September 12, 2022 • 50 mins
In this episode, Steve Haffner shares:
The song that inspired him to quit his job and become a magician!
Why he went in to IT in the first place.
That he has always had a strong, creative drive.
What mentalism is and how he incorporated it into his act.
What inspired him to go from performing at trade shows into public speaking.
Some of the different cognitive biases that we have and how a magician or marketing department can exploit them as well as how we can overcome them.
What the "Lizard Brain" is and how primitive impulses still affect our thinking and decision making today.
The single experience that made him almost quit his dream and the corresponding experience that caused him not to.
Why he believes that having regrets is not necessarily a bad thing.
That people should challenge their beliefs and be willing to change them when they do not line up with the evidence.
What the allure of the status quo is and why we should not be afraid to fix something that is not currently broken.
What outcome bias is and how it is not necessarily an accurate arbiter of whether a decision was good or not.
What System One and System Two are with regards to our minds.
How Magicians and Marketing departments use misdirection against us.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Our guest today had a successful 30year career as a systems developer,
project manager and executiveworking for bosses at companies
such as Humana EDS and Mercer.
In 2011, he shocked his colleaguesand friends by quitting that career to
become a full-time professional magician.
As a creator of deceptions, he discoveredthat the same mental errors, distortions,
(00:22):
and misperceptions that magiciansand exploit and manipulate to create
magic also influence our everydaythinking and decision making as well.
Today, he is a mindperformance strategist.
He combines insights from hisprevious careers with research,
from the fields of psychology,behavioral science, and neuroscience.
(00:42):
He presents his keynote in educationalprograms to associations and businesses
throughout the us without further ado.
Let's welcome, Steve ner to the show.
Hello Greg.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for being
here steve, can you take a fewmoments and fill in the gaps from
that intro and bring us up tospeed with what's going on in your.
(01:05):
Yeah I'd love to, and it's interesting.
Every entrepreneur, especially I thinkolder entrepreneurs which I assume
is most of your audience all havea different, very different path to
how they got where they got to, tomaking the decision, to be their own
boss and start their own business.
I and usually I think people move,they're an expert they've been working
(01:27):
in, say manufacturing for years andyears, and then they start their own
business in that same domain, right.
Or software developer, and theywanna develop their own app.
So they go out on their own.
My story's a complete 180 fromthat because I was a corporate
it systems, engineer anddeveloper for almost 30 years.
(01:49):
And then I was a, actuallya business analyst for a big
fortune 500 insurance company.
And then one morning I walked intomy boss's office and I said, I quit.
And she said, what are you talking about?
You can't quit.
You like it here, didyou get a better offer?
What happened?
And I said, no, I'm quittingto become a magician.
(02:10):
right.
And so that sounds crazy.
I know.
And then in hindsight it is alittle bit ridiculous sounding,
but and I'll go into a little bitwhat the impetus was to do that.
But I did that in, I made thatdecision in 2011, so it was in the
middle of a recession, so it waskind of a tricky time to do that,
but the timing was right for me.
(02:31):
And it came down to values.
I can get into that a little bit more.
I don't want to go into it toomuch here, right at the top.
But it was I think part of it was as I wasgetting, I was 48 years old at the time.
And at that point in your life,you're looking at what you've done
and where you're going and you decide,is there something I wanna do that I
haven't done that I'm gonna miss theopportunity for, if I wait too long.
(02:54):
And I think that was part of it.
I have always had a strong creativedrive, so to speak ever since I was
a kid, I was into the creative arts.
And as far as performing on stage, Iwas kind of a shy, introverted kid,
but I loved getting on stage in schoolplays and express myself that way.
I loved to write doing creative writing,and and so then naturally when it came.
(03:15):
Choose what I wanted to major in, incollege, I chose computer science and
and I did like computer science.
I don't regret that at all becauseI had a good, as I said, almost 30
year career, going, taking that path.
But it was the safe path.
There were a lot of jobs andprogramming and computers, and they
were good paying jobs, trying to,make a living in the performing arts.
(03:37):
Would've been a lot more difficult.
Right.
Which my parents pointedout to me many times.
So that's one of the reasonsthat I got into programming.
Plus I did like programming it I'm I'vealways been into puzzles and games and
programming is, is kind of a form of that.
Okay.
Same kind of, mind gymnastics that youhave to do to get from the input to
(03:59):
the output in a, in a computer program.
So, So, yeah, so then I got, I hada career as a professional magician,
doing all kinds of shows, startedoff doing kids shows, which I loved,
I, from the youngest, probably fiveor six up through, school age, then
I did adult shows as a mentalist.
What
exactly is a mentalist?
(04:20):
Yeah, it's a branch of magic.
So it's a, basically a magician,although some mentalists, they don't
want you to associate them with magiciansbecause they want to present themselves
as, I don't know, really having.
Supernatural powers or something but mostmost legitimate mentalists don't do that.
And they say that it is an illusion,just like a magician, but it's a type of
(04:42):
magic that is not visual, but it's in themind, for example, a mind reading trick,
I might have somebody think of their,the first pet they ever had as a child.
And then I'm able to apparently read theirmind and tell them what the pet's name is.
Or I make a prediction about whatsomebody will do with me on stage.
(05:03):
And, I have them pick something randomlyout of a list and I show that in an
envelope I've had them holding the entiretime I predicted they would pick that one.
So that's what mentalism is.
And I found that wasa lot more intriguing.
And fascinating for adults.
They got into that morethan the visual magic.
(05:23):
The little kids don't reallyunderstand mentalism because they
don't understand the limitationsof the human brain, but adults do.
And since we don't really knoweverything that the brain can do,
it's fascinating to think, wow.
I wonder if those powers can be real,and I tell people it's illusion, but
it comes across, as being very real andsometimes, people talk about my gift
(05:44):
and, it is a gift to be able to takeroutines, make them your own practice,
them, tweak them, make them work for you.
That's definitely takes someskill and training, but it's
not a supernatural gift.
Like, like some people think,so, so yeah, so I did mentalism
for corporate audiences.
I would do, holiday parties or clientappreciation dinners, and anything where
(06:05):
they wanted some entertainment for.
Okay.
That's not where I am today.
I had, I did a couple of pivotsalong the way, and I think this is
good lesson for any entrepreneur.
I started doing kids magic andschool shows, but I wanted to
get my income level higher.
And the only way to do that, staying inkids shows was to just do more shows.
(06:26):
And I was already doing quite a bit.
You just don't get paidthat much for each one.
So that's when I transitioned intodoing corporate events I wanted
to get into the trade show market.
So I don't know if you've ever beento a large trade show and you've seen
a booth where they have entertainmentthere, like, and some, sometimes they
might have a magician and it's okay.
(06:46):
Yeah.
And it's great.
A lot of magicians make theirliving, just working trade shows.
And it's really good for the companybecause the magician can insert their
message into the magical presentation.
They can draw a crowd, and get peopleinterested and let them have fun.
And then there's this naturaltendency to wanna reciprocate.
So if you give them somethinglike entertainment, then they
(07:08):
feel like they wanna give you, thecompany at the booth, something.
So they might come talk to yoursalesman for a little bit, and it
really is a great way, but it was atough sell for marketing directors.
They can magic has a stigma, magiciansand they picture somebody really
cheesy and corny and side show ish,and they don't wanna mix up miss
up, mix up their brand with that.
(07:30):
But I, I think that was a mistake, butwhat I did, I said, if I'm gonna try
trade shows, cuz that looks like a market.
I could have fun in.
And if by this certain date,I think it was June of 2016.
I said, if by this date, I'm not makinghalf of my income from trade shows,
then I'm going to go into speaking.
(07:51):
So, because that was anavenue I was interested in.
And so that's what I did when I hitthat deadline, and I call it a trip
wire and, I put it on my calendar.
This is the date, and this is a hard date.
Now I could, if I got that dateand I was close to my goal, okay.
I might have kept doing it, butI wasn't really close to it.
So when I hit that date, I'm like, okay,I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into speaking
(08:13):
and I'm going to, figure out what itis that makes me unique that I can talk
about that can help people as a magician.
Of course, you have to learnhow the mind works because you
have to learn how to fool it.
Right.
And I discovered that some of thesame mental distortions and errors and
weaknesses and shortcuts that magiciansunderstand and know how to exploit and
(08:36):
manipulate, they also affect us in oureveryday and professional thinking and
decision making as well in different ways.
Right.
In a magic show.
It's great when that happens,because that can create magic.
But outside of that, not so goodbecause it can negatively influence
the way we think and make decisionsand therefore, our success.
(08:57):
So I bring out some of theseI call them mental illusions.
They're cognitive biases.
They're what are called heuristics,which are mental shortcuts that the
subconscious brain takes to help usnavigate the world and all the millions
of stimuli that are constantly hitting us.
And other types of impulsesand preferences that we have
at the subconscious level, theinstinctive, lizard brain level.
(09:19):
Although I know the Liz brainis not an actual physical thing.
That's kind of been debunked but thewhole concept that we've got these
primitive impulses and they affect ourthinking and decision making, that's
what we need, need to be aware of sowe can understand how the mind works.
And take steps to mitigatethe negative influences,
when you made the switch, did you get alot of pushback from friends and family?
(09:43):
I know you mentioned your boss,
so yeah.
Yes.
So I'll tell you the end of thestory was I had, I was in my
career, I had switched jobs.
I wasn't doing tech programming anymore.
I had moved into managementposition, had new job.
I wasn't loving it.
And I had picked up a fewyears earlier magic as a hobby.
(10:05):
I loved magic when I was a kid and Iwas doing performances for friends and
family and charities and things like that.
And I know I knew people, even knew oneor two people making their living here
in, in my market doing it successfully.
So I had that thought, man, I wouldlove to, magic used my two passions
(10:27):
that I mentioned creative writing andperforming cuz you have to write your
own routines if you wanna be any good.
And so those came back into playand I really decided this was
something I really wanted to do.
So I but it was tough.
Middle recession.
I had a family, goodstable, high paying career.
So I had these two voices talking atme, one saying, this is ridiculous.
(10:49):
Don't even think about it.
And one saying, now's your chance.
so, and I did get, Italked to my wife about it.
I got support from her.
But I wasn't really wasn't sure whatto do until one morning I drove to.
Still at my, my job with the insurancecompany sitting in my car, not getting
out of it because I was wrecked.
If you've ever had a huge decision, that'sgonna have a big impact on your life.
(11:11):
And you're not sure which way to go.
That's painful.
I mean, that can be really uncomfortable.
And I was really struggling withthis and I heard a song come on.
The radio that I had never heard before,as I was sitting in my car I've started
listening to the lyrics and it waslike, they were speaking directly to me.
So some of the lyrics were, therecomes a time when you have to
(11:31):
ask yourself, where am I going?
What have I done?
Are you taking theorders you've been given?
Or are you breaking the ruleswith your own decisions?
Isn't it time you tried.
And so I heard this in a tsunami ofemotion hit me so to speak, and I was
(11:53):
just flooded with, oh my gosh, it was afeeling of clarity and relief, clarity.
I, that I felt this was kind ofthe motivation that I needed.
This made total sense to me.
I need to do this and relief that mystruggle was over of making this decision.
I now knew what I wanted to do.
10 minutes later, I'm in myboss's office saying I, I quit.
(12:15):
So it was the funny thing is I, as I'vesaid, I'd never heard the song before and
I've never heard it on the radio since.
So that was the one and only time.
And it hit me right at that moment.
So that's kind of crazy and pretty cool.
I mean, I like that.
And I've heard it's called living the.
By Martin Sexton and you can find it onYouTube cuz I've looked it up since then.
(12:35):
I'm like, what was that song?
And I just remembered a fewthose lyrics, and I looked it up
and I'm like, ah, there it is.
That's the song.
So that was that wasthe emphasis to do it.
And I know that, it's scary andprobably a lot of your viewers have
gone through a situation like thatwhere they've been wanting for a
long time to strike out on their own.
But it is scary.
It's like, it's like leapingover a chasm blindfolded.
(12:57):
You just don't know whatyou're heading into and you're
gonna screw up a lot of times.
because I have, but I think thekey is being willing to always
look at where you're at and what isworking and what is not working and
adjust and adapt to the situation.
And to disruptions, thatare gonna come and hit you.
You mentioned it was scary, but.
(13:20):
Do you think that it might have beenone of those decisions in life that
there really could have been, not abad outcome in hindsight, if worst
case scenario, if things had reallyfailed, you could always go back
or in your case, things did work out
(13:43):
. Yeah.
And I had I had made thatcontingency when I made that jump.
And for one, first of all, when I'mtalking to young people who want to try
to be magicians, or make their mark and dotheir own thing, even in not even magician
maybe they want to be a videographeror whatever, straight out of college.
I say that's great thatyou have the streams.
(14:04):
You're trying that, but.
You don't close the door to goingout and working for somebody else.
If you have to, because it's hardto plant your foot and get started.
I had that career, I had money saved up.
I could go for a while without making anymoney, while I ramped up the business.
So I did have that cushion.
And I also said, if six months in,if this is just not going anywhere,
(14:29):
I can, jump back into the job market.
Six months in, I was making money.
It wasn't a whole lot of money,but it was enough that the momentum
said, yeah, let's keep doing this.
And I was enjoying it enough.
And I basically, I had a new purpose,when at that time in my life, I wanted
to use my creative talents and to, toa degree, I hadn't been before to make
(14:53):
people happy, to bring joy to people.
And and and it worked and that did,and that was so much fun, okay.
Now you had talked about asingle experience that almost
made you give up your dream.
What was that experience and whatwas the corresponding one that
propelled you to stick with it?
Yeah, so this was really fascinatingthat I, so I was a couple years
(15:15):
into my magic career and I wasmostly doing kid shows at this time.
So you're familiar withFort Knox vague, at least.
Right.
So it's where all the gold is.
And it's about 45 minutes from whereI live Southwest of Louisville.
And it's an army base.
And so.
They have schools for the childrenof the service members there.
And a school had hired me to come totheir fall festival and perform close
(15:36):
up magic for kids, for the kids, whichis really great because you get to see
in their eyes up close when that momentof magic happens and they get that look
of delight and they laugh and they'relike, ah, or their jaw drops or it's
just, it's a, it's awesome feeling.
So that's my favorite kind of magic to do.
It's close up for kids.
So I was doing a trick for this littlegirl called the sponge bunnies trick
(15:58):
eight year old girl named Stacy.
And at the end of the trick, sheopens up her hands and all these
sponge bunnies appear out of nowhere.
Okay.
And she got that look that I was lookingfor that expression on her face of wow.
Wonder, but then it quickly changedand it changed to one of curiosity.
And she said, Steve, O cuzthat was my magician name.
She said, Steve O she said, how didyou make all those bunnies appear?
(16:22):
And I said, and my magiciansmugness, which were kind of known.
I said buy magic.
Of course.
And then her expressionchanged again to one of hope.
And she said, well, Steve,can you make my daddy appear?
And I said, well, where's your daddy in?
She said, he's in Afghanistan.
Can you make him appearright here right now?
How do you respond to something like that?
That was a tough year.
(16:42):
Yeah.
And I just said, well, you, I'msorry, Stacy, my magic isn't that
powerful, but I'm sure he will beback to you before, it safe and sound.
But that hadn't, that got me thinkingand my trip that 45 minute trap back to
Louisville, I'm like, what am I doing?
Am I doing kids against disservice bybasically lying to them when I do magic?
(17:03):
Cuz I'm deceiving them.
Is this really a good idea?
I certainly don't wanna make that lookbecause her expression changed again
to one of profound disappointment.
After I said I couldn'tmake her dad appear.
And I thought, I wannabring kids happiness.
I don't wanna bring 'em disappointment.
Maybe this isn't such a good idea.
Maybe I need to go back tothe corporate world though.
(17:24):
I thought about it.
I didn't leave magic, but I had that,sticking with me, wondering if I should.
So then a couple months later, thishappened, I was working as a every
Friday night at a restaurant bistro 42.
And now you may have seen magiciansat restaurants, performing table
hopping, where now it's notthat common, but you do see it.
(17:46):
Magician goes from table to table whilepeople are waiting for their food and
entertains 'em makes the weight shorter.
It's a lot of fun.
So I was doing this at this restaurantand I approached the table with a
little boy who was nine years old.
And I said, hi, I'm Steve, the magician.
Would you like to help me with some magic?
And he said, okay.
And I said, great.
I said, tell you.
I have an interesting hobbyand it is collecting autographs
(18:08):
of very important people.
And one of my magic skills is that I cantell when somebody is very important, just
from the first time I lay eyes on them.
And I said, what's your name?
Ms.
Son.
And he said, Thomas.
And I said, Thomas, when I firstsaw you, I could tell you are very
important person and you've got bigthings ahead of you in your life.
So can I get your autograph?
(18:30):
And he was kinda shy andsaid, okay, I said, great.
So I got outta a deck of cards.
One of 'em was blank on the face.
And I had him sign hisname, Thomas on the card.
And then he and I together did this trickwhere we lost in the deck and we shuffled
it and the end, it all disappearedor his card disappeared, and so he
got that look of, wow, that was cool.
And I said, yeah, but I said,tell you what, I'll show you
(18:52):
my most important autographs.
And I pulled up this wallet for mypocket and I showed him some, I had.
Daniel Radcliffe and lady Gaga,LeBron James on plane cards, their
names, I had written 'em there,but they, and then I said, but
that's not the most important one.
I keep the most importantones in this other envelope.
So there was another wallet insidethat I opened up and you could see
(19:14):
one card on one side and the otherone was a zippered compartment.
And I said the most importantautograph, I keep inside the zipper
compartment and there's a card in there.
And I pulled it out and said, here's themost important person's autograph I have.
And it was his card Thomas right on there.
So then he got really excited andgot that, that look of delight.
And then I said, oh, you may be wonderingwhat this other card is because there
(19:35):
was another one that I hadn't shown him.
And I said, this one, I got justa few minutes ago from a very
important person in the other room.
I could tell she was important.
So it was a lady back there.
She signed her name here, and this is it.
And when I showed him the name onthat card, His expression changed.
His eyes, got his biggest saucers.
His jaw dropped to the floor and hestarted looking around because the
(19:58):
name on the card was Lindsay Butler.
His name was Thomas Butler.
Lindsay Butler was his mother who wasa soldier stationed in Afghanistan.
And at that moment, she camefrom around the corner in full
fatigues for surprise homecoming.
Now that got me back to my purpose andthat was my biggest Tata in magic.
(20:24):
That was my favorite moment Ihad in my whole magic career.
So what happened was she hadcalled me a few weeks before.
Looked up Louisville, magician, andshe was coming home and she said
she wanted a way to, if I couldmagically make her appear for her son.
And since I'm not David Copperfieldand don't have a big stage
illusion, I could make her appearin a, big glass box or something.
(20:45):
I could use a card trick.
And so that's what I did.
And that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it was just the reverse ofwhat happened to me in Fort Knox.
Now, the fact of the matter is thatlittle girl at Fort Knox, Stacy, she
was probably only very disappointedfor a minute or for 10 seconds.
(21:07):
but I almost let that set takeme away from my dream, because
I was really considering maybethis isn't a good thing to do.
So my, my big takeaway from thatis, yes, we all have failures.
We all screw up and weall make big mistakes.
But put it in perspective.
We have to, we have negativity biasand we have to practice self care and
(21:30):
self love and not beat ourselves up.
We all feel like giving up sometimeswhen things are not going our
way and we ask, what am I doing?
Why am I, why did I putmyself in this position?
Maybe I just need to quitand do something else.
And maybe quitting is the right thing.
At that time.
Sometimes you do have to quitand do something else because
you can only move forward.
(21:51):
You have to leave something behind ifyou're gonna move forward, but you have
to ask yourself, what are my goals?
What are my values?
And what is what is my purpose?
What is the reason I'm doing that?
And is that purpose?
Is it still relevant?
Is it do I still feel strongly about it?
And if so, use that as a catalyst toget past that setback or that failure.
(22:14):
So you can move forward.
Learn from the failure.
I think regrets are fine.
People say, I don'twanna have any regrets.
Regrets are fine because you'rerealizing you screwed up.
You did something bad and that, and thenthat's the only way that you can get
better is by recognizing it, and Danielconman, he's a famous psychologist.
He wrote one of the seminalbooks thinking fast and slow on
(22:37):
behavioral science, so to speak.
And he says he loves being wrong becauseit means he's more right now so that,
and that, that speaks to the openmindset of have beliefs, but don't hone,
hang onto your beliefs too strongly.
Because if you get evidence that fliesin the face of those beliefs, you should
be willing to change your beliefs.
(22:59):
Yeah.
Right.
So it seems like a lot of peoplearen't willing to do that these days.
Oh, I know it.
I know it's very tough.
And there's a book by psychologist,Adam Grant, which I have back
here somewhere called think again,which is all, all about that.
All about the abilityto rethink your beliefs.
(23:20):
People say, what about your core beliefs?
And I and my opinion is you have corevalues, which are more integral to
your identity, but your beliefs shouldjust be something that's attached
that you can grab onto or let go of.
And it doesn't affect who you are.
That the more you learn, the moreyour beliefs should change and evolve.
Yeah.
It's just something I, I didn't realizevery, at first until I started studying
(23:44):
psychology and behavioral science andthink, yeah, I'm learning a lot from
this and I need to have an open mind.
You mentioned that you had given yourselfa trip wire to go into speaking, and
I understand that, but how did youpivot to become a mind performance
strategist?
Yeah.
That's a title that nobody else hasbecause I made it up and I looked
(24:08):
it up, to see if there was anybodyelse that was using this phrase.
The term that I actually usedfor about a year was mental
performance spec specialist.
No, it was decision performancespecialist, cuz I was
focused on decision making.
Well, it's not that I'm great aboutmaking decisions, but I know a
lot about what can get in the wayof making good decisions, so, so
basically it's, I say mind performancebecause we all wanna perform better.
(24:31):
And for most of us performance means whatwe're doing with our mind, the decisions
that we make and the choices that we make.
And we it's the degree towhich those decisions align
with our goals and our values.
The better you align with your goalsand values, the more successful that
you'll be and that's mind performance.
So it, here's how I made that transition.
(24:53):
And here's the connection to magic isthat we have these cognitive biases
and I call, I do call them illusionsthat if we understand them and we
know more about them, there arethings that we can do to reduce their
effects and they can make us make baddecisions because they can affect us.
When we assess, when we gatheroptions for a decision when we,
(25:16):
how we judge and assess the optionsand even how we move forward.
And after the decision you know what wedo, there's this is one of my favorite
cognitive biases called the outcome bias.
And we tend to judge adecision based on the.
Right.
So if I were to ask you, well, youkind of already told me, Greg, if
you were a good decision maker,you'd probably say, oh, not so much.
(25:40):
it sounds like.
But if you think about the bestdecision you ever made, you don't
have to tell me what it is now.
Cuz kind of putting youon the spot, but pardon?
Oh, she's in the other room.
Pardon?
She's in the other room.
Ahuh.
Okay.
Well, because it's your marriage will goin a different direction, but because
(26:01):
if I said this, I said how do you knowit was the best decision you ever made?
But let's say it's in another domain.
Let's say your decision tostart your podcast or whatever.
Trying to think of a good example now.
But if you judge it solely on the outcome,if you judge the quality of the decision
based solely on the outcome, you're makinga mistake because the outcome does not.
(26:24):
Does not indicate certainly nota hundred percent and often it's
pretty low percentage of whetherit was a good decision or not.
Your decision process doesbecause you think about it.
There are a whole lot of variables thatdetermine whether a course of action based
on a decision is going to be successful.
And a lot of those areoutside of your control.
(26:46):
There's a lot of randomelements out there.
A lot of market elements, a lot of thingsin the environment, we have no control
over that can affect that outcome.
And if we look at the outcome and itdidn't turn out the way we wanted to, and
we say that was a bad decision, maybe not.
Because if you look atyour decision process, did.
Did you have a good process for gatheringoptions for comparing and assessing
(27:11):
those options, for not being too embeddedwith the status quo option and all
those things that go into making gooddecisions and a good decision process.
If you did that, thenit was a good decision.
You can still go backand look at the process.
Was there something that we missed thatmade this decision not work out well?
But oftentimes, yeah, this was agood decision based on what we knew
(27:31):
at the time, vice versa, you couldhave a great outcome and you could
say, wow, that was a great decision.
And maybe you just got lucky.
So you say your marriage toyour wife was a great decision.
Maybe you just got lucky, Greg
. I would agree.
I would agree for me not so much for her,
, And it's you, if you look in the sports world, we were talking
about that before the podcast.
A lot of coaches get fired based onoutcomes that they had no control
(27:58):
over, prime example of that was thePete car when he made the call in
the super bowls a few years ago,and everybody derided him because he
threw a pass on the one yard line gotintercepted and they lost the game.
They said he should have run, well,in hindsight, when statisticians, and
information analytical people lookedat the data on what would be the best
(28:18):
play call he made the right decision.
That actually had a betterchance of succeeding.
It just didn't work out for him, butit's, our brain likes to do things fast.
It takes shortcuts and the quickestway to deter, to determine, at least
in our mind, subconsciously whethera decision was good or not is based
on how the outcome turned out.
Yeah.
(28:39):
And sometimes the mind is justlazy too, or tries to conserve
energy.
Oh yeah.
It's a energy conservation machine.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Cause it needs that energy in case youneed it to avoid danger, cuz it's all
about keeping you safe and keeping you,from running into threats, the whole
fight or flight things, it wants to avoiddanger in threats whenever possible.
(29:02):
And that's what most of thesecognitive biases and illusions
are based on the desire, the.
Primitive cuz all small animals have thissame brain system it's called system one.
And it's desires to keep you safeand it keeps us in our comfort zone.
Doesn't want you trying something newand innovating and doing go outside the
(29:22):
status quo because it's scary out there.
Take that well worn path to theriver to get a drink of water.
Don't go through the woods becauseyou don't know what's out there.
Stay in your comfort zone.
It's very strong that when we're comparingoptions for a decision, say you have
a two option decision between keepdoing what you're doing or something.
You've got, let's say just for anexample, entrepreneurs often use
(29:44):
a CRM software to keep track oftheir clients and which I do too.
So say that you're thinkingabout changing to this other one.
You've heard a lot about you'reeither gonna keep yours or change.
Well, status quo has a incumbencyadvantage because you're already using it.
There's the whole sunk cost fallacywhere, you put money or energy into
(30:06):
something, and that makes you feel likeyou need to keep using it, even if it's
maybe not the best option going forward.
So we do.
So it's a very strong pull tocontinue doing what we're doing and
not try to change, something, eventhough the change might be better.
So we need to try to, when we're comparingoptions, take away that incumbency
(30:26):
advantage of the status quo and make surethat we're specific about the different.
Qualities and traits of each optionand comparing them one to one on
their own merits instead of givingthe status quo in advantage, because
it's already there and who falls,what kind of companies fall prey to
(30:46):
the status quo bias more than others.
Do you think it's successfulcompanies or struggling companies?
I would say it's successful companies.
Correct.
And why do you think that
is?
Because they have no reason to change?
Yeah, they struggl company, we'reobviously not doing something right.
We've gotta change.
(31:07):
Right, right.
So, and you said we haveno reason to change.
It feels like they don'thave a reason to change.
Right.
But if you look at, there's a lot of,, there's a lot of companies that if you
look back over the years that have nottaken advantage of changes that were right
in front of them, opportunities that theyhad to grow or to move into new markets,
(31:31):
and they failed now, you could say that'ssurvivorship by us, where we only look at,
the ones that failed and the ones that,succeeded, we have a different view of
blockbuster comes to mind.
They could have startedon online streaming store.
I think they could haveactually purchased Netflix.
Yeah.
But yeah, chose not to
right.
Netflix called the meetingand said, Hey, let's March.
(31:52):
And they chose.
That's one of the examples that I use.
I also use Kodak and Iuse block or Blackberry.
I show logos of companies andask people to identify them.
BlackBerrys the hardest, but there'salways a few people that had a
Blackberry and they know what it is,the CrackBerry which was the biggest
smartphone in the world until yeah.
It was the precursor to the iPhone.
Right.
(32:13):
And then the iPhone,
okay.
Well they had that big keyboardon there and they didn't wanna
let go of that because that wasI guess that was their brand.
And even though it was obvious,market research showed that
consumers love the touchscreen.
But they don't even makesmartphones anymore.
So it's easy to sit back in hindsightand point at companies and say, you
failed, cuz you should have done this.
And it was much more difficult tomake the decision in the heat of the
(32:35):
moment, but the more successful youare, the less likely you are to want
to change and do something different.
A good example though, is Amazon.
If they had stayed in the statusquo, they'd still be a bookstore.
So they were able to makethat, to make that jump.
And I don't know, may maybe JeffBezos had planned all along to become
(32:57):
this, site to sell everything, thebiggest commerce site in the world.
But he started, with aniche with as a bookstore.
So anyway, so that's, that's my word ofwarning or advice is watch out for the
status quo bias and how it does havean irrational allure on us and pull.
So we have a preference for it.
(33:18):
But don't let the comfort,the comfort of the status quo
keep you from looking forward.
Okay.
Now are there, it almost seems likethe world's a little bit like the
matrix in that there's a constructdesigned to keep us in check.
How can we overcomesome of those illusions?
(33:40):
First of all, I would recommendto anyone, any professional,
really any human being that has abrain to pick up a user's guide.
which basically what I mean bythat is, your brain is your engine
that drives you and your life andyour experience as a human being.
(34:02):
And if you want to achieve your goals,which is what your brain does, the
decisions you make is what gets you toyour goals and helps you live your values.
If you wanna succeed atthat as best that you can.
Maybe you should learn a little bitabout how the engine works, right?
So if you've got a car, a high performancecar, you need to keep it in tune or
(34:25):
know somebody that knows how to right.
You need to have, an expert.
And so I, I always recommendlearn, go out into the fields of
psychology and behavioral economics.
Learn about some of the things that,that the brain does at the subconscious
level that we're not aware of becausethat's the first step, because even just
(34:45):
being aware of of some of these biasesand why it's there and that you actually
do have it, and then it may be affectingyour decision making, just having that
awareness can bring them to the top whenyou're considering a decision or taking
a course of action and think, wait aminute, Am I thinking about this because
of the status quo bias, or because ofconfirmation bias or any of the 180
(35:12):
other cognitive illusions that we have.
So first of all, become aware of them.
The second thing is, makechange your environment.
So I'm a big fan of James clear.
He wrote the book, atomic habits,and I've been following him for
years, even before he wrote that.
And I follow, his newsletter.
(35:33):
And one of the big one of the bigconcepts that he talks about is setting
up your environment for success, right?
So, as far as if you wanna form a new.
Or break a bad habit, set yourenvironment up so that it's
incentivizes the good behavior anddeses the bad behavior, or makes it
easier for the future you to behave.
(35:56):
Well, we, there are two us, two yous.
We're kind of schizophrenic.
There's the planner, Greg,and there's the doer Greg.
So the planner is the one that'ssystem two, you're thinking conscious
process that says, Hey, I've gotthese goals and I wanna achieve them.
So here's what I'm gonna do this and thislet's say, cuz I've kind of went on in
(36:18):
a weight loss regimen, not too long ago.
I put on some pounds over 2020when I wasn't working and
like I gotta lose this time.
So, made a decision, okay,I'm going to take these steps.
Well then when it comes time to implementthose, now it switches to the doer
Greg and the doer is the one that'sgot all those things inside that.
(36:40):
Rationalize and keep, you doesn'twanna spend energy, like you said,
wanna conserve energy and we'vegot all this resistance to doing
what the planner wanted us to do.
But if the planner set up the environmentto help the doer out the future doer,
for example, if we're talking about,weight loss, if you don't have the, the
(37:04):
bad unhealthy food in your environment,you won't be as tempted, to eat it or
to go you're less likely to go to thestore to pick up, a court of ice cream.
If you don't have it in the house, you'resaying, okay, well, so you're setting up
your environment and the same with, likedistractions set up, if you find that
you're not very productive, cuz you'reeasily distracted set up your environment
(37:25):
to not be, to minimize the distractions.
And this is interesting.
This is something thatI learned as a magician.
Magicians.
So you've heard of misdirection andthat's something that magicians use
to direct a spectator's attention.
Magicians learned.
It's very easy to get someoneto switch their attention, even
away from what's most important.
(37:46):
So if I've got a secret moveto make, while I'm performing a
magic trick, all their eyes are onme, cuz I'm the most interesting
thing on the stage at that moment.
Right.
And I've got the props, I'm the magician.
They wanna catch me out.
They make sure wanna make surethey don't miss something.
So their eyes are glued to me andI need 'em to be anywhere else, but
on me so I can do the secret move.
(38:07):
One method I use, if I have a, I'llhave a spectator on stage with me and
I'll ask the spectator an odd question,like I might say, oh, by the way,
what's the biggest lie you've ever told.
And then I pause for just a second.
Suddenly I'm not the most interestingthing on the stage anymore.
That person is because everyonein the audience wants to.
(38:29):
Hear their response.
They wanna see how they handle thatawkward question and they wanna
see how big of a liar they are too.
So, so now all the attentionshifts to that person.
Plus my gaze goes to that personand that's a natural tendency to
draw the audience's eyes there.
Nobody's looking at me.
I can do the secret move and create amagic miracle because I misdirected them.
(38:54):
So why is it so easy for us to haveour attention misdirected away from
even what's important to us justbecause the brain is built that way.
So, I'll just talk about attentioncontrol for just a second, because
it does have implications for us.
Anytime we're trying to get workdone, for example, or anytime we
get be set by a big disruption.
(39:17):
Distracts us.
Alright.
So here's what happens system.
One is the subconscious system andit's constantly scanning the millions
of stimulus in your environment.
Let's say you're on a dark street at nightin a sketchy neighborhood by yourself.
Your attention is everywhere.
Right?
Right.
Okay.
So what's it doing?
It's scanning to look for anythingthat is a change or sticks out from the
(39:41):
background or potentially dangerous.
And it, so it acts as a filterthe subconscious system one.
Then if you catch a movement, that's achange, out of your peripheral vision,
then you lock onto it and then itmakes a handoff from your subconscious
system to your thinking system, yoursystem, tooth goal focused system,
(40:01):
where you say, oh, what do I do now?
Well, if it's a cat walking by,I'm just gonna go back to scanning.
You don't do anything if it's.
Somebody with a knife, you're probablygonna take a different option.
so, Hey, there's a cat over there.
there you go.
So, so we've got this attention controlsystem, the subconscious system's
(40:22):
always scanning and looking for remembersomething that it's a change or something
that sticks out from the environment.
Not necessarily what's most important,cuz it doesn't know what's important.
What's important to that system.
One is keeping you alive.
right.
So that's what it's doing.
It doesn't care about our goalsand our values, the things
that are important to us.
(40:43):
So we can be taken away,even short term goals.
You're trying to get this projectfinished and your phone rings or
your phone dings with a text message.
And your system once saysyou better pick that up.
It could be important.
It could be a life or deathsituation and you try to resist.
So we need to we need to takesteps, set up our environment
(41:03):
to avoid those distractions.
That, that system works great forkeeping us alive that, that scanning
and locking on, but it makes usvery susceptible to distraction.
Right.
Yeah.
And so as a as a magician, all I haveto do is give them a reason to look
somewhere else, even if it's a verysmall reason and people will do it
because they don't, they're systemone, it's something new there might be
(41:25):
something important or dangerous there.
So, so it's interesting how that works, itaffects us all the time at the task level.
When we get taken away from, like I said,a project or at the big picture level,
because we can easily get distractedaway from our high level priorities.
Like our mission, if you're, if youhave a mission statement for yourself
or your organization can take us awayfrom our values can take us away.
(41:49):
We can forget our purpose.
Kind of like I did when I had thatexperience at Fort Knox with a little girl
and I it's like, oh, why am I doing this?
Right.
Keeping those top of mind so that whenyou get distracted, something like the
pandemic, that was a big disruptionfor everybody in various ways.
And all of a sudden our focus ison dealing with these emergencies
(42:10):
and all this new situation.
And we can get taken away from our valuesand our high level goals, that, and that
very easily without even realizing it.
But by keeping them top of mind,we can get back to them quicker
and easier and access them better.
So, and what I mean by top ofmind, if you write them down.
(42:32):
Put 'em on your website, put 'emsomewhere where people can see them
that makes you accountable to them.
Your mission.
What are, where, what areyour high level goals?
What do you want to achieve?
What's the purpose ofyour organization, right?
And your values.
And I think everyone shouldhave a value statement as well.
You write 'em down, you put 'emsomewhere where you will, them
frequently, that will, when you getdistracted away from them, that will
(42:54):
make it easier to get back to them.
Yeah.
There's entire industries thatare, set up to distract us.
Oh, absolutely.
I could go on a huge rant about that'sthe whole business model of media and
tech companies and news organizationsis is to get to our lizard brain and
(43:14):
make us afraid that whole fight orflight thing make us afraid and outrage.
And so that we will click.
Because that's how they make money.
It's not exactly, they're notnews organizations, they're click
organizations, as they say, if the, ifyou get it for free, you are the product.
Exactly.
(43:35):
And I don't think a lotof people realize that
I know, and I'm hoping people become,more aware of that and push back.
All right.
Where do you see yourself going in the
future?
Ah, well, okay.
So I am 59 years old.
I never plan to retire.
(43:55):
I say never meaning I don't have a harddate for retirement, meaning I wanna keep
doing what I'm doing until I can no longerdo it either physically or mentally.
Because I enjoy it.
And I think it's important.
I believe in my message and I thinkit's important to It to bring that
to people, to make people awareof, what their minds are doing.
All right, well, let'sget ready to wrap this up.
I'll point out a coupleof other resources.
(44:16):
Okay.
Since I said that, I think peopleought to take the step of intentionally
trying to learn more and you don'thave to read a big full volume book.
You can, watch Ted talkson how the mind works.
There's a lot of great ones out there.
You can read articles and blogposts and, look at sites on
(44:37):
psychology or neuroscience.
Neuroscience ties in with a lotof what I talk about as well.
I think that's important.
So I mentioned Adam Grant think againabout having a flexible mindset and being
able to change beliefs based on evidence.
Daniel, Conneman thinking fastand slow, and that's a pretty big
book and I use it for reference,but it's got FA it's fascinating.
(44:57):
It's easy to read.
And he won the Nobel prize in economicsby the way, several years ago.
Another book I think, is reallyvaluable about how the mind works
and how we think is by formerprofessional poker player, Annie duke,
and it's called thinking in bets.
Okay.
And it's really about isticthinking instead of, thinking in
(45:19):
absolutes and embracing uncertainty.
That's one of my big messagesas well, because we have a.
Lizard brain drive towards certaintybecause uncertainty slows us down.
And if you are slow actingor making decisions in the
wild, you're gonna get eaten.
So our primitive brain wantsus to think and act fast.
(45:40):
So it tries to make us feel certaintyeven when we don't have that certainty.
So we have to embrace uncertainty and say,Hey, I don't know the answer to this, or I
think this might happen, but I don't know.
And say what?
And so you make contingency plans.
If this doesn't happen, here's what I'lldo, so it's so those are all great books.
(46:00):
Great sources of information.
I'll mention one other name.
Dan, R E L E a R I E L Y.
He's a psychology professor at duke.
He's written some fantastic books.
One's called predictably irrational.
And it's all about behavioral scienceand the things we do irrationally,
but everybody does 'em and that'swhat makes 'em predictable.
(46:21):
So there's a lot of great fun resourcesout there for people to learn more
about how your engine is workingso you can make it work better.
What's the best way for people to checkyou out and get in touch with you,
Steve.
Oh, sure can go right to my website.
And it's Steve hoffner.com.
So it's S T E V E H a Fas in Frank, N E r.com.
(46:44):
And they can, you can get my book.
I mentioned seven strategies formaking great decisions, send it
to you free as a PDF, and youcan sign up for my newsletter.
So I have a weekly newsletter that comesout called cognizance, and it's about
critical thinking and mind performance.
And there, I always haveone fun section in there.
So I show links to articles.
(47:04):
That's a good way.
I talk about how you shouldlearn how the engine works.
Well, subscribe to my newsletter andyou'll get all sorts of good insights.
It's a real quick three minute read.
Sometimes I link it to a blog post.
You can unsubscribe if you want again,it's free and I'm not gonna use it
to try to sell you anything either.
So, okay.
What's the number one piece of advicethat you can give for our listeners?
(47:26):
I would say this and one book I wrotea draft for is called, don't say it.
And it's all about famous or commonsayings and a affirmisms that
people say all the time that youshould remove from your vocabulary.
. And so I, I will just say one ofthem, because I used to say, this
is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(47:50):
because, and I, like I said, I usedto say it, but it's a terrible mindset
because first of all, it's bad grammar.
But second of all, if you wait untilsomething breaks before you try to address
it or improve it, it could be too late.
And just because something isn'tbroken doesn't mean you shouldn't
(48:11):
try to improve on it or maybemake an upgrade to something else.
Speaks to the status quo bias,like we talked about before, right?
Today broke.
So it's a whole mindset thing.
I'd recommend, don't even sayit anymore because it puts
you in a status quo mindset.
Well, that's a wrap.
Thank you, Steve, for being aguest on entrepreneurs over 40.
(48:32):
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me on.
It's been a lot of fun, Greg.
Our guest today had a successful 30year career as a systems developer,
project manager and executiveworking for bosses at companies
such as Humana EDS and Mercer.
In 2011, he shocked his colleaguesand friends by quitting that career to
become a full-time professional magician.
As a creator of deceptions, he discoveredthat the same mental errors, distortions,
(00:22):
and misperceptions that magiciansand exploit and manipulate to create
magic also influence our everydaythinking and decision making as well.
Today, he is a mindperformance strategist.
He combines insights from hisprevious careers with research,
from the fields of psychology,behavioral science, and neuroscience.
(00:42):
He presents his keynote in educationalprograms to associations and businesses
throughout the us without further ado.
Let's welcome, Steve ner to the show.
Hello Greg.
Thanks for having me on.
Thank you for being
here steve, can you take a fewmoments and fill in the gaps from
that intro and bring us up tospeed with what's going on in your.
(01:05):
Yeah I'd love to, and it's interesting.
Every entrepreneur, especially I thinkolder entrepreneurs which I assume
is most of your audience all havea different, very different path to
how they got where they got to, tomaking the decision, to be their own
boss and start their own business.
I and usually I think people move,they're an expert they've been working
(01:27):
in, say manufacturing for years andyears, and then they start their own
business in that same domain, right.
Or software developer, and theywanna develop their own app.
So they go out on their own.
My story's a complete 180 fromthat because I was a corporate
it systems, engineer anddeveloper for almost 30 years.
(01:49):
And then I was a, actuallya business analyst for a big
fortune 500 insurance company.
And then one morning I walked intomy boss's office and I said, I quit.
And she said, what are you talking about?
You can't quit.
You like it here, didyou get a better offer?
What happened?
And I said, no, I'm quittingto become a magician.
(02:10):
right.
And so that sounds crazy.
I know.
And then in hindsight it is alittle bit ridiculous sounding,
but and I'll go into a little bitwhat the impetus was to do that.
But I did that in, I made thatdecision in 2011, so it was in the
middle of a recession, so it waskind of a tricky time to do that,
but the timing was right for me.
(02:31):
And it came down to values.
I can get into that a little bit more.
I don't want to go into it toomuch here, right at the top.
But it was I think part of it was as I wasgetting, I was 48 years old at the time.
And at that point in your life,you're looking at what you've done
and where you're going and you decide,is there something I wanna do that I
haven't done that I'm gonna miss theopportunity for, if I wait too long.
(02:54):
And I think that was part of it.
I have always had a strong creativedrive, so to speak ever since I was
a kid, I was into the creative arts.
And as far as performing on stage, Iwas kind of a shy, introverted kid,
but I loved getting on stage in schoolplays and express myself that way.
I loved to write doing creative writing,and and so then naturally when it came.
(03:15):
Choose what I wanted to major in, incollege, I chose computer science and
and I did like computer science.
I don't regret that at all becauseI had a good, as I said, almost 30
year career, going, taking that path.
But it was the safe path.
There were a lot of jobs andprogramming and computers, and they
were good paying jobs, trying to,make a living in the performing arts.
(03:37):
Would've been a lot more difficult.
Right.
Which my parents pointedout to me many times.
So that's one of the reasonsthat I got into programming.
Plus I did like programming it I'm I'vealways been into puzzles and games and
programming is, is kind of a form of that.
Okay.
Same kind of, mind gymnastics that youhave to do to get from the input to
(03:59):
the output in a, in a computer program.
So, So, yeah, so then I got, I hada career as a professional magician,
doing all kinds of shows, startedoff doing kids shows, which I loved,
I, from the youngest, probably fiveor six up through, school age, then
I did adult shows as a mentalist.
What
exactly is a mentalist?
(04:20):
Yeah, it's a branch of magic.
So it's a, basically a magician,although some mentalists, they don't
want you to associate them with magiciansbecause they want to present themselves
as, I don't know, really having.
Supernatural powers or something but mostmost legitimate mentalists don't do that.
And they say that it is an illusion,just like a magician, but it's a type of
(04:42):
magic that is not visual, but it's in themind, for example, a mind reading trick,
I might have somebody think of their,the first pet they ever had as a child.
And then I'm able to apparently read theirmind and tell them what the pet's name is.
Or I make a prediction about whatsomebody will do with me on stage.
(05:03):
And, I have them pick something randomlyout of a list and I show that in an
envelope I've had them holding the entiretime I predicted they would pick that one.
So that's what mentalism is.
And I found that wasa lot more intriguing.
And fascinating for adults.
They got into that morethan the visual magic.
(05:23):
The little kids don't reallyunderstand mentalism because they
don't understand the limitationsof the human brain, but adults do.
And since we don't really knoweverything that the brain can do,
it's fascinating to think, wow.
I wonder if those powers can be real,and I tell people it's illusion, but
it comes across, as being very real andsometimes, people talk about my gift
(05:44):
and, it is a gift to be able to takeroutines, make them your own practice,
them, tweak them, make them work for you.
That's definitely takes someskill and training, but it's
not a supernatural gift.
Like, like some people think,so, so yeah, so I did mentalism
for corporate audiences.
I would do, holiday parties or clientappreciation dinners, and anything where
(06:05):
they wanted some entertainment for.
Okay.
That's not where I am today.
I had, I did a couple of pivotsalong the way, and I think this is
good lesson for any entrepreneur.
I started doing kids magic andschool shows, but I wanted to
get my income level higher.
And the only way to do that, staying inkids shows was to just do more shows.
(06:26):
And I was already doing quite a bit.
You just don't get paidthat much for each one.
So that's when I transitioned intodoing corporate events I wanted
to get into the trade show market.
So I don't know if you've ever beento a large trade show and you've seen
a booth where they have entertainmentthere, like, and some, sometimes they
might have a magician and it's okay.
(06:46):
Yeah.
And it's great.
A lot of magicians make theirliving, just working trade shows.
And it's really good for the companybecause the magician can insert their
message into the magical presentation.
They can draw a crowd, and get peopleinterested and let them have fun.
And then there's this naturaltendency to wanna reciprocate.
So if you give them somethinglike entertainment, then they
(07:08):
feel like they wanna give you, thecompany at the booth, something.
So they might come talk to yoursalesman for a little bit, and it
really is a great way, but it was atough sell for marketing directors.
They can magic has a stigma, magiciansand they picture somebody really
cheesy and corny and side show ish,and they don't wanna mix up miss
up, mix up their brand with that.
(07:30):
But I, I think that was a mistake, butwhat I did, I said, if I'm gonna try
trade shows, cuz that looks like a market.
I could have fun in.
And if by this certain date,I think it was June of 2016.
I said, if by this date, I'm not makinghalf of my income from trade shows,
then I'm going to go into speaking.
(07:51):
So, because that was anavenue I was interested in.
And so that's what I did when I hitthat deadline, and I call it a trip
wire and, I put it on my calendar.
This is the date, and this is a hard date.
Now I could, if I got that dateand I was close to my goal, okay.
I might have kept doing it, butI wasn't really close to it.
So when I hit that date, I'm like, okay,I'm gonna, I'm gonna go into speaking
(08:13):
and I'm going to, figure out what itis that makes me unique that I can talk
about that can help people as a magician.
Of course, you have to learnhow the mind works because you
have to learn how to fool it.
Right.
And I discovered that some of thesame mental distortions and errors and
weaknesses and shortcuts that magiciansunderstand and know how to exploit and
(08:36):
manipulate, they also affect us in oureveryday and professional thinking and
decision making as well in different ways.
Right.
In a magic show.
It's great when that happens,because that can create magic.
But outside of that, not so goodbecause it can negatively influence
the way we think and make decisionsand therefore, our success.
(08:57):
So I bring out some of theseI call them mental illusions.
They're cognitive biases.
They're what are called heuristics,which are mental shortcuts that the
subconscious brain takes to help usnavigate the world and all the millions
of stimuli that are constantly hitting us.
And other types of impulsesand preferences that we have
at the subconscious level, theinstinctive, lizard brain level.
(09:19):
Although I know the Liz brainis not an actual physical thing.
That's kind of been debunked but thewhole concept that we've got these
primitive impulses and they affect ourthinking and decision making, that's
what we need, need to be aware of sowe can understand how the mind works.
And take steps to mitigatethe negative influences,
when you made the switch, did you get alot of pushback from friends and family?
(09:43):
I know you mentioned your boss,
so yeah.
Yes.
So I'll tell you the end of thestory was I had, I was in my
career, I had switched jobs.
I wasn't doing tech programming anymore.
I had moved into managementposition, had new job.
I wasn't loving it.
And I had picked up a fewyears earlier magic as a hobby.
(10:05):
I loved magic when I was a kid and Iwas doing performances for friends and
family and charities and things like that.
And I know I knew people, even knew oneor two people making their living here
in, in my market doing it successfully.
So I had that thought, man, I wouldlove to, magic used my two passions
(10:27):
that I mentioned creative writing andperforming cuz you have to write your
own routines if you wanna be any good.
And so those came back into playand I really decided this was
something I really wanted to do.
So I but it was tough.
Middle recession.
I had a family, goodstable, high paying career.
So I had these two voices talking atme, one saying, this is ridiculous.
(10:49):
Don't even think about it.
And one saying, now's your chance.
so, and I did get, Italked to my wife about it.
I got support from her.
But I wasn't really wasn't sure whatto do until one morning I drove to.
Still at my, my job with the insurancecompany sitting in my car, not getting
out of it because I was wrecked.
If you've ever had a huge decision, that'sgonna have a big impact on your life.
(11:11):
And you're not sure which way to go.
That's painful.
I mean, that can be really uncomfortable.
And I was really struggling withthis and I heard a song come on.
The radio that I had never heard before,as I was sitting in my car I've started
listening to the lyrics and it waslike, they were speaking directly to me.
So some of the lyrics were, therecomes a time when you have to
(11:31):
ask yourself, where am I going?
What have I done?
Are you taking theorders you've been given?
Or are you breaking the ruleswith your own decisions?
Isn't it time you tried.
And so I heard this in a tsunami ofemotion hit me so to speak, and I was
(11:53):
just flooded with, oh my gosh, it was afeeling of clarity and relief, clarity.
I, that I felt this was kind ofthe motivation that I needed.
This made total sense to me.
I need to do this and relief that mystruggle was over of making this decision.
I now knew what I wanted to do.
10 minutes later, I'm in myboss's office saying I, I quit.
(12:15):
So it was the funny thing is I, as I'vesaid, I'd never heard the song before and
I've never heard it on the radio since.
So that was the one and only time.
And it hit me right at that moment.
So that's kind of crazy and pretty cool.
I mean, I like that.
And I've heard it's called living the.
By Martin Sexton and you can find it onYouTube cuz I've looked it up since then.
(12:35):
I'm like, what was that song?
And I just remembered a fewthose lyrics, and I looked it up
and I'm like, ah, there it is.
That's the song.
So that was that wasthe emphasis to do it.
And I know that, it's scary andprobably a lot of your viewers have
gone through a situation like thatwhere they've been wanting for a
long time to strike out on their own.
But it is scary.
It's like, it's like leapingover a chasm blindfolded.
(12:57):
You just don't know whatyou're heading into and you're
gonna screw up a lot of times.
because I have, but I think thekey is being willing to always
look at where you're at and what isworking and what is not working and
adjust and adapt to the situation.
And to disruptions, thatare gonna come and hit you.
You mentioned it was scary, but.
(13:20):
Do you think that it might have beenone of those decisions in life that
there really could have been, not abad outcome in hindsight, if worst
case scenario, if things had reallyfailed, you could always go back
or in your case, things did work out
(13:43):
. Yeah.
And I had I had made thatcontingency when I made that jump.
And for one, first of all, when I'mtalking to young people who want to try
to be magicians, or make their mark and dotheir own thing, even in not even magician
maybe they want to be a videographeror whatever, straight out of college.
I say that's great thatyou have the streams.
(14:04):
You're trying that, but.
You don't close the door to goingout and working for somebody else.
If you have to, because it's hardto plant your foot and get started.
I had that career, I had money saved up.
I could go for a while without making anymoney, while I ramped up the business.
So I did have that cushion.
And I also said, if six months in,if this is just not going anywhere,
(14:29):
I can, jump back into the job market.
Six months in, I was making money.
It wasn't a whole lot of money,but it was enough that the momentum
said, yeah, let's keep doing this.
And I was enjoying it enough.
And I basically, I had a new purpose,when at that time in my life, I wanted
to use my creative talents and to, toa degree, I hadn't been before to make
(14:53):
people happy, to bring joy to people.
And and and it worked and that did,and that was so much fun, okay.
Now you had talked about asingle experience that almost
made you give up your dream.
What was that experience and whatwas the corresponding one that
propelled you to stick with it?
Yeah, so this was really fascinatingthat I, so I was a couple years
(15:15):
into my magic career and I wasmostly doing kid shows at this time.
So you're familiar withFort Knox vague, at least.
Right.
So it's where all the gold is.
And it's about 45 minutes from whereI live Southwest of Louisville.
And it's an army base.
And so.
They have schools for the childrenof the service members there.
And a school had hired me to come totheir fall festival and perform close
(15:36):
up magic for kids, for the kids, whichis really great because you get to see
in their eyes up close when that momentof magic happens and they get that look
of delight and they laugh and they'relike, ah, or their jaw drops or it's
just, it's a, it's awesome feeling.
So that's my favorite kind of magic to do.
It's close up for kids.
So I was doing a trick for this littlegirl called the sponge bunnies trick
(15:58):
eight year old girl named Stacy.
And at the end of the trick, sheopens up her hands and all these
sponge bunnies appear out of nowhere.
Okay.
And she got that look that I was lookingfor that expression on her face of wow.
Wonder, but then it quickly changedand it changed to one of curiosity.
And she said, Steve, O cuzthat was my magician name.
She said, Steve O she said, how didyou make all those bunnies appear?
(16:22):
And I said, and my magiciansmugness, which were kind of known.
I said buy magic.
Of course.
And then her expressionchanged again to one of hope.
And she said, well, Steve,can you make my daddy appear?
And I said, well, where's your daddy in?
She said, he's in Afghanistan.
Can you make him appearright here right now?
How do you respond to something like that?
That was a tough year.
(16:42):
Yeah.
And I just said, well, you, I'msorry, Stacy, my magic isn't that
powerful, but I'm sure he will beback to you before, it safe and sound.
But that hadn't, that got me thinkingand my trip that 45 minute trap back to
Louisville, I'm like, what am I doing?
Am I doing kids against disservice bybasically lying to them when I do magic?
(17:03):
Cuz I'm deceiving them.
Is this really a good idea?
I certainly don't wanna make that lookbecause her expression changed again
to one of profound disappointment.
After I said I couldn'tmake her dad appear.
And I thought, I wannabring kids happiness.
I don't wanna bring 'em disappointment.
Maybe this isn't such a good idea.
Maybe I need to go back tothe corporate world though.
(17:24):
I thought about it.
I didn't leave magic, but I had that,sticking with me, wondering if I should.
So then a couple months later, thishappened, I was working as a every
Friday night at a restaurant bistro 42.
And now you may have seen magiciansat restaurants, performing table
hopping, where now it's notthat common, but you do see it.
(17:46):
Magician goes from table to table whilepeople are waiting for their food and
entertains 'em makes the weight shorter.
It's a lot of fun.
So I was doing this at this restaurantand I approached the table with a
little boy who was nine years old.
And I said, hi, I'm Steve, the magician.
Would you like to help me with some magic?
And he said, okay.
And I said, great.
I said, tell you.
I have an interesting hobbyand it is collecting autographs
(18:08):
of very important people.
And one of my magic skills is that I cantell when somebody is very important, just
from the first time I lay eyes on them.
And I said, what's your name?
Ms.
Son.
And he said, Thomas.
And I said, Thomas, when I firstsaw you, I could tell you are very
important person and you've got bigthings ahead of you in your life.
So can I get your autograph?
(18:30):
And he was kinda shy andsaid, okay, I said, great.
So I got outta a deck of cards.
One of 'em was blank on the face.
And I had him sign hisname, Thomas on the card.
And then he and I together did this trickwhere we lost in the deck and we shuffled
it and the end, it all disappearedor his card disappeared, and so he
got that look of, wow, that was cool.
And I said, yeah, but I said,tell you what, I'll show you
(18:52):
my most important autographs.
And I pulled up this wallet for mypocket and I showed him some, I had.
Daniel Radcliffe and lady Gaga,LeBron James on plane cards, their
names, I had written 'em there,but they, and then I said, but
that's not the most important one.
I keep the most importantones in this other envelope.
So there was another wallet insidethat I opened up and you could see
(19:14):
one card on one side and the otherone was a zippered compartment.
And I said the most importantautograph, I keep inside the zipper
compartment and there's a card in there.
And I pulled it out and said, here's themost important person's autograph I have.
And it was his card Thomas right on there.
So then he got really excited andgot that, that look of delight.
And then I said, oh, you may be wonderingwhat this other card is because there
(19:35):
was another one that I hadn't shown him.
And I said, this one, I got justa few minutes ago from a very
important person in the other room.
I could tell she was important.
So it was a lady back there.
She signed her name here, and this is it.
And when I showed him the name onthat card, His expression changed.
His eyes, got his biggest saucers.
His jaw dropped to the floor and hestarted looking around because the
(19:58):
name on the card was Lindsay Butler.
His name was Thomas Butler.
Lindsay Butler was his mother who wasa soldier stationed in Afghanistan.
And at that moment, she camefrom around the corner in full
fatigues for surprise homecoming.
Now that got me back to my purpose andthat was my biggest Tata in magic.
(20:24):
That was my favorite moment Ihad in my whole magic career.
So what happened was she hadcalled me a few weeks before.
Looked up Louisville, magician, andshe was coming home and she said
she wanted a way to, if I couldmagically make her appear for her son.
And since I'm not David Copperfieldand don't have a big stage
illusion, I could make her appearin a, big glass box or something.
(20:45):
I could use a card trick.
And so that's what I did.
And that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it was just the reverse ofwhat happened to me in Fort Knox.
Now, the fact of the matter is thatlittle girl at Fort Knox, Stacy, she
was probably only very disappointedfor a minute or for 10 seconds.
(21:07):
but I almost let that set takeme away from my dream, because
I was really considering maybethis isn't a good thing to do.
So my, my big takeaway from thatis, yes, we all have failures.
We all screw up and weall make big mistakes.
But put it in perspective.
We have to, we have negativity biasand we have to practice self care and
(21:30):
self love and not beat ourselves up.
We all feel like giving up sometimeswhen things are not going our
way and we ask, what am I doing?
Why am I, why did I putmyself in this position?
Maybe I just need to quitand do something else.
And maybe quitting is the right thing.
At that time.
Sometimes you do have to quitand do something else because
you can only move forward.
(21:51):
You have to leave something behind ifyou're gonna move forward, but you have
to ask yourself, what are my goals?
What are my values?
And what is what is my purpose?
What is the reason I'm doing that?
And is that purpose?
Is it still relevant?
Is it do I still feel strongly about it?
And if so, use that as a catalyst toget past that setback or that failure.
(22:14):
So you can move forward.
Learn from the failure.
I think regrets are fine.
People say, I don'twanna have any regrets.
Regrets are fine because you'rerealizing you screwed up.
You did something bad and that, and thenthat's the only way that you can get
better is by recognizing it, and Danielconman, he's a famous psychologist.
He wrote one of the seminalbooks thinking fast and slow on
(22:37):
behavioral science, so to speak.
And he says he loves being wrong becauseit means he's more right now so that,
and that, that speaks to the openmindset of have beliefs, but don't hone,
hang onto your beliefs too strongly.
Because if you get evidence that fliesin the face of those beliefs, you should
be willing to change your beliefs.
(22:59):
Yeah.
Right.
So it seems like a lot of peoplearen't willing to do that these days.
Oh, I know it.
I know it's very tough.
And there's a book by psychologist,Adam Grant, which I have back
here somewhere called think again,which is all, all about that.
All about the abilityto rethink your beliefs.
(23:20):
People say, what about your core beliefs?
And I and my opinion is you have corevalues, which are more integral to
your identity, but your beliefs shouldjust be something that's attached
that you can grab onto or let go of.
And it doesn't affect who you are.
That the more you learn, the moreyour beliefs should change and evolve.
Yeah.
It's just something I, I didn't realizevery, at first until I started studying
(23:44):
psychology and behavioral science andthink, yeah, I'm learning a lot from
this and I need to have an open mind.
You mentioned that you had given yourselfa trip wire to go into speaking, and
I understand that, but how did youpivot to become a mind performance
strategist?
Yeah.
That's a title that nobody else hasbecause I made it up and I looked
(24:08):
it up, to see if there was anybodyelse that was using this phrase.
The term that I actually usedfor about a year was mental
performance spec specialist.
No, it was decision performancespecialist, cuz I was
focused on decision making.
Well, it's not that I'm great aboutmaking decisions, but I know a
lot about what can get in the wayof making good decisions, so, so
basically it's, I say mind performancebecause we all wanna perform better.
(24:31):
And for most of us performance means whatwe're doing with our mind, the decisions
that we make and the choices that we make.
And we it's the degree towhich those decisions align
with our goals and our values.
The better you align with your goalsand values, the more successful that
you'll be and that's mind performance.
So it, here's how I made that transition.
(24:53):
And here's the connection to magic isthat we have these cognitive biases
and I call, I do call them illusionsthat if we understand them and we
know more about them, there arethings that we can do to reduce their
effects and they can make us make baddecisions because they can affect us.
When we assess, when we gatheroptions for a decision when we,
(25:16):
how we judge and assess the optionsand even how we move forward.
And after the decision you know what wedo, there's this is one of my favorite
cognitive biases called the outcome bias.
And we tend to judge adecision based on the.
Right.
So if I were to ask you, well, youkind of already told me, Greg, if
you were a good decision maker,you'd probably say, oh, not so much.
(25:40):
it sounds like.
But if you think about the bestdecision you ever made, you don't
have to tell me what it is now.
Cuz kind of putting youon the spot, but pardon?
Oh, she's in the other room.
Pardon?
She's in the other room.
Ahuh.
Okay.
Well, because it's your marriage will goin a different direction, but because
(26:01):
if I said this, I said how do you knowit was the best decision you ever made?
But let's say it's in another domain.
Let's say your decision tostart your podcast or whatever.
Trying to think of a good example now.
But if you judge it solely on the outcome,if you judge the quality of the decision
based solely on the outcome, you're makinga mistake because the outcome does not.
(26:24):
Does not indicate certainly nota hundred percent and often it's
pretty low percentage of whetherit was a good decision or not.
Your decision process doesbecause you think about it.
There are a whole lot of variables thatdetermine whether a course of action based
on a decision is going to be successful.
And a lot of those areoutside of your control.
(26:46):
There's a lot of randomelements out there.
A lot of market elements, a lot of thingsin the environment, we have no control
over that can affect that outcome.
And if we look at the outcome and itdidn't turn out the way we wanted to, and
we say that was a bad decision, maybe not.
Because if you look atyour decision process, did.
Did you have a good process for gatheringoptions for comparing and assessing
(27:11):
those options, for not being too embeddedwith the status quo option and all
those things that go into making gooddecisions and a good decision process.
If you did that, thenit was a good decision.
You can still go backand look at the process.
Was there something that we missed thatmade this decision not work out well?
But oftentimes, yeah, this was agood decision based on what we knew
(27:31):
at the time, vice versa, you couldhave a great outcome and you could
say, wow, that was a great decision.
And maybe you just got lucky.
So you say your marriage toyour wife was a great decision.
Maybe you just got lucky, Greg
. I would agree.
I would agree for me not so much for her,
, And it's you, if you look in the sports world, we were talking
about that before the podcast.
A lot of coaches get fired based onoutcomes that they had no control
(27:58):
over, prime example of that was thePete car when he made the call in
the super bowls a few years ago,and everybody derided him because he
threw a pass on the one yard line gotintercepted and they lost the game.
They said he should have run, well,in hindsight, when statisticians, and
information analytical people lookedat the data on what would be the best
(28:18):
play call he made the right decision.
That actually had a betterchance of succeeding.
It just didn't work out for him, butit's, our brain likes to do things fast.
It takes shortcuts and the quickestway to deter, to determine, at least
in our mind, subconsciously whethera decision was good or not is based
on how the outcome turned out.
Yeah.
(28:39):
And sometimes the mind is justlazy too, or tries to conserve
energy.
Oh yeah.
It's a energy conservation machine.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Cause it needs that energy in case youneed it to avoid danger, cuz it's all
about keeping you safe and keeping you,from running into threats, the whole
fight or flight things, it wants to avoiddanger in threats whenever possible.
(29:02):
And that's what most of thesecognitive biases and illusions
are based on the desire, the.
Primitive cuz all small animals have thissame brain system it's called system one.
And it's desires to keep you safeand it keeps us in our comfort zone.
Doesn't want you trying something newand innovating and doing go outside the
(29:22):
status quo because it's scary out there.
Take that well worn path to theriver to get a drink of water.
Don't go through the woods becauseyou don't know what's out there.
Stay in your comfort zone.
It's very strong that when we're comparingoptions for a decision, say you have
a two option decision between keepdoing what you're doing or something.
You've got, let's say just for anexample, entrepreneurs often use
(29:44):
a CRM software to keep track oftheir clients and which I do too.
So say that you're thinkingabout changing to this other one.
You've heard a lot about you'reeither gonna keep yours or change.
Well, status quo has a incumbencyadvantage because you're already using it.
There's the whole sunk cost fallacywhere, you put money or energy into
(30:06):
something, and that makes you feel likeyou need to keep using it, even if it's
maybe not the best option going forward.
So we do.
So it's a very strong pull tocontinue doing what we're doing and
not try to change, something, eventhough the change might be better.
So we need to try to, when we're comparingoptions, take away that incumbency
(30:26):
advantage of the status quo and make surethat we're specific about the different.
Qualities and traits of each optionand comparing them one to one on
their own merits instead of givingthe status quo in advantage, because
it's already there and who falls,what kind of companies fall prey to
(30:46):
the status quo bias more than others.
Do you think it's successfulcompanies or struggling companies?
I would say it's successful companies.
Correct.
And why do you think that
is?
Because they have no reason to change?
Yeah, they struggl company, we'reobviously not doing something right.
We've gotta change.
(31:07):
Right, right.
So, and you said we haveno reason to change.
It feels like they don'thave a reason to change.
Right.
But if you look at, there's a lot of,, there's a lot of companies that if you
look back over the years that have nottaken advantage of changes that were right
in front of them, opportunities that theyhad to grow or to move into new markets,
(31:31):
and they failed now, you could say that'ssurvivorship by us, where we only look at,
the ones that failed and the ones that,succeeded, we have a different view of
blockbuster comes to mind.
They could have startedon online streaming store.
I think they could haveactually purchased Netflix.
Yeah.
But yeah, chose not to
right.
Netflix called the meetingand said, Hey, let's March.
(31:52):
And they chose.
That's one of the examples that I use.
I also use Kodak and Iuse block or Blackberry.
I show logos of companies andask people to identify them.
BlackBerrys the hardest, but there'salways a few people that had a
Blackberry and they know what it is,the CrackBerry which was the biggest
smartphone in the world until yeah.
It was the precursor to the iPhone.
Right.
(32:13):
And then the iPhone,
okay.
Well they had that big keyboardon there and they didn't wanna
let go of that because that wasI guess that was their brand.
And even though it was obvious,market research showed that
consumers love the touchscreen.
But they don't even makesmartphones anymore.
So it's easy to sit back in hindsightand point at companies and say, you
failed, cuz you should have done this.
And it was much more difficult tomake the decision in the heat of the
(32:35):
moment, but the more successful youare, the less likely you are to want
to change and do something different.
A good example though, is Amazon.
If they had stayed in the statusquo, they'd still be a bookstore.
So they were able to makethat, to make that jump.
And I don't know, may maybe JeffBezos had planned all along to become
(32:57):
this, site to sell everything, thebiggest commerce site in the world.
But he started, with aniche with as a bookstore.
So anyway, so that's, that's my word ofwarning or advice is watch out for the
status quo bias and how it does havean irrational allure on us and pull.
So we have a preference for it.
(33:18):
But don't let the comfort,the comfort of the status quo
keep you from looking forward.
Okay.
Now are there, it almost seems likethe world's a little bit like the
matrix in that there's a constructdesigned to keep us in check.
How can we overcomesome of those illusions?
(33:40):
First of all, I would recommendto anyone, any professional,
really any human being that has abrain to pick up a user's guide.
which basically what I mean bythat is, your brain is your engine
that drives you and your life andyour experience as a human being.
(34:02):
And if you want to achieve your goals,which is what your brain does, the
decisions you make is what gets you toyour goals and helps you live your values.
If you wanna succeed atthat as best that you can.
Maybe you should learn a little bitabout how the engine works, right?
So if you've got a car, a high performancecar, you need to keep it in tune or
(34:25):
know somebody that knows how to right.
You need to have, an expert.
And so I, I always recommendlearn, go out into the fields of
psychology and behavioral economics.
Learn about some of the things that,that the brain does at the subconscious
level that we're not aware of becausethat's the first step, because even just
(34:45):
being aware of of some of these biasesand why it's there and that you actually
do have it, and then it may be affectingyour decision making, just having that
awareness can bring them to the top whenyou're considering a decision or taking
a course of action and think, wait aminute, Am I thinking about this because
of the status quo bias, or because ofconfirmation bias or any of the 180
(35:12):
other cognitive illusions that we have.
So first of all, become aware of them.
The second thing is, makechange your environment.
So I'm a big fan of James clear.
He wrote the book, atomic habits,and I've been following him for
years, even before he wrote that.
And I follow, his newsletter.
(35:33):
And one of the big one of the bigconcepts that he talks about is setting
up your environment for success, right?
So, as far as if you wanna form a new.
Or break a bad habit, set yourenvironment up so that it's
incentivizes the good behavior anddeses the bad behavior, or makes it
easier for the future you to behave.
(35:56):
Well, we, there are two us, two yous.
We're kind of schizophrenic.
There's the planner, Greg,and there's the doer Greg.
So the planner is the one that'ssystem two, you're thinking conscious
process that says, Hey, I've gotthese goals and I wanna achieve them.
So here's what I'm gonna do this and thislet's say, cuz I've kind of went on in
(36:18):
a weight loss regimen, not too long ago.
I put on some pounds over 2020when I wasn't working and
like I gotta lose this time.
So, made a decision, okay,I'm going to take these steps.
Well then when it comes time to implementthose, now it switches to the doer
Greg and the doer is the one that'sgot all those things inside that.
(36:40):
Rationalize and keep, you doesn'twanna spend energy, like you said,
wanna conserve energy and we'vegot all this resistance to doing
what the planner wanted us to do.
But if the planner set up the environmentto help the doer out the future doer,
for example, if we're talking about,weight loss, if you don't have the, the
(37:04):
bad unhealthy food in your environment,you won't be as tempted, to eat it or
to go you're less likely to go to thestore to pick up, a court of ice cream.
If you don't have it in the house, you'resaying, okay, well, so you're setting up
your environment and the same with, likedistractions set up, if you find that
you're not very productive, cuz you'reeasily distracted set up your environment
(37:25):
to not be, to minimize the distractions.
And this is interesting.
This is something thatI learned as a magician.
Magicians.
So you've heard of misdirection andthat's something that magicians use
to direct a spectator's attention.
Magicians learned.
It's very easy to get someoneto switch their attention, even
away from what's most important.
(37:46):
So if I've got a secret moveto make, while I'm performing a
magic trick, all their eyes are onme, cuz I'm the most interesting
thing on the stage at that moment.
Right.
And I've got the props, I'm the magician.
They wanna catch me out.
They make sure wanna make surethey don't miss something.
So their eyes are glued to me andI need 'em to be anywhere else, but
on me so I can do the secret move.
(38:07):
One method I use, if I have a, I'llhave a spectator on stage with me and
I'll ask the spectator an odd question,like I might say, oh, by the way,
what's the biggest lie you've ever told.
And then I pause for just a second.
Suddenly I'm not the most interestingthing on the stage anymore.
That person is because everyonein the audience wants to.
(38:29):
Hear their response.
They wanna see how they handle thatawkward question and they wanna
see how big of a liar they are too.
So, so now all the attentionshifts to that person.
Plus my gaze goes to that personand that's a natural tendency to
draw the audience's eyes there.
Nobody's looking at me.
I can do the secret move and create amagic miracle because I misdirected them.
(38:54):
So why is it so easy for us to haveour attention misdirected away from
even what's important to us justbecause the brain is built that way.
So, I'll just talk about attentioncontrol for just a second, because
it does have implications for us.
Anytime we're trying to get workdone, for example, or anytime we
get be set by a big disruption.
(39:17):
Distracts us.
Alright.
So here's what happens system.
One is the subconscious system andit's constantly scanning the millions
of stimulus in your environment.
Let's say you're on a dark street at nightin a sketchy neighborhood by yourself.
Your attention is everywhere.
Right?
Right.
Okay.
So what's it doing?
It's scanning to look for anythingthat is a change or sticks out from the
(39:41):
background or potentially dangerous.
And it, so it acts as a filterthe subconscious system one.
Then if you catch a movement, that's achange, out of your peripheral vision,
then you lock onto it and then itmakes a handoff from your subconscious
system to your thinking system, yoursystem, tooth goal focused system,
(40:01):
where you say, oh, what do I do now?
Well, if it's a cat walking by,I'm just gonna go back to scanning.
You don't do anything if it's.
Somebody with a knife, you're probablygonna take a different option.
so, Hey, there's a cat over there.
there you go.
So, so we've got this attention controlsystem, the subconscious system's
(40:22):
always scanning and looking for remembersomething that it's a change or something
that sticks out from the environment.
Not necessarily what's most important,cuz it doesn't know what's important.
What's important to that system.
One is keeping you alive.
right.
So that's what it's doing.
It doesn't care about our goalsand our values, the things
that are important to us.
(40:43):
So we can be taken away,even short term goals.
You're trying to get this projectfinished and your phone rings or
your phone dings with a text message.
And your system once saysyou better pick that up.
It could be important.
It could be a life or deathsituation and you try to resist.
So we need to we need to takesteps, set up our environment
(41:03):
to avoid those distractions.
That, that system works great forkeeping us alive that, that scanning
and locking on, but it makes usvery susceptible to distraction.
Right.
Yeah.
And so as a as a magician, all I haveto do is give them a reason to look
somewhere else, even if it's a verysmall reason and people will do it
because they don't, they're systemone, it's something new there might be
(41:25):
something important or dangerous there.
So, so it's interesting how that works, itaffects us all the time at the task level.
When we get taken away from, like I said,a project or at the big picture level,
because we can easily get distractedaway from our high level priorities.
Like our mission, if you're, if youhave a mission statement for yourself
or your organization can take us awayfrom our values can take us away.
(41:49):
We can forget our purpose.
Kind of like I did when I had thatexperience at Fort Knox with a little girl
and I it's like, oh, why am I doing this?
Right.
Keeping those top of mind so that whenyou get distracted, something like the
pandemic, that was a big disruptionfor everybody in various ways.
And all of a sudden our focus ison dealing with these emergencies
(42:10):
and all this new situation.
And we can get taken away from our valuesand our high level goals, that, and that
very easily without even realizing it.
But by keeping them top of mind,we can get back to them quicker
and easier and access them better.
So, and what I mean by top ofmind, if you write them down.
(42:32):
Put 'em on your website, put 'emsomewhere where people can see them
that makes you accountable to them.
Your mission.
What are, where, what areyour high level goals?
What do you want to achieve?
What's the purpose ofyour organization, right?
And your values.
And I think everyone shouldhave a value statement as well.
You write 'em down, you put 'emsomewhere where you will, them
frequently, that will, when you getdistracted away from them, that will
(42:54):
make it easier to get back to them.
Yeah.
There's entire industries thatare, set up to distract us.
Oh, absolutely.
I could go on a huge rant about that'sthe whole business model of media and
tech companies and news organizationsis is to get to our lizard brain and
(43:14):
make us afraid that whole fight orflight thing make us afraid and outrage.
And so that we will click.
Because that's how they make money.
It's not exactly, they're notnews organizations, they're click
organizations, as they say, if the, ifyou get it for free, you are the product.
Exactly.
(43:35):
And I don't think a lotof people realize that
I know, and I'm hoping people become,more aware of that and push back.
All right.
Where do you see yourself going in the
future?
Ah, well, okay.
So I am 59 years old.
I never plan to retire.
(43:55):
I say never meaning I don't have a harddate for retirement, meaning I wanna keep
doing what I'm doing until I can no longerdo it either physically or mentally.
Because I enjoy it.
And I think it's important.
I believe in my message and I thinkit's important to It to bring that
to people, to make people awareof, what their minds are doing.
All right, well, let'sget ready to wrap this up.
I'll point out a coupleof other resources.
(44:16):
Okay.
Since I said that, I think peopleought to take the step of intentionally
trying to learn more and you don'thave to read a big full volume book.
You can, watch Ted talkson how the mind works.
There's a lot of great ones out there.
You can read articles and blogposts and, look at sites on
(44:37):
psychology or neuroscience.
Neuroscience ties in with a lotof what I talk about as well.
I think that's important.
So I mentioned Adam Grant think againabout having a flexible mindset and being
able to change beliefs based on evidence.
Daniel, Conneman thinking fastand slow, and that's a pretty big
book and I use it for reference,but it's got FA it's fascinating.
(44:57):
It's easy to read.
And he won the Nobel prize in economicsby the way, several years ago.
Another book I think, is reallyvaluable about how the mind works
and how we think is by formerprofessional poker player, Annie duke,
and it's called thinking in bets.
Okay.
And it's really about isticthinking instead of, thinking in
(45:19):
absolutes and embracing uncertainty.
That's one of my big messagesas well, because we have a.
Lizard brain drive towards certaintybecause uncertainty slows us down.
And if you are slow actingor making decisions in the
wild, you're gonna get eaten.
So our primitive brain wantsus to think and act fast.
(45:40):
So it tries to make us feel certaintyeven when we don't have that certainty.
So we have to embrace uncertainty and say,Hey, I don't know the answer to this, or I
think this might happen, but I don't know.
And say what?
And so you make contingency plans.
If this doesn't happen, here's what I'lldo, so it's so those are all great books.
(46:00):
Great sources of information.
I'll mention one other name.
Dan, R E L E a R I E L Y.
He's a psychology professor at duke.
He's written some fantastic books.
One's called predictably irrational.
And it's all about behavioral scienceand the things we do irrationally,
but everybody does 'em and that'swhat makes 'em predictable.
(46:21):
So there's a lot of great fun resourcesout there for people to learn more
about how your engine is workingso you can make it work better.
What's the best way for people to checkyou out and get in touch with you,
Steve.
Oh, sure can go right to my website.
And it's Steve hoffner.com.
So it's S T E V E H a Fas in Frank, N E r.com.
(46:44):
And they can, you can get my book.
I mentioned seven strategies formaking great decisions, send it
to you free as a PDF, and youcan sign up for my newsletter.
So I have a weekly newsletter that comesout called cognizance, and it's about
critical thinking and mind performance.
And there, I always haveone fun section in there.
So I show links to articles.
(47:04):
That's a good way.
I talk about how you shouldlearn how the engine works.
Well, subscribe to my newsletter andyou'll get all sorts of good insights.
It's a real quick three minute read.
Sometimes I link it to a blog post.
You can unsubscribe if you want again,it's free and I'm not gonna use it
to try to sell you anything either.
So, okay.
What's the number one piece of advicethat you can give for our listeners?
(47:26):
I would say this and one book I wrotea draft for is called, don't say it.
And it's all about famous or commonsayings and a affirmisms that
people say all the time that youshould remove from your vocabulary.
. And so I, I will just say one ofthem, because I used to say, this
is, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
(47:50):
because, and I, like I said, I usedto say it, but it's a terrible mindset
because first of all, it's bad grammar.
But second of all, if you wait untilsomething breaks before you try to address
it or improve it, it could be too late.
And just because something isn'tbroken doesn't mean you shouldn't
(48:11):
try to improve on it or maybemake an upgrade to something else.
Speaks to the status quo bias,like we talked about before, right?
Today broke.
So it's a whole mindset thing.
I'd recommend, don't even sayit anymore because it puts
you in a status quo mindset.
Well, that's a wrap.
Thank you, Steve, for being aguest on entrepreneurs over 40.
(48:32):
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me on.
It's been a lot of fun, Greg.
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