RHS 182 - Monica Parker on Turning Wonder into a Superpower

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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. I love having thinkers like Monica on the show because they just stretch your brain.
They stretch the way you think about things. And this episode is absolutely no different.
You're going to love this conversation with Monica. 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.
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.
It could be this episode. It could be the show in whole.
We're always trying to grow our listenership. We're always trying to reach new people, 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. So if you enjoy this show, we'd love for you to share it.
Lastly, a quick shout out to the sponsor of this show, Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y.com. That's T-I-V-L-Y.com.
Tivly has been a foundational tool for us in building consistent traffic, consistent leads for our commercial business. Uh, they're warm, uh, live phone call transfers.
So your team is picking up the phone and there is a business owner on the other end who has raised their hand and has already expressed what their need is. And now you're talking to them.
I mean, that's 90% of the game is getting business owners on the phone and Tivoli does that for you. That's what we love.
It's consistent. The ROI is always there for us and we just couldn't be happier and we just continue to grow our partnership with Tivoli.
And frankly, now that I'm saying all this to you, I kind of wish they weren't a sponsor because I don't really want you getting involved with our secret tricks. So actually, maybe a better thing to say is don't go to TIVLY.com.
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Okay. With all that said, let's get on to this absolute tremendous conversation with Monica Parker.
Thankfully, it was a long time ago, but it's like burned into my brain. I used to have a podcast that was specifically for marketing.
And this was a long time ago. Podcasts were relatively new.
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.
And like, I had to do 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.
Yeah. When my book was, when my book beat Michelle Obama's on, on the LA times bestseller, I took a picture of that.
I was like, I don't know if it's going to happen again. So I'm going to kind of put this in Austin, 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 fairly well-known author, best-selling author, and took a little work to get him on.
And we had this amazing conversation. Didn't record.
Didn't record. Yeah.
I didn't know what to do. Like, you know, 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. 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 that we all, not that we have time to give you another one yeah I was like oh no like you gotta be kidding me and I like almost started crying I was like this this is terrible like I don't I don't know what to do and ah man I can't remember who it was they ultimately did reschedule it oh really that's lovely yes they were super good about man it is gonna kill me I can't remember It was so long ago.
I can't remember who it was. They ultimately did reschedule it.
Oh, really? That's lovely. 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. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. I guess, you know, whatever, but they did reschedule with me.
It was like six months later, but that's fine. And then, um, you know, I just was like, thank you so much.
Thank you. You know, I don't't know it and here's the hard part though the

second conversation wasn't as good I know because 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 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 um I actually said because so what I do is I do the conversation and then I do a little intro after I almost will do that and in the intro I said I explained what happened and I said look like this is a tremendous conversation and I said you know the first conversation you know I wish you could, I wish you could hear both. I wish you could hear both.
Cause 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.
And I'm like, look, I'm not going to share anything. I just, I just want to make sure that we actually get this, but, but I want to, I want to, let's, let's, let's get right into this topic of wonder.
I, you know, when, when whoever it was on your team, you know, reached out and I started looking at topic, I was like, this is, this is awesome. Like, this is really, really interesting stuff.
And, you know, I guess my first question for you is really like, where, you know, when I, when I was reading through your materials and, and, and looking at, you know, looking at all the stuff, I was like, 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, I don't want to, I don't want to miss misuse this word, but strategically or, or with intention probably feels foreign to a lot of people who are listening. So maybe just start to get into a little bit where like, I don't know, we'll start there and we'll see where the hell we go.
Okay. Is there a question there? Yeah.
Yeah. I guess how do we take wonder from this romanticized concept to a concept that we can actually use with intention in our life? Sure.
So wonder, I explain sometimes that wonder it is about, there is a magical quality to it and we've all experienced it. So it is a universal emotion, 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. 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.
You give yourself a single sentence prime and say, I'm going to go on this walk and find wonder during it. 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. 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. 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.
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.
So things like meditation, narrative journaling, gratitude practice, all of those are mechanisms for creating a wonder mindset. 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. Yeah.
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? Like most of the time we're pushing paper, we're looking at numbers, we're dealing with 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 in different ways. You know, I think in general, we have a, uh, uh, most people look at our industry as an, as a negative.
However, um, 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, so I wanted to expose them particularly to this concept because because I think too often, the professionals who

sit in this space, I think they get bogged down by that negativity by the, the, the mundaneness,

the numbers, the, the regulation, these things that feel like they drain. And again, I'm,

this is an exploratory mission with you for me. So I'm learning.
But like, to me, when I think

about a concept of wonder, I think, are there ways and are there ways that a professional in a space that does kind of live in that world 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 this foundational back office service in most instances.
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 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 there are different personalities that exist within insurance. 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.
But what I find interesting is that in any corporate environment, there is an opportunity for wonder at work. 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 benefit from and that are capacity building for us. And those are things like empathy, patience, humility, 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. 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.
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? And are those, 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.
During COVID, I had people put on their, their screen saver in the back, a picture from childhood, and it was just like an icebreaker to, to be nostalgic. And that is helpful.
That helps you bring closer to wonder because it's a mixed emotion. But the challenge is that individuals can only go so far if the system that they exist within doesn't incentivize those behaviors, right? 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.
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. And that seems to be the most successful.
But from an individual point of view, it's really about slowing down. Daniel Kahneman said in Thinking Fast and Slow that if there's an opportunity to slow down, you should.
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.
We can engage in daydreaming, which I 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 constructive daydreaming. So that's the future daydreaming, imagining future scenarios is very positive for our brain.
And then also 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. So I know that insurance, there is a lot of drive towards having that single right answer and finding that there is an answer.
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 variety is where we find wonder. 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 it can be uncomfortable for some people in fact, but that is, that's a very powerful way to get closer to wonder.
All right. There's lots of unpacking there and that's amazing.
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 I just don't like it. I don't have a particular reason for not like it.
But I do like- Soft is always a pejorative except in toilet paper adverts. Soft is never a good thing, right? Yeah.
It's kind of Charmin or bust for me. So, okay.
So is's 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, but the idea of humility, empathy, compassion, understanding, connection to me are all or are often derivatives of humility. 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 challenges or we're open to other ideas.
We'll hold 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 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.
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, uh, and ego for a long time has been, uh, almost held as a, as a stand certainly as a standard operating procedure, but also rewarded to a certain extent.
And I think what the, 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, both from gender, from race, from ideology, from religion, all 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 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.
But 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. And the way that they do it is with vigor and passion and brand.
And 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 maybe there's some ego to it, but it's more of this, like, you can tell there's like passion and interest oozing out of them where their counterparts.
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 PM.
And, you know, I had my white shirt and my, and my black suit. And, and like, so to me, it's very interesting.
It feels like, and maybe this is just the, the jet that the generationally or where we are as a society today or whatever, but it does feel like people are starting to capture this idea. Do you think it's a societal shift that is happening in general and this generation is bringing it in? Or do you think, you know, I don't, I don't know that I have an answer.
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 that wasn't there in their predecessors. 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.
And authenticity is another one of those elements that is directly is enhanced by wonder and also can enhance wonder. So there's a lot of evidence around authenticity that says that authentic leaders are more respected.
There's what's called this idea of cultural coherence. 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.
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. And, you know, even a study that showed that people who pitched for startup funding, if they were authentic, they performed better than even people who had improved decks, you know, so it's a really people sense that authenticity, but sort of linking that to humility.
Humility also has tremendous benefits to a working environment. Humble people by their nature have a secure, balanced sense of self.
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, two series of studies actually, where they found that humble CEOs lead stronger management teams, and those management teams are more effective at collaboration, they're more effective at information sharing, decision making, 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 directly contribute again to increased engagement, commitment, job performance.
So humility really wraps around. 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. 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.
Yeah. I, um, I was talking to a few, uh, I was in a mastermind.
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, and we were talking about our leadership teams and how we operate.
And I'm, I'm like the, if there's 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. Um, 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, but it's, it's easy to go.
I need you to produce a hundred 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 that's to me way easier.
Now, I think it creates more problems. It limits your upside.
Certainly your people hate that for the most part. You know, there's certain type of people that may like that environment, but certainly not the people that are going to stretch your business or stretch you 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.
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. But man, geez, we tweet 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, 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. That person just doesn't know and it doesn't work or whatever, you know, and it takes, I think that, um, 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, 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 that Jack Welch, I'm going to chop the bottom 10 percent.
I don't care who you are mentality. The companies that still hold that and seemingly many have moved away 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. No one wants to work on a, you know, a single drive manufacturing line, you know, just popping their widget in all day.
I think that we've evolved to a place where you want people to have these moments of, you know, wonder or they do have time to slow down a little bit. And I really love and something I had never actually thought about is this concept of 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.
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.
You have no control over what someone's base instincts are or base heuristics.

And if you push them beyond, 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? Absolutely.
And there's a psychological phenomenon known as action bias. So it tends to happen in people who are leaders, who feel pressured, where there are a lot of externalities that they can't control.

Therefore, they want to control everything that they can. 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.
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.
And if we're leaning on those old heuristics, those heuristics could include things like bias. It's terrible for inclusivity.
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.
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.
When we have those things, then we perform better. So this idea of axing the bottom 10%, the bottom 10% based on what? 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.
How does that mean? How many people train those people to make those widgets or supported them when they got tired or any of the things that, that other lead true leaders do that maybe aren't quantified. And so, yes, I would say that that mentality, I, I will have people sometimes talk about productivity and I think productivity is a red herring.
You can be a busy fool. You know, I see it as performance.
And then when you start talking about performance, what is performance? It's something that can be more holistic that includes these human qualities as opposed to just the bottom line. Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
There's so many, you know, and so we were actually acquired back in April of 2022 by a company called SIA. So 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, I'll butcher, human culture, whatever, all the thing, words, new words for that position.
People I've ever worked with in my life. She's phenomenal.
Most of the time I find these people to be anchors. She is not.
She is understanding. She gets the business side of what we're doing and absolute pleasure to work with and just think the world of her.
And one of the things that she has really helped me wrap my head around as a leader is not using the same exact words that you use, but that concept. Results aren't always the same as performance and that we need to dig deeper.
We need to understand. 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. We need to get rid of you.
Right. 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 idea of like, you need your numbers.
What's wrong with you? Like, you know, when I did this job, I did this, you know, whatever. And, um, well, we slowed down, had some conversations, right? 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, do you have any idea why they're not hitting their numbers? Like what is the reason? Maybe they're not hitting their numbers because they're helping other people hit their numbers.
I'm working with a recruiting firm. 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.
And then when this person didn't get promoted, it happened to be a woman because there you go. You know, there she was nurturing.
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? 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.
Meanwhile, she's helping these people. She doesn't make her numbers and she gets penalized for it.
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. What's up guys.
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All right. I'm out of here.
Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
Yeah. 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? Do they have to be jerks? Can they just be type A? I don't want them to be jerks, but oftentimes they tend to be.
But jerks, because they're type A and people. So one of the things that I found is one of the most productive individuals on my team.
Uh, 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.
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.
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.
Three, I do think in general, our culture is slightly oversensitive to words. and four, she's getting better.
So like, what am I supposed to do?

I'm supposed to penalize her

for being incredibly productive,

working, doing an 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. Like I struggle with that.
Right. Like, so she, I have heard her referred to as a jerk or as, um, uh, man, what's the word they always, uh, women are bossy, right? I've referred to her as these terms.
And I'm like, first of all, between the two of you, you would go and she would stay. Second of all, she's absolutely dominating and working really hard.
And if she's being direct and you're taking it as her coming at you, 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.
So like I, so there's, that's like a world, that's a whole swirl of thoughts and ideas and whatever.

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.

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

But there is this whole other side of me.

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. But if you're not willing to run, I'll do all those things.
But if you're not also willing to run through the brick wall, then I kind of don't care as much. And I don't know how to manage all those emotions, right? Like there's like all these thoughts and swirling things.
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, you know, they get these labels and we always talk negatively about them. When at the same time, there's an undeniable truth to life that if we don't, a company can't exist, it doesn't make at least as much money as it spends.
And oftentimes those people are highly productive. 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.
I agree. The key is you need to, it's not about disincentivizing her behavior.

It's about incentivizing the ideal behavior.

So it's not losing sight that there are other qualities that if she had would make her even better at what 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 more 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. 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. 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, it's like a like an advanced level of leadership.
You can't, there is not the days of a one size fit all comp structure of a one size fit all performance review of a one size fit all persona in your company. It just, I don't know that that one, it probably never existed.
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? 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.
At the same time, you know, you kind of need this mix. And, you know, what I, I completely, I love your concept of, and I love this idea of being authentic.
And, and, you know, we have, we have a, 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. I don't care if you paint yourself purple and love to do your videos upside down, but don't mandate that everyone else do those things.
Right. Like we, this is who we are.
Like you get to be you. 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.
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. We're trying to help them and give them enterprise level service down market.
That's what we're trying to do. um 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. And it's just, to me, it's, it's, I love, to me, I love this concept of, of authenticity.
And because I do see, you see these moments with some of our team members where someone will call 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. And if we can hold our composure, work through that, be stewards of their account, of their business, of our business, 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, you'll see them come on zoom meetings, 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. Um, and you know, it's, but it's, it's not easy.
Like this is not easy. No, it's not.
So, um, I have two, I have two, two other specific questions that I, that I wanted to get to. Um, uh, but you have like, just didn't, you know, this 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 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.

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

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? 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, 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. 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.
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 experienced by the time we're 25.
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. 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.
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.
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. All is another curiosity.
We can be curious about things that are positive. Gratitude, nostalgia, what's known as existential longing or bittersweet.
Susan Cain just wrote a book about that recently. So these are all emotions that are known as mixed emotions.
They're complex emotions rather than simple emotions. Happiness is a simple emotion.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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 and the outcome may be happiness, but even if we don't get that, we still get so much benefit from it.
I like that a lot. I, I, I agree with you.
And I actually talked to my kids a lot about this who are nine and seven. I probably talked to them about too many heady adult topics,, there's never too many heady and adult topics.

I grew up in a home like that and I can tell you it made the difference in me. Yeah.
I, I, I enjoy sharing with them the things that are, cause I love this stuff. This is like crack cocaine to me.
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. But I don't know if you follow Jordan Peterson at all, but he, you know, kind of, I like, I actually think that, that where you've taken this is actually an extension of where he's taken it.
But, you know, he, he talks a lot about don't focus on happiness, focus on purpose, find purpose, find, find meaning. 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, Miss Johnson, I want to be an insurance agent. Like, 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. And regardless of where I go, I will be in this space.
I just my meaning and purpose. And particularly, I like helping insurance agents in their own success.
I don't really value my own success very much. But to me, it's this idea of finding purpose and forgetting about things like passion, whatever.
You find purpose and happiness as a. But, but to me, it actually feels like you maybe purpose is step one and wonder is, is, is that, is the, is the elevation of purpose.
And then out of that comes happiness. It actually feels like you've, to me, just, 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.
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.
And then happiness is just this derivative that falls out of wonder. And that to me, that to me feels like, 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. There's a, there's a gentleman named Shigahiro Oishi, and he did a piece of research and he looked at obituaries through the U.S.
for a large period of time and, and analyzed these. 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.
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 college. I regret that.
Or I 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. 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. It's something we can create.
And so if we look at things that make us psychologically rich and give us 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, really exploring 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 allows us to be on a runway to take flight to wonder.
Where did this come from for you? Like, how did you get to this topic? What we're, 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 am glad that we're not talking about change management. 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.
And what I realized through my life is that I have been trying to figure out how to help people manage existential change. 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.
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, 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. And that was going all the way back to people on death row and 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 that's that it's happening.
I mean, you're dealing with existential crises all day, right? They, someone's lost their home. Someone's lost their life.
They need to be, you know, evacuated from a foreign country back in. I mean, this is one of the things that I did.
We used to work with the team that got those phone calls specifically in an insurance company. My wife is, is in the Amazon and she just lost her leg and she needs to get back to wherever.
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.
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. And that is why I really felt compelled to write the book.
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. Do you think there's anything to the idea, you know, I, this probably happens to all of us, or at least the people who like to pretend like there's a lot of people pretend like they don't.
But, you know, I find myself on Instagram reels or TikTok and I'm watching these videos and I love, you know, the one day I was sitting there and, you know, five minutes or whatever. and you're scrolling through and I think it's a waste of time, but I'm watching Ed Milat and this woman, Cody Sanchez,

who I really love and just telling these stories and I'm flipping through and I'm, and I closed my phone and I actually don't feel shitty. I feel, I feel like inspired.
I feel like I want to go do something. And, and 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, 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, do you think that you can be, do you think if people are open to wonder, they seek out those kinds of things and even those little moments, if slightly superficial and short can be valuable, 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 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 if we curate our our feeds in such a way that what we're seeing is positive that's great 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.
Achievement porn is what my friends call it. Yeah, exactly.
That's not helpful at all. But what we do know is that wonder is not this big fleeting thing.
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. And when he first started, he believed the peak experiences were rare and fleeting.
That was the language he used. But over towards the end of his life, he realized, no, we can find them in little moments.
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. But almost equal to that is wonder in the quotidian, just day-to-day little bits of wonder.
And what you are experiencing is these people were sharing their wonder with you. 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. 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.
It's critical to who we are as humans. It's not just a hobby, it has gravitas,

it's how our soul 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

and that's where 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. Yeah.
So one of the things I share with my team a lot, I hope you're not offended by curse words. This isn't a bad one, but I don't care.
Okay, good. Yeah.
So, all right. I'm from the East coast and Irish and country and whatever you want to moniker you want to put on it.
I just love them. So who cares? So I, I tell my team all the time, I'm like, give a shit.
It's cool to care. Like I, I, one of my most successful piece of content I ever created was about five years ago.
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 in the simple message was, it's cool to care.
I'm sick of this nihilistic 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. So I believe in God and higher power.
And maybe some of that comes out of that, whatever. But even if you're not, it's cool to care.
Like it's cool to care about things to use. You know, you were 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.
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.
And I'm like, this is, or like explore things or, and it doesn't have to be these. 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, which is gorgeous.
Which it can be, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be.
Judge me or not, I love deadlifting. I love this.
And I picked it up after COVID, right? COVID happened, and I was locked in my,, like everyone else locked in the house. And I literally started this company seven days before the COVID lockdown in New York State.
So I'm having a lot of emotional reactions. Let's just put it that way.
And, you know, I may have kept the whiskey industry 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, never done. I 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. I started following people, you know, men and women on, on Instagram who are really good at this particular exercise.
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.
So, um, so today, what is that? A little two and a half years later, I deadlifted 405 pounds. And, and, and I, and I post videos online and people like, why are you doing them? Like'm like, those videos are not for you people.
Like I, I post them, but I look back in it and it's a, and it's a document of the journey. And, and it, what it does is it's, I don't know if it's dope, mean, or what it is, but I look back and I'm like, wow, like, look, look at how I did that there.
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 and I see this, I have this chronicle journey, because, and I'm coming back to this idea that you have of narrative journaling, it is almost like a journey, a journal 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, I have no idea why I love it, but I do.
And, and, and to me, it's like, I feel, I just, it brings me so much happiness. It does.
I feel, I feel inspired. I feel curious on how to get better.
I love watching. There are women that, that are half my size who make what I look like, look like they're lifting a bag of groceries, you know, and I'm like, that's amazing.
And their lever and all this kind of stuff. And to me, it's like, I feel like I hate the nihilism and the secularism of 2023, because I feel like it's a direct attack on everything that you've been talking about.
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 I do, but you don't have to.
It's, it's finding things that are, that, that bring these emotions to you that you can connect with people. Cause, cause 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.
It's incredible. I've, I've been so impressed and happy and amazed talking to you.
It's been incredible, but, but 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. And that to me is why we're here.
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. Prayer is another wonder bringer.
I mean, prayer is basically gratitude with narration combined. You know, this is a really powerful mechanism.
And so I, 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.
And you don't, it's recognizing that, religions share a similar structure, and there are similar goals that exist within that. 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 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.
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. 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. And so this is how we end up with cults.
But if we look at the positive of charisma, this is how we end up with social movements, how we end up with incredible communities, and that can be religious communities or otherwise. And so it's really an opportunity to bond with people in a more meaningful way.
And I think that narrative journaling is a great way to tap into that as well, because we love stories and we love a story more than anything, the story of ourselves. I mean, you think of your children, how many times did they say, tell me when mommy and daddy met, you know, because that's the story, that's their origin story.
So if we tell stories about ourselves to ourselves, then that can have a really positive impact as well. To end this on the most trite comment of the day, with great response or great power comes great responsibility.
My, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking to you. Uh, just a, uh, a wonderful conversation again.
I'm going to go there because we're ending this on, uh, cliches. Um, where can people learn more about you about hatch? Obviously we'll have links to everything to the book.
Um, uh, this, you know, I hope everyone after hearing this conversation wants to dig deeper into this topic, integrated into the. Obviously, guys, I had Monica on for a reason.
This is something I think is uniquely important to our space and the mind, the monotony, and the doggedness of our industry. I feel like this is something that can really separate us and create cultures inside our agencies and inside our insurance businesses that will help us grow.
So where can people find out more about you and everything that you do? So they can find me at monica-parker.com. You can also find more about my company at hatchanalytics.com.
But if you go to monica-parker, all sorts of information there. 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.

I love insurance.

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

Awesome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Ryan.

It was great.

See, see, see, see, see, see.

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