Productivity Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis

Marc, welcome!

Marc Schoen

Yes, very fun to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom. I have listened to your book, Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience twice, partially because I think your voice is so soothing. I guess that’s the hypnotist in you. But I would love to kick us off by hearing what’s a particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discovery you’ve made about us humans and how we perform best in your many years of working in mind-body medicine?

Marc Schoen

The biggest discovery, I would say, is that I was trained to believe that performance really had to do with controlling pressure or discomfort. And what I found is that, in reality, that’s not really what it is. It’s that we all should be feeling some amount of discomfort. And it’s not the discomfort alone that impairs performance. It’s that it’s our reaction to discomfort. And I have a great two studies on that, if that’s okay to elaborate on.

One was a great study done right around the start of the Afghanistan War, where they took two groups of people, the general infantry and the Special Forces, and they subjected them to a very intense, grueling workout. And the hypothesis was, is that the general infantry would show much higher signs of stress in the body, while the Special Forces would show very little stress.

Well, what they found out is that the Special Forces actually had a higher stress response than the general infantry, but the difference was they were able to parlay that stress response into productive action and, therefore, bring down the stress response, while the general infantry continued to hover in that higher level.

And that really is something that I have seen in several studies that I’ve done, whereas we can train people to manage discomfort and pressure better. But it doesn’t mean they will report that they’re not stressed, but their physiological response shows that they are managing the stress far superior than those who do not receive that kind of training.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s beautiful. Well, I think we could all use a little bit more of that. Did you say there were two studies?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, that was my main study on it, and then the second study was the Afghanistan study. That was not mine. That was someone else’s study.

So, two studies. The Afghanistan study, and the second study was mine, my own. And that was one where I had people who, in their everyday life, come in, report just the stress levels they’re having at work, and every day took blood measures of them, then trained a group into managing the discomfort and the pressure better, and their blood measures, which were cytokine measures, called Interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor, those people that received that kind of training had a far reduced inflammatory response, but they still reported being stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, we’re going to dig deep into what training consists of but, first, maybe let’s hear the big picture in terms of the big message behind your book Your Survival Instinct Is Killing You: Retrain Your Brain to Conquer Fear and Build Resilience. What’s the core thesis here?

Marc Schoen

The core point of it has to do with discomfort. And I think of it this way, is that here we are in this advanced technological society, and it’s done a great job of really limiting our discomfort in our lives. But the paradox of it all is that, even though we have less discomfort, theoretically, we’ve become far more sensitive to being uncomfortable. So, the premise of the book is, “Okay, how do we learn to manage discomfort without precipitating the fear response, like the fight or flight response?”

Pete Mockaitis

And that is a powerful message and question, and so rich and apt, I think, for our time. I’ve also enjoyed Michael Easter’s book, The Comfort Crisis, which explores some of these bits as well. You’ve got a fun word you use frequently in the book. Can you tell us the definition of agitants? What is that? And tell us a little bit of the story for how it is we’ve come to find ourselves here in this place with greater comforts and yet less resilience to discomforts?

Marc Schoen

Yes, I call it the comfort zone dilemma, is that we all strive to be in our comfort zone. And no doubt, it feels good to be in the comfort zone, to be a non-stressed organism, but the downside is, if we take refuge in this comfort zone, what we end up doing is that actually shrinking our comfort zone because we become more and more uncomfortable with the idea of getting out of it. It’s the effect is a lot today.

I see so much of this today, is that, as this shrunken comfort zone happens, we get many more mental symptoms, particularly phobias: fear of getting on the freeway, fear of flying, fear of closed places, or fear of heights. And so, we want to be challenging our comfort zone. If we just fall back into it, we are setting ourselves up for poor performance and many mental symptoms.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so, what is the concept of agitants?

Marc Schoen

So, agitants comes from the word agitation. And I’m very interested in, as our body gets more and more agitated, or has agitants in it, is that we cause a certain sort of high bar, I think of it, and the more agitants we have that exceeds the high bar, the more we are likely to impair performance and have psychological, physical symptoms. But if we can keep our agitants below that high bar, we tend to perform well and have no symptoms. But the key point of this is not the absence of agitants, but rather the well-management of agitants.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, is agitants the same as stress and agitation? Or what is the distinction or the core of this concept?

Marc Schoen

Well, I think of it more as a warming up of the body, heating it up. So, like, we all are theoretically around 98.6 is our basal temperature, and we do okay if we get into the low 99s, we may feel a tiny bit off. But once we start overheating and getting above 100, then our performance is very much affected. So, I like agitants more as a continuum, rather than thinking of we’re stressed or not stressed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, certainly. And so then, and for a given stressor, we may very well experience a different internal agitants response, like whether something gets us really steamed and furious, or a little bit like, “Ah, it’s kind of annoying, but I’ll shrug it off.”

Marc Schoen

Yeah, I just find it better to refer to that because of that continuum, rather than that you either have it or don’t have it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, can you walk us through the history, the chronology, the narrative of how we found ourselves in this place with lots of comfort, and yet a shrinking comfort zone? And you suggest it’s not just the smartphone but this journey starts much earlier.

Marc Schoen

I really think it starts as prehistoric humans, where humans learned to have an instinct to avoid being uncomfortable because the brain is pretty black and white about this. So, if we start feeling discomfort, then the brain starts experiencing a threat. So, in the early days, obviously, that threat was not enough food, or cold, or a mountain lion, or someone throwing a spear at us.

So, we learn real quickly to become sensitive to any impending discomfort and threat. And those humans that were capable of being able to respond effectively to that, live a whole bunch longer than those who are more tight-beat folks that were, “Oh, I’ll be fine,” and they just didn’t live long enough to propagate. And so, we’re a product of worriers and people that are constantly concerned that something bad will happen.

So, it’s natural that we would evolve more and more as a society to want to limit our discomfort because it just feels so much better. But that’s the ultimate trap, is that by continuing to pursue this path of greater comfort, which has really come significantly with technological advance, we’re losing that discomfort muscle so it atrophies, so we’re less capable of responding to the world.

And here’s, like, I think a wonderful example of this. We are in a world with tremendous amounts of psychological resources. And to help people do well and manage resilience and become hardy, but yet with all of that, and all of these technological advances, we have more mental illness than ever, and our troops are more likely to die from their own hands than they are from enemy fire. So, what’s happened is that we, as a society, have become less hardy, more fearful, and so that’s what’s happened to us.

Pete Mockaitis

Ooh, that’s tricky. And you say that in many ways that the march of technological progress has contributed to that, whether it’s microwaves and fast foods and convenient packaged foods, it’s like we don’t have to sit in even hunger or discomfort for long at all.

Marc Schoen

So true. And look how quickly we can create perfection by just tweaking things on the computer, making ourselves look better, sound better, or edit our responses. And not to mention, this was sort of what you alluded to is the issue of delayed gratification. We don’t have to wait long, do we, for gratification anymore? So, we don’t get uncomfortable in the same way we did in earlier times.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, bringing this to careers, in particular, could you tell us a story of how this scenario we find ourselves in, with a relatively tiny comfort zone, has been harmful to someone’s career, and what they did to turn it around and the cool results they saw on the other side of that training?

Marc Schoen

One great example was, some years ago I was sent a fellow that wanted to be drafted into the NBA. He was a senior year at the university, so he knew this is a make it or break it year.

And so, while he was playing during the year, he was never, by the way, historically a very good free throw maker. He’s always like around 60%, but now here he is in this last season, and many of the games being nationally televised, is that he’d get to the free throw line and freeze. He would push the ball rather than just be relaxed, and then his percentage went from 66% or 68% into the high 30s. So, he was having lots of pressure, and then of course freezing under the pressure.

So, I would go to Pauley Pavilion where he would play, and every time he got to the free throw line, the crowd would go, “Oh, no.” You just hear this large moan of 15,000 to 17,000 people. So, I had him come in, and I asked him questions, “What is your memory?” And this is so important for the bigger question that you’re asking, “What’s your memory of being under pressure?” And his memory was oral reports in school, and getting up to do an oral report and being nervous and shaking, and then the kids teasing him about his inability to talk.

So, now, years later, he goes to the free throw line, it’s like going up there for an oral report, and then when the whole crowd starts moaning, it pushes that old button and he freezes up. So, that’s a good example. So, what the solution was is that we couldn’t stop the pressure that he was feeling. Didn’t want to. What we wanted to do to make it so that the pressure, which is uncomfortable, no longer pushed the fear response.

Pete Mockaitis

And how does one make it such that that occurs?

Marc Schoen

It is possible to create a physical, emotional state in the brain that neutralizes the fear region of the brain, as many of you their listeners know is the amygdala part of the brain. So, what we do is put someone under pressure, when they’re uncomfortable, create this physical state in the brain. Hypnosis is the big way I do it, and it will block the fear response. So, now we’re having someone be uncomfortable, and learned that no fear is associated with it, and that’s how it stops.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay, cool.

Marc Schoen

Neuro-conditioning.

Pete Mockaitis

Neuro-conditioning. Hypnosis. Okay. And you said you had another story.

Marc Schoen

Another story is more directly related to business. I see a lot of folks that are young entrepreneurs, and have come up with a fabulous concept, made a lot of money, and venture capitalists come in to give them more funding for their company. And it was their idea, their intuitions, their hard work that created the success, but now you have the venture capital people, working with someone that’s a lot younger, and the entrepreneurs can get very intimidated by these people with their mathematical models, being older, putting pressure on them, second guessing their decisions.

And so, what happens is they start getting frozen up inside, starts second-guessing themselves, start losing confidence, start basically bowing to the pressure, which isn’t necessarily good because the venture capitalists aren’t the ones that created it, nor the ones that made the money. And so, we get this, again, this dilemma where we have pressure, uncomfortableness, pushing the fear response. And what is the fear response mostly is the area of rejection.

You think about it, when it comes to performance, if you look at “What is the issue?” It’s usually rejection, judgment, worry what other people might think, what they might say. When I asked my medical students, “What’s your biggest fear?” And these are super bright medical students at UCLA, “What’s your biggest fear?” Of saying something and embarrassing themselves.

And so, we get this with these young entrepreneurs and they buckle under that pressure. So, what I do is, again, create the pressure but make it so it does not push the fear response, so they can respond accordingly, express their opinion, stand up for what they believe.

Pete Mockaitis

And in your book, you mentioned that it’s very possible to feel two emotions at the same time. You’d say, “I feel stressed, worried, concerned, anxious, and also I’m safe.” Could you talk about that principle?

Marc Schoen

Yes. And that goes to that early concept of being able to create an emotional, physical state in the brain that blocks the fear, but yet, you can have them feel pressure. So, we have a neutral state or a safe state induced by this type of hypnosis, I like to call it hypno-meditation, and the real-world stress, and I also alluded to that study I gave you, is that, yeah, the people did report plenty of stress in their lives, but physically there was no trace of it. It’s an interesting dynamic. I call it duality, is my term for it.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, hypnosis is one way that we can get there. You also lay out 15 strategies to stay cool, calm, and collected. Could you share with us maybe your top three favorites for professionals that do a whole lot for folks, and yet are pretty easy, a big bang for the buck or ROI?

Marc Schoen

Yes, so the overarching goal is not to banish discomfort. The goal is to make it so discomfort does not experience as a threat and, therefore, push the fear response. Okay, so then that’s the goal of any exercise that we want to do. I have a lot of different ones that push the button, that make us uncomfortable, because it again pushes that button of rejection, or being judged, or being embarrassed and so on.

One thing that I’ve done to help train myself in this area was to ask people for favors, and that’s an uncomfortable thing. And the exercise I did was, and remember the goal wasn’t to get the favor granted, the goal was dealing with the uncomfortableness of asking for the favor. So, I would go around and ask people for $100. And, of course, virtually everyone would say no.

Pete Mockaitis

Virtually.

Marc Schoen

I actually had one person say yes.

Pete Mockaitis

Alright.

Marc Schoen

Of course I gave it back, but that’s really uncomfortable for me to ask that, and then justify it, or for people just to say, essentially, “Screw you,” or just ignore me, or walk away. That’s uncomfortable. But I wanted to give myself practice in that, and that’s a great tool.

Now, there’s different degrees of pushing this button. One is you could put yourself out there. Let’s say you’re uncomfortable about dancing in front of other people. You could go take dance lessons. Let’s say you’ve always wanted to sing, but you have a terrible voice. Well, you could take some voice lessons. Or, very simple, it’s so easy for us to just take the same way to drive to work or use our Google Maps. What if we were to try to navigate our way without the help of that? Again, the overarching goal is to feel uncomfortable and learn we can manage it and not get a fear reaction.

Another great way is to approach someone that you think is important or very attractive, and introduce yourself. All of these things really push that button. And so, the goal is to be uncomfortable, but still be able to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, if we are in the midst of it, feeling super uncomfortable, and we’re not sure if we can do it, and we are maybe feeling the fear response getting pushed, what do we do? Do we do some breathing? Or what’s your pro tip to pulling it off?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, I have a breath technique. That’s what I call it. It’s on my website. It’s a free download, and it’s a way that you can really expediently knock down your heartbeat and blood pressure. It really just takes 45 seconds to create a result. So, you can use this as a preface to doing any of these exercises, and all we want to do, we just bring it down below that high bar that I talked about so we’re not so overheated, and then move forward with the task.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Marc, that sounds like 45 seconds well spent. Could you give us a demo on this breath technique?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, it really is something I developed back in, like, 1983 in a biofeedback room at Cedars-Sinai when I wasn’t allowed to do hypnosis on the medical units so I had to find a way that would rapidly relax people. So, I hooked myself up with all these electrodes and then later ran other people through it, borrowed from here, borrowed from there, took from here to make something really quick.

And what I found is that an inhale through the nose, just a medium inhale, not having to be a big diaphragmatic breath, just medium. I’ll make a sound, but you wouldn’t make the sound. Kind of like this, about that amount. We pause for a second, and then have a pattern of four exhales. But the key part of it is to have no inhale between the exhales.

So, it looks and sounds like this, and the sound of the exhales is important. Here’s the inhale. Hold it for a second or so. Start of the exhales. And the last one, we just release the remaining air, and then we repeat that four times. And it’s remarkable, if you’re measuring someone’s blood pressure or heartbeat, how pronounced of an effect that can have.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So then, these exhales, it’s like a shh sound, like we’re calming, like telling a child to “Hush up now. Shh.”

Marc Schoen

Exactly. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis

And then there’s a pause between the shushes. And so, it’s about a medium level of inhale, not like a huge maximum.

Marc Schoen

Through the nose.

Pete Mockaitis

Through the nose. And then is the exhale there then, are we aiming to get mostly out, all of our breath out, or like completely evacuated, or just mostly evacuated, or does it really not matter?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, most of it, but we don’t want to deplete ourselves that we’re gasping for air. So, just a medium amount like that.

Pete Mockaitis

And then do we pause after the fourth exhale before the next inhale?

Marc Schoen

Yeah, a comfortable space between. And as you do this, cycles, you slow it down, so you’re pausing more between the exhales. Oh, and what I learned back in the ‘80s about this is that it’s not the inhale that relaxes us, it’s the power of the exhale.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s cool. That’s cool. All right. So, we’ve got that breathing. And tell me, when it comes to perhaps physical interventions, whether it’s cardiovascular exercises, or resistance strength exercises, or getting in cold water, or walking with a weighted backpack, are there any kind of physical fitness-y things that go a long way in improving our discomfort tolerance?

Marc Schoen

Well, it’s best for us to think about these kinds of techniques that I’m talking about, is that we have both discomfort, physical discomfort and emotional discomfort. And so, it is very important to work on our ability to tolerate both of them, and they both affect each other. So, obviously, if we’re physically less capable, then we’re going to be more emotionally uncomfortable, and vice versa.

So, the more emotionally uncomfortable we are, the less we tolerate physical discomfort. So, it makes sense to work on both. Now, here’s what I like to do, is to challenge myself physically. For example, when I used to run quite a bit, I would run, but meditate on the ability to stay calm and keep my heartbeat at a certain level. Or, when I take a sauna and have the temperature like 175, is to see how long I can keep my body cool from sweating. So, there’s that kind of interplay that we can do.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s great. Well, let’s talk about hypnosis for a moment before we wrap up. And so then, for those unfamiliar with hypnosis, could you maybe first share with us some of the best data or studies suggesting that hypnosis is a real thing that’s useful beyond our stage amusements?

Marc Schoen

Yes, it used to be that we thought hypnosis only changed people’s perceptions, and so it’s just sort of like a surface charge with a battery, that you can charge it a little, but it doesn’t seep into the true fabric of what it is. But as we’ve had more advances, we can truly measure the impact of what it does, and we see that it has a cellular impact and a biochemical impact. I even did one of those studies to show that we can use hypnosis to block the inflammatory response in the body, and that’s by measuring cells.

So, now hypnosis can be seen as having both a psychological and a physical effect. I like it because it’s like the difference between a Scud missile and a Patriot missile. It is precise, direct, and much quicker than going in more globally.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, for folks who are jazzed about that as a tool for being more awesome at their jobs, I mean, I guess we could schedule a session with a professional like yourself. Or, how can we get a taste of this benefits hypnosis might have to offer us?

Marc Schoen

I would like to offer your listeners a free download where it’s a hypnotic set of suggestions, all geared for job performance based on this whole concept of discomfort, threat, fear, and being able to manage discomfort without threat.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, thank you. That sounds beautiful. We appreciate that. We’ll make sure to link that in the show notes, etc. Okay, so we got that going for us. And then you mentioned the notion of the precision, like targeting anything. I’ve seen a whole boatload of different hypnosis pieces on YouTube for any number of things. What are your thoughts on those? My guess is that the quality and effectiveness vary. Is there any danger in just trying those out? Or, what are you thinking about these?

Marc Schoen

I certainly wouldn’t try someone’s work that isn’t credentialed and has significant training in it. And so, it should be a mental health professional that’s done it for a while because it’s very powerful and mishandled can create some bad results. So, be careful, selective, as to who you allow to do it. And again, most hypnosis can be seen as just trying to deal with changing people’s thoughts only, and just like cognitive behavioral therapy, it certainly can work.

But, if a lot of our behavior is influenced by fear, then it makes far more sense to deal with that part of the brain where it is centered in this limbic part of the brain. So, I like to use hypnosis to go directly at those limbic areas, such as the fear center, such as the pleasure center, the sleep center, and so on. And so, you can use hypnosis in a superficial way, or you can use it in a much more profound way, because to me, if we don’t deal directly with the fear response, no matter what we tell ourselves consciously, it’s just not going to hold.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And maybe, I’d love to get your…we’ll do your hot takes. I saw a YouTube video where they quickly said underrated, overrated for all sorts of, like, health and fitness interventions. So, let me get your hot takes here, the good doctor, Marc Schoen in the house. Hypnosis for, if I would like, I’m just going to put out some scenarios and say, could hypnosis be useful for this? Maybe say yes, no, or a little would be the three options if I may. We’ll say, “I crave cigarettes, and I’d like to crave them less.” Is hypnosis useful for that?

Marc Schoen

A little.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. “I get scared when I’m asking for referrals or feedback, and I’d like to feel less scared”?

Marc Schoen

Very positive. Good.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. “I’d like to sleep longer and better with less interruption.”

Marc Schoen

Good.

Pete Mockaitis

“I would like to stop eating as many cookies, candies, sweets, and diet more disciplined-ly.”

Marc Schoen

A little.

Pete Mockaitis

“I would like to be more assertive in telling my team my expectations for them and how they can improve.”

Marc Schoen

Good.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Anything else I should have mentioned, Marc?

Marc Schoen

Well, no, you did a great job. And you noticed where I said just a little tend to be those things which are more addictive in nature, that hypnosis is just a medium, it’s a single, it’s not a triple or a home run for addictions.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Well, Marc, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Marc Schoen

The thing I say is just a summary statement, is that in reality, what a lot of people say, “What doesn’t kill me, strengthens me.” It’s really more this, “It’s not the adversity that makes us stronger. It really is our effective management of adversity that makes us stronger and more resilient.” That is the key part of this.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, that’s good. Thank you. “I often find myself procrastinating and putting off the hard, uncomfortable things, and doing easier tasks like email.”

Marc Schoen

That’s a mixed one. That’s why I have to say a little, but possibly good. It depends what’s the source of the procrastination. A lot of people just come into the world wired as a procrastinator, and those folks, you can slightly modify it. There are groups of people that are procrastinators that’s totally out of fear.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay.

Marc Schoen

That can be modified that way.

Pete Mockaitis

And how about, “I find myself I just get so distracted. I sit down to do a thing and then I find myself around the news or social media or shopping minutes later.”

Marc Schoen

Not necessarily a good one either. Just a little bit of an effect.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marc Schoen

One I always like was something that Lance Armstrong had said when he was the Olympic athlete. It’s something along the lines like, “Pain is temporary, but quitting is forever.” That was a good one.

And there’s an old time one, God knows if I’m saying it correctly, it was something along the lines, you know, that we really want to judge someone based on the stage or position in life, but rather judge someone on the obstacles they have overcome. I like that one. I don’t know who said that but…

Pete Mockaitis

And a favorite book?

Marc Schoen

I love this book called The Untethered Soul.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite habit?

Marc Schoen

I do self-hypnosis meditation once to two times a day. That is such an incredible way to keep our body in the zone. Because as we get older, it would seem like it shouldn’t be this, but as we get older, it takes more work to stay in that zone.

Pete Mockaitis

And I’m curious, within that self-hypnosis, are there a couple key messages or suggestions that you think really hit home and bring a lot of the result?

Marc Schoen

If I had to say a core feeling is a belief, but it’s a feeling, is that when I’ve looked over my life, I have not had an absence of bad or tough things happen, but I’ve been very fortunate, that ultimately, it all resolves favorably with a few exceptions here and there. So, what I get to is a place of trust and faith and confidence, that no matter how tough something is, I will ultimately have the resources to manage it effectively. So, I’m just going to trust and let this feeling of total openness, non-tightness, safety, lightness be the prevailing dominant feeling I’m going to feel in my body. That’s what it is.

Pete Mockaitis

And is there a key nugget you share with folks that really seems to connect and resonate with them, and they quote back to you often?

Marc Schoen

It really is this notion that we have talked about that I can be uncomfortable, I can feel pressure, and nothing bad will happen to me. There’s no danger. And that I can persevere and succeed and that, ultimately, most people will say, my ability to hang in that place of fire is where the greatest results happen.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Marc Schoen

I would have folks feel free to look at my website. It’s my name, Marc Schoen, M-A-R-C S-C-H-O-E-N.com. You can find out more about me. I will have the downloads that I’ve referenced already there under the product section. But it’ll give you an overview of my work.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marc Schoen

I would really, really encourage people to challenge their discomfort zones, to push against that key thing I’ve said about rejection and judgment. And even though our tendency is to want to limit our losses, some people call that the negativity bias, often the probabilities of success are actually higher than the probabilities of failure. And so, so I would recommend really pushing that, and being uncomfortable, going in there and just challenging, “I can hang in here, persevere and succeed.”

Pete Mockaitis

Beautiful. Well, Marc, this is a great time. Thank you. And I wish you the very best.

Marc Schoen

Many thanks. Enjoyed being here.

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, welcome.

Dave Kerpen
Thank you so much for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom about delegation. And I’d love it if you could kick us off with maybe one of your most surprising and fascinating discoveries about us humans and delegation.

Dave Kerpen
Well, the most surprising thing is that the secret to delegating is much less about how to do it and much more about getting over yourself up here, getting through your brain, and dealing with the fear and the distrust issues and the perfectionism issues that are likely holding you back.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, succinctly stated right off the get-go, Dave. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. So, that’s the scoop. So, that’s funny, if people think I’m having trouble delegating, they may very well say, “I need a model. I need some steps. I need an acronym. I need a mnemonic.” And, Dave, you’re saying, “No, what you probably need first is to get over yourself because you’ve got some emotional stuff that’s hindering this whole process.”

Dave Kerpen
Yeah. And, look, my book has the steps and the acronyms and the models, and I love acronyms. I’m all for models, I’m all for systems and tools, but too many people do it to try a system or tool for anything, but certainly, in this case, for delegation, it doesn’t work, and then they say, “Forget it, this doesn’t work.” And the real answer is, “Let’s do the work on ourselves and deal with the issues, the limiting beliefs, the challenge, the fears that are holding us back.”

And then my model might work well but there’s a lot of other models right, or this software might work well but there’s 15 other software that might work well as well. And it’s less about choosing the software and more about getting the mindset right to be able to delegate.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear that. And so, so maybe if folks are so not over themselves, and they don’t even think it’s possible, Dave, can you paint a picture of hope, maybe share some data or a story?

Dave Kerpen
So, first, I’ll paint a picture of a sadder story and then I’ll tell my story, which, hopefully, is a little less sad. Scott came to me, names have all been changed to protect the guilty, but Scott was a long-time real estate entrepreneur, worked for himself, essentially, but built a nice little practice with having a couple people work for him over the years, made a lot, a lot of money, came to me years and years into his career, sort of mentoring me.

He said, “You know, I made a lot of money over the years. My son just turned 21, and I missed his growing up. I missed basketball games. I missed parent-teacher conferences. I missed an awful lot because I was so focused on building my business. And if I could go back, maybe I wouldn’t care so much about building my business because, yeah, it made me lots of money, but I will never get that time back with my son.” And that story struck me.

So, as I was doing the research for my book, I looked at deathbed research, and researched on what deathbed regrets people had. And perhaps this won’t surprise you at all, but, as you might guess, Pete, a very, very small percentage, under 1% of people regret not working enough hours. People almost always, over 50% of people, on the other hand, regret, when they’re asked for deathbed regrets, regret not having more time with friends and family, not having more time to pursue their passions, not having more time to pursue travel and other key hobbies.

We all get the same amount of time and we only get one shot at it in this lifetime. And the reason I wrote this book is that, sure delegation will make you a more productive employee, delegation will make you a more productive leader, delegation will make you a more successful entrepreneur depending on what it is that you do, but I think the stakes are much higher than that. I think delegation is the single biggest key to unlocking success and happiness in life.

And I will share that there’s many, many things that I’m not good at, but one thing that I’ve been fortunate, you know, the sort of happier story is that I pick up my son from the school bus every day, and shut off my phone, and for those three hours after school, I’m helping him with his homework, and we’re playing baseball, we’re having to catch, playing basketball. I’m getting that all-important family time, that all-important parenting time, that’s my priority.

If you’re listening, that might not be your priority, but then you might want to climb Mount Everest, or you might want to work out three hours a day, or you might want to find the love of your life. Delegation is the biggest tool that allows us to have the freedom to pursue our number one, two, and three priorities in life. And so, for me, that’s something I’m proud of, and I wrote this book to help share that with others.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. So, delegation unlocks all kinds of good possibilities for us. The hangup is that we are stuck believing that, “I don’t trust them. They won’t do it as good as I can. Only I am capable of doing this,” any number of these beliefs, mindsets, etc.

So, Dave, help us out, if we are in that place, like, “Okay, Dave, that sounds really awesome. Maybe you’ve managed to find some great people, but I mean, I’ve got a team of knuckleheads or I’ve been burnt before in terms of trying to delegate, and it didn’t go so well. So, what do I do?”

Dave Kerpen
Well, I mentioned before, maybe you try a tool and it doesn’t work, and then you sort of give up. I think a lot of people delegate poorly and choose poorly the person to delegate to. And when we get into my system, an acronym, and I do believe in such things, like I said, the number one and the most important aspect in the beginning is who you choose. And they choose the wrong person, they choose the person that’s there, the most convenient, cheapest, lots of reasons, but they choose the wrong person. And then, of course, it’s going to fail if you choose the wrong person.

But you got to keep trying until you get it right because the solution can’t be that you do everything. You’ll burn out. You’ll be miserable. You won’t have all that time. So, let’s attack one of those myths that you shared, Pete, “You’re the best person for the job.” Let’s really think about this. If we think about this rationally for a minute, there’s 7 billion people. I said I’m good at delegating. I’m pretty good at marketing, there are so many things I’m not good at.

And for me to think that I am the best person for any given task, virtually anything, let’s say anything actually, because honestly, there’s lots and lots of people that are way better at any possible thing that I could do. It’s frankly narcissistic and somewhat ridiculous of me to really try to convince myself that I am the best person for the job. I am very, very rarely the best person for the job. I might be the only person that knows precisely what’s in my head for how to do something, but I might also be wrong about the best way to do something. In fact, I’m probably wrong about the best way to do something.

Chances are there’s people out there that could get to the finish line much, much better than I can. So, if that’s, in fact, true, then the next challenge that I have is, “Okay, how can I choose the right person and then explain what that finish line looks like in a really clear, concise way that allows that person to be mutually aligned with me on precisely what the outcome looks like?” And then the trust issue comes up, “How can I…?”

This is hard, I get how hard this is, you know, I’ve been there, I’ve managed a lot, I’ve coached a lot of people here that have a tough time trusting others, but there has to be some level of trust that somebody else is going to get, it’s going to make their way to the finish line, and they’re probably not going to do it the same way I would. In fact, it’s very rare that they would do it the same way I would, but they might do it differently, and they might do it better than I would. And if they can get to the finish line, if they can get even to 80% of the finish line the way I would have done it, but allow me the time to do other things and not worry about it, well, then I have won.

Pete Mockaitis
Inspiring, yes. I like the winning and that’s cool. Let’s stay with the myths for a little bit longer. I’m with you. Okay, fair enough, Dave, 7 billion people alive on this Earth. Maybe I am. Maybe I am one in a million. Well, there’s 7,000 people that are as good or better than I am at that thing. So, okay, fair enough.

But in terms of realistically speaking, can I find that person? Will they be available? Can I afford them? In terms of the practical realities, are we thinking that, in fact, it is still the case that I could find someone who will do a thing better than me, even if I’m awesome at that thing, given these real-world constraints?

Dave Kerpen
Well, let me answer that in two ways. First is maybe they won’t do it better than you, but this is where most of us, to one extent or another, are perfectionists, so we have an idea about what we want something to be, and perhaps better than us is not necessary, and perhaps the same as us is not necessary. That’s where I got to that 80-85%. If they can get to 80-85% of what we would want, but relieve us of all the stress and the work and the agita of getting there, then I see that as a good outcome.

The other thing I want to address is this issue of, “How do I find this person, this mythological person? I can’t afford it. I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the money, etc.” That may be the case, but more often than not, when people come to me with this, and I challenge them on it, we get to the heart of it, and it seems like they’re making excuses because they’re afraid or distrustful or maybe truly ignorant.

In this day and age, when I can personally go on Fiverr and hire somebody for $5 to design a flyer for me, or if I’m really looking for high level…so, that’s on the one end, on the basic task, right? And then on the higher end, folks come to me, and say, “Well, I can’t find a CMO. I can’t afford a CMO.”

And to them I say, “Maybe you can’t afford it, maybe you don’t have the cash, but then maybe if you’re an entrepreneur, you can share equity and find a partner here. Find a partner. Much better to have a smaller piece of a bigger pie and find a partner, or a partner or two or three.” I think there are always creative solutions to find folks to delegate. You could be listening to the show, Pete, and you could be an entry-level employee.

If you have a set of tasks, and you’re responsible for getting those tasks done, and you think of a more creative way to get them done than you doing it, like, for instance, hiring somebody on Upwork and Fiverr for X dollars, and you vet the process and manage the process, and you pitch your boss on the business case for getting the job done that way versus you doing data entry, or whatever that tedious work is all day long, I can’t predict what the boss will say.

But I know that if somebody came to me and gave me a good business case for managing something differently and better than I had thought of in the first place, I’d say, “Great, go for it.” So, a lot of the time, it’s a matter of creatively thinking through better ways to divvy up the work than maybe we’re thinking. Maybe we’re too stuck in the box of having to get the work done ourselves.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve busted one myth. Could you bust another or help us with a general thinking, doing approach for getting over ourselves?

Dave Kerpen
So, Pete, I think the number one thing that holds us back, and the reason Get Over Yourself is really as high as the dual meaning of get over yourself to delegate work, but also get over the mindset issues that get in your way is fear. I think that a lot of us, at all ages and all levels of seniority at companies, have fear of failure, have fear of not getting things right, have fear that other folks won’t get the job done as well as we would, have fear that, maybe if we’re off with our kids or golfing or doing something else, that we’re not doing our job right, even if the work gets done.

There are all these fears that we have, and, ultimately fear, of course, is false evidence appearing real. Fear holds us back. All fear holds us back. And so, in my model, in my vision, in my dream, and in my scenario, and what I try to do, is feel the fear because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of screwing up on your podcast right now. I’m afraid about being valuable for your listeners. I’m afraid of not delivering. But I understand that fear, and then I proceed and act anyway. That’s literally the definition of courage.

And so, instead of, like, trying to push the fear away, when we embrace it and tackle it head on, and say, “It’s okay to be afraid that this person is going to screw up. It’s okay to be afraid that we’re going to lose our jobs. It’s okay to be afraid that we’re going to lose our clients.” And, in the face of that fear, I’m going to take an action and figure out how to best delegate this work so that I don’t lose my mind, so that I don’t burn out, so that I get this job done in a better way than maybe I would have otherwise. And that’s the courage that it takes to get over ourselves in that manner.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I dig it. Thank you. So, yeah, let’s talk about the model in terms of how, in fact, do we determine what we ought to delegate, and then do so effectively?

Dave Kerpen
So, we’ve got two acronyms. You mentioned the acronyms earlier, and while I said that acronyms are great, I said, “We got to deal with the mindset issues first.” So, we’ve dealt with the mindset issues. We’re through it. We’re having the courage to act. And now what do we actually do and what do we actually delegate?

And so, the model is there’s three things that we should be doing as leaders, managers, individuals with jobs. Those three things have to do with the overall vision and strategy of the goals here. If we’re in a position to hire people, making sure that we have the right people in the right seats, the hiring process, and the resources issue.

Now, resource is a tricky one. If you’re the CEO, yeah, it’s your job to make sure there’s money in the bank. If you manage an apartment, it’s your job to manage up and make sure to your boss that you have the headcount and the resources to get the job done. And if you are managing projects but not people, it is absolutely your job to make sure that you, personally, have the bandwidth and resources, and that, again, you manage up your boss, to say, “This is what I will need to get the job done.” And if that includes an extra $100 to manage a Fiverr project, well, then you’ve got to advocate for that.

So, those three things, strategy and vision, hiring the right people in the right seats, and access to resources and capital to get the job done. After those three things, my belief is that you can delegate nearly all, if not all of the rest. And so, the SHARE model is strategy, hiring, access to capital, and then remind ourselves that, if there’s anything else, we can, E, empower somebody else to do the job.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dave Kerpen
Then we move into the 5Cs model of delegation. The first, and probably most important C, is choosing the right person or resource to delegate to. Again, we may think, listening right now, because I’ve done a bunch of podcasts that I already know, and I’ve done a lot of coaching of people, and I’ve heard all of the complaints, all the excuses already, “I don’t have the resources. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the budget.”

So, let me share that when we’re thinking about choosing the right person, it is not just a full-time employee that you could delegate this work to. It could be an intern, it could be an apprentice, it could be a contractor on Upwork or Fiverr, it could be a virtual assistant, it could be a vendor, a consultant, there are a partner, there are numerous types of folks that you could delegate the work to.

And the biggest mistake folks do is jumping immediately to hiring the wrong person, maybe just the person that’s the closest in proximity, the person that works down the hall from them, the person that is their peer, the person that, “Oh, my goodness, my first company was in the social media space.” Do you know how many people hired their 21-year-old niece or nephew to run social media for their company because they happened to be the 21-year-old?

Pete Mockaitis
“You use Instagram.”

Dave Kerpen
“You’ve been on it. You’ve been on TikTok. You have a TikTok account, don’t you? Make some videos for me.” So, this first big mistake is choosing the wrong person. And if there’s anything that should be the bottleneck – nothing really should be a bottleneck – but if there’s anything that it’s worth taking the most time on, it’s that first piece of choosing the person to delegate to.

The next C is communicating clearly what the intended outcome is. And, note, what I’m talking about is not every step. There are some folks out there that, whether I say it or not, they’re going to micromanage, they’re going to do the standard operating procedures, they’re going to do detailed instructions on precisely how to get to the finish line.

And if that’s really important to you, I’m not here to say you can’t do that, but in my experience when hiring people, folks like autonomy. They like to be able to get to the finish line in their own way, zigzag a little bit, learn a little bit, have some freedom. People aren’t robots. They don’t want to just, like, input in, output out. They don’t want to be robots.

Exception might be GPT and actually delegating to robots. We can get to that in a little while. But when we’re managing people, what I would say is, the key thing here with this C is to communicate clearly the intended outcome, what does success really look like, paint that picture, and then, ideally, empower them to get there the way that they see fit.

The next C is coaching them to success. Way too many people see themselves as managers. Nobody likes managers. Managers are bosses. Managers are in your face. Managers are not there to support you. They’re there to boss you around. Coaches, on the other hand, which is I strongly urge you all to use the word coach instead of manager. Coaches, anyone that’s played sports as a kid has had the experience of having a coach, hopefully, a good coach, somebody that cheers them on, teaches them along the way, supports them when they have challenges. So, by all means, coach your person on to success.

The fourth C is check in on the regular. I personally like weekly 15-minute check-ins, just where I’m there to say, “Any challenges? How can I help you reach your goals, etc.?” And then the final C, which is often also forgotten, is congratulate them. When you get to the finish line, please, by all means, like, celebrate success. Celebrate success together and then, of course, move on to the next project. So, that’s, in a nutshell, the SHARE model for what to delegate, and the 5Cs model for how to delegate when possible.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I like that a lot. And, Dave, I’d love it if you could make this come alive for me with an example that I’ve heard is quite tricky. I was chatting with someone who is just excellent at sales, in terms of when he’s having those conversations with a prospect, they are just listening wonderfully, asking great questions, building rapport, being super honest and creative, like, “Hey, these are the solutions we got. This might work for you. This probably won’t. This is what I would try instead, such that it generates referrals and business and great close rates, all sorts of lovely things.”

And yet, the challenge is there’s a whole lot of other responsibilities in the universe of making sales happen beyond talking to a prospect in terms of managing the lists, and the outbounds, and the marketing, and the vetting of the potential prospect, etc. And so, we’ve had some conversations, like, “Boy, it should be great if there’s a way that we could delegate all of that, such that you just had appointment after appointment after appointment, and doing what you’re amazing at, and doing less of what sort of sucks your energy, and is not perhaps the highest and best use of your time. That’d be really cool.”

And he said, “Yes, that would be really cool, but in practice I’ve never actually seen a master salesperson do that effectively because people come in, prospects come in, you want to be quick and responsive to them, like, all the time, before the demo or the meeting, and then have the follow-ups, but the follow-ups are best coming from you and not someone else, because they’re like, ‘Wait, who’s this other person? Am I going to talk to this person? I want to talk to the main salesperson, and not the secondary assistant to the salesperson.’”

And so, these are the sorts of hang-ups that have made this tricky. So, Dave, I’m just going to lay that on you, and say, here’s the trickiest delegation question I’ve bumped into, how do we crack it?

Dave Kerpen
Well, Pete, it’s as if we planned this, and God is my witness, we did not. But the story that I will share is actually precisely the same role, and I didn’t write about this in the book, but perhaps I should have. A very impressive young man, Sam, who was a salesperson for me, who, very similar to what you said, was an excellent salesperson, not so excellent, as frankly probably many salespeople are, not so excellent at the pre-work, the post-work, the putting it into the CRM, all of that administrative stuff.

And he said to me, “Dave, can I have a budget for an assistant?” And I said, “No. So, here’s what I’m going to do. You take the chats. You prove the business model. You hire the assistant out of your commissions. And if it works, I’ll make the budget for you.” I wanted him invested in making it work. And, lo and behold, he took money out of his own commission check to fund an assistant to do all of that, to delegate all of that stuff to. And this is a rare case because in corporate America, you’re not funding a headcount out of your own pocket, right? That’s pretty insane.

But in this small business entrepreneurial environment, he pitched me. I said, “Here’s the deal. You want to do this? Go ahead.” And guess what? It worked, and I created the budget for sales support, for admin support because he was able to prove that there was a business value in delegating all that other stuff, that frankly was not the best use of his time, to somebody else. So, it’s absolutely doable. It is doable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so it is doable, and that’s encouraging. Could you share with us a little bit of the particulars, some of the nitty-gritty for how this vexing delegation problem can actually be cracked in the nuts and bolts?

Dave Kerpen
I mean, he chose, he interviewed a bunch of people. We’ll walk you through with the five C’s model. So, he interviewed a bunch of people. He knew what he was looking for. And for him, while the tasks were important, the fit, the cultural fit, the somebody that he could reach out to and really bounce things off of was probably even more important. So, I’m not him, but as I understand, he interviewed maybe seven or eight people, hired somebody.

Hired AJ. Gave AJ very clear directions over the types of prospects that he wanted him to reach out to. AJ did the prospecting. AJ did the outreach. There were some missteps along the way. People are going to make mistakes, that’s okay, as long as you coach them. So, Sam coached him, “You know, actually, I’d like more prospects like this,” and he did just that.

He adjusted along the way, getting him better prospects. They showed up for the call. Sam did his work. He closed them up, passed them back to AJ, who followed up to do the contracts and do the follow-ups and do all of that administrative work, getting them in the CRMs and doing the contracts and all that stuff. And, ultimately, both people did their jobs. And Sam made a lot more money for himself, and for me, for the company, by delegating that work and see him coaching his assistant through the steps that he needed done.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And not to get too much into the weeds here.

Dave Kerpen
Yeah, no, weeds.

Pete Mockaitis
When AJ was reaching out, AJ is reaching out, as AJ in his name and his email to the people, and he’s saying to the prospects, “Oh, let me have you speak with Sam.” And there’s a handoff? Or is AJ stealth being Sam?

Dave Kerpen
No, no, there’s a handoff. I think that authenticity is important. And so, I’m all for delegating, clearly, many, many things, but if you get a LinkedIn message from me, it’s from me. And I might have an assistant, my apprentices are going to write all the messages, they might draft all the messages, they might select all, using whatever criteria, they’ll do all the work in figuring out who to send messages to. But I like to click send. I do think it’s important, at the end of the day, for authenticity of we are who we say we are.

Pete Mockaitis
And I agree. And what’s really funny is, in this particular delegation scenario, and I guess this is a tricky nuance I’m glad we’re discussing, it’s funny because, well, so, Dave, I get a lot of inbound pitches. People want to be on the podcast, and that’s cool. What a great place to be. What a blessing. But what’s really funny is it’s clear that either there are, I don’t know, PR firms or software or automations or something happening, where someone says, “Oh, hey, Peter, I think we could really make a great podcast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,”

And I say, “Yes, I agree. In fact, we did make a great podcast four months ago. It was memorable to me. I’m sorry if you’ve already forgotten it.” And I’m just teasing them because I know what’s happening, and they’re like, “Oh, Pete, I’m so sorry. Oh!” you know. Or, I’d be like, “Hey, Justin, I’m getting this message from you, but it feels as though we don’t have a relationship and we haven’t seen each other in person numerous times, and we certainly have.” And he’s like, “Oh, yeah, sorry!”

And so that happens, and I don’t hold it against them, like, “You’re dead to me for this faux pas.” But it does diminish a little bit. It’s not a good feeling, and it could actually, in fact, be more devastating if, in fact, they’re like, “Hey, what the heck, man? We’ve had a long-standing business relationship, and maybe actually things are tense right now in our business relationship, and I’m getting an automated message from ‘you’ that isn’t really from you.” That might be enough to push it over the edge.

I think there’s a lot to it, whether it’s a human or a robot or an automation, that the way you’ve said it is, it’s like, you’re the person who clicks send, because then you can be like, “No, wait a minute, not that person. I’m already friends with that person. They don’t get a message like this.”

Dave Kerpen
That’s right. That’s right. And as much as I think that there are lots and lots of opportunity for delegation to tools and use of software tools when we don’t have, you know, I talk about resources to delegate, sometimes we don’t have individuals, or we don’t think we have individuals to delegate to. There are a lot of great tools to manage a lot of tasks. But when it comes to communication with people, I do think authenticity is an issue.

It’s funny. I told the story in my very first book, now 12 years ago, about I was friends with a State Senator on Facebook and I got a chat, a live chat from him asking me for a donation. And I was like, “Huh? I donated. I feel like I donated recently.” And he replied, “I know but I really need a little bit more.” And something was amiss, so I said, “Wait, this is my State…” I’ll protect the guilty here. I said, “This is my State Senator, X and X name, right?” Pause. And I said, “Please respond.” “Actually, this is an intern. I’m managing the account.”

Like you said, sometimes the stakes are higher than other times. I mean, if I really wanted to blow that person up for using interns to pretend to be them, to ask for money, I mean, it’s a really bad look, I think. So, I think we have to be very cautious about how much we, I’ll say how much we automate, and how much we automate about that final step in the process.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And I’ve heard that said as a general rule of thumb for AI, like, “Have a human in the process so it doesn’t do dumb things, like automatically deny everybody’s health insurance claims.” Like, whoopsie daisy, you know, or a number of the embarrassments that people have managed to get themselves into when they use AI without the human oversight touch.

Dave Kerpen
Yeah, I love, love, love large language models like ChatGPT for drafts, first drafts of articles, of emails, of marketing plans. I mean, there is massive, massive value in the work that a large language model can provide and produce, given the right input. So, the work becomes less about what to produce and more about the inputs, the prompts that you give the models.

But all of that is really wonderful, again, for a first draft, and then I urge you, as a human, to take that first draft and check it over, first of all, like literally, for some obvious ones. We’ve heard some of the horror stories there. But then work with it, use it as a starting point, because what a great starting point. Sometimes folks have come to me super overwhelmed.

Actually, I just had a woman that I invested in say, “I need a marketing plan. I don’t know even where to start.” And I said, “Here’s where to start. Go to ChatGPT, put in your goals, put in your budget, put in your target audience, and ask for a draft of a marketing plan.” She did it, and it produced a six-page marketing plan for her to consider. Now that’s a great first draft, but it took 10 minutes. And years ago, or without me, without that idea, she might have taken 10 hours to come up with that initial starting point.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Dave, tell me anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dave Kerpen
I want to give the listeners credit. Sometimes I take for granted that some of this stuff is easy because I’ve been doing it for a while, but I want to recognize that it’s hard. It’s hard to shift the mindset. It’s hard to change. It’s hard to let go of stuff that you’re used to owning and controlling and doing the work on. I want to really take a moment to recognize that and appreciate that. If you’re listening and you’re thinking, “Well, he’s full of S-H, and in the real world, this is hard.”

I hear you and I get it. It is hard stuff and it is worth doing the work on, is my pitch. It’s worth muddling through and challenging oneself, and becoming more self-aware about the limiting beliefs and challenge and fears that are holding us back from delegating more, and the constraints that we think we have that maybe we don’t have as badly as we might think, and then doing the work. And there’s a brighter side on the other side of the rainbow, it really is. It gets easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dave Kerpen
Sure. My favorite quote is from Seth Godin, who writes, “How dare you settle for less when the world’s made it so easy to be remarkable?” I think so many of us go through life like not being as intentional as we could be, and not doing the work to really stand out, and be amazing. And I think, like Seth says, it’s not that hard to be amazing. Go for it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Dave Kerpen
Probably Adam Grant’s research. He’s probably my favorite author and I love his research. I’ll go back to his initial research from his first book, Give and Take, that talked about givers, takers, and matchers, and the value of becoming a giver and giving freely. It’s a little tricky to talk about this on a podcast because I get that I’m giving information, but it’s more of a matching situation. I’m expecting to get book promotion. I’m getting that and I’m grateful for it.

But that first book of his that I read really moved me, if I wasn’t a giver already, to become a giver to the extent possible, and the research shows that it pays. It’s ironic because we need to give without the expectation of getting something back, but when we do that, it just comes back to us tenfold in the long run.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share a favorite tool something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Dave Kerpen
There’s so many that I could talk about, but I want to say that the free, simplest set of tools is Google Suite. Yeah, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Slides. Those three I use nearly every day, and for next to nothing I’m able to do a lot of cool stuff. So, thank you, Google.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Dave Kerpen
Walking. Walking gets the blood flowing and is a healthy habit. I chuckled because I have a whole bunch of habits that maybe aren’t enjoyable, maybe not as healthy as walking.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Dave Kerpen
With the context of delegation in mind, it’s probably “Hire slow, fire fast.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Dave Kerpen
I would say, first and foremost, I have pro bono office hours. I’ve met with 838 people over the last 10 years on Thursday afternoons. So, anyone that wants to chat with me, get some free coaching, absolutely no strings attached, I never charge for coaching ever, go to ScheduleDave.com, and you can book some free time with me on a Thursday afternoon. Of course, the book Get Over Yourself, and all my books are available on Amazon and bookstores everywhere. And if you’re looking for really awesome college-level talent, ChooseApprentice.com is our website.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dave Kerpen
Feel the fear. Life is scary. Be courageous. Think of what you can get off of your plate and challenge yourself to say no, say no to more, and then figure out how you can take those no’s and get that work done in one way or the other, either delegating to humans, delegating to ChatGPT, getting that work off your plate so that you can say yes to more, not necessarily at your job, but more of your priorities in your life and with your family.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Dave, this is powerful stuff. Thank you. I wish you many more successful delegations.

Dave Kerpen
Thank you so much for having me, Pete. It’s great to connect.