One of One

John Chambers (CEO of JC2 Ventures) ran Cisco for 20 years, from 1995 to 2015. He made 180 acquisitions, built the company into, at the time, the most valuable in the world, and in the year he stepped down, Harvard Business Review ranked him the 2nd best performing CEO in the world. He now runs JC2 Ventures, where he backs and mentors the next generation of founders. In those two decades, John faced the four hardest tests of a CEO: a market in transition, a bubble, the bureaucracy that comes with scale, and business model disruption. Most CEOs meet one or two in a career. John faced all four, and he and Darren mine the lessons from each. They also explore how John's dyslexia helps him detect patterns and capitalize on them before anyone else does.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

Ben Goorin is the fourth generation CEO of Goorin Brothers, the family hat company founded in 1895, and the creator of The Farm, the animal trucker hats worn on heads all over the world.Ben and Darren met years ago in the same YPO forum, and he's one of the truest creatives Darren has ever seen occupy the CEO seat. Ben's company was founded the year hats peaked in America. Every year since has been a headwind. His father told him the business is what it is and would never be different. But Ben spent his career proving otherwise, interrupting the mundane, as he puts it, until one of those interruptions, a rooster hat with four small letters stitched beneath it, split the company's history in two.Ben and Darren explore what putting on a hat actually does to a person, the freedom and the price of leading without a playbook, and why Ben believes the moment for creators like him has finally arrived. Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

Over 13 years, Jack Conte has built Patreon into a platform that has paid out more than $10 billion to creators. When Jack was 10 years old, the cool kids wore Nike and Adidas. Jack didn't. He wore Court Classics from Costco. Not because they were better, because the brand worship simply didn't make sense to him. That same voice, the one that says this isn't right, has run through his entire life. Today, it fuels his fight to build a platform that truly serves creators in an industry he says plainly is bad for humans. In this conversation, Darren and Jack explore the public stance Jack is taking against industry orthodoxy, the business he has built to reflect them, the inner work that has shaped how he leads, and the choices and trade offs he has made over 13 years.Jack’s New York Times Opinion piece: “I’m Building an Algorithm That Doesn’t Rot Your Brain” text and videoRecommended Reading:The Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro KishimiWhen I Say No, I Feel Guilty by Manuel J. SmithThe Power of a Positive No by William UryKegan’s Theory of Adult Development by Natali MoradFind out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

Doug Conant stepped into the CEO role at the Campbell Soup Company in 2001, inheriting a toxic culture and a workforce that had lost faith in its leadership. Over the next decade, he engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in modern business history. But what makes Doug's story so compelling is not just what he accomplished, but the inner journey that made it possible. A lifelong introvert who, after being fired at age 32, learned the importance of living his authentic life story, and in so doing, built a philosophy grounded in deep listening, relentless self reflection, and an unshakable belief that to win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace. In this conversation, Darren and Doug explore the crucible moment that forged everything, what it really means to be tough minded on standards and tender-hearted with people, and what 50 years in the arena has taught Doug about the inner work that great leadership demands.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

Mark Pincus is one of the most distinctive founders and product builders of the past three decades. He has written a remarkable new book called Life at the Speed of Play: Launch Products People Love! Most people assume that the willingness to stand for what you know to be true, even when the world is calling you crazy, is a quality common to all founders. In Darren’s experience, it isn't. It is rare. And Mark possesses it in a form he’s encountered in very few leaders. Mark is also a man doing the harder, quieter, inner work, asking what his soul actually needs, sitting in what he calls “the abyss,” examining the relationship between the conviction that built his companies and the integrity he is now bringing to the rest of his life. They talk about where that conviction came from, the moral contract Mark made with the people who built Zynga, and what it means at sixty to keep showing up in pursuit of something your soul still needs you to build.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

Eric Ries is author of The Lean Startup, founder of the Long Term Stock Exchange, and now author of a terrific new book called Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric's central argument is that even the most mission driven companies will, over time, succumb to what he calls financial gravity and lose their soul. The solution, how to become incorruptible, is to design structural protections early. The good news is that there are numerous examples hiding in plain sight. Eric and Darren talk about Sol Price and Costco, Novo Nordisk, Eric's work with Anthropic, and what he calls a spiritual holding company. And in the last stretch, they explore Eric's own inner journey, deeply personal and spiritual, that sits underneath all of it.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

In nearly 15 years, Wade has grown Zapier from a side project at a Missouri hackathon into one of the most capital efficient software companies ever built. Essentially bootstrapped, Zapier now helps millions of customers automate their work by connecting the thousands of apps and tools that businesses use every day.In this conversation, Darren seeks to understand Wade as a leader: a man who grew up in Jefferson City, Missouri with no entrepreneurial blueprint, who built something genuinely countercultural by trusting what he knew to be true before the evidence arrived. They talk about the “Code Red” Wade declared in March of 2023, the prescient decision to enact a company wide pause that has led to 100% AI adoption across the organization, what it takes to lead people through that kind of change, and the critical distinction between personal and institutional AI adoption.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

In this episode of One of One, Darren speaks with Wendy McMahon, former CEO of CBS News & Stations.Wendy McMahon is one of the most influential leaders in modern broadcast journalism. Over the course of her career, has led two of the most important institutions in American media, first as president of the ABC-owned television stations, and later as president and CEO of CBS News and Stations. She began her career in local television, working in branding, marketing, and storytelling across local stations around the country. From those early roles, she developed a deep conviction about the purpose of journalism, especially local journalism, as a public service and a cornerstone of civic life.Throughout this conversation, Wendy reflects on the realities of leading institutions through transformation and uncertainty. She shares how leaders build momentum during change, why visible signals of leadership matter, and what it means to steward an organization whose mission extends far beyond the business itself.She also introduces a powerful leadership idea that has shaped her thinking, the concept of mettle: the courage to stand in the storm when the stakes are highest and the world is watching. This is a conversation about purpose-driven leadership, navigating complexity, and the character required to lead when it matters most.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

In this episode of One of One, Darren speaks with Frank Blake, former chairman and CEO of The Home Depot.Frank stepped into the CEO role at Home Depot at a moment of profound uncertainty. It was early 2007, the housing market was beginning to unravel, and culturally, the company had lost touch with the values that once defined it. Frank had never aspired to be a CEO, and yet he was asked to lead one of the largest retailers in the world through one of the most turbulent periods in its history.Over the next eight years, Frank restored Home Depot's customer first culture. He paused new store openings to reallocate capital toward improving the customer experience, and led with a deeply unconventional philosophy that the CEO belongs at the bottom of the organization, pushing purpose upward rather than letting authority cascade down. This episode explores how to lead in crisis, the truth revealed by capital allocation, the discipline of focus, and what it really means to serve an organization.Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.

In this episode of One of One, Darren speaks with Jarek Kutylowski, founder and CEO of DeepL.DeepL is a pioneering AI company serving hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. Born in Poland and raised between Poland and Germany, Jarek experienced firsthand the challenges and beauty of bridging languages and cultures. Trained as a computer scientist, he saw early on how AI could transform communication, and he spent the past eight years building DeepL into a global leader in applied AI. DeepL achieved market dominance as a startup in a category that could easily have been owned by the large technology incumbents, and Jarek offers a masterclass in strategic counter positioning. He's evolved DeepL’s culture as it scaled, preserving its research roots while becoming a global commercial powerhouse. And now Jarek's leading DeepL into its second act, a courageous expansion beyond language translation into the broader world of agentic AI. Find out more about the Trium Group at triumgroup.comOne of One is produced by Darren Gold, Emily Shaw, Talia Deer, and Karen Welsh. Engineering by Aja Simpson.