9 | From Adversity to Insights: J Li on Innovation - RESET with Tonya

Episode Transcript
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Tonya J. Long (00:07):
Welcome home, friends.
I'm Tonya Long, and this RESETwhere where purpose meets
possibility.
Each week, we shareconversations with thought
leaders, innovators and thedreamers and doers who are
reshaping the future of work,technology, longevity and
purpose.
Whether you're navigating AI'simpact, reimagining your career

(00:32):
or searching for deeper meaning,you're in the right place.
So settle in, open your mindand let's explore what happens
when purpose meets possibility.
Hello and welcome to RESETwhere purpose meets possibility.
Today's guest really doesembody the essence of what it

(00:56):
means to reset.
I only met this guest a fewweeks ago and was so impressed
with her story, and I'm thrilledthat she agreed to join us for
today's episode, so that we canunderstand better that resets
come in all forms.
She's a Stanford-trainedmathematician and at one point

(01:18):
and I would argue still sheepitomizes Silicon Valley
success.
But her life changeddramatically.
She had a violent attack occurand it left her with a traumatic
brain injury and it left herwith something called
enterograde amnesia that I won'teven try to explain, but
through those circumstances itled her into the path for the

(01:41):
rest of her life.
It led her into the path forthe rest of her life.
So, instead of letting thissetback define her, J
transformed this new realityinto what I think is a
remarkable approach to businessinnovation.
So, through J company PrototypeThinking Labs, she's helped

(02:02):
organizations like Google, Asanaand my personal favorite, Lego,
save millions.
Her journey from deliveringgroceries after grad school to
becoming a sought-afterinnovation consultant it is more
than inspiring.
It's a masterclass in turninglimits into advantages.

(02:23):
J, I am just really excited tohave you here.
I adore you.
Every conversationwe've had has been filled with
meaning and with hope, becauseyou always are looking toward
the solution.
Before we go deep, tell us whatyou've been working on.
Before we go deep, tell us whatyou've been working on.

J Li (02:45):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
I was really excited to getinvited to talk about what
accessibility looks like foreveryone, and I know when we met
, we instantly got on like ahouse on fire.
So when I heard that you wereworking on this project, I'm
really happy to be here andcontribute how I can.

I'm mindful that it is awkward to talk about the
parts of our past we'd like toforget.
I really am, but can you takeus back to the time before your
injury?

J Li (03:30):
for your injury, because I want the audience to see how
things looked for you as aStanford graduate, yeah, and I
will also say I'm very happy andvery open to share about this,
and I think that a lot ofdisabled people are as well,
because for us it's actuallyit's not as big of a deal, right
, it's just kind of something inthe course of our lives.
So please feel free to ask meabout anything.
I came up through life as kindof your classic Asian American

(03:52):
academic hotshot.
When I was young, I was at thetop of my state.
I ended up going to Stanford, Istudied math and I had the
fortune of being born with aneidetic memory, so I just pretty
much never learned study habitsmy whole life.
And then at some point you domath and it gets like more

(04:12):
advanced.
I was somebody who, like saw allof these patterns in my head,
right, my whole life I had beentold that I was going to be a
good Asian girl and I was goingto become, you know, kind of a
technical professor, right ofsomething scientific.
This whole time in my heart Iactually really loved business
and that was something that noone in my family had ever

(04:33):
touched.
I have little kids now andgoing back and thinking about my
favorite books as a kid.
They were all like little kidversions of business books where
, like, there's somebody who waslike selling toothpaste, right.
So that had always been likekind of a part of my mind.
But I followed the academicroute and, um, you know, and I
was honestly, I was kind of adick about the whole thing.

(04:54):
Right, you grow up and you'relike, oh, I'm smarter than
everyone else, you know, oh, Idon't need to listen to everyone
else because I'm the person whogets to the answer fastest.
Um, and then what happened wasthat I ended up harling.
I was like, okay, well, what ifI take the math and then try to
go to business school?
So I got into a businessprogram at Penn and it was a

(05:20):
master's grad program and on thenight before classes were
supposed to start I got mugged.
The next thing I remember iswaking up in the hospital, being
incredibly confused, andapparently what happened was
that somebody had snuck up to meas I was walking down the
street and hit me really hard inthe back of my head and knocked

(05:42):
me out and, you know, grabbedmy things, and then so I woke up
in some hospital.
I'd never been there before.
I just moved to a new city forschool, right.
I knew almost no one, and Ijust remember waking up with a
strong sense that everything wasgoing to be different, like
this extremely deep, compellingsense.

(06:03):
And apparently what happened,um, is that I had, uh, a really
bad concussion, and um, gettingknocked out is not what it's
like in the movies, you don'tjust like fully recover.
And it turned out that I endedup with a bunch of cognitive
disabilities, one of which wasamnesia it's the way more common

(06:24):
, way less exciting form ofamnesia, which is called
interrogated amnesia.
You have trouble making newmemories.
Suddenly I was in thiscompletely new environment, in a
new city, with no supportnetwork, and doing something I'd
never done before.
I had a mountain of studentloans and I was about to enter
grad school and I couldn't dobasic things like read.

(06:45):
I had this pile of books that Ihad to study because I was
taking classes, right, but bythe time I got to the end of a
sentence, I would forget whathappened at the beginning of the
sentence.
I'd have to read the samesentence like nine or ten times,
very slowly, to retain it, tomove to the next sentence and
then by the time I got to thebottom of the page I would

(07:05):
forget the top of the page.
Suddenly I had no informationaround me in the world.
I was just incrediblybewildered, right.
I only kind of had theinformation that stayed with me
in bits and pieces and I was ina completely unfamiliar
environment and obviously Icouldn't do math or computer
science anymore and I stillcan't.
I've done a lot of rehab on it,like now I can read, for

(07:28):
example.
I did get mostly better overlike the five years that
followed.
But there are some things thatI still can't do.
I still have terribleshort-term memory, I still have
to take notes on everything andI'm still a slow reader and
there's no way I can hold like avery concrete mental model in
my head enough to code anymoreso you were quite young, without

(07:51):
a lot of life experience tofall back on, to know, to, to
inherently know everything wouldbe okay and yet, and yet, you
moved things forward.

I can't imagine what it would be like to have
all those skills and have mylife fully in front of me and
then have that summarily shifted.
So what was the hardest part?

J Li (08:27):
of realizing that you were not going to be able to
function for what you'd beentraining for for your whole life
, so 20-something years.
Honestly, it was kind of anidentity moment, right, because
I'd spent most of my life doingwhat other people wanted me to
do and the one thing I had goingfor me was that I was smart,

(08:52):
right, this is kind of whathappens if you haven't built the
relationships and you haven'tbuilt, like, the empathy and the
connection with the world, andso up until that point, I wasn't
a great person, and the thing Ihad going for me was that I was
smart.
Suddenly, like, I was not ableto perform, you know, at even a
really basic level, right, andso that meant like, who was I

(09:16):
and what was my place in theworld anymore?
And also, what was I going todo?
Because at the time, I wasestranged from my family as well
, right, I had no supportnetwork.
All I had was registration as astudent, which got me health
insurance and the ability to getthese student loans, and I had
to turn this into, you know, afuture for myself, using, you

(09:37):
know, like the whatever my brainhad to go for me, right, and I
could never get a job againusing anything that I was
trained in.
I had nothing to fall back on.

What, what, what an incredible experience you
talked about when I met you.
You talked about deliveringgroceries and I can't imagine
how that would feel.
You'd been a hot shot.
You use those words and I thinkthose are.
You'd been a real hot shot,attending the best schools.
Looking at this, reallybrainiac experience and suddenly

(10:08):
your brain was not such agolden ticket for your future
Seemingly at least, not the wayyou'd trained it to be.
What was going on?

J Li (10:20):
I mean, I think that's absolutely accurate.
I did pretty much the onlything I could.
I just signed up for everything.
I was like, well, at this pointI'm equally bad at all things I
do.
So let me just like the onlything I can do is try to just
get more life experience inwhatever I can touch so that I
can start getting more like kindof visceral visibility in how

(10:41):
the world works right.
So I studied a bit ofeverything I sign up for, all of
these random, unrelated likeprojects.
You know I deliberately putmyself in situations, um, in
which I would bomb right.
Like you know, I signed up todo like this kind of um.
It was like this consultingproject that through the school

(11:01):
to help underserved students,like in North Philly, right, I
signed up to volunteer on thesustainability partnership.
I was able to get into thingsright.
I mean, from my point of view,I was just kind of running
experiments right, and I startedlike learning how to perceive
things differently.
I started learning how to, youknow, notice what was right in

(11:23):
front of me, because that wasthe only data I had access to.
Part of not being able to keepthe whole picture in my head
anymore was that I also couldn'tkeep my assumptions in my head
anymore.
I had to actually get really,really good at listening to the
humans in front of me to figureout what was going on and what
was important.
Right, you've spoken a fewtimes about you know this was a

(11:44):
really challenging moment, butfor me, I am really really
grateful that it happened,because it forced me to learn to
be a good person.
Right, it forced me to approachthe world with humility and say
, like, what is the best that Ican do and what is the best I
can bring forth in this moment,even if it's 5% of what anybody
else is doing, and what is themost that I can hear that other

(12:07):
people need in this moment?
And I think that was somethingthat had been very, very missing
for me.
So I just learned to beincredibly sensitive to signals
based on tiny amounts of data.
Right, like, I got really.
Like you know how some peoplesay, like you meet a person and
you get a red flag about themand you don't know why, but
there's something about themthat tells you to stay away.
I started developing this flagsystem about everything.

(12:30):
Right, like I'm having aninteraction and like this is a
little flag that indicates thatthis person actually wants to
engage more.
This is a flag that indicatesthere's something more
complicated going on.
So if I get myself into thatcomplicated situation then I'm
going to have to like learn thedynamics of the situation before
I can navigate it.

(12:50):
You know, when I met you thefirst few sentences you said I
was like OK, what are the flagsI have about this lady?
She is extremely confident,right.
She knows she's used tooccupying a large amount of
space and she has a very likethorough mental model of what's
going on.
You came across as someone whoenjoyed shepherding other people

(13:12):
.
So I'm like okay, you know youhave a preset path that you
enjoy like shepherding people on.
So it's not a perfect match tothe path that I wanted to go on
at that talk that evening, butalso I had no other paths
available to me because I was ina new environment.
I didn't socially know anyone,so let me just run with yours,

(13:34):
because you kind of have avision about how everything fits
together, right?
And so I just started noticingall of these leading indicators,
right?
Or things like if somebody triesto say something to me four
times, if somebody says the samething to me four times, it
means that there's somethingutterly essential about what's
going on that I'm missing.

(13:55):
So then I just drop everythingthat I'm working on, all of my
assumptions, and go oh, I'venoticed that you said this one
random sentence to me four timesand even though that sentence
didn't mean anything to me or itdidn't seem like the point, it
sounds like this is actually thepunchline for you.
So let me figure out what it isfor you.
So, like I started seeing allof these doors about how you
unpack things Right and thatallowed me to navigate, like and

(14:17):
and really really prioritizewhere I spent my mental effort
and where I spent my socialeffort, because I couldn't spend
it everywhere, I only had atiny amount, but I was always
spending on it in the mostoptimal place.

How remarkable that you shifted from I don't
know that math is binary, butmath is formulas and rules, and
you rewrote the rules of how youinteroperate with humans, which
you know.
We have patterns, which you'velearned to declare, that you see
so that you can respond to themeffectively.

(14:52):
But we're pretty unpredictablebecause you know a math theory
pretty much holds but eachperson is very unique in how the
same situations will cause themto interact.
So you've developed a model fordoing that, which I find just
amazing, and then I think you'veturned that model into your.

(15:16):
You talked about being inschool and you had a few things
that were resources for you, sothat you could move into you
know your next chapters Well.
You've turned this mentalmodeling into one of many
elements you do to solvebusiness problems, so you've
adapted your disability tobecome something that can be

(15:38):
taught to others with whatyou've learned.
Like I listen to you, reflecton how I showed up and I'm like
I don't think as much as Ishould about how other people
show up and what that meansabout them, and I think that's a
remarkable skill.
When did you first startrealizing that these adaptations
for your disability would wouldbe useful in business?

J Li (16:04):
Well, that took a while, Okay.
So I mean, at first really forme like in my head it was all to
survive, right, and like Itried doing my thesis on it and
it was kind of okay.
But then I managed to reconnectwith some people in my life and
I moved back to the Bay Areaand I actually had a couple of

(16:25):
pretty moved back to the BayArea and I actually had a couple
of pretty rough years in theBay Area, right, I was still
very much in recovery.
I needed to make a living rightand I got myself in this
situation where, like all of myfriends had moved on to go
become managers at Google, andthis was like in the heyday of
tech, where they had theseglamorous tech lives.
And this was like in the heydayof tech where they had these

(16:46):
glamorous tech lives.

We're still in the heyday of tech.

J Li (16:50):
This was in the amazing cafeterias.
Heyday of tech.

Oh, I've been in those cafeterias.
They are quite a production.
So you came back during theheyday.

J Li (17:07):
And this was during the heyday of tech right, the heyday
of tech employment right, wherepeople like love lived these
luxurious lives in googlecafeterias and, you know, worked
for all of these major techcompanies that were wooing them
right, and I managed to get apart-time job as a delivery
driver for this startup right.
It was, you know, before doDash, but it was like an early
version of that, where it waslike matching home chefs.

(17:28):
I was the worst driver in thefleet because they gave us
little paper handouts at thetime with our routes every day
and I couldn't read the handout,so I would like be the last
driver out the gate because itwould take me like five minutes
to copy the address into myphone.
But then gradually I was ableto work my way into the back
office and I started learningabout the way that this lady had

(17:52):
started the startup.
The company was called Gobbleand the founder was Ushma Garg.
She's also from Stanford.

I tried a few home delivery services at one
point in my life.
Yeah, and I'm pretty surethey're one that I tried a few
home delivery services at onepoint in my life yeah, and I'm
pretty sure they're one that Itried.
So it's a small world withearly adopters and people who
want to try new things.
But you delivered with gobble.

J Li (18:12):
Yeah, who knows?

Maybe I deliver to you.
You might have.
I'm downtown San Jose, so youmight have.

J Li (18:18):
Yeah, so I was, you know, working back office and doing
like chef, liaisons and stuff,and it was actually like I
really appreciated Ushua in thiscompany because I think she
gave me the safe space to startworking again and to start
practicing my rehabilitationagain and so I recovered faster
working for that company than Ihad previously.

(18:40):
Right, and especially in theacademic environment.
We were working late one nightand she was telling me her
founder story, um and uh, so,and the way that she had started
this company was that, um, shewas really hungry and so she
missed her dad's home cooking.
So she posted on craigslist andlooked for a bunch of home

(19:01):
chefs willing to do home cookedfood and then she put together
the menu from them.
And then she called and emailedand messaged all her friends
and she was like this is themenu for this week.
Who wants in?
Right, and then people, moreand more people started trying
to join and she'd get week overweek growth and she'd be doing
it posting on Craigslist, right.

I love your energy.
I think that your energy, youare so you're not just excited,
but you're so sharing thehopefulness you had and and this
, this ability to to not lookback, just look forward that is,

(19:43):
I think, truly remarkable.
And we all get into darkmoments of uncertainty and, you
know, maybe that's a goodquestion for you is did you ever
have dark moments ofuncertainty?
Because just listening to youcertainty, because just

(20:05):
listening to you, it was allabout regenerating not just the
connections, the neuralconnections, but regenerating
your life.

J Li (20:14):
I I'm just not much of a look back person, honestly, like
I, for me, I'm just part of itis just I'm too relentlessly
curious, right, like I'm thesort of person who, like you
know, goes on vacation and allour vacation plans fall through,
and like we're, like you know,stuck in Rome after like a you

(20:37):
know 15-hour flight with like nohotel to go to, and like night
is falling, and I'm like this isan adventure.
I wonder what's going to happen, happen, you know, um, and so
that's kind of like how I feltabout it.
I was like, well, I mean, thisis different, right, like you
know, I wonder what's gonnahappen.
And then, after I did it once,now, every time I'm in a new and

(20:59):
messy situation, I'm like, well, I rebuilt my brain once before
, right.
I know that if I just putmyself in a situation like I
know, I'm like, well, I rebuiltmy brain once before, right, I
know that if I just put myselfin a situation like I know how I
get through it, right, I justtry some stuff until I learn how
to learn, and then I'll learn,and then I'll do it right, and
it's this kind of three-stepprocess.
But at the beginning, when it'sreally like you know, when you

(21:21):
have no idea what's going tohappen, that's because you
haven't done anything yet.

Hmm, I'm letting that sink in.
Okay, I love that, I I maybe Ineed a tattoo, I should, but but
seriously, that's, I meanthat's, that is wisdom.

J Li (21:41):
Okay, can I tell you the way I actually secretly looked
at this Tell?

me, tell me, how did you look at this?

J Li (21:48):
So I am a role playing gamer and I totally looked at it
as leveling up and D&D levelingup?
Yeah, because in gaming, right,you start out bad at everything
and then you fight monstersthat are your challenge rating
right.
There are things that are theright size for challenge size
for you to tackle and there arethings that are too big for you

(22:10):
to tackle, right.
So if you are a level oneplayer, you cannot go fight a
challenge rating 10 monster.
You will just immediately, youknow, your party, will wife, um,
you know, and you'll getsmushed, right.
So you go find, you know yourlevel one monster, which might
be like you know, a potted plantor something, and then you go
fight that one right.
And then gradually you gainexperience and then you level up

(22:31):
and you can take bigger andbigger monsters, right.
So it's about finding the rightchallenge rating to go for.
But the fact that you're levelone doesn't mean that you can't
someday be like a level 20demigod, right, who's like
saving the world.
It just means you can't do ittoday and we're all level one in
some situations and level 10 insome situations and level 20 in
some situations.

(22:51):
But it's just about likeliterally making your experience
bar go up until you do it.
In most RPGs you have to pickyour character class, like their
specialty, and that's all youdo, right, in Skyrim Skyrim,
anybody can do anything, but youjust pick which one you're
focusing on now and you get likea 10% experience bonus on that
one.
That is like my life philosophy, right.

(23:13):
It's like this is the thingthat I'm going to level up right
now.
And I went through this periodand I'm like I'm going to level
up listening.
Now I'm going to level upfocusing and like working hard.
Right now.
The thing I'm going to level uplistening.
Now I'm going to level upfocusing and like working hard.
Right now, the thing I'm tryingto level up is finishing Right,
and if you're like that's thething that I'm trying to get
better at, I just put myself inmore and more situations that
I'm doing it that are mychallenge rating and then pay

(23:35):
attention and that's where myattention is.
So the fact that I'm payingattention to it means I'm
getting that experience bonusRight and then gradually, like I
was able to kind of buildmyself back up to a version of
myself that could do things andthat I mean mostly to me.
Like that I care about isthat's a much, much better
person, right like so I alwayshave.
I try to have like a practicalfrontier and a moral frontier

(23:57):
that I'm working on in a givenmoment.

I've never been a gamer and I learned something
every time I talk with you, butI absolutely love this, you know
, because there's this, um bias,maybe that I have my godson
will, you know, have like aneight foot wide television
playing games all day long andbe happy, and I tend to think of

(24:25):
gaming as just mental escapism.
But you've just educated me on awhole new way of gaming being a
framework for incrementalimprovements and socializing you
to think that way, to makechoices that way.
I think it's fascinating, right, that you found the tool that

(24:47):
spoke to you, that helped youexperience change and move
forward and say, oh, I did that,I did that.
So now, when you get to Romeand there's no hotel room booked
, you're like, well, we've neverdone this before.
What will this lead to?

J Li (25:02):
Yeah, and my husband was like, like next time you're
going to book a hotel?
And I'm like, okay, she's like,J, this is our honeymoon.
And I'm like, look, I wasplanning the wedding.

Okay, we're in rome, that's good enough I got
married in rome, so you had ahoneymoon in rome.
yeah, yet another thing that youand I have in common, that's
the dream it is, but I love howyou had so many opportunities to
adapt, because I just you knowyou do tend to like push it off

(25:35):
that, oh, this is just how it is, but it's not how it is.
A lot of people, a lot ofpeople, give up, you know.

(26:07):
A lot of people have somethinghappen and people receive bad
things, up to and including thecompany that you run that helps
other major major companies.
Let's talk about prototypethinking, because I think it's a
culmination of all this learnedwisdom and confidence you've
gained.
That moved you into helpingothers, and I'm not going to say

(26:30):
it as well as you do, butyou've taken your disabilities
and adapted them and recognizedthat some of that thinking
really helps companies succeedbecause it's a different way of
thinking.
So can you share with ouraudience some of how that
framework helps you useprototype thinking to help

(26:53):
clients?

J Li (26:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is going to sound likea funny pivot.
Um, so prototype thinking isour process for helping people
who are building new products orservices or solutions um
internal or customer facing umfigure out the right way to
build it that really works inthe market and works with the

(27:16):
humans that they're building itwith.
In a very, very short amount oftime, with astronomically less
resources than are typicallyused including compared to agile
or lead startup or those kindof like move fast processes we
still save about six months to24 months of runway or of time

(27:37):
to market using our process.

I've put over 400 products in market in my tech
career without prototypethinking and I'm and I'm
painfully aware of some of thesizes of teams we had to deliver
on, you know, relatively modestrevenue products.
Uh, what about prototypethinking?
Is is different or unique thanwhat you would be aware of.

(28:02):
Development was like seven,eight, nine years ago.

J Li (28:06):
So for me, the biggest difference of how we do things
with prototype thinking is thatwe look at a challenge where
you're building somethingcompletely new and you don't
know how to do it, and we breakdown the steps based on building
understanding rather thanmaking progress in the
development journey.

(28:27):
So it goes like this so let'ssay that you're, you know,
launching a completely new lineof business, right, like you're,
you know, a large company, youhave a massive customer base and
your innovation function saysthat you know the market is
changing and you want toleverage your existing customer
base and bring to them a newtype of product, right?

(28:48):
So when you start out doingsomething like this, if I were
to ask you, on a scale of zeroto a hundred percent, how
confident are you that yourcurrent best guess about how to
build it is the right answer?
Right, like, like, at the pointthat this project has been, you
know, identified and that youknow, we know, that we have to
innovate in this direction,right?

(29:08):
If your design team or yourinnovation team or whatever, or
your exec team has to, like theyhad to pick today what they're
going to go to market with, howconfident are they that that
guess is the right answer.
So typically a good prototypethinking project is when the
confidence is under 40%.
And in practice, when we launchnew innovation projects, a lot

(29:32):
of the time like we're startingwork on something when we're
only like 10% confident on it or20% confident, right, and
there's this kind of a hiddenphase of the innovation process
that lives between that initialzero to 10% is like you've done
your market research and youknow it has to happen.

(29:53):
If you're 0% confident, you'reprobably not working on the
project, right.
And then after like 50 or 60%,you have an educated guess about
what your main valueproposition is and how it's
going to play.
And it's more about likedesigning, like you know
proposition is and how it'sgoing to play.
And it's more about likedesigning, like you know, after
60% it's like designing theusability and kind of how it
fits and you know what versionof it, what exact version of

(30:13):
features you want to tweak andso on.
Right, but there's this gapbetween 10 to 60%.
That is like what does it mean?
Will this basically even workRight?
What does V1 look like?
We have six possible ideas forhow to tackle this strategy
right, or how to, how to realizethe strategy right, which one
is the right solution that'sactually going to succeed with

(30:33):
the humans.
And what happens is we don'trealize, like I think we as a
society largely do not realizethat this phase exists because
we are, like our entire, likesociety is kind of built up of
people who are we've all beentaught as high performers.
To get an A right and like evenour grading system only starts

(30:58):
at 60 percent right, like youget a D or it doesn't count,
right, and people who are insenior corporate jobs or you
know, who are in innovationroles or starting companies,
typically have very highstandards for themselves Right,
and got there because theirentire lives and their entire
careers we've had high standardsfor ourselves, right.
So we're like well, how do Ipresent the thing in a way that

(31:18):
I know will succeed?
We'll hit all the things?
How do I get an A plus out thegate Right?
Present the thing in a way thatI know will succeed, will hit
all the things.
How do I get an A plus out thegate right?
And the thing is that, like, ifyou are 70% confident about
something, you can work harderand do some systematic research
to get to that 99% A plus, or atleast that you know.
Maybe 90% at pilot and then 95%at launch, whatever right.

(31:40):
But if you are early and wecall that pre-tangible or
sometimes it's a version of thezero to one right, like if you
are that 10 to 60% there isn'treally a process in place for
how to get through it.
So what happens is that teamsspin there and work harder and
harder and they get into a lotof arguments and debates because

(32:03):
they're like oh, I have thisidea, but here's the downsides
of this idea.
That's not going to work.
And someone's like oh, but wecan fix those downsides with
this thing.
But then that has downsides.
And suddenly months have passed, right, and you have produced
an enormous number ofPowerPoints Like so many
PowerPoints that are remarkablygorgeous these days, using AI

(32:25):
now to produce even more of them.
Right, and you've modeled allof the possible things that you
could do, but you're stillactually just as confused as you
were, like six months ago.
You just worked harder in themeantime and argued more and had
500 meetings.
So prototype thinking is theprocess for explicitly getting

(32:47):
through this phase reliably,efficiently and in a really fun
way 100% of the time, and it'san accessibility process,
because the reason why it ishard to work when you are 20%
confident about something isbecause performing at the level
that you want to perform andbeing able to actually build the

(33:07):
product is not actuallyaccessible to you yet, like
because you don't have theunderstanding right.
You haven't learned how tolearn and you haven't learned
what you don't know right, soyou don't know what the
variables are, you don't knowthe language that the solution
is being written in.
It's not that you don't knowwhich of the six answers users

(33:27):
would want, it's that you don'tknow how users basically break
down the problem, and the answeris almost never one of those
six options.
It's almost a weird always aweird mismatch, a mix and match
of all of those, of bits andpieces of those that you can
never have conceived of right.
And so we've done so manyprojects to help people get
through this phase, and whatwe've learned is that it usually

(33:51):
takes at minimum three pivotsto get there.
And so in startup world, rightor now, it's more common, but a
pivoting is something you'relike, oh, we have to pivot.
And so they're like, okay,maybe you plan to pivot once, or
maybe you plan to ideally do itwithout a pivot, and that works
sometimes.
But if you want to be the teamthat reliably succeeds every

(34:12):
single time, you just have tomake a roadmap that assumes that
you're going to pivot at leastthree times, and then you say
what experiments can we run?
What can we do?
to get ourselves quickly to thefirst pivot.
So I love this idea ofexperiments, keep going.

(34:34):
So specifically like, the onekind of really pivotal insight
right that we've just kind ofunexpectedly found over doing
our projects is that no matterhow hard you work or um, how
much effort you put in, or youknow how much you build right,
you can only get about 15 to 20percent more confident in one
step.
So if you are 10 confidentabout something you could spend

(34:57):
a year developing or two hoursdeveloping, and you um, before
you do a live like you know, um,immersive, like behavior, pilot
with humans, right, um, and youwill, you know well, you will
only get to 35 confident in onestep.
So this takes a huge amount ofthe pressure off because it

(35:18):
means that we spin because thereis no way to get an, a right.
We spin.
We spin because we're 20%confident.
We're trying to get out thatgate and get that A, but we
can't.
The only thing we can do is getto 35%.
So then we say don't worryabout anything else, right, what
is the lowest effort thing youcan do to just get yourself to
35% confident.

(35:39):
And we have a stable ofexperiments that we lead people
through that are highlyoptimized, right, and if you
work with us then we can giveyou some of our highly optimized
experiments, but you don't evenneed to do that you can just
sit with yourself and say, okay,you know, I'm launching this
new product.
I'm 20% confident.
What can I do in three daysthat will get me to 35%
confident?
That involves engaging realusers, right.

(36:01):
And then you go, do that anddon't worry about anything else.
Don't roadmap, don't plan,don't anything right, don't
build in depth, don't, you know,invest in infrastructure.
Then you look at your world,because the universe at 35%
confident looks completelydifferent.
And then you say what can I doto get myself to like 45 or 50%
confident?
And the universe there looksdifferent.
And you're like and then you'relike now I know I have the

(36:27):
language of understanding whatthey want.
I have some basic ideas aboutwhat's likely to succeed now at
50 confident, but which of themis right, like I think I have
the right language, rightanswers in, but I haven't proven
the right answer.
So then, what tests can you run?
Maybe this time you're 50confident, you can take a whole
two weeks to test.
Then right, only use effortcommensurate how confident you
are.
So two weeks later you're likeokay, I'm like 65% or 70%
confident.
Now, now I know which solutionwe're picking.

(36:48):
Let's go and you know usability, test it, build it, and this
absolutely doesn't have to besoftware, it can be anything
right.
People redesign their livesthis way too, in their careers,
like you know, and then suddenlyyou look up and you're like
well, you know, it's actuallyonly been like a month and I've
pivoted three or four times andnow I'm 80 confident.

I'm good right now now I can do what I do best
right, and now you're at yourzone of genius, at a place where
you can exactly your zonegenius exactly that.

J Li (37:19):
Now you're you.
You just keep pivoting untilyour zone of genius becomes
accessible to you right and it'sthe same as the Dungeons and
Dragons model right, you're onlytackling challenges that are
appropriate to you, right?
And it's the same as, like, thekind of really confused, like
you know, post-concussion spaceI was in, in which, like I could

(37:42):
not possibly build a career.
Then I could just only do somestuff, and it's the doing of
stuff that gets you the dataright.
As long as you do stuff in thetrue environment that it needs
to exist in and do stuff withactual human users, behaviorally
right, then that gets you thedata and we as humans are
fabulous synthesizers, right.
So enough random data.

(38:03):
You don't have to run theselike large scale survey,
controlled surveys, becausethere's a lot of math reasons I
can get into why, likescientifically, they're not
valid until you're at least at70% confident.
Just get yourself in thatsituation and your brain will do
it for you.
Your brain will do it for you.

I love the part just a minute ago where you
noted that it's the iterationsthat are happening early that
get you to where you need to be.
And in my history it seems tome that we get a request you

(38:44):
know in corporate softwaredevelopment and that request is
an expectation, it is a roadmapitem and there's not as much
iterating because thedeclaration has been made that
we will create these features tosatisfy these customer needs
and people are trying to make itwork.

(39:05):
What are some of the successstories that you maybe without
logos, but what's a successstory that you think is pretty
remarkable?
Showing how that old framework,when changed with this more
iterative, experiment-drivenprocess to get to that 70-80%
level driven process to get tothat 70, 80% level to show how

(39:32):
that really changed things for acompany.

J Li (39:33):
So we did a project with Autodesk and they it's a great
company.
Yeah, they're a fabulous company.
They create industrial designsoftware for engineering
architecture.
Like, if you've driven a car,it was probably designed on
Autodesk software.
If you've walked into abuilding, it was probably
designed on Autodesk software.
A number of years ago, beforethe rise of popularity of Gen AI

(39:54):
, right, autodesk was using alot of AI to do mathematical
modeling and engineeringprediction, so Autodesk had been
using AI for a very long time.
So there's a group of engineerswho wandered away to start
thinking about they're handlingso much data customer data.
They wanted to think about dataethics and how their

(40:14):
engineering teams handled datasets.
And this was at the time again,this was before the AI
explosion, so there wasn't a lotof discussion about ethics in
AI.
So all of them were working onit in their spare time, aside
from their other projects.
It was like one of the smallestprojects we'd ever done.
Right, we were working withthem on some other stuff and
they're like hey, you know, Ithink this AI ethics project is

(40:36):
cool, come work with us.
So we facilitated this projectwith them.
We did a simulation test wherewe grabbed a few teams who had
recently completed projects andwe learned that for the teams,
it wasn't about rating theethics of a project and deciding
whether you had a problem right.
It was about making a proactiveplan from the moment the
project is launched to be ableto ethically responsibly handle

(41:00):
data the entire time.
Like what good is it to scoreour ethics right?
Like what we actually want todo is have this handled.
And they were willing to dolike five times more work than
the team thought in order to doit proactively.
And also the team wascompletely wrong about all of
the points in the workflow, solike they rebuilt everything

(41:20):
right and then tried it again.
About 50 Autodesk projects havegone through this framework now
, and then the explosion of AIand AI popularity happened and
Autodesk was a company that wasable to say actually, we have
been working on this this entiretime.

We have been discussing ethics for years what
I love that you said, though,was that their original
assumptions were all wrong theoriginal assumptions were all
wrong.

J Li (41:46):
The original assumptions are always wrong.

In my career of hundreds of companies, I've had
one where their originalassumptions were correct, but I
think there's not a cadence forteams challenging the original
assumptions very well in myopinion.
I think making it okay andgiving people a safe place for
the original assumptions to be alaunching point maybe.
Maybe I'll pull back on.
They weren't wrong.
They were a launching pointwhere the experimentation led to

(42:13):
um clarity, yeah, and I thinkfor a lot of people, learning,
you know, speaking truth topower is just it's one of my
gifts but a lot of people justdon't have that tendency.
They execute.
They execute very well on whatthey've been told, but I think

(42:36):
training teams and a mindset ofexperimentations to look at, of
experimentations to look at theywere told to build a table, but
maybe what we really need is acounter instead.
Just to think of thingsdifferently and to have the
courage to raise those things isan amazing process, I think,

(42:58):
for teams to go through andultimately be stronger.
So I can make this a lot easier, okay.

J Li (43:04):
So my number one I love that you can assumption testing
and stakeholder management ofexecutives because, let's get
real, when you run an innovationproject, it is 80% stakeholder
management of executives.
Right Is to yes and everything.
It's just test everything.
Because you can actually buildthese lightweight experiments so

(43:27):
easily.
There's no reason not to sayyes to every single stakeholder.
So if somebody has an idea thatis their pet project, be like
yes, we will build and test that, right.
Somebody else has a conflictingpet project?
Yes, we will build and testthat too, right?
It is like 20 times easier totest every single idea than it
is to get people to agree onwhich one idea to test.

Oh my goodness, and that is why we don't do
ideation.

J Li (43:51):
We are the only design and innovation process that like.
Does ideation last instead offirst?
Because in practice, yourideation is going to be your
starting assumptions.
You can run beautifulbrainstorms, do a ton of
research, do all these beautifulideation tools and at the end
of the day, like you sign up formountains of stakeholder
management, right.
Or you just like test sevendifferent ideas but you put like

(44:13):
an hour or two into each one,right.
And then you can get an hour ona call with a dedicated
one-on-one with a user,especially if you're an
enterprise SaaS swap out a fewdifferent ideas with them and
just get good enough.
It's all about that.
15% more confidence, right.
You 15% more confident on sevenideas, right.
And then you know a week or twoor three weeks if it's

(44:34):
enterprise SaaS and you can'tget your customers on the line
very easily, right.
And now you have this huge bodyof perspective on how everybody
responded to everything.
And then you send those videosto your executives and be like
this is how the human respondedto your idea and suddenly your
executive will massively,statistically and conveniently
over index on that one video yousent them, so send them the

(44:56):
right video.
Just take yourself out of theconversation, right, and just be
the person who facilitates yourstakeholders' emotional
relationship with the data,right, you're just there to
guide them through their ownjourney and just it's between
them and the data, right.
But you're not giving them thepost-processed data.

(45:18):
You're giving them the rawbehavioral videos of the human
interacting with their idea, andnothing changes an executive's
mind faster and you just don'thave to sign up to explain and
pitch things for two months.

Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
As you were talking, I couldn'thelp but think of the
application for individuals aswe pivot, because that's really
the reason for this podcast isbecause I believe we're going to

(45:52):
have pretty large scaletransition in the workforce with
AI over the next few years andI want to be in conversation
with a lot of people and for alot of people around having the
courage to move into somethingnew.
That's why you appealed so much.
But as you talk about youriteration process, a lot of us

(46:13):
execution oriented people werebuilders.
You know, tell me what and I'llgo build it.
And they get so involved in thebuild because it feels good.
They don't consider it likeexperimentation.
So, as we see this disruptionthat I think a lot of us foresee
coming, how do you think thatthe approach if taken into

(46:37):
consideration for the individual?

J Li (46:42):
how do you think it helps people navigate uncertainty.
So let me give a very differentexample that is as small scale
as the other one is large scale.
So we had a small clientrecently who was a writing
professor and they were sick oftheir career and trying to

(47:06):
figure out where they wanted towork and they were thinking
about building like a personalwriting coaching practice.
But they also kind of had aspirit, wanted a spiritual
dimension, and they're like,well, who would receive writing
coaching anyway?
Right, and this is very common,right, like many, many people
now.
Yes, right, are people who havesuccessfully built careers with

(47:28):
institutions and are ready to goon their own and do something
that has more meaning.
Right, so they used the exactsame process, right.
I was like OK, how confidentare you about a writing coaching
career you could build?
Ok, you know.
And they're like OK, I'm 30percent confident about who I
would sell to.
And I'm like, okay, well, whydon't we list your top four
ideas?
Right, and then like just gotry it.

(47:51):
Right, go get like one clientin each thing and just do one
trial session and just kind offeel it out.
Right, like you don't have tobrand yourself, you don't have
to market yourself, you don'thave to charge the money.
Right, like, because, really,what is your biggest risk?
Right, like, what is your?
If they're only 30% confidentabout where they're going?
Like, what's their biggestquestion?

(48:12):
Their biggest question is can Ieven do it?
Does anybody want it?
What is the there there thatI'm doing?
Right?
Also, there's this other part,right, where when you're an
individual looking to redefineyour own career, a lot of the
time your most important user isyourself.
Right, and we often miss thatbecause we're like well, what
will the world accept about me.
I'm going to define a newcareer.

(48:32):
What will the world acceptabout me?
Will the world accept this orthis right?
But it's like, well, why don'tyou try, like these three
different ideas you had on thetype of coaching you would do,
and see how that feels on youand whether you want to do more
of it right and that feels onyou and whether you want to do
more of it Right?
And so there's a lot of.
You just use social capital toget one friend to do you a favor

(48:52):
, right, or a friend of a friend, and you just set it up.
And the thing is that whenyou're talking about running a
handful of very low confidenceexperiments, you don't have to
worry about having a scalablething to put in front of the
user and you don't have to worryabout your user recruitment
being scalable, just like youknow, spend your social capital,
grab someone off the streetlike craft a really good request

(49:14):
.
On our website we have likerequests, so we'll convince all
sorts of people to to test withyou if that's what you want to
do right, um, and then just getthat test done, because you only
need like three to five testsin order to get to your first
pivot.
If you run them right.
They ended up finding adifferent job that they could

(49:44):
work at part time for, like abase salary, in order to connect
with their congregation overeverything that's going on.
That was going on with Israeland Palestine at the time.
So now, like they've builttheir book out of rabbis, which
was not on their list of initialideas Right, but now they are a
rabbi.
Sermon coach.

And yet it's not that far from where they started
.
It's just much more explicitabout what they want to do.
Right.

J Li (50:16):
Right, but they never would have thought that Go ahead
.

Go ahead.

J Li (50:22):
This is what I'm actually so passionate about.
It's that I meet all of thesepeople who have, like this
thread of truth or this threadof magic that they want to bring
forth in the world.
And whether it be an individualredefining their career, you
know, or somebody you knowdefining like a massive global
innovation project, right,there's always the spark of

(50:45):
genius and passion in everyone.
Like, no matter what size oforganization you work in, the
humans who are doing it, likehave a vision, and the thing is,
everybody has a vision ofimpact that connects themselves
in the universe.
Right, and there is a way likethat thread.
There is a thread that connectsthe heart of the magic for you

(51:07):
and the heart of the magic forthe customer.
You just have to, like you know, do this kind of little
accessibility, wiggle, pivotuntil you find it, but it's out
there.

Those are some of the most important words that
have ever been spoken on thispodcast.
Okay, so thank you for that.
No, sincerely, because I thinkthat we all struggle either
moving up the ladder or movingoff the ladder.
What?

(51:50):
You've described is just sohelpful to help people
understand that it is withintheir capacity and with a little
more I overuse this word butwith a little more intention,
they can move themselves in thatdirection with these
incremental steps.

J Li (52:03):
Like when you are disabled , right, when there's something
that other people can do thatyour body or your brain or
whatever can't right.
It really hones yoursensitivity to relevance and
like.
One of the things I liked was,if you're familiar with, like,
marie Kondo.
She talks about, like herprocess isn't really about

(52:24):
organizing and cleaning, right,or it's not really about
decluttering.
It's about tuning into yoursensitivity to joy, right, so
it's really about optimizingyour environment so that there's
a much higher fraction ofthings that only bring you joy,
right, and decluttering is kindof a side effect of that.
For us, I feel like it's thesame.
It's about honing into yoursensitivity to what's relevant

(52:47):
and what's important both to youas the human and to the people
that you're trying to improvethe lives of.
And everything else is flexible,right.
Because when I'm disabled and Iwant to have dinner with my
friends but they're all going toa restaurant and I'm now
incredibly sensitive to soundand there's background music and
I can't go to somewhere wherethere's background music, right,

(53:07):
like suddenly I have to have aconversation about how do I make
this approachable to me.
Can we change restaurants,right or no?
It's my friend's birthday.
This is her favorite restaurant?
Right, she deserves to havethis thing.
How do I have it so that shehas our special birthday moment
and I can also be there?
Right, and you think about whatcan you be flexible about that
you wouldn't normally beflexible about?
Can we ask the restaurant for afavor?
Is there a type of music I cando?

(53:29):
Can I come early and give thema different playlist?
Right, can we ask therestaurant?
Can I pay extra?
Have the restaurant catered andwe eat it somewhere else?
Right, and suddenly, as long asyou know what two goals you are
fulfilling, everything else isflexible.
You just do the flexible thingand have and achieve that one
thing, that thread of connection, right, be as flexible as you

(53:51):
can achieve the next thread ofconnection and and I think that
that's, I think that's our neweconomy, right, I think that
that's, like you know, in thistime of incredible economic
upheaval, right.
Right, like humans, connectingwith humans will never change,
right?
So you just have to design theway to exist that works for you,

(54:13):
but be willing to be flexibleabout everything else and all of
your other assumptions.
Perfect.

So what advice would you give to people who are
on this journey or about tostart this journey, the folks
who are looking toward their ownRESET moment?
How would you tell them to getstarted?

J Li (54:40):
Well, first I would say, get started and do some random
stuff, right?
Like, don't spend a lot of timethinking and planning it.
If you really want to gethardcore, just do a confidence
check.
Okay, you want to do your reseton a scale of zero to a hundred
percent.
If you had to pick your newpath today, how confident are
you that your next path is theright answer?

(55:02):
Okay, what is something you cando in one week to get 10% more
confident?
Not what's something that youcan research or something that
you can think about, but what isa thing you can experience, you
can go out and actually have inthe next week or two to just
get 10% more or 15% moreconfident.
Like, who can you get in frontof?
What is something you can do?
One of?
Right, you have a few ideas foryour reset, but you don't know

(55:23):
what you is something you can doone of?
Right, you have, you have, afew ideas for your reset, but
you don't know what you like.
Well, go find out what you likeby doing some stuff.
Right?
Um, you'll get there, but don'tworry because you're.
It's not your job right now toknow what the answer is.
Right, it's your job right nowto follow yourself and just try

(55:47):
some stuff until one day you'verealized that you're sitting on
the answer.

I love it.
Are there any places that youwould recommend that people
could find more information?
I mean, I'm sure that yourwebsite has some things maybe a
book also that you'd recommend,or an article that you think is
particularly helpful forindividuals who are moving on
this.

J Li (56:12):
You know trajectory, I mean honestly like come talk to
me and you know I'm always happyto have a casual conversation
with you about what you'reworking on.
We have a lot of free resourceson Substack as well.
Prioritized Thinking, substackor PrioritizedThinkingio, is our
website.

I have to admit I have not checked out your
Substack yet, and I should, andwe'll put those in the show
notes because I think you knowyou are.
You're a genuine, authenticthought leader.
You really are.

J Li (56:46):
Thank you.

And so I'm looking forward to seeing what
is on Substack for you.
So we'll put your website, aswell as your Substack link in
the show notes so people can getto know you and the way you
think before they actually callyou because you're busy, but you
do have a genuine heart forhelping people, so I don't want

(57:06):
to take away from that either.
Wonderful.
So what do you think is nextfor you?
I mean, I, what I want you todo next is to start a massive
movement to help individuals,because I see that being, over
the next couple of years, a real, um, a real gap in society,
with people not being clear onhow to move forward and what.

(57:29):
What I hear you say says to meeveryone has a zone of genius
and everyone can move towardsomething new, but it's small
steps and most of us aren'tpatient for the small steps.
We just want to go into thething, and you make it okay for
it to be iterative.
So anyway, I'm giving my pitchfor what I want you to do.

(57:50):
What, what are you?
What are you planning to donext with prototype thinking?

J Li (57:56):
so, um, we, I mean, we have a lot of things in the
works, right?
Um, yeah, we, I've been doing alot of thinking about what
innovation is going to look likein the next decade.
Yeah, and I agree with you, Ithink that there is.
I've seen this incredible riseof innovation at the individual

(58:17):
scale, right, and what I'vereally seen a rise of are people
who are advanced in theircareers looking to make a
categorical change, and I thinkthat the economy is just
changing so much right now thatno one has a sense of security
and, like often, we think well,you know, the economy is shaped
by the behaviors of largeorganizations.

(58:37):
So you know what are the bigcorporations doing, you know
what's happening at a governmentpolicy level, right, but in
some sense, the biggestcorporations are actually the
least secure about what's goingto happen because they're swept
up in it too, right?
So I think that the new economyis going to be built up of a
combination of top-down patternsand bottom-up patterns, right,

(58:59):
and we're seeing kind of thisausterity push from the top-down
, right, but what we're alsoseeing is this kind of
grassroots niching, individualnetworking, network building,
resourcing going up from thebottom up, which is like more
and more small businesses areforming more and more unique

(59:21):
connection niches, right, like,think about how often we're
talking about business nichingnow compared to five years ago.
Right Like now everyone'strying to niche.
Before you never heard aboutthat.
Right, you have a lot morevendors who are doing one very
specific thing, and this is kindof an analog to the mutual aid
model, right, where you havethese grassroots small
organizations that are allbecoming one step in a big human

(59:45):
ladder or a big human web ofthe kind of economic interaction
, right, and so either you'regoing to belong to one of these
like kind of austerity behemoths, or you're going to be in this
web or you're going to somethinginteresting is going to happen
when they meet right, so I'mreally fascinated about the
patterns that are emerging andhow to help people be successful

(01:00:08):
wherever they land.
Right, and especially, um, as somany people are currently being
laid off from the workforce,like what's, how do we help
ensure that everybody can stillmake a living?
Right, and you know, and theeconomy is is very not pretty
for a lot of people right now,and I think ultimately, like,

(01:00:33):
like you know, my inborn passionis business, right, and for me,
true business is humans workingtogether with other humans to
create mutual value for society,right Is that?
Handshake of magic on magic,where value is created for
everybody?
Right?
Handshake of magic on magicwhere value is created for
everybody, right Um.
And so I'm here to fight forthe success of positive,

(01:00:53):
positive impact business, rightUm.
And to make sure that you knowevery that people are still here
helping each other.

Tonya J. Long (01:01:05):
Wow, I want to be on that journey with you
because, let's do it yeah, thevision, the impact, the and the
heart that you truly haveforeseeing.
And I love what you just saidabout business.
Business is really just thathuman to human contact, moving

(01:01:26):
things forward.
You said it much more elegantly, but it really is, I think,
where we're all headed.
So it has been just a truehonor to have you visit with us
today, share your wisdom.
I can't wait to see what youproduce next.

(01:01:49):
That's, that's visible.
Yeah, I told you when I met youneed to write a book.

J Li (01:01:54):
Uh, and that's not everybody we're also working on
a book.
If, if people want to run someprototypes and be in our book.
Come join our list and you canuser test our book for us of, of
course, you're user testing abook.
Of course we have to user testa book.
We can't do it without testingit.

Yes, I'm just so impressed and grateful and the
nuggets that you've shared today.
I want to thank you.
It really is wisdom for theages and I want more people to
be able to hear what you'reoffering, because there's more
than a glimmer of hope in whatyou're describing Right, because

(01:02:37):
it is scary to look at a yearor two and anticipate what might
be happening, the directionthat we see coming.
But you're not scared at all.
You've been through.
You've been through some roughtimes.
You know you can reinventyourself.
I think, having others see howthat's done and have the

(01:03:00):
confidence that they can figureout their own path as well, with
some help, with some frameworks, with constructive guidance.
We're all going to need more ofthat and I'm just grateful that
you're here in the world tohelp.
You are here in the world tohelp do it.
So thank you.

J Li (01:03:19):
Thank you.
I mean, I think the differencethis time is that I'm scared for
other people, right?
So I want to level the skillsthat will help me be able to be
a better support for otherpeople, and I do think that
accessibility is going to be onemajor thread of the future

(01:03:42):
economy, right, and disabledpeople will be the first to say
that, like, accessibility is foreveryone, because, you know,
not everyone has a brain injuryor not everyone, you know, has
like, no legs, right, buteverybody has something,

(01:04:03):
actually has many things thatmake normal life not accessible
to them, or work not accessible,or not as accessible to them,
and by all of us looking atsomething and saying, how do we
value every human being able toaccess what they need, that will
also, in turn, help disabledpeople access the resources that
we need.
So, yeah, so would just say, beentitled to you know, access

(01:04:29):
what you want, right, like beentitled to ask for the adaption
of the accommodation that youneed and to, you know,
creatively look for it.

Beautiful and to recognize that other people will
benefit from that sameaccommodation.
Right, yeah, because spoken tome.
Yeah, because it's a skill.

J Li (01:04:47):
Yeah, it's a mindset skill .
Once you learn to do it right,then you automatically start
doing it for everyone around youright.
Like you know, there's nothinglike a disabled person who like
hanging out between somebody whohas misophonia and cannot
handle people eating around themand someone who has a blood
sugar issue and cannot livewithout eating and cannot handle
people eating around them andsomeone who has a blood sugar

(01:05:07):
issue and cannot live withouteating, and somehow the two of
them have to spend time together.
Right, there is some creativenegotiation there and that is
also business.

I want to thank you again and I can't wait to
bring you back, maybe after thebook launches.
I'm not sure what the timing is, but bring you back to talk
more about the book.
But thank you, and I can't waitto see how our audience takes
into consideration what you'vesaid and applies it, and let's

(01:05:36):
see what happens from it,organically.
Maybe we'll get some requeststo connect you in and make the
difference in that impact that Iknow that you're on a track to
accomplish.
So thank you.

J Li (01:05:49):
Thank you so much and thanks again for having me.

So, everyone, this is RESET with J Lee, where
purpose meets possibility and,as she has shown us, there is so
much room for possibility,let's all go out there and grab
it.
Thank you, have a wonderful day.
Thanks for joining us on Reset.

(01:06:15):
Remember, transformation is ajourney, not a destination.
So until next time, keepexploring what's possible.
I'm Tonya Long and this is home.
This is Reset.

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9 | From Adversity to Insights: J Li on Innovation

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Tonya J. Long

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