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Episode 58—Get 1% Better with Joe Ferraro
128 Plays8 years ago
It's The Creative Nonfiction Podcast where I speak with the world’s best writers, freelancers, interviewers, authors, and documentary filmmakers about WHY and HOW they go about creating works of nonfiction and how YOU can apply what they do to your work. Today’s guest is Joe Ferraro, the fourth Joe I’ve had on the podcast (Joe DePaulo, Joe Drape, Joe Donahue, and now Joe Ferraro). Need a Josephine…anyway… So who’s Joe Ferraro? He’s a teacher and a learner, but above all he’s a leader. He just started a podcast: The 1% Better Podcast. His tagline is Conversations designed to help you get 1% Better. It’s aimed at gradual, continual, rigorous—though not overwhelming—personal improvement. “If we’re talking about hard work, it’s about squeezing out more of the day,” says Joe. “Nothing upsets me more than when someone says ‘I’m too busy.’” Joe talks about his allergy for negative people, finding ways to challenge himself, and how after teaching for 20 years, he feels like his best years are still ahead of him. He’s the type of guy that inspires you to take action. Be sure to follow Joe on Twitter @FerraroOnAir, reach out to him, and subscribe to his podcast right away. Whether it’s listening to world class leader Ryan Hawk or how to make the best cold brew coffee, the art of thinking and redefining a restaurant, The 1% Better Podcast will open your eyes to where you can add value to you life and those around you. And you want to know something else? He’s got a voice made for broadcasting, so sit back and enjoy Episode 58 with Joe Ferraro.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast where I speak with the world's best writers, freelancers, interviewers, authors, and documentary filmmakers about why and how they go about creating works of nonfiction and how you can apply what they do to your work.
00:00:19
Speaker
Today's guest is Joe Ferraro, the fourth Joe I've had on the podcast. There was Joe DiPaolo, Joe Drape, Joe Donahue, and that Joe Ferraro. You did Josephine. Anyway, so who's Joe Ferraro? He's a teacher and a learner, but above all, he's a leader. He just started a podcast, the 1% Better podcast, and his tagline is conversation designed to help you get 1% better.
00:00:46
Speaker
It's aimed at gradual, continual, rigorous, though not overwhelming, personal improvement.
1% Better Philosophy and Podcast
00:00:52
Speaker
For instance, my desk right now is a total incomplete cluster. I will feel like it's a 1% better improvement to clean my desk today, assign things to their place, and keep it that way. Maybe taking the time to chew your food more or floss is a 1% improvement that will make you 100% better three times a year. And who wouldn't buy that stock, right?
00:01:16
Speaker
Joe talks about his allergy for negative people, finding ways to challenge himself and how after teaching for 20 years he feels like his best years are still ahead of him. He's the type of guy that inspires you to take action, which makes him a great coach and teacher and, like I said, a leader.
00:01:32
Speaker
So be sure to follow Joe on Twitter and reach out to him. He's very active and he's not going to big time anybody. His Twitter handle is at Ferraro on air. That's F-E-R-R-A-R-O on air, all one word.
00:01:48
Speaker
Reach out, like I said, and then subscribe to his podcast right away. Whether it's listening to world-class leader, Ryan Hawk, how to make the best cold brew coffee, the art of thinking, or redefining a restaurant, the 1% better podcast will open your eyes to where you can add value to your life.
00:02:07
Speaker
and as a result, those around you. Anyone know something else?
Development and Influence of the 1% Better Approach
00:02:11
Speaker
He's got a voice made for broadcasting, so just sit back and enjoy episode 58 with Joe Ferraro, host of the 1% Better podcast. Thanks for listening.
00:02:27
Speaker
What I love about your 1% better concept is this continual improvement, continual learning, and it's like a master course in habit 7 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you know, it's that constant, alright, what can I do to get a little bit better in that slow accumulation.
00:02:50
Speaker
adds up to mastery over time. And I wanted to ask you first, like, how did you come to that idea? It's the true idea of of it feels like, oh, overnight, it just came to me. And then when I look back and try to think of the origin story, it's it's found in everything I've been doing for 20 years. Right. So when I started coaching, I would I would turn to my assistant coaches and I'd say, all right, today's the day.
00:03:16
Speaker
And then he would just be like, what does that mean? And I'd be like, today's the day. Something great's gonna happen today. Today's the day we get better. Today's the day we take one step forward. Something special's gonna happen today. Something special's gonna happen today. And then as you keep going, and you try to figure out who you are, who you wanna be, and it's taken a long time to get to this clarity of it, where it's literally just, let's get a little better when we go to bed tonight than we were when we woke up.
00:03:42
Speaker
I think it's so pervasive now in the culture that you can actually look at it where it almost becomes something I cringe at where, is it too commercialized? And then I immediately just kind of slap myself and say, no, no, this is a title to focus me. This is something that, you know, the name is a little bit overrated, I found in the whole creative process. It's much, much more about starting and actually doing the work.
00:04:09
Speaker
And I guess to answer your question, I truly try to live in a way where if I dive into something, I'm diving in deep. I'm not trying to dive in and touch the surface. I'm trying to find out all about it. And then the moment we find out or I find out that I'm not interested as I was, or I'm not as obsessed with it as I thought I might be, it's on to something else. So when I think about getting 1% better, it's part of that
Early Life and Mentorship
00:04:32
Speaker
idea. And then the other part of it is, it's so manageable. Like you can't look someone in the eye and say,
00:04:38
Speaker
I couldn't get 1% better today. And for that, it really helps. And obviously, Covey, I think of his work, but I also think of Darren Hardy and the compound effect. I think of James Clear. I'm not one of these guys that, and I don't think many people are actually in the creative world, people that would listen to your podcast. We steal from everybody. We borrow, we steal. You got Austin Kleon ringing in my head. And it's not that we're trying to take someone's concept, it's that the way I look at it,
00:05:08
Speaker
Every single thing that you've read, person that you've met, and podcast that you've listened to have kind of led you to this moment, and that's kind of where I'm at. Where does that come from? What kind of kid were you where maybe this kernel started? Or maybe it's something that completely developed as you grew into a young adult? No, it's definitely young.
00:05:33
Speaker
When I'm in front of my classroom, I often reveal a lot of myself to the students to let them know I'm in the journey with them. So a lot of times I'll say, I must have been a nerdy kid and they'll believe it because I'm constantly quoting Seth Godin and I'm constantly talking about things in the media that are creative and inspiring and fill the tank. So they're like, they don't have to go far to see that I was a nerd. But I think that the story would tell it a little differently because I was playing three sports for a long time.
00:06:02
Speaker
Then in high school, I really began to focus on a baseball, but the whole time growing up, I was the kid playing football, I was the kid in basketball, I was the kid in baseball, all three just kind of that true stereotypical, let's go play stick ball, let's go play wiffle ball, let's go play CYO basketball all the way through. So when I start thinking back, I think it's something that, it's weird that I consider myself kind of a nerd in that sense when I was doing the athlete thing as well.
00:06:31
Speaker
But I do recall conversations with my dad watching a baseball game. And where I started, this kind of convoluted story was, in going to be on your podcast, I get to think about the origin story. And when I would sit in front of the TV watching a baseball game with my dad, I would often ask him questions. And that's a familiar story. But when I look back on my version of that story, I would ask him what seemed to be ridiculous questions.
00:06:59
Speaker
I would ask him things like, and this is a true story, what happens if on a throw down the second, the shortstop tags the runner sliding in, the ball flies out of his glove, and he would say, well, that's, he's safe. I said, yeah, but what if when he slaps the ball out, the second baseman catches the ball in the air? Is that still a mess? Because that ball never touched the ground. And it's a great moment in parenting to think about it now as a parent.
00:07:26
Speaker
a lot of sense, but those are the things that I would be thinking about because once I learned the rules of the game, I'm actually now trying to get into the nuance of the game. So it's not so much, why did he do that? It was actually another layer. It was like, well, what would happen if instead of doing that, he did this? And I still carry that with me to this day. So I found out somewhere along the line that if I was in a comfortable space, and that's a key for me, where I felt that the person was listening to me and would answer my questions with dignity,
Connecting with Influential People
00:07:55
Speaker
there was no question I wouldn't ask. So I kind of just took that. Again, if I'm getting the signals from someone that they're not gonna be okay with making me vulnerable, they're not gonna make it a safe place, then I'm gonna shut down the questions and I'm pretty good at reading body language. So I think that is something that I bring into my teaching to try to create that environment in the classroom.
00:08:16
Speaker
Who else, it sounds like your dad was a pretty formative influence on you. Including your dad, who else would you cite as someone you could go to with those questions and would give you that positive body language to say, yes, Joe, keep going. Yeah, well, it's funny. My dad was 100% a lead by example guy. In thinking about my dad, and we talk quite a bit, but
00:08:41
Speaker
It's a very one sided conversation. So as I think about it, he was the listener. He was not creating any kind of dialogue, so to speak. He was just a stereotypical old school. I don't want to say Italian because he's Italian-American, but he's a second generation here.
00:08:57
Speaker
But he was just listening. He was a rock. He was going to work every day at his restaurant. That was what he gave me. Mom was in the trenches, right? Mom was doing the project with me, making sure Thomas Edison was spelled correctly in the project there, that in fourth grade. And she was the one doing all that stuff. What I did remember though about that was that he never said a discouraging word. So he was never, that is an amazing idea guy. He was never that guy. But he would very, very understatedly say,
00:09:27
Speaker
You could do anything you want if you put your mind to it, but you got to work. And that would be like his message, but he wouldn't say it. Like he would say that once a year. And I think when we retell our stories sometimes, we paint our parents as a picture of like, oh, he must have been just like, rah, rah behind your back. No, he was just that was what he would say once a month, once a year. And you would take it to take your question. Another step, though, in terms of mentors, you know, I had a little league coach.
00:09:51
Speaker
who worked on trick plays with us, who taught us how to appeal, who had the most boring practice you could ever imagine that involved hitting a ball off a tee with a rope attached to it, hitting a tire swing, doing wrist throws, then forearm, then full throws. Every other league team did nothing like that. So I think that was formative. But then overall, in terms of who do I think are mentors, it's so funny. I think I've been collecting more mentors in the last 10 years of my life than I did in the first 20.
00:10:22
Speaker
It's just something that, in thinking about it, it's almost like that Good Will Hunting moment where he has mentors of books and authors that are no longer alive, but I seem to hone in on the ones that are still alive so I can interact with them. You know, you and I talked about this. The new media allows you to hear a Seth Godin message and then reach out to him, to hear Brian Koppelman speaking and reach out to him.
00:10:47
Speaker
and quite honestly to hear your message and reach out to you and vice versa. So we kind of met that way. And it's no exaggeration to say that mentors have appeared to me more in the last decade than they had in the first 20.
00:11:02
Speaker
And especially when you're on this type of broadcasting media as well, it's like you see someone you admire and you're almost never more than an email or a tweet away. And then if you're lucky and you can kind of sell your ID, you can actually kind of get these people on the phone and record it and offer them
00:11:27
Speaker
offer them something. I can offer you some extra airwaves to kind of help promote your work and shine a light on your work and we can kind of pick each other. Well, I can pick your brain and it's going to help other people. It's going to promote your work and then everyone wins and that sort of democratization of media and the way we're able to connect is just so valuable and you can get these people and consider them mentors even if you don't necessarily see them face to face.
00:11:55
Speaker
There's no doubt about it. I absolutely love that. And then bringing it into the classroom, it's kind of amazing to me. My students don't think about that as a pathway. They don't think, let me read a book or article and write to the author.
00:12:08
Speaker
and maybe it's as I'm saying that maybe of course they don't think that they're 17 years old they have other things on their mind but that's something I actually do try to tell them because there's very few 17 year olds that are doing it right there's just quite a bit more 39 year olds doing it and and they don't realize and I try to tell them you can really differentiate yourself before even entering college
00:12:28
Speaker
by by learning from people that are still creating and that's kinda what i try to model for them right i'm i'm the writer in the room with them i'm i'm doing some projects with them but you're you're exactly right you know that there's nothing more short answer that my mentors are are people that are working in creating now whether they know it or not and just with my new projects it allows me to get in touch with them.
00:12:50
Speaker
So, you know, your dad worked in the restaurant business. I'm obsessed with food and chefs and the art that goes into that and the rigor it takes. And what did your dad being in the restaurant business teach you about rigor? Work ethic. Absolutely unequivocal work ethic. I recently had a colleague, friend and a colleague say, you know, you just don't take any sick days.
00:13:20
Speaker
I could hear my dad. Again, he never said, Joe, don't take any sick days. He just never took a sick day. Now, it's his own business, but you know what? There's ways around that. People that own their own businesses don't go there every day. His work ethic, it was unbelievable. I'm sure as we're recording, he's in the restaurant. He's not owner. He's owner, chef,
00:13:45
Speaker
dishwasher, you know, he realized that the margins in the restaurant business come when you don't hire a chef. So it's funny when I hear other businesses opening up, he taught me this once he said, you know, you have an idea of a restaurant is going to succeed or fail based on how many different chefs they hire.
Work Ethic and Hard Work
00:14:02
Speaker
So if you have a sous chef, I have a dessert chef, I have this, I have a master of cuisine, the restaurants in serious trouble. Now, when you're talking about Manhattan or some of the metropolitan areas,
00:14:12
Speaker
you're at a scale where you have to hire that kind of staff. But if you're opening a family type restaurant and you have multiple employees doing the work, you have a lot of people sharing profits and it doesn't work. So I think my dad was just meticulous with organization and a very, very steadfast work ethic. And it's just, it's amazing. I mean, it trickles over. I mean, he never put it on a card. He never said, be like this. He just did it.
00:14:39
Speaker
In bringing up work ethic, it's always something that's a little abstract. I think like you're a baseball guy, we both played I think fairly competitive ball throughout most of our lives and I know what hard work looks like.
00:14:56
Speaker
when I'm training for ball. When I went down into my basement, I had the Tony Guinan door solo header. Do you remember that thing? Oh my god, yeah, of course. I was down on that thing 500 swings every single night. As a result, I almost never struck out, even though I was kind of a power header for in high school. I never swung at a bad pitch, and I just always was able to put the bat on the ball, and it was because
00:15:23
Speaker
I spent so much time, and I also just spent hours in front of a wall throwing a ball up against it and fielding the ground ball, giving myself short hops. Everything like that just on my knees, just working on a nice supple wrist flick to get the ball into my glove hand, up to my throwing hand quick and so forth. I know what hard work looks like for a baseball player. When you're in the creative world, it can get a bit
00:15:48
Speaker
It's like, what does hard work look like? So I would say that to you as a teacher and podcaster and creator, how do you define hard work and tenacity and rigor and what you do and how do you measure that so you can constantly kind of sharpen that saw? What a great question. And I got to say that a lot of people you'll come across, we'll say things like it's hard to define a certain word.
00:16:12
Speaker
And then that's the end of the conversation. To me, that's the beginning of the conversation. There are age-old words that people hide behind saying, I don't know how to define it. I can't give you a perfect definition of it, but I think of two things when I'm gonna define that. One is reps, right? You described it with the Tony Gwyn, you know? Rest in peace, Tony. But you said,
00:16:35
Speaker
You said reps. You had more reps than the person next to you. So that can transfer very easily into the creative world, right? How many words per day? How many pages per day? How many hours per day? What we're learning with this beautiful sharing that goes on the Internet is that it doesn't matter if you go by word count and I go by page count and then someone next to me goes by hour count. It matters that you do one of those three things every day.
00:17:02
Speaker
And so that's the reps part of it. That's, that's what hard work looks like. You know, exhibit a exhibit B to me is squeezing more out of a day than someone else. And I hate to make it sound like it's a comparative game, but on some level, right? If you're talking about hard work, you are, you are comparing yourself to other people. So what I would say is nothing upsets me more. Well, very few things upset me more than when someone says I'm too busy. It's just,
00:17:29
Speaker
It's amazing that somehow that person thinks they're more busy than you.
Prioritizing Time and Persistence
00:17:34
Speaker
Every single person has the exact same amount of time, and how you or I are going to squeeze more out of it than the next person is really it. Now, there's a lot to be said for slowing down. I love a lot of quotes about, you know, Gandhi says there's more to life than increasing its speed. I mean, what a beautiful quote. But if we're talking about hard work, it's about squeezing out more in the day. Last thought on that,
00:17:59
Speaker
My uncle is a painter and I hope to have him on my show soon, but he kind of scoffed at the idea of hard work in terms of art. And I said, well, aren't you painting every day? He said, yeah, but I'm not in a coal mine. This is painting. And at first I thought he was reducing it. I thought he was saying, well, it's easy. But what he really meant was there's nothing hard about it. It's difficult to be great. It's hard to be great at it.
00:18:28
Speaker
It's just, it's, I guess it's another word, right? It's consistency. So I guess kind of summing that up, I would say you gotta have more reps than you think you need. And someone should announce that, right? So when someone says, oh, how many pages did you write? It's not a comparative game in terms of bragging. It's just, you have to have some idea. Is that a lot? I'm squeezing out more in the day. And then thirdly, you know, just realizing that at the end of the day, it doesn't have to feel like it's tedious.
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, and going to your point about people being maybe too busy, usually that's an excuse for not prioritizing time. Choices, yeah, poor choices. Yeah.
00:19:06
Speaker
And it's funny, just using that baseball example, I wasn't a supremely gifted player, but at the high school and whatever, that level, putting in those reps in that time made me
00:19:25
Speaker
good at that level. And I think the same can be true if you're willing to put in those reps. You can really take whatever maybe small kernel of talent you have and really expand it. But you do have to put in the work. It really does come down to those repetitions. But you also have to have Dinty Moore, who I had on the podcast a few episodes ago. He's like, you really have to have patience.
00:19:52
Speaker
and he's such a great writer and it was so great to hear him articulate that, you know, like this isn't my first draft, this is my 43rd. And so there's a guy who's a master who takes 40 to 50 drafts to get something that is publishable in his opinion and that's eye opening that you can go through that degree of repetition and repetition and repetition to reach something that is, you know, that is beautiful and that's the work.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, and you'll hear, you know, either apprentices or young learners. How did you get so good at that? And the answer almost always is practice and reps.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's one episode that you had with Kevin on KWB radio and it actually like put my ass in the chair. Like after I was walking my dogs, it was the end of a one conversation you guys had. It was like the final eight minutes. I forget the exact episode. It might be like 37 or 38 right around there.
00:20:51
Speaker
And it was right at the end, and Kevin went in his very soft-spoken way, kind of went on a rant, and it was about hard work. You're at this level, and you think you're working hard, and then you get to the next level, and you realize you haven't been working hard at all. And as I had come to realize that, that came from experience for him.
00:21:13
Speaker
I was just like, that put me back. It's just like you have to constantly reevaluate what it is to be tenacious and redefine what hard work is at each level because now everyone has gotten to this level at a certain level and squeezed out every bit of their talent. So it's like, all right, what more can you do? And so many people do not take that next step. Yeah, Kevin's statement is terrifying because it calls into question why you didn't get to a certain level.
00:21:42
Speaker
baseball, it's super tangible, right? I mean, I played division one college baseball, and then no one ever taps you on the shoulder like they say in the movies and says, kid, you're not good enough. It just becomes blatantly obvious. And then you start looking back and you say, man, I didn't work hard enough. And that's where a little trouble can kind of swoop in is like, enough is enough. That's tricky. That's a tricky balance. I don't have a beautiful formula for that.
00:22:10
Speaker
It's amazing that there's so much more work to be done. I had a moment with this very recently. I had a conversation with Ryan Hawke, and again, he wasn't giving advice, but he made it acutely aware to me that he was outworking me. In a million years, he would never tell me that. That's what I deduced. But wow, he's someone I admire in the podcast game, and he gave me some of his habits, and I was silently,
00:22:41
Speaker
shaking my head and taking notes saying, OK, it's back to work tomorrow.
Career Path and Seeking Challenges
00:22:45
Speaker
It's back to work tomorrow, man. Oh, my goodness. What did success look like to you when you were early 20s and into your 30s? I knew I wanted to do something that I would enjoy. Again, going back to the restaurant business, I did toast on Sunday mornings and my dad's restaurant and he would get omelets freshly made before the toast would come out. And I have
00:23:11
Speaker
Distinct visions of him flipping omelets in the air saying see this you don't want to do this every day You don't want to do this do something with this and he would point to his temple and I'm like, okay So that was the first sign point signpost because there's so many people I've met throughout my life that have said you don't want to go into the restaurant business Do you know how easy that would be to just kind of go into a successful restaurant and I laugh so hard Do I know how easy it would be? It's it's the opposite of what I want
00:23:38
Speaker
Um, so I went out on my own on that regard, but then, you know, I'm going to be honest. I never wanted to go into something that was quote unquote risky or unsafe. So when I was thinking about coaching, that was something I really knew when I was thinking about teaching, it was a little bit outside the box, but I was for me, but I was doing camps and I found myself more of a coach than the player at times. So again, it felt safe. Um, so.
00:24:04
Speaker
I guess when I was a senior in college, I started student teaching and my friends were doing what seniors do in college and I was student teaching. So there were definitely many, many weeknights where that was not an option for me. And before I graduated, I was fortunate enough to be offered two teaching jobs. And that's not a humble brag. I was searching for security. I was two hours away from home, which is not the end of the earth, but for me,
00:24:33
Speaker
outside my comfort zone, I still think my mom's waiting for me to come home. I went to Pace and it was two hours from Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania and then I think she still thinks I'm gonna teach in Pennsylvania. So to have two job offers in New York felt secure so that before I graduated I had choices. So I'm gonna answer your question by saying something I loved but also, Brendan, it had to be safe in some way. That was my 20s.
00:25:01
Speaker
You know, that was it. So 20s, safe, and something I love. Now you're asking 30s, that's where it gets interesting, right? Because 10 years into the job, well, this year will be a year 19. And as I said in a recent interview with someone, I said, I'm not a teacher that's getting burned out, I'm a teacher that's just starting to figure it out. So I really feel like I can't wait to have year 19 be my best year. And I feel like if we all, and again, you can hear that in my voice, that's the 1% project, right?
00:25:31
Speaker
It becomes a lifestyle. The success though, the safety rather of the 20s did definitely went into the 30s. And then as I've gotten more comfortable at my job and I've realized that some of the things I do well and I have some extra time to do some coaching and some writing and some podcasting, but you've seen it. It's only in the last few years that I've started to seek things that were outside my comfort zone.
00:25:57
Speaker
And that's a process that I'm still living. So right now, I'm still trying to get comfortable being uncomfortable. I feel very comfortable sitting here talking to you. It's only recently I found out that I'm an introvert, which no one that meets me believes. But the reality is I love deep conversations. And I guess if I could say, as I approach 40, what I want to do in terms of defining success for me is kind of merging all of my worlds into something
00:26:27
Speaker
so I can be doing one thing really well, and it seems to be teaching and learning. So I have the classroom teacher in one concentric circle, if you will. I have baseball coach in another, and I have the podcast project in another. If I can merge all those and find that sweet spot where they all intersect, I know that I'm doing something that contributes. So that's the best way I can explain it.
00:26:48
Speaker
So how do you surround your, like to have this kind of mentality, you know, you, you have to keep the toxicity away. And so how do you go about surrounding yourself with the right kind of people that help support, you know, a positive mission of this, of this nature? I try to do that with an allergy to negative people. It's, you know, I once heard, uh,
00:27:18
Speaker
coming from a place of yes, you know, I need to surround myself with people who come from a place of yes, maybe I never thought about that. Let's give it a try. And again, it gets back to supportive environment. It's just, you know what it is? It's a little bit of natural selection, right? You kind of go about your day. People observe your habits. If your skin can get thick enough, which I've been working on to where people are going, you know, people are going to say something behind your back like, Oh, he's,
00:27:46
Speaker
He's doing that. He's not going out to lunch or now he's doing whatever his podcast thinks. He got to believe some of that goes on and you just don't find people coming up to you unless they bring positive vibes. And then a lot of times you'll get that comment. It's like, you know, Joe, you're so positive. Well,
00:28:04
Speaker
Spend some more time with me. I mean, I don't know how else to say it. It's it's weird when you talk about yourself as someone.
Positive Influences and Energy
00:28:10
Speaker
I think people find it weird. You talk about yourself that has positive energy. But I refuse to admit that it's bragging to say I'm a positive person. Right.
00:28:18
Speaker
That's kind of what I'm doing on a daily basis. Students have made posters as kind of going away gifts for the classroom and I think part of it is like they get to live immortally in the classroom and part of it is just a true, genuine thoughtfulness and it'll say, be an energy giver. I didn't invent that, it's just something that kind of radiates or be where your feet are. These are signs in my classroom and signs in my classroom have to be things that I can believe outside the classroom. So I don't know if I have a perfect practice, just more of a,
00:28:48
Speaker
an allergy to people that aren't traveling the same way. Were you always such an energy giver, or was that something you cultivated over time? I like to think so, but I definitely can't go this long into the interview without mentioning Kevin Wilson. He's always been a friend, but he's become a true, true mentor, and I give a lot of my recent success and productivity to Kevin.
00:29:16
Speaker
He remembers a time when I was more grouchy, apt to complain, physically heavier, mentally heavier, a little bit of that darker, okay, I don't know what's going to happen next.
00:29:30
Speaker
And I still run and take things incredibly seriously. I'm not the guy that doesn't care what people think about me, right? After this interview goes to air, I would love people to reach out and say, hey, you know, this idea helped me. This idea, I didn't really get it. What did you mean by that? That's like the dream for me. I want feedback. I crave feedback.
00:29:50
Speaker
So I think all of our memories could go, they either skew very negative to ourselves or they skew positive. I tend to remember just always being optimistic, even if outwardly I was a little bit cautious and kind of heavy. How did you come to meet Kevin? Kevin was the hotshot freshman baseball player at Holy Ghost Prep.
00:30:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm, and here's an interesting parallel to what you just asked. I love how away leaves onto way into a conversation Many I don't think Kevin would would mind me sharing this many of my classmates. I was older than him disliked Kevin Why because he was a freshman switch hitter smooth fielding shortstop Things he was either gifted or things he cultivated in his own Tony Gwynn solo hitter type of basement way
00:30:41
Speaker
We did not like him and I actually let me just take myself out of that. They did not like him. He was a threat. He was the hot girl at the prom wearing that dress even though she can rock it and it's not her fault that we all hate it. And for some reason I saw in him somebody as confident as Kevin is now I saw in him some vulnerability and I saw my friends say you know
00:31:05
Speaker
Stay away from this guy. He's going to steal somebody's job. I went and sat down next to him on the bench. I said, hey, man, it's going to be OK. You know that, right? And he looked like that proverbial deer in headlights. And he became the starting shortstop as a freshman. I was the second baseman. And I think by law, you have to be close with your middle infield partner. But by choice, I kind of remember things my mom would say about like,
00:31:30
Speaker
You know, it's as old as time. If everybody's jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you? Well, that's more than just a fairy tale. That's a real lifestyle. And I think, you know, when I think back to it, I was doing that then, right? It was actually a little bit courageous in my own way to go over to Kevin and say, you have some talent. Here's what you need to do to be successful here. Consider this. And we struck up a friendship.
00:31:54
Speaker
That's amazing because I was kind of the opposite in that sense. I probably would not because I had experiences of upperclassmen just being jerks to me and then when I was that upperclassman who had a chance probably to lift up.
00:32:11
Speaker
I, well, you know, maybe it would have been different if it was a deer in headlights type kid. When I was a senior, we had a freshman who was just like an obnoxious ass. And so I was not about to go up to him and actually kind of reveled when he struggled, which goes to how
00:32:28
Speaker
poor my attitude was at times but that's just that's really wonderful like what you were able to do for a fellow teammate but especially a middle infielder because like the middle infielders here you can join twins in a lot of ways yeah
00:32:45
Speaker
Yeah, I was a short stop and it was my second basements over the year. It was always nice when you had that perfect chemistry. You knew exactly where to put the ball and then just the way you were able to ham it up with each other.
00:32:59
Speaker
And if you think about it looking back, I mean he had so much more skill than I did defensively So it was like if I threw the ball anywhere near him He would do things with it that I couldn't but I got to tell you, you know, he looks back on that extremely fondly He often says it in interviews that I was influential.
Mentorship with Kevin Wilson
00:33:14
Speaker
Well, let me tell you he's paid it back tenfold I mean, I'm not sitting here talking to you if it wasn't for Kevin and I don't want to make that syrupy sweet, but it's true, right? He he
00:33:24
Speaker
He and I started KWB radio, but he'll tell you that he started it so that I could get outside of my comfort zone. He thought I was good behind the mic and he was really thoughtful about it. And then in so many ways that I could never cover on your show, he has been directly responsible for pushing me or pulling me into the 1%
Balance of Improvement and Contentment
00:33:43
Speaker
project. So it's unbelievable. With something of the nature of 1% better,
00:33:53
Speaker
what what can sometimes become the if there is a danger of always you know this sounds kind of weird but like that a danger of always trying to an improve and in a sense that yet like you don't want to be static but the same time like is it possible to appreciate what you have now if you're always trying to
00:34:16
Speaker
you know can you appreciate how how it is now if you're always trying to get better can't like can you be happy in the present if you know like if you're always trying to improve if that makes any sense it makes a lot of sense it's a very thoughtful question and actually it calls the mind like if we want to take it to a dark place you could see a satire where it would be like nope I'm gonna be good today I don't need that extra 1% you just see some kind of like
00:34:39
Speaker
internet meme where it's like, no, no, I'm gonna get 1% worse today on purpose. And so I know that's not the spirit of your question. The spirit of your question, in my opinion, is one of Seth Godin's famous, well, I don't know how famous it is, but it's unbelievable. He says good enough can mean good enough. So I love that and I think, when I think of what Seth meant there, there's a place for segmenting it.
00:35:08
Speaker
If you say to me, is it okay to not learn anything today or get 1% better? I say an emphatic no, it's not okay. If you say to me, is it okay to not try to perfect this piece of writing any further and publish it? I say, hell yes. That's how I look at it. Art is never finished, it's only abandoned, I can quote you all day. There comes a point where we need to ship, there comes a point where we have to, now let me rephrase the last part.
00:35:38
Speaker
I was going to say that it comes a point where we have to be happy with ourselves. That part is daily. That part is part of your lifestyle. Comfortable in your own skin is a journey. There's no doubt about it. But good enough is good enough. So to your question, yes, you can't continue to put pressure on yourself. I just really prefer to take a lifestyle where I need to learn something new today, not because of some, you know, arcane title,
Podcast Launch and Goals
00:36:06
Speaker
But just because it's fun and it helps. Yeah, I guess maybe the spirit of the question comes from perfectionism and how crippling that could be. Like maybe if I made this just a little bit better, I will ship it tomorrow. And then it gets to that point like, oh, just a little bit better and then I'll ship.
00:36:28
Speaker
I have a friend right now I work with, and she wants to start a blog, and she's like, oh, but no one's going to read it. And then she's like, oh, I've written a couple posts, but I haven't been a Word document. I'm like, just publish it. Just ship it. Yeah, that's hiding. That's hiding. I use those exact words, Joe. I was just like, yeah, right now you're hiding. And I said, Jamie, you know what the great thing is?
00:36:51
Speaker
No one's going to read it right now. Nobody is going to care. And so you say, well, what's the point, Brendan? What's the point? If no one's going to read it and nobody's get no, no, it's it's a delicate balance. Seth Godin, I had a chance to see him in December and he said that exact phrase. Perfectionism is a form of hiding. And, you know, that's not at all the spirit of one percent because we can always make something one percent better. But but you're absolutely right. And if we we take nothing away from this conversation other than that, it's
00:37:21
Speaker
This conversation's not gonna be perfect. My next podcast isn't gonna be perfect. Your next article's not gonna be perfect. Your next story. We need to be shipping a lot more than worrying about those details.
00:37:32
Speaker
Which gets to a point, you've been cultivating this one percent ideal for a while, but it wasn't until July 1st that you published your first one with Ryan Hawk and then subsequently a couple days after the Cold Brew episode, which was wonderful. And everything's been great so far.
00:37:58
Speaker
What was the thought process as you were getting getting this podcast ready off the ground? And then finally, you know, when did you decide to hit publish and and just start rolling with it? Well, I'm going to work backwards in that story and and again harken back to Kevin in my parents kitchen over the right combination of beverages and food. He said, so how's July 1st looking? And I think I was hoping he had forgotten that I had said that.
00:38:28
Speaker
Somewhere in a few of the places that I was lucky enough to speak. I said I'm gonna launch my project July 1st Well now it's I think June 29th. He's at my kitchen table And he goes how's July 1st looking and my answer was exactly what your friend would say about her blog. Oh, it's not ready he looked right into my eyes and then on to my soul and he said July 1st and
00:38:51
Speaker
And I said, no, but you don't understand, it's not ready to go out. Like there is a 0%. I don't, and I started listing things, Brendan. I don't have an account. I didn't do this. I don't know if you need, I mean, some of it was nonsense and some of it was very real. And he said, July 1st. And I go, but I can't. And he's like, well, hold on. If you don't do it July 1st, what are you gonna do at July 4th? July 4th becomes July 15th. And so on down the line. He leaves the next morning I wake up
00:39:19
Speaker
and it's like the Tasmanian devil memory. Brendan, I don't even know what I did. I did some combination of put my credit card into the computer to buy a Libsyn account. I did some combination of put things on my blog. I found out what an RSS feed was again, even though I did it for 45 episodes of KWB Radio. I did so many things. It was like studying for a test the night before. No memory of what I did. All I know is that I had an episode out on July 1st.
00:39:48
Speaker
And guess what? It wasn't perfect. And guess what? If I listen to the intro again, I want to tweak something about it. And the encouragement that I got from Kevin and others outweighed the fear so vastly that it's almost like, wait, why didn't I say June 1st? But I did pick July 1st with a little bit of my personality in mind, which was, it's summer. I'm a teacher. I'm going to have some white space to dedicate to this. So that's the end line of that story.
00:40:19
Speaker
And it's a story of it's never going to be ready. You're never going to be ready to have kids. You're never going to be ready to try to search for a new job. You're never going to be ready to launch a new podcast. But at some point, you got to leap. And when the student is ready, the teacher appears and he was there.
00:40:36
Speaker
So what are some expectations and goals you have for the podcast?
Dual Passion for Teaching and Creating
00:40:44
Speaker
Sometimes, like Godin says, I would blog if no one was reading. I would still do it every single day. It just so happens people love it. But if nobody read it tomorrow, I would still blog. So similarly in that vein, what are your goals for your podcast and so forth?
00:41:06
Speaker
You know, I recently read that there's a lot of myths surrounding learning styles, according to some some doctors or cognitive scientists. And I don't I don't believe that. I don't I don't believe that. I know there's data that tries to prove it, et cetera, et cetera. What I mean by that, and I'm not here to debate that, I'm a person who learns an unbelievable amount by talking things out. As soon as this conversation is over, I'm grabbing a notebook.
00:41:34
Speaker
And I'm going to write notes on what we talked about, how I can improve next time in terms of being more clear, and what I learned from you. And hopefully when people reach out, then I'll include them in my process. So that is to say, if I can have an amazing learning opportunity, just on a one on one in person basis, how much learning can I do if I reach out to two types of people, world class leaders in the field, and
00:42:04
Speaker
and I never thought I would say this in a million years, something similar to Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Who are the people in your damn neighborhood? I mean, why can I not learn from the guy who owns his hardware store down the street from me, who is running that hardware store better than any hardware store I've ever been in? How can I have the audacity to say that I can't learn from him? So my project's going to have me in front of people
00:42:32
Speaker
that I can learn from people like you who are out there in the world doing it publicly, and I can learn from Rick the Wine Guy. I mean, to me, it's a no-brainer. And just getting myself in front of a microphone is a lot easier for me and how my brain works than writing it down. I'll do some writing, but the art and science of conversation and interviewing is just intoxicating.
00:42:57
Speaker
To that point there that like right in your backyard are a world-class experts But you know maybe because they don't have the shiny veneer of you know that the big Millions of followers online and that kind of highlight reel you almost dismiss it. I You're a hundred. Yeah, you're a hundred percent, right? You said that so much better than me Rick is world-class, you know Adam is world-class. He just doesn't have a block and
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And when I was speaking, when I speak with a lot of writers like Glenn Stout, who's the series editor of Best American Sports Writing, and he and I were, he lives way up in northern Vermont and
00:43:39
Speaker
he's not around anything in a magazine I write for in this little itty bitty town but there's narrative everywhere.
Daily Routines and Productivity
00:43:49
Speaker
You don't have to go to the Iditarod to write a really good story. There's a lot of backyard narrative that you can just tease out from right where you are and then maybe someday you'll get lucky and be able to travel far for a cool story. But there's so much wealth that you can cherry pick
00:44:06
Speaker
You know, with a biker, you know, your bike ride away. It's great what you're saying. A hundred percent. I've had so many titles for whatever podcast they eventually launched in my head and they all peek their head into this. Right. So, you know, at one point I was thinking about the idea of unfamous people, you know, a grammatic error, grammatical error on purpose.
00:44:25
Speaker
Because who are we to say that someone that's famous knows someone more? So we know that. But at the same point, the people that are quote unquote famous or have more of a reach are worth talking to as well. I'm not gonna reverse discriminate against them. I wanna hear what additional steps they took or what additional lucky breaks they got that took them there. So 100%, I'm interested. You know how a lot of people are why people? That's a big kind of trope, why. Find your why Kevin's a big why guy. I'm a how guy.
00:44:55
Speaker
I'm a what and how guy. So it's like, okay, what is cold brew and how the heck do you make it? Well, you and I are sipping cold brew while we talk. And it's an incredible thing that makes life a little better. Um, and someone could turn around and go, I really, I like my regular coffee. That's fine. Cold brew episodes, not for you. Um, I'll do one coming up where it's 1% better somatic yoga friend. And I didn't know what somatic yoga was two weeks ago.
00:45:22
Speaker
Like how is that not fun? It might not be fun for you, but I'm tuning in to say like, okay, I don't know what the word somatic means. So let's check it out and see what's going on. So I'm doing two things, long form conversations, but I love, and it takes confidence that I have to develop as a muscle. I love the idea that I can write a master list of things I'm interested in and I can do 1% better steak, like steakhouse food.
00:45:49
Speaker
And like nobody, you know what, get back to permission. Nobody can tell me I can't do it. And you have every right not to click on it. But the confidence that I have to do that is a muscle that's been exercised over time. And if I'm off air, I'm probably not as confident as I sound right now. So as a how guy, how do you set up your day so that you can look back on it and say, yes, I won Wednesday, I won Thursday? The answer to that is,
00:46:20
Speaker
sporadically, irregularly, and not at all at a world-class level, if I'm being candid. Just recently, I went back to the five-minute journal, and I've had two or three incredible days. Now, is it because of that? Not necessarily, but it's rooting my day in something. There's no doubt about it, but the idea that I could sit here and tell you and your listeners that I have a world-class routine would be disingenuous.
00:46:49
Speaker
My routine during the school year is one thing. My routine in the summer is another. I'm doing some coaching. The bottom line, though, is you and your listeners deserve something practical. So things like, let's not check the email before I get out of bed. That has worked incredibly well recently. You know, something as funny as going to settings and hitting mail and just not having any alerts pop up. How ridiculously basic is that? But it's freed me up so much.
00:47:18
Speaker
I've been trying to drink good coffee. I've been trying to exercise a little bit more, but I guess the answer to your question is the most important thing that's helped me specifically has been diet.
Impact of Media and Storytelling
00:47:31
Speaker
My wife has helped me with my diet so much to the point where I feel like a new person, and when people complain to me that they're not having a good day, in a very non-condescending way, I just say, hey, how's your sleep and diet been recently? And it's almost always linked.
00:47:48
Speaker
But what your question really calls to mind, Brendan, is the idea that that's a place where I really need to attack so that I can grow more.
00:48:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's something to be said for, I'm obsessed with morning routines, and I've been obsessed with them for years, and I'm still trying to dial mine in in a way that I can put it on kind of like an autopilot and not have to think about it. I can just go be like a pilot, just hit the check boxes, and yeah, we're gonna hit a nice cruising altitude and no turbulence.
00:48:23
Speaker
You know what's funny? You said it right. I'm obsessed with them, too. I love morning routines. People I read, they always say, well, it doesn't matter what your routine is, as long as you have one. And then on the other side of my mouth, I don't have one. But I can give you a glimpse into this one. I live 45 minutes away from where I teach. So my morning is pretty fast and rapid during the weekdays. But my first period starts at 8.03. And I am the most awake teacher in the building. And my students are not ready for that.
00:48:52
Speaker
12th grade, why are you so excited? Because I woke up at six. I mean, you guys, I'm in mid-season form. You live five minutes from the school. So just on a basic level, and you know what, this is a great time to mention this, we bought our house eight years ago, and eight years ago I started listening to podcasts. I haven't had the radio on in my car in eight years.
00:49:18
Speaker
And it's the idea, if you've never heard it before, of turning your car into a classroom. That can't help but spill over into my life. So I think that moving 45 minutes north of my school has made me a better teacher, a better learner, and is one of the main reasons why I do a podcast now.
00:49:39
Speaker
What would you consider books or documentaries and that you watch or rewatch specifically the ones that resonate so well with you that you go back to those books over and over again and those documentaries maybe if you're a documentary watcher like if you go back to those again and again. It's funny and thinking about that question.
00:50:01
Speaker
The rewatches are the fictional pieces, the Goodfellas, Rudy, Swingers, Hoosiers, No Country for Old Men, Fargo, those kind of things. Documentaries, I don't know if I've ever rewatched a documentary. It's amazing. And I'm looking, I'm saying, I want to give Brendan a good answer here. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't rewatch things. I think I'm too much moving on to the next thing, but this is how I think about it.
00:50:30
Speaker
I quote documentaries, quote movies, quote books incessantly to the point where a lot of my students and people that I mentor will say, how do you remember all that? That's my rewatching, right? That's my thing. So, you know, in terms of documentaries, Giro, you know, Giro Dreams of Sushi is an all timer. Yeah. There's a there's I don't know if we would quite call it a documentary, but the idea of the staircase. Have you seen the staircase? No. Okay. Well,
00:50:58
Speaker
If you've stayed tuned this long, the staircase is a seven-part true story, I'll call it, that is just off the charts, okay? I'm not gonna say anything more about it. Don't Google it. Find a way to get it. It's incredible, absolutely incredible. But in terms of rewatching it and actually answering your question, I am only rewatching them in the sense that I share them with others.
00:51:23
Speaker
You know what? Documentaries, I rewatched Giro Dreams of Sushi probably six or seven times. And I watch some 30 for 30 documentaries over and over again because those are like magazine stories to me. But in documentary form, like I the Jimmy Connors won the one that Brian Koppelman and David Levine did. I probably watched that four or five times. And on the fourth and fifth time, I had a notebook double spread out just blocking out how they structured it.
00:51:53
Speaker
And it was just so cool to see how they went from one scene to the next one, how they got super granular on one particular moment in history. And that's kind of my favorite kind of journalism, is that type of narrative story. It suits my taste. And I know you're interviewing me, but I gotta get something here and ask you.
00:52:19
Speaker
What are you looking for when you rewatch it? Because I haven't even been thinking about it like that.
00:52:23
Speaker
I'm looking at how they transition between between scenes between themes and scenes to like whether they're talking about how Jimmy Connors was like this counter cultural tennis player coming up through the 70s and I was actually basically had every quote every person that they had I kind of had on a stopwatch to I'm like how long are they quoting these people on Wow and it was like eight to twelve seconds by and large like clockwork and
00:52:53
Speaker
And so then I was just seeing like, oh, how are they structuring this? And I timed the big moment of that was the, I think the round four match against Krixstein, which they say, you know, up and comer, they were friends, blah, blah, blah. And they took about 15 to 18 minutes, I think, on that one section right in the middle of the movie. And that was kind of like the big crux of the whole thing.
Revisiting Literature and Learning
00:53:21
Speaker
And so, yeah, I was kind of timing the whole thing, like, alright, how much time are they spending on this, this, this, building this, going back to this, then forward. You know, if there was slow times in the tournament, they sort of dialed up some of the other narrative elements. And so anyway, I was just really breaking that down.
00:53:42
Speaker
Yeah, so you must realize that you're in the one half of one percent of people in the world that would do that. I mean, that is a compliment. There's no question. You have to realize that, right?
00:53:57
Speaker
And I approach books a lot like that, too. If a book really stands out to me, probably the best book I've read in a long time is Liz Gilbert's The Last American Man. And she wrote that book, this predated Eat, Pray, Love by five years. I think she's a magazine reporter for a long time. So before she was famous, she wrote this book, which ended up being a National Book Award finalist.
00:54:22
Speaker
And it's one of the single best narrative nonfiction books I've ever read. It's such a great profile of one person. And she is just incisively funny throughout the whole thing, too. I mean, she's just whip smart and funny. And it's great. I almost started rereading it right again when I finished it. But I had to put it down because for the podcast, I have to read a lot of books. So I have to keep going forward a lot.
00:54:48
Speaker
And you know what? Yeah, you're making me think of so many things. This is first of all, I'm going to steal that move on a book and I'm going to try to or a movie. I'm going to do that soon. So thank you for that. But you know what you're making me think about? And this proves my point from earlier about like talking it out makes me learn. I have a lot to catch up on. My youth was spent playing baseball and sports, not reading a lot, not watching movies critically, just watching for fun. So I think part of me, if I'm being honest, feels the catch up game where I can't give a book
00:55:19
Speaker
that much attention. I need to learn something else. I have to be more familiar with another author. I'm not saying that's totally healthy, but I think that's something that I'm dealing with. Yeah. There are those two schools of thought really that there's so much out there that why waste time rereading, rewatching, and you can use the same
00:55:41
Speaker
the same information to defend the other side too it's like because there's so much out there you're never going to get to it all so you might if you see something that really just really strikes a chord with you why not spend more time with it i read gatsby every year so like why not just like i love that book i get more out of it every time i read it it's so tight and lean and that's another book i kind of map out all right what's happening here why he starts with this quote with his advice his dad gave him and then it
00:56:10
Speaker
And so you know you just start breaking it down. Oh, that's how we did it. You know this is why you know Hemingway starts Sun Also Rises talking about Robert Kahn and he cut out the first whole chapter at Fitzgerald's behest or whatever that chapter was before you just start really getting into the bones of things and I'd almost rather do that then just keep trying to add another pile to the
Podcast Aspirations and Mentoring
00:56:34
Speaker
Though I always want to keep reading new stuff, I do want to sit back and reread the masters and you can learn so much from a lot of those things, contemporary or dead writers too. Wow, I absolutely love that. I love that.
00:56:52
Speaker
And so going forward with your podcast and a lot of the work you're doing, where do you want to take it? Where do you see it going? And what ultimately do you want people to keep taking away from the wonderful work you're doing?
00:57:10
Speaker
Well, thank you. I want to keep interviewing interesting people and people I find interesting. And that list is almost endless. I can learn something from everybody. So I'm excited about that. I am definitely not one of those people that is looking to leave the teaching world. I'm someone that's an and guy. I'm a I want to be the best English teacher I can be this year. And I want to create things on on my own. Well, not on my own. I was going to say on the side, that doesn't feel right. And right. I want to teach and create.
00:57:39
Speaker
So right now, I'm obsessed with the idea of the interview. I'm obsessed with speaking to people and mentoring them. If anyone gets anything out of this, like I said, I would love to be someone that people think of as someone who can come and speak to a group. In August, I'm going to be speaking to a group of coaches for the Cannonball Foundation. I'm thrilled and honored that they thought of me. Yeah, I mean, it's touching. It doesn't get old for me. There's not someone that's gonna call me up and say, would you speak to this group?
00:58:08
Speaker
And me say, oh, are you kidding me? I mean, that's just the farthest thing, farthest thing from my mind. So if you say to me, you know, where do I want to go personally and I want to help people, you know, as a resource, I would love to point people in the direction of how to optimize their time. There is something as quote unquote mundane as a great cup of tea and something as profound as kind of a creative process.
00:58:30
Speaker
to be seen as a resource because of who I've come in contact with. That would be phenomenal. Another part of it is kind of what I see in an up and coming podcast or Patrick O'Shaughnessy recently said the goal of his podcast was to have no goal.
00:58:45
Speaker
just to have great conversations and who knows where it leads. So, you know, Kevin and others remind me of that also. I'm a how guy, as we talked about. I don't have a really clear destination in my mind of what the finish line looks like. I want to just continue to improve the podcast every episode, and I want to speak to more people. So if I could speak with people, if I could speak to people, if I could work with them, that's what would really, really fire me up as I go forward.
Conclusion and Encouragement to Listeners
00:59:15
Speaker
Awesome. Well, with respect to your time, Joe, I could talk to you for another three hours and have a great time doing it. But in respect to your time, I'll let you get out of here now. Thank you so much for doing this and doing the work you do because people are going to
00:59:30
Speaker
are only gonna start getting to know what it is you're doing now if they don't already and you're being a great contributor to the world of creators and teachers and learners. So just keep up the great work and we'll be in touch down the road and thanks again for coming on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Oh my God, it means so much that you reached out and I wanna continue this relationship and like you said it best, if anyone gets something out of this conversation, it was time well spent
00:59:57
Speaker
You have my number, and I would love to be in touch. Fantastic, Joe. Thanks again. And yeah, just keep on doing what you're doing, and we'll talk later. That's another episode of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. There will be no joke this week about my wife not subscribing to the podcast. I know. I know.
01:00:19
Speaker
I will ask you to leave a review, though. In exchange for not having to listen to a joke, I ask that you leave a review. It takes less than 60 seconds, but will help me forever. So share this with a friend. Keep challenging yourself during your work. May the road rise up to meet you, and may the riff always be at your back. See you next week.