GA 638 | Separating Risk from Being Reckless with George Barrios

Anytime you're going to do something big, you're going against the grain, you're going against the status quo. People are going to be on the sidelines, you know, pointing at you. And so, you know, if you think everybody's going to be rooting behind you, they're not. Some people will not be. And so to get through that, you need to do the work that drives the conviction to push through.

Today I am excited to welcome George Barrios to the show. Now, George is an author and he's written, recently written a book called Sometimes Wrong, but Never in Doubt. And we had a great conversation today, um, really about the book, but also just about, uh, well, as you'll hear, it was a wide-ranging conversation. So, uh, so George will kind of, uh, peel the curtain back a little bit here, but he's got a really pretty powerful background. In fact, um, he, uh, spent some time working at a high level, uh, with the WWE. Yes, the wrestling organization. So like I said, a super dynamic guy with a really, really, uh, strong background. And so really throughout the conversation, we, we get into, um, a lot of different things. Like, we really opened up with, um, what— like, the whole idea of confidence and arrogance and like, what's the difference, right? Because then there's a, there's a, there's a, there's some thin ice, if you will, between you two. And so that's how we opened up. And then we really just kind of dig in through many different human behavioral topics and, um, and ideas that he touches on throughout the book. And, uh, it's really good, uh, really good conversation. I think you're going to enjoy this one. So show notes can be found over at gembapodcast.com. This is episode 638. Again, gembapodcast.com, and look for episode 638. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. George, welcome to the show. How's it going?

It's going great. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. Where are you calling in from?

I am calling from Fairfield, Connecticut, where I've lived for the past 16, 17 years.

Nice. Nice. All right. Very good. Very good. Well, I'm super excited. As we were kind of talking before we hit record, you got a prolific background, so I don't even know how you're going to get through all that. But one thing in particular really caught my eye, and maybe we'll touch on that here in a second. But George, before we get into that, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guests sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Oh, it's a great question. There's so many quotes. Well, I guess one is top of mind just because I was talking about it with someone. I will say, "Chip on shoulder equals chips in pocket." Oh, what's that mean to you? Well, you know, the first time I heard it, you know, the reason it kind of resonated is because I have— unfortunately, I don't recommend it, but I have carried a big chip on my shoulder. I couldn't even tell you why it's there, but but it's there. And the person who was saying that, he was talking about founders. He's an investor, VC, venture investor. And he said that one of the things he had found is that founders who set out with something to prove, and it was deep in them that they needed to prove something, he had found translated to success. So, you know, like in life, you find things that remind you of yourself and you go, "Yeah, I'll take that and I'll grab it." So, I just remember when he said it, I said, "Yeah." I've kind of traveled with a chip on my shoulder for a while and it's not always great, but I think net-net, it's been a positive.

I mean, not to probe too much, but I am genuinely curious about where do you think it came from? Like, have you had it since you were a kid or is it an adult thing or?

Yeah, yeah. It's been there. First fight that I can remember, I was in second grade, and it was bad enough that the nuns and priests combined threw me out of the school and, you know, said I needed a note from my parents to get back in because it was so bad. So the answer is, I think it's been there for a long time. My guess, it's a combination of temperament, you know, how you're wired. And, you know, I grew up, you know, in tougher circumstances and have been doubted along the way. Sometimes, the doubts were well placed, but sometimes, maybe you think they're a little bit unfair. And so, I think those are the main ingredients. There's something inside for whatever reason, and then the context also shapes those things.

Got it. Got it. All right. Well, hey, George, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your background. And obviously, you got a lot going on these days as a grown-up. So, I'll let you navigate that.

Yeah, no, yeah, I'm happy to talk about it. And by the way, I got it before I even start, you know, it's been a long time since I've used the word Gemba. Now, I am a green belt, I think, like you. So, I picked it up at Praxair, early role in my career. And so, anyway, I was looking forward to this conversation just because, hey, it'll be somebody, you know, the guy knows what it means, which is awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Gemba Academy. We picked the name, well, actually, I guess we chose it because one of my business partners, John Miller, he had a consulting company called Gemba Research back in the day. And so we stole the Gemba from that and then just added Academy because we were teaching, right?

Well, you know though, right? It's go to the place, right?

That's right. Yeah. The place the work is done.

Yeah. And so, in any event, I learned that early on in my career. I've applied at multiple places. But yeah, getting back to your question, born in Flushing, Queens to two Cuban immigrants who had come to the United States a few years before I was born in the middle of the Castro Revolution, was kind of raised by a nuclear family. So, my mom's sisters lived in the building and close by, grandfather was there. Raised that way, which is amazing. My dad, unfortunately, died when I was 9. So, we ended up moving around as my mom found places to work. She had come here, had gotten her master's degree in Spanish to be able to teach in school. She had been a college professor in Cuba before she had to leave. So, in any event, and then we kind of bopped around through that, ended up going to the University of Connecticut where I never applied. My mom filled out the application because I thought I was too smart. To go to college. So, thank God she did that. Almost flunked out, but turned it around towards the end there. And then, I've had an interesting career, multiple industries and always moving between strategic management, financial management, and general management. So, I was lucky. I got to run my first business when I was 29 or 30 for Praxair. So, a large company, but they had a semiconductor business. So, got my first taste of general management at a pretty early age. So, did those different roles at Time Warner, Praxair, New York Times, a couple of entrepreneurial things in there. And then, in 2008, what everybody loves to talk about because everybody's a wrestling fan, especially in the United States, is I joined WWE as a CFO and Chief Strategy Officer, and a few years later became co-president along with Michelle Wilson. We did that together for 12 years, transformed the business, ending with a $9— well, $20 billion merger with UFC to form TKO. So, just something I'm super proud of, the time there and the work that we did together. And then for the last 5 years, Michelle and I have had our own business, Isos Capital, to invest and advise in sports. So, we took Lucky Strike public, rejoined the WWE board to do that, to architect the merger that I mentioned with UFC. And for the last couple of years, I've been working with CF— CBC, large private equity firm, to form Global Sport Group, which we just closed over the last few weeks. But we've been working with them on that for almost 2 years. So, um, it's the largest sports investment company in the world. We're— Michelle and I are investors and on the board. Uh, we just did our most recent transaction, about closed about a month ago. We bought the largest equestrian business in the United States, so added that to the portfolio. Michelle and I are actually co-chairs of that business. So yeah, it's been a, a great run, a lot of lessons. Some more painful than others, but all valuable.

All right. Well, and you're also an author. So, you got a new book, Sometimes Wrong But Never in Doubt. And I got to say, now, full disclosure, I've ordered the book, but I have not read it yet. And I actually, it sounds weird, but I actually prefer to interview people before I read their books because I find out when I read the book, then I don't know, I got way too much bias maybe when I go into the interview then. So, I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to read it. But first of all, it's a fantastic title. And really, it makes me think just the title, Sometimes Wrong But Never in Doubt. Like, first of all, like, how did you come up with that? And what's the general synopsis of that title?

Sure. And I think, well, most people, anybody who knows is going to read that and go, oh yeah, he's admitting that he's an arrogant SOB, which is not the case. I mean, some people can— I've been accused of that and there's probably some truth there, but it didn't come from that. It was a phrase that early in my career, a guy I worked for used it in a performance review. And so, he had given me the review the night before, the day before we were going to sit down together so I could read it. Great advice, by the way. I did that after. It was awesome. I took that learning. So, I tell people all the time, always give people the review ahead of time in writing so they can process and they're prepared and they're not hearing things for the first time in the So anyway, he did that. It was a great review. I ended up getting promoted the next day. But in there was the phrase, "George is sometimes wrong, but never in doubt." And he actually didn't go into too much why he put the phrase in there. And I was, you know, again, buried in a lot of good stuff. I took it, when I read it, it was the thing that stuck with me. I'm like, "God, this is, you know, he's telling me that you gotta tone down the edge that you have." That's what I took it at. You know, he's saying you're a little bit maybe overconfident. And you have to tone it down. So anyway, we get into the review and we're talking and, you know, and I'm like, "Wow, this is great." And I say, "Hey, that phrase, why did you put that in there?" And so it came from this. And the fact that he recognized it has been one of the real key learnings for me. He said he had gotten it from a book he had read and the book was by a Harvard surgeon. And he used it, the writer, the author used it in saying that all great surgeons must— are sometimes wrong but can never be in doubt. Because surgery, the nature of surgery is so difficult and so complex that if you went into it with doubts, you would never succeed. So you have— you're comfortable that there may be failure because it is so difficult, but you have to have the confidence you're going to succeed. And that the only way to truly have confidence, not false bravado, was to do the work. So, it was Bob telling me, he said, "George, the reason you have it and the reason we love it, that feeling is because we see the amount of work that goes into you hardening your point of view on something, developing a mental model, whatever the topic is. That's where the confidence comes from." And that's two things. Number one, and I still remember, he said it just like that. He goes, That work and that will get you through the tough times because you'll see that it won't all go smoothly. But because you will have done the work, you'll have the conviction that you're on the right path. The second thing is that confidence that comes from that conviction is what will allow you to inspire people around you, whether it's the customer, the business partner, your team, whoever it is, the board. Whoever it is, you'll bring people along. But if you don't do the work to get there, he goes, it's not your case. He goes, then people will see through the bullshit. So, it was a validation of learnings I'd had up until my career. And I was always been very lucky. I've worked with people I learned a lot from. I picked that up actually earlier that go deep, deep, Gemba, go deep, deep, know how the work actually works. And I had been applying it and he saw it in me and convinced me to kind of— that was the way to go. But anyway, that's where it came from. And, you know, look, when you write a book, you start thinking, what am I going to call this thing? So, we had a bunch of titles or I had a bunch of titles, but ultimately, that's the one we went with. And I think it certainly resonates.

I love it. I love it. So, you talked a little bit about there just now about the whole idea of confidence. So obviously there's a big difference between a confident person and an arrogant SOB, right? Talk about that balance and what we can do to not fall into arrogance but have confidence that we need as leaders. Yeah.

And I draw the distinction, and I think there's two things. The internal distinction about is it confidence or conviction born out of a lack of knowledge or false bravado, or is it confidence and conviction born out of such deep work that you get to the point where you understand what you're talking about better than anyone else, and that's why that's confidence. So, that's number 1. 2, you always got to keep in mind what people think about you says more about them than it says about you. And so if somebody thinks you're a, you know, arrogant SOB, that's probably something on them. One of the things I've found is people who have really achieved a lot never think that way. They don't look at somebody trying to— who has conviction or something— think, there goes an arrogant SOB, because they've been there. The only people who think that are the people who are probably trying to do what you're already doing, you know, and they're a little bit jealous. So, you got to break both things apart. Number 1, where does it come from? And number 2, you know, being comfortable that some people may still not like it. But back to leadership, and everybody has a different personality. So, this isn't about personality because it gets manifested differently. But I don't think you can lead effectively without having true conviction in what you're attempting to do, especially if it's something difficult. Starting a business, transforming a business, changing something dramatically, even if it's a smaller scope than the whole business, maybe it's your area. Because anytime you're going to do something big, you're going against the grain, you're going against the status quo. People are going to be on the sidelines, you know, pointing at you. And so, you know, if you think everybody's going to be rooting behind you, they're not. Some people will not be. And so, to get through that, you need to do the work that drives the conviction to push through. And we talk about a lot in the book. In fact, I couldn't help putting the graphic in about the swamp of despair, the emotional journey of doing anything great. And that is everything always starts like when you come up with something, you go, "Man, that's awesome." And look, this could be anything. This could be getting married, starting a business, running whatever it is. This is awesome. Then, you start doing it. And if this is something big and important, all of a sudden, you start hitting roadblocks and you start going, "Holy cow. Holy shit." And then, things keep getting worse and you find yourself at the nadir, which is in this depiction, the swamp, the swamp of despair where you feel like, "Why did— God, did I do what I am now in the midst of? I'm never going to get out." And the art and the science of it is if you're able to claw your way out because you have that strength, that conviction because you know you're on the right path, you can see the green shoots, maybe others can't, then you come out and you first start going, "Hey, God, I'm out of the swamp. I'm done. Hey, let's call it a day." But if you keep going, you end up on the other side of where you started and going, "Wow, this is the most amazing thing that I've done." And again, it all comes back to though, do the work, get your conviction, go at it. And it's like I said, knock on wood, that approach has worked for me.

So as we were preparing for this interview, you had mentioned that, or this phrase, it's sort of like never in doubt. But that never in doubt is more of a mindset and not necessarily like a personality trait. So I'm wondering if you talk a little bit about what does that mindset look like? In practice.

And, you know, and I say it's not personality, right? Because some people are extrovert, they talk with their hands. Other people are not, they're stoic, they don't say much, they're quiet, they listen more. Other people think by talking, right? So, those are personality traits. The conviction from the work, from the thinking that I talk about, what it looks like is a lot of paper with stuff on it, with a lot of writing, with a lot of thinking. Anything big, if you really are going to do anything big, you have to think. And you only think by one way, is by writing. Not by talking about things, but by writing about it. And when I say writing, it could be words, it could be numbers, it could be shapes, whatever that is. But it's that, it's that works. What I've seen is the people who develop that conviction have done that. It's not all neat prepackaged, but when you ask them, they're pulling stuff out and saying, "Well, here, this is what I think and this is why I think it." Maybe it's an illustration of it. Maybe they've written about it in words. Maybe it's spreadsheets. Whatever it is, there's work that's gone in that said, "I have thought about this." And then, what it looks like is as you ask questions, the 5 Whys to unpack everything and go deeper and deeper, they have more and more answers and more and more writing that they've done on it. And that to me, that's where that conviction comes from. It's not by how loud you speak. It's not by how confident you sound. It's by your ability to, when you're dealing either with the failures or with people questioning you, you have the answers because you've done the work. I always said, I never, during the WWE transformation early on, Everybody was a critic. Literally everybody thought what we were doing was wrong. Inside the company, outside the company, investors, they didn't get it. And somebody said to me once, we were talking about this, it was an investor, and he said the one thing that gave him confidence, and he was one of the ones that made a lot of money because he never sold, he said the only thing that gave him and his partner confidence is when I would meet with them and they'd ask questions, I would be pulling things either usually digitally out saying, "Hey, this is how," and it would be my writing. It wouldn't be— but here's how I'm thinking about this. It was all public information externally, sanitized, put out there, but they could see the depth of the thinking. And they said, "Look, that's what gave them confidence that we were on the right path." But back to your question, what it looks like, that's what it looks like. The people who have done that. If you ask somebody who's just sold you something, say, "Hey, let me see, you know, show me something around what you just talked about," and they can't pull it out, then they haven't really thought about it. Then, there's a good chance they're bullshitting you.

Hey, so, let's talk a little bit about not a fun topic, which is failure. And we've all failed from time to time. In our lives. Talk a little bit about how a high performer should really reinterpret failure so it's more strategic rather than demoralizing.

Yeah. And look, failure is a signal, right? So, it's another input and it's telling you one of two things, either what you thought or assumed would work doesn't. So, there's a learning there. And there's also the element, you know, like I like to say, you know, there is normal variance, normal variation. Things come— are within a spectrum. So, you're not always getting the same. Sometimes there are things outside your control that are within the spectrum of expected outcomes that go against you. And you have, you know, that's something that you have to accept and you have to understand the distinction between those two because what you don't want to do is change what you're doing because you got a result you don't like when in fact the result was just normal variation and, you know, That's what luck is. Good luck is it goes your way. Bad luck, it doesn't. So you got, you know, you have to think about that and understand that. But, you know, but that's the technical element. The emotional element is difficult. You know, I mean, look, we, I had a massive run at WWE and how does it end? It ends up getting fired. Now there's a whole story about how we got to that. And it was, you know, it was kicked off by me actually resigning a few months earlier. Ultimately, in that moment when it happened, doesn't feel good. Look, you learn from it where you think there are things to learn. Then other than that, and it's the cliché of all clichés, is you just then get moving forward. You just get up and get moving forward. I think there's a balance between introspection and learning, which is valuable, but also with moving. I would say one of the things that I've been consistent at is when I when I've hit failures, either small failures or bigger ones, I don't ruminate about them too long. Sit around them for a little bit, but then I just get moving. And with me, that means just taking action to find a new goal and start doing something about that. And again, goal can be a business goal, it can be a personal, whatever it is, just say, "Hey, I want to move in that direction and now I'm going to start moving." That to me is the elixir for failure. What you don't want to do is amplify them with too much rumination. You want to think about it, learn the lesson that's there to be learned, and then kind of move on. Is, you know, and again, harder— easier said than done, like most things. But in some ways, it's also an easy thing to do. Where I've seen people really struggle is when they stop moving, and it becomes, you know, the rumination becomes the movement, which is, you know, just spending time in your own head on things.

Reminds me of— it's not really related, but it sort of is. My grandpa and grandma, they both passed away, but I'll never forget, we were— they, they vaca— they lived in Florida in the winter. It's too cold in Indiana for them. And so I went to visit him one time. My poor grandpa wasn't that great of a driver, you know, and, uh, and my grandma was always yelling at him, which probably made it worse. And, uh, I remember he pulled up to the road and then he kind he pulled out into the intersection and he sort of froze. My grandma just said, "Well, do something." So, it's kind of what you just said like, "Hey, man, you're in the middle. You got to do something." You got to do something.

Sitting around, same thing. I remember, I wasn't a particularly good football player. I'm 5'10", 150 pounds, but I still remember my high school football coach saying, "Hey, the people who get hurt are the people who pause. Just keep going." moving out there. He goes, you know, echo of the whistle, just keep moving. I remember it was good advice.

So yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, so when you look at your business career, and you've had a vast, vast career, lots of experiences, I'm sure you've had a lot of highs and a lot of lows along the way. But when we're facing sort of this ambiguity that we do, and not just business, but really life, right? Like, what do you think separates smart risk from just being reckless?

Yeah, that's a great question. Look, I always said you can't quantify everything perfectly, but you can attempt to quantify things, which in a lot of ways, the process of doing that, even those things that are difficult to quantify, hardens your thinking on them. So, to me, and again, it's a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason. Risk doesn't stand alone. Risk stands with, well, what's the opportunity? So, if something has a 10% chance of success with a 1,000-time payoff, and that could be an emotional payoff, an economic payoff, whatever it is, those are things you look— I say, hey, that's— you look at that. Something has a 10% chance of success and you're going to get a 5% improvement in whatever thing you're looking at, then you're like, "Well, is the juice worth the squeeze there?" So, to me, reckless is a combination of two things, potentially, one of two things, not doing that thinking. And again, not everything is easily quantifiable, but the process of putting numbers to stuff forces you to think. So, that relationship by what you think the opportunity is and the risk Understanding that is one. And then the second one is what we talked about before, is doing the work. Recklessness is not doing the work, not understanding enough what the potential outcomes are, and therefore having at least general plans to be able to pivot from. That to me is what drives recklessness. But if you do it, if you think you've got this thing where, hey, there's a chance of failure, but the outcome is so great that that relationship is one you're comfortable with, and then you do the legwork to give yourself the best chance of success and also give yourself optionality as you hit roadblocks, I think then you're taking smart risk when you do those two things. I think recklessness is you don't do either one or worst case, you don't do— well, you do only one. Worst case, you do neither. That, I think, is then truly reckless. And which, look, by the way, I've seen in my career, I've seen people who do that.

Yeah, and some people would argue the only— really, the only true way to fail is to quit, right? And stop, you know, because you can always pivot, iterate, learn your way forward, right? So, um, yeah, fantastic. Well, hey George, this has been a lot of fun. I'm wondering, um, maybe to wrap things up, I don't know, do you have any sort of like, I don't know, final words of wisdom, um, or some maybe some parting advice that you want to leave for the listeners?

Yeah, look, I think we've talked a lot of it and it has, and it has been a lot of fun. I will just say, yeah, there's a huge world out there of opportunity in whatever it is that you want to do. Again, it's not all about career, it's personal. My advice is what we were just talking about, kind of get to know yourself, get to know what really inspires you, and, and, and, and and how, you know, when you're spending time that it's natural to be in flow. And again, cliché, but go do that. If you do that consistently, I go, you know, you enjoy the journey. And so, that, you know, I tell my kids that all the time and I go, "I know it's a cliché, but it's true." And unfortunately, a lot of people don't do it. Just do something. Don't worry about the, you know, the money. You'll always have enough money You can make enough money to have a good life. I go, "Do stuff you're good at because then you enjoy doing it and that it's easy to get up in the morning and go after it." Like I said, that to me has been lucky. I kind of stumbled into a business career. It wasn't the path that I had set out early on. I wasn't sure what I was going to do even through college. And business, as you know, is primarily problem solving. I like doing that. So it's easy for me to do it. I don't want to, you know, I've never— it's never felt like work to me from day one. And I think because of that. So anyway, that, that would be the advice.

Awesome. Good stuff. All right. The book is called Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt. So I'm excited to read it. And if folks, folks wanted to connect with you, George, like just directly, what's the best way?

Yeah, GeorgeBarrios.com. You'll see a lot about the book. The, the, the stories it tells, and as well as some of the other writing I've done around what I do now, which is invest in sports. So, uh, georgebarrios.com.

All right, and we'll link everything up in the show notes. All right, appreciate you, George.

Awesome, it's been great, man. It's good seeing you, Ron.

Take care. Thanks for joining us today. We know the path to continuous improvement can be challenging to walk alone. That's why Gemba Academy exists, not just to provide training but to be your partner in problem solving. Whether you're just taking your first steps or leading a global transformation, our goal is to help you bridge the gap between knowing and doing. Beyond our library of Lean and Six Sigma resources, we're here to coach and guide you through your journey, whether that's through personalized support or joining us for a live training to get that immersive hands-on experience. To learn more, go to gembaacademy.com.