The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 300 - Episode 300

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: Welcome to Episode 300.

Jen: And the crowd goes wild.

Pete: The crowd...I mean, I wish you could hear the crowd, everybody. It's a stadium full of people. It is all happening. We have a bunch of our friends here on a call on Zoom with us, to watch the chaos unfold for Episode 300. Can you believe it? Can you believe we made it?

Jen: I cannot believe it. I also am completely delighted that listeners actually showed up to be flies on the wall for the recording of this episode. That is so cool. So thanks, people who are here with us right now.

Pete: Thanks, team. Delighted is one word, a little bit embarrassed is another, because they're seeing just how chaotic and unorganized things are at The Long and The Short Of It HQ. But I'm excited. So for today, we have some questions that have been submitted. This is an Ask Us Anything episode. Which, I discovered, I reminded myself that we did this in Episode 200, a similar thing, an Ask Us Anything.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: So ask us anything, one hundred episodes later. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Alright, Pete. Well, just so the folks at home know what's happening, we had people who submitted questions ahead of time. Some of those people are also in attendance live on our Zoom call right now, and some folks submitted their question and were not able to make it to the live taping. So you're going to hear from some of our listeners who are actually in the room with us, and then you and I will play the role of absent listeners and ask their questions for them.

Pete: Deal. Also, full disclosure, I have not seen any of these questions. I have absolutely no idea what Jennifer's about to ask, which I'm excited about.

Jackie: Hi, I'm Jackie. When do you record each episode before the ship date?

Pete: Ooh. Good question, Jackie.

Jen: It's cracking me up that we are the only people who can see that everyone in the Zoom room is clapping because of that question. But it's silent.

Pete: It's dead silent. It's a strange experience. It's a strange experience. So, when do we record before ship date? Short answer is, it varies. Most common answer is, about a week before. We had grand ambitions when we started this of always being ten episodes in front, which lasted about ten episodes and then life got in the way. And we usually have, what, two or three up our sleeves, Jen? Jen.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: And then, every now and then life happens (and this happened recently) and like we release an episode that we actually recorded about six months ago, that still kind of made sense. So we have a couple that are sort of like, "They're not bad. We'll use those in case of emergency." But usually at the moment, because our lives are so busy, it's like, "Okay, we really need to record an episode for next week. So, let's record an episode for next week." Which wasn't the intention when we started, but hey, here we are.

Jen: Yeah, we haven't missed a week yet. What's really funny is, that recent episode that we had recorded like six months prior...well, since we're pulling back the curtain today, we'll tell you that it's The Cringe Test episode that we released a couple weeks ago. And then, one of our mutual friends reached out to Pete and was like, "Um, the stuff you were talking about in that episode, I'm pretty sure you mentioned it to me like six months ago. What's going on?" And he was like, "Yeah, that one almost hit the cutting room floor."

Pete: Busted.

Jen: But what's funny is, those ones that we are always like this close to cutting tend to be the ones we get a lot of reaction to.

Pete: So interesting.

Jen: The number of people who have said the words "cringe test" to me since that came out is quite surprising,

Pete: Wild. Oh, I love that. It felt like a good warm up question. Thanks, Jackie. Like, I could actually answer that one.

Jen: Yes.

Mack: Now that you've had a warm up...Hi, I'm Mack. My question is, what is the most impactful thing you've learned from each other?

Jen: I'll go first on this one, since you went first on the last one, Pete, if that's okay.

Pete: Thank you. This will give me a minute for my brain to catch up.

Jen: I feel like I should be answering around concepts and frameworks and philosophies that we've learned from each other, but honestly, the most impactful thing I've learned from Pete is how amazing it is to have a friend who lives in the other part of the world. There is something really incredible about having this kind of a relationship where we're not fully woven through all of the details of each other's lives, because we live so far away from each other in different time zones. And so when we log on to talk to each other, we always have a limited amount of time. And we've really learned to cut the bullshit and get right to the point. And it is weird to me that one of my nearest, dearest, best friends in the world is someone who I have spent less physical time with than any of my other friends I've ever had.

Pete: That's true and lovely.

Jen: I guess the most impactful thing is have friends.

Pete: I love that. That's so lovely. It's wild how little we know about each other but how much we know about each other, if that makes sense, because we don't see the day to day.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah, so true. Alright, so my brain went somewhere similar, in the sense that I was originally like, "Oh, what's my favorite Jen Waldman framework that she's taught me?" And my brain was like, "No, that's not a great answer." I think the real answer is that the most impactful thing I've learned from Jen goes back to when I first met Jen, and she was a student in this online workshop called the altMBA, in which I was a coach. And after the workshop, after her and I had a bunch of coaching sessions, she said to me something along the lines of, "I don't know if this is appropriate, but I need you in my life moving forward. Can you be my coach?" And what Jen didn't realize at the time is I didn't have a business and I didn't have any other coaching clients at that moment. And so what Jen taught me, the most impactful thing that Jen taught me (which she didn't even realize), was to trust myself. That she taught me I have, or could have, the ability to start a business that seven years ago I couldn't have dreamed has ended up in the place that it's in now. And I literally have that one conversation with Jen to thank for that. So, yeah, that's pretty impactful. She changed my life with a question.

Jen: Wow. I'm just letting that hit me. Thanks for that. That's beautiful.

Pete: Where to from here? Oof, big questions. I love this.

Jen: Yeah. Okay, well, this feels like it is tangentially related. So, this question is: "Both of you come from different fields. What's the most surprising theater concept that works in business? And conversely, what's the most surprising business concept that works for creatives?"

Pete: Wow, okay. So gosh, I feel like, A., I don't know. I don't feel qualified to answer this question other than, I guess, based on what I've observed. So okay, I don't know if this is a cop out, but I'm thinking about this more and more. I feel like the thing that I want to say is, I don't know if they're separate concepts. In the sense that, I think the thing that's surprising is how common the challenges are. That whether you're in theater or whether you're working in business, so often, in my experience, having worked with people in both fields, the challenge is related to you being in your own way. And that looks different. That feels different. Maybe it manifests itself differently. That one might be, "I have a blocker when I'm in the audition room," but the other might be, "I have a blocker when I'm trying to have a difficult conversation with someone that reports to me." But actually, at the core of it, we're all dealing with the same human challenges that I think stem from the reality of us (myself included) totally getting in our own way. So, I don't know if that's a cop out. And you and I love Venn diagrams, but I feel like there's a Venn diagram that's surprised me, which is, we're all just messy humans trying to figure out how to do our best work, whatever that means for us, regardless of the context. What do you think?

Jen: I mean, yes to everything you just said. I can't really push back on any of it. I think it's all true. And there are a couple immediate concepts that come to mind that I'm like, "Oh yeah. Some of these things really have roots in both worlds, strong roots." The first that came to mind is: Listen, listen, listen. Which is like, basically the rule of acting. You've got to be listening actively, not just with your ears but with your mind, with your heart, with your body, with your breath, like every part of you needs to be listening and taking in what the other person is doing and saying, so that you can react truthfully.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So that's the first thing, is the listen, listen, listen. Which, a lot of the work you do, Pete, is helping people figure out how to listen to each other.

Pete: My gosh, yeah. It's like the number one challenge of working with leaders, is, "Have you thought about listening, maybe, some more?" Oh, so true.

Jen: "Maybe a little listening would go a long way," says the podcaster. And the other thing in acting, we've got these very basic fundamentals that we use in order to understand how our characters move through a scene and the play. And all of these fundamentals are basically just life. So we need to know what our character is ultimately after, what is the "super objective" (a.k.a. mission, vision). And in each moment, we need to know what our character is after in that moment, which we call "objective". We have to understand what obstacles are in the way. And then, we identify tactics and actions and behaviors that help our character attempt to annihilate these obstacles in an effort to obtain their objective, which would ultimately bring them closer to their super objective. And if you think about the way we talk in a business context, it is basically the same darn thing. So, that's the other thing that came to mind.

Pete: Yeah. I think I need a minute to process that, but I agree. I feel like, as you were talking, I was like, "Wait, is this the business concept or the theater concept?" Because they're so similar.

Jen: Yeah. Maybe "annihilate" was like a really strong word to use, but, "move through with empathy."

Pete: "Overcome."

Jen: If I turn it into a keynote, I'll use better language. First pancakes and all.

Pete: Hmm.

Greg: Hi, I'm Greg. So my question is, well, you often talk about how good decisions don't always lead to good outcomes, and the decision is separate from the outcome. At what point do you know if you're ready to start evaluating outcomes, or do you avoid evaluating outcomes altogether?

Jen: Oh, that's juicy.

Pete: My god, that feels like it's such a good question. I mean, I feel like I want to call Annie Duke and be like, "Annie, you know that book you wrote called 'Thinking in Bets'? I have a question for you." Okay, you go first, Jennifer.

Jen: So something I feel like I've gotten a lot better at over the years, but still have to consciously make an effort to understand, is when I'm looking at outcomes...which I do, let's just be honest, I look to see how things worked out...I have to remind myself which part of that outcome is due to my contribution and which part of that outcome is not, or is, as Annie Duke would say, luck. And so, I do evaluate outcomes. I try to remember that not all good outcomes are a result of good decisions. I've certainly had good outcomes that are a result of bad decisions. But the thing I'm trying to do for myself, and I also try to do this with my clients, by looking at the outcomes is to identify the positive patterns of behavior so that we can double down on those things and experience more of these good outcomes. But again, you can't always correlate the two. But for example, I have a lot of clients who are trying to build their professional network, and so I challenge them to make active decisions to introduce themselves to people. And a lot of times, down the line when we reflect back and look at, "How did we end up meeting all of these wonderful people or potential collaborators, or gain access to these new creative opportunities," a lot of times, it goes back to that initial decision to reach out in the first place. So if I can pinpoint that for someone, I can say, "Look, you know, all of these things are being traced back to the same behavior choice, which is, reach out and introduce yourself. So in that case, I'd say reaching out and introducing yourself is a good decision. And sometimes, that good decision might lead to the outcome of people not responding to you. But a lot of times, these responses happened because you reached out."

Pete: Yeah, this is juicy. So I guess the first thing I would say is, yeah, like Jen, I think I evaluate outcomes, some more than others. And the way that I think about this...like, I feel like Annie Duke's book really spoke to me, maybe because I used to love maths as a kid and my dad was a maths teacher. So the thing I love so much about it, that I feel like I've internalized, is probabilistic thinking. And what I think about when I think about that is, a decision is about increasing the probability of getting an outcome that you seek. It doesn't guarantee the outcome I seek. It can never guarantee the outcome I seek, because there are so many things outside my control. So if and when I'm evaluating an outcome, the question I'm asking is, "How could I have increased the probability," if it doesn't go to plan, if it goes off the rails and I didn't get the outcome I was hoping for, I might go back and go, "Huh. How could I have increased the probability of getting what I seek?" That could be, to use an example, you know, if I'm hoping to get an outcome of a new corporate client, for example, and the decision I've come up with in order to get there is, "I need to do ten reach outs a week." And after three months, I still haven't gotten the new corporate client, I'm reviewing and I'm like, "Huh. How could I have increased the probability? I guess I could have done fifteen, or I could have done twenty, or I could have been even more targeted or even more personal. So yes, there are things I could have done that were in my control." And because it's probabilistic thinking, and the thing that I really think I've internalized, I also am pretty good at shrugging my shoulders and going, "Huh. Probability didn't work out for me this time. That even if there's a 90% chance of you getting the outcome that you want, there's still a 10% chance that you didn't." And so, I try and think about that a lot. Because if it falls in the 10%, it might just be that I did everything in my power and it just fell in the 10%, and that's okay. So I just need to make another decision about something else, and then review that down the track. I just feel like there's so much power in thinking in probabilistic terms, because there is always a percentage chance that things aren't going to go the way we want. And I think that's freeing.

Jen: I have one more thing I want to add here, Pete.

Pete: Please.

Jen: Which is, I felt a little gremlin pop up when I started to answer this question, so I just want to call that out. I was like, "Oh gosh, I know I'm not supposed to care about outcomes. So how can I frame this in a way where it doesn't sound like I care that much? But I really do." And then, as I'm listening to Pete answer, I'm like, "I care enough about this that four times a year, I actually run a workshop where I bring people into a room and we look at our outcomes." Another one is coming up at the end of June. I do this quarterly review for people. And I realize, what we're looking for when we do the quarterly review is patterns. We're looking for the difference between an anomaly and a trend. And if we're able to identify patterns and identify trends in our own behavior and in our own outcomes, that's good information to help us make better decisions as we move forward. So, I just felt like I wanted to add that little nugget.

Pete: Now that we're adding nuggets, I don't know if I'm about to contradict everything I just said, but I also feel compelled to say, I'm totally motivated and driven by outcomes in so many capacities. Because the thing that I also internalized at school was getting an A being success or being the outcome that I'm seeking. And I bump up against that all the time still, like, "How do I get an A as a husband? How do I get an A as a dad? How do I show up for my son today that is going to get me an A?" I don't know if that's explicitly an outcome, because it's sort of this like nefarious thing that I can't put a finger on, because there's no teacher evaluating me, but the outcome of getting an A is something that I still grapple with. So I feel like I can hold both of those things at once, but maybe I'm contradicting myself. You be the judge.

Jen: Alright. We are moving on to a question that, when I saw it come in, I kind of started salivating at the thought of getting to answer it. The question is: "What use, if any, do either of you make of AI-facilitated note taking?"

Pete: I mean, you mentioned before we hopped on this call...in fact, it was on this call...that you've been experimenting with using the AI-facilitated note tracking. So I know you started last time, but I feel like you're perfectly placed to start answering this question.

Jen: Well, I just love it. I use it every single day. So, here's my AI rant. AI is a robot. It has no heart. It has no soul. It has no love or hopes or dreams. It doesn't care about you. It doesn't even care about itself. It's a robot. And because of that, it doesn't try to take care of my feelings when I ask it questions or when I input a transcript and ask it to throw the main ideas back in my face. The truth bombs it drops on me using my own words is pretty exciting to me. And then the other thing is, because I accept that it is not creative in any sort of human way, I think of it as just a little spark thrower. But my job when I interact with it, especially in some sort of a creative context, is to be the heart and the soul of the creativity. So I might use it to spark an idea, but I never give it permission to be creative. And because of that, I've had incredible success using AI tools for all sorts of different things. Recently, I started my summer coaching program. And I asked everybody to record their first hour-long meeting, and then run that meeting through a transcript app, and then take the transcript and put it in ChatGPT and ask it a couple questions. I'll share the prompts because they were totally fascinating. The first one is so simple, which is, "Please summarize this meeting." That's it. And it will just take the thoughts that we might have been bouncing around, going back and forth for the hour, and it will pair like with like and sort everything into buckets, basically. The second prompt was...I'm laughing, because I make everyone write the same thing, even though some of them feel gross when they do it. I say, "I am a Broadway actor...", not an "aspiring" Broadway actor. "I am a Broadway actor going through a career coaching program, and my first assignment is to express with crystal clarity what I want for my life and career. Based on this transcript, where am I clear? Based on this transcript, where am I not clear?" So that's just using your words, and throws it back in your face. And then the third prompt was originally, "From this transcript, please extract and compile my to do list." But one of my clients misheard that and instead just asked it, "What should I do?" And unbelievably, or maybe believably, it was like, "Here are ten things you could do to move closer to your career goals." And I was like, "Damn. Okay." So, I love it.

Pete: I think that...well, explicitly answering the question, I haven't used it very well, to date, to take notes in meetings. However, I do use some form of AI tool. I try and use it every day. And I think the thing that I use it for, if I was to really crystallize it, would be to clarify and to kickstart, I think. And the thing I also like to do, which I would add to your prompt, Jen, is to give the AI a persona or a role. And so I might say, "I want you to act like you are a Broadway star. What would you say to someone who's aspiring to be a Broadway star?" And so, I do this pretty much every time I use it. I give it a role. "I want you to play the role of world-class leadership coach. How would you design a workshop to help leaders with difficult conversations?" I'm literally reading this from my ChatGPT. That is the kind of prompt I use it for. So, I give it a role. "I want you to play the role of pediatrician. What does one do when their baby gets a fever?" Literally, something I asked my ChatGPT like two days ago. Not to take as gospel and not talk to my pediatrician, but just to clarify, to help me clarify my own thinking or my own thoughts or my own approach to a workshop or a question that I have. So I give it a role, and I ask it a question to clarify. And then the kickstart one, I guess, builds off that. Which is, you know, when you're staring at a blank page and you are just like, "I cannot start the first sentence of this keynote that I have to write, that I've got to deliver in two weeks," or, "I am putting together a blog post," or, "I'm writing a report for work," or, "I am writing a book," whatever it is, and you're staring at that cursor, I find it really useful to just say to it like, "I'm trying to write this particular thing." And again, I give it a role. "I want you to pretend like you're a world-class author, or a world-class podcaster, or a world-class," whatever the thing is I'm trying to do, "music composer. How would you approach this?" And then, it'll give you something. Some of it will be awesome. Some of it will suck. And then, I'll start the process of building off of that, or editing that, which will then eventually kick my own brain into gear. And I guess that's similar to you. I'll start to get more creative with it. So, that's how I'm using it at the moment. I also have this ongoing experiment, which I'm really trying to get better at, which is, I've given all of my blogs to this AI agent that I've started, it's called "Coach Pete". And I am trying to figure out how to give the podcast transcripts to it, with Jen's permission once I ask her...which, this is the first time she's hearing about it.

Jen: Love it.

Pete: And I want to see if I can have this AI that would coach people, ask a question that would be similar to what I would ask, based on my own blogs, on my own podcasts. I'm halfway through that. I haven't quite nailed it, but that's kind of fun...

Jen: Very cool.

Pete: ...to see if you can create a executive coach that is me, but not me.

Jen: So cool. Gretchen Rubin just did this on her website.

Pete: There you go.

Jen: So if you want to see one in action, you can go to her website and ask it a question.

Leah: Hi, I'm Leah. And my question is, both of you have talked a lot about riding the wave and going slow to go fast. But do you have any advice for when you're in that going slow phase and feeling like you're not getting any "results"?

Jen: It feels to me like this bounces off the previous question about outcomes.

Pete: Yeah, yeah.

Jen: So, one of the things I would suggest to anyone who feels like they're not finding results is to show me the receipts. So I'm always a big advocate for tracking your progress toward the things that you are trying to achieve in a way that is concrete, tangible, and shareable with your coach or a friend or a partner. Because a lot of times when we aren't paying attention to details and tracking how it's going, we can start making up stories that we're not actually making progress. I'm looking at someone in this Zoom room right now, who, we just had this conversation about some goals that they had set a year ago and how much faster it went than what they thought it was going to take. If that hadn't been recorded and they didn't have a look back date to really gauge whether or not things were working, they might not even have had that revelation that it was going faster than expected. So I'm going to always advocate that once you've named the thing that you're aiming for, you make a commitment to measure your progress. It could be in one way, it could be in a dozen different ways, so that you can really feel confident that if you've determined that you're not making progress, that that is a true story and not an alternative fact.

Pete: I'm writing notes to what Jen said, because I feel like you just captured one of my biggest challenges. One of my biggest challenges. It's just, agh, the pain of being in the slow phase and questioning your whole life's choices, the existential dread of, "Am I doing anything? Am I doing the right thing? Have I done enough? Have I done enough? Have I done enough?" That is like the loop in my head during those moments. So I just feel like saying, "I see you. I hear you. This is like me to a T as well." I love what Jen said about receipts. I would frame it as evidence. I think when you said that, I realized something I try and do is, I look for evidence that I'm helping move this forward or I look for evidence that things aren't as slow as I tell myself they are. And so, that evidence might be reflecting back six months ago, "Where were you and what were some of your challenges? Oh, okay. No, there's actually evidence that I have moved forward." The evidence might also be tracking, to Jen's point, the system or the process, the things that I am doing, and looking for evidence that I am actually nudging this forward. And I do think a lot in terms of nudges. I think that it's so tempting, when I'm in that slow phase, for me to want to just wake up and like all of a sudden, boom, the whole project has moved forward. Everything is now fixed. And I know, intellectually, that's just not true. So, I'm trying to frame for myself every day, "How do I nudge this forward? How do I nudge this forward? How do I nudge this forward?" Some days, the nudge might be, "Maybe it's time to go for a walk and take a deep breath." Sometimes, the nudge might be, "I need to email the person and follow up on this thing, just to nudge it along." And sometimes, the nudge might be, "I've got to talk to Jen about this, because I'm spinning my wheels." So I don't know if they're somewhat helpful, but I just also have to acknowledge that. I mean, there's a reason I always bring these up as episodes. If you go back, there's so many episodes where I'm basically like, "Jen, I'm thrashing and spinning my wheels because I feel like I'm not doing enough. Help." And we call it "ride the wave", we call it "thrashing", we call it all these different things, but it's ultimately the same thing.

Jen: Oh, don't we learn life's lessons over and over and over again? Yep.Yep,

Pete: Yes, yes, yes.

Jen: Okay, we have one more question. And I was delighted when this question came in, because this is my favorite ending question, Pete. It's almost like this person knows me. So for a little context, when I'm in rehearsals or when I'm in a long-form acting class where we're working on one project for a really long time, you know, ten to twelve weeks on the same character, this is my favorite way to end a session. And when I send people home to work on their own, I ask them to end their sessions this way too. And it's by simply asking: "What is your big aha? And what is your new burning question?" And the reason I love this question is the "big aha" requires that you find something you discovered. Even if it was a slog of a session, there's something in there that you discovered that is new. And then, "What is your new burning question," gets you looking forward to the next time you're able to work. So instead of shutting it down and being like, "And that's the end for today," especially when you're in creative work, it's that marination time that is where all the magic really happens. So if you're able to plant the seed of the "new burning question", you'll start seeing the world through burning question glasses and learn a lot in between work sessions. So the question for you, Pete, is based on everything we talked about today. What is your big aha? And what is your new burning question?

Pete: I'm staring out my window, hoping something profound comes to me, which is what I do. No, I think my big aha is actually back to that previous question. Which is, I am so often dealing with the same challenge. And I realized in that moment that we package it up as different things, but it's so often the same challenge of, "How do you navigate things when they're not going at the speed that you wish they were going at?" And I grapple with that, probably back to what we talked about getting an A, because of so many things that I wish were happening that aren't happening. And so, I think my big aha is to recognize that's a pattern of mine, and to look for receipts. I love that. I don't think I've heard you say that before, at least I don't remember...you probably have, and it's only just hit me now. I only just heard it for the first time. So looking for receipts, I'm finding particularly interesting. It feels like a big aha. And so, I guess my new burning question builds on that, which is, "Where are my receipts? Or what do my receipts look like moving forward?" I have some thoughts, but I'd like to sit with that a bit longer. "What are my receipts?" I mean, three hundred episodes of a podcast is a pretty good receipt.

Jen: Yes, it is.

Pete: What about you, Jen? What about you? What is your big aha? And what is your burning question? (I love this as a concluding question, by the way.)

Jen: So, my big aha has to do with my internal voices. And on the one hand, it feels very much like it feels when we're recording alone today. Like, having people here is not making me nervous at all. I feel totally comfortable and confident. And yet, my big aha was that I definitely edited my first thoughts more than I would have if it was just the two of us. Because we don't do a ton of editing of this show...in fact, we do little to no editing. But knowing that we can edit if we needed to does provide this sense of freedom. And because there are people listening as we're recording this, I'm just finding my internal editor turning on a little bit more. So, that's a big aha.

Pete: That's so true. I'm still thinking about me butchering Greg's question. It's so true. It's so true. Ahh.

Jen: Yeah. And I think my burning question is, "What am I going to do about that?" Because what's really interesting, when I speak in my classes, I can't remember the last time the editor voice turned on. There's something about...I guess, yeah, my burning question is, "Why? What? How? When?" I'm not even mad about it. I'm not like beating myself up. I'm just like, "That is so fascinating. And certainly a feeling I am not accustomed to." So I'm going to figure out where that came from.

Pete: Love it.

Jen: Well, friends, thank you so much for being here for three hundred episodes of The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Wild.

Jen: We recently got an email...actually, I don't know if I shared it with you, Pete...from someone who had recently discovered the podcast, and decided to go back and start at Episode 1.

Pete: Oh my god, no way. Not the monologues.

Jen: And she said, "I will email you again when I'm all caught up." And I was like, "Dang, that is crazy." Because I'm thinking to myself, "That's three hundred twenty-minute episodes, that's a lot of our voices to consume." It's amazing to me that we've made it this far. And honestly, I intend to keep going.

Pete: Oh, this is awkward. I thought this was where it ended. I'm joking. I'm joking, I'm joking. We're just getting started, Jen. We're just getting started. I mean, I was thinking about this as I was getting ready for today. And I was thinking, I was curious about whether there'd be a question about, "How do you come up with things to talk about?" And this wasn't a question, but I'm now just inserting it as a question. And the thing I was thinking about was that quote that I just am obsessed with, which I heard it from Seth Godin but I think he borrowed it from someone else, which was, "I don't sit down to write because I have something to say. I have something to say because I sit down to write." And I think that is so true of this podcast, and of anyone's creative pursuit. That we didn't sit down and go, "We have three hundred different things that we need to say." We said, "We're going to do a weekly podcast. We better think of something to say each week." And that has translated to some episodes which are fun and awesome, some which aren't as great but we're like, "We don't have anything else, so we got to release it anyway," and it's all culminated in this particular conversation right now. So, I'm just super grateful that everyone has shown up for us and that we have shown up for each other. And you talk about outcomes, I could never have predicted that this would be the outcome when we started six years ago. It's wild.

Jen: It is wild. So here's to Episode 300, and here's to three hundred more.

Pete & Jen & The Listeners: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.