Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Patrick Lencioni - The Table Group Founder & NYT Bestselling Author (10M+ Books Sold) | Why 80% of People Hate Their Work and the Simple Framework to Fix It

Transcript

Patrick Lencioni - The Table Group Founder & NYT Bestselling Author (10M+ Books Sold) | Why 80% of People Hate Their Work and the Simple Framework to Fix It · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  How does it feel when somebody's working outside of their genius?
• 0:03
  The best way I can describe it is that it feels like work.
• 0:05
  When you're working in your genius, you're working, but it doesn't even feel like work.
• 0:09
  Today's guest is Patrick Lencioni, best-selling author, leadership expert, and creator of Working Genius.
• 0:15
  As the founder of The Table Group, he has spent decades helping leaders build stronger teams and healthier organizations.
• 0:20
  In this conversation, he shares why finding the right kind of work can change how you feel about your career and why work doesn't have to feel like a grind.
• 0:28
  Are most people working outside their genius?
• 0:30
  The majority of people spend too little time in their genius.
• 0:34
  Some tragically spend no time in their genius.
• 0:37
  How do you describe how their day should feel?
• 0:40
  Nobody gets to work in their genius all the time.
• 0:42
  It's all a matter of relative percentages.
• 0:45
  But when we have a job that's mostly the things we don't like to do, that's just punishment.
• 0:50
  It's not about finding the perfect job.
• 0:51
  You need a job and start doing something that's not completely horrible for you and then figure out how to align that.
• 0:57
  But people who think it's supposed to be a grind are in for a very, very disappointing career.
• 1:05
  My fitness pal is a success story partner.
• 1:07
  Now here's something I've noticed after interviewing hundreds of founders, the ones that are performing at the highest level, the ones that are truly winning, they aren't just optimizing their business or their calendar or their team, they're paying attention to what they eat.
• 1:18
  And the ones who aren't paying attention, they're usually the first ones to burn out.
• 1:21
  And that pattern is consistent enough that it got me thinking about my own nutrition.
• 1:25
  Not whether I was eating well, but whether I actually knew what the big picture looked like.
• 1:29
  That's why I started using the MyFitnessPal app.
• 1:31
  I wanted to see what I was actually eating, not what I assumed I was eating, but the real numbers, what my protein intake looked like, what my macronutrient breakdown was, where my calories were actually going throughout the day.
• 1:42
  And the app gives you all of that.
• 1:43
  Now, what kept me using it is that there's zero friction.
• 1:46
  If I eat something, I scan the barcode, it pulls everything up.
• 1:49
  I can also verbally log what I eat.
• 1:51
  And it remembers my regular meals.
• 1:53
  So most days I'm logging my food in under a minute.
• 1:55
  See, food is a foundation for your energy, your sleep, your recovery, and your performance.
• 1:59
  It's not one of many inputs.
• 2:01
  It is the one input.
• 2:02
  So go to podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code Scott.
• 2:05
  All uppercades for 15% off MyFitnessPal Premium.
• 2:08
  That's podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code Scott.
• 2:18
  I want to first unpack when I look at sort of your life's work and your most recent work, the working genius.
• 2:25
  I know that this work applies to people trying to figure out their career and how they operate within a company, but I want to sort of from you working with all these individuals, trying to understand what their working genius is.
• 2:39
  How does it feel when somebody is working outside of their genius?
• 2:42
  You know, I think the best way I can describe it is that it feels like work.
• 2:46
  What I mean by that is when I was a kid, my dad, God rest his soul, said, Pat, if it were fun, they wouldn't call it work.
• 2:52
  And I remember thinking, oh, that's a drag.
• 2:55
  And when you're not working in your genius, it feels like, oh, yeah, this is really, this takes energy and intent that I probably wouldn't otherwise do.
• 3:04
  When you're working in your genius, you're working, but it doesn't even feel like you're working.
• 3:08
  Which is frictionless.
• 3:10
  It's, it's, yeah, it's like you're doing what you were meant to do now, but when you're working really outside your genius, which is what you call your working frustration, it feels like drudgery.
• 3:20
  So I, I'm thinking like, there's really three kinds of work.
• 3:23
  There's fluid, fun.
• 3:24
  I love what I'm doing.
• 3:25
  There's work where you're like, yep, this is kind of work.
• 3:28
  And then there's misery.
• 3:31
  So when I think of fun work, I think of flow state.
• 3:34
  That's in your genius.
• 3:35
  That's in your genius.
• 3:36
  You know, you don't even pay attention to the clock.
• 3:38
  Like when I do these podcasts, I'm in my genius.
• 3:41
  Exactly.
• 3:41
  I think, I hope, after I know that you have tests to figure out.
• 3:45
  But I feel like I'm in my genius because I genuinely get energy from it.
• 3:48
  Nothing else distracts me.
• 3:50
  Meanwhile, I could be on...
• 3:53
  an all hands call, a budget call, a whatever call, a zoom call on anything.
• 3:57
  And I'm like, okay, when does this end?
• 3:59
  I know you have to do it, but if someone else is talking, you know, I have the bad habit of checking emails on the phone cause I don't want to really be in this meeting.
• 4:06
  I have other things that I'm thinking into the future or into the past sometimes.
• 4:10
  So I think that genius, like you just said is flow.
• 4:15
  Not everybody experiences flow.
• 4:16
  I'm going to have sort of two questions to follow up with this.
• 4:21
  Are most people working outside their genius?
• 4:23
  Because I think that when people just hear you describe that, I know what flow is.
• 4:26
  I experienced it because I do a creative project for a living, but I think most people probably don't love their work.
• 4:32
  Yeah, I would say the majority of people spend too little time in their genius.
• 4:36
  Some tragically spend no time in their genius.
• 4:40
  And largely that's because it's kind of a crapshoot when people interview.
• 4:44
  And I see this, like people getting out of school or picking a career, and they're not doing it with an understanding of who they are.
• 4:54
  My first job out of college was the best job in America that year.
• 4:56
  It was the number one company.
• 4:57
  It was called Bain & Company, a management consulting firm.
• 5:00
  And they wrote a book that year and I read it because that was before the internet.
• 5:03
  They wrote books and it said the best job in America for a college grad is Bain.
• 5:07
  And I applied and I got the job.
• 5:09
  And it was so completely opposite of my working geniuses.
• 5:13
  See, somebody said it's a perfect job if you're wired a certain way.
• 5:18
  You can make good money and you get good experience if you're wired a certain way.
• 5:22
  But I was doing things I just didn't like.
• 5:24
  And so I didn't understand like, man, I've been pretty successful up until this point in my life and I am struggling.
• 5:31
  And for two years, I was just...
• 5:34
  just scraping by and I thought oh man I'm a fraud I how did they hire me and then I I five years ago discovered working genius and I was like oh it was the opposite of who I am and I was swimming upstream the entire time I think that most people that's that's the reality too often it is yeah um
• 5:57
  Now, the second thing I wanted to talk about just in terms of working genius and flow state is people do experience flow like I do.
• 6:09
  But I also understand that a lot of my day is work that I don't like.
• 6:18
  if you were going to describe working genius to someone, how do you describe how their day should feel?
• 6:23
  Because there's always going to be shit.
• 6:25
  This sucks.
• 6:26
  It's a great question.
• 6:28
  And nobody gets to work in their genius all the time.
• 6:31
  It's all a matter of
• 6:33
  relative percentages, if you will.
• 6:35
  And like, I'm a parent and my, I'm pretty much an empty nester.
• 6:39
  I've won.
• 6:39
  It's still in college.
• 6:41
  And, but for years I was doing things that my kids needed, my wife needed and the house needed.
• 6:47
  And,
• 6:47
  that weren't necessarily my thing, but you don't get to choose.
• 6:50
  Now, what I realized, though, you do get to outsource or ask other people to help you with things and kind of barter with people like, hey, you know, I'm terrible at this.
• 6:58
  Can you help me with this stuff?
• 7:00
  And I'd love to help you with that.
• 7:01
  That's the best thing in the world.
• 7:03
  But generally speaking, you know, I don't get to decide I'm going to change my kids' diapers.
• 7:07
  We got to get them dinner.
• 7:08
  We got to keep them going to school and doing their homework.
• 7:12
  So there's plenty of things we have to do in life.
• 7:16
  But when we have a job that's mostly the things we don't like to do, that's just punishment.
• 7:22
  And so and what's interesting, Scott, is this.
• 7:25
  People think that it's selfish to talk about that.
• 7:28
  One of my favorite stories was a guy that was getting his performance review and it was not it had not been a good year for him.
• 7:34
  It was going to be a bad performance review.
• 7:36
  And the night before he went in to talk to his boss and his boss's boss, he did the working genius.
• 7:42
  And so he came to the review and he handed them the report and said, Hey, before we get started, can you just look at this?
• 7:48
  And they looked at the report and they said, Well, no wonder you've had such a bad year.
• 7:52
  This job is totally wrong for you.
• 7:54
  He goes, I know.
• 7:55
  And they were like, you know, we have another job in another department.
• 7:59
  We need people just like this.
• 8:01
  And he said, I got promoted.
• 8:03
  I got promoted.
• 8:05
  rather than chastised or fired because they just did.
• 8:09
  If we don't know who we are and what gives us joy and energy, we can't find the right job.
• 8:14
  And that's even within the organizations who work.
• 8:16
  It's not like you have to go change your career or leave the company.
• 8:19
  Sometimes you'd have to go to your manager and say, this is, I discovered who I am and what I'm great at and what kills me.
• 8:27
  Most managers are like, I want to put you in a job where you're flourishing most of the time.
• 8:30
  Now, everybody's going to have to do some stuff they don't like.
• 8:33
  Yeah.
• 8:33
  But if you're spending 70% of your time doing stuff you don't like, it's not going to be a fun job.
• 8:39
  When you first started a Bain company, I bet like most people, you subscribe to the idea, especially just out of college, if you're super ambitious, that you have to do hard work and it's going to suck.
• 8:52
  So is that true or is this just a fallacy that we subscribe to because that's what our parents subscribe to and that's what our grandparents subscribe to?
• 9:01
  Like, talk to me about, I guess, the thing in your life, this inflection point that led you to realize that work doesn't have to suck, quite simply.
• 9:11
  You know, and St. Thomas Quintus says the answer is always in the middle.
• 9:14
  You know, like there's that extreme, that post-World War II thing.
• 9:17
  It's like you work and it's not fun and you do it.
• 9:20
  And that's why they call it a job.
• 9:22
  And then it kind of swung the other way where a lot of young people were coming out of school saying, I know some people now that are graduating.
• 9:29
  I don't think that would be a great job for me.
• 9:31
  And it's like, it's not about finding the perfect job.
• 9:33
  You need a job and start doing something that's not completely horrible for you and then figure out how to align that.
• 9:40
  So it's someplace in the middle.
• 9:41
  But people who think it's supposed to be a grind are in for a very, very disappointing career.
• 9:47
  Yeah.
• 9:48
  Because you're not going to be good at it.
• 9:49
  That's the thing.
• 9:51
  You owe it to yourself and to others to do the thing that feeds you because you will be better at it.
• 9:56
  You will serve other people better.
• 9:58
  You will do better.
• 9:59
  And when people say I have to be a doctor or a banker or whatever else it is because my grandfather was or because that's what the people in my school said I should major in, you are in for a very, very long struggle.
• 10:12
  Okay, so you have written 14 books, helping people understand how to lead, how to work, how to manage.
• 10:18
  You've sold over 10 million copies across those 14 books.
• 10:23
  What was the thing after writing those 14 books that led you to this framework?
• 10:28
  Was it an understanding of, because I mean, you've worked with so many companies over the course of your career.
• 10:34
  So I'm trying to figure out, because this was over the course of how many years that you've been in this game, like 20, 20 plus years.
• 10:40
  The company's been around almost 28 years.
• 10:42
  28 years.
• 10:42
  So you've been working with companies for 28 years.
• 10:46
  I'm assuming that you saw a lot of people in the wrong roles across the hundreds of companies that you've worked with.
• 10:52
  What was the thing?
• 10:53
  Was it something in your life?
• 10:54
  Was it something in a company you were consulting for that led to this idea?
• 10:58
  It was my life.
• 10:59
  And all the books I've written, I would say I like to say I wrote by accident, by the grace of God, because I don't ever sit down and go, I need to write a book.
• 11:07
  What should it be about?
• 11:09
  I'll be working with clients or doing something in my own company and something will occur to me and I'll start to share it with people and say, does this make sense?
• 11:16
  And when it resonates, we explore it.
• 11:19
  And so many people say, that's a book right there.
• 11:21
  And sometimes I say, I don't think that's a book.
• 11:23
  And they'll go, I do.
• 11:24
  And like one of my books, The Ideal Team Player, I wasn't going to write a book about it.
• 11:28
  Somebody else said, you have to.
• 11:29
  And it's growing now after 10 years faster than it ever has.
• 11:34
  So it's it's never I never set out to write a book.
• 11:36
  So here's what happened to me, though.
• 11:37
  It was it was almost six years ago and we were just coming out of the initial covid and I lived in California.
• 11:44
  So we weren't even close to coming out of it.
• 11:46
  But my little firm, we said, screw it.
• 11:47
  We're going back to work.
• 11:49
  OK, so we snuck past the at the dead of night, past the police and we went into our little office and most of the work we did was on Zoom.
• 11:58
  And so one day in particular, I had three meetings in a row.
• 12:02
  And the first one was with, it was me actually teaching a bunch of priests how to be better leaders.
• 12:08
  And it was a webinar and I loved it.
• 12:11
  I was excited because I love to teach people things.
• 12:13
  And then right after that, I had to have a follow-up webinar or Zoom call with the people who organized it, who made a lot of mistakes.
• 12:20
  And I had to get them to do better and to pay more attention to things.
• 12:24
  Oh, I was really bummed out.
• 12:26
  And then right after that, we had a meeting where we came up with a new idea for a podcast.
• 12:30
  And I was really excited.
• 12:31
  And Amy, the woman who worked with me, she said to me, why are you like that?
• 12:36
  I said, what do you mean?
• 12:36
  She goes, you're really happy and then you get really bummed out and then you're really happy.
• 12:40
  And I was like, I don't think I'm manic.
• 12:43
  What is that?
• 12:44
  And literally when she asked me that question, I was like, I want to figure this out.
• 12:49
  Because that had been going on for 20 years.
• 12:51
  I would come to work in a place that I liked working with my own company, with friends, working on stuff that I found interesting.
• 12:59
  And I'd come in always excited and I would find myself grumpy at some point during the day.
• 13:04
  And I never understood why.
• 13:06
  And so that was the day I sat down and I said, okay, what am I doing when I'm happy?
• 13:09
  What am I doing when I get grumpy?
• 13:10
  What am I doing this?
• 13:11
  And we came up with the idea that there's six kinds of work, all of which are necessary.
• 13:17
  And I was over indexing on one that I didn't love.
• 13:21
  That wasn't your genius.
• 13:22
  Exactly.
• 13:24
  And I would come to work wanting to do my geniuses.
• 13:27
  I didn't even know what geniuses were.
• 13:29
  And I kept getting sucked into the same thing.
• 13:32
  And everybody go, well, you have to do that.
• 13:34
  Yeah, you have to do that.
• 13:35
  And I started resenting it without even understanding what it was.
• 13:39
  And so I came up with these six, explained it.
• 13:42
  I thought, hey, I just explained my own problem.
• 13:45
  But other people saw it and said, no, I think that applies to me too.
• 13:48
  And one of our consultants, the very first night we came up with it, we showed it to him.
• 13:52
  The next day he went and sat down with the CEO and the CEO was going, man, I'm really frustrated in my work.
• 13:58
  He goes, hey, what do you think of these six things?
• 14:01
  And the guy literally teared up and said, well, that's my whole problem right there.
• 14:06
  And so we were like, there's something here that's deeper than just Pat solving his problem.
• 14:11
  So we had a, you know, rolling whiteboard in my living room and we just literally work on it all the time.
• 14:18
  I'd go to work and we'd talk about it.
• 14:20
  And then five months later we had developed an assessment and launched it with no marketing and it just started growing.
• 14:25
  Because it hits.
• 14:27
  This is the thing about a good idea, right?
• 14:29
  Yeah.
• 14:30
  It takes off because people feel it.
• 14:32
  Word of mouth.
• 14:33
  And what Jim Collins said to me was, you know, face validity.
• 14:38
  When people look at it and go, that is totally true.
• 14:41
  He said, that's more important than any statistical analysis.
• 14:44
  It's because you put a word or a couple words to a feeling that people couldn't articulate.
• 14:50
  And I've even tried.
• 14:51
  So people always ask.
• 14:54
  when they chat with me, have some young entrepreneur just asking, I have like five different business ideas, like which one should I focus on?
• 15:01
  And I've never been able to articulate what you've really done here.
• 15:04
  I just say, follow what gives you energy.
• 15:06
  Because that's what I do in my life.
• 15:09
  I just follow what gives me energy.
• 15:10
  But it's not just in work, it's in everything.
• 15:13
  Absolutely.
• 15:14
  And I want to talk about how this plays into other areas of your life, but I don't want to go there just yet.
• 15:19
  What is the work?
• 15:21
  Like when I, when I asked what is the working genius you've described, but I mean, is it personality?
• 15:25
  Is it psychology?
• 15:27
  Is it subconscious?
• 15:28
  Is it work?
• 15:28
  Like what is the myriad of factors?
• 15:31
  I love the question.
• 15:32
  I think a good way to look at this is to compare it to other assessments out there.
• 15:36
  Cause I'm a junkie for them all.
• 15:38
  I think learning about yourself and categories and stuff is interesting as long as it's real.
• 15:43
  And, and so we did the Myers-Briggs and disc and I can, we can talk about all those.
• 15:48
  There was none that actually described the verb of what, what you like to do, not just who you are or what your general preferences are in life, but like getting stuff done.
• 16:01
  And that's what this came down to.
• 16:02
  And that's what makes working genius what it is.
• 16:04
  And if I could title it again, I think it's still right to call it working genius.
• 16:08
  It's doing genius because it doesn't have to be at work and could be at home.
• 16:11
  But it's how do you get things done?
• 16:14
  Which parts of the process really resonate with you and which parts just drive you crazy?
• 16:19
  So I think that's what it is.
• 16:20
  It's about, and I think it's hardwired.
• 16:22
  I think it's Godwired.
• 16:24
  I talk to people and they can go back to their childhood and remember like, I always wanted to do things like this.
• 16:30
  I didn't get to exercise my geniuses until I got into my late 20s.
• 16:34
  Because nobody really recognized them.
• 16:36
  They're not the kind that you get recognized for when you're a little kid.
• 16:39
  There's a couple of these that are like little kids that have them.
• 16:43
  The teachers are like, my best student, my favorite athlete, the best kid in my family.
• 16:47
  Because they do what you ask them and they finish.
• 16:50
  And those are two of the geniuses.
• 16:53
  I have neither of those.
• 16:56
  So I was grinding.
• 16:57
  School for me was a grind.
• 17:01
  And even work was a grind until I got old enough to go, I don't have to do that.
• 17:07
  And so the point here is that this is based on how we're wired and what feeds us when we're at work, at doing things, in activity.
• 17:19
  Right.
• 17:20
  And I would even say that some of the things you mentioned about growing up and you weren't able to actually live your genes until you were older, sometimes, I'm going to make an assumption here, and I think you're going to probably agree with me, but I want your perspective on this.
• 17:33
  I've always felt that a lot of what we...
• 17:36
  our worldview is based on what our parents thought was right and wrong, right?
• 17:40
  Like from a young age, like they said, this is a job you should do.
• 17:43
  This is the school you should go to.
• 17:44
  This is who you should date.
• 17:46
  So a lot of that's ingrained in our subconscious.
• 17:48
  So now when I'm thinking about like your working geniuses and what you are naturally inclined to do, you may not be, you may not even be aware of it because your parents' genius, they imprinted on you from a young age and they thought,
• 18:02
  So a more real example, as opposed to speaking at high level, when your parents are putting you into certain sports or certain activities, you're saying, this is what you should do because this is what I wanted to do when I was a character.
• 18:13
  Oh, man.
• 18:13
  And they're pushing you to do things that are actually not what you actually enjoy doing or not your genius.
• 18:19
  And then you grow up not only with incorrect expectations about what a good life looks like that's been imprinted on you from your parents, but also how you should operate in life.
• 18:30
  And I think that that creates a lot of misery, depression, anxiety.
• 18:34
  So I'll go back to when I was seven years old.
• 18:38
  My dad loved mowing the lawn and I loved my dad and I was, and I wanted him to love me.
• 18:44
  He wanted me to mow and he would get me up on Saturday mornings, which when I wanted to watch cartoons back then, that was when cartoons were on.
• 18:51
  He watched them on Saturday or you missed them and, and major league baseball.
• 18:56
  And I would get up and help him mow the lawn and I hated it.
• 18:59
  And I felt so guilty because he wanted me to follow him around and, and he would,
• 19:05
  do something, rake leaves and say, pick this pile up.
• 19:08
  And then if I missed any of the leaves, he'd say, nope, still not done.
• 19:11
  Whereas the way I would have done it would have been like him saying, hey, look at the yard.
• 19:16
  Why don't you envision what kind of yard you want to have and how you would go about doing it?
• 19:19
  And I would have owned it and made some of my own decisions.
• 19:22
  I didn't know it.
• 19:23
  It wasn't that I didn't want to mow the lawn.
• 19:25
  I didn't want to do it the way he wanted me to.
• 19:27
  But I had no language for that.
• 19:29
  And I remember for years feeling guilty, like, why don't I like helping my dad mow the lawn?
• 19:32
  He loves mowing the lawn, but he liked, he had a certain way of doing things that did not correspond to mine.
• 19:39
  And literally five years ago when we came up with this, I was like, oh, that's why.
• 19:44
  I wish I could tell my dad.
• 19:46
  It wasn't that I didn't want to do it.
• 19:47
  It was that I didn't like doing it that way.
• 19:50
  So how do you, so when you think about this idea, people are going to, you know, read the book, take the assessment, figure out what kind of work they should do.
• 19:57
  But outside of work, how do you bring this framework to the rest of your life?
• 20:02
  One of the things as a parent, I have four sons, understanding that they're all different and understanding they're different in this way.
• 20:09
  And we knew like Myers-Briggs and all that stuff, but we never realized they were going to study differently.
• 20:16
  They were going to clean their room differently.
• 20:18
  They were going to go about organizing their things on a day-to-day basis differently differently.
• 20:24
  And so I'm going to, you have W as a genius, the wonder.
• 20:28
  The first genius is called wonder.
• 20:30
  That means you like to ponder things.
• 20:31
  You're deep in thought.
• 20:33
  You're asking questions in your brain, sometimes outside of your brain, a lot.
• 20:39
  Three of my four children are Ws.
• 20:42
  Do you know how often when they're young, you're like, how come you aren't doing this?
• 20:45
  What are you doing?
• 20:45
  Why are you not acting on this?
• 20:48
  And because you can't even see what's going on in their brain.
• 20:51
  And now that they're older, I'm like, oh my gosh, they're all wonderers.
• 20:54
  My wife is a wonderer.
• 20:56
  So they have processes going on in their brain that other people that don't have that as a genius...
• 21:02
  Just don't do.
• 21:03
  In fact, other people will hear about the wonder genius and they'll go, I don't have that one.
• 21:06
  I can't do that for more than five minutes at a time.
• 21:09
  Whereas four of the six people in my family can sit and ponder things for hours.
• 21:15
  And you know what's funny?
• 21:17
  That is where all new ideas come from.
• 21:19
  From this kind of person.
• 21:21
  Yeah.
• 21:22
  Yeah.
• 21:22
  They ask the question.
• 21:25
  They sit there and they go, I don't think this is the right way anymore.
• 21:30
  There should be a different kind of podcast.
• 21:33
  Do you think our listeners would like it if we did something else?
• 21:37
  Which is what I'm, okay, we're going to talk about me after, after.
• 21:39
  Yes, all the time, always wondering.
• 21:41
  And that's where every new idea comes from.
• 21:43
  Somebody asks, remember this thing?
• 21:44
  Amy asked the question, why are you like that?
• 21:46
  She was curious.
• 21:48
  She was literally like, what makes you like that?
• 21:52
  And that was the question that made me say, I don't know, but I want to figure it out.
• 21:57
  See, that W, the wonder, leads to the next one, which is invention.
• 22:02
  And I'm an inventor, but not a wonderer.
• 22:04
  So it's when other people come to me with a big question, I'm like, please let me try to figure that out.
• 22:09
  See, we need each other.
• 22:11
  That's why my wife decided it should be gears, because they each feed and turn one another.
• 22:18
  And so your wonder fires up my invention.
• 22:21
  Somebody asked to ponder the big questions.
• 22:24
  And what are the other geniuses?
• 22:27
  And then I want to get into mine.
• 22:29
  So those are the first two, and that's called ideation.
• 22:32
  The new ideas come from wonder and invention.
• 22:34
  You're half of ideation, and I'm the other half.
• 22:39
  The next one is called discernment.
• 22:40
  That's where I come up with an idea and I go to somebody and I say, what is your gut telling you about that?
• 22:46
  And some people have this remarkable gut instinct.
• 22:49
  It's not magic.
• 22:50
  It's called pattern recognition and they see variables in different ways.
• 22:56
  And you can ask them about something they don't have a lot of detail about and they'll say, I'm pretty sure the answer is like this.
• 23:01
  And you say, how do you know?
• 23:02
  And they go, I don't know.
• 23:03
  I don't know.
• 23:03
  I just, my gut telling me that.
• 23:05
  They've seen it again and again.
• 23:06
  I've watched this movie before, you know?
• 23:08
  Exactly.
• 23:09
  And that's called discernment.
• 23:10
  That's the third.
• 23:12
  After discernment comes galvanizing.
• 23:14
  That's the person who gets joy and energy rallying the troops, interrupting people going, come on, let's do this.
• 23:21
  Stop what you're doing.
• 23:22
  I have a better idea.
• 23:22
  Come on, here we go.
• 23:24
  I don't like doing that.
• 23:27
  And I was doing it every day at work.
• 23:29
  And I'd come to work and they'd go galvanize, galvanize, galvanize.
• 23:33
  I'd get kind of pissed off because I was like, I don't want to galvanize.
• 23:37
  Well, you're the CEO.
• 23:39
  See, that's the other thing.
• 23:39
  If you're the leader, you think you're supposed to do all of them.
• 23:42
  And no, no two CEOs are the same.
• 23:45
  I wasn't great at galvanizing.
• 23:47
  And it was okay that I found somebody on my team that could help me galvanize.
• 23:51
  So everybody is...
• 23:54
  One or two or multiple or... Everybody's got two.
• 23:56
  Everybody's got two.
• 23:57
  That is just their feeding genius.
• 24:00
  Okay.
• 24:00
  You put that combo together and you let them work in those areas and they're like, it's not even work anymore.
• 24:05
  Okay.
• 24:06
  So let's go through mine and this will frame up how to sort of interpret it because...
• 24:10
  even before we press record, you're telling me a little bit about my genius.
• 24:14
  And then as you're describing it, I'm like, oh shit.
• 24:17
  Like, yes, that makes a lot of sense.
• 24:19
  So I don't remember what mine are.
• 24:22
  So I remember W. So I'm a wanderer.
• 24:25
  I think and I brainstorm and I come up with these new ideas.
• 24:28
  But then what's the other WT?
• 24:31
  T. So T is the last one.
• 24:33
  So after I went to G, then comes E, which is called enablement, which is like there are people that come alongside and enable other people's ideas to play.
• 24:40
  And they're like, I will help you on your terms.
• 24:43
  I don't have that.
• 24:45
  They're the glue in an organization.
• 24:47
  When people go, we need help, before they even know what it is, they go, I'll do it.
• 24:50
  I love to help.
• 24:51
  They literally get joint energy out of coming alongside somebody going, whatever you need, I wanna help you with that.
• 24:56
  I understand.
• 24:57
  And you can see there's people in helping professions that love their work and you go, how do you do that?
• 25:02
  How are you a pediatric nurse?
• 25:04
  And they're like, are you kidding?
• 25:05
  I love it.
• 25:06
  See, one man or woman's trash is another man or woman's treasure.
• 25:09
  Yeah, 100%.
• 25:10
  Because those are such selfless jobs.
• 25:12
  But my God, like doing it as a full-time career for me, I don't even know.
• 25:16
  And what's funny is those are wonderful people.
• 25:18
  Don't get me wrong.
• 25:18
  They are.
• 25:19
  But if they'll tell you, no, you don't understand.
• 25:20
  I like this.
• 25:22
  Yeah.
• 25:23
  And they'll say to me, hey, you give speeches for a living.
• 25:26
  And I'm like, yeah, who wouldn't?
• 25:27
  And they're like...
• 25:29
  That's my greatest fear in the world.
• 25:31
  So the thing I find very easy, they hate.
• 25:36
  And that's the beautiful thing about working genius.
• 25:38
  A team takes this.
• 25:40
  They look at each one of those working geniuses and they're like, hey, we should probably not make you do that anymore, huh?
• 25:45
  And they're like, are you kidding?
• 25:46
  I would love it if I didn't have to do that.
• 25:47
  Well, I love doing that.
• 25:48
  Give me that and you can do this.
• 25:50
  Literally, that happens without any.
• 25:54
  You just look at the report and people are like, oh, I know what we can do.
• 25:57
  And productivity goes up right away.
• 25:59
  But anyway, we're going to go to T now.
• 26:01
  The last genius is called tenacity.
• 26:04
  And that's the T. And that's finishing things, getting things done.
• 26:08
  Okay.
• 26:09
  So you have a very unique combination.
• 26:14
  You live at 50,000 feet in the clouds.
• 26:16
  You ask the big questions.
• 26:18
  You're like pondering things and why is it like this and what's going on?
• 26:23
  But you also have one at the other end, which is, but I don't like things to not get done.
• 26:28
  Right?
• 26:29
  And you described yourself earlier.
• 26:32
  It's not that you want to make other people do it.
• 26:33
  You're like, crap, I'll just do it.
• 26:36
  Too often.
• 26:36
  Yeah.
• 26:37
  Oh, yeah.
• 26:37
  Way too often.
• 26:38
  That's your, and so you have this natural tendency, WTs, you're called the careful, thoughtful implementer.
• 26:45
  So you're thoughtful and careful and thinking about the nuances, but then you run right to the end and go, but we've got to get this done.
• 26:51
  And we call that altitude sickness.
• 26:55
  Because you're like, up here, down here, up here, down here.
• 26:58
  And it's a very unique type.
• 27:01
  And I would say the advice I give to all WTs is try to do them separately.
• 27:07
  When you have T work to do, tenacity, let yourself do that and tell your W brain, hey, right now I'm in T mode.
• 27:14
  I'm just going to crank.
• 27:17
  And the W part of you is like, but why are we even doing this?
• 27:20
  And you're like, not the right time to ask that question.
• 27:22
  In all seriousness, to sort of lay out how this plays out in real life for me?
• 27:28
  And this is not going to be best good advice for people, but this is a reality that I experienced, especially when I was first starting this podcast.
• 27:35
  Like I'd get a bad edit back from my editor and I would be simultaneously redoing the edit myself while also researching and like alt-tabbing between like watching podcasts and coming up with new ideas for new questions and new formats while, you know, in Adobe Premiere editing the podcast myself, which is quite literally the definition of what you're describing.
• 27:55
  Exactly.
• 27:56
  And that to me is, and you know what?
• 27:59
  It's like this compulsion to do both all the time because if I'm not doing one, I feel like I'm missing out.
• 28:05
  Exactly.
• 28:05
  So if I'm the one who's doing the work, the getting the stuff done work, the tenacity work, I feel like I'm missing out on the opportunity and I'm missing out on the new trend or the new idea.
• 28:15
  It's like internal FOMO.
• 28:16
  Yeah, 100%.
• 28:17
  And it'll drive you crazy.
• 28:18
  And you get nothing done because then you're switching back and forth and there's this context switching that's constantly going on tiring you.
• 28:23
  And it's so good for you to go, that's why, that's the beauty of this.
• 28:27
  Thank you, God.
• 28:29
  Working genius actually works.
• 28:31
  People get so much.
• 28:33
  We're doing a thing on marriage and working genius.
• 28:35
  There are spouses that argue with one another.
• 28:38
  And then we had a guy call us and say, I thought my wife hated me.
• 28:42
  We're like, what?
• 28:43
  He goes, I thought she hated me.
• 28:44
  I realized her working genius.
• 28:46
  And now I realize what's really going on.
• 28:48
  So you're right now, you're driving yourself crazy.
• 28:51
  And to know why that's happening, you can say, what?
• 28:54
  oh, I'm doing that thing where I'm having WFOMO and actually thinking I have to go solve the bigger picture problem.
• 29:01
  No, give yourself permission just to focus on doing the tenacity work.
• 29:08
  And then let yourself go sit up there and focus on that.
• 29:12
  Stop the switching costs, stop the guilt, stop the altitude sickness.
• 29:17
  Your type more than any needs to separate those things.
• 29:21
  And you can tell the people you work with, if you see me...
• 29:24
  you know, jumping, parachuting out of the plane to go to the, call me on it and tell me, no, let's actually, you should probably schedule your time for W work versus T work.
• 29:35
  HubSpot is a success story partner.
• 29:37
  Now, customers are using traditional search less and less to find the businesses they want to buy from.
• 29:43
  Now, when a buyer or a customer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up?
• 29:48
  They're looking for a product, they're looking for a service, and they're going into some AI chat tool, and they're saying, hey, help me find the best one.
• 29:54
  If your company isn't showing up, you're missing out.
• 29:57
  And most companies have no idea if their business is showing up or even how to show up.
• 30:01
  And by the time they figure it out, they've already lost a deal to somebody to figure it out
• 30:05
  AI.
• 30:06
  This is what AEO is.
• 30:07
  Answer Engine Optimization.
• 30:09
  HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers that your buyers and your customers are looking for.
• 30:16
  It could be before the first click, before the first form fill.
• 30:19
  That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for.
• 30:22
  So check out HubSpot.com to learn more about AEO.
• 30:25
  HubSpot is the agent to customer platform for growing businesses.
• 30:28
  Huel is a success story partner.
• 30:30
  Now,
• 30:30
  I'll be honest with you, I am terrible at eating well when my schedule gets packed.
• 30:34
  I'll look up, it's 2 in the afternoon, I haven't even had a real meal, and then I'm just useless for the rest of the day because I'm hitting a wall.
• 30:40
  So I started keeping Huel around.
• 30:42
  It's been an absolute game changer.
• 30:43
  They just launched into Target stores nationwide, which is huge.
• 30:45
  You can walk right into your local Target right now, grab the Black Edition ready to drink and the Daily Greens ready to drink.
• 30:51
  The Black Edition, this is a full meal, 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, gluten-free, and it's under five bucks.
• 30:58
  I grab one of these in between recordings, done, I'm good for two hours.
• 31:01
  And the Daily Greens is more of a health thing.
• 31:03
  42 vitamins, minerals, and superfoods in one bottle.
• 31:06
  It's developed by a registered nutritionist, 25 calories, four grams of fiber, and one gram of sugar.
• 31:10
  I'll have one first thing in the morning.
• 31:11
  It's the easiest win of my day.
• 31:13
  Now,
• 31:13
  15% off for new customers.
• 31:15
  Use my code Scott at Huel.com slash Scott and do the post checkout survey.
• 31:19
  It helps to show.
• 31:19
  Go to Huel.com slash Scott, code Scott.
• 31:22
  Monarch is a success story partner.
• 31:24
  Now, quick question.
• 31:24
  Do you know where your money went last month?
• 31:27
  Not roughly, but exactly.
• 31:28
  And most people don't.
• 31:29
  and I didn't for years, and that is most of our money stories, right?
• 31:32
  When we first start our career, we have one income and one account, and you can kind of wing it.
• 31:36
  But once you're running businesses, once you're investing, once you're carrying 50 different subscriptions that you stop paying attention to, winging it gets super expensive.
• 31:45
  Monarch fixed that for me.
• 31:46
  It is the personal finance app that tracks
• 31:48
  everything.
• 31:48
  So that means accounts, investments, savings goals, spending all on one screen.
• 31:53
  The first week I had it, it fired recurring charges I'd been paying for months without realizing.
• 31:56
  And every single week, the AI recap tells me if spending spiked, if my net worth moved, and what bills are coming.
• 32:02
  And I can just ask it, hey, can I afford this trip without touching my savings?
• 32:05
  And I can get a real answer based on my actual numbers.
• 32:09
  It is a financial advisor in your pocket.
• 32:11
  It costs less than an hour with a real one.
• 32:13
  So write your own money story with Monarch.
• 32:15
  Use code success at monarch.com and get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50.
• 32:20
  That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code success.
• 32:24
  And you know what?
• 32:25
  All of that for me was masked by the fact that it was all in pursuit of something that I love doing.
• 32:31
  Yeah.
• 32:32
  So this is an example of being in my, so I, you know, I don't know what podcasting falls under, but I love it.
• 32:42
  Your W curiosity is why you love this.
• 32:47
  I love learning.
• 32:47
  Exactly.
• 32:49
  And then the T thing means you're going to get it done, but allow yourself to enjoy both.
• 32:55
  If we look at all the different types of jobs, building your own business, entrepreneur, working for somebody, are there some people that are destined to be great entrepreneurs or great workers?
• 33:08
  Is that tied to their genius or is that just understand how the genius applies to your season of life that you're in, for example, that maybe,
• 33:20
  maybe the WT could be a great employee or a great entrepreneur, depending on what's going on in their life.
• 33:28
  Yeah.
• 33:29
  And it depends on, I mean, because two people with the same working genius, different life circumstances, education, background, as you said before, what your parents tell you is possible.
• 33:37
  Yeah.
• 33:38
  You know, if a person's never worked anywhere where like you can do anything, I remember when I went to college, my dad said major in accounting economics and computers, because that's where all the jobs are going to be.
• 33:48
  And he was right, except I hated all of those things.
• 33:51
  And I barely hang on to liberal arts economics.
• 33:55
  So that was my background.
• 33:56
  We didn't, we hadn't gone to college.
• 33:58
  But to the answer to your question, whether you're an entrepreneur or a CEO or whatever you do is less about your working genius and more about you knowing what it is and surrounding yourself with people who fill in your gaps.
• 34:10
  So like you're a WT and you go, okay.
• 34:14
  I got the first part of this wondering covered, and I got the tea covered.
• 34:19
  But I should hire some people who love other parts of this.
• 34:24
  So no CEO is limited by their working genius, except if they don't bring other people in and trust them to do the things they're bad at.
• 34:32
  And now, when people say, am I going to be an entrepreneur that comes up with a new idea every day, a serial entrepreneur?
• 34:39
  No, they're going to have some W, I, and D.
• 34:42
  An ET is not going to be a serial entrepreneur.
• 34:44
  That's called the loyal finisher.
• 34:46
  That's the, I will do what you ask me to, and I will get it done.
• 34:50
  And people, you can rely on me.
• 34:52
  I've already started it.
• 34:53
  I will never stop until it's done.
• 34:56
  And you can take your eye off the ball now because I got it.
• 34:59
  That person does not have a proclivity for like, let's just start a new thing now.
• 35:04
  They're much more like, no, please give me clear parameters and I want to finish things.
• 35:09
  So yeah, there are certain limits in there.
• 35:11
  But that ET might go, I think I came up with a new idea or I see an idea that we should start something around.
• 35:16
  I better hire other people that can do the things I don't like.
• 35:19
  Is there ever a circumstance where your working genius actually, from my own perspective, the tea, the tenacity,
• 35:28
  I'm doing things myself.
• 35:29
  So does my working genius sometimes get in my own way?
• 35:32
  Sure.
• 35:33
  Yeah.
• 35:33
  I have no tea.
• 35:35
  I will never do things myself.
• 35:37
  I cannot do things myself.
• 35:39
  I remember when I started my company, my dad, I left, I was the vice president of organizational development at a company.
• 35:46
  And I said, I'm starting my own firm, dad.
• 35:48
  This was 28 years ago.
• 35:49
  And he goes, oh, no, no, you have benefits though.
• 35:51
  Yeah.
• 35:51
  You know, that's that mindset.
• 35:54
  And I said, no, but me and these other four people are going to start this business.
• 35:57
  And he goes, oh, no, don't take anybody else with you.
• 35:59
  You might not be able to afford to pay them.
• 36:01
  I said, oh, no, no.
• 36:01
  If I don't take them with me, I'll never make any money because I can't do half the shit stuff that we're supposed to be doing.
• 36:08
  And I need them to do it.
• 36:10
  So the original question was.
• 36:13
  It was, does it ever, does part of your own working genius ever hurt you?
• 36:16
  Yes, because if you think I'm a T, you might have to get out of the T business.
• 36:21
  Yeah.
• 36:22
  But you'll be much more, because a WT will often go, I wish other people would do this.
• 36:28
  I'll just do it myself.
• 36:30
  And that, then you're using your time.
• 36:33
  Probably if you're running a business and you're starting to hire people, you need to let them finish some things.
• 36:39
  One thing that you mentioned, which I thought was a really interesting, you mentioned God several times and you call these geniuses gifts from God.
• 36:47
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 36:50
  Do you think that too many people feel like they have total control over their own life?
• 36:56
  And what I mean by that is they feel like they can change their genius or they can alter it if it doesn't suit their circumstance.
• 37:04
  Oh, yeah, it's misery.
• 37:05
  So I was just talking to somebody about this before.
• 37:07
  They said like 10,000 hours is how many.
• 37:10
  That's what I'm thinking.
• 37:10
  Like someone's going to read this and be like, well, I can learn how to eat or learn.
• 37:14
  Yeah.
• 37:15
  Well, like think of a guy like Tiger Woods.
• 37:17
  Was he meant to be a professional golfer?
• 37:19
  I don't know.
• 37:20
  But his dad, when he was three years old, you know, he was on the on TV golfing at three years old.
• 37:27
  Anybody can can get good at something.
• 37:30
  It doesn't mean they love it.
• 37:31
  It doesn't mean it gives them joy and energy.
• 37:32
  In fact, when you get good at something out of over practicing that doesn't feed you, you're setting yourself up for massive psychological challenges.
• 37:42
  because you're not meant to do things against the grain.
• 37:45
  So you're born, and I like to say, so God gave me the gifts of invention and discernment, and he gave me no enablement and tenacity.
• 37:56
  I have to do my best to tolerate enablement and tenacity and get things done, but if I try to be great at those, I'm really rewiring myself in a way that's not healthy.
• 38:07
  And other people are going to see me getting good at those things and they're going to ask me to keep doing it.
• 38:12
  Yeah, that's true.
• 38:12
  That's why I got that job because I knew how to interview for a job with enablement and tenacity.
• 38:18
  That's not who I was.
• 38:19
  So they were like, okay, yeah, we're going to hire you to do this.
• 38:21
  The problem is I had to go work there.
• 38:24
  So we are meant to lean into who we are.
• 38:27
  The other thing I like to say about gifts are we all have gifts.
• 38:30
  Some people never open them.
• 38:33
  I like to think that imagine if Scott, I came by and I dropped off a gift for you and you weren't home and I gave it to your wife.
• 38:41
  And I said, I designed this gift exactly for Scott.
• 38:44
  It's totally customized for exactly who he is.
• 38:47
  And she put it in the closet and forgot to tell you about it.
• 38:50
  And you never got to open it or you opened it, but you never used it.
• 38:53
  We are all meant.
• 38:55
  There's nothing selfish about saying I'm meant to use the gifts that God gave me for the betterment of others.
• 39:01
  And that's a win-win.
• 39:03
  Yeah.
• 39:04
  And when we don't ever open up those gifts or think we're not entitled to or that it's selfish to want to do work that we enjoy, that's not ordered.
• 39:14
  It's interesting.
• 39:15
  It's interesting that people, I know that you've, we've sort of danced around why people believe that to be true, but it just, I had a hard time with that for a long time.
• 39:24
  I had a hard time understanding that you could make money doing things that you enjoy.
• 39:30
  I had a really hard time with that.
• 39:31
  It was actually, I have to give a lot of credit to Gina because she's the one who sort of said, hey, life doesn't always have to be hard.
• 39:40
  You don't have to.
• 39:42
  And you know,
• 39:45
  I don't know.
• 39:46
  No, that's...
• 39:47
  I don't know.
• 39:47
  I think that, you know, my parents worked very hard.
• 39:50
  They provided a very good life.
• 39:53
  And I just thought, you know, I got to kind of do that.
• 39:55
  Yeah.
• 39:57
  It's great to be able to for short periods of time.
• 40:01
  I mean, imagine if something happened, you're like, I have to dig ditches to feed my family.
• 40:06
  Did you ever see the movie Cinderella Man?
• 40:07
  Yeah, yeah.
• 40:08
  I love that movie.
• 40:09
  And he's like out on the docks.
• 40:11
  Yeah.
• 40:11
  And he's going to do anything to feed his family.
• 40:13
  That is virtuous and good.
• 40:15
  And sometimes you live in a situation where that's all you got.
• 40:18
  But when you have the opportunity to, and by the way, you'll be a better father and a better husband and a better friend when you're not coming home from work ticked off that you're doing stuff that crushes you.
• 40:30
  But everybody should be able to tolerate that and offer that up.
• 40:34
  But don't put yourself in that situation on purpose.
• 40:37
  It's almost like people seek it out.
• 40:39
  I know.
• 40:39
  It's almost like you said, it's this kind of guilt.
• 40:43
  Like it's supposed to be hard.
• 40:46
  Yeah.
• 40:46
  And you know what?
• 40:47
  The issue is it.
• 40:51
  The issue is that if you seek out hard work and it benefits you, you're like, oh, I've just validated my own belief system.
• 40:58
  Yeah, you're in for you will eventually burn out.
• 41:01
  And by the way, burnout is not working too hard.
• 41:05
  When people go, I'm burnt out, and everybody says the same thing.
• 41:07
  And it's why when somebody burns out and they tell them, you should take time off, take a vacation, and they're like, they don't seem happy about that.
• 41:13
  It's because what they're looking for is not time away from the work they don't like.
• 41:18
  They're looking for, could you please just give me something to do that I love?
• 41:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:23
  And so when I can work for 12 hours and go home at night, Laura will be like, you're really excited.
• 41:28
  What's going on?
• 41:29
  I got to work in my geniuses all day.
• 41:31
  I was a bank teller as a kid.
• 41:33
  It is the worst job for me.
• 41:36
  Two hours in, I was like, oh no.
• 41:38
  I swear I'd look at the clock and it would go backwards sometimes.
• 41:41
  I was like, this is- I know exactly the feeling.
• 41:43
  I've worked those jobs too.
• 41:46
  But you know how, so whenever somebody talks about burnout,
• 41:53
  for lack of a better description, not being real or whatever the phrase is, right?
• 42:00
  You hear a lot of like the hustle culture that to sort of speak to this idea of burnout not being real, if you work on things that light you up, you're never going to be tired.
• 42:07
  There's so much pushback against that idea.
• 42:11
  And...
• 42:12
  Now that I understand that most people aren't working in their genius, it makes sense that the pushback is because most people feel like they get burnt out all the time.
• 42:21
  They feel like they're always tired.
• 42:23
  They feel like eight hours is like the end of the world and they hate going back to work on Monday.
• 42:29
  And this is the reality for majority of people.
• 42:32
  Um, but you always have said like works is supposed to be generative.
• 42:37
  It's not supposed to, it's not supposed to drain you.
• 42:40
  And I've only felt this more recently in, in this job, in this work that I'm doing now, because I could do this all day and I could go home at the end of the day and I'll, I'll, I'll be full of energy, happy, fulfilled.
• 42:54
  You know, even I mentioned, um,
• 42:56
  on the way down here, I got like four hours of sleep last night.
• 42:59
  And now I'm like fully awake, fully alert, like locked in, in flow.
• 43:03
  And I love it.
• 43:04
  So I can tell that this is work, this is generative, but I don't feel like a lot of people ever experienced that.
• 43:10
  What's your message to those people that are listening to this saying that's, that's absolute garbage.
• 43:14
  If I put in a 20 hour week, you know, a 20 hour day, excuse me, I like, I'm exhausted.
• 43:19
  Like, I don't want to do this every single day.
• 43:20
  Like, this is all I've ever experienced.
• 43:22
  I'm 40, 45, 50, and I've never known any other kind of work.
• 43:25
  And if you're, well, so the first thing I would say is disabuse yourself of the fact that work is supposed to be that kind of like emotionally exhausting.
• 43:33
  That's just not true.
• 43:35
  Disabuse yourself of the fact that even if you're doing something you love, if you're not sleeping and you don't have time with your family and all that.
• 43:42
  No, you can, you can in theory burn out.
• 43:44
  There's people like that just work all the time.
• 43:46
  That's alcoholism and all that kind of stuff.
• 43:48
  But generally speaking...
• 43:51
  If you need to find out, you need to find out.
• 43:54
  That's why we priced this frigging working genius assessment so low.
• 43:57
  We had friends go, this is a corporate tool.
• 43:59
  You should charge a lot more.
• 44:00
  We're like, no, we want every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and Jane, and Sally to take this.
• 44:05
  We even have one for students in high school.
• 44:08
  We want everybody to figure out, I am meant to do this kind of work in order for it to be generative.
• 44:15
  Start by figuring out who you are.
• 44:18
  Right away, you'll look at your job, and you'll go...
• 44:20
  Oh, crap, no wonder this burns me out.
• 44:22
  And here's the crazy thing.
• 44:24
  You know who wants you to change that?
• 44:25
  Your manager.
• 44:27
  If you go to your manager and you go, and this could be any job, there's far more flexibility in how you go about doing your job than you think.
• 44:35
  But you go there, somebody taught it to you, and they think, well, this is the way it's supposed to be, and this is going to be that way for the rest of my life.
• 44:42
  Once you discover what your working geniuses are, you can do most jobs using different geniuses.
• 44:48
  You know, there's a nurse is not a nurse is not a nurse is not a nurse.
• 44:52
  A teacher is not a teacher is not a teacher is not a teacher.
• 44:55
  So there's going to be some teachers who are,
• 44:59
  like me, and they're gonna wanna come up with a new curriculum every year, and they're gonna come up with new different things and see how it's working and adjust it.
• 45:06
  And then there's gonna be the ET ones who get a curriculum, they know how to use it, they grade their papers on time, they turn them in, they know exactly what the, my class would be a mess and it would be very inspiring.
• 45:16
  Their class would be very organized and it would be a little bit predictable.
• 45:21
  They're both valid ways to teach.
• 45:24
  But most people think that a career means I have to do certain in a certain way.
• 45:29
  Oh, a CEO is not a CEO.
• 45:30
  A pastor is not a pastor.
• 45:31
  We had a pastor write to me and say, I feel like, I thought I was a fraud for 20 years being a pastor.
• 45:39
  And he said, I couldn't write a sermon or a homily to save my life.
• 45:44
  He goes, I would go grind on a talk.
• 45:47
  And his friends would go for a walk in the woods for 20 minutes and come back with four sermons.
• 45:52
  And he goes, how can I be a pastor if I can't come up with a good talk?
• 45:55
  And then he looks at his working genius and like, so you probably like counseling people one-on-one.
• 45:59
  Oh, I love it.
• 46:00
  If somebody comes in there experiencing grief, do you like that?
• 46:03
  Oh, yeah, I totally do.
• 46:04
  How about managing people one-on-one and inspiring them?
• 46:06
  Oh, yeah.
• 46:07
  You know that guy that writes those great sermons?
• 46:09
  He doesn't like doing that.
• 46:12
  And so we have this thing where we're like, well, if I can't do all of these things, I must be an imposter.
• 46:19
  It's like, no, no two people do the same job the same way.
• 46:22
  And frankly, at the very, very fundamental level of this, Scott, the purpose of working genius is to alleviate unnecessary, unproductive guilt and shame in our lives.
• 46:36
  Nobody's meant to experience guilt and shame because they're not great at everything.
• 46:40
  And so many people go home at night thinking, another day when I struggled to do that.
• 46:45
  Yeah, you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.
• 46:47
  Do it in a different way.
• 46:48
  Figure out a different way to do that job.
• 46:52
  I get very excited.
• 46:53
  I'm all over the place.
• 46:54
  No, you're not.
• 46:56
  I'm just, I'm trying to understand why there's some, like, I'm trying to understand where all these fundamental beliefs come from.
• 47:04
  Like, why do we even feel guilt and shame that we're not doing something the right way when there's so many other ways to do it?
• 47:09
  I think it comes from a number of things.
• 47:11
  And you mentioned one before.
• 47:12
  We grow up and with our parents with the best of intentions, they worry about us.
• 47:18
  And in their worry for us, they try to get us to do things that in their mind will make things better for us.
• 47:23
  And it's not necessarily true.
• 47:24
  I look at it like this.
• 47:25
  I have two kids, let's say.
• 47:27
  And one's creative and one's really organized.
• 47:30
  What I ought to do is say, hey, Mr. Creativesome, that's really great.
• 47:33
  You're creative.
• 47:35
  Later in life, you're going to have to get a little bit more organized just to get by.
• 47:38
  But that's not who you're made to be.
• 47:40
  And so keep working on being creative.
• 47:42
  And on the organized one, I'm like, hey, man, you're really organized.
• 47:45
  That's going to serve you really well in life.
• 47:46
  Yeah.
• 47:47
  Be nice if you did a few creative endeavors, probably for yourself, but don't worry about that.
• 47:51
  You double down on who you are.
• 47:52
  We do the opposite.
• 47:54
  We go, hey, creative son, you should be organized like your brother.
• 47:58
  Hey, organized son, you should be creative like your brother.
• 48:01
  And both of them feel like, oh, no, I'm not enough.
• 48:06
  There's something wrong with me.
• 48:07
  Why do we do that to the kids?
• 48:08
  You know why?
• 48:09
  Because we're afraid of them suffering later in life.
• 48:13
  And we think that by getting them to be who they're not, we're going to protect them from catastrophe when they don't do their taxes for a disorganized one.
• 48:23
  Or this one over here when he can't paint a bedroom because he doesn't know how to, you know.
• 48:27
  It's out of well-intentioned worry that
• 48:32
  And for me, what I've learned is God loves them more than me.
• 48:36
  They're going to be fine.
• 48:38
  Yeah, he might turn his taxes in late.
• 48:40
  He might have to learn that lesson.
• 48:42
  Okay, this one might totally whiff on his creative writing class in college.
• 48:48
  But we're totally so worried about them suffering that we actually create more suffering by trying to prevent it.
• 48:55
  And if you think I'm saying that from a position of that I did all the right way, I didn't.
• 49:02
  I wanted the best for all my kids, but I just didn't understand what was really best for them.
• 49:07
  So we get stressed out.
• 49:08
  We try and be protective of the kids, and then we end up hurting them in the process.
• 49:13
  Yeah.
• 49:14
  And if there's people listening to this going, oh, crap, I did that.
• 49:18
  Don't beat yourself up.
• 49:20
  You can recover from that and they can too, but it's good to go to them and go, you know, when I did that, I thought I was helping you.
• 49:27
  Now I realize I should have encouraged you.
• 49:29
  Yeah.
• 49:30
  Lean into your, lean into the things that they're already good at.
• 49:33
  And let me tell you, there's nothing like even an adult child having their parents say, hey, I'm really sorry.
• 49:38
  I just realized I did something wrong.
• 49:40
  It's like, hey, that frees me up to call it out.
• 49:45
  You've worked with many people on this.
• 49:46
  Do you believe that most people intuitively, like say they didn't have their parents telling them what's right and wrong in schools and work telling them what's wrong?
• 49:55
  Do you feel like most people would know their genius if they just took a step back?
• 50:00
  Or is it like when you're an adult, it's too cloudy now?
• 50:02
  But as a kid, would you have known your genius?
• 50:04
  No.
• 50:05
  No.
• 50:06
  It's difficult to figure out.
• 50:08
  That's a good question.
• 50:09
  If somebody had asked me, I suppose if somebody had said and give me good examples of it.
• 50:13
  Yeah.
• 50:13
  Like, OK, so when I was seven years old, I watched the Waltons on TV.
• 50:17
  It was a show, really old show on TV.
• 50:19
  And the main character was was a writer and he would write in his journal every night.
• 50:24
  And I don't know why, but I would from that time, I was like, that's cool.
• 50:28
  He's writing his thoughts.
• 50:31
  So maybe I would have been able to go, okay, I think I like that.
• 50:34
  I think that's like creative.
• 50:37
  But I didn't even know that people, you know, in my family, we hadn't gone to college.
• 50:41
  We were pretty poor.
• 50:43
  And I was going to get a job where I could make money to pay the bills.
• 50:47
  So I didn't really have an access to like that there were actually jobs out there that could do that.
• 50:51
  Yeah.
• 50:52
  So you have to understand, like, yes, you have some idea of what lights you up as a kid, but you have to understand how those would actually translate into work career.
• 51:01
  Yes.
• 51:01
  Yeah.
• 51:02
  Yeah.
• 51:03
  And it's interesting because when I went to college and I did, I followed my dad's advice and I studied very practical things, but I took a screenwriting class and a journalism class my senior year in college, electives.
• 51:16
  Most fun I ever.
• 51:17
  I took a group dynamics class too.
• 51:20
  All the classes that were my electives were my favorite classes.
• 51:24
  My majors sucked.
• 51:26
  But this is a whole other point about how, like, I think a lot of the system is broken.
• 51:31
  Oh!
• 51:32
  Like, a lot of the system is broken.
• 51:33
  Like, whether or not, you know, you apply to your major and you're taking all these mandatory classes, and is it really setting you up for success in life?
• 51:45
  No, I mean, my undergrad was in pre-law.
• 51:48
  I haven't done anything with pre-law or law or otherwise.
• 51:52
  And when you get into a company, like what's, I would assume that when you, we can talk about how to hire people once you know who they are and what their genius is.
• 52:02
  But I would assume that without somebody knowing that, you're taking all these different geniuses and you're just sort of like putting like square peg into round hole again and again and again and again.
• 52:12
  And you're wondering why these people aren't working out.
• 52:13
  So like, I don't think,
• 52:15
  The system, meaning the system, like traditional ways that you hire and people that like, you know, work in your company, the system being how we educate kids.
• 52:26
  I don't think that the system is set up for success at all.
• 52:29
  Oh, it's so broken.
• 52:29
  Here's a great story.
• 52:31
  I think that kind of gets to this, but in adults.
• 52:34
  So I did this for a company, a big company.
• 52:38
  multi $10 billion company technology firm.
• 52:41
  They hadn't, they had not come out with a new piece of technology in years, but they were really good at using old stuff and selling it.
• 52:46
  They were frustrated.
• 52:47
  We did the working genius.
• 52:49
  Nobody on the executive team had invention software company, except one guy.
• 52:55
  And he was the lawyer.
• 52:57
  So he went to law school.
• 52:58
  That's so funny.
• 52:59
  And was their chief legal counsel.
• 53:02
  And the chief technology officer didn't have invention.
• 53:07
  The head of the IT, the product development, marketing, nobody had invention.
• 53:11
  Nobody liked to think about new ways of doing things.
• 53:14
  That's technically what they're supposed to be doing.
• 53:16
  Like, that's what the job is supposed to be doing.
• 53:18
  And so they were sitting there going, what are we going to do?
• 53:20
  And somebody finally said...
• 53:22
  Hey, how about if we put you into the lawyer?
• 53:24
  How about if we put you in charge of new technology acquisition?
• 53:28
  And he was like, I'm the lawyer.
• 53:30
  And they're like, I know, but you have invention.
• 53:32
  See, job descriptions and labels.
• 53:34
  Once you know you're working genius, it kind of doesn't matter anymore.
• 53:38
  You should put everybody on the table and go, how should we get this work done based on what you're gifted at?
• 53:44
  And so what we finally figured out is that job descriptions are not near as important as your geniuses.
• 53:50
  So this team rearranged their organization.
• 53:53
  Two years later, I went back and looked at their website.
• 53:56
  He was no longer the chief legal counsel.
• 53:57
  I thought he left.
• 53:58
  He was full time in technology.
• 54:00
  So here's a guy who studied law, probably because his grandfather did.
• 54:04
  And or he was good at taking the LSATs or who the hell knows why.
• 54:08
  And he when they asked, he's like, I would love to work on like coming up with new ideas.
• 54:13
  So I think what we need to do is kind of erase our educational whiteboard and all of our expectations and go, who did God make me to be?
• 54:22
  And granted, there's probably lawyers that can work in a creative way and there's nurses that can work in it, you know, but go back and figure this out right now.
• 54:29
  I want everyone to just stop what they're doing and take this 12-minute assessment, look at the results and just say, okay, what does this explain about your failures, your successes, your miseries and your joys?
• 54:41
  NetSuite Next is a success story partner.
• 54:43
  So they say that every day your business is late to using AI, you fall two days behind, and the competition is only moving faster.
• 54:52
  So how do you keep up?
• 54:53
  Well, fortunately, there is NetSuite Next.
• 54:55
  Now you probably already know NetSuite.
• 54:57
  NetSuite is the AI-powered business management suite.
• 54:59
  It's trusted by over 43,000 customers.
• 55:02
  It securely connects all of your data, financials, inventory, commerce, HR, CRM, into one single source of truth.
• 55:09
  But NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how businesses get done because AI is built into everything you do.
• 55:17
  So NetSuite Next automatically shows you all these custom insights for your business throughout your day.
• 55:23
  You'll have AI agents work alongside you to solve problems and handle routine work.
• 55:27
  And anytime you have a question about anything in your business, you just ask like you're having a conversation with a colleague and NetSuite Next will give you an answer.
• 55:35
  NetSuite is customized for a wide range of industries, so it supports the way that your business truly works.
• 55:41
  Whether your company earns millions or hundreds of millions, it's time for NetSuite Next, where your business meets AI.
• 55:48
  If I needed a solution like this, it's what I'd use.
• 55:50
  For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free.
• 55:54
  If your revenues are at least in these seven figures, go to netsuite.ai.scottclary.
• 56:00
  It's built for every industry.
• 56:02
  It's ready for every boardroom.
• 56:04
  netsuite.ai slash Scott Clary.
• 56:06
  My fitness pal is a success story partner.
• 56:09
  On this show, I speak to tons of high performers and the people that sustain that high performance, not just sprint and crash and burn, but they actually sustain, they all treat nutrition like a system, not an afterthought.
• 56:20
  The same way they treat revenue or hiring or product, it is key to their business.
• 56:26
  They pay attention.
• 56:27
  They look at the data.
• 56:29
  And that really stuck with me.
• 56:30
  And it's how I started thinking about my own health and wellness and what I put into my own body.
• 56:35
  Not in like a restrictive diet way, but in a data way.
• 56:38
  See, most people take a look at daily calorie total and they think they have the full picture.
• 56:43
  That's just one number.
• 56:45
  The MyFitnessPal app, Premium, it shows me macros.
• 56:48
  That means proteins, carbs, fats, broken down by meal.
• 56:53
  So I can see, am I getting enough protein at breakfast versus dinner?
• 56:57
  And it also shows me how my food is distributed across the day because of course, I can take a look at my total calorie number, but to see everything broken down by meal,
• 57:06
  Those are two completely different things, even if your daily total looks fine and you're gonna feel the difference.
• 57:12
  If you eat proper nutrition across your entire day and you track it, your energy is gonna allow you to sustain that high performance.
• 57:19
  Also, the food analysis picks up trends over the week that I'd miss just going by feel.
• 57:23
  See, this information makes good food choices automatic.
• 57:27
  See, food is a foundation, right?
• 57:29
  Energy, focus, performance, recovery, it all starts with food.
• 57:33
  Do yourself a favor, go visit podcast.myfitnesspal.com and use code SCOTT, all uppercase letters, for 15% off MyFitnessPal premium.
• 57:42
  That's podcast.myfitnesspal.com, code SCOTT.
• 57:46
  Noom is a success story partner.
• 57:48
  Now here's the thing that nobody tells you about losing weight.
• 57:51
  Losing it isn't the hard part.
• 57:52
  Keeping it off is.
• 57:54
  Almost anyone can white knuckle a few good months of diet and exercise, but then work gets crazy and routines break and it all comes right back.
• 58:01
  I have built my entire career and my life around one idea.
• 58:04
  Systems beat motivation and weight loss is no different.
• 58:08
  You need something that holds up when life doesn't cooperate and that's exactly what Noom is built for.
• 58:13
  Noom is a health and wellness app that combines GLP one medication.
• 58:17
  That's the weight loss medication that everyone's talking about with behavioral support to the medication kickstarts the weight loss.
• 58:23
  And then the psychology side, the daily lessons, the food logging, the real coaching that builds the habits that make it stick.
• 58:30
  Even if you stop the medication and it works, people lose 37% more weight with Noom than with GLP one alone.
• 58:36
  Noom helps you lose weight and keep it off.
• 58:38
  And that's the difference.
• 58:39
  The Noom GLP-1 program starts at $39.
• 58:41
  It's delivered to your door in as little as seven days.
• 58:43
  So start your GLP-1 journey today at Noom.com.
• 58:47
  That's N-O-O-M.com, Noom.
• 58:50
  Lose for keeps.
• 58:51
  Initial one-month subscription from $39 plus tax and $99 plus tax per month thereafter.
• 58:57
  Cost of medication not included.
• 58:59
  Final pricing depends on program selection.
• 59:01
  Results based on a January 2026 analysis of 14,203 NoomGLP1RX program members who logged weight over a 40-week period.
• 59:11
  Higher app engagement was associated with greater weight loss at 16 weeks.
• 59:16
  What does a, say there's a 50-year-old listening to this and they take this assessment and they realize that they've been working in the wrong way their whole life.
• 59:26
  What's your message to that person?
• 59:28
  I'd say, first of all, share it with your spouse and your close friends because they will have insights into it.
• 59:34
  Go sit down with your manager or your colleagues at work and go, hey, what do you think of this?
• 59:39
  My dad was an ET.
• 59:43
  So he was the loyal finisher.
• 59:45
  Like he'd always volunteer for things and get things done.
• 59:48
  When he retired, so I'll even go into retirement, he didn't know what to do with himself.
• 59:53
  And you know what he should have done?
• 59:54
  He's done anything that gave him responsibility.
• 59:57
  He was a responsible guy.
• 59:59
  He could have gone and run a... a...
• 1:00:04
  sporting goods store and been really happy because he liked organizing things, helping people, finishing things.
• 1:00:12
  And so we should do that when we're 30, when we're 50, when we're 70.
• 1:00:15
  Anytime.
• 1:00:17
  Anytime.
• 1:00:18
  And people talk about retiring now.
• 1:00:20
  You know what I think retiring is?
• 1:00:21
  Is look at your working genius and go do that 90% of the time.
• 1:00:26
  And if you get paid for it, that's great.
• 1:00:28
  But if you're retired and you don't need to get paid, just go do the kind of work that you love.
• 1:00:33
  And it might not be golfing.
• 1:00:35
  No.
• 1:00:36
  Mine isn't.
• 1:00:37
  It's just like stop following what you think, society, what your friends, what everybody says you should do and figure out life yourself.
• 1:00:46
  Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  I thought this was interesting.
• 1:00:48
  So when I go back into your story, you always tell the story of you being a very lazy, like a lazy kid, like a lazy child.
• 1:00:56
  Why is that part of, why is that such an important idea?
• 1:00:59
  Okay.
• 1:01:01
  So here's the thing you have to understand about me.
• 1:01:04
  I wanted to be a lazy child.
• 1:01:05
  And not lazy.
• 1:01:06
  I wanted to be creative.
• 1:01:08
  And I wanted to follow my gut.
• 1:01:11
  I worked my ass off.
• 1:01:12
  I know.
• 1:01:12
  Against the grain.
• 1:01:13
  I know.
• 1:01:14
  I didn't want to.
• 1:01:15
  But you know why I did?
• 1:01:16
  Because I had to please everyone.
• 1:01:19
  And so I got straight A's in school.
• 1:01:21
  I did everything every coach told me to do, my parents, my teachers, my bosses.
• 1:01:27
  I was my professors.
• 1:01:28
  I had to be perfect because my parents were more like that.
• 1:01:32
  And they were like, hey, success in life is that.
• 1:01:35
  They didn't say to me, hey, you know, you're creative.
• 1:01:38
  You should try these things.
• 1:01:39
  They're like, no, study accounting, get straight A's, get a scholarship.
• 1:01:42
  We don't have a lot of money.
• 1:01:43
  Go to college, get a job and provide for your family and have benefits.
• 1:01:46
  Right.
• 1:01:47
  And I lived that way intently for into my 25 years.
• 1:01:54
  I was so screwed up because I was good at things I hated.
• 1:01:59
  And so what did that mean?
• 1:02:00
  People thought, well, you can do that.
• 1:02:03
  You can keep doing that.
• 1:02:04
  And I was like, but I don't want to do that anymore.
• 1:02:06
  But my whole identity was tied up in being the responsible one.
• 1:02:10
  So I was actually better at things I hated than many people who had them as geniuses.
• 1:02:16
  That's not good.
• 1:02:17
  You've said that you were earning love through compliance.
• 1:02:20
  Yeah.
• 1:02:21
  And I think that, you know, if we look at all the things we've spoken about today, whether or not you're,
• 1:02:29
  Maybe at work it's not earning love, even though at some level I think it is, but earning respect through compliance or as a child earning love through compliance, it creates a lot of resentment.
• 1:02:41
  Yeah.
• 1:02:42
  Yes.
• 1:02:44
  What was the point when you figured out that this was like the engine that was running your life?
• 1:02:50
  It was in my 50s.
• 1:02:52
  It took a while.
• 1:02:53
  Yeah.
• 1:02:54
  Well, and because I finally found a job where I like I was writing and doing all these things.
• 1:02:58
  But what I didn't realize is why I had been doing all the other things.
• 1:03:02
  So it wasn't until I got older that I realized, oh, well, that's why I did all those things because I was looking for approval.
• 1:03:09
  For somebody that would like say, well, that's just what a high achiever looks like.
• 1:03:14
  Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  Beware high achievers.
• 1:03:16
  Right.
• 1:03:17
  So I think that there's a big difference between being fear driven and just being a high achiever.
• 1:03:25
  But how does somebody actually understand the difference between the two?
• 1:03:28
  You know, it comes down to peace and joy.
• 1:03:31
  And it's like, do you have peace or?
• 1:03:35
  If you're achieving and you're doing something that gives you peace and joy, then good on you.
• 1:03:41
  If you're achieving and you're afraid that you're going to fail at the next thing and you think that, oh, no, I have to continue to demonstrate to get all this energy to get myself to do it.
• 1:03:54
  A natural, a positive high achiever should be somebody who's not stressed out all the time.
• 1:04:00
  And if you're stressed and successful, it probably means you're doing stuff that you're not meant to do or you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
• 1:04:09
  Interesting.
• 1:04:09
  Does that make sense?
• 1:04:11
  No, it does.
• 1:04:11
  Now I'm thinking because I'm always stressed.
• 1:04:13
  Yeah.
• 1:04:13
  I'm always stressed.
• 1:04:15
  But how do you know?
• 1:04:15
  We learned growing up that that was good.
• 1:04:17
  Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  It's called hypervigilance.
• 1:04:19
  It's like, how do you know if it's the right reason?
• 1:04:21
  Like, what's the right reason?
• 1:04:22
  What's the right?
• 1:04:22
  Like, that's what I mean.
• 1:04:23
  So now I'm doing an analysis on myself in real time.
• 1:04:27
  I'm trying to think about like, what's the reason why I'm working so hard?
• 1:04:29
  And I don't have an easy answer.
• 1:04:31
  It's probably a therapy session where it is in all seriousness.
• 1:04:34
  Yes.
• 1:04:35
  And it's not weird and soft and touchy-feely.
• 1:04:37
  It's just that deep down inside when you were young, you had a notion of success and wanting to be successful, and the wiring in it was a little off.
• 1:04:48
  And what you need to do is go rewire that.
• 1:04:51
  And it's absolutely doable.
• 1:04:53
  It's a very practical thing.
• 1:04:55
  There's a kind of therapy where you just go back and people will go like, so tell me about when you were young and when you were thinking about this.
• 1:05:01
  And then you recall those things and you talk through them and you go, oh yeah, that's what it was.
• 1:05:05
  And just by bringing it up, you're rewiring.
• 1:05:10
  One thing that I've heard you say, no, it's, listen, everything in life is not overly complex.
• 1:05:16
  It's just hard work, right?
• 1:05:17
  Exactly.
• 1:05:18
  That's it.
• 1:05:19
  Like doing, whether or not it's figuring out which work you should be working on or figuring out why you're screwed up from stuff that happened in your life as a kid or whatever.
• 1:05:30
  It's just uncomfortable hard work, but it's not overly complicated.
• 1:05:33
  Life is simple and difficult.
• 1:05:35
  We want it to be complicated and easy.
• 1:05:37
  We're looking for some like magic formula that doesn't have any sweat behind it.
• 1:05:42
  It's like, nope.
• 1:05:44
  Marriage, parenting, success in business are all about doing.
• 1:05:50
  It's remembering to stick to the basics.
• 1:05:54
  When I say it's hard, it's not like grindy hard.
• 1:05:58
  It just requires constant reminders of staying with what works.
• 1:06:02
  Yeah.
• 1:06:03
  One of my favorite ideas is there's a difference between like hard work for the sake of hard work and doing things that are hard.
• 1:06:12
  Oh, yeah.
• 1:06:13
  Yes.
• 1:06:14
  And I've all I have repeatedly screwed that up.
• 1:06:17
  Wow.
• 1:06:17
  That's profound.
• 1:06:19
  When you are and that that may be very I was just talking to a guy that wrote a book about this and he says every year you should go out and do something ridiculously hard.
• 1:06:27
  And if we do it because we're just saying, hey, that's hard.
• 1:06:31
  And in a short burst of energy, I'm going to do something hard just to test myself.
• 1:06:36
  That could be healthy.
• 1:06:37
  But if you can get addicted to that.
• 1:06:39
  Yes, you can.
• 1:06:40
  And boy, the difference between those is the difference between misery and freedom.
• 1:06:45
  Like a good life and a very painful life.
• 1:06:49
  I did grow up thinking that life was supposed to be hard and I was supposed to be always vigilant.
• 1:06:54
  Yeah.
• 1:06:56
  Like, what could go wrong?
• 1:06:59
  Constantly preparing for what could go wrong.
• 1:07:00
  I lived in the future.
• 1:07:02
  You know, like, oh, but what about this?
• 1:07:04
  What about that?
• 1:07:04
  And it's like, like in the Bible says, there's plenty to worry about in the, and there's plenty of stuff from the past and plenty of stuff in the future, but you're supposed to be right here right now.
• 1:07:12
  What is it, right?
• 1:07:13
  Like anxiety is living in the future.
• 1:07:15
  Depression is living in the past.
• 1:07:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:17
  Sounds right.
• 1:07:18
  By the way, this is a total aside, but it's so interesting how all the lessons that we actually have to listen to, they're not new.
• 1:07:25
  Like everything we're talking about on this podcast, whether or not you go back to the Bible or you go back to Stoics, there's so many sources of wisdom that lay this all out.
• 1:07:37
  Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  But we forget.
• 1:07:39
  It's not true.
• 1:07:40
  Samuel Johnson was, I think, an 18th century writer.
• 1:07:43
  And he said people need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.
• 1:07:46
  But then you go and you see all these PhDs.
• 1:07:48
  Everybody's trying to do all this stuff.
• 1:07:50
  And it's like, hey, but you're not even doing, I call it the low hanging fruit.
• 1:07:53
  Everybody's like, I'm going to go up there and get that fruit right there.
• 1:07:55
  And I'm like, just bump into the tree.
• 1:07:57
  The fruit's going to fall right into your basket.
• 1:07:59
  No, no, no.
• 1:08:00
  It must be that fruit way up there.
• 1:08:02
  And people go through life like that, searching for these really complex things when simplicity is what we need.
• 1:08:09
  One of the ideas that you've spoken about that really, really stuck with me, you've said that success was just relief that you didn't fail.
• 1:08:21
  Yeah.
• 1:08:23
  When did that change?
• 1:08:25
  That's what I started working on about 10 years ago.
• 1:08:29
  So what is your definition of success today?
• 1:08:32
  I think I've learned that success is about being in the moment.
• 1:08:35
  I know that sounds like a euphemism or something you put on a poster, but, but it's like, I was always thinking about the future and thinking about the past, more of the future.
• 1:08:42
  And, um, and I realized now it's like, Hey, I'm sitting here talking to you.
• 1:08:46
  This is great.
• 1:08:47
  I want to enjoy this.
• 1:08:48
  And it, it's not about what's it going to produce.
• 1:08:51
  It's like this itself is worth doing.
• 1:08:54
  And whatever I do tonight, I want to be there and enjoy that.
• 1:08:57
  I never enjoyed the moment.
• 1:08:59
  I was always like, what does this lead to?
• 1:09:00
  And what am I going to have to prevent from happening in the future?
• 1:09:04
  So I think I'm just learning to live like this is what's here right now.
• 1:09:07
  And this is good.
• 1:09:08
  You know, it's interesting because when you live in the moment, the work you do in the moment is going to be much better.
• 1:09:13
  Totally.
• 1:09:16
  It removes any expectation, which, of course, creates like a better outcome.
• 1:09:19
  But also...
• 1:09:21
  Like, I think that's just like how to live like a happy, fulfilled life.
• 1:09:25
  I think that's genuinely like, I think people are always searching for like, what does success mean?
• 1:09:28
  What does success mean?
• 1:09:29
  Well, they want freedom, but they don't want freedom plus anxiety or freedom plus depression.
• 1:09:35
  It's like freedom plus peace.
• 1:09:37
  Yes.
• 1:09:37
  That's what people actually want.
• 1:09:39
  You just hit the nail on the head and there's so many people pursuing freedom where they think it's like, if I have another thing in another house and another this, and it's like, and their peace is going down.
• 1:09:50
  I met these monks recently, these guys that live in the woods in Pennsylvania, and they're like what's called discousest Carmelite monks.
• 1:09:57
  They live the most austere lives of all religious.
• 1:10:02
  And they live in a shack, which they call their cell.
• 1:10:05
  And they speak very little.
• 1:10:06
  They pray all day.
• 1:10:07
  Then they work.
• 1:10:08
  They have a little bit of time with one another and they go back and they eat by themselves in their shack and then they pray some more.
• 1:10:14
  And they were full of joy.
• 1:10:16
  And I was like, they were young.
• 1:10:17
  One's 23.
• 1:10:18
  And I'm like, what's?
• 1:10:23
  And he's like, yeah, it's great.
• 1:10:26
  And he was normal.
• 1:10:27
  I was like, you know, you think that guy's going to be kind of odd.
• 1:10:30
  And he was like, no, I'm doing the thing that I think is most important, and I love doing it.
• 1:10:35
  And it's not for everyone that, but he said, I have peace knowing that I have the one thing that matters most.
• 1:10:41
  But he has found out what matters most to him, where most people have no idea.
• 1:10:45
  No.
• 1:10:47
  You mentioned that you had only recently, I'd say recently as in the past 10 years, sort of come up with a new definition of success because for the first, I guess, 50 years of your life, it was a relief that you didn't fail.
• 1:10:58
  But even at 50, you were successful by any other metric.
• 1:11:03
  So what were you running away from at 50?
• 1:11:06
  Well, not in an accusatory way, in a why did it take you so long to realize that you were not even close to failure anymore?
• 1:11:17
  until that point, I thought my wounds were superpowers.
• 1:11:22
  See, this is what happens in life.
• 1:11:23
  We're all wounded.
• 1:11:24
  Everybody gets wounded.
• 1:11:26
  In little ways, big ways.
• 1:11:28
  And sometimes you get a wound that makes you act a certain way that the world says is successful.
• 1:11:35
  So mine was like, man, you work really hard.
• 1:11:38
  Man, you try to be really good at everything you do.
• 1:11:42
  Wow, you're pretty relentlessly focused on producing things.
• 1:11:46
  And they didn't know that I was actually afraid of failing.
• 1:11:50
  To them, it looked like success.
• 1:11:52
  So I thought...
• 1:11:53
  Well, I'm not going to stop.
• 1:11:55
  The world is telling me this wound I have is actually making me successful.
• 1:12:00
  And now if that wound had been something that was clearly bad, then that would have been a terrible thing.
• 1:12:07
  But in this case, everybody was saying, no, what's your problem?
• 1:12:11
  You're very successful in life.
• 1:12:12
  You're making money.
• 1:12:14
  And I finally got to an age where I said, no, no, the lack of peace is just not worth it.
• 1:12:20
  So why?
• 1:12:21
  By the grace of God, I didn't do anything terrible.
• 1:12:23
  No, no.
• 1:12:23
  I mean, but it just was like, wow, this is not worth it.
• 1:12:27
  It's interesting.
• 1:12:28
  And this, it's just, I think the teachable moment for people that feel that they should have their life figured out.
• 1:12:35
  And I'm going to use you as an example and you'll appreciate this, but your whole career was helping people understand themselves.
• 1:12:43
  And you still, to a degree, had a hard time understanding yourself.
• 1:12:46
  And I think that just, I think that that's just,
• 1:12:51
  what's the best way of saying it?
• 1:12:53
  It's just, um, I'm blanking on the word.
• 1:12:56
  It's kind of, it's ironic.
• 1:12:58
  Isn't there?
• 1:12:59
  It's ironic, but it's also like from the perspective of somebody who is struggling with
• 1:13:06
  I want them to have some grace with where they're at in their journey.
• 1:13:11
  Yeah.
• 1:13:11
  Because even people, my point is even people that are trained to do this still struggle at certain points.
• 1:13:17
  That's my point.
• 1:13:18
  Absolutely.
• 1:13:18
  And I think people are very hard on themselves.
• 1:13:21
  Yeah.
• 1:13:21
  And I don't want this whole podcast to be, oh, I...
• 1:13:26
  I don't want people to think I've been working so hard at the wrong thing.
• 1:13:30
  So now let me beat myself up for not being in alignment or not working in my genius.
• 1:13:36
  No, quite the opposite.
• 1:13:37
  Yeah.
• 1:13:38
  You know, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.
• 1:13:40
  The second best time is today.
• 1:13:42
  And I didn't figure all this out till I was 50.
• 1:13:46
  And I remember hearing these stories about people who got diagnosed with things like disorders when they were 70.
• 1:13:54
  And they were like rejoicing, like, this is so cool.
• 1:13:57
  I finally get to figure out what this is.
• 1:13:59
  And what a great way to look at things.
• 1:14:02
  And the other thing I think people need to realize is that's how they got here.
• 1:14:07
  You know, that was their journey.
• 1:14:09
  But no matter when you make a realization of change, it's a good thing.
• 1:14:14
  Everybody would go, I wish this had happened before, but I wish I would have before that.
• 1:14:18
  I look forward and I go, I'm glad it didn't happen 10 years from now.
• 1:14:20
  I want to, we've spoken a lot about
• 1:14:24
  how you understand your own genius, how it impacts your life.
• 1:14:29
  I think that's something that a lot of people who are listening to this podcast are dealing with right now, especially after listening this far in is, okay, great.
• 1:14:34
  Now I understand who I am.
• 1:14:37
  How do I work with different people?
• 1:14:39
  How do I hire even business partners?
• 1:14:41
  Like how does this play into this whole, and I mean, like you've done management business consulting for years.
• 1:14:46
  So why?
• 1:14:49
  I mean, the book that I know you from is The Five Dysfunctions.
• 1:14:54
  That's like the OG book that I knew when I was building teams.
• 1:14:58
  Let's talk about how working genius plays into five dysfunctions.
• 1:15:03
  Is there any crossover between the two?
• 1:15:05
  You know, there is.
• 1:15:07
  It kind of goes like this.
• 1:15:09
  The first thing you have to do in a business is get the right people on the bus.
• 1:15:13
  That's hiring.
• 1:15:14
  And the first thing you need is hire for core values and behavioral values.
• 1:15:16
  Like, do they fit here?
• 1:15:19
  The next thing is once you get the right people on the bus, then you have to put them in the right seat on the bus.
• 1:15:23
  And that's what working genius is.
• 1:15:25
  It's like, hey, you're a good fit for our culture.
• 1:15:27
  And we have the book, The Ideal Team Player, Humble, Hungry, Smart.
• 1:15:30
  If you have a team-oriented culture, that's good.
• 1:15:32
  Okay, they're humble, hungry, and smart.
• 1:15:34
  But that doesn't mean they're going to be good in every job.
• 1:15:37
  So find out what seat on the bus.
• 1:15:39
  And that's working genius.
• 1:15:41
  then now we've got people in the right seat on the bus and they belong on the bus.
• 1:15:44
  How do we, how do we get this to go?
• 1:15:46
  And that's the five dysfunctions of a team.
• 1:15:48
  But if people don't belong on the bus or they're in the wrong seat, it's really difficult to build trust and engage in good conflict and, and commit to decisions and hold each other accountable because they're like, I hate my, I don't, I don't think I belong in this job or I don't even want to work at this company.
• 1:16:04
  So hiring is such an important decision.
• 1:16:07
  And when it comes to working genius and hiring, it's really about when you, when you say we're going to have to hire somebody to head marketing or to be an executive assistant or be the head of engineering, ask yourself the question, what letters are probably really critical?
• 1:16:26
  Like maybe there's one letter.
• 1:16:27
  If they don't have T, right?
• 1:16:30
  I can't see how it's going to work.
• 1:16:31
  Or if they don't have G, you know, when you do that, then when you go out and interview people, you know what you're interviewing them for.
• 1:16:38
  Like how do you feel about getting up in front of people and rallying them when things aren't going well?
• 1:16:42
  How do you feel like pushing people when you don't, when they don't feel like doing something that's the G make sure they have the letter you're really needing in that job.
• 1:16:50
  So I think the biggest thing you can do in hiring is actually look at the jobs based on the letters that you need.
• 1:16:58
  And you're not going to get necessarily the perfect person, but don't hire somebody that has none of the key letters.
• 1:17:04
  It's just not going to work.
• 1:17:05
  Because you've seen leaders almost fire someone, like good people, because that person was a good fit for the organization, but they didn't have the right letters for that particular job.
• 1:17:17
  Yes, I remember right after this came out, one of the CEOs we worked with had this amazing VP of sales, and she was an ET as it turned out, they didn't know that.
• 1:17:28
  So she was super loyal, really managed her people well, and always made her numbers.
• 1:17:33
  And so she was fantastic and she had great values, fit the company.
• 1:17:37
  The market changed and had to reinvent the sales strategy because it was going to be a different go-to-market strategy.
• 1:17:42
  She couldn't come up with anything.
• 1:17:44
  And the CEO was like, why?
• 1:17:46
  She's my head of sales.
• 1:17:48
  If she can't come up with a new sales strategy, I guess I have to hire somebody else.
• 1:17:52
  And he was really thinking about letting her go.
• 1:17:54
  They did the working genius.
• 1:17:55
  And he said, and she said, I don't have any I or any D. And they found a guy in marketing who was an I.
• 1:18:02
  And they said, can you come to our meeting?
• 1:18:03
  And he came up with a new sales strategy in an hour.
• 1:18:06
  And they were like, can you come to all of our offsite meetings once a quarter?
• 1:18:09
  And he goes, yeah, I'd love this.
• 1:18:11
  And they're like, oh good.
• 1:18:12
  They borrowed, they outsourced invention.
• 1:18:15
  And he goes, I almost fired her.
• 1:18:18
  I almost fired one of my top leaders who was a cultural fit because she didn't have all six letters, basically.
• 1:18:26
  So, yeah, that's really important to understand.
• 1:18:29
  You can bring in contractors based on their working genius.
• 1:18:32
  You can borrow people to help you on a project based on their working genius.
• 1:18:37
  What do you do if you have an incredible employee that has the wrong letters?
• 1:18:41
  And you have no place else for them.
• 1:18:42
  Yeah.
• 1:18:42
  You, you know, what's beautiful, beautiful about that.
• 1:18:45
  You say to them, I love you.
• 1:18:47
  I'm not rejecting you.
• 1:18:49
  We don't have a job for you.
• 1:18:51
  I want to help you find a job where you're going to get to use the, your geniuses.
• 1:18:56
  There's no, and, and what it does is allows them not to feel like they're rejected.
• 1:19:00
  Like they did something wrong.
• 1:19:02
  If you're in a small company, you go, I need somebody like this.
• 1:19:06
  The moment a job opens up that I could hire you, I would.
• 1:19:10
  And I will help.
• 1:19:11
  I will give you the best recommendation.
• 1:19:13
  And I will tell people I didn't want to let him go.
• 1:19:15
  We just didn't have that.
• 1:19:17
  You know what I'm saying?
• 1:19:17
  Yeah.
• 1:19:18
  But you know what happens in so many organizations?
• 1:19:20
  People don't do it that way.
• 1:19:21
  And they just let somebody go.
• 1:19:22
  And the person goes, I guess I failed.
• 1:19:24
  And now they're like, I got fired.
• 1:19:26
  It's like, no.
• 1:19:28
  A friend of mine came to me and wanted to work at my company.
• 1:19:31
  And I said, here's the deal.
• 1:19:34
  Culturally, you're a great fit.
• 1:19:36
  Your working genius is this.
• 1:19:38
  The only two things we've got going right now are this.
• 1:19:40
  You would hate that.
• 1:19:41
  He was like, you're right, I would.
• 1:19:42
  So come hang out with us.
• 1:19:45
  Don't feel like we're rejecting you.
• 1:19:47
  And that is so much easier than just pretending like, oh, no, that's okay.
• 1:19:50
  Send us your resume.
• 1:19:51
  It's like, I'd hire you, but I don't have that.
• 1:19:53
  It allows you to put words to what's going on in the situation a lot easier.
• 1:19:59
  It's like a common nomenclature now.
• 1:20:01
  We get why you're succeeding, why you're not.
• 1:20:04
  Right.
• 1:20:04
  And you remove the emotion.
• 1:20:07
  Like there's some guilt or judgment.
• 1:20:09
  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:10
  That's the whole point.
• 1:20:11
  Why do you think leaders have a tough time having these conversations with their employees?
• 1:20:16
  Like having the hard conversations about it's not working.
• 1:20:19
  Is it because they don't understand why?
• 1:20:21
  Is it because they don't have the words to describe?
• 1:20:25
  Yeah, I think what's interesting, there's this thing called the fundamental attribution error, which I learned in college in psychology.
• 1:20:32
  And it means this.
• 1:20:32
  When somebody does something that I find annoying, I'll attribute it to their character.
• 1:20:37
  But if I do something that you find annoying, I'll attribute it to my environment.
• 1:20:41
  So I'm driving down the street and somebody cuts me off in traffic.
• 1:20:45
  I'll go, that guy's a jerk.
• 1:20:47
  He's probably a really selfish person.
• 1:20:49
  And then I cut somebody off in traffic and I'm like, oh, I got lost.
• 1:20:53
  I didn't know where I was going.
• 1:20:54
  I'm just late.
• 1:20:54
  We do this all the time.
• 1:20:55
  So we're struggling with somebody at work and we think, oh, they must be lazy or they're not very smart.
• 1:21:00
  Then you look at their working genius and you just go, oh, no, it's not that at all.
• 1:21:03
  They're just wired differently.
• 1:21:05
  And so once you know they're working genius, the conversation is actually really easy.
• 1:21:09
  It's like, hey, I noticed that you often don't get that done.
• 1:21:13
  And T is in one of your frustrations.
• 1:21:15
  That must be really hard for you.
• 1:21:17
  You're not saying what's wrong with you or you're letting me down.
• 1:21:21
  You're saying this is just not aligned with what you're best at.
• 1:21:26
  Suddenly the guilt and judgment are gone.
• 1:21:27
  And they're like, yeah, you're right.
• 1:21:30
  It makes everything so much easier.
• 1:21:32
  And it also makes it a lot easier to find the right person when you're hiring.
• 1:21:34
  Absolutely.
• 1:21:35
  But always err on the first on the side of the values.
• 1:21:40
  Faith is a big part of your life.
• 1:21:41
  Yeah, the center.
• 1:21:43
  You've spoken a lot about how these geniuses are God-given.
• 1:21:49
  You grew up Catholic, but you say your faith didn't become real until adulthood.
• 1:21:53
  So I'm curious, what was the trigger?
• 1:21:56
  Like you bring God into a lot of your work as well, which is unique.
• 1:21:59
  Yeah.
• 1:21:59
  And my faith, it didn't, but you know, as an adult, you have to really, you have to keep growing in your faith.
• 1:22:04
  Yes.
• 1:22:05
  And so I think as an adult, I came to do that.
• 1:22:08
  And, and you know, I'm, I'm, I don't know that there was this one moment, but I think one of the things you realize as you get a little older is this thing called success and earthly things don't last.
• 1:22:17
  Yeah.
• 1:22:18
  And when you realize that, you're like, okay, there has to be something more here.
• 1:22:22
  Which is why when I work with CEOs that keep striving for even more money and more money, I'm like, oh, there's nothing at the end of that.
• 1:22:30
  And earlier we were talking about living in the moment and in the day.
• 1:22:34
  And like today I woke up.
• 1:22:36
  I don't always do this, but I did today.
• 1:22:37
  I said the rosary and I went to mass.
• 1:22:39
  And then I went to work.
• 1:22:40
  It's a different day.
• 1:22:42
  And otherwise I get up and I just like race to work and I start getting involved in everything and trying to get things done.
• 1:22:48
  And my perspective is just like, what?
• 1:22:49
  I mean, my faith is that you have to have an eternal perspective on everything.
• 1:22:55
  And when we lose sight of that, we make decisions with really bad parameters.
• 1:23:00
  So, yeah, my faith is not a part of my life.
• 1:23:03
  It's the center of my life.
• 1:23:05
  And when I forget that, it's inevitable that I'm going to start to feel I'm going to lose my peace.
• 1:23:11
  One thing that I always try and bring up, and this is why I was just very excited to chat with you, even though faith is, you know, this is a small part of this podcast.
• 1:23:21
  I always say that pursuing true success, there's sort of five buckets that I've sort of made up myself.
• 1:23:26
  These are not anyone else's framework, but you obviously pursue wealth and money.
• 1:23:30
  That's one of it.
• 1:23:31
  It's necessary in a society to survive.
• 1:23:34
  100%.
• 1:23:34
  And you have your physical health, your mental health, your relationships, but then your spirituality as well.
• 1:23:40
  You work with so many very successful founders, CEOs.
• 1:23:47
  What's the difference between somebody that has a component of spirituality in their life and their business versus somebody who has none?
• 1:23:54
  Um, gosh, and, and the last, I don't want to seem like I'm being condescending or critical of people that don't have faith.
• 1:24:00
  Although I would be lying if I didn't say like in this moment, I pray that they will.
• 1:24:05
  Because that's not one of those things you don't share.
• 1:24:09
  Like, well, I have faith, but you don't.
• 1:24:10
  And that's fine.
• 1:24:11
  It's like, then that's not the right faith.
• 1:24:13
  Because in my faith, it's like, I want others to experience the love of Christ and peace.
• 1:24:18
  So I think that it gets down to that word and that's peace and the stress thing.
• 1:24:24
  It's like when we say that person is successful, but if you knew that they were stressed and didn't have peace and were striving for more, I think that we would probably not want to say that was success.
• 1:24:38
  So success is an external thing that you can put on a spreadsheet.
• 1:24:42
  Okay, maybe they're successful in that regard.
• 1:24:45
  But I would say that the guy who's working at a random job and he's peaceful and happy and knows God and loves his family and he makes enough money to take care of them, that is success.
• 1:25:01
  And I think that fame, wealth and power are things that we should run from, like excessive.
• 1:25:09
  I agree with that.
• 1:25:10
  And I've learned that by being around enough people and like leaning in too far into those things.
• 1:25:16
  And I've come to realize fame, wealth and power are something that is just not meant for me.
• 1:25:22
  I've thought about this a lot.
• 1:25:24
  I think that one of these ideas that has really stuck with me is if you don't have a version of God, like a more traditional version of spirituality or God or religion in your life, something else takes the place of God.
• 1:25:40
  Exactly.
• 1:25:41
  Everybody has a God.
• 1:25:44
  For many people, it's a them.
• 1:25:46
  And I think that's toxic.
• 1:25:47
  I think it's incredibly destructive.
• 1:25:50
  I love one of the definitions of humility, which is the ultimate virtue, because the ultimate sin at the center of all sin is pride.
• 1:25:59
  And the ultimate virtue then is humility.
• 1:26:00
  And one definition of humility is there is a God and it's not me.
• 1:26:04
  So how can I be anything but humble?
• 1:26:06
  And that kind of makes sense.
• 1:26:08
  When you work with these CEOs and these founders, you're helping them with very tactical things.
• 1:26:12
  But what's the advice outside of the tactics that you give them, just in terms of what we're talking about right now?
• 1:26:18
  You're talking to super high-achieving type A people.
• 1:26:24
  Do you ever have to sort of counsel them on other parts of their life to get them to get to the point where they can be open to ideas that can help their business, maybe be more empathetic, be more humble?
• 1:26:35
  Absolutely.
• 1:26:36
  And one of the things I like to say is ask yourself why you're doing what you're doing.
• 1:26:41
  I wrote a book called The Motive, which came out the day after COVID broke.
• 1:26:46
  So it was a great time to release a book, but it's called The Motive.
• 1:26:49
  And it's about a CEO sitting down to say, why am I doing this?
• 1:26:52
  And there's two motives.
• 1:26:54
  Is it for me?
• 1:26:56
  Because it makes me comfortable.
• 1:26:58
  I have fun.
• 1:27:00
  I get wealthy.
• 1:27:01
  I get famous.
• 1:27:02
  Yeah.
• 1:27:03
  and have influence, or is it in service of others?
• 1:27:07
  And I know that sounds very altruistic, but a leader is a sacrificial job.
• 1:27:12
  And if you're a CEO of a company and you think it's about...
• 1:27:16
  For your personal economics, it's not going to work.
• 1:27:20
  Eventually, it's just going to implode.
• 1:27:22
  So the thing I like to say is leaders need to check why they're doing what they're doing.
• 1:27:27
  And if you go to work every day and go, I am here because people need me and I need to make good decisions for them and their benefit, you will like what you're doing.
• 1:27:37
  And by the way, I've slid into the wrong motivation before.
• 1:27:40
  I think everybody has at some point.
• 1:27:42
  I used to come to work at some point and said, we've been pretty successful.
• 1:27:45
  Now I just want to work on stuff I feel like working on.
• 1:27:48
  And it's like, no, I have to do what needs to be done.
• 1:27:53
  And this is where working genius kind of comes full circle.
• 1:27:56
  It's, I do want to work in my area of working genius.
• 1:27:58
  It's my job to make sure that everything is getting done for everyone else.
• 1:28:02
  And at the end of the day, if there's nobody left to do it, I don't care which genius it is.
• 1:28:06
  It's me that has to step in and do the, the one that I don't like.
• 1:28:09
  Yeah.
• 1:28:10
  Hopefully that's not very often.
• 1:28:13
  But your North Star of building this thing or being in this role in service of others will allow you to do that.
• 1:28:22
  Yes.
• 1:28:23
  If you know that it's not about you.
• 1:28:27
  Suffering and sacrifice are the things in our society that people don't appreciate.
• 1:28:33
  Life involves suffering and sacrifice.
• 1:28:34
  We're not supposed to run for them.
• 1:28:35
  We're not supposed to, like, heap them on ourselves just to do it.
• 1:28:38
  But if we think the purpose of life is to avoid suffering and sacrifice, we are going to live a very miserable life.
• 1:28:43
  It's interesting how that works, huh?
• 1:28:45
  Isn't it?
• 1:28:45
  Yeah.
• 1:28:46
  And if you accept the fact, like, oh, yeah, somebody said every day you have crosses, some big, some small.
• 1:28:50
  And if you go, yeah, I wonder what they are today.
• 1:28:53
  Suddenly you can appease.
• 1:28:55
  Wow, this is a big one.
• 1:28:57
  But if you're like trying to dodge your crosses.
• 1:29:00
  Where else can they find you, follow you?
• 1:29:02
  You have your favorite social.
• 1:29:04
  Where do you want to send them?
• 1:29:06
  I think that my company is called The Table Group.
• 1:29:09
  So tablegroup.com is our website there.
• 1:29:11
  And then we do, we have a couple of podcasts.
• 1:29:13
  One of them called At The Table, which is just about organizational life.
• 1:29:16
  But then we do one for Working Genius.
• 1:29:18
  We have so many people that are following Working Genius now that they just want to hear like, what's the latest?
• 1:29:22
  And as we're doing more thinking about that, we're putting it out there.
• 1:29:25
  So you've given over a lot of wisdom, but say you could take everything you've learned over your life and you could only pass on one lesson to your children.
• 1:29:31
  What would that lesson be and why?
• 1:29:33
  To know that you're loved by God and that anything that happens in your life, whether it's good or challenging, is an opportunity to draw closer to Him.
• 1:29:47
  Why is that the most important lesson?
• 1:29:49
  Because if you know that, you're going to have peace and resiliency and
• 1:29:57
  And you're not going to fear.
• 1:29:59
  Fear is not a good thing.