156: MBS on Tipping Points and Pivoting Out of CEO (From His Own Company)

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Hi friends. I'm building this episode in reverse as I have one more announcement that I just couldn't resist adding in before we roll into the show. I have a whole bunch of free live Pivot workshops coming right up and one of them relates to the Advice Trap, the subject of our guest today, Michael's latest book, and how to be more effective as a mentor, manager and coach. I'll be doing a live virtual session over Zoom on how to apply Pivot Method as a coaching framework for having career conversations with your team or your coaches. If you're interested in enrolling, as I said, it's completely free. Just head on over to pivotmethod.com live. I look forward to seeing you there. What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

This episode is brought to you by Momentum, my private community for heart based business owners. Doors are opening again in just a few short weeks from March 17th through the 20th. I highly encourage you to join us if you're looking to earn twice as much in half the time with ease and joy, systems, structure, all the mistakes and lessons I've learned the hard way. This is what we focus on in Momentum and it's a tight knit group. We keep it under a hundred people so you're really going to get a chance to get to know other people, get input, advice, sharing, our favorite books, podcasts, apps, you name it. We also have two free masterclasses coming up. The first one is on Tuesday, March 3rd and the next will be on Tuesday, March 17th. I would love for you to join us. You can sign up for the Momentum interest list@pivotmethod.com momentum and you'll get all the details you need for how to join one of those two free masterclasses and to learn more about the program, ask questions and see if it's a fit for you. Another note about today's episode with one of my greatest friend tours and mentors, Michael Bungay Stanier. We are talking about his new book the advice. Be humble, stay curious and change the way you lead forever. Funnily enough, he also said before we record, we don't even need to talk about the book. So we just go off on random tangents. Which is both of our favorite way to do a podcast. I did wanna let you know that if you go to theadvicetrap.com he is giving a special offer if you buy two books, one for you, one for a friend and I highly recommend it. I consider this book a must read. Just like Michael's previous one, the Coaching Habit. They're short, punchy, beautifully designed and so, so powerful. So if you think you are gonna get a copy of the book, head over to theadvicetrap.com because if you buy two of them, you'll get some extra special Bo Michael's throwing in with that. Let's get into today's show.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am overjoyed to have Michael Bungay Stanier here as today's guest. We are also just like with Neil Pasrica. Michael and I are celebrating our 10 year friendiversary after I first brought him to speak at Authors at Google. And we're talking about his brand new book, the Advice Trap. Be humble, stay curious and change the way you lead forever. Michael, welcome back to the Pivot podcast.

Jenny Blake, it is good to be back. And how cool is Neil Petherica? I mean he's another Toronto guy, so he and I hang out here in Toronto a lot and he's just such a kind of ball of awesomeness. I mean literally that's his book, but it's also just how he shows up in life.

Truly, Truly. And he and I talked about the same thing you and I did before hitting record, which he said, listen, we don't even need to talk about the book, okay? The most fun podcasts are just a conversation between two people and you said the exact same thing.

That's cool. You know what I love about Neil? I mean, many things. But when he had that amazing run of how to be awesome or you are awesome or whatever that awesome book series was which sold millions, he just kept working in his job at Learning and Development in Walmart Canada. It was like a really interesting piece around wanting to stay Grounded and humble and kind of maybe some security stuff there as well. But it's such an interesting approach.

Approach, definitely. We talked a lot about that transition that he made because he stayed in it for a while when he could have left. And then I also thought it was interesting. In one of his more recent books he talked about how having that much success with a best selling book, he started to become obsessed with the numbers and tracking the rankings and tracking the charts and that even when you hit some number that your previous self would have been in complete disbelief at, there is this tendency we have to keep going for more, more, more. What else is out there? And I loved his aw around that. And I'm curious if you've had that as well because You've sold over 700,000 copies of your previous book, the Coaching Habit. So what's that been like for you in terms of aiming high and trying to get that tipping point and also keeping yourself sort of unattached to the outcome?

It has been something that I've tried to just be aware of and be conscious of because 700,000 copies is just a ridiculous amount of copies for a book to sell. I mean, it is ludicrous. And it happens through a combination of you write a good book, you work hard to market it, and then you have this amazing sprinkle of fairy dust from the universe that kind of actually makes it happen. One of the things that I did with the Coaching Habit book is I did a nice job, if I say so myself, of defining success. I went, look, I want this book to be a classic. And what that means is I'm playing a long game with it, which is I'm going to commit to market it for two years and stand behind it and do all I can to try and get it moving into the same sort of area as Patrick Lencioni's books or Josh Maxwell's books or David Allen's books, or basically the books that I have on my bookshelf where I'm like, these are awesome and I'm not going to give these away. I'm going to keep these because I'll come back to them time and time again. So in writing and marketing the Coaching Habit, I'm like, don't worry about the launch because the launch is just a blip. Be committed to the longer term play and see if you can make something that is good enough to perhaps become a classic one day. So I all know that in theory for this new book, in practice, I'm like, it's the launch.

Like going all kind of muffled on myself. And there's a way that you can get suckered into the numbers really easily. So there's part of me that's going, if this new book sells, let's say, 100,000 copies, that is miraculous for a book. So I'd be like, super celebrating that. On the other hand, 100,000 copies is like, I don't know, maybe 15% of what the Coaching Habits sold. I'm like, it's a failure. I've only sold 100,000 copies. So you just have to keep reminding yourself. I have to keep reminding myself, which is, you'll come back to the process. All you get to do is commit and do as good a job as you can on the process of it all. Write the best book you can, market it in a way that feels interesting and with integrity, and it'll either work or it won't work. And most of the time, I remember that most of the time.

And to give people some context, if you're listening and you don't happen to be an author or you're not one yet, there's a rule of thumb that selling even 10,000 copies is a successful book. And I think it's something like only 5% of books will even sell that many 10,000. So 700,000 is quite substantial. And one thing I'm curious about because. And I'll just share, I don't mind sharing book for Pivot. It sold about 30,000 so far. Life after college is very similar the last time I checked, which was a few years ago. So hopefully that's ticked up a little bit now, so I don't put too much energy into continuing to sell that one. So I've been pretty happy with 30,000, though I haven't yet earned out my advance. My rule of thumb for what makes a book successful is that a. It creates transformation, that it's helpful to somebody who reads it and they feel that. I'm sitting with them in a coffee shop and they feel relieved, inspired, and they actually have practical tips and strategies to navigate change. But on the back end, it's that they put the book down and they tell a friend and they say to at least one person, oh, you're wondering what's next? You've got to read Pivot just like you want it to be. The go to book for somebody navigating career change.

Right.

And so that, to me, that word of mouth guerrilla marketing can become exponential over time or can be kind of a slow drip where if, at least if every single person puts it down and then tells one or two friends it will sell over the long term. I'm wondering, with Coaching Habit, was there something that created a tipping point that got you to 700? Because even getting to 100,000 would have been like a miraculous success.

I wish I knew, right?

I know.

I really wish I knew. I mean, it sold a lot right off the bat. I mean, it sold almost 200,000 copies in the first year and has been pretty consistent in selling somewhere between 100 and 200,000 copies a year. So certainly what drives the wheel now is word of mouth and people buying copies for teams. They're like, I get emails all the time. I just bought a bunch of copies for my team. And I'm like, that is amazing.

I do think that one of the things that I did that has been helpful was in the book itself. Insert some of the early printing runs of it. I had a single page in the middle of the book going, it would be really helpful if you like this book, to write a review on Amazon, because Amazon is a big place where people go and buy the books. And social proof really matters, not just if you're looking at it and going, oh, Look, Michael has 100 or 200 or 500 or 1000 reviews for his book. But also I think it feeds the algorithm as well. So it means that the book pops up and gets recommended more often as well. So success breeds success. So I think that does help. But I can't really pin down a single event.

You know, I just think from everything I've heard, it's never a single event. You keep hoping that you're like, I was just interviewed on this TV program. This will be it. I will be discovered any moment now. Like, really discovered. And I'm like, you know, not so much. It just doesn't happen like that. You just, a thousand for me, a thousand little dabs. It's like an impressionist painting. You're like, just lots of little dabs of color and the picture emerges. And who knows? Some things may blow up and get big. I've got a TEDx talk that I'll be doing February 29th. I've never done a TEDx talk before, so it's interesting watching myself get caught into the magical thinking about this, which is like, oh, this is a really good TedX location. And they may post it onto the TED page, and then I'll become famous. And then Brene Brown will start returning my calls again, because she used to return my calls. I had this one great moment before Brene got Really famous, where she actually called me up and said, can you give me some tips on how to do good keynotes? I was like, how awesome is that? Brene Brown? Anyway, she doesn't do that anymore. She's pretty much got the hang of it, I think.

So I've got all these kind of fantasies going on about the whole TEDx thing and what it'll do and blah, blah, blah. And then I'm like, yeah, Michael, come on. It's just like, stay grounded. Just keep walking, chop wood, carry water.

Or as they say, well, Congrats on the TEDx. I can't wait to see it. Do you have the topic yet?

I do.

This is being done at the University of Nevada in Reno. They really are one of the top tier TEDx people. They take it very seriously. The audience is about 1500 people. They do get a bunch of their TED Talks onto the TED page. They're like, you will produce an outstanding talk. I had to submit my script to months ago. I had to do a run through with them three weeks ago to show that I'd already remembered my lines. It's already kind of memorized. And I'm literally rehearsing every single day. Every single day I stand up and I practice it and I do a performance that really I'm trying to get. I'm trying to. You know, when sometimes you see people speak.

It feels like they're reading the script from the inside of their eyeballs.

Oh, yeah.

Like, kind of like I've memorized it. I've done that really hard work. And now I'm just making sure that I read the words and I say what I wanted to say. And then you've got other people and stand up. Comedians, I think are particularly brilliant at this, who just had this ability to inhabit their Persona and their presence. And it doesn't feel like they're tinkling their way through a script. It feels like they're sitting there and performing and having this kind of enactment with you. And I'm like, I need to do this so often that I can get to the point point where I can stop obsessing about my script and start being present with the audience and being able to show up and be present and perform to them. And that's what I'm trying to get to.

That's exactly the advice someone gave me. I did one ted talk in 2011 and it was one of my first even public speaking events outside of Google. And they said it's the people that are the most rehearsed that come across the most casual and the most funny and the most in the moment. And that was counterintuitive. And I was so glad that this person. Person said that to me. And I think that's true. Sometimes if you're in the audience and the people who seem so relaxed and spontaneous that they are actually the ones that have practiced the most.

Exactly. I'm like, you know what? I don't even have to try and remember this because I've just said it so many times that I know the cadence and I know where my body should be and I know the little head gesture I'm going to do that will make you laugh or make you cry.

They've worked it and that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to knead the dough and work it and work it and work it. I mean, it's like writing a book, right? Books that you read where you go, that was so well written and it was so easy to read. It just flowed.

That's because that thing has been written and rewritten a hundred times and it's just finally hit that place where all the corners are off it and it's just as smooth as it can be. That's kind of artistry, is that willingness to just keep reworking it.

I always have in mind the Mark Twain quote. I would have written less, but I didn't have the time.

I've heard that being Twain and also Oscar Wilde, so I've never noticed. But the point is made, which is.

The only way you write a good short book is by writing a bad long book and then just hacking it to death.

Well, that's something I love about both the coaching habit and the advice trap. They're like twins, kind of. They came out four years apart. They're designed so beautifully. They're small and yet punchy and powerful. And listeners may or may not know because our last podcast was 2016, you wanted to get a traditional publisher for the coaching habit. And then time and time again, it just wasn't working out. They were dragging their feet. So you self published and man, was that ever a blessing in disguise. Incredible.

I'm just writing an email that I'll send out to the people in my mailing list because today, as it happens, we finally got the website together with the pre publication specialist of the book. And I'm just trying to tell this story in a funny way. And I'm like. And my publisher joined Richard Drew, I think his name is. Who is the person who said to the Beatles, yeah, guitar bands are on their way out. I'm like, yes, so you're right. It's a very satisfying. I'm trying not to feel too smug about it, but there is a little degree of smugness that the publisher who turned me down for three years, I'm like, see, I told you this was going to be a good book.

Exactly. It's hard not to have that feeling of like, I told you or I knew. Not only that, but the revenue for you and your business, it's just miles apart of what it would have been.

I mean, to kind of open the kimono around some of that stuff. If you're an author and you go with a traditional publisher, you'll typically get between 8 to 10% of what the book sells for.

I basically get a book if that, but even though I haven't earned out yet.

Yeah, about a buck a book. And the rest of it is the cost of producing it. And the publisher takes a big chunk because they've taken the risk of publishing you if you end up self publishing it in the way that I did. So I worked with this wonderful firm in Vancouver called Page 2 strategies.

They effectively are my white label publisher. They not only do all the big stuff, the obvious stuff like editing and copy editing and design and cover design, but they do all the miscellaneous stuff which would drive me nut, like what's your ISBN number and how does Amazon Japan feel about you and how do you do distribution? So then for me, the economics, the money that I pay Page Two, the money I pay my distributor, the money it costs me to print the book because I have to cough up the money to actually do a print run of 40,000 copies of the book, it means that I'm getting closer to 30% of the COVID price. And you know, when you've sold 700,000 copies at maybe 10 to $15 a copy, the difference between 10% of that and 30% of that is actually quite a lot of money.

It really does add up. And then you have so much more control, like even just the design. I mean, your previous books were beautiful as well, but these are really creative and I love all the personal touches. I'm not going to give them all away. You'll have to buy the advice trap and it is worth it. You've also made a very interesting career pivot and a career change since you were last on the show. I don't think I can adequately convey to you, let alone the listeners, what a guiding light you are for me in my career, Michael. And I know, I tell you, probably fumble through or tell you awkwardly, but you're consistently somebody that I've looked to who has integrity and is doing interesting work and making such an incredible impact. And then who you are and how you show up and how you've evolved in your path. Like, you are definitely. I know we're friends, but you are definitely somebody that. That has been a mentor from near and far for me, as I've been now nine years into self employment. So Michael founded a company called Box of Crayons. I want to say almost 15 years ago, if not long.

Actually. It was founded in 2002, so it's seven.

Wow.

Closing up to 18 years old now.

Oh my goodness. Amazing. And you just recently stepped aside as CEO, which must have been the ult letting go. And I don't know if that was a tough decision or not, but can you walk us through your thought process of stepping out of this company that you've put so much into for the last 18 years?

Yeah. So with the Coaching Habit book having such a success, it did not just as a book, but as a driver for business for Box of Crayons. And it meant that the company was on a growth jag. It doubled in revenue, and then it doubled in revenue again. Now it's just a much more complex organization than it had ever been before. Up to about 20 employees.

We just needed to.

Really reinvent Box of Crayons because one of the things that you come to learn when you're running a business is that there are all these plateaus where you grow. And it's amazing. Then you suddenly hit the sticking point where you're like, actually everything that was working has stopped working because system change and your needs change and your focus changes and you need to, on a regular basis, kind of reinvent the company at kind of like a million dollars and two and a half million dollars and five and 10 and 20 and probably 50 or 100 in all these rough revenue areas. You're like, okay, we need to do a rethink around the company is. And we were hitting one of those pivot points. And I'm just not a great CEO. I mean, I get away with it because I'm good at being self depre funny and I have a strong coach approach which carries me a long way in terms of leadership. But it's also my company and I'm not that driven by going, I'm trying to make this company financially huge and this, that and the other, I'm driven by impact.

Back in 2018, I started talking to my coach around what it would mean to step away from such a hands on, all consuming leadership role at Boxy Crayons. There was one person in the team who just seemed that she might be a really strong candidate for potentially stepping into the CEO role. Now, Shannon, who is just awesome.

The great origin story of that is I recruited her from behind the bar of my local pizzeria place to do a little bit of help with the marketing of the coaching Habit book. It came. So she's been part of Box of Crayons for a little over four years, but she's just wired to be successful and she's driven and ambitious in the right ways and strategic. She started off in a little bit of marketing and then got into sales and then grew the sales team. And then we spent a year from middle of 2018 to middle of 2019.

Sitting with the idea of her becoming the CEO and me trying to show what the job was like while saying to her, but it will be different for you because I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like a bad role model and having a coach Jill, to help us with that. And then July 1st, she officially became CEO and I stayed on in a design role for the company. So helping build the programs that we sell to corporations. But come January 1st, basically Shannon walked me off the premises and went like, michael, your work here is done. Step away.

She is in this amazing process of.

Stepping in and owning the leadership of Box of Crayons and becoming a CEO, but also starting to rethink and reinvent what this company is about. Because between us, she and I and the company holds big ambitions around trying to be a company that champions curiosity led organizations, moving them away from advice driven to curiosity led.

It turns out that when you try and pivot on who you are and what you do in the world, everything changes. So we change the focus on the clients we try to serve, which means that we have to change the product offering, the pricing, the sales, the marketing, the people, the culture. I mean, everything. So she's doing all of that and is doing a great job at it. But of course, for me, I'm in this process of taking off the box of crayons cloak that I have worn for 20 years and now going, huh? Why now? Oh. Oh, this is what a midlife crisis. Oh, got it. I'm exaggerating because I'm not really having a midlife crisis.

Was there ever a moment when you were working with your coach.

Wondering or feeling, having that internal dialogue, well, I should like being the CEO or could I be a better CEO? You know, did you go through a phase of feeling like you just needed to do some personal growth around this to get you to that CEO hat, or were you pretty clear that it just wasn't for you? And then I'm curious what that thing is that you love more when you say making an impact, what role you're excited about as you look ahead.

Yeah.

I've always had people who've been very willing to give me feedback on how I'm not a great CEO. So I was like, you know what? I'm not terrible. I've managed to grow the company to a certain size. I'm a compassionate leader, I trust people, I support them, I care about the culture, blah, blah, blah. So there's a bunch of things that I can tick off, but I know the difference. I'm like a well meaning amateur.

Okay, for an amateur, but put me up against a professional CEO or somebody who's really wired for and I'm like, oh yeah, you're ridiculous. And that's me. I'm like, I'm okay with that. I'm very much somebody who goes, look, Michael is much better when he plays to his strengths and acknowledges his weaknesses. And I have weaknesses galore. What I think the future holds for me, I don't really know, Jenny. I'm trying to keep this next period of time, year or so open as a place to see what emerges. I mean, my theme for the year for 2020 is cut loose and Cut Loose both being cut loose from box of crayons.

And it's also cut loose in terms of being a little more exuberant and waving my arms around and playful and experimental.

I've got three themes that support Cut Loose as my overall theme for the year. One is be exuberant. So continue to step into the joy and the play of what's going on. One is be a host. So gather interesting and good people together and spend time with that. And the other is to create big and small. So just to go look, one of the things that I am good at and I get a lot of pleasure from is.

Creation and collaboration. So part of what this year holds for me is testing out some creative projects and going, which ones? Which ones feel juicy and interesting? Which ones? Not so much.

And part of it is continuing to find really good people to manage the miscellany because that just doesn't play to my strength. I mean, I'm surrounded by strong, smart women who manage my life. There's Marcella, my wife, she's amazing. There's Shannon, the CEO of Box of Crayons. There's Marlene, who's been my executive assistant for 10 years or more. And there's Ainslie.

Who'S new in my life, but she runs MBS Works, which is the umbrella for this new company. And they're all these super competent, super smart, super lovely people who are like, Michael, we're just going to keep you on your tracks so you can do your best, you can do your great work, and you don't get suckered by all the other stuff that keeps pulling you off path.

Well, that ties back to one of your earlier books, which is Do More Great Work. And in fact, that's what I brought you to Google to speak about was that one.

That was like 10 years ago. It was amaz. Amazing.

It's interesting, too, that you didn't feel compelled to mold a box of crayons to you and your strengths. You actually are letting it emerge as its own company. And I know you've talked about that in the past, like, the difference between delivering services like coaching keynotes, even the licensing programs that you offer versus building a business. And you've really shown you doing your great work actually doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Box of Crayons. The business, if you're willing to let it go and let it be the emerging entity that it is at the same time that you focus on, which I can say is truly unique. How you show up in a room, your exuberance, your humor, your delightful touches, your design eye, you know, it's all there. And from the outside, it's easier to see. Oh, yeah, of course. You want to set that free. Like the world needs you to set that free.

Thanks, Jenny, for saying all of that. It's really helpful for me to know what your core motivator is. And somebody was talking about this to me the other day and said, look, there are three primary drivers for people. This may or may not be true, but it was helpful for me. One is money. One is ego. One is impact.

I've always just been really wired towards impact. I mean, for 20 years, I've held as a personal mission to infect a billion people with the Possibility virus. And for me, that is all about impact. And it's all about impact where I don't actually have to be known or in the center or in the spotlight. It's like, how do I get good stuff out into the world? And that's just been super helpful because when I look at Box of Crayons. If I was driven by ego or money, I might have made different decisions. But because I'm going, look, I want box of crayons to have an amazing effect in the world of work. Can I do that? No. I need help. So finding Shannon and the rest of that team is part of that.

It's interesting hearing you say that, because part of what. What. What helped me make the decision to leave Google was I looked up the reporting management chain up to Sheryl Sandberg, who is leading my part of the organization. And I had this aha moment one day where I thought, I don't want her job. Like, I just. It was this big aha. Because up till that point, I was operating under the assumption you just climb the ladder until you're super high up or you're middle management. And I remember thinking, that's the last thing I want is just too many people. It's too complicated. And like you, I love coaching and working with people. People. The idea of a manager didn't appeal to me. And then when I started my own thing, I remember thinking, I don't want to build some big consulting practice where I have all these employees. Like, essentially how you've described box of crayons as it is today. I remember thinking to myself, it's not what I want. And yet, as Pivot is more successful, I see how clearly you need to have more and more structures. And for now, I'm enjoying building those and building out the team and the programs and our corporate clients. And yet I'm finding a real love of the craft of business building. There is a creativity in that. But there may also come a day where I want more simplicity. So I focus on expansive creativity and contribution that way, not the machinations of managing a complicated company. You know, as like, weird as that is to say.

Yeah. I mean, part of what you're pointing to, Jenny, is I think, the importance of kind of strategic retreats where you step back and you come down to that really hard, important question, which is, what do I want? What do I want? Because it changes. And if you're still enacting the plan, that's delivering the thing you wanted from 10 years ago or eight years ago or even three years ago, you just might be climbing the wrong mountain. And when you're climbing the wrong mountain, what happens is you get to the top of that mountain and you get really depressed because you're like, hooray, I'm at the wrong mountain.

So for me, I was like one of the values of a box of Crayons for a long time was tread light. And it was a commitment implicitly at least to go, don't build anything that's big. Just work entirely. No employees entirely built around contractors and kind of outsourcing stuff. And then three years ago, we're like, this doesn't work. It doesn't work for us to scale and have the impact we want. So we then reorganized everything and hired a bunch of people and now we have all these employees. And of course that brings all sorts of.

Things to think about, like, wow, it costs, you know, some large chunk of money every month to run Box of Crayons. I mean, it's a six figure number every month. Like, that's a, that's a lot. Yeah, I mean, I remember, I remember the first year when I started Box of Crayons. The first year I earned over $100,000. I'm like, this is a miracle. And if I can just keep doing this, then my life is golden. And now it costs me well over that just to run the company on a monthly basis. And it's like, it changes. You grow, your ambitions evolve and morph and change. They don't have to get bigger. They can get more deliberate, more focused, more intense. But I think you just want to stay connected to what's the thing that I want here? What's the work I'm going to be doing.

When you were talking about the two mountains, it reminded me of the part of the advice trap where you talk about easy change versus hard change. And it was so good. Easy change is the present you to stay on the present track, and then hard change is for future you. It's hard because it means becoming someone else or evolving in some way.

And at the heart of hard change is a need to surface commitments about how you show up as future you and to say no to those because they no longer serve. Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's hard to figure out what those commitments are. And it's even harder to say, oh, I need to say no to that so I can say yes to this greater, better sense of self that shows up in the world the way I dream of. And yeah, it's kind of profound work. I mean, part of the book is trying to lure people into going, I can take this on. But it is a challenge for sure.

One of my coaching clients and I just yesterday were trading emails about the no snowball. And it changes so hard. You're exactly right. And I think even in pivot, I quote John Maxwell, you have to say no to the good so you can say yes to the best. That saying no to good things or things that got you where you are is hard.

It's hard because they're not things. There are people attached to the things.

Semi exciting you say in the book. So I want to close out with this and I laughed on this page. You said, I totally get the irony of writing a book of advice on how to give less advice. Let's embrace the wisdom of paradox and leave it at that. So let's embrace that paradox for even the closing of this podcast. If you could give people, ironically, one piece of advice or your best piece of advice from the Advice trap, what would it be?

I think the metaphor we introduced in the book, and we kind of expand on in the book is tame your advice monster. Because that's the metaphor that sums up the challenge you're taking on when you go, I'm going to become more coach. Like, I'm going to stay curious a little bit longer. The place you might choose to start is just by beginning to notice how quickly you default to advice giving as the reaction and the response you have to most situations, it is insidious. You spend a lifetime being rewarded and encouraged to go. The way you add value is by having the answer. So get that in your head and start telling them as fast as you can. Because until you notice how ubiquitous it is, it's hard for you to realize what you want to change what you're up against. So that's probably where I would start, Jenny, is just go start noticing your advice monster. And if this is like, oh, I'm interested in that. There is this questionnaire which I think you can find@myadvicemonster.com which will be it's short. It's like five minutes. But you can go, which of the three advice monsters is strongest in me? And what are some tactics I can use to actually tame that advice monster?

So good. I love the website URL and I'll put that in the show notes. You can also listen to episode 26 from back in 2016 on tame the advice Monster. I like to say I had a prescient. I pulled that topic right out of the.

You did.

You also. It really stuck out to me. You say your job is to stop seeking the solutions and start finding the challenges.

I remember writing that and going, oh, that's good.

You're like, oh, I think that's profound. Which is like, if you reframe the value you add in a conversation, the role you can play in a conversation say, look My job is not to come up with a fast wrong answer. Answer is to hold the space so that we can figure out what the real thing is that we're trying to figure out here. If you do that in your personal life, in your organizational life, you will become invaluable.

Absolutely. And as you would say, be lazy. Be curious, be often Michael, thank you so much for being who you are, being such a friend and mentor to me for so many years and for these incredible books.

Thank you Jenny.

Everybody go out and get your copy. I this is like a do not pass go. If you're a manager, a coach, a mentor, or a person, buy the advice trap. Be humble, stay curious, and change the way you lead forever.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at Jenny Underscore Blake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.