Cycling is not wanting for characters, and one of the more entertaining is John Burke, CEO of Trek, who is our dorky little worlds answer to the high-powered Walk with me, talk with me corporate archetype:Unfortunately, like much of the bike industry, Trek is having its share of financial trouble, but Burke wants you to understand thats not whats important:Making a profit is the lifeblood of a business, he told me in Las Vegas, backstage at the Great Place to Work For All Summit. But the success of the business is not just measured in how much money you make its in the impact that you make.Spoken like a guy whose company aint making any money!Burke said he couldnt speak for other companies, since hes been playing for the same team for 42 years, but when he looks out at corporate America, he said, theres been a decay in the purpose of companies over the last 25 years. And then he got historically minded. If you go back, an economist once said that making a profit is the only responsibility of a company and thats not Trek.As for Treks impact on the the world, if you want to know what that has been youll have to wait for the coffee table book:Its the kind of story Burke returns to when people ask what Treks 50th anniversary is really about. The company is marking the occasion with a coffee-table book cataloging 50 ways it has changed the world and a 43-minute documentary premiering June 18 at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin, with author Jim Collins in attendance. What Im most proud of at Trek is how weve changed the world, not what the financial results have been. When Im gone, I dont think anyones gonna make note of that.I wonder if the book will celebrate the Y-Foil or pretend it never existed:Both scenarios seem equally likely.Same thing goes for that guy who won-but-didnt-win the Tour de France seven times.As for the thing in the headline about Burke hating smartphones, this was apparently born of one of those weird private meetings CEOs have where they summon some brain genius to lecture them about something, after which Burke concluded smartphones were responsible for all the ills of societywhich, to be fair, is almost certainly true:Now Im kind of slithering under the table as I blew this guy off, Burke told me in his typically blunt fashion. But he had a question for Davidson: he asked where mental health in America stood today, on a scale of 100, relative to 1984. Davidsons answer: 23, down from 100 in 1984. Its in the toilet. Unbelievable. The culprit, Davidson said, was the phone.Out of respect for Burke Im going to leave the line about him slithering under the table as he blew a guy off alone. I mean weve all been there, right? Still, I do find it odd that the CEO of a company that makes bicycles says something like thisConsider the Masters golf tournament, Burke said, one of the last major public events where phones are banned from the grounds. Whats everybody doing? They have a smile on their face. Nobodys trying to take a picture of somebody else. No selfies. Theyre talking to each other. He estimated the happiness level is three times what it is at a comparable phone-permitted event. Its the greatest experiment in the world.yet doesnt make the connection between smartphone overdependence and bikes like his own companys $14,999.99 Supercaliber:Which is equipped with all the latest electronic components from SRAM, including their Flight Attendant suspension system (which I tried back in 2021):Care to guess which now-ubiquitous happiness-eroding device youll need to tune all this stuff? Hint: it aint a multitool, and youre not allowed to use it at the Masters Tournament:Though in his defense, once it is tuned the algorithm will take it from there:All of this does lead me to wonder if perhaps Burke secretly understands that the reason people watching the Masters Tournament are so happy has less to do with the fact that they dont have access to their smartphones and more to do with the following two factors:They are recreatingThey are wealthyThe platitude about money not buying happiness notwithstanding, when youre engaged in recreation and youve got money in the bank youre generally in a pretty good mood. Next time youre out for a ride on a beautiful day take a life satisfaction poll of of people on bikes that cost $15,000 and above. Not only do I suspect the numbers will be better than average, but I bet more than a few of them were at the Masters.Plus, you might even make a new friend, and friends are important:On trade and geopolitics, Burke was equally unsparing. Trek manufactures globally and has navigated years of tariff disruptions, but it framed Americas current isolation as something deeper than a supply chain headache. To accomplish things in life, you need to have friends. To accomplish things as a country, you need to have friends. And weve pissed off just about everybody. He ticked through the list: Canada, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia. I cant tell you why were pissed off at Canada, he said. I genuinely cannot tell you.Wait.Seriously?You cant tell why were pissed off at Canada!?!Its called CLOYING SMUGNESS, Burke![Note to Canadians: You dont need to bother with the patch. If youve got a North American accent and you have time to travel across Europe everyone knows theres a 97% chance youre Canadian.]Jeez, read the room!Hey, I do my best not to assume everyone with a maple leaf patch on their backpack is cloyingly smug. After all, you cant judge a book by its cover. Instead you should judge it by the first few words of every paragraph:Burke said he reads 52 books a year, almost exclusively nonfiction. His reading system, refined over the past four years, is rigorous. He reads the first sentence of every paragraph. If it grabs him, he reads the rest. If it doesnt, he moves on. Ive never read a bad sentence to start a paragraph which turns into a good paragraph, he said. Doesnt happen. (While this might imply that hes a skimmer or speed reader, this method suggests that he starts roughly 100 books a year, and only finished around 50.)What is wrong with me that Ive always been content with simply reading, and never felt the need to implement a rigorous system in order to do so, much less refine it over a period of years? Probably a lot, though it mostly sounds like a way to make both reading and riding equally un-fun:When he finishes a book, he goes back through his underlines and enters only the lessons he wants to carry for the rest of his life into a personal spreadsheet now more than 1,100 entries deep. The system was inspired by Jim Collins, who visited Trek in 2018 and suggested writing down one lesson per book. Burke took it further. The impetus was a bike ride with his wife, during which she asked him to summarize the lessons from one of his favorite books, Simon SineksThe Infinite Game. His answer, he recalled, was lame. Really bad retention. He went home, reread the book, underlined it, and built the spreadsheet.That sounds like the worst bookclub ever.