Steve Gordon: Inside the California DMV's Transformation

22:55And it would slide it across the counter. The customer would review them. They would sign it with a pen, what signature. They'd slide it back across the counter. We would then take those at the end of the day. We put those all in an envelope. We would send them on a journey to Sacramento where we would scan them and then we would dispose them. It was nuts, but it was one step in the process. And we had these tablets that were at the window that somebody a few years before that had thought, we're going to use these for something. but they never got used. So my chief digital transformation officer, a guy that is just an amazing talent, Jay Gupta said, why don't we actually have the attestation on the tablet?

23:30And people are like, we can't do that. Can't do that. So we looked at the statute, looked at regulations, looked at our policy and found out we actually could do that. And we did, we lift those up. All of a sudden that paper, those six sheets, we should slide across the counter and bring back, send a Sacramento scan, dispose of, that went to zero because we could. So we have people that attest online. And it's really a thing of beauty. I don't know if you've seen this guy, right? You have people that have never used a touchscreen before and you see them, they're just like slowly dragging, but they get it.

23:59They get it. And it's a joy. I don't want to malign people, but if people get a little older, haven't used as much technology, perhaps as you and I have, that's the first time they've used a touchscreen. They're saying, oh, that's what that's about. And they sign and completely paperless. And so we've gone from tons of paper a week to zero, no more trips across California to get the headquarters to be scanned and so on. So we've reduced our footprint. We've speeded up the process. We've actually made the process better because it's digital from day one. So it's things like that. And there's a thousand of those.

24:32And that's just one that you saw at every window on every driver's license transaction. I read a report. I think it was in the Harvard Business Review about management by driving around. So I want to hear about that. In my days working at Cisco, our CEO at the time was a guy named John Chambers. And John Chambers, I mean, at that level, you've got to be a master storyteller. So he would go off and he'd be visiting a customer. He'd come back with a story. I'd be doing this and I saw this. This is what they're working on. And he kind of put things in context. So you're always taking notes, right?

25:05As you're rising through your career, so what things do I need to bring into my portfolio. So when, if I ever get to that level so that I will be able to communicate effectively. And one of the things I pulled from John Chambers is that he was really good about getting out and it was really good about bringing back what he saw when he was out. So I made that one of the things I wanted to do, a deliverable I wanted to do. Cause sometimes when you're doing the, the number of changes we were doing at the time when I first joined, your staff needs a break from you. And sometimes you need a break from your staff.

25:34So I would go out on the road. I would just say, okay, this week I'm going here and I would just start driving. And we have 220 plus offices, 180 field offices and a bunch of other offices. And I would just go hit a region. And I did a lot of driving. My wife came with me and I was doing for two things. One is I wanted to make sure that I had firsthand knowledge of what was going on. I mean, look, you're not going to have representative view by spending 15 minutes or 30 minutes in a field office. But you started building simple relationships. You started showing that you care. Many times this was the first time the staff had ever seen the DMV director ever.

26:07And then in some cases, when I started visiting twice, three times, four times, they're like, wow, we've never seen the director twice. You start building these little small relationships. And when you do that, you start seeing things that you wouldn't normally see. And the staff sees you in a different light. I recall I was down in one of the offices in the LA area, and this woman brought to me this lien release. So she financed her car, as many people do. JP Morgan, they're going through their process, and she was trying to sell her car to her neighbor, but couldn't get the lien release. It's just a mess.

26:34Those things take time. But I gave her my card. I took copies of her material. I said, look, I'll be happy to help you and send me an email. Let's work on this together so I can actually learn more about the lean process. And the staff got to see that, oh, he's not afraid to talk with the customer. He's not afraid to reach across the county. He's not afraid to take on work. And it also encouraged them to say, you can lean in a little bit more. We can't solve all of the problems, but we can actually help the customer if we kind of lean in and try to understand stuff. And I've subsequently had discussions with the large financialists, including JPMC, to understand what is the lean release process what can we do to improve it so we can simplify because cars used to be homes were the number one asset people had nowadays cars are the number one asset people have and so when you make that illiquid because a lean release takes too long or we're administratively slow whatever it might be those are opportunities for us to learn and grow and improve and the only way you do that is you start seeing and feeling the pain that people have when And they're stuck between immovable forces, government, large bank.

27:35And we want to make sure that, in fact, we can improve things. And the only way you get to see those things is you just happen to be in the field office when somebody brings in that issue. So that's what I did. I went out and drove around. COVID interrupted it because you don't want to go out and start driving around during COVID when people are afraid. But it was great. It was great to get out. And this is a beautiful state. Just as a side note, I love to travel. I've had some good fortune traveling the globe. And now all of a sudden I get to be in all 58 counties first. I didn't know there were 58 counties when I started this job, but I do now.

28:04And I've been to all of our offices. I've been to all these places. And there are some remarkable people all across the state and some wonderful people. The people we hire in these communities are from those communities. So you get a sense for what the ethic is there, what the local customs are, cultures. And they're just some wonderful people. So it's a win, win, win, win, win for me to be able to be out in these communities. It's fun to have a road trip. My wife loves to travel with me. It's fun stuff. There should be a reality TV show about your life. Just see, this is like Ken Kiesinger, you know?

28:37Oh my God. I'm a serious guy, guy. I like to get out and have fun. But look, these are people trying to do their jobs. And I want to show that I respect what they're doing, but I want to show that I also care about improving the process, care about them. And there's no reality show. When I first started, the team was like, okay, we want to get this entourage. I was like, no, I travel light. I travel either by myself. I travel with my wife. That's the extent. I don't need any coordination. I don't need anybody traveling with me. I don't need any advanced staff. I just show up. And when I first started, I was polite.

29:09I asked for permission from my field staff. Hey, I'd like to be over here. Oh yeah, okay. That'd be a good time to show up. Now I just tell people I'm going out. I'm going to be in the high desert next week, or I'm going to be around the Salton Sea the week after that, or I'm going to be an altruist after that. I just tell them generally where I'm going to go. Not that I want to surprise anyone, but I don't want people to over-engineer what is really going to be a 15, 20-minute meet and greet and move on to the next site. Because it shouldn't be any more difficult, just like your neighbor stopping by, right?

29:39And that's how it should be. So just to make this perfectly clear to people, this wasn't like a TV series where the CEO goes in as a customer and disguises his help, mystery DMV user. You went in as a director. Yeah. One thing I found early on is that my photo is in every DMV. I did not know that. One of my cousins that lived in the Reading area, it was like three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, whatever it was, whatever it takes to get photos out there. She sends me a photo of my photo on the wall. She goes, essentially WTF. And I was like, so what is that? She goes, that's your photo on the field office out in Reading.

30:15I was like, I had no idea. But so yeah, I go in, I go in the front door and I talk with the staff. I talk with the customers. I go behind the counter of course they know who i am i show them my badge and she should authenticate everyone and yeah i go in and try to see what's happening and i meet everyone i try to say hello to everyone who's there and yeah no no surprise customer no mystery shopping now looking at that a different way i do use all of the different channels for our services and so i renew my registration we have this feature in our ivr and so i'll give that a try and some cases i'll record the session because i want to give feedback back to my staff about here's how it sounds here's where it's maybe too fast here's where it's too slow here's where i got in this loop it's all process improvement stuff but i try to use every channel we have and i try to encourage my senior staff and all of you in our line staff use these services feel how they feel give us feedback so we can actually improve them and so on but the only way you do that is you get out and you use them and the only way you get to see what's happening though if you will in the wild with our customers is you stand in a field office.

31:17You talk with people. The next time you go to Watsonville or Capitola, I want you to tell me, I want to go in with you. I want to see you do this. That'll be so fun. Yeah, no, I'm happy to do that. It's less exciting than you think. I'm there and I'm in and out. It's only 20 minutes. Right. I'm in and out 15, 20 minutes. I make sure I make a point of saying hello to everyone, including like there are examiners that are doing drive tests. I try to catch them in between drive tests because they're on the road and they rarely get a chance to see anyone. And I just want to make sure I don't make a big deal out of it.

31:49But at the same time, I want to make sure I have a chance to meet everyone. And that way, you know, encourage them if they see something, and there are a few that take me up on this offer, they'll send me an email and they'll say, hey, I saw this or I saw that. And then we'll go through a discussion about how do you collect data? There was one in Reedley, which is this town outside of Fresno. She was right, this manager, wonderful, very curious, was writing me about, oh, we see a lot of this. And I hear a lot. I say, well, quantify a lot. And so I said, here's how you might quantify it. So I taught her how to quantify.

32:21I grabbed some data on the backend that maybe she wouldn't have access to. I shared with her. Here's what I think is happening across the state. And sure enough, she validated that her a lot was maybe two items a week. I said, so instead of us focusing on those, important, but let's focus on something that's bigger. So I gave her some examples. But it's how you teach people. First, I taught her to reach out to me, taught her to engage, taught her about how we're thinking about data, caused me to think about something I wasn't thinking about. And now she's better at doing analysis. And that's up and down.

32:49There's a data entry clerk here. Her name is Catherine. Took me up on this offer months ago. And she is in this repetitive job where she sees all these kind of same form over and over again. Her job is to do error correction and finish the data entry. And so she wrote me and she had this long story about this address and not populating correctly. And I said, I'll come right down. I thought, OK, there's no way she's going to have any data on this. I show up and she's like this serious woman and she's seeing thousands of these things. She pulls up her examples. She walked me through a she saved one of them for me.

33:27She walked me through. This is where the problem is when you do this. And sure enough, she was spot on. and she says, the management team would not fix this. I said, I'll get that fixed. But she had evidence. She was waiting for this moment. It doesn't get any better than that because she was prepared. She had data and she had a real problem and she was stuck. So that was fantastic. So when Catherine writes me now, I pop right down and I say, show me that again. And we get it fixed. As a matter of fact, her team is now much more responsive because Catherine brings facts. Doesn't get any better than that.

34:00What office is this? This is a headquarters. This is a person who does data entry at headquarters. We process a lot of mail and she's the choke point for certain forms. And she is the expert because she sees thousands of them and she's attentive. So coming from Cisco, now I wouldn't put Cisco in that same class of companies as like Facebook and Meta and PayPal, Mafia, et cetera, et cetera. But what's the similarities and differences in management in this kind of Silicon Valley tech company and then going to a public service company, state of California? Like, what's the differences? What's the transition like for you?

34:44First, I was on the services side of Cisco. So even though I'm trained as an accountant, I was in technology support. I learned TCP IP protocol. I learned how all that stuff works. I was surrounded by a bunch of people who are MSCEs and BSCEs. Our COO, a guy who's our chief deputy, Ed Swenson, has got a couple degrees, a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Stanford. So these are people that actually know what electricity does. I know electricity does something. I can't tell you why it does it, but I understood protocols and so on. So anyway, most of my experience from Cisco was on the services side.

35:15And then I had this acquisition tuck-in role later on in my career. So it was kind of business driven. And in those roles, you became very focused on operations and you had to figure out what's the right order of things. I developed some great relations with a guy named Mike Zill, who's still a good friend of mine. He's a big thinker, but he's also a manufacturing process guy. So he taught me about the whole basics of how do we make sure we get cost quality cycle time and get things into the hopper and through the system. First pass yields and first time that sort of stuff. And so I had a number of people that were helping me understand the impact that a product could have on a customer.

35:50A guy who wrote to me last week, he was in one of our DMVs down in San Jose, Malachi Moynihan, who was our chief of engineering at Linksys when Cisco acquired Linksys, was stuck trying to register a car at one of our field offices. Our systems were having a glitch. So he was texting me like, what's going on? Should I wait? Should I go? But he's another guy who taught me how to think about when a product had a defect, the downstream impact, the impact on a customer, the impact on the channel it was in. And so all of those things played a role in helping you think about the business you're in, thinking about the quality of the product you're producing, making sure people can get through that process in the first pass.

36:25So regardless of whether you're at Facebook, you're at Cisco, wherever you are in that technology lifecycle, there's a lot of that that's the same. And you're just using best practices. I was fortunate to be surrounded by people with advanced degrees, good universities, good colleges, good thinkers, good experience. And I pulled from all of those people and they've been very generous with their time to help us improve my skills and help us now apply those to the state of California. Now, it seems to me that, yeah, you can say there's a lot of similarity, but correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your ability to motivate people with raises and RSOs or stock options, that's not on the table at the California DMV, right?

37:07So what do you do to motivate people? Yeah, because the Silicon Valley way is always about stock options. Yeah, it's tricky. I'm sure some of your other guests might be better skilled here academically about which buttons to push. I've never been a strictly a financially motivated guy. Some of my peers were like they were focused on the RSO or they're focused on when their options were going to invest. Never was my particular focus. Obviously, you want to be well compensated. At the same time, you want to make sure you're on a mission. That's the highest level thing, right? You're on this mission.

37:37You feel you can make an impact. And by and large, I think the people that are on my staff, out of the front line to the top line, they think they're making a difference. And they are making a difference. I was out in Palm Springs last week, and there was a woman in Palm Springs named Tamika. I forgot Tamika's last name. Sorry, Tamika. But she had been a recent recipient at this agency that were part of the transportation agency within the state. We recognized her across the state as someone who really was making a difference in people's lives. you meet her she just lights up the room and she's doing the intake at the field office in palm springs she's your first point of contact and she's on that mission and she's making people's lives better one customer at a time getting the right feedback a smile on her face a can-do attitude and that raises that office performs better than its adjacent office and i attribute some of that to tamika because that one person can make a difference so anyway you talked about stock options and compensation.

38:32We do not have those levers here in government, but we are mission driven. And I think having people like a Tamiko or even people like some of my senior staff who are on this mission are trying to remove roadblocks, things that we've all been taught to do in Silicon Valley, taking obstacles out of the way. I think people see that in fact, we understand that and we're willing to do that. We're willing to invest political capital behind that. And we're making their job simpler. We're making the customer's journey easier. and that's good for everyone, even if you're not doing it because of that direct financial motivation.

39:03And if I were to see Tomiko or call Tomiko and say, Tomiko, what is your mission at the DMV? What would she say? What's the mission? That's a great question. I don't know what Tomiko would say, but I certainly suspect she would say that she's there because she loves helping people. And I think about when we think about the mission of the DMV, yeah, that gets a little muddy. We are a tax collecting organization, but we should be the best. And I try to remind my staff that when we're buying an online service or even a retail service, we should be thinking about the best of the best. We should not be benchmarked within what is called the tallest pygmy.

39:39We should not segment ourselves into a small little group and be the best government agency with a left-handed leader. No, that's crazy. We should be looking at what does an Amazon do? JPMC, right? When you have the highest credit card, when you're about to lose that credit business, you should be thinking about what do they do to lean in to make sure they don't lose you as customers we have to aspire to that level that means our services have to work they have to be easy they have to be intuitive and when people want to pay us money we should help them pay us money we should not make it hard for them and sometimes we do so we have a lot of room to grow there but i think that's the mission we're on is just making sure that participating in society in california getting your driver's license registering your vehicle trying to be compliant that should be easy we should assume that people are trying to help themselves and trying to help us.

40:24And we didn't make it easy. And we should just realize that the comparator in the marketplace is Amazon. So I talked to my staff and I asked them, anybody order anything from Amazon over the holidays? And every hand goes up and says, so when you're thinking that the DMV or government should be different, I said, no, we should be good as what we're trying to do as they are. We should make the products are on the shelf. We should know what they want to buy. We should make it easy to put it in the car. We should make it easy to pay. And again, we have some room to go there, but that's the direction we're heading.

40:50up next on Remarkable People. These are federal roads that they allow California and other states to give certain privileges to HOVs. So we have to go and have the federal administration, I'm not sure if it's Federal Highways or I think it's Federal Highways. This is their program. They allow California to allow people into the HOV lane. We give a sticker as a result of that so we can identify those vehicles and make sure they qualify for emissions and so on. So the reason that it only is good to September, that is the end of the federal fiscal year. So we're waiting right now to find out if the federal government is going to continue to extend that for the next year or the years past that.

41:26But at this point, September 30th of this calendar year is the last time you'll be able to use an HOV sticker in California.

41:42Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners. It's our pleasure and honor to make the show for you. If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate, and review it. Even better, forward it to a friend. A big mahalo to you for doing this. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. I gotta say, I am just having the time of my life in this interview, and I don't say that quite often. Madison can attest to that. The innovation that I discovered with the DMV that when I first saw it, I said, man, like what made them do this? This is so interesting. It's this thing that you can get your number for your appointment before you get to the DMV.

42:33So you can get that number in advance. So when you get to the DMV, there's already been progress in the queue. So I want to know, how did that idea come to be? It's like calling up Baskin-Robbins and say, all right, give me your ticket now, and I'm going to drive down there in 15 minutes, and I'll be served 30 seconds later. I think some of us came from just our experiences outside of the office. Yelp allows you to do that, like one of the local restaurants, there's a Thai place by my place in San Jose, and they would allow you to put yourself in line. So part of it was just that lived experience that I had, but it wasn't my idea.

43:08We went to our vendor, this company called Qmatic, and I said, hey, so how does this work? They said, oh yeah, we have this feature. You guys didn't want to use it. I said, so how does it work? They told me, yeah, just give your email address, put your phone in there, get your name, and we'll drop you online. So many of these companies have these features. We just didn't understand exactly how to use them and the role they would play. And that's actually an underutilized feature today, the get in line feature. I love it too. The first time I used it, by the time I got there, I was late. And I was just doing it from the office.

43:37And our nearest office is like a mile up the road. But it's a really great way to allow customers to remove the long wait in the parking lot and just know that they've got a place. They can see the number being called as it tells you where you are in line. I think it's a great feature. And it was already in the product, but the idea I saw it being used was at Yelp. We actually contacted Yelp. And the advantage of being the director of the DMV, When you contact people, they think, oh my God, I did something wrong in my driver's license. People call you back. You know, you go through the investor relations door, right?

44:05That's that door. People are responsive and coming through the investor relations. And you get a lot of feedback from these other industries about what they're doing, how they're doing it. So we incorporated that. It was in the product already, so I don't get any credit for inventing it. But I just recognize I've been using that product via Yelp for this local Thai place because it was just easier to get in line as I walked over there from my house in San Jose. And wait, I'm just curious, not that I've never done this, but what happened? if you get there and your number's been called? The team will then put you at the top of the list.

44:34Okay. So there's no downside. There's very little downside. Okay. It's good to know. I got a lot of questions. I'm fascinated by your business. I'm sorry. You've got to come volunteer some time here. We could use some guy in the business. Sign me up. I'll go get training from Tamika and Madison, and I will staff the Capitola office. We would probably just be happy if you help us think about some of our bigger problems. But if you want to work at retail, we're happy to put you at a window. So I want to know, why does the DMV register every car every year? Like I know there are 10 states that do every two years.

45:15I know Delaware is a permanent registration. Like I have six people in my family. That means at some point I own four cars or something. And I'm always filling out forms. I'm always worried that I missed the deadline, that I get the penalty. Can't I register for a longer time? Yeah. So I think there's two issues there. One is that we've just launched a few months ago the concept of a garage. So you can put your vehicles in the garage. Now we've launched, you can cash your credit card. So again, these are just commercial services that all of us see at Amazon or wherever we might shop online. And then the next thing we'll do is B is to set them up for auto payment.

45:52So you will never be late again. but California's law is that we do it on an annual basis I'm not sure if that's a budgetary thing a cash flow thing but I agree with you that if you did them two years at a time or whatever I think the concern I hear and and this is anecdotal that well if you register for two years you sell your car now you have to deal with the I've got to unwind that transaction they didn't drive it for the second year I've got to give refunds and give me money back refunds is just a convoluted process there's a lot of controls around that so it's fixed it one year but we want to make that one year so that it's easy so you can just put it on auto pay and like everything else in life got to remember to take things off auto pay when you don't want them anymore but that's where we're going i tried sorry okay now another question i'm curious about is because i can't remember is donating your organs is it opt-in or opt-out it is opt-in why can't you make it opt-out good Good question.

46:50That's a statutory issue. I'm on the administration side of that. If the legislature wants it to be opt out, they can certainly write a bill and we will then adhere to that bill. We don't make the rules. We just operate within them. But I think social psychology has proven that if it's opt out, you'll get like 90 % opting or not opting in because you can't opt in. But 90 % of people would donate their organs if it was opt-out, right? I'm sure Donate Life in California would be happy to have that. I'm sure they're probably working on some legislation in that area, but it's not there today. Okay.

47:29What's the relationship with business partners like AAA? And I understood the AAA business partner, but then I saw that there's this insurance brokers and stuff. Did AAA come to you and say, please let us do some of this? Or did you go to AAA and say, take some of the load off of us? No, it predates me. But what I've heard, and I believe this is true, that AAA back in the day, a hundred and some years ago, used to be the DMV. And then the state said, actually, we want to take over that responsibility. But AAA is then, because of that past relationship, and again, you'd have to Google this, but we've been in business for 115, 117 years.

48:09And so before that, AAA, the Automobile Association was the place you had vehicles registered. Now, we should check this. I'm sure your audience is going to fact-its, but I believe that to be true. And so they have a special relationship with us. And so we extend our systems into AAA. So they have a special relationship that they are part of us and they can do transactions in a unique way. And there's no uplift on what they charge. At some point over the past number of years, there's this business partner program that has grown inside of California. And there's a couple of levels, but at the retail level, which are talking about insurance companies, small shops, you see them around every corner.

48:47And there's 6 ,000 plus retail sites. There's a belief that having those services in the community is a good thing. People are more likely to consume a service if it's within their community. And there's some evidence to say that's true. By and large, though, that the people that are probably doing the most with this are some of the online retailers. And that's a bit tricky because they charge an uplift for the service in this business partner program. And if you're not careful for the same service you can get at retail price, no uplift from us, vehicle registration, you're paying that same fee and then you're paying a$39 uplift.

49:24And that infuriates some folks because they're listed as a partner, but people missed the point that they didn't need to go down that road to get that done. But anyway, there's 6 ,000 plus of those across the state. There's a few large online retailers. And then on top of that, there's this first line service providers. Think about it as a two-tier distribution model. The first line partners, there are five of them. And those people actually then license all the people that are underneath them. And California is unique in a sense that the people that are actually in that channel, dealers are part of that channel.

49:54So if you're a franchise new car dealer in California, you are required to do an e-report of sale, electronic report of sale. And you're required to use one of those first line service providers to do it. And because we want to make sure the forms come into us, they come in right and so on. And so you see those fees listed out when you buy a car. And at the next level, if you're a used car dealer, you're also required to participate in those systems, but in a different way. We want all those documents coming to us electronically. So that distribution model works, and it's kind of a lot of different facets to it.

50:25But at the retail level, the insurance shop, the smog shops, and so on, that's just brick and mortar additional services that have been enabled across the state and are used in local communities. Because sometimes that's where you can speak a certain language, although we support 36 languages. okay it's a complicated world guide okay steve now if you thought i was being tactical before i'm gonna get a really tactical because i am very curious look at the time no okay okay these are gonna be quick and easy questions okay but stuff i'm wondering about and i bet a lot of people are okay so i want to know if you understand how the hov fast pass pricing on highway 101 in san mateo county works because i have been in that lane and that lane says hov two or more fast pass required fast pass is from 3 to 6 p.m except if you have an hov or something and i am driving along and of course i'm going speed limit but i am driving along in my plug-in hybrid car.

51:33And for the life of me, I cannot figure if I'm going to be pulled over or not. Yeah. Do you know how that works? No. I read those signs too and say, I have no idea. I look for the next signpost and see if I can figure it out piece by piece. But I'm like you, it's unclear what's categorized in the three or plus, two plus, but where you are in the state as well. So unfortunately, I'll kick that over to our friends at Caltrans and to the State Transportation Commission. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. I can't figure that out. Sorry. Okay. I see you are honest. All right. So now I have a plug-in hybrid and I found out to my surprise that I can get an HOV sticker, but it expires in September.

52:13So why are there short-term HOV stickers for some models? Well, they're not short-term. They mirror the federal fiscal year. That's why they end at September 30th. And it's a federal law. These are federal roads that they allow California and other states to give certain privileges to HOVs. So we have to go and have the federal administration, I'm not sure if it's federal highways or NHTSA, I think it's federal highways. This is their program that they allow California to allow people into the HOV lane. We give a sticker as a result of that so we can identify those vehicles and make sure they qualify for emissions and so on.

52:47So the reason that it only is good to September, that is the end of the federal fiscal year. So we're waiting right now to find out if the federal government is going to continue to extend that for the next year or the years past that. But at this point, September 30th of this calendar year is the last time you'll be able to use an HOV sticker in California. At all? For any car? Without federal, without a change in federal rules. Yes. Wow. I'm sure there's some 19-year-old undergraduate who's looking into that for us. So next question is, I have the app wallet MDL, and I don't quite understand.

53:25If I get pulled over by the CHP and I don't have my physical license, can I just show my phone? Is it good enough for that? Yeah. Law enforcement has not updated processes to consume the MDL, and a lot of places haven't. So I've been working with my counterpart, the commissioner of the CHP, and I think he's looking to figure out how do we make vehicle stops more efficient, more effective, safer for the officer and for the passengers in the vehicle. But this sort of change takes time. So we're just getting TSA to be able to take the MDL at the airport. I was just at Sacramento Airport just last week.

53:59They're announcing the next tranche of airports that will take a mobile driver's license. California is the only state that also uses a different technology. So we have the ISO standard, which is what you'll see in the MDL at the airports. And there's a verifiable credential W3C standard that allows us to be able to have something that could be used not only on websites for web purchases, but also in retail. And so we're working with a company called TrueAge, which represents these convenience stores and to be able to consume the mobile driver's license at convenience stores. So it's an emerging technology guy and law enforcement is gonna get there.

54:32And we're working with law enforcement. I have a chance. I get to know the commissioner of the California Highway Patrol, Sean Dury. marvelous guy. And he wants to modernize this thing. And we're working with him to do that. So you can actually have the engagement. They can have a safe transaction. They can pre-fill some forms if you're going to get a citation. So that day's coming, but it's not coming today. Okay. So the bottom line is carry your physical license. You need to carry your physical license. Yes. Okay. Now this question, I only have two more. This question I'm asking for a friend.

55:04All right. So I know that if you flunk the driving test twice and if you flunk it again, you got to start all over with the permit process. At least I think that's still true, right? What happens if my friend takes his kid and they go to the DMV and they watch the route that the test goes on? They follow a test driver and they say, okay, so now we know exactly which route that person is taking. So when you go for your driver's test, we're going to practice on that route. Is that legal? I'm sure this friend has been to one of the driving schools because that's one of the requirements for first-time drivers.

55:45Those driving schools know the routes that DMV takes, but that doesn't mean you're going to pass the test. So I think it's, yeah, it's certainly legal to do that. I would encourage you to do that, drive safely at the right distance. But the net of it is you still have to drive. My son, we were living in San Jose at the time. He took his at the Los Gatos office. and he pulls out of the parking lot and there's a truck that is unloading in the middle of the street. Even if he knew the route, which he did not, you have to be able to handle this obstacle that was in the middle of the road that, do I go to the right?

56:14Do I go to the left? Do I wait? So there are those things. And that's why people, I think they're challenged. You have to be able to know how to stop, how to navigate. Even if you know the route, it doesn't really matter. You still have to know how to get around the block and down the street. All right, because this friend used this story in a book to illustrate the concept that there's always a way to prepare for tests. And if you can figure out a way to prepare for tests, you can do better on the test. And when this friend wrote this story in his book, some people read that and said in New York, it's illegal to follow an exam to learn the routes.

56:56So I'm just asking for this friend who lives in California, if it's illegal here. Yeah. I don't think it's illegal. I don't know if it's wise to do that. Focus on the fundamentals. That's what I did with my son. Make sure he had enough reps, enough things. That's where you should spend your time. Okay. This is my last question. My last question is, I applied for personalized play three months ago. Can you check if it's done yet? Sure. so i'm gonna call up to mika and say to mika can you please help me she would love that phone call by the way personalized plates is a couple things right so we've changed the way we do personalized plates where we have an ai agent now that helps you helps us validate if the plate's going to be offensive and there's no shortage of things that are offensive that are clear edge cases and then from there there's a manufacturing process because each one of these things requires a special stamping and that takes some time, but it shouldn't take any longer than that 90 days.

57:53So off the air, you are, or you could outsource to Madison and shoot me the VIN and then I'll take a look. Wait, are you telling me that it's not somebody in Soledad who's making my plates? It's not a prison thing. That's a myth. No, no, no, no. It's not Soledad, but it's in Folsom and it is not a myth. There are stamping machines and there's - In Folsom prison. Yeah, I've been there. It's prisons, by the way, if you've never been inside of a prison, they're pretty depressing. So let's start there. But there's a team of folks that are part of the production line that actually stamp plates and they do a great job.

58:27And it just still takes a little while. Plates are stamped in California and it's a very sophisticated process, but it's also done inside the prison. So if there's a problem, your supply chain could be disrupted. I have visited San Quentin twice. And I got to tell you, I've been scared a few times in my life, but man, just walking through the prison, it's truly amazing. Just like the wire, man. I was scared shitless the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. I would encourage you to stay out of prison. But again, off the air, shoot me the vehicle identification number, the VIN, and we'll take a look, tell you where it is.

59:0490 days is probably right in the window because it just takes time to get that in the queue. It's a special one-off process. We got our sequential plates that are cranking through. So I got to stop that line to do, oh, this is Guy Kawasaki's plate. Let me, with reverence, and there's probably some incense or whatever we do. No, I'm kidding. There's no incense. Well, Steve Gordon, this has been a most enjoyable episode. And thank you. Besides all the humor, there's some very important lessons about the professionalism of your organization, how you manage by driving around and how these people have a mission.

59:39They are proud of what they do. And like for the 15th time, just let me tell you, I really love the California DMV. Great. Guy, thanks for having me on. And thanks for helping promote our services. We really appreciate it. All right. And I'm serious. If you ever want evangelism advice, I'm here for you. I'm going to take you up on it. Next time I'm down in the Capitol area, I'm going to call you up as well. We're going to see if you'll show up. We'll see. We'll see. I'll greet you at the DMV. That would be great. I look forward to that. So this was Steve Gordon, California DMV, and I hope you enjoyed this episode, listening to it as much as I enjoyed recording it and doing it.

1:00:18So this is Guy Kawasaki. It's Remarkable People. I hope we made you a little bit more remarkable today. Thanks to Madison Neisman, producer, co-author, Tessa Neisman, researcher, and Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez. is we are the Remarkable People team, and we're trying to make you remarkable and get a remarkable car registration experience. Thank you, everybody.

1:00:46This is Remarkable People.