173: Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman

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1. 00:00:00 So I just got back from Craft and Commerce Joe Buleg and it was amazing.
2. 00:00:04 Wish you could have been there.
3. 00:00:06 I kind of wish I had been there.
4. 00:00:08 Yeah, it's good time.
5. 00:00:11 I ended up staying in an Airbnb with a couple of our mutual friends and a couple new ones.
6. 00:00:19 And one of the people that stayed with us was a chef and he had a friend who does these pop-up dinners in Boise
7. 00:00:27 who lived a couple blocks from where we were.
8. 00:00:30 So we ended up having a dinner party at our house one night with these crazy hors d'oeuvres.
9. 00:00:35 I don't even know what was in them.
10. 00:00:36 One of them had octopus, but it was some of the best food that I've ever had.
11. 00:00:42 That sounds like a rough life.
12. 00:00:44 It was a good time.
13. 00:00:45 And then it's the standard Craft and Commerce conference.
14. 00:00:49 I'm not sure if you've ever been.
15. 00:00:51 I've been one other time.
16. 00:00:52 I have not been to that one, no.
17. 00:00:54 OK.
18. 00:00:54 It's a small conference.
19. 00:00:56 And so I keep forgetting that not many people have been to this.
20. 00:01:02 But it is definitely a worthwhile conference.
21. 00:01:06 I met a bunch of amazing people, Justin Moore, Nathan Barry, obviously, CEO of ConvertKit.
22. 00:01:13 Shared a little documentary that they've been working on sharing kind of his story,
23. 00:01:19 how ConvertKit got rolling and all that kind of stuff, really, really great people.
24. 00:01:25 And there's just something about the energy when you get into that environment
25. 00:01:28 with all those other creators.
26. 00:01:30 It's electric.
27. 00:01:32 It's great even for an inch for it like me.
28. 00:01:35 It definitely put wind in my sales.
29. 00:01:38 So I don't think there's a link to join next year yet, but they did offer a pre-buy thing
30. 00:01:47 for people who attended.
31. 00:01:48 So I have already bought my ticket for next year.
32. 00:01:50 I'm going record of saying that.
33. 00:01:52 And before I completely forget about this until next June,
34. 00:01:57 want to give a plug, go to Craft and Commerce.
35. 00:02:00 It is definitely a worthwhile conference.
36. 00:02:03 And Boise is a really cool city.
37. 00:02:05 It's kind of like a miniature Austin, but set in the mountains and more green.
38. 00:02:10 So mountains and more green.
39. 00:02:13 That's about what it takes to get me there.
40. 00:02:15 So there you go.
41. 00:02:17 It's true.
42. 00:02:18 You got the beard going.
43. 00:02:18 You kind of look like a mountain man already.
44. 00:02:20 Anyways, you'll fit right in.
45. 00:02:21 Yeah.
46. 00:02:21 So last week, there was a morning when it was kind of cool out.
47. 00:02:25 So I had none other than the red flannel shirt.
48. 00:02:29 When I say red flannel shirt, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
49. 00:02:33 And I had that on, but I was headed to the back by the shed to split wood.
50. 00:02:40 So here I am with the beard and had my hat on the red plaid shirt and an axe on my shoulder.
51. 00:02:46 And then I realized, huh, this has got to be quite a look.
52. 00:02:52 And then my wife confirmed that.
53. 00:02:53 Yep.
54. 00:02:55 That's the lumberjack there.
55. 00:02:57 Yep, it's kind of how it's become.
56. 00:03:01 That's amazing.
57. 00:03:04 All right.
58. 00:03:04 One other thing before we get to follow up.
59. 00:03:08 One of the people that I hung out with at Craft and Commerce is Mike Vardy.
60. 00:03:13 He's a good buddy and we have decided to do something together.
61. 00:03:17 So we are hosting a creative momentum masterclass.
62. 00:03:23 It's basically a paid webinar workshop, which is going to be June 29th.
63. 00:03:29 So the week after this publishes $49, 90 minutes.
64. 00:03:35 And we're teaming up basically to layer elements of his time crafting methodology on top of my creativity flywheel.
65. 00:03:46 We were talking about it.
66. 00:03:47 We kind of realized that productivity, creativity are like two sides of the same coin.
67. 00:03:52 And the creativity flywheel, Nathan Berry actually give a talk at Craft and Commerce about flywheels,
68. 00:03:58 which is really what got this going for me.
69. 00:04:02 And I realized that flywheels, once you get them going, each turn becomes easier and produces more output.
70. 00:04:10 So they're very efficient, but you need some effort to get them going.
71. 00:04:17 And kind of the productivity practices, that's kind of the wind in the sails.
72. 00:04:21 Right.
73. 00:04:21 So we're teaming up and we're going to present hopefully a killer workshop Thursday the 29th.
74. 00:04:28 There's two times and you can pick either one to sign up for, but they are separate registrations.
75. 00:04:33 So I'll put links to both of them in the show notes.
76. 00:04:35 One of them is going to be at 10 a.m. Central time.
77. 00:04:38 One of them is at 3 p.m. Central time.
78. 00:04:41 So if you are looking for some help dialing in your creative systems,
79. 00:04:47 illuminating the friction, finding the flow, trying to create on a regular schedule,
80. 00:04:51 whether that be full time or even just you want to make consistent progress on your creative side project.
81. 00:04:57 I'd love to have you join us.
82. 00:04:59 Cool.
83. 00:05:00 What's it called in creative?
84. 00:05:01 The creative momentum masterclass.
85. 00:05:03 It's trying to write it down.
86. 00:05:05 It's like, wait, creative what?
87. 00:05:07 Got it.
88. 00:05:08 I got it now.
89. 00:05:09 Yeah.
90. 00:05:10 So we'll talk about a bunch of the different things that can hinder that momentum, obviously.
91. 00:05:14 So one of them could be, I just don't know what to create stuff on.
92. 00:05:18 So how to never run out of ideas, right?
93. 00:05:21 That's the whole idea of the flywheel is an input.
94. 00:05:23 There's a process.
95. 00:05:24 There's an output.
96. 00:05:25 It is a creative system.
97. 00:05:26 Creativity is a formula, that kind of stuff.
98. 00:05:29 Right.
99. 00:05:30 And we're just going to try to eliminate as many roadblocks as we can for people so they can make their stuff.
100. 00:05:35 Obviously, ConvertKit's whole thing is they exist to help creators make a living online.
101. 00:05:40 But it's impossible to be in that place with all those other creators and not feel like creating is one of the most important things in the world.
102. 00:05:46 I kind of thought that prior anyways, but it just kind of galvanized that thought of my head recently.
103. 00:05:52 So I want to help people be more creative through the art of intentional productivity.
104. 00:05:59 Super cool.
105. 00:06:01 Vardy is a solid guy too.
106. 00:06:03 So we'll have Mike and Mike.
107. 00:06:05 Exactly.
108. 00:06:06 Mike squared.
109. 00:06:07 Mike's on.
110. 00:06:08 The minimum.
111. 00:06:09 Mike's, but not the Mike's on Mike's.
112. 00:06:11 I miss that show.
113. 00:06:13 I know me too.
114. 00:06:14 Totally miss.
115. 00:06:15 I wish it could have worked out long term for them.
116. 00:06:18 But yes.
117. 00:06:19 That's going back in time in the podcast world.
118. 00:06:23 All right.
119. 00:06:24 So should we go through our action items?
120. 00:06:27 Not from the previous book, but from the book before that I think.
121. 00:06:32 Two ago.
122. 00:06:34 So do you have any luck with these?
123. 00:06:36 You get two of them here.
124. 00:06:38 I failed miserably.
125. 00:06:39 I knew these were coming.
126. 00:06:40 I looked at these frequently.
127. 00:06:42 I just have not had time to really think about this.
128. 00:06:46 So I was in Boise.
129. 00:06:50 I came back and started sitting at university immediately after.
130. 00:06:55 And that's been going really well.
131. 00:06:57 But I have been putting a lot of extra effort into that.
132. 00:07:03 We're kind of talking about this before we hit record.
133. 00:07:06 Just I want to deliver an awesome experience.
134. 00:07:08 Right.
135. 00:07:09 So when I feel like this is the best way to teach something, I just do it.
136. 00:07:12 And so I have done these presentations before where I'll record little snippets of something
137. 00:07:18 happening and then break it up into these slides that I can trigger in keynote.
138. 00:07:22 So I can kind of control the pace, but it looks like I'm walking through a live video.
139. 00:07:26 But the audio and the video line up perfectly that way.
140. 00:07:30 Well, normally I do that for an hour long presentation.
141. 00:07:32 And I'll have a couple, ten second things that I chop up.
142. 00:07:37 I went through themes, customization and plugins last time.
143. 00:07:42 And I decided that the only way to effectively teach all 21 core plugins was to do this for each one.
144. 00:07:49 Of course you did.
145. 00:07:52 Yeah.
146. 00:07:53 So a little bit like drinking from the fire hose, I'm sure for some of the people that were there,
147. 00:07:58 but got some great feedback on it, obviously.
148. 00:08:00 And yeah, I want to make these long-term assets that are going to be helpful for people.
149. 00:08:06 And so that took a lot of time, a lot of effort.
150. 00:08:09 And I've been basically doing that for every single session.
151. 00:08:12 I'm also not at home today.
152. 00:08:14 People who are watching this video on when we record these live can see that I am up in Dark County visiting.
153. 00:08:21 My parents came up here for Father's Day and been hanging out with them a little bit.
154. 00:08:27 So those are my excuses, but I did not list the ten things for I know I'm being successful when,
155. 00:08:34 but if anything, that one actually I made less progress on because I came back from the Craft and Commerce Conference
156. 00:08:40 and I was like, "I'm doing too many things.
157. 00:08:42 I got to figure out what am I going to be known for?"
158. 00:08:44 And I don't know what I want to really be known for.
159. 00:08:46 There were a couple people who kind of spoke to this.
160. 00:08:48 One of them was Jay Klaus and he talked about the sawdust problem.
161. 00:08:52 And basically it's like there's this saying, "Sell the sawdust."
162. 00:08:56 Basically share the process when you make stuff, which is cool, but it should be in service of like a long-term asset.
163. 00:09:02 And he basically challenged everybody like, "What is your thing?"
164. 00:09:05 And I was like, "I don't know what my thing is. I've got multiple things."
165. 00:09:09 Yeah.
166. 00:09:10 So trying to figure that out.
167. 00:09:13 And then teaching my family to call each other out when we're in the gap.
168. 00:09:16 I've kind of pointed this out a couple times, but this wasn't the big formal, "Okay, let's have a meeting
169. 00:09:23 and establish this system and this routine."
170. 00:09:26 It hasn't caught on yet.
171. 00:09:28 So gap and gain has been something that has come up naturally in conversation probably four or five times since the last episode,
172. 00:09:35 though. So I've kind of exceeded it when I've had the opportunity, but we've got more work to do there.
173. 00:09:41 Yeah.
174. 00:09:42 How about you?
175. 00:09:43 That particular concept, like the gap and the gain, it shows up in many, many scenarios.
176. 00:09:50 And I don't think I expected it to.
177. 00:09:52 It seems like that concept is one that I end up talking about. Not necessarily using those terms, but it's one that's like,
178. 00:09:59 "Well, are you thinking about where you're coming from? Are you thinking about what you're missing?
179. 00:10:04 Which of those two are you considering right now?"
180. 00:10:09 And that conversation does seem to come up.
181. 00:10:12 I should actually probably mention that the whole idea there is like, don't go to the negative stuff, right?
182. 00:10:20 And I shared with you before we record. I had quite the travel experience on the way to Boise.
183. 00:10:27 And this did come to mind because there's another version of this that someone in my mastermind group had shared
184. 00:10:34 as this saying, "I don't mind what happens."
185. 00:10:39 And so that came into my mind over and over and over again when I was almost in Boise but couldn't land and got diverted to Salt Lake City
186. 00:10:48 and then finally landed in Provo and then went back to Salt Lake City and stayed there and waited for my crew to come before getting to Boise.
187. 00:10:56 Multiple times I found myself like, "I don't mind what happens."
188. 00:10:59 So I feel like I had a great opportunity to go into the gap and for the most part didn't.
189. 00:11:06 I mean, when I was on the same plane for eight hours and no one could get up and use the restroom, that was a little frustrating.
190. 00:11:14 It did help having that front of mind.
191. 00:11:18 Yeah, that concept has saved me a few times just because I could easily focus on all the things that didn't get done this week.
192. 00:11:27 Or like in this case, my two action items, I could focus on the reasons that I didn't do them.
193. 00:11:34 But instead of focusing on all the excuses as much as I want to give them, maybe I should just say that I got a lot done for our outdoor event that didn't happen.
194. 00:11:43 But really, I didn't get them done.
195. 00:11:46 So the two that I had on the list was the same one, list 10 things for I know I'm being successful when, but also to come up with my own filtering questions.
196. 00:11:54 Definitely looked at them more than a couple times and that's as far as it got.
197. 00:12:01 So complete failure.
198. 00:12:03 Leave them bolded.
199. 00:12:04 That way they show up next time.
200. 00:12:06 They're still on my reminders list too.
201. 00:12:08 So I keep getting hit with them daily.
202. 00:12:11 Hey, have you done this yet?
203. 00:12:12 Hey, have you done this yet?
204. 00:12:13 Hey, have you done this yet?
205. 00:12:14 The answer is no.
206. 00:12:16 Reminders, are you actually using Apple's reminders?
207. 00:12:19 Yeah.
208. 00:12:20 Have I said that on this show?
209. 00:12:23 Maybe I haven't said that on here.
210. 00:12:24 I don't know.
211. 00:12:25 But it just piqued my interest because iOS 17 and the Kanban boards that are being added to reminders.
212. 00:12:31 I saw that and I got a little inordinately excited over that.
213. 00:12:39 That could be, oh, this, this, this, this, this, all the little funny things that would be
214. 00:12:47 interesting to me.
215. 00:12:49 And then I have to step back and remember that a Kanban board for my reminders list is not
216. 00:12:57 the thing that will make me the most productive person in the world.
217. 00:13:00 It's true.
218. 00:13:03 That's not the thing.
219. 00:13:05 Just not the thing.
220. 00:13:06 Okay.
221. 00:13:07 There we go.
222. 00:13:08 I failed at my action items.
223. 00:13:09 I failed.
224. 00:13:10 Yes.
225. 00:13:11 We can be done.
226. 00:13:12 That is enough failure before we talk about greatness.
227. 00:13:19 All right.
228. 00:13:21 So today's book is Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman, subtitle, How the Best in the World
229. 00:13:28 Reverse Engineer Success.
230. 00:13:31 And this was a recommendation from the Bookworm Club from Ward.
231. 00:13:35 So thank you, Ward, for recommending this one.
232. 00:13:38 If you want to recommend books, you should do that.
233. 00:13:42 You should do it right now if you're listening live because I just realized I didn't pick
234. 00:13:45 mine for next time yet.
235. 00:13:47 Please go recommend books so we know what we're going to potentially pick from.
236. 00:13:51 Oh, I've got a bunch.
237. 00:13:52 I've got a bunch.
238. 00:13:53 But yeah, get those, get those votes in.
239. 00:13:56 I do look at that pretty, pretty often and see what, what is new in there.
240. 00:14:01 But this book is broken down into really two different parts.
241. 00:14:07 But there's four sections that we'll cover here.
242. 00:14:09 There's a short introduction.
243. 00:14:12 And then part one is the Art of Unlocking Hidden Patterns.
244. 00:14:15 Part two is the Vision Ability Gap.
245. 00:14:19 And then the last part is a brief conclusion.
246. 00:14:23 Now this book is about 200 pages, the hardcover version that I have.
247. 00:14:30 It looks much longer than that though because there are so many references.
248. 00:14:36 Really every productivity story you have ever heard is going to be referenced in this
249. 00:14:41 one, but it's going to be a sentence or two and the reference will be in the back.
250. 00:14:47 Which we'll talk more about style and rating later.
251. 00:14:51 But I actually think this is a pretty good approach.
252. 00:14:56 You can tell this is not something that was slapped together because Ron Friedman got inspired.
253. 00:15:04 This is the result of a lot of work and effort.
254. 00:15:11 And I think given the subject matter, it kind of has to be.
255. 00:15:15 If you're going to talk about how the best people in the world reverse engineer success,
256. 00:15:21 you got to do your homework.
257. 00:15:24 What was your first impression of this book?
258. 00:15:28 Your first impression, decoding greatness, just off of the title and subtitle, I was
259. 00:15:38 kind of thinking I was going to get a playbook of how to take people who have been hyper-successful
260. 00:15:46 and then replicate their process.
261. 00:15:51 Although I would say that that's probably the end result here, I don't think it's quite
262. 00:15:57 so cookie cutter.
263. 00:15:59 It's more of a, here's the process to figure out the process.
264. 00:16:02 It's almost a meta, one step removed scenario.
265. 00:16:08 In this particular case, I really appreciate.
266. 00:16:11 That's helpful to me to know, here are the steps you can work through to get to this.
267. 00:16:16 I'm going to teach you how to decode greatness, not these exact steps that you need to take
268. 00:16:22 in order to do that if you're with me.
269. 00:16:25 Again, it's not like a one, two, three do this, you're done.
270. 00:16:29 Here's how you figure out what your steps are.
271. 00:16:33 I really like that.
272. 00:16:35 First impressions were that this is going to be an exact systems book, but I'm kind of
273. 00:16:40 glad that that's not what it is.
274. 00:16:43 Yeah, exactly.
275. 00:16:45 Let's get into the beginning part here, the introduction.
276. 00:16:50 The introduction is pretty short, but there's a couple things that I jotted down here, which
277. 00:16:54 kind of set the stage for the rest of the book and also kind of tangentially relate
278. 00:16:59 to what you were just mentioning about how it's not just a follow the system, you have
279. 00:17:04 to figure this out.
280. 00:17:06 The big idea, and it's even in the subtitle, is this concept of reverse engineering.
281. 00:17:11 Basically, it says that reverse engineering is important if you want to stay out of the
282. 00:17:15 curb and there's lots of examples of people who have reverse engineered different things,
283. 00:17:19 whether it's a product, a business, a writing style.
284. 00:17:25 He talks about how Malcolm Gladwell lands on his formula later on.
285. 00:17:32 There's lots of really cool examples of how to do this.
286. 00:17:36 I think that idea is really powerful.
287. 00:17:38 I like that idea.
288. 00:17:40 However, there's one other thing that he said in this introduction that didn't sit real
289. 00:17:48 great with me and I've been kind of chewing on ever since I got back from the Craft and
290. 00:17:54 Commerce conference.
291. 00:17:55 But ConvertKit's whole mission, and Nathan Barry talked about this, the reason they exist
292. 00:18:00 is to help creators earn a living.
293. 00:18:02 They sell t-shirts and things that say, "I am a creator on them."
294. 00:18:06 They've got the big coffee table type blogger books about highlighting different creators.
295. 00:18:16 I've just been in that world, but also I personally feel that there has never been a
296. 00:18:21 better time ever to make a living as a creator.
297. 00:18:27 The tools that we have, they make it easy for you to find your tribe and do your thing.
298. 00:18:39 I was kind of surprised at how niche some of the creators that were there were.
299. 00:18:45 There was one person I met who was a no-code developer so they make Squarespace sites,
300. 00:18:51 but they make them specifically for accounting firms.
301. 00:18:56 That's really, really niche, but you can do that kind of stuff.
302. 00:19:01 Thanks, Internet.
303. 00:19:02 But Ron Freeman says in the introduction that no matter what you do for a living, you have
304. 00:19:06 much more competition than in decades past.
305. 00:19:09 I understand the broader point that he's making with this because Internet has also allowed
306. 00:19:17 us to connect with people from all over the place.
307. 00:19:19 You could have been in your tiny little town and you were the best, fill in the blank in
308. 00:19:24 that town.
309. 00:19:25 That was everyone thought you were great, but you had no context, real context, because
310. 00:19:30 all you knew were the people who were in the same place as you.
311. 00:19:34 Now we're hyper aware of all the people who are doing the thing we want to do all over
312. 00:19:40 the place.
313. 00:19:42 I think that's sort of balanced out by the ability to niche down and become known for
314. 00:19:50 this specific thing.
315. 00:19:53 I feel like there's a balance here, which obviously, Ron Freeman's not speaking directly
316. 00:19:58 to kind of curious your thoughts on that.
317. 00:20:03 I took it somewhat differently in that, yes, there's maybe a disc, because if we back up,
318. 00:20:11 part of what you're getting at is that we oftentimes refer to competition doesn't matter,
319. 00:20:16 because it's not like if I win you lose scenario, competition is a good thing, in that it's
320. 00:20:26 not like a loss of money or anything, really, if I'm in the same space as you.
321. 00:20:34 If I were to go headlong into the obsidian space, that's a plus for both of us.
322. 00:20:40 I'm not doing that, by the way.
323. 00:20:42 Good.
324. 00:20:44 That's the thing that you and I, the scarcity mindset, that's one that I think you and I
325. 00:20:50 would reject, but I think what my impression of that particular comment here was just that
326. 00:20:59 people only have so much attention in time.
327. 00:21:03 Even in the creator space, you do kind of have competition in that, because if there
328. 00:21:10 are a hundred people that are in the obsidian space creating one hour courses, someone
329. 00:21:18 can't watch those all in one day.
330. 00:21:20 Yep.
331. 00:21:21 So, there is a little bit of a scarcity piece in that sense.
332. 00:21:25 So at some point, it does exist, and the competition for someone's attention definitely
333. 00:21:33 is there and can overtake and make it to where you do have to be better than somebody
334. 00:21:42 else in that sense.
335. 00:21:43 If, is that really true?
336. 00:21:47 If you're targeting one specific person, yes, there's strong competition there, but there's
337. 00:21:52 so many people in the world, like what you're talking about, the no code for financial world.
338. 00:21:59 Like that's very niche, and yet they're going to find the people who are willing to put that
339. 00:22:05 particular topic very high in their list of attention desires, I guess.
340. 00:22:11 So in that sense, there's not.
341. 00:22:14 So I think I get what you're saying, but I didn't really take it as what you're saying.
342. 00:22:20 Yeah, that makes sense.
343. 00:22:23 It does.
344. 00:22:24 That's fair, I think.
345. 00:22:25 Just the wording of it kind of hit me wrong.
346. 00:22:28 He's not explicitly talking about the scarcity mindset, but I guess the fact that he's saying
347. 00:22:36 you have much more competition than in decades past kind of forces my brain in that direction.
348. 00:22:44 And I'm totally applying this to my creator context, which is not what he's talking about
349. 00:22:51 at all.
350. 00:22:52 There are probably quite a few big business people who are going to read this book, and
351. 00:23:01 the market's only so big and they want the majority of the pie.
352. 00:23:04 So they do need to be the best if they're going to achieve their goals, which is one
353. 00:23:11 of the reasons I decided to become a creator.
354. 00:23:13 I don't like that.
355. 00:23:16 But maybe I'm not the exact person that this is for, or I'm just reading into it too much.
356. 00:23:24 It's a minor point.
357. 00:23:25 So we can move on and actually talk about part one next and part one is the art of unlocking
358. 00:23:32 hidden patterns.
359. 00:23:34 Now I think I would like to try to go through all of these individual chapters because there's
360. 00:23:41 not that many chapters in the book.
361. 00:23:43 I think there are seven.
362. 00:23:44 Seven, yeah.
363. 00:23:45 Yep.
364. 00:23:46 So in the first part, there's three.
365. 00:23:48 And then in the second part, there are four.
366. 00:23:51 The first chapter in the first part is the mastery detectives.
367. 00:23:58 And got lots of notes from this one.
368. 00:24:02 A lot of my notes for this book are kind of all over the place.
369. 00:24:06 So I'm just going to kind of pick a few things here.
370. 00:24:09 And yeah, if you got anything that you want to talk about specifically, we can definitely
371. 00:24:16 address those in these chapters too, because there really isn't an arc to my notes or the
372. 00:24:21 discussion that I really want to have about this.
373. 00:24:25 So I'll just jump in here.
374. 00:24:26 He mentions at the beginning of this chapter that there's two stories that we've been told.
375. 00:24:30 That greatness comes from talent and that greatness comes from practice.
376. 00:24:37 And he's basically saying that there are other methods or at least one other method,
377. 00:24:43 reverse engineering that he mentioned in the introduction to get to that place where you
378. 00:24:50 are doing something great.
379. 00:24:52 And this is where he starts to talk about some of the people who have used this approach.
380. 00:24:58 It was the introduction where he told the story about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
381. 00:25:04 I forget if that was introduction or chapter one.
382. 00:25:07 That was introduction.
383. 00:25:08 Okay.
384. 00:25:09 Yeah.
385. 00:25:10 So Steve Jobs is berating Bill Gates because they just launched Windows and he's like,
386. 00:25:13 you totally ripped off the Mac OS.
387. 00:25:19 And Bill's like, well, you ripped it off from somebody else.
388. 00:25:21 And that's kind of the whole premise here is that kind of everything is a remix.
389. 00:25:28 And if you're so concerned about people not making anything that is even remotely like
390. 00:25:33 your thing, like you're always going to be trying to defend that stuff.
391. 00:25:38 But the other approach is to just try to continually ask where is the next innovation coming from
392. 00:25:43 and reverse engineer the next great thing that you're making.
393. 00:25:50 One of the things that really stood out to me from this section as it pertains to the
394. 00:25:54 creative stuff that I'm doing is this story about Kurt Vonnegut and how the world's most
395. 00:26:00 popular stories belong to six different trajectories.
396. 00:26:05 Rags to riches, which is a rising emotional arc, riches to rags, the falling emotional
397. 00:26:09 arc, man in a hole, fall followed by a rise, Icarus, a rise followed by a fall, Cinderella,
398. 00:26:15 which is rise, fall, rise, and Oedipus, whose fall, rise, fall.
399. 00:26:19 I probably said that last one wrong.
400. 00:26:20 I don't know anything about Greek mythology.
401. 00:26:22 Oedipus.
402. 00:26:23 Oedipus.
403. 00:26:24 Thank you for saving my bacon.
404. 00:26:28 But if you think about that, how many books have been written, how many movies have been
405. 00:26:33 recorded, like how many stories have been told that follow these six formulas.
406. 00:26:39 And it sort of triggered in me.
407. 00:26:42 I was watching, I was at the Entre Leadership Summit a while back and Donald Miller was presenting.
408. 00:26:49 And he had just come out with the Story Brand framework and he was equating all of these
409. 00:26:55 different stories, like the Story Brand framework to Star Wars.
410. 00:27:00 Basically, his point was like, this is the story for these epic type of movies.
411. 00:27:04 And this is the story that your brand needs to have.
412. 00:27:07 And then he obviously applied all sorts of his marketing principles to that.
413. 00:27:12 You're not the hero, you're just the guide, you're helping the customer do a specific
414. 00:27:17 thing, they're encountering three different types of opposition, yada, yada, yada.
415. 00:27:25 And I guess what it really kind of cemented in me was the belief that like, no matter
416. 00:27:34 what I make, it is the result of the formula going back to steel like an artist.
417. 00:27:42 So don't get hung up on like this incredible, unique creation.
418. 00:27:49 It really is just some of all the parts, the formulas are borrowed, they're being reused
419. 00:27:54 that doesn't degrade the value of the thing that you are making.
420. 00:28:00 But why not just lean into that and glean as much as you can from that process?
421. 00:28:07 Because that is the right path.
422. 00:28:11 The story because it's surface level is that the greatness comes from talent and the greatness
423. 00:28:16 comes from putting in the reps.
424. 00:28:17 But as we learned from Peek by Anders Erickson, that's not necessarily the case, you got to
425. 00:28:20 have the right kind of practice.
426. 00:28:23 So dig a little bit deeper.
427. 00:28:24 And when you do dig a little bit deeper, you realize that everybody's just putting in
428. 00:28:26 the reps.
429. 00:28:27 On just a couple pages after that whole section you're talking about, there's a line in here.
430. 00:28:36 He's talking about Mrs. Fields' brand chocolate chip cookies, which everybody loves.
431. 00:28:43 If you don't love them, something's wrong with you.
432. 00:28:46 And the phrase that he has here is this page 11.
433. 00:28:49 He says, "Observing the greats opens your mind to fresh possibilities."
434. 00:28:55 And from that you can then start to find the patterns.
435. 00:28:59 And there's a whole bunch more on that as we go through this book.
436. 00:29:02 But like that particular phrase really struck me.
437. 00:29:04 "Observing the greats opens your mind to fresh possibilities."
438. 00:29:07 And that's something that I know that people do when they're in an apprenticeship.
439. 00:29:12 If you find somebody who's really good at their craft, you want to follow them and watch
440. 00:29:17 their process.
441. 00:29:18 Not necessarily their end product, but how do they get there?
442. 00:29:22 And that's very common in the world of an apprentice.
443. 00:29:26 But that whole thing doesn't exist near as much.
444. 00:29:31 I've been hearing about it having a resurgence here lately.
445. 00:29:35 But in recent years, somebody taking on an apprenticeship really hasn't happened.
446. 00:29:43 But you don't have to go through a formal apprenticeship to do that.
447. 00:29:46 That's kind of what I got from this is just there are enough resources out there that
448. 00:29:52 if you wanted to understand how does Elon Musk do what he does with Tesla?
449. 00:29:58 How does he do what he does with SpaceX?
450. 00:30:00 There's enough information out there.
451. 00:30:02 Without ever having met him, you could figure out a lot of his process and then start the
452. 00:30:07 process of replicating that.
453. 00:30:10 You might need a lot of money to replicate Elon Musk.
454. 00:30:15 That's beside the point.
455. 00:30:16 But you get my point here is like, this is something that we can watch what other people
456. 00:30:21 are doing who are successful in an arena, who are accomplishing a thing similar to what
457. 00:30:25 we want to do and then start the process of breaking down what they're doing.
458. 00:30:29 That's essentially what a lot of this book is about.
459. 00:30:31 But I just love the way that he's got this phrase here at the beginning to set us up
460. 00:30:36 for the process of understanding what that process looks like.
461. 00:30:40 One of the examples he talks about in this first chapter is the process of de-formulation,
462. 00:30:46 which is when you reverse engineer medicines into the individual chemical components.
463. 00:30:51 I had never heard that term before, but when he explained it, I was like, "Oh, yeah,
464. 00:30:56 obviously, that must be a thing that happens."
465. 00:30:59 But he was basically saying, "This is a lot more approachable than you think.
466. 00:31:02 This is not millions of dollars to do this.
467. 00:31:04 You can send it away for like $2,000 and they'll give you an exact list of all the ingredients."
468. 00:31:09 Yes.
469. 00:31:10 I was like, "Oh, wow.
470. 00:31:12 So even someone like me could do something like this."
471. 00:31:15 And that's the big takeaway, I think, is anybody can do this.
472. 00:31:19 You just have to have the right mindset.
473. 00:31:23 I have an action item from this first chapter because I met some really cool people at Craft
474. 00:31:32 and Commerce and some people who are doing some pretty awesome things.
475. 00:31:37 And I want to obviously grow my newsletter, my communities.
476. 00:31:44 I saw Seheel Bloom speak and that guy is doing some cool stuff.
477. 00:31:52 He's invested in all these cool companies.
478. 00:31:55 Primarily, he's a creator trying to grow his email list.
479. 00:31:58 That's how he's gotten big.
480. 00:32:02 He reinvests everything that he makes from his newsletter back into the newsletter so
481. 00:32:08 it grows faster.
482. 00:32:10 He's doing a book deal.
483. 00:32:11 One of the companies that he's invested in is this company called Wanda.
484. 00:32:14 Have you ever heard of this?
485. 00:32:16 No, Wanda.com.
486. 00:32:17 It's basically these really nice smart houses that are different places in the US.
487. 00:32:26 Kind of like personal retreat style houses, but a lot of them are bigger so they're kind
488. 00:32:30 of for groups.
489. 00:32:32 Anyways, wouldn't it be cool to be able to invest in that kind of stuff and just have
490. 00:32:40 a bigger impact?
491. 00:32:44 I get all excited.
492. 00:32:46 Not that I'm comparing myself necessarily to Seheel Bloom, but you get around people
493. 00:32:50 like that who are doing the thing.
494. 00:32:52 You can't help but feel energized to like, "Hey, I really got to get serious about this
495. 00:32:57 and who knows what I'm capable of.
496. 00:32:59 Maybe I could do something awesome too."
497. 00:33:02 I've got a list of a couple people who are doing cool communities and I just really like
498. 00:33:08 what they're doing with their newsletter regardless of the size.
499. 00:33:11 Because I kind of have in my head, I want to get my newsletter to, right now it's about
500. 00:33:16 2000 subscribers.
501. 00:33:18 I want to get it to 10,000 because I feel like at 10,000 that's really when things start
502. 00:33:23 to change and you have more options.
503. 00:33:24 You can sell ads in your newsletter if you want to.
504. 00:33:28 At 10,000, if I've just continued to sell my products, maybe that's enough and that is
505. 00:33:35 able to provide the full-time living alone as an independent creator.
506. 00:33:42 But obviously if I'm going to grow my list to that size, it's not just get people on
507. 00:33:46 the list.
508. 00:33:47 I have to deliver consistent value.
509. 00:33:49 Very aware of my open rates being very high, my click-through rates being very high, my
510. 00:33:54 list even though it's small is pretty great.
511. 00:33:57 That's a result of serving people well for many years.
512. 00:34:03 Not necessarily the newsletter.
513. 00:34:04 I've shared, I've struggled to send that consistently.
514. 00:34:08 I don't want to neglect that anymore.
515. 00:34:09 And then the faith-based productivity community, I want to grow that.
516. 00:34:12 So I have a couple people who are really killing it in specific areas.
517. 00:34:16 And I want to kind of reverse engineer what they're doing.
518. 00:34:21 I've joined some newsletters, I've joined some workshops, joined some communities just
519. 00:34:26 because I want to poke around in there and be like, "How are they doing this?"
520. 00:34:30 Because I don't really know.
521. 00:34:31 But they seem to have it figured out.
522. 00:34:33 So let's see what they're doing.
523. 00:34:35 Figure out my version of that.
524. 00:34:37 I like it.
525. 00:34:39 Yeah, I actually have an action of this very similar to that.
526. 00:34:42 I've got three of them here.
527. 00:34:45 And I want to take, and I'm putting a time on this because we're talking about Joe's
528. 00:34:51 brain.
529. 00:34:53 And I'm going to give myself one week because I've been writing for the blog and I'm working
530. 00:34:59 my way towards making the newsletter that I have a little more, not a little more, but
531. 00:35:05 start writing for it again.
532. 00:35:09 But I want to make sure that in the space I'm talking about, because I'm kind of making
533. 00:35:14 a content topic change for me because I've done so much of the productivity stuff in
534. 00:35:21 the past.
535. 00:35:22 And a lot of what I've been writing about lately is handling tech at church.
536. 00:35:26 It's been a big thing and how do you run events well?
537. 00:35:30 And I've kind of been making that shift.
538. 00:35:32 But I know how people do things in the productivity space in those arenas.
539. 00:35:38 I don't really know how people do it in the church tech arenas.
540. 00:35:43 And I kind of want to see if I can take some of what I've learned elsewhere and mash that
541. 00:35:47 up.
542. 00:35:48 But I also don't know what works in those zones.
543. 00:35:51 So I'm giving myself one week to kind of examine what other people are doing in that space.
544. 00:35:58 But that was the one I had from this section here.
545. 00:36:01 Cool.
546. 00:36:02 Should go on to the next section?
547. 00:36:04 Sure.
548. 00:36:05 Or a chapter, I should say.
549. 00:36:08 So chapter two is algorithmic thinking.
550. 00:36:13 And don't have quite as many notes from this section.
551. 00:36:16 It talks about pattern recognition engines have four components, data collection, finding
552. 00:36:20 important variations, detecting similarities and generating predictions.
553. 00:36:25 Basically, the point here is to find the patterns because the best ideas don't come from the
554. 00:36:31 hours of isolated practice.
555. 00:36:34 And patterns are more easily found in quantity.
556. 00:36:40 There's one specific thing I wanted to talk about in this chapter.
557. 00:36:46 Okay.
558. 00:36:47 So this is books versus audiobooks.
559. 00:36:53 So he actually has a pretty brilliant strategy, I think, here to spot differences.
560. 00:37:00 He says, "Take a single work and consume it multiple ways."
561. 00:37:06 So you mentioned like we read physical books for the most part.
562. 00:37:14 I don't know that I've ever done an audiobook for Bookworm.
563. 00:37:18 Maybe the art of asking back in the day.
564. 00:37:20 I couldn't remember.
565. 00:37:22 I do vaguely remember there was one that you said you gave up and listened to it.
566. 00:37:28 Probably the art of asking.
567. 00:37:29 While you were running maybe?
568. 00:37:30 Yeah.
569. 00:37:31 Yeah, probably the art of asking.
570. 00:37:32 Does it sound right?
571. 00:37:33 Because I'm remembering now that she had like songs in between the chapters.
572. 00:37:38 So I'm remembering as I'm talking.
573. 00:37:42 But yeah, the general principle for me is that you get out of a book what you put into it.
574. 00:37:50 And I'm actually thankful that we have to muscle through and finish books that don't
575. 00:37:54 necessarily resonate with us because the other one picked it.
576. 00:37:57 I've learned a lot and there are some books that I probably would have given up on like
577. 00:38:01 how to read a book that have taught me some very important lessons that have kind of stuck
578. 00:38:08 with me because I stuck with the book back in the day.
579. 00:38:14 I know that's not generally the advice.
580. 00:38:17 There's lots of books out there and if something's not resonating then go ahead and find something
581. 00:38:23 else.
582. 00:38:24 I think our audience is probably generally going to lean towards audiobooks because podcasts
583. 00:38:31 are audio format.
584. 00:38:34 So there's that.
585. 00:38:37 But I do like the idea of supplementing a book with an audiobook.
586. 00:38:42 I've actually done that but I've never articulated it.
587. 00:38:47 I didn't codify it.
588. 00:38:48 I just kind of realized that I don't always want to listen to podcasts and there are some
589. 00:38:55 things that I want to listen to or revisit the material over and over again.
590. 00:39:02 So having an audiobook is a great way to do that.
591. 00:39:05 Like one example is Jim Rohn, the art of exceptional living.
592. 00:39:11 I have read that read quote unquote listened to that book probably a hundred times because
593. 00:39:18 Jim Rohn is great and there's just like these little principles.
594. 00:39:21 Jim Rohn is the personal development guy who mentored Anthony Robbins back in the day.
595. 00:39:31 He ran his merch table but I feel like Jim Rohn is the perfect balance of there's no
596. 00:39:41 hype there.
597. 00:39:43 It just feels very approachable.
598. 00:39:46 If you listen to his voice too he's got this kind of twang which is I can see how people
599. 00:39:53 would find it annoying but he'll be presenting in Alaska a rhetorical question.
600. 00:39:58 He'll be like of course you know stuff like that.
601. 00:40:02 I just I actually kind of like that.
602. 00:40:04 I want to say that's that type of thing.
603. 00:40:07 That's the character in somebody's voice that I absolutely love.
604. 00:40:09 Yeah.
605. 00:40:10 I know that it drives people bonkers but I absolutely love those.
606. 00:40:14 You either love it or you hate it and there are definitely voices where like I can't listen
607. 00:40:18 to this.
608. 00:40:20 Like Tony Robbins actually on his money book is his audible version.
609. 00:40:24 He did the first chapter just so he could have his voice there but his voice is kind of going
610. 00:40:28 from all the crazy stuff that he does on stage.
611. 00:40:31 So he had somebody else actually read the rest of the book.
612. 00:40:35 But I like this idea of like okay so you've read the book you may as well listen to it
613. 00:40:40 also to get something out of it.
614. 00:40:42 There was another book I came across recently.
615. 00:40:45 The person recommended okay so you bought this version get the audio version they made
616. 00:40:50 the audio version as cheap as they could I think it was like 99 cents on audibles and
617. 00:40:54 they recommended that you listen to it while you read it.
618. 00:40:57 I think that's actually a pretty good approach too.
619. 00:41:00 I think you would actually get more out of it if you saw it and listen to it at the same
620. 00:41:04 time.
621. 00:41:05 I don't think I'm definitely I don't think I'm going to do that on a regular basis.
622. 00:41:09 But I do think this is a cool idea of like once you've once you've consumed a book and
623. 00:41:15 go back and revisit it with an audio format kind of curious your thoughts on the mediums
624. 00:41:24 and if this is an idea that you want to practice at all.
625. 00:41:29 Yeah I haven't really considered like consuming the same thing multiple times in different
626. 00:41:34 mediums until I read this.
627. 00:41:38 I don't really know what my opinion on this is like usually I can tell you like oh yeah
628. 00:41:42 this is exactly what I think and I can come up with that very quickly.
629. 00:41:46 But I don't know that I have an opinion on this one just because I know like different
630. 00:41:50 mediums strike me differently anyway if I'm sitting and reading it I'm much more likely
631. 00:41:55 to recall it later when I want.
632. 00:42:00 If I'm listening to it it's very easy for me to tune it out and not remember it as well.
633. 00:42:07 But if I read it and listen to it at the same time or independently from each other I'm
634. 00:42:13 not sure what the results of that would be.
635. 00:42:17 So having no personal experience with that I don't know that I could say that this way
636. 00:42:24 is better than that way or vice versa I just don't know I don't know what to do with that
637. 00:42:29 one it's just interesting.
638. 00:42:31 So I'm sure it works but I tend to listen to a lot of music and then at the same time
639. 00:42:38 you know if I get to where I'm done with like whatever new playlist is that I'm working
640. 00:42:42 through music wise I'll put on some podcasts and catch up as fast as I can but trying to
641. 00:42:49 do the same thing in multiple mediums I don't know what to do with that one.
642. 00:42:55 Yeah I listen to a lot of podcasts I don't listen to a whole lot of music and I have
643. 00:43:03 my regular ones that I listen to they tend to be tech related I don't actually listen
644. 00:43:08 to that many productivity podcasts and I think that kind of hits that something he mentions
645. 00:43:14 later on in this book about avoiding influences.
646. 00:43:21 He mentions some specific like musicians who don't listen to each other's music specifically
647. 00:43:27 so that they're in the same genre so that they can't be influenced by the other person
648. 00:43:33 I think it was like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen or something like that but I don't know
649. 00:43:42 I don't think I've consciously decided like that's why I don't listen to the two productivity
650. 00:43:48 podcasts.
651. 00:43:50 I am kind of getting burnt out on the tech stuff a little bit.
652. 00:43:56 I think I need to dial back some of the stuff that I listen to but I do like to listen to
653. 00:44:01 things especially when I'm like in the car or at the gym and so I have been thinking about
654. 00:44:09 audiobooks I do have an audible subscription and I've had it for years by the way tip for
655. 00:44:16 audible if you weren't aware of this I think this is probably still the case.
656. 00:44:20 They have the subscription options right and it's like you get a credit a month well for
657. 00:44:25 some people like me can't actually go through a whole audiobook every month because it's
658. 00:44:31 like the second or third thing that you're gonna listen to right so you have all these
659. 00:44:36 credits that stack up but you can't have more than I think three credits in the bank so eventually
660. 00:44:45 I decided I can't keep up with this I'm just gonna cancel and when you cancel they give
661. 00:44:50 you an option to downgrade to a silver membership instead of the gold which is a credit every
662. 00:44:56 two months for half the price.
663. 00:45:02 So if you're interested in audible but you don't want to you can't keep up with it it's
664. 00:45:09 a little more than you want to spend sign up cancel and then go with the silver plan.
665. 00:45:16 Nice nice before we get too far I want to I want to come back to something you had just
666. 00:45:19 said the burnout on the tech piece that's something that I think I've been through which
667. 00:45:27 is why I've got a little bit of a content like shift a little bit but at the same time
668. 00:45:33 it's occurred to me that that's pretty common look at a lot of like the productivity bloggers
669. 00:45:39 and podcasters and such like they tend to last a certain number of years and then either
670. 00:45:46 the person changes topics and generally stays with whatever that second topic is pretty
671. 00:45:51 much indefinitely or they have a complete like almost idea ideological shift like they'll
672. 00:46:00 go from doing the tech side of productivity to like the creative side of productivity
673. 00:46:05 or trying to like find the why behind it like they make a shift.
674. 00:46:10 Are you talking about me Joe?
675. 00:46:13 I'll let you interpret this however you want to interpret it but it seems like kind of take
676. 00:46:18 a hot take here on reverse engineering like it seems like that happens.
677. 00:46:23 I don't really have any data to prove that but it seems like that's a thing that I've
678. 00:46:27 noticed over time like people will do this for a period and then step away from it and
679. 00:46:32 like I've done that you're kind of making that shift right now it seems like I know
680. 00:46:37 Mike Vardy has kind of done that so people do this and it's not bad it's just just the
681. 00:46:45 way it is like people have a change in direction over time but if you're going to reverse engineer
682. 00:46:51 the path that's a path that seems to happen so if you're going to get into productivity
683. 00:46:55 blogging just be prepared that three-ish years into it four years into it you're probably
684. 00:47:02 going to want to change your topic just be aware of that.
685. 00:47:05 Well let's go into the next chapter because I feel like that's starting to get at something
686. 00:47:10 in here that is related that I wanted to talk about so chapter three is the Curse of Creativity
687. 00:47:16 and the Curse of Creativity like that chapter title kind of tweaked me a little bit because
688. 00:47:23 I think creativity is really important and I have thought for a long time that I was
689. 00:47:30 not creative so that was a limiting belief that I had to come over and overcome and the
690. 00:47:38 fact that I finally did it I feel like creativity is a good thing right so yeah exactly black
691. 00:47:44 how could creativity be a curse I think what he's talking about here is that the more because
692. 00:47:54 of the point he makes at the beginning is the more often a formula is used the more predictable
693. 00:47:58 and less appealing it becomes so I mentioned even in this podcast that creativity is a formula
694. 00:48:07 so when you start to figure out what your formula is it starts to lose some of the magic it
695. 00:48:17 feels like that's not really all that great anymore this is just a thing that I do however
696. 00:48:30 on the flip side of that novelty makes us uncomfortable so where's the balance here and
697. 00:48:42 I think the thing that he lands on here is this optimal newness which is a derivative
698. 00:48:50 with a twist right everything is a remix and that's important especially if you want
699. 00:48:57 to spread new ideas because he mentions a study actually by Jennifer Mueller a USC psychologist
700. 00:49:04 who said that the more novel and idea is the more likely it is to be rejected okay that's
701. 00:49:09 interesting so I want to say something that is basically something that is easy to understand
702. 00:49:15 or easy to accept but put my own little spin or or twist on it okay so I don't have to
703. 00:49:20 have it all figured out I can just kind of share my thinking along the way because that's
704. 00:49:26 how our brains connect dots anyways I feel like with how to read a book right it's a topical
705. 00:49:32 reading it's one thing here one thing there and slowly your beliefs kind of change over
706. 00:49:36 time it's not like oh my gosh I read this book and I was totally wrong and now I see clearly
707. 00:49:40 and I go 180 degrees in the opposite direction I think that's kind of the picture that people
708. 00:49:45 have when they find the right book right the one that's going to change their life but
709. 00:49:50 that's not actually what happens there is an idea here that actually it's a heading and
710. 00:49:57 there's really isn't anything else he says about this but it reminded me of something
711. 00:50:02 I heard from Ann lore ness labs creativity happens when ideas have sex that's really
712. 00:50:11 your job if you want to create is to collect ideas and then your brain is going to mash
713. 00:50:16 them up mix them up connect them break them down put them back together in different ways
714. 00:50:22 and then the output is the output you really can't judge the output it's the natural result
715. 00:50:29 of the the system right so all you can really do is get better inputs if you want connect
716. 00:50:34 other dots but your creativity is determined by what you pay attention to and that's something
717. 00:50:38 that's the heel bloom talked about at aircraft and commerce he talked about his sika system
718. 00:50:43 but the first see is consumed and he basically said that whatever you consume is or whatever
719. 00:50:50 you create is downstream from what you consume so he's very careful about the things that
720. 00:50:56 he consumes but he does consume for I think an hour or two hours at the very beginning
721. 00:51:01 of his day but he's curated the sources you know so it's it's high quality stuff that
722. 00:51:06 can allow him to to create the the type of stuff that he wants to create I I kind of found
723. 00:51:15 myself in this section like torn and twisted a bunch of different directions because I
724. 00:51:21 found myself like wait how can creativity be a curse oh that's a really good idea about
725. 00:51:25 creativity Malcolm Gladwell does that okay that's really cool wait how is that a bad
726. 00:51:30 thing like I found myself like on this roller coaster and I couldn't quite figure out if
727. 00:51:34 he was doing that intentionally probably doing that intentionally where it just seemed like
728. 00:51:40 huh in one sense he's saying creativity can get to a point where it causes problems or
729. 00:51:46 you get burnout on it or the idea is such a big idea that nobody will get behind it
730. 00:51:52 because it's way before it's time and it's so far removed that people can't comprehend
731. 00:51:57 it like I get that so then you got to find the people who are really big thinkers
732. 00:52:04 or scale it back like that that's like the curse part of it right I don't really know
733. 00:52:10 what to do with this but it's cool it's it's it's it's an interesting exploration I think
734. 00:52:17 of the creativity piece because like you're saying having these different dots that you're
735. 00:52:21 collecting and then putting them together and then letting those create new new ideas
736. 00:52:27 that's like the magic right and trying to cultivate that to let those seeds grow that's
737. 00:52:36 the job of creativity and then nurturing those until they come to harvest right if we follow
738. 00:52:42 that whole analogy there that I can really resonate with I understand like there can be
739. 00:52:50 some downsides to it I don't really reject that maybe you reject those downsides maybe
740. 00:52:56 I'm just not looking at the downsides correctly I'm looking at the gap and not the game that's
741. 00:53:00 the problem and I like it I like this idea of creativity but at the same time being aware
742. 00:53:09 that you can take things too far in different arenas like that's one that I know I tend
743. 00:53:14 to want to struggle with just because yeah I can take it too far I can and I'm saying
744. 00:53:20 all this because I have the tendency to take an idea and then run with it way too soon and
745. 00:53:25 then it becomes something it shouldn't be and it's morphed itself into something that
746. 00:53:30 I shouldn't be getting into this is one of my action items here and it's kind of I brought
747. 00:53:37 it up now it was technically it started for me in the last section the last section I
748. 00:53:43 was working through a question he had like what makes this enticing and it was part of
749. 00:53:50 the algorithmic approach so like I want to work on putting together a checklist of sorts
750. 00:53:55 for examining an idea before deciding if it's one I should run with if that makes any sense
751. 00:54:01 at all basically why is this idea of interest to me and does it actually apply to the goals
752. 00:54:13 life themes core values that I have and does it help me get those like get towards those
753. 00:54:21 so that's one of my action ends here so put together this checklist all right there are
754. 00:54:26 definitely places where like you can be too creative he shared some examples this wasn't
755. 00:54:31 one of the ones that he shared but the one that I thought of was the Newton that apple
756. 00:54:36 made back in the day I know that there are people who absolutely love that thing yeah
757. 00:54:44 and it was definitely ahead of its time it was the precursor to the iPad but when it came
758. 00:54:54 out it was a complete flop and looking back at it it could do some pretty technologically
759. 00:55:00 impressive things but no one connected with it when it initially existed and I think it
760. 00:55:05 got killed when Steve Jobs came back and the same guy who announced the iPad years later
761. 00:55:13 yes so right thing at the right time the other thing that really just to hit on this idea
762. 00:55:20 again from this section is you need a formula that highlights your unique abilities so when
763. 00:55:27 it comes to figuring out the formula for yourself you can't just pick and choose or
764. 00:55:33 copy what other people have done you got to find one that really fits for for you it's
765. 00:55:38 going to be it's going to be different and that term unique abilities obviously that's
766. 00:55:43 from Dan Sullivan and the gap in the game right so that that's what I thought of when
767. 00:55:50 I heard that and it's like oh okay so I'm going to reverse engineer how to make my thing
768. 00:55:56 be a consistent full-time creator in a way that highlights the things that are uniquely
769. 00:56:02 me and the things that I am best at the things that I'm good at or are known for thinking
770. 00:56:08 about that probably there's sketch note elements to that which is not something I thought
771. 00:56:13 I would ever be known for because still don't think I'm a very good artist but anyways let's
772. 00:56:21 go on to the next section so part two is the vision ability gap and the first chapter in
773. 00:56:30 this section is chapter four the scoreboard principle I like this one I'm a big fan of
774. 00:56:38 scoreboards the biggest win I got from the digital marketing work that I had done the
775. 00:56:46 whole last 18 months I feel was the creation of a scoreboard and getting people to look
776. 00:56:52 at it consistently and starting to gain traction in using the metrics to make decisions didn't
777. 00:57:00 make as much progress as I would have liked to but I found that process of creating it
778. 00:57:04 and getting everybody to get an alignment with it that was really really valuable I
779. 00:57:09 would love to do that for other people in some way shape or form but the the minute that
780. 00:57:16 we introduce a metric he says we start optimizing for it so that's good right we can identify
781. 00:57:23 the key metrics but that also is kind of a bad thing because one of the mistakes people
782. 00:57:30 make is they collect a whole bunch of metrics all of these things are important no you can't
783. 00:57:35 watch them all you got to pick a couple of them that you are going to optimize for when
784. 00:57:39 you optimize for everything you haven't optimized for anything so metrics are incentives you
785. 00:57:47 got to pick them carefully and the other piece to this that I like was the coaching clients
786. 00:57:56 that around Friedman works with brings up time tracking again Joe he makes all of his
787. 00:58:02 coaching clients track their time just so it brings awareness and together they can
788. 00:58:08 review their findings when they meet together and I mean I knew this I've taught this but
789. 00:58:15 he said it in a little bit different way it's like well yeah you don't really know how
790. 00:58:19 you're spending your time and even these people who are running successful businesses because
791. 00:58:24 I know like executive coaching is really expensive so I'm assuming that's what this
792. 00:58:29 is and people who are are paying let's just say $10,000 a month I don't know if that's
793. 00:58:36 the actual cost but I know like that's what some executive coaches cost it goes up from
794. 00:58:40 there $10,000 a month and the first thing he's going to have him do is the same thing
795. 00:58:45 I tell people to track your time and then let's talk about where it's going it's like
796. 00:58:52 huh that's interesting but also you know obviously there's there's a little bit of
797. 00:58:59 juice behind that now for me because it's like well I've kind of thought this to be true
798. 00:59:03 but he's saying the same thing so yeah I guess there is something to this I'm not
799. 00:59:10 real thrilled that you brought that up to be completely honest why do we need to track
800. 00:59:16 your time Joe well I don't want to and the thing here is like I know I know that I have
801. 00:59:27 a lot of dead space in my day like I'm I'm aware that there's a lot of time that I could
802. 00:59:33 be using for other things I've kind of been working my way towards like trying to do things
803. 00:59:39 slow and methodical instead of rapid fire which is my tendency because I know that the
804. 00:59:45 rapid fireness tends to leave me with things that are a mess but if I were to do it slow
805. 00:59:50 and methodical I'd be a little more put together a little more prepared for some things so I'm
806. 00:59:57 trying to like make a little bit of that shift and I've been fairly successful with that over
807. 01:00:00 the last probably two or three months at the same time trying to decide like where my day
808. 01:00:08 is going to go ahead of time the time blocking side of it not necessarily the time tracking
809. 01:00:12 side of it is one that I've been slowly working my way towards like I do it somewhat not very
810. 01:00:19 well but I've gotten more and more to the point where I can do that just because the
811. 01:00:26 the fires that I need to put out are not as frequent now we're recording this on a Wednesday
812. 01:00:34 morning which is like two days before this releases which is not normal for us and that's
813. 01:00:40 because we had power go out at our church and Mike had some stuff going on last week
814. 01:00:44 and then we thought we were doing it here and that didn't work and then we do it there
815. 01:00:47 it's like it'd be easier if we do it anyway it created a bit of a mess so like that was
816. 01:00:51 because of a lot of that is because of fires that I'm taking care of it's like I can't
817. 01:00:56 even turn on my interface to plug my microphone in so we obviously can't record this afternoon
818. 01:01:03 like that that happens so I'm aware that thing that sort of thing occurs but at the same time
819. 01:01:10 I know that I can make the plans and then I can adjust plans once they're once they're
820. 01:01:15 created and I've not done a very good job of building those plans even if I'm going to
821. 01:01:21 throw half of it out the window if learn that when I'm willing to put it together I still
822. 01:01:27 get almost double the amount of things done in a day just by putting that plan together
823. 01:01:33 so this is the last of the action items I have for the book is like okay I'm going to
824. 01:01:37 try to at least plan this each day and because I've been doing it somewhat and had some success
825. 01:01:48 with it so I want that to continue and I want to try to build on that maybe before we're
826. 01:01:53 done with this I'll have another action item to add to the list but I'm at least going
827. 01:01:57 to take that one on for time blocking but time tracking not doing that I get that I could
828. 01:02:06 pay ten thousand dollars and somebody would do that the other piece of that is like if
829. 01:02:10 I paid ten thousand dollars and someone told me I needed to do that absolutely I'm going
830. 01:02:14 to do it because I'm missing something and he's got something he's going to tell me about
831. 01:02:19 it probably the exact thing I would expect him to say but it's so important that someone
832. 01:02:26 that I paid ten thousand dollars to is telling me to do it well then it's got a little more
833. 01:02:29 weight behind it so I'm more likely to do it so I would do it if I'd paid that but I'm
834. 01:02:34 not paying that yeah so I'm not gonna do it true maybe I should just start charging ten
835. 01:02:41 thousand dollars to have people track their time you figure out how to do that and I will
836. 01:02:47 jump on board alright well I am gonna revamp my time track I do check my time I use time
837. 01:02:57 re although I noticed the last couple weeks with how nuts things have been and also the
838. 01:03:04 structure of my time re because it's all all my timers are kind of set up for the day
839. 01:03:10 job still and if there is any friction at all like I don't know which timer to put this
840. 01:03:16 under then I just don't start one okay so it's fallen actually the last couple weeks
841. 01:03:24 and this week as you mentioned recording this on a Wednesday I've been consistent in tracking
842. 01:03:29 my time again but I want to by the end of this week so before next week actually tweak
843. 01:03:36 all of my timers in time re because that's not something I ever want to stop and do when
844. 01:03:41 I'm switching timers but if I took just 20 minutes I could dial it in and so I am committing
845. 01:03:49 to to do that as an action item I wonder if that's what I've always struggled with is
846. 01:03:53 like those categories this is why I always fail to accomplish it because I know that if
847. 01:04:00 I take the time to try to figure out what those need to be I end up with like way too
848. 01:04:06 many and then it gets to be like too detailed and I'm always like wait should I be switching
849. 01:04:12 should I keep going what is that but if I made it to vague like personal work and you
850. 01:04:17 just have those two back and forth look that's unhelpful yeah exactly I try to do it for
851. 01:04:22 like the different modes so that's that's the part I think that always gets me to where
852. 01:04:29 is those where are those lines what's actually helpful I think it's important in terms of
853. 01:04:36 collecting the metrics but then you have to pick the right metrics too so he mentions
854. 01:04:42 Cal Newport's leading indicator of his key metric is the hours of unbroken concentration
855. 01:04:50 deep work time basically that's a really good one so like I have a timer on my time
856. 01:04:55 memory for thinking time and I try to get at least an hour of thinking time every day
857. 01:05:02 and that's not necessarily I'm sitting and I'm just thinking about things that's the time
858. 01:05:05 when I'll go for a run or something and I'll just let my brain kind of noodle on stuff
859. 01:05:10 but I want to build in some of that margin to unpack things I've got ones for like webinar
860. 01:05:15 prep and podcast recording editing post-production all that kind of stuff but I don't have one
861. 01:05:21 for like working on the newsletter I don't have I've got one for Obsidian University
862. 01:05:26 like I could break that down into different different components because then I can look
863. 01:05:32 at the time that I spent on a particular tag last week the time I spent preparing for
864. 01:05:37 a webinar versus presenting a webinar and when that number hits 10x you're done because
865. 01:05:43 it's probably pretty close anyways let's go on to the next chapter here
866. 01:05:51 so chapter five is how to take the risk out of risk taking and there's a couple kind
867. 01:06:05 of tangential things I wanted to talk about in here one of the things that really kind
868. 01:06:15 of stuck with me was that it's hard to learn at work because the work environment is typically
869. 01:06:22 unforgiving and there is no room for failure I can definitely see how that is so even if
870. 01:06:28 your organization professes to have an emphasis on continuous improvement and personal growth
871. 01:06:35 and you want to as a leadership team invest in your people you got to be careful because
872. 01:06:43 you got to recognize that if they're going to learn they're going to make mistakes things
873. 01:06:48 are going to be inefficient when they make those mistakes but you just kind of have
874. 01:06:54 to put up with that I can build that into my structure because I'm a one man show currently
875. 01:07:00 I mean I've got a assist at the helps me with some of the sermon sketch notes stuffs and
876. 01:07:04 like Rachel helps me with faith is productivity Toby helps with editing so not truly a one
877. 01:07:09 man show but you get get what I mean I don't have employees that I am paying to do specific
878. 01:07:15 jobs because the minute that you have that mindset everything is efficiency based how
879. 01:07:20 can we do it as quickly as we can so the company can be more profitable whereas really like
880. 01:07:26 instead of how do I get this done as quickly as I can now a question I want to be asking
881. 01:07:29 is like how can I learn as much as I can especially where I'm at right now so one of the ways
882. 01:07:35 that you can learn things is to make things without necessarily launching things you mentioned
883. 01:07:44 that Zig Ziglar performed 3,000 times for free before he landed a paid gig but the one
884. 01:07:49 that really kind of stood out to me was Liz Winestead who is the Daily Show co-creator
885. 01:07:57 he tests material on Twitter and I like that idea it's actually validation for in my mind
886. 01:08:06 stuff that I've learned from ship 30 for 30 where you're writing for the social platforms
887. 01:08:12 and then from there you're trying to people like what you have they sign up for your newsletter
888. 01:08:16 eventually they buy your thing but that's the reason I am still on Twitter it's Twitter
889. 01:08:21 was never my community it wasn't the place that my friends hung out but it is a great
890. 01:08:27 place a great audience the public square right where you can share stuff and you can
891. 01:08:33 see what kind of pops off just a example of this before Obsidian University launched
892. 01:08:40 I did a whole bunch of threads on like this is how I do Bible study in Obsidian so I do
893. 01:08:44 book notes in Obsidian this is how I do personal retreats in Obsidian right and so and then
894. 01:08:48 the last week I had like a thread of threads and so one of those threads was this is how
895. 01:08:55 I set up Obsidian as my writing tool because I came from Ulysses and Ulysses had specific
896. 01:09:02 features I was like wouldn't that be great if I could add those back in Obsidian well
897. 01:09:05 third party community plugins you can do a lot of that stuff in terms of the number
898. 01:09:11 of of likes and interactions with people the different threads that I created because
899. 01:09:15 I got responses to all of them because they're all high quality threads they have images
900. 01:09:19 that show like this is you know how I do it examples but the one that got literally
901. 01:09:25 ten times more than any of the other ones was the writing one so that's kind of indicative
902. 01:09:34 of this like make noise listen for signals what Ship30 talks about and that's got me
903. 01:09:40 thinking like is that the thing that people are struggling with Obsidian for is like they
904. 01:09:45 want to be able to create with it should I be pivoting Obsidian University into something
905. 01:09:50 like creating an Obsidian something like that I mean that's where it seems like all the
906. 01:09:56 yeah and obviously I've got to do more tests right and figure that out I'm not going to
907. 01:09:59 just switch that that's kind of the whole point of this this chapter it's like I could
908. 01:10:03 just say oh there's one data point I'm going to make this this this move but when you it
909. 01:10:08 or when you have a whole bunch of small tests the small bets you know that you're you're
910. 01:10:12 replacing you you do that enough and you can you can connect the dots and you can see what
911. 01:10:19 audiences are really looking for and he mentions that we're in a golden age for feedback 100%
912. 01:10:26 agree with that doesn't really really matter how big your audience is I mean I'm not Ali
913. 01:10:30 Abdul I don't have millions of subscribers my newsletter I mentioned earlier 1800 people
914. 01:10:38 basically he showed a screenshot of him posting his newsletter from an airplane and in the
915. 01:10:45 screenshot you can see he's got like 346,000 people I mean this is not an apples to apples
916. 01:10:52 comparison here right but it doesn't matter because I can use the same tool and I can get
917. 01:10:58 the same feedback it's a smaller sample size but I've got my people it's it's kind of cool
918. 01:11:05 that when you think about it like that's kind of amazing that I can do that yeah I've heard
919. 01:11:11 you talk about this before with like posting things to Twitter or Mastodon as like a test
920. 01:11:18 case because like the the amount of effort that goes into writing those is significantly
921. 01:11:23 less than putting together an entire blog post and releasing it so yeah no I totally
922. 01:11:31 am with you like it's it's a way of as the title says here how to take the risk out of
923. 01:11:37 risk taking it's like well if you go through the process of basically testing all of these
924. 01:11:45 ideas gathering feedback on those ideas and then using that to pick the ones based on
925. 01:11:52 that feedback which ones have the most traction and build out on that idea like that's that's
926. 01:12:00 like gold and in today's world of social media the ability to test ideas is crazy easy hundred
927. 01:12:08 years ago that would have been significantly more difficult to just get around and figure
928. 01:12:14 out what your feedback is this is almost instant you can find out within a day or just within
929. 01:12:20 a few hours what that needs to be so like that in itself makes it well worth the time
930. 01:12:27 so yes I'm with you on this I don't know what to do with it it's cool idea I just don't
931. 01:12:31 know what to do with it yet well I'll tell you what to do with it take your church text
932. 01:12:36 stuff and start writing about it on Twitter that's a good idea that's a good idea writing
933. 01:12:40 notes putting it out on Twitter and all the places I send things Twitter made it really
934. 01:12:46 hard for me to do that though their API stuff kind of wrecked all sorts of stuff for me
935. 01:12:52 yeah so there are a couple of tools most of them have disappeared but the ones that I
936. 01:12:59 would recommend type fully is probably the best UI and that is the cheapest one also
937. 01:13:05 I think it's about a hundred bucks a year and that's the one the original one for making
938. 01:13:10 threads and things like that and then there's a hype fury and tweet hunter or the other
939. 01:13:14 two that allow you to cross post to LinkedIn and Instagram and other places those are the
940. 01:13:21 only ones that are willing to pay that much money for the yeah yeah interestingly no I
941. 01:13:26 don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole but as we record this there's a bruja
942. 01:13:29 ha with reddit because they announced their API price same thing yeah same thing I'm I'm
943. 01:13:35 concerned this is not a Twitter thing this is a trend for all of these large data sets
944. 01:13:42 which are going to feed all these large language models feeling we're going to see more of
945. 01:13:47 this stuff but yep so we go yes yes I'm with you on the small tidbits thing and you're
946. 01:13:56 absolutely right like posting some small stuff around like here's how I'm running a virtual
947. 01:14:01 sound check today do you even know what that is that's question number one yep exactly
948. 01:14:11 the next chapter is practicing in three dimensions and this is kind of about visualization there
949. 01:14:23 is a note I mentioned I had jotted down here about he mentions he says to pause and consider
950. 01:14:28 your progress which is very much the gap versus the gain yep exactly but the big thing is
951. 01:14:33 about visualization and kind of what that does to your your brain there was an interesting
952. 01:14:39 story at the beginning about how what you do changes your brain and you talked about how
953. 01:14:46 taxi drivers have this larger hippocampus so their brain is physically changing based
954. 01:14:52 on their their occupation and he kind of refutes the the belief that well maybe the taxi drivers
955. 01:14:57 because they have a large hippocampus and he basically no it becomes that way as you're
956. 01:15:01 forced to remember all the streets and navigate through things consistently so that's that
957. 01:15:11 plasticity of your your brain that's a concept that has always kind of fascinated me and
958. 01:15:17 he doesn't go too deep into it here but but basically the takeaway is make sure that you're
959. 01:15:22 intentionally doing things that are going to change you in in desired directions and
960. 01:15:29 then when it comes to the visualization piece I mean he talks about directors and athletes
961. 01:15:35 and coaches and how they rely on film to help them learn from the past and make crucial
962. 01:15:39 adjustments he really spends a lot of time talking about visualization but the one takeaway
963. 01:15:45 from the visualization piece that I really wanted to think about was how visualization
964. 01:15:51 is powerful when you visualize the process not just the outcome so it's not visualization
965. 01:15:55 in terms of by the end of the season I'm gonna have a batting average of whatever or we're
966. 01:16:01 gonna have won the championship like okay that's cool but that alone isn't enough to get you
967. 01:16:09 to that point he talks about Michael Phelps and the the blind you know when his goggles
968. 01:16:14 broken he had to race blind in the Beijing Olympics and talked about how his coach used
969. 01:16:18 to make him do that he'd turn off the lights in the pool and make him swim blind you can
970. 01:16:23 see where he was going so he knew exactly how far stuff was and he was rehearsing this in
971. 01:16:28 his mind and so he kind of kind of knew what it was gonna feel like it didn't rattle him
972. 01:16:33 when it happened like that's all really powerful but I like that emphasis on visualizing the
973. 01:16:39 process so it's not just I've done the thing but I've shown up and I've put in the work
974. 01:16:46 to make the thing I feel like that seems kind of obvious but the way he explains it I think
975. 01:16:53 it's powerful because if you can picture yourself sitting in the chair and writing the words then
976. 01:17:00 you're not jarred by that I don't want to say surprised because everyone who's a writer
977. 01:17:06 knows that the words aren't gonna write themselves right you do have to sit down and type them
978. 01:17:10 or write them by hand whatever your tool of choice is and but but there is something like
979. 01:17:17 if you're not thinking about that process ahead of time the moment that you sit down
980. 01:17:20 in the chair and you are faced with the blinking cursor it's like oh crap yeah I get it there's
981. 01:17:29 there's a piece here in this towards the back of the chapter where he talks about like the
982. 01:17:34 five ways that this visualization process makes you perform better one of these is that it
983. 01:17:41 grows your confidence and like the story you just told with Michael Phelps when his goggles
984. 01:17:48 broke it didn't rattle him because he was confident and knew he knows exactly how many
985. 01:17:54 strokes he needs to take in order to reach the other end he knows exactly all the details
986. 01:17:59 not a swimmer so I can't tell you how many kicks I don't know but these are the types
987. 01:18:03 of things like he just knows these things because he's confident in the process he's
988. 01:18:07 been there he knows what he's up against and visualization is a way of getting in the reps
989. 01:18:16 and having yourself in the position where you've taken the time to visualize things like I think
990. 01:18:22 of like the transitional gaps between things I'm in the sound booth waiting for an event
991. 01:18:29 to start it's got two and a half minutes before the event's gonna start what am I gonna do
992. 01:18:33 in those two and a half minutes my current nervous tick is to just double check all the
993. 01:18:38 patching I've got on a sound board and make sure I've got all the stuff queued correctly
994. 01:18:42 but at this point I've already run through those things three to five times so I really
995. 01:18:46 don't need to do it again it's just a nervous thing that I tend to do I could easily sit
996. 01:18:51 there and take that time and visualize the process of that service so that I'm better
997. 01:18:58 able to run it without having to constantly reference my notes as we go through that and
998. 01:19:02 then that would give me more confidence to do a better job when I'm running that event
999. 01:19:07 like those are the things that my brain goes to because then whenever I've got the chance
1000. 01:19:11 to do that I know that the overall experience for everybody the quality level of that increases
1001. 01:19:16 significantly so being able to do that that visualization process before the service starts
1002. 01:19:21 like that's an awesome thing to do but I hadn't really thought about it the development of
1003. 01:19:26 confidence through that process could have a very big impact later on through through
1004. 01:19:33 your actions so yeah I really like this one the third dimension being in your brain I
1005. 01:19:39 like it yep yeah there's lots of advantages of it need to cause out help to identify the
1006. 01:19:44 obstacles gives you an emotional preview lets you front load the decisions in advance
1007. 01:19:49 shrinks the anxiety and grows the confidence to you were just talking about activates the
1008. 01:19:53 same neural pathways is actually doing the activity that one blew my mind yeah that one's
1009. 01:19:58 nuts to me really yep it shouldn't be possible alright let's go on to the last one here so
1010. 01:20:05 chapter seven is how to talk to experts and the big point that he makes in this chapter
1011. 01:20:13 is that experts rarely make great instructors which is kind of interesting but sort of makes
1012. 01:20:21 sense after he breaks it all down there's this thing that I've been familiar with but
1013. 01:20:26 he talks a little bit more about it than I have heard previously called the curse of
1014. 01:20:30 knowledge which is the that knowing something makes it impossible to imagine not knowing
1015. 01:20:37 it so once you know something once you develop the skill to a certain level you kind of forget
1016. 01:20:43 what it was like before you knew that before you had that skill so why is that a problem
1017. 01:20:52 because experts once you achieve that level of expert I'm projecting here but assuming
1018. 01:20:58 that I was an expert in anything there's a good chance that I will fall into the same
1019. 01:21:02 trap of vastly underestimating how long it takes to acquire that skill in fact he says
1020. 01:21:09 that experts leave out 70% of the steps that are required to succeed that's kind of crazy
1021. 01:21:18 to think about so he has a couple of tactics that you should use when you're talking to
1022. 01:21:25 experts to help highlight the things that you really need to know journey questions process
1023. 01:21:30 questions discovery questions where you're asking like well what did you do right that
1024. 01:21:37 would be a journey question what was that what was that like for you or how do you actually
1025. 01:21:41 walk through and do your work order of steps involved with that what did you learn from
1026. 01:21:47 from the experience all that that kind of stuff and I don't necessarily have an action
1027. 01:21:52 I'm associated with this but I did find this this part fascinating I have I've got an interesting
1028. 01:21:59 story about this because as somebody who is big into sound systems like massive sound
1029. 01:22:05 systems I know that there's always a thing I'm trying to do where I'm trying to figure
1030. 01:22:10 out how other people run sound for bands and because it's a very personal thing and there's
1031. 01:22:17 a plethora of ways that people can do this and I'm always curious how somebody like what
1032. 01:22:24 is their process for putting together a good mix for a band and good friend of mine who's
1033. 01:22:31 someone we use to put installations in our church he runs sound for A-list singers he's
1034. 01:22:39 turned down gigs to run sound for like carry under wooden team like he's he's really really
1035. 01:22:46 good anyway when I've been around him and I'm asking like how did you put together a certain
1036. 01:22:52 part of the vocal chain or some piece on the sound board right and he'll give me some kind
1037. 01:22:58 of like high level like here's how I run a compressor here's how I run an EQ it's like
1038. 01:23:03 that's fine but those are all like the standard beginner level things that people get into
1039. 01:23:09 like you've got like four or five layers of processing you're here you're doing here
1040. 01:23:13 why and he struggles to give any a clean answer like he knows what each step does and how it
1041. 01:23:20 makes it sound a certain way but he's can't really explain it to you now some of that is
1042. 01:23:26 just like trying to explain how something sounds is actually a very difficult thing to do and
1043. 01:23:31 so that that gets to be a little bit tricky so I get that but it's also I think a case
1044. 01:23:36 where he knows it so well and he knows what he's after so much that it's tough to verbalize
1045. 01:23:44 what that is and how to teach somebody else how to do that I wish you could but what I've
1046. 01:23:49 learned in the process like okay what does that specific compressor do to that specific
1047. 01:23:55 vocal like that type of question is what I have to ask because then it'll start to like
1048. 01:23:59 well it does this I'm not going to explain it to you because it won't make sense but
1049. 01:24:03 it does this and then that lets me do this later on oh well then that starts to break
1050. 01:24:07 apart that chain and then over years of me asking these questions of these people that's
1051. 01:24:13 how I get to where I'm at today but now I've learned that I have the same problem now because
1052. 01:24:20 I've now got a few people that have asked me like well how did you do this and I understand
1053. 01:24:27 why these guys have been so coy with me over it because like oh well it just does this this
1054. 01:24:32 and this and I found I give that answer once in a while partially because in order for
1055. 01:24:39 me to explain the six or seven different steps I've got going into that final product one
1056. 01:24:45 it's going to take a long time and two I don't know your background well enough to know what
1057. 01:24:52 level do I need to be speaking at so the tendency is to speak very very high level and then
1058. 01:24:57 if you keep prying then we start going deeper so like I have to start very high and assume
1059. 01:25:02 you don't even know what a compressor is and go from there because me explaining why I
1060. 01:25:08 have four levels of compression on a vocal is very difficult to understand so why would
1061. 01:25:14 I take the time to explain it to somebody who doesn't even know what a compressor is
1062. 01:25:19 so I get it when you have somebody who knows what they're doing like you have to be very
1063. 01:25:24 specific in the questions because they're probably not going to give you all the stuff
1064. 01:25:28 you need yep which is the just to that chapter I'm not quite sure how useful that is I guess
1065. 01:25:38 I don't talk to experts all that often yeah maybe that's the problem we need to talk to
1066. 01:25:42 experts more often Mike there we go by the way there's a cool service for that called clarity
1067. 01:25:49 dot FM have you I've heard all of that I couldn't tell you anything about it though yeah so you
1068. 01:25:55 pay per minute to book time with these people who really know their stuff regardless of what
1069. 01:26:00 it is I mean you could book time with mark you and if you really wanted to but there are
1070. 01:26:04 other people that I've talked to unlike how to set up a webinar effectively or build a
1071. 01:26:09 community and you come with your questions right and it's up to you to make good use
1072. 01:26:15 of the the time but you can get the answers to specific things if you know exactly what
1073. 01:26:23 you want to ask very quickly without having to try a million different things so it's
1074. 01:26:31 pretty cool I've used it in the past but has been probably a couple years at this point
1075. 01:26:34 all right let's talk about the conclusion this one should be pretty quick because it's
1076. 01:26:44 really a summary of the whole book and he talks about Vincent Van Gogh here and breaks
1077. 01:26:52 down ten different things in the conclusion now you're probably thinking ten different
1078. 01:26:56 things but there were seven different chapters yeah you're right that part was kind of weird
1079. 01:26:59 to me but there's basically ten takeaways he wants you to have from this book become
1080. 01:27:04 a collector spot the differences think in blueprints don't mimic evolve embrace the
1081. 01:27:08 visionability gap keep score selectively take the risk out of risk taking distrust comfort
1082. 01:27:13 harness the future in the past and ask wisely so it's a good encapsulation of the rest of
1083. 01:27:21 the book guess that's the job of a conclusion but I don't think there's anything new here
1084. 01:27:27 you got anything else you want to want to add to this no I don't think so I just know
1085. 01:27:32 that like having these ten things here is something that's it kind of gives you a a
1086. 01:27:39 quick and easy something to just write down and keep in front of you as a way to remember
1087. 01:27:43 the book but again it's a little weird to have ten instead of the seven so I tend to
1088. 01:27:49 write down like the table of contents whenever I've got the book in front of me and I use
1089. 01:27:54 that as a reference point to remember the book but having the ten here does make that
1090. 01:27:58 little odd but at the same time it's just a repeat and summarization of the book which
1091. 01:28:03 I guess is what you kind of want in a conclusion so here's that all right let's go to action
1092. 01:28:10 items I have two in addition to the ones I failed on earlier the ones that I got from
1093. 01:28:19 this book specifically are to a reverse engineer some of the creators I got inspired by from
1094. 01:28:27 the craft and commerce conference that is a mouthful craft and commerce conference
1095. 01:28:34 I can work it yet and then the second one is to reconfigure my time area and put in more
1096. 01:28:43 appropriate timers that's going to be not just adding the timers because primarily
1097. 01:28:49 I'm doing the work on my Mac so I am going to do it on the Mac version first but I also
1098. 01:28:56 have these widgets for time tracking I do I have on iOS so I will choose which ones go
1099. 01:29:02 there as well those are my two what about you I have the three the first of which is
1100. 01:29:11 to do some of the reverse engineering on the blogging newsletter church tech space the
1101. 01:29:17 second is to make this checklist for when I'm examining an idea like whether to take
1102. 01:29:23 on an idea and the third being the time blocking piece on a day basically plan my day each
1103. 01:29:30 day I don't know that it would be technically time blocking but like planning out what needs
1104. 01:29:36 to happen that day that seems to work pretty well for me but at least making that plan
1105. 01:29:40 is the big piece that I need to start with cool all right let's go to style and rating
1106. 01:29:49 I like the style of this book it was kind of terrible timing for me because crazy couple
1107. 01:29:57 of weeks and I feel like I was not able to give this book the time and attention it really
1108. 01:30:03 deserved because as I mentioned at the very beginning it is a very dense book it's very
1109. 01:30:09 well written it's very engaging there's lots of stories there's lots of details added to
1110. 01:30:12 stories that I've heard previously but there is a ton of research that has gone into it
1111. 01:30:17 and you can tell that by looking at the the resources at the that not the resources but
1112. 01:30:24 all of the links to all the studies and things that have gone into the arguments that he's
1113. 01:30:27 made and a lot of those research a lot of that research supports like a single statement
1114. 01:30:35 which we've read entire books on that specific thing but he just mentions it in passing and
1115. 01:30:40 then links to all of those those references so there's a ton of effort that went into
1116. 01:30:47 it and he does a really good job I feel like of condensing it down and packaging it well
1117. 01:30:52 I feel like this whole idea reverse engineering is really powerful and even though I've heard
1118. 01:30:57 of it before like he did a great job breaking it down and it's definitely something that
1119. 01:31:01 I've got a better understanding of and I've got action items to actually put it into to
1120. 01:31:05 practice so I feel like this is going to be one of those books that has going to be very
1121. 01:31:09 impactful over time that that's all the good about the book I guess you know there really
1122. 01:31:18 wasn't a whole lot that I didn't like about it other than it really didn't grab me completely
1123. 01:31:27 the way that some other books have I remember reading through the recommendation for this
1124. 01:31:33 book and it was basically this one is also really good but not quite at the same level
1125. 01:31:37 as the previous one that they compared it to and I think that was pretty accurate I don't
1126. 01:31:42 know if that just kind of like set the place forward in my mind but I think this is probably
1127. 01:31:47 a 4.5 book and that is just because I think for myself the ideas here are pretty powerful
1128. 01:31:56 but I got to obviously synthesize them and figure out how do I apply them to myself as
1129. 01:32:01 a individual creator as opposed to big business guy does kind of feel in certain places like
1130. 01:32:08 I'm not the correct audience for this one but I do think there are lots of takeaways
1131. 01:32:14 for this for me and because it's presented so well it's pretty easily generalizable
1132. 01:32:20 I feel like this is one that I probably wouldn't recommend to everybody but I would recommend
1133. 01:32:30 to everybody in the bookworm audience I feel like if you have any interest in personal growth
1134. 01:32:36 at all this is going to be one that you're going to want to have read but I recognize there are
1135. 01:32:42 a lot of people who just don't care about that I don't know why you're listening to this
1136. 01:32:46 that's the case maybe somebody shared bookworm with you I don't know but yeah I think this is
1137. 01:32:52 a really good book and I think you could get a lot out of it I think I would argue everybody
1138. 01:32:57 probably if you take a long-term approach you know you're trying to reach your full potential
1139. 01:33:04 then you should read this one you're going to have to wrestle with the ideas it's not a simple
1140. 01:33:09 formula it's not three simple life hacks are going to save you an hour a day every day for the rest
1141. 01:33:13 of your life you're going to have to figure out what to do with this yourself but that's what it
1142. 01:33:18 says on the tin he says that right at the beginning like there should be no surprises with this one
1143. 01:33:23 and I do think it is it is really good so I'll write it at 4.5 I think you nailed it like there's
1144. 01:33:30 a lot of great stories and a lot of value in this I think 4.5 is exactly where it needs to be so I'll
1145. 01:33:37 join you there I know that there is so much value here like again you're saying it's super dense
1146. 01:33:45 but I think that's a good thing I think that you know sometimes I want them to expand on things a
1147. 01:33:52 little bit but in this case like give me a one-liner and then give me an entire book I've got to read
1148. 01:33:56 to understand that one sentence like okay all right but that works really well for us because we
1149. 01:34:04 have read a lot on those things already so we've got a lot of background to lean on when we get to
1150. 01:34:10 that if this is your first episode of bookworm and you haven't followed through on reading a lot
1151. 01:34:15 of the books that we've covered this might be a bit of a challenge I think to fully grasp in detail
1152. 01:34:22 I think you'll definitely get some high-level stuff out of it so I think I would recommend it to a
1153. 01:34:28 lot of people but at the same time I think if you want to get the depth out of it you need to have a
1154. 01:34:33 lot of background already like this is this is probably geared more towards not maybe not necessarily
1155. 01:34:40 like our like for you and I'm like but for folks who have read some but not maybe quite as much as
1156. 01:34:49 we have that was kind of my impression is that maybe that's what you were getting at is like this
1157. 01:34:53 is maybe not directed at us like we're maybe not exactly the target audience because I feel like
1158. 01:34:59 if you've read maybe half the books we have that this would be like an awesome read and it's definitely
1159. 01:35:06 geared towards you when you've read about a lot of these concepts already like testing things ahead
1160. 01:35:13 of time and finding patterns in how people do things like those have those are all generally topics
1161. 01:35:19 we've covered before so it's not a hundred percent brand new but at the same time if you've read some
1162. 01:35:28 books you understand enough of those concepts that this could really put things together for you
1163. 01:35:33 so I could see where that would fit fairly well so I think you got it at the 4.5 that's where I'll
1164. 01:35:39 land and I'm glad I've read it it's it did a good job of putting together some topics that I
1165. 01:35:45 haven't really seen connected before so I like it in that sense cool so let's put decoding greatness
1166. 01:35:53 on the shelf what's next Joe quit by Annie Duke because we need to quit some things I'm sure
1167. 01:35:59 I don't know what those are hopefully it's not bookworm it's not bookworm and
1168. 01:36:05 take on the right things that's essentially what it's about we've read a book by Annie Duke
1169. 01:36:10 before thinking in bets and it was an interesting read and this is Annie's latest book which is
1170. 01:36:18 kind of going down that path as well so yeah I'm excited to go through this one it's uh
1171. 01:36:24 what I've started on it already has been really good so I'm excited to cover that one with you
1172. 01:36:28 and what do we have after that one Mike?
1173. 01:36:30 After that one I'm going to pick Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly
1174. 01:36:40 you familiar with Kevin Kelly? Yeah I am he did oh shoot it was the 12 something
1175. 01:36:48 I can't think of it maybe that's a different book no I think you're right I don't remember
1176. 01:36:52 the title but I was looking at some of the other ones that he had written he's a tech writer I think
1177. 01:36:57 he's the one who initially came up with the idea of like a thousand true fans okay maybe I'm
1178. 01:37:02 misattributing that but this is one that so I've been familiar vaguely with Kevin Kelly for a long
1179. 01:37:10 time there's a blurb in the Amazon listing here from south godon 100 years from now when so much
1180. 01:37:17 of the nonsense of our ages forgotten people will still remember Kevin Kelly and his wisdom
1181. 01:37:21 so that's a pretty ringing endorsement by one of my favorite authors of all time yeah so uh
1182. 01:37:27 I'm going to make us read a Kevin Kelly book okay this is the one that's making the rounds right
1183. 01:37:31 now and a couple people I respect have recommended this one to me so let's go through it cool
1184. 01:37:37 I'm excited about it and get book what do you got
1185. 01:37:43 gap book you're funny I had to ask at least yeah I know what about you I didn't this week
1186. 01:37:53 between planning for a big outdoor event and all the fires I've had to put out I didn't get to
1187. 01:37:58 one this time real so no yeah I don't have one sorry about that gang hopefully we'll have
1188. 01:38:05 gap books next time but thank you for listening thank you for hanging out with us until the end here
1189. 01:38:11 if you are watching this thank you for joining the live recordings if you have not joined a live
1190. 01:38:17 recording you should there is a list of all the live recordings in the bookworm club club.bookworm.fm
1191. 01:38:23 and if you want to support show directly you can send it to become a bookworm club premium member
1192. 01:38:28 five bucks a month 50 bucks a year gets you access to a couple of goodies including the mind map
1193. 01:38:35 notes from all the books that we cover for bookworm I'm a little bit behind on those but I'll get
1194. 01:38:40 them posted shortly there's still hundreds of them to keep you busy so if you want to support
1195. 01:38:46 show it's a great way to do it club.bookworm.fm and if you want to be extra amazing pick up the
1196. 01:38:54 book quit by Annie Duke read it and we'll cover that one with you in a couple of weeks