Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership
Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number one
forty six. So this is going to be a catch
up episode. If I sound a little bit hesitant, that's because it's been a heck
of a first quarter here, around the, the podcast
area. And so, we should probably do these, like, once a
quarter. Just catching up, answering some listener
questions, talking about some things that are going on behind the scenes of the podcast.
And, I've got a little special treat that I'll be talking about with you all
today as well. And, of course,
my good friend and partner in crime, Tom
Libby, is joining us today. How are you doing, Tom?
I'm doing well. You you cut me off in that last rant just before you
hit the the record button, but that's okay. We could go back to it
if you want. No. No. So we're gonna we're gonna go we're gonna go back
to the this is what we're gonna start. This is where we're gonna start. So
so let me let me set the table for people who are just tuning in.
If you are just tuning in and you are scoring at home, which
you should be, by the way, if you are scoring at home. I remember when
Dan Patrick used to say that back in the day.
If you go into Google, like, I I have my my
my curated discover on my Google tab. And the first thing that's at
the top of my discover tab is the headline from the New York Times. It
says, and I quote, AI hallucinations are getting
worse even as new systems become more powerful.
Alright, Tom. Go.
Well, as I was saying, a few minutes ago, I mean, this is not
surprising to me. Right? Like, we've been talking about this. I mean, you and I
probably spoke about this several times in the past six months when
people what was it? Probably a year ago or so where
the world first started kinda getting, AI
crazy. Right? Like like, AI has been around for a long time. This is not
anything new for us. We've seen No. We've seen versions of AI coming out
for, give or take, fifteen or twenty years. Right? Like,
we've seen some of this stuff coming out. But it's really hit the
the tip of the tongue of the public the last year or so. And Yes.
And and we're talking in the what some of the stuff that's what they're talking
about, hallucinations and this and that and the other thing. Right? So about a year
ago, we were talking about it, and we were we've said, it's only
going to get worse. And they believed us, and now they're seeing what they're
and and and here's why. And this is this was the this is the rant
I was on a few minutes ago. So people are using
AI to generate content. Great. I wanna create
a a a you know, what are the five best things about
marketing in 2025? And Sure. I put it in
the the AIs of the world. I'm not gonna name any
specific because I won't I won't, you know, I don't wanna say We don't wanna
be we don't wanna besmirch any comp...any competitors. Exactly.
Exactly. So we put it into the AI, and it spits out a blog.
We go and we read it, and we go, oh, that sounds great, and you
publish it. Mhmm. Now if we do
real due diligence and we fact check it and we do all this stuff and
we make alterations to it and we fix it, great. But I guarantee
you, a small percentage of people are actually doing that. Most people are
reading it real quick. They're perusing it, and they're going,
that's close enough, and they publish it. So the next time
somebody puts in the the bet so let's say we do that
in February. And now in May, another person says, give
me the five best marketing ideas of 2025.
That AI generated gobbledygook that's a bunch
of BS is now part of the web
scrape that the AI is doing for the for the content. So it's
going to read stuff that wasn't validated, which means it's just gonna
produce more crap. Excuse the language, but it it
and and it's gonna continue on that. It's gonna compound on itself. We all we
all talked when we were little kids, we we learned about compound interest. Right? We
did. This Oh, yeah. This is the same thing with with compound crap on
the on the output of the AI on
the AI infrastructure. And by the way, the idea behind having
more powerful system just means we get more powerful
crap. But we we get more crap delivered to us out of the fire hose
faster and better. There's a guy there's a guy who who works in the,
place where I work at now, the the desk literally
behind me. And he has a side that says caffeine,
doing stupid, pardon my use of the term, but doing stupid "shit" faster.
Exactly. Like the lady holding the cup of coffee or whatever. That's what you're talking
about, though. Like like Exactly. Okay. Okay. So
how was it that you and I, who are two sane
thinking individuals? I mean, we may not
agree on everything, but we're sane thinking individuals. Right?
How is it that you and I managed to figure this out and yet
yet Sam Altman, it still gets billions of
dollars? This is the question. If we're so smart,
why aren't we richer? I think part I think
part of the problem is, think about this for a second, Hayson. We both
work we both work and help we we we help the startup ecosystem in a
in a sense. Right? We we have we have a whole startup ecosystem. And
what are we always telling people? That their startup has to you
have to solve a problem or you don't go anywhere. Right? Correct. That's right. The
Sam Altman's of the world think about it. The the the solution
to the to to what he's giving people is ease of
use, speed of use, and
the the and and without the like, there's no complexity to it. It's so
simple in it in his theory, and he says, just put in a prompt.
It spits out the information. If you like it, it's yours.
Like so there's no thinking involved. That's
why he's rich and we're not because we use our brains, and we're trying to
get people to think these things through. And, like So so
what you're saying is we're too smart to be rich.
Oh, maybe the word smart is a tough one to solve. It's
it's we're too complicated. I think it's it's like
we we we complicate as as much
as we try to simplify our own way of thinking and our own thought process,
and then you and I talk a lot about a lot of different things. But
it's Oh, yeah. But it's it's he
totally simplified the output of content. If that
like, if you think about that from that statement, like Well, I will yeah. But
he never end he never he never suggested
or or projected or
or gave people the false sense of security of thinking that
what the AI is producing is really
good or really, like,
like, there's no he tells people right up front, you have to fact check this
stuff that AIs hallucinate, but yet we're not. We're just
throwing crap at the wind and seeing what sticks. So I think you're I think
you're onto something here on a semi serious note. I think you're onto
something here because a few years ago, maybe about
four or five years ago coming out of COVID,
it occurred to me like a lightning bolt out of the sky
or like a phoenix rising out of Arizona that
I that I had overcomplicated my business
Yeah. And that everything could be simple.
And I thought, because this is how my brain works, the
complication part, I went, okay. I'm overcomplicating
my business. I immediately, in my brain, leapfrogged all these other people that were
overcomplicating their businesses, all these other businesses that overseeing.
And I started thinking, how many businesses are just built on
simple, to your point, simple concepts? And
the simpler the concept, I think this is a business
idea that folks should take from from listening to this. The simpler the business
idea, actually, the more money it will generate. And
when I had that epiphany,
I immediately went back to my complicated business.
But, like, but, like, it it's it's true. Like, you're right. Like, I think there's
a nugget of a semi series. I think there's a nugget I mean, nugget. I
think there's there's that's an element of truth. And and you're the guy on the
project that we're involved in. You're the guy who
is always, like, how can we simplify this? How can we simplify this? How can
we simplify this? How can we scrape more garbage away from
this to get to its genuine essence? And I will say, I
mean, you're right. Like, I see this in and and I'm gonna mention this
early because it's once a podcast I have to mention it. I see this in
jujitsu. Like, it's it it it looks so simple.
And then I complicate it, the move, whatever the thing is that I'm supposed to
do. And I know that at a certain point in time down the road, it
will be simplified, but it's not simple to me now. It doesn't look simple to
me now. And I think a lot of amateur
athletes, amateur business people, and now AI,
amateurs with AI, don't understand that that
simplicity concept. But But that goes back to what Einstein said, which is if you
could explain relatively and I'm paraphrasing here. I'm sure he never said this. But if
you could explain relatively to a five year old, then you understand
it. Yeah. Because it has to be simple. Oh, and we
recently had one of our, one of our
joint colleagues, and we we told her that she
should simplify simplify her pitch deck so that a three year
old could understand it, and she had no idea how to do
that. Right. She's like, what does that mean? How do I do that? And
I was like, okay. So, okay, just take a step back. Take a step back.
Take a layer off. Take a layer off. What is it at the core? What
is that at the foundation? Like, tell and we went through this whole process with
her. And, eventually, she was like, oh, so if I say it this way, and
we're like, yes. Say it that way. Because it
it's just you know? And and again, it I'm I'm
I'm speaking in riddle here just because it's Mhmm. Yeah. What the content is.
But but it it applies to pretty much everything. And in your and in your
case, with me, and I do it with everything. It's not
even just like theories or ideas or thought. I mean,
somebody sent me god bless him. But another one of our colleagues
sent me a new book that he wrote, and he's like, what do you think
of this? And I read it, and I was I I started reading, and I
I read I got through two chapters, and I stopped. And I and I scheduled
a a call with him, and I go, you you need to stop with the
words. What are you doing? Like, why like so I pointed out
particular words in here in there, and I go, who are you trying to send
this to? Like, college professors? Like, who's reading? Because if I'm reading
this, I don't want any of these words in here. And he goes he goes,
well, you understand what those words mean. I go, yeah. But they're SAT words. Like,
you're throwing those words in there just to make sure that people know you're smart.
Who cares? The the smartest people on the planet know how to say what they
need to say at a fifth grade reading level. Like, that's
like, the the even, like, the best authors in the world, the Stephen Kings of
the world. Like, the these guys write at a level where the
masses can understand it, not a handful of people. I will
I will tell you. So I picked up, I've had I've had this
book for a while, but I finally pulled it off my bookshelf because I
have so in case you folks don't know, I have bookshelves at my home.
You probably imagine. I have a lot of them. A lot of books all over
my house. It's not a goodwill hunting piles on top of piles of
books kinda situation yet, but I have lived in
something similar to that. I wasn't quite there, but I I could see they're coming.
I could see the exit coming up on the highway. Anyway, so I under Good
Will Hunting, absolutely. Man after my own
heart. And I have books on those shelves that I have
never read. I never cracked the cover of them. I just get them. I'm like,
oh, I know this author. Oh, I know this title. Oh, this is something that
might be interesting. I put it on the shelf, and I'll revisit it later. Okay.
Cool. But I did pick up recently
well, not recently, but I opened up, the book, A Song of
Significance by Seth Godin, which was not his
latest book, but his book before this one, whatever. Because the man's
publishing he publishes books like it's a bodily function.
And, he does. He would he would admit that. And,
after swearing that he was never gonna publish a book again, I heard him talk
about this on a podcast years ago. And he's like, oh, I don't have any
more books to publish because all publishing is dead, and nobody reads anything and
and then he sees published three more books since then. I'm like, shut up, Seth.
It's in the blood. But I picked up the book. And
the interesting thing about the book is the cover is complicated
and it's a put off. And then
you open but you open up the book itself, and the content inside is simple.
And I'm interested in his books, not necessarily for
the content because I I got the joke. He's been saying basically the
same exact things in marketing and in leadership and in
people being good human beings. And and you probably know some of Seth
Godin's work, Tom, from the space that you're in. But
the man's been blogging for, jeez, thirty
years, forty years on the Internet. He's an
institution by this point. So he understands I've got the joke, basically, is
what I'm saying. I've got the joke
and understand, what he's talking about, complicated,
but the word's simple. And that goes to your point about about authorship, and I'll
talk a little bit about a book that I've got upcoming. I go in the
opposite direction. I make I try to make the cover as
appealing as possible and as simplistic as possible. And
then one of the greatest compliments I ever got on a book I published years
ago was the guy started reading it, and he stopped. He
said, I have tried to read this book five times,
and I cannot finish it. And you know how thick the book is? It's only,
like, 90 pages.
And I was like, it's it's okay. That means that on the sixth
time, you'll finish it. And then, by the way, there's some movies like this. You're
a movie guy. So A Clockwork Orange is like
this. Oh my God. Like, I've watched that I watched that movie literally 10
times before I,
before I worked in an independent theater way back in my twenties when I was
a film projectionist when they still had people manually
create the films. And it wasn't just, like, plug it into a projector and then
go, like, your DVD player at home. And, we got an
original silver nitride version of
A Clockwork Orange. And here's what people don't know if they never did film projection.
So back in the day, when people would build films, films would come in
canisters. Like, Lord of the Rings came in, like, 13 canisters. It was
gigantic. It was stupid. And they had security and all this other kind of stuff.
Right? Because they're delivering film. If anybody rips it off, then it's a problem. Okay.
Well, old school films all come in these gigantic canisters. And
so Clockwork Orange, I think, comes in at a little
under two hours. I think it's somewhere around there, which is about, six
to eight reels of film, which means it's gonna come in, like, two cans, two
of the old school metal cans. Right? And so the
job of the film projector projectionist is to put
together the film and to cut it and make sure everything links together.
Martin Scorsese once said that, the film projectionist is the final
editor, has final edit over his film every single time. It drove him
crazy. That's why that's why Scorsese and
Coppola and Lucas and Spielberg, all those guys,
they all love to digital, and they all push for digital. Well, not Scorsese. Scorsese
likes film preservation. But they all push for digital because they didn't want that final
edit from guys like me. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. No. No. I said they they
pushed it. They wanted it quickly. Just Oh, yeah. They wanted it real quickly. Yeah.
Especially Lucas. Lucas was pissed at guys like me. He hated us.
He hated all all projectionists everywhere. He said you're ruining my vision.
Lucas, palm your cheese.
Chill out. Telling a space opera story for god's
sakes. Yeah. Yeah. You're the Jack Sparrow Lucas. Story
that was sold for $4,000,000,000. That you sold it for yeah. And then Disney
ruined it. Don't get me started. Anyway Yeah. So okay.
So I'm there. Right? I
put together the film. It's Stanley Kubrick. I know it's A
Clockwork Orange. I've seen it five times on TCM. I can never get through it.
I have to watch the whole movie to make sure I didn't screw up the
final edit. Right? So I put the movie on. I go in a theater.
I sit down. I watch all of A Clockwork Orange. And on that
sixth viewing, I finally got it. I was like, got it. I
got Rick's joke. Finally. And after that, I
have never watched that movie ever again, and I
never will.
And my books are kind of like that. I'm the Stanley Kubrick of book
writing. Like, if you look at any of Kubrick's films, Paths of Glory,
Doctor Strangelove, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which by the
way is my favorite film of his Eyes Wide Shut,
Full Metal Jacket, which is, like, parts of full metal
jacket that everybody remember are Lee Ermey yelling at everybody, the drill
sergeant yelling at everybody, and then the movie falls apart after that. Like, all
the Vietnam parts are, like, shot on a back lot in, like, England somewhere
because he didn't wanna leave his house. You know? You know?
I even watched a biography about Kubrick on Amazon Prime
recently. This is why I have it in my head. And I still don't know
what the hell the man was doing. I still have no clue what the hell
he was doing with him. And, apparently, nobody else does either
as a director. So, anyway, I'm more in that direction. And the
reason why I'm bringing all this up is because you're right. If you could explain
something simply, you will sell
billions of copies. If your business is simple, you will make billions
of dollars. If you were Sam Altman and you were doing simple AI, you will
make billions. But if
you're more complicated and you wanna thrust your complication upon people, you
will not make billions. You will be lucky to make hundreds of thousands. That's the
only lesson that I can think of out of that entire land. You'll be you'll
be Jesan and I. And I'll be Jesan. Yeah. Exactly. It'll be a hundred thousandaire.
Slumdog Hundred Thousandaire.
Anyway, speaking of speaking of that, so
we've got, a couple of different things that we're gonna do here today. That'll be
started with the AI thing. We're gonna transition
into this little gem of an
adventure. So speaking of starting a business, I
had a podcast media agency recently that I
started. So to to rewind this, sort of lay the foundation because Tom
doesn't even know the story. So back in
July of last year, June of last year, I started
talking to the owner of a local coworking space in the town that I live
in, because I was recognizing that podcasts were coming
along. People wanted to do podcasts. People wanted
to experience podcasts, and that I thought podcasts could be a
part of a local community. In particular,
moving away from sort of a Joe Rogan big idea
podcast and moving more into local podcasts that
serve a local market with local people doing interesting local things. Sort of
like a re a regeneration of local media that
has, that has been hollowed out just
like local newspapers. Right? Now Tom lives
in the Northeast, in a large city in the Northeast, large metro
area of the Northeast, so he probably doesn't notice this as much. But I live
in a rural area in the, in the Southwest,
and, you know, if it ain't if it ain't breaking on Facebook, people ain't
people don't know anything about it. You know? That has, like, substituted for all that.
And I'm sure this is happening other places. I'm sure it's not just my my
spot. Or I'm not ego driven enough to think that it's just my spot.
Anyway, so I looked at this and I said, there's a market. We
could do podcasts. And because podcasting was the hammer, there was
a nail, hammer meet nail, boom. And so I met this
guy, started working with him. We started doing we did a couple of work I
did a couple of workshops to convince the local people that, you know,
podcasting was something that you wanted to do. Got a lot of interest out of
those workshops. Made a little money off the workshops. Sort of a proof of concept.
Right? It was a proof of concept tool. That was in July, August,
September, and then we launched the
well, not we launched. We we began the process of building a podcast
studio, and that took us from, like, September to January because they had to put
together the studio. There's a lot of complications involved with that. Whatever.
January, we go out and get our first clients based on our podcast
workshop, start pitching it to the local
community. Bunch of people signed up, at max
because, you know, this is not a thing that you do at scale. I
figured I could probably handle 10 podcasts. Right?
And by the way, from soup to nuts. So doing everything from the editing
to the, the video editing, audio editing, distribution,
setting things up, setting accounts up, doing all the things that people don't wanna do,
making it turnkey for the creator to just come in, sit
down, do their thing, and then leave. Right?
And started in January. January '1 is when we start well, January 6 was
when we started and shut that business down two weeks ago
as of April yeah. April 20
no. March March thirtieth. March thirtieth. April first was our last
our last client day,
basically, or less day of client work. So March 29, March thirtieth, March
'30 first was done. I have
never started a business, opened a business, and closed a business that
fast. And there are some lessons
that I can I think I can impart on this show,
particularly for leaders? And I I don't know if any of this will resonate with
Tom. But one of the biggest lessons I learned is this one.
Just because it's an idea in your head doesn't mean that it needs to be
a business. Yeah. For
sure. That was probably
the hardest one because the way I wired,
I would just keep going. I would just keep I think I I'm like, I
can make this better. It's fine. Like, I'll just dig in. I'll put in
personal will. I'll sacrifice
time with family, other businesses. I'll do all of that
to make this work because, well, it's a good idea. Of course, it should
work. And I realized I had a sort of a again, another
flash. I'm getting life lessons all over the place this year,
actually. But yeah. But I had another flash.
And the flash was that's just ego.
And how many of us are running businesses that don't need to
be run for a population or a market
that doesn't need our product or service and wasn't crying out for it just
based on ego? And I don't think that's a minority
report thought. No. I agree.
So that was the first big lesson. The second big lesson was that
just because you're good at something for what you do,
like, I'm really good at what I do for this podcast. And I thought, well,
I could take what I do good that's what I do good with this
podcast and scale it up to other people. Right? Because other people need it. But
just because you do something good doesn't mean that other people need to take
advantage of you doing that thing good. Oh, well, in in the
same sense, like, just because you do something well for yourself does not mean that
you can replicate it and do things well for somebody else. Bingo. I I
like one of the things that started bugging me in, like, February and and early
March before I finally decide to pull the trigger was thinking about Joe
Rogan. Like, thinking about how successful Joe Rogan has been with podcasting.
Right? Yeah. And yet he doesn't produce anybody else's show.
He's like, y'all go off. Good luck to you. Like, you figure it out.
But his secrets, his tips, his tricks, how he's doing, what he's doing,
all of that, he's not sharing that with anybody. And he's got a
crew of, like, four, four, five people. He's doing that well himself, and he's
done. And he's like, I keep it small.
And I think that's I think that's lesson number two. Keep it
small. He kept it simple. I knew you
would love that. It's like, why
overcomplicate this by making it a big production company. Right? Like, it's
Right. And he's making millions off of the podcast even. Like, he
like, it's so, yeah, I I I I like
again, it's it's a good lesson to learn. And then
the third lesson I think I learned, because it always comes in threes with me.
The third lesson I learned is, and you'll appreciate this because
Tom just had a birthday. Tom went to, went to a
foreign location, and, ate
fermented shark. And, he did not drink vodka out of
an igloo, although we did encourage I did encourage him to do so.
Because I hear at that location, the vodka is pretty good.
And I know he's not a drinking man, but, really, like, sometimes you just gotta,
like, take a sip of something just, like, have the experience and say, yeah, the
experience. We call it in our house a "no thank you" bite. You take the
bite. You go, no. Thank you. I've I've now tried it.
That's just being polite. You don't wanna offend an entire country. We're doing enough of
that later on. We're doing enough of that right now. We don't need to we
don't need Tom to be doubling down. But,
I'm with you on this too. We don't need you don't need Ukrainian international
incident. But he he did eat fermented
shark. So if you know where fermented shark comes
from. But, the third lesson that I learned
was that
I'm too old to put up with nonsense.
I finally and and I don't have to be
so I thought I
ten years ago. I did. I thought I was too old to The thing
is, I realized I don't have to be loud about not wanting to put up
with nonsense. Yeah. I just have to say very quietly
and respectfully to everybody, it's not you, it's me.
It really is me. It's really not you. You're fine. You're doing what
you need to do as a client or as a partner
or as a sponsor or as a vendor or whatever. That's fine.
You're doing you. I don't have to own your business. I don't have to run
your business. I don't have to do any of that. But it's me. It's
me. I don't wanna put up with this nonsense, and I don't have
to. Even if it like, there's there was a potential
inside of that idea for at least a half million bucks,
which is not life changing money for a person like myself.
But if I put it into a, you know, interest bearing
account, that might be life changing money for, like, one of my kids. You
know? And so the stage of life I'm at,
the level of, for lack of a better term, material comfort that
I have, the level of confidence that I've got,
I was like, I don't I don't need this this kind of stuff when I
go home to, like, my homestead, and I'm like, I wanna punch a cow.
Like, I shouldn't have to I shouldn't have to thanks. You know, I shouldn't have
to have that desire. You know? And a cow can handle it. I mean, it's
2,500 pound animal. It's fine. But
all it'll do is try to kick me, and then, like, we're gonna have a
whole thing. Yeah. We we
are the mosquito in that in that equation. We are the mosquito in that equation.
We're the small thing. Yeah. Small, annoying thing.
I have a brother I have a brother that, that was, he
lives in the in Missouri. Mhmm. And,
he was telling me that he worked on a cattle ranch, and he was
trying to get the cow ready to do something that the cow just did not
want to do and ended up getting he ended up getting kicked. And
he was, like, out of work for, like, a week and a half. We are
the mosquito in that that circumstance. I always tell
my daughter who loves horses. She's a horse person, my youngest daughter. I always
tell her I've been telling these kids this for years. You don't wanna be caught
on the north the southbound end of a northbound cow. Like, you just don't.
You don't wanna be down there. So, especially not to get kicked because that's where
they kick you from. Like, they don't kick you from the side. You know? So,
but those are the three big lessons. Right? I don't have to put it with
nonsense. Just because I do something well for myself
doesn't mean I have to do it well for others. And every idea should
not necessarily go to scale and be a a business.
And I learned how to check my ego in the last, like, three months.
And that's like I'm a bit a major business turning point. So I
don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any any Oh, I think
I think it's interesting because, you know and I've known you for
a little while now, and, like, we're you know, if we had this
conversation two years ago, I might have a different perspective. But
Yeah. You know, knowing you for a while now, I
think it's interesting the way that you were, you know, checking your ego because I
feel like when you interact I'm just talking about you
personally, not necessarily, you know, the the podcast per se or this
particular venture that you're talking about. Sure. But but when you
interact with people,
it's not it it's very rarely egotistical, and I mean very rarely.
So when when you say that, I'm thinking you're talking about within.
Meaning, like, you can check your ego from within, not necessarily with
with your interactions with people. And that is a different ball of
wax. Being able to check your ego from within and and,
like, check yourself and be able to
know, understand know, observe, recognize and
understand that you that your ego needs to be checked is damn near
impossible. So the fact that you figured that out is pretty
good. It's pretty good. You know, it's it's it's
it's it's
so there's a great moment in the Old Testament when the prophet Elijah, who
literally is a man from nowhere. Like, he comes out of nowhere. How he's introduced
to first Kings is amazing. Just he just shows up at, like, Ahab,
king Ahab's, palace, and he says, listen.
The Lord God's gonna shut up the sky and not give you rain for three
years. You're gonna have famine because you're basically worshiping idols ridiculously.
And then he just walks out the court.
It's like the most it's the most sort of thug move
ever. Sort of like a prophet in the Old Testament. No. No. No. No. It's
not the it's like the it's like the the first thug move. Like It is
the first thug move. Like the OG thug. The OG thug move.
It was. And, actually, Elijah would probably appreciate that. And then, of
course, at the end of Elijah's story, God just takes him up in the
sky in a chariot. Like, Elisha's just standing there and he just goes up in
the sky in a chariot because God's like, "I can't even with this guy." I
just gotta go grab him. Thank you. It's
amazing. Gabriel, put down that horn. I'm gonna call him myself. Okay.
Go get it.
That's right. I gotta go I gotta go snatch that Negro.
I can't let anybody else take take on this one. Sometimes you gotta go take
it and stuff personally. Like I said, that man arrives. Yeah.
Oh my gosh. Anyway, so after Elijah,
puts on a show basically for the people of Israel,
and he has a fight not a fight, but he has a showdown of the
Pepsi challenge of prophecy in the old testament with the prophets of
Baal. And he, like, oh, and he's talking smack. If you ever have an opportunity,
it's in first Kings. Just read it just for the narrative structure of the
story. It is so good. Like, you read the story to, like, middle schoolers,
and they're, like, particularly middle school boys.
They go, that's the coolest story in the freaking Bible. Why don't we
ever hear about this? I'm like, well, because they don't want you
calling down fire from heaven. Like, chill out. You're 10.
But, but he does that. Elijah winds up in
a cave because he's running away scared from Jezebel, proving that
even a prophet out of a man out of nowhere could be afraid of a
woman. One could still still put fear into a man.
Anyway, but, there's like a
there's like a wind, but god was not in the wind. I love this quote.
God was not in the wind, and there was a fire outside. God was not
in the fire. There was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. And
then Elijah went out, he wraps himself in this cloth. And,
it says in, it says in first Kings that
Elijah paused, and he heard a still small voice.
And, basically, the still false voice is, Elijah, what are you doing?
Like, what what are we doing here? Like, stop
feeling sorry for yourself. Stop
hiding in the cave. Yes. I understand that you think you're
the only one in Israel that worships god, basically. And everybody
else is in idolatry and is terrible. And go get a disciple
already. There's a there's a guy named Elisha. Go go bother
him. You need you need a friend. I like him who
needs a friend. Use the buddy system. Use the buddy system.
That's right. And I don't I don't wanna minimize the story because it's a very
powerful story. And at the same time, that's for me
what an ego check sounds. It's a still small voice. That's why I said all
that. It's a still small voice inside of myself. I think
other leaders if there were any tip that I could
give, there would be a practical tip out of this entire sort sort of nonsense
that I've given about the media agency and all this stuff, this
no. Not stuff. But all this story that I've related is you have to find
that still small voice. Because if you don't,
you you and then you have to listen to it. That's the other piece. But
first, you gotta find it. And moving away all the
noise and stuff that's inside your own head and inside your
own heart and that's outside for even just the outside noise. It's
just it's just really hard. And so if you
could do it, you'll hear that voice, and then you'll be able to check your
own ego and check yourself. Here's the thing, though, Jesan. Everything you
just said, like, if you think about it, like, you should be doing if
you if you are part of the small business world and you are or an
entrepreneur and you're you're trying to get something started or whatnot,
all of what you just said applies. Right? Like, you have to you have
to clear away all the clutter, select
select what you are going to be
leveraging as your North Star, and you
go forward toward that North Star, and you keep all the clutter out of
the way. Right? Like, so so to your point, that inner
voice is your North Star in your company's growth
pattern. Mhmm. And you you point and go. And if something
deviates you from that from that direction, then you don't do it.
Like, we we've talked about this too in in a couple of the,
in a couple of the ventures that we've got going on, which is,
like, we've got all these people throwing tasks at
us. Do this. Do that. What about this? What about that? And we never
stop well, we we do now. But we didn't stop and think,
like, oh, that's a good or or sorry. We kept oh, that's a good idea.
Oh, let's try that. Let's try that. Let's try it. What what do we think?
We never stopped and said,
does it satisfy our North Star? Like, is it does it keep us
moving in the direction that we're supposed to be moving? Because if not, then we're
gonna skip that for now. We can come back to it later if it if
it if the idea or go simmer on the
idea. Fix it. Like, so to your point, now you might have gone
through all of that whole process in your head without realizing it coming to the
understanding that you need to shut it down because maybe there was no
North Star. Maybe there was no may maybe there was no there there was
no, you know and I understand what you're saying. Like,
maybe something you do well for yourself, you can't do for other people
or shouldn't do for other people. But, again, that means it has no direction, has
no North Star. Right? Like, there's, like, it's the same like, we're saying the same
thing, but we're coming at it from a different angle. Well, and how many how
many people how many businesses do you think
just operate on, for lack of a better term,
directionless money, directionless revenue.
Like, they've lost their North Star, but they still get so
much revenue from when they last had their North Star
that they're just running on that inertia of directionless
revenue. And I I I I mean, obviously, you could think of big
organizations that do this, but I'm thinking of, like,
small from maybe your your
family size to, like, a mid level size company in that
range. Right? Because those are the kinds of people listed as podcast. How many of
them like, I was talking to a guy, the other
day who whose company is a second generation
robotics company, and the tariffs are
crushing them right now Oh, yeah. Because they didn't they didn't but
they all but but but but they all voted for Donald Trump. So they're all,
like, on board, at least everybody in the company. And I'm it's not about voting,
by the way. They're all on board with, yeah, we're gonna have to go through
some pain. And that, by the way, case come from leadership. Right? But I
wonder where the minority report, to use that term again underneath,
is does your company really still need to exist? Like,
yes. I get second generation company, but have you made so much
revenue that you've lost your North Star? I wonder that. I don't know what the
answer to that is. I never I didn't ask that person that question because it
wasn't appropriate for the for the the thing that we were doing, but it
is something that occurred to me. But you can definitely see that in companies that
have recurring revenue models. Right? Like, some some sort of, like, monthly
subscription or annual subscription or what like, any kind of
thing like that. I think that happens a lot more frequently than people
think it does. The company's just lost its way, but it's got, you know, it's
got 15,000 customers spending a hundred bucks a
month. Let it ride out. Why not? You're
not you're not you you're just gonna keep pocketing profit. Why not? Like
but but does the company actually
still solve problems? Does it is it is it going to is it
gonna create generational wealth? Is it gonna, like Right. There's a lot of other things.
Now if if that's not important to you and you're just gonna run it into
the ground, then god bless you and keep going. You know, do what you gotta
do. But, but I no. But I to your point, though,
I and and by the way, I'm not suggesting that the North
Star can't change. That's Right. Yeah. That's what we
call a pivot. You can pivot. Like,
sure. But if your pivot is to nowhere,
that's not a pivot. That's giving up. Right? Like, that's just saying I'm gonna let
it ride, and I'm just gonna take all the money I can out of it.
Maybe you have some IP that you can sell at the end of the day
or whatever. I don't know. But I'm just saying, like but if you don't
have some sort of driving factor, some sort of North Star,
some sort of way to, you know, mechanism to make sure that you're on the
right path with whatever goals are or that you're
trying to accomplish, then what's the point? Like, what is the
point? Like, like, and to your point, when do you decide to wrap it
up and close it up and whatever? I mean, to me, that's it. Like,
now now your wrap up could could be, as we just said a
second ago, just letting it ride out. And as customers fall
off, they just fall off and you just walk away and you walk into the
sunset with whatever money you ended up making. Yeah. You don't that doesn't
necessarily mean that you have to literally quote, like, the way you did the the
media agent, the podcast media agency where you literally closed up shops,
stopped taking customer. Like, you're done. Bam. All done. Nothing else. Like, you
know, there are ways there there are come a lot of companies out there that
don't have to do that. They just let their come their let their, you know,
their customer base ride it out. Now
I'm not a big fan of that, but that's just me. Well and
and when you let your when you let it you talk about the so I
like that you mentioned the recurring model or the subscription model because that's the place
where it's the most notorious Yes. Particularly in
large media companies that are built on subscription models. And I'm gonna
say too that everyone will know, Hulu and
Netflix. Like, you could see this in both of them. Like, the level,
like, the level of content.
Well, this ties back into the AI thing. The level of content slop that's on
that platform that didn't used to be there when they were mailing out DVDs
Right. Is is kind of astonishing now. Like, I I I mean,
I pay for Netflix. I
can't think of the last time I actually sat and watched an
original Netflix anything that was good.
Mhmm. And that's because they're letting the
model just run. Did you see And by the
way, they've got enough they've got enough money to for run it for another twenty
years. I'm I'm not knocking that. They got enough money for twenty years. So maybe
they'll find a North Star in the next twenty years. I don't know.
Did you see so speak Netflix and and to your point, the the
last Netflix original movie that is currently in the top 10
is a new movie with Tom Hardy called Havoc. And I
read a couple heard of this. Yeah. I've read a couple of blog posts about
it, and then I was talking to my wife. I was like, oh, we should
we're both Tom Hardy fans, so whatever. Like, we're like, alright. We should watch this.
It was Netflix produced, and I
said I leaned over I I looked over my wife at one point about halfway
through the movie. I go, this looks like a live action version of Sin City.
Do you remember the the like, the Yes. I I couldn't
think of an a better way to explain it, and it was just not good.
I don't understand. Like and here's the worst part. Here's the worst
part. And I don't know if it's because we're just you know, we're we're
we're a we're a solid fan base for Tom Hardy. Right?
Like, I I like I like a lot of his characters. I like what he
does in movies. He's really good in Mobland. I don't know if you're watching the
show the series show right now on on Showtime. I saw I saw an ad
for it on Paramount plus or wherever, and I was like, oh, what's that? You
know? So He's good at he's good at Mobland. My daughter my daughter and wife
loved him in Peaky Blinders. Like, he's a good actor. Right? So I don't know
because I just like him. I thought his character in the
movie was good. The movie around him was
bad. Was bad. Yeah. You know? And, like Yeah. And they I think they
tried to get a little star power in there too because they had Timothy Olyphant
in there, which, again, usually No. He's usually pretty good. I I think
Timothy Timothy Olyphant's a pretty good actor.
But the movie itself, what were they thinking,
man? I was like I was like, what are they doing? So there's a there's
a phraseology that I'm gonna dump into your brain that you will that
will that will identify what you just saw there with Tom Hardy. And by the
way, I'm a fan of Tom Hardy only in that he does jiu jitsu. He's
a blue belt in jiu jitsu. Yeah. And he, he's might he might be a
purple belt by this point. And, he was once interviewed about doing jiu jitsu, and
he said that his favorite part of it was, that he got to crush people.
And I was like, oh, okay. I see what kind of game you play. You
play a pressure pass game. Got it. Got it.
I do not play that game. I don't I don't play that game, but I
understand. I understand you played that game. Alright. Anyway,
but, he, he the the phrase
that's used typically when an actor is better than the material
around him from the directing to the sets to the whatever
is he elevated the material. Right?
Now we typically think of elevated as in he brought everybody else up with him,
but increasingly not increasingly. For probably the last twenty five years in
Hollywood, it's been it's with increasing
frequency, you get these actors that come
in, and they are like mercenaries. And and Hardy's
definitely one of those guys. Colin Farrell probably
started this. One. Yeah. Yeah. Started this path really,
about twenty years ago now with his career, where he just comes
in and he just chews scenery, and he just eats up everything. It
eats up everybody, and everybody collapses, You know, it's it's not
meeting his level, and he's okay with that. And Tom Hardy just
just go through it, like, hot like, pooped through a goose, and I did my
job to the highest freaking possible level, and all of you are being players. And
now everybody can see it. And I don't know what you do with that, by
the way, as a film editor and as a director. When you're in
the, when you're in the room looking at the rushes and the dailies
and you recognize that, like, oh my god. He's elevating the material, and
everybody else is, like, just standing around. They're like five year
olds. Yeah. Like, but how do you not recognize that as a director? Right? Like,
you're looking at this from, like, the, like, from the lens of how do I
make this movie better as we go? How do I how do I direct people
to be better? But that's your job. You're the person who directs people to be
better. So I think it's hard in a creative so we saw
the I saw this in my media agency. This is sort of the one of
the sub lessons. Right? Because and I'll
frame it out this way. The person who gave me the space in the studio
was like a producer. He was a sort of a producer role. Right?
Then we had the creative talent that was coming along
and hosting the podcast or writing it or whatever. So that's your that's
your actors and your writers. Right? What's my role? Well, my
role is to direct. And so I'm thinking of one particular client
where
I had to be very careful how I talk to them
because they're creatives. And so
the way you talk to a creative person who is
not engaging
seriously with the content is
different than the way that you talk to a creative
who is engaging seriously with the content. Particularly if the
one who is not engaging seriously with the content is considered to be the linchpin
of the entire project. Yeah.
For whatever reason. Maybe they bring a certain charisma
or they have an ego or whatever. Right? Or maybe
they're bringing money. I don't know. But they're not elevating
even though they have status. Meanwhile, you got this person over there
who you can sort of jerk their chain a little bit, and you do,
and they elevate. And now you've got a weird dynamic in the creative
process that directors struggle with. And I think there's and so I had a
mini version of that, a very, very tiny version of that, very small.
Right? But you see it, I think, at much
larger versions in its scale in, in Hollywood
productions. And I think these young directors if you're a director
who's under the age of, like,
65, you probably have
never really not even younger than that. Let's say
55. If you're under the age of 55 in Hollywood, you've
never really had to deal with, like,
a Gene Hackman or Clint Eastwood type. Those guys are
long gone. Even even someone like, a
Lily Tomlin, right, or a, Gilda
Radner, right, who would elevate material,
or a Glenn Close or a Meryl Streep. Okay?
Blake Lively is not Meryl Streep. Yeah. She
thinks she is. I shouldn't I shouldn't laugh. No. Go ahead. Laugh. It's fine. Like,
her and her husband are getting exposed right now because of their nonsense. Because they
finally ran across a director that was like, oh, really?
I have Instagram too.
Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Like, you wanna you wanna go
I was thinking of the movie Tombstone. You go ahead. You pull that smoke wagon.
You go right ahead. You pull that and you watch what happens. And she did.
She went ahead and she pulled that smoke wagon. And she's gonna get some. She
found her Huckleberry. And, you know, someone is like, oh, yeah. That's just my game.
I got the receipts. What do you wanna do? And this is the
dynamic, I think, in the Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and
whatever that director's name is, triangle of nonsense
in lawsuits that you're seeing the inability of a
director to wrangle someone who has the ego but doesn't
have the chops. Yeah. And he saw the gap between the
ego and the chops, and I bet he tried to control
yelled at her on day one. But then, like, Ryan Reynolds is standing back there.
And, you know, you gotta deal with that guy, which, by the way, there's an
easy simple way to deal with that guy, but I'll just leave that aside for
just a minute. You know, you gotta be the director who's
like, no. No one comes on my set unless they're actually on the movie.
Right. Oh, your name is Ryan Reynolds? I don't care. This is not your movie.
Go do another Deadpool four. Leave me alone. Go hang out
with Hugh Jackman or whatever it is you do. Like,
go away. But you don't have that kind of dynamic, I think, in young directors.
I think that's one aspect of it. Yeah. But so in Havoc,
you get a director who's just sort of letting Tom Hardy just eats eats scenery,
and Tom will will he'll accommodate. If he's a
Brazilian jiu jitsu guy, I know how his brain works. He'll accommodate
you. But, you know, it's funny
too because, like, I was even saying to my wife, I was like, not not
only that, like, I I like his American accent. Like, I think he's good.
I I I think, you know, he's got that, but he he's got a charisma
to him that I just think is is missing in a lot of people in
the in the the diver the diversity of his of his craft.
Right? So, like, he's it's not like he's like, he did a movie like
Venom, and he didn't get typecast like everybody else did when they
did those MCU movies. Right? Like, everybody else Right. Kinda like Yeah.
You know, they got stuck in or whatever. Or, like,
like, the Jason Statham's of the world. Right? That just kinda, like, he's your action
guy, and Tom Hardy ended up doing some action stuff. So now he's your action
guy. And he was like, oh, hell no. I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna
do another TV series. And I'm gonna do a small screen, and I'm
gonna show you that I'm not just an act just an action guy, and I
can actually act. Like, you know, like so I don't know. I just I
I like them. Anyway No. No. I I I think you're I think you're onto
something. So, like, the the whole but, again,
this how do you go
ahead. So I was just gonna say, so on the flip side to that, that's
why I brought up the the Netflix, you know, top 10 movies.
On the flip side of that, the movie that just took over number one is
called exterritorial. It's actually a German
based film where Okay. The filmography and the cinematography
is mediocre at best. The dialogue
was mediocre at best. The acting was
okay, but the story was great. Like, it was
it was weird. Like, the concept of the story carried the
movie. Like, it was it was kind of an interesting
now there are some Farfetched BS stuff that happened, and anybody who watches
it is same as my wife and I did. We watched it, and we were
like, let me get this straight. You're in
this type of environment, and there is no human being around? Like, what is going
on here? Like, that's stupid. Like, you know what I mean? Like, rent parts but
so that was in a case where the material was probably better
than the environment and the actors. So it's like the
opposite effect, but but it was still a decent movie. In my opinion, it was
better than Havoc. There's a reason it it took its place at number one. It's
it's it was just a better movie, but it wasn't better acting. I thought Tom
Hardy was better than anybody in that other movie. The script writing
was not all that much better than
Havoc. The act it just it was the storyline.
Like, the actual story was compelling. Okay. Let me ask you one
question, and then we can we can switch to another we transition to another topic
because I wanna talk about the books and the format of the show because we're
gonna do do do some different things. They're going into the, the remainder of the
second quarter, and, the third quarter and the fourth quarter of this
year. I'm gonna shift some things around. I wanna talk about that for the listeners.
So here's my question. Which matters to you
more, the acting or the writing in a
film? I don't
think there is one over the other. I think it I think, ultimately,
I would love to have good acting, good writing. I mean,
obviously. Right. As long as one is really good,
I can tolerate the movie. Okay. So I don't I don't have
a preference of one over the other, but I one needs one
one has to be there. One has to be good in this either
the storytelling or the the story or the acting is just so
much better than than, you know, than the the material. As long as one
is present, I can tolerate the movie. Okay. It's
interesting. See, I I used to I started out
with actors, like, way back in the day when I was, like, 12,
13, 14 years old. And I started watching a few more movies, and then it
switched to, like, directors. I was like, okay. This director will elevate
material. Right? And that's where I go into, like, Kubrick and not
understanding him and going through this whole oeuvre. Oh, but then also directors
a lot, whether it's Jordan Peele or, like, you know, Christopher Nolan. Like, you know,
Christopher Nolan Christopher Nolan. Directors a lot. So I totally get that. I
definitely get that. Like, directors still do matter to me. I
agree. But at a certain point,
and I don't know it's if it's when I crossed over my thirties,
I started caring more about writing. Mhmm. And I started
recognizing that
there's some writing and some stories
that the ways modern scripts are written
make no sense and probably didn't need to be
made. So for instance,
what's a movie where the writing doesn't hold again, doesn't hold up? This is a
modern more modern movie in the last ten years. Oh,
mister and missus no. Well, no. Not mister and missus Smith. Well, no. No.
Not that one. Because action movies are too easy to, like, bang on.
I was just gonna I was just gonna say that. No. No. It's like action
movies shouldn't apply. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, it's kinda writing
and action movies are terrible. They're terrible. Okay. I I gotta go back I gotta
go back at least ten years just to make it sort of a movie that
or more than ten years, make it a movie that, that no one will will
recognize. So
Mulholland Falls Mhmm. Which had Nick Nolte in it back in the day
and whatever. That movie
doesn't hold together. Yeah.
Matter of fact, if I remember correctly, it's been a little while since I
saw it. Although, recently did pop up in my Amazon Prime, so I might go
revisit it. But, it it falls
apart in the third act. And that's typically, by the way, where most movies
fall apart is in the third act. Like, this is why one knock with Christopher
Nolan when he tried to break the three-act structure as a director,
with Batman, particularly the third Batman movie. The
three-act structure exists for a reason, Chris. Like, don't
mess with it. You have to have three acts.
You have to have beginning, a middle, and an end, and you can't crack the
middle and have, like, a full, like, throated ninety minute beginning
and a full throated ninety minute end. Like, he just doesn't the only
person direct that I'm aware of who is able
to successfully crack the three-act structure and do it in a way
where you don't notice it was Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho.
Sorry. Two, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There you
go. Yeah. I'll throw that one in there too. Yeah. Yeah. He's the
only one. Spielberg doesn't even doesn't even screw with the
Three-act structure. Yeah. So in the
third act, the writer has to either, like Chekhov's gun,
has to give me something and work with it
and bring it to conclusion or not. And if things
aren't working, and I'm noticing this increasingly in movies, if things aren't working in the
first act and then the second act, like, if people aren't saying the right things
and behaving in the correct ways and ways that and by correct, I just mean
correct for the script to correct that it's believable. Yeah. Like Snowpiercer, the
movie that entirely took place with Captain America on the train. Those, like,
going around the globe or whatever. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I don't like
nobody understood how right. Like I had the same feeling with Knives
Out. Like Oh, well, there. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Like,
knives out. And and even worse off because the star power
that was in that movie. Right. Right? Like, I had really good
actors in that movie. How did how as a director, are you not able to
make that movie phenomenal? Like but it wasn't. I I
I thought it fell into your point about connecting the dots
between the three acts. I thought act one
was actually okay, and then it just got
worse for me. Like, like, it just it just moved more from,
like, right right after the like, because they did a good job
with some of the introductions and why the why the family members,
who why they were the way they were, why who they were who was who,
and, like, that was all fine. And then it just
continued to go down downhill from there for me.
I'm gonna look up Knives Out, but I think that was directed
by, yeah, 02/2019.
That was directed by let me see just so that
I'm actually correct. Because that had Daniel Craig in it and all that.
Yep. Yep. And it was directed by
I'm pulling this up. Chris Evans. Christopher Plummer.
Mhmm. Rian Johnson. Okay. Can I tell you something about
Rian Johnson as a director? Well, Jamie Lee Curtis I
mean, I can already tell you I'm I'm probably not gonna watch a lot of
his movies. Well, you go ahead. Okay. Well, I'll tell you a movie that that
he should not have been allowed to touch, and and everybody that the next movie
that came in the series had to undo everything that he did in
the movie, and it wrecked the entire series.
Rian Johnson directed the last Jedi. Oh. A
movie that totally and completely has turned me off of Star
Wars films for the rest of my life because they let him touch
that. Yeah. He believes
fundamentally in subverting expectations.
That's his whole, like, shtick as a director.
Except the problem is, Rian, you're not talented
enough to subvert anything.
And you can record this and send it to him. He won't care. He's
European. He doesn't care. He's gonna
keep getting stuff because he's whatever. He's paid up with the right
people, however it works in Hollywood. I don't know. But my point
is, he has a history or track record of
looking at a script and going, I will do whatever the hell I
want. And then he just goes off and does whatever the hell he wants. I
mean, he thinks that makes him an auteur as a director. So he breaks the
three act structure or in The Last Jedi, he totally
undo undoes all of the character motivations that were set up,
quite nicely, actually, weirdly enough in the first,
you know, of those three movies, and just totally train
wrecks it. And by the time you get to the third act of the last
not even the third act. The end of the second act of The Last Jedi,
I did. I I now, arguably, I will preface this by saying, when
I watched The Last Jedi, I was already irritable, and I didn't
wanna watch it. So that was color whatever. But I turn and I
was I probably had too many vodkas out of
any igloo by that point. But but I
just just for full disclosure there, transparency.
But I turned to my wife. So my wife was watching, and my wife does
not care about Star Wars. Like, at all does not care.
I'm a huge Star Wars guy or at least I had been a huge Star
Wars guy up to that point. Whatever. And I look
at her and I go, I can't handle any more of this
millennial...millennial whining. I just I can't handle it.
It's too much of this movie. I'm done, and I shut it off. I don't
even know how The Last Jedi ended. It doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. Because the movie that came afterward, The Rise of Skywalker,
the JJ Abrams had to, like, direct to undo all the nonsense in
The Last Jedi, I didn't watch that movie either.
And I not I won't I won't. I refuse. I'm
done. I'm off the train. Yeah. I'm off the train at the station. I don't
watch any of the shows. I don't care about it. I get it that it's
it gives people a lot of people angina, Disney does, what they do over there.
I'm done. I'm off the train. You everybody should have gotten off the train with
Rian Johnson because the fact that that that Disney hired that guy with
his track record, who then later on, by the way, went on to do Knives
Out at other films where he's breaking Come on. The the
guys don't wanna be European auteur director. Let him go to Europe and
direct small films and no one will watch. Right. Yeah. I
Please. Just go do that. That's where you can break the structure and do all
the things. Whatever. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. No. I'm with you. But, again,
I I but at least now I now I understand.
It's it's it's it's just a hit. It's him. It's it's him.
Knives that was his problem because, again, my point my point to that rant
was with the star power that was in that movie, it should have been
awesome. It should've worked. Yep. Like, could you imagine Christopher Nolan or
Jordan Peele or Spielberg or any of those guys with that cast?
Come on. He was also the writer of Knives Out. Oh,
well, that makes sense then. Never mind.
It was not a good movie. I was I was very had
very high expectations of that movie. It was not very good. Well, he
subverted them. He successfully subverted your expectations. Exactly.
There you go. Alright. Anyway, let's get back to let's get back let's get back
to books and leadership here, Hasan. We are off the rails. Well, we do
this once a year. We did it a couple years ago with Oppenheimer. It's fine.
That's true. Yeah. I forgot about that. I forgot about that. It's fine.
Except this won't be a bonus episode. This is the episode. This is the whole
thing, folks. Okay. So the podcast. Right? So Leadership
Lessons are the great books podcast. We have a podcast here. We
read books. The philosophy of the podcast is is dead
simple. We we read books. We pull leadership
lessons from them, and we try to apply those leadership lessons to your real live
life. We do it with a variety of different, guest
cohosts, most notably Tom, but also others
like Libby Younger, and, and many, many
other folks. Some of whom are on with us regularly,
others which, others of whom are on with us intermittently. We
also do shorts episodes. We have a shorts format, which are
two to three minute, sometimes three to six minute long
rants where I just talk at you, about something
that bothers me. You should listen to the one that,
came out, last week where I'm beginning to talk about work and
significance, and the one that came out this week,
where I further go into this idea that the workplace
it's something it's a new idea that sort of captured my mind. The
workplace isn't a place where we should be seeking,
or where we should even be hearing, to paraphrase from Seth
Godin, the song of significance and meaning in our
lives. I don't I don't think work was meant to carry that
kind of weight. No. Family, tradition,
community, that's where those things that's where that weight should be.
Work is built into the fabric of reality. I fundamentally believe this because
of my my Christian beliefs. I fundamentally believe this.
I I think it was relevant at one point in history, but no longer. But
no longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well and I think I think this is part
of the renegotiation of a post industrialist,
and actually not even post industrialist, post post industrialist,
post fourth turning, as we get into the high of the next turning,
west. I I I think we're renegotiating this now in real
time.
And I'm not the only person that I know who
is looking around at the systems and the processes that we have that are based
on work and going,
this can't be a place of significance. The
significance has to be someplace else. And and
and postulating that
things were better in the West overall. I can't speak for
every any play any place else. But the West overall and
America in particular and my particular
state and neighborhood in very particular when we
were more focused on things like family, tradition, and community
versus what the industrialists of the twentieth century and
the mass marketers of the twentieth century strip mined out of us
and didn't and and replaced only with cash and
status and power. So I'm working on an idea
here, and it also ties into another idea that I have about people
who are serious versus people who are unserious. I'm a little bit irked about that.
I did a whole rant on that. I'm tired of the unserious people. I
don't think leaders need to put up with them anymore. And you can be
serious about something like this podcast,
without taking it seriously. But you
cannot be unserious and foolish
about something like this podcast
and expect to be taken seriously. And
what we've had in our culture, I believe, is a and
particularly over the last twenty five years, has been the rise of the unserious
people. And this is not just in our politics, although that's where it's
most bald, because everybody Where's the most obvious too?
Correct. That's right. But I think you see it in
the way in which the decline of the
neighborhood 711 let's go to the neighborhood 711. When I walk into my
neighborhood 711 and this is not the fault of the people who are working
there. This is a bigger thing that they are operating in.
But when I see someone barely wiping down the Slurpee machine and they
can't even do that well, that's because they don't take that stat act
of wiping down the Slurpee machine seriously. They just wanna get paid their
$18.33 an hour, barely wipe the surfing machine and go
off while they have the little earbud iPod earbud in their in
their, in their ear, maybe listening to a
podcast. I would hope, but more likely they're not, they're not.
And so that's unseriousness.
And, again, it's not their fault. They're operating. I don't
blame individuals for this. I don't even blame or hold
accountable, seven eleven for this, because seven eleven can
only operate within the parameters of what they're given as far as human capital.
I blame families and communities and traditions. That's
where the blame lies. That's where the fault lies. That's where the accountability
lies. And quite frankly, that's where the saving of
all of this will lie. So I'm working on a couple different ideas in the
shorts episodes in drips and drips and drips. You should listen to those,
every, every week. It's my it's my basically, my version of Seth Godin just
dripping an idea out over the course of twenty five years.
And I might write a book about it. I I did an outline this weekend
of another book. I'll talk about another project that I've got going on
here in a little bit, but I'm I'm a big fan of essays. I think
that's I think that's gonna be the way to go. Anyway,
so the podcast format, the main format of the podcast, though, is the book.
Right? So we read War and Peace. Like, we're supposed to read War and Peace
today, and I'm already five books behind. Right? Or Tender
is the Night. We just covered Parade's End. That was our
most recent new, quote, unquote, content episode with,
with Libby Unger. I read Considering Genius, the
writings of Stanley Crouch, because I am obsessed with this
idea of improv improvisation as a
method for getting us out of leadership problems. And it's
improvisation that's unique to America because jazz is unique to
America. No one else does it the way that we do. And
and and in in that lies the keys
to our successes in the next turning. We
also talked about Shop Class's Soulcraft this year on the
podcast, a book that if I had read it thirty years ago
when I graduated high school and everyone and it was
sort of introducing Google to me and was talking about
how the entire future was going to be high-tech. If I had read Matthew
Crawford's Shop Class at Soul Craft, I probably would not
be doing this podcast right now, or it would look totally different because
my life would have been totally different. It was one of those kinds of books.
I looked at it, and I thought, my god. Like,
I I'm 45, and it's too late. It's too
late to make the shift now. But Mm-mm. I can give it to
my 19 year old. So I did. I gave her a copy. And I said,
read this. Read this. So
those are the kind of books we cover on the podcast, fiction, nonfiction, covering a
wide variety of genres. But we're going to shift our focus a
little bit coming up here on the podcast. So, normally,
we take larger books like Brothers Karamazov or which is, like, a
thousand pages or War and Peace, which is, like, 1,200
pages or, Augustine's,
not Confessions. I'll think of it in a minute here. But,
books by Augustine. Right? The big thick tomes that really sort of
defeat people. We take those books and we divide them up into smaller parts, and
then we talk about them. Right? And each one of those is right around a
two hour episode to cover a larger book. But I'm increasingly
believing that we should take smaller books, such as f Scott
Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, which I'm reading right now, and really
break that down into smaller
parts. Because I think there's things I'm missing, things that
we're missing, gifts that I'm not bringing to you
all as an audience, that I think need to be brought to you.
I'm also not sharing these gifts, I think, at a at a comprehensive enough
level with my guests. So for instance,
Parade's End, which we just covered with Libby Younger. Great episode. Go back and
listen to it. We spent the first probably forty five minutes of
that episode just talking about European politics. And I was giving
her a historical dive into European politics. Most of the history, I probably got
wrong. My timelines were all screwed up. But But at least I understand a little
bit about, about, European politics. And
she asked me a question projecting forward European
politics, right, to to the next, twenty five years because I am a little bit
obsessed with the future and where we're going. And and that consumed forty
five the first forty five minutes of our conversation. But that means we had less
time for parade's end. And inside of parade's end, there's so much
information in there. There's so much good stuff about feminism, male
and female relationships, World War one, British
colonialism. How do you
lead when when you have, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling,
the white man's burden, whether we agree with that framing or not, it
was there in leadership. And I'm saying this is a minority,
and Tom's a minority. And, yes, it's there. Like, you you just there's certain things
you just cannot overlook. The book was written in 1934. It was written for a
Victorian audience. And so how
do we deal with those kinds of things in a really meaningful way, that a
deeper way on the show? And so I'm thinking we're going to we're gonna
take smaller books, and we're gonna take longer time with smaller books. So one
of the books that I wanna get to this year, I do wanna get to
the Empire of the Summer Moon, before Taylor Sheridan gets his
hands on it and releases to the public whatever it is he's doing. I wanna
get ahead of him on that, and he's fairly he's pretty quick, and he's a
good writer. So I gotta get ahead of that guy.
But there's other books that are on our list, to cover,
this year that do deserve more time spent with
them, even though they look small. So we're
going to start having more multi episode
or multi episodic, covering the same book.
Multi episodes covering the same book, coming up here on the podcast.
So maybe three, maybe four, maybe two. It'll just
depend on the length of the book and what I can pull what I can
pull out of it. Because I will admit right now, I'm about 75%
through Tender is the Night.
And probably about once every
30 or 40 pages, I'm getting a theme pulled out of there.
And so I'm gonna have to really go in there and really pull some things
out. There are valuable things in there, but you gotta read it to find those
valuable things. So, this is the first time I'm sort of bringing this up. Not
I'm sort of this is the first time I'm bringing this up with Tom. And
he is my my, my ride or die homie on
this one with the guests. So, Tom, what do you
what do you think about that as a potential cohost? Like, where do you see
the problems, the pitfalls, the challenges? You know what kinds of books you've read here.
I mean, come for god's sakes, I I started you off with Pearl Buck and
the Good Earth, which we couldn't revisit that, and we wanted.
And I I I convinced you that we could do something decent with the Good
Earth, and now you're you're like, okay. I'm all in. This guy's crazy, but I'm
all in. You know, it's funny as you were
as you were saying this. Right? Like, as you're you're so my mind my
mind starts spinning because, again, I'm I'm I'm listening to understand and I'm
listening Mhmm. I'm not I'm not listening to reply. Right? I'm listening
to to absorb and understand and and and be able to, you
know, and be able to really digest what you're talking
about. But one of the first things I I
I City of God, by the way. That's Augustine. City of God. City
of God. Sorry. One of the first one of the things I
thought I'm thinking, wouldn't it
be interesting? Or or or or how interesting
would it be? Because the cohosts that we have on this
show come from different walks of life, different ethnicities,
different genders, different well, I mean, really
different just totally different ways of thinking. Right? So could we
take something like I'll just you it was literally the last book you
just said, so I'll just make that as an example. You know, the good earth
with pro Buck, could we do an episode
with myself and then the next episode on the same
book with Libby, the next episode on the same book with
somebody? And what because of our different backgrounds, we're
gonna have very different views or vantage points from this book,
very different explanations for leaders and what they should or or could
do. And it might there might be some opportunity to resonate with
people. So again, I I I don't know what your
download, you know, I don't know what the download volume is or how many
people are actually listening to this, to this podcast. But
there may be some there may be some validity to
audience sharing. Right? Meaning, like, maybe you have an audience that
that chimes into Libby more often than other cohosts or Mhmm.
Do, you know, I just lost his name.
You have another pretty regular cohost. Dorel O'Nickson.
Dorel. Thank you, Dorel. Yep. Like, like so, he was the one I was
thinking of, by the way. So Dorel, like, you know, somebody that chimes in like,
when they go down your podcast list and they see Dorel, they're like, oh, I'm
just gonna listen because I like I like listening to him. I like listening to,
you know, whatever. Yep. But if they see it's the same book, would they
be more likely to go, oh, well, what are these so all three
of these people were talking about maybe I'll go listen to what they because maybe
it like, they're sitting hearing something that I say and they go,
oh, Libby was totally off. Like, they're totally in a different direction.
And, like you know what I mean? Like, again, as as you were saying this,
I was thinking I start my wheel started spinning going, so, hey, San, stop
reading 800 books a year. Meaning, just need 12. Maybe I
just need 12. One a month. One a month.
This is also selfish. I will for you. I know. I will admit this is
selfish. Right? Because I do look at the list books that I haven't prepared every
year, and I go
and I and I breathe out. But and then I take as I as I
tell my son sometimes when he gets when he gets hurt or taken by surprise
and, like, in soccer, Deep cleansing breaths, son. Deep cleansing
breaths. Yeah. Well, and then there's
books that are a total surprise. So every year
and and Libby Libby knows this. I've been I've
been for two years, I've been trying to crack brother's car and resolve
with Libby, and I just can't get there. I
just can't get there with her. And it's not a it's not an issue of
her or or really or really me. It's
a challenge of the book. Right? It's Dostoyevsky.
Like, it's like, we did Crime and Punishment,
and we only did the first chap four chapters of Crime and Punishment with,
David Baumrucker. I I I I'd then I so
what I did as a result of that was I sicced Baumracker on to the
brothers Karamazov and still haven't come
there. So, you know, it's it's it's one of those things where
there are certain books that are just hard. They just aren't. You know?
Like, we have not covered, and we won't until next year
sometime, James Joyce. Like, I I started reading, Finnegan
not Finnegan's Wake, the other James Joyce book. But Finnegan's Wake will serve
for the time being. You start reading Finnegan's Wake,
and I realized this was Joyce.
I realized when I was reading that that I'm probably not smart enough to analyze
this. And I don't think I'm a dumb guy. I don't
think I'm the smartest guy on the block, but I'm I know I'm not, like,
trailing it right in the back end of the the the IQ pool.
So but even I found
Joyce to be hard. Right? Ulysses. It wasn't fitting
its way. It was Ulysses. I read, like, the first probably 20 pages
of Ulysses, and I and I struggled not
because the words were hard, but because the ideas
were complicated and layered, and there's a lot of meaning. And
he wants you Joyce wants you to go into that book
with respect because it's a serious book. And
so if I'm gonna bring Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake or
the Dubliners, I think you wrote that too. If I'm gonna bring that to this
podcast, I wanna treat it with the weight that it deserves. Same thing with the
Russians. I wanna treat it with the weight that it deserves. Now, Tolstoy, on the
other hand, I've been a fan of Tolstoy since I re first
read Anna Karenina back when I was 15. I don't know why I was able
to bang through that. I just was. And then I read, the,
War and Peace, a couple years after that, and I've never
been defeated by Tolstoy. Probably because he was a guy, like, I would have
hung out with. Like, personality wise, he seemed like a guy that I would have
been, like he and I would have been okay. That's
my ego talking there. But, but is
the way he writes, the way he sort of frames
things, the way he frames his
world, the level of cynicism he has
tinctured by wisdom. I resonate with
that. And so I've never had any trouble with Tolstoy. Matter of fact, I I
always have to slow down with him because I'm speeding up too fast.
Same thing with John Steinbeck, reading Easterly. Just gonna say Steinbeck. That's
Steinbeck for me. Right. You know? Steinbeck. Your Tolstoy is my
Steinbeck. Yeah. So you know I would read that. If that guy wrote the yellow
pages, I would read it. Yeah. And it's just and it's just easy. It just,
like, falls off the you know, it just falls off your consciousness. So okay. So
this idea has some merit. I want to run this by And by the way,
I'm not suggesting we do one book a month and everybody gets a crack at
it. Maybe it's two. Right. Maybe maybe you think of the pairings. Right?
Like, maybe one book is, you know, Libby and Dorel. One book is Dorel
and I. One book is, you know, myself and some someone, you know, JP, whatever.
I think, like Whatever. But I'm, like, I I I like I like the
idea and the oh, and then and then. Right? You
could wrap it together with having, like, if you're struggling for
episode like, episodes to to fill because you're you're
not able to catch up on reading, if you're doing this two episode per
book kind of philosophy, you can have a third episode with
both guest hosts on at the same time. And then you can talk
about you could talk about the varying degrees of of thought processes behind
a a like, whatever concepts are being drawn out by the
book. One goes one way, one goes the other. Now if all three of us
are on the same page, that itself could also turn into an
interesting dialogue, right, of, like because
just because just because philosophically, we think the same thing doesn't mean we all get
there the same way. Right. Well, so a book like,
have you ever read Alice Walker's The Color Purple? No. No.
No. But So we did color yeah. We did Color Purple this year.
I got to admit, I read Color Purple, and
I was not a fan.
And, partially, it is because
the leadership lessons that you get from The Color Purple aren't
the ones that Alice Walker thinks she's giving. One of the ways she doesn't think
she's giving leadership lessons. But if she were Yeah. Yeah.
They're not the ones that the text would sort of put forth
as this is the lesson. Right? So there's a whole
to to be to give an example, there's a scene in there or not a
scene. There's a episode in there that is related where,
an African American lady and her husband are walking along,
are walking along the sidewalk or whatever, and a
mayor and this is in an all white town. Right? And there are black people
in an all white town in the South, back during segregation.
And so, of course, if white people show up on the sidewalk, you guys step
aside. Okay. Fine. That's sort of the framing, right, of this
of this episode in the book or this incident in the book.
And, the mayor's wife who, you
know, is walking on the sidewalk stops the, children of the,
the African American woman and her husband and, starts
touching their hair and starts talking about them and asks if they wanna be servants.
It's a whole it's a whole scene. And I know why Walker set up this
scene. Right? I know why. Because these are things that she witnessed in a
pre civil rights south, and these are things that were
told to her that happened to African Americans in a pre civil
rights South. In particular, African Americans who were
not, let us say this, of the status of, like, a W. E. B. Du
Bois. Okay? So they're poor,
beyond poor, like shanty poor. Right? Shanty poor African
Americans in Mississippi.
Check mark all the boxes. Right? And so in the incident
that is related in the book, the African American lady ends
up getting into a fist fight, ends up punching
the mayor's wife, and gets into a fist fight with the mayor and the cops.
And the cops, like, beat her half to death. Right?
And then they holler, of course, off to jail because that's what you do, because
she was the inciting person even though she was really whatever.
But they holler and I'm saying whatever, but, like, this is how things happened. Right?
And so they holler off to jail, and then there's a spiral
of degradation that that this pulls this family into.
What's the leadership lesson from there? And so I read this, and that's my
first question. Like, what is if I'm a leader and I'm reading this, what am
I getting from this? And the the only thing that I could
pull from that was the lesson of
demanding it's a Malcolm X lesson. Demanding respect.
Like, you're going to respect me, and if you don't, I'm going
to clap you. Like, he actually said this in one of his speeches. Right? He
said, like, you Christians, you have the religion of turn the other cheek. I have
the religion of if I get hit, I'm gonna crack you back twice as hard.
Yeah. And that was Malcolm X. Right? Because he's militant.
Right? Eldridge Cleaver, same thing when you read Soul on Ice, which you also read
this year. Same idea.
And this is the thing with with a book like The Color Purple.
I, as an African American,
am removed from that. I I don't have those
kinds of troubles, and by the way, neither do my children.
Because, sure, you can argue and you can assert, and people do,
that people like Alice Walker and everybody who came before them go through went through
this so that you don't have to. Okay. Yes. This is the idea of family,
tradition, and community. Absolutely true. For true. For
sure. I agree with all that.
And yet
and this is the direction I went in with The Color Purple. The
revolution is over, and
African Americans won. We won the revolution.
We really did. And I'm not talking about the
poor African Americans, because poor African Americans
just like just as poor whites, poor Hispanics, poor anybody,
regardless of race are going to have those same kinds of challenges. They just
are. But when you get into not but because two things seem to be
true at the same time, and when you get into the middle class and the
upper class, those challenges have now fallen away in a way they
did not fall away pre civil rights or even up to probably the nineteen
seventies or even nineteen eighties. Yeah. So what
do you do? And I'm obsessed with this idea or was obsessed with this idea
during Black History Month. What do you do when you've won the revolution
and you're shocked? Right. And you're shocked that you won, by the way.
No. You start a new one. What do you mean what do you do? You
you look for the next fight. This is this is this is not
this this is not a completion thing. This is not something what are you
talking about? Well, and also, as a as a Christian, I believe
in reformation rather than revolution, and those are two fundamentally different
things. Yeah. Sure. Because because revolution
revolution gets you into a different you forgot. Revolution is
always in a hurry. It's just like sin. It's always in a
hurry. K? And so I'm using The Color Purple, and I'm
using that book that we covered in the way that I approached it to say
this. If I had had four other hosts feeding
into ideas on that, I might have come to some different conclusions.
I could be persuaded. I think Yeah. Yeah. So because yeah. Because
I I I don't, again, I I think I don't think
I don't think the black community or the African American community won
yet. I think I think I think there's going to be a winner and
loser when the poor it that you just made mention.
The challenges that the poor face regardless of race, color, or or
or religion religious beliefs, whether they're black or white or Hispanic, it doesn't matter.
The the poor I think we're gonna win when all of
them collectively are fighting the same fight. That's when
we'll win. Because right now, to say that you won yeah.
No. You won a battle. You didn't win the war yet. I think the war
is still going on. The war is just changing the battlefield.
Well, I I mean, a new a new battlefield.
And you know what? You wouldn't be the first person to you wouldn't be the
first person to say that. So John McWhorter says this all the time with, when
he's on, the podcast with, Glenn Lowry. Because
Glenn Lowry very much who's been through the wars, he's an African American
writer and thinker, been through all the wars literally, went
from being conservative to being progressive back to being kinda sorta
conservative, not really. You know,
and John McWhorter always been a progressive leftist, always been
that guy. But he's progressive leftist with a brain, which is kind of amazing,
right, these days in our culture. And so, you know, they'll
get on and they'll they'll go after it. And McWhorter does just basically agree
with with you. He's in he's in that position. Whereas, Lowry
would probably be closer to my position where,
you know, fundamentally, at a certain point, particularly in America this is where the American
struggle is. I can't talk about other countries. But the American struggle,
particularly around race, is what
happens when racial groups in this country
wind up getting everything they asked for?
And it still wasn't enough. Now maybe your ask was too
small. That I
can maybe accept.
But even if your ask was gigantic, right,
and you got it, you have the the
curse of the victor. You know? I think of the
Amy Mann song from the movie from the movie
Magnolia. You got what you wanted, and now you can hardly stand
it. And I think
African Americans over the next, I would
say, ten years,
maybe fifteen. George Floyd was a blip. An important blip,
but a blip nonetheless. Because there's a trajectory. There's an arc that's happening in the
African American community that I could speak to because I see it. There's
an arc, an upward to the right j curve. It's it's just it's
slowly happening, and it's it's going inch by inch, step by step as is
the usual with African Americans in this country, inch by inch, step by
step. But every generation of African Americans
has to they're not
refighting the revolution. They're fighting a new thing on new ground every
single time. So and like I said, I believe in reformation
because reformation is the leaven through the loaf. It's it's slow.
You know, sometimes it requires a blowing up of institutions and systems and processes,
and I'm fine with that. But you have to have a replacement for it. And
that's where I always get off the train with revolutionaries because they never have a
replacement for it. They just wanna blow crap up, cause chaos, and then move
on. Like, what that is not helpful because then all of us are still here.
And what are you gonna do about the kids? They gotta build after the chaos.
Yeah. Yeah. You have no plan. So anyway,
but that's a conversation that would have been interesting to have with you
and Libby, Libby Younger and Derulo Nixon and Dave
Baum Rucker. Like, I could have aligned, you know, aligned for all four of you.
I haven't had that interesting conversation. And I would and you're right. I would have
gotten four different perspectives. So that would have been that would have been fascinating.
And it would have been fascinating for our listeners, I think. So
And so I I wonder if the formatting I I wonder I like I I
do like the idea of having, having one
book. Now I I I don't think it would be
effective to do it from the beginning with two guest
hosts. Right? Like Yeah. It would be too it would be too much. It would
be too much of all all at once. But if you did the same book,
two episodes with the same book, two different cohosts, and then possibly
a third episode with the both of them on, and maybe the
script is for you. Like, I wanna talk we
don't need to go through the the verses of the book again. We just need
to go through your opinions about this this particular like,
okay. We talked about, you know, chapter chapter
three. This topic came up. Tom answered it this way.
Libby answered it this way. Dorel answered it this way. I'd like to talk
about where's the overlap and where's the the discrepancies,
and what do we do about those, and how do how do leaders decide
which version of this should be on the forefront of their mind based
on what? Based on the type of company they have, based on, like
again, you decide on the script what, you know, what what that question
looks like. I think it could be interesting. Yeah.
I think I think we're going to start the amount of books you have to
read. Yeah. Exactly. Give yourself a break. Oh my gosh. You
have no idea I'm drowning. Oh, I got them drowning. I got too much other
things, too many other things going on. I'm killing businesses. I'm picking up
other ones. I'm doing this. It's the whole thing. Okay.
No. I I think I think I want to run that by you. I want
to run it by you live. I think this is going to be something that
we are going to do. I think we might start with Tender is a night,
or we might start with the book that comes after that that was supposed to
come after that. But, but, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna
rejigger this format a little bit midseason, kinda see if things
work a little bit differently. I do also like the idea of maybe, like,
a quarterly or maybe biannually recap where you bring on all of
your cohosts, and you just talk about
overlying themes that happen throughout the course of x number
of books, or whatever that you were you know? So and you you should be
able to you should be able to kinda, you know, basically
categorize where where the, like, the top five or six
themes of, like and then say, alright. Now as a panel, I want
let let's talk about theme number one, number two, whatever, and, like, let's
kinda I I think it would be cool. I think it could be interesting to
have an extended version of the podcast episode. Maybe it's
not an hour. Maybe it's two and a half three hours, three hours or
whatever where we go where you can take, you know, a a whole
quarter's worth of podcast episodes, get four
four guest hosts on all at the same time, and now really
attack a a really good subject matter. Like, maybe
it's maybe it's three different subjects, but it's really in-depth
conversation about it. And let's let's get down to the nitty gritty about,
like, you know I mean, we're we're not all leadership. I
get no. I guess we're all we're all leadership people in our own right. I
mean, I know I understand you're you're probably the guy being the you know, like,
you coach leaders to being better leaders. None of the rest of us really
do that, but we're leaders in our own right in different versions of our of
our life. So I think it could be I think that also could be very
interesting. Yeah. Like, maybe it's not once a quarter. Maybe it's twice a year. I
I don't know. I don't know what the time maybe it's once a year. I
don't know. But something like that, I think, could be interesting as well. Yeah.
Okay. We're going to we're gonna we're gonna futz around. We're gonna move some things
around listeners. We are going to and, hopefully, this will
answer some listener questions, that they have about format,
about books. We did we have been starting to get some interesting
listener feedback from, episodes
that we posted, on YouTube. So keep keep keep
sending us that, keep sending us that feedback.
Also keep correcting us when we miss small things. I love that as
well. I love being corrected. I don't know everything.
Sometimes the Internet is smarter than me. Not often, but
sometimes. Reminds me of that. Do do you remember the stand
up comedian, Steven Wright? Oh, yeah. Probably the most dry
Yes. Monotone person on the planet. But one of the comments
that he made, I just every time I hear it, it still makes me laugh,
and you just said something that was close to it, which is he said when
he comes out of the stage, he goes, you can't have everything.
Where would you put it?
That was maxed me up. I was like, damn. He's right.
Like, where would you I don't understand. Like, we just leave everything where it is
and just claim it as yours? Like, how are you gonna
That's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's brilliant.
That's brilliant. Cracked
me. Oh my gosh. That that's that's killer. He was he was he was a
genius comedian. He was. He was. Oh, Steven Rayne. Oh my gosh. I
haven't thought about that dude in years. But Buzzfeed He was
from my neck of the woods, just to let you know. Oh, of course he
was. Of course he was. Of course he was. Of
course. One day, we're gonna talk about that neck of
the woods, but not today. Not today. Not today.
So as we close our episode,
today, and thank you for listening to the leadership lessons for the great books
podcast, I have an announcement to make,
saving it for the end of our of our episode today.
So from three time least selling
author, a guy you would know, comes
his next book, a book on
culture, a book on
the challenges that we face in various
areas, a book about what we do
here at the end of the fourth turning about
the business of living in the world and his
own personal issues. Because what the heck? When you write
a book like this, you want to put a bit of your
own self in it. A book written in
somewhat the tone and the style of a James Baldwin, Notes
from a Native Son, or even a Joan Didion souching
towards Bethlehem Essayist or reportage
type model of essay, but without all that Hunter
Thompson, Gonzo journalism kind of thing going on.
A book that does feature, political,
opinions or at least ideas, but it also
features things like or or features essays,
actually, that focus on being our
human beings, being our pets' emotional support animals,
which we are our pets' emotional support animals,
or what we're going to be doing and what it's going to look like in
a post Christian twenty first century
in America or how ideas spread
or how fictions give people meaning, which
by the way they do. This is a
book that will talk about closing gaps
in anticipation of net of the network leap, and,
of course, per se or not per se, per pursuant to our previous
conversation, a book about revolutions and realignments. By
the way, there's a quote in this book.
If you're from, from Citizen Kane back in
1941, you're the greatest fool I've ever known, Charles Foster
Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would
be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson, and
you're going to get more than one lesson. By the way, this
is an essay writing about the Democratic Party
and where they need to go because we do still need two functioning parties
in America. A
book from your host,
Ehsan Sorels, wartime soon to be, wartime, least selling
author. This is the this is the
desk copy. That's why all its stuff is sticking out of it if you're watching
the video. A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, a
collection of literary essays by Haysan
Sorels. This book will be coming out
in July of twenty twenty five,
available for late summer purchase and just in time
for the holidays. I am also going to
finally knuckle under in my recording location
deep inside the back end of a warehouse somewhere
in an undisclosed location. I'm
finally from there, going to record
the audio version of this book with me reading
the essays, some of which you can see on my
or read on my substack. And so I do have proof of concept that
people will actually click on them and read them. Whether they'll read them in book
form is another matter altogether. But this is a
book that I probably should have published last year,
but I couldn't finish it because it didn't feel as though it were
the right time. This feels as though it
is the right time. So look for A Voice Crying in the
Wilderness, literary essays by Haysan Sorels,
a cultural commentary book coming in July of
twenty twenty five from my company, HSCT Publishing,
and it will be available everywhere where you get books. So
Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IngramSpark,
Kobo, all those virtual places print on demand.
And, of course, the audiobook version will be on Audible,
and that will be coming out looking like November or
December of twenty twenty five.
So a collection of essays divided into three parts covering a lot of different
areas. I think you're going to like it. I think you're gonna enjoy it.
And, of course, when it comes out, we will talk about it
on the podcast because why wouldn't I do that? It's a
little self serving thing that I could do, and what the heck I talk about
Tom. Kinda seems like you'd be crazy not to. I also talked about Tom
Libby's book, so I don't feel bad. Maybe I'll bring Tom on. I'll send him
a copy of the book. He'll read it. He'll tell me there's too many words
in it, and then we'll talk about it'll be great.
By the way, I do use the term Eshtikon and in
the book. So I'll be I'll I'll bring up
Hasan, do you remember back in May when you told me it
was 215 pages and you reformatted to now it's two
sixty seven? Guess what? It should have been two fifteen. It should have
left.
Should've avoided that Libra Baskerville type. Avoid all of
that. You should use Cambria. Use Cambria fonts.
And I don't wanna hear about it monetizing or whatever the word is
anymore. Exactly. Oh my. Stop using SAT
words. Stop using SAT words. We all know you're smart. Quit.
So this book is coming out, like I said, in, in two formats. And,
we will we were we are flirting with the idea of doing a hardcover format,
as well. That'll be a little bit smaller. That'll fit right
there on your, on your desk. But, yeah, this is my fourth book.
And I do know self publishing it in a little bit of a different mode
than I did before. So, it's been very interesting. It is the
most personal book that I've released, that I've released so far,
really talking about particularly in the personal issue section, things
that actually may have or may not have happened to me
in the course of my life that, have influenced
how I think, how I act, and how I walk in the world
and decisions that I have made thus far.
Alright. Final thoughts, Tom, before we close out this
episode. Here's a fun thought. What if what if we took
what if we took all of the episodes of, well, not all of
the episodes, but let's say we took our favorite episodes of this podcast,
took the transcripts, and coauthored a book that
was basically a leadership book based on I'm
just thinking out loud here. No. No. No. No. I've I've already
thought of that, and I have I have a repository of
transcripts that's just sitting there. So
I I I do have an idea. I I actually have a so I have
a journal. It's a black journal that's that was made out of an old album
cover. So it has, like, the album, the old 45 RPM actually embedded in the
cover. It's kinda really cool. Oh, that's actually I like that. It's kinda
slick. Found it in, like, a used bookstore, like, walking
around here locally. I was like, oh my gosh. I know that I got a
piece. Anyway, so, I write in in all of my book ideas, my premises,
my essay ideas, things like that. And it acts as sort of a and
I haven't in one of these journals in a long time, but it acts as
a repository for that. And so interestingly enough, probably about a month and a half
ago, I started noodling on the idea for a podcast because I've
wanted to do a podcast book for years, absolutely
years. But I wanted to make it, you know, hardcover
with, like, full color photos in it and and just make it real fancy, make,
like, a collectible. And, people who know me
tell me that I am crazy, and that is a ridiculous waste of resources.
But I think it would be cool to pull off something like that at least
once. Yeah. I I I think it could be again, potentially,
it could be very cool. Well, we'll we'll sit down, and we'll
we'll talk about it. Maybe we'll come up with a sales plan. We'll we'll figure
it out. Because we do need a sales plan for that sales and marketing plan
if we're gonna do something like that because, the the
inputs there I and I do have the number for what the inputs are for
doing that. But the inputs going into that to make
that worthwhile, you gotta have the output on the other end. You know? You
you just you have to. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So to make that worthwhile. But,
Amazon is doing doing really, really high end hardcovers
now. So that's Yeah. I saw that. It's really good.
Cool. Cool. Alright. Well, no. That was my last thought.
Alright. Awesome. Well, that's it for today. Thank you, Tom Libby,
for joining us on the Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast.
And with that, well, we're out.