Working for Kanye, Building "Items" for Delta Force | Justin Klahn | Ep. 445

Justin Klahn is hard to put in a box. Twenty years inside Nike Innovation. Years embedded with JSOC units building gear that had to actually work. Time consulting with three-letter agencies, DARPA, and the Harvard Learning Innovations Laboratory. A run working directly for Kanye West. He calls himself a problem solver, and the resume backs it up. His new book is Innovator's Handbook.

We open on the divorce conversation, the kind of failure neither of us wished for, and what it takes to show up for a partner the second time around.

From there it gets wide. The competition mindset that separates the top of the JSOC food chain from everyone else. What it's actually like to sit in a room with Kobe, with Tinker, with Kanye. The Nike origin stories most people don't know — the real Jordan re-signing, the Pantry, the relationship between Phil Knight and Steve Jobs.

We dig into the supernatural. Faith. Conspiracy and control. How a guy who advises high-stakes operators stays open enough to consider anything but grounded enough to still get the work done.

And we end on the AI workflow he used to write a book in two weeks — and what that says about where the world is going.

The Innovator's Handbook

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Timestamps:

[00:00:00] Cold open and COVID debate

[00:03:14] Marriage, divorce, and younger selves

[00:09:43] Dating, affection, and better relationships

[00:14:24] Jocko, tier units, and naming jokes

[00:20:27] Politics, liberalism, and social control

[00:26:09] Long-term planning and legacy thinking

[00:35:25] Red-pill questions and Epstein files

[00:38:55] Flat earth, truth, and belief

[00:45:03] Community, belonging, and strange topics

[00:51:07] Martial arts, Bruce Lee, and access

[01:00:03] Ultimate competition and 1% improvements

[01:06:27] Kobe, Delta anecdote, elite performers

[01:21:44] How he entered Nike innovation

[01:40:19] Balance versus obsession

[01:47:26] Working with Kanye West

[01:53:45] Open-mindedness and no-limits thinking

[02:00:20] Kanye’s processing and listening better

[02:17:22] Purpose, reverence, and understanding people

[02:22:18] Watching operators transition to business

[02:30:00] Excellence, identity, and what he does

[02:40:56] Counter-trafficking and confronting evil

[02:48:05] Writing the Innovator’s Handbook

[03:11:21] AI tools and staying relevant

[03:17:12] Smoke, evidence, and justice

[03:21:26] Where to find him