First Person Meets… Jim Wilt: Sending the first man to the Moon

Matt Egan

Hello, hello, hello, welcome to First Person The show where we meet the most interesting people in it and learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I'm your host, Matt Egan, asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you're an interesting person in it, let us know you might be the next first person. The next voice you hear will be today's guest. He is Jim Wilt.

Jim is absolutely one of the most interesting people in it, someone who describes himself as a voraciously curious CTO, distinguished Chief Architect and engineering advocate. Jim's enjoying a stellar career with roles as CTO CDO and Chief Architect across a multitude of enterprise organizations.

And we're delighted to have him as a guest on first person. So Jim, welcome and first up, what's the first thing people should know about you? Jim Wilt

I think everything that you said is probably very well stated and bloated. I don't think of myself as anything interesting or anything along those lines, but we'll find out during this conversation. It's just, it's just exciting to talk and share experiences and thoughts with others.

If it can bring an aha moment to someone that's like, oh, you know, I feel that way. I can maybe learn from his failure too. Matt Egan

That's definitely what we're aiming for here, right? It's all of our experiences. The benefits of them are not always the things that we expect, right? So we find that by talking, it's, it's, it's good to share those insights.

So we appreciate that, and we appreciate you being with us, Jim, so section one of our conversation, we like to call First things first, and this is where we like to get to know about our guest by understanding some of their first time.

So Jim, please tell me about your first job in this industry, your first job in it. Jim Wilt

So I I'm going to give you it's a two part answer on that, the first part I didn't get paid for, but it was an equitable arrangement in the in the era of early computers. And I'm talking very early computers.

I was in a family situation where we were not of the ability to ever purchase one. We were we were just too poor. And Radio Shack store down the room had this trs 80.

We, you know, called it the trash 80, but it was the first computer that was accessible. And I couldn't afford the computer, but I could afford the book that taught you how to program in basic. So I'm in high school. I buy the basic book.

I teach myself basic, and you do it all on paper and in your mind. And then I go to the manager of the Radio Shack store, and I said, you've got all these brand new computers sitting on the shelf just sitting there, yeah.

How about I write some programs, some interactive programs, some graphic programs. How about I do that? He goes, you know how to program like I bought the book at the store. I know everything there is to know about programming.

So that was my first step into this, this industry, and and I did it because it was a workaround if you can't afford to buy something, find a way to do it for free. And that's exactly what I did. They gave me time on the computer unlimited.

I wrote demo programs for them, and it was just an equitable relationship.

So then I graduate, I get into college, and my first paying job was an internship at Upjohn, which is a pharmaceutical company now known as Pfizer, but at the time, they had a data entry position, and this is where it gets.

A little exciting disappointments come sometimes with an open door right after them, I was up against a girl from Purdue, and I interviewed with all the staff, and the general manager called me into her office after the interviews.

And she said, I just want you to know, Jim, we're going to give the data entry position to the girl from Purdue. And I said, you know, I'm from a state university. I get that Purdue pretty prestigious. And you know, she's, I met her.

She's really a nice gal, great, you know. And thank you for calling me in to tell me personally, and she goes, No, no, no, no, we're not done yet. She goes.

During the interview process, the team decided they want you on as a scientific programmer, because you're getting a degree in physics and computer science and mathematics, they want you to write code, not data entry. I said I. I'm in, let's do it. She goes, Well, there's a problem.

We don't have a position or budget. So I said, I'll do it for free. She goes, we can't work that way. So she goes, what we're going to do is we're going to put you in the Visiting Nurse program.

So I was a visiting nurse for my internship so I could get paid to do scientific programming in the scientific group at Upjohn. That was my very first job and one of the most exciting experience that was in alamazoo, Michigan, of all places.

It was pretty exciting, but Matt Egan

there's so much to unpick there, Jim. Because, first of all, first of all, I'm sure there's a book to be written about the role of Radio Shack in the burgeoning careers of so many people in science and technology, right?

Because it's, you know, it's not, not a unique story, that the access to the kit was the thing that drove things. But I'm intrigued, like, what was it that made you buy the book on programming right without access to a computer you were interested in doing that?

Jim Wilt

Well, when I was in elementary school, I went to a movie with one of my friends birthday parties, and it was this crazy movie called The computer who wore tennis shoes from Walt Disney.

And it was about a guy who accessing a computer, and it gets burned into his brain, this kind of a thing. But it's my first real, real exposure to practical computing, as opposed to a James Bond kind of a movie. And and it clicked.

It's like, it's like, that's really cool. I might not be any good at it, but God, like I've got to try. Yeah, and that's cool.

You hear about them, but then then they came to the humans at the, you know, level of a Radio Shack, or Apple to E, or all of the others that were out at the time. And it was like just a natural progression. Buy the book.

See if it makes sense. Try it. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, I know what I'm not good at. That's one thing, but it worked out fairly well for me. Matt Egan No, it's amazing.

And, you know, I suspect Jim, I wouldn't like to say this for sure, but I suspect I'm a little younger than you, but I'm probably the last of the generation of I was the editor in chief of a magazine about computers before I ever owned a computer, right?

Like, like, whereas, to people, anybody under the age of like, 40, like, that's just like, wild, right?

To even think about that, but, um, but it's so interesting that the path that fiction, science fiction, can play in intriguing and exciting, uh, creative minds since using this technology and so impressive that your first boss was like, we don't have a job for this guy.

He's definitely not right for the data entry job, but we need to find a way of of bringing them on board. So so here you are with what sounds like a very smart and progressive employer. You're in there.

You're doing the the scientific work as a nurse is, was that kind of the first time that you thought, yeah, this is it. This is the gig for me. This is, this is the industry that I want to work in. Jim Wilt

Yeah, it's not that I would say. I would never be one to say I'm really good at anything, but we have a Pacific Northwest saying I didn't totally suck at it, is kind of the way I would look at it.

And I say that, and I had my own company when I was in Michigan, and my business partner was introducing me to Joe mantle, the CTO of the NFL National Football League, our football is a little different than your football right now, so I'm Matt Egan

a big fan, so that's fine. I get it. I get it both ways. Yeah, Jim Wilt

and so I'm talking, you know, I'm from Michigan. I'm talking to a guy in New York City, you know, in Manhattan.

And my business partner came from New York and was at Michigan, and Joe asked me a question, do you know anything about such and such a technical topic? And I said, Well, I know a little bit about it, you know. And Andy, my business partner, stepped in.

He goes, Jim, I gotta correct you on something in New York City, if you can spell it, you're an expert on it. And he goes, Joe, I need to tell you something about Jim.

If you know a little bit about it, you've probably done five talks on it, published two papers and written a book. And you know a little bit about it, he goes, there's a there's a cultural difference here.

So I'm always of the cultural I guess, significant way of looking at me is, I know I don't know everything, and I assume I know nothing, and I'm surprised when I get something right, so it's then when I get something wrong, it's just like, Well, yeah, of course, it's part of the learning process, but this is kind of how I've always been it.

Things I never would say, I'm really good, but then you go and you get, like, an award or something like that. And I got an award. This is just so funny.

I got an award as a distinguished alumni at my university, and I'm in the middle of doing some programming. It wasn't working. I was having a hard day, and the university calls and they go, Hey, Jim, you were nominated. You know, this is Central Michigan University.

And I said, Oh, you need money again. My wife manages our donations, and you give her a call, she goes, No, no, it's not about money this time, because you were nominated to be a distinguished, distinguished alumni this year. And I said, Oh, how cool is that?

That's wonderful. Love the nomination. Great. Do I need to give you money? She goes, No, you were chosen as a distinguished I love that. Oh, yay. Great. Thank you. I'm really busy right now. Can I get back to you? I mean, is there something I need to do?

She goes, Yes, you need to give us names of who's going to come to the dinner. When the President has a dinner for you and they announce it at a banquet, I'm like, wow, that's a lot. Yeah, you're gonna have to give my wife a call.

I'm in the middle of something. So even when something comes and it's a great, honor to receive that award. It's something that hits you as as but I'm solving a problem right now.

That's wonderful, but I'm solving a problem so someone who can figure that out, let them talk to you about dinner and guests and things like that, and then I'll, I'll continue my problem. Matt Egan

But I mean, and it sounds, what's very clear is level of focus on solving the problem, really, you know, fantastically important, right? And also, you know, you're being self deprecating, but you you've also really articulated that you do the work, right?

Like, I don't know much about something, but I'm gonna spend time finding it out. I think what's interesting about that professionally is that needs, you know, you need to work with people who recognize that right, who are able to kind of nurture that kind of approach.

And I just wonder, if you, you know, you can think of a first great boss who's who supported you in your your professional development and and if you can identify such a figure, you know, what kind of things did you learn from that that person? Jim Wilt

So I, I've had, I've had two great bosses that are first one is before I was in the industry, when I was in high school, I'd ride my bike to McDonald's and work at McDonald's, and I had a boss at McDonald's.

His name was Jeff, and he just said, be a leader to everybody. I was I really sucked at working at McDonald's. It wasn't that I didn't totally suck. I totally sucked at working at McDonald's.

Yeah, the only thing they could do is put me in the dining room because I was incapable of cooking burgers or anything at the time. I ended up being the Master Chef when I was fourth year in but when I started, I was really bad.

And so I'm always cleaning tables. It's the worst job. You're taking out the trash. It's but it's where I belong. And Jeff would just come up and say, Hey, be a leader out there. I go, Dude, I plan new tables.

He goes, even guys who clean tables could be leaders. Yeah.

And so he had this positive outlook that no matter how small you or other people thought your job was, you could still lead from it, and it reminds me of the story of some news agency doing an article at NASA, and they went and talked to the janitor and asked the janitor, what do you do here, here at NASA?

And he's got his cleaning equipment in front of him and his mops and things like that. He goes, what do we do here? He goes, I'm going to send the first man to the moon, yeah? And, and that's, that's the attitude, you know, I am always grasped on.

What are you doing here? McDonald's, I'm playing at the table. You're going to eat your meal off of because it's going to be, you know, super clean and germ free, yeah, and you're going to be healthier because of me?

Yeah, all because of a good manager influence in the industry I've had, I've had some fantastic managers, and one that stood out was Karen diamond at Ingersoll milling machine. We built aerospace equipment.

So the skin for the b2 bomber, or the F 18 or the F 35 the EFA fighter, all these things are made on a composite machine that's about the size of the building you're in. It's a huge and we built the CAD systems and things like that.

We were building complete. Deposit fiber equipment in an industry where metal rolled. So in the company, we were the Goonies. We were the laughing stock. They had nicknames for everybody in our small team, and we deserved the nickname. There's no question about it.

We had two PhD mathematicians, two physicists. I was one of the physicists and a computer science guru, and we were building code to move 15 axes simultaneously, which you can't do mathematically. You can only move five at a time.

So we have the Look Ahead logic, term of what you're doing, etc. And it was, it was a very eclectic group of misfits that didn't fit in anywhere in the company. And she managed us all. And we we did tremendous things, absolutely tremendous things.

And I found that the way she managed to she knew more than everybody else, but she never assumed that she could teach us anything we were really unteachable when you think about if you look at who we were, so she would know how to ask the right questions to guide us to what she was trying to teach us.

I learned that her process for doing that was so much better than just sitting down, it's like, Hey, Jim, let me just show you how to do this. Yeah, you know.

And then she would share in the emotional frustration, the empathy that you were having, if you were having a problem with the protocol and it wasn't working, she would sit down and be frustrated with you and and not trying to tell you how to do it.

And I thought that was a really neat, neat facet. So that same Goonies team that I was part of, we ended up because we were small, fast and agile, we were given an opportunity to build the first ever Stewart platform milling machine, which is called an octahedral hexapod.

It's a mouthful.

You can Google it, and it's a kind of a machine that's kind of like an upside down spider with six legs, and it's impossible to move without some singularity issues and some issues, and we were solving the mathematics, and our team, over the course of a year, went from the laughing stock of the company to being the team that won industry weeks magazines Product of the Year for building the hydro hexapod.

And wow, it was so massively impactful that our lab where we built the machine, when I say a lab, it's not like a lab, like in a conference room like I'm in, it's like a big, huge building where you've got a huge machine in it.

People would come to see demos of it. They want to see it work, because it was just so crazy. And we were kind of on the we've got to get control of this.

We did from noon to one where people could come in and get demos and things, because it just got to be crazy. Too many people were coming and get our work done, kind of a thing.

So that's a boss who fosters that kind of innovation, not just in the products or mainstream making, but in a product that's never been made before, and the first one to come to industry with a functioning octahedral hexapod.

So it was something that was just exciting, because her leadership was of I guess you would call it servant leadership. Today is probably the proper term, and just fantastic. We would do anything her. It was just amazing. Matt Egan

I think what's really interesting, there is very few conversations you would have would draw a line between the management style of your manager in your high school job at MacDonald's and in this very high, high profile, high intelligence workforce that you created, industry, you know, winning, award winning projects, and yet, you know, when you pass the two things like, there's a sense of mission there.

There's a sense of, you know, the leader, being engaged and invested in you, the individual, but allowing you the autonomy to kind of have an impact, right? It's, it's really interesting to me that there's a parallel between those two great bosses in those two very different environments.

Jim Wilt

And it's a great lesson to learn that no matter what industry you're in, what stature you're at, you can learn from anybody. Matt Egan

Yep, 100% Well, let's, let's, let's take that thought, Jim. We're going to learn some lessons now, right? Because it's, frankly, it's all been too positive, right? We've had too much success on your behalf. So we're going to move to section two, which we call first fails.

We're not only here for the good stuff. We feel that we learn more from our mistakes. And actually, you've already alluded to this several times, but you know what's, what's the first big mistake that comes to mind when you think about, think about your career, and maybe something.

You learn from it. Jim Wilt

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, okay, so this is where you get kind of, you have to be kind of right out there, right? I made a lot of mistakes. I think you learned from mistakes.

So I've learned a lot, yeah, sure, in, in the the octahedral hexapod and fiber placement and things like that, that was, was all great. Before that, I worked at burrows, I wrote operating systems, and I got out of college, have degree in physics, math, computer science.

I could go to the GM Tech Center and do research in physics, or I could go to California and build operating systems. I'm a young kid. I'm getting married.

We went to California in the process of building mainframes and operating systems for mainframes, we got into a situation where the medium systems burrows. Medium systems is now Unisys.

By the way, they could not sell a single mainframe because I had no way to connect a terminal to the mainframe, the processor that the terminals connected to and ran that terminal network went out of production in Pennsylvania, and it went completely dead, or we couldn't sell a single mainframe because we couldn't connect anything to it.

And so I was put on a six person crisis team to come up with a solution, and and we did. It took nine months. We had three people in Pennsylvania, three people in Pasadena, and we came up with the solution. We built it.

I even, I went into we had a theater where you had to defend your architecture, your programming design. And I did.

I'm just a kid at this point, just out of college, and I'm, I'm defending, you know what it is, it's a year after I'd been there, and everybody in the room is kind of laughing at me, and I'm like, we can do this.

I know, I know we can do this. And one guy just stood up in the theater and just basically said, if you can do that, it's pure freaking magic. So to this day, there is a module in the MCP I was building MCP nine and MCP 10.

I think they're up to MCP 29 or something. Now there's a module called Magic, because I didn't know what to call it. So I built magic. So we did. We did solve the crisis. We solved the problem, and at that point we were in Pasadena.

Our family was in the Midwest. We decided my wife and I to move back to the Midwest, and that's when I went into aerospace. There's a long way to getting to my biggest failure, but it's a big, big failure.

So after we moved Burroughs, gave me the Lifetime Achievement Award. I'm 26 years old, and I get a Lifetime Achievement Award for what I had done, inventing a protocol. And it's like, it's like, wow, that's pretty cool. And, yeah, there was some money that came with that.

My wife took the money and she goes, I had to limit you. During that time I get the money, I'm gonna go Matt Egan

buy a washer and dryer. Yeah. Jim Wilt

So that was, that was great.

The biggest mistake was, my biggest lesson in life is my head got so big it couldn't get between the doorway, sure, and I became an arrogant sob would probably be the best way to put it, and it was difficult for those around me professionally, because I'm too young to be getting an award like that.

You should never do that. Advice to people again and go lifetime achievement awards. Okay, you don't get them at 26 come up with a different name for it, yeah, but I did.

I did have a manager, and another good, good manager like Karen was Frank Mabry was his name, and he put me on a pip Performance Improvement Program, right?

I mean, when you think about a pip, I didn't know at the time, it's a form of punishment, yeah, for all practical purposes. But he taught me communication skills, he taught me humility, he taught me all of these things.

I took over a year to get through that Pip. But see, it wasn't a technological failure. I had plenty of those. I can come up with those like left and right. This is a devastatingly career embodied, you know, failure that you're either going to jump off the bus.

Business and get out of the business, or you're going to realize somebody's investing their career into you, putting their career on the line for you. You've got to, you've got to work at it. And I did. And I mean, he put me in classes interpersonal communications.

I mean, he had a whole thing set up, and he totally invested in me, and since then, you know, I've had opportunity to do that with others. I had one person I had to put on a pip out in Seattle.

My manager that I reported to, the officer or the company I reported to, said, You've got to fire this person. I said, No, I'm not going to fire them.

I'm gonna put him on a pip, and then when I put him on the PIP, I said, Okay, so your mistake, the reason you're on a pip isn't because you're not knowledgeable.

It's because you're not governing yourself and others working with you to govern so we're gonna put a governance process in place, code reviews, peer reviews, check offs that we're going to do.

You're going to create all of this for the entire department, and then you're going to execute it by example, because people learn by what you do now what you say.

And then you're going to come out of this pit with a promotion, move up one level, and that motivated him to just, yeah, I'm totally serious about this. And I did. Could not have done that if I had not been in his shoes.

Or I'm sure Frank was still I know Jim's brain on a stick, he's going to do great things for us, but nobody can work with him. Get rid of him. I'm sure Frank said, no, let me work with them. I'm pretty certain that must have Matt Egan happened.

Yeah, but that's, I mean, I mean, the emotional intuition that's that's on display there, the emotional intelligence on all sides, right?

Is really impressive, I think, because I think a lot of people, you know, hear performance improvement plan, and they think, like, your second time when the boss was saying that to you, it's like, I'm getting fired here kind of thing.

But actually, for you to have the kind of the humility at that point to take the learnings and get better, it's allowed you to pay it forward, right? Which is really interesting.

I think, I do think on a very tactical level, if you can performance improvement plan somebody with the promise of a promotion at the end.

It shows that you're committed to that person, and does make it somewhat easier for them to commit to the project, the program, without it, just without just hearing what we all hear when we're told we need to improve, which is, I am a failure kind of a thing.

Jim Wilt Correct?

Exactly, exactly. That's it, exactly. I Matt Egan

mean, one of the other questions we like to ask, and you've answered it already, actually, is, you know, thinking about the first times you've realized something you thought you knew may have been wrong.

And maybe, in your case, you know that speaks to the fact that, technically, clearly, you won a lifetime achievement award when you were 26 which I agree is absurd, but it's also speaks to the the achievement right?

So maybe you know, you were in a position where there weren't many people around who could teach you technical things, but I guess you had to learn those kind of interpersonal skills like to be right. Success, Jim Wilt

I find if there's a technical impedance mismatch, no matter how good the technology is, it won't land. So there, I'd say two kinds of Pence and mismatches in my career. One is the tech is not yet mature. So let's look at generative AI today.

Okay, we had prompt engineers, and then we get into rags, retrieval, augmented generation. Now we're into agents, Agent tech AI, and I've got MCP, model, context, protocols, all these things are building up.

But two years ago, three years ago, if I started implementing generative AI in production, I might have, I might have, and I might have done this gone too early, and the technology is not ready, and it just blows up in your face and it embarrasses you, and it's harder to recover from that blow up than if you didn't introduce it at all.

Sometimes, yeah, no, I'm saying that's, you know, that's one type of error that I seem to repeat making. You're supposed to not make mistakes over and over again, but it's so easy at times when the technology is new and exciting, right?

The other one is, the technology might be mature, but the humans not ready, yeah, and so I call this the I'm going to put a Ferrari in your garage. Okay, well, here in the United States, Matt, we don't know how to drive. Watches and stick shifts.

Most of us don't, right? It's the only way my wife and I drive, but most don't. So if I put a Ferrari with a manual transmission in your garage, it's going to be the worst car you've ever owned. It doesn't move. It stalls all the time. It jerks.

I can't drive it. It's the worst car. I'd rather get that automatic Kia instead for a Ferrari. With manual transmission impede mismatch of the user and the technology Matt Egan

completely, because the Ferrari has got no trunk space as well, right? And if you need your golf game or whatever, it's not, it's not helping. I think where we are right now with AI specifically, it's very interesting from that perspective.

I call it the Jurassic Park problem, which is just because we can do something, should we do it right?

And I think, you know, you see mature organizations currently who have kind of earmarked this year is the year when they want agentic to be like part of the business workflow, but the business workflow has to be in a sufficiently optimal state correct have a positive impact.

And so I think there's a really interesting conversation between business leadership and technology leadership, about exactly what you're talking about, right?

Are we better off having a Ferrari in the in the in the garage, or is it about, you know, running that care as efficiently as we possibly can at this point, correct? Jim Wilt

And sometimes it's a growth thing. I've done things with teams, and again, I've had so many failures. I've learned the few things that work right, and I go and execute those with high confidence, because I know how to screw it up really well. I'm really good at that.

So if you take a look at a lot of things, sometimes you get into a technology. I'll use our generative AI as an example.

I like introducing people to rags because you can build them without code, and you can do it in a manner that they get immediate gratification from it. But a rag is not a solution. I've got Jim the architect rag.

You can ask me any question at all in papers, I've written books, and everything is in there. You can ask me anything, probably answers better than I do, but it's just a part of a learning process. It's not the destination.

And then you get into the agentic and things you were talking about, you get into serious solutions. We can get into those after you build the non serious solution as part of the learning process.

But if I jump into the more complex agentic AI using auto Gen, I'm probably going to not do well at it, because I did take the time to learn what it is I'm doing.

And I think sometimes you need little projects to get you to where you've learned before you go into something that would end up in production eventually, Matt Egan

yep, no, I think that's, I think that's 100% true.

This is fascinating, Jim, but you know, I want to lighten, lighten the mood, and we're going to move on from failures now, because what we really want to do is get to know you a little bit beyond your professional veneer.

So we're going to move on to our section, which we call quick fire first, where we find out about the real person using our patented this is very much a project that's learning rather than ready to execute code, but we call it our random question generator.

So please, Jim, could you pick a number between one and 13? Jim Wilt Let's go with 12.

Matt Egan Go with 12.

What was the first concert you remember going to post gig, Jim Wilt first concert?

Yep, would be Beach Boys at the Monroe County Fair. Come on. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, his very first last pit was Dream Theater. Matt Egan That's incredible.

And you know, what are your What are your memories of that, of that, of that gig? Jim Wilt

Well, the first one, it was my first live concert, and my first memory would be, it sounds close to the recordings, it's it's quite different, but it's a lot more exciting. Yeah, Matt Egan wow.

I can't believe we managed to get that particular answer going on. Let's do one more and see if we can live up to the quality of that answer. One more. Number between one and 13, Jim Wilt please.

Jim. Number Matt Egan eight.

Number eight is the first thing you would buy if you won the lottery. Jim Wilt

First thing I would buy if I won the lottery. That's a That's a tough one to get, because I want to buy anything. Yeah, I would, I wouldn't buy anything.

I live in this comfort zone of, I guess what I've got isn't enough, and anymore I just want to give away and everything. I'm not Bill Gates.

I'm not that kind of a money to throw away and everything, but from a lottery perspective, at the stage that I'm at right now, obviously it would be one of those things where I would want to just just get rid of it, probably just donate it somewhere.

One of the things, though, we have a joke in my family, my. Wife and I, and everybody knows this, what do you need in life? I keep telling people, I need a lotus in my garage. A lot of sports car in my garage.

And so a couple of years ago, my wife, or my birthday, got me a matchbox lotus, put it in the garage by itself and and she gave me a card and said, Your birth, your birthday presents waiting for you in the garage.

I opened the door empty and this tiny little matchbox car on the ground. Okay, I cherish that Max spot car more than I would cherish a real Lotus because of the joking relationship. My wife and I have kind of a thing.

So if I were to win the lottery, I would probably, I know it sounds altruistic, just just give it away. I wouldn't want to become the person I would become if I started spending it. Quite frankly, Matt Egan no, completely.

I it's funny. I mean, I, I think, you know, you recognize that you did recognize the privilege in saying that when you said it, and it's funny, as you know, beyond a certain time of life, like it almost feels undignified to want the thing, right?

And there's nothing I want in life. I would pay off my mortgage. That might be the difference here, right? But I don't do the lottery. That's never gonna happen, but I would definitely Jim Wilt be kidding me.

I'm gonna stick it to the bank when I die. Matt Egan

Also a good way of thinking about things. Yeah, okay, wonderful, Jim. We're hitting on every question here, so we're gonna move on to the final section, first and final thoughts.

And I'm actually really interested to ask you this question, what would be the first piece of advice you would give to somebody starting out today? Jim Wilt

And we've touched on this. I have a little drawing thing I do where I have a star, $1 sign, a toy, and I draw a person. And I say, Where are you going to put your aim?

If you put your aim for the money, are you going to put the aim for perfection or attainment of something? And Newton's law colts, what happens is, whatever you aim for, you're going to land one step lower.

So if I aim for money, I'm going to end up in the toilet. I may have more money than anybody else, but I won't feel confident, or I won't feel content.

I say, right, yeah, if I have, like, a perfection that I'm pursuing, I want to build the best generative AI program. I want to build the best neural network. I want to build a vector database that nobody's seen before. Orion, right?

MCP, 56 I don't know whatever it is that you're after, you will never attain that. Yoga close is a true north, but you'll seem to somehow have just enough money, yeah, to continue pursuing that pursuit.

And I think that's kind of the advice I give people, is focus on the star. What is your star? And focus on your star. And don't worry about the money or the fame or anything.

When the university calls you and says you're nominated for the year, you should be thinking about great. I'm trying to fix this nice to star that I'm trying to Matt Egan

work okay, there's, there's, uh, yeah, sorry, go ahead, lose his first book, liars poke. There's this brilliant story about he's working as a trader.

He's had a year in London working as a trader, and he's earned enough to buy a house in central London, but he's annoyed because the guy next to him earned more, and he calls his boss to complain about it, and his boss says, quit today, because if what you're motivated by is like earning money, and you're not happy with what you've just got, you're never going to be happy.

You're just going to be working for a better class of feeling poor and Right, exactly forever, right?

It's like, to your point, if you if the work is the thing, and you follow the goal and the dream like the other things will follow, but to your point, you'll care less about them anyway, when, when they happen? Jim Wilt Yes, absolutely.

Matt Egan

But I do want to ask you about that. I want to ask you about the work itself. So you know, you know when everything's said and done, like, what is, what's the masterpiece?

What's the first thing you would want to tell people about that you've achieved, and maybe we've already, already touched on it, right?

But like, what, what is the kind of career masterpiece that that you've built, that Jim wilt would want people to know about you first of all, Jim Wilt

so, in line with Hopefully, everything we've discussed so far, I'll give you a non standard answer on that. We've talked about octahedral hexapods and lifetime achievement awards, blah, blah, blah. My next masterpiece is the masterpiece, whatever I'm working on now or next, it's.

That's going to be the coolest thing I've ever done, hands down. So I'm working on the third largest retailer in the world. I built an architect at a pilot using generative AI insights platform.

Okay, when that comes to fruition once it's a year into it, now, that'll be the coolest thing I've ever done, or it could be the thing I'm working on that's going to follow that, that that could be the coolest thing I'm ever going to done.

So I like that movie. What is it? Rat, not rat race, man, man.

It's the race across the country, and it's in the 60s or 70s movies, an old movie, and they hire an Italian race car driver to come in, and he gets into the Ferrari, and he takes the rearview mirror and just rips it off and throws it out.

He goes, we don't need that for this race. He's always looking forward for me, my masterpiece is yet to be achieved. I'm working on it. It's the next thing I'm working on, or the thing after that will be my masterpiece.

And in the process, you've got this trail of awards and things that you get. I never look back at that, that rear view mirror is gone. You know, I don't look back on my laurels. I There are problems that are unsolved right now.

And the industry has never been more exciting than it is right now.

And I've said these words, when PCs came into the world, when the local area network came into the world, when the internet came into the world, when the cloud came into the world, and now it's AI and agentic AI and all of these things.

You know, I bought my first neural network in the late 80s, when I was in aerospace. Who would have thought it would be on my phone answering questions. Today, it's so exciting, and being part of that moment, it doesn't get any better.

So our industry is so wonderful because it never settles. You know, it just keeps evolving and changing year after year after year. But every five to 15 years there's a huge jump, and we are in the middle of a huge jump right now. We certainly smoke.

People should just be jumping on their toes. It's just, it's a great time to be in this industry. Matt Egan

No, I quite agree. And Pat McGovern, who was the founder of IDG, who published our publications for the first 60 years of their existence, always had lots of phrases, but the one he would always come back to is the best is yet to come.

And if you're in this industry, that's the way you have to think about things, the best is yet to come. We are living through an industrial revolution. Frankly, if you're in technology and media as we are.

It's been non stop industrial revolution for the past 25 years that I've been in this industry. And you have to have the mindset you've just articulated is that, you know, you learn.

We've talked a lot today about learning from the mistakes, learning your lessons, but you're taking them towards the next thing, which is, which is amazing. Jim, this has been such an incredible conversation. Before we close off, I just wonder if you had any not first but final thoughts.

Jim Wilt

Yeah, I would say life's just too short to comply with everything. If you're not a risk taker, take some small risks and build up that muscle, and don't be afraid to fail when you when you fail, you learn.

And then you can approach something with higher confidence, because you know how to totally screw it up. So you know you won't that way. At least you might learn another way to screw it up.

And I do that all the time, but I think from an advice perspective, I would offer people that only thing I would say is, don't waste your time being safe. Take a few risks. Learn if you fail, embrace the failure. And sometimes failures hurt.

I mean, I I run. I run marathons. I've fallen down while running. I get a little cocky when I run. Sometimes these kids in the mountains.

When I used to live in Washington, you know, they passed me going down a hill, and I'm climbing up the mountainside Hill, and I pass all of them. I'm an old dude, man. I'm passing these high school kids, okay?

And, and then there's another downhill, and I'm like, Man, I just totally nails kiss, boom. I fall flat on my face. I slide on the gravel. I got it blood everywhere. And these kids come up to me, oh, guy, are you okay?

We want to help stones out of your leg. And I go, like, I deserve that so much. Yeah, yeah. Be willing to fall. It hurts and get up again. It Matt Egan

definitely hurts when they when the younger people look at you in that way, right? You're the old guy who's fallen over that's just past Jim Wilt them.

I just said, Good job, guys. You're doing, you're doing good. You know, you'll get there. Don't worry. Matt Egan Yeah, sad moment.

Well, Jim, thank you so much. It's been incredible conversation. My thanks to Jim wilt and thanks for watching and.

Listening to this episode of First Person, the show where we meet the most interesting people in it, and Jim certainly is that, and we learn from them what makes them tick by focusing only on their firsts.

I have been your host, Matt Egan asking you to enjoy, like and subscribe wherever you find us, and if you are an interesting person in it, please let us know you might be the next First Person. Thank you so much, and goodbye.