Why Wikipedia Works When Trust Is Declining Everywhere Else | Jimmy Wales

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on how Wikipedia, despite the general decline in social trust, has become a reliable and radical platform for knowledge sharing by fostering a culture of mutual trust among its contributors. Jimmy Wales emphasizes that the foundation of Wikipedia's success lies in the belief that establishing trust is essential to creating a collaborative and thriving community, which challenges conventional narratives about trust and credibility in the digital age.

Key takeaways

• Trust is a two-way street; give it to receive it back in spades.
• Wikipedia's journey from perceived absurdity to essential resource highlights society's evolving thirst for reliable information.
• Breaking trust isn't the end—restoration is possible; it just demands authenticity.
• Radical ideas are often dismissed until they redefine our reality, much like Wikipedia changed knowledge sharing.
• A love for diverse knowledge can spark revolutionary projects—sometimes, it starts with stickers in childhood encyclopedias.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Ryan Hawk (Host) · 25 min speaking
• Jimmy Wales (Guest) · 38 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 10:00: World Book Encyclopedia, New Pedia, Encyclopedia Americana, Jeremy Rosenfeld
2. 10:00 – 20:00: The Seven Rules of Trust, Robert Merton
3. 20:00 – 30:00: The Seven Rules of Trust
4. 40:00 – 50:00: Airbnb, Harry S. Truman
5. 50:00 – 1:00:00: The Seven Rules of Trust
6. 1:00:00 – 1:03:05: The Seven Rules of Trust

Notable quotes from "Why Wikipedia Works When Trust Is Declining Everywhere Else | Jimmy Wales"

• Jimmy, man, it's awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show.

  about Jimmy Wales · at 1:16

• The thing would come in. But you know loving the encyclopedia and of course later I found out about Encyclopedia Americana which was another brand and encyclopedia bratannica…

  about Encyclopedia Britannica · at 3:10

• And you had to send in your CV showing you were qualified and so forth before you could write anything. It wasn't working at all. we had very slow progress, not much coming out and I was really on the verge of giving up. I'm well, I, like I.

  about New Pedia · at 4:58

• Do this and just before this lovely guy Jeremy had one of my employees, Jeremy Rosenfeld, he had shown me this wiki thing he that we'd seen online and it was Oh, this is…

  about Jeremy Rosenfeld · at 6:00

• Recently won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in option pricing theory and I thought oh well great I mean I can write a short biography of him and as soon as I started…

  about Robert Merton · at 10:28

• And one of the things that he writes about he wrote about in one of his recent books was about making the trust wager. So you can either kind of show up cynical.

  about Good to Great · at 24:38

• They said, Look, we screwed this up.

  about Airbnb · at 41:44

• You talk to me more about that rule number seven and being transparent and how that builds? you talk about Harry Truman and Eisenhower and how that goes in the book, but h how is transparency or why is transparency so important?

  about Harry S. Truman · at 44:34

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Jimmy Wales — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions
  Central interview subject discussing the founding of Wikipedia, trust as a design principle, and lessons from his book on trust.
• Robert Merton — Person · Referenced expert / example subject of early Wikip · 1 mention · first at 11:15
  Used as an illustrative example of how intimidating expert-gated publishing felt versus the low-friction, iterative editing model of Wikipedia.
• Harry S. Truman — Person · Referenced historical leader (book example) · 1 mention · first at 44:38
  Cited in connection with the episode’s discussion of transparency and trust in leadership (as referenced by the host).
• Dr. Moheit Kira — Person · 3 mentions
• Jeremy Rosenfeld — Person · 1 mention · first at 6:07

Books & papers

• The Seven Rules of Trust — Book · Primary recommendation · 5 mentions · first at 17:16
  Jimmy Wales' book discussed as a blueprint for building trust in various contexts, including business and personal relationships.
  Oh my god, is he trying to tell us something? Is this a symbolic? what is it? The rules of trust aren't just like a lot of good words.
• World Book Encyclopedia — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at 1:30
  Early influence on Jimmy Wales, sparking his interest in encyclopedias and knowledge sharing.
  You're three years old. Your mom buys you a World Book Encyclopedia from a door-todoor salesman. And I read that young Jimmy became obsessed with those volumes and you even updated them. Te.
• Good to Great — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions
  Mentioned in the context of making the trust wager, illustrating the importance of leading with trust.
• Encyclopedia Britannica — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions
  Mentioned as a well-known encyclopedia brand that influenced Jimmy Wales during his childhood.
• Encyclopedia Americana — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 3:15
  Mentioned as another encyclopedia brand that influenced Jimmy Wales during his childhood.
  The thing would come in. But you know loving the encyclopedia and of course later I found out about Encyclopedia Americana which was another brand and encyclopedia bratannica…

Companies & orgs

• New Pedia — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 9:00
  Predecessor to Wikipedia, mentioned to contrast its top-down approach with Wikipedia's open model.
• Airbnb — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at 40:28
  Example of a company that successfully rebuilt trust after initial failures, discussed in the context of trust rules.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 The ideal encyclopedia should be radical. It should stop being safe. To get trust, give trust. If you say to someone, I trust you. That actually creates a mood in that person. It creates a willingness to trust back and to live up to that trust.

0:15 Your daughter Kira's birth, she's born and faced some challenges that actually helped spur you to want to create Wikipedia. But we had a group of people who were excited and and loved the vision, you know, a free encyclopedia for everybody. Given that Wikipedia went from this completely crazy idea that nobody could believe and kind of considered to be a joke to one of the things people trust and that actually turns out to be quite important in this era of really rather unpleasant social media.

0:47 How active are you updating, creating new articles? It's too big a deal if I go in and edit something. So too many people are like, "Oh my god, is he trying to tell us something? Is this a symbolic?" You know, what is it? The rules of trust aren't just like a lot of good words. You actually have to walk the walk. It's a common kind of saying is once you've broken trust, that's it. You can never get it back. But no, is it really true? No, it's actually not true.

1:10 Wikipedia on the other hand begins with a very radical idea. Jimmy, man, it's awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

1:20 Great to be here. Thank you. So, let's go back a few years to 1969. You're three years old. Your mom buys you a World Book Encyclopedia from a door-todoor salesman. And I read that young Jimmy became obsessed with those volumes and you even updated them. Te tell me about this time. You're only three years old and you're already creating Wikipedia then. Oh, well, I don't I don't think I did any updating when I was three. Um I I was uh only learning to read when I was four, so uh I don't know. Probably I looked at some pictures when I was three, but um yeah. Well, I mean it's it's kind of a joke really, but the the World Book Encyclopedia uh it was quite common to sell to parents uh door-to-d dooror salespeople. And of course, if you buy it when your kids's three because you're all excited about, you know, the future, then in a few years time, some of the articles are out of date. And so they would send out the

2:21 annual update. So once a year, you would get the, you know, the 1974 update. And then they would sometimes update articles. So for example, they had to update the article on the moon because we had had the moon landing. Uh, and so then they would give you these stickers and you could go through the uh, you know, the stickers and it would say you put it in next to moon. you would put C update in 1974 uh annual. So I would do that with my mom. Uh and so I always joke that was my first uh update of the encyclopedia.

2:52 How did that experience in obsessing over revising it impact you as you grew up?

3:01 Well, I mean that was it didn't seem that important at the time because I didn't know I was going to do this. So it was just a a thing. I did look forward to it every year when the when the thing would come in. But you know loving the encyclopedia and of course later I I found out about Encyclopedia Americana which was another brand and encyclopedia bratannica which everybody knows. um because World Book is really for kids and these are you know the more adult encyclopedias but just loving that idea that you could go and look anything up that you're interested in and uh you know as as a kid uh you know you you didn't know anything about anything really so you would be like oh tigers I wish I knew more about tigers and you go and you look and like oh great there's a whole article about tigers I'm going to read that so um I think that early love of you know quite random diverse knowledge uh is part of what's uh you

3:55 know meant I would enjoy working on an encyclopedia. So let's fast forward a few years to your daughter Kira's birth. I am Am I pronouncing her name right? Kira.

4:05 Kira. Yeah. Kira. So she's born and faced some challenges immediately right as as she's born and your doctor comes to you saying Jimmy to you and Kira's mom, hey we we we want to do this. I don't know if it's an experiment, but but a different type of procedure that could potentially help her. And you're in the hospital scrambling around. I don't know how am I supposed to make this decision. I don't have the necessary information. Right. And and and so can you walk me through that experience and how that actually helped spur you to want to create Wikipedia?

4:43 Yeah. So at that time uh we had been working on newia which was a predecessor project which wasn't that innovative uh really it was uh you know we we would recruit academics uh to write articles um and you had to send in your your CV showing you were qualified and so forth before you could write anything. It wasn't working at all. Uh we had very very slow progress, not much coming out and I was really on the verge of giving up. I'm like, well, I, you know, like I can't afford to see this through. Uh, at this rate, it's going to be, you know, forever before we get anywhere.

5:21 And then, you know, when Kira was born and I just realized like actually, you know, you you go on the internet and you've got a question like, you know, what is this condition my daughter have? Should I have this treatment? Like, what do I need to learn quickly? And there just it wasn't there. uh you know the only things there were either you know sort of random blogs and things like that or academic journal articles you might be able to find which were way above my head you know as they often can be which means I could read it but would I really come to a a good understanding probably not I don't have the context so uh you know so I was just like you know what we got to get this done we got to do this and uh just before this uh lovely guy Jeremy um had one of my employees, Jeremy Rosenfeld, he had shown me this um wiki thing he that we'd seen online and it was like, "Oh, this is interesting. It's just like a website

6:17 and anybody can edit it." And I'm like, "Oh, you know what? Maybe we could use that because clearly this top down approach with a sevenstage review process before you publish anything, that's no fun and nobody's doing it and maybe there's a better way and we've got to try something." So, put it up. So Kira was born on uh December 26th and I opened Wikipedia on January 15th.

6:42 Wow. Um and you know I just downloaded this open-source uh wiki software use mod wiki it was called. And uh just installed it. It was a Pearl script. It was quite simple. And um you know we we called it Wikipedia because we were afraid the new academics that were all very serious academics were like well they're going to freak out. they're not going to like this because it's just too wide open. Uh, turns out a lot of them did like it. Like nobody really had a a problem with it. And um yeah, and it it took off quite quickly, but partly because we had spent two years trying to get this newia thing off the ground. And so we had a group of people who were excited and and loved the vision, you know, a free encyclopedia for everybody that, you know, particularly at this time I would say this was sort of the height of the dot frenzy and uh you know, all kinds of crazy stuff were going on and people just thought, "Yeah,

7:36 this sounds great. We should have this." So, so do you think initially one of the biggest differences is what created why Wikipedia took off and new media didn't? Meaning it was a speed thing because I'm thinking back to then or to just in general when you think of ideas, hey, let's have strangers drive you around in cars obviously where no one would ever do that. That won't work. And that works, right? Let's just have anyone be able to edit, update, right? Publish and and that be kind of seen as facts. That will never work. Of course not. And yet here we are. Right. So, so I would just love to hear your mindset turn like did you even have doubts of wait a second anybody could edit it? Are we sure we want to do this? Why would anyone trust that? Well, we're going to talk all about trust today. Why would anyone trust this thing that anybody can go up and literally write whatever they want?

8:27 Yeah, totally. I mean so certainly in the very beginning uh you know we had this small community very eager people and I was like you know let's just put it up let's just start sketching around start to write stuff clearly we thought obviously we're going to have to have uh some mechanism we're going to have to figure out who like who's the editorinchief of the chemistry section right you're going to have to have some kind of authority and hierarchies and so on and so forth and so just assumed that that would happen. But then because of the experience of New Pedia, which did have sort of very top- down structure, I thought, well, let's just not have too much structure for as long as possible.

9:10 And if we need to solve a problem by adding in some structure, then we we'll do that. But for now, let's just get started. Like, we've got a lot of good people. They're trustworthy people. I've known them for a couple years online, and they're, you know, ready to get stuff done. And it's also fun. Like I I knew from very early on it was really fun. Like you could there was a point in time when you could be the first person to to like create a page, you know, Paris. You would just write maybe Paris is the capital of France. And you hit save and you're like, "Wow, look at that. That's amazing." It's not much of an encyclopedia article obviously, but it was fun. You know, it's like, "Oh, like we can just start documenting whatever we know." And so people started just doing all kinds of stuff. And then some people would go dig in and like write a really long article. And other people would just go around sort of

9:59 saying, "Oh, let's add let's add a short entry for every country in the world or you know something like that." And so it was immediately apparent and part of this was I had been working before this I had been working on a PhD in finance and I therefore knew a lot. I'd worked in Chicago in the in the markets and I had published a paper on uh option pricing theory and I thought oh well look Robert Mertton had recently won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in option pricing theory and I thought oh well great I mean I can write a short biography of him and as soon as I started it was like this heavy heavy weight because I knew they were going to take my first draft and send it to the most prestigious finance professors they could find to give me feedback and notes.

10:48 And suddenly it was very intimidating. It was very hard. It's like, "Oh my god, I feel like I'm back in grad school again or I got to turn in this thing and professors are going to, you know, critique it." And I it's just no fun. Like that doesn't sound like fun. Like grad school is not fun. Like you do it because you've got this objective at the end and you may do it because the subject matter is interesting, but that piece of it, right, sort of being judged for your work and all that that that not fun. So instead, you know, you could just write um Robert Merton, you know, is an economist. He works at the UN University. He won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on option pricing there. You write a few facts down and you hit save and it's not very good yet.

11:28 But you know what was cool is that you go back a few days later and you see, oh, somebody somebody dug in and they added more information and they added the titles of some of his papers and d and so that element has always been really important. That element of is it fun? Like do you enjoy the activity? Do you meet interesting people? Is it a nice place to be? And that actually turns out to be quite important in this era of really rather unpleasant social media. Um, you know, which I know I have been as much of a a Twitter addict as anybody, although I pretty much try to stay off of it for the most part these days. But is it fun? Well, I mean, it's only fun in the sense of, you know, you got to correct all these idiots or that sort of aggressive fun. Actually, no.

12:18 you're not really, you know, feeling good about things. And, you know, I always say, you know, you you spend one afternoon, you've picked some topic in Wikipedia, you found a shorter entry that wasn't very good, and you added a few facts, and you read a couple of articles, and then you're like, okay, well, that was kind of cool. But then you also think, you know what, the world's just ever so slightly better. Like, somebody's going to read that, and I'm glad. Like, that's cool. The when you create this environment though with a lot of freedom, independence, trust,

12:52 unfortunately there are bad actors in the world. And even though we lead with trust, which I do, and we're again, we'll go even deeper on this in a second.

13:03 And I love giving trust before it's earned as do you and as you did have done with Wikipedia. But how do you manage the bad actors? How do you manage the people that for whatever reason they're cynics and they just don't want to see things work or they like to enrage, right? Like it like Twitter uh the algorithms and how they're created. They incentivize that which really bums me out because I feel like it did used to be an amazing place um to learn. How do you deal with the bad actors in the world? How do you deal with the ones who don't lead with trust?

13:34 The ones who don't deserve your trust even though you're willing to give it before they've earned it.

13:40 Yeah. I mean I what what I think you have to do and it this kind of applies in real life.

13:46 Um and in fact one way to even sort of help yourself think about it is think about how you normally act in real life. And you know as we know uh you know out of every take a thousand people you know probably a small handful of them are going to be really annoying right they're just annoying. They're probably not actually bad actors. They're probably not actively malicious. They're just like, "Oh my god, this person's really annoying, but that's all right, you know, whatever. It takes all kinds and and so forth." But it's really rare to have somebody who's actually malicious, actually super problematic, at least in the default assumption. And so the idea of assume good faith, as we call it in Wikipedia, that you know, as you say, extending trust first as a starter uh before it's been earned, right? you don't approach people with with a sense of mistrust. Um, it's conditional, right? You you extend that

14:43 that sort of friendly hand of trust and if the person proves themselves to be super problematic, then you've got to not be naive. You got to deal with it. So, in Wikipedia's context, it's like, you know, if you come into Wikipedia and you vandalize, uh, hopefully the first thing that happens is you just get a little note on your talk page saying, you know, knock it off. like, hey, that's not what we do here. You know, I saw your vandalism. If you do it more, you're going to get blocked, but you know, why don't you do something better? And, you know, that often works really well. I mean, we tell the story in the book of uh uh Kana um who's a great Wikipedian who when she was uh very young, she her first edit to Wikipedia was vandalism. And then somebody was nice to her after she vandalized Wikipedia. and she felt so bad that she kind of uh she realized at some point she needed to sort of make it

15:34 up and uh became this great Wikipedian who uh really has been a driving force in you know writing about female scientists and and uh getting more people excited about that subject matter. So the assumed good faith is actually quite practical. It's to say like, okay, look, probably most people, even somebody who's done something, you know, wrong. They're they're either mistaken or they're young and just having a lark or whatever. They're probably not horrible people. Then eventually, you know, there are people who you just have to block and you just have to say, you know what, you're not here to build an encyclopedia. And you know, it's fine if if what you want to do is get in massive arguments and yell at people. You know, I don't know if you've heard of Elon Musk, but he's got this great website for yelling at people. It's right over there called X.

16:21 Just go knock yourself out. It's a great spot. Uh but if you want to write an encyclopedia, and if you're feeling better after a few days, you know, come on back and yeah, let's let's get let's get going.

16:31 Uh maybe a weird question. How active are you on like updating, creating new articles, fixing ones that where maybe they're a little off? Like h are you active at all? A lot.

16:42 Not not zero, but not that much. Uh I probably should do it more. And the main reason I should do it more is because it it's it's too big a deal if I go in and edit something. So too many people are like, "Oh my god, what's Jimbo doing?" And that's what they call me Jimbo. I'm like, "Is he trying to tell us something? Is this a symbolic?" you know, what is it? You know, it's like, no, I'm just I just saw something I wanted to edit, you know. Uh, but yeah, sometimes I do. I used to do it more, but I'm actually very busy right now with the the launch of my book coming up, which uh we've been implicitly talking about. I don't think we've actually mentioned it yet.

17:16 Yes, the seven rules of trust. I want to get to these seven rules in a second, but I do want to go to um back to that time right after Kira was born.

17:23 So, it was shortly after. And um interesting thing about trust of when you launched it. So in 2001, roughly 50% of Americans said that they trusted the federal government to do what is right always or most of the time. In this this is heartbreaking. In 2023, that number went from half to 16%.

17:52 Man, what what happened? What what why I mean maybe that takes two hours to explain, but what happened?

17:59 It does. is I mean and that first number I I just heard you say it and I remember from the book but make sure I got it right. That's 2000.

18:08 Yeah. Well, you wrote 2001 in the book, but 2001 2001, right? Yeah. So, I think one of the things that's really important to say it's quite easy to look at a number like that and go uh Donald Trump uh you know like Donald Trump he you know he says things he contradicts himself he contradicts facts all of these things. But I think that's too that's a little bit lazy, right? Because these are actually longer term trends. And in fact, the the cause and effect between uh politicians, and I don't just mean Donald Trump, I mean a lot of politicians who aren't trustworthy, as it turns out, and our lack of trust and this decline of trust in society. Those actually are causes of each other, right? In other words, why do we put up with uh politicians who we don't trust?

18:59 Like, why on earth would you vote for a politician you don't trust? And, you know, many times you look at an election, you're like, I don't trust either of these characters, you know. Um, and so, you know, it's it's it's too simple to lay it at the hands of any one person or anyone event. And I think it has to do with a lot of things. There are a lot of different elements uh that have led to it. I mean, um, you know, one of the things that's happened is the the business model of journalism got really really hard. Still is really really hard. And so, you know, the traditional model for the your your local newspaper, you know, it was pretty straightforward. Uh, you write the paper, you've got these different sources of revenue. You've got your subscriptions, uh, you know, to get the paper delivered. You've got your classified ads and you've got your display ads. So those three pillars, you

19:53 know, good strong business model, you could afford to do journalism. The journalism brought in readers. All of this is like it it all worked. And then pretty quickly, right, the classified ads went away completely that, you know, you you've got eBay, you got Craigslist, you know, I don't think anybody thinks, you know, uh I mean, I remember when I was uh 16 in Alabama and I'm like, I've got a few bucks from my parents. I'm going to buy a car. And you go to the classified ads in the newspaper and you look for us. Nobody shops that way anymore. The classified ads don't exist.

20:28 And then subscriptions. Oh, guess what? Yep. I get my news online. I get it for free. Or if I pay for something, I'm probably not paying for the local paper, right? I'm probably paying for the New York Times or a magazine or some bigger publication. And then the display ads, well, they're still there, but uh you know, car dealer ads in the local grocery stores, but it's not enough money. And then therefore, the papers kind of sucks because they had to let go all the journalists. And and it just becomes like a death spiral.

21:00 And there have been some experiments and some things are working in some places. But that decline of local media that was a piece of it. I think also the um you know in more recent times uh I would say the toxicity of social media uh that's a problem. Uh the existence of those bad actors who are clearly out almost as much to just undermine trust as they are to push any particular agenda. And uh you know that um and then we also have seen going back to the journalism piece like a lot of uh news outlets have become significantly more partisan uh significantly more on the left or on the right because they're kind of trying to find a way to have uh a business model and at least with a little bit of rage headlines you can get some clicks and that gets you some money in the short run. while meanwhile possibly undermining people's trust in you in the long run. So it's not a really sustainable business model. And then of

22:06 course you know whatever we've got bad politicians who've uh you know uh you know here in the in the UK where I live now the you know quite famously it came out that uh the the there's this really emotionally touching picture of the queen when her husband died. So, Prince Philip died and she's there in Westminster Abbey for the funeral and literally she's sitting alone. They've got all the seats around her cleared because they didn't want the queen to get co obviously and so you're like, "Wow, I mean this is tough. She her family is not around her. Um, and you know, she was pretty isolated during that time in the palace. They they were really careful with her." Um and then what came out was well at Downing Street the night before they were having a party against all the rules that they had imposed on the country. So you're kind of like yeah okay this is not okay you know this is not they're not

23:08 behaving in a trustworthy manner. Uh and that just undermines people's confidence in the government and that's the UK government. So the the trend you know you you mentioned the the polling data for the US. actually more global than that and it's not everywhere but um you know it's it's quite common. And so my sense uh and this is part of the motivation for writing the book is like let's not let's not forget what we've lost. Let's try and bring back a culture of trust. Let's try to hold people accountable. Let's try to find the ways of rebuilding trust in society. And you know given that Wikipedia went from this completely crazy idea that nobody could believe and kind of consider to be a joke to one of the things people trust uh not perfectly and they shouldn't trust it perfectly and and you know Wikipedia's got its problems and things like that but broadly people are like yeah you know what Wikipedia is all

24:01 right like there's a lot of stuff out there that's definitely not all right but Wikipedia is all right that you know they're doing their best and uh and that's really good and so now how do we spread that spirit? everywhere

24:13 and and that's what I think the seven rules of trust your latest book could help with. So let's let's let's get personal and then also talk about how this could work on a grander scale. So uh I'm going to go through like uh conversations I have had. So I got lucky to meet with um Jim Collins, the author of Good to Gray and Great by Choice. He's one of my heroes uh many years ago. And um one of the things that he writes about he wrote about in one of his recent books was about making the trust wager. So you can either kind of show up cynical forcing people to make uh go through all these hoops in order to uh for you to trust them or you can just trust them from the start without making them do anything. and he he argues that it's it's just it's a more enjoyable, better life to make that trust wager even though every once in a while you get burned. And so I I I try to live that way. Like meaning like if I meet you for

25:13 the first time, I trust you. If I hire you, if I'm working with you, if uh even with my keynote speaking business or or all that, I I send invoices after I'm done. Uh expenses, everything's afterwards. Like I don't make people pay in advance. I trust you, right? we we we we don't have a contract, but we just made an agreement that I'm going to come work for you for a little bit and you're going to pay me. And I've never been burned. Honestly, never been burned. And when I bring that up to some people, some who may be a little bit more cynical, they say, "Oh, just wait.

25:42 You'll change. Maybe you get a little bit older. May maybe you have a little bit more life repetitions. You'll you'll turn on that. You will change your mind once you've lived enough life." And I'm like, I think I've lived enough life. You know, I'm over 40 years old. I've lived enough life and I don't want that to be true. I don't think that it's true. I don't feel like when I read the seven rules of trust, I don't think you think that's true.

26:05 So, what do you think? What do you say to those cynics who look at me like I'm some little kid because I I think it's good to lead with trust or good to let them pay afterwards because I trust that they'll do it even though we don't we don't have a contract. It's just their word. What What do you say to them? Yeah, I mean I there's a there's a couple of things to say. So, uh first of all, I think most of those people uh when they go to a steakhouse, a restaurant with steaks, and they sit right next to complete strangers who got deadly weapons in their hands, uh sort of aggressively sawing on some meat, they trust that those people aren't going to stab them, right? Uh you know, like we do trust people every day. Every time you every time you get in a car and you're driving down the street, you've got a huge amount of trust in all the people around you driving their cars and that they for whatever reason,

27:00 self-interest, uh but also just being be decent human beings, they aren't going to crash into you. Now, obviously crashes happen, obviously bad drivers happen. But broadly, if we if we think about it as that wager, right, the odds are good, the odds are in your favor. But I think there's a deeper point and that's you know one of the one of the rules that we come up with in in the book seven rules of trust is uh to get trust give trust and actually one of the things about giving trust if you if you say to someone you know like I trust you just that act of saying I trust you or you know in in not every context is it is it does it make clear uh I mean you don't always have to say it out loud.

27:45 It's kind of obvious in most cases, but in those cases where you say, you know what, I trust you. Uh, you know, I I know uh many people wouldn't in this context, but I trust you. That actually creates a mood in that person. It creates a willingness to trust back and to live up to that trust. You kind of break that expectation, that cynicism, and you're like, most people are like, great, you trust me. You know, so employees you mentioned, right? If you've got a new employee, that is a good time to sit down and say, you know, like, okay, first day on the job, and let me tell you what kind of manager I am. I'm not going to be on your back all the time. I'm not going to be micromanaging every single thing you do because I trust you. I trust you're going to you're going to give it your best. I trust you're going to make judgment calls. You know what? You're new. You're going to make some errors,

28:35 but I'm going to trust that you're going to do it as best you can. Make an error, that's all right. You know what? you're learning and I'll be okay with that and you violate my trust, right? Uh then we're going to have a different story, but that's where we're going to start from is you're going to have autonomy. You're going to be treated as a proper human being and I trust you're going to do a great job for me. I mean, most people would die to have a boss like that. Like that's fantastic, right?

28:59 Doesn't that sound so basic though? Like that sounds like it's so basic. So basic obviously that's what we should do. It's obvious. You know what I mean?

29:06 Go Yeah. go sort of randomly looking through Reddit, right? And you'll see a lot of people, you know, sort of people talking about the company they work for or the boss they work for, and they've got a really negative attitude. And I think in some cases, they need to work on their own attitude. But in other cases, they've got that attitude because they've got a boss who's basically a jerk. And you know, it's sort of like, you know, like uh well, you know, like they're putting spyw wear on my computer because they don't trust me to work from home without spying on all my clicks. I mean, that's just a ridiculous practice.

29:44 And in the short run, you know, in the short run, yeah, you probably people sit up straight and they get the job done a little bit better. In the long run, they're all, you know, the minute they log out at the end of the day, they're logging to a personal computer and they're looking for a job because they're like, "These people aren't treating me like a proper person, so this isn't okay." So that that to get back to your question, like it's partly it's like it's a good bet. Like most people are basically decent. Um, but it also creates that environment where trustworthy behavior is rewarded and people love that. and and you know as a boss like what you know wouldn't it be fantastic if you know you feel like in any position like I actually I've got to go off and do this other thing but I I just trust my people are so good they're going to just crack on with the work right they're going to make judgment

30:37 calls sometimes they'll make a call I would have made it differently that's okay they're smart sometimes they're going to get better than I did you know brilliant that's exactly what you want in any kind of organization and to build that kind of culture rather than a low trust culture. I mean, it's I think it's really a recipe for success.

30:56 It sounds so basic, but it it takes me back to a moment uh earlier in my career. I was VP of sales at a big company, Jimmy, and um uh I the boss that hired me got fired and they brought in somebody else and it was he was there for a few few months at this time and uh one of my I had an open position in one of my management roles. So I was both looking for a new manager as well as that person had open positions like as sales reps. And so I was doing both. I was like acting manager to hire sales reps and looking for a manager. And I made an offer to as a VP of sales, you know, running a 500 million plus revenue organization. I made an offer to a a rep who didn't have as much experience as we would normally like, but was brilliant.

31:37 Like had all of the athlete work ethic, super smart, did had had it all. like checked every box except for the experienced one. I offered him in writing. HR signed off the whole deal. And he he came back to me and and looked at it and said, "He doesn't he doesn't have enough experience. You you you can't you can't offer that guy." I go, "What are you what are you talking about?" I go, "Well, I already did. So, we're past that point." And then he goes, "No, he didn't have enough experience. You you can't offer him." I go, "Have you did you talk to him? Did you see him? Did you?" And he goes, "No, I don't need to." He didn't have no experience. And I said, blank, his name, you have to trust me. I'm telling you, this this is this is a good hire. I believe in it with every ounce of my being. And he goes, I'll never ever forget this moment, Jimmy. He goes, you haven't earned my trust. Reig on the

32:25 offer. I go, I can't reig on the offer. I'm That's not I gave him my word. I It's in writing. Anyway, long story short, that moment when somebody looks you dead in the eye and says, you haven't earned my trust. I knew at that time that very day I went home and talked to my wife I'm not going to be in this job for long and I voluntar voluntarily left um after it you know I had to I had to put in some more time but it voluntarily left as pretty much as soon as I could because of that exact moment. That's that's the destruction it can have to be a cynical non I mean it's getting me fired up just thinking about it. You could probably tell just the moment of being a doing the opposite of what you just said. It makes to me absolutely no sense.

33:10 Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And we, you know, we generally understand it in some context but somehow forget it in other contexts. uh you know and I think part of it is uh you know let's say in the context of uh social media toxic social media the whole culture is so degraded there that you know you probably are right to assume anybody that's sort of pops up and yells at you you probably can't have a conversation with them because whatever it's just a bad environment but outside of those kind of edge cases you know usually basically people are pretty decent I I also think there's an element element of this that is also relevant in in parenting.

33:53 Uh because we all know uh of people who have bad parents or had bad parents, you know, who didn't trust them and then because they aren't trust I mean, you know, I I I think everybody's heard a teenager say, you know, well, it doesn't matter what I do, they're going to think the worst anyway, so I might as well do the bad thing, you know? And it's just like, wow, like that's really bad. Like that's really unfortunate. As opposed to, you know, again, sort of almost like that first day employee who's who's a a young person just starting, but to say to your teenager like, "Yeah, all right.

34:33 You know, you want to you asked you want to go out, you're going to go out and stay a little bit later than than before. Yeah, I want you to do that and um I trust you, but you got to, you know, do it the right way. show me that you can that I can trust you. you give that trust and then if you know whatever they they go out and they say well yeah I'm I just I'm telling a story from my when I was a teen actually uh you know said to my parents uh you know the the my friends are going to go and and see this movie and it doesn't get out till 10:30 and I know my curfew's 10 but you know can I stay out they're like yeah yeah you know just come home and believe me I came home right on sharp because I'm like this is my chance right to uh to actually nail this and earn brownie points and stay out till 10:30 and it's not going to be a big deal next time.

35:27 Brilliant. And then other kids are just like, "Yeah, well my parent 10:00 curfew, you know, f them." And they're like, "I'm going to stay out till midnight and see what they can do about." Well, they could do a lot about it, right? And they don't trust you then. And so that kind of thing of like in any family situation probably their parents didn't say I trust you. The apprentice was probably like on their case the whole time. Anytime you can just go, you know what? I I want you to live up to it. You know, I think I think you can do it. I I trust you. You're going to do the right thing. You know, make me proud.

36:00 Yeah. It's powerful. You're you're a dad of three daughters, correct? That's right. Yeah. So, so I'm I'm with you as also a dad of daughters that you I I lead with trust. I openly use that exact phrase. I lead with trust. I trust you. I trust you. Now,

36:17 different all all the all of them have different personalities in different ways. They they push the limits, right? I'm sure the same with your three. Like just because they're related to you doesn't mean they're going to be all the same. In fact, they're like the opposite in some cases. So, what how do you handle it when you lead with trust? You give trust

36:35 and they break it and they do something to go against it. This is to me I think one of the hardest parts of being a dad

36:43 is is you you lead with it, you give it and then it's broken. It's really really tough. How do you manage that?

36:52 Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think there's a there's a there's a couple of things to look at actually in that question is one how how do you manage it as the parent, but also what advice would I give to a to a teenager in that situation? How do they manage it? Like they've done they've done the thing, they broke the trust, right? Presumably there's going to be consequences for that. How how should they think about rebuilding the trust, right? Most of it's really basic stuff. You know, I think as a parent, hopefully you've sort of outlined, first of all, you've outlined a reasonable set of parameters, right? And so you're not saying, you know what, you're 16 years old, your curfew is 5:00 p.m., you know, and you can't call your friends like, no, you you create a draconian household. Then clearly you're going to have a lot of problems. But you've got reasonable rules and you know reasonable privileges and there will be levers to

37:45 pull and things like that and to say you know what like next time the answer is going to be no, right? You you violated my trust. You you went out with your friends, you came home drunk, right? And so there's going to be a period of time when you tell me you're going to go out with your friends and I'm like I don't want you coming home drunk. Maybe I'm just not going to let you go. Like maybe that's just not okay. You've disappointed me. That's actually the most terrifying and powerful word that a dad can say is I'm I'm disappointed here. I I trusted you and you didn't live up to it. And that's, you know, but it's not it's none of this is oneoff stuff, right? This this has to do with building a culture at home, building a family life that's healthy. That's a lot of different pieces. I've got advice for everybody on it, but I'm not an expert like any other dad. I'm just trying to get through life like everybody, trying

38:33 to have a good family. And then for the teen, I think one of the things that so to to tie this back to the book, we got on this great side conversation about relationships and parenting, but like Francis Fry is a Harvard professor who had a huge job at at Uber for a while when they had an enormous crisis of trust. Nobody trusted them. The drivers didn't trust them. Customers were losing trust. Regulators definitely didn't have trust. And one of the things she says is that people say like it's a common kind of saying is once you've broken trust that's it you can never get it back. And that sounds plausible to us right? Oh like yeah but no is it really true? No it's actually not true. She thinks companies can rebuild trust faster than you think. Um in relationships obviously it depends on the context. uh you know if there's been infidelity in a marriage maybe getting back to trust is really

39:29 hard and impossible I don't know but every situation is different but in many many cases and I think with a teenager who's broken a rule uh done something they shouldn't have done they can rebuild trust pretty quickly and our job is to let them rebuild that trust and so if they like are genuinely say you know what I screwed this up here's why here's what happened. Um, here's what I'm going to do differently next time. And then, you know, at the end of the book, we've got the the the sort of secret eighth rule, which is we call it the meta rule because uh we we sort we even talked to the publisher about should we change it to the eight rules and but we didn't want to. Everybody agreed seven sounds really nice. I don't know, something magic about the number seven. But the A rule is basically and really do it right. The rules of trust aren't just like uh you know a lot of good words.

40:23 You actually have to walk the walk. And so if you say, you know what, I screwed up. You own that. Uh this the Airbnb story in the book is is a good case of that. We screwed up. We didn't do it right. Here's the things we're changing. Right? If it's just a press announcement and you go back to being the same as you were before, you've not actually you're not going to rebuild trust. But if you walk the walk, people will see that and they'll be like, you know what, they really screwed that up, but they saw that it was a bad move and they changed a lot in the company.

40:55 Sometimes change the CEO, whatever you have to do, you know, and that's okay then like everything is fine. So in the Airbnb example, we just talk about this sort of incident where really early in the history of Airbnb, they had uh someone rented out their apartment and they came home and it was absolutely trashed. And Airbnb handled it very badly. You know, they sort of got bad advice. They were stonewalling, didn't quite answer. You know, I you know, this is old-fashioned PR advice used to be just it's going to blow over, don't say anything, you'll make the story bigger. In this era, that's often the wrong advice. Not saying anything just means it goes viral and everybody goes crazy because you've done this thing and and not explaining yourself.

41:40 So, they just they just are like, "That's it. We're going to, you know, we're going to rip off the band-aid." They said, "Look, we screwed this up." And they did a lot. They did a lot of real things. They started, you know, uh requiring ID uh for from the people who are renting their apartments out. Seems obvious now. ID from customers, like, you know, somebody should know who this person is. you're not an anonymous person who comes and stays in my house. I need to trust you. One way I can trust you is, you know, the indemnity, the insurance basically for for the owners so that yeah, like if somebody comes in and completely trashes your house, there's a substantial insurance policy to sort you out. Okay, that's important because if it's on me, I'm definitely not letting anybody rent my house. Like that's crazy. So, it's that kind of stuff and they walk the walk. And of obviously Air Movie is massively

42:26 successful and like any big company, I'm sure somebody out there is going to be, you know, down in the comments saying, "Ah, but they did this terrible thing or whatever mistakes they've made." But broadly, that story is super valid that you you can rebuild trust, but you've got to really do the things.

42:42 Um, I feel like it's we can appreciate people who take ownership, especially when something goes wrong or when they've made a mistake. I think that that that's just a it's it's a big deal for leaders too because so this is a show about leaders and leadership and all of us are humans and all of us are going to make mistakes.

43:03 I think the key learning here is how are you going to choose to respond when you do now hopefully you're not lying intentionally but maybe even if you do or you do something else that breaks trust

43:16 how are you going to choose to respond is a big deal. I don't expect people to perfection. I want to give people second chance. I do. Yeah.

43:26 And and you know, we want them too when we when we unfortunately mess up. Now, I think I think that's what it's all about from a leadership perspective is transparency, which you write about in the book. That's rule number seven.

43:37 Um and and making sure that you're not leaving people in the dark. One of the most frustrating things when I um I've been sports is my background. My kids play sports. And when I think about the biggest difference between the coaches they've played for and I've played for that have done really well that really I think the girls respond well to that's one of the biggest one is rule number seven is the ones that are super secretive and are really poor communicators and don't let anyone know what's happening until like the second before the game starting. Everyone just up in arms what's happening? We don't know. I don't know. and the results end up being worse versus the coaches who are overcommunicators and always let everyone know where they stand and what's happening and what's the plan. Again, this seems so basic as I'm saying it out loud, by the way, Jimmy, but that doesn't seem that hard

44:29 to be transparent and to lay it all out there and to be a good communicator. Can you talk to me more about that rule number seven and being transparent and how that builds? I mean, you talk about Harry Truman and Eisenhower and and how that goes in the book, but h how is transparency or why is transparency so important?

44:47 Yeah. I mean, well, if people can can see your workings, you know, they can see what you what you're doing and how it works and all of that, it just gives them an assurance uh in the process. I mean one of the uh things um in the world of software uh is that open- source software is incredibly transparent. Like you can download the source code and you can go through it line by line and even if you don't download it and go through it line by line which by the way most people don't because they don't know how or like who's got the time. But the fact that it is there you know that other programmers can go through it like if there's a problem you can figure it out and by and large that has given rise to like quite a lot of trust. I mean the whole internet's sort of based fundamentally on open source software and so that's really really uh powerful technique in in that field and in obviously in many

45:41 many others. It's a it's a really interesting thing because in some companies in some situations uh you know uh confidential information is also very important. So you know transparency doesn't mean oh well you're being you're being suspicious and untrustworthy if you don't tell us absolutely every single thing about every single thing because that's not necessary and it's not uh right. So it's it's about judgment calls like what can we share? Uh what would be helpful for us to share so that people can trust the whole process and all of that. Um that's that's huge. So for example like um let's say you've got a hiring process and you've got a certain set of criteria you're going to go by and blah blah blah all all this. Well, if you are using that process, you can't obviously sort of on the internal company sort of uh network share the private notes and evaluations of every single candidate.

46:45 That just wouldn't be appropriate. You know, somebody writes, you know what, actually bad attitude, whatever. Like, you don't need to share all that. Well, what do you need to share? You need to share that process. You need to say, well, here's the way we're making the decisions. Here are the things we're looking at. Uh, and then people can go, "Okay, I get it." Because otherwise it's just like, I don't know, they're hiring someone new, and then bam, somebody new here. I don't know how they got here. I don't know what choices were made. Uh, you know, go let's let's pull back in your story. Uh, had that hire worked and not not blown everything up. You might have gone out to to everybody and said, you know what, this guy's fantastic. And guess what? he has less experience than who we thought we were going to get, but we thought the these sort of attributes and being a good guy overcomes that. And

47:32 then people, they're like, "Okay, like great. I understand that." Otherwise, if you were secret, if you're like, "Oh, it's a little embarrassing that he's not that experienced. Let's not talk about his experience. Let's actually cover up that he's not that experienced." Then people are going to go, "Who's this guy? He has no experience." You know? So, it's like that kind of thing. And again, I think as you keep saying, like all of this is pretty obvious, right? It's really a lot of it's what I would call like kindergarten ethics. It's like what you know, like um one of the chapters is, you know, the title is your mother was right. You know, like the stuff you learned as a little kid about common decency and building trust is uh is actually like really important. It's actually it's correct.

48:13 Yeah. Let's let's go to maybe uh a leader of a company and I want to go to rule number three. I believe a strong clear positive purpose is a is essential for people to work together and make something wonderful. Again, these sound obvious and yet there's still a giant need for a book like this because they don't happen. We know these things, but then why not why don't we execute on them? Why don't we do them? Why why is it still so hard for people to execute on these things that seem fundamental?

48:55 Yeah, I mean it it's definitely true and I think that's part of the motivation for the book is to put this back in conversation, right? to to sort of have that open conversation to go, you know what, look, it's very easy when we look at the state of the world, uh to be just downtrodden, cynical, don't trust anybody, there's so many bad actors out there. Um there's, you know, so much uh suspicion and hostility um that the idea of of giving somebody the benefit of the doubt, right, which we all think is probably the right answer in almost all cases can get forgotten. And if we forget that, we end up in a really kind of a a dark place.

49:41 uh you know uh we uh you know it's sort of you know if you think people on the other side from you politically or people uh at your workplace or whatever it might be if you think they're fundamentally just rotten people then you're going to have a hard time listening to them. You're going to have a hard time understanding where they're coming from. you're gonna have a hard time just dealing with them in a successful manner, even for your own selfish reasons, right? Um you're not going to do the right things that make sense to people and uh and that's that's a shame and it it hurts us all in society, right? We how do we move for how do we build a more prosperous society? How do we, you know, have successful entrepreneurs, successful businesses, you know, successful people in in jobs, uh, instead of angry unemployed people and industries failing and all of these kinds of things. If we can't sort of fundamentally come

50:38 together and go, "Right, you know what? We're all in this together here on this little planet, and we've got to get on with it, and we better build a culture and a system that is about that, getting things done in a positive way." uh or is where we're lost. So,

50:55 let's say, okay, I I I want to let's get practical for a second. Let's pick a a an actual person, an avatar. Let's say this is a person who has been cheated on in a personal relationship

51:09 and has had a boss who did not trust them and they didn't trust them. And let's say they had a friendship blow up because a friend lied to them, right? So I'm this is rough combo here, right? But it's real life. It's real life, right?

51:24 Real life. It happens. Yeah, this this happens, right? That person, they look at this, they see the title of this episode is something to do with trust and they say, "I'm good. That's not that's not how the world works for me. Maybe for Jimmy, not for me."

51:40 But maybe they listen or maybe they they they give it a just a shot, right? What what are the what advice do you give to them? this person is down and out a bit like or at least they're nonrusting because of life in a way has beat them up a bit. What what practical advice do you give to that person to try to turn it around?

52:01 Yeah. I mean I I I feel like um you know a big part of it is so first of all you know reminding people you know like you get into an elevator and nobody nobody punches you, nothing bad happens. people are basically decent. You think about uh you know all the different things that people could do that's bad that they don't do and they don't do it because they're basically decent people. But those are just like ideas to sort of remind you like hold on a second maybe maybe there's better people out there. The other thing is you know for some people it's it's like really hard to recover from these things. So if you've had a really sort of bad uh you know work experience or a relationship experience like it's tough right and it's kind of hard to not draw the lesson of like people suck right and yet you know I think it's a lot of it's just like okay right like change the conversation change the situation right

53:04 if you if you work somewhere where your boss doesn't trust you and your co-workers are all backstabbing freaks and whatever it might be, it's time to change the channel. Like just every night, you should be trying to find a better position. Find a better job. And actually, your number one criteria in looking for that next position is going to be finding somebody who you think is a proper person to be your manager. You know, it's like, think of it as you're interviewing the company just as much as they're interviewing you.

53:35 You really want to do that. The same with your friends. you know, if your friends suck, find some new friends, right? Now, I know that it's easy to say that in a very glib way, right? That's not really uh for everybody the most immediately helpful advice, but bedrock truth, that's what you're going to have to do, right? And how do you get there is like to say like,

53:56 you know, I I you can you can be in a position in life where you're like, I actually uh I'm ambitious in my career. I'd like to I'd like to move up the ranks. I like to make more money. I, you know, I want to have a house and a family and all that. And there's all these obstacles in my way. And my dumbass friends just want to party every night. And it's really hard to break away from that. Well, you know what? Get some get some different friends if you have to, right? And actually, frankly, what can often happen, this is along that give trust to get trust, right?

54:29 You may be in a circle of friends who all are thinking the exact same things. They may be all thinking, you know what, this lifestyle isn't good. Like, we're going out too much, partying, you know, we've got too many cynical people. Actually, let's try and change it. And how do you do that? That's going to depend on the circumstances.

54:47 And the couple couple things here. I love that the um when you become known as a person who gives trust before it's earned, you seem to magically attract trustworthy people. It's kind of cool how it works,

55:01 right? If you're trustw willing, will you get burned every once in a while? Maybe. But you seem to attract the type of people that you want to be around. And one of the things I found, Jimmy, if maybe someone's down or you went through a rough stretch, I think it's from rule number two, I we as humans, we are born to connect and collaborate with others. I'd say get out there in the world, rub shoulders, and be curious. I found curiosity is the ultimate love language. Asking people questions and being genuinely curious about their stories

55:41 and learning about them and asking follow-up questions and listening, I found, is a great way to just show love and to connect with people. And when you find yourself in the midst of a curiosity conversation where every like everyone's kind of asking and learning and they're headnodding and they're into it and they give you good body language, I don't know if there's anything better, man. That's that's human nature connecting and that's that's rule number two um in the seven rules of trust that I'd love to hear hear a little bit more about how this is in our nature to connect and collaborate with others.

56:15 Yeah. You know, I mean, I think we it's it's so easy and and it's neither healthy nor unhealthy as a as a fact, right? Which is that it's quite easy and quite natural for people to fit into whatever culture is around them. And so, you know, we talk about horrible cases of lynch mobs, right? Where people kind of go along with the mob because it's going in a certain way and and they collaborate to do something terrible together. And so it's not automatically a good thing, but it's also an incredibly positive thing when it's put to the right purpose and and you know, you you've got the right vibe and the right people and and all of those things. So yeah, that it's really um you know we naturally like to work together to build something good and that can be almost anything, right? It can be uh in a social context you know even I I I wanted to make clear I do like a party right I when I was saying talking about

57:16 an example of frenzy party too much right I I do like a party and what is that like it's like okay we're all going to get together right and we're going to have a great time and so what are we going to do right we're going to have a couple of beers we're going to joke we're going to laugh we're going to have some music right uh we're going to we're going to maybe we'll have dinner and we'll have some conversation like we collaborate to build that experience together none of us could do it on our own because let me tell you a party with only yourself is not a party you know

57:43 and you know we all get that and and like you can you can just say okay yeah as humans we really like to to we're social and we like to be social.

57:53 Yeah. Um, one more Jimmy before we run, man. Um, let's say you're meeting someone a bit earlier in their career, maybe a college grad,

58:03 um, and they want to leave a positive dent in the world like you have done and are currently doing. What are some general pieces of lifecareer advice you'd give to that person? Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that I think is really important and it's such a cliche, right, that you're almost embarrassed to say it out loud, but it's do what you love. Do something that you really care about. And you know, often times, uh, for young people, it's it's sort of there is this struggle between here's the thing that I really want to be doing and here's the thing that's going to make me some money. Mhm.

58:44 And both of those are legitimate goals, right? There's nothing wrong with saying I want to do the thing I love. And you know, I want to I want to live a prosperous life and I want, you know, I and so my answer is like, okay, first of all, work really hard to find a way to put those together. Uh look really hard for a way to have do what you love be make some money. If it's about make some money, it's like some money for what purpose? Like so maybe what you need to do is go do that thing. you know, you're gonna make some decent money, but you're gonna have a like an early retirement goal. Maybe not to completely retire, but to then change careers mid, you know, I always wanted to be I'm gonna make this up. Somebody says, "Actually, what what would really make me happy in life is I want to be a first grade teacher, but I've also got this sort of opportunity to go and be a banker at a top bank and I can make a lot of money."

59:37 Okay. Right. And you think, what do you think the banking thing will be fun? Nope. Nope. I'm gonna hate every minute. Okay. So, either, you know, go be a teacher. Like, don't worry about it. Like, money's not everything. Go have a great life. Go be go be a first grade teacher. Or you kind of combine the two and you say, "Actually, I'm going to go off and do this banker thing. This is what my salary is going to be the first few years. I'm going to set a really clear goal and I'm going to be careful about lifestyle inflation, all of this.

1:00:03 And at some point, I'm going to say, "Thank you very much, bank. I got some kids waiting on me." You know, do that. Like, you can do that. It's an amazing thing. Uh and so realistically I think you know when you're young and you've got uh many different opportunities in life uh you know really think about that passion piece because if you're not passionate right like here's the here's kind of the worst example. you you you you go to work at a company, uh you're a top salesperson at the company and management level and you get a new boss and he doesn't trust you and he won't let you hire the the great salesperson you just met. And if you said, "Yeah, but you know what? I I just I I'm making a lot of money here and I I don't want to give that up and I'm not, you know, like I'm just I'm going to suck it up. I'm gonna hate every second of it. You know what? Nah, forget that.

1:00:57 Like, you're not going to be happy. By the way, you're not going to be as successful.

1:01:01 Right. Right. Chances are you're not actually going to make as much money doing that as you would if you went off and did something that you're really really passionate about. Now, maybe first grade teacher isn't it, right? But if we're talking about uh young people, right? It could be, you know, all kinds of things that, you know, like I actually I really want to I really want to run a restaurant. Okay, run a restaurant. You might own a chain of restaurants, right? And it's going to be a hard slog those first three years. It's really hard to make money as a restaurant tour, but you might be able to do it and so give it a go.

1:01:32 So that's it. It's it do something passionate. I think the passion part is really big because um one of my friends, Brooke Cup, says the way he defines passion is choosing extra work. If you don't really like the thing, you're not going to choose extra work. But when you do, you you choose extra work all the time. like what I get to do now is writing and speaking and and talking with smart people like you and and being able to chase my curiosity.

1:02:01 I want to choose extra work literally every day because it's so cool. It's so fun. It's awesome.

1:02:07 And I think I know sometimes people do have to have a job and to provide and they may not love it. I get that. That's I'm I'm a realist too. But trying to find something where you can have a love in the work, that's how you get excellent at it versus, oh, this is a job that isn't cool with a non-rusting boss. Uh, that just I just don't think you can do that for long periods of time. You can do it for a little bit. Anybody can do anything for a little bit at a time. And I think that's the that's the focus. And you think about Jimmy.

1:02:36 Man, I really appreciate this. book. It's called The Seven Rules of Trust, a blueprint for building things that last. I uh I really appreciate you being here, man. I encourage everybody to read.

1:02:49 Great fun. Yeah. Brilliant. And uh I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

1:02:54 Perfect. Lovely. Awesome. Thank you so much.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Why Wikipedia Works When Trust Is Declining Everywhere Else | Jimmy Wales"?

Ryan Hawk (Host), Jimmy Wales (Guest).

What is "Why Wikipedia Works When Trust Is Declining Everywhere Else | Jimmy Wales" about?

The discussion focuses on how Wikipedia, despite the general decline in social trust, has become a reliable and radical platform for knowledge sharing by fostering a culture of mutual trust among its contributors. Jimmy Wales emphasizes that the foundation of Wikipedia's success lies in the belief that establishing trust is essential to creating a collaborative and thriving community, which…

What is mentioned in this Ryan Hawk episode?

12 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Jimmy Wales, The Seven Rules of Trust, World Book Encyclopedia, New Pedia, Airbnb, Good to Great. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Why Wikipedia Works When Trust Is Declining Everywhere Else | Jimmy Wales"?

The episode runs 1 h 3 min; the transcript is about 12,245 words in 115 timestamped sections.

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