When I left Uber, I mean, I was scared. I take this job, a very big job at a company that's on fire, like in terms of everything, everything was up. Travis was on the cover of every magazine in the world and then less than 7 months later, I walked out.
You left it all on the, I mean, you didn't take any stock. You like left it all.
I had no interest. So, I issued a statement. I've now realized that my values and approach to leadership are inconsistent with what I've seen at Uber and I can no longer serve as the president.
Oh, it was, it was a, it was terrifying. I turned my phone off, literally turned my phone off for about 6 weeks. Every major media in the world wanted me to come do a sit-down tell-all. This is the most I've ever literally ever talked about Uber.
of the blue couch. It's very hard to walk away at the top of your game. Now, here's a story of a person who walks away from not just a big title, but a very big payout. Jeff Jones was an illustrious CMO. He was at Coke, Gap, Target, but then he made the move to actually run part of the business at Uber. But he discovered that it wasn't quite the company he thought it was and he walked away after 7 months leaving all the stock, which we all know was worth a lot pre-IPO, on the table. There's a lot of interesting parts of this conversation you're going to want to listen. I'm so excited to have you on the blue couch. You and I have known each other for some time, starting really from when you were in marketing, which was most of your career, really. And I loved doing research on you. It's so fun when you actually know the person and then go do research because you discover things you didn't know.
Yeah, new things, exactly.
And I love that you describe yourself as having a career where you were a mutt. So, I wanted to get into the messy parts because sometimes we have people on who've had storied careers like you, and then we just end up talking about all the fun amazing things, which they talk about on all the podcasts. And our goal is to talk about things that are messy.
I don't talk on many podcasts anymore, so.
Well, we'll have to talk about that, too. Because you know, I remember us having a conversation, I remember coming to see you when you took the job at Target, and you were saying to me what it was like when you and your family moved to Minneapolis for that job, and how people would like hunt down your wife in the parking lot to pitch her things.
I mean, it was really, it was another one of these incredible learnings because Margaret, she's always been great at the move. But she was getting all these offers to meet for coffee, and inevitably, at the end of the coffee, someone would say, 'Oh man, it's been great to get to know you. Hey, my son, daughter, husband, friend is developing a new yogurt drink. You know, I wonder if Jeff would be interested in learning about it.'
I'd be like, 'Could you read my screenplay?'
Correct. And it really, it was a great learning, but it kind of, it made us in Minneapolis not want to go out in the community a lot. And in that job at Target, you got everything pitched to you. And I really, when I look back on it now, I wasn't prepared for that.
Is anybody ever prepared for that?
I don't know. I don't know. We'll see if we get into it. There's a funny story about how I got to Target. And one of my colleagues was the chief merchant named Kathy Tesha, and she was incredible. She said, 'Listen, you're the third CMO in the history of Target. And the first two were legendary. And so, these kind of jobs have the potential to do things to people when the spotlight gets really hot.' She said, 'Please just come be you.' And that helped me so much inside the company to enter and not try to become somebody different, but the outside the company part I would never talk to anybody about. It was hard for me. But I was there at the beginning of the digital age for Target. I was also there in incredible crisis for Target.
Yes, when there was a data breach.
There was a data breach. I was there in the first transgender bathroom crisis for the company. I was there when we had people, these burly men with assault rifles strapped across their back, walking into the baby and the toy section in Target stores and posting videos online. You know, Target had been a really insular, very Minnesotan kind of company, and now of a sudden, you know, that didn't work anymore.
You know, I was a CMO for a long time. You did that role for a long time before you moved into the CEO role. Do you think that you would have the career that you have today if you started over?
I call myself a mutt kind of in a self-defensive way because it's been a very atypical career. Agency business, client business a couple times. I left Coca-Cola to join a friend to help start a systems integration consulting firm. McKinney, I only went there because we bought it back from Publicis to take it private. When I was leaving Durham to go to Target, it was in this crazy story because Durham for us was great. And I get this email from Greg Welch. I'll save that story if we want to get into it.
Head hunter in the CMO space.
Marketing job pretty much in America, Greg's in the middle of it. I go through the entire process and I'm planning to tell the kids we're moving. And we're all in the kitchen. The girls were middle school at this time and my oldest daughter literally goes, 'Are we moving?' And I didn't know what to do because I was so nervous about telling them. I'd kind of told them that McKinney, we own the company now, wasn't a normal job, we weren't going to be moving, and now I'm breaking it.
And Hannah, I mean, she just falls on the floor like snot sobbing yelling at me that we're moving. And she's like, 'And I finally have a boyfriend.'
And I look at Margaret and I'm like, 'She has a boyfriend? I had no idea she had a boyfriend.' So, the kids that move was a big deal for them. And then we basically were there until Hannah graduated high school. You know, when I went to Uber, I was commuting. We didn't move, thank goodness. And then when I went to H&R Block, we waited a little bit and then made the move as a family.
Because Uber lasted how long?
Right. So, it's a good thing you didn't move.
Yeah, 7 months. And I was never in San Francisco hardly the time I was there.
Because you ran America's.
Right. So, you were never physically, you didn't have to be in San Francisco.
So, you actually grew up from humble beginnings.
And you went to military school.
And I read, which by the way, why did you go to military school? Why 1 year?
So, I grew up in Parkersburg, West Virginia and I had 42 kids in my high school class. So, I was a really good baseball player and I played football. And I had a coach senior year high school after practice go, 'Hey Jones, what are you going to do next year?' I said, 'I don't know.' And he said, 'You should go to Fork Union Military Academy.'
So, did, was that a fifth year? It was almost like you were French and you had a back year?
So, Fork Union still to this day is known as a Division I football powerhouse. So, back in the day, colleges would send kids there for a PG year. I talked to my dad about this all the time. I literally came home from football practice and said, 'Coach Wegman said I should go to Fork Union.' I hadn't applied to college. I hadn't taken a standardized test.
Were you planning on going to college or just hadn't occurred to you?
I was literally a C-minus high school student.
What, why do you think is it's about you? Because by the way, you're not the first person to come on the couch to say they were not a good student and then have had a very illustrious career.
I mean, I think when you're an athlete and you play team sports, your coaches are very important figures.
Chris Wegman told me what I should do. And so, I think that had an outsized impact on how fast I made the decision.
I did. That's what I mean.
Which made you actually good for military school, because you definitely have to listen.
Well, you definitely have to listen. I get to Fork Union. I begged my parents to come home. But Fork Union changed my life. It gave me the confidence and the discipline that I didn't have in high school. And then when I went to college, I turned out to be an elite student.
What's the lesson that now when you look back that you reflect on and think to yourself, 'I wish somebody had told me that there was a way for me.' Like what is the thing that the lesson that you have taken away?
Well, I think there's a few things. I mean, I think one is you don't really know your potential when you're 16 or 17 or 18. So, just because you're in the position you're in then doesn't at all define what you might be in later. And then I also think, you know, you get a lot of advice as a kid and it's easy to write it off. Chris played an important role in my life as a coach. He told me I should do something, I did it, and he was right. And so I think, you know, when you're young, it's easy, you don't listen to your parents, you know, who knows who you listen to sometimes, but there are people that are looking out for you, and you know, listen sometimes and take the risk. Going to Fork Union was a risk. My parents couldn't pay for it, by the way. They had to borrow like $8,000 from an uncle to pay for me to go. And they did that.
When you're given those chances, what do you do with them?
I get there, I realize I hate it, but I realize it gives me something I didn't have before, and I took full advantage of it. You get lucky breaks, you get a chance, you create some on your own, but what you end up doing with those, I think, is what can start to create paths and define people over time.
Did you ever feel like a sense of I don't belong? This isn't my environment.
My parents couldn't teach me many things, but they definitely taught me great manners and hard work. They were small business owners. They just busted their ass and did many different things. But those two things translated, and then in college, you know, I interned in the advertising business every year in college. Every year in school, every summer between grades, I studied advertising or had an internship. I knew what I wanted to do when I graduated. And so being in all those environments, I think also prepared me to know how to belong.
So, what, why do you think it is about you? People ask me this all the time, so I'll be curious for your answer, because you have done these big pivots, right? A company you started yourself, big brands, different industries, and also even different roles. Like, I never wanted to be CEO. Did you know you wanted to be CEO?
Definitely not. When I left Uber, I mean, I was scared. I take this job which, big job at a company that's on fire, like in terms of everything. Everything was up. Travis was on the cover of every magazine in the world.
The founder, Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber. And so, he asked me to come run the ride-sharing business. And so, I do. And then less than 7 months later, I walked out.
You left it all on the, I mean, you didn't take any stock. You like left it all.
I had no interest. So, I issued a statement. I've now realized that my values and approach to leadership are inconsistent with what I've seen at Uber, and I can no longer serve as the president.
Oh, it was, it was a, it was terrifying. Really early, really early, I felt like I'd made a mistake.
Like the first few weeks in. Yeah.
Weeks. I've never actually counted, but I'm going to say I probably spent 75 to 100 hours with Travis before he offered me the job.
Mhm. Like interviewing in some way, shape, or form.
I thought I was talking to him about joining the board.
I see. Well, that's a good stick.
I mean, he obviously had something different in mind. We get to this point where he says, 'Hey, I'm not going to make any changes to the board, but I'd like you to come run the ride-sharing business.' I loved what I was doing at Target. I wasn't looking for a job. I only share that because I feel like I knew a lot about what I was going to walk into.
And then I got there and realized I knew nothing.
It's hard to describe that era of a company that big growing that fast in how chaotic it was every day. And I thought my job was to help the company grow up. But they were really fighting against wanting to feel big. Even though I think we were hiring like 200 people a week when I was there. I pulled more all-nighters in 7 months than I pulled all of college. I mean, it was just a massive company growing so fast in so many places in the world, so many time zones happening. And in most places where Uber was opening then, it was illegal. So, it was not uncommon to get a call or wake up and have a message that the GM of some city in some country had been arrested and put in jail overnight. Incredible challenges with safety. I mean, just it was crazy. There were many things happening that ultimately became public that weren't public. So, Susan Fowler wrote her infamous blog post about how female engineers were treated. There was the delete Uber movement here in New York.
We were accused of stealing the autonomous IP from Waymo to build our autonomous driving business. We hired Eric Holder to do an investigation of the company as a result of all these corrupt behaviors and practices. Eric Holder, the former Attorney General. Travis was caught on video in the back of an Uber berating an Uber driver, which became a personal crisis for him. We had a horrible safety record in countries around the world. It just, none of this stuff was public.
And you're not really supposed to talk about it at home. When things are going sideways.
Yeah, I mean and it's hard to describe, you know, what was happening. I'd had this conversation with Travis about the reputation of the company. And that the reputation of the company was really troubled. And it was inextricably linked to his personal reputation. He wanted data, you know, to back that up. So, I commissioned a study. And literally that is when the whole news breaks about Travis in this video in the backseat of the Uber. That turns into a whole thing by itself. We had, I believe at the time, I may be off on the number, two or three DOJ criminal investigations against the company for what was called gray balling. Which is a particular use of technology. That's the context.
It's funny because, you know, Target especially in that window when you were there and you know, it was really like a purpose-driven company. It was like very much of the community, you know, maybe sleepy in the tech world, but definitely, you know, with the values and ethos sort of at its core. And you joined tech and tech particularly in that window and Uber might have just been the poster child was very much a like let's grow at any cost. Like anybody who doesn't do that is kind of a sucker.
And you could see how that was addicting to people. I mean, I remember when I joined the world of tech, somebody showed me a video of a guy who'd helped, you know, Facebook get to billions of dollars and he just seemed like such a complete, I mean, we're still to some degree living with that, right?
Yeah. No, I think we are and we're probably entering a new phase of it actually with all the AI companies. Travis Kalanick is by far the most brilliant person I've ever interacted with. Without question. And one of the things I saw in him and learned from him was every single problem that emerged was just a challenge to be solved.
Including the law, by the way. Those kind of thinkers and leaders who create these kind of companies, these companies wouldn't be created without them.
But if your daughter was in a job like that, would you tell her to stay? I mean, because we've all worked for difficult bosses. Let's just say also visionary bosses.
Right? I mean, maybe those two things come together. I don't know. Would you have said if your daughter came home and described what you were going through, would you have said stay because you can learn a lot? Or by the way, the stock is going to be.
Yeah. Or like the stock is going to be worth a lot.
No, no, no, for sure not. When I face a tough situation, the first thing I try to do solve it.
But when it becomes really clear that you cannot do what needs to be done, then you ask the hard question, do I need to go? And that's where I got to at Uber, and that's the advice I would give my daughters as well. So, you don't just run because it gets hard.
But Travis believed that we had a reputational problem. I believed we had a behavioral problem.
And it turned out you were right.
And it turned out that to be true.
One of the things that I think becomes addictive for people, and neither you nor I clearly prioritize money when we started because we took jobs in advertising, which was definitely the lowest paying jobs coming out of school. It becomes heady, and then people are sort of on this race where it's never enough. At what point did you feel like, okay, my sanity, my values, it's worth more. Like, when was enough enough for you because you left without a job?
Which, by the way, can be terrifying to most people.
Why I said at the beginning I was afraid.
