Building Resilient Leadership In Tech With Jossie Haines

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I'm really excited for the guest that I've got today. And I know we're going to have like just an amazing conversation and one that is really aligned. Um, I feel like there's, there's a lot of the things that we feel about, about business and in particular how we show up in, in business contexts that we have great alignment on. So let me share a little bit about her. I'm going to read her bio and then I'm going to jump right in. Her name is Josie Haynes, and she spent 25 years in software engineering leadership, including leading an Emmy-winning team at Apple and creating the VP of Engineering role at Tile. She is now an executive coach for senior tech leaders, coaching them through the moments that matter most— new roles, team turnarounds, building something from scratch, high-stakes transitions— so they succeed in the role and drive real impact. What sets her apart is that she can get into the technical weeds, drive 10,000-foot strategy conversations, and coach mindset shifts underneath. You're going to love my conversation with Josie Haynes, so sit back and enjoy. Okay, Josie, so you just heard me read your very impressive CV, your, your introduction. What is one thing, just one thing that is not part of that bio, your history, your CV? that you would love for people to know about you at the outset of our conversation?

Ooh, that is an interesting one. I have played with computers since I was 5 years old and had a Commodore 64, but my undergrad degree is actually in chemistry and material science. Wow.

Um, I, so first of all, I mean, we're literally dating ourselves now, so anybody wants to look it up, I remember the, the VIC-20 or whatever, the Commodore 360, like, I remember those, those things. We had a Tandy in school.

Oh.

We had a Tandy T2000 or something. I don't know what it was, but it was just so rudimentary. So what was it about, I mean, it's kind of a, an obvious question, but what was it about computers that, that didn't overwhelm you? Because I think on some level there were people that, you know, and I think the word geek gets used, but right. So it's fine to say that. But there were people that geeked out on that kind of thing and people that were kind of intimidated, I wanna say, by it. Yeah. I'm gonna, that's, I think, a, a fair word to use too.

Yeah.

Um, and I was probably of the latter, you know, wasn't great. And I'm gonna blame this on my freaking teachers. I'm taking no responsibility whatsoever for being, for being shitty at math. I had crappy teachers because I love math now. Like I do. So yeah, you know, um, so I was not math or science inclined. And so therefore computers intimidated me. Why, why was it different for you, Josie?

So a few things. One of my brother was an electrical engineer. And so I got to kind of see him do this for a living, right? Obviously slightly different, but I got to see it and he always encouraged me playing around with computers and I really enjoyed, like growing up, I actually didn't have that many friends and like the computer was like kind of my little lifeline to the world. And I think also, you know, we didn't have social media. Like I, I mean, I had AOL starting when I think I was in high school or something like that. So I think something about getting to play with a computer and using it as a way to talk to my friends and be like, Oh, hey, I just did this thing on my computer and it was cool. Like, do you wanna do something similar? Like it was something to talk to people about and it was fun for me, but I feel like right now in the modern world, it can be a lot more overwhelming.

Yeah. Super. And so that's an origin story, like the, you know, and not everybody has that kind of a, a really cohesive You know, looking at where you are today and looking back then and go, oh yeah, I can, I can connect the dots. I, I see all the little breadcrumbs, right? You know, so let's go from that experience to what you ended up doing in postgraduate work.

Yeah.

Because you, you worked, you were on the team, an Emmy Award-winning team at Apple, right?

Yeah.

That's kind of a big deal. Maybe just there's a lot of unemployed people or people coming outta college, let's say, that are, are not quite unemployable, but the world, the marketplace is pretty rough right now. Yeah. And a lot of people are, are pivoting. And that's a cheap plug, of course, for my, my first book called Pivot. Um, but, um, but there are a lot of people I think that are interested in that. So how is it that you did manage to, is there a, is there a secret sauce? Is there a special story associated with you making it into Apple? Because that's no, that's no small feat either.

Yeah. And. There, it was really about my network. Um, I had, you know, I had been at Zynga for 5 years, the gaming company, right around when Facebook— basically Zynga helped Facebook grow into the company it is, uh, uh, today, 'cause gaming was what blew up the platform. And so I was there during that time. We went from 1,000 to 2,000 employees at Zynga in my first year there.

Wow.

Um, and a year before I had left Zynga, my mom actually passed away after struggling with Alzheimer's for 8 years. Um, so I actually left Zynga, moved to Florida to take care of my dad for 9 months. Then when I came back to the Bay Area, I ended up back at Zynga, but working on the ads team instead of on gaming. And while ads tech was really interesting from a scalability perspective. Like, it didn't do it for me. Like, I really love working on things that make an impact to the world and, and help people, or, or at least are aligned with what is fun. And to me, ad tech was like, okay, how do I build the thing that people like, the least shitty experience for people? But nobody likes ads. Nobody goes and is like, I loved that ad experience, right? And so. One of my friends was actually working at— on the Siri team in the infrastructure side, and they were looking for a new manager to come in to work on the Siri on Apple TV experience. So I— and actually funny story is I had actually applied to that job 2 years prior, right before my mom's health really deteriorated and it became clear that she was passing away. So the manager remembered me from when I had previously applied.

And that's one of those things that, again, not that we're giving out career development advice here, but there's a, it's sort of a level at which the follow-up, I always, I mean, on our team, we've always talked about this. The fruit is in the follow-up. And, and so often a no, and we like to refer to our nos, for example, as not nows.

Yeah.

Because it is a not now. I mean, it's not an, it's not a never unless somebody says to you, I will never work with you.

Yeah.

Which nobody's going to say that anyway. Even if they feel that way, they're never going to tell you that. Right. But, but, you know, unless, unless that's the vibe, then it's not now. And so how good are you? How organized are you? How meticulous are you at, at sort of the, the way you, you, you know, either keep in some ways nurturing a relationship or trying to create, you know, a budding relationship and circling back and thinking about the places where, yeah, maybe not now, but 2 years from now. I mean, like you, I keep saying it and I hate that I keep saying this, but you blink your eyes and yeah, a year goes by, right? I mean, so you blink twice, it's 2 years, blah. And, uh, and now you're working at the company that you were not now for earlier.

And I mean, I see this in my coaching world all the time, right? I literally just had somebody. I mentored 6 or 7 years ago when she was just becoming a product manager reach out to me a few weeks ago and say, I'm in my first director-level role and I need help. Like, can you coach me? Right? And so, so also it's, it's about just building relationships. And I think sometimes, you know, as technology leaders, people get into overwhelm around like over-optimizing their networking too. Like, I just went through this with, with one of my coaching clients. She's like, But I'm connected to 1,000 people. What do I do? And I'm always like, all right, we can use a little bit of Claude to help you narrow down the list and then just, just start, right? Just plan, pick 10 people who you intuitively feel like from the list you want to connect with and connect with them, right? I, it's, I think sometimes we try to over-optimize the networking piece and it's like, it really is around relationship building and it's our second-degree connections that Are the ones most likely to find us roles and opportunities and all of those things.

Yeah, indeed. Didn't expect that we'd go there today, but I'm really, no, no, I'm super thrilled that we did actually, because again, this concept of pivoting, I think had its origin, you know, in, I was using it when I wrote the book. I was using the pivot as an analogy, but it was a pivot on the basketball court because there's a way to sort of pivot on a foot and get kind of a 360-degree view of the court. And all of that is within the rules to do and all that kind of thing. So it's, it's a very, it's defensive, but it's also assertive. It's, you know, it's a vision-creating, a clarity-creating kind of an exercise. So I wrote the book, which was a story of my own personal pivot out of practicing law into this business arena, consulting, speaking primarily, uh, at that time, keynote speaking. And, uh, and so the pivot concept has been so tied to, to the startup world, to the VC world. Mm-hmm. And Silicon Valley and technology.

Yeah.

And it was really pejorative at the time, right? You pivoted meant you, you basically failed.

Mm-hmm.

You effed up. The, the model didn't work. And now, you know, but some great pivot stories is like, I think YouTube was started out as a dating site or something like that.

Mm-hmm.

Turns into, you know.

Yeah.

what it is today. So those successful pivots are really remarkable. You've pivoted a number of times in your career. So I think it's fair, just given where the breadcrumbs have led us so far, to ask about that.

Yeah.

What have some of those pivots looked like for you?

Right. And I love talking about this because I think especially in like the social media LinkedIn world, you see people talking about careers. And I think especially there's this belief everyone's career success means you're always going up into the right, you're getting more promotions like that.

Totally linear.

Yeah, it's totally linear. Like, if I mess up once, like, the world is over. And I mean, I have this conversation with folks all the time, even in more senior roles, and I've really taken it to be like, I'm going to follow what I find passionate and interesting right now. I, I love to play, right? Like, my— and When some— I've gotten to the point in my career when, and back in 2018, actually, when I left Apple, I, I basically, I was actually really burnt out. I was going through a lot of imposter syndrome. I actually almost left tech entirely. And I made a decision at that point, which was I had built enough career capital that I was never going to put myself in a position where I was not enjoying what I was doing. And I also decided I was never going to apply to a tech company through traditional, like, tech means again. And I've still had roles since then, which we can talk about too. And so, you know, I think part of it is also just this understanding that it's not this, like, linear thing, right? When I came back to Zynga after I had left, I came back as an individual contributor for a little bit. And I was like, this is what I want to do for a few months before then I ended up being director of engineering for ads. And it was like a great, just like little pivot back into like settling back into the company. After I left Apple, I took 6 months off. I thought I was going to start a business back then. Didn't end up really doing that. A former boss who was the head of engineering at Tile at the time brought me, convinced me kind of Grudgingly to, to come join. And he was like, it's fine. You don't have to. He's like, come do it part-time. The web team really needs some help. Come do it like 10 to 20 hours a week. Like, it's cool. Um, and I came back and it was just, it was so nice just being like an individual again. And I was just like an individual contributor on the team. And it was nice just like bouncing back into that. And then it really helped me build my self-confidence. And then I finally decided, okay, no, I'll come join as your as director of engineering for partnerships. And and so I share these stories because sometimes you think like your career just needs to go up and up and up. And right, I became I actually created my VP of engineering role at Tile, which we can talk about. And then Tile was acquired by Life360. And you know, I think everyone. You know, and I was on the executive team, right? Like I could have stuck around at Life360 and made most likely quite a bit of money from stock options, things like that. Stuck around for 2 to 3 years, whatever. But I decided to leave. Like I left after the acquisition and I helped the team transition because I really wanted to go into coaching. I had seen the power of coaching in my career. And I was like, this is what I want to do. And, you know, I've worked on multiple products that have been used by billions of people and that has its own reward, but there is just something truly rewarding to me about being able to help people make deep transformations in their lives and really connect back with happiness and success and Defining that on their terms, not what somebody else wants.

Yeah. And I, I wanna create a bridge between that, that type of coaching.

Mm-hmm.

And the way that you support leaders in, in the technology space. 'Cause I wanna, I wanna talk a little bit about what that's like today. Um, but before we get there, I do have a question. I'm just, and then it's not an easy question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, which is, yeah, you've been coached. Obviously, as you just said, has had a big impact on you, which is why you wanted to do the same thing for other people. What's maybe one piece of advice or some counsel that you got that you're still, it's part of your daily, because I know we, we've all gotten some, I mean, most people I think have gotten some decent or great coaching at some point. Um, not every piece of great coaching, you know, has a season. It's great at the time, but maybe 10 years later, you're not still thinking about that or, you know, utilizing it. Is there something that you're still utilizing that a coach shared with you some time ago that you could share with us?

Yeah. And it really ties to this like pivot piece, which is, um, and, and I had talked about this when people are talking about crafting their roles, which is if you don't ask, it's, it's a definite no. Right. And, and I think we are so Scared sometimes to just ask the question, right? Because we are afraid that no is going to come. And what's the— and the other thing is I think sometimes we make up stories in our head that somebody is going to get upset. And the worst that happens usually is somebody says no. And like you said, that isn't— that doesn't mean no forever. That means no right now.

And, and it's, uh, and it's funny because a mentor of mine some years ago used to phrase it some similarly. He would say, no ask is, is, you know, automatically no. I mean, that's the thing about it, right? Is if you don't ask, you've already given yourself a no. The answer's always no when you don't ask.

Yep.

I mean, and it's as basic or simple or simplistic as somebody might be thinking that sounds. Just try that out in your life. If you've never heard that advice or if you've not applied applied that advice, more importantly, if you're not applying that in your day-to-day, um, the things that you're, that you want, you don't ask for, that you make up whatever the stories are in your own head as to why it's not appropriate. It's not the time. It's pushy. It's, I don't know, whatever your little voices and your view, uh, on that is. Yeah. Challenge, challenge that. Disrupt that.

And something related to that, that I see a lot of technology leaders doing, and I have to catch myself doing this too. Is we try to over-optimize, right? So I, when I ca— like, I'm really good at catching myself like, oh, am I spending all this time learning about this thing instead of taking action on it because I'm worried I'm not going to be quote unquote perfect or great or amazing at it, right? And so that's really the question to like ask yourself every morning is like, What's the aligned action I can be taking today? Hmm.

So that I think is a, a great distillation of something, you know, that's big and, and you put it into something really finite like that, that anybody can just do, I think is really powerful. I want to ask, I want to talk about that. That's part of your career history where, where you're involved, like you say you were at Zynga and then it gets acquired by Life360, but you were working on a particular product before that, that Got acquired. I love to kind of get into that hackathon piece of it because I want to, I want to sort of unpack a little bit of what it, what it looks like today, uh, to, to, to be that. I'm not sure if the word is, it's, it's sort of a VC mentality around how you move through a product cycle and, uh, and the speed of that. So, absolutely.

So 7, so I used to work at Tile. It's a little, I'll show you a little Tile here. It's a little Bluetooth key tracker. I mean, you can put it on anything, but like the default thing people put it on is their keys. There's also a wallet one. I've had it help me find my purse on airplanes before that I've left. Apple has created their own, their AirTags, but Tile existed long before Apple took the idea and created their own. And so I worked at Tile for 5 years, and I think right around when I crafted my VP of engineering role there, we had, we had hackathons like every 6 months to a year, and my hackathon project was we were noticing in the usage data that, you know, most people on average have 2 tiles. Like, 5 is kind of a stretch, right? Average is 2. But we were seeing a lot— a number of accounts having like more than 100 tiles. And we realized that it was actually businesses using this. And the Tile app, let's be clear, is not focused on having more than like 10 or 20 of these things. This thing does not scale. It literally crashes at over like 1,000. Um, it is not meant for scale. And we noticed that there was some really interesting use cases. So I had a hackathon project and basically built a web interface for companies to, um, do B2B asset tracking through using Tiles. And we were going to actually build that product within Tile and ended up— but then Tile was acquired by Life360. Life360 is a very consumer-focused company, and so the project was killed. However, one of the Life360 co-founders who runs Hubble Networks, his own company, which is Bluetooth in space, said, oh, that's an interesting project that I think we should be kicking off. And so he ended up hiring Tile's chief business officer to come basically run this project called Smart— it's called SmartPin. And, um, so he ended up reaching out to me and was like, Josie, do you wanna actually build the thing we were gonna build back at Tile? So I decided, uh, this was an opportunity.

That idea got killed, right? When, when, when the company was acquired by Light360, they said, yeah, yeah, yeah. That B2B idea.

Yeah.

Not, not so much.

Right. But it's still, we all knew it had value, right? Like we all knew there were legs there and. Um, because people still reached out asking for this. And so he reached out and was like, Joseph, do you want to do this? Like, we can finally do this. So I was like, I was, you know, a year and a half, 2 years into my coaching practice. And I was like, okay, all right, Jeff, I'll, I'll come do it. He convinced me. Uh, so I scaled back on coaching, uh, brought in a few of my old team members. And we basically in around 10 months ended up launching SmartPin in May of 2025. And I mean, it was remarkable. Um, even with very little marketing, like there was very little outbound, you know, people were reaching out, people were finding us. So there, and so I stayed till actually I left in February of this year. I, You know, we got it to a pretty good, some nice incoming revenue. I got a nice founding engineering team. I set up another engineering leader for success who, funny enough, this is the second time he's actually come in under, and I've been like, I'm leaving. Would you like to come run this team? And so again, this is where your network is very valuable. And it makes it easy to build things when you already know really talented folks that you can bring in, uh, to build something. And so they're running a, the, you know, a nice, uh, I think the whole team now is a little over 10 people in SmartPin. And, uh, but it was really exciting kind of getting to watch that whole zero to one journey.

So I wanna, I wanna just focus in, like zoom in on that, on the zero to, you know, zero to launch or zero to like orbit or, you know, gra— you know, when you, when you, uh, what, what is it? Velocity. Um, uh, oh gosh, what's that term when you, you know, you break the Earth's, you know, gravitational—

Oh, escape velocity.

Escape velocity. Right, exactly. So, so let's zero in on that. And then I got a really, I think, um, you know, for me it's a really interesting follow-up question about what you, something you just said a moment ago. So I've written it down. So I'm going to not forget to come back to it. So what is it like, you know, in 10 months to kind of move through that, through that process? And that's quite quickly, it seems.

Yeah. I mean, I think we all had the benefit of having thought about this a lot. And my role at Tile prior to being VP of software engineering was I led All of our partner integrations on the engineering side. So I did a lot of zero-to-one work. We integrated Tile into Intel-based laptops. We worked with pretty much every major smart assistant that you can imagine to get integration. So you can say, find my keys. And so, you know, we even were talking to like Roomba for a while, right? So I'm very used to this like zero-to-one space and A lot of it comes down to really being clear of like, what is the MVP? Like, what is the must-have that we need to build? And, you know, I coach some founders right now who used to be engineers. And the biggest thing I always have to harp on them about is we love to build. And it is not about continuous building. It is about like, what is that minimum viable product? That you can start iterating on and learning from your customers about, right? So we got like the basics of like, all right, here's the web dashboard we need, right? Here's how people can do the minimum level of notifications. Here's where they can set up like, you know, the equivalent of like a little geofenced site. And that was it. I was like, this is what we need to launch. Then we need to get customers to start looking at it. And then I think part of the other thing is we didn't— the business model that we have today is actually different than the business model we launched from. We were like always going to do a subscription-based service, but it was like, is the hardware included or separate? And all of those things were— and how, how was pricing included and thought about? Like that evolved like multiple times since launch. And I think that's the thing. I think sometimes you get into this almost this fixed, like, and I mean, I think on the flip side, you also need to realize there is ongoing engineering cost if you are pivoting, right?

Yeah.

And so it is about being clear on, you don't wanna pivot every month because then your engineers are really never making forward progress. But sometimes the pivot isn't a backwards thing, even if it means throwing some things away. It means, okay, I've now learned new things. Like, this is a very intentional pivot based on all of this new data, which will hopefully take us to the next level.

I mean, it's the Edison quote that's always used, and I don't know whether it's, you know, it's been probably exaggerated. tons of time, right? It's the, you know, 999 ways to not make a light bulb.

Right.

So the, the thousandth, you know, the 1,000th time is the one, right? You go, oh, right. It's some reverse engineering on some level. So when you, you mentioned the, the zero-to-one space, can you tell us, give us a sense from your perspective, you were, you know, creating a recipe for being successful in that zero-to-one space. And we're, and because you're a coach, I think a lot of this has to do with behaviors. It's mindset and behaviors, right? So what, what's the recipe for the mindset and behavioral change that's required for somebody to be able to effectively move from 0 to 1 the way you've seen?

So first, be willing to start selling before you even build potentially, right? Like you, you can, and again, I think especially as engineers, and I see this a lot with the engineers, it's like we get into this like, But I need to build this thing and present it to them. And it's like, no, no, no, you need to talk to them and understand what the pain points are and then slowly iterate. And like the more, and it also doesn't have to be perfect at the beginning, right? Don't let perfection be the enemy of good enough, right? Like, yes, in the future you might need a much more complex notification system, but is that Which you need at launch. And then I would say the last piece, which I have definitely seen bite people multiple times, is you need to be really, really clear about who your ideal customer is. Because just because your product could satisfy multiple customers that maybe have very different sizes, but at the foundation, But I mean, even let's talk about SmartPin, right? Like a tiny little car dealership could use it to track license plates, or a huge enterprise could use it to track, you know, thousands to tens of thousands of invaluable devices that they don't want to walk out of a factory, for example. However, the needs for both of those is actually very different if you're thinking about what you're fundamentally focused on building. And if you try to prioritize both at the same level, when you've got a really small team, you're likely to build something that actually doesn't satisfy anybody. And so I'm not saying don't think about the fact that, hey, maybe in the future you want to scale big, or maybe you actually want to start with those bigger customers. And if the little guys are happy with like it enough, like that's great too. But really having that prioritization crystal clear is what really differentiates what I've seen, like these zero-to-one launches that actually work.

Yeah. So the question now that I wanna circle back to is based on something you said earlier, this, this moving Through that process of an idea, ideating, discovering something, sensing an opportunity in the marketplace to, let's call that zero in these terms, to one being there's an MVP, there's something, there's a product that's, that's, that can be launched, that, that you're gonna graduate, if you will, to the next sort of next level of, of its journey into more Maturity.

Yeah.

That, that zero to one journey for me feels like there's a, there's a question about letting go because to create something like this, it's like your baby. I mean, it, it becomes your baby. It's the baby of the pro— of the founders. It's the baby of the, of the architects, the engineers, the coder, like everybody's.

Mm-hmm.

And yet The cycle, if you will, for a VC or for, for, you know, for even companies that have to continue to iterate new things to be relevant, to be profitable, you, you kind of have to move through that cycle and, and then let go. Well, I want to understand from your perspective, what's the mindset when you're coaching somebody, you're coaching an executive or, you know, somebody senior. who you feel like is, uh, you know, hanging on to that baby too long because they either, you know, don't know what the next baby will be or whatever the reasons. I mean, let me get some thoughts from you on, on, on, have you seen that? Have you, you know, sort of diagnosed that? Have you helped somebody or, you know, with that?

And I, I think you often need somebody potentially from the outside, right? And This is why I think like all founders need a coach, right? Because I think you get so into it that sometimes you don't realize you aren't letting go when you need to. And on the flip side, that doesn't mean you're not allowed to have strong opinions, right? I think that's, that's the duality of it, right? Sometimes it's about, no, I have this decision, I have this belief, and I'm going to Keep trying different avenues to see if this pathway is the right way. And that's okay. Like you can have like a vision, but realize that the steps along the way to get that vision may be different. Right. And that I think is the key in the letting go. I call it, uh, in my terms, I call it loving accountability. I always tell people like, I am a judgment free zone here. Like, I will call out when I see you holding onto something or making a decision that I don't think is potentially the best. And I'm always doing it from the perspective that I wanna see you thrive and succeed, right? Like, that's what— and I also tell people, like, this is also my opinion. Like, I'm not gonna be hurt if you don't agree with me. Like, let's have a discussion about this. So, um, it's kind of that quote about strong opinions loosely held, right? It really is like you can have a vision, like, and, and you potentially don't want that changing that much, right? You don't want to be waffling on what that vision is, but where you really do need to let go is on the how, because the how can change. And if you're so stuck on how you're going to get to that vision that you don't see that there's potentially a much easier opportunity to get there. And I see this with early founders a lot, like if it's their first company. Um, I actually, I have a founder I'm coaching right now and, you know, he has a great product in like the developer productivity space. And, you know, he researched like, how do you do traditional marketing, right? And it talks about, You know, you create, you know, either ads or you reach out to people, you have a lead funnel, you know, you send kind of like sales lead gen type messages to CTOs potentially. And I was like, look, you're an engineer, a very senior engineer at a very well-known public company is your background. That is differentiator. Like, how many— and I told him, I was like, how many messages have you gotten on LinkedIn on a daily basis back when you were at your full-time job that you just ignored because it looked like a sales pitch from a vendor? And he's like, oh yeah. And I was like, but what if instead you go and have a peer conversation with CTOs and say like, here's— I've been doing research around the challenges you're all facing around AI, and I have some insights that I'd be interested in learning what you're doing. It's like, they are much more likely to hop on a call with you then, right? And so I think it's like sometimes the coaching piece is really showing people that just like the traditional right way to do things is not always the easy or smart way to be doing things.

So when it comes to that letting go, that process of letting go, Is there something that you, that you feel is a catalyst for more success there? Because again, in the VC space, for example, they invest in something, that's the baby, of course.

Yeah.

Um, they want it to succeed. And then when they start to see it succeed, then they are, you know, and even before that, sort of already looking out into the ecosystem for the next, that next opportunity, right?

Yeah.

So they're, you know, And you could say that's more transactional, I guess, but that's kind of, again, a negative bit of a negative way to look at it, but it is transactional. It certainly doesn't seem like it's attached. And I think that's the question here is like, how attached, how attached, you know, is, is a wise level of attachment, you know, when it comes to how you bring something from 0 to 1.

Yeah.

Because that's, because that's the part, that's the lens I'm looking at it through. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, so the other thing you need to decide, right, is like, are you building this thing with an exit in mind? Right? Are you building this thing with a desire to run it for another 10 to 20 years? Right? And there's no right or wrong between either of those, right? You can decide, oh, my desire is to build this very much like you were saying, like the VC will see it succeed. It'll try to go through an acquisition, right? But there's also on the flip side, nothing wrong with deciding, you know, I really want to build this and this is like the thing I want to see how it runs for the next 10 to 20 years. And hey, maybe I know I'm not going to make as much money because I'm not going to make an exit, but that's an intentional decision. And I think that's coming at it from that place is where letting go ends up being important, right? If you just kind of fall into that decision. Mm-hmm. Then you're like, oh, I need to let go of this. It's being sold. It's like, no, like when you're starting something new and looking at the zero to one piece, like you should be pretty clear about what your end goal is, right? And like from a financial transactional perspective, people will tell you that your end goal for creating a business is to sell it and then start the next thing because that is how you will get more money. I am not disagreeing with that. And at the same time, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You also get to decide what your version of success looks like. And if your goal is not to go make millions and millions of dollars, and it's not about just like playing the game, and you started this thing because you're really passionate about it and you really want to run it for the next 10, 20, 30 years until you retire, there's also nothing wrong with that. And I think that is the thing that people don't talk about.

Right. And so I'm thinking about somebody listening to this and applying it, of course, as we always do to their own lives, to their own situations. I think the question is a fundamental one and one that you can ask at the beginning, best at the beginning, of course, but can be asked at any point along the The path is what is my true intention?

Yes. Yeah.

Because that, that will answer, or at least lead to what you're, what you're bringing out, Josie, which is if your true intention is, this is, this is something I want to, I want to grow and be a part of, and it's going to be my calling and my purpose for the next, you know, whatever many years.

Yeah.

You really ought to know that at the start.

Yes.

Versus transactionally speaking, what I want to do is create something successful that I can sell so that I can then leverage it. to create the next thing in order to be able to sell that as well. All right. So I want to, as we wrap up here, I just got a few minutes, but I want to ask you about something that's related to resilience. So here's how I want to tee this up, because I think you're the perfect person to incubate this, this idea with. So I watched a video of Jensen Huang, who everybody I'm sure at this point knows, CEO of NVIDIA, giving a speech to a group of grad students, business school grad students at Stanford. So, you know, like this high-end business graduate group. And so he starts out saying, congratulations, you know, you all should, you know, be, feel very proud of yourselves. And, and I'm sure, you know, that you have high expectations as you would imagine. And he makes a joke, you know, because just to be able to pay the tuition at Stanford, it's like a big deal, whatever. your loans, et cetera. Right. But you should have high, he goes, you probably have high expectations. And then he literally pulls the rug out from under them because the next thing he says to them is, but in my experience, people with high expectations have low resilience.

Yes. Yeah.

You might've seen that clip. I'm not sure if you have yet.

I did not see that clip, but it is, it is something that the research very much aligns with. That being true.

So say more about that. I could, I may come on to say a little bit more about what he said next, but I want to say more about that, please.

Yeah. So when you've been so successful, right, and you're a high performer, you don't build the muscle for accepting negative feedback or negative things happening because you're so used to things just succeeding for you. So that is a muscle. That needs to be built. And it's one that often high performers don't get to build because it's not happening to them often. And then from a very neuroscience perspective, when something negative shows up, like our amygdala gets hijacked, right? We go into fight or flight. Fight or flight. Like it takes at least 30 minutes, if not on average 2 hours for our thinking brain to literally turn back on to be able to process the negative thing that just happened or occurred to us. This is why, like, I really, like, I was just talking to people about receiving feedback and I always tell people like the biggest piece of advice that nobody gives about receiving feedback is the skill to say I need to think about this and I'll come back to you tomorrow. Right. Because I think everyone's being taught like, no, no, you need to learn emotional resilience and all this stuff. And it's like, your brain literally shut down. Like, I don't—

I haven't heard, I haven't really heard a word you've said since you told me I suck.

Yeah. And so high performers, and then I think it's also the Especially the higher up you go, the more successful you get, the more kind of cushy the life gets, right? The harder the fall, the fear of the fall can be, right? And I think that is the other piece is if you're, you've constantly been going in this like upward trajectory. This fear of falling can be really hard, right? I say that this is one of the challenges with the world right now, especially, you know, the tech industry prior to, you know, a few years ago had been going up and to the right since like 2009, 2010. So we have a whole generation of people who've never lived through a crash, right? And, you know, having been through the dot-com crash where 25% of this valley got laid off during that time, just we didn't have social media crying and screaming about it.

What was it? Puppets.com or socks.com?

Pets.com.

Pets.com.

Yes.

Some of us remember.

Yep.

Yep.

And then, you know, the 2008 financial crash, right? I come at this as like, yeah, we're most likely going to have a crash. We're most likely in the middle of a crash right now. And we're most likely going to get over it like every other crash we have looked at financially. Right. And yet I have friends who started in the industry after that and just never having had to build the resilience of going through that. And since it's been so long since the last one, it's almost like— and now social media is so much more. than it ever was back then, that there's all these compounding impacts to this.

Yeah. So he goes on to say, basically, he says, you know, it's 30 years, you know, obviously it's a 30-year-old company, more than 30 years now. Um, and they suffered a lot. And he says, you know, when my team comes to me and says, you know, that they've gone through something or something's gone wrong, he kind of applauds it. So, you know, The last thing he says to this graduate group, he says, so I wish you ample amounts of pain and suffering. Can you imagine being in this seat to hear this, you know, this modern-day Steve Jobs say that? It's like, wow.

But it, you know, it's true though. Like it is true. You know, I, I reflect back on my life and, um, I forget if I mentioned this while we were recording or before I You know, my mom passed away after struggling with Alzheimer's for 8 years, and I had to basically remotely caregive for my mom. And my dad was suffering from serious mental health issues while trying to do this. And so it was a really hard point in my life. And, um, I always like right now, even through like when challenging moments come up, I can look back and be like, if I made it through those 8 years, or well, in the 9 years, cuz the year after was pretty rough too. Like if I can make it through that, I can pretty much handle anything that comes to me.

Yeah.

And so that's one part of it. I think another part of it is also a self-belief, right? I, the reason, one of the reasons I don't have fear as much right now, and not to say like I don't We all get fear sometimes, right? We are humans. But where I come back to is I 100% in my soul believe I can make money, right? Like if coaching fell apart as a practice tomorrow because AI became like amazing coaches and somehow you never needed a coach again, like I'd figure out a different way to make money. I truly believe in my resourcefulness, in my ability to adapt and change and do something new. And I believe that is where resilience starts, right? It's not like you can make up some like terrible event happening and pain and suffering, right? But what you can control, like what you have control about starting today, is developing that belief.

Yes. I mean, it is literally the, because our company Workwell does a lot of research on resilience, but in the end, if there's one thing, you know, you could sort of point to from a, uh, from the standpoint of the species, like the human species, but every species on the planet, it's this capacity for adaptability. That's the reason we're here. Darwin, you know, wrote about it a long time ago. It's, it's not the survival of the fittest. It's not his quote. Because the fittest, the strongest, the wise, you know, the smartest, the most intelligent are not the ones that survive. It's those that are best able to adapt to their changing environment. That's, that's why we're here. We're the legacy of that. We are, that is us. So if you don't believe that you truly have the ability to adapt to almost any environment, well, you're lacking, you're lacking the most important part of the equation to begin with.

Yeah.

Like you said, the belief that you, you'll be okay because you have what it takes to be okay.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, I mean, it's also, there's also an element of people, you know, just wanting to avoid pain. I mean, that's what, you know, fear is really just not— somebody once called it the false evidence appearing real or something. I've been taught that it's more anticipation of pain.

Yeah.

And when we anticipate pain, that's what fear is. So we're thinking, oh, there'll be pain associated if I lose my position, my job, my business goes down, or my business changes, whatever it might be. The fear is that I'll experience pain.

Yes. And for very logical folks, yes. And for very logical folks, which a lot of technology leaders are, it is This, it's twofold, but it's not wanting to feel that emotion and or never having been taught how to feel emotions. And I mean, I, I resonate with that one because after my mom passed away, it actually took me 8 years before I fully processed and let myself feel the grief. From that. I went on a vacation to visit my best friend and I ended up crying on and off for a week. And I said, that was like one of the best vacations I've ever taken in my life, despite the fact that I spent my evenings crying because I allowed myself to feel. And it's something that I think, again, in the corporate world, it's like, oh, those are those mushy things. Like those are not important to deal with. Like if you're having feelings, you just should tamp them down. And it's like, And I'm like, no, actually, if you learn how to process your emotions and let them flow through your body, so they're not stuck, you're going to thrive so much more and be willing to take action.

It will certainly not have you repeating a pattern of avoidance.

Yes.

Because this is how we respond to those things is through distraction. And our bodies are great at that too.

Oh yeah.

Separate topic, but our bodies will conveniently find ways to, to grab our attention as opposed to dealing with the emotion. There's a wonderful old book by Dr. Um, Sarno, I think is his last name. It's called Healing Back Pain. So those of you that, there'll be in the show notes, there'll be links to, to Josie's website and the work that she does as a coach and lots of other things and anything else that we've made reference to in the in our talk, but this book in particular, I think is also good to include because it's, it's a book about how our, our, our bodies, our minds really are very, very clever at distraction so that we don't have to feel those emotions.

Yeah.

So all of a sudden you've got like a low, you know, like back spasm and your back goes out and you, you know, you can't stand up for hours and you can't work for a couple of days. And, and that's, by the way, the most common reason for a missed day of work and you go, well, what's that all about? And, you know, like, is it structural? Is it the, you know, the car accident I had? Is it whiplash? Is it, you know, like, what is it? And often it's just stuck emotion. It's literally the body's way to keep you from dealing with, you know, something, your mind keeping you from dealing with something. And that's just, you know, the mind is a trickster. I think John Kehoe once said, so So it's really, it's really an interesting thing to try to hack what's going on inside between your ears, right? And mine. And Josie, I have loved this conversation. I feel like I literally could continue talking to you and maybe we'll just do a part 2 of this. I know.

Yeah, I would love to. I feel like we have so many more things that we could talk about too.

So, so cool. Our audience will often ask for that. So that's really, that's really great. Of course, there'll be a few postscript words from me, so stick around for that, folks. Um, but I just for now want to thank Josie for Everything she shared today. I took copious notes. I just thought so many really great things that you did share. Um, and I look forward to the next time that we get to chat. So thank you.

Me too. Thank you.

Well, I've got to add this to my personal list of favorite episodes from the Change Proof podcast. I just love talking to Josie. And, and if you'd love a part 2 of this conversation, please let us know. You can, um, just email us at team@workwelllabs.com or team@adamarkel.com if you prefer. And with comments, questions that you might have for Josie and I, you can, you can always do that as well. We'd love to answer those for you. But I just felt like, man, oh man, she and I, um, are simpatico. I loved what she shared about how, how it is that, that we, we often are, are, um, getting in our own way from fear, but this particular type of fear that she described, uh, that leaders have, you know, Really the fear of that fall, the fear of the possibility of that fall and the pain that's associated with that is one of those things that I think does really, really get in the way. She shared some insights about feedback that it's a requirement of any entrepreneur, any leader, any executive that we develop this muscle, a muscle for negative feedback. Think about that for a second, a muscle for negative feedback. Because if we don't, then we are less resilient than those that have. And that was this concept that Jensen Huang shared with graduate group business students, graduates at Stanford University, where he's saying to them, look, you have high expectations and that's probably going to be your biggest issue. That's going to be the thing that could in fact get in the way of your success because they haven't yet developed that, that muscle for negative feedback. And from a neuroscience standpoint, that they'll, you know, sort of seek to avoid experiencing anything but success. And that's just not the road of most leaders. It's not the, it's not the path that we're on as human beings in, in most, in so many respects. And to the extent that we've just been able to avoid adversity or others around us have helped us, you know, create and, and curate, if we could use that word here, an environment where we don't have to deal with a lot of negative feedback. Well, it might be that that's kind and that was compassionate and empathetic and all those good things. And yet it might've also set us up for failure down the road because we won't be able to deal with it. We won't know how to, to overcome it quickly. We won't have the, the self-belief that we can adapt and move forward based on that, that we'll not just survive it, but we'll will thrive in spite of it. And that because we lack that self-belief, that, that may impact our confidence in that moment and may contribute to us not being able to make the best decision possible to be able to pivot. In other words, in the moment without feeling sort of weighed down by that issue of low resilience, low adaptability, or low appetite even for adversity. And I know it sounds funny to say that because who really wants to have an appetite for adversity? And yet resilient people know that they've been able to overcome things. So when those things happen, they're not devastating. In fact, they are often a catalyst for growth. So love this conversation and love where we tracked it and how we also looked at how we, you know, what's the mindset of somebody that can move from 0 to 1? In terms of incubating an idea and getting it to that MVP, that minimally viable product stage, to then be able to learn what is needed and pivot again, yet again, in order for that product to make it to the marketplace, to scale even, and to ultimately lead to an exit. We also track sort of a first-tier question, a really valuable First domino question, if you will. What's your true intention when you start something? Is your true intention to exit? Is it your true intention that the thing that you're creating is something that you're going to eventually let go of, graduate and let go of so that you can then move on to something else and work through that same very sort of seamless process? That's a question we ask at the beginning because if we ask I think it, you know, if we don't ask it, I mean, it's better to ask it anytime, even in the middle, I suppose. But if you don't ask it at all, then you're lacking a certain clarity that will help you to be able to move without resistance. And ultimately in business, that's in anything really. I think we need to move as resistance-free as possible. And these things, when we let go of our attachment to things, when we let go of our fear, when we Are able to feel our emotions and express our emotions and not try to avoid our emotions. All these things create a more resistance-free existence for us, life for us, and, and experience, uh, in everything that we do. This among many things we discussed today. And so, so super, uh, appreciative to Josie for that conversation. If somebody you know would benefit from hearing this, please share this episode with a friend, a colleague, a family member, et cetera. Again, let us know your feedback. And as always, I want to just thank you for your time. Thank you for your presence on the show. Even though we don't get to see each other, I can feel you all out there listening. And really, I'm so grateful for our community, this expanding group that are the people that are leaning into the Change Proof principles. And soon, soon the Reculture principles, something we'll be talking about really, really soon. So thanks so much.

Thank you.

As always, and ciao for now.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com to get your own free resilience assessment. Assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.