Julie Zhuo: Secret Sauce to Success-Teams, Culture and the Future of Management

If you're like me, you've probably seen the headlines, wildfires, floods, melting ice caps, and thought, where's the hope? Well, this show brings it back.

It's called Planet Visionaries, hosted by Alex Honold. Yeah, the Alex from Free Solo.
But now he's climbing a different mountain, saving the only planet we've got.

Every episode reminds us that optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, and storytellers who aren't talking about the problem, they're living the solution.

I want you to check out the upcoming episode with Mark Ruffalo, actor, conservationist, and all-around force of good, as he and Alex break down how storytelling can spark real change and move communities to action.

Because if leadership is about vision, then this is what modern leadership looks like. Courage, clarity, and a belief, that progress is possible.

In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're tuned in right now.

Here's something most people never talk about. Half of young people will face psychosexual challenges at some point.

Mojo gives you a private, science-backed way to work through them without shame and without awkward conversations. Mojo is the world's first AI sex and relationship therapist.

It turns 50 plus years of sexology research into short, guided sessions you can do anytime. Women use it for pain during sex, low desire, or trouble-reaching orgasm.

Men use it for erection issues, performance anxiety, rapid ejaculation, and low libido. These things are far more common than people admit.
What I like is how simple it is.

The AI therapist gives you small practical steps that reduce anxiety, build confidence, and help you communicate better.

It is judgment-free and easy to stick with, and it already has more than 1 million members in over 150 countries.

Head to mojo.so slash mick unplugged for your seven-day free trial and start feeling the difference. You ever wondered what was the secret sauce that turned Facebook into a billion dollar empire?

Well, we're going to talk about that in today's episode. We're talking to Julie Zoo, who went from intern to VP of product and design at Facebook.

We're going to talk about the culture that was established at Facebook.

We're going to go through the one trait that you should not tolerate on your team, but we guarantee you're probably tolerating it right now.

We're also going to talk about how AI is affecting leadership. And if you're a new manager or a company that is promoting new managers, we're going to talk about how you can win the first 90 days.

Because if you don't win the first 90, I promise you're not going to make it. Buckle up.
Here's Julie Zoo. Miss Julie Zoo.
Julie, how you doing today, dear? I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here.
You know, I was telling you offline, this book is so timely. I've shared it with family and friends.

It's something I connect with because, you know, I'm writing a book as well. I just wrote a book.

And leadership and management is something that is changing dramatically just like our society is changing, right?

And so we can't lead and manage the same way that leadership and management was done even 10 years ago because expectations have changed, people have changed. So I applaud you for the book.

Thank you. It was a joy to write, mostly for the fact that I was sure that if I spent time thinking about all these principles, I would hopefully become a better manager.

And that's always been my goal. I love managing and I love just the people part of the job.

You know, I get to build products, I get to work in software and create new technologies, but it's the people part that gives me a lot of joy because I don't think anybody can do anything amazing on their own.

Like we are all connected to each other and we all have very different strengths and

our unique gifts to be able to apply towards like a bigger goal or mission. Totally agree.
Totally agree with that, which leads me to my first question, Julie.

You know, on the show, I like to ask people, what's there because, right? That thing that's deeper than your why, that's really your true purpose. All the work that you do

with helping leaders, helping managers, and now starting, running your own company, right? What's your because? What's your purpose?

I think my purpose is really to

connect with people and do what I can to,

it sounds very silly to say, but just to

enjoy working with people on really interesting big problems that allow us to reach our full potential as human beings. Yeah.
And

today,

I started a company called Sundial with my co-founder, Chandra, and that was really the premise.

I'd reached this point in my career where really all I want to do is just work with people I really love on problems that are really big and interesting.

And every day I want to wake up and feel excited to go into work and office and just feel how lucky I am to be able to do that. And I think it's hard.

I think that's what maybe all of us want is that freedom to be able to choose and to challenge and to grow.

But it can be hard, you know, because there's obviously so many constraints that we face and there's so many, we should do this or we have to do this.

But that to me is ultimate freedom, just working with people you like on really interesting problems. I agree with you completely.
I want to start with your... your business journey, right?

So you're an intern at this little bitty company called Facebook, right?

First, while you were interning, did you ever think that Facebook was going to be what it became? And then two, let's talk about that journey through Facebook. So I would say yes or no.

So I'll first say the no. No,

I think if you'd asked me, I was 22 years old. This is my internship.
And you would say, one day Facebook is going to connect billions of people.

And did you know you were going to ride this rocket ship and be a part of making that happen? Absolutely not. I mean, I was a kid.

I had had no idea how to even think about valuing companies. I was not thinking strategically.
I didn't have an MBA. I wasn't like, oh, let's think about risks and analyze this particular company.

So, no, I just went there mostly because, you know, similar reasons as I was giving before. I liked the product.
I thought it was interesting. And I liked the people that were there.

But I would say yes, in the

sense that at the time, Facebook was a college and

high school social network. So nobody really knew about it.
And my mom would call me and she would say things like, why are you going to this company? Like, this isn't really going to go anywhere.

Why don't you go work at Microsoft or Google or something that we all know?

And I did believe, and I think everyone at Facebook at that time believed that we were much bigger than just a high school and college social network.

That our dreams were much bigger, that there was like a lot that the world wasn't seeing about what we wanted. So I definitely feel like that vision.

And of course, Mark very early on had this very, very grand vision for what he wanted to do to connect the world. But I think we all believed that.

And I certainly, I was like, mom, I'm going to prove you wrong. Yeah.
Yeah. So you go from intern to ultimately VP of product design, which is phenomenal, by the way.

I've read the book, so I'm going to ask you the questions, right? But

was there a moment when you were, I don't want to say fearful,

but when you were nervous, when you were hesitant as you're making this journey throughout your career?

The entire, I want to say seven years of my first seven years where I like became a manager, I was asked to because our team was rapidly scaling.

So we were at the startup, we were in hyperscale mode, and the person who was leading our design team, I joined when the design team was about seven or so people. And so

a couple years in, you know, we had hired a manager and she basically said, I, we have new two new designers joining. I don't really feel like I have the time to meet with them.

Can you just take on managing? You get along with people.

Why don't you do it? And that was my qualification. I got along with people.

But I didn't know anything about managing. And I would say that was true for all of us.
Like we were, many of us were just recent college grads, just like a year or two or three ago.

And we didn't really have like, you know, a long-standing model because of how quickly we had scaled from being a very small company. And so I certainly felt like an enormous imposter.

And I would say that feeling was fairly consistent for about seven years after managing.

And then maybe after year seven, I started to think, okay, well, I still feel uncomfortable, but at least I think I'm getting a little bit more of a sense that discomfort is part of the journey.

And I'm more comfortable with the fact that I am uncomfortable. I get it.
I get it completely. That's where growth happens, right? Like we can't grow when we're stuck in comfort.

For the listeners and viewers, talk to us about that culture at Facebook, right? Because I've heard all the stories about how such a tight-knit community it was and how it was just an awesome vibe.

You know, my wife is from the Bay Area as well.

And so, you know, all the companies that are there, it seemed like Facebook was the one that was for like that new, whether it was millennial, Gen Z, or whatever, but it had that type of vibe.

Talk to us about the culture.

So, because the product did start out built by young people for young people, it was very much a company full of employees who were very, very young.

And so that has a bunch of pros and cons in its early days. I think one of the pros is like, we just didn't know what we didn't know.

And so we can kind of think about a lot of things, not just, oh, this is the way it's always been done, but hey, we're. taking on the problem.

We're kind of thinking maybe how should we solve it from our own vantage point. I think that allowed us to be more innovative in certain respects.

But certainly earlier on, we also, the downside is you didn't have great models about how to do things. Now, the good news is as Facebook scaled, we hired in some really incredible seasoned leaders.

I think Sheryl Sandberg had a really large role to play in terms of the management and leadership culture and just brought a little bit more discipline and really great grounding first principles.

But what made I think the Facebook leadership and management culture a wonderful place to grow and learn was this idea that it mattered. Like

we cared about people. We were a social network.
We really, really cared about people. We cared about each other.
We cared about transparency and feedback.

And so it wasn't one of those places where you never talk to someone, but you kind of resent what they're doing. This idea of open feedback, of being able to think about feedback as a gift.

And we're all in it together.

We're all trying to do this very big and bold, ambitious mission, but let us support each other in doing so while being direct with one another about what we think we can do better.

So I think there was this, it was a very growth-oriented company in terms of personal growth. This idea, not, nobody was like, we all know the answers.

We've done this a million times. We were right.
Like nobody thought we were right. It was always this, well, we probably can learn and we can grow and we can get better.

Then there was this, we really care about people and we think people are the core of what will make this company and our problems to be able to get solved. So that that

pillar of care was there. And then I think finally there was that feedback is a gift and directness and being able to work and work through conflict.
That was the other third pillar.

And I think those three things came in to make it, I think, a really great place to learn how to manage and grow in that craft. No, I agree with that.

And that actually lines up with a lot of the things that you talk about in the book.

So I'm going to keep promoing the book because I want everybody to see this and go get this book because it's going to change your life as a manager.

Julie, I want to hit a couple of things head on because we agree we are in alignment. One of the first things you talk about is, you know, managers aren't born, they're made, right?

And I have the same thing with leaders. Leaders aren't born, they're made.
You might have traits, right? But you still have to develop them.

I try to parallel it to sports. If you grow to be six foot 10,

You have a better chance of going to the NBA than somebody who reaches five foot 10, right? But there's still a lot of skills that you have to develop to actually make it to the NBA.

And it's the same thing with managers, right? Like you can have traits that you're born with. There's only one me, only so many hours and only so much focus.

That is why the new notion agent has been huge for me. The tedious work that used to slow me down is now handled in minutes.
Post-meeting admin used to be the part of the day I dreaded.

Now, my notion agent reads the notes, turns them into action items, adds them to the right pages, and tags the right teammates. It has freed me up to focus on the bigger decisions.

Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works. It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use.

With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work. And now, with Notion Agent, your AI doesn't just help with work, it finishes it.

Notion Agent can do anything you can do in Notion.

It can tap into your Notion workspace, the web, and connected tools like Slack and Google Drive to complete assigned actions end-to-end so you can focus on the hard decisions.

With one single prompt, Notion Agent forms a plan, executes it, and will even reassess and try again if it hits a snag. And this is key.
Everything it does is editable and transparent.

And Notion is trusted by over half of the Fortune 500. Try Notion now with NotionAgent at Notion.com forward slash MIC.
That's all lowercase letters. Notion.com forward slash MIC.

To try your new AI teammate, NotionAgent, today. And when you use our link,

you're supporting our show. Notion.com forward slash MC.

True or false? Incognito mode makes you invisible on the internet. The answer is false.

Most people have no idea, but your browsing history can still be monitored and even recorded unless you use ExpressVPN.

Look, there are times when I'm researching guests, projects, companies, or digging into sensitive prep for the podcast. I don't need my internet provider keeping tabs on what I'm looking up.

And that is why I actually use ExpressVPN. It protects me from all the third parties who can still see every website I visit.

My ISP, my mobile network, even whoever controls the Wi-Fi if I'm traveling.

ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure, encrypted servers so those third parties cannot see your browsing history. Plan started just $3.49 a month.
It hides your IP address.

It works on all devices. And it's unbelievably easy to use.
I open the app, tap one button, and I'm protected. And this matters to me.
I live online. I research online.
I run businesses online.

Privacy is non-negotiable. ExpressVPN VPN is the tool I trust.
Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com slash MC.

That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash MC to find out how you can get up to four extra months. Expressvpn.com slash MC.
But there's a lot of things you need to develop. So talk to us about that.

I love that basketball analogy because, you know, I live in the hometown of Seth Curry. And this goes back to like, yeah,

you can be great. And there are so many important skills and traits.
I think you're absolutely spot on that

there are.

many things that we can do. Now, all of us are unique.
We have our own specific qualities that we bring in.

And I think a lot of what it takes to be a really great leader is to be able to figure out how we can amplify those strengths, how we can become aware of our blind spots and figure out how to augment them.

It doesn't mean we have to be perfect at every single dimension, but we do need to be aware so that we can often build a team or surround ourselves with people that can augment what it is that we are weaker at.

So I think the most important quality of

being a great manager is like, do we have a good understanding of what the role entails? And is that something that's interesting to us?

Because I know that when I first started managing for many years, I almost thought about management as a series of tasks or jobs, per se, right?

Like, oh, the manager hires people, the manager fires people, they figure out who gets promoted, they have meetings, they do one-on-ones and tell people what they're doing wrong.

Like, these are my mental models of like the activities or the tasks of a manager. But I realize like all of them are actually just a means to the end.

And the end, which is the true goal of what we're asking people to do when we ask them to be managers, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together, right?

And the outcome has to be contextual to why are these people together. You know, if I were a superintendent for a district, the outcome is better education for children.

If I run a hospital, it's about saving lives. If I work in software, it's about building products that solve a problem for people that get used frequently and

are valued. But we have to first understand the problem.
And then we have to understand, okay, so how, so there's a group of people and this is the outcome.

so my job as a manager is how do i get that group of people to do either better work higher quality work or faster work because that's what's going to help us get to that outcome better and i think as a manager this is just the most important thing and if that's not what really you care about like maybe there's a you know i know that that for some people right and that you can be like somebody who loves doing an activity and maybe the craft of that activity and that's what you're you're drawn to and you wake up every day and you want to get better at heart surgery or you want to get better at actually educating students or you want to get better at painting or design.

You can be

a stronger and stronger craftsman in that particular field. But the difference to me between that and being a leader or manager is that you care more about the outcome.

as the manager and your specific task or role may change but that is the the almost like the most important thing and so whenever people say, hey, I'm thinking about getting into management or leadership, this is the question I ask them.

Do you really care much more about the outcome? And are you willing to play many different roles or do many different tasks to get to that outcome?

Or do you actually love one particular activity so much that you want to continue to deepen your love of the craft and your quality of that particular craft? And I think the world supports both.

Both are really valuable, but we kind of need to know that about ourselves.

I agree with that statement. I actually did a video a while back on for leaders, outcomes versus outputs, right? And if you care more about the outputs, right?

The outcome will never be what you want it to be

at the time that you want it. You can ultimately get to the outcome, but it usually doesn't happen the exact way that you want it when you care too much about the output.

But let's talk about outputs for a second, though. You know, today,

huge topic, AI, right? And we talk about leaders and managers.

I think why Julie is saying you need to focus more on outcomes is because at some point, AI and technology will start doing the outputs for you, right?

Not saying that it's going to replace us as humans and that we don't need a human to overlook those outputs, but the grind of the outputs, and I'm starting to see it in the things that I do and the clients that I have.

AI is starting to take place a little bit. So I'd love to get your thoughts on AI and how that is starting to intertwine with leadership and management.

Yeah, there's a couple of different things that I think about when I think about AI. The first is exactly as you said, which is that AI is a tool.

And ideally, it's a tool that helps us do certain aspects of our job better, faster, higher quality.

And as somebody who thinks about the outcome, I definitely think every manager and leader should be thinking about how can our team be 2x as good or 2x as fast or do 2x as better work or 3x or 10x because we're using better tools.

And that does require that we change perhaps the way that we work.

Maybe there was a very specific way that we were, I don't know, publishing books or doing other things.

And now with the AI tool, certain things that maybe we were doing by hand, we were very manual about, can be automated and AI can do them and take on some of the load.

Now, of course, that can also be very jarring because, you know, maybe the people on our team, we all had a sense of like our identity and our identity which sometimes comes from like i am a kind of person that does a b c or whenever this type of problem happens this is the playbook that i follow and whenever there is a disruptive new technology it changes things it's like wait wait a second like i maybe i'm not the person who does ab c because now i have a tool that can do b and c or i'm not necessarily this is not the playbook that is tried and true for how to do it and so i think that anytime we have a new disruptive technology like ai it will necessitate change.

And change is hard. It can be very destabilizing.
And it can, especially, you know, if it's about like, well, who are we? Like, what are, what am I good at? Like, what do I think of as my identity?

Which leads me to the second thing I think about in regards to management, which is the role of a manager more than ever is also to try and really be sturdy.

To recognize, to not just put your head in the sand and think, hey, I'm not like la la la, the world's changing, but like it's not going to change us.

No, we need to embrace change, but we also need to provide sturdiness for our people.

Like I think it's very, very important to be able to go to a team and to help the team embrace change, but do it in a way where we can still be focused on kind of what are our first principles of what matters as humans.

Like, because there are things that only we humans can do that AI will never be able to do, at least at this point, right? I could be wrong.

Talk to me in 10 years, you know, or it's anyone's guess how the technology will evolve. But my strong hypothesis is that the why, you know, you started this out, right, by asking me, what is the why?

What is the because? And that's a very human thing. You know, only we can have a sense of what really matters to us and why does it matter? And what are the problems that we mean to solve?

Only we can have a sense of what are our values. You know, we can certainly say, hey, maybe the outcome is, you know, we're running a business.
Obviously, we want it to be profitable.

Obviously, we want to make as much money as possible.

But I'm sure if I were to ask you, well, are you willing to go and, you know, sell a bunch of drugs to people if that's going to make you more money? You're like, no, because you have values.

And values are very, very human, right? So it's not always just about what are we getting from it. It's like, what are the things we stand for as a company, as an organization, as a group of people?

And I think that that's a lot of the role of leadership and management, especially when things are disruptive as they will be and in very, very rapid times of change, as what we're seeing right now.

Agree with you completely. And I want to double down on something, talking about values and culture, going to your book.

So one of my principles of leadership is that every good leader knows their team better than their team knows themselves. So you know how they think, you know their personality.

So I want to tie this to your book because in your book, you say, there's one thing you should not tolerate. And I'm going to go down this path because one, I agree with it.
And two,

it made me change something not in my circle.

You say, don't tolerate the asshole.

Right. We all have that person that maybe they're the best salesperson on the team, but deep down, they're just an asshole.
Right. You might have that person that's the lead developer.

Deep down, they're just an asshole. But people tolerate it because they're perceived as the best or they can't be replaced.

Talk to us about the importance of getting rid of that toxin in your culture. Yeah.

I think that, and I've also gone through this myself, which is often when we have someone who is really good at whatever is the... role or the job or the craft, I think we get really afraid.

Oh my gosh, if this person isn't here, we're just going to lose all this output and we're not going to be able to reach our goals or be able to get to the outcome.

But I think the thing that we often are not weighing, we undervalue is to what extent does that type of asshole attitude actually suppress everyone else in the team from being able to reach a higher potential and to be able to do better work because what often happens is like that person commands a lot of attention they kind of put each other people down you know they're very very difficult to work with so everyone's like trying to accommodate and and as a result other people you know their star is not able to shine in the same way because of of the fact that they're all trying to make it work with this one person right and maybe they're everyone else is a little more demoralized and if they're more demoralized they're probably not you know coming into work every day excited ready to do their best work because this person is sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room and so uh my sense is often we underweigh that, right?

We think, oh, if this person goes, I lose their output, but we don't realize that sometimes when that person goes away, everyone else has a chance to shine and to do so much better.

And if, like, there's seven people who now can do twice as good of work, like our team is going to be better off.

AG1 is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamin, pre- and probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants into one simple green scoop.

It is is one of the easiest things you can do to support your body every day. For me, AG1 became part of my morning routine fast.
I make it right before I sit down to plan my day.

One scoop, cold water, shake, done. What I love is how easy it has made consistency.
I'm on the road, in the studio, running events, managing teams. Routines get thrown off.

This is the one thing I can keep steady. AG-1 Next Gen has more vitamins and minerals than ever before, and it is clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps.

The pre- and probiotics help support gut health and digestion, and it supports a healthy immune system in a season where life gets busy and schedules get chaotic.

I also like that AG-1 gives me options, original, berry, tropical, and my go-to, citrus. And if you have been following me long enough, you know I do not recommend something unless I use it.

This one is part of of my day every day. AG1 has the best offer ever.

If you head to drinkag1.com slash MC, you will receive the welcome kit, a morning person hat, a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and you will get to try their new sleep supplement, AGZ, for free, which has been a game changer for my nightly routine.

That is drinkag1.com/slash MC for $126 in free gifts for new subscribers.

Chime is changing the way people bank. Fee-free and smarter banking built just for you.
And I will tell you straight up, my younger self would have benefited from this.

I used to get crushed by old school banks with overdraft fees and monthly fees. Chime flips all of that on its head.
Chime isn't just another banking app.

They unlock smarter banking for everyday people with products like MyPay, giving you access up to $500 of your paycheck anytime, and getting paid up to two days early with direct deposits.

Some banks still can't do that. Forget overdraft fees, minimum balances, and monthly fees.

QIIME makes your everyday spending work harder with real rewards, credit building, and savings up to 3.5% APY.

And their new QIIME card helps you build credit with your own money while earning cash back. No annual fees, no interest, no strings attached.

For me, switching took minutes, and it felt like upgrading my entire financial routine. Chime is not just smarter banking, it is the most rewarding way to bank.

Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up.
Head to chime.com/slash MIC. That's chime.com/slash MC.

Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured Chime visa credit card, and my paid line of credit provided by the Bankor Bank NA or Stride Bank NA.

My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges.
See chime.com slash fees info.

Advertised annual percentage yield with Chime Plus status only. Otherwise, 1.00% APY applies.
No min balance required.

Chime card on time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary.
See chime.com for details and applicable terms.

Completely. And I say I extend it to friends in your circle as well too, right? Like you have people in your circle that you know, they're just a butthole.

You really don't like being around them, definitely in solo environments.

And when there's a group or team around, it's like everybody knows, okay, they're so-and-so, they're just going to go do their thing. So, I'm going to challenge people: look at your circle.

You probably have someone in your circle that wears being an asshole, like a badge of honor, and they know it. And you all know that I'm right.

You need to evaluate that because that person is toxic, and the energy that creates is going to limit you from being the best version. Absolutely.

And I think that's such a great litmus test: which is, hey, after, do I look forward to seeing this person? And also, after we hang out, what am I feeling?

Am I feeling kind of worse or am I feeling more energized, more motivated, more alive? Like, what is that feeling? And I think that that North Star that we have,

it doesn't, you know, it's not wrong. And a lot of times, again, we ignore it because we're like, oh, I don't want to confront this person.
I don't, it would be rude of me to do X, Y, and Z, right?

But we, we kind of also have to stay true to ourselves. I think that's so important.
Absolutely.

You know, last part of the book, or last thing of the book, it's not the last part, but it's really important.

Julie, I want you to talk to the new manager or the leader that's promoting a new manager. What are some tips that they can do to win the first 90 days? Because to me, it's so critical.

If you don't win the first 90 days, you're not going to win. Let's just be very blunt and honest about it.
You have 90 days.

to win over yourself, to win over your team, and then to also win over whoever it is that you report to.

That's a really great question. I think the first and most important thing is that trust is the foundation of any successful management role or any sort of leadership role.

So you kind of have to really focus on how do I establish trust.

And again, we sometimes have this idea in our heads that the way I'm going to get people to trust me is I have to get out the door and prove and say all this smart stuff and really impress people.

And that actually is not usually the way to create trust. I think the best way to create trust is you have to be a good listener.

You have to try and actually have people talk to you, be able to open up to you and have them tell you what are their expectations? What are their hopes and dreams?

Like what would they consider great, right? So, and it's going to be very different, you know?

So if I were to go into any context or any, and I'm trying to figure out how to establish trust in the first 90 days, I first want to sit down with everyone and just have a real heart to heart and say, hey, I'm new here.

I don't know a lot. I'm going to need a lot of your help, but I want you to tell me what would it look like for you to have a really great manager?

What do would you want a manager to be able to do to support you or support the team?

So have them understand their expectations of what it would mean for you to show up for them. Second would be about the team.
Like tell me about what's going on with the team.

What is going really well and that I probably shouldn't change is going really well.

And what's not going well that are important problems for us to be able to solve that you would want me to know about. Again, I don't want to go and be like, I'm going to be the person to solve them.

I want to just identify what are these problems with the idea that we're all as collectively as a team are going to solve them together. So

I would say that that would do that with the people who are going to be on my team as well as my own manager. So very important in the first 90 days, hey, you just hired me.

you know clearly you have a bunch of hopes dreams expectations for what you hope that my presence here will be able to do for the team what are those

and we can get you know what is it in a year's time what is it in six months time what is it even in the first 90 days so we can get very meta here about even thinking about how the first 90 days could unfold and i think if you go in and you have a good listening ear and you're able to actually ask people these questions and they tell you then you have a really nice playbook for what success looks like right

amazing amazing So we've talked a lot about management and leadership,

but Julie decided to be an entrepreneur, which means that now you're responsible for a lot of things, Julie. Like you not only are you an entrepreneur, but you did it as a startup.

So you didn't do an acquisition, right? Like, so startup, you get to see everything.

I talk to leaders because I often get asked, Mick, what's the biggest difference between being a leader or manager and an entrepreneur?

And I simply say this, when you're a leader, you have an accountability department, right? Like Like you have a, you have walls.

And even though you might know other things, you get to stay singularly focused on this one thing. And yeah, there might be 20 things within the one thing, but you're right here.

As an entrepreneur, you've got a thousand things and you're responsible for that. Plus, oh, by the way, the decisions you make affect if your employees can eat at night.
Right.

So, so talk to us about the journey of Sundial, a little bit about what it is and why that became a passion for you. Absolutely.
So my company, Sundial, we're still pretty early stage.

We have about 60 or so employees. It's been four and a half years.
And we were very much brought to doing this, my co-founder and I, because of our mission.

We really, really wanted to help people be able to make better decisions with data. And that's something I very much believe in.

It's part of my philosophy of being a great leader, but just even how I want to live my life, which is, look, we're all biased. I know I've got biases.

And I have a lot of things that, you know, the way that my brain works is often it's pattern matching, right? So based on things that have happened in the past, there's a new situation.

I automatically come to some kind of conclusion. But a lot of times that conclusion is probably wrong, but it's not grounded in like getting a lot of actual.
data points from reality.

And that's true with companies as well.

So sometimes, you know, we say, oh, this is going to be a great thing for the company, but have we really sat down to analyze it, to think through it deeply, to ask ourselves, well, have we considered other alternatives or what evidence leads us to actually thinking that this is the best idea?

You know, again, sometimes we just get excited and we want to do the thing. And so I think my life philosophy is a lot of like, I want to be the kind of person that's very thoughtful.

I want to do as much as I can to understand what my biases are. Again, always recognizing that I have them, but I want more data and more information.

And this is also very much true in how I think about feedback because feedback is data too. And so our company does that.

It tries to use quantitative data, which is measurement of like everything that users are doing with a particular product or feature, and tell the story using AI and the latest technology of what is actually happening so that each of us humans can make better decisions.

Because decision making is, you know, I think it goes back to like, what can AI, it's a very human endeavor, right? There will never be a day where we don't have decisions to make for the future.

And we'll always feel kind of uncertain about them because we can never fully control the future, but we certainly can make better decisions if we feel more informed.

So that's what led me to wanting to do this. I feel very, very passionately about that mission.
And

I would say that the other thing that I wanted was to continue my growth of

being a leader. And it's exactly as you said, right? I've had a lot of experience growing.

And every time my team gave a lot of a little bit bigger or I had a larger scope of work, it was like, this job is totally different.

And there was so much that I needed to learn and a lot of mistakes made, but a lot of growth that came out of that.

And to me, the next step was like, to your point, being an entrepreneur, you have to think about many more dimensions of things.

Like, for example, when I went to Facebook, a lot of the culture, you know, I contributed to it, but a lot of the culture was also already there. It's already established.

There were values that kind of came from Mark, the founder. I think when it's your own company, you have to be face to face with like, well, what is it that I really value?

How do I really want to work? What constitutes the kind of company that is going to do work that I'm going to be really proud of? And I have to own that.

And I have to, and it's like, I think it very much what I learned so much is like just being able to stare and look at myself in a mirror and

get to asking myself these much deeper questions.

Amazing. Amazing.

Who, in your viewpoint, is your ideal client for Sundall?

I would say every company eventually

want to think big. Right now, we work with some really amazing tech companies.
So OpenAI is a client of ours.

A lot of the up-and-coming generation of AI tools like Gamma, we also work with large companies like PayPal or Vedmo, for example.

And so companies that have a lot of users, so therefore they have a lot of data. So therefore, there's a lot that data can tell them about what's going on.
What do users care about? What do they want?

What are they doing?

And from those, and again, everything is always a proxy. I don't think data can tell you exactly what it is.

You know, you should get like about to like decision making will always have a little bit of that uncertainty.

But if we are going to think about what is our strategy, what should we prioritize as a company? We likely want to understand, well, what are people already doing?

What are they, how is their behavior? You know, it does that hypothesis of this feature is going to to be awesome for whatever reason, is that true?

And now that we launched it, is that what we're seeing people do? And so it's about keeping ourselves honest to our intention and also, again,

having as much of our eyes open to what is truly the reality on the ground that is happening.

That's wonderful. So I'm going to start sending people your way, Julie.

Love it. I would love to work with just, and I love actually also working with different companies because it's part of my fascination and curiosity is also how do great companies operate?

Because, you know, like people, everyone, every company is a little bit different. And I always learn so much too from

getting to talk with people who work and lead at different types of environments. Yeah, wholeheartedly.
Julie, I know how busy you are. I'm honored that you spent some time with me today.

And I know that the viewers and listeners are writing many, many, many notes because I've been writing some as well too. I'm going to get you out of here on my quick five.
Quick five, rapid fire.

Ready? Yep.

What's the your favorite leadership quote that you live by?

My favorite leadership quote.

I'm not doing this really well on the quick. Okay, first thing that came to mind is make it happen.
I have a little banner behind me that says that. Make it happen.
I love it.

Number two, what's the first app that you check every morning?

Slack. Yeah.
Work emails or work, work messages. Yes.
Going to work. What's the most underrated habit of great managers?

I think think time, which could be journaling time or reflection time, but just having a block at the end of the week where you think, you reflect and you plan.

Super hard. I mean, it's so important for us to ground ourselves, but hard to make the time for it because everyone's so busy.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
You're planning a vacation.

What's the first place that comes to mind?

Europe. A city in Europe that I haven't been to before.
Okay. Good stuff.
Last rapid fire. Who's your favorite California-based basketball team? And why is it the Los Angeles Lakers?

I mean, look, I'm Warriors all the way.

I feel feel very lucky to have lived in the Bay Area during a lot of very exciting seasons. There you go.
Good stuff. Julie, again, appreciate you so much.

I'm going to have all of your connections in the show notes, but while we're here live, where can people find and follow you? I am on Twitter. My handle is J-O-U-L-E-E on most social networks.

I'm pretty active on Twitter. I'm active on LinkedIn.

I

have my website, juliezoo.com, which links to you know wonderful interviews like with yours um you can find my book the making of a manager at bookstores everywhere all right i'm gonna have links i'm gonna put links up for amazon and barnes and noble um just so i can give you some love at those stores because i know how important that is so julie thank you so much oh well i blog yeah i should have i should have said this first um i have a sub stack yes looking glass so i i write there um a lot and it's it's one of my my favorite ways of of trying to clarify things in my mind See, I'm going to need you to be my Substack mentor, if you don't mind.

We'll talk about that. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I love it. I'm a big fan of Substack, so I'm very happy to.
I need to get started, but I don't know what to do. So

I'm going to pick your brain if you don't mind. Let's talk.

Let's do it. Julie, again, I thank you.
For all the viewers and listeners, remember, your because

is your superpower. Go unleash it.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Mick Unplugged. If If today hits you hard, then imagine what's next.
Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this with someone who needs it.

And most of all, make a plan and take action because the next level is already waiting for you. Have a question or insight to share? Send us an email to hello at MickUnplugged.com.

Until next time, ask yourself how you can step up.