320: Rick Smith - How To Take Initiative & Solve Problems (CEO Of Axon)

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It is so liberating when you take the mindset, I
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don't have to be right. I never actually have to
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be right. I just have to make sure the team
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gets the right answer. And when one of my junior
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employees challenges me on something and ultimately they're right and
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I'm wrong, I am elated when that happens. Because the
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way I look at it is, you know what? You
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just saved me from making an ass of myself. And
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the fact that you're right and I was wrong doesn't
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matter because the team got it right. And that's going
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to elevate all of us.
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Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk.
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Thank you so much for being here. Text LEARNERS to
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44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning
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leaders from all over the world. Receive mindful Monday updates
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when I'm watching, reading, thinking about, and writing. Also, give
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the opportunity to be a part of my book launch team.
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Text LEARNERS to 44222. Now, on to tonight's Featured leader,
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it's Rick Smith, the CEO and founder of Axon. Under
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his leadership, the company has grown from a garage in
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Tucson to a 1,300-person NASDAQ-listed global market leader in conducted
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electrical weapons, body-worn cameras, and software. Rick was a winner
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of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
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also an author of a recent book titled The End
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of Killing, How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problem.
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A few of the topics we discussed, the importance of
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challenging the status quo and how to effectively do this
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where you work. Then the qualities he looks for when
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hiring a leader, followed up by how to build a
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team that buys in to the overall mission. This was
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a fascinating talk with Rick Smith. All right, Rick Smith,
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it's so good to have you here on The Learning
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Leader Show.
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Welcome.
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It's awesome to be here. Thanks.
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Rick, you have an incredible story, and I'm excited to
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get into it. But to get us going, initially I
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have a quick question that I am curious about when
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it comes to the leaders I'm fortunate enough to talk with.
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And that is, when I look over everything that you've accomplished,
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as well as the people that have surrounded you in
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your sphere, on your team and those who have impacted you.
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When you take a step back and think about those
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leaders who sustain excellence and have sustained excellence over an
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extended period of time, what have you found to be
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some of the commonalities among them?
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I think the biggest one is just initiative. That people
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who just see what needs to be done and go
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do it and they don't wait for permission or for
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somebody to ask them to do it. I think those
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are the people that rise to the top. Now, it
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might be a little different. In some very large organizations,
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that sort of initiative may not work if you're in
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a super political environment, in which case I would say
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either enjoy being a politician and love where you're at
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or get the hell out. Get to an organization where
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initiative is rewarded.
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That's a really great point. And I feel like I'm fortunate.
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My wife gets asked for her opinion a lot from
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younger people that she mentors, college grads. And that's one
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of the things she shares with them a lot is
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that be proactive, which I think is another word for initiative,
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meaning don't wait around for somebody to tell you what
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to do.
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Go accomplish things. Do it.
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And after the fact, people will most likely thank you
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for it. And I think taking that initiative, that's fantastic advice.
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Yeah, I can give you an anecdote. A couple of them. So,
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you know, I started this company in 1993 in the
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around 2009. Right. So we're like a 16 year old company.
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You know, we've been reasonably successful. We're public, etc. And
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we were attempting to pivot from doing taser weapons to
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also doing software and cameras. And as we were doing this,
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our first software and camera product was frankly kind of
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a train wreck. And We hired this young program manager.
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And so his job was to basically just talk to
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all the engineers and put together the project plan, right?
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Like this guy didn't really have much authority. It was, hey,
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it's your job to just document everything, put together the timelines,
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you know, let us know how long it's going to
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take and make sure everybody's talking to each other. And
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this kid walks into my desk. You know, we have
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cubes at Axon. We've never had offices. So he walks
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up to me and he says, hey, I want to
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talk to you. I said, okay, great.
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What's up?
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Well, I don't know how to put this, but this
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product is a train wreck. And like having me put
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a lot of effort into documenting all the plans around
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it is like sort of fiddling on the Titanic. And
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I remember being a little taken aback in his direct nature.
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I was like, okay. And then he says, well, look,
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I don't want to just bring you a problem. I
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want to bring you a solution. We should put a
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bullet in this thing. And then he laid out a
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plan where he had found a company that was making
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consumer-grade Bluetooth cameras that we could go buy the cameras
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from them, repackage them, and then create a partnership with Oakley,
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the eyewear company, to see if we could make... Our
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product at that time was also pretty functional, but very ugly.
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And his point was, we should just throw out, start over,
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get a small consumer camera, and really try to collaborate
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with a brand like Oakley. And I said, okay, if
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you think you can do it, go. Go chase that down.
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And a couple of weeks later, he's back in my office.
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He's putting the deal together. Long story short, he's now
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the president of the company. He runs the company day
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to day. And, you know, he was maybe 26 at
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the time. And he just had the chutzpah to step
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way outside of his job description. And he kept doing that.
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Then once he was he brought this new product to market,
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he then was came to me and said, hey, our
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marketing is not very good. And he gave me specific examples.
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And then, of course, he gave me a solution, not
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just a complaint. And next thing you know, I'm like,
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all right, great. Guess what? You're now head of marketing
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and so forth. And he grew up. And I hold
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that up as an example for the behaviors I want
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to see our young people model, which is don't wait
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for people to tell you to do stuff. If you
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see something that's wrong, don't complain about it. Highlight it
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and fix it. And that's how you climb. And if
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you're not, as I've given this feedback, some people have said, well,
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that wouldn't work where I'm working. And my feedback then is, well, great.
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Then either be happy just slowly moving along in a
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hierarchical tenure structure. And that's okay if that's what you
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want out of life. But if you want the ability
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to grow faster and those sorts of behaviors are not rewarded,
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then you should probably change the environment and get somewhere else.
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Is that Luke Larson?
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That is Luke Larson.
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That's a really cool story. And now how big is
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your company Axon?
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We're about 1,300 people now. Wow.
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And how big were you at the time when Luke
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came to you and said, we should put a bullet
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in this thing and start it?
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I'd say we were about 250. Wow. And that product
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was really struggling. Yeah, it was. Luke, actually, I consider
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him a founder of Axon. So I sort of divide history.
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Taser was the company we started with to do electrical weapons.
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And by the way, we still do those. We're very
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proud of them. But Taser is now the brand of
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that product. And the company has gone on to do
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additional things. And Luke was a guy who really helped
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me reinvent the company by challenging the status quo. And
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he and there were a couple other people that had
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similar stories that, you know, guys were very young in
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their early in their career, who just stepped up and
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challenged things that weren't working. And now they're, you know,
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now those are the people that are running the company
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day to day.
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For those people who are running companies, or an organization
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as as you are, Rick, how How did you create
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an environment where somebody like Luke felt not only safe
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but the potential to be rewarded for sharing the brutal
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truth with you and having a solution, certainly. But I
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think for the people who said that wouldn't work here–
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I'm thinking of leaders who are fearful now that, wait,
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am I leading an organization where the people that work
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for me think it wouldn't work? I want to make
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sure I'm setting the proper culture where it could. What's
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your mindset towards setting up a place like that?
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My honest answer is I don't think I get the
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credit for that. I think Luke does. What he showed
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to me is I had actually built a culture where
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it was very founder driven where, you know, in the
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first half of my career, I kind of felt like, Oh,
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I'm the founder. It's my job to solve all the
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hard problems and tell people what to do. And so
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that's what the organization had, uh, sort of adapted to.
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That's how we operated. And luckily for me, it's very
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fortunate that, that we hired Luke and he really took
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it on himself to challenge the status quo. And I
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found it very refreshing. And now if we had been
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a very, if we were, you know, moving along, succeeding
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in the camera business. I don't know if he could
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have been as successful with the fact that we were,
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he told me an ugly truth. That was a true crisis.
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And that created the leverage for both him and ultimately
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me and the rest of us to change the company.
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So I got a little bit lucky there and that
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I found somebody who challenged me. So now if I
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put myself, if you're the leader of another company, you,
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You don't want to be the guy I was leading
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up to that. You don't want to be the one
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who's like, hey, you know, orders come down from on
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the top. And we tell you what you really, you
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want to create a culture where you're empowering people to
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challenge you. And so today I think we've gotten to
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a place where it's absolutely non-hierarchical. Any employee can challenge
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any idea as long as they do it respectfully. You know,
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we don't have any place for belittling people, et cetera,
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but the power of ideas come from, it doesn't matter
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where they come from. And many times it's hit some
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of our new young employees because they don't know how
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things have always been. And they'll be the ones who
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challenge it. And you really, that's hard to do. And
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as a company gets bigger, it gets harder just because
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the nature of larger organizations, they become a little less personal. 1,300
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people can't know each other as well as You know,
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50 people can. So I think it's really incumbent on
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the leaders to very explicitly model those behaviors and to
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make it clear that, you know, challenging the status quo
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with good intentions is exactly what we want you to do.
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I mean, you've got to reward people who do it.
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I frequently hold Luke up in front of the company
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and I tell this story. Personally, I do a little
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bit of humor because Luke... He's he's he he's blessed
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that he looks much younger than he is right now
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that I'm 49. I wish I had that attribute. So
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I'll hold him up and I'll have a little fun
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with him. Say, hey, many of you are probably wondering
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why we have a teenager running the company. And I'll
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go back and I'll tell the story. I'm really look, hey,
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I want you guys to model this. Luke got where
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he is because he challenged the status quo and he
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fixed it with zero authority to do it. And that's
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what I want everybody here to model. And that's how
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you will succeed in this organization, how you will climb,
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not by waiting and just sort of doing the things
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you've been assigned to do.
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There are people right now, Rick, who are working to
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build out their teams. Perhaps there's open positions and they
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are in charge of hiring for those to fill out
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a team for a variety of roles. And so let's,
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for a second, take out the specificity around what the
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role does and, and just think about the qualities and
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the people that you want to bring to your team.
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And perhaps it's changed over time. If so, that's fine.
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Uh, feel free to take as much time as you need,
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but I'm, I'm curious from your perspective, when you're looking
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to add people to your team, what are those inherent
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qualities that you really want people to have to be
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part of your culture?
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Yep.
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Um, I would say first order businesses, it's got to
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be somebody I want to work with. We spend the
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majority of our waking hours around each other. So pardon
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my French, but the no asshole rule applies. No matter
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how brilliant somebody is, if they're going to be painful
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to work with, It's just not worth it. And it's
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not just because it's for me, but if they can't
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play well with the team, then they're not going to
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be successful. They're going to be divisive and disruptive. So
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that's number one. Number two is then, of course, initiative,
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that we want people that are going to step up
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and challenge things. We want people that are intellectually curious.
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I'm proud of the company we've built. But it has
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so many works in our internal processes. Like we are
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so far from perfect that the last thing I want
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is people that are going to come in and just
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do their job without challenging how we're doing things. There's
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so much room. And I think this is true of
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any organization to improve. You want people that are going
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to be curious, are going to ask questions and aren't
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going to say, well, that's just the way we've always
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done things. That is a death knell when I hear that.
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That's how organizations die because the world is moving very fast.
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organizations who are not adapting constantly are going to be
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on the decline pretty quickly.
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Need to want to be with them.
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Makes sense. Initiative, which we touched on before, intellectually curious.
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You're speaking my language, Rick.
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I love this. Let's go back now.
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The one other thing I'd like to tell you is
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I have no time for hierarchy and hierarchical people. So
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I've had a few and I've had some high performers
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who I've managed out of the company because they were
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too hierarchical, meaning when they had strong players on their team,
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they would try to quash them rather than grow them.
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They were threatened by up and comers on their team.
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And they had people that, you know, like to hire
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the comfortable B players that aren't going to challenge their authority.
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That's a great way to build mediocrity. I think you
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and I, this actually something as well, Luke really challenged
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me on and it's helped me grow this idea that
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you want to hire people that are literally better than you.
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And everybody says that, but it's really hard. We all
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want to feel like, you know, valuable and safe in
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our jobs and all that. And, and it can be
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a little hard when you've got, Hey, wait a minute.
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I've got somebody who's on my team. Who's challenging me.
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Who's disagreeing with me. And you know what? Huh? This
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person's right. Right. I learned to embrace that where I
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love when a junior employee proves me wrong. Now, being
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the founder of a company, I'm in a pretty comfortable
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position where maybe I can take a little more risk
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than folks. But I would tell you, it is so
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liberating when you take the mindset, I don't have to
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be right. I never actually have to be right. I
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just have to make sure the team gets the right answer.
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And when one of my junior employees challenges me on
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something and ultimately they're right and I'm wrong, I'm elated
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when that happens. Because the way I look at it is,
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you know what? You just saved me from making an
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ass of myself. And the fact that you're right and
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I was wrong doesn't matter because the team got it right.
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And that's going to elevate all of us. So, you know,
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you get the strongest horses you can get. And that's
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another thing where I think Luke was particularly– he challenged
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the environment that, no, no, we need to hire more
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people who are going to challenge all of us. And
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it really led to a significant culture shift in the
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business when you legitimately– it's one thing to say you
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can– you know, that there's no hierarchy and anybody can
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have ideas, but the rubber hits the road. When you
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have those emotional moments where people are arguing, it's a
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heated debate and you've got a vice president and a
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new employee. That's the moment where, all right, are we,
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are we walking the walk? Are we just talking to talk?
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Like does that VP pull rank and quash the discussion
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because it's inappropriate for this junior person to challenge them
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in front of their peers? Or do they, accept it
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and treat that junior employee like a peer and continue
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to have a productive debate to get to the right answer.
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That's when you know if your culture is really there
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or if it's BS.
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Let's go back to 1993 and the beginning of, at
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the time it was called Taser and you started this business.
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What was the impetus or your reason at that time
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to start this business?
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I was living in Europe in grad school and And
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two of my friends were shot and killed back in
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America in a road rage incident. And, you know, it
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was pretty shocking. And I found myself sort of getting
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very interested in the gun violence problem. And it just
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struck me, wow, this is really bizarre. Why are bullets
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still a thing? This is 1993. We fought the Revolutionary
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War shooting bullets at people. Why has this medieval technology changed?
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Why is it still in primary use? And I'm not
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saying that in the like gun control-ish kind of fashion.
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I'm comfortable with guns. I bought my dad one. But
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what I'm saying is you would think we can do better.
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And that's what made me realize, wait a minute, this
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is a big problem. The best businesses are the ones
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that solve big problems. If we could create technology that
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would make bullets obsolete, that would probably be a pretty
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valuable business. And With only that insight, I set forth
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to create the business. And that's another actually key piece
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of advice I give to people that are thinking about
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becoming an entrepreneur. Do not wait until you feel you
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have the perfect business plan because you will never have
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it and you will never get started. And you will
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be that person for the rest of your life who's
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telling people about you would have, could have, should have done.
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You need to just get to the point where you
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have a simple concept that you believe can work. You
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don't have to know how. And then you just have
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to go after it hard.
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Do you remember what your business plan looked like in 92,
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93 timeframe as you were getting ready to launch? Did
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you even have one or what did it look like?
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Have you saved anything from them?
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Oh yeah, I did have a business plan. Now part
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of it's because I was finishing a business school and
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one of my last courses was a course on entrepreneurship.
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So that actually provided a nice, I did it as
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a class project. That business plan was very different from
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where we ended up. I wanted to develop a 12
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gauge shotgun round with a battery in it that could
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be kind of a wireless projectile taser. Now we ultimately,
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here's a really funny story. Let me think about the
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right way to tell you this. All right. So my
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00:19:14.480 --> 00:19:16.200
original idea was we're going to build a 12 gauge
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shotgun round with a battery in it and a taser
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type of circuit. Then as I was doing the research
368
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to try to figure out if the theories would work,
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I came across the guy who invented the original taser,
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and he convinced me to pivot and go in a
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different direction and to build a handheld wire taser using
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a compressed air launching system. So we did that. That
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product failed. Our second product failed. We eventually hit success.
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But what's really funny is 15 years after we started,
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I finally went back and we built that product, that
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12-gauge shotgun round. that had been my original business plan
377
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and it turned out all of the technology assumptions worked
378
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it it was a brilliant design if i may say
379
00:20:00.529 --> 00:20:03.309
so myself and the reason i'll say that is because
380
00:20:03.369 --> 00:20:06.930
i also would tell you it was a commercial disaster We,
381
00:20:07.250 --> 00:20:09.190
we couldn't sell the thing. It worked great in the lab,
382
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but so point was the original business plan went in
383
00:20:11.450 --> 00:20:13.609
a totally different direction. We later came back to it.
384
00:20:13.660 --> 00:20:16.319
And even then it turned out the original business plan,
385
00:20:16.559 --> 00:20:19.960
the product technically worked, but was a commercial failure. So
386
00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:23.329
it almost doesn't matter what the original business plan is.
387
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As long as you're focusing on solving a big problem
388
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and you can build a business model where people will
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pay you for solving the problem. And then you just
390
00:20:33.950 --> 00:20:36.369
gather smart people and you work really hard. at that
391
00:20:36.430 --> 00:20:40.950
problem and you'll eventually get there. The quality of the
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00:20:40.990 --> 00:20:45.089
original business plan is not super relevant in my opinion.
393
00:20:45.109 --> 00:20:47.390
So don't, I'm not telling you to like quit your
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job tomorrow because you've got some ID you've spent five
395
00:20:49.250 --> 00:20:53.650
minutes on, but if you spend a few weeks, nights
396
00:20:53.690 --> 00:20:57.279
and weekends researching and thinking about this and your gut
397
00:20:57.859 --> 00:20:59.599
tells you and you think you've got some good data
398
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that there's something there, Then there's a time you've got
399
00:21:03.809 --> 00:21:06.289
to stop researching and planning because you won't find all
400
00:21:06.329 --> 00:21:08.809
the answers in your business plan. You have to just
401
00:21:08.849 --> 00:21:09.670
start executing.
402
00:21:10.730 --> 00:21:15.130
When was one of the first inflection points where you
403
00:21:15.150 --> 00:21:17.670
turned a corner and you started having some success?
404
00:21:17.710 --> 00:21:20.650
How much time? What happened? Take us back to that moment.
405
00:21:21.950 --> 00:21:23.869
So for us, it was seven years in. The first
406
00:21:23.910 --> 00:21:27.230
seven years were pretty miserable from a business perspective.
407
00:21:27.309 --> 00:21:29.269
Were you poor at the time?
408
00:21:29.309 --> 00:21:31.410
Were you just trying to figure it out?
409
00:21:31.509 --> 00:21:33.990
Or what was going on? What was your living condition?
410
00:21:34.849 --> 00:21:37.130
Yeah, I'd love to tell you I was poor because
411
00:21:37.190 --> 00:21:40.309
I'd be so much more uplifting. But it's worse. So
412
00:21:40.369 --> 00:21:43.029
I was born to a fairly successful family. My dad
413
00:21:43.069 --> 00:21:44.329
was a serial entrepreneur.
414
00:21:44.829 --> 00:21:44.990
So.
415
00:21:45.680 --> 00:21:48.660
Now, growing up, I watched him, he would fail at
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00:21:48.700 --> 00:21:51.200
a business, then he'd go get a job, save some money,
417
00:21:51.660 --> 00:21:55.829
try again, fail, you know, repeat. And then finally, he
418
00:21:55.849 --> 00:21:58.210
moved out to Silicon Valley, joined a startup there and
419
00:21:58.529 --> 00:22:00.490
had a good size hit made, you know, seven or
420
00:22:00.490 --> 00:22:04.730
$ 8 million. And when they sold the when they sold
421
00:22:04.750 --> 00:22:07.779
the startup, and so I went from seeing my dad struggling,
422
00:22:07.819 --> 00:22:11.299
you know, driving a Datsun to, oh, this is pretty cool.
423
00:22:11.319 --> 00:22:14.049
Dad bought a Ferrari and And I always thought he
424
00:22:14.089 --> 00:22:16.250
was so much happier when he was doing the entrepreneur
425
00:22:16.269 --> 00:22:18.789
thing than when he was working at a job, even
426
00:22:18.809 --> 00:22:20.710
though he usually made a lot more money working at
427
00:22:20.769 --> 00:22:24.069
bigger companies. But he was always kind of miserable. He
428
00:22:24.250 --> 00:22:27.089
loved trying to do his own thing. And then when
429
00:22:27.130 --> 00:22:30.329
it finally hit, I was like, wow, OK, I want
430
00:22:30.349 --> 00:22:32.730
to do that. That's pretty cool. So I had the
431
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idea for the taser. And of course, first thing I went,
432
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I pitched it to my dad, not thinking we'd raise
433
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money from him, but just to get advice. And he
434
00:22:40.400 --> 00:22:42.079
fell in love with the idea. Great. I'll fund it.
435
00:22:42.779 --> 00:22:45.480
And so we're off to the races. Seven years later,
436
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I had bankrupted him. So I felt like a complete
437
00:22:49.960 --> 00:22:51.599
loser because I'm like, man, I was kind of a
438
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silver spoon kid who had this great opportunity. Most people
439
00:22:54.529 --> 00:22:56.390
don't because my dad had made enough money to fund
440
00:22:56.450 --> 00:22:59.269
this thing. And I completely foobarred it. And not only
441
00:22:59.309 --> 00:23:01.269
had I screwed this thing up to where, you know,
442
00:23:01.990 --> 00:23:05.500
we were in 1998 or 99, I I thought the
443
00:23:05.519 --> 00:23:08.140
chance of survival was around 1% or 2%. Literally, it
444
00:23:08.180 --> 00:23:11.230
was that bad. And my dad had put everything into
445
00:23:11.250 --> 00:23:14.450
this business because he's a high-risk serial entrepreneur. And my
446
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mom was pissed. She wouldn't talk to me for about
447
00:23:18.029 --> 00:23:20.730
a year. She didn't go to my wedding. Really? Yeah,
448
00:23:20.750 --> 00:23:21.329
this was ugly.
449
00:23:21.849 --> 00:23:25.349
That's serious stuff. It's not just like, oh, Ricky, you're
450
00:23:25.390 --> 00:23:26.349
not doing well.
451
00:23:26.369 --> 00:23:27.089
That's serious.
452
00:23:27.980 --> 00:23:31.269
Well, the problem was like my my dad kept pouring
453
00:23:31.329 --> 00:23:34.230
money into this. And my my mom was like, what
454
00:23:34.250 --> 00:23:37.450
the hell are you doing? They just turned 60. And
455
00:23:37.470 --> 00:23:39.269
then eventually I took my mom's side of like, hey, dad,
456
00:23:39.289 --> 00:23:41.069
you got to stop. But by then it was too late.
457
00:23:41.089 --> 00:23:43.109
I remember we sat around the table and I was
458
00:23:43.130 --> 00:23:45.490
telling him to stop putting money in. And he said, look,
459
00:23:45.789 --> 00:23:47.650
nobody else is putting any money in. And guess what?
460
00:23:48.319 --> 00:23:50.410
I signed the guarantee at the bank. So if this
461
00:23:50.450 --> 00:23:53.049
thing goes under, I'm toast. They're going to take everything.
462
00:23:53.490 --> 00:23:55.759
So I'm putting everything I've got left into the company
463
00:23:55.920 --> 00:23:57.500
and you're going to figure out how to turn this
464
00:23:57.519 --> 00:23:57.880
thing around.
465
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Uh, and no pressure, no pressure. Whoa.
466
00:24:02.619 --> 00:24:04.230
So now I, yeah. So now I get to sit
467
00:24:04.250 --> 00:24:07.349
here and talk to you like, Oh, I'm Mr. Successful businessman, man.
468
00:24:07.390 --> 00:24:10.609
I was within a hair's breadth of being the schmo
469
00:24:10.930 --> 00:24:13.759
who had wiped his parents out. And, you know, I,
470
00:24:13.829 --> 00:24:15.430
I don't know what the hell I would have done.
471
00:24:15.470 --> 00:24:17.380
I'd probably still be, you know, working a job somewhere
472
00:24:17.420 --> 00:24:20.240
trying to support them. So, uh, but for a little
473
00:24:20.259 --> 00:24:21.859
luck and a lot of hard work, this could have
474
00:24:21.880 --> 00:24:22.880
been a very different story.
475
00:24:22.940 --> 00:24:24.380
So what happened seven years in?
476
00:24:25.900 --> 00:24:31.009
So, uh, seven years in, we, we, Basically, we had
477
00:24:31.470 --> 00:24:34.579
to do the hard work of fixing the core product
478
00:24:34.640 --> 00:24:40.819
and making it work. So the early generation tasers, they're
479
00:24:40.839 --> 00:24:43.599
pretty similar. If I showed you one in a room
480
00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:45.789
today compared to the tasers we're selling, they don't look
481
00:24:45.829 --> 00:24:49.970
that different. They shoot darts. They send electricity down the wire.
482
00:24:50.390 --> 00:24:53.049
The biggest difference was the early tasers had never done
483
00:24:53.250 --> 00:24:58.009
any biomedical testing on how effective they were to actually...
484
00:24:58.609 --> 00:25:02.759
incapacitate your muscle tissue. They've done some safety testing, but
485
00:25:02.880 --> 00:25:06.619
not effectiveness testing. And this is one of those things where,
486
00:25:06.640 --> 00:25:08.980
you know, part of the reason the product was failing
487
00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:12.420
was like Rodney King had been shot with an LAPD
488
00:25:12.460 --> 00:25:16.759
taser and it didn't work. And that was actually before
489
00:25:16.819 --> 00:25:19.980
I met the original taser inventor that that had happened,
490
00:25:20.059 --> 00:25:22.099
but it had really given the technology a bad name.
491
00:25:22.980 --> 00:25:24.839
And when I met the inventor, he told me it's
492
00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:27.829
because the batteries were dead. That's not true. The original
493
00:25:27.869 --> 00:25:33.230
tasers were underpowered. They were not sufficiently well-designed to actually
494
00:25:33.730 --> 00:25:36.759
causing capacitation against people who are violent or on drugs.
495
00:25:37.599 --> 00:25:39.839
And so this is great. I actually just read this
496
00:25:39.900 --> 00:25:44.180
article by Mark Andreessen about lead bullets, where everybody looks
497
00:25:44.220 --> 00:25:47.490
for silver bullets, right? The simple answer. What's the one
498
00:25:47.690 --> 00:25:49.970
tricky move we can make that's going to save the business?
499
00:25:50.930 --> 00:25:52.470
And we did a couple of those, and all of
500
00:25:52.509 --> 00:25:56.339
those failed. And this idea where Andreessen talks about lead
501
00:25:56.359 --> 00:26:00.180
bullets is like doing the hard work to fix the
502
00:26:00.240 --> 00:26:05.069
hard problems and not pivoting away from them. And ultimately,
503
00:26:05.089 --> 00:26:07.990
that's what we had to do. We had to figure
504
00:26:08.009 --> 00:26:12.069
this out. How do you test an electrical weapon for effectiveness?
505
00:26:12.690 --> 00:26:16.279
I don't know. well, let's see, let's call around and
506
00:26:16.339 --> 00:26:20.720
see who does nerve stimulation testing. And we found this
507
00:26:20.740 --> 00:26:23.720
guy in Nebraska who happened to also, by the grace
508
00:26:23.759 --> 00:26:26.220
of God, be a pig farmer. So we had access
509
00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:28.440
to the animals we would need to be able to
510
00:26:28.519 --> 00:26:31.180
do some, because you have to test on animals. There's
511
00:26:31.220 --> 00:26:33.180
no computer models that will tell you what to do
512
00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:36.339
because nobody's done the underlying test to develop the computer models.
513
00:26:36.359 --> 00:26:41.200
So we basically went to this PhD in Nebraska, and
514
00:26:41.220 --> 00:26:44.480
he helped us design some tests using anesthetized pigs. So
515
00:26:44.519 --> 00:26:46.339
by the way, they didn't feel any pain, but we
516
00:26:46.380 --> 00:26:49.759
could actually measure the effect of the electricity on their muscles.
517
00:26:49.859 --> 00:26:53.180
And once we figured out how to test it, within
518
00:26:53.619 --> 00:26:56.970
a matter of hours, we knew what the product had
519
00:26:56.990 --> 00:26:59.450
to do. We had solved the underlying issue. Now we
520
00:26:59.470 --> 00:27:02.230
just had to go back and design the physical hardware
521
00:27:02.630 --> 00:27:04.730
to deliver the type of electricity that we were able
522
00:27:04.769 --> 00:27:08.069
to develop in this test regime. And once we made
523
00:27:08.089 --> 00:27:09.420
the product work, Boom.
524
00:27:09.759 --> 00:27:12.230
Boom. Who was buying it then? Who was buying it?
525
00:27:12.460 --> 00:27:13.299
Cops. Cops.
526
00:27:13.579 --> 00:27:14.140
All cops.
527
00:27:14.180 --> 00:27:16.059
We were launching in the law enforcement market.
528
00:27:16.259 --> 00:27:16.460
Yep.
529
00:27:16.539 --> 00:27:18.569
And we would go across the country in a Winnebago
530
00:27:18.650 --> 00:27:21.150
doing demos. And it was really simple. We'd show up
531
00:27:21.170 --> 00:27:23.829
and we'd say, hey, who's your toughest guy? All right.
532
00:27:24.509 --> 00:27:26.009
Tell you what, I got a $ 100 bill. You want
533
00:27:26.029 --> 00:27:28.910
to come and get it? We'd say, well, you know,
534
00:27:28.930 --> 00:27:30.130
we're going to hit you with a taser. If you
535
00:27:30.150 --> 00:27:31.500
get to me, you can take the $ 100 bill. People
536
00:27:31.539 --> 00:27:32.920
did this? Yeah.
537
00:27:34.450 --> 00:27:35.650
Oh, yeah. Oh, my goodness.
538
00:27:36.230 --> 00:27:39.470
I'm a little bit jaded. I have personally tased thousands
539
00:27:39.519 --> 00:27:39.880
of people.
540
00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:41.579
How many times have you been tased?
541
00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:44.460
I've done it seven. I'm done, by the way. It's
542
00:27:44.500 --> 00:27:44.859
not fun.
543
00:27:45.180 --> 00:27:46.599
I've never had this done. Okay.
544
00:27:46.859 --> 00:27:50.680
I think of The Hangover. By the way, was that
545
00:27:50.700 --> 00:27:51.500
yours in the movie?
546
00:27:51.660 --> 00:27:54.980
That was us. Was it really? That was us.
547
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:56.640
Yep. Were you on set? Oh, no, no, no.
548
00:27:59.089 --> 00:28:01.069
No, no, they just, you know, they got one. The
549
00:28:01.109 --> 00:28:02.589
first I saw it was when the movie came out.
550
00:28:03.109 --> 00:28:06.269
I laughed my butt off, too. So what happens is
551
00:28:06.710 --> 00:28:10.730
there's this phenomenon. So if we go back to 1999,
552
00:28:10.730 --> 00:28:14.589
there's pepper spray, there's beanbags and rubber bullets. There's all
553
00:28:14.630 --> 00:28:17.309
these non-lethal weapons. But the way cops looked at this stuff,
554
00:28:17.329 --> 00:28:20.829
they're like, look, none of this stuff works very well.
555
00:28:20.910 --> 00:28:22.430
When we use it in the field against some guy
556
00:28:22.450 --> 00:28:25.430
who's high on PCP, you spray him with pepper spray,
557
00:28:25.750 --> 00:28:27.920
he just smiles at you. You hit him with a
558
00:28:28.039 --> 00:28:30.940
beanbag round, he doesn't care because these things just cause
559
00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:33.130
a little bit of pain, but they don't stop the aggressive,
560
00:28:33.170 --> 00:28:35.970
dangerous guys, the ones we really need them to. So
561
00:28:36.309 --> 00:28:37.849
not only the weapons had a bit of a snake
562
00:28:38.009 --> 00:28:41.170
oil reputation, and frankly, so did the taser because the
563
00:28:41.190 --> 00:28:46.789
early taser weapons were also like pain. They would cause pain,
564
00:28:46.809 --> 00:28:49.549
but they wouldn't infest you. Once we figured out how
565
00:28:50.190 --> 00:28:53.190
to lock up your muscle tissue, it was a whole
566
00:28:53.230 --> 00:28:55.759
new game. So now we could roll in to a
567
00:28:55.779 --> 00:28:58.960
police agency and say, yep, we know all the previous
568
00:28:59.000 --> 00:29:01.279
weapons haven't worked very well. Give this one a try.
569
00:29:01.779 --> 00:29:04.279
And then we would just crush these guys. And then
570
00:29:04.319 --> 00:29:06.180
what happened, they'd get up because the taser is like
571
00:29:06.220 --> 00:29:07.529
a light switch. When I hit you with it, your
572
00:29:07.569 --> 00:29:10.549
muscles contract. It's kind of like a temporary seizure. And
573
00:29:10.569 --> 00:29:13.210
there's nothing you can do to stop it until I
574
00:29:13.230 --> 00:29:15.150
turn the electricity off. And then as soon as it's off,
575
00:29:16.009 --> 00:29:18.309
you're right back to normal. It's like right now, you know,
576
00:29:18.470 --> 00:29:20.769
your brain could tell you, you could flex your bicep.
577
00:29:21.250 --> 00:29:23.829
And then when you stop doing it, the muscle relaxes again,
578
00:29:24.190 --> 00:29:28.349
same sort of thing. Um, so we could, uh, once
579
00:29:28.369 --> 00:29:32.059
we could demonstrate that this was effective and then of
580
00:29:32.079 --> 00:29:33.700
course the first guy would fall down, he'd get up
581
00:29:34.180 --> 00:29:36.309
and then you get this a little bit of a, uh,
582
00:29:36.630 --> 00:29:40.559
you know, kind of an adrenaline junkie. Cops are, kind
583
00:29:40.579 --> 00:29:42.839
of like uh you know they're adrenaline junkies they're kind
584
00:29:42.920 --> 00:29:45.480
of extreme sports guys so the first guy takes a
585
00:29:45.519 --> 00:29:47.819
hit then you know he goes down he gets up
586
00:29:47.900 --> 00:29:51.349
everybody sees he's fine he's typically laughing it off and
587
00:29:51.390 --> 00:29:53.509
then somebody else okay i want to give it a
588
00:29:53.529 --> 00:29:55.589
shot and the next thing you know you know everybody's
589
00:29:55.630 --> 00:29:58.950
lining up And it actually created a really interesting dynamic
590
00:29:59.029 --> 00:30:01.450
where it made for fantastic demos. And by the time
591
00:30:01.470 --> 00:30:05.170
you get done, everybody's tried it. And you've got 50 believers.
592
00:30:06.410 --> 00:30:07.730
And then the product just sold itself.
593
00:30:08.710 --> 00:30:10.230
Well, I was going to say, when you think about
594
00:30:10.269 --> 00:30:14.230
product demonstrations, that's got to be one for the books.
595
00:30:14.309 --> 00:30:15.690
I mean, as good as it gets.
596
00:30:15.710 --> 00:30:16.049
For sure.
597
00:30:16.609 --> 00:30:17.430
As good as it gets.
598
00:30:18.569 --> 00:30:21.390
It's actually pretty funny. In my office, we could be
599
00:30:21.410 --> 00:30:23.710
sitting in a meeting, and you'll hear a pop and
600
00:30:23.730 --> 00:30:26.480
a scream. And if we have visitors in the building,
601
00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:30.119
they literally, the blood flushes out of their face. They
602
00:30:30.140 --> 00:30:32.609
look like they're going to dial 911. And I'm like, no, no.
603
00:30:32.980 --> 00:30:34.640
Somebody just got tased downstairs. Don't worry about it. It
604
00:30:34.660 --> 00:30:37.339
happens all the time. And I forget that this is
605
00:30:37.380 --> 00:30:40.980
not normal. I've gotten accustomed to something that is a
606
00:30:41.059 --> 00:30:41.680
little different.
607
00:30:42.039 --> 00:30:47.740
So what percentage of the taser market do you guys own?
608
00:30:47.740 --> 00:30:49.970
100%. So the taser is a registered brand name.
609
00:30:50.349 --> 00:30:54.190
So if there's a taser from a cop, who else
610
00:30:54.230 --> 00:30:55.730
would use them besides law enforcement?
611
00:30:56.279 --> 00:30:56.559
Anybody?
612
00:30:56.650 --> 00:30:58.400
Well, private citizens can buy them as well.
613
00:30:58.519 --> 00:30:59.339
Okay.
614
00:30:59.720 --> 00:31:01.539
So we have about, call it $ 600, 000 in use by
615
00:31:01.579 --> 00:31:05.759
police and maybe $ 300, 000 in use by the public. But
616
00:31:05.880 --> 00:31:10.049
Taser is a brand name. It's like Kleenex or Microsoft. Now,
617
00:31:10.089 --> 00:31:13.589
there are other stun guns, like particular handheld ones that
618
00:31:14.730 --> 00:31:17.670
don't shoot darts and we have to touch somebody. That's
619
00:31:17.750 --> 00:31:20.009
a stun gun. Now, frequently people call them Tasers and
620
00:31:20.029 --> 00:31:21.730
then we have to correct them to protect our brand.
621
00:31:22.569 --> 00:31:24.819
But if it says Taser, it's us. If the police
622
00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:28.240
are using it, it's us. There are some dart firing
623
00:31:28.319 --> 00:31:32.519
knockoffs in China and Brazil, but we have really strong patents.
624
00:31:32.539 --> 00:31:35.789
So we've kept them out of the U.S. and Europe. Uh,
625
00:31:35.869 --> 00:31:38.329
because they, you know, they basically violated our patents and
626
00:31:38.390 --> 00:31:39.529
we got a pretty good legal team.
627
00:31:41.029 --> 00:31:41.430
I gotcha.
628
00:31:41.509 --> 00:31:41.690
Okay.
629
00:31:41.750 --> 00:31:44.809
So how, so what do you think when it comes
630
00:31:44.849 --> 00:31:48.500
to the second amendment, uh, perhaps for the people who,
631
00:31:48.660 --> 00:31:50.519
who want to have a gun at their house for
632
00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:55.039
protection or even those who have, uh, firearms to go hunting,
633
00:31:55.099 --> 00:31:56.460
what's your thought process on that?
634
00:31:57.579 --> 00:32:01.359
You know, I am a pretty libertarian guy. I don't
635
00:32:01.380 --> 00:32:04.900
want to take anything away from anybody that's not my shtick.
636
00:32:05.220 --> 00:32:08.660
I think people have their own opinions and they're not
637
00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:13.059
going to change their opinions. My point is, for the
638
00:32:13.140 --> 00:32:16.569
purpose of defending yourself, let's go back to when my
639
00:32:16.609 --> 00:32:19.309
two friends got shot and killed. The guy who killed
640
00:32:19.329 --> 00:32:21.069
them was a businessman who had a gun in the
641
00:32:21.109 --> 00:32:24.269
glove box of his car. He wasn't a killer. He
642
00:32:24.289 --> 00:32:27.170
wasn't a criminal. Well, he's spending his life in prison now.
643
00:32:28.069 --> 00:32:30.269
He didn't go out to hurt anybody. He bought a
644
00:32:30.329 --> 00:32:33.730
gun to defend himself, and he got in a situation.
645
00:32:33.809 --> 00:32:37.490
My buddies were big former high school football players, and
646
00:32:37.509 --> 00:32:39.819
they used to give me occasional dust-up on a Saturday night.
647
00:32:40.450 --> 00:32:44.279
So things were getting heated, and this guy probably had
648
00:32:44.319 --> 00:32:46.099
a legitimate concern that he was going to get his
649
00:32:46.140 --> 00:32:48.200
butt kicked. And he grabs a gun out of the
650
00:32:48.220 --> 00:32:50.779
glove box, and now things are really out of control.
651
00:32:51.400 --> 00:32:53.380
And they're dead, and he's spending his life in prison.
652
00:32:53.819 --> 00:32:57.799
So whether you like guns or not– you don't want
653
00:32:57.839 --> 00:33:01.200
to kill somebody. It is just bad news. Like going
654
00:33:01.240 --> 00:33:03.700
through that after the fact. And the fact is like,
655
00:33:03.740 --> 00:33:06.579
I think people romanticize it. Like, you know, yeah, it's
656
00:33:06.619 --> 00:33:08.619
gonna be like in the movies where Hannibal Lecter, the
657
00:33:08.640 --> 00:33:10.400
serial killer is chasing me and I'm going to kill.
658
00:33:10.740 --> 00:33:12.900
That's not the real world. The real world is you
659
00:33:12.940 --> 00:33:16.099
wake up, it's three in the morning, you know, you're groggy.
660
00:33:16.940 --> 00:33:18.920
All of a sudden you get that creepy feeling and
661
00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:21.720
now your adrenaline's rushing and something moves in your house
662
00:33:22.660 --> 00:33:25.410
and you've got a gun in your hand. And more
663
00:33:25.450 --> 00:33:27.619
often than not, it turns out you just killed a
664
00:33:27.630 --> 00:33:32.079
family member. The real world is messy. We make mistakes,
665
00:33:32.539 --> 00:33:34.940
and with a gun, you can't take it back. So
666
00:33:35.819 --> 00:33:37.400
I'm not saying people don't have the right. If they
667
00:33:37.420 --> 00:33:39.160
want to hunt, great. If they want to own a gun, great.
668
00:33:39.759 --> 00:33:42.460
But if you could go out and buy Captain Kirk's
669
00:33:42.640 --> 00:33:46.630
Star Trek phaser, this elegant energy weapon that was faster,
670
00:33:46.730 --> 00:33:50.230
more reliable, more effective than a gun, there's a reason
671
00:33:50.269 --> 00:33:52.150
Captain Kirk never pulls a gun out. It would look
672
00:33:52.170 --> 00:33:55.569
ridiculous in Star Trek, right? That's a future where, obviously,
673
00:33:56.170 --> 00:33:59.259
technology has progressed. I think we'll get to a point
674
00:33:59.319 --> 00:34:01.339
where like today, if I was walking around with a
675
00:34:01.400 --> 00:34:02.940
sword on my hip, you'd look at me like I
676
00:34:02.980 --> 00:34:05.420
lost my mind. What are you doing? I think we're
677
00:34:05.440 --> 00:34:07.859
going to get there where the idea of shooting lead
678
00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:11.320
balls at people, you know, we're gonna look back and go, Hey,
679
00:34:11.340 --> 00:34:14.489
you remember when cops used to like, you know, shoot
680
00:34:14.530 --> 00:34:17.750
bullets at people? Wasn't that kind of bizarre? But we,
681
00:34:17.949 --> 00:34:20.010
we have to first fill the gap. Okay. What's the
682
00:34:20.070 --> 00:34:22.230
next thing they're going to get? We need to create
683
00:34:22.250 --> 00:34:25.889
a weapon that's capable of legitimately knocking guys down every time.
684
00:34:27.150 --> 00:34:29.920
And firearms have had a 500-year head start on us.
685
00:34:30.570 --> 00:34:34.090
And I think the natural argument is if the other
686
00:34:34.130 --> 00:34:37.090
person has a gun, you don't want to bring the
687
00:34:37.690 --> 00:34:40.190
so-called knife to a gunfight, I think is one of
688
00:34:40.210 --> 00:34:40.730
the arguments.
689
00:34:41.789 --> 00:34:44.710
It is, but that's an interesting one. My argument to
690
00:34:44.769 --> 00:34:48.349
you would be forget about don't bring a knife to
691
00:34:48.369 --> 00:34:50.449
a gunfight. Don't get in a gunfight.
692
00:34:50.670 --> 00:34:51.030
I agree.
693
00:34:51.050 --> 00:34:54.829
First of all. Chances are you're both going to get
694
00:34:54.869 --> 00:34:59.260
killed or seriously injured. FBI statistics show even if you
695
00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:02.800
shoot somebody right in the heart, for the next 14 seconds,
696
00:35:02.860 --> 00:35:05.969
they can still shoot back at you because it takes
697
00:35:06.010 --> 00:35:09.150
a while to bleed out. You hear about guys in combat, right?
698
00:35:09.170 --> 00:35:11.829
They get limbs blown off, and they're still crawling through
699
00:35:11.849 --> 00:35:16.449
the mud shooting back. Bullets don't magically stop you suddenly.
700
00:35:17.449 --> 00:35:20.320
It's a gruesome process unless you hit somebody in the head,
701
00:35:20.380 --> 00:35:22.320
which is really hard to do unless you're a sniper.
702
00:35:22.659 --> 00:35:24.760
If you hit the brain, it lights out, game over.
703
00:35:25.469 --> 00:35:27.760
But that's not the typical shooting. Typical shooting is like,
704
00:35:28.460 --> 00:35:32.480
there's blood splurting, people, body parts are getting, you know,
705
00:35:32.559 --> 00:35:35.099
gruesome things are happening, but they're not done. If they're
706
00:35:35.119 --> 00:35:37.860
really focused, they're going to fight back. Now, you wouldn't
707
00:35:37.900 --> 00:35:40.539
take a taser to a gunfight today. But what I take,
708
00:35:40.969 --> 00:35:43.070
if I had to go into a situation where I
709
00:35:43.090 --> 00:35:45.510
know I'm going to go into a gunfight, give me
710
00:35:45.530 --> 00:35:48.030
Captain Kirk's phaser, I'll take that. Because that's going to be,
711
00:35:48.309 --> 00:35:51.730
if I knew the non-lethal weapon was actually more effective
712
00:35:52.429 --> 00:35:55.500
and faster, That's the one that you'd want. And I've
713
00:35:55.539 --> 00:35:58.280
actually been talking to cops about this too. And they
714
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:01.380
agree because police aren't in the business. They're not, they're
715
00:36:01.400 --> 00:36:05.170
not executors. They're not out there executioners, right? Their job
716
00:36:05.210 --> 00:36:08.050
isn't to kill criminals because they've been sentenced to death.
717
00:36:08.969 --> 00:36:12.409
They use lethal force because dammit, it's the only thing
718
00:36:12.429 --> 00:36:14.530
that still really works well today to stop a threat
719
00:36:14.570 --> 00:36:17.889
right now. Oh, no, by the way, the downside is
720
00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:21.659
in the process of stopping the threat, you just killed somebody. And,
721
00:36:22.090 --> 00:36:23.670
The simple premise of this book is we need to
722
00:36:23.730 --> 00:36:27.150
pull those two concepts apart so that killing somebody is
723
00:36:27.170 --> 00:36:30.739
a separate concept from stopping the threat. And that means
724
00:36:30.780 --> 00:36:34.360
we just need better tech to pull it. And intellectually,
725
00:36:34.639 --> 00:36:37.559
the two have been so intertwined that it's hard at
726
00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:40.300
first to wrap your head around it that, no, maybe
727
00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:43.900
a gun isn't the most effective weapon in a future state.
728
00:36:43.960 --> 00:36:46.449
And when it's not, then, yeah, you would take a
729
00:36:46.469 --> 00:36:49.989
taser to a gunfight if the tasers, you know. higher performing.
730
00:36:50.010 --> 00:36:53.469
So are you, is it a focus of yours to
731
00:36:53.610 --> 00:36:58.949
sell tasers to someone like me for protection, uh, at
732
00:36:58.989 --> 00:37:02.010
my home, instead of using, uh, having a gun, I'd
733
00:37:02.050 --> 00:37:04.530
have a taser that if I hear the rustling sound
734
00:37:04.550 --> 00:37:07.159
at three in the morning, that that's what I'm, I'm
735
00:37:07.199 --> 00:37:08.360
going after instead of a gun.
736
00:37:08.420 --> 00:37:10.199
That's, is that one of your focus areas?
737
00:37:10.980 --> 00:37:15.500
Absolutely. Absolutely. We go to taser.com and they're available for
738
00:37:15.519 --> 00:37:17.699
the public and it's a great choice. Now I will
739
00:37:17.719 --> 00:37:23.199
tell you most of our consumers actually own guns, which
740
00:37:23.239 --> 00:37:27.449
is interesting. But I think most rational gun owners are like, man,
741
00:37:27.469 --> 00:37:30.210
I do not want to use this thing. If I
742
00:37:30.230 --> 00:37:33.250
can have a taser, a lot of times they'll keep
743
00:37:33.289 --> 00:37:34.590
it in their car. There might be in a state
744
00:37:34.610 --> 00:37:36.889
where they can't keep a gun. Or I think if
745
00:37:37.710 --> 00:37:40.489
people really stop and think about it, think about the
746
00:37:40.610 --> 00:37:43.309
types of situations that you actually end up in life.
747
00:37:43.929 --> 00:37:46.230
It's very rare that you're up against a terrorist or
748
00:37:46.269 --> 00:37:49.360
a serial killer, but you're walking down the street and
749
00:37:49.380 --> 00:37:52.440
you have some aggressive drunk or some homeless guy who's
750
00:37:52.460 --> 00:37:55.340
high on meth who's coming up and causing issues, or
751
00:37:55.380 --> 00:37:58.300
my two buddies who get into this situation where it's
752
00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:02.699
been an out of control. Most situations where you are
753
00:38:02.739 --> 00:38:06.380
going to need to protect yourself, a gun is probably
754
00:38:06.500 --> 00:38:09.219
overkill and may actually get you in more trouble than
755
00:38:09.440 --> 00:38:12.289
you really want to get into. And in that case,
756
00:38:12.349 --> 00:38:13.789
I think that's where a lot of folks, even though
757
00:38:13.809 --> 00:38:15.750
they've got guns, are like, you know, I think a
758
00:38:15.789 --> 00:38:19.019
taser is probably a little more practical. And I think
759
00:38:19.360 --> 00:38:23.000
that math will really change. What I've said in the
760
00:38:23.019 --> 00:38:24.840
book is in the next 10 years, we'll get to
761
00:38:24.860 --> 00:38:27.579
where we actually outperform a gun. And at that point,
762
00:38:27.619 --> 00:38:30.010
I think the choice becomes much clearer.
763
00:38:30.360 --> 00:38:32.190
So the book you're referencing is The End of Killing,
764
00:38:32.670 --> 00:38:37.519
How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problems. Talk
765
00:38:37.539 --> 00:38:40.440
to me about the, the, the putting this book together,
766
00:38:40.539 --> 00:38:44.199
why you wanted to do it. Um, the process of,
767
00:38:44.360 --> 00:38:46.929
of writing, cause I just finished my first manuscript. So
768
00:38:47.050 --> 00:38:49.179
I'm like, this is really top of mind for me.
769
00:38:49.260 --> 00:38:52.329
So I'm fascinated by everything that went into the why
770
00:38:52.750 --> 00:38:54.869
and the how of, of putting this thing together.
771
00:38:56.010 --> 00:38:56.349
Yeah.
772
00:38:56.510 --> 00:38:59.750
So man, it was, it was, it was rough, a
773
00:38:59.789 --> 00:39:02.489
lot harder than I thought. There's this thing, as you
774
00:39:02.530 --> 00:39:06.070
well know, like, I can crank out a five page paper,
775
00:39:06.300 --> 00:39:08.159
you know, in a night, no problem. So I figured
776
00:39:08.219 --> 00:39:11.349
out you write a book, you know, to get 500 pages.
777
00:39:11.389 --> 00:39:15.409
So it's 100 nights of work. No, because what ends
778
00:39:15.449 --> 00:39:17.550
up happening is you're writing this thing, it gets the
779
00:39:17.989 --> 00:39:20.510
book ends up getting bigger than fits in your brain.
780
00:39:20.610 --> 00:39:23.230
And so you're constantly going back to reread. Well, did
781
00:39:23.269 --> 00:39:25.929
I already write that? And then you're deduping stuff. And
782
00:39:25.969 --> 00:39:29.750
there's this like exponential, it just ended up getting way
783
00:39:29.829 --> 00:39:32.239
hard than I thought. And because you're trying to do,
784
00:39:32.559 --> 00:39:34.340
you know, do it in your free time between other things.
785
00:39:34.840 --> 00:39:37.960
But going back to the impetus for me, I was
786
00:39:38.019 --> 00:39:39.980
at a dinner with a bunch of entrepreneurs and one
787
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:43.179
of the guys did a conversation starter where he said, Hey,
788
00:39:43.760 --> 00:39:45.579
I want everybody to share. What do you believe that
789
00:39:45.619 --> 00:39:49.480
nobody else believes? And when it came to me, I said, huh,
790
00:39:50.050 --> 00:39:53.389
I believe we're getting near the end of war. And
791
00:39:53.409 --> 00:39:56.590
I don't know if I said the end of killing exactly,
792
00:39:56.630 --> 00:40:00.070
but that was the basic concept. And then everybody looked
793
00:40:00.110 --> 00:40:03.030
at me like I was nuts. And then I started
794
00:40:03.050 --> 00:40:07.329
to sort of share this idea. And for the next
795
00:40:07.369 --> 00:40:09.710
two hours at dinner, it dominated the conversation. It was
796
00:40:09.829 --> 00:40:13.389
really interesting to see how people's first reaction was, you're
797
00:40:13.469 --> 00:40:17.090
Looney Tunes. And then after you really talk it through,
798
00:40:17.110 --> 00:40:18.909
people are like, you know what? That kind of makes sense.
799
00:40:19.550 --> 00:40:21.550
And so somebody said, hey, you should write a book.
800
00:40:22.389 --> 00:40:24.750
And just given that my life's work is in this space,
801
00:40:25.329 --> 00:40:29.480
and this in the book is the first time I've
802
00:40:29.519 --> 00:40:33.519
come out and said that our goal is to actually
803
00:40:33.559 --> 00:40:35.579
replace the gun long term. You have to be really
804
00:40:35.619 --> 00:40:38.300
careful saying that with police because what they can't hear
805
00:40:38.340 --> 00:40:40.639
is that we want to take their guns away. And
806
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:43.309
I was nervous about putting this out there. Because you
807
00:40:43.329 --> 00:40:45.530
don't want to oversell today's technology. So you've noticed I've
808
00:40:45.550 --> 00:40:47.409
been very careful to say, look, it's probably 10 years
809
00:40:47.429 --> 00:40:49.820
in the future. We're not there yet. But you've got
810
00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:51.159
to plant the flag if you're going to have a
811
00:40:51.199 --> 00:40:53.099
moonshot and say, look, here's where we're going. It's going
812
00:40:53.119 --> 00:40:55.500
to take time. And we've got to start to prepare
813
00:40:55.519 --> 00:40:58.400
our customers. When you tell a cop that, hey, you
814
00:40:58.440 --> 00:41:01.420
may not carry a gun someday, or you're going to
815
00:41:01.500 --> 00:41:04.400
use this non-lethal thing instead of a gun, their initial
816
00:41:04.420 --> 00:41:08.400
reaction is, are you nuts? And so that's why writing
817
00:41:08.420 --> 00:41:12.829
the book now starts that conversation. And it's, you know,
818
00:41:12.949 --> 00:41:15.429
I'm learning a ton as well. I'm seeing, okay, what
819
00:41:15.530 --> 00:41:19.920
are the criteria, you know, where police would actually shift
820
00:41:20.159 --> 00:41:23.179
away from using lethal force to an advanced non-lethal weapon.
821
00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:25.380
So this was a way for me to kind of
822
00:41:25.420 --> 00:41:29.380
test the waters, push out some, you know, some kind
823
00:41:29.400 --> 00:41:32.730
of crazy ideas and then learn from people's reactions. And
824
00:41:32.750 --> 00:41:37.289
that's guiding, you know, how we're developing these products over
825
00:41:37.329 --> 00:41:37.909
the next decade.
826
00:41:38.469 --> 00:41:39.570
What's been the early response?
827
00:41:41.800 --> 00:41:45.039
Uh, it's been really good, much better than I expected
828
00:41:45.079 --> 00:41:49.070
in two respects. Number one, I was holding my breath
829
00:41:49.159 --> 00:41:52.510
at how police were going to respond because, you know,
830
00:41:53.349 --> 00:41:56.369
the police culture, these people have a very close relationship
831
00:41:56.409 --> 00:41:59.389
with their gun. It's their lifeline, right? It's what they
832
00:41:59.429 --> 00:42:03.130
rely on to get through dangerous situations and get back
833
00:42:03.150 --> 00:42:06.550
to their families. And I was concerned that there would
834
00:42:06.570 --> 00:42:09.440
be a negative reaction. And I've been just shocked at
835
00:42:09.460 --> 00:42:13.550
how overwhelmingly positive it's been where cops are basically saying, hey,
836
00:42:14.969 --> 00:42:18.389
I've seen what happens when police kill somebody. And it's
837
00:42:18.409 --> 00:42:20.449
not just bad for the family and the community. Those
838
00:42:20.630 --> 00:42:23.929
officers' lives are frequently destroyed. I mean, if it's a
839
00:42:23.989 --> 00:42:25.789
bad shoot because they made a mistake, they may end
840
00:42:25.829 --> 00:42:30.349
up in jail. But look at Ferguson, Missouri, the Michael
841
00:42:30.369 --> 00:42:36.369
Brown incident. That cop got completely vilified. Now, nobody knows
842
00:42:36.409 --> 00:42:38.389
how justified he was or not. I think most of
843
00:42:38.409 --> 00:42:41.869
the evidence shows he was pretty brutally assaulted. But I
844
00:42:41.909 --> 00:42:44.449
don't know for sure. I wasn't there. That's based on
845
00:42:44.489 --> 00:42:49.409
what I can read in the media. That cop may
846
00:42:49.449 --> 00:42:51.989
have killed an innocent man. We don't know. Some people
847
00:42:52.030 --> 00:42:54.469
believe that. Or he may have been under a brutal
848
00:42:54.489 --> 00:42:57.309
assault and was fighting for his life and defended himself.
849
00:42:58.090 --> 00:43:00.760
Even if that's true, his life is ruined. He lost
850
00:43:00.820 --> 00:43:04.000
his job. He moved out of town. The guy was vilified.
851
00:43:05.639 --> 00:43:08.969
tarnished reputation. He went through hell after that. And so
852
00:43:08.989 --> 00:43:10.610
as I talked to cops, they're like, look, none of
853
00:43:10.670 --> 00:43:12.550
us want to be that guy. Even if it turns
854
00:43:12.610 --> 00:43:16.190
out it was fully justified, it can still destroy your life.
855
00:43:16.230 --> 00:43:19.840
So the first reaction was a shot to how positive
856
00:43:19.860 --> 00:43:22.639
police have been. And the second reaction that surprised me
857
00:43:23.280 --> 00:43:27.760
is I started putting some more aggressive future concepts like,
858
00:43:28.820 --> 00:43:30.780
you know, there are circumstances where I think we should
859
00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:36.409
look at arming drones with non-lethal weapons. And I was
860
00:43:36.489 --> 00:43:41.230
expecting some really negative backlash from the media, like the
861
00:43:41.269 --> 00:43:43.929
standard Terminator story stuff, like, oh, we shouldn't arm robots.
862
00:43:44.739 --> 00:43:47.380
But look, you look at the Mandalay Bay shooting last year.
863
00:43:47.400 --> 00:43:50.360
It took police 12 to 15 minutes to get up
864
00:43:50.400 --> 00:43:53.559
to the shooter. Meanwhile, he kills another 40 people. If
865
00:43:53.599 --> 00:43:56.940
police had a small drone where they could triangulate on
866
00:43:56.980 --> 00:43:59.340
the shots and send it up. Now, I don't think
867
00:43:59.389 --> 00:44:02.650
we want to have drones armed with firearms. That, to me,
868
00:44:02.809 --> 00:44:06.030
sort of crosses a line where we don't want little
869
00:44:06.050 --> 00:44:09.090
robots that can kill people. But if they can incapacitate
870
00:44:09.110 --> 00:44:13.789
dangerous people, that actually allows police to work faster and
871
00:44:13.809 --> 00:44:16.530
to keep police officers further from danger. Or, you know,
872
00:44:16.550 --> 00:44:18.880
the Pulse nightclub shooting. You think of lots of times
873
00:44:18.920 --> 00:44:21.699
when if you can send in a swarm of non-lethal
874
00:44:21.719 --> 00:44:24.340
capable robots. you could save a lot of lives and
875
00:44:24.360 --> 00:44:27.000
prevent police from putting their life at risk. I thought
876
00:44:27.179 --> 00:44:29.159
I'd get a lot of negative blowback on that. And
877
00:44:29.199 --> 00:44:33.739
I've gotten extremely positive feedback, even from the media. That's like,
878
00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:36.340
you know what? That actually does make sense. It seems
879
00:44:36.360 --> 00:44:40.510
like a better approach than, you know, putting more snipers
880
00:44:40.590 --> 00:44:40.889
out there.
881
00:44:41.530 --> 00:44:42.989
Wow. Yeah.
882
00:44:43.010 --> 00:44:45.269
Reading through some of your ideas and then hearing you
883
00:44:45.489 --> 00:44:46.329
speak about them.
884
00:44:46.929 --> 00:44:48.510
It is interesting.
885
00:44:49.869 --> 00:44:52.230
Interesting to hear because I think a lot of people
886
00:44:52.349 --> 00:44:56.190
before things become just normal or the way it is,
887
00:44:56.630 --> 00:45:01.329
they sound nuts. And, and it takes, it takes a
888
00:45:01.389 --> 00:45:03.860
few of those early leaders that are willing to go
889
00:45:03.960 --> 00:45:07.519
out and say things and potentially be wrong. Certainly, as
890
00:45:07.559 --> 00:45:09.599
you probably know, you've been wrong in the past, as,
891
00:45:09.739 --> 00:45:12.559
as you mentioned before, potentially be wrong, but to say
892
00:45:12.599 --> 00:45:14.460
them because you believe in it. And I think I
893
00:45:14.500 --> 00:45:19.150
find that inspiring regardless of people listening to agree or disagree.
894
00:45:19.190 --> 00:45:20.489
I think you have to respect that.
895
00:45:20.510 --> 00:45:23.469
You know, I would tell you this, when I talk
896
00:45:23.510 --> 00:45:26.969
to entrepreneurs or people that are, Hey, I've got, you know,
897
00:45:27.010 --> 00:45:31.090
tell me they've got an idea. Um, and everybody's telling
898
00:45:31.130 --> 00:45:33.389
them that they're crazy or it's a bad idea. I
899
00:45:34.210 --> 00:45:37.280
tell them, I think that's actually a good sign. Cause if,
900
00:45:37.590 --> 00:45:39.920
if you, if the first time you tell people your idea,
901
00:45:39.980 --> 00:45:43.380
they're like, Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah. Well, chances are,
902
00:45:44.409 --> 00:45:46.710
you know, you're not really pushing the envelope. Somebody's probably
903
00:45:46.730 --> 00:45:48.719
already done it. Or if it seems like it's an
904
00:45:48.760 --> 00:45:53.019
obviously a good idea and somebody hasn't done it yet,
905
00:45:53.039 --> 00:45:56.340
you know, you might have some, there's probably a reason why.
906
00:45:56.360 --> 00:46:00.099
I think ultimately the transformative business opportunities are the ones
907
00:46:00.119 --> 00:46:03.579
that are not obvious and the ones that challenge the
908
00:46:03.619 --> 00:46:07.179
status quo. So I take it as a good sign.
909
00:46:07.219 --> 00:46:09.989
And I try to encourage young entrepreneurs that, you know,
910
00:46:10.530 --> 00:46:12.309
if everybody around you is telling you all the reasons
911
00:46:12.369 --> 00:46:16.309
it can't work, Don't get discouraged by that. That means
912
00:46:16.349 --> 00:46:18.750
you're challenging the way things are and you might be
913
00:46:18.789 --> 00:46:19.510
onto a breakthrough.
914
00:46:20.989 --> 00:46:23.030
One of the other things I learned, Rick, prior to
915
00:46:23.110 --> 00:46:27.309
us talking is the fact that, quote, your executive team
916
00:46:27.530 --> 00:46:32.750
is very buttoned up and extremely impressive. And they've said
917
00:46:32.809 --> 00:46:37.440
Rick has done a great job of finding and developing
918
00:46:37.719 --> 00:46:44.010
impressive leaders to surround himself with. and has delegated extremely well.
919
00:46:44.610 --> 00:46:46.170
What's your thought process?
920
00:46:46.329 --> 00:46:48.909
And we've touched on it briefly about making sure that
921
00:46:49.150 --> 00:46:53.550
you don't, if somebody's worried about an A or A
922
00:46:53.590 --> 00:46:57.250
plus player being on their team, that you would probably
923
00:46:57.670 --> 00:47:00.300
fire them. You want people to desire to have other
924
00:47:00.320 --> 00:47:03.820
smart people around. So obviously you're modeling that by having
925
00:47:03.840 --> 00:47:08.769
an impressive buttoned up executive team. But I'd love just
926
00:47:08.789 --> 00:47:12.429
to learn about overall philosophy on how you think about that.
927
00:47:12.510 --> 00:47:14.989
So for that person who is working to build something,
928
00:47:15.070 --> 00:47:19.719
perhaps like you've built, that could be good advice for them.
929
00:47:21.860 --> 00:47:22.199
Yeah.
930
00:47:22.300 --> 00:47:26.539
So for me, one of the hardest transformations of my
931
00:47:26.579 --> 00:47:33.010
life was from founder to CEO, because they're very different characteristics.
932
00:47:33.250 --> 00:47:38.849
When you're a founder in the early stages, you have
933
00:47:38.889 --> 00:47:41.969
to micromanage a lot. You've got to be in the
934
00:47:42.010 --> 00:47:45.960
middle of everything. There's no room for error. You're washing
935
00:47:46.320 --> 00:47:50.079
the dishes and sweeping the floors and all these other...
936
00:47:50.079 --> 00:47:53.019
That's hard. And for me, as the company got bigger,
937
00:47:53.280 --> 00:47:55.960
I found that I was turning into a chronic micromanager.
938
00:47:56.760 --> 00:48:00.420
And for me, one of the things that was transformative
939
00:48:00.900 --> 00:48:03.179
was I actually reached a point where I was getting
940
00:48:03.219 --> 00:48:07.030
ready to retire. And So mentally, I was going through
941
00:48:07.050 --> 00:48:10.800
this process of, OK, how do I start just delegating
942
00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:15.199
everything that I'm doing so that I could eventually just
943
00:48:15.280 --> 00:48:17.840
walk out because I was getting so burned out? And
944
00:48:17.900 --> 00:48:19.699
in the process, I had a conversation with one of
945
00:48:19.739 --> 00:48:22.699
my board members. And they basically said, wow, that'd be
946
00:48:22.739 --> 00:48:25.289
really bad because you are a founder CEO. We'd like
947
00:48:25.309 --> 00:48:27.170
to have you stay around. And so we came up
948
00:48:27.210 --> 00:48:28.670
with a plan where I said, look, OK, here's what
949
00:48:28.690 --> 00:48:31.699
I'll do. I'll go to Europe for a year. and
950
00:48:31.800 --> 00:48:35.059
help hire our European sales team. We were really struggling.
951
00:48:35.840 --> 00:48:38.179
And to me, that was interesting too. It was a
952
00:48:38.219 --> 00:48:40.840
new problem to solve. I'd gone to school in Europe
953
00:48:40.880 --> 00:48:42.440
and I wanted my kids to experience the world a
954
00:48:42.440 --> 00:48:44.179
little bit. So, and it was a chance for me
955
00:48:44.199 --> 00:48:46.889
to take a little bit of a sabbatical, so to speak, mentally.
956
00:48:47.369 --> 00:48:49.769
And the most amazing thing happened is I was preparing
957
00:48:49.789 --> 00:48:52.030
to go to Europe. I basically, you know, I'd have
958
00:48:52.230 --> 00:48:54.429
moments where I'm like, wait a minute, it's 10 PM
959
00:48:54.469 --> 00:48:57.690
and I'm writing a webpage. Huh? This doesn't feel right.
960
00:48:57.730 --> 00:49:01.280
Why isn't somebody else doing this? And multiply that 10,000
961
00:49:01.280 --> 00:49:04.099
times over 18 months as I had to figure out
962
00:49:04.619 --> 00:49:08.440
how to give away my Legos, give to other people
963
00:49:08.519 --> 00:49:10.820
the things that I was doing. And then when I
964
00:49:10.889 --> 00:49:15.750
moved to Europe, I stayed engaged with the organization. But
965
00:49:16.110 --> 00:49:18.730
because of the distance, I could only stay engaged on
966
00:49:18.769 --> 00:49:22.150
the most important factor. And what happened, I became a
967
00:49:22.300 --> 00:49:26.039
way better CEO because I was engineering myself out of
968
00:49:26.059 --> 00:49:29.449
the job And ultimately, now that I'm back in the business,
969
00:49:29.550 --> 00:49:32.070
I really after that year, I fell in love with
970
00:49:32.090 --> 00:49:33.659
my job again. I was like, wait a minute. It's
971
00:49:33.699 --> 00:49:35.820
not my job to write Web pages. It's not my
972
00:49:35.860 --> 00:49:38.860
job to be working 24 hours a day. It's my
973
00:49:38.900 --> 00:49:41.500
job to build the team and let them run. And,
974
00:49:42.239 --> 00:49:45.369
you know, once I've adopted this mindset, like my mental
975
00:49:45.429 --> 00:49:47.969
health is way better. My stress levels are way down.
976
00:49:48.809 --> 00:49:48.929
I've.
977
00:49:49.300 --> 00:49:52.519
I've basically gotten to the point where I've accepted that
978
00:49:52.599 --> 00:49:58.260
my role is just to help inspire the right team
979
00:49:58.619 --> 00:50:00.949
and clarify their roles and get the hell out of
980
00:50:00.969 --> 00:50:01.269
the way.
981
00:50:02.150 --> 00:50:03.309
So what's your day-to-day like now?
982
00:50:05.190 --> 00:50:09.750
It depends. I like to say my role now is
983
00:50:09.849 --> 00:50:15.239
I'm the chief storyteller of the business. And that sort
984
00:50:15.260 --> 00:50:21.179
of bookends it. So I'm at the beginning phase where– okay,
985
00:50:21.510 --> 00:50:22.949
where are we going to be in 10 years? What's
986
00:50:22.989 --> 00:50:25.630
the story we want to tell over the next 10 years?
987
00:50:25.650 --> 00:50:28.550
What's the vision we're painting? And then I get to
988
00:50:28.610 --> 00:50:30.909
come back and connect the dots with our R &
989
00:50:30.590 --> 00:50:33.409
D guys and our product roadmap, which is the stuff
990
00:50:33.489 --> 00:50:37.050
I love doing. So it's okay, what is Taser 8
991
00:50:37.050 --> 00:50:39.429
going to be like? What research do we need to do?
992
00:50:39.469 --> 00:50:41.730
What are the problems we need to solve? I love
993
00:50:41.750 --> 00:50:44.090
all that stuff. And then I also get to tell
994
00:50:44.139 --> 00:50:47.219
the story of the company publicly about, okay, here's where
995
00:50:47.260 --> 00:50:51.539
we're going, the book, obviously. And then everything in between,
996
00:50:51.739 --> 00:50:54.960
I've delegated. So Luke Larson is the president of the company.
997
00:50:54.980 --> 00:50:57.760
He runs the place day to day. Oversees hiring all
998
00:50:57.800 --> 00:51:01.070
the people, managing all the issues. His job, I've done it.
999
00:51:01.239 --> 00:51:03.119
It's way more stressful than the job I have now.
1000
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:07.000
But I actually think it's really important for the business
1001
00:51:07.099 --> 00:51:11.260
because what happens, if I was the chief operating person,
1002
00:51:12.510 --> 00:51:17.230
you get so overwhelmed with all the day-to-day stuff. There's
1003
00:51:17.289 --> 00:51:19.989
no room left in your brain for creative thinking. You're
1004
00:51:20.050 --> 00:51:22.090
up at 3 in the morning waking up with that
1005
00:51:22.150 --> 00:51:24.489
knot in your stomach because Billy and Susie are having
1006
00:51:24.510 --> 00:51:27.190
some issue at work you've got to disentangle the next day.
1007
00:51:27.869 --> 00:51:30.780
That stuff, there's an endless stream of all those managerial
1008
00:51:30.840 --> 00:51:33.460
issues you have to deal with. And so for me,
1009
00:51:33.480 --> 00:51:36.400
when I went to Europe, I basically handed off all
1010
00:51:36.420 --> 00:51:40.079
of that. And I've tried my darndest not to get
1011
00:51:40.139 --> 00:51:44.130
back into it since I came back after that year.
1012
00:51:45.010 --> 00:51:47.070
And I think it's been really good for the company
1013
00:51:47.090 --> 00:51:52.610
as well because– My brain cycles are going into really
1014
00:51:52.710 --> 00:51:56.630
solving the interesting strategic problems. And again, it almost sounds
1015
00:51:56.670 --> 00:51:58.489
like BS when I say it. Like, well, you know,
1016
00:51:59.070 --> 00:52:01.610
I can't work hard because then I can't think. But
1017
00:52:01.630 --> 00:52:05.289
it's actually true, right? You only have so much emotional
1018
00:52:05.309 --> 00:52:07.469
and mental energy. And if you allow it to get
1019
00:52:07.550 --> 00:52:11.670
sucked up in all the minutiae, then ultimately you're going
1020
00:52:11.690 --> 00:52:13.809
to miss the big picture stuff that you've got to
1021
00:52:13.829 --> 00:52:16.469
get done. So that allows me now to focus on
1022
00:52:16.489 --> 00:52:20.320
the creative problem-solving knowing that I've got a team that's
1023
00:52:20.449 --> 00:52:24.809
way better than me at hiring, frankly, firing, and doing
1024
00:52:24.889 --> 00:52:26.949
all the day-to-day operational things that you need to do.
1025
00:52:28.030 --> 00:52:28.889
One more question, Rick.
1026
00:52:29.110 --> 00:52:33.429
Let's say you're sitting in your office and a person
1027
00:52:33.610 --> 00:52:37.570
earlier in their career has come into your office and
1028
00:52:37.789 --> 00:52:43.239
asked for career advice. And their loose question is, Rick,
1029
00:52:43.469 --> 00:52:46.059
I want to build a career and a life where
1030
00:52:46.079 --> 00:52:48.000
I make a positive contribution to the world.
1031
00:52:48.750 --> 00:52:53.739
I want to have some significance. I want to do
1032
00:52:53.820 --> 00:52:55.480
great work.
1033
00:52:55.940 --> 00:52:58.059
What are some of the pieces of advice you would
1034
00:52:58.079 --> 00:53:00.340
give to that person earlier in their career to say,
1035
00:53:00.599 --> 00:53:03.090
you should do these things, or you should think in
1036
00:53:03.119 --> 00:53:09.469
this manner, or just in general, an operating framework for
1037
00:53:09.510 --> 00:53:11.570
somebody who desires to do that?
1038
00:53:13.309 --> 00:53:16.610
Yeah, I would say, you know, if that's the case
1039
00:53:16.639 --> 00:53:23.510
at all, find a job where you get to feel
1040
00:53:23.590 --> 00:53:27.570
the impact of what you want to create, right? Meaning
1041
00:53:27.789 --> 00:53:29.380
not just a job where you go in and you
1042
00:53:29.400 --> 00:53:32.159
get assigned tasks and you do those tasks. And, you know,
1043
00:53:32.280 --> 00:53:33.940
for some people, that's great. Some people just want a
1044
00:53:33.960 --> 00:53:36.519
job that's going to pay the bills and they don't want,
1045
00:53:36.539 --> 00:53:41.429
you know, a lot of stress. And, and I, I, that's,
1046
00:53:42.349 --> 00:53:45.909
that is a choice. Not everybody, you know, needs to be, uh,
1047
00:53:48.530 --> 00:53:52.130
pushing the envelope of what they're going to accomplish at work.
1048
00:53:52.869 --> 00:53:55.769
But if that's what you want to do and it
1049
00:53:55.789 --> 00:53:58.389
can be very rewarding, well then you need to focus
1050
00:53:58.429 --> 00:54:01.070
a lot more on what are the big picture things
1051
00:54:01.090 --> 00:54:06.110
you are accomplishing and do not over-focus on your daily
1052
00:54:06.159 --> 00:54:11.360
to-do list. Actually, I'm not the best. If you want
1053
00:54:11.380 --> 00:54:13.099
to make sure something gets done, I am not the
1054
00:54:13.139 --> 00:54:15.820
guy to give it to because probably half the shit
1055
00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:18.969
I commit to pardon my French, slides off my to-do list.
1056
00:54:19.699 --> 00:54:22.789
And I've come to accept that it's actually, it's good
1057
00:54:22.909 --> 00:54:25.929
and it's intentional. There's just a lot of stuff that
1058
00:54:26.030 --> 00:54:27.929
I think I should do that ultimately, you know what?
1059
00:54:28.030 --> 00:54:30.269
There's not enough time to do all the things on
1060
00:54:30.289 --> 00:54:33.329
your to-do list. And you just got to let go
1061
00:54:33.389 --> 00:54:35.829
because otherwise the stress will kill you. Like trying to
1062
00:54:35.869 --> 00:54:39.269
get your email inbox to zero, not worth it. You'll
1063
00:54:39.289 --> 00:54:41.150
spend your whole day. And when you've seen people, like
1064
00:54:41.170 --> 00:54:42.590
they sit in meetings and they're on their phone the
1065
00:54:42.610 --> 00:54:47.510
whole time. They're just constantly, they're never really present. You've
1066
00:54:47.550 --> 00:54:49.880
got to identify what are the big things I need
1067
00:54:49.900 --> 00:54:53.840
to do and make sure I get those done. Now,
1068
00:54:54.400 --> 00:54:57.960
being the CEO, I have a little more latitude to
1069
00:54:58.019 --> 00:54:59.940
let things slide off my plate. If you're more junior
1070
00:54:59.980 --> 00:55:01.800
in an organization to where there's going to be negative
1071
00:55:01.820 --> 00:55:04.239
repercussions for that, you may have to find ways to
1072
00:55:04.380 --> 00:55:09.219
engineer those to-dos to go somewhere else. But I think
1073
00:55:09.260 --> 00:55:13.510
it really just comes down to, again, that factor of
1074
00:55:13.690 --> 00:55:16.010
initiative and working on things that are going to have
1075
00:55:16.500 --> 00:55:19.570
a material impact. The people that are the most effective
1076
00:55:19.909 --> 00:55:23.030
are the ones who can really see what needs to
1077
00:55:23.070 --> 00:55:27.150
be done and go do it without being told. And
1078
00:55:27.190 --> 00:55:29.730
it's a fairly small percentage of the population. If you
1079
00:55:29.769 --> 00:55:32.429
can be one of those people, you are going to
1080
00:55:32.510 --> 00:55:36.699
rise up in any organization that you'd want to be
1081
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:38.079
a part of. And again, you might be in a
1082
00:55:38.119 --> 00:55:41.449
dying organization where, you know, politics and infighting are happening there,
1083
00:55:41.469 --> 00:55:43.150
just get the hell out. But if it's a, an
1084
00:55:43.269 --> 00:55:48.289
organization that's growing, uh, and succeeding, you know, those behaviors
1085
00:55:48.510 --> 00:55:51.650
are what are going to serve you much better than, well,
1086
00:55:51.769 --> 00:55:55.030
I did everything they told me to do. Okay. So
1087
00:55:55.050 --> 00:55:57.619
did 95% of the world. That's not going to differentiate you.
1088
00:55:58.699 --> 00:56:01.389
Yep. It's great stuff, Rick. Thank you so much.
1089
00:56:01.429 --> 00:56:03.789
Your book's called The End of Killing, How Our Newest
1090
00:56:03.809 --> 00:56:08.150
Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problem. Where would you send
1091
00:56:08.190 --> 00:56:10.409
my listeners to learn more about you online?
1092
00:56:11.639 --> 00:56:16.900
Yeah, best place is I've got my website, simply endofkilling.com.
1093
00:56:17.719 --> 00:56:23.010
You're on Twitter, hashtag endofkilling, or the company website at axon.com.
1094
00:56:24.570 --> 00:56:27.400
Perfect. Well, Rick, thanks again for being here.
1095
00:56:27.420 --> 00:56:30.480
It was great getting to learn from you directly, and
1096
00:56:30.539 --> 00:56:33.519
I would absolutely love to continue this dialogue as we
1097
00:56:33.539 --> 00:56:34.260
both progress, man.
1098
00:56:35.659 --> 00:56:38.199
Fantastic. Well, I really enjoyed it, Ryan, and congrats on
1099
00:56:38.239 --> 00:56:41.679
all the success of building a fantastic show. Awesome. Thanks, man.
1100
00:56:42.840 --> 00:56:44.119
All right. Have a good one. Okay.
1101
00:56:44.690 --> 00:56:44.809
Bye.
1102
00:56:45.230 --> 00:56:45.349
Bye.
1103
00:56:47.420 --> 00:56:50.420
I found that conversation with Rick to be fascinating, particularly
1104
00:56:50.860 --> 00:56:54.070
the part about his dad's money being tied up in
1105
00:56:54.110 --> 00:56:57.510
his business and that causing fractures within the family and
1106
00:56:57.590 --> 00:57:02.610
was happy to obviously hear that it had a good
1107
00:57:03.050 --> 00:57:05.909
ending and it currently still does. In addition to that,
1108
00:57:06.030 --> 00:57:09.030
I found one part to be really useful for all
1109
00:57:09.050 --> 00:57:13.250
of us and that was his value.
1110
00:57:12.989 --> 00:57:14.610
In taking initiative.
1111
00:57:15.239 --> 00:57:18.989
And when you see a problem, Work really hard to
1112
00:57:19.110 --> 00:57:22.489
solve that big problem, regardless of if you work within
1113
00:57:22.530 --> 00:57:24.730
a company or if you're an entrepreneur. I think that
1114
00:57:24.789 --> 00:57:27.400
can apply to all of us and is really a
1115
00:57:27.579 --> 00:57:31.179
great reminder at any point in your career, at any
1116
00:57:31.239 --> 00:57:35.119
position in your career, take initiative. Look for opportunities to
1117
00:57:35.179 --> 00:57:39.769
make a difference and then attack it aggressively as Rick
1118
00:57:39.869 --> 00:57:40.309
has done.
1119
00:57:40.369 --> 00:57:41.510
We all can do this.
1120
00:57:42.469 --> 00:57:44.670
If you enjoyed this one as much as I did,
1121
00:57:44.809 --> 00:57:47.730
I would love it if you would write a review, subscribe,
1122
00:57:48.050 --> 00:57:50.889
and rate the show on iTunes, Apple Podcasts. Write a review, subscribe,
1123
00:57:50.929 --> 00:57:53.980
and rate the show on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, hopefully five stars,
1124
00:57:54.099 --> 00:57:56.920
as well as spread the message, tell a friend. The
1125
00:57:57.019 --> 00:58:01.800
best form of marketing is word of mouth, one person
1126
00:58:02.039 --> 00:58:04.199
at a time. And that continues to give me the
1127
00:58:04.239 --> 00:58:06.239
opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.
1128
00:58:06.280 --> 00:58:09.920
And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you
1129
00:58:10.099 --> 00:58:11.420
so much. Talk with you next week.
1130
00:58:11.539 --> 00:58:11.760
Can't wait.