Company culture is what you tolerate

Companies are most defensible when they're built around a unique person's personality. Culture is what you tolerate. At this place, we always want to be a 10 out of 10, and you're going to experience great personal growth. You're going to get tons of responsibility. The only long-term advantage, like only long-term competitive advantage in business, is culture.

All right, Jesse, you're looking very good today.

Thank you.

I know why.

You know why?

The board meeting. You know what? I thought being on the board would be fantastic, but I don't know if it is for you. Here's what I imagine being on a board is. You sit back, people ask you your opinion, you get to tell them what to do, give them a little bit of opinion. Yeah, you have to do a little bit of hard work of listening to this like process conversation that's boring, but at the end, you know, you're a board member. There's prestige. Apparently, there's free groceries if you're the board member of the super big supermarket that you're a part of.

Yeah, look, I think I'm a learner, as you know. I love learning.

Yep.

And so, new and different things are always interesting to me to give it a try. And I think I'm on the board of a $3 billion grocery business here in St. Louis, and it's like my childhood grocery store. So, it's like a really fun full circle. And I'm very focused. I'm one of the younger digital-firsts savvy sort of like members. And it's been a fantastic experience. The people are amazing. The family, it's a family-owned business. The family's incredible. They've kept this business running for 80 years. And I've enjoyed it. And I think, you know, it is prestigious. It does have some cool, like, you know, it's a different angle. I think the entrepreneur in me, you know, the point of it is to sit back and give advice and give feedback. And when I joined, and what I've been invited to a lot of boards now, and I think— Some of it is I'm just so excited about the work I'm doing and I like being an entrepreneur that I'm like, dude, I wanna be spending my time on AI. Like, I wanna be, I wanna be doing things.

Yeah.

And I don't necessarily wanna be sitting. I'm just not in my phase of life. It makes— there's a couple guys on the board who are really brilliant, smart, successful guys that are on 5 or 6 boards. They're probably in their 60s. You know, they probably make close to a million bucks a year and they fly around and that's what they do. Like, that's their job. And that makes tons of sense to me. That sounds like it could be cool, but I'm in the midst of building a bunch of stuff. And so it's a very different gear to all of a sudden sit down and go, okay, wait, I gotta listen to these. I gotta understand these things. You actually don't have that much impact as a board member.

Mm-hmm.

You, some would argue you have an insane amount of impact because you can say something at the top of the food chain that then trickles down. But I think there's something about it, it just maybe isn't the right season of life for me just yet. And especially what, you know, you're working on a bunch of stuff like Knack and that, everyone's working on things and I'm like, wait, why am I sitting here right now? I wanna go work on stuff. And so, but it's a great learning experience. And it, and you know, the business of that scale and size is just, it's, you know, I was like, they spend more on insurance than like we generate in EBITDA. Like it's a gargantuan business. And it's interesting just to see how that kind of thing operates.

And occasionally you come back and you say, this is a really interesting insight. They had this presentation that we wouldn't have had access to before. And I see how that's helpful. All right, here's what I wanted to talk about today. Culture. You've been forwarding us these messages that are very heartwarming from Ampushers, people who worked at your previous company, who are getting together in New York, from Ampushers who are saying goodbye to Ampush and are sending these long messages thanking people for, like, page and page and page with specific thank-yous for working with me, for growing me, for whatever, and you haven't even been at the company for a long time. And so, I've asked you, how do you create a culture like that? And I also want to add, on top of the touchy-feely stuff, what I want to know is, how do you create a culture where people are pushing themselves to do more than they would otherwise, who are— I don't know, at one point you said to me, Andrew, if you set a high bar for people, they're going to love you for doing it. They're not feeling like you're pushing them too far and feeling stressed. They love you for bringing this out of them. So I wanna know both of those. How do you create an environment where you do that and people still love each other and wanna stay connected? Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? I think like the, I think the email you're referencing, John, the CEO who succeeded me at Ampush, sent it to me and Nick and was like, guys, this is amazing. Like, 'cause it's been 5 years since we left the company and, you know, the company's 15 years old and it's been acquired for 2 years or 3 years at this point. And the idea was, wow, the culture is living on. And I'll be honest and say it's been pretty like, I sent it to you guys 'cause I'm actually like touched in those moments where I'm like, damn, this is amazing. And, you know, I think there's a couple things we can, we'll go deep and try to unpack all this stuff. I think the first thing to recognize, and I'd say I kind of knew this intellectually, but I really, really felt it many, many years into the Ampush journey. And I'll explain why, which is the only long-term advantage Like, only long-term competitive advantage in business is culture, right? And you think about these examples, like Steve Jobs was obsessed with this concept of the innovator's dilemma, which is like Kodak, you know, went out of business or whatever because, you know, they've had the technology for digital cameras and digital photos and they buried it because they thought it was gonna hurt their core business.

Yeah.

And when he had the iPod, he's like, no, I'm gonna disrupt myself. I'm gonna get rid of the iPod with this thing called the iPhone. And, you know, he— if you ever read his, especially his later life things, he said, the real thing I've built, the disruptive thing I've built, is Apple as a culture. And he talks a lot about the culture. And obviously, I had a front row seat to Red Ventures and their culture. I mean, they've pivoted that business. There's a really famous story that Reed Hastings tells about Netflix where he talks about his first company, and he says it was some programming software company. He said, you know, in our first company, we built systems to dummy-proof everything.

Hmm.

Everything was dummy-proof. Nobody could make a mistake, and it was all really well, you know, but then the only people who wanna work at that company were dummies. And then what invariably will change, and the one thing that will always change for every business is the market, right? The market is always changing. And so, what happened to their business is the market changed. I think it shifted from C++ to Java, and they couldn't make the adjustment. And he had to, you know, he viewed it as a failure. He had to sell the company. It was an exit, but it was like a, it was like a low, It was a good exit, but it was like a, you know, a low-power exit, let's call it. Then the guy goes and builds Netflix and dude, they've pivoted. I mean, you and I are old enough to remember they used to mail people DVDs. That was their whole business.

Yeah.

Then they started streaming content and now they make their own original content. Like, that's 3— that's massive, massive pivots because they've just always kept up with the market. And that's what great cultures do. And that's why culture is the only competitive advantage. And so I knew that in my brain because I'm a business nerd and I've read a lot of business books. But then, you know, my, my largest supplier, my biggest partner at Ampush was what was a company called Facebook. Well, guess what Facebook was doing every 6 months?

Yeah.

They were changing everything in their business.

Destroying so many companies that built on the previous iteration just because they need to get to the next one. Right.

One minute mobile app installs were the big thing. The next minute, you know, lookalike audiences were the next thing. The next thing, then newsfeed mattered. The next thing, then this mattered. And I watched my competitors go out of business on the regular. Like every year, one of the companies who we thought of as formidable, who was like, would like go out of business because they raised debt and then their business model margins collapsed and then whatever. And we survived that, you know, all of that stuff and got to be very good at moving quickly. And so anyway, I think culture is the only long-term competitive. It's the only thing you can actually Nobody else can replicate because it by definition is your unique culture. It's even more defensible than a product or anything else like that. And how do you create it? You know, look, I think, oh, I wanted to talk to you about this because I like, I'm like, oh yeah, there's a, I have a lot of reflections on it. Like, I always knew it mattered to me and I knew it was important, but in the beginning I had no idea how to create it. And I was like creating what I would call, you know, phony culture. Right? It's like, okay, we've got the pool tables and we talk like we're cool and I sit with everyone and it didn't really do anything, right? We even had values and it was— and so, you know, I think it— and one thing I should say, I guess, is I am one of these people who believes that every company has a culture, right? Oftentimes the culture they say they have versus the culture they have are not the same thing.

Mm-hmm.

And I think we were like that for many, many of the beginning first 5, 6 years of the company. Because in my heart of hearts, all I wanted to do was be successful. And I was very focused on myself and I wanted to make money. And I was very, I was just very self-focused. And so, no matter what we said, people felt that, right? They felt that that's actually what I wanted. And then as I shifted, and this is kind of one of the first number one thing of culture is the founder has to genuinely want to build that great culture, and it has to start with them, that they're actually clear in their own mind as to what the culture, what they, what their culture is. So, step one is, and this is the thing I see with Adrian and Casey and you, you first have to ask yourself, what are my values? And I know when I first asked myself that question, that's not the question I asked myself. I asked myself, what are the right values?

And that's the thing. What are the right values that I should have as a leader?

What should, what should my values be?

What are, what are some should values that we think we should have? 'Cause I might be wrong. I mean, you could read any of the startup blogs, like, Speed is, you know, move fast and break things. Ah, got it.

There's a lot of Facebooks, or—

Got it.

I think we should always be data-driven in how we approach problems, or we have the best talent, or— and the should question, for me at least, and I think for a lot of founders who are first-time founders especially, it's like, I don't know, what do you mean? What are my values? Like, and I think second and third, and people who've been doing this for a long time, they let go of— and the best founders, Rick Elias is a good example, Mark Zuckerberg, there's a story about him that's pretty famous. They don't ask what the right values are. They just say, what are my values? What do I stand for? What's important to me?

So what'd you come up with when you did that?

You know, it took me a little bit of time, right? It probably— the first iteration was the should answer. So we had 10 values. They were the should values. Some of them felt more real to me than others. And those ones oftentimes were the ones the company exhibited, but they— there was too many of them. So we cut down to fewer values. That was one of the first things we did. You know, I started thinking about what matters to me. Like, I'm, I'm a— I'm always focused on my personal growth and learning, and I try to get better all the time. And I was like, okay, that's the thing that matters to me. I like a high bar for, for people, for how we solve problems or how we get things done. So that's a really important value for me. I like— I want to have a big heart and care about people. And that was a big value for me.

Data.

I want to be like analytical and quantitative. What were you saying?

The same thing that you are, which is data.

Yeah, I like solving problems with information and data and being rigorous in my thinking. Like, that's an important thing. And, you know, you've seen this concept that me and Nick, my co-founder, came up with, entrepreneurial rigor, which is you can be entrepreneurial, which is like speed, fast, bold, creative, while also being logically sound and analytical. And anyone who's worked with me for any period of time just watches that go on. They go, oh my God, he's just always doing that. He's always circling on those things. I wanna have fun, right? Like, I think that's an important thing for me. So, I think the first step of it is honestly identifying your own values. And I think that's where I see most people get tripped up and they don't even know what their values are, or they're like not willing to own their values even if they know what they are.

How'd you come up with that? 'Cause fun, I think, actually is one that I know is really important to you. And I would think if I'm rigorous, I don't even wanna bring up fun because it's confusing for people and it's, out of like, it's just out of joint with it.

Yeah, but that's probably you trying to be right.

Maybe. So then how do you—

What are the right— the second you just go, you're just— it's like, I don't know, what— how do you— how did you design the room that's behind you? Did you think about what the right layout was? Or are you like, no, no, this is what I like. And ultimately, companies are most defensible when they're built around a unique person's personality, which in my RV is like Rick. Steve Jobs is Apple.

So it's just what do I like and just own the thing that you like.

Yeah, and that's why you've got, again, if you look at the one thing that all the best companies share is they're unapologetically themselves. Whether, again, if you're like, let's take 2 really prominent examples of Apple and Microsoft, the 2 biggest market caps in the world, right?

Mm-hmm.

They're in the same space broadly. They have these famous historical stories about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but they couldn't be more different companies, right? Microsoft is MBA-ish. It's got layers of analysts. It's Bill Gates. It's Bill Gates turned into a big thing. And then Steve Jobs, like, no, we build equipment. cool design, like, but they couldn't just, they couldn't be more different. Like, there's almost no overlap in the people who work at both of them. It's not like you go from Apple to Microsoft or Microsoft to Apple. It's a very rare jump because of how different. And so, there's a famous story about Zuckerberg where he said he wrote his values down in like 5 minutes at a board meeting and said, these are the values of the company. And they go, oh, that's interesting. He's like, I want them to be, what's the word? I want them to be controver— no, it wasn't controversial. I want them to be like alien, like, I want the right people to go, yes, I agree with that, and the wrong people to go, I don't want that. And so again, when you started getting like, integrity is about polarizing. Thank you. Integrity and this, it's like, well, dude, if everybody can agree to your values, they're not actually values.

Okay. So then how do you make it then fun in a, and still be productive? When I think about fun, I always think, all right, then we're also going to go out somewhere. We're also going to have like a dinner once a month or once a week. That's, that's not the fun that really makes A day-to-day work fun.

I would ask you, I would like, and Dave Cashin helped me a lot with the value stuff, but then I would ask you, Andrew, what is it about that that makes it fun for you? And I think I know the answer, but I want you to answer.

Oh, I see. Like crazy conversations.

What is that? What is a crazy conversation? Let's go even one layer deeper.

Exploring the things that are a little out of bounds to understand ourselves better because there's a bond.

My story about you is connection.

Connection's a good one too.

You really value connection.

Yeah.

And that's one way. So, so there's this matrix actually. I pulled it up from one of Dave's presentations since we're talking about values and, you know, you love it when I pull up stuff. But this is sort of like, this is, you know, Dave Kashin has a whole deck. He used to call himself Awesome Culture, right? That used to be his Twitter handle. But it's like, you start with your heart, then your cultural values, then your behaviors, then your systems, and then on the outside you see culture. So, I mean, we could go into this whole presentation, but the idea is like, you start with, You start with what really matters to you, what's in your heart, and then what are the things you're trying to accomplish? And then, okay, so then you start with some of that stuff, then, you know, you're clear about it. The next question is, are you as a founder willing to live your own values? And Rick Elias came to my company after he invested in it, and he sat with my leaders, and I was like, what's culture to you? I did like a fireside chat with him, and he's built, they've built an amazing culture.

Yeah.

And there's 2 funny Rick stories, actually. One is this one where he's like sitting on a bench, you know, he's like, he just bought this company or bought into this company. And he looks around. First of all, he chastises me because I have no women on my leadership team. He's like, Jesse, that's not acceptable. You need women on your leadership team. And I had never even noticed, which is— and then he followed it by saying, culture is what you tolerate. And I've like looked for a better definition of it. And I can't actually find one up until now, which is as simple as a leader. What do you tolerate? If everyone— if you can be 5 minutes late to a meeting, that's your culture. People are gonna be 5 minutes late to a meeting.

How about on the positive side? Culture is what you tolerate. What does that mean for— let's relate it to fun for a moment.

Well, I guess I could tolerate— if you tolerate a day full of meetings where nobody laughs, then that's your culture. It's not a laughing culture. It's not a fun culture.

If you tolerate a culture where you go months without going out to dinner, Then, and if you don't tolerate it, then, then that also is your, is your culture. Now you've really stood up for it.

Yeah, I can't go more than 5 days without saying appreciation for someone. I mean, you've noticed that about, like, I try to give a lot of affirmation to people. I just don't tolerate the, you know, again, the don't tolerate maybe is a negative frame to it. But what I like about it is it is when Adrian comes to me with issues in the business, you know, I'll oftentimes just say to her, what are you willing to tolerate? Are you willing to tolerate someone? Like, you know, there was a story recently where one of her employees was, you know, there's one thing about giving feedback to your boss. There's another thing where it turns into gossip, right?

Yeah.

And Conscious Leadership talks about how they don't like gossip. And she's like, well, I want the information, but I don't wanna tolerate gossip. And I was like, all right, well, what are you willing to tolerate? And you can say to the person, hey, I want you to give me feedback on this 'cause it's important. But I also want you to go talk to that person. I don't want you to say anything— the definition of gossip according to Conscious Leadership is something I'd say to you about Lauren that I wouldn't say to Lauren.

Yeah.

So, it's okay if I say it to both of you. I can say, I love Lauren's hair, as long as I say, I love Lauren's hair, to her as well. But if I start saying it without that, then that's gossip, right? So, are you tolerating gossip in your organization? What are you willing to tolerate? And that just becomes— if poor performers are immediately managed out, Versus they go on a PIP and then they say, and then 6 months later it's like, okay, that's your culture. You hang out, you know, people can hang out for a long time. The other thing, so we'll go ahead if you have a question.

So you're getting into the things that make a company what they are. I'm, and that is, it's helpful, right? I can see that you care about rigor with data. You care about decision-making with data. And I could see that you care about having fun. And if it becomes a slog to do the podcast, if it becomes a slog to write Right. Content or any of it, you don't want to do it. I get that. What I'm trying to understand is then, how do we then take all these people who say, this is my world, and say— and have them feeling like, this is my world and these are my people, and I spend enough time with them in a fun way that I'm going to write a message to Jesse long after he's left the company, or to them long after Jesse, who created the culture, left, to say, I love you. Where does the bonding come in?

My head's going to a couple of places. I think one is I was just thinking of more of the more benefits of culture beyond just the only competitive advantage. Like, I'd say culture of Ampush is the thing I miss the most in restarting. It's been fun to do this a second time for me, but man. And you know what the other big thing is? Culture is not only the biggest competitive advantage, it's the most leverage you can get in an organization.

How do you mean?

Because at Ampush, I could ask someone— sometimes I'll ask you for something or the BG team for something, and they'll come back and I'll be like, no, guys, this is not it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what you're really feeling is my probably sadness or unfelt frustration of missing the Ampush culture, because I could say one sentence to John over text. The next day I would get the thing exactly. And it gave so much leverage to, to everyone to make decisions, to move quickly. Like there's this rule that it's in this famous article on Apple and HBR that you're required to know the details of your organization 3 levels down. And observing Red Ventures and other culture and Ampush, people were required to know their numbers. That was just a thing. Why? Because you can make decisions quickly. So anytime you're in a new culture and I walk in and someone's like, oh, I don't know my numbers, then I'm like, oh, because at Ampush, the first months, your boss, your manager would be told you from— they say, hey dude, one thing you got to know when you work here is you better know your numbers. There was this famous story for you where you asked Noah, because it was the first year, 6 months you and I were working together, you go, hey, sometimes Jesse asks me numbers and I don't know them. How do I, like, manage him in that situation? And Noah looked at you and he looked a little nervous and he said, you just don't want to find yourself in that situation, Andrew.

Yeah.

And that's culture, right? That's, that's a, that's a tolerate. What do you tolerate? That's an expectation. So one of the benefits that comes to mind is like, man, you can move so much faster. You can get so much more done because everybody marches to the same drum of the beats, why the military does the things the military does, whatever. So to get to the emails and all that stuff, Now, okay, so first you got to know what you want. Then you got to be willing to stand for what you want. Both of those are extremely hard, and most founders go wrong because they don't know what they want or they're inconsistently standing for what they want. And once again, once you're tolerating something that's not what you actually want, that's your culture. Now, let's assume you did both of those things. Then you got to be very clear with the outside world about what your culture is. This is who we are, right? Hey, if you come to Ampush, you're gonna get a lot of responsibility quickly. You're gonna be held to a really high standard to know your numbers. You're gonna get promoted quickly if you're good. Like, whatever you are, you are, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like, one thing at Aux I've been telling people recently is like, hey, we are like, we're the worst company ever because we're a startup and a consulting firm at the same time. 2 very difficult, demanding professions in one business. So, if you're not ready to come in and get crazy with us, like, you probably shouldn't join. Right? And so, part of it is you want to first select into the group of people who have agreed. And, you know, this is another good Rick story I was gonna tell is Rick had a debate with Meg Whitman, the historical CEO of eBay and then HP, on stage. And she's more corporate, of course, and she's talking about values. And Rick says, I don't know what to do with values. You know, values are very personal. They're things, they're things that like we learn as kids. So he doesn't call his values values. He calls them beliefs. He goes, are you willing to believe what I believe? Right? And he has his beliefs. Everything's written in pencil. We run up escalators 'cause we're so urgent. Like he has these set of belief statements that they write at Red Ventures. And so we could call them beliefs, but it's like, hey, if you wanna join our company, you believe these things, right? And you don't have to believe it. And another thing, you'll see this, Bezos says this all the time. He says it in a company. It has to be, right? Where's the word culture come from? Cult. Like, that is like— but it's just like Sikhism. Like, you know, you believe you want to cut your hair. Do you believe there's one God? Do you believe all those things? If you believe them, you're part of the faith. If you don't, you're not. But one thing I was going to say about Bezos especially, and I've seen other great leaders do this, is they never claim to be right. Andrew Bezos never says he's right. In fact, he will say he's wrong.

Yeah.

Or he'll say, I— there, there, this is how I do it. I don't know. I can't tell you that is the right way. This is just my way of doing it. And that was a big unlock for me personally when I stopped trying to be right. And I said, this is just how I like things. I'm not sure it's right.

It's—

you may like them, you know.

Yeah.

But if you're gonna work here, you gotta believe the things I believe. You gotta subscribe to this. So then, so then you, you're clear about what you want, and then you go find people who both exhibit and agree to those beliefs. Right? And then internally, you promote and compensate the people who demonstrate those beliefs on and on, and then you fire the people who don't, right? And you recognize that. And again, it just becomes— you do that for 2 or 3 years, and this is the way we do things at this organization. This is our values. This is how we roll. And, you know, there's some tactical things we could get into. Like, we In your reviews at Ampush, we would talk, we brought down to 3 values, which were kind of unique values, but we would literally, like, your review would come out against the values.

Yeah.

Like, the first value was entrepreneurs in training take risks. So, there was so much depth to that. Entrepreneurs, right? That was the first thing. Are you entrepreneurial? In training, are you learning? Are you a learner? Take risks. Do you actually go out and do bold things? And you'd get feedback on those things. You know, you're not as entrepreneurial as we'd like. Here's a, Right? The second value was get the right things right. Kind of a simple value, but it was like, it's actually, are you rigorous? Do you know how to prioritize well? Do you like— so we had these values that then would really be specific things we would judge and evaluate people on. And all these things, you know, and I have a theory, by the way, that high-performance cultures are sort of the opposite of human nature. If you look at the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, or you look at good values in any company, you look at Amazon's principles, they value things like speed. Most humans are slow and inert. They value things like candor. Most people don't wanna disrupt things. They just wanna go along. They value boldness and high performance. Like, so the best cultures, and then to get to your answer, your question that you asked a long time ago, when you bring a young person, and we brought a lot of young people in Ambush, and they experience this culture and they experience their own personal growth. Right? And then our third value, by the way, was savor the climb. So there was a lot about people and fun, and are you enjoying it, and are you helping others and all that stuff. They go, wow, like, again, to your point, I grew and I got challenged, but I also, like, people cared about me here. And, and, like, you know, I really loved that and enjoyed it. And so you get to the end of a run like that, and you're like, wow, this is amazing. I loved it. And it's, it was, you know, really touching for me to see again 5 years later.

Yeah.

I'd never met that woman whoever sent that email.

Oh, I assume she's just someone you knew.

She's met me. No, I never met her. I didn't know who she was, but she's met me, right? Because there was a whole organization of people who, who took that culture and had lived it on and on and on.

Okay. So then how do you create a demanding culture that still is, is fun this way? How do you create a culture and Get comfortable saying, I want more than this, more than what you just did. And I know it's your best and I need you to do it more. And it's due tomorrow.

You just say that.

And you just feel comfortable, Jesse, as a person saying that?

Yeah, because it's— because it's what I stand for. I mean, here's a version of it that's even more like, you know, there's this talk— I've been talking a lot about servant leadership and trying to— trying to become more servant-oriented, right? And I realized Rick talked about it a lot back in the day, and I was like, man, you know, and, you know, he had a funny way of being really demanding, and I had never felt belittled or bad about it. In fact, I felt like loved in those moments. And what I realized was, and I've tried my best to be this, I'm not always this, is like he was doing me a service, and it's a disservice to people. You know, he would say this, and we started saying this at Ampush after we heard him say it, is like, I want to do you a favor in your career. That you're gonna be better the next— when you take another job somewhere, you're gonna blow them away with how numbery you are or how rigorous you are or the depth of your thinking or the end product you put out. I'm serving you and you can't do it fakely. You can't in your heart be thinking this person sucks or like, I need a better result so I get better numbers in my revenue or something like that. But genuinely, I wanna help the person right now in front of me and I'm gonna serve them. And the way I'm gonna serve them is I'm gonna serve them by being demanding. Because it's gonna be what's best for them.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And so again, it, to me, I would say something like, this is a great job. I love your work. At this, at this place, we always wanna be a 10 outta 10. And to me, this is an 8 outta 10. And here's the 5 reasons. Let's give it another shot. Let's be better next time. And, you know, again, these things become highly reinforcing once everyone is doing them. And then it's just an opt-in, opt-out. And the people who opt in, You know, it's like, it's like asking the question of like, how does a championship basketball team have fun? Well, they have, they have a blast, man. Right?

Because they're winning.

Not just— no, not just because they're winning. Like, they play at a high level. They're demanding with each other. They're— but they're also like enjoying life. Like, they have fun with it because that's the way they roll. That's, that's how they do things. And once everybody does it, it only feels weird when someone doesn't do it the way that everyone else does it. That means the culture is not very aligned. Right? And that's why it's better to like opt in. I, in the beginning of Ampush, I would sell everyone on joining Ampush. By the end of it, I would anti-sell everyone on joining. Here's why you should not join, right? So if you're gonna join, you're, you know, again, your red pill, right? It's like the Neo, like the Matrix thing. Like you're taking this red pill.

We're gonna be demanding. We're gonna want you to have your numbers.

And you're gonna experience great, great, yeah. And you're gonna experience great personal growth. You're gonna get tons of responsibility. I mean, by the way, this is not a new invention by Jesse Pujji. Wall Street has been doing this for 50 years. years, right? And people have a lot of fun on Wall Street.

Yeah.

Well, not just demanding, but rigorous. Lots of responsibility for a young person. Insane personal growth, right? You know, you could argue the hours are obscene there, which is part of the problem there. But, but they've— but they have the version of them where they bring really bright people together and they are, you know, they make stuff happen and they're demanding, but they deliver against their value prop is they're very good at it.

The thing I noticed when I went to Red Ventures was everybody took notes on, on a paper notebook. Not— I don't think I saw an iPad there. I don't think I saw anyone.

Well, guess who else takes notes on paper notebooks?

Yeah. Rick, the founder. He did the same thing. He said, and I have— there's an important family thing, so I'm going to keep my phone out. I usually don't see me. That's why I have it out. And then he took out his notebook, put it on the desk, and go, What are we about to tell him that he needs to take notes on? I have no idea. He, he was there to answer our questions and still he plopped it down. He opened it to a page. And is that part of culture too? This idea that we do things that to that degree?

It certainly can be, right? Again, the US military, think about the military. I mean, it clearly based on that observation that people take paper notes and they're engaged and very present in meetings. I've never been in a meeting with Red Ventures where somebody wasn't present.

That is so true.

And Rick is an incredibly present guy also.

Yes.

Like nobody's on their phones, nobody's on their laptops. They are present in that meeting because they're either there or they're not. And by the way, you observed a little bit of it.

Yes.

I took my entire leadership team there in 2017 or 2016 and shadowed across their leadership stack.

Meaning you just watched them for the day.

So I shadowed one of their presidents. You know, my, my leadership team shadowed a bunch of their VPs and one leader level, our director level shadowed their, you know, their next level down. And we were just like blown. We all came together and started, we put together a whiteboard of what all we observed and learned. We shared it back with Rick and he was obviously excited to see that he'd never given someone that kind of access. And man, they would walk into a meeting and they would just, how do we, how do we generate incrementally? Like they just moved at a pace because they were all speaking the same language. They were all working from the same set of assumptions. And it was just very obvious that, that there was a really, really strong culture.

So we went there because we wanted to meet Rick. Um, and they came to us because the heads of their different companies, it's essentially a collection of companies over there, wanted to ask you questions. And I did look at people's computers. I took a photo of one person's computer. All he had was a queue up of something he wanted to ask you and show you. And I go, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to watch because he can't, he's leading a company. There's no way he could not have to respond to Slack during the session. Nothing. It was just that. I don't know how you can stay that present.

They're super present and dialed in. And they also, by the way, like that's part of how they also have good lifestyle and stuff in that company is, is like they're there, they do their work and then they leave and then they're present, you know, in their other parts of their life too.

Yeah. Do you do any of this culture stuff at home with your family intentionally?

I've tried to, you know, look, again, I think my family has a culture, right? It's— I have debated making it more explicit. One thing I read on Twitter or TikTok that I started to do was I had the kids brainstorm values. Like, we did this values exercise at Kahani when we were starting it that Dave led us through, which was like, It's pretty simple, right? It's kind of like, what things matter to you? When do you enjoy yourself the most? When do you do your best work? It's almost like a crowdsourced version of it. Then you synthesize it. So I kind of did that with my kids. I'm like, what are Pujjis? Like, what are we? And we started brainstorming them. And so we came up with 5 words: kind, tenacious, creative, fun, and courageous. Or brave, maybe, I think we say. And they kind of came up with that on the drive to school in the morning. And now what I do most, most of the times they leave the car in the morning when I'm dropping them off, I go, which one are you going to be today?

Hmm.

And so then they pick one and, oh, I'm going to be kind today. I'm going to be tenacious. And then I might ask them after school, not always, I'll say, what were you today? How did it go? So I'm a little— the reason I'm a little reluctant to do is because I want to be very mindful of allowing them to become who they're meant to be versus who they think I should be.

Meaning if they're not kind, you're just saying, all right, some people need to be more Wall Street-like. It's okay.

I just— I mean, I believe in parenting. There's this conscious parenting thing. I don't know if I've sent it to you.

I can send it to you, but I know it.

I like the gardener analogy versus the, like, clay molder analogy, right? Clay molders like, oh, you're a lumpy piece of clay, child. Let me shape you in all the ways I think you should be shaped. A gardener is plant the seed, water, soil. The plant might go this way first and then this way, and you can't actually adjust the way it grows because that's, that's what it's meant to grow like. That's what the universe has in store for it. So I'm a little reluctant to overdo it on that stuff because, dude, no matter what, you already have so much weight in your parents' head. Like, as I do my own personal growth and spiritual stuff, like, I realize how much weight my parents had for me as a child, and then I'm like, fuck, that's a lot of weight. Like, I don't want to over— I don't wanna overdo it. I want them to be, you know, to, to choose their path and feel okay with whatever path they want.

I, I know my wife and I used to have it clear, and it's, it is something that we've just been so exhausted with a third baby that it's, it's, it's been allowed to slip. Uh, it was part of our vows when we got married, and I think that that was helpful. One of it was talk it out, and I'm like, I don't want to talk anymore. Last night we had it. We had an argument because I was just sitting on the couch. I'm like, I'm done talking about the kids' school. I'm done talking about work. I'm done. No one's here. She called me up and she's like, I saw the note from the teacher. I need to talk. No. And that's probably not the best way to react, but I'm exhausted from talking about stuff.

So, I think, I mean, I'm trying to think of what other things with culture, you know, I, well, again, it's all what you, we would get feedback very regularly. We do pulse surveys once a quarter, once a half, and then share them out with the team.

So, I do have this spread— I have a spreadsheet actually that I guess is a performance review spreadsheet that came from Ampush that we're gonna share with our 833 members. And I do see the different, the different parts of the matrix up on the screen here, like the entrepreneurial. I thought I saw it here somewhere. But here's the other thing that I did as we were looking. So I searched my Google Drive to find this, and then I, I just did a ChatGPT search to say, what is Ampush's culture? And I don't see it online. And I may— at least ChatGPT didn't come up with it. And The question I have is how much of it do you need to share in order to reinforce?

I mean, I think, well, look, Ampush is a B2B company. Like, I don't think that it necessarily needed a public— it was on the website at some point. The website's gone now because the company got acquired. But I think it's really important through the interview process and through the screening process that you're very, very candid about what your culture is. And yeah, I think it has to be front and center and, you know, all the way there. And, you know, I remember interviewing, like, there'd be, there was a period where I stopped interviewing candidates because we got so big. And then I was like, oh no, I need to keep doing that because I would notice these things. And, you know, it's a little bit of one bad apple spoils a bunch, but I would do a 30-minute interview. Basically, the team was recommending giving the person an offer, right? So, they were right there. And I probably rejected 20% of the people. So, it wasn't a huge number, but that 20% was really critical.

Yeah.

Right? 'Cause my questions, I would just basically take our values. I'd go, tell me about a time you did something like this. And I go, this person's not very entrepreneurial, like, or I didn't get the sense this person, you know, they enjoyed things. And obviously you don't know what would've happened if they joined, but I'd like to tell myself that, you know, we screened away the bad apples and that mattered a lot.

All right, let's close out with this. What are you doing this week that's fun at GatewayX?

What are we doing? Well, I'm going back to San Francisco tomorrow, and I have not been since I moved, if you can believe it.

Wow.

Because I actually think it's going to be a little bit emotional. You know, it's just kind of a crazy turn of events, right? Like, I left in the middle of the night, basically, at COVID, right? So they're like, I didn't even have a going away party. Like, one of the saddest things actually about my career with Ampush and everything is never had like a Jesse CEO, he's done. Nor did I ever have a leaving San Francisco party, which I totally would've probably just combined those into one party if, you know, COVID happened the month we transitioned. So we did not know it was gonna happen. It was like in the things. And then, so we left in the middle of the summer. John took over CEO. Everything went remote for 2 years, right? And then during the remote time, they basically started hiring. And I think by the time it was done, by the time we sold the company, there was only 15 people left in San Francisco or 20 people left in San Francisco. There was no office. And then Nick left San Francisco during COVID and moved to New York. And there's just no reason for me to go to San Francisco.

Hmm.

Like, there's not been a good reason. And I'm going there for a retreat. And then I added a bunch of stuff on top. And then I said, I said, to Dia. I was like, let's just go back, like, show the kids. Our kids were born there. Like, lots of my kids— Ampush was born there, my 2 kids were born there. And I'm like, damn, like, just have not been back. Literally, it's been half the time since we lived there. We lived there for a decade, and it's been 5 years.

My kids have gone back. I've gone back a little bit. The things that they look— the thing is that San Francisco is not a tourist city. It's not like New York where you can go and experience a thing. All you can do is go there for work or If you're like us and you live there, you go back for sentimental reasons. So for me, I might do a run going down Mission Street and Embarcadero. I would go to Arizmendi to get one of— it's a bakery that makes only one type of pizza a day. You don't know what it is. Actually, I guess now they put it on the website. It's fantastic. I would go have one of those. I'd have a papalote burrito. What are you gonna do?

Yeah, we're definitely gonna get papalote on Friday. My favorite restaurant there is called Basil Canteen. Thai restaurant.

Yeah.

Off the 101 and Civic Center exit, literally the banner of Ambush is still on the building.

Wow.

Landlord hasn't taken it down even though we're not there. So I'm going to like— I don't think— yeah, that'll be fun. We'll take them to CPMC where they were born, the hospital they were born, and show them that. Probably we have a place in Noe that, you know, it's rented out, but we'll drive through Noe, go to Phil's right by that park. So yeah, it'll be fun. I'm excited.

Yeah, it will be. All right. All right, everyone. See you. Bye.