116: The Art of Witty Banter by Patrick King

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1. 00:00:00 There's a very important question that you and I need to answer, Mike.
2. 00:00:03 What's that?
3. 00:00:04 Do you tilt your keyboard?
4. 00:00:05 Do I tilt my keyboard?
5. 00:00:08 You can tilt it up, right?
6. 00:00:09 Or you can lay it flat.
7. 00:00:12 Or some of the new new ones, you can do negative tilt.
8. 00:00:17 And I don't have one of those.
9. 00:00:19 Absolutely not.
10. 00:00:20 Get decent keycaps, then you don't need to tilt your keyboard.
11. 00:00:23 Okay, I'll jump right on that.
12. 00:00:28 No, I don't, but the keycap profiles, I guess, kind of, that I use, kind of
13. 00:00:36 accomplish the same sort of thing.
14. 00:00:38 I've got the MDA in front of me and it definitely is sculpted up in the back.
15. 00:00:43 So it's kind of like tipping it up.
16. 00:00:46 And I think the essay is what I have on the other one.
17. 00:00:50 And that one is fairly sculpted too, if I'm remembering correctly.
18. 00:00:55 I don't use that one every day.
19. 00:00:57 But interesting.
20. 00:00:58 How about you?
21. 00:00:59 Do you tip your keyboard?
22. 00:01:00 I don't.
23. 00:01:01 I lay it flat.
24. 00:01:02 I kind of thought you did tilt yours, which is why I was asking the question.
25. 00:01:05 That was my original thought.
26. 00:01:08 And I know that a lot of people in the mechanical keyboard world do tip it.
27. 00:01:14 Like the back is up higher than the front.
28. 00:01:17 And in my head, that's a bad thing to do.
29. 00:01:21 That sounds painful.
30. 00:01:22 Yeah.
31. 00:01:22 I've got a wrist rest in front of my keycron.
32. 00:01:26 So I don't have to do that.
33. 00:01:27 Right.
34. 00:01:28 Right.
35. 00:01:28 And, you know, I don't have a wrist rest on mine, but where it's sitting, it's like right at the edge of the desk.
36. 00:01:36 So there's like nothing there.
37. 00:01:37 So I tend to hold my hands up.
38. 00:01:38 So it is what it is.
39. 00:01:40 But I have been playing and I don't have one because I don't think keycron makes it
40. 00:01:45 where you could have the negative tilt.
41. 00:01:49 I'm very curious about that.
42. 00:01:51 And it's primarily because I've been thinking about like the way that we hold our hands, right?
43. 00:01:56 It's easy for us to like tip our fingers down when we have them on the keyboard, as opposed to holding them up.
44. 00:02:02 Sure.
45. 00:02:02 It's very weird to hold your hands up.
46. 00:02:04 So I've been I've been playing around with that idea.
47. 00:02:05 No idea if I'll ever actually do anything with it.
48. 00:02:08 It's just a fun idea.
49. 00:02:09 You could just get it chained and tie it to the corners and put it over your neck and then just walk around because it's Bluetooth.
50. 00:02:15 Never have to lift your hands up at all.
51. 00:02:18 Yeah, there you go.
52. 00:02:19 I got it on my chest.
53. 00:02:20 It'll work out well.
54. 00:02:21 Oh, too fun.
55. 00:02:23 Well, that has absolutely nothing to do with.
56. 00:02:26 Bookworm or today, but it was what was on my mind.
57. 00:02:30 That's for sure.
58. 00:02:32 So that said, we should do some follow up.
59. 00:02:35 And my first question for you is, have you done anything with Kanban boards?
60. 00:02:38 Because that was like one of the huge takeaways from Cal Newport's book.
61. 00:02:44 It seems like everybody who has read it is now exploring and playing around with Kanban.
62. 00:02:48 So here we are.
63. 00:02:50 How's yours going?
64. 00:02:51 Yeah, well, I'm still looking for the perfect Kanban app, to be honest.
65. 00:02:56 I've got stuff in to do this.
66. 00:02:57 And I think that's probably fine.
67. 00:02:59 I've also been messing around.
68. 00:03:02 I've got an obsidian theme called spectrum, which has a CSS class.
69. 00:03:06 So you can create in an outline format, a Kanban board, but you can't drag the blocks around, which kind of breaks it for me.
70. 00:03:16 But I know some other people don't really have that issue.
71. 00:03:20 So maybe I need to get over it.
72. 00:03:22 Maybe I just need to find the right, the right app to do this with though.
73. 00:03:26 Sure.
74. 00:03:26 I messed around with a, I found a free app on the iOS app store and the Mac app store called Avocado Kanban, which is just a super minimal, super clean Kanban app.
75. 00:03:40 And it's got an interesting pricing model.
76. 00:03:41 You can basically set up one board for free.
77. 00:03:45 And then if you need additional boards, different projects, it's a $2 in app purchase
78. 00:03:50 for each one.
79. 00:03:51 Sure.
80. 00:03:52 And it, it looks decent, but I dug into the developer and they have like 30 other apps on the app store, including it looks like older versions of this sort of thing that they've abandoned.
81. 00:04:04 So I don't feel a real great recommending that.
82. 00:04:07 Right.
83. 00:04:07 Right.
84. 00:04:08 Yeah, that's, that's the trouble with those things, right?
85. 00:04:12 Yeah.
86. 00:04:13 I have all of these examples and all of these ideas bouncing around.
87. 00:04:17 I'm like, what's the best way to do this?
88. 00:04:19 And the bottom line is that I haven't landed on it yet, but I have been experimenting.
89. 00:04:22 Here's a seat.
90. 00:04:25 Are you still an omni focus at this, this week?
91. 00:04:27 Not really.
92. 00:04:29 Well, I haven't opened it.
93. 00:04:32 It's working.
94. 00:04:32 Here's, here's what I'm getting at.
95. 00:04:36 There's a whole Kanban by project level that I've been using.
96. 00:04:41 And okay, you have a stream deck too, right?
97. 00:04:44 I do.
98. 00:04:45 One of the smaller ones.
99. 00:04:46 Yeah.
100. 00:04:47 It's right here.
101. 00:04:47 I can control my lights.
102. 00:04:48 It's, it's possible I found out to program the keys to run the automation plugins.
103. 00:04:56 All right.
104. 00:04:57 And the way I've been doing that is I've been setting up some really random obscure hot
105. 00:05:02 key for going to the menu and selecting it from the menu and the Mac keyboard input
106. 00:05:08 settings.
107. 00:05:09 And then you can program that hot key to a button on the stream deck.
108. 00:05:14 And I set it up to where the buttons move it between the columns, essentially,
109. 00:05:19 and move it from category to category, which is pretty slick.
110. 00:05:23 But that is pretty cool.
111. 00:05:24 It just means you select the project you want, hit it on the stream deck and boom, it goes.
112. 00:05:28 Like that's it.
113. 00:05:29 So.
114. 00:05:29 Well, as you know, I'm all for having you create things for me.
115. 00:05:35 So.
116. 00:05:35 If you're willing to walk me through it, I'd love to give it a shot.
117. 00:05:42 I tried the, the, the Kanban automation previously and I could never get it to work.
118. 00:05:48 I don't know what I was doing wrong, but it really worked for me.
119. 00:05:52 Well, they had, let's see.
120. 00:05:54 What was it?
121. 00:05:54 They had it set up.
122. 00:05:55 Like, did you just download the one straight from the Omni automation site?
123. 00:05:59 I downloaded that one.
124. 00:06:00 I downloaded yours.
125. 00:06:02 I tried every version of it that I could find basically.
126. 00:06:06 Sure.
127. 00:06:06 And I could get the buttons to show up in the toolbar, but they never did anything.
128. 00:06:12 Sure.
129. 00:06:13 So I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it wasn't working.
130. 00:06:16 Yeah.
131. 00:06:16 I know the one that's on the Omni automation site works on a task level.
132. 00:06:22 So then you set up tasks, you select the task you want, and then you run the
133. 00:06:27 automation and it moves it by tagging it and such.
134. 00:06:30 And that I didn't care for because I was operating with projects of like their
135. 00:06:37 template projects, right?
136. 00:06:38 Like there's one for today's episode.
137. 00:06:42 They just had I've gone through probably 40 items on it already, just because it's
138. 00:06:47 like, okay, set up this window, set up that window, restart your Mac, turn on the
139. 00:06:50 Linux box.
140. 00:06:51 Like there's all these things that I have to do before we can ever connect and hit
141. 00:06:56 record.
142. 00:06:56 So that's all the thing I've done, but that whole project needs to move through
143. 00:07:01 the Kanban setup, right?
144. 00:07:04 So sure.
145. 00:07:05 It does the whole tagging thing for me by running those automations and such, but
146. 00:07:10 you just select the project and for me, it's hit the button, hit the hotkey, hit
147. 00:07:15 it from the menu, one of those two, three, four, whatever that is.
148. 00:07:18 I really want that board view though.
149. 00:07:20 Uh, and that's the thing I don't think I can get with Omni focus.
150. 00:07:24 I know I can get separate windows and line them all up.
151. 00:07:26 Not what I want.
152. 00:07:27 Yeah.
153. 00:07:28 I didn't, that's the one side of it I don't care for.
154. 00:07:32 Like with mine, it's not, they're not columns.
155. 00:07:35 They're like rows, like rows that grow.
156. 00:07:38 Um, so I'll, I'll have like a to do in progress, waiting, done.
157. 00:07:44 Those will be different subsets, but they're all in a list form.
158. 00:07:47 They're not columns.
159. 00:07:49 I could get it set up for the different windows and column views.
160. 00:07:53 And I suppose if you did that and use the whole stream deck thing, it would make
161. 00:07:56 it super simple to switch them from column to column without having to do much, but
162. 00:08:01 it just seems kind of clunky to set up to me to get the view that you want.
163. 00:08:06 Exactly.
164. 00:08:06 But I will say right now, I promise, Ken case, if you are listening, add
165. 00:08:11 combo boards to Omni focus and I'll be back tomorrow.
166. 00:08:15 Well, that's sure.
167. 00:08:17 It's such a, it's such a solid app.
168. 00:08:21 I just don't like the visualization of the, the tasks currently.
169. 00:08:26 Sure.
170. 00:08:27 And I feel like this is something that's being added to task managers all the
171. 00:08:31 time now.
172. 00:08:32 So I actually believe it's only a matter of time before it ends up in Omni focus and
173. 00:08:37 it ends up in things like there's a Kanban view and to do this, you can switch
174. 00:08:41 back and forth between a list and a Kanban style view.
175. 00:08:45 And you can also do the same sort of thing in tick tick now.
176. 00:08:48 So I think it's just going to become more popular.
177. 00:08:52 Makes sense.
178. 00:08:53 It does.
179. 00:08:54 I think there's a lot of benefits to it, of course.
180. 00:08:58 I'm not one that's using it probably in the entire way that people intend it to be, but
181. 00:09:04 I'm not a huge, like use Kanban for all the things type of person.
182. 00:09:09 Sure.
183. 00:09:10 I don't know.
184. 00:09:10 Hey, if it works for you, go for it.
185. 00:09:12 So that was a long piece of follow up for one of yours.
186. 00:09:17 Yes.
187. 00:09:18 Uh, the other one here is to make my list of things to delegate.
188. 00:09:25 And boy, do I have a list of things to delegate?
189. 00:09:28 Let me tell you.
190. 00:09:29 Am I on the receiving end of this?
191. 00:09:32 Do I need to ask this question?
192. 00:09:33 No, I don't think so.
193. 00:09:35 Uh, so I'll just run through some of this stuff.
194. 00:09:40 And this is an incomplete list.
195. 00:09:41 By the way, in addition to me just thinking about the things that maybe I could
196. 00:09:45 delegate, again, this is not like the how to delegate them, just the things that
197. 00:09:49 could be delegated.
198. 00:09:51 I've also talked to my wife about this and we are prioritizing in our budget, uh,
199. 00:10:02 a line item so we can pay for a virtual assistant that we can both use.
200. 00:10:08 Sure.
201. 00:10:08 We don't know exactly how much work we would have to delegate yet, which is why
202. 00:10:14 like this is part of the, the project.
203. 00:10:17 She's keeping track of a list of things too that like,
204. 00:10:21 I don't really need to be doing this.
205. 00:10:22 And if I didn't have to do it, I would be a lot less stressed sort of a thing.
206. 00:10:26 Sure.
207. 00:10:27 So I think this is going to happen.
208. 00:10:29 I just don't know exactly how or when yet.
209. 00:10:31 Well, I suppose I've got a couple of them here.
210. 00:10:33 The first of which is create protocols for how support comes to me.
211. 00:10:39 And now me and my support assistant.
212. 00:10:43 And we've started in on that.
213. 00:10:45 I've had some failures in that already, but it's in progress.
214. 00:10:52 Uh, we, we essentially we tried, we tried at one point to like just email support
215. 00:10:59 at domain.com and it will go to all the places it needs to go.
216. 00:11:05 And then we could manage the ticket and stuff and people continue to just ignore
217. 00:11:08 that.
218. 00:11:09 And I get it, you know, again, to church, you have to do things slightly different.
219. 00:11:14 So we've just gotten to where we have kind of a, a bank of things that we're
220. 00:11:20 asking.
221. 00:11:21 It's like, okay, when does this need done?
222. 00:11:22 What is it?
223. 00:11:23 Who's in charge?
224. 00:11:24 What's the password?
225. 00:11:26 Like all these things that we just ask.
226. 00:11:28 And then we keep that template actually in basecamp for what we need to ask.
227. 00:11:35 That way, if my assistant or myself realizes there's another question that needs
228. 00:11:40 to be asked in that process, we can add it.
229. 00:11:43 And then we both realize, oh, yeah, that's a good question or we can change the wording
230. 00:11:47 on it and such.
231. 00:11:48 So that's kind of what we've come to and then answering those questions.
232. 00:11:51 We put them in as a ticket and then run it from there.
233. 00:11:54 So that's what we're working with right now, trying to force people to send an email
234. 00:11:58 with a template.
235. 00:11:59 It doesn't work.
236. 00:11:59 Don't try that.
237. 00:12:00 And we'll, we'll, we'll keep going.
238. 00:12:04 The other follow up that I had, remember I talked about this shortcut for time
239. 00:12:11 bound email access.
240. 00:12:13 I remember this.
241. 00:12:14 It actually worked for a period.
242. 00:12:18 It worked really, really well, actually in telling me when I shouldn't be on email.
243. 00:12:24 And then we started to list our house and all that went out the window because documents
244. 00:12:31 to sign and now we're like setting up showings and stuff.
245. 00:12:35 So I've got like emails and texts that are coming constantly.
246. 00:12:38 So if I ever pause here, it's because I got to confirm a showing date and such.
247. 00:12:41 So like these are all the things that come with that.
248. 00:12:45 I expect to go back to using this at some point, but I've had to just kind of throw it out for now.
249. 00:12:49 But I suppose I should probably explain what it is.
250. 00:12:53 So the idea was to set up a shortcut that whenever you tap on it, if I'm within working hours,
251. 00:13:00 it would let me have access to my email app.
252. 00:13:03 And if I was outside working hours, it would say, no, stay off your email.
253. 00:13:07 And it worked well to get me off of it until I needed to be on it.
254. 00:13:15 Quite a lot because of other people and things being extremely time sensitive.
255. 00:13:19 All the things.
256. 00:13:22 I wonder if you could set something up like that using screen time instead of shortcuts.
257. 00:13:27 Oh, the where you couldn't spend too much time on.
258. 00:13:29 Oh, like the time.
259. 00:13:31 It would just shut off access to your email based on certain times.
260. 00:13:36 Sure.
261. 00:13:37 Maybe.
262. 00:13:38 I don't know.
263. 00:13:38 I've never really messed with screen time in my head.
264. 00:13:41 It's a thing for kids, but.
265. 00:13:44 I'll look into it.
266. 00:13:45 It sounds interesting.
267. 00:13:46 Don't tell gray to use it a lot.
268. 00:13:48 Oh, yeah.
269. 00:13:48 I haven't been able to keep up with cortex lately.
270. 00:13:50 Yeah.
271. 00:13:51 They just did their yearly screen crimes episode.
272. 00:13:55 Ah, got it.
273. 00:13:56 I'll look into it.
274. 00:13:58 So they got a lot of gripes, a lot of gripes with the system.
275. 00:14:01 And I understand that, but I think kind of for something basic, like you were doing.
276. 00:14:07 Maybe that's an easier version for people who like the idea of your action item,
277. 00:14:11 but don't want to create a shortcut from scratch.
278. 00:14:13 Right.
279. 00:14:14 Right.
280. 00:14:15 Yeah, I don't know.
281. 00:14:16 I'll look into that.
282. 00:14:16 That might work.
283. 00:14:17 I'm sure there's because I know there's like some time bound stuff in there,
284. 00:14:21 but that has never occurred to me because I don't have a mess with screen time.
285. 00:14:25 Yeah, you would just have to be able to do it on an app level.
286. 00:14:28 And I'm not sure, you know, if it's a global setting or if you can do individual app settings.
287. 00:14:32 Sure.
288. 00:14:33 No, that makes sense.
289. 00:14:34 Well, let's let's jump into today's book.
290. 00:14:37 The art of Woody banter by Patrick King.
291. 00:14:40 And the tagline on this is be clever.
292. 00:14:44 Quick and magnetic.
293. 00:14:46 And in my head, I thought I was getting into a book about basically how to do like the quick
294. 00:14:53 quips, like when people have like a quick response and stuff to like a quick phrase.
295. 00:14:58 It comes back after you've told a story or made a comment and such.
296. 00:15:02 It's like, I always wish I was better at that.
297. 00:15:04 And I thought this was going to teach me how to do that.
298. 00:15:07 But I was not expecting was a book that taught me how conversation works.
299. 00:15:14 And I'm now fascinated by both.
300. 00:15:17 So this has turned out to be a lot more than I expected.
301. 00:15:21 And I'm glad to have read it, but there's a lot here that I wasn't expecting.
302. 00:15:28 I guess is what I'm getting at.
303. 00:15:30 Did you even look into this one beforehand to see what you expected?
304. 00:15:33 I know you just kind of buy them and start reading them and don't even look at them whenever I pick these.
305. 00:15:37 So that is basically what I do.
306. 00:15:41 I will say that I'm going to talk a lot about my Toastmasters experience in this episode.
307. 00:15:48 Sure.
308. 00:15:49 So sorry, everybody who's sick of that, but it's going to happen.
309. 00:15:51 And because of my Toastmasters experience, I saw this book, I got it in the mail.
310. 00:15:59 I opened it up.
311. 00:15:59 I looked at the cover, looked at the back cover and I immediately thought this is going to be kind
312. 00:16:09 of like the quick and dirty version.
313. 00:16:11 I don't need to sign up for that club and put in the work.
314. 00:16:15 All you need to know is like three quick tips, three quick life hacks for conversation.
315. 00:16:20 Right.
316. 00:16:21 And on that level, I was not very disappointed.
317. 00:16:25 Was kind of what I anticipated.
318. 00:16:29 Sure.
319. 00:16:30 Sure.
320. 00:16:31 This will be fascinating then because I have zero.
321. 00:16:35 Well, I shouldn't say zero, I have like one Iota of experience with Toastmasters.
322. 00:16:40 And that is in that I went to a Toastmasters gathering because there was a special
323. 00:16:50 speaker that was in to tell a story about how to tell stories.
324. 00:16:55 Yeah.
325. 00:16:56 And I was fascinated by that.
326. 00:16:57 So I went to that.
327. 00:16:58 That is the one and only time I've ever been to a Toastmasters gathering of any kind.
328. 00:17:03 And it was not a normal Toastmasters gathering at all, which means I know like nothing
329. 00:17:10 about how these things actually operate.
330. 00:17:12 So sure.
331. 00:17:13 Having zero background on it and having had.
332. 00:17:16 Zero true training in, I guess, conversation and speaking.
333. 00:17:24 And you having a lot of this through Toastmasters and such, I think this will be a fascinating.
334. 00:17:32 Well, let me just set the stage here real quickly because Toastmasters is basically, you
335. 00:17:36 join this group and it's something like 50, 60 bucks for every six months.
336. 00:17:42 And then if you go through all of the curriculum, it's the equivalent of basically
337. 00:17:49 like a master's in communication.
338. 00:17:51 So if you apply yourself and you do the work, it's a much better deal than going to
339. 00:17:59 school for becoming like a professional speaker.
340. 00:18:02 Whether you're trying to make money as like a professional motivational speaker,
341. 00:18:07 people book you for stuff or not, it's kind of irrelevant.
342. 00:18:11 Most of the people that are in it are in it because they want to improve their
343. 00:18:15 communication skills for some other aspect of their professional life.
344. 00:18:19 They manage people at their, their work and they want to hold better meetings or
345. 00:18:24 something like that.
346. 00:18:25 So it's not all people who are like trying to get their name out there and they want
347. 00:18:29 to become famous.
348. 00:18:31 That being said, you join and you get this curriculum and it is a self-paced
349. 00:18:35 curriculum.
350. 00:18:35 You have to sign up for the speaking slots.
351. 00:18:37 You have to sign up for the evaluator slots and you do these assignments and then
352. 00:18:43 you get credit for them.
353. 00:18:44 You do enough of them.
354. 00:18:45 You get the different levels of the, the awards and they changed that over a
355. 00:18:50 couple of years ago and they kind of redid it.
356. 00:18:52 So I don't know exactly what all the new ones are.
357. 00:18:55 But when I was going through it the first time, there was this basic curriculum.
358. 00:18:59 You get through these, you give 10 speeches basically and then you get your
359. 00:19:03 competent communicator award.
360. 00:19:04 And I did that.
361. 00:19:06 Uh, and I did that in like 10 months.
362. 00:19:09 So it was one speech a month.
363. 00:19:11 I was basically giving one every other meeting.
364. 00:19:14 And what I realized from a lot of people who joined Toastmasters is they come and
365. 00:19:19 they attend and they don't really ever sign up to give speeches.
366. 00:19:23 And you can learn something from being in the room, but the real value is when you
367. 00:19:29 actually create the speech, you deliver it, you get the feedback.
368. 00:19:32 That's when the light bulb goes on.
369. 00:19:34 You're like, Oh, I should have done it this way instead until you are standing in
370. 00:19:38 front of people when it matters and delivering the speech, you're not going to
371. 00:19:41 get nearly as much out of it.
372. 00:19:44 Um, but the other, so I noticed that like I cranked through this, which really
373. 00:19:49 wasn't that strenuous, but I'd got my competent communicator in, in 10 months
374. 00:19:53 and other people who had been there for five years, we're still trying to finish
375. 00:19:57 their first, first 10 speeches.
376. 00:19:59 Sure.
377. 00:20:00 So if you want to drag your feet, you know, there will be the opportunity to do that.
378. 00:20:05 It's not like they are forcing you, Hey, come on, let's go.
379. 00:20:08 You have to kind of be self motivated if you really want to get as much out of
380. 00:20:12 it as you can.
381. 00:20:13 I don't tend to do anything halfway.
382. 00:20:16 So I'm like, all right.
383. 00:20:18 Yeah, let's do it.
384. 00:20:18 Uh, and then I started going, I will achieve it tomorrow.
385. 00:20:24 Yeah.
386. 00:20:24 Um, I started entering the, the contests.
387. 00:20:29 Um, I first entered the, the, the big contest.
388. 00:20:34 I forget exactly what they call it, but that's kind of like the inspirational one.
389. 00:20:37 And there's different levels.
390. 00:20:38 There is like the division in the area.
391. 00:20:41 And then there's another one I forget.
392. 00:20:43 And then there's like the district.
393. 00:20:44 And then from there, if you keep going with like the typical path, they have like
394. 00:20:49 the national one and even an international one.
395. 00:20:53 So I signed up for that one, got up and forgot my speech halfway through,
396. 00:21:00 just was like frozen on the stage and was kind of beating myself up about it.
397. 00:21:04 So I'm like, all right, that's it.
398. 00:21:05 Next contest I'm going to sign up again just to prove to myself that that's not
399. 00:21:09 going to happen again.
400. 00:21:09 Sure.
401. 00:21:10 So the next one was a humorous speech contest.
402. 00:21:12 And this is a story I know that I've told before, but it's kind of important
403. 00:21:15 for like my perspective with all the Toastmasters stuff as we're going to juxtapose
404. 00:21:18 it against this book.
405. 00:21:19 I kept doing, I kept winning the different contests for that one.
406. 00:21:25 I wanted to just give, give one basically and there I'm done.
407. 00:21:28 I don't consider myself a funny guy, but I kept winning.
408. 00:21:32 And then I went to the district level and I lost there, but that's, that's kind
409. 00:21:36 of like the finals for the humorous speech contest.
410. 00:21:37 The, the, our district is the entire state of Wisconsin in the upper peninsula.
411. 00:21:42 And I lost to a professional comedian.
412. 00:21:45 But while I was there at the district conference, they had a speaker come in.
413. 00:21:50 His name is Aaron Beverly.
414. 00:21:51 At the time he had been the runner up for the international speech contest.
415. 00:21:57 And he was selling coaching and I'm like, this guy is really sharp.
416. 00:22:01 So I signed up for some coaching with him, did some one on one coaching with him.
417. 00:22:05 Uh, I have not competed in any contests since then, but since I have been working
418. 00:22:11 with him, he has also gone on to win the international speech competition.
419. 00:22:17 I forget which year it is, but he's really, really good.
420. 00:22:20 Uh, and it was cool because that's a connection I never would have made.
421. 00:22:24 Had I not been involved with Toastmasters.
422. 00:22:26 So the TLDR is Toastmasters is great, but you're the value that you get out of it.
423. 00:22:32 It's totally going to depend on what you put into it.
424. 00:22:34 And if you go into it thinking, I want to put in some reps and I want to learn
425. 00:22:38 from making my own mistakes.
426. 00:22:39 It's the perfect environment to do that.
427. 00:22:41 Everybody is there because they're terrified of speaking in public and they
428. 00:22:44 want to get better at that.
429. 00:22:45 And then the other thing that you can really glean from it is some really cool
430. 00:22:49 connections like I got hooked up with the guy who won the international speech
431. 00:22:52 contest.
432. 00:22:53 There's a lot there.
433. 00:22:54 So these 10 speeches that you're talking about, how, how long is this speech?
434. 00:23:01 Like when you're talking about winning these competitions and such, are these
435. 00:23:05 like three minute deals?
436. 00:23:07 Are they 30 minute deals?
437. 00:23:08 Like what are they?
438. 00:23:09 It depends.
439. 00:23:10 And now with when they revamp things, they have different tracks that you can go
440. 00:23:13 through.
441. 00:23:13 And so there's like different types of speeches, which are different lengths.
442. 00:23:16 But the core curriculum that I went through before the competent communicator,
443. 00:23:19 your icebreaker is the first one and that you just get up and you talk about
444. 00:23:22 yourself.
445. 00:23:22 So it's super easy.
446. 00:23:24 You already know the subject.
447. 00:23:25 That one's four to six.
448. 00:23:26 And basically every speech after that is five to seven and you're timed.
449. 00:23:30 So at five minutes, someone will hold up a green card.
450. 00:23:33 It means you've qualified.
451. 00:23:34 People can vote for you.
452. 00:23:36 A yellow means you're halfway through.
453. 00:23:38 So it's six minutes, for example, you see the yellow and at red or at seven,
454. 00:23:42 you get the red card and you have basically 30 seconds before or after that to qualify.
455. 00:23:48 So if you give this big speech, you know, you're five to seven minutes speech and
456. 00:23:53 you talk for nine minutes, you're not, you're disqualified from the voting at the
457. 00:23:58 end of the meeting for like the best speech.
458. 00:24:00 Yeah, yeah, sure.
459. 00:24:01 If you're in a contest, you'll be disqualified completely if you go over, if you go
460. 00:24:05 on a date, but these are, these are short.
461. 00:24:07 They're not like a, I'm, I'm thinking about, I've been teaching some classes of
462. 00:24:13 sorts at our church and that's a quote unquote speech or a talk, I guess.
463. 00:24:20 Yep.
464. 00:24:21 But they're 40 minutes and then I set them up to be about 30.
465. 00:24:26 So, so that I've got time for like questions and stuff afterwards because they're
466. 00:24:30 usually somewhat tech related.
467. 00:24:32 And I get a lot of questions, thus the 10 minute time period there.
468. 00:24:36 Sometimes I think I should be giving it like 20, but I'm setting that up as a 30
469. 00:24:42 minute talk, which sounds like it's way different than what you're referring to.
470. 00:24:47 Cause that would be significantly longer than most of those.
471. 00:24:51 Not necessarily.
472. 00:24:52 I mean, there are, I've, I've not done a whole lot of work in the new curriculum.
473. 00:24:57 Most of the speeches that I've given have still been in that five to seven minute
474. 00:25:00 window.
475. 00:25:01 Sure.
476. 00:25:01 But I've seen people who have given speeches and their, their speech is to deliver like
477. 00:25:08 a presentation at a work meeting.
478. 00:25:09 And so they've got a PowerPoint that they're sharing and it is 20 minutes.
479. 00:25:14 Yeah.
480. 00:25:14 You know, so the meeting agenda is adopted based on who is signing up for the
481. 00:25:19 different roles and what project they happen to be working on.
482. 00:25:23 Sure.
483. 00:25:24 Yeah.
484. 00:25:24 Now that makes sense.
485. 00:25:26 Okay.
486. 00:25:26 Toastmasters in the background.
487. 00:25:30 Joe with nothing in the background.
488. 00:25:32 Let's, let's start talking about this book.
489. 00:25:35 Yeah.
490. 00:25:35 So Patrick King here, let me explain now my, my impression of this book is basically
491. 00:25:43 for Joe, people like you who have no experience.
492. 00:25:48 They look at Toastmasters and like 10 speeches.
493. 00:25:50 That's a lot of work or $60.
494. 00:25:54 I don't want to spend that much.
495. 00:25:56 Right.
496. 00:25:56 So well, is there like a light?
497. 00:25:59 Like, yeah, you're not taking the time for that.
498. 00:26:01 It's a lot.
499. 00:26:02 Right.
500. 00:26:03 Right.
501. 00:26:04 So, and on the topic of time, by the way, most clubs can have their own schedules,
502. 00:26:10 but ours are every other week.
503. 00:26:12 So second and fourth Tuesday night and the meeting is typically an hour.
504. 00:26:18 And because their whole thing is pay attention to the time and finish on time.
505. 00:26:22 Like you're not there for two hours.
506. 00:26:23 Right.
507. 00:26:24 Right.
508. 00:26:24 And that's fine, but still it's an hour.
509. 00:26:27 Like that's exactly.
510. 00:26:28 That's an hour.
511. 00:26:28 I'm not because the time I get there and get back, it's at least an hour and a half,
512. 00:26:32 maybe two hours, depending on where it's at.
513. 00:26:33 So like I'm not, I'm not in a place where I can do that.
514. 00:26:38 Like that's a significant commitment for me.
515. 00:26:41 And like this is where like I appreciate, you know, the way Patrick King does this,
516. 00:26:47 like if you don't have or don't want to put that time and dollars into Toastmasters,
517. 00:26:53 I'm going to be curious to see what your comparison is like between the book versus
518. 00:26:56 Toastmasters and such.
519. 00:26:58 I'm looking at it through the lens of somebody who practices this sort of thing
520. 00:27:03 public.
521. 00:27:03 And I learn in public as we do this.
522. 00:27:07 So thus the streams that I run, we're doing this podcast live.
523. 00:27:11 We, you know, I do the webinars and such like those, the classes.
524. 00:27:15 When I do those things, those are the times when I'm critiquing and learning
525. 00:27:22 myself through this process.
526. 00:27:25 Yep.
527. 00:27:26 I'm going to make a lot more mistakes in the real scenario, quote unquote,
528. 00:27:31 then I would if I were to go through Toastmasters, learn all the formal stuff and
529. 00:27:35 such.
530. 00:27:36 But if I can pay attention to what I've screwed up and try to improve on that live,
531. 00:27:42 I get like the double edged thing, right?
532. 00:27:45 So I can produce something and I can learn from it at the same time.
533. 00:27:48 It's not the same.
534. 00:27:49 It's not at all, right?
535. 00:27:51 It's not.
536. 00:27:52 You're immediately going to tell me that the coaching and such and the, the
537. 00:27:55 third party feedback is going to be the piece that's missing from that.
538. 00:28:00 Totally.
539. 00:28:01 And I won't disagree with you.
540. 00:28:02 But again, like you, you either have to commit time or dollars and be willing to
541. 00:28:09 put off.
542. 00:28:10 I shouldn't say put off, like make it more of a, maybe it's financial.
543. 00:28:17 Maybe it's career improvement.
544. 00:28:19 Like there's some driving factor behind trying to improve.
545. 00:28:25 At that level, but I don't think this book is designed to do that.
546. 00:28:31 And I don't think it's designed to replace that.
547. 00:28:33 So that's going to be the caution I'll give you here.
548. 00:28:36 It seems to me like it is positioned as the light version or the
549. 00:28:43 blinkest version.
550. 00:28:44 You don't have to read the whole thing.
551. 00:28:47 You don't have to go to the meetings to really understand.
552. 00:28:49 All you really need to know is flow like a river.
553. 00:28:53 The conversation is play and I don't think it's, I don't think you can, you can condense it
554. 00:28:59 down like that.
555. 00:29:00 So I don't think he's trying to, like he's not positioning this as a replacement to
556. 00:29:05 Toastmasters.
557. 00:29:06 Like that's something, I want to point that out.
558. 00:29:07 That's something that you brought up.
559. 00:29:09 Correct.
560. 00:29:09 That is my bias.
561. 00:29:10 He is not saying that this is a replacement for like a formal humor teaching class
562. 00:29:17 consultant.
563. 00:29:18 He's not saying this is a replacement for that.
564. 00:29:20 This is kind of like setting a foundation to show you how some of the basics work so
565. 00:29:25 that you could then go into something beyond that.
566. 00:29:28 Sure.
567. 00:29:28 I just think you can't learn this stuff without doing it.
568. 00:29:32 That's all.
569. 00:29:34 Well, right.
570. 00:29:34 And if you don't even know how to start, how could you start doing it?
571. 00:29:39 And I think that's where this comes in.
572. 00:29:40 Like this can give you the very basic fundamental components that can help you get
573. 00:29:45 started.
574. 00:29:46 And then once you start to get a taste for it, then maybe Toastmasters is the right
575. 00:29:50 answer, maybe hiring a consultant or a coach is the right answer.
576. 00:29:53 But if you have no idea where to start, this would at least give you some basics
577. 00:29:58 to begin with.
578. 00:29:59 Is that fair?
579. 00:29:59 Maybe you don't like this at all.
580. 00:30:02 I don't know.
581. 00:30:03 I mean, I agree that that's what he's trying to do.
582. 00:30:05 Um, I just don't think it's effective to be honest.
583. 00:30:08 Like he's giving you specific advice about like, well, let's get into the book here.
584. 00:30:13 Yeah.
585. 00:30:14 Um, sure.
586. 00:30:15 Cause he talks about, um, when you're in a conversation with somebody, like do this.
587. 00:30:22 And some of the stuff that he talks about, there's no way I would ever try that
588. 00:30:25 with any relationship that I am serious about.
589. 00:30:28 You have an example of that.
590. 00:30:31 Like what you're referring to, because there's, there's a lot of things he points
591. 00:30:35 out and I'm just not sure which ones you're talking about.
592. 00:30:37 Let's see.
593. 00:30:38 I guess it would be starting with chapter three.
594. 00:30:40 So maybe let's put a pin in that.
595. 00:30:43 But like you're kind of, some of the stuff he tells you to do is like borderline
596. 00:30:49 picking on people and I just think it's really, really dangerous to some of the
597. 00:30:58 advice that he gives first of all.
598. 00:30:59 And then he tries to temper it and say, well, you got to be careful.
599. 00:31:02 You know, this can come off, come across as rude.
600. 00:31:05 But if there's even the possibility that's going to come across as rude, unless
601. 00:31:09 this is like somebody that I spend an insane amount of time with, I'm not
602. 00:31:16 trying any of this stuff.
603. 00:31:17 Sure.
604. 00:31:18 Interesting.
605. 00:31:20 So because there's a lot of those pieces.
606. 00:31:23 And again, we'll get to that.
607. 00:31:24 There's a lot of those pieces that I do and have done for years that I think
608. 00:31:30 you're referring to that you would never do with strangers, but I do them
609. 00:31:32 with strangers all the time.
610. 00:31:34 So it's, it's, yeah, this is the hard part.
611. 00:31:36 Like, I'm curious here now. I'm the guy who likes conflict, right?
612. 00:31:40 But I'm not going to do some of the social that he's telling us to do in this book.
613. 00:31:45 So this is interesting.
614. 00:31:47 OK, let's, let's step into chapter one here.
615. 00:31:49 And chapter one is flow like a river.
616. 00:31:52 I want to read some of the subheadings here in this because I think it'll help.
617. 00:31:57 It helps set the stage of what he means by this.
618. 00:32:00 OK, so chapter one, flow like a river.
619. 00:32:04 And I should point out the the lettering on this is quite large.
620. 00:32:09 So this is a fairly quick quick read.
621. 00:32:12 Just going to point that out.
622. 00:32:13 I wonder how many words are actually in this book because I got it and it's like
623. 00:32:17 200 something pages, right?
624. 00:32:18 You're like, oh, this is a legit book.
625. 00:32:21 And then you start it.
626. 00:32:22 You're like, this is totally the guy who put one and a half inch margins on his
627. 00:32:26 school papers to make him look totally totally double spaced.
628. 00:32:30 Added the extra filler words.
629. 00:32:32 Anyway, here's the subtitles underneath the flow like a river.
630. 00:32:35 Never speak an absolutes, which is hilarious because he just did.
631. 00:32:40 Think before you react, practice free association, use double explanations,
632. 00:32:48 more effective compliments.
633. 00:32:50 And what he's getting at with all of these and like these little subsections
634. 00:32:55 here in flow like a river is he's showing you the components
635. 00:33:02 of general conversation and how to help that conversation continue to have flow,
636. 00:33:11 like Mahali flow, but this is in conversation and how you can have the back
637. 00:33:17 and forth.
638. 00:33:17 And I think that's important because throughout the rest of the book,
639. 00:33:20 if you don't have that, none of it matters, right?
640. 00:33:23 So you can't have the back and forth.
641. 00:33:25 If you don't understand how general non witty banter conversations,
642. 00:33:32 happen.
643. 00:33:33 There you go.
644. 00:33:34 Yeah.
645. 00:33:35 And the first thing he does is he shares a awkward story of him trying to be
646. 00:33:41 funny with a coworker and it falling flat and he'd be like, there,
647. 00:33:44 he won't avoid situations like that, which right away shows me that his goal
648. 00:33:51 with conversation is very different than my goal with conversation.
649. 00:33:57 So take the rest of my opinions for the remainder of this episode.
650. 00:34:02 With a grain of salt because from page one, he and I don't see it.
651. 00:34:05 Interesting.
652. 00:34:08 This chapter though, I felt like this one reminded me a lot of what I have
653. 00:34:16 heard from people who have practiced improv comedy.
654. 00:34:19 I don't know if that is his background or if that's just me recalling
655. 00:34:27 the conversations I've had with Mike Vardy, I know has an improv comedy background.
656. 00:34:32 So he's kind of talked to me about this same sort of thing and the value of
657. 00:34:38 like the yes and and keeping things open ended so that you can go back and forth.
658. 00:34:43 But improv comedy, again, like the goal is just to give the other person
659. 00:34:48 something to riff off of.
660. 00:34:49 So you can go back and forth, whereas I'm approaching a conversation and like,
661. 00:34:54 let's just limit the back and forth.
662. 00:34:57 And cut straight to the quick, which is why when I go out to eat with a group
663. 00:35:02 of people that I don't know, I'll ask that super deep awkward question that
664. 00:35:06 makes people think puts them on the spot.
665. 00:35:08 You know, like, I want to know I am that guy.
666. 00:35:14 I am that guy.
667. 00:35:14 So I recognize though that like because I am that guy, there are probably,
668. 00:35:20 there's probably, you probably can't even cut it into like two groups.
669. 00:35:25 People like me and then people weren't like me and split it down the middle 50/50.
670. 00:35:28 I'm probably in the vast minority with this.
671. 00:35:31 I get that for a lot of people.
672. 00:35:33 The worst thing that could happen to them is they have a conversation like the
673. 00:35:37 one that he outlines at the very beginning.
674. 00:35:39 So I understand that, but I also think not for me.
675. 00:35:43 OK.
676. 00:35:45 See, this is this is where I think we differ because.
677. 00:35:48 And I don't know if this is just my corporate background or what this is,
678. 00:35:53 but I feel like I've been in several situations where.
679. 00:35:58 I need to make a connection with someone else.
680. 00:36:03 Or I'm going to lose some form of a business deal or a potential to get
681. 00:36:10 access to something that I need.
682. 00:36:12 So I have to hit it off with someone.
683. 00:36:15 And, you know, a good example.
684. 00:36:19 We're in the middle of listing our house at prelisted this morning.
685. 00:36:22 As of like four hours ago.
686. 00:36:24 A whole mess, right?
687. 00:36:26 Well, in that process, you, of course, have to potentially meet a new real estate agent.
688. 00:36:33 In our case, I needed to go meet somebody new who owned a storage unit facility
689. 00:36:40 so that I could get a storage unit.
690. 00:36:41 Yep.
691. 00:36:42 And the thing that I have found just over the years, that's always helpful is
692. 00:36:49 I can hit it off with whoever that person is behind the counter or that's I'm trying to, you know,
693. 00:36:56 I'm on the receiving end of a service or I'm requesting something from someone.
694. 00:37:00 Everything is better if I can hit it off with them, right?
695. 00:37:04 Like everybody knows this, but.
696. 00:37:06 Doing that is not simple.
697. 00:37:10 And I have a tendency to like try to find things that are either in their workspace or.
698. 00:37:19 Something they say or make a comment, try to inject humor into something somehow very minorly.
699. 00:37:27 Just to try to get some form of.
700. 00:37:31 Conversation going because whenever I can get the conversation going, it seems like.
701. 00:37:36 Sometimes people will knock off discount, like they'll put a discount on things like.
702. 00:37:40 This is purely self beneficial for me to learn how to do all this.
703. 00:37:44 That sort of thing is what a lot of this I feel like helps with.
704. 00:37:49 Like I didn't translate this to something like Toastmasters really at all.
705. 00:37:54 To me, this was more about just day to day conversation.
706. 00:37:58 I have new people come in to the church building all the time with.
707. 00:38:02 Funerals, weddings, special events and stuff.
708. 00:38:06 So I have to meet new people constantly, it seems like, and being able to have the quick.
709. 00:38:12 You know, quips and such can be helpful to.
710. 00:38:16 You know, ease the tensions that are there, especially if there's something like a funeral going on.
711. 00:38:21 Because as weird as that sounds, injecting humor into things whenever you're.
712. 00:38:25 Dealing with something like a funeral.
713. 00:38:26 Actually helps everything go much smoother.
714. 00:38:30 So that's a lot of what I was after.
715. 00:38:33 And this particular section, things like never use absolutes because they shut
716. 00:38:37 conversation down.
717. 00:38:38 It doesn't really offer the other person something to.
718. 00:38:42 I guess respond to like that sort of thing is super helpful.
719. 00:38:46 To me, and that's the sort of thing that I was trying to get from this.
720. 00:38:48 So it's interesting to me, Mike, that in your case, you're trying to.
721. 00:38:52 I feel like you're translating it into talks and speeches, but then like there's
722. 00:38:56 the social gathering thing where you don't really want to do that.
723. 00:38:59 And that's the exact thing I wanted to do.
724. 00:39:01 So this is like, I feel like we're coming at this from two completely opposite sides,
725. 00:39:05 which is totally fine.
726. 00:39:07 You hit on one of my major issues with this first chapter when you.
727. 00:39:13 When you first started that, that explanation is I need to use this stuff in order
728. 00:39:18 to get something from someone else.
729. 00:39:21 It feels totally manipulative to me.
730. 00:39:24 And I get that there are a bunch of people who that's what they want.
731. 00:39:27 And I'm not actually projecting that on you specifically, but that's kind of the
732. 00:39:31 danger, I think of something like this is you will totally get the people who are
733. 00:39:35 like, how can I extract?
734. 00:39:36 Yes.
735. 00:39:37 Just a little bit more from somebody like Mike next time I run into them.
736. 00:39:42 And now my shields are up and I'm going into our conversations a little bit more
737. 00:39:47 guarded, a little bit more reserved, a little bit more, I'm not sure I trust that guy.
738. 00:39:51 Yeah.
739. 00:39:51 Yeah.
740. 00:39:52 And I, I don't know.
741. 00:39:56 I don't know.
742. 00:39:57 I don't know how to reconcile that.
743. 00:39:58 I don't know that I need to reconcile that.
744. 00:39:59 But the whole be clever, quick and magnetic, right?
745. 00:40:04 That's the subtitle.
746. 00:40:06 Why?
747. 00:40:06 What are you trying to get out of being clever, quick and magnetic?
748. 00:40:10 You're trying to get something from someone, whether it is a discount or a better deal,
749. 00:40:16 or maybe it's just you want them to, to like you more.
750. 00:40:20 That's fine, but not appealing to me in the least.
751. 00:40:25 I don't care if you like me or not.
752. 00:40:28 I'm going to go do my thing.
753. 00:40:29 In my case, like to defend that because I do this, right?
754. 00:40:33 And
755. 00:40:33 it's not because
756. 00:40:37 like I mentioned like counter workers, service workers and such, like I mentioned
757. 00:40:42 that just because it was the first thing that came to mind, but I try to just do
758. 00:40:47 that sort of thing all the time.
759. 00:40:48 And like I was doing it with a coworker this morning.
760. 00:40:52 Known her for years.
761. 00:40:54 She's in our small group.
762. 00:40:55 We've been in a small group for nine years, eight years together, something.
763. 00:41:01 And we did had the whole banter thing this morning.
764. 00:41:03 They do that sort of thing a lot.
765. 00:41:06 You know, I'm not, it's not only in those situations.
766. 00:41:09 I think that's the difference here is that if people are doing that only when
767. 00:41:14 they need something or want something versus they're just like that all the time.
768. 00:41:21 I think those are two very different things.
769. 00:41:24 Again, I, I'm probably doing it a bit more in certain scenarios than than others.
770. 00:41:32 And I think that's fine.
771. 00:41:34 But I, I wouldn't say that I get upset if something doesn't work out the way I want either.
772. 00:41:41 Sure.
773. 00:41:42 Like this is just a, I know that this helps both of us feel more comfortable.
774. 00:41:46 Sometimes they're willing to offer something in return, but generally speaking, you know, to use
775. 00:41:54 your thing, like be clever, quick and magnetic wise, like, well, it makes the whole
776. 00:41:58 interchange just easier and more comfortable for both of us.
777. 00:42:01 That's why it doesn't have to be, you're going to give me a discount or I'm fake or it doesn't
778. 00:42:09 have to be that.
779. 00:42:09 It just makes both of us more comfortable in the situation.
780. 00:42:12 I agree with you completely, but I also think that's not the tone that he projects here.
781. 00:42:17 I mean, just look at the section on more effective compliments.
782. 00:42:20 I have a couple of things jotted down in my mind node file and I jot these down in order
783. 00:42:25 that they're presented.
784. 00:42:26 First thing I wrote down, don't over compliment, make your compliments mean something.
785. 00:42:32 Why do you have to say that at the beginning unless you are automatically thinking, oh,
786. 00:42:37 people are going to take what I'm saying and use it for personal gain and the people that
787. 00:42:43 they're talking to are going to feel manipulated?
788. 00:42:45 Maybe that's not what he's thinking.
789. 00:42:47 Okay.
790. 00:42:47 But that's how I read that.
791. 00:42:50 Interesting.
792. 00:42:51 Cause I took it the opposite in that don't overdo this because then it won't have the effect.
793. 00:42:57 Like it, it does the opposite of what you intend.
794. 00:43:01 Sure.
795. 00:43:01 Well, that was, that was all I was thinking of.
796. 00:43:03 But he's laying that groundwork first.
797. 00:43:05 That way you keep that in your mind that you can't just compliment, compliment, compliment, compliment
798. 00:43:11 until somebody's completely exhausted with you.
799. 00:43:15 Cause then it no longer is a compliment, right?
800. 00:43:18 So you've, you've sidestepped your own attempts.
801. 00:43:23 Like that was all I heard out of that.
802. 00:43:26 So maybe this is a case of the curse of knowledge, right?
803. 00:43:30 Where you've been doing something for a while and you forget what it's like at the beginning.
804. 00:43:34 When I got to this section on compliments, I immediately thought of the gratitude practice.
805. 00:43:40 My wife and I have this as part of our weekly meeting every single date night.
806. 00:43:45 We express gratitude to each other when at the end of the actual meeting part where we're talking
807. 00:43:49 about like, what do we want to change?
808. 00:43:52 What do you want to start, stop and keep doing?
809. 00:43:55 We talk over any specific things that we had to make decisions on, you know,
810. 00:43:58 before we just chill and enjoy each other's company.
811. 00:44:01 And if you have expressed gratitude more than once, you don't need to be told to focus on the
812. 00:44:09 things that will have the greatest impact, the things that people have control over,
813. 00:44:13 the things that people have made specific choices about.
814. 00:44:15 It's like, have you never complimented your wife before?
815. 00:44:19 Well, here are some things you should know before you start.
816. 00:44:23 There are people like that.
817. 00:44:24 Yeah, I understand that.
818. 00:44:27 So that's why I say like, they're painful.
819. 00:44:30 But for me, it's like, I read this and I'm like, what? Really?
820. 00:44:38 Right.
821. 00:44:40 Very.
822. 00:44:41 But I think this is, again, this is, this is kind of what I expected when you started
823. 00:44:48 talking about Toastmasters because I didn't connect that world to this at all.
824. 00:44:54 I connected like the small talk world to it.
825. 00:44:57 Sure.
826. 00:44:57 Not like the, like, for example, like dinner date, you do a double date with another couple, right?
827. 00:45:04 If the world ever decides to open up again, you double date with another couple.
828. 00:45:08 And this happens, right?
829. 00:45:12 The wives know each other, so they set up the double date, but the husbands don't know each other at all.
830. 00:45:17 Or vice versa, right? That stuff happens.
831. 00:45:19 And I've been in those scenarios and it can be kind of difficult sometimes.
832. 00:45:27 Sure.
833. 00:45:29 I feel like this sort of thing can help with that.
834. 00:45:31 How do you kick conversations off?
835. 00:45:34 Like the compliments, like, again, you're not trying to get something from the other person,
836. 00:45:38 other than just learn more about them, build a relationship.
837. 00:45:43 You know, maybe you can hit it off and go golfing together afterwards.
838. 00:45:47 Like, I don't know what that is.
839. 00:45:48 Sure.
840. 00:45:49 But having some of this base, and this is where this first chapter comes in, I think,
841. 00:45:55 setting up the flow, like, how does the back and forth work?
842. 00:45:58 And some of that, like what he's talking about in here is just showing the emotion that the other
843. 00:46:05 person expects was in here.
844. 00:46:08 And I thought that was interesting too, because a lot of times people will make a comment
845. 00:46:13 or they'll say something and sometimes they're looking for you to feel sorry for them,
846. 00:46:21 to be upset with them and such.
847. 00:46:23 Yeah.
848. 00:46:24 And if you want to continue down that path, like, if it's a path you want to go down,
849. 00:46:30 you can emit that same emotion.
850. 00:46:33 I think there are a lot of cases where I deliberately choose not to,
851. 00:46:38 because I think the path the person is going down the emotion that they're wanting to
852. 00:46:43 elicit for me is not the one I want to give them.
853. 00:46:47 Like, and I, like, my tendency is to try to show the opposite just because, like, no, don't do that.
854. 00:46:54 Like, you think Samsung's amazing?
855. 00:46:56 Forget you.
856. 00:46:57 Like, no, go away.
857. 00:46:58 So you are Patrick King's ideal customer then.
858. 00:47:01 Yeah.
859. 00:47:01 So I don't know.
860. 00:47:04 Like, there's a lot that he has here that kind of shows just how that back and forth
861. 00:47:10 can work and how do you help each other feel comfortable in the conversation.
862. 00:47:13 I think we've all had those dialogues with people who really don't get out much
863. 00:47:21 and really have a hard time in conversation socially.
864. 00:47:28 And some of what he's referring to here, I feel like I've had a chance to learn
865. 00:47:35 in the real world of back and forth, like, oh, don't ever say that because people don't
866. 00:47:40 get it.
867. 00:47:40 There's some stuff like that just completely fell on its face.
868. 00:47:44 I did that one all wrong.
869. 00:47:45 Like, I do that and realize that sort of thing.
870. 00:47:49 I feel like this can save you a little bit of heartache from those situations.
871. 00:47:52 So I'm glad you brought up mirroring because that phrase stood out to me too.
872. 00:47:57 Do you remember the last place we heard that?
873. 00:48:00 Not off the top of my head.
874. 00:48:02 Never split the difference by Chris Voss, a book on negotiating with terrorists.
875. 00:48:09 Well, it was negotiations.
876. 00:48:11 He did like, he comes from negotiating with terrorists, but that wasn't the point of the book.
877. 00:48:16 Misdirect it there.
878. 00:48:18 Fair enough.
879. 00:48:19 Fair enough.
880. 00:48:19 Yeah.
881. 00:48:19 But I remember having the same sort of feeling with that book of, okay, so the whole purpose
882. 00:48:27 of the negotiation here is to get what I want.
883. 00:48:29 That doesn't feel right to me.
884. 00:48:34 Can't even put my finger on specifically why.
885. 00:48:36 I just know I don't want to be in those conversations.
886. 00:48:40 So here's a question for you then.
887. 00:48:42 This type of thing.
888. 00:48:44 So that's a good point.
889. 00:48:46 If we've had books that talk about how to converse with other people,
890. 00:48:50 and there's the potential to interpret that as seeking gain in some form,
891. 00:48:57 right?
892. 00:48:57 Sure.
893. 00:48:58 Every time the conversation can be potentially manipulated, right?
894. 00:49:02 You're showing kind of angst against that.
895. 00:49:05 If that's the case, does that mean that we shouldn't try to better a relationship with
896. 00:49:12 quote unquote tactics or methods?
897. 00:49:16 Is that the issue you're actually fighting against?
898. 00:49:20 And if that's the case, then should we not try to make a conversation comfortable?
899. 00:49:27 Like what's your take on that?
900. 00:49:29 Sure.
901. 00:49:31 Well, I think it's fine to make it appear more comfortable.
902. 00:49:34 I think for whatever reason, it kind of gets stuck in my head of this,
903. 00:49:41 with Patrick King's book, he paints a picture just like the negotiation book of this is a successful
904. 00:49:48 conversation versus an unsuccessful one.
905. 00:49:53 And I feel like making a qualitative judgment about the interaction into one of those categories
906. 00:50:01 is what I don't feel comfortable with.
907. 00:50:05 So if I'm going to be at a dinner party, like the scenario he talks about at the very beginning,
908. 00:50:11 and I'm talking to somebody, we don't hit it off, I'm not thinking to myself,
909. 00:50:15 oh, what are the tactics that I can employ to make this conversation work?
910. 00:50:19 I'm going to talk to somebody else.
911. 00:50:22 Maybe that's just my bias.
912. 00:50:25 I know that you mentioned like the double date sort of thing.
913. 00:50:27 You're trapped in a scenario where you have to interact with these people.
914. 00:50:31 I'm willing to concede that maybe this book could be very applicable in that scenario.
915. 00:50:36 But again, that sounds miserable to me, and I'm going to do everything that I can to avoid that.
916. 00:50:41 And I really think that with communication in general, that's really what we're talking about
917. 00:50:48 here. I don't really like, although I know you can break it down into like the different types
918. 00:50:53 of communication. But ultimately, that's what I think of when I think of Toastmasters is this is
919. 00:50:59 a group that will help you communicate better. And if you improve your communication,
920. 00:51:04 literally everything in your life gets better. That is not an overstatement, by the way.
921. 00:51:12 I know that is very general. I 100% believe that though, if you can communicate better,
922. 00:51:17 not negotiate better, not have the right story, or evoke the right emotion, or mirror what
923. 00:51:23 your partner is saying, but if you can communicate better, then every relationship where you have
924. 00:51:29 to communicate is going to be better. But sometimes it doesn't fit into a formula.
925. 00:51:37 You're talking about like the people who come in and you're organizing a funeral,
926. 00:51:42 and at certain points, humor can be helpful in those scenarios. But I imagine it totally depends
927. 00:51:49 on the individual. You're not going to try a joke and have it fall flat with somebody who is coming
928. 00:51:56 in because they lost someone close to them and they're grieving at the moment. Like, you're going
929. 00:52:03 to be really, really careful with that relationship. And I feel like with this book, it's only focusing
930. 00:52:11 on the one side. That's fine. You can focus on just one side, but it's presented very generally.
931. 00:52:16 And I feel like I'm not going to use this 95% of the time.
932. 00:52:21 [chuckles]
933. 00:52:22 So if somebody's difficult to talk to, you just ruled them out of your life?
934. 00:52:26 Good question. I don't think so.
935. 00:52:28 [chuckles]
936. 00:52:29 Because here's what I'm getting at. There are sometimes people that we have in our lives that
937. 00:52:36 maybe they're family, maybe they're friends of friends. You see them fairly regularly.
938. 00:52:42 But maybe they don't have the social skills to have a conversation like what you and I do here.
939. 00:52:49 And you have to kind of hand hold them through a conversation to help them in that situation.
940. 00:52:59 This will sound bad when I start, but it'll get better, I promise.
941. 00:53:03 [chuckles]
942. 00:53:04 We had a funeral and I'm bringing up funerals because it's a period of time when people are
943. 00:53:09 in a really bad emotional state, typically. I had a situation where it was a mom and dad,
944. 00:53:20 the deceased was a seven-year-old girl, which was difficult for me because at the time,
945. 00:53:24 I had a seven-year-old girl. So that was difficult. They come in before the funeral.
946. 00:53:31 And you know how most funerals they do, like that pre-service, they'll have the looping
947. 00:53:36 slideshow of memories of the deceased and such. That's a pretty common thing.
948. 00:53:40 And I'm always the one who sets that stuff up. And that's a big part of what I always do last
949. 00:53:46 minute because it takes a lot of work for the family to put it together.
950. 00:53:50 Mom and dad came in, I think it was a day before the funeral. And obviously,
951. 00:53:59 and this was an unexpected death. I'm not going to go into that, but unexpected,
952. 00:54:04 mom and dad are in really bad shape. And when they first walked in,
953. 00:54:10 I made some comment about, let's make sure I get the flaster I've in and right side up the first time.
954. 00:54:16 Very innocent, very non-assuming. It's more of a joke on me than it is
955. 00:54:24 anything and it's super, super minor, right? That one comment,
956. 00:54:29 dad spoke up, apparently he's a techie. I didn't know this. He's a techie and that started the
957. 00:54:38 conversation off. And then we were able to have a tech conversation in the next probably 20 minutes.
958. 00:54:44 And I had to kind of work with him quite a bit to get that conversation going. And when we were
959. 00:54:52 done and we got all the stuff working, I was of course doing things while we were having this
960. 00:54:57 conversation. He told me afterwards that that was the first conversation he had had that didn't
961. 00:55:04 involve his daughter since the day she died. And he thanked me for being willing to take him out of
962. 00:55:10 that for just a few moments because it was able to get him started in the process of healing and
963. 00:55:17 starting the process moving on past that. But I had to use and at the time I hadn't read this,
964. 00:55:22 right? But I used a lot of the things that are in this book unknowingly to help hand hold him
965. 00:55:28 through that conversation. I was just trying to have a conversation while I'm working on things.
966. 00:55:33 Like it's awkward for him to just sit there and watch me while I'm doing things on a computer and
967. 00:55:37 he can't do anything. So I always try to have that conversation something during that time.
968. 00:55:45 But if I were to just say the stuff in this book is unnecessary and these tactics and these methods
969. 00:55:53 are purely manipulative, I probably would have just let it be silent and he wouldn't have had that
970. 00:56:01 moment. Do you get where I'm going with this?
971. 00:56:05 - I do, but I also think that that exact scenario doesn't fit with this content that's in this book
972. 00:56:11 at all. - Why doesn't it? To me it feels like it fits perfectly.
973. 00:56:14 - You made a joke, but the joke, you had no idea that he was techy. So that really wasn't, in my
974. 00:56:24 opinion, giving him an invitation to engage in the back and forth witty banter. If that had been
975. 00:56:30 your goal, you probably wouldn't have said it at all because you don't know whether he's going to
976. 00:56:34 engage and you're thinking, "Just lost a seven year old daughter. I don't want to force him to do
977. 00:56:39 something uncomfortable." So you're making fun of yourself. And then that opened up a side door
978. 00:56:47 which had nothing to do with the joke itself. You weren't cracking jokes now about, "Oh, well,
979. 00:56:54 my flash drive is bigger than your flash drive." That's kind of where Patrick King would take that
980. 00:56:58 conversation. - At the very end of this, yes. But in this particular piece with the flow like a
981. 00:57:03 river, the tactics piece around keeping conversation going, absolutely 100%. Yes, this is exactly the
982. 00:57:09 stuff I was using. - Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that's fair. - So yes, your in-game, like when we get to
983. 00:57:15 chapters three and four, that was completely inappropriate in that particular situation. But
984. 00:57:22 what I'm getting at is with his conversation methods that he's referring to, don't use absolutes,
985. 00:57:29 invite someone into the mirroring pieces. Those are all super important in that type of situation.
986. 00:57:36 - But those are the same things that we were just talking about with the negotiation book
987. 00:57:39 that you told me you didn't want to do. - Yeah, okay. So I can get on board with you
988. 00:57:44 in chapter one is okay. But starting with chapter two, it immediately starts to go off the rails.
989. 00:57:51 - Okay. - Because the first thing he's talking about is break the fourth wall.
990. 00:57:55 And let's just use your example here. Okay, well, you're talking to this guy who just
991. 00:58:01 lost his seven-year-old daughter, the fourth wall. This is when a character steps out of their role
992. 00:58:05 and addresses the audience directly. Okay. And so a version of this would be you now switching
993. 00:58:13 to the third person and be like, "Man, I sure hope Joe puts the flash drive in the right side up."
994. 00:58:18 That's not gonna work. - Actually, that one would have.
995. 00:58:25 I just did this a minute ago with you. Whenever we were talking about the books, we kind of stepped
996. 00:58:28 back, right? And said, "When we're talking about the negotiation book and this book, like we stepped
997. 00:58:35 back." And I said, "Okay, you've now referenced these two books that are about that sort of thing
998. 00:58:42 is what he's referring to breaking the fourth wall." So in those cases, in that scenario,
999. 00:58:51 and we don't need to keep talking about the same one, but in that particular scenario,
1000. 00:58:55 it would have been, I think, depending on how you deliver that, I probably could have said,
1001. 00:59:00 now that I'm behind the computer, like, "Joe, you darn well better get this right." Like,
1002. 00:59:05 I probably could have made that comment. - Sure.
1003. 00:59:08 - But I probably won't do that if he has already engaged in the conversation. Like,
1004. 00:59:14 that's kind of a continuation of the first joke, right? Hoping that, you know, let's continue the
1005. 00:59:20 funny here for another second. Mostly, I'm just trying to fill air so it's not awkward. So that's...
1006. 00:59:26 I feel like I'm trying to shut you down on everything today. I don't know why.
1007. 00:59:31 - Even that doesn't fit real well with how he describes breaking the fourth wall, though,
1008. 00:59:34 because he says there's two places to use it. When you point out with both people are thinking,
1009. 00:59:38 but not saying, and at that point, he's not thinking, "Oh, this guy seems like a real tool.
1010. 00:59:43 I hope he puts them. I'm driving the right side." - Right, right.
1011. 00:59:46 - You point out your opinion about what is happening in the moment. I guess maybe you could classify
1012. 00:59:52 it as that. I just have a real hard time thinking about how from this point on how any of this stuff
1013. 00:59:57 gets applied in a scenario where I'd be comfortable using it outside of improv comedy.
1014. 01:00:02 - Sure. - And maybe that's the whole goal from the very beginning is improv comedy or situations
1015. 01:00:10 like that where a whole goal is to have this hilarious back and forth with somebody.
1016. 01:00:16 That's fine. If that's the goal of the book, then this book just isn't for me.
1017. 01:00:20 But I feel like it's a communications book. I feel like witty banter. That's very broad in general,
1018. 01:00:27 and you could apply that a lot of different ways. But he seems to get stuck in using it this way.
1019. 01:00:33 Now, it's not all bad stuff, though, either, which is kind of why I say the thing at the beginning
1020. 01:00:38 about how to me, this is like a watered down cheaters version, quick sheet of what Toastmasters
1021. 01:00:45 would give you. You can look at some of the stuff he says and look at some of the stuff that Toastmasters
1022. 01:00:50 would teach and say, "Oh, yeah, I know that already. Do you?" There's a difference between
1023. 01:00:55 information and application or revelation, right? The things that you really know are the things
1024. 01:01:01 that you actually do, in my opinion. So he mentions in chapter two, for example, of the fallback
1025. 01:01:07 stories. This is something I picked up from Aaron Beverly, and I've mentioned it before in this
1026. 01:01:13 podcast as an action item. It's another action item, again, is to develop that story file,
1027. 01:01:18 which is simply just a collection of stories with the different points. And you want to present
1028. 01:01:23 it in a way, kind of like an outline, where you can pick and choose the different details that you
1029. 01:01:29 include in the stories based on how much time you're trying to fill when telling it. If you just
1030. 01:01:35 want something to get the gist of it, you've got like a three or four sentence version.
1031. 01:01:38 If you're given a speech and you really want someone to feel the emotion, then you've got a
1032. 01:01:44 longer version of that. And so some of this stuff is actually good advice, but it feels like the
1033. 01:01:52 perspective that he has when he explains how to do this sort of thing. He presents it in a way
1034. 01:01:58 from a frame of reference that makes me just not want to receive it. And I get that's totally my
1035. 01:02:04 own bias and I probably have to just get over that. But that's my reaction.
1036. 01:02:09 All right, first section here, flow like a river, conversation is play. And essentially what he's
1037. 01:02:16 getting because we got to get going through this. But conversation is play is essentially a section
1038. 01:02:20 where we're talking about the different things that make conversation, I don't want to say light
1039. 01:02:28 and funny, but more enjoyable, I guess. And probably the example that I would have here going into
1040. 01:02:35 the third chapter, which is a touch of witty banter is that there's a man in our small group
1041. 01:02:42 who I consider to be quite witty in that he is really good with the quick one liners, like
1042. 01:02:49 explanations, like they get into the witty banter pieces here of like redefining ways of saying
1043. 01:02:56 things like if you're talking about the weather, here's a different way to say it's raining outside
1044. 01:03:00 instead of just saying it's raining outside. Like there's a guy in our small group that's
1045. 01:03:05 phenomenal at this. And I love having conversations with him, known him again for eight years or so.
1046. 01:03:13 And I love having conversations with him because he'll interject these one liners,
1047. 01:03:21 not often, but the way that he'll describe things just keeps it more, I guess, an enjoyable back
1048. 01:03:29 and forth, even if we're just talking about how to change the brakes on a car. Like it doesn't
1049. 01:03:34 really matter what the topic is, but putting those into it makes it more fun to have a conversation
1050. 01:03:41 with them. Thus, I have a tendency to seek him out whenever I see him just because I know the
1051. 01:03:45 conversation is going to be fun. It doesn't really matter what we talk about. I don't care. I'll throw
1052. 01:03:49 a one-liner at him to begin with and see where it goes. That's how that works. But it just makes
1053. 01:03:55 for a fun conversation. I feel like that's similar to what the purpose here is. You're talking about
1054. 01:04:01 the purpose behind this, right? And the argument that I would give you that's kind of conflicting
1055. 01:04:09 in my brain is that Toastmasters is the same way in that you're going through Toastmasters
1056. 01:04:17 to learn how to give a talk or a speech for a purpose, which is the exact same thing.
1057. 01:04:22 You're learning to do things, use these methods, learn how to not say, "um,
1058. 01:04:27 all the things so that you can get better at something for a reason." What is the reason? Well,
1059. 01:04:32 if you're trying to give a better talk or presentation at work, it's financial gain. You're trying to
1060. 01:04:38 get promoted. You're trying to be better at your job, right? So this could be similar,
1061. 01:04:42 just used in different ways. So I struggle with some of what you're
1062. 01:04:47 arguing with because I feel like you're using one set of foundations over here and you're changing
1063. 01:04:52 it over there. But it's really kind of the same deal. Sure. Well, I feel like Toastmasters is very
1064. 01:05:02 general in you to find your own objective when you join. And it even changes depending on the project.
1065. 01:05:08 But overall, it is very holistic. Like one of the things that you're talking about,
1066. 01:05:14 "Witty banter," the one liners, the way Toastmasters helps you with that is they have what are called
1067. 01:05:19 table topics. And you speak extemporaneously for two to three minutes on a topic, but you don't
1068. 01:05:25 know what the topic is until right before you start. They give you the topic, "okay go." Now,
1069. 01:05:31 talk about that thing for two to three minutes, which is the most terrifying part of Toastmasters
1070. 01:05:35 for me. Sure. But it's also been one of the things that has helped me the most.
1071. 01:05:39 I can say when I joined Toastmasters, it was because I think we had just started Bookworm
1072. 01:05:45 and I wanted to get better at podcasting and I was starting to do more webinars, so I wanted to be a
1073. 01:05:51 better presenter. And after a couple of sessions, a couple of talks that I had given, I immediately
1074. 01:06:01 saw that I was not only getting better in communicating in those mediums, but this was affecting every
1075. 01:06:09 area of my life. I don't think that is fair to say, I don't think it's fair to compare this book to
1076. 01:06:19 Toastmasters in that regard and be like, "well, this isn't changing how I communicate in every
1077. 01:06:24 scenario." I'm fine with that. But I also think that the scenario that it's describing here is just
1078. 01:06:31 not a sandbox I want to play in. Like the last thing in chapter two, he talks about instant role
1079. 01:06:36 play where you make a judgment statement about someone, you give them a label based on the statement
1080. 01:06:40 that you made and you start playing the roles. "I'm never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going to do that."
1081. 01:06:45 And then in chapter three, he talks about the art of misconstruing where you're
1082. 01:06:53 misinterpreting in an intentional manner to bring about a comical situation. The only place I would
1083. 01:06:59 ever do that is with my kids. #dadjokes. That's the only place that they're going to come out.
1084. 01:07:05 And I don't need any help with that. I got that one down.
1085. 01:07:09 Sure. I think a lot of what you're talking about is personality.
1086. 01:07:17 Completely fair. Yes. He is explaining how to be the personality of clever, quick, and magnetic.
1087. 01:07:28 And I think what you're telling me is that is not you. It's not me. And then even if it was me,
1088. 01:07:35 the reading it in a book is not an effective way to learn those skills. And I get like you
1089. 01:07:42 mentioned, "Well, I don't really have any experiences. It's helpful to me because now I
1090. 01:07:45 at least have somewhat of a picture of what this looks like." I don't know. I don't think I would
1091. 01:07:50 ever pick up a book like this. And this is not the first book that I have read like this, by the way.
1092. 01:07:57 I've read several books. Many of them have been recommended to me by somebody that we both know
1093. 01:08:01 about how to speak better. I do not learn that way, which is weird to me because look at all these
1094. 01:08:07 books behind me. This is how I learn by reading. But when it comes to communicating, it just is like
1095. 01:08:14 two totally different worlds. And I cannot reconcile in my own head how anyone can effectively learn
1096. 01:08:25 how to speak through a written medium. Because all you have with the book, maybe this is like
1097. 01:08:33 where an audio book actually helps because you can hear the voice inflections of the author and
1098. 01:08:37 stuff like that. But all you have is what is actually being said when you are reading this book.
1099. 01:08:44 And what he's actually sharing via what he's saying, including all of the examples, like the
1100. 01:08:51 jokes that he tells about himself. Yeah, this Ralph Lauren Polo, that's actually a real horse.
1101. 01:08:55 Again, self-deprecating. But I'm just like, I don't think I like you. That's not funny.
1102. 01:09:03 Yeah, I mean, these are all like some of the things you're talking about is from the section on
1103. 01:09:09 a touch of witty banter, which is like the comebacks and stuff we've been referring to.
1104. 01:09:16 The next chapter there is funny on command, where they get into the vivid imagery that I was talking
1105. 01:09:21 about with this guy, with the small group. He does that sort of thing quite a bit. And then he talks
1106. 01:09:27 about the comic triple, the listing of three things, two positives and a negative that can then make
1107. 01:09:32 it super funny. Those are all, again, tactics, right? And then sarcasm and irony, but be really
1108. 01:09:40 careful. Yeah, but I think what you're getting at is that, and it's one of the big complaints I have
1109. 01:09:46 with this particular book, I've been poking fun at you this whole time, right? But this...
1110. 01:09:50 It's a calico. This is the difficulty with it, right? In that take a number of the examples we've
1111. 01:09:58 shared here is like the way you deliver these words and your body language when you deliver these
1112. 01:10:04 words says so much in this process. The one example that comes to mind out of the book is
1113. 01:10:12 there was a question posed to Jennifer Lawrence on the Ellen DeGeneres show of, are you tired of
1114. 01:10:21 all the fame and celebrity? This was right after her role in the first Hunger Games. And
1115. 01:10:27 she says yes, but she says it in a way and with a smirk that would tell you it was sarcastic, right?
1116. 01:10:37 And it took him the better part of two paragraphs to explain that in a way that you could realize
1117. 01:10:46 that, oh, she actually means no, but if you had seen the video of that or been there,
1118. 01:10:53 it would have taken you exactly one second to know all of the things that it took us 30 seconds
1119. 01:11:00 to read or whatever it was. So like, that's the difficulty here, right? Because the way you deliver
1120. 01:11:07 the words in this book can drastically change the result from those, which is why I think what
1121. 01:11:15 you're saying in some cases are like, I would never say that. Well, there are cases when I would say
1122. 01:11:21 that, but the way I say that would be like what I just did. I would throw my voice. I would, you
1123. 01:11:27 know, you throw my mouth in a weird way so that it looks weird, like cross my eyes like those are
1124. 01:11:33 things that I would do. If you hang out in my house for very long, give yourself 30 minutes,
1125. 01:11:40 you will probably hear my wife use four or five different voices because she does this constantly.
1126. 01:11:45 This is a thing that just happens in our house or she will burst out into song. Like, it just happens
1127. 01:11:52 frequently. You don't even like, I live with her, so I see it constantly and it just seems like
1128. 01:11:57 it's normal. But I realize that's not normal. But my point is that it's really, really difficult
1129. 01:12:05 to get that sort of thing across in a book. So like these four chapters here, "Flow like a river,
1130. 01:12:11 conversation is play, a touch of woody banter, funny on command." Like, the funny on command thing is
1131. 01:12:17 difficult, I think, if you're trying to be funny, but I think it's one of those things you can practice,
1132. 01:12:26 right, if you want to do that. But again, it depends on what you're trying to do. Are you trying to
1133. 01:12:31 be the personality? Are you just trying to lighten up one conversation? What are you trying to do?
1134. 01:12:36 I think that's maybe where you're getting hung up. Is that true?
1135. 01:12:40 Maybe. This funny on command one specifically, this is the chapter I had the biggest issue with
1136. 01:12:47 because a big part of this is misdirection and he talks about sarcasm and irony.
1137. 01:12:54 And if you're doing improv comedy, great. Everybody knows exactly which rules you're playing by and
1138. 01:13:01 no one's taking it personally. Any other scenario that I can imagine where I would find myself,
1139. 01:13:08 I'm not going there. Yeah, sure. And I don't know, I'm trying to understand
1140. 01:13:19 where this is good advice. I just think like, if I were writing this, I would maybe
1141. 01:13:27 misdirection, that's fine, where you break a sentence into two parts. The second part of it is
1142. 01:13:32 what people react to. The first part is to set up and sarcasm is the most common way we use
1143. 01:13:37 misdirection and yada, yada, yada. I don't think I'm getting any more specific than that because
1144. 01:13:43 I don't want to tell you how to use this and then you think that you are just developing your
1145. 01:13:48 communication skills and you totally offend somebody. I think that if you don't have the
1146. 01:13:56 predefined rules agreed upon, then this is where you can very easily burn bridges. And maybe some
1147. 01:14:08 people aren't really worried about that. I kind of am. This is not the same thing in my head as
1148. 01:14:18 wanting people to like me. This is more so me valuing the other person and not wanting to
1149. 01:14:33 cause them harm or make them stumble. I think the biggest place this plays out for me is in the
1150. 01:14:39 church context. I don't want to cause anybody in our church to be offended at me and therefore
1151. 01:14:46 leadership because I am an elder. Likewise, if we're doing an outreach or something,
1152. 01:14:51 I don't want to offend one of the people that we are trying to outreach to and have them think
1153. 01:14:57 negatively of our church. But even outside of the church context, I don't want people to think
1154. 01:15:07 negatively of the businesses I represent. I don't want people to think negatively of my family.
1155. 01:15:11 I mean, I just don't want to create opportunities for there to be offense and division. There's
1156. 01:15:18 enough of that in the world already. And this is, you're coming from this misdirection piece.
1157. 01:15:23 Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, because underneath the misdirection,
1158. 01:15:26 he doesn't clearly define this, but how I group them is misdirection. And then he talks about
1159. 01:15:31 sarcasm and irony for a good portion of this chapter. But I believe those are like sub bullets
1160. 01:15:38 underneath the misdirection of plenty. He calls it. Yeah. I think I took this completely different
1161. 01:15:44 than you did. And here's an example. When I was going to set up the storage unit, the guy who owns
1162. 01:15:50 the place and was showing me all the things around it was saying, you know, if you come in with a
1163. 01:15:56 trailer, you're going to want to do this and that way you don't hit the posts. And I just,
1164. 01:16:01 this is a misdirection, right? I told him, like, I grew up on a farm driving semis all the time.
1165. 01:16:07 So you're pretty much guaranteed I'm going to run into everything. That's misdirection, right?
1166. 01:16:12 So most farm people I know are extremely particular about how trailers carry around corners and stuff,
1167. 01:16:20 like you can hug things very tight when you know how they work. Like pretty much everybody I know
1168. 01:16:24 from a farm is very good with trailers. And this guy, I knew just from earlier conversation that
1169. 01:16:31 he had been around a farm. So I knew that already. That was a misdirection. And he knew exactly what
1170. 01:16:37 I was referring to whenever I said that. And then he stopped explaining trailers to me after that
1171. 01:16:42 because he realized, and then at that point he'd had my license, which is a class ACL. So like,
1172. 01:16:49 he knew, like, I've driven big rigs, like a 15 foot trailer is easy. So that whole conversation
1173. 01:16:57 went very differently after that, which two things, it shortened the conversation. I was kind of in a
1174. 01:17:02 hurry. And two, it showed, you don't have to worry about me, you can trust me in this particular
1175. 01:17:08 situation. So I was trying to help him see that he could trust me in that particular scenario. And
1176. 01:17:13 that was a way that I could do that. But I used misdirection in that case. I'd already read this
1177. 01:17:18 section by that point. So I kind of knew what I was doing whenever I did that one.
1178. 01:17:21 Well done. But that's the sort of thing that I took from this. I didn't take it as a
1179. 01:17:26 misdirecting on, I guess, more serious, deeper topics to me that would be out of line. But I
1180. 01:17:33 think this is again, the difficulty with the book is like, when are these scenarios? When should I
1181. 01:17:38 use those? Because yeah, that's going to be the piece that's going to rely on. I don't want to say
1182. 01:17:46 like social experience, but it's just being aware of what the other person is expecting at the time.
1183. 01:17:53 That's some of the just noticing how the other person is responding from a body language stance,
1184. 01:17:59 right? So that sort of thing would be out of line if I was in the middle of a church meeting,
1185. 01:18:05 trying to decide whether or not we should take out a big loan or not. Like that would be
1186. 01:18:11 inappropriate. But when I'm trying to buy a storage unit, it's totally fine.
1187. 01:18:15 Yeah, that's a great example. You hit that 100%. That's exactly the scenario he's describing
1188. 01:18:25 in this sort of thing. And I understand that maybe the better title for a book like this is,
1189. 01:18:34 the art of useless small talk.
1190. 01:18:38 What is small talk? Which is something I feel like I struggle with, but I feel like this is maybe
1191. 01:18:43 that's why I was drawn to it. I don't know. Yeah. And that's the thing for me is like,
1192. 01:18:48 I don't really care about the small talk aspect of it. I don't really have time for that, to be
1193. 01:18:55 honest. I prefer to just jump right in. And I guess what I'm saying is I understand that like,
1194. 01:19:04 the there is usefulness to this type of stuff, it's just really, really hard for me to figure out
1195. 01:19:10 any way in my life that I am ever going to use it. That's fair. Maybe next time I open up a storage
1196. 01:19:17 unit, I'll try to use some some sarcasm. Sure. I feel like I'm just around a lot of people I don't
1197. 01:19:23 know. Yeah. And maybe that's why this is like, I, my day to day puts me in scenarios where I have
1198. 01:19:31 to small talk a lot. And personally, I hate small talk. I'm with you on that. Like, can we just
1199. 01:19:38 talk about the value of books in your life and get past the Vikings game? Like, come on.
1200. 01:19:44 I'm a Chiefs fan. We don't need to talk about the Vikings. Like, come on. So that's, that's me,
1201. 01:19:50 but I, you know, I have no idea what's going on in sports is what's the best book you've read
1202. 01:19:55 in the last three months. That's my conversation sort of thing is, you know, that, that kind of
1203. 01:20:00 forces people down deeper a bit. So it gets past all the small talk, but I feel like I struggle
1204. 01:20:05 with the small talk piece, right? So maybe that's why I'm seeing the positives on this, which brings
1205. 01:20:11 me to the last chapter here, captivating stories. And the, the part about this that I guess a bit
1206. 01:20:19 of a challenge, like he goes through a handful of methods for telling stories. I shouldn't say
1207. 01:20:27 that. There's a couple methods here. And then there are ways to request a story. There are ways to
1208. 01:20:33 refer to other conversation points you've had leading up to that, thus an inside story or joke.
1209. 01:20:42 And all of these come back to how do you set up a story, how, and how you go through the whole
1210. 01:20:52 process of the story, keeping in mind the amount of time allotted for the story. You were kind of
1211. 01:20:56 eluding to that earlier, but he has like one sentence stories. And I feel like that's something
1212. 01:21:04 that I don't really do. My tendency is to go way too long on a story, which is probably why you
1213. 01:21:09 need to cut some of my stories up with these recordings sometimes. So like that is something
1214. 01:21:17 that I'm aware of and I'm not good at. Sure. Is how do I gauge the amount of time I should put into
1215. 01:21:23 a story? Because sometimes I feel like I've got to give a ton of detail on it when I really shouldn't.
1216. 01:21:28 That's a piece that I feel like I need to struggle through. But telling good stories is one that
1217. 01:21:35 is valuable whenever you're trying to have an engaging conversation.
1218. 01:21:39 I 100% agree. And this chapter just doesn't make sense in this book to me. This is the one that
1219. 01:21:44 I'm excited about. I would love to read a book on how to tell better stories.
1220. 01:21:51 But this like the story spine that he talked about, this is an eight sentence thing. The one one
1221. 01:21:58 method that he talks about that I can get on board with that fits in with this back and forth banter.
1222. 01:22:05 That he's promoting in the rest of the book. But the story spine and like, oh, I could see myself
1223. 01:22:11 using that for like making up stories when I put my kids to bed at night. Wait a minute. That's not
1224. 01:22:16 witty banter. That's really what I thought of there. So again, like some of the stuff that's in here
1225. 01:22:23 is really good. And he talks on the back cover about how he works with people. He's basically like
1226. 01:22:29 a speaking coach. And I'm sure he is very, very good at that when you sit down with him and you talk
1227. 01:22:34 to him, but reading the book, I kind of feel like this is sort of all over the place. It's not real
1228. 01:22:40 clear. I'm like, here specifically when to use this is a lot of general principles and oh, be
1229. 01:22:44 careful using this one because if you use it in the wrong place, people are really going to hate you.
1230. 01:22:48 Like, you're really got to be careful with this. You're playing with relational dynamite.
1231. 01:22:57 Yes, if delivered incorrectly and at the wrong time. Yes.
1232. 01:23:01 Again, that's the piece that's impossible here is like timing. I don't even think
1233. 01:23:09 the whole concept of comedic timing, right? Like that's a known thing. I don't remember that
1234. 01:23:17 coming up at all in this. Because how would you teach that with a book? Yeah. Like, do you wait 500
1235. 01:23:25 milliseconds or 200? Like everybody's meeting at their own speed. So it loses all effectiveness.
1236. 01:23:34 So yeah, I mean, there's a whole aspect to this, right? I don't know what the percentages are,
1237. 01:23:40 but it's something like 1% of communication is the words you're using. 5% is the way that they're
1238. 01:23:46 shared and what is it? 94 or 90% whatever it is, is everything else, which is why like texting
1239. 01:23:53 conversations are so bad because you're only using like 1% of the communication process.
1240. 01:23:59 Exactly. And he's teaching you like text messaging email. You can't use sarcasm, right? It's going to
1241. 01:24:04 be misconstrued. He's teaching you how to use sarcasm with written text. This is the aspect
1242. 01:24:11 of this whole thing I will certainly give you. It is most certainly a problem with this book.
1243. 01:24:17 But if you find a book on how to tell a good story, I'll read it with you. Because that's
1244. 01:24:23 one I would definitely jump on board with. So there you are. All right. Put it out to the club.
1245. 01:24:29 We need some recommendations. Find us one on telling good stories. All right. That all said,
1246. 01:24:35 what else do you want to say about this in Mike before we do the whole action item,
1247. 01:24:38 style, and rating stuff? I think that's all I got. I think that the
1248. 01:24:45 the my note file that I ended up with for this is kind of a cool like cliff notes version. I want
1249. 01:24:52 to go back and review some basic concepts on things. But I feel like the book itself,
1250. 01:24:59 unfortunately, I didn't get into the stuff that I wanted to learn about very deeply. And
1251. 01:25:05 the other stuff I either had no interest in or thought was dangerous. Very valid, I suppose.
1252. 01:25:11 I don't have any action items either. But that's partially because this is not a book that
1253. 01:25:15 lends itself to that, I don't think. I do have two action items. Oh, you do. Really? What are this?
1254. 01:25:21 So the first one comes from chapter two. He mentions the fallback stories. And I mentioned,
1255. 01:25:30 I need to do some more work on my story file. It's going to be an obsidian now. So I need to
1256. 01:25:36 put some thought into how I want to set that up. The cool thing about obsidian is that you can
1257. 01:25:41 fold, unfold, bullets and things. So I think there's opportunity there for me to kind of build those
1258. 01:25:46 stories in a new way rather than just like big blocks of text. But it is something that I've had
1259. 01:25:51 in some way, shape or form previously in multiple places. So I need to get that into obsidian. I
1260. 01:25:57 have one more action item from chapter four when he's talking about the vivid imagery.
1261. 01:26:02 Yes. I don't really want to get ridiculous in my descriptions of things. But I do want to
1262. 01:26:09 develop my vocabulary a bit more. Sure. Which is another thing Toastmasters helps with, by the way,
1263. 01:26:15 the more you understand about communication, the more genius those meeting formats actually are.
1264. 01:26:22 One of the things, one of the roles is a grammarian. And they typically, the clubs I've been involved
1265. 01:26:30 with that is doubled with the A counter. So the grammarian A counter is one role in my experience.
1266. 01:26:37 And their job is to count the number of filler words that people use and which words they tend
1267. 01:26:42 to be. So just knowing that stuff is helpful. And recognizing that actually, like, this is kind
1268. 01:26:49 of getting back to at the beginning, we were talking about like, how can you learn this stuff?
1269. 01:26:52 It's not enough just to know about this stuff. You actually have to do it. Like, we all know
1270. 01:26:57 that we should not use as umbs. But I still struggled with that mightily up until my very first speech.
1271. 01:27:08 And then I forget exactly what the feedback was, but they said you tend to use um, and you tend to
1272. 01:27:14 use it in this way. And pretty much overnight, like from that moment on, the light bulb went on.
1273. 01:27:20 And I almost never use that filler word anymore. I can't, I wish I had a better recollection of
1274. 01:27:28 this is the exact revelation that I got. But it was just the difference in my opinion of like,
1275. 01:27:33 actually doing it versus reading about it. So I want to develop my vocabulary and the
1276. 01:27:41 the A counter and get back to the story of the grammarian. What they do is in addition to counting
1277. 01:27:46 the filler words, they pick a word of the day. And then if someone uses the word of the day,
1278. 01:27:51 because it's the first time you're hearing it at the beginning of the meeting, everybody like
1279. 01:27:55 wraps on the table, you know, it does as as a indication that, aha, we see that you used it
1280. 01:28:01 well done, sort of a thing, even if it's in the middle of their, their prepared speech. So
1281. 01:28:07 I want to do that more on my own. I would develop my vocabulary and not necessarily use bigger words.
1282. 01:28:15 I feel like I use big words already and I need to actually simplify some things, but have some
1283. 01:28:20 different ways to describe things. Makes sense. I feel like I've been trying to do
1284. 01:28:23 something along those lines for a while just by like paying attention to the words that certain
1285. 01:28:28 authors use. And if there's one that is in a book that I don't know or understand, I generally
1286. 01:28:34 check the dictionary on it, just to like, I could probably discern what it means. But looking it up
1287. 01:28:44 makes me get a better sense of it. So I've been doing that for years. So I think that's where
1288. 01:28:49 some of it comes from. But you could always be better at that, I think. I've always appreciated
1289. 01:28:54 people that use clever wording in situations. And usually that requires a pretty large vocabulary
1290. 01:29:02 to do that. Sure. Yeah. Well, unlike you, I don't have any action items. I feel like I should,
1291. 01:29:07 but I don't. But you're already implementing it. I suppose I've just been doing stuff,
1292. 01:29:15 like trying, playing around, experimenting, doing all the things Mike won't do. That's what I'm doing.
1293. 01:29:20 So living my life. Yes. So I don't have any action items, which I suppose brings us to
1294. 01:29:29 style and rating. One thing I will note is that the style on this is not real conducive, I feel like,
1295. 01:29:38 to just sit and run through it. Did you feel that like I felt kind of choppy to me? Like the
1296. 01:29:46 it probably took me to chapter two before I realized that there are like a handful of
1297. 01:29:51 steps that you would go through to get his point across, but they seemed kind of disconnected to me.
1298. 01:29:58 I don't know if that was just the way I was reading it or what that was.
1299. 01:30:01 Maybe it was just me, but it seems strange when I was reading it now, granted all the stories and
1300. 01:30:10 all of the overarching connecting points made a lot of sense to me. But like we were saying
1301. 01:30:17 earlier, it's big words, like font size is big, large margins. I think this is like a
1302. 01:30:27 if I had to guess probably like a 20,000 word book, most or what 35 to 40. Yeah,
1303. 01:30:34 somewhere in there. So it's probably half a book expanded via formatting to make it larger.
1304. 01:30:41 So it makes it a quick read just because of it not being as big of a book. But that all said,
1305. 01:30:49 the content of it, I think not coming at this from a stance of what am I to gain out of this.
1306. 01:30:59 Like that was not on my mind at all. And I didn't have formal speaking in any form on my mind either.
1307. 01:31:08 When I picked the book, I was intentionally trying to
1308. 01:31:14 pick something that would help me in some of these like transitional conversations.
1309. 01:31:20 Right. So that that was my intention with the book. I probably should have said that
1310. 01:31:25 earlier early on, but that was some of my desires from the book is helping with some of those
1311. 01:31:34 situations. And I feel like it does help significantly with that, at least for me.
1312. 01:31:40 Like, I think my personality is one that can benefit from some of some of these quote,
1313. 01:31:46 unquote tactics and methods, I guess, the understanding of the frameworks behind some of these things.
1314. 01:31:52 So those are all pieces that I greatly appreciated having read. If that is something that you find
1315. 01:32:00 that you do a lot, I would recommend it to people. I've already recommended it to a couple folks.
1316. 01:32:05 And I do know I've got a at least four or five friends that are like really, really good at this
1317. 01:32:13 already and don't need the book at all. Like they just do this naturally. And I've always appreciated
1318. 01:32:22 my conversations with them. And again, they're people that I tend to seek out. I'm not one that
1319. 01:32:28 really wants to change who I am. But being someone that is easy to talk to is something I've always
1320. 01:32:35 wanted to make sure that I'm improving on. And I feel like this is something that does help in that
1321. 01:32:40 process. So it's one that I'm grateful for having gone through. That said, like, there's some pretty
1322. 01:32:48 major loopholes in the way that this is delivered. I don't know that a book is the right way to do
1323. 01:32:53 this like we've talked about. There are probably other ways to do it. But at the same time, I feel
1324. 01:33:01 like this is probably a good way to kickstart that. Like this is one very, very, very small step to
1325. 01:33:08 get you on the road, I think. So I don't think this is a it's not even designed to be a replacement
1326. 01:33:15 for to a full blown coaching system. I don't think that's its intention at all. I think it's just
1327. 01:33:19 purely to get people started. And for that, I'm grateful to it. Now again, I'm coming from the
1328. 01:33:24 stance of I have no background in any formal training and speaking at all. So keep that in mind. But
1329. 01:33:33 I don't think this is the best choice if you're trying to teach this to people. There are a lot
1330. 01:33:40 better ways to do it. Okay, so that all said, I have found a lot of benefit from it. I have some
1331. 01:33:46 qualms with it. I think I'm going to put it at 3.5 for a rating just because and I know I've been
1332. 01:33:52 defending it like this whole time, but I do have some qualms with it, right? So I from a content
1333. 01:33:59 stance, like it's pretty good, but I think it lacks a lot as far as like we were talking the
1334. 01:34:04 comedic timing, the how you deliver things, the body language side of it is completely missing here.
1335. 01:34:10 So there are some pretty major components of how this works that are not there,
1336. 01:34:16 which is why I'm saying this is a starting point. It's not the solution to learning art, the witty
1337. 01:34:23 banter piece by any means, but it'll at least get you on the road, I think. So final answer, 3.5.
1338. 01:34:30 All right. I've made my opinions about this book known throughout this episode. I don't really
1339. 01:34:37 like it. I'm trying to figure out exactly why I don't like it as much as I do. I'm trying to
1340. 01:34:46 reconcile why I have such a strong negative reaction to it. When like you mentioned, you got a lot
1341. 01:34:53 out of it and you've already recommended it to a couple of people. I think maybe what it comes down
1342. 01:34:59 to is that even though the chapters are labeled and they speak to different things, kind of the
1343. 01:35:06 underlying tone underneath all of this is about being funny and about being humorous. And that's
1344. 01:35:14 like a major linchpin to the whole idea of witty banter that he seems to be describing here.
1345. 01:35:21 It comes up in every single chapter. And that's the part that for me, I guess I just am not
1346. 01:35:30 that excited about. Now, I also share this story about how I participated in the
1347. 01:35:35 humorous speech contest. So maybe part of this is like, I learned this by doing. And that's
1348. 01:35:43 tainting my perspective of no one can learn this through a book, sort of a thing to. I don't know.
1349. 01:35:51 I will say that I do think Patrick King is probably a very learned individual and probably knows
1350. 01:36:04 what they are talking about when it comes to this sort of thing, where you to sit down with them
1351. 01:36:09 and have them actually coach you through how to use this stuff effectively. I'm sure they would
1352. 01:36:15 do a phenomenal job. I don't think I would recommend anybody who is looking to improve
1353. 01:36:21 communication in any way, shape or form though, pick up a book like this. I would say, come join
1354. 01:36:28 me at my next Toastmasters meeting. Guests are welcome. You don't even have to join. You can
1355. 01:36:36 literally just club hop and go to different meetings and see different people. I know people
1356. 01:36:40 who do that because I've been involved in several clubs around here locally. And I've seen people
1357. 01:36:45 go from this one to that one to that one. It just makes the circuit. So I feel like that's kind of
1358. 01:36:51 the ideal medium for learning this sort of stuff. I 100% agree that there is value in learning how
1359. 01:36:58 to communicate better. And I am willing to admit that the situations where this stuff that he talks
1360. 01:37:05 about being helpful is just not something that I really deal with on a day to day basis.
1361. 01:37:11 That all being said, like this is my rating. Right. So I don't know how to
1362. 01:37:21 disassociate completely my opinion of the book from just like the facts that he teaches.
1363. 01:37:29 It's not very long. It's not very detailed in my opinion. I do wish that he would have gotten
1364. 01:37:38 into a lot more detail with the story stuff. I feel like there's a lot of gold to be mined there.
1365. 01:37:43 I think, you know, I've talked about the sarcasm and the irony and how that's really dangerous if
1366. 01:37:49 you're just going to read about it in a book and then try to start applying it.
1367. 01:37:54 I don't know. I think I'm going to put it at 2.5. I'm trying to decide 2.5 or 3. I think I'm going
1368. 01:38:04 to go 2.5 just because I think there's way better ways to improve this. Ultimately,
1369. 01:38:13 you know, why are we reading these books? It's because we want to get better. We want to collect
1370. 01:38:18 new ideas. We want that to change our day to day life. It's not so we can say there. I have read
1371. 01:38:24 100 books this year. I don't know. Maybe you do want to read 100 books this year just so you can,
1372. 01:38:31 you know, check it off on your list. That's fine. No judgment if you do. But whenever I get done,
1373. 01:38:36 I'm like, well, what was the point of me going through that? This book just kind of feels like,
1374. 01:38:41 well, I went through it because Joe picked it. Yeah, which is fine. You don't know me.
1375. 01:38:48 You know, and vice versa. Like we pick books that we know sometimes the other person is just not
1376. 01:38:55 going to be, isn't in their wheelhouse and we just bring them along for the ride. So I think maybe
1377. 01:39:01 that is my approach to this and maybe that's unfair to the book. But it's hard for me to disassociate
1378. 01:39:08 that from this. So take that for what you will. I'm going to rate it at 2.5.
1379. 01:39:15 All right. I think it's worth more than that, but that's okay. I will say it was a fun read though,
1380. 01:39:20 and I will say it was a fun conversation. Makes for a good podcast, I guess. So yeah, you are.
1381. 01:39:28 Feels like a lot of fluff to me though. Oh, that's fair. But it, you know, it's all about being
1382. 01:39:34 funny, right? Which depending on who you are is all fluff anyway. So very true. Yep.
1383. 01:39:41 It fits the form. There you go. All right. Let's shelf it. What's next, Mike?
1384. 01:39:45 Next is a recommendation, I think initially from awful water in the chat, which is think again by
1385. 01:39:53 Adam Grant. This is going to be a fun one. I don't think we've covered an Adam Grant book yet,
1386. 01:39:59 have we? We haven't. Nope. This is our first. Yeah. So we need to fix that and we're going to,
1387. 01:40:04 we're going to do it next time with think again. Sounds fun. And then while you were
1388. 01:40:09 bemoning the art of Woody banter, I was running through recommendations and such
1389. 01:40:15 on the Bookworm Club and ran across one that I feel like I have seen come up quite a bit,
1390. 01:40:23 but we've never covered and I have never read. And it came out in 2011. So it's 10 years old at
1391. 01:40:32 this point. So it might given some of the books that we've read over the last probably year.
1392. 01:40:38 I feel like we might be informed to argue with it a little bit. So we'll see. But this is Work the
1393. 01:40:45 System by Sam Carpenter, the simple mechanics of making more and working less. So we'll see.
1394. 01:40:51 We'll see. I'm curious to see because you've read this before, right? I've read it multiple times.
1395. 01:40:56 Okay. And I remember absolutely loving this book, but I also recently have had that same thought
1396. 01:41:03 because it's on my bookshelf. Yeah. I wonder if I would react the same way now.
1397. 01:41:08 Right. Right. So I'm curious. We have a pretty large bank of systems based books in our background.
1398. 01:41:17 So I'm curious to see how this plays out. So Work the System, Sam Carpenter. Two episodes from now.
1399. 01:41:26 There you go. Awesome. Got any gap books with house stuff? There's not a chance. I barely got
1400. 01:41:34 this one done and I'm going to barely get the next one done. Well, I am ashamed to admit I
1401. 01:41:41 still have not finished the road less stupid. So I'm going to continue to crack on that one.
1402. 01:41:46 Although I think I'm going to pick up, think again first because that looks like a pretty big one.
1403. 01:41:51 And I want to give it the space that I think it probably needs. Yeah. That's fair. Probably a good
1404. 01:41:58 idea. Well, big kudos to those of you who are Bookworm members. If you would be interested in
1405. 01:42:05 joining our membership system, go to bookworm.fm/membership. And that will take you through the process
1406. 01:42:15 once you get there. But essentially what that is, is it's a way for you to donate to us to help us
1407. 01:42:20 keep the lights on, keep producing the show, help us get the books that we're reviewing here on the
1408. 01:42:28 show. But you also get some perks. Like I've got some old gap book episodes back when I had time.
1409. 01:42:33 I would do those. And then there's also a fancy wallpaper that Mike put together for your computer.
1410. 01:42:40 Mike's Mind Node files are there. If you're interested in that bookworm.fm/membership,
1411. 01:42:46 we'd love to have you on board. Awesome. And if you are reading along with us,
1412. 01:42:50 pick up Think Again by Adam Grant. And we will talk to you all in a couple of weeks.