Are Robotics the Future of Society? with Jim Lawton, Vice President and General Manager Robotics Automation for Zebra Technologies

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:00) Today, we're talking to Jim from Zebra all about cutting edge warehouse robots. You're listening to Joel Beasley, Modern CTO.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:14) Jim.

(Jim at 00:00:15) How are you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:16) Good. I was just learning about robots.

(Jim at 00:00:18) Awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:19) This is great, man. I got to talk with Bill yesterday, and he told me a little bit about what you guys are doing, and I was hoping I could hear it directly from you.

(Jim at 00:00:30) Yeah. You bet. Yeah. Soon to be our CEO here at Zebra. You know, it's interesting because I've been in the robotics space now for a while. And, you know, it really came out of my interest in — I mean, I used to run supply chains for Hewlett Packard for almost ten years. And I would find that we had all of these problems. I'm like, you know, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be things that we can do with technology to make things, you know, better, faster, cheaper, more reliable, more accurate, higher quality — like, all those things that we struggle with.

(Jim at 00:01:00) So I got involved in doing more sort of tech development to help people like me when I was at Hewlett Packard. And for the last ten years, really focused that in on robotics. And how can we do things with, not just hardware robotics, but really sort of the software side? Like, what are the things that you can do with software and data coupled with sort of physical manipulation of the environment to drive the kinds of results that people who run supply chains are looking for? How do I get more productivity from a labor perspective?

(Jim at 00:01:32) How do I get more throughput? How do I get, you know, higher accuracy? Like, when I order the brown shirt, I get the brown shirt, not the blue one, you know, and those kind of things. And, you know, so many of the challenges people have right now is I'm trying to be more efficient. I mean, you know, more and more people are ordering online.

(Jim at 00:01:50) Our expectations are getting greater and greater. You know, what can we do with software-enabled robots to make that easier and better for people? And so, yeah, that's really been my mission over the last decade or so was helping people — all kinds, not just the big, highly funded companies, but small companies in all kinds of industries — take advantage of robots. And, yeah, I've made that my life's work over the last decade and just been having a blast doing it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:20) Is it mainly, like, the third party logistics shelf picking warehouse area that you're in, or are you in other areas than that?

(Jim at 00:02:27) Not just. Yeah. So warehousing of all kinds. Certainly ecommerce, item picking, wholesale picking, store fulfillment, but also manufacturing. So if you think about, whenever there's material movement required of any kind — like I want to get something from point A to point B — if there's a human involved in doing that, that's, you know, that's a lot of walking and moving stuff around. So if I can do that with a robot instead of a person, it allows the person to be more productive at what they're really there to do. And so think about things like, you know, line side replenishment. Like if I'm a highly skilled assembler of some high technology, at some point, I need parts to put together.

(Jim at 00:03:08) I can go off to the carousel — hold on. It's on the other side of the building — and go get those parts. But wouldn't I rather, you know, just sort of sit where I am and have the parts brought to me? And so that saves a lot of time, makes my job better, makes me more productive, you know, and has the robots doing what they're good at, which is, you know, moving stuff around.

(Jim at 00:03:26) So a lot of manufacturing environments, a lot of warehouse environments, a lot of item picking, each picking for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:33) How long until the robots that you produce can produce themselves?

(Jim at 00:03:37) You know, it's interesting that you say that. There are robots today that are making components of themselves. So if you look at some of the robotic arm providers, most arms like ours are made up of multiple joints. We got our shoulder, we got our, you know, elbow, we got our wrist. In each of those joints is a way that one part of the arm is moving differently from another.

(Jim at 00:04:01) A lot of robotic arm joints are being made by robot today. And so as they get more and more, you know, capable, you're gonna be able to put together, yeah, more and more of the robot over time. But, yeah, it's already, it's already started.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:14) Has anyone put together a proof of concept on, like, a really small scale where you build the first set of robots, then they can mine and shape and build completely from scratch? So, essentially, we could, like, ship these things to Mars and just have them start building and replicating.

(Jim at 00:04:30) Not yet. And so not yet, but we'll eventually get to that point. So yeah, you know, it's interesting because, I mean, our perspectives on what robots can do is shaped a lot by our experiences with them, and many of those experiences are in movies. And so you have this notion of, you know, a robot's like R2-D2 or it's like Rosie on the Jetsons or it's a Terminator robot. Most robots are a lot less sexy and a lot less capable, you know, quite frankly. And if you think about one of the things that humans are really good at is sort of dexterity in our hands. And if you look at most robots, most of the time, what a robot is doing with their hand is with a suction cup. So if you think about, you know, like the end of your vacuum cleaner, you know, I reach down, I apply a suction, and then I pick something up. They don't have sort of the same ability. In fact, when I look at — if I go into a factory, if I go into a warehouse, and I wanna see is that task a good candidate for a robot? — the very first thing I look at is what is the human person doing with their hands? Because that's usually the first thing that would filter out a robot from being able to perform that task.

(Jim at 00:05:40) So, you know, hand technology is getting better. It's gonna get, you know, cheaper and cheaper over time. With machine learning and artificial intelligence, it's gradually gonna be able to learn. And so there are, you know, applications of robots learning. As I pick more and more things up, I learn how to pick more and more things up, including things that I may not have picked up before.

(Jim at 00:06:01) And so that's getting better and better. But there's still, in all honesty, there's decades before we've got robots going to Mars sort of setting up shop. But it'll get there. It's just, it's just not gonna be overnight for sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:14) And what area of your business as far as the growth of it with the technological advancements and R&D or whatnot, what area are you most excited about? Like, what's the cool thing other than the hand stuff?

(Jim at 00:06:26) I mean, one of the areas that people have really been struggling with — so with this sort of explosion of ecommerce, especially going through the pandemic, I mean, we're all ordering online. You know? And as I said, our expectations are, like, you know, I want it now. Hey, hey. You know, true story: I ordered something this morning. I went on one of the dot coms, and it said it would be here 11:00 this morning. And then, you know, at twelve, it said, you know, it's gonna be a couple of hours later, but it'll still be today.

(Jim at 00:06:54) And then right before I got on, you know, our conversation, it said, yeah, we don't have any, and so you're not gonna get it today. And so I had an expectation set that something was gonna be here by 11:00, and now it's looking like it's, you know, it's gonna be tomorrow. And so our expectations of what's happening have just been getting higher and higher. And it's, it means that our, you know, our warehouses, our distribution centers are going to need to operate in profoundly different ways if they're to meet that expectation and still do it in an efficient, cost-effective way.

(Jim at 00:07:28) And so that's really been turning — you know, companies are starting to turn toward: How can I leverage automation? How can I leverage robotics? How can I make the most out of the limited number of people that I'm able to hire? Because there's such a, you know, a challenge sort of attracting and retaining, you know, people.

(Jim at 00:07:45) And so, you know, when I order those things online, if I can leverage and optimize the best of automation with the best of people and their capabilities and do that in an efficient way, that's where almost all of our demand and our interest from customers is today. You know, can I do robot-assisted, zone-based each picking in a way that allows people to fulfill customers' expectations and do it more reliably than the experience that I had this morning?

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:14) You should email their CEO and say, hey, you should become a customer.

(Jim at 00:08:19) That's a great idea. Yeah. I was thinking a few things, and but none of them were particularly generative at the time because I was hoping that I was gonna get what I was gonna get today. So, yeah. Anyway, but, yeah, we could probably help them out with that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:32) Lead for sales team, my friend. That's what I do all the time. I screenshot stuff into my sales team.

(Jim at 00:08:37) Yeah. Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:39) So this is really cool. How did you get involved in this as a kid? Were you always involved in this? Is this something that came about when you were in college? How did you fall in love with this idea of robotics?

(Jim at 00:08:50) Well, you know, I was one of those — I've got one of those t-shirts that says 1977, 1980, 1983, I was there. You know, I was standing in line at Star Wars the first time, mesmerized by R2-D2. I have to believe there's an army of us out there that are in robotics because of what we saw and experienced as a, you know, as a kid. And, and I would say that was really sort of the first thing that got me, you know, excited.

(Jim at 00:09:16) I mean, I tend to be a more technical person by nature. I mean, my degrees are in computer science and electrical engineering, and it just really sort of fascinated me what you could do, you know, with technology in robotics kinds of applications. And if you start to think about what we've been able to do over the last ten to fifteen years or so, where it's not robots locked up in a cage — because R2-D2 wasn't in a cage. You know? Rosie wasn't in a cage.

(Jim at 00:09:43) It was a robot working side by side with a, you know, with a person. And a lot of the technologies that we've been able to leverage over the last decade have allowed us to create these robots that work, you know, side by side, what are now generally referred to as collaborative robots, robots that are, you know, human and robots working together. And so I think it was those early, you know, sort of formative years of a kid that got me, you know, sort of really excited about it. But then as I got into, you know, as I get into sort of running supply chains, just experiencing all of the challenges — I had, you know, I did some design work and R&D for a while, then I moved and did more work on manufacturing and supply chain. And, honestly, I found the challenges from an engineering perspective in supply chain so much harder because the system is so constrained.

(Jim at 00:10:30) It's hard to create designs of things that work effectively when you've got such, you know, constraints in your environment. And so when you can leverage technology not to move along a curve, but to shift a curve, I mean, it can have a profound impact in your ability to, you know, to achieve objectives that you've got within the supply chain. So a lot of that I had been focusing on from a software perspective and had done a couple of startups that, you know, leveraged early versions of AI and machine learning. And then I had gotten, you know, a call from a guy by the name of Rodney Brooks. Rodney was one of the cofounders of iRobot.

(Jim at 00:11:07) And so the Roombas that people have sort of running around their house was, you know, an inspiration that he had. And I had known Rodney from back in my time at MIT. He was running CSAIL, which was the Computer Science Artificial Intelligence Lab. But he and I had a conversation, and he said, look, we see a real opportunity to do something very different with robots. And in some ways, the robotics industry, which has been providing robots in the manufacturing environments really since the early nineteen sixties —

(Jim at 00:11:36) 1961 was when the first robot was deployed in a production manufacturing environment — have largely been, you know, the innovation has been somewhat incremental. The robots in the seventies looked a lot like the sixties, and those in the eighties looked a lot like the seventies. But there are whole companies and verticals and markets and industries that haven't been able to take advantage of robots because we haven't designed the robots that they can take advantage of. They're either too expensive or they need more flexibility or they're not easy to use, or you need a bunch of PhD roboticists, you know, to be able to take advantage of them. And so what attracted me to it is, you know, this idea of, you know, can we democratize automation?

(Jim at 00:12:17) Can we make robots accessible to all of the people that haven't been able to take advantage of them? So when you look at, you know, companies like Amazon acquiring Kiva — of course, Amazon is able to take advantage of automation there. Amazon, when you look at Apple able to take advantage of robotics, of course, Apple's. But most of us aren't Apple or Amazon. And so if we're, you know, a typical mid- to large-size manufacturer in an industry, historically — most robots were sold in automotive — I may not have a bunch of roboticists on staff, or I may need to be able to, you know, have the flexibility to set up a line and run it for six months and then change it over.

(Jim at 00:12:55) Traditional automation wasn't designed for that. It was custom designed to do one thing really well. And when you were done with it, you threw it away. If I get a job shot that I'm doing something different in the afternoon than I'm doing in the morning, clearly, I can't, you know, spend six months building an automation solution and then throw it away. And so it was that opportunity to look at how can we build robots that work in those environments with those challenges, in the places where people already have operations so they don't have to sort of scratch — have to start everything from scratch and start over — where they really understand their processes, but they're not expert in robots.

(Jim at 00:13:33) And they don't wanna be experts in robots. They wanna be experts in what is my process or workflow that creates value for their end customer. And then how can they leverage robots without necessarily being experts in robots? And a lot of that comes down to sensor technology. So the way in which I can deploy and use sensors that allow me to navigate in very unstructured environments.

(Jim at 00:13:56) I mean, if you go in a warehouse today and, you know, you look around, you'll see pallets full of boxes. Some boxes are sort of hanging over edges. You've got, you know, somebody unpacked something and threw something on the floor. Those are really hard environments for traditional robots to be able to navigate because it's constantly changing. Well, if you have a robot with the right kind of sensors, it can detect what's going on. It knows what the broader mission is. I'm trying to get from point A to point B.

(Jim at 00:14:16) You know, it's sort of like, you know, arriving at Penn Station in New York, and I wanna go to the Empire State Building. Like, you're not gonna take sort of the line that is on the map because you're gonna be constantly dodging and weaving people and potholes and, you know, some cup that somebody's thrown in the middle of the road. Right? So you're gonna be sort of navigating your way there. We needed robots that are able to operate in that kind of way. And so we now have the technologies that we have needed in order to be able to do that, which then allows us to bring robots to all of these people and organizations that haven't been able to, you know, to really take advantage of them in the past. And that mission is what has been, you know, exciting to me over the last several years because everyone should be able to leverage the power of a robot to be able to make the lives and productivity of the people in the environment better, and not just, you know, not just the Apples and the Amazons of the world.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:16) Yeah. One of the things that I thought was pretty interesting when I was hanging out on your website was the fact that it seemed almost self-serve. So when I think about these third-party logistic-type warehouses, I imagine that you would have a team. They would go in there. They would do a bunch of work and set all these systems up.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:35) And then I saw one of your bullet points was like, you don't have to involve the IT team. And I thought, well, that's kind of interesting. And so you can unbox the robots, create a map, set up tasks, you know, work with the robots directly. And I thought to myself, is that real? Like, are customers actually doing that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:50) Can they make an order and then set the robots up themselves?

(Jim at 00:15:54) They can and do. So there are things like, you know, so I recently set up some of these smart doorbells at my house. You know, I got on my Wi-Fi in my phone. I pointed the QR code at the camera. It made a little chime, and I'm connected.

(Jim at 00:16:09) Getting the Wi-Fi in the robot, exactly the same way. Once you've got the robot sort of connected, then what you do is you have to help it understand its environment. The way I understand it's helped the robot understand its environment, I get a joystick that looks like any other, you know, Xbox or Steam Deck kind of joystick, and I just drive the thing around. As I'm driving around that robot in the environment, it's using all of its sensors to map and understand the environment that it's in. So then when you give it instructions and say, look, you're here.

(Jim at 00:16:40) So the localization, so it understands where it is. I need you to go there. And you sort of apply the semantics of what is what. You know, this is a shelf, and this is the packing station, and this is where you pick. And then it just goes. So it's really designed for people that really understand what they're trying to do and their process and don't have to code.

(Jim at 00:17:04) Don't have to sort of speak robot. They can speak human. And so there's a, you know, there's a workflow builder in the software, and it's literally a sort of drag and drop. It's like you're creating a, you know, like a flow diagram. And you say, look.

(Jim at 00:17:18) You know, first, you go over here, and then you wait. What are you waiting for? I'm waiting for the door to open. Okay? As soon as the door opens, then you move forward.

(Jim at 00:17:25) So it's those kind of tools and capabilities that have allowed us to make it possible for people that do really understand their environment but don't understand robots to be able to get them, you know, set up and running pretty quickly. And so depending on the complexity of your task, you know, you can start in the morning and have it working in the afternoon. You know, if you've got a more complex task, it might take a little bit longer, but these kinds of robots allow you to do things that, you know, in the past would have taken, you know, many, many months to be able to do. And that was one of our design goals was if you understand your environment and know how to use basic tools like, you know, flowcharting and, you know, to be able to do a QR code, then you can take advantage of a robot.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:08) Yeah. I had a very low-code, no-code UI-type interface when I saw the screenshots. Yeah.

(Jim at 00:18:13) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:14) So how many robots do you have?

(Jim at 00:18:17) You know, I've lost track. We've got thousands of robots out there now.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:20) How many unique, like, types do you have?

(Jim at 00:18:22) Types of robots. Well, we have, we have pretty small ones and big ones, and some of the robots are for special purposes. So let me give you an example. Some environments have conveyors and then workstations. And one of the movements of material is, hey.

(Jim at 00:18:41) I just finished my task at my workstation, and I want to get it onto a conveyor and have it go to pack out, for example, and get shipped to somebody. We have a little robot. The base is about the size of a, you know, an extra-large pizza. And then on top of it is a very small piece of conveyor. And so what happens is it goes to the, it may get called by the person sitting at the workstation, the tote or whatever it is they were working on moves onto the conveyor that's sitting on top of the big pizza box.

(Jim at 00:19:11) And then the robot goes and connects up, it docks up with a conveyor. It has an IoT gateway that's part of its understanding of the world. And so it says, I've now arrived. I'm going to start my conveyor. I'm going to start the conveyor on the other side, and we're going to move the tote off and then take it out to, you know, take it out to pack out.

(Jim at 00:19:31) So this is a little robot. It's called the roller top, and its job is to do material movements, specifically environments that involve, you know, involve conveyors. We also have robots, another one called the flex shelf, and it's designed to work in each picking environment. So this is, you know, very large, you know, 400,000-square-foot warehouse and lots of orders coming in, and the robot is assigned, I want you to pick, I want you to have these things picked into these totes and then bring them back to pack out. We'll assemble them into orders and out they go.

(Jim at 00:20:05) And so in those environments, the people stay put because in a typical warehouse environment, people are spending about half of their time walking. And the walking is, automating the walking part immediately sort of doubles your productivity because you're eliminating half the time that they're spending. And what people are really good at is finding something on a shelf, figuring out how to grasp it, coming back to the hands again. So the perception piece, the grasping piece, and then rapidly getting it into a, you know, getting into a tote that's going to be taken to pack out. So the flex shelf robot is, think about it as like, you know, three shelves has a variety of, you know, totes sitting on.

(Jim at 00:20:42) It has lights running down both sides. So the human picker is in a zone. The robot comes to him or her, stops by where the pick needs to happen, lights up where on the shelf the item is, brings up on the screen, this is the item that you're looking for. This is the quantity that you're looking for. The person will pick the quantity, scan it with the barcode scanner that's on the robot.

(Jim at 00:21:06) It'll be told, again, with the lights on the side, I want you to then put it into this tote. It puts it into the tote, and then the person goes off to do their next pick, and the robot goes off to do its next pick. That's another, you know, another great example. Then we also have robots that are quite large that can hold a full pallet.

(Jim at 00:21:27) So our FETCH 1500, it's a 1,500-kilogram payload. I mean, if you think about a pallet full of cinder blocks, you know, he can move those around and leave them places. They can have them, you know, picked up by forklifts and then taken to other places or taken up into high-bay storage. So there are, I think, six different robot types, you know, between the big ones and the medium ones, the roller tops, the flex shelf. Another robot is using the same base as the roller tops.

(Jim at 00:21:55) So again, the one that's the size of sort of a big pizza, and then it moves carts around. So you could have a variety of carts in your environment to move materials around. When you're done, you push a button, a robot comes, gets the cart, takes it where it needs to go and leaves an empty cart in its place. Again, tasks that the person, the human worker, is so much more productive if they don't have to do, you know, those kind of things, like, you know, pushing carts for long distances inside of manufacturing or a warehouse environment.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:23) So you're really into this. Like, you're really deep into robots, and then you see things like Elon Musk come out and show this, like, bipedal robot that you'll be able to buy for your house. How far do you think we are from that?

(Jim at 00:22:37) A decade, I think, before we're at that point. Yeah. There's sort of an interesting philosophical conversation there because, you know, sort of coming back to Rosie for a minute. You know, Rosie vacuumed. She cooked.

(Jim at 00:22:50) She cleaned. She took care of Elroy. Can't remember what the dog was called, but, you know, so she did all things. Most robots don't work that way. Creating robots that are flexible enough to do a very wide range of tasks is really hard.

(Jim at 00:23:05) And so as you've seen sort of the evolution so far, we end up with more special-purpose robots. So we have the Roomba that doesn't look anything like a Rosie, right? But to be able to do just vacuuming. You've got robots that look like Roombas that, you know, mow the lawn.

(Jim at 00:23:19) You've got robots now prototyping that fold clothes. Again, don't look anything like a Roomba. So you've got sort of specialized robots that do specific things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:28) Hold on a second. I don't mean to interrupt you, but I'm going to. Yeah. There's robots that can fold clothes? Like, I can buy a robot that will fold my clothes?

(Jim at 00:23:35) There are. Yes. Prototypes, early ones. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:23:37) So they're not like, I can't, there's not like a known model that's popular that people buy.

(Jim at 00:23:42) I can send you to a website to buy one, but, but yeah. If you go to some of the shows and events, you'll see clothes folding robots. So, I mean, if you think about what a lot of people will do is one of the things I really hate to do in my house, whether it's vacuuming, mowing the lawn, or folding clothes. And yeah, a lot of people are figuring out how do I get, how do I get robots to do those things? So, yeah, I mean, we'll end up, we'll end up with all of those.

(Jim at 00:24:06) The robots with legs are interesting. Legs are really hard. I mean, Boston Dynamics has been doing them, you know, for a long time. They can be relatively expensive. You would never do something with a robot with legs that you couldn't do with wheels, and you wouldn't do something with wheels that you could do with a rail.

(Jim at 00:24:27) And so it really comes down to the application. Now we're not going to put, you know, rails in our house. And so, yeah, at some point we may have robots with wheels. In fact, I can't remember the name of the little, the new Amazon robot that's sort of an Alexa on wheels. But, you know, so that one sort of navigates around.

(Jim at 00:24:43) I mean, you see it on wheels before you'll see it on legs. We may eventually get to the point where robots with legs are, you know, good enough and cheap enough that they're going to be, you know, sort of mainstay in a lot of people's homes. I think we've got years, years really before that happens.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:58) You know what I think will come before we get the fully autonomous bipedal robots? I think that we will get, you know, like a base on wheels, right, that's got a torso and then, like, really good arms and cameras. And then there will be people, like, in a call center that'll be able to, you know, have these gloves and operate the hands. That way, you know, they look at, like, elderly care. You can have all these robots stored in some closet in their house, and then a person can be in one central location and pair into the robot, do the dishes, pair into the robot, do all of these, you know, chores around the house.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:29) Do you think that's going to happen?

(Jim at 00:25:31) Oh, I do. Yeah. Without a doubt. I mean, if you look at, like, Intuitive Surgical that developed the da Vinci robot, I mean, that's a remote robot for doing things like, you know, surgery. You know, there's a great company up in the San Francisco Bay Area called Third Wave Automation that does human-in-the-loop autonomous forklifts.

(Jim at 00:25:48) I mean, again, if you come back to sort of the warehouse environment, you know, they're pretty complicated. And so getting a robot to be able to navigate that 100% of the time without human intervention is really hard. That's going to take a while. And so what they've done is created technology that allows them to have the robots running autonomously most of the time, but then you also have a human in the loop. So when they get stuck, it basically calls the human.

(Jim at 00:26:16) The human's like, oh, okay. So I need to navigate through this particularly tricky spot. Or if you think of a pallet that's wrapped with plastic and the plastic is clear and the clear plastic is covering the spot where the tines are supposed to go. If the robot gets confused, the human can see, oh, it's just sort of the plastic. We'll just sort of, you know, go right through that and be able to pick up the pallet.

(Jim at 00:26:36) Those are the kind of environments, whether the person's remote, you know, at the other end of the warehouse or remote at the other end of the world, you're going to have people that sort of jump in to, you know, to help in certain situations. The other interesting use case that you brought up, though, and, again, coming back to Rodney Brooks, one of the things that he had said to me, you know, a decade ago, was because of the demographic inversion, you know, there are the people that are retiring. There's more people retiring than there are sort of younger people coming in to replace them. And so the demographic, and this is true to a degree in the United States. It's particularly true in other countries, you know, like Japan. You're having more and more people that are needing services from fewer and fewer people. And so one of the things that Rodney said that I thought was quite profound was I'm building robots to take care of me when I get old.

(Jim at 00:27:26) Because there aren't going to be enough people to do it. And so we're going to have to find ways that we can leverage robots and automation to help people. And and that help can take a couple of different forms. If you think about people as they age, some of them have, you know, physical limitations. So are there things that I can do via automation to help people sort of physically, whether it's physically get around, perform tasks, they have to be able to take a bath, like, those kinds of things.

(Jim at 00:27:53) But then the other challenge that people have is, you know, limitations cognitively as they age. Are there things that you can do with software-enabled robotics to help people manage through the cognitive challenges that many of us will face as we get older? So if you think about both the physical and the cognitive, robots are in a unique position to be able to help, you know, from an elder care perspective. And we're going to need it because there are, you could just look at sort of the movement of people, you know, through the various generations. There just aren't, we've done a fantastic job of helping people live longer and longer, which is wonderful, and we don't have enough people that are being born right now. So we're going to need to rely on robots, you know, to help us take care of ourselves.

(Jim at 00:28:39) And so I'm really, sort of fascinated and interested in the, you know, the things that people are doing to, you know, how can I get a robot that can relate to me easily? How can I get a robot that doesn't, I mean, one of the things I love to do is when I go to a customer site and they take out the robot for the first time, do they pull it out of the box and do they sort of lean in and are they, you know, are they willing to get close to it, or are they intimidated by it? Do they sort of step back? Because what you want to do is create technology that people feel comfortable with so that they're drawn to it. Hey.

(Jim at 00:29:08) So a lot of our robots, I'll go to, I'll go to, you know, a customer site, and they're all named. You know, sort of this personification of a robot of, you know, there's Herbie. You know, there goes Herbie again. And and so, you know, people will sort of attach, you know, names, sports memorabilia, depending on which part of the, you know, country that you're in. And and that in many way, in some ways, you know, could sound silly.

(Jim at 00:29:33) But but in other ways, it's making it easier for people and robots, you know, to work together. And that will never be more true than it is in the home environment. You know, my mother who's in her eighties now, I need to create the robots that she's going to be comfortable with, you know, not the computer science kid with the master's degree. And so that's going to be a huge area for us going forward. And because it has to be, we're going to have to leverage robotics in order to be able to, you know, to help everyone.

(Jim at 00:30:02) I mean, as I think about older people in particular, you know, many people want to be able to stay in their homes as long as possible. If we can use technology to help them do that, isn't that adding goodness in the world? That's the kind of thing I think that attracts many of us into the robotic space. How can we do good in the world leveraging some of these technologies?

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:27) Yeah. I've got physicians as my family members, and the recovery rate when you can recover at home is so much better than recovering in a hospital. So that's definitely important. I want to touch on a couple of your points that you made. The kid, like, less kids replenishing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:43) I fully believe that. My parents came from families where they had six or seven siblings. They all had roughly three to four kids, and now my peers are having one, maybe two. I'm, they think I'm odd because I just had my third.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:01) They're like, woah, how do you have all those kids? You got a really big family there.

(Jim at 00:31:04) Yeah, that's awesome.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:07) And I was like, I told Michelle, my wife, I was like, we're going for eight. And she goes, I go, I'm going to take Elon Musk's strategy.

(Jim at 00:31:15) She may say, yeah, look, you may be going for eight, but, yeah, I have to say yes too. So, yeah. Yeah. I'd heard the stat. I think it's 1.8, and so if you've got two parents having 1.8 kids, yeah, it doesn't scale.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:29) Yeah. And it's interesting. It's almost like we're this giant organism, and as we become more affluent, we produce less. Do you think that's, do you think that's why, like, if life is easier, okay, here's an example.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:47) I live out in the middle of nowhere, right, on a farm. Coyotes, right? Coyotes, huge deal. They have this attribute about them where the females and the males, they'll howl back and forth to the nearby packs. And based off of the responses that they get from their neighboring packs determines how many offspring the female produces in her next litter.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:10) Right? So they'll actually, if you start killing them off, they'll start producing more. It's fascinating. If you watch this documentary, they started out in the West Coast, and now they're in every city in the United States. They're in New York City. We've just been completely dominated by these coyotes. So I was wondering if, like, if there's a human, because that's biology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:30) Right? That's biology. That's their engagement with society actively affecting their reproduction abilities, and nobody argues this. It's very easy to watch and measure.

(Jim at 00:32:40) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:40) But we don't look at ourselves that much like this. At least I don't read a lot of material or come across it where people are exploring these sort of ideas. But I wonder if that has something to do with it. Because now that we have robots, you know, and we have relative safety, right, as far as going about and living our lives. Maybe our biological desires are just changing based off of our environment.

(Jim at 00:33:01) I could imagine. Yeah. It would be fascinating to think about those kinds of studies too. If you think back to the, I won't remember these stats right off the top of my head, but the turn of the going from the 1800s to the 1900s, most people, their jobs were somehow related to putting food on the table. I mean, so there was a heavy, heavy agricultural component.

(Jim at 00:33:20) If you look at the turn of the century from the 1900s to the 2000s, that number went way, way, way down. And if you think about, like, what did somebody do in their day back in the early 1900s? You know, washing the clothes was a big deal because we had to go down to the river and get water and use the scrubbing board. And that was just very time consuming. And now, you know, it's, you sorted into colors and hot and cold, and then you just throw it in and off you go.

(Jim at 00:33:50) And so these technologies that have developed have changed what we do. I know that there is some thinking that, well, what are we going to do when all of these tasks are automated? Are we going to be, you know, all sort of poets and artists? And I think that's probably an oversimplified view. But I do think that there is an aspect of the way in which our engagement with the technology is shifting the way that we think about how we want to be spending our time.

(Jim at 00:34:18) And, you know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if it's having an impact on families and how we're thinking about it. There's probably a sort of a socioeconomic component too, in that, you know, more and more families have two people working rather than one. It's getting harder and harder to have a good living just based on, you know, one person's salary. And so there's probably an aspect of that, I would guess.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:45) If you want to keep up with your peers. Like, if you're okay with having less, you can definitely make it work. But—

(Jim at 00:34:53) The secret to happiness. Yes. No, I'm serious. I think people get sort of caught up in, wow, he doesn't have a better job than I do, but he's got that fancy Mercedes over there. I work hard. I deserve that damn Mercedes. I'm going to get one too. Really?

(Jim at 00:35:08) Do I need one? I mean, hey, you know, I go back and forth to CVS and pick up some aspirin. I think we start to attach a lot of value to the accumulation of things. And I think the happiest people are not necessarily, in fact, in many cases, they're not those with the most things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:28) Oh, yeah. There's plenty of, there's the happiness documentaries. I've seen a bunch of them. I struggled with this myself because I grew up fairly poor, so I had a very strong desire to figure out money. And I did, and I had it, and I lost it, and then I got it back and figured out how to build wealth.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:44) But I never thought, like, if you could go back to the 15-year-old version of me saying that there will be a point in your life where you'll be sick of buying things.

(Jim at 00:35:53) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:53) Like, you can have, within reason, everything that you want. Right? You can have the nicest class of everything, but you will get sick of it, and then you just won't want to have that many things. And I would tell you that you're crazy. I'd be like, no way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:06) But it's fascinating how once you get to a certain financial place, how uninteresting it is to have, you just become incredibly accustomed to it very, very fast. And then it's just about what I have found. I had to change the game from acquiring things and building money to building my character, like, figuring out how to challenge myself and grow myself. One thing I'm working on right now, I saw on your website you have amazing videos, B-roll of these robots, and you have this one robot that's somewhat tall and slender, and it's got these LED strips on the side that are nice and diffused, and it looks really futuristic.

(Jim at 00:36:43) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:44) Yeah. That's what I was doing this past weekend. I was putting LED lights into this custom closet that I'm building in our bedroom. So I started doing some woodworking, and I've never inlaid LEDs into anything. So I've been learning all about the LED per meter and how to get that nice look because it's not easy to get that smooth look.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:01) So when I saw it, I was like, they know what they're doing. They've got the good look of the LEDs. That's hard.

(Jim at 00:37:06) Yeah, I know. My grandfather volunteered in World War II to go over and help fight the war. He was in his 30s, so they all referred to him as the old guy. Unfortunately, he died on D-Day, so I didn't get a chance to meet him, but he was a carpenter.

(Jim at 00:37:22) And I can really relate, you know, because I like to build things. I like to create things. And so as you were talking about woodworking and figuring out how to get just that one look, I mean, that's, you know, for me personally, that's a way that I derive joy. I mean, it's very rewarding. And you'd mentioned sort of accumulating stuff.

(Jim at 00:37:44) And there's some sort of that George Carlin skit on that from years and years ago. But I get more value out of getting rid of stuff. I mean, if it, it's both cathartic, but also, you know, if I've got some shirt that's been sitting in my closet, that's in perfectly good shape for the last three years, that's not bringing any value to the world. And there are people that don't have shirts. And so if I can find a way to get that in the hands of somebody who could benefit it as opposed to just collecting dust in my closet for another four years, you know, there's value there.

(Jim at 00:38:12) And so spending some of my time on those kind of things, I find really, really rewarding.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:18) Oh, 100%. So when COVID happened, we sold everything, our house, all of our possessions, bought an RV, and then traveled around the United States for 10 months. Wow. Yeah. That's how we found this place out, and I'm just outside of Nashville on this little farm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:33) And the feeling that I felt, I'll remember until my deathbed, you know, when we were pulling out of the house after the closing had happened and the last items were in the RV and we were just driving away, I felt so light and free and amazing and opportunities and adventure. And that's the exact opposite feeling that you have when you have this, you know, compound and all of these things. And it's just a, it's a real interesting, I don't know. Whoever made this thing called life, they did a good job. It's pretty cool.

(Jim at 00:39:04) Yeah, totally. I remember when I packed up and left school as a senior, everything I owned fit in the back of my Toyota Corolla. And, yeah, it was totally deliberate. I mean, I, you know, I wasn't attached to anything or any place, or it wasn't stuff sort of driving. It was me driving. Pardon the pun there. But, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:26) I want to talk about ethics.

(Jim at 00:39:28) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:28) That always comes up when we're talking about AI and robots and things of that nature. I know you're in industrial manufacturing, but the industry as a whole obviously has to handle this conversation of ethics. How do you see it from your point of view?

(Jim at 00:39:45) Yeah. So a few factors. I mean, there's no doubt that the future has the potential to get into some pretty tricky places. And we're already, you know, we've already got a toe in that water. I mean, if you even look at some of the deep fake videos, you're like, what's real anymore?

(Jim at 00:40:06) And, you know, it is creating, like, I don't know what to, I don't know what to trust. I don't know what to believe. And, of course, in the current environment, you know, we're all skeptical of sort of the world around us, which in some form is sort of a sad commentary because the, you know, the hope and wonder and the art of the possible, I hate seeing sort of get squelched by, well, that can't be real. Somebody just sort of made it up because it's now possible to make up stuff that I can't tell the difference between what's real and what's not. You know, and so the whole idea of, at what point am I going to be communicating with a machine where I don't know it's a machine and it's, you know, because I thought it was a human?

(Jim at 00:40:43) And then it gets even sort of further complicated by we're going to go through a phase where the robots are able to, and automation and AI in particular, they're going to be able to sort of tap me on the shoulder and say, you know, Jim, you're doing that really well. But if you do it just a little bit differently, I can help you get a better result. And of course, you know, I'll be sitting there going, I want help, help me do my job better. But then as you sort of keep progressing that, you know, eventually you could get to the place where the robot starts to take on capabilities and sentience and the ability to, you know, start to think about its environment in ways that could be challenging.

(Jim at 00:41:25) So I think the work that people are doing to think about how do we sort of commit ourselves as an industry to upholding some set of ethical boundaries? I mean, is it something that takes the form of what professionals in the medical field do from a, you know, do no harm perspective? I mean, how do we commit to each other to try to, you know, create the world that we want and not, you know, one that has nefarious robots running around? I mean, this isn't an area that I personally spend a lot of time on it.

(Jim at 00:41:55) So I'm sure there's people that are much more thoughtful about some of the best ways to go about doing that. But I'm generally a pretty optimistic guy. And so I'm hopeful about the, you know, sort of the human condition and our fierce passion to try to figure out how to do this in the best possible way. And there's so much, sort of, you know, goodness in the world and smart, innovative people, you know, I'm hopeful that we'll figure it out. It's probably not a short-term problem, but then as a world, we've got to figure out how to deal with the things that are, you know, potentially longer-term problems.

(Jim at 00:42:37) You know, I recall back in the late '80s, when I was doing the research for my thesis, I was in a room with some people that were debating, you know, whether or not global warming was real. You know, there was absolutely no evidence to support it, and somebody else was making the counter case, you know, and here we are. And so, you know, somebody somewhere could be making the case that, you know, there's absolutely no way in which AI will develop to the point where it could be causing harms to humans. I don't think we can eliminate that as a possibility. So we are better off as a society if we consider the possibility and figure out what are the things that we do to avert the version of the world that we don't want to see.

(Jim at 00:43:18) And I'm glad to see and I'm very supportive of the people that are spending time thinking about that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:23) Yeah. And government is not the answer. That's always my first thought is, like, government. And then I was talking with some people about it, and they made a very good point that government works based off of the past. So, like, a bunch of kids, you know, die because of this toy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:39) Right? Then they legislate it out. Right? Or a bunch of fraud happens because of this thing, and then they legislate it out. So it's always happening in hindsight.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:48) And when we start talking about, you know, the AI apocalypse, that's not something you can handle in hindsight. That's something that the industry has to just dig out on its way. Yeah.

(Jim at 00:43:58) Yeah. When it's over, it's over. So yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:00) Yeah. San Francisco with that killer robot. What did you think when you saw that?

(Jim at 00:44:04) Yeah. That was a quick about face there, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we're going to have to self-police.

(Jim at 00:44:11) I mean, we're going to have to catch each other, and we're going to make mistakes. And hopefully, we won't make sort of the cataclysmic ones. And we will learn from them. I mean, so it's a lot like, you know, I remember when I first had children, right, they didn't come with a handbook. But, you know, somebody that I respect said to me once, you have to allow them to make some of the mistakes because that's how they learn and figure out their own path.

(Jim at 00:44:38) And I think we're going to have to make some of those mistakes so that we can figure out our own path. And, you know, just like kids, you know, there are circumstances where you don't let them put the fork into the electric socket. And so we're going to have to figure out how we make sure that as an industry, we don't do that. But, yeah, we're going to make some boo-boos along the way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:58) Yeah. That's what I'm learning. How old are your kids?

(Jim at 00:45:00) 18, 20.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:02) Okay. So they're alive? You did a good job? You got them raised up?

(Jim at 00:45:06) Yeah. They made it. Well, they made it at least out of the house. I don't know. They're not quite out. They'll be circling back, I'm sure. But yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:15) Mine, to your point exactly, is, you know, as a new parent, you're all very concerned. And then, you know, you realize that you have to keep them alive, like stop them with the fork, but then you also have to let them make the mistakes. And figuring that out, there's no book for it. It's not a science. It's an art, and it's very situational, and your kids are vastly different. And so for me, I'm going through that, you know, right now. And so it's exciting, and I'm only sleeping about like half the time.

(Jim at 00:45:46) Yeah. My wife will say there's years in her memory that she doesn't have because she was up a lot during that period of time. And, you know, I could help when I can, but sometimes she would have to take on more of the responsibility in the late night hours. But yeah. There's those tricky years where there's not much sleep involved.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:07) Oh, my wife's the best, dude. She does everything. I told her I was like, hey. Look. You can work, and we can both sort of share responsibilities, or you can not work and you can take care of the kids, and what do you want to do? And she was like, I want to just take—I want to be a mom. She's like, I've always wanted to be a mom. I just, you know, we can have less money and we can just, you know, be okay with that, and then I can spend time with the kids. So we got this farm, we homeschool our kids, and I built a studio about 25 yards away from the main house. So, you know, I get to have lunch with them every day. You know, she can come over at 5:00 and tell me I have to come out.

(Jim at 00:46:49) I was hugely impacted by people that I saw before me, men in particular, that didn't know their kids. And I was committed. I said, when I have kids, I'm going to make sure that, you know, when my son calls, I answer the phone. And I'm very cognizant of how much I travel and where I travel, because I don't want to be one of those people that their daddy is the guy that shows up for the weekend, you know, takes them to a baseball game and then disappears again. And because it's all those things during the week, you know, when something doesn't quite go the way they're looking for or they want, and they're looking for somebody to, you know, sort of help them through that. And I think that's where a lot of the relationships get built. And so—

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:38) Well, you're a good dad.

(Jim at 00:47:40) Yeah. I mean, it's easy. It's easy to, you know, to make mistakes. And I've certainly made—I've, you know, I've made my fair share. And, you know, it's funny because as you start to get, you know, a little bit of money, you know, people start having these conversations around, what do you—what do you want your legacy to be? And so, you know, you'll read these articles about legacy and a lot of people have, you know, foundations and buildings with names on them. You know, I would be happy if my legacy—you know, my kids thought I was a good parent and they are, you know, well-adjusted and have found a way to find joy in their life and bring joy to other people. Like, if that could be my legacy, like, I'm done. And I don't care about a name on a building. I don't care how much money is in the bank account. You know? I care that I've been able to do something to impact, you know, people that I love in a positive way. Yeah. That's more important to me than anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:36) Well, two points. The first about answering the phone. So my parents divorced when I was 12, and then I didn't live with my biological father, my dad. But he only lived an hour away, so I saw him often. And the one thing that was super interesting was in my lifetime, my dad was the most reliable human being. Like, I would say less than five times in my life, in my 34 years, have I called him and he not answered. And those times were like when he was out of the country. Right? You know, and I didn't know that they were out of the country as an adult. So that to me gives me this insane sense of security. Like, I know he will pick up that phone. And in that just that little act is so important. Yes. There's a million other things that have gone positive and negative and whatnot, but knowing that when I call, he'll be there has really helped me in my life. And the second thing is when I started to have kids and started to talk with him about being a dad, asking him, you know, how does he think about it and what did he do?

(Jim at 00:49:35) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:35) He shared this brief story. His father was abusive. Right? So when he was 18, he left—Air Force. Like, day he could leave, he left. Right? Air Force and then learned electronics, hardware and software, engineering.

(Jim at 00:49:51) And then—

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:51) He came out of the Air Force and did freelance and built things. So from that whole experience, he said that in his mind, all he wants to do is have his kids to just be a little bit better than him. So, you know, his dad's dad was even worse. His dad, you know, did it less. My dad didn't abuse us at all.

(Jim at 00:50:15) Right. You know?

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:15) And then on top of that, he took us from, you know, poverty to not poverty and, you know, poverty to middle class over the course of our upbringing. And then, you know, now I'm taking the kids to the next level. So that perspective of just being a little bit better in each successive generation, that's an interesting way to look at parenting, and it's helped relieve a lot of stress from me as far as, you know, because you have to determine what's success and all of this as a parent. So that was the perspective that I thought was incredibly valuable.

(Jim at 00:50:48) Yeah. What an awesome story. Yeah. No. I can totally relate to that. I mean, my, you know, my father retired as a technician making $22,000 a year. He was one of the happiest people I knew. He was always there for me. I mean, we struggled, you know, with money growing up, you know, but I got—they prioritized a good education for me at, you know, sacrifices that they made. Yeah. I mean, I'm hugely grateful and appreciative. And yeah. If I could take just a little bit of that and add on to it, you know, as I try to raise my own children. I think that's a great perspective.

(Joel Beasley at 00:51:25) Dude, good dad. I enjoy having this dad conversation with you. This is fun. But as we start to wrap up, because I'm watching time, I want to—you know, our audience is largely tech leaders, people that want to grow in their career. They come on to listen to really bright people like you, you know, share their experiences. Everyone always asks me, they're like, you know, what's the best piece of leadership advice that you've ever received and then put into practice? And it's been great. So I like to pass that question on to you. What's the best piece of leadership advice that you ever—you had to receive it, and then you had to put it into action, and it was useful for you?

(Jim at 00:51:58) The best piece of advice I received was someone that said to me, wisdom is knowing what you're not good at. Every one of us is human. We all have things that we do well. We all have things that we don't do well. And most things—success requires us to be good at things that we're not. And so if we are open to the possibility that, you know, we have strengths and we have things that are challenging, then we're in a much better position to be able to figure out what's necessary to be able to pull together something so that it's going to be successful, so that it works. And if you explicitly acknowledge that I'm not good at this, this, and this, and so I'm going to work with, or if you're a leader, build a team or surround yourself by people who can support the things that you're not good at, then you're putting yourself and your organization in a much better position to be able to succeed. I worked with another person a couple of decades earlier, and his view was very similar, although he sort of couched it in different language. He said, when you're designing an organization, make sure you don't have two levels of incompetence. And what he meant was if this thing, whatever that is—attention to detail, understanding the industry, whatever it is—if you are not good at it and the person above you or below you is not good at it, then you're sort of setting yourself up to have a problem. And so it sort of comes back to, if I know it's required and I know that I'm not good at it, I better hire for it or surround myself with people that are good at it. And, you know, so as an example, you know, I'm an analytical kind of guy. I like things. I like sort of building things. I like technology. I'm not necessarily very good at detecting how somebody is feeling. And so if you're going to be a leader in an organization, it's pretty important that you understand how the organization is feeling. So I surround myself with people that are really good at sort of connecting and understanding how people are feeling to help compensate for a blind spot that I have. So I tried to use that advice that I've gotten years ago to think about, okay, in this situation, in this environment, here's the five things that need to be in place, and I've got two of them. So what are we going to do about the other three? And that little bit of advice has helped me so often. It also, I believe, forces you to be humble and grateful, not for what you're good at, but for other people's strengths. You know, because it's—I mean, as an analytical person, it's pretty easy to, you know, how come he or she didn't get the right answer? I mean, it's easy. Right? Here's what you do. And maybe that isn't their strength, but they've got some other superpower, and maybe that's really important in this equation too. That's how I would think about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:02) Do you find yourself coaching the next generation of leaders at your company about what their superpowers are?

(Jim at 00:55:08) I do. And what sometimes I find that people have a superpower they don't understand. And to help them sort of see that is such a rewarding thing. You'll be able to detect in somebody that they're, you know, really good in certain situations and to help them sort of see that and say, did you notice when you were in this environment, you did this and it had this impact? And that changed fundamentally what was going on. And so your ability to tap into that, you know, use those powers for good because you've got something that a lot of people don't have, and it can help you not only from a career perspective, but it can help you help your organizations be successful. And to help sort of draw that out in people and help them sort of hone and refine that ability and that skill is just hugely rewarding. And it's great to be able to sort of see people start to understand their strengths and be able to use them in positive ways.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:13) Yeah. I want to challenge people that are listening to go—and I don't know if this is going to be a good challenge, so you can help me figure this out. But you explained some situation where you, you know, you're seeing and you're coaching and you're helping them see what they can't see there. But the people who are listening, you know, they could go to the person that's outside of their bubble. Right? Like, maybe one of their mentors or leaders within the organization, and they could ask them what their strengths are. Would that be a good conversation to start with?

(Jim at 00:56:39) That'd be an awesome conversation. Yeah. One of the things—in fact, literally, I had this conversation with somebody two hours ago. I said to him, I said, you have such experience and expertise. And what I love about our relationship is you don't have an agenda. So it allows me to be transparent and open and vulnerable, which puts me in the best position to learn and grow. And so what I would recommend to people, if they can find people that have experience and expertise that you respect, who don't have an agenda other than to help you become a better person or become a better leader. And if you can find those people, it's hugely rewarding. And really helps. I mean, the day we stop growing is the day we, you know, begin to die. And so I think it's really important that we all constantly focus on how are we growing? What are we learning? How are we better equipping ourselves, whether it's in the work environment or the home environment, you know, with any luck, I mean, I'll be, you know, 30 years from now, my kids and I'll still be parenting them in some form, probably a very different form. But if I can continue to learn how to do that better and better, and I'll only be able to do that if I keep myself open to the possibility that I have things to learn and develop as I grow, you know, whether I'm 30, 50, or 80. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:05) Otherwise, life is boring.

(Jim at 00:58:06) It is. Yeah. Let's keep some spark and life in there that makes it sort of, you know, interesting. It's funny. I had a debate with someone the other day. If you could find out what the date is that you're not going to be on the earth anymore, would you want to know? Yes. And so it was a really interesting, sort of philosophical conversation of, you know, yes, I'd be able to plan, but no, I'd sort of have some aspect of the surprise taken out of it. And the surprise in itself creates goodness in some forms. And so it's probably one of those questions that doesn't have, you know, a right answer per se, but the, you know, not knowing what a day brings for some can create, you know, ambiguity and stress and, you know, for others, you know, it's part of the richness in life that we live. So—

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:58) Well, if you had enough knowledge to guarantee that telling me—knowing the date would not impact the date, then I would want to know. But if it's like a—I don't know because I don't want to roll the dice and find out it's when I'm 60, but because I learned the date, it's now, you know, 50 or whatnot.

(Jim at 00:59:14) Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:14) But I'm the type of person that I like to know the end of the movie, and then I love to watch how we get there. Like, I love figuring out what the end of the movie is. Like, I enjoy it a lot, and that's like 80% of the time. And then 20% of the time, I want to be, you know, surprised and just kind of roll with it. But I really love the journey.

(Jim at 00:59:35) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:35) Oh, man. This is great, Jim. I'm actually really surprised. Like, this has been a fantastic—this exceeded my expectations, man.

(Jim at 00:59:43) The same here. Really appreciated all kinds of things that we talked about. So, yeah, life is—life's an interesting thing. And, you know, it's funny because when I was younger, somehow I had arrived at this view that my work life and my home life were different, and I needed to keep them in boxes. You know? But the reality is, you know, I'm the same person in both places that are both affected by the experiences that I'm having. And so what I'm experiencing when I'm with you at work is in part impacted by the experience that I had this morning and last night. And so, you know, I've gotten to the point where, you know, there's just one of me and I'm a collection of experiences, some of which are the work environment and some of which are in the home environment and some of which sort of crossover into both, but I've come to appreciate sort of the power of sort of thinking through that lens. And I'm generally a pretty private person, but, you know, sort of keeping things again, sort of entirely separate. I think it's much easier to get to know people and build relationships when they can experience the whole you and not just the part of you that you choose to share because you're in a, you know, quote unquote work environment.

(Joel Beasley at 01:00:56) It's much easier to just be one version of you, 100%. Thank you so much for listening, and if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected].

(Joel Beasley at 01:01:19) Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.