What Breed Are You?

Josh: The Daily Talk Show. It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 806.

Tommy: Happy Thursday, Gronks. What's happening? What's going on?

Josh: I'm gonna just do a round of applause. I'm feeling better today.

Tommy: Yeah, you're up and about today. Yeah. Is there any, any, uh, implemented any changes from yesterday? Any kind words coming through to your Instagram account? You were feeling a bit low if you didn't watch yesterday.

Josh: Yeah, Scooter Derek actually just messaged me. I need to write back. He's worried about me. He said he's going to Officeworks. Do I need anything? He's good like that.

Tommy: Yeah, I mean, that is a friend.

Josh: Mate, you just spent $2,000 at Officeworks. What do you need?

Tommy: Mate, what's another $1,000 on me credit?

Josh: No, but I did take the afternoon off, which was a nice treat.

Tommy: Did you?

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: What does that look like?

Josh: So, I mean, it's not too dissimilar to working, to be honest. It's just transitioning to that. You could look at that in two ways, either not good at switching off, or I'm always not doing something.

Tommy: Well, I will say, because if you give it the parameters of I'm taking the arvo off, it could be just removing a level of feeling, a level of pressure. Like, you may just dial the anxiety down based on saying that to yourself. And so I was finding it quite funny because you were still on the text and you were still posting Instagram storeys and you're still reading, you know, quotes. You're doing everything you normally do.

Josh: But if you felt different about it, I was on the bed though, I was lying on the bed.

Tommy: So I think that's what it was. I know, if I just like, say if I decided to take the rest of the arvo off and I just sort of was—

Josh: Could you do it? Would you? Why don't you take the arvo off?

Tommy: I could take the arvo off. What time from? 1? Like 2 o'clock? 2 o'clock?

Josh: Why don't you do it from straight after? What, 1 o'clock?

Tommy: I've got a bit to do.

Josh: Like, what do you got to do?

Tommy: Jess might be grumpy about it.

Josh: What's Jess? Oh, sorry, what have you got on?

Tommy: I've got a—

Josh: Jess can have the day off. I'm gonna give Jess the whole day off.

Tommy: But Mason, he's not getting the fucking day off.

Josh: Yeah, nah, Mason, don't even think about it. George? I mean, every single Well, I know that, yeah, Mason will be in his cubby house and he'll be, I mean, he eats like a kid too. I can just imagine he's got his sliced apple and he's like all of his bits and pieces.

Tommy: One of, a friend of mine, her mum has a business that used to do something called a Doona Day. And I was thinking about it this morning. Doona Day, you wake up, you feel, it could be mental health related. I think it wasn't specifically, it was just if you felt shit, it wasn't back when it, when I got told this, there wasn't as much dialogue around how you feel and how's your mental health, you're anxious, all that. But I think it does. It's like, that is the doona day is, can I just jump in bed? I don't want to do all the work today and I just want to disconnect a bit.

Josh: So, but also by actually saying this is what you're going to do, if you do do work, it's a win. But if it's the other way around, if you're still working and you're in that state, you could be like, I'm just fucking around here, I'm just reading a book, this isn't work. Yeah, yeah.

Tommy: And so then that's that, just saying the words and then just sort of dialling it all back. So it's almost taking away the pressures of a work day. Um, and so the book you were reading yesterday, I was— when I saw you doing that, I was like, ah, that's good, that's good, that's a great book for where you're at at the moment.

Josh: So this is the, this is the book, it's by, um, the guys who, uh, founded Basecamp, used to be called 37signals. 20-year-old software business now, I think. Is it 20 years old? It's been around for a long time.

Tommy: It is, it is crazy. You, you gifted that book to me. I read it, left it in the sun, and the COVID disconnected from the, the spine of it, and I was like, oh fuck, but I got most of the way through.

Josh: I feel like I was slightly worried giving it to you because there was the sense of there's a few things that are controversial in here That if you're not all across, like I would be worried Mason potentially reading this at the age of 20 because it's like he hasn't really, 'cause it's like, you know, saying no to meetings. It's like if Mason ever says no to a meeting, I'll tell him to fuck off. You know what I mean? But I could imagine he reads this book and it's like, hey man, I couldn't contact you today. It's like, oh, deep work, you know. No meetings.

Tommy: Yeah, deep work. Look, look, your revenue goals, I don't believe in them. Like we don't need revenue goals. We tried it and it, and you know, there was a lot of anxiety and so we're trying to dial back the anxiety. So I don't care about your revenue goal, Josh.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, so on the COVID of the book it says, like, so it has a big cross out of all of these things and it says 80-hour weeks, packed schedules, super busy, endless meetings, overflowing inbox. I can imagine fucking Seb's creating a good storey about his inbox. I can't get to email too much. I bet you are. I reckon he's a few weeks off asking for a HEY account, which is like a new way of looking at email. Mate, you haven't even worked out old email. Why don't you look at old email before you go to new email? Anyway, love you, Seb. Overflowing inbox, unrealistic deadlines, can't sleep, Sunday afternoon emails, no time to think, stuck at the office, all-nighters, and my probably favourite, chats blowing up. Which is normally a brand value.

Tommy: And what was the takeaway if you were to have one takeaway from that book? Well, in the state that you were in, so it was feeling a bit down, bit like, you know, you were concerned about the future or just feeling those anxieties of just putting pressure on yourself.

Josh: Just feeling the weight of the pressure, right? And so, this is definitely the antidote for that. And so, even just reading the contents, not like— The thing with non-fiction is, and I know I said that I was going to read some fiction, and Leah McClelland actually sent a DM saying, "Love the episode. Like, definitely read fiction." But I'd already gotten into this one. But the good thing about non-fiction, I reckon the— I might sound like a bit of a dummy here. But the secret equation for reading non-fiction is reading the contents first.

Tommy: The contents. Okay.

Josh: What?

Tommy: I mean, do all non-fiction books have that? I don't think so. Do they?

Josh: Yeah. So, but this one is like very good, I think. The— It's things like, so first, It's Crazy at Work, a quick bit about us. This is essentially just the chapters, right?

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: But I did an Insta storey @joshjanson if you want to follow along on my journey. There's Curve Your Ambition. Pardon?

Tommy: Well, you have to.

Josh: No, I was just like, if you want to follow, I was pretty pumped about my Insta stories. I thought they were good. I was like, this is something. And a few people DM'd. It did give me anxiety to write back to everyone, so I haven't yet. But it did feel good because people were like, yeah, this is great. The bits that you've underlined are refreshing. But it's like, bury the hustle. Happy pacifists. Our goal, no goals. Don't change the world. Make it up as you go. Comfy's cool. So, you get a good sense just reading the contents around the type of thing that it's going to give you.

Tommy: Where do you land with this stuff? Because I feel like you're one to, and it's a skill of yours, to consume something and then take it. So, the one you've been on recently is the the WIGs, widely important goals. And then we speak to someone like Nathan Chan from Founder who talks about the traffic light system, and he's, you know, his coach has told him that, um, and so then he's implementing that. And so great, what do you think was the book that he recommended?

Josh: I'm still— I've been reading, listening to that audiobook.

Tommy: Good.

Josh: But where do I land? Yeah, no, good question. I think that for me, I use the— even though I'm in extremes, I will use books to try and realign or just give some perspective. So I feel like, say, using the, um, Four Disciplines of Execution, which is what you're talking about, which is talking about the wildly important goals and having leads and lags and all these different types of metrics to sort of understand your business, um, accountability meetings, all of that sort of stuff, uh, this here just gives the other side of the coin. Because if you just read all of that stuff, you can think that there's no other option, and that if you don't do— if you don't have a wig, if you don't have all these things, you can't have a successful business.

Tommy: Well, if you don't have a— if you don't have a goal, you don't have a destination in mind, how— where are you going? You're going nowhere. You're driving the fucking streets.

Josh: And so, I did. I— The goal thing, I don't necessarily— So, they're very much— They've tried the whole— At Basecamp, they tried the whole setting goals. I think that it is important for us, the goal bit, because there needs to be a central thing that we're all understanding and what we're trying to do. But I think that it's— The tricky bit is that we— I think that we are in the compass game, wherein a— this is the direction we're going in and go full steam ahead. Whereas the tangible goals around revenue or the amount of downloads you have— I was speaking to one podcaster the other day, um, and he was talking about growth, and we were chatting about how do you grow your podcast. And I asked the question that you ask a lot, which is like, what is the number? What's the number that you want to get to that then you'll be happy?

Tommy: And I ask that because I put it back on people that say that you don't have enough money, you don't have enough numbers to monetize. And then the quick question to them is, well, what's the number? Yeah. And so, and most people don't have an answer. And most people don't because that's, that's the thing. You can make money starting a podcast with no followers if you have a good brand behind you. If you're an influencer, you could probably get it sponsored for the whole thing. Or you could probably do it the other way. You got no brand, no spot, no sort of influence, but somehow you con someone into it. Like, there's a million ways to skin it. And what did he say to you when you spoke to him?

Josh: Yeah, so, yeah, wasn't sure on the exact number. And so, but I think that that is the common problem. And then it's also identifying what's that number going to do for you. And it's not too dissimilar to if you're trying to make money. It's like if I get $50,000, like before Bri and I went away to go overseas, like we had $50,000 that we had that we spent throughout the trip. It doesn't do anything. Like it's not—

Tommy: And that was just on gelato.

Josh: That was crazy in Italy. You're not too far off. But that $50,000, like I think that there's a lot of people who think that if I have X amount in the bank, that all of a sudden that will be where I have some level of comfort. But like, we spent it all.

Tommy: And so what about the people that make a fuckload of money, have these realizations, and then are falling back on all the cash? Then they're going, well, ah, it's obviously not about that, but then I've got all this money. Where do you think, when you read a book like this that is quite impactful and gives a great perspective of the other side of the coin, And then you go, the situation we're in, where— how does that make sense to you? How do you reconcile not having a bank account full of cash or an audience as big as Joe Rogan? And then where do you— what do you do with that?

Josh: Um, yeah, so I think that it's not talking about it in this book, but Simon Sinek, who wrote the book and had the famous TEDx talk, Start With Why, He has a book called Finite and Infinite Games. And so finite and infinite games, that's two different types of games that you basically— this is like game theory. So you have two different types of games. One of them, we know the players and we know the game. And so for instance, uh, basketball, we understand, uh, where— how you get 3 points and how all of that sort of stuff works. It's very easy to measure, and you know your competitors, you know who you are playing against. Whereas what we're playing is an infinite game. An infinite game doesn't have a, like, uh, necessarily an outcome. It's not outcome-focused. Competitors can change, or rivals can change over time, and it's very much about, um, it's being less focused on those very specific goals. So when people say the iTunes charts or the Apple Podcast charts, that's a finite game that people are playing, which is like, okay, if I get subscribers really quickly, I can then get into the charts. But then what does the charts do for you? And so for, um, the finite versus infinite thing is very good because— and that was my frustration around the Podcast Ranker. It's trying to take something that is an infinite game, which is building an audience and serving people, and trying to make it a finite game where it's like every month, these are the winners, here's the people who are on top. And so for me, what this book does, even though this isn't, uh, that book, it still makes me recognise that you don't have to enter into the finite games. And so, yeah, go on.

Tommy: Do you think that people who— but do you think that people may have goals set around finite games and they're not willing to pursue the infinite game?

Josh: Well, yeah, I think that that's the thing. So, the difference between a finite and an infinite game is a finite game can be won and lost, but then it also doesn't— it can't necessarily continue. It's going— so if you, if you are playing the finite game, when something like a pandemic happens, all of a sudden the rules change. And when the rules change, that game can be disrupted. We've even seen that in fucking sport. Like, these things aren't immune to that. Whereas the infinite game— building audiences, serving people all of that stuff, the infinite game stuff, is transferable in any time in life. And so I think that—

Tommy: Mixed in with the why, Simon's previous book, it's like, I mean, that's a good combination. If you're understanding your why, then playing the infinite game, but then you see the challenge. So what's the challenge even while you've identified those two things? You know your why, you know what game you're playing, and it's the infinite one. And then it's the you, you're the thing in the middle of that, that still feels everything.

Josh: And you can potentially get confused into thinking that you're meant to be playing the finite game, or you could be judged on the finite game. So people who would compare, or you see reviews or whatever it is, you hear people talking about, they've made a judgement call on It's like they're watching a soccer game and they say, why don't they just pick up the— why don't they just pick up the ball? The fucking idiots, right? Like there is a misalignment between the rules. And that's what I feel.

Tommy: It's not Gaelic football, mate.

Josh: I think that that's like part of the frustration. It's like for me, when I hear criticism or I hear feedback, are people thinking about it in the infinite game? Or are they just comparing us? And but I think there are people who are. But some of the things that stood out to me, um, so this, so this is— finite and infinite games has nothing to do with this specific book, but to give you sort of a sense. So the book is called It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work. One of the things I underlined, which is an infinite game mindset, is set out to do good work, set out to be fair in your dealings with customers, employees, and and reality. And so if you look at that, if you focus on the finite game— so the finite game is we're going to make, uh, $150,000 this month. The problem when you focus on the finite game is at what cost? At what cost are you willing to make that $150,000? Basecamp, the authors talk about um, you know, customer retention. And so one way that people can turn on customer retention is making it way harder for people to get out of their contract or to cancel their service. Yeah. So when you go on to Adobe, or if you go on to any service, how— like SaaS product— how easy is it to cancel? If it's hard they're probably playing the finite game. They're wanting to make sure that they have the revenue coming in right now at the detriment of people who don't even necessarily want to be there.

Tommy: And then they, yeah, can't work out how to cancel, so they go hard on sales to get people through the trapdoor, and then everyone's trying to work out how to get out. They fucking can't get out.

Josh: And so then you've got to ask, um, and so I think that part of the friction that we sometimes feel is when people aren't playing the infinite game. They're playing the finite game. They're like, how do I make money? How do I, how do I monetize this relationship here? Or add fees here? And like, I deserve to be paid here. Like, these things— I think that we need to look at things holistically. I think for us, what we've done is we always come in with the posture of how we're serving people how we, how we supporting the people around us. And you can sniff out someone who's playing the finite game because it always comes back to those specific needs that they're trying to do right now, which won't necessarily serve them for the future.

Tommy: And then, I mean, how do you, how do you set out to do something? Because you see the people that really win are the ones that are doing what they love they're not sleazy salespeople and they're making good money. It's like they're being rewarded for this great thing that they've— that they're putting out into the world. And so I see that more of a win than the hard salesperson that's just closing deals and deals at any cost.

Josh: And so, like, what is an actual— like, I think that what we're in is in— we're in the relationships game. We're like, I'm proud of all the great people we have around us. And it's funny that our intuition, our gut instincts on these things are normally spot on. And you see, and what I think, um, the reason why these books are great is it's very easy to fall into the finite game when you have enough conversations with people and they're asking questions about certain things, or they're trying to you know, um, you know, growth for growth's sake, but like, what does it all mean? So anyway, yeah, I definitely recommend, um, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work, and then also, um, Finite and Infinite Games.

Tommy: I think the, the way you were laying out that would feel better for an individual or for yourself or us takes longer, but then it's, um, but then if you're— then it makes sense if you're in if you've decided that this is the long haul, we're doing 10 years of this show, it just becomes a small portion of a 10-year piece. But if you don't have that understanding of the longer play, that's where some anxiety can come in because you're like, I wanted all this success yesterday or one year ago and I fucking— I need to start now. I need it to blow up, or, you know, all those things. I need to be unicorn.

Josh: And then it also, like, I think that it, um, it doesn't allow for the light and shade of things. It's all too, um, it's, it's too black and white. And so yeah, I think, but in saying that, there is, there are moments where, and this is like, um, metamodernism, which, uh, Dr. Jason Fox has spoken about on, you know, spoken to on our show before. It's like you can enter into these states, so you can enter into an— a finite game temporarily, or you can oscillate between finite and infinite. Like, but as long as you know that you are playing the infinite game and then you recognise that this finite game won't come at the detriment, but it's actually the game that needs to be played Now that's like the little bit of the headfuck is there is, there is an oscillation that can happen where you are playing at a short period of time, uh, the, the finite game. That makes sense, or do you think people think I'm fucking whack?

Tommy: Yeah, I think, I mean, the finite infinite game thing has been one that you sort of went hard on. That was early, probably 6 months ago.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Um, I mean, there's simple concepts, but how do you swallow them and actually digest them and make sense of it? And so I think if you were to look at— if you are struggling to look at it, it's like, what goal do you have? What is the period of time? Or where are you wanting to go? How quickly is it? If it's very quick, it's probably going to slip into a finite area, or it could trip you up to play a finite game. So I need money by next month. How can I do it today? And who can can I call to ask to help me with what I need? And it's like, me, me, me.

Josh: And you can sniff it a mile away, right? Like, I don't necessarily think it's affecting—

Tommy: I empathize. We've done it. And because it's like, it's actually, how can we serve our need quick smart? Because it seems— and but then it's like, you know, it's like, I mean, this is where the people in religion is like, giving back gives to you. It's like doing things for others, it's like, that is That is a truth, that when you shift the focus from all about me and what I need to what do you need, how can I help you, there's a reward back, there's something that comes back to you. And so, it's a balance, there's a balance.

Josh: We were talking before the show, we were actually talking about it yesterday, what dog breed would you be if you were a dog?

Tommy: Oh, mate, it's a fun one. Look up dog breeds in Google and you've just got a whole plethora of dogs just to swipe across the top.

Josh: And so, dog breeds. Can I pick one for you?

Tommy: Yeah, please pick one for me. I'm just scrolling through.

Josh: I know what you are straight away.

Tommy: What am I?

Josh: You're a Siberian Husky.

Tommy: Oh, hang on. Wait. Is this a huge thing? Saraba dog. Sarabi dog. What am I?

Josh: A Siberian Husky.

Tommy: Siberian Husky.

Josh: Mason is a Bernese Mountain Dog.

Tommy: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big cuddly fella. My mate had two of them. They were huge and they shed hair everywhere.

Josh: They're not huge.

Tommy: Bernese, dude.

Josh: Conspiracy Jimmy would be a Doberman.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, dude. If you think Bernese Mountain Dogs aren't big, you've lost your mind. Like, they look huge.

Josh: They're quite small, dude.

Tommy: They come and they're like, oh, look at that cute, like, small little, like about the size of a, you know, mid-range Labrador. And how old is that? Oh, 3 months. Oh, oh, wait, like 6 months' time, a year's time, huge, heavy, like thick set, not like a Doberman style, but just like a king-size Labrador that's 70 kegs and shits the size of a can of chum.

Josh: So what am I?

Tommy: I mean, I like, because Jess called you the chihuahua.

Josh: I'm not, definitely not a chihuahua. But if you want to— I reckon—

Tommy: No, no, no, you can't give it to yourself. I'll give you it. I'll give you it.

Josh: A Shar Pei.

Tommy: I'm just, I'm looking at—

Josh: Have you looked up Shar Pei? S-H-A-R—

Tommy: Yeah, Shar Pei.

Josh: P-E-I. That's me.

Tommy: I need something that's got a bit of bitch about you.

Josh: Yeah, they're all bitches.

Tommy: Oh my God. An Afghan hound is hilarious.

Josh: An Afghan hound. I can't say that.

Tommy: He's got long hair.

Josh: What's GB? Georgie Boy. Uh, George Pomeranian.

Tommy: Yeah, he's a— yeah, he's a bit of a Shih Tzu. Oh no, I reckon you're a beagle because you actually look quite young, kind of cute, um, very fucking across everything, you know, like a beagle sniffs out dog treats through a fucking Yeah, I do that.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me.

Tommy: You know, like, you've kept your youth, your skin's really nice, and not your scalp, but, you know, your skin, your facial skin, you've got— yeah. And so you're a beagle, mate.

Josh: And then, so what's GB then? Can we lock in GB's?

Tommy: All right, um, a dachshund, because he's the hip— he's the most hip, hip person on our team. Bit hipster. Dash hound. Like George, I don't think he's, you know, he doesn't go to the gym. He's not the fittest guy on earth, but he's still got a, you know, reasonable rig. Is that skinny fat?

Josh: Is he viscerally? Because he looks, yeah, he looks lean, but he eats shit. He's very lean.

Tommy: But love to be around them. People love to be around dash hounds.

Josh: Do you think he's got, I don't know if George has a long enough torso.

Tommy: No, he doesn't. I mean, you don't fit the sort of layout of a beagle, nor do I of a— what was I?

Josh: No, you did. Yeah, yours is a—

Tommy: What am I?

Josh: For accent, you're written bagel. Yeah, I sort of look like a bagel. What was I?

Tommy: I forgot.

Josh: I can't fucking remember. Did you— have you heard about like— so I saw on Whippers' Instagram Insta Stories, a montage of news reports. Yeah. About two words when you put them together that have been really making the rounds lately, and it's very funny.

Tommy: Oh, yeah. Great.

Josh: Have you heard about this?

Tommy: No. What is it?

Josh: So, uh, masks, the mask debate. Mask. Say it. The mask debate.

Tommy: The mask debate.

Josh: The mask debate. Masturbate. And so, it sounds like there's a montage of about 15 different news outlets, especially the American accent. It sounds like they're saying the masturbate. The masturbate. That's great.

Tommy: That is great. The on the dog thing, another fun game to do with your mate. Go around the room and you have to bark. So, you have to, you need to do a bark and everyone decides what dog you are based on your bark.

Josh: Should we do that now?

Tommy: You just do one. You, you get— do you want me to go?

Josh: Okay, okay.

Tommy: That was just—

Josh: yeah, yeah, sure.

Tommy: I just, um, think too much.

Josh: What do you think that is? So you were a Siberian Husky, by the way. Um, so I think that you there were, um—

Tommy: I wasn't a Siberian Husky, that's for sure.

Josh: Breeze on a meeting, but I'll still do it. Um, Okay, ready? Yeah, yeah.

Tommy: Mr. Chihuahua. Fucking oath. Either that or a Bichon Frise, one that you get from Chadstone Shopping Centre, and it's a—

Josh: I don't think they do them anymore.

Tommy: No, they don't.

Josh: I don't think they do.

Tommy: As in shopping centres? Yeah, they don't do those.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, that too. I wonder how the cinema's going.

Tommy: Oh yeah, I've still— I mean, oh my God, can I just say, I got a, um, I got— can I, can I just see if I can get this? Can I just see if I can go get this?

Josh: See, so he's just left his microphone. Sorry for the delay. A little sniffly nose. Do we need to get tested? Okay, what do you got?

Tommy: Got a letterbox drop yesterday. Can you see that there? Yeah. What is it? What is it? It's just a little pamphlet. Oh, it looks like, oh my God, handwritten notes being delivered to me. Amy said, oh, this is hilarious. So, this house that we're in just got sold and the new owners have taken over. And so, the people who sold it, the company, have nothing to do with this house anymore. They've put in the letterbox this hand— handwritten, air quotes— letter. Sorry I missed you. I may have a buyer for your property and was hoping to speak with you. Please call me on blah, blah, blah. And it's like, and then at the bottom, the best bit is it says, this is not a general street drop. It's like, that is the finite game. Sales, sales, sales, sales. Even trying to con people that I've handwritten this and really put in the letterbox today. To make sense of it all.

Josh: I've had that. So, I think I spoke about it a while ago. There's this book called The Boren Letters.

Tommy: Oh, yes.

Josh: Remember this book? I talked about this.

Tommy: Scotty Pape recommended that to me.

Josh: Yeah, Scott Pape recommended this for me to read. So, it's basically, I mean, so, if you look at the book, this book cost me like $45. It is the ugliest book you'll ever see, right. It's actually, it was printed By Amazon, you probably can't see it, but the lettering is all smudged, like it's blurry. It looks like shit. And then if you look at it—

Tommy: It's literally, you could get it done at Officeworks. Like, you could just, it would be like them just printing pages and then binding them for you.

Josh: And so, here you go. I don't know if you can read this here, probably not, but there's a, right there, Uh, basically it says a handwritten or typed address, no label. And so when it comes to preparing, if you want to get someone in from a sales letter perspective, this guy who wrote this book, he, he wrote this book in jail. He, uh, um, he sold so many of these, uh, products and wasn't able to deliver on them that he went to jail. And these are the letters that he wrote to his son about how to market and how to copyright. Um, it's very interesting, but it did remind me—

Tommy: what games he play?

Josh: I mean, I think that's the, uh, it feels like the finite game, doesn't it?

Tommy: Yeah, ends up, ends up in jail.

Josh: Uh, well, he says here, interesting though, because I underlined it, some of the things I underlined was you can grab attention without cheating, without making the reader feel ripped off. So, that's good. But then another thing you said, let's have a look here. It makes a letter a little bit more personal. Yeah, it's— I won't read this whole book, but it's very interesting. Fuck, can I just recommend underlining books?

Tommy: In books?

Josh: Yep.

Tommy: Grey lead?

Josh: Pen? Pen? Grey lead, just to give you options. It's good though, because you can go— I could go through the Boron Letters and read the whole thing. In half an hour just looking at the shit that I underlined.

Tommy: Oh yeah, good point. So you could just quickly skim through the shit that jumped out at you. Love it.

Josh: I mean, this guy talks about— yeah, he, uh, how to make money. I just— I literally underlined how to make money. You did? He said the money is where the enthusiasm is.

Tommy: Yeah, what are you enthusiastic about? Is that for other people or for you?

Josh: Yeah, I think it's, it's for you. What people want to buy. People were trying to give the right answer. They felt they should drink. Oh yeah, this is that whole thing. Remember we talked about baristas? You ask a barista when they're starting to work, you know, and they—

Tommy: yeah, what's their coffee order? And they all say long blacks because it's what you want to be seen as. The— you want to be seen as the long black drinker.

Josh: Uh, Rory asked, uh, which Seth Godin book should he start on if he was to read a Seth Godin book?

Tommy: Yeah, I think, uh, are you feeling a bit down? Because then the dip's good.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. So the 3 books that I love by Seth, um, there's one called The Icarus Deception.

Tommy: Great one to start on.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: And so literally what I started on, JoJo.

Josh: And so The Icarus Deception, I, whilst reading that, quit my radio job. So I was fired up after listening to that and went in and quit.

Tommy: You wanted to fly like— what is it, the Icarus? Is that—

Josh: yeah, so the idea is that, um, they— Icarus was this fucking bird or some shit, or had wings. I'm gonna fucking butcher this story, but basically they said do not fly too high because if you fly too high, uh, your wings, like the wax of your wings will melt and you'll and you'll crash. But then what Seth was saying was the storey had actually changed. The original storey said, but also don't fly too low, because where it's low is where the ocean is, and the, um, and this— the water from the sea will make your wings heavy and you'll crash. And so it was talking about the industrial age and how over time we're getting taught to don't, don't go too, too high, don't try and reach, um, for, you know, above you. So yeah, but don't go too low either. Don't go too low. Exactly. Don't go too low, you'll fuck it.

Tommy: Um, in Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the creator of the labyrinth. Icarus and his father attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax.

Josh: There you go.

Tommy: Yeah, it's like a— it looks like a, you know, that sort of old, old style mythology, man, half man, half winged species. But anyway, that's, that's sort of—

Josh: so that's a good Seth Godin book. The other one—

Tommy: start there, start there.

Josh: The other one that changed my life was Poke the Box. Yeah, which— poke the box, the The main line out of that that stuck with me was pick yourself. So everyone's waiting to be picked. Everyone's waiting for fucking, you know, Channel 10 to say you're the Bachelor. Yeah, exactly.

Tommy: You're on The Bachelorette.

Josh: It's about, especially it couldn't be more relevant than today.

Tommy: But yeah, I even think, yeah, I even think for job interviews, for, you know, just if you want, if you want to start your business. Yeah, sure. But even working within a business, how do you just pick yourself to stand out? And those two— Icarus, Deception, Poke the Box.

Josh: And also, yeah, The Dip is great, and it's a quick— it's a quick read if you have the audiobook, it's under 3 hours. So yeah, anyway, was that too— have I gone too— if we, if we were to deconstruct the two moods from yesterday and today, is this a manic episode?

Tommy: Like, it might have gone from post Mr. 97 posted a video of you from 1 year ago in the same state. Human experience is one of being up and down.

Josh: Well, it's cyclical too, don't you think? Like, I reckon if you look at all these things happen at the exact same time, so it's like winter, fucking eating, all of those things happen, and it's like, I feel like it's just, it's a bit Groundhog Day, isn't it?

Tommy: But if you're asking if it was up and down, yes, it is.

Josh: But are you okay? Have you got whiplash? You're all right?

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty good. Feeling good.

Josh: Okay, all right. It's a, it's a daily talk show. If you enjoy the show, leave us a review too, please. Yeah, on Apple Podcasts. It's, it's helpful just because it, um, because only fucking assholes are writing at the moment. No, we've only had like, we get a couple of ratings and like negative. They never leave actually any, um, information. You can't respond to them. Yeah, but, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, give us a review. Infinite Game. Uh, see you tomorrow, guys. Have a good one.

Tommy: See you guys. Love you.