Something You Should Know - How Amazon Got So Big, So Fast & The Epidemic of Workplace Anxiety

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Starting point is 00:00:45 He is, to Amazon employees, certainly an inspirational figure. I think he's an intimidating figure when you're in a meeting. And I've interviewed him, and when he fixes you with that laser-eyed stare, it is intimidating for sure. Also, how having a passion in life can improve your health. And the level of anxiety in the workplace has gone through the roof. Everyone is anxious.

Starting point is 00:01:10 Why? Number one issue was job security. Will I have a job? As you might guess, that impacts everything else. So that uncertainty, particularly about will I be able to pay my bills, was the number one issue for anxiety. And that kind of makes sense.

Starting point is 00:01:26 All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

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Starting point is 00:02:34 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hello there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Do you take your shoes off when you come into the house and ask other people who come over to do the same thing? We do. We've been doing it.

Starting point is 00:03:00 Well, I can't remember not doing it. We've been doing it for a long time in my house. And it turns out it's a pretty good idea because shoes are gross. I mean, really gross. The Rockport Shoe Company and the University of Arizona did some research on just what you're tracking into your house on your shoes. And it's not very pretty. What you walk on gets your house on your shoes, and it's not very pretty. What you walk on gets picked up by your shoes, and you walk on public streets, public bathrooms, and who knows where else.

Starting point is 00:03:34 So you can imagine what sticks to the soles of your shoes. E. coli is a big one. That's on everyone's shoes. Apparently it comes from restrooms, and it can make you sick. The research showed that not only is all this bacteria on your shoes, it is almost certainly transferred to your floors when you walk into your home. So the recommendation is to ask everyone to remove their shoes or wear protective booties over their shoes, and also wash your floors and steam clean your carpets regularly. If you have throw rugs, you should wash them in the laundry every once in a while. And if someone must wear shoes in the house,

Starting point is 00:04:15 you could wipe them with disinfectant wipes first. Now that removing your shoes is becoming more acceptable in Western countries, don't be shy to ask. In fact, a lot of times people come to our house and ask if they should take off their shoes, to which I typically say, sure, that's a good idea. It is your health, after all, and most people will comply, including workmen who come into your home. All you have to do is ask, And that is something you should know. It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't interact somehow with Amazon, at least on a weekly basis.

Starting point is 00:04:57 Either you buy something from them, or you receive something that someone else bought on Amazon, or maybe you sell products on Amazon, or you see their trucks and vans go by, you have an Alexa speaker or a Kindle, maybe you're an affiliate who puts Amazon ads on your website. So how did this company that started out just as an online bookstore become such a giant retailer of so many things, as well as a movie studio, and just an overall tech giant that shows up in your life somehow on a pretty regular basis. Brad Stone has some great insight into this. Brad is Senior Executive Editor of Global Technology at Bloomberg News, and he's author of a new best-selling book called

Starting point is 00:05:46 Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. Hey, Brad, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. So if you had to answer in a sentence or two, how did Amazon become such a huge, huge force? Was it dumb luck? Jeff Bezos is a genius. What's the, you know, the one phrase answer? Certainly there's some luck, but no, he's brilliant.

Starting point is 00:06:15 And it's not just the intellect or the ingenuity to come up with things like the Kindle or Alexa or Amazon Web Services. And those were all Jeff Bezos ideas. But it's the it's the powerful force of the founder, the relentless drive to kind of empire build. Bezos is just a forward propellant, and he is micromanaging teams that are working on new things like Alexa and the cashierless grocery stores. He's coming into businesses that have been autonomous for a decade to make new demands and to tell them they're not profitable enough. He's coming up with ideas that are somewhat

Starting point is 00:06:58 disastrous, like HQ2, that auction for Amazon's second headquarters. And I describe Amazon as scaffolding built around Bezos's brain. And it's also around his personality, right? And his charismatic force. And it's a little bit like Steve Jobs at Apple or some of the other great entrepreneurs in history, Sam Walton at Walmart. He is Amazon. And it's that really unique combination of ambition and drive and intellect and inventiveness that made the company a success. Amazon started as an online bookstore. And so was it always meant to be so much more than that? Or did the so much more just happen as a result of starting off with this online bookstore? Well, it turns out when you remember Amazon in the days when it was a bookstore, you're

Starting point is 00:07:48 kind of dating yourself, and that's in the 1990s. But Bezos conceived the idea for Amazon when he was at a hedge fund called D.E. Shaw. And the idea wasn't just a bookstore. It was an everything store, that this new thing called the internet could allow a kind of endless selection. Even if you didn't have it sitting there in the warehouse, you could just go get it. And books were the beginning. It was a kind of a strategic opening salvo, starting point.

Starting point is 00:08:14 But he always had those ambitions. And now he's kind of followed it one by one, opportunities as they arise, cloud computing, e-books, now voice computing, grocery delivery, so much more. I don't think he ever conceived of a $1.6 trillion company, but certainly he was betting on the internet and on this confidence he had that you could build a new business and really a fortune on this new technology. And that was back in 95 or 94, when most of us, to the extent

Starting point is 00:08:46 that we use the internet, you know, we thought it was this funny little thing where you could send an email to your high school pal and nothing more than that. So he was a visionary in that respect. What kind of guy is he? Is he a nice guy? Is he a jerk? Is he, you don't know or what? Well, he is to Amazon employees, certainly an inspirational figure. I think he's an intimidating figure when you're in a meeting and I've interviewed him and I've been at press conferences and asked him questions. And when he fixes you with that laser eyed stare, you know, it is it is intimidating for sure. You know, is he is he nice? I mean, I think he's pretty driven. Look, I'm not friends with him, right? And he's very guarded when it comes to the press. So I can't speak to his personality, but I think that he is demanding. I have stories in Amazon Unbound where he takes an

Starting point is 00:09:41 underlings document filled with an appendix full of data and numbers, and he spots the mathematical error. And he says, if I can't trust this number, how can I trust anything in this memo? And he rips it up and he throws it down the table. So, OK, that's not a nice guy. That's a guy with incredibly high standards who's kind of a jerk. So maybe, Mike, that answers the question. He's a jerk like all, you know, like Steve Jobs before him and Bill Gates when

Starting point is 00:10:10 he was CEO of Microsoft. The jerks still reign in Silicon Valley in the tech world. When you look at the big milestones in the history of Amazon, like Alexa, like you say, for example, Alexa was his idea. Was, was the whole idea of smart speakers, his idea? Yeah. I mean, before Alexa, you know, voice recognition was Google voice or Siri, where you spoke into your phone, you spoke into a microphone and, and it answered a question. And so that existed. But what Bezos wanted from his engineers was, I'm going to use a technical term, far-field voice recognition. He thought it was awkward to take out your phone and ask it a question. He wanted a speaker that could be

Starting point is 00:10:59 across the room or across a garage. And let's say you were changing your oil, it could guide you through it. Or it was in your oil, it could guide you through it. Or it was in your kitchen and it could recite a recipe. Or it was in your living room and you could have a conversation with it. A kind of Star Trek computer. I don't know, Mike, if you were ever a fan of Star Trek, but they would have these conversations with this voice in the background. And that was actually, it seems like a small thing because, hey, Siri's already there in your phone, but it was a hard technical problem because it's with far field speech recognition, you're basically asking a computer to identify a voice, to weed out the echoes, all the acoustic

Starting point is 00:11:39 interference, and that technology didn't exist. So that certainly was a Bezos idea. His engineers actually didn't think it could be done. And the other magical skill he has are the resources at his disposal. And he just hired his way and spent his way into making it a reality. Where did his money come from to finance all this? Well, I mean, this was Amazon money. So the company in 2010 is already a hundred billion dollar market cap company. He and remember back like Alexa. So, you know, he's basically created this machine that, you know, churns out cash. But instead of giving investors a dividend or buying back Amazon stock, he's investing in new things. And it took a while for the world to figure that out. And it was, I think, deceiving for some competitors. They just thought, well, Amazon's not a real threat. It's losing money. But investors allowed it to do it. And it gave Bezos this big purse, this big war chest with which to go and pursue new industries.

Starting point is 00:13:00 And one of the industries he pursued, which seemed a little odd, was a traditional newspaper. Why? Why did he buy the Washington Post in 2013? It's a great, great question. Part of it is circumstance. The Post is owned at the time by Don Graham or the Graham family. And Graham was a friend of his. The paper was in decline, was for sale.

Starting point is 00:13:27 I think Bezos thought, well, you know, this is a relatively kind of minor investment, but maybe he can save an important public institution. Perhaps he had some foresight to understand that owning a paper might be good for his image. We in the media love a newspaper savior, and Bezos, with a modest investment and the application of his ideas about kind of embracing changes and trends, has become a savior. Like, there's lots of reasons to criticize Bezos, but his ownership of the Post is not one of them, right? He saved the Post. He turned it around. The newsrooms double the size. The digital subscribers have grown by a factor of five. It's really a remarkable turnaround and maybe got a little lucky with the Trump administration and all media boats floated

Starting point is 00:14:16 a little bit in that turbulent time. But he's been good for the post. And I think it's been good for his image. Now, his image is so bad because people see Amazon as like a dangerous monopolist. And Bezos is, you know, is the wealthiest guy in the world at a time of terrible income inequality. But I think the Post maybe makes a little bit better. Is he particularly conscious of his image? Does he worry about his image or he worries about his business? Well, I mean, I think that he's receptive to criticism. And when he, you know, reads, you know, criticism of Amazon and its relationship with its workers,

Starting point is 00:15:03 I mean, we can criticize them for being too reactive. But, you know, today, the day we're speaking, Amazon said it was hiring 75,000 workers at a $17 an hour wage. And, you know, that's $2 above $15 an hour, which itself was leading when they announced it. And so I think he does worry, maybe not about his image for his image sake, but about the practical impact of doubt seated in the customer's mind when they're presented with the buy now button on Amazon. And do they feel good about that? Or do they feel like, you know, they're supporting injustice or climate change or, you know, any ill that Amazon is accused of adding to. And so Bezos, you know, he administers to that. And the last letter that he wrote to investors,

Starting point is 00:15:52 probably the last one he will write because he's resigning as CEO, was all about image burnishing and defending Amazon and positioning it as a contributor to society. And so, yeah, I think it really does indicate that he cares a lot about how he's perceived. We're talking about the remarkable success of Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos. I'm talking with Brad Stone. He's author of the book, Amazon Unbound,

Starting point is 00:16:18 Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series

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Starting point is 00:17:04 in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go Network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

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Starting point is 00:18:19 The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Brad, what about the concern that Amazon is crushing small business, that they can sell virtually anything, often for less, get it there pretty fast, and have selection that, you know, your local store can't have, And that's really hurting small business. I think it's legitimate. You know, Amazon has all the advantages. It had all the advantages going into the pandemic. And then suddenly people were fearful of going into stores. And it was like Amazon got injected with a dose of steroids. It's incredibly hard for small merchants to compete with Amazon. And if they sell on Amazon, they're subjected to Amazon's rules. They have to compete with sellers around the world who sometimes pay

Starting point is 00:19:13 little or no taxes, who might take advantage or try to game Amazon's fraud systems or review systems. And look, I think there's plenty of room for regulators to look at what Amazon does with the data at its disposal, how it decides what products to launch under its own private brands. And these big tech companies, they have such wealth right now. And the fact that they've been allowed to acquire smaller companies and get ever bigger, I think that age is coming to an end. There's an understanding in the Biden administration has has indicated its sort of willingness to block these kinds of deals because, you know, they don't want to see the big companies

Starting point is 00:19:53 get even bigger and stronger. When I look at the success of Amazon, I think, well, why him? Why didn't somebody else do this? And why is there no second? Why is there nobody nipping at his heels, you know, like Avis and Hertz or VHS and beta? Pick your analogy. But there's Amazon and then it seems there's everybody else. Look, I mean, eBay started around the same time as Amazon and took a different approach and got a little distracted, had a lot of turnover and leadership, and it has faded a little bit. And certainly, you know, other, Walmart and Target are fast-growing competitors, but much smaller.

Starting point is 00:20:40 And then you have companies like Shopify that do, you know, represent brands selling directly to customers. And those are success stories. So there are maybe other, there are the, the other car rental firms, but you're right. No one on equal footing. And, you know, and for a number of reasons, one, Bezos has just been a very clever CEO. He has kept doubling down and investing in new businesses. You know, eBay's CEO, to just use that example, you know, resigned after the first year, Piero Midiar, and turned it over to professional managers,

Starting point is 00:21:12 one after another. But Bezos stayed at the helm all along. So maybe one answer to the question, Mike, is that the CEO, you know, or the founder, who really commands somewhat magical powers at any company when you're the founder, he founder who, who really commands somewhat magical powers at any company, when you're the founder, he stayed for the whole ride and he, he drove the business forward and he took the risks and he, he, he made sure the investors were on board and he, he encoded a

Starting point is 00:21:36 kind of operating philosophy in the company and drove the culture. And, you know, and, and the, and the companies that started at the same time didn't have that. They didn't have their Jeff Bezos. So he's kind of the secret weapon. And, you know, and we'll see as he moves on to do other things, whether that impacts Amazon or whether what he has built is so resistant, you know, or so durable that Amazon continues to grow and dominate. What has he gotten really, really wrong? Yeah, well, a couple of things, a couple of places where Amazon has fallen flat on its face. One place is in China, where he invested billions of dollars over many years, but not enough to make a difference. And they kind of got crushed by Alibaba,

Starting point is 00:22:24 and maybe the Chinese government was never going to let a difference. And they got kind of got crushed by Alibaba. And maybe the Chinese government was never going to let a Western company succeed. You know, that was kind of a disaster. The sort of famous smartphone, the Fire Phone, Bezos had a vision for that. He, just like he had a vision for Alexa, was kind of far out. His employees didn't believe in it. He didn't really listen to them. And, you know, it made a, it left a crater in the, in the, in the, in the universe of smartphones. Um, so that's another one. And look, the space company that he owns, Blue Origin, uh, still, you know, TBD in terms of its impact, it's, it's far behind SpaceX. Um, the personal saga, you know, splashed on the on the tabloid newspapers. He certainly somehow,

Starting point is 00:23:08 this is a mystery to me, underestimated the interest that people would have in his personal life if he, you know, basically started a relationship while he was married. So that he got wrong. And HQ2 is another good example. I think. He conceived this process of, you know, Amazon is having a hard time in Seattle. Let's go to a place that wants us. And he created this bake-off between 238 regions around North America. And they had a terrible backlash because, you know, a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar company was seen as soliciting incentive packages and tax relief. So maybe it's not surprising as you become a multi-billionaire that you kind of lose a little bit of your sense for which way the political winds might blow or how people might perceive you or how receptive customers might be to a new product that you would like, but maybe nobody else would. So look, but his willingness to do these things and to fall on his face and to fail is probably part of the elixir of what makes him successful also. Well, Jeff Bezos certainly is out front there as the face of Amazon, but given all the businesses that they're in and how much money they make and all the things they do, there must be other people right behind him who I would assume are pretty smart.

Starting point is 00:24:31 There's a leadership team there. Andy Jassy, who's taken over as CEO, has run AWS, the cloud business with a lot of autonomy. That's been incredibly successful and profitable. You know, there's a guy named Dave Clark who runs the operations business, and that includes the vans that drive our roads and the trucks on our highways. And that guy is like a little mini Bezos in some respects, and he's been incredibly successful. This is a company of over a million employees, and Bezos has had an impact and has been inspirational and started some of the most important new products. But it's some of those veterans who have taken his ideas and run with them. There was a lot of criticism of Amazon during the pandemic and a lot of the criticism coming from within that people who work there were complaining that they were not being treated well.

Starting point is 00:25:23 What was that all about? You know, stores were able to close down. Amazon kept operating. There was a period in March of 2020 when arguably the CDC was being inconsistent. Amazon was trying to do the right thing. But you heard from employees all around the country that they didn't feel safe, that infections were happening inside fulfillment centers. I do think Amazon ultimately kind of got its act together and invested in things like thermal temperature scanners, on-site COVID testing, social distancing, and did a pretty good job of steering through the pandemic as they fulfilled all of this increased customer demand, but they weren't perfect. And they put their employees at risk. It's hard to tell because,

Starting point is 00:26:10 you know, employees could have been infected on their way to work, on their way home from work. There were probably some infections in the fulfillment centers. But the other thing they did, which, you know, is just smells bad, is they ended up firing some of the most prominent internal critics, the employees who were speaking out and saying they didn't feel safe and Amazon needs to do more. And Bezos and his team just seemed to not be able to tolerate any internal criticism. And they fired some of those employees. And I think that left a bad taste in the mouth of many Amazon employees to see that this company could be so hard on internal dissenters, even dissenters whose values and whose motives are genuinely good.

Starting point is 00:26:54 When I think of Amazon, and I think when most people think of Amazon, we think of shopping boxes being left at our front door kind of thing. But Amazon's in a lot of other businesses. You mentioned Kindle, Alexa. But what else do they do that makes money for them that people might not know? Well, one of the big ones is advertising. And you search for anything on Amazon, and it used to be this hierarchy of useful results. And now it's basically ads. So sellers are paying to appear

Starting point is 00:27:26 in Amazon search results. It's kind of pay to play. And that is now an enormously successful and profitable business for Amazon. So that's one. I'll give you one other. We all know they bought Whole Foods, but they have been quietly opening grocery stores that they call Amazon Fresh. And the idea there is they've got these grocery carts where if you drop in a package, it'll scan it automatically. And there is another variety of them where there are cameras in the ceiling and weights in the shelves. And if you take an item off a shelf, it'll automatically charge you. And so they've got this idea that they can start opening physical stores and tap that 90% portion of retail that's not online and do it with a kind of technologically sophisticated system. And, you know, if they're successful there, watch out because there's plenty of room for Amazon to grow. And haven't they also opened brick and mortar bookstores? That's right.

Starting point is 00:28:25 And then these kind of gift stores called four star stores. Why? Why these little nickel and dime compared to Amazon? Why? What's the? Well, because of what I just said. Online retail is 10% of all retail. So if you're a big company, you need big opportunities to grow. And physical retail

Starting point is 00:28:47 is still 90%. And, you know, groceries, a lot of people want to go into a grocery store and hold up the pair and sniff it and, you know, you know, see how ripe it is. And only a small percentage of people are going to really shop online for groceries. And so it's just an opportunity. And so one day somebody at Amazon woke up and said, let's get in the movie business. Let's get in the streaming business. And it just, it seemed kind of weird to me. And not only are we going to get into the streaming business, we're just going to give it away to our Prime members. What was that about? Let me, let me go through the logical chain. We talked about Amazon being the everything store, and DVDs and VHS cassettes were a shelf on the everything store. And then what happened in the mid-2000s is that business started to decline, and people started to look

Starting point is 00:29:41 to download movies. And so Amazon started a video-on-demand business. They want to always be there. And then Netflix kind of moved from its envelope service to subscription video, sign up, pay a monthly fee, stream anything. And Amazon did that too. But Bezos knew that the catalog wasn't going to be as big as Netflix's, and he made it free within Prime. And then Netflix and Amazon started dueling to license catalog big as Netflix's and he made it free within Prime. And then Netflix and

Starting point is 00:30:05 Amazon start dueling to license catalogs of TV shows and movies. And that's really expensive. And they make the economic decision that maybe it'll be better to just do their own movies and TV shows. And so they start Amazon Studios. And then Bezos being Bezos, he wants to do things a little differently. And he gets kind of creative and funky and has these grand ideas about how maybe people can vote on what they want to see. None of that quite works out. But it brings us to today where Amazon's making big movies, particularly Amazon, which is so in the public eye, you know, it sells direct to consumers, as does Apple and other companies. It's interesting to hear the story behind this very public and visible company. My guest has been Brad Stone. Brad is Senior Executive Editor of Global Technology at Bloomberg News, and the name of his book is Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. And there's a link to that book at Amazon. See, they're everywhere in the show notes. Thanks, Brad. Thank you, Mike. Good to be here. Hey, everyone.

Starting point is 00:31:27 Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners

Starting point is 00:31:41 that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:32:01 New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:32:39 This past year or so has been filled with a lot of uncertainty. For many of us, uncertainty about our health, money, school, work. And with uncertainty comes anxiety. Anxiety at work, especially now, is a really big problem. Here are some interesting numbers. In one survey, 70% of American workers reported that the COVID pandemic has been the most stressful time of their career. In another survey, 89% of workers reported that their work life was getting worse, and 85% said their well-being was in decline. Stress and anxiety are big problems for a huge portion of the workforce, and Chester Elton, who is a speaker and author on workplace issues,

Starting point is 00:33:28 decided this was an important enough problem to investigate. He is co-author of a book called Anxiety at Work. And what he discovered about this topic is really interesting, and I think important for anyone who works. Hey, Chester, welcome. Hey, Mike, delighted to be here. Thanks for the invitation. So when you investigated this whole problem of anxiety at work, what is it that you found? You know, we looked at the research, people that were anxious before COVID, and it was about 20%. Now, this is severe anxiety that would actually impact your life, right?

Starting point is 00:34:08 COVID hits, it jumps up to just under 40%. What was really interesting is when we looked at the data in younger people, that, you know, people in their 20s, it was almost 50%. It was well over 40%. was really shocking was 70% of Gen Z and millennials said that they had left a job because of mental illness or anxiety or not being able to cope within the last three years. So when you ask me that simple question, who's anxious? The answer is pretty much everybody to some degree. It's when you get into that debilitating anxiety where it gets really concerning. It actually is the number one issue for businesses. Well, if it's number one for businesses, you know that that ripples into your personal life as well. So not only did we see that in our research around, you know, business culture, the ripple effect into personal lives was dramatic as well.

Starting point is 00:35:03 What are people anxious about? Number one issue was job security. You know, will I have a job? As you might guess, that impacts everything else, right? Number two was health. Not only personal health, but health of family, friends, and so on. So that uncertainty, particularly about will I be able to pay my bills, will I be able to provide for my family, was the number one issue for anxiety.

Starting point is 00:35:34 And that kind of makes sense, doesn't it? The net result of that is what? Other than we got a bunch of anxious people, what else? Well, it impacts literally every facet of your life, right? It impacts your ability to deliver in the workplace. You know, we have a whole chapter that we deal with called perfectionism, that when you're unsure about your job, you tend to do more than, you know, as expected. You want every report to be perfect. You'll work longer hours, you'll work into the weekends and so on. The other thing that impacts is when that pressure is on you.

Starting point is 00:36:14 And I'm sure a lot of your listeners have been in between jobs or felt like their jobs were threatened. The ripple effect into personal relationships is really dramatic. I mean, it's well known that through the pandemic that, you know, divorces are up, relationships are more tenuous, and on and on. And you can often trace that back to uncertainty about, will I have a job to pay the bills? It sounds like that would be good for business. Now you got a lot of perfect people. You would think so. And that's an interesting perspective. What actually happens, Mike, is that the difference between it's good, it's really good and perfect. Okay. So this is something

Starting point is 00:36:57 we talk to people all the time. Say, look, set your parameters, you know, make sure that the boundaries are there, that sometimes just good is good enough, right? Whether it's at home or at work. And as, you know, co-workers, as spouses, as family members, you want to make sure those boundaries are there because the difference between very good and perfect, the amount of effort that you've got to put in to get that last couple of percentage points. You know, as my brother Byron always says, that juice isn't worth the squeeze. That actually perfectionism is sort of the enemy of getting stuff done.

Starting point is 00:37:47 You know, the subtitle of our book is, you know, these eight strategies to help people build resilience, deal with uncertainty, and get stuff done. So where you may think that perfectionism is going to cause all this extraordinary work being done, it actually does hold up getting things done, with the exception, and I think you'll agree with me on this, there are certain, you know, professions where you do want perfect. You know, if I'm going in for open heart surgery, I want that surgeon to be perfect, right? I don't say, ah, good enough, stitch him up. The fact is, in most cases, that extra little 2% or 3% to get to perfect is not worth it. And so, but if you're worried about your job security, and you're worried about your health and the health of other people, and you're just overall anxious, what do you do about it? I mean, it is what it is. And this was another data point that was just shocking for us, that only one out of every 10 workers felt comfortable talking about mental

Starting point is 00:38:38 health or anxiety in the workplace. And let me ask you a question, Mike, why do you think that is? Why are people so hesitant? I mean, you wouldn't hesitate to say, hey, I broke my leg skiing. I need some time off or I've got COVID. I'm not coming in. Why do you think this subject makes people so hesitant to talk about it at work? Because of the stigma of mental illness. Exactly. Because if I say that, what's it going to do to my career, right? How's my boss going to think of me? You come in and you start talking about that. You don't want your boss to think, oh, he's weak. we can remove because it's not this sordid little thing it's just health we call it mental health right it's just health it's so interesting you say look you you break your leg that's a part of your body you get it fixed well the most important part of your body your brain right when something's not going there why wouldn't

Starting point is 00:39:44 we address that with the same fervor, with the same open mind and say, hey, we just got to get that fixed. And that's the big problem. So we talk about three steps, and this applies at work and at home, is you've got to normalize it. You've got to say, look, this isn't anything, this is a health issue. Let's talk about it. Two is to take that stigma away. Don't be embarrassed. Don't be ashamed. And the third part that we found was really encouraging. As we talked to team members, people in their personal lives, you know, leaders in work, when they hid their mental health, they would lie about it, right? I just don't feel well today. I'm not coming in. Or, you know what, I got this thing I got to do, I got to leave early or whatever, right?

Starting point is 00:40:45 In the book, we tell the story of, he's become a good friend of ours, Chris Rainey. If you were to meet Chris, you would think this is the happiest guy you've ever met, but he's never had a bad day in his life. The truth is, is that from a very young age, he suffered from debilitating anxiety and he hid it from his childhood best friend, who's now his business partner, and his wife and his family. And he said, because I was hiding it, it turned me into a liar because I'd lie about why I couldn't do things.

Starting point is 00:41:15 Finally, and you'll love this because you're a brilliant podcaster, on his own podcast, he was interviewing a chief human resource officer from a big pharma company, and they were dealing with anxiety going through COVID and so on. And he admitted on air live that he had suffered from it, not realizing that his whole staff was right behind him and they had no clue. And he turns around to look at them and they're all big eyed with their mouths agape. He wraps up the show and they all to a person rallied around him. And this is the message I want to get through to your listeners. The people that care about you, and there are many, when you admit that, look, I've got this thing and it's

Starting point is 00:41:59 anxiety and it causes me to be nervous, it causes me to not be able to work. Do you know what the most common answer is from those friends and family? When you, when you tell them that they say me too, thanks so much for being honest and vulnerable. How can I help? And Chris has said since that moment, when I was honest with my friends and family and coworkers, he has not had another anxious episode. Isn't that unbelievable? Just coming clean that he's anxious relieved his anxiety. Exactly. Now, he's got a personal routine, and this is what I would encourage everybody who's listening do. His, you know, holy trinity is he says, look, I've got to get my sleep, I've got to eat well, and I've got to exercise. Now. I've got to eat well. And I've got to exercise.

Starting point is 00:42:46 Now, for Chris, that works great. All of us need to have, I believe, somewhat of a ritual, kind of a go-to thing. Now, for me, and you and I don't know each other well, if you knew me well, you'd say, Chester, I'll bet COVID's been tough on you because you are really a social animal. And my answer would be, absolutely. It's been really tough. And so for me, I need to get in motion in the morning. So even if I haven't had a full night's sleep, when the alarm goes off, I've got to get out of bed. I've got a little mantra, you know, very Buddhist, you know, be kind, be grateful, be of service. And I go for a walk. And as long as I can get out of bed and get going on my walk, the odds of me having a great day and my anxiety being low, I've got a really good shot at a really good day. And it's really been

Starting point is 00:43:39 interesting that there is not one size that fits all. Find your routine. Find what brings you that peace and that tranquility. I would imagine that there are businesses, organizations that recognize this problem, that people who work for them are anxious and that that probably has an effect on the business. Right. Number one priority for Walmart in the U.S. and in Canada, we're doing some nice work with them in Canada, is mental health. Are you overbooked

Starting point is 00:44:14 or overburdened and worried about burnout, right? Do you need time off for your family? Because what they were finding, back to perfectionism, people weren't taking their paid time off because they thought, well people weren't taking their paid time off. Because they thought, well, if I take my paid time off and they don't miss me, I'll lose my job. Do you know what I mean? There are even companies that would say, if you will take your paid time off, we will give you more paid time off. If you will take the two weeks that is allotted, we will give you an extra two days. And people still weren't taking it. So this idea of building up trust, talking about it more, getting leaders to talk about their stories and saying, yes, I

Starting point is 00:44:52 have dealt with it as well, is going a long way to take the stigma away. Now, I agree with you. There's a lot of work yet to be done. It's getting a lot better. And that's what we're hoping in our writing and our research is to accelerate that process. Is there a fear though of, I mean, this seems, listening to you talk, that this could get really very touchy-feely and we're all emoting about our anxiety. Nobody's doing anything. The work's not getting done because we're all in touch with our feelings. You know, and that's really a valid point. Right. It's helping people be more resilient, you know, deal with uncertainty and get things done. See what we're what we found is the organizations that really embraced it is it allowed people to be more productive you see the only thing worse about or the only thing that's more scary right than not talking about the issue is keeping it to yourself and keeping

Starting point is 00:45:52 it buried that's that's the worst place to be you know the story of chris rainey for me is is a microcosm of so many of us that you hide it you you lie about it, and you are less productive because of that. It doesn't mean that we've got to spend the first three hours of every day sitting in a circle, virtually holding hands and singing kumbaya. Absolutely not. So on the management side, it's a much better investment to invest in figuring out who needs help and how to get it to them than it is to just pretend it's not there and keep applying more pressure. Are there other strategies you found in the research, other things people can do that help to alleviate that anxiety? The power of gratitude we have found is really helpful for people to keep a gratitude journal, to accentuate

Starting point is 00:46:44 the positive. Let's not worry as much about what we don't have. Let's appreciate what we do have, the good people in our lives, the good people we know at work. You know, if you're a person of faith, there's a community there or, you know, the circles that you travel in, to be grateful for that. You know, our studies have shown you can't be in a state of anxiety and a state of gratitude at the same time. So choose gratitude and lighten that load. The other message that is so important that builds resilience is you've got to understand you are not alone. And that is a huge breakthrough for a lot of people.

Starting point is 00:47:21 When you think you're alone and you're hiding it and you're waiting and you're waiting for it to get better, it's really hard to wait alone. If you've got somebody with you on the journey and someone that can relate to what you've been going through, and most of us can. So we've been talking about the anxiety that results from the uncertainty of, will I have a job? Will the company survive? And how to deal with that anxiety. But what about dealing with the uncertainty itself? I mean, wouldn't it be better to know or to find out what the future holds? Because, you know, the people that run the company probably have a pretty good idea of at least what's in store for the near future. We encourage companies, especially when they're going through any kind of uncertainty, whether it's a merger acquisition,

Starting point is 00:48:10 opening new offices, downscaling, and so on, is communication really has to skyrocket. That you really need to tell your people as much as you can tell them as often as you can. You know, if you think you're communicating too much, it's probably about right. Now, back to the individual, it comes down to how much do you trust the people that you work for? How much do you trust the information they're giving you? Now, yeah, it's a little scary. I would come back to say, I think it's a more scary place to just sit there and hope rather than be a little proactive, dip your toe in the water. Are there co-workers I can talk to? Can I talk to someone maybe in a different company as to how they're dealing with it?

Starting point is 00:48:52 You know, get the information. And again, you're not alone. Find your community. Find people you can trust. Hopefully it's where you work. And more and more companies are getting better at it because they realize that this stigma has to be taken away. And this is something that we're going to be dealing with for years to come. And I hope that makes sense. I, I get that, you know, we're going to an extreme to try to make a point here because it is scary and it is tough to admit that you're dealing with these kinds of things. I think it's a tougher place to live when you don't. Well, what's so interesting is that we hide our anxiety.

Starting point is 00:49:30 We don't want anybody to know. And what you're saying is that when you let people know, the anxiety you're trying to hide will dissipate to some extent. Absolutely right. Because what are you doing? You're stewing about it all the time. You know, anxiety is different than stress. Stress is kind of episodic, right? You've got to make a big presentation or you're getting married or you're having a child. Those are, you know, those moments

Starting point is 00:49:55 you get through. Anxiety is that thing that's just in the back of your brain that's always there, that just worries you, that you wake up with worry, you go to bed with worry. And you're right, when you keep focusing on that, it just makes you go to bed with worry. And you're right, when you keep focusing on that, it just makes it worse to the point where you finally just got to find somebody and let it out. You know, find somebody that you can confide in. You know, my dad was such a great guy. I miss him every day. He's been gone for a long time now. He used to say, look, when you're in trouble, you know, the people that love you will rally around you. And the people that don't, never loved you, what do you care? We're worried

Starting point is 00:50:31 about what all these people think of us that we don't know and don't like and are not looking to impress anyway. Let the people that love you rally around you because they will. And to your point, it'll only get better from there, I promise. As we've been talking, you know, I've been trying to think, not just in this past year, but forever, I can't recall anybody confiding in me that they're feeling particularly anxious at work. And yet, from what you're saying, this is a huge problem that a lot of people feel, and if that's true, people are keeping this a big, deep, dark secret that, according to what you're saying, really needs to come out. Chester Elton has been my guest. He is a speaker and author, and the name of his book is Anxiety at Work. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:51:23 Thanks, Chester. Thanks so much. You know what's really good for your health? Having something you're passionate about. That's the observation of Dr. Tel Franklin. He wrote a book called Expect a Miracle. And he noticed in his patients that those who really had something they enjoyed, whether it was knitting or golf or running or work or whatever it is, that those people tended to be healthier

Starting point is 00:51:51 overall than people who couldn't really point to a passion in their life. Here's what he concluded. There's an old quotation that says, you are what you think about all day long. And too many people are caught up thinking about back pain and depression and diabetes and all their other problems. The more they think, the more they become those problems. And it just snowballs downhill. People with passion and purpose have something positive to wrap their thoughts around. And life is happier and healthier.

Starting point is 00:52:27 And it kind of makes sense. And that is something you should know. If you like this podcast, tell someone you know who is not a regular listener to give a listen. That is the way we get most of our new listeners, and you can help by telling a friend. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager,

Starting point is 00:53:02 but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn

Starting point is 00:53:20 between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:53:40 Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - How Amazon Got So Big, So Fast & The Epidemic of Workplace Anxiety

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