In this short motivational monologue recorded in Austin on June 8, the speaker recounts a dinner conversation with an old college friend who runs advertising agencies. The friend shares his leadership philosophy: empower teams by trusting them, keep reporting lines short, and intervene only in crises. He also teaches a simple three‑point rule for personal and professional success—be on time, do good work, and be easy to work with. Consistently meeting any two of these three criteria keeps you "in good shape," while failing to meet at least two leads to problems. The speaker adopts this rule to evaluate his own performance and suggests it can also be applied to personal relationships, prompting listeners to reflect on how they show up for others. The talk ends with an upbeat encouragement for the day.
Chapters
Good morning, everyone. Here is your moment of yes for Wednesday, June 8th. We are here in Austin now, and yeah, enjoying Austin. Hotter than Hades, but in awesome city. So enjoying Austin right now. I had a chance to go out and grab dinner last night with an old college friend, and he is, you know, for 15, 20 years now. He's been the director of different advertising agencies. Really, really awesome guy. Very sort of eccentric and different and just a really cool dude. And we were talking about leadership last night at dinner. And, you know, he talked about how he tries to empower people as much as possible, right? He goes, I want as few people reporting to me as possible. And his message to his staff or his team is, I trust you. I trust you to figure this out. And he's like, and so for the most part, I'm only trying to get involved when maybe it's a crisis mode and they really need my input. But before then, I trust them to figure it out. So I always just love his ideas when it comes to leadership and and inspiring others. But he shared this one concept. He was talking about how he loves to use interesting, deep, creative improvisational questions in interviews to really get people super open-ended creative questions in interviews. And he also said, he goes, I've realized managing teams that in order to be successful, He goes, in order to be successful, there's 3 things to be successful. He goes, be on time, one. Number 2, do good work. And number 3, be easy to work with. He said, be on time, do good work, be easy to work with. And then he leaned in and said, and the reality is, as long as you're doing 2 of those 3 things at any given time, You're going to be in good shape. He goes, the problem is, is if when you are not doing 2 of those 3. He goes, so you might— let's say you're not on time, but, uh, and when he says on time, it means like physically maybe on time to work, but also like on projects. You're not on time on projects. But let's say, yeah, you're not on time, but man, you do good work and, and you're easy to work with. You're going to be all set. Or let's say you keep delivering on time, your work isn't great but you're really easy to work with, you're going to be all set. So you take any 2 of those 3 and if you're doing 2 of those 3 consistently, you're going to be in good shape but if you're not, there's going to be problems and I just, I love thinking of those 3 criteria as far as in the grand scheme of how am I doing, how is my work doing right now. And thinking of them in those criteria, I'm like, okay, I think I'm really easy to work with. I think I'm doing pretty good work. I'm definitely always on time. And I think I'm in good shape. And so that's just kind of a new paradigm, a new model that I'm gonna kind of continue to use when I sort of think about myself and my work, as well as those people that I'm working with. And really, you can apply that to your relationships as well. You know, how are you showing up in your relationships, right? Are you on time? Are you showing up and doing good work? And are you easy to be in relationship with? So, I love that concept. Wanted to share that with you guys here this morning. And that's your moment of yes for today. Have an awesome day, everybody. Bye.
