SPEAKER_01: 0:23

No, I'd unmute myself again. Okay, so there's uh welcome back to Corporate Strategy Live, the podcast and live show that should have been an email that evolves every week. We change just a little bit of how we do things. So uh this is a remote live show.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

I'm being this is this is even weirder than before. I'm Michael.

SPEAKER_01: 0:51

Hi there. I am so thrown. We keep changing things and it's it's just messing with my comfort level.

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

This is the nerve change, and we're we're just gonna figure it out together. It says we're live. I think that's a good thing. So we must be doing something, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:05

Uh Michael, I don't know. Do you do you have like the studio stream view pulled up per chance? I can. Oh, I can pull it up, all right. Take a look at the shorts view. Take a look at that beautiful vertical video. Oh, that looks wonderful. If I stand right here, then it's good, I guess. Uh that's something I'll have to investigate.

SPEAKER_00: 1:30

If I like how much do I have to move to the other side? That's what I'm worried about.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35

Here's something we can only do in this format. Let's merge our faces into one.

SPEAKER_00: 1:42

This is so weird. Well, apologies to anyone, to anyone who is on the live stream. You are, and and if you're on the live stream on your phone, like this is gonna be a really bad view experience. But we're gonna fix that at some point.

SPEAKER_01: 1:55

We'll get it figured. Uh everything is a learning experience these days. And uh I, you know, I'm just I'm just happy I'm here. I'm just happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

How are you? Me too. Hey, you know, I'm just happy to be here too. It's always a great time when we get to get together and talk about something that we're interested in.

SPEAKER_01: 2:12

Yeah, absolutely. I I love it. I love that with this new format of live, there's an extra expectation that people are hanging out, listening, chilling with us. So uh, like I said in the last one, we had some really good interaction with our audience. Now I know, you know, three 3.40 on a Wednesday Eastern Standard Time, maybe not the most optimal time for you to be, you know, participating with a live stream about work. But uh if you can, if you if you've got thoughts and ideas, let us know. We'll we'll read your stuff out loud in the chat. And if you're catching us from the past, the future, you're listening, listening to past us with your future phones, um, do be sure to hit up the link tree in your show notes and uh either join our Discord, which might be changing soon, or uh support the show on our Patreon, which also has a chat functionality that we don't know how to use. But uh lots of ways to engage with us and uh love the engagement we got on the last stream.

SPEAKER_00: 3:13

Yeah, I feel like we're we're in the learning process right now of what works, what doesn't work. And this is our first live stream remotely because we've only live streamed in person in your great podcast setup. So this is gonna be a little bit of trial and error, but we appreciate everyone who's going to bear with us. Also the volume.

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

Like I just need to know if you have feedback on the overarching volume of Michael and I. That would be great too, because I can't hear it, I can only see it. So, you know, we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_00: 3:40

I feel like one of us, one of us is gonna have their ears just blowing out people's ears. So if you do that, throw it in the chat, let us know, and we'll we'll turn it down. I think we have control over that. So we'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

Yours keeps going into the red, which is like I'm I'm I'm taking it down just a notch, just a notchy sort of thing. So you're taking me from uh eight to a six, is that what you're saying? I'm actually taking I've taken you from a because if we're in the negative decibels now. I mean, we've always been in the negative decibels, but I took you from like a uh a 15 to an eight.

SPEAKER_00: 4:11

Oh, you really you dropped me almost 50%.

SPEAKER_01: 4:13

Which is because I'm at a negative three. Math. You're you're at a I'm actually gonna take you even further. I'm taking you even further. You're at a negative nine now. Just keep bringing me down. Just keep bringing me down. But anyways, speaking of bringing you down, uh, vibe check, Michael, how you doing?

SPEAKER_00: 4:27

Yeah, yeah. This this week was went by quick. I feel like there's just always so much going on. Time is just flying by. I said this last year on this podcast, but it always feels like January just doesn't exist. Like every single time we get into a new year, I'm like, did January happen? Because it's almost the end of February right now, and I feel like January never happened. I only lived February.

SPEAKER_01: 4:51

January felt forever long for me, but February is I cannot believe it's the 20th. It's the 25th. I've got so many. Yeah, not even the 20th. We literally have three days left of the month. I've got so many like April, March deadlines that are going to kill me. So uh I'm nervous, I'm terrified that February is gone. You know, you know what, Michael? Resident Evil 9 is out uh tomorrow. Okay, Friday.

SPEAKER_00: 5:20

I would say I'm thrilled, but just to be totally transparent, I've never played a Resident Evil game in my life.

SPEAKER_01: 5:27

Good. I know what we're gonna stream when we do our game streams together.

SPEAKER_00: 5:31

I I've like seen it, I know vaguely what it is. Because obviously everyone has heard, like if you hear Resident Evil, there's probably not a soul that doesn't know, like hasn't heard that before, but I know nothing further than that.

SPEAKER_01: 5:43

Bigger than the Beatles is what I've heard in regards to Resident Evil. You know, I think uh when you when you hear Resident Evil, you think like Shea Stadium couldn't come close to to seeing Leon Kennedy roundhouse kick some zombies, you know? Like I think that's that's where we're at.

SPEAKER_00: 5:59

Okay, that is a bold statement. I don't know if anyone will agree with you on that, but I'll take you, I'll take you at your word. Why wouldn't I take you at your word? I trust you. Implicitly, take me implicitly, implicitly do your vibe check. What do you got? What do you got going on? How it's been a week. How was your week?

SPEAKER_01: 6:15

Chaos, a spiraling chaos, whirlwind of chaos. The I need a like a five-day weekend, I think. That'll set me right. I think a five-day weekend will set me right.

SPEAKER_00: 6:29

I hear that. You just need those extra two days. You know, maybe maybe because then you can enjoy two days without Sunday scaries. Michael. Oh, three days. True. True. Three days. So you need an extra three days to like give buffer to be like, oh no, it actually is Friday and I have that off. And then Monday and Tuesday, so that way you can enjoy Saturday and Sunday without Sunday scaries. Bingo.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

That's exactly what I need. It's exactly what I need.

SPEAKER_00: 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:53

Um I think I think once I get through, I'm just I'm just in a little bit of a project hump right now. You know, my one of, you know, if you were gonna interview me and say, Anthony, what's your greatest weakness? Uh, one, I have an aversion to authority. But number two would be I am really, I get frazzled as heck when I've got like too many projects uh that I'm trying to manage one time. Like I'm a great focused tasker. I'm a terrible multitasker. So the more multi you have me tasking, I drain really quick. So I just need to get through some projects, I need to get to some stability, some more like individually focused tasks with budgeted timelines, and I think I'll be right as rain. I think I'll be as peachy as a pancake.

SPEAKER_00: 7:38

You know, both those statements were great, by the way. I, as I've transitioned out of my role at Universal, I feel like I mastered my workflow, like how to do things, how to structure my work, how to have it in a good system, how to manage the projects. Like I felt like I was always in pretty good shape on where things were and making sure my team was on top of them. As I've transitioned out of that, I'm still trying to find out like my routine of balancing future things that I'm working on. And then there's like all these just projects around the house and personal things that I've going on. And it's so strange because it's like simple things that you squeeze in during a regular workday where you're like, oh, I gotta call the dentist and like tell them my new insurance. And like during a workday, you just kind of figure that out because you know, like, I have to do it, I have to get it done by tomorrow. But like when you don't have like all these deadlines and you're in meetings all day, you don't have five minutes just to hop out and make a call, it's up to you to define when to do the thing. And it's like hard to figure out when is the right time. Like, and and I think I'm just trying to figure out that balance now, not being in a typical nine to five where I'm just always on meetings and trying to squeeze those things in the middle. So now my to-do list, like every day, I roll over a huge plot of things because I don't know how much I can actually accomplish in a day and how much I can't. It's weird, it's a weird dynamic.

SPEAKER_01: 8:57

So, how do you prioritize?

SPEAKER_00: 8:58

What's your prioritization practice like right now? It's a good question. I'll be honest, it's hard because there's things that it's like the urgent and important scale where like certain things are important but not that urgent. And then there's certain things that like get a little higher on that urgent list where it's like, if I don't do this tomorrow, my car insurance is gonna renew and I didn't chop around for rates. So I better figure that out. So I feel like I'm on that sliding scale right now of like trying to pin where those things are in the urgent and important grid and trying to pick the right things to work on. But it's hard because you know, I truly do believe in the uh, I think it's like Parkinson's law that the task and the time will fill to give it the time allowed. Yeah. When you don't have deadlines for things, it's hard to like get yourself to do them. Exactly. It's really weird. Correct.

SPEAKER_01: 9:46

I I completely agree with that. I would say so much of my as someone who actually enjoys project management, budgeting and deadlining and and and figuring out the timetables for all these things. For me, if I had my way, I would I would like slice up everything into chunks that I know I can accomplish in certain spans of time and just get them done in those chunks and spans. And then I could slot it, you know, I'd leave little buffers. So if I gotta go get my teeth cleaned or whatever, I can step away and do so. My problem is always the X factor, which is everyone else. And everyone else does not agree with my my time budgeting. And because of that, and their own wacky priorities, I don't have the luxury of doing what I like to do, when I like to do it, how I like to do it within the span. Instead, it just becomes a cast, a waterfall of tasks upon me that I then have to like frantically all the things, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 10:44

Yeah, and we talked about this before on a previous episode, but it's like there's so many tips to try to do something to help remediate your situation. Like, can you do the urgent, important thing, or can you do the trade-off thing of being like, hey, if I have to do that first, is that more important than this? Is that more important than this? But like in your situation, we talked about it on that episode, it's kind of a lose-lose. It's like no, the answer is yeah, the answer is everything. Just do it all. You'll figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 11:12

Eat the entire burrito. That's that is the challenge. Um, yes, that's how I'm doing. I'm not, I'm not bad by any means. I'm just you know, I'm I'm frizzazzled.

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

Sometimes that happens. It's a it's a season. You know, you're in Q1 right now, projects are getting green lit, big goals for the year. It's it's heightened pressure. Then after Q1 fades, you get a little bit more realism on what can actually be done that year, and hopefully then you can take it down a notch. Bring it down to an eight, yeah, instead of a 10.

SPEAKER_01: 11:40

Oh, you're right. I should take you down to like a negative 17. Hold on. You zone peak in the red. I don't know. I I you're you're negative 10 now. You're negative 10. I've taken I keep taking that.

SPEAKER_00: 11:51

Zone me all the way out. I hope this goes, I hope this goes live. And truthfully, I have to. I mean, we are live. Everyone's I hope no one can hear me. I hope no one can hear me right now, and it's just you talking to my moving mouth.

SPEAKER_01: 12:05

Uh according to my little audio mixer, they can't hear you.

SPEAKER_00: 12:10

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

You're coming through loud and clear.

SPEAKER_00: 12:12

That's all perfect. Get me down to negative 12. I can handle it. So, what are we talking about today, Michael? Oh, yeah, we should probably pick a topic, huh? You should. Yeah, it was funny. I was thinking about going off documentation in our last episode and just thinking about some best practices on the workplace. Some funny, I was talking to my wife, and she was like, she gave me a couple ideas. She's like, you know, you guys have always talked about CAC, and it's it's a weird acronym. What does that mean? So we're gonna get into that in a later episode because I I still think it's one of the best and coolest things that we've done here. But another thing that she mentioned, I just slammed this and I'm probably hitting the red mark. I gotta stop hitting things on tables on streams. Um, but another thing she mentioned was, well, what about doing like a book club? Like you guys have always talked about a lot of books that you read. What if you kind of can suggest to the people, if you want more than just this podcast, you want to know things that we read that influenced our thinking, that maybe influence a lot of what we talk about on here and the tips that we give to either people on this podcast or people at work, could you share some of those so that way people could go off and read them? And so I thought it was a really good idea. I grabbed a couple off my bookshelf right before we started, and I sprung this on Anthony about 30 seconds before we hit start.

SPEAKER_01: 13:26

Well, it was it was a really weird conversation because I had to be like, you know, Clark, Michael, whoever the heck you are, I don't know how to read. So this is gonna be super embarrassing for me to hear you talk about your literacy and me be like, well, I have used a book to swat a fly before. But uh, you know, we'll we'll figure out a way to make it work. And uh I I actually I I'm excited to hear about the books you like because you've made me read some books and I've hated them.

SPEAKER_00: 13:53

So I want to have you actually that actually is hilarious that you have read a few and you're like, that was awful. Like, why did I read that? Oh, but hey, that's what a book is, right? Like I know what a book is. I I think it's subjective, you know, it's gonna help some people, it's not gonna help some people. I firmly believe that when you read, and I've I've had to figure this out over time, it's not about like reading every single word and going through that and like feeling like you have to complete the whole thing. I believe that you should read things that can be helpful to you and you can put into practice because that's when it really sticks to memory. When you read something that's just so out of context of like what you're actually dealing with, and you feel like you've got to read the whole thing, it's just gonna go. Well, what's what's the opposite of out in one ear and out the other when it goes through around the other brain? Yeah, there you go. That's so I feel like you should focus on that. Find things to read that are relevant to your current situation, especially if you're strapped on time, that you can put into practice. Otherwise, you're just gonna be reading a read and you're gonna forget all of it. It's not gonna be relevant, and it's gonna be kind of a waste of your time. So don't feel like you need to, for any of these, pick it up and read the whole thing unless it's like super relevant and you you can actually put it into practice. So that's my general, you know, asterisk at the top. So a few of these things, like I've read them, actually, most of the books, I've pretty much read all of the ones I'm gonna share. Um, but a lot of them I only read certain pieces at certain times, and I'd come back like six months later and be like, oh, I'm actually ready to read the next chapter. So that's my method. I don't know if you're similar in that, Anthony, but that's the way I like to read.

SPEAKER_01: 15:32

Dude, did you choose this topic because you wanted to bring on more props? I I do like props. I feel like with a live show with video, you gotta have props. This is we've done three video live shows now, and this is the second time you've had props. And I I'm just starting to notice a trend here. So uh, you know, just an observation, a passing observation. Let's do it. Let's talk about some books.

SPEAKER_00: 15:54

Let's do it. Do you want to? I mean, I feel like I should start because you told me before this podcast that you maybe have one. I I have more than one. I have more than one. Okay. But why don't you kick us off? Okay. Okay, so maybe we start with like before we get into specific like work-related things, maybe we talk about like self-help/slash maybe larger picture perspective books. You know, one that I really like. I actually don't have a prop for this one, so you're welcome. I lended this book out and I don't know who has it at this time. One book that I really like when when it comes to like life is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey. I think so many people have heard of this book. It's so like it's the most vanilla book ever because I think everyone's like, oh, I've read that book. But I truthfully love the way that he talks about like framing your life around work, around fulfillment, around how you can kind of structure things to have a successful life and what that means to you. I read that book probably once every couple of years because I really like the way that it kind of lays it out and it's given me some really good tips to balance. Like, how do you balance, you know, priorities in life versus priorities in work? And how do you kind of blend them together into a life that you can be happy with? And so I think that book is like, in general, a really good way to frame your mindset for life and work, and I'd recommend it to anybody.

SPEAKER_01: 17:20

So um, one of our frequent guests on the show, Alex Restrepo, capitalist correspondent, he is a a big uh recommender, that's gotta be a better word than that, for Seven Habits of Highly Highly Effective People. I reread that book because of uh him. We did it for a work group book club before. And you know, it's interesting. So the whole idea of like sharpening your saw, Stephen Covey puts out there, like it's I think there's there is something about that sort of refactoring, rethinking about what you're doing approach to the the habits that are highly effective of working with people. I I don't remember any specific habit specifically. But I do remember that like I did have some qualms with some of some of them, as is my responsibility is to have be the person with qualms about things. But it I think that's a book that everyone needs to read, regardless of whether you agree with it or not, because it is so fundamental, it will help you understand. Every business exec reads that book, like every single one on the face of the planet has read that book. So if you want to understand their mindset, it's a book worth reading just to kind of get leveled with the mindset of a lot of sort of older executive folks. Uh, because it is a little bit of an older book. I would say it's not anywhere near as recent as the books I'll be talking about. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

Yeah, 100%. It was originally published uh in 1989. So it is an older book for sure. There's been a couple like revisions of it, I believe. But I won't go into all the details because we got to move on to the next thing. But there's seven main habits that seem really basic. Like you'll hear them and you'll be like, oh duh. But like when you actually read them, it really puts in uh perspective of like different ways of thinking about these things and different ways of using these things. So it's be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand, then to be understood, synergize, start, sharpen the saw.

SPEAKER_02: 19:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:18

And so, like it's all so basic, but it's just about working with people and not just people you work with, but people in your life. And I really like the I think the one that always hit the hardest for me is thinking about like win-win. And there's a lot of times like when you're going to argument or you're going for something, you always kind of think about like your your side and your needs and not well, how can I help that? Like, what are they trying to achieve? And trying to find ways that you can negotiate with people to find win-wins, like has been a tactic that I've used throughout my whole career that has been really beneficial. Like, even if I know, okay, my boss doesn't want to concede this, or I'm about to go into battle. Okay, let me put myself into her shoes and think about like, hey, you know, this person needs this, so maybe I can find a way to weave that in so that way I we can make a compromise. And like thinking that way just forces you out of your own box and forces you to put yourself in someone else's perspective, which I love.

SPEAKER_01: 20:13

Yes, I I agree. And I think the uh starting with the end in mind, that's the one that really resonated with me the most. Because if you don't have a goal, if you don't have a plan to achieve that goal, like we talked about with the time budgeting, right? Like you're never gonna get it. So I I do recall when you went to the list, I was like, oh yeah, that was the one. That was the one I really liked.

SPEAKER_00: 20:35

I love it. Were you got any like life books? That would be like my my main one before it gets to like work stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 20:42

I'm glad you brought that one up first because it changed the order of the two that I will talk about. So um, one that I also read as part of uh the Electro Strepo workbook club that we used to have, uh, is called The Unsubtle Art of Not Giving an F. And I've talked about this multiple times in the pod before, and I can give you a quick little TLDR on the whole book, but it the the big like the big example that kind of gets referred to and brought back to a lot in this book, and this book is it's it's a self-help book, but I think it's also just a career life path. And the the thought is, you know, do you want to be a rock star? Right? Like everyone wants to be a rock star. Wouldn't it be so cool to play guitar on the stage for thousands of people and have all that money? Yeah, that's a cool idea. But the the sort of underlying theme in this book is when you evaluate things like that, when you have that unsubtle art of not giving enough, um, you say, like, okay, well, am I willing to commit to a recording schedule? Am I willing to commit to becoming a master of an instrument or a musical you know format? Am I willing to spend the time touring with my bandmates, hiring, firing, and managing my bandmates, doing all of the nitty gritty? You start to realize like the the image in your mind of what a rock star is. Is 1% God on the stage and 99% like muddied in the mire dealing with difficulty and strife. And you take that principle and you apply it to everything, right? Like, do you want to be a manager? Do you want to be uh you know a rocket scientist? Like the unsettled art of not giving an F is actually taking basically realizing like what do you care about? What do you give an F about? And how do you apply that um in work, in life, and everything? And uh that little segment that I just kind of talked through, that's the part of the book that stuck with me the most. There's a lot of really good tidbits in there, and I I do recommend it to everybody. Um I should have the author. Mark Manson. Mark Manson is the author. I think there's even a sequel. It was like the even more uh hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_00: 22:49

Yeah, what is the uh what's the follow-up? Oh no, the following.

SPEAKER_01: 22:52

Everything is effed. I haven't read that one, uh, but I did really love. Sorry, it's not the unsubtle, it's the subtle art of not giving an F. Uh, great book though.

SPEAKER_00: 23:03

100% agree. Yeah, my my wife is a huge advocate of this one. Um, she she talks about all the time, tries to get everybody to read it because I think it's it's a really good book. It kind of coaches based on what you were saying around like happiness in general. It can't just be happiness all the time. Like there's gonna be problems, you're gonna run into issues, and you have to choose what problems are you going to care about? And it's okay to have problems, okay to not be happy all the time. Like those, that is just life. Like, to your point, it's like you can't just be a rock star 24-7. That's not them 24-7. It's not that person on YouTube or that person that feels like they got it all together. It's like they have challenges and struggles of their own. Everyone does. Like, that's life. And I feel like that in this day and age where everything's so instantaneous, like gratification is instant gratification. Like, you have to remember, no one is just living this dream life to where they're always happy all the time. And you have to choose for yourself. It's it's okay not to be like that. And it's also, you know, okay to realize that you don't want to put in the work to get the one second of fame for rock star. So a hundred percent. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 24:07

And I like I think it's so funny. Like the takeaway is you should give an F. It's just you should know what you should give an F about. Like, I love I love that. And that that book has stuck in me for a long time. It like I still carry a lot of the sort of mantra and like realizing what I should give an F about in work and in life. Uh definitely one I recommend, especially if you're feeling a little aimless or lost on finding your direction.

SPEAKER_00: 24:33

Yeah, 100% agree. Um, kind of going into okay, how do you kind of start with the work books? I think there's a couple different, like there's story type books that help you get through situations or help relate to certain situations that can like kind of paint a path of hope for you if you're in a kind of bad situation or at a feeling company or whatever. Then there's like just general work process books of like, hey, you can do your work differently and you can look at it at a different perspective, and this is how you can kind of tackle your to-do list. And then there's like just general philosophy or interview type books or management type books. So, one I'd like to talk about this is your favorite. I'm gonna laugh so hard when I raise this up. I can't wait to see this because this is your boy. There he is, David Allen. There he is, love him crossing his arms. Do they have a good crossing arms picture? Oh, I have the one without the crossing arms. I'm really disappointed. He looks way too good in this photo. The original is like you and I gotta go back to back, right? That's David Allen. Every time we talk about getting things done, we go back to back, arms together. But honestly, this book is one I always I've kind of incorporated in work in life, on handling everything that comes in. You know, you think about text messages, you think about emails, you think about physical pieces of mail. Like in work and life, those things happen all the time. You also think about, hey, you know, I woke up this morning, my dryer's not working. Like everything comes in, and you have to have a way to manage all that. And the whole core philosophy of this book, it's it's one of my favorites, is systems are how you get everything out of your head, you aren't overwhelmed, and they can help you actually get things done. And so I've really kind of incorporated that into my life of anytime something comes in, doesn't even matter what it is, don't leave it in your brain. Your brain can't be trusted. Your brain is distracted left, right, all over. And truthfully, like the last thing you want to do is flood your brain with a million things. And like, if you're thinking every five seconds, oh shoot, I forgot to do that, oh yeah, this thing popped up, like you're failing to have a system that can that you can trust that can help you get things done. And so this book's really good because while I don't do exactly what it says in the book and I've kind of adapted it to work for me, the core concepts of everything that comes in, I get out of my head, I get into the the system, which all mine is digital, and I write it down, I give it a date, I put it on a list, and then I trust that when I come in tomorrow to my office and I look at my to-do list, it's gonna have the things that I need to get done on it. But the great thing about that is my brain isn't cluttered with thousands of things anymore. It's it knows there's a system and I can trust it. So I'm not stressed about those things. I go to sleep just fine, not running through a million things in my head because it's all in the system. And so I highly recommend this book to anybody. So helpful in productivity, helps help me organize everything when I was at Universal, the different projects, 30 plus projects I was working on at one time. This one was a game changer for me.

SPEAKER_01: 27:33

Yeah, I um I followed the Getting Things Done model for a week for the you know, corporate strategy of the podcast, could have been an email. Like when we talked about it on that pod, I was like, you know, I'm gonna give this a shot and come back and give you feedback on it. And I will say this I think it's a great model. I think it falls apart, specifically in startup type organizations, where you your Monday and your Wednesday could be totally different weeks just based on the influx of things. Because when things were calm, it worked great. And I actually did find that it was a great way to start the week, do the prioritization praxis, you know, end the week, do the D like the sort of like the follow-up so you're ready to start the next week. Like that was really good. But as my life has become more chaotic, and as I've started to have like a lot more projects and things in the mix, it just doesn't scale to chaos, sadly.

SPEAKER_00: 28:27

Yeah. Yeah, I think when we talked about this, one of my biggest takeaways for your situation, because I was trying to like understand why wouldn't this work for you? The whole idea is that you can put it into a system and things will be relevant a week from now. The reality is in a startup, things may not be relevant tomorrow, right? It might be like, hey, this thing doesn't matter. Like I'm just gonna move on to this. So there certainly are cases where it's not the most effective way. But if you are in a bigger organization, you have longer planning cycles, like it's a really, really effective way to put things on your schedule, plan your weeks around it. And people would always ask me, you know, hey, how in the world are you at inbox zero? And how in the world are you, you know, all your team's messages are caught up? Like, how are you doing that? Because I have thousands of emails. And the answer was because I have time to process my emails, I'm not doing the work of the emails unless I can answer in two minutes or less. And then I take the action out of the email so we don't have to read it again and I put it in the system. Yeah. So then when I go to my to-do list, I'm not processing an email. I'm looking at, okay, this is exactly what I need to do. Done. Now I know I responded to this email with the action. And so I think those like little tips were game changers for me. Of like, I had two times every day where I was processing email, putting in my to-do list. And a lot of the times it'd be like, hey, I can respond in under two minutes, I can say no, and then I say no to that, and that doesn't go in my to-do list at all. And so I think being able to manage things like that really help in a big corporate setting.

SPEAKER_01: 29:49

Yeah, I I would agree, and I would also say, you know, that little nugget you just shared, even if you never read that book, look into practices like getting to inbox zero and uh, you know, just prioritizing for the week. Because these practices really do help, even in absolute chaos zones. Just getting some modicum of organization in your work life will make you less stressed and feel better about what you're doing day to day. 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 30:19

Do you have any other books like that?

SPEAKER_01: 30:21

Yeah. Yeah, I have one. Um, I I have I have I'm gonna talk about one. So uh there's a book I love. It's called Starting with Why. It's by Simon Sinek, who you've probably heard of or seen before if you've been in like the marketing space or if you just are in sort of the more corporate Instagram uh influencer space. Simon Sinek is is very prolific and well known amongst the LinkedIn folks. But I I will say this book is actually I would say, regardless of whether you're not you're in marketing, a great read for anyone who is looking to understand businesses, business practices, and how to be a successful business. Because when you when you boil it down, the whole idea of starting with why is you're not you're not trying to sell a quarter-inch drill, you're trying to create a place to put an anchor that you can mount a hook, that you can hang a painting. But you what you're really trying to do is make the room look more pretty because you want to hang up a really beautiful painting in your room. But your company sells drill bits, right? So, like when you start with why you're able to get down to why does my business exist? And and what do my customers care about? Like, how do I tickle their fancy and their minds and make them think, ooh, I should see myself with this company. And he uses some really good examples in the book of real companies that have gone through uh either rebrands or changes and kind of have re-marketed themselves. He also talks about like the five whys exercise, which is something I do to this day. Anytime I'm having to create any kind of new marketing or messaging, um, I will go through a process with myself to kind of make sure that I understand what it is that we're looking to launch, we're looking to market, um, by asking the question why five times. And I'll I'll give you an example. Why do we do a live show on this podcast? Well, uh, we do a live show because we realize that just doing audio only meant that people only got to hear our words, and maybe if we put faces to uh to voices, that would help encourage folks to engage with us more. Well, why why does faces help engage more? Well, it just shows that we're real people. It's also why we used our real names. It it lends a little bit more reality, credibility, and authenticity to who we are. Well, why did you need that? Well, as you can see, uh, you know, I've got my Simpson shirt, I've got my office, Michael's got his Michigan shirt, he's got his Michigan office, and all of us like it it shows a personality and it shows that multiple different types of people can find success, which is exactly what we want our listeners to get to. And as you keep going through like this why activity, you you start to uncover like the reason why we are doing this is because we want to connect with you better, right? Like, and that's that is ultimately it. And you can I've never seen this practice fail, which is pretty wild, right? Like most things fall apart, like you know, David Allen's getting things done. It fell apart for me when things got too chaotic. It works great, but once you get to like midweek prioritization, you don't have time and things are like it falls apart. I've never seen the five whys activity fail. So I think starting with why is a great one to just kind of re-shift shift the way your mind thinks about things and help you understand why businesses do the things they do. And and maybe maybe it also helps you realize why your business is not doing things the right way.

SPEAKER_00: 33:44

Yeah, I love that. I earlier in my career, I wish I did that more because you're so overwhelmed drinking from a fire hose, like you don't really know what your focus should be on or like why you're doing things, you don't think to question it, but it's so simple. It's like it seems like dumb questions, but especially in product management, I talked about this a lot in the last episode. You have to understand why. If you are building products for customers or for internal users, whatever it is, you need to understand why you're doing it. Because if you don't get that, you're gonna build the wrong thing. You know, you're not gonna be effective in whatever solution you're building. So I I love that. That's a really good one. We also had two um in the chat, which isn't working great.

SPEAKER_01: 34:26

Uh we recognize that.

SPEAKER_00: 34:29

Yeah. Strange. Dana the same was able to say one that I've read, one that I haven't, I'm curious if you have. One is the mythical man months. So some good like software product project management books where you know you can't put nine women in a room and make a baby in a month is kind of the core premise of that, which is true for software engineering too. Like just adding bodies doesn't mean you're gonna build something faster. Now, with AI, like maybe that changes. I don't know, that'd be an interesting debate. Disagree, hard disagree. Man month is still. Yeah, so I I love that one. The other one I haven't read is Peopleware. I've heard it, I think, but I've never read that one. What about you?

SPEAKER_01: 35:10

I've actually not read either of these, but I do know the mythical man month uh via other people telling me what it is. And just it's uh it is such, I think of all the books we've talked about, probably even more than Seven Habits, I have heard of the mythical man month more in my career of working in corporate than anything else. Like that gets brought up all the time in sprint planning, it gets gotten brought up in you know, marketing launch planning. Like the mythical man month is a concept that has evolved well past its actual book, and it's just become like the Pareto principle, something we just talk about as it is a fact, which it is.

SPEAKER_00: 35:49

Right, a hundred percent. Yeah, a few people can't access the chat that they've been saying, so don't know why. They're making comments, it's just not going through. And and it might be because it's like not going to live chat. I don't know. Straight.

SPEAKER_01: 36:02

I don't know. It's it's really weird. Um I'm looking. Oh, Dana Dana, individual contributors, individual contributor. Welcome, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_00: 36:12

Uh for a second there, I was like, this name sounds familiar. I feel like we know who this is.

SPEAKER_01: 36:16

We know we know who this is. I I don't know what's going on with the chat because I've messed with it all kinds of different ways. We'll get it figured out before the next one, though, and we apologize for any confusement that's occurring right now.

SPEAKER_00: 36:29

I'll say and I'll say in the Discord if they send them here. So we have two more um from ICA and maybe Elmer Fudd too. So I shouted out one, which I don't know that I've heard this before, but it's a book on advertising. Rory Sutherland, um, a book on advertising, just any books on advertising in general, it sounds like. So I don't know about those. I would love to read those in your realm.

SPEAKER_01: 36:52

I I love that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 36:54

Yeah, oh, one of them I already like. I'm looking at some of the titles. The surprising power of ideas that don't make sense.

SPEAKER_01: 37:01

Yeah. Oh, that's I love that. That's a good one. I'll have to add that to my reading lineup. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00: 37:09

Were there any others that we missed? I think those were all of them. I'm looking if Elmar Federino had one for us too. No, I think those were the main ones. So I can go to the next one. So, and it's weird, I went to live chat and now my messages are gone. So I have no idea what's happening.

SPEAKER_01: 37:29

I typed things that are gone. So it's uh as the as the corporate strategy.biz account on YouTube, we're losing things that we're writing. Uh we'll get it fixed.

SPEAKER_00: 37:39

That's always good. All right, let's go to another one here. I kind of want to go to maybe like books for certain situations that you're going through. This one I think is so relevant to anybody who kind of went from the waterfall to agile transition in software product management. And now I think this concept has proliferated into every aspect of businesses. Like, you know, it started with the assembly line, then it went into so many other things, and then software project management, and then it went into marketing. Like this, I hear this everywhere now is agile, right? And I think this is something that we went through, you know, really deeply at a software company where we were transitioning from this big waterfall release company to this agile, you know, small release companies. And it was painful, it was fun, it was exciting, like and it changed the way that companies operate and how we build consumer projects or products. So this one, the lean startup is really, really good. It's a class, this is a table stakes. Like you have to have read this. The concepts in this, I think, are timeless. And you know, I won't give it all away, but you should read this if your team is struggling with are we building the right thing? How do we test and learn? How do we actually know like this is the market we should be going after? The whole concept is build, test, learn. Small iterations, test it out, measure it, take those learnings back and iterate. And so the whole concept of waterfall to agile, as we're talking about in software project management, used to be literally like a waterfall. It's like yearly or you know, multi-year planning. So three years from now, we're building release 7.2.1 of our project. And then you would basically plan that down to say, okay, we're gonna take six months to write requirements. So we're gonna talk to customers for six months, we're gonna write down requirements, we're gonna put it all on spec sheets, we're gonna build something that's really fancy. Then after that, we're gonna go through a design process where we're gonna design everything that we just wrote down for six months, that'll be for three months. And then we're gonna spend nine months actually building the thing or 18 months building the thing. And when you think about an ever-changing landscape like the internet, software, AI, like the reality is by the time you get through that three-year planning cycle, the goalposts have completely changed and you're building the wrong thing. You didn't get something to market for your customers, you didn't learn anything, and likely customers are overtaking you. And so the concept of use small cycles, like break things down into small, small chunks, test your hypotheses, say, hey, we're going out to learn if you know we are gonna get engagement on our types of social posts, like if you're in marketing, and then you're like, okay, well, let's try something for the next two weeks. Let's start posting on Instagram or doing shorts, and let's see, do we get the engagement we were hoping for? And then let's move on from that and iterate from what we learn. And if it's not working, let's pivot to something else. And so this one I love for all those concepts because I think it just works in everything that you do to build, test, learn, break it down to small increments, and work in a way that you can iterate and move quickly.

SPEAKER_01: 40:45

I've I've not read the book, but it is one of those things that when Michael and I went through the agile training, I took it very seriously. I took notes. I never take notes, paid attention. It was a week long. And uh when when I came out of it, I was a believer and I still I can't follow it to the T, but I still very much believe in Kanban, I believe in Scrum, I believe in sticky notes and tickets or or or Jira cards and sprint planning, all of it. It it's so good. I don't think it breaks ever. Um, it does the only the only challenge with it really is it requires buy-in. And uh you can't be the only believer, which I think has been a problem I've had with it since the start. You you kind of have to enforce it from the top down, and everyone has to buy into it, otherwise it does fail. But I will say, even in life, you can take the agile framework and apply it to your personal life, and I guarantee you it will make for more productive weekends, better task management, and the ability to kind of like plan, prioritize, and manage things in your own personal life. So uh highly recommend 100%.

SPEAKER_00: 41:56

The only the one thing I'd say that companies really struggle with with this is a lot of companies, and I've been at many, still focus on output over outcome. Because measuring something that's not black and white is hard. So, for example, like if I say, okay, Anthony, I need you to ship this marketing campaign by next week, like you can do that. That's black or white. It's really easy to say you did the thing or you didn't do the thing, right? Now, if I say, okay, Anthony, what's your hypothesis for how much engagement you'll get of a lift, you know, from last marketing strategy to this marketing strategy? And you say, I think this tactic is gonna raise it by 15%. Okay, then you get to measure it and you're like, oh, we got to 12%. Does that mean we're successful? Does that mean it's not successful? Do we pivot? Do we persevere? Do we keep going down this path? And I think companies really struggle with that at larger organizations because it's hard to get to that level of value measurement at the granular level with a huge organization. And I think that's where it really falls apart for a lot of organizations.

SPEAKER_01: 43:07

I think it pairs very well with a book I did read called Lean Startup, right? With the idea of the MVP, the minimum viable product, and being able to break things into basically customer deliverable chunks and understanding like you can't sell the entire scope of everything. Instead, if you what is that MVP I want to deliver? How do I do this leanly, right? Like, how do I operate like a lean startup model? You can apply this to enterprise deliveries, and I think agile plus lean is a winning functionality, but again, it requires buy-in and adoption uh from more than just you and your team, even I would say.

SPEAKER_00: 43:46

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that one's really good. Um, do you have any others on top of that? I sure do. I've got I got a lot of people. I sure do.

SPEAKER_01: 43:54

Um and I'm I'm gonna recommend a book that's not a workbook, it's not a self help or life advice book. It's a book that I just really enjoy. And one thing it's worth knowing about me is the things that have always worked on me when it comes to marketing, advertising, just if you want to convince Anthony to buy your product, the best thing you can do is subvert my expectations. Right? Like getting me to pay attention is hard. And I love having my expectations subverted. I love being surprised. I love finding myself in a situation where you know more than I do. That intrigues me and it carries me along for the journey. And one of my favorite books is actually a book I just read for the first time last year, but now it is probably one of my favorite books of all time. It's called House of Leaves. Michael, could you go Google image search? Just type in House of Leaves pages and take a look at that. Um this is a it is a so this book is it's it's a thick, juicy book. It's a, I would call it horror adjacent, but it is a book that tells a non-linear narrative uh over hundreds of pages that requires the reader to interact with a book in the way that they should not interact with a book. Uh stories are told in the footnotes. You have to go to the end of the book multiple times to read things that are hidden in the appendix to then understand things that are happening in the house. And it is it is an experience you will only have once in your life. But this book is the definition of subverting expectations. And for me, when I create things, I want to create House of Leaves, right? Like that's what I want to do. I want to make sure that my readers, my the people who interact with my material are having that same kind of experience where like I didn't know this was going to go there. Wow, you took me for a ride. Uh, highly, highly recommend. There is some uh, I would just say intense and extreme subject matter in there. Uh, it is a little scary, but I wouldn't, you know, put it in the same level as like Stephen King or anything like that. But it's I mean, like, so Michael's reaction. What did you see when you when you looked at the pages of how this is so weird?

SPEAKER_00: 46:11

I I opened it up, or I just went to Google Images and I was just looking at a couple of the images, and it's like it's the weirdest format of like traditional book that you've ever seen. Like there's just large squares of just nothing, and you have to kind of like read around, and then there's like black squares, and all the text is like upside down, and you're like, what in the world? And then there's like shapes in red text, like it it truly kind of looks like a puzzle.

SPEAKER_02: 46:38

It doesn't even know where to begin.

SPEAKER_01: 46:40

Uh, you start at the beginning and you let the book take you where you need to go. And I mean, one of the really neat things about this book is there's no right or wrong way to read it. You could read it sequentially, you could take advice of the footnotes. Uh, and there are there are thousands of footnotes in this book. Some of them are real, some of them are fake. It is it's a magical experience, and I just love it because it really changed my mind on what a book could be. And I think that we should try and achieve that whenever we can with anything we do, is push the norms. Uh, don't just give them a linear left to right, top to bottom, make them work for it, uh, make them read the book upside down.

SPEAKER_00: 47:23

That's hilarious. I think outside the box. Highly recommended. I think I think in a in a age of AI slop, the things like this are gonna stand out more than anything else. AI could out. It's gonna draw your attention. Yeah. Right. Like it it reminds me of that your your favorite, your superb owl, the Super Bowl ad just a few years ago. So everyone knows Super Bowl ads, they always are like, gotta be this super impactful thing, they gotta be really funny, they gotta have all the celebrities. One crypto company just showed a QR code on the screen for like 20 seconds. No, no sound at all. It just was a colored screen with a QR code on it. And what did everyone do? It literally took down their site. Everybody was scheming the QR because they're like, is the TV frozen? Like, I don't know what's going on. Like, those are the things that will grab the attention because they're so outside of the norm.

SPEAKER_01: 48:18

Subvert expectations, and uh yeah, I think anytime anytime you're able to actually subvert expectations from a customer perspective, wow, I did not expect your product to do this, or the way your marketing got me, you got me. I I like you know, I tell a story about how I bought my mattress, but like I literally got a YouTube ad for purple mattress, which was like them dropping an egg on a bed, and it got me to watch an entire 10-minute video. So an ad to a video to buying a mattress, and now I will only sleep on purple mattresses. So, like, there is there is something about if you are able, especially for those of you who are in marketing advertising, subverting expectations is the best thing you can do to get your audience hooked in. But I will say also this hooks right back into starting with why, right? Like, if you don't know why your product exists and why you're building what you're building, you'll never be able to get to a point where you're hooking in people to get them interested in what you're looking to deliver. So, you know, I think it's uh I think it's fair to bring a little bit of horror fiction literature into this.

SPEAKER_00: 49:22

That's just fun. I like it. It kind of like I probably would never read something like this, but this one makes me want to read it because it just sounds like a puzzle.

SPEAKER_01: 49:29

I mean, it is a puzzle, it's very fun. It's a very fun read. You don't have to finish it. That's that's part of the experience, is you don't have to finish it.

SPEAKER_00: 49:36

Yeah. You can close it in. I might give it a try. And that's I might have to borrow this from you. Oh, well, um, in the chat, we had a couple uh thoughts from Elmer Futterino. Um, one is just around going back to the lean startup. Uh, fundamental problem with agile or scrum is that it almost becomes dogmatic, which is arguably antithetical to agility. It works well for greenfield or startups in tech, but legacy software states with mission critical delivery. It's a mess. And I I agree with this. To be honest with you, it's I think a lot of companies go wrong because they think they have to do agile. When the answer is you don't have to, like SquarePeg, Roundhole, if you are building mission-critical systems, if you're building something that's tried and true and it can't have you know zero trust, whatever your you know, security vulnerability uh protection is, like those things that are so critical that could affect people's lives, medical equipment or whatever it is, there are certain things where you shouldn't put out things and take risks, and they have to be airtight. And I 100% agree with that. It's like some corporations just need to realize it's okay that we're not that. But I also think that the core principles of breaking things down into smaller pieces and iterating on that, even if it's internally, but still having a rigorous testing cycle and whatever, like those things still hold true, and I think will help you guys work faster and better together.

SPEAKER_01: 51:00

Yeah, and I, you know, I'm gonna use you as an example because I think what you and your team did back at BigCorp was the perfect testament to merging agile with waterfall, right? Like you were building the modern user experience, you were helping, and and you know, not just you, but like other folks were helping wrap old code up in APIs while people were still working on that old code in a very waterfall fashion. So I think you can hybridize it. So like new projects and new architectural slices, you can you could start agile and make that work while still running the old, the old ways, basically, and and get that working. But uh I wouldn't give up on it just because you are in a big enterprise or legacy, but I also wouldn't don't try to fit the square peg in the round hole. Start with a new hole, right? Like build a new hole, and then you're you'll get it in.

SPEAKER_00: 51:52

I love that. That's great. Um, since we're almost at an hour, I guess we should flash through these last ones. I can't believe time just flies on these. These live streams are dangerous. Dude, how many books do you read? I I've read a lot. And it's funny because I usually loan them out. Like I read them and then I loan them out, and I I don't even remember all of them. You made me buy all the books I had to read. I had to go buy the books. I could have probably, well, it's probably it's probably because I've already loaned them out to someone else. How dare you? What do you think I'm minimum money? This one, it's a good fiction book about software project management. It's it's a hero story where there's a failing car manufacturing company, which is kind of exactly what we were just talking about. Of they were waterfall, they didn't know how to move into the digital world, everything was falling around them, the systems were failing, and all the technology was just going down the toilet. And it's kind of a success story of like how they shifted their way of working, started implementing a getting things done style tracker, and started getting things back on track from like a software and new age perspective for their customers. And then, you know, kind of turned their company around. And it's really good. It's called the Phoenix Project, and it's a fiction book, but it's based off kind of true stories of companies who weren't able to make that transition. And it's just a fun read. Like this was one that it's so relatable if you've been working in software or just tech, you know, in the last 20 years. And it had me hooked. I was like, I'm I'm hooked on these characters. I read the whole thing from start to finish. And there's a sequel which talks about the Unicorn Project, which is how they kind of it's back on the shelf. Uh, the Unicorn Project, which is kind of like the next step for them of like, okay, now they're caught up to the market. Now, how do they, you know, jump into the next stage of their what their customers want and leapfrog the competition? So it's a great series. It's a really easy read. Would highly recommend it. It's fun.

SPEAKER_01: 53:38

Uh, if they made a third book, so we had Phoenix, we had Unicorn, so I guess the third book would be Dragon, right?

SPEAKER_00: 53:45

Yeah, I mean you rise from the ashes, you go out of your head. A mythical creature because you're something totally different, and then you hoard your gold. So you're dragon. And then you hoard your gold, you build your moat and hoard your gold, hold your gold, and you bury yourself in a mountain until a hobbit comes and tries to steal something from you.

SPEAKER_01: 54:04

But that's the that's the billionaire experience. Yeah. Yes, yes, yeah, you got it. Yeah, got it. Okay, got it. Understood. I'm excited. I'll read the I'll skip to the third one. I think that's where I'm I'm landing on this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 54:16

100%. That would be a great time. Um, you want me to go through my last two? Holy cow, you have two more? I have two more, but I'm gonna go quick. I'm gonna go quick. Product managers, this is a great one. Cracking the PM interview. This is how PM interviews used to be, and it's like the way Google and Facebook and whatever go through it. To be honest, it's kind of some bogus stuff. Like, how many golf balls can fit in a 747? Like, those are legit things like Google used to ask candidates. And the way I put to people when I tell them to read this, I'm like, don't get stuck on those exercises. It's not about having the right answer, it's about showing and communicating the way you think. And I do like questions not as ridiculous as that, but I like questions that force the candidate to kind of like think about and talk about how they're thinking about things because it helps you really relate to them and being like, would they be a good fit for this team? Can they think critically? And I can't tell you the amount of like interviews that I did with product managers where we'd say, okay, here's a problem that we're running into. And they just start throwing out 50 solutions of like, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this without ever asking, well, why are we doing that? Start with why. Tell me a little bit more. Exactly. Start with why. And like it's so basic, but the best candidates I had were the ones that had a lot of questions up front. Then they went into, okay, understanding that, now let me go into who are we actually doing this for? Who's our customer? Let me understand them a little bit more, let me understand their needs versus their wants. Let me then go into coming up with solutions and let me prioritize those. And then let's think about like edge cases that could break what we just decided to do. And so it's a really good book because it kind of talks through how to think through those things. And I would take away some interviews still do this and they're ridiculous. Abstract from that and just think about the way they think through problems. I think that's the value you can take from this. That's really helped in even projects, really big projects that I've worked on. I love that. All right, last one. The next level it is what insiders know about executive success. Oh my gosh. This is a this is a 90% fluff book. 90% fluff. And you're recommending it on our podcast. Like, who's the author, so we can shame them? Yeah, we can shame them. I won't read it out loud. You can look it up. It's Scott Eblin. I'm gonna owl him right now. And I changed my mind. The reason I say it's 90% fluff is because you could get, like, when you read through it, you find a nugget, and you're like, oh, that was really good. And then you have to like read another couple pages and be like, ah, none of that really mattered. Okay, that was good. And but the main takeaway I'd say for this book is it's a good management book of figuring out how to get out of execution of work and how to derive your own value of getting work done by yourself to realizing your value comes from your team being successful and what they do, not no longer what you do. And I think it's a really good book that um even Danny Awkers, who came on our podcast and talked about his book, which we should give a good shout out to. Um, yeah, we should give a good shout out to him and his book in a second here. But this book is great because I think it kind of tells you hey, as you grow your team, as you become an executive, you can't continue doing the things that got you there. Success isn't what it was before. It's not no longer about how much you can do, saying yes to everything, always doing it on your on your own and putting the team on your back. Now it's about can you build and empower people to do the work and bring the value and see that by them doing well, you're doing well. It's no longer just about what you can do well. If your team fails, you fail. And I love the concepts and things that I brought up because it really kind of helped me as I was going through that managerial transition because I was so used to and depending on I bring value by what I do, not, and then I kind of felt bad because my team would get started. I wouldn't, I would feel like I'm not doing anything. Like I'm not helping with this project. But the idea is that you helped your team be successful in this project and hopefully they'll become even better than you. And that shows that you're a great leader.

SPEAKER_01: 58:16

I love it. And uh, do we I do want to shout out Danny Onker's previous guest in the show, uh, what is one of our audio only episodes in the past. Go back and listen to it if you haven't. Uh, his book is called And Then I Pooped My Pants. And it is all about uh, you know, exactly what Michael's talking about, sort of learning to be a manager and all of the sort of different phases you're gonna have to go through uh in leaving that individual contributor role and becoming that that manager. Uh really great episode when he came on and sort of talked us through some of the themes of that book. So go back and listen to it if you haven't. It's a great one. 100% agree.

SPEAKER_00: 58:53

That was my list.

SPEAKER_01: 58:54

You got any closers? Was that the closer? That's a great I yeah, I think that I think that's gotta be the closer. It's gotta be. I mean, someone we know. It's an author we know personally.

SPEAKER_00: 59:05

Um such a good name for a book, too. Like that is so, so good.

SPEAKER_01: 59:09

And so you would never ever expect a book on you know helping you become a better manager to be called and then I pooped my pants. So, you know, again, you gotta get that hook. Get that hook, pull them in. Um hooked. Well, good, good topic, Michael. Thanks for bringing the books. Thanks for bringing the books. I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 59:30

You can date my wife. Shout out to my wife, her idea.

SPEAKER_01: 59:33

I thought it was great. Shout out to Michael's wife. Um, you know what? Also, shout outs to our patrons. We have a Patreon now, and that is the best way to support the show if you'd like to. Uh, you can go to our Patreon, which is linked in the YouTube video. It's linked in our show notes. If you're listening in audio only mode, and if you are in audio only mode, join our live streams. Uh, we're not really good at scheduling them, so you know it's gonna be hard for you to join them, but it's like getting hit by lightning, it's a it's a worthwhile experience. So you should join our Discord for the time being, and we are looking into alternative solutions, not Discord, given the risk to all of our personal information in Discord. Don't worry, I actually have three different solutions I'm gonna be posting in the channel uh this week that we can kind of figure out, decide which direction we want to go, because this is not a dictatorship, this is a democracy, and we're gonna decide as a community where we'd like to migrate to. So join the Discord, join the conversation, support the show. And if you can't do any of those things, share the YouTube channel, share the audio podcast, and leave us a nice review if you can. We would be so grateful if you could do any of these three things. It means a lot for us. Anything else they could be doing for us, Michael?

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:42

No, I I think we can put like our books, we'll put them in the corporate strategy channel for now until we migrate, just so everybody has a list. And uh also we have the Is It AI challenge, which probably will get one more life before we switch to our new platform. So we'll post that in there for February.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:58

I am excited to diagnose yet another AI. Let's let's get it. Uh well, I think we've I think we've done it yet again. We've managed to spend a lot of your time talking about us. So thank you as always for for joining us on corporate strategy, the podcasts. It could have been an email, as always, and as it has always been, it's never been anything else. I'm Anthony.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:22

And I'm Michael, never been anything else.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:24

Antonio to my my closest friends. Michaelonio to his closest friends. Sound like spaghettios. Who says we're not? Uh, but I do know this. You are on mute. We will see you.