Work life balance. Is it a recipe for long term success, or a surefire way to fail? In the Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn counters the case made by some enormously successful CEOs. (Watch Now on YouTube)

Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, this is a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast, because it is a video podcast. If the listeners would like to watch instead of just listen, they can go to Toughthingsfirst.com, find the podcast, locate this podcast, and then of course find where … There’s a little button to click for watching the video. It’ll take you to the YouTube channel where they post the videos all the time, so I hope you enjoy that, if you choose to do that. If you don’t, still, we’re happy to have you here listening. Ray, I found something that I’d like to talk to you about. This is from a Fortune.com article. It says, “There are many workers out there who are perfectly happy clocking in at 9:00 and heading out the door at 5:00,” and Cerebras co-founder and CEO, Andrew Feldman, said, “They can have a great life. However, if you want to launch the next billion-dollar company or innovate a product, you won’t get anywhere at 40 hours a week.”

This is his quote, here. “The notion that somehow you can achieve greatness, you can build something extraordinary, by working 38 hours a week and having a work-life balance, that’s mind-boggling to me,” unquote. That’s Feldman, again, leader of the $8.1 billion AI chip company. He said that recently on a 20VC podcast. He says it’s just not true in any part of his life. Apparently Jeff Bezos agrees with this philosophy. There are other industry titans that believe in this. You’re not one of them, Ray. Why is that?

Ray Zinn: Well, historically, the work day has been eight hours a day, five days a week, 40 hours a week. Yeah, so if you think about what your effective work schedule is, because you have to have time to eat and sleep and do other things other than just be at your desk slaving away at whatever product line or business you have, it’s inefficient. It’s ridiculous. If it requires 80 hours a week to be successful, then you don’t have enough people, so obviously, if you can’t afford to hire enough people so that you don’t have to work 80 hours a week, then I guess you’d have to work 80 hours a week. I mean, you’ve got to do whatever you have to do to be successful. I know people that have a beauty salon and they’re the only one, they’re the top talent for that, to do that particular service, and so he has to put in whatever hours he needs to cover his overhead. He recently had a few people leave, and so he was taking over their customers and he was working 80 hours a week, but it was killing him. In other words, he had no life.

As I mentioned, there’s 24 hours in a day, but you can’t spend 20 of it working, and so if you just do the math on it, 80 hours a week, you’re working 16 hours a day, unless you’re working seven days a week, so it’s not really efficient or not a good lifestyle to work 60 to 80 hours a week. I ran Micrel for 37 years, and I believe the longest work week I ever had was 50 or 60, and that was during the time we were preparing for our IPO and that sort of thing, which required a lot of my personal attention. Having to work more than eight hours a day just doesn’t … If you just divide the day up, you’ve got three eight-hour periods in your day, and it’s very, very difficult to not have some form of life other than your work. If you have to give up sleep, I mean, I don’t know how effective you’re going to be by not sleeping, but I do know that some people try to get by to three to four hours of sleep, and God bless them for that, but they’re not going to be very healthy. Your health is important too, as you try to be effective and efficient as a CEO or as a leader of an organization, so again, I disagree that you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Do you think they’re factoring in some things like, you get off work and you go home. If you’re the leader or the CEO or or you’re in the middle of developing something, that you can go home, enjoy dinner, enjoy some time with your family, but at the same time your brain doesn’t necessarily turn it off. Could they be factoring in some of the hours that you put in working where you’re just maybe looking at technical manuals or something like that at home, and taking up your own time to do that, or are they talking straight, in the office, going hardcore and driving, and being either always on the phone or always having a meeting, or always trying to develop something?

Ray Zinn: It’s at work. I mean, obviously you can’t turn your brain off, but your family knows if you’re not focusing on them or on something other than work, they notice that. Just because you’re home, if you’re on the phone or if you’re doing Zoom or whatever with clients or employees, they notice that. We’re talking about now not having your total cognitive hours focused on work or work type activities. I know people who love to work 80 hours a week. I think Donald Trump says he works, I don’t know, he gets three hours of sleep or four hours of sleep a night. I don’t know how healthy that is for him, but I do know that, they claim anyway, he’s running around the clock and just barely gets any sleep time. Even his hours of where he eats and has other things to do other than just work, he’s still working. I mean, even at dinner, I mean, he’s got other people that he’s surrounded with that he’s talking to, and on the phone with different country presidents and so forth, and maybe he can do that for a few years, but to do that around the clock, I don’t think it’s healthy.

Rob Artigo: There’s diminishing returns, because if you are … You were talking about the cognitive impacts of, the positive cognitive impacts of getting rest, letting your mind rest, so you can actually go drive for 80 hours a week and really only get 60% and even less productivity out of it mentally, because you’re not thinking totally straight, than if you worked fewer hours and gave yourself a chance for your mind to recuperate.

Ray Zinn: Yep. Well, that’s part of it too. You can’t exercise 24/7. You have to spell off a little while. I exercise five days a week, I don’t exercise seven days a week, and so you have to give your body a little chance to relax and to recuperate. I’ve heard that there are people that even conduct business while they’re taking care of some personal business, as they say, or even when they’re at the dinner table, but to me, it’s not healthy. I mean, your stomach, you can’t have a decent meal and digest that meal effectively if you are arguing with somebody over the phone. I mean, your system recognizes when you’re upset or when things aren’t going right, and so pounding your fist on the table while you’re eating or yelling and screaming into the phone is not going to help your digestion. I think there’s more to life to be successful than just working 80 hours a week on your job or your work function.

Rob Artigo: If I hear you correctly, Ray, it seems like it’s a … Excuse me. It seems like it’s really a matter of saying it’s okay to work a lot of hours one week. You just don’t want to make it a habit of doing that throughout your career, because eventually it’ll run you down and you’ll be less useful.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, I know people that literally believe they have to work 80 hours a week or they don’t think they’re being successful, and that’s just a mindset. It’s not reality, and so if you think you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful, God bless you, because you’re not going to live a long healthy life. I ran Micrel for 37 years and I’m still working, even though it’s been 10 years since I sold the company. I’m still actively either writing books or doing podcasts or teaching at the universities, so I haven’t backed off doing things. I just don’t believe that I have to work 80 hours a week to be successful.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, you have your own private plane, and I’d be worried about you, your longevity if I found out, “Okay, I’m in New York, I’m heading to Dallas right now. I’ve got to be in LA by 2:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’ve got a meeting there, it’s an hour. Then I’m going back to the Bay Area.” Something like that, I would definitely find that a concern, but there are people who do that, and I think maybe that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re 25 years old, but when you start piling on those years of hard work, like you said, the longevity’s not there, and then you’re just burned out or we lose you too soon.

Ray Zinn: Well, in my mind, to be successful, it has to be more than just your work opportunity or your work objective. You have work at home to do, you’ve got your family to raise, you’ve got service projects to help others in your community, and it’s more than just pounding away at your job function. Remember, there is a balance you have to have, whether it be in the way you eat, the way you exercise, the way you interact with other people, your family. It has to be balanced. Anything that’s out of balance, as you know, doesn’t do well. Tires on a car that are out of balance, you know what that does to the car and to you, so balance is important.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, I want to thank all the listeners, and in this case, viewers, for those who watch this on YouTube, on your YouTube channel. Thank you for being here for the Tough Things First podcast. You can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are welcome. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First. As you know, the Zen of Zen series is available, one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader, which is this image you see behind me right here, 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob. Good to be with you.

Change is the one constant. Handling it is a skill in itself. Ray Zinn has seen his share and you can benefit from that experience.

Ray Zinn: Hi Rob. Good to be here today.

Rob Artigo: Great to be back, Ray. Job changes, industry shifts, entrepreneurial leaps, what do these all have in common? They’re all big changes, right. They’re big. They’re big life choices, or sometimes not even by choice. So we’re bound to face these if we are in the business environment long enough, but we do know they just happen in life. So what are some ways to build resilience so that we can get through those tough challenges?

Ray Zinn: That’s the willingness to accept change. That’s what it starts. If you’re intimidated, if you’re under stress because of the change, then you don’t have that resilience.

So, to build resilience, it means you have to accept change, because change is with us. Whether it be our family, our health, our personal education, whatever it is that bringing about these change, change is with us. We’re not going to ignore, or we can’t resist change.

It’s part of life and something we have to accept. So your willingness, your ability to accept these career changes, is just going to be more to your favor. You can’t grow without change.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. A company can also hit that… those moments too. When you were CEO, there were times when you had to make some changes, and I think of it as pivoting. We talked about on this program a few times about what that means, a way to retool and get going in a different direction.

But your company may face a change that you have to lead the company through. And really, it’s important to have the ability to have that mindset of accepting the fact that change will happen so that you can anticipate events down the road, right.

Ray Zinn: Yeah. In fact, I did a study when I was getting my master’s about change, and GE was a good example, or was maybe it was Westinghouse, one of them. It was either GE or Westinghouse. What they were doing is they were actually changing the color of the walls on a yearly basis. They would change it to a different color, and they would move people around from position to position so they get used to change.

So if you get… if you’re resistant to change, it’s called being in a rut. And so a rut refers to those wagons that back in the early 1800s, where they were having these wagon trains, and they would form these ruts in the road… in the trail, and then if the other wagons would just keep deepening the ruts. And so pretty soon the ruts would get so deep that the wagons were having a hard time because of the friction on the wheel being down several inches into the ground.

It caused the wagon trains to have a difficult time. They had to add more oxen and animals to [inaudible 00:03:14] wagons because the ruts got so deep. So this referred to as being in a deep rut. You got to have change. You move over, so you’re not in the rut. You got to accept change and actually invite change if you’re going to progress.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. And it’s not always easy to do with… if you are… if you’re ill-prepared. So that’s why you have to be… you have to anticipate change, and you have to be able to accept the fact that it’s going to be part of what you do.

Ray Zinn:

Part of that book, Who Moved the Cheese, was a well-known bestseller and talked about these mice that kept going back to the same spot for their meal. And then when that cheese when that got moved, then those mice perished because they were so used to having the cheese in the same spot, and they weren’t willing to go and search out where the cheese may have been moved, that they perished. So you either change or perish.

Rob Artigo: Well, let’s talk a little bit about transferable skills. So if I’m going to be ready for change, I’ve got to be able to know what my skills translate into, right. When I think of transferable skills, I think of a skill that is useful in one job and useful in another job too.

Ray Zinn: Well, in 2015, when I sold the company, I was kind of forced, as you would into retirement. But rather than just go off into the sunset, I started writing books, started teaching at various universities. I started a program called ZinnStarter at these schools. So I had to accept change. I was no longer the CEO of Micrel, a semiconductor company. I was now a retired person having to adjust to a different way of life.

I didn’t have thousands of people working for me. I just had to find something else to do to continue progressing. I won’t just say occupy my time because that’s more laziness as you would. But I wanted to find something more productive to do, not just go out and sit on the rocking chair on the porch. So I said I started writing books. I started teaching. I just had to change. I had to move with the cheese.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. And nobody says that you have to go off into the sunset, as they say, when you retire. You can pivot, and you can keep on doing other things. But that’s what you do. You’ve made a great living after retirement just by getting out and being proactive and staying involved. And that’s an impressive feat in itself.

Ray Zinn: I was talking to a friend of mine who was a CFO of a company. It’s a chief financial officer. And so when he retired, I saw him down at Costco. He was doing food demonstration at Costco. And I said, “Well, gosh, that’s really strange that you would go from being a CFO of a very important company to now you’re just preparing these food samples for people at Costco.”

And he says, “Hey, anything to keep me busy.” So it was… He says, “A lazy life is a lazy mind.” And he says, “Yeah, I may be… I may not be crunching numbers like I was when I was a CFO,” but he says, “I’m crunching these goodies and I’m handing them out and meeting and greeting people.” So he said, “It’s not the money, it’s how I spend my time.”

Rob Artigo: Join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome there. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the Zen of Zinn series 1, 2, and 3. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks Rob.

Leading with emotional intelligence is a major part of success in any leadership role. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn outlines what is at the heart of developing this difficult skill to master.

Rob Artigo: We have talked at length on this show about your management style, walking around, getting to know employees, and you’ve written about it in your book, The Essential Leader. So I want to unpack that a little bit though, and talk in more detail about self-awareness, which you have, and also empathy, which you also have an abundance of, and incorporating that with your interpersonal skills to be an effective leader.

Are these essential attributes, to coin a phrase from the book, are these essential attributes that you’re looking for in leaders that you hire, as well as what you expect of yourself?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. My thought goes to what constitutes a good father or a good mother. It starts out, when I’ve heard eulogies given about a person who’s passed away, the thing I hear about them, “They were a good person,” and I’ve never heard a eulogy for someone who has passed that wasn’t considered their goodness, as you would.

When I hear somebody say, “Well, that person’s been a good father or is a good father,” Or mother, or whoever, it’s because of their goodness. The constitution of a good leader is their goodness, G-O-O-D-N-E-S-S. Goodness. Okay. So do we need to define what is goodness?

Rob Artigo: I think you did right there. What is goodness? It is, to me, a peaceful presentation of yourself, to show your empathy, and, really, your ability to communicate. And I think that’s where you get the reputation for goodness.

Ray Zinn: And a word is caring. A good person is a caring person. They care, meaning they honestly and realistically care for others. They put themselves subservient to others. A good father, a good mother, a good husband, a good wife, a good employee, a good leader, that they all start with good, G-O-O-D, good. Good means you’re respectful, you’re honest, you have high integrity, you show dignity and respect for others, and you’re willing to put yourself at risk doing whatever it takes. A good father, a good mother, they look out for their children. Good brothers and good sisters look out for each other. Good husband and good wives out for each other. Good leaders look out for their employees. They put themselves at risk for their employees, I should say.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. Well, and in the workplace with, Micrel is a computer chip company, and you had design teams, you had people that were in creative environments, and I’m wondering if this approach as a good leader helps build stronger teams.

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. I mean, that’s what you want, is you want them to know that you care, that you show respect in all respects. You show respect for others, whether it be your customers, whether it be your vendors, whether it be your employees. That respect has to be number one. And what is respect? It’s a caring attitude.

Rob Artigo: And everyone knows that workplace conflicts do spring up. I mean, even in the best work environments, you’re going to have some conflicts, and they can be creative conflicts, or they can just be personal conflicts, and you just don’t like somebody. But I wonder if empathy and interpersonal skills make a difference in resolving these issues.

Ray Zinn: Sure. We just talked about that. I mean, to be empathetic means you are caring. To be conflict-resoluting, that means you’re caring. You don’t condescend, you don’t use foul language, you don’t use words or definitions of people that are negative or disheartening to those that you’re addressing. They feel your love, and that’s the key, is feeling that love and that respect is what’s key. And so if we can highlight the most important principle or factor to being a loving, caring person, it is to show respect for all individuals.

Rob Artigo: Our listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Questions and comments are always welcome there. Follow Ray on Twitter or X, depending on how you want to reference it, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And of course you can also check out Ray’s books, and we invite you to. Tough Things First is the first one, as you know, there is the Zen of Zinn series, which is one, two, and three. And on sale now, The Essential Leader. Pick up the books. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks Rob.

Making timely, smart decisions can be an everyday occurrence. But what happens when the pressure is turned up and the stakes the highest you have ever faced? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the key elements of navigating decisions under pressure.

Rob Artigo: Ray, as CEO of Micrel for nearly four decades, you have had to make countless decisions, and so I thought maybe we’d explore just on how effective leaders like you make confident, informed decisions when the stakes are really high. Obviously you’re talking about employees’ futures, the future of the company, people making decisions on investments when it relates to your company, and then also buyers; the people you’re selling to have to have confidence that your company’s going to deliver properly. All of those things are really high stakes in decision-making. So let’s talk a little bit about decision-making and how high stress impacts that process.

Ray Zinn: Sure. Well, what I’d like to do is start out by talking about the culture. Every company needs a culture. And at Micrel, our culture was, number one, honesty, the second was integrity, third was dignity of all individuals, and the fourth was doing whatever it takes, no excuses. So those cultures help form and transform the decisions that we make. All of the decisions that the company made were, whatever the reason, were based on those four cultures as it relates to employees, of course, dignity of every individual. So you make your decision based on that culture of dignity and respect. And then whether it’s dealing with customers or dealing with a bad market, honesty and integrity are very important. So those were the basis of the decisions we made regarding how we run our business, whether it be honesty, integrity, respect, or doing whatever it takes.

Doing whatever it takes is really an interesting one because it talks about how you go about making a decision. Your first decision is, how do I rectify this mistake or this problem that we’re facing and doing it in a way in which none others than yourself will have to suffer? You have to take the biggest hit. And I did that when I was CEO, is whenever we had a layoff or whenever we had a downturn, I took the biggest hit. I took the most time off, or I took the biggest pay cut by a factor of three over everybody else. So I put myself at risk more than I did my employees.

So if you start out with that basis that, whether you’re an employee or whether you’re the CEO, that you’re going to make sure that no one suffers from your mistakes, that you take that responsibility of correcting that mistake, will be key to how well your decision is going to be accepted. When we had to do a layoff or when we had to do a cutback, reducing salaries, they knew that I was going to take the biggest hit. We’re all in it together, as they say. So if your employees or your customers know you’re in it, you’re in it to win it, as they say, then they’re more supportive. And that’s what you need. When you have tough decisions, just make sure that your employees know that you’re on it, that you’re in it 100%, and that you’re not trying to put it off on someone else, that you’re taking full responsibility for that decision. And that’s the key. Just saying, by the way, “Oh, I take responsibility,” doesn’t mean anything. You have to show it. It has to be absolutely clear that you have accepted that responsibility.

So that’s the key to good decision-making is that willingness to accept the penalty, not just the words, the penalty for a bad decision. That’s what it takes. It takes that willingness to make the reparation for your decision and that you’re not putting others at risk; you’re taking on that responsibility, and they can see it. That’s what my people, the employees at my company, saw my willingness to take the penalty to suffer the consequences.

Rob Artigo: In my experience in the Army, we called that lead by example. And you’ve always been a leader in whatever you’ve done, where you’ve set the example, not just in creating the culture, but in living the life. So you’re out there not just talking the talk, you walk the walk, and people respond to that. And I’ve seen that.

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s that Congressional Medal of Honor philosophy. The way you get a Congressional Medal of Honor, and of course you know probably better than me because you’ve had a good career in the military, is that you have… To do something outstanding, you have to take whatever risks that are necessary to save your company or those around you. You’re going to put your life more at risk than anyone else, and that’s how you get the Congressional Medal of Honor. And maybe you could speak a little bit to what that means, because that’s what good decision-making is, is getting that Congressional Medal of Honor

Rob Artigo: Yeah. And most of the people who have the Medal of Honor, not withstanding the fact that… Because people have been getting that award for long enough to where a lot of people end up dying of old age, but they’re deceased when they receive it because of decisions that they made, selfless sacrifice. And I think that’s what you’re talking about here is you’re saying lead by example. Selfless sacrifice is in doing things that you know put yourself at risk, but you’re doing it because you’re living your personal ethos.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, so to be the one making the decisions is also the one who’s willing to take the hit and suffer the consequences. So be a Congressional Medal of Honor winner, either as a leader of your company or as an employee. Have that mentality that you’re going to do whatever it takes, no excuses.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, our listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Comments are always welcome there. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First and Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

How do successful people master resilience for career and life success? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says it comes down to mental toughness and the key to that comes from within you.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, let’s talk about how we can develop mental toughness to adapt, to change, and overcome setbacks. This goes to mastering resilience for career and life success because we do need to be resilient. In doing so, we have to develop a certain mental toughness. I wonder if you have an idea of what mental toughness is in your mind.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, it is based on confidence. It’s all about confidence, and how do you develop confidence? Well, that’s the key to our podcast today is how do we get confidence? Actually a trait that we have to develop even as a young person, whether you’re primary school, child or teenager or college. Developing confidence is the key to having this resilience. The way to develop confidence, it goes back to what your standards are, what your beliefs are, what drives you to do anything, whether it’s work or play or school or whatever, is you have to have that confidence that you can succeed.

Rob Artigo: Can we be overconfident because we’re overestimating what we can accomplish?

Ray Zinn: Sure. The way you become overconfident is an ego. It’s all relates to your ego. So if you have a really a pretty large ego, then you’re going to have what we refer to as overconfidence, and of course that can lead to failure just as fast as a lack of confidence. So you want to have a kind of balanced level of confidence so your ego doesn’t get in the way of your progress or your insecurity gets in the way of your progress.

Rob Artigo: Well, in investing, we talk about being risk-averse. Can people be change-averse?

Ray Zinn: Yeah, I think change is difficult for almost all of us. We all resist change, whether you’ve got overconfidence or underconfidence, or whatever your problem is, you do have this lack of focus and that prevents you from developing the proper level of confidence as you would or the proper level of risk that you’re willing to accept. Risk-averse is a challenge for all of us. We all resist change.

It’s like when I was learning to swim as a five-year-old, my uncle, my dad was watching, I actually can remember it even though it’s many, many years ago. I can remember it as clear as day. My uncle told my dad, he’s not going to learn to swim unless you just throw him in. Okay, just letting him paddle around is not going to get him to… So here I am, five years old, he grabs me and he throws me in the pool and my dad was ready to jump in and my uncle stopped my dad from jumping in. My uncle said, “It is not going to hurt him to take a few gulps of water.” So how do you learn to swim? Is by not letting your head stander too long.

A student asked Socrates, “How do I gain knowledge and wisdom?” And Socrates says, “Well, I’ll show you.” And he says, “Meet me down at the ocean tomorrow morning at six o’clock and I’ll show you how to do it.” So the student was actually there by 5:30 and Socrates walked out into the ocean about chest high and he said, “Come on out with me.”

And so then the student went out to where the Socrates was standing in chest high water and Socrates dunked his head under the water and held him there until he could see him gurgling and swallowing amounts of seawater. And then he pulled him up and the student was spitting and shaking his head, and Socrates looked him right in the eye and said, “Now what did you want more than anything else while your head was under water?” And the student says, “I wanted air.” And so the Socrates said, “Well, when you want knowledge and wisdom as much as you wanted air, you’ll find a way to get it.” And that’s the way it was when my uncle threw me the pool, he turned to my dad and said, “Look, he’s learned to swim already.” So, anyway.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, I don’t know. I have seen this technique done before. I’m not sure I’d want to do it because, like your dad, my impulse would be to jump in the water and rescue. But I have seen this technique where they’ve taken basically babies and dropped them in the water and within a few minutes they’re swimming around.

Ray Zinn: Well, there’s that saying, Rob, sink or swim. You ever heard that?

Rob Artigo: Yeah.

Ray Zinn: Okay. That’s what we’re talking about is sink or swim. Years ago when they had that research vessel capsize in the Baja California or whatever it is that ocean in between Baja and Mexico, there’s that research vessel overturned. There were like 10 researchers that were lost in that tragedy. I think it was, what they call it, chubasco. A big storm came up and caused that vessel to overturn, but three of them made it back to shore. So seven were lost and three survived. They were interviewing them and said, “Well, how did you survive? And the others perished?” And the three said almost simultaneously, “We didn’t quit swimming.” So obviously that says something about persistence and what we’re talking about being risk-averse.

Sometimes you just got to keep swimming, as that saying goes, sink or swim. So if you don’t want to die, you better keep swimming. Like Socrates says, when you want knowledge and wisdom as much as you want air, you’ll find a way to get it. So this all ties together, Rob, about how do you have mental toughness and resilience is you just got to keep swimming. You can’t quit swimming.

Rob Artigo: Right. That goes for your continuing education, your physical fitness, all of those things work together to help bolster your chances of success. Well, Ray, join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and of course pick up Ray’s books, the Tough Things First book and of course Zen of Zinn Series 1, 2, and 3, and on sale now, The Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks Rob. Good to be with you.

This isn’t politics, it’s madness. In this Tough Things First podcast Ray Zinn discussing the murder of Charlie Kirk and the sickness that plagues the American political landscape. (At the time of this post, no suspect had been arrested.)

Ray Zinn: Hi Rob. How’s it going today?

Rob Artigo: It’s a tough day because we had a 31-year-old conservative activist who was at a speech on a college campus and he took a bullet round to the throat and is dead. And so it’s like hate to have a downer podcast, but it seems like it’s important for us to talk to a little bit about this. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. Give me your reaction right off the bat.

Ray Zinn: Well, listen, as you started out, this is a horrible way to start a podcast, is talking about something as devastating as the death of a young man, father of two little children, just 31 years old, really just starting his career and then to end it in such a tragic way. He was giving a seminar at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, which I know very well. I’m involved with that school in my program called Zen Starter, and so that’s a very touching thing for me. It hits right at home because I’ve had grandchildren attend UVU. I don’t have anybody there right now, but I did have children that attended there and graduated from that school. It’s a very good town. I know it well. I’ve been there to give talks and to teach there at that school. I know the faculty, some of the faculty quite well.

As I said, I’m involved philanthropically there, and it was just very, very problematic to have that happen, especially since I’m involved with that school. And it is a very conservative area, that whole area of Provo and Orem are very, very conservative. It was just very surprising to have it happen there, especially given the forum. He had a tour, I think of 15 universities he was going to speak to. He is very engaging with young people, the college-age, young people that follow him on social media. He’s an extremely well-known figure, and I guess he felt perfectly safe, obviously I would too. I mean, I would never, ever expect it to happen there. Maybe that’s why the shooter felt comfortable, because nobody was expecting it. Very little security, that speaks to the problem that we have in this country right now, that you have to have security or you’re in trouble.

Like that young girl, Ukrainian girl a couple of days ago that was stabbed on that train, just minding her own business, sitting there by herself, and then this perpetrator came up behind her and slashed her throat. And the violence that seems to be prevalent in this country speaks to the problem we’re having in this country with violence. Of course, there’s violence in Israel, there’s violence in Ukraine, in various other parts of the world. This violence has just seemed to be increasing at a dramatic rate.

We’re also honoring, or we’re celebrating, I shouldn’t say celebrating, we’re recognizing the 9/11 tragedy that happened in 2001 on September the 11th. Here again, I mean, it is kind of coincidental that we had that killing of that Ukrainian girl, that young 23-year-old, and then that became national media or national recognition. And then we had this shooting of this well-known political figure or political activist, I should say, Charlie Kirk. And then today, I think it is today, we honor those who lost their lives in that 2001 incident where these airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City.

What’s interesting is that just as a sidelight is I had just returned back from a long trip just a few hours before they shut the whole airport system down. So I don’t think I’ve was home more than six hours when they shut everything down. So that was kind of an interesting thing that I got back in time. But of course, the tragedy of that 9/11 is still with us, and we recognized that every single year.

And then we had this incident yesterday where this very well-known political figure, Charlie Kirk was shot to death by some unknown assailant at this point and looks like it was done professionally. It was very well planned out. I guess these tours are planned well in advance, and somehow or another, this perpetrator had this thing well, looks like well, well planned out. They haven’t found him yet or her, and so the person still remains at large.

But it just shows, in my mind anyway, the tremendous violence that is occurring around this world at this time, and it needs to stop. We need to bring this thing to an absolute halt. And my heart goes out to his family, to Charlie Kirk’s family, his wife and his two children, and Charlie’s parents, and actually all of us. All of us are affected by this sort of violence, whether it be in Gaza or whether it be in Ukraine, wherever it is, it does have an impact on us Rob.

Rob Artigo: I wonder, Ray, if you’re saying that in the past you’ve had relationships with people at the school and the students are there, I mean, a lot of them are directly traumatized by this because they witnessed it happen. And like you said, it extends beyond the campus to everybody else because we now have this specter of assassinations kind of lingering over political discourse in this country, which is really devastating to open dialogue. So I don’t know, Ray, is there something we could tell the students and young people particularly about this, to tone it down, to bring it back to a rational conversation instead of violence?

Ray Zinn: Well, we have to reject what’s going on. I know that on social media today, some of the students were celebrating the death of Charlie. We got to quit that. We got to quit celebrating death, whether it be in Gaza or Ukraine or wherever. We just got to quit celebrating animosity. We have to show more love and concern for each other no matter what our political beliefs are and where we differ in our political beliefs or religious beliefs or whatever, we need to tone that down and show more love and concern for our fellow man. This anger which is being perpetrated around the world, we have to show resilience and condemnation for it.

So what I recommend, and hopefully the people who are listening to this podcast will do is on their own just reject this sort of animosity. As I pointed out a minute ago, on social media there are people who are celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. I mean, I don’t care what your political belief or religious belief is, you shouldn’t be celebrating death of any kind. This has got to stop.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, it really is a, I’m at a loss for words really when it comes to this kind of thing, because I just can’t believe that we’ve gotten to this point in this country where people do celebrate an assassination.

Ray Zinn: Yeah.

Rob Artigo: Openly, openly on social media. They do videos, these social media videos celebrating this, and it’s mind-boggling to me.

Ray Zinn: And it just shows how crazy things have got in this country that we celebrate this sort of anger and animosity. We shouldn’t have animosity toward anyone. I mean, that should not be even part of our culture is having animosity toward anyone irrespective of their differences in belief. And so I’d like to call a halt to this animosity and focus more on trying to find ways that we can get together and relate better to one another as opposed to being so angry and celebrating the death of a very wonderful young man, irrespective of your differences in your beliefs.

We did this podcast today, Rob, because it is central to themes that we’ve been promoting here on our podcast, and that is to show more respect and love toward our fellow man, and let’s not celebrate this sort of animosity. Let’s reject it. Let’s show anger toward the animosity as opposed to anger toward people who differ in our beliefs.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, the audience can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series one, two, and three, and on sale now The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

If you had more than four decades of experience and knew all there was to know about hiring people for important positions, what would you say described a winning resume? Let’s ask Ray Zinn in this Tough Things First podcast.

Rob Artigo: Ray as CEO of Micrel, I’m very interested in your take on this, and you were involved in management your entire adult life, basically at different levels, and obviously the longest period was as CEO of Micrel, semiconductor for 37 years. So you’ve seen your share of resumes for everything from the entry-level positions to the second-in-command at Micrel, for example. I just want to pick your brain a little bit about the kinds of things that you like to see and you don’t like to see. Are resumes your first impression of an applicant? Or do you get something before the resume that gives you a hint as to whether or not you want to talk to this person?

Ray Zinn: Well, the first thing I do, of course, is look at what the job opportunity is so I can size it. Otherwise, I say, “Okay, this job requires a certain education. It requires a certain amount of experience.” And then I kind of put in my mind what the ideal candidate should look like. In other words, whether they’re going to be a janitor as you would, or they’re going to be a vice president. And so I know in my mind, excuse me, what I’m looking for before I actually begin the interview process. Then getting that description out to the public as you would, whether it be through LinkedIn or X or however you use, whatever media you use to get your job opportunity out there, you want to make sure it properly explains what you anticipate.

So if you over exaggerate what you want, in other words, if you say, “I need a PhD,” when I only need a high school graduate, that’s going to discourage some applicants and knowing that, but you’re liable to attract the wrong kind of applicants. Because an applicant, when he looks at that job description, can say, “Well, this doesn’t require a PhD. This company must be a bunch of bozos.”

So you want to make sure that your requirements, the needs of the job are realistic. In other words, don’t exaggerate what’s required for the job. Because you’re going to get the wrong kind of candidates when you put out there the wrong requirements for the job. So that’s the first key is if you’re the hiring company, make sure that your description is realistic. If you get the wrong applicants coming in, you’re going to be wasting your time and you’re wasting their time also. Okay, so that’s the first thing is make sure that your requirements are properly identified. Don’t underestimate them and don’t overestimate them as you would. Be realistic. Look at other apps that are, I mean, other job descriptions for a similar job, and that’ll give you an idea of some of the requirements of your competitors. Okay, now let’s go to, we’re switch hats here and you’re going to become the applicant for that job.

Okay, so what happens is that remember that the hiring company is going to be what we call skeptical. I mean, the first thing is that remember, they’re going to be skeptical. You’re not going to be preaching to the choir. You’re going to be preaching to people who are not going to believe what they read. And so you want to make sure that you know that you’re preaching to a skeptic, okay? So make sure your resume is very, very, very, very realistic. I can’t emphasize that because they can tell from reading your application or your resume, they can tell whether you’re blowing smoke or whether you’re a very humble person. You want to look humble. So don’t exaggerate what you’ve done or what you can do. Be humble, make the application or the resume, make it look like you think it’s a privilege to go to work for that company and then what you anticipate learning. So again, don’t blow smoke, okay? You want to appear very realistic and very humble in your application on your resume.

Rob Artigo: Is it a good idea to tweak your resume, not just send the same one out to everybody, but know the audience that you’re going to be pitching to, whoever the hiring company is, tweak it, maybe skew it a little bit in the direction of what you believe that company might want as opposed to a different company?

Ray Zinn: Well, sure, because you have the job description, I mean, that’s been posted, so you already know what they’re looking for. So don’t have what we call a canned resume. You want your resume or the application that you send in, you want it to be matched where they’re headed. In other words, what they want to see. Don’t make it a canned resume or canned response. You want to ensure that your capabilities match what the job description is requiring, and they can tell that too if it’s just a canned resume. And so if you’re not skewing your resume or your application to the job, they can know that. Yeah, I would make that very, very specific to the job opportunity.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, it’s worth the time, I think. And also there has to be for you, one of the things that one, two, whatever those things are that you hate to see on a resume that automatically makes you not want to call somebody in for an interview.

Ray Zinn: Well, sure. I mean, if you exaggerate your work experience, and I can tell that, I mean, I can see, especially if I really have done my job description properly, I can tell if you’re exaggerating your education or your experience, and I’m also very dubious people who puff themselves up as you would that pump and dump thing where you just pump yourself up. Because you’re not going to sound humble. So the last thing I want to see is a resume from a person who’s just pumping themselves up.

Rob Artigo: It can be a minefield in that respect because some people feel like, well, you have to go in there and show confidence, but you don’t want to go in there and show overconfidence. Obviously, somebody who goes with a has salary range that they want on their resume. I’ve seen that. I don’t know why people do it. The job description probably already has a salary range on it. You don’t need to put it in there. That can be a problem. But also if you really don’t do any work on your resume and it’s just a bland, flat piece of paper, you didn’t work at it. I’ve noticed also, what do you think about length of a resume if it’s three pages long.

Ray Zinn: One page. Okay, one page. And you want to hit the highlights of what you can do, avoid overstating what you have done or what you can do. You want to come across with just the simplest, straightforward details that will catch the eye of the reader and invite you in for a resume or personal interview. So one page, the best resumes are a page long.

Rob Artigo: I want to also say that you mentioned that before you even do the job description, you’re getting an idea of what that person looks like. And by that you mean the whole person. You’re not talking about what they physically look, but what they, is this person going to be right for these jobs? And it has nothing to do with race or gender or anything like that, and it’s just your standard operating procedure is make sure I know what kind of person’s going to fit well in this position.

And I just wanted to point that out for our listeners. There was also something that I saw once in a resume where the person at the start at the top of the resume talked about goals. It said, “I don’t want to work with a team that has a certain number of race color people, white people or whatever on it.” They wanted to work with a diverse team that had a transgender person and an alternative lifestyle people, depending on how you want to look at it. But it was a very odd thing to have on a resume. Does that concern you deeply when somebody puts that kind of demand?

Ray Zinn: Yeah. I mean, well, again, you don’t want to talk about what you do and don’t want. You can’t say, “Well, I want to work for a company that’s ethical.” I mean, that’s obvious. I mean, don’t state the obvious and also don’t state things that are going to raise a red flag like I only want to work for a diverse team. I don’t want to work for all white or all black or whatever. You don’t want to state what you want and what you don’t want. Just stick to the facts, as they say, “Stick to the facts, buddy.” And they’re going to do reference checks on you anyway, and you want to make sure the reference checks match what you’re saying, who you are. And so again, just state the obvious, how it matches the requirements of the job, and then hopefully they’ll bring you in for a personal interview.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, Concise resume that is tailored to the job you’re applying for. So tweak your resume and of course, don’t make any of those major mistakes that’ll raise red flags that you might be a difficult person.

Ray Zinn: Let’s bring up another comment because of the oftentimes is a Zoom type of interview as opposed to a personal. So in a Zoom, make sure that where you are, where you’re doing the Zoom properly reflects how you want to project. I mean, if you’re, you’re doing it from your home and it’s a mess in your house, that’s going to be a turnoff. So make sure that whatever location you’re using to Zooms the interview gives a proper indication of who you are. So I’ve heard a lot of Zooms that find out pretty clearly what kind of person this is, how they’re dressed, and I’ve even heard of them doing a Zoom with their pajamas on and with their hair up and curlers, so to speak. So make sure that how you come across in a Zoom, especially if it’s a video Zoom, not just on audio that, your room, the location that you’re doing the interview from is proper and that you’re dressed properly.

Rob Artigo: The listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray on X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zen series one, two, and three. Also on sale now, The Essential Leader. Ten skills, attributes, and fundamentals that make up the essential leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: You’re welcome, Rob. Thank you.

Some challenges are financial, others are personal, and some are life changing where only you can decide if you still want success badly enough.  Ray Zinn discusses how to persevere through worst kinds of challenges. (Watch on YouTube)

Ray Zinn: Hello, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: You may not, and others may not, immediately know the name Richard Allen, and you may know the name of his rock band, Def Leppard. He’s famous for not only being a legendary drummer in Def Leppard, but he has one arm. He faced this unique challenge. His left arm was amputated, and you imagine a drummer, you always see these drummers waving their arms around and they’ve got all these drums set up around them and all kinds of things going on. They’ve got to hit all those cymbals and whatnot. And I’m not a drummer, but I know that it looks like it’s a hard thing to do.

Imagine doing that with just one arm. And then he got his arm amputated after being with the band for quite a while, but the band hadn’t reached the pinnacle of success. It was only after he lost his arm that they went on to have their greatest period of commercial success and really make the band a Hall of Fame type of band.

I know that you’ve had your own personal and professional challenges, including we’ve talked about your eyesight situation, you’re legally blind, but also you wanted to launch Micrel Semiconductor back in the day, I think it was, was it ’76?

Ray Zinn: ’78.

Rob Artigo: ’78. So 1978, you go and you decide, “I’m going to found Micrel Semiconductor.” A microchip company, and you faced a $50 million challenge right there, right off the top.

Ray Zinn: Right. So, I’ll need you to understand that in context. See, the average semiconductor company startup at that time in the seventies and eighties was around $50 million, and I didn’t have that kind of money. And to think about trying to start a semiconductor company without $50 million was a gargantuan task, because I would’ve had to use venture capital, and I did not want to use venture capital for all of reasons that why they call it bolster capital, actually was kind of the nickname for it. And that’s the reason I didn’t want to use bolster capital, or venture capital. So, I had to figure out another way of starting the company with my own money, basically.

Rob Artigo: And you could have given up, but you set out on a mission to get it done even when people said you were crazy. Many people,-

Ray Zinn: Everybody said I was crazy. Not one single… The only person that was supporting me was my wife.

Rob Artigo: And you needed-

Ray Zinn: And she’s not a semiconductor expert either.

Rob Artigo: Right. They said that you needed 50 million to get there. You did it with 600,000, roughly, and that did the trick, turned it into a massively successful semiconductor company. And stayed in business the whole time you were a CEO and profitable all but I guess two cycles, or two periods or something.

Ray Zinn: Well, just one year.

Rob Artigo: One year.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, one year. So, that was right at the end of the dot-com implosion, and it was in 2002. We had lost over half our customers because of that dot-com implosion. And so, we had to reinvent ourselves to try to stabilize the company and last that cycle, that dot-com implosion cycle.

Rob Artigo: Again, another one of those periods where all of a sudden you’re sinking, but you were prepared for downturns at Micrel. And that preparation made it possible for you to do something that a lot of people didn’t do in Silicon Valley during that period, which was stay in business and stay on track. But again, this is a thing where a company CEO faces a challenge and could just say, “All right, look, I’m done. I can retire now or I can quit.” Or whatever, or leave it to somebody else to deal with it. But you didn’t, you persevered.

Ray Zinn: Well, it goes to the concept that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. And we were prepared, as you mentioned, we were prepared for a downturn. We always hope for the best, but we expect the worst. And so, with that mentality, with that thought in mind that you hope for the best, but expect the worst, that means you’re prepared. You don’t just ignore reality. And reality is you’re going to have bad times. What goes up has to come back down.

And so, we knew it would happen, we were prepared for it. I had predicted it in May of 1999. I actually predicted the downturn that occurred in 2001, as a result of the dot-com implosion. And so, we were ready, because we had forecasted it or we had foreseen it, and that allowed us then to get ready so that when it did happen, we didn’t go under. We were able to continue on. It was a struggle. We had to do some very difficult things, cut back headcount, reduce salaries.

We had to do a lot of things to stem the red, as you would, when the implosion happened, but we came out the other side even stronger. So it’s like breaking a bone. If you break your leg, actually your bone grows stronger. It’s painful at first, and you have to be in a cast and on crutches and stuff, and we were, we were on crutches and we had a cast on, so to speak, but by just knowing that we’d come out the other side stronger gave us that confidence that we would come out the other side even better.

The story is told about this Olympic marksman. He was from Germany, and this is back in the Olympics, he’d won the Olympics, this is many years ago. I don’t remember the exact year, but he was a German marksman, pistol shot, pistol marksman, and he had won it with his right hand. But then he had an automobile accident and he lost his right hand, and so the next Olympics, four years later, when it came around, he actually won it again, but with his left hand. Now that’s extremely hard, especially if you’re right-handed and right-eyed, to come back and win with your left hand. But he did, he came back and won the Olympics with his left hand.

Just because you have a setback… I lost my vision in 1994, and at first I was in a state of depression, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to move on from here?” But then I said, “Well, it’s like if you get thrown from your horse, you get back on again and keep riding.” So I just said, “Okay, I’ll have to deal with it. I lost my vision, so I still got to deal with it.” And I did. I built a company even stronger after I had lost my vision, because you become resolute. If the challenge doesn’t knock you down, if it doesn’t put you under, as they say, then you can come out the other side even stronger, because what you do is you compensate. You develop that ability to build, make weak things become strong. And that’s what I did, I made a weakness become a strength.

And so, I lost my vision, I became better. My memory improved 10 times over what it was, because I wasn’t relying on my eyesight to memorize or to record information in my head. So, actually my memory improved, and that was one of the best things that happened was my memory got better, and that was an advantage to have my memory better. We do compensate, just like this fellow, this one-armed drummer, you compensate for that lack of shoulder or arm, and you become actually better. He was a better drummer than he was before when he had two hands.

So, just because you have a deficit, or because you have some kind of handicap that comes along, doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. Success comes from desire, from that ability to pick up the pieces and move on. And so, anytime you have a challenge or a deficit, a problem that crops up, rather than looking at it as, “Oh, woe is me.” Then you become the victim. You look at it as, “Okay, I’m going to make this a strength. I’m going to take this challenge and make it a gain.” In fact, that’s what we do really when we run businesses. All we’re doing is taking difficulties, problems and challenges and using them to our advantage. That’s how you become successful.

Look at an artist. They start off with a blank sheet, and then they have to create the image that they want to project on the piece of paper. We all start with a blank slate sometime. We didn’t all start as CEOs when we were born.

Rob Artigo: Right. Well, turning a challenge into a triumph inspires others around you, and then they feel like they can do it too, they see how much you’ve done, and so that’s why you’re an inspiration to so many people. So thank you, Ray.

The listeners can join the conversation at Toughthingsfirst.com. If they have comments, they can leave them there. You can follow Ray on X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course his books are out there, Tough Things First and the Zen of Zinn series. It’s Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills and Attributes and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

It has been quite the ride on the stock market in 2025, but it hasn’t been the one many expected in January. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about how the market tanked but came back in what seemed like record time.

Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Well, it wasn’t very long ago, Ray. We all remember it. This is 2025 and early in 2025, the stock market plummeted and there were talks of deep drops that were going to come after that and fears about recession. How did the markets find their way back to new record highs in such a short period?

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Tough Things First Podcast: Ray Zinn discusses his commencement speech at San Jose State. (Watch)

Rob Artigo: Well, you have the honor to do the commencement speech at San José State recently, and you described it as a bucket list moment. What was it that you felt was so special about doing it?

Ray Zinn: Well, if you think about all the things in life you want to accomplish, your bucket list defines what your goals are. And education is extremely important to me and always has been. And so, this is going back, I would say probably 25 years ago. I was talking to a friend of mine who was asked to do a commencement address. And I got thinking, I wonder why I haven’t been asked to do it, given my help with the schools, and the things I do as end starter and other programs that I have scholarship-wise, why I haven’t been asked to be a commencement speaker. And so, it was just something I didn’t really voice out loud. It was just something I was thinking about. So, there’s this movie called The Bucket List, if it’s called The Bucket… but anyways, a movie about this fellow who had a bucket list. And he was striving to… before he left this world and went on the other side as they say, there’s some things he wanted to accomplish.

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Do you often think of the words that exist within words and how they expand and deepen meaning? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks an about the word inspiration.

Rob Artigo: This is a good reading that we’re going to do here. This is from the Zen of Zinn 3, your third book in this series, inspirational quotes, Proverbs and things like that that you have written over time. And let me just read one of them. This is from page 215. I flip through these every once in a while just looking for different ones that catch my attention and might be worthy of a podcast. And I think this one is, so let’s read this one. It’s very short.

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There are differing views on justifying dishonesty. Revenge or righting wrongs with more wrongs seems to be the default position of many these days. But in this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says there is an honest answer to this question.

Rob Artigo: Ray, you recently wrote a musing that caught my attention. I thought this is surely going to be a good conversation because people need to hear it in modern times, we definitely need to be reminded of this. This is what you wrote. There is no legitimate excuse for dishonesty. In Victor Hugo’s famous story, Les Miserables, the main character, Jean Valjean, stole a loaf of bread because he was hungry. It was still dishonest for Jean Valjean to take something that wasn’t his just because he was trying to survive. We often try to rationalize dishonesty because of some reason we believe is for the better good. There is nothing good about being dishonest, no matter our motive.

We can choose between the lesser of two evils, but evil is still evil and we will need to live with the consequences. Just remember, we will need to live with the consequences of our choices, whether they are good or evil. And I would imagine, Ray, that the inspiration behind this was just seeing so many people, including politicians, justifying their actions by saying, well, because somebody else is doing something wrong, I have to do something wrong. And it ends up becoming a problem for everybody.

Ray Zinn: Yes. Last night I was talking with a friend of mine who was in the Vietnam War. He was in the trenches, as you would. He was over in Vietnam and actually fighting literally with a gun and a rifle or whatever. What was interesting was he felt because the Vietnamese were so dishonest, in other words, they didn’t follow, as you would, the Queensborough rules of conduct, as you would, that they were allowed then to do similar, in other words, fight fire with fire. And I thought that was kind of interesting because oftentimes we tend to fight fire with fire and rather than whether what we’re doing is honest, so is there an excuse to be dishonest or not to be doing what’s correct or right? I’m sure there is an excuse, but it doesn’t make it right just because we have a good excuse.

And I thought this would be good in this podcast to talk about, is there a good excuse to do something dishonest or not something that’s ethical? And we could get a lot of argument and people not agreeing with this, but it is worthwhile talking about how important is being totally honest. And I think that at the end of the day, no good deed goes unpunished and there’s a lot of truth to that. Often helping somebody else, you end up hurting yourself, as you would. We could get a lot of people disagreeing with, is there any reason to be dishonest? And I stand by my statement in my musing that there is no good reason to be dishonest.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. And just simply doing wrong. The saying is, ends justify the means. And I think we live in an era right now where a lot of people think it doesn’t matter really how bad my behavior is, if the end justifies the means, and whether that is stopping law enforcement from doing their jobs or setting a church on fire or something like that. People get it in their heads that whatever their motive is and whatever the end goal is, that they can do anything necessary. There’s even a protest organization out there called, By Any Means Necessary. Just in the name it’s very threatening. By any means necessary, and I think that that’s what you’re talking about here is that just because you feel like you’ve been wronged doesn’t mean you should go wrong other people.

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s that end justifies the means concept. As I said, I was talking to this friend of mine last night about his experience in Vietnam. We had certain rules and rules of engagement, as you would, and they wanted to go around those rules of engagement and kind of fight fire with fire, and it was difficult for them to not, as they call clipping in football, or there’s another term for it in hockey where you slam them up against the boards and anger is what drives people to do dishonest things, is really the root of it’s called anger. We deviate from our honesty, as you would, our integrity, when we’re angry. So to avoid doing that, you just try to avoid being angry. Try to look at the positive side, try to, as you would, let them slap the other side of your face, that biblical saying.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, turn the other cheek.

Ray Zinn: Right, strike, if they strike you on one side, turn the other side, let them strike you there. I know that sounds hard. I mean, I know that sounds bad. I know that some time ago a woman whose daughter was raped and murdered by, this is in Germany, this German mother, her daughter was raped and murdered by this criminal. She went into the court with a loaded gun and shot him seven times. Of course she’s going to pay for that. You say, is that justified? Is she justified taking this into her own hands? And some people would argue, yes. I mean, yeah, because he killed her daughter, then she had a right to kill him. That’s why we have rules. That’s why we have laws. If we don’t obey the laws, then we become a lawless society.

While I might empathize with that woman for wanting to kill or did kill that criminal, that murderer, we still have to follow the laws. I mean, it’s like going down the freeway. Just because you feel that the speed limit is not authorized or not correct, doesn’t mean you should go ahead and break it because you will pay a price for it. There’s no deed, no bad deed will not ultimately go unpunished. So they say that there’s no good deed that goes unpunished either, but certainly no bad deed will ultimately go unpunished.

Rob Artigo: Well, I’ll give you another saying as we wrap this up. When you first set out for an act of revenge, you first dig two graves because it’s going to be both of you that go down. I think that’s the lesson here is that if you try to correct a wrong or a perceived wrong and you do it by creating another wrong, then like you said here, you have to live with the consequences of your choices, good or evil.

Ray Zinn: That’s right.

Rob Artigo: Join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and comments are welcome. Follow Ray on X, Facebook and LinkedIn and pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First. And as you know, the Zen of Zinn series is out there, one, two, and three. On sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

It’s not enough to succeed at first. We must continue to excel. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about the need for constant self improvement and professional development.

Rob Artigo: So I guess the question here is when is it okay to neglect skill building and updating knowledge, your knowledge of work or whether just self-improvement? I think that based on what I know about you, the answer is you should never stop. Right?

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It turns out chat bots for chat or phone-in help lines are a mixed bag of results. Is the pendulum swinging back in favor of live human help? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks pros and cons of Ai assistance and human communication barriers.

Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: I thought we’d talk a little bit about chatbots. If you call an organization, and you get a voice comes on, and it’s an artificial voice, and you’re sort of navigating the choices of what you want to get to using this computer voice. Or it could be also doing one of the … If you’re online, and you’re doing a chat with a artificial intelligence giving you the answers right there instead of a person.

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Now more than ever, we are all forced to question what we see and hear, but where our own biases are involved we usually don’t. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the imperative of recognizing how easily we are duped by ourselves.

Rob Artigo:  Well, Ray, I was reading Zen of Zinn 3. On page 244, you wrote about how we live in a time of so much information at our fingertips that it makes it harder for others to deceive us. It means, in other words, there’s so much information out there that anybody who’s trying to lie to us is going to have a harder time lying to us. But you also say, “That depends on whether or not we take the responsibility to check or verify the source of the information so we could get information that is intended to deceive us. And if we’re lax about taking that responsibility, then we just assume that what they’re saying is true.”

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Why strong leadership doesn’t mean leading with power. In this Tough Things First podcast Ray Zinn offers some thoughts on why many organizational leaders get it wrong.

Rob Artigo: Well, you recently wrote, Ray, “The essence of leadership is not the wielding of power, but rather the wielding of grace and nurturing.” This is in line with what you wrote in your new book, The Essential Leader. You have made it a practice of being closer to your employees than the average CEO. Over the many years that you ran Micrel, 37 years you ran Micrel and you made a difference in the way that you operated as a CEO, which made you stand out from other CEOs in Silicon Valley. Why is that?

Ray Zinn: Well, if you’re wielding your leadership with power, that’s a negative. In other words, you’re using fear to get what you want done. And instead of wielding power, you’re wielding grace and nurturing, that’s love. So the difference is one is fear and the other is through love.

When we did a study on people who exited the company or left the company, we found that 75% of the people that leave are leaving because they’re having a problem with their manager because that manager wielded power rather than nurturing and grace. If you think of that, that’s 75% of the people, if that study that we did is correct, that 75% of the people that are unhappy at work are unhappy because of their boss and that that’s critical.

So managing by love, we talk about the steward leadership, you’re actually leading your flock as opposed to driving them. So as a shepherd, as you would, if he is a true shepherd, then he’s out in front leading his flock. If he’s having to dry the flock, he’s behind him with a whip or with some kind of punishing device to make them do what he wants them to do. And so when you wield power, you’re driving, you’re doing it through fear and intimidation. If you’re doing it through grace and love, then you’re out in front leading them. You’re not pushing them or driving them. And that’s why I came up with that musing referring to wield grace and truth, not power as a leader. And I think that’s important and critical if you want a stable and a loving workforce.

Rob Artigo: And you had an open door policy, you said, “Hey, come talk to me if you want.” I suppose there are some CEOs out there wielding their power in a authoritarian manner where they might say, “Hey, I have an open door policy,” but nobody ever goes there because they’re afraid of talking to that person. You made it a practice of walking around and talking to your employees so that they knew you well, and they knew that they could trust you if they had something they wanted to talk to you about. I suppose that makes a difference in the way that the employees behave?

Ray Zinn: Yeah. I recently did a leadership training for a company and I had the CEO of the company rank the people that reported to him and the managers that were reporting to the CEO, had them rank the people that were working for them and so forth and so on down the line. And it was interesting that the first line was like the CEO, the managers that worked for him, he rated them high, but he also rated the people that worked for his managers, he rated them low. But when we looked at the managers, they rated their employees high. So you can see that the second level, the CEO thought we’re doing a poor job, but yet the people that are working directly for them, the first line of managers, rated them higher.

So there’s a miscommunication there between the CEO and the second line of managers versus the first line. And I thought that was interesting. So there’s a breakdown. There’s a communication issue. It’s like dropping water over a cliff. If you’re right underneath the vessel that you’re dumping the water with, you’re going to get drenched. But as a water then gets down to the bottom of the cliff, you don’t feel it at all. So what’s happening is that apparently the CEO does not have faith in his first line managers or he would’ve rated the people that work for them higher. There’s a communication issue that has to be resolved where the first line manager rates his direct reports much better than he rated the people that were below them. I just say that’s a huge breakdown, I think, in communication that they have to resolve. And that’s the whole purpose of that musing, wielding grace and nurturing, not power.

Rob Artigo: The people that were in that class and the CEO and then the mid-managers and whatnot, were they surprised by that result and your take on it?

Ray Zinn: I wasn’t surprised. I was disappointed, obviously, but I wasn’t surprised because this is why I was there, was to dig into the problem. And it’s not surprising that the second level people rank their employees better than first level. That’s not unusual. You see, you tend not to want to blame the people report to you because you want to be considered to be a good manager. So obviously you’re going to rank those that report directly to you, you’re going to rate them higher. And you don’t have as much confidence or you don’t have as much love for the people that report to the first line managers, so you tend to rate them lower because that’s why you’re having problems in your company is because you believe that the lower level people are not doing their job. It’s not true. It’s first line that’s not doing their job or the CEO would love those that report to them.

We need to go to school on that and understand why it is that the people that report directly to you, you rank higher than those that report to them. And if that’s the case, you have a problem in your company or your organization. This is pretty universal. I mean, This is not just at this one company. I mean, I’ve seen this, even the school and in universities. I’ve seen it happen in nonprofit organizations. I’ve seen it in religious organizations and social organizations. This is not something new. This is a problem where the top managers think that that report to the first line managers are not doing their job. And that’s a definite signal or sign that you have a problem within your company. If you don’t feel as good about the people that report to your first line, if you don’t have as good a feeling about that, then that means you’ve got to breakdown somewhere in your organization.

Rob Artigo: And obviously Ray, you have said that it’s important for you as CEO to know your people and nurture them, but be a mentor, and that’s the remedy to the problem that exists, like you said, universally across different organizations.

Ray, the listeners can join the conversation at ToughThingsFirst.com. Their questions and comments are always welcome. Ray, you’re on X and Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course your books are out there. You have the Tough Things First book, you have Zen of Zen 1, 2 and 3, and of course the new book, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Ray, another great podcast. Thank you.

Ray Zinn: Well, thanks Rob.

Is it true that you should trust but verify? In this Tough Things first podcast, Ray Zinn if you have to verify, there’s no trust involved. (Watch Video Podcast)

Ray Zinn: Hey, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Good to be back. Well, this is a special edition of The Tough Things First Podcast. It is a video podcast. If you want to watch the video, you can go to the website, toughthingsfirst.com, find this podcast, and then click on the link that takes you to Ray’s YouTube channel. And then click on that and you’ll be in the know, like so many others in Silicon Valley listening and watching this particular podcast.

Ray, recently you wrote about the phrase trust but verify. This is made famous by Ronald Reagan. It’s also a Russian proverb, but that’s where it comes from originally. But you say it’s a mistake to go by this saying because you describe it as blind trust. Tell me about that.

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Is the push for American Made an open door to a would be entrepreneur? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn tells us how it could be done for those seeking the American Dream.

Ray Zinn: Hi Rob. How’s it going today?

Rob Artigo: Great. So with a nation, I feel like we’re in a mode of… There’s turmoil going on and there’s some uncertainty out there, but one of the interesting things is this drive to bring some manufacturing back to the US and I’ve been thinking about are there opportunities for would-be entrepreneurs out there to dive in and take a chance on some of these things? This would be like carving out a niche, making a product that is typically known to be made overseas and making them here instead. And I think you can do it on kind of a small scale. Also going based on the idea that people who are doing this might have limited time and limited resources to get going, but they may have come up with a brilliant idea and something they’d really like to do and maybe take charge of their own destiny in that respect. Here are some suggestions that I pulled together and it really references how to pull it off. I talked about limited resources, financial resources, and limited time.

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Failure happens. But is it really a failure if you learn something valuable? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses how a few business failures paved the way to a massively successful semiconductor company.

Rob Artigo: Here with me is Ray Zinn, the longest-serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Being invited back is always great, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Hey, Rob, every day is a good day when I get to do a podcast with you.

Rob Artigo: Oh, I appreciate that. Of course, it’s fun and we have great conversations. So you ran a very successful semiconductor business for 37 years, Micrel, but before you did that, you had a couple of failed business ventures that had to be disappointing and emotionally taxing, but you used those experiences as motivation to find something bigger and better.

Ray Zinn: Absolutely.

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Working from home may have seemed like progress over hustle culture, but has it brought on something worse? Un-Hustle culture. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says one bad work ethic has led to a worse work ethic.

Rob Artigo: Let’s talk about hustle culture. One of the soundbites we use in the intro for this podcast is… It’s one of my favorites from you. You say, “If you think you have to work 80 hours a week to be successful, then you’re dead wrong.” So when I was looking for topics for the podcast session, I saw the words hustle culture on the internet, and I immediately thought of that quote. So hustle culture is the belief that you have to grind it out 24/7. And I imagine you’re not a fan of hustle culture.

Ray Zinn: No. Not at all.

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Ray Zinn: Hi Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Page 89 is what I’m focused on in Zen of Zinn 2, the book you wrote, and it’s about the victim mentality, and you talk about it by sharing a list that you created and you called it the victim mentality list, appropriately named. So I thought we would go through some of these items here on this list of the victim mentality and just talk about why they are associated with the victim mentality. The first one is blame. When it comes to the victim mentality apparently blame tops your list. Tell me about it.

Ray Zinn: Well, what’s interesting, Rob, is that the victim mentality, if I were to ask you, “Rob, do you have a victim mentality?” You would probably say what?

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We all know change is inevitable, but layoffs can be devastating when you find your once secure job has vanished. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says don’t panic, just be prepared.

Rob Artigo: Here with me again is Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Hi Ray.

Ray Zinn: Hello Rob.

Rob Artigo: You are always thinking and reflecting on the world around you, and that’s really great for your writing. You recently wrote this and it goes, “Our current economy is in a state of flux. Layoffs are inevitable. Layoffs, they’re terrible and they’re disruptive. Lives are impacted. What’s the resolution,” you say, “to minimize the impact of layoffs? First, don’t panic. You’ll recover. It is just a matter of time before you will have this behind you. Second and most important is to always have yourself prepared for layoffs. You’re basically living within your means. Avoid unnecessary debt. Always looking for other opportunities as a backup plan, and keep your name out there. Bottom line, always assume things are never permanent. Change is always out there and being prepared for change is the best approach.” Very good writing there, Ray.

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What you need to know now. In this Tough Things First podcast Ray Zinn demystifies the troubled waters so we can all get it and look forward. Call it Part 1.

Rob Artigo: Good to be back, Ray. Nice to see you. Thriving amid uncertainty and handling adversity. That’s what we’re talking about here in this podcast. 2025 has been a wild ride so far, and I’m not really overstating that, am I?

Ray Zinn: What’s interesting is last week I met with the Montana Secretary of State and her team. I gave this talk on leadership. It went fine except they wanted to ask some questions about uncertainty in the world and especially in the US economy. So, I thought that was interesting and appropriate, why we should cover that and discuss it today because foremost in everybody’s mind is what impact, inflation? Is there a recession pending? What about interest rates? What about tariffs, and what’s going on with the stock market? So let’s talk about them kind of individually, just as I listed the topics that I covered.

So, if we look at inflation, what’s happening with inflation? Well, you’re probably getting this on the news, but inflation looks like it’s abating. In other words, it came down some last month. Will it continue to come down? There’s a big speculation regarding the effect of tariffs, so let’s talk about tariffs before we jump into a recession.

Tariffs are meant to level the playing field between countries and especially those that sell to the US, so that’s been bandied around and beat up quite a bit over the last week or two. Tariffs are meant to, at least the way that the Trump administration looks at it, it’s meant to bring the other countries to the table and negotiate with them a better term so that we can sell to them. It’ll have a big impact on Ag culture. The Ag culture is the one that’s going to benefit the most from these tariffs released.

Now, the other countries which are selling cars, refrigerators, dishwashers, consumer electronics and so forth to us because the labor is cheaper in those countries is the big debate. That’s where everybody is having a proverbial fit over it. Depending on how fast we can bring automation back to the US or automation in the sense of the word of reducing the labor costs, that will help that issue regarding the products that we offshored to reduce the cost of the product and the labor to produce it. So if we get more automation, AI and so forth, that really helps us, and we’re able to produce in this country at the same when we offshored it, then there won’t be any impact on the product that’s coming into the country.

If we have multiple countries that produce the same product, then there’s some competition, and that could impact or at least minimize the effect of the prices on the product coming in because of the competition between countries. So, this all depends upon what kind of products that are going to be onshore versus offshored and just how fast we can go to full-blown automation or AI, as some people refer to it.

The biggest impact on this is going to be on consumer electronics, clothing and that sort of thing. I think Trump has now backed off on tariffs on consumer electronics, so that’s kind of been settled. Clothing? Again, that’s all a function of automation and what countries will compete with each other. There’s a lot of countries that are producing clothing, so that won’t have as big an impact if they’ll compete with each other. I’m not sure how big of an impact that’s going to be on pricing for clothing because I’m not sure. I don’t believe we’re going to produce much clothing here in the US. We’ve kind of lost that skill, that art as you would, and those other countries have picked up that capability, and there’s a lot of labor involved in making clothing.

What impact will that have on our economy as far as interest rates and so forth, and are we looking at a recession? So the Fed, federal banking, looks at things like inflation and whether or not the economy is growing or recessing. Of course, to get the interest rates down, you have to lower spending. In other words, you’ve got to drop demand. So when you drop demand, then of course the GDP will minimize, which you’re going to have less GDP growth, which brings me to really talking about the business cycle.

So in Q1, quarter one, which is January through March, that’s our weakest quarter. In fact, it’s coming off of Christmas, and Q1 is a very weak quarter. So, we’ll start seeing the numbers on how Q1 went in another month or so. Not in a month. Let’s say another few weeks, actually, as these companies start reporting their results.

Q2 is typically a more upbeat quarter. In other words, you’re coming off of the down Q1, and Q2 which is then April through June should be a better quarter. So, all eyes are on how bad was Q1 and how good does Q2 look? We won’t learn about Q2 until probably August. Well, early August, late July. So, you can see kind of the timing. We’re in a no man’s land because we’re coming off a weak quarter, so we don’t expect great results. If we get decent results off of Q1, that’ll help the stock market.

So then Q3, which is July through September, is our strongest quarter. In other words, that’s the best quarter of the year. Again, we don’t get results on Q3 until more like late October, first part of November. Then Q4, which is October through December, is a slower period. Let me back up a minute, going back to Q3, so Q3 is building up for Christmas. Christmas is our strongest season and even worldwide. That’s why Q3 is generally a stronger quarter, and Q4 is more of a flattish quarter. We don’t expect hardly any growth because you’re coming off of Christmas or you’re in Christmas as you would. I’m not sure that you’re going to get a big bump in Q4. Then back to Q1, which is a bad quarter or a weak quarter.

So, we’re all looking at the numbers, looking at how the companies report, and that will definitely impact the stock market. Is there going to be a recession? In order for interest rates to come down, GDP has to slow. Okay. When GDP slows, depending upon what political bent you are, you’re going to scream your head off. If the GDP comes down and it’s looking like we’re getting into a recessionary period, and the other side is saying, “Well, look. We’re naturally transitioning from a no tariff to tariff, so that’s having some impact.” What impact will that have on inflation depends again how the government negotiates these tariffs.

So, are tariffs good? They can be. Are tariffs bad? They can be. So, it just depends upon how well you manage that. We really didn’t have an income tax in this country. We used tariffs to raise our government spending, and therefore there was no need of income tax until we backed off of the tariffs. Then we had to go to an income tax in order to cover the government spending.

I know it’s a lot of information that we’ve beat around, but you can see that it’s kind of a wait and see. We haven’t had big tariffs for many, many years. Probably 40, 50 years since we’ve had any kind of a tariff situation or a tariff issue. We’re marching at a new territory.

When will interest rates come down? They’re going to come down when the Fed decides that the economy is in trouble. We need to lower interest rates in order to encourage spending, so you can see it’s kind of a what if type thing, depending upon what the economy does that will decide whether or not interest rates are going to come down.

Are we going to have a recession? Well, depending upon what kind of recession we’re talking about. Are we talking about just a reduction or slowing in GDP? Do you call that a recession? Well, if you’re more liberal, you’re going to call that a recession. If you’re more conservative, you’re going to say, “No, that’s just a natural slowing. That happens on normal business cycles, which occurs every three to five years.” So, everybody is going to be painting the picture that they want to make everybody understand what they believe is what’s going on in the economy.

I don’t think the recession is going to be terrible. There is going to be a slowdown, if you want to call it a recession. That’s what recess means. Recess means to slow down. Are we going to go into a depression? I don’t think that’s the case because we’ve got too many levers we can pull to prevent a depression. So anyway, that’s a short tutorial on the state of the economy, Rob.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, you covered a lot of territory there. Very interesting stuff. It’s a time in our history really where that stuff, it’s important today, and it’s going to be important for the rest of the year as things fluctuate. We don’t know what other countries are going to do. We don’t know how the tariffs will change things with some countries and how it will change things with us in some areas. It would be interesting to listen to what your take is throughout this year. We’ll try to do this more often. So, join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Your questions and your comments are always welcome.

Ray Zinn: Hit me with an email on toughthingsfirst.com. I’ll be happy to answer them if you have further questions. If you would like to see more detail on this subject, please feel free to let us know. We’re happy to revisit this discussion. In fact, we’ll do it every quarter. So, if you chime in every quarter, we’re going to give an update on the economy.

Rob Artigo: Follow Ray Zinn on his X, Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, Ray’s books. You’ve got to pick them up. Tough Things First is the big one, his first book. As you know, there is the Zen of Zinn Series 1, 2, and 3. On sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up The Essential Leader. Thanks a lot, Ray.

Ray Zinn: You’re welcome, Rob.

Rob Artigo: Now announcing, The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn. 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up The Essential Leader. Watch for it as it arrives at your favorite retailers in paperback and digital format. It’ll be everywhere by the official launch date, March 12th. That’s The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn. Don’t miss it. Thank you for listening to the Tough Things First podcast.

Do we live in a culture that promotes comparisons to others? Is it jealously, envy? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says keeping up with trends may be healthy, but keeping up with the Jones’s may be a problem.

Rob Artigo: I recently read a quote where the writer said he had not met a person on the planet who did not compare themselves to others. He pointed out that we live in a society that perpetuates comparison at every turn, from social media and magazines to commercial ads and perhaps even the car sitting in the driveway at the neighbor’s house. It’s almost impossible not to find a potential trigger of comparison right in front of your eyes. That was authored. Davin Salvagno wrote at length about it.

So first, do you agree that we live in a society that perpetuates comparison at a return?

Ray Zinn: Yes and no. We look at hairstyles, we look at clothing styles, we look at car styles, whatever. We do kind of follow along with the trend, and so that’s a comparison, as you would, because we’re looking at how others are dressing, how others are doing their homes. I remember we used to, when I was early, young, married, we had a shag carpet and no one has a shag carpet today or-

Rob Artigo: Yeah, that’s true. I remember those.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, or the kind of furniture that we have, we try to stay up-to-date with what’s trendy, as you would.

Rob Artigo: That’s Keeping Up with the Joneses’ scenario.

Ray Zinn: That’s the other part of the topic. Okay?

Rob Artigo: Okay.

Ray Zinn: So, we’re talking about now how we do a comparison other than Keeping Up with the Joneses. So it’s not necessarily Keeping Up with the Joneses in the sense of the word that we’re going to talk about next, let’s just talk about comparing ourselves with the trends. In other words-

Rob Artigo: Gotcha.

Ray Zinn: … we want to make sure we’re not wearing the wide tie if the narrow ties are in or we make sure we’re not doing a pompadour hairdo if more of the short hair or whatever kind of haircut. The big style right now is beards on men. I’ve never had a beard, and so when I do the comparison, I compare myself to myself, this is who I am. I don’t wear a beard, and so I am not a beard-type guy. I’m not mocking at people who do have beards, I’m just saying that’s not my thing, but that’s a comparison again. I’m not comparing me against them. I’m comparing myself against myself. That was my goal. My desire is to not have facial hair, and that gets us into the second part of our topic is how we compare ourselves against the Joneses.

So if you’re trying to keep up with the Joneses, that’s a different part. That requires a different view. That’s called envy, E-N-V-Y. Envy that’s the part of it, and that’s the negative part of comparison. If we’re comparing ourselves against the Joneses, then we’re being envious because now we’re just trying to up one, be better than somebody else, the bigger car, the bigger house, the whatever, the fancier this, the fancier, oh, I got this, I got an airplane. You just drive around a little Volkswagen or whatever. Those are the bad kinds of comparisons where we are comparing ourselves against the Joneses. I’m opposed to that. I like to stay up-to-date, but I’m not comparing myself against the Joneses. I’m just looking at the trends and trying to stay within the trends.

Now, some of them I like, some of them I don’t like, so I’m not a, what you would say is I’m not necessarily a full-blown trendy. I don’t go along with everything, all the trends that are. I do the ones that I want to go along with. Again, I’m comparing myself to myself. What do I want? What’s my goal? What do I like to be like or look like? So again, the comparison should not be against the Joneses. The comparison should be against who you are and who you want to be. That’s the main goal.

Rob Artigo: The style thing is a perfect example, but also if you are one of those people who compares themselves to others’ levels of success, you can say, “Look, that’s what I would like to achieve,” that’s a good kind of comparison in the area that you were talking about versus, “I envy that person because they’re doing it, but yet I’m not doing anything to achieve that level of success.” Right?

Ray Zinn: Yeah. If you’re out there trying to impress people and how great and how wonderful you are, how beautiful or handsome or whatever, that’s doing it for the wrong reason. The right reason is comparing yourself to what you want to be, not comparing yourself to others and trying to beat your chest and say how wonderful or great you are, “Oh, I went to Harvard,” or “I went to Stanford,” maybe you went to San Jose State, like I did. I don’t look down on that. I looked at it as great, but I know others, “Yeah, where’d you get your degree?” “Oh, I went to Harvard. I went to Stanford, or I went to Berkeley,” or whatever. That’s the wrong kind of approach. Again, you have to look at where you want to be compared to where you’re going and what you want to accomplish.

Rob Artigo: You look at the titles on what people put on their walls behind their desks and that’s one thing that’s establishing your credit, if you will, your credibility and also displaying something that you’re proud of, but it’s a different thing to, in conversation, put somebody else’s degree down because it wasn’t an Ivy League degree or something like that. Just ends up being, it reflects poorly on you.

Ray Zinn: Yeah. I think that’s the key is that if you’re hanging your shingle up just to impress others, then you’re doing it for the wrong reason. You were trying to impress yourself, not impressing others. Compare yourself to yourself, here I am, here’s where I want to be, and here’s where I’m going, as opposed to, “Oh, so-and-so is accomplishing this, so-and-so is accomplishing that. Look at this leader or that leader and what they managed to have accomplished” whether you’re the richest man in the world like Elon Musk or whether you’re the President of the United States like Donald Trump, don’t do that comparison. Look at where you are and where you’re going. Maybe you’re just a hairdresser or maybe you work as a clerk in a grocery store. If that’s where you want to be, if that’s where you’re headed, then great, but don’t compare yourself to Donald Trump or to Elon Musk. Try to be who you want to be, not be who you thought somebody else is.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. Toughthingsfirst.com, that’s where the listeners need to go if they want to continue the conversation. Comments and questions are welcome there. Follow Ray on X and Facebook and LinkedIn, and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and as you’ve been told, the Zen of Zinn series is also available, and that’s one, two and three on sale now, The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn: 10 Skills, Attributes and fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader.

Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

You may have heard that a failure to plan is nothing more than a plan to fail. Ray Zinn puts his hard earned life experience out there and proves what you get if you fail to plan is a pipe-dream and surefire disappointment.

Rob Artigo: Good to be back. You have a series of books. You have Zen of Zinn one, two and three, and I picked up Zen of Zinn one and went to page 110, and I found this particular writing, which I thought was interesting. It was thought-provoking and I thought made a worthy podcast. You wrote, “The difference between a goal and a plan is that a goal is what we want to accomplish, and a plan is the way we accomplish the goal. Many of us have goals, but no plan to accomplish their goals. A goal without a plan is just wishful thinking.” And also you’ve said, and you wrote in your book, The Essential Leader, “That a goal without a plan is not a plan.”

Ray Zinn: They call it a pipe dream, Rob.

(more…)

A lifetime of leadership experience wrapped in an entertaining and informative read. Join Tough Things First for the official launch of The Essential Leader by Ray Zinn, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. (Watch the Video Podcast)

Rob Artigo: I’m Rob Artigo, former Bay Area Radio Personality and your host for this edition of The Tough Things First podcast. Here with me once again is Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Today we understand the Essential Leader. This is a special podcast in more ways than one, it’s a video podcast. The link is at toughthingsfirst.com. Today is the day we announce Ray Zinn’s newest book, fresh Off the presses, The Essential Leader, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up The Essential Leader. Congratulations, Ray. This book really turned out great.

Ray Zinn: I think it’s one of the most important books that I’ve ever written.

(more…)

The question often heard is who will pick our produce under tighter immigration enforcement? Maybe the question that aught to be asked is when will humanoid robots be doing that job? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn tells us the one constant is change.

Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob.

Rob Artigo: Well, I’ve heard this repeated frequently, and maybe you have as well, the often heard quote, “Who will pick our crops if migrants are sent home?” Now, we’re not anti-immigrant or migrant here at Tough Things First. That’s not the point here. The point is, now the replacement of those workers has already been going on for many years, and that’s bound to accelerate, don’t you think?

Ray Zinn: Yes. Back in the ’50s when I was working for my father, we had a cattle ranch and a feedlot, I should say cattle feedlot, and we would feed the cattle with hay and grain and so forth. Back in the day, we would hire these migrants. They would come over the border, but they would go home at night, but they would come over and work during the daytime to help take care of the cattle, to clean the corrals and to walk and clean their drinkers and also to feed them. And we used to feed them with pitchforks and bags of grain. That’s the way we used to feed them. But then we wanted to improve the growth of the animal so it would fatten up faster. And so we built a mill and we used to grind the hay and then a mix of feed with the grain with the hay and mix it with a little molasses, which was very tasty for the cattle.

And then it would be delivered in a truck with an auger that would dispense the feed into the troughs. And that concerned our migrants because they used to do that by hand. In other words, that was what they did. They would kind of chop up the hay and mix the grain with the hay and so forth. But it was very inefficient and it wasn’t very productive, and the animals didn’t do as well as it did when we improved the automation. And my dad reassured them that, “Oh, we used to love the job. There’s still things to be done.” And we found other ways that we could help employ their efforts rather than feeding the animals. And it was very effective in getting them to understand because to make the feed, we had to have people loading onto the conveyor. We had to have them cut the strings on the bales, and then they had to operate the batcher, which is the weighing device that weighed the hay and then dispenses the grain and somebody had to load the bins.

And I said, “So you didn’t lose your job. Your job changed. So it’s a job change rather than losing it.” And so when we talk about the who’s going to pick our fruit, if it is automated, somebody’s going to have to operate those automated systems. Granted, they’re going to have to change. The migrants that were working at my dad’s feedlot, they had to learn how to run the hay grinder or chopper and how to operate the mixers and so forth. They had to learn how to do that. And they didn’t have that skill set before, but they had to be taught. So when you talk about who’s going to pick our crops, if it’s automated, somebody’s going to have to manage that. You’re not going to get rid of humans just because you automate.

Rob Artigo: That’s a fascinating story because we had talked about how much automation is going on with running cattle in Mexico right now. Very large cattle organizations that are being almost entirely run by some kind of machine. So harvest automation has been going on for a long time. In the Central Valley of California, for example, they have machines that run up and down and pick grapes and nuts off of trees and fruit and all kinds of things now, which is something that used to be done by hand. But now we have humanoid robots that are coming online, and so they’re working in warehouses and they’re doing other things.

These are, I’m sure, very expensive. Maybe one day they’ll be less expensive. The headline that caught my attention this week, China Launches center to train 100 plus humanoid robots simultaneously. And it says, “Training its future workforce one robot at a time.” And that caught my attention because I thought, “Well, wait a minute, if you have to… I don’t know if you’d ever get to where if a robot does the work of 10 people because it never needs to take a break. Does that cost end up being the replacement of somebody who is a low skilled sort of manual labor type of position?”

Ray Zinn: Well, China is the most populous nation, either that or India is the most populous nation in the world. And most of those people are doing manual type labor and not operating sophisticated computers and so forth. Just like in the case of my father’s place, it costs a fortune to put in that mill that ground the hay and the batchers and the mixtures and all that stuff we had to put in. And that was to help reduce the cost of fattening up an animal. There’s no way a human could do that task. And so we had to use machinery to do it, but then there are half the people operate the machinery. And the same thing in the case of when we go from people doing it manually to humanoids robots. Back in the day, Adam Smith was a well-known author. He talked about the differentiation of labor. I don’t know if that’s the exact title, but it’s something like that.

Divisional labor, that’s what it’s called. Divisional labor. And that was back in the 1700s when the locomotive became into being. And we had other things that were automated back in the 1700s. And that was a big concern that Adam Smith talked about was the division of labor. And you can read about that. This has been a concern of humans since the beginning of time is having humanoids or robotic or mechanical ways of accomplishing tasks. And as I said, you can read about that. You can pick up the book. It’s been written… It’s been one of the most read books in history is The Wealth of Nations, I guess that’s the title of it. And so this is nothing new. We’ve been talking about this in our country since the 1600s. We just have to live with the fact that automation is to improve our lives. It’s not to take away jobs or to eliminate labor. It is to help us improve. We improve through automation.

And so I look at this as being a godsend to the average employee and not something where they’re going to cause them to lose their job. They may change the way they do their work. In other words, they’ll have to be taught as China does with somebody’s got to teach those humanoid robots. But it’s to make it more efficient. It’s not to eliminate people’s jobs. It’s to make the process more efficient and make it more available to more people.

Rob Artigo: You’re talking about China’s workforce is because of the one child policy in China, you have a shrinking… You have an aging workforce and no replacement for them. And that’s happening in a lot of places like in the US where you’re going to need those extra workers to get things done because you’re not having people have a lot of kids unfortunately. I think that’s really unfortunate that we’re not replacing ourselves. But that’s a story for another day.

Ray Zinn: But again, manual labor. Manual labor is a misnomer. It’s kind of like in computers, manual labor, I used to write my emails with my hand and a pen and a piece of paper, but now I type on a keyboard, so that’s still manual. Granted, I’m not long handing my emails and I’m not sending them out through the postal service. And now I typing them on a keyboard and then getting them sent out via the internet, but that’s still manual. I’m still having to do something manually. And so you’re not going to get rid of manual labor. There’s going to be manual… There’s no such a thing as total elimination of manual effort. So manual effort, you may change the way you do it, but it’s still manual.

Rob Artigo: Interesting topic, Ray. Very, very interesting topic. I’d invite the listeners to go to toughthingsfirst.com to check out more podcasts. You can also offer your questions there. If you have comments, those are welcome as well. Follow Ray on X and on Facebook and LinkedIn and of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the original, and as you heard, Zen of Zinn I, II, and III. On sale now, the Essential Leader by Ray Zen, 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.

Competition is a wonderful and important aspect of success, but some people recoil in horror over how it forces them to be proactive. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores the reasons why we need to embrace our competitive nature. (Video Podcast)

Rob Artigo: Good to be back. This is a special edition of the podcast. It’s on video, so if you are listening to it and you want to watch it, you can go to toughthingsfirst.com, find the link to this podcast and then right next to you it’ll say, “Click here if you want to watch the video,” and you can do that. And vice versa. If you happen to be watching it or you found us on YouTube, you can switch back and find the audio-only version. So you can listen or watch. It’s up to you.

So Ray, one thing that came up recently was something that you wrote and you’d sent me in an email and it basically laments the idea that competition is a wonderful and important thing. This musing is fantastic because some people are afraid of competition and some people aren’t. So this is what you wrote. “Competition is a wonderful and important aspect of success. The main reason some hate competition is because they have to improve and this takes extra effort.” So you also make the point, “To embrace competition like it… You got to embrace competition,” I’m misreading this, “to embrace competition like it was a loved one.” So if you do that, you’ll be the better for it. So tell me a little bit about why competition helps drive you to success.

Ray Zinn: It really is the hallmark of what causes us to become better people is competition. I know that it sounds like a dirty word because we have to compete against someone and that takes effort, but we look at all the sports events that happened, football, basketball, baseball, hockey, whatever, and those are all competitions and we enjoy watching competitions. But how many of us like to participate in it? It’s because it’s tough. I mean, a professional athlete, it’s difficult. They have to prepare, they have to work at it. I remember Jerry Rice when he was a neighbor of mine and played for the 49ers, I mean, he would practice twice as long as other people, other athletes. Because to become the best, you really have to put forth a lot of effort. And I guess basically we’re lazy and we don’t want to have to put out that much effort to become better. We like it to be handed to us.

But you can’t refine yourself by accident. I mean, refining takes work. It’s like hardening steel. It’s a process. I mean, when we talk about hardening, you harden steel to strengthen it. So to harden ourselves is to strengthen ourselves, but we have to have a purpose. A competition has to be there to drive us to do that. And that’s why I said you got to love competition, love it like a loved one, and embrace it so that it becomes the hallmark of who you are. You invite competition, you want it. It’s endearing. You just can’t stand to be without it. That’s the way you should look at competition.

Rob Artigo: Well, you’ve always recognized the importance of competition here. And in your decades with Micrel as CEO, you seem to always have this policy that if you’re producing a product, it’s being manufactured and it’s going to go to market, it’s on its way, well, you’re already products ahead in development because you know that if you don’t do it, the competition is going to do it and you’ll be behind. Right?

Ray Zinn: Well, staying ahead of the competition is, I don’t care what sport you’re in, you don’t want to wait till the fourth quarter to score all your points. You want to get off to a good start. And so you got to look ahead. Don’t be complacent about your competition. I mean, they’re there, they’re real, and they’re going to eat your lunch if you don’t get ready for them. So having that forward-looking view of competition and how if you don’t take care of your customer, somebody else will. You got to be out there. Don’t be complacent about your competition and where you see your product or service.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, it’s like the corporate level or the big level there in business is that the best offense is a good offense. It’s different than the thinking in sports. Going back to the individual, the micro level, and you’d see that the status quo is not progress. I mean, if you really want to look at yourself as an individual, if you aren’t performing to compete, you’re going to leave yourself behind and eventually everything will just pass you up.

Ray Zinn: It’s called performing at the highest level. I don’t care what you’re doing, whether you’re washing dishes or whether you’re vacuuming the floor or out there designing another product, you want to be at the top of your game. Do everything you do at the highest level with the way you dress, the way you talk, the way you eat, the way you interact with others. You want to be at the highest level and that keeps you at your peak performance.

Rob Artigo: And if you’re at your peak performance, we’ll wrap it up with this, if you do all the work, like you were talking about Jerry Rice, he worked twice as hard as everybody else and he was twice as good as most people. So it just stands to reason that you get that result. But Jerry Rice dropped passes. The team lost games sometimes. I believe he was on multiple Super Bowl teams, including when they went to the championship, the 49ers that is, went to the championship game and didn’t make it to the Super Bowl that year. You win some, you lose some, but being the best and accepting the good with the bad, hey, you’re golden right there, right?

Ray Zinn: Well, losing is not a loser. Some people say if you lose, you’re a loser. That’s not true. Losing is not necessarily being a loser. Losing is learning. They both start with L. And so I like to learn through losing because I overcome, I change things, I mix things up and so that I learn from my losing. So don’t think of losing as a loser. Losing is part of competition. It’s part of becoming better at what you’re doing. So just because you lose doesn’t mean you’re a loser.

Rob Artigo: Thanks, Ray. You can join the conversation, folks, at toughthingsfirst.com. This has been a special edition of the Tough Things First Podcast, which you can find there at toughthingsfirst.com and also on Ray’s YouTube channel. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on X-Twit, as I like to call it, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And of course, pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and as you know, the Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3 and on sale now is The Essential Leader, this one right here behind me, 10 Essential Attributes and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.

What makes a good employee bury their face in their hands and under-perform? Ray Zinn says it’s not a mystery. Not to them. But to the leadership? Crickets.

Rob Artigo: Ray, got this message from you the other day, I love this story you told, about recently going to get some medical tests. And you met some medical techs who left you thinking about job satisfaction. So, tell us about this experience, and then we’ll break out from that and talk a little bit about some of the likely causes. Every business person really needs to understand this stuff. This is a competitive job market.

Ray Zinn: Well, this was an interesting one. In fact, I didn’t know we were going to do this podcast, and so it surprised me. But I was in getting some tests run, some blood work, some CT scans, some x-rays and stuff, and just the typical… Not typical, but things you do when you’re having a medical problem and you want to understand what’s going on. So, I just thought I’d ask when I was getting my CT scan, I’d ask, these are very young, but very professional techs that were running the CT scan lab. And I thought I would just ask him how… Typical, the way Ray Zinn [inaudible 00:01:21], I’m very passionate about people, employees, and work, and how companies manage their people.

And so I just said, “Hey, how do you like your job?” And I thought they would come back, “Oh, I love my job. It’s wonderful. I just can’t wait to come to work.” But that’s not what happened. They wouldn’t even engage in the discussion. They were actually frankly ignoring me and didn’t even respond. Just telling me to put my clothes back on and get ready to depart to the next procedure. And so, that caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting that, actually.

So then, I went into a chest x-ray. So I said, “Well, I’m going to ask this young lady.” Again, she’s a young woman. I thought I’d ask her how she likes her job. And at first she was very reluctant to even discuss it. She just says, “Ah.” Like that. And I was taken back by that comment, “Ah.” So then she went on to say, “Well, it’s a job.” And I said, “Well, you don’t sound very happy.” She says, “Well, I have to work. I need to provide for my family and it’s a job.” And so she says, “I guess I should be happy about that, but I’m not necessarily happy about my boss.” I said, “Oh.” Okay.

So, I’ve known for years when I were running Micrel that 75% of the reasons that employees resign or leave the company is because of their boss or their boss’s boss. So, it’s their first or second level management is why they resign. So, that shows you how important it is to have good managers or supervisors running your organization, because they’re the ones that are going to be at most, to have an influence on whether a person stays or not.

That caused me to reflect. I actually wrote… Amusing, in fact, I might write another chapter on my book about what the primary role of a manager or a supervisor is, and that is to overcome the frustrations of their employees. Because every employee, I don’t care who you are, whether you’re CEO or a person mopping the floor, you’re going to be frustrated. There are frustrations. And good managers are there not to drive the employee. Drive. Not to drive them to success or to do their job, but to lead them, to help them, to support them.

I remember the purpose of a shepherd as a sheep herder. He leads a sheep, he doesn’t drive them. But most of all, the purpose of a shepherd is to protect his flock. Protect his flock. And that’s what a good leader does, is they protect those individuals that work for them, protect them. Protect them from being frustrated, protect them from being harmed, to protect them from just the frustrations of their job. And so the purpose, like again the shepherd, is not to drive his flock, is to lead his flock. The shepherd is not necessarily back there behind him, pounding away on their behinds with a staff. He’s out there leading. They want to. So, a herd of sheep that loves their shepherd, they will follow. You don’t have to drive them. They will follow. They become the mother, the leader of the herd. The leader of the band, as you would.

And so, if you have to drive your employees, you’re not a good leader. Trust me. When you do this walking around management that I’ve talked about in other forms, you’re really finding out what you can do to help them, not to drive them. So, a good shepherd leads his flock, he doesn’t drive his flock.

Rob Artigo: And this is a company culture thing. It’s something that you need to build into the company culture, that you need to have happy employees. I know that you’ve said before, that certain people might assume that the job satisfaction problems they have in their company is because of wages.

Ray Zinn: It’s not, no. The job satisfaction is loving your boss, loving what you do. I’ve asked thousands of leaders over the years, what do they think of their boss? In fact, when I’ve interviewed people, one of the first questions I ask is, “How do you like your last job?” If they said they hated their job, that’s a no-no, that’s a black mark against the interview. And so I ask them, “How do you like your job,” that they respond, “Oh, I loved it.” “How’d you like your boss?” “Oh, I loved my boss.” That’s a plus. And so, then the interview proceeds.

So, when you’re interviewing someone, ask them how they liked their previous job, their company, the boss, and so forth. What culture did they have? Because you want to make sure you’re hiring the people that match the culture of your company. If you like to be beaten and driven and harassed, then maybe you got to look for a company that beats and harasses their employees.

Rob Artigo: Or join the Army Rangers.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, there you go. If you love your job, you love your boss. If you love what they did, then you go on to say, “Then, why are you leaving?” Because that’s the follow-up question, why are you leaving? If they say they hate their boss, they hate the company. Well, you don’t have to ask them why they’re leaving, that’s obvious. But if they are leaving, say why. If you love the company, love your boss, why are you leaving? That’s a good question. The reason people stay at their job is because they love their job or they love their boss. And so, it is a concern to me when we do recruit people because they had to leave somewhere, they had to leave from something. And so, the fact that they’re leaving because they hate their job, they hate their company, they’re going to find the same thing there at your company.

And the story is told about this elderly man who lived on the edge of town and he was the town spokesman as you would, that if anybody wanted the history of the town, they would come and visit with that man. And so, there was a couple that came through considering moving into the town, and they were at the store and they said, “Well, who really knows this town?” And they talked about this elderly man that lived on the edge of town. So, they went out to visit with him and they found him rocking in his chair on the front porch. And they said, “Sir, can we talk to you about this town?” And he said, “Sure. What would you like to know?” And he said, “Well, what town did you come from?” And they told him the town. [inaudible 00:09:02] said, “Well, how’d you like your town?” And they said, “Oh, we hated our town. It was terrible. The people were backbiting. They were not friendly,” and so forth. And he says, “Yep, you’ll find the same thing in this town.”

So then, of course, they went off quite disgruntled. And so then, another couple of would come into town. Again, looking for somebody that knows about the town. And they talked to this elderly gentleman and they said, “Sir, how do you like this town? Can you give us a history of this town?” And he said, “Well, let me ask you a question, how did you like the town you came from?” “Oh, we loved it. We thought the people were wonderful. They were just the happiest and most helpful people you’d ever want to meet.” And he says, “You’re going to find the same thing with our town. It’s a wonderful town. And they love people, they love you. You’re going to fit in really well here.” That summarizes what I’m talking about.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. Well, I think the bottom line with the discussion is that job satisfaction, the happiness among your employees, that’s what drives success and results, not the get out the whip or make people get the oars going faster. So, let’s join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Our listeners are welcome there. Questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter. Access, also known as X, Facebook and LinkedIn. And of course Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn series, one, two, and three. And on sale now, The Essential Leader: 10 Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals That Make Up the Essential Leader. Thank you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

Would be entrepreneurs often fret over, “is this the right time to start my business?” Maybe the real question gets ignore in the process. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explains the bigger question you must ask yourself and why “when” is hardly what matters most.

Rob Artigo: Would-be entrepreneurs can often find themselves stuck before they even get started. They might say to themselves, “Hey, it’s just not the right time to start my business.” And Ray, we always seem to be in a state of flux, and lately we’ve been mentioning a lot of politics because we had a presidential election, we had a change of presidents. So looking at this, we’ve always been in this state of flux economically, politically as well as in other areas. So how do entrepreneurs know when the right time to start a business is?

Ray Zinn: Your first question is, is that, “Am I the right person to start the business?” And so again, you don’t want to go into a business if you don’t have the financial wherewithal or the experience or even the passion. And so defining when the right time is, is looking at yourself. “Am I the right person to do this particular undertaking?” And I think that’s the key, and that’s a lot of soul-searching, talking to your friends, your significant other, whoever, your family, just say, “Am I the right person to do this?”

Now remember this though, when you are communicating with others about, “Am I the right person or is this the right time?” They’re looking for a negative. In other words, they’re most likely going to give you negative feedback because that’s what they think you want. You’re looking for pros, and they’re going to give you the cons. You just have to realize that just because they’re throwing all the negative at you, it doesn’t mean this is not the right time. It’s more of, “Who am I? Am I the right person?” As opposed to, “Is this the right time?”

Rob Artigo: I think it’s worth mentioning that you wrote a book called The Essential Leader, which is ten skills, attributes, and fundamentals that make up the essential leader and soul-searching self-assessment like that is a key part of becoming the essential leader. It’s like you have to be honest. You do want to take the negative with the positive, and you have to decide, be able to discern, “Hey, if you’re going to be the leader, you’re going to have to make some decisions like that. What stuff is okay, I understand that, but I’m still going to do it. Okay, I understand that. Maybe I’m not going to do it exactly the way that I had originally planned.” But you’ve got to be willing to pivot a little bit when you get that feedback. Right?

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s that self-assessment thing. Rob, I know that the subject you’re wanting to talk about today, is this the right time? And I’m saying it’s more important to say, “Am I the right individual? Do I have the right skills? Do I have the right attributes?” The right time is not as important as am I the right person.

So in this podcast, what we want the listener to really understand and do that self-assessment is, “Am I the right person? Do I have what it takes to do it?” And that’s to have an honest assessment that right from your gut, and then you can talk to your family, your friends, your associates, and you can ask them if you’re the right, is this the right timing? If you are the right person to take on this particular opportunity? And then that to me is the key that we want the listener to take away from this podcast is the self-assessment about, “Am I the right person?”

Rob Artigo: I remember you telling me a story once, and we talked about it on the podcast, I believe. Somebody that you had met who had opened McDonald’s franchises. Part of this was in his, he had business acumen, he was a smart guy but didn’t know anything about running McDonald’s. It turned out his wife did because she worked her whole career there. And then he took the time to say, “All right, what are my weaknesses?” Again, like I said, you’d mentioned this guy, he’s being a talented business guy, and he did this. He looked at what his weaknesses might be in that area, and he went through all the schooling before he got involved with it. I mean, I guess they have a McDonald’s franchise college or something that you go through to get training, but that’s the kind of thing you’re talking about there is doing the hard work because you could get ready to start a business, do the self-evaluation you were just talking about, and realize that you don’t have the tools. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get the tools. It just means that you have to do the work first.

Ray Zinn: Exactly. Another interesting point is I have a friend who’s a pediatric dentist and then another one is an adult dentist, and one, more of a general practice as you would. A pediatric dentist requires a different skill set than a regular dentist even though they both go to dental school and both learn the techniques and aspects of doing dental work, but your patient is different. In other words, if you’re doing children versus the adults, that requires a different skill set even though you’re basically still doing dental work as you would. So again, you have to really look at who’s the recipient? Who’s my patient? Who’s my audience? Who’s my customer? And that defines what extra level of knowledge you have to have to perform your particular occupation.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, I think it’s worth reiterating that we started out talking about is this the right time to start a business or how do you know when it’s the right time to start a business? The answer is that the right time to start a business is when you are ready to do it because are you the right person? If not, maybe you can become the right person for it, and that’s how, but it’s a non-starter if you’re not the right person to start the business.

Ray Zinn: Exactly, and that’s the key is defining who you are and what are your skills, what is your interest? And obviously if you don’t like working with children, don’t become a pediatric dentist, and if you don’t like working with adults, don’t become an adult dentist as you would, or whether you’re a barber or if you’re selling toys or something, you got to be more of a kid person than an adult. So again, look at, “Am I the right person? Do I have the right mentality? Do I have the right skill set to address the market that I want to penetrate?”

Rob Artigo: Great, Ray. As always, you can reach out to Ray Zinn with your questions at toughthingsfirst.com. Continue your education in the conversation with all of the podcasts, blogs, and links to information about Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zinn Series 1, 2, and 3, and also now on sale, The Essential Leader: Ten Skills, Attributes, and Fundamentals that Make Up the Essential Leader.

In business self-assessment, few components are more important than identifying your customer. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the elements of identifying your target customer and the obstacles to obtaining and retaining them.

Rob Artigo: I caught a piece on a website called entrepreneur.com. It caught my attention for a couple of reasons, but I picked one little piece out that I thought would be interesting for us to talk about. In part, this is what it says. “For small to medium-sized businesses, it’s particularly important to perform a self-assessment. Are your revenue streams diversified and if possible, reoccurring? Do you have enough flexibility in your supply chain? Are you prepared to respond to new regulations?” That sounds like a good one. “What would happen to your business if sales completely stopped and how long would you be able to survive?”

So let’s talk specifically about market analysis as a way of doing this self-assessment. This is part of as self-assessment, and I thought focusing just on one part of it would be a good way to look at this and what our listeners would be interested in. For market analysis, there are four bullet points here and one of them is, who’s your target customer? When I’m doing that assessment and looking at it, how do I narrow down who the target customer is?

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s an interesting question because if you look at who your target customer is, then you’ll have identified your market. I mean, years and years ago, I don’t know how many, maybe 35, 40 years ago, there was a product that came out called the Pet Rock. And if you can just think of that… I think you can still get them, as a matter of fact. I think I saw them online. You can still buy Pet Rocks. But to me it was a dumb idea, even though they sold like crazy, but it was very short-lived. The product went away, as you would. That product’s got to be 55 years old now, because I remember my daughter who was in kindergarten, she made a pet rock for me for Father’s Day. It looked like a ladybug, and I still have it actually.

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Sometimes we need to check with ourselves to see if we are positioned well for unforeseen troubles. In this Tough Things First podcast with Ray Zinn, has the keys to self-reliance.

Rob Artigo: Good to be back. And I’ve got a copy of Zen of Zinn Two, one of your books here in front of me, and I flipped over to page 160 and I found something you wrote up on self-reliance, and what I’ll do is I’ll just mention the setup here to this and then we’ll go through, there’s seven steps, great list of things to think about, but basically it says, “Self-reliance should be the goal and objective of all of us. This means to have the following.” So I’ll go with number one, “A viable source of providing the needs of ourselves and family.” What do you mean by that?

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A cognitive bias that occurs when someone overestimates their knowledge or abilities in a particular area can wreak havoc. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores ways to avoid it.

Rob Artigo: I had been looking around for different subject ideas and I came across a term called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It’s about cognitive bias that occurs when people with limited knowledge or skill in a certain area overestimate their abilities. And then I asked AI to define it because it called some information from around the web, so that’s my source on the definition, but I was able to see that this is accurate.

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The opposite of paralysis by analysis is making a resolute decision in moments while others stew. But how do you get there? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses how famous business minds get right to it without hesitating.

Rob Artigo: Well Ray, let’s talk if we could, a little bit about leadership and leaders in business at really any level, how we can make decisions faster. I have some examples here. I actually picked this up from a Forbes article that was the inspiration behind this podcast. So for reference, people can check out Forbes and look for, How Top Entrepreneurs Make Tough Decisions In 5 Minutes. So there’s a bunch of examples, and we just pulled a few of them out just to have a conversation about it.

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It is called the Department of Government Efficiency and it doesn’t even exist yet. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray discusses the hope of D.O.G.E. and why it will require some very heavy lifting to see real change.

Rob Artigo: A lot of changes have come up in the last month or so, and we’re going to have a new president and we’ve got a lot of things going on. So one of the things I wanted to look at based on all this experience you’ve had in the corporate world, and talk a little bit about this organization called DOGE, which is the Department of Governmental Efficiency, which Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will be taking over that, or I guess they’re in the early stages right now of making sure that they’ve got that organizational structure in place. But the idea is to cut the deficit and also reduce government waste in the process. And the numbers they’re talking about is one and a half, $2 trillion is I’ve what I’ve heard. They’d like to try to do it in two years. Is this a pipe dream or is this something you think can happen?

Ray Zinn: Well, sure it can happen. So let’s talk about that a little bit. I always thought, and I’ve lived a long time here on Earth, and I always thought we had that department already. In other words, I thought that we were always trying to reduce government spending. And I know there are pork barrel projects all the time that come up. And they’re there to make that congressman or senator look good to his community, to those that he serves. Because he’s getting these little perks for his area. And it looks like that they’re working for their community as opposed just to serving on committees in the Congress or whatever. So I think it’s gotten out of hand in the sense of the word that that government continues to bloom, get larger and larger and larger. And unfortunately it has become very, very expensive. We have to decide how much government do we really need?

I live in Helena, Montana, and I think half the people in Helena work for the state of Montana. And so they are jobs and there people are being employed by the government. And so the debate is how much good does the government really serve in the large scheme of things. So whether or not you’re a Republican or Democrat, you have a different view of government spending. Technically, I guess, or policy-wise, Democrats are for a larger government and the Republicans are for smaller government, given that the Republicans are now in control of all three branches or two branches, Congress and the executive branch, or legislative and executive, then they’re going to do what they promised on the campaign, which is they’re going to reduce government spending. And that’s what Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have been chartered to do.

Rob Artigo: So you mentioned Elon and Vivek. What do you think about these two guys who have a track record of business success like yourself? What do you think of these guys being the ones tapped to do it?

Ray Zinn: Let me back up. First, I want to talk about something else for just a minute before I jump onto that. When I ran Micrel, my semiconductor company for 37 years. And there were times when we had to do cutbacks, we had to do shortened work weeks or we had to do reduce salaries or layoffs. That was never pleasant. It was never, never pleasant. Because the people that were either had a salary cutback or laid off, they weren’t happy about that because now they had to go find a job and that increases unemployment. The government is supposed to be balanced. In other words, you’re supposed to not spend more money than you take in. And so right now we’re spending more money than we’re taking in. There has to be some control or you go out of business. I think that the concept of cutbacks or reducing spending is necessary because we spend it to an excess.

In the last four years or maybe the last eight years, we’ve spent far more money than we were taking in. If we want to have reduced taxes, that’s less revenue for the government. And so there’s got to be give and take. There’s got to be some reduction in the spending unless you’re going to increase your revenues, which is through taxation or other means, tariffs or whatever, you got to find some way to increase your bottom line as you would. If you’re going to spend more, you got to take in more.

So I think we’re at the point where there is too much spending and not enough revenue. Now Democrats, again, are more for increasing taxes. They say tax the rich, they’re not paying their fair share. They always said that. I can remember since I can read and write that the government has always said, or the people, some of the government anyway, says that “We’re not taxing you enough.” In other words, “You’re not paying your fair share.” And so that’s always been the battle that one side who wants to increase spending always says, “We’re not taxing you rich guys enough.” With that being said, we can talk about Vivek and Elon.

Rob Artigo: These guys seem like they’re pretty good choices, but what’s your take?

Ray Zinn: Well, both of them are from industry and so they’re obviously familiar like I am. I’m from industry and have lots of experience in running companies, and when you run a company, you learn to run a company. And if it’s a profitable organization as opposed to a non-profit, you’re trying to increase your profitability. And to do that, you have to either increase revenue or reduce spending. Now right now, they’re looking at, again, reducing spending because they’re talking about having tax cut, no taxes on tips, no taxes on social security, no taxes on overtime, and that’s just reduced revenue. So if you’re going to reduce your revenue, you have to reduce the spending commensurate with that.

If you’re working for the government, you’re not going to be happy to lose your job. If you’re one of the ones that’s going to have your job eliminated. Elon and Vivek mean they’re choices. I mean, are they the best choice? Don’t know. They’re good choices, but we will find out. We know that both of them want to be involved in the Trump administration and they get their name known or they want to accomplish something good. I’m sure that they’ve convinced themselves that they’re going to do something good. And we’ll see. We’ll see what kind of good they do. Some of the pork barrel ones that have been promoted as potential ones to reduce are a bit silly.

The monies they’re given out are really not necessary and should be eliminated. Now, they’re not huge amounts of money. They’re not like billions or trillions, but they’re hundreds of millions in many cases. And they all add up. So getting rid of the pork barrel ones are going to be very, very important. If it’s in your territory. If you’re a congressman or a senator and it’s in your territory, you’re not going to be happy about that because that’s revenue that people that support you are not going to get. In most cases, these pork barrel or less-than-contributional projects should be eliminated. But that’s again, politics is, as they say, is dirty. And so there’s no clear winner or loser.

There’s give and take. You’re going to increase unemployment when you cut back all these jobs, there is going to be less revenue for those opportunities as you would. And so if you’re being impacted, you’re going to be unhappy, impacted negatively if you lose your job or lose your project or whatever. Some of these are very, very silly and probably should be eliminated. I contribute a lot to different organizations philanthropically. And some of the ones that I contribute to aren’t as profitable in my mind as they really should be. For example, I contribute philanthropically to the Helena Symphony. Now, not everybody goes to a symphony and appreciates what that music is.

And so my contribution to that, is in my mind, I’m helping the fine arts and we need to be cultured and so forth. So I felt okay about that, but obviously I’ve got a lot of friends who don’t go to that symphony. That’s not their thing as you would, and so they think it was a silly thing for me to contribute to because they don’t enjoy fine art. It is not easy. These are difficult decisions to make, and depending upon which side of the fence you’re on, you’re going to be happy or you’re going to be unhappy.

Rob Artigo: And like you said, if you have, I remember the old speaker of the house, Tip O’Neill, probably remember him from, I’m pretty sure the ’80s. He wrote a book, a short book about politics, but it was really good, called All Politics is Local. And that’s what it comes down to is you have people from both parties and then some independents that are going to have their home districts impacted. And that’s where you’re really going to have to work some political magic because it is going to be tough to get some of these things passed even if they’re ridiculous.

And like you said, I think the symphony is a good cause because you get to support the symphony, and symphonies generally don’t make a lot of money. But at the same time, it’s a nonprofit and it’s cultural and you want to keep it, but you also have to figure out, okay, so how do I do that and make it all work and come together and still get cuts. And also do, I guess you can call it harm reductions, so that you can keep the unemployment situation down and also try to impact people as little as possible while making a big impact, if that makes sense.

Ray Zinn: Well, the people that are in the symphony, they’re earning a living. In other words, they’re getting paid for performing in the symphony, and so you’re helping their employment as you would. Not everybody agrees that that’s an important aspect of life is to have the symphony. I could see both sides. I can understand how they feel if I were in the orchestra and I would say, “Well, I’m told that we’re no longer going to have it.” then I got to go find another job. Or if I’m contributing to the symphony or helping the symphony, then the people say, well, but you could be helping out some poor person, somebody who’s got some serious psychological problems or some medical problems. You should be using that money to help them.

So it’s difficult. And I have to make that decision on a regular basis as to who I choose to help, even though it is from my income and my financial structure is what’s helping. It’s none of their business. I’m using my money. But they’re arguing with me saying, but you could use it for this other more important part as you would. So you’re not going to please everybody. You’ll please some of the people some of the time, but you’re not going to please all the people all the time.

Rob Artigo: And what it comes down to is it’s a human issue at its core because it does impact people. So it’ll be interesting to see how this all comes out, where they can make improvements and what they have to say after the experience. Because maybe they’ll determine that they could have done a lot of different things, a lot of things different, and then maybe you’ve been more successful. I don’t know, and I hope it goes well. Anyway, for the listeners, as always, you can reach out to raise in with your questions at toughthingsfirst.com, continue your education and the conversation with all the podcasts, blogs, and links to information about Ray’s books, Tough Things First, and the Zen of Zen series one, two, and three, and an upcoming book we’ll let you know about very soon. We appreciate you listening. Thanks again, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks a lot, Rob.

The long and the short of the 2024 Presidential Election cycle and what it tells us about where we are as a country. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn gives his take.

Rob Artigo: It’s been another long and exhaust… It’s weird, it’s been an election cycle that was both very long as it tends to be, two, three, four years of people running, and then we had this switch up with President Biden stepping out of the race and Kamala Harris coming in. And so, we had this short race head-to-head between Harris and Trump. It’s been very expensive, but also truncated in a very unusual way, that I don’t think any of us ever experienced before in our lifetime.

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It’s possible to be honest only sometimes, which makes integrity a full time job. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discussing how honesty and integrity are different and how they may impact your reputation as a leader and coworker when applied disproportionately.

Rob Artigo: Well, you have talked a lot about honesty on this show, also integrity, but we’ve never really looked at them side-by-side, comparing one to the other and seeing where there’s overlap and how they are different, so let’s talk a little bit about that. Let’s start off with what your personal attitude is, what your personal definition of honesty is. So what does it mean to you, honesty?

Ray Zinn: Being truthful. In other words, being correct in what you’re saying, not being deceptive. So that’s what honesty is. Honesty is do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? That’s honesty.

Rob Artigo: And integrity.

Ray Zinn: Integrity is doing what’s right when no one’s watching. In other words, is your heart being honest or correct, as you would? Are you doing the right thing for the right reason? Integrity is, for example, if a store clerk gives you back more money than what you should in your change, integrity is then reimbursing the amount that was overpaid or obeying the laws of the road, as you would, staying within the speed limit, not taking something that doesn’t really belong to you or on it, back to the honesty thing.

So integrity is really where is your heart? What is your belief? For example, if you’re dishonest, you could tell the truth periodically, or you might obey the speed limit periodically, but you still don’t have integrity being that you’re not always honest or always doing the right thing for the right reason. So integrity is a longer period of time, whereas honesty could be just for the moment, as you would. For the moment, I’ll be the speed limit, or for the moment I’ll be truthful, but integrity is over the long haul. In other words, how honest are you over the long haul, as you would. So that’s the difference.

Rob Artigo: Okay. Well, let’s take a look at the two together, honesty and integrity. How are they different?

Ray Zinn: Honesty could be just for the moment, you’re honest for the moment, you’re obeying the speed limit, for the moment you’re paying your fair share of taxes, or maybe for the moment you might reimburse somebody for overpaying you, or maybe you’ll pay the correct amount for the job done. Integrity is over the long haul. It means that you’ll every day, every week, every month, every year, you’re being honest. So honesty could be just a short term, whereas integrity is a longer period, meaning that you have integrity, you’re always honest, you’re always doing what’s right.

Rob Artigo: Can we be honest but lack integrity in different ways?

Ray Zinn: You could obey the speed limit in town because there’s more police around, but then when you get on the freeway, you may drive faster than the speed limit. So you could be honest in some respects, but not honest in all respects. Or it might be that you’re not stealing your neighbor’s fruit trees, fruit off the tree, but you might kick their dog or whatever. I mean, so honesty is more at the moment, okay?

Rob Artigo: And I guess it doesn’t necessarily mean that something has to be against the law or a written law. For example, you mentioned the fruit tree. Let’s say you’re walking down the street, and a lemon has fallen off a tree, and it’s laying on the sidewalk. Really, you’re not really stealing, but maybe you’re not particularly acting ethically if you’re just going to take stuff without getting the permission of the owner.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, that’s a good point. Let’s say there’s fruit on the ground, as you would, there’s no sign that says, “Please have any of the fruit that’s on the ground.” So should you pick it up and take it with you? That’s an interesting point. You’re saying, “Well, but I don’t want to see that fruit go to waste, and so I’m just going to take it with me, and then hopefully that’s not being dishonest because I’m not trying to be wasteful.” But what if somebody just was walking by, and there was no fruit on the ground, but they shook the tree, made the fruit fall on the ground, and then pick it up? “Oh, I’m just picking up the fruit that’s on the ground.” Or you’re walking behind him, you say, “Oh, that guy just shook the, look at the fruit on the ground.”

It depends upon how fine a line you want to draw between what’s honest and what’s dishonest. If the neighbor doesn’t complain, and you pick it up, I don’t know. I mean, that’s a good point. Now, I mean the neighbor can’t force you to pick up that fruit. So if you were to walk on by and not take it, then that’s being ethical or honest. I mean, you’re saying, “Well, but I don’t want to see the fruit go to waste.” But that’s not your fruit to waste. Okay? That’s the neighbor’s fruit to waste. So again, that’s a good corollary as to what’s considered honest and what’s considered dishonest. So it’s kind of like the story about at work, do you take the paperclip home? Do you take the pencil home or the pen? Is that ethical? The answer’s no to taking it home. Or to use, or let’s say rather than you going down and buying paper for your printer, you just take some that at work. You just take some of that paper from work.

Rob Artigo: Take a ream. Take a whole ream home. Yeah.

Ray Zinn: Or not, maybe you don’t want to look that evil, so you just take part of the ream, as you would.

Rob Artigo: Degrees of evil.

Ray Zinn:

You left a cover there, so at least you just took a few pages, as you would, and that’s dishonest. Okay?

Rob Artigo: Yeah. It’s also dishonest when somebody asks, “Did you do it?” And you say no.

Ray Zinn: Exactly. If you said yes, you took the paper because they asked.

Rob Artigo: You could make it, right? I mean, if they ask, and you said, “Yes, I’m replacing it.” You could just make up for it. I mean, that’s how I’d like to wrap up the podcast is to say, Ray, is maybe something we’ve realized down the road a week or two or even a year, we realized maybe we sort of lied and maybe we didn’t practice good integrity in a certain area, or we weren’t really honest on something. Can we make it up down the road somehow?

Ray Zinn: Well, I write a lot of musings. These are quotes and stuff I do every day. I write and post them on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth. I post these, and I’m very careful that if I’m looking like I’m quoting or look like I’m taking something that is already known to be somebody else’s quote or work, I feel compelled to acknowledge that saying, “This is an old saying.” Or if I don’t know the author, or, “This is a quote by Dwight Eisenhower or something.” I’ll say that, I’ll recognize that because that’s the correct thing to do. If I quote something, if I make a statement about a quote, and I don’t know who it was, I’ll say unknown author or something. So people don’t think it’s mine.

And even if I try to reword it, so it’s not exactly like that person’s quote, I feel bad about it. I still say, “I’ve reworded this, but it’s similar to, as you would.” So that’s having integrity and being honest, okay, is to do the right thing for the right reason, as you would. Depends upon how honest you want to be, and your daily dealings will depend upon how you respond to different situations where you find a dollar on the pavement and say, “Well, I don’t know whose dollar this is. What do I do?” Well, you walk into the store and say, “I found this on the pavement.” And if somebody comes by and says, “Did anybody find any money?” At least you’ve been honest about it. Or they hold it for you for 30 days or a month or whatever, I mean a year, and then they give it to you. That’s being honest, but just to pick it up and say, “Well.” What’s that? There’s a saying.

Rob Artigo: Finders keepers, losers weepers,

Ray Zinn: Right. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Yeah, that’s the saying that most people use. They see a dollar, and they pick it up. Now, if it’s a penny, I’m not going to go in the store and say, I found this penny on the ground. If anything, I’ll just pass it up. I’ll just walk by it. I won’t pick it up.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. Plus, if you find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.

Ray Zinn: There you go. That’s it. That’s another saying.

Rob Artigo: Yeah. Well, Ray, let’s wrap this up. I just want to let the listeners know they can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. If you have questions, you can get them to Ray. Also, if you have comments, you’re always welcome to join us at toughthingsfirst.com and put that there. Follow Ray Zinn on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, his first book and the Zen of Zinn series. You won’t regret picking these books up, and we look forward to introducing the new book to you. Thanks, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks a lot, Rob.

It is getting easier to instruct AI tools as a shortcut for sending out emails and social media posts, but when is it a misleading crutch? Ray Zinn discusses changing AI use and how to recognize the gray areas of using AI and calling it your own work. (Watch Video Podcast…)

Ray Zinn: Good morning there, Rob.

Rob Artigo: Well, this is a special edition of the Tough Things First Podcast. If you’re listening, you can check out toughthingsfirst.com, find this podcast, and right next to it there’s a link that says video. So you could click on it and watch it if that is your choice, or listen to it now and watch it later, whatever. While preparing this podcast, Ray, I logged into Microsoft Copilot, something I’ve been kind of experimenting with in a few different ways. And I asked it to write an email about this podcast, which is about having AI or ChatGPT write your letters, emails, or social media posts.

So I logged into Microsoft Copilot and I just said, “Can you write an email for me?” It said, “Yeah, what’s the topic?” And I told it what the topic was, and then what it said was… Here’s the email. Subject line is, “Join us for an insightful podcast on AI and email communication exclamation point.” And it says, “Hi recipient’s name, we are excited to invite you to our upcoming podcast episode where we dive into the fascinating world of AI-driven email communication. Our special guest, Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history, will be sharing his invaluable advice and insights.” And then it has the date and time and it says, “Put the link here.” And it says, “Look forward to having you with us. Best regards, your name.”

So what I’d really like to do is ask you just based on that, I mean, that was a very quick thing. If I didn’t want to craft it myself, seriously, Ray, it would’ve taken me just as long to write the email myself and do that same thing rather than having the AI do it. But let’s have your reaction to me going through the process of having something else create the email for me.

Ray Zinn: Well, for one thing, it says AI, so there’s the starting point. I mean it’s already doing kind of an advertisement for artificial intelligence. And it’s just interesting that AI really is a buzzword. We’ve had ways of doing emails that way before cut and paste. I’ve used cut and paste for, I don’t know, 50 years.

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Getting ahead at work is not complicated, but it does require effort. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the concept of hiring from within a company, and how to be the person who moves up.

Rob Artigo: Good to be back. So let’s talk about promoting from within a company instead of seeking talent from elsewhere. Micrel, which you ran for 37 years, had a reputation for people wanting to stay and then anybody who left tended to want to come back at very high, what you called the boomerang rate. So people coming back to the company because they enjoyed the environment where they worked. That means that people are looking potentially for advancement within the company and they would like to be considered.

Are you a guy who preferred to promote from within or seek fresh talent from outside?

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Entrepreneurs accomplish a lot by themselves. Fierce independence is a common trait, but why not work smarter, not harder? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn details why going it alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Rob Artigo: Well, Ray, you write so much it’s hard to keep up, but one thing that you did right recently was, “To succeed, we need the support of others. Friends, customers, mentors, families and associates.” And these are in the home, these are at work and these are in the community, people that you bump into regularly at ACE Hardware, for example. So you say that you need to get this support, why do you think that that level of support is necessary for success?

Ray Zinn: Well, because we don’t live on an island, no man is an island. We need the help of others. We are very much a society of people.

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The benefit of self-awareness becomes evident when you put that knowledge into action and then evaluate if these actions are working. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn uses his extensive experience as a leader in business to explain why the habit of self assessment and reassessment is worth developing.

Rob Artigo: In the Zen of Zinn one, we have a series of Zen of Zinn books and it’s one, two, and three, and I picked up the first one and looked at the first entry. So on page one, you ask the question … in your writing, you ask, are you a good leader? It says, “Good leaders can tell if anyone is following by seeing if the tasks are met on time. When you make sure the team is happy and working together, they will follow.”

Ray, isn’t it the trick for starters in being a good leader, convincing people simply to see you as a person worth following?

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In business, we want to see the bottom line grow! But in the last few years wading into politics and the latest social trend is having the opposite effect on sales. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explains the basic problem with divisiveness.

Rob Artigo: Well, I noticed that some companies have recently come out and said they’re changing the way that they attach their names to certain causes because some issues, and gosh, the last few years, almost any issue could, but some issues have proven to be so divisive that they’re not helpful. And Scripps is a company, for example, that has made some changes. It is apparently shutting down its 24-hour news channel and blaming advertisers because the advertisers are saying, “We don’t want to be involved in programming that has politics because it reflects on us.”

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They are the errors that can do you in and you will have nobody to blame but yourself. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn defines what an unforced error is in the business word and what you can do to save yourself before they happen.

Rob Artigo: Ray, I was reading Zen of Zinn 3, in fact, right from page 191 it caught my attention. You wrote about unforced errors, define what an unforced error is.

Ray Zinn: Okay. It’s an error that you made that you weren’t forced to make. In other words, you did it because of just your lack of skill or paying attention to the problem, it end up being an unforced error.

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Even if you have decided to shun social media, virtually every type of communication you use is a form of content creation. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about ways we overlook our status as influences just because we don’t post videos of ourselves all the time. (Ironically, Watch Here…)

Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob. Good to be with you today.

Rob Artigo: Great to be back. This, of course, is one of our favorite occasions. It’s a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast. If the listener wants to watch it, all they have to do is navigate to the website, ToughThingsFirst.com, and then click on the Watch Now link right next to this podcast, obviously, the intro to the podcast, and watch instead of just listen, which is great. I’m wearing my sports coat today, which works out great.

Ray, one of the notes that we got as a suggested topic was content creators today are shaping far more than purchasing decisions and trends. They’re shaping public opinion on major national and international issues, which we know. I mean, we hear about this all the time. X, formerly known as Twitter, other platforms, people are creating content all the time, and they’re influencing. We worked together on the book Essential Leadership that’s forthcoming, we’re proud to say, and you did a whole chapter on how everybody’s an influencer and the essential leader has to look at themselves as a influencer. Are they also content creators in a general sense?

Ray Zinn: They sure are. I mean, there’s a program on TV, it’s called American Greed, and what’s interesting is that the way you live your life, what you do with the resources that you have, influences others, either for good or for bad. And so the concept of being an influencer is very important.

I mean, it’s the same thing that’s happening in the political environment, whether it be Donald Trump being sued for election interference or for his business dealings, or whether it be Biden regarding his son and other problems that his son is having. That has an influence on the election.

Or if you’re running a company, if you are doing things which are not legitimate or appear to be greedy, you may not be doing something that’s against the law per se, but if you come across as a greedy individual where you’re focusing on yourself … In fact, that’s one of the things that they’re complaining about Trump is that he’s focused on himself, and then Kamala Harris says she’s focused on others. So it’s a way that they have of steering the influence, as you would, either toward them or against them.

When we think about what kind of influence we’re having, either in our business dealings or employment or socially, we have to be careful what kind of an image we’re portraying. In our book that we’re coming out with soon, in Essential Leadership, we cover that. That’s one of the major chapters is, what kind of an influencer are you? Because you are influencing, whether you’re a school teacher, or whether you’re a nurse, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or whatever your field of business is, you influence.

In one of our podcasts, we’re going to cover the effect of nurturing your influence, as you would, or those that you do influence, those who you’re associated with. And so you can’t say just because you’re a student, or you’re a school teacher, or a nurse, or maybe a construction worker, that you’re not having influence, but you do. That affects your income, that affects your merit review is how well you are influencing others. And so getting the job done, as you would, working as a team, team building, even as an individual contributor, whether you’re working from home or whether you’re working at the office, you are having an influence.

In fact, what’s interesting is as we deal with working from home and either using some kind of media to interact with others, it’s actually you have a bigger challenge, because you’re not directly in front of someone. You’re actually doing it vis-a-vis some kind of a media connection, and maybe they don’t even see your face. Maybe they just hear your voice, so they can’t read the expression on your face, or how you’re dressed, or how your interaction is. If you’re going to be a good influencer, make sure that when you are working from home or working through some kind of a media interface, that you do it correctly. That your tone of your voice, the way you’re coming across, the way you’re answering questions is appropriate.

One of the things they’re talking about in the upcoming election is how Trump comes across or how Kamala Harris comes across. So how we come across is what we’re talking about in this podcast is, how are we influencing?

Rob Artigo: You made a valuable point there. Your points are always valuable to me. But, specifically, about the fact that you don’t have to be a TikTok participant where you’re out videoing yourself and then sending out a message. That there are subtle ways in which you are a content creator, that even in an email, you’re a content creator in a literal sense-

Ray Zinn: Exactly.

Rob Artigo: … and that those things are influential. I guess the question you have to ask yourself is, is this an appropriate message to send? Am I sending the message that would be something that I want shared with other people, and do I want other people to emulate it? For example, we talked about the election, is do I want a vote to go one way or another? Maybe what I’m saying sounds like I’m interested in one candidate, but I’m actually going to vote for another. You’ve mixed the message, and you’re not being a good influencer, obviously, and your content that you’ve created is confusing.

Ray Zinn: Well, the interesting thing is that Donald Trump, for example, says, “I am who I am.” Well, we all are that. We all are who we are. But depending upon how we want to come across depends upon what kind of influence we want to be. Do we want to be a negative influence or a positive influence? Hopefully we want to be a positive influence, either because we’re selling a product, or because we’re trying to build a relationship with another person. As I said, we’re going to cover that in another podcast, but our sociability, the kind of preeminence we want to be in whatever setting that is, is important.

I know that in this upcoming election, they’re talking about Donald Trump. “I wish he would back down on the rhetoric, talk about policies and issues rather than talking about the person,” but he’s not listening, he’s just doing it the way he wants to do it. And then the same thing with Kamala Harris. She’s doing it because that’s who she is. Maybe they both want to say, “I want you to vote for me for what I can do, not for how I’m acting or how I’m coming across,” which is difficult to separate. You’re bifurcating. You’re trying to say, “Well, I’m really not the person that I’m portraying myself to be. I’m really somebody else.”

If you want to come across as genuine, then, of course, you want to be who you are. But by the same token, though, you don’t want to come to a funeral dressed in a bathing suit. You want to make sure your interaction is appropriate for whatever role it is that you’re trying to achieve, whether you’re trying to be in a mentoring role, or whether you’re trying to be receiving information from someone where they’re trying to mentor you. So the information or the kind of input you want or output you want depends upon what kind of a image you’re trying to portray, which is again, this influencing image.

If you’ve watched TikTok, you’ve seen really goofy-looking TikTok videos, because what the person’s trying to portray, it comes across to me as kind of silly and stupid, but to others, they enjoy it, because it’s what they want to see. It’s how they want to be influenced, as you would.

Rob Artigo: As you mentioned, we are going to cover some territory in being an influencer for good in an upcoming podcast. This is a different area of being an influencer, but, obviously, the message ties in with the other one, which is being an influencer for good. So you can join the conversation at ToughThingsFirst.com. We appreciate you being here to watch or listen, as this is a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast. Your questions and comments are always welcome. Follow Ray on X, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please rate this podcast, so that we can keep the momentum going and grow this podcast more times over as it is a popular podcast. Check out Ray’s books, the Zen of Zinn I, II, and III. It’s a whole series. Also, of course, the flagship book, which is Tough Things First. Be prepared, because the ball’s going to drop soon on this book, Essential Leadership, and you won’t want to miss that. Thank you again, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thanks, Rob.

Asked for an opinion or not, it seems most people jump at the chance to say what’s on their minds. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the ways opinions can go wrong, and how to make them go the right way.

Rob Artigo: Often flipping through Zen of Zinn one, two, or three and things appeal to me in some way, shape, or form. Hit me in a way and I write down a note, and I think this one did. You wrote about how people are quick to offer critical opinions, but you also suggest that an opinion that creates hard feelings should be avoided. Why is that the case?

Ray Zinn: Well, we talk about protests. A protest is an opinion effectively, and there’s no such thing as a good protest. They’re all evil, or they all have hatred or some animosity associated with a protest. So when you express an opinion, you’re actually protesting because if you’re not, unless you agree with somebody else’s opinion, you’re offering a counter view on something.

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No matter the size of the investment or the investor group, cash infusions to boost your company will come with strings. In this Tough Things First podcast, offers some thoughts on how it works and what to expect.

Rob Artigo: I recently read that Applied Digital, it’s a data center operator, their shares recently had soared like 65%. They said they would receive $160 million in financing from a group of investors. That would be including investment from Nvidia. I use Nvidia products, I like it. It’s in my computer. It’s good for digital editing, and audio, and that sort of thing, so I’m a big fan, but where I’m going with this topic here is part of the investment group is a real estate firm called Related Companies. I kind of think like, “Okay. You got Nvidia, makes sense for the type of company that Applied Digital is, but then there’s also an outside firm, this real estate investment firm that’s involved.” I think, “Wow, it seems like there’s not synergy there Nvidia and the investment firm would expect something out of the deal.”

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Money is not everything, but if you want it, are creative, and a bit delusional, you have a shot and being more than lucky. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn points out the difference between a healthy delusion and being downright crazy.

Rob Artigo: You’ve probably heard of tennis star, Coco Gauff. [inaudible 00:00:17] she’s a major champion tennis star and she’s using that fame, which probably based on good advice, to take some of the money she’s got and the influence that she has, and she’s using it to parlay that into a billion-dollar entrepreneurial endeavor, which is probably a combination of businesses. I didn’t look closely at it, but I’m assuming that’s what that is. Usually that’s the case for the athletes that are operating smartly, but she actually recently encouraged people of her age who have similar goals to be delusional.

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The Democrat’s national convention kicked off in 2024 under the constant threat of violence over war in the middle east, but it’s not hard to figure out the motivations. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses why violence can irrupt in politics and what to do about it.

Rob Artigo: There’s something in the news business, when I was a reporter, of course, we called it the news cycle, and this has been one heck of a political news cycle. I think it’s been going on for a couple of years, a lot of stuff with the various riots and things like that that we’ve seen on TV and heard about. This has been the strangest year for politics that I can remember. The president steps down from his campaign for reelection, which is huge. That hasn’t happened since ’68 or something I think thereabouts. And he’s not going to seek a second term. And then somebody attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. And so Tough Things First podcast, it’s not a political show, so we’re not going into politics so much as I thought we’d talk about the idea of political violence, because it can happen on an international level, a national level, local level, even in your office building, that sort of thing. Ray, does it start with words or does it start with actions?

Ray Zinn: Which comes first? The chicken or the egg?

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“Loud quitting” is just foolish, but smart career moves can be a ladder to job satisfaction and success. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about how changing jobs is a skill in itself, and future employers will follow the trail. Will it send a good or bad message? (Watch Video Podcast Here…)

Rob Artigo: Well Ray, when I was a reporter in Reno, I got to know a guy named Kenny Guinn. He was the governor of Nevada. He was also a very wealthy businessman. I was talking to him and I told him that I was looking at a possible job offer in Fresno, and he did this very… I remember this vividly. He put his arm on my shoulder and he said, “If it’s a step up, take it,” and I didn’t take the job because it was really a step sideways. Fresno to Reno is really a step sideways, at least in radio it’s a step sideways. So I didn’t take it and I’ve always appreciated that advice, because it changed… It kept me on course for success in radio.

So Ray, for starters, let me just ask you, when do we know when it’s the right time to make a good career move?

Ray Zinn: Well, there are three reasons why we change jobs. One is, as you talked about, a step up to get a promotion, to get more pay or some advancement reason. The second is because you don’t like the job, you don’t like the company, you don’t like your boss. There’s a “don’t like” problem. That’s number two. Number three is is you want to relocate. In other words, you want to stay… Instead of living in Fresno or Sacramento, you want to live in Chicago.

So those are the three reasons. The advancement, it’s a “don’t like” situation where you don’t like the boss, company. Maybe you don’t like where you live either, but anyway. Then the third of course is that you want to change locations. Sometimes it’s because you want to be closer to family or because educationally it’s more advantageous to be at a certain area because of the schools you want to attend. So those are the three reasons why you want to change your occupation.

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