Your Personal User Manual with Martin Gonzalez

eorge grombacher 0:00
Music. Martin Gonzalez is the best selling author of the bonfire moment. He is a Google leadership and org development principal. He is a Stanford lecturer, amongst many other things. Welcome to the show, Martin,

Martin Gonzalez 0:15
thanks for having me. George.

george grombacher 0:16
Thanks. Good to have you on. Tell us a little bit about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do.

Martin Gonzalez 0:25
So I think of my work in in three platforms, if you will. So the first one is the core work I do at Google. I work very closely with our senior leadership teams. Many of them are in the AI research and engineering spaces. Have them really think through some of their their their most strategic people and organizational challenges. I tell my team that I think of our work as like the business equivalent of the CIA, where we work on really high stakes issues, and when we do our jobs, well, you know, things are better, but no one will know that we were ever there. And so a lot of our work is really behind closed doors and trying to really help leaders think through. Do we have the right capabilities? Do we have the right people in in the right places? Do we have the right culture to be to be successful? The second part of this portfolio career I have is, is I do a lot of work with startups. Early in my time, I’ve been at Google for about 10 years. Early in my time, I did what we would call a 20% project, a chance to work on, like a pet project you’re really passionate about. And my 20% project was helping Josh Yellen, my co author, build up the accelerator program that had scaled across the world. And, you know, in that work, I had offered just some help to to build out the people and culture curriculum for this accelerator. Well, you know, it turns out that over the course of the many years, you know, the workshop we had built to help to help founders really wrestle with a lot of the people, relationship and cultural issues in their teams. You know, took a life of its own. Felt very, very useful for a lot of founders, and it had reached founders in about 70 countries, which then has led to this book that that we’ll talk about today, the bonfire moment. The last part, you know, this third part of my portfolio career is really teaching. I come from a line of teachers, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, all teachers. So it’s very much a part of my my DNA to, you know, to want to be in the classroom and to give back to the next generation. And so I find myself quite often in classrooms. You know, the you know, my primary affiliation is with Stanford, but I also teach at Martin and siad, which is a French based school, and that’s it. That’s me. I’m a father of three kids. I have recently started to call myself a serial immigrant. I was born in the Philippines, and, you know, about 15 or so years ago, had a good fortune of moving to New York for school, lived in Jakarta, Singapore, Taiwan for working. About four years ago, moved out here to the Bay Area to be at their headquarters here at Google.

george grombacher 3:15
What is it that makes you a successful serial immigrant?

Martin Gonzalez 3:21
Just the just the appeal of the of the wide open road and the thought that there’s adventure to be had. Also a partner who’s incredibly supportive of these wild ideas, uprooting and exploring new places. I’ve just really loved it. I think, you know, a lot of immigrants will tell you that resilience, and, you know, resourcefulness and and being creative with your limited resources is all is all a shared, kind of shared characters among a lot of a lot of immigrants.

george grombacher 4:03
And I would, I would, I’d have to think that there’s crossover through lines when it comes to, you know, starting a new enterprise, and what it takes to bring culture together. You’re you’re taking your family to new places, and it takes those things that you just described. You need to be scrappy and resilient and make the most of your resources, and

Martin Gonzalez 4:22
yes, indeed, all of that. George, it’s, yeah, raising a family in what is it now? Four or five countries is a is definitely an intense startup, like an environment that we create

george grombacher 4:38
for sure, for sure, for sure, and it’s, it is for sure, a zero options kind of a deal, because what do? We’re certainly not going to stop being a family. So we need to make this thing work.

Martin Gonzalez 4:52
Yeah. Indeed, indeed, yeah.

george grombacher 4:56
So when you talk about working with founders. Uh, making sure that they have the right people the right culture. How do you define what right is? Or how do you help them to define that?

Martin Gonzalez 5:08
Yeah, well, you know, first of all, a lot of our work is anchored on a really classic study out of Harvard that that found that 65% of startups failed because of people issues. And so that that becomes the first reality, which is, you know, left your own devices, you are likely to fail because of the people related challenges in your in your startup. And so the promise that we make in the book is less about this will make you wildly successful, but more this will at least, at the very least, de risk your best ideas. You know, what does success look like? A successful startup or a startup that is voiced towards, you know, succeeding or not failing because of the people issues. You know, one of the number one things that that’s that founders get wrong is that they grab at their friends or their family to be their partners in crime as they build the company. And we know from the data that building a company with friends and family that is the most unstable relationship possible. The reason for that is, you know, this relationship is a very expensive relationship, not only is it, you know, a personal relationship, but you’re layering over that a professional relationship. So in some senses, you you want to, you know, you want to figure out, you know, how do I create the right conditions where we’re able to really have the tough conversations that we’re able to put some extent, the relationship on the line in service of the business? And if I’m not ready to do that, then perhaps I should be, you know, founding the company with perhaps cheaper, so to speak, relationships, perhaps. And we know from the data that, you know, it’s people who are acquaintances or people who are former co workers where, where there’s a lot more stability in those partnerships. Yeah,

george grombacher 7:03
why is it that we’re attracted to friends and family? Is it just known quantities?

Martin Gonzalez 7:10
Yeah, you know, a lot of it is very ambitious. Young founders will typically only have a pitch deck and not a lot of credential or traction in their product, and so the only people who are ready to go along with them on this crazy journey are people who already know and love them, so friends or family. I think it’s a, I think it’s a very classic mistake. And I wouldn’t say it’s a write up mistakes if this is, if you’re listening to this and, and this is the configuration of your team. It just simply means you need to work doubly hard to create those conditions. We know there are a lot of companies who that have succeeded really wildly that have this configuration. But then there’s, you know, there’s a graveyard of many, many more, where this was the starting point, and, and things blew up. So I think it’s really expediency, at the end of the day, that people, you know, look to friends and family to start companies.

george grombacher 8:06
That certainly makes sense, very, very human thing. So, yeah, yeah. And it also makes sense because there’s not necessarily a ton of time, I don’t have an infinite amount of time to spend developing my team, but that’s the chicken or the egg.

Martin Gonzalez 8:23
Yeah, and it’s the the first people you go to just to ask if this is a good idea are usually that buddy of yours that you hang up with on weekends, or, you know, your spouse and and it’s easy for them to get excited and to say it’s a good idea, when really asking your friend is probably the worst way to validate an idea, because, you know, they’ll, they’ll say nice things, and then it’s very easy for them to just then say, Okay, I’ll come along with you and look, this is relevant, not just for founders, but also for, you know, for leaders within companies where, you know, how often do we think about staffing up this team, that this new team I need to build with people I’m very familiar with. And it’s a, it’s part of the human condition to reach for the familiar, as opposed to really go through the hard work of assessing across multiple, you know, options, you know, who might be the best person for the job. And so you want to, so you want to, you know, we talked in the book about the trap of speed, where, you know, a lot of these big initiatives, or these initiatives that really start with very ambitious goals, without a lot of resources. It’s very, it’s very dangerous to get really, you know, brought into this, you know, to this narrative of speed is king, and that speed is everything. In many ways, this is true. Like you’re under limited funding. You want to keep your burn rate down. You want to, you know, make sure you you turn a profit as soon as possible. But as a result, what tends to happen is that, you know, entrepreneurs will will get. Sloppy on some really important decisions on day one, that will really mean a world of pain, you know, years from now, if and when they they get big and so we want, you know, we tell founders like, be careful about certain things. And one of them is who you co found with. Another one is how you hire. Getting sloppy on hiring will will mean a lot of cleanup and a lot of like, you know, a lot of pain, whether it’s financial or cultural, that you will experience down the line and many other things. Yeah,

george grombacher 10:35
yeah, massive costs to to making a Iran hire, probably far beyond just having them there for the amount of time that they’re there. I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s it’s fascinating why a message gets so much traction, or why some messages don’t at all. You’re doing this in 70 countries and across, I’m sure, many different industries. What? What is it that you think has has made this message successful?

Martin Gonzalez 11:07
I think in many ways, it’s that this population of founders who, by the way, I really enjoy spending time with these are truly the dreamers who are trying to build something kind of new for the world. They will move society forward with their, you know, with their inventions, for good or for bad. I think they come into this work obsessing over the product. They think, you know, I’m going to build a really elegant solution, and we’re going to disrupt industries and and it becomes an afterthought to them that oh, so. So when we get successful, I need to build a company around this product. And I think it’s the founder who is just so intensely focused on on building the product, that they create these really intense environments for the people around them. So this, this workshop that we’ve built. It’s a one day workshop, which we actually open source through the book. We all the, not just the tools are shared there, but also kind of a very clear like, agenda for the day and step by step, like, how do you actually run this for your teams? It’s all captured in this book. I think this one day is a is a gift to a lot of them, because they never have, you know, they never have protected thinking time and time to really deal with some of these issues. On top of that, we know that these are some of the most painful parts of the journey. We start the book with a quote from Bill Curran, who is, you know, who used to be a, you know, very senior leader at Google is currently a partner in Sequoia Capital, one of the premier venture capitalists in the world. I mean, he says engineering is easy, people are hard. And it, you know, it flies in the face of popular belief that, you know, the people stuff, these are, you know, it’s not rocket science, right? Like we should actually spend a lot of our thinking time on rocket science. But this one isn’t rocket science. Well, the we write in the book, the irony of that statement is that, as a society, as a civilization, we’re incredibly good at rocket science. We can actually launch someone on the moon and land within a very small margin of error, whereas when it comes to people. You know, oftentimes it’s so hard to understand why people behave a certain way and so, so this message of and this workshop, and the message that the workshop delivers, giving people a time and space and a structured way to think about these, the very difficult parts of the journey that maybe aren’t the most sexy parts of you know, of the work, I think people really grab at it and find a lot of value in

george grombacher 13:48
it. I certainly imagine, and that’s not easy. I can’t imagine it was easy to boil everything and distill it down to a day. I’m sure that you could have made this a month long program,

Martin Gonzalez 14:01
for sure. And George, you know, I in my field. I’m a I’m a practitioner in this space. And when I first came into this work, I thought, we’re going to build some really sophisticated tools. It’s going to be, you know, it’s going to be completely path breaking and and it turns out that, as we were trialing all these many ways of really bringing people into the, you know, into this thinking and thing, and, you know, having a more considered approach to the people and culture elements of their business. It turns out a lot of the most simple, basic tools were the ones that resonated the most. For instance, we asked folks to, I’ll give you two examples. One, we ask folks to to write up what, what we call a user guide. It’s a it’s not a term that we created. It’s something that is really popular within the walls of Google, where leaders will write up, you know, if, when you buy a printer or phone, it comes with a user guide, How to install it, uninstall it, troubleshoot it. Well, you know, let. Me write up a user guide for myself. This is why, this is why I’m here. This is how you know, I tend to work really well if we get into conflict, this is how you resolve it with me. This is how I prefer to receive and give feedback. These are the things that will really disengage me from the work. It’s these kinds of questions we ask people to write up and then just share across the team. And somehow this becomes like a really revelatory moment for team members. That’s the first one. The second example is one of the parts of the workshop that I have a lot of more for is this thing we call the bullshit circle. And the bullshit circle really is premised on this idea that when you are out to do really bold and ambitious things, self doubt and insecurity are great to be your companion along the way. And where a lot of founders tend to believe that as I get better at this work, my my self confidence will rise. Actually, the data, our data on founders around the world, shows almost nearly the opposite, which is, you know, your confidence is highest at the beginning of the journey, you almost require it. If you knew exactly what it would take to succeed, you would not even begin. And as you start to do the work and you realize what the gold standard looks like and how far you are from it, then self doubt really creeps in, and all these setbacks which are inevitable in the journey you know will, want, will almost tempt you to throw in the towel. And we tell founders, look, one, that’s more a signal of growth than it is a signal of future failure. And then two, in this bullshit circle, we invite founders to just have real talk and say, you know, and have them, you know, reflect and then share. You know, what are the biggest insecurities you bring to the work? And how do you like, how does this maybe show up? What masks do you wear that create toxic environments for your teams? And at least two things, and, you know, things similar, and as simple as that, that really give founders, you know, a lot of, you know, they find a home in these workshops, and they and they share it with a lot of people. And this is why we wrote the book, because at some point when we were going back to these, you know, to these countries where we initially seeded the program, founders would come back and say, hey, you know, I hope you don’t mind. I, I ran my own bootleg version of this to a bunch of other founders, and they found it really useful. So thank you. And we thought, well, we might as well help you do it well through the book.

george grombacher 17:20
You’re right. That isn’t necessarily intuitive, but when you lay it out, it makes total sense. That is it a function of, I would rather try and tackle a perceived product or engineering or design problem than crawl inside my own head, because that’s scarier inside my own head kind of a thing.

Martin Gonzalez 17:38
Yeah, you know. And we talk about how, unlike code, when you have a buggy code, you can put your head down, find the bug and debug it. People are so buggy and they and there’s so much more about the human condition that you could find a bunch of bugs and try to debug that. But then you’ll the next morning, you’ll find more. And so there’s, there’s something about the human condition that I think is is infinitely more complex than you know, doing, you know, doing engineering.

george grombacher 18:16
I just that resonates with me so much, because I certainly know it’s true, and I’ve experienced that across so many different domains, so that it resonates with people and it’s exciting, and that they’re trying to replicate it, it just makes so much sense to me. So yeah, the book has been out since May, and has how, how has it been? Looking back, are you happy with everything and how it turned out? So

Martin Gonzalez 18:47
we’ve been very happy with the reception. But George, you know, our job, when Josh and I set out to write this book, really, our main focus was, you know, can we get these useful ideas and tools into the hands of, you know, entrepreneurs around the world. And where before, access to this was really limited to whether you got into the Google accelerator program or not, like, now it’s kind of open to, you know, really, to the rest of the world. And despite, you know, despite hitting bestseller lists and, you know, really getting all this accolades for it really, we’re still, we’re just focused on making sure we get the message out and, you know, and get get this into as many translations as possible. So we’re having a Chinese version coming out at some point next year, Korean, a Mexican, and we hope to Spanish, I should say, and we’re hoping to get it into more languages. Even Bahasa Indonesia’s one Portuguese as well. Because Brazil’s a really big, a really big market for, you know, for startups. So we’re, we’re we’re happy, and we’re excited about all the accolades we’ve received through for the book, but, but we feel like there’s just still so much more work to be done. Yeah.

george grombacher 20:00
Yeah, I appreciate that. Never ending. Martin, yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for for for the work that you’re doing. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage and where can they get their copy of the bonfire moment?

Martin Gonzalez 20:15
So the book should be available anywhere you like to buy books. Bonfire moment.com. Is our website where you can learn a lot more about, you know, the workshop about the book. We have a bunch of really good videos in there, and Josh and I are also active on LinkedIn. So come and reach out, connect with us, follow us, and we’ll know. We’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have drop us a

george grombacher 20:40
message. Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this much as I did so Martin, your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to bonfire moment.com and learn more about the workshops that Martin been talking about. Check out the great video content you could find Martin and his co author. What is the full name of your co author? Martin Joshua Yellen. Joshua Yellen on LinkedIn and pick up your copy of bonfire moment wherever you like, to buy your books. Thanks again, Martin,

Martin Gonzalez 21:11
great. Thanks for having me, George.

george grombacher 21:13
Until next time, remember your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.