Tom LeNoble: Facebook Employee Number 57, the Adult in the Room, and Finding Unity

Tom LeNoble was employee number 57 at Facebook, recruited out of Palm, the Palm Pilot and Treo company, back when it was still "the Facebook" and still lived inside college networks. He was older than almost everyone in the building, the person Ryan calls the adult in the room, and he had a front row seat as a tiny unknown startup became one of the most powerful companies in the world.

In this conversation, Tom pulls back the curtain on the human side of that story: what it was like to meet Mark Zuckerberg for the first time, the camaraderie of the early days, the goodbye he gave Mark on his way out, and what it means to work shoulder to shoulder with brilliant, driven young builders. Then he and Ryan widen the lens. Tom is careful to speak only to his own era, not today's Facebook, and he turns the conversation from technology and kids to something bigger: responsibility, the parts of the tech world most people never see, and how a deeply polarized world might start finding its way back to unity.

It is a warm, reflective episode about people, not just platforms, and about the future we are building for our children.

In this episode:

How a Palm executive became Facebook employee number 57

The human side of the early days, including meeting Mark Zuckerberg

Why every team needs an adult in the room

What working with brilliant young builders taught him

Responsibility, and the side of tech most people never see

Depolarization, unity, and a hopeful message for the future

Connect with Tom LeNoble:

Website: openingpathwayscollective.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tomlenoble

Podcast: Opening Pathways (youtube.com/@OpeningPathways, also on Apple Podcasts)

About Ryan Vet

Ryan Vet is a USA TODAY bestselling author, futurist, and international keynote speaker whose insights on generations, culture, and the future of work have been featured in Forbes, Financial Times, ABC, NBC, and CBS. His research helps leaders understand emerging generational patterns and anticipate societal shifts before they fully unfold.

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👉 https://ryanvet.com/collide

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

On this episode of the Ryan Vett Show. I think we have that opportunity today in humanity. How do we take this polarization that's happening and find something new, knowing that if nothing else, our world, the lives of our children, the future of society and humanity depend on us finding at some level unity.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to another episode of the Ryan Vett Show. I am excited to be here. I I thought about dropping the from the Ryan Vett Show, and part of that's because of our guest, Tom Lenoble here. Tom, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

It's great to be here, Ryan. I've been looking forward to this and being with your viewers.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Well, thank you so much. And the reason I made the joke about the is because you joined the Facebook, or at least interviewed at the Facebook, and then went to work for Facebook.com. Could you tell us a little bit about your story as kind of the the oldest, the adult in the room, as I think you put it? Yes. And your early days of Facebook, and we'll talk about what that means for us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, it's a great story. I was I was running global service operations for Palm, the Palm Pilot Trio people, and I got a recall from a recruiter, and it was from a little company that was unknown to me, Facebook, a the Facebook at the time, which was in colleges, and I thanked the recruiter and hung up the phone. And a buddy called me and said, I referred you to Facebook, you didn't talk to them. To which I said, Well, what's Facebook? So, long story short, and it's a great story that you can find in my book. Um, I went and interviewed with Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19. And um, boy, was that an experience of going upstairs in a suit and arriving at the stop of this little office over a Chinese restaurant. And as I came up the stairs, there was graffiti art everywhere by the famous David Cho, who worked for Stock and is probably worth a quarter of a million dollars or more today for it. Of women's breasts everywhere, and came around the corner to a bunch of people that were young enough to be my child, and then taken to a room to meet Mark Zuckerberg in his signature shorts, sandals, and t-shirt. And I was there in my suit. All I could think was I need to take something off. So I took my jacket off.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

That's fantastic. Yeah, I I can't say uh the natural inclination for most people going to interview saying, hey, I need to take something off. So that that's wonderful. Now, you you interviewed at the Facebook shortly before it became Facebook.com, and you were employee number 57. You got the job, and and you were sort of an outlier from who they had hired so far. Could you kind of talk about uh your role compared to the others that were already in there?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I I interviewed at that that little uh office that was very tiny, and I I started a few weeks later after I gave notice, and I ended up, believe it or not, the last week I worked both places at the same time. It's um was pretty wild, which I'll never do again. Um and I started and they had moved across the street and taken over half of a floor, which they ended up taking over the whole building and half of Palo Alto. But at that point in time I remember walking in the door, and um as they took me into this room, this huge room of triads of desks, all I could see was one office across the room, and having left my cushy office looking over the bay at Palm, um, I thought for sure they're taking me to that office. Well, no, I was taken to the desk right outside outside the office. That was the controller. They wanted me, I think, to to block the door somewhat. But as I sat there with the two two of the people that were going to report to me on these desks that literally had very little on them, and the first thing I noticed is there were no phones. And I remember asking, um, where are the phones? And these two people, I think, turned white or you know, just white and looked at me and said, Phones? We don't want phones. We ask everything by email. And I was like, okay, I know somebody's gonna talk on the phone, likely me. But it was still the Facebook and shortly became Facebook as things started ramping up to the one of the wildest rides I've ever had in my career. But the thing about it was everybody there was fresh out of college. It was still in colleges. This is their dream job. They were deferring business school, law school, medical school just to work at Facebook. Everyone, 2021 from Brown, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and here I was at 50. They called me the adult in the room.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So, Tom, as you know, employee number 57, there had to be some sort of camaraderie at Facebook. I remember uh, you know, many of the different startups I've been a part of. When you had that employee number that you remembered, especially when it was double digits before you hit that triple digit, or even some of the triple digit numbers, there was something special. Are there any traditions that you all have upheld over the years?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Um, you know, one thing I have to share with you and your reviewers, Ryan, when I was leaving Facebook, I went to Mark and I said, I want to see you in 10 years. And he looked at me and said, You're leaving. Why do you, you know, why do you want to see me? I said, I just want to see what happened to you. You know, you're in your early 20s. I met you when you were 19. I just want to see what happened. So I left and went on with my life and forgot all about it. Ten years later, I was sitting at my desk and a Facebook message popped up that said, Still want to have lunch. I looked at that Facebook message from Mark Zuckerberg and I thought to myself, do I want to have lunch with the fifth richest man in the world? Because he was at the time. To which I responded, heck yes, I want to have lunch with the fifth richest man in the world. And so we arranged to have lunch, and I went to Facebook still growing madly, I could find parking. I think they moved somebody out of their parking place to give me a parking place. Went through enormous security. I was taken upstairs, and there's two glass conference rooms, one's Mark, he's in there with a group of people, one was Cheryl's. I positioned myself on this couch where I'm kind of can look at both directions, kind of looking around. And in front of me, in the building that I opened, which there was graffiti art there, they had cut out the sheetrock, one of my favorite images, and framed it and memorialized it in this building, which was very touching to me. Here I am back for the first time in all this time in there that is. So Mark comes out of his meeting, and as he does, we greet each other, and this photographer comes up and starts taking pictures. And I remember thinking, oh, how sweet. They're going to put me in the newsletter or feature me at the company meeting, and then it hit me. No, you're talking to the fifth richest man in the world. They're taking photos in case something happens. They have evidence you were here. But Mark and I went and we were supposed to have 30 minutes. We ended up together almost 45, and it was a really engaging conversation. And you'll be able to learn more about that later in the year when the book comes out. My life at Facebook, The Adult in the Room, of what went on in that meeting. Well, this year, Ryan, is 20 years. Believe it or not, I've had a Facebook account for 21 years. And Mark and I agreed that we would see each other in 20 years. Now a lot's changed, so I don't know what will happen, but that's coming up later in the year. And I'm hoping that that Facebook message pops up again and says, Wanna have lunch? Because I'd say yes again. I have some other questions. I went prepared with a few questions because you're not going to go visit the fifth richest man in the world and not have some questions. It was quite engaging.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

That's such a powerful story, and it brings the humanity back to it, right? We are still people serving other people, and we often forget the human side of it when we characterize people uh in news and all of that, but they're still humans wrestling with the same things that we've discussed so far on this episode.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Absolutely. And you know, I remember the first time I met Mark, it felt like I was talking to someone who was had like five computers going at the same time, that you were in this conversation, but there were all these other filters happening from it. And what was really refreshing at the tenure mark, while he had grown up some for sure, I still had the experience of speaking to someone very human, very thoughtful, very, very, very bright, and I still felt the processing going on. It was fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

That's amazing, Tom. I love that. And I think they they needed an adult in the room. We all do uh at different phases in our life. I think that's just wisdom. But what's so interesting, you know, you say employee 57, and that sounds, you know, that's you're not the first 10, but when you think about it, as of today, as of the day of this recording, Bloomberg says that Facebook or their parent company, Meta, has 79,000 employees worldwide. So 57 is significant. There's been a thousand times more employees, or you know, 1,500 times more employees since you've been there. So a lot has changed since those early days when it was just on college campuses, and then you know, you have 2004 when it launches, and several years thereafter, uh, we see social media being uh adapted by more than half of Americans within a few short years, and then becoming uh really transformative on culture and society, which is really why I want to have you on today, because you have so much insight on how social media evolved, the impact it's had on culture and society, and the good it's it's made us be able to stay in contact with and communicate with people, but also you had to deal with some really, really tough things being the adult in the room, having to answer the phone, uh fraud response, law enforcement requests. Could you talk a little bit about um maybe some of the things that we didn't know was going on behind the scenes that you had to work with?

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Yeah, you know, it was an interesting time because I was working with really, really smart, unbelievably gifted individuals and of the millennial generation, which was just coming into their own in the workforce with all the labels that we give generations. And um, I, you know, I I I have this thing that I like to approach this where I could be the mentor and sort of director, which I was, but I quickly learned that this generation loved to work in groups. And so allowing that to happen created so much space. So as we unfolded some of the fun stuff that happened, as for example, I remember when photos launched, we would launch it internally and then it would expand, expand, expand. Well, as it did, we needed uh policies and procedures. So one of the first ones was what do we do about photos when people are exposing things? So the actual policy was called nips and cracks. That was the name of the policy. So uh it became if the photo showed nips or cracks, the photo came down. If not, the photo could stay up. Now, this might sound simple, but this was hours of discussions of what qualified um to go into this. Because did a shear mean that? Was it partially a crack? What was that mean? So some of those things were were hysterical. And then there were, you know, the users, which as we expanded, some of the things that I would get requests for, I all of them came to me, law enforcement, subpoenas, because you just we didn't give information. Even kids had rights. And if you were 13 or older, you had a right of what you were doing, and which obviously continues to be somewhat controversial. But we were very at the time pr focused on protecting young people. But um, some of the interesting thing I would get would parents would call. And I remember one in particular the this woman called and she had escalated, and I finally got on the phone with her. I said, ma'am, how can I help you? What in the world's going on? And her response was, you have to make her stop. And I said, What? Are you what? Help me, tell me what you're talking about. And her daughter, I guess, was exposing herself. And as she shared this with me, I had to remind the woman, ma'am, she's your daughter. And um how you handle those things. And then there were also some really difficult things to handle. I helped create the relationship with the National Suicide Hotline, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, because at the time, and it continues to be unfortunately, the suicide rate in this young population was very high, and that troubled me. And so I wanted to build that relationship so we had some place to get help for people when we recognized it, and we even worked on how to identify that and what to do with it as a policy. And then, of course, most people don't realize, but when you report things, well, you would think you're reporting something to the to the authorities, you become liable, the company becomes liable. Reporting through the National Center for Missing Exploited Children, it removed that liability. So I could report things. The downside is I never got to know the outcome, I never got to know what happened. But um, as you've heard on many sites then, dating sites, all of this, which I think is something I'm not sure we've ever really resolved, is some of the the fraud that's exposed, some of the pornography that's flowed, some of the um things that happen with with children and stuff that we were at the time very, very aggressive about managing.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I think that's so helpful. And one of the things that you you said, we've had several conversations now and they've all been so enlightening. But one thing that stuck out was you talk about parents assuming their kids were not on the platform, and you're like, no, they already are. Your kids are already on the platform. Could you talk about that? Because I think, you know, here we are 20 years after the launch of Facebook and and mainstream social media. Kids have been getting on it way under 13, and and we can talk about that later. Um, but but they've been getting on these platforms and parents don't think that they're there or they don't understand what's actually going on. Could you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

I know for me, if you told me I couldn't do something or I shouldn't do something, that typically meant I needed to find out more about it. And I think that's natural curiosity that some of us have. But I love this. I'm gonna start from something that just happened last week. I was having a discussion and uh with a friend who said their child had just turned 16 and they were going to let them have their first Facebook. And I looked at this mother and said, their first Facebook, and they said, Yes, we've not allowed it. I said, if you think your child isn't on Facebook yet, you've missed everything. And I think even back then, because people know older kids, people know this, people find ways around, especially back then, younger people and even continues today, know the ins and outs of technology and computers better than many of us that have been seasoned with it over the years. And so I think by nature people find workarounds. I think it's one of the things we forget that even with policies, even with strict guidelines, even with checkpoints, it doesn't stop the human being and the young mind from finding a way around something. And so I think that happened back then, and we were quite aggressive about it, and people, you know, would report when children were in there because other people felt fashion passionate about it. And um, you know, I I I I think we look at today, and you know, there's recently been this judgment that happened in the courts about social media, and I think it goes beyond social media. I think it's a call for businesses to pay attention to their responsibility to their users. We get in these high-growth startups or our businesses, and I find so many people, so many that clients that I work with that are so into their ecosystem, they don't see what's coming from the outside. And we need to remember that one of our th major, major responsibilities is to protect our users, all users, especially young ones that have young minds that are going to try and find ways around whatever barrier and boundary you put in place.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

I think that's so good. And you brought up this word responsibility, and I think that goes into so many different aspects. We we obviously seen the court cases in California. We've seen uh as of yesterday, and and this will be old news by the time this airs, but the Supreme Court overturned uh a ruling as well. So there's conversations happening about who's responsible for for what. And I don't want to target any one leader of any of these companies uh because that's a big heavy burden to wear uh where wherever you are. So let him who's without fault cast the first stone, right? But so I'm not looking at that, but but as a company, what is the responsibility? Uh we've already seen the nips and cracks policy, right? You you guys saw an opportunity to protect, and and I think that's great and try to create an environment, but at some point you you have to figure out what's right and wrong, what can be said and what can't. And there's some inherent dangers with that, a human trying to decide. Could you talk about some of your thought processes on that? And how do you how do you know what's right and what's wrong?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

You know, I think um back then I can speak to it. I can't speak about current stuff because I'm not there as far as even Facebook or but I can share about what I think in that we took it very, very seriously, but we took very seriously not only what policies we were putting in place, but the legal side of it. Our general counsel, who still speaks on this today, Chris Cowley, an amazing human being and leader, um, would you know, we would look at it from all angles because it wasn't fair just to impose our thoughts and our beliefs. What were the what were the legalities? How are people protected by the law? And and you know, we may not agree with the law, well then you need to find a way to change the law, but it is the current law, and so that's part of what you have to go by. And but we were quite rigorous about it. We put in quite things in places. Again, now as things grow and change, I look at some of these businesses that that while they may not charge, some of them are very mimic a subscription model. And as as people time out or age out of the system, so to speak, this is true about many businesses, you have to bring new people in. And I think for all of business we need to think about how we do that, what it means, how we're doing it, how we're validating it. And so for me, it's about remembering the the totality of all this, about what's the right thing to do, what's leg legal, what is the responsibility legally, as well as what people's rights are. And then I think we just need to be conscious, we need to be thoughtful about it, what it means in our businesses today, of how we treat these groups of people. And it's not only young people. Today I'm seeing it with older people. I remember going to my father's assisted living. We had launched Facebook groups years ago, and I was in a meeting with some other family members, and somebody raised their hand and said, We should have a Facebook group. I thought I was gonna fall out of a chair. I'm like, I'm an assisted living, God, Facebook has made it. Well, through the years, it became a lot of older people on Facebook they continue today. Well, as we get older, we have some interesting issues that happen with us as well. We become targets of scams, we become targets of many different things. Our our mind may not be as sharp as it once was. So this protection that I think business needs to look at is far broader than just children. How are we responsible if we're responsible? People get to make that decision. I tend to believe we have some responsibility to be conscious about it of all of our users, all of our customers, all of our clients, no matter what business. I'll reflect that in my business today, in my coaching practice. I need to know as a coach, when it's time for me to refer someone to a professional, many coaches will cross that line. I think there's a very clear line of when someone needs something more than coaching and they need a different kind of level of professional than what I offer. That's good, Tom.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

And I I think you're you're wise to pivot the conversation just from kids, because that's that's the easy conversation. It seems to be the most vulnerable, but but you brought up uh those in in elder care. And as we see an aging population, we have prolonged life with modern medicine. And people are living longer, which leads time for for uh other things to creep up uh that I've even seen in my own family, like dementia and Alzheimer's that don't allow you to process uh some of these scams that are happening readily. And I think with the uh availability of things like generative AI, we're seeing voice clone scams, kids call kids, I'm doing air quotes for those of you just listening, but kids calling parents, and it sounds like they're actually in need. They're giving wire information, and a parent can't tell the difference between a voice clone, and and that's not even necessarily people that are that are older. That could be anybody. And and you talk about the importance of responsibility of a company to understand all of these things. Um, and you you said there's a hidden cost when we chatted earlier, a hidden cost of moderation and safety. There's a human cost because someone is behind the scenes having to make these tough decisions. And you shared some heart-wrenching stories of the things that you you had to be a part of to help set some of these policies. Um, do you mind sharing any of those?

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah, I mean, it it's interesting, Ryan, because this is the side that people don't see. At one point I worked as a consultant at a dating site running HRN and their customer care organization, and boy, that will open your eyes to some worlds of what people do on dating sites as well. But I remember back in the day, we would, I would they would get escalated to me because people would want subpoenas and law enforcement would come of some of the horrific things that go on in our world and what people can do to each other. And, you know, I can remember that um uh when I got this one phone call and a and a guy literally Was had uh had dismembered his girlfriend and was barbecuing her on a grill, and they wanted photos that were on Facebook because this person put photos on Facebook. Well, I of course said, get me the subpoena, I want to help, but I also have a responsibility to the company. I can't just give them freely. Another example, I had someone that called me heart-wrenched, that that their their it was their nephew, they were calling for the parents, had been in an auto accident going somewhere, and they were convinced someone had done something to the car. I could see clearly on Facebook this person had been drinking with friends on the way there and and unfortunately had a an event as a result. And I can't tell them that. It's not my responsibility, it's not my place, just tell them, was my heart hurting? Of course it was. I'm a human being and I can't imagine being in that situation. But I I tried to guide them into um what I possibly could, but they got a subpoena and they learned it on their own that their what they thought had happened was not what happened. These things are heartbreaking. We don't we don't know many of these things that go behind the scenes. And then there's the we'll just call it in the bucket of pornography. I remember at one point certain pictures would get categorized by the system, and I'm working with these kids. They're like, you know, really old enough to be my child, and I'm I'm like, let me let me do those pictures. I'd rather you not have to to look at them. And um I can remember what it felt like for me to do them. And if you look at history that got outsourced and then even outs out of the sourced out of the country and and in many places, not just Facebook, and the ramifications it has on people to look at those images. Well, I hopefully by now, I know we wrestled with it back then trying to create and find the technology to handle that without a human being involved. Sometimes it required a human being to make a judgment decision. So while Nipson Tuck sounds funny and humorous, and it was to us at the time, the policy itself was not funny at all. It was something we lived by that I'm sure became a very stringent and uh an appropriate name later, once we were not all kids in a fun company in a startup. Um so these things happen, they are real-world things that people aren't exposed to, that that behind the scenes we were working on, and I'm sure they still wrestle with it today on many areas. Again, I think you have a responsibility to somehow look at that and address it, not only from the people having to review it, but from the people that are posting the audience that has to see it. We've gotten a little desensitized to some of this stuff, I think, today. And um, I think businesses suffer because of it personally.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

That's profound. And you just brought up an existential question that I think so many people either don't forget or those that think about it wrestle with uh tremendously is you basically said you you all tried to create technology to solve problems, but at the end you use the word that there is still a human that has to judge it. And I think we so often rely or trust or lean on technology to solve these problems. But even as good as technology has gotten, even in the last call it five years, we've seen uh accelerations and availability of computing power and energy that allows some of this generative AI to take shape and force unlike we've ever had before. There's still humans somewhere making that decision. Technology isn't doing that. And that's a real toll, a real toll. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Well, I'm gonna date myself first and then I'll tell you my my thoughts. You know, I remember the first fax, which there are people listening to this that are gonna go, what the heck's a fax, right? We thought it was magic. I was there when we took the paper off people's desks and put computers on their table. Of course, we everybody thought they were gonna lose their job. Email came along, we thought that was the end of the world, now we just like to end email. And then the internet and that revolution, now we're getting into AI. Here's what I see. Two things. Technology, as we develop it, is what creates more technology and future technology of all the things we get to do today that we never could do, right? I also think what happens is people disrupt the technology. So just like we're talking about looking at images or whatever it may be, people come along and disrupt that, that creates new technology. As people try and break things, as people try and get around things, it creates even more. One of my pet peeves right now, I don't know if it's happened to you, but people putting things on my calendar, meetings on my calendar from people I've never spoken to, I don't know who they are. They think I'm going to click on that and think I belong in that meeting and join in and are going to hook me in somehow. Watch. I predict to you very soon, someone will create something. There'll be a net probably already is a name for whatever that is, and someone will create technology to stop it, and then someone will disrupt something else. So I think technology not only builds on the beauty of our minds and technology creating new things, just like AI, yes, things are gonna get disrupted, things are gonna change, that's what happens. But think of all the information that will be available and how we might use it that will create new opportunities. So, you know, it's sort of a a scale that goes back and forth, but there will always be someone trying to break it. I remember back in the day at Facebook, um, it was not uncommon for us, and I think other companies as well, is very young hackers would become new hires.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that's so funny. The hackathons and everything else, they make great developers. They they figured out the ways around it. They were critical thinkers, and I think we've lost a lot of that critical thinking ability uh today. Now, you have shared so much insight, and I appreciate that, but you're not just a Facebook uh employee. You didn't just work at Palm or a dating site. You have your own story uh and a story of uh a cancer survivor um and everything else, and and you're you speak, you coach, you consult, you've got a podcast that uh thank you for having me on that. Everyone listen to that episode of Tom's podcast and his whole podcast. But Tom, could you share a little bit about your story and why you're so uh why you think the way you do and what shaped you to be who you are today to have this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

Yeah, thank you, Ryan. I love that you asked me this question. And by the way, viewers, Ryan's podcast should be out in just a couple of weeks. Probably you've already seen it by the time you hear this. Um you know, I'd like to say I retired, being retired to be inspired. I had this great corporate career. I led customer service at MCI, this long-distance company that broke up all the bells. I was the head of customer service at Walmart.com, ran global service operations at Palm. You've heard the Facebook story, you've heard the dating site. Um startups would send me in, their boards would send me in as the VP of HR, the CEO, to address some perceived problem, which was never the problem. And I fell in love, got married, and traveled the world and sort of kicked back a bit and then knew I had more to share. So today I'm a confidential advisor to founders, um, C levels, uh, nonprofit executives, professional levels. I'm an author of a five award-winning book, My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns, and High Heels, that tells a lot of this story. And I'm also a professional speaker. I have my own podcast, which you were on, Ryan. Thank you, Opening Pathways. I'm the CEO of the Academy for Coaching Excellence. We train coaches around the world. It's 24-year-old. I love my team there. But what I love to share with people is two things. One, um, I'm actually a philanthropist. I do everything I do to serve others. I worked with underserved communities, youth in the arts, um, uh first gen students, current women's issues of the day, other things I feel passionate about. And through everything I've told you, I've had two life-threatening illnesses. All of those jobs I was sick and no one ever knew it. The first one I was told was terminal. I've had metastatic cancer now for 14 years, and Ryan, as you can see, I'm still here.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Well, Tom, I appreciate that, and I appreciate all you do to have these conversations and make a positive impact. So I kind of want to leave with this last uh thought. What do you think the relationship is between technology, trust, and humanity?

SPEAKER_00 30:32

You know, I think that we have gotten into a time where we as a world, even not just our country, have become polarized. And one of the things I know to be true, when something is polarized, if you can watch my hands and that tension is happening, there is only one place to go, and that's here. The only way to break the polarization is to find something new to go to. That's what we see technology often do. Something is built, it becomes either stale or someone has a new idea. We've already talked about that, and somebody creates something new. I think we have that opportunity today in humanity. How do we take this polarization that's happening and find something new, knowing that if nothing else, our world, the lives of our children, the future of society and humanity depend on us finding at some level unity. What I find and I believe that was when you can turn off a lot of the noise, most of us are wonderful, loving, caring people who want the best for other people. We hear a lot of noise that tells us something different. I encourage all of us to try and take the first step, to try and look at wakes where we can break that cycle because this polarization, it just gets tighter and tighter and something will break badly. Let's find a way to lift ourselves up and come together.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Tom, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I could not have said it better myself. Tom, how can people find you? How can they get in in touch with you? Uh, listen to more of your podcast, uh, get your book that's already out or one that may or may not be coming out pretty soon. Pretty excited for that. Uh, how how can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

You can find me on openingpathwayscollective.com. I'm on all the socials, I'm on LinkedIn, and while my team goes crazy when I do this, my email address is resilience at tomlenoble.com. I'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Well, Tom, thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom and your insight, your story, your journey, and sharing words for the future. Thank you, Ryan. It's been great. Thanks, Tom. And for everyone listening, thanks for listening to another episode of the Ryan Bet Show, Inspire Forward.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Thanks for tuning in to the The Ryan Bet Show. Be sure to subscribe, comment, and like this episode. Plus, share it with someone who needs to hear it.