Bookworm Transcripts

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and discovered something about setup.

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Like.

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- Yeah, what's that?

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That it's awesome?

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- Mind node is a part of setup.

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- Yes, it is.

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I'm so excited.

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I honestly was blown away when they said

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that they added that because there was already,

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I think I thought it's in there.

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- Yeah, it is.

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- Which is kind of like the power user one.

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And I'm like, there's no way they're gonna add my node

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'cause it's too similar.

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There's too much overlap there, but they did.

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And I am very happy.

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- I have an article that I'm working on for my blog.

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That's quite long.

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Kind of deviates from my normal topics,

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but I felt like I just needed to outline

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a whole bunch of stuff.

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And as I started writing things,

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like, well, I wanna move that around

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and I wanna move like,

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and then it occurred to me,

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it's like, come on, Joe.

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Mike talks about my node all the time.

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I should go buy my node because I don't own it.

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And then it occurred to me, like,

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wait, before you buy software,

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you're supposed to check set app first.

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Like, this is what you should do

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in the world that we live in today.

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So I pulled up set app, typed in,

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I think it was like, M-I-N, it pops up my node.

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What?

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What is this magic?

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I click install and I open the app and I go to town.

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Like, that was a moment of wizardry for me.

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- Yeah, it's awesome.

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There's really no reason not to have a set app

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subscription anymore.

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They keep adding tons of new stuff.

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I don't think you could buy a new Mac today

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and just use the Apple stuff.

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Some people maybe could,

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but if you were the type of person

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that that would not work for you,

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there is a very good chance that you could just buy a new Mac

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and a set app subscription and nothing else

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because there's so much good stuff in there.

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- Good friend of mine recently started a new job.

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And as part of that has a Mac

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and I told her, sign up for set app,

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use everything you can from that.

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And if you feel that set app is not filling your needs

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on something, shoot me a text.

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I have not heard from her since.

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(laughing)

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- And by the way, shout out to Eugene,

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who we met at Mac's back, who is set app.

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- Yes.

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- Well, he and other people, of course,

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but we both got some set app swag when we met him.

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- Yeah, I have this really cool set app pin.

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I'm super stoked about that.

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So, and we should mention set app is not sponsoring this show.

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We're just both enamored by it.

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- We just both really like it.

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And really the tie into Bookworm,

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obviously is the Mind Node stuff,

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which I talk about all the time

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and quick plug, I guess,

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for the premium membership,

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if you want to download those Mind Node files,

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they are in the PDF versions

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of the files.

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Someone had asked for the Mind Node file

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and I didn't experiment,

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I don't think it's gonna work

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through the cloud links that I use for the PDFs.

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- Okay.

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- 'Cause it's kind of like a package file

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with the images and stuff.

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- Right.

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- But I did send it via Dropbox public link.

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I don't wanna do that for everything.

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So, I'll throw it out there for people who are premium members.

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If you do want the actual Mind Node files,

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you can contact me directly in the Bookworm club

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and I'll send them to you.

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But I don't wanna just make a habit

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of uploading every single Mind Node file

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that I do to the club.

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It's a bit more work,

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but happy to do it if people really want it.

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- Sure.

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Well, we didn't plan to do plugs for set app in Mind Node,

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but that just happened.

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So, let's step into outline mode.

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Mike, did you try more stuff?

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- Oh, did I try stuff?

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(laughs)

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Okay, so as we're recording this,

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earlier this week,

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I went to hang out with the rest of the Blanc Media Team.

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- Cool.

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- And got to hang out for,

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well, it was basically Monday late afternoon

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through Wednesday, early afternoon.

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And one of the things that we did,

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which is definitely new stuff for me,

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is we went rock climbing.

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- Nice.

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- So, a little bit of context here.

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I have never gone rock climbing.

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I have never wanted to go rock climbing.

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I am scared of heights.

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So, I went along with it

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and kind of in the back of my head,

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I forgot about this action item,

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but kind of the back of my head,

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I'm like, it'll be fine,

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and I should push myself to try something new.

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So, I did.

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And we did the tall walls at this place.

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And this place, it was a lot bigger

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than your average rock climbing gym.

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I think they had like 30-something of these tall walls,

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and then they had like the bouldering stuff.

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And this is all new to me,

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but apparently like there's a whole bunch

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of different versions of rock climbing,

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and they had everything.

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- Right.

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- So, we did the tall walls,

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and they have these auto-bullies.

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So, like you hook up, and then you climb,

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and then the auto-bullay will,

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like when you disconnect from the wall,

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it will catch you,

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but there's a little bit of a gap before it catches you.

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So, I did not test the auto-bullay

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before I climbed the first wall.

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- Oh, that is awesome.

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I love that you didn't test it.

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- And I got to the top,

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and I'm like trying to test it a little bit,

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but I couldn't, while still holding onto the wall,

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disconnect enough for it to catch.

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So, I got to the top of the first wall,

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and I could not let go.

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But eventually, I got it,

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and then after that, it was awesome.

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The last one I did,

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I think it was a 40-foot wall,

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going back and looking at their website.

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It was like the tallest one in there,

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and they have obviously different difficulty levels

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from 5.6, I think, is the easy level,

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and then it goes up to 5.12 or something.

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5.11, I think.

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Okay.

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The last one that I did,

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I believe was a 5.8.

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So, kind of in the middle,

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and definitely pushed my non-existent rock climbing skills

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to the limit, but I made it.

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And I got home, and I found myself

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googling rock climbing gyms

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to see if I could find something close by

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that I could do it again.

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Turns out there's nothing within an hour of me.

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Of course.

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Which, well, anything good within an hour of me.

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But, yeah.

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So, I definitely did try more stuff, I guess.

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And turns out I liked it.

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Nice.

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I'm proud of you, Mike.

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Well done. Thanks.

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Unfortunately, I was too terrified at the time

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to even think about having somebody take a picture of me,

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so I would have proof of this,

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but I did indeed go rock climbing.

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Well done, sir.

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(laughs)

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Thank you.

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Well, I will say you succeeded

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in trying more stuff then.

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I had one follow-up action item,

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and that was to set intentions for homeschooling.

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Turns out this is a lot harder than we thought.

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At least than I thought.

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And in the midst of conversations about it with my wife,

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we're probably about a third of the way through

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that discussion, but it's kind of an ongoing thing.

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Every once in a while, we'll stop

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and we'll have a conversation about it.

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One of those is very likely to happen this afternoon

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because we're going mushroom hunting together.

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Just the two of us date night in the woods.

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That'll be fun.

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That sounds like the ultimate habit date night.

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It does.

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It does.

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I posted a picture earlier this morning

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about a mushroom that I took a picture of,

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and somebody wisely commented that,

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hey, that's a brightly colored mushroom.

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Aren't brightly colored mushrooms

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usually something you want to avoid?

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Yes. Yes, in fact, they are.

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This one remained where I found it.

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It was simply a photo opportunity,

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and it was nothing more than that.

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That was not a dinner mushroom, by any means.

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All right.

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So we're in the midst of these homeschooling

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intentions conversations.

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They will continue.

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Can't really say that they're the type of thing

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I could report on, but I can say that I am successfully

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going through this action item.

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Awesome. There you go.

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All right.

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One more thing, I guess, real quickly,

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before we get into the book.

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It's been a while since we mentioned the iTunes reviews,

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and I want to just call this out because I looked at them

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before we started recording.

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And I noticed that we did have more reviews

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than the last time that I had checked,

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which honestly was weeks ago, maybe months ago.

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And then I noticed also that the number of one-star reviews

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has gone up.

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Which, at that point, my thought was, yes, we're winning.

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Yeah.

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So this is interesting because your initial reaction is,

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oh, people don't like my thing.

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But then I thought about it a little bit,

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and I realized that the reason that we typically

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get those one-star reviews is because you or I either

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rail on a book that somebody else has recommended.

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Yep.

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It probably happened with the four-hour work week,

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to be honest.

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It was probably either the four-hour work week

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or getting results the agile one.

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Yeah, true.

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It could have been getting results.

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It was probably one of those, too.

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Yeah.

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But I also know, interestingly, that when we rail on books,

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it's also when the download numbers tend to go up.

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Yep.

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So people want us to pick on books.

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People don't want us to pick on books.

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I mean, make up your mind.

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I figure we just pick the ones we want to read.

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The takeaway here is just, you know,

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we're going to keep doing what we do.

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But I do want to say thank you to the people who do take time

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to leave a review.

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It does help us out.

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And I don't want to--

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I don't want to make it sound like we're completely

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dependent on those types of things.

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But the truth of the matter is that there

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is a mystery algorithm that iTunes uses.

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And iTunes is where most people listen to podcasts.

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So if you go leave a review that works the algorithm,

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and there's a better chance that people can find it.

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And likewise, on Overcast, which is actually

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like a surprisingly large percentage of our users,

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Libson tells us just basically what app they use

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to listen to it.

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And a lot of people use Overcast.

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I do this for all the podcasts that I listen to.

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If I really like an episode, I just hit the star icon

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at the bottom.

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I don't even know how Marco computes it anymore.

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But I do know that Overcast is a really great job

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of showing me recommended episodes based on people

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that I used to follow on Twitter.

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It's not how he does it anymore.

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But basically, like people who listen to this sort of thing

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helps them find other stuff.

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So not just Bookworm, but if you really enjoy a podcast,

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you know, there's little things you can do

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to help the producers of said podcasts.

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So.

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Right.

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Right.

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There you go.

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Awesome.

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Well, that said, let's step into today's book,

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which is Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull,

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who was the president, is the president of Pixar still is?

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To be honest, I don't know.

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I was under the assumption that he was, but I haven't looked.

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Yeah.

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That came out of my mouth and then I realized,

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wait, I'm not actually certain of that.

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I'm pretty sure he's still the president of Pixar

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and now head of Disney animation as well.

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So this book is quite different than what we would normally do

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for Bookworm.

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Its primary purpose is a story of Pixar

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and how it became what it is.

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But in order to tell that story,

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he has to share the business principles

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and the relationship principles and the creativity

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principles that they had to follow and develop over 10, 20,

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what is it, 20 years now, almost 20 years, somewhere in that range.

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Over that amount of time, they've had to develop a lot of just

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general ways of operating as a company in order

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to protect the creativity that they have with their films.

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And this, I feel, is a very fascinating journey to go on

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because if you can extract those principles

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and learn how to apply those, I feel that it would be extremely helpful.

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But it's also just a fascinating history of the journey

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that Ed and John Lasseter and the team at Pixar have gone through

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to continually hit number one in the box office over and over and over again.

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Everybody has their favorite Pixar movie, and it's a thing in and of itself.

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They just continue to have hit after hit.

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And this explains why to a large degree.

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So I really enjoyed this book.

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It was a good read, even though it is quite a bit different.

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I have no idea how I'm going to rate this,

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so I got to figure that out while we talk.

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Yeah, when I read the first chapter,

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it starts with a story of how they picked a different format

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for the conference table in one of their rooms.

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And then it kind of goes into the Ed Catmull story.

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And at that point, I was thinking to myself,

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"Joe, what did you get us into?"

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Yeah, I had the same thoughts, like, "What did I do?"

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Yeah, I'm not sure if I would say that

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I wish that hadn't been there.

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Like, I guess, you know, when we read books,

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the tendency based on our bookworm perspective

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is to nitpick all the little things that we would change

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or we didn't really like.

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And while the Ed Catmull story really felt like,

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at the beginning anyways, like, we were a little bit duped.

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Like, this isn't what I was signed up for.

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And maybe in that context, it's a little bit dry

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or not interesting, not saying that Ed Catmull

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is not interesting, but like, it's the kind of thing

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you would find in a biography.

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And I picked up this book, "Not Expecting a Biography."

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So it was a little bit of a shock

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through the first couple chapters this season,

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basically telling his life story.

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There are some interesting anecdotes in here.

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I really don't care who Ed Catmull's two childhood heroes were.

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You know, that kind of stuff is like, "Well, okay."

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But it is kind of cool to know that he was the one behind

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really the first computer animation,

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that hand thing that he made in 1973.

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Yep.

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And that kind of sets the stage for like,

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what his interests and passions really are.

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I don't think we need to get into a whole lot of the details here.

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I'll try to summarize this.

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So basically, he grew up wanting to do computer animation.

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Really liked the concept of animation,

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really liked technology, tried to combine those things

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in a time when it really wasn't a thing

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and went to University of Utah, I believe,

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which I thought was interesting.

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Like, that doesn't seem like the cutting edge technology

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powerhouse, but basically that's the program

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there kind of was.

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From there, he went and joined this agency in New York,

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then worked with George Lucas.

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And while he was there, some Disney animators showed up.

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One of them was John Lasseter.

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He ended up getting fired by Disney a little bit later.

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They stayed in touch and then they started working

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with Pixar and eventually Steve Jobs.

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Which kind of leads into the other thing

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that I think people might expect from this book

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is a description, a very long detailed description

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of what it was like to work with Steve Jobs.

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And while there is some of that stuff in there,

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the majority of this book, I think, is talking about

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their systems and their processes, the things

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that they did right and also some of the mistakes

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that they made, the things that they learned

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and how they tried to fix them.

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So it's more of a Pixar management biography

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than anything else if that makes any sense.

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- Right, yeah, no, and I think it makes a lot of sense

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to do it that way because I'm with you.

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I don't really, the beginnings of Pixar

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through Ed Catmull's story.

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I struggled with that side of it.

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But at the same time, I think you have a tendency

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to start criticizing books earlier in the reading process

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than I do. - I do.

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- That's something I've noticed whenever I talk

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to people who are in the middle of reading a book,

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do they have a tendency to try to figure out

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what they think about it in the midst of the introduction?

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Or do they wait until after chapter one?

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I'm more of a like wait till chapter two

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or maybe even three type of person.

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And correct me if I'm wrong, Mike,

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but I feel like you start doing that in the introduction,

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which I'm not sure there's a right or wrong

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on that process, but is that fair?

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- Well, the red flag went up in the introduction

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and then chapters one and two just confirmed it.

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- Yeah, yeah.

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- And then even chapter three,

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we're starting to get into the Pixar stuff.

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And again, I'm not sure that you could remove any of this

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because it kind of is foundational

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for some of the stuff that he alludes to later.

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But at the time, I'm thinking like,

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when is this gonna get rolling

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and it really wasn't until chapter four in my opinion,

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with the story of the Toy Story 2 disaster,

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which is my terminology, not theirs,

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but it was kind of a crisis moment.

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And if that had gone the other way,

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Pixar probably doesn't exist.

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- Right, well, going back,

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like the Ed Catmull story,

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because it took a while to tell that story,

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I had started judging it somewhat

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by the time I got to the end of it.

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And although I understand his story is,

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it's an interesting story,

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but I couldn't quite figure out why it was there.

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You know, there's, he essentially has a journey of

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wanting to create the first 100% animated,

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computer animated film, feature length film.

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That was the goal.

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Toy Story, the original Pixar film,

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was the culmination of that 20 year journey of Ed Catmull.

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Post Toy Story though, he has a crisis

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because now he has succeeded in his 20 year goal

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and wants to figure out what comes next.

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And it takes him a year to realize that

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the development of the creativity culture in Pixar

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is his next mission and protecting that.

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- Yep.

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- So that's really what he goes through.

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And is, I think, this is my speculation,

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I think the reason he shared that was to point out

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the purpose of the book and show that yes,

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this is something that he is passionate about

00:18:51

in the development of the company of Pixar.

00:18:55

And I think there's a lot of credibility to give to him

00:18:59

as a result of that story,

00:19:00

even though it felt a little out of place when it happened.

00:19:04

- Yeah.

00:19:05

- I think it did advise the rest of the book

00:19:07

without it being explicit.

00:19:10

- Well, I get it, once you've read through it,

00:19:13

you can understand why it's there,

00:19:15

but when you're going through it,

00:19:16

your perspective is a little bit different

00:19:18

because he's basically telling you all the cool stuff

00:19:22

that he did.

00:19:23

- Right.

00:19:24

- And if you were sitting down with somebody in a room,

00:19:27

meeting them for coffee, dinner, whatever,

00:19:29

and they just talk for the first 30 minutes

00:19:33

about all of the things that they've done,

00:19:35

your initial impression is,

00:19:37

well, this guy's full of himself, right?

00:19:39

- Yeah.

00:19:40

- Yeah.

00:19:40

- And what he does is he,

00:19:44

I don't think that anymore after going through it,

00:19:46

but the first time that you're going through it,

00:19:47

you're like, well, what is this?

00:19:50

This isn't what I signed up for,

00:19:52

and you're looking for an opportunity to leave

00:19:54

and with Bookworm, there is no opportunity,

00:19:56

you just push through when you talk about it.

00:19:58

- Yep.

00:19:59

(laughs)

00:20:00

- But the average person,

00:20:00

I could totally see them saying like,

00:20:02

well, this had Catmul guy,

00:20:04

I don't wanna, I don't really care.

00:20:06

Like, these are the kinds of things

00:20:07

that maybe your family is really interested in.

00:20:10

You know, I've been in those situations,

00:20:12

those conversations with people who can tell a good story,

00:20:17

and sometimes they're sharing all these details,

00:20:19

and they're necessary to the story,

00:20:21

they come back and they touch on them later.

00:20:23

And in the moment, it's like, okay,

00:20:25

when are you gonna get to the part

00:20:26

that I really wanna hear?

00:20:27

That's kind of what this is like.

00:20:29

Sometimes they just never get there.

00:20:30

Sometimes you leave the conversation and you're like,

00:20:33

well, this person just like talking about themselves.

00:20:36

I kind of had an experience that a couple of weeks ago.

00:20:40

So I don't wanna go into the details here,

00:20:42

but I walked away from it,

00:20:44

and I was just in a terrible mood, and my wife is like,

00:20:47

what's your deal?

00:20:48

I was like, well, I didn't even realize

00:20:52

that it impacted me this much,

00:20:53

but really I just can't stand being around this person

00:20:55

because they don't pay attention.

00:20:58

It's all about them.

00:21:00

And I realize that like,

00:21:01

I just don't like being around people like that.

00:21:03

So as I said reading this book,

00:21:04

I'm like, I don't like being around you, Ed.

00:21:07

But it's an unfair characterization

00:21:10

because the rest of the book,

00:21:13

he shared basically what he needed to.

00:21:15

I don't feel like now that it was longer than it needed to be,

00:21:19

but it did definitely take a little bit to get rolling.

00:21:21

- Yeah, and that's fair.

00:21:23

Now, one thing I want to point out about this book

00:21:27

is it is not a three part book.

00:21:28

It's a four part book, Mike.

00:21:31

- Yep.

00:21:32

As weird as it is made me happy.

00:21:35

It's like, thank you for being abnormal.

00:21:37

I guess that's the story of Pixar, do things different.

00:21:40

- Yeah.

00:21:41

- But the whole thing kicks off with part one,

00:21:44

getting started, and he tells a brief history of Pixar.

00:21:49

Now this is-

00:21:50

- Yeah, it's just kind of what we were talking about already.

00:21:52

- Yeah, it is kind of what we were talking about.

00:21:54

It does delve into where Ed Catmull was working for,

00:22:00

Lucasfilm for a period,

00:22:03

like where his whole beginnings

00:22:06

of developing an animation company came for him

00:22:10

and how it moved from owner to owner

00:22:13

and how I ended up in the hands of Steve Jobs.

00:22:16

And the part that kind of got me in the midst of that

00:22:19

was that at one point, Pixar,

00:22:21

I got the number right, it was either 54 or 56 million dollars

00:22:25

in the hole, in the red.

00:22:27

- Yeah.

00:22:28

- That dumbfounded me and Steve Jobs bankrolled that personally.

00:22:33

Jeez, I like that.

00:22:36

Talk about a big hole to dig out of.

00:22:39

- Right, and it wasn't the first time

00:22:42

that he tried to acquire the company either.

00:22:45

Because before he got let go by Apple

00:22:50

and founded Next, he was trying to buy them.

00:22:54

And then after he got let go,

00:22:58

basically they lost contact with him.

00:23:00

Eventually he contacted them again

00:23:02

and wanted their technology

00:23:05

'cause he wanted to build a killer personal computer

00:23:09

and they're like, no, that's not what we wanted to do.

00:23:11

And then later on, he comes back to Apple

00:23:14

and they get reconnected again.

00:23:16

He's like, how are things going?

00:23:17

Well, not so great.

00:23:18

56 million dollars in the hole.

00:23:20

- Right.

00:23:21

- And that's when he buys them,

00:23:22

but at each step in the process,

00:23:25

they're basically putting their flag in the ground

00:23:27

and they're saying, no, we are dedicated

00:23:29

to computer animation.

00:23:30

That's what we are.

00:23:31

- Right.

00:23:32

- And there are 56 million reasons

00:23:33

for you not to hold that position.

00:23:36

- Right.

00:23:37

- You know, so I'm trying to put myself in their shoes

00:23:40

and it's a little bit different maybe

00:23:42

because of my family dynamic,

00:23:44

but I'm thinking to myself,

00:23:46

would I really be willing to fight for this thing

00:23:50

after I had lost 56 million dollars in 1980 money?

00:23:55

Like, I don't even know what that is worth

00:23:58

with the inflation rate adjusted for today,

00:24:01

but that is a really, really big hole

00:24:05

that you don't know if you're gonna be able to climb out of.

00:24:08

So I don't know.

00:24:09

I don't think I could be that sure

00:24:12

that this is the thing it's going to take off.

00:24:15

A lot of people have their passion projects,

00:24:18

but at some point you have to come to the reality

00:24:21

that your passion project may not be financially sustainable.

00:24:25

You know, fortunately for us and all the other Pixar fans,

00:24:27

like they did stick with it and it did turn out okay,

00:24:29

but there's definitely an alternate path here.

00:24:33

- I can't say that whenever I crossed the 10 million

00:24:35

in the hole mark that I would have kept going.

00:24:38

- Yeah, exactly.

00:24:39

- Even the, you know, 400,000 in the hole.

00:24:43

Wow, 50 plus million in the hole.

00:24:46

Obviously that struck a chord with me.

00:24:48

And I appreciate that they continued working on it

00:24:53

and I appreciate that they made it work,

00:24:56

but holy buckets, they had a rough road getting there.

00:25:00

- Yep.

00:25:01

- Obviously if you want to know this whole story,

00:25:03

pick up the book and read it.

00:25:04

He goes through a lot of detail.

00:25:06

We're skipping a lot.

00:25:07

- Yes.

00:25:08

- But there is a large amount of passion

00:25:13

that went into the building of Pixar,

00:25:15

especially that went into the development of Toy Story,

00:25:19

the very first.

00:25:20

And they do tell the entire story behind Toy Story

00:25:24

and how it came about and how Steve Jobs actually positioned

00:25:29

their IPO for a week after Toy Story was to release

00:25:35

and game to the whole business side of things perfectly.

00:25:39

- Yeah.

00:25:39

- Like that's classic Steve.

00:25:41

- Smart dude.

00:25:41

And he basically made the company as a result of that move.

00:25:46

So it's a fascinating history,

00:25:51

but what happens then is after Toy Story,

00:25:56

they released, I just blanked on the name of the film.

00:26:00

What was number two?

00:26:01

- A Bug's Life.

00:26:02

- A Bug's Life.

00:26:03

Yep.

00:26:04

So they released Toy Story, huge success of course.

00:26:07

They release a Bug's Life

00:26:09

and they had some bumps in the road,

00:26:12

but they had a lot of success with that as well,

00:26:15

which brings us to what Mike has termed

00:26:17

the Toy Story 2 disaster.

00:26:20

And I don't think it's a misnomer to call it that

00:26:24

because I think Ed Catmull would call it that

00:26:27

given his brutal honesty with the way that he phrases things.

00:26:32

Like he's like, you know that failed.

00:26:34

Like we had to, you know,

00:26:36

it completely fell off the tracks.

00:26:38

We had to straighten it out.

00:26:40

But they tried, correct me if I'm wrong on this, Mike,

00:26:45

they tried to bring in new directors and some new people.

00:26:50

They thought they had the process figured out.

00:26:53

One of their mantras was trust the process.

00:26:57

They had that nailed down and they handed it over

00:26:59

to some new folks.

00:27:02

And in the midst of them doing a screening of it,

00:27:07

they realized this is a disaster of a film.

00:27:12

And they had to fire the folks in charge

00:27:17

of it, the directors working on it

00:27:19

and bring in the original team that had worked

00:27:21

on Toy Story, the original,

00:27:23

in order to hustle, hustle, hustle

00:27:27

and hit their deadlines and have any success with it.

00:27:30

- Yeah.

00:27:31

- They get all that right?

00:27:32

- Yes.

00:27:32

So I'll add a little bit more detail.

00:27:36

Basically, Toy Story 2 originally started as an idea

00:27:41

from Disney and they wanted to make a direct to video,

00:27:46

lower quality release of Toy Story 2.

00:27:50

They started working on it in a couple of months in,

00:27:53

they came back and said,

00:27:55

"Our standards are higher than that.

00:27:56

"We can't do this."

00:27:57

They wanted to do a theatrical release.

00:28:00

The problem at that point was that they were already

00:28:03

working on a Bug's Life, which was John Lasseter's baby.

00:28:06

So they had no experienced directors on Toy Story 2.

00:28:11

They did have an experienced team

00:28:17

and they thought that the experienced team would be able

00:28:19

to make up for the lack of experience from the directors.

00:28:23

So John Lasseter and the A team are working on a Bug's Life.

00:28:28

That gets shipped.

00:28:29

John checks in on Toy Story 2

00:28:32

and he's basically like, "This is garbage."

00:28:36

So he calls together the company and he says,

00:28:41

"Starting January 2nd,

00:28:43

"we're gonna work really hard on this

00:28:45

"because we've only got at that point

00:28:46

"nine months to save the film."

00:28:48

And they kind of had to start over.

00:28:51

Everyone ended up pushing really hard

00:28:53

and they came to the realization afterwards,

00:28:56

even though the whole industry is kind of built on this,

00:28:59

where there's these ebbs and flows of like,

00:29:01

you have to work really hard for these periods.

00:29:04

And Katmall tells this story,

00:29:06

which was kind of the clarifying point to him

00:29:08

that this is absolutely not okay

00:29:10

and this is a sign that we were pushing people too hard

00:29:13

when one of their employees came in, overtired,

00:29:17

forgot to drop their kid off at daycare,

00:29:20

their wife called them at work.

00:29:22

He realized he had left the kid in the car

00:29:24

and it was really hot and the baby ended up being okay,

00:29:28

but like not a good situation.

00:29:31

Obviously something like that will scare you

00:29:34

into thinking like things that aren't okay.

00:29:36

Like that's kind of a wake up call.

00:29:39

So they pushed "Toy Story 2" out the door.

00:29:41

They were able to actually release a sequel

00:29:44

that did well and was not a garbage film.

00:29:47

But then they kind of realized that they need to,

00:29:52

they need to do things a little bit differently.

00:29:54

- So I think that the piece in all of this that they learned

00:30:00

was that you really need feedback

00:30:04

and they had to change that whole system

00:30:06

to allow brutal feedback to directors and folks

00:30:11

who are building those films

00:30:14

so that they don't fall off the rails like that.

00:30:18

They learned a lot in the making of "Toy Story 2"

00:30:23

which led them into, which in the book is now part two,

00:30:29

"Protecting the New",

00:30:30

they built out this team

00:30:35

which they refer to as the brain trust

00:30:38

and I love the concept of what they do with this,

00:30:43

but this comes out in a chapter on honesty and candor

00:30:47

and what they do,

00:30:51

see if I can get this right,

00:30:52

'cause this is, it sounds like an intense meeting

00:30:55

that I don't really wanna be a part of,

00:30:57

but it sounds amazing given the results

00:30:58

that they have from it.

00:30:59

- Oh, I wanna be there.

00:31:01

- I know, I know, it's one of those,

00:31:02

I wanna be on a fly on the wall,

00:31:03

but I feel like I really don't wanna participate.

00:31:05

(laughing)

00:31:06

- I would love to participate.

00:31:08

I feel like this is right up my alley.

00:31:10

(laughing)

00:31:12

- So the idea here is that they have a rough form of the film.

00:31:17

The group, which could be 10, 15, sometimes 20 people,

00:31:24

other directors, other producers, other storytellers,

00:31:29

they watch this and then they go into a room,

00:31:33

they grab something to eat,

00:31:35

the director of the film pitches the idea to them,

00:31:40

explains what they're doing,

00:31:42

mentions the areas that they're struggling with,

00:31:44

the ones they're excited about,

00:31:46

the ones they feel they've nailed,

00:31:48

and then John Lasseter typically kicks off

00:31:52

with his thoughts on what worked and what didn't,

00:31:55

and that starts a whole conversation

00:31:57

that they just let go,

00:31:59

indefinitely until it's done,

00:32:00

about what they saw did and didn't work in the film.

00:32:06

And the key here is that they have 100% candor

00:32:10

in the process, as opposed to honesty,

00:32:14

which I get his difference in terms,

00:32:18

I think the idea is just be real until the truth,

00:32:22

(laughing)

00:32:23

was his point, but the thing that they would do is say,

00:32:27

this area didn't work,

00:32:29

and I'm not really sure why, or they knew why,

00:32:32

this was too harsh, that he was too hard on that character,

00:32:36

this one wasn't working, that guy was too small in the scene,

00:32:40

I didn't believe you on your main storyline,

00:32:43

and they would do all of this back and forth,

00:32:46

share a lot of thoughts with each other on it,

00:32:49

and then it was up to the director to decide

00:32:52

if they should accept or reject any and all of these ideas.

00:32:56

And because of this brain trust meeting,

00:32:59

they are able to continually iterate and develop

00:33:03

and build out a story that really rings true,

00:33:06

as we can see with the huge amount of success

00:33:10

with all the Pixar films that have come out.

00:33:12

So, again, I think this brain trust meeting

00:33:16

is really interesting, I'm not really sure how to apply it

00:33:18

to my life, other than, how does this,

00:33:21

I can try to think through how does this apply to our church,

00:33:25

to some degree, but I'm not really,

00:33:28

we're not in a creative endeavor really,

00:33:30

so I don't really see how that could apply,

00:33:32

but the concept behind the brain trust

00:33:34

is incredibly intriguing to me.

00:33:36

- Well, I think the way to apply this

00:33:38

is something like a mastermind group,

00:33:40

and I actually had a meeting

00:33:42

with my mastermind group this morning,

00:33:43

so I think that the honesty versus candor,

00:33:48

the difference there is most clearly seen

00:33:51

in that sort of setting.

00:33:54

- Okay. - I guess just real briefly

00:33:56

for people who aren't familiar

00:33:58

with the concept of a mastermind group,

00:33:59

it's a bunch of people that you allow

00:34:03

to tell you the truth even if it hurts.

00:34:05

So, honesty, for example, every single person would say,

00:34:10

"Yes, honesty is a good thing, you should be honest."

00:34:13

Okay, so how do you honestly answer

00:34:16

when your wife says, "Does this dress make me look fat?"

00:34:19

Okay, that's the problem.

00:34:22

The candor is honesty with fewer moral connotations.

00:34:26

It's forthrightness or frankness.

00:34:28

So, candor is just cutting to the quick,

00:34:32

saying the thing and not really caring

00:34:36

what impact it's going to have on your other person

00:34:38

because they've signed up for this.

00:34:40

That's, does that make sense?

00:34:43

- Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.

00:34:44

- Okay.

00:34:45

So, the brain trust is kind of like this mastermind group

00:34:48

of people who are there to help you

00:34:51

make your thing better.

00:34:52

There is no selfish agenda here.

00:34:54

So, that's another thing that I think is kind of important

00:34:57

to making this whole concept work.

00:35:00

The people in the brain trust initially

00:35:02

were John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Doctor.

00:35:05

That was the guy who did like up

00:35:07

and monsters, Inc, I believe, Lee Onkrich and Joe Ramphed.

00:35:12

And they were made up of people who specifically,

00:35:15

Ed Catmull says, "Had a deep understanding of storytelling

00:35:18

"and no authority."

00:35:20

The goal was to put all of these smart, passionate people

00:35:23

in a room together and then charge them

00:35:25

with identifying and solving problems

00:35:27

and encouraging them to be candid with each other.

00:35:30

I also think, I don't remember if I wrote this down,

00:35:33

but the thing about this brain trust

00:35:38

and the notes that came from this was that

00:35:41

the director had to change something.

00:35:44

They didn't have to follow the advice

00:35:47

that people had given them,

00:35:49

but they had to make sure that their movie

00:35:51

didn't stay the same because the theme

00:35:55

that he talks about in this chapter

00:35:57

is that all Pixar movies suck at the beginning.

00:36:00

The goal is to get them from suck to not suck.

00:36:02

So, that's gonna require a lot of revisions,

00:36:05

a lot of changes.

00:36:07

- Right.

00:36:07

- They also outlawed Steve Jobs

00:36:09

from these brain trust meetings

00:36:10

because they thought he would change the video.

00:36:11

- Yes, that's true.

00:36:13

I forgot that point.

00:36:14

- I thought it was really interesting

00:36:15

because they recognize right away

00:36:17

that you get the wrong person in the room

00:36:19

and the whole thing breaks.

00:36:21

So, I too thought about how can I create

00:36:26

this sort of atmosphere in the different arenas

00:36:32

that I'm involved in?

00:36:34

And I think he talks about creating a brain trust here

00:36:37

and there's a couple of things I wanted to call out.

00:36:40

He makes a point that it takes a while

00:36:43

for any group to become,

00:36:47

or to mature to the point where they could become

00:36:49

a brain trust because it takes a while

00:36:51

for any group to develop the level of trust

00:36:54

which is necessary in order to really be candid.

00:36:57

Also, the people in a brain trust,

00:37:01

and I would argue to people in a mastermind group

00:37:02

that supplies to them as well,

00:37:04

that they can't help people who don't understand

00:37:11

the philosophies, so people who aren't willing

00:37:13

to learn and grow,

00:37:14

people who refuse to hear criticism

00:37:18

without getting defensive,

00:37:20

or maybe they just don't have the ability

00:37:23

to digest the feedback and then make adjustments

00:37:26

and start again.

00:37:27

That is kind of a lot,

00:37:30

but basically if you're gonna walk into a mastermind

00:37:35

or a brain trust type meeting like this,

00:37:37

you gotta know that it's gonna hurt a little bit,

00:37:40

you gotta recognize that it's gonna benefit you

00:37:43

in the long run, no pain, no gain.

00:37:46

And then the other thing I wanna call out about this,

00:37:48

and again, I think this applies to mastermind groups as well,

00:37:50

is that they evolve over time,

00:37:52

so the brain trust, even if it's the same people

00:37:55

at the beginning is going to be different

00:37:57

three years from now when you start this thing.

00:38:00

And I think that's an interesting observation

00:38:03

that can be scary to some people,

00:38:05

but for growth minded people, it shouldn't be

00:38:09

because you're gonna be changing too,

00:38:11

and as long as the goal of the group is to grow

00:38:15

and your goal is to grow,

00:38:16

that's really the thing that matters,

00:38:18

there's gonna be synergy there.

00:38:19

- I think it was important for him to point out

00:38:22

that these brain trust meetings, this team,

00:38:27

it wasn't something that you could set up

00:38:30

and walk away from.

00:38:32

It wasn't something that you can say,

00:38:35

okay, every three months we're gonna get together,

00:38:37

have this meeting,

00:38:38

this is the people who's gonna be a part of it,

00:38:40

and this is the format of how it's gonna go,

00:38:43

turn it loose.

00:38:44

He made it very clear that this setup is one

00:38:49

that requires constant moderation and constant observation

00:38:54

and leadership.

00:38:58

You have to continually work at making sure

00:39:01

people feel free enough to share their ideas,

00:39:05

and that others aren't taking offense at critique

00:39:10

of the story.

00:39:12

At one point he called out that human,

00:39:15

I forget the exact phrasing, I'll have to look it up,

00:39:18

but he mentions that it's great for you to have ideas,

00:39:22

but don't let your ideas become you.

00:39:24

- Yes, you are not your ideas.

00:39:26

If you identify it too closely with your ideas,

00:39:28

you will take offense when they are challenged.

00:39:30

- Yes, that.

00:39:31

- Which is why the one star reviews don't bother me

00:39:34

because I am not bookworm.

00:39:36

Bookworm is my idea,

00:39:38

and I would like people to like it,

00:39:40

but ultimately that one star review

00:39:42

is not a judge on my character.

00:39:43

- Yes.

00:39:44

- It's not my identity.

00:39:45

The other thing here is that the candor

00:39:48

is not something that is optional, I believe.

00:39:53

I think that, 'cause he makes a point

00:39:57

that lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.

00:40:01

I have been in those places where

00:40:05

I know what I should say, but I know I can't say it

00:40:11

because the people who are there

00:40:13

are not going to receive it well.

00:40:16

- Right.

00:40:16

- And the goal of candor is to essentially remove

00:40:21

the emotion from the statement,

00:40:24

but it's hard to do that in a lot of contexts,

00:40:30

and if it's gonna work, the feedback that you give

00:40:33

has to be not emotionally charged.

00:40:38

And that's one piece of it, so I can make sure

00:40:40

that what I say is not emotionally charged,

00:40:42

but kind of what I've learned the hard way

00:40:44

is that it doesn't mean that the person

00:40:47

I am communicating it to is not going to receive it

00:40:50

as emotionally charged.

00:40:52

And ultimately that is my responsibility

00:40:55

to make sure that they receive it correctly.

00:40:58

Now, sometimes there's things you just can't do anything about,

00:41:03

no matter what you're gonna say,

00:41:05

people are gonna receive it wrong.

00:41:06

So in those situations, I just don't say anything.

00:41:08

(laughing)

00:41:10

- Mama always told me, can't say something nice,

00:41:13

don't say anything at all.

00:41:14

- Yep, yep.

00:41:15

- Like that's really the truth principle here,

00:41:18

but I am finding myself also looking for

00:41:21

situations, organizations, really everything that I do,

00:41:27

I want to facilitate this.

00:41:29

And I want this to be the goal.

00:41:34

Now, some things have the potential to grow to the point

00:41:39

where you can have candor.

00:41:42

And like I said, it just takes time to get to that point.

00:41:46

But if you're further down the food chain in a company

00:41:51

where candor is not welcomed,

00:41:55

like that's a red flag in my opinion,

00:41:57

because it's just gonna compound over time.

00:42:01

And eventually it's going to have a negative impact

00:42:05

when the thing that needs to be said is finally said

00:42:08

and people blow up.

00:42:10

Or the company or organization continues to be ineffective

00:42:14

because no one's willing to deal with the real problems

00:42:17

that are there, 'cause they don't want

00:42:18

to hurt people's feelings.

00:42:19

Both of those situations are not good.

00:42:21

So I guess my takeaway is try to align myself

00:42:25

with people who prioritize candor.

00:42:27

- Right.

00:42:28

And I think there's a lot of benefit to being aware

00:42:32

of the other person's ability to accept that feedback.

00:42:37

It's, we all know people who, if you were to share,

00:42:41

you're making a terrible choice in your life,

00:42:44

they're gonna flip over backwards and just lash out.

00:42:48

Everybody knows someone like that.

00:42:50

But I think that if you are conscientious of that

00:42:55

and aware of how people can react to your feedback

00:43:00

and you convey the idea that you're open

00:43:04

to people critiquing you,

00:43:06

to me that's a key component that made these

00:43:10

brain trust meetings successful,

00:43:12

is that the director who was in charge of that film

00:43:17

was open to the feedback.

00:43:18

If he had not been open to the feedback,

00:43:21

the whole thing could have fallen apart.

00:43:23

And that was a very key component to the whole thing.

00:43:25

So in the midst of conversations with people

00:43:27

in the process of giving constructive criticism,

00:43:32

if the recipient is open to that,

00:43:37

that's where a lot of the value can come from.

00:43:39

And that's what I think, as long as you and I are open

00:43:41

to that, we're totally cool with people giving us

00:43:43

one star reviews.

00:43:45

Do I want that?

00:43:46

No, of course not.

00:43:48

But at the same time,

00:43:51

I would much rather know that people don't care for it

00:43:54

and would really honestly like to know why.

00:43:56

Yep.

00:43:57

If you don't like it, why don't you like it?

00:44:00

Don't just tell me, oh, that's terrible.

00:44:03

And really, if I could refer,

00:44:04

is that don't tell me why you don't like it,

00:44:07

but tell me what can make it better.

00:44:09

Correct.

00:44:10

What can we do differently?

00:44:12

Not just to change so that we're more in line

00:44:16

with somebody's preferences,

00:44:17

but is there an underlying actual problem

00:44:21

with how we are doing things?

00:44:22

And is there a better way to accomplish our goals?

00:44:25

That's the kind of thing that's valuable.

00:44:28

And you have to tease out because a lot of the,

00:44:30

'cause a lot of people will just complain

00:44:32

and they'll say, I don't like that.

00:44:33

Correct.

00:44:34

Well, okay, I probably won't be able to fix that.

00:44:38

For the person who says,

00:44:39

you guys have too much religious undertones,

00:44:42

it is who I am.

00:44:43

I'm sorry, but it's a big part of my story.

00:44:46

And I realized that you and I,

00:44:49

one star reviewer guy,

00:44:50

because of that reason,

00:44:51

like we probably won't be able to reconcile that.

00:44:54

I would if I could,

00:44:56

but there's just no way that I can make an authentic podcast

00:44:59

and talk about these things in a meaningful way

00:45:01

without being phony.

00:45:03

And that feels phony to me

00:45:04

because it is so ingrained in my identity.

00:45:08

You know, that's way more part of my identity

00:45:10

than bookworm is.

00:45:11

So I'm not gonna flip those.

00:45:14

Yep.

00:45:14

All right, that said,

00:45:16

he has a whole chapter here.

00:45:18

We are skipping some chapters here, by the way.

00:45:21

There's a lot.

00:45:22

It was, how long is this, Mike?

00:45:23

Little over 300 pages.

00:45:25

Just under,

00:45:27

but there are 13 chapters.

00:45:29

We could have tried to nail every chapter,

00:45:31

but I felt like the four sections

00:45:34

kind of lend themselves

00:45:35

to tying a couple of these ideas together.

00:45:37

And there's no need to go into every single chapter.

00:45:40

The next chapter though, is fear and failure.

00:45:43

And it does tie into this honesty and candor piece.

00:45:46

And the reason being that this whole idea

00:45:49

of the brain trust and the candor and the honesty,

00:45:51

I feel like one of the ways to really facilitate that

00:45:56

is to talk about your own mistakes

00:46:00

and your own failures as a leader

00:46:03

because it makes it safe for other people to do the same.

00:46:07

And when everybody's talking about

00:46:08

all the things that they've messed up,

00:46:11

now to have something that's messed up

00:46:13

is no longer a rarity.

00:46:16

And the truth is that there's lots of stuff

00:46:18

that we work on that's messed up.

00:46:20

But if we pretend that it's perfect,

00:46:23

then we can't fix it.

00:46:25

- Yeah, he goes through a process about,

00:46:28

like he explains the general knowledge and wisdom

00:46:34

that people share around failure where,

00:46:37

fail fast and get your failures out of the way

00:46:40

so you can get to the successes.

00:46:42

That mentality is especially common

00:46:45

in the world of software.

00:46:47

And it's one that I think has permeated

00:46:49

a lot of the business world at this point.

00:46:52

But he also says, sure, those are fun maxims,

00:46:56

but what do you want me to do about it?

00:46:58

Like, I'm not gonna go out and try to fail.

00:47:02

- Yeah.

00:47:03

- Like that's obviously not what I'm going to do.

00:47:06

But at the same time, he does call out that

00:47:10

as you're trying to build something big and successful,

00:47:14

you can simply make a decision about what you think is best

00:47:17

and move quickly and move towards it quickly.

00:47:21

And if you learn that it's not the right path,

00:47:25

change course and go elsewhere.

00:47:27

It's not necessarily a good or bad thing.

00:47:31

It's just a learning and move on

00:47:34

and head to what you think is the right direction.

00:47:37

That was my main takeaway from it.

00:47:40

But he does try to spell out like,

00:47:43

failure isn't all negative, but it is negative.

00:47:47

So I did at least appreciate that.

00:47:50

- The best analogy I have ever heard

00:47:54

or about this topic comes from this section.

00:47:56

He's talking about Andrew Stanton,

00:47:58

who's the guy who says,

00:47:59

"fail early, fail fast, be as wrong as you can."

00:48:01

And he's not the one who originally came up with those ideas,

00:48:03

but he's the one who he attributed some to in this book.

00:48:07

But he also mentions that Andrew views failure

00:48:10

like playing the guitar and he says,

00:48:13

"You don't think real hard about where to put your fingers

00:48:17

because you only get one chance to strum."

00:48:19

I thought that was kind of brilliant the way

00:48:23

that they described that as a guitar player.

00:48:25

I mean, it's true.

00:48:26

And I kind of fall into that mode naturally

00:48:31

where I even with my limited ability

00:48:36

to play the instrument,

00:48:38

I can find myself not wanting to make a mistake,

00:48:41

trying to avoid errors.

00:48:43

And that's really what they're defining

00:48:45

as like the negative view of failure.

00:48:47

And it is something that they have to deal with

00:48:50

after they merge with Disney down the road in section four.

00:48:55

But what really intrigued me about this section here

00:48:59

is how to know if the company or organization

00:49:04

that you're involved with has embraced

00:49:07

a negative view of failure.

00:49:10

He's got a couple of different steps here.

00:49:11

He says, "Ask yourself first,

00:49:13

what happened the last time an error was discovered?

00:49:16

Do people shut down and go inward

00:49:18

or do they come together to untangle a cause of the problem

00:49:21

that it might be avoided going forward?"

00:49:24

And the acid test is,

00:49:27

if the question asked is,

00:49:30

"Who's fault is this?"

00:49:32

then your culture vilifies failure.

00:49:35

And if we're honest with ourselves,

00:49:38

that probably applies in a lot of the cultures

00:49:40

that we're associated with.

00:49:42

- Yep.

00:49:43

- And this is one of the lessons I learned

00:49:45

in when I was working with the Asian efficiency team,

00:49:48

I think I've told this story before.

00:49:49

So I'll just reel briefly,

00:49:51

like a podcast episode got published early.

00:49:54

And I was trying to dive in and figure out,

00:49:56

like, who did this?

00:49:58

Tans like, doesn't matter.

00:49:59

How do we figure it out so that doesn't happen again?

00:50:02

And that was a tipping point for me.

00:50:05

And I want to continue to build that mentality

00:50:09

in the different groups, companies, organizations

00:50:12

that I'm involved with.

00:50:14

But some of them have gotten it, some of them not.

00:50:17

And I can't tell you that it's very refreshing

00:50:20

for the ones that do understand this.

00:50:23

It does feel very different.

00:50:25

You know, he talks about how also how fear

00:50:28

can be created quickly, but trust can't.

00:50:31

I think this is really the key way that fear gets built,

00:50:34

is if you have this mentality that if I make a mistake,

00:50:39

people are going to blame me,

00:50:41

there's gonna be negative repercussions for this.

00:50:44

People are gonna feel obviously,

00:50:45

like they cannot afford to make a mistake.

00:50:49

But trust is not assuming that somebody

00:50:54

is not going to make a mistake.

00:50:57

Trusting people means that when they make a mistake,

00:51:01

you trust that they will act to also help solve it.

00:51:04

They're not just going to walk away from it

00:51:06

and leave a mess in your lap.

00:51:08

That was interesting, that whole perspective,

00:51:12

as he defined it, because you can be building trust

00:51:17

and that takes a long time to do.

00:51:21

And it only takes one instance of this is your fault

00:51:27

and that trust is broken and now fear has taken its place.

00:51:31

And I don't have a specific action item associated with this,

00:51:34

but what it did show me is that I have to be very careful

00:51:39

about building trust because it only takes one slip up

00:51:45

to destroy that thing that you've been trying to build.

00:51:47

- Absolutely.

00:51:48

I think there's, you know, I noticed you wrote down

00:51:51

an action item around this.

00:51:53

The thing that I think is the most important with this

00:51:56

is that, and you see this, I see it a lot in nonprofits,

00:52:00

if you don't discuss the things you screwed up,

00:52:05

people have a tendency to put you on a pedestal.

00:52:10

They may still put you on a pedestal,

00:52:12

but if you don't talk about your failures,

00:52:15

you borderline become idolized in a way

00:52:19

because they see you as larger than life.

00:52:22

And then if someone learns of a mistake

00:52:25

or something that you didn't own up to,

00:52:27

a failure that was hidden,

00:52:29

now your entire character is at stake,

00:52:32

not just that one thing.

00:52:34

- Yeah.

00:52:35

- So it's super important to talk about,

00:52:38

I screwed this up or this is something that I'm seeing

00:52:41

that's not working well in our organization

00:52:45

and talk about it because it can easily create long-term

00:52:49

issues or completely destroy people or organizations

00:52:53

if it's not talked about.

00:52:54

- Yeah, and the action item that you're alluding to

00:52:56

was simply to talk about my failures.

00:52:59

There's a couple of reasons for this.

00:53:01

Number one, obviously we're talking about

00:53:04

how I can change the culture of the different organizations

00:53:07

that I'm involved with,

00:53:09

and I do think that that is an important thing

00:53:12

that I can do in different situations,

00:53:15

but I also think that with the platforms

00:53:19

that we have online being fairly visible,

00:53:22

especially in the productivity space,

00:53:25

there is so much emphasis on the gold standard, I guess.

00:53:30

I don't know another way to describe it,

00:53:31

but people are sharing all the things that go right

00:53:35

and they don't share any of the things that go wrong.

00:53:38

And so, if you just follow these people,

00:53:43

you can feel really bad about your situation

00:53:46

because you're not getting an accurate picture

00:53:48

of what their life is really like.

00:53:50

- Right.

00:53:51

- All you're seeing is all the cool places that they travel

00:53:54

and working from the beach,

00:53:55

like the entrepreneurs dream sort of a thing.

00:53:58

You don't see the long hours that they've got to put in.

00:54:01

Before they get to that point,

00:54:03

you don't see all the sacrifices that they made,

00:54:05

and not that even those sacrifices

00:54:08

have a direct correlation to you getting to that point.

00:54:11

Like, just be real. (laughs)

00:54:14

Let's all just talk about what's really going on,

00:54:17

and not try to paint this picture

00:54:19

so that we can sell something, you know?

00:54:23

Which, I feel like Bookworm,

00:54:25

we've done a pretty decent job with that

00:54:27

'cause that's kind of been my ethos the whole time.

00:54:31

Right or wrong, you know,

00:54:32

people who listen to this can judge for themselves,

00:54:34

but that's at least been my goal

00:54:36

as we have done this podcast,

00:54:39

is I want to give people a realistic picture

00:54:43

of the struggles and the things that we go through.

00:54:46

But as I'm going through this section,

00:54:49

I'm realizing that now more than ever,

00:54:51

that is needed online. (laughs)

00:54:53

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:54:56

All right, so let's step into part three.

00:54:59

Building and sustaining,

00:55:01

and there's two points here we're gonna jump into.

00:55:06

One of which is research trips and post mortems,

00:55:09

but this is a part of a broader list.

00:55:12

What is it, nine parts on that list, Mike?

00:55:17

There are eight, yeah.

00:55:20

And I wrote them all down in my mind, notefile.

00:55:22

So if you're a premium member, you can get these.

00:55:24

(laughs)

00:55:25

Good job, Mike.

00:55:26

The things I do for the Bookworm Premium Club members.

00:55:30

No.

00:55:32

So the whole list is really interesting,

00:55:34

and the chapter that this comes from

00:55:36

is chapter 10, broadening our view.

00:55:38

This list is the methods that they use

00:55:40

to put their collective heads

00:55:42

into a different state of mind.

00:55:45

This is kind of building on a concept

00:55:47

that we cut from the previous section for sake of time.

00:55:51

I'll just real, really talk about it.

00:55:53

They've got this concept of the beast,

00:55:55

which is kind of the thing you alluded to earlier

00:55:59

where they keep pumping out number one hits.

00:56:00

And so the beast is basically how you keep this thing going.

00:56:03

No one wants to make a mistake and publish a movie

00:56:05

that doesn't end up at number one.

00:56:08

And then the ugly babies, that's the belief

00:56:10

that everything that you first created, it is an ugly baby.

00:56:14

And you have to fight to protect that thing

00:56:16

at the beginning until it kind of finds its legs

00:56:18

and evolves into the thing that it really can be,

00:56:20

the potential there.

00:56:22

And all of the movies that Pixar produces

00:56:26

all start out as these ugly babies,

00:56:28

the most interesting story I found was the story

00:56:30

of how up came to be.

00:56:32

So up is a really, it's a really great movie.

00:56:36

And I guess there are people who haven't seen it.

00:56:39

There's this old guy who his wife passes away.

00:56:42

He made a promise to take her to Paradise Falls.

00:56:45

And then the whole house lifts up

00:56:47

and he goes to this South American country

00:56:49

with a whole bunch of helium filled balloons.

00:56:50

Pretty ridiculous, right?

00:56:52

But the story originated as this kingdom

00:56:57

that was floating in the sky.

00:57:00

And there were two princes who were very different

00:57:03

and always fighting with each other.

00:57:04

And they fell to the earth and they're trying to figure out

00:57:06

how to get back up to this castle in the sky.

00:57:09

Very, very different movie, right?

00:57:11

The only thing that made it from the original

00:57:16

to the new one was there was this bird, Kevin,

00:57:19

which is kind of like a minor character.

00:57:22

- Right, right.

00:57:23

- So yeah, so as that transformation is taking place,

00:57:28

it requires a perspective shift

00:57:31

and it requires that you look at things differently,

00:57:33

which is where these eight different things

00:57:37

that they do kind of fall into play for me anyways.

00:57:41

So research trips, this is basically,

00:57:44

if they're going to do a movie in a setting or on a topic,

00:57:49

they will send a bunch of the crew to go do that thing

00:57:53

or be in that environment.

00:57:55

It ends up being very expensive, but the net result

00:57:59

is that they catch a lot via osmosis

00:58:03

just because they're there.

00:58:04

So for example, Monsters University takes place

00:58:09

at this prestigious university.

00:58:11

So they sent their teams to Harvard and Yale

00:58:14

so they could be in these prestigious universities.

00:58:17

And even the sounds that are in the library

00:58:21

are influenced by being in that environment.

00:58:24

So you may not have notes of,

00:58:26

I noticed this thing while you're there,

00:58:29

but then when you're back home

00:58:31

and you're building this thing,

00:58:33

you can tell if it feels right.

00:58:35

And the interesting thing to me about this

00:58:37

was that there really is no way to quantify the value of this

00:58:41

because when you do this

00:58:44

and you present it to an audience member

00:58:45

who maybe or maybe doesn't, most likely doesn't,

00:58:49

understand that domain or that environment very well.

00:58:54

Like they can't tell if that sound

00:58:58

or that thing that you drew is accurate.

00:59:02

But if you don't nail it, it doesn't feel right.

00:59:07

It's almost like they can intuitively tell,

00:59:09

even if they have no idea what's actually wrong

00:59:11

when something is wrong.

00:59:13

And so he basically says that the net result is that

00:59:17

when the team can nail this,

00:59:20

the audience knows it and they're more engaged with the film,

00:59:23

which was really interesting to me.

00:59:26

- I think these are really important.

00:59:28

But at the same time, you gotta try to translate it

00:59:30

'cause I'm not going to write an article

00:59:34

about how awesome it is in Africa and not go there.

00:59:39

That doesn't make sense.

00:59:42

I wouldn't do that,

00:59:43

but I'm probably not going to write that article either.

00:59:46

But granted, they're also dealing with much, much bigger

00:59:49

budgets and much higher margins on the return.

00:59:53

So I get it, but I think there's a potential learning here

00:59:58

in that if you are going to do a creative endeavor,

01:00:04

do your research.

01:00:05

- Right. - Yep.

01:00:07

- Watch videos on it, watch documentaries on it.

01:00:10

Research it to no end.

01:00:11

If you can go there, go there.

01:00:13

If you can find people who work in a given sector

01:00:16

and you need to know more about it,

01:00:18

talk to them, read books about it.

01:00:21

This is the classic collect dots concept

01:00:24

before you can connect them later.

01:00:26

And the more dots you collect,

01:00:28

the better off your creative endeavor is going to be.

01:00:31

To me, that's the real takeaway here,

01:00:34

is if you're going to do something with high impact

01:00:36

and with a lot of quality,

01:00:38

do the background legwork.

01:00:41

Don't just make guesses and speculate.

01:00:46

Get detailed about it.

01:00:48

Because as Pixar has shown,

01:00:50

that does have a huge impact in the long run.

01:00:53

- Yep.

01:00:54

And it's interesting because part of the problem

01:00:57

that comes with that is that they spend too much time

01:01:02

on the details.

01:01:05

So for example, the next one here,

01:01:07

which isn't in the list we were going to talk about,

01:01:09

but it's power of limits,

01:01:10

they talk about the beautifully shaded penny.

01:01:14

And the problem with this is that Pixar employees

01:01:17

will spend a crazy amount of time on little details

01:01:20

for the actual films,

01:01:21

but they don't understand whether that thing

01:01:25

is going to have any significant impact in the movie.

01:01:27

So for example, there's a scene that they share

01:01:30

from Monster Zinc,

01:01:32

where the little girl knocks Mike Wazowski's CDs off

01:01:36

of the case.

01:01:37

Do you remember that scene?

01:01:38

- I do.

01:01:39

- Okay.

01:01:40

So he says, oh, those were alphabetized.

01:01:43

The whole scene is like three seconds, right?

01:01:45

Each CD on that case,

01:01:47

a Pixar employee created an album cover for.

01:01:52

Even though there's only a couple of them

01:01:53

that you will see on the floor in Mike's apartment.

01:01:56

- Yeah.

01:01:57

- And so they're looking at that and they're saying,

01:01:58

well, that was a waste.

01:01:59

We didn't need that many covers made.

01:02:02

On one level, it's kind of cool

01:02:03

that they put that much attention detail into things,

01:02:05

but also obviously that makes the amount of effort

01:02:08

to create the film much higher

01:02:10

and they're kind of always pushing up against these deadlines.

01:02:13

So if you're looking for something to cut,

01:02:15

that would be a great thing to cut.

01:02:16

Let's just design the three we need instead of all of them,

01:02:19

but they don't know how those things

01:02:20

are going to be pieced together.

01:02:21

- Right.

01:02:22

- And being able to see the limits of usefulness

01:02:27

helps them conserve their energy

01:02:29

and put it in the appropriate place.

01:02:31

- Absolutely.

01:02:32

But they also do post-mortems, Mike.

01:02:34

- Yeah, post-mortems are cool.

01:02:36

I love the idea of post-mortems.

01:02:38

I've done some of these

01:02:40

and they're always really valuable.

01:02:42

Basically, a post-mortem is a short meeting

01:02:45

and it could be after a project,

01:02:46

but at Pixar specifically, it's after a film was released

01:02:49

where they explore what worked and what didn't work

01:02:51

and they attempt to consolidate all of the lessons

01:02:53

that they learned from it.

01:02:55

There's a couple of reasons that they do this.

01:02:57

Number one is, like I said,

01:03:00

they want to consolidate what they learned

01:03:02

in making this film.

01:03:04

They also want to teach other people

01:03:06

who maybe weren't there

01:03:08

so they can avoid some of the mistakes maybe that they made.

01:03:11

And the thing that was interesting to me

01:03:13

is they don't want to let resentments fester.

01:03:16

I think this is probably the most important piece to this

01:03:20

because if you are on a team that is pushing

01:03:23

and you get this thing out the door

01:03:27

and then the initial reaction,

01:03:30

if it's a successful film,

01:03:31

which almost all Pixar films are,

01:03:33

is like, hooray, we did a good thing.

01:03:35

But you may resent the fact that this thing,

01:03:38

or your piece of it didn't really go

01:03:40

the way that you wanted it to.

01:03:42

You're caught up in the celebration

01:03:44

because it was a monetary success

01:03:46

and then the next film that you work on,

01:03:48

the same thing happens.

01:03:50

Right?

01:03:51

And then you're like, oh, that's right.

01:03:52

I was mad about this before.

01:03:53

Now I'm even more mad that it's happening again.

01:03:55

This is totally unjust.

01:03:58

So here we go again.

01:03:59

So just document that stuff, get it out there.

01:04:01

And yeah, maybe it'll happen again,

01:04:03

but I feel like if you have the ability

01:04:06

and the avenue to share those things,

01:04:09

you can release those things.

01:04:11

So even if it does keep happening again,

01:04:14

as long as you are able to express your frustration

01:04:16

with the thing, you feel better about it.

01:04:19

It's no longer something that you're holding onto

01:04:22

and it continues to make you more and more bitter.

01:04:24

You're able to let go and do your best creative work.

01:04:26

I think that's a really important aspect

01:04:28

to these post-mortem's.

01:04:30

- Yeah, I mostly wanted to see,

01:04:34

and again, as I go through listeners, you know this,

01:04:38

I have a tendency to try to extrapolate things out

01:04:41

and go to like, how do I apply this elsewhere?

01:04:44

This is the same thing.

01:04:45

How do I apply this to events at the church?

01:04:49

How do I apply it to projects that I complete online

01:04:52

or even articles that I write?

01:04:55

How do each of those instances,

01:04:59

what does a post-mortem look like?

01:05:02

I don't know that I have an action item around this one, Mike,

01:05:04

or really what to do with it,

01:05:06

other than I know these are good things to do

01:05:09

and I know they're valuable,

01:05:11

but I haven't quite figured out what to do yet.

01:05:13

- Well, I'll give you an example,

01:05:14

a church example even.

01:05:16

So my wife and I lead the outreach team at our church

01:05:20

and we do a big outreach, basically once a quarter.

01:05:24

And after the outreach, we have a meeting

01:05:28

with the rest of the church staff to do a post-mortem

01:05:31

and we talk about what went well, what didn't go well,

01:05:33

and we make a bunch of notes on things

01:05:34

that we want to change for next time

01:05:36

because there's a good chance we're doing the same event

01:05:38

a year from now and we don't want to repeat the same mistakes.

01:05:42

And all of those things get documented in a Google Doc

01:05:44

and when we're planning the next one,

01:05:46

we look at that Google Doc and we say,

01:05:47

"Oh yeah, we didn't want to have fruit in the summer

01:05:51

because it just attracts the flies and the bees."

01:05:53

So we're not gonna do that when we cook up all the hot dogs

01:05:57

and the brats and have the big community block party

01:06:00

sort of a thing.

01:06:01

So that's one place where that can be valuable.

01:06:04

But I think again, it comes back to the candor piece.

01:06:08

Like you have to take an honest look at the event itself

01:06:12

and you have to disconnect yourself from the event.

01:06:16

You know, if the event is a total bust,

01:06:17

it does not mean that Mike and Rachel Schmitz

01:06:20

are a total bust and we have to be able and willing

01:06:24

to hear the things that could have gone better.

01:06:27

- You have a point in the outline, creativity and skiing.

01:06:31

I don't know where you want to go with this one.

01:06:33

- Sure, so chapter 11 is the Unmade Future

01:06:36

and it basically talks about creativity.

01:06:40

And there's an analogy in here that I really liked

01:06:43

of creativity and skiing.

01:06:46

The point being that if you are skiing

01:06:49

and you tighten up and think about it too much,

01:06:51

you are going to crash.

01:06:53

So in essence, trying not to crash actually makes you crash.

01:06:58

So how does this apply to creativity?

01:07:02

I think if you were to sit down and be like,

01:07:03

I really need to be creative now.

01:07:05

You're not going to be creative.

01:07:07

You're going to crash.

01:07:09

But when you can learn to relax,

01:07:11

you can go faster and you can enjoy it.

01:07:13

The phrase that they use for this is,

01:07:15

if you think you stink, (laughs)

01:07:18

which I am a thinker.

01:07:19

So this definitely applies to me.

01:07:21

I don't necessarily have an action I'm associated with this,

01:07:25

but basically what I want to do is just let go

01:07:29

and trust the process, kind of what they were talking about.

01:07:32

One of the big main picks are values at the very beginning.

01:07:35

The other one, by the way,

01:07:36

I don't think we mentioned this is that story is king.

01:07:39

So obviously that applies specifically to Pixar

01:07:42

'cause they're telling stories,

01:07:44

but you could apply that a lot of different situations as well.

01:07:48

But specifically the trusting the process,

01:07:50

I have long believed that everybody is creative.

01:07:55

You may not think you're creative

01:07:57

and then you would be right,

01:07:58

but you have the ability to be creative.

01:08:02

And if you try to force it, you may have trouble with it

01:08:06

and then you use that as reinforcement for the idea

01:08:09

that you are not creative, if that makes any sense.

01:08:13

He says on page 223 that in his experience,

01:08:16

creative people discover and realize their visions over time

01:08:18

and through dedicated, protracted struggles.

01:08:20

So the fact that you are struggling

01:08:22

does not mean that you are not creative.

01:08:24

In fact, it's actually evidence that you are creative

01:08:26

because all creatives struggle with this stuff.

01:08:29

You have to show up and you have to put in the effort

01:08:32

and really the big thing that made a difference for me

01:08:36

was not judging my work afterwards.

01:08:40

I made the decision I was gonna show up

01:08:41

and I was gonna write for an hour every day.

01:08:44

That's how my book got published initially,

01:08:47

or self published initially,

01:08:49

was that I just showed up and wrote.

01:08:51

And at the end of the day, I published it.

01:08:53

I wasn't gonna sit there and edit it until it was perfect.

01:08:57

Some days I sat down, I only typed out 100 words

01:09:00

instead of 1000, didn't view that as a bad day

01:09:03

because at least I showed up.

01:09:05

And I think that's the key piece here is just show up,

01:09:08

relax, let it go, and then whatever happens happens

01:09:13

and that's okay.

01:09:14

- Which is similar to how we both got started

01:09:17

with Bookworm in that we both wanted to read more

01:09:22

so we figured let's start a podcast so that we read more.

01:09:25

And it's what I'm slowly coming to.

01:09:27

It's like just start reading.

01:09:29

But with creative endeavors, it's very similar.

01:09:32

If you're going to read an entire book

01:09:35

or you're going to write an entire book,

01:09:38

the principles are the same.

01:09:39

Show up every single day, preferably at the same time,

01:09:43

and do the work.

01:09:44

Like whether it's 10 minutes, 10 hours,

01:09:47

like show up and do the work.

01:09:49

And that's something I've slowly been developing

01:09:52

with my writings, like I show up every day,

01:09:55

write it at the same time.

01:09:56

Same thing with the reading practice,

01:09:57

like these become habitual rituals

01:10:01

that I go through on a daily basis.

01:10:04

This is very similar in that if you give yourself the space,

01:10:08

you don't put any restrictions on what you're creating

01:10:13

or how much to create or how amazing it is.

01:10:18

You're just giving yourself the space

01:10:19

to do the creative work itself.

01:10:23

- Yep.

01:10:23

- Now, I forget if it was Hemingway

01:10:26

or somebody else that said,

01:10:28

I only write when the muse strikes, thankfully,

01:10:31

it shows up every morning at 8 a.m.

01:10:34

I think that's Hemingway.

01:10:35

- Right.

01:10:35

- Somebody like that.

01:10:36

Like that's it.

01:10:39

You know, show up.

01:10:40

And if you show up every single day,

01:10:41

it's slowly that mental state becomes normal.

01:10:45

- This reminded me a lot of James Clear

01:10:47

and atomic habits.

01:10:48

- Absolutely.

01:10:49

- 'Cause he, and it's not,

01:10:51

he's not the one who came up with this,

01:10:53

but he really hammers this idea of,

01:10:56

so you wanna be a writer, you gotta write.

01:10:58

What does a writer do?

01:10:59

They write.

01:10:59

What does a reader do?

01:11:00

They read.

01:11:01

What does a runner do?

01:11:02

They run.

01:11:03

So if you don't run, if you don't read, if you don't write,

01:11:07

you cannot say that that is an identity that you've embraced.

01:11:11

But if you show up and you run poorly,

01:11:14

you can say, I am a runner.

01:11:16

And you can continue to get better.

01:11:18

If you show up and you read one page,

01:11:21

every day you can say, I am a reader.

01:11:23

If you show up and you write for one hour,

01:11:26

even if it's only a hundred words,

01:11:28

you can say you are a writer.

01:11:30

And the more that you do it,

01:11:31

the better that you get at that specific thing.

01:11:33

The thing that paralyzes a lot of people

01:11:36

is making a value judgment on the thing right away.

01:11:39

And I totally get that.

01:11:41

You have to be able to view yourself as a beginner

01:11:45

when you are a beginner.

01:11:47

If I approached my running with the goal

01:11:51

of running a half marathon, which I did,

01:11:52

and then the very first time I ran,

01:11:54

I could really go two miles

01:11:56

and I was like a 10 minute pace,

01:11:57

I would have quit right there and be like,

01:11:59

you're never gonna be able to do this.

01:12:00

Look at you, you're pathetic.

01:12:02

But that's not how it works.

01:12:05

You just do it over and over and over again.

01:12:07

And it gets easier.

01:12:09

And I believe that applies to your creativity as well.

01:12:11

Now part four, testing what we know,

01:12:15

this goes back to some history in Pixar

01:12:21

and a period of time when Disney,

01:12:25

now keep in mind, I don't know if we've talked

01:12:27

about this a whole lot,

01:12:28

but Ed, Catmull and John Lasser both loved Disney growing up

01:12:33

and aspired to be a part of Disney animation.

01:12:38

Now, during the period when Pixar was releasing hit

01:12:43

after hit after hit, Disney had not released a single,

01:12:48

big number one in the box office hit.

01:12:51

But as a result of that,

01:12:54

and through conversations, this is when Disney purchased Pixar.

01:12:59

I believe the sale price was a little over 7 billion.

01:13:02

And as a part of that negotiation,

01:13:05

Steve Jobs negotiated it.

01:13:07

So guess what, it really was in Pixar's favor.

01:13:11

And Ed Catmull and John Lasser

01:13:15

became the heads of Disney animation and Pixar.

01:13:20

- Yep.

01:13:20

- And it also being that if you had a centralized leadership

01:13:24

across those two, you would not have competition

01:13:28

between the two.

01:13:29

And also the idea was that if the leadership from Pixar

01:13:35

moved over to the leadership of Disney

01:13:37

as a part of that merger,

01:13:40

the rituals and the success factors

01:13:42

that go into the development of Pixar films,

01:13:46

those traditions could remain.

01:13:48

That was key to Steve Jobs.

01:13:51

And I think brilliant negotiating for him.

01:13:55

And they had a success, the merge happened.

01:14:00

And this was the first chance that Ed had to apply

01:14:06

the principles and the practices that they had at,

01:14:09

excuse me, Pixar, they took those to Disney

01:14:13

and tried to learn how to incorporate those

01:14:16

into Disney animation in an effort to fix Disney.

01:14:21

Thus, he terms this a new challenge.

01:14:24

- Yeah, and a little bit of background here.

01:14:27

So we mentioned a while back with the IPO of Pixar,

01:14:32

there was also a detail there where Steve Jobs

01:14:37

renegotiated the deal they had with Disney

01:14:40

so that it was a 50/50 split.

01:14:43

But Disney owned the rights to the Pixar characters.

01:14:47

So--

01:14:48

- Pixar owned it.

01:14:49

- No, Disney did.

01:14:51

They had a group called Circle 7

01:14:55

that before Bob Iger took over

01:14:59

was there was some bad blood between Pixar and Disney

01:15:02

and they were moving ahead with making sequels

01:15:06

to the Pixar hits and they basically didn't need

01:15:09

Pixar's okay to do so.

01:15:11

They had the legal right to do it.

01:15:13

And that was under Michael Eisner.

01:15:16

So when Bob Iger takes over and he talks to Steve Jobs

01:15:20

and Steve Jobs likes him a lot because I think

01:15:23

he was the first one to put TV shows on iTunes,

01:15:27

a bunch of the ABC stuff came over.

01:15:30

And then Steve Jobs has John Lasseter

01:15:33

and Ed Catmull over for dinner and he's like,

01:15:35

"Hey, so I'm thinking of selling to Disney."

01:15:39

And they're both like,

01:15:40

"What? How could you sell to our mortal enemy?"

01:15:43

(laughs)

01:15:44

- Yes.

01:15:45

- So his advice to them was just go get to know Bob Iger.

01:15:50

I think he's a good guy.

01:15:52

And to his credits, they mentioned that Steve Jobs said

01:15:55

that if they weren't on board with it,

01:15:57

he wouldn't go through with the deal.

01:15:59

So they got to know Bob Iger, they liked him.

01:16:02

And he mentioned that he had been through a successful merger

01:16:06

and an unsuccessful one.

01:16:08

He wanted to make this a successful one.

01:16:10

And basically we're not doing things right.

01:16:12

We want you to come help us out.

01:16:14

So John and Ed were the ones basically coming

01:16:18

to save Disney culture, which was a challenge

01:16:21

because it couldn't just also make a clone

01:16:24

of what they had at Pixar.

01:16:26

Disney had to kind of evolve into its own thing.

01:16:29

They did eventually get there.

01:16:30

A lot of this is history.

01:16:32

I didn't really care for this section all that much

01:16:34

in terms of like stuff that you could apply.

01:16:37

Sections two and three were really the meat of that

01:16:39

in my opinion.

01:16:41

But there is some interesting stories here.

01:16:42

And they did obviously get to that point

01:16:45

where they eventually released Tangled

01:16:47

and that was the first number one that hit

01:16:49

that they'd had since the Lion King, which was pretty crazy.

01:16:54

But they had to make a lot of changes,

01:16:56

including how the floor plan was laid out,

01:17:01

personnel changes.

01:17:02

One of the personnel changes I thought was interesting

01:17:04

was the Circle 7 group,

01:17:06

the guy who was leading that actually was a pretty bright guy

01:17:09

who was just doing his job.

01:17:10

So when he met with Ed and John,

01:17:12

he wasn't like begging to stay or anything,

01:17:14

but they were impressed with this guy

01:17:15

and they gave him a pretty high up position.

01:17:18

Even though he was the one in charge

01:17:20

of like breaking their babies.

01:17:21

- Yep.

01:17:23

- So that was kind of cool.

01:17:25

And then the other thing here,

01:17:27

which maybe we don't need to spend a ton of time in here,

01:17:29

but the note stay, I thought this was cool.

01:17:32

Because as Pixar is growing

01:17:35

and they fix Disney, like the companies continue to grow,

01:17:38

they realize basically that they've kind of gotten away

01:17:41

from their culture, not because they did anything wrong,

01:17:45

but just because it's harder to maintain with new people.

01:17:50

They actually experienced, they said,

01:17:51

three crises at once where the production costs

01:17:54

were rising, the external economic forces

01:17:55

were putting pressure on the business

01:17:57

and the cultural tenant that had that good ideas

01:18:00

could come from anywhere was kind of faltering.

01:18:02

So just like they have these note stays for their movies,

01:18:05

they told everybody, we're gonna have this note stay

01:18:08

and it's gonna be this day and they set up all these sessions

01:18:12

to talk about different things

01:18:13

based on the suggestions that they got.

01:18:15

And the end result was they had this day

01:18:18

where you had people from all over the company,

01:18:19

all these different backgrounds, different departments

01:18:22

who never interacted really with each other previously.

01:18:26

Now we're attending these different sessions

01:18:28

and everybody was encouraged to share their ideas

01:18:32

and like basically how do we fix Pixar?

01:18:35

And they held notes day on March 11th, 2013,

01:18:41

and it was a huge success.

01:18:43

I really liked this idea.

01:18:45

I'd like to apply notes day to everything I'm involved with.

01:18:49

I know that's not gonna happen,

01:18:50

but I really love this idea

01:18:52

and really like the story behind it.

01:18:54

- Yeah, this was a piece that,

01:18:57

it's right towards the end of the book

01:19:00

and when I was reading through it was like, yes, yes, yes, yes.

01:19:04

Like this is, yes, like I want this.

01:19:07

And it's because essentially what they're doing

01:19:11

is they're making it okay

01:19:14

and giving a mechanism for the entire company

01:19:18

to shut down for one day and look internally

01:19:23

and discuss ways to make themselves better.

01:19:26

- Yep.

01:19:27

- And when you take a massive crew,

01:19:29

like the entire company of Pixar

01:19:32

and shut it down and say, how do we get better?

01:19:35

How do we cut costs?

01:19:36

How do we speed up the process of making films?

01:19:40

People get excited, like, wait, you're gonna listen to me?

01:19:44

Like I can say something all the way up to the CEO,

01:19:46

even though I sweep the floors, like this is amazing.

01:19:50

And everybody bought in, they built their own wiki pages,

01:19:53

they came up with their own like team.

01:19:56

- Before notes day even happened.

01:19:57

- Yeah, before it even happened weeks before it even happened.

01:19:59

They were discussing this amongst each other

01:20:01

so that they had better ideas.

01:20:03

And it all goes up to leadership

01:20:06

and they use that to continually perfect

01:20:08

and improve the company on a whole.

01:20:11

It's brilliant.

01:20:13

If you really wanna know what the details

01:20:15

of day-to-day business and how to improve those,

01:20:18

talk to the people who live and breathe it every single day.

01:20:20

Like it's just a brilliant idea.

01:20:22

- Yeah, and there's a lot in the details of how it was executed

01:20:25

that really make it work.

01:20:26

Like John Lasseter going on stage at the very beginning

01:20:29

and sharing how he received a whole bunch of feedback

01:20:33

and it was all compiled and he thought maybe

01:20:34

there would be like a half a page

01:20:35

and it was two and a half pages.

01:20:37

Like all the stuff that people didn't like about

01:20:39

working with him, you know?

01:20:40

And he's like, did I like reading that?

01:20:42

No, but it was valuable.

01:20:44

And he's like, and I'm asking you to take the same approach.

01:20:46

We're not attacking people here.

01:20:49

We're attacking the problems with our processes.

01:20:51

What was really interesting to me about all of this

01:20:54

was they gave people some direction at the very beginning.

01:20:58

They mentioned like we wanna get the number

01:21:01

of employee weeks per film 'cause there's a ton of people

01:21:05

that work on these movies down to something like 18,500.

01:21:10

- Yeah, percents, yeah.

01:21:12

- Yeah, and everybody who was involved with it

01:21:14

basically ran with it further than they thought

01:21:17

they were going to and they were like,

01:21:19

no, we're gonna get it down to 12,000.

01:21:21

(laughs)

01:21:22

- Yes.

01:21:23

- Which was interesting to me because of the way

01:21:27

that it was presented, because I feel the,

01:21:31

if you were to say, I can envision a very different

01:21:34

scenario here where John Lasseter comes out and he says,

01:21:38

okay guys, we've done really well Pixar is awesome.

01:21:41

We've built this place, but it's not sustainable.

01:21:44

We gotta make some changes.

01:21:45

Everybody's gonna have to suck it up a little bit

01:21:47

and we gotta get this down to here.

01:21:51

And how much differently that would have been received

01:21:54

'cause I've been in those meetings.

01:21:56

It sucks.

01:21:58

You feel like you have no ownership in the process.

01:22:00

You feel like the ship is going down

01:22:01

and you're doing what you can to save it,

01:22:03

but inevitably this is gonna go down anyways.

01:22:05

So like, what are we even doing here?

01:22:07

- Right.

01:22:08

- As opposed to let's reconsider everything

01:22:12

and we know that there are ways that we can do this

01:22:15

without just forcing people to work more.

01:22:17

Over time is not the answer.

01:22:19

So how do we do this?

01:22:22

And obviously the net result was that everybody loved it.

01:22:26

Everybody felt like they had a voice.

01:22:28

Everybody felt like they were listened to.

01:22:30

And I imagine that this had a ripple effect

01:22:34

where people were not just doing more work

01:22:36

but more effective work.

01:22:37

They were more engaged with their work, I guess,

01:22:38

would be the term to use here,

01:22:40

though that maybe has negative connotations.

01:22:42

Like people were excited to come to work

01:22:44

for how many weeks or months after that

01:22:46

because they thought that they had been hurt.

01:22:48

- Right.

01:22:49

- You can't put necessarily a dollar sign value

01:22:53

on that sort of thing,

01:22:54

but it's totally what happens

01:22:56

when you do something like this.

01:22:58

- After this chapter,

01:23:00

this is technically the end of the book right here.

01:23:03

There's an afterword and then some starting points

01:23:06

that follow that.

01:23:07

You mentioned earlier,

01:23:09

some people may be picking this book up

01:23:11

in an effort to learn about Steve Jobs' involvement in Pixar.

01:23:16

He does give that to you in not quite 20 pages

01:23:20

at the back of a book in this afterwards,

01:23:22

the Steve we knew.

01:23:23

I don't really wanna go into that

01:23:24

other than it is interesting to see Steve's involvement

01:23:28

in the book.

01:23:29

And then after that,

01:23:31

he has the starting points,

01:23:33

thoughts for managing a creative culture.

01:23:35

Basically, if you wanna start managing a creative culture

01:23:39

in the way that they manage Pixar,

01:23:42

here's some tips for how to do that.

01:23:44

That's what that basically is.

01:23:45

I just wanted to point those out quick

01:23:46

because if you are reading the book or interested

01:23:47

in picking it up,

01:23:49

those are a couple pieces that I think are valuable,

01:23:51

but I don't really wanna go into them a whole lot here.

01:23:54

- Yeah, I agree.

01:23:55

The Steve Jobs we knew or the Steve we knew that chapter,

01:24:00

I didn't really care for it all that much.

01:24:04

A lot of it was just the people

01:24:07

and the nice things that they said at his funeral.

01:24:09

(laughs)

01:24:10

- Yeah.

01:24:11

- So not a whole lot there.

01:24:12

If you really wanna study Steve Jobs,

01:24:14

the person, go read the Walter Isaacson biography.

01:24:19

- Exactly, that's a great biography, by the way.

01:24:22

Action items, Mike?

01:24:24

- Yes, so I mentioned one of them already,

01:24:27

which is to talk about my failures.

01:24:29

I did actually have another one in here.

01:24:31

We didn't talk about this,

01:24:34

but this comes from section two,

01:24:38

Pete Doctor, he was the director of UP.

01:24:42

He has this thing that he does

01:24:46

to trick people into considering change.

01:24:49

- Right.

01:24:50

- Those are his words, and I thought this was brilliant.

01:24:53

So he would say things in meetings like,

01:24:57

this would be a big change if we were really going to do it,

01:25:01

but just as a thought exercise.

01:25:03

What if we--

01:25:05

- Yeah.

01:25:05

- Yeah.

01:25:06

- And I totally get where people,

01:25:09

especially people who have created something

01:25:11

in there already watching the number of hours

01:25:13

that they're putting into this thing,

01:25:14

they'd be hesitant to completely throw out

01:25:17

what they had done and take a different direction.

01:25:19

So I think that this is a brilliant tactic

01:25:24

to use to get people to think a little bit differently.

01:25:26

I don't know specifically where I would use this sort of thing,

01:25:29

but I'm definitely putting this in my management

01:25:32

leadership toolbox.

01:25:34

- Nice.

01:25:35

Well, I have two down here.

01:25:40

One, I copied from yours, talk about my failures more often.

01:25:43

I'm specifically referring to this in my work context.

01:25:47

That's, I feel like where I could use that the most.

01:25:51

Two is, I'm just curious about this whole brain trust concept,

01:25:55

or maybe something like a notes day

01:25:58

and how that applies to our church

01:26:01

in a way of how do or should we use mechanisms

01:26:07

and ideas along those to help us improve the church.

01:26:11

So I'm probably gonna have a couple conversations about that

01:26:15

just 'cause I'm curious what other people think about doing it.

01:26:18

- Cool.

01:26:19

- There you go.

01:26:20

All right, so authors, style and rating.

01:26:24

I'll go first here.

01:26:25

I think Ed Catmull is a very easy guy to read.

01:26:30

Like his writing style is very easy to read.

01:26:33

I love, love, love the way he tells stories,

01:26:36

which I wouldn't have expected anything less

01:26:39

from someone who's so deeply ingrained in a storytelling company.

01:26:44

And as a result, this is a tough one to put down.

01:26:48

At least I found it hard to put down.

01:26:50

But I do think that there's some pieces of it

01:26:54

that I'm just not quite sure I wanted.

01:26:56

They are like Ed Catmull's personal history.

01:26:59

Yes, it kind of informs things later on,

01:27:03

but I just didn't see how that really fit.

01:27:06

There's a number of things that I had a hard time translating.

01:27:09

And that's primarily because I don't think

01:27:14

that there are a lot of companies

01:27:16

that are creative in the sense like at this scale.

01:27:21

Like Pixar and Disney, of course.

01:27:25

I could see how any sort of big media company could be that way.

01:27:30

But I mean, you had a good point earlier too, Mike,

01:27:32

about translating things down to like a mastermind group.

01:27:36

Maybe there's some strong correlations there.

01:27:40

But some of the principles I had a hard time

01:27:43

seeing how it applies.

01:27:45

I think I'm gonna put this at a 4.0.

01:27:47

'Cause I really like the book.

01:27:49

It's a great read.

01:27:51

It is very different for Bookworm,

01:27:52

but there are some definite tidbits that we can pull out.

01:27:56

But I don't think it's a five,

01:28:01

and I have a few qualms here and there,

01:28:02

which makes me wonder about the 4.5,

01:28:05

so I'll put it at a 4.0.

01:28:06

It's right, Lance.

01:28:07

- All right.

01:28:08

Well, as you know, I was skeptical about this one.

01:28:12

- Yep.

01:28:13

- I did not think that this was going to fit.

01:28:16

And when I read the first couple chapters,

01:28:18

those fears were confirmed.

01:28:21

But something funny happened after that.

01:28:25

By the time I got to chapter four,

01:28:28

and he starts talking about the defining creative principles,

01:28:32

Toy Story 2, and everything after that point,

01:28:36

I absolutely loved.

01:28:39

And then as I mentioned, the further I went,

01:28:43

he does a great job of weaving the things

01:28:45

that he's talking about back to those early experiences

01:28:48

that he had.

01:28:50

It's also kind of interesting

01:28:51

because you see the same people popping up

01:28:54

over and over again.

01:28:56

And one example of that,

01:28:58

that I noticed in the transition

01:29:02

and how the story evolved.

01:29:04

So he starts off talking about how when he was in New York,

01:29:08

when he goes to work with George Lucas

01:29:10

and he's working with Steve Jobs,

01:29:11

and kind of his right hand man

01:29:12

through all of that stuff is a guy named Alvey.

01:29:16

And then he meets John Lasseter.

01:29:18

John Lasseter gets fired from Disney.

01:29:19

He comes and works for him.

01:29:21

And after a little while,

01:29:22

it's not at an Alvey anymore.

01:29:24

Now it's at in John.

01:29:26

You don't see that relationship developed though

01:29:31

unless he tells the stories at the beginning

01:29:33

about how he was working with Alvey.

01:29:36

And I feel like this story is more about Pixar in general

01:29:41

and you could even argue more about John Lasseter

01:29:44

than it is about Ed Catmull.

01:29:46

- Right.

01:29:47

- By the time you get to the end.

01:29:48

So as much as I didn't like that stuff at the beginning,

01:29:52

I saw how it all fit at the end.

01:29:56

And I don't really have an issue with any of it.

01:30:00

I also got way more out of this book

01:30:03

than I thought I was going to in terms of

01:30:06

not even necessarily action items though,

01:30:08

there are a couple of those,

01:30:10

but just mindsets that I believe are beneficial

01:30:14

and have a very general positive effect

01:30:16

with a lot of the things that I'm involved with.

01:30:19

So as I finish this book,

01:30:23

not only do I put it down and think,

01:30:25

wow, I really enjoyed reading that

01:30:28

as I try to quantify what sort of impact that this book,

01:30:33

what kind of impact did this book actually have on me,

01:30:35

I feel like it's pretty significant.

01:30:38

So those things combined,

01:30:41

I actually am going to rate this out of five.

01:30:44

- Wow.

01:30:45

- Yeah.

01:30:46

- And if you can get past the first four chapters,

01:30:49

which again, there's reasons for that approach,

01:30:52

but it's going to feel a little bit weird at the beginning.

01:30:55

I feel like there is something in here for anybody.

01:30:59

And it's a very entertaining story,

01:31:02

even if you didn't have a growth mindset

01:31:04

and you weren't looking for ways to do things better,

01:31:06

manage things better, lead things better,

01:31:09

you're still going to enjoy the journey.

01:31:11

And I really like Ed's style.

01:31:13

I really like how it's not all about him.

01:31:16

I like how he points out all the mistakes that he's made.

01:31:21

And just even the terminology that he uses,

01:31:24

he's like, "This was really dumb of me."

01:31:26

That's kind of reassuring.

01:31:28

'Cause he was obviously very successful.

01:31:30

He worked with some very successful people.

01:31:32

But I feel like he would be an interesting guy

01:31:35

and he would totally be willing to go grab a coffee.

01:31:38

He doesn't, I don't get the feeling reading this,

01:31:41

he feels like he's arrived or he's above anybody,

01:31:45

if that makes any sense.

01:31:46

It feels like a very approachable book.

01:31:48

- Yeah.

01:31:49

Awesome.

01:31:50

So good pick.

01:31:51

- Well, it's a great book.

01:31:52

It's a great pick.

01:31:53

I really enjoyed it.

01:31:55

So what's next, Mike?

01:31:56

- Next is "Ultra Learning" by Scott Young,

01:31:59

which I don't know, I can't remember

01:32:02

where I originally, this came on my radar,

01:32:04

but it is one of the more requested books

01:32:06

in the Bookworm Club.

01:32:08

And it's got a forward by James Clear.

01:32:10

So it's all you need to know.

01:32:12

(laughing)

01:32:13

- All right. (laughing)

01:32:15

Following that, I picked up "Super Better"

01:32:19

by Jane McGonagall.

01:32:21

The tagline in this is "The Power of Living Gamefully."

01:32:25

Jane McGonagall is the sister to Kelly McGonagall,

01:32:31

the willpower instinct, episode number two, Mike.

01:32:35

- There you go.

01:32:36

- So we're coming all the way back to,

01:32:38

so Kelly McGonagall, this is her sister, Jane,

01:32:41

who's a big gamer.

01:32:43

And she wrote this book as a way to learn

01:32:46

how to game real life challenges and the healing process.

01:32:51

I think this would be fun to go through.

01:32:55

- Cool.

01:32:56

- And since I'm on a knack for picking weird odd things

01:32:59

for Bookworm, here we go again.

01:33:00

(laughing)

01:33:02

- All right.

01:33:03

- We got for a gap book.

01:33:04

- My gap book is a book that I did not hear about

01:33:07

until today, but I have ordered it, we'll be here tomorrow.

01:33:11

That is "Tools and Weapons" by Brad Smith.

01:33:16

Brad Smith is the president, I believe, of Microsoft.

01:33:20

This book has a forward by Bill Gates.

01:33:24

The subtitle is "The Promise and the Paral of the Digital Age."

01:33:27

So it's probably very much in line

01:33:30

with the digital minimalism type stuff that we've read.

01:33:33

What was that one a while back?

01:33:35

Draining the shallows, probably along those lines.

01:33:39

But the real interesting thing to me about this

01:33:41

is that Brad Smith is from Appleton.

01:33:43

So that's where I live.

01:33:45

(laughing)

01:33:47

- And-- - It's a local boy.

01:33:49

- Yeah, I actually was talking to somebody

01:33:51

who knows Brad Smith, and he's like,

01:33:52

"Yeah, I read this book."

01:33:53

And I'm like, "Oh, was it any good?"

01:33:55

He's like, "Yeah, it was really good."

01:33:56

So local person, local celebrity, maybe, I don't know.

01:34:00

And recommendation from a friend of mine,

01:34:04

I'm gonna go through this one.

01:34:05

- Thanks.

01:34:07

I have "The Oxygen Advantage" by Patrick McEwen.

01:34:14

Breathing, just kind of not something

01:34:17

I ever thought I would have an interest in.

01:34:19

This was mentioned on a podcast that Brett McEwen

01:34:23

did for Art of Manliness,

01:34:25

and they were talking about the benefits

01:34:28

of getting good oxygen into your system.

01:34:30

I think it was Brett McEwen.

01:34:32

And I know that David Allen mentioned it at 1.2.

01:34:35

So I am very intrigued, "The Oxygen Advantage."

01:34:39

- All right. - So anyway,

01:34:41

that's what's on my plate next.

01:34:44

Big thanks to Premium Members,

01:34:46

those of you who are listening in the live

01:34:49

piece of this at the moment.

01:34:50

The show keeps going because of you guys.

01:34:52

So huge, huge, huge thanks to everyone

01:34:56

who has supported us through the Bookworm Club memberships,

01:34:59

and we'll continue kicking things out for you.

01:35:02

So there you go. Thanks guys.

01:35:04

- All right.

01:35:05

We talked a lot about candor in this episode.

01:35:06

If you want to be candid with us

01:35:08

and let us know what you think of the show,

01:35:10

you can do that by leaving us an iTunes review.

01:35:13

I promise I'll read them.

01:35:13

I don't promise I will agree with them,

01:35:15

but we do want your feedback.

01:35:17

- Love that.

01:35:18

- If you are following along with us,

01:35:20

pick up "Alcher Learning" by Scott Young,

01:35:22

and we will talk to you in a couple of weeks.