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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Did you know stealing a pen from your employer is embezzlement? It might not seem like a big deal, but what it says about you IS a big deal. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses ethics and how little things become big things that create a negative workplace culture.

Rob Artigo: Ray, interpersonal communications, which obviously we’re doing here, expense reports, travel expenses, these are things most business people deal with, so let’s talk about handling ethical decisions at the ground level, in other words, where we’re penciling in mileage and things like that. I mean, when we’re making decisions at the ground level where we’re displaying ethics and where those ethics may come from in the course of your life and business life. I found this definition on the Santa Clara University Website on ethics. It says, “Ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness or specific virtues.” Do you agree with that particular definition?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. I mean, I define ethics as doing what’s right when no one’s watching.

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Depending on who you listen too, a recession is either already here or just around the corner. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn, who led a major tech company through good times and bad, discusses options for making your personal finances just as resilient.

Rob Artigo: Ray, I don’t think it’s a stretch, I really don’t, that far too many people have not saved enough money. Would you agree with that?

Ray Zinn: Uh-huh. For sure.

Rob Artigo: I figured there must be a few ideas that you have about things people can do to be more proactive, whether early on in life or now depending on whatever stage in life they are, looking at having to save money. If you’re starting early, starting late, there has to be some common sense ways to work things out. Can you start with a few ideas?

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s a good topic. Because of high inflation that we’re experiencing right now, people are hurting, and they’re having to dig into their 401s or having to dig into their other savings or selling off some of their investments. You never know, maybe a calamity, medical problem, or some family issue or some crisis around your community or home. A savings account is absolute, absolute necessity. You need a buffer, and that’s what the purpose of 401k, that’s why they came out, is to encourage the government and wants to encourage people to save money, because otherwise, we fall back on the government to save our bacon. Emergency will happen.

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The question is what has more value, the price of an education or work experience? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn says one has an edge over the other. He’ll explain why smart choices will help you navigate these life decisions.

Rob Artigo: I’m Rob Artigo, your guest host for this edition of the Tough Thanks First podcast. I’m a writer and former radio personality. Here with me once again is Ray Zinn, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. Hi Ray.

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

Rob Artigo: Sure. I located a Pew research study that was recent, I think within the last week or two that it came out and it showed that only 22% of 5,200 college grads that were surveyed said that college is worth the cost if a student must take on debt. That’s only 22%. 47% said a four-year degree is worth it only if a student doesn’t have to take on loans and that leaves 29% of respondents who said college isn’t worth it no matter what. If you have debt or loans or whatever, it’s just not worth it.

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Running in circles pushing a cart full of goals will lead to two things. Exhaustion and a cart full of unfulfilled goals. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores the difference between action for action’s sake and action with purpose. (Watch the Video Podcast here.)

Rob Artigo: Rob Artigo here, once again your host for this edition of The Tough Things First podcast, a special edition of the Tough Things First podcast. If you are listening to this and you’d like to watch it on video, we have it on Ray’s YouTube channel. And the link is right next to the intro for this at toughthingsfirst.com, so it is available to you. We try to do at least once a month. And it’s a great opportunity to see what we look like because we’re very handsome gentlemen. I’m an entrepreneur in California. Also, you may remember me as a radio broadcaster. I was at KGO in San Francisco, Seattle, and also in Sacramento I was a journalist on the air.

And Ray, it’s always great to be back here at Tough Things First to do another podcast with you. Ready for one?

Ray Zinn: You bet. Thank you, Rob. Good to be with you again.

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Good or bad, a rise in wages results in reaction. The earner may first have more money, but prices follow and can wipe-out the gains. In this Tough Things First reality check, Ray Zinn explores a game that is less than zero sum when it’s forced.

Rob Artigo: We once talked about kiosks. What we were talking about was technology. I think we were talking about robots being used in restaurants and we talked about kiosks. And I was adamant, I felt like they were impersonal and that they would end up backfiring on businesses. And in California here where I’m at right now, you have house here, $20 minimum wage that went into effect here in California has made the proliferation of kiosks grow also by leaps and bounds. Cash registers are literally having signs hanged on them at fast food restaurants where they just said, “Please use the kiosk,” and they have no person operating the cash register anymore, you have to use the kiosk because they don’t want to pay somebody to work there. Employees at the counters are really becoming a thing of the past. You walk into a place and there’s nobody standing there.

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Effective leadership is about being a people person, not about people pleasing. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn wonders if a better understanding of your own leadership style can help you communicate better with different personalities.

Ray Zinn: Hello there, Rob.

Rob Artigo: Your idea was, what kind of leader are you? And I bet the listeners are wondering, how could four colored squares help them understand their leadership style?

I looked into this, and there’s this guy whose name’s Don Lowry, and he developed a system called True Colors. There are a couple of different iterations or versions of this kind of thing out there, and some of this is based on other versions of this. So I’m not saying that this one is the end-all, be-all, but to understand sort of the origins of it, this particular one that we’re using here, Don Lowry developed the system, True Colors, and it uses four primary colors to designate personality types and behavioral styles. And what we want to be able to do is find out what can we glean from that about our leadership styles individually and where the crossover exists.

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Diversity is a natural course of business. Not just in gender and race, but in thought. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the key differences between the proverbial left and right brains on the job.

Rob Artigo: Now you’re someone who has run a diverse workplace at Micrel. You’ve ran it for decades, all walks of life it seems. You had men and women working there. You had short people, tall people, I’m assuming people who are a little larger, a little smaller, a little thinner, a little more healthy and a little bit maybe a little bit more lax in their exercise routine. And also the idea that you’re in a creative environment, so you have different ideas and different types of creativity out there. Let’s talk a little bit about personalities here. Some people are conservative and some people are more liberal, and I would say that that manifests itself in politics, but this isn’t really about politics as much as it is about understanding the people who are around you and the differences. The people who are more conservative versus people who are more liberal, give me just some general ideas where you see differences between the personality types.

Ray Zinn: Well, the biggest difference between an individual is conservative versus one who is liberal is that conservatives tend to be more religious and they follow what we refer to as the Mosaic law. That’s the 10 Commandments, which is found in the Torah and the Bible. And the 10 Commandments were the ones that Moses brought down off Sinai and hr had those tablets, and he saw how wicked the people were when he came down and he threw them down. He broke them and smashed them into pieces. And then again, they were reconstituted and they’re basically the rules or the guidelines, laws that most countries legal system is based on is the Mosaic law. Because Moses was in the Torah and the Bible and so forth, the Quran or whatever, they tend to be more religious derivatives as you would, commandments or laws brought down from heaven as they say. That’s the conservative view or values is based more on what we refer to as the moral law or the Mosaic law.

Liberal is different, meaning they don’t necessarily adhere so much to the Mosaic law, but more to what we call the amoral law or the law that was set up by the legal system or the courts. Not so much coming as you would through a religious media like the Bible or the Quran or whatever, or the Torah, but more related to what the populace accepts as law. So in other words, the liberal view is less defined by the moral law or the love thy neighbor as myself kind of law, but more on what’s legal. In other words, what the court system has defined as legal.

For example, in the moral law, adultery is defined as one of the sins or one of the rules that needs to be followed. But in the amoral law or the liberal law, there’s no crime against committing adultery, I guess depends upon if you’re Donald Trump or not. But they accused him of having this relationship with Stormy Daniels and then hiding it as you would in some way he was keeping his records of that payment. Again, the liberal view is that we don’t necessarily follow the moral law or the Mosaic law, but we follow what is legal and not legal as defined by the rules of that country. That’s basically the difference, Rob, is the amoral is more focused on what’s legal and the moral law is based on what’s more what’s right or what’s based on what God defined as the Mosaic law or the moral law.

Morality, we’ve heard that term before is kind of the guideline of the conservative and so that the liberals say, well, let the people define what’s legal and what’s not as opposed to what God says is legal.

Rob Artigo: And I would take that a little bit further thinking about that. And when you have the Mosaic law being the rule of law, and then the liberal approach is more of the interpretation of the law according to norms of the moment. And I was looking at some research from 2013, so just over 10 years ago, it showed that conservatives desire security, predictability, and authority more than liberals do. And liberals are more comfortable with novelty and nuance, which I was just referring to when it comes to interpretation of law, and complexity. And I wonder if it’s still that way now here 11 years later, and was it that way in the 1970s when you started Micrel?

Ray Zinn: Yes, it’s substantially changed. I mean, the younger generation or what they call generation Z, they’re more liberal. In other words, they’re not so much… Well, they’re not religious for one thing. So if we define how a conservative would view loyalty, God, belief in God, belief in family, and belief in country or patriotism, they’re at least two to three times more likely to favor loyalty and family and God and patriotism more than the liberals who are less likely to make that as a priority. And so the Gen Z or the younger upcoming generation, they’re much less religious and their belief in what they call the moral law is like one third that of the conservatives.

So that that’s a change. And you have to understand then that, for example, in a company, loyalty is very important. The younger generation doesn’t believe that loyalty is that important. And especially when they can work from home or if they’re so mobile now compared to way it was 50, 60 years ago, you have to understand that as you now deal with that younger group.

Rob Artigo: That statistic has continued, I guess, the trend downwards for years, which is that fewer people feel strongly about having a religion or believing in God. And then also patriotism. And one of the stories I saw, which was actually from… I believe it was from 2023, and it said under 40% of Americans in general, we’re talking about young people, but also in this case under 40% of Americans said patriotism was very important to them. A similar number shared that opinion about religion. In 1998, when this survey first asked about these values, 70% of Americans felt patriotism was very important and 62% felt that way about religion. So we obviously have seen a enormous drop really in the percentage of people who feel that way. What do you owe that to?

Ray Zinn: The breakdown of the home, having a strong mother and father figurehead in the home has somewhat degraded those attributes of loyalty, family, God, and country. There’s less, I think, teaching and actually encouraging religion actually in the home. And if the children aren’t getting that emphatic guidance and direction, then they’re less likely to be religious. It’s interesting, this podcast wasn’t meant to dwell or focus on religion, but because it has such a dramatic impact on the morality of each of us that we can’t just ignore it.

That’s what’s actually covered in teachings in religion, is morality. That’s the moral law. And so if you’re not getting that, if that’s not being taught in some way either in school or church or family, or if you’re not getting that moral background, then you’re less likely to be moral. So if we look at loyalty, God, country, and family, that’s more of a moral issue as opposed to being what they call amoral, meaning whether it’s defined in the law or not. Not having that focus, religious focus as you would or moral focus, don’t call it religious, let’s call it moral. If you don’t have that moral focus in your home, in your community, in your education, or in the work environment, if the work environment that you’re in doesn’t promote morality, then again, it’s going to become less of a priority.

Rob Artigo: I think that in the more secular business environment, it manifests itself as a focus on ethics, on ethical behavior, and-

Ray Zinn: That’s all part of it.

Rob Artigo: And so you just don’t see that focus anymore. People don’t focus on that. It’s really all about what you can do for me to validate my opinions and attitudes, not what I can do for the company to make it better.

Ray Zinn: It reminds me of that John F. Kennedy and, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” It goes back to that’s 1961. It’s more of a me too focus currently that we have to deal with. And for those of you who are running companies, if you want a strong ethical company, then you have to have some kind of moral guidelines or attributes associated with your company. So I would encourage you leaders, corporate leaders, to bring in this morality and this self-governing concept of ethics and being honorable in the way you deal with your customers and your way you deal with each other.

Rob Artigo: Our listeners can join the conversation at toughthingsfirst.com. Those questions that you might have and you want to pose to Ray, you can obviously do that. Comments as well all welcome at toughthingsfirst.com. Follow Ray Zinn on Twitter, which is obviously now X, Facebook and LinkedIn. And of course you can pick up Ray’s books, Tough Things First, the flagship book of this podcast, so make sure you get that. Also, the Zen of Zen is a series one, two, and three, which we talk about occasionally on podcasts here. You’ll enjoy those books. If you like what you hear on these podcasts, you just get more of that in those books. Thanks again, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Thank you, Rob.

The enemy of innovation comes in many different forms, but usually the goal is the same. To throw you off your game. As Ray Zinn tells us in this Tough Things First podcast, stifling innovation can take a whole company out.

Rob Artigo: Let’s talk about this, ways in which innovation can be stifled in our businesses, in our organizations, because a lot of people that are listening to this either want to be entrepreneurs or are entrepreneurs, but there are other people who are just interested in the life advice that you offer.

So they have families and they experience roles of leadership and also serving others and all this stuff has value in those areas as well. And I found this list that sparked my interest on the subject. This list, it’s not one of your lists, but it’s certainly the kind of thing that you would come up with. So I wanted to ask you to see if you agree with the statement. If you could add something to it or make a change to it, what would you do? Let’s start with number one, fear. According to this list, fear is the single biggest reason why most organizations and individuals do not achieve their full potential. Fear of failure.

Ray Zinn: I agree. Fear is probably the biggest deterrent to success if you lack courage because the opposite of fear is courage, if you lack courage, then you won’t be able to pursue your dream or your mission. Fear is a great deterrent to innovation because you just don’t want to fail. Failure is part of growing. We all fail to some extent, and that’s how we grow. For example, a little child learning to walk, he will fall down and that’s failing as you would, but you know darn well that if you don’t start with that first step, you’re never going to learn to walk and so you’re going to fall down. And so becoming an entrepreneur or a successful CEO or leader, you have to be willing to fall, be willing to fail as you would, being willing to get up again and get back on that horse if you get bucked off.

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Some train wrecks are easily seen coming down the tracks while others go off the rails because of bad drivers. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the faulty CEO who goes off the rails because their priorities get out of whack.

Rob Artigo: Well, a company called Stability AI was sold to investors as a, quote, “Herculean force poised to vanquish the twin serpents of illness and ailment and extend the olive branch of longevity,” unquote. And that sounds like a really good deal. Hey, I’m all about longevity and you’ve proven that you don’t need this technology to have longevity because you just live a good life and you’re good to go. One of the business startups that caught a lot of attention, and as recently as March of 2024, the CEO was hailed as a modern Prometheus. And you see how there’s like a Herculean force and a modern Prometheus, really like this hyperbole going on to build this company up. And a couple of weeks later, the creative leadership of the company, the creative team behind the company, they just all quit and the CEO ended up resigning. There were these issues going on like unpaid bills and bungled contracts and complaints about running out of money that had been known for, apparently, months and the CEO was unable to secure additional fundings.

And so, in March, he was out there while this was all going on, doing what amounts to some kind of tech TED Talk kind of thing where he is talking to a crowd of investors and people and building things up. So, where am I going with this? And the thing is that we were just casually talking about this not long ago. I thought it was interesting that your take on it was more about CEOs. You made the point that often a CEO kind of loses focus or doesn’t really know what the true objective is of the company. And you mentioned the company JUUL as an example of this. Let’s talk a little bit about how even good plans or good ideas can run afoul in a hunt for money.

Ray Zinn: Well, you’re talking about JUUL, which is that e-cigarette company.

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The Chips and Science Act is supposed to lower silicon chip manufacturing costs, create jobs, and strengthen supply chains. It all started three years ago, but as Ray Zinn explores in this Tough Things First Podcast, China’s head start caught many by surprise.

Rob Artigo: Hi, Ray. I was reading about this fresh influx of about $8.5 billion in…

Ray Zinn: No, $85 billion, $85 billion.

Rob Artigo: $85 billion? Well, in this particular story that I was reading deals with Intel and it said $8.5 billion so you’re saying…

Ray Zinn: That’s just to Intel.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, just to Intel. In this Intel thing, $8.5 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding to help Intel build its semiconductor plant and upgrading an existing plant in Chandler, Arizona and downtown Phoenix. It’s expected to bring in thousands of high-paying jobs and that sort of thing. But I really wanted to just use that as a bouncing board to say, “Where’s the industry right now? The chip industry.”

Ray Zinn: And I might have my numbers wrong, maybe it’s $58 billion, not $85 billion, but it might be 50. I don’t remember the exact amount. But what happened was is back in the late seventies, early eighties, the industry began moving offshore some of their manufacturing because it was less expensive and mainly the less expensive and more they offloaded upsourced or sent out the higher labor-intensive parts of the manufacturing, such as assembly and test of the semiconductors.

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Between global turmoil and more local chaos, how do you stay focused in life, and stay profitable in business? In this Tough Things First Podcast, Ray Zinn explores the finer points or knowing where to put your energy and what to avoid. (Watch Video Podcast)

Rob Artigo: Well, 2024 has been marked by small but vigorous protests around the world influenced by the attack on Israel and then Israel’s response to that attack, but that’s just one aspect of what’s going on in the world. We have Russia and Ukraine, we have China and Taiwan, and in the business world, we have higher than usual operating costs, difficult labor market, and lots of uncertainty out there. So this question really is in your wheelhouse, and I really wanted to ask you about it is, how do we as business leaders and entrepreneurs stay focused and profitable when everything else in the world seems to be going crazy?

Ray Zinn: This is all about being able to deal with challenges. Half the time, things are going to be going up, half the time things are going to be going down, and so you just have to be able to deal with the vicissitudes of mortality, meaning the challenges, the problems that face you as you wake up in the morning and try to execute your day.

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Many entrepreneur’s know when their mojo is working, but some people just do not know how to tap into it. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn offers a surefire way to find your mojo.

Rob Artigo: Entrepreneurs at their heart are creative, ambitious people. Am I generally right when I say that?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. You have to have ambition, you’ve got to have the enthusiasm, and you have to have that passion. Passion, passion, passion.

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Loyalty in the mafia means something different than loyalty in its most productive and meaningful ways, or does it? Is blind obedience really loyalty? Ray Zinn explores the finer points and graces or loyalty.

Rob Artigo: Rob Artigo here once again, your host for this edition of the “Tough Things First” podcast. I’m an entrepreneur in California, wonderful to be… Let me try that again. Three, two, one.

Rob Artigo here once again, your host for this edition of “The Tough Things First” podcast. I’m an entrepreneur in California. Wonderful to be back again with you, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Hey, it’s good to be with you, Rob. Thanks for joining me today.

Rob Artigo: Of course Ray’s the longest-serving CEO in Silicon Valley history, ran my Micrel for more than 37 years.

So Ray, you say loyalty is one of the most important human attributes. I was thinking about loyalty, and this is how I framed it was, loyalty in the mafia means something very different than the loyalty we expect in our lives with our families and our places that we work, because those are the more productive and meaningful ways to have loyalty. Blind obedience really is not loyalty anyway. So a healthy loyalty benefits pretty much everybody. You say-

Ray Zinn: So, Rob-

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Entrepreneurs rarely get what they “deserve”, but most everyone gets what they focus on, good or bad. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn takes a deep dive into our focus and how it drives the results.

Rob Artigo: You wrote recently, we generally get what we expect, and you say the reason is our focus is on what we want, and that dictates our decisions. It’s true in our personal lives. Is it true in our business lives and our work environment?

Ray Zinn: Absolutely. I mean, you get what you expect because that’s where your focus is, so if you’re not happy in your work or you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, you’re going to change your focus and that focus becomes your output because again, you can’t think of two things at the same time.

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Diversity, equity, and inclusion has supplanted merit as an important decision tool in hiring for many companies, but has it helped or hurt businesses and employees? In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores fundamental truths about fairness, that DEI has set aside.

Rob Artigo: Well, because of all this talk about DEI, that’s the diversity, equity and inclusion stuff that’s been out there, some feel like merit-based hiring is unfair. And you’ve written recently about this, so I wanted to talk to you about it. So let’s see, you wrote that in life, almost everything we do is merit-based. Tell us more about that, and we’ll get started with that part of this topic.

Ray Zinn: Well, what’s interesting is I recently heard that some states are considering doing away with the law exam or the bar exam for lawyers, just to make it easier for certain people to be able to practice before the court. And so again, this DEI thing is getting totally out of hand. We’re almost not going to measure anything anymore. It’s kind of a sad commentary on our society that in order for us to standardize everything so that it doesn’t become difficult for anyone that we lose that ability to differentiate. Even the SAT tests are coming back, they’re bringing back the SAT tests, but they’re making it so it’s easier for certain people to pass them. So, this whole thing of making sure that there is total fairness makes it unfair, as you would. And going to my musing that I wrote, everything is based on fairness. I mean, on merit.

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Clashes in the streets are never pretty, and Ray Zinn says they never really do much other than cause more division and anger. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray lays out why protests are negative by nature, but are they evil?

Rob Artigo: It seems like we’ve spent the better part of the last seven years in some state of ongoing protest by one group or another. Got a big group out there right now in various cities doing who knows what, blocking freeways, access to airports, what have you. Typically pretty small groups. I mean, they look big in the areas that they’re congregating, but they’re not particularly a large percentage of the American population. They’re typically pretty small. But they’re very vocal. They’re sometimes violent. They’re kind of a patchwork of causes or cause du jour. You’ve written that you think that protests just in general are evil. Can you explain that?

Ray Zinn: Well, yeah, because a protest is evil. Anything that doesn’t uplift is evil. So you have to say, “Okay, what are you protesting about?” You’re protesting about something that you disagree with or that you feel strong about or whatever. And unfortunately it’s anger. I never heard of what they say they call friendly protest. I don’t know what a friendly protest is. I mean, I don’t think it can possibly be friendly, a protest.

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In life and business decisions must be made, but they do not always have to be hard decisions if you are prepared. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn explores a list of lessons learned that can help you be ahead of the game.

Rob Artigo: Well, I was reading a Forbes piece. It had some experts, and these are 20 tech leaders who shared their lessons from some difficult projects that they had, so they didn’t explain the projects in general, but they said we had a really difficult project. I guess that could be anything from rolling out a product to developing a product or what have you, but they weren’t specific on it. What they did was they offered a few things that you can learn from difficult projects.

Ray Zinn: Or what they learned or what they learned from-

Rob Artigo: What they learned, and I guess the idea is that you could consider these things when you were approaching.

Ray Zinn: Rob before we start that list, even in life, in other words, what you can learn from a difficult situation, whether it be an accident, whether it be an illness, whether it be some other loss of a loved one. These are the difficult lessons that we can take away in life, but the ones you’re going to read refer more to company kind of issues, difficult company problems, which is fine, but I want everyone to know that these apply to life in general.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, you can definitely edit and adjust to make it fit whatever you need to deal with.

Ray Zinn: Any difficult situation.

Rob Artigo: Yeah, so in looking at this list here, I mean there are 20, so I will tell you that if you go to forbes.com and look for this, you can find the whole list. So, we’ll let Forbes handle the whole list for you. We’ll just pull out a full bullet, a few bullet points here and give Forbes credit for having given us some inspiration to take a look at this stuff here. When looking at a, I guess, a product rollout, I’m guessing here, but along these lines is the first one is don’t scale your team too quickly. I guess that means that you don’t want to build faster than you need to because you-

Ray Zinn: Or that you can grow, don’t scale faster than you can grow or to consume it. It’s like how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, right? Don’t try to eat the whole elephant in the same setting. It goes to, again, almost any struggle or difficulty project you’re undertaking. Don’t take on more than you can chew.

Rob Artigo: I thought you were going to say, “How do you eat an elephant?” Head first, or something like that. But how about number two or B, if you will, identifying the unknowns early on. I guess going into it, you want as few mysteries as possible.

Ray Zinn: Yeah, so kind of understand whether it be a marriage or whether it be a project you’re starting or whether it be a company, understand what you’re getting yourself into. Be prepared for that. Other words, know all the pros and cons. I had this rule it when I was running my Micrel semiconductor, I had to rule it for every pro you have to have a con. It’s like when you flip a coin, flip a coin is half of its heads, half of its tails. So, half the time you’re going to have pros, and half the time you’re going to have cons, and so let’s find them. Let’s identify the cons. We’re real good at identifying the pros, everybody. I mean, that’s how you start a project. You’re all enthusiastic and excited, and so you can come up with all kinds of reasons why you want to take on that project, whether it be a project or a company or a spouse or a home or anything.

What you want to do, look at the pros and cons. Okay, so a pro of course is the advantage. This is why I want to do it, and as we know Rob, those are the easy ones to come up with. What the difficult ones to come up with are the cons, because we don’t want to talk ourselves out of the project or the relationship, so we tend to try to ignore the cons. If you ignore something, what’s your chances are going to happen? You’re going to get hurt, not wearing a seatbelt. You say, “Well, how often will I get into an accident?” Well, until you do, you wish you had worn your seatbelt. So, it’s again, look at the reasons why your project may not succeed or your relationship might not succeed. You got to look at all the downside and make sure they’re equal. Equal number of pros, equal number of cons. Don’t con yourself into only having pros. How’s that one, Rob?

Rob Artigo: Oh, I love it. And yeah, of course if you have all pros, then you’re just into confirmation bias and exactly just telling yourself lies. All right, so the next one is make sure that you have the right people for the project.

Ray Zinn: Again, this can go to a marriage relationship, could go to a company, could go to a product. Make sure that you’re heading in the right direction. Again, it is key to identify what it is you want. In other words, what is your expectations? What problem are you trying to solve? And if you’re just being cavalier about your project or the company you’re starting or whatever relationship that’s going to come back to bite you because you haven’t looked at what your objectives are, in other words, what is you trying to solve? Don’t solve something that doesn’t need to be solved.

Rob Artigo: Also, I guess it says prioritize expert guidance. Make sure that you’re prioritizing your expert guidance.

Ray Zinn: I hate to keep only bringing up marriage relationship, but it goes to what we’re talking about. So in the US, divorces are about what? 50% to 60% marriage end up in divorce. Whereas in India, the divorce rates is only 94% or 95%, and the reason is because the parents help the individual find the right partner. So, those are the experts. Believe it or not, your parents know you better than you do, so they help out. They want the best for you. If they love you, they want the best for you. So, you want to make sure your experts are really on your side, whether it be you’re starting a company or whether it be your product that you want to do.

Again, I had this group that had to have at least six people in it that would analyze your project and give you their opinion of that project, and you had to get unanimous agreement among your 16 members or the project wouldn’t go. We called it the product definition committee. So again, whether you’re running a company or starting a project or finding a spouse, get some people around you you trust that will give you guidance that will help you decide on the value of what you’re doing.

Rob Artigo: Outline the project scope and SMART objectives. I don’t know, maybe that one’s a little too esoteric for us. Outline the project scope. Let’s go with that. I guess understanding what the objective is.

Ray Zinn: Well, we did, we talked about that just prior, so then maybe that’s one we’re just going to kind of glean over a gloss over because it is very similar to what we just talked about. Have the right goal in mind when you go into a relationship or a product or a company, make sure your goals match.

Rob Artigo: And then bouncing off of that is set your expectations carefully.

Ray Zinn: That’s an interesting, that goes back again, this all could be summarized down to its pros and cons, okay? You have to expect difficulty, you have to expect challenges. What happens, Rob, is we expect everything to go hunky door, everything to be perfect, wonderful, nothing ever to happen, everything ever to go wrong, but that’s just nonsense. Anybody that’s lived more than 12 years knows that you’re going to have difficulties, okay? And that’s just the nature of life mortality is that you’re going to run into problems. So, when you manage your expectations, make sure they include the cons, the reasons that things will fail, then you’re ready. You’re prepared. So, that’s the main thing, is to be prepared. That’s the scout motto, isn’t it? Be prepared. So, you want to get prepared for whatever happens. It is really the ones that fail are the ones that are just not prepared or for problems, and so they’re not managing their expectations because they’re ignoring the difficulties that they’re going to experience.

Rob Artigo: Again, that’s forbes.com. I’ll just tell you it’s Expert Insights 20 Tech Leaders Share Lessons From Difficult Projects, so if you want to check that out, go ahead. Thanks again, Forbes. Appreciate it. This is the fast-growing podcast for Silicon Valley. A lot of people are listening to it and we’d like you to rate it at your favorite podcast platform. Please also check out Ray’s books, the Zen of Zinn 1, 2, and 3. Also, Tough Things First. I look forward to the next time, Ray.

Ray Zinn: I do too. Thanks, Rob.

The ups and downs you feel about how quickly or slowly you are getting ahead are not imaginary, but if you are waiting for some magic, government, pixie dust, for a boost out of a downturn well… In this podcast, Ray Zinn ponders the question, should you be relying on the government or yourself for your prosperity?

Rob Artigo: Well, there is this term floating around lately called Unleash Prosperity. There are actually these committees, these nonprofit groups that have popped up to go around and promote Unleash Prosperity. I think it’s really just a money generating scheme in many cases, but they call it Unleash Prosperity, and it sounds really positive and optimistic, and the idea is how to help the government make you prosperous. Give me an idea what you think about this. I know you wrote a little bit about it, so give me some thoughts.

Ray Zinn: Unleashing prosperity is really something you have to do for yourself, otherwise you’re relying on the government to help you become prosperous. So again, the focus should be unleashing your prosperity, not unleashing prosperity kind of “general prosperity.” If we’re going to be successful, we have to take control of our own prosperity.

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Ai continues to make headlines and alter the way we think about art and plagiarism, and even the law. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn discusses the diverging lines between what is your creative endeavor and what has no copyright at all. (What we discuss here is anecdotal, based on news reports, and should not be construed as legal advance. Always, consult a lawyer.) 

Rob Artigo: Well, as a writer, the subject of copyright comes up, something that’s copyrighted, and plagiarism has been in the news a lot lately-

Ray Zinn: Yes. Big time, yeah.

Rob Artigo: … and defining what plagiarism is. And I wonder, when I’m looking at AI, where does AI get its content? If I create an AI-generated article, apparently, it can’t be copyrighted, but where does the material come from?

Ray Zinn: Well, AI is really a buzzword that it’s getting a lot of press. There’s a lot of concern about it. Just the other day, the government was getting concerned about AI chips going into China, and they’ve had to modify the capability of the AI chip, like what we do when we’re talking about a GPS. The military, they have GPS that goes down to a couple, two or three feet.

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Covid is still affecting the work place and what other trends might we see in 2024. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn Discusses when he expects most people will be back in the office. (Click here for the video.)

Rob Artigo: Welcome to the Tough Things First podcast, your indispensable source for business, leadership and life advice with the longest-serving CEO in Silicon Valley history. I’m your guest host, Rob Artigo. And he’s Ray Zinn. Good morning, Ray.

Ray Zinn: Hey. How you doing there, Rob? Good to be with you again.

Rob Artigo: Good, good, good. Good to see you.

Ray Zinn: Thank you.

Rob Artigo: Well, COVID is mostly in the rear view mirror now, but the fallout apparently lingers. We still have-

Ray Zinn: Oh, man.

Rob Artigo: We still have a lot of people working from home, remote working. And I know that there is… I mean, some big companies, Facebook and Apple and other companies. It’s a big push to try to get a lot of people to get back into the office, in some cases requiring people to get back into the office. And some people are still balancing a little home, a little work. What do you think, Ray? In 2024, are we going to see more work-from-home? Or is it going to start tapering off?

Ray Zinn: Well, it’s tapering off now, actually.

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“Divide and conquer,” is a frequently used term and almost as frequently misused when unity is what you’re really after. In this Tough Things First podcast, Ray Zinn talks about how a winning team in business or on the playing field is one that focuses on what unites, not what divides.

Rob Artigo: I’m Rob Artigo, your guest host for this edition of the Tough Things First podcast where I get a chance to talk with Ray Zinn, as noted, the longest serving CEO in Silicon Valley. And that’s for good reason. He’s been there, he’s done that. Hi Ray. It’s good to be back.

Ray Zinn: Hi, Rob. Yeah, thanks. Making me blush here buddy.

Rob Artigo: Well, good. Divide and conquer. I was kind of looking at the history of this, and this is the tactic Julius Caesar used 22 centuries ago, but he wasn’t the first person to do it. So divide your enemies up and conquer them. And in modern times we’ve gotten to this notion of divide and conquer meaning I have to take my team and divide my team up into smaller groups and then I can conquer. You’re saying that that is not helpful logic?

Ray Zinn: Well, that’s going back to the silos.

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