645: Ryan Petersen (Flexport CEO) - Front Line Obsession, Gemba Walks, Relentless Work-Ethic, CEO Mastermind Groups, & Valuing Simplicity

25:49There are a lot of work to map dependencies and say, hey, you own this. And then constant assessment of are these teams aligned? It is true. People will optimize for their own. Work structure changes can make a big difference in achieving an outcome. But I don't think there's anyone that's more complicated than freight forwarding, more interdependence. Because, you know, there's a lot of global companies like Coca-Cola has probably more offices in more countries than we do. They're at every plate. But Coca-Cola in Vietnam doesn't need to cooperate with Coca-Cola in Mexico. They run their own little P &L.

26:23They just run fast. They do their own thing. But in freight forwarding, every transaction from Vietnam to Mexico, both those teams have work to do that they need to collaborate on to get that shipment moved. And there's an ocean team that's getting its space on the boat, customs teams clearing the customs. So there's domain expertise and there's regional operational work, all needing to collaborate on each and every single transaction. So you do it a lot through metrics, a lot through alignment, a lot of video calls at different hours of the day. People know they got to work nights or early mornings.

27:01But we made it one of our values to just clarify, like, guys, we're all on one team here. Let's solve this problem together. A lot of it can be done through metrics. Never underestimate the incentives. That's one of the core aspects here is you've got to have a strong mission that ties people together, a sense of purpose, a real focus that comes through the metrics, good decision-making processes. If you need to change direction, it's clear who can make what decisions and a good program for knowledge and learning and make sure we're all, like those are kind of the underpinnings of good culture in addition to the values.

27:36It's a reminder what my dad has reminded me a million times it dude leadership if it were easy then you wouldn't need to exist like this is why you whenever like i complain about something it's like this is why you exist as a leader this is specifically why if it were easy and everything just worked you wouldn't really need leaders you just kind of go out and do the thing but this is why leadership is a thing is because you have to work through these complexities through these issues these incentives through the messiness of human beings that's why leaders exist yeah and the relationships really matter COVID really derailed Flexport in a lot of ways, not just the fact that we couldn't ship containers successfully because of the port situation and other problems.

28:16We stayed to work from home for way too long. Now, we're five days a week in office, but we stayed for like a couple of years too long. We should have just always worked through it in office for our business. Then on top of that, regardless of whether you're in office, we're not all in the same office. So you got to get people together. So started this on the recommendation of Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb, who's someone I really look up to on the culture front. And he recommended it. He got it from Steve Jobs of take the 150 most important people in the company, not the most senior people. And it doesn't have to be the same list every time.

28:51It's not. But get the top 150 together twice a year is what they do. I think we're doing once a year for the top 150 and then twice a year in addition to that for 350 people. Gather them together and go through, here's what we're doing and why. Deep dive into the different teams and the different plans that are happening and trainings. And part of that, we do a speed dating thing. Just like meet this person for 15 minutes. Talk through what you do, what they do. Just trying to create serendipity on some level. but I think that in-person is just key. I'm jealous of companies where just everybody works in one building.

29:31Is it hard to choose those 150? Yeah, it is. And I just do it. We just do it. The leaders have to pick their list and I reallocate and then I keep 25 slots that are just based on contribution to our culture and values, not based on level at all. Yeah. The leaders will always pick their direct reports and the senior most people, but I don't want it to be the 150 most senior. So I do a lot of hand-selecting of people who are like high-contributing culturally, as well as people who are just like, all right, this person, maybe not the most senior, but maybe it's a key designer or a staff engineer or a salesperson who's just absolutely crushing it or something.

30:08You want to have a mix of different people there. And then it's not the same every time. That has to be like, this is not a static list. If you're one of the flex providers who didn't get invited, it's like, it's fine. Maybe you'll come to the next one. Or here's these avenues of ways that you can contribute more to get invited. And it's not the only thing that we do. I'm trying to do more, like, as we get more and more profitable, our goal is to end this year sustainably, durably profitable as a company. Then a big way to reinvest, I think, is going to be these types of summits and getting – it's not cheap, right?

30:37We're doing the next one in Vietnam, taking 150 people to Vietnam. So I want to do more and more of that in different types of groups, right? The summits we do are, like, 300 people where we're coming together as more operators, people who are, like, moving freight and stuff. That we do in Vegas because it's cheaper. We do it in Vegas in the summer. It'd be nice to do that more frequently in more places, like get people more exposure. Yeah. Getting together with people, there's just nothing beats that. I actually think it's in demand more now than ever because we got a feel, we got a taste of what it's like to have that taken away from us.

31:12And so now I've sensed in-person events, companies getting together, leadership off sites, all of the above are way more in demand. I want to talk about culture and maybe even costs getting out of hand. So the last time we talked, you were the CEO, founder, CEO of Flexport. Now we're talking, you're the founder, CEO of Flexport. But in between the two times we've talked, you were just the founder, but not necessarily the CEO. You hired a CEO to come in and run the business. There's a lot that goes into that. It didn't necessarily go great from what I gathered. I'd love to hear what made you initially want to hire an outside CEO and then what made you decide to say, nope, I'm taking this thing back.

31:56I got to come back and run the show. Yeah, it clearly didn't go well or you don't hire the CEO and then plan to come back. Right. And I came back after six months, but a lot went wrong during that period. Why did we do it? I wasn't trying to hire a CEO. I was trying to hire a COO and his name is Dave Clark. He had become the CEO of Amazon's retail division. So kind of what you and I think of Amazon, not AWS, but Amazon.com. But he'd really come up through the supply chain logistics group there. He ran supply chain and logistics. So it seemed like a marriage made in heaven. I think I made the mistake of falling in love with the resume.

32:28But honestly, it's not Dave's. We had our problems, but I wouldn't blame Dave at all. Even just listening to myself earlier talking about the culture and how complicated it is, how complex it is, and how interrelated. And it's just very hard for an outsider, probably impossible to take over the company. And if doing it over again, I mean, first of all, I wouldn't, but should have hired the COO if that's what I needed. And it turns out, I don't think I even needed that. I needed to have more confidence. But we're now, like, our key HR focus is just hiring from within. You got to promote from within.

33:03And so if I ever, someday I will pass the torch, you know, hopefully when I'm very old, and it will be someone who's been at the company for many years, who's grown up. and it's a natural transition, not an outsider. It's just too hard to, too much to learn. The fundamental problems, the short-term proximate cause, we let costs get out of control and quality suffer. Our customers, our churn went up, our NPS with our customers went down and our costs ballooned. You're like, this is like a perfect storm. So we did have to go through quite a turnaround the last 18 months, but it's bad. Company's in a good place right now.

33:36Did you think you weren't knowledgeable enough? Why bring in somebody else? Because I'm just trying to distinguish for maybe someone listening who I get the population isn't that big of someone who started something and then it gets so big or gets to the point where like, you know what, we need to bring the guy who ran the best company in the world. And it's Amazon. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm just wondering for that person, what was it? I'm a huge Amazon fan. I think Amazon is a really interesting company. And in our world of tech plus logistics, it's kind of an end of one type of company.

34:07Yeah. Maybe that's not quite true on a global basis, but in the United States, Amazon is like tech and logistics. That's who I think of besides Flexport. And the problems that I was trying to solve is operationally doing the same thing over and over again a little bit better every time. How do you drive that operational rigor to improve quality, remove defects, just like drive repeatability, reduce variability of outcomes? Just that whole lean is what it's called in the US, but it's Toyota Production System ultimately is who pioneered this in the world. And Amazon was very well known for doing that.

34:42I'd hired a lot of good people from Amazon. A lot of them told me this guy was amazing, would be perfect for us. I trusted some people on the reference checks more than anything. Of course, I had some bad reference checks that I just ignored. So that was my fault. So those were, I was looking for someone who could do those types of things. Like I'm more of the creative type. I like to do different things every day, not the same thing over and over again. And operations is review the same metrics every day. find the defects, root cause it, ask why over and over again, do it again, kind of build those rhythms.

35:13And so I was looking for a partner to do that. Next thing I knew, I kind of convinced myself that he'd be better as the CEO rather than the COO. And probably that was the only way to hire him in the first place. So I kind of fell into that. That should have been the first sign that this was the wrong fit because it wasn't what I was hiring for. And yeah, in hindsight, I should have had more confidence in my ability to go learn these things and put it in and get the team to own those challenges. It's a fun intellectual problem and like philosophical problem. And really, it's actually very, very interesting to take Toyota production system and apply it to our business because we're a different business.

35:50We're not a manufacturing business. And yet there's a lot of parallels. So it's actually very intellectually stimulated. They'd be like, oh, what is the concept of inventory in a logistics company? We don't have inventory, but what would be the related concept that we'd work off of? Interesting. I want to talk about poise. I think excellent leaders have this. I've got to learn about being kind of calm and composed and poised as a quarterback and playing in college a little bit afterwards that stuff's going bad all the time. You throw an interception, you get sacked, you got to bounce back, you got to stay cool, you got to get the play call in and call it with confidence, right?

36:28And I read that you said something, rule number one in a crisis is everybody will rally around the calmest person in the room. You got to have poise, right? You got to be composed. Can you talk to me about the importance of being the calmest person in the room? Well, it's great advice. I'm not that good at it. I'm kind of emotional and get pissed off too easily. It's something I need to work on. But it is intellectually correct, and you need to remember it and come back to it and figure out, you know, it's a real, real crisis. sure you can you have the moment to digest but when people are just like disappointing you and sometimes valuable to get mad at someone and yell at them and what was the um the gentleman is never rude except on purpose there is a time and place do you do that in front of peers or do you do that privately or both probably both uh is that something you think about though or because some some exec teams it's just part of the sports background you just get used to that you're gonna to get ripped in front of all your buddies and that's just how it goes i don't think it's that bad actually there's some value in i don't do this that much but reading about it it's kind of an interesting idea that there is value in getting mad at one of your directs in front of their team yes because then the next time they ask you something they'll be like oh we better we better the next time that exec asked them to do something they're like we better deliver or ryan's gonna yell at him again i i don't do that consciously but i was just reading someone talking about that I was like, it's kind of an interesting idea.

37:56I think, though, there is value if somebody is viewed as, this is like a Belichick-Brady thing, but somebody is viewed as above everybody else, you make sure that that's not true. I had a coach, I remember one of my favorite coaches, he pulled me aside and said, this is when things were going pretty well for me, and he said, hey, I'm going to rip you in front of the guys regularly because they need to see that nobody's above the team. And so if you make a mistake, I might overdo it a little bit. actually I've built a ton of trust with me and him because he's like it's not gonna be fake it'll be when you mess up but just know and I know you can take it and so I think like there is some art to that when it comes to communicating and leadership to making sure that everybody knows the standard here is really really high and we're holding everybody to it I think that's a good leadership moment yeah that's interesting there's so much I never played I wasn't a very good athlete so I don't have that background but I wish I did there's so much where do you pull like your leadership lessons.

38:50I feel like you're well-read, but where do you pull from? Is it from your peer group, your friends, the Paul Grahams of the world? Where do you do it? Some of that. I have a good CEO group that there's 10 of us. I think CEOs of peer-level companies that we meet really regularly and give each other feedback and help support. How was that formed? I don't know. They already had it going and they invited me. I'm fascinated by these things because I think we need these things. All of us need these. I am curious there's probably some parts that you don't talk about but i am just curious about how the whole thing goes like what are the meetings are they formal informal how does it work they're semi-formal there's formal in terms of like we have it pre-scheduled you're only allowed to miss two a year or you get kicked out wow do you get together in person every other month in person wow are you guys located all in california or everyone's in california but some are in socal and some are in sf so that's why we don't do every month in person okay and then we alternate sf or LA.

39:47So you have to fly every third month to the other city. Okay. We do updates. So you'd say, what's the best thing that's happening last month and the worst thing kind of personal and professional share. And then someone times it and make sure people don't go for too long. And then we save time at the end to synthesize topics that looked relevant across different people's areas and deep dive or offer to help somebody who had a problem that someone thinks they could offer input on. And so it's pretty good. I recommend people, you got to find peers that can do that for you. Right. We're not in like a formal association with a bigger group, but I think it's kind of similar to what YPO does.

40:24Yeah. In their little formations. I think we probably copied it. So I think one of the guys, a member of YPO and helped us structure a little bit on how they do things. You have simplified your Twitter bio or X bio about making global commerce as simple and reliable as flipping a light switch. And you highlighted this recently. Can you talk to me more about, again, back to simplicity and the, we all can envision just flipping a light switch. What's that all about? Oh, well, I like the light switch analogy because very similar in the old days, when electricity was first invented, every company had to have their own power plant in their factory.

41:02Well, originally before electricity, you had to put your plant next to a waterfall to make power off the water mill. But then when electricity came along, everybody ran their own generators. And it was only with the development of the grid, now we just take for granted that you had electricity and you flip that light switch. But when you control, if you're in a place that's coal fired, where you're getting your power from coal, which most of us are, if you flip that light switch, you're actually controlling the power plant itself. Like it's getting a little bit hotter for you. There's not a battery between you and the generator.

41:33It's generating a tiny bit more electricity on demand for you. We just totally take that for granted. And yet it powers everything that we do. And I think in logistics, in commerce, you have this mindset. You don't really think about it. The idea, you buy something on a website and it just gets delivered to you. You think, therefore, oh, there must be this complex interconnected system that flows data back to the factory that's making those goods. And they produce one more on demand to replenish and move it in. And that's not how it works today. Today, it's like a bunch of emails and attachments and kind of duct taping this thing together of phone calls and spreadsheets.

42:09But that's what our ambition is, is to make it work a lot more like the electrical grid, that you buy something, the demand signal is automatically sent back to the factory to queue up production on demand, make one more. Or maybe they shouldn't make one more. It depends on the product and what the machine learning models say about what demand forecast looks like for the next one and where to position that item. Should they put it in a fulfillment center near you or in the center of the country or fulfill it off the water, fulfill it directly from the factory? Yeah, we want to make it more like the electrical grid where you can just take it for granted and have it work on demand.

42:44Interesting. I like the simplicity and the use of metaphors and making something complex easy to understand. Changing gears a little bit before we run in a few minutes, I'm always fascinated what a CEO looks for in somebody, specifically on a leadership team. So these are really important decisions. I know it sounds like you're shifting more towards promoting from within. And maybe you've always done that for other jobs, but you didn't for the one brief stint for the CEO. But what are some of the must-haves when someone's going to get promoted or hired into a role that's super important, like a leadership role?

43:19It's a number of things. Work ethic, very underrated. And you won't find that in an interview. You got to talk to people who worked with them. Is this one of the hardest working people we've ever met? will they outwork everybody else? Work ethic is super key. I think John Calvin is probably the greatest religious genius of all time. Well, maybe that's an overstatement, but incredible genius because Calvinism basically that your fate is predetermined whether you're going to go to heaven or hell is already decided before you're born. You have nothing to do. However, the only way you can know which one you're going to do is based on how much wealth you accrue and how hard you work.

43:54And it's like basically the origin of capitalism comes from that insight. It's like, all right, I got to work really hard and don't spend money so that I can prove that I'm going to heaven. I'm not like literally looking for Calvinist Protestants, but there's something to that work ethic. It's not innate in everybody. Some people have it, some people don't. You can be any religion to have it, but there's some argument that the origin of it comes from Calvinism. Intellect, I want really, really smart people. I want to be wowed by how smart they are. And that comes with curiosity because you're not born that smart.

44:26you learned all this stuff. And so someone who's like constantly learning and excited by learning. Then I mentioned earlier humility, because again, even the really wise people are wrong 30 % of the time. So you got to be willing to be wrong and admit it and stay humble. And frankly, like arrogance is its own form of stupidity because you stop learning. Reliability, something that you want to look for, someone that actually does what they say they're going to do. Public speaking or charisma. I mean, I guess that goes along with the communication that we talked about earlier, your ability to simplify and communicate well.

44:58And then there's, in our spaces, domain experience, which could be logistics, legal, finance, whatever the domain is that they gotta be, have seen a lot of edge cases and developed enough experience to have intuition. How much of this is done through an interview process versus how much is done through referrals and talking to people who've worked with them? It's almost all referrals and references. And that's why I try to do internal hiring for everything because it's just like, how do you trust these external people that they're telling you? Do you know them better than they know the person?

45:30Yeah, you could see it, that they've actually done it while working at your company. That's ideal, right? Worked really, really hard, been humble, curious, learned new things. But we can't fill all the roles internally, which I so hard. But when it's external, I try to get someone whose referrals from people who work at the company are worth way more than a random reference check that the candidate themselves gave you, right? Right, right. That's my ideal. Like I've only hired one exec in the last couple of years and he was someone who was one of my direct reports bosses for six years and said he was the best boss ever without remembering that he works for me now.

46:06So are you still doing much work with Founders Fund? Well, I mean, I was full-time there and now I'm kind of a part, not really. I'm so focused on Flexport. I hope to in the future. The end of the year, we turn profitable Q4 and then I think I'll have more options there. Most people in your position, they have moments where there's more balance in their life, but a lot of their life is not very balanced. So I don't really even strive for that. I think people that do big things usually are obsessed. They have amazing work ethics. They get after it, right? They chase it with great rigor. I am curious.

46:39So you're a family guy, married, kids. How do you manage making sure that you have a strong marriage and you're a good dad in addition to doing this impossibly hard job? Yeah. of work at it i guess i got two little kids two little girls so i'm trying to give them as much attention as i possibly can when i'm there make it home for bedtime most nights weekends a lot of time but i'm kind of bad i'm like constantly thinking about flex sports so really yeah constantly i'm sure investors love to hear that and employees probably love to hear that but what does your wife think when you say that um well i mean i'm just being honest she knows she's correcting me she's pushing me she's a good partner she's like knows you know what's best for me what's good for the company she knows she knows that it's good that i'm obsessed with flexport that's it's like hannibal right like hannibal the general he was always praised because his soldiers were never loyal were never defected they were always very loyal and he's like ah he's a great general but the only thing is he was pretty cruel whenever somebody defected from his army, he would torture them to death.

47:49Well, you can't criticize him for that. If you're going to praise him for his soldiers, never defecting, uh, you know, on some level, you got to take the good with the bad. So are you saying though, cause I feel this so much of when you're kind of an alpha type of a person who gets things done, who does big, big things in the world, who leaves a positive dent, right? You employ thousands of people, you're helping so many, your customers, all this. There is a cost, right? You don't become that type of a guy who does those things without being obsessed, without being a maniac, without working really hard.

48:22I think there's just a price to it. And I don't think we should act like that doesn't exist. That's just a real thing. That's my thing. Yeah. But I mean, like, it's amazing to have kids because it gives you an instant fulfillment, sense of purpose, why we're here. I mean, I would always wonder about that. Like I always got my purpose and fulfillment from building Flexport. And I would wonder like, what are all these people that aren't doing this? How are they getting purpose in the world? And then you have kids. You're like, oh, I get it. You just need to raise your kids. And that's all the purpose you ever need.

48:51So there's a tension there because I see it. I feel it. It's great to care about so much about them, about anybody besides yourself. That's the thing. I feel like it gives us massive purpose. I remember after having one and I was thinking, there is no possible way I can love the second one as much as the first one. It's not possible. But here's the weird thing, and you know this, right? Because you've done it. But then you have the second one and all of a sudden you can, like you do, like you actually are able to have more love. And I think that's a good thing for a leader. That's a good thing for a person is like, I didn't think it was humanly possible because I love this thing so much.

49:31And then you have the second one. You're like, wait a second. I'm capable. Like, it's just, it's bizarre, dude. I mean, being a dad is the best. It is the best. It is the best. and as uh so that work on constantly is like work on my take put my phone away don't pick it up don't get distracted it'll be there yeah but also the example of working hard is a really really good thing one more thing before we run dude you're meeting with a young person maybe like a newer employee who's straight out of college or straight out of like columbia business school like you were and they want to like leave a dent right like they want to leave a positive dent in the world what are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to them oh i mean i think everything is about learning is like building your capabilities and learning.

50:09And I really like to point people to Charlie Munger's essay, Unworldly Wisdom. You can find it. I think it was actually a graduation speech that he did. I think it was at USC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really important piece of knowledge and wisdom is the idea that in life, there's only a limited number of domains of areas. It's not infinite things. And yeah, these are arbitrary lines between those. You can say how many there are, but I call it 300 different areas. And in each of these domains, there's two or three big ideas that if you understand that, you kind of get 80 % of the whole domain.

50:45And so it's not an infinite problem to learn. To become worldly wise would mean you'd know these kind of main ideas and therefore mental models from all the domains. And that's a very good starting point to strive towards in life. And you can read pretty easily. The world's smartest people have taken the moment, taken the time to write down their ideas. Like you can engage with the smartest people to ever live. And a lot of people don't take advantage of that. So we're going to read constantly, find the people who know the thing that you want to do and model them, ask them. Those are all good ideas.

51:20And then I guess the other one comes from Rene Girard, which is the idea that we're all imitative people. There's no way around it. That's what human beings are. We imitate others. That's what separates us from the animals is that we're very good at imitating. And there's no way out of this. You're going to imitate somebody. So you should be very conscious about who you imitate. Choose your role models wisely. Surround yourself with people that are, have similar values to the ones you want to have that are working towards inspiring things that are leading the type of life that you want to lead because you're going to naturally imitate those people.

51:54And if you're not careful, you'll be imitating the wrong model. You will be, you will imitate someone. I think this is why, um, why Christianity can be really important is like imitate Christ, pick the ideal and imitate that rather than at least you're consciously choosing someone great to imitate. Otherwise you will imitate someone who's, you get it wrong and it can be disastrous. So I think picking really good role models, whoever it might be is really important and do it consciously. those are all good ideas and optimize for that for learning and like who are you going to learn from you don't have that one role model you can have role models for different areas of development or different areas you're trying to learn luke burgess has a book called wanting which is all about renee gerard so that's really good it's funny ryan actually i leave on this trip tomorrow i go on an annual trip with my younger brother and it's with people who have definitely sustained excellence they've generated a lot of wealth in their life they haven't inherited these are people who've worked really, really hard and made tons of money and are kind of world changers.

52:54And I'm super lucky to get to go. We've done it last 17 years. We have dinners every night. We hang out during the day. When I come back from that trip, I think differently, man, being around kind of world dominators, it raises your level of thinking. It truly, truly does. So I love that advice to put yourself in environments with people who do big things, who get after it, who are optimists who want to do it the right way by working insanely hard, like the first thing you mentioned when you're going to hire somebody. It's so good. And remembering that success compounds, right? Because those people don't want to hang out with you if you've never done anything interesting or haven't contributed, et cetera.

53:30And so you got to work your way up. And then the more successful you become, the more capable you become, it'll compound on itself because now you're going to be able to surround yourself with people even more successful than that. and that will inspire you, that you will learn from them, et cetera. But you don't, networking is not that useful. Like you come out of college and like, oh, I met so-and-so. Like, I've met tons of famous people and entrepreneurs, but like, it doesn't really help me unless they're see me as a peer and want to engage with me and develop. And that, you know, I've earned over time by being more and more successful.

54:03So you got to work on yourself. The best networking tool is being insanely good at whatever the thing is that you do. Yeah. It really is. is like, be so good, you can't be ignored. The Steve Martin, Cal Newport stuff, right? Whatever the thing is, it doesn't necessarily matter, but be insanely good at what you're doing. That's how you don't get kicked out of groups like that because those groups are ruthless too. Like they will, they're not afraid to disinvite people, right? They're just out. So I think like that's a big part of it as well. And in business world, you know, coming back to that mental models thing of like learning all this stuff, like a lot of the most successful people have come from like taking one domain and another domain and mixing these things out and find out like, oh, the best idea from this, no one's even thought about over here, but it would work.

54:47I mean, in our case, like SaaS. And one of my early inspirations for Flexport was this web app called Dropio. Sam Lesson started it, who then went over to become, I don't know, a senior job at Facebook. Facebook acquired it and killed it. It just wanted the team. But it was like the earliest web app where you could just like upload docs. Now you take it for granted, Google Drive or something, you upload these docs in there and it had a really nice UX. I was like, oh, we should have this for customs. So cool. It's funny you mentioned Sam. He's coming on in three weeks. I think we just booked that one a couple weeks ago.

55:18Fascinating dude. Hey, man, I love this. I'd love to continue and do it again as a little bit more time passes just to hear from you, man. I always learn a ton. I appreciate it, man. Likewise, man. Thanks a lot. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Ryan Peterson. A few takeaways from my notes. How about the tweet storm that saved Christmas when Ryan heard about the problems at the Long Beach Port? He asked the five whys, as he mentioned multiple times, the five whys, and then went to the front lines himself.

56:02This reminds me of General Stanley McChrystal and his front line obsession. I think senior leaders need to have a front line obsession. Ryan got a taco truck, rented a boat, and brought another high-powered CEO with him on the boat. Kind of held him captive, as he mentioned I should do. And then afterwards, he wrote a tweet storm about what he learned. It went viral. And then Governor Gavin Newsom called a couple hours later. and then policy changed a few hours after that. Ryan's action created change. That is frontline obsession. That is powerful. And then rule number one in a crisis is everybody will rally around the calmest person in the room.

56:50It is on us as leaders to be poised and level-headed when things go bad, as they inevitably will. Be prepared for those moments and how you will respond. Everybody will rally around the calmest person in the room. And I love his idea of going deeper than having quote chauffeur knowledge. A chauffeur can repeat back with the people they're driving said, but they don't know why. As leaders, we gotta go deeper than that. Understanding the things so that you can answer again those five whys and be able to describe it back to someone else with simplicity. That is when you truly show that you know something about that and not just having chauffeur knowledge.

57:38Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Peterson. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show. Really important. You write a thoughtful review and you rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.

58:09Talk to you soon. Can't wait.