Bookworm Transcripts

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Well, thank you for moving this.

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No problem.

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Makes my life a lot easier.

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My wife is going to a conference,

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and I didn't realize she was leaving at noon on Thursday,

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which would mean I wouldn't make our normal recording time

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since I'd be watching the girls,

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and I debated the babysitter thing,

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I debated a bunch of different things,

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but none of that, none of it worked out.

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It's like, okay, well, I think I can make Friday work,

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and then I had that whole rigmarole

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that I had caused with you.

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Thank you for moving it.

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No worries.

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So how's life in Mike's world?

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Good.

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Been really busy making the final push for the

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the email course that we're doing at Asian efficiency,

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but I finished editing the last video yesterday.

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Oh, nice.

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As I saw Tan had, he had a tweet about you being a beast

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and getting this thing out like eight days early

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or something like that.

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So.

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Yeah, it was our goal for this quarter.

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So I guess technically that's about eight days early,

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but not really that early.

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It's a lot of content on the topic of email,

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though it's almost seven hours worth of video altogether.

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Oh my gosh, that's hello email.

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Wow.

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So does that.

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Does it go through like how to write them

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and how to manage them and then all the big,

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like the normal apps?

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Like what is this not to add in intent for this to be a plug

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for Asian efficiency's email course,

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but now you have my curiosity.

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What's in this thing?

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Yeah.

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So basically what we did, the whole process

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behind this product was really, really interesting.

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And I learned a lot.

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We implemented the model from, I believe it's running lean.

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So it's a lean product development model where we first of all,

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just announced that we're going to build this product

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on the topic of email.

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What are your biggest pain points with email and people who filled out

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the survey we contacted to talk about their specific problems,

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zacted interviews with everybody, really articulated very well

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where they were experiencing problems with their email.

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And then we built basically custom solutions.

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And as we were doing that, we realized that all this stuff tied

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together into a very comprehensive solution

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on the correct way to handle email, which is a huge problem.

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I mean, some of the research that we did identified that,

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according to the Huffington Post last year,

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the average US worker spends 6.3 hours per day dealing with email,

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which I think we've actually talked about on this podcast too.

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So it's identifying all of the improper habits and mindsets

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that we have typically towards email,

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recognizing all of the triggers,

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all of the potential pain points,

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all the things that we could typically get tripped up on,

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and then crafting systems so that those things don't happen

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and we can avoid those things while still maintaining the peace

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of mind from knowing that everything that comes in,

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we've got a system in place that'll handle it all.

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Sounds like I need to go through this.

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Yeah, actually, I thought of you a couple of times when we were

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working on it based on our conversations,

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because I was working on it while we were recording those episodes

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and you're like, yeah, I'm working with this specific thing.

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And I'm like, ah, so is Tom in North Carolina.

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Nice.

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This might be on my list of go through relatively soon.

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Do you have a launch date on this?

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Like, is it coming out soon or has you got a while on it yet?

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October 11th is the official launch date.

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Right. And I'm comfortable giving that now because I just finished the video.

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So nice.

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Well, before we go too far down this, let's let's get through some of our followup.

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One thing I've been doing, and I just threw this on the followup list here,

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like, I don't know, a couple hours ago.

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But I kind of want to go back to the deep work episode that we did.

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And you and I had this conversation about

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the digital versus analog calendar, where I write out my day on paper and you do it digitally.

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And I figured out a way to do the digital thing a little bit here, Mike.

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And I'm pretty stoked about it, of course.

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I wanted the digital thing to work.

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But what I found was I can't, from a digital standpoint,

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I can't do the entire day in a digital calendar.

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I just have to plan when are those very specific deep work sessions going to happen.

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And they're usually like an hour and a half to two hours long.

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And I do those usually one early morning and one sometime in the afternoon,

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typically, but it doesn't always work out that way.

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But I managed to figure out that I can schedule those specific pieces

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digitally. And then I write out the rest of my day.

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On paper, and then I use that digital calendar piece to basically manage reminders

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is the way that ends up working, where it it triggers an alert on my phone and lets me know,

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Hey, dummy, go turn off everything else and go do your deep work session now.

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So it works out pretty well for me to just have that little ding to jar me out of

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whatever it is I'm working on.

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Usually something distracting I shouldn't be working on.

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But that's it's been an interesting thing that I've been kind of excited about

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and getting it to work finally from a digital standpoint.

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Sweet. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the idea behind those notifications and those

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things is like you've put it to a productive use, but most of the time,

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that's not usually the case.

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And we talked about that in the email course and we've talked about it on this

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podcast before, but the default is whatever application you install in your mobile

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device probably has pushed notifications turned on, which means that it's just

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going to notify you as soon as anything comes in without any discretion as to

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whether it's important.

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And then you get hundreds, if not thousands of these notifications throughout

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your day and they steal your attention away from the things that you should be

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working on. We're in your case.

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I really like your example where you've used those, you've used the power of a

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notification for good. Yes. Yes. Finally.

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I finally found the reason they exist.

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Nice. I want to know about your breakpoint thing.

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You were still working on.

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So for the listeners, Mike's been working on this process of gaining energy

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through very small time periods between longer, deep work sessions, I guess.

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And this is taken from the idea of between points in tennis.

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Am I, am I getting that right, Mike?

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Yeah.

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So with the ritual, what I've come to the realization is that it's really

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important for me when I have these breakpoints to implement something that I

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kind of picked up from when we read the Ryan Holiday book, The Obstacles, the

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Way where he talks about how things aren't positive or negative.

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They just are.

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And so one of the things that I've implemented is as I'm going in between

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these different rhythms and these different, usually it's different places

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throughout my workday, I will take a moment as I am packing up, walking to my

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car, whatever, and just think about what just happened.

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And then just let it go.

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So what happened?

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Did I get the videos done that I wanted to get done?

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If I did, you know, mini celebration and then on to the next thing, if I didn't

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get them done, don't beat myself up about it for the next two hours and think

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that I've had an unproductive day, just kind of hit the reset button there

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and then get ready for the next point.

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Okay.

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And because I've played tennis, like that really resonated with me because

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you can, when you're playing tennis, think about an easy shot that you missed

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for several points after that.

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And it's affecting your play on the very next points and you're missing other

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shots that you should be hitting because you're so focused on the one thing

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that you messed up on.

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So I noticed I was kind of doing that myself and I tried to be more intentional

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about evaluating what just went on saying, yeah, that was good.

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No, that wasn't.

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And then just letting it go.

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And then from there, moving on to the next thing.

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I think that's interesting because something I do and I haven't really thought

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about it until you started in on this breakpoint ritual that you're trying to

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put in place and something I do whenever I realize that I'm just going down a

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rabbit trail and I realize I'm being extremely unproductive or I didn't get

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something done that I wanted to.

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I often take a look at inside of Omni Focus.

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I've got a perspective that shows me the completed items that I already have

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done.

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And I find it sometimes helpful to just look through that list and say, okay,

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here's all the things I've been getting done on my projects.

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It could be today.

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It could be yesterday.

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It just kind of depends on when it is that I look at it.

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But just looking through that list to see here are the things that I've been

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accomplishing.

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Here are the ones that I've managed to complete.

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And then that helps me kind of get some energy and some motivation to keep

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keep cranking on on my guess.

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I don't know if that's similar, but it's something that I use to, like, if I'm

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find myself going down a hole, just looking at all the things that all the

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progress that I've made, because there's some, maybe it's a pride thing.

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I don't know, but there's some motivating, inspiring piece that can come

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from seeing all of the positive work that I have recently completed.

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Does that make any sense at all?

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Yeah, it's important to celebrate your successes, but you can't dwell on what

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you did in the past either.

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Right.

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So yeah, the completed perspective is really powerful.

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I actually just met a guy the other day who has been using Omni Focus for a

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while and really what got him to use Omni Focus was that completed perspective.

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That's interesting because he liked to see the things that he actually

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accomplished, not the things that he planned to do or wanted to do, but things

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that he actually did.

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Interesting.

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That's cool.

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Uh, kind of a little bit of a follow up from the last show that we did, uh,

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with Vernet Brown's book, Darren, greatly.

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Uh, we talked a little bit about how we're having those conversations with our

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kids and how we're changing a few things with them.

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Uh, the one piece that I had down to start trying to do is the, the concept

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of talking to my kids about, uh, you've made certain choices versus you are

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something.

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So you're a good kid, but you've made bad choices like that concept.

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And that's not a new thing.

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It's just something I've been changing in me because I've just never thought

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about it.

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Uh, there's, there's too many parenting methods out there, Mike.

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Uh, so there's, there's a lot of that out there, but I've kind of been intentional.

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Well, I'm not kind of been, I have been intentional about making that shift in

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my terminology.

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And I can't say that I've seen any, uh, drastic changes in my girls and how they

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respond to that.

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Uh, but I think your last follow up here is one that I've been doing as well

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with the facial expressions.

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And that on my end, I know that's been extremely helpful.

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Uh, I have been trying to be very intentional about this.

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I don't have quantifiable data that I can say, yes, I've made improvement here.

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But I believe that I have my good feeling is that I have just because I've been

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more aware of it.

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Uh, and I think that awareness is really the key thing I was looking for in that

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particular instance is just recognizing those opportunities rather than just

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letting them float right by.

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So I would chalk that up as a win because I noticed this even several times a day.

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So I consider that a successful outcome from during greatly.

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I know that on my end, whenever, whenever I do something like that, that, because

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it, it amazes me how much our kids can pick up just from facial expressions.

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It just blows my mind how much they can pick up just from looking at you.

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And I love seeing the excitement on my girls's faces whenever I see them and

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just give them a quick smile.

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Like you would think that's not a big deal, but there's something about that

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that just makes their whole day.

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And I like being the dad who makes, who makes the whole day.

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I like that.

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Right.

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Yeah, me too.

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So let's transition into today's book and this is one that you picked out.

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So I'll let you introduce it.

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All right.

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I didn't, I feel kind of bad.

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I mean, whenever you say that you have, you pick this book, you have like these

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very eloquent explanations and deep philosophical reasons for picking books.

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This one is just like, I heard this one's good.

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No, I read, I read leaders eat last by Simon Cinek.

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Actually, I listened to it.

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I think it was the first book I ever got on Audible.

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And I really liked it.

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And I've been told by a couple of people that start with why is even better.

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So that was my rationale for, for picking it.

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And yeah, I really liked it.

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I'm sure we'll get into our ratings and things at the end, but it didn't

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disappoint from my perspective.

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The nice thing is that this one was on my list as well.

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Has been for a long time.

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I couldn't tell you why.

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I just knew that it was on my list.

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This is something I'm trying to do, Mike.

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I, whenever I get these ideas for books to read, I'm trying to get to a point

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where I'm writing down like where I heard about it and why I wrote it down so

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that whenever I'm trying to determine which book comes next, I can look through

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some of those notes and know, okay, this is one I had an interest in because I was

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reading this one and I really liked that one.

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So let's do this one.

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Anyway, long story short, I'm trying to get better about that just because I don't

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always remember my rationale behind some.

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And I am with you on.

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It doesn't have to be some waxed philosophical reason for picking a book.

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You can pick it just because it sounds cool.

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I will say that Simon started off on the wrong foot with me though, because

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we still need to do this show on how to read a book.

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I do this book index, my own personal book index at the back of a book.

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And if you look at the back of start with why there's no blank pages, this is the

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first book I've ever seen that doesn't have blank pages at the back of it.

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Every book has like at least one or two back there.

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This one has none.

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It's like, where am I supposed to put my index?

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That's where I always go.

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So it was not.

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I darn near just started writing right on top of the existing index just because

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I got frustrated with it.

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Yeah, I didn't even think about that, but yeah, you're right.

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There's there's not a whole lot of room on the back of this.

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No, and it's a book.

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So it's not a big deal.

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It's just like, what?

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Come on.

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Where am I supposed to do this?

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So anyway, before I even started reading it, I was like a little frustrated with it

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just because of that terrible reasoning.

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I know.

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Not terrible reasoning, but I don't know how we can avoid that in the future.

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So there's no systemic solution to this problem.

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No, none whatsoever.

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Well, regarding the content of the book, the very first thing he talks about at the

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very beginning really grabbed me.

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So I had a different first impression, but that's because I started at the front, not the back.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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That's probably the best way to do it is don't start at the end, start at the beginning.

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My mom used to do that.

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My mom used to always go to the end of a book and she'd read the last chapter.

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And then she'd go back and read the whole thing.

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Like a what?

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I don't understand that people who read fiction sometimes do this.

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I'm not.

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Don't jump on me over this fiction readers, but there there's a group of people that

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like to read the last chapter and then they go read the rest of the book.

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To me, that's just bonkers.

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I don't understand why you would ever do that.

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But anyway, I digress.

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That's there's a group of people who do that and I completely think it's illogical.

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Yeah, I don't I don't understand that that either, but I've heard of people doing that.

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So I know it's I know it's not unheard of.

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But yeah, I thought that he started this book really strong.

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In fact, there's a quote right at the beginning that I wrote down.

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He said, there are only two ways to influence human behavior.

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You can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

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And then he spent quite a bit of time talking about the difference between manipulation

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and inspiration, which is a very important.

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Distinction from the perspective of not just finding your your personal why, but really,

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the whole book is kind of written from the perspective of if you're leading an organization

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or you're leading a company or a business like this is why you want to start with your why.

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And so I thought that was really, really cool and just kind of set the tone right from the beginning.

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And there's a bunch of different manipulations that he lists here.

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There were six of them, I believe, that I'll run through real quick.

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And having him go through these and point out like examples, I can totally see how people use these all the time.

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Number one was price.

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So anything that you see on sale, like that's a price manipulation.

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Promotions would kind of fall into that category.

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Also a fear.

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He used a quote, which I have actually heard before, but I really liked it said,

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no one ever got fired for hiring IBM.

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And then number four was aspirations.

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Number five was peer pressure.

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And then number six was novelty or innovation.

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And I've been involved in different businesses long enough that I've seen

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these emphasize from a business perspective, particularly a marketing perspective

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for a long time and even encouraged to a certain degree.

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And basically what he's saying from the very beginning of the book is all of that stuff is wrong.

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It might help you get a sale, but it's not going to help you in the long term

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by getting you a fan that's actually going to be the type of customer that you want.

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These are all going to be transaction based and you may get people who will buy your thing,

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but then they're going to be the ones who spend 50 bucks and then you spend

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countless hours trying to support them and convince them that they should buy the next thing.

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So it's cyclical too, which is really kind of dangerous from an organizational perspective.

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You don't want to have to continue to work to maintain.

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You can't really build anything that way.

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That way you need to inspire people by, like you said, starting with the Y.

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So I thought that was really, really cool.

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Yeah, I totally agree because I used to work for a marketing company and it was a virtual company.

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So it was a different experience, but we always referred to it as a race to the bottom.

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Like who can get the price the lowest and who can have the most promotions and

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you would add features to certain things just to have something to talk about.

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And it's very hard to get loyal customers doing that.

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And the short term gains are awesome.

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You know, that's the manipulation side of things that we're talking about.

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But it's the companies who and this is the main premise of the whole book,

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you know, get your wife figured out and then let everything, let that why permeate through

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everything you do.

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You know, that's if you want to sum up the whole book very quickly, there you go.

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But if you focus on the long term mission of the company, don't let finances and everything

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dictate how things go.

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I mean, you have to pay attention to shareholders and you have to pay attention to all of that stuff

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to a point, but don't let that be the part that drives your end product.

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Let the, this is what he's getting at is let the Y drive and inspire people to do business with you.

00:19:54

And this is, this is one of the things that kind of drove me a little bit baddie with,

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with the book, but I loved it at the same time as he praises Apple again and again and again and again and again.

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Like he just, he talks about Apple a ton.

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And it was to the point that I had to stop and I went and I looked up,

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I went and looked up the, the copyright of when did, when did he write this?

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Because I really wanted to know where, where was everything at?

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And whenever this was, when he was writing this, like did was Steve Jobs still around?

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Like what?

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Anyway, it was written in 2009.

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So you kind of have to keep in mind where Apple was at that point.

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And you know, for some of us who are big into Apple stuff, you can start to see potential breakdowns

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in the company between the point when this book was written.

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And now I think you really have to read between the lines to get there, I think, but

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he loves, loves, loves, loves talking about Apple and singing their praises.

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And I really wanted him to use some different examples, but that anyway, what I'm getting at

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there is Apple does a very good job of sharing their why and their purpose as a company and then

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using their why as something to inspire people to go and use their products to do something with

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them. And that's why a lot of us get really big into Apple products and buy a lot of them

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is because we've bought in hard on their why because their why resonates with our personal why.

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There's a lot of why and what I just said there.

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But if you can follow me there is we resonate with what the company is trying to do on a

00:21:34

deeper level than just cost and product, if you can catch the difference between all of that.

00:21:40

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I'm an admittedly Apple fanboy, so I was completely okay with that.

00:21:47

But I actually thought that was a really good example because he talks about some of the stuff

00:21:51

that Apple has done that really illustrates that they do start with the why. Like you mentioned

00:21:56

the iconic 1984 ad with the like everybody's, there's like all these guys in business suits and

00:22:03

they're all like grayed out in the background and you see this like woman in orange shorts and a

00:22:08

white t-shirt like running towards the other direction with a sledgehammer.

00:22:13

You know, and another ad that I thought of kind of in the same vein is the one that I think Steve

00:22:20

Jobs actually narrated it. Here's to the crazy ones, which I actually, like I said, admittedly an

00:22:26

Apple fanboy. I've got that rained in hanging on my wall right in front of me. But yeah,

00:22:32

there there are great example and I guess the Steve Jobs personality is a great example of the

00:22:41

starting with the the why and not really caring about the what or the how almost to the to the

00:22:46

point where it's detrimental to a certain point. I mean, we can kind of see how the rest of the

00:22:51

story plays out now because it's 2016 and Apple is kind of here and there be the most valuable

00:22:58

company in the world. So we can say that yeah, this stuff kind of kind of works. And I guess

00:23:03

that's why I give it more credibility. If it was like, I know, fill in the blank with whatever the

00:23:09

current hotness is, you know, I guess I might have had the same same reaction. But I guess I really

00:23:16

resonated with that Apple example because I know the historical context. I know what all happened

00:23:20

because I've been following the company for a while. But also I can see the fruit of that approach.

00:23:26

Another another story he uses in there though, because he does use several different stories. He

00:23:32

does mention Apple quite a bit. But I really liked the one about Sam Walton, the guy who found Walmart.

00:23:39

Oh, right. Yeah, I really like that company. Yeah, that's kind of the inverse side of the coin

00:23:44

because he talks about how Walmart has kind of lost their why, whereas Sam Walton was getting paid

00:23:50

$350,000 a year, which is nothing for CEO of a company that's worth that much money. And he always

00:23:59

would come in to work on Saturdays because he wanted to do what he was asking his employees to do

00:24:04

and work on the weekends. People would ask him like, why don't you drive a fancy car instead of

00:24:09

that pickup truck? And he's like, what am I going to pull my dogs around in a Rolls Royce? Like he

00:24:13

just seems like a very down to earth type of guy, his whole why for developing the Walmart chain.

00:24:18

It talks about like he wanted to bring the centers to small town America so that people didn't have

00:24:25

to go to the city in order to earn a sustainable living, which is a really noble goal. And then

00:24:30

he even uses the example of like whoever was in charge when he wrote the book. I don't think it

00:24:36

was a direct successor, but it was two or three successors down the line. Like he's pulling in

00:24:40

six million a year almost. You know, so it's very clear indication that they've lost the why.

00:24:46

And I guess really coming back to that whole idea of, you know, start with why there's a really

00:24:50

clear concept that he illustrates in this book, which is really important. And that's that golden

00:24:56

circle. And I did not put this in the notes. I don't know why I didn't because this is a really

00:25:00

key concept. Yeah, he talks about it. But if you were. Yeah, and I like how he keeps elaborating

00:25:06

on it too. Like he starts off with these three circles and why's in the middle and then outside

00:25:10

of that, the next ring out from the bullseye center is the the how and then on the outside is the what

00:25:16

he talks about how a lot of businesses will focus on the what then they'll figure out the how and

00:25:21

then they'll figure out the why. But the successful ones are the ones that start with the why and they

00:25:25

work from the inside out instead of the outside in. But then he expounds on that and he applies

00:25:30

like a 3D model to it and he shows that there's different different things underneath it and

00:25:34

things like that. So it's not just like re reiterating the same concept over and over and over and over

00:25:39

and over again throughout the book, which obviously he does. I mean, don't get me wrong. But he really

00:25:44

expounds on it and he layers it, which I thought was was really cool as well.

00:25:48

It really makes a lot of sense whenever you look at this golden circle, simply because

00:25:55

so much of what businesses do and I run into this all the time, you know, building websites and

00:26:01

finding clients. I'll talk to them and nine times out of 10 whenever I go in and I have a

00:26:07

conversation with them. Usually what I need to know is, you know, if I'm going to build a website for

00:26:11

you and you're a small business, I need to know why your business exists. Like I need to understand

00:26:18

what the purpose of the business is so that we can make the website resonate and feel that purpose.

00:26:26

Like that's that's a lot of what I try to do. But so many times I go in and I ask, you know,

00:26:31

why does your business exist? Which is number one, a question they don't really expect from a web

00:26:36

developer. It doesn't really come across as something you should plan for whenever you're

00:26:40

going to meet with me. But whenever I ask that question, nine times out of 10, they start telling

00:26:45

me what their product is and why they think it's better than their competitors. But that doesn't

00:26:51

tell me why the business is in existence. Like it doesn't give me anything to run with. It's like,

00:26:57

oh, great, you make axles for trucks. Cool. So why do you do that? Well, people need axles for

00:27:02

trucks. Well, but why do you do that? That doesn't make sense. So it's interesting that if I come in

00:27:12

and I simply say that I have a passion for helping people's dreams come to a reality

00:27:18

through their websites and helping them portray that. Well, that's one way of selling myself to them.

00:27:24

But they can rarely reciprocate that and explain to me why their business exists. Because they

00:27:32

jump to the outer ring of this golden circle and start telling me what they do, or maybe they go

00:27:36

to the one layer in and like, how do they go about making that product? Like, what's the process of

00:27:42

creating the alloys that go into that particular axle? Like those types of things are interesting,

00:27:48

but that's not the phrase that Simon continually repeats throughout this book is people don't buy

00:27:56

what you do. They buy why you do it. And that's something that, and it's very interesting.

00:28:02

Here's another reason you should be able to listen to his TED talk. Because we talked about

00:28:06

that last time I'm a fan of TED talks. He says, people don't buy what you do. They buy why you do

00:28:10

it. And he's got a slight accent that I love hearing in my head whenever I say or hear that.

00:28:17

So anyway, I got a thing for accents, I think. And that might be because I got a y'all

00:28:22

folks southern twang that comes out in my voice on occasion. But anyway, long story short,

00:28:27

I don't see with a lot of my clients, I don't see a lot of them getting anywhere close to resonating

00:28:35

with that center of the bullseye. They always start on the outside and try to work their way in.

00:28:41

And people really don't buy from companies that work that way. It just seems weird whenever you

00:28:46

run into those scenarios, or it ends up producing a lot of scandals, which is like what he's talking

00:28:52

about with Walmart anymore, since they've gotten so far away from there.

00:28:55

Yeah, I can tell you from my experience in business, it's really refreshing to hear his perspective

00:29:07

on why seeking out all of those transaction based stuff. If you don't have the why,

00:29:12

and people ask you, well, why do you make the truck axles? Well, people need truck axles.

00:29:18

That, like I've been there, I get that. And that is really, really frustrating because you're

00:29:24

constantly having to work on the next sale. And he has a quote in here that I really, really liked

00:29:30

about repeat business. He says, there's a big difference between business and loyalty. Repeat

00:29:35

business is when people do business with you multiple times. Loyalty is when people are willing

00:29:39

to turn down a better product or a better price to continue doing business with you.

00:29:45

Loyal customers often don't even bother research the competition or entertain other options.

00:29:50

Now when you're talking from a business perspective, what's your ideal customer? It's that guy,

00:29:56

or that girl, that person who is not even going to look at the other things that are options,

00:30:04

because you have built up so much trust and they are such raving fans. And this is why the

00:30:09

Apple thing really resonated with me. I mean, as we record this, current events, recently,

00:30:16

Samsung released the Galaxy Note 7, and it's been blowing up on people.

00:30:21

Okay? Literally. So I've seen a lot of people who are like, "Ha, Samsung serves them right."

00:30:27

But that's a great example of people who fit this. I'm just going to call it a stereotype. I don't

00:30:33

think that's really the right word. But this description of somebody who is loyal to the

00:30:39

Apple brand. And it's because Apple is completely unashamed about their why. And they know that

00:30:49

it's not going to be for everybody. There are a lot of people who buy Android phones, and he talks

00:30:54

about this in the book, how Apple's why doesn't resonate strongly with them. And you can apply

00:31:00

that to any market segment you want, but because I'm a tech geek, that's the one that

00:31:05

I was like, "Yeah, you're speaking my language. I totally get that." And that's completely okay.

00:31:10

I've been in the position where it's like, "Oh, we got to capitalize on whatever market share we can get."

00:31:15

And this whole book was a fresh air to me because I was like, "No, you don't have to do that."

00:31:19

You just got to find the people who are really going to resonate with your whole purpose and

00:31:25

your whole vision. And then you just got to be focused on that. You have to maintain integrity

00:31:32

when it comes to that. That is more important. That's kind of a bigger impact on your bottom line

00:31:37

than trying to become all things to all people so that whatever you're developing, whatever you're

00:31:44

making, whatever you're building, whatever you're serving fits a need that they have. Because just

00:31:49

because there is a need doesn't mean that those people are going to buy your thing. At some level,

00:31:56

it's not really commodity-based, but kind of. There are enough options in our consumer-based

00:32:04

society that if I didn't want this specific thing, I can go find something very similar. I can go

00:32:09

find another smartphone that does the different things that I need it to do and buy it from a

00:32:15

company that I'm more in tune or aligned with. I think the smartphone analogy, it's one that

00:32:22

makes this really easy to understand. There's a lot of passion in that because there's such a

00:32:32

personal device. But something that I think makes a lot easier is because Apple people, us,

00:32:39

when it comes to buying a smartphone, the question is seven or seven plus. That's the simple question

00:32:46

that you're trying to answer. Whenever you don't resonate with Apple or you don't understand why

00:32:53

you would pay a premium for a smartphone and you're going to go Android, there's a lot of options.

00:32:59

There's a ton of different ways that you can get into the Android system. Do you want a Samsung?

00:33:04

Do you want an HTC? Do you want the list can go on of all the Android devices out there? But

00:33:10

something that I think really shows this is that, and I run into this a lot because people are always

00:33:16

asking Apple or Android, that question comes up a lot. Usually that question is sparked by

00:33:22

Android users. I've tried to sit down and figure out when I've had somebody who's using an iPhone

00:33:29

ask me if they should switch to Android and I can't come up with a single time that's ever happened.

00:33:34

I very regularly have Android users who will try to argue with me over how their phone is just as

00:33:41

good as mine or better than mine. But I never ever see people who even want to start that

00:33:49

conversation the other way around. It's almost like I run into these Android users who are trying

00:33:54

to justify their decision for not using an Apple device and people who are using an Apple phone

00:33:59

don't even understand why there's a question out there. So to me, that's the ultimate of people who

00:34:06

get into Apple devices typically have bought in hard and are extremely loyal to the company.

00:34:14

And those who aren't, they're probably getting something weird with hand-me-down devices and such.

00:34:20

But it seems like to me that whenever you get into it and you're really truly loyal,

00:34:25

it's not even a question. It's not even something to discuss. It's not even something that's even

00:34:31

worth bringing up because the decision's already made. They have a new phone. Do I have an upgrade

00:34:38

available or not? That's as far as it goes. It's really polarizing because of Apple's strong

00:34:46

messaging around their why. You either love them or you hate them. But the people who are on their

00:34:53

side are usually raving fans. And to be honest, like I mentioned the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 thing,

00:35:00

I'm not in that camp that's like, we'll take that Samsung. I think it's terrible that that's

00:35:05

happening. And I think ultimately this is a bad thing. I think competition in the market is good.

00:35:09

I think that having Samsung, or I'll just say Android, because I know there's a lot of different

00:35:15

makers that make Android phones, Android and iOS, having those two very popular options is

00:35:22

ultimately going to result in better products for the consumer no matter what side that you're on.

00:35:27

So I don't want to make it sound like we're just completely on Apple's side and everything that's

00:35:33

not Apple is wrong. But the technology based examples are really good for this particular book,

00:35:41

I believe, because there's another thing that he talks about in here with the,

00:35:44

what's he called it? He calls it the law of diffusion of innovations, that bell curve.

00:35:51

If you remember that, where he talks about at the very front 2.5%, our innovators, and then 13.5%

00:35:58

our early adopters, 34% our early majority, 34% then on the back end of this, our late majority and 16%

00:36:05

are laggards. And this was interesting because I've always considered myself

00:36:11

an Apple fanboy to a certain extent. But let me ask you, I guess, before I reveal mine, did you

00:36:18

locate yourself on this bell curve? It really depends on what you're talking about. Are you

00:36:23

talking about computer devices, like technology? Yeah, I mean, we'll just use technology as an

00:36:29

example. So when it comes to smartphones or computers, we'll lump those together. Where do you fall

00:36:34

on this? If you give me unlimited funds, I will always be an early adopter and buy them as soon

00:36:41

as I can. That's where I land. And I know that. But if you put me, and this is why I asked about

00:36:47

the specific sector, because there are some realms like take agriculture, which is my bread and butter.

00:36:53

If you let me go work in that, I will fall into that innovator category, because I'll help come up

00:36:59

with the new stuff and try to use things that have never been used before. Like I'll fall into that

00:37:04

category. But you get me into cars and new technology and cars, I'll hit that late majority to laggard

00:37:15

level. So it really depends on the sector. I think it's going to be dependent on what specific

00:37:20

thing we're talking about for them. But yeah, if you're talking computers and smartphones and

00:37:25

that type of thing, given the ability, I'll fall into that early adopter category.

00:37:30

So you just stole my follow-up point, but that's okay. Which was that we are all innovators and

00:37:38

early adopters in some area. And he talks about how he uses the example of him and I think his

00:37:43

sister maybe, where she's an innovator when it comes to fashion and he's an innovator when it

00:37:50

comes to technology. And he's trying to convince her that she should get a Blu-ray player and she's

00:37:54

trying to convince him that he should get designer jeans. And the person who's trying to do the

00:37:58

convincing is always hitting a brick wall. And I thought that was really, really interesting.

00:38:03

But I also thought it was interesting because I'm looking at my behavior patterns.

00:38:08

And I'm looking at this. And I always would have thought because I consider myself a pretty technical,

00:38:14

pretty technology savvy. I would think that I would tend to be on the front end of this curve,

00:38:22

like the innovators. But I think I fall actually in the early majority or early adopters section.

00:38:31

Probably early majority though. We're talking about smartphones and we're kind of dating the

00:38:37

podcast when we do this. But as we're recording, the iPhone 7 just launched and people are talking

00:38:43

about which ones they ordered and when they're coming and things like that, I did not get a new

00:38:48

iPhone. And to tell you the truth, I didn't really want to get a new iPhone. If someone were to hand

00:38:53

me one, that'd be fine. But I'm not going to go out and spend $1,000 on this thing.

00:38:57

Mac OS Sierra was released and I didn't even think about upgrading it because I don't want it to

00:39:03

break the things that I use on a daily basis, like Skype, although today, what could possibly be

00:39:09

sold on its face today? Hello, it's not working anyways. So maybe I should become more of an early

00:39:16

adopter there. But yeah, this was really interesting to me because I kind of painted myself into a

00:39:22

corner and then painted a picture of where I thought I was. And then when I thought about it,

00:39:28

I'm like, actually, I'm not that. And then as I was thinking about the different hats that I

00:39:32

wear, the different roles that I have, trying to identify myself regarding the different scenarios

00:39:38

and the different things that I'm involved in. Well, it was actually a pretty cool exercise and

00:39:45

it brought a lot of clarity to how and why I do things the way that I do. I think it's interesting

00:39:50

to look at that chart and I'll grab a picture of this and put it in the show notes. But if you

00:39:55

look at this, to me, it's interesting that you say that you're putting yourself in the early

00:40:00

majority category. I can see that. And a lot of times I will fall into that. But it's not because

00:40:07

of a lack of want, like it's not because I don't want to. Like, okay, so let's use macOS here coming

00:40:14

out. I almost decided to upgrade to that this morning. Now you have to keep in mind, I'm not

00:40:19

even up to Yosemite right now. So I need to get upgraded soon. Anyway, I didn't because I knew

00:40:26

we were going to be recording this podcast. However, when we're done with this podcast,

00:40:30

I will be saving my files, running a backup, and then I will be hitting that upgrade button

00:40:36

because I know that I don't have anything vital that needs done until about next Friday.

00:40:41

So I have some time if something goes wrong, I have the ability to sit around and play with it

00:40:47

to get it up and running correctly. But given the opportunity, like I'm not upgrading to an iPhone

00:40:53

7 that has nothing to do with anything other than finances currently. Like I just don't want to

00:40:58

spend the money on it and I would have to buy out my current process on my current phone. And I'm

00:41:03

just, I don't want to do it. So it has more to do with finances and anything. But if you got

00:41:07

rid of that variable, I would do it immediately. So that's how I know I'm in that early adopter

00:41:13

category with that stuff, just because when new ones come out, I want it right now. And I want

00:41:18

to get into there. But I know that I'm not in the innovator category because, and I think when it

00:41:23

comes to these particular pieces, like what we're talking about, very few people actually fall

00:41:27

into the innovator category just because we don't have the ability to build the hardware that does

00:41:34

this stuff. We could do the software pieces, but the hardware is very difficult for just the average

00:41:39

Joe off the street to just go build a new laptop to compete with Apple. Like that just doesn't really

00:41:46

happen. Right. And he talks about how the best does not always win. And that's really the key

00:41:54

takeaway with that bell curve, I believe, is he mentions that it's critical that you reach the

00:42:01

early adopters because they are going to champion your cause to the majority. Right. So if you go on

00:42:08

Twitter right now, you're going to see all sorts of stuff from the early adopters and the innovators

00:42:14

who are upgrading to this stuff. And every time you see somebody that says, hey, upgraded, you know,

00:42:19

I'm able to do this. I'm able to send lasers in my messages app. Right. That that is one more thing

00:42:27

that's going to move me in the right direction towards adopting that technology. And it's really

00:42:34

interesting to think about this from a business perspective, because like we talked about, we're

00:42:39

all influencers about different things. And I think that sometimes we have assumptions about who the

00:42:46

influencers are and we go after those people and they're not the correct influencers. But really,

00:42:51

the key to your success from a business perspective is to find those influencers, get them on board,

00:42:59

and then have them champion your cause for you communicating once again, starting with the why.

00:43:04

And there's a really good example of somebody who did not communicate their why very well with

00:43:12

Tivo. Oh, yeah. And I did not know the whole picture of Tivo, but I know it's been around for a

00:43:17

long time. And I was I fell into that camp where I'm like, well, why do I need that? Like, what is

00:43:23

the benefit to that? You know, and he talks about and I don't know, this is probably not the entire

00:43:28

story, but it was basically set up on a silver platter for Tivo to dominate this entire industry.

00:43:35

But they could never really articulate why the average TV watcher would need this service.

00:43:41

And that comes back to something else that I put on the outline here, the salary test.

00:43:46

All right.

00:43:47

The salary test is for like, he uses the example where everybody's got their opinions about this

00:43:55

is what you need to do. This is what you need to buy, etc. And so he says, you ask somebody,

00:44:00

what's the secret to business success? And like, oh, you got to buy Oreos and somebody else is like,

00:44:04

well, you got to buy M&Ms and somebody else is like, no, you got to buy rice pudding and celery.

00:44:08

And it comes back to the why. If you're a why, if your goal is to become healthy and fit, you're

00:44:14

going to go to the grocery store and you're not going to buy the Oreos and the M&Ms, even though

00:44:19

there are innovators that are pushing those who are saying, yeah, this is the thing,

00:44:23

because it just doesn't seem right. And it's really important for the, so I guess,

00:44:31

tying this all back, it's really important for two things to happen. One, you have to identify the

00:44:35

people who are really going to champion your cause. And then two, there really has to be authenticity

00:44:41

there for why they are championing this thing. There really has to be some value that's derived

00:44:47

from it so that it passes another way, I guess, to say it would be like the smell test, you know,

00:44:51

where when they, when this innovator talks to an early adopter or a late, early majority or a

00:44:57

late majority, that they can look at that and say, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay,

00:45:01

I'll do that. I'll go ahead and install that, that operating system. And I think a lot of

00:45:06

companies never really take the time, a lot of organizations never really take the time to

00:45:11

identify that so they can articulate it so that that message is kind of like a telephone game,

00:45:15

unless you start with, with something that is authentic, you're never going to get that down

00:45:20

the road, it's not going to become clear through translation, you have to make sure that you start

00:45:26

with a really solid, solid, articulated and very clear why, and then you can hope that that gets

00:45:31

translated correctly, but it's never going to become more clear as the process moves down the

00:45:36

chain. If you if you finish off the Tivo example, they, you know, essentially what they did is they

00:45:43

came up with this revolutionary device that allowed you to record your TV shows. We know what a Tivo

00:45:50

is, but instead of telling us, you know, this allows you to control your life, this is allowing you to,

00:45:55

you know, put things, you know, watch things when you want to instead of just when the cable

00:46:02

companies tell you you can, instead of telling us that they told us that, hey, you can record shows

00:46:07

and then you can play them back. That, you know, instead of telling us why it existed, they told us

00:46:12

what it did. I think a good parallel to this is, and I don't think this is an example from

00:46:19

this particular book, but when Apple came out with, you know, let's go, let's throw more Apple

00:46:23

examples out here. When Apple came out with the iPod, they didn't tell us, you know, it has such

00:46:31

and such size hard drive and here's how it plays and here's how you hit back and forward. Like,

00:46:36

it didn't tell us all that. They said, you can keep a thousand songs in your pocket. You know,

00:46:41

you can take your music with you. You're the type of person that wants to listen to music

00:46:45

whenever and wherever you want. This will do it for you. That's what they told us. They told us

00:46:50

why this thing existed instead of telling us, hey, you can put, you know, this many gigabytes

00:46:56

worth of song, or maybe it was megabytes. I don't even remember, but, you know, whatever that size was,

00:47:01

but, you know, there's a very big contrast between those two approaches. Well, we all know how big

00:47:07

the iPod was and it's pretty obvious that Tivo didn't dominate the market like they should have

00:47:12

and it's primarily because of the way that they marketed it to us and Simon Sennick does a pretty

00:47:18

good job of explaining that in a couple of scenarios. I can't even place where it's at right

00:47:21

now, Mike. I tried to find it, but couldn't do it, but he gave a couple examples of explaining the

00:47:28

differences in marketing tactics that people use or that companies use where they'll say, you know,

00:47:33

this is how big the hard drive is. This is the speed of its processor. Like, they would give us

00:47:38

all these stats on it and then they would say, do you want to buy it? Well, if you come at it the

00:47:43

other way around and take, say, the Apple approach where, you know, we have a passion for design,

00:47:50

we want to bring computing power to the everyday man. And by the way, we have a computer that has

00:47:57

this much hard drive and this much RAM. Like, you come at it from a different perspective where

00:48:02

you start out with the inner, you know, start out with the bullseye, that golden circle with your

00:48:06

why, even in your marketing. You know, let's talk about why our company and why we exist.

00:48:12

Let's talk about that first. And then we'll talk about how we go about making it and then we'll

00:48:17

talk about what it is. I mean, look at Apple's launch events whenever they introduce a new product.

00:48:23

They always start out with some of the purpose behind a product and then they go through the

00:48:28

process of how they made it. And then they'll tell you what that will do, which is just fascinating

00:48:34

that, and I don't even know if they intend to do it that way or if they just, you know,

00:48:38

figured it out through trial and error, but you know, they follow that golden circle perfectly

00:48:44

in almost every piece of marketing they ever do. And that might be why so many of us are such

00:48:49

huge fans of them anymore, because they've hit us at the core, Mike.

00:48:53

Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the launch events because I heard a statistic just this week that

00:49:02

the iPhone seven launch event, this is a statistic cited by the company that

00:49:07

built the streaming infrastructure that was used to broadcast the event. They said that more people

00:49:16

tuned in to watch the iPhone seven launch event than at any point during the Olympics this year.

00:49:25

Oh my gosh. And that's, that's because like, not total viewers, obviously for the Olympics,

00:49:30

but at any given point during the Olympics, the total number of viewers at that given point was

00:49:36

less than the number of people who tuned in to watch the iPhone seven launch event. And it's because

00:49:42

the goal is not to build a company. It is to in Simon Cinex words to build a megaphone. He talks

00:49:48

about how most companies have logos, but few have been able to convert those logos into meaningful

00:49:55

symbols. And that is definitely something that Apple has been able to do.

00:50:00

Or Harley, he talked about Harley Davidson quite a bit and the passion that people have for those

00:50:06

motorcycles, despite the growing group of people who hate them, you know, there's always a battle

00:50:13

back and forth, but yeah, welcome to iOS and Android fights. The Harley Davidson logo is one of the

00:50:20

few in existence that people will tattoo on their bodies. People love them that much that they'll

00:50:26

put a corporate logo on their chest. It's just what people love them that much. And very few

00:50:32

companies ever, you know, can even imagine reaching that level of loyalty.

00:50:37

Yeah, exactly. And that's because their, their goal is a little bit skewed. He talks, he has

00:50:48

another line in here where he talks about how money is never a cause. It is always a result.

00:50:53

And how many times have you heard from different companies or organizations that you've worked with?

00:50:57

You've got to keep an eye on the bottom line. What Simon Cinex is saying is that no, you don't.

00:51:04

You need to keep an eye on your vision and your why. And the score will take care of itself. And I

00:51:11

thought that was really cool. He also mentioned that what gets measured gets done. And that

00:51:19

really challenged me because from an organizational perspective, what are the

00:51:25

marketing term I know about key performance indicators? What are the things that really

00:51:31

determine a safe guys? Come on, Mike. Sorry. But I'm thinking about this, not just from an

00:51:37

organization, or I guess not from a business perspective, but like even from a ministry

00:51:43

perspective, like I'm the men's minister at our church. What are the things that contribute to a

00:51:51

successful ministry? And you can apply this to anything. What are the key things that determine

00:51:56

whether your family is successful? You know, you can apply this to any area of life, but you do need

00:52:02

to make sure that you are measuring the correct things. And then you have to measure those if you

00:52:07

don't get if you don't measure those specific things, then those things are not going to get done.

00:52:12

Maybe for your family, it's quality time. So it's the number of days that you spend

00:52:18

going to, I don't know, field trips, number of vacation days that you spend, I say field trips

00:52:24

because I'm we homeschool our kids. You know, so when I take a vacation day, it's usually to go to

00:52:29

the Children's Museum or something with my family. But those are the things that really

00:52:34

build strength in our family. It's that quality time that I spend with my wife and with my kids. So

00:52:40

that's something that I want to measure. And if I haven't gone on a field trip so far this year,

00:52:46

like I want to know that because that means that that thing is overdue. And if I neglect that for

00:52:52

too long, then the organization, in this case, the family organization is going to suffer because of

00:52:57

that. I think that makes a lot of sense. If you don't understand why you're doing something,

00:53:04

why do it at all? This is funny. You want to take it to a really low level here.

00:53:10

Earlier today, so my wife is gone for the weekend. She's at a women's retreat. Kudos to her. I really

00:53:17

wanted her to get some time to just go and relax and enjoy a nice little relaxing weekend. I

00:53:24

wanted her to get some of that. Anyway, I looked at my oldest and I realized she had her arms full

00:53:32

of toys. She just was loaded up with tons of toys. And I asked her if she was playing with all of

00:53:38

the toys. And she looked at me and said, "No." You have like 15 toys under your arms. You

00:53:46

reloaded it up. And I realized that our youngest was running around. Didn't really look like she

00:53:52

knew what to do. And that made me realize, "Oh, Emma is holding on to all of these toys because

00:53:59

she doesn't want Rose to play with them." So I looked at Emma and said, "Okay,

00:54:02

why are you holding on to all those toys?" She's like, "I don't know." It's like, "Well, if you don't

00:54:07

know why you're holding on to all these things, why don't you put them down?" That's a good point.

00:54:13

And then she went and she put all the toys down. And only when she put the toys down did she

00:54:18

realize why she was still holding on to them. And then she started trying to gather them again.

00:54:21

Anyway, it was interesting to me that even at that level, the simple question of, "Why are you

00:54:27

holding on to all this stuff?" Even in a three-year-old triggered the idea that,

00:54:31

"I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm going to stop doing this." And if a three-year-old can

00:54:39

figure that out, you would think billion-dollar companies could figure that out.

00:54:43

That we have all these things. I don't even remember the book now, "Sunk Cost Bias" that we

00:54:49

talked about where you invest a lot into a specific thing or a product and it's hard to kill it

00:54:54

because you've got so much invested in it. Well, there's a lot of that to be said with the why

00:55:00

as well because if you don't understand why you're holding on to something,

00:55:04

why do you still have it? Get rid of it. Let's go to minimalism. If you don't know why it's in

00:55:11

your life, if it doesn't have an exact purpose that happens repeatedly and frequently, get rid of

00:55:17

it. And don't hold on to things just because you think you should. That's a terrible reason to keep

00:55:22

doing things. I think there's a lot of value just in seeing and applying the purpose and a mission

00:55:30

and a vision to a lot of different areas, not just in business. It's obvious this is a primarily

00:55:36

business and leadership book, but I think there's a lot of truth that can come out of it down to

00:55:42

even a lower level, even to raising kids when they're playing with toys.

00:55:48

Absolutely, because it's one thing even to know the why yourself, but then you have to be able to

00:55:56

communicate that to other people. You have to be able to give that vision or that why to everybody

00:56:05

else that you work with or serve with or are in the organization with you. And he talks about how

00:56:14

that is the most difficult thing that you can do. He says that, where is it? I think he said in the

00:56:22

book, I didn't write this part down, but I think he said that successful succession is like the

00:56:27

most difficult thing for a business. And this is the part I did write down. He says successful

00:56:31

succession is more than selecting someone with an appropriate skill set. It's about finding someone

00:56:36

who is in lockstep with the original cause around which the company was founded. And he uses a bunch

00:56:42

of examples. We mentioned the Walmart example already, which really just solidified it for me.

00:56:48

Like how important that stuff really was. Like you have to get the right people on the bus, so to speak.

00:56:56

People really have to be on board with the why. And if they're not on board with the why,

00:57:02

that's okay, but it's not the right fit. And coming back to the business side of it,

00:57:08

you know, it's not just the people that you work with. It's not just the people who are in the

00:57:12

organization with you. It's the people that you're trying to, trying to sell to. And he has a quote at

00:57:16

the, at the very end of the book, which I absolutely loved. He said, are we better than our competition?

00:57:21

If you believe what we believe and you believe the things we can do can help you, then we're better.

00:57:26

And if you don't believe what we believe and you don't believe the things we can do will help you,

00:57:30

then we're not better. Our goal is to find customers who believe what we believe and work together so

00:57:36

that we can all succeed. And through all the different stories and things that he talks about,

00:57:40

and this is kind of getting to your last pointer, I guess, the achievement versus success, like

00:57:44

true success comes when there is synergy throughout the entire organization or the entire team.

00:57:51

And that has to be from the top down. You can't just believe the why, like Sam Walton did,

00:57:58

you have to be able to communicate that. And you have to be able to pass what he calls the school

00:58:03

bus test, which is where if the leader of the organization were to get hit by a school bus

00:58:08

tomorrow, is the why clearly articulated enough that everybody else in the organization would be

00:58:14

able to pick it up and run with it. And Walmart is an example of that not happening. I would

00:58:19

argue that Apple is actually a pretty good example of that happening. I know people will say, well,

00:58:24

it's not Steve Jobs Apple anymore. But I think for the most part, Tim Cook has been around long

00:58:28

enough that he's done a very, very good job maintaining that why throughout the company. He does things

00:58:35

a little bit different. He famously released the Apple Pencil where Steve Jobs said, like,

00:58:41

you don't need a stylus. We'll never make a stylus, things like that. But he's connected to the why.

00:58:47

And that's actually, now that I bring that point up, that's a really good example of people who

00:58:52

are viewing this from an inside out perspective versus an outside in perspective. The people who

00:58:57

will say, well, see, Tim Cook is not doing the same things as Steve Jobs would have done. They're

00:59:02

focusing on the what and the how. And they're focusing on what Steve Jobs said. He said, well,

00:59:08

you don't need a stylus. The perfect stylus is at the end of your hand. But it doesn't bother Tim

00:59:13

Cook and the rest of Apple that Steve Jobs once said that because they're looking from the inside

00:59:18

out. They're starting with the why. And they're asking themselves at this point today, like,

00:59:22

what is the vision? What would this, what would Steve Jobs do in this particular instance,

00:59:26

so to speak? Although I don't think they frame it that way. But it's more what would Apple,

00:59:30

what would the Apple that Steve Jobs created do? What would the Apple that we've all bought into?

00:59:34

And we've developed over the years, what would they do? And the answer is develop a really awesome

00:59:39

stylus to go with this iPad Pro that we released. And they're okay with that. You know, I think

00:59:44

I've been in situations though, where it's like, Oh, well, we once said this thing. So we can't go

00:59:48

back on our word. That's the wrong way to view it. That's looking at it from the, from the wrong

00:59:55

perspective, the wrong direction. And that can end up, I mean, it's a stylus, who cares? Like,

01:00:00

that's not going to make or break the company. But there are, there are situations that I can

01:00:04

think of in my own life, which I don't really want to share the podcast here. But like, we've,

01:00:11

we've said, Oh, we did this thing six years ago. So we can't possibly pivot and change directions

01:00:17

now because we're focused on the what. See, I think the Apple pencil thing, there is a good

01:00:24

example because so much of what they've done and what they've said in the past, it comes through

01:00:31

in something like the pencil, like it comes through in something like a stylus, because they're

01:00:36

trying so much to do this whole rebellious concept of helping the every man in competing with, say,

01:00:44

the corporations of the world. And whenever you have something like a stylus, you're able to write

01:00:50

and draw and create in ways that can rival what those big companies do. And that's so much of what

01:00:56

Apple tries to do is make really complex and really sophisticated and complicated processes,

01:01:03

like video and audio editing. And in my case, a lot of development, they're pretty good at making a

01:01:08

lot of that feasible from just about anybody that can pick up the devices. And there's a lot of that

01:01:16

that is easier done with something like a stylus. So I think there's a lot of value in them doing

01:01:21

something like that. And it's because they understand the why of what they do, and they understand

01:01:26

how to build something that garners a close relationship with the people who are going to be

01:01:34

using it. You know, there's a lot of loyalty that comes from the people who use their products.

01:01:40

So something like a stylus can help that come about, it can help people use the device in a

01:01:44

better way. And you know, honestly, it's, you know, I think your last point here is trust is not a

01:01:50

checklist. I think there's truth in that because so many companies and so many, at least the

01:01:56

corporations I've worked with, Mike, both as clients and just working for them as an employee,

01:02:02

they so often want to build loyalty. They'll put together these graphs and the funnels that

01:02:08

you'll see on these big presentations of how do we take people from a first time buyer to a loyal

01:02:14

forever customer? And they want to put, they literally create these checklists of here are the things

01:02:20

and here are the steps we need to take these people through in order to get them to a loyal

01:02:24

and trusting customer. And that's not the point. Like, that's not why, like you have to understand

01:02:34

the vision of why the company exists and then let that come through. And then people will buy

01:02:39

into that, even if it's just the early adopters, then they'll become your spokespeople. You know,

01:02:44

this is repetitive at this point, but you have to come at it from the standpoint of here's why we

01:02:50

exist as a company. And this is what we do. And you know, this is how we get this what in existence.

01:02:58

So I think that people so often try to say here are the steps you go through in order to succeed

01:03:05

and to build that trust. It doesn't work that way. That's not, you missed the point if that's what

01:03:12

you're trying to do. Exactly. You cannot just do xyz and then get trust. He says, trust begins to

01:03:21

emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than

01:03:26

their own self gain. And when you meet a company or a client, I may guess a relationship could work

01:03:34

either way. And they're willing to change their business model in order to work with you.

01:03:40

That is not going to facilitate trust that may facilitate a transaction, which is going to

01:03:47

provide a temporary short term gain, but it's going to provide a long term loss as you have to

01:03:53

rejigger your whole business model to figure out how do I how do I actually sustain this.

01:03:57

So just being upfront, saying like, yeah, you know, we may not be the best fit, but this is what

01:04:03

we believe. And if you agree, then come on board, we'll work together and we'll build you something

01:04:08

awesome. That builds trust, even with people who don't resonate, I think with what specifically

01:04:14

your why is, but the people who really do resonate with that, that's where the trust comes. And what

01:04:19

that trust comes a sense of value. In fact, he actually says that value is the transference of trust.

01:04:24

But trust is not something that you can manufacture. And that's the whole point behind trust is not a

01:04:32

checklist. You can't just do all the steps. And then all of a sudden you have trust. Trust is

01:04:38

kind of a hands off thing where obviously the things that you do will or will not build trust.

01:04:44

But you just do your part basically. And then it's up to the individual. And how they respond to

01:04:51

your why to manufacture that trust or not. And you have to be okay with there's a bunch of people

01:04:57

that are not going to trust us. And that's okay, there are a lot of people that don't trust apple,

01:05:02

that absolutely hate apple and vice versa. But if you can create those raving fans,

01:05:08

those innovators who will go to bat for you, then that will provide the success. And like I said,

01:05:13

that's not just a company or a business perspective. That's everything. I mean, that's what I really

01:05:18

liked about this book is this is a leadership book. Leadership can look a lot of different ways.

01:05:25

Leadership could be leading your family. It could be leading an organization. It could be leading a

01:05:30

business. It could be leading a ministry. It could be leading a community service team.

01:05:34

You know, fill in the blank for your sphere of influence. But the principles that are in this book,

01:05:39

I think are transformational because a lot of people view leadership as well, I have authority.

01:05:48

And I'm going to tell you to do something and you're just going to do what I say. But really like

01:05:52

bringing this all the way back, you can't just manipulate people that way through power or through

01:05:58

even incentivization, you have to inspire people. And if you can't figure out how to inspire people,

01:06:04

then any sort of leadership position you have is going to be short lived.

01:06:07

Just to just to clarify what you just said, you can get people to do what you want through

01:06:12

manipulation. Well, it's not discount that. Like you can, you can in the short term, you can pull

01:06:19

that off, but you won't build a bigger, longer term business through those methods without

01:06:26

destroying your business itself. Just exactly. And a great, great example, a great example of this,

01:06:32

I guess, to be the family perspective, like we both have young kids. Yes. Right now,

01:06:36

we can tell our kids, you have to go to bed by nine o'clock. Yes. Okay. But when they get to be

01:06:42

16, 17, 18, they're still under our roof. It's easy to try to play the power card with, well,

01:06:48

you're under my roof, you obey my rules. It's not going to work though. And all that's going to do

01:06:54

is it's going to produce this long term resentment instead of inspiring our kids to

01:07:00

deliver right and to make healthy choices, we're going to just basically build up this

01:07:04

resentment until they finally get freedom. And those are the people that they go to college and

01:07:08

they drink and they party and they funk out of school because I finally have this freedom.

01:07:13

You know, that's not what I want. So this book really hit home for me because I feel like these

01:07:17

are principles that I really have to solidify. I'll just use the family example. Like in my family

01:07:23

right now, because my kids are impressionable right now. And if I don't get this stuff down,

01:07:29

like it's gonna, I'm gonna get a harvest in six, eight, 10 years and it's either going to be good

01:07:37

or bad based on what I do right now. So I really want to make sure that I nail this.

01:07:41

Absolutely. And I know that for me, one of the things, I'm going to transition here

01:07:46

into action items, but one of the things that really struck me on this was that

01:07:51

so much of what I do in web development, like whenever I meet with clients and I build websites

01:07:58

for them. That is something that I am very good about stating, here's why I'm here. Here's why I'm

01:08:05

helpful to you. If that doesn't resonate with you, we need to split ways. And I'm very good at it

01:08:14

from that standpoint. The place I tend to fall down with knowing why I do things. And it's not

01:08:22

that I don't know why it's it's more that I have a feeling of my purpose behind my online business.

01:08:28

So why do I write the blog? Why do I write scripts that I give away? Why are we doing this podcast?

01:08:33

Like there's a lot of these things that I do online, both in written words, spoken words,

01:08:40

and then video in some form. It all involves words in some way. And it just depends on the

01:08:46

medium you want to share them. The question is, why do I do that? I could tell you, like, if we sat

01:08:51

down and talked about it for about 15 minutes, I could explain it to you. But I've never taken

01:08:56

the time to boil that down to say, here's exactly why I run this whole thing. And here's my purpose

01:09:03

behind it. Like I could get there eventually, but I've never boiled it down to define it specifically.

01:09:11

You get the difference between those two. That's kind of a nebulous thing there.

01:09:15

But that's what I want to try to do is get it boiled down to where I can state it clearly and

01:09:21

succinctly. Yeah, exactly. And I guess I didn't actually put down an action item because as I was

01:09:28

going through this, I saw all the different places that this applied to my life. And I felt like I was

01:09:32

kind of drinking from the fire hose, honestly, in terms of this book. And so, but my action item,

01:09:40

I'll just say is to do the exact same thing, just like reevaluate everything that I can easily

01:09:48

now sit down and identify all the things that I say I'm going to do or I want to do, for example,

01:09:55

I'm in a journal every night and I'm going to read my Bible and pray every day. Like,

01:10:02

those are things that are built into my current routines. And there are certain things that

01:10:07

we make our kids do, but I wanted to just basically take everything, all the different areas of my

01:10:14

life where I have those things. Like, I know the what and I want to actually just deconstruct

01:10:21

all of those things and say, okay, what is the why behind this? Basically, what you're saying with

01:10:27

your with your business. I just was really impacted by this book. And I realized that this has far

01:10:33

reaching effects throughout a lot of different arenas. And so, this is not probably going to be

01:10:38

something that we'll be able to completely follow up on next time. But I want to I want to start

01:10:45

from ground zero, I want to identify why for everything that we do, why do we parent the way

01:10:51

that we do, why do I work the way that I do, why do I lead the ministry the way that I do,

01:10:59

you know, and then if there's anything that's out of alignment there, it's got to be fixed.

01:11:04

But that's that's a pretty big project. That's definitely going in on focus.

01:11:07

So I have a whole bunch of questions for you for next time now.

01:11:12

Yep. There we go. Would you think a Simon's writing style?

01:11:17

I really liked the writing style. One thing I did not like was he capitalized every instance,

01:11:26

I think of what why and how, which I get why he did that.

01:11:30

It really makes the the terms pop off the page. But that got a little little old. That's not the

01:11:37

stuff that really resonated with me. It was more of the illustrations and the examples.

01:11:42

When he was getting into the explanations behind the points that he was trying to make

01:11:48

with that type of stuff. That's the only thing really that I didn't like about it though.

01:11:52

I really liked his his writing style. I really like his examples. I thought that his interpretation

01:11:58

of of events and things was spot on. I know you mentioned like it's apple apple apple. There are

01:12:02

a lot of different examples there. It's kind of obvious that he's a technology guy with an apple

01:12:06

bias as well. But I thought that everything that he said was not not viewed through like

01:12:12

roles colored glasses, so to speak. It was it was an accurate interpretation of the events

01:12:18

at the time that he was writing the book. So I really liked it and I would give it a 4.5.

01:12:24

4.5. So from my standpoint, I've said it a couple times now, I got tired of that apple constant,

01:12:34

which is fine. Again, I'm a big apple fan. So I'm good with that. My only thing was it just seemed

01:12:42

like there were a couple places where he could have broke the monotony a little bit.

01:12:48

And gone a different route. And that meant that to me it was a bit repetitive and there were a

01:12:52

lot of cases where and I just noticed this because I write a lot and you write a lot too. But we

01:13:00

you do that enough and you can start to notice things within certain paragraphs where it's like,

01:13:05

okay, so that sentence that you wrote there is almost identical to the one a couple paragraphs

01:13:10

before and it says the same thing. So why did you say it again? Like there was a lot of that

01:13:15

that I ran across and it just kind of got to be annoying to me. So that's why I say a bit

01:13:21

repetitive. That's a personal preference. That's not something that I think most people would pick

01:13:25

out. So that's just me. So anyway, all that to say I ended up rating this one a 4.0.

01:13:33

Coming up next, the ones that I have when I picked out to come up next is the innovators dilemma

01:13:41

by Clayton M. Christensen. And if I read correctly, he is a professor at Harvard. I think that's where

01:13:50

he's a professor. I probably got that wrong. Anyway, that's one I've had on my list for a while.

01:13:54

And I'm excited about that. Would you pick for following up to that one?

01:13:58

Well, I saw this on the list and this has actually been something on my list as well.

01:14:04

That is the productivity project by Chris Bailey. Chris Bailey was actually on the productivity show

01:14:11

and I believe that his book might actually be featured in the dojo right now.

01:14:17

Oh, nice.

01:14:17

But yeah, so it's been something that when he was on the podcast, he was talking about the

01:14:24

process that he was going through at the time of writing the book. So yeah, I'm interested to see

01:14:30

the end result of that. And I've heard a lot of good things about the book as well. So cool.

01:14:37

Yeah, I like our list of books. Mine grows a lot. I've got my own personal one that I maintain.

01:14:43

And then there's the one that you and I share. And I'm sure you've got one separate from that as well.

01:14:48

So book lists, yeah, they grow faster than you check them off. It's just the way it goes. However,

01:14:55

dear listener, if you're listening to this and you have a specific book that you'd like to hear us

01:15:00

go through, there is a way to recommend a book to us. If you go out to the bookworm site, bookworm.fm,

01:15:06

you'll find a link out there. You can you can click on the recommend button

01:15:10

that all the form will get that recommendation in the same area. You'll also find a book list that

01:15:16

lists all the ones that we've already gone through, as well as the ones that are coming up.

01:15:20

And those that have been recommended to us. So there is a way to see all of those. So you can

01:15:23

get a feel for the type of books and the different scenarios that we like to talk through. You can

01:15:28

get all of those out there at the bookworm site. And I did see that some of those have made it

01:15:34

onto the list. So we're going to be tackling some of those recommendations here. Yeah, some of

01:15:38

those recommendations made it onto the planned list. And there's one that's coming up very quickly

01:15:43

that I got in the mail here recently. And it's much longer than I was expecting with very small

01:15:49

type and it'll take a while to read that one. The other thing that you can do, and we would

01:15:58

really appreciate this, is if you enjoy the show, go over to iTunes and leave us a review.

01:16:04

Because the way that iTunes features podcasts, it takes into account and waits those reviews

01:16:11

very heavily. So by leaving a review, you're helping other people find the show. So we would

01:16:16

really appreciate if you would take a few moments and do that.

01:16:19

And just to kind of tease some things, might going to have a couple little

01:16:24

fun versions of episodes that we're going to deviate a little bit from the reading a book

01:16:31

concept here very soon. So just kind of stay tuned. We've got some interesting things we're

01:16:37

doing. We'd like to continue growing out the bookworm process. So those things are coming up,

01:16:41

so stay tuned. And those will be out quick, it seems. So we're pretty excited about that. But

01:16:46

until then, we have the innovators dilemma coming up. So if you're reading along with this,

01:16:50

you can pick that one up and get ready to go through that one in a couple weeks. So we

01:16:54

appreciate you tuning in to listen to us. And we will talk to you next time.