[CTQ Smartcast] Lessons in Habit Building and Compounding for Excellence, With Joe Templin

Joe Templin has donned many hats. He is a reformed physicist, financial planner, start-up founder and autodidactic polymath. He has invested the past two and a half plus decades in helping others reach their financial potential, as a planner, trainer, mentor and creator. He is also a runner, big into martial arts.

In this Smartcast, hosted by CTQ’s co-founder BV Harish Kumar, we have talked in-depth about his book ‘Everyday Excellence’, the philosophy behind compounding and habit building. The conversation also has great insights into the role emotions play while building one’s organisational culture.

Also, don’t forget to visit Joe’s website www.everyday-excellence.com and get a 10% discount on Joe's books, use the code 'THINQ'.

 
 

Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.

 
 
 

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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)

SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • Joe’s view on habit building and compounding

  • The role of emotions in motivating someone

  • How did ‘Everyday Excellence’ come about?

  • How to stack your habits?

  • How can habit stacking impact a company’s culture?

  • How to multitask?

  • Why is reflection and sharing feedback crucial?

  • How to use the compounding philosophy to your benefit?

  • Compounding philosophies and Everyday Excellence

PLUS

  • Future relevance of self-help books and email newsletters

AND

  • Future relevance of Major League Baseball

LINKS TO BOOKS, PEOPLE AND PODCASTS MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST

PEOPLE

PODCAST 


OTHERS

If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like How To Become A Learning Machine? with Tom Vanderbilt

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

00:00:00
Harish: A reformed physicist, financial planner, start-up founder and autodidactic polymath, best described as a Swiss Army knife, Joe Templin has invested the past two and a half plus decades to help others reach their financial potential, as a planner, trainer, mentor and creator. He is also a runner, big into martial arts. So, we caught up with Joe about his book ‘Everyday Excellence’, a Kindle number one, a new release in professional development. The book and his philosophy of compounding are very close to our hearts. Being consistent at compounding is a core value for us at CTQ. A lot of what Joe spoke about habit-building resonated with us. As he says, intrinsic motivation is a necessary condition for individuals to change and appealing to the emotion is critical for creating that intrinsic motivation. And we all know organisations comprise individuals. So don't underestimate the power of emotions while building your org culture. There are a lot of truth bombs that Joe dropped in this chat. I'll give you two reasons why you should listen to this. This talk inspired me so much that I wanted to go for a run at 10 PM in the night. Eventually, I ran the next morning, and I don't like running. And two, Joe has been generous enough to offer a discount to our listeners on this book ‘Everyday Excellence’. If you like us at CTQ, you’ll want to lay your hands on this book.

00:01:49
Harish: Hi, Joe. Welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.

00:01:52
Joe: Harish, it's been a long day already. Glad that I am here. I'm here looking forward to it. I need to have a little bit more coffee cause I didn't run this morning.

00:02:06
Harish: So that’s what change of habits can do to you, right?

00:02:12
Joe: Yeah. One of the things is when you're following your habits, it's like dominoes. It sets up one success from the previous success. And this is one of the things that everybody will find what works for them. It takes a while to develop it. But once you get these base routines, it allows you to be able to have a much more consistent output and mindset throughout your days, which then compounds into having a much better overall output. This is one of the reasons why you see professional athletes, whether it's a cricket player or a baseball player or basketball player, they have their pre-game rituals and the routines when they're getting ready to go on up and bat. And that mindset allows them to achieve the state of flow to be able to move forward.

00:03:05
Harish: Yeah. So, you've already touched upon most of the themes that we wanted to cover today. So, I want to really pick your brains about habit building and compounding for excellence. You've used the word compounding already. It's not even five minutes into the conversation and we are big on compounding. We actually run something on the CTQ Compounds. Compounding is a core value for our company. We are very serious about being consistent about something, doing those small actions on a daily basis. We have our internal reading compound where we finished 1500 days a few days ago. We've been reading something together as a group. So, we are really big on compounding and habits, but before I talk about what I know I wanted to ask you, what is it that you know about habit building and compounding that others don’t?

00:04:05
Joe: Well, I know a lot of this because I've screwed it up in the past. And so that's one of the things that lessons need to be emotionally connected with the individual. So, if that hurts, you're going to remember it more. If you've got an embarrassment, because you weren't prepared for the meeting or in a game, you got absolutely destroyed because you didn't do the work upfront. That's the sort of lesson that is going to stay with you a lot longer than having the teacher or the boss say, here you go and have it all written out for you. So one, it's that emotional tie that makes things have longevity. So, don't be afraid of somebody screwing up. In fact, somebody screwing up a little bit is actually one of the best things to potentially happen because they will never make the same mistake again. They will have something to laugh about hopefully, and they will get the mental lessons around it, of what they need to do to get better overall. And that's one of the things about compounding is that people need to figure out what works for them and what doesn't work for them as equally as important and get emotionally involved in it because it's important to them. It's not this goal imposed down from on high, by the boss or the home office or anything. They need to be doing it because they want the results. They want to fit into that suit for their high school reunion. Or they want to be able to run that ultra-marathon, or they want that next rank in the martial arts, or they want to finish this degree, or they want the division to reach a certain goal so that everybody benefits and gets bonuses. Whatever it is, it needs to be very internally driven because externally imposed goals and disciplines fade away, as soon as those external reinforcements are removed.

00:06:12
Harish: Yeah. And we've seen that the role of emotions in getting people really motivated about picking on such habits or journeys is often undervalued. People don't get it. People feel that, oh, I give you a very rational explanation that yeah, you need to lose weight, or you need to be fitter and that's it. And that's enough for people to get going. What have you seen about this?

00:06:36
Joe: Well, as Frederick Nietzsche said, if you have a strong enough ‘why’, you can bear any ‘how’. So, training for an ultra-marathon sucks at times. It's five o'clock in the morning. I gotta get up and I have to go seven miles. I get to do seven miles, then go work for the day. And then I get to go and run again for another hour after work. And people will be looking at that, like why? Well, it's because I want what comes with it. I want the feeling. I want to challenge myself. I want to push myself. I went to sleep every single night and woke up every morning for over six months when I was preparing for one of my first major tournaments, visualising how I was going to win that tournament. And when it came to the moment in the tournament, that's exactly why I ended up executing because the ‘why’ was so important. I was able to get through the house, the little injuries, the doubts, the, oh, you know, I'm tired from having a really long day at work. No, I still need to train because that's more important than rest and recovery at that point. Having that emotional involvement and you see this with a special needs parent, you see this when you're taking care of a parent with Alzheimer's or with a friend who has cancer. The ‘why’, the emotion becomes so strong that we overcome all these other limitations. So, if management imposes the goal, that's an external thing and people won't buy into it. But if the goal is, I'm going to do X, because that allows me to be able to take my crush on this trip that she's always wanted to go on. And so, there's a lot of emotional value. It's really important to me and I'm going to do it. So, for example, one of the reinforcers of my goals with the book is to hit a certain number of sales. And I told my 11-year-old autistic son that when I reached that goal, we're going to go to Disney World. And so, every day he's like, Dad, did you do it? And so how am I going to look at this whole 11-year-old with big eyes and say, no, I was too lazy. I didn't feel like picking up the phone and scheduling those things or doing those reach outs. We're doing that fifth podcast for the day or whatever it is because I just didn't feel like it. So, you don't get to go to Disney. I mean, what sort of horrible human being would I be to have that capacity? So having these reinforcers that help the internally driven disciplines and goals as Arnold Schwarzenegger said, I didn't need discipline because I loved what I was doing. If you love, if you're focused, emotionally bound into your being, then it becomes a lot easier. You don't need as much discipline. Yeah, there are some tough days where you have to overcome the lethargy or the other distractions, but it's a lot easier if your belief system is completely aligned with what you're trying to achieve there.

00:09:52
Harish: Yup. And I'm also a big believer in appealing to the identities that people want to see themselves as. That I'm an X kind of a person. I'm a person who runs all the time. If I appeal to that identity, we've seen change is much easier to bring about and use influence rather than, like you said, issuing a directive saying, come on now you have to do this. That usually doesn’t last, right?

00:10:21
Joe: So that's one of the reasons why Run The Year is such a good thing. Run The Year is a virtual race that people can do as an individual or as a team. And you're literally running the number in the year. So, this is the eighth year that they've had it. So, 2022 miles last year, it was 2021. A couple of years ago it’s 2016. And every year there's a different medal. You get the medal right up front, and it has some sort of tracking mechanism in it. So, this one's got a maze and you moved a little dude around the maze to get to your goal. A couple of years ago, it was a watch with hands. And the hands you move them to track your mileage. So, you have something like that where you're getting that feedback mechanism, but you're also a part of a community. So, you're posting, you get these things, but you get this upfront. And for most people, if you're given something upfront, but then told you to have to continue to work for it to fully earn it, most people are actually going to step up. And so that's something that we can learn from a management point of view is treat your people as if they are already good enough, empower them to make the decisions, support them and guide them, but let them do the work. And you're going to see the growth of individuals that you're not even going to be able to comprehend because they will go above and beyond if it's the right culture and you brought in the right people and have supported them properly and empowered them, they're going to grow in ways that you didn't even conceive up beforehand.

00:12:22
Harish: Yeah. I think that that's a very valuable lesson for a majority of our listeners who are in the category of managers, leaders, founders. I'm sure they're going to find this very valuable. But let me get back to the second part of the conversation, where we wanted to talk about how these people, what they can learn from you from a personal standpoint? And this is where I wanted to talk about your book. Tell us more about the book that you've written and why'd you decide to write it?

00:12:59
Joe: So, the why is weird in a lot of ways, just like many things in my life. So, it was a combination of multiple different influences. I was going through a divorce at that point. We were at the height of COVID. So, everybody's struggling. One of my friends, who's an attorney, was like, dude, why don't you just be my life coach? Because you are so much more than what it says on your business card. You bring in all these different factors based on your Renaissance man background. So, the book… I was working out and listening to a podcast, Jocko Willink, and all of a sudden it hit me that excellence is a habit and habit that needs to be achieved every day. So, we need something to help people every single day, create the habits or reinforce the habits needed for them to have the human Kaizen or continuous growth. And so, I literally put down the kettlebell, ran upstairs, sat down at the computer and brain-barfed out for about a half-hour of the concepts and ideas. And then it got into the research and the writing on it, which the research part of it had been being done for 30 plus years because of my continuous self-development. I'm not an athlete. I'm more of a mathlete than an athlete. But I run multiple ultra-marathons and Ragnars and have been an international champion martial artist. And I've participated in all these different things because of having the vision and then doing the hard work. And so, the book was a lot of the same sort of approach. You have the vision, you break it down into a plan and then you execute on your plan every single day, even when you don't feel like it.

00:14:52
Harish: Right. Yeah. And at this point, I also wanted to talk a bit about your influences because you spoke about the martial arts, spoke about running, but you, as I read, are also a reformed physicist. So, there's also that engineer, who's trying to break down complex systems into smaller things, which is what you seem to have done here. So how have all those different influences shaped your thinking? Did they contribute to coming up with this aha moment that, oh, this is what I was setting my life for the last 30 years?

00:15:30
Joe: One of the things is - if we look at life as a video game. And we're trying to get to the end where we have the castle and the princess and all the gold and all that. But to get there, you have to go through all these trials and tribulations. You need to level up, which is part of what I call ageing. At this point. I'm not getting older; I'm just levelling up. But also, you get different skills. You get different resources. And with life, we go on all these different side quests and some of them might just be for fun. That's why vacations. Some of them you're trying to acquire resources, whether it's people or knowledge or skill sets. And that's what doing the martial arts has done. That's what ultra-marathons have done. It has further enhanced my resiliency and my reserves, my capability to continue when I'm physically and mentally and emotionally done. You still have stuff in the tank to keep going. And so that's what boot camp does in some ways. That's what Hell Week does if you're looking at Navy SEALs. So, you end up testing yourself to these extremes so that when you're doing at a smaller level, but consistently every single day, you're like, I can do this. I can do this. I only have to write for a half-hour, not a big deal. So, getting these diverse influences and skill sets and mindsets that you can then draw back in, makes you better as a person. So, for example, a lot of my friends are engineers who went to an engineering school, RPI, the oldest engineering school in the English-speaking world. So, some of these individuals are just absolutely brilliant in their space, but because they're so narrow, they are forced into a strictly linear path versus the ones who have all these outside influences, whether it's from doing a sport or reading or having a hobby, like being able to paint or things like that. They can then take influences from there and bring it back into their main pursuit, which then gives them additional abilities to overcome obstacles. If you think about problems from a different perspective, to overcome different things that occur. And so, by taking time away or seemingly dispersing their energy, it actually allows them to have more for when they're going through these things. And that's ultimately what our careers and our businesses and our lives are like in a lot of ways.

00:18:14
Harish: Right. And were you always like this or did you make a very deliberate attempt to collect these dots so that you can connect them later?

00:18:24
Joe: I've always been this way in some capacity like when I was 10 years old, I told my mom, I wanted to learn everything that there was to work. Right. And my mom being a mom, the former nun and professor, she's like, well, you better get to work. So, she encouraged me and told me if I want to do it, it's on you and these are some of the things that you need to do to achieve it. And that was the same attitude with building a business, with going back to graduate school with writing a book. It's like, you want to do this. It's going to work and it's on you. And this is part of a way to be able to tackle that problem, whatever that situation as to why it's sending a person to the moon or building a business or your relationship or doing something physical or learning how to play an instrument, those are all the same sort of thing. You have this big idea, and then you need to break it down and start on your individual path mastery of it.

00:19:28
Harish: Yeah. And I also read before that you're very big on habit stacking. So, can you briefly walk us through how you stack your habits?

00:19:40
Joe: Sure. So, for people who are not familiar with habit stacking, look at like for any action, there's going to be a consequence that comes out of it. So, if you want to focus on the consequence, whether it's a good consequence, like being able to run 10 miles or a bad consequence, like, having an alcohol addiction or something like that, there are things that lead up to that. So, if you find that you're always going to drink around certain individuals, you might want to cut them out of your life, which is what one of my friends who is recently out of rehab is going through is removing those bad influences. If you've got an app on your phone that always leads you to bad places, emotionally or other things, removing the app from the phone removes the triggering of those habits. So, that's partially habit cracking, which is removing the bad habits, but you can also have the reverse of habit stacking. And so, the simplest place to start is when we get up in the morning, cause we all wake up. If we don't, then that's a different situation, but you have to deal with it, but that's beside the point. So, we get up in the morning. So, what do you do immediately after you get up? What's A then B, then C then D? How do the dominoes get arranged and be able to move forward? So, for example, I was working on a book. I would get up. I would go grab my half cup of coffee that I left there from the night before to prime the pump, basically, turn the coffee pot on because the coffee pot was prepped the night before, so it'd be ready that day. So, this is some pre-planning that you need to do, looking ahead thinking strategically to allow yourself to do these things. I would have that half cup of coffee while the other coffee was going. I would do a hundred punches with each and something that I've done every single day for decades. And we can talk about that to get the blood flowing, get my mind ready. I would sit down. I was reading the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. Now I'm reading the Daily Laws by Robert Greene. I work, read my book every single day, and then I would sit down. I would write for 5-10 minutes. Just get the stuff out of my brain, that was there from the sleeping, get up, refill my coffee, go and work out for 20 minutes, setting a timer. So, it was 20 minutes basically on the dot then, because my brain was then in fully activated mode, I would sit down, I would write two days of the book minimum every single day. So, I had these habits. I do X, I do Y and then I do Z. I do A. And so, by the time that 45 minutes expired in the morning, I had already read, I had already learned, I had already worked out. I had already produced writing. And that's how I started every single morning. So, whatever happened from that point, I had already accomplished a tremendous amount, but my day was prepped and set for the rest of the day. And one of the things is that every day is a new page in the book of life, but there are some carryovers from previous parts of the story, and we can change that story throughout the day. But once you're along a particular path or a particular idea, the amount of change that you can have is not great. So, if you're going to have that particular day be its own vignette, its own independent thing, you should set it up in a way that you know is going to give you the highest probability of decent outcomes.

00:23:34
Harish: I think this is fantastic. As you said, every day is different, but if you prepare for it, you can make every day special as well. And then, you can make that first hour of the day or whatever is your most valuable time and make the most out of it.

00:23:55
Joe: Yeah. John le Carré talks about allocating your most difficult tasks or most important things with when you're at your best, I'm a morning person. So, I'm up before dawn typically, and that's why I crank stuff out. Other people might be at their best mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Figure it out and try to build your day to take advantage of that. And if you're in a situation where you can't, because there's a misallocation between your circadian rhythms and what the needs of that organisation are, that should be a sign that you should not be their long-range.

00:24:33
Harish: Yeah. And now that you mentioned the organisation, I wanted to ask you, whether you've actually made a deliberate attempt at drawing parallels and analogies, from what we've discussed now. Things like habit stacking, things like preparing for the day, things like timing your priorities into the corporate group of people, because you can come up with similar rituals for an organisation to build the kind of culture that you are looking at. So, have you done something about this?

00:25:07
Joe: Absolutely. So, for example, I had an assistant who was a morning person too. So, she actually would come on into the offices at 7 AM and be very effective in the morning. And what we would do is I would actually make sure I left her alone and she left me alone. I was meeting with clients. She'd be doing her stuff because by 11:00 AM, in those four hours, we each accomplished more than almost anybody else in our office and our respective components, because we knew that's what we did best. And it got to the point where, her normal schedule is 7 AM to 3.30, and at 2.30, if she was done with everything, I'm like, get out there. Right? You did awesome stuff. It’s Friday afternoon, go see your kid, go see the beach. During the summer's Thursday afternoon, I actually closed the office for a half-hour because the ice cream truck would come by and if we had hit our goals for the week, then we ended up having ice cream every Thursday afternoon. And so, my team was motivated to achieve what we needed to do for the entire week, by Thursday at 2:00 PM, because they could hear Mr Ding-a-ling coming and they wanted that. And so that was not me saying we need to do this as a team that was putting a reward out that was aligned with their wants and belief systems and let them run wild and they achieved it.

00:26:33
Harish: Yeah. And one more thing I've heard you talk about is doing one thing at a time. So, can you tell us more about how it has benefited you and did it change, where you were multitasking earlier and you realised that no, this is not how it should be?

00:26:55
Joe: I still multitask in a lot of ways because I want to maximise why I can gather things. So, for example, when I drive to the office, I'm listening to a podcast or I'm listening to educational things or motivation. When I was preparing for my first marathon, I was also preparing for the CFP exam. So, I would get up at 4.45 in the morning, drive to the gym because running in January and upstate New York is not great. But five o'clock in the morning, I would jump on the treadmill, but I would also be listening to educational material tax code on my headset for that seven, eight miles. I was cranking out that morning. So what I would do, is knowing that I couldn't sit there and study for those 90 minutes I was working out. I found a way to blend them now that my studying was as effective as if I was just purely sitting there. And no, but I was still able to squeeze in an extra two or three hours a day of doing that. And even if it's only 75% as effective, just because of the volume around it, it was able to be successful. But if I'm doing something like creative endeavours, I'm sitting there writing blog posts, I literally set a timer so that I'm focused and can take Pomodoro 20 minutes hardcore on it and I will have no distractions. So, I closed the door. I turn off the phone. I either play some music that sets the mood, or I'll play some meditation music, or I'll just play the sound of rain or something like that. And I literally just boom. And I work hardcore on this for this time period.

00:28:48
Harish: Right. Yeah. So, figuring out what works best for what kind of work I think is the key to getting this right…

00:28:56
Joe: And not just the type of work, but for the individual. And this is where some of the metacognitive awareness comes on. Remember how we were talking about how lessons should be painful a little bit because you learn best from them. People need to experiment with what works best for themselves to maximise their performance. So, some people don't want to go and run for saying they're writing simply because they're sweaty or they're out of breath or whatever. And it doesn't work for them, but you need to try it to see if it works or you do it in a low stakes environment obviously but figure it out. My tendency is that I am at my best performance under these circumstances. Or if I do acts, it sets me up to do this type of work and understanding that and building your day and your organisation, if possible, around that. So, I've worked in organisations where it's been all suit and tie every day for everybody because it was in financial services. And we had certain structures that produced the best overall outcomes in aggregate, but people were allowed to earn their way to have slightly different requirements. If they prove that they could do it. And so that's where you get that balance of mass customization, where this is what we do in general, but this is how we tweak it and personalise it to maximise the performance of the individual. And that's one of the arts of management is understanding what's important to your people and why and how you can allow them to have that flexibility while still maintaining the integrity and consistency of the organisation.

00:30:43
Harish: Right. So, one thing that struck me, Joe, when you were mentioning this, is that a big component of this meta-thinking is reflection. You need to reflect on the different experiments that you've conducted, what the feedback was and then tweak it accordingly. So, in the world of sports, you will have your coach who will do that job for you. But what we see is most people, related to day-to-day things like, how does my energy level vary through the day and what should I do differently, that reflection component is missing because there's no coach out there?

00:31:25
Joe: One thing is they're not necessarily keeping the numbers either. So, for example, people who are in sales know how many calls they're making and how many people they're reaching and how many closing attempts they have and the results of it. And they can look at stuff like that. And so that's a very sport like the idea of keeping score and looking at your parameters. So, whether it's RBI's and baseball or number pass attempts in soccer. What have you found the right numbers to look at and track them so that you understand and can see where there's a need for improvement and also getting to that higher level if you've got sufficient data? Like I've got all my recorded numbers going back to 1995 sitting over there actually. So, I always knew I was a little bit better in the morning, but I had very strong statistical data to support that 75% of my production was occurring before 11:00 AM. And by the time you reached 5:00 PM, it was down to essentially nothing. After 5:00 PM, I'm not going to do any of this sort of work, at least I'll go to events and hang out with individuals and stuff like that. But my numbers showed that I was ineffective. So, I'm going to tweak what I'm doing in my schedule around that to be more effective with it. So, there's that. And then there's having other people who are willing to look you in the eye and tell you the truth. One of the biggest producers in one of my old companies said that the key to his success was what he did with clients. And he expected the people in his universe to do that. So, my closest friends will tell me when I'm screwing up, that is the difference between a friend and an enabler. An enabler who will make you feel good at the moment will tell you everything is glorious. Here's a cupcake and look there are rainbows and unicorns and all that stuff. You don't need that. That's not going to make you better. Hey, Derek Jeter, the former captain of the New York Yankees was upset that his manager, Joe Tori did not tell him the harsh truth earlier saying, if you do this, you can be better. Friends want what is best for their friends, even if it hurts, whether it hurts that person, the friend or themselves. So, I make little sacrifices to help my friends because that's what friends do. I will tell my friend the truth, even though they don't want to hear it right now, because it makes them better overall. I'd rather that they become better than to feel good in the second and be on a path that makes them much worse, long-range. So having those people around you that can give you that feedback. And it's tough love. When my friend tells me, dude, you're being a jerk. I need to listen to it because they've earned that right. What do I need to do to be better? Okay, the same thing with my martial arts instructor, hey, you're doing this wrong, do this, that's better. Okay. Thank you. My fellow instructor years ago, the same sort of thing. Your friends and your peers in business that you care about should be doing the same thing so that you can get better as a communicator, as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner, as a cook, as a friend in general. Having that feedback mechanism is critical because as you said, we can't see ourselves very easily. We can see our front in the mirror. We can't see our backs very easily. So, we need our friend to say, dude, you got something on here, you need to fix that. Let me come up and fix your collar for you. Essentially, you're asking for them to do that with non-physical components of who you are because we have these blind spots that we just develop over time. So, a good friend is not like a good accountability partner is not exactly like you, because that way you don't get the echo chamber, you get some challenge, you get some pushback, you get some new ideas that you didn't have that then help you grow as an individual.

00:35:34
Harish: Right. So, to collect more means of feedback, it could be numbers, data, and people who can speak the truth to you.

00:35:45
Joe: Right. And people who speak the truth are doing it because they care about you. They want to see the best version of you. That's the sort of person that you should treasure.

00:35:57
Harish: Yep. I think that's a truth bomb out there, which we will use in our promos for the conversation when we post this. Following up on the whole compounding philosophy. One reservation that I've seen from people is that it seems like a very small action, right? The delta is very small. Every day I'm going to just 0.01% maybe. Yes, over a while, we know it can lead to huge change, but it seems very similar. So, when somebody has this kind of reservation, how do you convince them otherwise?

00:36:42
Joe: One way it can be very visual. Like literally draw out what a 1% improvement is and draw it, not just over, a couple of months, but for a year, 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. And you start getting way up here versus the difference. Make it physical for that in some ways. So, maybe like, hold the bowl, put a penny in it, put another penny in it, keep putting the pennies in it and it gets heavier and heavier. And then what you do is you do that and then say, but now we're doing compounding. And so instead of putting in a penny and they put in two pennies, put in three pennies in the pot and they can feel it's getting heavier and heavier faster and faster. So, give them something that they can feel, something that they can see, something that they can experience because people learn in different manners, give them multiple different feedback mechanisms so that they are buying into this on a very emotional and physical level, besides just the intellectual level. Because everybody knows, that's great. But until you can feel that; so, it feels like crossing the finish line in a marathon. If you can embody that feeling earlier on, you're going to make the sacrifices along the way to get there. Embody what it feels like to make bad choices. So, one thing that you can do, if you're trying to work with somebody on their health, have them put on a couple of sweaters and then try and put a jacket on it tight, it's uncomfortable. You can’t tuck in, they can't tuck their pants in. And that gives them a real visceral feeling of it. And then give them the image of what it would be like on the other. Because every single day, we either get a little bit better or a little bit worse and the little bit better takes the sacrifice you guys get up. So, you're tired, you sweat, you're smelly and gross potentially. You get hungry because you're cutting down your calorie intake so that you can lose weight a little bit. If you're a smoker, you're going through smoking withdrawal. If you're a drinker, you're going through alcohol withdrawal, whatever it is so that they can get through those harder parts. Same thing with saving money. I used to do a demonstration for young people just getting out of college and I had stacks of fake money. And so, it would be talking to them. I will be dropping the stacks, boom, boom, boom, boom, to create that reinforcement because yeah, we're hearing up here in the intellectual brain. But the neocortex is the weakest component of our brain, our limbic system and our crocodile brain essentially are so much more powerful. So, we need to tap into those components and use that to then support what the neocortex is saying. This is intellectually the right thing that we should be doing. I know I should be doing this. Knowing and doing are different, but if you know that you need to do it, you also feel like you need to do it. It's emotional. It is just part of what you're doing. Not doing the right thing feels bad, then you're going to do the right thing. Whether it's cutting down calorie content or not going into potentially temptation situations or saving the money or running the miles, wherever it is, if you make it feel good, even though it's not if you're tricking your brain as Jacqueline, the fitness expert who invented Nautilus said if you can make yourself believe that a red pepper taste as good as a chocolate bar, you're going to succeed. And so, it's being able to find different ways to trick or nudge, if you want to use what Thaler got the Nobel Prize in economics for. Nudge yourself into making better choices. If you consistently make better choices, you're going to get better results because we make someplace between 10 and 25,000 individual decisions every day. Micro decisions in a lot of ways. So, as they say in Deadpool 2, classes are trying to talk to dead bull and not doing something stupid, he's like four or five moments. That's all it takes to be a hero. Four or five micro-decisions every single day is what it takes to move yourself up or move down. And you've got that 1% improvement and so four or five choices every day and you make it so that those choices are easier by setting up your environment and doing the right things around that. Four or five choices every single day and you're getting that 1% improvement. And you're getting the longer-range compounding that you were talking about, Harish.

00:41:42
Harish: Yep. And I can see a lot of parallels between what you said and how say leaders and founders can think about building a culture in their organisation as well, right? Building those small rituals doing the grind every day.

00:42:00
Joe: Well, the grind, but also, it's having the belief system that everybody's working for the same thing. In the Bible. There's a proverb that says people without a vision will perish. There's a saying if you don't know where you're going, any road will do. If you have this vision of, this is what we want to achieve, and then you get people who believe in that vision, you will figure out the way. It's not an obstacle. It's an opportunity, as Jocko Willink says. So, if this is the goal, this is the mission we want to achieve X, whether it is writing this book and hit New York Times bestseller, or we want to do a million units of whatever product we sell, or we want to reach 10 million users across the country or the continent within a certain time. If everybody gloms onto that mission, if everybody has bought into that, then as Jim Collins said, you can get the right people on the bus and in the right seats, people know where they're going. They know what they need to do. They're buying in. And so, they're like, oh, if I do this, this affects this person over here. This can help them out. Or, if we try this or change this, this will move us forward. And then you've got this harness brainpower of everybody because they're focused on achieving this one aim. And that's the reason why they talk about the commander's intent. What does the general want in this situation? Okay. We need to take out the Germans. We need to stop these people from invading. We need to achieve X. So, everybody buys into that and they're willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that because they all believe together.

00:43:50
Harish: Yeah. So, coming back to your book, Joe. Did you use any of these compounding philosophies to write the book? Did you approach the process of writing the book any differently?

00:44:08
Joe: One of the things that I did with the approach to writing the book was that I first, figured out what I want the overall vision to be in a lot of ways. Then I build the structure. So, like with this book, I knew that every single day was going to have a quote from somebody whether it's Mahatma Gandhi or Muhammad Ali or Steve Jobs or whoever. So, I would have a quote and then I would have an analysis and discussion around it. And I want an action item because I didn't want this to be a pen and ink philosopher sort of book where you read it and say oh, that's nice. That's wonderful. I'll think about that. No, you need to do something. Motivation comes from action, from movement. So, every single day you need to do something, whether it was smiling at five people today or writing down five things that you're upset with somebody about. And, you say, I forgive you for it and cross them off or call that one person who is very important to you or that you haven't talked to in a while. So having an action item so that you're translating this from theory to reality, in some capacity. So, I came up with that sort of structure. Then there were certain days in the year that I wanted certain things. So, for example, on May 4, Star Wars Day, I wanted to quote Yoda and then I built some things around that. I want something Irish for St. Patrick's day. So, there were a couple of days like that, but then I went, and I started researching quotes to be able to build out the rest of this and build a theme. I'd come back to different ideas throughout the year because that more organic approach would be able to help reinforce some of these concepts. In that way, I wasn't quoting the same person too many times or going too similar in certain things. Then I sat down, and I started writing, but once I started getting the momentum, the writing became easier because I was getting the consistency every single day. I was like, all right, let's crank out two days, at least. That's like, alright, 20 minutes, I'm done with two. I'm going to keep going. And some days, what I wrote was absolute crap and I got rid of most of it. Happens. I spent over a thousand hours after the research of just literally saying that, writing the book. So, I got to the point though, where there was less bad stuff that I'd want to remove and higher quality things coming out. And the writing was going faster and smoother and more powerful. And that was because I was getting the consistency. I was getting the compounding. The more you write the better of a writer you are. The more you do martial arts, the better martial arts you are, the more you lead, the better of a leader you are. So, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hours for mastery. And as you approach it, you become better and easier. Robert Greene was talking about it, about writing the book Mastery saying that as the first research components were difficult and then he started writing it and it was a little bit difficult. But as he moved further in the book, it flowed easier and easier because he was comfortable. He had that compounding from all the years that led up to it and the specific efforts around that particular project. And this is the sort of thing that we see over and over again. So, give yourself enough time to do your research, to consolidate the skills, to get the information that you might not even know, that you need at this point. That's one of the reasons why every single day should be trying to learn new things, simply because you don't know when those resources from your little side quests are going to be valuable to your main quest down the road but keep doing that consistently so that when you sit down, then you can get into it and you get into the flow and not every day is going to be perfect. But if you show up every single day and work, just like Stephen King said, you're going to be able to get better results.

00:48:30
Harish: Yeah. I can again see the engineer in you, breaking down that vast project into one manageable portion.

00:48:39
Joe: Well, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? How do you build a building? One brick at a time. So, if you've got this glorious thing that you're trying to achieve, whether it's a unicorn or a billion dollars valuation or writing a book, or cleaning up your kid's room, you break it down into little components. So, like my kid, all right, we're going to pick up 50 Legos. We accomplish that. All right. We can goof around for a couple of minutes. All right. We're going to pick up another 50. All right. We can move around for a couple of minutes, but that couple of minutes of goofing around is a little shorter. Because he's getting into it. Hey, let's pick up 60 Legos this time. And obviously, my kids have a lot of Legos. But we just keep doing it and he gets to the point where it's like, all right, let's get going. And all of a sudden, it's like, we're done. Let's go have fun. And that's the same thing, whether it's the sprint trying to release a video game, like a bunch of my buddies did multiple times, or you're trying to do a renovation project on the house. You're working towards whatever physical activity it is, you will see that compounding effect out there, and it becomes easier and more fun further along the path that you are. And one of the cool things with human development with business building, there is no finish line. We just keep going in. We get celebrations along the way, but there's another cool challenge ahead. And you get to the point where like, all right, let's roll up our sleeves. Let's have some fun together. And when you get to that mindset, if it's no longer work, you're getting paid to play.

00:50:21
Harish: Yeah. So, coming back to your book. I've been thinking of using it. I journal every day, so I've been thinking of using it as a trigger for my journal where it sets the theme for the day. At the start of the day, I'm thinking of reading your book, seeing what the expected thing for the day is and at the end of the day when I journal about how my day went, I want to sort of close the loop based on what I did. So is this something how you have visualised and have you seen others…

00:50:57
Joe: I've seen others use it this way because I don't do any formal journaling because I'm sitting down writing anyway. And I write multiple times throughout the day. I probably write for two to three hours a day just to form what I do. And when I get inspired, Index cards are on me all the time. And so, I have lines and lines and poems and ideas for another thing that I'm working on. So that's just in my nature. It's a habit that's spread throughout. So, I don't normally sit there and journal-like some people do, but I formally sit there every single morning and I read my page in my book and then I have to do my action. And sometimes it's really difficult to do that action item because I'm a human being, I'm not a machine. I want to avoid tough situations at times. I want to avoid that difficult discussion. I don't want to rock the boat all the time or I don't want to challenge myself. It's like, oh, I'm good enough. I'm making guys. Oh yeah. That scares me a little bit. That hurts. I gotta do it. So, for example, let’s choose a day. May 4th. The quote is ‘Much to learn you have’, and then we discuss it. “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing” - Socrates. “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” - Epictetus. And in the Japanese martial arts, there's the idea of beginner’s mind - Shoshin, where things must be approached with openness and the wonder of a child experiencing it for the first time. And we go on, we have a discussion about that for a whole page. And then the action. learn something completely random today and try to fit into your worldview or work, repeat daily to stay mentally young and flexible. So, I'm going to ask you Harish, your day is much further along than mine. What's something new that you've learned today? 

00:53:05
Harish: Yeah. So, I picked up a few things from a couple of work calls. They were interesting because they spoke about how things happen in their organisation. And that was a revelation for me. The way those practices are being followed and I'm planning to pick some of them for our company as well.

00:53:30
Joe: Awesome. So, you've learned from there and so you've written it down. Now, when you're journaling tonight, you're probably going to have some additional insights or lessons based on the different people that you've talked to, the different things that you've seen, that you can then draw from. And when you play it down, when you write it, you're solidifying in your brain a lot better. It's haptic feedback. That's why I write most of my poems. That's why I have clients write down ideas and stuff because it gives them better learning. That's when we were practising a language, you write down what you're doing, or your goals, your visualisation, you know, I want 1 million bucks, write 1 million over and over because it makes the body and mind buy into that. And so that's the same sort of concept that goes with your journaling. And so, it solidifies it in your mind and your book when you put it that way. Yeah. So how do you then turn around and further apply this?

00:54:31
Harish: Yeah. So, it's usually the next day, when I'm reflecting upon the past. I also try to think of ways in which I have practised what I have learned as an insight, because it said it could be very theoretical, right. Like how I mentioned that I heard about these practices, but yeah, at this point, it's just about curiosity. And I learn about something new. Interesting. I've written it down, but because I've written it down, it is all already there in my mind. But unless I do something about it, I feel like some of these things are wasted potential, right. It's an interesting, good thing that you should pick up. If you're not doing that, then it's not of any use.

00:55:20
Joe: And then the other thing is, you're trying to apply it, but maybe that idea is something that you pull out down the road. That's one of those resources or like, oh, I have this to help us today, but it's continuous, it's a process of self-improvement of that little bit, that 1% compounding betterment every single day. That's a great technique for actually taking the concept and applying it and making it real because I bet if you look back at your journals for the past year or two years and did a quick skim through them, you will realise how many of those concepts and ideas you're integrating into your daily activities without consciousness of it at this time.

00:56:10
Harish: Yeah. So, on that note, I also wanted to ask you Joe about books, people, podcasts that have sort of influenced your thinking, shaped your life in general and what would you recommend to our listeners to go pick up? It could even be people to follow on social media.

00:56:31
Joe: So, one thing that I've found is Tim Ferriss. For a long time, he was doing a lot of stuff. He's narrowed it down, he's only doing stuff once a week. He's really good. If you want to stuff with a real edge, look for Mark Manson, he wrote The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck. He now puts out one piece of new material a month in the first week of the month. I think it's the first Monday. So those are both good ones. Jordan Peterson gives another good insight. If you're running an organisation, Jocko Willink. Because it was a military experience. He's been able to bring a lot of things in there and go well beyond what you would normally think of as a strict business influence. I mean, The Art of War by Sun Tzu has been talked about, but the Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do. Even going and taking all that and then looking at a painting and saying, what can I pull from here? What can I appreciate from here Taking a Walk in the Woods, by the way, is underrated in terms of how important it is just getting out in nature for a couple of minutes to reset and let your mind reconnect and think, and eliminate the chaos from our modern world? So, things like that. I listened to a whole bunch of different motivation channels on YouTube that I just randomly chose. Use music. One of the big things that I do is perform, getting ready to do a podcast like this. I have one song that is my switch song Princes of The Universe by Queen. So, I can just hear the first opening strains and all of a sudden, I'm in go mode. So, find what that is, so that if you're getting ready to perform, whether it's going in front of a sales pitch, or it's a meeting with your boss, whether it's meeting with the investors, whether it's whatever is an athletic endeavour, you can use that to be primed for it. So, those are all little things. And one of the things I do is I ask people all the time and I won't say, Hey, how are you doing? My question when I meet somebody is, what are you reading? What are you learning? And so, you can get a lot of insight because other people are pursuing completely different endeavours, but you can get a lot of really cool ideas, insights, and new guidance from asking a question like that that is more growth-oriented. So, what are you reading currently, Harish, so that I can pick something up?

00:59:24
Harish: Yeah. So, I read a bunch of things in parallel. So, while I'm reading a book on The Untold Story of Flipkart, which is one of the big start-ups, sort of poster boys of the start-up world of India. I'm also reading a book called Managing The Professional Services Firm, which comes highly recommended, especially for a company like us by somebody who we respect a lot. Also, we have been listening to The Huberman Lab podcast. And that's been a big favourite over the last 6-8 months. And he talks a lot about self-hypnosis. When you mentioned listening to the song as your go-to I was reminded of going into the inner self-hypnosis trance.

01:00:31
Joe: That's like the visualisation that I had with winning that tournament or writing down the goal every single day, so that your programming erect activation system, to see opportunities towards that. And, you know, the subconscious that we were talking about where you review your goals if you tell yourself I can't do this yet, it's programming the mind to figure out the way to achieve that, you know, the obstacle is overcome. So, these are all different ways to look at the jump, that jewel that is our business and our life. We look at different facets to pull out what is most appropriate at that point.

01:01:11
Harish: But I think the key thing in what you said is to have that learning lens on all the time, right? You have to be open and receptive to figuring out what you can learn from that situation, the circumstances, the book, the person, the podcast, the music, the painting. You need to have that learning lens.

01:01:33
Joe: Right. It's the growth mindset. And my father always called it, looking for the Pearl. So, one of the talks that I do is called Pearls of Excellence on some of the insights from the book. And it's in any meeting, in any podcast, in anything looking for the one idea, the one concept, the silver lining, the connection, whatever in every single thing. And so, if you go through a day, you pick up a half dozen to a dozen pearls like this throughout the day, and then you can have greater gratitude, which then programs your mind in a different way. And it creates that compounding again of the micro-decisions, being better, the gratitude being better, the mindset being better, that causes you to want to work out physically a little bit more. It reduces your stress. So, your cortisol levels drop slightly. So, your body heals a little bit more overnight. So, it's that constant attitude of what can I learn? What can I do? What can I grow? How can I help somebody that is going to create that process of continuous improvement for your mind, your body, your spirit, your organisation overall? And ultimately that's how you build a wonderful life.

01:02:54
Harish: Yup. So, we've almost come to the end of the conversation, Joe. We do the section with all our guests where we ask them for the hot takes on certain things. So, what I'll be asking you for is what do you think is the future relevance of that certain thing? So, first thing is, what do you think is the future relevance of self-help books?

01:03:33
Joe: I think that we're going to see greater and greater adoption of this simply because even before COVID we were seeing anxiety at the college level. I did a talk a couple of years ago in the class of 2019. Roughly 40% of them had actually sought help for anxiety. And it was expected that roughly 20% needed help, I hadn't sought it. You're seeing the majority of people from that demographic. So, people 22 years old up to 30ish, so that young wave of zoomers coming into the market. And the attitude towards mental health has shifted tremendously with COVID and dispersed learning. So, the decline of the traditional brick and mortar schools, they're having trouble with enrollment, not just from declining population, but people are like, why do I have to spend all this money to go have that experience when MIT's entire course catalogues are on YouTube? When I can use Khan Academy, when I can use apps to be able to teach me, I can't help myself with Duolingo and I can do the same thing on mental health. And so, as people have realised the importance of this again, and corporate culture has realised that we need to pay attention to her or else we're going to lose employees, which is one of the major things. I think that we're going to see in the 2020s. I want to call it a golden age for self-help books, but we're going to see a lot more than coming out. And a lot of them are going to be very narrow, very specific in certain areas, whether it's around communication for this or healthy eating in this capacity or balance. So, you're not necessarily going to see the broad ones that completely revitalise your life and change everything. You're going to see a plethora of smaller, narrower ones coming from a variety of experts and people are going to go about this in a completely à la carte manner, finding what works most appropriate for them. So, we're going to have individually tailored, self-help and mental help that people can go on their own journeys over the next 10ish plus years. That's really going to have some pretty cool effects over a long range.

01:05:56
Harish: Yeah. Looking forward to that. What do you think is the future relevance of email newsletters?

01:06:04
Joe: For a portion of the people, it's always going to work. And that's unfortunate, the old saying in marketing that half my dollars are wasted, I just don't know which half. With email, we actually can get much better feedback as to what works and what doesn't work. And so, we're going to continue to see that. But what I actually see is going to be more important than email is using visualisation. Using short videos, almost like a TikTok for whatever your service is. So, if you're in financial services, sending out those 20-30 second quick clips - the visual soundbites because people don't read as much as they used to. And so, if they can open something and get quick visualisation because they're going to be able to get many times more information, this way. And hearing that they would just from reading, and they can do it while they're doing something else. They're still going to be much more effective. So, I actually think that email newsletters are going to be good for more complex information as a resource to click here, to find more things like that. But if you want stuff that is actually going to change the dynamic, that's going to build trust. That's going to lead to people buying, whether it's buying a product or buying your service or buying into you as an individual or an organisation. So, marketing in that capacity, we're going to see a lot more micro-video than emails.

01:07:42
Harish: Right. And the final one, what do you think is the future relevance of Major League Baseball?

01:07:47
Joe: Oh, dude, I'm wearing my Yankees tie here. All right. I am a die-hard Yankees fan. So, I'm really upset because we need baseball more than ever right now. In terms of baseball, hopefully, they get rid of this stupid seven-inning doubleheader thing, because that's not real baseball, that's high school baseball. They are trying to use a pitch clock because they want to speed up the game and it's not necessarily speeding up the game because baseball is meant to be a slow game. It's not supposed to be constant action. You're supposed to be able to sit there and eat your crackers, talk to the person next to you and meet the person in the stands and interact. So, it's a social thing. I mean, that's attending games. Yes., more games are consumed with TV and radio. I listen to probably 100-150 Yankees games a year. Actually, while I'm doing other things because that's part of the way things have gone. But one of the things that they need to do is that they need to remember that baseball is eternal. Still, you take the ball, you throw it over the play, and you try to strike somebody out and they try to hit the ball. So, they've eliminated the shift, supposedly, which is a good thing because stacking everybody on one side is changing too much. So, baseball is going to continue to be relevant because you have this multi-generational connection. The one huge regret I have. With my mom passing on eight years ago, we never got to go see a Yankees game together. So, my kids have all been to the new stadium. In fact, I went to the first game at the new Yankee stadium openings. The only Yankees game I've seen them lose. And so, like my friend who attended that game died last year, there were three of us who went, one of them is now gone. And so, every single time I see anything about Yankee stadium, I'm always going to remember that individual. And so, these emotional ties that we have that go down through generations, whether it's at the major league level, the minor league level. Cause I can talk about watching Derek Jeter play in the minor leagues here and things like that. It is having that sort of connection that is going to be important. And so, the future of major league baseball is glorious, if they can remember that baseball is the American pastime, it's not meant to be consumed in small things. It is meant to be an emotionally connective thing where you remember, and you talk about, Hey, remember when we went to this game at Yankee stadium, it was raining, and Greg Bird hit that grand slam and the first ending and my dad remembers that game and my kids went to that game and they remember, and they'll talk about 20 years from now. Remember when grandpa took us to that game. And so major league baseball needs to remember those sorts of things, those memories. And if they can continue to do that, then baseball, if they can get through the stupid negotiation of the labour shortage or the lockout, if they can get through that, they can continue to bring fans in whether it's fans from the United States or Mexico or Venezuela or Japan or India or wherever because of the universal appeal of the relations and emotions and stories.

01:11:17
Harish: Yeah. So, I think that sort of resonates with my views about cricket which is considered to be the national pastime of India. So, I can very well resonate with your thoughts on it. So final word, Joe. We wanted to give our listeners some details about the book, where they can purchase it and how they should go about it. So, if we can talk about that.

01:11:41
Joe: So, it's available on Amazon. It should be in your local bookstores. You can get it from my website everyday-excellence.com. I'd recommend that you go there because we have all sorts of supplemental material. We put out five different micro blogs per week. There's a list of all the podcasts. So, this one will be available there if they want to tap into it. And for your listeners, if they use the code THINQ at checkout, they can actually get a discount on the books.

01:12:14
Harish: All right. I think that's very generous. So, on that note, Joe, thanks a lot. This was a great conversation. We sort of riffed about a lot of things that are close to our hearts and, speaking to you, it's what 9:00 PM here for me in India. I'm really tempted to go for a run myself.

01:12:35
Joe: You're charged up. I did my job. Everyone needs a good cup of Joe to energise them.

01:12:40
Harish: Yeah. On that note. Thanks, Joe. This was a fantastic conversation.

01:12:46
Joe: Thank you. I learned a lot and I had a blast. Be excellent and grow today.

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