121: Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

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1. 00:00:00 So I'm curious Joe, I haven't checked in with you in a while regarding Obsidian.
2. 00:00:04 Are you still using it?
3. 00:00:05 I am.
4. 00:00:06 It's great fun.
5. 00:00:08 Nice.
6. 00:00:09 How many notes you got in there now?
7. 00:00:12 Not anywhere near as many as you do.
8. 00:00:14 Guaranteed on that front.
9. 00:00:16 100%.
10. 00:00:17 No, it's, I don't know, maybe.
11. 00:00:22 What is it?
12. 00:00:23 350?
13. 00:00:24 350 or so?
14. 00:00:26 Okay.
15. 00:00:27 Cool.
16. 00:00:28 I don't know if it was sticking for you because I have been telling everybody about Obsidian.
17. 00:00:33 I tried to convince Chuck Joyner to use it the other day on Mac Voices.
18. 00:00:37 Yep.
19. 00:00:38 I just, as we record this, presented a three-hour workshop on Obsidian.
20. 00:00:44 How did that go?
21. 00:00:45 I saw all the stuff around it, but I didn't get a chance to join it.
22. 00:00:49 It was great fun.
23. 00:00:50 It actually went really well.
24. 00:00:51 It was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be, which is good, but also made
25. 00:00:57 me extremely nervous.
26. 00:00:59 You know how I put my slides together.
27. 00:01:00 I do all the video ahead of time and then chop it up into those little--
28. 00:01:03 You're crazy.
29. 00:01:04 That's what you are.
30. 00:01:05 Yeah.
31. 00:01:06 Yeah.
32. 00:01:07 So I had the 155 of those video slides that I walked through.
33. 00:01:11 Good work.
34. 00:01:12 Yeah.
35. 00:01:13 It was a lot of work, but it went really well.
36. 00:01:16 So at least from my perspective, got some good feedback from folks.
37. 00:01:21 Quick tip for people who are following what I am doing.
38. 00:01:26 I am working on an Obsidian course for the suite setup.
39. 00:01:30 This workshop was a paid workshop.
40. 00:01:32 It was $79.
41. 00:01:34 The course is going to be $149, but just between you and me, if you buy the workshop
42. 00:01:43 because you can still buy the replay, now you will get the course when it comes out.
43. 00:01:49 So if you are already convinced that you want to get that course, you can save quite
44. 00:01:54 a bit of money if you buy the workshop now, plus you get access to the three hour zero
45. 00:02:00 to Obsidian thing that I did.
46. 00:02:02 Nice.
47. 00:02:03 So it's at thesweetsetup.com/obsidian and it will be available until the course comes
48. 00:02:08 out end of July is kind of what we're shooting for.
49. 00:02:13 But I am in love with this application.
50. 00:02:16 It can do so much.
51. 00:02:19 It's so great.
52. 00:02:20 I did something the other day.
53. 00:02:21 I have a note for every Bookworm episode that we've recorded and in the metadata at the
54. 00:02:25 top, I have the tags for the whole document and then I have Mike colon and Joe colon.
55. 00:02:30 So our ratings.
56. 00:02:32 And then there's this data view plugin, which I tell it, look at all the notes inside that
57. 00:02:36 Bookworm folder and sort them descending by Mike's rating.
58. 00:02:41 So it shows in a table all of the episodes with the links to the notes themselves with
59. 00:02:47 all the data was published, who picked the book, what we covered, and then it also shows
60. 00:02:52 all your ratings and all my ratings inside of Obsidian and it auto updates as soon as
61. 00:02:56 I throw a new note in that.
62. 00:02:57 Sure.
63. 00:02:58 That's pretty great.
64. 00:02:59 That's fascinating.
65. 00:03:00 Should we publish this thing?
66. 00:03:01 Is that publishable?
67. 00:03:02 Should we do that?
68. 00:03:03 I feel like you asked me about this at one point.
69. 00:03:06 The, well, this one, I don't know, we could.
70. 00:03:12 I'm going to record a video for this though that it's going to be part of the course,
71. 00:03:16 but I'm also going to deliver it to the blog first.
72. 00:03:18 So I'll share that when it comes out, but because it has a distinctly Bookworm angle
73. 00:03:23 to it, but it's super cool.
74. 00:03:27 And yeah, there's, there's so much stuff you can do with that data view plugin specifically.
75. 00:03:30 The moment I open that plugin, I'm like, this is for Joe.
76. 00:03:33 So you need to check that one out.
77. 00:03:35 All right.
78. 00:03:36 It's a plugin for the data obsessed, they say.
79. 00:03:38 Okay.
80. 00:03:39 That's good to know.
81. 00:03:40 I will, I will take a look at it for sure, but I haven't seen it yet.
82. 00:03:44 So I know that it exists and I know that I did a, a live stream that was kind of an update
83. 00:03:50 on how I've been using obsidian lately.
84. 00:03:53 And some folks were mentioning this data view plugin amongst a few others and I have not
85. 00:03:59 followed up on all those action items yet, but I have a list and it's sitting right over
86. 00:04:02 there.
87. 00:04:03 That's Joe's plugin.
88. 00:04:04 If there ever was a Joe's plugin.
89. 00:04:05 All right.
90. 00:04:06 Good to know.
91. 00:04:07 Shall we do some follow up?
92. 00:04:09 That we shall.
93. 00:04:10 All right.
94. 00:04:12 So in order that we had them last time, did you figure out your procrastination review at
95. 00:04:19 the end of every day?
96. 00:04:20 I did.
97. 00:04:21 This actually worked out really, really well.
98. 00:04:23 It was more so, it was, it was more successful than I expected that this would be.
99. 00:04:28 It's one that, and I don't even remember, wasn't the, you were going to do the procrastination
100. 00:04:34 log, right?
101. 00:04:35 So that's the method.
102. 00:04:36 I was going to do that.
103. 00:04:38 Yes, I was.
104. 00:04:39 I said was.
105. 00:04:40 I don't know if you actually have or not.
106. 00:04:41 If not talked about this, there's that.
107. 00:04:43 But I was not going to go down that path because I didn't feel like I could identify
108. 00:04:50 the moments in time when I was procrastinating at that instant.
109. 00:04:56 So I opted to do an end of day review and just here's what I think happened today.
110. 00:05:05 Here's how I feel like I procrastinated and in what ways and what caused that and how
111. 00:05:09 did I get there.
112. 00:05:10 I started doing some quick journal entries in my bullet journal that would keep track
113. 00:05:17 of this.
114. 00:05:18 And as it turns out, it works quite well.
115. 00:05:22 And I have noticed that there are a number of cases where I procrastinate and I'm not
116. 00:05:29 even aware that it happens after the fact, let alone in the moment.
117. 00:05:35 But I did have at least three or four days since we last recorded when I did this that
118. 00:05:41 I discovered afterwards that I procrastinated the entire day unknowingly.
119. 00:05:48 I accomplished things that I needed to get done.
120. 00:05:51 They just weren't what I was supposed to be doing that day.
121. 00:05:53 And I got the next days tasks moved because I didn't work on it that first day.
122. 00:06:00 I said that weird.
123. 00:06:02 But you get my point.
124. 00:06:03 I learned after the fact what I was doing and I was unaware of what was going on in the
125. 00:06:06 moment.
126. 00:06:07 So this is one that I feel like worked well for me.
127. 00:06:11 Again, I can't notice those things in the moment.
128. 00:06:13 So afterwards, very successful.
129. 00:06:16 Cool.
130. 00:06:17 Great fun.
131. 00:06:18 Well, we'll get to mine here in a second, but you had another one.
132. 00:06:20 Did you figure out how to play?
133. 00:06:21 You know, I didn't really spend much time on this one because I don't know when to play
134. 00:06:27 at the time.
135. 00:06:28 This is the trick, right?
136. 00:06:30 Maybe I will point out though that I think my wife and I, Becky and I were talking about
137. 00:06:35 this last night and we're in an apartment right now.
138. 00:06:39 I don't know that I've said this on any stream or anything, but we did submit an accepted
139. 00:06:47 offer on a house.
140. 00:06:48 So we have a house pending purchase currently.
141. 00:06:52 So we're still in an apartment planning and prepping for whenever we close on a house
142. 00:06:57 end of June and the discussion that we had was that right now, because we're in an apartment,
143. 00:07:04 we don't have like all your normal house maintenance things.
144. 00:07:07 Like you can't just go do big projects and such and the kids start to get a little antsy
145. 00:07:12 when they're in an apartment all day long, right?
146. 00:07:14 So we can't just open the back door and say go play in the backyard because that doesn't
147. 00:07:20 exist.
148. 00:07:21 You have to go with them, which means that you can't work on things on your own in the
149. 00:07:26 afternoon or the evenings when the kids are still around.
150. 00:07:29 So that means we're out with them a lot more than we were previously and then we're doing
151. 00:07:35 our projects earlier in the morning or later at night when we normally wouldn't really
152. 00:07:40 do anything other than just blow time.
153. 00:07:43 So it's been kind of fascinating to see how that has morphed things, but it has meant that
154. 00:07:48 I've spent a lot more time in play mode with the kids than I have previously and it's been
155. 00:07:53 kind of weird to see how that's been forced upon us without having any plan for it at
156. 00:07:59 all.
157. 00:08:00 So although I'm not one that's excited about living in an apartment, I can definitely see
158. 00:08:04 where there are some benefits of having this put upon us.
159. 00:08:07 There you go.
160. 00:08:08 Nice.
161. 00:08:09 So no formal play mode, but inadvertent accidental play mode has been activated.
162. 00:08:17 So I like it.
163. 00:08:19 I'm itching to know.
164. 00:08:20 I talked about the procrastination review.
165. 00:08:22 You have made a comment about your procrastination log.
166. 00:08:25 How did this go?
167. 00:08:26 Did you keep one?
168. 00:08:27 It did not happen at all.
169. 00:08:30 Aww.
170. 00:08:31 Well, okay.
171. 00:08:32 So here's the deal.
172. 00:08:33 We record Bookworm and I get all excited about the benefits of identifying when I'm
173. 00:08:37 going to procrastinate.
174. 00:08:39 And then I get done and we sell 10 times as many copies of Zero Tube City and as we thought
175. 00:08:46 we were going to and then I freak out because I'm like, okay, now this thing has to be amazing.
176. 00:08:53 So basically since we recorded the last episode, I have been feeling tremendous pressure like
177. 00:09:00 a looming deadline where if you don't get this done, it's going to be a disaster.
178. 00:09:05 Except that as soon as I think that I'm done, I realize there's more I could do to make
179. 00:09:09 it awesome.
180. 00:09:10 And so I can't say no to that and I just do it.
181. 00:09:13 This happens pretty much every year that I presented at Max Talk 2.
182. 00:09:17 It's not that big a deal, right?
183. 00:09:19 I could probably just show up and talk and everyone would be, hey, that's great.
184. 00:09:24 But I feel it's internal pressure to just make something super awesome.
185. 00:09:28 So timing for this was just absolutely terrible for me because I guess you could say I worked
186. 00:09:33 on that as a form of procrastination, but it didn't feel like it.
187. 00:09:37 It more so felt like hurry up and get this thing done.
188. 00:09:42 And then the scope just kept changing.
189. 00:09:43 By my own stupid fault, because I'm like, hey, instead of just walking through it, I will
190. 00:09:49 record all these videos and that will save some time.
191. 00:09:52 Which ultimately, I mean, the end product is better.
192. 00:09:54 I'm trying to get people from, they've never even opened Obsidian to their using it to solve
193. 00:10:00 a specific pain point and their note taking workflow within two hours, which is already
194. 00:10:03 an ambitious goal.
195. 00:10:04 I don't want to waste anybody's time.
196. 00:10:06 I have to answer questions and give people time to work on stuff as we go.
197. 00:10:10 So I'm like, yeah, I just got to do it.
198. 00:10:12 Yeah.
199. 00:10:13 Yeah.
200. 00:10:14 So I did it and I put in a lot of hours for that, but it's okay.
201. 00:10:17 It was great.
202. 00:10:18 It was worth it.
203. 00:10:20 I do want to try this again.
204. 00:10:23 I don't have anything specific.
205. 00:10:25 Like, I don't know.
206. 00:10:27 I've got some other things I'm brewing on as we read today's book.
207. 00:10:31 So maybe that will displace procrastination in terms of like, what's important, what's
208. 00:10:36 priority for me right now?
209. 00:10:37 So, let me get this straight.
210. 00:10:39 You're going to procrastinate on your procrastination log.
211. 00:10:42 Yeah.
212. 00:10:43 I just want to make that clear.
213. 00:10:44 Exactly.
214. 00:10:45 All right.
215. 00:10:46 Oh, that gives me an idea for another book.
216. 00:10:48 All right.
217. 00:10:49 I'm going to write this down.
218. 00:10:51 Okay.
219. 00:10:53 So I'm curious to see if you actually pull this off on the next round.
220. 00:10:56 Yeah.
221. 00:10:57 We will see.
222. 00:10:58 Okay.
223. 00:10:59 The other one that I thought you would be more anxious to hear about would be, did I
224. 00:11:04 actually meditate this time?
225. 00:11:05 I do want to know the answer to this.
226. 00:11:07 I did with mixed success, the first day, because I'm trying to do it as part of the morning
227. 00:11:15 routine before I start work, and I opened up 10% happier on that Monday after we recorded
228. 00:11:21 and opened up the daily thing, and it was 20 minutes long.
229. 00:11:25 And I'm like, nope.
230. 00:11:26 It's some of them.
231. 00:11:28 It's really weird.
232. 00:11:29 It depends on who the instructor is.
233. 00:11:30 Like you can choose a different time length, but that was literally the shortest for the
234. 00:11:35 one for that day.
235. 00:11:36 And I was like, well, this is just not going to work.
236. 00:11:38 And I still had my headspace subscription.
237. 00:11:40 So I went back and did the five minute headspace one.
238. 00:11:44 Yep.
239. 00:11:45 And I think I did that three or four times since we recorded.
240. 00:11:50 I do think it's valuable.
241. 00:11:51 I'm going to try to make it stick.
242. 00:11:53 I feel like it's kind of at the point right now.
243. 00:11:55 It could go either way.
244. 00:11:58 So if you remember next time, you can ask me about it.
245. 00:12:01 But I'll give you grief next time.
246. 00:12:02 Okay.
247. 00:12:03 Sounds good.
248. 00:12:04 So every day, this one, I did pretty good on.
249. 00:12:09 I know I mentioned like I was working a lot on this presentation for the Zero to Obsidian
250. 00:12:15 workshop, but we did also get an Xbox.
251. 00:12:19 I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time.
252. 00:12:21 Why would you do such a thing?
253. 00:12:24 Well, I have four boys who love video games.
254. 00:12:27 So I was the bearer of extremely great news when I walked in the door with an Xbox Series
255. 00:12:33 S a couple of weeks ago.
256. 00:12:35 Nice.
257. 00:12:36 And I started doing just some poking around like seeing, can you even get a PlayStation
258. 00:12:44 5, a newer Xbox?
259. 00:12:47 And the answer pretty much is nope.
260. 00:12:49 And then I found Xbox and stock at Green Bay.
261. 00:12:53 It's like half hour away.
262. 00:12:55 And I just went up and got it.
263. 00:12:58 Nice.
264. 00:12:59 Because I could.
265. 00:13:00 Nice.
266. 00:13:01 Yeah.
267. 00:13:02 So we've got that.
268. 00:13:03 It's new and they have this service Xbox game pass, I think they call it, where it has like
269. 00:13:10 the the piece where you have to pay to play online.
270. 00:13:13 Like that's Xbox live, I think.
271. 00:13:15 That's always been, you know, a certain cost.
272. 00:13:17 I think it's 10 bucks a month or something like that.
273. 00:13:18 But for 15 bucks a month, you also get game pass, which gives you access to a whole bunch,
274. 00:13:23 like 200 different games, including all of the EA ones, which are the ones that I like.
275. 00:13:28 So like the new FIFA, the new Madden, all that kind of stuff.
276. 00:13:31 So I've been trying to play like at least one game of FIFA, which is like 10, 15 minutes.
277. 00:13:35 Yeah.
278. 00:13:36 Everyday, which has been fun.
279. 00:13:39 Nice.
280. 00:13:40 And my kids absolutely love it.
281. 00:13:41 So yeah, I think, you know, when I was talking about the kids forcing us into playing, there's
282. 00:13:47 a, there's a game room at the apartment and it has foosball and shuffleboard in there.
283. 00:13:54 And they love, love, love, love playing foosball.
284. 00:13:57 So every day when I'm home from work, dad, can we go play foosball?
285. 00:14:00 It's like, so it's nice for me because it's not a video game.
286. 00:14:03 It's like, but it's an actual physical game they can go play.
287. 00:14:05 So analog, Joe's just comes in and wins again.
288. 00:14:08 So there's that.
289. 00:14:10 Well, on the topic of foosball, I've got a story here too.
290. 00:14:15 Okay.
291. 00:14:16 So we got a foosball table for Christmas.
292. 00:14:18 Last couple of years, we've not gotten anybody individual gifts but gotten family gifts.
293. 00:14:24 So two years ago, it was a ping pong table.
294. 00:14:25 And this last year it was a foosball table.
295. 00:14:27 Okay.
296. 00:14:28 Everybody signs off on it and they're like, yeah, that we want to do that.
297. 00:14:31 So it's not like, you know, if they wake up in the morning, they're disappointed because
298. 00:14:34 they didn't get an individual gift from mom and dad.
299. 00:14:37 So we got this foosball table and we play it all the time.
300. 00:14:40 Toby, my oldest is getting pretty good.
301. 00:14:42 He can beat me about half the time.
302. 00:14:45 Okay.
303. 00:14:46 And so we have this running joke that whoever wins when we play is King of the Knobs.
304. 00:14:52 Okay.
305. 00:14:53 And I actually got a foosball trophy made, so it's got the foosball guy on top.
306. 00:14:59 And it actually says King of the Knobs and now whoever wins gets to keep the trophy.
307. 00:15:04 It's a traveling trophy.
308. 00:15:05 But it never leaves our house.
309. 00:15:06 Nice.
310. 00:15:07 That's pretty slick.
311. 00:15:09 That's a good idea.
312. 00:15:10 Yeah.
313. 00:15:11 King of the Knobs.
314. 00:15:13 That's good.
315. 00:15:14 That's good.
316. 00:15:15 Shall we jump in today's book?
317. 00:15:16 Yes.
318. 00:15:17 I think this will be a fun one.
319. 00:15:18 Oh, this is going to be a fun one.
320. 00:15:20 This is longer than I remembered.
321. 00:15:21 So I apologize in advance.
322. 00:15:23 Did you buy the updated version or did you stick with the one you had?
323. 00:15:26 I did.
324. 00:15:27 So now I know how to lead millennials.
325. 00:15:29 Okay.
326. 00:15:30 That's what I was wondering.
327. 00:15:31 But that's what it says on my cover.
328. 00:15:33 Is that the one that you got?
329. 00:15:34 Yep.
330. 00:15:35 Yep.
331. 00:15:36 Because I had to buy it again, remember?
332. 00:15:37 Because my original is buried in a storage unit somewhere and I have no clue where it
333. 00:15:41 is.
334. 00:15:42 So there's that.
335. 00:15:45 So yes, I have the new version as well.
336. 00:15:47 All right.
337. 00:15:48 Yeah.
338. 00:15:49 And I had gone through this before simply as an audio book.
339. 00:15:52 And read the real one this time.
340. 00:15:56 But this is leaders eat last by Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, which we had covered
341. 00:16:02 previously.
342. 00:16:03 A very different type of book than Start with Why.
343. 00:16:07 Very different type of book than almost anything that we've read, I would argue.
344. 00:16:10 Yeah, I think that's fair.
345. 00:16:12 Because instead of the three parts that most books come in, this one has eight and they
346. 00:16:19 are not.
347. 00:16:20 I mean, if you look at the mind map for this one, it's kind of weird looking.
348. 00:16:25 It balances out, but there are some sections like section five that have tons of notes.
349. 00:16:31 And there are some sections like section eight, which are very, very short.
350. 00:16:35 And then also what's kind of weird about this is that the very beginning of the book,
351. 00:16:40 the introduction, that is where the title comes from.
352. 00:16:44 And so if you don't read the introduction, you're like, well, where does leaders eat
353. 00:16:47 last come in?
354. 00:16:48 Right.
355. 00:16:49 You can easily get confused, for sure.
356. 00:16:52 Yeah.
357. 00:16:53 So in fact, I thought I had read the introduction and then I was getting to the end of the book
358. 00:16:57 and I'm trying to recall like that story that they tell in the introduction.
359. 00:17:00 I'm like, did I just miss that?
360. 00:17:02 I don't see it in my mind map.
361. 00:17:04 And then I went back and I went back and I was like, oh, that's where it was.
362. 00:17:06 I didn't realize like that was the whole extent of that because that was a really big
363. 00:17:09 thing in my memory of when I listened to the book.
364. 00:17:13 I'll just start here with the introduction before we tackle it part by part.
365. 00:17:17 There's no way we're going through all the different chapters, but this introduction
366. 00:17:21 is written by a Lieutenant General of the Marine Corps George Flynn.
367. 00:17:26 And it's only a couple of pages, but talks about how if you watch Marines when they eat,
368. 00:17:33 the leaders always eat last.
369. 00:17:35 They make sure all of their guys go through the child line first.
370. 00:17:39 And so that is the basis of the title and the big idea you can extrapolate from that is
371. 00:17:49 that leadership is not about you and your privilege.
372. 00:17:54 It's about serving the people that are underneath you and prioritizing them, which if that's
373. 00:18:00 the only thing you got out of this book, I'd argue it's already worth it.
374. 00:18:03 But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
375. 00:18:06 It is.
376. 00:18:07 It is.
377. 00:18:08 And it's so true though, right?
378. 00:18:10 And I even think about, you know, I was always told growing up that I needed to let everyone
379. 00:18:16 else go through the line first.
380. 00:18:18 Never really thought much about it.
381. 00:18:20 I just followed through with what I was told, but it is fascinating now with like our small
382. 00:18:26 group.
383. 00:18:27 We have dinner every time our small group gets together and all of the guys have the
384. 00:18:31 same mentality.
385. 00:18:33 So it's like this fight of who's going to get forced through the line before someone
386. 00:18:37 else.
387. 00:18:38 And I think the only one who wins is whoever's the host of the event.
388. 00:18:42 But it's interesting how like, well, what happens if you've got multiple people that
389. 00:18:46 are like on top of each other at that point, but that aside, you're correct.
390. 00:18:51 Yeah, it seems very fascinating to see like the people who are top notch leaders are at
391. 00:18:56 the end of the line, not necessarily at the beginning of the line.
392. 00:18:59 Yep.
393. 00:19:00 And so this is, I guess a leadership book.
394. 00:19:04 You could also say it is a business book because it does talk a lot about leadership
395. 00:19:07 and organizations and corporations specifically.
396. 00:19:11 I think we'll probably talk about like the GE approach versus the Costco approach that's
397. 00:19:15 later on.
398. 00:19:17 But let me just real briefly run down these different sections here.
399. 00:19:20 So part one is our need to feel safe.
400. 00:19:23 Part two is called powerful forces.
401. 00:19:26 Part three is titled reality.
402. 00:19:28 Part four is how we got here.
403. 00:19:30 Part five, the abstract challenge.
404. 00:19:32 Part six, destructive abundance, part seven, a society of addicts and part eight, becoming
405. 00:19:38 a leader.
406. 00:19:39 Okay.
407. 00:19:40 And then there's something like 30 different chapters here.
408. 00:19:44 We're just going to tackle the section by section and try to crank through them quickly
409. 00:19:49 because there is a lot of meat in this book.
410. 00:19:52 Yeah, we could spend a lot of time on this one.
411. 00:19:54 Yeah, this could be five separate episodes, to be honest, based on how much is in here.
412. 00:20:01 But we're not going to do that.
413. 00:20:02 We're going to keep it hopefully two and a half.
414. 00:20:06 Good luck.
415. 00:20:07 So part one, our need to feel safe.
416. 00:20:09 The big ideas here, I think are the circle of safety he talks about in chapter three.
417. 00:20:16 And there's a visual here where he's got the circle and inside it's as safe and then
418. 00:20:20 danger is like on the outsides.
419. 00:20:23 And so that is a common theme throughout the rest of the book is as a leader, what you
420. 00:20:29 want to do is develop this circle of safety for the people that you lead.
421. 00:20:33 And there's different versions of this visual as we go here.
422. 00:20:39 He shares a couple cool stories.
423. 00:20:41 The book starts with a pretty intense story about Johnny Bravo, who's flying in a 10 for
424. 00:20:46 a support mission.
425. 00:20:48 And he just hears the chatter on the radio, feels like he's supposed to go in.
426. 00:20:53 Can't see anything, goes in anyways and ends up saving a bunch of people's lives because
427. 00:20:57 he's able to give them cover fire at the exact spot that they needed, even though he can't
428. 00:21:01 see anything.
429. 00:21:02 He's just kind of trusting his gut.
430. 00:21:04 And the end of that chapter is kind of like, where do people like Johnny Bravo come from?
431. 00:21:10 And that's the guy's nickname.
432. 00:21:12 So that is kind of like the picture in your head as you go through the rest of the book.
433. 00:21:18 Like this is what he's picturing as a leader, this person who is taking a risk and doing
434. 00:21:25 something that could end up meaning disaster for themselves because they just feel like
435. 00:21:29 they need to jump in and help these other people who are in danger.
436. 00:21:35 So what did you think about this story?
437. 00:21:39 Blake is saying in the chat, that story is so wrong in so many ways.
438. 00:21:42 I'm not a pilot, so I don't know.
439. 00:21:44 I have no clue, but knowing Blake comes from the military and is a current pilot.
440. 00:21:52 Huh, okay, I was reading your comment, Blake, and I just couldn't help but think I wonder
441. 00:21:56 what is going on there.
442. 00:21:58 But I'll do a little more research on it now because I'm very curious.
443. 00:22:03 But this is both the difficulty and the benefit of how authors tell stories, right?
444. 00:22:11 And they have a specific thing that they're trying to call out.
445. 00:22:16 They very likely can't tell you all the detail because they don't want to take up that much
446. 00:22:19 space to tell the story because it would probably be the entire book if they gave you
447. 00:22:23 absolutely everything about it.
448. 00:22:26 But it's difficult to know where details should or shouldn't be brought in.
449. 00:22:34 And the other thing you have to rely on in the midst of trying to tell these stories
450. 00:22:38 is your source of where you got the story can be sometimes tainted a little bit and
451. 00:22:45 you may not know it and people who have been around the story for many, many years, many
452. 00:22:51 different sources have come into them.
453. 00:22:53 They would know immediately that your story isn't 100%, but you may not know that and
454. 00:22:57 by the time you figured out it's too late and printed, right?
455. 00:23:00 Maybe that's what happened here.
456. 00:23:01 I don't know.
457. 00:23:02 Haven't dug into the story, so I don't know the answer to that.
458. 00:23:04 But I do know that if the story has any semblance of truth, it's fascinating and it makes a
459. 00:23:10 good point.
460. 00:23:11 Even if it is a fiction retelling.
461. 00:23:13 I think the value behind it is still there, right?
462. 00:23:18 Sometimes your instincts tell you you need to act, whether you know how safe or how real
463. 00:23:24 the danger is you don't know.
464. 00:23:25 But if your instincts tell you to act, you're better off following through on those.
465. 00:23:30 Like that's kind of what I got from it, I guess.
466. 00:23:34 There's a lot of different ways you could come at it.
467. 00:23:36 If you want to dive in deep and figure out where these stories are, he's got tons of
468. 00:23:42 resources for you in the back.
469. 00:23:44 So I just looked up that one for part one that flying over the thick clouds.
470. 00:23:48 The sources for this are Ted Talk that was recorded May 2012 and he's got the URL by
471. 00:23:55 Mike Drowley.
472. 00:23:56 That's the pilot.
473. 00:24:01 And then also he did an interview with Mike Drowley in April and June of 2013.
474. 00:24:06 And there are a lot of these sources in here where it just says author's interview with.
475. 00:24:13 So he didn't just dig up a bunch of stories in an archive somewhere.
476. 00:24:18 He actually talked to a lot of these people, which is kind of crazy when you see how many
477. 00:24:23 stories are in here.
478. 00:24:25 I mean, we may have a new contender for the best storyteller between Simon Sinek and Ryan
479. 00:24:32 Holiday here.
480. 00:24:33 Oh, easy.
481. 00:24:34 I mean, he's up there with Ryan Holiday on this, right?
482. 00:24:38 So Ryan Holiday was a master at finding the stories you've never heard and then telling
483. 00:24:45 them impeccably well.
484. 00:24:47 Simon Sinek has done his research.
485. 00:24:49 I'll say that.
486. 00:24:51 Yeah, I will say it would be easy not to dive in and look at all of his sources.
487. 00:24:56 If you just read this, it reads very much like he is cherry picking specific details
488. 00:25:02 from the stories to support his point.
489. 00:25:05 But when you realize how much research went into this, I feel like that kind of negates
490. 00:25:10 that criticism a little bit.
491. 00:25:13 But yeah, I mean, obviously he's got a message he's trying to get across.
492. 00:25:17 So he's going to pick some stories.
493. 00:25:19 But I don't think it's I don't think it's any worse than what Ryan Holiday did.
494. 00:25:22 I think the same criticism you could use there to and all these stories are told really,
495. 00:25:27 really well.
496. 00:25:28 He does a great job of condensing these stories into short little snippets too because there
497. 00:25:33 are so many of them.
498. 00:25:34 I mean, even in this first section, he talks about this guy, Bob Chapman, who comes in,
499. 00:25:39 he buys these distressed companies.
500. 00:25:41 And then he starts sitting in the cafeteria and listening to employees and he actually
501. 00:25:47 starts implementing some of the feedback that he gets from them.
502. 00:25:51 They're shocked because no one's ever listened to them before.
503. 00:25:54 And so the whole organization goes from, we're about to go under to, we're doing really,
504. 00:25:58 really well just because he's showing empathy to the people that actually work there.
505. 00:26:03 It's kind of crazy.
506. 00:26:05 I also like with the Circle of Safety, one other story he told here about the Spartans
507. 00:26:10 Warrior strength.
508. 00:26:12 So Spartans were, I believe, the Greek warriors with the big shields.
509. 00:26:17 And I've understood a little bit about these warriors before, but there was a detail here
510. 00:26:24 that I thought was fascinating.
511. 00:26:29 He said that if you lost your helmet or your breastplate, there wasn't any major repercussions
512. 00:26:34 for that.
513. 00:26:35 But if you lost your shield, you lost all citizenship rights because your helmet and
514. 00:26:43 your breastplate, you use when you are defending yourself, but the shield you use when you
515. 00:26:48 are defending each other.
516. 00:26:51 Not that that was kind of cool.
517. 00:26:53 Yeah, that's so fascinating to me.
518. 00:26:56 And there are a lot of stories like that, especially from the military.
519. 00:27:00 Like the whole leaders eat last thing.
520. 00:27:02 If they run out of food, it's the leader who doesn't eat, right?
521. 00:27:05 Exactly.
522. 00:27:06 The thing here is that whenever the actions, and there's a story later on too of an officer
523. 00:27:14 who fell asleep on the watch, but they were debating taking him out of the officer and
524. 00:27:19 training.
525. 00:27:20 Oh, right.
526. 00:27:21 Yeah.
527. 00:27:22 And that's in a later chapter to different reason.
528. 00:27:25 But the purpose behind that was yes, he fell asleep.
529. 00:27:29 He was in the woods of Virginia, not a big deal.
530. 00:27:32 But when he was called out on it, he denied it multiple times until irrefutable proof
531. 00:27:36 was shown to him.
532. 00:27:39 That was why.
533. 00:27:40 And then he said I'd like to take responsibility for the actions and they're like too late,
534. 00:27:43 but he's way too late.
535. 00:27:45 You're a step behind now.
536. 00:27:47 This is not going to fly.
537. 00:27:49 So much of this book is about the process of leaders taking responsibility without being
538. 00:27:55 caught and being willing to take the fall whenever something goes awry.
539. 00:28:02 I've had people explain it to me as like something may not be my fault, but it's my responsibility.
540. 00:28:07 Yeah.
541. 00:28:08 So someone else may cause something bad to happen, but it's my responsibility to take
542. 00:28:12 care of it.
543. 00:28:13 So that I feel like is one of the foundations that comes out here, but you're absolutely
544. 00:28:17 right.
545. 00:28:18 It's not going to be said for this process of being aware and being empathetic to those
546. 00:28:24 who are quote unquote underneath of you in the hierarchy.
547. 00:28:28 Yeah.
548. 00:28:29 And on that topic, let's go into the next section here, part two powerful forces, because
549. 00:28:33 there is a fascinating story here about a company, I believe it's called Next Jump, which
550. 00:28:40 basically hires people for life.
551. 00:28:43 They don't fire people when someone messes up, they get coached.
552. 00:28:49 And this is kind of an idea that he extends throughout the rest of the book comes up again
553. 00:28:54 and again of you can't fire a family member.
554. 00:28:59 You can't fire your kids.
555. 00:29:01 And he uses that specifically because he knows it's going to elicit a strong reaction
556. 00:29:06 for people like, how could you even suggest something like that?
557. 00:29:10 But that's kind of what happens in these organizations and companies is that people
558. 00:29:15 will give their whole life to a company.
559. 00:29:17 And then the manager is focused on the numbers, not the people and just lets a person go.
560. 00:29:22 So this is his story of this company that got this revelation and they're like, no,
561. 00:29:27 we're just going to change the way that we do business.
562. 00:29:30 And we're not going to fire anybody because the founder, Charlie Kim, believed that running
563. 00:29:36 a business or running a company is like raising children.
564. 00:29:41 And it was kind of cool to see like the metrics with this because you would think, well, if
565. 00:29:45 you can't fire anybody, when things get bad, you're going to lose a ton of money.
566. 00:29:49 And they actually went from, this was a tech company.
567. 00:29:54 They went from 25% growth to 60% growth when they started doing this.
568. 00:29:59 And they also used to have 40% turnover in their staff, which is an insanely high number
569. 00:30:04 when you think about all the costs associated with the hiring process and doing the interviews
570. 00:30:09 and finding people to fill the positions and then training them up to do the job specifically
571. 00:30:15 that they were hired for.
572. 00:30:17 It's kind of crazy when you think about how much you have to invest in that.
573. 00:30:21 And that just basically gets thrown out the window when you're thinking about, well, do
574. 00:30:25 we keep this person or not?
575. 00:30:28 Yeah, there's a lot.
576. 00:30:31 There's a lot of difficult pieces with that one, I think, because you have to make the
577. 00:30:37 decision upfront.
578. 00:30:40 What was the company that did the lifetime employment policy where once you were hired,
579. 00:30:45 you could not be fired if the company was next jump?
580. 00:30:49 Was that them?
581. 00:30:50 Okay.
582. 00:30:51 Because with that policy, it meant that you couldn't get fired for your actions or the
583. 00:30:58 company's lack of performance.
584. 00:31:02 And two things went through my head.
585. 00:31:05 One, what happens if somebody's just really good in the interviews, manages to get hired
586. 00:31:09 and then just doesn't do anything?
587. 00:31:11 That's what went through my head on one side because people are people and they're not
588. 00:31:15 always genuine and good at what they're like.
589. 00:31:18 They're not always honest and authentic.
590. 00:31:22 That was one thing that went through my head.
591. 00:31:23 The other was it's fascinating to me that a policy like that has such positive effects
592. 00:31:31 because it's purely the, my job is not ever at risk because of me speaking up or the company
593. 00:31:39 doing poorly.
594. 00:31:41 And it means that because of that trust, like, okay, take my situation.
595. 00:31:47 I work for a church, right?
596. 00:31:49 Churches generally don't fire people.
597. 00:31:51 It's just going to say that.
598. 00:31:53 They just generally don't.
599. 00:31:55 So they want to be nice.
600. 00:31:57 They want to be kind.
601. 00:31:58 They want to be inclusive to a lot of people.
602. 00:32:00 They generally don't fire.
603. 00:32:02 And in my role, I'm extremely confident in my position.
604. 00:32:07 I don't see it being canceled or cuts for many, many, many, many years.
605. 00:32:14 And that puts me in a spot where I don't feel like me causing a stink over something that
606. 00:32:22 I think is wrong.
607. 00:32:24 I don't feel like that's going to jeopardize my role.
608. 00:32:28 I also don't think that there's really outside of like stealing or something like royally
609. 00:32:36 terrible would actually lead me to being fired in any way.
610. 00:32:41 So because I have that trust and because I have that confidence in my job, I have a tendency
611. 00:32:48 to be a lot more creative and a lot more.
612. 00:32:51 I push the boundaries of what we should or couldn't could do in the future to help the
613. 00:32:57 ministries of the church where I think if I was nervous about going too far or making
614. 00:33:05 a suggestion or pushing on a project that I thought potentially might fail and then reflect
615. 00:33:09 poorly on me and then potentially jeopardize my job, I don't think I would push near as
616. 00:33:14 hard.
617. 00:33:15 I don't think I would try to be as daring with some of the stuff that I do that I would
618. 00:33:21 actually kind of just sit back and coast more than try to innovate if that if you follow
619. 00:33:29 what I'm getting at.
620. 00:33:30 So I think that trust and what they're doing with this lifetime employment policy is actually
621. 00:33:35 really, really smart, but it requires you to be spot on with your hiring whenever you
622. 00:33:42 go down that path for sure.
623. 00:33:43 Yeah, you definitely have to be slow to hire and make sure that you're getting the right
624. 00:33:48 person.
625. 00:33:50 And I think he does mention that there have been a couple of occasions where somebody
626. 00:33:57 has just they're leaving the company for whatever reason.
627. 00:34:02 Maybe they did do something like completely against the company culture, but whenever
628. 00:34:08 they do that they don't just like cut them loose either.
629. 00:34:10 If someone wants to leave basically, then they help them find a new position because
630. 00:34:17 they're prioritizing the individual.
631. 00:34:19 So I don't think they it's like a hundred percent once you're in, that's it.
632. 00:34:24 I think they probably do have a few scenarios where they would be willing to say, you know,
633. 00:34:30 we got to go our separate ways, but when they do that, they're going to help the person
634. 00:34:33 land on their feet.
635. 00:34:35 And then the speaking freely part that you were talking about, that's the result of that
636. 00:34:39 circle of safety, right?
637. 00:34:41 Which is the other thing in this chapter, he talks about these four chemicals that affect
638. 00:34:46 our happiness.
639. 00:34:48 And two of them serotonin and oxytocin, those are selfless chemicals that keep that circle
640. 00:34:54 safety strong.
641. 00:34:55 I actually found this part pretty fascinating because I love all this brain science stuff.
642. 00:35:00 Yep.
643. 00:35:01 I spent a lot of time on this part and actually reread some of these pieces just because
644. 00:35:06 it's like, oh, neuroscience.
645. 00:35:08 Yay.
646. 00:35:09 Yep.
647. 00:35:10 That was my kid in a candy store moment.
648. 00:35:13 Well, you just give me another idea for another book.
649. 00:35:16 Okay.
650. 00:35:17 But I'll just run through these real quickly.
651. 00:35:19 So the four chemicals he talks about are endorphins, which exist to mask physical pain.
652. 00:35:24 He talks about the runner's high being an example of this and also the fact that laughing
653. 00:35:27 releases endorphins, which I thought was interesting.
654. 00:35:30 Dopamine, which is the one that you and I are probably the most familiar with because that
655. 00:35:35 one gets brought up in the productivity space all the time.
656. 00:35:39 That's the one that brings satisfaction after we finish something important, causes us to
657. 00:35:43 be goal oriented, but it also fuels addictions, whether those be substance abuse or something
658. 00:35:48 like social media.
659. 00:35:51 Serotonin is the leadership chemical.
660. 00:35:53 This is the one thing that drives the feeling of pride when we feel people like or respect
661. 00:35:58 us.
662. 00:35:59 So the people who do something, graduation, big accomplishment, whatever they get up on
663. 00:36:04 stage and they feel they get they think somebody, I couldn't have done it without them.
664. 00:36:11 That's serotonin on display.
665. 00:36:14 And then oxytocin, that's the feeling of friendship, love or deep trust.
666. 00:36:17 This is the one that's kind of responsible for those warm fuzzy feelings.
667. 00:36:22 Without this one, we don't perform acts of generosity.
668. 00:36:25 This is the one that makes us social.
669. 00:36:28 This one is also long lasting, which is interesting because dopamine is kind of the opposite.
670. 00:36:32 That's the one where you get instant gratification, then you feel like you need another hit.
671. 00:36:37 So basically you can be driven by those endorphins and dopamine.
672. 00:36:41 Those are the reasons that we hunt, we gather, we achieve though he calls those the progress
673. 00:36:45 chemicals, but then serotonin and oxytocin, those are the selfless ones that keep that
674. 00:36:50 circle of safety strong.
675. 00:36:51 And these are actually the ones that make a big impact in the long term.
676. 00:36:55 Yeah, I wasn't real sure what to do with the like how to act on a lot of this because
677. 00:37:01 we've studied and read a lot about endorphins and dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin.
678. 00:37:09 Like we've read about these in many books in the past, they come up in a variety of ways.
679. 00:37:15 They're the four chemicals that we generally hear about.
680. 00:37:20 At the same time, since I, you know, being down the ADD path and taking medication for
681. 00:37:29 that, like I've stepped into a lot of this science to a pretty deep level in my specific
682. 00:37:36 scenario.
683. 00:37:37 And the only thing I really want to add to this in this particular piece is like he just
684. 00:37:41 it lines up with a lot of what I've seen, like it all just makes sense and fell right in
685. 00:37:47 the same path and then the same vein that a lot of my external research has led me to
686. 00:37:52 as well.
687. 00:37:54 So it's an encouragement in that, you know, he's done a good job I would say with this
688. 00:37:58 because apparently Simon Sennick just spends his days researching and studying and interviewing
689. 00:38:03 and such.
690. 00:38:04 So that's kind of what I've learned.
691. 00:38:05 Well, it's project anyways.
692. 00:38:06 Yeah.
693. 00:38:07 Yeah, he obsessed over this one.
694. 00:38:08 You can tell.
695. 00:38:09 Yep.
696. 00:38:10 The next section is part three reality.
697. 00:38:13 And this is basically talking about how all of these chemicals and the roles that they
698. 00:38:19 fulfilled for us when we were running around as cavemen trying to bring down wild animals,
699. 00:38:27 how they're not really suited for today's culture.
700. 00:38:30 In fact, there's a chapter in the section called a snowmobile in the desert.
701. 00:38:36 And he kind of talks about how a snowmobile in the desert, you can actually move, but
702. 00:38:41 it's not made for that, for that environment.
703. 00:38:47 So it's going to be slow.
704. 00:38:49 It's going to take a lot more effort than it then is warranted.
705. 00:38:55 And so he's kind of equating this with the modern workplace, modern culture and saying
706. 00:39:02 there's a better way to do this.
707. 00:39:04 It's not a whole lot I want to talk about in this section.
708. 00:39:08 Happy to discuss anything you found in here, but a couple interesting things I saw just
709. 00:39:13 a stat that the self help industry is an $11 billion per year industry.
710. 00:39:21 That is a lot of money that people are spending on self improvement.
711. 00:39:29 And then also in the previous chapter, the courage to do the right thing.
712. 00:39:34 He talks about how trust needs to be reciprocal.
713. 00:39:38 You can't have one way trust in a group that's not valuable.
714. 00:39:44 So the people that are being led need to trust their leader, but the leader needs to trust
715. 00:39:50 the people also.
716. 00:39:51 There has to be a two way relationship.
717. 00:39:53 Otherwise, it's just not going to work because ultimately what we need is we need to trust
718. 00:39:59 the people around us that not only are they going to do the right thing at the right time,
719. 00:40:05 not only are they going to obey the rules, but also like Johnny Bravo at the very beginning
720. 00:40:11 that they know when they need to break them as well for the good of the group.
721. 00:40:18 Yes.
722. 00:40:19 I don't think there's much I want to add to this particular one, just that the part is
723. 00:40:25 called reality and just keeping things down to earth and being aware of what's really
724. 00:40:34 going on as opposed to what you want to have been going on.
725. 00:40:39 You mentioned the self help industry and we probably don't help people with that much.
726. 00:40:47 We create things that people spend to be better people.
727. 00:40:50 We're the type of people who do that and that's not a bad thing, but at the same time I often
728. 00:41:00 wonder where is the line there?
729. 00:41:03 At what point do we need to stop doing the research and buying courses and buying things
730. 00:41:10 that help us become better people?
731. 00:41:12 I'm saying that knowing that both of us have at least part of our income, if not all of
732. 00:41:17 our income from that, so I have to be a little careful with that.
733. 00:41:23 At some point you have to stop and work on building your own systems and pay attention
734. 00:41:29 to yourself.
735. 00:41:30 The meditate thing that you've been doing, Mike, stop, pay attention to why you're acting
736. 00:41:36 or not acting on something.
737. 00:41:38 Why do you not do those items on your task list?
738. 00:41:41 Why is that?
739. 00:41:42 That's a tool, I would argue it's rarely the tool that I'm busy procrastinating.
740. 00:41:48 Correct.
741. 00:41:49 There's too much other stuff that you're focusing on that you shouldn't be.
742. 00:41:55 It's rarely going to be the app, the software you choose.
743. 00:42:00 It's rarely going to be that.
744. 00:42:02 It has more to do with the concepts and mindsets that you bring to it.
745. 00:42:07 That I think is what he's getting at here, is that that concept of don't assume that
746. 00:42:13 you need to make one change and then all your woes will disappear.
747. 00:42:19 You need to stop and be a little bit introspective here and pay attention to yourself and how
748. 00:42:25 the brain chemicals, how are those impacting you and how are you taking advantage of those?
749. 00:42:30 I think that's what he's calling you to pay attention to here.
750. 00:42:33 I got out of this was a little bit different.
751. 00:42:37 I think he's saying that we have a tendency based on our neocortex, which is constantly
752. 00:42:44 driving us to learn and to achieve, to be isolated.
753. 00:42:48 We are in fact social animals and trust is the lubrication going back to the snowmobile
754. 00:42:53 in the desert that allows you to move.
755. 00:42:57 We spend a lot of money trying to make ourselves better, but really if we want to make ourselves
756. 00:43:03 better, we got to make everybody in our circle of safety better and we don't look there very
757. 00:43:08 often.
758. 00:43:09 The other thing I want to just real quick mention because you did bring up that we are
759. 00:43:13 in this self-help industry.
760. 00:43:16 I think the thing I hear all the time from people is that they buy these courses, but
761. 00:43:22 they don't go through them.
762. 00:43:24 So the big challenge for someone who actually wants to help somebody affect positive change
763. 00:43:28 in their life is help them actually go through it.
764. 00:43:32 It's interesting because you see all of these people now who are doing these cohort based
765. 00:43:35 classes.
766. 00:43:37 You can't just buy access to the course because they want to force you essentially down the
767. 00:43:42 path of we're going to do this together because I know you're not going to do it if I leave
768. 00:43:45 you to do it on.
769. 00:43:46 Correct.
770. 00:43:47 Yes, absolutely 100%.
771. 00:43:49 Which is kind of the thought behind the Zero Tube City and Workshop to be honest is I want
772. 00:43:55 to create not only a two hour, it was intended to be two hours, it ended up being three workshop
773. 00:44:01 where I share a bunch of information, but you're actually going to work on this as we
774. 00:44:05 go because if you just watch everything and then assume you're going to do it later,
775. 00:44:11 it's never going to happen.
776. 00:44:14 And I fall into this trap too.
777. 00:44:17 But I think for people like us who are trying to help people to reach their full potential,
778. 00:44:25 that's the current state of things.
779. 00:44:28 It's not enough just to share the information anymore.
780. 00:44:31 You can't just write the book and throw it out there and assume that a bunch of bookworms
781. 00:44:34 like us are actually going to read it because most people won't.
782. 00:44:38 You got to hold their hand and help them walk through it.
783. 00:44:42 Which is very contradictory to a lot of our culture today, which is kind of the whole idea
784. 00:44:48 behind part four, how we got here.
785. 00:44:51 I apologize if I offend people in advance, but this is Simon, not me.
786. 00:44:55 He basically blames all of this stuff on the baby boomer generation.
787. 00:44:59 Totally, completely.
788. 00:45:01 He totally throws the boomers under the bus here.
789. 00:45:03 It's not even sugar-coated.
790. 00:45:06 It's just you guys screwed this all up.
791. 00:45:08 That's pretty much what he's saying.
792. 00:45:10 Yes, but he does say that it wasn't because of bad intentions.
793. 00:45:14 So the whole story here, chapter 11 is the boom before the bus talks about how in the
794. 00:45:19 1920s there was a period of unprecedented wealth and then there was a big depression
795. 00:45:24 that hit in 1929 after Black Tuesday.
796. 00:45:27 That lasted until Pearl Harbor when the US was pulled into World War II.
797. 00:45:33 During World War II, this is a fascinating statistic.
798. 00:45:35 Twelve percent of the population served in the military, which was way higher than I
799. 00:45:42 had anticipated.
800. 00:45:43 And that is the generation that in the US is known as the greatest generation because
801. 00:45:49 they were marked by service and hardship.
802. 00:45:51 We were all in this together, not excess and consumerism, which is kind of where we find
803. 00:45:58 ourselves today.
804. 00:46:00 Now that greatest generation, they didn't want their kids to have to go through the
805. 00:46:03 same thing they went through.
806. 00:46:05 So when they had kids that baby boomer generation, which caused a 40 percent growth in the population,
807. 00:46:12 they were growing up in a different world.
808. 00:46:14 And it's natural, I think, to want to set your kids up for success.
809. 00:46:19 So they did that.
810. 00:46:20 And as the boomers grew older, they tried to preserve, again, Simon's words, they selfishly
811. 00:46:26 tried to preserve the world that they had created.
812. 00:46:29 Okay.
813. 00:46:30 So then we get into the 1980s.
814. 00:46:34 Things start to become more disposable.
815. 00:46:36 August 5, 1981, he says, that's the day where we really embraced layoffs for the first time.
816. 00:46:44 Reagan orders all of the air traffic controllers back to work.
817. 00:46:49 The effect of that strike wasn't as severe as they thought.
818. 00:46:52 When they didn't show up, he fires 11,359 air traffic controllers on August 5.
819. 00:46:59 And then the unintended effect of that, Simon's words, but I can see the connection here is
820. 00:47:04 that CEOs think they can do the same thing that the president just did.
821. 00:47:08 So now we've got a new trend where you've got the baby boomer generation who has risen
822. 00:47:13 the ranks of these businesses and these organizations.
823. 00:47:16 They're trying to preserve their world as they know it.
824. 00:47:21 And they're focused on the numbers and the comfort and the wealth.
825. 00:47:24 And so people become the disposable resource.
826. 00:47:27 And the big problem with all of this is that we start to dehumanize people very different
827. 00:47:31 than the next jump story that we read about several chapters earlier.
828. 00:47:36 And this is the process by which trust is eroded.
829. 00:47:42 And that circle that we were referring to starts to dissolve.
830. 00:47:48 And once those two things have happened, guess what?
831. 00:47:53 We sit in a very stressful, unhappy scenario because we don't feel like we can let go and
832. 00:48:03 say something quite wrong or make the wrong move.
833. 00:48:07 Like we don't like we feel like we have to be absolutely perfect.
834. 00:48:11 Because unless we do, unless we are perfect, that whole world can come crumbling down.
835. 00:48:19 And we could be without a job.
836. 00:48:20 We could be without a house.
837. 00:48:21 You could be in a lot of really scary scenarios if you don't keep up absolutely perfectly.
838. 00:48:30 And that leads to the cortisol stress hormone.
839. 00:48:35 Does he talk about that in this section?
840. 00:48:37 I started to get these blended together.
841. 00:48:38 That was in the previous section with the EDSO.
842. 00:48:42 He does talk about cortisol, but there's just so much in here.
843. 00:48:46 Right.
844. 00:48:47 I skipped over that one.
845. 00:48:48 This is, okay, so this is off topic here.
846. 00:48:50 But normally we have these three part books, right?
847. 00:48:54 And it's easy for me to know what came from which part whenever they're like that.
848. 00:48:58 But when it's in eight parts, like, wait, where did that come from?
849. 00:49:01 I took notes and I have them here.
850. 00:49:03 But I don't remember which part that came from.
851. 00:49:06 So maybe that's...
852. 00:49:07 He is a master at weaving these things together too.
853. 00:49:11 It's not just like I'm telling you this so that I can reference it in the end.
854. 00:49:16 He references these things all the time as he's going.
855. 00:49:19 And it's not like he's referencing a single idea all the time.
856. 00:49:23 All of these stories he's referencing, it's like a patchwork quilt that's perfectly put
857. 00:49:27 together.
858. 00:49:28 Yeah.
859. 00:49:29 And because of that, I get lost.
860. 00:49:33 So, wait, where is that again?
861. 00:49:36 I don't remember.
862. 00:49:38 But it's in there.
863. 00:49:39 Anyway, my point is that whenever you lose that circle, when that dissolves and your trust
864. 00:49:47 is out the window, the stress hormones start to kick in because you feel like you're on
865. 00:49:53 your own, which as we see today with all of the necessary and required isolations, like
866. 00:50:02 we've seen how that just completely destroys the mental state of so many people.
867. 00:50:08 Like some folks are okay, at least for a period.
868. 00:50:10 But after a while, that isolation becomes a really, really toxic thing.
869. 00:50:16 Some of that's because of this.
870. 00:50:17 Oh man, that would be a fascinating addendum.
871. 00:50:20 Oh, absolutely.
872. 00:50:21 You know, I had that appendix for the COVID stuff.
873. 00:50:25 They would be great to hear Simon talk about how that has affected all of the social chemicals
874. 00:50:30 and things, how that's all out of whack.
875. 00:50:32 I would love to see that because I mean, you think about it whenever you're in isolation
876. 00:50:35 and you have to do things on your own, when you go completely independent and you become
877. 00:50:41 in it, like you put yourself in a spot where other people aren't necessary, stress skyrockets,
878. 00:50:48 whether you realize it or not.
879. 00:50:50 So whenever you have people around you and friends and those groups of people who can
880. 00:50:55 be a support for you, a lot of what he's talking about here goes away.
881. 00:51:00 But that only happens when that social network is there, which we do talk about here in a
882. 00:51:06 little bit.
883. 00:51:07 But that whole scenario of that subgroup is super important because it helps alleviate
884. 00:51:13 the stress and the cortisol and such.
885. 00:51:15 Yeah.
886. 00:51:16 And this kind of gets into the isolation thing.
887. 00:51:19 When you don't have those connections, some scary stuff can happen.
888. 00:51:24 The next section is part five, the abstract challenge.
889. 00:51:27 And the first chapter in here, "obstraction kills," he talks about this study that they
890. 00:51:34 did after they had apprehended the guy who basically architected the Holocaust.
891. 00:51:43 He escaped Argentina, I think it was, and lived there for a while.
892. 00:51:48 And then in 1961, they caught him and then that renewed these questions and was like,
893. 00:51:53 "How could the Holocaust have possibly happened or people that evil?"
894. 00:51:58 And so they did this experiment.
895. 00:52:01 I have a hard time even talking about this one.
896. 00:52:05 So basically the experiment, there were two groups and they basically thought they were
897. 00:52:11 both the teacher group.
898. 00:52:14 One group was told to flip a switch to administer an electric shock to the other person when
899. 00:52:20 they got a wrong answer.
900. 00:52:21 Now no shocks were actually sent, but the other group was told they were the teachers, so
901. 00:52:28 they were acting like they were getting shocked when this switch was flipped.
902. 00:52:34 And then they had a couple of different ways that they administered these shocks.
903. 00:52:40 One where they had to take the person's hand and put it on the shock plate.
904. 00:52:44 One where they flipped the switch and they could hear the person responding in the next
905. 00:52:48 room and one where they could not hear the person they could just hear him banging on
906. 00:52:52 the wall to get him to stop.
907. 00:52:54 The shocks themselves went up in increments from like you can barely feel this until the
908. 00:53:00 very top, which they were labeled different things.
909. 00:53:03 And remember, there's no shocks actually being sent, but the very last ones were like XXX,
910. 00:53:09 basically this is strong enough to kill somebody.
911. 00:53:13 And they were supposed to administer a shock whenever someone got a question wrong.
912. 00:53:18 So they administer these shocks and then they would express some hesitation and the scientist
913. 00:53:25 in the room had a series of questions or statements that they would reply with.
914. 00:53:31 At first, they would say, please continue.
915. 00:53:34 And then as shocks get stronger, the other person's freaking out more.
916. 00:53:38 They say the experiment requires that you continue.
917. 00:53:42 The third time is absolutely essential that you continue.
918. 00:53:45 And then the fourth one, you have no other choice, you must go on.
919. 00:53:49 Now when they started this, the hypothesis was that two to three percent, there'd be
920. 00:53:54 a couple deranged individuals who would go all the way and administer the top level shock
921. 00:54:00 where they would actually kill somebody.
922. 00:54:03 Again, remember, no shocks being, being sent.
923. 00:54:07 No people actually killed in this experiment.
924. 00:54:11 Yes.
925. 00:54:12 But what they found was that when they had to put the person's hand on the plate, physically
926. 00:54:18 grab the person's hand, put it on the plate.
927. 00:54:20 30% of the people who were in this experiment still went all the way to the end with this.
928. 00:54:27 When they could hear the person in the other room crying for help, 40% still went all the
929. 00:54:34 way through with this.
930. 00:54:35 When they couldn't see or hear the person, just like them banging on the walls or whatever,
931. 00:54:40 65% of the people went all the way with this.
932. 00:54:45 And I love to sit here and say, well, that's appalling and there's no way I would do that.
933. 00:54:52 But I think with the big takeaway from this is that people are, they have a lot less empathy
934. 00:54:59 than we thought they did.
935. 00:55:02 And when you again, realize the intention of this experiment was to figure out how something
936. 00:55:08 like the Holocaust could have happened.
937. 00:55:10 Well, there is your evidence.
938. 00:55:12 You have a leader who is saying, this is the way things have to be.
939. 00:55:16 You don't really have a choice.
940. 00:55:18 And then you have a whole bunch of people who really believe that they don't have a
941. 00:55:21 choice and they dehumanize the other side in the conflict.
942. 00:55:27 You can totally see how we ended up where we did.
943. 00:55:30 Yeah.
944. 00:55:31 Because if you take that to the extreme here, when you don't see, when you don't actually
945. 00:55:38 see the results of the decision that you're making, you may hear of it or be aware of
946. 00:55:45 it.
947. 00:55:46 But when it's abstracted one level and you don't actually see the results, it's really
948. 00:55:51 easy to keep going because if you take the empathy route here, yes, you could say they're
949. 00:55:57 not showing empathy for the other person because of that abstraction.
950. 00:56:02 But the other element here is that they're showing empathy to the research person who's
951. 00:56:09 behind them telling them they must continue because they're showing empathy to them because
952. 00:56:14 they need it done.
953. 00:56:15 It's like, well, I don't want to upset them and I can see them.
954. 00:56:19 They're right here beside me.
955. 00:56:21 So I'm going to follow them over this person that all they're doing is banging on the wall.
956. 00:56:26 I don't actually know what's going on over there.
957. 00:56:28 So who knows?
958. 00:56:30 But it's kind of scary and that's part of I think why we talk about corporate executives.
959. 00:56:38 We like to give them a lot of grief for these horrific decisions that they make occasionally.
960. 00:56:45 It's like, how could you come up with that?
961. 00:56:48 Well, this is why because there's so many steps removed from the end result of the decisions
962. 00:56:54 that they're making that it's really, really difficult to get a read on what all the nuances
963. 00:57:00 and subtleties are of a decision that you're making because it's so far abstracted from
964. 00:57:05 what you're seeing today.
965. 00:57:07 So the only way to really combat this is put boots on the ground and actually go see things,
966. 00:57:12 right?
967. 00:57:13 But that's not always possible.
968. 00:57:15 So then you're kind of left in this hole.
969. 00:57:17 Now what do I do scenario?
970. 00:57:19 So yeah, what do you do, Mike?
971. 00:57:21 I don't know.
972. 00:57:22 Yeah.
973. 00:57:23 They said in the study, the ones who actually did quit before they reached the end, those
974. 00:57:29 were the ones who felt that they were responsible to a higher authority other than the scientists
975. 00:57:34 that were in the room.
976. 00:57:36 So kind of what you said, if the person that you are responsible to, your authority is
977. 00:57:42 the person in front of you, your leader, it's very easy to see how you end up doing things
978. 00:57:47 that you never would have thought that you would have done.
979. 00:57:50 And then as the leader, you have to take into consideration that people below you, like
980. 00:57:55 it's not just you, you're not just trying to get as much as you can.
981. 00:58:00 That's kind of the next chapter, the modern abstraction he talks about businesses and
982. 00:58:04 he uses Apple.
983. 00:58:06 Simon Sinek loves to use Apple as an example.
984. 00:58:09 Oh, he does.
985. 00:58:10 He's an Apple fanboy.
986. 00:58:12 Yeah, but this is not an Apple fanboy story because he's talking about Tim Cook and how
987. 00:58:16 they were keeping the European profits in Ireland to avoid paying taxes.
988. 00:58:21 And Tim Cook on the stand basically says, unfortunately, the tax code has not kept up
989. 00:58:26 with the digital age.
990. 00:58:27 Like, not my fault.
991. 00:58:28 No, I'm a corporation.
992. 00:58:29 My job is to maximize my profits while playing within the rules.
993. 00:58:34 Yep.
994. 00:58:35 And your rules don't catch me.
995. 00:58:36 So here we are.
996. 00:58:37 Yes.
997. 00:58:38 And then he goes from there to telling the story of the Titanic, which was owned by the
998. 00:58:42 Oceanic Steam Navigation Company.
999. 00:58:45 And the Titanic was four times bigger than any other ferry, but that's the classification
1000. 00:58:54 that it fell underneath.
1001. 00:58:56 So they had these rules for the number of lifeboats that had to be on these ferry vessels,
1002. 00:59:02 which the Titanic is not a ferry, but it was classified as a ferry.
1003. 00:59:06 So the end result, obviously, it hits the iceberg.
1004. 00:59:09 It met the requirements of the law.
1005. 00:59:11 It actually exceeded the requirements of the law.
1006. 00:59:15 But still, they don't have enough lifeboats for everybody.
1007. 00:59:17 And 1500 of the 224 passengers and crew end up dying.
1008. 00:59:23 And this is just mind boggling when I think about this, because you can see that example,
1009. 00:59:29 that story.
1010. 00:59:30 And there were some details there that I had not known previously.
1011. 00:59:33 You can see the Tim Cook thing.
1012. 00:59:35 And you can see also how like nothing is being done to fix this sort of stuff.
1013. 00:59:41 It just keeps happening over and over and over again.
1014. 00:59:42 And it's super frustrating.
1015. 00:59:44 Yeah, it's fascinating to me to see how people try to manipulate laws and codes and stuff.
1016. 00:59:52 I'm in the middle of buying a house, right?
1017. 00:59:53 So there are so many scenarios where it's like, okay, we know this, we could do that.
1018. 01:00:01 But if we say this in a certain way, the county and the state are going to make us do all
1019. 01:00:05 these things, the salary, and you are both okay with it.
1020. 01:00:08 So let's just keep it behind the scenes and we'll just handle it that way.
1021. 01:00:13 And you sign some papers for arbitration and stuff so that if it actually goes awry, you're
1022. 01:00:17 both able to get somebody there to sort through it.
1023. 01:00:21 It's like, well, all they're doing is playing the game with all the rules and regulations.
1024. 01:00:26 It's all they're doing is navigating their way through this to get the sale done in a
1025. 01:00:30 way that all parties are happy.
1026. 01:00:31 That's all they're trying to do.
1027. 01:00:35 It's very similar to what we're talking about here.
1028. 01:00:37 There are a lot of ways that you can technically follow rules and yet deviate from the intent
1029. 01:00:45 of those rules, right?
1030. 01:00:47 So the thing that you want to do, depending on where you land on this, is follow the intent.
1031. 01:00:55 If you want to be a top-notch leader, follow the intent because that builds trust.
1032. 01:01:00 Even if the rules allow you to skirt around it, if you follow the purpose behind them,
1033. 01:01:07 you'll tend to trust the integrity that you're showing in that process.
1034. 01:01:12 The other one I think about is whenever, and I've seen this happen too many times, when
1035. 01:01:18 a company isn't hitting their profit goals, so they go to layoffs, to cut expenses, so
1036. 01:01:26 that they can hit those and they know that certain departments and stuff can be cut, they
1037. 01:01:31 know who can be cut when.
1038. 01:01:33 They keep very close tabs on that, it seems.
1039. 01:01:36 They choose to cut people who have upcoming retirements and pensions because those will
1040. 01:01:42 be even more expensive.
1041. 01:01:43 Now granted, there are a lot of laws and stuff that prevent that to some degree, but there's
1042. 01:01:48 still ways around that.
1043. 01:01:50 And these upper leadership positions will sometimes take advantage of those loopholes
1044. 01:01:56 in order to let people go that feels like a complete kick in the gut, but that, again,
1045. 01:02:04 it destroys the trust in your employees whenever that stuff happens.
1046. 01:02:11 That's not the way to do it, like following and trying to skirt the code so that you can
1047. 01:02:16 get what you want as opposed to following the intention behind it.
1048. 01:02:22 It's not good.
1049. 01:02:23 You're not a great leader when that happens.
1050. 01:02:24 Yeah, and that is kind of your point is echoed in the story in the next section.
1051. 01:02:29 So part six is destructive abundance.
1052. 01:02:31 And chapter 18, he talks about Stanley O'Neill taking over at Merrill Lynch.
1053. 01:02:37 And he preffices this whole story by saying that leaders who focus on their own wealth
1054. 01:02:41 and power are more like tyrants than leaders.
1055. 01:02:45 And then talks about how that's basically what happened at Merrill Lynch.
1056. 01:02:50 Stanley O'Neill was so focused on profitability, completely changed the culture, no one trusts
1057. 01:02:57 anyone anymore, and when the leader is wrong in a top-down culture like that, the whole
1058. 01:03:02 thing goes off the cliff.
1059. 01:03:03 And so that's where he talks about getting the authority to those who are closest to the
1060. 01:03:09 information.
1061. 01:03:10 I saw the image that you tweeted out prior to recording about how do you lead from the
1062. 01:03:16 bottom up.
1063. 01:03:17 I think that's kind of what this is speaking to.
1064. 01:03:18 And again, there's a visual to go along with this, but the people at the top of an organization
1065. 01:03:24 are typically the ones that have the authority, the ones at the bottom who really need to
1066. 01:03:29 be able to make the decisions.
1067. 01:03:31 They're the ones who have all the information about what's actually going on.
1068. 01:03:35 So in the story of Merrill Lynch, what you get is somebody at the top who has all the
1069. 01:03:39 authority to make all these layoffs, to make all these decisions because they're focused
1070. 01:03:43 on these numbers and they don't really realize the implications of what they're doing.
1071. 01:03:47 And all the people who can see what's really going on, they can do absolutely nothing about
1072. 01:03:51 it.
1073. 01:03:52 And what do you do?
1074. 01:03:54 You try to put yourself in an organization where that authority has been delegated down
1075. 01:03:58 to the lower levels of the organization.
1076. 01:04:00 So you can make those decisions based on the information that you have because people trust
1077. 01:04:05 you enough to make the right decision.
1078. 01:04:07 And at that point, it's kind of a virtuous circle, but also it could work the other way
1079. 01:04:12 as well.
1080. 01:04:13 Yes, completely 100% and with you.
1081. 01:04:17 I don't want else to add on that one, but yes.
1082. 01:04:20 There's another story in this section which I want to get to in chapter 20, which is the
1083. 01:04:25 reason that leaders eat last keeps coming up in my brain.
1084. 01:04:30 This is where they talk about the political culture and how it all changed when Newt Gingrich
1085. 01:04:35 was the speaker of the house in 1994 when the Republicans had taken control of it because
1086. 01:04:40 he changed a bunch of things, including that house members that previous to this, they had
1087. 01:04:48 spent most of their time in Washington doing what they were and what they were elected
1088. 01:04:54 to do.
1089. 01:04:56 And so all of the people who lived in Washington, they went to the same schools.
1090. 01:05:02 They went to the same churches.
1091. 01:05:04 They saw people outside of the debate floor and Newt Gingrich changed that and sent people
1092. 01:05:10 to their home districts where they spend a lot of time fundraising, a very selfish activity
1093. 01:05:15 so that they could get reelected for next time so they could maintain their, their
1094. 01:05:18 majority and just ram their agenda down people's throats.
1095. 01:05:24 And now we see that on both sides, but he tells a cool story there about a Democrat
1096. 01:05:29 and a Republican specifically who they were in Washington together and they were at this
1097. 01:05:33 thing and they had nothing else to do at the time.
1098. 01:05:36 So they just started hanging out and they got to be really good friends.
1099. 01:05:38 And then they started, they started empathizing with the other person, even on the debate
1100. 01:05:44 floor.
1101. 01:05:45 And so they would go along with something that the other person had said and their whole
1102. 01:05:48 party would get mad at them.
1103. 01:05:49 I thought that was kind of, kind of funny.
1104. 01:05:53 But this, this, I can totally see how this has gotten to the point that it has.
1105. 01:06:01 And I believe Simon Sinek when he says this is where it started, but even if it's not,
1106. 01:06:06 it's not really that important, you can see kind of how things have started to go off
1107. 01:06:12 of the rails.
1108. 01:06:13 And he shares that in January of 2013, U.S. Congress actually had a lower approval rate
1109. 01:06:18 than used car salesman or even Genghis Khan at 14%.
1110. 01:06:24 Because the whole focus is on fighting your enemies, getting your way, right?
1111. 01:06:30 And he makes the point that enemies fight, but friends cooperate.
1112. 01:06:34 Cooperation, by the way, doesn't mean that you always agree, but it means that you're
1113. 01:06:38 willing to work together for the greater good.
1114. 01:06:41 And I mean, you can apply that in a lot of different scenarios, not just politics, but
1115. 01:06:47 I found this whole story here extremely fascinating.
1116. 01:06:50 It amazes me that abstraction thing, right?
1117. 01:06:54 Whenever you have someone who disagrees with you, but you never actually talk to, it's
1118. 01:07:00 really easy to be mad at them at unacceptable levels, right?
1119. 01:07:09 This is seen in our society at ridiculous amounts today, just because we don't really
1120. 01:07:17 want to get to be friends with someone if they have even one thing we disagree on.
1121. 01:07:23 For whatever reason, we've decided that if we disagree on one thing, we cannot be friends
1122. 01:07:29 at all.
1123. 01:07:30 Even if it's you like cats, I like dogs, like, what?
1124. 01:07:37 Whatever.
1125. 01:07:39 That seems to be an extrapolation of this concept to an extreme level.
1126. 01:07:46 And I think it comes down to when we're not around people who disagree with this, there's
1127. 01:07:51 never a point at which you can show empathy to them and try to understand their viewpoint.
1128. 01:07:56 Thus, we end up in the situations we are today.
1129. 01:08:00 And I wish it was easier to just say, "I know you and I don't agree, but let's get together
1130. 01:08:07 and work through it and talk about it."
1131. 01:08:09 I have multiple friends that we don't agree on politics, we don't agree on many social
1132. 01:08:17 issues, but we both share something and I would consider us good friends.
1133. 01:08:25 I can think of at least four or five people off the top of my head that fit that description.
1134. 01:08:32 I understand their viewpoint and I don't necessarily always have arguments for them,
1135. 01:08:37 but there's not always an opportunity for a lot of people to have those discussions.
1136. 01:08:43 And when you have legislation that allows the political realm to follow suit with that
1137. 01:08:51 and not force some of this compromise ability, and you allow people to not be around each
1138. 01:08:59 other ever until you're at the front line having a war, how do you expect to compromise
1139. 01:09:07 and how do you expect cross-party support to ever happen when there is no need and there's
1140. 01:09:14 no interest in that?
1141. 01:09:16 Yes, we have such a strong desire for seats in a house for one party or the other because
1142. 01:09:23 the assumption is blue or red, you're going to vote to party lines because there's no
1143. 01:09:28 point in ever crossing that line.
1144. 01:09:31 Apparently, this is something that I get excited about because I've been talking about it for
1145. 01:09:35 a long time, so now I'm going to quit.
1146. 01:09:36 Here you go, Mike.
1147. 01:09:37 Well, it's kind of interesting because the news as we record this is that the Supreme
1148. 01:09:46 Court, which has a conservative majority, they've had a couple of decisions recently where
1149. 01:09:53 they've been unanimous and it hasn't always been in the conservative courts favor.
1150. 01:10:03 And so everybody's kind of like, "Well, what's going on here because there's this talk of
1151. 01:10:07 this whole concept of packing the court?"
1152. 01:10:09 And I think they're trying to send the message like, "That's ridiculous.
1153. 01:10:12 Just shut up and work together.
1154. 01:10:14 Yes.
1155. 01:10:15 It can be done."
1156. 01:10:17 But it's interesting the way Simon Sinek describes it because it just seems so obvious, right?
1157. 01:10:24 This is how we got here.
1158. 01:10:26 Surely, we can find a logical way out of this.
1159. 01:10:32 But he tells another version of this in the next section, part seven, a Society of Addicts.
1160. 01:10:39 Kind of like the political thing where he's laying it all out and like, "This is how we
1161. 01:10:42 got here." He does the exact same thing with news when he talks about the Communications
1162. 01:10:47 Act of 1934.
1163. 01:10:50 And this is my other favorite story in the entire book.
1164. 01:10:54 So this Communications Act, this required broadcasters to have a license.
1165. 01:10:59 And in order to get a license, you had to meet a whole bunch of requirements.
1166. 01:11:03 It was up for renewal, I think, every five years.
1167. 01:11:06 One of those requirements was that you had to have public service programming.
1168. 01:11:10 So that is where the nightly news came from.
1169. 01:11:14 It was inserted as public service programming.
1170. 01:11:18 It was not a business decision.
1171. 01:11:22 And then in 1979, ABC debuts Nightline as this big thing was going on where militants
1172. 01:11:33 stormed an American embassy in Tehran and they took 52 different hostages.
1173. 01:11:37 In the book, Simon talks about how that whole scenario lasted 444 days in a row.
1174. 01:11:44 And so Nightline was covering this every single night and it was getting crazy ratings.
1175. 01:11:48 At the same time, other networks were taking notice and they started to view news as being
1176. 01:11:54 profitable.
1177. 01:11:56 Then this guy, Mark Fowler, takes over the FCC.
1178. 01:11:58 He removes this fairness doctrine.
1179. 01:12:01 It's called in 1987, which we should totally bring this back because this is what prevented
1180. 01:12:07 a network from advocating only one perspective.
1181. 01:12:11 Almost every network I can think of right now promotes only one perspective.
1182. 01:12:17 And Simon is tracing it back to this event because he's saying that this is when networks
1183. 01:12:22 start to become more polarizing because it's good for business.
1184. 01:12:28 And again, you look at this and you're like, "Oh, come on.
1185. 01:12:32 Can't you guys figure this out?"
1186. 01:12:35 But yeah.
1187. 01:12:36 Yeah.
1188. 01:12:37 It is fascinating, I think, to understand how we got where we are.
1189. 01:12:43 And I do think that that helps you no matter what news source you look to, to realize that
1190. 01:12:49 this is only one side of the coin because they have chosen this side because this is
1191. 01:12:54 the profitable side for them.
1192. 01:12:57 And one of the things I've been trying to do recently is just aggregate my news sources
1193. 01:13:02 from both ends of the spectrum.
1194. 01:13:04 And I'm not going to prioritize one or the other.
1195. 01:13:07 I'm going to hold both of them lightly and realize that they've both got their own business
1196. 01:13:11 interests at hand.
1197. 01:13:13 And so really nothing of what they're telling me is the complete truth.
1198. 01:13:17 It's probably somewhere in between.
1199. 01:13:19 But it's fascinating to see the headlines as they appear on one site versus the other.
1200. 01:13:25 And it also, I don't remember which one it was.
1201. 01:13:28 Maybe it was a local thing.
1202. 01:13:29 We were talking about it this morning about there was a news source that spun a whole
1203. 01:13:35 thing and made a big deal out of a particular topic.
1204. 01:13:40 I'm not going to go into the details because it'll trigger somebody.
1205. 01:13:43 But they made a big deal out of something.
1206. 01:13:46 And their base source was an article from the Babylon B. If you know the Babylon B, you
1207. 01:13:54 know it's like a parody made up thing.
1208. 01:13:57 It's not real.
1209. 01:13:58 It's fake, but it's fun, right?
1210. 01:14:02 And it's pretty popular because it's spot on with some of the fun that it has.
1211. 01:14:07 But they used the Babylon B as a source for a very real news system that spun a story
1212. 01:14:17 and drove a bunch of clicks and drove a bunch of ratings.
1213. 01:14:20 And it's completely fabricated.
1214. 01:14:22 There was absolutely no truth to it whatsoever.
1215. 01:14:28 Come on.
1216. 01:14:30 We could do better than this.
1217. 01:14:32 Absolutely we could.
1218. 01:14:33 Yeah.
1219. 01:14:34 Well, one other thing in this section, this is kind of out of order, but the first chapter
1220. 01:14:39 in this section, chapter 22 is at the center of all our problems is us.
1221. 01:14:44 And so as we're talking about this, the solution that Simon Sinek lays out here is not to blame
1222. 01:14:51 anybody else.
1223. 01:14:52 The leaders eat last.
1224. 01:14:55 It is to assign the responsibility for change to ourselves.
1225. 01:14:59 He says in this section, we need to look at ourselves for the answers.
1226. 01:15:04 And there was an interesting story here too.
1227. 01:15:06 So many interesting stories in this book.
1228. 01:15:09 It is fascinating to read.
1229. 01:15:12 I'm going to mess up the pronunciation of this because I've not heard of it before.
1230. 01:15:16 Purple fever?
1231. 01:15:17 Am I saying that right?
1232. 01:15:19 I don't know.
1233. 01:15:20 I don't know how to say it.
1234. 01:15:21 So this was killing 70 to 80% of women giving birth in some hospitals and some doctor, Dr.
1235. 01:15:29 Oliver Wendell Holmes, he proposed in this paper that it was the doctors themselves who
1236. 01:15:36 were the cause of this because they didn't understand some things about sanitation, sterilization,
1237. 01:15:45 and the spread of diseases with germs.
1238. 01:15:48 And so they were basically bringing things in from their previous jobs in the morning
1239. 01:15:54 into the delivery room.
1240. 01:15:55 And that's why the mothers were getting sick and dying.
1241. 01:15:59 And when he proposed this, it was met with fierce resistance because everyone was saying,
1242. 01:16:04 oh, the doctors would never do anything like that.
1243. 01:16:07 They're gentlemen.
1244. 01:16:09 And his point was basically they didn't even know that they were doing it, but they were
1245. 01:16:11 still doing it.
1246. 01:16:15 And I think that is the challenge for everybody who reads this book.
1247. 01:16:22 And it is uncomfortable to say all of the problems that I see in society right now, maybe
1248. 01:16:31 I did not intentionally cause any of this stuff.
1249. 01:16:35 And maybe I am not solely responsible for any one of these scenarios that I see.
1250. 01:16:42 But how have I contributed in at least a minor way to this problem?
1251. 01:16:48 And what can I do myself to help remedy it?
1252. 01:16:52 I really want to know if those doctors were milking cows before they went in.
1253. 01:16:57 Like something like that has to have been happening.
1254. 01:17:00 I just cannot help but think that something like that was going on.
1255. 01:17:04 Okay.
1256. 01:17:05 Where are they bringing this stuff from?
1257. 01:17:07 What are they bringing in?
1258. 01:17:08 I don't know.
1259. 01:17:09 But it leads to a lot of deaths.
1260. 01:17:10 That's for sure.
1261. 01:17:11 Yes.
1262. 01:17:12 I am with you.
1263. 01:17:13 All right.
1264. 01:17:14 The last section here then is part eight becoming a leader.
1265. 01:17:19 I don't have a ton to say about this one.
1266. 01:17:22 Famous last words.
1267. 01:17:24 But I do like how he starts this off chapter 25, which is step 12.
1268. 01:17:31 And that is in reference to the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program, which he says
1269. 01:17:38 step 12 is the most important one.
1270. 01:17:40 This is what makes this work is that step 12 is to commit to help another alcoholic
1271. 01:17:48 beat the disease.
1272. 01:17:50 I think if there was one takeaway from this whole book for me, it is this idea piggybacked
1273. 01:18:01 off of the well, maybe it's your fault.
1274. 01:18:04 You know?
1275. 01:18:05 Maybe it is my fault and if I'm going to take a if I'm in a accept responsibility for that,
1276. 01:18:12 you know, what am I going to do about that?
1277. 01:18:15 How do I start to tip the scales in the other direction?
1278. 01:18:18 It is not to try to convince a ton of people.
1279. 01:18:25 This is what needs to be done.
1280. 01:18:28 It is to find one person and affect change in their life.
1281. 01:18:34 And when you do that, that has to be done face to face going back to like the whole,
1282. 01:18:41 how does COVID affect this?
1283. 01:18:44 And hearing Simon talk to that would be fascinating because he specifically says in this chapter,
1284. 01:18:51 connections required to beat addiction cannot be virtual.
1285. 01:18:58 You have to connect person to person.
1286. 01:19:01 You can't do it on a zoom call.
1287. 01:19:04 You can't do it on the phone.
1288. 01:19:07 And where does that where does that leave us?
1289. 01:19:09 Right?
1290. 01:19:10 Because I think we're in the US anyways, we're kind of in the place where things are opening
1291. 01:19:16 back up because the cases are going way down.
1292. 01:19:19 But I've just seen in my own church, there are people who have gotten comfortable with
1293. 01:19:24 the way that things have been for the last year, year and a half.
1294. 01:19:30 They are fine.
1295. 01:19:32 Just doing the virtual thing.
1296. 01:19:33 It's good enough for them.
1297. 01:19:36 And I think Simon is telling us like we're in, he would say, we're in this dangerous
1298. 01:19:42 spot right now.
1299. 01:19:43 You got to reach out to those people because everyone needs those connections.
1300. 01:19:48 How many books have we read about like digital minimalism and things like that that talk
1301. 01:19:52 about how those relationships are vital?
1302. 01:19:55 Okay.
1303. 01:19:56 And people who even once had those relationships now because they were forced to go into their
1304. 01:20:02 own cave, you know, they've gotten comfortable there.
1305. 01:20:06 And unless someone goes and like tries to bring them out, maybe they never do that.
1306. 01:20:12 I think that's the big thing for me is like, who can I help out of the cave?
1307. 01:20:16 And it's not just in the context of the church, but empathy is being shown up.
1308. 01:20:24 I forget exactly where he said it, but there was a quote that talks about how leadership
1309. 01:20:29 and empathy that is being shown to every person at every moment.
1310. 01:20:36 It's not just like a once in a while when you really need it sort of a thing.
1311. 01:20:40 If you're really going to be an effective leader, you got to have this mindset and you
1312. 01:20:43 got to have it all the time.
1313. 01:20:45 When we started live streaming here at the church, we had, I'm trying to remember, it's
1314. 01:20:50 like 300 households, I think that were tuning into our live stream on a weekly basis.
1315. 01:20:58 We've since opened up, the state of Minnesota has allowed us to open up basically as we
1316. 01:21:03 were before.
1317. 01:21:05 We're still a little tightened down as a church.
1318. 01:21:09 We haven't completely opened up the way we were, but we have yet to see a number of folks
1319. 01:21:17 yet from when we started live streaming over a year ago.
1320. 01:21:22 Some of those families I've met with outside of Sunday morning and they tell me, "Oh yeah,
1321. 01:21:30 it's really cool.
1322. 01:21:31 We can stay in our GME's, we make breakfast, we sit on the couch and we watch church and
1323. 01:21:37 then we can go about our day."
1324. 01:21:39 Do you have a small group?
1325. 01:21:42 Do you connect outside of that?
1326. 01:21:43 It's like, "Well, we see people once in a while."
1327. 01:21:46 Okay, well, I mean, you're still seeing folks.
1328. 01:21:49 I mean, it's probably not as extreme as what you're talking about, Mike, but I often wonder,
1329. 01:21:55 "Okay, am I doing a disservice by enabling this live stream to help people stay home
1330. 01:22:04 when they really don't have a need for it?"
1331. 01:22:07 In one case, I know everybody's vaccinated, they have no concerns, and yet they want to
1332. 01:22:12 stay home.
1333. 01:22:13 Like, "Okay, well, that's fine, it's your choice."
1334. 01:22:17 That type of person is the one that tends to frustrate me.
1335. 01:22:20 Now, coming from the church stance, I also know that the live stream helps us to find
1336. 01:22:25 new believers at the same time.
1337. 01:22:26 It's a way for new people to try out a church without actually having to do the nervous,
1338. 01:22:33 somewhat frightening thing of entering a church for the first time.
1339. 01:22:36 I totally understand that, and it's a way to get a feel for what is this church like
1340. 01:22:40 without having to actually go.
1341. 01:22:42 We have a lot of people that are new attenders at our church because of that.
1342. 01:22:46 They're getting me on a soapbox.
1343. 01:22:48 But that whole concept of not getting together with people and staying in isolation by choice,
1344. 01:22:58 I feel like you're hurting yourself significantly with that, whether you realize it or not.
1345. 01:23:03 So like you're saying, step 12, it's up to us.
1346. 01:23:06 Once we learn how leadership works, and once we learn how all of this is to be applied,
1347. 01:23:13 it's our job to like, "Okay, you, come with me.
1348. 01:23:16 This is how this needs to work.
1349. 01:23:18 We need to be the leaders in helping other people be leaders as well."
1350. 01:23:22 So I think that's kind of what he's getting to here.
1351. 01:23:25 It's the part that I resonated with out of this last part.
1352. 01:23:28 Yeah, exactly.
1353. 01:23:30 And it's not because we're trying to get people to comply with a set of rules.
1354. 01:23:34 It is because this is the best thing for them.
1355. 01:23:38 You're not forcing them to do it.
1356. 01:23:41 You can't yank somebody out.
1357. 01:23:43 You can't just show up and be like, "You're coming with me.
1358. 01:23:45 Get in the car."
1359. 01:23:48 But you have to show that you care about them and you have to show that you have their best
1360. 01:23:52 interest in mind and that gives back the whole concept of leadership.
1361. 01:23:56 I did find that quote, by the way.
1362. 01:23:57 It was in the last chapter, "Does empathy is something we owe everyone all the time
1363. 01:24:02 if we want to call ourselves a leader?"
1364. 01:24:06 And leadership is for everyone, not just those at the top.
1365. 01:24:10 I think that's where this is practically speaking applied for people like you and me.
1366. 01:24:14 We see those people who we know they're struggling.
1367. 01:24:18 We want to help them, not because we want to pat ourselves on the back because it's the
1368. 01:24:22 right thing to do.
1369. 01:24:25 They don't realize, and this is Simon's argument throughout this whole book, if you just stay
1370. 01:24:32 virtual, go back to the step 12 thing, if you never make that connection, the only chemicals
1371. 01:24:38 you're activating are the endorphins in the dopamine, which we know are not going to lead
1372. 01:24:43 you where you need to be.
1373. 01:24:45 Really if you want to thrive, if you don't want to be that snowmobile in the desert,
1374. 01:24:50 you need the other ones, the social chemicals, which can only come when you have a direct
1375. 01:24:56 interaction, when you're meeting face to face, when that empathy is really being able to
1376. 01:25:01 be shown.
1377. 01:25:02 I can't really show you empathy over a video call like this.
1378. 01:25:07 I can to a certain degree, and that's the thing that makes us tricky is like all of
1379. 01:25:10 this stuff is on a spectrum, but I feel like with where we're at now and so much of this
1380. 01:25:17 stuff being virtual, the tendency is well, virtual is good enough.
1381. 01:25:22 And really what Simon I think would say is no, there's a whole lot more good to be had.
1382. 01:25:29 You got to push past that and it's the job of the leader to do that.
1383. 01:25:33 Coming back to the idea of like the baby boomers and the period of excessive abundance that
1384. 01:25:41 he describes that we find ourselves in, how do you do that if you find yourself in that
1385. 01:25:47 situation?
1386. 01:25:48 Because I'm in a pretty privileged situation.
1387. 01:25:52 I recognize that and he says in chapter 26 here, the place to do that is to think bigger,
1388. 01:25:59 right?
1389. 01:26:00 You have to have a big enough vision that your vision out sizes your abundant resources.
1390. 01:26:10 So when I think about that, that's challenging to me.
1391. 01:26:13 That's my one action item from the whole book and it's totally a mic action.
1392. 01:26:16 I just think bigger because the tendency can be to make sure that I'm good, that my wife
1393. 01:26:25 is good, that my kids are good.
1394. 01:26:28 But having read through this, I realize that there are a lot of places not just in my church,
1395. 01:26:34 but really how do I display that empathy to everybody that I come in contact with and
1396. 01:26:42 how do I and I don't have an answer to this, but how do I expand my vision big enough so
1397. 01:26:48 that I'm not just concerned about my own small little circle, but I'm looking at like, how
1398. 01:26:54 can I expand that?
1399. 01:26:57 Benjamin Franklin was said to have this quote, "What good shall I do this day?"
1400. 01:27:03 He would ask himself when he got up in the morning.
1401. 01:27:06 That's kind of what I want to rewire my default to.
1402. 01:27:09 It's like, who am I going to help when I get up in the morning?
1403. 01:27:14 How do I make sure that this is not just about me and what I am going to do, but how can
1404. 01:27:20 I actually help somebody else as I go about my day to day?
1405. 01:27:24 Again, I don't have an answer, but I am inspired.
1406. 01:27:28 I am inspired by Simon Sinek after reading this book.
1407. 01:27:32 Yep.
1408. 01:27:33 What good shall I do this day?
1409. 01:27:34 Who is it that has the coffee mug that says that?
1410. 01:27:37 Is that Mike Vardy?
1411. 01:27:38 It might be Vardy.
1412. 01:27:39 Either him or Brett McKay.
1413. 01:27:41 Brett McKay would totally do that art of manliness.
1414. 01:27:44 So those two I could definitely see with that coffee mug.
1415. 01:27:47 I should get one of those.
1416. 01:27:48 That's a solid quote.
1417. 01:27:50 It is.
1418. 01:27:51 I'm writing that one down.
1419. 01:27:53 That's all I got, anything else about this book?
1420. 01:27:55 No, it's a pretty solid one.
1421. 01:27:58 That much I know it's challenging, encouraging, and yet difficult I think sometimes to figure
1422. 01:28:06 out what to do with it.
1423. 01:28:09 So yep.
1424. 01:28:10 That said, your book, what were your action items from this one, Mike?
1425. 01:28:14 Well, I mentioned my one action item is to think bigger.
1426. 01:28:17 I don't think there's a whole lot of specific stuff you can glean from this book.
1427. 01:28:21 I will say that before you go and maybe you have 12 different action items.
1428. 01:28:24 I don't know.
1429. 01:28:26 But this is a lot of very big picture vision casting.
1430. 01:28:32 This is what it means to be a leader.
1431. 01:28:34 One thing I found interesting with this was that people get motivated by the vision, but
1432. 01:28:43 a lot of the change happens by the small actions.
1433. 01:28:46 You can't motivate people to change, though, by saying, "Oh, just do this one small thing."
1434. 01:28:53 So the leader has to understand both the big picture and the next step.
1435. 01:29:00 And so you walk away from this feeling like you're being called to go up to a new level.
1436. 01:29:09 And I don't even know exactly what that looks like, which is why my one action item from
1437. 01:29:12 this whole book is simply to think bigger.
1438. 01:29:15 I don't even know exactly what that's going to look like.
1439. 01:29:17 But I do know that I am inspired to grow and become a better leader and change as a result
1440. 01:29:23 of reading this, even more so physically reading it than when I went through it with the audiobook.
1441. 01:29:30 I feel like the stories were great.
1442. 01:29:32 I'm getting the style and reading now.
1443. 01:29:33 I'll put a pin in this.
1444. 01:29:34 Do you have any action items from this book?
1445. 01:29:39 Yes, I have one.
1446. 01:29:42 So I don't have the 12, but I have one.
1447. 01:29:46 I have a handful of teams that are underneath of me at the church.
1448. 01:29:54 And those teams are very vital to a Sunday morning.
1449. 01:29:58 And having read this, I wonder if I have shirked my responsibility of trying to be with them
1450. 01:30:07 in the trenches, as it were.
1451. 01:30:10 And I kind of want to try to work my way back into that.
1452. 01:30:15 So much of what I've done lately is, here's your system, here's your schedule.
1453. 01:30:20 Let me know if you have any problems.
1454. 01:30:22 And then I don't really hear from people in a lot of cases, but I also don't follow up
1455. 01:30:28 with them in a lot of cases, unless I happen to be running sound at the same time that
1456. 01:30:33 someone else is doing things or I happen to be making rounds, which doesn't happen super
1457. 01:30:38 often because there are other people that are responsible for those.
1458. 01:30:42 I'm not real good about following up and making sure that my responsibilities are completely
1459. 01:30:49 met as Simon Sinek would describe them.
1460. 01:30:54 So I don't know exactly what that means, but I know that over this weekend, and I have,
1461. 01:30:59 I know at least one meeting on Sunday and then two more on Monday, that I have set up as a
1462. 01:31:06 result of this book to just kind of let me get back into the trenches and make sure that
1463. 01:31:10 I understand what my people are doing.
1464. 01:31:13 Yes, they're volunteers, but that means I should work a little bit harder to make their
1465. 01:31:16 life easy.
1466. 01:31:18 So that's kind of what I want to work towards.
1467. 01:31:20 I have no idea how to actually summarize that into a one sentence thing.
1468. 01:31:25 I'll let you do that for the show notes, or maybe I'll have to do it for next time we'll
1469. 01:31:28 see, but I got you.
1470. 01:31:30 I got you.
1471. 01:31:31 Joe's action item is to lead his people.
1472. 01:31:33 Okay.
1473. 01:31:34 All right.
1474. 01:31:35 There you go.
1475. 01:31:36 Yes, that's what I need to do.
1476. 01:31:37 I feel like I've done it partially, but not fully.
1477. 01:31:41 And I'm a little bit ashamed to say that, but at least I'll admit it at this point.
1478. 01:31:46 Sure.
1479. 01:31:47 Yeah, no, that's a great action item.
1480. 01:31:49 And I had similar thoughts because I have those groups of people too that I thought
1481. 01:31:54 about I need to take a step up for these different groups.
1482. 01:31:57 I just don't know exactly what I'm going to do with those yet.
1483. 01:31:59 Right.
1484. 01:32:00 Right.
1485. 01:32:01 So I probably have like five or six of those.
1486. 01:32:07 And I guess those are kind of encapsulated under my think bigger one, but I like that.
1487. 01:32:13 I like your action item.
1488. 01:32:15 And I'm going to do something similar.
1489. 01:32:17 And like I said, I've got three meetings set up to do this.
1490. 01:32:20 Now meetings may not be the when I say meeting, it's I'm going to be doing a training.
1491. 01:32:25 I'm making a change.
1492. 01:32:26 So I'm taking the opportunity to meet with people one on one and show them how it all
1493. 01:32:29 works.
1494. 01:32:30 It may only take 10, 15 minutes, 12 minutes or so, but that's kind of a gesture to a degree
1495. 01:32:35 and an opportunity to open the door there as well.
1496. 01:32:39 So it's kind of a sidesteped way of getting there.
1497. 01:32:42 So when I say meeting, sure, it's not the traditional, we're going to sit down for an
1498. 01:32:46 hour and do things together for an hour, whether we need the hour or not.
1499. 01:32:49 No, that's not the case at all.
1500. 01:32:51 These can sometimes be very, very short.
1501. 01:32:53 Gotcha.
1502. 01:32:54 All right.
1503. 01:32:55 Style and rating.
1504. 01:32:58 And my book.
1505. 01:32:59 I will go first.
1506. 01:33:01 I absolutely love this book.
1507. 01:33:03 It's great.
1508. 01:33:04 Everyone should read it.
1509. 01:33:06 I mentioned that I had listened to this, the audio book version back in the day.
1510. 01:33:13 And I realized having gone through it again, how much I missed the first time by listening
1511. 01:33:20 to it.
1512. 01:33:21 So I will renew my plea for everyone, do not listen to books, actually read them.
1513. 01:33:29 Because when you listen to a book, you're listening to a story, it's just going to keep
1514. 01:33:33 going.
1515. 01:33:34 If something really strikes you, you can't slow down and brew on something for a while.
1516. 01:33:39 I mean, yeah, I know Audible has added the thing where you can take the clip notes and
1517. 01:33:43 stuff like that.
1518. 01:33:44 It's not the same thing.
1519. 01:33:45 It's very easy to just keep going and really miss the meat of what is being said because
1520. 01:33:50 of the audio format.
1521. 01:33:52 I got so much more out of it this time.
1522. 01:33:55 It was longer than I had expected.
1523. 01:33:58 The only part of it I didn't really care for was the whole section on leading millennials.
1524. 01:34:03 Maybe that's because I'm a millennial.
1525. 01:34:05 It's like, wait, you can't.
1526. 01:34:07 You can rip on the boomers, but leave us millennials alone.
1527. 01:34:10 Well, no, it just felt very much like a prescriptive.
1528. 01:34:15 Here's how you deal with these people.
1529. 01:34:16 And I didn't like that.
1530. 01:34:19 Like, even if everything he said was accurate for me specifically, which it wasn't, by the
1531. 01:34:24 way, but even if it was 100%, I still feel like that approach just feels a little bit
1532. 01:34:30 weird.
1533. 01:34:31 But that was like one tiny little section.
1534. 01:34:32 And that's just my personal preference.
1535. 01:34:33 The rest of this is absolutely phenomenal.
1536. 01:34:36 Like I mentioned, the storytelling is really, really great.
1537. 01:34:40 I think he might be a better storyteller in this book than any of the Ryan Holiday stuff
1538. 01:34:45 that we have read, which is a very, very, very big compliment because prior to that, I
1539. 01:34:52 don't think, you know, Ryan Holiday definitely upped the bar in terms of what we considered
1540. 01:34:56 like, actually good storytelling.
1541. 01:35:00 It's like a whole other tier, which is Ryan Holiday and now Simon Sinek.
1542. 01:35:04 I also feel like as long as this book is, it does something pretty amazing in that it
1543. 01:35:10 captures your attention at the beginning and it inspires you and motivates you and kind
1544. 01:35:16 of carries that momentum all the way through to the end of its almost 300 pages, which
1545. 01:35:23 is no small feat.
1546. 01:35:26 These stories that are in here, we shared a couple of them in the podcast, but there
1547. 01:35:30 are so many of them, so many details, so many of them are just perfectly woven together.
1548. 01:35:36 I mean, I don't know what else I can say about this book.
1549. 01:35:41 Absolutely go read it, Five Stars.
1550. 01:35:43 I don't even think you have to choose like who is this for because he kind of ends it
1551. 01:35:47 by saying that leadership is for everyone.
1552. 01:35:49 It's not just those at the top.
1553. 01:35:51 Even if you are completely against the, like your own personal preference, you want nothing
1554. 01:35:57 to do with the topic of leadership.
1555. 01:36:01 You bristle at the thought of like the John Maxwell type stuff and you're like, no, that's
1556. 01:36:07 just not my thing.
1557. 01:36:08 I would still recommend it for that person.
1558. 01:36:11 Maybe that's the person where you get them to just go through the audio version and they're
1559. 01:36:14 impacted that way, but it's so good.
1560. 01:36:17 I feel like everybody who listens to bookworm should have this one on their bookshelf.
1561. 01:36:21 Probably a handful of books that we've read.
1562. 01:36:23 The other ones I can think of are like, Man's Search Remeaning by Victor Frankel.
1563. 01:36:29 Deep Work by Kallen Newport, Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
1564. 01:36:33 This one is in that top tier for me.
1565. 01:36:35 I don't know.
1566. 01:36:36 It's so good and I like Simon Sinek, but it's so good that I kind of don't ever want to
1567. 01:36:41 read another Simon Sinek book again because I feel like I'll be let down.
1568. 01:36:44 Because you will.
1569. 01:36:46 Yeah.
1570. 01:36:47 That's how this works, right?
1571. 01:36:48 Yeah.
1572. 01:36:49 Absolutely.
1573. 01:36:50 This is a phenomenal book.
1574. 01:36:51 Well, I have to say, I'm not sure I agree with you in him being better than Ryan Holiday.
1575. 01:36:58 I feel like what I would have to do is go pull up his latest and read one of the stories
1576. 01:37:03 from it since I have this one on mine.
1577. 01:37:06 I should go grab it and read it just to compare.
1578. 01:37:11 My point is they're that close in their storytelling ability.
1579. 01:37:18 The only one that I could think of, at least off the top of my head that could potentially
1580. 01:37:22 rival, that would be Neil Gaiman.
1581. 01:37:25 It's only because Neil Gaiman takes 300 plus pages to tell a story and these guys are doing
1582. 01:37:31 it in four.
1583. 01:37:33 So keep that in mind as well.
1584. 01:37:36 But I think you're absolutely right.
1585. 01:37:37 Simon has really nailed something here.
1586. 01:37:40 Obviously, this is the first time I've gone through it.
1587. 01:37:43 You have a very solid point in, you know, this is for everybody.
1588. 01:37:48 Even people who aren't in leadership, even, and I was thinking about this before we started
1589. 01:37:54 here on my journey in doing IT stuff that I didn't want to do and walking back and forth
1590. 01:37:59 and such, I was thinking about how I have some family members that have previously worked
1591. 01:38:06 in the fast food industry, like bottom tier, like they're the cleaners.
1592. 01:38:12 And even them, I could see how the things in this apply.
1593. 01:38:18 Even people who are unemployed, I could see how this applies.
1594. 01:38:21 There's so many of the recommendations, the methods, the thought processes, the concepts
1595. 01:38:28 that he recommends and coaches you through on how to be a good leader.
1596. 01:38:34 Those are great things to adopt.
1597. 01:38:37 Even if you have no one, you're leading.
1598. 01:38:39 If you adopt those things and you become good at them, you're going to become a leader
1599. 01:38:45 of other people.
1600. 01:38:46 And I would tend to think that that's something you should aspire to whether you think you
1601. 01:38:51 should or not.
1602. 01:38:53 And no matter how you come at it, you're going to be leading someone at some point, whether
1603. 01:38:58 it's now, because you have people under you.
1604. 01:39:02 If you're in a spot where you've got three or four teams, I think I've got four teams
1605. 01:39:05 underneath of me.
1606. 01:39:06 It's like, if you're in a spot like me, it's very obvious.
1607. 01:39:09 This is something that would be helpful.
1608. 01:39:12 If you have no one under you, though, and you're young, this is something that will eventually
1609. 01:39:17 happen.
1610. 01:39:18 At some point, you will have some role at some point somewhere where someone is underneath
1611. 01:39:23 of you.
1612. 01:39:24 Even if it's a one day volunteer position and you're leading people, putting chairs away,
1613. 01:39:29 like this stuff applies in those scenarios.
1614. 01:39:31 Do you get my point?
1615. 01:39:32 Like this can carry to so many different avenues.
1616. 01:39:37 And he tries to cover some.
1617. 01:39:39 But the way he sets it up, you can easily see how this transcends to so many arenas.
1618. 01:39:46 And he does an excellent job at that.
1619. 01:39:48 So I'm with you.
1620. 01:39:49 This is going to be a double five oh on this one.
1621. 01:39:52 This is when I think you absolutely should read no matter who you are.
1622. 01:39:56 And I hope that people take this and learn from it and that it's something that really
1623. 01:40:03 impacts your life.
1624. 01:40:04 I know that this is one that's encouraged me to step up and take the role that I've kind
1625. 01:40:08 of been shirking.
1626. 01:40:10 And I didn't even realize I was doing that until I read this.
1627. 01:40:14 So that's a kudos on Simon Sinek because that's me having to eat some humble pie there.
1628. 01:40:19 And that'll be a fun conversation when I have to have those over the next few days.
1629. 01:40:22 But hey, we'll get through it, right?
1630. 01:40:23 So yes, I'll put it at five oh, this is a solid one.
1631. 01:40:27 Great choice, Mike.
1632. 01:40:28 Yeah, thank you.
1633. 01:40:30 I think this is the definitive work on leadership as someone who loves the John Maxwell stuff.
1634. 01:40:37 Sure.
1635. 01:40:38 I have several John Maxwell books on my bookshelf behind me.
1636. 01:40:41 But this is the one that I would recommend to people.
1637. 01:40:43 And it's also interesting getting back to like how to read a book by Mortimer Adler, right?
1638. 01:40:48 We balance these books with all the other ones that we've read.
1639. 01:40:51 I think a perfect compliment to this is the second mountain by David Brooks.
1640. 01:40:56 Oh, sure.
1641. 01:40:57 Because the whole idea about that is you try to climb that first mountain and you're making
1642. 01:41:03 a name for yourself, creating the life you want to live in.
1643. 01:41:05 And you get to the top of that first mountain and you're like, is this it?
1644. 01:41:08 And then you see the second mountain, which is all about other people.
1645. 01:41:10 And that's what leadership is all about is about other people.
1646. 01:41:13 So if I were to recommend a bookend to this one, that would be it.
1647. 01:41:18 That's a good picture of that.
1648. 01:41:19 All right, let's put leaders eat last on the shelf.
1649. 01:41:22 What is next, Joe?
1650. 01:41:23 Yeah.
1651. 01:41:24 So the one that I've picked out for the next round is digital body language by Erica
1652. 01:41:30 DeWann, I think is how you say that.
1653. 01:41:33 And this will tie in a little bit with what we were talking about earlier today here in
1654. 01:41:39 that whenever you're not in person, it's not the same.
1655. 01:41:45 Remember that whole rant we went on?
1656. 01:41:47 This is going to talk about the scenario of if that's not possible, if you're not face
1657. 01:41:52 to face, what does that look like and how do you read body language when it's purely
1658. 01:41:58 100% digital, that's something I'm excited about.
1659. 01:42:02 So I think it'll be a fun one.
1660. 01:42:04 And what did you pick for after that?
1661. 01:42:06 I don't even know this yet.
1662. 01:42:07 You didn't put it in the outline.
1663. 01:42:08 So what are you doing?
1664. 01:42:09 I didn't.
1665. 01:42:10 Well, I'm going to keep this theme of procrastination alive.
1666. 01:42:13 Oh, fine.
1667. 01:42:14 Because I was one of my action items that's going to roll over.
1668. 01:42:17 For a long time, I have wanted to discuss this book with you.
1669. 01:42:22 I have not read it.
1670. 01:42:23 I'm just fascinated by the title and I'm familiar with the author.
1671. 01:42:27 So this is a systems book, I believe.
1672. 01:42:30 Oh, fun.
1673. 01:42:31 But we are going to read Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vadon.
1674. 01:42:36 Have you seen this one?
1675. 01:42:38 I have.
1676. 01:42:39 I have not read it, but I've definitely seen it and always thought it looked gimmicky
1677. 01:42:44 to me.
1678. 01:42:45 So this is going to be one of those Joe's coming at this with a side eye.
1679. 01:42:51 I'm already looking at it.
1680. 01:42:53 Sure.
1681. 01:42:54 Yeah, well, Rory Vadon wrote another book called Take the Stairs, which I really enjoyed.
1682. 01:43:01 And he is actually the person I've never actually met him.
1683. 01:43:05 But he is the person who inspired me to get involved with Toastmasters.
1684. 01:43:11 Because in that book, he talked about his own journey and he wasn't a public speaker,
1685. 01:43:18 challenged himself, and then he ended up taking second in the world championship of public
1686. 01:43:24 speaking.
1687. 01:43:25 And he's written a couple of books, but his primary job is with a consulting company,
1688. 01:43:29 I believe.
1689. 01:43:30 So very interesting guy.
1690. 01:43:33 And then this book came out after Take the Stairs.
1691. 01:43:38 And it seems very much like a productivity systems book that just completely confronts
1692. 01:43:44 one of those things like you shouldn't procrastinate on stuff and tries to turn it on its head.
1693. 01:43:48 So I have no idea whether we're going to be changing our minds about procrastination
1694. 01:43:53 and how we do it.
1695. 01:43:55 Or if we're just going to write this off completely and be like, yeah, he's off his
1696. 01:43:58 rocker.
1697. 01:43:59 Well, we'll see.
1698. 01:44:00 All right.
1699. 01:44:01 I am going to assume guilty until proven innocent on this one.
1700. 01:44:06 And assume he's a crackpot until he shows me otherwise.
1701. 01:44:09 Can I do that?
1702. 01:44:10 Is that allowed?
1703. 01:44:11 I'm going to do that on this one.
1704. 01:44:12 Sure.
1705. 01:44:13 All right.
1706. 01:44:14 Well, that said, you got a gap book this time around.
1707. 01:44:16 I've been on the phone doing house stuff like nonstop for the last week and a half.
1708. 01:44:20 So as much time as I've had to do this, house stuff took over.
1709. 01:44:26 So no, hasn't happened for me, but you?
1710. 01:44:29 I do not have a gap book this time.
1711. 01:44:32 I do have a couple that I have ready to go if I have the margin to tackle them.
1712. 01:44:41 But I want to read digital body language first.
1713. 01:44:46 And so if I do get to a gap book, I will report back on it next time.
1714. 01:44:51 Okay.
1715. 01:44:52 Sounds good.
1716. 01:44:53 All right.
1717. 01:44:54 So thanks everybody for hanging out with us today.
1718. 01:44:56 Thank you specifically to the Bookworm Club Premium members who are willing to not just
1719. 01:45:03 give us their attention, but also contribute a few bucks every month to keep the lights
1720. 01:45:08 on.
1721. 01:45:09 We really appreciate it.
1722. 01:45:10 We'd like to support the show.
1723. 01:45:11 You can do that at bookworm.fm/membership.
1724. 01:45:16 When you join, you get a couple of perks.
1725. 01:45:17 You get this wallpaper that I created.
1726. 01:45:20 It's a 4K wallpaper with the fancy bookworm logo.
1727. 01:45:24 You get access to a couple of gap episodes that Joe had created back in the day.
1728. 01:45:29 There's a couple of new sections in the club and all of the mind map files from all of the
1729. 01:45:35 notes that I take in these books get uploaded to that section so you can download the PDF
1730. 01:45:41 version or if you want to take the mind note file and customize it yourself, those are
1731. 01:45:45 there too.
1732. 01:45:46 So if you want to support the show, you can do that at again, bookworm.fm/membership,
1733. 01:45:52 5 bucks a month.
1734. 01:45:54 Thanks to everyone who helps us keep the lights on and keep the show going.
1735. 01:45:58 Blake has a good point.
1736. 01:45:59 I'm holding back on get books, Taylor Two Cities, Narnia.
1737. 01:46:03 I suppose I could do a thing on the Narnia.
1738. 01:46:06 That would have to be like a one-on-one livestream for an hour and a half probably.
1739. 01:46:10 But anyway, there's that.
1740. 01:46:12 That all said, if you are one of these that's been reading along with us, I know that's
1741. 01:46:16 what we intended bookworm to be and everybody has used it very differently than what we intended.
1742. 01:46:20 That's how these things go.
1743. 01:46:21 But if you are reading along with us, pick up Digital Body Language by Erika DeWann and
1744. 01:46:26 we will cover that one for you in a couple of weeks.