Bookworm Transcripts

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I figured out how to do the whole standing up podcasting thing.

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Oh, there you go.

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I have a, it's almost a shame to say this, Mike.

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I have a rickety old way of putting up lights so that I could record video in my office,

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which consists of a four by four with a two by four screwed to it.

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Very crudely and a thin strip of plywood screwed to the top of that two by four.

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So it's this two by four comes straight up out of the ground.

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And I set it up next to my desk and screwed my podcasting stand to it.

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So it's like tucked over in this little side of my desk and then I can have the

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boom stand for my mic reach out across my desk and stand up that way.

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Nice. I think we need a picture for the show notes.

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OK, I'll do that.

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I'll grab a picture for it.

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It's, it's quite, it's quite set up.

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Sounds like it.

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Very classy for sure.

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You say a classy Jobe leg.

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I know, right.

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I felt like I needed to do this because I realized on what was the show.

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It wasn't this one.

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It was on theoretical, I think, where I could hear my cheer in the background.

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I was able to cut it out, but when I was editing it, I heard it.

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I heard my cheer moving a little bit and I'm pretty sensitive to that.

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So the fact that I could hear it, even though I was being particular with it,

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it kind of bothered me.

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So that was my, I guess, last straw to tell me, I need to do something about this.

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Standing podcasting is far superior.

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Now you've been at it, obviously, much longer than me.

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Why do you like the standing up thing better than sitting?

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Because I can move more and I don't have to worry about, like you said,

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making a bunch of noise that the other person can hear.

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And I think that movement, at least for me, is really important because

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it changes your mental state.

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And so if I'm able to move around and talk with my hands and not worry about

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turning a certain way and my chair creaking or whatever, like that's,

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that's going to translate into a better, better recording for sure.

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And I'm with you there. I like to, I like to move around, especially when I'm on

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like conference calls or a client call of sorts.

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And I have, what is it?

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It's the Rode Filmmaker Pro.

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It's a Lavalier mic.

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And I have the adapter to where I can plug it into my Mac and use it as a mic input there.

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And I've never tried to podcast with this thing because essentially that

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would allow me to walk through the room.

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Like I could walk around while I was podcasting.

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I'm not going to talk about how terrible that will likely be for editing.

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Because I'm sure it will pick up a ton of things in the background.

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So it's probably not great for that.

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I feel like it would be really good for just a very casual conversation,

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like an interview style podcast, but something like Bookworm, not so much.

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No, probably not.

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The trick with that is you have to be able to hear at the same time.

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And that's where I've got, I now have the Apple AirPods.

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And see, that's where those could come in.

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Because then you could be wireless and still walk around with them.

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True. There is a little bit of a delay with the AirPods though, at least.

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And that's my opinion.

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Yeah, that's that's the downside I've learned with those is you can do it.

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But you have to be okay with like certain podcasts.

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If you ever pay attention to the way that people have, say, the banter between each other,

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whenever they have the back and forth, you pay attention to that.

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Some hosts have a good, like they know how to stall just a little bit before the

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other person talks and they're, they're able to do that.

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You and I do that quite a bit.

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Every once while I get excited and interrupt you, but other than that, we're pretty good at this.

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So in this particular case, it might be okay because we're used to a little bit of a

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delay between us going back and forth.

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But not every show is built for that.

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Like take theoretical, for example, that show would be terrible with a delay

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between us because we would be all over each other every time.

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So I think it really depends on the show, but at the same time, I think in a lot of

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cases, I would prefer to have it immediate, even though I could do the wireless setup.

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I always grab the wired mic, the wired headphones, whenever it comes to podcasting.

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I think you do the same because I know you're picky about this as well.

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Oh, yeah.

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I am quite picky about audio quality.

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I am using not only wired headphones, but wired in ear monitors.

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They are specifically the West tone.

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I believe they're the U.C.

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or UXRC3s, which means that they have a removable cable.

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They're very expensive.

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If you, if the cable were to fray, I can actually buy just a new cable and keep

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the actual headphone piece because the headphone pieces are so expensive and they

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have three separate drivers inside this little earbud sort of a thing.

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It's basically the nicest in your monitors you can buy that are not custom molded

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for your ears.

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Oh, got it.

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Got it.

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Yeah.

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And I've worked with, I've worked with some folks who have the molded in your

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monitors at church.

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Like when we have people come in who are, I don't want to say celebrity status,

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but they're well known in the Christian music arena.

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And I don't know how to say this, but they're kind of a big deal.

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Yeah, they're kind of impressive.

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You know, when you start dropping four plus figures on in your monitors,

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multiple times over, it's kind of a big deal.

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But it doesn't sound like you've gone that far.

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I don't think you need to go that far.

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No, and actually I probably wouldn't have bought these except I got a connection.

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A friend of mine introduced me to a friend of his who is a dealer for West

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Stone.

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So he gave me a pretty, pretty good deal on him.

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Got it.

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Got it.

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Those are people you like to stay friends with.

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Yeah, exactly.

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It's basically my miniature version of the connectedness that Josh has.

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The, oh, I was thinking connectedness.

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I don't actually know the people, but I know people who know the people.

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See, that's the part that matters as long as you can get there within one step.

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You're OK.

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So let's jump into follow up because we have some.

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A decent amount here.

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We do.

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So how have you been intentional about money in your business?

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I've been pretty good on that one.

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I took a look at the budgeting process.

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I essentially took my wife and I's budget process and duplicated it for my business.

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It's all Google sheeted, it did.

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Nittness.

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So it's all on the online.

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So I took that, translated all the budget categories and put the numbers in, all that stuff.

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And it showed me that I'm in pretty good shape from a money standpoint.

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There's a number of expenses that I want to try to cut.

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But other than that, I felt like I was in pretty good shape, but at least puts me on the path

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where I know I know where that money is going and I know what needs to be done to keep it

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where it should be.

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Does that make sense?

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I've said that in kind of a weird way.

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No, I think that one of the things that you pointed out is really, really important.

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And that is that you see where things can be cut.

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And there's two different ways to cut things.

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And I think I know which one you're talking about.

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You can just decide that I'm not going to do this thing anymore or I'm not going to use this tool.

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I don't need this particular service anymore.

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And you can cut that out.

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But I think probably what you're talking about is there are ways to do what you need to do cheaper.

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And if you're able to identify those and you're still like you're still able to have the services

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and the tools that you need to get your work done, that is literally just adding profit to your pocket.

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Yes.

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And that's very close to what I'm doing.

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This is a case where I have had two or three annual subscriptions going on that are fine.

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You know, there in one case, it's a couple hundred dollars a year, which in the grand scheme of what I have going on is really not all that much.

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And it's something where I could continue to use that.

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I could leave it.

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It would be fine.

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I can use that service.

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But I have since created some of my own systems that are very similar

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that fit a different niche.

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And I can transfer platforms and use my own instead and it costs me nothing.

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So there's some of those that I was aware of.

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I'm just picturing that the people who are in charge of going through the responses for the services that you're going to be canceling.

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And you felt the survey and like, why did you cancel this service?

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And like, well, I created my own.

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I built my own.

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I don't see that.

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They see that and they're like, I don't even know what to do with this.

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What bucket does this even belong in?

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Like, we never see this sort of thing.

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You're the outlier.

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Well, I was talking to somebody not long ago who works in that they work at a call center for credit cards.

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And so they get the phone calls where I need to cancel my card and they have learned that if someone calls in and says, well, have you heard of Dave Ramsey?

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Like, if they ever call in and say that, they just immediately cancel the card.

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Like, you're not going to talk them out of canceling the card ever.

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They've just learned not to deal with it.

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They've already cut up the card.

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They already know they're not going to use it ever again.

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You might as well just cancel the account.

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That's funny.

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Also, something that I discovered, I don't know exactly what the time is, but I figured out that with the cable company, if you can keep them on the phone long enough, they will give you a better deal just to get you off the phone because you are costing money.

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Oh, really?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I have to try this.

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Here in lies a long story, which I will try to abbreviate because it really has nothing to do with our topic today.

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But Time Warner got bought by Spectrum and Time Warner is who we have for cable in our area.

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Well, now it's now it's spectrum.

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So Spectrum is going around and they're offering insane deals for new customers.

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I've been a Time Warner customer for like seven years or something.

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I found out from a buddy of mine at the co-working space that he had Time Warner also, but he basically got the new customer discount when he talked to somebody.

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So I called and I'm like, hey, I want the new customer discount.

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I'm like, sorry, you're an existing customer. You can't get the new customer discount.

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I said, yes, I can. You gave it to somebody else.

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I'm like, no, we really can't give you the new customer discount.

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So that went nowhere.

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I called back.

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I talked to three or four different people.

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At one point, I even called back and I got the same guy that I had talked to previously and I was going to go through the spiel again.

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And he's like, yeah, I just talked to you and we really can't do anything.

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So I was a little bit upset and I was basically trying to talk this through logically and I'm like, okay, so you're telling me that the best thing for me to do is to leave you, go try somebody else and maybe come back later.

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He's like, well, I'm not telling you what to do.

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And I'm like, yes, you are.

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You're telling me that is much, much cheaper and I get the same service from somebody else.

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And I forget how long I was on the phone with this guy.

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It was either 15 minutes or it was 30 minutes, but literally to the second because I had the timer.

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I'm going on my iPhone to the second when I crossed the threshold.

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He's like, all right, look, tell you what, I can do this.

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And it was exactly what I had asked him to do like 10 minutes earlier.

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So I got my good deal, but next time I'm not going to find someone else who can call and just sit on the phone and tackle with them for a half hour.

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That's good to know because we've been we've been on the spectrum thing for quite a while and they continually raise rates like five bucks every year or something like that.

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And I've played around with putting in a business line in my house and it's only because our monthly price has gone up enough that it's not that far of a stretch to pay more for almost twice the speed.

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So I have really debated that, but that's a good thing to know.

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I can just sit on the phone for a while.

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I'm used to sitting in meetings where I don't listen and really don't do anything.

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You could probably get like a plug and develop all your.

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Yeah, there we go. You guys just keep talking on your end.

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I'll build a plug in and I'll earn the money back from the time I spent with you.

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That's quite the tangent.

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But yeah, so you're more intentional about money in your business.

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How are you doing with being aggressive in your business?

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I don't know.

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This is one that I don't know how to even hold myself accountable to it because what does being aggressive in my business mean, I guess.

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The best I can come up with is being very ruthless with how I price things.

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And I have been very.

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I don't know how to say that.

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I've been raising rates for a while and I have continued to do that.

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But partially what I've had going on is I've started to move away from smaller clients and taking on more corporate clients.

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And I've got four or five now that are in that camp and I'm trying to focus on them.

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And the nice thing about them is they tend to be recurring clients, whereas they don't really stop.

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You just go on to the next project right away.

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So you finish up the one and you go on to the next.

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So the thing is you get enough of those and you just always have recurring projects with them.

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So that's the nice thing.

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But that also means those need to pay well enough to make it worth your time, but they're corporate clients.

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They're willing to pay more.

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So I'm trying to be a bit more ruthless with how I set those prices.

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Knowing that things will continue coming in on that.

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So I'm trying to focus on that.

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I don't know if that translates to being aggressive in business, but in my world, it's definitely a big jump.

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The thing that I'm debating as a result of that and now we're now we're going to get into potential goal setting, I guess.

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But I'm I am considering trying to find two or three solid developers who are learning.

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That I can pass work to for say like a finders fee or something.

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And because I get enough of these small projects that I just don't like they're not worth my time.

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Whenever I've got the corporate clients, it's not worth me doing that.

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So I'm debating being a bit more open to bringing not someone on as like an employee, but just building that relationship where I will pass you work in exchange for say 20% or whatever it is, because you're using.

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My connection to get the job when you normally wouldn't be able to get it.

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So I'm debating doing some of that.

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Maybe that's being aggressive.

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I don't know.

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That's that's what I'm playing with.

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Yeah, that's not what I expected at all, to be honest.

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I thought you were talking about being aggressive in your marketing and your framing of yourself as an as an expert, but.

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Yeah.

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And maybe I'll allow it.

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Maybe I I don't know when it comes to my development work.

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I don't need to do marketing at all.

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Not not really.

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I struggled to keep up with what I have coming in already.

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If I like there's the different types of procrastination that people deal with, the one I would deal with is overwhelm because I have so much going on.

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I don't know where to start.

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So I end up not doing anything.

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That's the category I fall into.

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And it's primarily because I just have enough projects moving at one time that it's hard for me to nail down which one I need to work on next.

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You've got to pick one and run with it, but that's not always easy to do.

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So I don't really need to do some marketing in that realm.

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And I haven't stopped long enough to think about whether or not I should translate this whole aggressive and business thing to the online space yet.

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Yes, probably should.

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I think you would agree that I should.

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Yes, but I have not taken the time to do that, Mike.

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So I just changed my gap book because I realized that I just read a book which would definitely fall into the gap.

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But category, but it speaks directly to what you're talking about.

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The book is Overlap by Sean McCabe.

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Are you familiar with Sean West?

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I am.

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OK, so this book overlap is really like a guide to launching your business when you are currently in a day job.

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So not everything in here is going to apply to your specific situation, but there's tons of gold in here.

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And one of the things that Sean talks about in the book is this whole idea of being.

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Being successful and be and casting a big dream, which I know is going to sort of what we talk about in in this book that we're going to cover here today if we ever ever get to it.

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But we'll get there.

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We'll get there.

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The reason that these two, I think, are aligned with being aggressive in any sort of business is you have to be willing to throw your vision out there.

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You have to be willing to say that I have this experience and I frame yourself a certain way.

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And that's one of the things I really respect about Sean is the fact that he has done that he actually in the book says that by 2027, so 10 years from when he published it, which is actually a pre launch right now, it launches.

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It's September 14th, so it might be out by the time.

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I'm not sure when this podcast gets released.

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Maybe you'll have time to preorder it still.

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And if you get, if you do go to overlapbook.com before the preorder, you can actually get the audio book version for free.

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He's giving it away for free before the book actually launches.

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He says by 2027, Sean West is going to be a billion dollar brand and I'm either going to be proven right in everything that I'm saying, or you're going to know that you don't really need to listen to me, which is, which is a.

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I don't, I can't think of another term.

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I'm just going to say that's pretty ballsy to say that like, you're going to put that out there for the whole world to see, but, and when you do that, that I say that that's aggressive because there's obviously some people like myself, for example, when I heard him say that, I'm like, wow, like.

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He really believes what he's talking about.

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That resonates with me.

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I'm going to become a fan.

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There are other people who are just going to be like, no, you're, you're off your rocker.

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Like I'm not going to.

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I'm not going to smoke in exactly, exactly.

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But the thing here is that if you are not aggressive, that's where this whole dream big that like the big vision you can, you can, if you consistently are hearing from people that, like, if you're listening to the haters, essentially, you can keep ratcheting that down.

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And he talks in the book about how he's always had this goal of owning a Lamborghini.

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And when he started his online business, he got a little bit of success and he kind of compromised on his goal.

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And he ended up getting a used red Ford Mustang with less than 85,000 miles on it.

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Great car, but it was like $5,000 or something.

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And he, he realized after he had gotten that car, he actually says in the book, the best day of his life.

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So when he sold that car and got like this gray beater, because he could no longer compromise and think like, well, I've achieved my goal because the red used Mustang.

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It was red.

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It was a sports car.

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It was fast.

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Like it had all of the same attributes, but it wasn't the real thing.

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And so I think that like in order to get to the like the Lambo goal sort of a thing, you have to be willing to take that stance, draw the line in the sand and make people either love you or hate you.

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And I don't think if you are accommodating it again, you know, with your online stuff, maybe that's not not your goal.

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Maybe it's just, you know, something that isn't isn't the main thing.

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It's it's something that that fills a fills a void for you, but it's it's not necessary to make a strong stance in that particular area.

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Maybe the particular area you want to make a stance in is the development work.

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I don't know.

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But I think that this is a really important principle that everybody needs to decide because as this whole book that we're covering here today talks about like you have to be all in on the stream or this vision.

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If you really want to achieve it and you have to you have to be okay with people saying like, yeah, I'm not going to work with you or I'm not going to follow you or I have no interest in the thing that that you're selling.

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Because if it really is the right thing, there's going to be a large, large number of people on the other end who are just going to be super fans and this is going to help.

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There's a lot there for sure.

00:21:24

Sorry.

00:21:25

Didn't mean to go all philosophical during follow up.

00:21:29

Mike excited again.

00:21:31

Well, actually, I just interviewed Sean yesterday for the productivity show.

00:21:37

Okay.

00:21:38

Now we get it.

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He's a super smart guy.

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Well, actually, so here's the whole story.

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I read the book.

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I reached out to him and I was like, hey, this book is awesome.

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I think that we need to help you promote it.

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And he's like, yeah, that'd be cool.

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So yeah, and this is the first book that he's written.

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I mean, if you're familiar with Sean West, he's done courses.

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He's got a community, but he's a writer.

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He says in his bio that he writes a million words a year, but this is, to my knowledge,

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the first book that he's actually published.

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So the term author, that's a new title for him.

00:22:16

Sounds like I need to pick it up for sure.

00:22:21

I would recommend it at least the audiobook version because it's free until

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September 14th.

00:22:26

Well, there's that.

00:22:27

There's that.

00:22:27

That means I got to make time for audio in some form.

00:22:31

Yeah.

00:22:33

So I downloaded the audiobook and I tried to listen to it while I was running.

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I've been running quite a bit lately and I'm training for a half marathon.

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I actually ran Saturday.

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My personal best is over over nine miles.

00:22:47

Nice.

00:22:48

Just about that.

00:22:48

Hey, you were doing that.

00:22:49

Felt good.

00:22:50

Yep.

00:22:52

And this is a terrible book to listen to while running because about every 30 seconds,

00:22:56

he says something that you want to write down.

00:22:58

And so then I'm trying to run, but I'm also trying to record something via drafts on my watch.

00:23:05

Yeah.

00:23:06

But you're running so you're not going to be able to say it clearly.

00:23:10

Yeah, exactly.

00:23:12

You should see some of the crazy notes that my watch picked up when I was trying to

00:23:16

jot stuff down.

00:23:17

Eventually I just gave up and I'm like, I'm just going to listen to a podcast because this isn't working.

00:23:21

All right.

00:23:24

So we got through two of five follow up.

00:23:25

Well, hit me.

00:23:29

So I can go a little bit quicker.

00:23:31

Okay.

00:23:31

There's not quite as much room for, I don't know, rabbit trails or what do you call them?

00:23:39

Go.

00:23:39

Well, my follow up was kind of almost topic worthy.

00:23:42

If you were.

00:23:43

Ambiguous.

00:23:43

Yeah.

00:23:44

True.

00:23:44

All right.

00:23:46

So did I make any decisions take longer than they should have?

00:23:50

I'm going to say no on this one again because I literally finished the last interview yesterday.

00:23:57

So I did 32 interviews in a period of about two weeks in addition to all the other stuff that I

00:24:06

normally do.

00:24:07

Yep.

00:24:08

And it just about killed me.

00:24:10

I found out that I'm not sure if I mentioned this here, but this is worth pointing out.

00:24:14

So I found out through this process that the interviews, I can do them.

00:24:19

I can do them pretty well.

00:24:20

I can really get down to what people are struggling with when in terms of email specifically for

00:24:28

this particular product, but they are incredibly draining.

00:24:32

And so like people always say you introverted or you extroverted.

00:24:36

And one of the things that that people use to describe that is basically how comfortable you

00:24:41

feel in social situations.

00:24:42

That's garbage.

00:24:43

Okay.

00:24:44

Because I feel very comfortable in those social situations, but I am completely drained when

00:24:50

I'm done with them.

00:24:50

So I'm going to describe myself as a social introvert because literally I would find out that if I

00:24:56

had three of these interviews in a day, which sometimes they did, and it wasn't that I had tons

00:25:01

of other work.

00:25:02

Like it was a normal workload.

00:25:03

It's just I was talking to people for a large portion of the day.

00:25:06

At the end of the day, I was completely exhausted to the point where we were at our

00:25:13

midweek service for church.

00:25:15

And I had to sit down and I could not stand back up because I was so tired.

00:25:21

It just all of a sudden hit me and that happened multiple times.

00:25:24

Like I get home at night and just like, I can't move.

00:25:27

I can't think.

00:25:28

I can't do anything.

00:25:29

So yeah, I've had no additional margin to make things take longer than they should have.

00:25:36

But hopefully that part will will stick.

00:25:39

That will become a habit without the feeling like I'm going to die every night because

00:25:45

I've talked to people, which sounds really lame at first world problems.

00:25:48

I know, but it really, really does make an impact on me.

00:25:53

What's the term?

00:25:54

There's a term for the ambivert where you're kind of both introverted and extroverted.

00:25:59

And I'm pretty much convinced my wife is this and Drew has talked about this before.

00:26:06

He feels like he's an ambivert as well.

00:26:09

Chameleon?

00:26:10

Well, it could be borderline that probably.

00:26:15

I am not one.

00:26:17

So I couldn't tell you what the thought process is on that.

00:26:21

I fall solidly into the camp of introvert for sure, which is why podcasting is great because I

00:26:26

get to sit here in my little closet, little tunnel that I've created and talk and then people can

00:26:32

hear it later.

00:26:32

And I don't have to be there in the big group.

00:26:34

Yeah, so that's another thing that I noticed, by the way, the difference between a podcast

00:26:40

and a video call.

00:26:41

Like a video call is way more stressful for me.

00:26:45

And that part, I haven't really wrapped my head around.

00:26:48

Like, why would that be so much more stressful?

00:26:50

But it really is.

00:26:51

That's interesting because I debated, I almost sent you a text this morning saying,

00:26:56

do you want to do a video thing today?

00:26:59

Just add a curiosity to see how it would go for us.

00:27:01

I didn't.

00:27:02

But that's completely different to you.

00:27:05

Well, I'd be willing to try it.

00:27:06

And we could see what the results were.

00:27:09

But I think that video is more draining for me.

00:27:13

It also could be just the people that I was talking to because they're not like friends of mine.

00:27:21

It's not like we have this long history, like you and I do for this.

00:27:25

Like this is pretty non-threatening, I guess, for me, but won't have to call a stranger.

00:27:30

And I have no idea what they're going to tell me like that.

00:27:34

Or what their personality is and how are they going to react to what I'm saying?

00:27:38

And yeah, you got to figure all that out, like on the fly.

00:27:40

Yeah.

00:27:41

Yep.

00:27:41

Yep.

00:27:42

But the thing I think that makes the difference between an extrovert and introvert for me is just

00:27:46

basically does being around people give you energy or does it take energy?

00:27:51

I think energy is really the key to being quote-unquote productive,

00:27:56

like getting the things done that you want to get done.

00:27:59

If you don't manage your energy, like you're not going to get it done.

00:28:01

Even if you have all of the time set aside in order to complete the tasks,

00:28:04

at least in my opinion.

00:28:06

And so, recognizing what things give you energy and what things take energy is really important

00:28:13

when it comes to planning out your day.

00:28:14

What I've realized from this experiment, which really was a involuntary experiment,

00:28:20

I'm like the rat in the laboratory, I guess.

00:28:22

Test yourself.

00:28:24

But the observation is that Mike is definitely an introvert.

00:28:28

Cool.

00:28:31

A social introvert.

00:28:32

Go Mike.

00:28:32

Yep.

00:28:33

All right.

00:28:34

So how's the no news, but tech news thing going?

00:28:37

Oh, this is great.

00:28:38

In fact, I'm not even on social media a whole lot.

00:28:41

I've been checking it basically like once or twice a day.

00:28:44

Yeah, which is an improvement.

00:28:48

Again, out of necessity, but does feel good.

00:28:51

All right.

00:28:53

So you're on the budget train.

00:28:55

Yeah.

00:28:56

That was the other thing that I added here because I think my one action item from the last book that

00:29:01

we read was to get more diligent about the budget.

00:29:07

So yes, Team Schmitz is all aboard the budget train.

00:29:11

In fact, last night, my wife and I had a date night.

00:29:14

So we went out to eat, walked around the town where we live.

00:29:18

And when we got back, we watched training videos for YNAB.

00:29:25

That's what we do on our date night.

00:29:27

Super exciting.

00:29:28

All right.

00:29:29

For the listeners, if you don't know, YNAB stands for you need a budget.

00:29:32

Is it YNAB.com?

00:29:35

Is that what it is?

00:29:35

I think YNAB.com will take it to the marketing side.

00:29:39

The app itself is like you need a budget.com.

00:29:42

So that may be the domain for the actual marketing as well.

00:29:46

I think YNAB.com would take it to the same place.

00:29:48

So yeah, it's been around forever.

00:29:50

And yeah, it's if anybody who's used the app for any length of time calls it

00:29:55

YNAB.

00:29:56

Got it.

00:29:57

I know we've tried exploring YNAB.

00:30:00

We've tried all kinds of things.

00:30:02

And we could never find one that fits the way that we like to do stuff.

00:30:05

And that has a lot to do with we like to create little savings funds, if you will,

00:30:12

for the one I'm going through right now is replacing our car and buying a different vehicle.

00:30:19

So I create another little fund in our budget and then we move dollars to that.

00:30:24

And it's really hard to find a solid software system that can do something like that

00:30:31

in the way that we like to do it.

00:30:34

So yes.

00:30:36

So I applaud you for that.

00:30:39

It doesn't work for us.

00:30:40

So we end up doing the whole custom spreadsheet thing.

00:30:42

I'm not surprised that you have developed a custom solution to a problem that you have.

00:30:48

But I have not turned it into a website yet.

00:30:51

There you go.

00:30:52

We're plugging.

00:30:53

Right.

00:30:54

We're plugging.

00:30:55

Now this is a little bit awkward because I've just told the world that I'm using YNAB.

00:31:00

But literally yesterday as we record this, I also published an article on the best personal

00:31:06

finance software and I picked Banktivity.

00:31:08

So this is worth talking about here.

00:31:11

All right.

00:31:13

So how do you pick the best one and then not use it yourself?

00:31:18

Well, if it was just me, we would use Banktivity.

00:31:22

Okay.

00:31:23

But I think I've mentioned on this podcast that when it comes to like the Dave Ramsey,

00:31:28

you've got the nerd and the free spirit.

00:31:30

Yes.

00:31:31

When it comes to money, my wife is the nerd.

00:31:34

I am the free spirit.

00:31:35

And that means that if it is up to me to initiate the budget process, it ain't going to happen.

00:31:41

So that means that we have to use a tool that we both feel comfortable with.

00:31:48

And YNAB continues to get better.

00:31:50

There's some stuff I wish it had like Banktivity is nice because it's got all of your investments

00:31:54

in there.

00:31:55

You can pull in like your mortgage for your house and all of that.

00:31:58

So it gives you a more complete picture.

00:32:00

YNAB is literally, you know, whatever accounts you add, but it's just your checking and your

00:32:05

savings accounts.

00:32:06

There's credit cards and stuff too, I guess.

00:32:07

But like you don't get the full financial picture if you have any of those like 401Ks or whatever.

00:32:12

But it is a lot easier to use.

00:32:16

It's a web app. The iOS app is great.

00:32:19

And more importantly, that's what works for my wife.

00:32:22

So we use Asana for family planning, not by my choice.

00:32:26

We use, you need a budget for our budget, not 100% by my choice.

00:32:31

Like I said, I'm completely fine with this.

00:32:33

I think YNAB is a great app.

00:32:34

In fact, in the article, I mentioned that if you're looking for a web based version and you want

00:32:38

something that's a little bit more approachable, YNAB is our great option.

00:32:42

So it's kind of like the runner up in that sense.

00:32:44

But in terms of just like the features and things, I do think Banktivity is a better

00:32:49

application. And the new version, I think it's version six is really awesome.

00:32:54

They completely redid the reports and it's a lot easier to use.

00:32:57

But just wanted to call that out.

00:32:58

So I'm sure we would have gotten follow up if I had not mentioned that.

00:33:03

All right. So we'll blame Rachel and go from there.

00:33:08

All right.

00:33:10

I think that's all our follow up.

00:33:12

So what's our book for the day, Mike?

00:33:14

Well, on the topic of budgeting and money, the book for today is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon

00:33:19

Hill, which was my choice. This is one of those classics that I feel like I should have read a

00:33:24

long time ago. And so I made you read it with me.

00:33:26

And what did you think of it?

00:33:30

I liked it. I'm curious what you thought of it.

00:33:36

I'm very conflicted on this book.

00:33:38

I thought you might be.

00:33:41

Well, it's a great book. I cannot fault it at that.

00:33:48

It's much longer than it appears.

00:33:51

For example, like we get to gap books later, I'm on the same gap book that I was last time,

00:33:57

because my gap book is quite long.

00:34:00

And I realized I wasn't going to get it finished by the time I needed to have this one read.

00:34:05

So I put my gap book down and picked up Think and Grow Rich.

00:34:09

And then because I was thinking, I'll read this in two or three days and I'll be done,

00:34:12

because it's a fairly thin book.

00:34:15

And it looked like there were not many pages.

00:34:18

It's like 150, 60 pages or so.

00:34:21

But you know, that'd be a quick read.

00:34:23

I open it up and like, oh, dear, these are very long pages, fairly small prints.

00:34:29

Each page is like two pages.

00:34:32

It's like twice as long as I thought it was.

00:34:34

Yeah, my version was like 370 pages.

00:34:37

Okay, so you had the full length deal.

00:34:39

So page numbers won't translate here.

00:34:41

But yeah, I kind of wish I had that version where it is actually longer,

00:34:46

because it wouldn't be the deceptive side of this, I guess.

00:34:52

And that honestly was a big deal for me because each page takes so long

00:34:58

and it just felt like it was dragging on as a result of that.

00:35:02

I don't think I've ever been this aware of the formatting.

00:35:07

Creating an issue for me reading the content of the book before.

00:35:10

I don't think I've been that aware of it before.

00:35:13

Okay, yeah, mine, I think, was formatted pretty well.

00:35:18

There were a couple of things that you could tell.

00:35:20

Like they were converting this from an original text.

00:35:23

They probably like scanned it and tried to clean it up and they missed a thing or two.

00:35:26

Yeah.

00:35:27

But for the most part, mine read like most of the other books that we've read.

00:35:33

I got a hardcover version which had a black cover on it from Amazon.

00:35:38

But even picking one from Amazon was hard because there were like 35 versions of it.

00:35:42

Yeah, yeah, and I think that was part of the issue because I just,

00:35:45

I didn't spend as long as I probably should have selecting that.

00:35:49

I think you got to get burnt on stuff like this once in a while to know what you're looking for.

00:35:53

I will be more diligent in the future for sure.

00:35:57

Because I would have preferred a different layout of this.

00:36:02

But I still, the reason I'm conflicted on this is that I really enjoyed the content of it.

00:36:10

But the content was hard to convey.

00:36:14

Like I had a number of people that asked me, "Hey, that's an interesting looking book.

00:36:17

What's it about?"

00:36:17

Because I tend to carry it around with me and I take it to the church when I'm reading and all

00:36:21

kinds of things.

00:36:21

And people will ask about these books and trying to explain the concept of this book

00:36:31

to people who don't really get into the productivity space at all,

00:36:36

or really even get into setting your mindsets.

00:36:40

Like the concept of explaining meditation to somebody who has zero experience with anything

00:36:46

like that is incredibly difficult.

00:36:47

To me, this book is very similar to that because you're trying to explain a mindset shift

00:36:53

to someone who's not used to ever thinking about mindset shifts.

00:36:57

Does that make sense?

00:37:00

Yes. Also, if you were to summarize what the book is about, it is about how to become rich

00:37:06

and how to attract money.

00:37:07

If you were to just explain it, point blank like that, that's going to be very polarizing.

00:37:13

Going back to the mindset thing and your follow-up item about being aggressive in business,

00:37:19

this could be one of the ways that you become aggressive in business is that you say,

00:37:27

"Well, my business is here to make me rich." And I'm unashamed in saying that.

00:37:30

There's, if you dig down deeper, why do you want to become rich?

00:37:35

I want to have more money so that I can do this, this, and this.

00:37:38

I can make a bigger impact. Most of the people who want to have a lot of money,

00:37:47

it's not just because they want to be able to hoard a bunch of stuff.

00:37:51

In fact, I've got an outline which is way too big or a mind node here, but I'm trying to find one thing here.

00:37:59

Yeah, in the second step, he actually says, "Men will mask Great Wealth by looking to give

00:38:06

rather than get." That's one sentence in a 370-something page book, at least in my version,

00:38:12

but it is really, I think, the tipping point for a lot of this stuff because if you're just looking

00:38:16

to accumulate this for yourself, you're not going to get there. But when you realize that,

00:38:22

if I had more resources, I could make a bigger impact. I could do more good. And you have that

00:38:27

mindset then, your vision, not just 10 Xs, but 100 Xs, 1000 Xs, the potential for the number of

00:38:37

people that you can reach, and the amount of good that you can do, is much, much, much greater

00:38:42

as soon as you take the spotlight off of yourself and look at other people.

00:38:45

Yes, to all the things. And I, one of the talking points that I put down here, in a way that I

00:38:56

tried to understand this as best I could for myself, was primarily that

00:39:04

mindsets come before results. And where you set your thought processes, what you tell yourself

00:39:14

every day, and the passion that you put behind that is what will drive your results. You know,

00:39:21

go back to one of the things I said earlier about procrastination. Like the thing that I struggle with

00:39:27

is the overwhelmed procrastination, just having too much to do, and then it gets me to a point

00:39:32

where I just don't know what to do and try not to do anything at all. Like literally,

00:39:36

I try not to do anything, which makes zero sense whatsoever. But part of the issue there is that

00:39:45

the self talk that I end up telling myself in that exact process is, "Holy cow, I have a lot to do."

00:39:53

And that simple phrase is something that repeats in my mind a lot without me realizing it.

00:40:00

And it's a very subconscious thing, but I can easily look at the list of things I have in OmniFocus.

00:40:07

And I will quickly see a very large number of projects, a lot of tasks I could do. And this is

00:40:15

why I talk a lot about in OmniFocus trying to pair back the number of projects and be ruthless

00:40:20

on putting things in a someday maybe, putting them on hold. Like it's why I'm ruthless on that,

00:40:24

because seeing too many things in a list is overwhelming. And then I tell myself that I'm overwhelmed.

00:40:33

And when I get overwhelmed in that scenario, it's hard for me to decide what needs to be done first

00:40:39

and actually get moving on it. And so all of this comes back to the mindset piece from this book,

00:40:50

which has a lot to do with telling yourself. One of the first steps is deciding what it is,

00:40:57

like the amount of money that you want to make in a certain timeframe. And I kind of have a goal

00:41:02

on this through the 12-week year. And we talk about it on theoretical a lot. But I somewhat

00:41:08

already have this defined. And the problem and the thing that this book is prompting me to is,

00:41:15

I don't really tell myself about that goal daily multiple times a day. Instead, I tend to tell myself

00:41:23

that I'm really busy and I'm overwhelmed and I have a lot to do, which counteracts my need to

00:41:30

work because then I don't decide to work on anything at all. Yeah, it's not trying to pick on you,

00:41:38

but it's an excuse. Oh, yeah, I don't disagree with that at all. Yeah. And it's not just you.

00:41:43

I mean, I'm in the same boat that that can definitely apply to my situation as well.

00:41:48

But yeah, exactly. You say, I'm too busy to think about the vision, which will lead me to the point

00:41:56

where I don't have to be too busy. Where do I start sort of a thing? Yes, I got a circular problem

00:42:02

here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I think the point of this book is that it's not really circular.

00:42:08

It just appears circular. And there's a lot of people who, until they make the mindset shift,

00:42:12

are going to view it as circular and they're going to be caught in that quote unquote rat race.

00:42:17

There's no end in sight. There's there's no hope. And so I really like how he starts this book,

00:42:24

like the very first step towards riches, he says his desire. And he actually starts the book in the

00:42:29

introduction that I had anyways. Well, the story about this guy who leaves his town

00:42:35

does is nothing special about this guy. And he's like, I'm going to become partners with Edison.

00:42:41

And so he just shows up, he's like, Hey, give me a job. And Edison's like, well, okay. And then

00:42:48

does a great job. And then eventually he does get exactly what he confessed, what he said he was

00:42:54

going to do. He becomes a business partner for Edison. And he goes around and he sells these

00:42:59

these things, these, this invention that he had. And the point in the introduction is that that

00:43:06

desire literally means knowing what you want. And so that's where that that statement that you

00:43:13

had mentioned, like the first step is figuring out what exactly you want. He's got a method

00:43:18

for determining which desire is to be turned into riches is like a six step process. And actually,

00:43:24

there's lots of six step processes and lists and in this book, which I think is kind of cool.

00:43:30

I also think that the way that we approach it for bookworm is not the way that the author

00:43:35

intended it. He actually says in the beginning of my version, like you should be reading a chapter

00:43:40

a week or something like that. And actually applying what you're, what you're studying. So I

00:43:45

actually have the audio book version of this as well. And I intend to go back and revisit it.

00:43:49

But I think that there's a ton of great information here that there's no way we absorb

00:43:54

it all just by reading through it once. And I believe that he was actually commissioned by Andrew

00:44:01

Carnegie to basically create this system for accumulating wealth. Is that did I understand

00:44:07

that part correctly? I think he came up with it out of doing research on people who do this

00:44:15

a lot. Like that was the way that was the way I understood it is he spent a lot of time interviewing

00:44:22

and researching people who who live this out. And that's where the system came out. I think what

00:44:28

you're thinking of is he had a and I'm trying to find it. I think it was a politician of sorts

00:44:34

that wrote him a letter saying you need to write this thing down because he gave the talk

00:44:39

at a commencement address. Yeah, here you go. He delivered a commencement address at Salem College

00:44:47

in West Virginia. And a member of Congress was a part of that graduating class. And

00:44:55

how many years later was it? I'm not finding it. But a number of years later, this gentleman

00:45:04

wrote him a letter basically explaining how that talk completely changed his life. And basically

00:45:11

begged him to turn it into a book so that more people could benefit from having learned it.

00:45:16

And he actually ends the letter. If you publish the book, I would like to own the first copy that

00:45:21

comes from the press. Personally, autographed by you. And the guy was Jennings Randolph,

00:45:27

was the member of Congress that sent that to him. So I think that's where, is that what you're

00:45:31

thinking of? Because I think that's where the origin story of it came from. Kind of. I think

00:45:37

you're right that that's probably where the book itself came from. But my understanding,

00:45:42

I thought he mentioned a couple different times that essentially Andrew Carnegie and him kind of

00:45:48

had this joint mission where they were going to document this stuff for posterity so that other

00:45:52

people could learn from it. And I think that's kind of what led to the speech, which eventually led

00:45:56

to the book in a roundabout way. But it's clear that he talked to several very successful people.

00:46:03

He loves Henry Ford. He mentions Henry Ford over and over and over again.

00:46:07

Constantly.

00:46:07

Which that's one thing about this book is that it was written in the era of the Great Depression,

00:46:16

I believe, or slightly after. He talks about the Great Depression and how it's impacted a ton of

00:46:22

people. But it's also a time where there's a ton of opportunity available if people can embrace

00:46:27

this new mindset. Understanding that context is really important too, whereas now at least in the

00:46:36

United States, we're pretty wealthy as a nation, even the people who don't have a whole lot. We've

00:46:42

got it pretty good compared to the rest of the world. So the whole context of who he's speaking

00:46:47

to is a little bit different, which I think is important, but there's a lot of stuff in here that

00:46:52

definitely translates. It was interesting to see too, like he's talking about all of these trends

00:46:57

that he's seeing in terms of radio and marketing and stuff like that. And he was right. So it was

00:47:05

kind of cool to see that you can apply the same sort of thinking towards some of the newer mediums,

00:47:10

like podcasting, for example, in terms of instead of radio. I think that there's a pretty good parallel

00:47:16

there where literally it's changing the way that people get information. I don't think it's as widespread

00:47:23

as radio was in that particular point, but I think it definitely has the potential to be something

00:47:28

like that. So it's really an interesting book that you need to understand the context in which

00:47:36

it was written, but there's also a ton of stuff that you can apply here to your own life. And there

00:47:41

are so many quotes that I wrote down here. There's no way we're going to get through all of them.

00:47:46

The number one takeaway though, I think, if you were going to get nothing else out of this book is

00:47:52

this whole section at the beginning, like you were talking about the mindset like that desire,

00:47:57

that drives the action. And on page 64 in my version, he says, "No one is ever defeated until

00:48:04

defeat has been accepted as a reality." Like you literally have the potential if you develop the

00:48:10

right mindset to completely change your future. And the page after that, he says that it's just as

00:48:17

easy to be successful as it is to be a failure, which that maybe sounds a little bit controversial,

00:48:22

but I really like the way he framed this. He says, "No more effort is required to aim high in life,

00:48:26

to demand abundance and prosperity that is required to accept misery and poverty." It's

00:48:30

literally a choice of whether you are going to settle or whether you are going to compromise.

00:48:35

In the other book that I mentioned, the Sean McKay book, he shares that the word "settle"

00:48:40

in the Webster's Dictionary, one of the definitions, is literally to sink slowly.

00:48:45

So if you think about that in terms of like your dream or your success,

00:48:51

yeah, I know. It's like, why would you be okay with sinking slowly? And it takes maybe a little bit

00:49:00

more strength, a little bit more backbone, to say that, "No, what I'm seeing at this exact moment,

00:49:07

like that's not real. My vision is more real." You really have to believe it. You have to flip

00:49:13

a switch there in order to really be able to say that. But if you were able to just flip that switch,

00:49:20

like that is the difference. And the rest of the book is literally like how you actually do that.

00:49:25

Yes. That particular piece, because what is there, 13 steps in this whole thing that he goes through?

00:49:33

I believe so. Yeah. So that first one that we're talking about here,

00:49:40

that piece by itself to me is the crux of the whole book. And if you get that point and you

00:49:49

put that piece into action, which is, and I'll talk about it a little bit later whenever we have

00:49:54

to action items, cliffhanger, I will, when you go through that particular piece, it's the part that

00:50:02

lays the foundation for the rest of it. The rest of it is, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Mike,

00:50:09

but the rest of it could play into the productivity stuff that we do all the time really well.

00:50:14

It seems to play into how do you actually make this happen?

00:50:18

And yes, it's the beginning point, the motivational point that really causes this whole process to

00:50:27

actually come to fruition. But, and very big but here, it takes a large amount of faith in yourself,

00:50:40

and a large amount of self discipline to actually take the desire piece that he's calling out here,

00:50:46

the goal, if you will, that you're shooting for, the amount of dollars in a certain time frame.

00:50:51

If you're going to achieve that, you really got to have a lot of grit to pull that off,

00:50:57

to actually turn it into action and do something about it and never give up on it. That, to me,

00:51:03

is the part that really stands out. And that particular piece is the one that it feels like

00:51:08

we've read a lot of books on from self discipline, self drive, the grit piece I mentioned,

00:51:15

like those types of things being decisive, those pieces are the ones where a lot of a struggle with

00:51:21

that. And it's the piece that if you ever nail that part, the rest of the book kind of takes care

00:51:28

of itself. At least that's the way I saw it. Yeah, I agree with that. But I also think that

00:51:34

you don't necessarily need the grit if you follow the formula. Like I think you can develop the

00:51:39

grit, if that makes sense. You don't have to have it at the beginning. And if you don't have it,

00:51:44

you're going to fail. I think there's a very deliberate order in terms of the steps to riches.

00:51:50

Like number one, we mentioned is desire. Number two is faith. So once you have the desire,

00:51:56

you know where you want to get, then you have to have the faith in order to, yes, I can actually

00:52:01

accomplish this. And the third step is the auto suggestion. This is the filling in of the blinks

00:52:07

that your brain does. And so that's where the statement that you mentioned comes in. And he

00:52:12

says you should read it every day, multiple times a day, because you have to normalize that vision,

00:52:18

the more that you say it, the more that you believe it. And you really need to believe it in order for

00:52:22

that desire to materialize into the future that you're picturing. Does that make sense?

00:52:30

Yes. And that's the part I'm getting at is how do you take the initial want

00:52:37

and get it through these steps until you get to the point where it's real. And I definitely

00:52:45

agree with you that this is something you can build in and you can develop a higher level of

00:52:49

self discipline. But when you have, you know, and take the take this procrastination example,

00:52:57

we keep coming back to when you have that particular piece and it's strong. That is the

00:53:03

tar. And this is partially why I keep talking about it. That becomes the target you need to

00:53:08

overcome in order to get through some of these steps. And he talks about procrastination quite a bit

00:53:13

in the book, which is awesome. And it's a great thing that he addresses that because it seems like

00:53:20

to me, although this was written a long time ago, what are the 80, 90 years ago at this point,

00:53:27

you know, it's not recent. But yet the principles behind procrastination and how we come to those

00:53:36

are still spot on. And that I really appreciated.

00:53:39

Yeah, I completely agree. I think let's go back a little bit here to the point that you made,

00:53:48

like, how do you actually cross the bridge between just an idea and actually getting to this,

00:53:55

this desire that you have this dream that you have? Because I think that the third step here

00:54:01

with the auto suggestion, this is really the key. So in the book, he says that when you really

00:54:08

believe you will have the money, the plan will come via inspiration. And there's some other stuff

00:54:12

that I put on the outline a little bit later in terms of how you actually get these ideas. But he

00:54:17

basically frames it at the beginning part of the book anyways, that when you really believe this,

00:54:23

the plans will materialize. It's like you put out these unseen receptors and all of a sudden,

00:54:32

like the good ideas come to you. And this, I think, is a different way of looking at it,

00:54:36

but it's the same principle that Grant Cardone talks about in the 10x rule, where if you just

00:54:43

learn to start thinking bigger, then your brain, and he's got a whole whole step,

00:54:48

actually, devoted to to the brain and another one devoted to the subconscious mind, like your

00:54:54

brain will actually connect these dots for you if you can get it to think on an elevated plane.

00:55:01

If you can get it to essentially, if you can upgrade the way that you think, you don't have to

00:55:08

understand how all of these dots are going to connect, your brain will do that and you'll be

00:55:13

inspired and you'll all of a sudden be like, oh, yeah, this is how I get there. And I think that

00:55:18

that's a little bit scary, especially for someone like me, who's a high fact finder,

00:55:24

wants to know how it all connects. But to be understanding of the fact that when you make that

00:55:31

first step, especially when you start with it with the vision first, when you have the vision,

00:55:34

and then you make that first step, whatever that first step is, it's never going to be wrong.

00:55:40

You're initiating the process. And then from there, it's going to evolve, it's going to change course.

00:55:45

And your brain is going to connect these dots, and it's going to map out the next step and the next

00:55:53

step and the next step, as long as you have this this mindset, and that kind of leads into the

00:55:59

fourth step towards which is which is the specialized knowledge. So here is another thing that like

00:56:05

immediately when I was reading this and he's talking about all your brains going to come up

00:56:09

with these ideas like, Oh, okay, so I just need more ideas. And the fourth step towards which is

00:56:13

the specialized knowledge, I think that this is a little bit different. Because what it is saying

00:56:18

is that you need the right ideas and your brain may connect some of those dots, it may give you

00:56:24

some of those right ideas. But also, the fact that you have the knowledge isn't power, it's

00:56:31

potential power. And he actually says in here that it pays to know how to purchase knowledge. So

00:56:37

right away, I thought of a service like clarity FM, for example, where if you know where to go to

00:56:42

get the answer, that is going to be more valuable than trying to get all of this stuff for yourself.

00:56:50

But I think there's a balance here too, where you're constantly open and you're attracting those

00:56:55

new ideas and you're evaluating those new ideas and you're seeing if they fit with the vision that

00:57:00

you have, recognizing your limits when you when need be and getting some outside help is great.

00:57:06

But I think just the fact that you're open. So like a lot of people, for example, who are listening

00:57:10

to this podcast right now, like they would fall into the category of the person who is open to

00:57:16

learning and on page 126, he says that, or in my version anyways, the person who stopped studying

00:57:21

really because he has finished schools forever, hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what

00:57:25

maybe he's calling. And that just really illustrated for me, like we've talked about the reason why we

00:57:30

did this podcast in the first place is if nothing else, if nobody else ever downloaded this,

00:57:35

no one else ever listened, at least I've got some different perspectives and some different ideas.

00:57:41

And I think that this book in particular, like there's a lot of little things that you could

00:57:45

grab from this that could make a big difference. In fact, the image that I have in my my note file

00:57:50

of the cover that I got from Google Images says at the very top, this book could be worth a million

00:57:55

dollars to you. So I don't know if that's Napoleon Hill's subtitle, but I think it's true.

00:57:59

Either way, it's a good subtitle because it could be it could be worth a lot more than that.

00:58:06

Exactly. Depending on what you do with it.

00:58:09

Exactly. What you do with it, that's the that's the key.

00:58:14

So that's, you know, this is where we come back to a lot of the purpose of bookworm,

00:58:21

where we have these books, we read through them, we talk through them and talking through them

00:58:25

synthesizes the ideas in such a way that we can actually act on them. At least that's the concept.

00:58:31

Yep. And I want to transition a little bit into your next point here, the two types of

00:58:37

imagination, because he's got a number of little pieces here throughout the rest of the book in

00:58:44

the midst of these steps that it looks like you have written down here that help you through the

00:58:50

process of realizing this desire that you are now auto suggesting to yourself. And one of the

00:58:59

ways that he has in here is imagining what the plan and what the actual thing will be. Mike,

00:59:08

do you want to take us through these two bits? I can't find it at the moment.

00:59:12

Sure. So yeah, the fifth step towards riches is the imagination. And this is, this was really good.

00:59:19

This really crystallized for me, a concept that I had believed for a while. And that is that

00:59:28

there's a couple different types of imagination here. There's the synthetic imagination. And that's

00:59:33

where you arrange old concepts, ideas or plans into new combinations. That's really the idea behind

00:59:39

Austin Cleon's book, "Steal Like An Artist," which was really freeing for me because I found myself

00:59:44

in the place where everything that I tried to create on a musician. So I'd write a song or whatever,

00:59:49

and then I'd hear a song on the radio and I'd be like, "Oh, I just stole it from that." Like,

00:59:53

I didn't realize that this wasn't completely new. And after a while, like that got demoralizing,

00:59:57

because it's like, "Man, I can't come up with anything original." And Austin Cleon's book was really

01:00:02

like the tipping point for me to say like, "Well, no, like what you've done is you've combined these

01:00:06

dots in a way that nobody's ever done them before. Like this is original." And so that was important,

01:00:12

but the other type of imagination here is the creative imagination. And that is where, in Napoleon

01:00:19

Hill's words, "The finite mind of man has direct communication with the infinite intelligence." This

01:00:24

is where, like, if you get your mind to think on a higher creative plane, which is another point

01:00:30

we'll talk about in a little bit, like this is where all of a sudden you get those revelations

01:00:35

or those ideas that appear to be out of nowhere. And I believe that in this book, what Napoleon

01:00:42

Hill is showing us is that you can actually get your brain to do that, which for me is a pretty

01:00:48

radical idea because I was never like that. You know, when I was in kindergarten, I had friends

01:00:54

who were very imaginative and we'd play GIJOs or whatever, but I was always riffing off of what

01:01:00

they were doing. I was never the one initiating it, if that makes sense. And for a while, like,

01:01:04

I felt really bad about that. I'm like, "Oh man, my imagination doesn't work."

01:01:08

But--

01:01:10

- I'm broken. I can't think that way.

01:01:11

- Exactly, exactly. But what Napoleon Hill is saying, at least when it comes to business and

01:01:18

making money, which is obviously the point of the book, "Think and Grow Rich," he says on page

01:01:24

149, "God seems to throw himself on the side of the man who knows exactly what he wants if he is

01:01:28

determined to get just that." Like, if you really believe in your vision, what Napoleon Hill is saying

01:01:36

is that it doesn't matter if you consider yourself, quote unquote, "creative" or you have that creative

01:01:41

imagination active. If you follow some of the principles that are outlined in this book, like,

01:01:46

you can develop and foster that. It can work for you.

01:01:52

Something that struck me as kind of interesting about this is that the concept of having an

01:01:57

analytical or creative brain is oddly missing from this conversation. It comes with the expectation

01:02:07

that everyone is creative and can be imaginative in this way. Like, it's not even an option. Like,

01:02:13

this isn't something you can say you have or don't have. It's like a blanket statement. You have this

01:02:19

as long as you choose to do something about it. I thought that was very interesting because

01:02:23

there's a lot of times when we tend to refer to ourselves as one or the other. And it's almost

01:02:28

like, and it's an excuse to not do the alternative. I'm very creative. So why would I do the analytical

01:02:34

piece? I'll hire someone to do that for me. Or, you know, the flip side of that is I'm very

01:02:40

analytical. I'm not creative like that. That's probably the more common version of that.

01:02:45

He kind of throws that out and says that doesn't really apply without ever really saying that.

01:02:50

Like, he's just saying everyone has this capacity. You just have to be willing to do something about it.

01:02:56

Yeah, which is a pretty radical idea, but is one that I really want to believe works.

01:03:03

Because, you know, I've mentioned like my personal situation, I grew up thinking that I wasn't

01:03:11

creative. It wasn't until a couple of years ago when I started the process of writing my book.

01:03:17

And that led me to getting connected with agent efficiency. And I've had people who were telling me,

01:03:22

you know, create on a regular basis and pushing me outside of the box that I had created for myself

01:03:29

that I realized that, hey, yeah, I can actually do this. I do think that, like you said, there's

01:03:34

there's definitely personality types in the way that our brains work. Like, there are definitely

01:03:39

for an analytical mind, a logical mind, there are some additional obstacles to overcome here.

01:03:44

Like, he's got a whole section at the end of my book on how to outwit the six ghosts of fear.

01:03:50

I think that if you are very analytical or very logical, at least in my own personal experience,

01:03:56

you tend to focus on those things that could go wrong, those those things that you should be

01:04:01

afraid of, even legitimately. But in order to be wildly successful, you have to overcome that,

01:04:08

is what Napoleon Hill was saying.

01:04:09

So I know that for me, I have kind of grown into this whole creative thing. I used to consider

01:04:23

myself similar to what you're talking about as an analytical and only an analytical. And

01:04:28

specifically when I was a data analyst, I had analysts in my in my title. So of course,

01:04:36

this is the only thing I'm good at. And it wasn't until I started doing development work that I

01:04:41

realized there's a very strong creative side to this. And I needed to come up with ideas more and

01:04:47

more often in on demand. As a result, it kind of forced me into like what you're saying, realizing

01:04:53

that there's a creative side to this and that yes, I do have this. It is something that I can

01:05:00

develop and be better at and invoke at will, if you will. And that's been extremely liberating

01:05:09

and powerful at the same time, because it's not uncommon for me to just sit down and say that

01:05:14

I need to come up with ideas for XYZ. And 20 minutes later, I've got 50 of them. Like,

01:05:20

it's not uncommon for that to happen. And it's only because I finally admitted that, hey, maybe I

01:05:27

am creative. And that's okay. Yeah, absolutely. And this kind of gets into the next point on the

01:05:35

outline, because I think that embracing the fact that you are creative and getting to the point

01:05:43

where you actually feel free to create requires leadership. Now most people will think of leadership

01:05:50

as leading other people, but there's definitely a personal application to this as well. And the

01:05:55

six step towards riches, by the way, is not actually called leadership, it's organized planning.

01:05:59

This was a chapter that was kind of all over the place. But the leadership part was really the

01:06:06

thing that stood out to me. He's got major attributes of a leader, 10 major causes of failure in

01:06:12

leadership, 30 major causes of failure in general. But really, the point, the point here is that

01:06:21

you need to have an organized plan if you ever want to get to your destination, whether you are

01:06:27

going alone, or you're bringing a team. Page 160, my version, he says, a quitter never wins and a

01:06:33

winner never quits. And later on that same section, he talks about how it's one thing to want more,

01:06:38

it's another thing to be worth more. And I think that you have to have that personal leadership in

01:06:43

order to develop yourself to the point where you are worth more, in order for that plan to achieve

01:06:51

that future, which maybe is way out there when you started this process. If you really want to get

01:06:57

to that point, you really need to improve yourself. This comes back to something that I picked up from

01:07:04

Jim Rohn in the art of exceptional living. He mentions work harder on yourself than you do on

01:07:10

your job. Most people and most bosses encourage this. They want you to work hard on your job to the

01:07:16

point where you're putting in longer hours than you need to because you're dedicated to the company.

01:07:21

You're dedicated to the team, but what they don't see is that you're going to burn out,

01:07:24

you're going to not get to the point where you're really contributing value to the company because

01:07:31

you're just focused on the task at hand. And if you can lead yourself through some of these,

01:07:37

I'll just run through maybe these major attributes of leadership. Unwavering courage is the first one.

01:07:41

Self-control is the second one. Third is a keen sense of justice. Fourth is definiteness of decision.

01:07:48

Five is definiteness of plans. Six is the habit of doing more than paid for

01:07:52

under-promising, over-delivering, in other words. Number seven is a pleasing personality.

01:07:58

Number eight, sympathy and understanding. Number nine, mastery of detail. Number 10, willingness to

01:08:03

assume full responsibility, which we could talk for an hour on that point specifically,

01:08:07

and the number 11 cooperation. So there's tons of stuff here which if you were to break down

01:08:14

everything that we've ever covered in Bookworm, you could probably align it very directly with

01:08:19

one of those 11 categories. The part that I loved about this section, because you mentioned,

01:08:24

it's called Organized Planning versus Leadership. And I completely agree, it was all over the board.

01:08:30

He covered a lot of things in a very short time frame, which is where I think your point earlier,

01:08:37

where there's a lot of little tidbits in here, and you really need some time with it, which we did not take.

01:08:43

And I had an action item for this one, Mike, but I already did it. So, we'll see. But I

01:08:52

read through this section and I realized that, and this is a tenant that we've talked about with

01:08:59

GTD before, where you need to spell out the smallest detail of what your next step is

01:09:06

in a given project. And as I was reading this section, I realized there are a couple,

01:09:12

probably three or four projects that I have going on that I really just don't like working on.

01:09:18

I really struggle to go do anything on those. I figured out that part of the reason for that was

01:09:25

that I hadn't spelled out the next step very clearly. You know, it was something like build out

01:09:32

this particular section of a plugin. Well, that doesn't actually tell me what needs to come next.

01:09:37

Like, I know what that means. I can translate that in my mind and know what the next six steps are

01:09:43

very quickly, but I wasn't starting it because I knew to check that thing off, I had six to seven

01:09:49

things I had to do instead of the little thing, so it didn't progress at all. Kind of lame, but

01:09:54

it was something that reading this section caused me to take the time to at least go

01:10:01

rethink those projects. It worked out that I read this section the night before I did my weekly

01:10:07

review the next morning, so it worked out really well to do that. So I just made sure that I

01:10:14

spelled a lot of things out and had a true plan for the goals that I've got set for myself.

01:10:19

Yeah, and that's not lame at all. I mean, you fell, I mean, since you threw yourself out there,

01:10:24

we'll pick on you. But like I said, this can apply to me to hit me hard. Number one major cause of

01:10:29

failure in leadership, even personal leadership is an inability to organize the details, which

01:10:34

is exactly what you just described. I know I need to do six or seven things with this. I don't know

01:10:38

what they are. I don't want to think about it right now, so I'm not going to do anything.

01:10:41

Yes, yes. And thus I lead down the procrastination train because the things are too big. It's

01:10:49

overwhelming and I don't do it. You catch the recurring theme here today?

01:10:55

Yep, yep. But understanding the process here and how that actually works is important.

01:11:00

That, I mean, you're really touching on the beginning of the seven step towards riches,

01:11:06

which is the decision. So in this particular case, you're not making a decision because

01:11:11

you don't have all of the details in front of you. And later on, he talks about procrastination

01:11:18

specifically. But with the seven step towards riches, this was another thing that really kind of

01:11:23

hit me was he mentions that you want to make decisions quickly and change your mind slowly.

01:11:27

Most people, like the situation that you just described, will make decisions slowly and change

01:11:35

quickly because they haven't put in the effort to get all of the details organized, which is why

01:11:41

organized planning comes before this. And so when they make a decision, they're not confident that

01:11:46

they're making the right decision. And so they're looking for a reason to change course. And if you

01:11:52

do the legwork on the front end, what he's really saying is that you have to make that decision

01:11:56

quickly. And then you have to stick with it. If you're going to change your mind at all,

01:12:01

you should do it very, very slowly. I feel like I'm good and bad at this at the same time.

01:12:09

Because I can sometimes with decisions, I can make decisions very quickly. And if it's based on my

01:12:20

intuition in a sense that I know it's the right thing, I have a hard time getting off of that

01:12:26

decision. At the same time, I think if it's smaller, and maybe that's the difference here that he's

01:12:33

getting at, if it's a smaller thing, such as do I put this in a background job and offload it to a

01:12:39

different server? Or do I just let it run when the client goes to the page? Like something like that

01:12:44

is fairly small. And it's not uncommon for me to build it one way and then quickly change it to the

01:12:50

other and come back on that decision even sometimes within the same half hour period. So sometimes I

01:12:57

have little things that I think I change very quickly on, but with bigger things, I tend to make

01:13:01

a decision and stick with it. So I think that would be a case where I'm pretty good at this.

01:13:07

At the same time, there are a number of big decisions that I just don't want to make.

01:13:13

So I tend to put off making them at all. So maybe I fall apart whenever I get to that point.

01:13:19

But it's at least an interesting concept to think about because I know that there are a lot of

01:13:24

business owners and even corporate executives who tend to change their mind on fairly big

01:13:31

decisions and they do it very quickly and frequently. And it just wreaks havoc on not only the company,

01:13:38

but their team as well. And there tends to be a high turnover in those situations.

01:13:43

So don't do this. It is bad. It causes all kinds of problems.

01:13:46

Yeah, I would agree with you. I also think it's worth pointing out you mentioned like the

01:13:50

small decisions you can change your mind fairly quickly. I think that that's fine because you're

01:13:55

basically what you're saying is that you're trusting the data that you're being presented

01:13:58

with there. And for some of the bigger decisions, hopefully you've got a little bit longer data

01:14:04

collection process before you would make one of those bigger decisions. But that kind of gets into

01:14:11

the eighth step towards which is which is persistence. He's got the different factors of persistence.

01:14:16

I'll just run through this real quick, but really what I want to focus on is the four steps

01:14:21

developing persistence. I think that's the piece that that ties in with what you just mentioned.

01:14:25

Eight factors of persistence are number one, definiteness of purpose, number two, desire,

01:14:30

number three, self-reliance, number four, definiteness of plans, number five, accurate knowledge,

01:14:36

number six, cooperation, number seven, willpower, and number eight habit, which habits alone,

01:14:42

I think we could probably spend quite a bit of time unpacking, but we'll just leave that there

01:14:46

for now. The four steps of developing persistence though, this I think is really important. Number

01:14:53

one is a definite purpose backed by burning desire for fulfillment. Number two is a definite plan

01:14:59

expressed in continuous action. So if you can't trust your plan, you're never going to be able

01:15:06

to develop this persistence, but if you've put in the time and you've organized the details

01:15:10

and you have the plan, then you can have the definiteness to follow through with it and take

01:15:17

continuous action on it, even if the circumstances and the people around you are saying that's not

01:15:22

going to work. That's a bad idea because number three is a mind closed tightly against all negative

01:15:28

and discouraging influences, including negative suggestions of relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

01:15:34

These can be the most scathing, I guess, or it can make the biggest impact of the people who are

01:15:42

quote, unquote, close to you who don't really believe in your dream. And I think that this is

01:15:46

this is a really big topic, which maybe isn't appropriate for this particular episode, but

01:15:54

I just want to point out that really the freedom that this book gives you is the ability to overcome

01:16:01

any sort of circumstances. So if you develop this internally, in essence, it doesn't matter what

01:16:07

other people think. And then the fourth one, which gets into the ninth step towards riches is a

01:16:15

friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage one to follow through with both a plan

01:16:20

and a purpose. So putting yourself in the presence of other people who are going to help you achieve

01:16:25

your goals who believe in your vision is very important. And that gets into, like I said, the

01:16:30

ninth step towards riches, which is the power of the mastermind, which I would argue is kind

01:16:35

of what we're trying to do here on a small scale. Yeah, I would agree with that. I also feel like

01:16:40

this four step process of developing persistence is almost like a summarized version of the overall

01:16:47

13 steps. When you stop and look at it, like, Oh, a definite purpose backed by burning desire for

01:16:53

its fulfillment sure sounds like desire leading into faith leading into, I mean, you could see the

01:17:00

path here. So I think there's a lot of overlap between those, which is interesting to me,

01:17:05

because it's almost saying that persistence is simply the process of working the 13 steps repeatedly.

01:17:13

So I just I like that. I like that. I like that a lot. I think I would agree with the whole

01:17:20

mastermind thing too, because this is a small, a two person mastermind. Does that count?

01:17:28

Sure. This is the first book that I've ever seen speak specifically to this topic. I know that

01:17:35

there are other ones out there. But this whole topic of a mastermind has been really interesting

01:17:40

to me for quite a while. I know we've talked about it on this podcast. And I've never known

01:17:46

what it was supposed to look like or how it was supposed to function. And I think that in this

01:17:53

book, it does a pretty good job of explaining the purpose. It doesn't give you like the exact

01:17:58

steps for it necessarily, or at least that's not what stood out to me when I read this. But really,

01:18:03

it's just having the other people who think in the have the same sort of mindset as you,

01:18:10

not that they all have the exact same perspective, but they they've developed that,

01:18:14

that mindset where I guess I would call it like a growth mindset, for example.

01:18:20

And then you have those those people who can attribute their learnings from their source of

01:18:26

knowledge, because if you get a bunch of people who are constantly collecting these new ideas,

01:18:33

these new perspectives, and then applying it to their lives, and then you get around other

01:18:37

people, and especially if you present yourself, like a lot of the masterminds that I'm familiar

01:18:40

with their business focus. So here's my business, here's the problem that we're facing. And then

01:18:45

people ask you questions that they present ideas and you're like, Oh, hey, I never thought about

01:18:49

that. That's a great idea. I'm going to start doing that. Like that could literally change

01:18:53

your entire business.

01:18:54

And to be careful with some of these masterminds though, because I feel like this term gets thrown

01:18:59

around a lot. It's one where I think if you follow through with, and maybe this particular book is

01:19:07

the the originating source for that term, and the process that that would be interesting.

01:19:14

It reminds me quickly of the commonplace book bit where people got into the commonplace, which

01:19:21

basically was a way to just capture a bunch of data. And the original intent was to memorize it,

01:19:28

not just capture it. And this hits me as very much the same concept, because people tend to

01:19:35

say, I'm going to be in a mastermind, and I've watched people on a mastermind call before,

01:19:41

and they kind of just sit tight until it's their turn to share their own thing. And then they

01:19:46

share their own thing, and they take all the feedback from everyone else, and then they don't

01:19:49

offer feedback to the other people. Like it's a one way street for them. That's not the point.

01:19:56

That is not the intent there. And that's my hang up with a lot of the quote unquote,

01:20:03

mastermind groups that are out there is you usually have a freeloader or two that tends to be

01:20:10

in the group. And they may not realize it. They may not intend it to be that way,

01:20:16

but it tends to be very diluted as a result.

01:20:18

Yeah, completely fair. I completely agree. But I think that's not necessarily a problem with

01:20:26

the process. That's more a problem with the execution or the people that you selected. I

01:20:32

think who you pick for your mastermind is very important. Like you want people who are going

01:20:36

to challenge you to get better. And if they're just taking and they're not giving, then they

01:20:40

really shouldn't be there. I would argue. Make them quit. Don't fight them to the next meeting.

01:20:45

All right. This next one, this I put mind stimulants are getting on a higher creative plane,

01:20:52

but the 10th step towards riches is actually titled the mystery of sex transmutation. So 1920s

01:20:58

clickbait. But I read the title of this. And my first thought was, are you kidding me?

01:21:08

Really? We're going to go here. Okay. Yeah, it's not at all what it sounds like, though. At least

01:21:13

that's not what I got from this. So the main idea that he makes here is that when people think

01:21:20

about sex, they think different. Their brain operates at a higher frequency. And he is saying

01:21:28

that there are different mind stimulants like that, which you can use to force your brain

01:21:34

to operate on a higher creative plane, which I think is a fascinating idea. So the procedure

01:21:43

for getting on this creative plane from the book is to number one, stimulate your mind so that it

01:21:48

vibrates on a higher than average plane using one of the 10 mind stimulants, which we'll go over

01:21:51

in a second. Number two, concentrate on the known factors and create a picture in your mind of the

01:21:56

unknown factors. And number three, hold this picture until it's taken over by the subconscious

01:22:00

mind and then you wait for that flash of inspiration. So this is literally the whole concept of

01:22:05

thinking time, but it is forcing your brain to transform the energy that comes from one of these

01:22:12

different mind stimulants and express it positively towards the problem that you're facing. Is that

01:22:18

fair? I would say so. This is a hard one to translate

01:22:24

audibly without reading the whole chapter. I'll say that. But I'm with you in that it's

01:22:33

it's a way of taking advantage of some very creative energy in your mind and the way that you

01:22:41

think about things. And I don't want to say drive, but you tend to have this strong motivation

01:22:49

towards certain aspects of life. And it's a way of taking advantage of those strong motivations

01:22:55

and turning them towards this particular desire that you've set off at the beginning of this process.

01:23:02

Yeah, I think that drive is a very important term. I think that that's really what what these

01:23:09

10 mind stimulants are. And if you were to take pretty much anybody's life and dissect it and

01:23:17

look at, you know, when were the times when they really got stuff done, they were probably motivated

01:23:24

by one of these 10 mind stimulants. So the idea that when you are experiencing one of these,

01:23:30

these mind stimulants, that to understand that you have the ability to channel that

01:23:37

in the in you you have control, basically, of how that gets expressed. That's pretty interesting.

01:23:43

And let's just talk about like the the title of the the chapters, the mystery of sex transmutation.

01:23:49

So the desire for sexual expression is the number one mind, he mentions that this is the one that

01:23:53

is the most powerful. And if you look at, I don't know how to how to do this delicately, but like,

01:24:01

let's just say, you know, in college, you probably knew somebody if you were in a typical college

01:24:05

environment who couldn't curb this. Okay. But there were lots of other people who could.

01:24:12

Okay. So I mean, what that's showing you is that it is possible, but the fact that that driver,

01:24:20

that desire is there is not a bad thing. And if you grow up in certain religious traditions,

01:24:28

like I did, you may have grown up in a church where like you just never talked about this,

01:24:32

it was considered a negative thing. Okay. That's not true. But it also doesn't mean that you can

01:24:39

walk around having sex whenever you feel like it. So what do you do with that desire? You channel

01:24:44

it the same way for the other other nine mind stimulants. So number two is is love. Number three

01:24:50

is the burning desire for fame, power, or money. Number four is music. Number five is friendship.

01:24:55

Number six is the mastermind alliance. Number seven is mutual suffering. Number eight is auto

01:25:00

suggestion. Number nine is fear. Number 10 is narcotics and alcohol. And I think that he mentions

01:25:06

in the book, I don't, I didn't write this down. So I can't remember if this is exactly right.

01:25:09

I believe he mentions that these are in order of power. And then the top eight, obviously, are

01:25:14

positive. The bottom two are fear and fear number nine and then narcotics and alcohol. Number 10,

01:25:21

those are negative where like if you are driven by those things, it's not going to end well for you.

01:25:30

But I really, I really like this idea of being able to choose how these mind stimulants are going

01:25:39

to be directed and just like focusing on this particular thing, recognizing that, oh, I'm really

01:25:44

inspired by this song or I'm really inspired by my partner, for example, I mean, you look back at

01:25:51

what has been created in the in the creative realm, whether it be poetry, whether it be books,

01:25:56

whether it be songs, like you can say that a lot of this stuff, or let's just take love as an

01:26:01

example, like there's a lot of stuff that gets inspired by love. But what if you don't have,

01:26:07

like what if you're not a musician and you're not going to write that song? Does that mean that

01:26:11

that inspiration is wasted? No, not at all. What this chapter is saying is that even if it's a

01:26:16

business problem that you know you're trying to solve, like when you find yourself in that mental

01:26:21

state, you can control how that gets translated into the action and the energy that is created

01:26:29

and the momentum that is created from that, that feeling, if that makes sense.

01:26:33

I think we got Mike excited again.

01:26:37

This is one of my action items, by the way, came from this chapter. He mentions this idea of the

01:26:43

personal communication room. And I want to build this. Basically, what this sounds like to me is

01:26:48

just an atmosphere where you can go and you can think, where the atmosphere is set up in a way

01:26:54

where it facilitates and it encourages the right thinking about these particular things. It's not

01:27:00

a whole bunch of distractions, no TVs, none of the buzzing lights or anything like that. You

01:27:09

just have this place where you can kind of just automatically click into this mental state. I

01:27:14

think that that could be really powerful. And so one of my long-term projects,

01:27:20

turning into even longer term, is finishing the office in our basement. But I'm really

01:27:26

recognizing after reading this book that I really need that space. The ability to go to that space

01:27:33

whenever the inspiration, so to speak, would hit is important. My office where we're recording

01:27:40

this at the co-working space is great, but it's 20 minutes from my house. And I think that if I

01:27:46

were to be inspired, I'm not going to drive 20 minutes. And that by the time I got there,

01:27:50

the inspiration would be gone. So I think having a place where I can very quickly just like change

01:27:56

my physical location to accommodate the mental state that I happen to be in that could result in

01:28:00

a lot more good ideas. One thing that I need to try to do more of, because I do have an enclosed

01:28:09

office space at home where I am right now. And it's in this space where I have a white board.

01:28:16

There are a number of zones, if you will, where I can do work. I think I talked about this at one

01:28:24

point on whims, whims at work. But there are a number of places where I do certain types of work.

01:28:30

And I haven't been very good at this, but this particular chapter kind of made me stop and think

01:28:36

about these different areas. Because I think one of the potentially one of these that he did not

01:28:42

put in this list is location. Because I think it's very possible that you think about I'm camping

01:28:50

and I'm at a mountain. There's a very high likelihood that, at least for me, that I would have a lot

01:28:57

of creative ideas and a lot of this energy and drive that comes about when I'm looking at a certain

01:29:04

part of nature in a certain way, in a certain environment. That location can drive that.

01:29:09

And I think that can operate on a lower level as well, clear down to going to the coffee shop to

01:29:17

do writing. Or, in my case, standing up and going over to the white board, like that physical act

01:29:23

starts my brain off in a certain way, in a very good way. Because it leads me down this creative

01:29:30

path and it's a way to just kind of manufacture that energy right away. And I don't know if maybe

01:29:36

one of these other factors is playing a part of that. Maybe the music is kicking off. I don't know

01:29:40

maybe there's something else at play there. But I know that changing things up a little bit

01:29:46

midday can have a big impact. The problem is I'm terrible at it. I'm terrible at taking advantage

01:29:53

of this. And maybe I should write this down on action items before we get to that point.

01:30:00

Yeah, sounds like it. But I think you're right. The location, that's really the take away from me

01:30:05

with the personal communication room. The personal communication room sounds kind of ridiculous

01:30:10

when you say it that way. But really, it's just a place where you can kind of control your mental

01:30:18

state like you were saying. Yeah, because whenever I saw that you had this action item of

01:30:23

creating a personal communication room, I was like, "Oh, dear, what is he doing now?"

01:30:29

That's what I thought. But now that you explain it, it makes a lot of sense.

01:30:32

Not an underground computer with a hand radio. That's exactly what I was thinking about.

01:30:36

Is he digging a hole? That's what I thought. Nope, I'm not a doomsday prepper.

01:30:41

Yeah, so the next thing on the outline here, which is again something that I added, was the

01:30:48

positive versus negative emotions, which gets into the 11th step, which is the subconscious mind.

01:30:53

And he mentions that there's seven positive emotions. Number one is desire,

01:30:58

number two is faith, number three is love, number four is sex, number five is enthusiasm,

01:31:02

number six is romance, number seven is hope. And then the seven negative emotions are number

01:31:08

one, fear, number two, jealousy, number three, hatred, number four, revenge, number five, greed,

01:31:14

number six, superstition, and number seven, anger. The thing that I found really interesting

01:31:19

about this is that on page 298 in my version, he says that positive and negative emotions cannot

01:31:25

occupy the mind at the same time. I kind of believe this already with the whole,

01:31:31

what I've seen in terms of practicing gratitude. But I don't know, this was a little bit bigger

01:31:36

and broader definition of positive versus negative emotions. So literally, if you are consumed by

01:31:43

the desire of this, this dream or this vision, which like we talked about at the beginning is

01:31:48

not just to accumulate stuff for yourself, but it's to help other people most likely,

01:31:52

that can be used as a barricade against these negative emotions, which is really interesting.

01:31:58

And on page 294, kind of take it a step further, he says, if you fail to plant desires in your

01:32:04

subconscious mind, it will feed upon the thoughts that reach it as a result of your neglect.

01:32:09

So that means that if you're not careful, if you're not being a steward of your thoughts,

01:32:13

if you're just going with the flow and you're not choosing to create this desire and this vision

01:32:19

for yourself, it's going to be created for you and it could be negative. So you may as well take

01:32:24

control of the process, take responsibility for the outcome and choose one of these positive

01:32:30

emotions instead. This comes back to a thing we've talked about before where something may not be

01:32:37

my fault, but I can be responsible for it at a very different level. Because if you don't,

01:32:43

like say something happens to you, it's easy to say, I'm the victim here. And that very easily

01:32:51

drives a number of negative emotions. And just by saying, I'm the victim here. And instead of doing

01:32:58

that, you can change it and say, here's the thing I'm going to do as a result and make it a very

01:33:03

positive thing. It works definitely on the emotional level, for sure. Go back to, here we go,

01:33:10

procrastination again. With my process of the overwhelm, the self talk that comes with that,

01:33:17

that's a very negative emotion that's going to come with it. It's usually fear in some form or

01:33:22

another. That's a terrible motivator, as we've just talked about. The trick is changing that over to

01:33:29

a positive in an excitement thing that gets you going in a very, for lack of another alternative

01:33:37

positive direction. So it's something that I think you need to take control of. And I'm bad at it.

01:33:43

Thus, action items, which we're going to get too soon.

01:33:46

Yeah. So we can cover the last two here real quickly. Because the 12 step towards riches is

01:33:53

literally the brain. And the main takeaway I got from this section is that there are 14 billion nerve

01:33:59

cells. And his point is that those nerve cells are not there just to keep you physically breathing.

01:34:05

Like there's a lot that's built into your physiology that is going to keep this whole process in motion.

01:34:12

So addressing the point that you just mentioned, like by choosing to be positive instead of negative,

01:34:17

once you make the choice to be positive, once you've implemented these steps and you've gotten

01:34:20

the ball rolling, your brain is going to pick it up from there and it's going to do it subconsciously.

01:34:24

You're not going to have to worry about it because this is what your brain is built to do.

01:34:29

And then the 13th step is basically be a little crazy. He calls it the six cents.

01:34:35

Yeah. When I read this, at first I was like, you have got to be kidding me. But the more I thought

01:34:41

exactly, it's like, what is the more I think about it? This is actually kind of interesting.

01:34:46

So he talks about this imaginary cabinet that he's formed in his head and he's got like Henry Ford,

01:34:52

he's got Abraham Lincoln, I forget who else he has in his imaginary cabinet. And he's basically

01:34:58

talking through in detail these interactions that he's having in his head with these people,

01:35:03

like playing out this situation. It sounds almost like a movie. And when you read it, you're like,

01:35:08

what is he doing here? But his whole point basically at the end is that you can allow these

01:35:16

these people, even though, like in his particular case, Abraham Lincoln, I believe had been dead for

01:35:21

a while, you can allow these people to speak into your life. I think that podcast kind of

01:35:29

actually do this in a smaller sense. But this whole idea of imagination and being able to picture

01:35:34

this stuff and being able to find out, for example, what Steve Jobs would say about your

01:35:39

particular business problem that you're facing, like, that's kind of an interesting idea.

01:35:47

Well, I think it's an interesting idea. At the same time, it's a bit bonkers.

01:35:53

It is. You go through it that way. I completely understand. And I am with you on the podcast

01:36:00

thing because it's a way to listen to other people and what they would think about a situation,

01:36:04

especially when you start throwing the Q&A bit into certain shows. But it is an interesting concept

01:36:12

because if you take the Steve Jobs example as a good one because the realm that I tend to work in

01:36:20

isn't that realm per se, but it is from a software standpoint. And to sit and think through the

01:36:28

specific projects that I'm working on and think about how I would interact with Steve Jobs on that,

01:36:33

one, he would have me doing and committing to way more than I should because that was Steve Jobs way.

01:36:40

So him and Grant Cardone would get along really well. But the thing there is that you would see

01:36:47

a lot of things and learn a lot of things in that process. This comes back to the visualization

01:36:53

piece because you have a chance to visualize, say, the day that's coming up. You have an opportunity

01:37:01

to work through something in a way. And our brains have a hard time telling the difference

01:37:07

between something that is dreamed up versus lived out. And as a result, it can be very

01:37:15

impactful even though it was nothing more than a figment of your imagination.

01:37:19

Yeah. I think what also is interesting about this is when I started listening to podcasts,

01:37:27

I did so because I wanted to allow people who I turned to my internet heroes to speak into my

01:37:36

life. And so for quite a while, the Mike Farties, the Tan Phams, the Joe Buelligs of the world,

01:37:45

like I was hearing these things, but I wasn't at the point where I was just going to show up

01:37:53

and we were going to have a conversation about a book that we just read. That was not possible.

01:38:00

I do think that there is something to this process where if you see yourself where you are now

01:38:07

and you want to be around these sorts of people, if you can rehearse these conversations in your

01:38:14

head with your imaginary friends, that can, I would argue, lead you to the point where you do

01:38:23

actually have those physical interactions with those people because I've seen that kind of happen

01:38:28

in my own life where a lot of the people that would have fallen into that category, internet

01:38:33

heroes, I now have a platform with. And I was not having imaginary conversations with you, Joe,

01:38:41

in my head before we actually met. But I can-- That's probably good.

01:38:45

We kind of were because I was listening to the podcast. And I do think that there is a little

01:38:52

bit of this normalization of the fact that me and this person who I respect, let's just say

01:38:59

David Allen, for example, he's a big name in the productivity space. A couple of years ago,

01:39:04

there is no way that I would have ever-- That would have ever been a possibility. I would argue

01:39:11

that I'm a lot closer now. And I think that if you were to envision that conversation over and over

01:39:18

again, and when it does actually happen, you're not going to be

01:39:23

awestruck and not know what to say. It's just going to be natural because you've normalized it

01:39:30

in your head. You've made this a normal thing. And it's not going to be like, "Well, how in the

01:39:34

world did I get here is sort of a thing?" Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah. You have to work your

01:39:40

way into it. It's not something that's just going to happen right away if I'm following your train

01:39:44

of thought. And it's something where you may not visualize something, but it can lead you--

01:39:51

visualizing a different thing can lead you to the reality in a way that you didn't expect.

01:39:55

Yeah. The visualization aspect of it is really powerful. And I think you can't discount that.

01:40:02

Maybe the exact details of how you visualize that could be debated. I'm kind of interested to--

01:40:08

we'll never know, but it'd be cool to hear what Napoleon Hill thinks of podcasts, like how that

01:40:14

applies to this specific point. It's the next big thing, definitely. You should start one.

01:40:21

Or three, right? Yeah, one or three. No big deal. Once you do one, it's all the same amount of work,

01:40:28

right? Wrong. Right. Now, the next point here, which is the last point on the outline,

01:40:34

did your book have this, the sixth ghost of fear? Yes. Yep. Okay, because this kind of seemed like

01:40:40

an addendum sort of a thing. I wasn't sure if this was-- Yeah, I have a habit of pushing out weird

01:40:45

versions apparently, but yes, I did have this. Okay. So the whole chapter is called "How to Outwit

01:40:51

the Sixth Ghost of Fear." And I don't think there was a whole lot of how in this chapter,

01:40:55

but it's worth just pointing out these six ghosts, I think, because fear is one of the things,

01:41:00

it's one of those mind stimulants that will keep you from taking action. So number one is the fear

01:41:05

of poverty. Number two is the fear of criticism. Number three is the fear of ill health. Number four

01:41:11

is the fear of loss of love of someone. Number five is the fear of old age. And then number six is

01:41:17

the fear of death. And he's got symptoms for all of these. The one I want to point out is,

01:41:23

in my version, page 343, his whole idea of hypochondria. This is under number three, the fear

01:41:29

of ill health. He mentions that 75% of people who go to the doctor in 1920 or whatever it was

01:41:36

suffer from hypochondria, which is an imaginary illness. And this just shows you the power of your

01:41:43

mind where it can literally create symptoms if you believe you are sick, even when you are not sick.

01:41:49

I'm really glad I don't have this. At least I don't think I have this. Maybe I have it.

01:41:55

Yeah, I think that with advances in medical technology that this has probably diminished

01:42:01

this quite a bit because at that point you really didn't know. But I do know that there are people

01:42:07

who are just convinced that they're going to die of cancer or whatever. And so they develop

01:42:11

cancer. There's no other explanation for it other than you've created this in your mind. And it

01:42:17

doesn't have to be cancer. It could be whatever the affliction is. Oh, this is genetic. I was

01:42:22

born with this. My whole family has this. I'm going to have this thing. Well, yes, yes, you are going

01:42:27

to have that thing because you've decided it in your head already. Probably the more common version

01:42:33

of this is not so much with illness as much as it is with bad relationships, I guess, where

01:42:40

you imagine something is going on in the other person's head. You send them a text and you saw

01:42:47

the three little dots and then they went away. And then three little dots came back and then they

01:42:52

went away. And then the three little dots came back and then they replied and say, no. And it's like,

01:42:57

what were you typing? Like you start imagining what they were typing. I have a feeling that level of

01:43:04

imagination and thinking things through probably causes more pain in situations than anything

01:43:11

because very rarely are we thinking, oh, they're just trying to figure out how to delicately say

01:43:15

this. And then they realized they just need a simple answer. Like, we don't typically think

01:43:19

they're doing that. We think they're trying to spell out some big problem and they need to confront

01:43:24

us with something. And then they decided, I don't feel comfortable doing that. And then they just

01:43:28

told us no. Like negative auto suggestion. It's a problem. Yeah, definitely.

01:43:35

All right. So what did you think of the book? Oh, so we're doing action items. Okay. All right.

01:43:42

So I have added a couple since we've been talking, which is, I don't know if it's good

01:43:49

or bad. That's what we're going to do here. So I started off, I had one that I wrote down before

01:43:57

we started recording. And that was to change my morning and evening self talk. And this is something

01:44:03

he talks about in the first step of the desire and what to do, what to do about it. And then he

01:44:09

spells out more detail in the auto suggestion chapter. I think it was number three. And I,

01:44:15

I've mentioned this throughout this whole show now of this procrastination and this negative self

01:44:20

talk I've been putting myself through. And this book is basically the one and sole reason I've

01:44:27

realized that. So I'm a fan of the book because of that. But I've mentioned I'm conflicted by it as

01:44:32

well. The action item here is that I need to spell out a thing, a series of words that I need to be

01:44:41

telling myself and repeating on a regular basis such that I can drive some of that negative piece

01:44:47

out and make it a positive direction. That's the part that I think is the biggest piece I got from

01:44:53

this book. Nice. We'll see. So the action items that I had as my typical action items tend to go,

01:45:07

not sure how you're going to hold me accountable to these. That's the way we do them anymore, right?

01:45:11

Yeah. Yeah. So number one dream bigger and don't compromise. So don't don't settle when it comes to

01:45:18

the dream. And kind of along those lines, another one here, and this one you can hold me accountable to

01:45:26

is writing out my statement. I believe that this is really important that normalizing that dream

01:45:30

like we talked about is a big key to actually achieving it. One of the things that Sean McCabe

01:45:36

says all of the time is a million dollars is not a lot of money because he wants to normalize the

01:45:41

fact that a million dollars isn't a lot of money because I'm going to be a billion dollar brand or

01:45:45

whatever. So I think that that's important. And then like I mentioned, creating that personal

01:45:50

communication room, if I can't to get that office done in a timely fashion, then I got to figure

01:45:55

something else out. But I've got to find a physical space where I can communicate with myself apparently.

01:46:01

And not a hole in the ground. Yep. Yep. Exactly.

01:46:05

The other two I wrote down here, I guess I didn't spell them out. But as part of this self talk

01:46:12

change, I have been doing this process of writing out what it is I need to do that day. And I have a

01:46:20

rough schedule for how the day needs to go like when I can do certain types of tasks, maybe not

01:46:24

the task themselves. But when can I work on client projects? When can I do my own stuff like that

01:46:30

sort of thing is spelled out? But I need to visualize myself going through that day

01:46:36

in a very realistic way, like using my imagination to see myself going through that day.

01:46:42

Because I don't always keep my commitments to myself as a result of not doing this.

01:46:46

And it's very easy for me to just say, well, there's too much to do. I'm tired. I'll put it off and

01:46:51

I'll do it tomorrow. Like it's easy for me to do that. I need to make sure I'm seeing myself

01:46:56

following through and holding myself to those commitments. The last one I have here is taking

01:47:02

advantage. And I mentioned this a little bit, taking advantage of the location shifting.

01:47:05

Doing that proactively in an effort to drive the energy and motivation to do the other two

01:47:13

and follow through on the self talk and the visualization. So I, in my case, I can take

01:47:18

advantage of the whiteboard bit and take advantage of sitting at my desk or sitting in the sectional,

01:47:24

sitting on the couch, whatever. Like I can take advantage of shifting around and changing what

01:47:29

my thought processes are and the energy and the motivation that comes with that. So I'm going to

01:47:35

try to take advantage of that. Nice. So what did you think of the book itself?

01:47:40

Oh, you're going to make me go first. I knew you would. Okay. I can go first. That's right. It'd

01:47:48

be good for me. I, I both loved and hated it, which I kind of have been alluding to a little bit.

01:47:56

I love the concept. It's really hard for me to explain. I feel like it needs to be applied to

01:48:04

more than just money, even though that I know that that's the direction. And if you look at the

01:48:09

timeframe it was written in, that was the sole focus of a lot of people's attention is how do I

01:48:15

get the money to pay for food in a house? Like that was the sole direction a lot of people were headed

01:48:21

down. And I completely understand why it has that focus. I think in today's world, it would

01:48:29

benefit greatly from a more broader definition and a broader application. At the same time,

01:48:37

I still like that it has the money direction on it because that seems to be

01:48:42

the area that a lot of us tend to focus on because it can drive the rest of things for us.

01:48:47

So I like that part of it. So part of me wants to rate this like a two and part of me wants to

01:48:53

rate this as a five. So I think it's more on the higher end than the lower end. So I'm going to

01:48:58

put it at four. Can I do that? Yeah, yes, you can do that. You can rate it whatever you want.

01:49:04

Okay, good. I think that the topic of money specifically is interesting, but I think it's

01:49:15

appropriate. I believe I read somewhere that if you really want to make a difference in today's

01:49:20

world, create a great business because that's kind of an amplifier for the amount of impact that

01:49:25

you can have. So I think that this is actually a very appropriate message now, maybe even more

01:49:31

so than when it was written. And I think that there is a ton in here that if you were to actually

01:49:37

apply it the way that he intended it, I have no doubt that this could change your life. The

01:49:42

results that you get really are just going to be in how much you internalize it, which is why I

01:49:47

think that I mentioned earlier, I'm going to go back and reread this over and over again.

01:49:50

I've got the audiobook version. So I really believe in the potential of this book. I'm going

01:49:57

to give it five stars. Wow, we got a fiber. We do. Yeah. And I guess like time will tell whether it

01:50:06

actually translates into the action that I think it will create. But I think that this is a very

01:50:13

transformational book if you're in the right mindset. So again, not for everybody, you have to

01:50:20

be in the right place to really understand I guess what he's saying. And it probably is going to take

01:50:25

quite a bit of time to get to that point. But I can totally see the process here. I think there's

01:50:30

a lot of gold. I think this is a great book that everybody should have in their collection.

01:50:34

This is one of the difficulties that I think listeners don't always see with how to rate these

01:50:41

things because there's a lot of times we want to know, like one of the key components, I feel like

01:50:48

a data point that would help you rate this is knowing if it has had an impact six months from now.

01:50:54

That's a data point that I really want whenever I'm trying to put these ratings together. So I end

01:50:59

up like projecting in my mind what kind of impact do I see this having later and that tends to go

01:51:05

into doing this, but it's so hard and I want I want that data point. Yep. Well, we will see.

01:51:12

Need to do like an annual show and then re-rate everything once a year.

01:51:16

So what do you got coming up next?

01:51:21

Yeah. So the next one up the art of asking by Amanda Palmer and I will warn you that Amanda

01:51:28

is not known for having a clean mouth. So just brace yourself for that one. She's also known for

01:51:36

doing nude music shows. Like she's a she's a musician. So just be aware of that as well. So she's very

01:51:45

comfortable with being open with everything in her life. So just be aware of that. She likes to be

01:51:50

vulnerable. So that disclaimer thrown out there that will make more sense as soon as you see the

01:51:56

cover of the book. The art of asking it's about opening yourself up being willing to ask other

01:52:02

people for help and for things as you need them. And Amanda has had an interesting life.

01:52:09

I've listened to at least one of her TED talks. I don't know if she has another one. So this is

01:52:13

another TED talk person. And I really enjoyed her TED talk. I know that she has a lot of good things

01:52:22

to say. I've listened to a few interviews by her, but I'm very fascinated to see what her book has

01:52:27

to say because I know some of her story and background. So I'm going to take you with me.

01:52:32

All right. My upcoming book is paid to think by David Goldsmith, which is actually a reader

01:52:40

suggestion. I think that this is a really interesting topic, kind of on the topic of thinking time.

01:52:45

If I'm looking at the book correctly, I haven't got it yet, but I actually just ordered it off

01:52:50

Amazon. So I'm excited about this one. And I mentioned earlier that I'm still on my gap book

01:52:56

that I mentioned last time towards the philosophy of education by Charlotte Mason. It's a long one.

01:53:01

It's written by someone who writes textbooks, as Mike mentioned out. And it's very true to that.

01:53:09

So it's a long one. I'm still on it. I'll finish it sometime this week.

01:53:14

Nice. And in my, my gap book, I already mentioned overlap by Sean McCabe. Definitely go check that

01:53:20

out if it's before September 14th when you're hearing this. You can get the audio book version

01:53:24

for free at overlapbook.com. Otherwise he's got a hardcover version, which is going to be cloth

01:53:30

bound. He's got a custom font and everything for it like spared no expense in terms of the

01:53:34

attention to detail. It's a little bit more expensive. The physical version, I think, is like $40.

01:53:39

But great book. Lots of great information in there. Cool beans. So Mike mentioned his next one up

01:53:47

is going is coming from the book recommendation list. I have been talking about pulling a number

01:53:52

from the list as well. And essentially what I tend to do is I tend to select five at a time

01:53:58

and run with it. So my goal is as soon as this episode airs, so if you're listening to this,

01:54:04

as soon as it comes out, two days after that, I'm going to go in and take five books from that list,

01:54:11

the recommendations list, and it will be the queued up list for my end of bookworm. So I've got

01:54:17

one selected already that comes after paid to think. I'm going to hold that one to my chest at

01:54:22

the moment. But after that one, I'll have five that come purely from listener recommendations. So if

01:54:29

you have one you want to go through, get it out there, bookworm.fm/recommend, or you can click the

01:54:35

big button on bookworm.fm. Makes it super easy. If you want to see what else is recommended,

01:54:39

there's a link to get to the book list as well. And you can see the ones that we have planned and

01:54:44

the ones that have already been recommended. So if yours is out there, you don't have to do it.

01:54:47

There you go. All right. And if you want to help other people find the show, head on over to

01:54:53

iTunes and leave us a review. It would really help us out, and it would help us take down KCRW,

01:55:00

which is still the number one return when you use such a bookworm. We really need to change that.

01:55:05

Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. Keep working at it. Our download numbers have been going

01:55:10

up significantly lately, so that makes me happy. There you go. So if you're reading along with us,

01:55:16

two weeks, we're going to go through the art of asking by Amanda Palmer. So you can pick that one

01:55:19

up, read it, and we'll talk about it next time.