Episode 9 - Why Your Greatest Strength Could Become Your Greatest Trap

What if everything you've worked for — the career wins, the recognition, the expertise — is quietly setting you up for a fall? In this episode, we dive deep into Strength to Strength by Harvard professor and social scientist Arthur C. Brooks, a book that challenges everything we think we know about success, ambition, and fulfillment in the second half of life.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Welcome to Stacks and Strategies, where we go through stacks of books and pull out the strategies for business owners to apply. We're three business owners and advisors that work with small and medium-sized businesses on a regular basis. We've come together to share our passion for learning and in particular business learning. Knowing that business owners are very busy, their time to read is sometimes limited, and the volume of books makes it difficult to know what to read and what not to read. We still recommend reading for all business owners. If we can accelerate the process or reduce some of the effort, then we know our local businesses will improve. Our goal is to highlight the quality of the content and help the reader know if it applies to them. In short, our purpose is to cut through that uncertainty so the listener can choose to apply as we have shared, choose to learn more, or move on to some other topic so that they can improve their business in their lives. I'm John Davis, a business coach with Action Coach, and I know that businesses grow to the level of the owner. By learning, we improve. So I want to support that growth through learning. I work with owners to provide clarity on their destination, how they're going to get there, what they need to learn to be successful and achieve their goals. So, Wendy, would you like to introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Okay, my name is Wendy Pace with Pace Setting Media, where marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. We're here to help businesses meet their potential clients and clients that they have online on the social media platforms that they utilize.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hi, I'm Jess Viegas, principal at Acuity Business Consulting. Acuity demystifies the challenge of translating talent and resources into exceptional and sustainable organizational performance by surfacing actionable clarity and providing execution expertise in the areas of strategic design, financial management, operational excellence, and leadership development so that leadership can confidently navigate their organizations towards next level performance.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

All right. So this episode, our book was selected by Jess, and Jess is going to walk us through today's discussion.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Thank you, John. So the book I chose was From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks. And the fundamental premise of the book is that it tries to honor the fact that earlier in uh most of our careers, we tend to have a lot uh we make better use of fluid intelligence, which is speaking to our ability to kind of speak innovatively to solutions and issues, a little more resilience in terms of adaptability. And that's just characteristics that many younger individuals have. And I'm defining younger here, at least for the purpose of the book, as before middle age.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Younger than us.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Younger than us. Younger than most of us.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Because we represent this book.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

But then the book speaks of the fact that as you start to move from your best self in terms of operating in that mode and operating on that uh fluid intelligence curve, that you should transition over to what is called crystallized intelligence, where now you're starting to leverage what it is that you know, and things start to come from you in terms of your wisdom and experience from all of the experiences you've had through your life. And that moving to that curve is not just sort of an intentional thing to do. It's it takes work because the thing that holds you back from moving easily into that part of your life or into that second curve is just the way we think about ourselves, how we identify with our success, how we believe people need to remember us, and then for us for them to do that, they need to remember us the way we were at 20 and 25 and 30 and 35 and 40. It's just a mindset shift for trying to move from one curve to the other. So some of the fundamental tenets of the book are uh the expressions are the first, as I mentioned, the fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. The other thing is that letting go of that fluid intelligence capability is difficult, but it needs to be a process that you involve yourself in in order to move to your second part of your life. And that satisfaction comes from purpose, not achievement, which is a big paradigm shift for people who are really running hard throughout their lives. And that transition needs to be intentional because there are just so many things that are sort of holding us back. So that's the overall arc of the book. The way I'd like to open this is saying that I have a particular affinity for the book because I've been well into the second half of my career for a while. And as I read the book, I can start to recognize where I've faltered, I feel, and what I wanted to accomplish in the second half of my career. And the book helped me sort of identify what some of those issues are. And so I'll be a little bit vulnerable in this podcast, but not until John and Wendy are vulnerable first. So we're gonna let them run through uh some of their thoughts on this. I would start by maybe just challenging the premise and in intuitively it sounds right. But you know, I'll start with you, Wendy. How do you feel about the idea that in the first half of your life fluid intelligence is sort of the way our mindsets are dominated versus the second half being more crystallized intelligence and and the delivery of that being different than how you would do it in the first half of your life?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

I'll come out with the hindsight being 2020. Right. And the only way hindsight can be 2020 is because you've already got the knowledge to look back and go, yeah, I could have done that differently. So for me, to apply it to business, when I started paysetting media, social media management or social media for business was really just in its infancy. 2015 businesses were just starting to use social media. But I had the mindset that that was something, because I came from corporate marketing, that was something you handed off to an intern, right? That was something you gave to the 20-something in the group. And at that time I was 40-ish. And I was like, that's not me. I'm not social.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

By the way, I hate to interrupt you. I gotta say, you think people still give it over to the young people?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

They do. A lot of businesses will go, oh, my my niece handles that or my kid handles that, and they don't handle it well because they don't understand the importance. They think it's a TikTok, it's something they can just throw together, and they don't understand about being brand consistent and managing your brand online and such. For me, I thought I didn't have the fluidity to take on social media, and then I realized, oh no, I'm exactly who needs to be doing this because I had the education and the foundation of knowing business and understanding answering a question online to make a business relevant, and a lot of people don't make that correlation. So for me, it was a connection of crystallized intelligence and fluidity that had to come together in order for me to get out of my own way and start paysetting media, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

John, uh, what about you? How do you feel uh about the fundamental premise about how we are built for the first half of our careers versus the second half?

SPEAKER_02 6:52

I I appreciated the the message and what what he said there because I wasn't aware of it. I I agree with it. I agree with that concept. I probably wouldn't have known it ahead of time, but it makes total sense now, you know, from hindsight, uh just as Wendy said. It's funny because I struggled this week I've spoken about this book several different times with different people, which I guess is good for the book. But I couldn't remember the word crystallized intelligence, right? And which goes right to the whole idea of fluid intelligence is you can remember what the con you remember all the details. And I love the analogy that when we're, you know, our heads are like, you know, right now they're like the Library of Congress, we've got all this stuff in there. But when we were younger, we didn't have that many books. So when somebody brought up something, we could quickly immediately go right to whatever that book was, know what it is, know what tool to apply, and and solve that problem. And later, our brains are cluttered with all that stuff, and it takes us a little bit longer to find that stuff where we never ever remember the word or the fact, but we we remember the concepts and what they can do for people in terms of education and wisdom, if you will. So I absolutely agree with that concept. I appreciate him putting it into words. I wish it was more memorable, like IQ one and IQ two or something like that. I'm sure that somebody else has done that already. But no, I agree with the premise and I think it applies for sure.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Aaron Ross Powell So I think that one of the things I like to point out about the book, which made it a little more enjoyable than it might otherwise have been. Otherwise it could it might have been like a heavy data type of a book, like uh, you know, we recently did From Good to Great. You can see my crystallized intelligence was trying to kick in there. From good to great. And I know uh Wendy had said she didn't really like sort of all that data. And what it was really was rigor. It was just sort of, you know, some props for how they did their work. In this respect, the way Arthur Brooks does it is he just gives a lot of examples about individuals and how they operate in the first half of their life versus the second half. And he's drawing from popular culture, and he's talking about classical musicians, and he's talking about physicists, and he's talking about Nobel Prize winners. And he goes to great lengths to talk about the fact that no matter how you feel about it, decline decline is coming, and I think he hesitates to use the word decline, but decline has measured against your ability to have continue to have fluid intelligence. But the decline is really, he used the term, you know, going into the uh waterfall. You know, the water as the water's falling away, there's more opportunities and more things are uncovered, and now you have the wisdom to pick those things up and try and use them to your benefit or to use them for other individuals' benefits. So I appreciated, without having a lot of data, the rigor around at least trying to prove that look, look what happened to this individual, and look what happened to this individual after they transitioned, or if they failed to transition. So I think that really uh worked well for me. I'm gonna bring this back to myself more specifically. There was a quote, and there's a million things you could quote in the book, but one of them was about an individual that he was speaking with. Somewhere in the conversation, he asked the question, Well, if you know that this is the issue, why don't you do something about it? You know, which is the everlasting question. And this individual responded to say, Well, maybe I would prefer to be special than happy. And I thought to myself, isn't that something right? Special and happy are always the same thing. And when I thought about some of the blocks I've had more recently and some of the things I've doing, uh uh, you guys both know I operate a podcast. When I have a block, it's because I'm working so hard to preserve some beautiful thing I thought 15 years ago that it's been working this long, I want to keep working it. And sometimes you just gotta let it go and you gotta release it, and that's difficult to do. And I think I want it to be special and consistent, and I want to stay on brand versus just being happy with what I was gonna present. So I guess I'll throw that very esoteric thing out. Uh let's go to John. How do you read that quote from being special versus happy? Do you does that sound like it resonates with you?

SPEAKER_02 10:39

I think in the context does it resonate, yeah. I think the context of it was about when I said special was uber successful. Right? World now, world renowned, world worldly known for whatever it is that you were going to achieve. So when I read that, my thought was you're talking about somebody who wants to be known, wants to be popular for their performance and their expertise. That is how they defined special. And in pursuit of that, they gave up happiness and that's their trade-off and they're good with that. And I think some of that goes with also just longevity. And you know, we we were told to set goals, career goals, aspirational goals. And at some times you have to let go of some of them where you were talking, Jess. There's things you want to do, you want to you have to let go. And this person isn't ready to let go. But it may happen anyway. So I mean, it definitely resonates. I understand that, but I think it's really about professional goals versus personal happiness. And sometimes people are willing to give that up, and that's fine. Athletes do it all the time, right or wrong, they do it.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, just to jump in there, one of the things that the book tries to illustrate is that while you're making that conscious decision to say, I'm okay with this at the moment, assuming that at some point in their life they're going to want to be happy, even if it's not today, that there may be things you're omitting or not doing now that would serve you well in the future. But I got a little off track there. I wanted I wanted Wendy to be able to uh respond to that statement, being special versus being happy. How how does that resonate with you?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Being a woman in business and a mom and a wife, it came to me differently. One of the things that I always knew I wanted was to be self-employed, to have a business and run a business. And having been a stay-at-home mom and not starting my business until much later, part of that youth was I had to put my special on the shelf because I was raising two little humans. And I put all my energy into that. And for a lot of women, you put your goals and your ambitions and your dreams aside so that you can be mom, you can be the wife, you can be all the things that you need to be in that moment. So it doesn't mean that you're not happy, but your personal happiness, your personal growth, your personal identity is put on hold as you play mom. So one of the things that this kind of resonated for me, especially with the book, was that I saw older women being successful. And as I learned their stories, I was like, okay, I have that chance. I it's it's postponed right now, but it doesn't mean it can't happen. And so special comes later for some of us in life. If you attach special and happiness to your own personal goals and achievements. And that's what I feel like happened for me. They also talk about instead of happy or I think special and happy go together. And I think when you're able to work on something that's making you personally happy, and in my case, also enhancing the quality of life from my family, it's a win-win. But my daughter would tell you that I wasn't always there in her high school years, because that's when I started my business is when she was a freshman in high school. Yet I started my business so that I could be home and not traveling for business. So yeah, there's a challenge there.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

You know, it's interesting hearing Wendy talk about you know the the delayed happiness, the delayed gratification, right? That's kind of what we're taught all through growing up, right? I'm talking financially. You know, save for later, delay, you know, you're gonna be better, you're gonna be further ahead in 15 years if you save now and spend less, right? And just change spend with happiness or family time. You're like, oh, I'm doing this so that they're gonna have a better life later, so that's why I'm not there for dinner, or that's why I do whatever. That's just what we're all trained as humans. Now not everybody does it, but the people that are super successful are usually the ones that are long-term thinking. Doesn't mean their thinking is right. Their thinking may be misguided, but that's what they think they're doing.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Aaron Powell One of the notes I wrote is are we addicted to success, which is a question from the book. Uh I wrote in my notes, I think it's a cultural thing for entrepreneurs. Success and happiness is part of the culture of the entrepreneurial community. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Absolutely. It's a grind.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Other people are I'm happy and successful because my rent is paid. And you know, I I'm living in a shack by the river, but I've always wanted to live by the water. And so that they're happiness. You know, i everybody has a different level of what happiness and success looks like. But for the entrepreneurial community, it is the grind. We all get off on the grind for making it happen. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 15:29

But more than likely, why did they do it?

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

For happiness.

unknown 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

One of the uh somewhere late in the book, it talks about there's all the prescriptions that come with every book in terms of how to achieve certain things. But one of them operated ideas where the work needs to be its own reward. The the work you're doing is actually work that you're happy to do. All right. Let me go back to the idea of when the decline starts. And remember, I'm defining decline as moving off the first curve of being really good at fluid intelligence and going to the second curve. So decline is only a uh quantitative way to say not this but that.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

I think it I I think as you were talking, Jess, I was thinking it's transformation.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:11

And what triggers the transformation is the decline of fluid intelligence. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 16:15

That's what I think.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

The whole event is not a decline, but when that starts to happen, now we've now we are transforming. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

That's a good way to get the negative word into a positive context. That was that was brilliant.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Be sure to tell my wife I think.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yes. So one of the things I was fascinated about was when that decline starts, because or at least per his research. And I can't tell you exactly what each sort of profession called for, but there was nothing that said that people were still exercising extreme fluid intelligence into their 50s. And we're talking most of them were into the 30s and 40s. And it got me thinking about all right, what if I applied that template to myself? Could I say I was much more one-way versus the way in the first 20 years into my career versus the last 20? I had a hard time differentiating. Like if Arthur had called me and said, Jess, I'm writing a book. What year do you think your your fluid decline started? I said, Oh, I don't know, maybe 2022, just two years ago. Well, he would have said, No, that's not true. It started happening in your late 30s or early 40s. I said, huh. That doesn't seem right. But of course, he had a lot of he has a lot of data to support that. Did it surprise you Wendy, or do you even agree that that's when the decline starts? There's exceptions, of course, and and it's not a complete drop-off, right? There's a curve. That's why it's called a curve.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

I would say for the Gen X demographic, so much change happened in the last 25, 30 years that we had to be fluid. You had the moment where you're like, okay, I've got this down. I've got the software. I understand computers. I understand my smartphone. I'm good. And then technology jumps and your brain goes, now I gotta learn this new thing. There's a moment there where it's crystallized and it's looking for fluid in there to go, okay, like how can I add this into the into the bandwidth? How can I get this new information? And for me, in marketing, it happens all the time. I'm constantly going, okay, how do I learn to utilize these new tools so that I can stay competitive? And the older I get, the harder it is to get that information into my head.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

What do you think, John?

SPEAKER_02 18:30

Uh a couple of thoughts. I what I think is interesting is just listening to you right now, I can kind of I can guess.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

I'm just kidding. It's crystallized. You can see we're all thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

I'm trying to figure out how to simplify my thoughts. Um, first I thought what was interesting when you threw it to threw it to Wendy is in the book, he talks about it changes by by profession and by individual, but that decline he talks about is usually 20 years after you start that profession, which got me thinking to Wendy's situation. While she was later in life when she started her business, does that mean her fluid intelligence continues to rise for 20 years later? Is she older because she started her profession later? That was my first thought. The other thing I wondered was a little bit, was it chicken and egg, right? So I can't say that I saw my fluid intelligence decline. I'm not saying it hasn't for those listening, but what I noticed was when I wasn't the young person in the room and I was the older person in the room. And by default, the relationships and those engagements and that dialogue starts to change because I found myself referring to my experiences in my knowledge of what I'd seen before versus what I know in my problem solving skills, which he puts in fluid intelligence. So what I wrestled with was a more circumstantial, just because by default, you start to become the older person, you're wearing a different hat in group dynamics. This is specific to group dynamics, is which is where I was appointed. Because I literally I was always I was always the young guy in with the senior executives. And then all of a sudden I'm like, well what what happened? Why am I the old guy here? I don't know if it answers your question, but I I think it's there. I think it's true, but I don't know if it's because our roles inherently have to change. And therefore our approach to them changes, and therefore it puts us on that second track.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

I think one of the big characteristics of that second track, or not characteristics, one of the opportunities, uh at least according to Mr. Brooks, is that uh we're much more built and even more inclined, just because of our age, to want to dispense that knowledge and wisdom and start to be more helpful to other people. You know, if you were generally that type of person that this is really when you start to flourish. I thought I applied, I tried to apply that to myself because I think I had an interesting situation. I think the reason I had trouble saying, yeah, I remember at 48 or 47 when my, you know, fluid intelligence started to decline. And I had trouble for all that. And the reason is because I think my general orientation and aptitude was to sort of teach and think about how to help and be helpful all along anyway. I'm not trying to exude a lack of humility. What I'm saying is I've just oriented that way. I think I might have been a teacher if my career hadn't pushed me in a different way. I just felt like that's the aptitude I had. And now I still feel like I want to be a teacher. And so I'm still thinking, well, if that's how I felt when I was 25, and now I'm a lot older than 25, I didn't have the decline. Well, I did have the decline. It's just that where I'm sitting now is better for what I wanted to do when I was 25. Because when I was 25, if I wanted to be a teacher, I didn't become one. Why didn't I? Was it money? Was it that it wouldn't be a good use of the way I wanted to use my intelligence? Who knows? So I found a a creative way to say to Arthur Brooks, if you ever called me, I didn't have the decline. I just sort of moved from a big giant to the other side of the curve. But I'm particularly drawn to the idea, and I do firmly believe however good I thought I was when I was younger in terms of teaching and articulating and trying to help people understand complex things, I'm much better at it now. I don't know if I can tell. Do all those things the way I used to, but I'm much better at teaching now. Do you Do you guys find yourself in your uh in your ages, and you're both younger than me? You don't have to say, Oh, but I know you're younger than me. Do you find that you are more of a in a wisdom and teaching mode? Or you still find yourself really still working through your career and trying to get trying to sharpen that up and accelerate opportunities and things like that? So, Wendy, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 22:23

I would say yes, that there is teaching moments that come up where I can actually say to somebody from my experience X, Y, Z. But that's not to say I don't have moments where I'm looking at somebody younger going, I need you to explain this to me in a way that I'm gonna understand it. And that just might be from a technology standpoint or understanding today's cultural differences, because since I'm in marketing, I have to look at the different groups and understand how to make the message fit the different groups. So if you don't talk to those groups to understand where they're at, you're gonna miss sending them the message. So I think part of it is being open to the fact that when you're looking backwards, you're looking through a certain lens. You're looking through the lens of your experience and what's coming up behind us is completely different. So you have to be open to the fact that you can teach, but you also still have to learn.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

John?

SPEAKER_02 23:24

I'm trying to recall the question exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

I'm sorry. Do you find your do you find yourself more in the mode of being a teacher more often than maybe you used to be? And now you're a coach.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Thanks for clarifying. I was listening, but uh anyway, it's been a long day. Yes. So in my corporate endeavors, which ended in 2020, so five years ago, I was starting to move to that. But again, it was my role, right? My value was by educating, motivating, corraling others' efforts for them to do it. That was a more efficient use of our skills. And now as a coach, definitely it's advice. But there are still things I need to learn, right? There's still things that I've that are are still in the upswing, if you will. So but yeah, largely speaking, that's why I am coaching is to apply and educate.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

And uh I have a couple of things I want to share, but uh why don't we do this, John? If you don't mind, why don't you tell us what what your one or two big takeaways were from the book, and then we'll jump over to Wendy.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Aaron Powell Other than the the two intelligence forms. I like the turning weaknesses and the strengths. Right. And in particular, uh the Stephen Colbert example where he did it knowingly, where he embraced his really bad experiences, but he he was willing to say, hey, this is part of who I am, and this has made me who I am. So while I wish those things hadn't happened, they've made me a different and better person, and it's part of what happens, which ironically reminds me of what we just talked about in the Stockdale paradox, like the brutal truths. And then also there were people like the the Beethoven story, right? He wasn't conscious maybe that it was good for him to go deaf, but it changed him for the better. So those are the the turning weaknesses in the strengths and recognizing that they could be strengths, I think is an important lesson for everybody to think through, especially in their business, right? If they have a challenge and they say, well, quote unquote, I'm not good at marketing, or you use Wendy say, I'm not good at social media. Well, that's a great opportunity to go once you realize that, to go get a professional or to learn more and do a better job on yourself. So those are my two takeaways.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

My takeaways are success fates, but wisdom grows. Happiness will come from reinvention and putting your ego on the shelf and realizing you have to know the moment to take the bow. It doesn't mean that you don't go work backstage and lift the curtain for somebody else, but you have to know when it's your time to take the bow.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

So my big takeaway is that I like a lot of the uh thought processes and the lot rationalizations are anchored in ancient wisdom and areas like stoicism and Christianity, different religions. And he draws deeply on that. And I tend to like to draw on those types of things for inspiration. And I also think it helps validate the book because when some of your sources aren't just sort of the data or the research, that there are things that have been true for centuries. Things like humility, things like empathy, these are all things that we all aspire to, even if we don't overtly say that. I just like books that anchor themselves in that respect. And it makes me feel like, okay, I I feel like I can accept the premise in the book and I can apply learnings in my own life to believe that this makes sense, and it's the kind of book that that I've actually sent to my kids. So they're not kids, so we'll see what they do with them. But uh it'll be interesting. So Well, I think we're at a point where we're gonna give our uh grades, our stacks, and uh where do you keep this on the stack? And uh just to remind ourselves, uh one is the bottom of the stack, five is the top of the stack, where would this sit for you uh when it comes time to read this book or to recommend it to someone else, John?

SPEAKER_02 27:17

So one thing we didn't talk about is there's a section of the book where I was not really engaged. Nothing against the topic, but that when you went into the the spiritual side, which I understand was building the premise, and there was a lot of valid lessons, and you would say the foundation for the findings. I I just thought that went on way too long. Now, maybe some of it was the deadline to read the book, but I'm like, okay, I get it. Like that part, like I'm like, you had me. I was loving that. What are we doing here? Why why are we talking about the long walks in India? Help me. Like I get it. Okay, he went a long walk and he had a transformation. Great. Let's move on. Let's save a couple a hundred pages. I don't know if it's a hundred pages, but that was what I felt like. So now that I got that off my chest. I could say that it was a two for me. And I'm gonna borrow something that Wendy has used before. Wendy talked about the pamphlet. I had written Word pamphlet, but now I think about it. Give me the ebook. Give me the ebook on the the two types of intelligence. We have a transformation. There's a lot of examples. Here's they are. Here's the link to the other stories if you want to hear about it. Good lesson. Uh too long.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

There we go. Wendy.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

I would say I'm I'm giving the book a five. Oh. I'm putting it at the top. And this is, you know, Jess and I don't always think, but lately we've been hitting.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

We don't see mic to mic.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Right. And maybe it's because it's hitting at a time in my life where these are conversations I'm actually having with my husband who's about to sunset his career. That whole special instead of happy is a transition that we're going through. It's more relevant for me. So I would say definitely for those in their late 50s, early 60s, and retirement's kind of loom in. This is a book that should be read. But I agree with you, the whole spiritual is like, chuck that out. We can chuck that part out. Um, and just go with the meat and potatoes of the book. So I give it a five.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

It's kind of like in the movie when there's some movie or show where somebody had to go, you know, do some peyote dance or whatever, and it goes on for like 40 minutes in the movie. You're like, what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

We're getting popcorn is what we're doing. We're getting popcorn in a drink. That's what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

So I'm gonna agree with the both of you a little bit. First of all, I'm gonna say I I gave the book a five. I was struggling between four and five. But I gave it a five for a weird reason. Okay, and this is a Because I said two. No, it's because, and this is I'm sorry, this is gonna be a little off the wall. I don't know if you remember, John, but he actually said, I thought about leaving this chapter out of the book. He actually said that. And I thought, huh, that's weird. I wonder and he never really said why he put it in. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, I understand why it was important to him. And I kind of admired, even though I didn't particularly like how long it went on, I kind of admired that he did it. I felt like he was taking a big chance and that somehow it was in keeping with the way he lives his life and the way he thinks about it, and that a lot of these things are grounded in in some levels of spirituality.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Specifically the spirituality chapter. I do remember that saying.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, he said that. And so I'm thinking every once in a while I'll find something I'll latch on to that I know just it's adjacent to what we're talking about. It doesn't fit, it doesn't work, but I'm just gonna say it. I don't care. And I felt like he just said it, he didn't care because it was important to him. That gave him more credibility even for me, even though if he had to put the chapter in, I I wouldn't have liked it any less. I still would have liked it. So that's why I flipped it to a five, because I thought, I mean, he's working. I mean, well, I guess the other way you could deduce that he's serious is that he left his think tank job at the top of his game. Right. So he's just a guy that's serious about it. And then if I admire him for leaving his think tank and moving into a second half of his life, I gotta have to admire how he describes the journey. But again, I could have done without the chapter.

SPEAKER_02 31:22

It's interesting. And I mean, I don't think any of us have written a book, which makes it ironic we're doing this, but I did feel I left feeling like he wrote that book for himself, not for the readers. And that's fine. Because it's his content, I would say work of art or whatever he wants to. He can do whatever he wants. And and you're right, to his credit, he called that out. But we're judging it from the reader's perspective. And that's fine that he does it. And it's it doesn't mean I don't like the guy. If he called, I'll talk to him for sure, right? I just I thought that was like it was more for him than the reader, but it's his book.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Well, and I think he even said that. He started uh down the journey uh on an experience that he had, and it started him down the journey, and that's why he started making moves while he was writing the book.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

So anyway, well, interesting. So this is why we do this, right? Here's these are the perspectives, all of them good.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

I don't think we've found the perfect five yet for the three of us, have we?

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Nope.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

No.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Not at all. Not yet. We'll get there. That's okay. All right.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

We'll persevere.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

Thanks you. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for uh recommending it. Um so I'm the next one. Yes. The next book is uh my recommendation. Don't know too much about it other than the title and a little bit of the context. Uh it's on my list because it's something I think that I can improve on. I'm hoping that this book improves in that area. And it's called Crucial Conversations. Now I'd love to tell you that it has one author, but the book has five authors. So I have to give everybody credit. Joseph Grenney, Carrie Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzer, and Emily Gregory are the people in the cover. By the way, it looks like it's up to at least three editions now, which revisions. Maybe that's why they have all those authors. But uh so we're going to do crucial conversations in our next review. So just in conclusion, you have stacks and strategies. It's where we go through stacks of business books to pull out the strategies for business owners to learn to apply.