#303: How to Do Crazy Good Turns -- Frank Blake

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Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to tease out the habits, routines, tactics you can use from world class performers of all different types, including business. Military chess. Anything and everything imaginable, and there are patterns. The guest today is Frank Blake.

at Frank Blake on Twitter. Frank served as chairman and CEO of the Home Depot from January 2007 through November 2014, and then as chairman through January of 2015. Frank joined the Home Depot in 2002 as Executive Vice President Business Development and Corporate Operations. He previously served as deputy secretary for the US Department of Energy. Prior to that, He served in a variety, and I do mean wide variety of executive roles at General Electric. And we do have some great, great stories. uh related to lessons learned from Jack Welch as a side note, including senior vice president corporate business development. And under that umbrella, he did just about everything imaginable. He's an expert of mergers and acquisition and much, much more

But that's not it. Frank's public sector experience includes having served as general counsel for the US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, deputy counsel to Vice President George Bush, and law clerk to Justice Stevens of the US Supreme Court. He serves on the board of directors for the Georgia Aquarium, Proctor Gamble, Macy's, and is currently serving as chairman of the Delta and Grady hospital boards. Additionally, sits on the board of trustees at Agnes Scott College. He holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard and a jurisprudence degree from Columbia University School of Law. He is a very, very entertaining guy, has fantastic stories, and also a lot of takeaways that you can apply. He also has a podcast. which is short form, twenty five minutes. So if you want to scratch that itch, check out crazygood turns.org and the description. We tell inspiring stories about people who do amazing things.

for others. There are some fantastic episodes, so I encourage you to check that out. And Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with the ever fascinating And very, very effective, Frank. Blake.

Yeah. Frank, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. Thank you. I am so thrilled to have you here. to help me solve the riddles of life. Uh uh And I thought I would start with maybe some some common ground. And it relates to a book called Built to Scratch.

So the background. personally speaking, is that Built to scratch, along with a few other books. for

More than thirty years now. Wow. So they helped set me on my First entrepreneurial journey step. and have traveled from house to house, apartment to apartment, country to country ever since. And In the course of doing research I had read that

when you became the CEO of Home Depot that you had read Passages from built to scratch. Right. And I was curious if you recalled any of that, why you chose to do that, if you could walk us through it. That would be fantastic. First, your research is great, absolutely right. Uh that's very exciting that the book is important to you, as you'll hear it's hugely important to me. First the book is uh the story of Home Depot. Uh it was written by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank and about

Bernie and Arthur and Ken Langone and their founding of Home Depot. It's one of the great Entrepreneurial stories Uh our century of our times.

because Bernie and Arthur had been fired from their prior job. Ken Langone said to them when they got fired. You just got hit by a golden h horseshoe in the ass. You're so lucky. And then they went and established the home depot, which was uh the most successful retail concept of its time. fastest to ten billion, twenty billion, thirty billion, forty billion.

Uh my connection with the book is is It's very meaningful to me, not only because it's the story of the finding of the home depot, but also because Of my start as the s of home depot. Uh I did not have a background that would lead anyone to think that I'd ever be the CEO of the Home Depot.

In fact when the Board called me. And said We want you to be the CEO uh I said you ought to

take a day and think about this because you n I while I had been at Home Depot for a few years, I had not been really doing a lot of the retail work. I've been doing M and A activity and real estate and that kind of thing. And I said you oughta spend a day, think about it and think about hiring a real retailer and I need to think about it. Obviously they called back at the end of the day, they still offered me the job. I obviously took the job. But I can Honestly say

That A nanosecond before the call. I was not thinking I'm gonna be the CEO of this company. There were no moments of driving along in the dark of night thinking, Oh, what would I do if I were running this place? That is completely Unprepared.

And then like a lot of retailers, you know, we have a way of communicating to our associates at the time. Home Depot had around three hundred and fifty thousand associates. We have little uh T V S. that we beam in messages to the break rooms. And I have to go and address the three hundred and fifty thousand associates. Um

being singularly unprepared. At the time my my son uh Home Deep's program of returning veterans. giving them jobs in the store. My son was an a tur returning Iraq veteran, Iraqi war veteran, had come back, had been an assistant store manager, was now a store manager at Home Depot. And so I gave him a call and I said, Frank

His same name as I uh I said Frank Do you have any thoughts on what I should say? And first she said, Wow, good luck. And then the second the second thing he said was I don't know What you should say, but I can tell you How I start every store meeting.

In my store. I said, Great, what do you do? And he said I take built from scratch and I read from it. I'll read a passage from it. I go. This is brilliant.

And so I pick up the book, I flip madly through it to find something that's I think is relevant and in the book they talk about the inverted pyramid and a leadership concept where the CEO is at the bottom and the customers and the frontline associates are at the top. And so I use that. Uh

Reading from built from scratch and then inverted pyramid is my first And then for the next eight years as CEO, uh I spent time figuring out what does that actually mean. Uh how do you lead from an inverted pyramid um

perspective and and what are the leadership lessons you pull from that. So yes. Uh hugely important book. It's a great book. Uh unfortunately it's out of print, but I'm sure I can get it for anybody who wants it. Yeah, maybe we could get the publisher to do it. That would be great. Right. Yeah, exactly. S I I'd like to start right in the middle of the action, kinda in media rest with something like that and then rewind the clock. So If we go back to your childhood, could you tell us a bit about where you grew up?

And how you would Describe your childhood. Uh I grew up in uh right outside of Boston, Massachusetts, uh family of Five uh I was the fourth of five.

Unfortunately my three older siblings have died. My mom, though just had her one hundredth birthday and still lives in the house I grew up in. Uh had a great, very family oriented experience growing up. Very close family. And we have a lot of relatives in the area. So New England's sort of home still. What did your mom do for her hundredth birthday? Uh so we had a big party.

And and we had lots of relatives, lots of her friends, uh she um She's the kind of person who if you say Uh mention any name. she will know exactly what that person's father did, what their sister did, she'll have a backstory that will go on for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Uh She works the phone. Constantly. And she's done that even to the age of a hundred. She's sharp as a tack. Wow. So factual recall. Yeah. Very good. And very storytelling. So you just You go

Wow, I had no idea. that there was that much interesting going on in their life. You know, they had a twin sister and the twin sister ran away with the grocery man and you know, it's just all that kinda detail. Fascinating stuff. What did you think you were going to grow up to be when you were in, say, high school or Ah when you were younger. I I was interested in politics.

So so Um I worked on campaigns, uh when I got out of college, I worked in the state legislature in Massachusetts. Uh After I went to law school, I then ended up in Washington D C

I had very traditional uh Washington D C lawyer government career move back and forth. uh from private practice and into the government. So the I Politics fascinated me. I was interested in politics.

Fascinate you. What's what led to that? Uh Or what about it? I think you start you start by by uh the issues are so interesting. Uh you think you can impact people's lives, um Mm. They're uh Yeah.

You know, power is a fascinating thing and so politics is a source of power and it's fascinating because of it. Did you experience conversations about politics over the dinner table or how were you introduced to it? Not a bit. Not a bit. No, not a bit. Uh it was entirely um Aye. Self generated. I don't know where it came from, but

It m yeah. Just No one else in my family was remotely interested in politics. That was my thing. As I was mentioning before we start recording, I've had a hell of a time trying to figure out what path to take with this conversation because you have such an eclectic background and

Uh, people will have heard certainly a fair amount of this In the introduction, but I'll just mention a few things and then I'll get to the question. So you have law clerk for Supreme Court Justice. General Counsel for GE I'm skipping a lot.

Deputy Secretary. Now do you say Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy or is it better to just say Deputy Secretary of Energy? Department of Energy. There we go. All right. And then CEO of Home Depot and then certainly at least as one of our mutual friends has put it, you are the least retired retired person he knows. Mm.

I have a lot of friends who are lawyers, loved ones who are lawyers, uh, former lawyers, and they tend to be Very Uh Certainty focused. And uh

uh averse to entrepreneurship. So How have you and if this is even accurate. Ended up with this combination of very strong legal background and ability

to manage in amidst uncertainty. And Combine those two. It's really unusual from my Experience at least. Uh

I'm probably an awful lot accidental. Uh so the first part accidental was a group of us set up our own law firm. So there are twelve of us who set up our own law firm and that was kind of my first experience with entrepreneurial activity. I could say I was singularly bad I the firm did great. Uh most of my instincts about how to do it actually looking back are pretty funny because I was wrong. Uh So that was an introduction to entrepreneurial activity.

Uh I left Washington. Uh to go to GE to be the general counsel of a business in Schenectady, New York, and everybody thought That's the stupidest thing we've ever heard. Why would you leave Washington at Great

Legal practice and go to schenectity. And mostly it was by that time I was kind of sick of politics and sick of Washington. And Uh I was the beneficiary of the way GE did

H R so the uh Basically they move people around. Every eighteen months. But they never bothered to move the lawyers'cause who you know. They're not gonna bother to move the lawyers. So after about five or six years

I'm the person around the table who sort of knows how the business works and I've listened to this and I've observed over time And uh They offered me a job. going on to the business side and then the rest of it. Um

Uh Being a lawyer is great. Uh Having been a lawyer is even better. So so I really I really enjoyed the business side and found it much, much more fascinating than the legal side. Uh

How did you make the decision walk us through making the decision to leave the law practice. and take the job at GE because that's a sc or it could be a scary step. And I know certainly looking around myself at my friends who have what most people would consider successful legal careers

Uh they often pine after these types of changes, but very few of them actually take the leap. So how did you Uh how did you make that decision? The case I have never made as a salary. more money than I made as a lawyer. So

I did more with my draw from the law firm than through to being CEO of the home depot. So it was it was a very good legal practice. The problem with legal practice after a while that you realize is Um There's such a disincentive for any kind of efficiency. Right? Somebody comes in with a problem and you go, I know this problem. I can name this tune and Three notes. Well no, actually that's

Ps not what you that's not the business model. You wanna say, Oh boy, that's a complex symphony. That's gonna be three thousand notes. And so the idea of trying to do something that's cumulative rather than uh Spilling your time by the hour is really what appealed to me. And and Washington's a very Um

Washington's. Very close little culture. And I wanted just to get out of Out of that. Closed culture. And S Connected in New York sounded like.

The far end of the earth. Now at the time were you single, married, when You're married. Married. How did that Uh how did you deliver the news or how did you Uh

I you know, If you're comfortable saying Yeah, I don't I don't I don't know that we had a lot of discussion around it, but it was clear that I was not. I just was becoming increasingly unhappy. Uh on the legal side. And

while I'm I'm not sure everybody was thrill and um my family wasn't thrilled to be moving to uh Oh it You know, we lived in Albany, but to be moving to upstate New York they Wrote in with it. gets chilly I grew up in New York, but on Long Island. But upstate gets chilly. For people who haven't been there. Upstate is chilly and um

It's very chilly. Uh GE. So GE is another company in addition to Home Depot, even though I've never done anything myself.

in any industries related to either that is fascinating. Uh when did you first meet Jack Welch? Oh early early on um And and and then I ended up as a direct report for Jack. Uh

I Jack Walsh is I mean the founders of Home Depot, uh Bernie Marcus, Ken Langone, Arthur Blank, they're extraordinary people. Jack Walsh is an extraordinary extraordinary human being. w one of the ways I would describe it is I would never take a phone call from him. Sitting down.

The energy just immediately stood up. to provide an answer to Jack and uh Just I've got a lot of he was hugely helpful to me while I was the CEO at Home Depot. Got a lot of stories around Jack Trilly, uh hero. Yeah, let's get into it. This is a long farm podcast. Alright. We have the luxury of time. So so so this is an arc. This is a uh So I

Become CEO of the home depot. I think uh Alright, I gotta call Jack. And I'm gonna ask him for some time and kinda give me CEO one oh one lessons. And which I did, and he was very nice. He

was down in Florida at the time, I said, Jack, can I spend a day with you and you know, kinda Pick your brains. Mm. He said, Great. And mind you, I have done hundreds of pitches.

to Jack in my time at GE. And I prepared so hard. I could tell you the margin rate of an ant trap. I mean I was just into all the details, all the numbers. And I go down

And the first thing he says is um Draw me your org chart. And we spend a day. Going through People.

And it was probably one of the most helpful days of my time because Yeah. And I recommend this for anybody, anywhere, if you find somebody that you really respect. Will ask you questions and then you just listen to what you're saying. And in effect he did that.

Uh for me on the organization and the people And then every year. I do the same thing. I'd spend a day with Jack every single year. And this is jumping ahead, but I love the story so much. So the eighth Year. So my last time.

I get to ask the question that's sort of the More on stupid question that You wouldn't dare ask earlier'cause you wouldn't be able to get the next meeting with Jack. So I go, Okay, Jack All of the attributes of leadership. If if you had to weigh them all.

And Pick one. What is the single most important attribute of leadership and his answer shocked me. Uh

He said generosity. And I wouldn't have predicted it. Yeah. kinda took me by surprise when he said it and then when he explained it and explained How as leaders you need to be fueled by the success of others and how that's really got to be the driving force. And I could see that.

as true for how he ran GE. Um It made a lot of sense and it's stuck with me ever since. It's a great lesson. Why was it important in that first meeting that he shifted the focus to the org chart. What happened? What were the questions he asked? What were the important So the great questions were uh

First, how are you organized? I mean'cause you know. That Tells a lot about what your priorities are And second, uh He'd be asking about people.

And I'd be I'd find myself in some instances The kind of making excuses and saying, Well, you know, blah blah blah, but not really and then he'd just say I mean, did you hear what you just said? What are you gonna do about it?

And It wasn't his commentary on these people, he didn't even know them. But listening to his Mm. feeding back to me what I was saying and then say, Hey, look

Yeah. You're not smart enough to do this on your own. So if you're gonna do this and be successful, you gotta you've gotta get the right team with you. For people who don't know Jack. What would you say he is best known for? Uh something that uh stuck with me and I have great respect for Jack and I've read a lot about him, but I might be getting the details wrong'cause it's been a while. Uh I mean he's had the nickname Neutron Jack. He I think it was with the bottom ten percent of performers in GE were let go on an annual basis. Annual basis. And was he then asking you about

Strongest, weakest performers and then asking you why you were keeping or why the weakest performers were continuing to be employed. You know, who lags and who's ahead. It was more individual by individual, tell me, describe for me their strengths and weaknesses, go through it. Um And Well I would say the

What Jack did The Um particularly impresses me in retrospect because it's so hard to do Um

So I'm I Going to GE as a lawyer. Uh GE is a finance engineering firm. Lawyers are n I mean, you know, we had a great legal team, uh but

Still. The lawyers are not at the Top of the Organizational. Pecking order.

Somehow Jack got the sense within me. That the path to success in the company was actually to disagree with him and be right. And That's huge.

Because And he would say this, uh, you know, I'd s I'd express, wow, that's so amaz you know, in retrospect, Jack, that's so amazing and he'd say, Well I really don't need to pay people to tell me I'm right. I need to pay people who are gonna tell me where I'm wrong. But organizations are Such a Echo chambers. And Bernie Marcus gave me a great piece of advice. He gave me tons of pieces of advice that were terrific.

But I I remember one of them at the start of becoming CEO. Bernie said Okay, let me tell you how this works. You're gonna be sitting around a table. And you're gonna tell a joke. And

All the folks are gonna laugh. And he said, Let me tell you you're not fun. And the point the point of that is Yo people are just going to respond to you the way they think you want. them to respond. So eliciting the kind of reaction that Jack did from me, which was, hey, it's okay actually to disagree with the boss, you damn well better be right.

But it's a good thing to disagree with the boss is huge. So on that point, uh, and I may get the pronunciation wrong, uh Carol Tomay. Yeah. So at the time Home Depot's CFO. Yeah. I said that when you arrived. Still. Yeah. And this is a compliment. Yeah. You invited conflict into the decision making process. Uh and and I'll quote here.

This is from a fortune article. We were conflict hesitant. Frank asked a ton of questions that make you say what is working and not working. So this is interesting to me. Uh How do you encourage people and to disagree and elicit the bad news or whatever it might be. How do you do that without

Also simultaneously or Dissipating the fear of getting Punished for that. Uh

I think it's one of the most important things so so I have a long discussion around what the inverted pyramid means, but one of the things it means is that everything that's important as the CEO, everything that's important is happening above you. with the customers and the frontline associates and the folks who you know, work in the organization. So you've got to figure out a way to effectively listen. and effectively get them to communicate.

Yeah. I learned actually from a board member at Home Depot And this may be more unique to retail to Uh

The the best way to do that is if I was walking in a store and we had a particular project My comment would be Why isn't Project X working? And then they'd go, Oh my gosh, Frank knows that the project isn't working. I guess we Better say something.

And so that would actually prompt a conversation. While if you said How's everything going? In any organization of any size, there's only one right answer when the boss says, How's everything going? The answer is it's going great, you're awesome, please go. And

You need to kinda Pull out from people. You know, every once in a while somebody would say, Why'd you say it's not working? It's working great. But more often than not it would be, Oh, well, here's here's what you're miss here's what's not happening, here are the issues. So So

There are So many pieces of paper, as you can see, and so many questions that I want to ask and uh The next the next one is really closely related to this. And uh something that I think about a lot. Uh

then I'll lead into it in a somewhat confusing way. The internet is almost all negative feedback. People get punished and attacked. However, if you look at say operant classical conditioning, dog training, mammal training, human training Positive reinforcement.

This is actually Critically important. Uh So this is a this is a a quote and please correct me if I'm wrong.

But I'd love to get Some examples of how you have Celebrated. People's successes and wins.

Whether within Home Depot or elsewhere. And uh The quote is I'm a lawyer. Lawyers don't celebrate shit. Uh or actually furthermore, the only way people know what you want is that you celebrate when they get it right. I'm a lawyer. Lawyers don't celebrate shit. So how How what are concrete examples of how you would do that?

Uh That was actually one of my biggest learnings of the time as CEO was the importance of celebration. In fact Well I

Tell people now is you know, every business person knows the saying that Uh you get what you measure. Mm-hmm. I'd say there's an important, maybe even more important corollary. You get what you celebrate. People just as you say uh

They reference off of the stories, they reference off of When you reward someone and make a point of it. Uh that actually sticks in the mind long after other things have forgotten. And at uh At Depot, we did a lot, in fact.

Spent a lot of time on this. Uh Personally I would spend every Sunday afternoon writing notes to hourly associates. So for us customer service was what we were after. Customer service is such a vague, right? Such a vague

Term. And I would right a hundred to two hundred notes every Sunday.

And we had a whole process for rolling up, you know, the Challenge. Chain. Jack. Did

Blank. And It would roll up from the store to the district to the region and I would write notes saying dear Joe or Jane. And it wouldn't just be you're awesome, thank you very much, Frank. It would be

I heard you did. And I'd write out what it was. Thank you very much. And uh Send the note out and sign my name.

And I I There's a long I have a long thing about notewriting and why notewriting so let's get it. But So I wondered

about the power of that, but early on I was Walking a store. An associate came up to me and said, um Gee. Would you mind rewriting the note that you sent me? And I said, No, sure, no problem. But why? And he said, Well, we were all convinced that it was a RoboPen note and so we put it under water and it

leaked, it ran, and so would you write me another one? Uh People People respond to being recognized. I learned this from so I early in my career I worked for George Bush dad when he was vice president.

great thing to work for I mean, he's a wonderful human being. working for the Vice President is great'cause it's a very small staff so you can actually see what he does. And at the time so this is nineteen eighty one, ages and ages ago, no computers, but he would come into the office And type out notes. And you knew that he was typing the notes because you know the E would be slightly off and uh be white out. But as a staff member, when you got a note

From the vice president, you know, you're Walking on w Water. I mean you just f felt like Everything was great. And

Uh I believe that we learn more. From those positive stories and recognition than anything else. In addition, I mean the notes were kind of my thing. But we also did a video every single week of great customer service and we put it in that same break room TV. And you'd videotape the actual the associates. Yeah who we were tell the story. We'd retell the story with the associates. I mean so it would be

one of these every single week. We did little books. of great Associate uh customer service stories. We have if you go into stores you'll see people with badges and recognition And it's

Um It is You just don't communicate you can write a memo to someone and think it gets down to an organization, but it doesn't. It's when you pull people out and say Here, this is what this person did that was extraordinary. You tell a story around it.

And everyone remembers that story. The person's thrilled and everybody else is going, I want a story told about me too. I'm doing that kind of stuff as well, and it builds on itself. So if you have I think the number that you mentioned was three hundred and fifty thousand or a few hundred thousand. No three hundred fifty thousand. Three hundred fifty thousand or over four hundred. Right. So if you have three hundred and fifty thousand associates and you're doing this every week. How what are the checkboxes? Or the process for selecting those two hundred. I'd love to learn more about that because I I no doubt there are people listening to this. I know there are people listening to this who run very large organizations and the

So the great thing about it is you take so you take that So you say Frank wants to send a note out. Then This is where having an organization is great because then you say, Okay, here's how we're gonna do it. The stores are gonna submit stories of great customer service and the store will submit that to the district and the district will take its best stories and the district's best stories go to the regions and then the regions all submit them to me.

So Beyond the notewriting itself. There's actually A process for recognition so I hope.

That Better store managers, we're recognizing every single story. that they forwarded onto the district and were making a celebration with their associates in that store. Same with the districts and same with the region, so that it reinforced itself. Uh so it's not just

The One note. It's the entire process. It's why as I say the People just should spend time thinking about what they're recognizing and celebrating.

They should do it intentionally. They should have a process around it. They should do it consistently. Because Y talk a lot about company culture.

But that's what really sets the culture. It's what everybody is saying. You wanna know, you wanna see the story, you want to see what this looks like. This is what it looks like. And so if if

These letters are going out. And people want to receive a letter. They want to be in the video. Uh What were the criteria for good stories? In other words, these various say district managers and so on could have their subjective views of what makes a good customer service story, but did you give them any guidelines at all? Uh not I didn't.

I'd be honest. I I mean Customers I mean, that's the important thing about customer service is um It takes lots of different forms. Right. But um What we weren't looking for is And it's not like this isn't important.

But we weren't looking for the story of the you know, cashier who stopped the robber. I mean Yeah. Those are important stories but it w you know some companies

are more focused on shrink. prevention and things like that. We're focused on customer service. And we had lots of different I mim just emotionally powerful. People helping other people in the store, um Phenomenal, phenomenally strong stories. But no, didn't set any guidelines.

So you mentioned uh you know the the bank stopping the bankrupt not the bank robbery, but the the theft. Right. not being a very good example. And what this brings to mind for me is I think it was Andy Grove I might be getting this wrong. I'm sure someone on the internet will correct me if I am. But that for every metric they decided to measure

four which was a positive indicator for the company. This is Andy would insist that they identify the s per the perverse incentive or correlating metric that they should measure for side effects. Right. And so you could I mean I'm

Reaching a little bit here, but you could see if someone says Of course this is exaggerated, but oh my God, I could get in the video if I stop a robbery. Like who could I who could I hire to simulate a robbery uh and I'll let my buddy go, but I'll put up a good fight and get in the video. Uh How did you you mentioned the what you uh what you celebrate.

Or I'm sorry. The Let me get this right. But uh Effectively you get what you measure, you get what you celebrate. Uh what were some of the when you took the RANs, what were some of the metrics

that that you focused on. Yeah. So every retailer I mean now it's commonplace but you Look at uh what's called net promoter score uh But that

I mean Mm. The If that's an accurate Andy Grove quote, I entirely agree with it. because um

It's definitely a quote from someone. Definitely a quote from someone and a right quote. Because every single metric Does have Uh germ of a problem in it. So you have to be careful I mean we would measure net

promoter score, you know, how happy the customers are in the store. Uh But it's always a reminder that The dominant measure is

How are we doing on sales and profitability? So as you move down below that on the metric side you have to be very careful. And How did you measure sales. But there are many different ways to doing it or revenue. You have revenue per square foot. You have

Say uh Profit or revenue or net income, whatever it might be per employee. You have many different approaches you could take. Were there any that were more important than others? No. I mean we Idiosyncratic within the box. Uh

They're very similar and we just we would look at uh so we didn't have to get Very sophisticated about On the store side on revenue. Uh the merchandising side you do more of that.

Because you'd want to say what's our What's our return on the space where Work. allocating to that merchandise. See, y you you'd mentioned uh at least once, maybe a few times, how he

Seemed to be the accidental CEO. Didn't expect it. to be asked to be CEO. How did they explain it? Or if they didn't, I'm sure they they probably said something. Why why were you Has to be CEO. Uh

Well uh uh that's In the end you need to ask Ken Langone, who is the lead director and the other directors of Home Depot at the time. I've never really spent time asking them. Why uh I think They had seen a lot of me.

Because uh I was in charge of deals. And we did a lot of MA transactions. That was as the S V P the senior vice president of corporate business development, or Oh well that was at that was at uh G E. Well I did deals so my the job I ended up with it

GE was uh doing M and A The job I was uh doing at Home Depot was doing M and A. We went out and we bought U

A whole series of companies uh that we called at the time home depot supply. That became that was the largest uh commercial industrial distributor in the country. The first

But I pitched. those deals to the board. So they saw me a lot. And then the first thing I did when I became CEO is said we need to sell this business. And we sold the business. Why did you have to sell the business?

Why did you recommend that they sell the business? Um The dominant reason for me personally was uh And I think that this was organizationally right, but I know it was right for me individually, was saying To be the best retailer.

in any space requires a hundred and ten percent Of the effort. For me To be the best leader of a retailer. is a hundred and ten percent.

Plus of effort. No chance that I can also say, Oh And here's this other business that's you know, great commercial industrial distribution business. I can be the best

CEO in that space too. Just knew that was not gonna be possible. And so Say we need to sell it.

Is that what you said to convince the board that it was a good idea? Pretty much. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah, uh Yeah.

And said and it was I don't think I made it that personal. I I think I said look The because the company We'd been losing uh market share. Uh, we were trailing our principal competitor. I

So this is um We gotta be All eyes on the retail business and we gotta get rid of everything that's a distraction of the retail business. Plus at the time Uh

So I took over right at the start of two thousand seven. And the housing crisis was Yeah. By that point. the clouds were fairly obvious.

And so we knew We had to make some dramatic changes because Things were gonna go. Even more downhill and faster.

I bought a house in late two thousand seven. Talk about good timing. There you go. There you go. There you go. In San Jose. Aka Man Jose, California. But that's a separate story. The Decision to Divest of I guess H D supply. And I may be misattributing, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but it it is also makes me think of

Jack Welch, if I'm getting this right, which is Did he not? want every division or product line or company to be either number one or number two in its category. He famously had that as an objective. That did not drive that decision because home depot supply was number one. Right. Got it. So it's more matter of focus. So it was a matter of focus and in fact a

I mean my commentary was um There are some unique individuals like Jack. can run a conglomerate. And I would be

deep deep into the details of the business I worked at in GE and Jack would still ask questions to me that I'd just slap my head and go, Oh my God, what a great question. Why didn't I think of that? I knew not me. I mean it would take it would take all as I said. Just Running a conglomerate is a is a

Big big challenge and not one I knew I couldn't do that. Uh So you mentioned uh Well, we've we've talked a bit about your legal background and Uh

Someone compared you at one point Darwin Smith, the attorney turn CEO at Kimberly Clark. Uh because of how lawyers are trained in conflict, how to navigate deep root issues, et cetera, et cetera. Uh I've also noticed that, for instance, if I can't find a proofreader who is a professional writer, I will ask one of my friends who is a lawyer because they're very good. They're not professional proofreaders per se for the type of writing that I do, but they're very good at spotting. Language that is nebulous, words that shouldn't be there.

Uh how did your legal training help you for what came? Later. And it might be a chicken and the egg thing. I mean it could be what helped you to be a a g a a a good lawyer, but Uh what about those life experiences? Or that training helped you later.

Or hurt. I think the Part Of So the hurt is easier.

So we can start there. Yeah. So the so the the things that you I kind of had to hike away from Uh Uh for lawyers everything is great. Right. There's and You can

chew over decisions for a long time and it's very complex and full of ambiguity. If you're leading a three hundred and fifty thousand People strong. And you're calling out and your s statements are in paragraphs. I mean, just

You've lost it right from the start. So driving for simple portable messages The Just You know, screw the ambiguity. Uh

That is essential. I actually think it's essential, regardless of whether it's three hundred and fifty thousand people or three people. So that You kind of have to train away from the part that's probably good Is uh You're trained to work.

I mін lawyers Are Trained. Law school trains you to worry about things that no normal human being would worry about. And so There is a value

There is a value as a CEO to Worry. I You but you gotta kind of internalize that as much as possible.

Uh because The other part of the You have to get rid of that worry. Colin Powell has a great expression I deeply believe in, which is optimism is a force multiplier. And in any organization You gotta

That this was particularly true as things were grim. You've you've got to drive to the optimistic side. You can't be going, Uh, yeah, okay, yeah. This really could turn out badly. Uh So Um

But I think Internally that's helpful to worry. to be thinking around the corner, to be thinking what's gonna go wrong, just as you said. Get that every metric That you put in place.

comes with its own little seed of destruction. understanding that Being aware of it. Don't Tell it to anybody else. So you know, we would

All our stores would have net promoter scores. I wouldn't tell them Oh. Here's the fascinating flaw in that metric, and why you might not want to be committed to that. We just go, This is what we're focused on. We're focused on that promoter school. So

Yeah. Oh I'm sorry, too bad. I was going to uh I'm gonna zoom out but I wanna zoom in for a second just on net promoter score. How did you how did you Uh how did you all measure that? It's it was by surveys in uh after on the receipt in the store. And so you can immediately imagine if

So Not to get into the nitty gritty what's wrong with net promoter scores, but you can imagine one of the things is the more um crowded your store is, the more volume your store does. By and large, that correlated to a net promoter score that was a little bit lower. Right.

If you wanted the highest net promoter score, have a store that very few people went to. Uh one customer per employee per day. Right, exactly. And they were thrilled. And they take the little you know, they give give you the positive feedback. But Yeah, we did it straight off of um straight off of receipts and people typing in and saying whether they're happy or they weren't happy. And then you know, now on the internet.

Obviously. A lot easier. um foresee. Surveys come up all the time. get lost in the seeds of destruction. Right. Because if you have a net promoter score also

at least of of some types, you can uh have a selection bias for people who are unhappy. Which is super t super tough. Yep. Uh but The The zooming out. uh I want to do right now and look at what you said about keeping keeping a lot of that worry

This is a a huge challenge for a lot of founders and CEOs that I know. Or they have to really like put on the brave face and help everyone march to optimism while keeping

Uh could you walk us through if possible, or just describe maybe a a period or an instance where you had a lot of that to keep inside and how you dealt with that because a lot of these CEOs feel really alone. Yeah. And uh In some cases getting health problems.

Uh it's very, very challenging. Uh Could you give us a maybe an example of of how you've contended with that? Uh The best thing for me, uh There's a there's a great saying in retail that now has to be amended because of the internet, but the saying in retail is all truth is on the floor of the store.

So now it's also online, but all truth is on the floor of the store. Um The best vehicle for me to deal with those worries was always spending time in the store. And I would try I don't think I I didn't do it.

religiously every week, but I would do Um Dinners with hourly associates whenever I Yeah, wherever I was, I tried to do one a week. Um

with ourly associates. And you pretty quickly Get your problems. put in perspective and it was hugely valuable to me and I remember the first one I did was we fly in and I'm sitting around there's this very nice woman sitting next to me, you know, kind of

Give or take my age and I'm complaining about my back. So I you know She says how you doing and I say somet something with my back. Mind you, I've flown in a private plane and I'm saying I got my back problems. And then I go, How are you?

And she said, Well, you know, it's funny that you say that about your back problem because You know, three months ago I fractured my spine and I had to be in traction and it was really difficult when I started working in the store again and I was in a wheelchair, and you know, we have bulky items and they have to get moved and I'm going No, I'm complaining about the little and then She says and I go, Wow, that's amazing and then she said, Well that wasn't the really hard part. The really hard part was I have a twelve year old developmentally disabled son and I had to bathe I have to bathe him every day and I have to get him in the bath and that was so difficult when I was, you know, in the wheelchair.

The Fears and worries kinda melt. When you see what Mm. People are putting up with

Every day. and doing one foot in front of the other and having a smile and being um you know, committed m to the people around them. And so that gave a sense of perspective. that sort of put the earnings per share worries a little bit a little bit in farther focus. And they were always great for that. I mean just amazing. Home depot.

And and both Bernie and Ken Arthur as well. Uh The great stories of Home Depot. Why built from scratch is such a great book, why it's such a great idea is There's some crazy stories in that book. But I mean they're great. But the underlying thing is

People F Yeah. Typically start I come in, I'm shaggts in a lot, I Yeah.

Maybe I graduated from high school, I'm not really sure why I'm doing this job. And You know, eighty percent of our store managers started as hourly associates, our upper management started as hourly associates. And it's these amazing Uh

career stories, wealth generation Through starting at the bottom in retail. I was at dinner Uh last week with a friend This

I think happens all the time. With Bernie and Ken and Arthur. But it was you know, if you go Boy, there's a bell to ring in life. This guy comes up with

Uh And he's with his daughter. And he said, Uh, I just wanted to introduce my daughter to you'cause I want to introduce her to the person who's making her college possible. And you go, Wow I mean first off, obviously not me, but wow. That's

That is such an awesome story, and that story. is replicated over and over and over and over again at home depot. And It was uh both Bernie and Ken and Arthur always talk about The home depot

you know, you can have your mission statement and all the rest, but what it's really about is wealth generation for your associates. And it ties back if it ties back to Jack's comment about leadership. They they If if At the end you could say, Wow.

These people made their lives and careers from it. That Provides a Great perspective on the job. After

Leaving home depot. Since that time, how have you Created a Pressure release valve. for the worrying or

Uh stress. So The first great thing about retirement is the anxiety level drops. Right. Dramatic. So so so uh the fewer inputs.

Mm. Every day. Yeah, the the thing about a retail business is on your phone. They're your sales and the IT organization is saying, gee, I can give you this

By the minute. No, I really don't want it. Excuse me. I don't want it by the minute. Um So that anxiety of everyday I Home Depot just uh reported its results and they're great results and Yeah, uh Craig Maneer is the CEO now is doing a phenomenal job, but it is that everyday Every day.

pressure on delivery. Uh that's Good to step away from. And good to think about what are the some of the other things you want to do in your life and um focus some time. Also.

What else uh w when it creeps in, is there anything that you like to do, any particular sports or morning routines, or anything that you find helpful for managing? Your state. Uh There are lots of there are lots of things. Uh so when I because I think your retirement is busier than most people's careers in in in some respects. You you certainly keep yourself

uh occupied. So I'd I'd be curious to hear what what routines or habits or Uh. So the habits are very different. Now I I I think Probably I had a very non Uh

Pretty much. because of starting Without it. Yeah, uh preset n set of notions of what I was gonna do at Home Depot, if you ask me.

What I did at the start of every day as CO of Home Depot. No, the c compare and contrast. So yeah. So the so and I'm not recommending this. This is not a good tool. But I started every day Uh Reading emails from customers.

Um I did that. Because um Because In any large organization it's really easy to get

a false sense from averages and percents and then you see Uh wow, we Did that badly. Good. It was a good marker.

Uh for me. of how we were doing and what we needed to focus on and that s kind of management by anecdote is actually Pretty powerful. But I would do that for like an hour early in the morning. I have always gotten up really, really early

What time is early? So I get up about quarter of five and I'd usually be in the office by six o'clock. And Yeah, start. Now I don't.

I still get up really early. Uh now instead uh I I start by by reading um Uh my wife and I uh this was a habit introduced and I and Um

I'm not I I struggle with the notion of an intentional god. My wife does not. My wife is a strong believer in an intentional God and we pray in the morning.

Together. And Uh It was awkward. You know, I'm in New Englander. That's just you know, we don't gosh. We don't do anything. Uh with anyone.

the that level of intimacy. And uh That's actually really An interesting Habit to have.

Uh Because saying things aloud and hearing what's in her mind Uh And then you know, sort of being forced in yourself, okay. What

What do m what am I grateful for? What am I seeking help for is is really is really valuable. Um so. That's a different different kind of habit. So what is the the format? Uh you don't have to share the the specifics unless you're open to doing that, but what is the format of of the prayer? How long does it last? And you mentioned uh maybe some some sneak peeks, but I'd love to hear about that because Uh I journal almost every morning. Yeah.

And It's I'm not speaking aloud but there there might be some commonalities. Uh what is the format that you use? So the format is there are there's actually we have there's a lectionary that tells you what readings. So they're a series of readings. So you do of reading typically from the Old Testament, the Psalms and the New Testament is typically how you go. So we read And then uh we pray. And

My prayers I've gotten better at it. You know, because I do think To the extent you write it down, or you say things. It kind of gives context and maybe In some way it makes it more likely to happen. My prayers have tended to be you know, hey I hope everything works out. And boy am I grateful for everything.

Very specific. about Uh And is very specific about This person needs help.

Uh My wife uh Parenthetically. Um Worked for Habitat for Humanity. That was her job.

And she goes to Haiti. nearly every other Well every month. For a while she's gone almost every other week. So she's Um

She does a lot for other people, but she will mention here's Here are the people who are in need. Here's what and Um So it's really helpful seeing, okay, that's what she's focused on and then It teases out for me, what should I be focused on, who needs help, what should I be doing.

So if If people if if someone were transcribing your prayers, would would there be certain Categories that tend to pop up more than others, like somebody who needs help and how I'm gonna help them grateful for X. Yeah. I need help with X. Are there are there particular buckets that tend to pop up a lot? It's it's uh Other people who need help. Uh we have there's a separate thing of each time kind naming two things we're grateful for.

Mm-hmm. What are we grateful for? And it could be I'm grateful to be on Tim Ferr's podcast. I'm grate I'm grateful it's it's Uh But it's it's a good

mental exercise to say, Hey, there's um enormous amount of stuff to be grateful for. And then there are people who need help. And it's um And my wife is a much more powerful Prayer. than I am. But I'm learning. I'm getting there.

I really I really like that. I don't I don't pray in the morning, although maybe someone would uh would consider what I do a secular prayer, perhaps. Yeah. But I do have a gratitude channel. Yeah, three things that I'm grateful for, first thing in the morning. And then I have a handful of prompts that take four to five minutes in the AM and then I do a review in the PM, including what am I grateful for that happened today, effectively.

Uh it's it's very Deceptively powerful. Exactly right. Uh exactly right. And uh like you mentioned, uh or maybe I'm implying. Or inferring. It also helps to develop the lens through which you view the rest of the day. Right. If if you buy a car and then all of a sudden you go out and you see your car everywhere, it's not because everyone went out and copied you and bought your car, it's because you have that attuned selective attention.

Yeah. Uh it's it's it's really, really powerful. Uh it's a powerful way to get to learn about another person too. Mm-hmm. So to get that sense of oh okay. Yeah, this is what they're worried about. This is how they think it's really useful. I really love that it starts with somebody else who needs help.

And then grateful for. Yeah. In in the sense that it's not Right off the bat, beginning with your That's really important. Yeah.

And You mentioned. checking or reading customer email. So I had Red on I think it was consumers.com, it's probably elsewhere, but you gave out your phone number and email.

And uh I think that uh this is this is the line that I found on consumerist. Use it if you have a persistent problem with Home Depot that hasn't been resolved through normal customer service channels. Remember to be polite, professional, and to the point. And then there's a phone number extension. Da da da da da da. You can also email Frank underscore blank at homedepot.com. How on earth do you triage that? Did did you get W fewer email than expected, fewer phone calls, did you get deluged? What happens when you do Yeah. A lot. There are a lot. Uh and and we have a team

Uh I mean I think it was hugely important to do I Did it early on. I still get Uh

But we set up an executive Resolutions team. And you know, I'm not Uh I learned I learned the first weekend on the job when I mistakenly answered my phone not thinking and got a customer that you know, those take a long time to get resolved. So you have so we have a professional team uh that

goes through those and resolves them and um but for me what was useful was You see patterns and you go, okay. This is what's not going well. This is consistent we're just It may not be numerically that you know, percentage wise that high. But if somebody

is taking time out of their day. To email the CEO saying this is screwed up. Yeah. It's worth listening to. And then associates also knew my email.

And they send me. You know, hey, this isn't going well, you gotta fix this, you gotta fix that, whatever. What? What the What are some of your favorite interactions or or b better put, lessons learned?

tidbits of wisdom received from Bernie Marcus. You said you'd learned a lot. Wow, a lot. So are there any that come to mind? Uh it could be anything. Where they're like, wow, that's really useful. Um The the first is uh just as I said about

avoiding the echo chamber, getting outside of the echo chamber. Uh Bernie uh has the great I think one of the things that makes Home Depot such a strong culture is that one of Bernie's other

early on comments to me was um Yeah. Look, you have a prominent job, but you don't have a significant job. You have a prominent job'cause you go out and talk to analysts and all the rest of it, but the only significant jobs are the jobs of the people who are helping customers. And so everything you do and that again it goes back to the inverted pyramid, everything you do is in support.

of your frontline associates and your customers. And that's how you have to think about Mm. Bernie also quote unquote headquarters and

Home depot is not called the headquarters. It's called the store support center. That's not that unusual in retail, but it's a real The idea is you're there to support the story. Mm. That's what you're there to do.

What are some of the other ingredients? Those could be pre existing, so before before you arrived. Or uh changes that you And you were

Uh that help foster the orange apron cult, that sort of that dedication to customer service. Uh because it seems, at least based on what I'd read, that you you really paid a lot of attention to I'm not gonna say resurrecting it, but really reinforcing that as a core differentiator. Uh So it goes through I mean I

It starts with um And again this is this is another Bernieism, but uh You you You need to take care of your associates. And so uh

Even when things were really tough and the housing downturn We were giving our hourly associates pay raises and bonuses when we weren't And uh in the store support center. We pay

Our system store managers get stock grants, um Watch. I don't think any other retailer anywhere near the home depot size And now those stock grants Yeah.

Those are worth a lot of money. Uh So getting them bought into and understanding that the success of the company is their success as well. Also on pay we uh we have a very

We instituted a very strong success sharing program, so You know, if your store does well, the associates get an extra bonus. Um All of those things to say Look, I can't expect an associate.

to care about paying attention to the customer if the company Isn't Caring about the associate. Uh We did lots of other programs and then a lot on the recognition.

And uh reward side. to reinforce the culture of the company. But You do actually have to focus on how you pay people to I mean, you know, there's only so much you can do Without addressing

You you've got to be creating opportunities for wealth generation. for your team. And that's what's got to be as I said, that's what's got to be exciting to you and what's gotta be driving. Mm-hmm. Uh

One of the One of the bullets that was suggested. to me as a point to explore. It's in fact the number one that was suggested by this friend of mine. His accountability.

And uh this is what he wrote. Every time something went wrong, he took responsibility, even right before he left Home Depot and a trans Uh even right before you left Home Depot and a transition plan was set up, there was a hu there was a security breach. It's fifty six million credit card numbers or so. And Frank took the blame, also fixed things fast. He has uncanny self awareness quite separately

I had wanted to chat about this. So the Incident response room that was set up on the twentieth floor. From depot. Not headquarters. The store support site. How did you handle that crisis? What was your thinking process? Can you

Just take us through that. Because uh I I really like to kind of explore the macro by digging into the micro. So maybe we can talk about this. Uh So Home Depot we had a data breach in um

September of Two thousand fourteen. Uh And uh sort of ironic uh commentary.

In August we had actually spent a half a day going through with our board why we thought we were in pretty good shape and weren't gonna have a data breach, but uh obviously Obviously we did. Uh We had a couple of um

So once we knew Uh we And went out and made a public announcement right away. Uh

And my Principle. Were And I don't I mean I d I think there was a very nice article written

Um Hey You accepted accountability for this. I another way to look at it is well, I mean, really. You pr there wasn't I mean you had to. I mean I that wasn't

Not a serious choice. Uh and understand and this is where it actually helped being a lawyer. And understand that the help that the lawyers are gonna give you is not help.

Because the lawyers are gonna say things like well don't admit that you did anything wrong because then you're gonna be subject to litigation and all the rest and you gotta understand That actually All that matters is taking care of your customers. So I actually

K the pen. I said nothing is gonna be written about what we do here. From our legal team, love our legal team, we are great lawyers, but it's all gonna be written by our person in charge of communications. And all we're gonna talk about is As a customer. You're not liable.

And here's what we're doing for you. And then we just decided we were gonna be completely transparent. So every time we knew something, we said something, it was really painful. Because the nature of these things is that you don't really know what's going on. Unfolds.

Over time. So we'd have one release after another. It felt like we were constantly uh in the barrel. But I think uh People appreciated that

We were being transparent and Focused on taking care of our customers. And we didn't really see any significant decline. Was that

Uh a difficult or an easy conversation to have in terms of How you were choosing to respond. Do you remember like sitting down and having that first I I do we set out here our Here are three principles.

The only thing that matters is how we communicate to the customers. The second thing is I would Tell people just reCognize. The second principle is recognize. No one is gonna say massive data breach at Home Depot, everybody did things right.

So understand. We screwed up. Don't worry about that. Worry about fixing it. And I was really pleased, and I give a lot of credit to our CIO at the time, Matt Carey, I was really pleased.

that the experts who kinda came in and cleaned up the situation. Uh said that they saw less finger pointing CYA activity with Home Depot than anybody else. Uh so it was hey. Let's just move forward and get this thing fixed. Um

And We we got through it. It wasn't Uh I mean I There wasn't a lot of discussion about weighing other alternative approaches. I was very fortunate'cause my board was entirely supportive of how we handled it. Um

So I would imagine having the legal credentials that you do. also helps because you can think about it from the perspective of a general counsel, but make the executive decision to do something different. Exactly. And no That

In the end the value gained from that is modest in terms of the value potentially lost. by not being straightforward with With your customers. In fact they are a lawyer.

Was Hundred ten percent but behind that too. You mentioned three principles. Could you review them for us? Yeah. So it's it was Customers first.

No CYA and fix the problem. Okay, so recognize is related to um Problem solving. Right. It's like

Don't don't try to spin the facts. Right. Uh What were there any decisions that that s that stick out for you as far as uh the the most difficult Or one of the more difficult decisions, conversations You've had to you had to have

during your tenure at at Home Depot. Are there any particular difficult periods? Because looking at your resume I'll it's uh I can imagine quite a few people think to themselves, My God, this guy just bats a thousand every time he steps up to the plate. uh and find it very intimidating uh I think with with with some uh Uh you know, understanding. But

I any particular difficult times it doesn't have to be at Home Depot, in fact. I mean another question I like to ask and if this is uh an easier way to go about it. It could be throughout any at any point in your career. But a favorite failure. And what I mean by that is A failure that

in some way set you up for later success. Uh Are there any examples? Difficult times. difficult decisions or uh failures that ended up being for the better.

So it's it's uh an embarrassing failure. But I'll give a failure that was a great wake up. for me. Uh So before I became CEO One of the things I did for Home Depot is I did our real estate.

And um As I mentioned, my son Work. at the company, still works at the company, but at the time had just come back from Iraq and was starting working in a store and depot. and was given uh I think a temporary store

Assistance manager or store manager, I can't remember exactly which. Out in Colorado Springs. So I fly out there to see him and he's there with four or five of his colleagues from who'd also just returned from Iraq and they're telling the stories and I thought I worried about it as a parent, but at the end of it I was just kind of overwhelmed by wow, I didn't worry nearly enough. And these

And and these people are just Profoundly heroic. So That was the dinner. Then in the morning I say, Great Frank, I go

Drive out and See your store. In brand new store, so it was the store I was responsible for, brand new store. And it Great, here's the address.

And so I'm driving out to the store. I drive down and I don't see it. I can have go. Three miles up. Don't see it.

Three miles back, don't see it. Do it again. Do it again. Finally I see it. And the store is hidden by this massive Bom.

Along the roadway. And there's this tiny little sign saying Home Depot. And then the store itself Uh Yeah, if you know the construction of the store, the store has beams where they shouldn't be. I mean it was just

And I go. This was my job. It was one we were doing two hundred stores a year at the time. This was my job.

This was a number. I was just getting a number. Oh. Check my box.

And this is my son's damn store. That's Heartbreaking. And my commentary to myself was

Personalize this. Make this personal. feel it's personal. Your son may not be doing every job. But pretend that there's somebody You know, there's

There are people at the end of these decisions and focus on that and Don't Check a number box. Uh Uh

mistake, uh failure. But Clearly a failure and and one um hopefully hopefully I'll learn from. So the the the word worry or worrying has come up quite a bit. And it strikes me that perhaps there are different species of worrying. In the sense that uh there's maybe passive worrying or something just eats at you and eats at you and it's as I heard someone say to me once, uh worrying is praying for what you don't want.

Uh but and then perhaps There are other forms of worrying. that are more active. So when something is Bothering at you. bothering you or you see a potential risk.

What is the thought or the The next steps for you. Uh how do you then take it out of your head so it's not just acid in the vessel and do something with it. Yeah. And and any examples. Well so they're different parts of worrying. Just as you said. Tim, there are lots of different ways of worrying on a personal level. Uh

You know, I always found I just take the worry to okay, here are a series of things that can go wrong. Every single thing goes wrong. And I mean you could ask my kids I joke, I always figured I'd end up Driving a taxi. Or an Uber now. Just follow it all through and you're driving a taxi and eh. Yeah, that's not the end of the world.

And just deal with it that way. Uh the more constructive worrying is uh When you when you actually try to break it down and say, Okay, what am I worried about

What And and typically the answer to that is Take the worry from the Generic. and move it to some level of ground engagement.

Go Check it out. Mm-hmm go check it out. Go figure out what's actually happening. Odds are you'll be less worried and even if you're not less worried, odds are you'll actually have an answer to how to So step number one is fact finding. Yeah.

Yeah. So Uh I read a great book. many years ago. So this is another book that has traveled with me. Yeah. One of the others. So along with

uh the story of Home Depot, uh there's one called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. Okay. That sounds like a it's a it's a fantastic book. And one of the first steps is is this fact finding. Right. Like don't assume that your worry is well founded. Right. Don't assume you figured it out. Right. Uh Go do some fact finding. Um after you've done that, whether you're Let's say you perhaps you're less worried, perhaps you're more worried.

But still worried nonetheless. Right. This is a legitimate risk. What do you do then? Uh So if you ask the people who work for me at Home Depot and they sometimes joke about this that I

Just would do anxiety transfer. I just go, Okay. Hey. Here's my observation. This isn't going well. You got it. Yeah. You got it. You go. And I think anxiety transfer. No, and that is my view of careers. Careers exist

People People progress in their lives through solving bigger and bigger problems. So you go here. Here's the problem. Here's what I see. Here's a developmental opportunity. See if you can go fix this. Uh you know, I was wondering as you said it what anxiety transfer would mean. A friend of mine, uh and he's a humorist, also a fantastic writer named AJ Jacobs, he writes for Esquire among many other things that he does. And at one point

He was experimenting with outsourcing. to India, the Philippines and so on. And uh he was trying to broaden the number of tasks. that he could delegate to someone else. Keeping in mind that this is all

a bit tongue in cheek. And one of the things he did, because he is a a real warrior. Uh and he decided to outsource his worrying. So whether it was a book deadline or something else, he would ask someone in Bangalore to worry about it for him. And he told me that it actually worked. I I love that. I love that. That's terrific. Outsource the world. Uh. What if if what advice did you give Two

At Home Depot. Was there did you have sort of a presidential meeting like Let me tell you a few things that I've learned in the trenches, a few things to keep in mind. Did you did you have that conversation? Uh I'm sure I'm sure we did, but I'm sure he also didn't need it. Let's say someone let's say that it were someone coming in.

Fresh. Right. So they they didn't have the experience with Home Depot. What advice might you have given them? Uh A side from what we've discussed so far. Is there anything you would add on on top of that?

I think it's it's um Listening. And com how important listening, communicating and Getting your Whatever it is you want.

as simply stated as possible. I'm uh So this is the other part of the legal side. is uh And I can't remember who said it.

But There is What you always want to get to is simplicity that's on the other side of complexity. That's the goal for whatever it is you're working on. And when you get there You know you've got it and you know you really understand it. Um

And whenever you find yourself just bound up in complexity, you just know you haven't Worked it hard enough. Mm-hmm. How did you You'd uh mention the simple and portable Messaging earlier.

How would you suggest someone develop that skill, or how did you develop that skill? Think about stories. I think is the is the way to start. I mean Uh listening to your podcast, listening to how you tease out things from people. It's In the end you remember stories, and so if you said this is where I'm trying to go and this is the story around it.

Uh You can get pretty simple portable messages. Um Slogans don't do it. It's much, much better. If you can say here's the story.

Here's what it looks like. Because people respond to the stories. Do you remember any stories that you've told that have had a particularly large impact or that you've just received a lot of positive feedback. Uh about uh

And it and it brings it harkens back to you talking about reading these passages. Uh in your your very first sort of address to the troops. But are are there any other moments that come to mind? Could be one on one, could be with a smaller group, could be with the entire Base of associates. So it's Home Depot related or more broadly? Anything. Alright. So anything. Uh

So one of the fun things of doing uh post home depot is a Is A podcast listening to yours and go, gosh, these podcasts are fascinating. So we do something called Crazy Good Turns.

that talks about people who do crazy good things for others. And there are great I I love it for lots of different reasons, but here's the story. So We've been doing it for three years and there's one human story. All of the stories are wonderful, but there's one in particular

That I particularly Love. There's a woman, uh, she happens to live in Atlanta. She's now around seventy years old. When she was three years old, and she's describes very poor circumstances and you know her mom leaves her in the apartment and goes across the street to get groceries.

She's in the apartment with her sister. She's playing on the sofa. She finds some matches. Down the cushion, she lights them, she's wearing cotton Pajamas and she Goes up. Like a

match. She's entirely on fire. Raced. to the hospital. third degree burns covering most of her body and again This is now s sixty five, sixty seven years ago.

Massive blood transfusions required. Skin graphs. Uh They put out an all point Bulletin on a need for blood.

A truck driver Driving through The town. Here's this. Stops

Donates blood. And donate skin. And apparently skin graft is like one of the most painful operations ever. I can imagine. Gets into his truck.

And drives on. And you go I go If that's not the best I if that's not the best story ever. Uh

People doing something for someone else. And then I mean just So That's my favorite, favorite story. You mentioned uh

Post post home depot. Wha what are you uh focused on these days? Uh What types of projects are keeping you? Yeah. Keeping your mind occupied. Uh so the so there's crazy good turns. Podcast uh have a a lot of fun with I don't do most of the work on that. Uh the co founder with me, Brad Shaw, does the real work. Um

and we work together at Home Depot and it goes to The message and the story. And what Brad did At home depot. was

a lot of that storytelling of how you get these messages that are portable that people understand. Was he in comms or was he Exactly he was head he was uh head of our corporate communications. And did just a phenomenal job. And so we have great fun working on this podcast. Uh and then The

Uh When I started retirement I had this elegant theory or I thought it was elegant. I said I gotta spend a third of my time on business stuff, a third of my time on personal stuff, and then a third of my time giving back. And that actually Is

Turns out to be sort of a useless way to think about it. Well um It's sort of choppy and it's not continuous enough. And um

It struck me recently that So in November I got to spend A day day traveling around with Ken Langone, who Ken is one of the co-founders of Home Depot. He was my lead director At the start at Home Depot.

And He's just one of life's phenomenal people. And I realized at the end of it The really what I wanna learn is I I I wanna figure out how to be Authentically generous.

And whatever it is I'm doing I mean I some people pay me for help, some people don't pay me for help. People who pay me for help are probably frustrated by it. But Uh It's

Generosity. How did I so Putting that piece together with Welch's final advice and how do you learn to do that? And it doesn't It's not something that comes naturally to me. Uh I'm not the kind of person who you know, you see the beggar on the street and I reach in my pocket and give a buck. I'm much more the kind of person who's going to Oh, that's not really gonna help him for the following reason. Um

But that's my so. That's what I'm working on. I'm trying to figure out how to be more genuinely helpful and generous. How are you working on it? Because it seems like just like with worry, you have subsets of worry. There are many different ways to be generous and it it might mean different things to different people. So exactly so how are how are you working on that? Yeah. So so and I don't and I'm way short. Yeah. Right. Way, way, way way short.

But I know If you kinda work right to left and you go, What do I want? people to say. I'd love them to say that. Whenever. Uh

So so there are small things. Um in terms of Uh Yes. Giving I mean money

Giving money is one way to do it. Um Trying to be helpful when you do it so that it's not just writing a check and it actually takes a lot of thought. I've learned this You know, I get to hang around a fair amount with Ken and with Bernie and Bernie now what he does is his foundation. That's what Ken does. how you think about doing that and how you actually think about being helpful to people As you're generous with your own resources.

Um It's Learning. And I can tell there are some things I do where I think I'm being helpful where people go, God, that's fascinating, but keep your help to yourself. And other things I do where where I think I'm I'm a little more successful on. Mm-hmm.

Where where do you think what falls in the latter category? Of Uh Particularly people who are starting things. Mm. Um

And Uh For whatever reason in dealing with their own anxiety. Uh find it helpful to talk to somebody else who's got some perspective and can help them

feel uh like they're making progress on whatever direction they're they're going. Um And I think one of the great things That's true now that wasn't true. Yeah, when I was

growing up is that people are actually really willing to take some risks and do things and start their own businesses and start their own charities and uh step out And that's phenomenal. And helping that is great.

probably hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of entrepreneurs listening to this And I'd love to go to some of my My well worn Rapid fire questions, but I I might tweak it a little bit. So I very often ask about the most gifted books or most re read, which I'll probably ask anyway, but

We're gonna back into that by asking. Uh if Are there any particular books you would recommend? If you could recommend, say, two or three books. Could be more.

Two an entrepreneur. Maybe they're a year into their business or in the early stages. Uh Doesn't necessarily have to be early stages. I'm I know I'm adding a lot of qualifiers here, but what what books might you recommend to them?

Uh so we talked about one of them built from scratch, I think is uh is just a great book. Yes, and Any entrepreneur. Uh

Should Read it. Saying this not because I'm on this podcast, but because I started listening to your podcast and I think your books are phenomenal. And I think uh What's great about them

is uh the the You make an effort to kind of pull out from people. Here's what I think is Yeah. kind of a core part of what makes whatever it is I do successful.

And as a reader or as a listener, I can kinda choose. I can say, Yeah, okay, that makes sense or no, boy, that person's just way, way, away doing something different. And I don't believe Uh I don't believe that there's any one particular Yeah.

I As a business person, I love Jim Collins's good Yeah, good great. But you can also look at that and go, Oh, this is fascinating because the companies that were originally good to great are now not so great. Not even existing. So uh so you have to be willing to understand that there are lots of different stories and then you find your own within that.

Um so I So I give your book. Um'cause I think it's I think it's very cool. It's much more

Uh People have to have more respect. For differences in Right. Different ways of approaching problems. There's no one path. No one path. Are there any books besides uh built uh from scratch that you've gifted a lot to other people or reread a lot yourself?

So the What I tend to Gift. People is not has nothing to do with uh um business. It's a book by a writer called Clive James and it's called Cultural Amnesia.

And uh First off He writes I've You

He is so learned. That Uh you just wanna read what he has to say. So he's and I assume he's not making this up But you know, he says, Well, you know, I wanted to read Proust, but I didn't know French, so I started with the La Russe and start learning French. And you go, Okay, anybody who can do that I'm interested in what he has to say. But the book is interesting because

It talks about Uh to me it's interesting'cause it talks about how World War Two And the guilt around World War Two, particularly in Europe.

Infected The all of the sort of liberal arts world and the unwillingness to actually face into Uh

the fact that there was more collaboration than people wanted And so the Oftentimes the people the У Truly heroic. Our actual

Are actually Uh Heavily criticized. Because the people who were less than heroic couldn't stand the comparisons. And you go through all of these different literary figures and you go, Whoa.

Didn't No that backstory. That's Pretty interesting. So is cultural amnesia. Is it

A collection of examples and narratives related to I'm just trying to make sure. And these are people who are chopped down by their contemporaries because of their success. Yeah. Uh yeah. And and Or

Mm-hmm. Venerated now. But no one really sees through to hey maybe Maybe there's

They're more feet of clay than we want to say. Oh it makes me think of uh that sounds fantastic. I I wanna check that out. Do you give that to people Well, let me spit out what it was on top of my brain, which was it reminds me of a quote from Francis Ford Coppola when he was being interviewed by Uh a friend of mine, Robert Rodriguez, who's here in Austin, filmmaker. And uh I think it was during this interview that he said.

I'm paraphrasing, but uh of course Francis Fort Coppola, one of the greats. And he said the the same things that get you fired when you're younger are the things that give you lifetime achievement awards for when you're older. Which I thought was great. Uh. Do you give this to p do you give this to people to embolden them to give them courage to do things

with the expectation of facing th that type of blowback or w why do you give this book? Uh I I give it first because uh When he ta so the cultural amnesia is the subtext of what he's talking about. But he also just

Is such a great observer of different writers and uh It makes you want to read. all of the source material right that he's writing about. So if you like reading books and I like reading books. It's one of those books. That first, as I say, you go

This may be the smartest human being who's ever put pen to paper and um these Just Brilliantly smart. And secondly, that's an interesting way to look at history and how history has impacted things. But it's more just do you love books and do you love These these authors.

Uh, are there any books that you've finished recently or that you're reading currently? So the book that I just finished recently I uh heart it's not a Full fledged. book so it's real short. Three hundred arguments by Sara Monguso. Um And

It's it's it's kind of a neat book. Because her objective is I'm gonna reduce this book. So it's got a lot of little It's it's a sh

I mean you could read it in less than an hour. Uh But it's got A really It's it's kind of like montane. It's like um little statements. Lots of aphorisms. Little aphorisms. What's the theme of the book?

Or great question. And if I were a deeper reader, I'd probably be able to tell you the theme and I'm I'm probably doing her book massive injustice by not knowing what the theme is to me. It was sort of a random I mean just bounces bounces around with different observations, some of which you go, God, that's brilliant. And some of them yeah. But how do how did you choose that book? And I I guess the broader question is how do you choose books? Because we all we all have finite time on this planet. Yeah. How did how do you go about choosing books? So on that one, uh and I can't remember how

What the path was to get me this guy who writes a blog, Austin Cleon and I think it's a very good thing. Also an Austinite. I start reading his blog and he talks about and he had something that said, Here are the fifteen best books I read in two thousand seventeen. And I go Done. I've gotta read the fifteen and that was one of the books he had Some others and I'm going through them.

I'm That's all fifty. Well Austin. Yeah. Good work, sir. Yeah. Uh This the next question is very much a left turn. Uh

Yeah. And it's it's a hit or miss question. So if if it's if it's a a flub on my side, we can we can skip it. But What is The purchase of a hundred dollars or less Could be a thousand dollars or less, whatever.

that comes to mind that has positively impacted your life in the last Year or two. Does anything come to mind? So if I can bump it up above two hundred dollars, sure. It's Shoes.

Alright. So so recognize that I spent years walking concrete floors. Yeah and You know, as I was saying on my back thing You know, shoes are just hugely important. So I got Uh

a shoe that I actually really like. What's up? What is the shoe? Sam Hubbard shoes. Sam Hubbard. Yeah. And uh Yeah. So

To me finding a c so all my all For the last However many years I don't have the patience you know, go through the right sizing and so I

never wear the right size shoes and uh it's just been an enormous frustration. And I finally found a pair of shoes I really like. Sam Howard. Yeah. So uh I'm shoes. Yeah, well I I became fixated on shoes at one point because Uh As backstory, I'd been extremely stingy. Yeah, stingy sounds too Scrooge McDuck. Cheap. Right. Economical. Uh for

W my entire life, really. I mean, I was the guy who would have his his girlfriend complain about the single plate toilet paper and be like, Really really Tim? Like can we just get two pie? This is terrible. And uh I would always buy the cheapest shoes that seemed comfortable and were tolerable to my girlfriend. Uh aesthetically. And at one point I was in Panama. Talking to this wonderful woman woman who is uh The wife of uh

this gent who at one point had owned the largest uh brewery in Panama, maybe Central America. And uh really wise woman and she said to me, You know Tim?'Cause she was looking at my shoes and I just had nothing appropriate for Panama. And she said There are two places you should really Spend money she said, if necessary. You're

Mattress? And your shoes. Because if you're not in one, you're gonna be in the other. And I was like, Great advice. That is phenomenal advice. Yeah, so the Sam Humbert, I mean I I I really pay attention to the shoes now because Uh the well I should say what contributed to that or reinforced it was my experience in writing about cooking and you have line cooks who are standing all day long prepped. I mean they're standing all day and they a lot of them wear shoes designed for Hospital use.

Yeah. that are used by nurses and doctors. Fantastic. All right. Well I have I have to have a Shoot type to check out. Uh

If you were to teach a class To Let's call it High school seniors or college students, you could you could pick the grade.

And actually you could pick any grade. What class would you teach and why? Uh history. History just because history's about people Uh

History. We learn so much from history. I'd I'd love. Teaching history. But after you know, when you think about what books are fun to read it's

Great to read history books. And so Any particular focus what would the course description look like? Uh I I I like American history. I'm not that familiar with you know, I haven't spent enough time to know the history of other Countries. But I think our history is is unbelievably

complex and fascinating. Um I But going through the Oxford uh history of the United States sort

Book by book. Um And Mm. They get.

Maybe more deeply in than I might want to, but it's fascinating. It's great. Is there any particular historical figure from US history And that was a little department of redundancy department, but that's okay. Is there any historical figure in the US Y you would particularly have liked to meet.

Or have dinner with. Anyone come to mind? Uh I I Um

Boy, there's so there's so many, right? You could list you could list more than you. You could you could you could Uh have a lot of a lot of fascinating a lot of fascinating people. I'd actually Truman. It's a Truman would be interesting and Eisenhower would be interesting. I think both of those characters

Uh you know, for the decisions they faced, and obviously Eisenhower Uh Yeah, I think we So he was the president that I grew up with.

And So much deeper. than any picture that we have of him. That would be interesting. Eisenhower gets used a lot as an example by Peter Drucker, as an effective exe as an effective executive.

I the military has so much Uh Has has so many great learnings. On A lot to be borrowed.

Alright, last last few questions. If you could put anything on a billboard, metaphorically speaking. So a word, a sentence, a quote could be yours or someone else's. to get out to millions or billions of people. What might you put on that? Uh

It would be uh The only blessings you own are the ones you share. Uh um That's you know, that's the most fun thing about this crazy good turns thing is seeing the people who

Live that every day. Who are seeing things Um Seeing plights, people in need that others I mean there's a great one I could go on and on about this, but there's a great story of who knew that there were homeless people living in tunnels under Las Vegas.

Yeah. And then here's a guy who recognizes this and goes and takes care of the homeless people in tunnels in Las Vegas and you go Wow. That's amazing. Got it more of that. Please. Um

So crazy good turns. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanted to get someone hooked on crazy good turns, are there one or two episodes that you might suggest they start with? Uh I I would start at the start. Um Team Rubicon. We did the early one on Team Rubicon, which is the group of Iraqi and uh Afghan uh war veterans who come back and you know people are probably familiar with them they use their military training to go, you know, if there's a flood, they go and address the flood and

Amazing It it's an amazing uh group. Uh early on. I mean they're all I love uh you know it's like kids. Which which are your favorite kids? I just so that's the first one. But every single one of them and then I think the second one we did

Was Uh Um About Tunnel to Tower Tunnels to Tower. You know the story of the the guy who was the fireman On his day off.

And Uh the twin towers are hit. And he's driving in to help. his uh fire, you know, his colleagues. And the tunnel is backed up.

And so he puts all his gear And runs through the tunnel. To the towers. And unfortunately died and you know then

There's now a um uh a run every year through the tower in commemoration of that. People are So I I'd start with the start and the first ones, but I love them all.

There as I say it's like choosing your mind kids. Why did you create it or why did you co create it? What's why put this into the world? I mean I I know it takes effort. It uh it's the So if if um When we started It was and my first comment to Brad Shaw, the guy who does it with me, was is that I if eight people listen to this, I'll be thrilled.

Because I just want to take someone who's done amazing things And Talk about them. Mm-hmm. And just have them have a notion that someone's gonna spend

Yeah, ours are short. Yeah, twenty five minutes, twenty five minutes talking about the great thing they do. And then Brad did such a good job of it that now we're saying, okay, we want people to listen to it. But it's it's um It goes back to the concept of celebrating. Whatever it is you want, celebrate. Highlight and highlight it and tell stories about it.

And uh we connect From hearing these stories, and sometimes you go, Wow, this person's just so much better person than I'm ever gonna be that forget it. That's out of the ballpark. But it's still inspirational and then some of them you go, Oh yeah, okay. I can I can do that. Maybe I'll correct course one day. Yeah. Yeah.

So for all of you who complain that my interviews are too long Uh I mean certainly many of you. Listen to the entire interview, but if you'd like a short form fix You should check out crazy good turns. And I'm gonna make I don't do this very much, but I'm gonna make an ask of the audience and then I'm going to ask you if you have any

Parting words, suggestions. advice or ask of the audience. Uh to Beyond Checking out Crazy Good Turns. I would

Challenge everyone listening. For a day, maybe a week. To Not criticize. So to

to try to put into practice what we've been talking about, and that is Highlighting and applauding. what it is you want to see more of in the world. If you if you see someone online who's doing something great. who's making sacrifices for the be for the greater good. Practice applauding that because if you do criticize and the

Criticism online is certainly ninety nine percent of what we see, but y you Practice makes perfect even if the practice isn't a good practice. So if you f if you focus on being critical. You'll get better at it and it'll become easier. So For a day, for a week. Try to focus on applauding what it is you want to see more of out in the world. So that would be my

my challenge, my suggestion to everybody uh who is listening to this, and I will do the same for myself. I will I will eat my own dog food on that one. Uh so Uh any Any parting words. I'm not I'm not gonna begin to improve on that. That is brilliant and it is um So true. It's so true.

If if you take time to recognize and appreciate other people. Uh it bounces back. It gives back. Very cool. Perfect. Well, Sorry to go first. No, but I I wanted to get that out because I I feel so strongly about it.

out in the world, you And I None of us have to create more of it. There's a surplus of negativity. So try to focus on increasing the positivity. And Uh You don't get the positive just by shutting down the negative.

that void doesn't fill itself. Uh Where can people learn more about you, find you online if if if there is any way that you would like to share? And of course, everyone who is listening to this, you can find the show notes with links to everything, including crazy good turns, and so on. at team dot blog forward slash podcast. But is there uh are there any other places people can say say hello or learn more about what you're up to? Uh at Frank Blake on Twitter. Mm-hmm. Um Uh that's the

Dominant in addition to the crazy good turns. Fantastic. Well Frank, thank you so much for the time. Thank you. This was a lot of fun.

And uh For everyone out there. on the interwebs, wherever you may be. As always. Thank you for listening.

Talk to you next time. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share The coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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