Managing Like Musk and Bezos: Unconventional Leadership in Tech

There are managers who basically manage, I mean 10 people is usually where, where we go. So you'll have like if you had 30 people, you would have three people that are managing smaller teams of, of 10 each. And then those three people are going to be reporting up to whoever the next level is. And while you can end up having managers manage managers doing that, I do think that, that there's a reason that we have management and there are different skills. The people that are on the team doing the thing at the line level, having the conversations with the customers or inventing the products or whatever, those are different kinds of people than the people who know how to manage them and get them motivated and productive. And so I think that, that having those small teams, like if you've got a hundred people and you've got 10, 10 person teams, I do like that. And I think 10 is kind of the upper limit of the number. Okay. Hey everybody. Roland Frazier and Ryan Deiss here with another episode of Business Lunch. And we were thinking of fun things to do. We've got a couple of cool ideas. This one is coming off of both of us checking an article out. That was the unconventional ways Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and other tech leaders like to run their companies. But first, how you doing, Ryan?

I'm doing great. I'm actually completely overwhelmed. So you know, I like to do like a 30 day vacation every year. Like that's kind of one of the things that we teach to all of our founders, board members. Like that's how you know that like you've actually built a company that can scale. Not doing that officially this year. It's kind of getting broken up into two because of pesky like college stuff. But yeah, so I'm technically in the middle of a vacation, but like I'm in the middle of a vacation break. It's all just sort of mangled. But no, life is good. What about you?

Good. Well, I want to point out that my guess is that you are taking a 30 day vacation from several of the businesses. But because we have portfolios of companies and have lots of different companies that we're involved with, there isn't any one, I'm guessing that you're not, there isn't anyone that you're working in more than 11 months of the year, right?

Yeah, yeah. No, no.

And I just like, just because you, like you said, you know, our, our thing is to do that. I want everybody to understand we, we do live in integrity with what we, what we teach. Because you if, if you don't get a 30 day solid vacation break. Which I think is what you're talking about. One of the things that we talk about, it's because you already have that from multiple companies that you've already started, scaled and put operating systems into.

Right? Yeah, well. And this year, like I was technically gone. Like last week we were gone and then kind of had to come back this one because my son has like school stuff, like, like college type stuff. So we sort of had to cut our vacation. And I guess what I'm saying is it's his fault, it's the kids fault that we can't go on freaking vacation.

Well, which really leads to the bigger theme. Children ruin everything.

Everything. Yeah, yeah. The worst.

That's really.

But no. Yeah. So it's this kind of little blip where. And it's hard, man. We talk about this a lot. Like, I enjoy work. Part of the reason that I like to get away for 30 minutes. 30 minutes for 30 days. That was maybe a little bit Freudian. Part of the reason I like to get away for 30 days is because it forces me to break that, like that habit of just wanting to stay in that cycle of work. Because I do like it, you know. But it's also good to separate yourself from it because I just find that I think differently. I process different issues. I come back with renewed refreshed energy and things like that. So it's a little bit of a cheat week in a kind of bizarro entrepreneurial perspective. Like, I'm eating my dessert in the middle of my vacation, which is called work, and I'm, I'm oddly enjoying it.

I like it. I like it. Well, speaking of unorthodox management philosophies, how do you do that for a transition?

Pin it.

This, this, this was kind of interesting. And so I thought it'd be fun for us to riff on it a little bit. Just what is it that, like, what are some of these people who are some of the top entrepreneurs or they're heralded as the top best SEOs. One of them was called the CEO of a generation. What are they doing and how is it different from what most people do? And would it work for you? Or are they outer space alien unicorns that they works for them. But you know, first, step one, invent Tesla and Facebook and step two, you know that. Yeah. Where step one is really hard. It's like, I like those things because it's like you can have the success of Jeff Bezos. Here's his morning routine. It's like, well, yeah. And be the person that invents Amazon.

Right. Yeah. So much of this is. I do think articles like these are fun. But it does start, it seems, from a basic misunderstanding of correlation and causation. And like, yeah, if I will just manage my business like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, then clearly I Too will have $100 billion. Company equals billions.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. I do think it's important. I love, I love that we're talking about this. I think it's going to be a fun discussion. I do think there's going to be lessons. At the same time, the basis of this is a whole lot of survivorship bias. I'm sure a lot of the things that we're talking about are things that, you know, failed CEOs have tried as well. But I do think it's interesting, some.

Of them counter what the others do.

Right.

As you might, you know, it's the look before you leap. But he who hesitates is lost, you know. So here's the first one. Bezos employed the two pizza rule to limit teams to only as many people as could be fed with two pizzas. Assuming that you got eight slices per pizza and I don't know how many slices there are pizza, but let's assume there's eight and you have two pizzas and everybody has two pieces, that's eight people, right? What do you think about that?

Yeah, I mean, I've found that smaller teams tend to perform better, that as teams grow in size and you get more bloat, and especially to me, it's less about the size of a team because you think about a sales team. A sales team could have, you know, you might have 10 people, but they all do the same thing. Same with like customer, you know, service departments. They could be really large, but everybody's doing the same thing. So I found it's less about team size and it's more about team layers. So if within a team you've got managers, managing managers, managing managers, and then there's some interns down below who are doing all the work that I've seen only never work. So, yes, I do think that as teams grow in size, that is problematic. Less though because of the size, more because of the bureaucracy and people playing politics. I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, I think also because like you said, we've got companies that have 100 plus people doing a function like sales or customer service. But in those groups there are managers who basically manage. I mean, 10 people is usually where we go. So you'll have like if you had 30 people, you would have three people that are managing smaller teams of, of 10 each. And then those three people are going to be reporting up to whoever the next level is. And while you can end up having managers manage managers doing that, I do think that, that there's a reason that we have management and there are different skills. The people that are on the team doing the thing at the line level, having the conversations with the customers or inventing the products or whatever, those are different kinds of people than the people who know how to manage them and get them motivated and productive. And so I think that, that having those small teams, like if you've got 100 people and you've got 10, 10 person teams, I do like that. And I think 10 is kind of the upper limit of the number. And what I like about that is that then the teams can be competitive, they can be held accountable to each other. You know, they can be graded and standard costed, you know, like in terms of performance, you know, having typical managerial accounting, standard times to do things, standard results, etc. That are normalized against the other teams. And then the managers are aware of how their teams are performing against other teams that are doing the same work. Best practices can be shared by the managers in a management mastermind kind of group. And then those managers report up to the next level who is basically helping the managers be better managers while the managers are helping the line people be better line people. So I, you know, I think that, that he's right, but also it's not. Amazon doesn't, I believe, have the AWS team as only 10 people, right?

Yeah, obviously not. Yeah, there's, there's more than that working at Amazon. And I, and I agree with you, I'm not, I'm not saying there shouldn't be management functions. And I think having multiple layers of management at scale is completely appropriate. What I see happen a lot of times on some of these teams is you'll have a manager and then because somebody has been on the team for a while, they're like, well, I really want somebody to manage. I want to ascend, I want to grow in my career, so can you make me a manager? And so now this person is a manager of one person. And, and then because they believe that that is what, you know, growing in the company looks like, then they begin to pass that down. And what you have are these stick like organizations where it's literally one manager who has like one or two direct reports, both of which are managers who have one or two direct reports who are also managers. And it's like nobody's actually doing the work. And so I do believe that in general, flatter is better than, than stick.

Like, for, for sure. And we, we just said this too, like, what does it mean to lead? And I, I said this to one of my other business partners and I think he took a little bit of offense to it, but it wasn't said with anything except the desire to get us to the next level. And it was that we have some people who have been brought on as the company is growing and they have different views than the founders and they're coming from more because the company is getting bigger. These people that we're bringing in are coming from more traditional, hierarchical, non entrepreneurial positions and companies. And they are, and they're in support functions, you know, in the, like hr, legal, finance, all of those kinds of things. And, and they've got their views which are, which are certainly valid based on their experiences, but they're not entrepreneurs. And so then they're coming in and they're saying, you know, well, you need to do it this way. This is the way it's done. And there's a little bit of friction. And so one of the managers was saying, well, let's, let's do it both ways. And it's like, you can't, I mean, you, like, you can listen to those people for the input they offer, but ultimately a leader is going to say, look, this is the hill we're going to take. You need to march in that direction. And then you need to either agree, disagree and commit or it's not a fit for you. And, and so it was, he got a little, you know, I think upset with me for saying it, but it's like, man, if we're going to lead, we're going to lead. And I think it was our other business partner, Richard Lindner, that showed us that meme that, you know, lions have to do lion, you know, yeah, everybody.

Wants to be a lion until it's time to do lion stuff.

Everyone wants to be a lion until it's time to do lion stuff. And, and it's got the lion kind of messed up. And you know, it's like there are decisions that are not easy when you're leading. And you do have to lead and you do have to tell people, look, this ain't going to go this way, this is going to go this way. You have to have your vision, take the input, but then you're the Decision maker and then you have to go forward and lead. So that's, that's another thing about, you know, about I think the, the teams and leadership, you know, there. The other thing I wanted to say was that Bezos said no PowerPoints. Instead, he told employees to write six page memos for meetings which began with attendees silently reading the document, which I didn't know that part. I had heard that he had banned PowerPoints. What do you think of that?

I love it. It's, it's hard to execute in practice, I will tell you. And when you're moving quickly on things, not everything do you have time to put forth, you know, a memo. But like when we're going to make a significant strategic shift or we're going to do something new, I take the time. I heard this and I've been following this advice now for, you know, for years. This is something that I personally practice and it's been interesting to go back and look and just at some of the memos that I've written for. Here's why I think we should move in this direction and because when it's right now, there's knowledge that can be transferred from that and when it's wrong, we can go back and test, okay, what assumptions were being made that turned out to be false. Where I think if you don't capture it in the written word, it is harder to transfer throughout the organization and you don't get the lasting lessons. So to create that artifact, I think it's big now, do you need to do it for every single decision that is being made at all times? Certainly like the daily whirlwind type stuff. No, of course not. But I've also heard Bezos talk about one way and two way doors. Like there are some doors that you walk through a decision that you make and you walk through that door, it shuts behind you and there is no going back. I think for those types of decisions, it absolutely is worth investing the time to write up a memoir. Similarly, in marketing, we would say, hey, before you create the product, write the sales letter first. So I don't believe that this concept is all that foreign even to entrepreneurial organizations. If you don't feel like you can sell it, don't create the product.

So either of these things is create this artifact because you're either creating a PowerPoint or a memo. So I think the first thing would be from what Bezos is saying, it's I like an artifact, but the time you're going to spend making a PowerPoint pretty learning the program or whatever you might have to do versus write me just a short memo that everyone can look at before we go in. Instead of you presenting at, you know, snail speed through a PowerPoint that's got to be presented at the lowest possible, you know, consumption level that anyone in the meeting can take, do it this way. So I think thing one is it's an artifact. And I think what he's saying is that's a better artifact to create than a PowerPoint. Is what you're saying in that it's hard to do in practice, that it's hard to create any artifact, or that it's hard to not do PowerPoints.

Not everybody's a writer.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, and so I have found when I've encouraged team members to. They'll have an idea, and I think it's important. I'll say, great, write up a memo on that. And we actually have a format. Like, we have a structure inside. It's based loosely on that. But it's like, what's the problem that we're solving for? That's kind of the first part. Here's the problem, right? What are some of the assumptions that we believe to be true today, and what are some changes that we need to make in light of those assumptions and in light of the problem? Like, that is the basic structure of what we'd refer to as like a vision memo. So I'll write those. I'm comfortable writing. I found that other people struggle, other team members struggle with the writing process. And so I've even heard Jeff Bezos and I've heard people at other companies say that one of the things they evaluate for during the hiring process is, does. Do certain people write well, you know, I get it, but I've just. I know that there are some people who communicate more effectively through a presentation style. Like, I actually, it's a lot faster and easier for me to create a PowerPoint presentation or keynote presentation, to record myself delivering it, and to send out a loom video of me delivering it. So I think that is an artifact, but I think that something magical happens and you're actually forced to sit down and write it out. I've just found that not everybody is able to do that. And it can be so. The format can be so intimidating and so constraining that you miss it. So I have said to people, fine, then create a PowerPoint, create a keynote, whatever you need to do, create a loom video. Because at least I can watch that at 2x speed. But I do love the Idea if we're going to meet, people should come to the meeting with that pre stuff sent ahead of time so everybody knows why they're there and they've had a chance to process so they're not having to do their processing in real time. And the meeting is truly about, you know, discussion discussing the different options. So I do love the idea of submitting it ahead of time. What Bezos does, let's have everybody silently read it ahead of time. You know, the reason he does that is to make sure that people actually read it, which I get. Because even if you send it ahead of time doesn't mean people read it. They're kind of reading it distractedly while somebody's talking. So I get that as well.

Yeah, I think that like one of the things is I was going to mention what you hit on too. If you've got somebody that's not a writer, have them record a video and get it transcribed. If you want it written and edited by some VA or their assistant. If you are trying to show somebody how to do something, a loom video can be awesome. And I will always take the opportunity to watch anything at multiple layers of speed over normal presentation. But so I think, I think that's really. I think that's really a good way to. To approach that.

So can take one other one of the thing on this that that's related that I hate. I hate it and I want to get your opinion on this. When somebody sends me a voice text or a voice memo, they fixed it though.

Now it transcribes. Because I used to hate it because of the lack of transcription, but I like it much better now that I can read it.

The fact that it is transcribed helps. Anytime somebody on my team sends me one of those voice things, I'm like, write it out or go ahead. And you're right, the transcript does help. But I just feel like that so optimizes for the sender as opposed to the receiver. And it just drives me insane. I hate, hate, hate voice memos. Send it to me if I don't understand something we will do. Just drives me insane.

I you. You know, because we agree on that. I used to basically tell people, if you send me a voicemail, if you send me a voice memo, I probably will never see it or I'll see it a week from now. So if you don't care enough about having me read it now or see the message now, it's probably not important enough for you to send anyway. And we had a friend that would send them no matter what. And I finally just stopped responding at all. And eventually I got my way. But I will say that the reason I felt so passionately about that before was when you send me a voicemail, at least I can read it. When. Because frequently you and I and probably a lot of the people that are our, our, you know, listeners or our audience are in situations where you could read and respond, but it's not appropriate because you're in a place where you can't have audio and you don't have headphones and so you can't watch a video and so, or even listen to an audio call. So having the ability to read and reply makes me more efficient, helps me answer you. So if you really want to like to be an effective communicator, then send it the way that you're going to get the best response. And that's why we all ask generally, what's the, what's the best way to get a hold of you, Ryan? Do you like, are you a text, email, WhatsApp, you know, whatever? And then you hit them with, with that? Yeah, that makes a huge difference. That's just being a good communicator, right?

Yep.

Okay. So this one I'm, I'm kind of, I'm excited to talk about. So Elon Musk says I am a nano manager, not a micromanager, a nano manager. And he doesn't like delegating. Last year he told the Tesla, Tesla big company Tesla staff that he wanted to personally approve all new hires. Personally approve all new hires. What do you think about that?

I think that CEOs should operate at 30,000ft and they should operate at 3 inches. So I think that there are times when for certain projects that are again critically business important or something that the CEO is taking on as a special project because they bring something to the table that others might not. That it makes sense to nano manage that project and all the people who are involved in that. But that should be project based. It should be a season. I don't believe that that should define the function of the CEO role. Again, far be it for me to disagree, you know, with Elon Musk, obviously, but I think that, that, that, that I think that may work for Elon because he's Elon. I think if somebody takes us be like, oh, so to be like Elon, I need to become a nano manager. Everyone who works for you is going to quit because guess what? You ain't freaking Elon. So project based. Something very timely, very specific. There's a clear season A clear beginning and end. Nano manage. Totally agree with that. Or you're super top level working, as you like to say, above, you know, above the business. I think it's one of the two. I do believe that micromanaging or the dipping in and out is always bad. So anything in that middle is. Is pretty much always bad. Nano managing has its season. Shouldn't define the role.

I just looked it up. But. So Tesla has 140,000 employees. So let's say you've got 10% turnover a year. You're hired. He's. He's approving 14,000 people. Let's say it's 1%. He's approving 1400 people. I gotta think that either that was him being, you know, the puffery hyperbolic Elon, or he meant the key people, like the management level or something like that.

Thousand percent. There's no way. I mean, and even if he meant it when he said it, there's no way it worked in practice. I can't. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. There have been seasons where I said I want to approve everybody in this particular department because we were making some big changes and again, I was driving some of those changes. But I think it's important to acknowledge, like, when you do that, yeah, you're still the CEO, but I don't know that you're functioning in a true CEO capacity. You and your power as a CEO have decided you're going to put on a fundamentally different hat for a season and you're swooping in as like a consultant for this particular role, or you're swooping in as more of a manager. Like, I'm going to own the head of this particular department for this season. I think it's far better to say I'm going to nano manage this because I'm going to be taking on this role for this season. Define what that role is so that you know who you're hiring for to get back out of that.

Yeah, I agree. And I do think that can be very effective. The challenges is accidentally becoming immersed so much in that role that is not the CEO role. That then your job as a liaison visionary coach, which is kind of the CEO function, suffers. So it's, it's. That's tough, like. And to me, if you have to go do that, it means that you probably didn't hire the right people to be in the position that you're going to replace. Maybe though they left and you can't, you don't have a suitable replacement. But then that is also a failure. Of management. Because the people, before they leave their job, should be to bring up people who can replace them. Like, everyone should be coaching people that can replace them as they advance up through the organization. So that's kind of interesting, but this one I kind of like. So he sent an email to the Tesla staff and said there should generally be fewer shorter meetings. And he wrote, quote, walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it's obvious that you aren't adding value. I kind of like that. I can't tell you how many times I would like, even last week, I was in two or three meetings, and I was thinking, these four people don't need to be here. They're just like, they're trapped. I'm sure that they feel trapped. I'm sure their minds are miles and miles away. I have also been trapped in those meetings. And to have the freedom to just basically stop it sounds kind of cool. Our buddy Frank Kern has a thing he calls the Frank Fade. He just kind of fades out, and then you notice he's gone Homer, Homer.

Simpson into the hedges.

He does, yeah. Yeah. So what do you think about that?

Yeah, I totally agree. And we. It's one of the things that we practice and we say to all the teams, you should not. If you're not invited to a meeting, don't see it as an insult. Okay? Being invited to a meeting does not mean that you're more important. It means that whoever is putting that together, you know, they don't necessarily need your insight on that, or maybe they think they can get another way. They're likely being respectful of your time. Furthermore, if you do get invited to a meeting and you're not clear why you should be there, it's incumbent upon you to ask, what do you need me here for? I don't know what I add to this. I don't understand. I'm pretty busy, so. You have the right to question any meeting that you've been invited to. And then if you discover midway through the meeting, hey, everybody, I don't think I'm adding anything to this. You're encouraged to exit. And people should see that, again, not as being offensive. This is just us valuing and acknowledging each other's time. I remember this was probably six or seven years ago now, but I walked into our conference room back when Digital Marketer was all under roof and I was actively kind of CEOing the company. And I walked in and there were at least 12, 15 people in this meeting. And I was like, what are y' all talking about, like, oh, we're reviewing the. The newsletter for next week. Why? Why is why it takes 12, 13 to review the newsletter. And I'm looking at, like, basically the entire content team. I'm looking at half of the marketing team. And content was like, yeah, well, you know, because, you know, it's a marketing thing. We want to make sure. We like to get the input from, you know, from the marketing team to see if there's anything we're missing and, you know, any improvements they could add. So, you know, we thought it'd be nice to ask them to be here. So they invited the marketing team to their editorial meeting.

Right.

To be nice. Marketing team showed up to be nice. And I like marketers. Do you like being in this? Oh, and it was like, trying to be nice. I'm like, y', all, I know that there's other stuff you could be doing. Content team, do you need them here?

Well, no.

It'd probably be a little bit faster if they weren't here. Okay, Marketing team, leave and never come back to this meeting ever again. You don't have to come here. Content team, I appreciate the openness with which you invited them, but if you feel like there's a specific thing, maybe connect with that before or after. And I actually had everybody do the math. I was like, what? We're going to pause here. We're going to do the math on how much this meeting is costing the company, assuming an average salary of X amount. And everybody's jaws just dropped. And they were like, yeah, this is a really expensive newsletter that we're going to send out.

Yeah, I like that a lot. The other thing he said, and I'm curious as to what you think about this, he said, employees can feel free to buck the chain of command to get things done. Anyone at Tesla can and should email or talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company.

Yeah, totally. So I agree. And here's the nuance. Because people talk about chain of command. I don't like breaking chain of command. What I am fine with breaking is chain of communication. And I think those two things get mixed up. I think there's fundamentally a difference between I, as a manager, am allowed to task these people out. They are on my team. They report to me, I lead them, I manage them, I task them out. That is the chain of command. That should not be confused with chain of communication, meaning if anybody wants to talk to my people, they have to go through me. First, I think that that's bad. And so what I hear him saying here is chain of command does not equal chain of communication. Anybody could and should be able to talk to anybody, but I don't think that it's appropriate for anybody to be able to task out just anybody. And that's happened before. Like we've had people say, you know, oh, hey, can you help me with this? And essentially pull somebody off of one task onto another. And then their manager's like, what the heck? Why isn't this done? So chain of communication. Absolutely. Break the chain left and right, chain of command, that should still be respected.

Yeah. The tough thing about that, I think is, and I know that with some of the people that we advise and some of the companies we've got as portfolio companies, it's hard to make that move from entrepreneurial, doing everything, knowing everybody, tasking everyone, to a managed organization that's got delegation and hierarchy. So the chain of communication, I agree you shouldn't have to ask permission to talk to the other people. But it can also become a bitch session where you're not really, you're. You're hearing somebody complain about something and you're like, well, that's crazy. And then you go to your manager and you say, fix that. And then it becomes, I think it becomes kind of muddy. So I think the responsibility is with whoever is being communicated with that's up the chain of command to remember not to take the complaint and solve the problem or maybe even to address it completely directly with the person that reports to them who is being skipped in the chain of communication to. If somebody comes and says, hey, there's a problem, everybody doesn't like the way that the, you know, widgets are being manufactured on line six, but the manager says that's the way it has to be. Then to me, the, the conversation with the manager from the higher up is going to be. So tell me what's going on with, with the way things are going on, the widgets online six and, and go through either a five whys kind of discovery or consulting or coaching or whatever, as opposed to. I've received several commit complaints from people in your department about the fact that. You know what I mean? I think that's, that's where it can fall apart.

Yeah. And I think the second that you're talking about somebody and they're not there in the room, in the conversation when it's being had, that's when it shifts from communication to gossip. And so the way that you prevent that is if I'M going to jump the chain of command to go and talk to somebody. Am I talking to that person about the person who I've skipped over? Because if so, then I'm probably gossiping and that's not okay. I should go to that person directly. What we want to prevent is siloed communication to where I really need some information to do my job. The person I need the information from is at my same level. You know, I really don't want to have to ask my manager to ask their manager to ask this person's manager to then ask them to cycle it back around. Like that's, I think what you're trying to avoid. But yeah, it should not be used. Jumping the chain of communication should not be used for complaints. If you're going to complain about something, you should go straight to the source.

Yeah, I like it. This one's kind of a combination of Zuckerberg, Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, and he says that he hates to delegate and he doesn't like managers, managing managers. And then you've got Jensen Huang, who is the CEO of Nvidia, who believes that CEOs should have the most direct reports of anybody. And he has about 50 direct reports, which far exceeds all of the research of how many people can report to you and you still be effective. What do you think? They're both kind of on the, you know, let's not delegate. We're going to run everything. Nanomanager almost kind of thing that, that seems to be a theme through Musk and Wang and, and Zuckerberg. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, but like let's, let's think about, you know, let's think about, you know, in Nvidia and running Meta. Okay, so Jensen Wang has 50 direct reports. These are, if you're reporting into Jensen Huang and Nvidia, you're a pro. I mean, you're somebody who could be a CEO of any other Fortune 500 company. So he doesn't just like have some random entry level employee reporting into him. He's got absolute CEO level professionals reporting into who, who probably require almost no management. And I think that's important. They require almost no management. They require almost no motivation, no direction. These are batteries included. People who understand the vision. And so they're the easiest people in the world to quote, unquote, manage and have his direct reports. He's fundamentally running a holding company. Yeah, right.

That's what I was gonna say is that they're. Zuckerberg, he's more of a coach, I think, than Anything else. But Zuckerberg, who doesn't like to delegate. To me, those are different things, because having a lot of direct reports, you could have delegated to those people the entire management of the entire company or division or subsidiary or whatever, which I think is what's happening at Nvidia. Zuckerberg, I don't think so much though, right? I mean, he's got a CEO of it. Excuse me, a CEO of Instagram. And I don't know if he has a CEO of Facebook or not, but. But I did read an article recently by the head of Instagram. So is he. Is he delegating? I mean, like. But he says he's not.

I know, I know. And I think it really makes a. I think it makes a really good tweet. Well, he wouldn't tweet it. He would, I guess, threat it. I think it makes a really interesting story. Something that somebody says to be hyperbolic and to make a point. And I, And I get where he's coming from. But to me, that statement is similar to what Musk said before, where all hires must go. I think it's likely a whole lot of hyperbole. I think it was probably season, because if I recall when I read the article, this was during his year of efficiency. So he had a special project of, I'm going to go and do this. And keep in mind, I believe during that year of efficiency, he had Sheryl Sandberg, who most would consider to be kind of one of the best tech operators that has ever existed in the Valley, running Facebook, like, running the company, running the day to day. So I would argue that he had essentially delegated all operational managerial tasks to a professional so that he could then not worry about delegation. I mean, it's kind of like, okay.

All right, all right, fair enough. This one I like a lot. We got two more. Tim Cook. So this is cool to me. It says Cook grills employees in meetings to make sure they know their stuff, which I have started to get way more grilly for people because I want people to know their stuff. And it's very frustrating to me when they don't. And frequently they don't. I mean, top ahead you should have, off the top of your head, you should know these core key things. Hands down. You should know where we are, where your division is. You should be able to answer any of these questions. If it's not in your mind to that extent, then you're not thinking about it enough to make me happy. So it said, a former employee said in a book On Cook, would that be a cookbook? He'll ask you. It says he'll ask you 10 questions. If you answer them right, he'll ask you 10 more. If you do this for a year, he'll start asking you nine questions. Get one wrong, and he'll ask you 20 and then 30. I love that because to me, it's. It's. You got to know that stuff. I mean, I want you obsessed with the company like I am. I want you to know your stuff, especially about your division, your responsibility. What are your thoughts on that?

Nothing is a faster trust breaker for me than when I know one of my executive's numbers better than they do when I'm the one to find out when the thing is broken. And that's what I say to them. I was like, it freaks me out that I knew this was broken before you did, because you have to know your numbers. And it's the reason that we completely pivoted away from any type of automated dashboard. And now all company scorecards, all team scorecards are manual data entry and manual status update. Red, yellow, green. Because we found that when somebody was forced to go and look in the CRM, go and look at Google Analytics, go and look at wherever they need to look to get the data, and then copy and paste, transfer that into a Google sheet. That aspect of manually touching it, that friction, they actually knew the data. And then when they were forced to look at, okay, well, this was the. This is our monthly target. This is what we all agreed good. Is how are we doing right now compared to that? You know, are we a little bit behind? But I got a plan for catching up. Okay, it's yellow. Are we not. Are we behind? And I don't know how to catch up. Okay, it's, you know, it's. It's a red. You know, are we on track or had a goal? It's green when they have to manually select that. And then there's a little notes box, a little. A little notes field next to the color, where if it's yellow, they better write in some notes on what their plan is to get it back into green. That changed everything in terms of people actually knowing their numbers. Prior to that, nobody knew because they were overly dependent upon automated dashboards.

Love it. Last, last set of star, co, founder, CEO type people, Larry Page and Sergey Brin from Google. They have a policy encouraging employees to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most help Google. And they attribute AdWords and Google News. So one winner and one to that, what do you think about that?

I think it works if you're Google. I think it works if you're Google because the type of people that you want to hire are probably going to demand that kind of thing. To me, this falls in the category of free meals and you know, ping pong tables and foosball tables and all the other stuff. At the end of the day I believe most people want to be told this is the work that you do that we need you to do. And if you do this work, then this is what success looks like. There are going to be a small fraction of people who are entrepreneurial, intrapreneurial, who are going to come up with their own ideas and want to do some of their own things. So I think making it known that you celebrate those kinds of when they happen, that you encourage it and that you celebrate it so that more people want to do it is a good thing. But to say, okay, 20% of your time should be spent on whatever you want it to be spent on, I don't think this is going to work for 99.999% of the companies out there. I am buying.

I agree. I think you're right. I think it works if you've got, if you've got those big thinker inventor types or the positions are you're creating the software of the future and things like that. But if you're serving coffee at Starbucks, then you know, maybe thinking, I do think it's nice to think about why am I doing what I do and how could I do it better and share that with the company? Because that's really all consultants do is they come in and talk to all those people and like, hey, what do we do? That's stupid, you know, what are you doing that you wish was different? And then they go and you know, charge 100,000 or a million dollars and give that report. And it was basically if you just talk to the daggone employees, you know, you got to could have found that out.

I think it's an inherently entrepreneurial activity, you know, and I, I, I believe that most people, they just want to show up, they want to do great work, they want to work for a company that's winning, they want to be fairly compensated and then they kind of just want to go home and they want to live their own lives and they don't. And so, so much of this is based around the culture that I think has a lot of toxic aspects of it in Silicon Valley, which is your life is your work and your Work is your life. And I just don't think that that's true for the vast majority of employees out there. They want to work, they want to be fairly compensated, they want to do work that matters to them and they want to freaking go home. And so, yeah, I don't. On so many levels. I don't like it. I don't think it's even. I bet the vast majority of people at Google aren't even thinking about their 20% time.

I think you're right. So that's kind of fun. I like talking about that. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It's, it's. Now you have Ryan and Roland's take on how Sergey Brin, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Tim Cook should be running Jensen Wang.

Yeah. What they should be doing, I hope. You know what, I hope they hear this for their sake, you know, But.

I do think it's cool. I do think it's cool to take a look at these things and then contextualize them to real businesses that are, you know, that are not that they're not real, but like the average business, because there are definitely things we can take away and then there are things.

That are just kind of out there.

And then there are things that are said for the public, for the shareholders, you know, for the hyperbole, for the, for the media. So hopefully you guys found this helpful. And if you did, please share this with somebody else and also let us know. What, what are your thoughts? We'd love to hear them. And we'll see you next time on Business Lunch. Ever wondered how some people build real wealth through acquisitions, while others just sit on the sidelines? Well, I'm here to tell you it's not about luck. It's about having the right system, the right deals, and the right guidance. And that's exactly what we give you in the EPIC Deal fast track. If you've been thinking about buying a business, but you keep getting stuck, whether it's finding the right deal, structuring the financing, or negotiating with sellers, you are not alone. Too many people waste months, even years just thinking about acquiring a business while the real opportunities pass them by. The EPIC Deal fast Track is not another course. It's actually an implementation program. And it's designed to get you from the idea to the acquisition in just 16 weeks or less. We work with you one on one to help you find, fund, and close your first or next deal. And once you do, we're going to plug you into our elite EPIC board community so that you can keep scaling through acquisitions. We install three powerful systems in your business. The first is the deal flow engine so you always have high quality off market deals coming to you. Number two, we give you our offer and funding system so that you can structure offers that get accepted and fund them creatively many times with no money out of your own pocket. And number three, our closing and integration system so that you don't just buy a business, you actually successfully run and scale it once you have acquired it. Plus you'll have direct one on one support from an epic deal advisor every step of the way. And that's people that have actually come up through this system and done these deals themselves. That's the only way to become an epic deal advisor. And if you're serious about acquiring a business this year, don't just sit on the sidelines. Just text I'm in to 334-458-9034 and we'll get you in. So text I'm in to 334-458-9034. We'll get you in. No fluff, no wasted time, just real deal making from people that are actually out there doing deals right now.

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