Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #061_ STORY INSPIRE: Quit Smart: The Superpower of Knowing When to Stop

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#061_ STORY INSPIRE: Quit Smart: The Superpower of Knowing When to Stop · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: How do I know when to quit something?
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: It's okay. You can quit things.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hang on a minute. When I went to the gym
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: this morning, there was a Michael Jordan quote.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: If you quit once, it becomes a habit. Never quit.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: He's wrong. And it's very clear that he's wrong. And
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I've failed more times than most people who listen to this.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: And the simple secret for the power of quitting is
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: the dip. And the dip describes something in the world
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: that no one talks about. And so one of the
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: things I try to do is help people understand it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Because my whole career is about how can I help
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: people do better? find why they're stuck, realize what's holding
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: them back, go solve the problem. Because problems are opportunity.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: And I believe all problems can be solved. But what
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: we're wrestling now with is people are afraid, people are lonely,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: people are disconnected. They're victims of all sorts of media
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: and commercial systems. And we've been indoctrinated to not notice it.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: So I really want to just focus in on people
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: who feel stuck right now.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: So there's this philosophy, which is the key to figuring
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: out our stuckness. The donkey is trapped halfway between the
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: water and the carrot. The donkey is thirsty and hungry,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: but he's unwilling to move away from either of the
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: things he wants. So he starves to death and he
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: dies of thirst. And all of us do this, and
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: we do it with one simple word, but. I want
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to run the marathon, but I don't want to get tired.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I want to have a job that fulfills me, but
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: I also like this car and this house. And so
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I can give you tools that can help you overcome resistance.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: And also I can give you the mechanics to become
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: the person your future self thanks you for.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: And then the skill of overcoming shame or embarrassment might
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: be one of the most important skills in the modern
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: world today. How do I get better at dealing with that?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: So let me try to make it really simple.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: The floor is yours. This is super interesting to me.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: My team gave me this report to show me how
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: of you have told us, according to this, that you
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: all of you, please could you check right now if
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: viewer of the show and you like what we do here.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: simple free thing that you could do to help us,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: keep it improving year over year and week over week,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It is just to hit that subscribe button and to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: ask of you, do we have a deal? If you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and harder and harder and harder to bring you the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: true to that promise since the very beginning of the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: Diary of a CEO and I will not let you down.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the show. Seth Godin. For my audience who've just clicked
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: on this conversation, my question to you is by the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: time this conversation is done, what do you hope that
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: they're going to come away with? What questions in their
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: life are they going to have answers to?
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Some of your best guests are world experts and they
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: show up and they say, I did the research, I
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: did the math, do this because I told you to.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And I've never done that. I show up and I
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: try to paint a picture for people of what the
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: words mean and what the systems are like. And then
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: encourage you to do things because you told you to.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And so what I think we're wrestling now with is
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: people are afraid. People are lonely. People are disconnected. They're
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: victims of all sorts of media and commercial systems. And
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: we've been indoctrinated to not notice it. And there are
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: problems all around us. And if we can solve problems,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: we can make things better. So what I want to
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: help people do is find the words to talk about
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: their problem. Realize what's holding them back. Go solve the problem.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Because when we solve problems, we make things better for
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: ourselves and for other people. So problems aren't something to
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: be avoided. Problems are our opportunity. And I believe all
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: problems can be solved. Some things aren't problems. They're situations
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: and you have to live with them. But if it's
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: a problem, it means there's a solution. And I would
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: like to help people find the vision and the words
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: to see where they're stuck, why they're stuck, and whether
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: it's a problem or a situation. it's a problem and
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: someone's going to benefit from you solving it, I hope
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I can give you the mechanics, the tools, the vocabulary
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: to go move forward toward better.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: And what kind of problems specifically do you try and
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: solve for people in your work, but also in this
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: more recent book that you've just written called The Knot?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: So I don't solve problems for people, they solve problems
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: for themselves. And when someone points out to you where
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: the problem is, you can now make a new decision, right?
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: So If someone's applying for college, it's super easy if
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: you're 17 years old to get all hung up on,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: I'm about to be judged. How are they going to
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: know the real me? What if I get rejected? Am
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I a loser? Have I wasted my whole life? But
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: once you see the college industrial complex, once you understand
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the agenda of the admissions office, once you realize what
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: people are looking at and why, So this is a game.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: This is a game like Settlers of Catan or Monopoly.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And if I win this game, it's not because I'm
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a good person. It's because I played the game better.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: If I lose the game, same thing. Once you see that,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: all the drama and entanglement of applying for college moves
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: to the side. You say, what's in it for the
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: admissions officer to see the person I want to present
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: to them? Because if I can solve their problem, I'm
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: going to go to the school I want to go to. Well,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: that's true in so many parts of our lives. We
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: engage with a system or a person or a boss
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: or a coworker or a spouse and we think we're right.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: We've got all this noise in our head. We think
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: everyone can hear the noise in our head. They can't.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: We think everyone wants what we want. They don't. And
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: so we show up saying, it's my turn. I need
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: to get this. And now we have a problem. And
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: the reason we have a problem is because that other
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: person thinks they're as right as we think we're right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: And they have a different problem. So we're colliding. But
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: if we can see that all of this is a
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: dynamic within family systems, corporate systems, commercial systems, we can
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: understand what are the forces at work. Now that we
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: see them, we can use them to get to where
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: we want to go.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I go out into the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: world and I sit in taxis and I I walk
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: down the street and people come up to me and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: I get sort of an idea of the personas of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: people watching. And because I get in a lot of taxis,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I have a lot of conversations with taxi drivers. So
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: they're one persona in my head. And then, you know,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: the other is maybe like a mother with a kid
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: or two who's trying to make a change in their
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: sort of later career. For those people, the average person
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: listening right now, where is it that they want to
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: go to? And I don't mean specifically, I don't mean job.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Where is it that they want to go to and
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: where are they?
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Right. I think most people we meet, would like to
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: be seen, missed if they are gone, understood, and of use. Right?
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: That's something that crosses borders and cultures. And yet, we
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: end up being a cog in a system. The Uber
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: driver racing around, doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do because
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: the system is pushing them to cut every corner. Or
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the mom who's struggling because the financial system that she's
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: stuck in is pushing her away from the kind of
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: work or parenting she wants to do. And many of
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: those things are injustices. And some of those things cannot
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: be fixed by an individual. We can accept those as situations.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: You're not going to change Uber. Uber is going to
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: be the way Uber is going to be. And if
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: you choose to be an Uber driver, the rules of
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Uber come with it. But other things are things where
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: we get to make a choice. And I'm not saying,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I want to be really clear, I'm not saying anyone
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: deserves an injustice. Anyone deserves where they are right now.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: But given who you are, given where you are, what
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: are the choices you do have? And how do we
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: get out of the not, the stuckness of wanting two
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: things that we can't have at the same time? Because
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: it's when we want two things at the same time
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: that cannot coexist that we feel stuck. And that feeling
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of stuckness robs us from the chance to be of use.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: It robs us from the chance to get to that
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: place that deep down we want to go. So I
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: use the word purpose. And what I mean by that
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: is not you're born with a purpose because I don't
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: think you were. But you can choose with intent the
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: purpose of whatever you're going to do tomorrow. That purpose
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: might be I need to get paid. That purpose might
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: be I need to get this date. That purpose might
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: be I need to put something on the internet that
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: changes the lives of a thousand people. When you say
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: your purpose out loud, the purpose of this work is so-and-so,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: then I say back to you the very first question,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: which is the key. Who? Who is this for? Is
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: it for everyone? Or is it for 12 people or 1,000 people?
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: What change are you here to make? And for who?
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: And if we can't figure out who the who is,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: then we feel like there's just this amorphous, horrible, heavy
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: blanket on us, trapping us. But if you can find
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: the five people you can solve a problem for or
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: the 25 people who would miss you, it starts to work.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: So let me give you a quick story to help
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: you understand the analogy. You're a stand-up comic. You've been
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: working really hard and your agent calls, I got a
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: great gig. So you go and there's 100 people there
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: and you bomb. Not one laugh for 10 minutes and
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: then you leave the stage. Then you find out it's
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: a tour group from Italy and no one in the
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: room speaks English. So who bombed, right? It's your agent
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: who put you in the wrong room. There was nothing
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: wrong with your jokes. It was a mismatch because the
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: audience didn't speak English. So you're allowed to say, it's
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: not for you. When we show up to try to
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: engage with someone it's not for, if we read the comments,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: if we read the reviews, and someone gives a great
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: book a one-star review, all that one-star review says is,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: this book wasn't for me. That's all they needed to write.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Nothing else in the review is helpful. Because someone else
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: thought it was a five-star book. So the author has
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: learned nothing. So we pick who it's for. What is
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: our intent? This person I'm going to help. I'm going
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: to trade with. I'm going to engage. I'm going to
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: sell to or whatever. Who exactly? What do they believe?
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: What do they want? What are they afraid of? If
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I can solve their problem, they're going to want to
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: engage and I can be of use. And then I
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: can do it again. And then I can do it again.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Is this a point about getting unstuck in your current situation?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Is it come right back to who you want to serve,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: their persona, what their needs are, and then focusing on that?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Because I'm thinking again about this Uber driver who feels
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: somewhat powerless in their life. They They think I've got
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: to sell my time to make this much money, but
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not satisfied and I'm not fulfilled. So how does
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: what you've just said sort of dovetail into that person's life?
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So people sometimes call me a marketer and I had
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: the luxury of starting my career right when television was dying.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: So before that, marketing meant big companies, buying ads, interrupting people,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: hustling them, et cetera. And then it shifted. So I
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: got to define marketing as anything I wanted. And I've
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: defined marketing as telling a true story to the right
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: people in a way that helps them get where they want,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: that they will tell their friends about. If you do
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: those steps, you're not doing any of the icky part.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: You're being of service. And you don't have to have
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: a budget to do this. We are all marketing. When
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: you walk in in tatty jeans to a job interview
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: at an investment bank, you've just marketed yourself by your clothing, right?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: There's a signal that you chose to send and that
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: they will receive or not receive. So when we think
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: about the agency, the freedom that each of us have,
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: we have the freedom to decide who we're going to
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: show up for and what's the story that's built in.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: So back to this Uber driver. If you want to
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: make a living driving a car and meeting interesting people,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: one thing you could do is give up all of
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: your freedom to Uber and let them find you the passengers.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: But the other thing you could do is realize that
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: there are 75 people who live in this suburb of
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: your town. who need to get somewhere reliably and safely
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: and would be delighted to have you be their driver.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: And when you hand out the right cards to the
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: right people, making it clear what you do and don't
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: do and who you do it for and don't do
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it for, getting to 15 regular customers is not out
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: of reach.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: As a private chauffeur. Yeah.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: That path is a better use of his tomorrow. than
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: simply being ground out by some social media company or
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: or ride-sharing service.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Bringing it back to this this rope thing over here
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: because i really want to just focus in on people
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: who feel stuck right now the essence of where i'm
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: trying to go to in this conversation is i want
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: to speak to people that currently feel stuck but they
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: know that they're capable of more they know that they
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: could have another life but they practically don't understand i
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: guess both the psychology and the systems, the mechanisms, and
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: I guess what they can control in order to move
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: from where they are to where they want to be.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: There's a rope here.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: And it serves as a somewhat interesting analogy for, I guess,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: being stuck and pulling on the wrong thing. Yeah.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: You sound like a magician. Yeah. Okay.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you know the analogy?
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, I do. So 2,500 years ago, this guy named Alexander,
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: he didn't have a last name yet, showed up outside
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: of a small village in Turkey. And there was a
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: legend from King Midas. There was a wagon there and
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: it was tied with a complicated knot. And the legend
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: was whoever could untie this knot would become the ruler
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: of huge parts of Europe. And Alexander was 21 years
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: old and he did not use a knife. He did
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: not cut anything. But he looked at this knot that
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: was tied to the wagon and he did one thing
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: that no one before him had ever done. He realized
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: that there was a pole in the center of it
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: that it was tied around. And he removed the pole
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: and then he could see by looking very carefully how
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: the whole knot was held together and he could untie
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: it with no trouble whatsoever. And then he became Alexander
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the Great. Because the secret, the simple secret was we
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: are stuck because we can't see what's holding us there.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: If what's holding us there, we cannot change like gravity
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: is holding us to earth. Gravity is not a problem.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: Gravity is a situation. Going to the moon doesn't deny gravity.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: It works with the fact that it exists. But we
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: are working with problems, but we're confused because we want
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: two things. So can I show you what I mean? Yeah. Okay.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So here's an actual carrot and here's actual water. This
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: is not actually a donkey, but let's pretend this is
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: a donkey. Okay? In Burden's philosophy experiment from a couple
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: hundred years ago, the donkey is hungry and thirsty. He
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: has complete freedom. He can move. And he's halfway between
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: a pile of carrots and a bucket of water. And
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: he's trapped. Because every time he moves toward the water,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: he's moving away from the carrot. Can't do that because
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: he's hungry. And every time he moves toward the carrot,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: he's moving away from the water. Can't do that because
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: he's thirsty. And so in the experiment, because we're trapped,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: we end up dying of hunger and thirst. And all
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of us do this, and we do it with one
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: simple word, which is but. I want this, but I
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: also want that, right? I want to have a creative life,
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: but I never want to get rejected. I want to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: run the marathon, but I don't want to get tired.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: And we hide the but. We don't say the but
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: out loud. So my favorite story, which I talk about
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: in the book, is Jackson Pollock. So Jackson Pollock was
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the most famous painter in America in the 1940s, about
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: 80 years ago. He was on the cover of Life magazine.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: He had three years where he could do no wrong.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: His paintings were snapped up. Everyone saw him as a
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: little bit of a hero. It's very unusual for an
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: artist to be a hero in their own lifetime. And
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: his wife, Lee Krasner, later said that he felt like
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: he had done everything he could do with this cycle
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: of art. And what most people in that situation would
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: have done is become a Jackson Pollock cover band, paint
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: more versions of his old paintings, take the money, you won.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: He wanted to be a brilliant creator. He wanted to
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: be on the frontier. So he stopped painting Jackson Pollock paintings.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: He went to a studio and came up with a
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: whole new style, different size canvas, different approach. It didn't
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: look like Jackson Pollock had done it. And he brought
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: it to this big show. And the world yawned. Not
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: one piece sold. And to this day, if you go
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to a museum, you will probably not see a second
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: cycle Jackson Pollock. This led him to become even more
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: of a substance abuser, which led to him dying in
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: a tragic car crash that killed somebody else as well.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Because Jackson Pollock wanted two things. He wanted to live
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: on the frontier and be the creative artist on the
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: cutting edge. But... He also wanted to be the celebrity
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: who could sell everything he made and was seen as
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: a genius. He forgot how many years it took the
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: first Jackson Pollock to accomplish that. And because the second
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Jackson Pollock didn't hit, the butt became really loud in
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: his head. You can't have two of these things if
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: they are diametrically opposed. We need to find where is
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: the butt. I want this butt. I want that. It's
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: usually hiding as an and. But once we see it,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: once we say, oh, that is what is keeping me
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: from giving the people I'm trying to serve what they need.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: That's why I'm not getting where I need to go.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: We can remove the pole, see the entanglements, see what
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: we're measuring wrong, forgive them, make a new decision, and
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: the problem goes away.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: And you can substitute and you're saying instead of but.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: The and is the thing that emphasizes it. I want
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: to be a creative person and I'm eager to be
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: rejected and and not have people get the joke for
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: a while and have to live in the back of
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: my van because that's what creative people do. That's part
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: of it. I get that. I want to be popular
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: on social media and that means I can't be honest
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: and authentic and consistent because I got to keep chasing X, Y,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: or Z. And when we look at the people who
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: consistently get big clicks, that's what they're doing. They're not
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: saying this is who I am. They're going to chase
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: the next thing. If you're not happy with that, please
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: don't do it. But the and amplifies the work, but
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: undercuts it.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: There should be a button just down below here. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber,
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: please could you do us a favor and hit that button?
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: It helps the show more than you know. And according
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: There's people listening right now that are Maybe they've got
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: three kids under the age of seven. I'm thinking about
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: my brother. He's got three kids under the age of seven.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And they also want to launch a company. Right. And
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: they might feel that there's a tension between those two
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: things because they, on one hand, want to be the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: best dad on earth like my brother wants to be.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, they really want to launch
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: that AI startup.
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Now, these two things are tugging at each other.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: What do they do?
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: Well, first thing they do. was really important. They named it.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Okay. Second thing, can't do two things at the same time,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: but you can do many things over time. And what
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: that means is he made a commitment to three small
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: humans in this moment. He's going to go to work,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: but he can't go to work for a hundred hours
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: a week. So he needs to pick a project where
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: the amount of time he has is enough time to
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: do the project really well. He cannot start an open
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: AI competitor. It is off the table. That is impossible
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: because the thing he's committed to cannot coexist with that.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: That's hard to admit.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: Right, but it unlocks the door to what we can do.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: If he can figure out how to build an entity
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: where he's not hiding, where he's actually showing up on
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the hook, to a group of people and say, I
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: know more about AI than you and I'm going to
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: use this tool to do X and they pay him
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: for it, now at the end of a 40-hour week,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: he appropriately goes and does the work of a dad, right?
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: Dad's a business that's creating value for people that will
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: make you more profit than OpenAI made last year, right?
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So the point I'm making is media keeps showing up
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: and saying what you're supposed to do is be a Kardashian.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: What you're supposed to do is be Sam Altman. No,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: make promises and keep them for the smallest audience that's enough.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: You can't maximize two things that use the same space.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's possible to know if a motivation
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: or a goal or a dream you have or an
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: ambition you have is real or not? And when I
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: say real, I mean, like, did I just inherit this
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: from expectations from Instagram or from my family? Or because
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: my brother-in-law is rich and I want to kind of compete?
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Is there a way to know if the goal I
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: say I want is a real one?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love this. This is brilliant. This gets back
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: to the idea of purpose. What is the change you
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: seek to make with the next cycle of your effort?
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Not your purpose on earth, but the purpose of the
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: work you're about to do. Are you trying to make
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg happy? Are you trying to make an anonymous
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: commenter happy? Are you trying to teach troll a lesson?
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Because when you say that out loud, you realize that's
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: a ridiculous purpose and a trap. If we can be clear,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: what's in it for me? If I put this time in,
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: what will I get in return? So my company has
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: 75 people, let's say. And should I grow to have
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: 250 people? Well, what would be in it for me
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: to be a CEO of 250 people instead of 75 people?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Can I have a bigger headache? You're going to have
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: more money, theoretically.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: Theoretically, but what you're really going to earn is a
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: different kind of status. You have to decide if that status,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: boss of more people, that status, what I get to
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: say at the cocktail party, that status of what could
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: happen after that is worth the price you're going to
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: pay to do this or not. And so we keep
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: making these choices about what is the purpose of this work.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And that leads to the key from Steve Pressfield, which
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: is resistance. And resistance, is any feeling we have that
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: keeps us from doing generous, generative, creative work of any kind.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: So for example, writer's block is resistance. For example, you're
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: going out on a date and you change your outfit
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: six times. Resistance shows up in so many of the
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: things we do and the systems around us indoctrinate us
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: because they want us to be cogs in the system.
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: They want us to say, well, how do I get
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: an A? How do I get permission to do X, Y,
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: or Z? I'm not going to initiate anything. So it's
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: easier for your brother to deal with the resistance in
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: his head by saying, I'm stuck, than it is for
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: him to say, I changed the lives of 17 people
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: this weekend. Whereas if we kept drilling into what's your purpose,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: I think he would say, yeah, changing the lives of
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: people is more important to me than making Business Week
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: magazine happy because I built some company.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Is it useful to try and name the resistance in
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: order to overcome it?
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: You can't make resistance go away, ever. You can dance
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: with it. You can invite it in for tea. You
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: can name it. You can say, the reason I'm hesitating
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: to do this is resistance. You can say, I don't
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: feel like it. I got to go do this other
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: thing instead. I don't want to host a small party. Resistance.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: My friend Lisa moved across the country to be with
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: her partner all the way to Los Angeles, New York.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Three people in the whole city. She says, I don't
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: want to live a lonely life in Los Angeles. I'm
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: going to have a potluck dinner every Friday. I'm going
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: to start by inviting the three people I know. And
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: every week, you can come back if you bring a
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: new person. 50 weeks later, she has a network of
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: 400 people, all good friends. Anyone could have done that.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: No one does. Resistance. What if I invite someone and
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: they say no? What if I invite someone and I
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: don't like them? What if I invite someone and they
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: don't like me? Resistance, resistance, resistance. Name the baggage, drop
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: the baggage, do it. Once you can name the baggage,
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: you can say, this is why I am feeling stuck.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: If I can let go of this other thing, I
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: can move toward the carrot because I can forgive the water.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I was sort of running through different people in my
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: head that I know. Again, trying to think about the
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: personas of the people listening and one of the things
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: I realized is that everybody's starting from a very different
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: place here.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: And why is that? Why is it that some people
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: are quite good at dealing with resistance? They can invite
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: round strangers and then other people are living in fear.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: They're almost, they never take a risk. Yeah.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Well, a big part of it is privilege. It's injustice.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: It's living in a culture that never gives you the
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt. But even if I look among
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: a group of people who all have the same amount
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: of privilege, there's still somebody who is at the marketplace
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: helping people strangers find where they're going. There's still somebody who,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: you know, I have a family friend went to an
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Ivy League school. He wanted to be an actor. And
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: he went to apply to the improv troupe for auditions.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And they picked 10 people and he came in 11th.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And he called me up. He was very upset. And
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: I said, why don't you start your own improv troupe?
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: You don't need any equipment. You don't need a permit.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: You just need four people to do improv with. Start
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: your own improv troupe. And the irony, the reason I
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: remember the story is he couldn't do it. I mean
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: isn't that what improv is? Start your own improv troupe.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: And so I run an online community called purple.space. And
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: on purple, we got thousands of people who are coaching
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: each other. And it's the opposite of a social network.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: There's no scams. There's no hustle. Nobody sells anything to
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: anybody else. It's just I'll talk you through my– not
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: you talk me through yours. Let's hold each other accountable. Well,
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: someone needs to go first. Everyone wants to be invited
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: to an engagement like that, but few people want to
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: start one because you're afraid of being rejected because it's
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: one step short of dying. So when we can name
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: this and realize it's actually not at all related to dying,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: this isn't about hustling someone and getting in their face
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: to sell them something. This is about offering to solve
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: their problem as you solve your problem by naming the
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: thing and figuring out where we can be of value.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I've experienced as a podcaster
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: is a lot of people come up to me in
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: the street and they'll tell me about the podcast idea
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: that they've had for four years. And it's quite a
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: curious thing to observe because it appears on the surface
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: that they are serious, but the very nature that they've
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: been mulling it for a couple of years means that
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: there's probably some kind of resistance there.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So for a couple of years, my friend Alex DePalma
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: and I ran the podcasting fellowship. So thousands of people
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: went through this workshop To start a podcast. And the
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: reason podcasts are such a great example is everyone knows
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: what a podcast is and the cost of starting a
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: podcast is less than a dollar. So why don't you
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: have one, right? Okay. Well, so we start the cycle
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: by give me all the reasons you can't have a podcast.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: And one of the ones that comes up is, well,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think I could get good guests. And then
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: we would say, okay, who would be the best guest
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: you could ever get? And amazingly, Michelle Obama's name comes up. Yeah.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Michelle Obama is not going to be on your podcast.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: But who would you need to have on your podcast
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: as the guest before Michelle Obama that would lead her
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: more likely to say yes? And who would be the
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: guest before that and the guest before that? And let's
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: go all the way back to your next door neighbor.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Can you get your next door neighbor to be a
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: guest on your podcast? Yes. So go make that podcast
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: and just play it for the 20 people who are
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: in this circle. And at that point, half the people
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: can't do it. There's no technical reason why. It's just
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: too hard to say to your next door neighbor, can
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: I interview for 20 minutes and then show it to
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: somebody else? Because resistance. And so the hack I give
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: people is start a blog under another name, under an
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: assumed name. No one will know you wrote it. Do
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: it for 100 days in a row. If you do
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: that for 100 days in a row, I'm betting you're
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: going to want to put your real name on it.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: But if not, at least you understand there was nothing
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: fatal about posting something in public. For 100 days in
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: a row with somebody else's name on it. So that's
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: obviously not where the writer's block is. It's in resistance.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: Two things at once. I want to do this. I
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: want to be recognized. But I don't want it to fail.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be disrespected. I don't want to
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: lose status. And those two things keep us paralyzed. And
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: the system likes it like that.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: What you did there is you took the resistance and
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: you tried to break it down into the smallest possible piece.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Correct. Yes.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: You took a big piece of resistance, which is how
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: do I get Michelle Obama on my podcast? You broke
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: it down into... I need to go off to my
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: next door neighbor to come on my podcast. Yeah. And
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: then you broke it even smaller to, I'm going to
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: start an anonymous blog.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Because when we call our own bluff, it's very uncomfortable,
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: but it's better than someone else calling our bluff. And
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: this gets back to my posture of, I can't solve
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: your problem, but maybe I can give you tools to
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: that can help you name your problem so that in
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: a safe place you can talk to somebody about where
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: is the resistance? Why am I in my head about this?
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: What's the smallest unit of value for the smallest possible
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: audience that I could do that would make a difference
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: for them? Bob Lefsitz writes the most popular music blog
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: in the world. Everybody in the music industry knows him.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I promise you, when he started, he had five readers.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: My blog has a million readers. When I started, I
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: had five readers. That's the way they all start. That's
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: how your podcast started. Five listeners.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: When you broke it down there and you turned it
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: into an anonymous blog, I guess what you were also
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: doing is you were breaking down the embarrassment into smaller
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and smaller and smaller and smaller pieces of embarrassment.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: But like irrespective, there was still embarrassment. And I heard
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: this phrase, embarrassment is the cost of entry. Would you
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: agree with the general idea that irrespective of what you do,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to be embarrassed? You're going to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: have to pay that as the fee of entry to
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: almost anything outside of your current context and identity. All right.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about lifeguards and imposter syndrome. So imposter
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: syndrome was named by two social scientists about 70 years ago.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Imposter syndrome is that feeling when you're doing something important
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: or new that you're a little bit of a fake
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: or a fraud and that someone else ought to be
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: doing this instead of you. So the story I tell
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: is about being a lifeguard. So in Canada, you have
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: to get your bronze medallion to be a lifeguard. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: imagine you're on Canoe Lake on duty. There's six lifeguards
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: on the dock. And a kid starts drowning right in
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: front of you. The first thing that might come to
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: mind is, I just barely got my bronze medallion. And
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: that guy two docks down is a much better swimmer
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: than me. Someone else should say it. And then you realize, no, no.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: It's right in front of you. This is your kid.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: You jump in the water. Do you apologize for your stroke?
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: Do you say, I'm really sorry I'm not getting there
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: as fast? You save the kid. That's what lifeguards do.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: The kid is going to thank you and their parents
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: are going to thank you. That's the work of a lifeguard.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Lifeguards are able to overcome resistance because it's such a
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: vivid thing. Well, if someone's going to send an email
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: newsletter to someone who asked for it and that might
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: help them get to where they're going, where's the embarrassment exactly?
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: And Shame is this interesting emotion because we must receive it.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: It's sent to us all the time, but you have
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: to receive it for it to work. Now I'm walking
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: on 74th Street, not far from here, past this little
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: pocket playground. And I hear a four-year-old inside the playground
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: taunting somebody else. And this kid is making fun of
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: this guy, making fun of his clothes, making fun of
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: the fact that he's bald. And then I realized the
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: kid's taunting me because he was just, you know, It
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: felt safe for him and his yelling at bystanders. The
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: point was it instantly brought me back to third grade,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: instantly brought me back to what does it feel like
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: to be bullied. But wait, first of all, you're on
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: the other side of a fence. I'm never going to
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: see you again. You cannot put any shame on me.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: It bounces off me. And when we can get to
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: useful work for a small audience of people, we're allowed
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: to say to someone who doesn't get the joke, sorry,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: it's not for you. I forgive you. I don't have
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: to accept your shame. I don't have to accept the
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: embarrassment you want to give me because I'm here for
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: the right reason. And if it's not for you, we
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: both learned something.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I guess because of the internet as well, embarrassment is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: everywhere and shame is everywhere. People are, you start anything
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: on the internet, there's going to be some troll that
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: tells you it's terrible. Even when we started this podcast,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, still today, we get a lot of people
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: telling us it's fucking terrible, but because it's everywhere, one
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: could almost argue that overcoming it is now a superpower.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Because you know everybody that does anything is going to
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: encounter it. And you know how painful it is to
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: deal with that. And you also know that most people won't.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: That actually the skill of mastering, like overcoming shame or
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: embarrassment or critical feedback or whatever it might be, might
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: be one of the most important skills in the modern
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: world today when there's so much negative feedback and so
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: much shame or embarrassment or whatever. That's what I was
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: thinking of when you were saying it. It's like, how
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: do I get better at dealing with that?
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Well, let's look at it slightly differently. Because I think
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: that's a great point. But practical empathy says, I don't
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: know what you know. I didn't have the day you had.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I don't want what you want. And that's okay. And
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: I can forgive that. And I don't have to take
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: it personally. I can simply take it seriously. And those
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: are different things. Here's an interesting semi-business example. You've been
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: to Shake Shack. Yes. My friend Danny Meyer started Shake Shack.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: It's now a multi-billion dollar company. Shake Shack is based
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: on his youth in St. Louis, Missouri. And he grew
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: up with crinkle-cut French fries. Crinkle-cut French fries are the
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: secret to a certain kind of fast food hamburger joint.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: And fancy New York restaurant critics, Ed Levine, the New
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: York Times, said, what are you doing? You're making this
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: whole big deal out of everything is handmade and fresh.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: You're serving frozen crinkle-cut French fries that we can buy
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: in the freezer at the supermarket. You need to make
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: real French fries. So Danny– His status is associated with
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: the fanciest restaurants in the United States. And he and
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: his team see this assault they're getting on being embarrassed
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: about the French fries, which are at the heart of
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: their menu. So they spend millions of dollars over the
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: course of a year researching potatoes, reconfiguring every single restaurant,
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: putting in a different kind of fryer. Making fresh-cut French
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: fries is a really big challenge. Also, fresh-cut French fries...
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: are a living thing. And in May, the potatoes are
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: different than they are in November. So sometimes a fresh-cut
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: French fry is the best French fry you ever had.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: And sometimes it's limp and not very good. And they
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: switched to fresh-cut French fries because they wanted the status
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: that came from New York cultural critics saying, these guys
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: are authentic. They're the real deal. And the French fries
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: were no good. And the entire internet blew up and said,
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: what have you done to Shake Shack? And the staff
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: hated making them and it was a mess and you
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: had to clean things differently. Nothing good came of the
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: shift except making a couple people in New York City
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: happy because that's who they decided to listen to. And
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: one day, Danny looked at this and said, what is
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: the purpose of the French fries at Shake Shack? Do
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: the French fries at Shake Shack exist to help a
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: non-customer feel good about eating at a Danny Meyer restaurant?
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Or do the French fries at Shake Shack exist to
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: further the story of what it is to come to
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Shake Shack. And they ripped everything out and they went
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: back to the crinkle cut fries and the world rejoiced.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Profits went up, productivity went up, and they got back
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: to what they were trying to do in the first
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: place by forgiving and ignoring the people who needed to say,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: you need fresh cut French fries because that's what they
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: stood for. But it wasn't what the business was for.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: This sounds like a business story, but actually, as you
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: were saying it, I... Realize that it pertains to everybody's
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: life listening right now, because we're all serving a certain voice.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: And then the other thing that came to mind is
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: I've just hired someone called Ada Pema, who's came from Amazon.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: She was leading products there, building AI products, AWS. She's
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: now leading, she's our CITO, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: at steven.com, my holding company. And one of the things
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: she told me about Amazon is that they are just
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: unbelievably obsessed in the customer. Every decision they make from
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: a culture perspective is all about the customer. She even
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: told me that Jeff Bezos in his meetings and still
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: in the Amazon meetings today, they put an extra chair
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: in every meeting that is empty to represent the customer
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: because they want the customer to be in every meeting.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: And she told me how that anchors all of the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: decisions they make from a product perspective right back to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: the person they're serving. I guess it kills the donkey
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: thing you told me because they're not having to choose
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: between serving the merchants or the customer. They are serving
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: the customer. Sometimes she told me, At the merchant's expense.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: But you have to be okay with that. Yeah. That's
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: what she said to me. And that actually really stayed
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: with me because now I always think about, like, who's
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: the customer? Who's the customer? Even when I do this podcast,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: you hear me talking about personas. Right. I'm talking about
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Dave the taxi driver and Jenny the mom.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: That's who we're serving here.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so I just need to put a small
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: paperclip here. In the last two years, Amazon has lost
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: their way about who they're serving. And Amazon made billions
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: and billions of dollars last year selling ads that make
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Amazon search worse to people who want to interrupt what
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: you're looking for to put their thing up on top.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: That doesn't serve the customer. That serves a different kind
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: of shareholder. But yes, the model of what Jeff built
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: there from the way they hold their meetings, which is
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: absolutely fascinating, to what they chose to do about who
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: it was for and who it wasn't for were consistent
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: about saying, this is the problem we are here to solve.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: This is the purpose of this click. This is the
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: purpose of this page. There's no doubt about what it's for.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: And so the meeting thing, most people who are listening
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: to this go to meetings. And many people who have
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: white collar jobs say the meetings are the worst part
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: of their day. What is the meeting for? The typical meeting,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: if we're going to be honest, is to make the
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: boss feel like you were listening to them and let
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: the boss take attendance because it could probably be a memo.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: And if you're not sending a memo and you're having
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: a meeting, let's be clear. Who's this for? What's it for?
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: What is the purpose of what we just did here
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: with eight people just listening the whole time? Well, why
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: didn't you just send them a video that they could
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: watch at double speed? Meetings are a symptom. They're a
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: symptom of of whether the organization is entangled and stuck
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: with unspoken rules about what we do around here. And
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: we can see them everywhere we look. When in doubt,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: there are three things that drive people. Fear, belonging or affiliation,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: and status. And we don't really understand what they mean.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: So first, fear. I call it the freedom from fear,
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: which is different. Freedom from fear is I don't want
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: to do things that are going to make me feel nervous.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do things that I think I'm
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: afraid of. That keeps people from doing a lot of things.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: That's resistance. Affiliation is you don't wear a tuxedo to
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: a funeral or a clown suit. No one's going to
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: do that, so you're not going to do that. Fitting in.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Who's to my left? Who's to my right? What's everybody
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: else doing? And the third one, which is really misunderstood,
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: is status. Status is simple. Who eats lunch first? When
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: we get to the oasis, which animal gets the water first?
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: Status isn't money, but it could be related to money.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Status is just who's up and who's down. These three
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: things keep dancing with each other about how people choose
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: what kind of coat. Are they going to buy Patagonia
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: or are they going to buy a cheaper knockoff? One
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: of those things comes with a different kind of affiliation
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: and status than another one. But if we look for this.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: We can start to decode that quiet but that's been
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: going on in our head. Name it, right? I want
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: to get this car. Why? Because it's fast. No, you
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: don't need to go fast. I want to get this
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: car because that kid at the high school lunch table
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: who said I was never going to amount to something,
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: he could never afford this car. And every time I
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: get in this car, I'm going to be able to
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: tell myself a story that I'm not that kid from
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: the lunch table anymore. That's why I want to get
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: this car. Okay, now we're clear about what problem you're
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: here to solve. Go for it.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Well, does it help you? Is that what you want
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: to put your resources into? If that helps you, then
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: it solved the problem.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: Do you think it is a worthy goal? A worthy reason?
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not for me to decide this. That high
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: school leaves all sorts of tracks all over how we
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: look at the world. My high school English teacher wrote
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: in my yearbook, you are the bane of my existence
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: and you will never amount to anything. And She was
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: partially in jest, but remembering that as I become a
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: professional writer is fascinating. I dedicated like my ninth book
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: to her and then I could let it go, right?
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: And she and I had a wonderful lunch a couple
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: of years later. The point is we can't deny that
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: these things are in our lives. None of us are
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: living this optimized, fully optimized life. The reason you're going
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: and taking those nutritional supplements, the reason you're listening to
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: this thing about some shortcut of bio whatever has nothing
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: to do with you doing an actual analysis of all
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: the best ways for you to be healthy. They have
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: to do with feeling agency. They have to do with
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: feeling a certain kind of affiliation with the crowd you're in.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: That's why we have cycles in medicine. It's not because
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: medicine goes in and out of actual science fashion. It's
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: because culture. Changes what we think is beautiful, changes what
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: we think we need to do to get our emotional
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: needs met.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I've got 60 seconds and I'm going to show you
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: how much I can get done because of our sponsor
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: called Whisper Flow. And for those of you that don't
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: know what it is, it's a business I invested in
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: that turns your speech into text in any app or device.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: I'm going to post into our Slack channel, which rewards
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: whichever team member conducted the most experiments this week. Hi everyone,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: here is this week's experimenter of the week. Congratulations to
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the Dire Over CO trailer team, which is Ant, Liv, Dom,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: and Cam. You guys have won. Okay, now I'm going
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: to open Gmail. So here is one of our founders
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: on an email chain that I want to connect my
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: team with. All I have to say is add my
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: team's emails and Whisper will do exactly that. Now, a
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: quick message to Juan, who does my schedule every single week.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Hey Juan, can I record on Wednesday at 2 p... Actually, no,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: do you know what? Let's record at 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: WhisperFlow is four times faster than typing and it is
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: incredibly easy to use. So if you want to give
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: it a go, all you have to do is head
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: to whisperflow.ai slash Stephen to download it today. I've spent
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the last decade building and investing in companies. And so
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: often the conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: The budget gets approved. but then the results don't come back.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And most of the time, the creative pitch and the
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: offer is fine. The problem lies with the audience. Ads
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: reach people who will never buy or refer, nor do
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: they have the power to sign off anything at all.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: And this is why so much budget gets wasted. LinkedIn Ads,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: who are a sponsor of this podcast, lets you reach
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: them specifically by job title, seniority, company size, industry, the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: skills that they have, and much more. You're no longer
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: hoping your ad reaches the right person, Instead, you're defining
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: exactly who sees it. And LinkedIn ads drives the highest
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: B2B return on ad spend across all major ad networks.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Give them a try at linkedin.com slash diary. And if
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: you spend $ 250 on your first campaign, you'll get a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: $ 250 credit for your next one just by going to linkedin.com
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: slash diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and conditions apply.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I think I'll ask this as well because yes, you
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: can serve my parents' expectations because they're immigrants and they
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: want me to be doctor, lawyer, scientist, whatever. Or I
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: could serve my kids who want me to be a
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: great dad. Or I could serve my playground trauma who
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: wants to get the kid back who said I was
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: never going to be anything.
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Are any of these voices more worthy than the other?
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: Is there a particular voice we should really orientate ourselves around?
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: The other thing I've really now sort of internalized is
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to say no to the other voices.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: I can't try and serve them all, or else I'll
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: be the donkey stuck in the middle of the water
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: and the carrot.
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: I love this. I wish I put this in the book.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: This is exactly correct, that we're going to have to
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: forgive some of these voices. So there are three basic
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: things that get us hung up. There are time entanglements,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: which is today is not yesterday, and today is not tomorrow.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Today is right now. There are social community entanglements. What
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: will this person think of me? What will that person
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: think of me? And then there are the entanglements we
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: have with our vision of ourselves. When I look in
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: the mirror, if this works, what will I think of myself?
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: If this doesn't work, what will I think of myself?
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: And all three of them get in the way of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: announcing a purpose and then going to solve that problem.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Because we say to ourselves, well, I want to work
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: to help the poor, but I can't get a job
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: at a really fancy nonprofit. And if I get a
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: job at a less fancy nonprofit, then what will my
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: parents think? Oh, all of that's going on. We have
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: to acknowledge that, right? We say, I went to law
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: school for three years. I didn't like it. I practiced
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: law for five years. I hated it. Do I want
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: to spend the next 40 years of my life being
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: a lawyer? Because I've tried it fully out. We can't
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: quit because then we would have to Explain to our
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: former self, why did they pay this big price to
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: get me this fancy gift and I'm ignoring it? Sunk
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: costs keep us trapped. And what we can do is
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: realize that's a gift from our former self. And like
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: all gifts, you don't have to accept it. If someone
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: shows up and offers you a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig to
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: take care of, you can say, no, thank you. I
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: don't want to accept your gift. That law degree is
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: a gift, but you don't have to accept it now.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Now that you know what you know, you can make
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: a different decision about the purpose of your work. And
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: if it's not helping you achieve the purpose of your work,
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: you can forgive it, say thank you very much, and
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: untie the knot.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I think that point around sunk cost is an important
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: one to really double click on. Because when I learned
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: about the idea of sunk cost, it completely changed me
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: as an investor. It was actually my brother. My brother's
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: been working in investment banking for 15 years, now works
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: in my company. And he explained to me one day
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: early in my career, he goes, Stephen, it was a
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: stock I had. I was an investor in a particular stock.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And the stock was doing terribly. The company was doing terribly.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: But I didn't want to sell it.
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Because I'd invested at a higher price.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: And then he sent me the Psychology of Money book
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: and a few other papers and said, this is what
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: sunk cost bias is.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: And it'll ruin your life if you don't realize what
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: And it's in everything we do. So there's the new
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: parking apps let you find a parking garage near where
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: you're going and pay in advance. So when I come
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: into the city, sometimes I'll do this. So I've got
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: a $ 35 car. ticket to go park at this lot
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: starting in five minutes. I'm driving in and I pass
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: a free space on the street. Should I take it?
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: So the advantage of the free space, of course, is
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: you can leave when you want to leave and you
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: don't have to engage and it saves you five or
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: ten minutes. But if I take the free space, I'm
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: wasting the money I just paid for that parking garage.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: And it still goes off in my head that, well, yeah,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: obviously you take the free space because you're The money
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: you paid is already gone. That ticket is a gift
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: from your former self. Knowing what you know now, would
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: you take this job? Knowing what you know now, would
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: you take this parking space? And if the answer is yes,
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: then you can forgive what got you here because service
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: … the old you, the old you is gone.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about relationships as well.
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, if you're the kind of person that leaves
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: a relationship every three weeks because you're ignoring some costs,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: then you're never going to have a relationship. Repeating the
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: process has costs to you Because it develops these patterns.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: That's not the kind of sunk costs I'm talking about.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: But yes, when you meet somebody who has decided to
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: end a relationship, the healthy thing for them to do
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: is to say that relationship was then. I made all
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: the right decisions based on who I was then, based
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: on who they were then. But we are not those
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: people anymore. So based on who we are now, do
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: we want to recommit to this? Will it pay off
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: in the future? And if the answer is no, it
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: will not pay off in the future, you've already answered
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: the question.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's work on loss aversion.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: And I think this is an important thing to explain
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: because when you realize what's actually going on in your
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: head and why people don't like to lose things, you
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: can spot it when it's happening to you.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I read this study that showed if you lose 10
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: pounds in the street, it falls out of my pocket.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: If I then find 10 pounds, it doesn't make up
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: for the 10 pounds I just lost. I'd have to
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: find 20 pounds to feel... The pleasure sufficient to the
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: pain that I experienced from losing the 10. Humans don't
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: like to lose things. And when I remember searching, what's
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: like the evolutionary reason for this? And it came to
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: say that once upon a time in our evolutionary past, again,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: this is a hypothesis. When we had a meal in
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: front of us, going in pursuit of another meal that
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: would risk the one we current have was a terrible
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: decision to make. So actually this whole, you know, we're
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: designed to be sufficiently satisfied with what we have. versus
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: the pursuit of surplus.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: So we want to protect what we currently have. That
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: was a survival advantage.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: No, absolutely. We don't have to look in evolution. We
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: look at wild animals today. Wild animals are wild. They
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: hate change. Change never helped a species move forward because
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: it represents a threat. And what we built as humans
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: is a culture where change is happening faster and faster
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: and faster. By the time we're done with this conversation,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: some AI company will have launched a new frontier model Boom.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: And we can look at this and say, where can
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: I go hide? How can I get back to being
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: a wild animal that's in this one place where nothing changes?
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Or we can decide to get back to the purpose
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: of what are we trying to do right now? Ignore
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: the stuff that's not relevant to it. Seek out the
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: stuff that helps us make the change we seek to
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: make and get back to work. So we need to
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: decide where we're going to put our attention because our
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: attention is something we can never get back.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: You talked as well about systems, the systems we're held
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: in place with. One of the things that I've seen
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: in your work is this idea of picking yourself. Because
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: I guess we're wired to believe that there are still gatekeepers,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: but those gatekeepers have increasingly vanished. I mean, the fact
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: that I can start this podcast and people listen, I
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: think is evidence of the fact that you no longer
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: need gatekeepers. Do you know a funny story that I've
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: never told? I went for an interview with LBC. which
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: is a UK radio station, before I took this podcast seriously.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: I went there, I did my two hour audition, sat
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: there in the chair, people pretended to phone in, it
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: was just staff LBC. And I left, I was like
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: quite nervous, et cetera. I thought I did a good job,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: but I was a little bit nervous, unsure about what
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: they might say. And I never heard back. They never
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: gave me feedback. They never told me if I was good,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: if I was bad. So I started this podcast on
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: YouTube in my kitchen because I never heard back from LBC.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: And it just goes to show, actually, you don't need
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: a massive company to give you permission to start a platform.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: You can just do things in this modern world. And
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: this is kind of dovetails into your idea of picking yourself.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So let's talk about systems first, and then we'll
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: come back to picking yourself. Okay. People get a little
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: glassy-eyed when you talk about systems, so let me try
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: to make it really simple. When you get in a
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: car here, you drive on the right side of the road.
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: When you get back to the UK, you drive on
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: the left side of the road.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Why? Why?
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: Because it's way more efficient to drive on the same
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: side of the road as everybody else. We have a
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: system that says if you're going to drive in the
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: United States, drive on the right side of the road.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Systems start to get a little bit more complicated. The
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: college industrial complex is a system that starts in first
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: grade that includes things like the SATs and the stickers
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: and the football teams and the dorms. And it's a
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: 400-year-old system that we got into because it works. It works.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: It works. For most people, most of the time. It's
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: an easy way to look at a resume, see one
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: word and decide if you want to interview somebody or not.
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: So the system that people my age grew up in
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: is you would do as well as you could in
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: high school and a college would pick you. And then
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: you do as well as you could in college and
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: then a company would pick you. And you do as
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: well as you could at the company and then they
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: would pick you and you get a promotion and then
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: you would die. And so we indoctrinated billions of people
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: around the world. Please wait to get picked. Here are
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: all the rules. And if you follow all the rules,
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: you might get picked. Turns out it was rigged. Some
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: people got picked unfairly. But that's what we got brainwashed.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: And we still teach our kids this. And then all
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, starting in the 90s, we said, here's
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: a microphone. Here's a video camera. Here's a typewriter. Pick yourself.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: And now it's extended to, here's an AI. You can
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: start a company by tomorrow. You could build a complicated
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: website by Friday. Wait, I'm waiting for someone to tell
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: me I should go do that. No one's going to call.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: It's $ 20 a month. You'll probably get it for free
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: at your library. What are you going to do? And
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: when we put ourselves on the hook, it's super scary
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: because does that mean I'm responsible for every kid on
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: Canoe Lake who needs a lifeguard and I'm responsible for
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: every kid who might suffer from river blindness and I'm
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: responsible for this? So it's easier to say I'm responsible
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: for nobody. I'm a victim. But we have the chance
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to say, I picked myself to solve this problem. I'm
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: on the hook to help these people. I'm going to
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: use whatever tools I can to pick myself to make
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: a thing better. Turns out that's generative. If you get
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: a little good at it, lots of people will ask
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: you to do it again. When you give away credit
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: and take responsibility, lots of people will ask you to
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: do it again.
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we tell ourselves that we're waiting to be picked
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: because it's A nice excuse for resistance. We live in
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: a permission-seeking state because it's a good shield to avoid
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: this thing you were talking about, which is the freedom
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: from fear.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the entire New York City book publishing
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: industry is based on the author gets to say, well,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: they picked me to write the book. And then I
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: got to go promote the book because I promised I
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: would promote the book. The book isn't there because I
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: wanted the book to be there. They've asked me to
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: write this book. And as soon as you can publish
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: your own book, as soon as you can start your
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: own YouTube channel, you don't get to say, great news,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: YouTube called. They want me to start putting things on YouTube.
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: And that's why the number of people you would think
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: would go ahead and use this tool isn't as big
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: as it could be. Because again, it's one thing to
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: ask a teenager to be on TikTok. They're just entertaining themselves.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: They don't see themselves as a TikToker. To see yourself
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: as somebody, I picked myself. I am saying this and
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: I'm responsible. That's hard. No one taught us to do that.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like the LBC thing. I was waiting
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: for LBC to pick me.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: I think once this podcast comes out, they're going to
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: call you and you've got a big decision to make
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: because it's steady, Stephen. They'll give you like health insurance,
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: the whole thing.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: I still love LBC, by the way. I still watch LBC.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: But I'm probably too busy now to do LBC. One
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: of the sort of adjacent points here is how do
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: I know if I'm delusional?
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: I always think this because a lot of the advice
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: we give people around like getting going and starting and
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: pursuing the thing they want to pursue doesn't necessarily always
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: come with the nuance that actually, like I can't actually
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: be an NBA player.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: But how do I know? Because all the advice is
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: just go for it, pick yourself, et cetera. But I
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: might not have the talent.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad you brought this up. That's not my advice.
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: You probably... are delusional if you're picking something that's super fun,
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: that involves skipping lots of intermediate steps, and it ends
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: with a happy ending where you're famous. The chances of
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: winning that lottery are very, very low. So people come
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: to me and say, I got this great book. Will
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: you help me get a career as a novelist? And
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: the answer is super easy. Take your novel. It was
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: really hard for you to write. I get that. Make
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: it into a nicely formatted PDF. Costs you nothing. Email
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: it to 20 people. If they send it to other
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: people and it spreads, someone's going to call you and
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: hire you to write your next novel. If it doesn't spread,
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: write a better novel. But don't start running around saying,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: I'm a novelist and I deserve to get picked and
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: have a big advance. The heartbreak of someone who is
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: delusional is they insist that the world owes them because
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: they worked so hard on X, Y, or Z, or
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: that they have found some secret transcript that if anyone
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: else understood it, everyone would realize. Well, if people don't
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: understand it, that's on you. So we can get past
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: the delusion by going for the smallest viable audience. What's
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: the smallest group of people that if I made a
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: difference for them, it would be enough?
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: What's interesting is I imagine if you said that to
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: some people, they would really not like the answer.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: People hate it when I say this.
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: Because it's so comfortable to be stuck in that knot.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: I'm a genius and I'm really hardworking, but no one
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: in the world understands me. So now my butt isn't
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: the problem because I don't have to worry about any
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: of the things that come with the responsibility of it
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: being in front of the wrong people or whatever. It's
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: so much easier to say, if only, and I need
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: to be home for this or this thing happened to me,
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: therefore I'm stuck. We're safe at some level in that frustration.
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: And so what I'm trying to do with The Knot
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: is help people understand this is possible, but it is
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: not easy. This is possible, but it will not give
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: you the thing you are dreaming of. It will merely
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: find a path to get to where it is possible
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: to go. That's a grown-up thing to have to commit to.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: If someone's not happy with the advice you just gave,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: I think it also illuminates that maybe their motives are wrong.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: It reminded me of when I started this podcast and
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: I had these two friends, Oliver and Ash. come to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: me and say, that was good, when's the next one?
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: And I always say, if they hadn't have said that
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: to me, it probably wouldn't have continued because I was
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: busy with other things. But those two people who I
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: trusted and would tell me when something is terrible, they
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: often do, saying that to me, just, it gave me
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: so much energy and motivation. And I kept publishing in
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: part for them because I knew Oliver had this like
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: three and a half hour commute to work every day
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: from Sheffield. And I loved the process. I was getting
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: this feedback from this particular person that carried on going.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: But a lot of the time, actually, I think a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: lot of people would bounce off this advice of just
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: send it to 20 people because they're actually attached to
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: the podium.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: And what you're saying is, no, focus on the journey. Right.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: But they want in their head somewhere, actually, no, I
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: don't fuck the journey, Seth. I want to be famous
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: and I want the million pounds. Right. And that's not
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: what you're offering them. But actually you are.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Well, someone's going to win the lottery, Stephen, and it's
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: probably not going to be you. And so in your
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: case- We're talking because you won the podcast lottery. There
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: are 100 podcasts as good as this one out of
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: a million, right? That's pretty amazing. But there's still 100
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: of them. So you show up to buy lottery tickets
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: in a way that lets you buy more lottery tickets.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: You show up to add value for people so you
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: can keep going. And then when there's a lottery, you
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: got a shot, right? But along the way, the journey
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: says– I have a chance to say, here, I made this.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: I made this means it's for you. It is a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: gift I'm giving you. If you don't accept the gift,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: I can't blame you. I just have to make a
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: better gift. But if people start accepting your gifts, you
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: have traction. And Steve Blank talks about customer traction. As
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: an investor, you know this. Customer traction is the single
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: best indicator of whether a startup is going to succeed.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: More than any other metric. How many customers would miss
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: you if you shut down tomorrow? And for a pizza place,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: 100 is enough.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They say that a lot in product development. They say,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: just make a thing for one person you know. And
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: make it for one person you know that really, really,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: really loves it. And it will turn out that there'll
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: be lots of people like that person you know.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Enough people. Maybe it's not lots, but it'll be enough.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: And so this cycle we're talking about isn't self-focused. It's empathic.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: You have to let the audience in to your thinking
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: or else you're thinking about what's in this for me
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: and me alone. And that's narcissistic and that is where
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: you see all the internet hustle going on. All the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: people who are trying to pressure folks into sending them
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: $ 5 or multi-level marketing and all that stuff, that isn't
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: what's possible and it's not what we should be spending
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: our time on. But when we can be of service
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: for the right people, we have a chance to make
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: things better. But I need to put a big aside here,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: which is where resistance kicks back in. The only way
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: to launch something new is to create tension, not to
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: relieve it, but to create tension, generous tension, the tension
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: of you might be left behind. You won't be in
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: on the first cycle of it. I have this thing
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: that's going to help you and you don't know what
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: it is yet. Tension that's offered generously is the only
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: way people create forward motion. So Taylor Swift, is having
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: a concert, 15,000 people can fit in the arena. She
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: just created tension for 40,000 people because they're saying to
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: their moms and dads, I got to go get tickets
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: before everybody else. If she's not willing to create the tension,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: she can't go on tour. So yes, it's awkward to
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: create a tension. It's awkward to say, I'm doing this event.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: I hope there's room for you. But it's the only
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: way we can cause other people to decide to move forward.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I was stress testing that Taylor Swift analogy. And the
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: way that I stress tested it was, well, what if
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Taylor did a gig and there was unlimited seats? People
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: would still go, I guess, because the tension is that
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: she's so good, I might miss the experience, as you said.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: There's FOMO itself is the tension.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: There's unlimited seats, but there's not unlimited nights. It's just tonight.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: And that's why live events create a different sort of tension.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: You know, this video's on the internet. You haven't seen,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen. And we're not stressed about that because
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: they'll be there tomorrow. But the live event starts to
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: change how we're going to engage with it among that community.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: What else is sort of adjacent to this idea of
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: getting unstuck? Because that's really what we're circling here. It's
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: like the things that keep you stuck and how to
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: take sort of actionable steps outside of being stuck. Is
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: there anything else we need to close off on here?
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: So you saw some of my juggling balls there. Juggling
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: is fascinating because... When you see someone on the street,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: if you're a good person, if you see someone on
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: the street juggling, you're not rooting for them to drop
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: a ball, right? That we want the juggler to be
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: able to juggle. So when people say, I'm going to
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: learn how to juggle, what happens is they throw one
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: ball and they can catch it. They throw the other ball.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: But within two or three throws, one of the balls
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: goes over here. So they lunge to catch it because
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: juggling is about catching. So they lunge to catch it,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: but now they're out of position. And the next one
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: is going to hit the ground. And then people give up.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: People give up because they think juggling is about catching.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: It's not. It's about throwing. If you get good at throwing,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: the catches take care of themselves. So the way I
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: teach juggling is with one ball, throw it, catch it,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: throw it, catch it, until you're really bored. Then two balls, throw, throw, catch, catch.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: This is not hard. But if you do throw, throw, catch,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: catch for 20 minutes, every ball is landing exactly where
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: it's supposed to. And now juggling is easy. But what
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: we are hooked on– and listen to any self-improvement podcast.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: It's all about the catching, right? Does this help me
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: lose weight? Does this help me find friends? Does this
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: help me build my business? Those are all catches. Where's
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: the throwing? How are we going to get good at throwing?
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: How are we going to get good at realizing even
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: if no one reads this next short story, I'm going
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: to get good at putting words on the page?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: The process.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: The process. The practice. If we can develop a practice–
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: We're no longer attached to the outcome because the outcome's
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: out of our control. The practice is under our control.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Get good at throwing. Get good at seeing where problems lie,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: seeing where audiences are, seeing where you can be generous.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: When you get good at seeing those things, the catches
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: take care of themselves.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: This is something that I've made for you. I realize
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: that the diversity of audience are strivers, whether it's in
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: business or health. We all have big goals that we
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it's kind of
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And we call
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: this in our team, the 1%. And actually this philosophy
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: is highly responsible for much of our success here. So
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: what we've done so that you at home can accomplish
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: any big goal that you have is we've made these
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: 1% diaries and we released these last year and they
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: all sold out. So I asked my team over and
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: over again to bring the diaries back, but also to
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: to the diary. So now we have a better range
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: for you so if you have a big goal in
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: mind and you need a framework and a process and
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: some motivation then i highly recommend you get one of
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: these diaries before they all sell out once again and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: you can get yours at thediary.com and if you want
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: the link the link is in the description below this
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: again is not a narrative that people will love because
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: we all want to get good at catching yeah It weirdly,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: this is very, very adjacent and almost unlinked, but it's
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: somewhat linked. I sat here with Julian Treasure. He did
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: two TED Talks. One about speaking, right? 40 million views.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: One about listening, 2 million views. And I thought it's
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: almost kind of similar to like the catching and throwing.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: And actually when I sit here with spies and I've
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: interviewed some of the world's leading spies and I say,
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: how is it that you're able to get people to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: do whatever you want that have just met you in
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: foreign lands and hand over their secrets? They say, listening. Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: It's all about the listening. I go in that taxi
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: and I listen to them for eight weeks as they
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: offload because no one listens. And it kind of got
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: me thinking about this is like no one focuses on
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: the throwing. And actually that becomes the great competitive advantage. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: The practice. I love the idea world famous spies because
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: you would think that that's sort of an oxymoron. I
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: would imagine. the world's greatest spies, we have no idea
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: who they are.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: Well, they go on podcasts now, so they are like, yeah.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: But part of it links to one of the books
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: you wrote, which is called The Dip. We're talking about
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: delusion here and how to know if you're delusional or
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: if you're just going through the dip. So I've got
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: some images here.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Okay. How does someone listening know if they should give
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: up on something or if it's just the inevitable rough
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: patch that you go through when you start and you're bad? Okay.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: So the dip describes something in the world that no
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: one had talked about in the book before, which is
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: the power of quitting. What is the dip? The dip
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: is the hard part in between starting and getting good
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: at it. The dip is organic chemistry on your way
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: to being a doctor. And you got to get through
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: it to get to the other side. The dip is
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: the gym in March. If you want six-pack abs, you
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: can't quit the gym in February, which you joined during
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: the holidays. You're going to have to get through the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: hard part. And so most of what we do that
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: creates value has a dip in it. And my argument
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: is you should, A, see the dip before you start.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: You should say, if I'm going to drive this car
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: across the Gobi Desert, I can't whine when I can't
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: find a gas station. There are no gas stations in
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: the Gobi Desert. There's a dip to get across the desert.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Pack what you need to get through the dip or
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: don't start. And number two, when the dip shows up,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: say thank you because it means you hit the hard part.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: It means this is the beginning of getting to the
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: other side. Don't complain about organic chemistry. You knew organic
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: chemistry was coming. Organic chemistry is part of the process
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: of becoming a doctor. As my friend Gabe says, It's
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: not an obstacle in the way. It's something along the way.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: And it's a signpost that you're on the way. So
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: your question then is, should we quit? Has anyone ever
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: made it through this dip before? If this is a
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: dip like organic chemistry, where every single doctor in the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: world has made it through, now you know. You know
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: this is coming, and you know if you make it through,
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: you're going to get to the other side. On the
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: other hand, no one that I know of has ever
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: smoke their way through emphysema. That when emphysema shows up,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: it's not a dip. And continuing to smoke is not
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: going to make you better. It's what made you worse.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: It's a cul-de-sac. It's a trap. And so what we
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: look for when we're talking to people about this journey,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: this delusion, this problem we're trying to solve is what
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: does it usually cost to get through a dip like
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: this one? Do I have the resources to get through
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: it or am I just throwing good time and good
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: money after bad? But if you've got a business that's
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: losing money and losing money and losing money and losing money,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: and there's no evidence that putting more money into your
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: thing is going to get you to the other side,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: that's a cul-de-sac. Forgive yourself, the old self who started
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: the wrong business. Say, thank you. Thank you for having
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: the right insight, but it wasn't correct for this world today.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: I forgive you. I'm going to go quit and do
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: something else.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: The key word there you said is evidence.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: And the evidence could be, as you say, small.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So if we think about the business, if you
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: had a retail shop or a restaurant, the ones that succeed,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: 95% of their profit goes to the landlord. And the
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: ones that fail, 102% of their profit goes to the landlord.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: That's the only difference between failing and not failing in
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: one of those businesses. The landlord's job is to take
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: as much as they can of your profit, but not
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: too much that you go out of business. So someone's
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: got a four-year lease. They're two years into it. They're
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: not making rent. They're losing money every single day. And
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: they have a sunk cost, which is I got to
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: pay for the next two years of this storefront whether
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: or not I'm in here. But you can quit because
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: you can forgive that two years you have to pay.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: You decided that two years ago. That's not a new thing.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: That's an old thing. Are you really going to spend
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: the next two years of your life punishing yourself because
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: you made a decision a few years ago and signed
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: a bad lease and built the wrong business on the
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: wrong street in a system that doesn't support you? Why?
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: You can't get those two years back. But we can
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 2: take a deep breath and say, yeah, I'm going to
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: leave this place empty and go build something really useful
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: over here. And I'll come out way ahead compared to
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: defending that old decision.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: Hang on a minute, Seth. When I went to the
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: gym this morning, there was quotes written on the wall.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: And the quotes are like this one here. Can you
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: read that out for me?
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: If you quit once, it becomes a habit. Never quit.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: It's a Michael Jordan quote.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: Michael Jordan. Yes. I'm never going to have an argument
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: with Michael Jordan, but he's wrong. And it's very clear
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: that he's wrong. He doesn't play professional baseball anymore. He
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: doesn't play professional golf, nor does he play professional basketball anymore.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: Because humans age, and he did a thing But then
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: he stopped doing the thing because it wasn't productive anymore.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: And when we think about our fuel, he used as
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: an athlete a couple things to fuel him. One thing
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: he had was grievance. And if you listen to his
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: Hall of Fame speech, it's just a long list of
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: chips he's had on his shoulder for his whole career.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: That's fuel. Based on who he was and how he
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: grew up, that's how he gets on the court. And
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: the second one was never quit. So if those two
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: pieces of fuel– help you become the greatest basketball player
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: of your generation, I'm not going to argue with you.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: If that's getting you where you need to go, it's
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: up to you. But for most people, it's resistance and
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: a trap. It's shame. It's getting stuck in a knot.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: It's all of the buts, right? I want to be
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: a successful business person, but I can't admit I was wrong.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 2: I've shut down more businesses than most people who are
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: listening to this. I've failed more times than most people
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: are listening to this. If I was still running the
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 2: light bulb fundraising company I started in 1987, I wouldn't
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: be talking to you today.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: It's funny because there's this weird paradox that's so obvious
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: to all of us, but still people believe this idea
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: of never quitting. And the paradox that I'm pointing at is,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: The minute someone starts something, a new company, a new job,
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: a new relationship, we celebrate. But we also intuitively know
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: that in order to start something like a new job
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: or a new relationship, you have to do something before that,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 1: which is quit the other thing. Never quit, but we
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: celebrate starting. Theoretically, then, we should celebrate the quitting just
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: as much as we celebrate the starting because they are
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: fundamentally interlinked.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: Correct, but only quitting the right stuff. You don't want
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: to celebrate someone who quits the marathon at mile 25.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: Because what they failed to do in their training was
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: become the kind of runner that sees that the people
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: who finish the marathon figure out where to put the tired.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: But that's not the same as working for an abusive
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: boss because your boss is never going to stop being abusive.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: And so you can say, this can't get better. And
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: every day I come here and subject myself to this
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: trauma is costing me. It's reinforcing a system I don't
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: believe in. And I can get tomorrow back again.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: What you've described there sounds a lot like something I
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: wrote about in my last book, which was just a
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: quitting framework for this exact situation people find themselves in.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Because I know what people are saying that are listening.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: They're all saying, how do I know when to quit something?
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: So I made this framework, which I'll throw up on
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: the screen. And actually the example I use is a marathon.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the framework. You can see it
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: for yourself and I'll just sort of give you the voiceover.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: But if you look down the left side, I'm referring
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: to a marathon there. And what I'm saying is when
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: something is hard, That is not reason enough to quit.
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: Like a marathon in mile 23, when you're raising money
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: for a charity that means a lot to you. When
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: you should quit is when something, if you go down
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: the right-hand side, is when something sucks, like you've said
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: about the toxic boss, and critically, the effort it would
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: take to change it is not worth the thing on
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: the other side.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly right.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Because that's what people will say. They'll say, how do
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: I know when to quit something? How do I know? Like,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: you know, how do I know when to quit the
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: job or to.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: Right, and you can question your judgment because if you
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: have a history of quitting because in the short run
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: it was tough as opposed to looking at whether it
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: was worth it, you can find a coach or peers
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: who can challenge you on that. So I was one
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: of the leading makers of DVDs for book publishing companies
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: back in the brief moment when they were doing this.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: I worked with Fisher Price and we made a DVD
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: for parents and stuff. And then this day shows up
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: and it becomes very clear that book publishers aren't going
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: to do more of this because the internet's here. They're
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: going to do less of this. So every day I
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: would be defending what I had built as a DVD
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: producer was completely wasted. So forgive yourself. I didn't change
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: the world. Somebody else changed the world. But it's not
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: going to get better. This is a cul-de-sac. It's a
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: dead end. Thanks for doing this. Let's start something else.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: Because there's a lot of people right now that are
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: in their 30s, 40s, 50s that are in jobs that
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: have not made them fulfilled for a decade. Yeah. But
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: they're 20 years in, they've climbed the ladder, they're director.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: Right. So they have sunk costs because they've earned the spot,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: but they also have a whole bunch of entanglements. Like
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: I want to have a job that fulfills me, but
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: I also like this car and this house. I want
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: to have a job that fulfills me, but I also
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: like my neighbors thinking I'm this stable, respectable person. I
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: want to have a job that It fulfills me. But
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: I have all this other stuff I have to pay for.
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: All right. But if we look at those butts we
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: realize you just made the choice to stay in this
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: job so you don't have to fret about it anymore
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: you've accepted that you made that choice the alternative is
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: move to a two-bedroom flat eat rice and beans take
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: a deep breath reset all these things and now you
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: can get a different job that's going to pay you
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: half as much because you gave up the butts and
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: A job that fulfills me will give me a better
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: relationship with my family, will give me hope for the future,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: will give me a chance to make X, Y, or
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: Z happen in the world. That's hard because you can't
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: have the butts. You got to let them go.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: In that scenario, I have the car. I have the
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: business card, which is impressive to people. I get invited
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: to nice things, but I'm miserable.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: So- what do I do? I've got a community I've
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: built around this identity that is on this business card,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: but I'm miserable, Seth.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: Right. So the magic of this process is if you
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: announce through this, that it's a situation that all these
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: other things are so important to me that I cannot
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: change my job. Suddenly your job gets a lot better
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: because you're not bridling against it. You chose it. And
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: so if you talk to people, I've, I gave a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: couple of talks for people who are in the funeral industry, undertakers.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Most of us would not sign up for that job
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: as high school students at the career fair, right? But
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: the people who stick with it, they're not sitting there saying,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: this is horrible. I hate being around dead people. They're
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: saying all the stuff that I get in my life,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: this is part of it. It comes with it. Just
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: like getting tired in the marathon comes with it. If
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: I want to have this life, where it's stable, where
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: I don't have to move around, where I'm a member
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: of the committee, where the cash flow is assured, and
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: I get to be an undertaker. Within that structure, how
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: do I be the best undertaker I could possibly be?
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: As opposed to wishing that I would get a call
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: from Michael Jordan who wants me to run his financial
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: empire or something, because it's not going to happen.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: I get to be. You're taking back control from the situation.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: You're shifting from victimhood to control.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: There's this Remarkable couple of stats that I read about
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: this idea of feeling like you have control and how
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: it changes your outcomes in your life. The first stat
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: is people who believe they are in control of their
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: life and have control over their happiness rate their overall
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: life satisfaction at an average of 7.4 out of 10
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: compared to those that don't feel like they have control
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: of their situation who rate their life satisfaction at 5.6. Yep.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: People who report low overall happiness are five times more
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: likely to feel Like their own personal situation is entirely
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: outside of their control. I mean, this one was a
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: landmark study they did in care homes. In a famous
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: 1976 study, elderly residents given plant care and small daily
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: choices that they could make were 50% less likely to
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: die over an 18 month period compared to residents whose
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: care was fully handled for them.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: The power of feeling like you have control in your life.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: Right. And also, I don't know the stats, but when
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: they give people in hospice control over their painkillers, as
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: opposed to them having to wait for someone to give
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: them a painkiller, they don't necessarily take more painkillers. It
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: was knowing they can do it. Same thing back to
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: the meetings thing. If you have a job where you're
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: going to meetings all day, where you just have to
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: do this, you've lost control over your day. And I'm
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: not here to say there's no cost to switching. There's
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: huge cost to switching. That's why you chose not to
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: switch until now. But let's name it. Let's say, you know,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: gravity is fascinating because it's here. But if I was
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: on a planet that didn't have gravity or had low gravity,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: I would miss this gravity because I've built my whole
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: life around gravity being this consistent thing. I get to
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: live on a planet with gravity. I get to be
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of organism that's going to die before he's 100.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: If you look at the world that way, that that's
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: inevitable and I get to inhabit each day the best
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 2: I can, you're going to have a different life than
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: if you're spending all your time trying to figure out
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: how to live forever.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: I'd never heard that painkiller study before, but as you
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: were speaking, I just pulled it up and it says
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: it's one of the most famous real-world demonstrations of how
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: the perception of control alters your physical and psychological experience.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: When hospital patients are given a button to self-administer pain medication,
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: two incredible things happen. Number one is they consume equal
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: or less painkillers. Number two, they report lower pain levels
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: and higher satisfaction. The physical pain itself doesn't magically change.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: but the stress of helplessness amplifies pain. The stress of helplessness.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, it goes right back to what we're saying
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: about the knot in your new book, which is a
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: lot of us are living with the stress of helplessness,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: but sometimes, not always, but sometimes that helplessness is in
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: part a story.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: I would say it's always a story because we can
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: look at someone who is in human bondage. We can
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: look at someone who's, you know, been through trauma and
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: we are projecting what we would feel in that situation.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: There are all these unfair situations around there. But then
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: the question is what is our narrative? What is our
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: narrative of how are we living this day? What do
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: we actually have control over and what situations are we
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: choosing to stick with because most of us have the
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: freedom to shift, right? It's a story we tell ourselves
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: that might not change the outside world in the short run.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: But what it does is it gives us this feeling
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: of agency, which then gives us a sense of responsibility,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: which then amplifies into choice. And my whole career is
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: about how can I help people do better?
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: I wanted to throw another quote at you here. This
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: one is about meaningful work. So if you could read
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: that as well.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: From Warren Buffett. In the world of business, the people
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: who are most successful are those who are doing what
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: they love.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: I've heard that a million times. Do what you love.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's backwards. Sorry, Warren. The people who are the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: most successful love what they do.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: What's the difference?
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: Well, doing what you love means there's an amusement park
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: out there that has all the treats I love and
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: all the best prizes. Of course I love it. The
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: other is a choice. chose to do this work because
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: I love it. There was a guy who worked at
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: the Dean and DeLuca Cafe in Midtown, and he was
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: developmentally challenged, and he was probably 50 years old. He
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: was the mayor of this Dean and DeLuca. He was
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: the guy who cleared the tables and kept the thing straight.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: He loved this job. You and I would have lasted
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: 15 minutes in this job. He loved this job because
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: he decided to love this job. The Reverend King had
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: a great quote about street sweepers. And he said, if
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: you have to be a street sweeper, at least choose
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: to be the best street sweeper in that situation under
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: these conditions that it's possible to be. And the reason
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: is not because you want to help the street sweeping company.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: It's because your day's going to go better if you
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: I was thinking he also meant, potentially, although I guess
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: he didn't clarify, but the way that I perceived it
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: was that if I become the best street sweeper, not
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: to say that's not an important job, It increases my
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: possibility of becoming something else as well, of being promoted, being,
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: dare I say, picked to be something else or to
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: start my own street sweeping business or to, you know,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to build a great relationship with my customers.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: And I think they rhyme and dance with each other.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: They don't contradict each other. And so all of us
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: have had a job where we thought it was a
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: good job and someone doing the same job down the
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: aisle hated it or vice versa. So clearly it's not
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: the job. It's where did we come from? What are
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: we afraid of? What do we believe? Where are we going?
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: That creates the story that opens the door for possibility.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess some of these other quotes link to
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: it then. I mean, they kind of all say the
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: same thing, but let's do this one. This is a
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: famous Mark Twain quote that probably everybody's heard.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: If you get a chance, talk to your favorite AI
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: about Mark Twain quotes.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: Mostly fake.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: It's a great conversation. The two most important days of
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: your life are the day you are born and the
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: day you find out why.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: I've heard that a lot as well.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: And my small shift is not the day you find
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: out why. It's the day you decide why. Because this
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: isn't something you're born with. This is something you choose.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: And if you make the decision, like my friend Jacqueline,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: to say, There are 400 million people on this earth
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: who are making $ 3 or $ 4 a day. I'm going
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: to devote a generation of my life to helping them.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: You can go do that. And most people don't have
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: the head start. Most people aren't starting at mile 20
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: of the marathon. Some people are starting behind others. But
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: we still get to decide, based on who we are,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: what we know, what we've got access to, which problems
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: are we going to solve and who's going to benefit
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: from us solving those problems. That is what I think
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 2: Twain was trying to get at.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: And my last one. This one from a very famous
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: guy whose device I'm using right now.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: The only way to do great work is to love
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: what you do.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Bingo.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: Who is that?
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: That's Steve Jobs. And I think the keep looking part
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: might mean look inside. Don't look over there. Why is
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 2: it that you don't love what you do right now?
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: Let's unknot that first. Is it because you're being disrespected?
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: Is it because the external narrative of what's happening is
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: undermining who you hope to be? If we can get
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 2: clear about that, finding the next thing gets way easier.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: You're not giving into this lottery of hoping you get
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: picked by the next right boss. You can go hire
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: a boss. And when you hire the right boss, your
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 2: job is transformed.
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: At the heart of a lot of this is this
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: word perfectionism. That's a big knot. You know, when I
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: was thinking about the young lady that came up to
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: me in the Apple store the other day, and told
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: me that she's been thinking about her podcast for two
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: years and she's been working on it for two years,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: but it's never been published yet. What I heard there
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: is perfectionism maybe as a form of procrastination.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: Perfectionism is a trap every time. Perfectionism has nothing to
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: do with quality. So the word quality has a very
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: specific meaning. It doesn't mean luxury. It means meets spec.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: So the quality of a 1998 Toyota Celica was higher
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: than the quality of a Rolls Royce in 1998 because
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: the pieces fit together better. They met spec. It wasn't
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: all over the place. If you're not happy with the quality,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: make the spec better. But perfectionism says perfect feels like
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: an honorable thing to pursue, but perfect is unachievable. So
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: if I announce I'm a perfectionist, I'm hiding because what
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: I've just announced is I'm never going to need to
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: ship this because it's never going to be perfect.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: One of the other words that I think does tie
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: people in knots as well is this word authenticity. Because
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: authenticity is a terrifying concept when you really think about it.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: What do you think of this idea?
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: It's a trap and authenticity is for amateurs. Your friends
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: need you to be authentic. Your family wants you to
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: be authentic. Nobody else. Professionals are not authentic. Professionals are consistent.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Professionals make a promise and they keep it. So If
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: you're having knee surgery, you don't want the doctor to
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: authentically be in a bad mood and screw up. You
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: want them to be the best version of themselves even
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: if they don't feel like it. And Keanu Reeves, he's
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: not authentically Neo. He's an actor. He's pretending to be Neo.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: If he was playing Keanu Reeves in the movie, it
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be any good. on social media, if you're going
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: to show up and show up and show up, unless
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: you're a diva, then we're watching you self-destruct. That's what
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: we're paying for. You know, like Amy Winehouse or something.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: Everybody else, we want them to be consistent. And consistent
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: means you made a choice about the promise you're going
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: to make and you keep the promise over and over again.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: So when I'm writing my blog, I am playing the
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: role of Seth Godin the blogger. It is not authentically
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: how I felt in that moment. It's my best version
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: of what I think Seth Godin the blogger would say today.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: And we've spent time together. I like you a lot,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 2: but I don't know you. And that's for your friends
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 2: and your partner. So authenticity as a buzzword is a
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: version of resistance. It's one more way to hide. We say, oh,
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: I was just being authentic. No, you were just being
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: a jerk. And that's why I rejected you, because you
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: chose to be a jerk, not because you were authentic.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: We say, I can't write the next novel because it
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: wouldn't authentically be who I am. Well, yeah, but the
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: people you're writing the novel from don't know you. They
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: just want to read the next Perry Mason novel. Write
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: that or else get out of the circle we're in,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 2: because that's what they came for.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: In some way, these two things are somewhat interlinked. I
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: was thinking, you know, as a podcaster, I know that
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to do, if I want to
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: sort of accomplish my goals and continue to have this life,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: I'm going to have to do thousands and thousands and
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: thousands and thousands and thousands of episodes. And one of
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: the ways that I'm going to be able to do
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: that is by being as authentic as I possibly can.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: Because I find it to be very exhausting to be
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: inauthentic in that way. One very practical way that I
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: mean that is when I look at my guest booking
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: request list that my team sends me. I go down
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: there and I look at all the people, I go,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: oh my God. Okay. So that person's got a hundred
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: million followers and they're a super famous person. I've never
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: watched their movies. I have no idea who they are
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: because I don't really watch many movies, but you know,
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: I guess I could be authentic and pretend to care
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: about that thing. But then this principle comes into my mind,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: which is, well, then I wouldn't be able to do
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: this for a long time. I wouldn't be able to
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: be consistent if I didn't make those, dare I say,
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: authentic decisions. For me to sit here and try and
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: be someone else in those hours and hours and hours
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: times by 10,000 episodes. I wouldn't be able to be consistent.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 2: Thank you for calling this out. What you just said
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: doesn't contradict what I said. It's really important we highlight this.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: You should not sign up for something where you cannot
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: happily be consistent. So let's think about a teacher. The
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: teacher knows everything they're teaching. The students know nothing they're teaching.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: So the empathic solution is not to authentically talk about
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: whatever is interesting to you. It's to create the conditions
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: for you to teach people so that they can start
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: to get closer to where you are. That's a commitment,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: not an authenticity thing. It's what kind of taste am
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: I going to bring so I can consistently make a
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: promise and keep it. That needs to rhyme with what
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: you would do if it was your hobby, but it
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be your hobby. When you turn your hobby into
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 2: a business, you ruin both of them.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: So do I conclude then that it's this sort of
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: dance between me and my authentic self and the thing
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: that I can do to be consistent at this goal?
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: Is it a dance?
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: It's a dance because people who are happy find consistency
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: that rhymes with their overall authentic self. And their overall
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: authentic self, it turns out, changes over time based on
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: the promises they made. So if you hang out with
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: people on Wall Street, even if they weren't, you know,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: loud and short cycle kinds of people when they got
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: the job, They authentically became like that because that's who
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: they were surrounded by, affiliation, status. We change. We're not
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: who we were. And so we get to pick this arc.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: It cost me a lot coming out of business school
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: to be an underemployed entrepreneur in the creative business, not
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 2: joining Apple or Activision or something like that. So for years,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: I was behind on the status ladder of my peers.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: That's an investment. on the long arc of, quote, authentically
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: becoming the kind of person I wanted to be all day.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: But I said to myself, if I have to make
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: a promise to an engineering company that I'm going to
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: be Dilbert all day, every day, I'm going to die
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: a little bit inside until it's over. And I don't
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 2: want to do that.
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: All industries are changing. AI. What are your thoughts on
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: this crazy new technology that is.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 2: So my background here is when I was at Stanford
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: in 1983, I took a PhD course with Doug Lenat,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: who was one of the fathers of AI. I worked
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke in my first
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: real job. So I've been a science fiction person thinking
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 2: about AI my whole life. And so when it finally
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 2: showed up, I was like, yes, it's finally here. And
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: I've been writing about it for a while. I did
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: some AI-related products. Here's my two big ideas. Number one,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: this is the biggest change. in our world since electricity.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: And number two, either you work for AI or AI
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: works for you. And what do I mean by those
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: two things? There were companies and workers in 1890 who said,
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: I'll wait for electricity to go away. I'm just going
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: to keep being a blacksmith or whatever it is. That
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: did not work out very well. This is like that,
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: but much, much faster. And then the AI thing is,
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: if you work for an AI, It's not going to
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: treat you very well. It's not going to be secure
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: and it's not going to make you happy because bosses
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: are going to keep pushing the AI to do all
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: the good parts and you to be a gig worker
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: for all the parts that the AI can't do yet.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 2: But if you can say, I use AI to connect humans,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: I use AI to build a network of people, we
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: don't know how to replace networks of people and AI
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: is never going to be able to replace networks of people.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: If you are trusted– and connecting, and leading, using whatever
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: AI tools you want, you're never going to have trouble
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: making a living. And so that's what you say, okay,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: if I have these tools, how do I use them?
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: Not to be a junior, smaller version of open AI,
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: but use them the same way that the movie theater
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: used electricity, right? That the electric company brought electricity to
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: lots of businesses, but it took a movie theater to
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: figure out how to get you to pay $ 5 to
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: see the movie.
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: You used the word people and humans within that answer,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: and it made me sort of think that actually maybe
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: the great opportunity in a world of artificial intelligence is
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: not to try and be the world's best accountant, because
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: maybe the intelligence is going to be great at that,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: but all the human stuff.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: All the human and the people stuff.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly right. Good taste, understanding who trusts you and why.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: There are very few jobs where if I can write
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: down what you do all day, I can't find an
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: AI to do it faster and cheaper than you.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: So you want a job where I can't write down
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: what you do all day and then you'll be fine.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: Well, the quiet quitters.
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, so if you think about what does
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: a bookkeeper do? I can write down all the rules
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: of bookkeeping. and hire a different bookkeeper tomorrow and my
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: business isn't going to fail. That's something AI is going
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: to get really good at really fast. Because once we
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: can write down rules, AI knows how to follow them.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 2: On the other hand, somebody, the way you were talking
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: about your good taste about who the next guest should be,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: You can't write down the algorithm for how to do that.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: Your awareness of the world you're in, the fact that
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: you have read so many books, met so many people,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 2: talked to so many listeners. I can't write all that
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: down with instructions to get Claude to do that for me.
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: I was thinking about my fiance, actually. She runs a
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: business called Bali Breathwork. And what she does is she
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: takes women away on these retreats for seven days. And
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: I see the sort of feedback and the testimonials and
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: the videos that these women send, and they love it.
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: I always say to her, don't worry about it.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: And most of what they got out of it is
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: each other.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: And when we let the computer networks take over, it
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: keeps pushing us away from each other. It pretends we're
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: connecting on social media, but people are more lonely than
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: ever before. But when we figure out how to connect
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: human to human, we create value. And ultimately, if you
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 2: want to make a living You're going to have to
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: create value. And the bosses that are right now cost
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: reducing as fast as they can have no imagination. They're saying, oh,
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 2: this is cheap, super offshore labor. It's called a computer.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: I can get rid of 400 customer service reps. They're
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: racing to the bottom. Some people are racing to the top.
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: How can I make this more human? How can I
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: make it so that now that I've augmented doctors with
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: these AI tools, they're going to spend more time per patient,
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: not less time per patient.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: Because we know that patients that have doctors to spend
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: more time with them are more satisfied. So that's a
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: business advantage. Because now someone can either stay home, talk
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: to Dr. Google and figure out what's wrong with them
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: and never go to the doctor. Or they can go
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: to a doctor that's worth paying for because that doctor
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: has an AI working for them.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: It's very true. Is there anything else in The Knot?
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: That we haven't talked about, that we should have talked about. Obviously,
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: I want everyone to go and buy the book. I
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: love what you did on here. I think this is
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: probably worth just spending a second on. But I mean,
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: do you know when you see an idea and you
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: just wish it was yours? This is one such example.
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the names of all the people who pre-ordered
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: the book from my site. And then I used a
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: gray tone. So if you look at it from a distance,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: just right, it says the word purpose, as in what
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: is the project you're trying to do. Let me close
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: with the story of Dame Fina Cooper. Because a lot
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 2: of times we talk about, you know, the personal thing,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: what should this Uber driver do? But then there are
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: other times we talk about systemic injustice. Are we all victims?
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: So Dame Cooper was an indigenous person growing up in
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: New Zealand. And New Zealand was the last major country
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: to be colonized by the United Kingdom. And so huge
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 2: amounts of native lands, were taken, and the Indigenous people
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: were disenfranchised in a lot of ways. It's really tragic
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 2: when you think about it. And Dame Cooper, at the
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: age of 78 or so, decided that she would use
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: her status and affiliation within the tribe she was part
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: of to capture the attention of the entire nation and
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: try to put Indigenous people's rights on the agenda. So
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: you look at this and say, here's this woman. She's
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: not famous. She doesn't have a lot of money. She's
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: almost 80 years old. What could she possibly do? This
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: is a problem or it's a situation. If it's a situation,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: what are we going to do? Just live with it?
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 2: But if it's a problem, let's figure out where are
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: the pieces to make progress happen. She organizes 50 people.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: Most of us could organize 50 people. And they start
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: marching to the Capitol. And they do the work to
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: spread the news in advance. And day after day after day,
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: for more than a month, this group of people is
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: walking to the Capitol. She's on the front page of
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 2: every newspaper in New Zealand by halfway through. Now there's
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: 100 people, 200 people, 2,000 people. By the time they
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: get to the Capitol, there are 4,000 people patiently marching
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: side by side. And they presented their demands, requirements, suggestions,
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: to the parliament, and too late, not enough, but in
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: a very big way, it shifted the culture of the
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: entire country, changed the laws about how land was allocated,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: and made a really fundamental difference. She didn't do that
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: by herself, but she understood she had enough agency to
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: connect the others, to create a culture, to show up
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: and show up and show up with a practice. If
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: one 80-year-old woman can change an entire country, what can
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: we do? We can't drive to London or Washington, D.C.
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: and change everything. But what we can do is find
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: the others, come up with the story we can tell
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: ourselves and the others, and establish a new normal. The
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: only way the world has ever changed is when a
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: few people come together, build a culture, and repeat it
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: over and over and over.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: For some reason, when you talked about that, and it
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: was a very motivating thing to hear, the subject of
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: death came into my mind because, again, I've dropped into
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: the world of the listener right now. And I guess
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: I asked myself how you create that tension to do
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: it today and not tomorrow. Right. Because there's never going
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: to be a perfect time. Tomorrow is going to be imperfect.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: Next week is going to be imperfect. So when faced
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: with like lots of imperfect options, how do you create
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: enough tension to get whoever's listening right now to like
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: go do it?
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. When the person you're dreaming of becoming meets the
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: person you become, how's that meeting going to go? How
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 2: do you become the person your future self thanks you for?
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: Because most of us have regret. I wish I had
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: done something when I was 20 or 30 or 40. Well,
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: that regret's a powerful fuel.
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: You said this to me before we started recording about regret.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: And you said that It's actually not about what you
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: want to accomplish, I think you said. It's actually about
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: some of the things that you wish you had done.
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I think about my mistakes, and I've
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: had so many mistakes, the mistakes I regret the most
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: are the things I didn't do, not the things I
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: tried that failed. The person I didn't help, the lesson
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 2: I didn't teach, the door I didn't open. Because it's
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: easy to ignore those things and just move on. But
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: that's our power, our leverage, our agency, is to be
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: able to say, There's a thing I could do. There's
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 2: someone on that street corner who needs a hand. How
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: do we build the thing that our future self will
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: thank us for doing today? And so I spent two
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: years organizing the Carbon Almanac with 1,900 co-authors, full-time volunteer
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: work for me. And the 1,900 of us got something
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: out of seeing each other, working with each other, realizing
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: we could do something about our understanding of our climate problem.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: And then it became a bestseller in five or six
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: countries and opened the door for many of the people
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: who participated in it to have more leverage and to
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 2: do the next thing. But when I think about that day,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 2: when I said, well, I could post something about this
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: and see who shows up, it would have been super
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: easy to say, nah, let's just go see what's on
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: Star Trek today. But the habit, the practice of saying, okay,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: this is the next thing. that begins this generative positive
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: cycle and it's contagious. And that's the magic of this
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: sort of virus. If the generative contagious idea of who
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: can I open a door for spreads, then you're probably
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: going to end up living in a world that's more
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: like the world you want to live in.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: Why do you continue to do things? Because you've written
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: more books here than I can bloody carry. I mean,
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: I was saying to you when you arrived that when
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: I started my career as a marketeer, which is that
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: website that failed, turned into a marketing business essentially. And
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: then people, everybody gives you this book when you get
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 1: into marketing, which is your book, This Is Marketing. And
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: they use your ideas all the time. I mean, one
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: could say, Seth, you've done enough. Maybe now is a
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: good time to just enjoy it, they might say. Why
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: do you keep going?
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: You know, when I invented email marketing all those years ago,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: I needed to do it to make a living, to eat.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 2: And it was thrilling to watch an industry grow up
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: out of that. But after that, writing books is a
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: lousy way to make a living, but it's a pretty
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: good way to make a difference. And I said, don't
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: turn your hobby into a business because you'll ruin both
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: of them. But it's interesting to think about turning your
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: business into a hobby, into the thing you love to do.
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: And if someone said, I can't share ideas anymore, I'm
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: not exactly sure how I would spend my day. For me,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: when I hear from somebody who says, I learned something
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: from someone who learned it from someone who learned it
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: from someone who learned it from you, that's thrilling. The
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: only thing I'm trying to do is turn on some
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: lights for people, offer them some dignity and create the
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: next cycle. And if you sign up for that, I'm
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: not sure how you can stop.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: Now, maybe just maybe, listen, I'm not. that superstitious, but
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: maybe there's a couple of people that found this conversation
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: and they got to this point in the conversation for
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: some kind of reason. And I imagine it's because they
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: are in, you know, they have their own knot somewhere.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: So just to close off for those people who currently
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: are in a bit of a knot, it could be
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: a job, a relationship, a situationship, whatever it might be.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: What is your sort of closing remarks to those people
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: that are a bit stuck and that are on that
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: precipice of maybe taking a leap, a step forward, but
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: they're tied up a little bit like these knots are?
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're not alone. We all are. Every single one
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: of us, especially me, we're all stuck with something. And
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: you can forgive that and then say, okay, who can
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: I contribute to today? Who can I offer help to
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: and maybe ask for help? And it doesn't mean that
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: where you are is fair. And it doesn't mean that
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: what you're feeling isn't real. It is real. The only
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 2: question is what will we do next?
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: I've really sort of taken to heart this idea as
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: well that we talked about earlier of just being really
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: clear on which voice you're serving. Because everyone's life is
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: a noisy place increasingly.
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: You know, we're so connected in a digital sense. we're
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: so connected to other people's lives. And even if someone
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: isn't directly shouting at us and telling us what to
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: go be and who to become, their life is. Seeing
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: them in Hawaii on a beach, having a margarita is
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: shouting at me, telling me that my life sucks and
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: that I should change it and that I should be
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: more like them. And in such a noisy world, I
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: think maybe some of the most critical advice you've left
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: me with is this central idea of like getting clear
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: on which voice in my life I'm going to listen to.
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: Because we fail, we end up in a knot when
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: we try and serve them.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 2: All people are really lucky to have this show the
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: way you show up you've been narrating this kind of
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: journey for years now and you probably don't hear it
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 2: often enough but it's important and thank you for doing it.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: Oh well that's a unbelievable compliment coming from one of
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: my sort of personal icons so i appreciate that a
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 1: lot the not problems can be solved comes out in
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: september if it's september it's out now if it's not
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: you can pre-order it there'll be a link but I
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: think you know again in the context of the world
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: I think unfortunately we might find ourselves in even more
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: knots so this is a wonderful thing I think to
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: buy for somebody in your life that might be in
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a knot themselves but also to
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: buy for yourself if you find yourself in one Seth
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: who they're leaving it for and the question left for
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: you if you were given the opportunity to live forever
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: would you take it no that was quick.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: I think walking through the world as the only immortal
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: person would be heartbreaking and enervating and wear you out
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: much faster than you think. If everyone was immortal, I
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: think we would play by different rules as a planet,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: and that would be fascinating, but that wasn't the question.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: I think if you read enough science fiction, you realize
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: that selective immortality is a real curse.
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: Why? Because.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: Everyone around you is dying and you're not. Every single day,
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: everyone's dying just a little bit more. And we define
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: our humanity by our connections. And we're all on this
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: journey together. And all of a sudden, you opted out
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: of the journey. You're the only person on the boat
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: that's not going where the boat's going. And in the
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: short run, it would be nice that my shoulders didn't
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: hurt and that my voice was fixed and things like that.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: But that would get old really fast.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: That point of connection is so interesting because it immediately
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: made me think about my friendship circle. I've got these
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: five best friends I've had for the last 15 years
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: and we're all progressing through the life stages together. Like
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: they've all started having kids now and then I'm trying
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: to have a kid at the moment. And so we're
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: like talking about that together and we're connecting about that together.
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 1: And it makes it, you know, and actually my nightmare
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: would be to be the only one that wasn't in
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: that life phase right now. I feel disconnected. Yeah. Gosh,
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: and if I lived forever, I would, yeah. No, I've
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: never wanted to live forever. I think it's, people need
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: to think about the trade-offs of everything in their life,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: but particularly this idea of longevity.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: Embracing this moment, you lose that.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: I highly recommend just before we do wrap up, people
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: go read your blog as well. I'm going to link
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: that below.
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: Seth, we're done.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: What a treat.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: what video you would like to watch next based on
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: says that this video is the perfect video for you.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: I bet you, you might love it.