The Art of Manliness


The 3-Step System for Simplifying Your Work and Life


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Hosts:
Brett McKay
Also mentioned:
Square John Stanky Mark Zuckerberg Q-U-O Borg Kate Stuart Butterfield Rachel Maddow Smart Brevity Jim Vandehei Barack Obama Jim Vanderhay Jensen Wong Jim Fande Politico Calendar Shopify Mabel Gusto

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Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 School's back in session at the McKay household,
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00:02:10.120 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the A1 Podcast. Now, before we get to today's
00:02:14.440 show, I wanted to let you guys know that we just launched a redesign of the Art of Manliness
00:02:18.520 website. We think it looks really great, and we're very excited about it. Visit artofmanliness.com
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00:02:27.900 Now to celebrate this redesign, we're giving away AOM stickers completely free to subscribers
00:02:32.760 of the AOM newsletter. If you're not a newsletter subscriber yet, visit artofmanlies.com slash
00:02:37.420 newsletter and sign up. Not only will you get free stickers, but the newsletter is a great way to keep
00:02:41.760 up with the content we put out on AOM and improve your life each week. Hope you enjoy the new
00:02:46.380 website and thanks so much for the support. Now on to the show.
00:02:53.740 When people are faced with problems and complexity, our instinct is to add instead of
00:03:01.060 subtract. As a result, we have a tendency to make our work and our lives more and more complex
00:03:05.780 and less and less effective and fulfilling. Even when what we add is new technology that
00:03:10.260 promises to make us more productive, it often only seems to bog us down and give us even more
00:03:14.660 to do. My guest says that to fight this drift toward complexity, especially in the modern age,
00:03:19.680 you got to be ruthless about cutting out the superfluous and focusing on what's most important.
00:03:23.740 His name is Jim Vandehei, and he's the co-founder and CEO of Axios and the co-author of Simplify.
00:03:29.360 Today on the show, Jim explains how to simplify your work and personal life using a three-step process.
00:03:33.980 Confront, delete, and amplify.
00:03:36.240 We discuss how to identify the slop we're all inundated with, and he's not just talking about what's generated by AI.
00:03:41.420 Rules of thumb for what to say no to. 0.60
00:03:43.420 Why you should spend more time developing your strengths than fixing your weaknesses.
00:03:46.420 And the importance of getting clear on what you want out of life, both personally and professionally.
00:03:51.160 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash simplify.
00:04:04.680 All right, Jim Fande, hi. Welcome back to the show.
00:04:07.460 Great to be here. Thanks for having me back.
00:04:09.500 You got a new book out. It's called Simplify. It's all about how to simplify your work and
00:04:14.000 your life. There are lots of books out there about simplifying. Why do you think the world
00:04:18.660 needed another one. Yeah, I think you're right. I think there's a lot of people who've written
00:04:23.100 about how do you bring more efficiency to your life. The reason that I think this book is timely,
00:04:27.400 the reason that we did it is I think that artificial intelligence is going to make
00:04:32.560 the need for simplicity maybe a hundred times more important. I'm seeing it every single day
00:04:38.320 in my life, every single day in the work that we do here at Axios, that basically we've hit a point
00:04:44.500 where everything is becoming so complex at work,
00:04:47.620 so complex outside of work,
00:04:49.400 that if you don't have a system
00:04:51.580 to figure out how to simplify what you're focusing on, 0.97
00:04:54.880 stop doing the dumb things you shouldn't be doing
00:04:57.060 and amplify the things you both want to do 0.97
00:04:59.420 and that you're good at doing,
00:05:01.000 I do think inertia and complexity
00:05:03.840 just take over kind of like awful cancers.
00:05:06.760 They spread.
00:05:07.700 How are you seeing AI increase
00:05:10.200 the amount of complexity in our lives?
00:05:11.720 Because the idea, the selling point is
00:05:13.500 AI supposed to simplify our lives? I think with time, AI might simplify our lives. I think in
00:05:21.000 the short term, it is the greatest complexity creation machine ever created. And let me say
00:05:27.180 why. Because think about it at work. Like, yes, if you really know how to use it with great
00:05:33.420 expertise and you're one of the 1% where it's a true force multiplier, it probably saves you time.
00:05:39.560 What is actually happening on the ground is now everybody can do better presentations,
00:05:43.500 everybody can write more detailed memos, so everybody is. So suddenly we are all getting
00:05:48.620 lit up with more presentations, with more emails, with more context, with more ideas at a time where
00:05:56.280 we have less time to actually focus on it. So unless you're really careful and you think about
00:06:02.680 this almost like a system or an operating system or a mindset, you're just going to end up in a
00:06:09.160 bigger complexity trap than you were already caught in pre-AI. Yeah, I've seen it in my own
00:06:14.880 work. So we get a lot of PR emails from people who want to be on the podcast. And I'd say in
00:06:21.800 the past year, the amount of those emails that we've gotten have increased probably 10x. And I
00:06:28.440 think it's AI. It's all AI. And again, like that's, that's one example across one small part of your
00:06:34.980 workday. For most of us, we're getting hit with that from a hundred different directions. You add
00:06:40.860 that up and you end up wasting so much time. Like the reason we wrote this book, I am not somebody,
00:06:48.260 I think we talked about this a couple of years ago. I have no sort of egotistical scratch to
00:06:53.040 itch in terms of writing books. You know, I've reached the point in life, I'm 55, I've had
00:06:57.160 some successes. I've won the lottery with my family. So like I'm playing with house money
00:07:02.260 and I want to like spend my time,
00:07:05.020 like how do you be useful to others?
00:07:07.220 And I think this book is useful.
00:07:08.880 I love that word useful.
00:07:10.200 I think about it with content.
00:07:11.520 I think about it with time allocation.
00:07:13.260 I just want to be useful
00:07:14.620 and I think the book is useful.
00:07:16.300 Like when we write a book,
00:07:17.320 it's because we've done something
00:07:19.060 that we put into practice
00:07:20.320 and that I've seen have a transformative effect
00:07:23.040 on me or my company.
00:07:24.680 And we rolled out Simplify this idea
00:07:26.680 two years ago at our company
00:07:28.180 and the results are truly astronomical.
00:07:30.840 call. Like we went, I went back and looked, our budget two years ago was to have about 750 people
00:07:36.600 and to do way less revenue than we're doing right now. We have 425 people, I believe,
00:07:43.480 and the average revenue per person is up 75%. And I truly attribute that to the simplify
00:07:50.480 mentality. And what I mean by that is we went through the company and we literally ruthlessly
00:07:56.020 looked at what are the things that we do that we can just stop doing and then what are the things
00:08:01.460 that we do uniquely well that we can amplify the hell out of it and to do that we created this
00:08:07.320 three-step process which is just confront delete amplify confront is what are we doing why are we
00:08:13.100 doing it delete is make delete and know the most powerful words in your arsenal and just stop doing
00:08:20.240 stuff kill anything that's not adding value, anything that creates friction, anything that
00:08:25.740 is just done because we've always done it that way, so that you can get to amplify the things
00:08:30.580 that you actually do exceptionally well. One of the cool things that we did is we make every
00:08:36.260 single employee, rank and file, anybody who's just starting or has been here forever, now we're doing
00:08:42.000 it on a monthly basis, write down in order of importance the three things that you need to do
00:08:47.980 to crush your job this month, one, two, three.
00:08:50.960 Then write down the three things that you do 0.98
00:08:53.760 that you think are dumb or that shouldn't be done 0.95
00:08:55.920 in order, one, two, three. 0.96
00:08:57.980 And then the three things you think
00:08:59.240 could be automated using AI.
00:09:01.220 Almost no person does that.
00:09:03.480 Almost no company does it.
00:09:04.740 But the minute you do it,
00:09:05.820 you can then sit down with your manager and figure out,
00:09:08.240 are these actually the three things I should be doing?
00:09:11.080 And then the three things you're talking about killing,
00:09:13.480 at least your manager has to confront,
00:09:15.080 like, why are we doing them?
00:09:16.400 in most cases what we find is people are just doing them out of habit they're doing it because 0.96
00:09:21.340 we always did it and they didn't really want to raise their hand and say that this is stupid or 0.82
00:09:25.540 wasting me time the minute you kill those things productivity soars but it's not just productivity 0.96
00:09:31.620 because who really gives a that's kind of the business advantage your personal satisfaction
00:09:36.560 soars because you stop doing the chores you don't want to do and you have more time to do the things
00:09:42.520 that you want to do. And that's why I think that this mindset, this idea of simplify and doing
00:09:48.240 like twice as much with half the work is so important at this very specific moment, because
00:09:54.520 I just can't envision a time in my lifetime and therefore anybody's lifetime where we've had more
00:10:00.600 stuff, more choices, more things that distract us. And the one thing that is crystal clear from the
00:10:07.340 science, the more decisions you have to make, the crappier decisions you make.
00:10:12.120 Yeah, I want to get more into the framework because you have some great examples from it
00:10:15.800 and some brass tack things. But just sticking on this idea of complexity, even before AI,
00:10:21.240 things had a tendency to get complex. Like why does that happen? I imagine most people don't
00:10:26.620 start an initiative or in business or organization thinking, I want to make this the most complex,
00:10:32.860 confusing thing. Why does complexity nonetheless creep in?
00:10:37.720 Yeah, I don't think people do it out of laziness. They don't do it out of stupidity. 1.00
00:10:41.380 It's just a defect in our species that we just have this tendency to complexify, 0.99
00:10:46.980 to make things more complicated, particularly the longer that we do it. It's why every organization
00:10:53.220 ultimately becomes a bureaucracy. It's why every government, the bigger it gets, the worse it
00:10:57.960 functions. The reason that the more stuff you have in your closet, the harder it is to decide
00:11:02.560 what to wear. It's just something about us that we assume more is better. And we often equate
00:11:09.020 action with like smart activity. And it's a bad human habit. And that's one of the things I've
00:11:14.360 discovered starting and running companies is that if you don't have a system to defeat the worst of
00:11:19.960 your habits, you'll never defeat it. The first book we did was Smart Brevity about how to write
00:11:25.040 smarter and quicker and in a more efficient way. And it ended up being revolutionary for people
00:11:29.820 who did it. But it was because you had to see that there's this bad habit, long-winded writing
00:11:34.220 that wasn't helpful. And you had to have a corrective measure, smart brevity, which was the
00:11:39.060 measure that we outlined in that book. And that's the way that I look at simplify. In some ways,
00:11:43.640 simplify is smart brevity on steroids applied to every aspect of your life.
00:11:48.820 I think you tie like this study, this tendency for us to add instead of subtract. I think there's
00:11:53.400 a study that you highlight in the book where researchers gave people this puzzle where the
00:11:58.560 solution was you had to take something away, but everyone always just wanted to add something.
00:12:03.600 We don't default to subtract. We always default to add.
00:12:06.760 It probably goes back to like our hunter-gatherer instincts that we just think we need more and more
00:12:12.640 is better. More is survival. But the evidence is so clear that all of us get, you know, what they
00:12:19.960 call sort of cognition fatigue. This idea that the more decisions you make, the worse the decisions
00:12:26.520 will be ultimately because we only can make so many sharp decisions with our brain not feeling
00:12:32.500 exhausted, even if we realize it or not. It's the reason it seems silly, but like it is the reason
00:12:38.120 that Jensen Wang or Rachel Maddow or Barack Obama or Mark Zuckerberg, why all of them have very
00:12:46.160 limited clothing choices. Like all of them have talked publicly about they limit the number of
00:12:51.380 clothes or colors that they have so they can reduce the amount of decisions that they have to
00:12:55.480 make in the morning and it seems small but i do a version of this with i really there's only one
00:13:01.480 brand of shirt i have one brand of jean it mainly because like the more i have i lock up i realized
00:13:06.820 this like a decade ago i would sit there probably realized that 20 years ago when you had that craft
00:13:11.180 beer explosion like i love the hell out of beer but when i go and stare at this refrigerator full
00:13:16.180 of like 400 beers i just lock up there's too many decisions there's too many choices right and so
00:13:22.060 you've got to figure out a way to reduce the number of choices. You've got to delete things.
00:13:27.140 You've got to increase your capacity to say no and realize that every little bit that you do in
00:13:34.000 your life where you take away frees up time to do stuff that's actually rewarding and brings us
00:13:40.800 benefit. And ultimately, that's what all of us want. You have a whole chapter dedicated to slop.
00:13:46.540 You don't just mean AI slop. What's your definition of slop? And what are examples
00:13:50.620 of slop that creep into our working lives. 0.65
00:13:53.460 If anybody's listening to this
00:13:54.960 and you take the time just to think about your day,
00:13:57.120 take one day and dissect it,
00:13:58.820 your day is like 60 to 70% slop.
00:14:01.840 And what I mean is just like stuff
00:14:03.120 that gets dumped on your plate
00:14:04.280 that you probably shouldn't be dealing with,
00:14:05.820 don't want to deal with,
00:14:06.700 someone else could deal with it.
00:14:08.940 And a lot of it, again, it's not done intentionally.
00:14:12.140 We talk in the book about make work
00:14:13.820 or Stuart Butterfield from Slack
00:14:16.820 had that great term about sort of like human-like activity,
00:14:20.420 It seems like you're doing work, but you're just making work.
00:14:23.820 And every time you make work, someone else has to do that work.
00:14:27.200 And most work at work is just stuff you're doing because someone else sets something
00:14:31.520 in motion that maybe never should have been put in motion.
00:14:35.140 So there's AI slop, which is just a bunch of words that were added because AI is very
00:14:39.560 good at word.
00:14:40.180 That's one thing.
00:14:40.960 But the other slop that I think is even more insidious is just like the work slop that
00:14:45.940 gets piled out of bad habit and inertia.
00:14:49.100 Habit and inertia.
00:14:50.160 Those things are so powerful.
00:14:52.420 Like even at my company run by me, who's obsessed with this, if I'm not doing like a monthly
00:14:57.660 or even more frequent kind of inventory about what are people doing and why are you doing
00:15:03.340 it, we revert to habit.
00:15:05.680 We revert to inertia.
00:15:07.300 The number of times that people say, well, I do this because like five years ago, you
00:15:10.700 said we should do this.
00:15:12.060 And I'm like, yeah, I changed my mind like four years ago.
00:15:14.660 I didn't realize this is still cooked into the system.
00:15:17.300 And that's true at every company.
00:15:19.480 And that's why this isn't like a shame on you. You are dumb. You made things complex. Like we all make things complex. You just have to admit it. Like we all have this tendency. But if you don't do something about that, that complexity is just going to strangle you. It's going to make it so hard for you to do the stuff you want to do at work and do the stuff you want to do outside of work. 1.00
00:15:40.420 Yeah. So meetings can be slop. Reports can be slop. You have this great example from AT&T where this guy comes in as CEO and you realize that there were like thousands of company policies or something. And he just started going through them and saying, all right, what can we cut? And the reason why they accumulated, like you said, someone 10 years ago said, well, we need to create this policy for this reason. And it just stayed forever on the books. It stayed as a rule or operating procedure, even if it wasn't useful anymore.
00:16:08.600 Yeah, the guy's name, John Stanky, CEO of AT&T, one of the oldest companies, Mabel, in the U.S., a workforce that's well over 100,000 people.
00:16:19.140 And he came in and he's become a simplified zealot and he realized they have 8,000, 8,000 different policy declarations that are like official to the company.
00:16:30.700 He said he couldn't name 10 of them. 0.98
00:16:33.100 And he became militant about like, I want to kill all of these. 0.98
00:16:36.300 And he's got it down to 400, and he's trying to get it down to single digits. 0.97
00:16:40.500 And what Stanky calls it is, quote-unquote, the Borg.
00:16:44.060 And the Borg is just all of the stuff that gets encrusted and all the barnacles that get built up inside of a company that become bloat.
00:16:53.080 And all they do is they prevent people from doing the fun, electrifying work that they should be doing that makes them enjoy their work and makes the company more profitable.
00:17:03.840 And what Stanky's admitting is kind of what I'm admitting or what Mark Zuckerberg at Meta admitted.
00:17:10.040 Like they basically went through this, they called it the year of efficiency.
00:17:13.040 But when we talked to him, talked to his team for the book, they talk about it in kind of the same simplified mindset.
00:17:18.840 What they realized is that every time that they reduced a layer and reduced managers managing managers, their productivity went up and their internal satisfaction scores for employees went up.
00:17:31.280 Well, why? Because they stopped doing the things that deep down, maybe subconsciously, people realized they shouldn't be doing. And they were focusing on the stuff that they want to do. And their stock price bounced up and they became a better company.
00:17:44.260 Yeah. And in your personal life, slop accumulates. Clothes, like you mentioned. You buy clothes and
00:17:49.180 then you haven't worn something in three years, but it's still in your closet. And you're like,
00:17:52.000 I got to get rid of this. Or just stuff you do with your family. A lot of families feel
00:17:56.180 really rushed and harried. And they never take a look at their calendar to ask,
00:18:01.320 why are we doing this thing? Do we really need to do this activity? Probably not.
00:18:06.680 Yeah. And I think in the book, I talk a little bit about this. I do it and I'd recommend anyone
00:18:11.380 else do this, nobody ever even steps back to say, I'm going to take 20 minutes today and I'm going
00:18:16.100 to think, what do I actually even want out of life? Like when I'm on my deathbed, like what do I want
00:18:21.480 to be able to say I accomplished or I achieved or I became? And write it down. Like what are the
00:18:27.420 three things you want out of life? And then use that as a filter for, okay, when I do have free
00:18:33.240 time, am I achieving these things or am I just becoming a prisoner to habit or a prisoner to
00:18:39.520 what everyone else wants to do, or just, I don't know, I'll just do this because I've not put any
00:18:44.480 thought into it. And I do think the principles of Simplify work even better at home. We walk
00:18:50.720 through how you could do this with your diet, how you could do it with your wardrobe. But I do think
00:18:54.680 it's just this mentality of taking the time of like, why do we do this? Is this the best way to
00:19:01.040 spend our time? All these things that I buy in the household, aren't there ways that I could just
00:19:05.560 automate this so I'm not having to spend any time thinking about this cereal versus that cereal.
00:19:11.020 Like there's technology that does this for free. All of us have access to it through Uber Eats or
00:19:15.980 whatever other app that we're using. We might not take advantage of it and it might seem small or
00:19:21.320 trivial, but if you do five, six, seven, eight of these things, you suddenly have more time to do
00:19:27.660 the things that you actually want to do. And that's really the spirit of the book is trying
00:19:32.960 how do we liberate ourselves to do all the things that you have to do to be a responsible human,
00:19:38.920 but free ourselves up to spend way more time doing the things that bring us joy and reward.
00:19:44.420 And that's not selfish. I think everyone else around us benefits when we're happy and we're
00:19:49.480 doing stuff that makes us feel energized. Let's talk about this process to kind of
00:19:54.240 drill down a little bit more. So the simplify process, like you said, just three words,
00:19:57.600 confront, delete, amplify. With confront, you argue that a lot of people just don't even get
00:20:03.080 to this point. And I think people listening are probably thinking, well, yeah, this makes sense.
00:20:06.500 If you get rid of stuff that you don't need to do, your life will be better. But why do most
00:20:10.820 people not even get to that point? Because life's busy. Like we're all busy. Like the average
00:20:15.140 person's getting, I think what is 150 emails a day, 130 texts a day. That doesn't even account
00:20:21.760 for your Tinder alerts and all the other people like calling you and wanting your time. So I
00:20:26.820 don't think most people reckon with how much our brain is getting pounded with incoming stuff
00:20:31.800 all day every day which gives us less time to spend any time reflecting on like okay like I'm
00:20:38.900 a prisoner to all of these alerts and all of these updates and all of these emails and all of these
00:20:43.700 texts but just what should I be doing what do I want to do that's why confront is the first thing
00:20:50.620 Just take the time at work, at home, with your diet, with your exercise, like what just
00:20:57.440 confront like what is it that I'm doing and is this actually the thing I should be doing?
00:21:03.380 Like just doing that has a radical shift, right?
00:21:06.840 I always look back and we wrote Smart Brevity, like one of the big aha moments and the thing
00:21:11.340 that really seemed to resonate with readers and then people when I did a speaking tour
00:21:15.560 on this is no one even stopped to think about before you ever write anything, just take one
00:21:21.380 minute to why am I writing this? What do I want this person to take away? Could I just articulate
00:21:27.840 that in one nice crisp sentence? Just that mentality shift of taking the time has such an
00:21:34.540 effect on us. So just taking the time to confront what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Which
00:21:40.880 then opens you up to this concept of delete. Just like what can you get rid of? Can I stop doing a
00:21:48.180 meeting? Can I block a bunch of these emails? Can I stop like buying 600 different brands? Can I
00:21:56.460 stop doing these things at work that I know I shouldn't be doing, but I keep doing them because
00:22:01.980 I just assume I want to do them and I'm embarrassed to talk to my manager? In the book, we talk about
00:22:07.100 this study by Microsoft that the average worker spends at least 25% of their week doing stuff
00:22:15.600 they shouldn't be doing. Think about that. That's, let me do the math, that's three months a year.
00:22:22.320 That's 2.5 years a decade. Imagine if you had that time back and you use that time for stuff
00:22:28.880 you should be doing or wanted to be doing. Not only would you not be doing stuff that you found
00:22:33.860 to be a drag, you'd be doing things that bring you more satisfaction, probably more salary,
00:22:39.840 maybe more promotions. Like that's a lot. And to me, that feels worth it. That feels like, okay,
00:22:45.680 if that's the payback, I'm going to confront, I'm going to look at the things I can delete so that
00:22:50.700 I can amplify the things that I want to do. So with this confront, I mean, this is something
00:22:54.980 I think would be useful. Maybe you just set aside time, like once a week, look through your schedule
00:22:59.800 from the past week and think,
00:23:02.400 what was the stuff that I did
00:23:03.520 that I probably don't need to be doing anymore?
00:23:06.040 But it sounds like too, like you in the book,
00:23:07.400 you do this as a continual process.
00:23:08.940 Like it seems like every time you're doing something,
00:23:10.540 you're confronting it.
00:23:11.360 And it's like, do I need to do this?
00:23:13.100 You don't have to be a maniac about it like I am,
00:23:15.540 but I would argue you should be doing this weekly at least.
00:23:18.960 Like just thinking, again, like I'm not saying
00:23:20.860 that you've got to go off and meditate and become a monk.
00:23:24.280 You just have to spend like five or 10 minutes
00:23:26.020 even just looking at your schedule.
00:23:27.520 Do I need to be doing these meetings?
00:23:29.660 Do I need to?
00:23:30.940 Could that meeting be a phone call?
00:23:32.880 Could that meeting be an email?
00:23:34.840 Like what are the things that I'm doing this week
00:23:36.720 that I don't need to do?
00:23:38.360 What are the things I'm doing at home?
00:23:39.960 Even looking at your personal schedule,
00:23:41.680 I just always did that.
00:23:42.960 Like, what do you need to be doing that?
00:23:44.480 Because maybe that's an hour you could be working out
00:23:47.060 or reading or doing stuff that you find
00:23:48.840 brings you enjoyment.
00:23:50.340 It's more just getting into that habit.
00:23:53.440 Like this all flowed from, like, I do take it further, right?
00:23:56.300 I have what I call my happiness matrix,
00:23:58.020 which is I kind of know the things that I care deeply about,
00:24:02.200 whether it's my family, my kids, my work, my hobbies,
00:24:06.440 like hunting and fishing, my health, my workouts, my faith.
00:24:10.800 And I know if I feel off, it's usually because I've not actually confronted,
00:24:16.260 like, am I spending enough time on the things that matter most?
00:24:19.480 And that always has helped me reset to make sure that I am doing that.
00:24:24.160 Like a good example is like I made the decision years ago that like,
00:24:28.020 I think one of the most important things to me is not to actually have a wide circle of friends.
00:24:33.240 Like I want to have deep, deep relationships and individual relationships with my children,
00:24:38.260 my wife, my parents, my siblings, and a very small number of friends.
00:24:42.900 Well, to do that, I had to delete a lot.
00:24:45.840 And that meant I live in D.C., I run a media company.
00:24:49.240 You could imagine the social stuff that I could be doing.
00:24:52.200 I almost never do anything socially for work in D.C.
00:24:56.380 I take that time instead to allocate it towards those family members in my kids so that I
00:25:04.000 can amplify the time I'm spending on the thing that by the time I get to my deathbed, I
00:25:09.220 want to be able to say, I was a really great dad.
00:25:12.780 I was a really great husband.
00:25:14.460 I was a really good sibling and a really good son and a really good friend to a small group
00:25:18.900 of people.
00:25:19.460 That matters profoundly to me.
00:25:21.460 But I took the time to think that, oh, that's one of the most important things.
00:25:24.660 I confronted that.
00:25:26.020 that required me to delete a lot of things in my life
00:25:29.340 so that I could amplify the things that matter.
00:25:32.440 I've done that in my own life.
00:25:33.700 Mine was early on in my career,
00:25:35.880 I would do speaking engagements where I have to travel.
00:25:38.600 And at first, it's always great to get invited to speak.
00:25:40.900 She's like, oh, wow, I feel important.
00:25:42.760 But then I realized I live in Tulsa.
00:25:45.000 There's no direct flights to a lot of places.
00:25:47.320 So for me to go to some place like Washington,
00:25:51.200 it's basically three days
00:25:52.780 because like one day is for traveling there,
00:25:54.340 then one day is the event.
00:25:56.020 And then the next day is to travel back.
00:25:58.040 And I'm like, I don't want to do this.
00:25:59.720 My kids are young.
00:26:00.660 I want to spend time with them.
00:26:02.040 I can't get that back.
00:26:03.060 So I don't do speaking anymore.
00:26:06.120 But that's a great example, right?
00:26:07.840 I mean, one, it's admirable that you did it.
00:26:09.580 But two, you go back to when you initially made that decision as someone who also does
00:26:14.400 some speaking, you have it in your head.
00:26:17.080 Well, that's what somebody who does when they have a podcast or they have an idea or they
00:26:21.340 run a media company.
00:26:22.880 You do speaking.
00:26:23.760 but no one ever takes the time to like, well, do I have to do speaking? And what is the cost of me
00:26:28.480 doing speaking? And the cost is usually time and exhaustion. And only then can you decide,
00:26:34.140 I'm going to make the hard decision of deleting that so that I can then spend that time doing
00:26:38.040 the stuff that I want to do. I just think most people are like a piece of wood floating along
00:26:43.620 a river and going where the current takes it because there's just too much going on. We don't
00:26:47.560 have time to evaluate. Like if there's one big takeaway from this book is like, take more control
00:26:53.300 of your calendar, take more control of your mind. And I guarantee you, if you do, you're going to be
00:26:59.020 a happier, more satisfied person. If you don't, you might still be a happy and satisfied person,
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00:31:40.260 the show. Speaking of the delete, do you have any rules of thumb on what you say no to or use the
00:31:46.440 delete key on? I mean, I'm pretty ruthless about my schedule. And again, it's small things and
00:31:53.280 you could say, Jim, you're the CEO, so you get to do what you want. But I think most people can do
00:31:57.560 this, like a couple of things, like one, I'll almost never take a 30 minute meeting. At most,
00:32:03.020 I'll say 15, unless there's like a real something meaty that needs to be discussed. I don't know why
00:32:08.640 I would ever need to spend that much time on a topic. And I have a rule of, I think I'm a nice
00:32:15.080 guy. If you see me outside of work, I'd love to have a conversation about you and your life.
00:32:18.860 at work, I don't do small talk. So if a meeting is at 10, we're not going to do updates. I'm not
00:32:24.240 going to hear about your weekend. We just, we've got to do business. And so we can, I can get you
00:32:28.280 in and get you out so you can go off and do the stuff you need to do at work. So I am very ruthless
00:32:34.480 about the time that I have. And a lot of that is because in now being a CEO, I have to free up a
00:32:40.760 lot of time just to think, right? My job is to make really good decisions for the future of the
00:32:44.940 company and then bring people along. So I have to constantly delete. So if it's not something
00:32:50.460 that's, you know, family related, if it's not something that is keeping me in like a good
00:32:56.360 intellectual and spiritual place, if it's not something that is totally vital to the company,
00:33:01.980 in all likelihood, I'm saying no to it. And I will say like, as someone who, and this sounds
00:33:08.080 boastful and I'm not, and I know I have some level of privilege because you're a CEO, but like,
00:33:12.040 I run a company. I'm writing a column. I write books. And I still do some speaking. But I still
00:33:20.060 find an hour every day to work out. And I'm militant about going fishing and hunting or
00:33:25.060 being outdoors or hiking on a very regular basis for my own sanity. But the only reason I'm able
00:33:31.340 to do all of that stuff is because I have been more rigorous about having a system to get rid
00:33:36.820 of stuff that I shouldn't be doing and really putting the onus on trying to find things that
00:33:41.700 do amplify what I'm good at, what brings me joy, and what will ultimately make me feel like I've
00:33:47.120 lived the life I wanted to live. As a rubric and deciding whether you should say yes or no to
00:33:52.240 something, like an invitation to go to a party or whatever, you suggest asking the following three
00:33:57.280 questions. Question one, will I enjoy the company of at least one of the people at the event?
00:34:02.840 If the answer is no, skip the event. If the answer is yes, continue to question two. Question two,
00:34:08.700 will I enjoy this event personally or grow professionally? No, skip the event. Yes. Continue
00:34:14.720 to question three. Question three, will my attendance take away from other goals? Skip work,
00:34:20.400 lack of sleep, no workout. Yes. Skip the event. No, attend the event. So I think that's, I think
00:34:26.200 that's really helpful. Another simplifying technique you suggest is something called the
00:34:30.160 handcuffs tactic. What's that? I mean, what I've realized in running companies, like, like so much
00:34:36.400 of it is like because people's instinct is just to keep doing more or to develop habits that you
00:34:44.160 have to figure out ways to put handcuffs on situations and basically limit the choices that
00:34:49.840 people can make or force them to think about why are they doing the things that they do a great
00:34:55.440 example of this was like just one of the origins of smart brevity was i thought most stories were
00:35:01.260 way too long-winded. And I basically set a mandate, your stories can't be longer than X number of
00:35:07.880 words. And unless it was a firm number, people would violate that and they would waste their
00:35:13.960 time because they ended up wanting to write 2000 words, right? And so it's small, but if you don't
00:35:19.120 do that, you won't get the result you want. I constantly ask all of my leadership team to tell
00:35:25.060 me the things that they're doing that they can kill, that we could just stop doing. And I do that
00:35:30.040 Because if I don't do that, they'll just keep doing it because they feel like they're doing the right thing for the company and they're busy and they've not taken the time to confront things.
00:35:38.540 So you have to have these little handcuffs thing.
00:35:41.660 Like one for me for diet is it took me a long time to figure out kind of like what should I be eating and drinking that makes me healthy.
00:35:48.620 But my handcuffs are I just I very much limited the types of food that I eat.
00:35:52.540 So I have one of two things every single morning.
00:35:54.740 I have the exact same thing for lunch every day.
00:35:56.940 And I have like a mixture of four different things at dinner.
00:35:59.680 And it just, it makes it easier to make sure I'm kind of eating what I know I need to eat.
00:36:04.160 It eliminates the amount of like stress of deciding what I'm going to have that night.
00:36:08.840 Like those things start to add up little by little, those handcuffs.
00:36:13.160 Yeah.
00:36:13.360 I eat the same thing every day too.
00:36:15.240 Hasn't changed in 10 years.
00:36:16.860 My dad was the same way too.
00:36:18.520 Every morning it was, it was special K and coffee.
00:36:21.300 That was it.
00:36:22.220 And he still does it.
00:36:23.080 I don't love it.
00:36:24.100 Let's talk about this Amplify.
00:36:25.160 So this is all about after you've deleted all the slop from your work or your life.
00:36:30.060 It's about focusing on the good stuff, the strengths.
00:36:33.400 And you make a big case for instead of focusing on your weaknesses, you should be spending
00:36:38.760 more time on what you're good at.
00:36:40.540 Why is that?
00:36:41.740 It's not just me making the case.
00:36:43.700 There's really good data on this that basically you get a much better bang for your buck when
00:36:48.880 you're focusing on the things you do well, rather than trying to fix the things that
00:36:53.680 are broken.
00:36:54.440 the corporate leadership council did a study of 20,000 white collar professionals and it showed
00:37:00.660 the power of amplify that basically if you force people to focus on their strength they become way
00:37:05.720 more productive and you see much bigger gains than by attacking their weaknesses and so a lot
00:37:11.820 of the delete and no is to put the emphasis on the things you're actually good at and even there
00:37:17.720 I don't think most people do that at work like most people could you even say here are one two
00:37:23.460 three, in order, in hierarchy. Here are the three things that I think I do best at work.
00:37:29.420 Just writing those down. Because if you work for me, then I'd say, well, great. Then how do I make
00:37:34.400 sure that you spend almost all of your time on one and two and three? If those are things you're
00:37:40.040 really good at, I need you doing a lot of that. There's many things that I'm fine at, but I try
00:37:47.040 to stop doing anything I'm fine at because there's usually somebody who's better than me at doing
00:37:52.260 the thing I'm fine at, but what is it that I do that is uniquely good and work on amplifying
00:37:59.320 that. And you just see such great results from doing that because it's not just that you end up
00:38:06.220 like doing better work and your company benefits. It's like you psychologically light up. You're
00:38:12.620 doing the things that you know you want to do. You know that you're sort of sharpening the things
00:38:17.720 that you're naturally gifted at.
00:38:19.760 And you're doing that by purging the things
00:38:22.600 that you're like, I'm not that good at this
00:38:24.120 or I don't know why I do this in the first place.
00:38:26.320 I don't know why the company does this in the first place.
00:38:28.940 That stuff has a really negative psychological drain on us.
00:38:33.400 We might not realize it because it becomes just habit,
00:38:36.420 but it really does.
00:38:37.720 Like you just think about it.
00:38:38.980 Like how do you feel when you're doing something you enjoy
00:38:41.840 and you're good at versus when you're doing something
00:38:44.180 that you don't like doing at all?
00:38:46.160 You don't feel great about it.
00:38:47.720 The analogy that I like is it's like a garden.
00:38:50.880 Instead of spending your time pulling weeds,
00:38:53.320 spend more time planting flowers because it looks nice,
00:38:56.480 but also there's no room for weeds to grow.
00:38:59.360 I love that.
00:38:59.960 Yeah, it's very true.
00:39:01.360 But again, like to do that, you have to,
00:39:03.920 it is about the thought.
00:39:05.320 And it seems so simple because you started this thing
00:39:07.460 with like, well, there's a lot of books
00:39:08.740 about different aspects of simplify.
00:39:11.120 But I think there's not necessarily a book that I've seen
00:39:13.520 that gives you like a real system in real time to apply it.
00:39:17.560 That's why we end every chapter with very specific questions to ask yourself or very specific tasks that you could do.
00:39:26.300 Like even this exercise in the work section, this idea of just take 10 minutes today and like what do you want out of work?
00:39:34.620 When you think of work, if you think about work, most people in their adult years are going to spend 75% of their time, their waking time,
00:39:44.180 like working, going to work, bitching about work, thinking about work. 75% of your time.
00:39:49.940 Have you ever thought for 20 minutes, like, well, what do I want to get out of that? Like,
00:39:55.660 what would make me feel like I really, really had achievement? And have you ever written those down?
00:40:01.160 And then have you ever taken another 15 minutes to write down, okay, if those are the three things I
00:40:05.340 want, what are the three things like I need to be doing now or doing in the year ahead to actually
00:40:11.280 get there. Oh, wow. Okay. Now you have a map. You kind of have the steps you need to take.
00:40:17.760 Now you have a great frame to figure out what should I delete and what should I amplify?
00:40:22.780 And I just like having these written North Stars or don't have to be written, maybe just remember
00:40:27.260 it. As a writer, I tend to write everything, but just having that frame of like, where do I want
00:40:32.920 to go? What do I want to accomplish? What can I stop doing? It's such a beautiful, liberating
00:40:39.960 exercise. Yeah, that idea, the chapter on the career plan, I thought was really useful because
00:40:45.940 I thought, yeah, you need to have a career plan. But I think most people don't have a career plan.
00:40:50.040 They're not thinking five years or 10 years where they want to be. Or if they do, they put off
00:40:54.700 creating a career plan for themselves because they think, well, I got to go to some workshop
00:40:58.000 or take some course. And he's like, no, just make a list of three things you want to accomplish
00:41:03.360 with your career in the next 10 years. For sure. I mean, give you an example. When we left Politico
00:41:08.460 to start Axios, like I'd obviously been doing this exercise in the back of my head. And one of the
00:41:13.740 things I sort of reached a point in my life where I was like, okay, I've had success. Like, what do
00:41:18.560 I want? Well, one of the most important things to me was I just want to do like really interesting
00:41:23.680 things with people I genuinely enjoy. And that, okay, well, I took that time. I wrote that down.
00:41:31.320 Well, you know what that did? It affected how we set up the entire company. It affects like the
00:41:36.820 type of people we'll hire and fire. Like we had now have a culture where we really do purge people
00:41:42.600 who just aren't that pleasant to work with no matter how talented they are. But I wouldn't
00:41:46.880 have had that template at work had I not put the time to think, okay, that is really important to
00:41:53.020 me because I realized that maybe it's a flaw in me, but I just, I get really drained and down
00:42:00.220 by people who do the wrong thing for the wrong reason, even if they're super talented. Like
00:42:04.960 some people have a tolerance for it. I don't. And I was like, I'm in a position to do something
00:42:09.540 about it. Now, that might be a bigger thing because I run a company than your average person
00:42:13.800 would be able to do. But we all have that. And I think you just need that North Star. You have to
00:42:19.420 have that in your mind or you're going to drift. Yeah. You make this point in the book. A lot of
00:42:24.920 people think, well, I'm not a CEO. I don't have that much control about what I do. If the boss
00:42:31.200 asked me to do this report that I think is dumb. I got to do the report. But you said that's just 0.96
00:42:35.580 an excuse. So if you're not a CEO or a manager, how do you apply these principles in your life
00:42:43.200 at work? I think very easily. I think any person can write down what I said. What are the three
00:42:48.800 things I do in order that I think I'm best at and bring the most value? And then the three like I
00:42:53.440 shouldn't be doing. Any person can do that. And I'd be shocked if any manager would recoil if that
00:43:00.240 person said hey can I have a conversation with you I did this exercise and I just want to make
00:43:04.720 sure that I am focused on the things I should be focused on I want to raise the three things that
00:43:09.720 like I don't know if I'm that great at and I don't actually understand why we do it so we can have a
00:43:13.700 conversation about it any person can do that if your manager doesn't engage on that that's a big
00:43:19.380 red flag you might want to be finding a new job in the next couple of years but most managers aren't
00:43:24.000 they're going to want to engage on that so anybody can do it yes you have less control it might be
00:43:29.680 your manager says, just do it. And you're going to have to keep doing it. But at least you've
00:43:34.080 gone through the exercise of, okay, I now know the three things that are most important to me
00:43:38.160 in the time that I do control. And everybody controls at least some of their day. Almost
00:43:43.060 everyone does. How do I spend more time doing those three things? That little exercise. And
00:43:50.200 over time, you're going to see, okay, now I ended up being much better at my job, which will put
00:43:54.980 you in a much better position salary-wise or for promotions. Most companies are meritocracies,
00:44:01.280 but it requires some level of self-discipline and some level of self-accountability and self-direction
00:44:07.380 to make sure that you are at the top of the list. Communication can take up a lot of people's time
00:44:14.500 at work. I think that's where things get most complex. If I look at my work life, that is the
00:44:19.320 that causes the most mental drag?
00:44:21.920 Because there's 20 different places people can contact me.
00:44:25.680 There's a Discord server, there's email,
00:44:28.260 there's this app and that app.
00:44:29.980 How can you apply the simplified process
00:44:32.620 to how we communicate at work?
00:44:34.700 Yeah, I mean, it's my obsession, right?
00:44:37.320 I think people are terrible communicators
00:44:38.980 and I agree with you.
00:44:40.160 It's the biggest problem at most workplaces
00:44:42.540 because people aren't great communicators.
00:44:45.180 The difference you can make as a communicator
00:44:46.960 is just think about who you're communicating to.
00:44:48.700 How can you serve that person?
00:44:51.160 And what is the quickest, most efficient way for you to explain what you're trying to explain or ask what you're trying to ask?
00:44:58.620 So many emails, so much communications is long-winded, meandering, because people didn't think about what is it we're trying to achieve?
00:45:06.400 Why does it matter?
00:45:07.340 What's the next step?
00:45:08.500 So most communications should be 100 words, not 1,000 words.
00:45:12.620 Most things can be solved very quickly.
00:45:14.520 and you just need to take the time about like what is the most efficient way for me to convey
00:45:19.280 what needs to be conveyed because you want to be that person that when someone gets a text or
00:45:24.700 someone gets an email that subconsciously and consciously they want to read the text or open
00:45:29.740 the email you don't want to be the person where they roll their eyes and scroll past your email
00:45:34.600 because you're long-winded because it's not clear what you're trying to say and because you're
00:45:40.420 completely indirect. You want to be the person like, oh, I want to open Jim's email. He's always
00:45:44.700 tells me exactly what this is about. He always explains why it matters. And it's always clear
00:45:49.660 what the next step is. Like that is what you need to do. And I think every company needs to do that.
00:45:55.700 Otherwise, like, God, I go into some of these companies, you know, we have a side company that
00:45:59.660 does consulting for big businesses, Fortune 100 companies and smaller on how to communicate more
00:46:05.700 effectively and it's just awful like a hundred different email styles people long-winded doesn't
00:46:12.860 make sense antiquated formats expecting people to go into an intranet which like what any person
00:46:19.740 with a heartbeat and and a life would want to go to an intranet to find something right like all
00:46:24.860 these weird things that we do out of corporate habit you can tell the common string here is like
00:46:30.060 how do you defeat bad corporate and personal habit you've got to have a system let's take
00:46:35.480 of the personal life, you're really big on people having a master life plan and a life foundation.
00:46:40.980 What are those concepts and how do you keep that simple? Yeah, it goes to that idea we talked about
00:46:44.920 a little bit earlier about just kind of what do I want to get out of my life? And then thinking
00:46:49.440 about, okay, if those are the things that I want to get out of life, what do I have to do? Like a
00:46:53.620 good example is, okay, one of the things that Jim wants out of life is like, I love being active. I
00:46:59.600 love being vigorous. Like I want to be able to have a long time to be able to play with my kids
00:47:03.860 and my kids' kids and be active and mobile
00:47:06.740 in my 80s, my 90s.
00:47:09.000 And I've got this thing called ankylosing spondylitis.
00:47:11.580 So over time, my spine will want to harden into one bone
00:47:14.580 and it could make things difficult.
00:47:16.680 And so, okay, if that's what I want
00:47:19.080 and this is the obstacle I have,
00:47:21.160 how do I simplify my focus
00:47:23.400 so that I can still achieve what I want to achieve?
00:47:26.340 Well, that means I probably need to carve out an hour a day
00:47:28.480 to work out and make sure I maintain my flexibility.
00:47:31.460 It means I need to be pretty vigorous
00:47:33.220 about my diet to make sure that I can keep as much fat off of pressing against my spine so that if
00:47:39.880 there is arthritis, I get have less pain. That then says, okay, if I need to do that, I've really
00:47:44.580 simplified like we talked about with the diet, like how do I make sure that I can adhere to that
00:47:49.280 each and every day? And again, like you could say like Jim's neurotic or that's a little too much,
00:47:54.640 but I think you have to have that. You have to have this approach of what is it that I want and
00:47:59.960 then how do I stack my time as best I can on the things that we can control so that I can achieve
00:48:05.700 the things that I want to achieve. And I do think you have to work backwards. Like, what is it I
00:48:10.620 want out of my life? What is it I want out of my health? What is it I want out of my relationships?
00:48:15.400 Then from that flows the other kind of more trivial, superficial things of how do I organize
00:48:20.580 my closet? Or how do I set things on auto order? Or how do I stop doing things socially that I'm
00:48:26.820 just doing out of habit. Those other things flow from having kind of that North Star. And I think
00:48:32.480 you have to have a North Star for work and one for your life. I think that the two kind of go
00:48:37.880 hand in hand. I think that I'm better at work when I've got my stuff together outside of work
00:48:42.840 and I'm better at home when work is not that stressful, right? So I think you have to think
00:48:48.600 about both of those. And again, this is not a self-indulgent gospel, right? It's much more
00:48:55.260 about how do you just live like a really good,
00:48:58.200 productive, satisfactory, joyful life.
00:49:01.340 And I think you've got to have that system.
00:49:03.240 You've got to have those stars.
00:49:05.600 So we've talked about how AI is making things more complex,
00:49:10.020 contributing to the slop.
00:49:11.400 But you talk about there's ways you can use AI
00:49:13.400 to simplify your life.
00:49:15.600 What does that look like?
00:49:16.540 How have you been doing it at work and in your life?
00:49:19.540 Yeah, I mean, I use artificial intelligence a ton for sure.
00:49:23.100 I use it at work and I use it at home.
00:49:25.280 And again, I think it requires pretty deep thought
00:49:28.720 on the front end to make sure 0.57
00:49:30.120 that it's not a slop creator.
00:49:32.420 And so a couple of things
00:49:33.440 where I found it to be quite helpful
00:49:35.040 is like I put all of my health information into ChatGPT.
00:49:40.040 Everyone has to make a judgment
00:49:41.340 on their comfortability doing that.
00:49:43.680 But I find it to save me a ton of time
00:49:46.300 when I'm thinking about supplementation
00:49:48.360 or I'm trying to figure out
00:49:49.960 what happened with a blood result
00:49:51.860 or is there any latest research on spondylitis
00:49:54.720 that I should be thinking about as I think about my health.
00:49:57.820 And so I have found it to be a massive time saver
00:50:01.200 on the health side.
00:50:02.820 Another thing we walk through in the book
00:50:04.820 is just using artificial intelligence
00:50:06.380 to look at your schedule.
00:50:08.860 And it's very good if you give it access
00:50:10.960 to your Google Calendar to figure out
00:50:13.560 like where you're spending most of your time
00:50:15.600 and suggesting things that you could stop doing.
00:50:18.340 It's unemotional.
00:50:19.200 It's not there to judge you.
00:50:20.600 It's there to kind of just look at the data.
00:50:22.300 and it often does flag things that don't need to be done.
00:50:26.220 I think if you can really work with it,
00:50:28.480 it can also save you time in putting together things, right?
00:50:31.720 Like I used to spend a lot of time,
00:50:33.180 I spent a lot of time just dreaming up new ideas
00:50:35.520 and then I'd be in all kinds of conversations
00:50:37.880 about what might this look like.
00:50:39.720 I've figured out how to use artificial intelligence quite well
00:50:42.700 to do mock-ups of new business ideas
00:50:44.900 and that doesn't require anyone else
00:50:46.720 and little by little,
00:50:48.100 the artificial intelligence understands
00:50:49.940 my design sensibilities
00:50:51.600 and I can in two minutes
00:50:53.240 do what it would have taken me two months to do.
00:50:55.480 But I do think you kind of have to organize your mind
00:50:59.340 before you use AI.
00:51:01.720 Otherwise, if you're a disorganized mind
00:51:04.220 and you're kind of cluttered
00:51:05.400 and then you jump into it
00:51:07.240 and you've not really thought about,
00:51:09.080 okay, how might this be a force multiplier for good
00:51:11.720 instead of a slop creator?
00:51:13.540 I worry you're going to end up just creating more slop.
00:51:16.520 That's why I just think whether people buy the book,
00:51:18.740 don't buy the book, read the book, don't read the book.
00:51:20.400 I do think if there's a takeaway, it would be just take time today to think about the work and life thing.
00:51:27.100 What do you want out of both?
00:51:28.680 Give yourself kind of this guide that will help you make some of these decisions, whether it's using artificial intelligence or not, so that you have more direction.
00:51:39.580 Don't be the bobber in the lake.
00:51:41.440 Have an anchor.
00:51:42.680 Well, Jim, this has been a great conversation.
00:51:44.240 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:51:46.940 Yeah, if you go to Axios.com,
00:51:48.540 hopefully people are familiar with us.
00:51:50.540 You can get it there.
00:51:51.560 If you Google Simplify the book,
00:51:53.320 you'll be able to find it.
00:51:55.480 I write a column.
00:51:56.620 If you happen to be a CEO,
00:51:58.000 I write a weekly newsletter to CEOs.
00:52:00.300 If you email me at Jim at Axios,
00:52:02.240 I'll sign you up.
00:52:03.380 I write a lot about AI, politics,
00:52:05.620 other topics, and it's fun.
00:52:07.760 So I appreciate you.
00:52:09.020 I appreciate your podcast
00:52:09.760 and I appreciate your time.
00:52:11.380 Likewise, it's been a pleasure.
00:52:13.420 My guest here is Jim VandeHei.
00:52:14.520 He's the author of the book Simplify.
00:52:15.900 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:52:18.360 Check out our show notes at aom.is slash simplify.
00:52:20.800 We find links to resources.
00:52:21.840 We delve deeper into this topic.
00:52:30.740 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:52:33.420 If you haven't done so already,
00:52:34.260 I'd appreciate it if you take one minute
00:52:35.560 to give us a review on the podcast player
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00:52:39.840 Please consider sharing the show with a friend
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00:52:43.220 As always, thank you for the continued support.
00:52:45.000 Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you how to listen to the podcast, but put what you've heard into action.