222: Wild Courage by Jenny Wood

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1. 00:00:00 This episode of Bookworm is brought to you by the St. Louis Pencho.
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3. 00:00:11 Welcome back, Mike. It's good to see you again. How you doing?
4. 00:00:14 Pretty good. How about you?
5. 00:00:17 Doing well. Doing well. I'm excited to talk about this book. I'm excited to see what you thought of it.
6. 00:00:23 Get into the details. I think it's nine different details of it. But before we do that, we should probably hit some follow-up.
7. 00:00:34 Yeah, actually I've got a couple things before we get to the follow-up.
8. 00:00:39 So, I did a thing. Okay. And that thing is I kind of sort of inadvertently started a new podcast.
9. 00:00:53 Oh, really? Oh, did you really? Okay. Tell me. Did you tell? Do you tell? Tell me more.
10. 00:00:59 Okay. So, I write this newsletter every week. And I've mentioned before that I really tried to make the newsletter my primary product.
11. 00:01:10 That's where most of my writing time goes to is crafting that newsletter every week.
12. 00:01:16 And I may have talked with you about how now that I've got the new website, I've actually kind of flipped it a little bit.
13. 00:01:24 And people have been wanting to read it on the website as opposed to in the email. So, I'm kind of condensing it.
14. 00:01:30 And if you want to read more, go click on the link and open it up to the web. Okay.
15. 00:01:35 Well, basically, you know, I write a thousand word essay essentially every week. And then I had one where my obsidian report card.
16. 00:01:45 And it was like 5,000 words. I can't put all that in an email. So, I condensed it into some bullets and said, you know, click here to go read it and watch the video.
17. 00:01:53 And then by the way, you know, what do you prefer? Do you prefer that I have the whole essay inside the email?
18. 00:01:58 Or do you prefer this format where I give you a couple of bullets and you can click to go view it on the web page?
19. 00:02:05 And small sample size, but all of the feedback I got was either it doesn't matter or I much prefer reading it on the web.
20. 00:02:14 Okay. That's good. Good feedback. So, yeah. So, I've kind of been trying to condense it a little bit for the newsletter and then put it on the web.
21. 00:02:23 Well, so I've done that a couple weeks in a row now where I've got the newsletter and then it points to the web page.
22. 00:02:30 And then I came across Seheel Bloom's newsletter. He mentioned something on social and then I clicked through on it. And I saw that at the top of all of his newsletter posts, he has embedded an audio file using transistor.
23. 00:02:50 And it's basically the audio version of his newsletter. So, he's just reading word for word, the text that appears on the page. Okay.
24. 00:03:00 And I was like, that's an interesting idea. I wonder what it would take to throw that together. Okay. So, I signed up for the transistor free trial.
25. 00:03:09 I titled the show, uploaded the artwork. And within 30 minutes, had a podcast listed on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all the directories.
26. 00:03:20 Nice. Very nice. Yeah. And then I recorded in a single take the text from the article. And then that's embedded at the top of the most recent post.
27. 00:03:34 Okay. So, is it called practical PPM? Is that what you're calling it? It's called practical PPM. The description is basically, I help people get more out of their notes and ideas. This is the audio version of my newsletter.
28. 00:03:46 You know, it links in the listing to the actual web page. And if this was going to be, you know, a lot of work to put it together or to crank out the audio file and embed it, I was ready to just be like, this isn't worth it.
29. 00:04:01 But it literally took me like 30 minutes to set up the whole podcast, record the file and release a new episode.
30. 00:04:07 That's awesome. And then take that and take that and embed it at the top of the ghost site. So you can go see it if you want to see the most recent, most recent episode.
31. 00:04:15 And it has a, let's see, I can grab that for you. But it's, it's basically the audio player. So you can skip ahead 15 seconds, et cetera.
32. 00:04:28 It's on using the three levels of knowledge to get more from your PPM system. There's the, the direct link. I'll put this in the, the show notes as well.
33. 00:04:37 You can vary the, the speed, you know, it's got the little play bar there. And, you know, you can share this particular episode. You can get more info on the show. And then there's the subscribe link.
34. 00:04:49 So, you know, I was like, well, I don't really want to list this with the podcast directories just yet, but there's no way to turn off that subscribe link.
35. 00:04:58 So I'm like, well, I guess, you know, they have a thing in there where you can just click a button and then it submits it. And, you know, 20 minutes later, it's live on the, on the podcast directories.
36. 00:05:10 If you go to the actual page inside of transistor, there's links to like subscribe on overcast and pocketcast. It basically just like creates the specific links for every possible podcast player you can think of.
37. 00:05:23 And yeah, it was not my intention to start another podcast, but I did with the latest version of the newsletter. So if you prefer to listen to the newsletter instead of read it.
38. 00:05:35 You can do that now. No, that's awesome. Right. Man, like that's very, very convenient for the folks who would want to, who would want to listen instead of read, or if you just can't read it that one day.
39. 00:05:48 Right. You just follow the link and click on the button and you're listening to it while you're driving or whatever.
40. 00:05:53 Yep. And then I also have an ulterior motive with this because we've kicked around the idea of moving bookworm to transistor. So I wanted like a pet project to test project to see, you know, how everything works.
41. 00:06:06 And I think they make, they would make it pretty simple. I'm still nervous about migrating feeds somewhere else, especially as we start to sell ads for the show.
42. 00:06:16 Yeah, exactly. We get a sponsor and then all of a sudden nobody listens to that episode because I made something up like that would be terrible.
43. 00:06:24 Yep. Yep. Yep. I agree. That would, that makes me nervous too. Yeah.
44. 00:06:30 But it's, it's, it's pretty cool. I'm happy with how it, how it came out and curious to think what other people think.
45. 00:06:39 How long before you let AI transcribe it for you after you've trained the AI on your voice, that way you actually don't have to do the reading and you can just not happen.
46. 00:06:49 Let it go. Not going to happen? Why not? Not happening. It's not. Yeah. So there are a couple of things with AI. Like, I'm just not going to cross these lines. Right. So one of them is, I'm not going to use AI.
47. 00:07:03 I'm not going to just take AI's output and release that as my own text based stuff. No, I always use that as like the ideation phase, but then when it comes to the actual writing, like I'm doing that myself, I just think it's way better.
48. 00:07:19 And then the other thing is, I will not use it to create audio that sounds like me in its entirety. Now I've heard about David Porel talk about how he would record these.
49. 00:07:34 I think he was recording videos and using the script to edit it, but then like he would misspeak and they trained AI and they would use AI to create, you know, replace this word with what he actually should have said.
50. 00:07:47 And if you got a big team and you got a scheduled time in the studio and you're the bottleneck for that sort of stuff, I can see it being useful in that scenario.
51. 00:07:54 But I don't want to use it to like create original content under my name. I don't want to trick people. That's where you draw the line.
52. 00:08:04 I mean, what if you told them? What if you just said, Hey, like, I actually don't speak this. I've got an AI that sounds good enough and it sounds like me. You just don't feel good about it.
53. 00:08:12 No, I don't think the quality is there yet. I think it will be before too long, but still I would rather focus on ways that I can make the human stuff better than the AI rather than use AI to eliminate the stuff that the human has to do.
54. 00:08:30 Nice. Well, very cool. I'm excited to see how this transistor thing goes and see if it ends up applying to bookworm or if you decide it does not apply to bookworm. We don't want to do that. So, all right, cool.
55. 00:08:43 So let's get into. Sorry. That was that was actually super long. I got one other thing I got to mention. Okay.
56. 00:08:48 And that is maybe teased. I can't remember where I've talked about this, but a little bit of a whirlwind, but I've got this practical became cohort that I've done live several times. Last time I did it, which charged $1,000 for it.
57. 00:09:02 I am taking all of that content and I'm making a what I'm calling a hybrid cohort version of it. The feedback I got after the last version was that the content was amazing, but it moves too fast.
58. 00:09:13 I was thinking through like, how can I still provide like the live feedback on stuff, but allow people to go through it at their pace. And kind of the solution I landed on was self-paced videos, but then monthly live Q&A calls.
59. 00:09:29 So the hybrid version of this is going to be available in a couple of different versions and basically testing some different stuff with this. So I'm not sure this could be like this forever, but there'll be a video only version. So no live calls and that'll be $197.
60. 00:09:43 Okay. Then there will be the hybrid cohort where you get the monthly live calls. And that will be $497 and will also include life HQ. So you've got basically everything to implement all that I'm going to talk about.
61. 00:09:58 And that actually is going to be $100 off at launch. So it'll be $397 for that one. And I mentioned that here because that $100 off is going to just be until May 17.
62. 00:10:13 So I think it'll probably be about two weeks total after it's released. But yeah, by the time this goes live, it will be available. So I'll put a link to the fancy new hybrid cohort.
63. 00:10:27 A cohort sales page that I am finishing up as we speak. Hopefully that'll be done. Hopefully that'll be done today or tomorrow, right?
64. 00:10:36 No, it should be. It's like 95% done. All the content is done except for two videos. Speaking of AI, that's kind of an interesting thing that I've been doing with that because I'm taking all of the videos.
65. 00:10:47 By the way, there's 84 videos in here. That's crazy. I saw you eight hours, 39 minutes, 15 seconds of content.
66. 00:10:53 I don't know where you posted that. You posted it somewhere. And I was like, dang, I was like, that's a lot of content. That is a whole lot of content.
67. 00:10:59 It is a lot. Yes. And I actually am reviewing all of those videos manually, creating action items for them. But I'm also uploading the transcripts to notebook LM and basically give me five key takeaways from this video.
68. 00:11:14 And then it comes back with its version. I'm like, well, it's about 80% of the way there. And I change one of them. And I clean up the rest of them.
69. 00:11:21 But yeah, I've been using AI to create all that. So all of the course pages have action items. They have links. They have the actual code snippet queries wherever they're appropriate.
70. 00:11:32 And then the key takeaways links to everything that I mentioned, all the template files, all that type of stuff. So I'm really, really impressed with how this came together.
71. 00:11:43 I recorded these videos and I was like, well, I hope that this is coherent and it links together. And it makes sense. And as I was adding it all and putting it all together inside of the course pages.
72. 00:11:54 I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is probably the best thing I've ever made. That's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. That's great.
73. 00:12:00 All righty. Cool. Now we can do follow. Now we can go. No, you're good. No, you're good. No, you're good to follow. Okay.
74. 00:12:06 So we've got a couple of different things we're looking at here. You had two follow up items and then I have three. I'll go ahead and start just to just to get us rolling.
75. 00:12:17 I've got two out of the three, which for me, that's great. Right. Like I feel incredible about my two thirds victory here. The first one was the 478 method and it's a breathing technique.
76. 00:12:30 So it's an inhale hold and then breathe out kind of technique. And Mike, where I've found this to be the most effective is when I wake up in the middle of the night and I need to go back to sleep.
77. 00:12:43 If I do this breathing technique, I can go right back to sleep. Like, I mean, I'm talking like right back to sleep. It's crazy how well it works.
78. 00:12:50 I've tried to use it a little bit in other ways, like throughout the normal day with some success without, you know, with not, but really that evening get myself to go back to sleep because sometimes I'll wake up and it's like just outside
79. 00:13:04 of whatever, you know, sleep pattern, rem or whatever that version of that is. And it's just outside of that where I'm like kind of wired and I'm like, oh, man, it's way too early, but I'm not going to be able to go back to sleep.
80. 00:13:14 In my brain, I'll start racing. So this, if I do it quickly, puts me right back to sleep. So that's number one. The second one I was able to do, and Mike, I'm going to show you this. So for the folks looking on the video, you can actually see probably the reversed version of this.
81. 00:13:27 I did the pursuit map zones. So I established the pursuit map and I put different activities on the pursuit map and tried to get a good feel for, you know, the high energy, high competency and the low energy, low competency and wear different things.
82. 00:13:44 I can't tell you I'm going to get a ton out of it or that I got a ton out of it, but it's interesting to look at and it's interesting to map those things.
83. 00:13:51 The one I did not get is I did not get the five types of wealth survey done. I actually completely forgot that I was going to take the five types of wealth survey.
84. 00:14:00 And I was like, oh, I did have that follow up item. I totally forgot about that follow up item. So, so that's the one I did not get done. But how about you? How about your follow up items?
85. 00:14:10 Well, I didn't do so hard this time. Find my front row people. I thought about this. I didn't actually make like a list of the specific people that will be there.
86. 00:14:21 But I am noticing how thinking about this has already influenced some of the decisions that I've made recently.
87. 00:14:30 And just who are the important people in my life is something that's kind of top of mind. And I think it's I think it's making a difference. So that's the point of the action item.
88. 00:14:41 But it's interesting because I didn't actually complete the action. I get it. So, and then the other one revamped my morning routine.
89. 00:14:50 I haven't revamped it yet. I really honestly haven't done nothing more than think about this one a little bit. So I don't think this one's yellow. This is a big red X.
90. 00:15:01 But I that the morning routine spotlight has not gone away. You know, sometimes we have these action items and it's like, well, I had the best intentions with that one. And then I just never got around to it. And I guess I'm not going to.
91. 00:15:15 This one is still, I don't know what's actually going to come out of this. I think it's quite possible actually that my morning routine stays exactly the same.
92. 00:15:24 I don't know that I'll make any changes to it. But yeah, I am thinking about what are the important pieces here.
93. 00:15:32 Yeah, I don't know. I think actually I'm going to bold this one because I want to follow up on this one again.
94. 00:15:39 I feel like I need a little bit of a little bit of external accountability to actually do something with this.
95. 00:15:47 It feels like it's it's still potentially important to me. And I don't want to just get busy with the launches and things that are coming up.
96. 00:15:56 Is that is that because like the external is that because it's just so easy to fall into the routine of the morning, right? Because that's my issue is portion of the morning that just doesn't, you know, I can't really control like I don't really have a.
97. 00:16:10 I don't have a say in that when the kids wake up right like basically I'm responding to that. So is that is that why or is there another reason why you know you say no it's it's just been been busy.
98. 00:16:21 I shared with you. I don't think I mentioned this when I was talking about the practice became hybrid cohort, but just a little bit behind the scenes here.
99. 00:16:28 I've been working on this and I had in my mind. I'm going to launch this and I had a specific date in mind. And then I realized, Oh crap, I actually mentioned this publicly on the focus podcast.
100. 00:16:39 That's going to be released before this actually goes live. So that moves everything up.
101. 00:16:44 So I was picking away at this stuff and then realized, you know what I got to get busy. And so basically every spare moment has been uploading videos, reviewing videos, transcribing videos, creating action items, creating links.
102. 00:17:01 You know, all of the stuff that is required in order for this, this thing to be public in addition to writing all of the emails that I'm I'm going to send out. So it's basically like adding another 30 hour a week job on top of what I was doing.
103. 00:17:17 And why do I do this to myself? I don't know.
104. 00:17:20 So we determined your catalyst, like your catalyst is just say something accidentally on a podcast. That's how you get things done. Yeah, yeah, I'm not happy with that. But this is, this is one of the things that I really wanted to have out there.
105. 00:17:38 It's a piece of like the library long term strategy and stuff like that. So I don't, you know, regret working on this. I just kind of made it more urgent probably than it.
106. 00:17:53 It needed to be. And so yeah, every spare moment has been working on this, which means like I worked till 10 30 at night. I fall asleep exhausted. I wake up at seven the next mornings. Oh, well, you know, let's do it again.
107. 00:18:05 You better, you better plan in some sort of, you know, kind of refresh rejuvenate period after this. And you got to make sure there is, there is. So actually this launch is happening right before we do our life theme live event. Okay.
108. 00:18:19 So, yeah, good job me. But after the life theme live event, which is May 15th and 16th, I'll put a link to that too. People are interested. So got a couple spots open.
109. 00:18:31 After that, I've got a couple of weeks and I don't have anything specific that I am like a project that I'm working on there. So I'm essentially going to just like fix what breaks during that period. That's the intention. And then crafting commerce is coming up the second week in June in Boise.
110. 00:18:49 Okay. And there's actually a pre-conference for the lab that's going to happen before that. So I will actually be there Monday to Saturday. Oh, wow. And I am not going to be doing any work then. Now, obviously there's a conference. So like, that's Thursday, Friday.
111. 00:19:04 That will be a little bit exhausting for an introvert, but that's kind of like a vacation for me. Like I've talked before. I love Boise. I would move to Boise if I could.
112. 00:19:14 Yep. But yeah, I want to kind of use that as like my breather and then come back from that. Okay. Now, let's look at this with fresh eyes and decide where we go from here.
113. 00:19:25 Good, good, good. Well, you've got a plan then. I'm excited to see how it unfolds. Me too. You too.
114. 00:19:33 All right. It is time. Let's get into today's book. So today's book is Wild Courage. Go after what you want and get it by Jenny Wood. Jenny Wood is or was a executive at Google kind of worked up through the ranks at Google.
115. 00:19:52 She's got an interesting story about how she kind of joined Google that she tells in the book. And then kind of her experience is doing that. And then she owns her own coaching company as well.
116. 00:20:03 And I can't remember for the life of me what it's called. It's like, own your something. But I can't remember what the last word is.
117. 00:20:10 Career. Do you have it? Own your career. Okay. So she's got a coaching company as well. She, the book is going to take nine different ideas, right, that are all around the idea of courage.
118. 00:20:24 And it's going to try to redefine those in a way that is different than what we typically think of those words. Right. So we're going to get into the nine different things in detail because that's what each chapter is.
119. 00:20:37 Starts it off with a kind of an intro, motivational speech, if you will, and then rolls into the nine topics and then at the end concludes and just kind of does a real short wrap up for the conclusion of it.
120. 00:20:52 So that's the nature of the book. All about courage. Mike recommended this book. Mike, I don't think this one came from the bookworm suggestion list. Did it?
121. 00:21:02 I don't think so. This one I heard about from actually Nick Milo mentioned that he I think knows Jenny, or maybe I read about it in his, his newsletter. I know she was at some, like, not straight up mastermind, but she mentions in this this thing, the mobile models group.
122. 00:21:24 I know several people who are associated with mobile screen. I think that's probably where Nick met, met Jenny, but yeah, Nick is one of those people where if he recommends a book, it is an insta by.
123. 00:21:35 I got it. Got it. For me anyways. Yeah. So, so that's where this book kind of came from. So if there's nothing else, Mike, that you have, we can get into gather your courage, which is the introduction.
124. 00:21:47 Well, one one thing actually from the gather, your courage section, a note that I had was that the on your career, the OIC thing that you mentioned, she actually founded that while at Google. So I don't know what the connection is there.
125. 00:22:02 I don't know if it's, you know, it's underneath the Google umbrella or Google's just an investor in that, that thing. But there's a connection there somehow.
126. 00:22:11 And at one point, she says in, in here about the number of people at Google that have gone through her own your career thing and the number is huge. I mean, it's an absolutely massive number.
127. 00:22:22 So they're, they're maybe as a tie or at least they just encouraged her to do that because they saw that as a, an area where she had skill and, and when was really good at it. So, so yeah, that's a good connection.
128. 00:22:34 Okay, so let's get into gather your courage. Basically, this whole first part is going to be the idea of courage and the idea of fear and thinking through kind of the, the baseline for, you know, what fear does to us and how it holds
129. 00:22:49 us back and makes us uncomfortable in certain situations, prevents us from making progress and doing things and that we need to have courage.
130. 00:22:57 And it'll help us help us push through. You know, one of the things successful people take action despite their fear. So she's trying to encourage you to have have courage. The reason why I didn't mean it in a negative way at all.
131. 00:23:09 It read to me like a motivational speech, right? It was partially like, Hey, you know, step up, have some courage. We're going to talk about fear and talk about courage here. And then, oh, by the way, here's the way we're going to do it in which she introduces the nine traits, which I'll go over real quick here.
132. 00:23:23 I won't define them right now. But the nine traits are weird, selfish, shameless, obsessed, nosy, manipulative, brutal, reckless and bossy. And basically each one of those is a chapter of the book.
133. 00:23:35 And that's kind of how she starts out getting us ready to go into these nine different traits.
134. 00:23:41 Yeah, the thing that I loved about Gather your courage, which is kind of like an introduction, is the interesting story she has about meeting her husband. Oh, yeah.
135. 00:23:53 But you mentioned interesting stories about something specific. She's got interesting stories about just about everything. She seems like she's a very interesting person.
136. 00:24:01 She has a lot of stories and the crazy thing about the stories is some of them are pretty cringe. Like, and she'll admit that. Like, as she's telling the story, she's like, you know, so she tells a very candid picture of herself in this book about ways that she did things right, ways that she messed things up.
137. 00:24:19 It was very refreshing to see that. It wasn't all just like, look at this amazing person I worked with and look how awesome I was over here.
138. 00:24:27 Yeah, so cringe is a good thing. I agree. But the story goes, and she's using this as an example of wild courage, but she was riding the New York subway and saw this cute guy, and he gets off the subway.
139. 00:24:45 And she at first is like, oh, man, there he goes, and then runs off the subway, chases him down, and basically is like, hey, I like you. Let's go on a date. He becomes her husband. That's the point they get married.
140. 00:25:00 So that's kind of crazy, but also like the perfect story at the beginning of the book because the point she's trying to make is what's the worst thing that can happen if you put yourself out there.
141. 00:25:15 He says, no, okay, I get back on the subway and I go back to my routine and I never see him again. Right. So on the one hand, she does a really good job of telling that story in a sense where you actually feel uncomfortable for her just by listening to it.
142. 00:25:33 But also, it clearly illustrates the point. It's like, well, yeah, you can see yourself in that story. I could do that. I don't, but maybe I should. And that's kind of the incentive. You mentioned motivational speaking is like the tone.
143. 00:25:48 That's really what she's trying to do at this point is like, see, I put myself out there. This is what happened from it. You can do the same sort of thing. It's very empowering, I think, at this point in the book.
144. 00:25:55 And that isn't the only story that she tells. She tells one later in the book that we'll talk about that I felt it. As she's describing it, I'm feeling, oh man, that would be so terrible and I would feel so horrible and kind of in the same vein.
145. 00:26:10 So kind of to wrap up this first section, you know, she, I like it when authors make the claim of like what the book is meant to do. The thesis statement of the book and they don't like try to hide it. They don't try to mask it. They're like, this is what the book is for.
146. 00:26:24 This book is about getting what you want in life and why it's not talent skill money and luck standing anyway. It's you. And I was like, okay, great. Like, now we know what we're doing.
147. 00:26:33 She is intentionally seeking to coach us through this book in terms of, in terms of how to overcome fear and increase this courage.
148. 00:26:45 One more thing I'll say before we move into chapter one, where we're going to talk about weird, is book is very much tied to her resource bundle that she pushes you to on the on her website.
149. 00:26:57 So she'll give like, examples of practices or protocols or different examples of different things. And she's like, go to, you know, I don't know what is wild courage or.
150. 00:27:09 Com slash resources or something like that. So she'll push you there quite a few times after after at most chapters, I would say after most chapters she's going to push you towards that when you get into that so if you want more as you're reading this, you can go there as well and get, get more I went and looked at it.
151. 00:27:26 And I downloaded a couple different things and looked at a couple different things and it looks like pretty pretty decent stuff. So, okay, are you ready to go to chapter one for weird.
152. 00:27:36 Let's do it. All right, so I think that I think the best thing to do when we're doing each of these chapters Mike would be to actually give the definitions and give her redefining of the definitions before we launch off in anything so I agree.
153. 00:27:48 Chapter one is weird when as you or lose as who. So she defines weird as a strange or extraordinary character. And then she redefines weird as the courage to stand out.
154. 00:28:01 So that's kind of how she's going to set the stage for everything that we're working with here.
155. 00:28:06 As she unpacks this, she's going to say that weird is where your strengths are. So people think of weird as a completely bad thing, but that's actually where your strengths are that people who break kind of rules or break unwritten rules seem weird, but they often are showing power.
156. 00:28:23 She has a phrase that I've never heard of it playing it hot, right? Like, so have you ever heard of the phrase playing it hot? No, I mean, it kind of made sense when she described it, but I don't think I've ever heard that before.
157. 00:28:35 Me either. So she essentially means like being weird, like being weird in a situation is basically like, I'm not going to blend in and I'm okay with that and I'm willing to own that.
158. 00:28:48 One of the things that she starts off the tone of the book and gets me kind of from the beginning, and I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
159. 00:28:56 As I process through, I'm interested to see what our conversation does for this, but she's very much pushing. I don't know if that's too strong of a way to word it, but she's very much pushing, like succeeding, getting promoted, rising higher, not being invisible, not getting stuck, right?
160. 00:29:16 There's very much this like career trajectory that's, I think, throughout the entire book, like that's her nature throughout the entire book.
161. 00:29:25 I'm going to tell you that I'm kind of 50/50 on that framing of the way she wrote things. I didn't love it, but at the same time I didn't hate it.
162. 00:29:34 I understood why she did it, but again, I didn't love that aspect of it.
163. 00:29:39 Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm kind of two minds on that. There's definitely a climbing the corporate ladder perspective, which on the one hand, I have no interest in that.
164. 00:29:51 But on the other hand, the things that she shares are, I think, very easy to translate and generally applicable to a lot of different situations.
165. 00:30:00 I will say that in this chapter, specifically, there was a story that I loved about why being weird is a good thing and why we shouldn't try to be average and that there is no normal.
166. 00:30:15 Which talks about the story about, after World War II, that US fighter pilot casualties were rising and they were trying to figure out why. And what they found was that pilots were struggling to reach the controls when they were maneuvering in combat.
167. 00:30:30 They thought the average body size and shape maybe has changed and we need to change how we're designing the cockpits and the cockpits were designed for the average person. That actually hadn't changed.
168. 00:30:45 But they discovered that no pilot in the program was within 15% of the average body shape and size.
169. 00:30:53 So fatalities dropped quite a bit when they just added adjustable seats. So literally the point, she doesn't say this, but literally the point she's making is that being normal can kill you.
170. 00:31:08 So it's funny because we study this in one of my classes. We do a classical work methods where we study the way people do jobs in manufacturing industry or wherever it might be.
171. 00:31:17 And one of the things we look at is we look at those tables that she's talking about where it's like, oh, well, this is the population data from one of her year and this is the average height and the standard deviation.
172. 00:31:27 And therefore, should we design for the average with the standard deviation? And the answer is no, you really should design it with flexibility, like that way we can move that seat up and back and forth unless you're going to limit the program to people only in the average with the standard deviation.
173. 00:31:44 So I thought that was a cool part too, a good story.
174. 00:31:49 I like that she says in here that it takes sharp elbows to rub shoulders. So being able to stand out and sometimes when you're standing out, you look a little weird, but you don't get lost in the invisibility of everybody else.
175. 00:32:04 I think at times it's really easy for me to just be like, okay, I'm just going to sit back. I'm going to play it cool and not kind of interject or I don't want to cause a scene or whatever it might be.
176. 00:32:17 But she's saying, hey, if you want to be noticed, sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes you have to step out and she's a sharp elbows, right, get in there and actually fight for your position.
177. 00:32:28 And then the last one when I got to this chapter was basically that what's the risk of being weird or what's the risk of doing her version of weird is, okay, you'll be embarrassed sometimes.
178. 00:32:38 Like every so often you'll be embarrassed, but usually it's not going to be that you're so weird that there's much more of a negative consequence of that.
179. 00:32:47 So I thought that was a great way to frame that.
180. 00:32:50 Yep, agreed.
181. 00:32:52 Anything else on one or are you ready to move to two?
182. 00:32:55 No, let's go to two. Okay, two, so selfish. Be your own champion. Okay, so the adjective selfish is typically defined, concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself.
183. 00:33:08 She redefines it as the courage to stand up for what you want.
184. 00:33:12 So this whole chapter is about basically giving you permission to be selfish. And throughout the entire book or the entire chapters, I like how she will say the thing that seems very counterintuitive.
185. 00:33:26 It seems very like, oh, well, this is weird. Like this feels wrong. Like as you're describing this, this just feels wrong. You want me to be selfish.
186. 00:33:33 And then part of it is like giving you permission. And I don't know if that's too strong. Like, I don't know if you got the same feel as I did, but it's like, let me give you permission to do this.
187. 00:33:41 The right way. You can do this wrong, but let me give you the permission of like, do this the right way. And like the chapters describing what the right way looks like, or what it could look like. I won't say what the right way looks like, but what it could look like.
188. 00:33:56 Yeah, I guess the things that I jotted down from this chapter were a little bit different. And really, it was again, like, as you mentioned, and you've been sharing the definitions at the beginning of the chapters.
189. 00:34:11 There's like a negative framing of these words. And then she's spinning it into a positive by saying the courage to fill in the blank.
190. 00:34:18 And stand up for what you want is something that I have historically had trouble with. I'm a recovering people pleaser. So the things I jotted down here are like, you matter. And what are you afraid to ask for? I've got actually two action items from this chapter.
191. 00:34:34 Okay, very cool. Very cool. One of them is say no to the small things. And she describes how saying no is a complete sentence. I struggle with this so much.
192. 00:34:43 I find myself every single time someone asks me to do something. I feel like I have to say yes. And then if I summon the courage to say no, I immediately try to come up with a justification for it.
193. 00:34:53 They don't even ask for it. I just feel like I need to have some reason for me to be saying no, and I need to get better at that.
194. 00:35:01 She also mentions this win later on, and this was kind of a minor point, but this is something that stood out to me now when is W.I.N. and it stands for what I need now. And I understand her perspective with this.
195. 00:35:15 Again, she's coming from a corporate environment, working with large, high functioning teams. So this is not the team with a bunch of people who are not pulling their weight, but they've been there forever.
196. 00:35:31 They're good friends with the boss. So no one's going to let them go. It's basically not the situation at the office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right. These are people who deserve to be there. So there's, I think there's probably a commitment to excellence that's maybe missing from some other teams.
197. 00:35:47 But I like this idea of what I need now because this is, again, I say all this because in order for this to work, you really have to have people who are invested in helping each other, helping each other function at a high level and take the team to the team.
198. 00:36:00 To new heights, right? But what I need now is really like what I need selfishly, personally, to thrive currently, to be successful in the current situation.
199. 00:36:14 And when she mentioned that, what I need now, like she's talking about building this into weekly team meetings, you know, like if you're using EOS, this is like your level 10 meetings, you're checking in with your team members, stuff like that.
200. 00:36:29 But I thought about this in terms of the family meetings that my wife and I do with that specific format that we work through.
201. 00:36:38 And one of the questions that we ask is what would make you happy this week? And that's always a little bit tricky to answer. It feels a little bit selfish to put something in there.
202. 00:36:51 And I think reframing that as what do I need now? That could actually be an upgrade to that whole process. I don't know. I'll have to talk to Rachel.
203. 00:37:03 See what she thinks about this last time. I was like, Hey, let's do this corporate thing in our family. It was let's create Smith's family standard operating procedures and she vetoed that one.
204. 00:37:11 But what I need now seems pretty, pretty applicable.
205. 00:37:15 And it's very like tangible, very, you know, easily answerable. One of the big ones that stood out for me in this chapter was the not actually promoteable work.
206. 00:37:26 Right now, this is different in your world, right? Being the solopreneur and stuff like that. But like, Oh, man, like I'm reading this thinking to myself. Oh, yeah.
207. 00:37:35 Like, I know exactly what work she's describing right here. It's like, there's that work that quote unquote needs to be done.
208. 00:37:41 People expect it to be done, but then you don't get a value for actually doing it. Like, you know, you get nothing on the tail end for actually doing that.
209. 00:37:48 And it's like, Oh, man, how can I selfishly just get rid of all of that? Like, how can I not do any of that in my in my life?
210. 00:37:56 I like that she basically debunks or pushes back on the sunk cost fallacy when your destination is no longer relevant.
211. 00:38:06 Okay, just be done. Like be okay with the fact that you're going to have a thing that you want to do the context around life changes.
212. 00:38:16 And there might be a need to selfishly just get rid of that thing and just be like, listen, I said, we talked about doing this.
213. 00:38:22 It's not it doesn't make sense anymore. We need to we need to bail on that project or we need to bail on that activity or whatever it might be.
214. 00:38:29 So there was there was good stuff in here. When you read it at face value, you think selfish and you think, Oh, I don't want to be selfish.
215. 00:38:35 But it's much more of a protecting yourself selfish than it is a, you know, like taking advantage of people selfish.
216. 00:38:44 Yep, exactly. Okay, I'm ready to move the shameless if you are. Let's do it.
217. 00:38:50 All right. So chapter three is shameless. Find your swagger. So shameless is typically defined as insensible to disgrace.
218. 00:39:00 So shameless insensible to disgrace. And then she redefines shameless as the courage to stand behind your efforts and abilities.
219. 00:39:09 A couple of things that I noted in here were basically double down on your strength strengths more than showing up your weaknesses which we've we've read about before we've we've learned about before.
220. 00:39:22 She throws a number in there says there's 75% of your energy into your strength and 25% into developing your weaknesses, which is an interesting way to think about that.
221. 00:39:32 Shame ties into like this process you think about being shameless. We have to think about where shame comes from.
222. 00:39:39 And basically like shame is good. Shame tells you that thing that you should work on as long as it motivates positive change.
223. 00:39:46 I think my biggest takeaway from this chapter was truth and tales. I don't know if you remember that or not, but basically she outlines this step process right down the basic facts of what happened.
224. 00:39:57 This is the truth that you're working with next right down the tail you're telling yourself, which I think this is the biggest aspect of this for me is like, okay, there's the thing that actually happened.
225. 00:40:08 And then there's the thing you keep repeating in your head that is like some version of truth, but it's probably not the full truth.
226. 00:40:17 You've dramatized it or whatever it is, reframe the shame right down the shameless interpretation of the event and then basically make it stick closer to the facts and then watch the shame melt away, which I would I hope it works that well.
227. 00:40:30 This would be an interesting one. This would be an interesting one. So it's like, I'm going to add this to my to my action items is to do the truth and tales the next time I get that activity where I feel that feel that shame.
228. 00:40:41 Yeah, so I actually don't like the framing of truth and tales because I think it could actually be condensed a little bit more and it could be simpler.
229. 00:40:49 She's on the right path with it and maybe this is just a matter of preference and that actually is more effective for some people, but I think the simplest version of this.
230. 00:41:03 I don't remember exactly where I heard this, but it's really the story I'm telling myself is, and then you feel in the blank that's all you really need because by telling yours by shining the light on the story that you're telling yourself you kind of instantly see where the discrepancy is.
231. 00:41:22 It's almost like you don't need the truth part written out prior to that in order for you to get the benefit of realizing that the story you're telling yourself isn't completely true.
232. 00:41:32 And then also that same story I'm telling myself is more generally applied because you could be in a meeting talking about a sensitive subject and in front of everybody you're saying the story I'm telling myself is.
233. 00:41:47 And then you're not casting blame on them for you did this to me and you said you needed this this way.
234. 00:41:53 You're just saying this is how I'm interpreting it and then they can say oh no I didn't actually mean it that way at all. The things not do till whatever so take your time on this especially if you've got a higher up for example the minute that they ask you to do something you feel like you need to drop
235. 00:42:05 everything you're doing and help them out with their thing right.
236. 00:42:09 And that's not how they mean it a lot of times so I've seen that be very very effective for just getting everybody aligned in terms of the team.
237. 00:42:19 But same same principle I think the principles definitely definitely sound you know what what you think is happening may not actually be what is happening and it's a perspective altering question you know that can help you get back on the right track so that's
238. 00:42:34 that's cool. The thing that stood out to me from this section was the specific advice to join Toastmasters to help with your communication because literally I did this.
239. 00:42:47 I don't remember did she say specifically that she recommended it to help with podcasting or was that just my experience that's what I jotted down I don't know if it was like a public talk she was giving or what.
240. 00:43:00 But she's talking about recording yourself and playing it back and recognizing all the filler words and things that you use and then joining a group like Toastmasters to help you kind of iron that stuff out.
241. 00:43:12 That's definitely my experience. The way I got into it was I was recorded the demo of the productivity show back in the day.
242. 00:43:21 And I was responsible for editing the podcast it was a 30 minute podcast but it took me like six hours to edit it because I was trying to get rid of every on that I said.
243. 00:43:30 Which number one resulted in a very artificial sounding conversation but then also highlighted you say this a lot whenever you're trying to figure out what to say next.
244. 00:43:44 So I was like what do I do about this I need to fix this and join Toastmasters and basically from the moment I gave my very first speech just the fact that this was there was a spotlight on this thing now helped out a ton.
245. 00:43:58 So I can't recommend Toastmasters enough it was really a beneficial experience for me and I'm not a part of it anymore but that's really just because there's not a local club that meets at a convenient time.
246. 00:44:13 I actually was just searching the other day for the club that I used to be a part of they met on Thursdays I think at noon so kind of the middle workday and that actually would work really great.
247. 00:44:23 They don't meet at that time anymore now they meet on like Tuesday nights or something like well there goes that.
248. 00:44:30 But yeah anytime you can get some a couple of principles here anytime you can get it on tape that is going to be beneficial the supplies with sports too like if you remember playing tennis in college and one of the things that they would do is they would videotape you
249. 00:44:47 know you're lifting your head when you hit your forehand or your backhand you got to keep your head down you know oh yeah sure you hear it but you don't really understand it then you see it on tape and you're like well actually I am doing that thing.
250. 00:45:00 So that can definitely apply to communication as well but then also there's the principle of if you want to improve something get around other people who are also trying to improve that make yourself vulnerable everybody's there to help each other that's like the best environment to fix something.
251. 00:45:16 Yeah we'll do this with students sometimes when they're when they're presenting we'll do a practice session and we'll record all their presentations and then they have to go back and they have to acknowledge the things that they've done well or not.
252. 00:45:28 So shameless basically she's saying just be shameless right like go out there tell people what you've done tell people the good things you've done but then she also kind of puts a bow on the back end as well and says when you've messed up you know admit it like don't don't try to hide it don't try to you know sugarcoat it.
253. 00:45:47 This brings us up into this brings us into something that we actually haven't talked about yet but every one of these chapters she's going to describe the trait she's going to describe her like kind of redefinition of it and give examples
254. 00:45:59 but then she's also going to talk about trait traps and like there are these traps that you can get into if you would end up doing this wrong.
255. 00:46:06 So she does try to balance out the you know don't just be shameless like be shameless in the right way kind of a thing and avoid the try to avoid these traps so you also get that to in every chapter.
256. 00:46:17 Yep.
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270. 00:48:23 Our thanks to the St. Louis Pen Show for the support of the Bookworm podcast. Okay, so chapter four is obsessed, push, perform and persist.
271. 00:48:34 The adjective obsessed is defined typically as preoccupied with or haunted by some idea, interest, etc.
272. 00:48:43 She redefines obsessed as the courage to set your own standard.
273. 00:48:48 What I liked about this chapter was basically almost like giving you permission, I don't know if permission's too strong or not, but almost if you're giving you permission to be like work on the things you're actually passionate about.
274. 00:49:02 Do the things you actually care about. She talks about feeling yourself light up. She talks about when you're experiencing a lack of motivation, is that because you're not really that interested in it? You're not really that obsessed with the thing.
275. 00:49:16 And it's not obsessed in a bad way, it's obsessed in a way that leveraged that. Use that thing that you're really excited about, you're really passionate about and just keep going and just keep going. So I liked the general overall frame of the way she redid obsessed.
276. 00:49:37 Yeah, I like this one. I like the story that she tells here too about she was trying to get a job at the new Google campus in Denver.
277. 00:49:47 And she worked really hard on this resume. She uploaded it to the system and it messed up the formatting and she was kind of mortified and she's like, well, there goes my chance at getting the job.
278. 00:49:59 And then she decided that she was going to drive. I think it was six hours to the campus. She walked in. It's like, hey, I noticed that when I applied for this job, it messed up my resume. So here's a hard copy.
279. 00:50:12 And the lady, the receptionist there was basically like, okay, thanks. She's like, no, I need to talk to somebody. She's like, no, she's like, no, I need to talk to somebody. She's just really persistent, and she finally got connected with somebody in person at the campus.
280. 00:50:27 And then she made another mistake where she didn't get the person's email address to follow up or something. So she got home and she sent an email to every version of the person's first dot last name at Google.com.
281. 00:50:40 I laughed hysterically when she said that I was like, oh, that's actually really clever. Well done. I've heard of people doing that before. Every time I hear those stories, I'm like, I don't think I would do that. Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. But again, it's effective for the point she's making. She really wanted the job at Google. So she's obsessed with it. What is she going to do about it?
282. 00:51:02 She could just beat herself up about the fact that she made a mistake or she could actually try to fix it and she fixed it. She got connected with the person and she ends up getting the job. So kudos.
283. 00:51:13 I think it's an inspiring story. And there's definitely application potential there for me. I could be a little bit more persistent with some of that stuff.
284. 00:51:27 I don't know how exactly. I don't have a specific action item associated with that story or with this chapter, actually. But it is something that's got me thinking.
285. 00:51:38 I'll just say that because kind of where I'm at with the practical PKM stuff. It's like, I could make up these excuses for why the market is bad and people are nervous and well, no one's going to buy my stuff right now.
286. 00:51:54 Or I could just be obsessed that she's talking about and figure out a way to communicate it effectively because if I communicate it the right way and I find the right people and I've got the right product.
287. 00:52:05 There's a whole bunch of variables there, obviously, and I got to be willing to try a whole bunch of different things before I can really dial that in. But if I'm willing to do it, then everything is figure outable.
288. 00:52:16 Yeah, exactly. So can I tell you a side story that relates to hers? Yeah. Okay, I'm graduating college and we know we're going to move to Dallas because my wife's going to go to graduate school.
289. 00:52:27 So I graduated year early. I'm looking for a job while she's finishing up school. And I wanted to get a job in acoustics, right? Acoustical engineering or acoustics.
290. 00:52:36 And in Dallas, there were only a couple places that did the kind of the stuff that I want to do. I end up getting an interview with one of those places.
291. 00:52:43 So they fly me down. I do the interview. The interview is on Friday. It's like Friday, like during the day, you know, it starts at 8am and gets done at like two or whatever. I forget what time we were done with the interview.
292. 00:52:53 Well, I had a rental car and I was staying the night that night and flying back on Saturday. Well, the other place was, I don't know, like 20 minutes from where I was interviewing.
293. 00:53:06 And I was like, well, shoot, like, I'm just going to go to this other place while I'm in Dallas. Like, they flew me down here. Like, I may as well go and I'll just hand off a paper copy of my resume and just be like, Hey, like, you know, I applied.
294. 00:53:17 I don't even know if you have anything, but like, here you go, because I couldn't remember if they had a posting or not. I don't think they did.
295. 00:53:22 So I end up going there and I was like, Hey, you know, I'm here in Dallas. I just wanted to drop off my resume. I don't know if I don't think you have anything posted right now.
296. 00:53:30 I just want to keep in mind, I'm graduating from Penn State, blah, blah, blah. And they invite me into the ice cream social because every Friday afternoon, they had an ice cream social, right? Okay, so they invite me into the ice cream social.
297. 00:53:42 I hang out there for like 45 minutes, just talking to people about what they do, acoustics, like all this stuff. Next thing I know, the next week I get a job offer from the place that I just went to the random ice cream social.
298. 00:53:55 And then let me tell you the worst part about it. Mike, I didn't take that job and I totally should have taken that job without a doubt. Hands, I took the other job, right? Cause I got, I got both of the offers.
299. 00:54:06 I took the other job and I missed out. Like, I should have taken the job at the other place. I think I liked it so much better than the place I took the job.
300. 00:54:14 But it was just a wild experience. I was like, I can't believe that actually worked. Like, that was crazy. I can't believe that actually worked.
301. 00:54:20 That's awesome. I have another version of that with my brother-in-law. He wanted to get a job at, he works currently for the same company and he's one of the regional sales people for county materials.
302. 00:54:39 So it's like concrete stone, outdoor landscaping, big brick buildings, stuff like that. And he knew somebody at the place who was like, "Hey, you should see if you get a job here." And he just showed up one day.
303. 00:54:57 And someone at the front was like, "Oh, can you help with this thing?" So he just jumps in and starts working.
304. 00:55:05 And he's working there for every day for two weeks. Never had an official conversation with anybody. And then the boss is like walking up the stairs behind him, turns around.
305. 00:55:17 He's like, "Hey, what's your name again?" Like, Soren. He's like, "Oh, do you work here?" And he's like, "Not yet." He's like, "Oh, well, go talk to Kathy. She'll add you to the payroll."
306. 00:55:29 That's awesome. He's been there ever since. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.
307. 00:55:35 Okay, so before we move to the next one, she talks about Checklist, which is very much up our alley and how they help you. She talks about being obsessed as a chicken and egg problem.
308. 00:55:44 So if you're not obsessed about something, it's really hard to do good work. But then not doing good work will help prevent you from getting obsessed.
309. 00:55:52 There's this kind of cycle, this downward cycle. So overall, I think I like this chapter. This was probably one of my favorite chapters to think about doing quality work and passion and drive and those type of things, which I said the word passion, because I know you're going to probably spark something in you.
310. 00:56:12 But over I like this one. Actually, it didn't. I heard you use it previously, but also just in context of being obsessed with something, I think it kind of makes sense.
311. 00:56:24 Because a couple of things she mentioned in here that are in my outline, no one will ever go and tell you how hard to work to get everything you want.
312. 00:56:32 So you have to put in more effort than you probably think you need to, but everything is achievable, basically, if you're willing to put in the work.
313. 00:56:41 I heard it, I heard a quote the other day, which is a different version of this, which is like, you can get anything you want out of life if you are willing to pay the price.
314. 00:56:54 And then a different quote that is sort of related to that is something I hear Casey lists all the time is the juice worth the squeeze.
315. 00:57:04 I thought the same thing. So that's hilarious, because when she said it, I was like, well, Casey, let's just pop into my head.
316. 00:57:11 Yeah, I mean, the way she's using it in this book, I think, is probably a little bit more applicable.
317. 00:57:19 But I like that saying it's essentially, so there's these kind of bookends, I guess, where you've got on the one hand, you can get basically whatever you want if you're willing to do the work.
318. 00:57:34 But maybe the amount of work that you've got to put in in order to do the thing isn't worth it.
319. 00:57:39 So you have to be willing to work harder than you thought you would need to.
320. 00:57:45 But then at the same time, you got to balance that by constantly be considering is all this work that I'm doing really worth what I am getting out of it.
321. 00:57:54 And that's kind of the personal retreat process in a nutshell.
322. 00:57:57 Yeah, I agree.
323. 00:58:00 Yeah.
324. 00:58:01 All right, so let's move to chapter five, nosy.
325. 00:58:05 So chapter five is nosy get insatiable curious.
326. 00:58:16 So the typical definition of nosy is of prying or inquisitive disposition or quality.
327. 00:58:23 She redefines it the courage to dig deeper.
328. 00:58:26 This chapter is all about curiosity, and then she unpacks that into asking questions and showing engagement through questions and then education and how, you know, education is the ideal curiosity process and basically like, how do you get nosy and an appropriate
329. 00:58:48 way and like, look at all the benefits of being incredibly curious.
330. 00:58:56 That's the gist of this chapter.
331. 00:58:57 At this point, I'm going to turn it to Mike, because Mike loves curiosity and I figure he's going to go crazy on this chapter.
332. 00:59:04 Well, I guess behind the scenes, we record these episodes almost two weeks before they release, which means that I am typically reviewing and publishing the previous episode.
333. 00:59:17 Right before we record this one.
334. 00:59:21 I don't know if you go back and listen to them when they become live, but the last book that we covered was the five types of wealth by Seheel Bloom.
335. 00:59:29 And one of the sort of funny ha ha things in that episode was this constant back and forth we had about whether curiosity is the main thing.
336. 00:59:40 And I still think it is, I think I articulated that actually pretty poorly in that episode, but I don't want to go back and revisit that.
337. 00:59:49 I just think it's interesting that she brings it up here.
338. 00:59:51 And the thing that kind of reinforced my belief on that is the UC Davis study that she mentions in this chapter, where actually what this did is it showed me that curiosity is actually more important, really, I think, than I thought it was.
339. 01:00:07 Back when we were having that conversation, because really what this is talking about, they put people in this study where they did these MRIs on their brain and basically putting the brain in a curious state they found substantially enhanced the learning when they were trying to learn
340. 01:00:22 facts for this trivia thing that they were going to have to answer.
341. 01:00:26 But what they found was that by trying to learn that stuff for the trivia and being curious about the things that they were studying what that did is it actually helped them soak up everything else more effectively.
342. 01:00:38 So when we're curious, we're open and we're calm, we're receptive.
343. 01:00:41 And really, if you're not curious, then you can't learn.
344. 01:00:46 Essentially, I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but just like your brain's ability to absorb new information just kind of shuts down.
345. 01:00:58 It goes into this protective survival mode.
346. 01:01:04 I guess that's kind of like the fight versus flight versus freeze, I guess, is the new one. There's three different versions of that. Curious is like the exact opposite of that. I feel totally safe where I'm at so I can just follow my curiosity, whatever it happens to be intrigued by at the moment.
347. 01:01:22 I can rest knowing that I have the ability to go explore that thing a little bit further and kids are kind of naturally curious. You mentioned the statistic here that children under five asked up to 180 questions per day. I forget how old your kids are, but I think they're a little bit younger than mine, right?
348. 01:01:39 Yeah, they are a little bit. Yeah. So you probably get like what 500 questions per day? Oh my gosh, my five year old, every phrase is a question. He does not stop asking questions. So yes, very much so.
349. 01:01:54 I will tell you, Mike, that I figured out your book title. Yeah. In the past, we've talked about Mike writing a book, another book in what it's going to be about and what he wants it to be about. And there is a part in here where she says, let curiosity be your compass.
350. 01:02:11 And Mike, your book title is curiosity is the compass. Done. All right. Just write it in a city and file and then just start writing pages because that right there is your book title.
351. 01:02:25 That's all there is to it. Yeah. That's all there is to it. The words will just flow. You won't even have any trouble thinking about how to organize it. Curiosity is your compass and you just go.
352. 01:02:35 Yeah, what's interesting about the conversation we're having about this is I think it has little to do with what she's talking about in terms of nosy because he's really talking about like in terms of professional networking.
353. 01:02:46 Exactly. You know, avoid the questions that show how much you already know and asking questions, shows interest and other people.
354. 01:02:55 I think this is one of the chapters where, you know, I told you I was kind of 50/50 on the promotion chapter or not chapters promotion progress through your career like that kind of stuff where that sometimes rubbed me the wrong way.
355. 01:03:10 I think this is one of the chapters where it rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not. I don't think she said anything here that I wouldn't agree with in terms of like, Hey, like, ask people a bunch of questions.
356. 01:03:19 I tell my students this all the time. If you want to go learn something, ask somebody if you can shadow them and then just ask them a bunch of questions about what they do.
357. 01:03:26 You know, if you want to talk to somebody that you think is like out of your reach, if you will, right? Like they're a couple of network layers away.
358. 01:03:33 Just ask them to be the expert, right? Like, Hey, can I just pick your brain about whatever it is? Most people respond really, really well to that.
359. 01:03:40 She says in here about the most basic questions being like the most brilliant. It's really true. Like, you don't have to come up with these grand, crazy elaborate questions.
360. 01:03:50 Tell me about what you do. Like, why did you decide to make that decision or, you know, when that thing was really hard? What happened? How did you? How were you thinking about it?
361. 01:03:58 Like, it's a really effective strategy. My challenge with it is like, I'm just not interested in like constantly trying to figure out how to get to the next rung of the ladder.
362. 01:04:10 And that kind of rubbed me a little bit the wrong way.
363. 01:04:13 Yeah, I can definitely see that. And I think I agree with you that everything in here is accurate.
364. 01:04:21 But the way it's presented in this particular chapter is maybe the hardest of all of the chapters in order to generalize.
365. 01:04:30 Yeah. Okay. If you're good with it, let's go to six for manipulative. Okay. So chapter six is manipulative. Build influence through empathy.
366. 01:04:40 Typically, the way we define manipulative is intended to control. She redefines manipulative as the courage to influence others.
367. 01:04:50 She says in here about our kind of guttural reaction to the word manipulative. And I'll tell you, I felt that, right? Like, I did not like this from the onset.
368. 01:05:01 I was like, nope, I am not going to manipulate people. I won't manipulate people. That is not something I do.
369. 01:05:08 And then as she describes it, you think about it and you're like, well, I mean, everybody does it, right? Like, you do it. I do it.
370. 01:05:16 Like, you're always manipulating people where I think the struggle with this word is like manipulative has such a negative connotation in our brains.
371. 01:05:26 Because most of the time we use it, we're using it in a way that's not just intended to control, but it's intended to control like in a bad way, right?
372. 01:05:34 We're trying to do something that's bad for the other person. Yeah, this is the basis of all of the negative pushback to books like the 48 Laws of Power.
373. 01:05:44 And there are people who are like, well, it's just influence. It's happening whether you realize it or not. That's kind of Jenny's point, too, is that refusing to influence always doesn't remove influence from the equation.
374. 01:06:00 So I don't know. I guess it helped a little bit kind of bring that needle back from the... But I have that same negative visceral reaction. Like, I don't like this.
375. 01:06:10 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So she talks about how it's built on mutual benefit. So, okay, cool. Now we're talking, you know, in a language that makes more sense to me is like, oh, I'm going to encourage you to do something, even right here, Mike, I don't like to say the word manipulate.
376. 01:06:27 Like, I'm going to try to manipulate you to encourage you to do something that I would like you to do. But like, the best way to do that is when it's mutually beneficial to the two of us.
377. 01:06:35 She talks about honesty, generosity of time and effort and praise and then thoughtfulness. Yeah, I'm in. Like, yes, this is the best way to have this work.
378. 01:06:46 I get an action item out of here. She says, "Take a moment to jot down your dynamic dozen, 12 people you'd like to meet over the next 12 months."
379. 01:06:54 So again, she comes with this like very network-y focused or very like career development focus of it, which I don't care to do that from a career development standpoint.
380. 01:07:05 But I do think this would be a fun activity to do. It'd be like, who are the 12 people that I think it would be really fun to meet over the next, you know, over the next year?
381. 01:07:14 But it would be just to meet them. It wouldn't be to like get anything out of them or anything like that. It's just like, I like meeting interesting and cool people.
382. 01:07:22 So I'm putting that down as an action item, just not in the way she meant it for the book, for the audience.
383. 01:07:29 Yeah, I agree. A couple of things I liked from this section were the difference between the mentors and the sponsors.
384. 01:07:39 I'm not sure that this really applies to me in my current situation, but she defines mentors as people who speak to you, sponsors as people who speak for you and about you.
385. 01:07:49 And I feel like if you're in a place like Google, you definitely need both. And she actually kind of even mentions, you know, if you're trying to get promoted, you should be connecting with the people who are on the committee that are making that decision.
386. 01:08:03 They're not maybe directly above you, but they're sort of diagonally above you. And those are people worth making connections with.
387. 01:08:11 And I think when it comes to mentors and sponsors, this could obviously be sort of formal or informal, but the point being, you know, you never know when you're going to need somebody's help.
388. 01:08:22 And again, it's under the manipulative chapter, but it's not necessarily trying to get something from all these people that I'm meeting.
389. 01:08:30 It's really just kind of the right way to network, if I were to redefine it.
390. 01:08:35 Well, and I like you started talking about with the managed diagonally. I like the four different, you know, manage, manage higher, manage diagonally, manage sideways and manage outside.
391. 01:08:49 Like, I really like those four principles.
392. 01:08:52 I wouldn't like those nearly as much if she would have used the word manipulate manipulate, like, I wouldn't have liked those nearly as much because I think that's true.
393. 01:09:01 I need to manage in all those different spheres. I think in the corporate environment, it makes sense. In academia, I can tell you it definitely makes sense, right?
394. 01:09:08 Like, if I'm not paying attention up, down, left, right, like all the different ways, it's really, really easy for somebody to come in and, you know, negatively influence something I'm trying to get done.
395. 01:09:19 So, so it's like, you really have to think about that. I just, I like manage better than I like manipulate.
396. 01:09:26 I just did not like the framing of manipulation. I didn't like that at all.
397. 01:09:30 Yeah, I can understand that and I think I agree.
398. 01:09:34 Yeah.
399. 01:09:35 She ends the chapter, though. I don't know if you have, if you have much more. Do you, do you have any more on this one? Okay.
400. 01:09:40 Not really. I guess one other thing I'll just mention is that power grows through proximity. You got to be in the room, right?
401. 01:09:46 And then every job is a service job. I, I want to chew on that a little bit more, but I think there's some truth to that and the takeaway, not action item necessarily.
402. 01:09:58 But, you know, how can I do what I do in service of other people more effectively? That's, that's the key question I asked there.
403. 01:10:08 Yeah. My, my last one, again, I'm talking to the both sides of my mouth right now because this chapter I struggled with, she says, if you take nothing else from this chapter, give, give, give.
404. 01:10:18 So, give, give and give some more, which it's a manipulative chapter. You're trying to get stuff out of people and what's one of the ways she's saying the key to get people to do what you want them to do.
405. 01:10:27 Like, give in, in, you know, abundance. So, I get where her heart's at. I like, I like what she's doing here. But man, just that word manipulative I'm, I struggled with.
406. 01:10:38 Okay. Let's go to chapter seven. Chapter seven is brutal. Draw lines and stick to them. So typically the way it's defined is unpleasantly accurate and incisive.
407. 01:10:49 She redefines it as the courage to protect your time and energy. I, in my mind, I wrap this up or I classified this as the priority productivity chapter in my mind.
408. 01:11:01 Like, that's the way I thought about this one is like, this is her priority productivity chapter. And I thought she had a lot of good, good points in here.
409. 01:11:09 Just not being like my main takeaway, I guess, to just kind of put it out there. Don't be brutal with other people, but be brutal about certain things.
410. 01:11:20 You know, like, and I think if you think about it that way, this chapter reads very, very cleanly and has a lot of good points to it.
411. 01:11:27 Yeah, I think I agree with that.
412. 01:11:30 You're right that this is the productivity time management chapter. And I think it's probably the one that I didn't like the most.
413. 01:11:43 Didn't like is a strong word. I mean, I enjoyed the book, but there wasn't a whole lot here for me. And maybe it was because it is time management advice.
414. 01:11:56 And it is from someone who works in the most corporate of corporate settings. Yeah.
415. 01:12:03 Not to say that the advice is necessarily wrong or bad. Like, this is actually where she says no is a complete sentence and highlights at the average worker spends 2.6 hours per day on email.
416. 01:12:17 She's got the four F's of email for dealing with them more effectively. And I just kind of feel like, you know, email is obviously a much bigger part of her job and the people that she runs with than it is for me.
417. 01:12:32 And you really want to get good at email. Maybe there's some good advice here, but I think I would say, why do you want to get good at email in the first place?
418. 01:12:41 And maybe you are in a corporate scenario or salesperson and you do got to get good at it. But I don't know, there's definitely an efficiency focus with this one.
419. 01:12:54 And it's not just purely efficiency because there is, you know, you have to cut things. It's in the title brutal, right?
420. 01:13:04 The courage to protect your own time and energy, not let other people, other people's requests and demands stack up. But yeah, I think the whole thing can be summed up in one of the things that jotted down.
421. 01:13:17 There is no end to the work that could be done. Yeah. Close it. Close the chapter. Move on.
422. 01:13:23 Yeah. I did get an action item from this chapter has nothing to do with the content of the chapter itself.
423. 01:13:29 Okay, I like that. She mentions pull it in bullet. And this is basically when you are trying to communicate with a team. Right. So part of the reason that there's so many emails that are bouncing around is that no one in a corporate setting knows how to communicate very well.
424. 01:13:45 And as always, just like reply all, what do you mean question mark, no context, you know, in a creates 200 more emails. So pull it in bullet is basically like taking the whole conversation and condensing it down to a couple of bullets.
425. 01:13:59 And this is where like AI tools can be really effective, I think. Yep. I actually was thinking about that in terms of my newsletter.
426. 01:14:06 And I don't know that I want to use AI for this because my experience, you know, it doesn't do a great job of just converting it. But I think there's a smart brevity approach to my email newsletter where I condensed that essay into a couple of bullets.
427. 01:14:23 Yeah. And then they can go read the full text on the website if they want to. Again, that's just because that's what people have told me that they want.
428. 01:14:32 I don't know that I'm actually going to do that, but it got me thinking about that as an option.
429. 01:14:38 It would significantly decrease the length of the newsletter for the people who just want to see the big idea, the something cool, and then the notes from the book that I read.
430. 01:14:48 So I jotted it down to the question mark. I'm not sure I'm actually going to do that, but.
431. 01:14:52 Makes sense. Makes sense. I think as we're talking right now, the one other thing that stands out to me about this chapter is it's not only being brutal when somebody else tries to assign you something.
432. 01:15:01 But there's as much of it as being brutal with yourself, right? And the thing that made me think about that one is when something isn't paying off, leave it in her mission.
433. 01:15:10 She has that story about that. She's her uncle or her aunt and uncle or whatever it is. They have no problem going to a play.
434. 01:15:18 And if the place is not any good, they just leave. They just leave it in her mission. And I think about that as constantly evaluating your task list, your list of activities, the projects you're working on or whatever.
435. 01:15:30 And being okay with saying like, hey, this one doesn't make sense anymore. Boom. And you cut that and you run. I think you can overdo that. But at the same time, I still think there's more possibility for that than we acknowledge for us to do.
436. 01:15:46 There was a version of that with books, too, from that chapter, I believe, which I generally agree with. If you're reading a book and it's not doing it for you, put it down and go grab something else.
437. 01:15:55 Unless you're going to cover it for bookworm, then you got to finish it so you can talk about it.
438. 01:16:01 All right, let's get to reckless. So reckless is chapter eight, air on the side of action. So reckless marked by a lack of proper caution.
439. 01:16:10 That's the typical definition. And then reckless that redefined is the courage to take calculated risks. So she comes basically from the perspective of think about what you're doing, think about what you want to achieve.
440. 01:16:24 And don't be overly afraid that you're going to fail or that you're going to make missteps. Yes, that's going to happen. That's okay.
441. 01:16:32 You know, don't don't, I guess, have the courage to understand that those missteps are going to happen.
442. 01:16:37 But really take those calculated risks because those risks will help you get to where you want to get to this very, very high level for this chapter.
443. 01:16:48 Yeah, there are a couple of things that I liked in this chapter.
444. 01:16:54 Number one, she says, "If you're on the fence, do it. More swings lead some more strikes as well as more hits, but you got to put yourself up out there."
445. 01:17:02 Kind of related to that, she also addressed perfection. And that's something that I've struggled with in the past.
446. 01:17:09 She mentions that perfection is a direction, not an option. You're not going to hit it. And in fact, half of what you do will be below average or below the bar that you set for yourself.
447. 01:17:17 That seems like a really high number, but it's probably true.
448. 01:17:21 Yeah, I would agree.
449. 01:17:22 So the quantity is the thing that leads to the quality. If you're obsessed with the quality at the beginning, it's going to just slow you down to the point where you're not going to get the reps in to get it to the point where it's actually any good.
450. 01:17:34 And the other thing at the end of the chapter, which I think is very relevant, is for overthinkers, like myself, you don't need to have it all figured out.
451. 01:17:48 Go back to the compass idea, right? You need a compass, not a blueprint.
452. 01:17:51 And she has this specific phrase, "Move, then, map."
453. 01:17:56 Set a different way. You can't steer a parked car, but I found her framing of this actually to be way more effective, where the map that triggers the map is not the territory, mental model.
454. 01:18:07 So that's kind of where my brain went when I heard that, but I'm like, yeah, it makes sense. You aren't able to do that effectively until you are actually moving.
455. 01:18:16 Until you've made a decision, you've taken the first step, you put yourself out there, then you can course correct. And I think I'm guilty of trying to create all the maps before taking action.
456. 01:18:29 She doesn't hear that a lot of times the bold, scary move is the right one. I don't know if I agree with that statement. I don't think it's that simple, right? Because there are bold, scary moves that are just really bad decisions that I shouldn't do.
457. 01:18:47 So I think sometimes this section, or she could get a little bit over simplistic, but in general, I like this. So I tell people quite often, it's like, if I'm failing seven out of the ten things I'm trying, I'm good with that.
458. 01:19:04 That means I'm doing okay. As long as those seven are ones that I know I pushed harder, or that I'm pushing harder on this. If I'm only doing the things that I know that I can do, and I'm failing seven out of ten times, that's not good.
459. 01:19:17 That's a bad situation. But if I'm pushing myself, and I'm failing seven out of ten times, that means I'm doing it. I've talked to a bunch of people and they look at me like I'm crazy.
460. 01:19:28 What? You're willing to, and it's like, yeah, because I'm actually trying to get to that next stage. So I don't know if you have anything else on this one.
461. 01:19:39 No, I think I'm good. Okay. So chapter nine is bossy, steer others to success. So bossy, the typical definition is inclined to domineer dictatorial. She redefines bossy as the courage to listen and lead.
462. 01:19:53 And this is very much the leadership, management, chapter. Hey, here's essentially what I know about trying to be someone's boss, supervisor, leader, or manager, and just kind of a bunch of different ideas around that.
463. 01:20:11 One of the things I liked out of this one was solve for patterns, not problems. I really like that idea, right? So a lot of times we get focused on the individual problem. But really, the challenge started way before that.
464. 01:20:24 So in the engineering world, we would do something called a fishbone diagram. Are you familiar with a fishbone diagram, or an Ishikawa diagram?
465. 01:20:31 No, but if I saw one, I might recognize it. Yeah, I guarantee it. But basically it looks like a fish. When you draw it out, it looks like a fish in the bones within a fish.
466. 01:20:40 But basically, it's having you trace back to where like, here's the thing we're experiencing on the one end. And then here are all the possible causes of that.
467. 01:20:49 And you're trying to identify what is the most likely cause that's causing the thing you're experiencing on the very end. Like, you don't just want to fix the thing on the very end. You want to fix the root cause.
468. 01:20:58 So it's a root cause analysis kind of a thing. But I really liked her idea to solve the pattern or solve four patterns, not for problems. I thought that was a really good framing of that.
469. 01:21:07 Yeah, I jotted that down to, I like that a lot. A couple of other things from here mentions that violating social norms indicates leadership.
470. 01:21:17 Not necessarily, maybe that's more correlation than causation there. But I think it's a good point.
471. 01:21:27 The whole point of a manager or leaders to bring out the best in their team. Great leaders remove friction across the team.
472. 01:21:34 Yeah, I've definitely seen that and is a reminder to me for the people that I work with, you know, how can I remove the friction, not necessarily an action I'm associated with that.
473. 01:21:45 But top performers crave feedback.
474. 01:21:50 I definitely crave feedback, but also I think the reason I jotted that down is what happens when you're on a team where you're not sure who the top performers are.
475. 01:22:05 And so kind of the like not specific action item, but sort of that's associated with that is kind of pay attention for the people who you could give that feedback to and it would help them get to the next level and I have no idea who that is or in what scenario that could
476. 01:22:22 be applied, but got me thinking anyways. And I like the, the communicating up down and across idea, where up is you're sharing your accomplishments with the people above you leadership down you're helping the team that you're
477. 01:22:37 working with understand the larger vision, but then across where you're ensuring the seamless integration across the different levels of the organization.
478. 01:22:46 I don't think I have an application for that, but if I was still in the digital marketing agency, you know, that would come in handy that framing.
479. 01:22:55 Oh, and I can tell you that, you know, that that one hits really, really hard with me being in an organization like a university right.
480. 01:23:03 So I can tell you that we do that well in certain ways and we don't do that well in other ways and I've seen other places do it well in certain ways and not in not well in other ways.
481. 01:23:12 And the last one I have on this chapter is basically when you're a manager and think manager leader boss whatever it is every whisper is a shout.
482. 01:23:20 Right. And I think about this too with my parenting it's like, Oh, I said something and it was like, that wasn't a big deal.
483. 01:23:26 But like the other person on the other end receives that as if like, Oh, that meant everything I was like no like I've already forgotten about it I forgot about it, you know, right after I said the thing, but this happens with students that I'm leading it
484. 01:23:39 and so my boss and me, he makes a statement and it's like, Oh, I thought that was a big deal and he's like, No, it was not an idea and didn't really care.
485. 01:23:46 All right, we're going to wrap this one up. So now the conclusion embrace a life of wild courage.
486. 01:23:52 Honestly, Mike, this is really just a repeating the definitions and kind of kind of closing out the book well.
487. 01:23:58 This is the tail end of the motivation that was started at the beginning of, Hey, get out there and do it.
488. 01:24:03 I mean, she ends the book with the phrase let's go. So I mean, really, she's trying to motivate you to actually overcome your fear and use these courage, courage techniques.
489. 01:24:14 Yeah, I mean, I get the approach with these conclusions. It feels like a lot of books that we read have this style of conclusion, where it's like, I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
490. 01:24:25 And I'll tell you what I told you and inspire you to go do something with it. I don't like this, though. My big takeaway from this is that if when I write my book, the conclusion is going to be a totally separate thing that's going to communicate
491. 01:24:41 an original point. It's not going to be a summary of all the stuff that you just just read. Maybe I'll have a literary agent who will convince me otherwise. I don't know. We were taught that in grad school.
492. 01:24:55 Like they hammered that into us that said, if your conclusion is just a summary of everything else you wrote, you're writing it wrong. Like you're doing, you're doing a bad job. So yes, there's a whole field of writers that agrees with you.
493. 01:25:05 Yeah, I mean, it's only a couple of pages on a 220 page book. So it's really not a waste of time or anything. It's like an extra five minutes. It does a good job of pulling it all together.
494. 01:25:20 But I don't know. I'm trying to think of a book that we've read that had a different version of this that I thought was really effective. I can't think of the specifics, but in my mind, I'm thinking of a book where they talked about the different points.
495. 01:25:34 Like our outline here in chapters one through nine. And then the conclusion is an original personal story of how these things coalesced in their life and the change that had happened from it. You know, something like that is more effective to me than just here's the cliff notes version of the book. So if you jumped here, maybe you don't need to read it all. I don't know.
496. 01:25:58 Yeah, I agree. I agree. Okay, so with that, let's go into style and writing. If you're good with it, are you?
497. 01:26:06 Well, actually, there is one thing I jotted down from here, which again, like this is what I'm after. Like, I wish you would have just expounded on stuff like this, you know, everything you've ever wanted is waiting for you on the other side of fear is the phrase that she used.
498. 01:26:22 I like that a lot. And maybe, you know, the version of this would be because you talked about fear before. I think that was in the first section.
499. 01:26:32 So maybe, you know, that first section really is just a summary of the nine traits and the story of how she met her husband and the introduction to the idea of wild courage and then the fear stuff really like you take all that out, you put it in the conclusion.
500. 01:26:50 And the first time you're really addressing the topic of fear is right here. And then you end with everything you've ever wanted is waiting for you on the other side of fear, you know, something like that would have been more effective in my mind.
501. 01:27:00 Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.
502. 01:27:03 Okay, style and rating. My book actually action items first.
503. 01:27:08 Oh, I forgot. I forgot we didn't summarize the action items. We just said them. So thank you for correcting me.
504. 01:27:13 So I have two action items coming out of this. I want to try to apply the truth and tales process to reduce shame. My hope, my very strong hope is I don't have an event that happens between now and our next recording to where I have to do this.
505. 01:27:27 But I like this idea, like I like the idea of essentially reframing and rethinking about these shame inducing events. So again, I hope I don't have to do this, but at the same time, I want to apply it if I need to.
506. 01:27:40 And then the, the one that I want to do for sure is identify that dynamic dozen. Like who are the 12 people that I would want to meet in the next 12 months and then I'm going to add to this and say why, why do I want to meet those 12. It's not just purely for networking.
507. 01:27:53 Like I want to figure out why I want to meet those those 12 people. Sure. How about you.
508. 01:27:58 I've got four action items. One is say no to the small things. So these are the small requests that people make. And basically I want to have multiple instances where I just say no.
509. 01:28:09 I don't have to give a explanation for it. I want to add the win to the family meeting format. What do I need now?
510. 01:28:17 There is a quiz with this book as well. The wildcouragebook.com/quiz was the URL that is in the book. I haven't gone there yet. I haven't taken the quiz, but I do want to check out that quiz. You know, I love me a good quiz.
511. 01:28:29 You do love a good quiz.
512. 01:28:31 And then the last one is the pull it in bullet. And that's basically considering converting my email to essentially those three bullet points in the newsletter.
513. 01:28:42 And I don't know exactly even just saying that out loud. I'm nervous about it, but that might be the right move. So I want to think about that a little bit.
514. 01:28:51 Mike, if you haven't been able to tell, I'm excited to get to style and rating. I've been trying to get -- that's why I was pushing us and I forgot about it. I'm excited to get to style and rating. And here's why.
515. 01:29:04 So I didn't really like this book that much. There's good stuff in this book. I got some stuff out of this book. The nuggets were valuable. But overall, I did not really like this book that much.
516. 01:29:18 And I feel like I wanted to talk to you about it and try to figure out why I didn't like this book. There's just something about this book that rubbed me the wrong way. And I can't put my finger on it. I can't identify what exactly it was.
517. 01:29:32 I don't know if it was the reframing of negative things and that was the premise of doing it. I don't know if it applied too much to Google Corporate America. I don't know what exactly it was, but I just didn't really care for it.
518. 01:29:53 We had made the joke earlier that unless you're reading the book for Bookworm, I had to put this book down in chapter two. I would have stopped reading this book in chapter two. Knowing full and well, there's probably some good stuff in the rest of the chapters.
519. 01:30:07 I might get some good stuff out of this that'll mean something in the future. I'm not really going to recommend people go read this book. Like I don't think they're going to get that much out of it. I just -- I just didn't like it that much.
520. 01:30:20 Because it actually did provide some nuggets of value and I made it the whole way through because of the podcast, I'm going to rate it higher than you think I might rate it.
521. 01:30:31 I'm going to give it a three. My rating is a three on this book, but I have to tell you, just raw impression was not a fan overall of this book.
522. 01:30:43 I'm not going to belittle it, but that's just where I am. I'm intrigued to see what your rating was. If you have any comments on my rating, I'm more than willing to entertain those, but there you go. There you have it.
523. 01:30:56 All right. Well, I'm going to give it four stars and I liked the book. There were definitely points in it where -- I don't know. There were little nitpicks I had with it here and there. I think generally speaking, it's good advice.
524. 01:31:14 I really liked actually the premise, which is I'm going to take these negative words and reframe them. And I feel like when she did that and she shared stories around the new definitions that she came up with, they were generally effective in communicating her point.
525. 01:31:33 I think nosy was the one I talked about where that's the one that didn't quite connect with me. Chapter five or chapter six. And I do have a background with the digital marketing agency.
526. 01:31:45 So agency world, maybe that's enough to give me some context where like, oh, yeah, that's true. What she's talking about right there.
527. 01:31:53 Maybe I give her the benefit of the doubt because of that. Compared to you going through this, I don't know. But I think generally she's a skilled communicator.
528. 01:32:05 The way that she writes is kind of whimsical and fun, self-deprecating. It's easy to read. It's fairly entertaining to read. It's kind of the perfect mix, I think, for me, where I like these boring business books that most people don't like.
529. 01:32:22 And then she like sprinkles in some emotion to it. So yeah, I liked it. I'm not sure who I would recommend this book for. I mean, go after what you want and get it.
530. 01:32:36 That's kind of generally applicable. That's the subtitle of Wild Courage.
531. 01:32:41 I don't know that there's a specific person where it's like, if you're going through this thing, read this book.
532. 01:32:47 I think there's definitely parts of this which spoke to me as someone who left my day job to go independent a year and a half ago, actually almost two years ago now.
533. 01:32:58 But I don't think I would recommend this as the first book to read to that person either. That's more like the pathless path.
534. 01:33:08 So yeah, I'm not sure exactly who to recommend it to, but I did enjoy it. And I think there's definitely some good stuff in here. I think if you were to go through it.
535. 01:33:19 If you didn't quit in chapter two, there's something for just about everyone in here regardless of the situation.
536. 01:33:26 And maybe it's a little bit difficult to translate sometimes from the corporate speak, but I think overall it wasn't anything I had too much trouble with.
537. 01:33:34 I didn't look at the resources, but every time she mentioned them, I'm like, "Oh, okay, see how that could be useful."
538. 01:33:39 So my gut feel is that the resources that come with this are actually pretty decent as well.
539. 01:33:50 If you're going to go beyond just the content of the book itself and view it as a package, I'm not sure if that's the right way to do it or not.
540. 01:33:58 But yeah, can I comment on that one second? Sure.
541. 01:34:03 The resources. So she mentions in this book at one point about somebody that she worked with giving away a bunch of information in their book as a way to get clients.
542. 01:34:15 And I feel 100% that is a driver of the resources and a driver of the book. I'm not kidding.
543. 01:34:22 I think that is a big... She saw that model and was like, "Oh yeah, I should write a book about these core principles that I would use in my career coaching, and then I'm going to list these resources for this as well."
544. 01:34:35 Because it feels much less resource-y. So tiny experiments, those resources feel much more resource versus this feels much more like selling.
545. 01:34:48 It feels much more like sales. Just general impression on that.
546. 01:34:51 Yeah, could be. I still think it's a decent book. She mentioned she's friends with the woman who wrote free time and blanking on her name.
547. 01:35:03 Jenny Blake.
548. 01:35:04 Jenny Blake.
549. 01:35:05 Okay, I was going to say Blake. I was like, "Jenny, no, this is Jenny Wood."
550. 01:35:09 They're both named Jenny.
551. 01:35:11 I definitely liked that book better. But I think that... I mean, I mentioned that they're friends. They're...
552. 01:35:22 What's the term I'm looking for? They're not like co-workers or anything, but they...
553. 01:35:27 Colleagues, yeah.
554. 01:35:28 Colleagues? Sure, yeah.
555. 01:35:30 So that definitely comes through in the tone of the book. So if that's interesting to you, I think you'll like this one.
556. 01:35:39 But I don't blame anyone for not picking it up. It's not like the best of 2025 in whatever category to me.
557. 01:35:50 Agree. Okay, so let's get to upcoming books. So Mike, what are we working on next?
558. 01:35:55 All right, the next book is "When" by Daniel Pink because we have not read Daniel Pink Book in the entire run of Bookworm.
559. 01:36:03 And I feel like that needs to be remedied. So that's what we're reading next.
560. 01:36:09 And then after that, I have no idea. What are we reading, Corey?
561. 01:36:13 Yeah, so I meant to talk about this before the show. Usually Mike and I hit this before the show. So Mike, I just dropped something in the chat.
562. 01:36:18 You can look at it. Unless he vetoes this, we're going to go with what's called "The Confident Mind."
563. 01:36:24 A Battle Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance by Dr. Nate Zincer. So not too old. It's in 2022 book, but it looks pretty good and it's about confidence.
564. 01:36:35 All right, let's do it. So book on confidence. Okay, great. So cool. We're going to go "When" by Daniel Pink and then we're going to go "The Confident Mind."
565. 01:36:45 Mike, do you have any gap books during this period of time?
566. 01:36:49 I do. So Karaman wrote it a session in the library on creating a Facts of Life book in Obsidian.
567. 01:36:57 And she mentioned a book in her presentation called "You Need a Manifesto" by Charlotte Bergus Auburn.
568. 01:37:04 It's a book by the Stanford School of Design. I actually bought it. It came in the mail. It looks like a short, very visual book, but very much in line with the whole life-themed idea.
569. 01:37:16 Different take on it, maybe. So I intend to read that one before the next book "When" by Daniel Pink.
570. 01:37:26 Awesome. Fantastic. So if you're reading along with us, pick up "When" by Daniel Pink. Thank you all for joining us.
571. 01:37:34 In the Pro Show, we talked about nerdy gear today. So Mike has nerdy coffee gear and I had nerdy workout gear.
572. 01:37:42 We talked about kind of why we like those things. If you're interested in becoming a pro member, you can sign up at patreon.com/bookwormfm.
573. 01:37:52 You'll get the bookworm wallpaper. You'll get the bootleg version of the show where as soon as we start, we hit record.
574. 01:37:58 You'll get the Pro Show feed that strips out the ads when we start selling more of those.
575. 01:38:04 And then we also started live streaming. So if you're in the Pro feed, there's a post that we post right before the show starts when we record.
576. 01:38:12 And you can jump onto the live stream as well. So if you're interested in that $7 a month, we'd really appreciate it.
577. 01:38:18 That's patreon.com/bookwormfm. Otherwise, pick up "When" by Daniel Pink and we'll talk to you next time.