Interview with Eric Nehrlich

Foreign. Welcome to One Sharp Sword. Cutting through to what matters most. I'm your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the Exponential Success coach and the president of Dynamic Leader Incorporated. Today is an amazing interview. I have had the pleasure of meeting Eric Nerlik. He was with Google for a couple of decades and figured out that he could actually say no to burnout. There are things that you're asked to do and do more of and do more of, and when you get punished by being given more work because you're good at it, sometimes you have to push back. And it took Eric a little bit of time to figure out that he wanted his life back too. So I wanted to share that story with you. And with that, I will say Eric Nerlik, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Thanks, Wayne. I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah. So, oh my goodness, the Silicon Valley and Google of all places. Like everybody who's, you know, in the tech world is, holds Google up as the place to work or Apple. Right. The place to work, or any of the big ones. You know, it's like, oh, that would be so great to have that on my resume. Or, or, you know, and, and even if you're not like in that. And for our audience, that is around the world and in various jobs, even if you're not striving or hoping to work for one of the big ones, even in your own job, you may find that there are things that just no longer match for who you are. So talk about a couple of things. What did you do before you went to Google? How did you get to Google? What did you do there? And, and then like, what was your. Oh my gosh, I actually could own my own life again. What was that point? So let's start with. Well, before I was at Google, I.

Yeah, so before I was at Google, I started my career actually as a physics student. And so I was very much on the most quantitative and hard, hard science of sciences and believed that was where I was going to spend my life. It turned out that I didn't actually love physics enough to make it my career as I eventually dropped out of grad school because I was like, wow, this is really hard. But fortunately, the other reason I dropped out was it was 1998, it was the dot com era and I knew how to program computers. So I was like, wait, you're going to pay me that much money to work less and get paid a lot more? Huh? That seems like a good deal. I'm going to Go do that. So I bounced around a bunch of startups for about 10 years, being a software engineer and then moving a little bit into product and enjoyed it. I loved working on hard problems with interesting people. But the pivotal point for me in that was being at a company that had an amazing engineering team, this great technical team that did world class kind of stuff, stuff nobody else in the world literally could do. And I loved it. It was like, I'm working with these great people, we're working on hard problems. This is amazing. The company raised $40 million. Everything's going great, and then we went bankrupt. I'm like, wait a second, what happened here?

What did happen? Yeah, what. How is it on a. I mean, a lot of. In many companies, there's a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes. Um, but you're on a climb. You're on a climb. You got a cash infusion or. Or something along those lines of $40 million and then sudden bankruptcy. What happened?

Well, the CEO spent a lot of it on boondoggle kind of stuff, so he moved into a new building, renovated it, Spent like half of it on that, coincidentally, the build. The new office was right next to where he lived. Just coincidence, I'm sure. And he also pivoted us to go work on something that we actually had no expertise in and didn't know how to do. And this was also when the dot com crash happened. So there was no sources of new funding.

So Basically, was this 2008 around there?

This was the first one. 2002, 2003. So what that taught me was it didn't matter how good of an engineer I was, if the leadership was bad, a bad leader could wipe out all the work of the engineering team and the technical team. And it also taught me, like, wait, this business thing matters. This money thing matters? I don't understand it.

Cool. I want to pause for a second. This is. You've seen or listened to my podcast enough to know that I. I will pause at places I want to underscore something.

So.

So this is a question of leadership, and you're saying this company had bad leadership. At what point did you realize it was bad? What made it bad, and what in your mind would have made it great? Leadership? Because it's. It's easy for people in general to get into a place of. It's not me, it's outside of me. And the context is terrible. Right. Versus. Versus. It's a terrible person. It's a person who just doesn't have the skill set. So what happened what was what made it bad? Was it a series of bad decisions? Was it non communication? Those are typically the things that make for bad leadership. What was it in your world?

Yeah, it was bad decisions. It was lack of communication. This CEO was brought in to make us go big, so he was meant to do that. And he came up with ambitious plans that were not connected to reality. And the engineering team and the science team were like, yeah, we can't do what you're telling the investors we can do. And they told us to stop having negative attitudes. Uh, so I was, you know, to your point about blaming the context versus blaming myself at the time, I was like, this is. He's all bad. But I also did not handle it well because I would be the guy standing up at an all hands meeting saying, you're an idiot and this is why you're an idiot. And it turns out that was not very persuasive.

Non productive. Non persuasive. Yeah. Ad hominem attacks very seldom are. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because we're at a place in the world where that's just not helpful. Right. See it happening around the world and we're, you know, we see it happening in, in areas that we're not even involved in and we stand up and go, grr, you, you bad. And it's like, so what can you do instead? And I think that that's, that's important. So, so you had a reaction to the way he was doing his business and running business and what happened at that point? Because you said that was around 2003.

Yeah. So, I mean, this was. The company was spiraling downward, downward in 2002, eventually went bankrupt in 2003. But yeah, it was just, it was a bad series of interactions. My, I, I literally got labeled the corner of negativity by the leadership team because we're like, you're just always being negative. Why can't you be positive and get on board? I'm just like, because you're, we can't do what you're saying to do. Like, we actually had a situation where we were going to ship what we were doing and give it to a partner. I'm like, it doesn't do what you're telling the partner. It does. Like, you can't ship this. And they're like, no, no, it's fine. Don't worry about it. We'll figure it out. I'm like, no. And I wrote it all. I wrote up my observations. I said, here is what's going to happen. Here's the concerns I have, and I know you're not going to listen to me, so I'm just going to forward this to you in six months and say, I told you so, which I did. Which did not endear me to the leadership team. So there's a lot of people.

I told you so is never productive, ever. It only serves your ego. And I'm glad you're in a place, like, to look back and go, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, Steve Jobs was like, I want you to. I, you know, I want you to. To create a thing that doesn't exist. And his engineering team was like, we don't know how to do that, which is different than what you were saying, which is what you're asking for actually can't be done. We don't know how we're going to figure it out is different than, you know, what you're asking. It's like, it's almost like having a physics background and they're saying, okay, please design this thing that violates the laws of physics.

Yeah. I mean, like, actually, literally, that's kind of what we were being asked. We were like, we. We had. We had pushed the. Pushed things to the limits of what was physically possible. And he's like, yo, you need to. You need to get another two orders of magnitude accuracy. I was like, yeah, that's. There's just no way to do that. Like, we have done everything. Like, we went at one point, this is very geeky, but there's the National Institute for Standards and Technology in Colorado. They're like the preeminent scientists in the country. And we sent a delegation there to say, okay, how do you do this thing? Because maybe you know something we don't. And they came. Our team came back like, yeah, we're two orders of magnitude better than what they're doing. So, no, they're not going to be helpful. Like, we're 100 times better than what NIST is doing in this area.

We're like, oh, you've surpassed the National Institute of Standards. That's awesome. And. Yeah, yeah, good.

I mean, yeah. So the.

So from there, it was a pivot, right? And you. You shopped yourself out. You. You were like, I gotta do something bigger, better it.

So it was a pivot to realize I need to pay more attention to business and product. And that led me to, a couple years later, going back to school at. At Columbia to get a master's in technology management, which is like an MBA for tech people. So that program was Specifically designed to take tech people and give them the language of business and executives. And I'm working my way back to your original question of how I got to Google. So.

Oh, it's all good.

One of my professors in that program was walking us through a P and L statement and like, you gotta understand this. This is what is the fundamental of a company. Company has to make money, it has to make a profit. And you have to understand it if you wanna be an executive.

Just real quick, for those that are not in business, P and L is profit and loss. So understanding Prof. Is really important all the way down to, you know, your household expenses, what are you bringing in, what are you spending? It's the same for business.

Absolutely. Thank you for expanding on that. So this professor was like, if you don't understand the money, you're not going to be able to talk to executives. Executives have to understand the money. I was like, boy, I really don't understand the money. So when I started looking for my next job, I came across this position at Google, which was to be a revenue forecasting analyst. Like, literally my job was to analyze and forecast the money at Google. And I'm like, you know what? I bet if I'm with a forecaster, I'm going to learn to understand the money. And I got hired and I did that for three years. And boy, did I understand the money a lot better after that.

Okay, so I want to pause here because this is huge. Just in terms of a life. Life lesson. In terms of a life lesson, I think this is huge. You chose to step into a role that you knew was over your head and you figured you'd learn along the way. Yes. You had a little background. Yes. You are supposed to know it. And you stepped in and said, I could do it. And I just, I want to underscore that as a success step because so many people would let opportunities like that go because they're not ready because, well, somebody else is probably better. And it's just, you know, part of what you do now is you do mindset coaching and you do. You're all about leveling people up, which is why I have you on the show, because obviously that's our world. And so to, like, you may not have even known that you were doing that as a present to yourself, as a gift to yourself at the time of, you know, if I step into something that's bigger than me, I have to level up.

That's awesome. Yeah. And I guess one thing I'll say here is I had a couple Advantages that, you know, as you said, I wasn't really fully qualified for this role. So you. One might ask like, well, how did you get it? Google's really competitive and I was fortunate that through. I learned about the job through an alumni job board. So I had a connection with a hiring manager. I met up with them directly for coffee and he's like, yeah, you don't have exactly the requirements I'm looking for, but I really need more quantitative analysis on this team. And you're a physicist and I really need somebody that understands software. And you've done software for 10 years across startups. So let's build on those strengths and I can fill in the business stuff you don't understand. So I had a hiring manager that was willing to take a chance on me.

Amazing.

And give on. On my potential. And one more thing I want to say there, because I've heard you talk about this. This is also a diversity issue because. Because I look like I do. He was willing to take a chance my potential. If I would look like a woman of color, he'd be like, have you already done it? Have you shown me? Can you give me five years of proof that you've already done it? And that is a reason I got that opportunity is because I look like I do. And he's like, yeah, you could figure it out where somebody else who didn't look like me would probably not get that opportunity. So I just want to be clear that there's some privilege aspects under. Underweighing this.

I think it's huge. I think it's really important. And I think it's our responsibility to identify when privilege exists. And I mean, it exists all the time. I think it's. It's important to identify that it was there today it might be different or we might have a different conversation in the, in the hiring conversation. It might go differently, but huge. I'm glad you brought that up. You know that, that there is. There is bias going into this. There is bias in big business, in any business. So part of it is to call it out. And I think thank you for that because it's one of my personal and professional values is to acknowledge that. So thank you.

Yeah, I heard you do that. Discuss that on one of your previous podcasts. And I was like, I do want to bring this up when it comes up because it is important to me also at this point because I didn't realize at the time. At the time, I'm like, well, it's just because I'm great. That's Why I got the job. And now I'm like, eh, yes. And I had some tailwinds. That made it a little easier.

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so you got the job, you got to have the opportunity, you know, step in, make some.

Yeah, so this, this is one thing that's really fun for me because I got this revenue forecasting job In September of 2008, just as the world fled into the Great Recession.

Oh, definitely. Wow. Yeah.

And all of a sudden the CFO of Google is calling me and saying like, hey, what's going to happen with revenue? And I was literally presenting in front of Eric Schmidt and Larry Sergey and the CFO and all the top people of Google once a month. And they were like hammering me with questions like, okay, what's going to happen with the economy? What's going to happen with revenue? I'm like, how the hell should I know? I just started this job six months ago. It was a really interesting time because what my professor said was, right, executives really care about the money. And I'm sitting up there in front of the top executives at Google and getting exposure to them because I was the one that knew more about the money. And it was an exhilarating time. It was an exhausting time because I was working literally every day, late every night. I think I, I think in that year of 2009, the first holiday that I actually didn't work was Thanksgiving. I was working most weekends. It was just bonkers. But I learned a lot. I developed a lot of strong relationships and like I said, I got the visibility with the top executives. Google. That was thrilling for me at the time because I had never gotten that kind of exposure before. I'd never gotten that opportunity before. And kind of leading into that, the question about burnout, I was like, I can't blow this opportunity. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get this level of respect, to have this visibility. I have got to do Whatever it takes to stay where to build on what I've got here. And I can't blow this opportunity. And all this, you can hear all these absolutes on voice. I can't, I must, I have to. And well that, that turns out you, there's only so far you can push your body and mind before they break.

Well, I think, you know, it's, it, it's interesting because we'll, we'll get to this. So call this foreshadowing. The ideas of can't must have to. Those are the stories we tell ourselves based on the stories and rules that we assimilated early on in our, in our youth, even prior to us under understanding how the world worked like we were given. Well, you have to do this, you have to do that. And, and those become ethics, which they're not bad until they become oppressive and you realize, oh, I can't do this, I have to do that, I must do this. Those are somebody else's words. And when you awaken to that, your life opens up and I can't wait. Like we're, we're that far away from just being able to talk about that and what you're doing these days. This is great. So I can't, I must, I have to. All that must have piled up on you. And at this point you go, no thanks.

Well, I mean it did pile up on me a couple years later. I'm working 8am to midnight literally every day. I would occasionally take Saturday afternoon off is my joke. And it was like working 100 plus hour weeks and still not able to keep up with everything being asked of me. And this gets to something you mentioned in the intro of. I've been a high performer my whole life. I'm the kind of person that you're like, give me a bar and I'm going to exceed it. And all my previous jobs, I would start doing my job, I would learn how to do it, I would do it well. And then I would kind of coast along for a little bit, get bored and move on to the next job at Google. I'd learn how to do the job and start to feel like I got it under control and be like, oh great, you've got that figured out. Here's some other stuff to do. Oh wow, you have that. Why don't you take on this too? Hey, you know you've got that too. Why don't you take on this? And so the thing I had never learned in my entire life was how to say no, how to set a boundary and that's what I had to learn. Well, I didn't learn it, but I was just kept on saying yes, yes, I can do that. Yes. Oh sure. I'm honored you're asking me. Let me. Give me more, give me more. I guess here's one point I'll add in here is part of the reason I did this is I'd been my previous job before Google, I had been fired. So I had had the experience of not getting along well with the CEO and founder of the previous company and therefore got forced out. And he didn't value me. And I'm like, Google values me. I gotta, I have to keep this. I can't again, can't mess this up. I must lean in and do everything they ask me. I'm not gonna get fired again. So continue. Fast forward three years. It's like fall of 2011. I'm still keeping this pace. I haven't done anything except work for basically three years. I've lost track of my friends. I don't do anything outside of work. It's just work, work, work all the time. I look terrible. I have pictures of me from that era. I'm like, I've put on an extra 20 pounds of fat because I'm just living on soda and snacks in the micro kitchens at Google. And it was not a good situation. But I still couldn't let go of taking on more because at that point I was trying to get promoted. And I'm like, I have to get the promotion and show I belong here. So my manager's like, oh well, if you want to get promoted, do this, do this, do this. And I'm like, yes, yes, give it to me. Until Christmas of 2011 when I got, I finally like hit was a holiday break. I had the week off. I was going to go visit my family, spend time with my parents and my body just said, you're done. And I had 103 degree fever and I was sick in bed for a week. And I'm not usually the kind of person that gets sick. I have a pretty strong immune system. So I had run myself down to the point where I literally couldn't get out of bed for a week. And while lying in bed that week was when I had this reckoning that you're talking about of like, what am I doing? I'm sacrificing my family, my friends, myself, my body for this promotion. What is it worth it? Like, why do I even want this promotion? What is going on here?

Yeah.

And that's when I first kind of questioned some of these rules as you said, these things, these impositions that I'd taken on, said, this is the way the world is. And it's like, is it?

Yeah, good question. This is really important. I want to pause again and just. I want to highlight something. You said that you were a high performer all your life, and I want to make sure that our. Our listening audience gets that there's a difference between high performance and going so hard that you burn yourself out. Because high performance includes rest. High performance includes rejuvenation. Taking time off to actually keep you in high performance. You can't go. It's like driving your car and driving your car and driving your car. And at some point, you'll decide that it might need some oil. You know, you might want to. But no, no, you're so busy driving, driving, driving, that even as the end, the engine overheats from not having the lubricant it needs, right? It's like, oh, no, we're going, going, going, going, going. And sometimes it's interesting, you know, there are. There are great stories about exactly what you. What you reported when given the time off. Some people get heart attacks. You were lucky in that. You. You got 103 fever, which left you going, is this worth it? And I want to call attention also to this thing we all went through called a pandemic. You might have been there for it. It's interesting because we all got the opportunity during the pandemic to go, what are my values? I can't live life the way I used to. That's imposed around the world. Not just. I think we make the mistake in the United States of thinking that we're it. And so it became a political issue. Right? It's like, no, no. It was a pandemic around the world. And. And it's like, so what do we value? If I can't go out, if these four walls are all I'm going to be seeing what really matters to me. And in 2011, that was 12 years ago, you were faced with. You get a choice. Dear Eric, you get a choice. And it's funny, because your book is called you have a choice. So maybe that was it, Dear Eric. Right. That came through. You have a choice. And we'll talk about your book in a little bit, too. Was that your awakening? The. The fever? I burned myself out.

Yeah. It was my epiphany of sorts, of realizing, yeah, I have a choice. I get a choice. And the choice I had, which I had never faced before, was like, the rule in my head was, I must do whatever my manager asks of me. I must. And I just did it and did it and did it until I was lying sick in bed and I realized I could modify the rule, which was like, didn't realize it until then. And it was like, I must do whatever my manager asks of me unless I accept the consequences of not doing so. That was the moment and I went in and I made that choice. So my first one on one in January, I went to a manager and said, this is too much. I can't do this anymore. I will not do this anymore. And she looked at me and it's like, well, if you can't handle the work, say goodbye to that promotion. Like, I understand. If you can't handle the work, I'm going to give it to somebody who can, who can do it like you do what you need to do. So she did. She took away half my team, gave it to somebody else. She slashed my performance rating from strongly exceeds expectations to barely meeting expectations. And these were the consequences. I had feared so much that I'd driven my body beyond breakdown. Like I was the car that was like limping along and smokes coming out of the exhaust and like doors are falling off. And I had gotten everything I feared and instead of feeling terrible, I felt amazing. And it was again a mind blowing moment of realizing, oh, I can fail and still be here. The world did not end.

Yes, this is, it's huge. This piece is huge. And really what you've said is the biggest thing I feared. My identity is going to shift from being seen as being seen as not that I am, but being seen as this top performer, this go getter, this, you know, whatever it was you'd built up. My identity is going to shift from being seen as that to being seen as this horrible non performer. And you were most afraid of how you the optics on it, how you would be perceived. And you realize and the reason most people actually fear that is that they fear ostracism. They'll be cut out, they'll be left alone. And if they're cut out from the the tribe, they will perish. And the truth. Absolutely right. The truth is that you went, oh, like there are consequences. But I think I just got my life back. Right, you woke up. So, so describe that a little bit.

Yeah, I just want to build on something you just said about being ostracized. And there's the executive coach. Jerry Colonna often says our emotional needs boil down to love, safety and belonging. And you know, my strategy for earning belonging was overachieve. Like, if I overachieve and do everything everybody asks of me, they have to let me belong again. Have to the rule in my head. So that was my conditional version of the world. Like, that's how I earn belonging.

Well, you were talking. I mean, you, You. We don't have to go into it. The truth is you learn that probably right around five, six, seven years old. That's right. That that's how you're going to get love and approval is by showing you don't just. Do you overdo.

Absolutely. Yeah. It's definitely a childhood thing. And there's a whole. We could do a whole separate podcast on that topic.

But let's begin with your mother and your father. No, it's. The reason I got into coaching is that. Is that I get to cut through to that without actually having to. To. It's like I recognize it. It's a pattern. Recognize it and it's not. I don't. I moved away from traditional clinical psych so that we don't have to begin with your mother and your father. That. That kind of story, it exists for a lot of people, most people maybe, oh, 100% of people, because we take. We take on rules that we learn from authority early on and apply and. And for some, it's. You'll never amount to anything. For others, it's the only way to amount to something and to get approval and love is to. To push and push and push and push and push until there's nothing of you because it's all for someone else to give you, to grant you that. So. So without going into family history, just recognize like, this is a. One of the reasons I wanted you on also is that this is a universal story that your story of, you know, burning out at Google is. It's actually relatable to most everybody. We've. We've all had that experience of, dang, I gave so much. And that's it. That's it. Yeah. What's key here is that you, the. The core of Eric did not disappear. You didn't implode. You didn't burst into flames. You, like the you that was waiting, actually came alive. And that's the cool piece. So talk about that.

Yeah, I think that's the part that was so intimidating, almost mysterious about. Is like there was no other side to experiencing these consequences. It was just like pure badness. I cannot even contemplate what is there. It's unthinkable. Like, literally unthinkable. I cannot think about what's going to happen? And then I went for it. It happened. I'm like, oh, I'm still here. And there were so many things I wanted, so many things I could say, but several consequences. Immediate results. One, I started working 40, 50 hours a week, but getting paid the same salary, which is a pretty good deal. My hourly rate doubled.

Yeah, you doubled your salary by doing your job.

Yep. The realization that I could do things and risk failure, not being good at them, gave me the confidence to try new things, which I hadn't done in a long time. So that spring, I took up snowboarding, which I did. I had been a skier, but I'd never snowboarded. I became a snowboarder that summer. I went on a bike camping tour. I didn't know how to bike camp, but I was like, well, I've got a bike. I'll go get the. I'll get a couple bags. I'll just start biking down the California coast. And I did, and it was fantastic. That winter, I flew to India. I'd never traveled internationally alone before. And I'm like, I'm just going to fly to India. I've got three weeks there, and I'll figure it out. And I did. I still have this memory of being on the flight back from India and writing in my journal and going like, I have a new superpower. If I decide to do something, I'll figure out how to do it. And that led to the next year, became what I call my year of yes. I'm just going to say yes to everything. Every opportunity, things that intimidate me, things that scare me. I'm just going to lean into doing more of all of it. And that's helped build more and more confidence. Like, I can handle. I can do hard things, as they say. And from there, things unfolded in a kind of spectacular fashion. The last 10 years have led to enormous personal growth and development as a result of that. But it all stemmed from that one moment of, like, I can make a different choice here. I can change the rules that are binding me.

This is huge. And we're about to talk about your book. I can feel it, which is awesome. Which is, you have a choice. I really want to underscore I'll figure it out as your mantra, almost. It's like, I've never done this. I'll figure it out. I would love to just highlight that. As for those watching, for those listening, write that down and put it somewhere where you can see it every day, because you have that superpower, too. And that Is the key that two things. You have a choice, and choices always have consequences. And two, no matter what the consequence, you'll figure it out. You've gotten past some hard things in your past before. You'll figure it out. And so I just. I wanted to just take a moment to put that back in front of every single audience member, each of you listening and watching. It's like you get a choice, and you are strong enough to figure it out. And the parentheses behind I'll figure it out is this. You don't have to do that alone. Right? That. It's not like, oh, I'll figure it out. I'm figuring it out on my own. It's like, no, I'll figure it out. I've got resources. I've got resources in people around me. I've got resources in using the Internet. So big stuff. I mean, this is. That's huge. So you took this experience and you took the opportunity to go to India, and it's like, oh, I'm just gonna go to a country around the world that I've never been to for three weeks. Fantastic. Like, that's. How amazing is that? Because you get to immerse yourself in a different culture. You get to break all the rules that you. That you were living by and just kind of figure it out. So talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. There's a. You know, I literally, I originally we'd planned to go with somebody else, and then they dropped out. And then I was like, I'm think I'm just gonna go anyway. And like I said, figure it out. And I had a hotel booked for the first couple nights, and I had a lonely planet that I brought out on the airplane. And I'm like, we're just going to go from there. And it was fantastic. I could just wake up and say, where do I want to go today?

And

speaking to the theme of you'll figure it out, there was one moment where I was a little panicked because I had gotten to a town and I needed to get back to Delhi to catch my flight back to the US and there were no buses or trains available. Everything was booked out. It was Christmas week, and everything was booked out. I'm like, ah, crap. What do I do? Like, how do I get back to my flight? I'm gonna be trapped in India forever. And I was with the hotel, and they're like, yeah, just go hire a car. Like, oh, go to. Down the street. There's a car service. You pay them a hundred bucks, they drive you to Delhi. I was like, oh, okay, that wasn't so hard.

Right. Again, resources that are available to you and you not know what's available unless you ask. So that was great.

Yeah. And I want to go back to something you said about the you'll figure it out part. I mean, one thing that stops people from trying new things is they think they have to do the huge thing first. Like, I'm going to go change my life. I'm going to go across the world to India, and that doesn't have to be that way. So we haven't gotten to this yet, but I now work as an executive coach. I help people get unstuck when they feel stuck in their own head with these mindsets and these rules. And the framework I offer them because of my training in physics is, let's do an experiment in this one situation where you would normally do this. Can we try one slightly different action and see how it goes? And it turns out that's incredibly powerful because you do it once and you're like, oh, that didn't turn out the way I feared, the way I expected. You get some positive reinforcement, then you try it again, like, ooh, that worked well. And this works like compound interest. If you do a little bit every day, it adds up really fast. I mean, you're the exponential success coach. You get this. You know how this works. But that's the investment. It's like if you try a different experiment once a day, even once a week, that's how your life changes. Not by, I'm going to drop out and do something completely different, like just do one different thing.

This is why I have you here. This is great because we are thinking identically. One of my stories is that when I was in grad school, I got really tired of doing the same thing every day. Wake up, shower, eat, go to, go to class, come back home, like study, eat, go to bed, wake up. And I ended up getting a 4x6 card where I was, you know, I'd take my notes on, on the things I was reading on, on cards so I could catalog them. Yes, there were computers, but not quite the way we use them today. And so for me it was like, oh, I have this information. Well, I took a 4x6 card, I took a bright orange marker and I put a four letter word ending in K on that. On that card. And I put that card on the door where I would see it as the last thing I did. Last thing I'd see going out into the world. That letter word was Risk. And so for me at that time, it was me pushing me to risk. Do one thing different, which is why I love your story. Do one thing. It doesn't have to be the big thing. Oh, I'm gonna change me. It's like, no, no, I'm gonna do one thing different today. Just one. Go talk to a different professor. Have a different food. Go to and from my. The place I was going. Like, for me, it was. It was the university. It was like, go a different route. Take a little longer, try and do it faster. Do one thing different. Like if. Change my parking spot, change my pace, change my. You know, because I'd walk sometimes, I'd drive sometimes. But do one thing different. Even if it's trying a different food that you've never even tried. Like, do one thing different every single day. And you teach your subconscious. It's not just like, oh, I proved to myself I could eat something different. It's you teach your subconscious that you are growing deliberately. Right? And that's. That's where you are. And as a. As you know, we both do executive coaching. We both are teaching people how to get unstuck. That's one of the basic exercises to getting people unstuck, is try walking 25% slow, more slowly or faster. You know, it's like, change your pace and see what happens in your body. You have to become conscious of it. Do one thing different every day. So cool. Talk to me about. Talk to us about. About the book and everything you've put in it.

Yeah. So I've been working. I left Google about four years ago. I've been working as an executive coach since then. And, you know, I do personalized coaching. I design experiments. I design plans for each of my clients. But over doing it for a few years, I realized, like, I'm kind of telling the same stories, giving the same advice, kind of following the same patterns with a lot of my clients. I'm like, oh, maybe there's a way to make this general not personalized. And so I took on that challenge of turning it into a book. And we've already covered most of the themes. The title of the book is, you have a choice beyond hard work to meaningful impact. And the catchphrase I've been using, it's when working harder isn't working. It's like when I was working burning out, I was working hard, wasn't. And I was working harder and harder and doing more of the same thing that wasn't working. And this gets to what we're talking about with Experiments. The key was to do something different, take a different approach. And that's the choice part. But you can't make that choice unless you start to notice these rules keeping you boxed in to working the way that you're working today. And start questioning and start experimenting with bending those rules or moving those rules or loosening those rules. So that's what the book is. It leads you through this process of understanding what you want to be different. Like, let's aim. Where would we want to go? What does success look like? And then let's understand, how are you the problem? How are you and your rules keeping yourself stuck where you are? And I have a bunch of exercises in the book to kind of illustrate the ways in which that happens. So one good example is a lot of people are like, well, it's not me keeping me stuck, it's my manager. They're the problem. You know, back to our discussion earlier of, like, putting it out there. It's the context of the problem. Like, okay, let's deal with that. So I had one client that was like, my VP is so demanding. They don't support me. They make my life miserable. Like, they need to change. I'm like, okay, but what evidence do you have they're going to change? Like, well, they're none. And. But you're still frustrated. They're like, yeah, like, here, let me do something for you. Watch this. Is it frustrating? They're like, no, it's just something falling. Like, well, why isn't frustrating? Because it happens every time. And your vp, they're like, it's not the vp. I mean, yes, the VP was a problem, but the bigger problem was that my client expected the VP to change and was frustrated and angry every time. And when we worked through it and said, this is who they are, they're not going to change. What are you going to do differently in that reality? And then they started to realize, oh, I do have choices. I could work around them. I could make these relationships. I could try a different way of interacting with them that gets a different result. And the choices just started opening up in a way that was not there when it was like, it's not my problem, it's theirs.

I'm loving this so much. I'm smiling really big as you're talking. I'm going to make a guess that you've never studied rational emotive therapy. Ret.

I have not studied that, no.

Very excellent. Because what you've done is you've. You've been able to observe patterns, and you've come up with basically the, the lay approach, which is a powerful approach. What you've got is, is the lay approach to rational emotive therapy. R E T which is, which is exactly as you described. It's like, here's this outcome that keeps happening. You choose. You choose to pound your head against the wall, and you're going to blame the wall. So how's that serving you? And it's like, you know this thing about gravity. Like, if you drop something, it's gonna fall. And you can't yell at the thing you're dropping and ask it not to fall because it's gonna fall. So here's this. Here's this thing. You have an emotion. Like there's a thing that happens all the time. You have an emotion. Which part of that thing, which part of that equation needs to change if you want to feel better? Right. So.

Well, and it's funny you mentioned speaking of red arriving. Like, I recently read An Introduction to Buddhism. Turns out it's the same principles apply in Buddhism. They're 1500 years old. Where Buddha tells a story about the two arrows. Like, you get shot by an arrow, that's a lot of pain. But the reactions and the emotions and all the anger you feel about the arrow, that's like a second arrow that you're inflicting on yourself.

Exactly.

Like, bad things happen. But if you can accept the bad things you're not attached to different outcomes, then you can say, okay, that happened. What do I do about it?

It exists. Yeah. So good. The. The circumstance exists. What I ask is what's available to me now? Right. I talked about martial arts, and I teach that in, in all the coaching. And it's like every moment is different. You get a chance to choose a different perspective, which gives you a chance to respond differently. So for you, I mean, talk more about your book. Because I sort of. I went on my little. This is so important to me. And I want to know about your book. I want to know more about where you. Where you enter with it, where you take the reader and what. What's the reader come away with?

Yeah. The themes of the book are things we've been talking about. The two principles I use throughout the book are, how are you the problem? What are the rules you're putting on yourself to keep yourself in this situation? That doesn't mean you're the only problem. We've already talked about privilege, We've talked about diversity. And there are ways in which I do not have similar problems than somebody that's a Black woman, let's say. That's something that was very important to recognize. I actually have little privilege sections throughout the book saying, here's how I did it and here's why it will not work for everybody. But secondly, after how are you the problem? Then the title of the book, you have a choice. If your actions are the ones keeping you stuck, what will you choose to do differently? So the structure of the book is we first look at the rules keeping you stuck. Then there's a chapter, experimentation. Let's try some experiments. Let's nudge things in a different direction. And then I talk through some of the common blockers that keep people stuck and how to pay attention, to notice when you're falling back into your old habits. Your point about neuropsychology is when we do something the same way every day, literally, our brain gets wired that way. It's very easy to fall back into the ruts of our brain and do what we did before. We do it unconsciously, we do it unthinkingly. We do it automatically. Learning to pay attention with journaling, with mindfulness, with techniques like that, to notice, like, oh, I'm not doing what I thought I said I wanted to do. And then the final chapter of the book is Aspire. So it's like, okay, now that you've learned to take control of yourself, a little bit more, understanding how you're keeping yourself stuck, how do you want to change the world? And first we change ourselves, then we change the world. And the analogy here is the butterfly effect. Now we hear the story about the butterfly that flaps its wings and a tornado appears throughout the world. We never know when we can be that butterfly. So take action today to live into the world you want to create. You never know who's watching. You never know how they might be inspired by you, how they might copy you. And that's how movements change the world. One person, then two people, then four people. So that's where I end. The book is really challenging and inspiring, hopefully inspiring people to change the world.

Yeah. Recognize that any action you take that is a positive action creates a positive action reaction. That being that light. I call it being the beacon. Can you be the beacon? Can you be the torch? Can you be that? Lights, other lights. You know, you don't have to light all the lights. You need to light a light that can light other lights. And that's really important. I. I like the format that you've described because you go from. Move away from pain into move toward what you want and. And a Lot of books out there will just be one sided, you could have it all. Let's go for the aspiration and it's the or you don't have to live in pain anymore. It's okay. And what you've done is you said the pain exists. You don't have to live there. Check it out, check your thoughts. Like let's do experiments, make it real to yourself and then bounce from there. And you, you were kind enough to mention that, you know, mine is the world of exponential success. Get to a point where what you do finally causes this propulsion. Right. The way I like to explain it is that the difference can be a degree of difference. You lay down all these degrees and when I say degrees I mean do you will know the difference between in Fahrenheit 211, 212, 211 to 212. That's a 1 degree difference. 11 to 212 is the difference from hot water to boiling. Right. At 212 it's the boiling point. So yeah, it's still just one degree of difference. And so what you're describing in your book is pay attention to where it hurts, let go of that, experiment with what doesn't. Even if it does, it might be a stretch and then step into what do you really want to do? What do you really want to be. You have a choice is the name of the book. Where can people find more? Do you have a website about you have a choice? Do you have if people want to contact you? I'm assuming you're on LinkedIn.

So yep, I'm on LinkedIn. You can follow me there. I post a couple times a week with things like experiments things like things you can try. But the place to learn about me is my website toomanytrees.com and there's a link from there to the book toomanytrees.com book and you can go there. The Too Many Trees is a reference to the saying you can't see the forest for the trees. Hard to see the big picture when you're like there's trees everywhere and I can't see it. And one of the things I try to do with my clients is help them get out of the trees and see the big picture, see the forest and map out where they're going to go. Again, this inspiration, this aspiration of here's what I want to do, here's how I want to be different. And then let's look at how to get there.

That's great. So too many trees.com and it's not about deforestation, it's about perspective and perception. So toomanytrees.com, eric Nerlich or Nerlich N E H R L I C H E R I C H Eric. So it's it's a German last name but not a German spelling of your first name. Eric N E H R L I C H if you wanted to find them on LinkedIn or the other socials otherwise the website too many trees.com and that's where you learn more about you have a choice the book. So please, please reach out to Eric. I'm making some notes. I'm reviewing my notes. These will all be in the show notes last kind of parting pieces of wisdom that you wanted to give us.

Well, first of all, I want to thank you for having me on the show. I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's wonderful to find a like minded soul and just geek out in this way. So thanks for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure.

And I think the parting wisdom is it doesn't have to be this way. You feel stuck. You feel like nothing can possibly change. You're like, oh, if I change anything, the whole thing's going to fall apart. Like it's like this whole tower of locks is going to just fall apart if I change one thing. And so I can't change anything. And I just want you to believe you can try one tiny experiment like even as follows what you suggested, like walk 25% slower today, take a different route to work and recognize you have that power to change your next action. And if you believe that and you try it out and you realize you have that power, the whole world will change. I lived it. Sounds like you've lived it and I want you, the listener, to live it.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Eric Nerluch has been my guest. This is one sharp sword cutting through to what matters most. I'm Wayne Purnell, Dr. P, the Exponential success coach and the president of Dynamic Leader Inc. Please find more about eric@toomanytrees.com and after that, we'll see you here next time. Eric, thanks again for being here and to our listeners, to our viewers, we'll see you here next week. Thank you.

Thanks, Wayne.