E54: Be Inspired by Many, But Influenced by Few (Monthly Reflection)

March 2026 recap. It was filled with the show hitting 50 episodes and the not so fun management of being ghosted by guests. But the influence of the guests that did show up, did not disappoint with their wisdom and practical advice for navigating work today. 

It is not what you do. It is who you are becoming. 

It is not the game you play. It is how you show up to play it. 

Transcript

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So another month of podcast interviews. And once again, another big shout out to PodMatch, BuzzSprout, and Riverside for making my life totally easy with this process. Let's face it, it would totally suck without these platforms because just to be honest, it takes about one to three hours for every like 30 minutes of this particular show. And without those services, I wouldn't be able to do it. So thank you. What a great month last month it was. Hit 50 episodes for the show. And that's pretty crazy because when I first started this, it just felt like, oh, I'm going to do one a week and it's going to take me a year to get to 50, right? 52 weeks in a year. But now that I've been doing two a week, and again, it's not about the numbers, but what I love about sharing the numbers is that I'm practicing the skill of interviewing. And I really love that. And hopefully you can hear in my voice and these conversations that they're just becoming more, I guess, genuine and more sort of real, right? Before I was like kind of fumbling. I mean, I still fumble, right? And I've like kind of like blanked out in some of my previous, you know, interviews. And I'm like, oh, well, good thing about editing is I can take this out. And I'll just blank out in the middle of talking here. But that's part of it, right? And that's kind of the skill that I'm still developing. So amazing. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in to 50 episodes. So just a quick thing the quiz is live for you to take on the worksucksbutalike.com website. And basically the quiz is talking about if you're frustrated at work today, right? And you're wondering, okay, do I need to quit my job or what it may be? I think the first step really is we all have goals. We all have things that we want to strive towards. But I think the thing that I've realized more importantly than ever is yes, it's important to know where you're going, but it's more important to know where you are. So the quiz is all about understanding where you are in the flow channel. And that's going to help you take that next step towards making your work really flow. So go on over, check that out. So let's recap this month. March 2026, reflection. Be inspired by many, but influenced by few. Now, I'm going to be honest, what sucked this month? Being ghosted on my show by guests. And I get it, right, folks? Things come up. But the crazy thing is, some people didn't even message me. And again, I assume something bad's happened, right? You know, I say think the worst of like getting into an accident, something happened. But, you know, and that's fine, right? Life happens. I'm not saying, you know, you're gonna miss these things, but at least send a message. The problem with some one instance, I had the person, they eat they emailed me three days after apologizing. Again, I don't know, but to me it's crazy. Now I on I grew up, my dad taught us that if you weren't 15 minutes early, you're late. Or you message them, right? It's okay. I get it. But man, that that kind of sucks because you're just sitting there. You're literally sitting there. It's like being on a date, and the date stood you up, and that kind of sucks. And and like also, just one more thing with that. You know how I say say what you do, do what you say. Well, you say to make an appointment, well, do that, and you show up. So let's dive in with the guests that did show up. So Mary Eldridge, I loved her concept that we are a chameleon at work sometimes, right? And it's really sad. And she even indicated what I when I asked, what sucks about your work? And she goes, Man, how people treat each other and how we have to act like chameleons, like to play the game, if you will, to get through all the, you know, the political tape and the workplace culture and all that stuff. And that's just kind of sad, right? And I guess it comes down to, you know, we're kind of realizing when I was talking to her, it's this idea of like building that confidence for yourself. You know that you've stepped into this organization, that you can offer something. And yeah, it's very tough to get caught up into the like the game of it all. We want to fit in, right? This sort of like kind of a group effect where, you know, we want to be the the one left out with the group. So we want to try and fit in. But at the same time, we don't just want to lose ourselves in that process. We don't want to lose that identity. And when we're becoming chameleons at work, we're not really showing up. And that's sort of a sad sort of thing. So what she talks about is really doing that inner work first. So important. And then that result is gonna follow. Mark Strucheski, he was really cool. He's had a ton of energy, right? Mr. Productivity, and that, you know, work should be intentional, not reactive. And the thing that kind of stuck out to me most was, and you know, hopefully for you listeners as well, was the idea of boundaries and learning to say no. Now, when he said that, I was like, man, I am so bad at this, right? So on PodMatch, for example, I've got quite a few people asking me now to be on the show, and I'm just like, oh, it's so hard to say no. You want to please everyone, you want to, you know, not upset them. But at the same time, as I realized when I'm already, it's now March uh 2026, and the podcast is booking into August, September of 2026. And again, two shows a week here. It's like at some point I need to start saying no. And it's very tough. And so I'm working on it now, just so you know, it's my skill that I'm still kind of developing as I start to step into a space where I'm having sort of a different kind of conversation with people. It's with many people now, and it's tough. And maybe you feel that too in your, you know, work day. It's like you're so used to talking to your boss and these few people in front of you. And then when you got someone new coming in, it's like to this conversation, it's like, oh, I already have enough of my plate. How do I give that time and the resources and attention to this other person? And it's not easy, right? And maybe I will say yes to these people, but at some point I just know and see where it's going now. There's gonna come a time where I'm gonna have to learn to say no. So stay tuned. More to come in my experiences for how to say no. But another thing that Mark, you know, kind of talked about was this idea of being busy. And I think that's something that I have certainly seen in my experiences in the workplace culture that people, when they're working these long hours, they're burning the midnight oil, sending emails at 10 p.m. or whatever it is, and you know, showing up at five in the morning and being there with their coffee ready to go. And that's fine, right? There's an element of being excited, I guess, for the game and the work to get done. But we don't want to confuse this idea of being busy, appearing to do these different things, right? People will tell me, Tony, man, you are really busy with your life. You've got your PhD, you're doing this podcast, you're guesting, and then you're hosting, and then you're in the process of writing two books, and you have a relationship, you know, with your girlfriend, and you go into yoga and you're spending time with family and all these other things, right? I don't like the word busy because busy is sort of this like sort of it's almost like aimless. You know, you're just being busy to kill time, you're being busy to look a certain way. You're not doing it for the intention of like the activity itself. I prefer saying to be engaged. I am engaged with my work, I am engaged with my life. It may look busy to others, but I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't feel busy. And I definitely have learned in my experiences of the threshold of burning out. So, for example, right now, the podcast, great news for the industry with podcasting. YouTube is now picking up podcasts. And the great thing about YouTube, it's almost like a Google where it's a really good search engine for people's questions today. And as podcast hosts, it's really sort of exciting to now be on YouTube to be able to share sort of like some solutions to people's questions of work being frustrating, things like burnout and crappy workplace cultures. But I know that I would burn out if I started editing for video because there's a lot, like I mentioned earlier, it takes about one to three hours, depending. And again, this is all the course, the emails to you know, the person before the show, it's setting up the show, it's getting the the waiver signed or the not the contract signed, whatever the document is, it's all through PodMash, but it all just adds up, right? All these tasks and activities. And if I added another level, another thing to my plate already, I'm gonna hit that point of burning out. And that's not effective. And that's what Mark goes back to is that busyness does not equal effectiveness. And I think when you start asking yourself, okay, am I being effective? Right. And let's face it, we're not gonna say that five minutes I was really effective, right? There's sort of this qualitative sort of judgment as whether or not you're effective with your time. Because if in an hour you need to solve a problem, there might be a lot of frustration for the first 50 minutes of like, okay, what is this? I'm gathering the report, the data, I'm sending emails, I'm looking stuff up online. And then in like a span of like maybe a minute or two, you get the right answer. So you don't want to say, okay, well, 50 minutes, I wasn't effective. Absolutely not. That's part of the process. You know, with flow, there's the struggle, the release, flow, and recovery. So you could say that the 50 minutes was the struggle. The two minutes that you finally figured out the answer was the flow. Now, in between, you had a little release, you took a breath, someone came by, distracted you from your work, whatever. But then the important thing is to accept that now you need to take a break. And I think that's why I keep coming back to this sort of mantra of let's integrate the cycle of flow into our day because it allows for breaks. And that is something that corporate today needs to appreciate and learn. It's not working through your lunch and you're gonna be the workplace hero. It's not showing up on the weekends and you're gonna really, you know, save the day for Monday. The work is still gonna be there. Yes, there's a time and place to come in and do the overtime and to get it done, but are you being effective, right? Being busy does not mean effectiveness. And the other thing that, you know, Mark talks about is just this idea of controlling your time, right? It's just like you need to control it or it's gonna control you. Then we had Ed Howard. Now, I loved Ed because before we got in the call, he was, um, I'm drawing a blanket where he was calling in from. He was on the pretty much the other side of the world. And his two-year-old kid was running around the back, you know, in the background, and I could faintly hear it, right? And the great thing about Riverside is it pretty much takes out a lot of the background noise. And he felt bad as a guest. And I said, Ed, man, this is the work, right? You're a parent, you're doing this, you know, cool stuff with your book now and doing your coaching and stuff. That's what I love about these conversations, right? It's not this polished, oh man, this guy's got his shit together, you know, and like the kid's all perfect in the back. No, the two-year-old was running around. I don't know what he's doing, making all these sounds. It's kind of funny. And him and I were chuckling in between, and he kept apologizing. I said, man, no, it's all good, right? Now, the thing with Riverside is I had to get the audio levels, you know, right? There's the the AI component where it just kind of masters all the sound stuff. I'm not a sound engineer, I was doing it before I had Riverside, and that totally sucked. So now Riverside has made my life so much easier with that. So it unfortunately washed out, you know, his two-year-olds, you know, kind of running around in the background. And else I would have kept that in there and us sort of chuckling. But the one thing with Ed that I really liked, and his book is really kind of speaking to, especially from my yoga background, right? We teach the breath as being such an important thing in a yoga class. Well, same too with leadership. You know, there was a thing that I was reading somewhere, it was called email apnea, where literally you get so many things, notifications on your phone and your inbox that you can't even breathe. And that's so crazy, right? You have all these things coming at you, and it's actually changing the way you're breathing. So the simple thing that Ed was talking about was literally taking a simple breath. Simple breath when you're drinking tea, simple breath whenever you're doing. And again, that is so that's such great advice. And I love that. I speak to it in the yoga classes all the time. And also for you yogis, you'll hear me say how you do anything on the mat is how you do everything off the mat. So Ed's work is really all about that breath off the mat. And I encourage you, you listeners, you know, that are struggling with like sort of learning this integration of breath in the sort of you know movement of your life, go and take a yoga class, right? And reach out to me if you have any questions for what types of you know yoga you might be into, what kind of studios to check out. But I really encourage it because yoga classes have really taught me this skill of breathing. And what's cool about yoga is that if I'm in a tough posture, right? I know for some of you that don't do yoga, you might be like, what the hell is he saying? But a warrior three, Google it. It's very hard. There's a lot of things going on. There's a it's a balance and you're lifting your back leg up and the hands are going forward. It's intense. It's it could be a lot of work. And but what I love is when you keep the breath flowing, you can find this sense of stillness in the posture. So, how do I take that lesson off the mat? Well, if I have a hard problem, right? If I work the 50 minutes, as I mentioned, that example, and I'm breathing through it, just like I was the Warrior Three, that challenging pose, the skill that I was learning in yoga class, I'm now implementing into my work. That's that's it right there, folks. Like you're using the breath now to get through these difficult situations, these difficult problems that you're putting yourself that you're subjected to every day. And then we got to Kirk. Kirk McCarley, man, he was so we opened up, you know, we always do kind of an introduction before we jump on the call. And he told me, you know, you know, if it comes up, Tony, you know, I had heat treat experience. I'm like, oh, that's super cool. You know, it's human resources, right? So I'm digging that because I'm doing my PhD, as you know, in industrial organizational psychology. And this guy is, you know, doing um human resources for 35, 40 years of his life. And he's talking about heat treat, which is kind of like, you know, where I sort of love, you know, what I love with my my work in the aerospace industry. And so Kirk and I were just really digging this sort of like with the sports analogies too. He worked for, he still works for ESPN. And I'm just so excited to have him back on the show, you know, to talk more about human resources because to me, the workplace culture is very critical today. And companies, you know, if they've sort of stood the test of time, they have proven that they can manufacture their widgets, provide these services. But let's face it, the real thing that needs to get designed into organizations today is the concept of the workplace culture. Because I find that, you know, there's no one right answer to this, right? You don't, you know, I know there's sort of militant styles of leadership and more collaborative sort of styles. And I don't think one is better than the other. I think there just needs to be an awareness of your sort of style, if you will, if you are leading people or leading different projects. And then also be aware of the other types because that is just realize that different people have different ways to work. And so if you're using one style that doesn't resonate, you're not going to get them to want to work, right? Imagine, you know, you've had a boss that, you know, really rubs you the wrong way and you don't want to work because they have a different style for how to motivate you. And so where I'm going with that is like Kirk had this just wealth of knowledge that I feel like, you know, I was talking to him afterwards, where I always say, like on the on the call, if I really engage with the person, it's like the first few questions out of the gate. I know I ask, you know, how do you define work and yada, yada, which is great, it sets the stage, right? But it's like we're just touching the shallow end of this conversation. And by the end of it, we're starting to groove. And as I mentioned before in, you know, last month's sort of reflection, that was something that I was still trying to work on. I'm still working on. But let's face it, right? Imagine you meet someone new. You still have to establish this sort of like groundwork. Okay, this is this person, I am this person. We kind of relate on these topics. And we were saying, Kirk and I afterwards, it's like, man, okay, now that we got sort of the icebreakers out, let's deep dive into human resources and really assess what's going on today. Because to me, they're really, they hold the key to really helping create a workplace culture. So more to come. So, but I love that episode from Kirk, regardless of how we even just established that sort of baseline in our conversation. But man, human resources really has to be kind of a top thing in corporate today. And then we went to Joe LaRusa, and this guy I met at Podfest. Now, remember this was January 2026. I had gotten a concussion that Monday. I was set to fly out Wednesday to Orlando, Florida from Manchester, New Hampshire. And that Wednesday night, after Tuesday and Wednesday of me sleeping because, you know, I was I had a concussion. I literally could barely do anything. And Joe got up there at our first little, you know, um workshop that evening and said, you know, I'm gonna be the guest, the best guest on your show. And it wasn't a sense of arrogance, it wasn't even that cockiness that got me. I just knew and could tell, even my concussed state, that Joe knew what he was doing, right? He knew how to build relations. And sure enough, the time we set it up and established the conversation, he was emailing me. He was asking how he could help me. He was promoting the episode even before it came out. And when it did come out, he's repurposing the content and tagging me in it. I mean, the guy is just, he knows what he's doing. He definitely is one of my best guests that I have from the stance of conversation, but also the pre and post before the episode, that sort of work. And it was truly amazing. But one of the things that stood out, I hope you, you know, you heard it as well,$140,000 salary when you get home. That's your job. That's how much it's worth when you show up at the house. And, you know, leadership skills, he argues, is that they really start at home. And we don't do that. We overlook all these great things that we do in the workplace, like structured meetings and laying out sort of like, you know, job roles and responsibilities. We get to the house, we put our, you know, hats away and our coats, put them in the closet, and it's almost like we turn off. We forget that there has to be work, you know, that needs to happen in at home. And that's going to help improve the family dynamics. He had this concept of like having these meetings, I think it was Sundays with his whole family. And the whole idea was he was teaching his kids how to prioritize these different topics. Meaning, okay, if the kid came to him and said, Hey, I've got this one thing, can we talk about it? And he says, Does it have to be resolved now, or can we wait till our family meeting? And what a great skill at the house as well. Not everything is a fire, right? You know that from work. Every conversation you have, you've already sort of developed, you know, in your years of being there. Okay, this is not a fire. This is okay. I can work on this later. This person's just blowing smoke up my ass, or, you know, whatever it is, right? And but Joe talks about how, you know, really how you lead a team or your project or how you show up at work, it's really how you should be stepping into your household and doing that same sort of work. And I definitely encourage you to go over and check out his information and start implementing those things. So one of the things that, you know, Emily and I do is that we have our calendar and it's it allows us to get on the same page, which again, as you can tell or as you've known, I have a lot of things that I stay engaged, right? I don't like the word busy. But there is those pockets, right? It's important for, you know, and she'll catch me too, and she'll be like, hey, we need to go do something fun. And I'll look at my calendar, and she has this sort of intuitive sense now with it. I'll look at my calendar and be like, oh yeah, she's right, because I don't have any, I color code things as purple for like my yoga and yellow as social. And when I don't see enough purple and yellow in my calendar, I know that I'm gonna need some time to uh to hang out with family so I don't burn out. And then speaking of burnout, right? And that led to Trisha Vinateri. And, you know, a lot of the people I've been meeting is, you know, has been on Podmatch, which has been great. Again, Podmatch, think of it as like a dating app for basically, you know, podcasters. And her work around, you know, psychological safety in the workplace and burnout was just incredible. I love following her work on LinkedIn, and she talks really about this idea of building these safe spaces and really connecting with people. I mean, that's what it comes down to. And you would think that in the healthcare industry, it was already implied that you were to connect with humans. But the fact that now it's become like every sort of you know, manufacturing sort of mentality with things with how to run a business, it's okay. Well, how many patients can I get out in an hour? Every 15 minutes, I'm pumping out a patient. And it's like people aren't that, and now you're Forcing these people who came into these roles to, you know, want to build human relations, do a good deed, do work that they felt was meaningful, now are by the system's design, okay, you got 15 minutes. And again, one could argue, right, from the soccer standpoint, you have 45 minute halves to score your goal and to get the job done, if you will, to win the game. But when you're talking about people and you don't know kind of why they're coming in, right? In soccer, there's a clear intention. I know the goals, I know the task at hand, there's an opponent. And when you have someone coming in from the healthcare, from a healthcare standpoint, you don't know why they're coming in, right? You don't know. I remember my friend Brett, he's the singer in the the Nowhere kids. He was studying for one of his exams to be a doctor, and there was a thing on, he got questioned if someone came in, they had these symptoms. And the answer was they ate like a puffer fish. I mean, how do you know that? Like, how do you you have to like put your hat on and think, okay, what are all the scenarios? I don't even know this person that's coming in, but I have 15 minutes to figure out more or less their life and assess kind of what's going on. And I think she just reminds me and hopefully you listeners too, that you know, the meaningful work is really about, again, bringing those the the dogs back to the workplace, right? That that they're the therapeutic dogs. And that's that's incredible, right? Why is the workplace getting rid of something? Now, again, I guess people could complain, not everyone's gonna be happy, not everyone likes dogs, they're allergic to dogs, whatever. But it's like, I guess that's the sad part about Corporate 2, right? Is that the rules you're trying to make so everybody can play, but sometimes it takes away these key things that are really keeping the team together. And then we come to Ken Kunkin, and this guy's story, I mean, I was feeling it the whole time, and I was truly inspired because I have certainly looked at myself in the mirror and I'm like, oh, you know, I've got these sort of physical, you know, attributes of, you know, I can, you know, my athleticism of rock climbing and playing golf and skiing and all these different things. And imagine that your neck is broken from playing a game that you love, and then the rest of your life you barely can move, but you still live epically. And that was Ken. I mean, that that was incredible of his journey. He starts out in engineering at Cornell and then goes into like psychology and then a lawyer, and then it's just like he writes a book. He basically ignored what people were telling him, meaning that, you know, people would judge him on the way he looked. And think about that for yourself, right? Think about how people will look at you and say, oh, you know, you drive this particular car, you're not going to be able to this. Oh, or even I hate to say for this the sexism in the workplace, you know, this person's a particular gender. Oh, they they're not a leader, they're not, they're not a good worker, whatever it is. I mean, that is happening as you know, as you probably experienced, unfortunately, in the workplace today. But imagine being on that other side, as we heard Ken, he got real with us and was like, yeah, I mean, that just that sucks, right? When you're like getting judged and told you can't ever get a job because of your disability. No, obviously the job is relative, but he definitely could have done that job. You know, he's definitely qualified for it. And so one of the things that, you know, Ken spoke to was some of you might have seen the, you know, I don't know if you call it a meme, I guess. Can't even keep up with all the things out there on social media because I'm not even on Facebook anymore. I deleted that. But he's mentioned that in this photo, there was like a cat looking at the mirror, right? And the cat could either see the cat or the cat could see themselves as the lion. And I think the thing to take note here is not that I don't think Ken was implying that, okay, I'm a cat, now I'm gonna be really great and a super leader. I think what he was really getting at was seeing who you really were, right? People are gonna call you, you know, ex, but you know that you're really whatever, the A-team. You know that you could do the job. You know, despite your being called X of this disability or whatever it may be, that you can still show up. You know you've got the potential, you know what you've got to make it work. And so then there's Rob Tracy's and the idea of sports, you know, again, I love the fact that we could talk sports. He was really cool because I think it was similar to my age, millennial here. And we were talking, you know, the nine to five and entrepreneur sort of like worlds. And, you know, in the podcast, you've probably heard for you listeners that, you know, tune in every week to the different conversations. And again, if you don't tune in, remember, it's not like Pokemon. You don't have to catch them all and listen to every episode. Just pick the ones that you resonate with and to improve those skills on. But one thing that I've realized on the show is that basically there have been two types of people. You have the entrepreneur and then you have the nine to fiver, is what I'm sort of calling it. And, you know, I've always fascinated with how people go, because they usually start at nine to five, right? We don't know anything other than what our parents, unless your parents were entrepreneurs, they teach us to get a job. And so we don't know anything else other than that nine to five mentality. And so Rob was really cool to sort of talk to about this nine to five mentality and also being the entrepreneur. And so he told us that, you know, his girlfriend is really likes the security and really prefers the nine to five, whereas the entrepreneur, you know, likes sort of the no boundaries, right? And that's where Rob kind of thrives in his game to play. And I think that was the thing that I enjoyed most too, kind of reminding myself with sports is that, you know, he mentioned wrestling. And I immediately thought, oh, that's an individual sport. And he quickly reminded me that it's not, it's a team sport. And he said it so well that we have to show up to be the best wrestler to get points for the team. And when we relate that to work, right? And of course, it goes down the whole rabbit hole of questions of, okay, is it the team I want to be working for? Is the work I'm doing meaningful with this company that's making these things that I don't give a shit about? And I get all those questions, right? But let's just start with, okay, I'm gonna be the best, whatever it is, engineer, the best salesperson, the best buyer or whatever it may be at your particular company. How can I be in that position, play this game, and have my team win? And I think if really corporate could really start tuning into that sort of theme of, hey, I've got a bunch of players, industrial athletes that want to play this game of work. How do I get them excited? Just like a coach, right? In basketball or any sport, wrestling, golf, you got a coach for golf too. They get you inspired and they motivated to play the game to win. And I think that's what we really need to do with our work today. And again, I'm not talking about let's get all excited over the top and you know, super passionate that we, you know, never work a day in our lives. Like that's the crap that I hate, right? That's the self-help that to me I've read enough of. It's super cheesy. I get it, and I'm all for positive thoughts and whatnot. But to me, I'm hoping that you listeners are hearing that I want to engage on the friction of what is good about work and what sucks, because that's part of the process. You look at athletes, right? And they, you know, ran the marathon or they won the Super Bowl. You know damn well they practice hard. There was no light day. There was no, I mean, sure, they go to Disneyland after or whatever the heck they do when they win. But it's like there was a grind. They were sweating, the coach was yelling, whatever it was, but all that hard work, as my grandmother would say, would pay off, right? And I think that's what we need to realize is that don't forget, pay is not going to be just in the form of paycheck, but also the joy of you actually doing that work. And so Rob reminds us that, you know, one is not better than the other with this type of work, right? Someone can be really winning and killing at the game of nine to five. And same with the entrepreneur. They can be winning as well. And I just want to again thank you, listeners. The show has been really growing in sort of very awesome and unique ways. You know, it's not, I don't like base it on the download counts. It's really, it's part of it too. They've gone up, which has been pretty cool, people listening in, but it's really the quality of the conversations. And I'd love to hear more of your comments and thoughts. Again, head on over and take that quiz. Give me your feedback. And just so you know, you listeners out there, I'm starting to put together a group cohort and really I'm gonna start sharing because people keep asking me, like, how can I do all these things in my day like you do? And I'm starting to put together, I guess, my techniques, if you will, and I'm gonna be sharing that um, you know, hopefully soon. We'll see, see how it goes with my work. But again, thank you for tuning in. And remember that success is not a matter of good luck, it's good skills. And it goes back to my initial frustration. So when you say you're gonna do something, you got an appointment to make, you set up that time to be with whoever, wherever, show up, please, because that person's waiting for you. They want you there, they want to engage, they want your presence. So please show up. Say what you do, do what you say. We'll see you next time. Thank you.