About a year ago I started a podcast to prove something to myself. As I was coming up in my career, I always wished there was more proof that being a good person actually works. More stories of people who got ahead by being kind. So I went out and collected them myself. 40 guests later, the answer keeps coming back the same: people are good. The jerks just get way more airtime. For our 1-year anniversary, I pulled my favorite moments from year one of Don't Be a Jerk: - @work_matters (who literally wrote The No A**hole Rule) on how you can win in business and still lose as a human being - 11-year-old Sam Schwartz on the difference between being nice and being kind - Bing Chen on the screamers he worked with at Google, and why the moment you yell is the moment you lose - @ilananankin's answer to every CEO who says they don't have time for kindness - Emiliana Simon-Thomas on why the science doesn't back the "it's me or them" mindset And sooo many more, you’re definitely going to wanna check out this special episode of DBAJ. Thank you to every guest who sat down with me and to everyone who listened this year. Year 2 starts now Full episode of DBAJ is live everywhere you get your podcasts!!!

This coffeeshop founder built his hiring pipeline from formerly incarcerated folks… and it’s made all the difference. Keba Konte started @redbaycoffee in a garden shed behind his Oakland garage with a Whirley Pop popcorn popper and YouTube videos. He was in his late forties and already had two full careers behind him, photojournalist and exhibited fine artist. When it came time to staff the thing, he didn't post and pray. He went out to re-entry programs and recruited returning citizens on purpose. What he found: they worked 2x as hard because they were grateful for the shot. Then he said the part most founders leave out. It was not all without challenge. Trust issues were real. He leaned on counselors from those same programs to work through them. So I brought him a study. A million applicants, 11 large firms, 2018. Same performance as everyone else. 13% LOWER turnover. The "risky" hire was the one who stayed. Here's what we get into on the latest DBAJ episode: • Why he refused to build a coffee company that would speed up gentrification in his own city • The hiring problem nobody warns you about: what you do when your industry never trained the people you want to hire • Where he went looking instead (chocolate, wine, kitchens, bartenders) • Why Red Bay is trending 15% better on retention than the average for coffee and hospitality • What he'd put on a billboard for a billion people. I did not see it coming. Keba is one of the most thoughtful builders I've had in this chair. Loved every minute of this one. New episode of Don't Be a Jerk with Keba Konte is live now, everywhere you get your podcasts!!! ❤️‍🔥

She finally ran the numbers on whether kind leaders win. 3500 CEOs. Sorted by whether they share credit in good quarters and take the blame in bad ones. The prosocial ones ran companies with better financial performance, lower executive turnover, and less accounting misconduct. Emiliana Simon-Thomas was on the Berkeley panel that presented it. She's the Science Director of @UCBerkeley's @GreaterGoodSC, she co-teaches a happiness course with 850,000+ registrations, and she has spent 20 years proving that you can be a kind, generous person and still succeed in the world (in fact, it helps!). So I asked her the cheeky version: can you fake it on an earnings call? Her answer is one of the best part of the episode, and it has nothing to do with earnings calls. Here's what we get into: • The paradox of power, and the one habit that protects you from it • Why happy employees show up in customer loyalty and closed deals, not just engagement surveys • What a grudge is doing to your nervous system while you hold it • The 7-day experiment that moved people's well-being in 169 countries • Why she'd spend a billboard on a cost comparison I learned so much in this conversation and could have talked with Emiliana for 3+ hopurs. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. New episode of DBAJ with Emiliana Simon-Thomas is live now, everywhere you get your podcasts!!!

What do you do with your life on just a regular Tuesday? I believe that’s the question we all need to be “optimizing” for. Here’s how mine used to go: The drive in to work. The first meeting. The 10 minutes after I walk through my own front door. I decided exactly NOTHING about how any of it would go. It went however it went, with no intention. But then, I learned about an old eastern practice called “Segment Intending” that fixed this for me. It takes about 10 seconds. You break the day into small pieces, and before each one you say what you want out of it. I do it daily now. I also do it weekly and grade myself against it. Early on my board was mostly red and orange. Most of it comes back green now. New episode of Don't Be a Jerk (just me!) talking about all things willpower: - The 10-second practice I run before meetings, drives, and walking in my own door - Why I treat willpower as a muscle rather than a personality trait - The one sentence to open a meeting with so nobody loses an hour - How I segment and grade my weeks, and what the scorecard taught me - What setting an intention before seeing my wife did for our 14-year marriage Try it this week and tell me how it went. I actually want to hear it. ❤️‍🔥