RHS 182 - Monica Parker on Turning Wonder into a Superpower

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Speaker 5 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 4 Today, we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Monica Parker. Monica is the founder of Hatch Analytics.
They do a lot of work inside the insurance industry.

Speaker 4 But the reason we had Monica on the show was not just the fact that she has experience in the insurance industry, but that she is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Power of Wonder.

Speaker 4 And this idea of wonder and building wonder into our lives and how wonder is possibly the top level ingredient in which happiness is derived from. And we talk about that equation a little bit.

Speaker 4 This book is phenomenal. I highly recommend it.
I'm going to have it linked up in the show notes. You can also just go to Amazon and type in the power of wonder.

Speaker 4 I highly, highly recommend this concept. The subtitle, The Extraordinary Emotion That Will Change the Way You Live, Learn, and Lead.
I was blown away by our conversation.

Speaker 4 Just, I love having thinkers like Monica on the show because they just

Speaker 4 stretch your brain. They stretch the way you think about things.

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 this episode is absolutely no different. You're going to love this conversation with Monica.

Speaker 4 Before we get there, I just want to give a quick shout out to you guys. Thank you for listening to this show.
I love you for listening to this show.

Speaker 4 The only thing I ask if you enjoy the show, share the show. Just share it on social, text it to a friend, email it to a colleague.

Speaker 4 You know, it could be this episode. It could be the show and hold.
We're always trying to grow

Speaker 4 our listenership. We're always trying to reach new people,

Speaker 4 trying to impact more individuals with the message, the conversations, the thoughts. We're trying to stretch people's brains like we did in this conversation with Monica.

Speaker 4 So if you enjoy this show, would we'd love for you to share it. Lastly,

Speaker 4 quick shout out to the sponsor of this show, Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y.com. That's T-I-V-L-Y.com.

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Don't go to tivly.com and grow your business using warm commercial lead transfer calls.

Speaker 4 Okay, with all that said, let's get on to this absolutely tremendous conversation with Monica Parker.

Speaker 10 Thankfully, it was a long time ago, but it's like burned into my brain.

Speaker 4 I

Speaker 10 I used to have a podcast that was specifically for marketing. And this was, this was a long time ago back.
Podcasts were relatively new,

Speaker 10 but it was fairly large at the time. We were doing like 40,000 downloads a month.
I actually have this screenshot where for like a week, my podcast was ahead of Gary Vaynerchuk's podcast.

Speaker 10 And like I had took this screenshot and I was like, this probably will never happen again. But.
you know, we're ranked higher than him for like a week or whatever.

Speaker 11 Yeah, when my book was, when my book beat meet Michelle Obama's on the LA Times bestseller, I took a picture of that. I was like,

Speaker 10 like,

Speaker 10 I'm going to kind of put this in, you know, for austerity purposes. I'm going to take a picture of this.
But I had, and I'm going to forget who the guest was, but it was like

Speaker 10 fairly well-known author, best-selling author, and took a little work to get him on. And we had this amazing conversation.
Didn't he record?

Speaker 4 Didn't record. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I

Speaker 10 didn't know what to do. Like, you know,

Speaker 10 one, I'm like 10 years younger than I am now. So I don't have as much experience in general with like these types of situations.

Speaker 10 Two, it was the first time that had ever happened. Three, this was someone who I know when they have an hour booked in their schedule.
Not, not that we all, yeah, not that we have time to do it.

Speaker 11 You're not going to give you another one.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I was like,

Speaker 4 oh no, like, you got to be kidding me.

Speaker 10 And I like almost started crying. I was like, this, this is terrible.

Speaker 8 Like, I don't,

Speaker 4 I don't know what to do.

Speaker 10 And oh, man, I can't remember who it was. They ultimately did reschedule with me.
Oh, really?

Speaker 11 That's lovely.

Speaker 10 Yes, they were super good about it. Man, it is going to kill me.
I can't remember. It was so long ago.
I can't remember now.

Speaker 10 Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
I guess it, you know, whatever. But they did reschedule with me.
It was like six months later, but that's fine. And then, you know, I just was like,

Speaker 10 thank you so much. You know, thank you.
You know, I don't know.

Speaker 10 And here's the hard part, though. The second conversation wasn't as good.

Speaker 11 I know.

Speaker 10 Cause it was kind of forced. And I could tell that they were doing it as a favor to me and trying to be nice.
And they were a good person. And that's great.
And I was very thankful.

Speaker 10 But the first conversation was so dynamic, so interesting, so off the cuff and fun. And the second one felt forced.
We were trying to recreate it. And

Speaker 10 I actually said, because so what I do is I do the conversation and then I do a little intro after. Most people do that.
And in the intro, I said, I explained what happened.

Speaker 10 And I said, look, like, this is a tremendous conversation. And I said, you know, the first conversation, you know, I wish you could hear both.

Speaker 10 I wish you could hear both because we, you know, whatever. But yeah.
So, so now what I normally do is before the other person, the person even comes in, I hit record, which does freak some people out.

Speaker 10 And I'm like, look, I'm not

Speaker 10 going to share. I'm not going to catch in anything.

Speaker 10 Yes, I just, I just want to make sure that we actually get this, but but uh I want to I want to let's let's let's get right into this topic of wonder. I um

Speaker 10 you know, when when whoever it was on your team, you know, reached out and I started looking at the topic, I was like, this is, this is awesome. Like, this is really, really interesting stuff.
And,

Speaker 10 you know, I guess my first question for you is really like,

Speaker 10 where,

Speaker 10 you know, when I was reading through your materials and looking at, you know, looking at all the stuff, I was like,

Speaker 10 wonder feels like one of those words you read in like a harry potter book right like we we we we fantasize or romanticize this this concept or topic of wonder but the idea that it could be used um

Speaker 10 i don't want to i don't want to miss misuse this word but strategically or or with intention um probably feels foreign to a lot of people who are listening so maybe just start to get into a little bit where

Speaker 10 like i don't know we'll start there and we'll see where the hell we go okay is there a question question there? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I guess what, how do, why, why, how do we take wonder from this romanticized concept to a concept that we can actually use with intention in our life?

Speaker 11 Sure. So wonder, I explain sometimes that wonder, it is about, there is a magical quality to it.
We've all experienced it. So it is a universal emotion.

Speaker 11 But like so many things, we can prime ourselves to experience it. So we can say, I'm going to seek wonder and find it because that's how priming works in our brains.

Speaker 11 So there's a lot of like really practical ways that we can find wonder. We can take a wonder walk.
So what makes a wonder walk a wonder walk? You decide it is. That's again, the power of priming.

Speaker 11 You give yourself a single sentence prime and say, I'm going to go on this walk and find wonder during it.

Speaker 11 Another great way to find wonder in a very practical way is just novelty, just trying new things, exposing yourself to new ideas, taking new paths. It's really an opportunity.

Speaker 11 Our brain notices newness. And in newness is the opportunity for us to see things in a way we hadn't.
And there is the opportunity for wonder.

Speaker 11 And also we can create a wonder mindset. One of the things that I try to explain to people is that wonder is not about a moment, it's about a mindset.

Speaker 11 And so we can create a wonder mindset by really focusing on things like slow thought. So anything that helps us close down that chattering monkey mind that we all have and instead be really present.

Speaker 11 So things like meditation, narrative journaling, gratitude practice, all of those are mechanisms for creating a wonder mindset.

Speaker 11 And so there are a lot of very practical ways that we can bring wonder into our life. It's not just sitting, you know, in the lotus position, hoping that some wondrous thing happens to us.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 One of the reasons, another one of the reasons why I was so interested and excited to chat with you is that the primary audience of this podcast are professionals in the insurance industry, not an industry that you would usually assign to the topic of wonder, right?

Speaker 10 Like most of the time we're pushing paper, we're looking at numbers, we're dealing with

Speaker 10 seemingly awful things, right? I mean, when really bad things happen in our world, unfortunately, the professionals that listen to this show are the people who respond with in different ways.

Speaker 10 You know, I think. in general, we have a

Speaker 10 most people look at our industry as an as a negative. However,

Speaker 10 you know, it's a little secret inside and that we all kind of share in our industry, which we know, you know, no one else is coming with a check, right? So

Speaker 10 I wanted to expose them particularly to this concept, because I think too often the professionals

Speaker 10 who sit in this space, I think they get bogged down by that negativity, by the

Speaker 10 mundaneness, the numbers, the regulation, these things that... feel like they drain.
And again,

Speaker 10 this is an exploratory mission with you for me.

Speaker 10 i'm i'm learning but like to me when i think about a concept of wonder i think are there ways and and is there are there are there ways that a professional in a space that that does kind of live in that world that that doesn't it's not necessarily creative in its nature it's not there's no fun products we can take pictures of we're not exploring anything we're we're this foundational back office service in most instances are how do how do those type of people who may feel that even if they love their jobs start to find wonder or practice wonder or build that into their life to maybe bring a little more excitement or joy yeah absolutely and um hatch our biggest market that we work for are insurance companies so probably about 50 to 60 percent of our clients are insurers and so i do understand the mentality and it can and i know that there's a lot of that there are different personalities that exist within insurance.

Speaker 11 Certainly the actuarial teams are different than some of the non-life teams that tend to be a bit more, can be a bit more creative.

Speaker 11 But what I find interesting is that in any corporate environment, there is an opportunity for wonder at work.

Speaker 11 And what I mean by that is that there are a certain set of, and I hate the term soft skills. So I'll just say human or social skills, social science skills that we can all

Speaker 11 benefit from and that are capacity building for us. And those are things like empathy,

Speaker 11 patience, humility,

Speaker 11 psychological safety, authenticity. And these are all things that we hear and they feel sort of like buzzwords, but they're actually all what are known as pro-social emotions or pro-social behaviors.

Speaker 11 And wonder generates those. And also, when we engage in those pro-social activities, they get us closer to wonder.
So it's sort of this cycle.

Speaker 11 So if we can start to understand and rebuild what we see as leadership DNA in these environments, then that I see as a great first step for anybody who is a leader in this industry, really starting to question what do we incentivize and remunerate on?

Speaker 11 And are those,

Speaker 11 is that the totality of the human that we want to encourage? Because we can do things individually. Like taking a wonder walk, we can nostalgia is another great one.

Speaker 11 During COVID, I had people put on their

Speaker 11 screensaver in the the back a picture from childhood, and it was just like an icebreaker to be nostalgic. And that is helpful.
That helps you bring closer to wonder because it's a mixed emotion.

Speaker 11 But the challenge is that individuals can only go so far if the system that they exist within doesn't incentivize those behaviors, right?

Speaker 11 So if you're working for a larger organization and they say, we only want you to make these numbers and that's all that matters, then it becomes harder.

Speaker 11 And so one of the things we're really trying to work with larger organizations is to say, really, who do you want your leaders to be? And let's define that and then incentivize it in a different way.

Speaker 11 And that seems to be the most successful. But from an individual point of view, it's really about slowing down.

Speaker 11 Daniel Kahneman said in Thinking Fast and Slow that if there's an opportunity to slow down, you should.

Speaker 11 When we are rushed, when we're stressed, we lean too heavily on our heuristics, on our shortcuts in our brain. And that really takes us right past any opportunity for wonder.

Speaker 11 We can engage in daydreaming, which I now know sounds a bit crazy, especially for the actuarial types, but just allowing your brain the freedom to not be thinking about any particular element and not the ruminating kind of daydreaming, but the kind of daydreaming that's what's known as positive constructed daydreaming.

Speaker 11 So, that's the future daydreaming, imagining future scenarios is very positive for our brain. And then also

Speaker 11 just engaging in conversations that are different than you normally would and allowing yourself to hold competing ideas in your head at the same time.

Speaker 11 So I know that insurance, there is a lot of drive towards having that single right answer and finding that there is an answer.

Speaker 11 And whenever we pursue the single right answer, we frequently close out all other thinking. And in that, we lose the nuance and the nuance and that

Speaker 11 variety is where we find wonder.

Speaker 11 And so trying to hold this paradoxical mindset, hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time and saying they could both be right and allowing that gray area, which again, I know is not something that people enjoy particularly.

Speaker 11 It can be uncomfortable for some people, in fact, but that is, that's a very powerful way to get closer to wonder.

Speaker 8 All right.

Speaker 10 There's a lot to unpack in there, and that's amazing.

Speaker 10 So one of the things that I try to push often on this show and the work that I do is one of the human skills that you pulled out. I also hate the term soft skills.
I don't know why.

Speaker 10 I just don't like it. I don't have a particular reason for not liking it.
But I do like it.

Speaker 11 Soft is always a pejorative, except in toilet paper adverts. Soft is never a thing, right?

Speaker 10 Yeah, it's kind of Charmin or bust for me. So, okay.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 is humility. To me, a lot of the other human skills that you mentioned, and I could be wrong about this, I'm not a psychologist.
I'm a failed math major. So,

Speaker 10 but the idea of humility,

Speaker 10 empathy, compassion, understanding, connection to me are all or are often derivatives of humility.

Speaker 10 If you, you, you, if you are humble, if you are accepting of the fact that we're all just dummies trying to make our way through the world and that we're trying to seek solutions, then you are empathetic to others' opinions and situations and

Speaker 10 challenges or

Speaker 10 we're open to other ideas. We'll, we'll, we'll hold, you know, as you said, hold multiple ideas in our head.
And that I find unfortunately in our space, I think often because of the nature of how,

Speaker 10 say, retail agents are compensated, how executives in large organizations are promoted. ego is a large part of it.
It's a, it's, there's this me brand.

Speaker 10 If, if, if you look to me and I don't have the solution like this, then I'm not going to get promoted. I'm not going to get this appointment.
I'm not going to get this account. And

Speaker 10 ego for a long time has been almost held as a stand, certainly as a standard operating procedure, but also rewarded to a certain extent. And I think what the,

Speaker 10 again, this is another cliche that I kind of hate, but the more connected nature of our world, the fast-paced nature of our world, the more diversity that's being brought into this particular industry, which is phenomenal,

Speaker 10 both from gender, from race, from ideology, from religion, all these different, these different ideas and concepts have been brought in that single focused ego driven my name is on the box mentality is starting to break down and i think that's where we see this struggle and uh what's been interesting to me and i'm kind of making this i was kind of making this connection in my brain as you talk so i don't want you to think that this is a well thought out idea it's not um

Speaker 10 but uh uh I have seen in say like the last half decade, a lot of young to the business agents, not necessarily just young in age, but most of them are say under 35, but young to the business agents starting their own agency.

Speaker 10 And the way that they do it is with vigor and passion and brand. And

Speaker 10 they talk about their business and they start podcasts and they engage in their communities. And it's like this thing.
And it's in it. And it's.

Speaker 10 Maybe there's some ego to it, but it's more this like, you can tell there's like passion and interest oozing out of them where their counterparts,

Speaker 10 one, don't talk about the business that way when they started. It was grinding on this business and my head was down and the lights were off and I'm in the office till 10 p.m.

Speaker 10 And, you know, I had my white shirt and my in my black suit. And like, so to me, it's very interesting.

Speaker 10 It feels like, and maybe this is just the, the, that, the generationally or where we are as a society today or whatever, but it does feel like.

Speaker 10 people are starting to capture this idea. Do you think it's a societal shift that is happening in general and this this generation is bringing it in? Or do you think,

Speaker 10 you know, I don't, I don't know that I have an answer.

Speaker 10 I just was starting to make that connection that a lot of these younger agencies that I see are operating with seeming, I'm going to, I know it's not the same thing, but I'm going to say maybe a stepping stone to wonder being passion, commitment, excitement, energy

Speaker 10 that wasn't there in their predecessors.

Speaker 11 What I'm hearing is actually you describe authenticity, that there's this direct alignment between what they are passionate about and then what they're trying to share with the world.

Speaker 11 And authenticity is another one of those elements that is directly is enhanced by wonder and also can enhance wonder.

Speaker 11 So there's a lot of evidence around authenticity that says that authentic leaders are uh more respected. There's what's called this idea of cultural coherence.

Speaker 11 So if the organizational culture is one thing and then they say, oh, bring your authentic self to work, but it doesn't match, that gap is a real problem for people.

Speaker 11 But those who feel that they can be authentic at work, they have higher job satisfaction, they have higher engagement, motivation, performance, all of those things, that is proven.

Speaker 11 And, you know, even a study that showed that people who pitched for

Speaker 11 startup funding, if they were authentic, they performed better than even people who had improved decks. So it's a really people sense that authenticity.

Speaker 11 But sort of linking that to humility, humility, humility also has tremendous benefits to a working environment. Humble people, by their nature, have a secure, balanced sense of self.

Speaker 11 And so they appreciate and recognize the contributions of other people. And that's really one of those key elements.
There was this fascinating study,

Speaker 11 two series of studies actually, where they found that humble CEOs lead stronger management teams. And those management teams are more effective at collaboration.

Speaker 11 They're more effective at information sharing decision making and and following a shared vision and then in another study she found that ceo humility was associated with empowering those leadership behaviors so that empowerment then prompts greater integration between top and middle management so it really does then

Speaker 11 directly contribute again to increased engagement, commitment, job performance. So humility really wraps around.

Speaker 11 What's fascinating is that people who experience wonder there was another piece of research that people who experience wonder report that they feel more humble but then their friends also reported them as more humble so this is a total change in self-concept that when we are when we experience wonder it changes our view of where we sit in the world so much that it is palpable by others.

Speaker 11 And I think that that is an incredible, like that's a fundamental shift that it's not just how we feel, but how other people perceive us.

Speaker 10 Yeah. I, um, I was talking to a few, uh, I was in a mastermind.

Speaker 10 I was talking to people and they were asking me about my leadership team and how I have a team of 22-ish people that work for Rogue Risk. And, um,

Speaker 10 and we were talking about our leadership teams and how we operate. And I'm, I'm like the,

Speaker 10 if there was an, whatever the opposite is of a, of a micromanager, that would be me. I, one, I.
don't have the brainpower to it. And two, I hire adults and I treat them like adults, I guess.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 and you know people were asking some questions and i said look like you know my my opinion is this is this is advanced leadership what i mean by that is not advanced like better what i mean by it's like really hard like it's it's easy to go i need you to produce 100 widgets and they need to be here by the end of the month and you're going to use this process and this tool and da da da that's to me way easier now I think it creates more problems.

Speaker 10 It limits your upside. Certainly your people hate that for the most part.

Speaker 10 You know, there's certain type of of people that may like that environment, but certainly not the people that are going to stretch your business or stretch you.

Speaker 10 Because when you give people Slack, allow them to solve problems, they sometimes create more micro problems, but they also, in my opinion, get you way more upside on the other end because they start to do like these things that you're talking about.

Speaker 10 They sit there and they daydream about what's possible beyond what I may have said. Hey, here's where I want to go.
And they think, okay, here we can get there. And here's how we'll do that.

Speaker 10 But man, geez, we tweak this and we, and we solve this problem and we bring this person in and we can go even further. It's something I would have never even thought of.

Speaker 10 But it's also very difficult because maybe some of those ideas are crazy. Maybe we don't have the budget for that idea.
Maybe that idea has been tried 10,000 times.

Speaker 10 That person just doesn't know and it doesn't work or whatever, you know, and it takes, I think that,

Speaker 10 you know, at least from the companies that I see, and I'm just super interested in your perspective on this and the companies that I follow and watch,

Speaker 10 you know, some of which I know, some of which I just don't know. I just watch from the outside like everyone else.
It feels like

Speaker 10 that Jack Welch, I'm going to chop the bottom 10%. I don't care who you are mentality, the companies that still hold that, and seemingly many have moved away,

Speaker 10 are not the companies that we're holding up on pedestals today as bastions of innovation and growth and interest. It just, that is not.
the method anymore.

Speaker 10 No one wants to work on a, you know, a single drive manufacturing line,

Speaker 10 you know, just popping their widget in all day.

Speaker 10 I think that we've evolved to a place where you want people to have these moments of wonder or they do have time to slow down a little bit.

Speaker 10 And I really love, and something I had never actually thought about

Speaker 10 is this concept of

Speaker 10 when we rush, we actually like fall back on our base heuristics, which may or may not be productive in any way, shape, or form.

Speaker 10 That concept to me is something i've never really it makes complete sense i don't know that i'd ever wrap my head around it but it's almost a little scary like you you almost you have no control over what someone's base instincts are or base heuristics and if you push them beyond

Speaker 10 i don't want to say their capabilities but beyond what should be expected of them in a normal day you're ultimately opening yourself up to maybe more problems. Does that seem accurate?

Speaker 11 Absolutely. And there's a psychological phenomenon known as action bias.
So it tends to happen in people who are leaders, who feel pressured,

Speaker 11 where there are a lot of externalities that they can't control. Therefore, they want to control everything that they can.

Speaker 11 And the problem is, is that we live in a society that rewards leaders who make decisive decisions, even if later it's found that those decisions were terrible decisions.

Speaker 11 We still say, oh, but they acted decisively. And this comes back to if we can slow down, we need to, because just because you act decisively doesn't necessarily mean it's the right decision.

Speaker 11 And if we're leaning on those old heuristics, those heuristics could include things like bias. It's terrible for inclusivity.

Speaker 11 They could include things like overworking your team. So basically, just giving this idea of, I don't know what to do.
So we're going to start a thousand new projects this week.

Speaker 11 You know, we've all worked for people like that. And of course, it just goes back to Dan Pink's drive, which was based again on some earlier research: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Speaker 11 When we have those things, then we perform better. So, this idea of axing the bottom 10%, the bottom 10% based on what?

Speaker 11 And this goes back to our idea of what is the employee DNA, what's the leadership DNA? If it's based on some, how many widgets did you make this week? Well, great.

Speaker 11 You know, what is how does that mean?

Speaker 11 How many people trained those people to make those widgets or supported them when they got tired, or any of the things that other true leaders do that maybe aren't quantified?

Speaker 11 And so, yes, I would say that that mentality, I will have people sometimes talk about productivity. And I think productivity is a red herring.
You can be a busy fool.

Speaker 11 You know, I see it as performance. And then, when you start talking about performance, what is performance?

Speaker 11 It's something that can be more holistic that includes these human qualities as opposed to just the bottom line.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I

Speaker 10 couldn't agree with you more.

Speaker 10 There's so many,

Speaker 10 you know, and

Speaker 10 so we were actually acquired back in April of 22, 2022 by a company called SIA. So

Speaker 10 we have a parent company and what came with that parent company, we were a startup, was their HR department. And inside their HR department is one of the best,

Speaker 10 I'll butcher it, human culture, whatever, all the thing words, the new words for that position, people I've ever worked with in my life. She's phenomenal.

Speaker 10 Most of the time, I find these people to be anchors. She is not.
She is understanding.

Speaker 10 She gets the business side of what we're doing and absolute pleasure to work with and just think the world of her.

Speaker 10 And one of the things that she has really helped me wrap my head around as a leader is

Speaker 10 not using the same exact words that you use, but that concept.

Speaker 10 Results. aren't always the same as performance and that we need to dig deeper.
We need to understand.

Speaker 10 And one of the things that we found was that, you know, it's easy to look at someone's numbers at the end of the month in a sales position, say, and be like, you didn't hit your numbers, you know, you stink.

Speaker 10 We need to get rid of you. Right.

Speaker 10 And, and I found myself because we were a startup, because we had 10,000 fires we were trying to put out, being rushed, seeing things like that, and finding my mind dropping back into, as you said, this kind of base.

Speaker 10 idea of like, you didn't hit your numbers, what's wrong with you? Like, you know, when I did this job, I did this, you know, whatever. And

Speaker 10 well, we slowed down, had some conversations, right?

Speaker 10 Well, I won't say that I slowed down, but I had some conversations. And what, what, and what she shared with me was like,

Speaker 10 do you have any idea why they're not hitting their numbers? Like, what is the reason?

Speaker 11 Maybe they're not hitting their numbers because they're helping other people hit their numbers. I'm working with a recruiting firm.

Speaker 11 And this is one of the things that they found is that several people who weren't making their numbers weren't making them because they were actually supporting other people in achieving that.

Speaker 11 And then when this person didn't get promoted, it happened to be a woman because there you go, you know, she was nurturing.

Speaker 11 And when this person didn't get promoted, it actually really upset those that she had helped because they said she deserves it. And who did they promote?

Speaker 11 They promoted somebody who was a really successful jerk, someone who made their numbers, but was like, you're going to be in my wake, buddy, because I'm going to get there before you do.

Speaker 11 Meanwhile, she's helping these people. She doesn't make her numbers and she gets penalized for it.

Speaker 11 And this is one of the main drivers for changing the DNA, that leadership DNA, because they said, wait a minute, we've got to have incentivization beyond just the bottom line.

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Speaker 10 Yeah,

Speaker 10 I completely agree with you. I think, you know, one of the things that I struggle with is I think you also need type A driven jerks too.
You need both, right?

Speaker 10 Do they have to be jerks?

Speaker 11 Can they just be type A?

Speaker 10 I don't want them to be jerks, but oftentimes they tend to be, but jerks, but jerks only because they're type A and people.

Speaker 10 So one of the things that I found is one of the most productive individuals on my team,

Speaker 10 she is, can be very bristly, right? She's, you know, she's, but she does the work of three people. I love her to death.

Speaker 10 I've said multiple times: if this company blew up and I can only take one person, it would be her. That being said, she rubs people the wrong way sometimes.

Speaker 10 And she's worked on it and we're working on it. But there's also part of me that I'm like, geez, like, one, no one's perfect.
I'm certainly not. Two, everyone has different personalities.

Speaker 10 Three, I do think in general, our culture is slightly oversensitive to words.

Speaker 10 And four,

Speaker 10 she's getting better. So, like, what am I supposed to do?

Speaker 10 Supposed to penalize her for being incredibly productive, working, doing in eight hours, the job of three people that only one is doing because sometimes she's a little too straightforward and not everyone loves that.

Speaker 10 Like, I struggle with that, right? Like, so she, I have heard her referred to as a jerk or as, um,

Speaker 10 oh man, what's the word? They always uh, women are bossy, right? I've referred to her as these terms, and I'm like, uh,

Speaker 10 first of all, uh, between the two of you, you would go and she would stay. Second of all, she's absolutely dominating and working really hard.

Speaker 10 And if she's being direct and you're taking it as her coming at you,

Speaker 10 we need to have a conversation as a company around one, maybe softening our language a little bit for sure, but also let's not be quite so sensitive about everything that we read and immediately thinking that someone is attacking us when really they're just asking for you to do something they've asked you four times before.

Speaker 10 So like, I,

Speaker 10 so like, there's, that's like a whirl, that's a whole swirl of thoughts and ideas and whatever.

Speaker 10 And I sometimes struggle with that because it's like, look, like my natural disposition is, I am going to run through brick walls. If you don't want to follow me, get out of my way.

Speaker 10 Like this is like, this is how we get things done.

Speaker 10 But there is this whole other side of me.

Speaker 10 And maybe it was because I was raised by my mom or whatever, where I'm like, no, we need to like accept people and understand people and make them feel comforted.

Speaker 10 But if you're not willing to run, I'll do all those things. But if you're not also also willing to run through the brick wall, then I kind of don't care as much.

Speaker 10 And I don't know how to manage all those emotions, right? Like there's like all these thoughts and swirling things.

Speaker 10 And it's very, very difficult sometimes I've found because I feel like the jerks or the bossy people, you know, guys are jerks, women are bossy, which is, you know, whatever.

Speaker 10 You know, they get these labels and we always talk negatively about them.

Speaker 10 When at the same time, there's an undeniable truth to life that if we don't, a company can't exist if it doesn't make at least as much money as it spends.

Speaker 10 And oftentimes those people are highly productive.

Speaker 11 So how do you, how do you, this is like a company can't exist, but it can't grow with just people like that.

Speaker 11 I agree.

Speaker 10 The key is, you agree.

Speaker 11 It's not about disincentivizing her behavior. It's about incentivizing the ideal behavior.

Speaker 11 So it's not losing sight that there are other qualities that if she had would make her even better at what she she does and if other people have them but lack the quality she does which is being a you know a pit bull and going for it that doesn't mean that they don't have value so it's recognizing the diversity of value that people bring and that's your authentic self and allowing someone who is more of a backseat taker but who is really helping other people shine or doing some of the work of helping people manage their emotions, helping people manage their stress, whatever that might be, that that has value as well.

Speaker 11 So yes, if you had to take one person, maybe not her, it would be her. But if you had, if you wanted to build a company of 50 or 100 people, you can't have 50 or 100 of those people.

Speaker 10 I completely agree. And I think this is why I look at this topic as, you know, it's not sexy or whatever, but I think through it as like an advanced level of leadership.

Speaker 10 You can't, there is not the days of a one-size-fits-ructure, of a one-size-fits-all, of a one-size-fits-all in your company. It just, I don't know that that, one, it probably never existed.

Speaker 10 It certainly doesn't exist today. And it's, and it's not, one, not a company that I would want to work for because then it's not as much fun, right?

Speaker 10 Like if we were all just hard charging jerks who are running through walls, that wouldn't be as much fun because people wouldn't be compassionate or caring or understanding or, and all these different things.

Speaker 10 At the same time, you know, you kind of need this mix. And uh, you know, what I,

Speaker 10 I completely, I love your concept of, and I love this idea of being authentic.

Speaker 10 And, and, you know, we have, we have a, um, we have a saying inside our company, be whoever you want to be, but don't put your shit on anybody else, right? Like we, I don't care.

Speaker 10 I don't care if you paint yourself purple and like to do your Zoom videos upside down, but don't mandate that everyone else do those things, right? Like this is who we are. Like you get to be you.

Speaker 10 We're working on it on a shared mission, a shared set of goals. We serve a certain clientele.
We serve them in a way that I would like to believe is caring and understanding and compassionate.

Speaker 10 And we try to, we're essentially trying to help small business owners who are oftentimes kind of thrown out or treated very poorly in the insurance industry.

Speaker 10 We're trying to help them and give them enterprise level service down market. That's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 10 And sometimes these people are used to being treated poorly and we have to take some, you know, we have to eat a little garbage. And in exchange, if we can give them back compassion, we get that back.

Speaker 10 And it's just, to me,

Speaker 10 it's, it's, I love, to me, I love this concept of authenticity. And because I do see, you see these moments with some of our team members where someone will call.

Speaker 10 And like maybe the wonder in our business is someone will call and they'll be angry or upset at something because they're operating under an expectation.

Speaker 10 And if we can hold our composure, work through that,

Speaker 10 be stewards of their account, of their business, of our business.

Speaker 10 Oftentimes by the end of that call, they've turned around and they may even be apologizing for the way they initially picked up the phone and called. And then you'll see them come on Zoom meetings.

Speaker 10 They'll have this big smile on their face and they'll want to tell that story. And it's like, bam, that's it right there.
That's what we're trying to do.

Speaker 10 And, you know, it's, but it's, it's not easy. Like, this is not easy stuff.

Speaker 11 No, it's not.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 I have two, I have two, two other specific questions that I, that I wanted to get to.

Speaker 10 But you have like, just in

Speaker 10 this.

Speaker 10 associated with the book and the woman who reached out to me, she wrote this three words, stop chasing happiness. And that's the first three words that caught my eye out of the entire thing because

Speaker 10 I'm very interested in where you go with that. Obviously, there's a little more subtext, but I'm very interested because I have my own feelings around that for sure.

Speaker 10 And I'm very interested in what yours are as it relates to wonder and just in general in the context of this conversation.

Speaker 11 Sure. So the reason I say that is because For starters, we are, at least in America, obsessed with happiness.
It seems to be the end goal of everything. I mean, it's in our constitution, right?

Speaker 11 The pursuit of happiness. But the problem is, as a, for starters, as a nation, we are very unhappy.
You know, there are one in four people are on antidepressants.

Speaker 11 Something like 40 million people in the U.S. have anxiety disorder.
So we are not a particularly happy nation. And one of the reasons why is that people are not good at knowing what makes them happy.

Speaker 11 They miswant things that they think will make them happy. And this is a psychological term known as affective forecasting.
So we forecast something we think will make us happy.

Speaker 11 We get it and it doesn't. One of the reasons is our happiness baseline is pretty much set by the time we're 25, half by our personality, half by what we experience by the time we're 25.

Speaker 11 So we can go and get the new shoes or the nice bottle of whiskey or whatever it is. And right after it, we'll pretty much return back to our baseline.
It's called the hedonic treadmill.

Speaker 11 And even if we look at sort of the more eudaimonic happiness, which is more well-being, still the benefits of eudaimonic happiness are not as great as the benefits of a mixed emotion like wonder.

Speaker 11 Now, why is that? Because we have emotions that sit at, usually most emotions sit at one pole or the other. So, happiness is what's known as positively valenced.

Speaker 11 And then we have like fear, which would be negatively valenced. Some emotions have both valences together at the same time.
Wonder is one of those. Awe is another.

Speaker 11 Curiosity, we can be curious about things that aren't positive. Gratitude, nostalgia,

Speaker 11 what's known as existential longing or bittersweet. Susan Kane just wrote a book about that recently.
So these are all emotions that are known as mixed emotions.

Speaker 11 They're complex emotions rather than simple emotions. Happiness is a simple emotion.

Speaker 11 And when we hold complex emotions in our mind at the same time, it gives us a great deal of resiliency along with that feeling of it can lead to happiness, but what it does is it gives us the opportunity to feel more and it deepens our emotional vocabulary, our emotional portfolio.

Speaker 11 And so happiness, you can't be happy looking at a war in Ukraine. I mean, you'd be weird if you were, but you can be in wonder and you can be in wonder.

Speaker 11 And in that, that starts to give you those benefits of empathy, of humility, of authenticity, of all of those pro-social emotions. It makes you more tolerant.

Speaker 11 It makes you want to be a better community member. So these are things that I see as more beneficial.
And it's much easier to find wonder than it is to find happiness.

Speaker 11 We're terrible at knowing what makes us happy. So I think we should just put happiness to the side and focus more on trying to find wonder.

Speaker 11 And the outcome may be happiness, but even if we don't get that, we still get so much benefit from it.

Speaker 10 I like that a lot. I

Speaker 10 agree with you. And I actually talk to my kids a lot about this who are nine and seven.

Speaker 10 I probably talk to them about too many heady adult topics, but no, there's never too many heady and adult topics.

Speaker 11 I grew up in a home like that, and I can tell you it made the difference in me.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I

Speaker 10 enjoy sharing with them the things that are, because I love this stuff. This is like crack cocaine to me.

Speaker 10 Not that I haven't actually done crack, but if I had done that, seemingly, this is what I feel like it would be like from a mental standpoint.

Speaker 10 But I don't know if you follow Jordan Peterson at all, but he, you know, kind of, I like, I actually think that where you've taken this is actually an extension of where he's taken it.

Speaker 10 But, you know, he, he talks a lot about don't focus on happiness, focus on purpose. Find purpose, find, find meaning.

Speaker 10 Cause, you know, no little boy or girl's dream is to, is to work in the insurance industry. No one at seven is in second grade going, you know, you know, Miss Johnson, I want to be an insurance agent.

Speaker 10 Like, that's that's not what anyone says. However, here I am, 42 years old, 17 years in this industry, and I love it to death.
I love the people, I love everything about it.

Speaker 10 And regardless of where I go, I will be in this space. I just, I found my meaning and purpose.
And, and particularly, I like helping insurance agents and their own success.

Speaker 10 I don't really value my own success very much, but

Speaker 10 to me,

Speaker 10 it's this idea of finding purpose and forgetting about things like passion, whatever, you find purpose and happiness is a derivative.

Speaker 10 But to me, it actually feels like maybe purpose is step one and wonder

Speaker 10 is the elevation of purpose. And then out of that comes happiness.

Speaker 10 It actually feels like you've, to me, just thinking through his, you know, what I've learned from him and what I'm hearing from you is that maybe the first step in this journey is to find some sort of purpose.

Speaker 10 And then out of that purpose is going to come wonder as you, as you have curiosity and empathy for the people or the situation or whatever, so that you're elevated from that.

Speaker 10 And then happiness is just this derivative that falls out of wonder. And that to me, that to me feels like,

Speaker 10 well, I'm going to have to do some, I'm going to have to do some thinking on that. I kind of, I kind of like that quite a bit.

Speaker 11 There is a, there's a gentleman named Shigahiro

Speaker 11 Oishi, and he did a piece of research and he looked at obituaries through the U.S. for a large period of time and analyzed these.

Speaker 11 And what he found is that while people said what they wanted was something that they thought would make them happy, what they regretted not being able to do on their deathbed or put in their obituary were the things that were psychologically rich.

Speaker 11 And this is the term he uses. And these are things that are purposeful that contribute to who we are as humans.
So like, I never got to go to a college. I regret that.

Speaker 11 Or I didn't didn't spend enough time with my children. I regret that.
And so looking at the things that we would miss if we didn't do them.

Speaker 11 So psychological richness to me is the underpinning of what then creates a wonder mindset. And that's one of the things I always try to say.
Again, wonder is not a moment. It's a mindset.

Speaker 11 It's something we can create.

Speaker 11 And so if we look at things that make us psychologically rich and give a psychologically rich life, and that is purpose-driven, but that is also contributing to others, that is filling ourselves epistemically so you know knowledge for knowledge sake um really exploring in a in a deep curious way not just surface curiosity like google searching to settle a bet but deep curiosity about big ideas then we have the opportunity that creates that level of curiosity that level of absorption that level of openness that that allows us to be on a runway to take flight to wonder.

Speaker 10 Where did this come from for you? Like, how did you get to this topic what where

Speaker 10 i mean nothing is maybe a spark it's a it's a it's a series of events that leads to this but how did you get to this to this idea i set about to write a book about change management which in retrospect would have been really freaking boring and i'm glad i didn't um i am glad that we're not talking about change management

Speaker 11 so what i did was i then i started looking at my history and my history has been multivariate you know i was a homicide investigator of the department of justice tried to get people off death row i worked with kids with disabilities and in the corporate sphere.

Speaker 11 And what I realized through my life is that I have been trying to figure out how to help people manage existential change.

Speaker 11 And more than that, I knew that there were things I could bring to the table to help, but there are just some people who are better at it.

Speaker 11 And so I was trying to understand why are some people more buoyant? And I don't think I had the language for it at the time.

Speaker 11 But what I realized once I started researching change management, I found that people who held their world with a sense of wonder were more able to handle what the world threw at them.

Speaker 11 And that was going all the way back to people on death row in solitary confinement to people, you know, layoffs of a thousand people when they're losing a job, which is an existential crisis to the person

Speaker 11 that it's happening. I mean, you're dealing with existential crises all day, right? Someone's lost their home.
Someone's lost their life.

Speaker 11 They need to be, you know, evacuated from a foreign country back in. I mean, this is one of the things that I did.

Speaker 11 We used to work with the team that got those phone calls specifically in an insurance company. My wife is in the Amazon and she just lost her leg and she needs to get back to wherever.

Speaker 11 I mean, that's heavy stuff. And so how is it that these people can be more resilient? And what I found from my experience and then from the research is that wonder is one of the main keys.

Speaker 11 People who stay open, who stay curious, curious about their situation, even if it's terrible, and then allow themselves to think deeply about it, they have greater resiliency.

Speaker 11 And that is why I really felt compelled to write the book.

Speaker 11 When I saw the data about the quantum of benefits of this emotion and realized that no one was writing about it, I just thought, well, I need to be the person to do it.

Speaker 10 Do you think there's anything to the

Speaker 10 idea? You know, I...

Speaker 10 This probably happens to all of us, or at least the people who like to pretend like there's a lot of people who pretend like they don't.

Speaker 10 But, you know, I find myself on Instagram Reels or TikTok, and I'm watching these videos. And I love,

Speaker 10 you know, I, the one day I was sitting there and, you know, five minutes or whatever, and you're scrolling through and you think it's a waste of time, but I'm watching Ed Milet and this woman, Cody Sanchez, who I really love, and telling these stories.

Speaker 10 And I'm flipping through, and I'm,

Speaker 10 and I close my phone and I actually don't feel shitty. I feel,

Speaker 10 I feel like, uh,

Speaker 10 inspired. I feel like I want to go do something.
And

Speaker 10 I guess the question that came to my mind around this particular topic is, you know, that those people get scrolling like that gets a lot of

Speaker 10 there's a lot of negativity associated to it. And I know that those studies are out there and I'm not trying to discount that.
But my point is like,

Speaker 10 do you think that you can be?

Speaker 10 Do you think if people are open to wonder, though, they seek out those kind of things? And even those little moments, if slightly superficial and short, can be valuable?

Speaker 11 Or do you think that's still a complete waste of time no so what i would say is that the internet is an incredible wonder tool it's how we use it so the problem is is you have curated your feed in such a way that there is positivity there the problem is is the guys who run these systems know that negativity gets more clicks and so they literally over egg that in the algorithm the algorithm benefits negativity because it drives more activity so if you've ever doom scrolled into the middle middle of the night, this is this dopamine cycle that's happening where we click on it and then we get a jolt of dopamine and then it is like a drug, but it can be used for positive as well.

Speaker 11 If we curate our feeds in such a way that what we're seeing is positive, that's great.

Speaker 11 Now we don't want to get into toxic positivity like, oh, I feel guilty because I'm not as positive as this person is, recognizing that that is their experience and your achievement porn is what I is what my friends call it.

Speaker 11 Yeah, exactly. That's not helpful at all.

Speaker 11 But what we do know is that wonder is not this big, fleeting thing.

Speaker 11 The original people who started researching this thought, and even going back to Maslow, when he described peak experience, that is basically a wonder experience.

Speaker 11 And when he first started, he believed the peak experiences were rare and fleeting. That was the language he used.

Speaker 11 But over towards the end of his life, he realized, no, we can find them in little moments.

Speaker 11 So, what's fascinating about the research is they show that, yes, these big moments of awe, maybe seeing your kid walk for the first time or going to the Grand Canyon, that has an impact.

Speaker 11 But almost equal to that is wonder in the quotidian, just day-to-day little bits of wonder. And what you were experiencing is these people were sharing their wonder with you.

Speaker 11 So wonder shared is wonder multiplied. And if we experience wonder and then tell a story about it or write about it in narrative journaling, it amplifies our sense of wonder.

Speaker 11 And one of my goals with writing this was I want people to start using the language of wonder, not shy away from it, so that we start sharing this language as something that's pivotal to who we are.

Speaker 11 It's critical to who we are as humans. It's not just a hobby.

Speaker 11 It has gravitas. It's how our soul.

Speaker 11 thrives and that if we share that with other people, then it helps it grow within us. And I think that that is one of the benefits.

Speaker 11 And that's where, you know, the internet can be incredible if we see those sorts of things. But it takes some discipline and some serious curation to not fall down the rabbit hole of the negativity.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 10 So one of the things I share with my team a lot.

Speaker 10 I hope you're not offended by curse words. This isn't a bad one, but I don't.
I don't care.

Speaker 10 Okay, good.

Speaker 10 Okay, good. Yeah.
So, all right. I'm from the East Coast and

Speaker 10 Irish and country and whatever you want to moniker you want to put on it. I just love them.
So who cares?

Speaker 10 So I

Speaker 10 chatt with my team all the time. I'm like, give a shit.

Speaker 10 It's cool to care. Like,

Speaker 10 one of my most successful pieces of content I've ever created was about five years ago.

Speaker 10 I was working actually, this, the company I currently work for is my startup, but this was a different startup that I was working for as a CMO. And I did this piece of content as a little video.

Speaker 10 And the simple message was, it's cool to care. I'm sick of this nihilistic

Speaker 10 bullshit mentality of nothing matters and everything's negative. And I'm like, no, I refuse to believe that.
Now, I'm also a Christian.

Speaker 10 So I believe in God and a higher power, and maybe some of that comes out of that, whatever.

Speaker 10 But even if you're not,

Speaker 10 it's cool to care. Like, it's cool to care about things to use.

Speaker 10 You know, you had talked about like your soul thriving, these words, these ideas, living in curiosity, living, you know, the concept of just digging down deep into a rabbit hole.

Speaker 10 And all of a sudden, this information lives in your brain and you enjoy it. And you, you find other wacky, crazy people who are interested in similar topics and you learn even more.

Speaker 10 And I'm like, this is or like explore things or it doesn't have to be these.

Speaker 10 I think sometimes people feel like the idea of wonder has to be some awe-inspiring view off one of the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains,

Speaker 10 which is gorgeous.

Speaker 11 Which it can be, but it doesn't have to be.

Speaker 10 It doesn't have to be, you know, like, I,

Speaker 10 you know, judge me or not, I, I, I love deadlifting. I love this.
And I picked it up after COVID, right? I, I, I, COVID happened

Speaker 10 and I was locked in my, you know, like everyone else, locked in the house. And, uh, and I, I literally started this company seven days before the COVID lockdown in New York State.

Speaker 10 So I'm having a lot of emotional reactions. Let's just put it that way.
And, um, you know, I may have kept the whiskey industry

Speaker 10 just like all the rest of them going for a while. And I hated myself for making, for kind of wallowing for a while.
So I said, you know what? I'm going to pick up something I've never done before.

Speaker 10 Never done. I'd never done this exercise before.
I played sports my entire life. I was always kind of scared of the exercise.
I didn't know how to do it. So I started watching YouTube videos.

Speaker 10 I started following people, you know, men and women on Instagram who are really good at this particular exercise.

Speaker 10 And in August of 2020, I picked up this exercise and I could do 185 pounds for a set of four. That was the most I could do.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 today,

Speaker 10 what is that? A little two and a half years later, I deadlifted 405 pounds. Wow, that's great.
And, and, and I, and I post videos online and people are like, why are you doing it?

Speaker 10 I'm like, those videos are not for you people. Like, I, I post them, but I look back at it and it's a, and it's a document of the journey.

Speaker 10 And, and it, what it does is it, it's, I don't know if it's dope mean or what it is, but I look at it and I'm like, wow, like, look, look at how I did that there.

Speaker 10 And, and today I can look at that and go, man, I was, my back was a little rounded there, or I, I did this. And, and I see this.

Speaker 10 I have this chronicle journey because you, and I'm coming back to this idea that you have of narrative journaling.

Speaker 10 It is almost like a journey, a journal of of this experience that I had building this exercise that I had never done before. And I just, I don't know why I love it.

Speaker 10 I have no idea why I love it, but I do.

Speaker 10 And, and, uh, and to me, it's like, I feel,

Speaker 10 I just, it brings me so much

Speaker 10 happiness. It does.
I feel, I feel inspired. I feel curious on how to get better.
I love watching.

Speaker 10 There are women that, that, that are half my size who make what I look like, look like they're they're lifting a bag of groceries, you know, and I'm like, that's amazing.

Speaker 10 And, and they're lever and all this kind of stuff. And to me, it's like, I feel like

Speaker 10 I hate the nihilism and the, and the, and the secularism of 2023, because I feel like it's, it's a direct attack on everything that you've been talking about.

Speaker 10 And I like to share as much as possible a mess, this message of it doesn't, you don't have to believe in God. That's not what I'm talking about, you know, but, but

Speaker 10 I do, but you don't have to.

Speaker 10 It's, it's finding things that are, that, that bring these emotions to you that you can connect with people because, because the human connection that comes out of this particular emotion, or at least my understanding of it, I obviously have zero, I have none of the knowledge or depth that you do.

Speaker 10 It's incredible. I've been so impressed and happy and amazed talking to you.
It's been incredible. But

Speaker 10 the human connection that comes out of these wonder moments, you never break it. I feel like it sticks for you forever.
Your souls are like slightly intertwined in these moments.

Speaker 10 And that to me is why we're here.

Speaker 11 Well, and what I like about wonder is that it can exist in a secular form and you can follow that just as in a secular way and it will still enrich it, or it can knit itself into a religious practice and it knits itself so seamlessly into a religious practice.

Speaker 11 Prayer is another wonder bringer. I mean, prayer is basically gratitude with narration combined.
You know, this is a really powerful mechanism.

Speaker 11 And so that's one of the things that I really love about this. And I wrote a chapter about religion and I struggled with that because it's so personal.

Speaker 11 And you don't, it's recognizing that all religions share a similar structure and there are similar goals that exist within that.

Speaker 11 And that wonder can be found in all of these or outside of the religious practice, but still in a way that is secular, that respects

Speaker 11 the wonder of life and of each other. And I think that that is the real potential.
And absolutely, you know, when we share wonder in groups, it's so powerful.

Speaker 11 This is part of why we have social movements. I mean, charismatic leaders are, that is a wonder bringer, charisma.
And of course, it can be used for negative.

Speaker 11 We know that there are some charismatic leaders that don't have, and what happens with charisma is it creates a moment of malleability, of brain plasticity. What gets planted there can be good or bad.

Speaker 11 And so this is how we end up with cults.

Speaker 11 But if we look at the the positive of charisma this is how we end up with with social movements how we end up with with um incredible communities and that can be religious communities or otherwise and so it's really an opportunity to to to bond with people in a more meaningful way and i and i think that Narrative journaling is a great way to tap into that as well, because we love stories.

Speaker 11 And who loves to, we love a story more than anything, the story of ourselves.

Speaker 11 I mean, you think of your children, how many times do they say, tell me when mommy and daddy met, you know, because that's the story, that's their origin story.

Speaker 11 So if we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves, then that can have a really positive impact as well.

Speaker 10 To end this on the most trite comment of the day, with great response or great power comes great responsibility.

Speaker 10 Mine, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you.

Speaker 10 Just a

Speaker 10 wonderful conversation. Again, I'm going to go there because we're ending this on cliches.

Speaker 10 Where can people learn more about you, about Hatch? Obviously, we'll have links to everything, to the book.

Speaker 10 This, you know, I hope everyone after hearing this conversation wants to dig deeper into this topic, integrate it into their business. Obviously, guys, I had Monica on for a reason.

Speaker 10 This is something I think is uniquely important to our space and

Speaker 10 the mind.

Speaker 10 uh the the the the monotony and the uh doggedness of our industry i feel like this is something that can really separate us and uh create cultures inside our agencies and inside our insurance businesses that will help us grow.

Speaker 10 So where can people find out more about you and everything that you do?

Speaker 11 So they can find me at monica-parker.com.

Speaker 11 You can also find more about my company at hatchanalytics.com. But if you go to Monica-Parker, all sorts of information there.

Speaker 11 And I also have a newsletter that comes out every Wonder Wednesday that shares some of the things I'm thinking about. So those are just some of the ways.
And yeah, I'd love to help any.

Speaker 11 I love insurance. I'd love to help anybody bring wonder into their work.

Speaker 10 Awesome. Thank you so much.

Speaker 11 Thank you, Ryan. It was great.

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