Beau James is currently Meta's Director and Associate General Counsel for Mobile and Artificial Intelligence. Beau discusses his legal career, upbringing, passion for rare disease advocacy, and much more.
Connect with Dr. Sciarretta on X
Beau James is currently Meta's Director and Associate General Counsel for Mobile and Artificial Intelligence. Beau discusses his legal career, upbringing, passion for rare disease advocacy, and much more.
Connect with Dr. Sciarretta on X
You know I'm a big fan and we kind of talked about this throughout the conversation but also earlier, in a safe way, but exposing people to adversity and challenges. The teachers I remember are the ones who kicked my butt in school, mr Perry, 10th grade biology, like I didn't think I was going to get out. I was so happy with the B-Class and I couldn't tell you a look about biology today. But it was the experience of working hard through adversity, not for that subject matter, but as a basis for the next time I faced adversity.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Superintendent's Hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, dr Sharetta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode, I was privileged and honored to sit down for a conversation with Bo James. Bo is currently Director and Associate General Counsel for Mobile and Artificial Intelligence at Metta. Prior to his current position, bo worked for 10 years at Qualcomm as a senior counsel prior to that, for Turner Broadcasting System, delta Airlines and other nationally known companies.
Speaker 2:Bo is a graduate of the University of San Diego Law School and, prior to that, university of California, berkeley. Bo and I touched on a wide range of topics, from his legal career, his upbringing, his passion for advocacy in the area of rare diseases and the personal story behind that passion, and much, much more. I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I did creating it with a very inspirational leader and a friend of mine, bo James. I thought we would start with your origin story, which is where I start all of the episodes on this podcast, because it's important, I think, for listeners to understand where the guests come from, what it was like for them growing up, what were the forces that shaped their trajectory and have brought them to the present moment.
Speaker 1:I love the question. I love the use of the word origin. You know, I think so many times you meet people and they say are you talking like? What do you do? What's your job? I think origin goes a little bit deeper. For myself to kind of describe my origin, I have to talk about my parents, you know. I think it starts there.
Speaker 1:My mom, elizabeth. She was an Army brat, born right after the war, lived in Mississippi, lived in Japan, lived all over the South and then about 18, she moved to Fort Scott, kansas, to become a nurse. She'll tell the story. I was a little black girl making 50 cents an hour as a nurse's aide. She got my dad there in Kansas. They moved out to California and over a span of like 30 years my mom raised us kids with my dad and she retired as a nursing executive. She made her obstacle system here and my mom always talked about being a manager, what it's like in corporate America. That's kind of her story. My dad grew up in a lot of places, graduated from high school in Santa Monica, went to college in Kansas, ku, let me get it right lived in Seattle for a while. He was a probation officer, retired after 30 years here in LA County. He was one of the first groups to go off and join the Peace Corps. So in the 60s he was in West Africa, very worldly person, you know, committed to his family. So those are my parents. I have a younger sister, dawn. She's a geologist. She does a lot of climate work right now for a big consulting firm.
Speaker 1:When I was first born I was, you know, up through probably about I don't know. I don't know how old I was. We first lived in Santa Monica small apartment. Then my parents moved us to Inglewood. I was in Inglewood until about eighth grade, if you will, started school at an elementary school called Parent Wasn't quite in Inglewood, it was a little bit outside. I took the bus there, it was kind of a bus to parent, I remember there. I was there until about second grade and then around second grade, halfway through second grade, my mom moved me to Seeds UES. I don't know if you know that school. It's known as the lab school now. So this was an experimental school, attached to UCLA, if you will, and so super fortunate. You know, it's a school that sits in the middle of this forest in Westwood and you have these wide open classrooms.
Speaker 2:One of your podcasts.
Speaker 1:You're talking about how you walk into a classroom and you give the thumbs up or thumbs down based on the number, the amount of materials on the wall. You know that resonates with you. This place was clean and you had teachers coming out of the school of education like not quite experimenting but using the latest techniques on kids, and so it was a great, great place to learn. Went to Crossroads for middle school, graduated from Santa Monica High School for high school, so eighth grade. We moved to Santa Monica without having schooled High school, you know, ran track for school, played a little football, played a little soccer Wasn't quite intellectually curious, I would say. But you know, school wasn't super difficult and I just kind of, you know, went through it. When it came time to make decisions for college, I, you know, I look back after, you know, send my first kid to college and how competitive and difficult it is to go to college. I just kind of, you know, I grabbed the UC applications, you know, picked four schools and I said, well, if I get into Berkeley it's the best school over there. I was playing basketball and I met someone like hey, I think I should apply somewhere else, maybe I should apply to Stanford. She's like nah, you don't want to apply to Stanford, you know whatever. Whatever she said, I'm like you know what? I don't know who you are, but I agree, I'm not going to apply to Stanford, ucs. That's the way to go. Fortunately, it worked out.
Speaker 1:Went to Cal An amazing life experience, wide open. I was kid who's growing up in Southern California to arrive there and just have the world in front of me. You know, the only subject I really enjoyed in high school was history. So I went to Cal. It's a history major. I just studied everything. You know I had a great time. I wasn't like over the top in terms of studies but I just really looking back on it. You know this was classic, great experience. I got to experience a lot there.
Speaker 1:After Cal took two years off, wanted to work. You know I've been in school my whole life and hadn't experienced the real world. I've had a couple of jobs worked at the Gap for a little while. You know I worked at one of the retail stores. They had a great program where for college juniors, they would train you as an assistant manager. We talk about career stuff. You know we can look back at that moment as being very defining, very important. Worked for Pete's Coffee as an assistant manager. I managed a couple of Kaplan centers, kaplan education People who do the test crap. I managed the San Francisco Berkeley experience. Kind of got my toes wet in business. Then went off to law school. I'll cut it there. We've talked career stuff you know, but it's got hit you with a lot. I love getting questions.
Speaker 2:I know, thank you. Thank you for that. You grew up in an interesting time in LA. Well, there's never a not interesting time in LA, right? I know you're approximately my age as you were talking. I'm like going back and doing mental math and trying to figure out like somewhere in there was somewhere in there was OJ Simpson and White Bronco, somewhere in there was Northridge A lot of tectonic shifts.
Speaker 1:I'll say what was probably the most defining. So when I was in high school, the gang violence, you know, crack epidemic in Southern California was. It was insane, like it was. It was horrific. You know, I remember being told like, hey, as a young black man you are a rare species in LA. You should either be dead or incarcerated. I think what you know. Great parents, but I really think about my dad.
Speaker 1:So my dad is a probation officer. He worked in the camps, la County camps, and so this is where kids would be sent, you know, when they got in trouble. You know, not prison, not jail, but these camps, and he would work these shifts where you know he might go off to work on Friday, have to work over the weekend. He'd come home on Monday, and so every weekend it seemed like every week, but every weekend we go visit him, like on Sunday. You know, my mom would take us up to the camp where he was working and I'd go there and I'd see these kids who weren't much older than me, like with all their freedoms taken away. You know, just kind of off on a different path. You know, I remember we were, I was in this room and there was this kid.
Speaker 1:His name was Roscoe, a couple of years older than me, and I remember saying I was in elementary school. I remember we were talking about something I'm like, yeah, like cursive is really hard. I'm having a tough time with cursive, you know, and Roscoe was like an old enough, like he would have been in high school, and he said to me yeah, like it's really hard for me to. I'm like dang, like you're older than me, like you're like cursive should not be hard for you. Like just there were just these little moments Again, having my parents there, having that great support system, but just these little moments that made it a little bit easier for me to just kind of like steer clear, like I'm gonna get, like, you know, I gotta be a little extra careful.
Speaker 2:So you had your own built in scared straight program. That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I did anything. My parents my dad.
Speaker 2:You thought your mom was taking you to see your dad, but it was a gay, so you got you. You know, both your parents were in professions that were service professions. Right, we're really serving others and not that the laws doesn't imply serving others, but there's certainly. Nursing is entirely service of others, and your dad to a great degree as well. What led you into the law?
Speaker 1:You know, as we're having this conversation the connections are kind of coming through. But you know, probably in high school, definitely in high school, I thought it was bizarre that you could get in trouble, serious trouble, and never have anyone explain to you how the law works. You know, maybe in church you know they'll shout, not kill. You know, go through your 10 commandments. Maybe in school you get a little tiny bit of it. But the nuances and the complexities of the law that you can understand as a teenager, like no one ever teaches that to you. You know, I was just like that doesn't seem right, that's kind of broken. So it was kind of sitting there for me.
Speaker 1:I had an uncle who was a lawyer in San Diego. I didn't know him well. He passed away when I felt relatively young and we never had conversations but we never talked about his work. But he was always just a very prestigious person in our family. And then I think the other piece you know. So going to Crossroads, going to UES, you know I was exposed to a lot of kids who were their families were much more wealthy than my family would ever be, movie stars, what's called captains of industry, had the nicest cars, and I didn't want to be broke. I was just like you know what, and not maybe when I was first. You know, maybe I was in high school and college, but it's like I don't want to be broke, like from a consumer you know, childhood of the 80s, like consumer of mine. He was like I want nice things.
Speaker 1:I think as I got older it was much more financial flexibility. I think I'd describe it as financial independence, not, you know, not having my debts dictate decisions that I make. And for me, you know, a legal career seemed like a good path to those outcomes. Now, the reality is not every lawyer is wealthy, not every lawyer is not in debt. I mean, when you look at the cost of law school, look at the decisions that you make as a very young person that can impact many, many years of your life. Look at the reality.
Speaker 1:So when I was in law school, there was this statistic that only 11% of you will get to go to big law. Big law is kind of like the clearly you know, the predefined path to certain level of income, but not the only one. You know there are many other ways to do well financially of a legal profession, but that's a miniscule Like that's like you go to a small law school. You're not with a USD there in San Diego Law School. You go to a small regional law school. Sometimes the odds are very much stacked against you if you're not going to a Harvard or a Yale or one of those big schools where it's kind of predefined.
Speaker 2:Do you teach your own kids about financial planning and those sorts of things? I know I was just having conversation with a colleague and I always say very proudly that my daughter has started financial planning really young. Like her first summer job, she started paying into a 401k and started her own Roth IRA, you know, and no one told me how to do that when I was a kid and by the time at least our generation I think, realized the power of compound interest, that she had partly sales yeah, I think only had half a sale by that point. Right, Because it's driven by time, right. So you tell it. How do you educate your own children around the financial planning and not necessarily chasing dollars for the sake of chasing dollars? But I really like what you say about flexibility and independence. That comes with resources.
Speaker 1:Yes, so I wish I could say that. You know, I sit my kids down at the dinner table and I commence the lecture. If they look at me, like who the heck are you and what are you thinking, old guy? Like isn't there work you should be doing? But it's the things I try to expose them to, the stories I try to tell them about. So my youngest son is into investing in the stock market. I said, all right, I'm gonna contribute $200 to your account, I'm gonna set up your account. But here's my requirement I want you to find companies that you're passionate about, that you use their service. You know, go study them a little bit and come back to me and let's talk about you investing in them. That's what my dad did for me. You know I was an early investor in Apple, didn't hold onto it which I had, but you know it was like that. I'm like oh, apple computer. Amazing.
Speaker 1:My son, who's off to college. He sent me an out and said hey, dad, I wanna get a credit card. Why do you need a credit card? You know how I feel about that. You know how I feel about credit card. I need to, you know, establish my credit rating. So you know I won some, I lost some. You know he got one. You know you sign up. He signed her name, you know, and I have to double job. No, and you got a credit card. But we talked yeah, I've talked to him about you know my experiences with having a credit card and debt, and let's talk about what 26% interest looks like. Let's talk about when you miss a payment and the impact there and let's compound that over time. So I try to sneak it in as lessons, but you know some things. You have to experience yourself and learn the lesson.
Speaker 2:So that's hard, yeah, and I think it's an interesting process. Right Is as the generations shift into the way we parent our kids and, as you know, families. Ideally, hopefully, each generation kinda does a little bit better financially than the previous one, even though that trend seems to be reversing in America. Overall. That's a different topic, but the challenge is really to raise children in an environment where they're both appreciative and also understanding that you know the finances are resources that need to be cultivated and protected and nurtured. Yes, now, it's just not. Not everybody can be a TikTok influencer and make a living from it, that's right.
Speaker 1:Like very no, that's right. And I also feel that you know some of the best life lessons come out of failure, come out of pain, come out of, you know, not having the outcome that you expected, and so you know it would be great. You know I can swoop in there and save the day, you know. But you know what you gotta fail a little bit. You know. You gotta deal with adversity so that you build upon that going forward, you know.
Speaker 2:So you go to law school and as typical law school, you know whatever, you know what. Second year, third year, you start to narrow your focus and kind of decide kind of what you're gonna do, talk us through that process and then how that led to your first job and then ultimately to where you are right now in your career.
Speaker 1:Sure, sure. So law school was a trip for me, so I was a little bit older and that I had worked a little while I got. I was accepted into the evening program at USD. I helped with costs. I could work during the day, study a little bit kind of defer costs there.
Speaker 1:I remember my first day I'm gonna say this person's name because we live in San Diego, I hope he hears this Jason Oda. A guy went to UCLA. We're sitting at the fountain before like the orientation, you know, and this older gentleman walks up to us and says what do you hope to get out of law school? And I'm like man, I just wanna survive. Like I have no idea what I got, really got myself into. I just wanna survive. And Jason says, well, I'm here to do well and I'm like man, I thought you were my friend, what is going on? But that was like the first indicator what law school is gonna be out. And then the second indicator was this older gentleman who came to us, turned out to be the D and his welcome ceremony, his welcome speech, was about not just hoping to survive but to actual thrive at USD and I'm like I'm done, I am done, so, yeah, so that was like the welcome. You have no idea what law school is like until you actually show up there In terms of classes. That in retrospect, really, the first year is hard. It's supposed to be hard. It is one of those experiences where, hey, we're gonna chew you up, we're gonna break you down and then we'll rebuild you. And that first year, that first semester, is about breaking you down. I had this professor, paul Wollman, who I will always remember. He went to Yale and Yale Law School professors are known for being the toughest and Yale Law School professors that teach. I'll say he was my contracts professor, your contracts professors. All the movies are about contracts professors. They're spoke just brutal. And Wollman was known for every year making someone cry in class and he did my year. Someone's bawling, not just crying but just like ugly crying in the front of the room.
Speaker 1:My favorite wellness story, one of my favorite long stories. You sit in this kind of amphitheater, 15 chairs, 15 seats across, and we're doing some case, and he's coming down the road, one kid at a time, one adult, one adult at a time, blowing people up. You don't know what you're talking about. Did you read it? Like just horrible, horrible, horrible. I'm in the middle, get myself ready. I'm like here it comes. All right, though, do your best, you studied, you're ready to go. He's going now one kid, one kid, one kid. And then he skips me and keeps going down the road and it was just like why did he skip me? What like? What did it go on? It was mental stuff like that, just breaking you down, building you back up. But he turned out to be my favorite professor. I went back to seminars like amazing time.
Speaker 1:That was law school. I didn't in it, I didn't enjoy it and I wanted to get out of San Diego. It was hard, it was rough, like I was just like what is this? What did I get myself into? But for me, what law school really taught was you could be presented with any type of problem and know nothing about it, but you will have the tools to find an answer or a solution, and that was that for me. That was the fundamental lesson of law school In terms of career path.
Speaker 1:Coming out of law school, it must have been like the spring, maybe it must have been the spring of my first year. I was walking through the career center, past the career center, and I saw on a pillar little piece of paper that said I forget the name of the company, it's one of these old school brick and mortar companies back east, minority Job Fair. And what it was was. This company said to all of it DuPont, minority Job Fair. That's what it was. Dupont had this program where they said all of our law firms, everyone who works with us around the world and this is revolutionary at this time now it's pretty calm the revolution at that time Every law firm that we spend tens of millions of dollars for that we're gonna sponsor a lot of job fair, minority Job Fair, and we want you to come and interview different minorities that we bring through it.
Speaker 1:So I applied, I got one interview with a law firm in San Diego and this law firm brought two matrons, one from Palo Alto and one from San Diego, and this was the largest law firm in San Diego. They had the two most citizens and this position that I was entering where it was for a summer. Like you said, the summer associate set during my second year, kind of that internship that could lead to your path forward. And so for me I remember driving up to LA at this little 20 year old Honda Prelude super reliable car. It was my low car. I drove up to LA, downtown LA, I got my little suit on and they had everyone who was interviewing in this holding room, this conference room, and I'm sitting there and there are all these kids, young adults sitting around. I remember looking around the room and I'm like I got this, like they were scared, like they hadn't been in real interviews.
Speaker 1:Parking back to my earlier story about being a manager at the gap, as part of that, you interview people to hire them and that's the best training for being interviewed to like knowing how to best utilize that 20 to 30 minutes. So I went into that interview. I walked away with the opportunity to go back to the firm, the respective offices in San Diego and Palo Alto and do a full slate of interviews and what that is. You show up at nine in the morning, you leave late afternoon. Every 20 to 30 minutes. You're interviewing with a new attorney and it's exhausting. You're interviewing with a new attorney, you're getting the business cards, you're writing a little note for your thank you, note that you're gonna send back to the match words. You're trying to make that connection so that you stand out beyond someone else. Everything you try to do, to do well.
Speaker 1:In an interview I did both offices, both went well and they said, pick one. You can't do both, but you gotta pick an office. And so that would have been for the summer of 99. And so in 1999, dot com explosion and I said like from a historical context, like I have to go to Palo Alto, like hands down, like Sandy goes. Great, it's beautiful, this is the largest firm, most prestigious firm in San Diego, but I've gotta go to Palo Alto just because of what's happening in the world.
Speaker 1:I told them that I wanted to be a corporate associate, someone that does IPOs, does mergers and acquisitions, or an employment attorney. And no idea what that meant, what that really meant. It sounded good. I'm like no idea what that really meant. And so that summer of 99, when I got there, when I was doing assignments and meeting attorneys, one thing I realized and no slight on corporate attorneys but what I realized was that they didn't understand what their clients were building. They were not steeped in the technology, they were steeped in the transaction. Like, hey, we're gonna get you an IP, we're gonna put you through an IPO, like IPOs were crazy. Then you're gonna, you're gonna IPO, we're gonna merge your acquisition, but you would kind of talk to the associates and I had no idea what their clients were doing.
Speaker 1:I'm like, if I'm coming here like I wanna know what the tech's all about, I did an assignment for this associate and I forget her name and it was a disaster, like it was, like it was. I did some agreement and it was horrible and she marked it up in the red pen and I'm like there's no way I'm getting this job. But the deal was she sat down with me for three hours and walked me through everything I did wrong or right or whatever. She just spent the time with me. That's what I knew. That was the practice I wanted to join. You know the technology transaction practice. You know Deals between companies when they wanna exchange or build technology. You sit with a lot of engineers. You sit with a lot of high caliber business people building deals and that's what I knew. And I was fortunate enough to get an offer after that summer for a full time employment afterwards. Then I was kind of off to the races that way.
Speaker 2:And so how do you, as an attorney with a very full life and a demanding career, how do you learn what you need to learn about the technology so that you can converse appropriately with engineers, with executives and companies, perhaps with CEOs, perhaps with founders companies? How does one do that?
Speaker 1:You don't have to have a technical background. I was a history major, right? So you know many people will look at me and, no matter what I do, I'm thinking, no, who are you Like? You can't do this. Like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1:A lot of times, if you have a solid foundation of certain technology, those new and improvements are just the step above. So there are nuances and there are differences as technologies improve, but it's always building on the foundation. And so there was when I was at the firm. There's this incredible attorney and she would teach a class to the new attorneys, saying like you could do any agreement based on four basic agreements, like an NDA, professional services agreement, software license agreement, one other agreement. You can construct any type of agreement you need based on this core foundation. And it's true, it worked.
Speaker 1:In terms of dealing with engineers, a couple of thoughts. When an engineer comes to you about a project this is a default of all attorneys they're doing risk assessment like good, bad, zero one, oh, this will never get off the ground, and that's okay and that's part of what you do. But you never tell an engineer that they're product. You never tell them that their baby is ugly, right, because this is someone that has poured their passion into it and they're coming to you because they need you to help solve a problem. And if you're open and you're honest but you help them get through their, an engineer's like anyone else, like I want someone committed to work through the problem I think about.
Speaker 1:I was just catching up with an engineer that I used to work with. He was at Mata for a while and he took some time off. I was in a very difficult position. He had had a difficult time with another turning on the team and he'd gone to our supervisor and said I need someone else. My supervisor's okay, but I need you to jump in. And our very first meeting he's explaining this super complex technology and business plan that he's trying to put together. And I said you know what, like? Let's talk about this in terms of baking a cake. What are our ingredients, what does our oven look like? You know what are we doing with the results of this cake? What kind of icing are we doing? And so converting a complex topic into something that we can usually understand. That helped a lot and shown up here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to get back to that strategy of kind of reduction right to in a minute, but I had this anecdote that popped into my head I remember that you and I at one point had gone to a football game together and at the time you were working with a company that was piloting this or trying to get this product off the ground. That was like a portable, a USB right, and like it never took off or maybe the technology morphed into something else. But then and I remember people going, oh, that's the dumbest idea. Like why do you? Who would want to have a screen that's like this big when you could just get a big plasma TV? So I just always chuckle about that because I'm like great idea. Maybe a few years too early, maybe because it wasn't integrated with a phone, that was it.
Speaker 1:That technology, what's called out? Because there are great people in San Diego we worked on it Flow TV Media, flow as a company, this notion of hey, we're gonna stream content over the airwaves to your mobile device, either as a portable device this thing panel portable device or a phone. The phone was the first one, and I'll say 10 years too soon, right, because today we could not imagine not being able to stream to a portable device. Um, you know, I think when I look at my career, when I do like you know, what keeps me going is I get to work on the cutting edge of technologies. You know things that brilliant, brilliant people dream up and I play a small part in helping them bring that forward. Sometimes it's too early, sometimes it lands. It's fun, it's really fun.
Speaker 2:So I noticed on your LinkedIn profile you mentioned AI.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's obviously front of mind for just about anybody today, certainly in my field of education. In fact, I just had an interview the last couple of days that's gonna come out in a week or so with an author who wrote the leading book on AI in the classroom and how teachers can leverage artificial intelligence, specifically language learning models like a chat chibi T type of model, to empower students but also, at the same time, keep kids safe. And it's complicated and it changes every day. What is your work, what I know? There's a lot. You can't talk about specificity wise in terms of your work, but just philosophically. You know, what does your work look like in the area of AI and what should a layperson like me be thinking about in this space?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think it's okay for me to name companies. So I was 10 years. I was at Qualcomm there in San Diego.
Speaker 2:I was waiting for you to name them, but that's fair that's fair, totally fair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't worry. Yeah, we're different. So I was at Qualcomm for a very long time and then I had an opportunity to join at the time, what was known as Facebook, now known as Meta, and I was brought on, you know, as a standalone attorney to work on deals related to artificial intelligence. To that point in time, I'd done one AI deal, you know, worked on thousands of deals, but only one AI. But you know, as I was kind of describing, you know, technology will constantly involve and as long as you have that solid foundation, you can tackle anything. That's been my experience. Shall say, all this is my opinion, not necessarily my company, and certainly a disclaimer. And so when I joined Facebook, I did a lot of deals that relate to partnerships between companies related to AI. Either we needed technology that we needed to license from someone else or we were licensing AI out, and that was kind of, you know, I did that. I have done other things. I've supported other groups related to mobile groups related to connectivity. I've built out a team that I support, you know, related to AI, also now related to strategic alliances, but AI has always kind of been my constant during my time here. And then, you know, like everyone else, it just exploded. You know, when open AI came along with chat GBT, you know it was like nitro in the engine and everything took off.
Speaker 1:A lot of people talk about, a lot of people are nervous understandably with new technologies. I think what I, I think what most people would say is exciting is to have this very powerful technology in the hands of people and creators to do really cool things. Like when I think about your podcast. You know, if you invite me back in a year, I'm gonna ask you. I'm gonna say, hey, dave, the questions you generated, did you use chat GBT?
Speaker 1:Did you run our last interview through? Did you run my LinkedIn profile through and use chat GBT to at least create the starting point? I might ask you, hey, like in post-production, did you use an AI tool to generate a transcript of the conversation? Or did you use AI to create a version of our conversation in voices that sound like us speaking in German or in Spanish to expand your user base? And if you come back to me and say, yep, I did it and I paid the extra $50 a month for those services to expand the reach of my podcast, because either I've got new customer or new listeners or new advertisers, because these tools enhance my business. I would say like, wow, like this technology has really taken off and it's doing what people expect or what people are anticipating today, but it's still super early, it's very early.
Speaker 2:It's early and what's interesting to me is I think I, like a lot of people, naively thought that AI was gonna be changing society, kind of from the most repetitive types of manual work or like data entry, clerical kind of jobs first, or long haul truck drivers or what have you, and it is transforming that. But it's also having an amazing impact on a lot of white color work. Yeah, I mean, I have a friend who's an attorney and he's like yeah, I use chat GBT every day when crafting the first draft of a letter to a client or when analyzing notes from a meeting that have 50 bullet points in them and disorganized thinking, like I use chat GBT to scrub that and bring it to me. And then there's amazing things like that companies are building in as functionality that you don't even know what's coming until it comes. Like I just now just started in preparation for in the future I'd like to have a video component as well, and in this podcast I just have to find a suitable background office, but so I started to post the episodes on YouTube. Well, YouTube has built in functionality where you post an audio and I didn't even know this, but it already transcribes it for you. It has sound markers. A lot of the time a different speaker speaks or the theme changes, there's a little play thing you can hit and you can. You know it'll say Bo's talking about AI here and you can hit that and it'll jump down in the audio to that section. And we didn't pay for that, that's just. You know, YouTube's got that baked in, you know, and so I think those are really interesting things, Like when you mentioned the way that you explained a complex deal and reduced it down to making a cake.
Speaker 2:Feel like and maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but I feel like that's the space in which humans will always be able to still live and operate in an agile manner, where a machine can't right. If you took this complicated thing and you said, hey, bro, can you give me 15 minutes? And you plugged it in chat GBT and said, hey, reduce this down to a basic fourth graders understanding of the concepts. Like, yeah, okay, but that's not how your conversation went down. Right, you lost it already. He's not gonna want to work with you anymore, and so I think the beauty of it is that you understand the whole picture of this big deal and the complexity and then you're like, okay, we got to get to like the basics first, and that's a human, instinctual move right in the middle of a dynamic situation.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, no, totally agree that the technology is also amazing. Like, yes, there are nuances, there will be different sets of skills that I think that people will bring to the table that a machine will never be able to replicate, and that's kind of the exciting thing. Like, I love sharing what you were sharing with about where you're seeing AI pop up in your life. I love looking at kids and seeing how they're using it, how it's influencing their lives, how they're kind of tweaking what the older generation offers, and I kind of looked at them like that's gonna be really cool when that use that form of technology or AI, and it's true for all technology. You got your mobile phone and I really I'm gonna take pictures, I'm gonna record video, but you look at these kids and these creators and the way they use these phones how much that's advanced technology. I think it's true for all technology and it's cool, it's exciting.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm sure that it's going to transform. It's hard to even characterize the legal profession as one homogeneous profession because it's so has such variety, right. But I'd imagine, just like in accounting and in all these, medicine is gonna be transformed. The law must in the future, right Even what you described from law school. I'm wondering if the Socratic method this is a rhetorical question, but, like I'm wondering if the Socratic method is really gonna need to be so hammered in in law school preparation into people's minds. You talk about boot camp in year one of law school, like is that really? I mean, how many times does Bo get grilled on the job by someone who's like right now? I need an answer on this. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Every day, every day. Oh, do you Every day, every day? So your point well taken.
Speaker 1:I think you know law school and the Socratic method, hell Week with Navy Seals, residency for medical students. Yes, this is an opportunity to learn how things work. But it's more important, more importantly, I'm training you. I'm training you to think or operate in a certain way, because in your life, in your professional career, you're gonna face situations where what you've learned is not applicable to the situation and what you will have to fall back on is your training, your ability to improvise and operate in difficult situations.
Speaker 1:So, first year law school, I'm pounding the crap out of you. You know it's really difficult, it's stressful. You know you're working with subject matter. You have no understanding about it. Fast forward to your first year as a young associate partner walks into your office Friday four o'clock I need a memo throws a piece of paper, throws a report, you know, sends an email. I need this summarized. I need a memo on this. I need an agreement on this by Monday morning. Like I literally think back to the associates, we were in a little room closet when I first started that training like that's hard to replicate.
Speaker 2:Can AI do some of that so like AI could get the memo going and the draft agreement right, Not the final one?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, but just like any tool. Yeah, you know. But you know, email through communicate, email communications we remember in our lifetime when we started using email and now we couldn't imagine living without it. You know there were partners I worked for. You know, when the first computer showed up in the office. It was, you know, revolutionary, but it was another AI working it out. You know, kind of chat to PT, which is just one sliver because there's so much other stuff. It's a tool, you know. I think those who are skilled at being able to prompt AI to produce desired results like that's amazing, that's a skill set that you know. But this like, yes, you can go in many places and I'm probably going to be wrong. You know, ai might go wherever, but in the end it's a tool and we humans, you know from the beginning of time, are very good at manipulating and using tools for desired outcomes.
Speaker 2:You know Henry Kissinger and one of the founders of Google, whose name I'm going to blank on. And one other author just came out with the book on AI. I'm not sure Henry Kissinger actually wrote it, but his name is. But they start out the book by talking about you know this computer I think it might be an IBM computer originally, but big blue that was, you know, and it was like the chess computer, right. And it was like they developed this thing over years and eventually got to where it could beat the top chess champions in the world and could beat them resoundingly because it could just do millions and millions of calculations, a second right. And then they, at some point, they had this and I don't know all the technical terms, but similar to a chat, gbt or a language, a learning model, like a model could learn, and they pitted it against against that computer, and in the beginning it lost a bunch of times, but, but.
Speaker 2:But then it started to behave like it started to almost develop its own independent mind around doing things that were illogical, things that that a computer that it programmed to to cut risk out of its game never would have done. Yes, and watching this thing go, and in a day or two. It was. It was dominating big blue, yeah, yeah, and I think that's the piece that I think we're going to be wrestling with a long time. Clearly, that model doesn't feel emotion, it doesn't feel fatigue, it doesn't feel frustration, it doesn't have an ego, it doesn't. But oftentimes it can behave in a way where we are not, we can't even a way where we start ascribing it human qualities, and that's going to be really interesting. You know, maybe the next generation of kids, the kids are being born right now. We're going to grow up in a world where, just like kids today never imagined not having a cell phone, generations never going to know what it's like to not have these models that are adapting and learning and hopefully, for the most part, making the world better.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely. I no doubt you know AI represents a very powerful tool, very powerful technology, and people are. People are fast. I mean that that's what's kind of blown my way my mind away is just how fascinated and interested people are. You know, rightfully or wrongfully, but you know there are lots of different reasons and it's, you know. I think we're fortunate. You know I feel very fortunate to work during this time, you know, to be exposed to this technology, to have a decent understanding of it. You know AI is also very broad. You know most people are very familiar with large language models, but there's so many other technologies within AI that will provide us with really cool tools through our lives. You know it's exciting, but it's. You know the guys who worked on mobile my mouth was exciting. Also. You know electric cars. You know the work we're doing around climate change. I think we're just very fortunate during this time in our lives to be around these great advancements. It's, it's, it's cool.
Speaker 2:How can schools better teach and prepare students for a job like yours in the future?
Speaker 1:This will go back to your point. If there's any kid or any young person who's listening to this conversation and said like, wow, both said something, it really motivates me. I want to be a technology licensing attorney or I want to focus in AI. Even if you're in law school right now, maybe if you're a junior assistant, I'm going to tell you it's too late.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Like the next wave of technologies that will need the skills that I utilize as part of my job. They're just like someone's, just that spark is just going off in someone's head and it will pass. Ai, it will be the next wave of technologies. So I I answer that question. I want to answer that question in a way like don't focus on the technology where you are, because your skills will be needed at the next level To answer your question directly to schools. Yeah, when I look at my own experience, you know what can educators do. It's continuously building that foundation. I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1:We kind of talked about this throughout the conversation, that also earlier, in a safe way, but exposing people to adversity and challenges. The teachers I remember are the ones who kicked my butt in school. Mr Perry, 10th grade biology, like I didn't think I was going to get out. I was so happy with a B plus and I can tell you a look about biology today. But it was the experience of working hard through adversity, not for that subject matter, but as a basis for the next time I faced adversity. Professor Walmouth, usd. You know this guy's insane, smartest guy I've ever met. You know I worked through it. You know he turned out to be a good guy and I learned how to navigate it. If you come to work in my area, or just the law in general you know clients come to you because they've got a problem and they need someone who's really smart to help them solve that problem. And a lot of times sometimes not all areas a lot of many times those problems have never been seen before or the facts are very unique. You know what experiences can you draw on to solve this problem and I think you know that's an important part of education. That's an important area that educators serve.
Speaker 1:I also think exposing young people to different people in their community, like you're doing with this podcast. You know, I don't know what it was like as a kid and speaker to the con, like in one ear out of the other, but you never know when that day is going to happen, when the right kid is listening to the right speaker and something will change their life. And I think that educators, you have to be persistent in that because it makes such a difference and it might be if it's one out of 24, one out of 30, whatever your class sizes and it makes a difference in that kids life totally worth it, like no matter. The no matter you know every Friday you know you do this and totally worth it makes a world of difference and I think I'll stop talking on this one answering question. But, like in terms of pure subject matter, when I look at my own kids, they don't understand the technologies that they interact with.
Speaker 1:Difference between Wi-Fi and cellular. Why does my Wi-Fi work at home but it doesn't work when I drive around? What does it mean to have one of these phones? How do these companies make all this money when I have this phone? What do these terms mean when I click yes or no?
Speaker 2:Who wrote this long agreement that my dad did?
Speaker 1:I wrote it, but it's. You know. As we talked about the challenges of AI, the challenges of any technology, I think that we don't do a good unless you're specialized. We don't do a good job of understanding, like how it works, and I'm not saying you have to be able to build it, you know. But there are people in our communities there are, you know, who are able to teach at a level so that you can conceptually understand what's going on. And I think that's what makes me sad about my kid.
Speaker 1:When I talk to my kids about the apps they use, I'm like does it like bug you, you know that you're like uploading all the pictures or you're doing this and doing that, and they say it disappears, but you know like it can still be captured, like, do you like think about it? No, it's cool, like really like no one cares what I'm doing, you know right? Do you know what I do? That kind of thing? That would be the last thing I would recommend.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you mentioned that. My mom, my mom was one of these people who was like 30, 40 years ahead of her time and she founded an organic food co-op in our living room in 1975 that you know, if she waited 10 years could have been the start of Whole Foods and I'd be we'd be doing this call for my private jet or whatever. But one of the things that she did was she had this thing like. She was very careful about what technology I could be exposed to as a kid, because her theory was that it would take away my creativity if a machine would do something for me.
Speaker 2:So I remember I desperately wanted to get a radio and I was like 10, 11 years old and so for Christmas one year I get a crystal radio kit from Radio Shack I do it yourself, build your own kit. And my grandfather and I sat and welded this thing together and her whole thing was like you want a radio, you got to build it, yes, yes. And then that's how I got into and I remember it only had AM and didn't have a speaker. It had one little earbud for one ear. Yeah, but I learned how to build you know, the very, very, very basic sub radio. But I was like oh, I get it.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is how this works, and I've been. I've just been thankful for that over the years because, especially as consumer electronics have become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and more disposable yeah, where your device doesn't even matter anymore, it's whatever's in the cloud, right? I don't care if you steal my laptop like, unlike Hunter Biden, I don't care, because everything's in the cloud anyway. Right, and I'm going to give a second thought to what goes into this device.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What role do you think creativity has? Oh, like creativity and imagination, I mean full disclosure. Like you and I first met when both of our kids are kids in both families were in in in Walter schools and that's kind of a fundamental tenant of Walter education creativity. All wonder what role should that play in a successful person and a successful professionals life? Do you think?
Speaker 1:I would say it's probably the most important characteristic. I was having a couple of stories. I was having a conversation with my son. He's all first year law school. He's in a STEM program First year, so it's hard. So I'm loving it. It's hard. That's what I want to hear. Dad, this is really tough. I don't understand. I was just talking.
Speaker 1:I'm like I suggested to you, because you have this natural inclination towards mathematics and sciences, to go into engineering Because you're good at it and engineers are very good at problem solving. There's a very important methodology and skill set that you'll learn and even though you don't necessarily have to become an engineer, but you'll learn these skills and I said I know you will excel at this because you're a charismatic likable. There is depth, there is creativity to who you are. I can walk into his room and he's got hundreds of those complex leg assets that he's built and it's just those things. So that's one, personally, where I see it important.
Speaker 1:When I hire attorneys, I don't care where you've gone to school, maybe I care a little bit about your firm, but I really want to know how you solve for the unknown. I really want to get in there and test your ability to creatively solve problems. Because I know when you come work on my team, someone's going to sit in front of you. The most brilliant rocket scientist, phd, amazing, amazing engineers going to sit down in front of you with a white sheet of paper at the back of an applicant and say I need to construct a deal around this. And more than just constructing a deal around this, I need you to predict the future in terms of what could go wrong with respect to this deal and protect me and the company with what could go wrong. It's unknown technology and an unknown possibility, and no school, no experience can teach to that, but it's your creative mind, with the training you have, that will help you get there. So, 100% behind creativity, it's what's needed at that cutting edge.
Speaker 2:It's such an interesting theme that I didn't anticipate would keep cropping up in these podcast interviews and I've been asked from time to time from staff who I work with well, why do you spend time on this podcast? How does that connect to our lives and our jobs? And I'm like well. So if and when you decide to actually listen to an episode or two, you'll see that it directly applies. Educators should be reflecting upon and wrestling with the concept of creativity and critical thinking and the difference between creative problem solving and just mad chaos. That's right, and what true collaboration means and where you take a stand and where you compromise all these different pieces we were reflecting on.
Speaker 2:I spoke to a couple of different people on here and I was talking to a journalist the other day about 9-11. And after 9-11, the federal government hired screenwriters, the CIA hired screenwriters to help predict future possible attack. Because it turns out that somewhere and some bad there's only been about 10 million movies made about destroying New York and LA right, and one of those someone flew a plane into a bill, hijacked the plane and flew it into a building and the field was what destroyed the building. So that was a screenwriter that nobody paid attention to at the time. This is really a fascinating thread.
Speaker 2:I want to pivot a little bit and first I want to thank you, bo, really for your time. You've been very generous and I'm always aware of and thankful for guests for taking time out of their day. I want to pivot a little bit to your family. Your family story, your LinkedIn profile and what I know of you personally indicates that a central part of your energy and thought and work is going towards advocacy around rare diseases. So I was wondering if you could share with us a little bit about your journey and your family's journey in that area.
Speaker 1:Absolutely no. Thank you for asking it is. This experience has defined so much of who I am. I think just turn 50, you go through a midlife and you have this moment like what's my purpose. Why am I here? I'm halfway done, like what will be my mark.
Speaker 2:You're halfway done if you've been meeting your vegetables.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right. That's exactly right, hopefully thinking I don't know, if I'm going to go to balance 50.
Speaker 1:But 10 years ago my daughter Maya, she was diagnosed with a rare disease. It's a disease. The broader category is called Batten's Disease. She has a specific type called CLM2 Batten's Disease, or more specifically, she has the atypical type. I'll kind of break all this down. So Batten's Disease is a lysosomal storage disorder.
Speaker 1:And flashback to biology, mr Perry's class, if you will, have different organelles within a cell and one of them is the lysosome, and the lysosome is responsible for recycling waste that's in a cell. And so Maya inherited a genetic defect that causes her lysosomes to not produce enough of a certain enzyme to break down waste materials. And so over time her cells, in particular her neurons, get sick and they die. And when neurons die, impact your brain and there's some theories, but they generally don't reproduce, they don't regenerate. And so 10 years ago we noticed, my mom noticed my mom. The nurse said, hey, when Maya's blocking, she seems a little kind of off balance. You guys should go get this checked out. Like any parent is like, eh, like, really, 30 years nurse, you fall up on this. So make an appointment. It takes a long time to get the appointment with a specialist. You have to go to a pediatrician. They're like I don't see anything. They get to the neurologist. We're down at Rady's. Actually. We go into Dr Leshner who diagnosed my mom or told us it was an issue with Maya. We sit down for the appointment. He does these really basic tests Touch your nose, walk, heel, toe, just real basic stuff and just 100% clear that she is having a really difficult time. We need to vary. Basically that's when we something was up. We then wound up working with a doctor, dr Friedman, there, who actually got us to our diagnosis, and in the rare disease community something happens and he knows the problem. So for us it was a taxia and Maya's problems with walking.
Speaker 1:Traditionally in baton's disease and the type we deal with, the kids will have seizures. The doctors will try to treat seizures but the medication doesn't quite take. We go through a battery of tests and eventually someone says let's do genetic sequencing. So another big San Diego company, illumina. They brought down the cost of genetic sequencing. I tell anyone I'm not a doctor, but I tell anyone Something's going on. No matter what they say, go get genetic sequencing. You're kind of concerned, knock that out, it's not expensive. Most insurance care covers it.
Speaker 1:And that's when we came back with hey, maya's got the defects for baton's disease, cl and 2 baton's disease. However, when you look up this one of baton's disease, it only the known cases. The vast majority of cases are kids between the age of four and then they pass away when they're 12. Maya was 10, 11, and not at the tail end. And so we're like what's going on? She's a little bit different. And there was this one article that we were given about a Dutch family who had older kids near adults with this form of baton's disease. We're like we're not Dutch. What's going on? Like what? So there wasn't at the time when we were meeting the diagnosed. There was not a treatment. We would go to people and say we'd go to conferences, like hey, we're here, we're representing our daughter. She has CL and 2 baton's disease, she's 11 years old, and they're like what are you fake batons? She's too old, they can't. Horrible stuff, horrible stuff. What do?
Speaker 2:they think they were thinking. You just didn't know what you were talking about.
Speaker 1:I had someone tell me what do you have to fake batons Like a very prominent person in the community. That was pretty devastating. That was pretty devastating and so initially, a lot of the work that since that, my wife and I did was finding other families with this form of baton's disease, Because when you find other families, you can come up with natural history, you can be accepted and get access to truth, and so we spent a lot of time finding other families. Right now we're up to like 35-ish and you imagine Maya was the third reported case, third case published, with this disease.
Speaker 2:Like third public case out of $7 billion.
Speaker 1:Exactly exactly and we had to find 33 others and we found them and that was massive for us because at the time we call them the classic ones. For the younger kids with this form of baton's disease, that was a treatment called enzyme replacement therapy, where the company's developed a synthetic form of the missing enzyme and the plan was to inject it into the kid's brain to slow down the progression, and so we had heard about this. But we had this outlier form of the disorder and to be eligible we had to educate researchers Like, nope, we're here, we're part of the community, like we need to be a part of this. So a lot of people in San Diego, like we did this massive campaign fighting for Maya. A lot of that was raising awareness, funding other types of research, like getting the word out there. That was part of the. You know, my career always helped with this, but at the time when I was at Qualcomm, I supported the marketing team and being around creative marketers, you learn how to get your message out there, and that helped a lot in the fighting for Maya. So Maya was a part of the Compassionate Use Program, so she got pretty early access. That was another fight. You can do another podcast on how you get that going.
Speaker 1:She's been on this treatment for seven years. It has slowed the progression. It has not stopped it. It's not a cure. She can't walk on her own. She can't eat on her own. Speech is very difficult to understand if you haven't been around her, but she's sharp as a lip. She will call you out, just like any 20-year-old will do, and so we're very fortunate, but we're also. What is the next technology? My wife has taken on heroically the FDA.
Speaker 2:Where, where she's got technology, your lawyer skills may come in handy. No, no, no. So everyone talks about the lawyer skills.
Speaker 1:It is, she's a lawyer.
Speaker 2:That's true.
Speaker 1:So the latest generation of technology, gene editing, gene therapy amazing breakthrough. The inventor, I think she, won the Nobel Prize this year. There's a lot of promise and there are treatments available. The FDA has not approved these treatments in the United States, so you see these companies taking it abroad. So the next technology we need to prove that it's safe, and so the next round of technology that we need is currently being tested on the little boy in Brazil, and I say tested, but it's being treated.
Speaker 1:But it's being tested to get the FDA comfortable, and so Suzette speaks on a lot of panels with the FDA, helping them understand that, since we are dealing with a progressive terminal disorder, we are educated and capable of making difficult decisions about access to treatments for our child. And it's a tough one, but she's doing amazing work, along with many others amazing work to get this treatment to be available.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for sharing that, and I do remember the fight for Maya t-shirts and hashtag and thank you for it. It's very humbling to hear just what you've gone through and why you're fighting on that front. Both of you are keeping your family together and you've got other kids and father.
Speaker 1:Time keeps ticking on and life keeps moving, but I will say that it all ties back together the skill that the lawyer, someone walks in front of you and says I have this insurmountable problem that you've never dealt with. All right, let's go deal with that. In the rare disease, hey, I've got a grumpy researcher or doctor who doesn't want to talk to you. Now I'm used to speaking in front of people with power or convincing or persuading them, but it all starts on. I always go back building those skills over time. So when you get to that difficult situation, you're prepared to deal with it. Yeah, that's my thought there.
Speaker 2:What do you know now, professionally or personally, that you wish you'd known? Let's take you back I don't know 30 years, when you were 20. What do you know now? What does the 50 year old bow say to the 20 year old bow, other than don't sell your Apple stock, right, exactly.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's going to be okay. Kind of two thoughts. The first one is not, neither is original. The first one is definitely not original because I recently heard someone say it and it just resonates. It's not a straight path and in not being a straight path, you will not always know which direction you're headed or what's around the corner. And you have to be comfortable with that and that's okay. And maybe you're making a lot of lefts and right, maybe you're taking steps backwards, maybe it's alien chess, so you're taking steps down, you're taking steps up, but that's an important component of life and career.
Speaker 1:The other important lesson this was never really like an issue with me because I always think I get along well with people, but I've seen people have problems with this. This was an advice I received from someone who was in law school and I was still right after graduation. But just the importance of relationships and how you treat others. You're professionally and personally, but especially professionally, your reputation can be made or broken in an instant based on your first interaction with someone. If you're a jerk, we all know the jurors. If you're a jerk, you can be toasted your entire career. Everything you've done could go up in the plan. So it's so important to treat people this is what I say to myself so important to treat people the way you want to be treated. People ask me hey, but what's your management style? Just one thing Treat people. Manage people in a way that I would want to be managed, and it's so important. It's probably the most important lesson.
Speaker 2:And that goes for in-person and digitally, absolutely, and I think the latter becomes much harder because the courage wall seems pretty strong when you're on your keyboard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just had an incident like that yesterday. Let me just figure out what I'd say. It was a personal incident where someone was having a layer in the use of language and they got an angry dad response. And this angry dad happened to be a lawyer in response and the digital screen like no, I need you to pick up the phone and call and have a conversation with me so that we can talk this through.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I know there's some companies I think BP was one of them patrol them. I don't know if they do it anymore, but they used to have a policy where you could be terminated if you sent an email or an internal chat or like slap or something, just someone that could have been handled in a phone conversation or a face-to-face. I'm not talking about sending them a template of a contract they were working on, but to something you know, especially around contentious things.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean going back to your earlier question. You know, in terms of educators, I don't think this is an issue, but just the importance of interpersonal communication, interpersonal contact, dealing with others. Now you hear a lot of stories about young boys losing that ability to interact and have those interpersonal moments and navigate. Those. People are reporting. It's a real problem for our society and you see that, yes, that's probably a downside of technology, it's a downside of just how we live today, but it's just an important skill set for my mom. I heard talking about it. It's a key skill set now, Super important.
Speaker 2:So you've obviously accomplished a lot in your life professionally. Oftentimes, when we're applying to a new job or we're asked to be on a panel or whatever, people ask for a resume, and so let's talk accomplishments and that oftentimes, or almost always, is things that are in the past. So I'm going to flip that a little bit to the concept of an anti resume. In other words, the gaps, the holes on your resume, what are? What's at least one thing that's on your anti resume? Ie something you would still like to learn, to do, to experience.
Speaker 1:My response is a little surprising a little bit. So I just, you know, super fortunate work I, you know, after a period of time you're given this extended amount of time to take a break. You know very much like a sabbatical. And at some point during the sabbatical, towards the end, my wife came to me and said you know what? You've been home a lot, a lot to do and I think we could do a business together. And I'm like all right, you know that bodes well for us. But like that was a good affirmation and what I think an idea we kick around a lot.
Speaker 1:You know one we're kind of very much interested in getting away from big cities, probably California We've and I want to also include my kids, you know, so that they have a business for themselves. But we've been. You know we're kind of kicking around this idea of buying a lot of land, having horses but setting up really kind of a physical therapy center for people with neurological challenges. So one of the things Maya does, you know, part of her therapy she does equine therapy and the pace of the horse, the movement of the, helps. It helps support your ability to walk and keep in engaging your system. We're very fortunate there's centers very close to us, but there aren't enough of these, and so Suzette and I have talked a lot about doing that elsewhere in the country, somewhere back east. So I'm like all right, like maybe I'll take some night classes, learn how to become a PT, we'll go start a business, you know, and give that a try. So that's great. That's kind of the anti-resonating, I mean people you know.
Speaker 1:Very early in my career I took only these kind of tests that assesses you know, what do your personality type, what profession does your personality type align with? Like out of 100, lawyer was like 45. Number one was farmer. Like, 100%, like above and beyond super clear. You should be a farmer. So you know, at some point I'll stop ignoring.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, that's well. And you know, those tests are funny. I took one when I was in high school. I might have said this on a different episode, but I took one in high school that was a pencil and paper one. I'm talking about like 1984 or something, and of all of the things that came back, mine came back. It's something that I don't even think people know what it is. It's a soda jerk. It's the guy in the soda fountain who pulls the lever to fill the soda. Your root beer, sassaparilla, float back on Main Street in small town America. Like I've never forgotten that and I don't drink soda and I mean I guess like I must have put something down in there that I like I'm socially awkward and I'd like to serve others and maybe just so. Anyway, so did jerk came out. So I think you're on a much better path from your career assessment than I don't think soda. Soda fountains don't exist anymore.
Speaker 1:Did they exist in 84? Like they're still around.
Speaker 2:I think my school was using assessments from the 60s. I think it was some old, dusty thing that the counselor was like oh, part of my job is to do like career assessment. I remember that and you know, and I and people's were coming out with really cool professionals Like, oh, I'm going to be an engineer. They're like you're going to be on like soda jerk.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad you ignored it. I'm glad you ignored.
Speaker 2:Well, even if I'd wanted to, I don't think I could pursue that job. So that's. That's pretty funny. Is there anything? Before I ask my last question, is there anything that we have not touched on today, Bo, that you would like to to add to this conversation? It's been a real pleasure. I appreciate your candor and your openness and your thoughtfulness. Is there anything that we haven't touched on?
Speaker 1:I don't think so. One Thank you for having me. It's great to chat. You haven't spoken in a long time. Thanks for inviting me. You know I'm very open to feedback, so like if you're listeners you know, bo, you said this. What does it mean? I'd love to come back and chat again and follow up, and you know this is fun. You know this is. I appreciate the opportunity to just, you know, share my share, my experience. You know so many did that for me and hopefully I'm able to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really appreciate that. Are you still mountain biking?
Speaker 1:No, I'm all Peloton, like the whole deal about having to pack up and get somewhere. It's like, okay, I've got 20 minutes, I'm going to go in the garage and I'll hit the bike.
Speaker 2:And also the whole deal with not having to fall off.
Speaker 1:I shared that.
Speaker 2:I shared your story recently with him I, so I a couple of. When I turned 50, I thought it'd be a good idea to buy a new mountain bike and go out and mountain bike. And someone told me a buddy of mine who had mountain bikes said you got to get the clip in pedals, bro. Oh yeah, I got clip in pedals and where I live there's dozens of miles of dirt trails, so it's been great, except that every time I go out I fall.
Speaker 2:Oh and I had. I had this humiliating experience where I fell on the side of the trail because you know you lose your speed and you can't on clip fast enough. And I'm there and I'm tangled up in my bike and a much younger female rider comes down the mountain coming towards me, veers over to the side with a shock, look on her face Because, sir, sir, you OK, do you need help? And so after that I took a little bit of a break.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Maybe I need to do the Peloton. It sounds a much more efficient and safer way.
Speaker 1:Although you do have to clip in and out Like I will. That's a major problem.
Speaker 2:If I'm, if I'm falling on that, then I just need to give up. But maybe someday, you know, we'll be able to meet in person to do episode 2.0. I could come up to LA or, if you're ever in San Diego, we could, we could, we could go by to eat and do episode 2.0. I'm going to finish with this question. This is something I put to all of the guests. You have the opportunity to buy a billboard on the side of the freeway. I don't know what the closest one to you is the five or the four, or five or well, anyway, there's about 20 freeways near you, so the busiest freeway you get the chance to put a billboard up.
Speaker 2:It has Bo James's message about life, about work, about anything you believe deeply in, and you've got about three seconds to convey that to motorists as they go by. What does your billboard say?
Speaker 1:All right, I'm going to take your question, not answer it in the way you expect, to do it a little bit different. What I'm going to do with the billboard is tear it down. There are two states in this country, I believe the two states where billboards are banned Hawaii and Vermont. It makes a difference Anything. I you know maybe I'm being too hoity-toity, but anything I could share on a billboard in three seconds isn't worth it. I'd like to sit down and chat with you for a couple of hours. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2:I think that's a fitting final point for today's conversation and it brings back together those streams of divergent thinking and critical thinking and creativity. So I appreciate that. I'm just glad you didn't turn around and go. What would you have on your billboard? I had one guest and he goes. I don't know man, you really got me stumped. What would be on yours? Oh, I'm like I usually you know me off here my language is peppered with words that probably shouldn't be on the side of the freeway sometimes.
Speaker 1:I'm just glad I didn't drop any of those during this conversation. I remember this is young people.
Speaker 2:I really do appreciate your candor and creativity and everything you do, and I'm honored that we had a chance to reconnect and let's not let it be this many years that go by. Thank you for listening to the superintendent's Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at dvs1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Bacchial for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.