Technology That Combats Technology Dependence With Joey Odom

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And welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute here at A&I. We believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations, and we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings, both virtually and in person, all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now with without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Joey, thanks for joining us today.

Kwame, thank you for having me, my friend.

Hey, it is our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Would love to. If I could start with a story, I'd love to do that. And it's a story of been a few years ago. So when my son, who is now 14, when my son was five years old, he was playing soccer. It was his first soccer season. And he is a wonderful kid. He's a great tennis player now, but at the time, he was not a great soccer player. So we're midway through the season, everybody on the team has scored a soccer goal except for him. And so this moment in this game arises where, and you almost think about it in cinematic terms, he's standing there. It's him, the ball, the goal. Rears back. His leg kicks as hard as he can. Ball goes end over end, back of the goal. Harrison's very first goal. And the crowd goes wild. His coach, his coach runs out, picks him up. This moment of elation, and you're a dad. What's. What's the first thing he does? He looks to the sideline, to me, to lock eyes with dad. Just say, dad saw this moment. We shared this moment. But I missed it because I was looking down at my phone and I missed the entire goal. I missed the goal. Now, my son, here's the good News. My son's 14 now. He says he can't remember it, so that's good. But I miss this beautiful moment of my son. And that was a little. One of these little great reminders that this thing that it's in my pocket is distracting me from what's most important in my life. And we're on a journey right now. The company we're working on called ro, Our goal and my goal personally and my co founder, Heath, and all of our team is focused on making sure that other moms and dads don't have to tell that same story. So we don't. We don't miss a soccer goal. So that's what we do. We're on a mission right now. To help people live out those moments, put aside those distractions, and really, really actually be in that moment, be present.

Oh, that is a powerful. Why? Wow.

Hurts. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, I don't look the great thing, I don't look back on that with, with, you know, any kind of toxic shame. It's a motivator. It's a good thing. That's, that's a little, that's a little, you know, a little reminder that, hey, you got to be on, you got to be on watch for the things that are important to you all the time.

Absolutely. And so, I mean, so many good things that we can talk about from that, besides the obvious, which we'll spend more time on, but I think just good modeling for the listeners too, because when you're thinking about doing anything, that's tough. We talk about difficult conversations on the show all the time. But anything that you're trying to do and learn, you're going to be bad at it. You're going to make mistakes early on. And it's important. I love that term you use, toxic shame. It's important not to feel that shame and then shy away from it because these moments are learning opportunities where you can learn from it, get better from it. But if you are, if you, you don't have that self compassion and self forgiveness, you are not availing yourself to the, to the benefit of improvement wholeheartedly.

Well, you have to have. And I came up with the term compassionate curiosity. Just kidding. That was you. That was you that came up with that term. But you got it. You know, you got to have the compassionate curiosity with yourself. Right? You got it. You got to say to yourself, like, okay, I recogn this moment, I got to be, I got to be curious with what my shortcomings might be, but I got to be compassionate to myself. We got to forgive ourselves for these moments of that. And then to your point, let's go get better from it. And it's, it's an interesting thing. I think this is embedded within all of us, but I bet everybody listening to your show has a certain level of achiever in them, which probably makes them more susceptible to a little bit of shame because they're always pushing themselves, driving themselves. Got to get better, right? So anybody who's taking the time, who's listening to this right now, it's important to them to better. And so you got to make sure we have to know that we can get better at things. We're not stuck in this and it's the, you know, the whole, you know, fixed mentality. You can't get stuck in that. We can improve at those sorts of things. That's really, really encouraging.

Absolutely. Oh, this is great. This is really, really great. So when we're talking about ro, the technology, let's. Let's take a second and paint a picture for the audience. What does this look like?

Sure. So RO helps us. RO is the word. Its to notice. And so RO itself is a platform. And the platform is designed all around a simple thing, which is to make it easy to put down your phone. And again, our phones are great. When it's the workday, I'm generally with my phones. I gotta make calls, I have to respond to calls. But when it's family dinner time, it's not time for the phone. I'm not anti book, but I don't bring a novel to family dinner. Right. But we've gotten into this, we've gotten into this practice and habit of having our phones with us at all these times when we don't really need them. And the problem is, and we know this, we all know that over time, our environment is stronger than our willpower. In fact, James Clear, who's, I believe he's a fellow Ohioan, excuse me, of yours, he says that, he says environment is stronger than willpower. And over time, no matter how strong our willpower is, our environment will trump that. And I will. I would even take that a step further and says we don't need to be disciplined on certain things. If we just set up our environment, we avoid the necessity of discipline. And so then we can pour that energy into family time, into family dinner. So RO is two things. The platform itself, it begins with. And it's back to James Clear. It begins with a visual cue. RO is a physical place where you put your phone. It's an ever present reminder of these ambitions that you have for yourself, for your life. When you walk in and when it's time for you to be with Whitney and Kai and Dominic, you see that and it reminds you, hey, Kwame, you want to be present. And so that visual cue, so in the habit loop, as James Clear defines it as cue, craving, response, reward. So that visual cue initiates a craving which moves to a response which is placing your phone down. And RO is more than just a box. It's actually a smart box with a bunch of embedded technology. And what that means is when you drop your phone, RO knows that your phone is in there, knows your phone's there. But where the Magic really happens where it really coalesces. Because when your phone's away, you do great things with life. You do whatever you'd like. You read a book, you have family dinner, whatever it may be. When you take out your phone, the reward system comes in. You get credit for the time that you've been away from your phone. So it says, hey, you were just away from your phone for an hour and 13 minutes. 1. That feels good to see. That's a great thing that I just did. That's a tough feat. You tag that time I had family time. And then over the course of time, you see the way that you're living your life apart from your phone. And so we all get this dreaded Sunday notification from Apple that tells us how much time we were on our phones a day, like 30 hours a day or something like that. Right. And so what this does is it tells us the amount of time that you've intentionally been away from your phone. That's a positive thing. That's actually a dopamine hit that tells you. And then we use all the tech companies streaks and badges and all that kind of stuff. But the real reward, we all know this is the life we live when we're apart from our phone. And so it's that platform. ARA is that platform that combines, that pairs this online, you know, this app and this interface with that physical presence and those two things that really leads to that habit creation formation.

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Is that Near?

Yes, that is the name of the author of that book because it's what you're saying sounds a lot like what he said in his book.

Yeah, it's, you know, near is a brilliant thought leader on this topic for sure. Adam Alter is a brilliant Tristan Harris. There are a bunch of people and so, you know, here's this thing that we, you know, we have this physical thing, and everybody's been talking about it kind of in the ether about, hey, this is. What can we do about phones? There's nothing we can do about it. We actually disagree. We believe we need the environment for it and the solutions out there. And by the way, I'm going to back up. I'll say it again. We love our phones. We need them. We're not going to get rid of our phones. My grandfather passed away several months ago, and in his hospital room in Arizona, and me in my home in Atlanta at the time we spoke on FaceTime. Before he passed, he told me he loved me. He's proud of me. What an amazing moment that was made possible by phones. So a lot of people who are talking about this are demonizing technology, and we take an opposite stance. We love it, we need it. I'm not going back to a flip phone. But it's the, you know, it's this power that we. It's this thing that everybody's been talking about in the ether of what do we do about it? These solutions have been located within the problem. It's mainly just been apps. We don't think the solution can be located within the problem. We need a physical distance between us and our phones for a few minutes each day. So we're grateful for people like Near. We're grateful for people like Adam Alter, grateful people like Tristan Harris who have been kind of leading the way on this. And we hope that this is. Hey, this is a physical representation of all that great work they've done.

Yeah, this is great, man. Because so I know my listeners hear me say this all the time, but I'm a psychology nerd. I love psych. That's my undergrad degree. And. And so this. What I love about this is that it's rooted in science, right? Is like, it's. It is all peer reviewed, data driven, which is great because you've. You've been intentional about recognizing, hey, we are addicted to our phones. I think it's okay to. To admit that we are addicted to our phones in a psychological sense. And so what we need to do is we need to create positive habits in order to break that addiction. But the key word is positive, right? Because you're not demonizing technology. Because a lot of people who do this demonize the technology. And sometimes for me, I say, you know what? That's right. Smartphones are the devil. Then I buy a flip phone, and I'm like, man, this sucks.

I can't order an Uber. Right.

I don't want this. I have all these little. These. These flip phones around me from times where I got extreme. But this, this is really something that's doable. And I love the fact that, again, you talked about willpower. We have to realize that. Think about it almost like a Mortal Kombat type of game. You know, the video games where every time you get, like, kicked, your life goes down.

Right.

So that's the way our willpower works. It's. It is a resource that can be depleted. So the concept is called ego depletion. And so that's why you're more likely to make mistakes later on in the day. Because you've demonstrated so much willpower throughout the day, you are out of willpower by the time the day ends. So that's why when we're having difficult conversations with our spouse, our partners, our family members, we are significantly worse at those difficult conversations that usually happen in the evening.

That's right.

Kept it together all day long, and now we snap in the afternoon. Right. But if we think about the fact that we're trying to be in the moment with somebody and then we're trying to utilize willpower to ignore the phone and refocus, now we're with everything that that is happening, every distraction that we're trying to refocus from, we're diminishing our performance because we're allocating cognitive energy outside of the interaction that's in front of us.

Gosh, that.

That's.

That is much smarter than I could have possibly said it, but it's totally right. And it. Because we all know it. I mean, you hear that. We all know that you're right. That is when I get in the arguments that is. You know this. I'm a father of two as well. I know the most important time of the day is 6 o' clock to 8 o', clock, 6 o' clock to 9 o'. Clock. That's the time. Those are golden hours. And we got to take back 6 o' clock to 9 o'. Clock. I believe as a society, we have to take that time back. And that could be morning and evening, by the way, because that's your time when you're charging up in the morning, and that's your time, possibly your most productive time. But then that's the time when it's friends and family time in the evening. And so our defenses are way low by that time. And that's why we need. To your point, all you need one of my friend Tanner Clark says this. You need one second of strength. You just need one second of strength to drop your phone in Ro. And then go live that life. Go be present. And it's a. And I've caught myself doing this lately where I'll be in a moment. Because we know that even with our kids, we make it sound like it's this great moment all the time. We know there's a bunch of monotony. There's a bunch of minutiae with it. And so sometimes we have to say to ourselves, my daughter's name. Gianna. I'm with Gianna right now. Just that statement. That's a really powerful thing just to say what you are doing in that moment can really, really create some power. But. But we can't do it if we're getting text messages and feeling buzzes or if in our little crazy active brain, we think, hey, who was the rebounding leader in the NBA in 1992? I got to look that up right this second at dinner. We do it all the time. All of us do.

It's so true. And quick aside, I think our phones have made us worse storytellers because we are focusing on the precise rather than the magic of story, you know, because, oh, I don't need to know exactly who that person is with the amount of rebounds. I just need to make an overall point. Right. And I could just simply tell a story. People were able to tell stories. In fact, they were probably better when they didn't have access to the Internet to say it. Precisely. You know, I love that.

That's really, really good. Yeah, you're right, because the story. Yeah, the story is in. It is in its telling. It's. It's not always in the. Is not always in just what. Whatever that point exactly was and the precision of the point. I love that.

Yeah, man. It's really interesting because, again, it's so black and white, so all or nothing with the way that we think about technology. You have people who are like, technology is everything. And then you have people who are like, technology is the worst thing that's happened to us. And most things, the truth lies somewhere in between.

So true.

It's about recognizing its benefits and then coming to terms with the fact that it makes us.

It.

It does come with some detriments, too. And that doesn't mean that we need to get rid of it. We just need to be better at managing it.

I totally agree with that. And we talk about the issue here actually, is our relationship to it. It's not necessarily the technology itself is what's our relationship to this? Because with my kids, both of my kids have gotten phones within the last two years, and I felt actually a high level of confidence to teach them, hey, here's how you use this thing really, really well. Hey, we're going to. Hey, you're 12, 13, you don't need the Internet. I'm going to disable Safari on your phone. And they didn't love it, but because it was how they learned the phone, it wasn't that big of a deal. And so we have to. Instead of just going back to flip phones, our kids will get smartphones someday. So let's teach them that right relationship. It's really hard for me to relearn it, but for them to initiate it, it's great. And the analogy we use, if you think back on the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty, you know, there was this prophecy over the. Over the young princess that someday she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel. And so what did her parents do? They got rid of every spinning wheel in the entire kingdom, except for one they couldn't find that happened to be in the castle, which. That's oversight on their part. But when she first encountered. When she first encountered her first spinning wheel because she had no idea how to use it, the first thing she did was pricked her finger on it. So here we are. We're going to get rid of phones. We're not going to teach kids how to. We do one of two things. We don't teach them anything about it and we just give them to them and there are problems there. Or, or we just. We get rid of the phone entirely and then they don't know how to use this amazingly powerful tool.

No, that's powerful. That is really great. And I want to go back to one of the things that you said, the statement of intention. I'm with Gianna. I think that is really powerful. But I want to kind of zoom in on this because a lot of times we react, we just become reactive in these conversations. Sometimes the conversations that we're having difficult conversations, they choose us. We don't choose it.

We.

We find ourselves in these conversations. And so we just react emotionally to what's happening. And I think simply taking the time to make that statement of intention first on. On focus. Very simply, I'm with Gianna, that's. That is the explicit purpose of this interaction. Great. I mean, even. Even before we even get into my ultimate goal with the conversation, I won't be able to get to my goal or it'll be increasingly Difficult to get to that goal if I'm not even focused on the person who's in front of me. I really like that statement.

Well, it's almost, you know, it's. You know, as parents, I know I do this. It's the. That actually reframes the statement I made in a much more positive way, because that's the entire intention of that interaction. I usually have an agenda and telling, hey, did you make your bed? Did you. You know, all this stuff. But that's not the point. The point is, is being there. And that changes everything. And you know how that. I mean, that changes the. You know, when someone is engaged with you in conversation or waiting their turn to talk. There's a. There's a major difference there. And what greater thing could we do as parents than just being with them? Because in being. That actually is a form of accepting them, you know, warts and all. On. On both sides, you're accepting them. I'm just being with you. I love that, Kwame.

Yeah. And, you know, a. It made me think. So when we think about communication, communication really begins and ends with connection. We have to create a connection in order to begin the conversation. And then once the conversation ends, once the connection ends, too. And if we think about focus as that connecting line, we realize that a lot of times we're not even really communicating in a meaningful way because we haven't even gotten that basic level of focus and connection.

Yeah. Yeah, that's totally right.

And, Joey, something that is obviously related to what we've been talking about, but a little bit different is the difficult conversations around the use of ro. Yeah, because what I'm thinking is that there are going to be people who are listening to this podcast, and they're saying, wow, where can I buy this thing? And then they're going to say, that's right. Kwame said, link in the description of this episode. And so then they're going to go and click the description, and then they're going to come with this beautiful piece of technology, and then they're going to come home and they're going to share the episode, and they're going to be like, this might be the best podcast episode I've ever heard. And then they say, even though this was such an exceptional podcast, I don't want to use this technology because I want to be on Instagram tonight. And so for the listeners who want to try to implement this, and they're getting some resistance from folks at home, how can they have that difficult conversation?

Yeah, well, I believe that it begins for me, it begins with, you have to. It begins with your own personal conviction for yourself. We know by experience, all of us know, really trying to impose something on somebody else can be very, very challenging, especially if it's a spouse, for example. And I know for me, here's what happens for me. So I know that I'm giving a gift when it comes to me, I'm giving a gift to my family of my presence. Whether they put their phones in RO or not, I'm giving a gift to them. Because what happens when you put your phone in aura, what you're doing, you're bestowing value on everybody else around you. You're saying you're more important than this thing to me. And so whether they participate with me or not, I'm actually not super, super concerned with that for myself. I think that the most people, they see a need for themselves, but actually the majority of people, they see the need for other people. And I think as parents, we actually see a need our kids. I want a good plan for our kids and that's a place that can start. But the awesome thing is this. And I'll tell a story. Rich, who's our head of customer experience, he brought Aro home to his family and he has a 4 year old son named Luke. And so Luke said, hey, Daddy, what is that? Henry said. He explained exactly what it was and Luke looked at him, nodded his head and walked off. Thirty seconds later, Luke came back with his toy phone and he put it in the box and then he started screaming at the top of his lungs, mom, dad, put your phone in the box. And so what we have found, this is fascinating because you think this is for 12, 13, 14 year old kids? No, no, no. It's for 2, 3, 4, 5 year old kids who are seeing how you model things. And they not only deserve, but many of them demand your attention because they, and they deserve it for sure. They deserve all your attention. And they're really, really greedy when it comes to that. And thank God they're greedy for that because otherwise we'd just be off on our phone scrolling Instagram time. So what we found, it's a long way to answer your question, but I found two things. One, you have to feel that need in yourself. And then two, you're actually when, when it's there. We found that the kids notice really, really poignantly and they really want that for you. And when your kid asks you to put your phone down, it does powerful things. Which actually is how you and I met, which I love this. I'm going to read. You had a beautiful LinkedIn post and you said, are you having family time or cell phone time with family presence? You said, my new goal is to never have Kai ask daddy, why are you always on your phone again, man? That'll hit you, won't it? That'll. There, there's some, there's something that'll change your behavior when you hear it from a six year old, from your six year old boy. That's pretty powerful. Pretty powerful motivator.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's. It's really good. And I think it goes back to what we're. When we're thinking about persuasion, it comes in different ways because we can think about persuasion in terms of almost pushing people or bullying them or shaming them into doing what we want them to do. I was on how ironic. I was on Instagram and I saw this funny meme and they said, essentially parenting becomes. Or no, no, no, it wasn't parenting. Said spending quality time with your spouse has to both of you telling each other that you're on your phone too much. That's, that's really what it comes down to. And it's, it's so funny because it goes back to what we were talking about before with willpower and saying, okay, I'm going to fight this temptation. Because hearing those own words, my own words, it's like, wow, I failed on that one. Like, you know, I did well that day. Willpower was depleted. I can't do that every day. But one of the best ways to fight temptations is to not put yourself in a position to be tempted. It's true. It's like I started. We just moved into a virtual office. So everybody's working from home. We're demoing this for a month and it's been going really well because half of the staff didn't want to come come into the office. They worked better. And so what I realized is that health and fitness wise, it was really easy for me to be disciplined because I would only bring healthy food to the office. Now I'm at home.

Home.

And I have all of this food and it's not, it's not doing anything for my body.

Cinnamon toast crunch, sitting in the pantry. I mean, you can't say no to that.

No, I don't. And it's literally like Joey, people don't get it. Like they think it was a joke in the TED Talk.

So that's real. It's.

Oh, it's literally every day. And now Kai is competent and Capable enough to steal my cereal.

Amazing.

Right to it, you know, but it's, it's so true. I think it's even more persuasive if you just lead by example and you just sit there and say, hey, nope, my phone is in this, in the ro. You do what you want, but here I am here with you. And then people, people follow suit. I think that's, that's really powerful.

And you actually, the great thing is it becomes unconscious virtually instantly. You have forgotten where your phone is. And this is a, this is something, this is a muscle you build up. And I actually will take. You mentioned earlier, and I do agree with this to some degree, but you mentioned that our, you know, we're addicted to our phones. We take a little bit more of a hopeful approach to it. We say we've developed a habit. IPhone just celebrated its 15 year birthday. They've been around for 15 years. So we have learned a habit in 15 years that we need to have our phones with us all the time. For about a billion years prior, we didn't have our phones with us all the time because they didn't exist. So I believe that we've learned this and our premise and our thesis to people is you're a lot closer to the things that you want than you think. When you think, oh, I'm addicted to it, it becomes a crutch. But it also seems like a mountain. It's not a mountain. You just need a little bit, you just need some better habits. It's the, you know, the concept of neuroplasticity that we can rewire those, you know, our brain to, to change the behaviors towards the things that we want. And it doesn't take as much as we think. Now, is it hard to engage as, as a, as a spouse on a date night, a father, or even reading a book after that? Yes, it's hard. So it's still, it's still, you know, all we've done, we put our phones back. We've just reset ourselves back to what it was like for our parents. They didn't have phones, but they still had to be good parents. Right. And I know, I'm coming. This is from the perspective of a parent, but even as a professional or as a single or someone who's in the dating scene or whatever it is, you still have to still hard to do in the same way that a marathon would still be hard to run, but it'd be the heck of a lot harder if you're carrying a boulder with you. Right. And that's what we're doing, we're trying to do these hard things while carrying this boulder in our pockets. And we just need to put it down just for a few minutes each day. That's the. That's our thesis. Just a few minutes. It doesn't take much. Any time is good time. But pick those moments.

That's great. And I think it's really important to that point to recognize that not all moments are created equally. It's. And I love that you're making this manageable by thinking about it in terms of. All right, it doesn't need to be all the time. You don't need to be like a hermit or something like that. No, you can live in the real world. It's okay. But hey, the hours of 6 and 9, you. You probably want to focus on that. And I think that's. It's so true because I think about that. It's been challenging for me as leading a company and everything like that. And I have these employees who work for me. Yeah, I love my employees to death. Should say that at times it can be challenging. And so I keep it together all day and then I go and I sit in the garage. You know, the parent. The parent move where you sit in the Dr. Where the garage. Just gather yourself. And then Kai opens the door and he's excited to like, you know, jump on my face. I'm like, I'm not ready for this. He doesn't care what.

He does not care what's happening leading up to that.

Doesn't care. Doesn't care. You know, and so it's, it's really great to say, all right, hey, this is, this is an area of opportunity. Right? It's. This is where we need to focus in. And then again, bringing it to the business world some during the zoom meetings and all those types of things. Hey, let's, let's focus because these, these conversations are important. And I can see, see, you know, I've done this enough so I can see when people are, when their eyes are shifting. Right. I can see it. It doesn't feel good. We think that we're being sneaky when we're trying to check our email during. During a zoom. No, people can see it, you know, and even if you are able to recover and pay attention enough to respond in a meaningful way, it doesn't undo the little bit of damage that is done when people recognize that there was a break in connection there too.

It's. It's so true. There, There's a great study done by a Researcher by gloria mark at UC Irvine. And she found that it takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after you've been distracted. So in your, in your example there, you could probably fake that you refocused. You're not, you're not refocused, you're not back in the zone. And what's interesting, we've got, you know, this is a direct to consumer. We're initiating with the direct consumer product. We've gotten this influx of interest from, from the corporate side saying we just can't have in person meetings anymore because everybody's on their phone. And so it's, we're looking for a solution. Let's get that focus back. Because when we're, when it's during the day and again everybody listening to this knows this when it's work time, got to focus, we got to be productive. We're all achievers here. Let's do our absolute best that we can throughout the day. And it's just really hard. And especially, and we all know this in Covid, when we were, when we were all remote and we lost connection. We have the benefit now in many instances of face to face communication and we got to take advantage of that and we're still somewhere else prioritizing somebody else above, above those moments that we're in. So we've been interested in the corporate application that's come from this and just hey, let's have these in conference rooms so people can focus.

That's really good. That's really, really good. And I think one other thing too, because we, it's pretty easy to go from this topic and talk, then move on to multitasking too. They're related. And I think we have to pay attention to the unique ways in which technology makes focus difficult. So for instance, if there is a bird chirping outside, that's not going to be as distracting as a cell phone.

Right.

And so we have to understand why. So when we think about our computer screens or our cell phones, whatever it happens to be, it focuses your attention on that little block, that little rectangle, but it focuses it and then disperses it. So I log into my focus now onto my phone. But then once I enter my phone, I have hundreds of apps with all of these notifications. And so it is a higher level of distraction than almost anything else that we've encountered as humans. You know, and so it's a very unique mental challenge that nobody's really been able to physically overcome because our brains aren't designed to overcome such a High level of distraction.

That's exactly. I mean, that's. You nailed it right there. We are physically incapable of doing it. We're mentally incapable of doing it. We just can't. These things have been designed much stronger than our human brain. And if we're holding it, I use it. I think probably a terrible analogy. That's maybe not spot on. But if I'm carrying chocolate cake with me all day, a. I'm going to take a bite at some point. But there's a. There is a. It's. It's stupid.

I know.

But there's a. But there is a 0% chance I'm going to eat a bite of chocolate cake if it's not in front of me. I can't do it. And so let's. Let's just create a little bit of distance. And so. And this is where, you know, I love your podcast on. Just practically on the negotiation side. But I think about what's not negotiable for me because we know, we all know this, that the toughest negotiation is a negotiation with your present self and your future self. Right. We know. This thing that I want in the mean, in this dopamine hit that I want from this endless world of distraction on my phone is what I want more. I'm negotiating between that and being present with my wife on a date night. That's a really hard negotiation. And so we got it. We got to take that moment to pause and really negotiate with ourselves and say, no, this is more important to me.

So true, True, So true. And again, we want to make it as easy as possible to make that good decision.

That's right.

And we do that by taking the decision out of our hands. That's right.

Yeah. There's no more decision to make. Again, back to the. My friend Tanner Clark is one second of strength. You just need one second of strength to put it down. And then it does not require strength towards that effort anymore. Strength towards something else. You got to put your effort towards something else. But that effort is on. Done. You've accomplished that one.

I love this. This is great. So, Joey, where can we get a hold of this? R.O.

Absolutely. Go to goro.com that's g o a r o dot com. We are shipping out very, very early fall. So we're within the. Within the window here. We're manufacturing right now. And goro.com and if you're just curious, say, here's another thing a lot of people say. Hey, this is really interesting. I'm a little curious. Get on our wait list. Just find out a little bit more about it. Put your name on there. We'd love to communicate with you. And it's, you know, it's something I can say for me is made in. There was no bigger offender than me on this, and I can say that it's changed everything around me. I really do mean that, because we know when we change our relationship with our phones, we change our relationship with everybody around us. All of our relationships change just by changing that one relationship.

So true. So true. Joey. Really appreciate it, man. This was really great.

Kwame, thank you so much.

Congratulations. You've just joined an elite club by listening to a full episode. You're now officially on the Negotiate Anything team. So welcome aboard. What most team members do is they subscribe to the podcast because that allows them to automatically get the latest episodes of the show. Show. The best things in life lie on the other side of difficult conversations. Keep learning, keep practicing, and keep getting better. Your relationships will improve, your career will soar, and you'll have the confidence you need to get the most out of these crucial conversations. Again, thank you for joining the team. We're excited to have you, and I will see you in the next episode. I'll catch you later.