Teams Don’t Exist in Business

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You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech? You know we got tacos and tech is on smash. Fold a green guacamole, keep accountants counting beans. Contador cuentan frijoles, founders trying to raise some queso. La vida San Diego, school of rapping, rapping fire. Tortillas around jalapeños in these modern times. A craft beer and coffee, my coding yoga posse. Fold a Body origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo. The tacos staying in puesto. Lucha libre and sombrero. Gotta shout out Tech Coast Angels by the ocean. Watch the sunset. La Jolla shores. Entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer. Oceanside to Tijuana. SD be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewing founders who be shooting for the moon. Tech SD Tacos with your host, Neal Bloom.

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You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech? You know we got it, hey!

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Startups get the party, startups get the party started.

You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech? You know we got it, hey!

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm thrilled to have on Larry Koval, the founder and author of Misled. Hey, Larry, thanks for being on the pod with us today.

Thanks for having me.

Oh, it's a pleasure. We got connected through, through the Cox Communications world, to be honest, through Jared Ruth, but even further back than that, Top Tech Awards, which has been celebrating Every community's technical leaders for a long time, but I'm excited to see that you are coming out with your own book. You wanna give us a quick high level? What is Misled?

Well, I think Misled is 2 things. One, it's a manifesto, kind of me railing against conventional wisdom when it comes to leadership, especially with leadership in business. But it's also a story about my career, almost 40 years leading people, all the rakes I stepped on, all the times I got lucky and found success and everything in between.

Amazing. Ah, well, I want to take us back to that a little bit. Uh, I happen to have really spent time with you at the end of that career with when you, me, and Jared Ruth sat down, I think on the rooftop in Oceanside.

That's right.

At the Mission Pacific. But yeah, obviously you were really feeling reflective at the time and feeling like, you know, there's some lessons to be learned here and shared with others. Take us through, like, where did it all begin for you? And, uh, how'd you end up as kind of the leader's leader? Yeah.

So I started my career at 23, leading teams that were used to— they'd been at those companies for, you know, 30 years, 40 years, longer than I'd been alive. And when I got there, it was clear I didn't know what I was doing. The thing that I was good at was drinking beer. And they knew I didn't know what I was doing.

So—

It was frustrating for me, but I had a boss, luckily for me, who sat down with me and really asked me what was wrong, what did I need to fix, how could he help. And that started to build my confidence. Every day I was meeting with him, talking about what I would fix and what we could do differently. I gained a level of competence that led to confidence. And then the real me started to come out, the creative side of me that— just changed everything. It allowed me to kind of break some things, as people in the founding community like to say. And that kind of set me apart from my peers. And it kicked off a 40-year career in leadership across 5 companies and lots of different roles, lots of different environments. Wow.

I mean, I think looking across the arc of many companies, when I look at When I've dipped in and out, you always get when people are leaving, which is when they're most reflective, they almost write like an obituary. They write about the people. They'll miss the people, right? Which makes every culture, and yet some companies have different kinds of people, yet everyone misses the people is what they're gonna like look back on. Is that what a big arc is across so many companies?

I think generally when you're in leadership and you're doing it right, you establish a connection with people that's deeper than just them being interchangeable parts. They're not. They become much closer to you than that, especially when you work with them for a long time. So, yeah, I don't think if you can fog a mirror, you're not going to leave a set of relationships without missing those things. And, you'll do what you can to keep them going strong afterwards. At the same time though, there's a certain energy that comes with being especially in a fast-paced environment, which I was always in because the large majority of my career was spent in sales. So, there was never a dull moment. And I think there's a part of me that channels that into my writing, into my thinking, you know, because it just— there's an intensity about it, but it's also energizing, right? You draw from it and your battery's constantly charging based on the environment that you're in. So it's really cool. And so I miss that as well, but it was a long run and it was time and my wife wants to go travel and eat You know, good food and things like that. So it's time.

And do it together, not just on sales meetings, sales, you know, trips that you're doing fast-paced around the world as well.

Do you know my wife? It feels like you do.

You know, we, we all have business trips and then we all have the trips that we'd love to take our family on as well too, for sure. What I mean, when you've been working at it and having so much fun being creative, reinventing yourself, Like, how do you, how do you know when it's time? How do you know when there's either a new time to move on to a new place or to, to say, you know, it's, it's time in the business world?

Yeah, well, I think at first, uh, after my last job, I thought, okay, it's time to go out and find a new place. But the more I thought about it, I led so differently than my peers, and I think most of the people that worked for me and with me would tell you that. And It felt like moving into a similar role would limit my impact. I've got three kids in the working world now, and you know they're in their mid twenty mid to late twenties. They've all experienced you know some good leadership and some really not so good leadership. And I thought to myself, this is my one chance to have an impact that's broader and deeper than just going in and working for a company. And a lot of people. As I was, you know, retiring from my last company and going on my kind of farewell tour, they said, Larry, you've gotta write a book.

Mm-hmm.

You've gotta, you've gotta make sure other people know how to do this stuff. And so that's what turned into Misled.

Mm-hmm. Amazing. Okay, so wait, so pre this, pre-book, cuz people obviously already knew you were meant to do this. Did you have like Larry's principles? Did you have like Larry's law of leadership or what, what did people know already about Larry's style?

I think I definitely had some Larry's Laws out there or Larry's beliefs or whatever you want to call them, Larry's maxims. But, at the end of the day, they were never in writing. You just saw them. You felt them. You experienced them. So, that in and of itself formed a foundation that I think the people that worked for me, especially the leaders and the leaders of leaders and the leaders of leaders of leaders, those folks were able to copy and paste some of the things that I was doing into their own leadership behaviors, and they saw the benefits of them. And they said, like, this isn't what the books tell us what to do, and it's not what the keynote speakers say we're supposed to do, but it works. And that's how I knew I was having an impact, that we were sticking out like a sore thumb for all the right reasons.

Hmm. You know what's interesting when I think about like startup world, Startups are trying to, in a sense, figure out what playbook to write to scale, to become big, in a sense, to stop being nimble, but hand playbooks off of what works, right? But it's usually playbooks around process. It's not usually playbooks around management and people skills and the soft side, right? Have you— so you've written many sales playbooks and many others. This feels like you're writing the the soft side playbook, which doesn't get written nearly as much. Is that true?

I would say it's not the soft side. I think this is really more skills and behavior-based. And so what do I mean by that? If you think about the— and I have a lot of pet names for this group. So, you know, the leadership industrial complex, the keynote cartel, the platitude pushers, whatever you want to call them. You know who those famous faces are out there that keep talking about, authenticity and vulnerability and emotional intelligence and servant leadership and all those things. And those principles, those platforms have had the podium for the last 30-plus years. And if we look at all of the data out there, since we're going to geek out a little bit, let's geek out on data. Gallup does a really good State of the Global Workplace study more than once a year, it seems like now. And The numbers are really damning, right? Because employee engagement has been low and stayed low for a long time. But now we're actually seeing something different. We're seeing managers and directors and middle management who used to enjoy a premium when it came to engagement. Now they are as affected as the employees are. So those are the people that are supposed to dig us out of this hole, and they're saying, help, I'm drowning. So Something is broken. And for me, what it, what it was and is, is that we've neglected the skills and proper behaviors that good leaders exhibit day in and day out to build trust, to make sure that we engender environments that create engagement, loyalty, and productivity. And those are the things we want from our people, but we're not able to give them what they need to give it back to us. So, when you say soft stuff, I think of it as just the opposite of the soft stuff. This is the hard-fought lessons that you get from stepping on a lot of rakes and falling into a lot of potholes. And, it just is what it is. And, if you look at, again, who the famous voices and faces are in this space, most of them are not— people who've spent, you know, decades working in the business world. They are, you know, academics and professors of God knows what and that kind of stuff. So, you know, their understanding of what takes place in the workplace is theoretical. Mine is experiential.

Totally.

So, how do you sit down and start writing a book? Like, what's the— how do you do this?

I still want to know because it kind of happened by chance. So, again, You know, my, my time at my last job was winding down. I was ready to start taking some international trips with my wife, and several people came up to me and cajoled me to start writing. And it was a rainy Saturday here in San Diego, which is uncommon. And I said, what the heck? So I opened up a notebook and I started writing. And before you knew it, I think 10 hours had passed and I was still writing. And I realized when I finally stopped, which was a few weeks, maybe a month or two later, I built the framework for what could be a really insightful, helpful book for leaders at all levels, at all stages of their career. It was a jumble, but the experiences, the stories that I was able to recall in more detail than I thought, although I did have to call a few people and say, did I really remember this right? Because it sounds crazy. And the fact is I was able to put it together in such a way that I said, okay, now I got to finish, right? I'm so far along. And before you knew it, you know, a business book is about 60,000, 65,000 words. I had 92,000 words written down.

Wow.

Yeah.

And you formed it and, and pretty much had the book already there and, and had to rearrange it, reformat, or no? It was like—

It's been through a bunch of edits. Um, and I never thought I'd be as protective over words and lines that I've written as I have been. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's been a battle of wills and Every time, at least, I think I've been smart enough to let the editors win because it's the right thing to do, even though it's painful for me to not use that word or that phrase or that story or whatever. But yes, it's gone through a lot of structural changes. I've learned a lot about writing a book that you wouldn't learn unless you wrote a book, which is kind of the same thing when it comes to leadership. You wouldn't know certain things unless you'd led. So, yeah, very cool, very cool experience for me. Kind of life-changing.

Yeah, I love it. That's so much of it is about the journey for sure. Uh, some of the— one of the main— let's, let's dive into the book a bit. Uh, you have this area of focus on team and how it's, it's the wrong word, uh, to be used specifically around, you know, the people that you are with. Can you take us through that concept?

Well, yeah, and it's not just the wrong word, it's the wrong unit of analysis, right?

Hmm.

I think that somewhere along the line, the word team, you know, made its way into the business vocabulary, the lexicon of business, and nobody really saw it coming. But the fact is, teams don't really exist in the business world. Let's talk about what teams have that are unique to other collections of people. The first thing is they have a common goal.

Right?

So, I played sports growing up. The word team matters to me. You know, when we talk about a common goal, it's win the game, execute the play, you know, win the playoff game, win the championship, get the gold medal, whatever it is. And, there are no other goals that compete with that, right? But, outside the world of sports, you think about a fire department, they get called to a house fire, They have one goal, you know, save life and property as best you can, get everyone out, including firefighters, and the mission will be accomplished. And there's nothing that competes with that. Every decision, every action is based on that. So, common goal is really important. The second thing is interdependency of work. And teams, even though you have people doing different things. In the team environment, there's a dependency on others to do the work that they're supposed to do the way that they're supposed to do it in order for you to be able to do the work that you're supposed to do the way you're supposed to do it. So, everybody operates with that same understanding, and then you accomplish the goal. That interdependency of work. So, where do you see that? Again, we'll go back to the fire department. There's somebody, you know, at the top. There's a woman at the top of the ladder. using the water cannon to, you know, rain the huge streams of water down on the house that's burning so that other firefighters who don't do that can breach doors, windows, whatever it is, get into the house, save people, whatever it is. They have to do their job a certain way or else the firefighters on the ground can't do their job a certain way. And everybody has to perform their function the way they're supposed to function. So that's part 2. And then the 3rd thing And, this is probably the most defining characteristic of teams is there is a sense of personal sacrifice that goes into being part of a team that, hey, it may not benefit you, but you're going to sacrifice for the good of the team, for the good of the mission so that the team achieves its goals, right? Where do you see that? In the military is a great example, any sort of special ops team, SEALs, Army Rangers, things like that. Those, those people go into their work every single day where the consequences are existential, and they are willing to make not just sacrifice, but the ultimate sacrifice for the mission to be successful. That's why they call them SEAL Team, Army Ranger Team, Delta Force Team, those kinds of things. And being from a military town, I take that seriously. And I think that word—

Yeah.

means a lot more to those people that operate in those fields than maybe we think it does. So, in the business world, we strike out all 3 times when that pitch comes across because we don't work with a common goal set. We each have individual goals. We don't work with a great deal of interdependency. I come from sales. I was actually hoping the guy next to me didn't do as well as he could do because I wanted to win that sales contest. And, you know, when it comes to personal sacrifice, I mean, I think that's just, you know, it's limited to a very elite group of groups.

And something you touched on is the diversity of skill sets, right? Helps everyone get to the common goal. Same can be said then for the diversity of opinions of what is our goal, how do we get there, not just everyone agreeing with the leader's goal. Right? That's right. So take us through that. Yeah.

So I think there's a, and this is a message for founders specifically too, because, you know, at the early stages of building a business, I think those hires that you make as a founder builder are so critical. It's a little different when, you know, you're a corporate VP and you're responsible for hundreds of people and you think, okay, I can, I'm going to take a flyer on this person. Every single hire you make as a founder is critical. And especially in the early stages of building a business, that's when a founder-builder is least checked or more unchecked than ever, right? So it's really important that they seek out those people who don't necessarily think the same, approach problems the same way, have the same backgrounds and experiences as they do, because the inclination is to hire for sameness. In fact, even in the corporate world, I mean, we're taught to hire for culture fit, team player, all these things that are really synonymous with get more of what you've already got. And that's not a good thing. It actually leads to poor performance because you don't find people that can challenge conventional thinking, that can elevate the group's performance by suggesting new and better ways of doing things. So, When I talk about, you know, hiring for sameness, uh, you know, I think that's a, uh, an epidemic, not just in the corporate world, but also in the world of founders where they've got to go find people that don't think like they do, that present differently than they do, and then benefit from that, really extract the goodness that comes from that.

And, and then the cost that comes with hiring the wrong person or going in the wrong direction because of Um, you know, sameness, right, in that regard, which is hugely expensive to founders, that's for sure, to startups, and expensive to every organization for, for going that in the wrong direction.

You nailed it. The worst thing that a founder or, or any leader can do is create an echo chamber, because that's when decisions don't get, you know, pressure tested. They, you know, the military is really good at red teaming. What they do is they pressure test all their decisions and plans before they go out and execute a mission. And I think the really great leaders out there have ways of tapping into people that can help pressure test decisions and really look at problems differently, help them solve for X when X is unquantifiable, given what the leader's really good at and not good at.

That's interesting. Well, sticking with the founder metaphor, founders and startups in general claim to move fast and break things. Right? That mostly what I think they're talking about is about iterating. You get more cycles than, say, an incumbent gets. But what are the— what could you lose by breaking certain things, especially breaking the wrong people that maybe aren't meant to be broken in that way too?

Yeah, it's a great question, actually. I always think about how important it is for leaders to deliver expectations to their people with Crystalline clarity. It's really important that you not create confusion with your people because confusion is friction and friction slows you down. So, there is that moment when you are giving instructions or you are laying out expectations for people. And, if you don't do that with absolutely zero ambiguity, people walk around wondering, what did my boss or my boss's boss or whoever really want me to do here? And it slows them down from going into action mode. And that's, that's not a good outcome for any business environment. So what's it— what's at the core of that? Well, I, I've always believed that you need to have a structure or some sort of scaffolding when it comes to communicating expectations. So for me, it was always, we're going to sit down, I'm going to lay out my expectations for you, and then you're going to play it back to me. And if you play it back to me the way I think you're going to play it back to me, I'm going to need to repeat myself a couple of times so that we get it right. And then once we get it right, you're going to go off and do your work. And I'm going to follow up with something documented, an email, a note, whatever, that says, here is what we agreed to and this is what you're going to get done. And all the things that you think that would go into that— timeframes, numbers, milestones, all those quality of work, whatever it is— that all goes into the expectation setting. And I think, again, when we're talking about founders, they are moving at the speed of light. They're wearing all these different hats. It's to be expected that they're going to want to go fast all the time because time is so precious to them. But it's precious to everybody. And when you prioritize the time that you need back over the time your people need back, then you've created a problem for yourself. And you will end up spending more time fixing things that are broken than you would have if you just did it right the first time.

Hmm.

That— there's a founder's dilemma in that as well. Often founders have this do or delegate piece also though, right? Like, what's the time it takes for me to communicate, you communicate back, and then you do it versus me just do it? That's, that's just not just a founder, that's every leader who is managing people, right? This, this do or delegate. How do you, how do you, how do you go about doing all this piece?

It is, it is every leader. You're absolutely right. And so, well, let me tell you a story first. Years ago, early in my career, I'd gotten a new boss. And just as context, I was not a fan of delegation. I never could wrap my head around it. I thought, why would I give the work that I know I can do better than anybody else to somebody who can't do it as well as I can and will take longer to do it and have that potentially reflect poorly on me. Why would I do that?

Yeah.

So, this new boss was not the warm and fuzzy kind of boss. She came in, sat down with myself and my 5 peers individually, got to understand what skills we brought to the table. And then, a couple of weeks into her tenure, she gave us all folders with our, what she called collateral assignments, which were basically code for, here's what I'm taking off my to-do list and handing to you. I said, great. Okay. So what is it? So what's in the folder for me is a lot of results tracking and data analysis and things like that. I said, great. This is what I'm good at. I thought, this is going to be a piece of cake. And then in that moment, I realized that our company, a big company, was going through a massive tools and data analysis platform change.

Hmm.

And nothing we had was accurate. In fact, you could bet that whatever you were getting was inaccurate. It was more wrong than right.

Hmm.

So, 2, 3 weeks I'm spending trying to make heads or tails of the data, couldn't do it. My boss is growing ever more frustrated. In fact, she was publicly giving me lashes in front of my peers. And, I'm trying not to make excuses, but there is just no good way to get any reasonably accurate data from our headquarters location. So I made the decision at some point, because I just got fed up with all the public beatings, to do it my own way. I came up with some manual tracking. I added some creative things in there that weren't even in the prior analytics that we were using, got my peers to sign on for it because, you know, it meant some manual work on their part. But we were able to cobble together this new way of looking at the business. that was nothing like what we used before. But the fact is, it actually provided us some insights that we didn't get prior, and they started to yield some really good benefits. So without my boss knowing it, we were kind of working, you know, kind of in a shadow realm, so to speak, coming up with this way of leading through this ambiguity and lack of clarity and lack of accuracy. And we were doing better with it than we were with our prior tools. So my boss You know, started, you know, really getting deep into what we were doing. And before you know it, I was on conference calls with her, her boss, her boss's boss, and her boss's boss's boss going through what I built. And suddenly, within 2 months, this became a standard. It became a corporate standard. Everybody was going to do this this way. So, I had people calling me from all over the place. And so, what's the moral of that story? I realized that my boss had, whether intentionally or unintentionally, gotten me to stretch myself. I stepped outside my comfort zone, did something I wasn't prepared to do, and it turned out great. And what I realized in that moment is that hoarding all the work that I'd been hoarding was actually robbing developmental opportunities for my people. And, you know, I was keeping them from being able to move forward. So that changed my entire landscape when it comes to delegation. And I think that's a lesson that's Hopefully helpful to founders and leaders at big companies as well. I just, I think there's a, there's a strategic intent behind good delegation, and I'd learned it the hard way. Here, I'm giving you a book that teaches you the easy way.

Is, is that how most leaders have to learn though, you think? Like learn it the hard way or learn it through fire?

I, I think there are a lot of, especially today, Neal, because the large majority of what's written isn't the fundamentals. There's a reason for that too. I mean, if you're a CEO of a big company and I offer you, you know, a keynote on how to run a tight meeting, craft a meaningful agenda, and make sure value is driven through, you know, open dialogue and solving problems, or how to bring your whole self to work, what are you going to pick?

Yeah.

You're generally going to pick the thing that's going to leave people feeling good about themselves and uplifted and all those kinds of things.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, there is some part of this that is me saying, I understand why people choose style over substance. At the same time, substance is what's missing in today's leaders. And that's why they're in their stress behaviors. And so many people think that their leaders are not emotionally intelligent. It's not that they are necessarily emotionally intelligent, although that could be part of it. It's that they're in their stress behaviors because they don't have the tools to help their people be successful.

So, you're saying we need to make substance sexy again?

Yes. Can you help me with that?

Yeah.

You're doing it with Misled, making, you know, with the book. By the way, are you doing an audiobook version? Do we get to listen to Larry read us the book as well?

There will be an audiobook version. And if George Clooney and Idris Elba turn me down as narrators, then you might just You're me delivering it.

Yeah.

And it will be early part of next year.

Okay.

And then also apparently, you know, we need to deliver it, the substance, in bite— TikTok bite-sized formats as well too. I think that's also a little bit as well, I guess, is like how people consume substance these days. How have you seen that over time?

You're absolutely right. And, and I think there's a, there's a way to go about that. And it has to be connective tissue, right? So you can't just give a bite-sized piece of information about something that's unrelated to anything else because, you know, thinking about delegation, well, delegation, as we discussed, is a really critical part of development, but that development has to be part of something bigger. And for me, that bigger thing was always career planning with employees. That's a skill nobody I can find out there has written about in any great detail. Nobody's given anybody a playbook on that. Well, Well, how can that be when we know from all of the employee survey data that employees are telling us, I really wish my boss could help me realize my career goals. Otherwise, I feel like an interchangeable part. I'm just another number to them. I can be moved out and replaced with somebody else. That's not what we hope work turns out to be for our kids and our grandkids. It's got to be more meaningful than that. And there's a role that leaders have to play there. So, yes, you know, bite-sized pieces of information, digestible pieces of information are really important, but they have to be delivered in a taxonomy. It has to be kind of a continuum. And that's why I developed this Arcane Model. And you can learn about it on my website at arcaneleadershipconcepts.com, where it's really relentless improvement. But it is, you know, a leader's journey that they decide what they want to work on themselves. What are the behaviors they want to suppress? What are the skills they want to acquire? And you, you get through and you step through that process and you go back and start at the beginning for that next piece. It's constant improvement. And, you know, for leaders that invest in themselves and their development, they find themselves in a great position to help their people be successful.

Why don't we do a few takeaways for like first-time leaders? A lot of first-time leaders get elevated to the leader role because they're great individual contributors, not that they're great at managing or delegating. So I'm sure you've seen a lot of that. And a lot of founders the same as well. They're the expert in something either technical or they're great at go-to-market, but have never actually led. They're just good at being great strike soldiers. Like, give us a few takeaways that you think kind of first-time leaders really could be taking away from, from your experience.

Yeah. So in the, in the corporate world, we talk about the Peter Principle a lot. And how, you know, people get promoted, as you say, because maybe they were an individual contributor, but they were performing at an extremely high level for an extended period of time. And we thought, hey, wouldn't it be great if we just promoted that person and they cloned themselves, you know, 8 times and created 8, you know, superstar performers? But all you have to do is look at sports again. You can see where great players have become coaches, and most of them have flamed out. The record for NBA coaches who are Hall of Fame players is about .500. I mean, that's about what it is. It's really not good. So, note to any NBA execs out there, don't go that route. But, the point is, yes, we often see people promoted past their abilities. But, what's more disconcerting, Neal, is that 60% of managers out there report in some of the data and surveys out there that say they didn't get an ounce of training when they were promoted into managerial jobs for the first time, that no one taught them how to be a leader. And that was my experience too. There was no onboarding that said, here are the things you need to know in order to be an effective, capable leader. So, yeah, that was trial by fire. People shouldn't have to go through that because the people I led during that period of time weren't getting a whole lot of value from me, right? And so, I look back on that with a certain degree of heartache. And what I would tell first-time leaders is go find experienced leaders that you can look up to, build a network of people that you can look to, especially for those things that you don't do well. If you're a founder and you're a technical genius, but sales is not your strong suit, go find people who have worked in the trenches, but also led sales organizations at lots of different companies in lots of different environments, even against horrible headwinds, not just lifted by economic tailwinds and things like that, but people that had to fight their way through not having enough resources to do the things they wanted to do, or being an unknown in the marketplace, trying to survive, scratch and claw their way into some degree of market share capture. You know, there's a lot of things that are as intricate as they are in the technical world in sales, marketing, finance, you name it. So find people that can help you be good in that space and learn from them, but also empower them to help you.

Do you think someone like you who's rose the ranks multiple times throughout as As a leader, you think there's a lot of people who go and find others for mentorship? Is that pretty common as like a leading skill? Or, cuz they're not handed the playbooks, like you said, maybe they're given training a little bit. Like, what do you think is a common thread for the ones who do flow up to great leaders?

Yeah, they, they, they believe that they have the ability to help others, but more importantly, they have the desire to enable other people's success. That's the common thread in every great leader I have ever met. They prioritize that over all things, and that becomes their decision matrix. If they're faced with some very difficult choices, the first thing that comes to mind is, how will this affect the people that work for me and with me and around me? And, you know, for a founder, I think that's a mission-critical skill that you have to acquire. But it's not just a skill, it's a mindset. Right? How do you get to a point where you're actually prioritizing your people? So, yes, it's something that I've seen in every great leader, the leaders that I've wanted to be more like and seen as iconic role models. And it's an important thing that if you don't possess that, you got to really check yourself at the door and say, is this something I want to do?

Okay.

So, so an up-and-coming leader comes to you and says, hey, Larry, I'd love to talk and chat. Where do you take them to tacos? Where do you go?

Oh, well, top of the list, because, um, if you've never had the smoked marlin taco at Oscar's in PB, ooh, then, and I, I mean, I drown that thing in their orange sauce. I mean, I, I could take a bath in that orange sauce they have there. But yes, that is one of the great eats. And, and just so you know, I am a food snob in every way, shape, and form. You know, I think my wife and I, last checked, we ate at about half of the world's top 50 restaurants. I mean, that's how crazy I am about food. If she, she wants to go somewhere, she knows we have to look and see what restaurants we can get reservations for. I mean, when we went to climb Machu Picchu, Yeah. I spent 4 months working on restaurant recommendations.

I love it. In Peru.

And I said, if we don't get a reservation at Central, we're not going. And she's scratching her head going, what is wrong with you? So, yeah. So Oscar's smoked— but all the fish tacos at Oscar's are great. And then probably second place, I love Lourdes. I mean, I think their tacos are great. It's a great balance of fish. Their crema is outstanding, and you got to have, you know, the spicy carrots for garnish. Of course.

I love the specific dish call-out at Oscar's, which is a legend spot and often gets mentioned more for its ceviche, I feel like. Great ceviche, but the smoked marlin taco. Okay, love it. Adding it to the list for sure.

Eat it and thank me later.

Okay, got it. Or we'll share it together.

That'd be great.

Yeah, Larry, this has been tremendous to have you on, but to also to be pulling out little nuggets here that I know honestly, I think we're in a new awakening right now for hungry for leadership advice. Honestly, people are change going back to office. There's a whole chunk of people who. only worked virtual for 4 years, only learned virtual in undergrad college-wise, and are coming into the first time of actually working with people right now. Like, it feels like 10 years worth of knowledge workers who— and you have AI with this, like, hey, you have to change and adopt new tools, which really just means you have to learn to work with people in the end, right? And so what a timely book to come out and share lessons learned over a bunch of You know, time periods that will probably be timeless as well. So thanks for sharing. Thanks for doing the work of writing it, but sharing these knowledge with our community here.

Thanks for having me, Neal.

Appreciate it.

Cheers.

Tacos and tech is on smash for the green guacamole. Keep accountants counting beans. Contador cuentan frijoles. Founders trying to raise some queso. La vida San Diego, school of rapping, rapping fire, tortillas, round jalapeños. In these modern times, a craft beer and coffee, my coding yoga posse, fold the body origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo, the tacos tenen puesto, lucha libre en sombrero. Gotta shout out Tech Coast Angels by the ocean, watch the sunset, the Hoya shows. Entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer. Oceanside to Tijuana, SD be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewing founders who be shooting for the moon. #SDTechos with your host Neal Bloom.

Come on!

Startups get Startups get the party started. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party started.

You want tech in tacos? Tacos in tech? You know we got it, hey!

Startups get the party started. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos? Tacos in tech?

You know we got it, hey! Tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey!

Tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey!