25 Million People Can't be Wrong: This Advice Will Change Your Life (James Clear)

What if the smallest decisions you make today determine who you become in 2026? In this powerful New Year conversation, James Clear — author of Atomic Habits, the global phenomenon with over 25 million copies sold — sits down with Emma to break down the real psychology of habits, identity, and long-term success. Whether you're trying to reset your routines, build discipline, or reinvent your life this year, this episode gives you the blueprint. James reveals:-Why “every action is a vote for the person you wish to become”-The invisible mistakes that sabotage your habits-How to escape bad habit loops without relying on motivation-Why the next hour matters just as much as the next decade -How to build habits that are obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying-The science behind consistency (and why starting is the real superpower)-Why “if you’re struggling to improve, the problem isn’t you — it’s your system”-What leaders, founders, and top performers do daily to stay ahead-Why identity is both your greatest advantage… and your biggest obstacle-How to make habit change FUN Emma also opens up about her own struggles with habits, discipline, and energy — and James responds with practical tools, mindset shifts, and game-changing frameworks you can start using today. This is more than a conversation — it’s your 2026 reset, your system reboot, and your reminder that you’re far more capable than you think.

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

• 0:09Emma Grede?

  James Clear's Big Ideas on Small Habits completely rewired my life. And if you're serious about change, he's the person you need to hear from. James is one of the world's leading experts on habits. His book, Atomic Habits, has sold over 25 million copies. And you know what? 25 million people can't be wrong. Today, James breaks down how to reshape the next decade of your life and why it all starts with the next decision you make, right now.

• 0:44Emma Grede?

  James, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to talk to you. I've read your book, Inside Out, backwards and forwards. Well, I'm one of the 25 million people that bought that book. And it's my theory that 25 million people cannot possibly be wrong. So congratulations. No, it's absolutely the truth. So listen, for so many people listening to this right now, it will be their first podcast that they listen to at the top of the new year. And so I really think that habits are so incredibly formative, incredibly important for your life and for your success. And so I want you to contextualize a little bit for anyone that's listening right now.

• 1:26Emma Grede?

  If they listen to what you say and they do what you know, what actually can they get out of it?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Well, we talk about habits a lot of the time. What we're really talking about is the process of learning. It's the process of how your brain and body learns a new behavior or something to do. And everything that you do now was previously unknown to you. When you were born, you didn't know how to chop a tomato or write your name or brush your teeth or anything, start a business. But now you have skills because you've practiced these things. And so one of the lessons is that you will get better at anything that you practice. And if you take a minute to look at what people are practicing each day, like what do a lot of people spend their time practicing? Practice the art of getting mad on social media. Practice the art of going into a spiral of negative thoughts and overthinking. They practice behaviors that aren't performing well for them.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  So in a lot of ways, your habits are the best lever that you have for driving a better life, whether that's a healthy mindset, or a more fit body, or a more successful business, or whatever. It's, you know, you're, the things that you repeat are what you reinforce. And so if you want to figure out where you're going to end up in a year, or five years, or 10 years, just follow the arc of your habits. What trajectory are you on right now? I think the short way to say it is, if you want to change your life, you have to change your habits too. And there are lots of steps that are involved in that. And that's what Atomic Habits is all about.

• 2:45Emma Grede?

  Oh, that's what we're going to talk to everyone about today. I mean, I feel like there was a time in my life when my habits were so poor. It's like, I would get up late, I would like go to sleep late. I used to smoke a lot of weed, which does not lead to really good, healthy habits. But I feel like we've all been there. And so what do you have to say to somebody that is listening to this right now, who's in a bad habit loop? Like, how do you get out of the not so good habits?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Two things. First thing is, when things aren't going well, it's very easy to blame yourself. Self judgment, get critical, feel like getting criticized, or other people looking at you, or whatever. But if you're struggling to improve, the problem isn't you. The problem is your system. We don't change, not because we don't want to change, we don't have enough discipline to change, or a lot of the standard kind of narratives that you hear. Usually, we don't change because we have the wrong system for it. We don't have the right approach. And Atomic Habits is all about trying to build a better system. And so the second thing is, if you want to build a better habit, there are really four things that you need to work in your favor. So you want the habit to be obvious. That means it's easy to see, or easy to get your attention. You want the habit to be attractive,

• 3:56Speaker 01

  so it feels fun, or it feels motivating to you. You want the habit to be easy, simple to do, convenient, frictionless. And you want the habit to be satisfying. You want it to be enjoyable, or rewarding, or you feel like it benefits you in some way. So those four things, I call those the four laws of behavior change. Make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, make it satisfying.

• 4:15Emma Grede?

  Can you give me an example of that? Like, what's the easiest example?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Well, actually, one of the most interesting things is to look at the behaviors that are very easy to form a habit on. So like checking your phone, you know, nobody, people sit around all the time and they say, oh, I wish I had enough discipline to work out more. I wish I had enough discipline to meditate every day or whatever. Nobody ever says, oh, I wish I had enough discipline to check my smartphone. You know, it's like, it just happens.

• 4:36Emma Grede?

  It just happens somehow.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  So why does that happen so seamlessly? And what can we learn about our habits from that? Well, one reason is it's very obvious. Your phones are always on you. It's buzzing. You get notifications. Somebody texts you, whatever. It gets your attention. Second reason is it's very attractive. There are all kinds of interesting things. You know, how many people are following me on social media? Do I play a video game? Check my emails? See if somebody messaged me? Whatever. It's simple. It's very, most of the behaviors are very frictionless to do. In fact, a lot of the largest companies in the world now, many of the apps that are on your phone, basically take a simple human desire and then they try to make it as frictionless and as simple as possible. DoorDash, everybody needs to eat. Now you can just tap your thumb a couple of times and the food will show up for you.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  And then it's, of course, it's rewarding and there's lots of stuff about dopamine hits and all that kind of stuff. But that's one example of a behavior that is obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying. And what do we all do? Billions of us are just picking our phone up every three minutes. So take that same idea and apply it to something that you want to do, you know, like, exercise is probably the most common example. It's the most typical New Year's resolution or the most popular New Year's resolution. But make it obvious. All right. If you want to go for a run, set your running shoes and your clothes out the night before. So it's right there as soon as you wake up. I actually have a couple of readers who will sleep in their running clothes. And then they just get out and just put their shoes on.

• 5:53Emma Grede?

  I could just turn over and not look at a running shoe, like very easily. All right. So make it obvious.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  So second step is make it attractive. All right. So you wake up on January 2nd. You're like, all right, today's going to be the day and your bed is warm. It's cold outside. You're like, well, maybe I'll press snooze. But if you text a friend and you say, hey, let's meet at the park at 6:30 and go for a run. Well, now you wake up at six and your bed is still warm and it's still cold outside. But if you don't get up and go for a run, you're a jerk because you leave your friend at the park all alone.

• 6:21Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  So you've simultaneously made it more attractive to get up and go for a run and less attractive to press snooze and sleep in. You haven't changed how hard the habit is, right? The run is still going to be just as annoying as it was before. Yeah. But you have made it more attractive. Make it easy is pretty obvious here. You would scale the rundown, make it shorter. Maybe you just go around the block the first time. There's this guy named Mitch. I mentioned him in Atomic Habits. When he first started going to the gym, he had this strange little rule for himself where he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he'd get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, drive home. And it sounds silly, right? Like, clearly, this is not going to get the guy the results that he wants. But if you take a step back, what you realize is he was mastering the art of showing up.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym for even if it was only for five minutes. And I think this is a pretty deep truth about habits, something that people often overlook, which is a habit must be established before it can be improved. And you have to make it the standard in your life before you can optimize and scale it up. You need to standardize before you optimize. But most of the time, we're so focused on finding the perfect workout plan, the ideal diet, the best sales strategy, the perfect business idea. We're so focused on optimizing that we don't give ourselves permission to show up in the small way. But, you know, if you can't master the art of going to the gym for five minutes, four days a week, who cares how good the 45 minute workout plan is? You know, it's just a theory at that point. There's a quote from Ed Latimore where he says, "The heaviest weight at the gym is the

• 7:50Speaker 01

  front door."

• 7:52Emma Grede?

  That's a really good quote.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  There are a lot of things in life that are like that.

• 7:55Emma Grede?

  That's a really good quote.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  You know, the hardest step is the first one.

• 7:57Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  So I think if I could only boil, I had somebody ask me recently, "Hey, you know, 25 million people have read this book. What are some of the themes that you've seen bubble up?" If I could boil it down to one thing, like the single biggest theme that comes out is, at the end of the day, most of this is really about making it easy to start. And the easier that you can make it to start, to show up, the easier you can make it to master the first 30 seconds or the first five minutes, the better positioned you are to be successful. And there are lots of things that you can do for that, to make that possible. But really, sticking with habits, being consistent, is just an exercise in getting started each day. And so the person who starts consistently is the person who sticks with it.

• 8:38Emma Grede?

  Yeah, because I feel like for so many people, like, starting is okay. You know, it's January, you're like, "I'm gonna do this. I got a new workout kit. I'm feeling like..." Who wants to break their goals in January? But by the time it gets to February, it's a whole different thing. So what is the one thing that people get completely wrong about the way that habits form? And what are the, like, invisible mistakes that derail us?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I like the phrase invisible mistakes. That's good. All right, two, two things. First invisible mistake is... They think they're making it simple when they're really not. So they'll say something like, all right, I'm only going to do one thing. I'll just focus on going to the gym to start the new year and that'll be my habit. But if you're focused on working out for an hour or whatever, then all of a sudden you look up, you had a long day at work, you only have 20 minutes left. You're like, oh, I don't have time for my workout. One of the little messages that I try to remind myself of is reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule.

• 9:31Emma Grede?

  Reduce the scope.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule. The original scope was I was going to work out for an hour and now I only have 20 minutes. So a lot of people are like, oh, I can't work out today. But reduce the scope and stick to the schedule.

• 9:42Emma Grede?

  So you're like, do the 20 minutes.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, what can you do in 20 minutes, you know? And I've had so many days where time gets away from me and all I have time for is I go to the gym. I do like three sets of squats and that's it or something, you know? You only have time to do one exercise or whatever. But in many ways, I feel like the bad days are more important than the good days. They end up counting for more because you don't throw up a zero and you keep the habit alive. And if you keep the habit alive, then all you need is time. But somebody who's too focused on it being perfect, well, then they just like let that day go by and that's a, that's a missed opportunity. I almost feel like not, we've been using a lot of like personal examples and working out and stuff, but I think it's true in business as well. The only place that you really gain an edge is when you show up on the hard days.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Showing up on the easy days, everybody shows up on the easy days. They feel good, they have enough energy, they have enough time. Everybody does it when it's easy. So it's only when things are suboptimal that you actually gain any distance on what the majority of people are doing. And not that it's all about like winning, but the way that greatness shows up is through consistency. So if you want to do anything well, you have to be able to show up when the situation is suboptimal, not when it's in your favor. And scaling habits down, reducing the scope, but sticking to the schedule is a way to do that. It's a way to not throw up a zero and make sure that you stick with it.

• 11:00Emma Grede?

  And what's the science behind that? Because I feel for so many people. So we do a couple of things, right? We don't just say, oh, I'm going to start going to the gym. I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to get healthy, I'm going to change the way I eat, I'm going to change all these things. So we actually try to put so many different things together. And then when one thing falls, like somehow they all fall. So what does the science say behind, to your point, just doing what you can, not throwing up a zero, doing the 20 minutes if 20 minutes is all you've got?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  So I think this leads into the second invisible mistake, which is Usually when we start and people say, what do you want to achieve? Pick whatever habit you want, business, creativity, life, fitness. People start by picking something they want to achieve, an outcome that they want. I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to make a million dollars. I want to publish a book, whatever. Right? There's some, there's some outcome that we optimize for. And I think instead of asking, what do I wish to achieve? We should start by asking, who do I wish to become? So who are my habits reinforcing? You know, what identity am I fostering through these behaviors that I do each day? This is a concept that in the book, I refer to it as identity-based habits.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  And the idea is that every action you take is like a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

• 12:15Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  So when you show up, if you, if you walk outside today and you shoot a basketball, you don't instantly think, oh, I'm a basketball player. But if you shoot free throws every afternoon for the next three months or six months or year, at some point you cross this invisible threshold where you say, yeah, I guess playing basketball is part of who I am. And it works that way for everything. Every time you show up and record a podcast, you're casting a vote for being a podcaster. Every time you go to the gym, even if it's just for five minutes, you cast a vote for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. And no, writing one sentence does not like make you a writer, but it does cast a vote for, I'm an author, I'm a writer. I'm the type of person who doesn't miss writing sessions. And the more that you build up evidence of that identity, the more you will push to maintain it, the more you will fight to keep the habit.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Because you start to take pride in that being part of your story.

• 13:04Emma Grede?

  And you literally start to believe that you're the kind of person that can achieve those things.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  I think the difference here, so you often hear people say something like fake it till you make it. I don't necessarily have anything wrong with fake it till you make it. It's asking you to believe something positive about yourself.

• 13:19Emma Grede?

  But you're saying, don't fake it. You're saying, do it.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  I'm saying, Behavior and beliefs are a two-way street. So what you believe will impact the actions you take. But the actions you take will also impact what you believe about yourself. And so start with meditating for one minute, or making one sales call, or doing one push-up, and let that be evidence that in that moment, you were that kind of person. And pretty soon, you look back in three months or six months, and you start to see why these small actions matter. It's not just about getting a result in the moment. It's also about building up a body of evidence, piling, casting votes on the pile for who you are. And you can't deny it.

• 13:58Emma Grede?

  You cannot deny it.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just did that for three months. So I know that this is who I am.

• 14:02Emma Grede?

  It's so interesting. I mean, I'm fascinated that after that unbelievable success of this book, you decided to do a workbook. And you decided to do a workbook, what, seven, seven years after the book?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Seven years, yeah.

• 14:15Emma Grede?

  We're like, come on now, what's going on? I love that you did it. What made you decide that you wanted to actually do a workbook? And what are you solving with this project specifically?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Well, something that I've learned from working with people and businesses the last seven years, talking about the book, is people can always use more direct, specific help with implementing their habits. You know, my, kind of my objective, my guiding light as an entrepreneur is just to be useful. So I want to try to produce the most useful things that I can. In a sense, I get paid for like the quality of my ideas. If I have better ideas, things go well. And if I have bad ideas, then I get criticized for it. And that's how it should be. And so Atomic Habits is like all of the best ideas that I have for building habits. But you could still sit there and say, okay, I understand environment design. How do I redesign my environment to make habits easy? And that's what the exercises in the book are for. Or, okay, I understand that scaling habits down is helpful. How do I actually break my habit down?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  So it's something I can follow. And that's what the exercise is for.

• 15:11Emma Grede?

  For people that are listening, like you know those things. You know those things about yourself when you're doing them. And so sometimes just being, having the awareness of like, this is just not what I want. I don't want to eat this way. I don't want to be like this. I don't want to spend this much time in bed. It's like, well, then what is the opposite of all the stuff that you don't want to do?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Something that you're saying here reminds me of a thought, which is that in many ways, I think the two timeframes that matter most in life are 10 years and one hour.

• 15:39Emma Grede?

  Ten years and one hour.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Ten years is shorthand for all the big, important, meaningful stuff in life. You think about most of the big movements in life, the things that people really care about, you know, building a marriage that you're proud of, raising successful kids, um, you know, creating a successful business, getting in the best shape of your life, contributing to some cause, whatever it is, like, it's usually a multi-year thing, right? Sometimes multi-decade.

• 16:03Emma Grede?

  Totally.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  They're big, long-term visions. And so I think it's important to think longer term than most people will. It changes the choices that you make in the moment. But you need to pair that with one hour, which is shorthand for how can you do something in the next hour that contributes to where you want to be in ten years?

• 16:21Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  You know, like, you never want a day to pass without doing something that will benefit you in a decade.

• 16:26Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  And now, not everything in life will be like that, right? There are lots of things that just have to get done each day, there are tasks to do, whatever. But if you can go to bed each night and you've done something today that will pay off for you in ten years, you usually don't even need to wait ten years. Usually it's two, or three, or four, and you start to see how those things accumulate and stack up.

• 16:44Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And so it is the combination of long-term vision and short-term action.

• 16:49Emma Grede?

  Long-term vision and short-term action. So you're literally saying to yourself, I've got this big picture goal for myself that's gonna take potentially a decade to achieve, but I'm not gonna go to sleep until I've done something small that's getting me there.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  This is the core insight behind Atomic Habits, the phrase. I chose the phrase Atomic Habits for three reasons, right? So first reason is atomic means tiny or small, like an atom, and your habits should be small and easy to do. Second reason is an atom is a unit in a larger system, so your habits are kind of like the fundamental units of your day, and collectively they make up your daily routine. And the third meaning of the word atomic is the source of immense energy or power. And so if you put all three of those together, you understand the art of the book.

• 17:33Emma Grede?

  Well-chosen, my dear.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Right? So you got, you make changes that are small and easy to do, you layer them on top of each other, like units in a larger system, and you end up with a really powerful result. And I think that is basically... Long-term vision, short-term action. It's how am I taking steps today that are contributing to this larger result?

• 17:49Emma Grede?

  So I love that you frame that up for us though, because even as you speak, everything sounds so simple. It sounds so easy. And so when people listen to this, they're like, yeah, I've done that. Like, I've tried that. Like, that feels so obvious. But really what you're talking about is this idea of like the compounding effects of small actions. Right? You say it much more beautifully than that.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Well, we all, we all know people have done this and we all have also done this ourselves, which is you can take small actions that accumulate, or you can take small actions that evaporate. You know, we all have spent time on small things that are trivial minutia. They don't really add up to much. And so I think the dividing line here is, am I taking small actions that are accumulating toward a larger thing? They're part of something bigger and you can start to see how they compound day in and day out. It's easy to just spend time doing little things that don't matter. And so there is, it's not, the key is not just that it's small. It's also that it accumulates.

• 18:43Emma Grede?

  It's, yeah, it accumulates and it's working very purposefully towards whatever this end goal is. I think people find it very, very difficult to imagine themselves that far out. But I think that you really have to do. I mean, I'm a, I'm a furious planner and it, it's not my quote, but somebody amazing said, you know, people tend to underestimate what they can do in a decade. Right? And it's really, it's an interesting way to think about your life. I always had these plans for myself. It started with the 30 plan and then the 40 plan, then I'll be working on my 50 plan. But for me, it's a, I love to have something that feels that far out. Because for me, I can then break it down and I go, all right, well, like, there is a thing that I can do that's going to get me closer to that.

• 19:26Emma Grede?

  There's no illusion that it's going to happen quickly. And I know that in my life, it takes like a million little steps. And that's all right, because having that context of it being really far out makes you relax about it almost.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  You know, what's interesting is many people feel like what they lack is motivation, but what they really lack is clarity.

• 19:44Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and vision sometimes, right? Like, you can lack a vision for yourself.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  The more clearly you know where you want to go, what your vision is, the easier the next step becomes. Um, you know, it's, there's a, there's a framework that I really like. Sean Peery, he's an entrepreneur, I think it's the first person I heard it from, but he said, A, B, Z. Okay, so point A is an honest assessment of your current reality. Don't deny the facts. This is where I actually am right now. Point Z is where you want to end up. And B is your next step. And the the lesson is that you don't actually need to know steps C through Y. You know, a lot of the time, people feel like they have to have everything planned out, or at least a good chunk of it, before they can give themselves permission to move forward. But all you really need to know is A, B, and Z. If you know where you're at and what your next step is,

• 20:30Speaker 01

  you can just assess after you take that step, am I getting closer or not? And then you can do the whole thing over again from there.

• 20:35Emma Grede?

  I love that framework. I've actually never heard it like that, but that's how I feel. Because oftentimes, it takes you getting to B to even see what's happening in C and D. Like, you don't know. Plans emerge. And they don't like, it doesn't all make sense at once. And especially when you're doing like, when you're doing big things, when you're doing important things, it's like, it's never that obvious.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  There's that line from Brian Armstrong, the Coinbase founder. He said, "Action produces information." So your point A takes some action to point B, and it will produce information. And then you will see, you know, the next step more clearly from there.

• 21:07Emma Grede?

  Yeah, which is a great thing for people to grasp on to. Because again, I think that, you know, you can feel pretty hopeless sometimes. You can feel like, wow, this thing feels so far away. How on earth will I get there? All right, I'll just give up. I won't even bother.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  There's a, so there's, there is like a tension between these two mindsets. On the one hand, you want to think long term. Where do I want to be in a decade? What's that 10-year vision? But on the other hand, you can't get so paralyzed by that big thing that you don't take a step. And so I think there's a balance of doing that, but then also realizing you, seeing the long term, but realizing you don't need to do that much right now.

• 21:40Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  So sometimes I'll tell people, you would be surprised that you can do it five good minutes. You know, five good minutes of pushups will leave you winded. You'll be panting, gasping for air, right? Five good minutes of conversation can restore a strained relationship. Five good minutes of writing will make you feel like you're moving forward on the manuscript again. It does not take long to feel good again. And so if you're sitting here and you don't feel good about where you're at or what you're facing right now, just try to have five good minutes.

• 22:07Emma Grede?

  Do the thing.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  That that can do a lot to reset your mood. And then you see, you see things differently after you're on the other side of those five minutes.

• 22:18Speaker 02

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• 23:50Emma Grede?

  One of my favorite things to do is read. And when you have four kids and, you know, five companies and a podcast and other stuff going on, it gets really hard, right? It's like, it doesn't ever feel like the cozy moment to like have a little read. But I started doing, you know, like 10 minutes in the morning. And I put my workout kit on and I sit in like the dark kitchen. And I'm like, you know what? This is the moment. And for me, that was always useless because I like to read for an hour. I want a 90-minute clear moment where I can dive into something. And I'm like, you know what? I've only got the 10 minutes. So I'll just do that. And it, for me, it like restored me as like, no, I am still a reader. I get through books a lot more slowly these days. But it's like something that I love and something that's meaningful for me.

• 24:33Emma Grede?

  And so that little 10 minutes just like restores me back to like, I haven't given up on this thing. That's still a part of me. It's just a little 10 minute.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  That's such a great example of giving yourself permission to do the small version. You know, it doesn't have to be the perfect version. It still matters. Those 10 minutes still matter.

• 24:48Emma Grede?

  All the minutes matter. You write about this really interesting thing. And you say time management is meaningless without energy management, which I love. What are your personal rules for protecting your energy?

• 25:01Speaker 01

  So, you know, we all, everybody always say, oh, everybody only has 24 hours in a day. Well, that's true, but those hours, if you were to break them out into 24 one hour blocks are not equivalent. You know, you have different control over certain hours than you do for others. You have different energy during certain hours than you do for others. I think the question is, when are my good hours? When are my best hours? And how do I want to structure those things? I found my, my big change this year has been shifting my workouts earlier in the day. And just saying, it's probably going to impact business stuff a little bit. But if I say my health is important to me, it needs to get some of my better hours. What was happening last year is it was only getting my leftovers.

• 25:38Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, I said, I said this was important, but then you look at how you're spending your time and it's not. So, yeah, I think that's one thing. The second thing, I think probably the more useful answer to this question. It's so hard to tell people like, how should you spend your time, right? Like, that's everybody's personal decision. But the practice that I find most useful and that I think will be helpful for others as well, is a practice of reflection and review. So just purely mathematically speaking, what are the odds that what you're spending time on right now? Is the highest and best use of your time? It's very unlikely out of the universe of options.

• 26:13Emma Grede?

  Well, if you're listening to this podcast right now, I beg to differ. But otherwise, if you want.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  So the the odds are that there's something better for you to be spending your time on. And the only way to find that is to have time to reflect and review. What I found is if you have a strong work ethic and you've found that working hard serves you well in life, then that's really good, but sometimes it can become a crutch. You know, it's like for me, for a long time, my solution, if I had a problem was, well, I'll just work my way out of it. And that works for a while, but what really matters, if you really push, maybe you can work like 10% harder or 20% harder. But if you work on the right thing, you could get like 100x outcome or 1,000x better results. And so you don't only need to work hard, you also need to make sure you're working on the right thing. And I don't think you can just stumble your way into that.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I think you need to carve out time to reflect and review. What do I really want out of my life? What am I focused on? There are some questions I like to ask myself to try to like figure this out.

• 27:13Emma Grede?

  Will you share those? Because I I really believe, especially at this time of year, like looking back, being reflective, being super, super honest with yourself is probably one of the most valuable things you can do. But it's really hard for people because all the shit you didn't do was your fault, usually, you know? So it can it can actually be a very difficult process to do, honestly. How do you do it?

• 27:37Speaker 01

  So here's some of the questions I like. And no, no single question will give you the total answer, but collectively they can start to move you in the right direction. So the first question is, what am I optimizing for?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Different people optimize for different things. You will optimize for different things at different times in your life. Sometimes maybe you're optimizing for money. Sometimes you optimize for creative freedom. Sometimes you optimize for family or free time. But whatever the answer is, it's probably pretty personal to you. And it's worth it to think about what am I optimizing for.

• 28:05Emma Grede?

  And it's critical, right? Like to be that, because again, when you're saying, you know, it's about the money or it's about the quality of work or I'm optimizing to spend more time with my family. Like that is key to your decision making. So you really need to get that clarity.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It's key to your decision making and it gives you permission to not do other things that maybe you are berating yourself about right now. Oh, why aren't I spending time on that? And then once you realize that's not what I'm optimizing for.

• 28:33Emma Grede?

  So you're using that question almost as a process of elimination.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 28:37Emma Grede?

  Okay, I like it because you know, I'm just like, I like to work the backwards way into everything. So that's that's helpful.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  So second question is, what season am I in right now? So once I know what I'm optimizing for, life has different seasons. You know, sometimes you're in a career heavy season. Sometimes you're in a family heavy season. Sometimes there are all sorts of inflection points. It could be everything as big as I had kids or all my kids moved out and now I'm an empty nester. Or, um, you know, I'm starting a new job. Or it could be as small as I took on a new project at work and that, you know, that's changing things. But when your seasons change, your habits often need to change too. And I find that I'm kind of a slow learner in that regard. I kept, especially after we had our second kid, I kept trying to force fit my old habits into my current life.

• 29:21Emma Grede?

  Totally.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And then eventually.

• 29:22Emma Grede?

  After my second kid, I was trying to force fit my old body into my old clothes, but I understand. Same thing, same thing.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  It took me about a year and a half and then I realized, stop being dumb about it.

• 29:31Emma Grede?

  About a year and a half too, James. It's amazing stuff. We have so much in common.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  So what season you're in dictates the habits that you're in, that you're going to follow. After you've spent some time thinking about what am I optimizing for and what season am I in? You can ask yourself, can my current habits carry me to my desired future? You know, am I on the right path? If your, if your current habits can get you there, then great. Maybe all you need is patience. But if they can't, something needs to change. And so that helps you distinguish like, am I just being impatient about this? Or do I need to make some bigger adjustments to what I'm doing each day? The other question I like, kind of, kind of adjacent to this is, um, I call it like the, I don't know, like the alien test or something. But like, imagine some alien came down from outer space and they were going to follow you around for the day. You can't talk to them. They don't understand your language. All they can do is see how you spend your time.

• 30:17Emma Grede?

  Oh, Lord.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  What would they say your priorities are?

• 30:20Emma Grede?

  That.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Right? If they can't, if they can't hear your words and they can only see your actions, what would they say your priorities are?

• 30:25Emma Grede?

  That's it.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Um, because a lot of the time, I find that the distractions that are most dangerous are the ones you have a good story for. You know, it's like, it's usually items that are like, uh, numbers three through seven on your to do list. Because you're like, well, look, it's number three, it's number four, it's on here, I need to do this. But you have a good enough story for it that it prevents you from doing priorities one and two. And that stuff, that, that's, uh, your most dangerous distractions will always seem justified to you. And so you need to be ruthless about where you're spending your time and what you're focusing on.

• 30:57Emma Grede?

  Yep.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  So those are, those are some of the questions I like.

• 31:00Emma Grede?

  I mean, again, all kind of. Hard questions, right? What am I optimizing for? What season am I in? Like, again, you really have to be quite reflective about yourself to truly go like, really what season am I in?

• 31:14Speaker 01

  I think you need to sit down and think about it. You're not gonna, you're not just gonna stumble into the answer. But here's, alright, so those-

• 31:19Emma Grede?

  Because we tell ourselves a lot of stuff, right? We go, we go, you know, I've, you know, I've just had a baby or I'm just like this. We've just had a move and you kind of categorize yourself in these moments of your life. But it's like, is that really the truth? And how hard do you hold on to the season? You know, sometimes we get kind of comfortable in these identities that we make for ourselves. When in actual fact, it's like, that's just something you used to say. And it became, that became the habit.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  The, what you just said is a really important truth, which is the tighter that you cling to your current identity, the harder it becomes to grow beyond it. And so you see that identity is kind of a two edged sword.

• 31:53Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  On the one hand, you know, we were talking earlier, identity is really useful. It helps you build habits. It helps you establish being this type of person. It helps you, it gives you something to hang on to and something for the habit to, to build around. But at some point, growth is unlearning. It's, it's unlearning the things that you were holding on to. It's unlearning the habits that used to serve you in a previous season, but maybe don't serve you anymore. And now it's time for something new. The other question that's a little more tactical, the, these questions have been kind of bigger and philosophical, but-

• 32:23Emma Grede?

  I love being philosophical.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so do I.

• 32:25Emma Grede?

  It's January, it's like, let's go deep, but this is the time, let's go in.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  But some of the other ones that are good are a little bit more tactical. And it's, one question is, what habits are upstream from other good things happening? So when you, when you live a good day, when you feel like you're productive or you're kind of dialed in, it's like, oh, that was a really good day. What are the major pieces of that day? And, and most people have two or three things that kind of bubble up. Like, I know for me, if I get my workout in, that's a big part of it.

• 32:51Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Usually if I read, even if it's only for like five or 10 minutes, that's a part of it. And for me, reading is often more important than writing, because when I, the reading sparks ideas to write about. So, you know, maybe those are two things that I would say are upstream from other good things happening. This thing happens when you think about what habits you want to build. It's really easy to pick a list of like six or seven or 10, and that that's too many things to focus on at once.

• 33:14Emma Grede?

  Is it too many things?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  I think so. It's just hard. It's very hard to perform at a high level while you're spreading yourself in seven different directions.

• 33:21Emma Grede?

  What do you say? What's optimal?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  As I say to the woman with five businesses.

• 33:25Emma Grede?

  I have a lot of people. I'm relying on a lot of other people's habits.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find that I can get away with, if you're just talking about, I'm trying to build a new habit. I find that I can get away with one professionally and one personally at the same time. And part of that is because habits are deeply tied to context, to environment. So if you were to talk to like an academic or something, they would tell you the definition of a habit is this automatic, non-conscious behavior. You know, brushing your teeth or tying your shoes or something you don't even think about. But I think a more useful definition for what a habit is, is it's a behavior that is tied to a particular context. So your habit of watching Netflix might be tied to the context of your couch at 7:00 PM.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  And if you walk into your living room at seven and you're like, hey, I want to build a new habit. I want to start journaling. Your brain is kind of subtly being pulled toward, hey, this is time to pick up the remote and turn the TV on. So one thing, and there have been a number of studies that have found this. It's easier to build a new habit if you have a new environment. Now, that doesn't mean that you always need like a brand new room. But you could, for example, you could get a chair and you could put it in the corner of the room and you could say, this is the journaling chair. And the only thing that happens when I sit down here is I journal for five minutes. And now that context is starting to get tied to the new habit and becomes easier for it to get established and for it to be built.

• 34:45Emma Grede?

  And James, those things are important because as I, even as you say, I'm like, do I really need a chair? Like, do I need the chair? Do I need the chair? You're like, yes.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Doesn't have to be a chair. Be a pillow.

• 34:57Emma Grede?

  But you're like, you need something. Like, human nature means that we need that.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  You can't have a habit outside of an environment. It's not possible. We live in environments all day long. We're in some space always. And so if you want the behavior to be reliable, it helps for it to have a reliable place to live, for it to have a reliable space. That's the meditation pillow in the corner. Maybe it's the journaling chair. Maybe it's, you know, something else, but it happens in the same place each time. And that helps it get established. Now, once it's established, maybe you find that you can adapt it a little bit more or whatever. Sometimes when I hear from people who travel a lot, they kind of complain about it because they're like, well, I'm always switching contexts. So how do I do it? And in that situation, I would recommend find a part of the experience that is reliable.

• 35:42Emma Grede?

  Oh, talk to me about that because I am religious about my workouts until I travel. Well, I'm traveling. I can't possibly do it because my trainer's not here and my stuff's not here. And I don't like, do you know, like I make that the the total excuse.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  So like, let's say you don't know what hotel you're going to be in. But you know that you're going to check into a hotel and you know that whenever you go up to your room, you take your bag and you set down the luggage and you unpack it or whatever. That's the first thing you do. Well, if that is part of your typical process, you could say, all right, my new habit is going to be, after I check in, I set my bag on the luggage rack and then I do 10 pushups or whatever it is. You know, and you you find a way to tie it to that part of the experience that is reliable. That's the context that's reliable, not even though the environment's changing. That sequence is always the same.

• 36:27Emma Grede?

  You've got to tie it to the experience.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  This is what in Atomic Habits, I refer to this as a habit stack or habit stacking.

• 36:32Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love the habit stacking. That that is, I have to tell you, thank you for that because it is one of the best takeouts. I want you to explain it and then I'm going to tell you my favorite habits. Okay. Because I just did it. But to me, that was like, I use the phrase game changer too much, but that was so game changing for me. It really was the the big, like, if I could take one big takeout from your book, it was.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, that's great. Well, it's not my idea. BJ Fogg, who's a professor of Stanford, came up with it, but.

• 37:00Emma Grede?

  You could have taken it.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, no. He, um, his insight, which I think is great, is that habits are easier to build or they're more likely to stick when you tie them or stack them to something you're already doing.

• 37:11Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  So let's say that you make a cup of coffee every morning already. And your new habit is you want to meditate. Your habit stack could be after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. And then, once you start to get good at it, you can start to build them out a little bit. So you can say, after I make my morning cup of coffee, I will meditate for 60 seconds. After I meditate for 60 seconds, I will write my to do list for the day. After I write my to do list for the day, I'll start working on the first item. And you've got this little stack of behaviors that you do in the same order every time. And it's tied to something you're already doing. And so it's just more likely that you follow through. A lot of people, I feel like they wake up and they kind of think they have this general sense of, I hope I feel motivated to write today, or I hope I find time to meditate today.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  And you're never going to find it if it's just like that. You need like a specific place to insert it into your routine.

• 38:01Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  And so part one of a habit stack is find the right place to insert it. Maybe it's your morning routine, maybe it's some other time. But when is the right time for this habit to live? And the right habit to trigger the new thing that you want to do?

• 38:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and I think that it's that connection point that is really, really important. For me, you stole it because it was coffee followed by meditation because I have to, like, nothing happens for me if it doesn't happen in the morning. So that was like a really amazing one because putting those two things together has just become, that's my everyday, like, that's what I do. I would never skip the coffee, would never skip brushing my teeth. I never skip the meditation and it goes like in that order.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 38:38Emma Grede?

  But my other favorite one is like when I travel, I like will take my kids. Like if I can like butt my trip up, you know, it's supposed to be on a Wednesday. I move it to a Thursday, which means like I can have a kid be with me over the weekend. And it's just such a like delicious little thing because it turns something that's like, okay, I've got to be away from the kids again into actually no. This is our little moment to have like the offshoot time. And it's me with one kid in a city doing something that otherwise that would never have happened. And it's not, it literally has become such a habit for me that I'm looking for those moments in my schedule where I can make it happen. And I was like, This is, this is beautiful.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  It's really nice. And they probably love it too.

• 39:16Emma Grede?

  They do, they do love it too. Who doesn't love one-on-one time with their mom? You obviously have worked with a lot of leaders, CEOs, like seriously high executives. And I wonder if there are like consistent habits that you see with leaders, like right across the board.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I'm gonna call these like a, like an anchor habit or something. So it's like, what's the one thing that you do that you feel like primes you for peak performance? And there are some common ones that come up. Creatives often mentioned going for like a daily walk of some sort. Uh, gets their creative juices flowing, helps them see things clearly. Performers, musicians, comedians, things like that, talk a lot about visualization routines, especially before they step out on stage. So that's another one. I'm gonna come back to that in a second. CEOs and executives, meditation is, I would say, the most common one that I hear. Uh, you know, did I get my 10 or 15 or 20 minutes in in the morning? It feels like it sets the rest of the day up for success. And then workout is another really common one. Not, I don't know anybody that does all four of those every day or anything, but those are the common ones that come out. And maybe you can figure out which one sounds best for you.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  The visualization one is an interesting one that I've been um, thinking about recently and, and also learning more about. I was talking to this guy the other day who is, I, I have a, in addition to my writing, I also run a publishing company. And um, or co-founded a book publishing company.

• 40:29Emma Grede?

  First of all, we, we have to touch on that a little bit.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 40:32Emma Grede?

  It's kind of amazing what you're doing.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  So anyway, he's one of the authors that we're publishing. It's this guy uh, named Brandon Webb, who is a, he previously trained the Navy SEAL snipers in mental performance. And he's also a father. He has three kids. And so he took a lot of the mental techniques that he used with them. And he also is teaching them to his kids who now are older.

• 40:50Emma Grede?

  His kids.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, now they're older. They're, they're great. They're all doing well. They're in college and whatever. But one of them, one of the key things that they talk to both SEALs and his children is visualization techniques. And specifically, it is a positive outlook in any scenario and visualizing what a positive day might look like. So I actually answered up, I, I read a little bit about this. I talked to him a little bit. And then I started, I did this with my son the other day. So I have young kids.

• 41:15Emma Grede?

  How old are your kids?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Five, three and 10 months. Um, yeah.

• 41:18Emma Grede?

  You're in it.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  It's the best.

• 41:20Emma Grede?

  In it. I love that you say it's the best.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  It is. It's, it's, it's the, it's the best. Anyway, my three-year-old started preschool. And uh, he had a hard drop-off the first day or two. You know, he's crying, fussing a little bit, doesn't really like it, whatever. So the third day comes and I'm getting him up. I, we're having breakfast. And I was like, all right, today's a preschool day. And he was like, eh. And I was like, all right, hold on. So you like your teachers, Ms. Caitlin, Ms. Jayla, right? He was like, yeah. I said, uh, what'd you do yesterday? You got to use glue sticks and the crayons? Like, that was fun activity? He was like, yeah. I said, uh, what about snack time? You like snack time and lunch? She said, yeah. And then I said, what do you do after school? He said, well, when we get done, we go play on the playground for like 30 minutes. And that was it. I just stopped there. Yeah, I feel like, you know, I'm not trying to like hammer it home. You love preschool, you know, whatever. But, uh, but just a little bit. You said it out.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  What I'm trying to do is get him to visualize the day going well. And you can see how this could help you at any stage. You know, when they're in fourth grade and they're giving their first presentation in front of the class. Like, let's visualize what a good day would look like. And the more that you do that, I think it's just, to me, it's like, which story are you emphasizing? You know, there are good things and bad things that happen in every day. There are good things and bad things that happen in every life. And we're all gonna have our time when it's your turn and life comes for you and things get challenging. But what story are you choosing to emphasize? And what I want is for them to emphasize the day going well, or for them to emphasize the positive moments. I played, I played baseball for a long time. I played through college.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  And when I was 10, 12, 14, at the end of each season, we'd go out on the back deck and I would sit out there with my dad. And we would talk about the, the wins from the season. We'd talk about the best games that we played and like the team. We'd talk about my best plays or like, you know, games that I had that went really well. We would talk about the good parts. And what happened was I would end each season, I'd have this catalog of memories of things that went well. And it would send you into the next season feeling good. And so I think it can both be done beforehand, uh, to rehearse what would a good day look like. And it can also be done afterward, reflecting, what were some of the wins from my last year or from my last month? And emphasizing some of those pieces of your story.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Because it puts you in a better position to be persistent and to stick with it the next day. One time, I was talking to David Epstein, he's the author of Range and Sports Gene, a couple of other books. And he told me grit is fit. Grit is fit. Grit is fit. And what he means is that people often talk about wanting to be disciplined and persevere. They want to have mental toughness. But really, what mental toughness looks like is it looks like you are well suited for what you're facing. It looks like you have a good fit with what you're dealing with. Because the person who is well suited for it, the person who is a good fit, is having fun. They're having a good time. And so, the person who is having fun doing that thing is a person you do not want to compete with.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Because when it gets hard, they're more likely to stick with it. The person who's not having fun, who it was a chore and a hassle and kind of a, they had like a negative frame around the whole thing to start, well, as soon as it gets difficult, what are they gonna do? They're gonna give up. And so, I think all of this weaves together to create this kind of mindset of resilience, which is, you try to visualize what the day would look like if it went well. After things are done, you reflect on what the wins were and what was positive. And you look around and try to find the things that are fun for you. I actually think, if I could add one question to Atomic Habits, one thing that's not in the book. I was gonna ask you that. It was gonna be this question of, what would this look like if it was fun? You know, and so for any habit that you're trying to build, that doesn't mean that your

• 44:56Speaker 01

  habits will always feel like going to a concert or like the most fun part of your day, but pretty much any habit can be more fun than the default. Oh, yeah. And just take the time to figure out what that version is for you.

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• 46:17Emma Grede?

  I speak to so many founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs on this podcast and they come in and they've lost money, they've lost companies, they've gone bankrupt. And I speak, and I will just say this, and I'll probably get killed for it, mostly the men will tell me how much fun they had. And it didn't matter anyway, because they were in it and they were thriving and they could get back up and do it again. And you can see it lights them up in a way. And I'm like, you're made to be an entrepreneur, you're made to be a founder, because it is hard, it is difficult, you will lose, it's not always great. But you can see the people that thrive in that environment. And so to

• 46:58Emma Grede?

  me, it makes so much sense, like grit is fit, like it's, that is extremely true.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  I love being an entrepreneur, but I don't really care if my kids want to be entrepreneurs or not. What I want is for them to find something that lights them up, the way that that lights me up, you know, because all you really want is for them to be interested and invested and curious and excited about it. And if that energy is there, there's a million ways to improve.

• 47:23Emma Grede?

  And you'll be successful and you'll be happy. And those are the things, that's all that any of us want for our kids. I think the big problem is, because I love that you speak about visualization, it's so much easier for people to sit in the place and be reflective about what didn't work out, right? It's like, in a way, like, we, we spend a lot of our time and a lot of our energy naturally goes toward what didn't work out. And it's almost like that opposite of what you're saying is the right thing to do.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  I think what's tricky, I'm trying to get better at this. I think what's tricky is there's a place for pessimism, there's a place for questioning and criticism. But the way that I've been thinking about recently is optimism in the beginning, pessimism in the middle, optimism at the end. So optimism in the beginning, yeah, right, a little pessimism sandwich. Optimism in the beginning is, I try, I don't always do a great job of it, but I try to not be my own bottleneck. I don't want to be the first person to tell myself no.

• 48:20Emma Grede?

  Damn, why?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  I would rather the world tell me no first and then I can learn. Maybe it's a bad idea, maybe it's not gonna work, but I don't want to say no.

• 48:28Emma Grede?

  So what does that look like in practice for you? Like if you're gonna be optimistic at the start, setting out to do this workbook or to, you know, open your new publishing company, what does that sound like?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  My little shorthand in my head is work backwards from magic. So what is the magical outcome? Let's dream that up. There are no constraints, there are no restrictions. Let's figure out what the magical outcome is and then let's try to work backwards from there and figure out a way to make it happen. But what we're not gonna do is dream up the magical outcome and then talk about all the ways that it won't happen and then not attempt it to start. So optimism at the beginning, but then, once you have a little bit of a plan formulated or you know what that magical outcome is, pessimism can be useful. And specifically, the question that can be useful is, if this is going to fail, how does it fail? If we're sitting here in two years and something went wrong, what's going wrong? I'm working on a couple of big projects right now and when I sit down with the team,

• 49:23Speaker 01

  I say two things. First is, I don't need to be right. I'm gonna have a lot of questions or a lot of ideas and I'm gonna propose things, but I don't need to be the one who is right. What I want is for us to get it right. So I don't need to be right, but we need to get it right. And then the second question is, I'm a slow learner. So what am I gonna figure out eventually in a year or two or five that you guys are looking at now and you're saying, if he only knew, then he would do it differently? Or what am I gonna see in two years and I'm gonna be like, well, now this is a real pain in the ass, I wish we would have figured it out then? The question that I ask for that is, what's not being said right now that needs to be said?

• 50:01Emma Grede?

  Oh, yes.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  So I don't need to be right, I want us to get it right. And what's not being said that needs to be said? And if we can lay all that out and have an honest conversation, then I feel like the pessimism is useful because it's helping us improve the plan.

• 50:14Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  But once we get through that exercise.

• 50:17Emma Grede?

  You gotta move.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  Now we gotta go back and now I don't want to hear anybody not on board, right? Now we all need to believe because the only way to make it happen is if we're all the way in. If you're trying to do something hard and. And it's going to be difficult. Anyway, we're going to face plenty of obstacles. I don't need to be talking myself out of it from the start.

• 50:33Emma Grede?

  Let's not have it internally. How do you think about organizations and culture and habits? Like, is it possible to implement good habits within a company?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Definitely. I at some level, I feel like I I get questions like this a lot from companies. I honestly think at some level, it's like an HR problem. And what I mean is, do you have the right people on the boat? You know, is everybody rowing in the same direction or are people rowing in opposite directions? And then you're wondering why you're not making any progress. Some people just want different things, you know? And that question of what are we optimizing for? Is everybody here agreed on what the answer to that is? And a lot of the time.

• 51:10Emma Grede?

  And even if you're not, are you rowing in the same direction as me? Because otherwise you have to get off the boat.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's tough. And you know, and sometimes, a lot of the time, you also are trying to do both. You're trying to get the right people on, but you're also trying to make progress with the people that you have. And I think there are some things that can help there. Role modeling is the biggest one. Don't ask people to do things that you're not willing to do, you know? Or like, what kind of, how do you want to show up as a leader? The best, the best form of motivation is not like fear of punishment. It's respect and wanting to reach that standard because they aspire to be the way that you are.

• 51:41Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah. So you're saying the best way to implement great habits in an organization is for the leadership to model the habits that they want.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  For the leader to be competent. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's like, you gotta, you start there.

• 51:53Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Now, there are lots of other things that, you know, can come after that. One interesting, the bigger the organization gets, the trickier it becomes. Because it kind of becomes like a game of telephone.

• 52:05Emma Grede?

  It's Helly May.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, you have something that you say is a priority. And then as soon as it gets passed through the ranks, it gets filtered. And the message that finally lands to a lot of people is totally different than what you wanted. So it gets, it gets hard. You need to, you need to focus on fewer things. I heard this story that Microsoft, when they were launching Azure, which is their cloud computing product. They wanted both reliability, no bugs in the software, uh, security. And they also wanted speed. We want you guys to ship quickly and have a lot of features. And they knew that if they told the team that both of those things were a priority, they would just use one as an excuse for why the other wasn't happening. Oh, you said you want us to ship quickly. Of course it had bugs. Oh, you said you didn't want any bugs.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  That's why it's taking a long time. And so they decided, all right, for the first year, it's just going to be about speed. And so the message to everybody was speed, speed, speed, iterate fast, ship quickly. Then after the first or second year, they shifted. They said, okay, now we have a fully built out feature set. Security prior is the main priority and speed is less important now. But it shows that clearly both of these things matter, but they, they had to choose. And I think you also have to choose as a leader. What are you emphasizing? Because the message is going to get muddy if you're trying to emphasize multiple things.

• 53:23Emma Grede?

  Yeah, no, it's incredibly good advice. I mean, you've been so unbelievably successful now. And obviously we're talking about your publishing imprint, which I think is quite brilliant. What made you decide to start your own thing, given all the success? I mean, anyone in the world would have taken whatever it was you were working on next. So why bother to do it yourself?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Um, I think it's fun to try to make things better. And so, yeah, I-

• 53:48Emma Grede?

  You saw a bunch of problems in the publishing industry?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I, you know, I launched Atomic Habits and I, I love the team that I worked with, but-

• 53:56Emma Grede?

  Can I ask you just worked, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but did you, did, I just, I, I just got my copy of your book so I can make sure you sign it. And, um, it's annoying because it's not the one that I've read a hundred times. It's a new copy that came from upstairs and it says 20 million copies sold, which I think is now 25 million. Did you visualize that? Did you imagine that? Did you optimize for that?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  I don't think any reasonable person could have expected that. Um, I, I had two things in mind. Um, I thought, can I sell a hundred thousand copies in the first year? That was, I had, so my email list is about 400,000 when I launched. It's like three million ish now. But I thought, I thought, okay, maybe I can, you know, if I push it hard, I do all, if I, you know, do a bunch of interviews, if I do the whole thing, can I do that? And the book is good, obviously.

• 54:42Emma Grede?

  You knew the book was good?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying if the book is good, maybe you could do that. You know, you don't know until you launch it, right?

• 54:47Emma Grede?

  No, you don't.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  So a hundred thousand the first year was my first thought. And then the second was, can it sell a million copies ever? So if I make the timeline long, like, could it sell a million copies in 20 years? Habits are still relevant in 20 years, 40,000 copies a year for 20 years. I don't know if I keep growing and keep writing about this stuff, like, maybe that's possible. Those were the two things that were in my mind. So I did not expect to sell 25 million and five or whatever, but it was, yeah. It's been, it's been great.

• 55:14Emma Grede?

  It's been pretty good. I wanted to ask you how success has actually changed your own habits. Like, have you changed the way you think about habits and discipline and your own purpose?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  That's interesting. Some stuff changes and some stuff doesn't change. I feel like the important stuff probably doesn't change, you know, like, at the very beginning, I was just trying to be useful and share ideas that were helpful to people. I think that's basically the same now as it ever has been. You know, it's like, how can I be useful? How can I share something that's helpful?

• 55:40Emma Grede?

  Congratulations, you succeeded.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. Your time gets tighter, so that's different. You have to make decisions that seem almost kind of silly sometimes. Like, if you, if you do a good job at your thing, then your opportunity cost should increase every year, which means that things that used to be like the coolest thing that would come across my desk in a month, now I have to say no to, and that still feels kind of silly.

• 56:03Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  I can't have as tight of a relationship with the readers as I used to. The first 10,000 people that signed up to my email list, I emailed each of them individually.

• 56:10Emma Grede?

  No, you didn't.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  They would sign up, I'd be getting like, let's say I would have like, you know, 50 people sign up in a day. I'd send 50 emails the next day to those people just saying, hey, thanks so much for signing up. I'm really excited to have you as part of this community. I'll be sharing more soon, or, you know, something like that. You can do that for a while, but once it got over 10,000, I can't do it anymore. Then, once it got over like 100,000, it was hard for me to reply to the emails. And certainly over a million, you know, I just, I basically had to put the inbox on a responder, which is fine, it's, you know, it's not terrible for anybody. It's just that I don't feel like I have quite as good of a read on the audience. I used to know it so well, you know? So the scale makes that part a little tricky. But it, it's all good. I mean, you know, what can you hope for? It's like best possible outcome, so.

• 56:50Emma Grede?

  I mean, it's literally the best possible outcome. But does it, um, does it stop you from thinking about doing something else? Has it been too successful?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  I don't think so, I hope not. I, I heard the story that, uh, when Adele wrote Someone Like Me, or, sorry, Someone Like You. That after that, she felt like the best song.

• 57:07Emma Grede?

  Well, it's that fine.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was like, the best song I've ever made is done now.

• 57:11Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  So you kind of feel like, oh, you peaked. I don't, I don't feel that way about Atomic Habits. You know, I feel like it can just be a project that I worked really hard on and did my best. And a lot of people liked it. And the next thing can just be another project that I work really hard on and do my best. And we'll see how that goes. But I don't think it needs to be more than that. You know, like, I'm not making it my entire identity or life or whatever. I'm proud of it. I'm glad that people find it helpful, but I'll just move on to the next thing and try to be helpful with that.

• 57:38Emma Grede?

  Did it change your life?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Again, yes and no. In some ways, of course, you know, it changed.

• 57:44Emma Grede?

  I mean, you must have made a ton of money, no?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  I'm talking to Emma Grede now.

• 57:47Emma Grede?

  I mean, hello. You weren't doing that before.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, there's obviously lots of opportunities that have come as a result of it. You know, I, Author's Equity, the publishing company that I co-founded, like, that wouldn't have happened.

• 57:59Emma Grede?

  It's called Author's Equity.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Author's Equity, yeah.

• 58:02Emma Grede?

  So there's clearly something there that you did around the author's equity. What did you do?

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the model is, the typical traditional model is you get paid in advance upfront, but the publisher keeps the majority of the money. So the majority of the success of the book goes to them. Our model is different. It's no advance upfront, but the author keeps the majority of the profit. And traditional publishing is fine, but it's really a pre-internet model. You know, before the internet, it was true that authors would write a book and the author or the publisher would do basically everything else. They would do all the printing and distribution. They had all the sales relationships, more or less everything else was through them. But post-internet, the author not only brings the content, they also bring the audience.

• 58:43Emma Grede?

  Hundred percent.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  And that is an enormous shift for the industry. And everybody has known this has been true for, I would say, at least 15 years. But all the incentives in the industry run against it. What publishing company is like, oh, we're keeping 70% of the money, but we realize it's different now, so we won't.

• 58:57Emma Grede?

  No, nobody thinks.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Nobody's gonna disrupt themselves that way.

• 59:00Emma Grede?

  But if you are talent, let's say, for example, an influencer, a creator, a more traditional talent, and you have a built-in audience, and you know that you're gonna, on the face of it, sell a bunch of books to your community or fanbase, this is a far more advantageous model.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  For sure. You make two to three X the money per copy. Authors will probably make twice the money. It's not just if you have a massive audience. That certainly is who the model is tailor-built for. You know, it's, it's perfect for someone like you or I.

• 59:25Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  You know that when the book comes out, it's gonna get a lot of exposure and you can keep the upside now. But we've we've tried to map it out based on the size of the advance that you would get and how many copies you would sell, and it holds all the way through the line. So even for authors that maybe aren't going to move as many copies, you're still going to end up with more money. The key is, are you writing about something that's going to persist or not? If you have a book that is going to be relevant in three years, or five years, or 10 years, the author's equity model is very hard to beat.

• 59:55Emma Grede?

  And how does it work on the on the flip side? Because you're obviously the publisher at this point. How are you deciding what type of project should go into your new venture?

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  It's an interesting question. We see a lot of deals. We see a lot of books. It's been fun. You you also just kind of have to decide, like, who do we want to be as a publisher? You know, what kind of ideas do we want to support? And so far, we've been lucky to work with really great authors. So I don't know. It's a it's it's a one off thing. You know, each each book is its own is its own choice.

• 1:00:22Emma Grede?

  What an exciting new thing for you.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  I love it. It's probably the project I'm most excited about.

• 1:00:26Emma Grede?

  Is it really?

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  It feels like each time we do it, we're changing the industry. So I if if someone were to come up to me and say, what are you trying to do with this? I say, I'm trying to build the world's most valuable publisher. And what I mean by that is not the publisher that makes the most money, although that would be great. What I mean is the publisher that provides the most value to authors. So that means four things. You get paid the highest royalties, you get the widest distribution, you have the best rights, so that means you retain the creative rights to your work, and it means we have the best process, you have the best team to help you create a great book. And if we can check those four boxes, we're the most valuable publisher. So far, I think it's gone really well.

• 1:01:01Emma Grede?

  How impressive. And you've put together a pretty dream team around me.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that's been a very fortunate thing. I think I hope that in like 30 years, I'll look back and just be like, I just got really lucky with the timing on this. You know, Madeline McIntosh, she's the CEO of Authors Equity. She was previously CEO of Penguin Random House, which is the largest publisher in the world. She brought Nina, her number two, over. Don Weisberg was CEO of Macmillan, another one of the big five. He's one of the co-founders as well. So the four of us kind of helped. Launch this thing and now we have an amazing team around it too. It's been, it's been a lot of fun.

• 1:01:32Emma Grede?

  That's so fun. I mean, so exciting. Could you imagine when you were writing this book all those years ago that this is where you

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what's crazy is not even that many years ago. I was, you know, I was finishing, I was finishing the manuscript in March of 2018 and then like here I am sitting with you now and I'm like, I'm not only did I publish a book, but it did well. And now I run a publishing company.

• 1:01:53Emma Grede?

  Now you run a publishing company and you're a father of three and yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  A lot's changed in the last

• 1:01:57Emma Grede?

  I mean, a lot has changed for you.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:59Emma Grede?

  What hasn't changed for you? What is like still the same?

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  I love working out. I love spending time with my kids. I love spending time with my family. I have a great wife.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  I like spending time outside. I like going on hikes and I love creating and interfacing with new ideas. Like on the reader's side, the thing that I care about is am I being useful? Am I producing ideas that are valuable? On my side, the, the reason I like doing that is because I think it's fun to engage with ideas and come across new. It's fun to learn new things.

• 1:02:31Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  All those things are the same. And that's why when you asked me a minute ago, has your life changed or not? Yeah, some stuff's changed. You know, you have more money, got a nicer house, you got, you know, whatever. But all those things, those things are all still the same. And interestingly, when you look at like, what are you spending your money on? It's mostly to be able to do those things.

• 1:02:52Emma Grede?

  All the things you used to do.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Emma Grede?

  Which is kind of amazing. Do you have another book in you?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely. I, what I don't have are like 20 books in me. You know, some authors are just like, I'm making a lot.

• 1:03:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  But if I'm fortunate enough to live to say be 80, then I think I'll probably publish three or four, maybe five. I don't know. Something like that.

• 1:03:09Emma Grede?

  But you're not working, are you working on one now?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  I am. I have, I have, I have three manuscripts that are in various states of disarray. Yeah. So.

• 1:03:17Emma Grede?

  That's how you do it? Three?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  I procrastinate on one book by working on the other one, but then, but then what happens is none of them get done. So, um, yeah.

• 1:03:25Emma Grede?

  Will we be surprised at what you're writing about?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Probably not. It's not, it's not gonna be about habits. I wrote my habits book. That's basically everything I have to say.

• 1:03:33Emma Grede?

  Yeah. I mean, seriously, you can't

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Listen to this podcast, read that book. That's everything. I do think that it should pair nicely with habits. You know, there's like, there's one question you could add. You finish Atomic Habits. You're like, all right. I have the toolkit for building better habits. But which habits should I focus on? Like, how do I decide where to direct my energy and attention? How do I decide how to spend my precious time? And so that's a question of like, strategy and focus and prioritization. And so that's one thing that I'm playing with a lot right now is how do you choose the best things to direct your attention and energy toward? So that's some of it. I also just really like this concept of how do I have power over my days? You know, people, power has been discussed a lot and it kind of gets framed as like power over others. But I think really what we all deeply want is power over ourselves.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Power over how we spend our time, what we focus on, power over our thoughts and our mindset. And so those are all questions I'm playing with.

• 1:04:28Emma Grede?

  I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. I just wrote a book called Start With Yourself. All I think about is like, how we have ultimately control of our own thoughts. I mean, it's one of the things that we're all trying to master every single day.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:04:41Emma Grede?

  Yeah. And with all this noise out there, it's really needed. Hurry up. Get on with it. I can't wait to read it. I'm like, let's go.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  In the meantime, I do have two things, two little projects I'm excited about. So one is the workbook. So you've got, you know, you've got Atomic Habits and the workbook comes with it.

• 1:04:55Emma Grede?

  We will all be buying the workbook.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  The second one, though, it sounds kind of silly, but I really do like it. It's, it's an Atomic Habits daily calendar. And what it is, is it's just a page a day that's a reminder from Atomic Habits. And I have found, you know, I look at, I've got like almost four million people on my email list now.

• 1:05:11Emma Grede?

  Do you really?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  I'm like, why?

• 1:05:13Emma Grede?

  Where does this seem like you're not on Substack or something like that? You do it, it's your own.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah, it's on, it's just a newsletter. jamesco.com/newsletter. But.

• 1:05:23Emma Grede?

  What a community. They must be so happy that you stayed with them all this time.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Well, so here's what, here's what's interesting to me is why do you sign up for the newsletter when you could just read the book? And the answer is, people need to be reminded. We all need to be told this stuff week in and week out so that we stay on course, so we stay on track. And that's where the daily calendar has been helpful. I, you know, it's not, it comes out in a couple of months, but I already have it on my desk. And it's really helpful, I think. I have this idea one time that I kind of wanted to hire a coach, like a mental performance coach. And all they do is. You call, they call you in the morning at like 8 a.m. and they give you like a five minute pep talk, just like one like mindset thing and then it's done. That's it. That's the whole service.

• 1:06:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  Um, but it sends you into your day like in the right frame of mind. And I kind of feel like that's what the Atomic Habits Daily Calendar is sort of like. You read like one little page and then you're like, okay, I'm primed for the day and then you go. Um, it's just, I don't know. It's just nice to have a little reminder to keep you on track.

• 1:06:22Speaker 07

  Nerds. Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast. Personal finance can feel like a pop quiz you didn't study for. This podcast is your study guide. On NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, you'll hear from trusted journalists who explain the why behind major financial decisions. You'll get research-backed insights and clear pros and cons, whether you're planning a big purchase or just want to grow your wealth. Make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast on your favorite podcast app.

• 1:06:52Speaker 08

  Hi, everyone. This is Kara Swisher.

• 1:06:54Speaker 09

  And I'm Scott Galloway.

• 1:06:55Speaker 08

  And we want to tell you about Pivot, our twice-weekly podcast.

• 1:06:58Speaker 09

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• 1:07:04Speaker 08

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• 1:07:16Speaker 09

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• 1:07:22Speaker 08

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• 1:07:27Speaker 09

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• 1:07:27Speaker 08

  So if that sounds like a good time for you, especially Mr. That's right, you can follow us on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes every week.

• 1:07:45Emma Grede?

  We're going to go to rapid fire. Okay, let's do it. What's the first thing you do when you wake up?

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  I'm so bad at rapid fire, by the way. I give such long answers.

• 1:07:52Emma Grede?

  I am so long-winded. Don't even worry about it.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  First thing I do, uh, turn my phone off and then take a shower.

• 1:07:59Emma Grede?

  Turn your phone off in the morning?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, like alarm.

• 1:08:02Emma Grede?

  Oh, turn the alarm off. Okay, fine. I was like, wow, that is something else. All right, alarm off and get in the shower. And what's the last thing you do before you go to bed at night?

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Um, give my wife a kiss.

• 1:08:16Emma Grede?

  What is one bad habit that you've broken recently?

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Checking my phone before lunch. I try to leave my phone in another room until lunch each day. I don't do it all the time. I can't, don't do, I probably do it seven or eight out of 10 days. But leave my phone in another room and then I actually get to work on my priorities from like nine to 11, say, or something like.

• 1:08:33Emma Grede?

  Shut up. Wow.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  The funny thing is, I'm like everybody else. If it's next to me, I'll check it every three minutes just because it's there. But I have a home office, so it's only like 30 seconds away, but I never go get it. And so I'm like, did I want it or not? You know, in the one sense, I wanted it so bad that I'd check it every three minutes when it's there. But in another sense, I never wanted it badly enough to go.

• 1:08:56Emma Grede?

  To actually get out of the room and go and get it.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  A lot of your habits are like that. Introduce a little bit of friction and it can curtail to the desired degree.

• 1:09:03Emma Grede?

  You are the gift that keeps on giving, aren't you? What is a book that changed your life apart from Atomic Habits?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Okay, so here's a little, I have a couple that I like. Manual for Living by Epictetus. A lot of people, it's one of the Stoic books. A lot of people talk about Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I think Manual for Living is almost better. You can read it in like an hour. It's very short. Nothing in this book is something you haven't heard before, but everything in this book is something you need to hear again. So just good life principles.

• 1:09:30Emma Grede?

  Immediately buy it.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Manual for Living by Epictetus. The second is Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. So they're this historian, this husband-wife combo. They spent like this 60-year career as academics, writing this huge 12-volume compendium, thousands of pages of everything that happened in history. And then when they got done, they wrote a little 100-page book called Lessons of History. And it's about the main things.

• 1:09:55Emma Grede?

  That's the one we need to read.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  That repeat throughout history. Also, you can read it in like an hour.

• 1:09:59Emma Grede?

  Love.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  And then the third one, this is just personal for me, but A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

• 1:10:05Emma Grede?

  I mean, it's.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so I read that book and I was getting ready, I was kind of in the early stages of writing Atomic Habits. And I thought, alright, if he can write a book about the origins of the universe, and it's easy enough for me to understand, and it's in a hundred and eighty pages, I have no excuse. I have to be able to write a book about habits that's easy enough for people to understand.

• 1:10:26Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  So that was, that was an important one for me.

• 1:10:28Emma Grede?

  That's a great, I mean, that is such a good reminder, because that is a brilliant, brilliant. But we all had to read that in school in England, like back in the days. But I need to read.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Education system.

• 1:10:38Emma Grede?

  Exactly.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:10:39Emma Grede?

  Real roots deep in our genes, absolutely. What is something that you valued when you were starting out your career that you no longer value?

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Interestingly enough, the office that I write in, I used to think if I only had a better office, then I could have the writing habits that I wanted. You know, if I just had the ideal setup, the ideal camera and monitor and desk chair and whatever. And now I have a nice office, and what I find is, I actually write all over. I wrote Atomic Habits in the passenger seat of a car while I was on a road trip. I wrote Atomic Habits on my parents' couch while I was visiting for the holiday. I wrote Atomic Habits in my office. I wrote it at our kitchen table. It's not about the space. And so, yeah, or I guess I should say, it's not about the gear. I valued the gear more than now, I'm like, am I doing the work or not?

• 1:11:31Emma Grede?

  What is something that you value deeply now that you didn't when you were starting out?

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  In some ways, I feel like it was purest in the beginning. You know, like, it couldn't have been about the money, because I wasn't making any. You know, like, I was, I was doing it just because I loved it. And so I think the, the lesson is, the climb is the fun part. And in the middle of the climb, you don't feel that way, because you're just so busy trying to get to the next thing, you're so busy trying to climb to the next step. But the climb is the fun part. And so I think if I could go back, maybe appreciate that climb a little bit more. You know, it's, it's fun to get to the top, that, that's fun too.

• 1:12:10Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  It's hard to stay at the top, that's a lot of work. But the climb is, the climb is great, like. I can remember the first day that I got a hundred email subscribers in a day. We went out to dinner to celebrate.

• 1:12:22Emma Grede?

  You were like.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, it was like a big deal. Um, I, you know, I don't even know what we're getting to three thousand, four thousand. I, you know, I, nobody's even, we're not even paying attention.

• 1:12:30Emma Grede?

  Selling a hundred of those workbooks is not going to move the needle right now for you.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  Which is great, and I'm not, you know, and I'm not trying to complain.

• 1:12:37Emma Grede?

  No, but I understand that.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  My point is just that you're in the middle of the good time right now, even if it doesn't feel like that. Uh, the good time is like when you're having to work for it and when you care about the wins and when each little thing matters. You know, it feels like you're proving it to yourself every little step that you take. I feel like my whole career has basically just been take my current advantages and try to use those to accumulate another advantage. And when you start out, you don't have many advantages. You don't know anybody, don't have much money or time or whatever. But, you know, you like try to find some little win and carve out that step and you step up a little bit and then you just do it all over again. And each one of those little steps is, is worth it. Each one of those little steps is worth celebrating.

• 1:13:17Emma Grede?

  I, it's a pretty glorious message to leave people with because when you're in the middle, it's so hard to think like that and to see it. But I think that's what anyone sensible and, and pretty much everyone I know says, it's like, I wish I could have appreciated it in that, that moment.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  It's not just business too. We went, we were on vacation and we were eating at a restaurant and, um, I went to the bathroom and when I came back, my wife is like crying. And I was like, oh, what's going on? And she's like, I'll tell you afterward. And so we, we left the restaurant and, um, while I was gone, this man came over who's, he's probably in his like seventies. Um, and he was like, I just see you with your little kids and like, it's just, I just want you to know, like, it's just the best time of your life. And, you know, like, it's just so, you know, so great. And, um, we were saying that night.

• 1:14:05Emma Grede?

  Having the worst dinner ever with this five and three and 10 month old.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  And that's how it feels a lot of the time, right?

• 1:14:11Emma Grede?

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  What she said was. You know, at the end of your life, if you were granted a wish to go back and get to spend any one day again, we might choose right now, you know, like we might choose today. And I think it, it doesn't feel like that in that moment, you know, like what you feel is tired or stressed or annoyed because your kids aren't listening or whatever. But it's true, you might choose today. And so the climb is the fun part. It's the fun part of building a family. It's the fun part of building a business. It's the fun part about building your life. It's also work, but it's the part that matters.

• 1:14:45Emma Grede?

  On that note, thank you so much, my dear.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:55Emma Grede?

  If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Derek Brown, and me. Our executive producers from Odyssey are Maddie Sprung Kaiser, Leah Reese Dennis, Asha Saluja, Lauren Legrosso, and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Evan Cox, Kirk Courtney, Andrew Steele,

• 1:15:36Emma Grede?

  Carlos Delgado, and Arnie Agassi. Social media by Olivia Homan. Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sidney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company, and WME. Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Hillary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meekle, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Vieira. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemmagreed. Grede is spelled G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E, with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagreed.me.