Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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(00:44):
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This is Pete Moore on Halo Talks nyc. I have the pleasure of
(01:07):
bringing straight from Woodstock, New York, a
legendary author and expert specialist
in how to think about business and how to think about life. Duff
McDonald. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Pete. Glad to
be here. So I met you up on Terry Hill, Terry Hill
Road on the third house on the right with the lights with the Mastery family.
(01:28):
So give them a shout out for connecting us and hopefully they get a,
they get a wood chopper that does not create any kind of workers
comp injuries with the, with the child labor over there. Exactly.
That's a concern. So jumping in
here, you've written several books. I've read several of
them before I met you. The Golden Passport because I went to Harvard Business School.
(01:51):
And then on my way out of Woodstock, I had the pleasure of
driving four hours up on my trip to Syracuse
listening to tickled and trying to figure out what
tickled me that we'll talk about. And one of the quotes that I love that
you, that you had in the, in the book was
I'm the only person I'm responsible for.
(02:14):
Which was a quote that I've taken with me and put up on our website.
But do you want to give our audience just a quick background on you started
investment banker and then became an author. And then I'd love to get your
perspective on how to think about life and how to think about your career.
Sure. So I went Wharton undergrad,
started work on Wall Street. I worked at Goldman Sachs for
(02:37):
two years. I was investment banker in their analyst program,
left that and went into business journalism
and spent 20 years as a magazine writer,
left that or sort of stopped doing so much magazine writing when
the Internet kind of destroyed the economics of
(02:59):
print models and
weirdly, ironically, ended up writing books after that.
Wrote a book about Jamie Dimon, wrote a book about McKinsey, wrote
a book, as you say, about Harvard Business School. Wrote a book
with a friend of mine, Christiane Lemieux, called Frictionless,
(03:19):
about Internet era business models. Then
during COVID shifted gears entirely and wrote a
memoir called Tickled. Because
during early quarantine, my. Everything
sort of exploded for me mentally in a good way, and
I sort of re thought
(03:43):
or sort of came to a new understanding of how I would look
at life and sort of re architected my entire approach
to living. So numbers, numbers, numbers,
banking, business, journalism. And then as you know,
in Tickled, I kind of disavowed numbers. But we can
get into that in a sec. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the first part of
(04:05):
Tickled, for those who will end up reading the book, or just to give you
a little summary, the first couple of chapters are Duff talking about the book
that he was going to write and the book that has evolved into
Tickled and kind of almost went against your,
your, your narrative and thesis of what you wanted to tell people.
You know, we spend a lot of time with clients in the halo sector
(04:28):
and health clubs, you know, looking at their data,
talking about like artificial intelligence. And I joke around with them that
you can't have artificial intelligence until you have intelligence,
you know, so that's something that like you might want to actually understand the
numbers. But what, what, you know, as you kind of hit that tipping point of
starting to write the book and then almost like kept writing as you were
(04:51):
thinking about what the, you know, redirection was,
what kind of, you know, annoyed you about where you were
heading to give people a little bit of like a taster.
Appetizer. Sure. So, you know, as a business,
you know, major and then banker and then business writer,
I spent most of my life and
(05:13):
certainly all of my career
under the impression or sort of the assumption
and ultimately proved to be an unexamined
assumption that if you have the numbers, you
have the story. And I went so
far as to say that to people, if you've got the numbers, you got the
(05:35):
story. Now that's true in the sense of if you are
trying to tell a story about numbers and then you
have the numbers, then you've got the story. But I suddenly realized,
and this was out of the blue in Quarantine, it's
like if, if you're writing about a
(05:55):
business like, of course we want to talk
dollars and cents. How big is it? How many are there?
How does it compare to others that do the same thing that it does?
How does it compare to itself, you know, in the
past or the future? And, you know, of
(06:15):
course, we use, we use an arithmetic framework to sort
of put something in a place where we can and understand it.
But it all of a sudden hit me out of the blue that
numbers cannot grasp the essence of a thing.
And it's a subtle point, but, you know,
(06:37):
an easy way to think about it is like, if we think about you or
me. There's been this big push for the quantified
self in recent years, right? We count everything about ourselves.
And in health, obviously, people like to do that too. But
so it's like, yes, it's interesting how fast you can run a mile.
Yes, it's interesting how old you are. Yes, it's interesting how much
(06:59):
money is in your bank account. But all of those things, if you said, tell
me, give me the essence of Duff,
you wouldn't have a number, because a number cannot
grasp it. And that suddenly hit me.
I was like, oh, my God, maybe this applies to everything.
Maybe we're counting, trying to count our way to
(07:22):
meaning. When we can't do that.
You can count your way to counting. But, like,
when we say, how many? Sure, but why?
No, the answer to why is not a number.
So I suddenly, yeah, sorry, go ahead. No, you kind
(07:44):
of get into the crux of capitalism and quarterly
earnings and reports, and I feel like that's all
that's reported, is the numbers, and people don't ever think about
what's the mission statement. How many lives have you affected, how
many jobs, people you've employed? What's the feeling
that people get? Are you delivering happiness? Are you
(08:06):
solving problems? I think that's the crux of what you're getting at
for. For an entrepreneur. And unfortunately, we're locked into this game of
I got to talk to my investors about my numbers, and they don't really give
a shit about anything else. And why is that? Why do we get here
or how do we get out of here? You know, I make a point in
the book where I. And it's my
(08:28):
distinction, but I think it works just for thinking
about it. I think at some point along the way, we split into
two groups. There are
experts and there are specialists.
If you open up the New York Times on any given day,
(08:49):
they probably use the word expert in it maybe 50
times in one day. And what
experts tend to mean in the context
of the times and sort of a modern parlance is
people who count things and predict things.
Right. So during COVID they were always talking to
(09:11):
epidemiologists who studied the statistics of COVID and
tried to predict where it was going. So there are the
experts on the one hand. On the other hand, there are specialists.
So a specialist is someone who has mastery of a
thing. Right. So a great chef,
a doctor, or a,
(09:33):
you know, musician or a athlete,
someone who has. Who has put all their focus and energy
towards mastering some specific aspect of life.
And it suddenly hit me, I was like, okay, if you had
Covid in the thick of it when everyone was terrified,
would you want to go to the expert who is
(09:57):
the epidemiologist who counts things,
or would you want to go to the infectious disease specialist
who will actually treat you? I think one of the
things that's happened to us as a culture and
capitalism is certainly behind this, is that
we have ceded too much of the discussion to the
(10:20):
experts, to the people who count things,
whereas the specialists are just off doing what they're doing. Right.
So we let the conversation be driven by an
analytical view of it rather than a synthetic view of it.
Like you were saying before, when we want to talk about a company,
especially small companies that are on a growth curve. Yes,
(10:43):
you're tracking the data, but you. But you really want to be
tracking, like, what are you doing? Why are you doing it?
As opposed to have you doubled X?
Right. And the experts are the ones who are like, oh, this is half the
size of that, and it could be twice the size it is in the future.
You want to talk to the people who can talk about the essence of a
(11:05):
thing. Yeah. The irony of what you're saying
is you should really have to be a specialist
as a prerequisite to be an Expert.
Yeah, exactly. 100%. Because it's funny, I read these Wall
street analyst reports, which I've been reading for coming on now
25 years, and I'm thinking you have never been in a health
(11:27):
club. You have no idea what that business
and. And revenue engine, like what, what it takes to
do that. And also when you put projections on an Excel model and
you want, like, Planet Fitness to open up 300 locations, that's
300 leases, that's 300 real estate brokers, that's, you know, $2
million of equipment per location, that's hiring 15 people,
(11:50):
that's getting permits from the city. You know, that's actually somebody waking up at
4 o' clock in the morning. You know, it's all like these things of like
the specialists are like. You're saying maybe the reason why the specialists aren't
in the Wall Street Journal is because they're busy,
right? Oh, no, exactly. And you know what? This is not a
new issue. I trace in. I've talked
(12:12):
about this more in the Golden Passport, the Harvard book than I did in
Tickled. Right. Like I trace a lot of our current
sort of societal woes to.
We're the most over educated people, right?
So instead of going and apprenticing
with someone who actually can teach you how to do a thing,
(12:35):
we spend more time in school talking
about a thing, right? So another,
another way to think of my division is an
expert is someone who talks about stuff.
A specialist is someone who does stuff. And
you know what? Where we are as a culture now, you
(12:57):
need both. And you're right. The best of the best is
the specialist who will talk to you about
their specialty. The worst of the worst is the
inexperienced expert.
This is Pete Moore. I want to let you in on a little secret. There's
this company called Promotion Vault. And what they do is they give out rewards
(13:21):
from retailers that allow you to incentivize your
members without having to do zero down and one month free
or giving away shakes or giving away t shirts. What you want to
do is build a rewards program that lasts, that people value
and that doesn't discount your own products and services. So here's the deal.
There's something called Rewards Vault. The Rewards Vault is going to
(13:44):
allow a member to set up their own profile. They are going to
answer questions, you are going to get those answers, you're. Going to be able to
target those. Members and you're going to reward them inside your club,
inside your spa and outside of the club and outside of the
spa to get them to become loyal, to get them to pay their
monthly dues and to be rewarded properly for the
(14:06):
actions. A lot of companies are cutting back on rewards. You shouldn't be.
Promotion Vault, your answer, Trust me, this is real.
You know, I'll take this down to like a granular level of something that we
did at Woodstock like four weeks ago. But I took Siege, Noah
and Adam and we went down and we sold, we set up a lemonade stand
(14:29):
on the corner and we basically taught these 12 year old kids like, this is
how you sell a product. This is how you talk to people. You don't yell
at people, you bring them in. You might offer them something for
free. If they make a Donation as part of it. So
you're actually freed in the transaction. And I think what's happened in our
society is people get into sales roles, but they actually
(14:51):
haven't been taught the relationship side of sales or
the social side of sales, and they're given quotas and numbers.
So to take it back. And I don't have an answer for this. You probably
do. How do we change the narrative and how do we
change the storyline to get across and live in a society that you
and I want to live in? So
(15:14):
a big part of Tickled and my
conclusion that counting it leads us astray
came down to. In early quarantine, I
suddenly found myself saying to my girlfriend, now my wife,
and in all sorts of junctures, I'd be like, oh, my God, this is the
best burger ever. Or, oh, my God, this is the best book I ever
(15:36):
read. Or, oh, this is the best band I've ever listened to.
And I kept saying it and I kept saying it. And at one point
I said to myself, have I lost all sense of
all my standards ever? It's just the latest. Like,
don't I? Doesn't something have to have quality? And then I realized
(15:57):
it's like that wasn't what was happening. I realized that I was present.
And I was like, oh, my God, this is what they're talking
about. When you're present,
you get as close as you can to the sort of miracle
of it all that we exist. And a couple
things came out of that instantaneously for me.
(16:20):
One, you cannot count the present,
you cannot count now. And there's a
reason for that. One, it contains everything,
everything is contained in now. So you can't actually count it. And.
Or if you tried, as soon as you start trying, it's not now
(16:41):
anymore. You're off of now. So that's a sort of a
philosophical insight that to hold on to
there. So once you realize that there is only
now and you can't count it, right? So
then what are your options here? Because what we do when we try to count
things is we say, how are we doing today versus yesterday?
(17:03):
So we're comparing now to not now, or how are we
doing today versus how we want to do in the future? You're comparing
now to not now. And when we do that, when we count
things, essentially, and we start comparing, it takes you out
of your present moment, right? Because you're thinking, if you're thinking
past, you're not present anymore. You're thinking of the future. If
(17:25):
you are present, right? So A couple
final insights. Like, first of all, everything that has
ever happened has led us to this
moment, right? So therefore, everything in
the past is already contained in now.
Anything that might happen in the future
(17:49):
could be a bunch of things, but no matter what it is, it's
going to start now. So therefore,
the future is also contained in now.
This is like Eckhart Tolle talks about this a lot in the Power of Now.
So given that the whole past is already in now and the future all
starts now, you could do yourself a, like,
(18:13):
more of a disservice if, like, if you decide, okay, you know what, I'm going
to focus on something that isn't happening right now. You've basically
given up all things, right? So if you focus on what's happening
right now and you're not distracted,
your awareness of what's happening will increase and
you will see more opportunities than you otherwise would have
(18:35):
seen if you were distracted. And you will make better
decisions, which will bring the future to you.
So to circle us back to your thing about entrepreneurs, right? Like,
of course there's going to be tracking. If you're a business,
you got a payroll, there are certain numbers we have to pay attention
to. But when you're not doing the sort of admin,
(18:58):
the more of your focus you can bring to what you're doing
right now. Not like now, this week,
now now. If you focus
everything you have on that, what's that going to do?
You will, you will. You will notice more. Right.
I think to kind of frame this for. And that's awesome, dude. I love it.
(19:22):
And I'm trying to practice it much more than I used to
from an awareness standpoint. I had somewhat of an awakening, you
know, during COVID as well, when all of our businesses were closed. And I told
people as a joke, they're like, how's business going? I'm like, bro, I'm an unpaid,
pro bono, certified entrepreneurial therapist. So
how do you think it's going financially? It's not going well, lifestyle wise.
(19:44):
I actually, like, wrote a book, actually
planted some plants in the backyard. I put out,
like, some seeds for the, for the squirrels. I didn't know that it was a
day that they sprayed the pesticide. And I would argue, but I'm saying. Like, that
was awesome. You weren't distracted by the future.
Exactly. Or stressed about the past. Yeah. At the same time. Right.
(20:05):
But. But to bring it back to, like, the people that are listening to the,
to this, you know, if you're inside of a health club and, and this, this
bothers me. And Duff, you'll, you'll stick with me on this part
here. You know, when I check into a club, okay, and I'm paying you
$40 to go into a soul cycle or a spinning class or
a high intensity workout, look me in the eye, okay? Be
(20:27):
present with me. I'm here and I'm trying to get value out of this.
Ask me why I'm here, ask me what I'm trying to achieve, and note
down that we are now building a relationship. Okay? Everyone looks at the
data and says, hey, what's your attrition rate? How many first time visitors came back
and now turned into a membership? Well, let me tell you, all that
is like contained in the now of what relationship we built or
(20:49):
did not build. You know, so it's almost like the human interaction of you
staying present actually create something that's a bond. Then now I
might actually help your business financially. Yeah. You want to count it? It
goes back, it goes back to my earlier point about, you know, you can count,
we can count ourselves in, you know, six ways from Sunday. But
when you're standing in front of a person engaging with them,
(21:11):
there's no like, again, in the
trying to be on the button of now. Not like, can I convert
these guys to a paying customer? When you're looking at them right in the eye,
you, it's not, it's a non countable situation.
It's. You want to be connect and realize that you're both
alive and that you both exist and that
(21:34):
you are, you know, in, in you are, you
are in a sort of a unified state. At any point when you're dealing with
someone and you want to just make the best of it, counting something isn't going
to get that done for you. You know, when you watch like college sports and
they talk about some of these kids and they talk about their grit and they
talking about their resilience and their backgrounds and how
(21:55):
coaches get the best out of them. How if you, if I put you as
like, I don't like to use the term hr, but let's say you, you,
you became the head of player personnel and you were
recruiting. How do you decipher who lives
in the now? Like, what questions would you ask? Or how do you, how could
you figure out, like, I want to build my team with, with the presence
(22:17):
of those types of people? That's a good point. It's a great point.
You know, the book was called Tickled
for a specific Reason. I realized at some point, sort of trying
to think about what I was trying to get across, Right? Yeah.
All the ways that we engage with
the world around us. Right. All the senses.
(22:40):
We actually. Whenever something
works for you or connects, there's a tickle.
And I'm like, I can explain. It's like good food. We say
tickles the top, right? When someone tells you
something that you think is really interesting. So it's like your mind is like, oh,
that's cool. It sort of tickles a little bit, right?
(23:03):
Physical stuff, like, great.
When we are engaging with the physical part of
our own existence, you know, up to sex, like, orgasm
is the ultimate tickle. But you
know, doing something when your body feels good,
it tickles. And then the final one is when we create something out of
(23:26):
nothing, right? The moment you have when. When
you're like, oh my God, I just brought something out of
nowhere, Whether it's an idea, a piece of art,
or even just like a dinner, like, it's, it's. It feels
good to basically be engaged in the creation of your own
reality. Right. So. And when. When you're doing
(23:48):
any of those things, basically reminds you,
you know, why it's awesome to exist.
Yeah. And, you know, why do we not. Why do, like,
we've all been sad and depressed. Why do you not kill yourself when you're depressed?
Because ultimately it's fundamentally awesome to
exist. And deep down we know that even if we're sad. So back to your
(24:10):
point about recruiting, right? Like, the people who will
do the best at any particular thing are going to be
those who are most engaged with it. And that basically
you can tell like, like when someone is locked
in to. To their thing, their
tickle, you can just tell, right. They're
(24:32):
not trying to sell you something, you know,
a piece of their own data point. They're not trying to persuade you.
You can just see it. And like, again, I'm not a
recruiter, so maybe some people who have to deal with hiring are like
this. You can't see it, but like, no.
You feel the energy of people in a room in their presence. I got,
(24:54):
I got. Yeah, like, like, for
me, like, ever since tickled, it's like my whole thing is like, is, does this
tickle? Does it feel good? And if so, like, why? And
like, to zero in on that, you could do that with people too. People
can be. Can tickle you. And some people don't
tickle you. Right. And it's like, you know, let's not. Maybe we're
(25:16):
not meant to work together, but those that do, right? That's the goal
that, like, you've got the brass ring there? Yeah. So. So, so
one. One technical question. If I'm in an interview and I
interview someone, can I ask them what tickles you?
You know, I don't even know these days. Right. You know,
I am not the woke police. I'm just wondering
(25:40):
because I think it's a great question. Right. I mean, you know what? That came
up. That came up in a couple ways. I first wanted to call
the book Tickled. I wanted to call it how to Tickle
Yourself. And the publisher said, we're not going
to do that. That's funny. But I did
take the time to articulate in
(26:02):
the beginning of it. I'm not talking about
tickling in a perverted. Yeah, I
know that comes. Right. It's like. It's like I said, if you look it
up in the dictionary, there's. There's Tickle, which is sort of
to. It's like to. To, like,
stir your soul. Yeah. Right. And when people say,
(26:24):
oh, that tickles me, not under your armpit,
but like, the sense of being tickled to be alive,
I think if we prefaced it. Properly, you could say, so it was
interesting. I'm on LinkedIn a lot. That's kind of like my
primary content consumption.
And obviously that's a highlight reel and a lot of numbers and a lot of
(26:47):
fluff and a lot of bullshit. But I did read something the other day that
I thought would resonate with you. When you are meeting somebody at a
trade show or a dinner or networking event or what have you, instead of saying,
what do you do? I read and they said, ask somebody,
like, what are you working on that you're passionate about? And, like, give them the
opening to basically say. To basically do exactly what you're saying,
(27:09):
like, what's tickling you? And obviously you want to share that. And maybe I would
share that passion with you. I would. You know, people love to talk
about what their ideas are and what they're currently trying to
pursue in their dreams. I think that was
something for me, where you go around the room and you're like, what do you
do? What do you do? What do you do? And it's like, you know, truncated
(27:30):
resume, which is kind of boring, versus what are you passionate about?
Sure. Or. Or you could just, you know, what's your. Who's. What's the best
song you've heard recently? Right. Like, I remember when I was
in. When I was first interviewing as an undergrad for jobs on
Wall Street. Yeah. One of the interviewers was asking me the same
old stuff and I obviously had a look on my face and they
(27:52):
said, there's something wrong. And I said, you all ask us
the same questions and we all give you the same answers. How can you,
like, claim to find the creme de la creme
if it's all the same? So I think as
like, I did have a phase like 20 years ago when I
(28:12):
was in New York, bureau chief for a magazine. I was hired a lot of
people hired like 30 or 40 people. I would just.
My interviews were not like the interviews I
had. You know, I went to myself. It was just trying to get to
know the person. And, you know, the more you can ask them about
what their personal interests are, then they'll get fired up, then you'll know
(28:35):
what tickles them and then, you know, off to the races.
This is Pete Moore. Here's the last tip for you of the podcast.
We are partnered up with a company called higher dose
higherdose.com they are the leader in
workout recovery products, infrared technology,
(28:55):
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recovery train yet, your time and your stop
is now. You got to get these products in there before these workout
recovery and spas end up saturating your market.
(29:17):
Having your members walk out of the club and going into one of their locations
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you. Let's become an expert in workout recovery. If we
are already an authority in workouts, Higher dose,
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forward to helping you augment your products and services
(29:39):
to meet the demands of your members. And hey, let's get people
happy, healthy and sweating. And the recovery should be
just as. Good as the workout.
So. So last question on the we could talk for hours, obviously, and I really
appreciate your time here. I think people are going to get some takeaways on living
(30:00):
in the present and tickling themselves and tickling their employees and making
something awesome in that, in that chain. What brands
tickle you or what brands do you think are doing the right thing to emote
in a personal connection that is not just like, hey,
I'm an authority. I'm selling you products that I'm getting as much money out of
you as I can, or I'm selling you a premium experience. What things resonate with
(30:22):
you is like authentic tickling.
You know, branding. You know, we're talking
about a relationship With a corporate, like
in a commercial relationship. So most of the things, if
you ask me about branding, it's quality. Right.
So I live up, up here outside the city.
(30:47):
Husa and steel chainsaws. Either one, I
use both. And it's because they're awesome. Right. They don't break
and they do exactly what they're supposed to do. On a
related note, there's a.
So up here I can go with.
(31:07):
If I need to go to the hardware store, I can go to Lowe's, Home
Depot or Herzog's, which is a local
hardware store. Like it's an Ace Hardware,
but it's like it's, it's real local. It's more personal in
there.
Herzogs hands down. Because I go in there, you could talk
(31:31):
to people and know where the stuff is. And so it's
like people who actually take it seriously to,
you know, do right by their customers love that place.
Let me think here.
You know, I hate to say it, Apple,
(31:52):
because I think there is no brand on earth that is more adored, that
doesn't give a about its customers ultimately.
Like I had an Apple II plus from,
from like 1980 to the year 2000. I
had that computer for like 20 years. And now a laptop,
you're lucky if it lasts you two years. Yeah,
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but they do it well design wise. What
other brands? Nothing's coming to me off the top of my head. Yeah, no, I
think that's a good. I love the local hardware store because you would have argued
that if you were in Harvard Business School and you were doing a case study
on Ace Hardware, that would have been out of business already. Right. That would have
been like the expert conclusion that this is like a
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cash, cash runoff business and these things aren't going to compete. And I
go to Ace Hardware because I. Exactly what you talk about. I want to talk
to somebody and I want to tell them what project I'm working on and what
is the solution and they'll give you their specialists and they care.
I think caring is like just a big part of retail that
everybody forgot was like part of like the business model.
(32:59):
Caring. Yeah. And again, I would argue that we
are so distracted by
the past and the future, which leads us to be
distracted by numerical comparisons, which leads
us to sort of lose our grasp on the
present moment. Because if you're comparing anything, you're not
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present. Right. And it leads us
to sort of lose sight of.
And I said this at the beginning, the miracle at hand. One of the things
that occurred to me during COVID I was not particularly religious
or even spiritual for most of my life. And
then it just hit me like. Like an anvil on the
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head. I was like, oh, my God. It's a
miracle that any of us is here. Yep. Right.
You've heard the thing where they talk about, you know,
the. The odds of you being conceived. Right.
You know, everything had to fall into place for you to be conceived.
You could go back in your family tree. And so it's like infinite upon
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infinite upon infinite odds. The fact that you're here is like an infinite m.
And when we do what we
do, we all have to do something. You got to do something in any given
moment, Right. You don't want to squander
this infinite prize, like, counting some
shit. You want to spend it engaging with
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the reality that's right in front of your face. And most of the time, like
you say, if you're in service businesses like this, it's people,
right? It's the people should. We've got it all backwards.
We're counting the people. Right? Right. Doing the people
thing and then counting it after the fact. Right. We just
got to, like, you know, there's only one go around on this
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ride. And the interesting part
of it is not a number. The interesting part of it is
something that's happening to you, and more than. More likely
than not with some other people around, and you're engaging in,
like, a, you know, doing a joint miracle together.
Yeah. I tell people, you know, most people know how fast the car they're
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going is driving, know how fast they run a mile, and nobody
knows that the Earth's going around the sun at 66,000 miles an hour
and rotating at 1400 miles an hour. And then the sun,
96 million miles away, like, enjoy the ride,
however it's been constructed and do good things
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and give back. And I think the interesting takeaway here is that
for the operators here that are so immersed in their numbers. Look, I'm a
guy trying to help people bring in capital to solve
loneliness, diabetes, and obesity. But at the end of the day, it comes
down to what's the multiple, what's the valuation. I'm fighting over $10,000
right now. We're fucking H vac unit in Texas.
(35:59):
That may or may not break within the next 30 days. Does. @ the end
of the day, does that matter? The answer, obviously, is no. Okay? But I'm, like,
spending time on that, you know, minutia point on an asset
purchase agreement right now. So I think let's let everybody level up
and say, instead of counting your numbers every day, count, like, the good things
that happen and then that. That the income statement will,
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like, kind of build itself because you do. Or I
wouldn't even go so far as count the good things. Like, the point I was
making before now, like,
I. I can't overstate it, right? And like, the
takeaway is this. Pay attention.
And so that means in every single moment that you
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can remember to do so, pay
attention. And what will come out of
that? Right? You will do the right
thing. If you are paying attention. You
won't do the distracted thing. You won't do the sort of
easy but morally flawed thing. If you are really,
(37:06):
really paying attention, you will almost always
and invariably do the right thing. And if you do the right thing
in every given moment, starting now,
if you do the right thing, everything else will take
care of itself. It's true. It's. There's another way to
think about that. It is never not
(37:29):
now, right? So if you are like,
when have you ever been able to say it's not now? You never
have. So if it's never not now, right? We can
really only do one thing your whole
life, and that is the following.
What it is that you're doing right now. You can never do something in
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the past. You can never do something in the future. You can never do something
somewhere else compared to where you are. You can only
ever, for your entire existence, do the thing that
you're doing. So what does that lead to?
Pay attention to what you're doing. Love it. Only
thing that is. And if you pay attention to that,
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the rest you got nothing to worry about. Awesome.
I'll tell you this. This all occurred to me out of
nowhere during quarantine. And my life
since, it hasn't been perfect, right? Because we all get
distracted. We all get distracted. But
when I'm not distracted and when I'm following my own
(38:37):
advice of paying paid attention to what you're doing,
there's like, you're. You're at the top of your game because
doing the only thing that you can do, and you're doing it well.
And then all everything else is
just noise compared to that. I love it. All right,
(38:58):
you got enough takeaways here to my Halo audience to do the right
thing, pay attention, make other people awesome, and you will become
awesome on your own by living in the present.
Hey, Duff, it's great to have you on, man. I really appreciate the words of
wisdom here. I'm sad about the pandemic, but I'm happy about what you gleaned from
it. So we'll take that as a positive takeaway from COVID
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And you know what, Pete? Let me leave you with one thing.
Covid was terrifying, and it was tragic, and
there was a lot that was horrible about that.
Right? But if you think about it,
those are the parts of COVID right? We talk about people who died.
(39:40):
Right. I would not discount death and anyone who
lost loved ones. It's horrible. But that's the countable
part of COVID The part of COVID that
isn't countable is, did you start doing something
cool like you said earlier? Did you plant a garden?
Did you take up a new hobby? Did you suddenly realize that you
(40:02):
wanted a new job? Did you suddenly decide that you wanted to commit
to your girlfriend or boyfriend? All these things do not
yield to counting, and that's why we don't talk about them as much.
But Covid, at the same time as it's horrible. Great things happen
during COVID I'm in a violent agreement.
Well, thanks for coming on. Look forward to seeing you get in person. And our
(40:25):
audience is going to take these words of wisdom and live a better lifestyle
and create better businesses with better people and actually living
and understanding that social relationships are how the world goes around.
So thanks for coming on, buddy. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks, man.
Awesome. Cheers.
(40:52):
Sa
(41:18):
Sam.