Leah: [00:00:00] Welcome to episode 131. Today we are talking about how to change what’s not working. When you’re stuck, how do you get unstuck? And we’re doing it with an incredible guest who I’m so, so excited to have, which is Dan Heath, the author of multiple books, but most recently, in fact, as of today, his book Reset hit shelves.

Leah: So if you don’t know who he is, as I start to give this bio, you might realize that you actually do. Dan Heath is an American bestselling author, speaker, and senior fellow at Duke University’s Case Center, which supports entrepreneurs who fight for social good. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Leah: He is an entrepreneur himself, having founded ThinkWell, an innovative education company. He’s the number one New York Times bestselling author, or co author with his brother, of six beloved business books, including Switch, Made to Stick, and my personal favorite, The Power of [00:01:00] Moments. He made Fast Company Magazine’s list of most creative people in business, and he hosts the award winning podcast, What It’s Like to Be.

Leah: So, his new book, Reset, launched today, and I was lucky enough to be sent an early copy and I sat down with Dan a few weeks ago to talk about his new book. So, the premise of Reset is how to change what’s not working, and I feel like for us as busy women, we are aware of where we’re feeling stuck. We’re aware of where there’s these sticking points, right?

Leah: What’s not always so obvious is how to get unstuck, how to reset and get in a place that we’re feeling really, really happy about. So the goal of this episode is to help you get unstuck. Like that’s the goal. We’re in the new year. We’ve got goals. We’ve got things that we want to see change. Let’s talk about how you are going to get yourself out of the results you’ve been seeing in the past and into the results that you want moving forward.

Leah: All right. Let’s jump [00:02:00] in. . Dan, welcome to the Balancing Busy Podcast. I am so excited you’re here. Thank you for being on the show. 

Dan: So happy to be with you, Leah. Thanks. 

Leah: Yes, absolutely. So congratulations. On your new book, I have it right here. 

Dan: Thank you. Absolutely. 

Leah: I loved reading it. I highlighted and I wrote in the margins and I had so many ideas, but one of the things I want to say first, because I, this book literally came out today, you guys, so like go on to Amazon or wherever you like to buy [00:03:00] books and grab it right now.

Leah: And I’m going to just say that one of the things, and I found this with your other books too, is that As I’m like taking notes and as I’m highlighting, it wasn’t just for my business. So don’t get me wrong. I got so many ideas for my business, but I also had ideas for my marriage. I had ideas for the kids, like how to get them to do things, how to, you know, help them to be closer, how to just things like that for us as a family.

Leah: Even I volunteer teach an early morning religion course for high school juniors and seniors. And I even have like places where I’m like seminary question mark where I had ideas for that too. So. 

Dan: Well, this is music to my ears. Thank you. 

Leah: You’re welcome. There is so many ideas. So, my first question is, what got you excited and interested in this topic?

Leah: Like, how did you find your topics? 

Dan: This one sort of found me. So, uh, during the pandemic, I was sent one night to Chick fil A to fetch nuggets and fries for the family. I get there, and you probably remember this from the pandemic era, but [00:04:00] you know, it, Drive throughs were crazy, and, and this was probably the longest drive through line I’ve ever seen in my life.

Dan: I mean, 50 cars minimum, and I just am crushed by this. And, uh, and I start trying to come up with, you know, possible lies I could tell my wife to get out of this job, and maybe just pick up McDonald’s or something easier. But reluctantly get into the line, and then Almost immediately, my emotions kind of flip because this line is just steadily creeping forward, almost like one of those automatic car washes that pull you through, and I’m like, what in the world is Chick fil A doing?

Dan: That is making this line so much smoother, so much more effective, such a better flow than anywhere else. And I got through this 50 plus car line in 10 minutes and I was dazzled. And I, and I just, for my own intellectual curiosity, I resolved to track down the owner. I did that later, a guy named Tony Fernandez.

Dan: And I learned all [00:05:00] about the history of this drive thru that it is one of the fastest drive thru lanes in the country. First of all, I just happen to be living in the community where, you know, there’s the Usain Bolt of drive thrus. They can process over 400 cars in an hour. And so, this kind of planted a seed.

Dan: The original way I formulated the question was, How do you make things run better? And so I started digging into that. That took me down a rabbit hole of operations research. And how do you make things run better? How do you just kind of make the trains faster? And then partway into the project, I realized I started to get interested in a different question, which is more like, what if you’re Arby’s?

Dan: And you have this kind of sad, ineffective drive through line. Like what, what if you’re just stuck in performance that you’re not happy with? What if you’re not an all star, but you aspire to better? And, and I got very, very interested in that. So it was like, I kept a lot of the operations stuff that I liked from, you know, [00:06:00] that Chick fil A framing, but I liked lodging it more in this frame of.

Dan: What if you aspire to more, and you’re, you’re feeling a little bit stuck, a little bit mired in the way things have always been, and you’re not sure how to get there? 

Leah: Yes, well it makes me think of, so, okay, so for anybody who doesn’t know, the book is called Reset. And then how to change what’s not working.

Leah: So we can all relate to this idea of feeling stuck in some area, maybe multi areas. And that’s what I’m so excited to dig into with you today, because I know that that’s universal. And whether it’s in our marriage or it’s in our business or it’s in our health or whatever that can be. There was this quote that you had in the introduction.

Leah: You had it further in the book as well again, about how every system is perfectly designed to get the results. It gets, and I’m thinking about that. I’m like, you know, that’s ultimately what you’re answering. You’re answering this question of, okay. So if I don’t like where I’m at right now in this phase [00:07:00] of life, whatever we’re talking about, whether we’re talking about our marriage or health or something in our business or a career that we can look and say, okay, so there’s, there’s this, the current system isn’t working and I need.

Leah: To make these changes, right? So you introduced the concept of leverage points or those areas where the minimal effect can lead to the significant positive changes and, and then create that progress. Can you elaborate, like help us understand leverage points? How do we identify those within the constructs of like our daily life?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you said it perfectly. I think the first leap is to realize. When you’re seeing consistent results, that’s a product of the system that you’ve perhaps unwittingly built, or it may have been something that was a genius system three years ago and conditions have changed and you still have the three years ago system.

Dan: And so I think the first leap is to realize, you know, meaningful change happens at the level [00:08:00] of the system, even in your personal life, there’s still like a system may sound a little geeky to talk about it that way. And then, and then the second part is. When you start thinking about changing systems, it feels really burdensome and complicated, and there are all these variables and complexities.

Dan: And so you can’t change everything. It’s just unrealistic. What you’ve got to do is find these, what the book calls leverage points, which are places where a little bit of effort yield disproportionate returns. And so basically, half of the book is about, well, where do you find these magical leverage points?

Dan: Because all of us would like to do a little and get a lot. And so, the first part of the book is about that detective hunt. 

Leah: So, have you been able to find leverage points in your daily life where you’re like, I’m noticing there is, there’s something a little stuck here. What have they been? What have you done?

Dan: I think one of the tools that’s been most helpful for me is the notion of studying bright spots. So let me just give a little bit of context for this idea because I [00:09:00] think literally every single person listening to this right now, you’ll find some way to use this idea in your life. I promise. And, and the idea is that psychology tells us that we tend to dwell on what’s not working.

Dan: We tend to obsess about problems and we agonize over the things that are not working and relationship problems and parenting problems and work problems and we just stew and stew and stew and spin our wheels. What we don’t do as much is apply all of that same analysis and, and all of that, you know, the same hand wringing to what is working.

Dan: So, you know, even if your marriage is really strained right now, even if your relationship with your boss is, is not great, it’s not bad all the time, right? There are still moments when, when that relationship is, is going along perfectly and you, you have a real moment of connection. Those are what I’m calling bright spots.

Dan: You know, the positive moments in a range of experience with your kids. You know, even if you’re having some testy times with a teenager, like they’re not always testy, there are bright [00:10:00] spots. And so the notion is. It’s not that people don’t realize when things are going well, of course you know it when things are clicking and when you have a good moment.

Dan: The point I’m trying to add is We don’t spend a lot of time trying to reverse engineer what made those moments possible. That’s the trick. So, you know, if we can study what’s allowing success to happen in some moments, that opens the door for us to create more of those moments. And so, you know, back to your question, I use this all the time in my work.

Dan: I mean, over, over years, like I’m always thinking about, you know, what, what’s the best of what’s possible for me? When do I feel most effective? When do I feel Like I’ve done something that was worth doing. I’ll tell you one of my, this is not a recent victory, but it was one of the biggest victories for me as a writer was just starting to understand when I was successful in getting words on the page.

Dan: And I don’t think I’m the only writer to struggle with procrastination. I mean, it has been [00:11:00] like a lifelong challenge for me. And so it’s easy to kind of wallow in, you procrastinate, you don’t get anything done, and then you feel bad about yourself, and then you start thinking, well, maybe, maybe I’m not cut out for this, and I can’t do this.

Dan: But that’s, that’s negative frame thinking, right? Flip it. There were times when I was successful. And so I started asking, well, what characterizes those times? And I start to figure out that it’s, it’s really tangible stuff. Like the times when I’m excelling were number one, it was almost always in the morning.

Dan: I do my best work in the morning. It’s almost always in an uninterrupted shift of, it’s usually three or four hours for me, maybe different for someone else. I don’t take calls. I’m not on email. It’s just a block of time. I work best in coffee shops and, um, I’m very distractible. You know, if I have emails or text messages going like, you know, I can derail myself.

Dan: You know, there was a time when I was writing a book called Switch with my brother. I literally had a laptop where I took the wireless card out of it and I would leave my phone at home. [00:12:00] So I was in a coffee shop, literally unable to get access to the internet. And it worked, you know, it worked. And, and it was all a product of just asking yourself the simple question.

Dan: What’s working already and how can I reproduce it? 

Leah: Oh, I love that. So as a mom entrepreneur who has focused on helping mom entrepreneurs have better time management skills, implement those systems so that they’re doing the right things at the right time in the right places, right? Like this concept of we don’t have time to waste and we need to make sure that everything we do is really effective.

Leah: I couldn’t help but keep bringing this back to thinking about. Um, our schedules, right? Like thinking about and looking at, okay, so how do I use all of these concepts within Reset and apply it to. Making a more optimized schedule where we don’t get to the end of the day and have that feeling of, man, I never stopped moving, but I don’t really know what I accomplished.

Leah: And I like [00:13:00] this idea of how you can reverse engineer the bright spots. That day that went really, really well, what was different in it? So I’ve been thinking about that. Do you have any thoughts as I share that, that come to you? 

Dan: Well, I remember there’s one story in the book that I really adored. It was from, it’s a discipline of therapy called solutions focused therapy.

Dan: And, and solutions focused therapists do bright spot stuff. They may not call it that, but that’s exactly what they’re looking for. They’re looking for the evidence that you’re already succeeding in some context. And so there’s the story of this mother named Rosa, who has a daughter Mia that’s just been diagnosed with, uh, ADHD.

Dan: And so she’s kind of trying to figure out, what, what do I do? They’re having a lot of tension in their relationship and it’s bugging her and she doesn’t feel like she’s as good of a mother She would like to be so she goes to therapy meets with this solutions focused therapist named John Murphy And he immediately starts trying to figure out like okay Well, when are when are things not strained when you feel like you’re really helping her and you’re relating and so they start talking through these [00:14:00] specifics and and Rosa realizes You know, one of the worst times is usually in the morning when everybody’s getting ready for school and it’s like, it’s stressful and there’s stuff going on.

Dan: That’s when she tends to bark at Mia and then she feels bad about herself. And, and so they kind of apply this bright spots lens. Well, the times when you’re not like that, what’s going on? And, and one of the things that pops out is, is Rosa realizes, you know, the mornings when I can just get up and have a cup of coffee and just be in my own head 20 minutes before the kids get up.

Dan: Like, I feel like I can get myself centered. And I’m not as prone to freaking out and kind of boiling over. And so that’s what she does. She starts going to bed a little bit earlier to allow herself to wake up a little bit earlier. She could, so she can have that kind of Zen cup of coffee before the pandemonium begins and she never comes back to therapy.

Dan: I mean, it’s a one visit miracle, which, you know, wouldn’t we all love to have that scenario? But, but what I love about this discipline is. It’s so tangible, right? It’s, it’s one [00:15:00] thing to hear, and, and believe me, the internet is full of advice about how, you know, brilliant, famous writers do their work. And you’re like, well, yeah, that works for Stephen King, but, you know, I’m not Stephen King, or that works for, uh, you know, John Grisham.

Dan: It’s a, it’s another thing to say, this is what I’ve done in the past. Like, by definition, that will work for me because it has worked for me. And I think there’s something really powerful and optimistic about that. 

Leah: I love that because I do think we have a tendency to look outward so often at other successful people and we think like, well, I need to model what they did, but your best chances of results are to model what you’ve done when you’ve been successful.

Dan: Amen. 

Leah: Oh, I love that. So that particular story, I, I loved it because that is something that I have been personally preaching for over a decade now, which is that Your kids cannot be your alarm clock. If you want the worst morning routine ever, [00:16:00] let your kids be your alarm clock. Cause you instantly feel like you’re behind, right?

Leah: They’re, they’re immediately have a request. They’re waking you up because they want something. And so it just. Um, kicks everything off wrong. And when I made that shift myself, where I started making myself wake up before the kids, and I did it incrementally. I started with like, Hey, I’m just trying to get 10 minutes up before then 20, then 30 and kept working my way.

Leah: But as I did that, it changed everything because instead of starting the day already feeling behind because I’m not dressed, I’m trying to take care of the thing that they need and hurry and get them going. There’s something so empowering and so incredible, especially on the days when I’m like, Oh, I feel like Superwoman, if I have already worked out, had my quiet time, done a little bit of work, gotten ready for the day, and then they’re getting it, I’m like, okay, I’m already successful.

Leah: Everything’s good, right? So, I love that story. 

Dan: I mean, it kind of connects back. We were talking about, you know, how do you [00:17:00] find leverage points? You’re trying to do something big, you need to find a leverage point. This notion of just waking up 20 minutes before your kids. Like, that’s a simple, tangible, doable thing.

Dan: That’s a classic example of a leverage point. It’s not like that was some magical fix where everything in their relationship was perfect. But, it was a little thing that made a big difference. 

Leah: Yes. Well, and that makes me think of the story of the sticky notes with the couple, 

Dan: right? 

Leah: Like again, a leverage point that you look at and you’re like, is it really going to make that big of a difference?

Leah: And it made a huge difference. Y’all have to read the book to find out what we’re talking about. And it’s amazing. So I’m just going to plug that for you, Dan. I like that. Just a 

Dan: little teaser. 

Leah: Yeah. We’re just going to, we’re going to tease that out. Um, okay. So one of the things you talk about is like the entrenched habits that hinder our progress and how we have to like.

Leah: We have to question, right? We have to ask the whys and figure out why we’re doing what we’re doing. And I think, I, I see in like a corporate atmosphere how it’s really easy in anything. I [00:18:00] mean, whether I’m on the school board, you know, or I’m, I’m, I’m volunteering with the school or, or I’m in corporate, it is very easy for me to identify what other people are doing wrong.

Leah: And be like, you know what, I can see how that, That should be fakes. Mm hmm. I think it’s harder for all of us when we’re trying to identify what’s holding us personally back. Like, what are those false beliefs? So what would you share? What insights do you have for us being able to assess that within ourselves?

Leah: I 

Dan: think there’s a really powerful question. That is what is the goal of the goal that we’re chasing and I found it addictive Personally, I think it has business applications of personal applications. You know, it’s it’s New Year’s resolution time of year So I’ll just share the story of a woman who used this on her her resolution.

Dan: So Marissa Levar’s was her name She’s an Australian mother of two I believe and she was In a really bad health state. She was recovering from breast cancer and breast cancer treatment. She also had long COVID. I mean, it could be. You [00:19:00] know, a huge strain on her health just to do the basics. And so her resolution, this was part of a survey I did just following people as they went through their New Year’s resolutions a year ago.

Dan: And so the, the initial prompt was, okay, which, what’s your resolution? What are you coming into the year with? And, and hers was kind of classic health stuff. I want to get in better shape. I want to, um, you know, feel better about myself. And, and then the next prompt was basically what’s the goal of that goal?

Dan: Like, why is that important to you? What will that, Allow for you and she starts talking about how she wants to be a better mom to her kids that she feels like the health challenges have held her back and they’re not having as much fun and maybe she feels some distance from them because it’s, it’s not easy for her to just get in the floor and rough house.

Dan: She had two boys and, and then the survey, the next prompt was, okay, would there be a way to realize that ultimate mission that you just identified without going through? You know, that initial goal. So in other words, [00:20:00] would there be a way for her to be a better mother to her kids without, you know, exercising and becoming more fit and so forth?

Dan: And, and she immediately starts popping out these, these kinds of beautiful ideas with, you know, we should bring play back into our life. And we used to play board games in the evening. We got out of the habit and we used to, we used to hear more music and that was a source of joy for all of us. And it was like, you know, boom, boom, boom, idea, idea, idea, none of which had anything to do with.

Dan: Walking or getting on the treadmill or doing sit ups or anything else. It was just kind of directly on point. And, and I think that’s, what’s powerful about this question is, is I think we’ve had it drilled in our head so many times in life, both personally and professionally, you got to set a goal, got to set a goal.

Dan: You got to be chasing a goal and we can kind of fixate on goals. And lose sight of, really, what’s the point? Like, what is the goal going to allow us to do? And, and the reason that’s important is, you don’t want to spend a lot of time realizing a goal that [00:21:00] actually didn’t get you any closer to the destination you really aspired to.

Dan: And so, so that’s, for anybody who’s got resolutions pending right now, uh, you know, ask yourself, you know, what’s, what’s the goal of that goal? 

Leah: I love that. And over the years, I have found that I have gotten clearer and clearer on asking those questions because of going after a goal, achieving it, and then feeling that kind of hollowness and looking and realizing, because it wasn’t actually in alignment with those core values that I had.

Leah: Right? Like, it just, it looked shiny. It looked good. It looked like, yeah, that should be the next thing or somebody else is doing that. Therefore, I should do that. Yep. And, and it wasn’t really in alignment. So looking for the goal of the goal, so powerful. It makes me think, so you had talked about cutting waste.

Leah: And I think, so you had said that waste is anything that doesn’t add value to your work in the customer’s eyes. Well, I wanted to shift that for like myself personally, and then [00:22:00] balancing busy audience, right? So as I was thinking about that, I was like, okay, well maybe I could say waste is anything that doesn’t add value to.

Leah: My values, goals, and long term purpose. 

Dan: Mmm, that’s good. Yeah. Thank 

Leah: you, thank you. And, uh, and kind of thinking about that, so, I, so as I was thinking about that, I’m like, Okay, well, how do we do a better job identifying The real waste versus what’s maybe sending us on down a trajectory. That’s really not actually the right place to be focused on.

Dan: That’s a really meaty and important question. So let me go on a brief tangent, but we’ll, we’ll come back and hit that squarely. 

Leah: Love it. 

Dan: So, um, I talked to this guy who’s a consultant, a guy named David Philippi works at a consulting firm called Strategex. And they are obsessed with the Pareto principle, and we’ve all heard this, the 80 20 rule, and there’s a hundred different formulations, but, but in the business world, you often hear 80 percent of your revenue comes [00:23:00] from 20 percent of your customers.

Dan: It’s not like that’s a law of nature of anything, but it just seems to be true a lot of the time that there’s this kind of disproportionality. And here’s what’s interesting. So he, as part of his practice, let’s say he’s working with a manufacturing firm, for instance. He’ll go through and help them compute the profitability of every customer they serve, which is not always easy.

Dan: I mean, you have to do some untangling and you have to figure out, well, How much support did this customer eat up and how, how expensive was it to market to them? And, you know, what were the costs of the things that they bought from us? And I mean, even if you’re selling, you know, online courses instead of, you know, optical instruments or something, the logic is the same.

Dan: You could do that same analysis. And then they force rank the customers from most to least profitable with everything baked in, you know, costs and time, not, not just revenue. And, and here’s where it gets interesting is he said in virtually every case, he finds that, that the people at the top of that chart, the most valuable customers [00:24:00] are under coddled and the people at the bottom, the worst customers are over coddled.

Dan: And he gave an example that stuck with me. He said that, that they often find the on time delivery rate for the customers at the bottom is often better than, than the customers at the top. And, and you might think, well, how, how could you possibly like de prioritize your best customers in pursuit of the worst ones, but what happens is.

Dan: The people at the bottom maybe are buying just kind of nickel and dime stuff, you know, one part here, one part there. It’s easy to throw in a box and ship it out. By the way, think about the translation to email, right? You know, sometimes we tend to take those easy emails and get them out because it makes us feel good.

Dan: It’s like something off our to do list. And meanwhile, like the most important customers, the people with the most important questions in email, I get neglected because it’s harder. It’s more complex. Maybe we procrastinated a little bit. And so after I talked to him, number one, I think [00:25:00] any business person should have that construct in their mind at all times, like who’s over coddled, who’s under coddled.

Dan: Cause what you want to do is, is rewire your business such that your best customers get what they need first and every time you got to make sure that your systems are wired to support that. And number two. If you’re looking for extra resources, time, money, energy, what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to steal from the bottom and give to the top.

Dan: Now, now here’s a weird shift. Imagine that you weren’t talking about customers and profitability, but you were talking about relationships in your life and their value to you. I promise you, you could do a similar ranking from top to bottom. And you know, probably your kids and your spouse and your family are at the top.

Dan: And then, you know, for all of us, it’s probably something a little different at the bottom. It might be relationships at work, or volunteer stuff, or, you know, a nosy neighbor. You know, [00:26:00] there’s someone who is eating too much of your capacity, that they are, in effect, over coddled, and they are stealing time from the people at the top.

Dan: And so, anyway, that was a, that was a long tangent, but I think it gets to the question you were asking of like, Where do we find these pockets of time spent, energy invested that don’t honor our long term purpose? And I think if we can kind of think through an exercise like that, we might turn those pockets up.

Leah: I love that you went there. Like, love it. Yes. I think there’s so much power in, in, and you share this, right? In reallocating our resources. Thank you. There’s only so much time for so many, they feel like, where am I supposed to find more time? But by taking, by taking that exact method and investigating and saying, Oh, What is the, that, you know, that lower 20 percent really, you know, [00:27:00] even smaller than that, that’s sucking up so much time and energy, that nosy neighbor or the, the, the school that keeps, keeps asking you, my sister and I were talking about this because she’s amazing and she is someone that you can count on.

Leah: And that is such a wonderful attribute, except that it means. You’re going to be the top of everyone’s list because you’re the one that they know will call back will say yes, right? So she has become the curse of conscientiousness. Like, the school calls her for everything at all times and it’s been really fun kind of watching her this year as she’s staying more true to where her strengths actually are and being willing to say, you know, that’s actually not my sweet spot.

Leah: That’s not going to be my strength. I’m going to say no to that one. And, and honestly, you know, she’s kind of needing to retrain all the people in her life because I mean, they’ve all been trained to be like, you go [00:28:00] straight to her. She will say yes. She will do it. Right? And, and then how does she allocate her resources when so much is being taken up and where she really wants it to be is, you know, she, it’s funny because, okay, taking this, this whole analogy, she started by, she wanted to be in her kid’s classroom, right?

Leah: She wanted to be with them, but then she’s like, oh sure, I’ll help with this and I’ll help with that. Right? So then she starts helping with other things. Right. Within, uh, you know, a year or so, the majority of her volunteer time is nowhere at all in the kids classrooms. It’s all over the school and everywhere else where her goal and her, her long term purpose was, you know, being there with them and, and feeling that presence and sure, she wants to help a little, but not That’s a 

Dan: perfect example.

Dan: Yeah. And, and, and I think what’s so important about that example is you don’t have to conclude that what you’re doing is Isn’t important or that it’s not valuable. You’re never going to come to that conclusion, right? Just like those customers that are the very worst that they’re not bad [00:29:00] people. I mean, they’re buying stuff from you, right?

Dan: That so it’s not that you’re concluding they’re not valuable. It’s that you’re concluding serving that or them. Is distracting you from what you care about the most. So you, you know, it’s not that you have to say this is an outright negative. It’s just that it’s not as positive at what, as what you would aspire to, like in the business example, what they’ll do with those customers that are at the bottom of the register is not just, you know, kick them out the door is they will, they will redefine the offer.

Dan: They’ll say, you know, the, the point of a business is to define what you’re offering and on what terms. And the point of the customer is to. Choose yes or no. Does it, does it make sense for them? And there are ways to do that to kind of reconcile the investment maze, so you could change the price. You could set a minimum order size.

Dan: You could, you know, push people to self service tools on the website instead of eating up your support team’s time and so forth and so on. So, uh, [00:30:00] you know, is there. An analogy to our personal lives as well. Like, can you redefine the offer in your personal life that, that might change the way some of these low value relationships operate?

Leah: So good. Okay. So I loved your example. I laughed so hard at the coffee shop and you realizing that you were one of the worst. Customers. So, will you just share and explain that really quick? Because it made me start looking at and thinking, okay, in what areas do I need to be honest and be like, I’m the worst, like, customer or, or part of that relationship?

Dan: Yes. So, uh, in the book I, I recount this moment where I realized to my horror that I was an overcoddled customer. I was one of those bottom dwellers for my local coffee shop where I go all the time. So, this was a couple of years ago and this coffee shop had, at that time, A, a, a bottomless cup of coffee.

Dan: So, you know, you, you buy your cup and then they had coffee available publicly so you could just go refill it as [00:31:00] many times as you want. And so that was a great thing for somebody like me who’s there for hours and loves coffee and you know, I’d probably refill it six times. And there was this whole tribe of, of older people who would meet up in the morning and you know, chit chat and they would have.

Dan: You know, five cups of coffee, a piece, and then spend like the next three hours in the bathroom. But it dawned on me at one point, like, no, I’m the person that is giving them 5 or whatever the cup cost. And then just clogging up a table for three hours. And meanwhile, there are these poor people coming in.

Dan: That are looking to get a croissant and a cup of tea. And they’re just going to be in and out, but they can’t find a table because the likes of me and right around that time, the, the owners changed the policy completely did away with the bottomless cup idea. And not only that, there were no more refills.

Dan: Like you want to refill, you pay for it. And I remember going through this phase where I just was indignant at this policy and how dare they. And then, you know, eventually I settled in on trying to see it from their [00:32:00] perspective. I realized, you know what, I really should pay for those refills. And if I’m going to clog up a table, I should be paying.

Dan: And if I’m not, I should get the heck out of here and let someone else sit there. But, but it was, it was just sort of funny to go through that moment where you realize, oh no. I’m the, I’m the bad guy I’ve been writing about. 

Leah: It’s so true. So my thought immediately went to our tax planner. So. We have this tax fighting firm.

Leah: I know there’s no way we’re one of the big clients, right? And I’m, you know, we’re, we’re usually a little bit bad at getting all our paperwork to them. They have to like check in with us a few times. Cause you know, who wants to go find all that stuff? We’re both self employed. It’s like, Oh, okay, hold on.

Leah: Right. And so I was like, Oh my gosh, we are absolutely the over called ones who like, You know, our price point isn’t nearly maybe, even though it’s a lot, it’s not nearly what others is. But anyway, I was laughing because I was like, there was this little internal, like, note to self, get the documents in because I’ve gotten, you know, we’re, we’re in January, right?

Leah: So I’ve gotten two emails [00:33:00] now because they’re, they’re wanting to get things going. And I was like, okay, note to self, don’t be that person. I get to try harder. 

Dan: Well, and it, there are people listening who are more like in the tax accountant role, like that’s an opportunity to change the offer. It’s like there’s a price contingent on this set of documents appearing by this date.

Dan: Like that’s the plan A price. And then maybe there are contingency prices for others on different timelines. But yeah, anyway, I just love that over coddled versus under coddled idea. 

Leah: I did too. And I think it’s. It’s so applicable in so many areas of our life. I mean, just, you know, in this conversation, we’ve talked about my sister in her volunteering at the school.

Leah: We’ve talked about your coffee cup. We’ve talked about my poor tax planner, who I owe an apology to, right? So it’s, it’s, and, and I think we can look at it from both sides, which I really love that. Like I’m looking at it to say, what is taking too much from me? And it’s, it’s not giving that return on investment, right?

Leah: Especially when it just comes to my time. And then, and then [00:34:00] also, where am I maybe not giving a good return on investment to someone else? And, and how can I adjust that? 

Dan: Yeah, and I mean, it, it has made me, I’m not sure I thought about it in those terms, because those are, you know, recent things I discovered with this book, but, but over time, I feel like I’ve just slowly learned.

Dan: What needs to get cut loose? Like as an, as an author, especially in the, in the business space, there’s all these kinds of partnership opportunities that manifest like, Oh, we could work on this and a workshop and a tour, and, you know, this kind of IP online or this video series. And in the beginning, it’s like, just really exciting to think about all these possibilities.

Dan: I could expand here. I could expand there. And then in, in probably 90 percent of the cases, what happens is it burns a lot of time because you’ve got to kind of. Get to know each other and you’ve got to formulate. What are we trying to do here? And you got to take the first couple steps and you know It’s some of the most ambiguous difficult work is up front and she sort of pay [00:35:00] the piper and then ultimately what I found was That was the over coddled stuff in my schedule Is it, again, I didn’t have to conclude any of it was bad or pointless.

Dan: I don’t think any of it was bad or pointless. It’s just that it wasn’t nearly as satisfying to me personally as researching or writing or, or speaking about what I’ve uncovered. Like those are the things that really bring me lasting joy and purpose. And so I started getting really disciplined about, you know, I stole this quote from someone and I can’t recall who, but, uh, if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no.

Leah: This is a two part episode, which is why all of a sudden it’s just. stopping, or it’s about to. So you just listened to part one. Now we’re going to keep going in, and I’m going to make this shift where I’m going to ask about when there’s acute anxiety. We’re also going to talk about how you know if your child does need therapy or not, and a whole slew of other things to help us help our kids to feel less anxious.

Leah: And of course, there’s going to be some great tips that we [00:36:00] can take on ourselves as well. Let’s jump into part two. Now, 

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