The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 489: Todd Henry - Asking Uncomfortable Questions, Solving Big Problems, & Casting Your Vision

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. Receive a carefully curated email to help you become a more effective leader. Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Todd Henry is an international speaker and best-selling author of 6 books including, The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, Die Empty, and his latest book is called The Daily Creative. Notes: The mantra Todd tells himself before going on stage is, "Be Present. Be Yourself." This is a reminder to be in the room, and pay attention to the nuance... And don't try to be someone you're not. Don't apologize for your existence. Authenticity shows that you have skin in the game. I am putting my actions where my mouth is. We crave real experiences: We do business with human beings. The most valuable thing we can do is make genuine connections with people. Make people feel seen and known. Creativity is problem-solving. If you solve problems every day, you're creative. Have a BIG VISION. Walt Disney started as a cartoonist. Todd has Disney's business plan from 1967 hanging up on his wall. All arrows point to the creative output of the film team. Do the "What would blow your mind?" Exercise. Write a list of things that would blow your mind if you accomplished them in the next 10-15 years. What did you do? Who did you do it with? What impact did it have on others? Our greatest work will be accomplished in the community of others. Todd intends to influence 28 million people. That is roughly 17% of working Americans in his field. That ambition points his mind in a direction. Where do good ideas come from? Adjacent possibilities. "I'm not trying to build a business. I'm trying to grow a life." It's important for your kids to see you doing work. You must grow comfortable with Asking Uncomfortable Questions – Brilliant, effective creative professionals are willing to ask inconvenient and uncomfortable questions. Difficult Conversations – Douglas Stone wrote, "Difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values." Clean and dirty fuels — proving doubters wrong or proving supporters right? Detractors can be helpful if they care about you. Reward leading behaviors rather than trailing outcomes. Reward the behavior -- "That was a brave choice." Advice: Get a job and add as much value as you can. Be resourceful. Figure out how to get things done.  Understand where you can uniquely add value and pay attention to what's needed. Stick around long enough to connect the dots. Don't follow your passion. What works better? Put in the hard work to master something rare and valuable, then deploy this leverage to steer your working life in directions that resonate. Todd had bumper stickers made that said: "Safety is not an option." Coming up with safe answers over and over will make us irrelevant. "If you are not inspired, you will not inspire other people." Focus on your inputs. You must take time to read, meet with mentors, and learn from a variety of sources. Pause. Reflect. As leaders, we must make this a priority. Buffalo, Not Cow – "Son, I need you to be the buffalo, not the cow." In Colorado, when storms come, they almost always brew from the West. And then what happens is they roll out towards the East. Cows can sense that a storm is coming from this direction. So, a cow will try to run East to get away from the storm. Without knowing any better, the cows continue to try to outrun the storm. But instead of outrunning the storm, they run with the storm, maximizing the amount of pain, time, and frustration they experience from that storm. Buffaloes run at the storm and by running at the storm, they run straight through it, minimizing the amount of pain, time, and frustration they experience from that storm.  Prune Relationships – Sometimes we need to cut ties with people who drain us.

Jim Collins told me on episode number 216 that the single greatest determining factor in my long-term success or failure would be my who, who I chose to surround myself with. And that conversation has had a huge impact on how I've designed my business. And one of the most important services that I provide is my learning leader circle. and I open up applications one time per year, and that time is now at learning leader circle.com is where you can apply. Now, this is the most inefficient element of my business because I personally read every application, and I personally choose who will go on to the next round, and then who will ultimately be one of the 12 people to be in my next Learning Leader Circle. And I only do it one time per year, and that time is now.

If you are intentional about surrounding yourself with others who will push you, challenge you, make you think differently, if you're willing to self-reflect and do some work, this could be for you. And you can apply at learningleaders circle.com. We meet once per month on Zoom and then we meet one time per year in person for our leadership retreat for members of my learning leader circle. So if you'd like to apply, go to learning leader circle. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world,

will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how my book, The Pursuit of Excellence will help you become a more effective leader. Text, Hawk to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. One of my favorites, Todd Henry is an international speaker and bestselling author of six books, including the accidental creative, hurting tigers, die empty. And his latest book is called The Daily Creative. A few of the topics we cover why we should create a big vision for our lives and careers. This is something that I personally need help with, and I'm glad Todd and I covered it live.

And then how we can be better at having difficult conversations and why we must do this as leaders. And then why we should prune relationships from our lives periodically and focus. on proving the people who believe in us right. Todd is someone I call regularly when I have questions about the creative work I do, and he's always there for me. I value his friendship very much. This one is so good. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Todd Henry.

Todd is so great to have you back on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. Thank you. I am not only grateful that you're giving me a chance to be on the show, but I'm a huge fan. like I actually love listening to your episode. So this is a real joy for me. I probably won't listen to this one because I'll be, you know, like like everything, right?

When you're the one talking, you're kind of cringing the whole time. But yeah, but I love your show. Thanks for what you do. Well, no, you're like, I think people who are big time productive achievers, you're your own harshest critic. And so you listen to yourself and maybe get tired of your own message and you say, let's go. I feel that way when I watch videos of keynote speeches. I'm like, I gotta do some new stuff, but you get the feedback forms and people are saying, well, some of the stories that move them the most are the ones that you've told the most

times because you're probably good at them. So anyway, that and I think also just to that point, I think I wrote about this in the new book is like we're also, I think often the worst judges of our own work. We're our own worst critics and we're also the worst judges of the quality of our own work because what seems obvious to us isn't obvious to everyone. And so we often, I think, feel like, you know, our work isn't measuring up to our expectations, but that's only because we have such high expectations for ourselves.

We have to be careful about that, I think. Do you think I was not going to go here, but I'm glad you brought this. Do you think, I think for me, I almost have to surprise myself. So that's why sometimes the Q&A portion of a keynote, I am most proud of because I've maybe shared something that I haven't publicly shared before or maybe not a lot. So I'm still almost surprising slash impressing myself with what I'm saying versus the killer story that I've told 150 times that absolutely crushes. But it doesn't to me because it's not a surprise at all.

I completely agree with that. And I think for some of us, I think people who teach or, people who lead and maybe you have to sort of repeat the same principles over and over. If it's not a surprise to you, I think it doesn't resonate in the same way with you. It does with others because for them it's like opening a package for the first time. Oh, this is really cool. Whatever it is, it's really cool because it's a surprise and surprise is a huge element of leadership, of effective leadership and making your message resonate, but also a huge element of any kind of creative work that we do problem solving work.

And so for those of us who repeat the same messages over and over, regardless of the context, you know, it can start to feel again a little obvious to us because we've heard it a million times and we've said it a million times. And when we surprise ourselves, we have this, it's almost like we have that same audience response to what we said. I do that very often. I was doing an interview about this new book about a week ago. And I said something that was a new metaphor that I'd never used before.

And I was like, oh, that's, wow. I've got to remember that. And now I've said it three or four times. And now it's like, okay, it doesn't resonate the same way it did the first time. But I think it's that element of surprise. And I think that's a really useful tool for leaders, you know, when they're communicating. And we have to also recognize that just because it feels worn to us doesn't mean it comes across that way to others.

Is there a talk track you have to say in your mind before you go on stage knowing you're going to share a story that you've. shared so many times before that it's not a surprise. Like I know for me, I have to say, this is the first time. And so it needs to feel like it's your first time saying it's them, meaning the excitement level, the surprise, like, don't mess up the timing because you know the ending. Like, you know what I mean? Because I think stand-up comedians are the best at this. You know they've handcrafted these bits and whittled them down to the lowest number of words possible when it comes to that joke. And they say it as if it's the first time, yet you know it's

the thousand time. I think of that before I go on Sage. What do you tell yourself before you go on to make sure it feels to them like it's new and refreshing and you're super excited about it? Yeah. So I do have a little mantra that I tell myself before I go on and it's be present and be yourself. Be present and be yourself because I think it's easy for us to sort of go into performance mode. And again, this is true of leaders, you know, who are giving talks to their organization or to, you and I when we go give a speech. It's easy to not be present, first of all. So you're not in the room. You're not breathing the same air. You're not paying attention to the nuance of what's happening in the room. You're not paying attention to nonverbal communication. You're not

pausing and allowing things to land. But instead, you're sort of like, okay, I got to go on the next thing, the next thing, the next thing, which is when leaders are communicating often, it's about, I'm trying to get my point across. No, you're not trying to get your point across. You're trying to make your point land with people. You're trying to make it sit with people in a deep and resonant and actionable way. And so the be present part for me is about be in the room with these people right here, right now. And the be yourself part is don't try to be someone you're not.

Don't mimic and imitate someone who you think is better than you are at what they do. Just be yourself. Just be present. Be yourself. when you tell a story, tell it in the way that you tell it. When you make a point, communicate it in the way that you communicate it. Use your tone. Use your phraseology. Use your cadence. Use your, you know, the way that you think about it, the way that you experience it yourself. And be unapologetic. You know, I tweeted something the other day, you know, don't apologize for your existence. I think a lot of people in the workplace feel the need to apologize for their existence, meaning, I apologize that I am not something more than I feel like I need to be in this circumstance. Or I apologize that I have an idea that may not be the best idea in the world or whatever it is. We have to train ourselves as leaders not to apologize for our existence.

You are here. You're in this role. You're occupying this space for this time. Regardless of whether you think you belong there or not, you occupy this space for this period of time. And your job is just to be present and be yourself. Be present and be yourself. deliver whatever value you're being charged with delivering and do it to the best of your ability and do it in the way that only you uniquely can deliver and stop apologizing for your existence. And that was early in my speaking, especially. That was something I really struggle with. I struggled with it when I was leading organizations as well. But in my speaking, I always felt that sort of need to kind of prove myself every time I stepped on stage.

And I just stopped doing that. The funny thing is when I stopped. trying to prove myself, there was more gravitas to what I was doing when I just showed up and just decided I'm just going to occupy the space I've been given to occupy. And, you know, that's all I can do. What did it look like at that point when you're, are you, were you trying to look like you, you'd see maybe a Tony Robbins or somebody and you're trying to act like him or you're imitating others? Or what was that, that kind of evolution from the beginning towards the moments when you felt like be yourself. How did that go? I think the way it comes across most, I wasn't really trying to mimic other people, but it was there was a desperation and an urgency to how I communicated.

You know, I desperately need you to understand what I'm saying right now. I urgently implore you to act on what I'm saying right now versus I'm just having a conversation. And so many, if you watch great leaders give effective speeches, they feel very conversational. They're not full of soaring rhetoric and high concept. I'm just having a conversation with you right now, and I'm stepping into your shoes and I'm communicating with you. Yes, there might be a degree of urgency to what I'm saying, but I'm communicating with you in a way that proves that I have skin in the game.

I am authentically here. And that's really authenticity really is about showing that you have skin in the game. It's not transparency. We conflate those things. We conflate transparency with authenticity. Transparency is, I'm going to show you everything and tell you everything, and here I am, works and all. That's not helpful for leaders. Authenticity, however, is I am putting my actions where my mouth is.

I'm putting skin in the game and showing you that I am at potential cost to myself taking a stand and showing you what I care about. When you do that, people will follow you anywhere because they see that you're in it just as much as they are. you're not just offering them soaring rhetoric. And so I think that was for me when I started getting vulnerable on stage, when I started sharing, you know, not just like, hey, here are some things you should do, but also, hey, here are some ways I've screwed up. And when I also started just kind of being present with people and having a conversation, that was when things started resonating much more deeply.

It's weird that the most personal stories. So sometimes I'll like weave back and forth between a personal story and then a story about somebody else that I've learned and shared. And when I, again, ask for feedback afterwards of like what was the most impactful, what's most memorable, what's most useful, they always, and it's like 98.9% say there's like two or three of the personal stories that I share. It's always that. Isn't it weird?

Like those are the ones that people remember. They become actionable because you've attached emotion to it since it was you. Hopefully you do a good job of tying it back to the theme and to the action that you want them to take, but that seems to be the most memorable, and that's a telling sign for me. Two things. One, it's good to get feedback from your audience, but it's also a telling sign that, oh, I thought this bit was really good. It was about somebody else. It was something different. And maybe it was, but it wasn't the most memorable part of the speech. Yeah. Well, I think we crave real experiences. You know, we want to know that we're interacting with human beings. And I think

that's a good reminder for anybody in any kind of business that we don't do business with businesses. We do businesses with human beings. And people aren't consumers. They're human beings. And we need to remember that. At the end of the day, the most valuable thing any of us can do is make a genuine connection with the person on the other side. As leaders, same thing. When we're communicating with people on our team, the most valuable thing we can. can do is just to make a genuine connection with them and ensure that they feel seen and known. You have so much conflict in organizations is the result of people not feeling seen and not feeling known. Or I always tell people the greatest source of conflict in organizations is a result of two things.

I have expectations of you that I've not communicated to you and you're not hitting them, right? Even though I haven't told you, that doesn't matter. You're supposed to read my mind. And so the more we reach out and try to make genuine connections with people and show vulnerability and also offer them entree into difficult conversations with us, hey, you're not meeting my expectation right now and I need to talk to you about that. Boy, that completely changes the game for us as leaders and changes the calculus of the organization when we're able to do that effectively. Your new book's called The Daily Creative, and I love the setup. I feel like this is going to be a great way for you to operate moving forward because there's literally 366 lessons. I think that is so hard to do and you made it look really easy because I started thinking about the daily excellence or daily leadership or whatever.

And I actually started journaling on this stuff through the preparation of the combination of Ryan Holley's Daily Stoic and now Daily Creative from you. It is so much harder than you guys make it look. So first, huge props that every single page and entry is not only useful, but also they're like an entertaining story a lot of it. You're referencing things from your life or things that you've learned. So I think that part alone makes this book something that people have to have to buy. And I want to start actually with, I don't think everyone thinks of themselves as a creative or that's for other people. But really, creativity is about problem solving, which you write in the book. Can you share more about why people who think the creative stuff is for others when in actuality, if you're a leader, you're involved in creativity because creativity is about problem solving. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, I think we often conflate creativity and art. We think that creativity means I paint or I design or I make music or I dance or something. And those are certainly creative acts. But, you know, as you said, if you have to solve problems every day, you're creative. If you're taking disparate bits of info and combining them into a new solution, that's a creative act. So if you're an engineer, you are remarkably creative. If you lead an organization, are you kidding me? I mean, you have to deal with all of the ambiguity. You

and uncertainty, client demands, demands of your manager, demands of people on your team, and you have to figure out how to navigate through all of that, that is a complex creative problem that has to be solved every single day. And so I think, you know, when we don't, when we don't give ourselves the moniker of creative, it's often because we don't want to wear that moniker because we think it's reserved for someone else. It's not. You're a creative professional. And so with that comes all kinds of pressures and dynamics that you may not be aware of and things that you may not know how to deal with. But that also means that there's tremendous opportunity and upside to what you do every single day. If you build some practices into your

life to position you to be brilliant when it matters most. And that's really what Daily Creative was designed to do. And that's really been the focus of my work for a couple decades, right? It's helping people build practices in their life that prepare them for those moments when they need a great idea or when they need to have a well of energy to be able to deal with a difficult problem. And that's really why I wrote this book. And to your point, it's not for, I mean, it is for those artists, but it's also for the manager, the mid-level manager, the manufacturing company, right, who has to deal with all the same pressures and uncertainties that those artists do on the daily basis. Okay, I'm going to dive into some of the entries. So I did not read the book.

how you're supposed to. I just hammered through the whole thing because, well, I mean, I wanted to be prepared. So I didn't read it one day at a time. But I think people could actually read it the way I did and still benefit in a big way if you prefer just to just to plow through it or you do it one day at a time. I think it's either or. So I want to focus on things that I struggle with, Todd. I think people, hopefully audience members could, or people listening could gather that me following my curiosity. It seems to be what people like, and it's certainly what I like. But let's focus on, for one of the entries, is about big vision. Okay. So you read about Walt Disney, and he announced Ebcott through a series of videos in 1966, and this is the title,

this is basically dream big. This is something I really struggle with because I am, and I've been asked, hey, like, what's your vision plan or what's your three to five year, 10 year plan? And it's usually like it's not good. And I think I need to get better and I want to get better at this. I don't think it's one of those things that I'm like, no, it's fine not to be good at. I think I need to get good at it and I'm not, which is like actually planning for the future and thinking about it because now I'm just heads down, do the work, prepare for the next podcast, write the next book, work, you know, prepare for the next keynote speech without really looking up and planning. could you, and maybe this is just a free consulting session for at least this one question,

when you think about that, like having a big vision and how to put this into action, I think probably there are others who struggle with this too. What are some practical ways that we can get better at having a big vision and implementing it? Yeah. So first of all, I think that it is often the case that we begin our careers in our lives with this giant question mark of, I wonder what could be, right? I wonder what, I mean,

you think about Walt Disney. It's a great example, and that's why I used it in the book. Walt Disney started as a cartoonist, basically, for a small Kansas City newspaper and became really like the, you know, probably one of the most,

if not the most influential people in the history of entertainment. If you look at his, and I have it framed over my, behind me on top of my bookshelf, back here. You can't see it in the frame, but it's there. I have a framed copy of his business model from 1967, the Walt Disney Corporation's business model from 1967. And you see all of these things, right? You've got licensing and you've got, you know, music and you've got merchandise and all

these things out on the periphery. But everything, all of these arrows point back to this little factory. And it's the creative output of the film team is at the center of the entire business model. It all comes back to the idea factory. It all comes back to that central thing of the quality of the ideas that are generated at the center of that business model. And so I think for any of us who have been in our role for any period of time, who are starting maybe to allow the harsh boot of pragmatism to begin to snuff out the seedlings of promise and possibility. I think we have to spend some time on our own and set aside some time to just think about what would blow my mind? What if it would happen would be just completely out of this world

and unimaginable to me? In my life, in my career, what kind of impact would you want to have? what kind of work would you want to be doing? Who would you want to be doing that work with? What would the net result of that impact be? We start off with all of these ideas and ambitions, and over time, we allow those rough edges to get rounded out of us because that's what organizations often do. Organizations organize, which means they have to strive for conformity.

They have to because that's the only way they can make things predictable. And so they might say, oh, we want you to be yourself. We want you to bring your unique leadership perspective. we want you to innovate. We want you to come up with new ideas. But at the end of the day, innovation and uniqueness can be threatening to organizations because what they're really striving for is conformity, predictability, then you'd be able to make projections and satisfy stakeholders. And so I think we often learn over time to play the game that gets us the next available thing for us rather than thinking, okay, where do I want this to go? What would my ultimate

ambition be, if I could do anything, what would I do? And I don't mean, oh, go sip margaritas on a beach somewhere because that would be a remarkably boring life, right? Or, I want to work with my laptop from the beach every day. I mean, I think people talk about stuff like that and then they do it for about a month and they realize this is awful, you know, because our greatest work is going to be accomplished in the community of other people. Different people are going to have different aptitudes and different ways of creating value in the world around them based upon their unique combination of passion skills experiences. But I think often we fail to stop, to entertain, to think about what might be possible for us. So I would turn it back

on you, Ryan, and I would say, you know, you could just, you know, settle for having a great business and a nice, you know, podcast that's listened to by a lot of people and all of that. But if you were to imagine what a larger platform for you would look like, what kind of value you could deliver, what kind of change you could create, what would that look like for you? The number that has historically been in my mind is $28 million. I'm not talking about $28 million, about $28 million, about $28 million people, because that is about 17% of the adult working population in the United States. and though it doesn't account for the global population, but specifically my community, the place where I live, if I'm thinking about my country where I live, if I can have a significant influence in the lives of 28 million people, I can change them in some way. I'm going to tip culture. I'm going to because that's how many people typically, about 17 percent, right, when 17 percent

of a population is moved in a certain direction, it changes the rest of culture. And so that's really what, you know, that's sort of the number that's been in my mind for all. long time. That's a huge, ambitious thing. The idea of that it seems ridiculous. And at the same time, is it really? I mean, you know, Walt Disney was trying to invent a new city when he died. I mean, he was literally, Epcot is not what we think it is today. It wasn't like a new theme park with like little experiences from around the world. Epcot was going to be a fundamentally new way of thinking about community planning, you know, experimental prototype community of tomorrow. people movers were going to be public transportation. There were going to be people who lived in this

community and commuted to work on the people movers every day. And it was like a completely new way of thinking about how we could plan communities moving forward. I mean, that's somebody who like drew a mouse for a newspaper, you know, like a couple decades before. And now he's thinking about how do we build new kinds of cities moving forward. And so I think that's the kind of ambition that all of us should aspire to. We should all be thinking way beyond. We should be way, and to, you know, to use the football metaphor, right? We should be way out kicking our coverage, you know, I think when it comes to how we, we dream and we plan. You wrote that your friend Lisa Johnson encouraged you to do this 15 years ago, right? Write your quote, below your mind list.

Do you recall some of the things, did you do it 15 years ago? And if so, what were some of the things on that list that you've now beat or done. I did. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, start a business was one of them. I've done that. Write a book was one of them. I've done that. We wanted to build a house. We've done that twice now since then. We wanted to go certain places on vacation with the family. We've done all of those things. I mean, there are some that are more personal, right? But it's all of these kinds of things that honestly at the time seemed like none of these things are going to happen. I mean, I don't see a path to making these things happen. There's nothing magical about making a list of, and by the way, this is, I think, the January

first entry. And the reason I put it on January 1st is because at the beginning of every year, I want people to begin to think about the trajectory of their life. And I want them to think about possibility, to dwell in possibility. It's a great time to do that at the beginning of a year. And there's nothing magical. about making a list, but what that does is it frames up and it points your mind in a certain direction. You start thinking about how you might be able to bring those things into being.

You start looking for dots to connect. Stephen Johnson in his book, where good ideas come from, he talked about this concept borrowed from evolutionary biology called the adjacent possible, which means combining and synthesizing bits of stimulus or bits of, of input immediately around a problem until you begin to come up with new ideas that could possibly work. And I think that's kind of what happens. When we start making lists like this, we start looking at our environment and our circumstances and our opportunities and we start paying attention to things maybe we didn't before that could lead us to being able to achieve those desired outcomes because now they're front of mind. Instead of being these vague wishes

that we have somewhere, they become much more immediate and eminent to us. And so that's what I think that exercise says, there's nothing magical or mystical about making a list. It's not like, oh, if I write it down, it's going to happen. No, I think it just brings it front of mind for us and forces us to have to, you know, begin to consider things. Maybe we weren't considering the day before. Yeah. And I actually want to publicly state now, you and I have had private phone conversations where I just pepper you with questions about, you know, what do you think I should do next? How should I approach this? And every single time, you do it like instantly right i say todd i have these questions and we're on the phone three minutes

later and we stay on for an hour and i i leave i leave every single one of this conversation like oh man that dude's so good and kind so i just want to publicly state that man because i really do appreciate those there'll be more in the future um if you'll have me because it's just so helpful for me to be able to talk things through with somebody who's kind of like on this path and has lived it and it done it longer than me and and i think most of importantly, you're doing it in a way in which I admire. Because there are people who have done some things, but not necessarily in a way and I admire. So I don't want to do it that way. I want to do it in a way which somebody I admire. And that's, that's you, man. Well, that really, that really means a

lot to me. It really does. And first of all, the door is always open and you have my number and you always walk on the call. And so I appreciate that. I will say that one of the things that kind of surprises people when I work with them or I interact with them is one of the first things I tell them is I'm not trying to build a business I'm trying to grow a life which means I have made decisions in my business that don't make sense from a pure business sense and the reason is because I have other priorities in my life life is a portfolio you know and a lot of people become very unbalanced in how they allocate that portfolio They think, oh, I'm going to spend 10 years building my career, 15 years building my career.

And then after that, I can start investing in other parts of my portfolio. And you and I both know that there are certain opportunities that once they're gone, they're gone. You cannot spend 15 years heavily investing in your career at the expense of your family and expect it in 15 years. Then I'll just turn a corner and suddenly then I'll be able to reinvest in my family. You just can't do that. And so I have now three kids, two of whom are in high school, one of whom is in college. And when they're out of the house, things are going to probably take a different turn for me. So it's almost like I'm doing almost like an inverted career in a way where people, you know, a lot of people do everything they can to try to build their career early.

And then they sort of, you know, coasted out. And I'm almost kind of doing the opposite, which is, you know, I think I'm on the back end, once my kids are in school and they're out. got basically lots of time of flexibility, I'm going to kind of do the opposite, which is, okay, now I'm going to really pour some fuel on the fire and see what we could turn this into. But that was a very intentional choice because I wanted to be around. I wanted to be present with my family and my kids and approach things in a very structured way. And I think that is for me just understanding, you know, what is enough, what sustains us, what's enough and understanding the portfolio of what I'm trying to build, not just trying to, you know,

build as big of a thing as I can. So in alignment with that, man. And I think there are sacrifices. There are times away. I've told a story on this podcast multiple times about the summer months of getting out of here at 3.30. So I can go swimming with my eight-year-old daughter, Charlie, and throw her in the pool because that's my favorite thing in the world to do.

And so I have to optimize it. I have to plan for that. I have to work harder when it's cold outside so that when it gets hot, I'm doing the thing that I want to do because I still have work to do. I still have to get things done. still have to provide, but I know I will never, ever, ever, ever regret those summer days, ever. 100%. And also, yeah, 100%. And also, it's also important for your, for those of us who have kids, it's important for your kids to see you working hard. So I'm a big believer that, you know,

it's okay to not make every single event that your kid has, every single game, every single recital. you should strive to be at as many as you can, but it's also important for your kids to see, oh, mom and dad have other things going on in this world that don't center around me, and they have other priorities and other callings and other things that they're doing that are important, and that's what it means to be a well-rounded citizen

and an effective human being is you have a lot of different obligations and priorities. The question always comes down to what is your most important priority in your life? And if they consistently see you bending around things other than them, if that becomes the theme, okay, well, then there's an imbalanced portfolio, right? But I do think, you know, just because you want to say, I want to value my family, I want to honor my family and put them at the center of my decision making, doesn't mean you don't miss things because it is important for kids to see

you working really hard as well. Yeah, especially when you're traveling around and say, like, I have an opportunity to impact a thousand people at this event. Right. And I think that's, it's important to do those things because it shows like we're, we're focused on not only work, but impacting people. And I think that can be inspiring for kids. Speaking of people who, um, love you,

you write a post about clean and dirty fuels. And I viewed this as, you see, you watch the last dance, um, or the captain, the last dance, Michael Jordan, the captain's Derek Jeter. or whether it's Aaron Rogers, where you see these people who like placing chips on their shoulders and proving doubters wrong. And I think clean and dirty fuels, though, to me at least, Todd, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I view it more as, I think life is more rich and rewarding to think of my supporters on a daily basis and do everything I can to prove them right versus trying to prove a hater wrong.

And I know there are people out there like the Michael Jordans and Jeter's and Arods of the world who seem to relish in the fact of proving people wrong. To me, though, let's say you do win the championship. Who are you celebrating with? Like I guess your teammates are there, but those people who you prove wrong, they're not going to be around. That's not fun in that moment. but how fun is it when you do something well and the supporters your loved ones are right there

with you it happens to be we're recording this on the day of your book launch i would imagine this is a really big day you don't launch many books in your lifetime you want your supporters there you want to prove them right for supporting you so can you talk more about clean and dirty fuels and why at least i think and it seems like you do it's better to live a life it's more rich and more rewarding to live a life of proving your supporters right. Yeah, well, I think, you know, you brought up the example of the last dance, right? Like, if you listen to the interviews with, you know, Michael Jordan, not to pick on him, listen, he's one of the greatest, right?

Sure. He's the best. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, or any number of other people, because they're, especially in sports or in business, right?

You hear leaders who are now out of the marketplace or even in the marketplace. You hear them talking with. a lot of bitterness about people who did them wrong or people who weren't on their side or didn't believe in them. And that became their fuel to, it was basically a drive to prove them wrong, you know, to show like, you're wrong and I'm going to prove you're wrong. Well, what happens after you prove them wrong? Well, then what drives you moving forward? If your entire ambition is just to prove somebody wrong, somebody who did you wrong, you want to make them eat their words, what do you do after that? You know, you have to be driven by something more than that.

You, I think that kind of fuel, anger, resentment, bitterness, it burns dirty. And that's kind of the point of that essay of clean and dirty fuel. Yeah, it might get you where you're going, but it's going to leave residue all over you. It's going to leave residue all over your soul and all over everybody you touch. I mean, even if you, if you, and that's a great example of the last dance. If you listen to interviews in that documentary, they talk about how Jordan would invent enemies. Like he would invent slights. Like somebody else had disrespect. Even though they didn't, he would like invent it just so he would have fuel to like drive him to perform or whatever. And listen, whatever, fine. I'm not judging anyone. It's, it's, you know, his call. But I think that

if we do that consistently, it can't help but leave residue all over us versus clean fuels, which is, to your point, who am I aspiring to serve? What am I trying to do? What is my outcome? What is it that animates my most unique and valuable work? And how can I leverage that more consistently? Those are clean fuels. Those are people who, I think generally speaking, tend to, A, they tend to be much more healthy people to be around, to be a part of a team. B, probably deliver work that is more hopeful and consistent with, you know, the expectations of their stakeholders. And I think, C, they just end up being happier, more well-rounded people because they're constantly looking forward instead of looking backward, trying to find some source of motivation. And so again, I'm not judging

anybody. I'm not telling anybody like, you're evil or wrong if you don't do it this way. I just think it's a cautionary tale that we have to be careful that we're burning clean fuel and doing our work and not burning dirty fuel because dirty fuel leaves residue. And there are outliers to every rule, to every idea. And I think the ones we mentioned like Jordan and Jeter and others are the outliers. Now, I don't know them personally. So who knows what they're like how they are or they're kind of how they feel? But to me, I just know the sense of like I said, publishing a book surrounded by the people

who absolutely believed in me that I could do it and continue to do it and then be celebrate alongside them is such a motivating force. I love it. It's the best. And then you see people that it's impacted in a positive way. It's like, man, I mean, doesn't that juice you up to do more of it as opposed to like searching out for someone who says, Todd, you can't do this? I just feel like it's a better way to live.

Yeah, 100%. Right. And I also think that it's useful, it is useful to remind yourself from time to time that people haven't always believed that you're capable of doing what you're doing, but not from the standpoint of like I'm going to prove them wrong, but more from the standpoint of like, okay, these are the voices of the kinds of people that I don't want to surround myself with. I want people in my life who will tell me the truth, who will speak truth to me because they have my best interest at heart. I want people around me who will doubt my ideas, challenge my ideas, challenge my ambitions,

not because they want to see me fail, but because they want to see me succeed, and they're questioning whether that's the right way for me to get there. I will listen to those people all day long. So I'm not talking about detractors. The tractors can be very helpful if they care about you, if they want to see you succeed. The tractors who are tossing hand grenades at you because they want to see you destroyed, those are not the kind of people we should listen to. So we should take, I think I wrote about this in the book, in Daily Creative, in one of the entries, we should listen to the advice of a trusted few advisors rather than the critiques of the faceless masses who only want to tell us what they think without any skin in the game.

We need people around us who trust us and people who we trust and who want to see good outcomes for us because they care about us because they have skin in the game. And we should try to be that for others. Absolutely. This is something we talk about at home, actually, as parents of it's so easy to criticize somebody else for whatever that they did. And one of the things I try to calmly say this, and I'm sure I screw it up, but I say, wait a second, they did something like they sang up on stage or they did something. We were watching. I'm applauding for that person. I don't know that person. I'm applauding for them. And if it is somebody I know and they do want feedback, I will then, we will have. We will have. have kind of the feet, but I'm not going to talk negatively behind the back of somebody who's a performer or somebody who's out on the court doing the thing. When I watch my daughter's volleyball team, it's easy for us parents to criticize when a girl misses a ball. But they're actually on the court doing it. We're watching them do it, right? I'm happy to talk and we'll, we'll try to coach it up

a little bit. But to me, to talk behind somebody's back who's actually in the arena doing it versus me not, I don't think we should do that. I think we should try to be the trusted few for people who that we care about, they care about us, that we can help them, but not sit there and say, oh, how did you miss that? You got to get that ball. You know what I mean? And I think that's something for us to think about both as on both ends of it, when we're the creative, one of the one doing the thing, as well as when we're in a support role. Yes, absolutely, totally agree with you. And so I always, with our kids, one of the things we tried to do, and I do this with people on teams as well when I'm working with,

leaders and organizations is, I always tell them, listen, what we need to do is we need to reward leading indicators or leading behaviors rather than always rewarding trailing metrics, right? So in other words, we need to pay attention to the dashboard more than we pay attention to the scoreboard. Most leaders and most organizations will look at the scoreboard and determine who needs to be rewarded based upon the outcome. But I think it's much more important to reward the kind of behavior that's going to lead or is likely to lead to those outcomes that you want. So in that case, right, hey, how brave is it for that person to have stood up and engaged in that activity? That was a brave choice that they made to do that, right? Yeah, they may have sucked. Maybe they were terrible.

Maybe it was an awful performance, whatever, but that's not my place to judge. I'm just going to look at how brave it was for them to get on stage to do that. Now, if I'm paying for a ticket to come to a concert and you know then i i feel like i have the right to say like well i really did not enjoy that right um whatever but but listen if it's like you know something where you know somebody's doing something or or to your point in the sports thing i mean come on these are i mean youth sports culture is just insane and ridiculous um and the the the standard that we hold children to and by the way all the way up through high school i mean these are literally like i have three i had three high schools. I have three teenage kids right now. Like, I mean, the standard that we

hold these kids to is just insane. It's ridiculous. We forget that they were up at six this morning, like in high school sports. They were up at six this morning. They had to get to school. They came home. They probably did their homework on the bus on the way to the game. They're going to go play a game. And then after the game, they probably have to finish their homework and they have to get up at 6 a.m. again tomorrow morning, right? And then when you hear people talking or parents talking or you hear whatever and I'm just thinking, come on, these are kids who are doing this because they love the sport or they love their teammates or they just want to have something to do, right? And, you know, I think that we have to be very careful, again, to reward behavior and choices, not outcomes. So what we'll say with our kids is that was a really brave choice or you worked really hard on that or things of that nature because those are things they can control. If you say, oh, that was really smart or way to get that grade, it's like, well, what does that? even mean. But no, you worked really hard to get that grade. I'm really proud of you for working hard.

Or that was a really brave thing that you said. I'm really proud of you for saying that. Even though I disagree with you, I'm proud that you were willing to have that conversation with me, right? Reward behavior that's likely to lead to the outcomes that you want. That's how we shape character. Character becomes destiny, right? I love it. Well, I mean, it's like, it's like the dinner table instead of the question of like, did you get any on the test? Can you, can you share an example the time you were kind to somebody today? Can you share an example of how you helped somebody today? Can you share an example of a brave choice that you made? Can you share an example of how you bounced back from something where maybe you messed up or you struggled? So we're talking about

actual things that we did as well as things that are within our control because we control our attitude or our effort. And that's a big thing with sports too. We talk a lot about body language and cheering on teammates and being excited when they do well and picking them up when they fall down. I'm so I'm so proud when I see those behaviors, even though obviously they make mistakes and they miss it and mess up. We all do, but it's more about how they respond and the behaviors and controlling the controllables of attitude and effort. I don't want to get us off topic, but I can talk all day about kids sports time. I want to go to the next one. You once had a bumper sticker printed that said safety is not.

an option. Why is playing it safe or how is playing it safe? How can it be dangerous? Yeah. And in retrospect, maybe a bumper sticker was not the best format for that, the best medium for that message. Safety is not an option. Actually, that bumper sticker is hanging on my whiteboard right over there. I can see it right now. It's within field of view that exact bumper sticker. And the reason was I wanted to encourage my team, not to think about the safe option. Because safety, the most safe thing we do is often the most dangerous thing that we do. Coming up with safe answers over and over and over makes us irrelevant. If we're not willing to take small calculated risks, then we're going to become irrelevant very

quickly. And so I think sometimes people think when they make the safe option or take the safe route or introduce the safe idea, well, this is the conservative idea that's going to kind of keep things moving forward, but the opposite happens. If we're not growing, we're dying. If we're not advancing, we're retreating. So safety is not an option basically means there is no such thing as safety. The safe idea is the most dangerous idea in the world because it's going to lead to irrelevance. If you're not willing to take calculated risks, by the way, not stupid risk, but calculated risks in your work, then you're going to very quickly become irrelevant. Inputs and outputs are moving faster because I want to get to more. I love this stuff. So good. But

inputs so this one's important so I know you work with leaders within teams and this is if a lot of them have back to back to back to back to back calendars right you've seen this you try to work with people and that's how I do the same and what happens is their inputs they don't they lose that steady stream of inspiring inputs like reading books listening to podcasts going to a conference whatever it may be they lose it because they're fighting fires all the time And I talked with my wife about this. I mean, she's a, she's a director of sales at a, at a tech company. And I look at her calendar and it's like, I don't think you've had any inputs other than fires that you're working on, which I get it. Like it's really hard. This is not easy. So I realize it's easy for me to say, maybe easier for you to say as someone who is kind of in the spaces that we're in. But with that said, I still think this is so important about inputs and outputs and why. As leaders, it's so vital for us to be focused on what we're ingesting to make sure that our output continues to get better. Can you share more about this inputs and outputs section of your book? Yeah, you cannot draw water from an empty well. You can't. But most leaders try. You can't live in perpetual harvest mode. You have to go through seasons. You have to plant seeds, tend them, water them, you know, take care of the sapling or the seedlings and watch them grow into plants that bear fruit. Many people try to live in perpetual harvest modes. There's just a couple

of metaphors that all say the same thing, which is if you're not taking time, dedicating time to absorb valuable stimulus, to read, to observe the world around you, to think, right, to be present with your thoughts, which so many of us aren't, by the way, these days, then you are eventually going to wither on the vine. You are, period. Or your ideas are going to start becoming very derivative of one another. So you're going to keep saying the same thing over and over. Every idea is just a minor iteration on the idea before. We have to build time into our life to absorb stimulus. As Stephen Sample, the former president of USC said, to commune with great minds. We have to build time into our life to be able to do that if we want to remain viable and

effective. Here's a principle that teach the leaders. If you're a not inspired, you cannot inspire other people, period. People will not be inspired by you if you yourself are not inspired. So you have to take the time to be inspired. And to your point, that can mean absorbing books. Maybe it's audio books during your commute or on a walk. That's great. That's fine. Maybe it's taking time to read in the morning or in the evening before you go to bed to absorb the great thoughts of others to pursue your curiosity in some capacity and then share those ideas with people on your team. But you need to have some time set aside for absorbing stimulus that sparks new ideas, new insights. And maybe that has to be before you go to work. I used to go to a coffee shop in the

morning and spend an hour in the morning doing this before I would go into my job because it was the only place I could have predictable quiet time. I don't care what it is for you. It needs to happen. If you're not inspired, you cannot inspire other people. It's so good, man. Can you talk to me about the buffalo and the cow and why we should strive to be the buffalo. This is a great story that I heard Shola Richardson tell about his father. His father's from Sierra Leone. And Shola and I connected at an event we both spoke at called Global Leadership Summit last year or the year before. And Shola told this story.

He said, one day his father pulled him aside and he said, son, I need you to be the buffalo, not the cow. and he's like, what the heck? Son, be the buffalo, not the cow. And Shola's like, all right, you got to explain this to me. I have no idea what you're talking about, dad, right? And he said, his father went on to explain that when the storm comes, a cow just stands there, right? Cow gets scared and maybe even runs away from the storm, which basically prolongs the time that the cow has to be in the storm.

A buffalo, on the other hand, and by the way, who knows, this is all apocryphal. this is the story that his father told him. The buffalo, when the storm comes, turns and runs directly into the storm. And even though it is maybe more uncomfortable to run directly into driving rain, it shortens the amount of time that the buffalo is in the storm. And he said, you need to be the buffalo, not the cow. Don't run away from the storm, embrace the storm and run into it. And Shola took that as a lesson that in life, we're going to have a lot of storms come our way,

a lot of discomfort. People who embrace discomfort and are willing to. work directly through that discomfort, spend less time in discomfort. But a lot of people spend their entire life or even their leadership running away from discomfort or running away from pain. And the net result is the pain just keeps chasing them around and they keep finding it everywhere. And so if you have discomfort, if you have pain, if you have storms in your life, the best approach is just to take them head on to go straight into them, be the buffalo, not the cow. That was a lesson I learned from Scholar Richardson's father.

Love it. I know we're over. Do you have a talk about? Do you have a for a couple more. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay. For sure. Um, you wrote about pruning relationships. And this has come up a little bit in, in, in my life. Um, and sometimes you hear this word loyalty. And I'm like, am I not loyal to that person that I've kind of pruned the relationship? Because I feel like we're going in opposite directions as far as growth and the way, not, not that we have different. I think you should surround yourself with people who view the world differently, but I do think there's kind of a posture of striving to grow and improving it better, as well as those who maybe blame everything on other, you know what I'm saying? And so I really identified with this, and sometimes I've even questioned,

am I not a loyal person to those who I've been friends with for maybe a really long time, but I've sensed I don't get any energy from spending time around you, because of whether it's complaining or blaming. And it's like, dude, I don't know. And then I start feeling bad. So I'm curious, can you share more about this idea of pruning relationships? Sure. Yeah.

So we only have so much bandwidth in our life for anything that we want to do. We have a finite amount of energy we can spend on behalf of what matters to us. And, you know, sometimes relationships run their course. You know, I don't hang out with the same people I hung out with when I was in high school or even in college, right? Like I have a new set of friends now, and a big chunk of that is because we have common interests, because we energize one another. And I think sometimes we hold on to relationships or we engage in commitments far beyond

their usefulness to either person because it's just what we've always done. And so if you have a commitment that you've made to someone, I think that's when you brought up the topic of loyalty, that's a very different calculus. Right. So I'm not advocating, turning your back on a commitment that you've made to someone. So this is not, you know, oh, I don't like you anymore, even though I promised you that I would be with you. So I'm going to move. That's not what I'm saying. Right. But I think there are times when say, I'm going to have coffee with this person every Friday morning at 9 a.m. And we've been doing that for a couple of years. But it just kind of gets to a point where this is turned into an obligation. It's not really serving either one of us. But we do it just because. it feels like we should do it because we've always done it. We need to be very choiceful about how we engage in those kinds of commitments in our life. And so, yeah, when I talk about pruning relationships, what I really mean is there are people in your life who are bringing negative energy or things that you really don't want in your life into your life.

And there comes a time when you have to say, listen, I have things I'm trying to do in the world. I have places I'm trying to go and I have people in my life who bring the energy and have people in my life who suck the energy out of me, they're energy vampires. And I'm going to try to eliminate as many of the energy vampires as I can because I want to have the capacity to spend more time with people who bring me energy and who are on the same mission than I'm on. And so is it unloyal? I don't think it is because I mean, you haven't made an oath to that person, right?

And if that person needed you, your loyalty, the definition of loyalty isn't, do I have coffee with someone once a week. The definition of loyalty is if that person calls me, am I going to be there for them, right? So I'm not saying like, oh, completely eliminate people from your life. I'm just saying, hey, be mindful about where your time and your energy goes because that's all you have to spend on behalf of what matters to you to invest in that portfolio that you're trying to build. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that one. Speaking of that, you said Douglas Stone wrote, difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right there, about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. And I think this is a very important topic for leaders especially

is being skilled at having difficult conversations. Can you share more about why this is something we need to think about as well as get better at? Yeah. So I think often conflict in organizations, and I mentioned this earlier, I have expectations of you haven't communicated and you're not hitting them. I think also conflict is often the result of the fact that we, we are not arguing about the same thing. You're arguing one point of view. I'm arguing a different point of view, but we're not even arguing about the same thing. We're talking past one another. So the most effective thing we can do as leaders when we're engaging in any kind of conflict is to clarify what it is we're even arguing about. Make sure that we're trying to achieve the same objective.

So are we trying to solve the same problem here or are we arguing because we think we have different perspectives of the problem we're trying to solve. So that's the first thing is, are we even arguing about the same problem? Let's identify our point of divergence. So we probably have some common ground. Let's agree on the common ground. And then let's identify that point of divergence. What are we actually disagreeing about? And then we can actually have a meaningful conversation about my idea versus your idea instead of just, you know, arguing at one another. The final thing I would say is relates to conflict is conflict can never be personal inside of organizations. The moment conflict becomes personality based, everybody loses, period.

If it's, I'm arguing just because I don't like you or I'm arguing just because you never accept any of my ideas, that's not healthy. It's just not. And obviously, the person on the other side needs to do some soul searching about why that's the case. But if we follow those principles, let's make sure we're solving the same problem. let's agree on common ground before we argue about our differences. And let's make sure that it's always about ideas, not about personality. It's going to go a long way in helping us have healthier conflict. Listen, conflict is the natural result of talented, creative, driven people bumping into one another. Conflict in organizations is healthy as long as it's healthy conflict.

If you have no conflict, that's probably the least healthy thing you can say about your organization because it means, A, people don't care. So they're, they don't. I don't, why would I argue? I just want to collect my paycheck and just, you know, go home. So they don't care. B, they don't understand what they're trying to do. So they have lack of clarity around expectations. So they don't know how to argue for an idea because they're not even sure what they're trying to do. Or C, there's no accountability. Nobody's being held to account for bringing ideas to the table. So if you have no conflict, that means that, you know, you probably have some work to do as a leader. But we need to make sure that that conflict is healthy conflict. I want to end with permission. You're about waiting for permission. I think this is a good kind of jumping off point for people to leave with. And for me, it's easier to blame others than it is to assume responsibility for the results. And this idea of like, well, I got to wait till somebody says this or no, there's this gatekeeper or no, there's this.

When in reality, that's not the case. Can you talk more about this issue with waiting for permission? Yeah. Yeah. So I think this is a big problem. I think a lot of leaders encounter, I mean, a lot of creative pros encounter is this idea that when someone gives me permission or when somebody opens a door for me, then I'll do the work, then I'll step through.

And I'm just kind of waiting for someone to give me permission to do it. And my encouragement to people is, listen, share the idea, do the work, introduce. the concept, don't wait for somebody to give you permission to do it. Now, here's the thing. Permission to speak is not permission to make a decision, right? So that doesn't mean that just because you do the work or you say the thing that it's going to happen. No, of course not, right? And this is, I teach leaders to this, right? You need to give people on your team permission to speak, but make sure that they understand permission to speak is not permission to make the decision. So in the same way, we need to embrace that as leaders, but also we have to recognize that attention

for your work is not a birthright. So just doing the work does not mean your work's going to be received. And I think that's what prevents a lot of people from acting. That's why they wait for permission is because they're afraid that their work isn't going to resonate or it's not going to come across or it's not going to be effective. So we have to do the work. If you want to, you know, Austin Cleon talks about be the noun, or be the verb, not the noun, right? Do the verb, not the noun. If you want to be a writer, write. Start writing. Put stuff into the world. Put it out there where people can experience it, period. And listen, it might be a long, hard slog, and nobody may pay attention. And honestly, your work may not be that good. That's okay. None of our work is that

great at the beginning, right? But put it into the world where people can see it and experience it. If you want to start something, you have an idea, go out and do it, put it into the world. Stop waiting for permission from people. Pay attention to your stakeholders because they matter, right? You have to pay attention to your stakeholders. So one of the things, when I was launching my business, and we've talked about this before, right, I think, our private conversations. It was very important to me that my wife was on board with the decision to launch my business, which meant I had to understand what my stakeholders needed in order for all of us to feel good about the risk I was going to take. That's different. That's not waiting for

permission. That's making sure your stakeholders are accounted for. Waiting for permission is I'm waiting for somebody out there to tell me, you should go start a business. And here, I'm going to give you permission to go to. No, no, absolutely not, right? So get your stakeholders on board, but don't wait for other people to open the door for you because they're too busy, worried about their own door that they're trying to open or, you know, trying to try and to do the thing that they're trying to do. So we don't need permission to act, but also we have to recognize that just because we act doesn't mean people are going to pay attention. That's okay. We can always redirect as long as we're moving forward. I think being a person of action, having a bias for action, being a doer,

versus just a, hey, I'm about to do this. You probably get this where somebody comes up to you after speech or they send you email, I'm about to do this thing. Or I want to say like, we'll just do it. And then let's, you know, we can talk about it after you do it. Like let's, let's be a person of action. Don't wait for permission. Just do it.

That doesn't mean it's going to be great. Probably won't be in fact that's at the beginning. That's right. But let's be a person of action and then we can iterate and work off of that as opposed to, hey, I'm about to do this. One more before we go. Yeah. And your kids are about, at least the oldest one,

about to be this age. Let's say you're meeting with somebody who's a recent college grad, 25-ish, and they want to leave a debt in the world. They're not exactly sure what they want to do, but they want to positively impact other people, do well and do good. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you give to that person? Probably the most valuable thing I could offer them is go find a job and add as much value. as you can, wherever you can. So when somebody asks you to do a particular task, do it to the best of your ability and add as much value as you can, be resourceful. So if someone asks you to do something and you don't know how to do it, figure it out and make it happen, add value even in places

where they're not asking you to add value and pay a lot of attention to the places where the value you add seems to be especially resonant or especially valuable to other people. And truthfully, this is not popular advice, but stay in that job and stick it out long enough that you can see patterns begin to emerge and you begin to recognize the places where you offer unique value because those are probably the things that people aren't going to tell you going into the marketplace. It's not the kind of thing that comes from book learning or from college. It comes from practical lived experience.

You're going to discover things about yourself. that you didn't understand or you didn't know previously. Like, for example, the one thing I discovered early in my career was I have a unique ability to connect dots. I just do. I have a unique ability to take really complex things and simplify them and explain them in a way that resonates deeply with people. And that was something I did early in my career that people around me couldn't do.

But I would look at a really complex problem and say, well, this is, here's what's going on. It's boom, boom, boom, boom. And I would tell a story and people would go, oh, that's exactly what it is. Well, I figured that out pretty early, but it was years and years and years. years before I translated that into, you know, I probably should be writing books and teaching people how to do things. That's okay. You know, sometimes it takes us a decade plus to figure those things out, but just find work that you can do where you can add value and just add as much value as you can

and pay attention to the places where that value seems to be disproportionate. And as you begin to notice those things, you can have been applying them in new ways. And that's going to become the launching point for your career, whatever that is. Man, that's so good. We learn who we are in practice not in theory, the Hermania Barraquo, and it's so true. And I love that your advice is all about that. Go get a job and add as much value as possible and pay attention. And I think that is, that that's critical because sometimes it's like, well, find out what your passion about and do it. And now there's a, there's actually, it's kind of swung the other way where people make fun of those who say that. But I still, I asked this question a lot, Todd, I still get

that advice. In fact, I think I got it recently. And I get it. I get why people, say it. Yes, it's awesome to do the thing that you love. But it's so much more real life to, I learned this. I mean, I didn't know what I didn't do it. I played football. I didn't think about anything else other than playing sports in college and after college in the arena league. I mean, I wanted to play in the NFL for a little bit. I get a job in sales like a lot of former athletes do and learned how to do it really well. And those skills I picked up over the course of those 12 years of rep and manager and director and VP have really been the springboard to everything else, everything built through those, that decade plus time of, I wasn't as good

early on at paying attention, but I got better at paying attention to where I added unique value and then that's led to this. So I think that is actually something that people could do as opposed to this kind of pie in the sky, wow, let's find what we love type of type of Absolutely. Well, and I think Cal Newport said it so eloquently. He said, we expect people to choose what they're going to do for the rest of their life at the exact moment they know the very least about themselves they'll ever know throughout their course of their entire life. Right. So people pick majors and they think, I've got to go find the perfect job. There is no perfect job. Listen, Ryan, you and I, like, I get to basically determine what I do all day. I get to determine how I approach my life and my work and have client. I don't have the perfect job. I have to do things I don't want to do. You know, as part of my work, because it's, you know, it's what needs to be done. There is no perfect job. And as soon as we embrace that, we recognize work is not about the tasks we do. It's about what we bring to those tasks.

Once we begin to understand that, it completely changes our framing of life and work. Don't follow passion or try to figure out your passion and then go follow it. Go work somewhere and you'll discover passion in the midst of your work. And that's, I think, a much more valuable and lasting way for us to approach life and work and purpose than to sit around and conceptualize about what we might want to do with our life. Man, I would benefit so much from having way more regular conversations. I don't know. Maybe we should do something on the side of them to have more podcasts together because I really appreciate the insight and the care and the love you bring to these. And I just learn so much every time we talk. I'm super grateful for you. And the latest book is called Daily Creative, A Practical Guide for Staying, Prolific, brilliant, and Healthy.

And whether you read it like I did where you just mow through it or one day at a time, I highly, highly recommend people get this book. I feel like this is going to kind of be another launching off point for the next part of your career. And I'm pumped to see it, man. Oh, thank you very much. Well, this is, in some ways, it's a distillation of the last decade plus of my life and my writing and all of my other books, my five other books. And in some ways, it feels like a new

beginning, right? It feels like a distillation and also a launching point. So thank you for saying that. That means a lot. I love it, man. Well, this will certainly be continue our dialogue. So I really appreciate it, man. Thank you. And thanks for the great work that you do. If you are not inspired, you will not inspire other people. Outline was so good from Todd. Focus on your inputs. If you're too busy fighting fires all day, every day, eventually you will not inspire other people. I think I take this very seriously. You must take time to read, meet with mentors, learn from a variety of sources. Your job can't be only that of fighting fires.

It must be that of you proactively focusing on your inputs to be incessing. inspired so that you can inspire others. We have to make this priority. Safety is not an option. Coming up with safe answers over and over will make us irrelevant. This one hit home with me because I think I am so focused on consistently putting my head down and doing the work that sometimes you take the safer route. and I also relate this to dreaming big and the big vision of Walt Disney that creating and doing the exercise that Todd did the blow your mind list that his friend Lisa Johnson had him do had him do I think of this now a lot I need to be better at implementing this and I'm guessing we all can and then clean and dirty fuels instead of proving our doubters wrong what if we focused on proving our supporters right it's so much more gratifying and fulfilling to live

this way and it's lasting as todd says it's more cleaner fuel to do it yes there are stories of michael jordan and chips on our shoulders i get it but i think they're outliers i think the more enjoyable gratifying fulfilling way to live is to prove our supporters write. Again, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. As you can tell, I love Todd Henry, and I'm so grateful for his friendship if you found it useful. I'd love it if you'd tell a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Todd Henry. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that, and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast, you are giving me the

opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that I will forever be grateful. Thank you so so much. Talk to soon. Can't wait.