235: Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

Click any line to jump to that moment.

1. 00:00:00 So the first item of accountability here, Corey, you
2. 00:00:03 wanted to carry over from last time.
3. 00:00:05 And that was talked to me about accountability for a book.
4. 00:00:11 This is for the book writing we're
5. 00:00:13 going to be doing in November.
6. 00:00:14 Yes.
7. 00:00:15 Which November is tomorrow, Mike.
8. 00:00:17 So if we--
9. 00:00:19 As we record this.
10. 00:00:20 As we record this.
11. 00:00:20 Yeah, as we record this.
12. 00:00:21 So if we had time, if we had time,
13. 00:00:25 I would do it right now because then I
14. 00:00:27 could be assured that it would check off the list.
15. 00:00:29 But we don't have time right now.
16. 00:00:31 So I'm going to have to try to schedule this with you
17. 00:00:33 either today or tomorrow.
18. 00:00:35 Because if we're going to start writing a book tomorrow
19. 00:00:38 according to this recording, then I need to do this soon.
20. 00:00:42 So I failed.
21. 00:00:43 I failed.
22. 00:00:44 I failed.
23. 00:00:44 I failed.
24. 00:00:45 I failed.
25. 00:00:45 I failed.
26. 00:00:46 I failed.
27. 00:00:47 I failed.
28. 00:00:48 I failed.
29. 00:00:49 I failed.
30. 00:00:50 I failed.
31. 00:00:51 I failed.
32. 00:00:52 I failed.
33. 00:00:53 I failed.
34. 00:00:54 I'm writing it down right now.
35. 00:00:55 Talk to Mike.
36. 00:00:56 I'm sorry.
37. 00:00:57 I am for sure doing this.
38. 00:00:58 With different people and every time I've felt very uncomfortable telling them I'm writing
39. 00:01:03 a book next month.
40. 00:01:07 But yeah, there's like a dozen people now who know.
41. 00:01:12 I'm committed to this.
42. 00:01:13 In fact, in the car, we recently took a trip to Tennessee, went to the pinball museum
43. 00:01:19 pro show listeners just heard us talk about my experience there.
44. 00:01:23 long car ride on the way there, I outlined the different sections of the book. It's going to be
45. 00:01:29 roughly a productivity book. I mean, it's going to be in personal retreat. So I'll give you a guess
46. 00:01:34 how many sections there are. Three. Ding, ding, ding, ding. That's how you know. I was trying, I was
47. 00:01:45 trying not to, but that's just kind of how it broke down when I was working on the outline. I got
48. 00:01:49 the mind map outline. That's the, the TLDR here. The outline is ready to go or mind map is ready to
49. 00:01:54 go. I've written a whole bunch of words for a video that I published on personal retreats. So
50. 00:02:00 that was like 8,000 words. And that's going to be, I mean, all of that is, is stuff that I can use
51. 00:02:06 in the book. But yeah, tomorrow is, it's go time. I don't have a set amount of like, I want to
52. 00:02:16 write a thousand words a day or anything like that. I'm just going to try to write every day.
53. 00:02:20 Well, and that was my next question to you. I just hadn't made it there yet is what's your plan?
54. 00:02:25 Do you mind telling us your plan? Is there a set time that you're going to write is you already
55. 00:02:30 said you don't have a set number of words that you want to write? Like what, what's the structure
56. 00:02:35 of this? Because if if you're like me and you don't put a structure to it, then you're going to last
57. 00:02:40 a day or two and then it's just going to fizzle out and do something else. So what's your structure?
58. 00:02:45 Yeah, well, I don't know 100%. I mean, the structure is really a time block my days and writing the book
59. 00:02:53 is going to be one of the three things that is going to be in the time block plan every single day.
60. 00:02:58 And I'm going to try to block off at least an hour. And I think some days I'll be able to do
61. 00:03:03 more than that. Some days that'll be a stretch. But the thing is I want to make sure that I write
62. 00:03:09 every single day. Joshua is also going to be writing. He wants to work on, I don't think,
63. 00:03:16 not like a novel, but like a fiction fiction work that he's been working on. So we talked about
64. 00:03:23 creating like a big chart and hanging it in the kitchen where we can nice, you know, the dots,
65. 00:03:27 you know, go up as you have the number of words that you've written every day. But
66. 00:03:31 yeah, it starts tomorrow. We don't have that yet. So we'll see.
67. 00:03:36 There's always tonight, and there's always tomorrow morning, right? Like so,
68. 00:03:40 I'm glad to hear that you're going to you're going to push forward with it,
69. 00:03:44 not to take too long on this tangent. Did you know that NaNoWriMo is not happening in 2025?
70. 00:03:51 Oh, really? No, I didn't know that. So listen, or if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is,
71. 00:03:54 it's National Novel Writing Month, and it's usually the month of November. And it's for primarily
72. 00:04:00 like what like science fiction and fantasy, like, isn't that where it got started?
73. 00:04:03 National Novel Writing Month. Yeah, yeah. So they, the organization shut down in April of 2025
74. 00:04:12 due to financial issues. So now all the NaNoWriMo stuff is going to be like bootleg, you know,
75. 00:04:19 I'm sure somebody on Reddit has started a let's do this without the organization kind of a thing.
76. 00:04:24 So, but I just did a quick Google search of it. I was going to link to it and it's no more.
77. 00:04:30 That's sad. It is sad. Because now you're going to do your own. You're going to do your own.
78. 00:04:34 Yep. Mike Schmidt National Productivity Book Writing Month.
79. 00:04:40 Well, I'm going to write and I am going to share what I'm doing inside of the library,
80. 00:04:45 my community. So we can do additional accountability if you would like. But that there's going to be
81. 00:04:53 some public accountability just to make sure that I stick with this. But I am confident that I am
82. 00:05:00 going to be able to not necessarily write the whole thing in 30 days, but write every day.
83. 00:05:08 The personal retreat planner, not to go too deep on this, but I've been using that and it's working
84. 00:05:15 really well. I actually got a unprompted testimonial from somebody the other day,
85. 00:05:21 the first one, which is pretty great talking about how they've been trying personal retreats for
86. 00:05:25 many months and they haven't gotten it to stick. And this was the first time that it really had
87. 00:05:29 any sort of traction. I'm experiencing that. Well, not the first time it's had any traction,
88. 00:05:34 but I've definitely seen the traction that comes from using it too. So aligning my quarterly plan
89. 00:05:39 of writing this book with the daily plans and blocking out the time for it, that's really the
90. 00:05:45 key. You don't need my planner in order to do that. But that's what I'm using. And so I have never felt
91. 00:05:51 more confident in my plan for accomplishing something than I do right now. That's good. That's good. I
92. 00:05:58 like to hear that. But again, it's the process. It's not the outcome that I'm really tracking here.
93. 00:06:03 So what else is on our follow up list? Well, I've got several follow up things that I failed at,
94. 00:06:11 defining my STP creating checklist for everything. I still intend to create the checklist. To be
95. 00:06:17 honest, I don't remember what STP was at this point. Normally, folks, I go back and I even
96. 00:06:23 re-listened to the part of the episode where we talk about the action items. So I know exactly
97. 00:06:29 what I was thinking when we get to this part of the show. But as Corey alluded to, it has been
98. 00:06:36 a week. So I did not get a chance to do that this time. I'm just going to take the loss on this one
99. 00:06:44 and turn the page. And I fully, I fully support that. I fully support that.
100. 00:06:51 All right. And then you had a couple for downloading the resources from the previous book,
101. 00:06:55 which was sponsor magnet by Justin Moore. Well, actually, let's just talk about that one first.
102. 00:07:01 Did you get a chance to do that? I didn't. I didn't remember that I was going to do this.
103. 00:07:05 I need to do this. But no, I just, I bombed on that one. I can move quickly on to my second one.
104. 00:07:11 So I don't feel too bad about that one. So go to the audience or take the first step in this.
105. 00:07:16 I think where I'm at, Mike, and I keep circling back on this. So you've probably picked up
106. 00:07:20 as I don't know where I want to put the majority of my time right now.
107. 00:07:28 Like I have like three or four different things that are that check slightly different boxes,
108. 00:07:34 but they're all around, you know, that same like true north or that same life theme, like as you
109. 00:07:39 would, you know, describe it. So like they're all in that space and they're all good. I just don't
110. 00:07:44 know which one to actually commit the effort to right now. And I keep going back and forth on them.
111. 00:07:49 And it's like one of those situations where like, I'll, I'll be on Monday, like super
112. 00:07:53 confident like, yeah, this is like, I should do this, right? This is the one. Then on Wednesday,
113. 00:07:57 I'm like, huh, maybe, maybe I should do this one. Right. So like I haven't made like a boatload of
114. 00:08:01 progress on any of them because I'm not positive on which one makes the most sense. And I need
115. 00:08:08 to figure that out. Like that's a big thing. So grow the audience. Like I've thought about that.
116. 00:08:12 The other thing I come back to a lot, and you know, I've talked about this in different
117. 00:08:17 ways in different forms. I know like social media is necessary. And I think social media is a part
118. 00:08:24 of the way that you grow an audience. And I know that we've read some books on growing your newsletter
119. 00:08:30 as opposed to growing like a social media audience that there's more value in in that.
120. 00:08:35 I just can't stand social media. Like I just can't stand it. And it's because I think like of what
121. 00:08:41 it does to me internally, like when I start to play around with it, I like, I just think differently.
122. 00:08:48 And I don't like the way I think when social media is very active. So that's been a hard
123. 00:08:53 thing for me to figure out. I was like, how do I grow my audience, but not like go crazy on social
124. 00:08:57 media? And I haven't figured that out either. So I mean, I'll stop there.
125. 00:09:02 Well, let me break the bad news to you that you are live on social media right now as we stream
126. 00:09:08 this to YouTube. I know. And like, that doesn't bother me as much because like, I'm not super
127. 00:09:15 engaged in it. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Where like, do I care that if people watch the
128. 00:09:20 live stream? Sure. Do I care if they watch the video afterwards? Yeah. But it doesn't like creep
129. 00:09:24 into my brain and like start to mess with me. For some reason, if I do a post on Instagram or
130. 00:09:29 X or whatever it is, like, I want that to go viral. And I don't like that about me. Like,
131. 00:09:34 I'm saying this very strongly. Like, I don't like that about me. Or I want my follower account to
132. 00:09:39 go, I, you know, it's a it's a pride thing. It's got to be a pride thing, right? Like,
133. 00:09:43 I want my follower account to go up. I look at yours and I'm like, Mike has more followers than me.
134. 00:09:47 And I'm like, yeah, but he's been doing this for like 20 years, right? And like, but my thing
135. 00:09:51 is like, that bothers me. And I don't like that it bothers me. And so I want to like retreat and
136. 00:09:56 just completely go away from it. You should be in my creator business accelerator, sir.
137. 00:10:01 And I told you that I was super close, super close. And I just yeah.
138. 00:10:07 Yeah. So just real briefly, I think that maybe this isn't news to you, but just for the sake of
139. 00:10:13 everybody else is hearing what you're saying and saying, yeah, I agree. I think the way to beat this
140. 00:10:17 is to pick one platform where you actually want to show up. Don't view it as social media and don't
141. 00:10:23 be like, well, I got to show up on all the socials. Just go where your people are,
142. 00:10:26 join the conversation, start talking. And then you can build the audience and eventually you have
143. 00:10:33 something that you're going to going to sell. My audience is YouTube. I almost never go on YouTube,
144. 00:10:39 just to chat or comment, things like that about once a week, maybe once every two weeks, I'll
145. 00:10:47 actually just go in and batch reply to to all those those comments. I try to be a little bit
146. 00:10:52 more responsive right after I launch a video. But for the most part, that's you don't have to play
147. 00:11:01 the game the way that everybody else plays it either. You can do it on your own terms. So really,
148. 00:11:05 it's just thinking about what am I trying to get out of this? I know I don't have to, but my brain
149. 00:11:10 can't not like, you know, that's my problem. Like, so and I know that about me, but that's the whole
150. 00:11:16 thing that just driving me crazy about this growing the audience thing is which project which ties
151. 00:11:22 back to the other idea. And then how do I push forward with that? But I'll work on that. I'll
152. 00:11:28 figure that out. It's going to be you've got a you've got a couple months to figure it out before
153. 00:11:31 you go to the sponsor games. That's okay. And the last one is the sponsor games, which I just told
154. 00:11:38 Mike, I think before we turned everything on, I'm like 90% in on sponsor games. I have to confirm a
155. 00:11:43 couple more things, which will probably get done this weekend, but I'm about 90% in on the sponsor
156. 00:11:49 games. So Justin Moore, you did a great job convincing me to do a thing. And then Mike helped
157. 00:11:57 you out convincing me to do a thing. So there's a real good chance that we're we're going to be
158. 00:12:01 in Dallas in March, you and I. San Antonio, is that what I was saying, I'm sorry. Don't go to Dallas.
159. 00:12:08 You won't find me there. Sorry. There's your chance we're going to be in San Antonio. Come, come March.
160. 00:12:12 All right. That's my last one. That's my last follow up on. Cool. Yeah, that looks like a really
161. 00:12:17 cool conference. And I'm hoping that my black Friday sale goes bonkers. So I don't have to worry
162. 00:12:25 about spending the money to to fly for this thing. And the stupid thing is not stupid. But like,
163. 00:12:32 if there was one conference you were going to go to where you literally could you could justify
164. 00:12:39 the expense, it would be one that's going to help you make money through sponsorships. Exactly.
165. 00:12:45 That's the same thing that goes through my brain is my brain is like, Corey, this like
166. 00:12:48 probably has the highest potential ROI out of anything you could ever do. Like you should do
167. 00:12:54 this, right? You should really do this. So yeah, like what you're hearing here, audience is you're
168. 00:13:00 hearing the difference between somebody who's a full time creator. And then somebody who does
169. 00:13:04 this because you know, it's like the side thing and like it borderlines hobby versus creator kind
170. 00:13:10 of thing. And like, we just you think about it in different ways. You really do. It's true. All
171. 00:13:16 right. All right. All right. Although I think we need to destroy that. It's gonna say stereotype,
172. 00:13:25 but really it's like a mental model limiting belief there at some point, you know, because a lot of
173. 00:13:33 the quote unquote full time creators that I I've looked up to over the years, they started as
174. 00:13:44 full time other job. And then this was a side hustle. They just didn't frame it that way. They're
175. 00:13:49 like, yeah, I'm Max Sparky. I'm also a lawyer. Yeah, but I'm totally this thing. Like, that's what
176. 00:13:55 we got to get you to. I know, I know, I know, I know, keep working on it. Mike, keep working on me.
177. 00:14:01 All right. I'm a working progress. Mike. We all are. Okay, let's talk about today's book,
178. 00:14:08 which is made to stick by Chippendan Heath. This was a listener recommendation from Andrew, I believe.
179. 00:14:18 So thank you for recommending this one. I had read previous Chippendan Heath books. And this,
180. 00:14:23 so I kind of knew what to expect with this. This one did not disappoint. What I love about the
181. 00:14:28 Chippendan Heath books is that the structure of the book is very simple. So this one has an
182. 00:14:36 introduction, which is what sticks question mark. So asking the question. And then chapter one is
183. 00:14:42 simple. Chapter two is unexpected. Chapter three is concrete. Chapter four is credible.
184. 00:14:46 Chapter five is emotional. Chapter six is stories. And then there's an epilogue,
185. 00:14:50 what sticks minus the question mark? So it's a statement. There's no three parts to this. There's
186. 00:14:57 one core idea they are talking about. It's very clear from the subtitle why some ideas survive
187. 00:15:03 and others die. And it's an interesting combination of expertise that they bring as co authors. I
188. 00:15:12 forget which one it was. I think it was Chipp who teaches a class at Stanford. Yeah, I can't remember
189. 00:15:21 one of them does teach at Stanford. I just can't remember which one of them. Yeah, and the class
190. 00:15:24 is called made to stick, which is like based on the ideas in this book. That's kind of cool.
191. 00:15:29 Which what's wild is I've actually seen this happen with more than one person at Stanford,
192. 00:15:33 where they'll teach a class and they'll teach it a couple of different times. And then they'll
193. 00:15:38 turn it into a book like they basically just take their course notes and they make them a little
194. 00:15:42 bit more robust and they'll turn them and turn it into a book, which I think is a really kind of
195. 00:15:46 clever way to do that. It also comes from and I won't go down too far down this rabbit hole. It
196. 00:15:51 comes from the culture of a place like Stanford, where they essentially have more money than they
197. 00:15:55 ever know what to do with. So they encourage, they encourage their faculty members to do
198. 00:16:00 stuff like this, like they give them time to like help and like, you know, they give them free time
199. 00:16:05 to go like turn that class into a book. So it's an interesting model for university.
200. 00:16:11 Yeah, that that is true. And I do think that that is cool. However, that's only half of this
201. 00:16:17 because that's one person's perspective. And then I forget how the pieces fit together. But the
202. 00:16:21 bottom line is that it reads different than because we've read some of those books, I believe, that
203. 00:16:27 have come out of Stanford classes, I forget which ones. But it's a it's maybe the most successful
204. 00:16:37 or the best, in my opinion, co-authored book I've read. Like, I generally don't like co-authored
205. 00:16:43 books because there's a very distinct handoff from this person wrote this section to this person
206. 00:16:49 wrote this section. And it feels a little bit disjointed. You don't get that with Chip and Dan
207. 00:16:54 Heath. They were made to write books together. Well, and I thought to see the exact same thing,
208. 00:16:59 right? As you as you said that, I thought this did not read like a co-authored book. They would
209. 00:17:04 refer to the person who if they were like talking more specifically about somebody than somebody
210. 00:17:08 else, they would they would do that. And but it wasn't like inappropriate. Like, now Dan's going
211. 00:17:13 to talk about blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, you didn't have to like play that mental game of
212. 00:17:17 Switch. It was just them telling a story and they'd be like in chips classes or in Dan's experience.
213. 00:17:22 And like it worked really well. I think they did it really well.
214. 00:17:25 Yep. All right. So ready to get into the content? Yep. Ready to get into the framework
215. 00:17:33 because that's where they start us.
216. 00:17:37 That's true. So the first section is technically the introduction where they're asking the question,
217. 00:17:44 what sticks? And they define sticky as getting your ideas understood and remembered.
218. 00:17:53 I believe it's this section where they start off with a very
219. 00:18:00 Yes. Disruptive. Dramatic. Dramatic. That's the word. Yes. Story about the kidney bandit. Right.
220. 00:18:12 And apparently this is a thing that like people have told different versions of this story
221. 00:18:18 throughout the years. And I had never heard this before. Had you heard this?
222. 00:18:22 I'd never heard it, but I will tell you they had me hooked like so hooked in the first however
223. 00:18:29 many lines like they had me hooked. Yeah. So the the the version of this is guy meets this
224. 00:18:37 girl at the bar. She gets him a drink. He gets knocked out, wakes up in the bathtub. There's a
225. 00:18:43 tube out of his side and his kidney has been harvested. I was just like, oh my gosh, there's no way.
226. 00:18:50 Like this is crazy. This is a crazy story. Yeah. And then they drop. They drop the reveal.
227. 00:18:56 Yeah. Which is kind of the point is they want to show that certain ideas and certain stories tend
228. 00:19:03 to stick with you and others don't. They also mentioned at the beginning here that most communication
229. 00:19:09 advice focuses on the delivery and on the presentation, which I have been through toastmasters and done
230. 00:19:16 stuff like that. So I obviously there's not no value in that, but kind of their whole argument
231. 00:19:23 right from the beginning here is sort of a hot take because they're like the idea is really the
232. 00:19:27 thing that matters. Not how well you you can present it. They have the framework that you
233. 00:19:33 mentioned, which is that sticky ideas draw from a common set of traits, which are the next six
234. 00:19:37 chapters. So simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and story. And there's a
235. 00:19:46 a lot here with this like story specifically, I think of story worthy by Matthew Dix. So there
236. 00:19:52 are whole books that have been written just on the ability to tell a story. You can definitely go
237. 00:19:56 deeper than what they share in these 250 pages roughly. But I also think that the length of this
238. 00:20:03 is pretty decent. They do a good job going into each chapter, explaining not only the core ideas
239. 00:20:11 and sharing different stories to and statistics to support those ideas, but they've also got as
240. 00:20:16 you go through the chapters, the gray boxes, I forget what they're called, but it's basically
241. 00:20:21 like they show you two different messages. And then they run through the checklist and they say,
242. 00:20:26 this one is better than that one because of this. And you can see how it checks these criteria,
243. 00:20:30 that sort of thing. They call them clinics is what they call clinics.
244. 00:20:33 Yeah, clinics. I liked the framework. I thought the framework was easy. Success is how they break
245. 00:20:41 it down. So it's just got one less s so they had like a little lowercase s on the end of it.
246. 00:20:47 The other thing that stood out to me in this chapter that I've heard before, but they put it in an
247. 00:20:52 interesting context was this idea of the curse of knowledge that basically once we know about
248. 00:20:56 something, it's hard for us to imagine that somebody else doesn't know that. And I experienced this
249. 00:21:03 every day or every semester with with what I teach, like so right now I'm teaching statistics.
250. 00:21:09 And like one of the things is like, how on earth could you not know that the area under the curve
251. 00:21:14 is the probability kind of a thing? And I and I forget that like for a lot of these students,
252. 00:21:19 this is the first time they've ever experienced that concept in their life. So like, I really
253. 00:21:25 like how they drive home this idea of the curse of knowledge. And then they carry that through
254. 00:21:30 throughout the rest of the book is, Oh, you're noticing here one of the one of the curses of
255. 00:21:34 knowledge, you know, where people aren't paying attention to that. Yeah, the definition for the
256. 00:21:38 curse of knowledge, by the way, is when we forget what it was like not to know something. So I have
257. 00:21:45 definitely heard this term before been aware of it with just the stuff that I've done online over
258. 00:21:52 the last several years. I probably still have fallen into this at different times, but I've tried
259. 00:21:59 real hard to make things that are approachable for anybody on the spectrum as it pertains to,
260. 00:22:07 you know, in my specific case right now, how familiar they are with with obsidian, you know,
261. 00:22:15 I'm working on a video right now, which is like 20 quality of life tips. And so there's some stuff
262. 00:22:20 on there that's really basic some stuff on there that's pretty advanced. And I'm trying to, you know,
263. 00:22:25 make it so that whoever is going to give me the time to watch the video is going to get something
264. 00:22:30 from it. Before that it was productivity. I think that one, it's easier for me to fall into the
265. 00:22:36 the curse of knowledge, like, oh yeah, everybody time blocks, right? Just obviously it's a great
266. 00:22:40 idea. Not the case. But the larger point that they're really making at the end of this, which I think
267. 00:22:48 is important and relevant for the rest of the book, is that creating sticky ideas is something
268. 00:22:52 that can be learned. And so that's what they're going to try to teach us over the next six chapters.
269. 00:22:56 Yeah, I think just before we move on to chapter one, because we're going to start to talk about
270. 00:23:00 like each of the key ideas in their framework. So we're going to start with simple before we move
271. 00:23:05 on to that. The idea of creating sticky stories or sticky ideas was really, really attractive to
272. 00:23:11 me. So in this first introduction, you know, I come out of this thinking, this is relevant,
273. 00:23:15 this is valuable, no matter what you do. So I don't care like they'll use a lot of like advertising
274. 00:23:20 examples, because they're trying to get this idea stick in your head that way when you go to the
275. 00:23:24 store, you remember to buy the thing or you remember to look it up. They'll use those examples. But
276. 00:23:28 like, for me, like teaching, like I think about this a lot, like I want these ideas to stick in
277. 00:23:33 people's brains, not because I want them to get an A on the exam, but because I'm teaching them
278. 00:23:39 something that's going to be valuable in their life and the better it sticks, the more they're
279. 00:23:42 likely to remember it, or at least to remember where to go look things up and like figure it out
280. 00:23:46 later on in life. So like this really connected with me because I use this every day, like I will
281. 00:23:51 use this every day. Then I think about it from my family standpoint, right? Like there are things
282. 00:23:55 that I want to have stick in the boys minds as they grow up, you know, that way they remember
283. 00:24:01 those truths, right? Or they remember those good practices or whatever it is. So like this hit me
284. 00:24:06 really well on two different levels, and it had nothing to do with like advertising or
285. 00:24:11 any of that other stuff. It just had to do with like life and skills. So for those of you out there
286. 00:24:17 thinking like, ah, you know, these guys and do I really care about business development or anything?
287. 00:24:22 It's like, don't worry about that. Like these, I think these principles go across a lot of different
288. 00:24:26 domains. And if you want to have an influence in other people's life, there's a lot of
289. 00:24:31 good practical tips that they give you in here that will help you have an influence in somebody
290. 00:24:35 else's life. So I want to, I want to throw that out there for the people who are a little bit
291. 00:24:37 skeptical about whether or not to read this book. Absolutely read it. That's the short version.
292. 00:24:43 Let's go into chapter one because there's something here that complements exactly what you
293. 00:24:49 were talking about. And I thought of you when I read this. So chapter one is simple, but one of
294. 00:24:54 the points that he makes here, and this isn't one of the core points, but I want to jump here
295. 00:24:58 because you were just talking about this good teachers intuitively use lots of schemas.
296. 00:25:05 Okay. So schemas are kind of these frameworks, I guess, like mental models,
297. 00:25:11 the model already understand. And then they use that to explain new things. So this whole chapter
298. 00:25:17 is on making things simple, they define simple as core plus compact. And by the way, at the end
299. 00:25:24 of this book, after the epilogue, there is a making idea stick the easy reference guide. And I love
300. 00:25:30 this. I have this open as we talk through things because I want to make sure that the way they
301. 00:25:35 presented this stuff, there was very clear, very clear progression to the things. That's not the
302. 00:25:41 way my notes read necessarily, because I'm just jotting down whatever stands out to me.
303. 00:25:46 So there are two things here under the simple section. There is find the core and share the core.
304. 00:25:54 Right. So this is the first item on the checklist. If you really want to make something sticky,
305. 00:25:59 you've got to make it simple. And a couple of examples that I liked from here, they talk about
306. 00:26:05 core ideas for a couple of brands like Southwest, the low fair airline and how that can be clarifying
307. 00:26:10 in terms of what decisions to make. Because if you are the low fair airline,
308. 00:26:15 then the example they use is someone in marketing has the idea because people want to eat something
309. 00:26:20 on their plane. We should offer chicken salad to people because that's what they want. And then
310. 00:26:27 the clarifying question is, does serving people chicken salad on the flight make us the low fair
311. 00:26:33 airline? Well, no, obviously not. You have to spend more money to do that. Okay, we're not going to
312. 00:26:38 do that. So I love just the clarification that comes from knowing what the core idea is for
313. 00:26:46 your brand and in that specific scenario. But they also talk about commander's intent in this
314. 00:26:51 chapter, which I think is pretty cool. Commander's intent comes from the army. But the idea here is
315. 00:26:57 that whenever you have a plan, it never survives contact with the enemy. The enemy gets a vote.
316. 00:27:03 You know, it's kind of how they introduce it at the beginning here. So when you are establishing
317. 00:27:09 commander's intent really like, what is the mission about? What are we trying to do here?
318. 00:27:14 When you understand that, then you can modify the plan as you encounter resistance, which applies
319. 00:27:21 to everybody every single day, not just those in the armed forces. So two questions for establishing
320. 00:27:27 commander's intent, they share, which I think are great. If we do nothing else during tomorrow's
321. 00:27:30 mission, we must and then fill in the blank. And the second one is the single most important thing
322. 00:27:35 that we must do tomorrow is then fill in the blank. If you did that, imagine how much more
323. 00:27:41 productive you would be. I mean, I love commander's intent because what it does is it gives you the
324. 00:27:51 structure that you need, but it doesn't tell you everything that you have to do or like every required
325. 00:27:56 item in that thing. So like, this is what we this is who we are. This is what we do. And then go do
326. 00:28:04 your thing. And like part of the thing that gets me so I do, you know, some management type thinking
327. 00:28:10 and teaching around like project management and those things. And like part of the thing that drives
328. 00:28:15 me crazy is when we over manage or we micromanage people, because like, the best way things run
329. 00:28:20 oftentimes is I'm going to hire you because you're an expert and because you're smart. And then I
330. 00:28:27 don't want to micromanage you. I want to tell you the intent. And then I want you to go do really
331. 00:28:31 good things. And part of the reason why is because you might do something better than I think, you
332. 00:28:36 know, like better like wiser than me because I hired you and you're smart in that domain.
333. 00:28:42 So I love the idea of commander's intent because it accounts for that. It doesn't like tell you
334. 00:28:46 exactly what you need to do step by step by step. And then you just you just become like a drone
335. 00:28:51 following the guideline. It like gives you the ability to to excel in that. It can go wrong,
336. 00:28:56 right? Because if you have somebody that's lazy or incompetent or whatever it might be,
337. 00:29:00 they're not interpreting your intent the right way or whatever it is. But I love that that principle.
338. 00:29:06 I think the other one you had brought it up at the very, very first part is schemas. And I had
339. 00:29:11 colleagues and peers in grad school that would study schemas around different ideas or different
340. 00:29:17 concepts, particularly as they relate to like something like physics, right? Like, how do we,
341. 00:29:22 what are the schemas or what is the background information that we would need in order to
342. 00:29:27 advance to the next concept in schemas? And schemas will be tied in to like an idea called
343. 00:29:33 threshold concepts, right? Like, okay, well, I need to develop the schema. You can think about
344. 00:29:37 it as like a scaffolding, like the pre the pre information that I have that then allows me to
345. 00:29:42 build on top and then get that next concept and understand that next concept. So it's like what
346. 00:29:47 they're doing here, I guess what I'm trying to say in a very long winded way. There's a lot of
347. 00:29:52 credibility in the idea of what they're developing here. And they're basing it on I think some really
348. 00:29:58 legitimate like science and some really legitimate ideas. And I just really like that.
349. 00:30:04 Agreed. I think this is a fantastic beginning to the book. Anything else from chapter one or you
350. 00:30:12 want to go to chapter two? Yeah, they if you need a good example of this, of like what they
351. 00:30:17 they give a good example towards the end of the chapter, where they talk about like proverbs,
352. 00:30:21 you know, like a bird in the hand, you know, kind of a situation or like the golden rule or
353. 00:30:26 those type of things. This is an example of what they're talking about when they say like it needs
354. 00:30:30 to be like the core message and it needs to be compact or what was the over the two things
355. 00:30:35 for simple Mike, I'm forgetting about core and compact, right? So it needs to be this core idea
356. 00:30:39 needs to be compact when they they say like proverbs, just ones that you can think of off the top of
357. 00:30:43 your head. Like these are the things that are core and compact and that's why they stick in your
358. 00:30:47 brain so well. So I think they give a really good example when they talk about call proverbs there.
359. 00:30:51 Okay, I'm ready to go. They talk about proverbs as soundbites that are profound. All right, so
360. 00:30:58 chapter two then is unexpected and the core ideas here are to get attention, which is the element
361. 00:31:08 of surprise, and then hold attention, which is getting people to be interested. And I feel like
362. 00:31:15 this one, maybe out of all the chapters, is trying to do the most in terms of communicating
363. 00:31:27 ideas. Okay, just because, I don't know, it almost feels like those two things, I get how
364. 00:31:33 they're connected, you know, get attention versus hold attention, but those feel like they almost
365. 00:31:38 could be their own chapters. Yeah, they're two steps in a process. They're not two sides of a coin
366. 00:31:46 necessarily. So let me say this now, I was going to hold off until the end when we talk about style
367. 00:31:50 and rating. If there is, I shouldn't say it's the major rub, like if one of my rubs in this book is
368. 00:31:58 the fact that they could have actually broken the chapters down into more chapters that hit
369. 00:32:05 tighter points. I get why they didn't. Like it makes sense why they didn't. So I'm not knocking
370. 00:32:10 them for that. But like, I agree, this chapter, like if you'd have broken it into those two sections,
371. 00:32:14 it would have fit better in my brain. So like that's an area where I would, you know, knock them a
372. 00:32:20 little bit, I guess, if you want to. Yeah, I I'm struggling because I on the one hand, I feel like
373. 00:32:27 I agree with you, it should be two separate sections. On the other hand, though, they they do fit
374. 00:32:32 together. And they I feel like it's a clean, clean way of combining them to define this as
375. 00:32:39 unexpected. I just have a little bit of trouble, like figuring out where I want to go first with
376. 00:32:45 this. Surprise gets our attention interest keeps it they talk about. So that, you know,
377. 00:32:51 is a great way of tying these things together. The most basic way to get someone's attention
378. 00:32:56 is to break a pattern. But you do need it to be interesting as well, because they mentioned that
379. 00:33:02 when something is surprising, but not interesting, it ends up being frustrating. So if you want your
380. 00:33:08 ideas to be sticky, they say you need to break someone's guessing machine and then fix it.
381. 00:33:13 And they they describe this in there. There's a quote in there. I can't remember who who the
382. 00:33:18 quotes from, but they say, well, the aha experiences much more satisfying when it's preceded by the
383. 00:33:25 huh experience, right? And it's like, I really like the way of thinking like that you tell me a
384. 00:33:29 story and I go, huh, I wonder. Oh, like, and if you and if you can get that, you've done exactly
385. 00:33:37 what you want to do. This ties directly back to something they say earlier, which I was worried
386. 00:33:43 about when they started this chapter, I was like, Oh, it's going to be so gimmicky, right?
387. 00:33:47 This like just gimmicky surprise, but they directly counter that and they they tell you ways to
388. 00:33:51 avoid the gimmicky. And I really like what they do with this this like, huh? And then like, oh,
389. 00:33:56 my gosh, I can't believe I didn't think of that. So I like the way they pitch that.
390. 00:34:02 Yeah. And just for clarification, what Corey said was that the aha comes after the huh. So
391. 00:34:11 huh, pre seeds, not pro seeds. Oh, sorry. Well, no, no, they sound the same when you're when
392. 00:34:17 you're talking fast, but I think the order here is very important. Yeah. Where people maybe are
393. 00:34:23 just trying to create those aha moments, you know, I feel like I've maybe been thinking that way in
394. 00:34:30 terms of things that I've made previously. And so not necessarily an action item, but the big
395. 00:34:35 takeaway from this is you got to open the loop first. You got to get people to ask the question
396. 00:34:41 before you can have the big reveal. Otherwise it's kind of wasted.
397. 00:34:46 It's so funny as I think through this as a teacher and how much of this applies to
398. 00:34:49 my, my world and education, we try to do with this, this, we try to do this with labs. So my,
399. 00:34:55 I don't know, I don't remember the last time or I don't know if you remember the last time you
400. 00:34:59 took a lab class, like a chemistry or a biology or something like that. So we'll, we'll come in
401. 00:35:04 and we'll, we'll try to have the students do some sort of an experiment. And where we're trying to
402. 00:35:08 get them to go, huh? I wonder why that's the case. And where we lose it, we 100% lose it is the fact
403. 00:35:15 that they're really just trying to get the lab done. Like they have no idea what they're doing.
404. 00:35:19 So they're really just trying to do the mechanics of the lab. And they never make it to that like,
405. 00:35:25 like idea. And that's where we fall down as educators. And like, we can get them to the reveal like,
406. 00:35:31 oh, that did turn blue. Like, oh my gosh, I can't believe it did turn blue. But they never,
407. 00:35:35 they never had the, I wonder why this isn't blue, right? Like kind of a thing. So it's just cool to
408. 00:35:41 see how this book like so directly applies to my world. Yeah. And the term for that is a gap theory
409. 00:35:52 where gaps in our knowledge cause pain. It's like an itch that we need to scratch. And so the scenario
410. 00:35:57 that you're just talking about, you need to open up the gap, help people realize that there's
411. 00:36:03 something here you don't know, because people tend to think that they know a lot. And it's hard
412. 00:36:07 to use that gap theory when people believe that they, they know everything. But gap theory, I think
413. 00:36:13 this is a powerful idea for not just you in the classroom, but for me and internet marketing and
414. 00:36:21 even the stuff that stuff that I make, it's not necessarily even marketing tends to have a little
415. 00:36:28 bit of a sleazy feel to it. I don't think it needs to be, but it can be. And so even just like the
416. 00:36:34 videos that I make gap theory is relevant there. You know, if I want people to watch my youtube
417. 00:36:39 videos, I have to have a hook. That's where gap theory comes in. I've got to open up the loop at
418. 00:36:44 the beginning to make them want to watch. Well, and this is just human psychology. It's, it's not
419. 00:36:49 trying to trick anybody. It's not clickbait. I mean, one example of this is the Pat Flynn,
420. 00:36:55 the deep pocket monster. You know, he has the, the pack said he opens. They start with the,
421. 00:37:01 the rap pack because people want to know what's in there. There's the knowledge gap. What, what is
422. 00:37:06 that? What is that? What did you actually get when you bought this sort of a thing?
423. 00:37:09 I think that's really valuable to understand. What was the video that you were talking about
424. 00:37:13 making the, it's like the 20 something's. How many? Yeah, the quality of life tips, basically,
425. 00:37:21 just like quick little obsidian tips. So my first thing applying this directly to you is I go,
426. 00:37:25 hey, Mike, do you really have any quality of life tips that you can provide me? You don't
427. 00:37:30 know what I mean? Like, so you say that out there is like, there's 20 quality of life tips and I go,
428. 00:37:33 do you really have? And like, that's the, that's the huh. And then hopefully, like the reason I'm
429. 00:37:39 watching this is that I can glean one or two of those off of you and I go, right? And it's like,
430. 00:37:44 so this directly applies to what we do every day. Mm hmm. Yep. And the hook for that video,
431. 00:37:50 just if you want to understand how I crafted this, it could definitely be stronger. If there was a
432. 00:37:55 knowledge gap, I could definitely insert knowledge gap here. But just because this is the one I'm
433. 00:37:59 working on and we're talking about this book, whether you're brand new to obsidian or you've
434. 00:38:02 been using it for years, chances are there are features you haven't discovered yet in this video,
435. 00:38:06 I'll share some of my favorite quality of life enhancements that can streamline your PK and
436. 00:38:09 workflows, boost your note taking product productivity could definitely be stronger.
437. 00:38:13 I'm not great at the hooks. You know, I prefer to just write the thing and put it out there.
438. 00:38:18 And a lot of people do that. You know, I'm going through the creator business accelerator right
439. 00:38:21 now and people are like, I just don't want to think about thumbnails and titles and hooks and like,
440. 00:38:27 you have to. But this book tells you why it's it because it creates that, huh? Like, huh? Like,
441. 00:38:34 is this video going to tell me what I don't know or what like the creator thinks they're going to
442. 00:38:40 tell me? And like, this gives credibility to that concept or that thing that isn't just the thumbnail
443. 00:38:47 or the title. It's actually a real thing that that goes into it. So I like that. And ultimately,
444. 00:38:52 the reason to do this is not because you want to manipulate someone and you want to get them to
445. 00:38:57 watch your video. It's because you want to serve them effectively and actually deliver on whatever
446. 00:39:03 promise you're going to make. You don't want to trick them accidentally. I will say, you don't want
447. 00:39:07 them to click on the video and be like, Oh, this was a total waste of my time. I should have never
448. 00:39:11 done that. I will say some people believe what you just said. Then there are those other people
449. 00:39:16 who don't really care. They're like, really, I just don't care. Just hit that button. Like,
450. 00:39:19 I just want you to hit that button. And I'll and I'll use any method necessary. And we don't watch
451. 00:39:23 those people after a little while. Once we realize they're doing that, we don't watch those people
452. 00:39:26 anymore. They don't stick. They don't have they don't have the longevity. And yeah, that's that's
453. 00:39:33 why. All right. Ready to go to the next chapter? Yes, sir. Okay. So the third chapter is concrete.
454. 00:39:42 And the big ideas here are to help people understand and remember, and then to help people coordinate.
455. 00:39:51 So when you have a concrete idea, basically, the easiest way to define this, I think,
456. 00:39:59 is to explain what it's not. It's the opposite of being abstract. Yeah, exactly. Which is tough
457. 00:40:05 for me. I tend to be a bit of an abstract thinker and like, Oh, well, you know, it's kind of like
458. 00:40:10 this. And I, I talk about things that don't really exist. So I feel like maybe I have a lot of,
459. 00:40:17 a lot of room to grow in this particular area. They talk about computing in context, where you
460. 00:40:24 take an existing schema, and then you overlay a new layer of abstraction. That is the thing that I
461. 00:40:31 think if I'm going to try to be more concrete, that's what I have to do. So one example of this
462. 00:40:38 that I can see right away that I could get better at is I've got these frameworks like the PKM stack
463. 00:40:43 framework or the creativity flywheel framework. But when I explain those, I'm explaining them
464. 00:40:48 out of thin air. It would be great if I could anchor them in something that people already
465. 00:40:52 understood. And I haven't thought it through to that level yet. So that's the work to do.
466. 00:40:58 And I'm sorry if people get annoyed with the teaching examples here, but like, this is 100%
467. 00:41:03 in my world where it's the lesson works so much better if I build off the prior days lesson or
468. 00:41:09 the prior weeks lesson or the thing you learned in that last class. And students always come to me
469. 00:41:13 and be like, Oh, why do I have to take linear algebra before I take operations research? And I go,
470. 00:41:19 because if you don't take linear algebra and you don't understand the basics of like that kind of
471. 00:41:25 math will make no sense to you. It's like I'm going to do magic. And I'm not doing magic. I'm
472. 00:41:31 doing linear algebra in an applied context. So it's like, it's very, very true and valuable. I think
473. 00:41:39 one of the ideas that they brought in here is this idea of the Velcro and like the
474. 00:41:43 in good people, good teachers, good presenters of this kind of stuff, the more hooks you can create,
475. 00:41:49 the easier it is for me to layer that more abstract concept onto the more concrete ideas,
476. 00:41:56 right? So that more abstract concept on the more concrete ideas. And it's like, it just makes sense.
477. 00:42:01 Like when you've done this a bunch of times or when you have to do this, it just makes sense. I can
478. 00:42:08 tell you that like my students absolutely hate it when I am not concrete. They hate it when I
479. 00:42:14 leave things in the abstract. The they give an example here about the engineers talking to the
480. 00:42:19 machinists. And I'm trying to find where exactly it is. I seem to have lost it. But like, basically,
481. 00:42:27 it's the idea that engineers think abstractly. And they think about design and drawings and
482. 00:42:32 blueprints and machinists think, what do I need to do to keep the production line running or to
483. 00:42:39 keep like to actually make the part. And this is why, you know, we talk about diversity a lot.
484. 00:42:45 This is why having both of those people in the world and in the same meeting makes sense. I used
485. 00:42:50 to I worked at a microphone manufacturer at one point in my life. And the hilarious thing is like
486. 00:42:56 we would do things in the engineering space. And then we had this guy and this guy was a master
487. 00:43:01 clock technician. So he was trained in Germany. I mean, he would put one of those little eyepieces
488. 00:43:05 in that has like the super magnification. And he'd work on things like half the size of your pinky
489. 00:43:10 nail. I mean, like, I mean, he, and he was like down in there like going into it. And we would come
490. 00:43:15 to him like with a design or we would say like, Hey, this is what we're thinking. And he'd come
491. 00:43:19 back and he'd be like, Nope, don't do it. He's like, that's a bad idea. And we'd be like, why? And
492. 00:43:23 he'd be go, you can't manufacture that. He's like, the guy's on the line. There's no way they
493. 00:43:27 can do what you want him to do with any kind of quality. And then if and if we turn it up and we
494. 00:43:32 try to manufacture 1000 of them or a million of them or 100 million of them, he's like, no way,
495. 00:43:36 never gonna happen. So we'd have to go back and rethink about about the design. And it's like,
496. 00:43:40 it's just a really cool idea between abstraction and concrete and abstraction and concrete and
497. 00:43:45 the dance that goes on between those two things. That's interesting. Which microphone manufacturer
498. 00:43:51 was it so sure? I had an internship at shore in Chicago. And like one of the coolest projects
499. 00:43:57 I worked on was basically it was when the in earbuds were first starting to come out and they were
500. 00:44:02 basically only used by professional performing artists. So you were trying to make those smaller
501. 00:44:09 and smaller and smaller and make them cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So the consumer could buy
502. 00:44:12 them because sure as a prosumer, you know, kind of a place they make professional gear and they
503. 00:44:17 make consumer gear. So we were trying to figure out how to make the drivers in them that would
504. 00:44:21 push the sound out. And yeah, that was a fun, that was a fun time fun. Using using sure in ear
505. 00:44:27 monitors. Nice. Those were the first those were the first ones I ever had that were actually good.
506. 00:44:33 And I got them because they had an old pair that had broken and they couldn't sell them anymore. And
507. 00:44:38 somebody walked up to me and threw them at me and he goes, Hey, we fix these. Here we go. And I was
508. 00:44:42 like, awesome. Very cool. One of the things that is relevant to what you were sharing there is that
509. 00:44:50 novice is crave concreteness. They talk about in this chapter. But the key is and experts
510. 00:45:00 tend to think more abstractly about things. So the difference to an expert in novice is that
511. 00:45:04 ability to think abstractly. However, that doesn't mean that the expert or the teacher in this
512. 00:45:10 particular case should just dumb things down so that the novice can understand it. The way to do
513. 00:45:17 this is to find a universal language. That's challenging to me, but I really like that idea.
514. 00:45:24 And Blake with the dad joke in the chat that sure sounds interesting. Oh my gosh. Thanks. Thanks,
515. 00:45:32 Blake. Thanks, Blake. All right. I don't think anything else from chapter three. Okay, I'm good.
516. 00:45:40 All right. So next chapter is chapter four. This is credible. And the big ideas here are to
517. 00:45:49 help people believe. And there's a couple different ways you can do that with external
518. 00:45:55 credibility and with internal credibility. The things that I jotted down in my notes from this,
519. 00:46:02 though, were really just tactical things, I guess, like that minor points underneath that. So I don't
520. 00:46:11 know if you want to talk about internal or external credibility yet before we get into like two
521. 00:46:17 types of authorities in the Sinatra test. Like this chapter, I don't want to say it was the weakest,
522. 00:46:23 but it was one of those ones where I was kind of like, okay, like fine, it's fine. It didn't stand
523. 00:46:28 out as much as the other ones did to me. Yeah. And that's the thing is with credible, I feel like
524. 00:46:34 this is sort of a checkbox where all of the other ones maybe are sliding scale. This one is either
525. 00:46:41 do I believe this or do I not? You know, is it is it credible or isn't it? It's not like, well,
526. 00:46:47 this is 80% credible. So I guess, you know, it'll stick. That's a really good way to describe that.
527. 00:46:54 I would have never thought of it that way. But this is one of those ones that you have to have.
528. 00:46:58 But really, if you can get there, that's really all you have to do. Like you don't have to be like
529. 00:47:02 expert at it. Just get good enough and move on. Yeah. And so there's lots of different ways that
530. 00:47:08 you can have credibility. The authorities are the thing that was interesting to me.
531. 00:47:13 Authorities are a reliable source of credibility for ideas. And then there's two types of authorities,
532. 00:47:18 experts, and then celebrities or other aspirational figures, which is why you may have the world's
533. 00:47:24 leading expert in whatever talking about something. But you may also have Oprah recommending a book
534. 00:47:28 under book club. And that has more sway than the exit. Okay, pause, pause, pause. Can we talk
535. 00:47:35 about why this is true? Like, I don't want to take us too far. But like, this makes absolutely,
536. 00:47:41 like, no sense to me. Okay, if let's let's use an NBA player, an NBA player, if they're going to
537. 00:47:46 recommend basketball shoes to me, they are an expert at evaluating basketball shoes. So therefore,
538. 00:47:54 go tell me about those basketball shoes. Fantastic, right? I love that. But if they're going to
539. 00:47:59 recommend to me, like, I don't know, like a t-shirt, like everybody wears t-shirts, like you're not
540. 00:48:06 special. Like, what do you know about t-shirts? Right? So then I turn this on and I say, Corey,
541. 00:48:10 think about this. Is this what Mike and you and Mike do? Right? Are you like, do you consider
542. 00:48:15 yourselves experts at these books part of the problem? Like, we're what I'll say. I'll speak
543. 00:48:20 for me because I don't want to I don't want to back you into a corner. I'm definitely not a
544. 00:48:24 celebrity, right? Like 100% not a celebrity. Okay, cool. So therefore, would that mean like,
545. 00:48:30 I have some expertise at evaluating books and recommending them to other people? Or do I have
546. 00:48:35 nothing of that? And I just am a guy who's willing to talk for an hour and a half to two hours on
547. 00:48:38 a microphone. But like, I think about this and I'm like, why are we so as humans? Why are we so
548. 00:48:45 crazy that we let people who can sing really, really well tell us about like bacon and like,
549. 00:48:53 you know, sliced meat or whatever? Like, yeah, it just doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm not
550. 00:48:58 saying I don't fall for it. I'm just saying it doesn't make any sense to me. Well, okay, so,
551. 00:49:06 okay, there's I think later on in the book, they talk about how we tend to make decisions
552. 00:49:16 based on what would be best for our group. And so basically, I think this is the beginnings
553. 00:49:22 of wanting to identify with a particular group. That actually makes a lot of sense. So I may not
554. 00:49:30 be able to dunk from the free throw line or dunk at all. But I want to be like Mike, so I'm going
555. 00:49:35 to drink Gatorade. Okay. And yeah, I guess if we think about it, we know, well, he's being paid a
556. 00:49:41 lot of money to do that. He probably doesn't even like it, you know, doesn't drink it outside of
557. 00:49:48 the ad spots maybe. But in the moment, we have trouble disconnecting that. But I do think that
558. 00:49:53 there is something about just in it, take out the advertising piece. Because I think the examples
559. 00:50:03 we're focusing on here are very much the far end of the scale, like the tip of the spear,
560. 00:50:11 right? And there are a lot of people, I mean, we literally at the beginning of this episode
561. 00:50:15 talked about sponsor games, right? We want to sell sponsorships. We're not going to sponsor,
562. 00:50:21 we're not going to take sponsorships for things we don't like or don't use. Having gone through
563. 00:50:28 sponsor magnet and understanding that if we're going to recommend something to people, we want
564. 00:50:34 to put an honest stamp of approval on it. You know, I think that's more relevant for a lot of
565. 00:50:41 people. But there are a lot of a lot of people who will look at, and I don't consider myself a
566. 00:50:46 celebrity to answer your question. But I do think that if I think about it, I do influence people
567. 00:50:54 in specific ways. Yes, you do. Hopefully to use obsidian. So I think there's different levels of
568. 00:51:02 celebrity or aspirational figures or even experts. You know, what makes somebody an expert? If you're
569. 00:51:10 looking for somebody who is a productivity expert, I'm definitely not that. If you're looking for
570. 00:51:15 somebody who's even an obsidian expert, I'd argue, I'm probably not that. There are bigger names,
571. 00:51:21 Nick Milo, for example, who have been doing this longer and no obsidian better than I do.
572. 00:51:27 If you're looking for values-based productivity principles executed through obsidian workflows,
573. 00:51:33 now I'm probably the expert because we've nitched down far enough. And that's one of the things that
574. 00:51:38 I teach people in the Creator Business Accelerator is if you nitched down far enough, you are an
575. 00:51:42 expert at something. So I don't want people to hear about this, to think about experts,
576. 00:51:48 celebrities, aspirational figures and be like, oh, well, that's the elite 0.1% of people in the world.
577. 00:51:55 I'll never ever be that. You're a celebrity to somebody. You're an expert to somebody for some
578. 00:52:01 specific thing. You have some sort of expertise there. So I don't think this is just, you know,
579. 00:52:07 well, I should borrow credibility when I want to talk about these things. No, talk about the
580. 00:52:11 stuff that you know, talk about it in a way that it would have been helpful to you from two years
581. 00:52:15 ago, the curse of knowledge, right? We think that what we know is just obvious to everybody.
582. 00:52:24 But it's not. There are things that you are in your brain that can be helpful
583. 00:52:29 to somebody. So I think that that's that's worth thinking about. And then the other thing I want
584. 00:52:32 to mention about the borrowed credibility, I think the argument could be made that we are
585. 00:52:39 complete posers here because we're talking about these ideas from these books, from people who have
586. 00:52:45 actually written the books and put in a lot more work that we ever have. How easy is it to just
587. 00:52:50 show up and talk about, well, I like this one. I don't like that one. The thing that gives us
588. 00:52:54 credibility, I would argue, and makes us an expert in some way, shape, or form is that we have done
589. 00:53:00 this a lot. We have read a lot of these books. So there is expertise that comes along from that
590. 00:53:06 perspective. I when I started the doing this 200 something episodes ago, I had no idea really what
591. 00:53:14 a good book looked like. I know exactly what a good nonfiction book looks like now. And that
592. 00:53:19 is helping me as I'm writing my own nonfiction book. And until you have a tipping point event
593. 00:53:25 like that, you kind of don't even recognize how much skill or expertise you've developed.
594. 00:53:31 And tying back to their stuff, you're taking the abstraction of your book and putting it on the
595. 00:53:37 concrete schema of the fact that you have this idea of what good nonfiction books look like.
596. 00:53:42 So it makes total sense. It makes total sense. So the only other thing that I think from this
597. 00:53:47 chapter, and we'll hit it real quick, is this idea of the Sinatra test, which I thought was pretty
598. 00:53:52 clever. And I had never heard of it before. So I want to say it here. It's the idea. It's like,
599. 00:53:56 if I can make it in this environment, or if I can do this thing in this context, I can do it
600. 00:54:02 anywhere. And the reason why I like this so much is because this is 100% true. If I can, you know,
601. 00:54:08 yada yada yada, then I can definitely whatever. And it's like, this is 100% a true phenomenon
602. 00:54:15 that I will, you know, agree to and acknowledge like, if you can do that,
603. 00:54:20 you can do pretty much anything in that in that same context. So I'm in for that.
604. 00:54:25 Nice. Yeah, I like that too. The other thing, well, two other things.
605. 00:54:32 Three other things. Okay, because I'm going up from the Sinatra test in my map. And I realized
606. 00:54:39 that there are a couple of things here which are relevant to what we talked about. So the first
607. 00:54:44 thing in my notes, we trust the recommendation of people whom we want to be like, that encapsulates
608. 00:54:48 the idea we were talking about previously. So credit to Chippendan Heath, they said it much
609. 00:54:52 more succinctly than I did. They also talk about vivid details tend to boost credibility.
610. 00:54:58 So if you're looking to add credibility to your idea, one easy way to do it is just to get more
611. 00:55:04 and more specific, which is sort of a different way of explaining what I was talking about where
612. 00:55:09 if you niche down far enough, everybody's an expert in something. The other one, this is the
613. 00:55:13 one I was going to share statistics. I like to use statistics. I like to use numbers. They should
614. 00:55:20 almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. That's challenging to me. And again, I don't
615. 00:55:25 have an action item associated with this. In fact, I don't know that I have any action items because
616. 00:55:31 really it's just get better at developing and communicating your ideas. Get better, get better
617. 00:55:37 success. Yeah. But this is this is something that I want to to consider is like, how do I use
618. 00:55:43 these statistics and these numbers in communicating my ideas? Because a lot of times like, Oh, that
619. 00:55:48 sounds cool. So to support this idea. But I'm not real clear on, well, this is how it communicates
620. 00:55:53 this relationship between between things. So yep, I'm ready to move to emotional. All right,
621. 00:56:01 you want to kick this one off? Yeah, sure. Okay. So chapter five is emotional. Basically,
622. 00:56:07 it's this idea that we are more effective in our in making ideas that stick. If we can attach to
623. 00:56:16 some sort of, you know, human emotion, if we can attract our idea, if we can get people to believe
624. 00:56:22 in something or if we can like pull on the heartstrings a little bit or push these emotional buttons,
625. 00:56:28 that way they kind of connect or resonate with the idea that we that we want to get out of here. So
626. 00:56:35 they they are good about saying like, don't do it for the sake of doing it. Try to find an actual
627. 00:56:42 like tangible emotional connection to people that way that way they'll they'll bind to what
628. 00:56:48 you're trying to tell them. And the funny thing about is one of the examples they use, this guy
629. 00:56:52 named john capels, but they actually kind of like say, you know, he's he's ruthless in the way he
630. 00:56:58 does it, right? Like, so he does it well. He's like really effective at doing it. But like,
631. 00:57:02 he's kind of like, you know, I don't want to say over the top, Mike, help me help me with them.
632. 00:57:07 If I'm if I'm saying my word wrong, he's really effective at doing it. But he also is a really
633. 00:57:12 aggressive at it. If that's if that's the best way I can describe it. So he's he's kind of a
634. 00:57:19 marketing guy. And the way that he describes it in terms of the direct mail marketing,
635. 00:57:28 I think is the the way that they they mention it. It's like the stuff that shows up in your,
636. 00:57:36 your mailbox. And you got to have a single sentence or to get someone to to open it. Instead of
637. 00:57:43 just throwing it in the the trash. And there is a little bit of there's a little bit of negative
638. 00:57:49 connotation with that, which I think is where you're you get the idea of like being over the top.
639. 00:57:54 That's kind of the where clickbait comes from. But again, like, I think the principles that he's
640. 00:58:00 talking about, they can be used for for good or evil. And he even kind of talks about that a little
641. 00:58:08 bit later, how there's certain things like he's uncomfortable using these these principles.
642. 00:58:13 Sort of the same idea behind, I would say influenced by Robert Childini or 40 at Laws of Power by
643. 00:58:20 Robert Green, like these are legit principles. These things work, but you got to be careful how
644. 00:58:27 you you use them. And what's interesting in the context of this chapter is right away direct response
645. 00:58:35 mail campaigns, people are like, you know, I'm not going to touch that with a 39 and a half foot
646. 00:58:39 pole. And he's like, no, that's fine. But later on, you know, I'll draw the line. So I feel like
647. 00:58:45 it's a little bit relative, you got to figure out where you're going to where you're going to draw
648. 00:58:49 that line. Yep. So then they immediately go to or immediately is a funny word, but they tie this
649. 00:58:56 to the idea of if you want people to be emotionally attached, you need them to get like to think
650. 00:59:01 about what's it for me? Like, what does this mean for me? How does this hit me? So they talk about
651. 00:59:05 this, they call it wiffy, right? This idea of what's in it for you, right? So it's an acronym,
652. 00:59:11 what's in it for you? And they say, if you want to get people to care about something, you have to
653. 00:59:16 like make it relevant to them, or you have to get them to care about it. So this whole concept comes
654. 00:59:22 in, when we get to emotional, it isn't like make them cry in everything, right? It's much more about
655. 00:59:30 make them care about it in a way that makes sense for them to care about it. So like, I'm trying,
656. 00:59:36 I'm pulling for an example, and I didn't write any like dramatic or direct examples down. So Mike,
657. 00:59:41 if you have if you have a good example that they gave in the book, like, I'd love that. But it's
658. 00:59:45 this idea of like, the thing that makes it turn back onto you and go, Oh, yeah, like, I would,
659. 00:59:51 I would care about that a lot. So that's kind of the nature of emotion. That's, at least that's
660. 00:59:55 what I got out from a high level standpoint. Well, there is one story that stands out to me. And
661. 01:00:00 that's when they were trying to get the fireman to watch the safety video. And they're like, yeah,
662. 01:00:08 sure, we'll, we'll watch it. And then they tried to incentivize it more by giving them a free popcorn
663. 01:00:13 popper or something. And they got upset because not because, you know, it was detrimental to them
664. 01:00:21 as individuals, they would get something that they would not have gotten otherwise, like, they come
665. 01:00:26 out better in this deal. But the whole idea, it, the whole idea that a fireman, the group that they
666. 01:00:33 belong to would be influenced by something like this, they found repulsive. So what's in it for
667. 01:00:39 you isn't just what's in it for me as the individual and how do I get more so that other people don't,
668. 01:00:46 but really is how does my group succeed? This is kind of the chapter that that comes from.
669. 01:00:51 But the other thing, you know, talk about what's in it for you. This is where they talk about
670. 01:00:54 Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And how how that hierarchical view of Maslow's pyramid is actually
671. 01:01:00 bogus. You don't go from one to the next to the next to the next. And then finally, you get to the,
672. 01:01:04 the one at the top, they're kind of, you can appeal to multiple needs at the same time. You
673. 01:01:10 don't have to go in that specific order, which I think is interesting. Related to Reddit and Maslow,
674. 01:01:16 they, they give a good example of basically the difference in you thinking for yourself and then
675. 01:01:21 you projecting onto other people, which I think we do this a lot more than we realize we do it.
676. 01:01:25 It's like, Oh, if I'm making the decision, I'm making it for the following reasons,
677. 01:01:30 if Mike's making the decision, it he's making it for different reasons than I would. But then,
678. 01:01:35 if you, but then if you asked Mike, Mike would say the exact same thing, like he's making it for
679. 01:01:38 the same reason I am, but he would think I'm making it for, for that other reason. And they give some,
680. 01:01:43 they get some examples of that as well. I have a different way of framing that,
681. 01:01:48 which is that we judge ours, we judge others by their actions, but ourselves by our intentions.
682. 01:01:55 Absolutely. Absolutely. This, some other interesting stuff in here, semantic stretches,
683. 01:02:00 when people overuse a word, the word they kind of highlighted was unique. But when I,
684. 01:02:08 when I think about that, I feel like that the business world is very, very guilty of this.
685. 01:02:13 Priority is probably another one. There's really only one priority. It literally means the first or,
686. 01:02:19 or prior thing. And so you have people who are like, I have these 10 different priorities for
687. 01:02:25 today. Like, no, that's not what it means. And then at the very beginning, there's a story
688. 01:02:32 of Mother Teresa, which I think is really powerful. If you're going to try to use this to make an
689. 01:02:38 idea sticky, I think this is where the, this is where the takeaway is. Mother Teresa said,
690. 01:02:43 if I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will. So when you are trying to
691. 01:02:50 compel people to do something, or you're trying to communicate an idea in a way that it sticks,
692. 01:02:55 the way to do that is to make it emotional. And the key here for me from this section is that
693. 01:03:04 people don't think analytically and emotionally. They say it this way. When people think analytically,
694. 01:03:11 they're less likely to think emotionally. And they shared the examples of the people who were
695. 01:03:16 trying to raise funds for like starving children. And they gave people $5 and they measured the
696. 01:03:23 average number amount that people paid. When they first heard the statistics about how great the
697. 01:03:31 need was those people who received that on average, they donated like a buck 43. And the people who
698. 01:03:37 got the story about a specific kid who was struggling, they donated $2 and something. But what was
699. 01:03:43 interesting was when they combined those two, they shared the numbers and the personal story,
700. 01:03:48 it basically lined up with the first group, the $1, something group. And so the numbers I kind of
701. 01:03:54 think are irrelevant, but it was interesting that it's like, just because you have an emotional
702. 01:03:59 plea and something doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to have the effect that you want it to
703. 01:04:05 have. And as an analytical thinker, my kind of my default, I got to check myself when I'm
704. 01:04:11 communicating ideas, I think. This makes me think of, do you know the Sarah McLachlan, like commercial,
705. 01:04:18 where she's singing in the background arms of an angel and there's all the like dogs and and
706. 01:04:23 stuff like that, right? Direct appeal to emotion 100% appeal to emotion. And I watch that and think,
707. 01:04:29 like, I'm sorry, forgive me if anybody thinks I'm completely cold-hearted. But like, I watch that
708. 01:04:33 and I think, like, I mean, like, that's a really sad song. And there's dogs and cats and stuff.
709. 01:04:40 And it's like, I have no like, I have no pool to donate to the ASPCA or whatever that that's even
710. 01:04:45 for. Sorry, I don't know why I went on that tangent. But I don't remember if this is where
711. 01:04:50 they tell the story for the first time or if this is if they tie back into it, because they'll tie
712. 01:04:55 back into like stories they told in the past. The Floyd Lee story, where he is the dining
713. 01:05:02 coordinator for the one food service provider in the military in Baghdad. Yeah, like, I love
714. 01:05:10 the connection to this where he says, I'm not just in charge of food service. I'm in charge of morale.
715. 01:05:17 And I think it does directly into that Maslow's hierarchy of needs where he's saying like, hey,
716. 01:05:21 guess what, I'm not just providing food for people. Yes, like, that's a lower need. What I'm really
717. 01:05:28 doing is I'm giving them an escape from this absolute chaos that they're living in. And when
718. 01:05:35 they come here, they have the ability to forget about that for a little while. And I think in that
719. 01:05:40 in that context, it makes me think about like, okay, what am I doing? Like, you know, in education.
720. 01:05:47 Like, am I giving you the knowledge or just communicating information to you?
721. 01:05:52 Or am I helping you become somebody that you want to be in the future? And those are two very
722. 01:05:58 different ways to think about education. Because like, if I just think about it is like, I'm going
723. 01:06:02 to come in and like, we're just going to turn this crank. And I'm just going to teach you the skills
724. 01:06:05 and like the raw materials that you need, blah, blah, blah. Where it's like, I'm inspiring you to go
725. 01:06:11 do cool things in the world. And I'm inspiring you to get that job that you want to get. And I'm
726. 01:06:15 inspiring you to, you know, add value in the following ways. I really like that framing of
727. 01:06:21 what's my target as I try to communicate to the group that I care about, or that I try to
728. 01:06:26 communicate to the individual I care about. And I thought that was a really compelling story for
729. 01:06:31 me, a sticky story for me, as I think through how to, how to influence others.
730. 01:06:37 Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was this chapter, but the concept of stories is the next chapter. So
731. 01:06:41 you're ready to go there? Yeah, I am ready to go there. Okay, so the last official chapter in the
732. 01:06:47 book chapter six is stories. And this is basically the being able to tell a story. It's an effective
733. 01:06:58 teaching tool. And again, there are whole books that have been written on this. But I think that
734. 01:07:06 this is a great way to end the book. I feel like when you make things simple, unexpected,
735. 01:07:14 concrete, credible, and emotional, and then just like communicate them that way, it really does have
736. 01:07:22 limited effectiveness if there isn't a story attached to it. So kind of at the heart of this is this
737. 01:07:29 idea just based in human psychology that we really love story. Stories provide both stimulation and
738. 01:07:37 inspiration they talk about. They mentioned that when friends tell us stories, we instinctively
739. 01:07:41 empathize. And then they get into kind of why this is the case and that when you imagine an event,
740. 01:07:50 it stimulates the same brain regions as actually having the physical going through the physical
741. 01:07:55 activity. They talk a little bit about mental practice, which kind of ties back to mental
742. 01:08:01 rehearsal visualization that kind of use those terms interchangeably. I don't think they are
743. 01:08:05 interchangeable. But I've mentioned on the podcast before, I think the kind of the research that
744. 01:08:13 has gone into this that I'm familiar with with the family business. Do you remember me talking
745. 01:08:18 about this or should I briefly? Okay. I guess just real briefly, like the one study that comes to mind,
746. 01:08:24 I think it's a University of Chicago study where they had groups of basketball players and one
747. 01:08:29 practice free throws for an hour a day. They improved by a certain percentage. There was another group
748. 01:08:34 that visualized shooting free throws every day, but didn't touch a basketball. And then there was
749. 01:08:38 another group that didn't do anything. The one that didn't do anything obviously didn't get any
750. 01:08:41 better. The one that practiced free throws was like 18%, something like that. And it was like one
751. 01:08:47 percent less for the group that just visualized it. And free throws are a very mental thing. Like
752. 01:08:53 there's not a lot of basketball players have the mental dexterity and skill that is required to
753. 01:08:59 shoot a free throw properly. So that maybe is cherry pickening an example. They mentioned that
754. 01:09:04 mental practice alone provides about two thirds of the value of physical practice. And I think
755. 01:09:09 that's probably pretty accurate. And so it doesn't mean that you don't need to do the physical practice,
756. 01:09:16 but I think the takeaway here is that you should augment that with the mental practice. And as it
757. 01:09:21 pertains to this chapter on stories, you got to be able to paint that picture for people. You have
758. 01:09:26 to help them visualize themselves doing the thing they want to do. If you can't do that, you're not
759. 01:09:32 going to convince anybody to follow you. So this isn't just a sales thing. In fact, for the family
760. 01:09:39 business, there's an emotional intelligence assessment where one of the scales is defined as sales
761. 01:09:44 orientation and people always bristle at that. Really what it is is leadership. And I tell people,
762. 01:09:50 you know, who are like, I don't want to be salesy. Like, well, are you married? Well, you sold yourself
763. 01:09:54 at least once. Yeah. Yeah, I think they framed this chapter in a very interesting way. And I can't
764. 01:10:03 tell if I like it or not. So the framing that they gave to it was simulation. Right. And they
765. 01:10:09 they define simulation is knowledge about how to act. Right. So they say that stories are simulation,
766. 01:10:14 knowledge about how to act. And then they're also motivations or inspiration or motivation to act.
767. 01:10:20 Later on, they say the story is part entertaining and part instruction. I agree with the premise
768. 01:10:24 behind what they're doing. It's their not overuse, but it's their continual use of the word simulation.
769. 01:10:31 I just like I that rubs me the wrong way. Like I don't know if it's the right word.
770. 01:10:37 I'm not going to tell you that I think it's the wrong word. I just don't know if it's like the
771. 01:10:41 best word or the word I would have used. They're consistent with it. So like they come back in
772. 01:10:46 here and they'll talk about like the simulation is basically you're running it through your head.
773. 01:10:50 Instead of actually doing it. So shooting free throws would be a good example. I'm doing everything
774. 01:10:55 mentally that I would do physically to shoot a free throw. I'm just doing it in my mind. I also
775. 01:11:00 think about I've always, you know, like I don't know if it was in movies or where I saw it, but like
776. 01:11:05 somebody running the the bobsled route, you know, before they actually run the bobsled route. So
777. 01:11:11 like they they mentally memorize it and they know exactly what they're going to do. The blue angels.
778. 01:11:17 There's a there's a video somewhere where where they run that mentally. Like everything they're
779. 01:11:21 going to do and they sit in a room around like a conference table and they've got their eyes closed
780. 01:11:27 and they're all doing it based on like timing. So essentially they've memorized exactly everything
781. 01:11:31 they're going to do to where they're almost reacting more when they get into the physical
782. 01:11:36 world than they are actually like actively thinking about how to do it. And there's but there's just
783. 01:11:42 something about this that like I would need to put a lot more time in thinking about it. Something
784. 01:11:48 about simulation just seems wrong to me. It seems like the wrong word to use in this situation. And
785. 01:11:54 I mean, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna beat it up. But at the same time, it just seems like they're not
786. 01:11:58 like the wrong word. I like when they get to the end, they also talk about like the different like
787. 01:12:04 story plots. Yeah, there's just three of them. Yeah, I think I think that's cool. Like the way
788. 01:12:09 they do it, they talk about Aristotle. You know, there's four primary dramatic plots, you know,
789. 01:12:14 and they go through those. But he tells you, you know, these other plots and things like that.
790. 01:12:19 I agree with what you said at the very beginning. There are other people who do this for the entire
791. 01:12:23 book. And that is a much better and much more thorough thing if you want to just learn about
792. 01:12:28 storytelling. But I think they do a decent job like saying, Hey, this is important in making
793. 01:12:33 ideas sticky. You got to be able to tell a good story. Here are some tips and tricks and
794. 01:12:38 you know, some basic ideas now go go launch. So overall, didn't didn't have an issue. Like,
795. 01:12:43 I like the chapter that that idea of simulation just for some reason doesn't sit right with me.
796. 01:12:49 Yeah, I I get I think why it's there, but I also sort of wish it it wasn't.
797. 01:12:59 It feels like a tangential topic, which maybe isn't necessary. Like the whole mental practice
798. 01:13:05 idea, when they started talking about imagining events, that's where my mind went. I'm like,
799. 01:13:09 are they going to go there? And then it's like, Oh, they went there. But then, like you said,
800. 01:13:12 it's kind of like, well, why does that matter? You're talking about the, the simulation and
801. 01:13:19 like the examples of the elite of the elite, not everybody is a blue angel pilot. Not everybody
802. 01:13:26 is the Bob Slutters. The picture I get for that, by the way, is the cool runnings where they're in
803. 01:13:29 the bathtub. But another example of this, which is pretty famous is Michael Phelps,
804. 01:13:38 where he visualizes the race. And there's a famous story about how he's up on the platform.
805. 01:13:45 He's visualizing himself going through every single stroke. And his coach, even before,
806. 01:13:50 as he gets up on the platform, he he yells out, put in the videotape. And that's his cue to play
807. 01:13:55 through what's going to happen in the race. And then I think it's the China Beijing Olympics,
808. 01:14:00 where he had that last stride at the end, and he held his arm out just a little bit longer,
809. 01:14:05 said taking another stroke, and he ends up winning by a hundredth of a second. And then they ask him,
810. 01:14:10 and that, that race, actually, his goggles broke. So he's swimming blind, and they ask him afterwards,
811. 01:14:15 what did it feel like? He's exactly like I thought it would. You know, because he had just done it so
812. 01:14:20 much that nothing could shake him off of that. That's not most people most of the time.
813. 01:14:26 Well, I think I think about this on a more tangible thing. Like, you're going to tell me
814. 01:14:30 a story and like try to do something sticky with one of your videos. Like, I got to tell you, Mike,
815. 01:14:35 like, I'm not visualizing myself doing something in obsidian. And you know, like, it just doesn't
816. 01:14:40 connect like there's something I'm not simulating that that obsidian thing, or that knowledge management
817. 01:14:46 thing. It just doesn't, I don't know, there's something that breaks down here. So that's where
818. 01:14:50 like, it's almost why is this in here? Because I agree that that's important in the beginning of
819. 01:14:55 the story, or beginning of the video, or beginning of the course, or beginning of the book, you want
820. 01:15:00 to paint this picture and communicate the end state for the person. This is the transformation
821. 01:15:06 that's going to happen, why you should stick with me as we go through this journey together.
822. 01:15:11 But the simulation and the mental practice there has zero impact on that application.
823. 01:15:17 I agree. Yeah. So it's sort of like a tangential thing, and maybe we drifted a little bit too far.
824. 01:15:23 I think you could make the argument that you, they really didn't, but I agree that it just
825. 01:15:27 didn't fit quite as nicely as all the other stuff. Yeah. Let's go to the epilogue.
826. 01:15:34 Okay. So the epilogue is what sticks minus the question mark. And this is kind of where they take
827. 01:15:45 these six different things that they've talked about in these different chapters.
828. 01:15:50 And then they make a checklist, basically, that you can use to decide whether this is
829. 01:15:59 going to be a sticky idea, but it's not just, is it simple? Is it unexpected? They reframe it a
830. 01:16:07 little bit, and they only include five of them. So the first one, simple, is basically assumed
831. 01:16:13 that you do have the core of an idea. So then what do you need people to do once you have that core
832. 01:16:20 idea? How do you communicate it in a way that is sticky? And this, I think, is pretty genius.
833. 01:16:26 So first, it must make the audience pay attention. That's where the unexpected piece comes in.
834. 01:16:32 They have to understand it. Remember it. That's where concrete comes in. They need to agree or
835. 01:16:37 believe that's where credible comes in. They have to care. So that's where emotional comes in,
836. 01:16:41 and they have to be able to act on it. That's where the story comes in, which I guess that's
837. 01:16:46 something we didn't really talk about with story. So in this context, a good story is not, you know,
838. 01:16:54 David Goggins can't hurt me, you know, the radical transformation, because most people
839. 01:17:00 are not going to be able to act on that sort of story. It may be inspirational, maybe entertaining.
840. 01:17:06 You get done and you're like, well, that guy's crazy. I'm not going to do that. It's got to be,
841. 01:17:12 I see how this idea can actually benefit my life, and there's a clearer way to apply this so I can
842. 01:17:18 get that desired result. Yeah, I like that they were intellectually honest here,
843. 01:17:26 because they throw out those five, the pay attention, understand, and remember, agree and
844. 01:17:32 believe, care, be able to act on it. They throw out those five and they say, hey, we could have
845. 01:17:37 written the book this way, right? Like we definitely could have structured the book this way, and
846. 01:17:41 these could have been our five chapters, and it would have been a good book and everything was great.
847. 01:17:44 But we thought about it this other way, and, you know, we just decided to form it that way.
848. 01:17:49 And I like when authors do that, like they say, hey, we're going to make this connection here.
849. 01:17:53 It's going to be a good connection. You might ask yourself, why didn't you just write the book that
850. 01:17:57 way? We could have, and we didn't. So I think, and especially at the end, after they've established
851. 01:18:04 everything, after kind of they've given us their entire framework, they then give us another
852. 01:18:09 version of the framework, because I think what they're actually doing is they're actually practicing
853. 01:18:13 what they preached in the earlier part, they're making it more concrete. Oh, unexpected, pay attention.
854. 01:18:21 Like they're giving us another framework to like, attach on to, or another schema to attach on to,
855. 01:18:27 and I really like the way the way they did that. I don't know if we're going to do, are we going
856. 01:18:32 to do the next section on its own, or are we stopping here? No, I think we probably will stop here.
857. 01:18:39 I mean, the next section, I've sort of sprinkled in stuff throughout, but it's the reference guide.
858. 01:18:44 Yeah, which I think when you attach the epilogue and the reference guide as a way to end this book,
859. 01:18:50 man, I think it's a killer way to end the book. Like it actually just makes it like it ties
860. 01:18:56 a very, very, very effective bow on their framework, and it ties a very, very effective bow on the
861. 01:19:02 story that they're telling. So I really liked, you know, kind of how they wrap this up in the
862. 01:19:06 epilogue, might be one of the most effective epilogs. And then with that reference section
863. 01:19:11 that I've read in a book, like it was really well done. Okay, you just gave me an action item.
864. 01:19:17 I'll get to that in a second. Okay. Yeah, I think that this is a great way to end it. And then just,
865. 01:19:22 they hit on a couple other things that they've mentioned in the book, but I think it's the way
866. 01:19:26 that they highlight them again adds more weight to the argument, you know, focused on the message
867. 01:19:32 not the presentation. They actually share here that there's almost no correlation between speaking
868. 01:19:36 talent and the ability to make an idea stick. And then they also mentioned the difference
869. 01:19:41 between idea spotting and idea creating. They mentioned this in a previous chapter. We just
870. 01:19:47 didn't get to it. But they call out here that great idea spotters always trump great idea
871. 01:19:53 creators. There's there's more great ideas out there already than you are able to make on your own.
872. 01:19:58 So that's the thing for me is I want to become better at recognizing those things. I feel like
873. 01:20:03 that's kind of the basis of the creativity flywheel. So I'm I'm sort of there already,
874. 01:20:08 but good a good highlight or reminder at the end of the book here.
875. 01:20:12 I'm really glad you brought that one up because when I was reading this, I wanted to talk about
876. 01:20:15 that. And I was just I completely blanked on it right now. So that's spotter versus creator thing.
877. 01:20:20 And it's by no means a get out of jail free. Like you don't have to create anything, but it's much
878. 01:20:24 more of a if you're not the kind of person who like is going to be that creator, creator, creator,
879. 01:20:31 like just try to be a spotter. And I think that's what they've done. And they showed the
880. 01:20:35 example of it. We spotted this story. We grabbed it because it tells other point. Well, we spotted
881. 01:20:39 this story. We grabbed it and it tells our story. Well, so I really liked that too.
882. 01:20:44 All right. Action items. I don't have any, Mike. I don't know if that's just the nature of I
883. 01:20:51 told you I was flying too close to the sun, right? And like my week is just my my week is just my
884. 01:20:55 week. Or if it's the fact that I just am struggling to get to the action items. I don't really have
885. 01:21:01 any I I know that I'm not going to commit to this as an action item. But like, I know that the ideas
886. 01:21:07 in this book are things I want to act on. I don't know if I want to commit to saying like in this
887. 01:21:14 venue, I'm going to try to do XYZ or whatever it might be. I think the easiest action item I can
888. 01:21:22 I can say is I want to take their reference guide. And I want to have that more accessible
889. 01:21:29 than it being in the end of this book where I have to go find it. So like somehow I will commit
890. 01:21:34 to to the action item of I want to go get that reference guide and I want to put in a more accessible
891. 01:21:39 form for me that way when I go like, Oh, what did Dan and Chip say about this idea? Boom,
892. 01:21:44 I can go to the reference guide and have that have that more available. So that's the one I'll
893. 01:21:47 commit to for right now. All right. Well, the reference guide, I didn't know we were actually
894. 01:21:54 going to talk about that in the show itself. But as you were talking through it, and you were
895. 01:21:59 mentioning how nice it is to have that and even your action item of making that more accessible,
896. 01:22:05 my action item is to add an easy reference guide to my book.
897. 01:22:09 Very cool. Yeah, that's a great action item. Yeah. But I agree that the format of the book
898. 01:22:16 really isn't tactical in terms of I'm going to go apply this tomorrow. It's more
899. 01:22:24 helping you make a mindset shift, I feel. And there probably is specific action items regarding
900. 01:22:31 I'm going to use the checklist when I during my next teaching session or the next newsletter
901. 01:22:36 that I write or something like that. They did give a lot of those examples inside of the
902. 01:22:42 shoot. What'd you call them clinics? Yeah, clinics. Yeah, the gray boxes where they look at two
903. 01:22:47 different versions of a message and how one is better than the other. But I guess the
904. 01:22:53 the thing about communicating ideas in a way that makes them stick is you just have to communicate
905. 01:22:57 ideas over and over and over again. And as you do it, and you have this this reference, I feel like
906. 01:23:03 over time they're naturally going to get more sticky and you're naturally going to get better
907. 01:23:08 at communicating them. And that really is the goal of this this book. It's not, well,
908. 01:23:15 get a million people to do a personal retreat or something. It's really just you're talking
909. 01:23:19 about ideas anyways, you want people to remember more. So here's some stuff that may may help you do
910. 01:23:25 that. All right, style and rating. So my book, I'll go first. This is the prototypical Dan and
911. 01:23:35 Chip Heath book. So if you have read any of the other ones, decisive, I think is the one that we
912. 01:23:43 covered for bookworm. That one was was really good. This is very much like that. We talked a
913. 01:23:50 little bit about this at the beginning, but co-authored books I'm generally not a fan of.
914. 01:23:56 However, Chip and Dan do a great job of co-writing. They both bring different expertise, but it
915. 01:24:01 doesn't have that disjointed jumping back and forth between different people. And even if
916. 01:24:07 co-authored books don't say like this is me and I'm saying this and this is the other person and
917. 01:24:12 they're saying that just the tone is different. It feels like somebody else is speaking, but when
918. 01:24:19 it's not explicitly communicated, you're kind of wondering who is actually saying this. So I'm
919. 01:24:24 generally not a fan of these. I think Chip and Dan Heath books are the exception. I also think
920. 01:24:31 that what they're really, really good at is taking a simple concept and for the most part,
921. 01:24:39 sticking to it very well. I think we talked a little bit about how the mental rehearsal,
922. 01:24:43 the visualization, the simulation stuff maybe drifted a little bit further than everything else
923. 01:24:51 being so applicable. And it's a direct connection between this is how I apply this as independent
924. 01:24:57 creator. This is how I apply this for you, Corey, as a teacher. Like there's a very clear path
925. 01:25:02 forward. It's like, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. This is definitely going to help me in the next
926. 01:25:06 class that I present. They do a phenomenal job of that that they write maybe some of the most
927. 01:25:14 generalizable productivity slash business type books that you will ever come across.
928. 01:25:21 It's almost the exact opposite framing of the previous book that we read where you go into it.
929. 01:25:29 Like, well, unless I'm a creator who's trying to get sponsors, I'm not sure there's anything
930. 01:25:34 in there. And spoiler alert, if you haven't listened to that episode, it was a golden book.
931. 01:25:37 We both gave it five stars. I was worried that you weren't going to. So definitely go read that one.
932. 01:25:41 But the takeaway from that was, yeah, there is a lot of stuff in here that I can apply. But this
933. 01:25:45 one from the very beginning, they have this way of they didn't know that I was filling the blank
934. 01:25:52 in terms of occupation, but they wrote this book specifically for me in my occupation or vocation
935. 01:25:58 or whatever. I don't know how they do it. It's really, really good. They are phenomenal storytellers
936. 01:26:05 right from the very beginning with the kidney heist. I mean, there are so many powerful stories
937. 01:26:10 in here, which generally people try to tell powerful stories when they are writing a book, right?
938. 01:26:16 But it's it's goes together with this topic like peanut butter and jelly that was ever a book
939. 01:26:24 where storytelling would have been critical. Like it's it's this one. So in one sense, it's
940. 01:26:32 it's a little bit familiar because it seems like everybody's doing that now. This book was written
941. 01:26:37 a little bit ago. I don't remember the exact published date, but it's not a brand. I think it
942. 01:26:41 was 2017. Yeah. Okay. 2007. Sorry, 2007. Yeah. So almost 20 years old. There's some things in
943. 01:26:48 there where they talk about things. I'm like, Oh, well, you know, iPhones aren't a thing yet.
944. 01:26:52 Whatever. So it maybe is a little bit dated. I don't know. I think the the doesn't doesn't
945. 01:26:59 degrade the quality of the arguments of the ideas that they're they're talking about here.
946. 01:27:05 I think this is a five star book. It's hard for me to justify that when I had zero action items
947. 01:27:13 from it. I think that's okay, though. I think there are perspective shifting books where you
948. 01:27:20 can look back several years from now and be like, yeah, that one really changed the way I do things.
949. 01:27:27 You may not be able to specifically call out the ways that it has changed things. It's hard to
950. 01:27:34 it's hard to point out the specific points in my workflows that this is going to influence,
951. 01:27:41 but my guess is that its fingerprints are going to be all over everything that I make for years
952. 01:27:46 to come. So I'm going to rate this a five star book. Okay, so it's it's my turn. I will not
953. 01:27:52 rated a five star book. I'll tell you that right now. But like, I'm going to temper my my rating.
954. 01:27:59 So this book is incredibly valuable when it comes to thinking about communicating in a way that
955. 01:28:06 people will remember what you say. So they, you know, they call it made to stick, right? Like,
956. 01:28:10 so thinking about communicating effectively in a way that people will carry on or remember the
957. 01:28:15 things you say or use those later. I think the book itself is a great model of that. Like, I think
958. 01:28:22 they did that really, really well. Like the success framework, it's going to stick. I'm going to be
959. 01:28:28 able to remember those things. I'm going to be able to remember, you know, kind of the core ideas
960. 01:28:32 throughout this book. Some of the stories they tell, I think are going to are going to stick.
961. 01:28:36 So a very, very effective in that, like where like, I think we've done a good job at
962. 01:28:43 extolling the virtues of this book and like saying the good things about it. So I'm just going to
963. 01:28:47 focus on the reason why it's not a five, a five star book for me. There were too many stories.
964. 01:28:53 Like, I think at times they made their point and then they just kept going. And I was like,
965. 01:29:00 guys, you don't need another 15 pages of stories. You made a really effective point and we're good
966. 01:29:07 and I don't need it anymore. If they would have taken those and added them to an appendix and say,
967. 01:29:12 for another example of this, see the story we give an appendix B. And that would be great. Like,
968. 01:29:18 absolutely great. The clinics, I did not find that much value in. I thought they were okay.
969. 01:29:27 I didn't think they were, they were great. Now, maybe that's just me. Maybe I just like,
970. 01:29:30 didn't resonate with, with what the clinics were. But I got to the point where towards the end,
971. 01:29:34 I just started skipping through the clinic because I was like, yeah, okay, I know what you're going
972. 01:29:37 to do. You're going to give me two scenarios. You're going to then evaluate those based on a thing.
973. 01:29:41 And it just wasn't that necessary for me for what I was trying to get out of the book or the point
974. 01:29:48 of the book. So like, when you put those two ideas together, like, I think that's what drops it down
975. 01:29:53 from a five star book for me. Other people might read this and they may love it. They may be like,
976. 01:29:57 I am so glad they included the clinics. I couldn't have, you know, done this book without the clinics
977. 01:30:01 or, man, I wish they would have given me more stories. I just disagree with that. Like, I think
978. 01:30:06 they made their point. They didn't need to go on further with the point. So you had said about,
979. 01:30:12 you thought it was a good length, right, with the book. And this is why I love doing the show,
980. 01:30:16 because sometimes we completely agree. And sometimes we don't. I think we could have knocked
981. 01:30:20 probably a solid 50 pages off of this book. And I would have given it a five star rating. Like,
982. 01:30:26 if we did, if it had just shortened down, and it's not because what they said was bad, or
983. 01:30:32 like, not even, I don't even want to say it's not because what they said was irrelevant.
984. 01:30:36 I just don't think they need to go on as long. So I'm not going to drop it very far. I'm going
985. 01:30:42 to do something that we don't often do, but I'm just going to knock this to a four and a half
986. 01:30:47 star book only because I think if you had dropped 50 pages of it off, it's a more accessible book
987. 01:30:53 to audiences. And it gets your, and it gets your point across just as well. I wouldn't get rid of the
988. 01:31:02 reference guide at all. I wouldn't change the framework. I think the framework was good. Like,
989. 01:31:07 there was very little about the core content of this book that I would have changed. Just,
990. 01:31:11 I think you could have done it in a more concise way. So I guess thinking about it now as we process
991. 01:31:16 out loud when we talk, I think they made it a little, they could have made it a little more simple
992. 01:31:21 or a little more compact. And if they'd have done that, it's a higher rated book for me.
993. 01:31:26 That is fair. So I was flipping through the introduction to see if I could find it because I
994. 01:31:33 agree with you. However, I think one comment that I'm not sure I can find, and then a piece of advice
995. 01:31:42 for people if they're going to pick this one up, I thought they said, but I cannot find the clinics
996. 01:31:48 are basically optional. They 100% did that, which allowed me to go, okay, like after I read the
997. 01:31:54 first couple of them, I was like, I'm done. Like, I know what they're going to do in the clinics.
998. 01:31:57 I'm good. Like, I don't need to do those anymore. And it's because they said that they absolutely
999. 01:32:01 did say yes. Okay, cool. So I'm not making that up. So that the piece of advice that I'd give people
1000. 01:32:06 then is like, I'm glad that the clinics are there. However, I also feel like you do not need to read
1001. 01:32:13 all those. So if you want to instantly make the book about 50 pages shorter, just give the clinics.
1002. 01:32:20 If they would have said what they said, given us the first clinic, and then taken the rest of
1003. 01:32:24 the clinics and said they're in the appendix, and they would have referred to it. Like, if you want
1004. 01:32:29 a clinic about this, refer to Appendix Sure, Appendix B, that makes it a stronger book to me,
1005. 01:32:33 right? Because now you're not put in the middle of the text as I read through it. It wasn't that
1006. 01:32:38 hard for me. I mean, I'm the only way to read is electronically. So therefore, it wasn't that hard
1007. 01:32:44 for me to scroll on. It wasn't that hard for me to scroll through it. And it wouldn't be that
1008. 01:32:48 hard to turn the pages. It just, it just brought the rating down for me. That's all.
1009. 01:32:52 Yeah, no, that's fair. I understand that. Yeah, it was easier for me to look past that. And I do
1010. 01:32:58 think that the practical examples of those are great. I do think you're right that putting them
1011. 01:33:02 in the end might be a different way to do it. But I didn't mind it.
1012. 01:33:05 I do think though, before we end this section, I do think this is a very good read when you think
1013. 01:33:12 about communication and when you think about transferring ideas to other people. I think it's
1014. 01:33:16 a very, very strong read. So I would highly recommend people, no matter what you do, read this book.
1015. 01:33:21 Yeah, I think that's the big thing is this is definitely a one that we would both recommend
1016. 01:33:26 people read for sure. All right, let's put made to stick on the shelf. What's next, Corey?
1017. 01:33:33 All right, the next book finishes out the Ryan Holiday Stoic series. It is wisdom takes work,
1018. 01:33:41 learn, apply, repeat. It is his stoic virtue series. And according to Ryan Holiday, this is the last
1019. 01:33:49 one in there. This is the mic, if I'm remembering the fourth of four books in this series.
1020. 01:33:54 Yeah, I mean, there are only four stoic virtues. So this has to be the end.
1021. 01:33:58 Okay, I didn't, I didn't know that. So okay, you just taught me that there's only four stoic
1022. 01:34:01 virtues. So it basically came out like a week ago. I don't even know, as of when we're recording
1023. 01:34:07 this podcast, it came out about a week ago. And it's already ranked, you know, number one
1024. 01:34:13 new release. So it's it's getting the the popularity that, you know, Ryan Holiday has kind of built
1025. 01:34:19 for himself as we go through this. I'm excited to read this one. There are, I've kind of had mixed
1026. 01:34:26 feelings on the past stoic virtues book. So I'm very intrigued to see what I, what I think of this
1027. 01:34:32 one. I'm saying that as a way to say, I do not expect this to be a five star book for me when
1028. 01:34:38 we're done, when we're done reading that. But you know, I, I like the idea of these. I'm not
1029. 01:34:44 necessarily a stoicism person. But I think there's some truth to glean out of, out of these things.
1030. 01:34:50 And then I think Ryan Holiday writes some interesting, interesting stuff. And I like reading,
1031. 01:34:54 reading his stuff. So we're going to read the last of the stoic virtues books from Ryan Holiday,
1032. 01:35:00 Wisdom Takes Work. Mike, after that, what's coming up?
1033. 01:35:05 After that is a book that I am both very excited about, but now actually fairly nervous about.
1034. 01:35:14 That is Toxic Grit by Amanda Gatz. I heard Amanda speak at Craft and Commerce. I met her. She's
1035. 01:35:21 a very smart, very accomplished person. And this book, the subtitle is How to Have It All and
1036. 01:35:31 Actually Love What You Have. I feel like the core message of this is going to be great.
1037. 01:35:37 However, let me read the first two sentences of the Amazon description to you.
1038. 01:35:42 Burnout is an epidemic caused by a society that praises Toxic Grit all good so far.
1039. 01:35:48 Women haven't taught to chase goals and to hold everything together while quietly falling apart.
1040. 01:35:52 So we are not women. But I think that is okay because a lot of the productivity books that we read
1041. 01:36:04 are written by bro culture dudes. Let's just call it what it is, right? So I think this is going
1042. 01:36:12 to be a very different tone which I think will be very refreshing and is worth shining a light on
1043. 01:36:18 even if it's not written to us specifically. It may make the conversation a little bit interesting,
1044. 01:36:25 but that's great. I'm all for it. That doesn't worry me at all. I think it's going to be a fun
1045. 01:36:34 story or a fun conversation. Yep. All right. Got any gap books? No, yes. Okay. I don't remember
1046. 01:36:42 if this was a gap book last time or not, but I am working through God's kingdom through God's
1047. 01:36:48 covenants. So that is my gap book for right now. And it's basically a book on what's called
1048. 01:36:53 Progressive Covenantalism, which is how the covenants unfold throughout the Bible. So that is my
1049. 01:36:59 gap book that I am working through right now. How about you? No, no, no. Maybe I'll have one
1050. 01:37:10 by next time. But wisdom takes work, looks like a little bit longer book. It came not too long ago.
1051. 01:37:19 If it's like a lot of the other Ryan Holiday books, it's probably a bunch of short little
1052. 01:37:23 chapters haven't cracked it open yet. So it probably looks longer than it will actually read. And maybe
1053. 01:37:28 I'll have time to squeeze another one in. But I have survived this week. That was that was my
1054. 01:37:35 only objective. That was your only objective. Just so everybody knows in our in our note taking
1055. 01:37:39 app, I put no dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. That's the way that's the way Mike
1056. 01:37:45 said that, right? No. Yes, that is how I said it. All right. So thank you for listening. If you
1057. 01:37:53 want to support the show a couple ways you can do that. Number one, you can come and hang out with
1058. 01:37:57 us on the live stream. We made these open to everybody now. And we've had a couple people who've
1059. 01:38:04 been pretty active in the chat today. So thank you, Michael. Thank you, Blake. If you want to come
1060. 01:38:08 hang out with us live, you can you could do that. Go to youtube.com. Is it bookworm FM? Is that our
1061. 01:38:15 our channel? I believe so youtube.com slash bookworm FM. Yes. Okay, cool. So there you'll find the
1062. 01:38:25 links to the upcoming live streams. And as long as I don't have to push them because life gets
1063. 01:38:29 crazy, that's when they'll be another way you can support the show is by contributing to us
1064. 01:38:36 monetarily by joining the the pro members. We've got a pro show where we've got a longer ad free
1065. 01:38:42 version of the show. We don't have a ton of ads. That's going to change once Corey and I go to
1066. 01:38:46 sponsor games. That's right. That's right. And we do a separate section of the show every week for
1067. 01:38:52 the pro members. So today we talked about my trip to the pinball museum in Chattanooga. And you also
1068. 01:39:00 get a bootleg which gets uploaded right after we record. So in addition to the longer ad free show,
1069. 01:39:07 you can also get the show about a week or two early, depending on when we actually get around
1070. 01:39:12 to recording this. There's also a bookworm wallpaper, which is a 4k wallpaper. The bookworm logo looks
1071. 01:39:19 awesome. And you can become a bookworm pro supporter by going to patreon.com slash bookworm FM. It is
1072. 01:39:25 $7 a month and it helps us keep the lights on helps us keep doing the show pays for our books. So
1073. 01:39:31 thank you to everybody who has become a member. And if you want to become a bookworm from member
1074. 01:39:36 yourself patreon.com slash bookworm FM. If you're reading along with us, pick up wisdom takes
1075. 01:39:42 work by Ryan Holiday, and we will talk to you next time.