Does Your Life Matter? Reclaiming Worth With Thoreau | Ken Lizotte - EP 735

What if Henry David Thoreau wasn’t escaping work but redesigning it? In this episode of Passion Struck, John R. Miles sits down with author and thought leadership expert Ken Lizotte to explore his transformative new book, Walden for Hire: Business Lessons from Henry David Thoreau. Together, they dismantle the myth of Thoreau as a solitary hermit removed from society. Instead, they reveal a disciplined builder, an innovative entrepreneur, and a master architect of intentional living. Lizotte reveals that Thoreau’s time at Walden wasn't a withdrawal; it was an act of radical design. By simplifying his needs and aligning his work with his values, Thoreau reclaimed his authorship. From reinventing pencil manufacturing to building a thriving surveying practice, he proved that meaningful work and ethical success are not opposing forces—they are deeply intertwined. At the heart of this episode is a powerful reframe: A life of quiet desperation is often a life disconnected from meaning. The solution isn't to do more; it is to live more deliberately. Drawing from philosophy, history, and modern psychology, this conversation offers a blueprint for anyone questioning the true cost of their current path—and seeking a way to work without betraying their soul.🔗 Check the full show notes here: https://passionstruck.com/ethical-entrepreneurship-henry-david-thoreau/Explore You Matter, Luma: https://youmatterluma.com/Go deeper with companion reflections: https://www.theignitedlife.net/p/business-mentor-for-2026-ethical-entrepreneurshipConnect with John (speaking, books, podcast): https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesIn This Episode, You Will LearnThe biggest misconception about Thoreau’s relationship with work, productivity, and successHow “quiet desperation” shows up today as burnout, disorientation, and loss of meaningWhat Thoreau meant by “the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”Why simplifying your life restores time, attention, and autonomyHow aligning your work with your values strengthens your sense of matteringThe concept of moral independence—and why your livelihood should never require self-betrayalA practical reframe: how to examine your current life and redesign it around what truly mattersSupport the MovementEvery human deserves to feel seen, valued, and like they matter. Wear it. Live it. Show it.👉 https://StartMattering.comDisclaimerThe Passion Struck podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Passion Struck or its affiliates. This podcast is not a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a licensed physician, therapist, or other qualified professional. Connect with John Pre-Order The Mattering Effect: https://matteringeffect.com/Book John to Speak: https://johnrmiles.com/speaking/Keynotes, books, podcast, and resources: https://linktr.ee/John_R_MilesChildren’s Book — You Matter, Luma:

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  What drove him crazy was watching people just struggling and working five, six days a week in factories or on the farm or whatever to pay bills, just like we do now. That's where the other quote, "The mass of men's lives are lived in quiet desperation, but they don't know how to get out of it." So what he was trying to say with your quote is, there's another way to look at this.

• 0:27John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 1:15John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, and welcome back to episode 735 of Passion Struck. This week has been an important one. On Tuesday, I released my new children's book, You Matter Luma. And alongside that launch, I had two conversations that shaped this moment in a powerful way. On Tuesday, with Dr. Gordon Flett, we explored something both concerning and deeply hopeful. Nearly one out of every four children feels like they don't matter. That is a staggering statistic. He described this as a quiet epidemic of unbearable insignificance, one that shapes how people see themselves and how they move through the world. But we didn't stop there. We also explored what we can do to change it.

• 1:59John R. Miles?

  How mattering is built through attention, through small moments of care, through relationships where a child feels seen, heard, and significant. Because mattering is experienced.

• 2:10John R. Miles?

  And it can be strengthened early, consistently, and intentionally, which is exactly why I wrote You Matter Luma. Yesterday, with Dr. Martin Shaw, we approached the same idea from a different direction. Martin and I explored how myths and storytelling shape identity, how the stories we live inside of give us a sense of place, purpose, and direction, and how, without those stories, people begin to lose the thread of who they are. Taken together, those conversations point to something essential. We need to feel like we matter, and we need a way to live that truth. That's where today's conversation begins. There are a handful of thinkers who have stayed with me over the years.

• 2:51John R. Miles?

  People like William James, Viktor Frankl, and Henry David Thoreau. They ask questions that still feel unresolved. Thoreau wrote that most people live lives of quiet desperation. I've spent years thinking about what he meant. When I look at the world today, I see a pattern, a quiet disorientation. People stay busy, keep producing, and continue moving forward, yet many still carry the sense that something essential is missing. The more I studied Thoreau, the more I've come to see this clearly. He was really describing a loss of connection to one's own worth, a loss of the feeling that a life is inherently meaningful. In today's language, this is a mattering problem.

• 3:35John R. Miles?

  My guest today is Ken Lozot, author of Walden for Hire: Business Lessons from Henry David Thoreau. I wanted to bring this conversation into this week because it completes something we've been building. We've explored why mattering is essential. We've explored how it's shaped through story. Now we're looking at how a life can be structured to sustain it. And what stood out the most in this conversation is that Thoreau approached work as a form of life design. He examined cost, time, effort, and necessity, and structured them in a way that protected his independence, his values, and his sense of self. As Ken and I discuss his work, from improving pencil manufacturing to building a successful surveying practice, it reflects a deliberate and disciplined approach to livelihood.

• 4:20John R. Miles?

  This reframes how we think about him and it reframes something even larger, work itself. This conversation centers on one simple question. What is the true price of the life you're living? Now, let's begin our conversation with Ken Lizotte. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating a life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 4:51John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Ken Lizotte to Passion Struck. Ken, so nice to meet you.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Nice to meet you, John. I'm thrilled too to meet you.

• 5:01John R. Miles?

  I get a ton of people reaching out to me to be on the podcast and it's not very often that I get hit and something speaks to me as much as this book that you wrote, Walden for Hire, Business Lessons from Henry David Thoreau does. It was so meaningful for me because Henry David Thoreau has been such an inspiration in much of my work on the likes for me of William James or Viktor Frankl, so much life wisdom. So when I saw this, I knew I had to interview you. But I wanted to ask, what made you feel that now was the best time to bring this book to the world?

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? The way you're introducing it speaks to me in terms of what my experience of Thoreau has been. And by the way, I got to start with correcting the way you say his name. The way you say his name. Okay. Just two aspects to it. You may already know this, but maybe not all of the folks out there know it. Henry was born David Henry Thoreau. David Henry. And as he got into, I don't know, maybe teen years or twenties, I don't know when it was. He wanted to switch David and Henry. He wanted to be Henry David. And also, he liked the French pronunciation of his last name,

• 6:29Speaker 01

  which most people say Thoreau, but it's Thoreau. Thoreau like thoroughly, thoroughly, or thorough job, or thorough. And as opposed to Henry David Thoreau, Thoreau. See, I have trouble now saying Thoreau because I've gotten so used to thorough. Thorough. So I won't correct you every time you mess up, but it is a bit of a learning curve. But that's the deal with Henry David Thoreau. But here's, to answer your question, the thing that I noticed as I, I spent 10 years as president of Thoreau Farm, which is Henry's birthplace house. It was restored. It was, they were going to tear it down in Concord at one point.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And about 25 years ago, a bunch of us, a small bunch of Concord citizens said, no, you can't tear that down. Of all the famous writers and thought leaders, let's say, that came out of Concord in the mid 19th century, including, for example, Louisa May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson, none of them were born in Concord. But Henry was. And these people got together and they did all kinds of things to get the town to agree to back up the South and then to raise some money for it and all those kinds of things. But the thing about is that what you said about yourself in terms of your relationship

• 7:57Speaker 01

  to him, that this was more exciting than a lot of the topics because it meant something to you. I've seen that in my work with, with being on the Board of Trustees again and again. Get somebody to come in, like particularly a worker. We had to have an inspector come in and look at our elevator, for example. And he came in and he had to look at some violations and see if he confirmed them or not, according to the state of Massachusetts. And he said, what is this house again now? And we say, well, this is Henry David Thoreau's birthplace. And he said, Henry David Thoreau. Well, I love that guy. In high school, we read him and I've never forgot him.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And those kinds of uncovering people's relationship to him. Nobody wears a badge to let us know this. It's a subculture that's out there. And so I had a feeling that this idea of business lessons from him would resonate with a certain group of people of which I would say you you represent. This relationship with Henry. But beyond that, it didn't come about because I thought this was the right time as much as it was the right time for me. I'd it'd been percolating in my head for a long while. And I just felt like I couldn't believe the more I looked into it.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  And I saw that there never for all of books, there's never been a book focusing on Henry as a business mind. And since I also have a business with which I help business leaders, entrepreneurs and business leaders, consultants, I help them become thought leaders by getting their own ideas published, by getting a book published, by getting articles published, by doing speaking, all the things that Henry does or did. Then it came together, these two aspects of my life came together, knowing about Henry and knowing about business and business thoughts. Two of them together, never been a book on that.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  So here I am.

• 10:11John R. Miles?

  I love it. So it's going to take me a long time to get used to saying Thoreau.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Thoreau. You will be thorough about it.

• 10:20John R. Miles?

  Given I've been saying it the other way for 50 years.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  We all slip up, including us who are part of this whole thorough subculture. All of us slip up from time to time. Like I said, it's a it's a learning curve.

• 10:37John R. Miles?

  Can many people picture Thoreau as a solitary philosopher at Walden Pond? Yeah, what I loved about the way you write about him is that he's a builder, he's a marketer, he's an inventor, he's a teacher, he's a surveyor, he's a profitable entrepreneur, whose lifespan so many disciplines. So what do you think is the biggest misconception culture holds today? Like our modern culture holds today about his relationship with work and success?

• 11:11Speaker 01

  The closest thing to my book is a book titled Henry at Work. And that came out about two years ago. Before that, I don't think I could see anything like that book in this book. And I think that with that title, Henry at Work, for a lot of people, it would signify that he did work. That the cabin seems to people to be just this sort of easygoing, let me float around the pond and the Walden Woods and that area and just dilly-dally my life away each day. But it's not what he did. Even going to the pond and creating that cabin, he built the whole thing himself, although

• 11:56Speaker 01

  with the aid of some people to help him do things like raise the roof and things like that. But for the most part, he did it by himself. And what he did inside it was significant too, in terms of significant work. Because he spent that, the two years, two months and two days that he spent in that cabin at Walden Pond, writing. And that was his, it was his principal dream career was for him to be a writer. But at the time, he hadn't published any books yet. In the end, he would end up publishing only two books, although a number of his essays would become books. So he really became a successful writer.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  But plotting away at it day after day, or day in that cabin, is what eventually led to that. So you have him working on the manuscript for Walden.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And it said that he spent, he went through seven drafts in nine years. Seven drafts of Walden in nine years before he turned it over to a publisher. So the thing about the cabin again is, was he just lolling around in there? Or was he really doing something that was not just businesslike, but profitable? And if you remember from that chapter, one of my fellow colleagues, who is an economist at the University of Connecticut, Tom Michelli.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Tom wrote, he wrote an analysis, he put an analysis together about what did Henry, what really happened in terms of economic output? What the, from Henry during that time at Walden Pond? And he was able to calculate that Henry was actually profitable. Even though he didn't get a hundred thousand dollars for his manuscript then and there. In time, what he did there led to that, not to that figure, but it led to a book contract. It led to people buying the book. And after he died, it led, more people bought the book, more people.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  And it's 170 years now, and the book is still selling. So where did that profit that's being made? How was that created? It was created in the cabin and during that time that he was there. That's the misconception is that he was a loafer. He didn't really do that much. He did a lot in a lot of other ways too. But I like to think about how that Tom Michelli was able to identify the finances of what happened and the aftermath of Henry being there.

• 14:54John R. Miles?

  Can I have a fun question for you? If Henry had LinkedIn today, what would surprise people most on his resume?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  You might remember that I had a little mock LinkedIn, a couple of pages in the beginning of the book.

• 15:09John R. Miles?

  That's why I went here.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I put down as much as I could about all the various things that Henry did in his life that were business-like or work-like, like, or whatever. And in the end, I say, how could you not hire this guy? There is just so much there. I think it would be that there would be so much of a variety of business-related achievements on his resume. I think that people would expect it to be a much smaller document, and there wouldn't be all that much. And if you take certain things that Henry did that were not the whole of his life, but just a kind of episode in his life, you could look at certain things and say,

• 15:56Speaker 01

  if this was the only thing he did in his life in a business sense, he could have had a mark, made a mark in history that way. I'm thinking about the pencil, for example. Okay, his father ran a successful pencil manufacturing firm in Concord. And while Henry didn't spend a lot of time there as he grew up, he was looking at other things that he might do with his life. He did spend some time working for his dad. And he noticed that there was something wrong with even the successful pencils that his dad produced. At that time in America, pencils were very sloppy, unpredictable.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  We were starting to come out of the Inkwell era and into the pencil era. And it wasn't, a pencil might write cleanly and clearly, or it might slop all over the page. There was a problem. And yet, that could be considered a successful pencil because it was a state-of-the-art, even though it's not pushing the phrase "state-of-the-art." Anyway, he, Henry, had a feeling that it could be something better. So I write in the book about how he decided to do some research and he went back to Harvard, where he graduated, and he went to the library there and he started hitting the books.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  And he found that in Europe, particularly in Germany and France, pencils were much, much better than in America. So why was this? And he determined what the recipe, as they call it, for the lead inside was, how it was, it was mixed and constructed and all. And he brought that information back to his dad and, and also created a, an invention, I'll call it a contraption, that allowed the, just the perfect kind of ingredient to be created in the pencil factory and then mixed together and used for the, for the lead inside the pencil.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  He basically reinvented the pencil because his process caused it to be something that you could, it was predictable. You could rely on it. You knew that it wasn't going to get sloppy all over the page. And it then spread to the rest of America. So successful pencil makers, just like his father, that type of pencil went away because of what Henry had done. If that's the only thing he did in his life, that would have been enough to make his mark on history. But it wasn't. It was just one of many things that he did that was remarkable and a contribution.

• 18:39John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, I want to pause for a moment. Across this week's conversations with Gordon Flett, Martin Shaw, and now Ken Lozot, a clear pattern emerges. Mattering is the foundation. The stories we live shape how it develops, and the structure of our lives determines whether we sustain it. That's why I wrote You Matter Luma. It's designed to help a child feel their worth early, before it becomes tied to performance, approval, or constant proven. Because when that foundation is in place, people move through life with greater clarity and stability. If you want to learn more, you can visit youmatterluma.com. Now, a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 19:23John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck on the Passion Struck Network. Now, back to my conversation with Ken Lozot. Yeah, I love that story. I happened to be interviewing Joan London yesterday, and it was interesting because the way she was describing her life is how you were describing Henry's. If people only thought of her of being the anchor for Good Morning America, they'd be missing out on the three decades of work she's put into cancer advocacy, dementia advocacy, elder advocacy. But I think it's a common issue that we tend to look at people through a narrow lens instead of seeing the greater impact that they've made.

• 20:07John R. Miles?

  And I think Thoreau was exactly that case, the way you just described it.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I have to tell you that before I got involved with the Thoreau Birthplace House, and particularly before I began my research for this book, I didn't know that much about him. I grew up 20 miles from here to Massachusetts, a small city called Marlborough. And we never came over to Concord, except to go to Walden Pond once, a crazy beach afternoon. We're all on school buses and just going wild. But as far as really understanding who he was, didn't really understand it. So one of my inspirations, one of my moments of inspiration for this book had to do with that pencil.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Because what happened was I had, I had, there's an auction every year for the Thoreau Society puts on for all kinds of artifacts and things, various books and recordings and things like that. But I had to put out a winning bid for something. I can't remember what it was, but I had to go over to the Walden Woods, basically artifact shelter. And where they have a lot of things that are up, up behind glass, and they all have to do with Henry. And the guy who was the caretaker of it said to me, I was looking at this pencil behind a glass. And he said, he said, you know what that is? And he told me the story. And I was like stunned. I had lived in Concord for a number of years at that point.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  I still didn't know that. So that there was something in there that clicked in me then that eventually led to this book because it just was leaping out at me that this he did that?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  How could he do that with no training, with no 30 years in the industry or anything like that? That's the sort of thing that if you go back to the LinkedIn resume, that's the sort of thing that I think people don't know about because I didn't know about it.

• 22:13John R. Miles?

  Ken, a lot of my work deals with the bridge between, in some aspects, work, some aspects are personal lives, but then worth and mattering. And as we talked before we went live, I mentioned to you that I was going to try to bring some of my favorite quotes from Thoreau into this discussion.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  You're doing good, John.

• 22:38John R. Miles?

  And one of the first ones I wanted to bring up is the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. And I had a question for you about that. When you step back from the business achievements, do you think Henry was ultimately wrestling with a deeper question? Not how to succeed, but whether a human life can feel inherently worthwhile?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  That's probably what he defined as success. What drove him crazy was watching people just struggling and working five, six days a week in factories or on the farm or whatever to pay bills, just like we do now. That's where the other quote, the mass of men's lives are lived in quiet desperation.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  And but they don't know how to get out of it. So what he was trying to say with your quote is there's another way to look at this. In the first chapter of Walden.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  He talks about what he calls the necessaries of life, not the necessities, but the necessaries. That was his word. And he's looking at things like clothing, for example, and saying, how much clothing do we, how many shirts do we need? How many pants do we need? That sort of thing. And looking at that. And so it's like, if you feel like you need 20 pairs of shoes and 20 pairs of pants, et cetera, you're going to have to get some money to pay for that. But he felt that in order to really be successful, you could have much less stress, feel much more at one with the universe around you and spend time on things that you might

• 24:19Speaker 01

  care about more than some job that's on an assembly line and let those things go that you need the money for. So that was a work-life balance approach to things. But it's not something that's easy to do, but he was able to do it pretty well. He's certainly a good example of doing it, but it doesn't mean we're all going to run out and live in a cabin for two years and just have only one pair of pants. But that was his thinking there.

• 24:53John R. Miles?

  Ken, I'm glad you brought up quiet desperation because I have just turned in a manuscript myself for a book that'll come out in October, where what I try to do in this book is create the modern day infrastructure for how do we in our modern lives overcome quiet desperation? But in the book, I thought a lot about quiet despair. And I can't even tell you how long I thought about this because as I was thinking about Henry's definition, what he was arguing is that most people live trapped by debt, obligation, and endless labor disconnected from meaning.

• 25:36John R. Miles?

  And his response to it at the time, it was radical simplification of life's necessities, which you go through in the book. Food, shelter, clothing, fuel, movement, things like that. But as I have started to really look at this, and I wanted to ask you about this, I have started to say that today, the mass of men are not living in quiet desperation, they're living in quiet disorientation. And what I mean by that Is Henry was really looking at the lives within the walls that contain us. And I think today with algorithms and the digital world we live in, those world, those walls are becoming translucent.

• 26:21John R. Miles?

  And so to me, the difference is a quiet disorientation is this ache that we feel when we fill every sign silence that we have with chatter or the pursuit of the next achievement. Um, so it's expanding upon his legacy. I just wanted your thoughts on that expansion.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  There's nobody that's a better standard bearer of quiet and our natural sounds like Henry. A lot of people don't know that he spent literally four hours a day out wandering the woods. He, that's a significant amount of time. And he saw the factories starting to be come in and the noise that accompanied them. And he didn't want any part of it. He had his own issues with technology at that time, which not as wasn't anywhere near as crazy and disorienting as it is now, but it was starting to happen, right? The train was now just coming in, the telegraph, not much more though, when you think about it,

• 27:27Speaker 01

  certain kinds of machinery and that kind of thing. But he felt that to be a whole human being, a human being that was in touch with nature and also in that way with their core and what mattered to them. Well, what they felt like they should be doing with their lives. Those are the things that I would say were his attempts, successful attempts to escape the disorientation of his life and his surroundings. Disorientation is certainly more simplistic than what we have now. But it mattered to him as well that the quiet was important. When he and his brother started a school in there, I think they're around, both of them

• 28:11Speaker 01

  in their twenties or so, they, part of the curriculum was to go out for a number of hours in the afternoon with the kids and then experience nature.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  And if that happens in our school systems today, it's certainly not every day and it's certainly not three or four hours. But that was important to him and Henry knew, Henry had grown up in public schools in Concord and he had even taught for a very short time there. And he knew the curriculum was, had to do with rote, memory and just the basics of the three hours and that kind of thing. And then a memorization, definitely. He wanted more critical thinkers to emerge from his teaching. And that's the way he did it, get out there. And, and that's the quiet, I think, that he was able to find. And you could still do that now. You can still go out.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Either of us, anyone listening to us right now can, once this is over, not before, but once this is over, go out, take a walk around nature. And scientific studies these days, that indicate that a simple matter of going out for 20 minutes and just looking at trees as you walk down the street or something like that, can be a great stress reducer. And it's just so simple, but Henry was locked into that back then.

• 29:39John R. Miles?

  Thoreau writes that when people live these lives of quiet desperation, I think the critique of the labor system that he was looking at during his time mirrors today's hustle culture and burnout epidemic. And as I think about this and what you were just saying, he's really not diagnosing an economic problem. He's describing what happens when people stop feeling that their lives truly matter. And I think that's what that quote really means. The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. And if you're exchanging it for your fundamental sense of significance,

• 30:23John R. Miles?

  then quiet desperation is the result that you're going to end up with. Do you think simplicity, when it came to Henry's life, when you look at it through this lens, was a productivity strategy? Or do you think it was for him a spiritual discipline?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Maybe both. I certainly think it was a spiritual discipline. But you're getting me thinking about it. I think that it felt to him like the most natural way to go about your life, whether that was in the course of, you use the word productivity, was that in the course of doing things or not, simplicity. He became very successful as a surveyor, which we talk about in the book. And, but the way he went about it was to be truly dedicate, dedicated to measuring the plot of the land,

• 31:21Speaker 01

  the plot, plots of land, the plots of land as carefully as he could, or he had, he had a project in the Concord River where he was plumbing the depths of the Concord River and all of that. It was simple, the way he was doing it, but it was also much more intense in a sense of being committed to getting it done right. So in some sense, it's productive and profitable, but in other, it's just, it wasn't doing anything that was having five different instruments to do the measuring or anything like that.

• 32:01John R. Miles?

  Ken, as I read your book, and I would do a lot of this at night because I would read it and then I'd spend time contemplating what you wrote, because the words are very deep and philosophical. And what I came to the conclusion of is I think his radical simplicity was not withdrawn from the world. I think it was a way that he was trying to protect something that he felt was sacred. And that was the ability to live without constantly proving his worth. And what I took from it is that when life is simplified, space opens for mattering. And that was a huge awakening for me when we examine how he lived his life. Because that's what I think he was trying to say.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, simplicity was something that he, I think there are a few different quotes from him on simplicity through his life that emerged. I think it was something that he tried to apply everywhere and to profess everywhere to get other people to pay attention to it. It helped me with one of my experiences about six months ago when I ended up landing a client who wanted to do a book. And again, that's what I do in my day job. I help business people get books published, even though they wonder if they could ever get a book published. Would anybody ever care about what I write about, that sort of thing?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  And this particular guy, he was working with a self-publishing firm and they were having him come back every other day or something for meetings and like this and that. And he was personally using AI and he was getting all this information and all these graphs and all this kind of stuff. I always had to say to him, simplify, you gotta simplify this. This is actually more straightforward. You think about your thoughts, you write them down, you may, you reread them, you rewrite them, you get some feedback. But it's, but simplify. And apparently it worked in his case because he did come and sign on with me.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  But, but it's just that I saw him trying to do so many things. AI in particular is a thing nowadays that we get so much information. It's easy to get. You can get it in 20 seconds or whatever, but it's so much information. Do we need all that information? And I think that, I think it would have driven Henry crazy and disoriented the hell out of him. But I think what he would have done in response was get out of the freaking house and go back to Walden Woods and walk around for four hours and just forget about it.

• 34:39John R. Miles?

  So I think this whole idea, Ken, of simplicity is so valuable for people today. And I think what Thoreau was really trying to do is he was trying to say that simplicity is the protection of your soul. And I loved his quote, "Our life is fretted away by detail." And then he can simplify. Because I think what he was saying here is it's a move toward freedom and autonomy and agency over your life. At least that's how I read it.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I put this in the book, but when he said that, it's hard to know if this was a real thing that happened or not, but it said that Henry said that to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Simplify," to which Emerson supposedly said, "Henry, one simplify would have been enough." So the point I make with that is that it was tough even for him, even in a simple message like that. It's very insidious kind of thing to be pulled toward complexity and information overload and that kind of thing. But he's our guy to keep reminding us that we should resist it.

• 35:54John R. Miles?

  Yeah, so another thing I wanted to really hit on is I think the world moves in very interesting ways over decades and centuries. And there's this thing called social cycle theory where we end up coming back to patterns. And I think we've been in this pattern now for four or five decades where more and more people have moved away from entrepreneurship and independence to conventional employment and working for big companies. And in the manuscript, you repeatedly show that Henry intentionally chose entrepreneurship

• 36:36John R. Miles?

  and independence over that type of employment because for him, meaningful work mattered more than lucrative work. When I look at why so many people are disengaged today, I think that is at a crux of a lot of this. I knew I faced this. I remember I was in a Fortune 50 company. I was at the pinnacle of this company and... I just remember one day, I'm like, why am I spending eighty to a hundred hours a week making someone else's dreams come true while I'm feeling more and more hollow inside?

• 37:14John R. Miles?

  And I think when I read his work, what I'm thinking is like, his approach to business was fundamentally ethical. It wasn't just practical. And his reason for doing it was because of all the reasons I just laid out. So is it fair to say that Henry's real innovation wasn't just perhaps entrepreneurial independence, but the insistence that your livelihood should never require you to betray your own significance?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're reminding me of a quotation, beware of enterprises that require you to wear new clothes, or purchase new clothes, or whatever. His life was all about being what he felt we should all be. So he chose entrepreneurialism because whenever he didn't, it seemed like he got himself into trouble. His job as a teacher, for example, is a good example of it, where here he had just graduated from Harvard, and there were no jobs because it was a depression at the time called the Panic of 1837. And he did somehow land a

• 38:30Speaker 01

  job as a teacher right there, right here in Concord. But he was assured that he would not have to maintain discipline through corporal punishment. And then there was a supervisor from the school committee that came and sat in the back of the room and watched how he handled things and things where kids were a little wild and this and that. And the guy told him afterwards, you're going to have to do that. You've got to have, got to maintain order and quiet. So he said, you got to do this. And Henry, for whatever reason at that moment, said, all right, okay, I'll do it. He called up a couple of students or whatever, and he wrapped them on the knuckles and wrapped them on the wrist and whatever.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  And they went back to their seats crying. And he felt really bad about it. That day, he felt so bad about it that when school was out, he went to this school committee man's office. And he said, I'm quitting. And it was only 10 days that he'd been working there.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  So it was just the, that's the sort of thing that he would recognize when he was not being an entrepreneur. And it pushed him more and more in the direction of entrepreneurialism, because it just seemed like the most honest and successful in his definition of it. And in such a way that he didn't have to feel the way you were feeling, which was like, what am I doing here all this time? He knew what he was doing here and there. So that worked for him, and he pretty much became an entrepreneur, very successful entrepreneur, profitable as well, to the ends of his, the last phase of his life.

• 40:11John R. Miles?

  Ken, if Henry was alive today, what do you think he would reject about modern capitalism? And what do you think he would admire?

• 40:24Speaker 01

  I think that, I think that Henry's thing was that he didn't necessarily outright reject anything without extending his curiosity toward it and trying to understand it. I think the short answer is what we've just discussed. I think that he would say, simplify, simplify, and I think he'd probably stay away from AI as much as he could. But I also remember that part of technology invading his life at that time was that the railroad train was coming in. And in Concord, the railroad goes right by Walden Pond. It doesn't go over it

• 41:04Speaker 01

  or around it or any of that, but it's off to the side. But you can see it. If you're walking around Walden Pond, you can see a train going by, or you can hear it or whatever. And so he builds this cabin, and there is no train tracks. And while he's there, the tracks are starting to be put in. And then ultimately, the train started going by. And he would watch the trains going by, and he would see the people looking out the window, the passenger cars. And he would say,

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Why do we need trains to bring people from Concord to Boston? And to work 10 hours a day and be exhausted and come back? Why can't they just work here? Or why do they have to do that kind of work at all? So the resistance to like the whole point of having trains and that kind of technology was high on his list of what he didn't admire. But as time went by, because he used to go into Boston and roam around and go to museums

• 42:16Speaker 01

  or the Boston Ethneum and study and just admire the way the parks were in Boston and all of that. One day, he tried taking a train trip into Boston rather than the four-hour coach, stage coach, or walking. A lot of what he did and a lot of what people did in those days was just walk to a place. It could be like someplace it took a day to walk. Perhaps that was why they were so skinny. Maybe, yeah, maybe. How much food could they carry right then? There were no Arby's or Burger Kings on the way. But anyway, he got on the train and he went in and then he was able to take his pleasurable

• 42:57Speaker 01

  saunter around Boston and then after two, three, four hours or whatever, get on a train and go back. He liked that. He didn't really appreciate that at the very beginning. But he wanted to try it. And he was known for walking around a city like Boston and seeing like a factory or some kind of, some kind of office building that was doing something that he didn't know what it was all about. He was famous for going in and just saying, I was walking by, I'm not sure what's in here. Could anybody show me around? And they would. So I think that today, he would employ the same process of being willing to, let's keep

• 43:39Speaker 01

  AI in the picture, being willing to see what it did. In the beginning, possibly say, whoa, no, too complicated, this is crazy. But then maybe little by little, he could get drawn into it. It feels like that's what Henry would do, but the verdict would still be there. The verdict of whether maybe at the end of this process of being curious about AI, maybe he would say, forget it. This is too complicated. I don't know what he would say. But the story of the train, I've never forgotten that because it just showed me that he had the ability to change his initial biases and see some value in particularly in technology.

• 44:22John R. Miles?

  Ken, I realize you didn't intend to do this when you wrote the book and other people have different interpretations of it. But in a world where we live in today, where 70% of all employees worldwide are disengaged, I think one of the most important insights from your book was that ethical entrepreneurship equals what I call relational mattering in work. Meaning it's really the way that cultures today should be designed. Because what Thoreau did was he wasn't rejecting work.

• 45:00John R. Miles?

  He was designing it intentionally so that livelihood, as I interpret it, would not violate conscience. And to me, this is such a profound principle when it comes to mattering because what I interpret from it is work that requires self betrayal destroys our sense of mattering, but work aligned with values restores it. And I think so many companies today have these empty values that they put on their walls and then they're there for like face value, but no one lives it. And I think that's what Henry was trying to say is you have to live it. And it's something that Marshall Goldsmith wrote about in his book, The Earned Life.

• 45:44John R. Miles?

  He's, you're not going to earn the life that you want until you match your values with your ambitions and your aspirations. And that's what I look at. His entrepreneurship wasn't about profit maximization. It was about moral independence, his ability to live without surrendering his own inner significance in exchange for it. And I think that's one of the most powerful messages from your book.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  If we go to surveying for a moment, he believed committing himself all in to surveying in such a way that he could learn what needed to be learned, regardless of what perhaps was set out for him in the beginning. In this thing called the Concord River Project, this was almost like an early climate change type of research project because it was looking at the banks of the Concord River and what happened year after year, what happened when it flooded and how it might erase fields and farmlands and things like that. But he got hired by Concord, the town of Concord, to be able to measure the river, all up and down the river. And he spent months working on that.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  And he would go there in the dead of night, as well as in the dead of day, the light of day, the dead of night, and measure again and again. He wanted to do it right. He wanted to do what was going to bring the information out. And Emerson actually apparently was criticized for that. He said, "What? He just goes there and he's just all going back and forth, measuring the same thing." But that's what it was all about for him. That was a moral code, you might say. It's the ethicalness of doing it right, as opposed to just maybe doing the minimum if he was working for somebody and being told what to do.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  He might have been told, "No, don't go out there at night. Don't do that. We're not getting paid for doing all of that, spending all that time." To him, it didn't matter. He wanted to do the job right. And I think it's a thread that then runs throughout his decisions in his life, all the way through, from beginning to end.

• 48:00John R. Miles?

  Ken, I want to end today's discussion. I'll ask you a question, but I want to end it on this thorough quote. Henry writes, "A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone." And to me, this is a refrain.

• 48:19John R. Miles?

  Of wealth as freedom from proven, freedom from comparison and freedom from external validation. If you could leave one thing for the listener today that look, reading Henry's work, he would want them to start doing differently, what would it be?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I think it would be, I would extend what I just said about the total commitment that he would put into it, just to make sure the job was going to be done right and, and not to cut corners. And I think it would be to look at every moment, even like us here, talking together. And then people watching and listening and hopefully reading this book. I do that. We're putting ourselves into this deeply so that real learning comes out of it. And this is just us in this hour, but we'll both shut off the technology and we'll go to do

• 49:24Speaker 01

  something else, whether it's responding to an email, or if it's some sort of conversation, or whatever it is, all through the day, committing yourself to doing something, not just a job, but doing something, your family or whatever, doing it in the way that feels meaningful and feels like a real contribution to that situation. That's what I think Henry was trying to do all through his life. And the more we can do that, I think the more we, we clarify a lot of the conflicts that we have and we face.

• 50:04John R. Miles?

  And I'm going to leave the audience with my own quote here that I would like to leave them with. So many people are disconnected today and they

• 50:14John R. Miles?

  They're most disconnected from themselves and from the experience of life, like you were saying, like walking in the woods, experiencing the beauty. And Henry said, live in each season as it passes. Breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit. And what I think he was trying to say is embody your life, slow down and be present. And I think that is a tremendous message for so many people today.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Right. I think that's exactly what I was trying to say in Henry's words. Breathe, breathe what's around you, taste the fruit, really taste it. I think that's what we often don't do. And it's not, it shouldn't be a matter of moving on to the next thing, but

• 51:01John R. Miles?

  Right.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  being at attention to the thing that you're engaged in at this moment.

• 51:09John R. Miles?

  Ken, it was such a pleasure to have you and such a fun discussion. Congratulations on your book and I highly encourage my audience to go out and buy your own copy. It's called Walden for Hire: Business Lessons from Henry David Thoreau.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Thoreau.

• 51:29John R. Miles?

  There we go.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  You've got to throw yourself into pronouncing it that way from here on.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  You're about to say it.

• 51:38John R. Miles?

  Ken, thank you so much for joining me.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Thank you, John. I had a great time. It was a lot of fun.

• 51:43John R. Miles?

  That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Ken Lozot. This episode brings the week into focus because across these conversations, a clear structure begins to take shape. We need to feel like we matter. The stories we shape carry how we understand ourselves. And the way we live determines whether that sense of mattering holds. Thoreau's example adds something practical to that structure. He treated life as something that could be designed. He examined what was necessary, he reduced what was not, and he built his work around what he valued. This leaves us with a useful prompt to look at the life we're building and consider whether it reflects our values, our priorities and our sense of self. If this conversation resonated with you, share it with someone who may need it.

• 52:24John R. Miles?

  Leave a five star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore more at our Substack, theignitedlife.net. To continue the journey, learn more about Walden for Hire, visit youmatterluma.com and watch the full conversation on YouTube at John R. Miles. Before we close, a look at what's coming next. Next Tuesday, I sit down with Joan London, journalist, author, and former co-host of Good Morning America to discuss her new memoir, Joan: Life Beyond the Script. In this conversation, we explore life transitions, caregiving, and what it means to navigate change across different stages of life. From advocating for her mother during later life care to redefining her own identity across decades,

• 53:07John R. Miles?

  Joan shares what it takes to move through uncertainty with resilience and purpose.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  People often hear things that are opportunities and they immediately think, ah, wow, wow, that would be great for someone. Why not for you? And I don't think that people just let ideas and opportunities like pass them by, like just float right by them because they don't take that moment to consider, maybe I could do that. And it's, you don't have to see, as one of the quotes in my book is, you don't have to see the whole staircase, you just have to take the first step.

• 53:42John R. Miles?

  Until then, remember, you matter and the life you build should reflect that. I'm John Miles and you've been passion struck.