In this episode we discuss the following:

• Movement is medicine. Not the pharmacy kind, but the kind we build into our life, day after day, year after year.
• Longevity isn’t something reserved for the genetically lucky, but rather a choice we can make. And given that people are living longer than ever, it has never been more important to take care of ourselves.
• It’s never too late to start getting healthy. Michael takes inspiration from 100 year old marathon runner who started running in his 80s.
• We can avoid the midlife crisis by recognizing it as an opportunity. If we’re going to live longer, then we’re not winding down… we’re just getting to halftime. And that means there’s still time to rebuild, improve, and re-invest in a better version of ourselves.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Sitting for extended periods is like kinking a garden hose, which reduces blood flow, oxygen, and glucose regulation. But taking regular five minute breaks helps us think more clearly and feel more energized.
• We can make small structural changes to encourage movement breaks by scheduling a meeting for 55 minutes rather than an hour.
• The best part about regular movement breaks is that it isn’t a tradeoff—it’s a win-win where small changes improve our health, mood, and productivity. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Will’s restaurant ranked 50th out of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, he leaned on something his dad taught him: adversity is a terrible thing to waste. That night, he wrote two words on a napkin—Unreasonable Hospitality. And just a few years later Will achieved his goal of  becoming number one in the world.
• What stands out most isn’t just the turnaround—it’s the insight behind it: excellence isn’t just about what we deliver; it’s about how we make people feel.
• Will realized that the real differentiator was the experience. It was “one size fits one.” It was DreamWeaving. It was an obsession with the human side of every interaction.
• DreamWeaving was buying sleds for a family whose kids were seeing snow for the first time so that their after meal activity could be sledding for the first time in Central Park or creating beach scenes in the private dining room for a couple who was only there because their beach vacation got canceled.
• So often the people who achieve at a high level do so by being a little unreasonable.
• Never let a gracious impulse pass. We all have small instincts to do something thoughtful and too often, we ignore them. But that’s where the magic is.
• Hospitality, at its best, is being creative and intentional in pursuit of relationships. And even something as simple as asking our guests to really listen isn’t an imposition. It’s a gift.
• No detail is too small to be poured into. Especially when it comes to valuing people.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Eric gave us a powerful lens for capturing attention: most advice lives on a dial (e.g., work harder, care more), but what actually sticks is a switch, something you either do or you don’t. We all know that eating less and exercising more is what matters when trying to lose weight. But it’s that third thing—the concrete, measurable action like drinking celery juice—that gets people to buy the dieting book.
• As Eric reminded us, it’s not about being provocative for its own sake—it’s about being provocative and defensible. The best ideas make people think, “I always believed this… now I can prove it.”
• I’m excited to use the lens Eric provided that helped him start making money in his career. He switched from being a dumb smart person, to a smart dumb person. Rather than advance the conversation for 1000 people, Eric entered the conversation of a million people.

Jim has delivered keynotes or workshops at more than 300 colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. He also consulted with the United Nations on a multiyear project to develop teaching materials in ethics and integrity for high school and college faculty.

Jim is a graduate of Notre Dame with a B.A. in English and philosophy. He holds an M.A. in English from St. Louis University and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• One of Jim’s central ideas comes from Aristotle: the beginning is more than half of the whole. Jim experienced this firsthand when he started his class with a provocative question, but low energy, and the students mirrored his energy.
• The first five minutes of a class, meeting, or even our day carry disproportionate weight because they set the tone and create the lens through which everything else gets interpreted.
• Energy is contagious, and students tend to mirror whatever the teacher brings into the room. So if we want better discussions, deeper learning, or more engagement, don’t leave the opening moments to chance; design them carefully.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• While private wealth management operates in the financial world, it’s also deeply psychological, which worked out well for Lowell given his undergraduate degree.
• I especially appreciated Lowell’s insight about the two ingredients required for trust: ethics and competence. When he lost an early client, it wasn’t because the client questioned Lowell’s integrity or intentions. The hesitation came from uncertainty about Lowell’s experience and ability. Just being a good person wasn’t enough—we also have to demonstrate that we can deliver results.
• I also enjoyed Lowell’s emphasis on playing the long game, not only in business but in life.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When we face uncertainty, stress, or grief, we spontaneously create structured, repeatable, often elaborate behaviors that provide order and give us a feeling of control.
• The rituals we create, whether clinking silverware together before meals, singing Happy Meatloaf, or going through a 12-step process before a tennis serve, probably don’t change the outcomes. But they do change our experience.
• Violating rituals also reveals how much they matter to us. The anger people feel imagining an ex-partner reusing “their” couple ritual shows how much meaning and emotion is embedded in these small, repeated acts.
• The goal isn’t to create more rituals. But rather, notice the significance of the ones we have. And if you can, be sure to ask your parents what their bedtime ritual was for you.

In this episode we discuss the following:

As Sangeet said, “Yesterday’s advantages become tomorrow’s commodity.”

We should ask ourselves, “What are my enduring, unfair advantages that align with my skills, energy, and purpose?”

Don’t focus on what AI can do today—focus on what only you are uniquely capable of doing as AI continues to improve.

For magicians, it isn’t about creating tricks that can’t be figured out; it’s about recombining ideas in ways that inspire wonder.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I’m intrigued by Adam’s perspective on saying yes, which goes against much of the research and conventional wisdom about protecting our time. By saying yes to things, countless unexpected doors have opened for Adam.
• But of course, we must be willing to cut ties with projects that lack purpose or a reasonable ROI.
• Being "easy to work with" is not just the right thing to do. It also reduces friction for others and creates a psychological preference for us in our colleagues' minds, making us the first person they think of for future collaborations.

In the episode we discuss the following:

• Hortense had been ignoring her inner voice and had become physically ill for not making the decisions she knew she needed to make. But thanks to a dream of her wise grandmother, Hortense decided to find her “path of roses” and make choices she knew she needed to make.
• As CEO of her company, in a room full of engineers, she gained the trust of the engineers, not by pretending to be one but by honestly admitting what she didn’t know.
• As Hortense said, the world doesn’t need a repetition of someone else. The world needs us to be courageous enough to be ourself.  

Beth holds a Ph.D. in management from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan.

In this episode we discuss the following:

Hiring a star performer seems like an easy win, but Beth’s research shows that hiring stars can trigger status conflicts and envy.

Research suggests that "star power" hits diminishing returns once a team is composed of more than 20% high performers, as too many "hot shots" can lead to ego clashes rather than collaboration.

To avoid these pitfalls, leaders can look for stars who possess humility and high emotional intelligence, as they’re more likely to share credit and lift those around them.

Success isn't just about chasing the best talent, but being thoughtful about the character traits of stars and the system they’ll be working in. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Tom’s experience reads like a case study in an ethics textbook. Tom felt like he was on the outside looking in. So when given an insider tip, he traded on it.
• When Tom’s boss looked the other way, while simultaneously applying pressure, Tom started rationalizing his behavior. After all, he was trying to be a good dad and husband, which made him feel like he had moral credits to spend on illegal trades.
• Once caught by the FBI, Tom turned his scars into service, contributing to an investigation that resulted in dozens of guilty pleas.
• Our ethical failures rarely come out of the blue, rather they are the predictable result of surrounding ourselves with the wrong people and making seemingly small ethical compromises.  

Scott’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Scientific American, Psychology Today, and Harvard Business Review, and he is the author and editor of 11 books. In his most recent book Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential, he explores the limiting beliefs and widespread anxiety that puts people in boxes, lowers expectations, and holds them back.

In addition to teaching at Columbia, Scott has also been a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and NYU. Scott received a B.S. in psychology and human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon, an M. Phil in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge under a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Scott’s definition of intelligence: the dynamic interplay of engagement and abilities in the pursuit of goals. When we give people a chance to go deep into an area that they love, over a long period of time, they can develop expertise and brain structures that can override some of our IQ limitations.
• The thing that surprised Scott most as he researched intelligence was just how predictive IQ is. Scott thought he was going to be on a vendetta against IQ but ended up falling in love with the science of IQ, intelligence, and the brain.
• Differences in ability are both natural and valuable, and recognizing them—rather than denying them—creates better paths for growth and contribution.
• Unlocking our potential requires intellectual honesty, patience, and environments that allow passion and skill to reinforce one another over time.  

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[Transcript]

Nate: 

My name is Nate Meikle. You're listening to Meikles and Dimes, where every episode is dedicated to the simple, practical, and under-appreciated. Bob Goodson was the first employee at Yelp, founder of social media analytics company Quid, co-inventor of the like button, and co-author of the new book Like: The Button That Changed the World. On Oct 1, 2025, Bob spent a day with our MBA students at the University of Kansas, and he shared so much great content that I asked him if we could put together some of the highlights as a podcast, which I've now put together in three chapters: First is Careers, second is Building Companies, and third is AI and Social Media. As a reminder, any views and perspectives expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individual and not those of the organizations they represent. Hope you enjoy the episode. Let’s jump into Chapter 1 on Careers. For the first question, a student asked Bob who he has become and how his experiences have shaped him as a person and leader.

Bob: 

Oh, thanks, Darrell. That's a thoughtful question. It's thoughtful because it's often not asked, and it's generally not discussed. But I will say, and hopefully you'll feel like this about your work if you don't already, that you will over time, which is I'm 45 now, so I have some sort of vantage point to look back over. Like, I mean, I started working when I was about 9 or 10 years old, so I have been working for money for about 35 years. So I'm like a bit further into my career than perhaps I look. I've been starting companies and things since I was about 10. So, in terms of like my professional career, which I guess started, you know, just over 20 years ago, 20 years into that kind of work, the thing I'm most grateful for is what it's allowed me to learn and how it's evolved me as a person. And I'm also most grateful on the business front for how the businesses that I've helped create and the projects and client deployments and whatever have helped evolve the people that have worked on them. Like I genuinely feel that is the most lasting thing that anything in business does is evolve people. It's so gratifying when you have a team member that joins and three years later you see them, just their confidence has developed or their personality has developed in some way. And it's the test of the work that has evolved them as people. I mean, I actually just on Monday night, I caught up for the first time in 10 years with an intern we had 10 years ago called Max Hofer. You can look him up. He was an intern at Quid. He was from Europe, was studying in London, came to do an internship with us in San Francisco for the summer. And, he was probably like 18, 19 years old. And a few weeks ago, he launched his AI company, Parsewise, with funding from Y Combinator. And, he cites his experience at Quid as being fundamental in choosing his career path, in choosing what field he worked in and so on. So that was, yeah, that was, when you see these things happening, right, 10 years on, we caught up at an event we did in London on Monday. And it's just it's really rewarding. So I suppose, yeah, like I suppose it's it's brought me a lot of perspective, brought me a lot of inner peace, actually, you know, the and and when you're when I was in the thick of it at times, I had no sense of that whatsoever. Right. Like in tough years. And there were some - there have been some very tough years in my working career that you don't feel like it's developing you in any way. It just feels brutal. I liken starting a company, sometimes it's like someone's put you in a room with a massive monster and the monster pins you down and just bats you across the face, right, for like a while. And you're like just trying to get away from the monster and you're like, finally you get the monster off your back and then like the monster's just on you again. And it just, it's just like you get a little bit of space and freedom and then the monster's back and it's just like pummeling you. And it's just honestly some years, like for those of you, some of you are running companies now, right? And starting your own companies as well. And I suppose it's not just starting companies. There are just phases in your career and work where it's like you look back and you're like, man, that year was just like, that was brutal. You just get up and fight every day, and you just get knocked down every day. So I think, I don't wish that on anybody, but it does build resilience that then transfers into other aspects of your life. 

Nate: 

Next, a student made a reference to the first podcast episode I recorded with Bob and asked him if he felt like he was still working on the most important problem in his field. 

Bob: 

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to the podcast, as this gives us… thanks for the chance to plug the podcast. So the way I met Nate is that he interviewed me for his podcast. And for those of you who haven't listened to it, it's a 30 minute interview. And he asked this question about what advice would you share with others? And we honed in on this question of like, what is the most important problem in your field? And are you working on it? Which I love as a guide to like choosing what to work on. And so we had a great conversation. I enjoyed it so much and really enjoyed meeting Nate. So we sort of said, hey, let's do more fun stuff together in the future. So that's what brought us to this conversation. And thanks to Nate for, you know, bringing us all together today. I'm always working on what I think is the most important problem in front of me. And I always will be. I can't help it. I don't have to think about it. I just can't think about anything else. So yes, I do feel like right now I'm working on the most important problem in my field. And I feel like I've been doing that for about 20 years. And it's not for everybody, I suppose. But I just think, like, let's talk about that idea a little bit. And then I'll say what I think is the most important problem in my field that I'm working on. Like, just to translate it for each of you. Systems are always evolving. The systems we live in are evolving. We all know that. People talk about the pace of change and like life's changing, technology's changing and so on. Well, it is, right? Like humans developed agriculture 5,000 years ago. That wasn't very long ago. Agriculture, right? Just the idea that you could grow crops in one area and live in that area without walking around, without moving around settlements and different living in different places. And that concept is only 5,000 years old, right? I mean, people debate exactly how old, like 7, 8,000. But anyway, it's not that long ago, considering Homo sapiens have been walking around for in one form or another for several hundred thousand years and humans in general for a couple million years. So 5,000 years is not long. Look at what's happened in 5,000 years, right? Like houses, the first settlements where you would actually just live at sleep in the same place every night is only 5,000 years old. And now we've got on a - you can access all the world's knowledge - on your phone for free through ChatGPT and ask it sophisticated questions and all right answers. Or you can get on a plane and fly all over the world. You have, you know, sophisticated digital currency systems. We have sophisticated laws. And like, we've got to be aware, I think, that we are living in a time of great change. And that has been true for 5,000 years, right? That's not new. So I think about this concept of the forefront. I imagine, human development is, you can just simply imagine it like a sphere or balloon that someone's like blowing up, right? And so every time they breathe into it, like something shifts and it just gets bigger. And so there's stuff happening on the forefront where it's occupying more space, different space, right? There's stuff in the middle that's like a bit more stable and a bit more, less prone to rapid change, right? The education system, some parts of the healthcare system, like certain professions, certain things that are like a bit more stable, but there's stuff happening all the time on the periphery, right? Like on the boundary. And that stuff is affecting every field in one way or another. And I just think if you get a chance to work on that stuff, that's a really interesting place to live and a really interesting place to work. And I feel like you can make a contribution to that, right, if you put yourself on the edge. And it's true for every field. So whatever field you're in, we had people here today, you know, in everything from, yeah, like the military to fitness to, you know, your product, product design and management and, you know, lots of different, you know, people, different backgrounds. But if you ask yourself, what is the most important thing happening in my area of work today, and then try to find some way to work on it, then I think that sort of is a nice sort of North Star and keeps things interesting. Because the sort of breakthroughs and discoveries and important contributions are actually not complicated once you put yourself in that position. They're obvious once you put yourself in that position, right? It's just that there aren't many people there hanging out in that place. If you're one of them, if you put yourself there, not everyone's there, suddenly you're kind of in a room where like lots of cool stuff can happen, but there aren't many people around to compete with you. So you're more likely to find those breakthroughs, whether it's for your company or for, you know, the people you work with or, you know, maybe it's inventions and, but it just, anyway, so I really like doing that. And in my space right now, I call it the concept of being the bridge. And this could apply to all of you too. It's a simple idea that the world's value, right, is locked up in companies, essentially. Companies create value. We can debate all the other vehicles that do it, but basically most of the world's value is tied up in companies and their processes. And that's been true for a long time. There's a new ball of power in the world, which is been created by large language models. And I think of that just like a new ball of power. So you've got a ball of value and a ball of power. And the funny thing about this new ball of power is this actually has no value. That's a funny thing to say, right? The large language models have no value. They don't. They don't have any value and they don't create value. Think about it. It's just a massive bag of words. That has no value, right? I can send you a poem now in the chat. Does that have any value? You might like it, you might not, but it's just a set of words, right? So you've got this massive bag of words that with like a trillion connections, no value whatsoever. That is different from previous tech trends like e-commerce, for example, which had inherent value because it was a new way to reach consumers. So some tech trends do have inherent value because they're new processes, but large language models don't. They're just a new technology. They're very powerful. So I call it a ball of power. but they don't have any value. So why is there a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in front of all of us right now in terms of value creation? It's being the bridge. It's how to make use of this ball of power to improve businesses. And businesses only have two ways you improve them. You save money or you grow revenue. That's it. So being the bridge, like taking this new ball of power and finding ways to save money, be more efficient, taking this new ball of power and finding ways to access new consumers, create new offerings and so on, right? Solve new problems. That is where all the value is. So while you may think that the new value, this multi-trillion dollar opportunity with AI is really for the people that work on the AI companies, sure, there's a lot of, you know, there's some money to be made there. And if you can go work for OpenAI, you probably should. Everyone should be knocking the door down. Everyone should be applying for positions because it's the most important company, you know, in our generation. But if you're not in OpenAI or Meta or Microsoft or whoever, you know, three or four companies in the US that are doing this, for everybody else, it's about being the bridge, finding ways that in your organizations, you can unlock the power of AI by bringing it into the organizations and finding ways to either save money or grow the business. And that's fascinating to me because anybody can be the bridge. You don't have to be good with large language models. You have to understand business processes and you have to be creative and willing to even think like this. And suddenly you can be on the forefront of like creating massive value at your companies because you were the, you know, you're the one that brings brings in the new tools. And I think that skill set, there are certain skills involved in being the bridge, but that skill set of being the bridge is going to be so valuable in the next 5 to 10 years. So I encourage people, and that's what I'm doing. Like, I see my role - I serve clients at Quid. I love working with clients. You know, I'm not someone that really like thrives for management and like day-to-day operations and administration of a business. I learned that about myself. And so I just spend my time serving clients. I have done for several years now. And I love just meeting clients and figuring out how they can use Quid’s AI, Quid’s data, and any other form of AI that we want to bring to the table to improve their businesses. And that's just what I do with my time full-time. And I'll probably be doing that for at least the next 5 or 10 years. I think the outlook for that area of work is really huge. 

Nate: 

Building on the podcast episode where Bob talked about working on the most important problem in his field, I asked if he could give us some more details on how he took that advice and ended up at Yelp. 

Bob: 

So I was in grad school in the UK studying, well, I was actually on a program for medieval literature and philosophy, but looking into like language theory. So it was not the most commercial course that one could be doing. But I was a hobbyist programmer, played around with the web when it first came up and was making, you know, various new types of websites for students. while in my free time. I didn't think of that as commercial at all. I didn't see any commercial potential in that. But I did meet the founders of PayPal that way, who would come to give a talk. And I guess they saw the potential in me as a product manager. You know, there's lots of new apps they wanted to build. This is in 2003. And so they invited me to the US to work for them. And I joined the incubator when there were just five people in it. Max Levchin was one of them, the PayPal co-founder. Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons were in those first five people. They turned out to be the Yelp co-founders. And Yelp came out of the incubator. So we were actually prototyping 4 companies each in a different industry. There was a chat application that we called Chatango that was five years before Twitter or something, but it was a way of helping people to chat online more easily. There were, which is still around today, but didn't make it as a hit. There was an ad network called AdRoll, which ended up getting renamed and is still around today. That wasn't a huge hit, but it's still around. Then there was Slide, which is photo sharing application, photo and video sharing, which was Max's company. That was acquired by Google. And that did reasonably well. I think it was acquired for about $150 million. And then there was Yelp, which you'll probably know if you're in the US and went public on the New York Stock Exchange and now has a billion dollars in revenue. So those are the four things that we were trying to prototype, each very different, as you can see. But I suppose that's the like tactical story, right? Like the steps that took me there. But there was an idea that took me there that started this journey of working on the most, the most important problems that are happening in the time. So if I rewind, when I was studying medieval literature, I got to the point where I was studying the invention of the print press. And I'd been studying manuscript culture and seeing what happened when the print press was invented and how it changed education, politics, society. You know, when you took this technology that made it cheaper to print, to make books, books were so expensive in the Middle Ages. They were the domain of only the wealthiest people. And only 5% of people could read before the print process was invented, right? So 95% of people couldn't read anything or write anything. And that was because the books themselves were just so expensive, they had to be handwritten, right? And so when the print press made the cost of a book drop dramatically, the literacy rates in Europe shot up and it completely transformed society. So I was studying that period and at the same time, like dabbling with websites in the early internet and sort of going, oh, like there was this moment where I was like, the web is our equivalent of the print press. And it's happening right now. I'm talking like maybe 2002, or so when I had this realization. It's happening right now. It's going to change everything during our lifetimes. And I just had a fork in my life where it's like I could be a professor in medieval history, which was the path I was on professionally. I had a scholarship. There were only 5 scholarships in my year, in the whole UK. I was on a scholarship track to be a professor and study things like the emergence of the print press, or I could contribute to the print press of our era, which is the internet, and find some way to contribute, some way, right? It didn't matter to me if it was big or small, it was irrelevant. It was just be in the mix with people that are pushing the boundaries. Whatever I did, I'd take the most junior role available, no problem, but like just be in the mix with the people that are doing that. So yeah, that was the decision, right? Like, and that's what led me down to sort of leave my course, leave my scholarship. And, my salary was $40,000 when I moved to the US. All right. And that's pretty much all I earned for a while. I'd spent everything I had starting a group called Oxford Entrepreneurs. So I had absolutely no money. The last few months actually living in Oxford, I had one meal a day because I didn't have enough money to buy three meals a day. And then I packed up my stuff in a suitcase - one bag - wasn’t even a suitcase, it was a rucksack and moved to the US and, you know, and landed there basically on a student visa and friends and family was just thought I was, you know, not making a good decision, right? Like, I'm not earning much money. It's with a bunch of people in a like a dorm room style incubator, right? Where the tables and chairs we pulled off the street because we didn't want to spend money on tables and chairs. And where I get to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And I've just walked away from a scholarship and a PhD track at Oxford to go into that. And it didn't look like a good decision. But to me, the chance to work on the forefront of what's happening in our era is just too important and too interesting to not make those decisions. So I've done that a number of times, even when it's gone against commercial interest or career interest. I haven't made the best career decisions, you know, not from a commercial standpoint, but from a like getting to work on the new stuff. Like that's what I've prioritized. 

Nate: 

Next, I asked Bob about his first meeting with the PayPal founders and how he made an impression on them. 

Bob: 

Good question, because I think... So I have a high level thought on that, like a rubric to use. And then I have the details. I'll start with the details. So I had started the entrepreneurship club at Oxford. And believe it or not, in 800 years of the University's history, there was no entrepreneurship club. And they know that because when you want to start a new society, you go to university and they go through the archive, which is kept underground in the library, and someone goes down to the library archives and they go through all these pages for 800 years and look for the society that's called that. And if there is one, they pull it out and then they have the charter and you have to continue the charter. Even if it was started 300 years ago, they pull out the charter and they're like, no, you have to modify that one. You can't start with a new charter. So anyway, it's because it's technically a part of the university, right? So they have a way of administrating it. So they went through the records and were like, there's never been a club for entrepreneurs at the university. So we started the first, I was one of the co-founders of this club. And, again, there's absolutely no pay. It was just a charity as part of the university. But I love the idea of getting students who were scientists together with students that were business minded, and kind of bringing technical and creative people together. That was the theme of the club. So we'd host drinks, events and talks and all sorts. And I love building communities, at least at that stage of my life. I loved building communities. I'd been doing it. I started several charities and clubs, you know, throughout my life. So it came quite naturally to me. But what I didn't, I mean, I kind of thought this could happen, but it really changed my life as it put me at the center of this super interesting community that we've built. And I think that when you're in a university environment, like starting clubs, running clubs, even if they're small, like, we, I ran another club that we called BEAR. It was an acronym. And it was just a weekly meetup in a pub where we talked about politics and society and stuff. And like, it didn't go anywhere. It fizzled out after a year or two, but it was really like an interesting thing to work on. So I think when you're in a university environment, even if you guys are virtual, finding ways to get together, it's so powerful. It's like, it's who you're meeting in courses like this that is so powerful. So I put myself in the middle of this community, and I was running it, I was president of it. So when these people came to speak at the business school, I was asked to bring the students along, and I was given 200 slots in the lecture theatre. So I filled them, I got 200 students along. We had 3,000 members, by the way, after like 2 years running this club. It became the biggest club at the university, and the biggest entrepreneurship student community in Europe. It got written up in The Economist actually as like, because it was so popular. But yeah, it meant that I was in the middle of it. And when the business school said, you can come to the dinner with the speakers afterwards, that was my ticket to sit down next to the founder of PayPal, you know. And so, then I sat down at dinner with him, and I had my portfolio with me, which back then I used to carry around in a little folder, like a black paper folder. And every project I'd worked on, every, because I used to do graphic design for money as a student. So I had my graphic design projects. I had my yoga publishing business and projects in there. I had printouts about the websites I'd created. So when I sat down next to him, and he's like, what do you work on? I just put this thing on the table over dinner and was like, he picked it up and he started going through it. And he was like, what's this? What's this? And I think just having my projects readily available allowed him to sort of get interested in what I was working on. Nowadays, you can have a website, right? Like I didn't have a website for a long time. Now I have one. It's at bobgoodson.com where I put my projects on there. You can check it out if you like. But I think I've always had a portfolio in one way or another. And I think carrying around the stuff that you've done in an interactive way is a really good way to connect with people. But one more thing I'll say on this concept, because it connects more broadly to like life in general, is that I think that I have this theory that in your lifetime, you get around five opportunities put in front of you that you didn't yet fully deserve, right? Someone believes in you, someone opens a door, someone's like, hey, Nate, how about you do this? Or like, we think you might be capable of this. And it doesn't happen very often, but those moments do happen. And when they happen, a massive differentiator for your life is do you notice that it's happening and do you grab it with both hands? And in that moment, do everything you can to make it work, right? Like they don't come along very often. And to me, those moments have been so precious. I knew I wouldn't get many of them. And so every time they happened, I've just been all in. I don't care what's going on in my life at that time. When the door opens, I drop everything, and I do everything I can to make it work. And you're stretched in those situations. So it's not easy, right? Like someone's given you an opportunity to do something you're not ready for, essentially. So you're literally not ready for it. Like you're not good enough, you don't know enough, you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the skills. So you only have to do the job, but you have to cultivate your own skills and develop your skills. And that's a lot of work. You know, when I landed in, I mean, working for Max was one of those opportunities where I did not, I'd not done enough to earn that opportunity when I got that opportunity. I landed with five people who had all done PayPal. They were all like incredible experts in their fields, right? Like Russ Simmons, the Yelp co-founder, had been the chief architect of PayPal. He architected PayPal, right? Like I was with very skilled technical people. I was the only Brit. They were all Americans. So I stood out culturally. Most of them couldn't understand what I was saying when I arrived. I've since changed how I speak. So you can understand me, the Americans in the room. But I just mumbled. I wasn't very articulate. So it was really hard to get my ideas across. And I had programmed as a hobbyist, but I didn't know enough to be able to program production code alongside people that had worked at PayPal. I mean, their security levels and their accuracy and everything was just off the, I was in another league, right? So there I was, I felt totally out of my depth, and I had to fight to stay in that job for a year. Like I fought every day for a year to like not get kicked out of that job and essentially out of the country. Because without their sponsorship, I couldn't have stayed in the country. I was on a student visa with them, right? And I worked seven days a week for 365 days in a row. I basically almost lived in the office. I got an apartment a few blocks from the office and I had to. No one else was working those kind of hours, but I had to do the job, and I had to learn 3 new programming languages and all this technical stuff, how to write specs, how to write product specs like I had to research the history of various websites in parts of the internet. So I'm just, I guess I'm just giving some color to like when these doors open in your career and in your life, sometimes they're relationship doors that open, right? You meet somebody who's going to change your life, and it's like, are you going to fight to make that work? And, you know, like, so not all, it's not always career events, but when they happen, I think like trusting your instinct that this is one of those moments and knowing this is one of the, you can't do this throughout your whole life. You burn out and you die young. Like you're just not sustainable. But when they happen, are you going to put the burners on and be like, I'm in. And sometimes it only takes a few weeks. Like the most it's ever taken for me is a year to walk through a door. But like, anyway, like just saying that in case anyone here has one of these moments and like maybe this will resonate with one of you, and you'll be like, that's one of the moments I need to walk through the door. 

Nate: 

That concludes chapter one. In chapter 2, Bob talks about building companies. First, I asked Bob if he gained much leadership experience at Yelp. 

Bob: 

I gained some. I suppose my first year or two in the US was in a technical role. So I didn't have anyone reporting to me. I was just working on the user interface and front end stuff. So really no leadership there. But then, there was a day when we still had five people. Jeremy started to go pitch investors for our second round because we had really good traffic growth, right? In San Francisco, we had really nice charts showing traffic growth. We'd started to get traction in New York and started to get traction in LA. So we've had the start of a nice story, right? Like this works in other cities. We've got a model we can get traffic. And Jeremy went to his first VC pitch for the second round. And the VC said, you need to show that you can monetize the traffic before you raise this round. The growth story is fine, but you also need to say, we've signed 3 customers and they're paying this much, right, monthly. So Jeremy came back from that pitch, and I remember very clearly, he sat down, kind of slumped in his chair and he's like, oh man, we're going to have to do some sales before we can raise this next round. Like we need someone on the team to go close a few new clients. And it's so funny because it's like, me and four people and everyone went like this and faced me at the same time. And I was like, why are you looking at me? Like, I'm not, I didn't know how to start selling to local businesses. And they're like, they all looked at each other and went, no, we think you're probably the best for this, Bob. And they were all engineers, like all four of them were like, background in engineering. Even the CEO was VP engineering at PayPal before he did Yelp. So basically, we were all geeks. And for some reason, they thought I would be the best choice to sell to businesses. And I didn't really have a choice in it, honestly. I didn't want to do it. They were just like, you're like, that's what needs to happen next. And you're the most suitable candidate for it. So I I just started picking up the phone and calling dentists, chiropractors, restaurants. We didn't know if Yelp would resonate with bars or restaurants or healthcare. We thought healthcare was going to be big, which is reasonably big for Yelp now, but it's not the focus. But anyway, I just started calling these random businesses with great reviews. I just started with the best reviewed businesses. And the funny thing is some of those people, my first ever calls are still friends today, right? Like my chiropractor that I called is the second person I ever called and he signed up, ended up being my chiropractor for like 15 years living in San Francisco. And now we're still in touch, and we're great friends. So it's funny, like I dreaded those first calls, but they actually turned out to be really interesting people that I met. But yeah, we didn't have a model. We didn't know what to charge for. So we started out charging for calls. We changed the business's phone number. So if you're, you had a 415 number and you're a chiropractor on Yelp, we would change your number to like a number that Yelp owned, but it went straight through to their phone. So it was a transfer, but it meant our system could track that they got the call through Yelp, right? Yeah. And then we tracked the duration of the call. We couldn't hear the call, but we tracked the duration of the call. And then we could report back to them at the end of the month. You got 10 calls from Yelp this month and we're going to charge you $50 a call or whatever. So I sold that to 5 or 10 customers and people hated it. They hated that model because they're like, they'd get a call, it'd be like a wrong number or they just wanted to ask, they're already a current customer and they're asking about parking or something, right? So then we'd get back to and be like, you got a call and we charged you 50 bucks. So like, no, I can't pay you for that. Like, that was one of my current customers. So now the reality is they were getting loads of advertising and that was really driving the growth for their business, but they didn't want to pay for the call. So then I was like, that's not working. We have to do something else. Then we paid pay for click, which was we put ads on your page and when someone clicks it, they see you. And then people hated that too, because they're like, my mum just told me she's been like clicking on the link, right? Because she's like looking at my business. And my mum probably just cost me 5 bucks because she said she clicked it 10 times. And like, can you take that off my bill? So people hated the clicks. And then one day we just brought in a head of operations, Geoff Donaker. And by this point, by the way, I had like 2 salespeople working for me that I'd hired. And so it was me and two other people. We were calling these companies, signing these contracts. And one day I just had this epiphany. I was like, we should just pay for the ads that are viewed, not the ads that are clicked. In other words, pay for impressions to the ads. So if I tell you, I've put your ad in front of 500 people when they were looking for sushi this month, right? That you don't mind paying for because there's no action involved, but you're like, whoa, it's a big number. You put me in front of 500 people. I'll pay you 200 bucks for that. No problem. Essentially impression-based advertising. And I went to our COO and I was like, I think we should try this. He was like, if you want to give it a go. And I wrote up a contract and started selling it that day. And that is that format, that model now has a billion dollars revenue running through Yelp. So basically they took that model, like I switched it to impression-based advertising. And that was what was right for local. And our metrics were amazing. We're actually able to charge a lot more than we could in the previous two models. And I built out the sales team to about 20 people. Through that process, I got hooked, basically. Like I realized I love selling during that role. I would never have walked into sales, I think, unless everyone had gone, you have to do it. And I dreaded it, but I got really hooked on it. I love the adrenaline of it. I love hunting down these deals and I love like what you can learn from customers when you're selling. You can learn what they need and you can evolve your business model. So I love that flywheel and that's kind of what I've been doing ever since. But I built out a team of 20 people, so I got to learn management, essentially by just doing it at Yelp and building out that team. 

Nate: 

Next, I asked Bob how he developed his theory of leadership. 

Bob: 

I actually developed it really early on. You know, I mentioned earlier I'd been starting things since I was about 10 years old. And what's fascinated me between the age of like 10 and maybe, you know, my early 20s, I love the idea of creating stuff with people where no one gets paid. And here's why. These are charities and nonprofits and stuff, right? But I realized really early, if I can lead and motivate in a way where people want to contribute, even though they're not getting paid, and we can create stuff together, if I can learn that aspect, like management in that sense, then if I'm one day paying people, I'm going to get like, I'm going to, we're all going to be so much more effective, essentially, right? Like the organization is going to be so much more effective. And that is a concept I still work with today. Yes, we pay everyone quite well at Quid who works at Quid, right? Like we pay at or above market rate. But I never think about that. I never, ever ask for anything or work with people in a way that I feel they need to do it because that's their job ever. I just erased that from my mindset. I've never had that in my mindset. I always work with people with like, with gratitude and and in a way where I'm like, well, I'll try and make it fun and like help them see the meaning in the work, right? Like help them understand why it's an exciting thing to work on or a, why it's right for them, how it connects to their goals and their interests and why it's, you know, fun to contribute, whether it's to a client or to an area of technology or whatever we're working on. It's like, so yeah, I haven't really, I haven't, I mean, you guys might have read books on this, but I haven't really seen that idea articulated in quite the way that I think about it. And because I didn't read it in a book, I just kind of like stumbled across it as a kid. But that's, but I learned because I practiced it for 10 years before I even ended up in the US, when I started managing teams at Yelp, I found that I was very effective as a manager and a leader because I didn't take for granted that, you know, people had to do it because it was their job. I thought of ways to make the environment fun and make the connections between the different team members fun and teach them things and have there be like a culture of success and winning and sharing in the results of the wins together. And I suppose this did play out a little bit financially in my career because, although we pay people well at Yelp, we're kind of a somewhat mature business now. But in the early days of Yelp and in the early days of Quid, I never competed on pay. You know, when you're starting a company, it's a really bad idea to try and compete on pay. You have to, I went into every hiring conversation all the way through my early days at Yelp, as well as through the early days at Quid, like probably the first nearly 10 years at Quid. And every time I interviewed people, I would say early on, this isn't going to be where you earn the most money. I'm not going to be able to pay you market rate. You're going to earn less here than you could elsewhere. However, this is what I can offer you, right? Like whether then I make a culture that's about like helping learning. Like we always had a book like quota at Quid. If you want to buy books to read in your free time, I don't care what the title is, we'll give you money to buy books. And the reality is a book's like 10 bucks or 20 bucks, right? No one spends much on books, but that was one of the perks. I put together these perks so that we were paying often like half of what you could get in the market for the same role, but you're printing like reasons to be there that aren't about the money. Now, it doesn't work for everybody, you know, that's as in every company doesn't, but that's just what played out. And that's really important in the early days. You've got to be so efficient. And then once you start bringing in the money, then you can start moving up your rates and obviously pay people market rate. But early on, you've got to find ways to be really, really, really efficient and really lean. And you can't pay people market rate in the early days. I mean, people kind of expect that going into early stage companies, but I was particularly aggressive on that front. But that was just because I suppose it was in my DNA that like, I will try and give you other reasons to work here, but it's not going to be, it's not going to be for the money. 

Nate: 

Next, I asked Bob how he got from Yelp to Quid and how he knew it was time to launch his own company. 

Bob: 

Yeah, like looking back, if I'd made sort of the smart decision from a financial standpoint and from a, you know, career standpoint, I suppose you'd say, I would have just stayed put. if you're in a rocket ship and it's growing and you've got a senior role and you get to, you've got, you've earned the license to work on whatever you want. Like Yelp wanted me to move to Phoenix and create their first remote sales team. They wanted, I was running customer success at the time and I'd set up all those systems. Like there was so much to do. Yelp was only like three or four years old at the time, and it was clearly a rocket ship. And you know, I could have learned a lot more like from Yelp in that, like I could have seen it all the way through to IPO and, setting up remote teams and hiring hundreds of people, thousands of people eventually. So I, but I made the choice to leave relatively early and start my own thing. Just coming back to this idea we talked about in the session earlier today, I I always want to work on the forefront of whatever's going on, like the most important thing happening in our time. And I felt I knew what was next. I could kind of see what was next, which was applying AI to analyze the world's text, which was clear to me by about 2008, like that was going to be as big as the internet. That's kind of how I felt about it. And I told people that, and I put that in articles, and I put it in talks that are online that you can go watch. You know, there's one on my website from 10 years ago where I'd already been in the space for five or six years. You can go watch it and see what I was saying in 2015. So fortunately, I documented this because it sounds a bit, you know, unbelievable given what's just happened with large language models and open AI. But it was clear to me where things were going around 2008. And I just wanted to work on what was next, basically. I wanted to apply neural networks and natural language processing to massive text sets like all the world's media, all the world's social media. And yeah, I suppose whenever I've seen what's going to happen next, like with social network, going to Yelp, like seeing what was going to happen with social networking, going to building Yelp, and then seeing this observation about AI and going and doing Quid, it's not, it doesn't feel like a choice to me. It's felt like, well, just what I have to do. And regardless of whether that's going to be more work, harder work, less money, et cetera, it's just how I'm wired, I guess. And I'm kind of, I see it now. Like I see what's next now. And I'll probably just keep doing this. But I was really too early or very, very early, as you can probably see, to be trying to do that at like 2008, 2009, seven or eight years before OpenAI was founded, I was just banging my head against the wall for nearly a decade with no one that would listen. So even the best companies in the world and the biggest investors in the world, again, I won't name them, But it was so hard to raise money. It was so hard to get anyone to watch it that, after a time, I actually started to think I was wrong. Like after doing it for like 10 years and it hadn't taken off, I just started to think like, I was so wrong. I spent a year or two before ChatGPT took off. I'd got to a point where I'd spent like a year or two just thinking, how could my instinct be so wrong about what was going to play out here? How could we not have unlocked the world's written information at this point? And I started to think maybe it'll never happen, you know, and like I was simply wrong, which of course you could be wrong on these things. And then, you know, ChatGPT and OpenAI like totally blew up, and it's been bigger than even I imagined. And I couldn't have told you exactly which technical breakthrough was going to result in it. Like no one knew that large language models were going to be the unlock. But I played with everything available to try and unlock that value. And as soon as large language models became promising in 2016, we were on it, like literally the month that the Google BERT paper came out, because we were like knocking on that door for many years beforehand. And we were one of the teams that were like, trying to unlock that value. That's why many of the early Quid people are very senior at OpenAI and went on to take what they learned from Quid and then apply it in an OpenAI environment, which I'm very proud of. I'm very proud of those people, and it's amazing to see what they've done. 

Nate: 

That concludes Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, we discuss AI and social media. The first question was about anxiety and AI. 

Bob: 

Maybe I'll just focus on the anxiety and the issues first of all. A lot's been said on it. I suppose what would be my headlines? I think that one big area of concern is how it changes the job market. And I think the practical thing on that is if you can learn to be the bridge, then you're putting yourself in a really valuable position, right? Because if you can bridge this technology into businesses in a way that makes change and improvements, then you are moving yourself to a skill set that's going to continue to be really valuable. So that's just a practical matter. One of the executives I work with in a major US company likes to say will doctors become redundant because of AI? And he says, no, doctors won't be redundant, but doctors that don't use AI will be redundant. And that's kind of where we are, right? It's like, we're still going to need a person, but if you refuse, if you're not using it, you're going to fall behind and like that is going to put you at risk. So I think there is some truth to that little kind of illustrative story. There will be massive numbers of jobs that are no longer necessary. And the history of technology is full of these examples. Coming back to like 5,000 years ago, think of all the times that people invented stuff that made the prior roles redundant, right? In London, before electricity was discovered and harnessed, one of the biggest areas of employment was for the people that walked the streets at night, lighting the candles and gas lights that lit London. That was a huge breakthrough, right? You could put fire in the street, you put gas in the street and you lit London. Without that, you couldn't go out at night in London and like it would have been an absolute nightmare. The city wouldn't be what it is. But that meant there were like thousands of people whose job it was to light those candles and then go round in the morning when the sun came up and blow them out. So when the light bulb was invented, can you imagine the uproar in London where all these jobs were going to be lost, thousands of jobs were going to be lost. by people that no longer are needed to put out these lights. There were riots, right? There was massive social upheaval. The light bulb threatened and wiped out those jobs. How many people in London now work lighting gas lamps and lighting candles to light the streets, right? Nobody. That was unthinkable. How could you possibly take away those jobs? You know, people actually smashed these light bulbs when the first electric light bulbs were put into streets. People just went and smashed them because they're like, we are not going to let this technology take our jobs. And I can give you 20 more examples like that throughout history, right? Like you could probably think of loads yourselves. Even the motor car, you know, so many people were employed to look after horses, right? Think of all the people that were employed in major cities around the world, looking after horses and caring for them and building the carts and everything. And suddenly you don't need horses anymore. Like that wiped out an entire industry. But what did it do? It created the automobile industry, which has been employing massive numbers of people ever since. And the same is true for, you know, like what have light bulbs done for the quality of our lives? You know, we don't look at them now and think that's an evil technology that wiped out loads of jobs. We go, thank goodness we've got light bulbs. So the nature of technology is that it wipes out roles, and it creates roles. And I just don't see AI being any different. Humans have no limit to like, seem to have no limit to the comfort they want to live with and the things that we want in our lives. And those things are still really expensive and we don't, we're nowhere near satisfied. So like, we're going to keep driving forward. We're going to go, oh, now we can do that. Great. I can use AI, I can make movies and I can, you know, I don't know, like there's just loads of stuff that people are going to want to do with AI. Like, I mean, using the internet, how much time do we spend on these damn web forms, just clicking links and buttons and stuff? Is that fun? Do we even want to do that? No. Like we're just wasting hours of our lives every week, like clicking buttons. Like if we have agents, they can do that for us. So we have, I think we're a long way from like an optimal state where work is optional and we can just do the things that humans want to do with their time. And so, but that's the journey that I see us all along, you know. So anyway, that's just my take on AI and employment, both practically, what can you do about it? Be the bridge, embrace it, learn it, jump in. And also just like in a long arc, I'm not saying in the short term, there won't be riots and there won't be lots of people out of work. And I mean, there will be. But when we look back again, like I often think about what time period are we talking about? Right? People often like, well, what will it do to jobs? Next year, like there'll certain categories that will become redundant. But are we thinking about this in a one year period or 100 year period? Like it's worth asking yourself, what timeframe am I talking about? Right? And I always try and come back to the 100 year view at a minimum when talking about technology change. If it's better for humanity in 100 years, then we should probably work on it and make it happen, right? If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have any light bulbs in our house. Still be lighting candles? 

Nate: 

Next was a question about social media, fragmented attention, and how it drives isolation. 

Bob: 

Well, it's obviously been very problematic, particularly in the last five or six years. So TikTok gained success in the United States and around the world around five or six years ago with a completely new model for how to put content in front of people. And what powered it? AI. So TikTok is really an AI company. And the first touch point that most of us had with AI was actually through TikTok. It got so good at knowing the network of all possible content and knowing if you watch this, is the next thing we should show you to keep you engaged. And they didn't care if you were friends with someone or not. Your network didn't matter. Think about Facebook. Like for those of you that were using Facebook, maybe say 2010, right? Like 15 years ago. What did social media look like? You had a profile page, you uploaded photos of yourself and photos of your friends, you linked between them. And when you logged into Facebook, you basically just browsing people's profiles and seeing what they got up to at the weekend. That was social media 15 years ago. Now imagine, now think what you do when you're on Instagram and you're swiping, right? Or you go to TikTok and you're swiping. First of all, let's move to videos, which is a lot more compelling, short videos. And most of the content has nothing to do with your friends. So there was a massive evolution in social media that happened five or six years ago, driven by TikTok. And all the other companies had to basically adopt the same approach or they would have fallen too far behind. So it forced Meta to evolve Instagram and Facebook to be more about attention. Like there's always about attention, that's the nature of media. But these like AI powered ways to keep you there, regardless of what they're showing you. And that turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because it unleashed loads of content without any sense of like what's good for the people who are watching it, right? That's not the game they're playing. They're playing attention and then they're not making decisions about what might be good for you or not. So we went through like a real dip, I think, in social media, went through a real dip and we're still kind of in it, right, trying to find ways out of it. So regulation will ultimately be the savior, which it is in any new field of tech. Regulation is necessary to keep tech to have positive impact for the people that it's meant to be serving. And that's taken a long time to successfully put in place for social media, but we are getting there. I mean, Australia just banned social media for everyone under 16. You may have seen that. Happened, I think, earlier this year. France is putting controls around it. The UK is starting to put more controls around it. So, you know, gradually countries are voters are making it a requirement to put regulation around social media use. In terms of just practical things for you all, as you think about your own social media use, I think it's very healthy to think about how long you spend on it and find ways to just make it a little harder to access, right? Like none of us feel good when we spend a lot of time on our screens. None of us feel good when we spend a lot of time on social media. It feels good at the time because it's given us those quick dopamine hits. But then afterwards, we're like, man, I spent an hour, and I just like, I lost an hour down like the Instagram wormhole. And then we don't feel good afterwards. It affects us sleep negatively. And yeah, come to the question that was, posted, can create a sense of isolation or negative feelings of self due to comparison to centrally like models and actors and all these people that are like putting out content, right? Kind of super humans. So I think just finding ways to limit it and asking yourself what's right for you and then just sticking to that. And if that means coming off it for a month or coming off it for a couple of months, then, give that a try. Personally, I don't use it much at all. I'll use it mostly because friends will share like a funny meme or something and you just still want to watch it because it's like it's sent to you by a friend. It's a way of interacting. Like my dad sends me funny stuff from the internet, and I want to watch it because it's a way of connecting with him. But then I set a timer. I like to use this timer. It's like just a little physical device. I know we've all got one on our phones, but I like to have one on my desk. And so if I'm going into something, whether it's like I'm going to do an hour on my inbox, my e-mail inbox, or I'm going to, you know, open up Instagram and just swipe for a bit, I'll just set a timer, you know, and just keep me honest, like, okay, I'm going to give myself 8 minutes. I'm not going to give myself any more time on there. So there's limited it. And then I put all these apps in a folder on the second screen of my phone. So I can't easily access them. I don't even see them because they're on the second screen of my phone in a folder called social. So to access any of the apps, I have to swipe, open the folder, and then open the app. And just moving them to a place where I can't see them has been really helpful. I only put the healthy apps on my front page of my phone. 

Nate: 

Next was a question about where Bob expects AI to be in 20 years and whether there are new levels to be unlocked. 

Bob: 

No one knows. Right? Like what happens when you take a large language model from a trillion nodes to like 5 trillion nodes? No one knows. It's, this is where the question comes in around like consciousness, for example. Will it be, will it get to a point where we have to consider this entity conscious? Fiercely debated, not obvious at all. Will it become, it's already smarter than, well, it already knows more than any human on the planet. So in terms of its knowledge access, it knows more. In terms of most capabilities, most, you know, cognitive capabilities, it's already more capable than any single human on the planet. But there are certain aspects of consciousness, well, certain cognitive functions that humans currently are capable of that AI is not currently capable of, but we might expect some of those to be eaten into as these large language models get better. And it might be that these large language models have cognitive capabilities that humans don't have and never could have, right? Like levels of strategic thinking, for example, that we just can't possibly mirror. And that's one of the things that's kind of, you know, a concern to nations and to people is that, you know, we could end up with something on the planet that is a lot smarter than any one of us or even all of us combined. So in general, when something becomes more intelligent, it seeks to dominate everything else. That is a pattern. You can see that throughout all life. Nothing's ever got smarter and not sought to dominate. And so that's concerning, especially because it's trained on everything we've ever said and done. So I don't know why that pattern would be different. So that, you know, that's interesting. And and I think in terms of, so the part of that question, which is whole new areas of capability to be unlocked, really fascinating area to look at is not so much the text now, because everything I've written is already in these models, right? So the only way they can get more information is by the fact that like, loads of social networks are creating more information and so on. It's probably pretty duplicitous at this point. That's why Elon bought Twitter, for example, because he wanted the data in Twitter, and he wants that constant access to that data. But how much smarter can they get when they've already got everything ever written? However, large language models, of course, don't just apply to text. They apply to any information, genetics, photography, film, every form of information can be harnessed by these large language models and are being harnessed. And one area that's super interesting is robotics. So the robot is going to be as nimble and as capable as the training data that goes into it. And there isn't much robotic training data yet. But companies are now collecting robotic training data. So in the coming years, robots are going to get way more capable, thanks to large language models, but only as this data gets collected. So in other words, like language is kind of reaching its limits in terms of new capabilities, but think of all the other sensor types that could feed into large language models and you can start to see all kinds of future capabilities, which is why everyone suddenly got so interested in personal transportation vehicles and personal robotics, which is why like Tesla share price is up for example, right? Because Elon's committed now to kind of moving more into robotics with Tesla as a company. And there are going to be loads of amazing robotics companies that come out over the next like 10 or 20 years. 

Nate: 

And that brings us to the end of this episode with Bob Goodson. Like I mentioned in the intro, there were so many great nuggets from Bob. Such great insight on managing our careers, building companies, and the evolving impact of AI and social media. In summary, try to be at the intersection of new power and real problems. Seek to inspire rather than just transact, and be thoughtful about how to use social media and AI. All simple ideas, please, take them seriously. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• At a time when our calendars are packed with meetings, Rebecca reminds us that meetings shouldn’t just happen—they should be designed. Her "Meeting Doomsday" experiment was interesting: a simple 48-hour calendar purge saved employees an average of 11 hours per month by forcing them to rebuild their schedules with intentionality.
• A few simple strategies can go a long way: treat our meetings like a product. Fight our instinct to add, and instead use the "Rule of Halves" to cut the duration and/or attendees by 50%. Measure our "Return on Time Investment" (ROTI) with simple post-meeting pulse checks.
• If we want to overcome organizational inertia and Parkinson’s Law—where work expands to fill the time allotted—we have to stop using meetings as a knee-jerk default and start seeing them as our most expensive, yet least optimized, business asset. And then design them carefully.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Hubert became CEO of Best Buy, he resisted the instinct to cut, cut, cut. Instead, as a first-time CEO, he chose to be a learn-it-all rather than a know-it-all—constantly asking, What’s working? What’s not? And what do you need? He then held himself to a strong “say-do” ratio, making sure his actions matched his words.
• I was also struck by the hierarchy he emphasized at Best Buy: people, business, finance. Of course a company has to make money. But when meetings start with finance or strategy, the implicit message is that people come second. Best Buy ultimately clarified this by defining its purpose as enriching lives through technology by addressing human needs.
• Another powerful idea was Hubert’s reminder that culture changes faster than we think—if behavior changes first. If you want to be customer-centric, don’t just talk about customers. Spend time with them. Behavior shapes culture surprisingly fast.
• Give a name or brand to our behavior change goals.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Tal flips a common assumption on it’s head: happiness doesn’t start with feeling good; it starts with giving ourselves permission to feel bad.
• Painful emotions aren’t a bug in the system. They’re proof that we’re alive. The mistake we make is treating emotions as moral verdicts rather than facts of nature, and then trying to suppress what we feel. The key is to accept what we’re feeling and then chose to act in line with our values.
• The real work isn’t learning these ideas. It’s applying them, and for that reason Tal wears a bracelet to help him bridge the knowing / doing gap.
• In summary, to be happy, remember to let yourself feel bad. And then ACT.

Maya has a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience from Stanford, a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and a B.A. from Yale. She's been profiled by The New Yorker and been the featured guest on NPR's All Things Considered, Freakonomics, and Hidden Brain. She's also a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music's pre-college program. And most recently, Maya is the author of the book, The Other Side of Change.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I loved Maya’s insight about identity. When she injured her finger and could no longer play the violin, she was devastated because she identified as a violinist. But when she looked more broadly at the motivations that drove her, she realized that connection, growth, care, and contribution were underlying motivations. And violin wasn’t the only way to accomplish her ultimate goals.
• By anchoring our identity to deeper motivations rather than specific roles or activities, we create a more resilient sense of self while also creating more opportunities for us to achieve our goals.

Josh earned a PHD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, a master’s of fine arts degree in fiction and nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and an undergraduate degree in English from BYU Idaho. In between his master’s degree and PhD, Josh was selected as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, one of the most prestigious creative writing fellowships in the world. Josh also earned a minor in Spanish and studied at the University of Guadalajara.

In his almost two-decade writing and publishing career, Josh has served in key editorial positions with notable magazines such as Terrain.org, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast. Josh now co-operates the creative cooperative and press FOSTER LITERARY with his wife, the poet Georgia Pearle Foster.

In this follow up interview with Josh (see Episode 99 for our first interview) we discuss the following:

• We covered a lot of ground with Josh, which is always great because he’s so full of insight. First the farm, as a metaphor for life. Raising a successful crop each year requires daily blood, sweat, and tears. But even when the uncontrollable weather actually cooperates, markets can suddenly change. It’s a never ending struggle. But farmers just keep showing up every day.
• Water is the lifeblood of the farm, and it was fun to hear how Josh is engaging with community members and policy makers to figure out how to allocate water effectively, and potentially grow the supply. And I look forward to reading his upcoming book on water.
• I also look forward to reading Georgia and Josh’s book, Other People’s Parties. As Josh said, he often finds himself at the last moment of things and I’m inspired by how he wants to memorialize and preserve the stories that are fleeting.
• I’m especially excited to both watch the film Bozwreck and read Josh’s novel on his cousin Nate Bozung. After the interview, Josh sent me a brief clip of the film, and I was blown away by the beauty and style of the film.
• I always love talking to Josh because he teaches me about life and humanity. But he also inspires me. Whenever we create things, we never know the impact they may have. But like the farmer, we just keep showing up every day. And even though the world is confusing, violent, and unfair, let’s be good to each other, help each other, and be better.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When one of David’s students was falling asleep in class, a pep talk was the last thing she needed—she was working until 1:00 a.m. and catching a 6:30 a.m. bus just to get to school. What she needed was love, respect, and repeated check-ins over time.
• Even when students have especially difficult lives, the answer isn’t to lower expectations, but to raise support through mentorship, consistency, interventions, and relationships.
• Often, what people need most isn’t money, but guidance—someone to help them navigate systems and help them believe a different future is possible.
• By applying the Heath Brothers’ Power of Moments framework and intentionally designing positive, celebratory experiences, the school massively increased graduation rates.
• In the end, it all comes down to relationships.

Peter holds degrees from Stanford, Northwestern and USC. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Humble Inquiry is a philosophy about how to get along, gather information, and build relationships. The key is to ask people questions we don’t know the answer to.
• If we tell people what to do, or guide them with questions we already know the answer to, we are telling them that we know best. But by asking people questions we don’t know the answer to, we communicate genuine curiosity while also gathering information that we don’t currently possess.
• Remember to ask people questions that we don’t know the answer to. 

Dorie holds degrees from Smith College and Harvard Divinity School.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• While Dorie was working grueling hours on the campaign trail for low pay, her boss was earning 10 times her monthly salary in one hour speeches—and that sparked Dorie’s curiosity. She realized that the massive pay difference came down to scale.
• Even if Broadway actors are just as talented as Hollywood actors, the Hollywood actors reach millions more people, thus commanding a premium.
• Dorie also saw that her boss had earned trust of other high status people who vouched for him. By building up social proof through brand affiliations, media appearances, and content creation, we make it easier for people to trust us. And we can also increase our scale. 

Mike’s research has been covered by media outlets such as Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, PBS, NPR, Business Insider, Men's Health, and New York Magazine among others.

Prior to joining academia, Mike worked in the construction industry, at Hewlett Packard's Executive Leadership Development group, and in publishing and online education. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from BYU, and his PHD from the University of Georgia. In this episode we discuss the following:

• Trust is both a gift and a burden. When we trust others, we can increase their pride and opportunities but can also overload them with responsibilities and pressure.
• Leaders routinely overload their most trusted people without taking anything off their plates, while under-investing in newer employees who could grow with smaller tasks.
• Trust shapes how we interpret behavior: trusted employees get the benefit of the doubt; less-trusted ones receive harsh judgments for the same mistakes, which can make early impressions disproportionately powerful.
• When people are forming those early impressions and deciding whether to trust us, they are thinking about three things: Are we competent? Do we care about them? Do we have good values? So if we do our job well and help other people without being asked, we will tend to make a good impression.
• About 25% of employees don’t actually want more trust—they want stability, not responsibility.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• For the sports psychologist and 40-time national handball champ Daniel Zimet, his best match ever was a loss.
• Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, lost nearly half the points in his career.
• Outcomes are noisy, and are only loose signals of decision quality. True peak performance, whether in sports, investing, or life, isn’t always about winning. It’s about a relentless focus on the process.
• At the highest levels, listening beats speaking, strategic patience often beats knee-jerk decisiveness, and the courage to quit can matter more than blind persistence.
• None of this matters if we’re running on empty. The foundation of sustained excellence is sleep, diet, and exercise.

Ian has also served as a faculty member in business schools in Australia, Switzerland, and Indonesia.

Ian is a globally recognized expert in the area of human resource management and his research has been published in leading academic journals and covered by leading media outlets across the world.

Ian received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a bachelor’s degree in business from Miami University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Ian sees himself as a steward, making decisions for the person who comes after him, recognizing that he’s caring for something that existed long before him and will continue long after him.
• What a powerful example of long-term thinking Ian encountered with the Māori leaders, who asked, "How will this decision affect our great-grandchildren?’”
• Not all leadership looks the same, and it’s perfectly fine for some leaders to focus on the short term. But the key is being intentional about what our role demands and what kind of leader we want to be.

In this episode we discuss the following: 

• The great advice Elyce gave about the value of writing thank you notes. Not only has Elyce written countless thank you notes, but also she has helped countless others write thank you notes through her stationery line at Kate Spade.
• After this interview with Elyce, I ordered a box of thank you notes and a pack of stamps. I first wrote a note to thank my wife Keshia for being so wonderful. And then I wrote a note to Elyce, thanking her for coming on the podcast. And just like that, I’m on track for 25 notes in six months when I check back in with Elyce.
• I encourage all of you to follow Elyce’s advice to write thank you notes to people you meet with. By doing so, you will make others’ lives better.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Steph went through her horrific divorce, she realized that she had abdicated her personal financial independence, even though she was a sophisticated corporate finance professional.
• Even if we’re in a partnership, we can be proactive in taking responsibility for our finances. That includes addressing the emotional and psychological aspects of money matters. Communicating openly about personal finance. Using frameworks that help us achieve our goals. And starting now, because time is our greatest ally.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Claude repeatedly found herself in unhealthy, codependent relationships, and it wasn’t until  her brother told her that she was living in a pretty prison, followed by a therapist insisting she attend Codependents Anonymous, that Claude began to understand the pattern: she was losing herself by centering her identity around others.
• Through six years in Codependence Anonymous, Claude learned some powerful lessons: Empathy needs boundaries. You can’t change others—only yourself. We each have the agency to steer our own life. It’s okay to take up space and be big in the room. We don’t have to shrink so someone else can feel better.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• What often holds us back as leaders isn’t the ability to grasp some new tactic. Rather it’s the beliefs we hold about ourselves.
• Many of the mindsets that helped us succeed early on—like needing to be involved in every detail, always being right, or not being willing to make a mistake—can hold us back later.
• Overcoming our limiting beliefs starts with curiosity: noticing when we’re frustrated or blocked, asking what belief might be driving that feeling, and challenging whether it’s still true.

But before all of that, Bryan was working at McDonald’s and sleeping on couches, in closets, and in cars. In Episode 138 of this podcast, Bryan shares the incredible, inspirational story of how he pulled himself out of his tailspin. And in that episode, we touched briefly on how Bryan became obsessed with health and fitness.

In today’s episode, we take a deep dive into health and fitness. One reason for Bryan’s outlier success is his outlier ability to learn and apply. Over the past three decades, he’s studied and implemented the best science on health and fitness in his own life, and today he shares those insights. While this podcast shouldn’t be relied on for medical advice, I find Bryan’s approach both fascinating and inspiring. I’ll be listening to this episode over and again—and it will also be required listening for my kids.

And if you’re like me, and want to keep learning from Bryan Porter, check out his website: bryan-porter.com.

In this episode we discuss the basics of health including:

• Sleep: Good sleep is the fastest way to feel better and have more mental clarity.  Min get 7 hours, ideally 8. If you’re getting less than 6 you’re reducing the quality and quantity of your life.
• Exercise 6 days a week: min 45 min brisk walk daily, break up sitting with 10 body squats every 45 mins – nobody is too busy for that, strength 2x per week, get to max heart rate 1x per week. Really helpful to have an event on the calendar that you’re working toward.
• Eat well: min 1 gram of protein per pound of weight. Lots of fiber. Healthy fat: olive and fish oil. Reverse osmosis filtered water + electrolytes. 

But this summary is just the tip of the iceberg. In this episode, Bryan shares 100s of great insights and practical tips for how to be more healthy...How To Make Ourselves Hard to Kill. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The most common way to allocate scarce resources is through pricing. But other mechanisms exist: hidden markets. And by staying alert for these hidden markets, we can increase our luck.
• One of the most common hidden markets is the race: first come, first serve. In Judd’s case, when he realized that demand was going to outstrip supply for his child’s after school program, he recognized he was in a race, so he made sure to sign up right when registration opened. And he increased his luck.
• The lottery is another hidden market. If four friends wanted to attend Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, they increase their luck by each entering the lottery for four tickets each. Hunters increase their luck by entering the lottery in years when they’re not able to hunt. And people needing organ transplants increase their luck when they sign up through multiple transplant centers. 
• To get lucky in the dating app world, people can signal that they are worth investing in.  And then I loved Judd’s insight on settling for silver. Whether we’re trying to get lucky in college admissions, with restaurant reservations, or even in the dating market, we can increase our luck by pursuing a more attainable, less competitive option. And in many cases the silver turns out to be more desirable than the gold.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We can’t truly feel successful until we define what success means for ourselves. If we look at the scorecard that is handed to us, which consists of accumulating money, status, titles, and promotions, we will always feel like we need to reach for more, a trap made worse by the arrival fallacy. 
• Our ability to achieve our goals is influenced by our surroundings. The goal to live a simple life is much easier to accomplish in small town America than New York, where Sahil sees extraordinarily rich people spend their time figuring out ways to impress even more extraordinarily rich people.
• To help us reveal how much our decisions are influenced by external validation, we can ask ourself some version of the question, “Do I really want this job, or do I want other people to see me having this job?”
• True success is built on five types of wealth (time, social, mental, physical and financial) rather than chasing society’s default measures. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

To be a great leader, you have to be in shape. Leaders need energy and health, and sleep is a weapon. If you’re not rested, you’re not ready for battle.

Admiral Stavridis was Captain of a destroyer that failed inspection, it was his peers that had his back and saved him that day. Invest in our peer relationships because they will be honest with us and be unafraid to reach out.

Great leaders are great readers. To be a reader is to lead a thousand lives. Every book is a simulator, whether we’re learning resilience from The Old Man and the Sea or leadership from the Godfather. Since conducting this interview, I have been reading The Admiral’s Bookshelf, and I love learning the lessons he learned from his top 25 books. And because of this conversation I created my own bookshelf of the 25 books that have most influenced me. I’ve pasted these in the show notes and on my website.  

The Admiral’s final lesson is timeless. Be humble. 

And inspired by The Admiral's Bookshelf, I created my own bookshelf.

Nate Meikle’s Bookshelf

1. The Book of Mormon & Bible
   • Taught me about Jesus Christ, love, repentance, forgiveness, and endurance
2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
   • Reminds me to avoid the superficial
3. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
   • Motivated me to become a professor
4. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
   • The first book to get me excited about personal finance, one of the most important, underappreciated topics IMO.
5. A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
   • Motivates me to be honest in all things
6. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
   • Improved my communication skills dramatically
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
   • Warns me of the dangers of infidelity
8. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
   • Motivates me to live a life of integrity
9. My Personal Best by John Wooden
   • Taught me about servant leadership and to treat friendship like a fine art
10. The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
    • Made me realize the importance of long tail events
11. Jim Trelease Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease
    • Motivated me to teach my daughter to read at age 2, read tens of thousands of books to her (and our subsequent 3 children), and ultimately write my own book (Little Miss) about how to inspire children to love reading
12. Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
    • Taught me the importance of storytelling and how to tell great stories
13. The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield
    • Taught me about Buddhism, and the three causes of human suffering (Grasping, Aversion, Delusion)
14. A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine
    • Taught me about Stoic Philosophy and the value of negative visualization and wanting the things we have
15. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
    • Taught me to not coddle my children and the dangers of cognitive distortions (and the value of cognitive behavioral therapy)
16. The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweill (published in 2005)
    • Made me realize that AI is likely the most important invention ever, and persuaded me that Artificial General Intelligence will arrive during my lifetime
17. Poor Charlie’s Almanack, by Charlie Munger
    • The greatest collection of wisdom I’ve ever come across related to investing (specifically) and decision making (generally)
18. Thinking In Bets by Annie Duke
    • Taught me about the dangers of resulting / outcome bias (judging a decision by the outcome rather than the process)
19. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
    • Taught me the importance of seeing a negotiation from the other person’s point of view, and constantly showing them that you understand their position (by labeling, mirroring, and using an accusations audit)
20. Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
    • Taught me about elite ambition, determination, and focus
21. Endurance by Alfred Lansing
    • Taught me about unflinching leadership
22. Good Energy by Casey Means
    • Persuaded me to eliminate processed foods and exercise 5-6 days per week
23. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
    • Reminds me how capable children are
24. Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan
    • Inspires me to be courageous
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
    • Reminds me to try to laugh every day, in every class, in every conversation

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Scott’s key insight that every innovation has heroes, plural. While Julia Child is one of the most well-known chefs, her first cookbook had two additional coauthors.
• Even Scott’s book has multiple heroes, as it was his publisher that suggested the topic.
• Scott’s insight on the shadow of innovation. Questioning the status quo and innovating can create winners and losers.
• Scott’s advice that if we want to get better at innovation, we need to find ways to get to intersections. Attend trade shows in different industries, read magazines from different fields, and meet with people from all over the world. 

Margaret earned her undergraduate degree from Cal Berkeley and her graduate degree from MIT.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Margaret’s boss told her that she wasn’t self-aware, she made a change. She learned more about herself and others—and since then, she has been teaching leaders to do the same.
• Margaret helps leaders by asking questions such as: “Who’s thinking has influenced your life?” “What are your core values?” and “What type of leader would you like to become?” Answering these questions helps leaders see where they’re at and where they want to go. And then it takes thoughtfulness and intentionality to become the leaders they want to be.
• We have to understand and manage ourselves if we want to understand and lead others.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love Mark’s message, that the best leaders lead from the heart. They care about people, they support people, they trust people, and they have their best interest at heart.
• I thought Mark made a really interesting point that we admire coaches who show that they love their players. But the conventional business leaders shy away from this type of heart-led leadership.
• When we think about the best leaders we know, the ones who we’ll run through a brick wall for, they’re the ones who truly love us. The best leaders lead from the heart.

Adam's research focuses on strategic leadership and corporate governance. His work has appeared in top-tier academic journals, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Organization Science. His research has also been profiled in media outlets such as The Atlantic, Financial Times, Forbes, NBC News, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

Adam received both his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. from Penn State University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Adam graduated college, he had a prestigious job as an investment banker. It paid well. It was intellectually challenging. He liked the people he was working with. But he wasn’t excited to work every day. He didn’t have autonomy. And he didn’t have creative outlets. So he thought about the tradeoffs he was making by staying. He then considered the  tradeoffs he would make by leaving. By thinking about tradeoffs, Adam gained clarity on what mattered most to him. He ultimately chose to leave banking and found his way to academia, which has its own set of tradeoffs, but ones that Adam is happier with.
• As Adam tells his students, there are three types of careers people can have. One they love. One they hate. And one they’re okay with, in the murky middle. And it’s this third kind of career that people need to watch out for so that they don’t drift, and wake up 20 years later realizing they should have thought more carefully about the tradeoffs they were making.
• Remember to think about the tradeoffs we’re making, both when we stick with the status quo and when we decide to change. 

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love the Stoic lesson Brad shared about the prized cup. If we expect our prized cup to never break, we’ll be devastated when it does. But if we’ve already been through the mental exercise of the cup breaking, it can be much easier to stay calm and confident when our prized cups do break.
• Being an entrepreneur is constantly dealing with broken, prized cups.
• I loved hearing how Brad tries to apply Jocko’s advice for dealing with setbacks by responding with a simple “Good.”
• Brad’s emphasis on seeking out mindset coaching stood out. The best athletes get the most coaching. So it makes sense that we too need regular feedback and mindset coaching to reach our potential.
• By jumping into the trench himself, Brad is giving himself more opportunities to deal with broken cups. And I love his advice for how we can deal with the broken cups in our lives.

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• While I was intrigued by so many things in this interview, starting with how high-school Vivek preferred policy camp to sports camp, I was especially intrigued by Vivek’s perspective on living an integrated life: combining our values and passions, and then spending time with people who reflect those values.
• Vivek is a master at building and maintaining relationships, and then constantly striving to learn all he can from others.
• While Vivek's professional achievements are remarkable, I’m most impressed by his commitment to doing good in the world.
• As Vivek reminded us, to achieve anything worthwhile in life, we have to work really hard, all the while accepting the uncontrollable.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love Marianne’s insight that the best leaders are not tough or kind, but rather both.  Toughness and kindness are not opposite ends of a spectrum but rather two sides of the same coin. And any leader who pushes too hard on one, while ignoring the other, will not reach their potential.
• And I thought it was especially interesting to hear about the creative geniuses who also appreciated tension and paradoxes: motion vs rest, particle vs wave, harmony vs discord, light vs. dark, life vs death. The magic is in the tension.
• When it comes to leadership the best leaders are both tough and kind.

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Darren earned both his BA and JD from the University of Florida, where he was also a Valedictorian. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Darren’s goal to remember why he’s doing it: to help his clients. And one way he does that is by continually challenging himself to be a student. When NFTs exploded onto the scene, Darren learned all he could and became an NFT expert. As NIL transactions ramped up, so did Darren, becoming one of the go-to attorneys for everything related to NIL. Rather than fear new technologies, Darren gets excited by them and then learns all he can about them.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• It’s interesting to hear Marty describe how leaders’ weaknesses are often just the flip side of their strengths. The leader who works hard, and sends emails at 2 am, might be unintentionally modeling a standard that isn’t possible for others to achieve. I also loved Marty’s advice for leaders to prioritize the things that only they can do. And lastly, I was especially intrigued by Marty’s point that the most elite performers get the most coaching.

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• I’m truly inspired by Saxon’s drive and commitment. Though he started to surf at age two, it was his commitment in high school that set him up for his national championship. Waking up early each weekday to first attend seminary, and then get to the beach, Saxon refined his skill while also learning to surf all kinds of waves. And he was also flexible, willing to focus on long boarding to get on his high school team.
• And what a wild story about his national competition: forgetting his board, borrowing his coach’s, nailing a buzzer beater on Saturday, saying a prayer to find his board, finding it with Dimitri, and then landing another clutch buzzer beater on Sunday for the national championship.
• And most remarkably, Saxon is now giving up surfing for two years and moving across the country to share a gospel message in hopes of helping others.
• As Saxon so perfectly demonstrates, sacrifice, persistence, and passion are key to success.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• I was touched by Avi’s vulnerability in sharing how listening has saved his life—twice. After his daughter died by suicide, it was the listening community that Avi had cultivated that helped him carry on, even as his pain and sorrow endured. One friend, in particular, asked Avi to recount the last day he spent with his daughter—and then told him she’d listen to that story 100 more times if he needed to.
• Listening saved Avi again during an exercise where he realized he’d spent five years on a project simply to prove a point, rather than because he valued it. That moment launched Avi’s mission to become a better listener every day of his life.
• I was especially intrigued by how Avi doesn’t dwell on people’s listening mistakes. Instead, he helps them discover how to improve. And he extends the same compassion to himself when he falls short.  He simply notices and praises his awareness. 
• I was impressed by how present Avi was with me, encouraging me to take my time and then referenced earlier parts of our conversation, demonstrating that he truly heard me. 
• Because of this conversation, I have adopted Avi’s goal: to become a better listener every day. And because of this interview, Avi will soon be coming to Kansas to teach a listening seminar, and I cannot wait to learn more from him.
• When someone truly listens, it creates a magical space-- a meeting of the minds where ideas emerge that could not have been reached alone.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

How impressed I am with Dave and Melissa and their ability to face the uncertainty and challenges of moving to China with five kids, something that the system in China is not designed for. From three-hour entrance exams, two-hour daily commutes, and 16-hour days for their children, I can only imagine how difficult this was. And then of course they faced the risk of being separated from their children if any of them ever tested positive for COVID.

And I was especially intrigued by things I learned about China. Getting into a great first grade can be more difficult than getting into college. To reduce the pressure on kindergartners, teaching math was prohibited at schools. But then parents hired tutors to teach math to the kindergartners outside of school, often creating more stress. Many Chinese students are essentially forced to drop out of high school by 9th grade. And Chinese culture doesn’t always reward problem solving so much as it rewards following rules.

Finally I love the lesson Dave shared about what he learned. It’s important to hold off on judgements, because our assumptions about people are often wrong. However, people are generally pretty reasonable once we understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.

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Wendy’s research focuses on strategic paradoxes – how leaders and senior teams effectively respond to contradictory agendas. Her research has been published in top-tier academic journals and her book, Both/And Thinking, was published by Harvard Business School Press in 2022.

Wendy earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When we view our challenges through an either/or lens, we limit our options, often leading to suboptimal decisions. Both/and thinking, on the other hand, enhances creativity leading to better outcomes.
• Take fairness, for example. Some argue it means treating everyone the same. Others believe it requires treating people differently to ensure comparable outcomes. Both views have merit and represent a classic paradox. And this is where Wendy’s process if helpful. First, notice the paradox, notice the either/or. And then change the frame to see if we can accomplish both. Is there a win/win that allows us to do both right now? I love Wendy’s mule analogy here—the mule, a hybrid of horse and donkey, represents the power of combining two different paths. And if we can’t do both at once, maybe we can do both over time. Wendy’s tightrope metaphor was excellent. A tightrope walker stays balanced by making continuous, slight adjustments as they move forward.
• If we stick to either/or thinking we risk getting trapped, incapable of adapting when context changes.

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Ethan has helped improve operations and employee engagement for several top companies, including Fortune 500 companies in technology, financial services, casual dining, grocery, and retail sectors, along with hospitals, defense contractors, commercial real estate companies, and governmental agencies. He has also acted as a visiting scholar for Microsoft and Google.

Ethan earned a PhD and MS from Cornell University where he worked as a lecturer before joining Texas.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• In order for leaders to consistently make the best decisions, they need access to the best information. But all too often, employees who have that information don’t speak up.
• To get employees to speak up, maybe the most important thing managers can do is proactively reach out and solicit voice. No good manager has ever said they have a closed-door policy. But if we don’t have systems in place that encourage employee voice, our door will feel much more closed to employees than we perceive. 
• Simple techniques can help employees speak up. For example, managers can use the two-question, two-word response check in at the beginning of meetings: How are you feeling? What’s going on? This gives people a chance to speak, while also creating an expectation that everyone has something to say.
• Eye contact can also be important. When we give deference to people it signals we trust them and helps them feel like speaking up.
• It’s also important for leaders to be consistent, otherwise it feels risky to speak up.
• Proactively seeking voice comes at a cost. Many of the Type A+ people Ethan consults with feel like some of these things are too touchy feel. Some of the activities also take time that could be spent on other things.
• By proactively seeking out voice, we signal that we value it and increase the odds that we get access to the best information from our employees.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Rather than follow the traditional path in academia and focus on one specific, well-established research area, Peter pursued topics that were interesting to him. And then over time, Peter was able to see that there was a broad theme that connected his research, even if it wasn’t an off-the-shelf research program.
• Peter realized that he had an inner voice that was guiding him. It wasn’t always clear where he was headed. Listening to his inner voice created challenges for him. But the importance of listening to his inner voice is something that has stuck with him ever since. And it’s something he still revisits to this day, because his inner voice keeps guiding him.
• We can pursue any combination of the things we want that fit with what our inner voice is telling us.

His first book, focused on helping people build the skills they need for joyful, energizing relationships, is scheduled for publication in the Fall.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As Ryan said, it’s okay to feel burned out by other people sometimes: 72% of parents say they're constantly stressed, 75% said they're too busy to enjoy their lives, and when workers quit, 57% say it's because their relationships are too much.
• Each of us has a different set point for how much alone time we need, so we should be thoughtful about how to cultivate solitude that energizes us.
• For Ryan, cultivating solitude that energizes him means going to movies, restaurants, or even new cities alone. At his daughter’s elementary school, that meant providing a room for students to take a break from the dance and watch a movie.
• Going to networking events can be overwhelming for some people. So a strategy Ryan recommends is to just try to have one meaningful conversation. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Bruce shared an interesting story about a hospital that was responsible for a child’s death. Rather than lawyer up, the hospital admitted their mistake and took full responsibility. Sadly, in Bruce’s experience as a judge for decades, this sort of accountability is far less common than it should be.
• Saying we screwed up is not a sign of weakness, but rather it’s a sign of strength and character. And speaking of character and ethics, we should follow the law, we should make sure our behavior benefits people and the planet, and we should never do anything that we’d be embarrassed to tell our mothers about.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Though we often think of innovation is heroic, deliberate, and isolated, it’s often serendipitous, unpredictable, and social.
• The idea of inventions as private property, which reinforces the often incorrect notion that inventions are made by single inventors, is a relatively recent invention in human history.
• We never know the impact of innovation. The Like button blew up an industry and created a host of new challenges and problems to be solved.
• Whether in the field of academic papers, the creation of the Davy lamp, or a simple Like button, innovation is rarely an isolated, independent event.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Kobe Bryant was struggling, Todd helped him create an alter-ego which would eventually become the Black Mamba. Though creating an alter-ego can feel inauthentic or weird, creating a model of the person we want to become can help us behave in ways that will allow us to reach our goals.
• We all have multiple identities, but being thoughtful about the identities we adopt and create can help us become the best versions of ourselves, whether we’re creating a Spiderman, fitness, public speaking, or business alter ego.
• The highest performing, most capable people have powerful tools in their tool belts. And creating an alter-ego, like we once did as children, is a tool we can add to our own belt. There is power in using our identity to reach our most ambitious goals.

Zach also serves as one of Simon Sinek’s “Optimist Instructors,” teaching a course with Simon on how leaders can show everyone how they matter.

Zach earned a Ph.D. in organizational learning, performance, and change from Colorado State University, where he now serves as a Senior Honorary Fellow in the Center for Meaning and Purpose.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To show people they matter we can ask them, “When you feel that you matter to me, what am I doing?” And then do more of those things.
• We can show people they matter by providing evidence (e.g., pictures) of how their work benefits others.
• We can show people we need them by pointing out what wouldn’t get done without them.
• Just because something is common sense, doesn’t mean it’s common practice. But by taking simple steps to notice and affirm people, even scheduling our good intentions, we can help people know that they matter and close the knowing / doing gap.

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A longtime Supreme Court reporter said that Kannon has “perhaps the most eloquent and elegant manner … that I’ve ever seen in my 40 years covering the Court."

Legal 500 called Kannon "a brilliant lawyer and tactician, with impeccable judgment and an optimal moral compass." It added, “you won’t find a more talented, sophisticated, compelling lawyer—and he matches that with his overall humility and kind nature.”

Before entering private practice, Kannon served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Kannon earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard, was a Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, and then returned to Harvard for his Law degree.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As Judge Sack told Kannon, all you can do in a career is stand by the hoop and hope that somebody passes you the ball.
• There’s no substitute for hard work. At the top levels, everyone has great credentials. But what differentiates the very best people is they put in the work, in a profession where there are no shortcuts.
• Surround yourself with great people, including great mentors. But not just older people. Kannon devoted a lot of time to finding the most talented young attorneys who were driven, smart, and enthusiastic.
• Enthusiasm is one of the most important things Kannon looks for when identifying talented people: enthusiasm to work, enthusiasm to grow, and enthusiasm to learn.
• If you love what you do, it’s easy to get out of bed in the morning and keep doing it.

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Bob is also a co-author of the new book Like, which tells the story of the origins of the Like Button in social media. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The question Bob routinely asks himself: “What is the most important problem in my field and am I working on it?”
• It’s nearly impossible to make meaningful contributions to important fields from the outside. But by placing ourselves in the heat and discomfort of the furnace, we give ourselves the chance to do our most important work.
• By working on the most important problem in our field, we potentially give ourselves an advantage, because often there aren’t as many people working on that problem as we might think.

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Siri has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When computer science classrooms changed the pictures on the walls, from masculine-associated pictures to more gender-neutral pictures, more women expressed interest in computer science.

• As Siri said, we should strive to have humility about how much we trust our brains and our own intuition. And by doing so, we can hopefully make work, and the world, more fair.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• If we’re thinking about coulda shoulda wouldas, we’re in the past. If we’re thinking about what ifs, we’re in the future. But to help us be where our feet are, we can think about 3 things we see, 2 things we hear, and 1 thing we feel. Then add in a deep, diaphragmatic breath and we’ll reset and get our minds into the moment.
• When Riley didn’t think he could make it through another 60 days of caring for his sick daughter, his mom asked him, “Can you make it through tomorrow.”
• Greatness is achieved one day at a time, one rep at a time. And if we’re worried we can’t make it through one day, can we make it until lunch, or even just through the next ten minutes.
• It’s never as bad as it seems, and it’s never as good as it gets.

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Theresa has published her research in top management and psychology journals and been covered in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Huffington Post. 

Theresa received a PhD in social, organizational, and individual differences psychology from the University of Illinois and a BA in psychology from DePaul University. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To help us work hard, Theresa suggests we “park downhill.” Each day, as we finish work, we can queue up the thing we need to work on first the next day, which can help us hit the ground running.
• To help us have fun, we can reflect, each night, on the good things we did at work. The negative tends to be stronger than the positive, but by creating an “I did list” each night, we can improve our mood and even our health. 
• By being present throughout the day, for example, while walking to a meeting, we not only improve our attention quotient, but also can improve our relationships with others.
• Though work can often feel like we’re digging a hole in water, Theresa provides great tools to reframe and restructure our days: work hard, have fun, choose kind, be present. 

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Tamara's work has been featured in FastCompany, Business Insider, and Forbes, among other publications.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Given that we spend one third of our time at work, it’s hard to feel like life is meaningful if work isn’t.
• Sometimes it just requires a mental shift to make work meaningful. For example, a data center worker realized she wasn’t just connecting wires, she was connecting people, and even saving lives given all the industries that depended on the data center.
• When a young guest at the Ritz Carlton left their stuffed animal behind, the workers didn’t just return the stuffed animal. They also took pictures of the stuffed animal enjoying an extra-long vacation at the resort.
• To make work meaningful, strive for community, contribution, and challenge. And then try to help others experience meaning as well.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love Jenny’s advice to be shameless: have the courage to stand behind our efforts and abilities. And go after what we want.
• What a great example of shamelessness when Jenny chased her husband-to-be off the subway to give him her business card.
• In the workplace, it’s hard to be noticed if we don’t stand out. But many of us default to not self-promoting enough. Yet as a manager at Google, Jenny loved getting a shameless Monday morning email from a small number of her direct reports who told her what they had accomplished and what they were going to do next. 

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• If we’re concerned about fairness, it cannot be a program. It has to be a way of doing things. For example, DEI trainings are programs. And the research shows that they don’t change behavior.
• When Astrid Linder collected data on car accidents, she learned that women tended to have worse injuries than men because the crash test dummies that had been used to inform the cars’ design had been made to represent a prototypical male. Designing crash test dummies that are more representative of women is an example of doing things that make life more fair.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a leader, it’s important to use your “shut up” muscle. Don’t over participate, don’t over speak. Instead, let others speak first. For Sabina she tries to be the third, or later, to speak.
• Don’t treat delegation like an on/off switch, but rather treat it like a dial which is calibrated to people’s readiness and ability.
• Our behavior as leaders gets amplified on the way down, and peoples’ responses get muted on the way up. But by reacting to feedback kindly, and consistently asking for specific feedback, we can amplify the volume of the responses coming back to us

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A human behavior professor at Hunter College In New York City, Melody’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and dozens of other media outlets. She is also a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Psychology Today and Forbes.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We’re always teaching people how to treat us.
• We may be prone to over-apologize. But rather than over-apologize, we can simply say, “Thank you for your patience.”
• Rather than prefacing a comment with, “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” we can say, “I believe we should try X.”
• When setting boundaries, rather than just saying, “No” to a request, we can say, “I’m happy to make an exception this time.”
• Rather than always trying to get to the point, we can share anecdotes and stories that will be much more memorable.
• To make sure we’re working on things that our managers value, we can ask questions like, “What do you wish you had more time to work on?” or “What could I do to make your job easier right now?”

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Rebecca is also a research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a fellow of both the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She also sits on the boards of several companies, including AMGEN.

Rebecca earned a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and a PhD in business economics from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love the story Rebecca shared about the book contract she had lined up. She was going to write a book about how we are prone to take on too much stuff, and then she had to cancel the contract because she had taken on too much stuff.
• Finding the right balance between staying focused and embracing change is a never-ending struggle. Rebecca worked with Nokia, Kodak, and Motorola. All of them were at the cutting edge of technology and poised to dominate the cell phone and camera market. But none could adapt quickly enough to the changing technology.
• I thought it was fascinating to hear how some firms got superior results to other firms, even though they had the same inputs. The economists hated the finding because the research showed that leadership and management practices could make such a difference. The best firms took care of their people.

Here are two of Rebecca's papers:

Innovation in the 21st Century: Architectural Change, Purpose, and the Challenges of Our Time

Moral Firms?

And here is a link to her book website for Reimagining Capitalism. 

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Jon didn’t want to be a musician. But he and his wife adopted the principle of, “Turn your life over to God, and he’ll make more out of it than you’d ever be able to.” And it was that decision that guided Jon back to music.
• When I asked Jon what he’d say to his kids if they didn’t believe in God, I loved Jon’s response…that he doesn’t think God gets uptight about how we think of him. So whether people believe in an embodied God or just a higher power, it’s the intention to try to make the most of our lives that matters.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Silence is a learned behavior. We’re endlessly influenced by culture and society, so it’s important to question assumptions, and ask ourselves: In what ways do we self-censor and in what ways do we silence others?
• Just as there is no one best time zone, there is no one best way to speak, to look, to act.
• We should always seek out data, but remember that it’s not definitive.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Anna learned from her patients in addiction recovery that if they wanted to maintain their recovery, they couldn’t tell a single lie.
• One of the reasons lying hurts ourselves and others is because it denies us access to reality, which of course makes it more difficult to deal with reality.
• Radical honesty applies to more aspects of life than we may realize. For example, Anna is able to reduce her anxiety before interviews by being radically honest with herself and remembering that she doesn’t have to be all things to all people, she doesn’t have to be anything more than she already is.

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• The demand for energy, specifically and surprisingly for coal and petroleum, has never been greater, especially with the growth of energy-intensive data centers that power AI. But each energy source comes with tradeoffs, so the more diversified energy sources countries have, the greater potential for resiliency when shocks hit the system.
• Estimates indicate that an electric car only becomes less carbon intensive than a combustion engine after it’s been driven for 100,000 miles, in part because dirty energy is often used to charge the batteries, plus mining the material to create the batteries is energy intensive.
• While nuclear power is quite clean and becoming much safer, it is especially expensive due to regulatory burdens that haven’t been updated with the latest technology. And while wind and solar help meet overall demand, they cannot reliably hit base load demand.
• As Shon tells his students, the holy grail for energy production balances security, safety, affordability, reliability, and cleanliness. In other words, when it comes to energy policy there are no simple solutions. Only tradeoffs.

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Originally educated and employed as a chemist, Teresa received her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University. I hope you enjoy learning from Teresa Amabile today.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• People have their best days at work, feel the most creative and productive, when they make progress on meaningful work.
• People transitioning into new life phases, for example, retirement, are at risk of not feeling productive, if their meaningful work comes to an end.
• After interviewing 120 people, Teresa found that those who successfully transition to new life phases do the following: they take action to align their identities with some sort of structure, they strive to be aware of what’s working, and then they adapt accordingly.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• The skills that got us to where we are may not be sufficient to get us to where we want to go, given the rapidly changing world. So, we need to continually upscale or rescale, to prepare ourselves to do something adjacent or something different.
• For Ravin, the journey of reinvention is his destination.
• Seek to continually reinvent yourself.

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• We now live in a digital village, where AI can learn so much more about us than we realize. And naturally, this ability can be used to influence us for good or bad.

•  

  Pay attention to AI progress. Look out for ways it can help us. But also be on the lookout for how it can harm us. 

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• To achieve our potential, it is most effective to focus on areas where we have some natural ability and curiosity. Motivation and hard work can only take us so far.

• Rather than constantly working on our weaknesses, it is often more effective to harness our strengths.

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Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including seventeen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, and two Oscar nominations. And Ken won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and was recently inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Ken kept three-ring binders on his desk that had hundreds of rejections. Those binders reminded Ken that we pay for what we get with effort, hard work, and perseverance.
• I love how Ken followed his passion. He ignored the conventional advice to move to New York City, and instead followed his heart and moved to New Hampshire, and that made all the difference.
• In the words of Emerson: I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a PhD student studying unethical behavior, Elizabeth found herself lying to prospective professors about the crime rate in Tulane. She then realized she was doing this to help the school, which prompted her to study unethical pro-organizational behaviors…lies we tell or unethical behaviors we engage in to help or our organizations.
• Elizabeth found that we’re especially prone to engage in unethical pro-organizational behaviors when we strongly identify with our organization. To combat this behavior, Elizabeth suggests that we think about other stakeholders who may be harmed by our behavior.

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Born and educated in the UK with PhDs in Cognitive Neuroscience and Statistical Modeling at Oxford, his work for Gallup began in London where he developed their leadership consulting business across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and eventually the Americas as well.

Barry has 40 years of experience in the areas of psychometric assessment and testing, executive coaching, and team optimization. He has been ranked as one of the top 50 leadership thinkers in the world by Leadership Insights magazine. And he is also the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling co-author of Strengths-Based Leadership.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The reality is that most people are not going to be outstanding leaders. So, we should strive to be brilliant in the roles that best fit our capabilities, and then surround ourselves with people who have complementary skills who are brilliant in their roles.

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He examines how companies can create a culture of continuous innovation and the role that individual managers play in making a company more innovative.

Costas is the author of four books on strategy and innovation, he was listed by Forbes.com as one of the world’s most influential management gurus, and has served as a Fellow of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Costas received his BA and MA in Economics from Boston University, and his MBA and DBA from Harvard Business School. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• What often seems like an obvious answer to a problem is usually not the right answer. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, 1000s of companies diversified, only to refocus decades later. An obvious explanation for this was that the companies had made a mistake. But an alternative explanation was that the companies were right to diversify when they did and then right to refocus when they did because the market had changed.
• Just because a company communicates a particular strategy in public, does not mean that they aren’t communicating a different, or more refined, inspiring, strategy privately. To get at the heart of the onion, as Costas said, we need ask at least five Why’s.
• Managers know they should differentiate themselves. Yet data suggests that 92% of managers imitate rather than differentiate. To close the knowing/doing gap, Costas suggests we start small, develop a strategy, work hard, and try to turn behaviors into habits.

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Rita has written five books, including Discovery Driven Growth, cited by Clayton Christensen as creating one of the most important management ideas ever developed.

Rita received her Ph.D. from the Wharton School and has degrees from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• At any given time, we’re in one of two situations: low uncertainty or high uncertainty. And the mistake we so often make is using the techniques we use for low uncertainty in the domain of high uncertainty.

• When we’re in an uncertain environment, where we’re making a lot of assumptions, we need to collect data to convert those assumptions to facts. Rita calls this Discovery Driven Planning.

• When planning for a conventional line of business, uncertainty is low, managers have good data, and people can accurately forecast the future with relative precision. But when launching an entirely new venture, uncertainty is high, so it doesn’t make sense to start off with a big team, ambitious goals, all the money upfront, and definite deadlines. Rather, we should do the opposite and start small, collect data, test assumptions, and iterate.

• When making decisions, we should first assess whether we’re in Situation 1 (low uncertainty) or Situation 2 (high uncertainty). And if we find ourselves in Situation 2, we should start small, collect data, test assumptions, and iterate.

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Jennifer has an English degree from Yale University and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of New Hampshire.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Williams Syndrome, which occurs in about one in 10,000 people, makes people incapable of distrust, so people with Williams Syndrome love everyone (and they want to hug everyone). And in return, people love those with Williams Syndrome.

• I love what Williams Syndrome teaches us. It’s not always about what we say, or how we say it. But rather, if we are genuinely curious about people and want to connect with them, they will feel it, and they will be forgiving if we aren’t the most articulate or charismatic.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Effective leadership is about finding the balance between how we naturally want to show up as a leader and what the situation demands of us.
• Mike distills leadership down to four domains: communication, adaptability, focus, and influence. But what’s most intriguing about Mike’s work, is that these four domains are each on a spectrum. For example, adaptability is on the spectrum of rigidity and flexibility. And the best leaders do what the task requires.
• Though we might naturally feel most comfortable being flexible as a leader, sometimes the task requires that we be rigid; we might feel more comfortable being selfless, but sometimes leaders need to be selfish.
• It is neither bad nor good to be rigid or flexible, to be selfless or selfish. But rather, the best leaders do what the task requires.

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She is also the author of the book, You Have More Influence Than You Think.

She received her PhD in social psychology from Columbia University and her AB in psychology from Brown University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We tend to underestimate the power of a simple ask. As a graduate student, Vanessa felt anxiety about asking people to fill out a survey. But once she analyzed the data, she was surprised to see how different her perception was from reality. People were way more willing to help than she had expected.
• Before we ask for something, we should assume we are going to get the thing we’re asking for, and then ask ourselves, “Is this something I should be asking for.” Given how powerful our asks can be, this extra step will help us ask for things that are appropriate.

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John teaches organizational behavior and strategic human resource management courses to Executive MBA, MBA, and undergraduate students, and he has won numerous teaching awards, including the Student Choice Faculty Award. And his research has been published in top management journals and been featured internationally in news outlets.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• John teaches students how to thrive. And the first thing he teaches are the myths of happiness: status, wealth, beauty, power. The motivation to pursue those things and the comparisons we make to others, can lead us to feel hollow and empty.
• To thrive, we have to be intentional and deliberate about progressing on the things that matter most to us…things that are intrinsically motivating rather than extrinsically driven.
• To thrive, it’s not just about knowing what to do. It’s actually doing it, as John learned for himself, when his daughter told him that she hated his job. So he changed.

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Daniel was named one of the "12 Thinkers to Watch" by Monster.com, a "Financial Blogger You Should Be Reading" by AARP and in the "Top 40 Under 40" by Investment News.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Our lives will tend to be as rich or poor as the lives of our friends. We mimic each other to an astonishingly high degree, and the people we surround ourselves with is predictive of who we are and where we’re going.
• “Show me your money and I’ll show you your values.” It’s easy to say we value health, while spending a sizeable portion of our income on fast food. By analyzing where we spend our money, we can see what we truly value.

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Lisa has worked in publishing at W.W. Norton, as an agent at the Angela Rinaldi Literary Agency, as a producer on shows for Showtime and CourtTV, and as a story consultant for Warner Brothers and the William Morris Agency.

And since 2006, she's been an instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers' Program and been on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts MFA program in visual narrative in New York City.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• Take almost any bit of data, random or not, and our brain will try to make sense of it…it will try to create a story to explain it.
• Given that our brains are wired for stories, when it comes to persuading other people, stories are the most powerful tool we have. Don’t underestimate the power of stories.

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I've started making my way through these books and they're excellent. And to make it easier for you to read the books, here's the list:

As A Child

• Haunted Mesa by Louis L'Amour
• Western books by Zane Gray
• Old Testament and New Testament
• Old Mother West Wind by Thornton W. Burgess

As An Adult

• The Street Lawyer by John Grisham
• When I Found You, Walk Me Home and Take Me With You by Cathryn Ryan Hyde
• Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
• The Boys in the Cave, by Matt Guzman
• Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
• Centennial by James A Michener
• Greyhound by Steffan Pyper
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
• A Child Called It by David Pelzer
• A Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
• Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
• Endurance by Alfred Lansing
• South by Ernest Shackleton
• Teach Like Your Hairs on Fire (first 2/3 of the book) by Rafe Esquith
• Einstein by Walter Isaacson
• Jesus the Christ by James Talmage
• The Journal of Joseph by Joseph Smith Jr. and Leland R. Nelson
• Battle Rock: The Struggle Over a One Room School by William Celis
• Blind Man’s Bluff by Sherry Sontag (Tozer worked with Tiernen)
• Dead Run by Dan Schultz (murder that happened in Cortez)
• October Sky by Homer Hickam

Kim earned his B.A., MA, and PhD in economics from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We’re all leaders. And the best leaders lead in 3 ways: they help people experience meaning, purpose, and personal growth. They help the organization realize its purpose. And they strengthen the organization.
• Leaders always do good. They strive to increase light and decrease darkness.
• When Kim became Dean of Harvard Business School, he knew he had to fire a colleague who had been a kind of poison. The previous administration had been afraid to fire the colleague for fear of a lawsuit with the Union. But when Kim fired the person, the Union said, “What took you so long?”

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Matt was happy in San Francisco, and when the New York Times told him he needed to relocate to New York City or be fired, Matt decided that he didn’t want to mess with happiness, so he stayed in San Francisco. He then waited for the Times to fire him, but the call never came. And eventually Matt went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
• “Happiness can be fragile. Don’t mess with happiness.”

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Doug earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of California at Davis and his medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco. He also served in the United States Navy Reserve for 15 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander and earning the Meritorious Service Medal.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Listen before you speak.
• Doug intentionally tries to not sit at the head of the table in meetings to signal to others that they’re all equals.
• Doug has more bosses now than he's ever had

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For his college career, Ty set 59 NCAA records and tied three others. His ability to accurately pass the football was unprecedented, and played a pivotal role in the passing revolution in football. And in 2012, Ty was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

Ty continued playing football beyond college, spending 14 years in the NFL where he mentored players such as Brett Favre and Michael Vick.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Maybe no football player has ever been so successful while also being so often mistaken for an equipment manager. But as Ty said, a little bit of toughness and a little bit of grit can go a long way.
• In Ty’s first college game he threw four interceptions; in an NFL game he threw seven. But he simply took accountability and kept working hard.
• It’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that matters in life.

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Prior to joining Covington, Ingrid clerked for Chief Judge James E. Baker of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. She also served as in-house counsel at Amazon Web Services before returning to Covington as Special Counsel.

Ingrid is a graduate of Stanford Law School and the University of Cambridge.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When it comes to investment in technologies that are relevant to national security, such as AI, quantum computing, integrated circuits, or even collecting sensitive personal data, the U.S. government wants to ensure that’s its interests are protected, so it was interesting to hear how Ingrid helps companies navigate that investment process.
• I thought it was especially interesting that Ingrid felt “underwater and overwhelmed” when she first started her career, especially given her intelligence and background. But her advice is excellent: People should come into their careers with confidence, knowing they have something to contribute but also with humility recognizing that there is always more to learn.

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Jeff’s research focuses on organizational ethics and meaningful work. And in 2009, Jeff and his coauthor, Stuart Bunderson, published a paper that went viral in the academic world, and has been cited nearly 2,000 times. Much of our conversation today revolves around findings from that work.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Jeff found that the zookeepers he studied, consistent with others who have found their calling, have three things in common: First, they do work that has an other-orientation, a sense of service. Second, they embrace, and leverage, their own unique gifts. And third, they describe a sense of destiny, as if it were fate that had led them to their position.
• And even though Jeff eventually found his own calling, he realized that there was more to his calling than he initially thought, as he accepted new positions and embraced new opportunities. 

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As commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, Admiral McRaven led a force of 72,000 men and women and was responsible for conducting counter-terrorism operations worldwide.

After his military career, he served as chancellor of the University of Texas System, overseeing 14 institutions, 220,000 students, 20,000 faculty and more than 80,000 health care professionals, researchers, and staff.

In 2014, he gave a commencement speech at the University of Texas that went viral, titled, “If You Want To Change The World, Start Off By Making Your Bed.”  

He is also the author of several books, including Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations and the New York Times Bestseller, Make Your Bed.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Admiral McRaven asked his Master Chief how to earn the respect of the soldiers, he responded: “Work hard. Come early. Stay late. Work on the weekends.”
• You don’t have to be the most talented to succeed. But regardless of talent, everyone can work hard.
• You will earn the respect of others if they know you are working hard on their behalf.
• Know your business. As a Navy SEAL that meant knowing all about weapons, diving, and demolition. It also meant knowing the details of the playbook. For example, if you’re in an ambush, first guy goes left, second guy goes right.
• When Admiral McRaven’s solider accidentally blew off the leg of his colleague, the Master Chief wanted to go relatively easy on the solider. But Admiral McRaven believed they needed to “throw the book at him.” And through the tough love of accountability, the solider bounced back and became Sailor of the Year.
• How do you gain respect of those you lead? Work hard and be a good person. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
• When I asked Admiral McRaven, “Did you ever get scared?” he laughed out loud: “Yeah, of course. You’re scared all the time.” But he was able to fall back on his training and barricade his fears to help him get through countless life-threatening situations.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Alfred became president of the PCC, the goal was to attract as many customers as possible. But COVID gave them a chance to reassess their strategy, and they realized that maximizing attendance put too much stress on the infrastructure and the employees, which in turn reduced the satisfaction of the guests.
• By capping attendance, they were able to increase guest satisfaction, increase employee satisfaction, and also charge a premium.
• And lastly, I love Alfred’s advice to the employees when they ask him for advice: Keep trying to excel at whatever you do. Love what you do. Enjoy what you do, and don't worry so much. Because if you are consistent, and do the things you do very well, life is going to take care of you.

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Harry received a perfect score on the ACT college admissions test, attended college on a full-ride academic scholarship, and graduated from Stanford Law School.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Harry didn’t want to be a famous artist for a living, so he chose a career that allowed him to be adjacent to creativity. And now he represents some of the top artists in the world.
• Being an entertainment attorney is like reading instruction manuals for board games and looking for ways to cheat.
• Many industries are not as large as people might expect. So, reputation and relationships matter. By looking for win/win deals, not only will people want to keep doing business with you, but also you’re likely to get better performance on the deals.

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Craig served as trial counsel for Vanessa Bryant in her landmark civil rights victory against the LA County Sheriff’s and Fire Departments for their improper photos of the victims of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, and seven others. 

Following Craig’s closing argument, the jury delivered a verdict in favor of Vanessa Bryant and awarded her and a co-plaintiff $30 million in damages for their emotional distress.

Other significant representations for Craig include:

• Lead counsel for Berkshire Hathaway in a billion-dollar dispute with Pilot Corporation 
• The LA Clippers in litigation against Madison Square Garden Company
• Hume Street Management Consultants—a world-renowned developer of luxury hotels—against members of the Qatari royal family—including the former emir of Qatar and a former prime minister of Qatar.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Litigation is like the debate Olympics. It’s a team sport. It’s often irrational to take cases to trial. And there’s nothing like giving a closing argument.
• The case Craig is most proud of, defending Vanessa Bryant, the widow of Kobe Bryant, in her landmark civil rights case.
• Craig’s advice about authenticity. He doesn’t try to act how he thinks a trial attorney should act. He doesn’t try to impress the jurors. Rather, he tries to connect with them by being himself and conveying information clearly.

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Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• How Tozer tutored college students
• How Tozer started funding the education of someone he met online
• How Tozer has an amazing knack for recommending books that change peoples lives

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A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Business School, Charles has been a frequent contributor to This American Life, NPR, The Colbert Report, PBS’s NewsHour, and Frontline.

Charles currently writes for The New Yorker magazine.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• One of the skills that Charles most wants to teach his kids is how to ask questions, and specifically deep questions that get at peoples’ values, beliefs, or experiences.
• Rather than ask someone, “Where do you practice law?” we can ask, “Did you always want to be an attorney?”
• Nick Epley plays a game with strangers of trying to get people to talk about their hopes and dreams within three questions. He usually gets there in two questions (What do you do? Did you always want to do that?).
• We often hesitate to ask deep questions, when in reality people love to answer deep questions.
• When Charles speaks to large groups, he has people share with their neighbor the last time they cried in front of someone. People predict they’ll hate the activity, but then they do the activity and love it.
• Supercommunicators don’t have superpowers. They’re just a little more thoughtful about communication.
• Supercommunicators ask deep questions, they show people that they want to connect, and they’re aware of the different types of conversations such as practical, emotional or social conversations.

Follow Charles:

Twitter: https://x.com/cduhigg

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesduhigg/

Website: https://www.charlesduhigg.com/

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And now a quick word about SEAL Team Six. Most information concerning SEAL Team Six is classified. Their activities generally aren’t commented on by the Department of Defense or the White House. But they are the U.S. Military’s primary Tier 1 special mission unit, and are responsible for carrying out the most complex, classified, and dangerous missions, as directed by the President of the United States or the Secretary of Defense.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Over and over again, Gus saw that his leaders were willing to do everything that they asked their men to do.
• Secretary Mattis taught the SEALs to ask three questions when making a decision: Does this decision make us more efficient? Does it make us more effective? And does it make us a more lethal fighting machine?
• Gus noticed that the best leaders delivered information clearly, concisely, and in a timely manner. “Here’s the info you need to know. Here’s what you’re going to do with it. Now go execute.”
• I was impressed by how Gus controlled his thoughts, whether in combat, on a dive, or even during BUDs. He focused only on the things he could control, in manageable chunks. Sometimes that meant that all he was thinking about was how he could make it through the next hour, or just make it to chow.
• As a member of SEAL Team Six, Gus is the most elite of the elite. And yet the lessons he shared are lessons that we can all apply. Lessons on leadership, decision making, communication, and mental toughness. All simple, yet profound, practical ideas. 

Connect on Social Media:

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General Casey served 41-years as an American soldier, following graduation from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• General Casey’s grandpa taught him: You’re no better than anyone. And no one’s better than you. So, treat everyone with respect. But don’t take any guff from anybody.
• General Casey’s father taught him: Never be afraid to try to be the very best.
• Vince Lombardi taught General Casey: Insist on disciplined execution of the highest standards.
• The higher General Casey rose in the hierarchy, the more he realized he needed to influence the people outside his organization rather than just look down inside his own organization.
• The more experienced General Casey got, the more comfortable he got saying, “I don’t know.”
• “Be a man or woman of your word. If you tell someone you're going to do something, you either do it or you tell them why you're not going to do it.”
• There are only two kinds of plans: those that might work and those that won’t work.
• Family is everything.

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• As Ken Burns said, “Leadership is humility and generosity squared.”
• Leadership is admitting we don’t know everything and then giving credit to others for their success.
• When Kevin played basketball in college, his coaches would use every second of the timeouts to coach the players. But as the years passed, he noticed that coaches started using the timeouts to counsel with the other coaches. There’s power in admitting you don’t see everything and in getting advice from others.
• As the President of BYU, Kevin learned to say “yes” as often as he could, because there are so many times as a leader that you have to say “no.”
• It’s important to be generous and kind when saying “no,” especially because saying “no” typically doesn’t persuade anyone.
• I love two of the quotes Kevin shared: “Anger never persuaded anyone” and “The law of love is undefeated.”

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Shortly after joining the IRS, Richard was a lead investigator on the University of Kansas ticket scandal, in which several KU employees stole an estimated $2-3 million from the athletic department.

Prior to joining the IRS, Richard worked as an auditor at Deloitte. He earned his accounting, business administration and Masters of Accounting degrees all from the University of Kansas.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a special agent, Richard has dedicated himself to continuous learning. Criminals launder money through the Internet in countless ways, whether through cryptocurrency or the banking system, and Richard has to stay on top of all of it.
• As an IRS special agent, Richard helps keep the playing field level for all of us by holding criminals accountable for not paying their taxes.
• Richard's advice: "Look out for yourselves. Fraud is rampant. And look out for your friends, neighbors and family as well, to make sure they’re not being victimized."

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Alison has consulted with numerous organizations, including ExxonMobil, Bayer CropScience, and the U.S. Air Force and Navy among others. And her research has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, and The Financial Times. Before entering academia, Alison worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Company.

Alison earned her PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford and her BA in mathematics and economics from Dartmouth, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Though Alison didn’t explicitly set out to conduct research to help women, she realized that it was often the women who were sticking around after class asking for help from someone who looked like them.
• Status and power are often used interchangeably, but they are distinct. Status is respect. Power is resource control. So, it's possible to have one and not have the other.
• Women, more so than men, end up in positions of power without the commensurate status. The alternative, status without power, is much easier to navigate. People think of you as warm, giving, and capable. But people who have power without status are often treated poorly, which can lead to instability and exit.
• Alison’s most common recommendation for women who ask for help navigating power and status dynamics is to start sooner advocating for themselves. Otherwise, they may find themselves in situations where people have already concluded that they’re not the valuable person in the room.

Follow Alison:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonfragale/

Website: https://alisonfragale.com/about/

Book: https://amzn.to/3XuH6Wj

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Amy has been recognized by the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and in 2021 and 2023 Amy was ranked #1 in the world.

Amy is also the author of several books which have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Her most recent book, The right kind of Wrong was named the business book of the year by the Financial Times and Schroders.

Amy earned a BA in engineering and design, an MA in psychology, and a PhD in organizational behavior, all from Harvard University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Amy studied hospital teams, she found, to her dismay, that better teamwork was correlated with higher error rates. But then she had a key insight: better teams were more willing to report errors than worse teams.
• Most people, most of the time, hold back dissenting views. And because we don’t know what we don’t hear, we have to go on a treasure hunt for people’s dissenting views if we want to hear them.
• Psychological safety doesn’t mean being comfortable. Rather, it’s about a willingness to endure discomfort, giving people permission for candor, when we go on treasure hunts for dissenting views.
• We believe we see reality, but we rarely stop to think whether what we think we see is actually true. 

Follow Amy:

X: https://x.com/AmyCEdmondson

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Ayelet earned a bachelor's degree with distinction in psychology, a master's degree summa cum laude in psychology, and a PhD magna cum laude in psychology, all from Tel Aviv University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To increase motivation, find pleasure along the way. And setting a goal to do something is generally more motivating than setting a goal to stop doing something.
• To increase motivation, we can monitor progress by looking back and looking ahead. When we start out, we can look back and take encouragement from the small progress we’ve made. When we’ve almost completed our goal, we can look forward, and take encouragement from how little we have left.
• When our goals are in harmony with each other we’re more motivated than when we have conflicting goals. For example, rather than thinking about work-life goals as conflicting, we can think more abstractly about how the goals complement each other.
• Including other people in our goals can be more motivating, whether that’s explicitly involving them in our goals, or just acknowledging that others have an interest in us achieving our goals whether they realize it or not. 

Follow Ayelet:

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Website: https://www.ayeletfishbach.com/

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Todd has also worked in a number of investment management roles at Blackstone, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Wells Fargo. He’s a former professional athlete and speaks fluent Spanish  and earned a JD/MBA from Penn Law School and Wharton.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• As a corporate attorney Todd helps CEOs and Boards of Directors 1) act in good faith and 2) be fully informed when buying and selling billion-dollar businesses. If the execs fulfill those two requirements, the court will defer to the “business judgement rule.” Otherwise, the courts will use the more stringent “entire fairness” standard.
• If you want to be successful at anything, you typically have to work really, really hard at it. This includes embracing the process of improving a little bit each day, week, and year. And if you’re consistent and diligent with your work ethic, overtime you’ll rise to the top.
• If you’re good to people, doors will open for you. Todd’s managing director at Morgan Stanley taught him that the decisions that would most affect Todd’s career would likely be made when Todd wasn’t in the room. So, Todd needed to make sure that his reputation helped rather than hurt him during those meetings.
• As Todd learned in Venezuela, “Create fama y echete a la came.” Create fame for yourself, and then go lie down. Our reputation is either helping or hurting us.

Follow Todd:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddmortensen/

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Joseph is also a globally sought after keynote speaker, and has shared the stage with Jack Welch, Brené Brown, Jim Collins, and General Colin Powell among others. 

In addition to his writing and speaking, Joseph serves as chairman of the board for the Other Side Academy, a peer-run residential school for people with long histories of crime, homelessness, and addiction.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• At the heart of most disappointment in organizations are conversations that people are either not holding or not holding well, in part because many of us think that there are just some conversations that we can’t have.
• But Joseph’s work shows that you can talk with almost anyone about almost anything as long as you create enough safety. If people feel safe, and that you’re motives are appropriate, then they’ll let you say almost anything you need.
• Joseph witnessed this firsthand when he intervened during a fight at the airport. By showing the aggressor that he understood and cared for him, Joseph was then able to deliver the truth that the man’s behavior was unacceptable. In seconds the man moved from aggression to apology.

Follow Joseph:

X: https://twitter.com/josephgrenny

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-grenny-a89081b/

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Prior to becoming a full-time coach, Nathan was the VP of People at Neighbor, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup disrupting the storage industry. Prior to Neighbor, Nathan spent half a decade at DoorDash where he was hired as the head of HR and scaled the company from 250 to 5,000+ employees. There he built the company’s first leadership development program and coached more than half of the executive team. Prior to DoorDash, Nathan held several roles on the HR team at LinkedIn. He started his career on Wall Street at Lehman Brothers where he had a front-row seat to the largest bankruptcy in history.

Nathan is also the author of two books, Not Your Parents' Workplace, and his new book, The Unconquerable Leader. Nathan has been an advisor at Y Combinator and writes for Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, and other publications. He's an IRONMAN triathlete, holds an MBA from BYU, and was trained as an executive coach at the Co-Active Training Institute.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Lehman went bankrupt and Nathan struggled to get back into investment banking, he told himself the story that he wasn’t smart enough or talented enough. But then he realized that this story wasn’t serving him. He changed the story from, “I can’t do this” to “I haven’t done it yet, but I can figure it out.”
• Rather than tell ourselves the limiting story of, “That’s just who I am” we can aim to become the best version of ourselves.
• Identify the self-limiting stories we tell ourselves and reframe them into stories that serve us.

Follow Nathan:

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In 2020, Taya was recognized as one of the Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors by Poets & Quants, and she is a Past-President of the International Association for Conflict Management.

Taya earned a B.A. in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to joining the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, Taya spent two years as a postdoc at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• When we do something wrong, we can feel guilt for the bad behavior, or we can feel shame for being a bad person. If we feel guilt, we can apologize and try to be better in the future, which can give us hope. But feeling shame, feeling like we’re fundamentally flawed, can make us feel less optimistic about the future and can be much harder to deal with.
• When we provide feedback to others, it’s generally more effective to focus on people’s behaviors as opposed to more generalized statements about who they are as a person.
• Guilt tends to be a much more healthy, positive emotion than shame.

Follow Taya:

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Bryan earned his B.S. in Accounting from the University of Southern California and his M.B.A. from Stanford Business School.

But before all of that, Bryan was working at McDonald’s and sleeping on couches, in closets, and in cars.

Bryan’s incredible story borders on unbelievable.

In his words, if you ran the experiment of his life 1,000 times, you’re going to get 999 gutter balls.  

But in this in-depth interview, Bryan shares his playbook for how achieved a most improbable comeback.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• In high school Bryan was sleeping on friends’ couches. He took a job at McDonald’s. He graduated high school near the bottom decile. He slept in closets and in cars.
• When a close friend committed suicide and Bryan got kicked out of his house, he made a change.
• “If you realize you’re heading in the wrong direction, even if you’re 95% of the way there, you turn around.”
• Bryan took control of his health. He served a church mission. He earned a 4.0. And eventually he made his way to Goldman, Carlyle, Stanford, and the hedge fund world.
• And along the way, Bryan learned crucial lessons:
• Study to learn, not to pass tests.
• Make game day easier than practice.
• Persistence is one of life’s biggest differentiators. People are not patient and want results now.
• An orchid requires just the right amount of water and sunlight. But a weed can grow in bad dirt, with little water and sunlight, and can punch through concrete. Do you want to be an orchid or a weed?
• You can’t outrun your diet. A Big Mac meal is 1300 calories. And an hour at the gym burns just 300 calories.
• Find your limiter and train it until it’s no longer a constraint. Then find your next limiter and repeat.
• And maybe the most important takeaway of all was Bryan’s playbook:
• Set some ridiculous goal that's far out in the future. And then embody that reality with perfect clarity and become it. Smell it, taste it, live it, and your brain won’t know the difference. And then just persist. People overestimate what they can do in a six-month time frame, but underestimate what they can do in a six-year time frame, if they persist.

Follow Bryan:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryandporter/

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Cory is both a graduate of and an instructor in Cornell University’s Executive Master’s in Human Resource Management program. His book HR You Kidding Me? Surprisingly Simple Steps to Unlock the Power of People is a #1 best seller on Amazon.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• It’s impossible to dive deep while wearing a life jacket. The things that helped us in the past can be the same things that hold us back today.

• Cory has found power in the words, “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure, let’s look together” or “What do you think?” By being okay with not having all the answers, Cory has accelerated his own learning.

Follow Cory:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-sanford/

Website: https://www.guidantfinancial.com/about-us/leadership-team/

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Follow Me:

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Follow Me:

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Her research has been covered in the New York Times, NBC, ABC, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, US News and World Report, the Associated Press, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Huffington Post, Washington Post, NPR, and in blogs for Psychology Today and Freakonomics.

Ann was also my advisor when I was a postdoc at Notre Dame, and she is, in a word, awesome.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• No one is immune from behaving unethically. And sadly, over and again we tend to overrate our own ethics.
• When facing an ethical dilemma, we predict we’ll behave ethically, and after making our decision we recollect that we’ve behaved ethically. But at the time of decision, we all too often feel unexpected pressure, make some excuse, adopt some rationalization, and behave unethically.
• We’re in a constant battle with our want self and our should self. And all too often we give into our wants, rather than standing by our shoulds.
• To improve our ethics, we need good sleep, continued education, and practice. Just as we wouldn’t expect to perform well in a meeting without preparing, we shouldn’t expect to perform well in an ethical dilemma if we haven’t prepared.
• Study ethics. Take a class, read Ann’s book, learn about the ways that power, pressure, and circumstances can lead us to unethical behavior. And then check your ethics with other people, conduct a pre-mortem, and let your “should-self” win.

Follow Ann:

Ann's Book Blind Spots: https://amzn.to/4cVxgSH

Website: https://mendoza.nd.edu/mendoza-directory/profile/ann-tenbrunsel/

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She’s also host of the popular podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin, and founder of the award-winning Happier app, which helps people track their happiness-boosting habits.

Gretchen has been interviewed by Oprah, eaten dinner with Nobel Prize-winner Daniel Kahneman, walked arm-in-arm with the Dalai Lama, had her work reported on in a medical journal, been written up in the New Yorker, and been an answer on Jeopardy! After starting her career in law, she realized she wanted to be a writer while she was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Raised in Kansas City, she lives in New York City with her family.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• There is no magic. one-size-fits-all solution for happiness
• No one can tell you the best way or the right way to be happy, just as there is no one best way to cook an egg.
• One thing that was really hard for Gretchen to learn was what she enjoys versus what other people enjoy.
• Samuel Johnson: "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance is difficult."
• Yogi Berra: "If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him."

Follow Gretchen:

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Website: https://gretchenrubin.com/

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Modupe examines how organizational environments- characterized by deadlines, multi-tasking, and other attributes such as having low status- can engender stress, and how this stress can have spill-over effects on performance.

Her work has been covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, WIRED, Scientific American, Forbes, The Economist, and The Huffington Post.

Modupe earned her undergraduate degree, MBA, and PhD from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We have so much control over how we experience life, and it's within our control to find ways to manage stress so that it doesn’t negatively affect others.
• If you’re feeling stressed, do a stress check on yourself to see how you can change and dial down that stress in a way that isn't contagious so that other people don't have a terrible day because you are having a bad one.
• If Modupe snaps at herself or someone else, she pauses and asks herself, “What’s going on?” That often helps her realize why she’s stressed so that she can deal with it.
• If you are stressed, pause, figure out why, and then ask yourself, “What do I need right now?”
• Modupe learned a simple phrase that has improved her relationship with her Mom when she’s stressed: “I’m busy right now, Mom, but I’ll call you this weekend.”
• Working as Chris Hemsworth’s stress coach reinforced for Modupe that everyone has stress, regardless of their fame or success.

Follow Modupe

X: https://twitter.com/ProfAkinola

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mnakinola/

Website: https://www.modupeakinola.com/

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Frank earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a law degree from Columbia.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The single most underappreciated tool that leaders have is the recognition and gratitude they can express to people working for them, and doing it in a way that is memorable for the people who are recognized and celebrated.
• Frank recognized people by bringing them up on stage and telling stories about them that demonstrated great customer service.
• Frank recognized people by writing 200 handwritten personal notes every Sunday, thanking them for specific things they had done.
• Just as kids will root for athletes who take the time to sign autographs, Frank generated support from his team by writing them personal letters of recognition.
• Every business leader knows the phrase, “You get what you measure.” Frank’s corollary is, "You get what you recognize and celebrate."
• If I say to someone, “I want you to provide great customer service” that sort of vaporizes instantaneously. But if I share a story of great customer service, everyone understands it and can apply it.
• When you tell a story that illustrates great customer service, people start talking about the behaviors they're doing that are similar, and the behavior gets reinforced and you get real momentum in the organization.
• More often than not, leaders are unintentional and undisciplined about how they recognize and celebrate their employees.
• Frank learned the power of recognition when he worked for George H. W. Bush. As VP, George started every day by spending an hour typing out personal notes. As a staff member, when Frank got a note from the VP, he felt like he walked on air.
• You can surprise people by thanking them and doing it in a specific way.

Follow Frank:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FrankBlake

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-blake-1a99646/

Website: https://crazygoodturns.org/blog

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Her work has been featured in the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, GQ Magazine, Slate and O! Magazine, among others, and Time Magazine named her a “Leading Campus Celebrity.”

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We are not our thoughts, and we can change our thoughts. The way we think can affect our behavior in ways that we don't really expect.
• Rather than yell at ourselves like a drill Sergeant to motivate ourselves, it can be more effective to practice self-compassion by talking to ourselves like we would talk to our friend.
• To improve our happiness, we need to invest in social connection. Not only does investing in social connection make us happier, it makes us happier than we expect it will.

Follow Laurie

X: https://twitter.com/lauriesantos

Website: https://www.drlauriesantos.com/

Podcast: https://www.drlauriesantos.com/happiness-lab-podcast

Instagram: LaurieSantosOfficial

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In addition to teaching people how to be smarter, Brent teaches spin classes and pottery. He also made his own (and his daughter's) wedding cakes, has biked around Iceland, collected all of the original set of Pokemon in Pokemon Go, drove a Zamboni, and poked sticks into flowing lava. He is fluent in English, Finnish, and German, with basic proficiency in French, Spanish, Italian, and Icelandic.

Brent is also a writer, and in this second episode with Brent, we discuss the book he is writing, wherein he describes his philosophy on the purpose of life and how to achieve that purpose. I loved his manuscript so much that I gifted it to my wife for Christmas. And I am so grateful that Brent graciously agreed to discuss his book here today, and I’m motivated to be a better person because of his book and this conversation.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• For Brent the purpose of life is to experience joy. And he experiences joy when he sees growth in himself or others he loves.
• To increase our joy, we can increase our love for others.
• Combining these ideas led Brent to an equation: Joy = Growth X Love^2.
• Brent’s parting phrase: “I love you! Have fun! Do your best!”

Follow Brent

Website: https://acetestprep.com/

Volcano hunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Se7FssokU

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Website: https://natemeikle.com

Brent is the owner and founder of ACE Test Preparation, where he has taught more than 6,000 students how to “Ace” the LSAT. During his 27 years of teaching, his students’ average score is above the 90th percentile, and he even taught the first person who got a perfect raw score on the LSAT in the current format. Brent has lectured on the LSAT around the country, everywhere from Harvard to Hawaii.

In Brent’s free time he teaches spin classes and pottery. He also made his own (and his daughter's) wedding cakes, has biked around Iceland, collected all of the original set of Pokemon in Pokemon Go, drove a Zamboni, and poked sticks into flowing lava. He is fluent in English, Finnish, and German, with basic proficiency in French, Spanish, Italian, and Icelandic.

In this first of two episodes with Brent, we learn Brent’s history, including both how became a volcano hunter and an LSAT instructor. And then we get to learn from Brent the same methods of reasoning that he has taught thousands of students. It is these teachings on logic and reasoning, which Brent teaches so clearly and entertainingly, that have helped thousands of law students achieve their dreams of getting accepted to the most prestigious schools around the world.

This episode will be required listening for my children because it will make them smarter. It will help them think more clearly and enable them to spot logical fallacies that are so common in journalism, politics, business, and even in school.

I believe Brent has improved my brain more than anyone else on earth, so I hope you enjoy learning from Brent Dunn today, because I always do.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Brent's rejection from a premier school, his acceptance, and his expulsion from chemistry for shooting projectiles toward his teacher

• Moving to Finland for a church mission

• Proposing to his girlfriend two weeks after their first one-on-one date

• Defaulting into a philosophy major

• Chasing volcanoes

• Becoming an LSAT teacher

• We also covered logical fallacies:

• inaccurate word strength

• insufficient evidence

• faulty comparisons

• fallacious appeals to authority

• ad hominem attacks

• confusing correlation with causation

Follow Brent

Website: https://acetestprep.com/

Volcano hunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5Se7FssokU

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Website: https://natemeikle.com

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• LK99 Superconductor
• Tozer going to work for GE Astro Space
• Tozer getting recruited to work for the National Lab in Idaho

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• How Tozer and his team at IBM invented MR technology
• How Tozer is better at talking to a horse than a human

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

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Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Two specific examples of youth he mentored
• The mental rules he uses to manage the stress of mentoring youth
• Internships he had while in college

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Marc earned an undergraduate degree from Amherst College and a Ph.D. from California Berkeley.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed more than 2,000 people spanning more than 85 years. The one finding that stands out above all others: Relationships keep us happier and healthier through our lives.
•  Relationships help us navigate stress, overcome challenges, deal with emotions, figure out our path, and connect us with our past. Relationships are also where we experience our most joy, and they also predict our health and happiness.
• The risk of mortality associated with loneliness is about the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
• One of the biggest problems with loneliness is that it’s quite prevalent. In the United States, in a given week, 20-50% of adults report being lonely. Given that loneliness is as damaging to health as smoking 15 cigarettes/day, the surgeon general talks about this is a public health crisis.
• In the past, people had to get out of their house to see whether the Jones’s where better off than them. But now we can socially compare ourselves from our phones. And most of us come out of those comparisons feeling worse about ourselves.
• By going more virtual and focusing on efficiency we miss out on informal connections, like talking to people in the hallway.
• Just as physical fitness is important predictor of health and happiness, so too is social fitness. By thinking about our social lives in terms of what’s working, and then prioritizing our positive social relationships, we can improve our happiness.
• When people in their 80s discuss their regrets, most regrets are centered on relationships. For example, losing contact with friends, or not being as kind as they could have been to the people they loved.
• Social fitness is all about making time for our friends and loved ones. Eating lunch with them, going on walks with them, or calling them. As the key finding from the 85-year Harvard Study of Adult Development shows, relationships keep us happier and healthier through our lives.

Follow Marc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-schulz-20663222a/

Website: https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/marc-schulz

The Good Life Book: https://amzn.to/41ShAe3

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Website: https://natemeikle.com

First Travis Kelce: “I got the greatest coach this game has ever seen. He's unbelievable at not only dialing up plays and having everybody prepared, but he's one of the best leaders of men that I've ever seen in my life. I owe my entire career to that guy. I just love him man.”

Second Patrick Mahomes: “I believe he is the best coach of all time. For me, he brings out the best in me because he lets me be me. He doesn’t try to make me anyone else. I don’t think I would be the quarterback that I am if I didn’t have coach Reid being my head coach.”

I can’t imagine two better endorsements of Andy and his leadership style. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When Andy thinks about the most important things he’s learned about leadership, he thinks about his role models, from church leaders to LaVell Edwards.
• What Andy especially loved about LaVell Edwards is that he was never out of control, he was honest, he was a good teacher, and he was consistent.
• Andy is so good at applying lessons learned from LaVell Edwards, for example, keeping control of his emotions when getting “bumped to the other side of the 50” by Travis Kelce in the Super Bowl.
• Andy is so good at applying lessons learned from LaVell Edwards. For example, committing to always be honest with his players because he doesn’t believe you can be a good teacher if you’re not honest.
• One of Andy’s greatest leadership strengths: He knows his players. He remembers that Chris Jones was wearing a red tuxedo 8 years ago when Chris didn’t get drafted in the first round. He knows that Travis Kelce is the oldest player on the team. He remembers drafting Kelce in his first year at Kansas City and has watched him grow up.
• Andy’s greatest leadership strength: He loves his players. Andy loves Travis Kelce for his passion, even when getting yelled at and bumped in the Super Bowl. Andy loved Travis for putting his body on the line every play and for wanting to give more.Andy loves Chris Jones for committing to do all he could do to win the Super Bowl, and then reaching deep into no man’s land to make it happen. Andy loves Patrick Mahomes coming into the huddle every day saying, “Let’s be great!”
• It’s important for leaders to be calm, honest, consistent, teachers. But I think Andy is one of the greatest of all time for two additional reasons: He knows his players and he loves them.

Follow Me:

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Website: https://natemeikle.com

At Yale, Zoe teaches one of Yale’s most popular classes, Mastering Influence and Persuasion. She also collaborates with Google and Optum Health. Prior to her engagement at Yale, Zoe marketed a $200 million segment of the Barbie brand at Mattel and developed an executive education leadership program at Harvard.

Her research has been covered in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Scientific American, Psychology Today, Financial Times, and Discover.

Zoe received her doctorate from Harvard, MBA from the University of Southern California, and bachelor’s degree from Haverford College.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Those who had advantages were seven times more likely to ask for help than those who didn’t. But, if we help those who ask and don’t seek out and support those who don’t ask for help, we further perpetuate inequality.
• By developing policies with an eye towards helping those who are less likely to ask for help, we can help level the playing field.
• A lot of privilege in this world is a result of asking for help. But when we help those who ask for help, we can unintentionally perpetuate the Asking Gap, as we help those who already have more privilege.
• An employee who had just had a child was struggling to keep up with work. So, she asked to work remotely. The manager, being kind, agreed. But the two previous mothers who had just given birth, but hadn’t asked to work remotely, were short changed. So, the company created a policy allowing all mothers the same benefit.
• To reduce the Asking Gap, Zoe automatically grants a two-day extension to anyone who asks. All they have to do is send an email to an email address which automatically responds with the extension.

Follow Zoe

X: https://twitter.com/zoebchance

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoebchance/

Website: https://www.zoechance.com/

Book: INFLUENCE IS YOUR SUPERPOWER,

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Website: https://natemeikle.com

Dolly’s work has been covered on the TODAY Show, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Atlantic, The goop Podcast, NPR, Dr. Phil, and other media outlets. And Dolly’s TED Talk was named one of the 25 Most Popular TED Talks of 2018 and currently has more than 5 million views.

Prior to becoming an academic, Dolly worked at Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, and Time Inc. Dolly earned a psychology and economics degree from Cornell University and an MBA, M.A. and PhD from Harvard.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Just as our brains are limited in how quickly they can process and store information (bounded rationality), our brains are also limited when it comes to ethical decision making (bounded ethicality).
• By using systems, we can safeguard ourselves against some of our biases. So, for example, rather than just hiring for fit, and possibly perpetuating inequality, we can formalize the hiring system and hire for behavioral competencies.
• Just as we need financial literacy to understand finance and how to invest, we also need psychological literacy to understand ethics and how to behave ethically.

Follow Dolly:

Website: https://www.dollychugh.com/

X: https://twitter.com/DollyChugh

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dolly-chugh/

Book: https://amzn.to/4aPkPHh

Follow Me:

X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Bob has given keynote speeches to more than 200 groups in more than 20 countries and has been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including ABC, Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, Fox, NBC Today Show, PBS, NPR, Marketplace, and CNN.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The best leaders see themselves as trustees of other’s time. As Bob told his employer at Stanford, and even a Google executive yesterday, “If the California DMV can be trustees of our time, you can do it for your employees too.”
• At the CA DMV, Bob showed up at 7:30 am, and 60 people were in front of him. Bob was thrilled when he saw a worker walking each row passing out forms, prepping people for their visit, and re-routing those in the wrong line. This DMV hero was a trustee of other peoples’ time (and Bob was out in less than an hour).
• Our natural tendency is to add things to anything we do, whether it’s a recipe, a vacation, or our jobs. But when we switch to the subtraction mindset, we can vastly improve things.
• Switch to the subtraction mindset: In the state of Michigan there was a form that 2.5 million residents filled out that had 1,000 questions. But thanks to Project Reform, the form is now 80% shorter and takes half the time.
• Lead with love. Starting with love, and then building the logistics behind it, can lead to vastly improved experiences compared to starting with logistics. For example, when Netflix made it easy to cancel, they got much better data from their customers.

Follow Bob:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/work_matters

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobsutton1/

Website: https://www.bobsutton.net/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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Huggy has also consulted with organizations such as British Petroleum, CEMEX, General Electric, IBM, Mass Mutual, American Cancer Society, the FBI and CIA.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Whether leaders are wasting others’ time or underestimating coordination problems, they are creating bad friction that leads people to say things like, “After pouring myself into my BS work each day, I only have scraps of myself for my family.”
• Not all friction is bad. Creating friction for the Oakland Police Department led to less African Americans and Latinos being unjustly stopped.
• A leader has two primary jobs: remove obstacles that infuriate. And insert obstacles that educate.

Follow Huggy

X: https://twitter.com/huggyrao

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hayagreevarao/

Website: https://huggyrao.com/

The Friction Project Book: https://amzn.to/48BVX3I

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X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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Website: https://natemeikle.com

Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. Previously, Dan worked as a researcher and case writer for Harvard Business School. In the late 1990s, Dan co-founded a publishing company called Thinkwell, which produces online college textbooks featuring video lectures from the country’s top professors. And one proud geeky moment for Dan was his victory in the 2005 New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest, beating out 13,000 other entrants.

Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We’re prone to focus on weakness and shortcomings. Almost 2/3 of emotion words are negative. When we write in journals, we tend to focus on what’s not working. But focusing on our bright spots can be superpower.
• We naturally assume that when there are problems we should spend our time focusing on the problems. But an alternative approach is to focus on strengths…the bright spots.
• It’s so easy to think, “What’s the problem and how do we fix it?” But another mode of inquiry that is every bit as powerful but rarely asked is “What's working today and how can we do more of that?”
• "Again and again in life you’re going to encounter situations with mixed signals. Our natural tendency is to dwell on what's not working, what's broken. But I want you to be the person that says 'Hang on a second, let's flip this and look at the other side of the spectrum. What are the bright spots?'”
• Dan is a serial procrastinator. But by focusing on his bright spots, analyzing when he was at his best, he realized that to be most productive he needed to spend his mornings writing in coffee shops.
• “One company in particular added an increment of about 9 digits of revenue just by studying their own best work.”

Follow Dan:

Website: https://heathbrothers.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-heath-aa5a63147/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whatitsliketobepodcast/

Follow Me:

X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

In this episode we discuss the following:

• For most negotiations use either a playful, upbeat tone or the “Late night FM DJ voice.” And smile.
• Oprah may be the greatest negotiator of all time. And people still like her. Collaboration beats cutthroat.
• Women pick up “tactical empathy” better than men. But also they are punished more than men for bad negotiating.
• Extreme anchors have the tendency of driving deals away from the table.
• If you routinely win “too big” in negotiations, people may stop dealing with you.
• Prepare people for bad news with phrases like, “You’re probably not going to like this…” This phrase is way better than, “Not to be rude…”
• Accusation Audit: Imagine the negative thoughts your counterparty has about you and proactively address them.
• Mirror Technique: Repeat that last 3-5 words of what somebody just said. This is often received much better than, “What do you mean?”
• Labeling Technique: After your counterparty speaks, label what they said by using phrases such as, “It seems like…” or “It sounds like…”
• Use no-oriented questions: “Have you got a few minutes to talk” can be changed to “Is now a bad time to talk?” “Can I have the day off?” can be changed to “Is it ridiculous to ask for tomorrow off?”
• When negotiating salary, first negotiate success: “How can I be guaranteed to be engaged in projects that are critical to our strategic future.”
• And Chris’s final message: You’re going to be more prosperous being collaborative than cutthroat.

Follow Chris:

Website: https://www.blackswanltd.com/

X: https://twitter.com/fbinegotiator

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophervoss/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefbinegotiator/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7jHqdlFFDBhC1QIFqi54w

Book: https://amzn.to/41zEcQj

Follow Me:

X: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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Cassie’s research has been published in leading academic journals, and the course she developed, Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, is among UCLA’s most popular MBA classes.

Prior to joining UCLA, Cassie was a professor at Wharton. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Columbia.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The answer for greater happiness isn’t having more time. It’s making our time more fulfilling.
• Looking at data of hundreds of thousands of working and nonworking Americans shows that people with too little time were just as unhappy as people with too much time. However, 2-5 hours of discretionary time, plus using that time in meaningful ways, was the sweet spot for maximum happiness.
• Happiness isn’t about being time rich. It’s about making our time rich.
• One way to make our time rich is to track our time for a week, while also rating how we feel on a 10 point scale coming out of each activity.
• Initial data shows that social media can set subjective and arbitrary expectations for how we should spend our time, thus decreasing our feelings of time richness and fulfillment.
• When we feel “time poor” we stop helping others. But helping others makes our time more fulfilling thus reducing our feeling of time poverty.
• Time management has traditionally focused on maximizing productivity. But by slowing down and focusing on tasks that are more meaningful, like having a nice conversation with a colleague, spouse, or child, we can increase our happiness and reduce our feeling of time poverty.
• To increase your happiness, take your grandma to lunch. She’ll have perspective, knowledge, and wisdom gained through experience on how to spend your time meaningfully.

Follow Cassie:

Website: https://www.cassiemholmes.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassiemholmes/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• How Tozer started tutoring people in college and in Idaho Falls
• How Tozer used me to help other people
• How Tozer received a standing ovation for standing up for his classmates

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• How the medicine to treat Tozer's tumor affects his quality of life
• Tozer's parenting instinct
• Tozer's work as a court appointed special advocate for children

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Tozer working for Halliburton and driving a truck with no brakes
• Tozer serving as safety coordinator 
• The tumor on Tozer's pituitary gland
• How the tumor affects Tozer's testosterone and prolactin levels
• How the medication clouds Tozer's mind
• Tozer's former ability to do millions of calculations in his head
• How Tozer wanted to remember everything he studied

Follow Me:

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Joe’s clients include AT&T, General Motors, General Mills, Wells Fargo, and Yale University, he has published nine books, and his research has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.

Joe holds a doctorate degree in Social and Organizational Psychology, as well as a master’s degree in Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When people receive feedback about their strengths and weaknesses, they often choose to focus on their weaknesses. But Joe’s research, based on one million assessments of 80,000 leaders, shows that people tend to be better off focusing on their strengths rather than their weaknesses.
• To build leadership strengths, such as trying to improve our honesty, it can be helpful to focus on adjacent strength builders such as assertiveness. By improving our assertiveness, we can improve our honesty.
• Joe’s research shows that those who rate us are twice as accurate at predicting our strengths and weaknesses as we are.
• Steve Jobs had weaknesses, some of which were nearly fatal flaws. But his strengths were so strong, that they more than compensated for his weaknesses in the workplace.

Follow Joe:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoeFolkman

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-folkman-4766813/

Joe’s HBR Article on Strength Builders

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

In this episode we discuss the following:

• After backpacking in Asia for a year, and then returning to the states, Jennifer realized that our culture and infrastructure could be different because she had seen different.
• People think of government as an “other” and unchangeable. But it’s up to us to make government more aligned to our values. 
• Lots of people talk about public service as giving back. But Jennifer got more out of public service than she gave, and hopes that we would all spend time in public service.
• We need to hold our politicians accountable for not only planting new seeds, but also nurturing the seeds that have already been planted.
• David Graeber: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently.”

Follow Jennifer:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/pahlkadot

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpahlka/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

And in 2015 and 2019 Amy won the “Inspiring Yale” Award, voted by students as the most inspiring professor at Yale’s School of Management.

Amy earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Prior to joining the Wharton School, Amy was on faculty at Yale and NYU.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• We make a mistake in thinking that certain jobs are meaningful and other jobs are not. However, the meaning is really in the relationship between people and their work, which makes finding meaning a far more personal endeavor.
• It’s not just about finding fit. It’s also about creating fit. Just as there is some finite number of people we could build a great life with, there are also some number of jobs or careers we could make our own and find meaning in.
• By changing both our perception and behaviors, we can alter the meaning and significance of our jobs.
• Whether we view our job as cleaning hospital rooms or as healing people, there is significant flexibility in how we can craft our jobs and derive meaning from our work.

Follow Amy:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/amywrzesniewski

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-wrzesniewski-032229/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Adam is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 6 books that have sold millions of copies and been translated into 45 languages: Hidden Potential, Think Again, Give and Take, Originals, Option B, and Power Moves. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021.

Adam hosts the TED podcasts Re:Thinking and WorkLife, which have been downloaded over 70 million times. His TED talks on languishing, original thinkers, and givers and takers have over 35 million views.

Adam’s speaking and consulting clients include Google, the NBA, Bridgewater, and the Gates Foundation. He has served on the Defense Innovation Board at the Pentagon, has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and has appeared on the television show Billions. He has more than 8 million followers on social media and features new insights in his free monthly newsletter, GRANTED.

Adam was tenured at Wharton while still in his twenties, and has received the Excellence in Teaching Award for every class he has taught. He curates the Next Big Idea Club along with Susan Cain, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dan Pink, as they raise money to provide books for children in under-resourced communities.

Adam earned his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan, completing it in less than 3 years, and his B.A. from Harvard University, magna cum laude with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa honors.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Be careful about listening to other people's advice because they can only tell us what's worked for them. Adam learned this lesson accidentally from his mom who told him to not be a professor.
• When Adam’s mother advised him to not be a professor, Adam realized how badly he wanted to be a professor by noticing how strongly he pushed back against his mother’s advice.
• It’s common for people to think that the best thing they can do for the world is achieve success and then give back. But this is backwards. It’s through helping other people that we often achieve our greatest success.
• You don't have to wait until you've accomplished a great deal and accumulated a lot of status, power and wealth before you have something to contribute. Give back now.
• Other people’s emails are not your priority. They’re their priority. In other words, your inbox is other people’s priorities. But this also means that emails are an opportunity to do something meaningful for someone else.
• Adam’s mentor warned him that the danger of loving his work is that he might end up working all the time. It wasn’t until Adam had a child and was feeling a sense of compulsive workaholism on Saturday mornings, that he was able to step back and recalibrate his priorities.
• Sometimes we don’t really appreciate the lessons people share with us until we’ve made the same mistakes they’re warning us about.

Follow Adam:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdamMGrant

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammgrant/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamgrant/

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The Japanese tool maker who felt responsible for the suicide of an American.
• The flat tire that helped Tozer save a young man's life.
• How society lets too many young people suffer.

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Tozer teaching himself calculus for fun.
• Tozer arguing with the financial aid office at BYU because they didn't charge him enough.
• Tozer working for 72 hours straight, and later saving a CO2 plant from burning down.
• Tozer receiving a mission call to Japan.

Follow Me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nate_meikle/

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Tozer's grade school teacher would constantly bring him broken things to repair.
• Not knowing his birthday...only knowing that it was during the second cutting of hay. 
• Getting paddled in math class for answering too many questions.
• First time he used a baseball bat, he hit the ball, let go of the bat and hit his coach in the chest and knocked him down.
• Tozer's elementary school teacher still has letters on her fridge that Tozer wrote her.
• When Tozer told his counselor he wanted to go to BYU, the counselor asked if he was LDS. Tozer had never had that acronym but thought we was talking about LSD so Tozer responded that he didn’t do drugs. 
• Tozer was the first person in his grade to be accepted to college.
• First time Tozer took the ACT he scored perfect on math and got a 13 in English.

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Brad earned both his undergraduate degree and master’s degree from the University of Michigan.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Fierce self-discipline requires fierce self-compassion.
• Doing hard things, showing up even when you don’t feel like it, is integral to having meaning and excellence in life. But you’ve got to be kind to yourself too. Because if you’re not kind to yourself, your self-discipline is not going to be sustainable.
• Self-discipline takes you to the really hard places and allows you to step into the arena, but if you beat yourself every time you fail, why would you take that risk in the future?
• Self-discipline and self-compassion end up getting pitted against each other. But as Brad observes people on the path of excellence, it’s not either or. It’s both and.
• Individuals who practice self-compassion are more resilient and tend to work through challenges more skillfully.
• “I knew intellectually that I should be self-compassionate, but it wasn’t until I had a severe episode of depression that I realized I wasn’t very kind to myself.”
• “I was carrying a lot of self-discipline, but no one really taught me the self-compassion side of the equation. And I had to learn that to get through the depression, because simply showing up is really hard when you’re depressed.”
• Self-compassion: “Have your own back.”
• Self-care is really community care. All the research on resilience shows that the number one factor of resilience is seeking support and being enmeshed in a circle of belonging and community.
• The things that work, work until they get in the way. Self-discipline works until you self-destruct because you’re pushing yourself so hard.
• Self-compassion works until you get so soft that you don’t actually start, and every time you feel a little bit off you let those feelings dictate what happens next.

Follow Brad:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BStulberg

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-stulberg-009b168b/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradstulberg/

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Reputation is how people perceive us. But integrity is what we get to choose for ourselves.
• We can hold ourselves accountable for our integrity, but when we worry about our reputation, we’re prone to get led astray.
• If we try to control our reputation, we’re prone to avoid risk (e.g., we don’t do the things we should do because we might make people mad).
• If we try to control our reputation, we may deviate from our values in an attempt to keep other people happy.
• We undermine ourselves when we prioritize reputation over integrity.
• Our long-term reputation will ultimately derive from our integrity.
• You can’t control your reputation. You can control your integrity.
• Brian was told he was ruining his career. But by focusing on integrity over reputation, Brian and his colleagues revolutionized science.

Follow Brian:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrianNosek

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-nosek-682b17114/

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Dan also hosted and produced “Crowd Control,” a TV series on the National Geographic Channel that aired in more than 100 countries. He hosts a popular MasterClass on sales and persuasion, and he appears frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV and radio networks in the US and abroad. 

He has been a contributing editor at Fast Company and Wired as well as a business columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and other publications.

Before venturing out on his own 20 years ago, Dan worked in several positions in politics and government, including serving as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997.

He received a BA from Northwestern University and a JD from Yale Law School.

In this episode we discuss the following: 

• Just get started. So often we want to wait for the perfect time or conditions to do something. But in reality, the best way to find motivation to do things is to just get started.
• Acting creates motivation. If you don’t feel like writing, but then you start writing, you will then feel like writing.
• Julius Erving: “Being a professional is doing what you love to do, even on the days you don’t feel like doing it.”
• “If I decided that I was going to write when I was inspired, I would never write a word.” Instead, I show up in my office, I give myself a word count, and I don’t do anything until I hit that number.
• Once I start writing I feel like writing. I wish someone had told me when I was younger that action created motivation. It took me a while to figure that out and put it in practice.
• Our intuition reverses the sequence. We think we have to feel a certain way to act, when in fact you can act your way into feelings.
• Don’t wait until you feel like doing something to act. Act, and then in most cases, you’ll feel like doing it.
• Start with generosity. In almost any interaction you have, lead with generosity. It makes us feel better, and there are also massive returns to us.
• If we make our default setting to be generous, we may have to switch off the default for some people, but most people are worthy of our generosity.

Follow Dan:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DanielPink

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielpink/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danielhpink

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

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If you’ve never met Tozer, I bet you’re skeptical. If you have met Tozer, I bet you agree with me.

A math and science prodigy, Tozer grew up on a farm where formal education was all but prohibited. Yet somehow Tozer would make his way to the world’s most prestigious firms, first in Silicon Valley and later in Los Alamos at the world’s preeminent scientific lab.

Yet no professional accomplishment compares to the countless lives Tozer has saved, changed, and enhanced.

Please take the time to get to know Justin Tozer on Sundays with Tozer. You will become a better person for it. And you will see that Tozer is Singular.

In this episode we start at the beginning:

• Growing up on a farm.
• Tozer's first house that had no running water or toilets.
• School was everything to Tozer, so much so that he would set the clocks back so he could stay in school longer.
• Chasing his cousin with a pocket knife because the cousin was teasing Tozer.
• Tozer's father, who was mentally ill, in part from serving in the Korean War.
• How laughing at his dad one day changed their relationship forever.

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Robert is known globally as the foundational expert in the science of influence, and his Principles of Persuasion are used by some of the world’s most notable people. For example, Robert worked for both the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton presidential campaigns.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• If you do a favor for someone you work with, don’t say, “No problem.” Rather, say “It’s what we do for one another here.”
• To increase influence with people you don't work with say, "I know that if the situation were reversed, you’d do the same thing.”
• When you go into a situation with unfamiliar people, be generous with them. They will then like you and be more generous with you.
• Don’t ask, “Who can most help me here?” Rather ask “Whom can I most help here?” And after you help them, you’ll have an advocate.
• When we’re generous with others, two levers of influence apply: liking and reciprocity. They will like us more and will want to return the favor.

Follow Robert:

Twitter: @RobertCialdini

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertcialdini/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robert.cialdini/

Website: https://cialdini.com/

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Josh earned a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, a master’s degree in fiction and nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and an undergraduate degree in English from BYU Idaho. In between his master’s degree and PhD, Josh was selected as a Stanford University Stegner Fellow, one of the most prestigious creative writing fellowships in the world. Josh also earned a minor in Spanish and studied at the University of Guadalajara.

In his almost two-decade writing and publishing career, Josh has served in key editorial positions with notable magazines such as Terrain.org, DIAGRAM, and Gulf Coast. Josh now co-operates the creative cooperative and press FOSTER LITERARY with his wife, the poet Georgia Pearle Foster.

Today’s interview with Josh is unique for at least three reasons:

First, Josh has several advanced degrees, as do many past guests, but Josh’s degrees are in literature, making him the first literary fiction author I’ve had on the show.

Second, scheduling this interview with Josh was difficult because it's harvesting season, and Josh is a farmer.

Third, this episode is record-setting, coming in at nearly three hours. Josh is not only a professional storyteller, but also a professional observer of the human experience. And if anything, I wish our conversation were longer.

In this episode we laugh, we cry, and we discuss the profound melodramatic disorder (as Josh calls it) that we each suffer from.

Follow Josh:

Website: www.FosterLit.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foster.literary/ & https://www.instagram.com/jdfish9/

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• We struggle to separate what we know from how we've come to know it.
• When we think we know something, it’s important to remember the tools and methods we used to learn that information, because that determines how much we do know.
• Our environment is censored. We don’t know what we don’t know, and this makes learning difficult. So when we think we know something, remember that our environment is censored.
• So often when people lie, they do so for selfish reasons. But some lies are motivated by kindness, and therefore can have a different impact than selfish lies.
• Remember that we never truly get to see the counterfactual of our decisions.

Follow Maurice:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ME_Schweitzer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurice-schweitzer-2a433534/

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Prior to teaching at Stanford, Matt held senior leadership positions at leading software companies, where he created and ran global learning and development organizations.

Matt is a founder at TFTS Communications based in Silicon Valley that helps people improve their presentation skills. He works with executives to help them prepare and present keynote addresses and IPO road shows, conduct media interviews, and deliver TED talks.

Matt also hosts the Stanford GSB podcast called Think Fast Talk Smart and he curates the website NoFreakingSpeaking.com.

Matt earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford and a graduate degree in communication studies from UC Davis.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Public speaking is something that all of us can improve at. And much of it comes down to managing the symptoms and sources of anxiety.
• When speaking in public, we can manage the symptoms of anxiety by practicing specific breathing techniques, like taking in deep breaths and then exhaling for twice as long as we inhale.
• When speaking in public, we can manage the sources of anxiety by doing something physical, whether it’s walking around, talking with people, or listening to music.
• When speaking in public, we can manage our mindset by reminding ourselves that we have value to bring.
• When speaking in public, remember that the goal of speaking isn’t perfection but rather connection.
• When speaking in public remember that each chance to speak is an opportunity to learn and share, rather than a threat or challenge to fear.
• When speaking in public, strive for connection over perfection.

Follow Matt:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maabrahams/

Website: NoFreakingSpeaking.com

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natemeikle/

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Mike was named a "Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professor" by Poets and Quants, a "Top 50 Best Undergraduate Business School Professor" by Poets and Quants, and a "Rising Star" by the Association for Psychological Science.

He has authored op-eds for the Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Newsweek, Quartz, and New Scientist, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, BBC, New Yorker, Washington Post, Forbes, and TIME.

Mike earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Michigan, a PhD in Psychology and Social Policy from Princeton, and completed a postdoc at Columbia.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Leaders can come from anywhere, because leadership is a behavior, not a position, a verb not a noun.
• We can lead by example, by challenging the status quo, by having difficult conversations, or by listening to others. Ultimately, we get to decide what kind of leader we want to be.
• Age unnecessarily divides us in many ways, especially given that age is the only universal social category.
• We will all join each of ages identities and subgroups if we live long enough. But rather than glue us together, age often divides us, whether its younger people saying, “Okay, boomer” or older people lamenting “kids these days.”
• Generational tensions are not new. There are quotes dating back to 800 BC where the older generation complained about the younger generation in the same way we see today.
• Although both young and old are discriminated against, sadly young people tend to be viewed most negatively, both from older and younger generations alike.
• One way to bridge the generation gap is to recognize that advice given by young people is equally as good as the advice given by old people. Just as leadership can come from anywhere, so too can good advice.
• We probably focus too much on chronological age. To better appreciate people we can view people through other age lenses, such as generation, tenure, and experience.

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Steve’s work as a strategist for senior leaders took him routinely to the White House, the Halls of Congress, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

Steve is also the creator of Doctrine Man, a defense and national security micro-blog with more than 2,000,000 unique visitors each week.

Steve is a non-resident fellow with the Modern War Institute at West Point; Co-founder and board member of the Military Writers Guild; Co-founder of the national security blog, Divergent Options; Co-host of the national security podcast, The Smell of Victory and author, co-author, or editor of ten books, and numerous articles, blog posts, and podcasts.

Steve also serves as senior assistant dean at the University of Kansas where he also teaches leadership.

In this episode we discuss Steve's six leadership lessons: 

1. If you take care of people, they’ll take care of you.
2. It’s sometimes better to beg forgiveness than ask permission, especially when commandeering enemy vehicles.
3. Don’t use the hammer unless you need to. And you’ll rarely need to.
4. You can’t lead from under a truck…or from behind a computer monitor.
5. Remember the 3Bs: be brief, be brilliant, be gone.
6. Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

Follow Steve:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Doctrine_Man

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenleonard1/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoctrineMan/

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Dave has published over 60 articles and book chapters in leading management and psychology journals. He’s a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company, and his research and ideas have been covered in Bloomberg, Business Insider, CNBC, Forbes, Fortune, Huffington Post, LA Times, Newsweek, NPR, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post among others.

Dave earned a B.A. in psychology from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the University of Maryland.

In this episode we discuss the following: 

• How to live a good life: Be good. Feel good. Do good.
• To be good, fill our mornings with rocks, the most important, hard things. And then fill in the rest of our day with pebbles and sand.
• To feel good, be happy and healthy now. Don’t keep pushing off happiness to the future because the happiness may never come. Every stage of life can be celebrated. And friendships and relationships should also be celebrated along the way.
• To do good, think about the three attributes that best describe your role model, and then strive to follow their example. Don’t get so caught up in trying to be good that you forget to do good.
• As Aristotle said, we can improve our virtues the same way we improve our other habits.
• If happiness and meaning are habits, we should prioritize them now, rather than waiting for a day that may not come.
• We need to balance self-acceptance with growth. We don’t want to beat ourselves up for not being perfect, but there’s always space to be better.

Follow Dave:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DaveMMayer

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemmayer/

Dave's Website: https://davemmayer.com/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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In this episode we discuss the following:

• Where do you want to get your status from? By being part of a high-status organization? Or by doing great work inside your organization. Would you rather have status or influence? Because often, they are mutually exclusive.
• Are you optimally distinct…fitting in and standing out? If you don’t fit in, you might not have influence. And if you do fit in, are you providing something uniquely valuable, making the work better for everyone else?
• Are there any projects causing you self-doubt? If so, you potentially just found a great source of pride if you complete the project.
• By taking on the thing that no one else wants, and turning it into something that’s really important, you increase your influence.

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As the officer in charge of training for a specialized command, Rich also spearheaded the creation of the SEAL "Mind Gym" that helped SEALs perform faster, longer, and better, especially in high-stress environments.

Since his retirement, Rich has worked as a speaker, facilitator, and consultant, training more than five thousand business, athletic, and military leaders.

Rich shares his work on his website, theattributes.com, and in his excellent book, The Attributes.

In this conversation, we discuss the following:

• Being in charge and being a leader are two separate things. The former is a position; the latter is a behavior.
• We don’t get to self-designate ourselves leaders. Other people decide whether we are someone they want to follow, and they do so based on the way we behave.
• “If you call yourself a leader, and you look back and there's no one following you, I’ve got bad news for you.”
• “I was always in charge of something in the Navy. But whether or not I was a leader depended on how I was behaving and what the people in my span of care thought of me.”
• “There have been people who outrank me hierarchically, and I wouldn't follow them anywhere. And meanwhile there's someone over there by the water cooler who has no hierarchical rank whatsoever. And I would follow that person to hell and back because of the way they behave.”
• You can manage and supervise people, but no one likes to be supervised. They want to follow a leader.
• One of the most important leadership behaviors is accountability. I own my decisions. And I own the consequences thereof, whether good or bad.
• As a leader you can always delegate responsibility, but you can never delegate accountability.
• Rich was commanding officer of a NAVY seal squadron and had delegated the responsibility of the jump to a new jump master. As a result, they missed the mark badly. But Rich owned the results, even though he had delegated the responsibility of the jump.
• When we take accountability, we increase our control. When we blame others, we give up control.
• Leaders aren’t born or made, according to Rich. They’re chosen, based on their behaviors. And one of the most important behaviors for leaders is accountability.
• Accountability puts us in the driver's seat, compared to blame, which immediately cedes our position to the back where we give someone else control.

Follow Rich:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RichDiviney

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/nate_meikle

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