Episode 71: Michael Dunn: This Is Not The Story: Prototypes, Failure, and Faith is Where Ambiguity Is

What if the lost years of your career became the blueprint for a better way to lead, parent, and live? We sit down with Michael Dunn, a veteran of Apple, Netscape, and Joby, to unpack the IPO-era rush, the “sleep at the office” mythology, and the long tail of burnout that followed. This candid conversation about buying the wrong house in Texas, chasing stock spikes, and missing family dinners—became enlightening about rebuilding around people, patience, and a different kind of ambition.

Michael’s leadership philosophy was forged in the hardest classrooms: global teams that never slept, deadline death marches, and the sobering realization that pressure doesn’t make minds think faster. He explains how empathetic, equity-based management outperforms authority, why the Golden Rule can fail at work, and how to keep a team solving new problems instead of the same ones eighteen months later. Along the way, he shares how employees he empowered now lead at Fortune 100 companies—and still call to say thanks.

There’s a deeper current here too. Born with cerebral palsy, Michael chose resilience early, deciding to use his weaker left arm after watching another boy play baseball with deformed arms at a summer camp. Aging has equalized what disability began; humility and accommodation now live alongside agency. In faith, he moved from dogmatic certainty to a Christianity that embraces ambiguity and resists culture-war binaries. He’s liberal, hopeful, and relentlessly practical about where impact still lives: small circles, lasting relationships, and adding “a little spin” to each interaction.

We talk Santa Cruz gentrification, Highway 17 commutes, return-to-office tactics, and why a handful of gifted engineers can make or break a company. We also get a playbook for overwhelmed times: prototype your life, try small experiments, accept the failures, and keep hope on purpose. If you care about humane leadership, meaningful work, resilient parenting, and faith that breathes, this conversation will stay with you.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review—what part challenged you most?

Transcript

Cold Open And Santa Cruz Roots

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Here we go. Lyrical jujitsu up on the mic. Let's do this. SC, stand up. Yeah. Here we go. Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I'm about to break down. First person mean mug and catch a tape down.

unknown 0:17

I can't relax with the beats around.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Michael Dunn.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

Yes. And the bumper music. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

That's from one of your neighbors.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Really?

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Yeah. Yeah, just down the street on 17th. Nate Mendelssohn, yeah. Elite Technique.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Yeah, very geeky.

unknown 0:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:34

He is a nerd.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

I expect an anime uh explosion out of that.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

So uh he he he was wearing masks before COVID. So he he's he actually is a he's on that edge. He's on that end of the spectrum. Nate, you're on that end of the spectrum. You know this already, but I'm not gonna say that to your face because you'll beat my ass. But anyways. Santa Cruz, what's the first thing you think?

SPEAKER_03 1:02

I think what Santa Cruz is for me is now it's home. Yeah. You know, um maybe it took 25 years to feel like it's home. But my wife and I had a certain journey in our in our lives. We we traveled all over the Bay Area in California and always seeking certain types of opportunities to build relationships with uh with folks and and build opportunities for church. And at the same time, I was trying to provide enough funds and revenue so my family could, you know, we could pay rent and buy food and pay credit cards. And uh so one of my journeys um took me from California uh when my kids were all in elementary and middle school to to Texas for seven years. And that was an interesting journey for us. My motivation partly was pragmatic. I thought I will never be able to afford to buy a house in California. And here I qualified for a house before I even arrived in Texas. Yeah. So, but then my father lived there, he was in the Air Force. And if you're in the Air Force, you cannot avoid Texas. It's almost impossible to avoid Texas if you're in the Air Force.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, Aiden went to uh Corman School in Texas. Yeah, I think it's any military.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Well, it's especially Air Force.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

I mean our Army, Navy, Air Force, maybe the Marines.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Yeah, well, they're all they're all there. And I lived in a city that had six bases. Six. Six. Six yeah, a Navy base, uh, an Army base, and four Air Force bases. Wow. So that was my childhood growing up on an Air Force base uh when I was with my father. My parents divorced, my mother came to California, my dad stayed in Texas. So I would bounce back and forth between them. So as we were a young family, um, I envisioned, well, wouldn't it be nice to go to Texas? Because I have sons, and Texas is a great place for boys because there's all kinds of stuff to do. There's always woods and critters and snakes and and lizards, and uh it's it's a it's a great place to explore if

Texas Move, Military Childhood, And Housing

SPEAKER_03 3:40

you're a kid. And so I thought that was a good childhood. I'm gonna go back. And we did. We bought a house and bought the wrong kind of house. I found out that I bought a house that by Texas standards was too small. Oh, yeah, right. And I mean, the house I left that I was renting in California was 800 square feet. You mean a house in California? Yeah, yeah. And and I I I bought a house that was 1,400 square feet and a third of an acre, 25 oak trees, a separate two-car garage. I thought this is like paradise. But then when I came time to sell my house, I found out it was way too small. People would go, well, that's no bigger than an apartment. How can you live in a place that's that small? And if I'd if I'd been more wise, I would have bought something bigger and I would have had a better because they were giving them away out there, right? Well, I mean, it cost more, but but it would have had a the you know, the evaluation of the property, the valuation property would have grown faster and greater if I'd just gone up another thousand another thousand square feet.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

And um, but anyway, it was such as it was, it was our place. And um and I was in tech, I worked at a startup there, and what it did for me is it brought me into a very geeky space from a career perspective. Uh I'd started out doing tech uh with my first main job working as a contractor for Apple. I'd built a graphic design business. And Apple said, Hey, we need graphic designers to come and test our product. Just do whatever you would do if you're a graphic designer and tell us what you think. So they paid me to do this. Yeah. And but as time went by, I just got geekier, you know, I got more and more techie. And when I went to Texas, that's when it really changed the startup I was at. But working in a startup that's moving towards IPO, it's just a whole different world.

SPEAKER_02 5:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

It's uh what what year was this? This was back in 1994.

SPEAKER_02 6:00

Okay, so right, right at right at that whole um peak peak IPO moment.

SPEAKER_03 6:05

Yeah, I mean like Red Hat when IPO went in those years. And I I have the illustrious uh uh history of having bought Red Hat at at eight at $50 a share and selling or $80 a share, selling it at $50, and then watch it go to $400. Yeah, jeez.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Oh, we all have those stories. I I I was in a meeting in 1998. That cost me about $50,000. Over two hours. You know, I made a call a couple days before that. And yeah, I I not only did I lose the $50,000 that I gained in that two hours, but then it cost me another $1,500 to get out. It was, you know, uh the the those those wild rides of the of the market back then were crazy.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

Well, with my coworkers, they had quite a reputation. So they were very interested in what stock I was buying because they felt if I bought it, they had to sell it straight away. As soon as I sold stock, they all went in. Yeah, they all went into double down.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yes, I think I was that guy too. Maybe that's another another thing we have in common, Michael.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

But but having a career in tech, though Austin isn't really quite like Silicon Valley. I mean, it is a very small amount. I mean, uh, I mean, there they call themselves Silicon Hills because they Austin has places with elevation.

SPEAKER_02 7:48

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Unlike, you know, the Pad Haddle or something like that. But you know, where Austin might have 200 companies, you know, Silicon Valley has 6,000 companies. It's just the scale is nowhere, nowhere near. But uh, but my experience at the startup was the kind of things they put in books. You know, I was working all the time. And in some ways, when I think of it as a parent, I consider those the lost years because I literally was at the office. There were times I was I never went home.

SPEAKER_05 8:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:27

I mean, one I we in those days we would have offices rather than cubes, which was nice, you know, many ways. Certainly made it easier when I was interviewing for other jobs at other companies to close the door. But the thing about it was is I only lived 10 minutes from my office. So I would go, okay, I'm gonna just do this one code commit and then I'll go home because it's just 10 minutes away.

SPEAKER_05 8:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 8:55

And and and then I'd go, oh man, I just missed dinner.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Yeah, I I mean it it's strange looking back on that, and we're gonna segue just a little bit, but um that era, you know, and of course we have our crew, you know, collectively from Netscape and all that, that really kind of started that move fast and break things. You know, the uh all of our friends were all sleeping at the office, especially that that first two years. You know, it it it was weird to be outside of it raising kids, watching my friends, you know, many of whom were also married, but like you just lived there. Like that it it was it

Startup IPO Era And Market Whiplash

SPEAKER_02 9:40

was central to your life. And I I don't I don't like there aren't enough words to describe what the momentum felt like. Like like you it it was fun to be a part of it but looking back, yeah, lost years, you know, just a lot of a lot of time, like all time. And uh you know, within my friendship group, it's it's very hard to leave that trajectory. You know, that the the the people that are my age still that that's where they were cutting their teeth when they were young still have not left that lifestyle. Like it it's it's pretty crazy to watch still, you know, at you know, 55, 60 years old, these guys, like once they're in it, like they just disappear for a year. Like they're they're gone.

SPEAKER_03 10:31

And uh well it's a um I mean it's the it's heaven for a workaholic.

SPEAKER_05 10:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

I mean it really is. If you're a workaholic, you will never not be happy, yeah. Because that's funny, you know, because you just it just never stops. And the way it changed in my, you know, so I started my tech career in the 90s, so I saw a lot of transition. And the transition had to do more with mobility and and uh always available, you know, and having teams that are global teams, so that any moment of a day there was somebody on my team working. It didn't matter what day it was, it didn't matter whether it was Father's Day, uh, uh it didn't matter if it was Christmas, it didn't matter if it was two in the morning, there's always somebody on one of my teams working.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah. And um that phone better be on.

SPEAKER_03 11:35

Yeah, absolutely. And uh and in retrospect, I I learned a lot from all of those uh uh broken ways of working. I call it broken because it's not sustainable. You cannot keep driving your teams like that forever. It just can't happen. So if you're a good manager, what I define as a good manager, your job is to make that better over time. You can't fix it today. You know, if if your how if the roof is falling in on your house or the floodwaters are rising, you have to do an intervention. You've got to you've got to do whatever it takes to sort out the chaos. But uh what I learned as a manager is my goal is is that I never wanted to be dealing with the same problems 18 months from now that I'm dealing with today. They had to be different problems, you know, had to be different challenges. And my experience in Texas taught me by bad example how not to manage things. I mean, the only reason we worked those crazy hours wasn't just because we were short on staff, we just didn't manage our projects well.

SPEAKER_05 12:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:52

And it wasn't, it didn't have to do, it didn't have to do with delivery dates, it didn't have to do with having hit certain deadlines. We just had to be better at managing things. And that's how I learned to be a good manager. So if I didn't have that over-the-top death march experience, you know, death march is where the French Legion, they m they they they they they stand at attention, they go out into the desert until they die. And that's what software development was like in the 90s at startups. And um, and so I learned from that experience. And so when I came, after seven years, I came back to California, uh, partly because my oldest son wanted to go to college here. And when he got accepted to college, my wife goes, Well, why can't I go back to California? Because she had lived her whole life here, still had family here. Yeah. And I said, Well, we'll do the unusual thing, we'll go back. Because nobody ever goes back.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

No, no, you leave California, you're doomed.

SPEAKER_03 14:01

You know, I mean, how do you uh, you know, you sell your eighty thousand dollar house, what do you do when you come to California? You find a place to rent if you can. Uh, unless you struck a rich. But uh, and when I came, we had any place, we could live anywhere in the Bay Area we choose. Anyway, because you know, I I it was all a gift. I could pick where to live. And um, we thought of going back to San Francisco where we'd left, and we liked San Francisco, but we we started in San Diego, and and my son was visiting colleges, so we we brought a tent trailer and we camped all the way up the coast to California. And so my son interviewed at all these different colleges, and when we got to Santa Cruz, we just felt like this is where we should be, you know, we should be in this place, and it had certain practical advantages, it's a small place. Um, my kids could ride their bikes to school. Uh, the scholar the high schools are relatively small. So it was it felt more like a neighborhood, you know, and it felt at a very good scale for my family. Because, you know, when you have four kids, three in those days in school,

Workaholism, Global Teams, And Burnout

SPEAKER_03 15:30

it's really advantageous if they can make their if they can travel their own way to practice. Right, right, you know, in school, and you don't have to pick them up and take them. Yeah. I mean, that just adds complexity.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Well, why why don't we take this moment to uh tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Um you know, clearly you married, have have four children, you have grandchildren, all that kind of like stuff.

SPEAKER_03 15:55

Well, um my uh I have I have three sons and a daughter, and there's 15 years between the first and the last. So that means the first and the last were surprises. The the bill.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Did you figure it out on the last one?

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Well, no, it just was uh it was like, well, you know, every birth control method has a statistical failure, right? I just should have bought a lottery ticket that day. And uh so our first and our last were unplanned and a little bit disruptive to our lives. Um I mean, when my wife got pregnant at 40 and she looked at me with a look that I either needed to get the plubbing fixed or she was gonna fix it for me. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

So PG ⁇ E came and turned the gas off.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

And uh so in her ninth month I decided to get the operations. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:53

Get the ice packs, you know.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

But the uh but in but ultimately the first and last were just pure joy. Yeah, yeah. You know, uh my kids, they're going, you know, how can I my youngest go, how can I ever afford to have a family or kids or anything? And I always tell them, no matter what, kids always get taken care of.

SPEAKER_05 17:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:17

Doesn't matter how poor you are or how rich you are, they they they get taken care of. And the the what they bring back into your life, you can't quantify that. You can't reduce it to, well, that's a hundred thousand dollars per year per kid. You know, people do this because you know, especially in my world where there are engineers, they have to they have to use math on every part of their life. But but that just isn't the story. It doesn't, it's not an equation that returns, doesn't it has no way to understand the value that having children return to your own life. Um I mean, there's also you know, pain and suffering and yeah, disappointment, and and it and for me as a parent, I wasn't the kind of parent that I thought I would be envisioned because I experienced a lot of anger uh only with my children, which was uh uh troubling for me because I didn't understand why I was angry. And then a few years ago, you know, as my old youngest is in high school, I read a paragraph in one of these uh self-help books that said, Children of alcoholic parents become angry parents. And I go, Why didn't I read that 20 years ago? You know, it would have been useful. Yeah, right. And you know, and as I'm interacting with my two youngest children, especially my youngest, my older sons would see me interacting and they'd go, Well, hey, dad, you never did that for us. And I go, Yeah, I say, he's got such a better father than you.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yeah, that's just the case.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

And I and I just own it. I say, look, I'm happy to pay for your counseling, and you were my training wheel child.

SPEAKER_02 19:26

So yes, yeah. That first one is where, man, we spend all the money and make all the mistakes. It's it's hilarious. I'm sorry, Caleb. Well, you know, uh I'm just for the audience, the there's a certain affinity that sits at the table right now, and that uh Michael and I have known each other since our boys were thirteen. Uh my middle child is the same age as your youngest. Uh we're we're, in a practical sense, a generation apart, you know, as as far as uh uh numbers go but um i i just for you guys to understand Michael to me was the first human that I had met outside of uh my ministry circles, my athletic circles,

Learning Management The Hard Way

SPEAKER_02 20:20

these kinds of spaces that we we we shared a lot of things in common. And and it's taken gosh what are we looking at 15 years to kind of unpack our similarities. I I think this conversation will we'll do even more to do that. And so Michael lives in a really neat space for me in that I could look up to him but he chose to stay at my level all of these years. You know that that there's a fluidity to his generation that many in his generation do not have you know of of really being able to uh relate to uh you know Gen X, you know what we consider a lost generation. And we can get further into this as as as you know the topics kind of emerge in this conversation. But but Michael, to my end at least the the way that I viewed you throughout this time is is an active learner and is not set on uh believing that things are going to stay in stasis. You know it's it's a constant change and he's such an adaptable human you know to to what new thinking needs to emerge to approach whatever's new. And so he is the first person of this type that I ever met from your generation where I really related to you and and you always like you were also the first in the water polo group that made a place for me. You know the the the the hotel room floors the you know all the kind of traveling that we did together. A lot of that um so there there's a really cool space in my heart for Michael just just because of the uh not just the olive branch that was extended to me but but the I I mean I felt the need inside of you was the need inside of me you know of of just longing for real conversation and long-term friendship. You know that that that you know it wasn't a race. And and so you you get to you get to sit and listen in to to something here that that has taken 15 years to brew I'm certainly hoping for more than that amount of years after this moment. But it it's it it this is this is this is classic Michael right here, right? I think we might be in for a gift here that's my point. So thank you for coming you know let's just start right there but but uh you know you've you've already glanced on things you know that I think are topics that are relevant to the moment you know you you you said that there's there's this practical space that you've you know had had to live in because you've done things wrong most of the time you know that the management style that that was given to us we were all in that flow of that doesn't matter what whether you were in services you know we were you know uh putting together you know big packages for salons to help them you know become more efficient you know to where things are experienced the same way despite all the artists in the group you know all these kinds of things but but the valley is synonymous for efficiency and so for you to to acknowledge right off the bat like we were just doing it wrong the whole time is is fascinating because when you think about who emerged it was it really came down to management styles of what companies did or did not succeed. You know that that that was that was the thing that stood out the most and the players that I certainly know that are my age right now are the best managers out there of humans not not of technology of actual human beings and so I wonder if you have a little bit more to say about about what it's like to do things wrong for so long but come back with a practical understanding well I believe that you have to start from a place of humility.

SPEAKER_03 24:35

If you um there's a lot of ways to approach our lives um you know if if you have an engineering orientation like I have you seek to understand lots of stuff and you you try to arrive at some answer. So like in a biblical context when I used to read the Bible for the first 20 years of my Christian experience I just wanted to get all the answers. I had a bunch of questions wanted to have all those questions answered and it was a um in a way it was all a formula for me and it's not dissimilar from how we attack our careers and our our management of people we try to find that formula you know how can I extract the outcome that I want but the challenge with managing people is and technologies and companies is you can achieve a goal and you can do it in so many different ways. And you can do it by exerting authority and uh um leveraging your power uh with people or you can choose to bring them along and build equity with everyone you interact with and the second part that equity thing that's harder because it means you have to be a little more patient you can't take full control you have to allow space for people to to trust you and believe in in your vision and and we see in technology today we see in the leaders like Elon Musk and probably I mean he's the only one who's really visible so I get some sense of his management style but he's authoritarian you know he's he's not interested in winning the hearts and minds of anybody he's just trying to overpower them. And you have that choice you can do that you can manage purely from authority because you have the leverage of of pay and and livelihood

Returning To California And Choosing Santa Cruz

SPEAKER_03 27:00

and things that people need to survive but for me the better way was always let's build equity with my team let's let them understand that I see problems that need to be resolved and we're going to do it together. I'm not gonna do it alone I could see that because that's easy that that's that is the easier way but in the net of it is is that I chose to behave differently and achieve the same result with a different approach. And part of that's because of my Christian ethic you know we we know the phrase what would Jesus do yeah you know so that's supposed to mean when I get into a situation you know how would Jesus do this and so my approach it was and became if I'm a Christian should that not affect the way I manage people you know and and I I owned a couple Christian bookstores and people would steal Bibles and you go now what kind of thinking goes into a Christian who's following Jesus who thinks it's okay to steal a Bible from a bookstore you know it's like that just seems completely backwards. But we live in this world of ambiguity but for me my goal in life was to be fully integrated in all the areas of my life to reflect the religiosity that I adopted and so I will admit that Elon Musk is effective uh does is it the best could it be better? Yeah but I will never I would never choose to manage the way that he manages um and besides a good manager the most important thing is to understand what the goal is and allow the team to develop how to get there. Yeah and how we do things makes a difference. You know I've I've taken on a new persona in the past four years. When I'm in a line at a grocery store I say to myself I am a patient person and I I I kind of recite that to myself so that when I finally get up to the checkout stand after some person has tried to return five different things and and just cause a huge delay uh in the line and I get up there and the checkout person goes oh I'm so sorry to keep you waiting and I I just go I'm a patient person. Yeah I'm always going to be patient and it changes their whole demeanor I mean they're like I thought you were going to be upset at me and it's not their fault that serving somebody else took so long but I find that if we start to envision in ourselves the kind of character that we want to have it can make a difference. Not not I mean it's complex because we don't always know what motivates us and triggers us. But I but again that the message is this is that if you're a follower of Jesus it should change the way you interact with anyone and everyone and and that becomes kind of the standard. Yeah um and it affected the way I managed people and ultimately I became a really good manager to the point where people that worked for me are now senior VPs at different tech companies. And I had one of them reach out to me he's an executive vice president of technology for a top you know Fortune 100 company and he goes you know Mike if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have the job I have today because you empowered me when I as a new engineer to do stuff.

Parenting, Joy, And Owning Mistakes

SPEAKER_03 31:20

You I didn't have to just do what you told me. You empowered me to to to move beyond and to explore you know new new things. And he was just overwhelmingly grateful. And I start to reflect I go well I went on a road trip uh last year and I I visited about 10 people that I've known in my life family friends but three of the people I visited were former employees so imagine that I still have relationship with employees of mine that I had 20 years ago. And to me that's that's the that's a to me that's equals legacy you know legacy really comes down to people. So I retired two years ago and people asked me well uh what are you gonna do? I said well I have doctor's appointments and funerals lined up so you know I did a fair amount of that I've decided now I'm gonna be very selective with funerals because uh at 70 I literally could go to a funeral every month or every week if I chose to and but you know they were trying to say well what's this great thing you're gonna do and I thought I don't actually have a great thing to do I but I I'm trying to learn who I'm gonna be you know um and so I'm transitioning to a new season of my life that doesn't involve managing people and building stuff cool stuff I mean you know when you work for Apple and Netscape and Joby that's cool you know that those are some of the coolest companies ever. Yeah you know cool cool opportunities um but what I find now is what I want to do is just try to make things better just for me personally and uh you know and I I learned something kind of indirectly I I was working at Apple it was my first real geeky tech job and we we you know we spent much of our time playing football and and ping pong and the guy I played ping pong with he was really good so he was teaching me how to play I mean I thought I knew how to play but then he Yeah showed you how you were missing he showed me a whole new world and he he said that when people hit the ball they're putting some sort of spin on it and it's either going to make the ball go this way or that way he says what you have to do is you have to give them a little bit back. Not a lot just add a little bit on the return. And I realized that that's kind of my my model today. It's like I want to just add a little so in every circumstance that I'm in whether I go to a men's group or uh I've been doing some things at the library for you know trying to engage people with technology who are seniors and my whole point of doing this is just to add a little value.

SPEAKER_02 34:44

A little spin.

SPEAKER_03 34:44

Little little more in in it in you know try to make things better. I mean I could take a different approach I could uh you know try to argue with people or or influence people so that they come to my way of thinking about things like politics. Someone did tell me that if you bring up politics on Thanksgiving it saves you money at Christmas. Yeah and so but I've decided that I'm not combative. I don't want to be combative I want to have a humility and step back and be more surgical in how I interact with folks be more in you know um I just want to help add a little value. I don't want to fix I mean it the thing is as an engineer you always want to fix things and uh my wife will tell you that that was a long transition to where I stopped trying to fix things you know she never really wanted me to fix things she just would often want me to uh that wasn't why she's talking yeah that's right but but you know I I think it's uh it's a typical thing for an engineer to always think okay I'm a problem solver that's what I do and you present or you voice a problem I'm gonna go off and try it try and fix it so I'm not in the mode of trying to fix anything anymore I just I just wonder situationally can I make things better you know yeah and that's what I'm kind of learning to do it's not I I don't have a you know 10-step program or I I don't have a rubric for that but because situations are different but and the other thing I've decided is that I don't really if I'm gonna build something I'm not really in the building phase anymore but I'm not gonna do anything alone anymore. I'm capable I can do you know when my employees would come to me and I'd give them all this responsibility uh and I would take none of it for myself if

Friendship, Generational Bridges, And Adaptability

SPEAKER_03 37:10

they needed me to help them make decisions I could do it all day long. That was just as easy. And so I'm capable of of doing everything alone but I don't actually want to do it alone anymore. I I want to do the harder thing you know I want to do it with other people and I want to meet them where they're at and and hopefully have a good outcome at some point. And so that's kind of what motivates me today is uh in other words I guess the way is should I not try to have an adult relationship with other adults you know uh you know in our boomer gen in the boomer generation who are pastors I I would say 90% of every boomer pastor I've ever known are are are just control freaks you know and they develop this parent-child relationship yeah with their with their congregations and it's not all their fault I mean the congregations want to be they it's it's a relationship they they empower as well uh but I want to have an adult-to-adult relationship with people you know I want to um and that's kind of my goal and it was the biggest challenge of my parenting was how do I transition from parent child to adult to adult yeah and you know not a lot of parents ever do that or try to do that. Yeah they they they you know I mean they have expressions like helicopter parent and and uh you know and it is true that if we have a certain amount of affluence we're in a position to rescue our children we're a safety net for them yeah which means they don't have to struggle in the same way that we struggle at least I struggled coming up but but my what I intentionally did with my children you know starting at a very young age was I want to transition them into adulthood where my relationship is adult to adult and you know children today when I when I left high school that was the beginning of my adulthood yeah yeah it was cold turkey it was like we're done parenting yeah good luck yeah you know are you gonna get a job are you gonna what but what are you what are you going to do and you know I didn't have oh let's go on a road trip and visit colleges let's you know let's get you an apartment I didn't have any of that I just like boom yeah and uh but today in our culture Sure. Adulthood is a ramp.

SPEAKER_05 40:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:03

You know, it doesn't start when high school ends. Yeah. Doesn't start adulthood, that is. It's it's like a slow transition. And one of the first milestones of adulthood when children is when they offer to pay for your dinner. Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

I've had that experience. Thank you. My children are adulting.

SPEAKER_03 40:26

No, that's like that's like one of the first milestones. Oh, you're gonna pay for dinner. Sounds like a great plan, you know? And uh, but but I observe with other children, other parents, kids, that adulthood is something that evolves over time in our culture. So some so as they go through their 20s, might take their entire 20s and half of their 30s for them to arrive at what I would call adulthood, where they're owning all their stuff.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Yeah, you know, the phone bill, the all the all the hidden hidden treasures that make life.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Well, I I I want to rewind just a little bit because because you know it we're we're gonna be segueing into the broader topics that we have in common. But but I wanted to point out something. I I mean, all the listeners, you're you're hearing that Michael's a little bit more labored in his breathing. Um, it's not because he's obese or anything like that, but you you've had a lifelong effect from an illness that you had as a child. And why don't you share just a little bit about you know that, how however you want to share it.

SPEAKER_03 41:38

But yeah, I so my earliest recollection as a child, as another kid coming up to me and asking me what's wrong. You know, why do you walk funny? And as a child, I go, I have no idea what you're talking about, but it's because I was born with cerebral palsy and it affects my left side. And um, so I have a disability that as a child I could never see or experience because it was all I ever knew. So I actually had a hard time even taking on other people's vision of me. But at the same time, it meant that everything I tried to do physically or athletically, I had a a disadvantage. Um but for whatever reason, because I was blind to my disability, yeah, I kept moving forward, you know. So I I would play baseball and basketball and swim. I was on a swim team and water polo team in high school. Uh mostly in water polo, it just meant I was really good at holding onto somebody's suit and drag me along, you know, because I was fairly lightweight. I had this one experience where I grabbed this guy in the hole set and he was gonna shoot his shot, and he lifted up the ball and I grabbed onto his arm, and I had both hands on his arm, and he was just moving me back and forth in the water. I didn't affect his shot because you know I was like 90 pounds, and he was, you know, uh he was much stronger. But I I never took on that identity of a disability, and that shaped my whole life in a way, in a way of it created in me a persistence that I'm fortunate that I have.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

Yeah, and and and just for the audience, it's like I am sitting across from an athlete, an athlete's athlete.

Authority vs Equity In Leadership

SPEAKER_02 44:00

You know, it's the profoundness of what we're talking about right now that that I know I'm staring at an athlete, you know, but the world would not imagine that. You know, but an athlete's mind, an athlete's heart, you know, just totally going for it. I mean, when I first met you, you were talking about playing basketball when you were at UCLA. I'm like, dude, you can dribble. Like just you know, it it's so butted up against, you know, what are just natural prejudices, right? It's not like I think ill of you. It's just that you don't imagine that that there's an athlete sitting sitting on the other side of this table that thinks like an athlete. And you know, it that your body has held you back is the only thing. You know, it's it's not like you weren't one. It it's just this it it was it's such a unique quality to you that it's something we never talk about. I think we talked about it maybe twice in the last 15 years. It's just not a piece of your of your library. It has, I wouldn't say has zero effect on you, but but it's like it's just not a part of the conversation. And it's not because you're ignoring it, it just isn't part of your vernacular.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Yeah, it's it's unusual. Um and what was funny was when I was in college, um I thought I would start interacting with other kids with cerebral palsy. And but when I started interacting with their parents, they would just look at me and go, Well, you don't know what it's really like because you I had all this mobility, I could do things their kids couldn't do. So I just wasn't disabled enough for them. And um so I actually never was in a position to really encourage other folks with my particular challenges because their parents refused to see me as as disabled as their kids were. And it's kind of a funny, yeah, funny. I mean, it's a kind of a funny thing. I mean, you hear about uh, you know, what was Obama's famous uh line where he says, uh, if you don't think I'm black, you should see me try to get a taxi in the rain in New York. Yeah. You know. It's like Obama wasn't black enough. Yeah, you know, um, I wasn't disabled enough. And it's it's unfortunate that we we have these categories. I I will say this that yes, I was fortunate enough to be athletic to my extent. What's changed though, what's remarkably changed, is no one ever comes up to me now and asks me what's wrong. Partly because I find that aging is the great equalizer. They just think I'm old. They they don't try to, they don't analyze, well, well, you know, what's what's wrong with your leg or your arm, or they just see a cane now and and they see my head and they go, well, you're just old. And and so aging is the great equalizer that um it your body breaks down, and and since everybody else's bodies are breaking down, I'm about the same level as everybody else.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

Yeah, yeah, you know. Yeah, they've all caught up.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

You know, except for the guys in the uh amazing commercials, you know, who are you know uh but it's a uh it's an identity I never leaned into. Um I find now that it's a little challenging because of the aging, it creates unique challenges for me. Um and and I what I have to do is I need now to have a little more humility about my disability. And because I have to allow accommodation uh for what could go wrong.

SPEAKER_05 48:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:14

Because when I was, you know, when I was 10 years old and I would fall down, it would big deal. I just weighed 50 pounds and I'd get up. But now if I fall down, you know, they say that you can tell the difference between whether you're a young man or an old man that if you're a young man and you fall, people laugh. Yeah. You know, but if you're an old man, they all come running. Yeah. So I'm in that old everybody comes running stage now. Because now if I fall, things might break.

SPEAKER_05 48:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:50

And so I have to do probably what everyone my age has to do. We have to accommodate certain limitations.

SPEAKER_05 49:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

And that's new for me. And I honestly, that limitation thing, that's an adaptation. Um, because my childhood was like this is that I would have a good function in my legs, and then and then I would have a deterioration as I grew. And so then there was a surgery which would intervene.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

Right.

SPEAKER_03 49:23

And I did that every two years. So I'd go, I'd go, uh uh, you know, six months of recovery, one year of great function, six months of decline operation, six months of recovery, one year of good function, six months of decline operation. I did that for 12, 12 plus years. And um and so that kind of rhythm uh was but it was always forward progress. So

Practicing Patience And Character Formation

SPEAKER_03 50:00

now I'm in a season of life where there's actually not forward progress, it's managing decline. And that's that's a new space for me. Yeah. It's just a new space.

SPEAKER_02 50:12

How do you think looking back that affected really how you think in a practical way? Because I, you know, of course, I have a lot of examples coming to my mind right now of how I would answer that looking at you. But for you, you know, you've talked about your management style, you know, move fast and break things, culture of the valley. Uh you know, how how is it, you know, when when you had to look at yourself in the mirror, and the like the pattern's really clear to me just the way you presented it, you know, that you know, you have the surgery to make an accommodation, right? Like things are here, you know, they they weren't there before. You recover from that, uh you have a good year, and then it's you know, taking the next accommodation. You know, what what what what does the new pattern mean for me next? Like what kind of influence does that have on your approach with others?

SPEAKER_03 51:23

Well, that's uh interesting perspective. I know how it affects me personally. It it built in me a persistence, and I don't know what came first. I don't know if the life circumstance, creative persistence, or my persistence, my innate persistence, um made my situation better. I don't I don't know. I do know I made very specific choices. And like one year I was given a scholarship to uh handicapped a sch uh camp, a summer camp for handicapped kids. And I thought, I'm not handicapped, I'm not gonna do this. But I thought it's free. Why not? So I I went. And at the time I was in sixth grade and I wasn't using my left arm at all. I would just kind of cling it next to my body because my left arm didn't function as well as my right. But when I was there, I saw a kid who had two completely deformed arms and he was playing baseball. Okay, and I thought, man, if that kid can use his completely deformed arms, I should at least use my left arm.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Right, right. My one.

SPEAKER_03 52:40

You know, and I made a conscious decision from that day at that camp to start using my left arm. And it made a difference. But see, it was intentional on my part.

SPEAKER_02 52:53

Yeah, but but yeah, you know, this really does lead us into a consciousness conversation. Not that I want to go too far down that rabbit hole, but but you know, your body's sending you a message, right? And it's not that you're ignoring it, it's actually you're acknowledging it. You know, my body is saying this to me, but I'm saying this back to it. And y you know, you you talk about things like culture. Well, well, the culture would not expect you to to perform. You know, so this conscious choice, and you know sorry about the coffee this conscious choice because it it hits a strand of of of ways that I've you know chosen to live that you know, just acknowledging, yeah, there's a problem here, but if I begin moving, there's strength just to be had by moving. You know, I may not ever get to a proper form, but I can continue to try to move myself to that position even though it's not easily available and the information come to me is the opposite of that. No, you you don't have to do that, you know, because the system is not working there. Uh you know, as you're saying these things out loud, I'm you know, I'm thinking about all the hundreds of conversations we've had and all the ways that that that well of thinking has affected you in the best of ways, you know, that that no might always uh be the right answer. Even though all the information is saying no. You know, all all the context, all the content's going like, no, you don't need to do that. It's like, yeah, but I I might be able to, so I'm gonna try. You know, that type of resilience. Again, it's not easily found culturally. I I mean it's celebrated with big athletes and things like that, but but it's not for the ones that succeed. Yeah, for the ones that succeed, yeah, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:01

The the guy who gets his shoulder blown out on the way to the Olympics, they don't remember him.

SPEAKER_05 55:06

Yeah, no, they don't.

SPEAKER_03 55:07

But um, yeah, I um resilience. So what it did for me was this is that as a manager, I had to endure a great deal of criticism from the people that I managed at times. And so I had a choice. Am I going to just give up and blow it off, or am I going to press in and try to understand how to be successful? And and so that's all a relational thing. How can I be successful in this relationship? And what I learned as a manager was I mean, the disadvantage of being a Christian is you have this thing called the golden rule. Treat others as you want to be treated. I don't know, is that in the Bible? But something like that. Yeah, it might be, it might not.

Legacy Through People And Retirement Reframed

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Yeah, but I realized I'm pretty sure it is in a couple places, just in. But but I will say this that that's the absolute wrong way to manage people, uh, definitively, because I tried that and I failed as a manager. I tried to treat people the way I want to be treated, and I found out they don't like to be treated the way I like to be treated.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Oh, gotcha.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

I had to learn how they wanted to be. You know, I had to be in their space, I had to have empathy for their what really motivated them. And that was my first real lesson as a manager. Now, the question is, why did I learn that lesson? I learned it because I was determined to be better. Uh the other option I could do is I'd go, well, these people are just these three people or four people in my team who don't like the way I manage. I'm just gonna get rid of them and replace them with people that like the way I manage.

SPEAKER_01 57:05

Because I had people which is which is what managers do. That's what a lot of them do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

And I said, No, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do the other thing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna live in their world and embrace their perspective on how they want to be managed and how they want to move forward with their career. And it's harder. There's no question it's harder. It means I have to have more conversations, I have to spend more time with people. When I've got all these upper managers asking me questions, I got to spend time with staff that other managers wouldn't have spent. But but uh my determination was to just get better at this thing. And I used to tell my fellow managers uh when I was a second line manager, they'd tell me, Well, this person's really difficult to manage. I go, Yeah, but isn't that your job? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Right.

SPEAKER_03 58:02

It's like if people are easy to manage, then we don't actually need you to manage them. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

Okay, we we have glanced on so many things that I I really want to I want to pop the cork on the champagne bottle a little bit here. So if you haven't found evidence yet, Michael is in fact a Christian, has been in Christian ministry for as long as I've known him, certainly before I knew him. Uh we run in similar circles, but not the same circles through the years. But have a very familiar background with each other as far as the Christian side of things goes. Um we we share very similar political philosophy, uh, in that I would I would consider you to be fairly liberal Democrat, also by category, although I'm not sure what that means anymore. Uh that places us in a weird space in our Christian circles.

SPEAKER_03 59:03

It does.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Uh and I I guess what I'm wanting to pop the cork on and kind of contextualize here a little bit, because I don't know that I really have a question. Uh but you're sitting and listening to two incredibly liberal Christians right now who uh it's a hard space to be in. You know, I I I I believe that I'm and I don't even know that this is true. You know, I I don't know that we I've I've stated this to you. I believe that I'm even a little left spiritually than Michael is in the sense that I I'm I'm it feels to me, although I again I don't know that this is true, that that I'm a little bit more off the farm, so to speak. Uh but there's this place that we've had uh unity. And a kind relationship because of our liberal proclivities and our willing and willingness and openness to not having to define what God is, but just allowing God to be whatever God is. In you know, this place of stasis in my mind of calling ourselves Christians, although I don't know that I necessarily identify with being Christian, the way that the culture puts it out there. And it has a very dramatic effect on how we articulate to others, how cautious we are about some things, how harmed we often are by conversations and the conclusions that people come to, you know, about who is godly, who is not. Like it just it's all become nonsense to me in a way, because like you, you know, I've certainly spent the last three years in a very pragmatic uh work of empathy for myself, but not just seeing things how other people see them, but also seeing myself through their eyes and how I'm having an effect on them, you know, doing this, you know, young Ian mirror shadow work. Like it's it's rough because like people are just people, you know, we're all we're all trying to find something higher, stronger than us. You know,

Ping-Pong Wisdom: Add A Little Spin

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

I feel like I found that, you know, through Christianity, but I wouldn't say that modern Christianity defines what I believe in any way about who God is. You know, like it's it's a great structure to sit in. That being said, most of what's being said, I feel very disconnected, you know, to the movement itself, especially with the way that it's politically moved to. So there's the other piece piece of the cork, boom.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:56

You know, what you call, you know, contemporary modern evangelical, white evangelical Christians. Yeah. Have, you know, they have, you know, they have aligned themselves very strongly politically for a lot of different reasons. Reasons I don't completely understand or embrace um necessarily. Um yeah, Christianity's been a bit of a transition for me because as I said, when I began, I was very dogmatic, meaning there was one right answer, and I just need to find that one answer. And then I was good, whatever the topic was. Once I got the right answer, I stopped asking questions. But after about 20 years, I found that it was no longer life-giving having all these answers. It didn't really return a robust spirituality. It just made me a really good technician, you know, and my goal is to move past being technical and having all the answers and try to embrace um, you know, who uh a Christ you know, Christocentric um experience of God um that allows for unanswered questions and complexity. I think the real issue with evangelical Christianity today, for the majority of the speakers that you will hear. I'll call all these sermons TED Talks because that's our culture these days, is that they they want to be certain. They do not want to live in a world that's ambiguous, and they do not want a world that's complex, you know. Our politics are the same. We we don't want two things to be true at the same time, you know. Either this action was bad or this action was good. It can't be both. And so my observation is that many people gravitate towards certainty for a whole host of maybe psychological reasons. They can't exist with ambiguity. But I realize now that ambiguity is where faith actually resides. Um if you have certainty, it's actually not faith.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:55

You know, it's a formula, you know, it's not faith. It's certainty so that you don't have to, you don't have to wrestle any longer with this certainty that you have. But ambiguity is where faith resides. And so that's been my space for the past 15 years.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:17

And that's where we that's when we started to engage.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:21

And and yeah, you and I probably would be in different places on that continuum, but partly because my my propensity is I always want to hang on to as much as I can.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

Um where, you know, another strategy would be to just, you know, burn it all down and start. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, th those are the kinds of choices.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:50

We're we're seeing it emerge. Um, I'm not that fond of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:53

You know, with the burn it all down strategy, you know, it's certainly why I left ministry, is because like

Disability, Aging, And Resilience

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

that was the next objective. You know, what whether anybody knows it or not, it's like this thing needs to burn, so I should probably leave. Um because I've run out of uh I've run out of the right words for what I'm watching, you know, to to bring the grace and the hope and all the things that that I experienced through that vehicle.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:26

But part of it is disappointment, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:28

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:29

I mean that that to me, that's the core emotion that that you feel uh when people do things that are so unexpected, yeah that seem to be so out of alignment, uh just very disappointed. Yeah. And so for you personally to deal with that disappointment, it's it is easier, or it one choice, one way to solve it is to just move move away from it. Not not jump into it anymore, just avoid, yeah, avoid those uh those alleys, you know, avoid the places where you where you could get hurt. And I I think that's fine. In other words, I don't think there's anything wrong with, you know, uh what's the phrase? They you know they have phrases now like self-care. Yeah to me that's an aspect of self-care. Get out of the areas where you're triggered in a way that that that becomes you know hurtful to you. Um I think that that's that's that's a normal, understandable response. Um and I just but for me, what changed, you know, because of the kind of manager I was, I always was trying to figure out what I can hold on to, what how can I still operate in this world that has these things kind of out of place. And and I I know um and I've I've observed how people have reacted. You know, I have one friend or acquaintance now, because we haven't talked in many years. He became a monastic. His choice was I'm just gonna go to a essentially build my own little cave and just contemplate the presence of God and not worry about anything that's going on around me. I'm just gonna be, I'm is it gonna be totally Zen? Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah. And and there's actually a tradition for that, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:54

Yeah. Well, it it again, none of these things are new. So I want to be careful with how I'm garnishing this hamburger. We're not confronting something new in belief. That that's not what's happening here. It's new to me in the sense that you know, I I dedicated my life with certainty to particular prospects, and it's not that those prospects were wrong, it's just that my certainty was off, you know, to your point. And like on a very personal note, for those of you who have listened to the podcast and have heard the earlier ones, you you were listening to me sorting out, like, you know, what what does this mean for me to even say out loud I'm Christian? I I don't even know what that meant at that point. And it's not that I'm certain now, it's just that, you know, I I it like it's easy to go, like when Trump got elected, I left. You know, but but that doesn't state anything. I mean, Trump is Trump. Who cares? I don't really care about for him, about him, you know, love him in whatever love form we can, like we love humans. What alarmed me specifically, and this is now I can say it out loud three years later, specifically, is what I saw germinating for 20 years before that. You know, and it just blossomed with Trump. You know, it's like it was sitting sitting underground. And, you know, in leadership circles, it wasn't like it wasn't talked about, but it seriously wasn't addressed, you know, within my circle. And then how it came out, like it kind of came out all at once. You know, there there was there's a bunch of shit in the field, and one rain later, we got every kind of mushroom there is. You know, it's blook, you know, it just all popped up at once. And you know, for any of you that are familiar with chaos theory, you know, the chaos of seeing all the mushrooms doesn't mean that the mushrooms weren't there before. You know, we just didn't see them, you know, so it's it's they're just unobserved things.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:06

But it becomes quite it still becomes quite a surprise.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:09

Yeah, yeah. Because it was just a lot to take in at once.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

It's a uh yeah, it's like I the analogy I used to use, and this had more to do with uh, you know, our our emotional walk and psyche and you know uh emotional maturity over time, is that sometimes our life it's like looks like hamburger frying in a skillet. You throw the hamburger in, and if it's like 70% fat, all you see is grease.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:46

But it's only emerged because you add a little bit of heat, right? And so what do you do with that grease? You well, you know, back in the old days, you'd you know, you'd get a cup with foil and pour it in and let it harden and then throw it away or something. And that's how we have to approach our lives sometimes. It's we we get in seasons where stuff in our own lives surprise us, you know, like the anger I had as a young parent. I was shocked by it. And but I never understood the relationship properly until I actually read that one paragraph. And uh and and then that's where growth happens. It's like you become aware and you understand the relationship, and then you have a choice to to to allow yourself to grow and and and healing comes. But but it's akin to just scraping off the grease and discarding it and keeping the hamburger. Yeah, you know, when the grease pops up in the hamburger, you don't throw the whole skillet out. Yeah, I mean, if you're cooking kale, you might. Yeah. I always say my kids are into kale, you know, it's their age group, I guess. That's how you know they're in their 30s and 40s if they eat kale. And the uh I always tell the best way to cook kale is with butter because it's you can scrape it in the garbage so much faster. But that's the kind of thing with the hamburger, is you don't want to, unless you're vegetarian, you don't throw out the whole thing. You you get rid of the stuff that's hindering you, you know, that that whatever that takes, and that might take a whole mess of stuff to get to where you feel whole again, where that disappointment or that surprise doesn't you know blow you out of the water, yeah, you know, and you know, in all the aspects of you know, depression that can come when you're that disappointed and discouragement, and it it it's so complex for every very every person. So it's like for me, I don't have a prescription. Say, oh, this is how you should respond to this situation. It's my first step is I'm trying to understand how normal those responses are. You know, um, and it is a learning experience for me to have to deal with this notion of political belief with people that I'm still connecting with on a daily basis. How do I resolve this? And if it wasn't for social media, it'd probably be so much easier, yeah. Right? Because, you know, at the the old saying is that, you know, I always used to talk about the villagility idiot, but we've learned that you know, villages have more than one. Yeah, you know, it's the internet has shown that it's exposed that there's a lot more misunderstanding than understanding in the world. You know, it just has exposed it. You know?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:21

Yeah. I'm trying not to make this too personal, but at the same time, allow it to be that way. The level of disappointment, I mean you

Conscious Choices And Using The Left Arm

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

perfectly describe, you know, what slides into a deep dark depression, which is certainly what happened to me, you know, post all those things on top of adding the middle-age thing of your kids leaving and all that sort of stuff. It's easy in retrospect to identify all that kind of stuff. But when it's all coming at once, um it's overwhelming. And how I want to repackage this is that it seems to me that we are all as Americans culturally in a moment, you know, where I think most people I know are overwhelmed, you know, by what they're seeing, you know, whether it's one side or the other. Uh you know, I'm I'm watching people crawl into their caves. You know, and and and on the one hand, yes, to please, you know, protect yourself, you know, from some of this stuff, because it is gonna pass by. But you know, I I I'm reticent to blame social media, very much so, because there's humans on the other side you using it, and that's the only thing I can change. That's the only thing we can affect. Um I I'm I'm I'm I'm finding myself really backing away from blaming anything other than the fact, to your point earlier, we need to learn to be better, whether that's with each other, um, whether that's standing in line, you know, at a at a grocery store. Like now is the time to just be better and and learn what that might mean for us individually to do those things. And you know, whatever this form of consciousness that I'm coming into at whatever age I am, blah, blah, all that kind of self-helpy stuff aside, the the vacancy of of what I'm seeing around me, of like just feeling overwhelmed. Like there's I don't know where to start touching to begin to make things better seems to be the the the hardest thing. It certainly, you know, as as we've I've expressed in our conversations as of late, you know, it's how to reintegrate, you know, once you're really aware of how little impact you have other than these fleeting moments of of being with one another. You know, it's that's overwhelming too. Like, you know, you've spent your whole life and really, you know, you're you're great-grandchildren away from not being known.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:20

Yeah. Like that, that's it. You know, you'll be lucky if there's a picture of you. But you, you know, our existence is is is very we have a very light footprint. I guess that's my point, you know, unless unless we're in a collective of some sort. And, you know, coming to that understanding of of how little relevance you actually have to the bulk of humanity, but you can be very relevant to your situation, you know, depending on how they come, that that's a great paradox of life. You know, like that's that's a heavy thing to step into. You know, I like you, and learning how to reintegrate, you know, to this thing, even acknowledging, yeah, I think I'm Christian. I I like I I I okay, whatever that means, uh, you know, but it may not be the way that you're meaning it. And we're not trying to be goofy about it. It's just like I I think we might be talking about two different things because, like you said earlier, what would Jesus do? Like when those bracelets came out, I just wanted to burn every one of them. We already know what Jesus did. Like you can read it, it's in a book. What are you gonna do? That there's my question, you know, and that that was the thing that drove me for years in ministry. Yeah, you know, we we have that they're they're being reduced down to these glib statements. Oh, oh, I believe in God. Oh, good for you. Goody goody gumdrops. What does that mean for the people around you? You know, how how how does your belief impact people? You know, because that's where we're supposed to have the greatest impact, is with one another. You know, how how that fell off at my institution, institutions around, is neither here nor there. The trouble is just fallen off. Like, like it just there's not a lot of spots to go do just good things for selfish reasons, as I expressed before we started podcasting. You know, this is a complex moment where I can't just go serve homeless people. Like, where is that? I used to be able to do that, but now somehow it's like hidden away. You know, how how do how do we let our dollars go farther in Zimbabwe? You know, what what are what are those organizations? They're they're oddly hidden from the framework of humanity right now. And, you know, I think we both grew up in a tradition where the world was available to us to help. And it seems like even that has been obscured. And so, you know, in light of that, you know, rather than really talking about the problems uh with Christianity politics, anything like that, what what are the things that you're looking towards, you know, in the future of things that we can do, you know, to just be better? Because I think that's what's sitting behind, you know, what your lead-in. Yeah, you know, that that that you're at this reapproach

The Golden Rule Trap In Management

SPEAKER_02 1:21:30

at 70, me at 56, and and again, different time frames. You we're we're not in the same spot as far as how our bodies are aging, but to really have to sit and contemplate, no, I I can't just rush into something because these things go somewhere, and I'm not seeing places where I want to go where those people are going. Like there, there becomes the the dichotomy. And I was just listening to someone talking about stress, and stress is when you have two opposing, you know, things. You know, it's like you have two things and they both might be right. And the stress is which one do I decide to be? And where it seems like we're slipping into a culture where I'm just deciding nothing and just letting it happen the way it happens. And you have boomers, you know, at least to my generation, saying you're not objecting enough, you need to do more, you need to protest. It's like protesting doesn't work. Like none of this stuff works anymore. Like, like you're just protesting your way into a corner because the content will be utilized against you. Like there's no proactive spot. Are you finding yourself in a familiar spot that way?

SPEAKER_03 1:22:48

I I mean it's because it's yeah, I I would say that I would say it requires me to be there's two aspects. One is is there hope? And what's the basis of hope? And the the basis of hope it can't be uh it has to be something that's beyond just the rational and problem solving thing. You know, um it it we have to make it we for me, I have to make a decision to remain hopeful because the alternative things just get dark really quickly if you if because there's every reason to be discouraged and to be disappointed. And and you're right when it comes to legacy. I mean, my parents, both of them have passed away, and for both of them, their entire lives of what we kept fit into two boxes, everything else went to goodwill. I mean, everything, and um uh so in a way that's kind of my life too. It's like there's no guarantee that after I'm gone uh, you know, though it won't be two boxes, it'll be a couple hard drives. Yeah, yeah. It'll fit in your pocket, it it'll be something much smaller. Um and that's that whole notion of of significance, how do we how do we move forward and become significant? Uh and that has nothing to do with scale. I mean, when we're younger, when we're when I was younger, I I literally wanted to change the world. I really thought that was within my my grasp, but I was just a really good hippie. Yeah. I I embrace I I embraced that persona. Yeah. And um, you know, it was my start, my world of Star Trek, right? You know, everything's getting better, people are getting better. Uh and and now I find that my world is a little bit smaller. But legacy now becomes a much smaller sort of thing. And maybe it comes down to you know, just a couple uh a couple ways of making things better for someone else in some way, you know. I uh and being being content with that, you know, being content with what contribution we can make and stay within, you know, our own conscience. Um I mean the biggest challenge I have with uh is letting go that things have to be the way I I want them to be and trying to trying to just actually make a difference with my family and my friends and the effort it takes to build and keep relationships. I mean, at 70 the hardest thing to do in my mind is build and maintain relationships because there's a side of me that just I just kind of want to veg out. Yeah, you know, there for a lot of different reasons, you know. I just want to throw the ball for the dog and watch Netflix, you know. And do I really want to pick up the phone? Do I really want to talk to people? There's a side of me that wants to do that, but there's also this inertia. It's like every the inertia it takes I have to overcome to be that intentional is sometimes substantial. Yeah. And um it's a uh I I I I've been reflecting on the fact that um uh of my own mortality, of the fact that I'm not likely to live forever. It's not likely to happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:49

Despite all the advertising.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:51

And does the and that can stress me out a little bit. You know, it's like um what will I forget to do before it's too late, you know? I mean, a lot of people have bucket lists. I don't have bucket list at all. Never I I don't have any kind of bucket list. There's nothing I want to do that I haven't done, or not because I I'm lack imagination.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:17

It's just I'm not a bucket list guy. I just you know I find them redundant. Yeah. You know, I'm what I'm watching people picking off their bucket list. It's like you're just checking boxes, but well, but I get it.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:33

I mean, people want to have an experience they haven't had before, yeah. But I don't I

Liberal Christians, Certainty, And Ambiguity

SPEAKER_03 1:28:40

mean, for me, so much of what I care about is about people. I care more about people than things and places. And I love a lot of places. I've traveled all over the world. I mean, there's a lot of places I like, but I care more about the people in those places. That's just the way I'm wired. Yeah. And and that's kind of why as a as a tech in technology, you know, in Silicon Valley, to me, it's all about team.

unknown 1:29:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:17

I mean, it ultimately, if you're gonna be content at a job, it really your manager can make it worse, no doubt about it. We're really capable of making this bad. But if the team, if your team and the people you interact with the majority of the time, uh are just a wonderful group of folks to interact with and move towards a goal with, you're gonna be happy and content.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:47

You could have horrible up, you could have you could have Elon Musk as your CEO, and you're good because your team is doing something special. And and uh I mean you could tell that I I I consider Elon Musk to be the opposite of what anyone should be from a management perspective.

SPEAKER_04 1:30:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:07

Uh, but but but it really is true that in these large companies, and I was part of some large companies, it came down to a handful of people. And what's really um a misunderstanding of technology managers is they forget that your success depends on just a few people doing their job. It's it's this view that that engineers are fungible, meaning just doesn't matter who you who you assign to a task, that you know, just next man up sort of thinking, that actually doesn't exist in reality. In reality, all that's techno success for technology companies comes down to the gifting of just a handful of folks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:03

And and we've walked in those circles of those that small handful.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:08

You know, and it it and but the mistakes that account what I call accountants make is they think that you know we can just swap out these handful of high-paid engineers with you know a handful of other engineers. Yeah, the whole Jack Welch, uh, Warren Buffett theory of people are the problem, it's like and I I hadn't I had personal experience where if it wasn't for the effort of just a couple people, whole companies would have failed. Yeah, literally. Nobody else could do what they did.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:46

And um it's a uh and and to me, but that's the mystery, that's the magic in the mystery, is that the an individual does the individual does make a difference.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:00

And you can become that individual to some degree. I mean, I can't make myself much smarter than I am. I mean, I can't a little bit, but and um I can't make myself think faster, you know. Um that's the other mistake that tech managers will make is they think that if they apply pressure, it'll make your brain work more. Yes. You know, they're thinking, I I'd always tell, I go, okay, you want to apply pressure. Are you thinking they're gonna think faster? They're knowledge workers. How in the world are they gonna think faster? In fact, I found with some of my employees, if I applied pressure, they think slower. Yeah, that's kind of kind of how it works. Well, not for everybody.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:44

Yeah, well, I I mean, not not for me, but like whenever I was applying pressure, like it just never helped the situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:52

Yeah, I mean, if somebody applied pressure to me, in some ways it did make me think faster because of my personality, but but the vast majority of people, you apply pressure and they can't. It breaks down their ability to think. And um so we make all these mistakes in tech. And so we're successful in tech for all the wrong reasons. You know, we're just uh it I it doesn't mean we're not successful, it doesn't mean we we we don't do things successfully, it doesn't mean that we can't get productivity. And uh I used to tell people that the thing that I could never predict when I interviewed a candidate for a job was will they be productive? Yeah, yeah I can I they went to MIT, so I guess they're smart. Yeah. They went to Stanford, I guess they're pretty smart. You know, they worked for all these name brand companies. They must be smart, but will they actually be productive? I I could never predict it.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:57

Yeah, it it's uh it it is the I mean some of these things are so hard, and I'm actually gonna have a question because you you know you you really have embodied most of my question set that I that I come to these interviews with. But um there's something so unique about this region, it's just intuitive, and that's what makes it very hard. It obfuscates what's actually happening here, you know, how competitive we are, you know, even in little old Santa Cruz, I think this is the most competitive region just about anywhere in the world, you know, on every level. You know, it's it's uh and my last interview with Chris, he brought up this very interesting point, you know, that Santa Cruz believes that and it treats itself like it's an island, but it's not. You know, like it's this unique spoke just outside the hub of all things that are coming. You know, the val the valley is all things that are coming next, has been for a while. Uh it's just now, you know, with as you were saying, now we see Elon Musk, you know, and and and just so you know, I have different feelings than Michael does about Elon. I wish there was a thousand of them so we could balance him out. There's my two cents in that. Um and that centralization has done more harm than anything has, you know, to the conversation we're kind of we're kind of dancing around. But that being said, you know, from I I would consider you a Santa Cruzan. You know, you just you really embody so much of what Santa Cruz is, you know, both both, you know, on the on the kind of hyper competitive side, but also on the peaceful side that Santa Cruz says that it is. You know, like you you are a person that lives in peace in this town, you know. Um but there's something about being here and the way we get to observe the valley and pretend like we're not in it. Um how do you feel that that view of again, all my tech workers talk about this thing, Highway 17, like it has an effect on your pay grade, it has an effect on the amount of time in the car you're going to spend. It has a dramatic effect on every interviewing process you've ever been through, just because of two words, Santa Cruz. Yeah. That doesn't have anything to do with intelligence, it just Santa Cruz is a thing. It's a thing that thinks itself to be one way. Chris did a good job of like, yeah, no, it's it's not really that way, actually, probably more of this than that, but we're just a group of people trying to get out of that culture where it it's obvious. Um but again, not to reuse the term, it just obfuscates the reality we think we're watching, but we're actually in it. How do you think that that's affected you?

SPEAKER_03 1:37:21

Well, I would say that from my perspective, the biggest change for in Santa Cruz in 25 years is kind of the full-scale techy gentrification of the but of the place. Who in the heck can afford to buy a house here? Yeah, you need it, you pretty much need it. I mean, a tech salary is the most accessible way to do it. So that means you're an engineer or you're in tech. Not everybody in Santa Cruz is in tech, and certainly 25 years ago they weren't.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:04

And so that's a big change. In other words, we are, like it or not, we're becoming just just part part of the Silicon Valley experience. But I will say this that when I talk to people my age in this town, almost none of them have came from tech.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:25

Almost none of them. But if I talk to people in their, if unless they came

Disappointment, Social Media, And Self‑Care

SPEAKER_03 1:38:30

here purely for surfing, which there are a few. Yes. A couple. You know, it's like ski, like Park City for skiers, you know. It's if they're here, they're they're touched by tech tech salaries and working in uh working for companies that are over the hill. Uh now, what's funny about my experience was is for 20 years I drove over the hill. 20 plus years, and I kept looking for jobs in Santa Cruz, and they literally literally would never hire me. Why? Because my my income working in Redwood City was 20% higher than they wanted to pay me. Not 20% higher than what I was willing to accept. I mean, think about it. I I would take a pay cut, not to have to drive, you know, the Redwood City every day. But they, in their minds, they thought, no, he'll lose patience with his quote unquote low salary, and then he'll ditch us. So they would preemptively disqualify me from the city.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:38

Yeah, it's it's it's like we hate ourselves. Like we're trying to live a lifestyle here, and we hate ourselves, and we presume.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:47

And uh so I could never get a job. Then my last job, my last job was working for a Sankris company. And they recruited me. I didn't even go looking for them. So uh so all of a sudden. Nice way to book in my career that I actually only had to go. If I went to the office, I only had to drive three miles. But I and and the tech careers changed. I mean, in the beginning, I had to be in the office every day. I mean, I just uh uh I can't think of a time when I worked for Netscape where I wasn't working in the office. Just period. But then as time went by and and internet became faster and everything moved to the cloud, uh I would tell my boss, I'd go, well, if I have work to do, I work from home because I'm too busy to get in the car. If I don't have work, I'll go to the office so I can interact with people. And that was my career for for probably the last 10 years. It had that story.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:40:51

And uh and a hint, um, just as a hint to anybody that's young out there, if you ever get caught into a return to office story, say absolutely I'll return to office. Never debate it, never argue it. Because if you ever work from home after they've made that and you argued the point, they'll always be suspicious of it. Instead, say, absolutely, I'll do it. And then on a on a situational basis, work from home. You know, that's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:25

There's the hot tip. Just say yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:27

Just say I've never never fight it. Because the reality is nobody's gonna make you go to the office every day uh if circumstances prove if your productivity proves more important than making an appearance. But if you make a stand, you know, if you if you protested and all these types of things, then you're just you're setting yourself up for total failure. So I never asked, my deal was I never asked permission to work from home. Never. Because if I asked permission, it would give people an opportunity to say no.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:06

Yes, just do it, find out later.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:09

I just uh it would go like this. Hey, I need to work from home today. I'm chained to my desk. Oh, okay, no worries. Yeah, and that's the way life was. Yeah, I mean, you know, I was in a uh position where I had a track record where I'd built equity, so nobody was worried that I had two jobs or that I was uh quiet quitting or any of the things we hear about today.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:36

Yeah, what whatever labels being pasted onto whatever whatever set of behaviors trying to systemize it and you know qualify all the behaviors around it. Okay. I'm sorry, we've we've drifted, we've drifted many places. We drift, yes. Well, I mean, there's so many stories. Uh I mean it's yeah, I I I'm I'm kind of wanting to like celebrate a moment. You know, you were there, you know, with Netscape. And uh, to your point, you know, these quiet teams, you know, you know I'm fairly good friends with a person that happened to rescue that company uh after he was just begged to stay, just start any project, don't worry about it, ended up being the thing that that one against Microsoft was the threat of this thing. And of course AOL bought them, and you know, the rest is history, and Andreessen got a lot of credit for for what happened there. But the energy, you know, of those moments, like like when you look to the future and you've you've had these qualifying moments in your career, you know, where a thing happened and it changed the world. You know, in light of what you've just shared, how do you look forward into the world, knowing that really you were part of a world-changing event at Netscape? Uh certainly, you know, with your spare time at Joby here the last few years, you know, we're watching other things emerge.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:23

In light of these things that you actually have done, which is, you know, it's pretty amazing, you know, to be able to be on teams like that. Not that you were a big player over there, but Oh, it's just fortunate. Yeah. You know. Yeah, but but but how how to how to see the future knowing what's already happened. You know, what what's the thing that drives you forward?

SPEAKER_03 1:44:45

Well, one thing I would say in retrospect is that we we we all exaggerated our impact. Yeah, yeah. You know, we actually didn't change people. We we did empower them to do things they couldn't do before. I mean, there's um it's like I am not I am not on the side where I'm afraid of technology or how it's gonna hurt us. Uh people, on the other hand, could could hurt us.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:15

And how people how people use the technology, but in general I'm so adapted. I mean, it's like it's like I I can't not be a technologist. It's impossible for me. I I can't uh I will say that we did exaggerate uh we had a vision that certainly exceeded our grasp. We thought we were changing the world. I mean, with Apple, that was their model, yeah. Literal. Yeah, but we did change the world, but and in many ways we made things better, but it didn't actually change people. And that's the that's the thing that's kind of uh that's where we need to be more, we need to recognize the complexity, it's not enough just to to build the thing. Um it and it comes down to the benevolence of people. Like I have friends, I'm of the age where I have friends who worked for Hugh Packard when David Packard was there. And here people talk about David Packard. It's like they're in they were just in awe of the man because he was so giving. He was so uh um, he really did think that he wanted things to be better for his employees and for all the technologies that he he brought forward. And that's not a thing anymore. Nobody, you know, Facebook and these guys, Meta, I guess, they're not thinking about really making things better. They're not they're not going outside their comfort zone to make a better quality of life for their staff necessarily, uh other than giving them money, money, money, money, which is good. I money's good, but but David Packard was in it for

Overwhelm, Significance, And Small Circles

SPEAKER_03 1:47:30

more than a more than money, right? And uh, and I talked to his former staff, and they're just like, yeah, he was, we knew he cared. He cared about everything, and he wanted to make a difference. So that meant that he would make decisions that weren't based on money, they were based on value, bringing value to people. And I gravitated towards product management because that's the mantra is I want to bring value to people. I want, I want at some level, I want what I produce to bring value, to make somebody's job easier, to to uh give them opportunities they wouldn't have. Like something like simple, like simple, like AI. For me, I I saw one of my friends give me a give me a definition of how AI interacts. He goes, what AI enables him to do is to think about what he wants the outcome to be, not how to implement something. Because AI can help him implement it now. He doesn't he he just has to figure out what he actually wants. What what he wants, what what he wants, and um that's hard. That's hard, I think. But so that so in other words, I had this optimistic view of tech. And and it's partly because I'm completely adapted to it. I'm completely it's part of who I am. Um but I also I still have these great examples of individuals in tech who were different than the technologists we have today.

unknown 1:49:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:14

Right? In other words, I guess the point is you can accomplish the same goal with different methods, and how you do something becomes is important. We we live in a in our politics, we b have begun to believe that how we do something isn't important anymore. All that's important is the res the outcome. Yeah. And uh I think that that that by itself diminishes us as a people. You know, it turns everything into uh everything becomes functional, all your relationships become functional. They're they're not genuine, yeah, more transactional. It's all transactional. And uh I'm I'm determined to work against that trend. I don't want my relationships ever to be transactional, I want them to be real, yeah, and uh and maybe I'd be successful at that. You know, um I you know you you went back to this this kind of a binary sort of ethic where okay, you you we were in this situation before uh ministry-wise, and and and and things have gotten very broken. So then you go, well, what what the heck do I do about this? I can't make this, I can't influence this big change. And I think I think in a way there's a flaw in that thinking, because we think that we have to figure it out before we start. And I think that one thing that tech has taught me is that the better approach is to prototype. You try stuff, you keep trying stuff and seeing what ultimately resonates. In other words, you don't have to commit all your resources to a particular direction, which is what how they used to do tech back in the in the 90s, you know, they would, you know, CEO would come, well, they still, some CEOs still do this, still doing that, still do this thing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:44

You gotta be about something, son.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:46

You know, but but if you just take the step to prototype, to experiment, to see if it actually resonates, if it returns value, if it makes a difference, you don't have to uh you don't have to hold on to it so tightly that you have to have it figured out, or you even have to make the right choice. In other words, there's enough room to fail, is to give ourselves space to do something that fails. And eventually we learn from that failure and we we move forward. And the biggest thing problem that young people have today, when I talk to them, if they're 40 or 30s, they keep talking about, oh, I just this is the kind of perfect job that I want. And I go, you don't know what kind of job you want. Yeah, I mean, you you think you do, you don't know what will satisfy you until you're doing it. So rather than try to, you know, like they would disqualify themselves from applying for a job because they go, Well, I don't know if I like that job. And I go, Well, you don't know if they like you. So let's it's it's it's a process, right? Yeah, and so my life, your life, if we can say, hey, this is a season and a process, it's not the way it's always going to be. It doesn't always have to be like this, and I can try other things, I can experiment and see if something really re-resonates, if something actually bears fruit. And uh I mean, to me, your son Caleb's a great example of that. I mean, who would have thought that his unique combination of experiences would set him up for essentially a kind of a perfect job? Yeah, a job only he could do as well. He could do it better than anybody else.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:46

But you know, he didn't go into his education with that roadmap, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:53:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:52

And see, that's what gives me hope is that if you if you get overwhelmed with the macro, you know, you know, they talk about how hard it is to get a job if you're a new college grad. And if you get overwhelmed by that, then you don't, you're not you need to allow yourself space to have hope that that your story's not over. I mean, what's wonderful about the American culture we live in is we get so many second chances. Uh, you know, there are cultures my colleagues in Korea and Japan, they had one chance to get a job. They didn't have 12 chances. They had one chance to get in that school. And if they didn't get in that school, they that was it. And think about it, we don't live in a culture like that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:53

Yeah, I I mean it's it it's it's the paradox and the reality that highly socialized structures of government uh create that funnel, you know, where it's like you got your shot, and if you don't do it, you know, there's your one shot, you know, and and so the all the programming from the beginning of life begins for that one shot on the one career that you might be able to get to if you can compete. And that is the beauty of this country, is that you got lots of shots, you know. It's not true for everybody, and you know, circumstances certainly disqualify a lot of people, and that's uh thing we need to overcome again.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:43

Well, our ch our choices get limited, you know. It's like um my son he got a really high score when he took the PSAT. Yes, when he was a sophomore.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:55

Yes, he did.

SPEAKER_03 1:55:56

And and I go, you know, my oldest, and he did really well.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:00

So I'm thinking, hey, maybe this kid can break into the top 1% when he's a junior and get a ten thousand dollar scholarship, yeah, which is kind of the reward, right? And uh so he took the test as a junior, and I got back with him, and you know, it was on a Saturday, and I said, How'd you do? Test scores come back, and it was lower than his sophomore, sophomore year. And I was a little surprised. I go, Well, suddenly, what what were you doing? Did did you study

Santa Cruz, Tech Gentrification, And Commutes

SPEAKER_03 1:56:30

for this? Go, what would you do the day before the test? He goes, Oh, I took a I took a shift at Albertson's. A shift came available, so I took a shift at Albertson's that night. I go, oh, really? How much you make? He goes, Oh, you know, like 50 bucks or whatever. I go, okay, $10,000 scholarship, $50 salary. Yeah. I go, I go, it's fine. You just limited your choices.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:58

It's okay.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:59

You know, you don't have to have every choice. You made a choice that for short-term benefit that could have had a much better outcome if he'd studied. You know, or like my other son, he forgot to submit applications to like a handful of colleges. Or he submitted them, but he forgot to tell his school to submit transcripts. He did something like this. And I go, it's okay. It just means you're not gonna go to those colleges.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:36

You know, you have verified the fact that that is not going down.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:40

You know, your choices have been limited. So there are situations in our life where our choices become limited. That for for a variety of reasons. But at the same time, we have still have so much opportunity. The story, what I try to tell people is the story is not over. Yeah, it doesn't have, you know. I mean, I watch a lot of movies, so I know the story can't possibly be over, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:58:08

Uh and uh we're only a half hour in.

SPEAKER_03 1:58:13

Yeah. You know, it's it's it's we and and that's so wonderful about our situation. Um and and in the stage of life that I'm at, um I'm still trying to learn how to be very present. Um because you know, when you spend 50 years just building and on a goal, you know, on a deadline, it's such a transition to walk away from all that. And I know a lot of people in my category, it becomes a bad thing for them. Yeah. They can't, they've lost they have no identity outside what they had done before. And uh I really I can understand why they feel that way. It's tough to walk away from something you were really good at and just let go, say I'm gonna stop doing that thing, right? And I actually get people who who go, hey, well, could you, you know, you're a tech guy, could you do this tech thing for me? And go, yeah, I could, but I'm not, I'm not going to. I go, that's it's not uh, you know, now if you need if somebody needs my help, like figure out how to uh sign up for Zoom or whatever, I'm happy with that. But I I don't have an overwhelming desire to uh to do the work I did before. What I miss the most is relationships that I had with people and being part of a team. Yeah. In the abstract of that, other than sometimes doing techie things is fun. Like, I mean, how many people set up a dual boot with Lennox? Yeah. I did.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:00:05

Well, I'd use it much. I doubt it, but it was just kind of fun. It was fun. You know, and so I'm geeky enough to enjoy things that some people may never enjoy, you know. But but again, for me, it's experimenting. I'm trying to find that balance as to um I know I want to be more than just a lump on the couch. Not every day. I'm fine some days. But I I want to have a little more. Um, I don't know. I want I want a rhythm to my life that I don't have yet, but I'm hopeful that it will come.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:47

Well, on that note, Michael, thank you so much for being on the program. Appreciate you. And to all y'all, you just got done listening to the Unpacked in Santa Cruz podcast. I'd like to thank Santa Cruz Vibes magazine, also Point Side Beat Shack for providing me with this moment. Y'all have a good rest of your day. Take care.