Welcome And Leadership Legacy

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Leadership Insight Podcast with Spencer Co-financial Group. I'm going to be your host today, Shad Kim. Success in leadership isn't just about the decisions we make today, it's about the legacy we build for tomorrow. On this show, we talk to the leaders from around the country who are open to sharing their wisdom, insights to help us become better. I'm honored and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today with Bill Burnett. He's written many books, he has great topics, and I think that we're going to learn a lot. So, Bill, back to you.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Well, thank you, Chad. My pleasure to be here. Very happy to be here and uh happy to chat with you. So, where would you like me to start?

Diners Club Change Without Consensus

SPEAKER_01 0:45

I think we'll start going back maybe 20 years or so when you got into this space that you're in today. Share with us how you got started understanding people's psychology, the way they live, and what they do, so that we could all become better at interacting with other people.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Sure. So I had been working out in San Francisco for Bank of America, and I got a call from a recruiter one day and ended up taking a job here in Chicago with Diners Club International as their vice president of policy and procedures. And at the time, I thought that this would be a pretty straightforward assignment because when they interviewed me, they said what they wanted to do was to move the business from a paper-based interchange, global interchange system with paper settlement into an electronic environment. And I had been the U.S. representative on an ISO committee around electronic banking and also on the ANSI committees. And so I had been deep in this stuff, so I knew it pretty well. And I thought this will be a piece of cake. It's a technology change. You know, you install the new system, you train people, and you turn it on. Well, it turns out that I was completely wrong. That part was the easy part. Diners Club was a franchise organization, and I worked for the franchise or, which we ran the network, but there were 52 independent franchises around the world. And under the way it was structured, is all of the operating rules were baked into the franchise agreement itself. It had some interesting clauses in it, one of which is any change made to the operating rules had to be agreed to by 100% of the franchisees. And any one franchise could agree and then back out within 30 days. So I had a real problem because I wanted to convert the network to this electronic environment. And there were franchises that were not as motivated to make that change. And so I needed to figure out how we can take the franchises through a decision-making process that would enable them to come on board. So I use Saudi Arabia as a really good example because Diners Club franchise card members are all well healed. These are wealthy people. And in Saudi Arabia, they would leave Saudi Arabia in May because it gets so darn hot, like it is here today in Chicago, and they would go to Paris or London or even to the United States to get away from that dreadful heat. And they would be gone from May through the middle of October. And then they'd come back. Well, they're they're Muslim and they're they're good for their debts. That's one of the things that the franchise can count on, but they don't pay when they're out on vacation. And so what would happen is the franchise would get all these diners club bills in every couple of weeks, and they were supposed to pay the other franchisees for what their card members spent, but they wouldn't. They would sit on it. And they'd sit on it because they just didn't have the cash, right? It was a cash flow problem. And when the card members returned in October, paid their bills, then they would they would settle up with the rest of the network. They were inclined not to agree to an electronic settlement and interchange because it meant they had to pay every two weeks. So getting them to agree to switch to an electronic settlement and electronic interchange was a bit of a challenge. And what I learned along the way is that there are some techniques that we can use from psychology to enable people to absorb change. And we repeated this mechanism that we used to get people to agree over 17 different changes that we made to the entire network over the time that I was running uh global operations. I ended up running global operations for them.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Okay, so hold on a second. We're going to come back to the global operations. How did you learn, first of all, how lucky the AR to have found you? But how did you learn, and when did you learn that psychology can influence people to make decisions that are in other people's best interest also and not just their own best interest, right? So people have a tendency to just be worried about them and what's

Status Quo Bias And Reciprocity

SPEAKER_01 5:00

in it for them and the money they make. But you learned at an earlier age that there's a way to influence people for the greater good.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Right. And and the trick is to just to recognize right up front that all of us naturally resist change. We have a very strong status quo bias. And so the minute somebody proposes change to us, the first thing that goes up are our defenses, right? We want to find all the objections of why this wouldn't be a good idea for me to make this change. And so one of the things that you want to do is you want to put the issue on the table without putting a solution on the table. So here's our issue, we've got to figure out how to solve it, and then let them express all of their misgivings, all of their thoughts around how to address the issue. And the other thing is that people take a while to get through that. So as Americans, we like to think that we can present an argument and we'll convince the other side and we're done, right? But anybody who's been in sales, particularly in sales which involves fairly high-priced items, you know that's not going to happen. It's going to take a while for them to come back to you with a decision, yes or no. And so the trick in getting people to absorb change is to give them time, right? Let them work it through themselves. If you give them the opportunity to come up with ideas on how this thing might work, even if it's not going to work for them, how it might work for the rest of us, you get them thinking about solutions. Uh, as they raise objections, you listen carefully to their objections and take them on board without trying to pull a decision out of them until you know they're ready to make the right decision. One of the things that we also would do at Diners Club is we always kept a little thing in our back pocket, right? Something that we can give them for making this decision. So for Saudi Arabia, we could give them something. And we always kept that in our back pocket and we would give it to them when they made the decision. And that that made them feel like they won. And so they took ownership of the decision, made them feel like they won. It made the next time we approached them much easier, right? To get them on board to listen and then to eventually make the decision. And I will tell you that that first change from paper to electronic interchange, just to get them to say yes, took 18 months. So you've got to be patient. You've got to let people work through it. Now it was okay with us because we needed to build the system, and that that took longer than 18 months to build and then install it across the network. But at any rate, that was the that was the process that we took these uh CEOs through to get them to agree.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So at the end of it, you know, there's a whole world out there with this thought around being a gift giver. So when people become my clients, I'm a big advocate of the gifts. When you come in my office for a first meeting, you leave with chocolates, you leave with some kolachotskis, some toys, some things, paper pads, whatever it is, to help you feel good as a giver with the law of reciprocity. If you trust me, I'm trying to help encourage that I am who I am. When they sign up and become a client, you could give them a new client gift, which is a little bit unusual in business. And what you're saying is in alignment with this, is when people make a decision, if you reward them with something, even just a thank you, they feel like they won and they feel like they came out of the deal ahead.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Right. Right. And, you know, one of the one of the gifts that you can give people is the opportunity to help you, right? Believe it or not, you're asking for help, but you're actually giving them something quite valuable because it's in our nature to want to help one another. And if if I can uh give you the opportunity to help me and make it easy for you to do that, right? That's the trick. Make it easy for you to help me. When you help me, I'm very grateful, but you also feel really good because you help me. It's one of those psychological insights that's quite useful, right? In in how we interact with people. And the the key for for me, I think, was to recognize that in in virtually every human interaction, pick an interaction, an interaction, there is some level of influence involved, right? We're trying to make somebody agree with us or to like us or to laugh, whatever it is, we're influencing them, and they're influencing us. And so if you recognize that that's what's going on every time we interact, then you have the opportunity to say, okay, how can I be a more effective influencer? How can I understand what's going on with them that would enable me to get them to say, as Chris Voss would say, that's right versus you're right. He makes a he makes a big deal about the difference between those two things. And you want them to say, that's right, because that means they agree. So that's really you know part of the process is to take people through

From Banking To Consulting Books

SPEAKER_00 10:05

understanding how influence is going to be effective with them.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

So, what happens after Diner's Club? How many years are you there?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

So I was there for 17 years. I then was Citibank owned Diners Club. We were a subsidiary, very independent, which was marvelous. But uh I I then went to find a job in City because I uh had a vested pension plan and I didn't want to lose it, right? And I needed a couple of years, and I went to work for a part of City that that turned out to be a very poor fit for me. But I slogged it out for two years and then I took a package and I took early retirement. I then went into consulting. I worked with a couple of really smart guys, they're both Harvard MBAs, and we tried to to sell a consulting service to PE firms back when the economy collapsed in 2008 and nine and 10. And I had I had met them because I wrote a book called Advantage, which is one of the books that that is on my LinkedIn page. And I gave some talks based on that. That's how I met them. And then I wrote this book, The Peak Interview, which is really about how you use some of these insights in a job interview, because a job interview is obviously it's a sale, but it's obviously an influence opportunity, and you want to be as influential as possible. And that got me to go over sort of an academic step, in that at that point I started to do research into psychology itself and neuroscience to try and get deeper understandings of what's actually taking place in our decision, our very faulty decision engine that sits up here in our brains. And that led me down a path that led to the book, The The Peak Interview, which is about how you put yourself at the top of the candidates that are interviewing for the job.

SPEAKER_01 11:57

So, so share with me, if you will, a couple of minutes on the book, your first book, The Advantage. A lot of times it becomes forgotten when you write three or four books, but it was your baby, you're right. Getting the first book done is a big deal. What's in the book, The Advantage, at Amazon, that you could share with us?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

It's a book about how we can be more innovative. And it was written back in 2009. So it's it's quite old at this point. And the reason that I wrote it is because I wanted to get a good understanding of all the elements that that sort of govern how we innovate and how uh we can be influential when we innovate. And in the discipline is that if you're going to write a book, that you should do good research, that your research shouldn't take stuff that's anecdotal. You want to take stuff that's scientific. And so writing the book put that discipline around me so that when I was talking about how you innovate, for example, I was using science as the basis, not something some business person made up, right? Because you know, consultants are really good about putting together these really cool tools, but they're just made up. And and we like to use them because they're fun. It's like doing a SWOT analysis, right? It's it's a fun thing for a leadership team to do, but it doesn't really have much effect because all you're doing is putting on the table the stuff you already know, right? It's not nothing new, and you're not talking to the one person whose decision really matters, which is the customer, of course. So at any rate, that's the I got really into it there. And that led me to write the book, The Peak Interview, uh, which I wrote really not, it was not targeted at job interviewers at all. It was written because we were having a hard time during that recessionary period selling our services. And we knew that if you had a book that you could hand out as you're doing your sales pitch, it boosts your credibility. You know this because you've written the book, right? It boosts your credibility. So I thought, well, let me write a book that shows that we're really good at turning over unturned stones, that we can find that lever that you can use to create new competitive advantage. And that's what the peak interview book is about. It's about how you could find stuff that gives you new competitive advantage. And I picked the job interview out of out of a suite of things that we had that we could have written about, because it was something everybody in our target audience understood well. They were they typically had been on both sides of the table at some point during their career, mostly now on the interviewer side, because they were mostly we were targeting CEOs of small, mid-sized companies. And they could understand the environment really well, and they thought they knew it really well because anybody who's had any experience, like you or me, we feel really confident in our interviewing skills in talking to candidates coming in to interview with us, right? We think we're good at picking the right candidate. So, at any rate, I wrote the book and it applies a couple of little psychological insights

Job Interviews As Influence

SPEAKER_00 14:55

to put you at the front of the list in the interview. And I didn't expect it ever to result in people who were actually looking for a job uh using the book, but it's that's been used now by thousands of people. And I've given over 200 talks on the book to people who are in transition. And the trick there is just to recognize that it's a sale. And when you go into the sale, you're being talked to because the interviewer has already pre-qualified you. In other words, they've gone through your LinkedIn page and your resume. They already know you've got the skills and the experience necessary for the job, even the education that's required. What they're really trying to decide is if you're a fit. That's the term that you use, a cultural fit. And what that really boils down to is are you somebody that I like and I would like working with? And so that's the person you want to be. And these little psychological insights put you in that position to be the person that the hiring manager likes the best.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And it turns out it works. So, you know, there's a book out there years ago. But this all comes down to being likable, how to win friends and influence people.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Very good book.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So, does this does this is this an advanced version of that? Or is this a partner to that?

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, so I I would say it's probably a partner to that more than because it's a different approach. So this is a very scientific kind of approach versus how to win friends and influence people is more of a anecdotal approach. There's another excellent book written by Barbara Walters called How to Talk to Practically Anybody About Practically Anything. And and her insight, which turned out to be valuable, is that uh people's favorite topic is to talk about themselves. And so you know, we leverage that in the in the job interview environment because that's what the hiring manager really wants to do. They want to talk about themselves.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

So in the peak interview, in the peak interview, as you go through the scientific way to be able to communicate with people to get them to like you, it comes down to two, three, or four peaks that we want to take ourselves up to to be able to win.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yes. So that's correct.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

And and with that, again, I recommend everyone go out and get it and study it. You have taken the time to help thousands of people in transition learn how to communicate to get up to different peaks, so that you end up being at the very top at number one or two when it comes to them selecting you as a as a candidate. And I share with you that I've also learned helping thousands of executives in transition, that with today's technology, everybody knows who you are when they decide to talk to you. And therefore, you could open up and get more connections on LinkedIn by asking questions or having them do your favor. I'm trying to build my local presence on LinkedIn. I'm trying to build and have my leaderships people built on LinkedIn. There's simple one sentence that you could use on LinkedIn that allows people to feel like they're doing you a solid by connecting to you. And then you could build on it if you take your time, right? A couple days later, you just keep building with questions, but not selling yourself.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a good strategy.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Well, in my past, in everyone's past, we used to sell ourselves because how do they know who we are if we don't tell them who we are? And in today's world, they're pushing one button and getting a full descriptive of your entire history using LinkedIn and other tools that are out there. Now that they're engaged with you based upon how well they know you, I think that what you've come across is these questions that allow them to have a more positive interaction with you about interesting things that they don't know until you speak.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Right. And and one of the problems with with the what's already out there is what they're going to learn about you is are all the rational reasons why they should be talking to you, right? The skills, the abilities, the education, the experience, right? And those are rational reasons. But the our decision engine is actually emotionally driven. And so the the peaks that you mentioned are emotional peaks, and you're creating an emotional context for them to like you. You still have to get the rational piece

Bonus Question Plus Peak-End Question

SPEAKER_00 19:35

across. And so I use a question called the bonus question. So when you're in a job interview and it's now your turn to ask questions, which is towards the end of the interview typically, you should always have a lot of questions prepared, right? So that you don't never run out of questions. The the wrong answer to do you have any more questions is no. It's yes, I do, I have a bunch, right? But one of the questions that you want to ask when it's your turn, and you don't want to sacrifice the peak end question, which I can mention in a moment, but this is called the bonus question is this. Now, this isn't true, but but imagine just for the sake of argument that you hired me. And it's now a year later, we're going through all the stuff that we've accomplished in the past year, and I've had an absolutely outstanding year. What have I accomplished? Right? And and it's a tricky question to answer because most people, they've written the job description, but they haven't thought through what makes for outstanding performance. And all you're asking is, what would make for outstanding performance in this job? And as the you want to ask this of the hiring manager, as the hiring manager, they have to be able to answer that, right? They have to, they know they have to be able to tell you what makes for outstanding performance, but they don't have that prescripted. So they're going to make it up as they go along. So what you do in answering questions before that in earlier in the interview is you're telling them stories about your background. And what you're giving them actually are narrative elements that they can pull into answering that bonus question about what you've done, because they've already heard about stuff you've done. And while they're listening to what you've done, they're also processing it in terms of why that matters for this company. Well, now you're asking them to give you that feedback and they'll make it up as they go along. And the and the psychology behind this, the science behind this, is that when we are the people that are talking, what we say is very credible to ourselves, right? We believe what we say. And now you're, as the hiring manager, you're describing what this candidate did that was so successful. And because you're saying it, even though at the conscious level you know it's not true, at the subconscious level, because the subconscious cannot handle falsehoods, it can only handle truths, it takes that in as truth statements. Now they're not judged truth statements, but They're there. And so they they build a foundation for you from a rational perspective that you are the right candidate for this job because you will deliver an outstanding performance in a year. So that's the rational side taken care of. Then the emotional side is this business about asking the peak questions. And the big question is the peak end question. And you have to you have to finesse this question a little bit. First of all, you want it's the very last thing you do in the interview. So you want to get all the housekeeping done, right? So you you find out what's the follow, what do you intend to do as the next steps? And you want to ask an intent question because the minute they articulate what they intend to do, what their process is for making the decision, it makes it more likely that if they say we'll get back to you in two weeks, that they actually will get back to you within two weeks. If if you if you don't ask any of that stuff, you're sort of in the dark as to what's going to happen next. So you want to get their intention on the table. Once you've got all that stuff done, you're about ready to shake hands and leave. You're going to have this one more thought. This is, you know, it's really been fascinating talking to you. You must have done some really interesting things in your career. What's the one thing you've done in your career that you're most proud of? And you just let it sit. Now, if they don't have time to answer that question, they might say, I really don't have time. But then they'll take a minute or two to answer the question, which is great because it gives you something to follow up with when you send the thank you note, you can mention that. But most people will want to answer that question and they'll start telling you a story about something they did, and they might switch in the middle of the story to a different story because something else came to mind. And you know, I've asked this of people, even somebody, I won't mention their name, but somebody that you know. We were having breakfast. This is somebody who knows all about the pequen question, right? Absolutely knows it because it's has actually presented the book with me. And uh, so we're having breakfast, and he goes, Oh, I have to run, I've got an appointment in 20 minutes. I gotta drive over there. And I said, Uh, great, I have one more question, if you don't mind, just one quick question. And I asked the peek in question. You know, tell me about something that you've done in your career that you're particularly proud of. 40 minutes later, he gets up from the breakfast table, having told me three stories. And it it's it's so much fun to answer that question. You sort of get easily sucked into it. So, anyway, it's a great question to ask in the job interview.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

What's the one thing that you've done in your career that you're most proud of?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

That's a longer story. But in the short version is I was in a position to take over an operating unit that was in substantial trouble. There were 120 people working in the unit, they were losing $8 million a year, and they shouldn't have been losing anything. And the problem had to do with both the way the the or the work was organized, the level of training that the people had, and the accessibility to information wasn't there. And so I had presented how to fix this unit to senior management. I asked for some special dispensation. So the bank used uh this is a bank, they used a forced ranking system. And I said, look, if we can get this loss from 8 million down to zero, wouldn't that be outstanding? Yes. What if it took the whole team? Wouldn't the whole team be outstanding? All right, I see your argument. So I want to waver from the forced ranking. They said, done. I said, in addition, I want really some some front and center ability to place people because we're gonna take the 120 down to 60. And I don't want to lay anybody off. And so they said, sure. And so I went, HR actually contacted me and says, hey, listen, this is not a good idea because you're gonna lose your best people if you're gonna try and place them elsewhere in the in the business. And I said, look, I think they're all good people. So my best people, they actually should get a promotion. So they should be going on to bigger and better things. So we put all the people through a fairly clever training program that that was a it was a personal challenge that they all had to had to get through, and they all did. And then we reorganized the work and we built in an opportunity for them to game the system. And as humans, we love to game the system. We love to think we're getting away with something. And so we built that into it. We reorganized the work, opened the doors on on Monday, they all came in, they all had new assignments and went to work. And within six weeks, our losses were zero. We'd gotten gotten rid of all the losses, and we were on, we had no backlog, we were on target. As it turns out, I didn't have to lay anybody off. And part of the reason I'm very happy I didn't because at the beginning of this, I stood up in front of the 120 people and I said, Look, here's what I want to do. Anybody who has a level one or level two, and there are five levels in terms of performance, is protected by the bank. We won't lay you off. Absolutely not. And I had already planned that they would all be level one or level two. And I said, and if anybody has to be laid off, I go first. And I can't afford to lose this job. I got two little kids, you know. I need this job, so we're not gonna lay anybody off. And we didn't. We placed 60 people in the bank. I ended up firing one employee. This was a guy he had a significant cocaine problem, and this was in San Francisco. We were right at the bottom of the Castro area, which is the gay area. So most of the men that worked with me were gay, and I had come into the job with a little touch of homophobia. I left the job with exactly the opposite. These were marvelous people. But he came, we for Halloween, everybody dressed up. He came in a loincloth with nothing on underneath. So we had to we had to send as soon as he sat down, we had to send him home, right?

A Turnaround Built On Trust

SPEAKER_00 27:55

But he we tried to get him help and we couldn't get him any help, and we ended up having to let him go.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

So, you know, it is a feel good. I'm gonna start using that question about your biggest accomplishment in business, but then it is, does it? I think it also helps people if you were to ask the question, what is your biggest mistake in business? Is that a good framing word or sentence, or is there a better one to use?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

No, I wouldn't use that one because you're you're asking them to drudge up something that they probably won't drudge up the really bad thing, right? They'll drudge up something minor. It's like asking somebody in a job interview, what's your greatest weakness? You know, nobody's gonna say, problem is when I drink, I gamble, right? They're not gonna say something like that. They're gonna say, Oh, I'm too I'm too organized.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

So you have the peak interview, it's an incredible book. You get all the way to the top. You gave up some golden nuggets today when it comes to that book. But what encouraged you? What's going through your head that you've written? How many books have you written?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

I've written these six books that you see on the screen. The latest one is this designing your competition. The that book I actually wrote as a textbook for a class that I taught at UW Parkside this spring. And the students were actually very helpful in helping me edit that book, but I've just completed the third rewrite and it's up now on Amazon. And that's about leveraging some psychological insights into becoming a much more effective leader.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

And then, okay, now what about outsell, right? So everybody wants to sell. Does outsell apply to everything, whether you're getting a job or you're trying to just sell a consulting service?

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah. So it includes those two things I just mentioned about the bonus question and the peak end question, because those are, you know, a job interview is a sale, right? So it's it's like any other sale. You you you're trying to influence the other party, if it's the right thing for them, to buy whatever it is that you're pitching. And but there's a couple of other things that are in there. The propositional content question, which is a difficult question. You have to plan ahead for this question, but it's a very effective question to ask. And then the intent question, which I mentioned, is spelled out in more detail in that book. So it has these four components. And the idea is that you're trying to be influential without trying to force a sale, right? You're you really want to give the other party the opportunity to make the right decision, and hopefully the right decision is to buy your product, right? That's why you're in that conversation because you think that's probably true.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Now, what about behave?

SPEAKER_00 30:36

So behave is about really how you leverage some psychological insights in uh share with us about the book Behave. Oh, yes, Behave is about taking a business beyond, for example, all the stuff that you would you build into your business using a system like EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. A great way to move a company from being somewhat chaotic to being really disciplined. And the EOS system does that really well. And so the book takes some elements out of EOS, but puts them in a different frame because EOS takes you just so far. But if you really want to get the best out of your people, you have to change how you lead them. And and Behave talks about some of the tools and techniques that you can use to better manage your employees. So that's really what Behave is about.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

So, of the books we have on the screen, what's your favorite book?

SPEAKER_00 31:32

It's my most recent book, Designing Leadership. It's because it's really about how you can really deeply leverage some psychological and neuroscience. This time there's quite a bit of neuroscience in it, to become a more effective leader. And it's a radical departure from how most people run companies, but not radical for some very interesting things some companies have done. And and so I will say there's probably nothing original in it other than maybe some of the neuroscience. But the the examples that I use are the companies that have done

Guardian Leadership And Decision Authority

SPEAKER_00 32:10

this, what I call guardian leadership effectively, are pretty remarkable.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

I would say what we talked about today is pretty remarkable. I've had hundreds of interviews, and I think you're at the top of the chart of asking questions to let people make decisions to feel like they won or that it's going to be a win-win. That it's not either or, and that you actually go through life saying, How do I help other people get where they want to go so they can be with the right people when they make decisions?

SPEAKER_00 32:45

That's spot on. Exactly right. It's about how do you put people in a position where they can take ownership, right? Make it their decision, not something you told them to do, something they figured out how to resolve the issue. And once they do that, they own it. And when they own it, then their performance around delivering it is completely different.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

So I have a couple of questions. Let's talk about some personality types. So let's say you're talking about the control person. They want to control everybody around them and they're in manager mode all the time. They don't know how to take orders or be in a position to listen to others. Do you have questions in ways of leadership to deal with people that are hard to work with?

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Well, first of all, they are hard to work with. Particularly, you know, we we get fairly set in our in our beliefs and our opinions. And for example, I ran into a guy who's got a business, he's a manufacturer. A lot of his people are laborers who, for some of them, English isn't their first language, right? They're relatively poor people. And we talk about giving them decision authorities. Oh, I can't know that these people are not capable of making decisions. But if you think about it, yes, they are. They make all kinds of decisions, not at your workplace, but in the every other aspect of their lives, they're making adult decisions. All of a sudden they walk in through your doors and they're no longer adults, they're children. You have to tell them what to do. Whenever you do that, you're having a negative impact on their motivation. And so there's if if you actually want to be in control, the best control you can get is when the people closest to the information are in control. They know stuff you don't know. Although you'll be absolutely convinced that you know it better than anybody else. You're just wrong. We all are. I mean, you know, I ran big organizations and I thought I was the smartest person in the room when we would hold a team meeting, right? But I learned fairly early on that some of the best ideas come out of the most unlikely brains. And so and you may reject them at first, but eventually you'll accept them.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

So they go through the process. And what do you think about in today's world? We're in 2026, about people getting jobs and communicating with leaders today. Is it with AI getting harder and harder, or is it just different?

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Yeah, I'm not sure that AI has an impact on the human interactions that much, although it can be fairly helpful. So if you need to have a difficult conversation with a colleague, for example, running it by AI to say, hey, listen, this is the situation, and you lay it out what what the person is like and what the argument may be about, and you say, what is the most effective way I can approach this where we don't dig our heels in? And AI is actually pretty good about giving you some suggestions on what you can do and say that will make it make you more effective, you know, if you're facing that kind of thing. I've done it for I had to write a letter to a CEO of our health insurance company because the their customer service is just atrocious. And and so I used AI to help me craft that letter because I wanted it to, I wanted to bring up the problem without sounding like, hey, you jerk, you know, your system is terrible. So I wrote it using what I think I used Gemini or ChatGTP suggested, and I sent it off. Well, I got a call back, right, from the CEO's office, and they took care of the problem immediately, and our relationship with them ever since has been really good. So, you know, that's the kind of thing that you can you can use AI

AI Purpose And Brain-Healthy Habits

SPEAKER_00 36:32

for. It's awful.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

I have two more questions for you. So when you wake up every day, what kind of people do you want to interact with? And what are you doing to make a living today as you're out there writing books and speaking to the public?

SPEAKER_00 36:47

So I don't actually make any money on my books, right? Because, you know, if you've written a business book, unless you've written good to great or some other bestseller, you're not going to make money on the book. Fortunately, it doesn't cost you anything to put a book up on Amazon anymore. And so you're not investing a lot of money, just a lot of time in writing a book. I write books for personal reasons, right? I don't write them to make money. So, how do I make money? Well, I'm actually, I took advantage of that extra stinted city to get that pension. So I'm a pensioner. Plus, at my age, I'm now 75. I'm on Social Security, so I get a little bit of change from that. I also teach. And so I make a little tiny bit of money teaching, but that's all I need. I'm I don't need to be wealthy. I don't, I'm not chasing the almighty buck. I actually am much more interested in learning and growing uh that way.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

I just find it to be awesome. You don't look 75, I'll tell you that. And I'm around you pretty often, and kudos to how you're taking care of yourself then and how you're how you're just enjoying life and making your days. So, what's on the last question? What is your favorite hobby that you do when you're not writing and you're not teaching?

SPEAKER_00 38:00

So I did it this morning. I went gym climbing. And it turns out that if you're an older person like me, gym climbing is probably the best physical exercise you can do because it deals with what's going on in your brain is your brain is shrinking. And the areas that are affected most, according to Sun Science, is are the areas that process dopamine. And processing more dopamine causes those areas of the brain to function better. And those are your executive decision function areas, your learning areas, and your reward centers. And so what climbing does is every time you take a climb that's challenging and you're naturally inclined to challenge yourself, right? Every time you get a difficult hold, right? You reach up and you get a difficult hold, a shot of dopamine goes through your brain. When you reach the top, big shot of dopamine. Climbing turns out to be very social because you've got to rest between climbs, and there's other climbers, so you end up talking to them, you make friends, and being social is also very important for an aging brain. So you've got that. So it's the problem solving, the dopamine influx, the social aspect of it, and just the physical exercise. Because what surprised me is my kids got me started in this and they said, just climb 10 feet. And I did that, and you climb back down because at first you don't trust the ropes. But then I climbed to the very top. It was the easiest climb in the gym. I climbed to the top and I felt so great. And I let myself drop to the ground with the Audible light. And when I got there, I was gassed. I could barely breathe. I was sucking in air. And I thought, wow, I didn't realize that as I was going up the wall, but I am I'm drained, I'm really spent. So you have to rest in between climbs. And that kind of exertion, it's intermittent, intense aerobic, is the best thing for somebody who's my age. It's the best kind of exercise for your brain.

SPEAKER_01 39:58

I absolutely love it. And as we wrap up, and thank you so much for your insights and your knowledge, at Co-Fanancial

Counterfactual Planning And Closing

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Group, we take people through the abundant life roadmap to help provide clarity and focus to be able to have a financial plan and investments that work for them. So I use goals and values. I use the DOS question from Strategic Coach, which is which is looking out three years from now, what has to happen so you're happy personally, professionally, and financially. And then we take them through their roadblocks, their opportunities, and their strengths. And through this, people find clarity and they find a vision for their future thinking instead of where they're at today. So if anybody wants to reach out, go ahead, Bill.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Well, I was going to make a suggestion that you change that question a little bit. Okay. And change it into what we call the counterfactual hypothetical, which is imagine that we work together. It's not three years later. You have a we've managed to achieve all of your financial goals. Where are you today? Now three years in the future. Or you could say it, you know, what have we done together that's made that so successful?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Or I love that because now it's including me in the picture.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yes, and you want them to describe what you've been able to do for them. And work on that question a little bit and you'll polish it and you'll get them to paint in their brain that future, that marvelous future working with cofinancial, right?

SPEAKER_01 41:30

I absolutely love it. I'm available through LinkedIn, Instagram, however you want to read between it's easy. Chat at cofinancial.com. And then Bill is easy as well. You can reach Bill at Bill at M-A-N-U-P-A-R-S.com. His books are on Amazon. I highly encourage everybody to go out and start reading them. His work is fantastic and it's easy to learn and comprehend. Bill, thank you so much for being here today.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

This was great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

Thank you.