Bookworm Transcripts

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You ready to hit her follow up?

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- Let's do it.

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- All right, so first one here on the list.

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I'm to encourage Becky to read it.

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That's what it says on the list,

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but I know that that is referring to the book

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Who Moved My Cheese,

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and my wife finished reading it here a few days ago.

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She read it in two settings.

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So kudos to her.

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She had some interesting feedback on it.

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Mostly, really, there's a book for this.

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(laughs)

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What's her reaction?

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It's interesting, but it has led to some fun conversations.

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And those have been enjoyable.

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I've had a good time talking through,

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now that you and I have gone through that one,

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it's kind of interesting to sit down and do that again

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with my wife and get her perspective on it.

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So it's been interesting.

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I've enjoyed that process with her.

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- Nice, I actually just gave a talk at Toastmasters

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before I came here on Who Moved My Cheese.

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- Nice.

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- I still like the book,

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even though my wife is not convinced

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of the joy of that book.

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- I will say that it was fun doing the Toastmasters project

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because I'm in the storytelling book.

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And so I was supposed to do a folk tale,

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and I cheated kind of and retold Who Moved My Cheese.

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But retelling it, I was able to kind of cherry pick

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the pieces that I really liked out of it.

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- Oh, nice.

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- 'Cause you've only got seven to nine minutes

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to tell the whole thing anyway.

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So you physically can't cover everything.

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And I like my version a lot better.

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- Nice.

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Maybe I should get you to record that sometime

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and we'll just post that book for him.

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- Yeah, it was fun.

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- Cool.

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You got a couple here on the list.

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- Yeah, so I don't have specifically

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data to support being willing to laugh at myself,

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but I'd like to--

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- I'm gonna ask how you were gonna record that one.

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- I think it's more just a reminder.

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It seems like a lot of my follow up items

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tend to be that sort of thing.

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So yeah, I guess next time you see me laugh at me

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and see how I respond.

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- All right, we'll do.

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- And the other one, remodeling office space.

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Haven't done anything more with this,

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but then we've been gone for a couple of weeks.

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So probably since the last time that we talked,

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we really haven't had the chance to do anything with this.

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We are, we've submitted all of our tax information,

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so we're waiting till we hear back from our accountant

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about what kind of return we're gonna get

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before we commit to spending a lot of money

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to finish off the office,

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but it looks like that's gonna happen

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in the next probably month or two.

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- See, here's the thing.

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There are a number of us now listening to you

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talk about this tax return.

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Knowing that we will not get one.

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So for those of you out here who are like me,

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who run your own business,

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you know a tax return is a thing that does not exist ever.

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- I have lots of dependence, remember.

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- 'Cause if you happen to overpay,

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they simply hold onto it until the next quarter

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and use it for that.

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Like you're not gonna get anything back ever.

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- That true, true.

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I don't know, I guess this is the first year

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we've done it this way,

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but last year, even though my work situation had changed,

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we still got a little bit of a return.

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And this year we have an additional dependent.

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So I think maybe we'll get a return.

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Maybe? - Nice.

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Nice.

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Fun, fun.

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All right, you wanna talk about this Apple script?

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You've been bugging about me on this.

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Yeah.

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- Actually the question is,

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do you want to talk about this Apple script?

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- Yes, I do.

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I looked into this because I wanted to know,

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okay, how much time is it gonna take for me to pull this off?

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And before I go too far,

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take me through and more for the listeners and me,

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'cause I got to listen to the recording of this

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a couple times just to make sure

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that I understood what you were after,

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but explain to the listeners what you're after

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with this Apple script and day one.

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- Well, basically what I wanna do is I want to be able

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to job real quickly what I am focused on,

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but that can't happen on my phone I realize

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because I won't take the time to pull my phone out

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and enter what I happen to be focused on at the moment.

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But if I'm on my computer,

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which I am pretty much all doing the working day,

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which is really when I wanna track this stuff anyways,

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then an Apple script, there's a lot less friction there.

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So I think that having it be on my Mac instead of an iOS device

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would be enough for me to make this sticky.

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Does that make sense?

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- So effectively it's a recurring pop up on your computer

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that asks what you're doing right now.

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- Yep.

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- And when you fill it in and you hit enter,

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it logs it to day one, right?

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- Yep, exactly.

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- Okay, now what you need to know is that day one

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does not have Apple script support.

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- Boo.

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- So that's on day one.

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However, they have CLI support,

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command line interface support, which means

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that if we do this, it is possible

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to make this process happen.

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But it will require the end user will have to install one,

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the command line, I'm trying to think of how to explain this

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for people who don't get it, it's shell scripts.

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So you have to install this package for day one

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in order for the Apple script to do anything,

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which I think actually is technically gonna end up being

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like an automated service of some sort,

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but it all works effectively the same.

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But you would have to be comfortable installing

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two separate pieces in order for it to work.

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Is that okay?

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- I guess we'll find out.

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(laughing)

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I would think so.

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- Okay, 'cause I can't, from the service

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or the Apple script side of it,

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I can't install that for you, that's a security risk,

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they should never allow that.

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So I'm not gonna be able to say,

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install this one thing and you're done,

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but I can say if you install this package,

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and I can link to it, give you instructions on it,

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and install this Apple script,

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do you want the time period to be configurable?

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- You've talked about every hour,

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does that need to be able to change per person?

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- That's a good question.

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I would say that the simplest solution

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is invariably the best solution.

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So let's just go with one hour.

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- Okay, hard-coded in.

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Okay, now all my questions aside,

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I'm going to put a bounty on this,

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and I did some research into,

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can I do something in WordPress that makes this possible?

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And I believe I have found a plugin, Mike,

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that lets me say, okay, you can donate via PayPal

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up until this dollar amount is hit,

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and once that dollar amount is hit,

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then we don't, like you don't go over,

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and then everybody can see a status at the same time.

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If I understand it correctly,

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which is exactly what we want.

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So I'm gonna put this in place,

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I don't have any idea what the link will be,

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but by the time this particular show goes live,

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I'll have the link in the show notes.

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So if you're interested in this script

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for having your Mac nag you every hour

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to log something today,

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wanna do it automatically for you,

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you can go to the link in the show notes.

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That will give you a page to where you can donate.

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I'll set the bounty for it.

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Mike, gut feel as it's around 300, Mike,

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three, 350 somewhere in there,

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just to get the whole thing pulled together

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and get all the documentation and everything for it.

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So I'm gonna set one of those two.

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I gotta figure out the exact hours on it,

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but that number will be on the page.

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If you go to the link in the show notes,

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so scroll down, click, go to the page, there you go.

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And we'll go from there.

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Once we hit the bounty, I'll go to work.

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Nice.

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Fun, fun.

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Wow, I can't believe you're like hiring me out on this stuff.

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(laughs)

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All right, fun times.

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So now that we're done with followup,

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unless you got something else you wanna go through,

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nope, oh, happy day.

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Looks so good.

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The book for today, the personal MBA.

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This book, it's by Josh Kaufman,

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and this is one that I saw mentioned by Sean Blanc,

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via, I believe it was Twitter.

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There's probably no way I'm gonna find that tweet.

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It's been a while.

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It's probably been a year plus ago about at this point.

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He mentioned this book, said he really enjoyed it.

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I have been told by multiple supervisors

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that I should go get an MBA.

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I almost went for it,

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but I could never get the math to line up

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on why I should get an MBA versus,

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like the amount of money I was gonna put into it,

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versus the salary bumps I would get for having it.

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Like, I could never get the math to work out.

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Mm-hmm.

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So I didn't do it.

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And over time, I've never been in a situation

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where I feel like I have needed it or wanted it.

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So whenever I saw that this book was something

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that was potentially an alternative

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and kind of a crash course for an MBA,

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and I saw Sean Blanc recommending it,

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thought, "Whew, give it a shot.

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I'll drag Mike along for the ride and see how this goes."

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So here we are.

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Josh Kaufman thinks that you made a good choice.

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That was cool.

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- Yeah, he talks about at the very beginning of the book,

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exactly what you were just describing,

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about how the cost of an MBA doesn't really pay for itself

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and how a lot of the information that you need to learn

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for an MBA type degree,

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is kind of changing and evolving.

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And by the time that you would go to an MBA program

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to get the knowledge that they would teach you,

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it's kind of out of date.

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And so I've also thought that the same thing

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that I should go get an MBA, crunch the numbers,

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and say, "Ah, this really isn't worth it."

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So this has been on my list for a long time,

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but I also knew it was very long

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and that was enough to make me procrastinate

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on actually reading it.

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- Right, right.

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I will say whenever I started this process,

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I've always got two or three business ideas

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that I'm bouncing around inside my head.

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And I will say it's very helpful to have those

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if you're gonna read this,

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because it immediately gives you an example to work through

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'cause he goes through a ton of information

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and I just found it extremely helpful to have,

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okay, this particular business is one

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that's on the forefront of my mind.

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I'm really interested in taking it forward

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and seeing how I can promote it and make it something big.

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Going through this book,

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while having that on my mind was really enlightening

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and helped me understand the concepts in a much better way.

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- Yeah, definitely.

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One of the things that he mentions at the very beginning,

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the first talking point that we had written down

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just to kind of set everybody's expectations for this book,

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if you haven't read it yet,

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is that it doesn't give you the answers,

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but it helps you ask the right questions.

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And I would say that is definitely true.

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And so as you approach this book through a lens,

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like you were saying, where have this business idea

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or this idea for a project or a venture or whatever,

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it will help you ask the right questions to determine

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whether this thing is actually viable

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or something that you should be doing,

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or whether it's just one of those pie in the sky ideas

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that's really not something that you could monetize

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and therefore it's not really worth the time and the effort

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that you would invest in it.

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And I didn't realize how important being able

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to ask the right questions really was.

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But I kind of had that same experience

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after I read the book was like,

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when I was viewing some different projects and things

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through what I was learning,

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as I was reading the book,

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it just crystallized a lot of things for me.

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And the answers became super, super clear

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as soon as you knew what questions to actually ask.

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- So here's a question for you.

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'Cause you have a business degree, right?

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- Yes.

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- So he's bashing business degrees at the beginning.

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Not a bachelor's, but the master's.

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What's your take on that?

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Given you have a business degree

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and we're kind of down that path,

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the content that he covers here and his attitude, I guess,

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towards academia in the business world,

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that strike you as a very negative thing,

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that make you angry?

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What was your take on it?

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'Cause I don't have a full business degree.

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- No, he's 100% right.

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It's an absolute complete waste of time money.

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- All right.

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- Yes, I have a liberal arts business degree,

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so it was probably twice as expensive.

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And yeah, the things,

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the classes that I really benefited a lot from

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were not the ones that really had anything to do

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with business.

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The standard business classes, the statistics,

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the accounting, I basically muscled my way

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through those classes and retained absolutely nothing

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from them.

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There was one or two classes in particular

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where I actually did learn a lot and it was more so

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mindset stuff, like how to think about different problems.

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In fact, one of my classes,

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which was my senior capstone class,

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the teacher would have us do case studies

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to bring in newspaper articles,

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usually wall street journal articles.

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And we discussed,

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this company made this specific decision

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and then we kind of dissected it.

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Did they make the right decision or not?

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You know why?

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We did some simulations and one of the big projects

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we had to do was this thing where we broke up

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into separate small groups basically

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and we had a semester long project

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where we were running a shoe company,

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which was part of this simulation.

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But other than that,

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like the actual information that I was taught

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that appeared on the test

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was definitely not worth the amount of money

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that I paid for it.

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And once you get out into the business world,

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you figure out a lot of these things

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based out of necessity that never really

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were taught in business school.

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So when I was going to school,

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it was 2001 to 2005.

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And the internet was kind of just getting going.

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In fact, one of the case studies that we did was on Amazon.

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I remember that one specifically.

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And so the landscape of,

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especially internet based business

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has changed a lot since I was in school,

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but I can't imagine that even now

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they are teaching the kinds of inbound

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content marketing type ideas that you need.

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You know, grow your email list.

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I guarantee that's not being taught

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in the business program at St. Norbert College

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where I went to school.

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But that's the kind of thing

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that really has been beneficial to me

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is that type of stuff where I've learned it

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pretty much through trial and error.

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- So is this,

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it sounds like you would see this the same way

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I see a computer programming degree.

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People go to school to learn how to build programs

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and write code.

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And by the time they get out of a four year school

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and they're done with it,

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most often I run across people

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who are talking about how great Java is.

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And you know, it's going to be the thing of the future.

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And it's like, I don't know anybody that thinks that.

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Like everybody I talk to is talking about Python and Rails.

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Like they don't really talk about, okay.

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All right, I know I probably offended a few people there,

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but that's okay.

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I just don't see the schools keeping up

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with how fast things are moving.

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Things just take off.

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And if you're going to build a degree around it

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by the time they get the books written,

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like what was the one that we talked about

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the time it took to write a textbook,

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like being eight to 12 years or something like that?

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- Yep, it's completely ridiculous.

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And in fact, there's another resource

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that this book reminded me of called the $100 MBA,

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which is Omar Zenholm, I believe.

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- Okay.

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- He was actually in academia.

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He was a professor and he wanted to teach his students

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not how to manage factories

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'cause that's not what they were going to be doing.

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But he wanted to teach them some of this internet marketing

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stuff where he was a professor.

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And I can't remember specifically where he said

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that he was a professor, but he went to get

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the curriculum changed and it was going to take years

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before it was approved.

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And so what he did is he basically distilled everything

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that he knew about business into a video course

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that you can pay at one time, $100, $100 MBA,

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and get this sort of information as well.

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I think that that is really the key.

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And this is actually one of the points.

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The very end of this book, he talks about

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how self-education is never done.

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The people who are successful are not the ones

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who have paid a bunch of money and gotten a piece of paper,

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but they are the ones who are continually looking

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to improve their skill set.

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And that's where this book, I believe, has a lot of value.

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All right, so let's jump into some of the things

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that are brought up within the book.

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One of them that I thought was pretty interesting was

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he goes through the process for evaluating a market

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and he had these 10 steps that,

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if you look at the 10 steps and look at the market

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that you're thinking about going into,

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see this is why I say it's helpful to have a potential

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something in your head, 'cause you're going through this.

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Okay, how do you evaluate this market?

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If I've got an idea in my head,

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I'm immediately starting to consider the pieces

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of that market or that business as they apply to this.

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So anyway, the 10 ways to evaluate a market,

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I'm just gonna run through them quick

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'cause I don't wanna spend a ton of time on this,

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but the 10 steps of evaluating a market urgency,

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how badly do people want or need it right now?

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The market size, how many people, the pricing potential,

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what's the highest price you could charge for it?

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Cost of customer acquisition,

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how easy is it to find somebody to buy it?

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Cost of value delivery, how much does it cost

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to create and deliver the thing?

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Uniqueness of the offers at a complete niche.

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The speed to market, how fast can you create it

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and get it out the door?

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The upfront investment, how much it takes to get going,

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upsell potential, can you do an upsell?

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Evergreen potential, does it ever need to be updated

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because it's, what do I want to say?

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It's timeless, that type of thing.

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So, anyway, I thought it was interesting to look at

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all of those, and the more

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of them that your potential business

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could hit the better off you are.

00:19:19

And, this is helpful as an entrepreneur,

00:19:21

as somebody who's always coming up with ideas,

00:19:23

it immediately showed me,

00:19:25

it made me want to go pull up my business ideas list,

00:19:28

and just run through it like, yes, yes, no, no, no,

00:19:32

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, oh, great.

00:19:37

Like, it just made me want to do that.

00:19:39

So, it was a framework to help me go through them,

00:19:42

and to get through it a little bit better.

00:19:44

- Yeah, exactly, and you're supposed to,

00:19:46

for these 10 different things,

00:19:47

in the book he talks about rating each of them

00:19:49

on a scale from one to 10.

00:19:51

And then you add them all up at the end,

00:19:52

and if you, the total score is below 50,

00:19:55

it's a bad idea, and you should move on.

00:19:57

If it's 50 to 75, it's got some potential,

00:19:59

but it's going to need a lot of effort.

00:20:00

If it's 75 or above, very promising, full speed ahead,

00:20:04

and these type of things,

00:20:06

this whole section was maybe just a couple of pages,

00:20:08

but this is the type of thing

00:20:09

that this book is chock full of,

00:20:11

and even if this was the only thing

00:20:12

that you got out of this book,

00:20:14

it's still going to be very beneficial.

00:20:17

And there's a whole bunch of them.

00:20:18

I think he says at the beginning

00:20:19

that there are 248 simple concepts

00:20:23

that are part of this book.

00:20:24

And so, I would argue that if you are involved

00:20:27

in any sort of business whatsoever,

00:20:29

you're going to find something in here,

00:20:31

whether you've got an MBA or not,

00:20:32

that you're going to just be like,

00:20:34

"Wow, that's amazing.

00:20:35

I could apply that right now,

00:20:36

and that's going to make this thing so much simpler for me."

00:20:40

- So the concept that it was only two pages

00:20:43

on this particular piece,

00:20:45

that whole thing drove me nuts.

00:20:46

I'm going to get into that later.

00:20:48

There was a big piece of this book

00:20:49

that just made me angry.

00:20:51

(laughs)

00:20:52

We'll get into that later.

00:20:54

You've got a thing on here,

00:20:55

frustration leads to burnout.

00:20:56

Where are you going with that?

00:20:58

- Yeah, he just talks about his experience

00:21:00

with Proctor and Gamble.

00:21:03

And he tells a lot of his story

00:21:04

throughout the book,

00:21:06

especially at the beginning,

00:21:07

where he kind of outlines his process

00:21:11

and how he was climbing the corporate ladder

00:21:13

and he was going to do this stuff.

00:21:14

And then he just kind of stopped and rethought things

00:21:17

and was like, "I don't know if this is really

00:21:18

what I want to do."

00:21:19

And there were three big takeaways

00:21:21

from his PNG experience,

00:21:23

which I thought were really good.

00:21:25

And definitely something that people

00:21:28

probably don't ever stop to think about,

00:21:30

but it's something that you really should think about

00:21:32

if you find yourself in one of these organizations.

00:21:34

Number one, large companies move slowly.

00:21:36

Number two, climbing the corporate ladder

00:21:37

is an obstacle to doing great work.

00:21:40

And then number three, frustration leads to burnout.

00:21:43

So specifically, frustration leading to burnout.

00:21:45

I just wanted to tease that one out

00:21:47

because if you are frustrated

00:21:50

with your particular work situation right now,

00:21:53

Josh's experience,

00:21:56

and I think kind of the default experience

00:21:59

is that if you don't figure it out, if you don't fix it,

00:22:03

then it's only going to be a matter of time

00:22:05

until you actually exit.

00:22:07

And so there's probably a lot of people

00:22:08

who maybe are listening to this right now

00:22:10

and they're thinking,

00:22:10

"Well, I'm really frustrated with my work,

00:22:12

but I have no intentions of leaving

00:22:14

unless you figure out how to reconcile those things.

00:22:17

In a few years, you're going to find yourself leaving."

00:22:20

And so I kind of saw this as a warning sign

00:22:22

because as we talked about in the last couple of books,

00:22:24

a lot of this stuff is on us as individuals.

00:22:26

It's not on the company's fault.

00:22:28

It's not the organization's fault

00:22:30

because of our particular situation,

00:22:32

but how do we take accountability for this?

00:22:35

How do we take responsibility for this

00:22:37

and fix it from our perspective

00:22:39

instead of just projecting the blame onto the organization?

00:22:42

'Cause there's a lot of big organizations,

00:22:44

I think that offer a lot of really good potential jobs

00:22:48

and a lot of really good potential careers.

00:22:49

And that's completely fine if you want to be involved

00:22:52

in that particular thing.

00:22:52

And I just want to throw this out there

00:22:54

because I don't want people to be forced to leave

00:22:58

just because they are at a crossroads right now

00:23:00

and they don't realize it.

00:23:01

They just continue to put one foot in front of the other

00:23:03

and pretty soon they're in the same position where,

00:23:06

oh, I never really thought about this,

00:23:07

but yeah, I've been frustrated for years.

00:23:08

I got to get out of here.

00:23:10

- Yeah, I always tell people that

00:23:12

if you're frustrated in the position that you're in,

00:23:14

you need to do one of two things.

00:23:16

You either need to think about your job differently.

00:23:20

Don't be one who's blaming

00:23:22

being the, don't have the victim thinking.

00:23:26

Get to work and do something and make it better

00:23:29

or get yourself promoted out of that position.

00:23:31

Do something, don't just sit tight.

00:23:34

But if you're in a position where the organization

00:23:39

will not let you get better and will not let you

00:23:44

continue to grow, that's when you need to start

00:23:47

looking at leaving.

00:23:48

But if you're burnout because of your own doing

00:23:51

and I would venture to say that most cases

00:23:54

it's your own doing, then you need to do something about it.

00:23:57

Don't put it on somebody else.

00:23:59

Take responsibility for it.

00:24:01

- Exactly, there's a lot of systemic problems

00:24:03

that can be solved as soon as we recognize

00:24:04

that this is actually a system

00:24:06

and we can just change some of the inputs

00:24:07

if we wanna get different outputs.

00:24:09

And that was another thing that I wrote down here

00:24:11

is that success is based on mental models and systems

00:24:14

and he used the example of Charlie Munger.

00:24:17

That's one of the things that I've really learned

00:24:19

in my work with Asian efficiency

00:24:20

is that we maybe don't realize it

00:24:23

but everything around us is part of a independent

00:24:27

and interdependent system.

00:24:30

And so if you don't like the results

00:24:31

that you're getting, tweak the system.

00:24:34

And a lot of times even just small tweaks to the system

00:24:37

can produce really monumental results and changes

00:24:42

which is why this book in my opinion,

00:24:45

I know we're gonna get to the ratings and stuff later

00:24:47

but I really enjoyed it because there's a lot

00:24:48

of little things in here, a lot of potential sources

00:24:51

of revelation and inspiration where they can provide

00:24:55

a blueprint for a small tweak to a system

00:24:58

that can change a situation from bad to good.

00:25:02

- Yeah, I like the whole system thinking

00:25:06

but you know, we're tech nerds.

00:25:08

(laughing)

00:25:09

We like systems.

00:25:10

And I'm a programmer, I'm always trying to put things

00:25:12

into a system and make it work out for me.

00:25:14

- Yep, maybe I think I suppose.

00:25:18

- Any talks about how every business is made up

00:25:21

of five interdependent systems

00:25:23

which I thought this part was really valuable too.

00:25:26

Number one, value creation.

00:25:27

So what value are you giving to the world?

00:25:29

Number two, marketing.

00:25:31

And this is, we've talked about this before.

00:25:33

I'm terrible at self promotion

00:25:35

but this is a big part of any business system.

00:25:39

If you wanna be successful, you have to market yourself.

00:25:41

Number three, sales.

00:25:42

This is another thing that people tend to shy away from

00:25:44

but you have to ask for the sale, value delivery.

00:25:48

So once you have made the sale

00:25:51

and you've promised something to the customer,

00:25:53

you have to be able to deliver that.

00:25:55

And then fifth is finance.

00:25:57

So these businesses being made up

00:26:01

of these interdependent systems,

00:26:03

this was maybe something that seems really straightforward

00:26:07

and common sense.

00:26:09

But when he laid him out in the book,

00:26:11

he kinda showed how you go from one to the next.

00:26:13

And this part I thought was really good.

00:26:14

Some of the later stuff where he talks about systems,

00:26:16

I thought he has a whole section devoted to systems

00:26:19

at the end, I thought maybe that was,

00:26:21

I wasn't as impressed with that.

00:26:22

A lot of that stuff was pretty elementary, I thought.

00:26:25

But this part at the beginning

00:26:27

where he's literally deconstructing,

00:26:29

this is what a business is.

00:26:30

Every single business is gonna follow this specific formula.

00:26:33

And then you can real quickly identify,

00:26:36

oh yeah, my business, I'm stuck at this point.

00:26:38

I haven't asked for the sale.

00:26:41

- Yeah.

00:26:42

- That I think is really valuable.

00:26:44

- You're not gonna sell anything

00:26:45

and don't ask him to buy.

00:26:47

- Yep, exactly.

00:26:48

- It's helpful because he really breaks down an MBA

00:26:53

or business and how you do business.

00:26:58

He breaks it down into these big categories

00:27:01

and then goes through the category in,

00:27:03

I don't know if I wanna say a high level or a deep level.

00:27:07

It's almost both.

00:27:09

It's kinda weird how he goes through it.

00:27:10

But he starts off, and maybe I'm backing up here,

00:27:15

maybe I'm just going crazy.

00:27:19

He starts off with value creation.

00:27:21

A business is going to have value that it's coming up with

00:27:25

or deriving from nothing

00:27:27

or out of some base materials.

00:27:30

It's developing something new.

00:27:32

And then he walks you through the process of,

00:27:35

what does that value look like?

00:27:37

How do you go about showing that value?

00:27:39

How do you market it?

00:27:40

How do you do the sales?

00:27:42

How do you deliver it?

00:27:43

He goes through the whole thing.

00:27:45

And he's got a bunch of little details

00:27:49

of how to technically pull those off.

00:27:51

And to me, the section of this that really stood out,

00:27:54

Mike, was the marketing section

00:27:57

because so much of the online world

00:28:00

and development world,

00:28:02

how you go about promoting this stuff.

00:28:05

And there's a good chance

00:28:07

I'm not going to see that person in person.

00:28:10

So the sales process has to be entirely digital

00:28:14

and mostly automated.

00:28:15

And it's kind of weird how that all has to work out.

00:28:18

So if you look at the concepts

00:28:21

and the methods that he gives you in here

00:28:24

and try to overlay that on the digital world,

00:28:26

it's kind of interesting how it can all play out

00:28:28

because you start to see things like the freemium model

00:28:32

that we're all familiar with now.

00:28:33

This thing is free.

00:28:35

If you want these special features,

00:28:37

then you pay this subscription.

00:28:38

Like the details of why that works is fascinating to me.

00:28:43

'Cause he explains why that stuff works out.

00:28:47

And I'm not going to dive into that.

00:28:49

You'll have to read the book, sorry.

00:28:51

(laughs)

00:28:52

There's some interesting backstories behind a lot of that.

00:28:57

And the more that I get into software development,

00:29:00

the more I realize the freemium model works.

00:29:02

And here's something, you know,

00:29:04

everybody seems to talk about millennials

00:29:06

and make fun of them lately.

00:29:07

But it's kind of the in thing to do.

00:29:10

But technically we are one or how do my grandfather say that?

00:29:14

I are one.

00:29:15

So it's interesting because we really just don't like,

00:29:20

we don't like people pushing opinions on us.

00:29:23

We don't like people telling us how to act

00:29:24

or how to do things.

00:29:26

And a lot of marketing is trying to help us

00:29:31

and force us to see or do something we may not want to do.

00:29:34

Like there's so much of that

00:29:35

trying to trick us into doing things.

00:29:37

So the radar that goes off of,

00:29:39

"Don't make me buy that," comes out a lot for me.

00:29:43

And a lot of the marketing methods that he spells out,

00:29:46

some of them I'm like, "You do that

00:29:49

and I'm never buying it from you."

00:29:51

(laughs)

00:29:52

There is some of that.

00:29:53

But the concept of, "Give me something free

00:29:56

and then let me test it.

00:29:57

Let me dip my toe in the water."

00:29:59

That one really resonated with me.

00:30:00

That's why I wrote down "Fremium Model" here.

00:30:02

'Cause it's something that I find

00:30:06

that works really well in the tech world.

00:30:08

And I think that might be because so many people

00:30:10

are against the "Ram it Down My Throat" type of marketing.

00:30:15

- Yeah, and I think it's a great example

00:30:17

of one of the things that he says in there,

00:30:19

that marketing is not selling.

00:30:21

Marketing is getting noticed.

00:30:22

Sales is closing the deal.

00:30:24

And a lot of people can't differentiate those two

00:30:26

when they're talking about the "Fremium Model"

00:30:28

because they see, "Well, I'm getting the app for free.

00:30:31

So how am I going to make any money?

00:30:33

How am I gonna monetize?"

00:30:34

And to be fair, some companies

00:30:36

that embrace the "Fremium Model",

00:30:38

they don't worry about that.

00:30:39

They don't even think about it.

00:30:40

They just try to acquire as many customers as they can

00:30:43

because that extends their runway from a startup perspective.

00:30:46

And then they figure out,

00:30:48

they decide that they're gonna figure out

00:30:50

the money thing later.

00:30:51

But, and that's obviously not a great approach either.

00:30:56

But there's a lot of really great marketing ideas in here.

00:31:01

Not just the "Fremium Model",

00:31:03

but also like the Maslow's "High-Rarchy of Needs",

00:31:05

where he talks about number one, physiology, number two,

00:31:08

safety, three, belongingness, and love,

00:31:10

for esteem, five, self-actualization.

00:31:12

And the idea here is that you're gonna move down this,

00:31:16

this, or up this pyramid, I guess,

00:31:21

where you're gonna satisfy a level one needs,

00:31:23

and then you're gonna go to level two needs,

00:31:24

and you're gonna go to level three needs.

00:31:26

But really when it comes to sales

00:31:28

and whatever you're trying to sell,

00:31:30

like you are meeting a need at some specific level,

00:31:33

and some people don't realize that,

00:31:35

well, because we're not worried about,

00:31:38

getting eaten by mammoths and stuff like that,

00:31:41

that we don't have to worry about those needs,

00:31:43

but the needs just change.

00:31:44

And so you have to recognize that,

00:31:46

whether you interpret it the way the Maslow did,

00:31:49

or the other one that I really liked

00:31:50

is the ERG model that he talks about in here.

00:31:52

And we've mentioned this,

00:31:53

I think on the previous episode,

00:31:55

a little bit where you've got existence.

00:31:57

So first of all, I have to make sure that I'm going to survive.

00:32:00

And then from there, you want to improve your relationships.

00:32:02

You wanna make sure that you are in good social standing

00:32:05

with your friends, or your spouse, whatever.

00:32:09

I wanna make sure those relationships are good.

00:32:10

And then finally, the top level, the G, that's the growth,

00:32:13

and that's where you wanna invest in yourself.

00:32:17

And a lot of this stuff is just,

00:32:19

it's things that I've heard before,

00:32:22

but thinking about them from a marketing

00:32:25

and business perspective was a little bit different for me.

00:32:29

I also really liked the iteration model

00:32:31

that he talked about, the wigwam,

00:32:33

I think is what he calls it,

00:32:36

where you watch, ideate, guess,

00:32:39

and then ask which one, and then act, and then measure.

00:32:43

There's a lot of little things like this,

00:32:44

which could just, if you tried just one of them,

00:32:48

it would change how you're doing your marketing

00:32:51

and your sales, and it could be the thing

00:32:53

that kind of pushes you over,

00:32:54

'cause you're like you were talking about,

00:32:55

your online sales process has to be,

00:32:58

for the most part, completely automated.

00:33:00

So a lot of times, the system isn't working,

00:33:03

and you're not getting the results,

00:33:04

and if you don't deconstruct it,

00:33:06

and you don't have the blueprints like this,

00:33:07

to match up what you're doing with what's working

00:33:11

and what's not, you can kind of guess,

00:33:13

is this the thing that's broken?

00:33:15

Nope, okay, well, let's try something else.

00:33:17

But I think that the way that he presents

00:33:19

these different models and shows you the questions to ask

00:33:22

that it's really easy to pinpoint some of those things.

00:33:25

- Did you catch this story about the hero's journey?

00:33:29

- Yeah, and this is something that

00:33:32

Tan has been preaching to me for a while

00:33:35

about this hero's journey, and about,

00:33:37

we wanna tell the hero's journey,

00:33:39

and all of our content, stuff like that.

00:33:41

- Right. - And I never really got

00:33:43

the complete picture of it,

00:33:45

but when he explained it in the book,

00:33:48

he kind of broke it down into a couple different steps,

00:33:51

which again, this is the kind of thing

00:33:53

that really crystallized it for me.

00:33:55

So number one, you introduce the hero.

00:33:58

Number two, the hero has a call to adventure,

00:34:02

and this could be your potential customer,

00:34:04

where you're introducing them as the hero,

00:34:06

and then they've got this call to adventure

00:34:08

where they wanna do this thing,

00:34:09

and then the third part of this is there's a trial,

00:34:11

so there's gonna be some sort of hardship

00:34:14

that they're gonna have to go through,

00:34:15

and then number four is the success,

00:34:17

so you wanna paint this picture of your customer,

00:34:20

for example, if they buy your product,

00:34:22

they're going to have victory and overcome this trial

00:34:25

that they're facing right now.

00:34:26

Number five, you've got the riches,

00:34:28

you've got the reward, you've got the promise of more time,

00:34:32

or whatever, fill in the blank with whatever you're trying

00:34:36

to sell, and then number six, the return to normal life.

00:34:39

So you've gone away, you've gone through this quest,

00:34:42

this hero's journey, you've emerged victorious,

00:34:44

now you return to normal life,

00:34:45

and you're just like anybody else.

00:34:47

That I think is a really important piece,

00:34:49

because a lot of times you can think about,

00:34:52

well yeah, that's great, that worked for that person,

00:34:54

but it'll never work for me,

00:34:56

and that's because you don't finish this hero's journey,

00:34:59

you have to really paint the picture

00:35:01

of the hero's journey of an individual

00:35:03

who is not necessarily special,

00:35:05

but they have this particular problem,

00:35:06

and then show how they overcame this particular problem,

00:35:09

show the benefit of the success,

00:35:11

the reward that they got for actually completing this thing,

00:35:15

and then now we've conquered this thing,

00:35:17

we've slain the dragon, we return to normal life,

00:35:19

and we teach other people how to do the exact same thing.

00:35:23

- Wow, you spelled that out way more than I was gonna

00:35:25

(laughs)

00:35:26

go into, I didn't even go into the whole steps thing,

00:35:30

I was just imagining, he spells out the whole hero's thing,

00:35:33

like you did very well there,

00:35:35

and the only thing I could think of was Frodo,

00:35:38

and taking Lord of the Rings going through the whole thing,

00:35:43

and I was trying to place that type of story

00:35:47

into marketing, and it was just a weird story

00:35:52

that I was playing out on my head anyway,

00:35:54

it was something that was enlightening to me

00:35:57

to see so many times we see marketing things

00:36:01

that are just rammed down our throat,

00:36:03

people are using scent, and they're using

00:36:05

all kinds of these word plays in order to get you

00:36:07

to think a certain way, like stuff like that

00:36:09

kinda drives me crazy, but this one really struck me

00:36:13

because it's one that I tend to resonate with,

00:36:15

I mean think about like Amazon reviews,

00:36:18

you look for the people who say something along the lines

00:36:21

of my life was horrible, I found this

00:36:24

and now everything's good again,

00:36:25

like that's some very, very dumb down version of it,

00:36:28

but that's something that I find interesting

00:36:31

because when I'm looking at reviews,

00:36:33

or if I'm considering a product of some sort

00:36:38

or a service that I want to contribute to,

00:36:41

if I'm looking at those, I tend to trust

00:36:44

the people who have dealt with something negative

00:36:47

and overcame it, and using that product or service

00:36:51

is what helped them do that.

00:36:53

Frodo makes it over the mountain, that type of thing,

00:36:57

and whenever I think about some of the materials

00:37:01

and the things that I put together to sell things,

00:37:04

it made me wonder, do I ever do this?

00:37:07

Like that's what helps me buy,

00:37:09

why wouldn't I use that to sell?

00:37:11

So it was enlightening to me to think through

00:37:14

my current marketing efforts,

00:37:15

I'm looking at the freemium model,

00:37:17

looking at this hero's journey,

00:37:19

how can that help me write my materials in the future?

00:37:22

- Yeah, exactly, and if you take this approach

00:37:24

and you try to not only tell a hero's journey,

00:37:28

but develop the hero's journey

00:37:30

with the customers that you're working with,

00:37:32

then that can really contribute

00:37:34

to a really strong sense of purpose

00:37:37

for the work that you're doing.

00:37:39

I've discovered this with Asian efficiency

00:37:40

where when we developed our email product,

00:37:43

escape your email, we've talked about the development process

00:37:47

and how we interviewed people about their specific problems,

00:37:50

and then we developed specific solutions for them,

00:37:52

brought it back to them, said,

00:37:53

"Here, try this, let us know if it works or not."

00:37:56

But then once they do and they realize that it does work,

00:37:59

then they become raving fans,

00:38:01

and those are the type of people that you see

00:38:04

on the website with the testimonials,

00:38:07

and those kind of things really aren't that hard

00:38:10

to get, all you have to do is focus on this hero's journey

00:38:13

and focus on the actual story.

00:38:15

But when you hear customers say,

00:38:18

"Yeah, I did what you told me to do,"

00:38:19

and it completely changed my life,

00:38:21

and now I've got so much more time to spend with my family

00:38:24

and don't struggle with email.

00:38:26

I went from dealing with it for six hours a day

00:38:28

to an hour a day, that type of stuff is real,

00:38:31

and when you can attach the story

00:38:34

in the hero's journey to some of those people,

00:38:37

for me personally, and we've talked about core values

00:38:39

and things like that, that's one of the things

00:38:41

that connects me to my work at Asian efficiency,

00:38:43

is I really enjoy the idea of pulling other people up.

00:38:46

And if you focus on the hero's journey,

00:38:48

you can attach to those stories,

00:38:50

and it can kind of give you increased motivation

00:38:53

and increased purpose, it can become the why

00:38:56

behind all of the things that you do,

00:38:58

and I think that's really important.

00:39:00

- I tell people this all the time,

00:39:01

if you're looking for your mission in life,

00:39:04

find a way to help people.

00:39:05

- Exactly.

00:39:06

- If you can figure out where,

00:39:09

and to me, if you have a product or a business,

00:39:11

it needs to solve a need, like something negative

00:39:15

or a problem that people may not know needs solved,

00:39:20

or it helps enable something that currently wasn't possible.

00:39:23

Like there's always something that's being overcome,

00:39:26

a way to help people either understand, accomplish more,

00:39:30

do more, not have a problem,

00:39:32

like you can always help people in some way.

00:39:35

If you can find a way to help people,

00:39:37

that's to me what brings most people,

00:39:40

if you think about how people find joy in life,

00:39:43

you talk to folks who are near the end of their life,

00:39:46

if you summarize everything that they tell you

00:39:49

and what brings them joy in life,

00:39:51

it usually comes down to how they have helped

00:39:55

or had relationships with other people.

00:39:57

- Yep, but I guess what I'm saying is that

00:40:01

don't just look to help people,

00:40:03

you know, if you're using the analogy of like a role-playing game,

00:40:07

these are not non-playable characters

00:40:09

that we are talking about here

00:40:11

where you're trying to help them

00:40:12

literally focus on helping the customers that you have

00:40:16

become the hero.

00:40:18

Put them in the place of utmost importance

00:40:21

and help them solve their problem,

00:40:22

and then this kind of stuff,

00:40:24

I believe will take care of itself.

00:40:26

- That's like I tell other folks

00:40:27

who are building plug-ins and stuff.

00:40:29

So if you can find a way to help other people make money,

00:40:31

you can make a lot of money at it.

00:40:33

(laughs)

00:40:34

If you help other people do the thing,

00:40:35

that they wanna do, yeah, you're better off.

00:40:38

Next thing you got here, three universal currencies.

00:40:41

- Yeah, this actually leads into,

00:40:44

ties together beautifully because the hero's journey,

00:40:47

the problem that you're trying to solve for people,

00:40:49

I would argue is always going to be to try to improve

00:40:53

the amount of one of these three universal currencies.

00:40:56

So number one is resources,

00:40:58

and that's probably what most people think of

00:41:00

when they think of currencies,

00:41:01

how much money do you have.

00:41:03

Number two is time,

00:41:05

and this one I think is undervalued by a lot of people.

00:41:09

And then number three is flexibility.

00:41:12

Those three things I believe you need to have a balance of,

00:41:16

this was a big reason why I took the job with Asian efficiency,

00:41:21

is that they offered me the time and the flexibility

00:41:25

so that I could reframe my current schedule,

00:41:28

and I could, if I wanted to, take an afternoon off

00:41:30

and go to the Children's Museum or go on a field trip

00:41:34

with my family because we homeschool our four boys.

00:41:38

But I think that it's a mistake to focus on

00:41:41

just one of these things.

00:41:42

I think you do need to make sure

00:41:44

that you have a healthy balance here

00:41:46

between the different things,

00:41:47

the resources, the time, and the flexibility.

00:41:49

And depending on your specific situation,

00:41:51

you're probably going to value one of these higher

00:41:54

than the others,

00:41:55

but you can have all the money or all the resources

00:41:58

in the world if you don't have the time and the flexibility,

00:42:00

you're not going to be happy.

00:42:02

You can have the time and the flexibility.

00:42:04

You can not have a job and have all the time in the world.

00:42:08

But if you don't have money,

00:42:09

you're not going to attract a spouse and start a family

00:42:12

because you need to have all three of these things.

00:42:16

And I think, again, this is one of those things

00:42:18

where it's just a good reminder.

00:42:20

When I read this, I was like,

00:42:21

oh yeah, I need to make sure that all three of these accounts,

00:42:24

so to speak, are full.

00:42:27

And if I find myself really focusing

00:42:30

on one particular season,

00:42:32

taking a lot of side jobs and things like that

00:42:34

'cause I want to save up the money

00:42:35

to finish my office, for example,

00:42:39

I need to make sure that I'm doing that in a way

00:42:41

where I'm not neglecting the time and the flexibility,

00:42:44

which is the reason why I got the job that I have now

00:42:48

in the first place.

00:42:49

I have to remember the why behind all the things, basically.

00:42:54

- All the things, all the great things.

00:42:58

- I was excited when I saw that you put Kaizen down here.

00:43:01

So Kaizen,

00:43:04

for people who don't know that, Mike,

00:43:08

I know it immediately jumped off the page at me,

00:43:11

so you want to explain what that is before--

00:43:14

- Yeah, Kaizen is actually another one

00:43:17

of the Asian Efficiency Core values.

00:43:19

And the basic-- - What is with

00:43:21

the Asian Efficiency, like all over this stuff?

00:43:24

- Yeah, I don't know, sorry, I guess.

00:43:28

But Kaizen is basically consistent improvement

00:43:31

and it comes from the Toyota development,

00:43:35

well not development model, I guess,

00:43:37

but production model,

00:43:39

where they famously, several years ago,

00:43:43

gave anybody on the assembly line the ability

00:43:46

to stop the assembly line for any reason and fix something.

00:43:51

Which, if you think about it,

00:43:52

that's a pretty big responsibility

00:43:54

'cause you have hundreds of, not thousands of people

00:43:57

who are all doing their job,

00:43:59

but when the whole assembly line stops,

00:44:00

that means all of those people cannot do their jobs.

00:44:04

They are not building the cars anymore

00:44:06

and they are not able to sell the cars and make money.

00:44:09

So this was a really radical idea back in the day,

00:44:12

but what they did is they gave any employee the ability

00:44:14

to pull the yellow cord and stop the assembly line.

00:44:17

And when that happened, the managers would come over

00:44:20

and they'd say, "What did you see?

00:44:21

"Basically what's out of place?

00:44:22

"What do we need to fix?"

00:44:23

And then the employee would mention that,

00:44:25

"Oh, I saw this thing and we need to make sure

00:44:27

"that this is right and they would always make sure

00:44:29

"that it was right."

00:44:30

And they gave any employee the ability to do that

00:44:32

whenever they wanted to.

00:44:34

That's one of the things, again,

00:44:36

I mentioned Asian efficiency, one of our core values.

00:44:39

One of the things I really like about working

00:44:40

with Asian deficiency is you can develop all these systems.

00:44:44

You can have all of this stuff in place.

00:44:46

And then you can just get head down, focusing on,

00:44:50

"Well, we gotta do things according to the system."

00:44:52

But you need to develop the ability to look at things

00:44:56

and say, "How can I make incremental improvements?

00:44:59

"How can I make this even better?"

00:45:01

And so one of the things that we do is we have,

00:45:04

as part of our scrum board, every single sprint,

00:45:07

we have an issue which everybody tracks time against

00:45:10

called Kaizen.

00:45:11

And it's basically just, you're gonna,

00:45:13

you put down on the issue, you comment on the issue,

00:45:15

what specific system that you are looking to improve

00:45:19

and then you just go and you make fixes

00:45:21

and you make changes to the currently existing systems.

00:45:24

And everybody does this for a couple hours a week

00:45:26

and then everybody just logs their changes there.

00:45:29

That type of stuff really makes a big difference

00:45:32

in the long run and really just need to be careful

00:45:36

that you don't just get stuck in,

00:45:38

okay, this is the way things are.

00:45:41

I really, really believe in the idea of Kaizen,

00:45:44

not just at a professional level,

00:45:45

but even on a personal level.

00:45:47

Like my wife and I have our family meetings on Sunday nights

00:45:50

and we talk about the different things

00:45:52

and we talk about what's working

00:45:53

and what's not working.

00:45:54

If you never take the time to ask like,

00:45:56

what is not working, you will never figure out

00:45:58

what is it working.

00:46:00

You'll just continue to bang your head against the wall

00:46:02

and wonder why things aren't working.

00:46:04

So the whole idea of Kaizen I think can make,

00:46:06

can make your entire life easier.

00:46:08

- So two things that jumped out whenever I saw Kaizen.

00:46:12

One, and they're both development related, of course.

00:46:16

One is what we refer to as continuous development

00:46:21

or continuous improvement, I guess is another way to say it.

00:46:24

Essentially, you're always releasing new fixes.

00:46:29

So you don't do these massive,

00:46:32

I'm gonna put a release together, turn it loose

00:46:34

and then everybody downloads it in the way you go.

00:46:37

The concept is that if I find something small,

00:46:40

I tweaked and cleaned up the code, I push it right now

00:46:44

and you're just always pushing something new.

00:46:47

It could be multiple times a day that that happens.

00:46:50

Sometimes some programs you get an update on them

00:46:53

every three or four weeks, some cases,

00:46:56

it's every three or four years.

00:46:57

But in some of the more advanced systems in today's world,

00:47:01

they're every three or four hours, if that.

00:47:05

Sometimes it's three or four times an hour.

00:47:08

The other concept that this makes me think of

00:47:11

is what we refer to as complaint driven development.

00:47:15

Effectively, you take the thing that has the most

00:47:20

complaints against it and that's what you work on.

00:47:26

If I've got a thousand clients or a thousand customers

00:47:29

on a specific set of software that I've written

00:47:31

and 400 of them are complaining about the same thing,

00:47:35

I should probably go do something about it.

00:47:37

But if I have four complaining about something,

00:47:40

they may be really loud and be very vocal

00:47:42

and give me a whole bunch of feedback,

00:47:46

but it's only four out of a thousand.

00:47:48

I'm not gonna touch that.

00:47:50

If it's 50%, then I'm gonna jump all over it.

00:47:53

Now, those are really high numbers.

00:47:54

If you get 50% of the people complaining, something's off.

00:47:58

The whole thing went down.

00:47:58

Amazon broke for the day.

00:48:00

Something like that happened, but that's the concept.

00:48:03

And the reason I bring those two up is because

00:48:05

it's easy to say, I'm gonna work on this

00:48:09

and by this date, I'm gonna say I'm better at it

00:48:13

as opposed to this is the thing I'm gonna work on right now.

00:48:17

This is the thing that needs stopped

00:48:18

and put in place right now in order to continually

00:48:21

get it better.

00:48:22

And I like those concepts at the same time.

00:48:26

I feel like you have to be careful with some of this.

00:48:29

It's too easy.

00:48:30

Like, so much of this book is talking about systems

00:48:32

and this is how you do this and this is how you do that.

00:48:33

And this is how it gets better.

00:48:35

And there's a lot of these things that just end up

00:48:38

being a lot and a lot and a lot.

00:48:40

The concern I have with that is a lot of the relational

00:48:43

side comes up short, I guess.

00:48:47

And the thing that he calls out that made me stop

00:48:51

and think about it was this concept of an assistant buyer.

00:48:55

And effectively what it is is you come alongside somebody

00:48:59

and explain the product, show the details,

00:49:01

explain all of the difficulties that can come

00:49:06

from using maybe a competitor product.

00:49:10

I don't know what it is, but you get the concept.

00:49:13

You're coming alongside the person who's potentially a buyer

00:49:16

and helping them make that decision.

00:49:19

And I struggle with figuring out how to do that online.

00:49:23

I'm not gonna see these people.

00:49:24

In most cases, I will never know their first name.

00:49:27

So how do you come alongside somebody

00:49:31

and walk through the questions and help them understand

00:49:34

it well enough so that they can make that purchase decision?

00:49:38

I mean, from a technical standpoint,

00:49:39

like, okay, build a webpage and here's an FAQ

00:49:42

and all this stuff.

00:49:42

But to me, those are all these cold

00:49:44

and they don't really show the personal side of it.

00:49:48

And it's something I struggle with.

00:49:51

I would like to sit down and go through it with everybody.

00:49:53

I feel like I could sell a lot of things

00:49:55

if I could just sit down on a phone

00:49:56

and go through things with people.

00:49:58

But I can't do that online.

00:50:01

I'm never gonna get that level of detail

00:50:04

and that level of personalization

00:50:07

with an online product like that.

00:50:08

- Yeah, that makes sense.

00:50:11

I think there's two parts to this.

00:50:13

So first, I think what you're talking about

00:50:15

is the education-based selling,

00:50:16

where you make the customer more informed

00:50:19

so that what you are offering is of higher value.

00:50:23

And I think along with that,

00:50:26

very important piece is later on on page 180,

00:50:30

he says, "Always focus the majority of your efforts

00:50:33

on serving your ideal customers."

00:50:35

Customers buy early,

00:50:36

buy often spend the most spread the word

00:50:37

and are willing to pay a premium for the value you provide.

00:50:40

The more ideal customers you can attract,

00:50:42

the better your business.

00:50:43

And so the way I interpreted this was

00:50:47

when it comes to education-based selling

00:50:49

and creating the value of the thing

00:50:51

that you are trying to sell.

00:50:53

Be willing to not be the right solution for people.

00:50:58

Don't try to be everything to everyone

00:51:01

and just identify who your ideal customer is

00:51:05

and then serve them to the very best of your ability.

00:51:08

And if you can do that,

00:51:09

then you can attract more ideal customers like that

00:51:13

and you don't have to deal with,

00:51:15

like you were saying,

00:51:16

the people who are complaining about something

00:51:17

and so you're just responding to the things

00:51:19

that they're complaining about,

00:51:21

even though those people maybe

00:51:22

are never gonna buy anything from you again.

00:51:24

I mean, we see that with people at Asian efficiency,

00:51:26

they complain about the content on our blog

00:51:29

and in the podcast,

00:51:30

but these are the people who never buy anything.

00:51:32

And for every one of those,

00:51:34

there's 10, 100 maybe people who are saying,

00:51:37

"Oh my gosh, this stuff is amazing.

00:51:38

"It's really, really good."

00:51:40

I really have applied this principle

00:51:42

that you talked about on the podcast

00:51:44

and it really changed things for me.

00:51:45

And then I went ahead and I bought rituals or whatever.

00:51:48

So don't worry about trying to make everybody happy

00:51:52

'cause you'll never be able to do that.

00:51:55

Yeah, don't do that.

00:51:56

(laughs)

00:51:57

I say it all the time, wait three weeks

00:51:59

before you trust any feedback that you get on it

00:52:02

unless it's positive, then I'm all over it.

00:52:04

But if I release a new thing,

00:52:06

I'm gonna get a bunch of people mad at me

00:52:08

whenever it first comes out.

00:52:09

I wait three weeks,

00:52:10

see if they're still complaining about it.

00:52:12

(laughs)

00:52:13

And then I'll do something.

00:52:14

- Yeah, one other thing I wanna add here,

00:52:17

going back to the Kaizen thing

00:52:19

and I think this also applies to the value of the product

00:52:22

that you're throwing out there

00:52:23

and serving your ideal customer,

00:52:25

there was a really good quote here by Alan Weiss.

00:52:27

He says, "Improve by 1% a day

00:52:28

"and in just 70 days, your twice is good."

00:52:31

Most people I think don't realize that the power,

00:52:35

the compound effect that kicks in

00:52:38

when you make those small incremental improvements.

00:52:41

And it doesn't just have to be improvements

00:52:43

to your systems and how you're doing things

00:52:45

which is kind of the approach

00:52:46

that we take at Asian efficiency,

00:52:47

bringing this back to how do you become

00:52:49

an assistant buyer when selling online?

00:52:51

How do you do education based selling?

00:52:54

- It could literally just be making the product

00:52:56

that you are selling 1% better consistently.

00:53:01

And then pretty soon you've got a really awesome product

00:53:04

which isn't gonna be for everybody

00:53:06

but for the people that it's appropriate for,

00:53:08

it's gonna be the exact thing that they need

00:53:10

and they are going to become those raving fans.

00:53:13

- Okay, I can't recall.

00:53:16

You've got reference levels on here.

00:53:18

I can't place what that is.

00:53:19

- Sure, reference levels,

00:53:23

there's a quote he put in there

00:53:25

which I think that this is really what Bookworm is all about.

00:53:29

He says, "Good books, magazines, blogs, documentaries,

00:53:32

"even competitors are valuable

00:53:34

"if they violate our expectations about what's possible."

00:53:38

When you discover that other people

00:53:40

are actually doing something,

00:53:41

you previously considered unrealistic or impossible,

00:53:44

it changes your reference levels in a very useful way.

00:53:48

And I think that just about every person

00:53:51

who is listening to this podcast

00:53:53

probably has some reference levels

00:53:55

which they need to be violated.

00:53:58

They need to have that paradigm shifted.

00:54:00

They need to see things bigger

00:54:02

and they have to have a different picture painted

00:54:04

of what is actually possible.

00:54:06

And that's the kind of thing

00:54:07

that reading all of these books really helps with.

00:54:11

This one in particular,

00:54:12

a lot of different business systems where it's like,

00:54:14

"Oh, we don't really have to struggle with things like this.

00:54:16

"There is a better way to do this."

00:54:19

The next book which we're gonna talk about in a little bit

00:54:22

and we've got a special guest is gonna be joining us

00:54:24

for that one, the 10X Rule by Grant Cardone.

00:54:27

That one in particular,

00:54:28

his whole mission in that book

00:54:31

is to just destroy and annihilate your expectations

00:54:34

of what you think is possible.

00:54:36

And I can say in my own life,

00:54:39

I've talked about the process of writing the book

00:54:41

and how that led to my work with Asian efficiency.

00:54:43

And all of these things now where it's like,

00:54:46

"Why would anybody listen to me?

00:54:48

"Why would anyone care about my perspective on this stuff?"

00:54:51

It's because my reference levels have been pushed.

00:54:55

They've been adjusted and the boundaries have been pushed.

00:54:58

I've been able to push those things

00:54:59

because I can take the course, I can read the book,

00:55:02

I can listen to the podcast,

00:55:04

I can see other people who are going through

00:55:05

this hero's journey and I can say,

00:55:08

"Well, if they did it, if it worked for them,

00:55:10

"then maybe that'll work for me too."

00:55:11

And just stepping out there and doing it,

00:55:14

I think that that's really what this is all about.

00:55:17

It's helping people escape their definition of status quo

00:55:22

or their definition of normal

00:55:24

and to just put themselves out there and try something.

00:55:27

Try something that you think maybe isn't possible.

00:55:30

Get a bigger vision, get a bigger picture

00:55:33

about what's possible and then just step out there

00:55:35

and see what happens because a lot of times

00:55:38

just the energy and the action that you take,

00:55:41

that translates into motion, that produces results

00:55:44

that are a lot bigger than you could even possibly imagine.

00:55:46

I didn't envision myself in this position

00:55:50

that I am in right now when I decided to get up

00:55:54

and start writing every day before work,

00:55:57

but one thing leads to another and then before long,

00:56:00

you've got a much better version of things

00:56:04

than you could have possibly projected

00:56:08

before you had gotten a bigger canvas

00:56:10

to work with, if that makes sense.

00:56:11

I think it's fun to destroy expectations

00:56:14

when it comes to glass ceilings.

00:56:16

Okay, I think I can accomplish this.

00:56:21

Well, this person did something that maybe indicates

00:56:25

that you could triple that.

00:56:27

(laughs)

00:56:27

It's kind of fun to see what people do

00:56:30

if you have a way to show that

00:56:33

where they think their maximum ability is

00:56:37

is actually much higher.

00:56:39

What's the thing with the marathon runners?

00:56:42

Whenever they feel like they are exhausted

00:56:44

and they can't go any further, they've actually used,

00:56:48

I think, what is it, 40% of their energy?

00:56:50

They still have 60% left in the tank or something like that.

00:56:54

I'm not a marathoner, couldn't tell you.

00:56:56

Not planning to do that.

00:56:58

Not a long distance runner, not for me.

00:57:00

But the concept is that typically,

00:57:04

when it comes to our bodies,

00:57:06

when we feel like we can't do anymore,

00:57:08

that number is actually at 40%.

00:57:10

We're not actually at the cap.

00:57:12

We're not even halfway there. (laughs)

00:57:15

So if you can help people see that in so many arenas,

00:57:19

that you start to open up a lot of doors for people.

00:57:23

And it starts to help people see that,

00:57:26

"Yes, I can do more.

00:57:27

"Maybe I'm not gonna procrastinate as much anymore on this.

00:57:29

"I'm gonna keep moving.

00:57:30

"I'm gonna keep at it.

00:57:32

"And I can do more than what I think I can currently."

00:57:35

I think this steps into your next point here,

00:57:37

the Acresia versus procrastination,

00:57:40

is if I define, most people don't know,

00:57:43

what is Acresia?

00:57:44

No, I'm not a crazy one.

00:57:46

Not a lot.

00:57:47

Well, okay, no comment there.

00:57:49

But Acresia, essentially what it is,

00:57:53

is putting something off to the future.

00:57:57

We know something would be in our best interest,

00:57:58

but we don't do it.

00:58:00

There's something I feel and know that I should do,

00:58:04

but I ain't gonna do it,

00:58:05

'cause I don't wanna.

00:58:07

Like that whole concept is Acresia versus procrastination

00:58:12

to me, they're basically the same thing.

00:58:13

Just my opinion.

00:58:15

Procrastination, the definition he gave

00:58:17

is avoiding the task that you know you need to do.

00:58:19

Acresia, like you mentioned,

00:58:20

knowing that something is in our best interest,

00:58:22

but we don't do it anyway.

00:58:23

So an example would be, "I should quit smoking."

00:58:26

Acresia, and maybe I'm saying this wrong,

00:58:29

I guess I just read it, and read it Acresia.

00:58:32

Acresia?

00:58:33

Acresia?

00:58:34

Acresia?

00:58:35

He gives a pronunciation in here.

00:58:37

I miss that, so Acresia,

00:58:40

that is lacking command over yourself.

00:58:44

Going back to the reference levels for a little bit,

00:58:48

and also kind of tying into this whole idea of Acresia,

00:58:51

and identifying like what is possible.

00:58:53

There was a story, actually ESPN picked it up

00:58:57

about a pastor in LA, I believe,

00:59:01

Matthew Barnett, who's the pastor of the Dream Center Church.

00:59:04

He has been training for a while.

00:59:07

He set out to do the World Marathon Challenge,

00:59:09

which I thought about when you were talking about marathon

00:59:11

running.

00:59:12

What it literally is, is seven marathons in seven days

00:59:16

on seven different continents.

00:59:18

The first one is in Antarctica.

00:59:20

And so he'd been training for a while.

00:59:22

He did this World Marathon Challenge,

00:59:25

and I think it was the fourth marathon, his knee popped,

00:59:29

and ESPN picked up the story because,

00:59:33

even though he had this knee injury,

00:59:35

he finished all of the marathons.

00:59:37

And he's telling the story now about how,

00:59:42

when he's knee popped, he thought he was done,

00:59:45

and there was always somebody who,

00:59:48

in all the different marathons,

00:59:49

who saw him and ran the race with him.

00:59:54

And he talked about how basically he just had resolved

00:59:57

in his mind that there was no way that he could return

01:00:01

without completing this World Marathon Challenge.

01:00:06

And so he was able to do it,

01:00:09

and it just really showed that story in particular,

01:00:12

the power of your belief system.

01:00:16

And so when it comes to Acresia and procrastination,

01:00:21

and these things that we talk ourselves out of

01:00:23

because we're so dang lazy,

01:00:25

we're capable of so much more than we realize a lot of times.

01:00:30

And he talks about those four general parts to Acresia.

01:00:33

So number one is the task.

01:00:35

Number two is the desire of the want.

01:00:37

Number three is a should.

01:00:39

So I should do this thing because I want this result.

01:00:42

And then number four is the emotional experience

01:00:44

of resistance.

01:00:46

That is where the rubber meets the road,

01:00:49

is that emotional experience of resistance.

01:00:51

Most people, when they encounter emotional resistance,

01:00:56

I don't wanna do this thing because it'll make me uncomfortable.

01:01:00

That is the hardest battle for people to win.

01:01:03

And I think that you can actually condition yourself

01:01:07

to overcome this on a daily basis.

01:01:10

If you wanted to, simply by employing something

01:01:12

like at Asian efficiency to talk about eating that frog,

01:01:15

doing your most important task,

01:01:16

the hardest thing at the beginning of your day.

01:01:19

Because this is a muscle.

01:01:20

If you can just consistently take action on those things

01:01:24

that you know you need to do,

01:01:25

and you don't feel like doing them,

01:01:28

you can develop the ability to overcome this kind of at will.

01:01:33

And I think that ultimately that could play it out,

01:01:36

that could play out as something like Matthew Barnett

01:01:39

being able to finish those marathons.

01:01:40

Maybe you're not trying to finish a World Marathon Challenge.

01:01:43

Maybe you're trying to get your product launched

01:01:46

or your book written or whatever.

01:01:48

Consistently look for those ways

01:01:51

and create those situations where you can win every day,

01:01:55

where you can overcome a crazier and procrastination

01:02:00

because it's a habit.

01:02:01

Winning and losing are both a habit.

01:02:03

And if you can consistently win over a crazier

01:02:06

and procrastination, then that will take you a long way.

01:02:11

- We had like three to four books in a row

01:02:16

where a certain person was mentioned.

01:02:19

How do you say this Mike Mahali?

01:02:21

- Me Holly, me Holly Cheeks sent me Holly.

01:02:24

- Yes. - He was on page 255.

01:02:27

I was like, "Oh, here we go again.

01:02:31

Mike, you're going to say this for me again."

01:02:33

Anyway, I didn't have anything about that

01:02:36

that I wanted to talk about other than,

01:02:38

we got Mahali back.

01:02:40

- Yep, absolutely.

01:02:42

- But this is, Mahali came up in a section

01:02:44

that was talking about working with yourself,

01:02:46

which I felt like was a,

01:02:49

it was pretty much a productivity crash course,

01:02:52

which is partly why I felt like I was more fascinated

01:02:56

by that section than a lot of the others.

01:02:59

Go, okay, here we go.

01:03:00

Yeah, I know this one.

01:03:01

Oh, I know this one.

01:03:02

Oh, I know this one.

01:03:03

I think there was a lot of those.

01:03:05

It was fun.

01:03:06

Anyway, the one that was interesting to me

01:03:08

is the, this whole multitasking thing.

01:03:10

It amazes me that people still think multitasking

01:03:14

is something that's positive.

01:03:15

But it seems to be just being,

01:03:17

it's driven down our throats.

01:03:18

Like you can't multitask.

01:03:19

Like this is not possible.

01:03:21

It's one of those things that I get tired of seeing

01:03:24

over and over and over again.

01:03:25

And yet I realize people do it constantly.

01:03:28

It's like, come on people.

01:03:29

You're listening to this, stop multitasking.

01:03:31

We all know it's bad for you and you can't actually do it.

01:03:34

- Yes, you cannot actually do it.

01:03:37

In fact, on page two, 50, 80 says,

01:03:38

neurologically it's impossible to multitask.

01:03:41

When you try to do more than one thing at a time,

01:03:43

you're not really parallel processing,

01:03:45

which is what most people think

01:03:46

when they're a multi, quote unquote, multitasking.

01:03:49

But you are rapidly switching attention

01:03:51

from one thing to another.

01:03:54

If you really understood that,

01:03:56

there are a lot of things that you would stop doing.

01:03:58

You would stop trying to multitask

01:04:00

in particular situations because you would identify

01:04:04

that this thing that I'm supposed to be working on,

01:04:06

this is really important.

01:04:07

And this is where Mahali comes into.

01:04:09

I mean, he's the guy who really wrote the book on flow.

01:04:13

And so getting into the whole idea of deep work,

01:04:15

where you're going deep on a specific topic

01:04:17

or a specific work area or specific task

01:04:20

because this is the thing that's of most importance,

01:04:23

you're sabotaging yourself when you try to multitask

01:04:26

or even you're not trying to multitask,

01:04:28

but you leave the door open to interruptions.

01:04:30

Like you leave your email open

01:04:32

and you hear those dings and those notifications.

01:04:34

And it changes what you're able to do drastically

01:04:39

because you have to switch your cognitive context

01:04:43

every time that you do it.

01:04:44

He talks about the cognitive switching penalty

01:04:46

in this book.

01:04:47

And basically have to load the context

01:04:50

for the tasks that you are switching to

01:04:52

every single time that you switch.

01:04:55

And so the solution to this is to batch your tasks

01:05:00

to identify that, okay, from this period,

01:05:03

I am going to work on email and I am not going to touch it

01:05:07

before then because I know that jumping back and forth

01:05:09

all the time is not going to make me productive.

01:05:12

And this is something that is really basic

01:05:14

in the productivity world.

01:05:16

Like you said, it really makes me want to cry

01:05:19

whenever I see people doing this.

01:05:20

Like you're hurting yourself, you have to stop this.

01:05:24

And I kind of along the same lines here,

01:05:26

he presents a method, the 31020 method.

01:05:31

Did you catch that?

01:05:32

- I did not, it sounds familiar, but I can't place it.

01:05:36

- Okay, so this is, I thought, a really great idea

01:05:40

for identifying what you're going to work on

01:05:43

in any particular day because that's something

01:05:45

that we hear at Asian efficiency all the time.

01:05:46

It's how many tasks should I identify to work on

01:05:49

in my task manager?

01:05:51

And it's going to be different for every person,

01:05:53

but he lays out this 31020 method as a way of providing

01:05:58

like a benchmark of this is what you should kind of shoot for.

01:06:02

Okay, so three major tasks, okay, in any given day.

01:06:06

So you want to have three major tasks

01:06:09

and 10, that's 10 minor tasks.

01:06:11

And the distinction here is that major tasks are tasks

01:06:15

that take more than 20 minutes.

01:06:17

And I think that articulating it this way

01:06:20

provides a really good framework for anybody

01:06:22

who's using OmniFocus or any other task manager

01:06:24

when they're sitting down and they're planning their next day.

01:06:28

And you're trying to decide what am I going

01:06:30

to try to get done tomorrow?

01:06:32

I think this provides a framework

01:06:34

that is a great place to start.

01:06:36

- The golden trifecta.

01:06:44

- I like the title of this section.

01:06:47

Effectively what this is, he has a personal three word summary

01:06:52

of the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People,

01:06:57

which is a book by Dale Carnegie, if I remember correctly.

01:07:01

- Believe that's correct, yep.

01:07:02

- Yep, so the three word summary,

01:07:07

appreciation, courtesy and respect.

01:07:12

So expressing gratitude for what others are doing for you,

01:07:16

even if it's not perfect, having the courtesy

01:07:19

to be polite, pure and simple.

01:07:23

Don't drag things out, don't be too wordy.

01:07:26

Respect, a matter of honoring the other person's status,

01:07:31

no matter how you relate to the person you're communicating with.

01:07:35

And I thought this was helpful

01:07:38

because I've not read that book

01:07:39

and I know that I should.

01:07:41

Sorry, someone probably needs to get it on our list.

01:07:44

But it's something that it makes a lot of sense,

01:07:49

especially when you think about

01:07:53

how you get work done with other people.

01:07:55

How do I go about working with my potential clients?

01:08:00

How do I sell to them?

01:08:02

How do I have my relational interactions

01:08:05

with existing clients and my continuing

01:08:10

customer relationships, I guess?

01:08:12

How do I go about building those

01:08:14

and making sure that they are top notch?

01:08:16

And this simple three word appreciation, courtesy and respect.

01:08:21

It really struck home.

01:08:22

It was a good way for me to summarize a lot of

01:08:25

how I want to be to the people that I'm working with.

01:08:29

- Yeah, when I read this, I thought of Chris Bailey,

01:08:32

the productivity project.

01:08:34

And when he talks about how people are the reason

01:08:37

for productivity.

01:08:39

All you really have to do is not focus on yourself,

01:08:41

focus on other people and basically the rest

01:08:46

of it's gonna take care of itself.

01:08:47

But along with this, I still am having a little bit

01:08:51

of trouble reconciling this

01:08:53

because actually right before this section,

01:08:55

he shares a quote by Charles Boyle.

01:08:57

It says, "If not controlled, work will flow

01:08:59

"to the competent man until he submerges."

01:09:02

I've experienced this.

01:09:04

So how do you balance, I guess I'm just

01:09:08

wanting to hear your perspective,

01:09:10

how do you balance serving other people

01:09:14

via the golden trifecta,

01:09:15

showing them appreciation, courtesy and respect

01:09:17

while still standing up for your own rights

01:09:21

and setting those limits which you need to do

01:09:24

if in order to be productive?

01:09:26

I would say one area where this can be extremely difficult

01:09:31

would be in a church setting

01:09:33

because a lot of the people that are in a church,

01:09:35

it's basically my pastor has described it

01:09:36

as a volunteer army.

01:09:38

So you're trying to coordinate all of these people

01:09:40

who this isn't their job, they're not getting a paycheck,

01:09:44

you can't tell them, do this or you're out of here.

01:09:47

So how do you look to serve people

01:09:50

while still maintaining your own personal integrity

01:09:54

when it comes to your schedule

01:09:56

and making sure that you are becoming

01:09:59

the best version of yourself so that you can be

01:10:01

of more value and more benefit to other people?

01:10:04

See, that's a coaching time to me.

01:10:07

And so I'm director of IT at our church

01:10:10

and I deal with a ton of volunteers,

01:10:12

that's the mass of our team is volunteers

01:10:17

and a lot of times I will run across situations

01:10:21

where someone's potentially breaking a boundary,

01:10:25

they're crossing a line that shouldn't be crossed

01:10:27

and what do you do?

01:10:29

I mean, you can't fire them, you can't get upset,

01:10:32

you can't say, no, you gotta do it this way.

01:10:34

Like, well, it takes a little more on my side

01:10:38

to show the respect to teach them,

01:10:42

hey, if you go this route,

01:10:44

you're gonna have a better situation,

01:10:46

like it'll be a lot better for you if we go this way.

01:10:49

Now, I'm summarizing that so it sounds harsh

01:10:52

and the way I just said that,

01:10:54

but if you take the time to understand that person well enough

01:10:59

to be able to speak into their life that way

01:11:02

and if I'm doing my job well as a director of IT

01:11:05

and building those relationships,

01:11:07

it's a simple flow of a normal conversation.

01:11:11

Does that make sense?

01:11:12

They're not in competition with each other.

01:11:15

- It makes sense,

01:11:16

but I think it can be difficult

01:11:18

when you've got different teams, different organizations

01:11:22

that are maybe playing by different rules.

01:11:25

But I think that there's a key

01:11:27

in one of the things that he mentions

01:11:30

where he says, don't focus on the problem,

01:11:32

focus on the options.

01:11:34

So let's just use the church context

01:11:37

and the golden trifecta where you want to put other people first,

01:11:41

but at the same time, maybe there's some systems here

01:11:43

that are broken and we want to fix them.

01:11:47

So we've talked about this in previous podcasts.

01:11:51

Take responsibility, take accountability

01:11:54

and don't focus on, well, whose fault is it?

01:11:57

How did we get here?

01:11:59

That's not going to necessarily help,

01:12:01

although that's probably my initial response

01:12:04

every single time I try to deconstruct things

01:12:06

and identify what are the actions

01:12:09

that got us into the situations that we can't do this again.

01:12:12

But if you're really going to embrace the golden trifecta

01:12:16

and you're going to live this out,

01:12:17

what you want to focus on is where do we go from here?

01:12:21

Not necessarily whose fault is it,

01:12:23

but what can I do specifically to fix this

01:12:26

so that the team and the organization

01:12:29

can be successful going forward,

01:12:31

but I think that's a lot easier said than done a lot of times.

01:12:35

- I don't know, I stick by the,

01:12:39

if you got to know people

01:12:41

and if I'm going to have a conversation

01:12:43

and something's not going right,

01:12:45

that I need to step in and do something,

01:12:48

a lot of times like, okay,

01:12:49

here's something that I feel we need to do.

01:12:53

And as director of IT, I can do this.

01:12:55

So that situation might be a little different

01:12:58

because in my case, if something's off

01:13:01

and the sound team needs to be taking control of something

01:13:06

and currently the video team is doing it

01:13:08

or vice versa, people may not be happy about those changes

01:13:13

and what I see as my goal is to help them

01:13:16

see the benefit to them or help them come up

01:13:20

with the idea itself.

01:13:22

To me, that's my job more than anything

01:13:25

is helping people come up with that,

01:13:27

even though I'm in IT.

01:13:28

Welcome to tech support.

01:13:29

Like that's how I come at it.

01:13:33

It takes a lot of,

01:13:34

I have to really appreciate what the people are doing

01:13:39

and help them see that I'm appreciative

01:13:41

of what they're doing and have the constructive criticism

01:13:46

at the same time.

01:13:46

Something I do quite a bit,

01:13:47

I did this quite a bit whenever I worked in corporate

01:13:50

was this concept of yes, no yes.

01:13:53

Are you familiar with this at all?

01:13:55

Mm-hmm.

01:13:55

Okay, so whenever I have something that needs to change,

01:13:58

someone's not gonna like it.

01:13:59

I use the yes, no yes process.

01:14:00

So very, very dumb down and very basic.

01:14:04

Thank you so much for the help you're doing.

01:14:06

Here's something you need to get better at.

01:14:08

This is awesome, let's continue working together.

01:14:10

Like that's a very dumb down way of saying it.

01:14:12

Now it's gonna be a lot more drawn out.

01:14:14

It's gonna be a lot more detailed

01:14:15

and the more I can put into the yeses,

01:14:17

as opposed to the no, better off we are in the long run.

01:14:20

And I use that quite a bit.

01:14:22

Even there's a couple of guys on the team that know

01:14:23

that I do it and they still tell me

01:14:26

they're grateful that I do it.

01:14:27

So it's like, okay, this is something I know helps

01:14:31

because I want you to know that I like what you're doing

01:14:33

and it's helpful and it's great for the team

01:14:36

as a broader sense.

01:14:38

And yet this is an area where I feel like we could grow

01:14:42

and I know that if I spell it out in that way,

01:14:45

everybody's happy in the end, typically.

01:14:48

Every once in a while you got somebody

01:14:49

that's just always going to be negative.

01:14:52

And even though it's volunteer based,

01:14:54

I have been known to let other people,

01:14:57

you're not allowed to volunteer here

01:14:59

until we get this figured out.

01:15:00

We have had to do that before.

01:15:02

And those are very rare and it kind of hurts

01:15:05

whenever you have to do that.

01:15:07

But sometimes the people who are there

01:15:09

are more toxic than they are helpful.

01:15:11

And you have to know where to draw that line

01:15:12

and it's different in every situation.

01:15:15

- Yep, I definitely agree with you.

01:15:17

I just think that that can be difficult,

01:15:21

especially with people who you're going to see

01:15:25

on a regular basis to have that conversation

01:15:27

and be like, you know, you're not really

01:15:30

in the right position to do this thing right now.

01:15:33

That can be really difficult,

01:15:34

but it kind of gets into the next point here,

01:15:37

the six principles of management as well.

01:15:39

You should just run through these real quick.

01:15:42

- Yeah, yeah.

01:15:44

- Okay, so number one is recruit the smallest group

01:15:47

of people who can accomplish what must be done quickly

01:15:49

and with high quality.

01:15:51

I think this is a really important piece

01:15:53

and I think that the tendency can kind of be to

01:15:56

recruit a bunch of people to these teams

01:16:00

and the bigger that they get,

01:16:02

the less agile they are and the harder it is

01:16:05

to actually take action and accomplish our goals.

01:16:10

So I think that's important to recruit

01:16:11

the smallest group of people you can

01:16:13

and still accomplish the goal.

01:16:14

Number two, clearly communicate the desired end result

01:16:17

who's responsible for what and to the current status,

01:16:21

number three, we just talked about treat people with respect,

01:16:24

number four, create an environment where everyone can be

01:16:27

as productive as possible, then let them do their work.

01:16:31

Number five, refrain from having unrealistic expectations

01:16:34

regarding certainty and prediction

01:16:36

and then number six, measure to see

01:16:38

if what you're doing is working

01:16:39

and if not, try another approach.

01:16:42

- I feel like if everybody would go through

01:16:47

and do this when they're in management,

01:16:49

life would be a lot better for the broader world.

01:16:52

- Yep, definitely.

01:16:53

- How many managers break at least half of these?

01:16:59

- Yep.

01:16:59

- Anyway.

01:17:01

- Yeah, and that kind of actually leads into

01:17:03

the next point here, the analytical honesty.

01:17:06

I mean, especially the six point where we want to measure

01:17:08

and then we want to change things

01:17:09

if what we're doing isn't working.

01:17:11

Analytical honesty, he defines it in the book

01:17:14

as measuring and analyzing data dispassionately,

01:17:18

which is a really,

01:17:20

I don't know, I think just about anybody

01:17:24

who is in charge of pulling together numbers

01:17:27

for the purpose of interpreting data to tell a story

01:17:31

is guilty of this in some way, shape or form,

01:17:34

where they pull numbers together,

01:17:36

which will paint the situation in a positive light

01:17:39

to tell their version of the event

01:17:41

so the story that they want to communicate.

01:17:43

So analytical honesty is literally just not approaching

01:17:47

the numbers or the data with any sort of agenda

01:17:52

or feelings, but just looking at it to say,

01:17:56

okay, what is actually going on here?

01:17:59

And I think that's a lot harder to do than it would seem.

01:18:04

- So story time, Joe used to be a data analyst.

01:18:08

I used to work corporate and I had at my disposal

01:18:15

some massive databases.

01:18:17

And by the time I was there for probably two months,

01:18:22

I had developed a habit of sending my data results

01:18:27

in PDF formats.

01:18:30

And the goal of that was to stop anybody up above me

01:18:35

from editing the data.

01:18:37

Because it was a problem for me to see a document

01:18:42

that I had prepared with data

01:18:46

that was not entirely accurate.

01:18:48

It was technically correct,

01:18:50

but it painted the wrong story.

01:18:53

And it drove me crazy.

01:18:56

'Cause that's not what the data says.

01:18:59

Like, you can't do that.

01:19:00

Like that.

01:19:01

(laughs)

01:19:03

That was one, a very small reason I left there,

01:19:06

but I mean, there was a lot of things

01:19:08

that played into that.

01:19:09

But so much of the integrity of the data,

01:19:12

even down to how you put a chart together,

01:19:15

like I could put together a chart

01:19:18

that shows technically correct data,

01:19:22

but makes you think the opposite of what the data says.

01:19:24

Like, you can do that.

01:19:26

And I'm hypersensitive to it.

01:19:28

You're gonna get me on a soapbox.

01:19:29

I need to stop.

01:19:30

Anyway, it's a problem.

01:19:32

If you have a lot of data, you're measuring things

01:19:34

and you have a story you hope or want to be true,

01:19:39

you have to stay objective.

01:19:40

You can't let your preconceived notions or theories

01:19:46

impact how you run the data.

01:19:48

You have to use tried and true principles into it.

01:19:50

Okay, I'm done.

01:19:51

- Yeah, the other thing I'll add to this

01:19:54

is that the correlation is not necessarily causation

01:19:57

when it comes to interpreting data.

01:19:59

So if you're looking for a way to show

01:20:01

that something is growing or something is shrinking

01:20:03

or whatever, you can usually find some sort of correlation

01:20:06

between things, but you have to dig deeper

01:20:08

and you have to understand exactly what the numbers are

01:20:10

telling you and depending on the specific situation,

01:20:13

that is a lot more work than people think.

01:20:18

It's easy to just kind of cherry pick specific statistics

01:20:24

and say, oh, look, the podcast numbers are growing.

01:20:27

The downloads are going up, that sort of thing.

01:20:29

But if one month there were five Mondays

01:20:33

and you release every Monday and the next month

01:20:35

there were four, it's gonna come back and bite you

01:20:38

at some point if you're trying to manipulate the data

01:20:40

and make it tell a specific story.

01:20:43

The other thing I wanna tease out here

01:20:46

is the whole section on systems at the end.

01:20:50

I thought that there was some good stuff in here,

01:20:53

but like I mentioned at the beginning,

01:20:55

I also thought it was pretty elementary

01:20:58

when it comes to systems.

01:21:01

And I was kind of disappointed that there wasn't a whole lot

01:21:06

new or deep here other than on page 400,

01:21:10

he talks about standard operating procedures,

01:21:12

reducing friction, minimizing willpower depletion.

01:21:15

We've talked with the checklist manifesto,

01:21:17

how checklists are actually externalized SOPs.

01:21:20

But a lot of this stuff I thought was really, really basic.

01:21:24

So kind of disappointed in that particular section,

01:21:27

but very end, last thing here,

01:21:30

and I love the way that he ended this book.

01:21:31

He talks about how self-education is never done.

01:21:33

So just because you've gone through this particular book,

01:21:38

there is always going to be more ground to take.

01:21:41

You want to keep changing your reference levels.

01:21:44

And I thought that how we ended the book

01:21:47

was a really good call to action

01:21:48

to keep going and keep growing.

01:21:51

- That's why we do bookworm, always getting better.

01:21:54

Always learning something more.

01:21:55

Here we are.

01:21:56

Action items, you got a handful here, you go first.

01:22:00

- Yeah, there were a lot of these.

01:22:03

Okay, so the ones that I wrote down here

01:22:06

were number one, create a back burner context

01:22:10

in Omni Focus.

01:22:11

So things that I don't necessarily want to work on right now,

01:22:16

but having a kind of like a waiting, waiting for,

01:22:20

or a list of things that are ready to be picked up

01:22:25

and move forward, but it's not just a someday,

01:22:28

maybe a list if that makes sense.

01:22:29

I don't know if I'm describing that real.

01:22:30

- That doesn't make any sense to me at all.

01:22:32

(laughs)

01:22:33

- Okay, so let me see if I can find a specific section

01:22:36

where he talked about this,

01:22:37

'cause we did not talk about everything in this book.

01:22:42

- Oh yeah, there's a lot.

01:22:43

- There's a lot.

01:22:44

- There's 400 something pages.

01:22:45

Yeah, basically just the back burner context,

01:22:49

these are things that I want to say right now,

01:22:54

I'm not going to work on these things,

01:22:55

but it's kind of like an on-decker next up list,

01:22:59

because there are things that on a day-to-day basis,

01:23:01

I do not want these things appearing in my task list.

01:23:05

These are not things that I want to work on,

01:23:07

right now they're not available yet, so to speak,

01:23:10

but the back burner context is basically a bunch of things

01:23:14

that I know I want to do when I have a little bit of time,

01:23:19

and it's kind of like a curated waiting for a list already.

01:23:24

I don't know if that makes sense.

01:23:25

- How is it different than a someday maybe?

01:23:28

- Yeah, well for the GTD purists,

01:23:30

they're gonna say this and they're gonna say,

01:23:32

"Well, you're going through your weekly,

01:23:34

your someday maybe list every week anyway."

01:23:36

- Maybe I'm a GTD purist then.

01:23:37

(laughing)

01:23:38

- I don't think of myself that way.

01:23:40

- Yeah, I guess my specific scenario,

01:23:43

I tend to throw things on to the someday maybe list,

01:23:46

and then that's kind of the place that they go to die.

01:23:50

- Okay, so instead of deleting things,

01:23:52

you put them on a someday maybe,

01:23:53

which means that your someday maybe is completely diluted.

01:23:56

- Exactly, yeah, and so the back burner context

01:24:00

level of someday maybe.

01:24:01

- I guess, yeah.

01:24:03

- I'm just giving you grief now.

01:24:06

(laughing)

01:24:06

It's not necessarily different priority levels

01:24:10

because I don't like the fact that some people

01:24:13

have test management systems,

01:24:14

we have priority one, priority two, priority three.

01:24:17

And really, if you've got a bunch of things

01:24:19

that are priority, that just means that nothing is.

01:24:21

It's not necessarily different priority levels,

01:24:24

but it is the next place to look

01:24:29

when I want to move something else forward

01:24:33

instead of going back to the someday maybe list

01:24:36

and going through the big archive of things that,

01:24:39

talk about the six different horizons at GTD,

01:24:41

the 50,000, the 40,000, 30,000,

01:24:43

like the three to five year thing,

01:24:45

that's not gonna be on my back burner context,

01:24:48

but something that I want to do in the next three to six months,

01:24:52

that would be there.

01:24:53

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well.

01:24:55

- Okay, I'm gonna, yeah, I'll let you go with it.

01:24:57

Okay. (laughing)

01:24:59

Okay, another thing that they talked about in here,

01:25:03

the next action item I have is to look into speed reading.

01:25:07

I think he called it priming.

01:25:09

And there's actually a course by Abby Mark's Beal,

01:25:14

which is on speed reading,

01:25:15

and I believe I have access to it,

01:25:18

so I'm going to look into this,

01:25:20

and I am going to try to embrace speed reading,

01:25:24

maybe not for this podcast,

01:25:26

where we're going through these books

01:25:27

and we're trying to tease out the things

01:25:29

that are really standing out to us,

01:25:30

but for the gap books that we had talked about

01:25:33

and the things that I want to get through these,

01:25:36

but I don't necessarily want to try and tease out

01:25:39

everything that I possibly can out of this book.

01:25:42

I just want to get the 80/20 of what the subject here is.

01:25:46

That sort of thing, I'm gonna give speed reading a shot.

01:25:50

Okay.

01:25:51

Number three is to have a set time

01:25:58

for my most important tasks to be done by,

01:26:00

which I am going to say is 10 a.m.

01:26:04

And this was just something that he talked about,

01:26:08

and I really liked that idea

01:26:11

of putting a deadline on there for my most important task.

01:26:13

I think I've done a pretty good job

01:26:15

in the past of identifying my most important tasks

01:26:18

and then saying, okay, I'm gonna work on these today.

01:26:20

I'm gonna get these three major things done,

01:26:23

but having a specific time

01:26:25

where I'm gonna have those things done by,

01:26:27

I think that might help a lot.

01:26:30

And then the last one is to review goals every single day,

01:26:36

which this is.

01:26:37

No, I'm pretty terrible at this.

01:26:39

Okay.

01:26:40

I need to not just write down specific goals,

01:26:45

but I wanna write them in such a way

01:26:47

that I look over them every single day,

01:26:50

and I wanna actually incorporate this into my morning routine.

01:26:54

One of the gap books that I read while we were in Florida

01:26:57

was the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.

01:27:01

And he has a very specific format that he uses

01:27:04

for the morning ritual.

01:27:07

And part of that is affirmations and gratitude

01:27:11

and stuff like that.

01:27:12

And visualization, that's where the goals come in.

01:27:16

So I want to articulate them in a way

01:27:19

where I can very briefly say in three to five years,

01:27:21

I'm gonna have this specific thing

01:27:23

where I've got that stuff kind of

01:27:26

in different places right now,

01:27:28

but I wanna make sure that it is clean, concise,

01:27:31

it's condensed and I can go through it

01:27:32

in a couple minutes every single morning,

01:27:34

just to kind of center myself

01:27:36

and make sure that I'm connected to the Y

01:27:38

and I'm moving things forward.

01:27:39

- So for my goals,

01:27:42

so I'm still in the 12-week year thing,

01:27:44

and I treat those as my daily goals that I review.

01:27:48

And I've got the breakout per week

01:27:50

of where I need to be on each one of those.

01:27:52

That's what I use for it.

01:27:53

Seems to work well.

01:27:55

Anyway, there we go.

01:27:57

Okay, so I've got a couple here.

01:27:59

First one is get back on the horse.

01:28:01

It bugs me to say this,

01:28:06

have been bad at sticking with OmniFocus,

01:28:09

and I've been not so great about sticking to my lists

01:28:13

and using my checklists and yeah,

01:28:16

things kind of got chaotic with me from a business standpoint

01:28:18

and it started to stress me out really bad

01:28:21

and this book made me realize,

01:28:22

oh, I'm stressed out because I'm not working my own systems.

01:28:26

I write about this stuff.

01:28:29

What's wrong with you, Joe?

01:28:30

Anyway, thus, I'm admitting publicly

01:28:34

I need to get back on the horse.

01:28:36

The second, I want to rethink some of my marketing strategies.

01:28:40

I've been pretty bad about the whole self-promotion piece

01:28:43

and it's because,

01:28:45

and I'm only just now learning this,

01:28:47

it's because I have a reservation

01:28:51

with forcing my thoughts onto somebody else.

01:28:54

I don't want to run something down another person's throat

01:28:59

because I think it would be good for them.

01:29:03

I want to help them see that it's the right thing

01:29:05

and that's what I mean by rethinking my marketing strategies

01:29:09

because I feel like if I think it through the right way,

01:29:12

I can do that online,

01:29:15

I just don't have the answer right now.

01:29:17

So I want to take some time and figure that out.

01:29:19

Nice, that's what I got.

01:29:21

Author style, I need you to go first on this one.

01:29:25

So I really liked the author's style.

01:29:30

Basically, the way the book is set up,

01:29:32

we mentioned at the beginning, it's 268,

01:29:36

small sections,

01:29:38

and at any one of those, you could go deeper

01:29:41

and have an entire book worth of content,

01:29:45

but it's kind of jumps from thing to thing,

01:29:47

which can be positive or negative.

01:29:49

I happen to really like it.

01:29:51

And in fact, a couple of the different sections,

01:29:54

he mentions additional resources and additional books

01:29:57

if you wanted to dive deeper on one of those things.

01:29:59

And that's one of the gap books actually

01:30:01

that I've got it from going through this one.

01:30:04

But I really liked it.

01:30:05

And with the exception of the system section,

01:30:08

I got a lot out of this book.

01:30:09

That was the only point where it was kind of hard

01:30:12

for me to read just because I guess I'm around systems

01:30:16

all the time and something that we preach

01:30:18

at Asian efficiency a lot.

01:30:19

So it was kind of elementary to me.

01:30:22

Other than that, I absolutely love this book.

01:30:24

So I am gonna give it 4.5 stars.

01:30:27

- Wow, nice.

01:30:29

So I'm conflicted by this one because I'm with you.

01:30:32

There's a lot of great information here.

01:30:34

There's a lot of great stuff to glean from it and enjoy it.

01:30:38

But if I go back to the book, The Shallows,

01:30:43

and there was a whole section in there

01:30:45

about how books in print form

01:30:49

may start to take some of the online

01:30:52

and the digital form formats.

01:30:54

And when that starts to happen,

01:30:57

you start to lose some of the comprehension

01:30:59

that can come with how the book's written.

01:31:02

To me, when I read this, it made me angry

01:31:06

because I wanted him to spell some things out.

01:31:09

And I felt like he skimmed over some pieces

01:31:12

and it just got under my skin.

01:31:14

Maybe that's just my personality,

01:31:16

but I felt like I was reading hundreds of blog posts.

01:31:19

Like that's what it feels like.

01:31:21

They're a page and a half, two pages,

01:31:23

maybe three pages long for each quote unquote chapter.

01:31:27

And it bugged me.

01:31:30

I was fine at first.

01:31:31

And then once I think I got to maybe the finance section,

01:31:35

maybe it was the finance section that I didn't like,

01:31:37

but the overall layout of it just got under my skin.

01:31:42

That's what I got on that.

01:31:43

But I do, I agree with you.

01:31:45

I think the material itself is top notch.

01:31:48

I think there's a lot of good things there.

01:31:51

I just didn't care for the layout.

01:31:53

But again, I understand why I did it that way.

01:31:56

He's trying to cover a lot of ground.

01:31:58

And the only way to cover that amount of ground

01:32:00

in that few pages,

01:32:03

like he's, how many pages did you say this?

01:32:05

It was 400, 107, something like that.

01:32:08

If you're gonna cover an entire MBA's worth of information

01:32:12

in a single book, you have to do this.

01:32:15

I'm not gonna say that he made a bad decision here.

01:32:18

I think that just the choice of book her, my personality

01:32:23

maybe doesn't mesh real well.

01:32:26

But I don't have anybody to blame but myself on that one.

01:32:29

- I think that's completely fair.

01:32:32

And I guess my perspective is maybe tainted a little bit

01:32:35

because I recognize the fact that these are basically blog posts.

01:32:40

I think that's actually how the project started

01:32:41

was just a bunch of blog posts that he turned into a book.

01:32:44

But I think that he does a really good job

01:32:45

of recommending good resources.

01:32:47

In fact, I've finished this book

01:32:50

as we're recording this now several weeks ago

01:32:53

because we've tried to record it a couple of different times

01:32:55

and it had been sick.

01:32:57

But I actually flew through this

01:32:59

and I ordered some of the additional resources.

01:33:01

Like one of the books that you mentioned the accounting

01:33:02

that he recommends is financial intelligence

01:33:05

for entrepreneurs.

01:33:07

And I have not been disappointed by the follow up books

01:33:11

that he recommends if you did want to go deeper

01:33:13

on specific topics.

01:33:15

But I can totally understand where you see

01:33:18

that he's only spending three pages on accounting

01:33:23

and you're like, that's not enough.

01:33:24

You need to know so much more.

01:33:25

You're absolutely right.

01:33:26

You do need to know so much more.

01:33:28

The fact that you've read through this book

01:33:29

does not necessarily equate to a MBA degree

01:33:33

but in my opinion, a lot of great information here.

01:33:36

- I think it does a very good job of introducing things.

01:33:38

Like it does a, maybe that's my problem

01:33:40

is I had my expectations set differently.

01:33:43

And whenever I go through this,

01:33:45

I'm like, I thought it was a book,

01:33:47

not a bunch of blog posts.

01:33:49

Like that's cranky old Joe here.

01:33:52

But all that said, I'm very conflicted on how to rate this

01:33:57

because the material I absolutely loved,

01:33:59

it was the format that gave me all kinds of problems.

01:34:02

So I'm gonna, part of me wants to give it a three.

01:34:04

It's a part of me wants to give it a five.

01:34:06

So I'm gonna give it a four and stop there.

01:34:10

(laughs)

01:34:12

- All right, sounds good.

01:34:13

So upcoming books, the one that we've got coming up next

01:34:17

with a special guest, we wanna announce

01:34:19

who the special guest is gonna be?

01:34:20

- We did last time.

01:34:22

- Oh, did we?

01:34:23

Okay, well, yeah, I guess then go back.

01:34:25

- And you did earlier in this show too.

01:34:27

- I don't think I teased it at the beginning of the show.

01:34:29

I mentioned we're gonna have a special guest

01:34:31

but Sean Blanc is gonna be joining us for the 10X rule.

01:34:34

That is gonna be by Grant Cardone.

01:34:37

And this one I'm excited to talk about.

01:34:40

I'm interested to get Sean's perspective

01:34:41

and how he's applied this to his business.

01:34:43

But this is one of those books that we talked

01:34:46

about reference levels that can really change

01:34:47

your reference levels.

01:34:48

- Yeah, yeah.

01:34:49

Hey, I'm three-fourths the way through this.

01:34:52

Well, no, I'm further than that.

01:34:53

So as we record this, we're recording that one tomorrow.

01:34:57

So that'll be interesting.

01:34:58

(laughs)

01:34:59

But yeah, that'll be a good one.

01:35:02

I'm excited about that conversation.

01:35:04

Following the 10X rule, we are jumping back into,

01:35:09

we've talked about the Dave Ramsey books

01:35:11

that he has his new hires read.

01:35:14

And this is another one of those Rhinoceros Success

01:35:18

by Scott Alexander.

01:35:19

I don't know much about it other than that.

01:35:23

Other than I think it'll be interesting to read

01:35:26

a book about success after we read the 10X rule,

01:35:29

which seems to be all about success.

01:35:31

(laughs)

01:35:32

That'll be interesting.

01:35:33

For gap books, I'm finishing up a book

01:35:38

called Starting Strength by Mark Rippetto.

01:35:41

I've wanted to get into barbell training for a while.

01:35:45

And I figured Mark Rippetto is one of those guys

01:35:47

that seems to have it all together and knows it really well.

01:35:49

And he teaches you the process of actually doing them

01:35:52

the right way in that book.

01:35:54

So I'm going through it.

01:35:55

I've got a gym out in the woodshop

01:35:57

that I'm planning to use for it.

01:35:58

So we'll see how that goes.

01:35:59

I've never really been one that works out

01:36:01

for exercises, so we'll see how this goes.

01:36:04

(laughs)

01:36:05

- All right, and my gap book,

01:36:07

I'm gonna put one that I picked up

01:36:09

from the personal MBA here,

01:36:12

and that is Mindfulness in Plain English.

01:36:14

'Cause we didn't talk about this,

01:36:15

but he also talked about meditation yet again.

01:36:18

And this was the one that he recommended for this.

01:36:21

I'm not even gonna try to pronounce the guy's name.

01:36:24

(laughs)

01:36:25

But this was one that he says,

01:36:28

like this is the definitive book on this.

01:36:30

So I've been pleasantly surprised

01:36:33

with the financial intelligence for entrepreneurs.

01:36:35

Haven't started this one yet, but I intend to.

01:36:38

Maybe this is one of those ones

01:36:39

that I'll try out my new speed reading technique on.

01:36:43

- There you go.

01:36:44

That'll make a lot of sense.

01:36:46

Let's speed read a book about Mindfulness.

01:36:48

(laughs)

01:36:50

(laughs)

01:36:51

- Yeah.

01:36:52

So if you wanted to recommend a book, you can do that.

01:36:56

We love it when people recommend books.

01:36:59

We've got a growing list.

01:37:00

You can go to bookworm.fm/list

01:37:03

and you can see a list of all of the books

01:37:06

that we've covered so far,

01:37:08

as well as the ones that are planned.

01:37:10

And there's a link right at the top to recommend a book.

01:37:13

So if you wanna go there and recommend something,

01:37:16

you wanna hear us talk about,

01:37:17

that would be the place to do it.

01:37:19

- And we're always interested in the feedback

01:37:25

that people have on what we're talking about.

01:37:27

There's a couple different ways

01:37:28

that you can leave feedback on what you're hearing here.

01:37:31

One is to go to iTunes, leave a review there.

01:37:35

There's a link to the podcast on iTunes and the show notes.

01:37:39

That's extremely helpful.

01:37:40

We've talked about every week.

01:37:41

It's a great way to help other people find the show.

01:37:43

Another way to leave feedback,

01:37:45

I didn't vet this with you, Mike.

01:37:47

And I didn't even really intend this,

01:37:49

but it's kind of morphed into that,

01:37:52

is that the discussion site that I have behind my website

01:37:56

at joebullig.com,

01:37:58

I have a discussion forum that follows up

01:38:01

with comments on every article I post out there.

01:38:04

And there's been a handful of people

01:38:06

that have been starting to have conversations

01:38:07

about the books and the shows there as well.

01:38:10

I didn't really intend that.

01:38:12

It just kind of started happening.

01:38:13

But there you go.

01:38:14

If you wanna follow up on that,

01:38:15

the one that we've been talking about a lot lately

01:38:16

is the checklist manifesto.

01:38:17

It's been good.

01:38:18

There you go.

01:38:19

- Yep, you dragged me into that as well.

01:38:21

- I know.

01:38:22

- It's like, oh, Mike's not over here.

01:38:23

We need to get Mike drug into this.

01:38:26

- Yep, so definitely check out Joe's discussion site,

01:38:30

give us feedback.

01:38:31

We wanna know how you are implementing some of the stuff

01:38:35

that we're talking about, the changes that you're seeing.

01:38:37

But thanks everybody for joining us

01:38:39

and we'll talk to you next time.