The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 400 - Episode 400

Transcript:

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Happy 400th.

Jen: Happy 400th, Peter. Can you believe it?

Pete: Not really.

Jen: 400 episodes, never missed a week.

Pete: I mean, 400 sounds like a big number. And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's a big number." But then, when you go, "400 weeks," like that sounds like a long time.

Jen: That's a long time. That is a long time. And Pete, we've got to disclose to everyone what is actually happening. Just in case there's any weird audio, I think now's the time.

Pete: At what point are we going to acknowledge what's happening? At what point do we do it?

Jen: Now's the time. We haven't even gotten into the intro music, but it feels like it's time to tell everyone that I am recording from a moving vehicle, from the passenger seat of my Subaru. Say hi, Mark.

Mark: Hi.

Cate: Hello.

Pete: What's up, Cate? What's up, Mark?

Jen: Yep. So we're in the car, driving somewhere, and I thought, "What better time to record our 400th episode than from the car?" So this, my friends, is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Oh dear. It feels like the most fitting way to record Episode 400. We've recorded in some strange places over the years, in some strange ways.

Jen: That is true.

Pete: To consistently get it done. And recording from the car, it might be a new one for us, actually. And I feel like it's fitting for Episode 400.

Jen: Yeah, I think this is our first. I don't know if it's a new high or a new low, but it's a new.

Pete: It's a new. So, Episode 400. What we realized in thinking about Episode 400 is...not deliberately, but every time we've hit the 100 milestone, we've done some form of Q&A, Ask Us Anything, send in your questions and let us riff on them. And so, we were like, "Oh, we've created a tradition that we didn't even realize we created. I guess we better continue the tradition."

Jen: That's right.

Pete: So, a bunch of listeners (thank you so much) have sent us really great questions. I don't think we'll have time to get through all of them, but there's a few that we're going to earmark for like entire episodes.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And we're going to do our best to get through as many as possible.

Jen: And because I'm in the car, listeners, Pete is going to read all of the questions, so that I don't get motion sick. And that's how it's going to work. Okay, Pete, so what's the first question?

Pete: Alright, let's go with this one because it feels, again, very fitting for the situation we find ourselves in. "How have you sustained this momentum for so long?"

Jen: Okay, well, I'll go first. Well, we have religiously, with so much discipline, met every single week for four hundred weeks in a row.

Pete: That's wild.

Jen: Come rain, come shine, we log on to the Zoom. Sometimes they are long conversations that, at a certain point, we're like, "Oh, maybe we should record an episode." And sometimes it's like, "I've got twenty minutes. We've got a twenty minute episode to record, and that's it." But we've been so disciplined about putting time on our calendar. And we do block out the time on our calendar well in advance, so that nothing else can eat up that time. And it just has been a priority. And thank goodness, because I look forward to it every week.

Pete: Likewise, likewise. I'd say we've been very deliberate and a little bit lucky in how we've chosen to structure the podcast too, which I think contributes to the momentum. So we have (again, part deliberate / part accident) reduced or minimized the friction so much by having no guests, no scripts. Thanks to your nudge, back in about...oh god, it would have been about sixty episodes in. You encouraged me and asked to pay an amazing editor in Sarah Nichols to take care of editing and uploading for us. So the friction is so low that literally all we need to do, the minimal viable time we need to spend together in a week is twenty minutes. And we record a Zoom call. And then, we're done. And Sarah, the magician, takes care of the rest. And so, I think the structure and the format makes it a lot easier to keep going. Again, no guests, no scripts, no huge preparations. We literally log on and can press "record" within three seconds of saying hi to each other.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: We just go for it. So, there's something in the structure. We're very lucky.

Jen: And Sarah, thanks for still being there all these years later. It is actually amazing to me that she is still with us. And she is the best.

Pete: Yeah, I know. We're very lucky. We're very lucky. I guess the only other thing to say out loud is, I'll speak for myself, I find it easy to continue the momentum because I continue to get benefit from these conversations. So it's not like a thing we have to do, for me. It's like a chance to learn from Jen and talk to my friend Jen. And I actually asked AI recently to like summarize the podcast for us, based on all the transcripts. And it was like, "Two friends think out loud together from opposite sides of the globe." And I was like, "That's really nice. That's literally what we're doing."

Jen: Yeah, so accurate.

Pete: Alright, should we go to the next question?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: This one feels funny.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: I'm like...I don't know, but I could check. The question is, "What are some episode topics you haven't released, summarized, if shareable?"

Jen: Oh.

Pete: How many do you think we haven't released?

Jen: It feels so rare that we will record something and say to Sarah, "Put that in the folder we have called the Cutting Room Floor." And I have never actually opened that folder. So, I have no idea what's in there. Maybe you could do that, Pete?

Pete: I'm opening the folder for the first time. You are right. There is a folder in our drive called Cutting Room Floor. I have literally never opened it. And I just did. And in my head, I was like, "Oh, there's maybe three or four or five that we've recorded and we were like, 'Nah, that wasn't very good. Let's go back and do a different one.'"

Jen: Yeah, I would say maybe like eight.

Pete: There's forty. There's forty.

Jen: Wait. What?

Pete: There's forty episodes. It's an entire year's worth of episodes, almost.

Jen: Forty episodes in the Cutting Room Floor folder. That's insane.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I don't remember what any of them are. What are they?

Pete: I mean, neither do I. I'll read you some names. I still, even reading the names...because we always try and come up with some like clever title, I don't actually know what half of these are.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: I'll just pick some. One: "Change It Up".

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: Two: "Cousin of Sonder".

Jen: Okay.

Pete: What? Three: "Cozy Day".

Jen: Hmm.

Pete: "Cozy Day". What is cozy day? I wonder why that made the cutting room floor. "Jen's Epiphany". "Learning Junkie". "NPTs". What is that? "Rest." "Scarcity Mindset". "The Universe". There's one in here called "The Universe". Oh my god.

Jen: Wow.

Pete: Yeah. So that's just a select few for you, listeners, of our ridiculous cutting room floor.

Jen: I think it's hilarious that "Jen's Epiphany" was unimportant enough that it made it to the cutting room floor. That's hilarious.

Pete: It sounds so promising, doesn't it? Wow. Like, "This is a life changing epiphany." Nah, it wasn't good enough.

Jen: Wow. That's hilarious.

Pete: "Perception Paradox". "Modifications". I mean, there's so many. There's forty. That's too funny.

Jen: You know what might be interesting, Pete, is for us to either listen to them, or maybe like load them into Claude and ask Claude to tell us what we talked about and see if there's anything worth going back and listening to.

Pete: Oh, yeah. That's a fun idea. Alright, thank you for that question. I liked that one. What about this one? "Are there any episodes you wish you could record with updated context / info?" Now, that one feels like we could think about it for a long, long time. I have some like immediate thoughts.

Jen: Yeah, I have one too.

Pete: Okay, you go first. What's yours?

Jen: Well, it's funny because every once in a while you and I will be on a call and say, "Have we ever recorded an episode about this?" And then, we go to our own website and like scroll through to see. And I just find myself, every time I get to like the COVID section, being like, "Oh my god, I can't even look there. I just, I can't even." That whole section kind of makes me cringe. Not because anything we said was cringey, but just like the context of the whole thing and like what was on our minds. And you can tell when that era kicks in, just by the titles of the episodes. So, anyway. Yeah, so I guess that's the context I'd like to change.

Pete: Yeah. Yes. Likewise. I think we have always tried to make these evergreen or timeless, so that no matter where you are or when you're listening, it's still relevant to you. However, there are very clear episodes around the time of COVID that sound like they were recorded at the time of the beginning of a pandemic, when no one knew what the hell was going on.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: And so, funnily enough, I actually think a couple of them are our most downloaded episodes. Because a stranger called Simon Sinek once shared a bunch of them, at the start of the pandemic, to his like three million followers. And so, we got a little kicker in downloads during that period.

Jen: Thank you for that.

Pete: Yeah, thanks for that. But also like cringe if that's our most listened to episode, because I don't really remember what we talked about at the start of COVID.

Jen: I know. That whole time was such a blur. It feels like a thousand years ago and also like yesterday.

Pete: I also feel like there's somewhere I would maybe be embarrassed to listen to because I said I was going to do something or change something and / or I've fallen back into a pattern that I said I was going to address. Like I'm pretty sure we did some episodes about social media, once upon a time. And I was like, "This is how I think about social media. And I'm going to stop using social media." And like, you know, three hundred episodes later, I still have this dysfunctional relationship with social media, goddammit.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: Yeah, so that one could do with a re-record.

Jen: I agree. And that is an ever-evolving landscape, so our takes on it kind of have to also be ever-evolving.

Pete: That's true.

Jen: Like even the way social media is used and integrated into our lives has changed so much since we started this podcast, four hundred episodes ago.

Pete: Truth. I mean, I'm sure in four hundred episodes time, we're going to be like, "Oh dear, listen to how we were talking about AI back in the day."

Jen: Right?

Pete: Oh dear.

Jen: True.

Pete: Okay. Alright, next question.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: Oh, this is fun. I feel like you'll have a good answer for this. "If you could have a leadership-related dinner with three people in your field, who would you choose?"

Jen: Ooh, in my field. Okay...and I could have them all around the table at the same time?

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: That's how I'm envisioning this. So, I'm going to go with...do they have to be alive?

Pete: Oh, I mean, it doesn't specify. So I'd say no, they don't have to be. You can bring someone back from the dead for dinner.

Jen: Okay. So I'm going to go with Stephen Sondheim, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Audra McDonald. My three Broadway Jesuses, my Broadway Jes-i.

Pete: Jes-i. What would we eat for dinner? Would it matter? Or would it just be like a very rich conversation? It wouldn't matter what we're eating or where we are.

Jen: Yeah, I don't even think that matters.

Pete: No, I think you're right. That sounds like a fun dinner.

Jen: What about you?

Pete: I mean, I feel like mine would be unsurprising for anyone who's listened to these episodes. I guess I'm lucky to say one of the guests in particular, I'm lucky enough to have had meals with and broken bread with Seth Godin, but I would want him at the dinner still because I never cease to be amazed by the wisdom when I catch up with him. And I'd be curious how he interacts with the other guests, because I know he knows them but I've never seen them all in the same room. Also, I'm taking the assumption that you are naturally...you don't count as one of my guests. We're both at this dinner together. So I'm like, I'm just assuming you're there too. And I would add to our dinner with Seth, Brené Brown and Adam Grant. They're the three people in my world / industry that I find myself reaching for their opinion or take or question or thought on the most. And I was hesitating initially because I was like, "I've heard them all talk in so many different ways, on so many different podcasts, in so many different formats," but an intimate dinner with the three of them, I feel like would be fascinating. So, I would say those three plus you.

Jen: Great answer. And it's so fascinating because the question-asker specified our industry, so I went theatrical. But I also see a world in which your dinner guests are also my industry. So yeah, I'm going to be going to both of those dinners.

Pete: I mean, not that I'm closing the episode, but that is essentially the long and short of it. Is it not?

Jen: But seriously, yes.

Pete: Different worlds, what have we got in common? Turns out, everything. We ask questions. We help people. Like, we're thinking about leadership. We're thinking about creativity. All of these things are much the same, regardless of the industry. Okay, there's a couple more here that I think we could try and get through.

Jen: Okay

Pete: I mean, this feels like an entire episode, but I just want to say it out loud because it's a very good question. I don't know if I have a good answer for you yet, but I could attempt one before we do a full episode on it. The question is, "Should we spend less time training leaders, so there's more time to train followers?" Which feels rich and juicy. What do you think?

Jen: Well, I agree with you that we need to do a whole episode on this, because I want to unpack the word "follower".

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I don't know if I could answer this question until I know what that word means, in this context.

Pete: I agree. And I want to make sure we're talking about training leaders, not training managers, and whether there's worth a distinction being called out on those two. My general thought is yes, and I see this happening in organizations already. And I also wonder, when we're thinking about followers, are we actually not talking about leaders as well? Like is it not an act of leadership to be a first follower, for example?

Jen: Right. That's where my brain went as well, Pete. Isn't everybody both, in some way?

Pete: Yeah. Isn't everybody both? But anyway, if I take the question a little more literally and think about organizations I'm working with, I'm having conversations with leaders in organizations that are organizing leadership programs that are saying something like, "We want to open these programs up to more than just a select few group of leaders." And so, that might be people who aren't necessarily in a position where they have people reporting to them, which is generalized views of leadership in a corporate structure. And so, maybe there's versions of that happening. But it feels like a juicy, rich conversation that we could talk about for hours. But I just wanted to call it out, because it's a great question.

Jen: Yeah, let's definitely do a full unpacking of that. That sounds pretty juicy.

Pete: Alright, maybe we could fly through this one.

Jen: Okay.

Pete: This one, again, feels like we need a week to think about it, but that's not our style. So, let's do it on the spot. "What is a favorite episode, lesson, or transformation for you, after four hundred episodes?"

Jen: Oh, so I don't know if this actually is answering the question, but the first thing that comes to mind...well, it is a transformation that I see in myself. When we first started recording four hundred weeks ago, you might remember, Pete, I was pretty persnickety about making sure I had my eyes on and my ears on every single thing that went out into the world, because we don't do a lot of editing...other than if we are in the middle of a sentence and, oh, I don't know, my daughter walks in and slams the door very loudly. She just said, from the backseat, "Hey." Then, we might have to edit that stuff out. But because we don't really edit our conversation, I used to always like to know exactly what I said, before it went out into the world. And I think I've really loosened my grip on that, over probably really the last two years. In fact, last week, I was doing our Box O' Goodies (you might remember, Pete) and I did it for the wrong episode. And the episode went out without me ever listening to it. And I thought, "I'm okay. That's fine." So, that's a big change.

Pete: Yeah, that's such a good one. In the past, I feel like you would have woken up in the middle of the night in a sweat and forced yourself to listen.

Jen: Oh, 100%. Yes, I would have.

Pete: Yeah. Nice. I like that. That's a solid lesson, a solid transformation.

Jen: Yeah. The release of perfectionism, in a specific context.

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like it's an overwhelming question in a way, because I think about the person I was four hundred episodes ago and the person that I am now, and I'm like, "Woah, you live a very different life and have a very different perspective on things."

Jen: Oh, you do.

Pete: So, it's big. But it's also small. Because the thing that I'm noodling on in response to this question is...I think this is a Seth Godin-ism, borrowed from someone else. Which, you know, Seth Godin sits down to write a blog every single day, and has done so for so long. I don't even know how long, like so long. And I've heard him say something like, "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 this lesson is repeatedly smacking me in the face every single week, for about three hundred and ninety episodes. I'd say the first ten episodes, we were like, "We have a can of topics that we know we can speak about." And since about Episode 10, it feels like since Episode 10, every single week, I'm like, "There's no possible way we have something else to say, another topic to talk about, another question to ask. I have no idea what I could say." That, we don't sit down to record because we have something to say. We find a metaphor, a story, an analogy, a framework, we find something to say because we sit down to record.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: And I'm just constantly blown away by that practice of starting before you're ready, and seeing the momentum that comes from that. Not to say all of our episodes are great because we do that, because I think so many of them are not great.

Jen: Right.

Pete: So many of them, I might look back on and go, "Wow, that was a particular moment in time. Good for us, getting an episode out there. But I wouldn't share it with my best friend. I wouldn't share it with my most important client, necessarily." But the fact that we keep showing up and shipping is wild to me.

Jen: Yeah. Wow. Well, Pete, that's it. Episode 400.

Pete: 400.

Jen: And listeners, some of you have been with us since Episode 1, which is actually mind blowing. And thanks for being here this whole time. And to our newer listeners, we hope you'll still be with us when we reach Episode 800.

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: Oh my god.

Pete: With gray hairs and wrinkles on our foreheads.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: Yes. Thank you, listeners. We are so excited by making it to this milestone and just so humbled that you still are out there listening. I truly, truly can't believe the questions that we get, because that means people listen...which I sometimes forget.

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