The Exchanges

Q is, maybe you should set up a life that you don't escape from. Very poignant, especially today when for a lot of people that is possible, you know, that, especially in the US, it's pretty possible. And you open up with a parable about a man named Alexander and the Knot, and I thought there was a lot of similarity between the two. So would you mind telling that story?

A So they call him Alexander the Great. I think when he was 17, knowing he added the great part, he was with Alexander. And there was a legend in a small town in Turkey that, uh, there was an ox cart that was tied with a very complicated knot to the edge of town. And it was said that whoever could come and untie this knot would become the ruler of all of Europe. And, uh, Alexander showed up, and there's a myth about it that's not true, which is that he took out a sword, cut it in half, and said, there's no knot. That's not really what the story was. The story was this. He showed up, he heard the story, he saw the complicated knot, and he said, wait, there's a wooden post in the middle of it. If I just pull this post out, the knot sort of takes care of itself. Because it had entwined itself and was concealing the real problem. Pull out the post and the knot gets fixed. That doesn't mean it's easy. It takes a lot of practice to realize where's the post, where's the entanglement, where's the thing I'm going to pull out. But we're surrounded by knots. There are all these people who want us to be mildly unhappy. There are all these people who want us to measure the wrong things and buy solace in the form of a bottle or a fast food or whatever it is. That's good for them to make us reasonably unhappy all the time. But when you see where the post is, and you see where the nod is, you ca…

AI assessment note: “there was an ox cart that was tied with a very complicated knot”

Q Like, I guess, let's say there's somebody listening right now, and this somebody could be me on many days, but, you know, when you don't want to do something, like, you have that deep in your veins, please, like, I would rather do anything else in the world except the thing I know I need to do. What would you tell them, or what do you tell yourself?

A Well, I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right? Is it common for you to Not want to do the thing you have to do. Because if that's the case, then it's not the thing. It's the have to part that you're, right? That people go on vacation and do things that they just paid a lot of money to do that are supposed to be fun, but if that was their job, they would hate it. So that's part of what's going on here. And we can talk about what are the trades we make to solve problems? What are the trades we make to create the thing we want to build? Or it could be that you're engaging with something toxic, and there's something in your system that's saying, don't do that. And I had a young friend who took karate lessons, and after three weeks, he said, they yell at me and they hit me. Now, some people think that's fine. He did not. Don't take karate lessons, right? If it's making you sick to negotiate to win in certain settings, small claims court or whatever it is, then don't, because you only get tomorrow once. You don't get, get a chance to do it over again. We have more freedom than we want to admit. So how are you going to spend the resources you've got, and what are you going to get in return?

AI assessment note: “I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right?”

Q Right? It's no, I listened to you. We had a conversation, even though it was mostly in my head, and I took your feedback. I implemented it. I got better. So by the end of the thousand, it wasn't they all suck. It was I got better. Is that right?

A Yeah, and it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person over and over again. You learn so much from all the people who walked by your store and didn't come in that you changed the window, and as soon as you changed the window, someone came in and said, oh, I should do that more. So we get what we measure, and the feedback loops are super important because if you're measuring the wrong thing, so if you go to the gym and you see someone on one of the Stairmasters and they put their hands on the side rails to lift their weight up, Why did they do that? It hurts your back, it doesn't give you a good workout, because it makes the little number on the Stairmaster go up. That's the only reason. Is that why you went to the gym? To make the number on the Stairmaster go up? Because if so, you succeeded. When we measure things that don't matter, if we're busy counting calories but not losing weight, did we count calories because we like counting calories? Or did we just learn something about our metabolism and maybe we're counting the wrong thing? So if you want to get funded and people who care enough to listen to you are saying no, can you imagine why they might be right? The answer, they're an idiot, is not acceptable. Why might they be right to reject me? Because everyone who makes a decision is correct based on who they are, what they believe, what they want, and what they h…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, and it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person”

Q know, younger people getting married less, having sex less, some of that's good perhaps, but also it's just like tamping down our risk spectrum. So I wonder, Like, for somebody who's sitting there and worried about taking on more risk and putting themselves out there, what do you say to them or what do you repeat to yourself when you're like, this feels risky, I'm going to do it anyways?

A The way you learned how to walk, and the way you learned how to talk, and almost everything that's important is you did it a little, you discovered what happened, and then you did it some more, and you got good at it. Please don't quit your day job. Don't quit your day job. Go try to mortgage your house, risk your life savings. Don't do that, right? But maybe on Saturday, go to a garage sale, buy 18 dollars worth of stuff, and see if you can sell it on eBay. Is that risky? I don't think it's risky. I think it's generous, because there's somebody in Toledo who wants that thing you found, and they're eager to pay for it, and you're gonna charge them less than it's worth, and there was someone in the garage who wanted to sell it to you, and they're eager to sell it, and you paid what they thought was, and you came out ahead by creating value for people. So when people talk to me about risk, I asked them things like this, like, when was the last time you did something generous that might not work, where if it didn't work, only three people would know? And that's how I grew up. That's how I spent the formative years when my business was struggling. I was constantly doing things where if they might, if they didn't work, almost no one would notice. And you may have heard me tell the story about my mom, but I'll tell it again. My mom was one of the pioneers of museum stores. She co-fou…

AI assessment note: “when people talk to me about risk, I asked them things like this”

Q Interesting. You, you have a saying, managers want authority, leaders want responsibility. My question is, what is the first step you can take to become a leader and not a manager?

A The most important thing is to lead yourself. And we have a lot of trouble with that. And what The Knot is about is, you know, many of my books have been, how do you get other people to change their mind? This is about how to get yourself to change your mind. And how do you figure out how to be more curious? How do you figure out how to be more resilient? How do you figure out how to measure what matters? Because once you start doing that, you will begin to move. And when you will begin to move, then people who want to move will begin to follow you. And, you know, I love the Main Street model of boring, small, recession-proof businesses. Most of what makes them boring is on the outside, they're not looking for innovation, right? If I need my lawn mowed, I just want it mowed. I don't need you to be innovative. But on the inside, there's huge value add if you can figure out how to innovate, how your employees engage with each other and with the customers. Those sorts of shifts are critical, and this is what it means to be a professional. What it meant to do hard work a hundred years ago was you needed to change your clothes twice a day because you were digging ditches. We're so lucky we don't do that anymore. I'm, at least I am. Ok, so what's the hard work? And the hard work isn't like gritting your teeth and getting through it. The hard work is being clear with yourself and then…

AI assessment note: “The most important thing is to lead yourself.”

Q you pretty quickly. But the other side that you talk about a lot in the book and sort of overall in all of your work is this idea of mediocrity. And you refer to the four horsemen of mediocrity as deniability, helplessness, contempt, fear. And so I'm curious, one, Tell me about the four horsemen, and then two, how could we figure out which one of those is crippling us?

A Right. All right, first, first let me, the word mediocre just means average, and there are two kinds of mediocrity, uh, and compromise, and so let's, I want to talk about compromise first, because compromise isn't exactly the same thing. If you are an architect, and you have a client, and you bring your perfect building to them, and they ask you to make changes to it so it will work better for their business, that's a useful compromise. That's a powerful compromise. On the other hand, if you bring an idea to someone who doesn't want to change, who doesn't want to, they will insist that you sand out all the edges and make it banal, that's a bad kind of compromise. That's the kind of mediocre we're avoiding. Right? To make it so that every single human doesn't notice us so we don't get criticized. Right, so then we got indoctrinated. We got a job. Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. Deniability means you don't have to put your name on it, because it's what everyone else was doing, and this one is super common, right? The next one is this idea of contempt, which is, I don't care that much about my job. I don't care about that much about my customers. It's just not worth it. Anytime you hear someone say, I'm just doing my job, it's because their boss is burned Any relationship they have with what they're doing, it's not their fault. They're in a system that doe…

AI assessment note: “Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. Deniability means you don't have”