for the majority of nights for the next year, Steve would call. A lot of times it'd be just, ‘Hi.’ ‘Hi.’ It felt like [having] an eighth-grade girlfriend.” — Ron Johnson [0:15:57]
“You have to have the courage to give up what's very good to do what's great.” — Ron Johnson [0:26:07]
“To be a kind person, that's a choice you make every day. Steve knew I believed in kindness.” — Ron Johnson [0:30:29]
“[We] knew what Steve was thinking at all times because he was so direct, so transparent, wears opinions on the sleeve. That's probably misunderstood because he was [never] mean to be mean; he was mean when he expected more. He didn't tolerate good work, he wanted great work.” — Ron Johnson [0:38:11]
Longer Quotes
“[Steve Jobs] said – ‘You seem to like to hug people. I always see you hugging people when you say goodbye.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that's my nature.’ He goes, ‘But you've never given me a hug.’ I said, ‘Well, I just don't think you're that kind of guy.’ He goes, ‘Well, I'd really like a hug.’ It was really touching. The only way to do it, I had to literally crawl in bed because he couldn't get out of bed, but we shared a pretty special moment. That was a really nice way for him to say goodbye. My guess is he did that as much for me as for him.” — Ron Johnson [0:48:40]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
EPISODE 9 [TRANSCRIPT]
“RJ: We walk in and all these probably 25 people are sitting there and the store is set up, looking really ready to go. It's perfect. Steve walks in and goes, ‘Well, Ron came to me today and told me our store's all wrong, and he's right. I'm going to leave now and he's going to tell you how you're going to redesign the store.’ He walked out. That was it. He went from, ‘what the heck are you talking about?’ to processing this, and I'm standing all alone, and my team’s looking, they're going, ‘What just happened?’”
[0:00:43] JU: You're listening to Paint & Pipette. I'm your host, Jeremy Utley. I teach innovation and entrepreneurship at Stanford University. Thanks for joining me to explore the art and science of bringing new ideas to life. Let's dive in.
[0:01:05] JU: All right. Good morning, everybody. Great to see you all. Welcome to another fine episode of the Paint & Pipette Podcast. This one is an incredibly special episode because it's jointly hosted by my great friend, Greg McKeown, the two-time New York Times best-selling author who is also a former teaching instructor with me at the Stanford d.school. Greg and I are thrilled to get to invite to the stage today, Ron Johnson. Ron is an accomplished executive with innumerable qualifications.
Today, we wanted to invite Ron to focus on his relationship and some key moments with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is a leader whom both Greg and I admire deeply. Ron is one of the very special individuals who's had the chance to work with Steve over many years. We are really looking forward to this conversation, fellow Steve Jobs junkies. Welcome. We're glad to be with you. Ron, thank you for joining us today.
[0:02:08] RJ: Oh, it’s my pleasure, Jeremy and Greg. It'll be a fun conversation, I'm sure.
[0:02:13] JU: Absolutely, absolutely.
[0:02:16] GM: Well, let's go right to the beginning. Ron, you’re one of the very key members of the Apple mafia in building this tremendous company, and I think it either could not have been done without you, or would look very different if it had not been for your involvement. I just wonder, if you could go back to your beginning with Steve and your onboarding, or how he managed to get you to come and join Apple in the first place at a time when Apple wasn't what it is when people think of the company today.
[0:02:52] RJ: Yeah. Well, Apple would be a great company without me. Don't have any question about that. But hopefully, I left a little mark when I was there for a dozen years. I was about turning 40 and I had made a decision to be a retail guy. I was working at a company in Minneapolis called Target, we all know. Target was flourishing. The stock had gone up a dozen times in the last eight years, or something like that. I was one of the merchandising leaders who had really put design on the map for the Target, reinforcing Target’s Tarjay, this really cool place.
Steve had concluded, unbeknownst to me, that if Apple had any chance to win, it had to control the customer experience. He had come back to Apple in ’97, launched the iMac. That's what I noticed. I mean, that iMac was a beautiful product when that came out. Huge impact on the world of merchandising everything. But three years later, the market share was still really small. Steve wanted to open stores. Someone reached out to me.
[0:03:55] GM: Which by the way, that's not obvious that he would have wanted to do that. It wasn't like there were lots of other tech stores at the time that were working and thriving. You had some pretty big fails, in fact, that you see out there. Yeah, go ahead.
[0:04:08] RJ: It was completely counterintuitive. Because, remember, in 2000 was the peak of the dot-com boom. Everything's going to the Internet.
[0:04:17] GM: The bricks and mortar.
[0:04:18] RJ: Apple had less than 5% market share, people owned PCs back then. It was Dell. Dell was winning with their online model. There was one retailer, you might remember, called Gateway. Lots of funny stores by Gateway, but they had 300 stores, but they couldn't make their stores work serving the 95%. People said, “Well, how is Apple who really serves a creative pro with super expensive products going to make retail work, why would they do that when the world's going online?” Mark Andreessen, about that year, announced stores are dead. In the future, we won't go to stores. It was very counterintuitive thought by Steve and the team at Apple.
[0:05:02] GM: He reaches out to you yep, he calls you, he –
[0:05:07] RJ: He hired a recruiter.
[0:05:09] GM: Okay. A recruiter comes to you.
[0:05:10] RJ: To identify, who could do this job. For my understanding, they were about four or five people they were talking to. I was the only one who –
[0:05:17] GM: Do you know who the other people were?
[0:05:19] RJ: No, I don't know them. I think I heard their names at some point, but I didn’t. Most of them were senior – they were CEOs of companies. I was this guy who was identified, because of work I'd done at Target.
[0:05:34] GM: Your work at Target was distinct. I mean, that design showed that you could differentiate a company by the design and experience that they have when they go into the shop, even when it isn't a, let's say, a high-end brand that's all about designer. It's still design, but it's designed for everyone, let's say, or something like that.
[0:05:58] RJ: Yeah, exactly. Well, Target was always trying to be different. I had this view they had to be preferred, which was different and better. You can have different merchandise, but just make sure you're not competing with Walmart. That was our big competitor. The way to be different and better was to do something original. We partnered with an architect named Michael Graves, who had done beautiful buildings and products for a Italian company called Alessi. We did this amazing line of home products and we launched with a 140 items, and we launched at the Whitney Museum in New York and Target didn't even have stores in New York on the North-East side.
[0:06:37] JU: No way.
[0:06:38] RJ: It was one of these moments in the industry that captured people's attention. Mickey Drexler was on Apple's board at the time. I think he probably had input and you should find out who's doing that work at Target. There were a lot of people at Target doing great work, but the work I did stood out, I think.
[0:06:54] GM: What was your reaction when they get that first call?
[0:06:57] RJ: I was like, “Why would I do this? Target's this great company. Apple's losing money.”
[0:07:02] JU: How did you answer that question? I mean, that's a big question. How'd you answer it?
[0:07:05] RJ: The thing about Target, like many companies, they saw me as being this very good merchant. I was just doing merchandising over and over again. But I went into retail, because I wanted to do the whole retail thing. This was a chance to start from scratch a retail chain for a great brand. I had this confidence, because if I could make Michael Graves, who no one's heard of really help transform Target, imagine having a brand like Apple with their products, how a well-designed retail experience could change that company. I was inspired –
[0:07:40] GM: By the opportunity. By you can build it from the ground up.
[0:07:42] RJ: Well, listen. They invited me at one Monday in November to go meet Steve. That's the first time I met him. I flew out to San Francisco and had a meeting at 5.00. I remember arriving 1.45. Sitting in a chair outside his conference room. On the tables were all these business magazines with him on the cover, so I'm keeping at these. 5.00 comes and Steve's not there yet. I said, “It’s all right.” Then I'm looking at Allison, and about 10 minutes later I looked at my left and I see this knee. Now, I come from Target where people dress up. It's a torn pair of Levi's jeans and I look up and there's this black T-shirt. I guess, that's Steve.
We met. I bet we spent two and a half hours together in a little conference room outside his office. It was just this unbelievable conversation. I love talking to him. I was inspired by him. I didn't know much about him, but he was absolutely the smartest person I met. At Target, whenever I wanted to innovate, I had to push really hard, because it was way beyond what Target was comfortable with. It was the opposite with Steve. Whatever I thought –
[0:08:52] GM: You’re pushing an open door.
[0:08:54] RJ: He's taking whatever I'm thinking about to the next level. I was very inspired. We chatted for a long time. Then he said, “Ron, I really like you. Why don't we do this? Why don't you come back in a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving, we'll meet again. But if you could do one assignment for me, I'd like you to write up for me, if I gave you this job, what you would do? How would you approach it?” I said, “I can do that.” “You just send me an email.” “I don't have an email.”
[0:09:19] JU: No way. That’s great.
[0:09:20] RJ: This is 2000. Now, Target didn't have an email.
[0:09:23] JU: That's amazing.
[0:09:24] GM: You didn’t have an email when talking to Steve Jobs for the job at Apple. That's a great moment.
[0:09:29] RJ: I didn't have a computer. No one did.
[0:09:31] GM: That's a bit unthinkable, though. It's still a bit unthinkable what you just said.
[0:09:34] RJ: No, it is. Steve said, he was like, “I'll send you a computer.” He goes, “You should get the Mac anyway.”
[0:09:39] JU: Oh, that's great.
[0:09:39] GM: They sent me a computer. I just set it up. I typed up something on whatever it was at the time. It wasn't pages. Whatever Apple was using. You would probably know, Jeremy. I sent it to him, then I went back two weeks later on a Monday night and Steve had set up for me to meet other members the executive team. I met, well, Mickey Drexler, I saw him in his office. I met Phil Schiller and Tim Cook and a lot of people we know today. Then at 5.00 I met Steve again. I said, “So, what did you think of my little write-up?” He goes, “Oh, not very much. But I'm going to offer you the job anyway, so let me tell you about it.”
[0:10:17] JU: No way.
[0:10:18] RJ: Literally, he offered me the job the second, third hour I ever met him. It was a really generous offer and I was going to join the executive team at Apple. I said, “Give me a month. I'll think about it and make a decision.” That was it. You always remember the first time you meet somebody.
[0:10:35] GM: Well, that's what I wanted to go back to. You have that very first moment, but then you have this two-and-a-half-hour meeting and you said, you loved that conversation. If we were a fly on the wall for that conversation, what was discussed? What do you remember from it? Any specifics?
[0:10:51] RJ: It was just wide-ranging. But I remember at one point saying to Steve, we were talking about store size and I said, “Well, how big do you think the store should be?” He goes, “I don't know.” I said, “I’ve always felt the size of the brand correlates with the size of the store. A lot of these computer stores are really tiny, because the products are small, you don't have many, but that makes you think it's a small idea.”
I said, “You're on the board of the gap. The gap feels like the right size store.” He goes, “I like that.” “So, how many products do we have?” I didn't know Apple's product lineup. He said, “We've got four.” He goes, “I'll show them to you.” He walked me down to the board room and on this little table were two pro computers, a desktop and a portable and two consumer, a desktop and a portable, and that was it. I said, “Well, we've got 32 square feet needed to merchandise our products. That leaves us 4,968 square feet of space to create a great experience.”
[0:11:48] JU: Did you think that immediately?
[0:11:49] RJ: Yeah, right away. Yeah. Because that's as a merchant, you're always thinking through presentation of a product, and then what's around it. But he loved that. He wasn't intimidated by the fact that he had very few products. We talked about things. I said, “Well, what if we devoted half the store to service? Our goal is to reach out to new customers. You're doing this expand market share.” He had this great phrase, “Five down, 95 to go.” We have five market share. We're building stores to get the next 95.
[0:12:19] JU: I love that.
[0:12:20] RJ: I know, Steve's idea. We're going to reach out to 95. Well, if you're going to get someone to switch to Apple, which is expensive and unusual and that's a big move for somebody, you got to stand behind the product. I said to Steve, the best stores are intuitive. You just understand them from the moment you walk in. He would immediately embrace that being a purist in design. I said, “Let's devote half the space to owners and half to new customers.” That set up the whole – we just talked effortlessly about store design, location, movies, people, life. It was just a fun conversation.
[0:12:57] GM: What did you talk about with life? Do you remember?
[0:13:00] RJ: Not that conversation, but let me move to the next one then. Another idea. Now, I decided to join Apple. I started February, like a couple months later. I came out for my first day at work. I go to check in at the lobby at building 1 Infinite Loop. I'm also early. I'm an early guy and I go, “I'm here. A new employee, Ron Johnson.” The guy looks down and says, “There's no Ron Johnson starting today. We have five people starting. You're not starting.” I said, “Well, I think I have an ET meeting,” because I have an ET – I'm executive team. “But you're not on here.” He goes, “I've got ABC.” He goes, “I've got a John Bruce starting.” I go to myself, “Wait. my name's Ronald Bruce Johnson.”
Steve sometimes makes code names for people. My first day, I got a code name. I'm a pretty well-known retailer guy and he's trying to hide me, because he doesn't want the people know he's going to open stores. I went up with our ET meeting. Then ET's done, I was very quiet. I was just listening. It's like a three-hour meeting.
[0:13:58] JU: Did you introduce yourself as John Bruce, by the way?
[0:14:00] RJ: I should have. I don't think I did.
[0:14:03] GM: This is your first executive meeting. You've met them individually, but now you're seeing them in action.
[0:14:07] RJ: Most of me, I sat there and I was a bump on the log. It was like a new language to me. The whole, everything they're – they’re talking about operating systems and OS 10 and chips and a level of detail that I wouldn't have been aware of, not being an Apple guy, tech guy.
[0:14:23] GM: It’s not your background.
[0:14:25] JU: Not having an email account.
[0:14:27] RJ: Then at the end of the meeting, I go back to my office and by myself, what do I do the rest of my life at Apple? I get this call from Steve's assistant, Andrea, “Can you come down? Steve would like to see you.” His office was – I'd walk by Tim Cook and then Steve. I think that was the sequence. I went to see Steve and he goes, “Ron,” he goes, “Are you excited to be here?” I said, “Yeah, I'm real excited.” He said, “Great.” He said, “What time do your kids go to bed?” I said, “8.00.” He said, “Good. Can I call you?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Every day?” I said, “Okay, sure.” He said, “Five days a week, or seven?” He said, “Seven.” I said, “Okay.”
But he said, “The reason I want to call you,” he said, “I have a handful of people I am very close to at Apple that I work with and I want them to know how I think about everything. When we chat, we're going to talk about our personal lives, our work lives, movies.” He goes, “I'm not into sports, but we'll talk about all that stuff.” He said, “But then, within a year, you will be free as a butterfly to do whatever at Apple. The only time you have to come to me if you don't know how I think about something.” It was interesting. He committed all his –
[0:15:41] GM: It’s serious empowerment. That's what he's really going for here.
[0:15:44] RJ: He does delegate. It's so counter. You hear Steve was – he was involved with it. He loved the big picture and all the details, but he was by far the best delegator I've ever seen.
[0:15:55] JU: Did he call you after bedtime?
[0:15:56] RJ: After 8.00 every day. Phone rang every day at 8.00. I mean, I'm sure there are nights that were missed, but I'd say, the majority of the nights for the next year, Steve had called. A lot of times it'd be just, “Hi.” “Hi.” It felt like an eighth-grade girlfriend. It was bringing me back to when I was getting on the phone and doing that. But we would just talk and –
[0:16:17] GM: He wouldn't have an agenda. He wouldn't be saying, “Hey, here are the three things I want to talk about.”
[0:16:21] RJ: He talked to me about what Apple thinks. He goes, “Yeah, let me tell you some things I think about at Apple, or things we talked about at the ET meeting and blah, blah, blah.” I bet, half was Apple, half was personal. Most the conversations last 30 minutes. They weren't super long, but it wasn't five minutes. It was an investment. I was just so impressed with all that he had going on, that he committed that time to get to know me, but it was how he created leverage, because where he wanted to spend his time was on the products, the marketing. That's where Steve's true passion was. He delegated other things.
Now, he loved the stores, he loved helping design some of the stores. He had great passion for it, but he didn't want to get involved with the details. He just didn't have time. I was one of the lucky ones, probably like Tim Cook and a few others, who got to work with Steve without a lot of Steve oversight. A lot of personal freedom with my team to do what we believe was right. Every six months, I’d see Steve every week at executive team and I talk to them all the time. But I’d say, “Steve, can you come over? I want to show you some of the stores we’re to build.” We'd set up a room with models of 20 stores around the world, or 15 stores. He just loved to look at them and get into the details, but he truly was a great delegator.
[0:17:40] GM: I want to riff on this for a second. The book that people most cite when they're thinking of Steve is the Isaacson biography, but there's another biography called Becoming Steve Jobs. Let me just ask, were you involved in either of those projects? Were you interviewed by either?
[0:17:57] RJ: I was interviewed by Walter for his book.
[0:18:00] GM: For his book. Are you familiar with the Becoming Steve Jobs book?
[0:18:03] RJ: Who was the author? Do you remember? I don't believe I was. No, I don't believe so.
[0:18:08] GM: Well, the reason I asked is because in the second book, you get a sense of the journey that Steve went on while he's gone at NeXT. This 10-year journey, longer than many people imagine and the change between this, let's say, he's a visionary startup at first, but some of the criticism that's in the press about how he handles people and how harsh he is on everything, and this idea that he actually transforms, he becomes a different leader. Not that he is a perfect leader afterwards, but that he is materially different and it's been always my position that the media never caught up on the change.
They're still imagining him as just a like, “Hey, he's a joke. That's it. That's the story.” But when, in all the work I've done at Apple and all the executives I've worked with personally, that's not the story. It's not that he couldn't be harsh, or couldn't be certainly seeking clarity, this idea of like, yeah, you don't do the best work of your life for just someone who's a tyrant. That's not the reality behind it.
[0:19:04] RJ: Steve was not a tyrant at all. He had such passion for people and products. He loved, loved, loved his family. He loved the people he was close to. He had a relatively small number of people he was close to. There were people he was a lot closer to than me, like Johnny and Bill Campbell. I was one of the ones, we were very close, I think, but I wasn't in that super tight. I don't pretend to be.
[0:19:37] GM: Yes, I understand.
[0:19:37] RJ: But we had a relationship. What Steve had was the highest standards of anybody you'd ever meet. He wanted you to be your best. He actually got most people to be better than they would be on their own.
[0:19:50] GM: Tyrant doesn't achieve that. No tyrant does that.
[0:19:51] RJ: He doesn’t do that. Yeah. We were inspired. We were all inspired to try to meet, or exceed Steve's high standards.
[0:19:59] JU: I wanted to ask about the standard piece, Ron. I don't know if one of your memories involves a Steve standard, but I'd love to hear a practical example of when you say, he had higher standards than we had for ourselves, is there a time where you remember him raising the bar for you?
[0:20:14] RJ: Every meeting with him. Every meeting. When we launched the stores, so at least this warehouse about two miles from campus, and we built out a prototype of a store. At that time, I'd meet every Tuesday morning with Steve at 9.00 till noon. He would want me, because he didn't have a cellphone. I would go to his office. He would drive over in his car and we'd talk all the way over and then we'd have our little retail walkthrough. Every week, we would change the store. We would have things we looked at, window displays, graphic panels, lighting, store design, fixtures, and every little details you looked at.
Every time it's like, how do we make this so good that Steve just looks at and says, “That's great.” But he could never do it. He always had a way to make it better. The input was exceptional. It wasn't like, just a different opinion. It was a better opinion.
[0:21:10] GM: For example.
[0:21:11] RJ: Every little thing. Yeah, you look at a window display and what that's going to communicate eye photos. He stares at me quickly, where he goes, “What if you did this?” You go, “Ah, it would be better if we did that,” and then we'd do that for the next week. He just had an uncanny intuition about design, or creativity, or marketing that he saw the world differently. I got to learn from that, which was a wonderful thing. But there were a lot of interest.
I'll tell you another story that relates to what you're asking about. About nine months after I started, we were building out apps. A guy named Sina Tamaddon – great leader. He had done the first app, which was iMovie. It was really the first app Apple did. Then iTunes, which was our music app, which connected with the iPod. Then we were creating a photo application. Steve was super excited about these and they were going to be announced, I think, one of them at the next Mac World in January.
I was just sitting there listening. I call one of our 8.00 calls on a Friday night. I said to Steve, “You know, I've been thinking about this. The Mac is like the computers at the center of your digital universe.” I explain this thing, the computers here, but we connect our camera with an app and there's this, and you connect this and that.” He goes, “Can you send me an email with that?” I said, “Sure.” I wrote him a little note.
The next week, we get into the ET meeting, he goes, he stands up and he walks in, he goes to the chalkboard, or whiteboard and he says, “Let me tell you, I've got the future of the Mac and I'm going to announce it at Mac world.” He goes, “It's called the Digital Hub.” You might remember that, the Digital Hub. The Hub, I called it. Universe, or whatever it is, but this is hub. He went through that. It was great. The team loved it. The whole ET did. We helped out into it.
The next morning, that was my retail day. I stopped by his office in the morning and I said, “Steve, I've been thinking. If you really like this digital hub, which I think is great, we've got to change the store design, because our stores can open in January when you announce the digital hub and our store’s built around products. It's got to be built around what you do. Photos and movies and music. We got to change this.” He looked at me and he was so upset. He said, “Ron, do you know I've spent – now, that was that time. It was probably nine months with you every Tuesday helping design this first store. It's being built as we speak. But this is like starting over. Do you know how big a deal this is? Because I don't know if I have the energy to do this.” Had those moments. I looked at him. I said, “Okay, so let's get over there.” He says, “But don't say a word about this to anybody, because I don't know if it's the right thing to do.” That's okay.
[MESSAGE]
[0:24:07] JU: How much time and effort does it take to test an idea? When I ask individuals in an organization this question, they typically overestimate both the time, effort, and expense required. Tests need to be quick, fast, and cheap. You need lots of tests. When I work with organizations, I help them take ideas out of the waiting-for-testing pile and move them into the tested pile. That's where lessons are learned and impact is created. Do you want to make impact for your organization's good ideas? Let's talk. Check out jeremyutley.design, or write me at jutley@jeremyutley.design. Let's test some ideas together.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:24:51] RJ: We get in his car, not a word said for this 10-minute ride over.
[0:24:56] GM: Oh, this is a very awkward drive.
[0:24:57] RJ: It was a quiet drive.
[0:25:00] JU: Oh, in the eighth-grade dating relationship, sometimes there are awkward drives. It fits perfectly.
[0:25:06] RJ: It's that silence that you want to break, but you know you probably shouldn't. We get there, we get out of the car. It's still silent. We walk in. All these, probably 25 people are sitting there and the store is set up, looking really ready to go. It's perfect. Steve walks in, he goes, “Well, Ron came to me today and told me our store's all wrong, and he's right. I'm going to leave now and he's going to tell you how you're going to redesign the store.” And he walked out. That was it. He went from, “What the heck are you talking about,” to processing this. I'm standing there alone and my team’s looking, they're going, “What just happened?”
Then, that night when he called me at 8.00, he said, “I realized on the car right over, as much as I didn't want to redo the store, every great movie we've done at Pixar, we get down to the end and we're three months from release, realize there's a better ending. You have to have the courage to give up what's very good to do what's great.”
[0:26:13] GM: Yeah, it's a great story.
[0:26:15] RJ: That was the story there. He said, “Like our store,” he goes, “it doesn't matter if we open our store in January, February, March. We're going to open it once, we got to open it right. Thank you for bringing that up.” That was Steve. Obviously, that shows that he wants you to be direct. He wants you to share ideas. He might react pretty harshly at first for a variety of reasons, but he processes quickly. I had that when I called him up about the Genius Bar. I called him one day and I wanted to make service the feature of the stores and I said, “We're going to create a place, Steve. Imagine this. Other companies that do service, they hide it. They don't want you to ever think, when you're buying a product it might not work. Well, computer would put in a separate room, maybe another building.”
I said, “Let's put ours in the center of the store. Let's make it a big deal.” Imagine if getting help at a bar. Let's make a bar.” When you think of a bar, you think of a bartender and they can make any drink on the planet and they remember my name and they're friendly. You're just really comfortable at the bar. Imagine getting support for your computer that felt like you're at the nicest bar with a bartender and we're going to call it the genius bar and we're going to put the smartest Apple people in every city behind that bar. He looked at me and he goes, “You had me, until – you don't realize, Ron. You don't know technology. There's nobody who knows computers who can talk to people. They're all geeks.” He said, “They really are.” He said, “If you want to call it the geek bar, maybe that makes sense.”
I said, “Steve, I think you're wrong. Retailers are young people. Young people that grew up, they know computers. You know all the geeks, because you're older, we're older.” Literally, 30 minutes later, Nancy Hine and the general counselor at the time calls me up and says, “Ron, can you tell me about Genius Bar? Steve wants me to trademark this name Genius Bar.”
[0:28:05] JU: 30 minutes later.
[0:28:07] RJ: Yeah, literally in five minutes from bad idea to great idea. Yeah, and that's just Steve.
[0:28:13] GM: Tim Cook talked about that, about how that's a genius thing that he can do that he would come fighting, arguing for one idea day one, day two, he's arguing the exact opposite, as if he never held the previous opinion and he thinks, describes that as a gift.
Here's what it seems to me is that it's about clarity. That at any given moment, you know what he's thinking. No, this is a problem. This is how it feels. No, you're right. I'm wrong. Let's move forward. That there isn't this endless ambiguity that makes up for so much of the communication, especially in corporations, where everyone's trying the – they'll use jargon and try to – don't play your cards too early, because you might be wrong and then you look stupid. It's like, he removed that in one sense from these communications that he's having with you. What am I getting wrong?
[0:29:03] RJ: No, you got it exactly right. Now, Steve loved argue both sides of any problem he had, but then he’d end every conversation – and it was really interesting that we'd spend an hour debating what do we do here, and then he'd end, he'd say, “Now, let's walk through the logic tree one more time,” on whatever we agree to. He’d say, “Here's the problem. Here's the solution. Da, da, da.” Then it all would make sense. He loved to debate things. He would go until he was done. There was never a clock on a Steve meeting. It goes long as it needs to. It was done when it was done.
[0:29:38] JU: The two examples you gave us are both from this is a bad idea to, this is a good idea, which that's got to feel great, right? I can imagine, that clarity – to me, I wonder, does it cut both ways? Were there times where something was a great idea and quickly became a bad idea and how did that go?
[0:29:56] RJ: I'm sure there were. I'd have to think about that. There were some locations we had that Steve didn't like. There was one on 34th street in New York that we actually walked away from. He was right on that. I want to go back, if I could, to what Greg said. Steve believed that it was interesting. He knew I valued kindness. That was my number one – it's always been my number one thing. Kindness is a choice you make. I tell my kids, someone's the best athlete in the class, that's a gift. My kids were both really smart. You guys are really smart, that's a gift. To be a kind person, that's a choice you make every day. Steve knew I believe in kindness.
He said “Ron, when I think of kindness, the highest form of kindness is telling the truth. Letting someone know where they stand.” He goes, “I wear my opinions on my sleeve. You will always know when I like something and when I don't.” He was right on that, because I never had any doubt about where I stood with Steve.
[0:30:57] JU: There's a great expression from a GSB professor. I don't know if, Greg, if you ever take his class, but Irv Grousbeck, he has this great quote. He's one of the owners of the Boston Celtics. He often says, never mistake vagueness with compassion.
[0:31:10] GM: Totally. Totally. Clarity is kindness. But the thing that one has to wrestle with for a moment is how different that is from most management experiences and most corporate cultures. They do not breed clarity. They breed confusion, ambiguity, guessing, everyone's reading the tea leaves for everything, well, what does the person think, and oh, the business thinks this. You just live your life in these organizations in a guessing mode. Of course, it's frustrating for everyone, but I think it makes everything so much harder.
[0:31:48] RJ: I agree. That's because, it goes back to that classic management leadership paradigm. Most companies are managed. Harvard Business School teaches you to be a manager. Apple is a culture of leadership. Leaders are comfortable pushing the envelope. Leaders are comfortable making opinions. Management cultures, it's like, “Well, I can't present this idea unless I get approved in advance. I’ve got to make sure everyone in the pyramid supports before I talk about something.” It's just a different culture, but that's what made working at Apple during the time I was there at least super unique.
I think Steve's relationship was the same with every other leader of the ET. That's how he loved to work. We all adapted to him, but he was so authentic. Authenticity is the other thing he really valued. He said, “If I’m myself, you will learn to work with me. If I’m not authentic, you're going to wonder, well, which Steve is this.”
[0:32:48] GM: You'll never know what you're getting.
[0:32:50] RJ: You’ll never know what you're getting, so he was just an authentic, passionate person who wanted to change the world. He had done that when he was in his 20s with Apple. I think, once you do that, he just lived to have these great moments where he created things to change the world, where there's a movie, a product, an application, and he would live for these things. It was like one hit after the next. He wouldn't bring them out until they met his standard.
When we were doing the iPhone, a lot of people thought it would never come out, because you could never build a phone that he would meet his standard. It took a long time, but that's why he was so exceptional at what he did. That was true with our stores.
Another interesting moment I remember is he used to love to come to the openings of our big flagship stores. He flew to Tokyo. Thanksgiving weekend, we opened our first international store at the Ginza in Tokyo. Came to New York when we opened our first New York store, the post office down in SoHo. That was an interesting story, because we timed the opening to Mac World. We used to do four Mac Worlds a year. There was a New York Mac World. We had the opening the day after Mac World and our openings had been legendary. We get thousands of people waiting in line.
We had the Mac World, the papers were pretty negative on Mac World. For whatever reason, it was like, writing Apple's death. The company stock price was at an all-time low. There weren't a lot of believers in what Steve and everyone was doing, we were all doing. Steve gets over to the opening at 9.00 and there are 45 people in line. Nobody's there. I had misjudged. I didn't realize in New York people stay out late. They don't get up early. But Steve walks in, he goes, “Well, this is a great opening.” I said, “I’m sorry, we probably should open a different time, or a different day.” He said, “I should just give up.” He pulls me aside, he goes, “I’m just tired. I’ve been working really hard. Nobody cares. We did Mac World yesterday, nobody cares. Nobody cares about your story here in New York.” He goes, “I’m going to leave.” I said, “Okay.” He went back to the hotel.
Tough day. I mean, tough day for me, tough day for Steve. About 11.00, we start counting, we had a clicker, a thousand people walked in the store in an hour. At 12.00, it was busier. They're starting to line up outside. I called Steve up. He was staying up at The Forest. I said, “Steve, you got to come back.” He goes, “No.” I said, “I want you to come back.” He said, “I’ve already been there once today. I saw the store.” I said, “Will you please come back?” He said, “Okay.”
He came down. Got there around 1.00. The store was filled. He came in, looked around, we walked up to the stairs, there was this glass bridge on the second floor at the back of the store, you might recall if you've been there, under a skylight. Steve and I stood there till 7.30 at night. Six and a half hours, whatever that is, just watching customers soaking in. One of our great moments together, because it was the first time he saw the love why he wanted the stores. He wanted to meet the customer. He's not doing that every day. But he saw people after people coming in, trying his products, getting help with the Genius Bar, binds, everything he dreamed of happened in that moment. That was just one of the most beautiful moments for the two of us. A few years later, we opened that Fifth Avenue store, the glass cube, and Steve played a big part in helping us create that store.
[0:36:15] GM: Let's go back to that moment, that clearly really genuinely precious moment for you, for him as well. Everything you shared in the story is again, this idea of – I mean, we could call authenticity, but it's authenticity plus clarity. It's some other formula that's being created there, where you know exactly what he's thinking. I mean, including the disappointment. “I should just give up. This is exhausting. I’m fed up with all of this.” You know what he's dealing with. Then, “No, I’m not coming down.” Even that's clear. “Okay, fine. I’m doing it. I’m all in if I’m doing it. I’m going to come. Fine.”
At every moment, and you know what you're dealing with, which flies in the face of this caricature, so frustrates me anyway. I don't know if it frustrates you or not, but this idea. Well, when you create a caricature of Steve jobs, you do a lot of damage without knowing it, because this lazy journalism produces other people who are imitating not Steve jobs, which itself is a problematic thing to do, but you're imitating a fabricated version of Steve jobs. So now, you just have a bunch of rubbish aspiring CEOs and executives who are doing what they think he was doing, which is not what he was doing. I think it really actually has done a lot of damage for a lot of people, especially when the real version was something worthy of emulation. Anyway, just your reaction to any of that.
[0:37:44] RJ: Well, like I always felt, I’ve got a pretty good EQ, but I think goes back to Steve invested a lot of time with me, so I knew how he thought. I had good instincts about what he needed, when he uses time, like, “Come back here, come back here. You're going to love it.” I had a good relationship with Steve. I was very lucky. It came from good moments and hard moments, but I would guess, most of the people that were close to him felt the same way. They knew what Steve was thinking at all times, because he was so direct, so transparent, wears opinions on the sleeve. And that's probably misunderstood, because he was not ever mean to be mean. He was mean when he expected more. He didn't tolerate. He didn't tolerate good work. He wanted great work. He didn't tolerate not very smart people. He expected me, if I brought someone and it wasn't very smart.
[0:38:40] GM: He wasn't going to enjoy that.
[0:38:42] RJ: He wasn't going to enjoy that. He would let me know pretty quickly. He would judge people in one man. I mean, if they weren't smart, he would leave. That wasn't very nice. I mean, it wasn't very nice. I remember, we had these three guys coming out, we were to do real estate and we had – I wanted to hire them, but I want Steve to meet them first, another funny story. They came into the room and they were going to tell them about how they were going to do real estate for Apple and how they pick sites. After five minutes, Steve said, “You guys, you're not ready. You're wasting my time.” I’m trying, “I don't want to hear from you. You guys might not be smart enough to work for Apple,” and he walked out.
We all sat there and go, “Wow, that was interesting.” But he didn't feel they were prepared. I went to him, he said, “Ron,” he goes, “If that's your group,” he goes, “I’m nervous.” I said, “Look, I’ll have him come back in a week. We'll meet again.” He said, “Fine. I trust you. But have him come back in a week and hopefully, they'll be ready.” A week later, we go through the same scene, we're in the same conference room, interview with Steve, right next to his office. 1.00 comes, they're ready. 1.15 comes, Steve doesn't show. [Inaudible 0:39:53] says, “Ron, Steve wants to talk to you.” He goes, “It’s your call. Do what you want.” He didn't meet them. He's a great delegator. But he wanted to make sure we had high standards. He could be tough in that way. Most people would say, “Oh, we should have been more polite.” But that was Steve. He had those moments.
[0:40:14] GM: Jeremy, you're going to jump in with something.
[0:40:16] JU: I was just curious, Ron. To me, it seems that that clarity, I would hope it begets reciprocation, that you could also be clear with him. I wonder I wonder if it took any adjustment on your part, because depending on the culture – I don't know what it was like at Target, but how was it for you adjusting to communicating with him?
[0:40:37] RJ: Well, I was very comfortable telling Steve what I thought. I remember his commencement speech at Stanford. Jeremy, you might have been there, but I was pretty close to him when he was writing that. We talked about what he's going to include. It was fun. He knew I was going to be there the day of the speech because I’m a Stanford grad and all this stuff. Ceremony is usually at 10.00. At 11.00 it was over. My phone rings, I’m still walking out of the stadium and he goes, “Ron, how are you? How are the stores? How's it going? He didn't ask me about the speech.”
[0:41:11] GM: I got to pause on that. I know you're about to explain more, but that really is surprising. That really is surprising.
[0:41:16] RJ: I knew he wanted to ask about it. It's only his nature, but I didn't bring it up at the start. I just listened. He asked a couple of questions. Now you said, it was an awkward pause. I said, “Steve, people are saying great things about your speech.” He said, “Oh, that's nice, but what did you think?” I said, “I thought it was good.” I said, “Stories were very well done. I like how it was laid out.” He said, “Okay, thank you.” Hangs up. Phone rings in two minutes. “Ron, give me a grade.” He goes, “I want to know how you think I did.” I gave him a B plus. He said, “Okay,” and I told him why. He said, “Thank you,” and that was it. Now, I start reading the next day. This is the world's best commencement exercise ever. I feel like, I guess I missed that one.
[0:42:09] GM: No, no. But actually, Ron, I think it's really intriguing, because it reminds me when the iPad came out and Steve gets a thousand emails and many of them really brutal, because okay, you've used a different lead and how dare you. It's just so much to swallow getting this awful feedback. But of course, iPad goes on to be this runaway success, but I think the speech is a bit like that. The speech is, I don't know, how would I describe it. It's not super high energy. It's very Steve. It's like, look, a little understated in a way, in the way I’m trying to – I’m delivering this, but it's a speech that has become more and more beloved over time. Then with his death, suddenly, everybody returns to it, rewatches it. There's these personal stories and it's like, that has had a very long shelf life, maybe include over time.
[0:43:03] RJ: That shows exactly how wise Steve is, because when I gave him the grade, it's kind of what you said Greg. I said, “Steve, you read the speech, and I thought your energy level was low. I’ve had the privilege of sitting in the front row of you giving talk after talk after talk and you're the most inspiring person I know. I was engaged, but I wasn't inspired. I would want to be inspired if I’m graduating.” That was the conversation. “That's why I give you B plus.” But he said to me, he said, “Ron, the thing about a graduation speech, it's what they're going to remember is not how you felt. It's what you said. Every word matters. The only way to get the word right was to read the speech.” He goes, “That will stand the test of time at the test of today,” something along those lines. He was right, though, but that's Steve.
Steve had the ability to understand that he's going to do this once, that he had to be very personal, that he wanted to connect with these kids and kids forever and other people, but that was Steve. He had the ability to see things well beyond what I would. Just, how'd you do in your speech today. Yeah, he was looking this in perpetuity almost.
[0:44:19] GM: It's a particular story that captures my attention, because, of course, all of us have given speeches and I’ve spent a decent amount of the last 20 years doing this. To be able to appreciate like, okay, I mean, I know who knows how much really was designed and how much is – it's hard to know what's intentional and what's not in this story, but even this idea of no, I do have to read this one. Every word will count over time.
[0:44:45] RJ: That is what he said. Yeah.
[0:44:46] GM: That's a really important choice, because if you're reading a speech, it is hard to make it as immediately connected with the audience, because you're not you're not responding to them. If they're a little less energy, you can jump up to energy. You can change your story. You can do all sorts of things if you're prioritizing the energy of the people in that audience in that moment. But if you're saying, “No, I want this to be for many, many audiences and even for these people to watch again and again, I’m trying to craft every word.” It's an interesting story when you see how it's all come out.
[0:45:22] RJ: The other one I was going to tell you real quick is when we opened the New York stores, we opened this beautiful 5th Avenue store and you get to do one store on 5th Avenue ever. The Apple store just turned out to be this unbelievable store.
[0:45:35] GM: It really is iconic.
[0:45:36] RJ: Yeah, and I loved Harry Macklow, the developer, said, “Apple changed the skyline of Manhattan. Normally that's done at 55 or 60 stories, they did that in 32 feet.” which is a great quote.
[0:45:48] GM: That’s true.
[0:45:50] RJ: But what’s interesting is Steve came to the opening and we had fun and we went to dinner that night down at Nobu and Soho and we sat down to dinner and he said, “You know what I love about Apple?” There were about eight of us there, I think. He said, “We're going to spend five minutes talking about the 5th Avenue store, and the next two or three hours talking about the next store.” Yeah, that’s another thing about Steve. It was one thing at a time. Once he did it, he moved on. It was about the next great thing he got to do.
That was a really interesting thing, because he wasn't ever pat himself on the back, look what I did. It was all about producing something. I remember looking at the store, and he was going through every fitting in the glass. His eyes looking at the stair and seeing how it’s constructed and how well it was put together. We met his standards, which was very gratifying, but he just loved the design and the beauty of a well-constructed piece. It’s like a piece of art to him. I’ll never forget that message. We'll spend five minutes talking about that store and then we'll spend the rest of dinner talking about the next. That's a good lesson for people.
[0:46:55] JU: I’m mindful of time. I want to make sure that we hear, because I know you have one more moment that you want to talk about, is that right, Ron?
[0:47:01] RJ: You had said, if you can share when you met Steve and the last time you saw him. I will tell you, I had a chance to go visit Steve at his home, probably a week before he passed away. Maybe eight days, maybe six day. Not at the very end, but – I go to his house a lot. Most of my meetings the last years were at his home. It was amazing. No security guards. It's so different than today. The door was unlocked. I would just walk in the front door and go to the kitchen and maybe see Laurene or the kids, go back to see Steve. There's no knocking on the doors. But the last time I went and saw him, we went there, he asked me to come over, spent –
[0:47:40] GM: Can I interrupt for a second? I don’t mean to, but what you just said about it being different than today, I wonder really, because even back then, there were plenty of Silicon Valley visionaries and big wigs who had their entourage and put lots of barriers between them and others. It just seems like, it's more that he was different than it is just that the times were different.
[0:48:03] RJ: I agree with that. I live in area where you know where the CEOs are, because the security guards are always outside the house.
[0:48:10] GM: Exactly.
[0:48:10] RJ: 24 hours a day. People do that. I think it was more Steve. You’re exactly right. But that last day, we spent probably an hour. It’s a lovely conversation. He was very frail. Tired. Laying in bed. At the end, he said, “Ron,” he goes, “You and Bill Campbell.” Bill Campbell was his legendary, the coach of the valley and just a great guy.
[0:48:35] GM: Terrific guy.
[0:48:36] RJ: A good friend of mine. Coached my son eighth grade football. A lot of history there. But he said, “The two of you, you seem to like to hug people. I always see you hugging people when you say goodbye.” I said, “Yeah, that's my nature.” He goes, “But you've never given me a hug.” I said, “Well I just don't think you're that kind of guy.” He goes, “Well, I'd really like a hug.” It was really touching. The only way to do it, I had to literally crawl in bed, because he couldn't get out of bed, but we shared a pretty special moment. That was a really nice way for him to say goodbye. My guessing, he did that as much for me as for him, but it was a great memory.
[0:49:16] GM: Earlier, you had said that Steve loved products and he loved people and he loved all of it. I wanted to ask then, but this is a better time to say it. Did you feel loved by Steve?
[0:49:31] RJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. In a very authentic way. When I did something good, he would let me now and his eyes would sparkle when he tell me. When I did something bad, he would be very direct. But he shared great appreciation with me at all times. That last conversation, he was very appreciative of all the work we'd done together. I won't get into more than the hug, but it was – I felt very much loved by Steve, yeah.
[0:50:04] JU: At that point, you had already moved on from Apple, right?
[0:50:07] RJ: I hadn't left yet. I announced I was leaving, but Steve asked me to stay for six months, or until he passed, because he was nearing the end. I was able to stay until he passed, and then moved on. That was the time, Jeremy. But thank you for asking.
[0:50:23] GM: Do you miss him?
[0:50:24] RJ: I think about him all the time. What I mean is I think everyone who works on that close would say the same thing. You're asking, what would Steve do? He was such a clear thinker and he had such a unique point of view to the world on so many subjects. You're constantly thinking about, what would Steve do? I think about him a lot. That's why it's actually been fun to chat with you about it, because I haven't talked about him for a long time with someone. Hopefully, this has been – hopefully, through these stories, there's been something that will inspire someone to learn something from Steve. Something that at least I saw value and that will help them in their walk, wherever that might be.
[0:51:06] GM: Ron, you've had really unique seats at the table. Of course, this isn't the only contribution that you've made the period at Apple, but you were able to experience, observe and be part of the renaissance of Apple. Really, I think the greatest turn around certainly of that decade, but maybe 50 years or something. I mean, it's an unbelievable turnaround story, especially as you look at how it's all become as a company. You were there at the table all through that in the conversations with Steve directly.
I know I’m speaking for Jeremy here, saying how grateful we are for you to take the time to share some of those poignant moments, some of those keys that can live on for a long time with us and for everyone who's listening. Thank you for your time and for your insights that you shared with us.
[0:51:59] RJ: It was my privilege, my pleasure. I was just one of many. There were a lot of people. I made a little contribution, but so many people did. I want to compliment Tim for what he's done. Tim joined about ’95, or 7. He was there with the Mac. He was there throughout the retail stores. He helped with the retail stores. But if Tim hadn't shepherded the company so fabulously the last decade, post-Steve, the last 11 years since he's been gone, we probably wouldn't think about the company in the same way. Just be another company that had a moment, but it's endured.
So many the products that have endured were one Steve imagined. The iPhone, iPad, the things he worked on, the apps, the way you have a unified system hardware, software, so much and Apple was originally conceived by Steve, but Tim has taken that to another level. The way he's built this business – when I joined Apple, we did 5 billion dollars in revenue a year. Today, Apple does 3 billion dollars a day.
[0:53:01] JU: That's insane.
[0:53:02] RJ: Can you think of the scale of that company with 1.2 billion. We had a few million customers. There's a billion two. It's remarkable what –
[0:53:12] GM: It's a phenomenon.
[0:53:13] RJ: - all the team at Apple has done through the years, led by Steve, continued with amazing leadership by Tim. I’m just happy to have been a part of it.
[0:53:22] GM: I can't help but share a Tim moment here. I was at Stanford when he was the CFO. And as a student, we were invited to many, many events. You really are being spoiled all the time. Bill Gates coming to speak at this event. In that moment, people sometimes were spoiled. They had an apple visitation. Okay, you're going to go meet with the executives in the finances team there at Apple. I arrived, I was the only person to turn up for probably, I don't know, 45 minutes or something. Tim's in there with his immediate team of people and me. It was awkward for me, because I felt really embarrassed they had their whole executive team there and there's me and I’m not qualified to be meeting with this executive team all these years back.
But the reason I share it is it tells you something about Apple's position then versus now. I mean, it says something about being spoiled at the GSB, but it also says, like it's unthinkable now for the same situation to take place. At that time, later than you're describing, but there were three 10-billion-dollar businesses and that's it. That's the whole company. Couldn't there be a fourth 10-billion-dollar business? Of course, as you describe it, there's been this whole Tim phase that has sought to be true to that spirit and principles and ways of thinking and ways of doing business that were incorporated under and when you were there when Steve was there.
[0:54:49] RJ: Well, thanks guys. Everyone's got better things to do now than talk about Apple and Steve and –
[0:54:54] GM: Jeremy, give us the last word.
[0:54:56] JU: Ron, it's awesome to learn from you. You're a wonderful professor. I really love your statement. I wrote it down, kindness is a choice. I think it's a great thing to remember. It's not a gift, it's a choice. Maybe one could say, it's a choice that becomes a gift to others. I appreciate that being a mantra that you live by. I think it's a great thing for all of us. It’s something clearly that even impacted Steve and how he thought about delivering messages, so thank you very much for sharing your time.
I know that it's sometimes diving back in the past can be emotional, but I really appreciate you being willing to go there with us and share with us. It means a lot to us and we hope that lots of people, as you said, really glean insights from this session and are able to implement them into their lives in meaningful ways. Thanks again. Thanks everyone for listening. Until next time, we'll see you soon.
[0:55:48] RJ: Thank you.
[0:55:48] GM: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:55:50] JU: By day, I’m a professor, but I absolutely love moonlighting as a front-row student next to you during these interviews. One of my favorite things is taking the gems from these episodes and turning them into practical tips and lessons for you and your team. If you want to share the lessons you picked up from this episode with your organization, feel free to reach out. I'd be thrilled to do a keynote on the secrets that I’ve gleaned from creative masters or put together a hands-on workshop to supercharge your next off-site adventure. Hit me up at jutley@jeremyutley.design for more information.
[END]
The fine folks over at Section recently interviewed me about some common mistakes I’m seeing folks make when they use AI. One of the biggest ones? The tendency to expect too little, and get just that.