Lessons From Steve Jobs on Leading With Love, With Ron Johnson

0:00Today we had a conversation with arguably the most powerful man in the history of retail, Ron Johnson. You've probably heard the name Steve Jobs. Well, Ron is the guy that Steve Jobs was working with to create the most iconic products of Apple. For us, it's Steve Jobs. For Ron, it's just his friend Steve. I was ready for an insightful conversation, but it took a shocking turn. What do you think are the two words that fuel his business ethos? So if love works at home, love works in the office. If people respond to kindness at school, a teacher and a student, you see that, or a coach and a player, people respond to kindness at the office.

0:45So this idea that you have to manage your way through work, you have to hold people accountable, you have to create a sense of fear to get people to perform. You've got to have deadlines. All these kind of negative emotional words at work is the opposite of what we try to do at home. In this episode, we evaluate some of Ron's biggest swings from helping to launch the iPhone and create the Genius Bar and the Apple Store to being the CEO of JCPenney. We talk about his wins, we talk about his losses, and what he has learned from both. If you are a person who wants to take a big swing or make a big swing in your life, this episode is for you.

1:28My friends, we've got a good one for you. This is the story of Ron Johnson, and welcome to Big Swing Zone. If you listen to this show, you're probably one of two people. You're someone who's trying to improve their communication skills and learn how to resolve conflict, or you're a dealmaker who's trying to learn how to get an edge in their next negotiation so you can either make more or save more. The American Negotiation Institute is built for both. We have keynotes for conferences, workshops for teams, and courses for everyone because the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations.

2:05What is it that's giving you the most energy right now? Well, it is the book because it's my newest, you know, when you launch something, launches have always been fun for me. You know, I've launched product lines, I've launched stores, I've launched iphones i've now launched a book you put a lot of energy into something you never know how it's going to do and it's fun to have that moment where it all that hard work and creativity comes together so i think that's giving me a lot of energy oh you see that now body language analysis for the folks who are listening on audio so that that was a real answer because you're you lit up when you were talking about launches.

2:50What is it for you about launches in general? Let's go deeper into that because I want to follow this. Well, so I've always been a guy who, in your terms, loves to take big swings. And I started in the bookshop, Dear Front talks about that. But when I was a junior in high school, I got selected by the coaches and team as captain of my soccer team. And that was my first really big leadership thing. And it wasn't a huge honor because we only had two returning players and I was one of them. So it wasn't like there were a lot of choices. And, but I decided, well, I'm the leader. What if I bring the players together who would be playing next year?

3:42Not at the beginning of next year, right now. And we got together and I said, I don't know about you guys, but, you know, we won one last game last year. We only have two people returning. But our school is known for winning state tournaments. I want to go to a state tournament. Does anybody else want to go? And all these young kids went, yeah, let's go. It was like a big effort. And people thought we were crazy because nobody had really played much soccer. But I said, you know, most teams will have a captain's practice two weeks before the season starts. What if we start 52 weeks out? Now, this Sunday, I'll be in the field house with a ball and just join me.

4:22And people started joining. And a year later, nobody remembered what had happened the year before. We had this amazing confidence. And we tied our first game, won like 16 of the next 17. We're the number one ranked team in the state going into the tournament. So we made the state tournament. We lost the semifinal game in overtime, won the consolation, but it was a big swing. And what you realize is in life, you can only accomplish, you'll never accomplish more than you dream, what you imagine. And so for my whole career, I've been imagining things to do with teams. and at Target that was to bring good design to everybody through a partnership with Michael Graves.

5:14At Apple that was to launch the Apple stores. It was to help launch products like the iPhone. Now I'm launching a book. And so what's interesting about these, these are things that are really hard to do, that take an extraordinary amount of commitment to do your very, very best. and then at the launch you get to for the first time see what people think your work you know did it work and some things work really well some things fail miserably i've been on both sides yeah and but there's something super exciting about you know giving your all to something that's important to you that gives you meaning and seeing how it does so launches light me up you know they're fun they're moments they're a celebration of a lot of hard work is what they

6:08oh i love that a celebration of a lot of hard work tell me if i'm overstating but it sounds like the the launch itself is the is the win and then we can uh when we put the the thing the product the service or the team out into the world we're going to see how it actually does that's a separate thing, but getting to the launch is in itself a success. Well, that is the journey. It's, it's bringing something into the world that's never been there before. And that's the, that's the hard work. Then you're kind of improving, but when you're launching, that's, that's the breakthrough. You know, that's when most of the significant work is done.

6:58there are a lot of people who can operate something there are very few who have the gift to create something now interesting use of the word skill because and i agree with it i want to go deeper into to what this means to you because i know that there are going to be some people who are listening to you tell your story and say okay so ron was just born with this he was born a leader he's doing it since high school um but you were very intentional about using the word skill. So let's tell me, tell me what that means to you in this context. Well, I, I think everything we do, you have some innate, you have innate talent, but through hard work, you develop a skill.

7:40Okay. So imagine the best athlete in your high school class, the best person on the basketball team, obviously that person, whether you're thinking of the men's or women's team had some natural talent. But you know they spent a lot of time working at it. Look at a guy like Steph Curry. You know, because I live in the Bay Area. I love Steph. I mean, the amount of shots that guy has taken and still takes and the condition he puts in every offseason to be in shape for this year, he's 38 years old, whatever he is. You know, it's a skill. Obviously, he's talented, but he's got a skill. the same is true business you know you develop skills you have certain talents but it's really about perfecting a skill you know and and you develop a skill for launching something if you've done it a few times you get the skill to know how to put a team together yeah the skill how to you know identify the north star and hold people to that and not give up on that you know you know when it's ready like you know you know when you have to hit the rewind button sometimes you know these are all skills you develop uh as you as you build things and so i think most of life is it's more about skill and will than it is about gifts or talent.

9:14I agree 100%. I even think about, for me as a parent, we have two kids and my mentality, my methodology is skills-based parenting. So I always think about whatever it is, whatever behavior I want to see or whatever behavior I don't want to see, I dig down deeply and figure out what skill is it that's underlying this that will unlock the consistent behavior that I want to see. And it's funny because a lot of times we might see something on the surface and we might just stop our analysis there, but there are several underlying skills that are required in order to be effective there. So for example, with my son, one time he wasn't paying attention in class.

9:54He was kind of getting bored and wasn't feeling very challenged. And so he was starting to disrupt. And I said, Kai, what's wrong? And he said, I'm just bored, dad. I just can't focus because I'm bored. I said, okay. So I understand that it can be boring. And I just want you to know that there are going to be a lot of things in life that you might find boring. So let's work on developing this skill of dealing with that. So we're going to practice focusing. And so we spent the whole weekend working on that. And the focus was the thing that was the underlying skill that helped him to not be as bored and be more focused there at school.

10:31And so when you think of, thank you. And when you think about the launches, there are probably some surface level skills that people think that's what's required to do a launch really well. What are the hidden skills that you've discovered that really make things happen effectively at a launch? Well, the hidden skill is, I learned this from Steve. Steve said, you got to get the big idea right. you know and you get a big idea you ought to be able to communicate that to someone in an inspiring way that will wake them up every day on the journey in four words or less that's pretty interesting that's the big idea so for steve that was a thousand songs in your pocket it was, we're going to reinvent the phone.

11:24So you think about it, you come up and you're working at Apple and you're told, I get to work with Steve Jobs to reinvent the phone? That thing that Alexander Graham Bell invented a hundred years ago? That'll wake you up in the morning. You know, it's not, oh, we're going to produce the consumer electronics product that will compete with this. And, you know, we're going to, we're going to produce a phone. You know, we're going to reinvent the phone, the phone. Not a smartphone, not a cell phone, the phone. You think about all that's captured in those short few words. So you got to get the big picture.

12:01But the skill is the recognition that the devil's in the detail. The recognition that every little detail counts. while I was waiting for this interview, I saw an article about the new CEO of Apple, John Ternus. And it ended with the story about when he was a young engineer over in China or somewhere on his, one of his first projects, which was the Apple cinema display. And I remember when Apple came out with that cinema display back in the early 2000s. And John was a young engineer. He's been there 25 years, you know, back to early 2000s. But he was sitting there late in the morning, counting the little details of a screw on the back of the screen.

12:51And he was wondering if anyone would ever see it. But he said, no, I will see that. And the rest of his career, every time he saw that screen, look at the back and goes, that's what made it great. It's that the devil's in the details. The skill is to be able to understand and appreciate the details. And it's kind of like your son. It'd be pretty easy for some people to get bored. I want to work on the big picture. But I got to do all these little details. But one detail after another is what creates something great. Like for our stores, every detail, picking the location, getting every location right, design that store, hiring the store leader, training the team, picking all the people, doing the launch right, getting the opening right, blah, blah, blah.

13:42It's a million little details that make something look so effortless to a customer and they come for the first time. But everything great in life has a lot of details. And the simpler you make something, the harder it is because you've got all the complexity out of the way but you had to eliminate all that complexity you know wow yeah and so there is we have details we have work ethic yeah um but what do you think about the word obsession too because to get to that level of sophistication to that level of simplicity i i find it hard to believe that somebody could replicate what Steve Jobs did without being as obsessed.

14:31No, I don't think many. No, but there are very few people that had the obsession with. Obsession, yeah, it's just a commitment to the best. Really a commitment to perfection. Steve used to believe, he genuinely believed this, that if you thought about any question hard enough, you'd come to the inevitable only answer and everyone would agree with you. You got it right. You know, think of how many people today, you know, especially the danger of something like chat GPT or one of these agents is you quickly get to an answer that feels like it's, that's pretty good. And you think your work's done.

15:18No, no, no. You're just getting started. right you gotta think through something really really hard and that's what Steve did Steve was a perfectionist and he would obsess over every detail till he knew he had thought it completely through that they explored every single potential way to do something and reached a conclusion with a team of people not himself that we all agreed that was the right answer, and then we'd move on. But it's obsession. Wow. It's a standard. But it's something really high. And what's the amazing thing about Steve is that example he said for Apple, it's now 15 years or whatever since he passed away.

16:12It's still what makes Apple great. It's that obsession with retail. We all know if Apple does something, they've worked really hard to think it through. Now, they've even got to a point where they're so confident in their ability to execute the details that they don't have to be first. Now, they say innovation today isn't about being first. It's about being best. In some ways, yeah, I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what they believe. But they do deliver a quality level that nobody else can touch. Like I believe the iPhone duo is going to blow people away and far exceed Apple's expectations, customers' expectations, because they'll have taken this concept that's been around for seven years.

17:03But they'll have thought through the details of how software magically unlocks really elegant hardware in a way that you have never seen before. and that magic is going to make a big difference to people and everyone's going to realize that i've been using the same form factor for fundamentally 20 years and now i can use something different and i use these devices i mean everyone uses these devices six seven hours a day more than any other thing they use so the marginal cost of owning that is not high i think you know Because of Apple's standards and attention to detail, that product is going to be magical.

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20:44Thank you. Thank you. So it was cool to get in there and do some with that work. And it's really interesting because you talked about the level of obsession that is required to get to this level of success and how you have to really focus and think down deeply. And if you ask a good enough question and think long and hard enough, you can get to the answer. What are your thoughts about the patterns that we're seeing of more people outsourcing deep critical thought to ai what do you think the future is super dangerous yeah no what my my belief uh you know ai is just to me the next technology you know we've always had disruptive technologies that have changed our world and ai is the next one and the reality the way we have to look at it is it just enables us it's kind of a shortcut to making really rapid progress right but that's going to create time for you to go to a whole nother level of obsession of detail you know and that's what you got to do because it'd be easy to just move on you know one company did a big disservice to the world and they said move fast and break things you know Now, think about that.

22:10Move fast and break. That's the exact opposite of Steve Jobs. Steve would say, ruthlessly eliminate hurry. Don't be in a hurry. If anything, be in a hurry to do high quality. But you get one chance to do something and make it great. And you're not going to let someone touch that or try that until you know it's absolutely perfect. That's the exact opposite of move fast and break lens, right? So there's these two things in the world. Now, move fast has been kind of a hallmark of the valley for about 20 years. And that's created a lot of issues. Right now, we're seeing it with AI where people are truly and probably rightfully nervous about these models going into the wild before they'd been appropriately vetted for safety, for example.

23:05Well, that's the ethos. I've got to move fast or someone else will. You know, when you make a product, you are responsible. You are absolutely responsible for the outcome of that product and how it impacts people in their lives. And, you know, Steve would never move fast. I mean, I remember when we came out with, you know, the Internet team out, one of the first things he wanted to do is he had young children was to create something called KidsSafe, which was a way to let kids surf the Internet but put some safety, you know, levels into that. That was really important to him. And to this day, Apple probably cares as much about privacy as any large company, you know, and that's been a hallmark of Tim's leadership.

23:52But safety, privacy, these are all things that, you know, as a creator of something, you've got to take responsibility for all of the impacts that that product might have. but move fast and break things is saying i don't care about responsibility i just want to get stuff out in the wild it's a whole different mindset yeah and when we're seeing how dangerous it can be and i i love this answer because you when we look at a lot of these these conversations about artificial intelligence are so simplistic in a very problematic way which are which is kind of emblematic of the lack of deep thought that we were just talking about too but when you look at it as a tool tell me if i'm interpreting what you're saying right you can still use the tool effectively to be more efficient but it does not diminish the quantity of effort that you put in correct no it allows you to put the same effort in but yield a lot faster progress go a lot deeper you know it used to be i could i can only go as fast as i could bring together a group of experts because i had to put together experts to fill in the holes for what i know as a person now i've got the general knowledge that's been accumulated by mankind available to me right now with the query right so i can operate independently at a level of detail that I never cooked before.

25:25And that's what makes the tool so powerful. But you've got to keep asking more questions, refining, polishing, getting to, like you said, get to the real core issue that's underlying what you're trying to do. And you're trying to, and I think the most important thing, because we each come with our own personal geography. It's our lived life. We all are going to value something a little bit different. Right? That's the thing about AI. That'll lead you to common knowledge. Right? What we bring to the world is our inner voice. And that's a product of our own personal geography and how we think and understand about it.

26:11Think about it and understand it. And that's the value in what you do. So AI should let you get to your own inner voice and how I apply that to whatever I'm working on. And that's the unique contribution we make to the world. Yeah. Oh, that's brilliant. I love this. I love it. It's not brilliant. Let's go back to it. It's just what I think about. It is. Listen, see, this is the problem, Ron. You're too humble. You're too humble. Now I need to ask a question to get you to flex a little bit. Okay. So when you think about all of the contributions you've had with the Apple Store, with Target, everything, I want the audience to get a really good idea.

26:55When we talk about launches, the impact of the launches and the projects that you've worked on, how would the world look different if your contributions to some of these marquee products were not there? Oh, I don't know. it might not look different maybe I just did some things ahead of other people other people might have eventually got to the same answer you know but I'll give you an example when I was at Target there were creators like designers and the rest of us were copiers and what retailers did is we go out Target had its own product lines And we go sample shopping and buy things others had done.

27:43And then we'd bring them overseas and make them at a lower price. So we weren't creating. We were copying. And then I had this thought at one point. I saw this tea kettle when I walked into a store in London on a rainy day, like it is here today in the south of France. And I ducked into a store. And I saw the most beautiful product. I don't know. I just couldn't stop staring at it. It was the most beautiful tea kettle. And it was designed by a guy named Michael Graves and produced by an Italian company called Lessee. It was like$149. And at Target, our highest priced tea kettle was$9.99. But I asked this question, why does good design have to be so expensive?

28:30And I thought, what if Target could win on design? What if we didn't copy? What if we created and we used our strength, this ability to buy things at scale and figure out how to do high quality at a low price? Wouldn't that be great? And, you know, and I did that with a big, bold initiative partnering of Michael Graves, who designed for Target. We launched with 140 products. And it kind of changed Target. and I didn't I was just doing something I thought would be really fun to do it was a launch and it had a huge impact and today you see collaborations every other day in retail so and so is working with so and so so and so is working with so and so but those didn't exist you know at any scale when I did that for the first time so you know but I do believe if I hadn't done that, someone else would figure that out.

29:28So I just happened to be, you know, early at it, you know. But what I sometimes make, but like the Apple store, the Apple store is a very unique thing. It's hard to go back now and remember what stores are like before the Apple store. But everything we did there was unique, you know, especially how we hired and trained people and serve customers. and to this day the apple store i think is the most vibrant dynamic store most crowded store in most locations and people love going to the apple store so we did some things right and i think apple stores are widely i mean a lot of people say do it like apple did it you know how do you serve people like apple how do you design a store as clean as the apple store how do you you know Yeah.

30:16So I don't know. A few things I've done probably have been, you know, first or had some following. I don't know which is more important. They're all kind of just things I love to do and did.

30:30I love this answer for so many reasons. First of all, I really like that strategy of collaboration, finding unique collaborations. Because especially when you think, I can't shake it, I'm still the negotiation guy. That's the heart of effective dealmaking. If you can be creative and collaborate in ways that are synergistic, then you can create something incredible. And that's a perfect example there. And it really blazed the trail for other future collaborations. So I think that's really notable. Everyone has their own. When I was young, my dad used to say, Ron, you should do something significant.

31:08And I said, what's that? He goes, well, you have to figure it out. And I looked up significance in the dictionary and said it has meaning. Okay. And if you look up meaning, it'll say meaning is something significant. And then you start to think that through and you realize what is significant to me is uniquely significant to me because there's meaning to me. Right. And so we've got to each pursue our own significance. And sometimes it'll have broad impact. Sometimes it doesn't. But you're doing something meaningful. Well, what's interesting about negotiation is you've got to find a way. We each come at a problem or negotiating with different priorities.

31:49but when we get to the right outcome it is meaningful to both of us and those are the best ideas right and so you got to find a way to do it we built a little store on fifth avenue that glass cube which you know in you know in some ways people think change the skyline of manhattan at 32 feet in a sheet of glass which is pretty amazing it was the most five years after had opened, it was the most photographed object, according to Flickr, in New York City. Of all things taken, more people took it with that building than all these buildings that were 100 stories tall, or the Statue of Liberty, you know?

32:31But when we built that store, we had to make a decision to do it. We all got to that we should open the store from a different perspective. You know, I wanted to see a first store I get to open on Fifth Avenue. I loved it because it was always going to be the first store on Fifth Avenue. Forget being in the middle of the street at the 50-yard line. There's only one great shopping street in the world. And imagine being on the first store forever. Because we're on, you know, right across from Central Park, the plaza. It's zoned residential the rest of the way. No matter what, that's where Fifth Avenue shopping starts.

33:07That was meaningful to me. Steve for his entire life had loved the form of a cube. Right. He had tried to make products in the shape of a cube. Next, the company founded after Apple, the logo was a cube. Right. He just thought that was a perfect form. And when we had to go underground for that store, the architect said, well, I am painted a pyramid over the lube and brought light downstairs in Paris. Why don't we find a shape that we can put over and bring light into the basement on Fifth Avenue? And next week, he came into the cube, and Steve found meaning through the cube. Right? But each of us found a different reason to love that location.

33:53And the more people who find a way that that is significant, the bigger the idea will be. but we all uh value significance or meaning according to our own personal geography i don't know where i'm going with this but it's like it's really fascinating you know so it's not like there's one reason why the cube work it's because it works for so many people you know it works for people who are out of town and have flown in from europe and they're jet-legged and they wake up in morning they got nothing to do and they go down to the hotel and they say well the apple store is open. It's open 24 hours.

34:30Just go over to the Apple store. It works for all the people that support the city that never sleeps because when they finally get done working, they're wide awake. They want to do something. They got a place to go. They can come in the middle of the night. Right. It works for people that are doing a project and their computer breaks and they can run to the genius bar at three in the morning. Right. That's an idea that has significance in so many different ways, then we opened that around the clock. It exceeded the break even in the store during the hours it wasn't intended to be open. But those are, I think that's where you find the big ideas.

35:10They have meaning to a broad number of people for a variety of different reasons, not just one. That's fascinating because it brings a, it's very hard to describe because it's nuanced because there's energy that goes behind significance and purpose and it will look different for different reasons for different people. But if you can create something that other people find significant, then they will put their energy to it. And then you almost have to to honor their rationale for bringing that energy and just appreciate it and find a way for everybody to work toward the same goal even if they're working toward the same goal for different reasons exactly like and then if you don't give people a chance that's when you fail like when i went to pennies i had this vision for pennies and for a variety of reasons we went way too fast and the team at pennies they didn't see a need to change i don't think it was the idea was bad, but they didn't get a chance to have any input into it because it was Ron's idea.

36:14And people want to all understand why this idea matters. And they want to make a little contribution to it. You got to give people time to do that. And if you go too fast, you never do that. And that's how, you know, a humble guy like me was seen as being arrogant. I think probably the people that work there, because, you know, this Apple guy knew exactly what he thought pennies needed and he didn't take the time to ask me what i thought you know and i can understand that yeah yeah let's let's go into humility and arrogance in business and life because what's what's interesting to me hearing this hearing you talk having this conversation with you is that there is a lot of humility in the way that you describe your contributions and now you're talking about the chapter of jc pennies where it was a launch or an endeavor that didn't turn out the way that you wanted to so over your years your relationship to the concepts of humility versus arrogance tell us where where this came from and and well i think what happens what happens is uh success is addictive and uh blinding is what I'd say.

37:34You know, when you... And I think Steve was that way. He changed the world at age 24 when Apple went public. You know, he created the person computer with Waz and other people at the time. And I think the rest of his life, he lived for moments like launching something that would change the world. You know, he loved, you know, imagining, you know, movies like at Pixar. when he acquired that little animating software. You know, he had a dream that he could make a motion picture movie some way like some time like Disney. And he got to do that, right? He got to come back to Apple. He got to create the iMac.

38:16He got to launch the iPod. And then he wanted to do something. He wanted to reinvent the phone. And he lived for those moments, right? And each time you succeed, you become more confident in your ability to succeed. Right? And that can lead to arrogance. Normally when you're doing something for the first time, you're just working so damn hard, you have no reason to be confident. You just want to go try something. Like when I had no reason to think we'd go to the state tournament, I just thought it'd be fun to try to go to the state tournament. You know? But I had no idea that we could get there, and we did.

38:54but that gave me confidence to try something else. And then as you succeed and succeed, you realize, okay, so then I'm now going to go to Penny's and leave Apple. And I'm given six months because for a lot of reasons, I had to delay the arrival for six months. I, in my own mind, started working up all these visions for what Penny's could become. And then I told the board what I wanted to do. And they go, that sounds great. I said, should we wait? And they said, no, let's go. What do we have to lose? And we went way too fast. But I was situationally arrogant. You know, they said, go. I could have pushed back and said, no, no, it's too fast.

39:32Even though I knew in my bones we're a little reckless in going this fast, you know, I should have known better. And the Miley point is this humble guy who grew up doing things got to a point where I had such confidence in what we're going to do that I was willing to risk, take that big a risk with a big company with all those employees. That's borderline arrogance. When you do something reckless, that's arrogance. You know, not unlike your kid who's got your license for the first time and you love to drive fast and you're just speeding around a corner because you just have confidence you can go as fast as you can do it right that's reckless but it's you're arrogant because you don't know better you know and you know i had i've had those moments and so i think like all these things you know the line between good and evil cuts right inside of us very close to each other the line between humility and arrogance very close to each other.

40:39The line between great work and not great work, very close. You got to really work at these things. And when you look at the successes that you've had and you look at the failures that you've had, which of those have taught you more? Honestly, I don't buy anything that failure teaches you more. I think you learn from everything you do. What you learn is when you think deeply about cause and effect, you know? It's really the depth at which you think about your history that provides the lessons, right?

41:26I think when we're successful, we're so busy doing the next thing, we don't take time to learn. When we fail, it is so overwhelming to your psychology, your confidence, that you have to explore what is meant. Why did this happen? How did I get into this position? What do I learn from it? So I think we tend to dwell on failure more than we tend to celebrate success and move on. You know, you think, oh, wow, we picked the right location on Fifth Avenue. No, it was every little detail of decisions that got us there. But we don't tend to think about that when we're successful. But when we fail, we tend to dwell.

42:15So we learn more through failure because we think about it harder. But I don't think you learn more from failure. The first thing that I ever got from Quince was this pair of really nice formal pants, but they were stretchy and made for travel. So for me as a lawyer and businessman, as I travel and I do these keynotes all over the world, it's really nice to be able to know that I could wear something that looks good in the airport, that's comfortable on the airplane, and I could wear comfortably if I have to roll into a meeting or an event right after getting off the plane. And it was only$60.

42:50And that's what turned me into a repeat customer because Quince focuses on wardrobe staples that are made with premium materials. So, for example, 100 % Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and as it's gotten colder, I've been leaning on their down jackets and wool outerwear too. They're solid, warm layers that don't feel like they're cutting corners just because the price is lower. And that's really the whole model. Because everything at Quince runs about 50-80 % less than similar brands simply because they cut out the middlemen and work directly with ethical factories. But the thing is, it's not only clothing either.

43:24They carry that same quality into bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture, all designed with the same care. I use Quince, and so should you. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. Have you ever walked out of a meeting feeling really good about it, and then 10 minutes later, someone's messaging you saying something like, wait, what did we actually decide in that meeting?

44:01That gap between what happened and what anyone remembers is exactly what Granola AI closes. Honestly, the first time I looked back at my notes afterwards, I didn't expect them to be that clean. It was more organized than anything I'd ever written myself, and I hadn't done any extra work to get there. Granola AI is an AI-powered notepad built for how people actually meet. You take the same rough notes that you always would, and in the background, Gornola AI is quietly transcribing the conversation. As soon as the meeting wraps, it turns all of that into clear, structured notes automatically. And it also runs through your device's audio, so there's no bots joining your call and nothing extra to configure.

44:39It just fits nicely into the tools you already use. You can stay focused on the conversation and still walk away knowing exactly what decided and who's doing what next. If meetings are eating up your day, granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai.com. That's granola.ai.com to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai.com. Ron, that's a fascinating answer because most people go in the direction that you said. Most people go because it's the pain. The pain has a focusing factor and there's a lot of negativity bias. We're going to just naturally pay attention to the things that hurt the most.

45:20But really, what it's sounding like is that you have to coach yourself to evaluate activities. What did I do? Cause and effect, regardless of the outcome. And it sounds like that takes a lot of discipline. It does. Well, think of like, I'm thinking of NFL football. They play a game every week. and when a team lose a game they go, God, we got to go in and really watch the film and figure out what we did not. You know, these guys go nuts. You feel it when your coach is just going nuts trying to dissect why you failed. When you win, they just go celebrate. You know, they don't go back and say, what did we do that made us so great that game?

46:03We just go on to the next game and imagine what can we do next? But we can lose sight pretty quickly of what it, you know, so we go deeper on things that don't work. I really believe that. And that's why people think they learn from failure. But you learn from life. And the problem is most people don't, they aren't very introspective. That was the beauty of writing Shop Different. When you write a book, it forced you to think deeply about not just what you did, but why you did what you did. What made me believe in that love could be a strategy for serving customers? You know, where did that come from?

46:47It went all the way back to my mom. You know, that's where it came from. And I read about that in the book. But, you know, you've got to be introspective. And right now, unfortunately, people move way too fast. They multitask. You know, I get so sad. You see people taking a walk and they got headphones in and they're not even thinking. They're just listening to something. Whether it's music or a podcast or they're not listening. They're not in touch with their own inner voice and reflecting on what they could be learning. They're trying to find an answer from somebody else. You know? So true. It's so true.

47:30And again, it goes back to what we were talking about. Depth of thought is a skill and a discipline. You have to be able to be willing to do it. And when you think about not just your career, but also just business and life in general, what role does luck play in all of this? It's a huge role. oh no we're all uh like you know in the valley like i my kids you know my kids you get to know the parents of your kids friends right and there were so many people parents who were working as hard as i worked who were smarter than i am but they hadn't found a company that had the success that I got lucky with an apple.

48:19Right? And so I think luck plays a big role. Now, you make your own luck. I think there's some truth to that too. How you carry yourself and things you do. But, no, I think most people, you know, that's why you say we're blessed, right? You had some good fortune. Now you got lucky. I was lucky to be born into the family I was born into. I was lucky to somehow have the faith coming out of business school to pursue an industry I could love for a lifetime. I was kind of lucky to pick retail for me because that was a great choice. I was lucky to go to Apple when I did. I got to get to work with Steve.

49:07I was lucky that the iPod went to Windows and it made Apple a great company. and our stores had a product that everyone wanted to buy and they packed the stores that we had a good vision for and got the volume well above our break even. I was lucky that Apple then came up with the iPhone that I got to help just at the margin with in terms of developing, but got to bring it to the market. But that made the stores reach another level. you know so i was very lucky in my career you know and i think that's true you know that luck plays a big part um that's where you just got to be patient because it's gonna come you just have to be ready for it when it comes and you can't miss those moments when when the future is a thought away some of us miss those opportunities that come in you know like when i was in that store oh for sure when i was in that store in the rain looking at that decal that changed target if i hadn't gone out to walk into stores that day i might have never come up with the idea that good design didn't have to be expensive right but i not only found that I let that idea I let my entire body embrace that idea you know and I just wonder how many people have these moments just happening all the time and they miss them because they don't know how to spot them you know the genius bar that's a big part of it but to deliver service to a bar all of a sudden there's an idea and you go wow that's kind of cool and then you ruminate on it and then you share it with someone and you end up what do we call it let's call it a genius bar and suddenly an idea is born that could have been very fragile a thought that just went away but i caught it you know and and you gotta be ready to catch these things when they you know pass your way you know and that's kind of yeah that's the look yeah Right.

51:26And so there's a fun study where they talked about luck and they said they wanted to divide people on whether or not they self-identified as lucky. It was a really interesting study. I'm going to butcher the numbers, but the essence is going to be the same. so they said read this newspaper both part both groups were going to read this newspaper and the goal was to count how many images were in the newspaper and then see how long it took and so the average time for the people who identified as unlucky was let's say about one minute or two minutes something like that but the average time for the people self-identified as lucky was about 15 seconds.

52:04And so what happened was in the newspaper, there might be two images on the first page. You flip to the second page. And then on the second page, there's a box that says, stop counting immediately. There are 50 images in this newspaper. The lucky people saw that. The unlucky people didn't. And so what I'm finding is that luck all around us, we just have to train ourselves to see it and when you are obsessed with your craft the world becomes your library and you see opportunities for growth everywhere i totally agree and to to see the opportunity you have to be present you've got to be so present um you know you can't you got to eliminate all regrets from the past.

52:55You got to eliminate the anxiety of the future. You got to be grateful for this presence that you get to be a part of and just be just present, you know? Okay. What is the single thing, the single most important thing that Steve Jobs taught you that business school did not. To ruthlessly eliminate hurry. Steve was never in a hurry. Every time I called him, he answered the phone. He talked as much as we needed to, to get things done. He'd come to a meeting. He wouldn't carry a cell phone for the iPhone. He would just stay until things got done. You know, we launched an iPod in 2001. We didn't launch another product until 2007 because we had to make the iPod great.

53:50And then we launched the phone. But you look at all he accomplished in his life and he was taken too early. He was never in a hurry. With your book, Shop Different. Yeah. When you think about your book, when you think about your book, when somebody reads your book what changes in their mind um their approach to life i think they will end up choosing kindness more frequently yeah another book this book really talks about how i mean it's funny i've i've had quite a few people tell me it's not a business book. It's a love story. And, you know, I kind of go, a love story? Yeah, you love retail. You love Steve.

54:38Steve love you. You love stores. You love customers. You love creating stores. You love life. And that shows up on every page, you know. And ultimately, all I do is I just chose kindness every day with every person, with every moment. And the outcome of that was the book. And so I think you read the book, you will start to understand how you can live a life filled with kindness every moment. Let's make a compelling case. I want you to go back to business school. Let's talk about the young, aspiring business person who wants to take over Silicon Valley and compel them with this. What's a compelling argument for love and kindness as fundamental principles in business?

55:24Yeah, because, well, the reality is

55:31most people sleep in a good, they sleep eight hours a day. They work eight hours a day. It's a 40-hour week. And you live life eight hours a day. That adds up to 24, right? Right. So in your personal life where you live life, most of us were grew up either with a faith or a family that talked about, you know, filling that life with love and meaning and purpose and how we treat people matters, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's eight hours a day. Why do I then have to wear a different hat to work? I spend as much time working as I do living my life. And so then why do I try to separate those? So if love works at home, love works in the office.

56:22If people respond to kindness at school, a teacher and a student, you see that, or a coach and a player, people respond to kindness at the office. So this idea that you have to manage your way through work, you have to hold people accountable, you have to create a sense of fear. to get people to perform. You've got to have deadlines. All these kind of negative emotional words at work is the opposite of what we try to do at home. So why is that? And there is really no idea. There's two things in life, love and fear. And you can choose which one do I want to lead with. Managers tend to lead with fear.

57:08Leaders tend to lead with love. Oops, that was two, three minutes so i apologize it's all good that's simone's job he'll chop it up he'll make it look good okay now let me push you on this because steve and this is from me from the outside looking in i did not have the pleasure of meeting him like you did from the outside looking in steve jobs seemed to be equal parts brilliant and equal parts ruthless so what would you think his relationship is with bringing love and kindness into the business world oh well steve steve told me once that the highest form of kindness is telling the truth it's letting people know exactly what you think that was steve's view and he wore his opinions on his sleeve and he was never criticizing the person.

57:59He was criticizing the work, the idea. So Steve would say, I love people, but I didn't love the output all the time. And I was very demanding on that. So Steve, the light of God burned as brightly inside of him as it does in me. It just was harder to get out sometimes because he was so obsessed and demanding of himself. And a lot of people have that trouble. You know, they get in the way of, you know, being the best version of themselves. But now Steve was really a wonderful human being. And there is some truth. You know, he had a pretty tough side. But, you know, what he did then, he surrounded himself with really nice people.

58:49Now, Tim Cook's a really good guy. Johnny Ive, a really good guy. Eddie Q, a really good guy. I like to think I'm a nice guy. You know, so Steve understood that one of the ways he could be himself was to let people around him who reflected what he really wanted to be, but couldn't bring himself to be there every moment of the day. So he understood the importance of love and kindness. And he let me do that. He said, just use a different word. You know, don't call it love. Call it something else. You know, but he was very supportive. I love that. That's great. Okay. Now, and last one, as somebody who has negotiated with and perhaps against Steve Jobs, how would you describe his negotiation style?

59:40He negotiated until the best idea won. Steve never came into negotiation with an outcome he wanted to achieve. he came into a negotiation trying to find a way to whatever idea he had come to could be better yet right so for steve the best idea is what he was in pursuit of it was never his idea so i don't feel like i ever negotiated with steve i just had a lot of conversations about what would be great. The first thing that I ever got from Quince was this pair of really nice formal pants, but they were stretchy and made for travel. So for me as a lawyer and businessman, as I travel and I do these keynotes all over the world, it's really nice to be able to know that I could wear something that looks good in the airport, that's comfortable on the airplane, and I could wear comfortably if I have to roll into a meeting or an event right after getting off the plane.

1:00:45And it was only$60. And that's what turned me into a repeat customer. Because Quince focuses on wardrobe stables that are made with premium materials. So for example, 100 % Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and as it's gotten colder, I've been leaning on their down jackets and wool outerwear too. They're solid, warm layers that don't feel like they're cutting corners just because the price is lower. And that's really the whole model. Because everything at Quince runs about 50 to 80 % less than similar brands simply because they cut out the middlemen and work directly with ethical factories. But the thing is, it's not only clothing either.

1:01:21They carry that same quality into bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture, all designed with the same care. I use Quince and so should you. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let him know it was me. That's the best way to support the show. Have you ever walked out of a meeting feeling really good about it? And then 10 minutes later, someone's messaging you saying something like, wait, what did we actually decide in that meeting?

1:01:58That gap between what happened and what anyone remembers is exactly what Granola AI closes. Honestly, the first time I looked back at my notes afterwards, I didn't expect them to be that clean. It was more organized than anything I'd ever written myself, and I hadn't done any extra work to get there. Granola AI is an AI-powered notepad built for how people actually meet. You take the same rough notes that you always would, and in the background, Granola AI is quietly transcribing the conversation. As soon as the meeting wraps, it turns all of that into clear, structured notes automatically. And it also runs through your device's audio, so there's no bots joining your call and nothing extra to configure.

1:02:36It just fits nicely into the tools you already use. You can stay focused on the conversation and still walk away knowing exactly what decided and who's doing what next. If meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for three months. Just head to granola.ai.com. That's granola.ai.com to get your time back. Three months free at granola.ai.com. Wow, that's so paradigm shifting. Oh, so good. So good, Ron. Now, before we wrap up, I want to bring Simon in. He's very humble, just like you. So he probably didn't tell you that he has the number one Spanish negotiation podcast in the world.

1:03:15Well, he told me he doesn't speak French very well. He lives in Ottawa. No, go ahead. Not yet. I'm sure. Simon, are you going to learn? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Cool. So, Simon, what's on your mind? Well, I'm a designer. And when you design something new, you start hearing the voices of people saying, no, this is not going to work. This is not going to work. And as I see the Apple stores, those are very different from anything else. So I am sure that you heard voices saying, this is not going to work, this is not going to work. So how did you deal with that pressure of people even more experienced than you saying that this was not going to work and kept going with your idea?

1:04:05Well, it's really important that you, Johnny has said that many times, Johnny, ideas are fragile. And that's where in their early stage, you want to keep them close to a few people. And you want to have people understand the fragility of an idea. Because once you start becoming a skeptic and people start to compromise, the idea just goes away. Because it becomes something that's not very special, right? So I had the privilege with the Apple Store of working with Steve. Because no matter what I would come up with, he always had a way, what if we did this? You know, he was an adder, not a subtractor.

1:04:50And Steve wanted to take risks. And he was willing to be a contrarian, to think different in his words. And so I had the privilege with Apple of leading the group, working side by side with Steve and a team of people that really wanted to change the world and were willing to take risks. The problem is you get to other companies and people don't have that culture. That's what I ran to at JCPenney, a group that didn't want to change. And wanted things to fail more than they wanted things to succeed. They didn't want the best idea. They wanted to maintain their idea. That was kind of what I ran into there.

1:05:30And I should have been smart enough to see that, but I wasn't. But I didn't have that issue at Apple. But you're right. With creatives, you've got to stick to your guns. You've got to stick to your idea. You've got to have belief. You are the one. If you're in charge of creativity, you've got to be the believer. and you got to get people to believe. That's your job. Now you're selling your idea. You're creating that North Star that people will say, okay, let's go. And you can't compromise on that. Thank you. Thank you. So good. So good. So Ron, when you think about your legacy and where you are now, where you want to go, where you've been, everything, how would you how would you describe your career and what do you see your future being now no i don't have a lot i'm a retail guy you know and i spent my entire industry trying to improve the retail experience you know through stores and and uh i love doing that and I'm now 68 years old.

1:06:45I had a birthday recently. You know, I don't need more. I don't need more. I just need to, you know, hopefully give back more, you know, and I can do that in a lot of different ways. A book is one way to do that. It's mentoring one-on-many, whereas most people only get to mentor one-on-one. A book is a way to mentor one-on-many when people get to read it and maybe something will connect with them. So I don't believe in legacies. I just think you be the best that you can every day. Try to become a little better tomorrow and see where it leads. So good. Ron, I appreciate you for coming on the show.

1:07:26And thank you for writing this book, too. So listeners, we will put links in the description of this episode. Ron, really appreciate it, brother. My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you both.