Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

So I'm curious Joe, I haven't checked in with you in a while regarding Obsidian.

00:00:04

Are you still using it?

00:00:05

I am.

00:00:06

It's great fun.

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Nice.

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How many notes you got in there now?

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Not anywhere near as many as you do.

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Guaranteed on that front.

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100%.

00:00:17

No, it's, I don't know, maybe.

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What is it?

00:00:23

350?

00:00:24

350 or so?

00:00:26

Okay.

00:00:27

Cool.

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I don't know if it was sticking for you because I have been telling everybody about Obsidian.

00:00:33

I tried to convince Chuck Joyner to use it the other day on Mac Voices.

00:00:37

Yep.

00:00:38

I just, as we record this, presented a three-hour workshop on Obsidian.

00:00:44

How did that go?

00:00:45

I saw all the stuff around it, but I didn't get a chance to join it.

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It was great fun.

00:00:50

It actually went really well.

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It was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, which is good, but also made

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me extremely nervous.

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You know how I put my slides together.

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I do all the video ahead of time and then chop it up into those little--

00:01:03

You're crazy.

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That's what you are.

00:01:05

Yeah.

00:01:06

Yeah.

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So I had the 155 of those video slides that I walked through.

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Good work.

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Yeah.

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It was a lot of work, but it went really well.

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So at least from my perspective, got some good feedback from folks.

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Quick tip for people who are following what I am doing.

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I am working on an Obsidian course for the suite setup.

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This workshop was a paid workshop.

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It was $79.

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The course is going to be $149, but just between you and me, if you buy the workshop

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because you can still buy the replay, now you will get the course when it comes out.

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So if you are already convinced that you want to get that course, you can save quite

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a bit of money if you buy the workshop now, plus you get access to the three hour zero

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to Obsidian thing that I did.

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Nice.

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So it's at thesweetsetup.com/obsidian and it will be available until the course comes

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out end of July is kind of what we're shooting for.

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But I am in love with this application.

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It can do so much.

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It's so great.

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I did something the other day.

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I have a note for every Bookworm episode that we've recorded and in the metadata at the

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top, I have the tags for the whole document and then I have Mike colon and Joe colon.

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So our ratings.

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And then there's this data view plugin, which I tell it, look at all the notes inside that

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Bookworm folder and sort them descending by Mike's rating.

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So it shows in a table all of the episodes with the links to the notes themselves with

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all the data was published, who picked the book, what we covered, and then it also shows

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all your ratings and all my ratings inside of Obsidian and it auto updates as soon as

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I throw a new note in that.

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Sure.

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That's pretty great.

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That's fascinating.

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Should we publish this thing?

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Is that publishable?

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Should we do that?

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I feel like you asked me about this at one point.

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The, well, this one, I don't know, we could.

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I'm going to record a video for this though that it's going to be part of the course,

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but I'm also going to deliver it to the blog first.

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So I'll share that when it comes out, but because it has a distinctly Bookworm angle

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to it, but it's super cool.

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And yeah, there's, there's so much stuff you can do with that data view plugin specifically.

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The moment I open that plugin, I'm like, this is for Joe.

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So you need to check that one out.

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All right.

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It's a plugin for the data obsessed, they say.

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Okay.

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That's good to know.

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I will, I will take a look at it for sure, but I haven't seen it yet.

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So I know that it exists and I know that I did a, a live stream that was kind of an update

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on how I've been using obsidian lately.

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And some folks were mentioning this data view plugin amongst a few others and I have not

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followed up on all those action items yet, but I have a list and it's sitting right over

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there.

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That's Joe's plugin.

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If there ever was a Joe's plugin.

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All right.

00:04:06

Good to know.

00:04:07

Shall we do some follow up?

00:04:09

That we shall.

00:04:10

All right.

00:04:12

So in order that we had them last time, did you figure out your procrastination review at

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the end of every day?

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I did.

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This actually worked out really, really well.

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It was more so, it was, it was more successful than I expected that this would be.

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It's one that, and I don't even remember, wasn't the, you were going to do the procrastination

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log, right?

00:04:35

So that's the method.

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I was going to do that.

00:04:38

Yes, I was.

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I said was.

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I don't know if you actually have or not.

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If not talked about this, there's that.

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But I was not going to go down that path because I didn't feel like I could identify

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the moments in time when I was procrastinating at that instant.

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So I opted to do an end of day review and just here's what I think happened today.

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Here's how I feel like I procrastinated and in what ways and what caused that and how

00:05:09

did I get there.

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I started doing some quick journal entries in my bullet journal that would keep track

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of this.

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And as it turns out, it works quite well.

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And I have noticed that there are a number of cases where I procrastinate and I'm not

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even aware that it happens after the fact, let alone in the moment.

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But I did have at least three or four days since we last recorded when I did this that

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I discovered afterwards that I procrastinated the entire day unknowingly.

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I accomplished things that I needed to get done.

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They just weren't what I was supposed to be doing that day.

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And I got the next days tasks moved because I didn't work on it that first day.

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I said that weird.

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But you get my point.

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I learned after the fact what I was doing and I was unaware of what was going on in the

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moment.

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So this is one that I feel like worked well for me.

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Again, I can't notice those things in the moment.

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So afterwards, very successful.

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Cool.

00:06:17

Great fun.

00:06:18

Well, we'll get to mine here in a second, but you had another one.

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Did you figure out how to play?

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You know, I didn't really spend much time on this one because I don't know when to play

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at the time.

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This is the trick, right?

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Maybe I will point out though that I think my wife and I, Becky and I were talking about

00:06:35

this last night and we're in an apartment right now.

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I don't know that I've said this on any stream or anything, but we did submit an accepted

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offer on a house.

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So we have a house pending purchase currently.

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So we're still in an apartment planning and prepping for whenever we close on a house

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end of June and the discussion that we had was that right now, because we're in an apartment,

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we don't have like all your normal house maintenance things.

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Like you can't just go do big projects and such and the kids start to get a little antsy

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when they're in an apartment all day long, right?

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So we can't just open the back door and say go play in the backyard because that doesn't

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exist.

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You have to go with them, which means that you can't work on things on your own in the

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afternoon or the evenings when the kids are still around.

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So that means we're out with them a lot more than we were previously and then we're doing

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our projects earlier in the morning or later at night when we normally wouldn't really

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do anything other than just blow time.

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So it's been kind of fascinating to see how that has morphed things, but it has meant that

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I've spent a lot more time in play mode with the kids than I have previously and it's been

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kind of weird to see how that's been forced upon us without having any plan for it at

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all.

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So although I'm not one that's excited about living in an apartment, I can definitely see

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where there are some benefits of having this put upon us.

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There you go.

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Nice.

00:08:09

So no formal play mode, but inadvertent accidental play mode has been activated.

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So I like it.

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I'm itching to know.

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I talked about the procrastination review.

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You have made a comment about your procrastination log.

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How did this go?

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Did you keep one?

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It did not happen at all.

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Aww.

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Well, okay.

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So here's the deal.

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We record Bookworm and I get all excited about the benefits of identifying when I'm

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going to procrastinate.

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And then I get done and we sell 10 times as many copies of Zero Tube City and as we thought

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we were going to and then I freak out because I'm like, okay, now this thing has to be amazing.

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So basically since we recorded the last episode, I have been feeling tremendous pressure like

00:09:00

a looming deadline where if you don't get this done, it's going to be a disaster.

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Except that as soon as I think that I'm done, I realize there's more I could do to make

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it awesome.

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And so I can't say no to that and I just do it.

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This happens pretty much every year that I presented at Max Talk 2.

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It's not that big a deal, right?

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I could probably just show up and talk and everyone would be, hey, that's great.

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But I feel it's internal pressure to just make something super awesome.

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So timing for this was just absolutely terrible for me because I guess you could say I worked

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on that as a form of procrastination, but it didn't feel like it.

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It more so felt like hurry up and get this thing done.

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And then the scope just kept changing.

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By my own stupid fault, because I'm like, hey, instead of just walking through it, I will

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record all these videos and that will save some time.

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Which ultimately, I mean, the end product is better.

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I'm trying to get people from, they've never even opened Obsidian to their using it to solve

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a specific pain point and their note taking workflow within two hours, which is already

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an ambitious goal.

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I don't want to waste anybody's time.

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I have to answer questions and give people time to work on stuff as we go.

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So I'm like, yeah, I just got to do it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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So I did it and I put in a lot of hours for that, but it's okay.

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It was great.

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It was worth it.

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I do want to try this again.

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I don't have anything specific.

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Like, I don't know.

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I've got some other things I'm brewing on as we read today's book.

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So maybe that will displace procrastination in terms of like, what's important, what's

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priority for me right now?

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So, let me get this straight.

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You're going to procrastinate on your procrastination log.

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Yeah.

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I just want to make that clear.

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Exactly.

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All right.

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Oh, that gives me an idea for another book.

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All right.

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I'm going to write this down.

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Okay.

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So I'm curious to see if you actually pull this off on the next round.

00:10:56

Yeah.

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We will see.

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Okay.

00:10:59

The other one that I thought you would be more anxious to hear about would be, did I

00:11:04

actually meditate this time?

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I do want to know the answer to this.

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I did with mixed success, the first day, because I'm trying to do it as part of the morning

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routine before I start work, and I opened up 10% happier on that Monday after we recorded

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and opened up the daily thing, and it was 20 minutes long.

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And I'm like, nope.

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It's some of them.

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It's really weird.

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It depends on who the instructor is.

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Like you can choose a different time length, but that was literally the shortest for the

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one for that day.

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And I was like, well, this is just not going to work.

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And I still had my headspace subscription.

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So I went back and did the five minute headspace one.

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Yep.

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And I think I did that three or four times since we recorded.

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I do think it's valuable.

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I'm going to try to make it stick.

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I feel like it's kind of at the point right now.

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It could go either way.

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So if you remember next time, you can ask me about it.

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But I'll give you grief next time.

00:12:02

Okay.

00:12:03

Sounds good.

00:12:04

So every day, this one, I did pretty good on.

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I know I mentioned like I was working a lot on this presentation for the Zero to Obsidian

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workshop, but we did also get an Xbox.

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I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time.

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Why would you do such a thing?

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Well, I have four boys who love video games.

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So I was the bearer of extremely great news when I walked in the door with an Xbox Series

00:12:33

S a couple of weeks ago.

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Nice.

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And I started doing just some poking around like seeing, can you even get a PlayStation

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5, a newer Xbox?

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And the answer pretty much is nope.

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And then I found Xbox and stock at Green Bay.

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It's like half hour away.

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And I just went up and got it.

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Nice.

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Because I could.

00:13:00

Nice.

00:13:01

Yeah.

00:13:02

So we've got that.

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It's new and they have this service Xbox game pass, I think they call it, where it has like

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the the piece where you have to pay to play online.

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Like that's Xbox live, I think.

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That's always been, you know, a certain cost.

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I think it's 10 bucks a month or something like that.

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But for 15 bucks a month, you also get game pass, which gives you access to a whole bunch,

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like 200 different games, including all of the EA ones, which are the ones that I like.

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So like the new FIFA, the new Madden, all that kind of stuff.

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So I've been trying to play like at least one game of FIFA, which is like 10, 15 minutes.

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Yeah.

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Everyday, which has been fun.

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Nice.

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And my kids absolutely love it.

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So yeah, I think, you know, when I was talking about the kids forcing us into playing, there's

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a, there's a game room at the apartment and it has foosball and shuffleboard in there.

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And they love, love, love, love playing foosball.

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So every day when I'm home from work, dad, can we go play foosball?

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It's like, so it's nice for me because it's not a video game.

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It's like, but it's an actual physical game they can go play.

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So analog, Joe's just comes in and wins again.

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So there's that.

00:14:10

Well, on the topic of foosball, I've got a story here too.

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Okay.

00:14:16

So we got a foosball table for Christmas.

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Last couple of years, we've not gotten anybody individual gifts but gotten family gifts.

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So two years ago, it was a ping pong table.

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And this last year it was a foosball table.

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Okay.

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Everybody signs off on it and they're like, yeah, that we want to do that.

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So it's not like, you know, if they wake up in the morning, they're disappointed because

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they didn't get an individual gift from mom and dad.

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So we got this foosball table and we play it all the time.

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Toby, my oldest is getting pretty good.

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He can beat me about half the time.

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Okay.

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And so we have this running joke that whoever wins when we play is King of the Knobs.

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Okay.

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And I actually got a foosball trophy made, so it's got the foosball guy on top.

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And it actually says King of the Knobs and now whoever wins gets to keep the trophy.

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It's a traveling trophy.

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But it never leaves our house.

00:15:06

Nice.

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That's pretty slick.

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That's a good idea.

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Yeah.

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King of the Knobs.

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That's good.

00:15:14

That's good.

00:15:15

Shall we jump in today's book?

00:15:16

Yes.

00:15:17

I think this will be a fun one.

00:15:18

Oh, this is going to be a fun one.

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This is longer than I remembered.

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So I apologize in advance.

00:15:23

Did you buy the updated version or did you stick with the one you had?

00:15:26

I did.

00:15:27

So now I know how to lead millennials.

00:15:29

Okay.

00:15:30

That's what I was wondering.

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But that's what it says on my cover.

00:15:33

Is that the one that you got?

00:15:34

Yep.

00:15:35

Yep.

00:15:36

Because I had to buy it again, remember?

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Because my original is buried in a storage unit somewhere and I have no clue where it

00:15:41

is.

00:15:42

So there's that.

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So yes, I have the new version as well.

00:15:47

All right.

00:15:48

Yeah.

00:15:49

And I had gone through this before simply as an audio book.

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And read the real one this time.

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But this is leaders eat last by Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, which we had covered

00:16:02

previously.

00:16:03

A very different type of book than Start with Why.

00:16:07

Very different type of book than almost anything that we've read, I would argue.

00:16:10

Yeah, I think that's fair.

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Because instead of the three parts that most books come in, this one has eight and they

00:16:19

are not.

00:16:20

I mean, if you look at the mind map for this one, it's kind of weird looking.

00:16:25

It balances out, but there are some sections like section five that have tons of notes.

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And there are some sections like section eight, which are very, very short.

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And then also what's kind of weird about this is that the very beginning of the book,

00:16:40

the introduction, that is where the title comes from.

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And so if you don't read the introduction, you're like, well, where does leaders eat

00:16:47

last come in?

00:16:48

Right.

00:16:49

You can easily get confused, for sure.

00:16:52

Yeah.

00:16:53

So in fact, I thought I had read the introduction and then I was getting to the end of the book

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and I'm trying to recall like that story that they tell in the introduction.

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I'm like, did I just miss that?

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I don't see it in my mind map.

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And then I went back and I went back and I was like, oh, that's where it was.

00:17:06

I didn't realize like that was the whole extent of that because that was a really big

00:17:09

thing in my memory of when I listened to the book.

00:17:13

I'll just start here with the introduction before we tackle it part by part.

00:17:17

There's no way we're going through all the different chapters, but this introduction

00:17:21

is written by a Lieutenant General of the Marine Corps George Flynn.

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And it's only a couple of pages, but talks about how if you watch Marines when they eat,

00:17:33

the leaders always eat last.

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They make sure all of their guys go through the child line first.

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And so that is the basis of the title and the big idea you can extrapolate from that is

00:17:49

that leadership is not about you and your privilege.

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It's about serving the people that are underneath you and prioritizing them, which if that's

00:18:00

the only thing you got out of this book, I'd argue it's already worth it.

00:18:03

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:18:06

It is.

00:18:07

It is.

00:18:08

And it's so true though, right?

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And I even think about, you know, I was always told growing up that I needed to let everyone

00:18:16

else go through the line first.

00:18:18

Never really thought much about it.

00:18:20

I just followed through with what I was told, but it is fascinating now with like our small

00:18:26

group.

00:18:27

We have dinner every time our small group gets together and all of the guys have the

00:18:31

same mentality.

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So it's like this fight of who's going to get forced through the line before someone

00:18:37

else.

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And I think the only one who wins is whoever's the host of the event.

00:18:42

But it's interesting how like, well, what happens if you've got multiple people that

00:18:46

are like on top of each other at that point, but that aside, you're correct.

00:18:51

Yeah, it seems very fascinating to see like the people who are top notch leaders are at

00:18:56

the end of the line, not necessarily at the beginning of the line.

00:18:59

Yep.

00:19:00

And so this is, I guess a leadership book.

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You could also say it is a business book because it does talk a lot about leadership

00:19:07

and organizations and corporations specifically.

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I think we'll probably talk about like the GE approach versus the Costco approach that's

00:19:15

later on.

00:19:17

But let me just real briefly run down these different sections here.

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So part one is our need to feel safe.

00:19:23

Part two is called powerful forces.

00:19:26

Part three is titled reality.

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Part four is how we got here.

00:19:30

Part five, the abstract challenge.

00:19:32

Part six, destructive abundance, part seven, a society of addicts and part eight, becoming

00:19:38

a leader.

00:19:39

Okay.

00:19:40

And then there's something like 30 different chapters here.

00:19:44

We're just going to tackle the section by section and try to crank through them quickly

00:19:49

because there is a lot of meat in this book.

00:19:52

Yeah, we could spend a lot of time on this one.

00:19:54

Yeah, this could be five separate episodes, to be honest, based on how much is in here.

00:20:01

But we're not going to do that.

00:20:02

We're going to keep it hopefully two and a half.

00:20:06

Good luck.

00:20:07

So part one, our need to feel safe.

00:20:09

The big ideas here, I think are the circle of safety he talks about in chapter three.

00:20:16

And there's a visual here where he's got the circle and inside it's as safe and then

00:20:20

danger is like on the outsides.

00:20:23

And so that is a common theme throughout the rest of the book is as a leader, what you

00:20:29

want to do is develop this circle of safety for the people that you lead.

00:20:33

And there's different versions of this visual as we go here.

00:20:39

He shares a couple cool stories.

00:20:41

The book starts with a pretty intense story about Johnny Bravo, who's flying in a 10 for

00:20:46

a support mission.

00:20:48

And he just hears the chatter on the radio, feels like he's supposed to go in.

00:20:53

Can't see anything, goes in anyways and ends up saving a bunch of people's lives because

00:20:57

he's able to give them cover fire at the exact spot that they needed, even though he can't

00:21:01

see anything.

00:21:02

He's just kind of trusting his gut.

00:21:04

And the end of that chapter is kind of like, where do people like Johnny Bravo come from?

00:21:10

And that's the guy's nickname.

00:21:12

So that is kind of like the picture in your head as you go through the rest of the book.

00:21:18

Like this is what he's picturing as a leader, this person who is taking a risk and doing

00:21:25

something that could end up meaning disaster for themselves because they just feel like

00:21:29

they need to jump in and help these other people who are in danger.

00:21:35

So what did you think about this story?

00:21:39

Blake is saying in the chat, that story is so wrong in so many ways.

00:21:42

I'm not a pilot, so I don't know.

00:21:44

I have no clue, but knowing Blake comes from the military and is a current pilot.

00:21:52

Huh, okay, I was reading your comment, Blake, and I just couldn't help but think I wonder

00:21:56

what is going on there.

00:21:58

But I'll do a little more research on it now because I'm very curious.

00:22:03

But this is both the difficulty and the benefit of how authors tell stories, right?

00:22:11

And they have a specific thing that they're trying to call out.

00:22:16

They very likely can't tell you all the detail because they don't want to take up that much

00:22:19

space to tell the story because it would probably be the entire book if they gave you

00:22:23

absolutely everything about it.

00:22:26

But it's difficult to know where details should or shouldn't be brought in.

00:22:34

And the other thing you have to rely on in the midst of trying to tell these stories

00:22:38

is your source of where you got the story can be sometimes tainted a little bit and

00:22:45

you may not know it and people who have been around the story for many, many years, many

00:22:51

different sources have come into them.

00:22:53

They would know immediately that your story isn't 100%, but you may not know that and

00:22:57

by the time you figured out it's too late and printed, right?

00:23:00

Maybe that's what happened here.

00:23:01

I don't know.

00:23:02

Haven't dug into the story, so I don't know the answer to that.

00:23:04

But I do know that if the story has any semblance of truth, it's fascinating and it makes a

00:23:10

good point.

00:23:11

Even if it is a fiction retelling.

00:23:13

I think the value behind it is still there, right?

00:23:18

Sometimes your instincts tell you you need to act, whether you know how safe or how real

00:23:24

the danger is you don't know.

00:23:25

But if your instincts tell you to act, you're better off following through on those.

00:23:30

Like that's kind of what I got from it, I guess.

00:23:34

There's a lot of different ways you could come at it.

00:23:36

If you want to dive in deep and figure out where these stories are, he's got tons of

00:23:42

resources for you in the back.

00:23:44

So I just looked up that one for part one that flying over the thick clouds.

00:23:48

The sources for this are Ted Talk that was recorded May 2012 and he's got the URL by

00:23:55

Mike Drowley.

00:23:56

That's the pilot.

00:24:01

And then also he did an interview with Mike Drowley in April and June of 2013.

00:24:06

And there are a lot of these sources in here where it just says author's interview with.

00:24:13

So he didn't just dig up a bunch of stories in an archive somewhere.

00:24:18

He actually talked to a lot of these people, which is kind of crazy when you see how many

00:24:23

stories are in here.

00:24:25

I mean, we may have a new contender for the best storyteller between Simon Sinek and Ryan

00:24:32

Holiday here.

00:24:33

Oh, easy.

00:24:34

I mean, he's up there with Ryan Holiday on this, right?

00:24:38

So Ryan Holiday was a master at finding the stories you've never heard and then telling

00:24:45

them impeccably well.

00:24:47

Simon Sinek has done his research.

00:24:49

I'll say that.

00:24:51

Yeah, I will say it would be easy not to dive in and look at all of his sources.

00:24:56

If you just read this, it reads very much like he is cherry picking specific details

00:25:02

from the stories to support his point.

00:25:05

But when you realize how much research went into this, I feel like that kind of negates

00:25:10

that criticism a little bit.

00:25:13

But yeah, I mean, obviously he's got a message he's trying to get across.

00:25:17

So he's going to pick some stories.

00:25:19

But I don't think it's I don't think it's any worse than what Ryan Holiday did.

00:25:22

I think the same criticism you could use there to and all these stories are told really,

00:25:27

really well.

00:25:28

He does a great job of condensing these stories into short little snippets too because there

00:25:33

are so many of them.

00:25:34

I mean, even in this first section, he talks about this guy, Bob Chapman, who comes in,

00:25:39

he buys these distressed companies.

00:25:41

And then he starts sitting in the cafeteria and listening to employees and he actually

00:25:47

starts implementing some of the feedback that he gets from them.

00:25:51

They're shocked because no one's ever listened to them before.

00:25:54

And so the whole organization goes from, we're about to go under to, we're doing really,

00:25:58

really well just because he's showing empathy to the people that actually work there.

00:26:03

It's kind of crazy.

00:26:05

I also like with the Circle of Safety, one other story he told here about the Spartans

00:26:10

Warrior strength.

00:26:12

So Spartans were, I believe, the Greek warriors with the big shields.

00:26:17

And I've understood a little bit about these warriors before, but there was a detail here

00:26:24

that I thought was fascinating.

00:26:29

He said that if you lost your helmet or your breastplate, there wasn't any major repercussions

00:26:34

for that.

00:26:35

But if you lost your shield, you lost all citizenship rights because your helmet and

00:26:43

your breastplate, you use when you are defending yourself, but the shield you use when you

00:26:48

are defending each other.

00:26:51

Not that that was kind of cool.

00:26:53

Yeah, that's so fascinating to me.

00:26:56

And there are a lot of stories like that, especially from the military.

00:27:00

Like the whole leaders eat last thing.

00:27:02

If they run out of food, it's the leader who doesn't eat, right?

00:27:05

Exactly.

00:27:06

The thing here is that whenever the actions, and there's a story later on too of an officer

00:27:14

who fell asleep on the watch, but they were debating taking him out of the officer and

00:27:19

training.

00:27:20

Oh, right.

00:27:21

Yeah.

00:27:22

And that's in a later chapter to different reason.

00:27:25

But the purpose behind that was yes, he fell asleep.

00:27:29

He was in the woods of Virginia, not a big deal.

00:27:32

But when he was called out on it, he denied it multiple times until irrefutable proof

00:27:36

was shown to him.

00:27:39

That was why.

00:27:40

And then he said I'd like to take responsibility for the actions and they're like too late,

00:27:43

but he's way too late.

00:27:45

You're a step behind now.

00:27:47

This is not going to fly.

00:27:49

So much of this book is about the process of leaders taking responsibility without being

00:27:55

caught and being willing to take the fall whenever something goes awry.

00:28:02

I've had people explain it to me as like something may not be my fault, but it's my responsibility.

00:28:07

Yeah.

00:28:08

So someone else may cause something bad to happen, but it's my responsibility to take

00:28:12

care of it.

00:28:13

So that I feel like is one of the foundations that comes out here, but you're absolutely

00:28:17

right.

00:28:18

It's not going to be said for this process of being aware and being empathetic to those

00:28:24

who are quote unquote underneath of you in the hierarchy.

00:28:28

Yeah.

00:28:29

And on that topic, let's go into the next section here, part two powerful forces, because

00:28:33

there is a fascinating story here about a company, I believe it's called Next Jump, which

00:28:40

basically hires people for life.

00:28:43

They don't fire people when someone messes up, they get coached.

00:28:49

And this is kind of an idea that he extends throughout the rest of the book comes up again

00:28:54

and again of you can't fire a family member.

00:28:59

You can't fire your kids.

00:29:01

And he uses that specifically because he knows it's going to elicit a strong reaction

00:29:06

for people like, how could you even suggest something like that?

00:29:10

But that's kind of what happens in these organizations and companies is that people

00:29:15

will give their whole life to a company.

00:29:17

And then the manager is focused on the numbers, not the people and just lets a person go.

00:29:22

So this is his story of this company that got this revelation and they're like, no,

00:29:27

we're just going to change the way that we do business.

00:29:30

And we're not going to fire anybody because the founder, Charlie Kim, believed that running

00:29:36

a business or running a company is like raising children.

00:29:41

And it was kind of cool to see like the metrics with this because you would think, well, if

00:29:45

you can't fire anybody, when things get bad, you're going to lose a ton of money.

00:29:49

And they actually went from, this was a tech company.

00:29:54

They went from 25% growth to 60% growth when they started doing this.

00:29:59

And they also used to have 40% turnover in their staff, which is an insanely high number

00:30:04

when you think about all the costs associated with the hiring process and doing the interviews

00:30:09

and finding people to fill the positions and then training them up to do the job specifically

00:30:15

that they were hired for.

00:30:17

It's kind of crazy when you think about how much you have to invest in that.

00:30:21

And that just basically gets thrown out the window when you're thinking about, well, do

00:30:25

we keep this person or not?

00:30:28

Yeah, there's a lot.

00:30:31

There's a lot of difficult pieces with that one, I think, because you have to make the

00:30:37

decision upfront.

00:30:40

What was the company that did the lifetime employment policy where once you were hired,

00:30:45

you could not be fired if the company was next jump?

00:30:49

Was that them?

00:30:50

Okay.

00:30:51

Because with that policy, it meant that you couldn't get fired for your actions or the

00:30:58

company's lack of performance.

00:31:02

And two things went through my head.

00:31:05

One, what happens if somebody's just really good in the interviews, manages to get hired

00:31:09

and then just doesn't do anything?

00:31:11

That's what went through my head on one side because people are people and they're not

00:31:15

always genuine and good at what they're like.

00:31:18

They're not always honest and authentic.

00:31:22

That was one thing that went through my head.

00:31:23

The other was it's fascinating to me that a policy like that has such positive effects

00:31:31

because it's purely the, my job is not ever at risk because of me speaking up or the company

00:31:39

doing poorly.

00:31:41

And it means that because of that trust, like, okay, take my situation.

00:31:47

I work for a church, right?

00:31:49

Churches generally don't fire people.

00:31:51

It's just going to say that.

00:31:53

They just generally don't.

00:31:55

So they want to be nice.

00:31:57

They want to be kind.

00:31:58

They want to be inclusive to a lot of people.

00:32:00

They generally don't fire.

00:32:02

And in my role, I'm extremely confident in my position.

00:32:07

I don't see it being canceled or cuts for many, many, many, many years.

00:32:14

And that puts me in a spot where I don't feel like me causing a stink over something that

00:32:22

I think is wrong.

00:32:24

I don't feel like that's going to jeopardize my role.

00:32:28

I also don't think that there's really outside of like stealing or something like royally

00:32:36

terrible would actually lead me to being fired in any way.

00:32:41

So because I have that trust and because I have that confidence in my job, I have a tendency

00:32:48

to be a lot more creative and a lot more.

00:32:51

I push the boundaries of what we should or couldn't could do in the future to help the

00:32:57

ministries of the church where I think if I was nervous about going too far or making

00:33:05

a suggestion or pushing on a project that I thought potentially might fail and then reflect

00:33:09

poorly on me and then potentially jeopardize my job, I don't think I would push near as

00:33:14

hard.

00:33:15

I don't think I would try to be as daring with some of the stuff that I do that I would

00:33:21

actually kind of just sit back and coast more than try to innovate if that if you follow

00:33:29

what I'm getting at.

00:33:30

So I think that trust and what they're doing with this lifetime employment policy is actually

00:33:35

really, really smart, but it requires you to be spot on with your hiring whenever you

00:33:42

go down that path for sure.

00:33:43

Yeah, you definitely have to be slow to hire and make sure that you're getting the right

00:33:48

person.

00:33:50

And I think he does mention that there have been a couple of occasions where somebody

00:33:57

has just they're leaving the company for whatever reason.

00:34:02

Maybe they did do something like completely against the company culture, but whenever

00:34:08

they do that they don't just like cut them loose either.

00:34:10

If someone wants to leave basically, then they help them find a new position because

00:34:17

they're prioritizing the individual.

00:34:19

So I don't think they it's like a hundred percent once you're in, that's it.

00:34:24

I think they probably do have a few scenarios where they would be willing to say, you know,

00:34:30

we got to go our separate ways, but when they do that, they're going to help the person

00:34:33

land on their feet.

00:34:35

And then the speaking freely part that you were talking about, that's the result of that

00:34:39

circle of safety, right?

00:34:41

Which is the other thing in this chapter, he talks about these four chemicals that affect

00:34:46

our happiness.

00:34:48

And two of them serotonin and oxytocin, those are selfless chemicals that keep that circle

00:34:54

safety strong.

00:34:55

I actually found this part pretty fascinating because I love all this brain science stuff.

00:35:00

Yep.

00:35:01

I spent a lot of time on this part and actually reread some of these pieces just because

00:35:06

it's like, oh, neuroscience.

00:35:08

Yay.

00:35:09

Yep.

00:35:10

That was my kid in a candy store moment.

00:35:13

Well, you just give me another idea for another book.

00:35:16

Okay.

00:35:17

But I'll just run through these real quickly.

00:35:19

So the four chemicals he talks about are endorphins, which exist to mask physical pain.

00:35:24

He talks about the runner's high being an example of this and also the fact that laughing

00:35:27

releases endorphins, which I thought was interesting.

00:35:30

Dopamine, which is the one that you and I are probably the most familiar with because that

00:35:35

one gets brought up in the productivity space all the time.

00:35:39

That's the one that brings satisfaction after we finish something important, causes us to

00:35:43

be goal oriented, but it also fuels addictions, whether those be substance abuse or something

00:35:48

like social media.

00:35:51

Serotonin is the leadership chemical.

00:35:53

This is the one thing that drives the feeling of pride when we feel people like or respect

00:35:58

us.

00:35:59

So the people who do something, graduation, big accomplishment, whatever they get up on

00:36:04

stage and they feel they get they think somebody, I couldn't have done it without them.

00:36:11

That's serotonin on display.

00:36:14

And then oxytocin, that's the feeling of friendship, love or deep trust.

00:36:17

This is the one that's kind of responsible for those warm fuzzy feelings.

00:36:22

Without this one, we don't perform acts of generosity.

00:36:25

This is the one that makes us social.

00:36:28

This one is also long lasting, which is interesting because dopamine is kind of the opposite.

00:36:32

That's the one where you get instant gratification, then you feel like you need another hit.

00:36:37

So basically you can be driven by those endorphins and dopamine.

00:36:41

Those are the reasons that we hunt, we gather, we achieve though he calls those the progress

00:36:45

chemicals, but then serotonin and oxytocin, those are the selfless ones that keep that

00:36:50

circle of safety strong.

00:36:51

And these are actually the ones that make a big impact in the long term.

00:36:55

Yeah, I wasn't real sure what to do with the like how to act on a lot of this because

00:37:01

we've studied and read a lot about endorphins and dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin.

00:37:09

Like we've read about these in many books in the past, they come up in a variety of ways.

00:37:15

They're the four chemicals that we generally hear about.

00:37:20

At the same time, since I, you know, being down the ADD path and taking medication for

00:37:29

that, like I've stepped into a lot of this science to a pretty deep level in my specific

00:37:36

scenario.

00:37:37

And the only thing I really want to add to this in this particular piece is like he just

00:37:41

it lines up with a lot of what I've seen, like it all just makes sense and fell right in

00:37:47

the same path and then the same vein that a lot of my external research has led me to

00:37:52

as well.

00:37:54

So it's an encouragement in that, you know, he's done a good job I would say with this

00:37:58

because apparently Simon Sennick just spends his days researching and studying and interviewing

00:38:03

and such.

00:38:04

So that's kind of what I've learned.

00:38:05

Well, it's project anyways.

00:38:06

Yeah.

00:38:07

Yeah, he obsessed over this one.

00:38:08

You can tell.

00:38:09

Yep.

00:38:10

The next section is part three reality.

00:38:13

And this is basically talking about how all of these chemicals and the roles that they

00:38:19

fulfilled for us when we were running around as cavemen trying to bring down wild animals,

00:38:27

how they're not really suited for today's culture.

00:38:30

In fact, there's a chapter in the section called a snowmobile in the desert.

00:38:36

And he kind of talks about how a snowmobile in the desert, you can actually move, but

00:38:41

it's not made for that, for that environment.

00:38:47

So it's going to be slow.

00:38:49

It's going to take a lot more effort than it then is warranted.

00:38:55

And so he's kind of equating this with the modern workplace, modern culture and saying

00:39:02

there's a better way to do this.

00:39:04

It's not a whole lot I want to talk about in this section.

00:39:08

Happy to discuss anything you found in here, but a couple interesting things I saw just

00:39:13

a stat that the self help industry is an $11 billion per year industry.

00:39:21

That is a lot of money that people are spending on self improvement.

00:39:29

And then also in the previous chapter, the courage to do the right thing.

00:39:34

He talks about how trust needs to be reciprocal.

00:39:38

You can't have one way trust in a group that's not valuable.

00:39:44

So the people that are being led need to trust their leader, but the leader needs to trust

00:39:50

the people also.

00:39:51

There has to be a two way relationship.

00:39:53

Otherwise, it's just not going to work because ultimately what we need is we need to trust

00:39:59

the people around us that not only are they going to do the right thing at the right time,

00:40:05

not only are they going to obey the rules, but also like Johnny Bravo at the very beginning

00:40:11

that they know when they need to break them as well for the good of the group.

00:40:18

Yes.

00:40:19

I don't think there's much I want to add to this particular one, just that the part is

00:40:25

called reality and just keeping things down to earth and being aware of what's really

00:40:34

going on as opposed to what you want to have been going on.

00:40:39

You mentioned the self help industry and we probably don't help people with that much.

00:40:47

We create things that people spend to be better people.

00:40:50

We're the type of people who do that and that's not a bad thing, but at the same time I often

00:41:00

wonder where is the line there?

00:41:03

At what point do we need to stop doing the research and buying courses and buying things

00:41:10

that help us become better people?

00:41:12

I'm saying that knowing that both of us have at least part of our income, if not all of

00:41:17

our income from that, so I have to be a little careful with that.

00:41:23

At some point you have to stop and work on building your own systems and pay attention

00:41:29

to yourself.

00:41:30

The meditate thing that you've been doing, Mike, stop, pay attention to why you're acting

00:41:36

or not acting on something.

00:41:38

Why do you not do those items on your task list?

00:41:41

Why is that?

00:41:42

That's a tool, I would argue it's rarely the tool that I'm busy procrastinating.

00:41:48

Correct.

00:41:49

There's too much other stuff that you're focusing on that you shouldn't be.

00:41:55

It's rarely going to be the app, the software you choose.

00:42:00

It's rarely going to be that.

00:42:02

It has more to do with the concepts and mindsets that you bring to it.

00:42:07

That I think is what he's getting at here, is that that concept of don't assume that

00:42:13

you need to make one change and then all your woes will disappear.

00:42:19

You need to stop and be a little bit introspective here and pay attention to yourself and how

00:42:25

the brain chemicals, how are those impacting you and how are you taking advantage of those?

00:42:30

I think that's what he's calling you to pay attention to here.

00:42:33

I got out of this was a little bit different.

00:42:37

I think he's saying that we have a tendency based on our neocortex, which is constantly

00:42:44

driving us to learn and to achieve, to be isolated.

00:42:48

We are in fact social animals and trust is the lubrication going back to the snowmobile

00:42:53

in the desert that allows you to move.

00:42:57

We spend a lot of money trying to make ourselves better, but really if we want to make ourselves

00:43:03

better, we got to make everybody in our circle of safety better and we don't look there very

00:43:08

often.

00:43:09

The other thing I want to just real quick mention because you did bring up that we are

00:43:13

in this self-help industry.

00:43:16

I think the thing I hear all the time from people is that they buy these courses, but

00:43:22

they don't go through them.

00:43:24

So the big challenge for someone who actually wants to help somebody affect positive change

00:43:28

in their life is help them actually go through it.

00:43:32

It's interesting because you see all of these people now who are doing these cohort based

00:43:35

classes.

00:43:37

You can't just buy access to the course because they want to force you essentially down the

00:43:42

path of we're going to do this together because I know you're not going to do it if I leave

00:43:45

you to do it on.

00:43:46

Correct.

00:43:47

Yes, absolutely 100%.

00:43:49

Which is kind of the thought behind the Zero Tube City and Workshop to be honest is I want

00:43:55

to create not only a two hour, it was intended to be two hours, it ended up being three workshop

00:44:01

where I share a bunch of information, but you're actually going to work on this as we

00:44:05

go because if you just watch everything and then assume you're going to do it later,

00:44:11

it's never going to happen.

00:44:14

And I fall into this trap too.

00:44:17

But I think for people like us who are trying to help people to reach their full potential,

00:44:25

that's the current state of things.

00:44:28

It's not enough just to share the information anymore.

00:44:31

You can't just write the book and throw it out there and assume that a bunch of bookworms

00:44:34

like us are actually going to read it because most people won't.

00:44:38

You got to hold their hand and help them walk through it.

00:44:42

Which is very contradictory to a lot of our culture today, which is kind of the whole idea

00:44:48

behind part four, how we got here.

00:44:51

I apologize if I offend people in advance, but this is Simon, not me.

00:44:55

He basically blames all of this stuff on the baby boomer generation.

00:44:59

Totally, completely.

00:45:01

He totally throws the boomers under the bus here.

00:45:03

It's not even sugar-coated.

00:45:06

It's just you guys screwed this all up.

00:45:08

That's pretty much what he's saying.

00:45:10

Yes, but he does say that it wasn't because of bad intentions.

00:45:14

So the whole story here, chapter 11 is the boom before the bus talks about how in the

00:45:19

1920s there was a period of unprecedented wealth and then there was a big depression

00:45:24

that hit in 1929 after Black Tuesday.

00:45:27

That lasted until Pearl Harbor when the US was pulled into World War II.

00:45:33

During World War II, this is a fascinating statistic.

00:45:35

Twelve percent of the population served in the military, which was way higher than I

00:45:42

had anticipated.

00:45:43

And that is the generation that in the US is known as the greatest generation because

00:45:49

they were marked by service and hardship.

00:45:51

We were all in this together, not excess and consumerism, which is kind of where we find

00:45:58

ourselves today.

00:46:00

Now that greatest generation, they didn't want their kids to have to go through the

00:46:03

same thing they went through.

00:46:05

So when they had kids that baby boomer generation, which caused a 40 percent growth in the population,

00:46:12

they were growing up in a different world.

00:46:14

And it's natural, I think, to want to set your kids up for success.

00:46:19

So they did that.

00:46:20

And as the boomers grew older, they tried to preserve, again, Simon's words, they selfishly

00:46:26

tried to preserve the world that they had created.

00:46:29

Okay.

00:46:30

So then we get into the 1980s.

00:46:34

Things start to become more disposable.

00:46:36

August 5, 1981, he says, that's the day where we really embraced layoffs for the first time.

00:46:44

Reagan orders all of the air traffic controllers back to work.

00:46:49

The effect of that strike wasn't as severe as they thought.

00:46:52

When they didn't show up, he fires 11,359 air traffic controllers on August 5.

00:46:59

And then the unintended effect of that, Simon's words, but I can see the connection here is

00:47:04

that CEOs think they can do the same thing that the president just did.

00:47:08

So now we've got a new trend where you've got the baby boomer generation who has risen

00:47:13

the ranks of these businesses and these organizations.

00:47:16

They're trying to preserve their world as they know it.

00:47:21

And they're focused on the numbers and the comfort and the wealth.

00:47:24

And so people become the disposable resource.

00:47:27

And the big problem with all of this is that we start to dehumanize people very different

00:47:31

than the next jump story that we read about several chapters earlier.

00:47:36

And this is the process by which trust is eroded.

00:47:42

And that circle that we were referring to starts to dissolve.

00:47:48

And once those two things have happened, guess what?

00:47:53

We sit in a very stressful, unhappy scenario because we don't feel like we can let go and

00:48:03

say something quite wrong or make the wrong move.

00:48:07

Like we don't like we feel like we have to be absolutely perfect.

00:48:11

Because unless we do, unless we are perfect, that whole world can come crumbling down.

00:48:19

And we could be without a job.

00:48:20

We could be without a house.

00:48:21

You could be in a lot of really scary scenarios if you don't keep up absolutely perfectly.

00:48:30

And that leads to the cortisol stress hormone.

00:48:35

Does he talk about that in this section?

00:48:37

I started to get these blended together.

00:48:38

That was in the previous section with the EDSO.

00:48:42

He does talk about cortisol, but there's just so much in here.

00:48:46

Right.

00:48:47

I skipped over that one.

00:48:48

This is, okay, so this is off topic here.

00:48:50

But normally we have these three part books, right?

00:48:54

And it's easy for me to know what came from which part whenever they're like that.

00:48:58

But when it's in eight parts, like, wait, where did that come from?

00:49:01

I took notes and I have them here.

00:49:03

But I don't remember which part that came from.

00:49:06

So maybe that's...

00:49:07

He is a master at weaving these things together too.

00:49:11

It's not just like I'm telling you this so that I can reference it in the end.

00:49:16

He references these things all the time as he's going.

00:49:19

And it's not like he's referencing a single idea all the time.

00:49:23

All of these stories he's referencing, it's like a patchwork quilt that's perfectly put

00:49:27

together.

00:49:28

Yeah.

00:49:29

And because of that, I get lost.

00:49:33

So, wait, where is that again?

00:49:36

I don't remember.

00:49:38

But it's in there.

00:49:39

Anyway, my point is that whenever you lose that circle, when that dissolves and your trust

00:49:47

is out the window, the stress hormones start to kick in because you feel like you're on

00:49:53

your own, which as we see today with all of the necessary and required isolations, like

00:50:02

we've seen how that just completely destroys the mental state of so many people.

00:50:08

Like some folks are okay, at least for a period.

00:50:10

But after a while, that isolation becomes a really, really toxic thing.

00:50:16

Some of that's because of this.

00:50:17

Oh man, that would be a fascinating addendum.

00:50:20

Oh, absolutely.

00:50:21

You know, I had that appendix for the COVID stuff.

00:50:25

They would be great to hear Simon talk about how that has affected all of the social chemicals

00:50:30

and things, how that's all out of whack.

00:50:32

I would love to see that because I mean, you think about it whenever you're in isolation

00:50:35

and you have to do things on your own, when you go completely independent and you become

00:50:41

in it, like you put yourself in a spot where other people aren't necessary, stress skyrockets,

00:50:48

whether you realize it or not.

00:50:50

So whenever you have people around you and friends and those groups of people who can

00:50:55

be a support for you, a lot of what he's talking about here goes away.

00:51:00

But that only happens when that social network is there, which we do talk about here in a

00:51:06

little bit.

00:51:07

But that whole scenario of that subgroup is super important because it helps alleviate

00:51:13

the stress and the cortisol and such.

00:51:15

Yeah.

00:51:16

And this kind of gets into the isolation thing.

00:51:19

When you don't have those connections, some scary stuff can happen.

00:51:24

The next section is part five, the abstract challenge.

00:51:27

And the first chapter in here, "obstraction kills," he talks about this study that they

00:51:34

did after they had apprehended the guy who basically architected the Holocaust.

00:51:43

He escaped Argentina, I think it was, and lived there for a while.

00:51:48

And then in 1961, they caught him and then that renewed these questions and was like,

00:51:53

"How could the Holocaust have possibly happened or people that evil?"

00:51:58

And so they did this experiment.

00:52:01

I have a hard time even talking about this one.

00:52:05

So basically the experiment, there were two groups and they basically thought they were

00:52:11

both the teacher group.

00:52:14

One group was told to flip a switch to administer an electric shock to the other person when

00:52:20

they got a wrong answer.

00:52:21

Now no shocks were actually sent, but the other group was told they were the teachers, so

00:52:28

they were acting like they were getting shocked when this switch was flipped.

00:52:34

And then they had a couple of different ways that they administered these shocks.

00:52:40

One where they had to take the person's hand and put it on the shock plate.

00:52:44

One where they flipped the switch and they could hear the person responding in the next

00:52:48

room and one where they could not hear the person they could just hear him banging on

00:52:52

the wall to get him to stop.

00:52:54

The shocks themselves went up in increments from like you can barely feel this until the

00:53:00

very top, which they were labeled different things.

00:53:03

And remember, there's no shocks actually being sent, but the very last ones were like XXX,

00:53:09

basically this is strong enough to kill somebody.

00:53:13

And they were supposed to administer a shock whenever someone got a question wrong.

00:53:18

So they administer these shocks and then they would express some hesitation and the scientist

00:53:25

in the room had a series of questions or statements that they would reply with.

00:53:31

At first, they would say, please continue.

00:53:34

And then as shocks get stronger, the other person's freaking out more.

00:53:38

They say the experiment requires that you continue.

00:53:42

The third time is absolutely essential that you continue.

00:53:45

And then the fourth one, you have no other choice, you must go on.

00:53:49

Now when they started this, the hypothesis was that two to three percent, there'd be

00:53:54

a couple deranged individuals who would go all the way and administer the top level shock

00:54:00

where they would actually kill somebody.

00:54:03

Again, remember, no shocks being, being sent.

00:54:07

No people actually killed in this experiment.

00:54:11

Yes.

00:54:12

But what they found was that when they had to put the person's hand on the plate, physically

00:54:18

grab the person's hand, put it on the plate.

00:54:20

30% of the people who were in this experiment still went all the way to the end with this.

00:54:27

When they could hear the person in the other room crying for help, 40% still went all the

00:54:34

way through with this.

00:54:35

When they couldn't see or hear the person, just like them banging on the walls or whatever,

00:54:40

65% of the people went all the way with this.

00:54:45

And I love to sit here and say, well, that's appalling and there's no way I would do that.

00:54:52

But I think with the big takeaway from this is that people are, they have a lot less empathy

00:54:59

than we thought they did.

00:55:02

And when you again, realize the intention of this experiment was to figure out how something

00:55:08

like the Holocaust could have happened.

00:55:10

Well, there is your evidence.

00:55:12

You have a leader who is saying, this is the way things have to be.

00:55:16

You don't really have a choice.

00:55:18

And then you have a whole bunch of people who really believe that they don't have a

00:55:21

choice and they dehumanize the other side in the conflict.

00:55:27

You can totally see how we ended up where we did.

00:55:30

Yeah.

00:55:31

Because if you take that to the extreme here, when you don't see, when you don't actually

00:55:38

see the results of the decision that you're making, you may hear of it or be aware of

00:55:45

it.

00:55:46

But when it's abstracted one level and you don't actually see the results, it's really

00:55:51

easy to keep going because if you take the empathy route here, yes, you could say they're

00:55:57

not showing empathy for the other person because of that abstraction.

00:56:02

But the other element here is that they're showing empathy to the research person who's

00:56:09

behind them telling them they must continue because they're showing empathy to them because

00:56:14

they need it done.

00:56:15

It's like, well, I don't want to upset them and I can see them.

00:56:19

They're right here beside me.

00:56:21

So I'm going to follow them over this person that all they're doing is banging on the wall.

00:56:26

I don't actually know what's going on over there.

00:56:28

So who knows?

00:56:30

But it's kind of scary and that's part of I think why we talk about corporate executives.

00:56:38

We like to give them a lot of grief for these horrific decisions that they make occasionally.

00:56:45

It's like, how could you come up with that?

00:56:48

Well, this is why because there's so many steps removed from the end result of the decisions

00:56:54

that they're making that it's really, really difficult to get a read on what all the nuances

00:57:00

and subtleties are of a decision that you're making because it's so far abstracted from

00:57:05

what you're seeing today.

00:57:07

So the only way to really combat this is put boots on the ground and actually go see things,

00:57:12

right?

00:57:13

But that's not always possible.

00:57:15

So then you're kind of left in this hole.

00:57:17

Now what do I do scenario?

00:57:19

So yeah, what do you do, Mike?

00:57:21

I don't know.

00:57:22

Yeah.

00:57:23

They said in the study, the ones who actually did quit before they reached the end, those

00:57:29

were the ones who felt that they were responsible to a higher authority other than the scientists

00:57:34

that were in the room.

00:57:36

So kind of what you said, if the person that you are responsible to, your authority is

00:57:42

the person in front of you, your leader, it's very easy to see how you end up doing things

00:57:47

that you never would have thought that you would have done.

00:57:50

And then as the leader, you have to take into consideration that people below you, like

00:57:55

it's not just you, you're not just trying to get as much as you can.

00:58:00

That's kind of the next chapter, the modern abstraction he talks about businesses and

00:58:04

he uses Apple.

00:58:06

Simon Sinek loves to use Apple as an example.

00:58:09

Oh, he does.

00:58:10

He's an Apple fanboy.

00:58:12

Yeah, but this is not an Apple fanboy story because he's talking about Tim Cook and how

00:58:16

they were keeping the European profits in Ireland to avoid paying taxes.

00:58:21

And Tim Cook on the stand basically says, unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up

00:58:26

with the digital age.

00:58:27

Like, not my fault.

00:58:28

No, I'm a corporation.

00:58:29

My job is to maximize my profits while playing within the rules.

00:58:34

Yep.

00:58:35

And your rules don't catch me.

00:58:36

So here we are.

00:58:37

Yes.

00:58:38

And then he goes from there to telling the story of the Titanic, which was owned by the

00:58:42

Oceanic Steam Navigation Company.

00:58:45

And the Titanic was four times bigger than any other ferry, but that's the classification

00:58:54

that it fell underneath.

00:58:56

So they had these rules for the number of lifeboats that had to be on these ferry vessels,

00:59:02

which the Titanic is not a ferry, but it was classified as a ferry.

00:59:06

So the end result, obviously, it hits the iceberg.

00:59:09

It met the requirements of the law.

00:59:11

It actually exceeded the requirements of the law.

00:59:15

But still, they don't have enough lifeboats for everybody.

00:59:17

And 1500 of the 224 passengers and crew end up dying.

00:59:23

And this is just mind boggling when I think about this, because you can see that example,

00:59:29

that story.

00:59:30

And there were some details there that I had not known previously.

00:59:33

You can see the Tim Cook thing.

00:59:35

And you can see also how like nothing is being done to fix this sort of stuff.

00:59:41

It just keeps happening over and over and over again.

00:59:42

And it's super frustrating.

00:59:44

Yeah, it's fascinating to me to see how people try to manipulate laws and codes and stuff.

00:59:52

I'm in the middle of buying a house, right?

00:59:53

So there are so many scenarios where it's like, okay, we know this, we could do that.

01:00:01

But if we say this in a certain way, the county and the state are going to make us do all

01:00:05

these things, the salary, and you are both okay with it.

01:00:08

So let's just keep it behind the scenes and we'll just handle it that way.

01:00:13

And you sign some papers for arbitration and stuff so that if it actually goes awry, you're

01:00:17

both able to get somebody there to sort through it.

01:00:21

It's like, well, all they're doing is playing the game with all the rules and regulations.

01:00:26

It's all they're doing is navigating their way through this to get the sale done in a

01:00:30

way that all parties are happy.

01:00:31

That's all they're trying to do.

01:00:35

It's very similar to what we're talking about here.

01:00:37

There are a lot of ways that you can technically follow rules and yet deviate from the intent

01:00:45

of those rules, right?

01:00:47

So the thing that you want to do, depending on where you land on this, is follow the intent.

01:00:55

If you want to be a top-notch leader, follow the intent because that builds trust.

01:01:00

Even if the rules allow you to skirt around it, if you follow the purpose behind them,

01:01:07

you'll tend to trust the integrity that you're showing in that process.

01:01:12

The other one I think about is whenever, and I've seen this happen too many times, when

01:01:18

a company isn't hitting their profit goals, so they go to layoffs, to cut expenses, so

01:01:26

that they can hit those and they know that certain departments and stuff can be cut, they

01:01:31

know who can be cut when.

01:01:33

They keep very close tabs on that, it seems.

01:01:36

They choose to cut people who have upcoming retirements and pensions because those will

01:01:42

be even more expensive.

01:01:43

Now granted, there are a lot of laws and stuff that prevent that to some degree, but there's

01:01:48

still ways around that.

01:01:50

And these upper leadership positions will sometimes take advantage of those loopholes

01:01:56

in order to let people go that feels like a complete kick in the gut, but that, again,

01:02:04

it destroys the trust in your employees whenever that stuff happens.

01:02:11

That's not the way to do it, like following and trying to skirt the code so that you can

01:02:16

get what you want as opposed to following the intention behind it.

01:02:22

It's not good.

01:02:23

You're not a great leader when that happens.

01:02:24

Yeah, and that is kind of your point is echoed in the story in the next section.

01:02:29

So part six is destructive abundance.

01:02:31

And chapter 18, he talks about Stanley O'Neill taking over at Merrill Lynch.

01:02:37

And he preffices this whole story by saying that leaders who focus on their own wealth

01:02:41

and power are more like tyrants than leaders.

01:02:45

And then talks about how that's basically what happened at Merrill Lynch.

01:02:50

Stanley O'Neill was so focused on profitability, completely changed the culture, no one trusts

01:02:57

anyone anymore, and when the leader is wrong in a top-down culture like that, the whole

01:03:02

thing goes off the cliff.

01:03:03

And so that's where he talks about getting the authority to those who are closest to the

01:03:09

information.

01:03:10

I saw the image that you tweeted out prior to recording about how do you lead from the

01:03:16

bottom up.

01:03:17

I think that's kind of what this is speaking to.

01:03:18

And again, there's a visual to go along with this, but the people at the top of an organization

01:03:24

are typically the ones that have the authority, the ones at the bottom who really need to

01:03:29

be able to make the decisions.

01:03:31

They're the ones who have all the information about what's actually going on.

01:03:35

So in the story of Merrill Lynch, what you get is somebody at the top who has all the

01:03:39

authority to make all these layoffs, to make all these decisions because they're focused

01:03:43

on these numbers and they don't really realize the implications of what they're doing.

01:03:47

And all the people who can see what's really going on, they can do absolutely nothing about

01:03:51

it.

01:03:52

And what do you do?

01:03:54

You try to put yourself in an organization where that authority has been delegated down

01:03:58

to the lower levels of the organization.

01:04:00

So you can make those decisions based on the information that you have because people trust

01:04:05

you enough to make the right decision.

01:04:07

And at that point, it's kind of a virtuous circle, but also it could work the other way

01:04:12

as well.

01:04:13

Yes, completely 100% and with you.

01:04:17

I don't want else to add on that one, but yes.

01:04:20

There's another story in this section which I want to get to in chapter 20, which is the

01:04:25

reason that leaders eat last keeps coming up in my brain.

01:04:30

This is where they talk about the political culture and how it all changed when Newt Gingrich

01:04:35

was the speaker of the house in 1994 when the Republicans had taken control of it because

01:04:40

he changed a bunch of things, including that house members that previous to this, they had

01:04:48

spent most of their time in Washington doing what they were and what they were elected

01:04:54

to do.

01:04:56

And so all of the people who lived in Washington, they went to the same schools.

01:05:02

They went to the same churches.

01:05:04

They saw people outside of the debate floor and Newt Gingrich changed that and sent people

01:05:10

to their home districts where they spend a lot of time fundraising, a very selfish activity

01:05:15

so that they could get reelected for next time so they could maintain their, their

01:05:18

majority and just ram their agenda down people's throats.

01:05:24

And now we see that on both sides, but he tells a cool story there about a Democrat

01:05:29

and a Republican specifically who they were in Washington together and they were at this

01:05:33

thing and they had nothing else to do at the time.

01:05:36

So they just started hanging out and they got to be really good friends.

01:05:38

And then they started, they started empathizing with the other person, even on the debate

01:05:44

floor.

01:05:45

And so they would go along with something that the other person had said and their whole

01:05:48

party would get mad at them.

01:05:49

I thought that was kind of, kind of funny.

01:05:53

But this, this, I can totally see how this has gotten to the point that it has.

01:06:01

And I believe Simon Sinek when he says this is where it started, but even if it's not,

01:06:06

it's not really that important, you can see kind of how things have started to go off

01:06:12

of the rails.

01:06:13

And he shares that in January of 2013, U.S. Congress actually had a lower approval rate

01:06:18

than used car salesman or even Genghis Khan at 14%.

01:06:24

Because the whole focus is on fighting your enemies, getting your way, right?

01:06:30

And he makes the point that enemies fight, but friends cooperate.

01:06:34

Cooperation, by the way, doesn't mean that you always agree, but it means that you're

01:06:38

willing to work together for the greater good.

01:06:41

And I mean, you can apply that in a lot of different scenarios, not just politics, but

01:06:47

I found this whole story here extremely fascinating.

01:06:50

It amazes me that abstraction thing, right?

01:06:54

Whenever you have someone who disagrees with you, but you never actually talk to, it's

01:07:00

really easy to be mad at them at unacceptable levels, right?

01:07:09

This is seen in our society at ridiculous amounts today, just because we don't really

01:07:17

want to get to be friends with someone if they have even one thing we disagree on.

01:07:23

For whatever reason, we've decided that if we disagree on one thing, we cannot be friends

01:07:29

at all.

01:07:30

Even if it's you like cats, I like dogs, like, what?

01:07:37

Whatever.

01:07:39

That seems to be an extrapolation of this concept to an extreme level.

01:07:46

And I think it comes down to when we're not around people who disagree with this, there's

01:07:51

never a point at which you can show empathy to them and try to understand their viewpoint.

01:07:56

Thus, we end up in the situations we are today.

01:08:00

And I wish it was easier to just say, "I know you and I don't agree, but let's get together

01:08:07

and work through it and talk about it."

01:08:09

I have multiple friends that we don't agree on politics, we don't agree on many social

01:08:17

issues, but we both share something and I would consider us good friends.

01:08:25

I can think of at least four or five people off the top of my head that fit that description.

01:08:32

I understand their viewpoint and I don't necessarily always have arguments for them,

01:08:37

but there's not always an opportunity for a lot of people to have those discussions.

01:08:43

And when you have legislation that allows the political realm to follow suit with that

01:08:51

and not force some of this compromise ability, and you allow people to not be around each

01:08:59

other ever until you're at the front line having a war, how do you expect to compromise

01:09:07

and how do you expect cross-party support to ever happen when there is no need and there's

01:09:14

no interest in that?

01:09:16

Yes, we have such a strong desire for seats in a house for one party or the other because

01:09:23

the assumption is blue or red, you're going to vote to party lines because there's no

01:09:28

point in ever crossing that line.

01:09:31

Apparently, this is something that I get excited about because I've been talking about it for

01:09:35

a long time, so now I'm going to quit.

01:09:36

Here you go, Mike.

01:09:37

Well, it's kind of interesting because the news as we record this is that the Supreme

01:09:46

Court, which has a conservative majority, they've had a couple of decisions recently where

01:09:53

they've been unanimous and it hasn't always been in the conservative courts favor.

01:10:03

And so everybody's kind of like, "Well, what's going on here because there's this talk of

01:10:07

this whole concept of packing the court?"

01:10:09

And I think they're trying to send the message like, "That's ridiculous.

01:10:12

Just shut up and work together.

01:10:14

Yes.

01:10:15

It can be done."

01:10:17

But it's interesting the way Simon Sinek describes it because it just seems so obvious, right?

01:10:24

This is how we got here.

01:10:26

Surely, we can find a logical way out of this.

01:10:32

But he tells another version of this in the next section, part seven, a Society of Addicts.

01:10:39

Kind of like the political thing where he's laying it all out and like, "This is how we

01:10:42

got here." He does the exact same thing with news when he talks about the Communications

01:10:47

Act of 1934.

01:10:50

And this is my other favorite story in the entire book.

01:10:54

So this Communications Act, this required broadcasters to have a license.

01:10:59

And in order to get a license, you had to meet a whole bunch of requirements.

01:11:03

It was up for renewal, I think, every five years.

01:11:06

One of those requirements was that you had to have public service programming.

01:11:10

So that is where the nightly news came from.

01:11:14

It was inserted as public service programming.

01:11:18

It was not a business decision.

01:11:22

And then in 1979, ABC debuts Nightline as this big thing was going on where militants

01:11:33

stormed an American embassy in Tehran and they took 52 different hostages.

01:11:37

In the book, Simon talks about how that whole scenario lasted 444 days in a row.

01:11:44

And so Nightline was covering this every single night and it was getting crazy ratings.

01:11:48

At the same time, other networks were taking notice and they started to view news as being

01:11:54

profitable.

01:11:56

Then this guy, Mark Fowler, takes over the FCC.

01:11:58

He removes this fairness doctrine.

01:12:01

It's called in 1987, which we should totally bring this back because this is what prevented

01:12:07

a network from advocating only one perspective.

01:12:11

Almost every network I can think of right now promotes only one perspective.

01:12:17

And Simon is tracing it back to this event because he's saying that this is when networks

01:12:22

start to become more polarizing because it's good for business.

01:12:28

And again, you look at this and you're like, "Oh, come on.

01:12:32

Can't you guys figure this out?"

01:12:35

But yeah.

01:12:36

Yeah.

01:12:37

It is fascinating, I think, to understand how we got where we are.

01:12:43

And I do think that that helps you no matter what news source you look to, to realize that

01:12:49

this is only one side of the coin because they have chosen this side because this is

01:12:54

the profitable side for them.

01:12:57

And one of the things I've been trying to do recently is just aggregate my news sources

01:13:02

from both ends of the spectrum.

01:13:04

And I'm not going to prioritize one or the other.

01:13:07

I'm going to hold both of them lightly and realize that they've both got their own business

01:13:11

interests at hand.

01:13:13

And so really nothing of what they're telling me is the complete truth.

01:13:17

It's probably somewhere in between.

01:13:19

But it's fascinating to see the headlines as they appear on one site versus the other.

01:13:25

And it also, I don't remember which one it was.

01:13:28

Maybe it was a local thing.

01:13:29

We were talking about it this morning about there was a news source that spun a whole

01:13:35

thing and made a big deal out of a particular topic.

01:13:40

I'm not going to go into the details because it'll trigger somebody.

01:13:43

But they made a big deal out of something.

01:13:46

And their base source was an article from the Babylon B. If you know the Babylon B, you

01:13:54

know it's like a parody made up thing.

01:13:57

It's not real.

01:13:58

It's fake, but it's fun, right?

01:14:02

And it's pretty popular because it's spot on with some of the fun that it has.

01:14:07

But they used the Babylon B as a source for a very real news system that spun a story

01:14:17

and drove a bunch of clicks and drove a bunch of ratings.

01:14:20

And it's completely fabricated.

01:14:22

There was absolutely no truth to it whatsoever.

01:14:28

Come on.

01:14:30

We could do better than this.

01:14:32

Absolutely we could.

01:14:33

Yeah.

01:14:34

Well, one other thing in this section, this is kind of out of order, but the first chapter

01:14:39

in this section, chapter 22 is at the center of all our problems is us.

01:14:44

And so as we're talking about this, the solution that Simon Sinek lays out here is not to blame

01:14:51

anybody else.

01:14:52

The leaders eat last.

01:14:55

It is to assign the responsibility for change to ourselves.

01:14:59

He says in this section, we need to look at ourselves for the answers.

01:15:04

And there was an interesting story here too.

01:15:06

So many interesting stories in this book.

01:15:09

It is fascinating to read.

01:15:12

I'm going to mess up the pronunciation of this because I've not heard of it before.

01:15:16

Purple fever?

01:15:17

Am I saying that right?

01:15:19

I don't know.

01:15:20

I don't know how to say it.

01:15:21

So this was killing 70 to 80% of women giving birth in some hospitals and some doctor, Dr.

01:15:29

Oliver Wendell Holmes, he proposed in this paper that it was the doctors themselves who

01:15:36

were the cause of this because they didn't understand some things about sanitation, sterilization,

01:15:45

and the spread of diseases with germs.

01:15:48

And so they were basically bringing things in from their previous jobs in the morning

01:15:54

into the delivery room.

01:15:55

And that's why the mothers were getting sick and dying.

01:15:59

And when he proposed this, it was met with fierce resistance because everyone was saying,

01:16:04

oh, the doctors would never do anything like that.

01:16:07

They're gentlemen.

01:16:09

And his point was basically they didn't even know that they were doing it, but they were

01:16:11

still doing it.

01:16:15

And I think that is the challenge for everybody who reads this book.

01:16:22

And it is uncomfortable to say all of the problems that I see in society right now, maybe

01:16:31

I did not intentionally cause any of this stuff.

01:16:35

And maybe I am not solely responsible for any one of these scenarios that I see.

01:16:42

But how have I contributed in at least a minor way to this problem?

01:16:48

And what can I do myself to help remedy it?

01:16:52

I really want to know if those doctors were milking cows before they went in.

01:16:57

Like something like that has to have been happening.

01:17:00

I just cannot help but think that something like that was going on.

01:17:04

Okay.

01:17:05

Where are they bringing this stuff from?

01:17:07

What are they bringing in?

01:17:08

I don't know.

01:17:09

But it leads to a lot of deaths.

01:17:10

That's for sure.

01:17:11

Yes.

01:17:12

I am with you.

01:17:13

All right.

01:17:14

The last section here then is part eight becoming a leader.

01:17:19

I don't have a ton to say about this one.

01:17:22

Famous last words.

01:17:24

But I do like how he starts this off chapter 25, which is step 12.

01:17:31

And that is in reference to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program, which he says

01:17:38

step 12 is the most important one.

01:17:40

This is what makes this work is that step 12 is to commit to help another alcoholic

01:17:48

beat the disease.

01:17:50

I think if there was one takeaway from this whole book for me, it is this idea piggybacked

01:18:01

off of the well, maybe it's your fault.

01:18:04

You know?

01:18:05

Maybe it is my fault and if I'm going to take a if I'm in a accept responsibility for that,

01:18:12

you know, what am I going to do about that?

01:18:15

How do I start to tip the scales in the other direction?

01:18:18

It is not to try to convince a ton of people.

01:18:25

This is what needs to be done.

01:18:28

It is to find one person and affect change in their life.

01:18:34

And when you do that, that has to be done face to face going back to like the whole,

01:18:41

how does COVID affect this?

01:18:44

And hearing Simon talk to that would be fascinating because he specifically says in this chapter,

01:18:51

connections required to beat addiction cannot be virtual.

01:18:58

You have to connect person to person.

01:19:01

You can't do it on a zoom call.

01:19:04

You can't do it on the phone.

01:19:07

And where does that where does that leave us?

01:19:09

Right?

01:19:10

Because I think we're in the US anyways, we're kind of in the place where things are opening

01:19:16

back up because the cases are going way down.

01:19:19

But I've just seen in my own church, there are people who have gotten comfortable with

01:19:24

the way that things have been for the last year, year and a half.

01:19:30

They are fine.

01:19:32

Just doing the virtual thing.

01:19:33

It's good enough for them.

01:19:36

And I think Simon is telling us like we're in, he would say, we're in this dangerous

01:19:42

spot right now.

01:19:43

You got to reach out to those people because everyone needs those connections.

01:19:48

How many books have we read about like digital minimalism and things like that that talk

01:19:52

about how those relationships are vital?

01:19:55

Okay.

01:19:56

And people who even once had those relationships now because they were forced to go into their

01:20:02

own cave, you know, they've gotten comfortable there.

01:20:06

And unless someone goes and like tries to bring them out, maybe they never do that.

01:20:12

I think that's the big thing for me is like, who can I help out of the cave?

01:20:16

And it's not just in the context of the church, but empathy is being shown up.

01:20:24

I forget exactly where he said it, but there was a quote that talks about how leadership

01:20:29

and empathy that is being shown to every person at every moment.

01:20:36

It's not just like a once in a while when you really need it sort of a thing.

01:20:40

If you're really going to be an effective leader, you got to have this mindset and you

01:20:43

got to have it all the time.

01:20:45

When we started live streaming here at the church, we had, I'm trying to remember, it's

01:20:50

like 300 households, I think that were tuning into our live stream on a weekly basis.

01:20:58

We've since opened up, the state of Minnesota has allowed us to open up basically as we

01:21:03

were before.

01:21:05

We're still a little tightened down as a church.

01:21:09

We haven't completely opened up the way we were, but we have yet to see a number of folks

01:21:17

yet from when we started live streaming over a year ago.

01:21:22

Some of those families I've met with outside of Sunday morning and they tell me, "Oh yeah,

01:21:30

it's really cool.

01:21:31

We can stay in our GME's, we make breakfast, we sit on the couch and we watch church and

01:21:37

then we can go about our day."

01:21:39

Do you have a small group?

01:21:42

Do you connect outside of that?

01:21:43

It's like, "Well, we see people once in a while."

01:21:46

Okay, well, I mean, you're still seeing folks.

01:21:49

I mean, it's probably not as extreme as what you're talking about, Mike, but I often wonder,

01:21:55

"Okay, am I doing a disservice by enabling this live stream to help people stay home

01:22:04

when they really don't have a need for it?"

01:22:07

In one case, I know everybody's vaccinated, they have no concerns, and yet they want to

01:22:12

stay home.

01:22:13

Like, "Okay, well, that's fine, it's your choice."

01:22:17

That type of person is the one that tends to frustrate me.

01:22:20

Now, coming from the church stance, I also know that the live stream helps us to find

01:22:25

new believers at the same time.

01:22:26

It's a way for new people to try out a church without actually having to do the nervous,

01:22:33

somewhat frightening thing of entering a church for the first time.

01:22:36

I totally understand that, and it's a way to get a feel for what is this church like

01:22:40

without having to actually go.

01:22:42

We have a lot of people that are new attenders at our church because of that.

01:22:46

They're getting me on a soapbox.

01:22:48

But that whole concept of not getting together with people and staying in isolation by choice,

01:22:58

I feel like you're hurting yourself significantly with that, whether you realize it or not.

01:23:03

So like you're saying, step 12, it's up to us.

01:23:06

Once we learn how leadership works, and once we learn how all of this is to be applied,

01:23:13

it's our job to like, "Okay, you, come with me.

01:23:16

This is how this needs to work.

01:23:18

We need to be the leaders in helping other people be leaders as well."

01:23:22

So I think that's kind of what he's getting to here.

01:23:25

It's the part that I resonated with out of this last part.

01:23:28

Yeah, exactly.

01:23:30

And it's not because we're trying to get people to comply with a set of rules.

01:23:34

It is because this is the best thing for them.

01:23:38

You're not forcing them to do it.

01:23:41

You can't yank somebody out.

01:23:43

You can't just show up and be like, "You're coming with me.

01:23:45

Get in the car."

01:23:48

But you have to show that you care about them and you have to show that you have their best

01:23:52

interest in mind and that gives back the whole concept of leadership.

01:23:56

I did find that quote, by the way.

01:23:57

It was in the last chapter, "Does empathy is something we owe everyone all the time

01:24:02

if we want to call ourselves a leader?"

01:24:06

And leadership is for everyone, not just those at the top.

01:24:10

I think that's where this is practically speaking applied for people like you and me.

01:24:14

We see those people who we know they're struggling.

01:24:18

We want to help them, not because we want to pat ourselves on the back because it's the

01:24:22

right thing to do.

01:24:25

They don't realize, and this is Simon's argument throughout this whole book, if you just stay

01:24:32

virtual, go back to the step 12 thing, if you never make that connection, the only chemicals

01:24:38

you're activating are the endorphins in the dopamine, which we know are not going to lead

01:24:43

you where you need to be.

01:24:45

Really if you want to thrive, if you don't want to be that snowmobile in the desert,

01:24:50

you need the other ones, the social chemicals, which can only come when you have a direct

01:24:56

interaction, when you're meeting face to face, when that empathy is really being able to

01:25:01

be shown.

01:25:02

I can't really show you empathy over a video call like this.

01:25:07

I can to a certain degree, and that's the thing that makes us tricky is like all of

01:25:10

this stuff is on a spectrum, but I feel like with where we're at now and so much of this

01:25:17

stuff being virtual, the tendency is well, virtual is good enough.

01:25:22

And really what Simon I think would say is no, there's a whole lot more good to be had.

01:25:29

You got to push past that and it's the job of the leader to do that.

01:25:33

Coming back to the idea of like the baby boomers and the period of excessive abundance that

01:25:41

he describes that we find ourselves in, how do you do that if you find yourself in that

01:25:47

situation?

01:25:48

Because I'm in a pretty privileged situation.

01:25:52

I recognize that and he says in chapter 26 here, the place to do that is to think bigger,

01:25:59

right?

01:26:00

You have to have a big enough vision that your vision out sizes your abundant resources.

01:26:10

So when I think about that, that's challenging to me.

01:26:13

That's my one action item from the whole book and it's totally a mic action.

01:26:16

I just think bigger because the tendency can be to make sure that I'm good, that my wife

01:26:25

is good, that my kids are good.

01:26:28

But having read through this, I realize that there are a lot of places not just in my church,

01:26:34

but really how do I display that empathy to everybody that I come in contact with and

01:26:42

how do I and I don't have an answer to this, but how do I expand my vision big enough so

01:26:48

that I'm not just concerned about my own small little circle, but I'm looking at like, how

01:26:54

can I expand that?

01:26:57

Benjamin Franklin was said to have this quote, "What good shall I do this day?"

01:27:03

He would ask himself when he got up in the morning.

01:27:06

That's kind of what I want to rewire my default to.

01:27:09

It's like, who am I going to help when I get up in the morning?

01:27:14

How do I make sure that this is not just about me and what I am going to do, but how can

01:27:20

I actually help somebody else as I go about my day to day?

01:27:24

Again, I don't have an answer, but I am inspired.

01:27:28

I am inspired by Simon Sinek after reading this book.

01:27:32

Yep.

01:27:33

What good shall I do this day?

01:27:34

Who is it that has the coffee mug that says that?

01:27:37

Is that Mike Vardy?

01:27:38

It might be Vardy.

01:27:39

Either him or Brett McKay.

01:27:41

Brett McKay would totally do that art of manliness.

01:27:44

So those two I could definitely see with that coffee mug.

01:27:47

I should get one of those.

01:27:48

That's a solid quote.

01:27:50

It is.

01:27:51

I'm writing that one down.

01:27:53

That's all I got, anything else about this book?

01:27:55

No, it's a pretty solid one.

01:27:58

That much I know it's challenging, encouraging, and yet difficult I think sometimes to figure

01:28:06

out what to do with it.

01:28:09

So yep.

01:28:10

That said, your book, what were your action items from this one, Mike?

01:28:14

Well, I mentioned my one action item is to think bigger.

01:28:17

I don't think there's a whole lot of specific stuff you can glean from this book.

01:28:21

I will say that before you go and maybe you have 12 different action items.

01:28:24

I don't know.

01:28:26

But this is a lot of very big picture vision casting.

01:28:32

This is what it means to be a leader.

01:28:34

One thing I found interesting with this was that people get motivated by the vision, but

01:28:43

a lot of the change happens by the small actions.

01:28:46

You can't motivate people to change, though, by saying, "Oh, just do this one small thing."

01:28:53

So the leader has to understand both the big picture and the next step.

01:29:00

And so you walk away from this feeling like you're being called to go up to a new level.

01:29:09

And I don't even know exactly what that looks like, which is why my one action item from

01:29:12

this whole book is simply to think bigger.

01:29:15

I don't even know exactly what that's going to look like.

01:29:17

But I do know that I am inspired to grow and become a better leader and change as a result

01:29:23

of reading this, even more so physically reading it than when I went through it with the audiobook.

01:29:30

I feel like the stories were great.

01:29:32

I'm getting the style and reading now.

01:29:33

I'll put a pin in this.

01:29:34

Do you have any action items from this book?

01:29:39

Yes, I have one.

01:29:42

So I don't have the 12, but I have one.

01:29:46

I have a handful of teams that are underneath of me at the church.

01:29:54

And those teams are very vital to a Sunday morning.

01:29:58

And having read this, I wonder if I have shirked my responsibility of trying to be with them

01:30:07

in the trenches, as it were.

01:30:10

And I kind of want to try to work my way back into that.

01:30:15

So much of what I've done lately is, here's your system, here's your schedule.

01:30:20

Let me know if you have any problems.

01:30:22

And then I don't really hear from people in a lot of cases, but I also don't follow up

01:30:28

with them in a lot of cases, unless I happen to be running sound at the same time that

01:30:33

someone else is doing things or I happen to be making rounds, which doesn't happen super

01:30:38

often because there are other people that are responsible for those.

01:30:42

I'm not real good about following up and making sure that my responsibilities are completely

01:30:49

met as Simon Sinek would describe them.

01:30:54

So I don't know exactly what that means, but I know that over this weekend, and I have,

01:30:59

I know at least one meeting on Sunday and then two more on Monday, that I have set up as a

01:31:06

result of this book to just kind of let me get back into the trenches and make sure that

01:31:10

I understand what my people are doing.

01:31:13

Yes, they're volunteers, but that means I should work a little bit harder to make their

01:31:16

life easy.

01:31:18

So that's kind of what I want to work towards.

01:31:20

I have no idea how to actually summarize that into a one sentence thing.

01:31:25

I'll let you do that for the show notes, or maybe I'll have to do it for next time we'll

01:31:28

see, but I got you.

01:31:30

I got you.

01:31:31

Joe's action item is to lead his people.

01:31:33

Okay.

01:31:34

All right.

01:31:35

There you go.

01:31:36

Yes, that's what I need to do.

01:31:37

I feel like I've done it partially, but not fully.

01:31:41

And I'm a little bit ashamed to say that, but at least I'll admit it at this point.

01:31:46

Sure.

01:31:47

Yeah, no, that's a great action item.

01:31:49

And I had similar thoughts because I have those groups of people too that I thought

01:31:54

about I need to take a step up for these different groups.

01:31:57

I just don't know exactly what I'm going to do with those yet.

01:31:59

Right.

01:32:00

Right.

01:32:01

So I probably have like five or six of those.

01:32:07

And I guess those are kind of encapsulated under my think bigger one, but I like that.

01:32:13

I like your action item.

01:32:15

And I'm going to do something similar.

01:32:17

And like I said, I've got three meetings set up to do this.

01:32:20

Now meetings may not be the when I say meeting, it's I'm going to be doing a training.

01:32:25

I'm making a change.

01:32:26

So I'm taking the opportunity to meet with people one on one and show them how it all

01:32:29

works.

01:32:30

It may only take 10, 15 minutes, 12 minutes or so, but that's kind of a gesture to a degree

01:32:35

and an opportunity to open the door there as well.

01:32:39

So it's kind of a sidesteped way of getting there.

01:32:42

So when I say meeting, sure, it's not the traditional, we're going to sit down for an

01:32:46

hour and do things together for an hour, whether we need the hour or not.

01:32:49

No, that's not the case at all.

01:32:51

These can sometimes be very, very short.

01:32:53

Gotcha.

01:32:54

All right.

01:32:55

Style and rating.

01:32:58

And my book.

01:32:59

I will go first.

01:33:01

I absolutely love this book.

01:33:03

It's great.

01:33:04

Everyone should read it.

01:33:06

I mentioned that I had listened to this, the audio book version back in the day.

01:33:13

And I realized having gone through it again, how much I missed the first time by listening

01:33:20

to it.

01:33:21

So I will renew my plea for everyone, do not listen to books, actually read them.

01:33:29

Because when you listen to a book, you're listening to a story, it's just going to keep

01:33:33

going.

01:33:34

If something really strikes you, you can't slow down and brew on something for a while.

01:33:39

I mean, yeah, I know Audible has added the thing where you can take the clip notes and

01:33:43

stuff like that.

01:33:44

It's not the same thing.

01:33:45

It's very easy to just keep going and really miss the meat of what is being said because

01:33:50

of the audio format.

01:33:52

I got so much more out of it this time.

01:33:55

It was longer than I had expected.

01:33:58

The only part of it I didn't really care for was the whole section on leading millennials.

01:34:03

Maybe that's because I'm a millennial.

01:34:05

It's like, wait, you can't.

01:34:07

You can rip on the boomers, but leave us millennials alone.

01:34:10

Well, no, it just felt very much like a prescriptive.

01:34:15

Here's how you deal with these people.

01:34:16

And I didn't like that.

01:34:19

Like, even if everything he said was accurate for me specifically, which it wasn't, by the

01:34:24

way, but even if it was 100%, I still feel like that approach just feels a little bit

01:34:30

weird.

01:34:31

But that was like one tiny little section.

01:34:32

And that's just my personal preference.

01:34:33

The rest of this is absolutely phenomenal.

01:34:36

Like I mentioned, the storytelling is really, really great.

01:34:40

I think he might be a better storyteller in this book than any of the Ryan Holiday stuff

01:34:45

that we have read, which is a very, very, very big compliment because prior to that, I

01:34:52

don't think, you know, Ryan Holiday definitely upped the bar in terms of what we considered

01:34:56

like, actually good storytelling.

01:35:00

It's like a whole other tier, which is Ryan Holiday and now Simon Sinek.

01:35:04

I also feel like as long as this book is, it does something pretty amazing in that it

01:35:10

captures your attention at the beginning and it inspires you and motivates you and kind

01:35:16

of carries that momentum all the way through to the end of its almost 300 pages, which

01:35:23

is no small feat.

01:35:26

These stories that are in here, we shared a couple of them in the podcast, but there

01:35:30

are so many of them, so many details, so many of them are just perfectly woven together.

01:35:36

I mean, I don't know what else I can say about this book.

01:35:41

Absolutely go read it, Five Stars.

01:35:43

I don't even think you have to choose like who is this for because he kind of ends it

01:35:47

by saying that leadership is for everyone.

01:35:49

It's not just those at the top.

01:35:51

Even if you are completely against the, like your own personal preference, you want nothing

01:35:57

to do with the topic of leadership.

01:36:01

You bristle at the thought of like the John Maxwell type stuff and you're like, no, that's

01:36:07

just not my thing.

01:36:08

I would still recommend it for that person.

01:36:11

Maybe that's the person where you get them to just go through the audio version and they're

01:36:14

impacted that way, but it's so good.

01:36:17

I feel like everybody who listens to bookworm should have this one on their bookshelf.

01:36:21

Probably a handful of books that we've read.

01:36:23

The other ones I can think of are like, Man's Search Remeaning by Victor Frankel.

01:36:29

Deep Work by Kallen Newport, Essentialism by Greg McKeown.

01:36:33

This one is in that top tier for me.

01:36:35

I don't know.

01:36:36

It's so good and I like Simon Sinek, but it's so good that I kind of don't ever want to

01:36:41

read another Simon Sinek book again because I feel like I'll be let down.

01:36:44

Because you will.

01:36:46

Yeah.

01:36:47

That's how this works, right?

01:36:48

Yeah.

01:36:49

Absolutely.

01:36:50

This is a phenomenal book.

01:36:51

Well, I have to say, I'm not sure I agree with you in him being better than Ryan Holiday.

01:36:58

I feel like what I would have to do is go pull up his latest and read one of the stories

01:37:03

from it since I have this one on mine.

01:37:06

I should go grab it and read it just to compare.

01:37:11

My point is they're that close in their storytelling ability.

01:37:18

The only one that I could think of, at least off the top of my head that could potentially

01:37:22

rival, that would be Neil Gaiman.

01:37:25

It's only because Neil Gaiman takes 300 plus pages to tell a story and these guys are doing

01:37:31

it in four.

01:37:33

So keep that in mind as well.

01:37:36

But I think you're absolutely right.

01:37:37

Simon has really nailed something here.

01:37:40

Obviously, this is the first time I've gone through it.

01:37:43

You have a very solid point in, you know, this is for everybody.

01:37:48

Even people who aren't in leadership, even, and I was thinking about this before we started

01:37:54

here on my journey in doing IT stuff that I didn't want to do and walking back and forth

01:37:59

and such, I was thinking about how I have some family members that have previously worked

01:38:06

in the fast food industry, like bottom tier, like they're the cleaners.

01:38:12

And even them, I could see how the things in this apply.

01:38:18

Even people who are unemployed, I could see how this applies.

01:38:21

There's so many of the recommendations, the methods, the thought processes, the concepts

01:38:28

that he recommends and coaches you through on how to be a good leader.

01:38:34

Those are great things to adopt.

01:38:37

Even if you have no one, you're leading.

01:38:39

If you adopt those things and you become good at them, you're going to become a leader

01:38:45

of other people.

01:38:46

And I would tend to think that that's something you should aspire to whether you think you

01:38:51

should or not.

01:38:53

And no matter how you come at it, you're going to be leading someone at some point, whether

01:38:58

it's now, because you have people under you.

01:39:02

If you're in a spot where you've got three or four teams, I think I've got four teams

01:39:05

underneath of me.

01:39:06

It's like, if you're in a spot like me, it's very obvious.

01:39:09

This is something that would be helpful.

01:39:12

If you have no one under you, though, and you're young, this is something that will eventually

01:39:17

happen.

01:39:18

At some point, you will have some role at some point somewhere where someone is underneath

01:39:23

of you.

01:39:24

Even if it's a one day volunteer position and you're leading people, putting chairs away,

01:39:29

like this stuff applies in those scenarios.

01:39:31

Do you get my point?

01:39:32

Like this can carry to so many different avenues.

01:39:37

And he tries to cover some.

01:39:39

But the way he sets it up, you can easily see how this transcends to so many arenas.

01:39:46

And he does an excellent job at that.

01:39:48

So I'm with you.

01:39:49

This is going to be a double five oh on this one.

01:39:52

This is when I think you absolutely should read no matter who you are.

01:39:56

And I hope that people take this and learn from it and that it's something that really

01:40:03

impacts your life.

01:40:04

I know that this is one that's encouraged me to step up and take the role that I've kind

01:40:08

of been shirking.

01:40:10

And I didn't even realize I was doing that until I read this.

01:40:14

So that's a kudos on Simon Sinek because that's me having to eat some humble pie there.

01:40:19

And that'll be a fun conversation when I have to have those over the next few days.

01:40:22

But hey, we'll get through it, right?

01:40:23

So yes, I'll put it at five oh, this is a solid one.

01:40:27

Great choice, Mike.

01:40:28

Yeah, thank you.

01:40:30

I think this is the definitive work on leadership as someone who loves the John Maxwell stuff.

01:40:37

Sure.

01:40:38

I have several John Maxwell books on my bookshelf behind me.

01:40:41

But this is the one that I would recommend to people.

01:40:43

And it's also interesting getting back to like how to read a book by Mortimer Adler, right?

01:40:48

We balance these books with all the other ones that we've read.

01:40:51

I think a perfect compliment to this is the second mountain by David Brooks.

01:40:56

Oh, sure.

01:40:57

Because the whole idea about that is you try to climb that first mountain and you're making

01:41:03

a name for yourself, creating the life you want to live in.

01:41:05

And you get to the top of that first mountain and you're like, is this it?

01:41:08

And then you see the second mountain, which is all about other people.

01:41:10

And that's what leadership is all about is about other people.

01:41:13

So if I were to recommend a bookend to this one, that would be it.

01:41:18

That's a good picture of that.

01:41:19

All right, let's put leaders eat last on the shelf.

01:41:22

What is next, Joe?

01:41:23

Yeah.

01:41:24

So the one that I've picked out for the next round is digital body language by Erica

01:41:30

DeWann, I think is how you say that.

01:41:33

And this will tie in a little bit with what we were talking about earlier today here in

01:41:39

that whenever you're not in person, it's not the same.

01:41:45

Remember that whole rant we went on?

01:41:47

This is going to talk about the scenario of if that's not possible, if you're not face

01:41:52

to face, what does that look like and how do you read body language when it's purely

01:41:58

100% digital, that's something I'm excited about.

01:42:02

So I think it'll be a fun one.

01:42:04

And what did you pick for after that?

01:42:06

I don't even know this yet.

01:42:07

You didn't put it in the outline.

01:42:08

So what are you doing?

01:42:09

I didn't.

01:42:10

Well, I'm going to keep this theme of procrastination alive.

01:42:13

Oh, fine.

01:42:14

Because I was one of my action items that's going to roll over.

01:42:17

For a long time, I have wanted to discuss this book with you.

01:42:22

I have not read it.

01:42:23

I'm just fascinated by the title and I'm familiar with the author.

01:42:27

So this is a systems book, I believe.

01:42:30

Oh, fun.

01:42:31

But we are going to read Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vadon.

01:42:36

Have you seen this one?

01:42:38

I have.

01:42:39

I have not read it, but I've definitely seen it and always thought it looked gimmicky

01:42:44

to me.

01:42:45

So this is going to be one of those Joe's coming at this with a side eye.

01:42:51

I'm already looking at it.

01:42:53

Sure.

01:42:54

Yeah, well, Rory Vadon wrote another book called Take the Stairs, which I really enjoyed.

01:43:01

And he is actually the person I've never actually met him.

01:43:05

But he is the person who inspired me to get involved with Toastmasters.

01:43:11

Because in that book, he talked about his own journey and he wasn't a public speaker,

01:43:18

challenged himself, and then he ended up taking second in the world championship of public

01:43:24

speaking.

01:43:25

And he's written a couple of books, but his primary job is with a consulting company,

01:43:29

I believe.

01:43:30

So very interesting guy.

01:43:33

And then this book came out after Take the Stairs.

01:43:38

And it seems very much like a productivity systems book that just completely confronts

01:43:44

one of those things like you shouldn't procrastinate on stuff and tries to turn it on its head.

01:43:48

So I have no idea whether we're going to be changing our minds about procrastination

01:43:53

and how we do it.

01:43:55

Or if we're just going to write this off completely and be like, yeah, he's off his

01:43:58

rocker.

01:43:59

Well, we'll see.

01:44:00

All right.

01:44:01

I am going to assume guilty until proven innocent on this one.

01:44:06

And assume he's a crackpot until he shows me otherwise.

01:44:09

Can I do that?

01:44:10

Is that allowed?

01:44:11

I'm going to do that on this one.

01:44:12

Sure.

01:44:13

All right.

01:44:14

Well, that said, you got a gap book this time around.

01:44:16

I've been on the phone doing house stuff like nonstop for the last week and a half.

01:44:20

So as much time as I've had to do this, house stuff took over.

01:44:26

So no, hasn't happened for me, but you?

01:44:29

I do not have a gap book this time.

01:44:32

I do have a couple that I have ready to go if I have the margin to tackle them.

01:44:41

But I want to read digital body language first.

01:44:46

And so if I do get to a gap book, I will report back on it next time.

01:44:51

Okay.

01:44:52

Sounds good.

01:44:53

All right.

01:44:54

So thanks everybody for hanging out with us today.

01:44:56

Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members who are willing to not just

01:45:03

give us their attention, but also contribute a few bucks every month to keep the lights

01:45:08

on.

01:45:09

We really appreciate it.

01:45:10

We'd like to support the show.

01:45:11

You can do that at bookworm.fm/membership.

01:45:16

When you join, you get a couple of perks.

01:45:17

You get this wallpaper that I created.

01:45:20

It's a 4K wallpaper with the fancy bookworm logo.

01:45:24

You get access to a couple of gap episodes that Joe had created back in the day.

01:45:29

There's a couple of new sections in the club and all of the mind map files from all of the

01:45:35

notes that I take in these books get uploaded to that section so you can download the PDF

01:45:41

version or if you want to take the mind note file and customize it yourself, those are

01:45:45

there too.

01:45:46

So if you want to support the show, you can do that at again, bookworm.fm/membership,

01:45:52

5 bucks a month.

01:45:54

Thanks to everyone who helps us keep the lights on and keep the show going.

01:45:58

Blake has a good point.

01:45:59

I'm holding back on get books, Taylor Two Cities, Narnia.

01:46:03

I suppose I could do a thing on the Narnia.

01:46:06

That would have to be like a one-on-one livestream for an hour and a half probably.

01:46:10

But anyway, there's that.

01:46:12

That all said, if you are one of these that's been reading along with us, I know that's

01:46:16

what we intended bookworm to be and everybody has used it very differently than what we intended.

01:46:20

That's how these things go.

01:46:21

But if you are reading along with us, pick up Digital Body Language by Erika DeWann and

01:46:26

we will cover that one for you in a couple of weeks.