Monte Wood
speaker
192 appearances
6 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Monte Wood’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
I'll give an example that many people have quoted. One of the most successful people in history, actually. I worked directly with Steve Jobs when he was at Next and indirectly at Apple for many years. There are many quotes that circulate on the internet now of his last and final words with his best friends.
And all of them say that he talked about he wished that he had been more generous in his life. He wished he had benefited those around him. Now, I think there's a little bit of a misnomer there because he was not a kind person. I sat in rooms and watched him berate people. other people and do it in a very inconsiderate and unkind way.
But his generosity, his focus of generosity was to change the world and make it a better place. He wanted to empower everybody of all abilities to be able to use technology for themselves. And his compass was generous. His manner was not. And in the end, I think he wished that his manner had been different. So I think that's probably the best example that I can give.
Most of the great leaders that I worked with, John Chambers and Andy Jassy and many others, actually were generous people. They worked harder than those people around them to create success for others. Some of them were very myopic and maybe didn't have the best interpersonal skills, but I don't know that they were I wouldn't say they were not generous.
I think that maybe they just didn't understand generosity, which again is one of my goals is to help people understand what generosity is, how simple, very simple, easy things when done with the right intent can make a tremendous impact in the world.
I think that greed is a big part of it. And the reason I say greed is because there are powerful entities and people who are using divide, who are using conflict and creating conflict amongst parties to line their own pockets with money. When you have a media, all of our media outlets, there's not a single good one out there, right? They're not reporting news anymore. It's all opinion.
And it's all opinion to create divide and conflict. When you have such powerful entities that are trying to do that, it's difficult for the single person standing on a mountaintop to get people to understand. Now, I will say there are some really strong and powerful people that are focused on consciousness and generosity now. And we're beginning to see some of that effect.
And I'm not going to give you any names, but I'm fortunate to be on the inside of some of that. And I am hoping that those people can create, like you and I talked about earlier, collaboration. respect for each other. I don't have to agree with everything you say. In fact, I never will agree with everything you say, but I can respect your opinion and I can respect you as an individual.
And then I can respectfully disagree and we can be fine together. But it is now, it's almost if a lot of media is promoting that if you don't agree, then you should hate the person that you disagree with. And that is incredibly dangerous, in my opinion. What do you think?
Yep, I would agree. And you'd be surprised the people that are generous that you might not expect. Two and a half years ago, in a hot tub at a hotel in the island of Lanai, and Elon Musk and Grimes and X said, walked up to the hot tub. We sat there and chatted for probably 45 minutes. We weren't anybody in comparison to him.
He was considerate and gave us conversation and we laughed and he talked about a German movie that he had watched and was all animated. He could have just turned and walked away, but he didn't. He was considerate, and I considered it to be a very generous thing that he did. He left a very positive impression on me, like he really cared about people.
I'm sure when you're that wealthy, there's all kinds of limitations. And I know there were security guards in every direction, all in black, that we couldn't see. But he really stopped and cared about the conversation he was having with us. And that gives me hope. It really does give me hope that there are people, powerful people out there that will help us make a difference.
So the answer is yes. But I have to be careful, right? Over-optimistic. will turn people off. So if I am appropriately optimistic with the person that I'm talking with, if I'm understanding their energy, their way, how they communicate, the tone of their voice, their comfort with eye contact, if I'm aware of those things, then the optimism I give them in a way that they can absorb it is a gift.
I go through life thinking the optimism I share with people is a gift. It's a gift that maybe they walk away from me and are more hateful and more positive in the next engagement that they have in life. And it turns out amazing for them.
Yeah, in order not to be a hypocrite, I'm going to give an example because I think that I have to practice what I preach. I keep a journal. And in that journal, I document some form of generosity and some form of appreciation every single day. And I haven't always done this, but I think I'm very close to 600 days now.
of doing this and our recommendation in the book is just to do it for 30 days to document to actually be generous every day for 30 days so i set out to do that and i liked it so much that i'm now on day 672 or whatever it's just like anything else in life If you practice it, you will get better at it. You'll find a thousand ways that you can be generous. It may be sharing optimism.
It may be sharing a smile. It may be just really intently listening to somebody. It may be calling, using somebody's name and remembering their name and making them feel special. There's so many ways to to be generous. And the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the more you realize all the different ways. And of course, we list all of those ways in the book. And in the book, there's 12.
I talk about famous leaders that I've worked with and so forth. In the book, there are 12 incredibly successful people that we interviewed and asked them how generosity has played into their success and how they've been generous in their lives. It's great to not only practice it yourself, but to understand how other people have done it.
Yeah, I do both. Sometimes when I'm traveling, it's easier to do on the phone. But the hardest thing in life is doing anything consistently. So I have done it consistently for 600 days, every day. And there are a few other things that I do consistently every single day, but I'm not going to I'm not going to go into those now because I also I think you need to be generous with yourself.
So there are some things I do exercise wise every single day for the last 600 days. And that's my way of being generous with myself. documenting your generosity and what you appreciate in life. When you appreciate more, when you understand, when you become good at appreciation, you become much better at being generous.
Showing 1–20 of 192 · page 1 of 10
Next →