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Philadelphia Indie Book Awards on the Price Writers Podcast Episode 32
19 Plays1 month ago
Fresh from Philadelphia, where Jeremy accepted his Indie Book Award win for The Price Writer, he and Catrin sat down to unpack the standout titles from the awards ceremony, including a few that might just change the way you lead, think, and work. In this episode, they explore three books that caught their attention and offer surprising relevance to pricing professionals: The Productive Perfectionist: Catrin reflects on the tension between perfection and performance, and why this book resonated with her as a leader. How We Choose to Show Up: Jeremy dives into energy management, presence, and how the choices we make affect our impact at work. It’s Not (All) Your Fault: A thought-provoking systems-thinking lens on self-help, this book challenges some of the most ingrained narratives about personal responsibility. Expect candid takes, practical reflections, and a few disagreements on which titles truly earned their awards. Price Writers transforms pricing professionals into the most respected leaders in insurance. Find out more at http://www.pricewriters.com #priceWriters #InsurancePricing #CareerGrowth #Podcast #PriceWritersPodcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Prize Writer Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
just have so many great thoughts though, don't we? know, I know, I know.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to the Price Writer Podcast with me, Katrin Townsend, and Jeremy Keating. Join us as we explore and discuss the world of insurance-related books, offering our insights, recommendations, and crucially, how to apply it to insurance pricing.
Award Wins and Notable Books
00:00:31
Speaker
We were recently in Philadelphia where Jeremy won another award at the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. In this episode, we're talking about some of the other books that won awards at this prestigious event.
00:00:44
Speaker
Hi, Jeremy. Hello, Katrin. So first things first, how does it feel win your fourth award for the Pricewriters book? It felt amazing to win another award for Pricewriter. I just think it's so wonderful that the book is being recognized at international award ceremonies because it is from a niche subject and I do believe it's quite unusual for something so niche to be recognized so widely. So it's really thrilling to me to get that recognition and going to Philadelphia was just amazing. I enjoyed the whole time I was there. It was just brilliant take to be there and we got to meet lots of authors and we picked three books that also won awards, particularly because we felt that they might be useful to pricing professionals.
00:01:33
Speaker
in their day-to-day jobs. So we thought we'd read them, find out just how good they are and let you know if we recommend you reading them.
Perfectionism in Pricing: 'The Productive Perfectionist'
00:01:40
Speaker
So Prize Writers was the finalist in the business book category, but we've also chosen three other books that won awards.
00:01:49
Speaker
They are The Productive Perfectionist, How We Choose to Show Up and It's Not All Your Fault. Yep, so the book that really jumped out on me from just reading the book list even before the event was The Productive Perfectionist by Catherine C. Mayer.
00:02:09
Speaker
I chose this because I always just thought of myself as having perfectionist tendencies and obviously I always want to be super productive. was just going to say how productive you are.
00:02:20
Speaker
Thank you. yeah and quite the perfectionist as well. um Oh, do you think so? Yeah, I definitely feel like I have perfectionist tendencies and I always to be productive. I'm particularly just, i think a lot of people in pricing have these tendencies.
00:02:35
Speaker
and Sometimes we can clash in these ways as well, actually. Some of us are a bit results focused. Can we just get it deployed, please? And other people a bit like, oh, I'd just like another couple of weeks to analyze stuff a bit and more, please. Yeah.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, so this book works on the premise that perfection is holding you back from achieving your potential. In fact, the subtitle is A Woman's Guide to Smashing the Shackles of Perfectionism.
00:03:01
Speaker
So definitely has that that view in mind that perfection is holding you back. And she particularly talks about the perfectionism where you think you should do it rather than what you want to do. So kind of shoulds rather than actually what what really drives you.
00:03:23
Speaker
There was a lot in this book that I liked. It has lots of really practical tips and it has a lot of like quizzes and worksheet type exercises that you can do along with it. So it's it's really interactive and and quite good for discovering more about yourself.
00:03:39
Speaker
What kind of perfectionism you have. It uses a lot of sports and analogies. That's her background. And she tells you about it a lot. You do love it. So if you're in into sports, particularly tennis and skiing metaphors, you might really like this book.
00:03:56
Speaker
How does one become a productive perfectionist? Because that does seem like the like two conflicting things, really. It can be hard to be a perfectionist and be productive. Really? Yeah.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's mostly about being productive in spite of being a perfectionist, I would say. one of things she talks about is perfectionism versus situational wins. And this really resonated with me because I think that we see this lot of pricing teams.
00:04:23
Speaker
So a situational win is aiming for the best results for you and your key stakeholders. And the focus of situational wins is about gaining agreement on the standard for success.
00:04:37
Speaker
I think that resonates a lot because, yeah I've been in teams where we find the pricing value of good rather than perfect or, you know, the 80-20 rule. it's It's very similar. The drive for good enough rather than absolutely perfect.
00:04:51
Speaker
But equally, we have to balance that against the fact that we don't want errors and we do have a lot of people who very detailed speakers definitely want it all to be right. So I think that's a real tension in our space right now.
00:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree with that. I do think that's a problem in pricing teams because I can understand conceptually being like, okay, let's get 80-20 so that we can get stuff deployed and move fast and so on.
00:05:19
Speaker
But on the flip side, you do not want errors in your calculations. so So it's kind of some places I can see you can move fast and don't need everything perfect. Other places you really probably do need to put the work in and and get rid of those errors.
Agile Pricing Strategies: Flexibility vs Inflexibility
00:05:34
Speaker
um them Yeah, it just, it seems to be a topic that's coming up quite a lot at the moment in pricing teams, you know, this move towards quicker and more agile pricing. And in fact, at our inspiring pricing conference in May, Maiden Blue actually talked about the importance of quick deployments as being the key thing in the pricing system, which I think is probably overlooked a lot of time, but the importance of quick deployments as part of a control and monitoring cycle because if you can deploy something twice or three times a week, even if you've got it wrong, you can fix it quite quickly and you know you can do all of that test and learn type attitude. So I think we see quite a big difference in pricing teams at the moment. The ones that have a less agile pricing deployment system are still very much in that, well, it has to be perfect because we get one shot at this every week.
00:06:30
Speaker
versus the teams that ah have a much more flexible setup and can change the rates daily if they want to, being much more open to this age to twenty or and and situational win, as she calls it.
Presence and Readiness: Insights from 'How We Choose to Show Up'
00:06:43
Speaker
So overall, what do you think of the vet, Katrin? Is it one we're going to recommend? don't think so. and it was quite interesting. She doesn't really talk much about...
00:06:58
Speaker
why so many people, particularly so many women, count themselves as perfectionists. She mentioned some stats in the beginning of the book where it shows that women are much more likely to call themselves a perfectionist than men, but she doesn't really delve into that at all.
00:07:12
Speaker
um It's very much focused on what you personally can do. You should lighten You should buy a homey-goo. Have you tried tennis? um So there's lots of you know things that that you can do which which may or may not help. yeah and I think there are some real gems in here, such as focusing on what you're doing that you feel you should be doing rather than what you actually want to do, for example. So it is a good book, particularly if you do have that tendency...
00:07:40
Speaker
But I think that there are other books that capture the same vibes. But yeah, did really make me think about what do we lose in pricing when we aim for perfect instead of Gris enough.
00:07:53
Speaker
and So, Jeremy, at the event, I saw you picking up a book after speaking to the author. Yeah, that's right, Catherine. So we met Marcy Axelrod, who is the author of How We Choose to Show Up.
00:08:06
Speaker
And I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of her book at the ceremony. And i I like it. I agree with the premise. It's about how... we can choose to show up for things. So what she means by that is, do you remember times when you've been in a meeting or you've just had a day where you felt like, I am in the zone, like I am good today.
00:08:29
Speaker
I've understood everyone. I'm hitting stuff. I'm doing really well. So the book's about how do you get yourself to be like that all of the time? I know this is going to be another time where Jeremy's like, it's a beautifully typeset book. But honestly, this is a beautifully typeset book. It is is absolutely lovely.
00:08:49
Speaker
So there's all these heat maps in it about how well you're doing at showing up. And she measures people on different scales. Here's another one. It's just a really lovely, lovely typeset book.
00:09:02
Speaker
There's three levels that she defines here. So there are truly showing up. So this is where we're really hitting it. There's just showing up. It's kind of in the middle and I think this is probably where most of us live a lot of the time.
00:09:15
Speaker
And there is when we are barely there. I think we can all think at times where we are barely there. And it's not just about work, it's about our personal lives as well. And she uses quite a few examples from dates that she'd been on too, which is quite interesting. So ah she's anonymized the names, but they are real dates that she's had with people. And she measures people on whether they were truly there or just showing up.
00:09:37
Speaker
She talks about some of the dates she she went on where um people were not like ready. so I think there's one particular one where the chap she's on a date with is just very focused on telling her all about the problems he's got in his life.
00:09:53
Speaker
And it's like, those are interesting things. And I can understand him wanting to share them, but he didn't come ready for a date. He came ready to offload his problems onto to another person. and i So it's that, like thinking beforehand, what energy am I needing to bring to this thing that I'm about to do?
00:10:12
Speaker
And even just things like that should help you to improve. She breaks down the idea of being truly showing up into three areas. So you've got grounding, readiness and what she calls all intelligence.
Prioritizing Energy and Presence
00:10:28
Speaker
and So I'll just say that again. So it's all-telligent. So instead of intelligence, it's about your all-telligent. Being grounded iss really about being secure and strong. So it's people who are like rocks to you. So you know that that person is steady. You know that you can rely on them.
00:10:49
Speaker
Readiness is about being prepared and composed so you arrive at things in the right mindset. If it's work, you've done the correct preparation so you know full well what you're going to be doing in that meeting or in that conversation.
00:11:03
Speaker
And then intelligence, I would describe as read the room. so it's about feeling the emotions of other people and acting accordingly.
00:11:16
Speaker
These three things together, if you do them well, you will be truly showing up. It's something actually we talk about in our time management module, our price factors, is about grouping tasks by the energy needed for them rather than what the tasks are or the urgency, which is the more common rate of group tasks.
00:11:36
Speaker
If you've got lots of emails, they all use the same energy. There might be some other tasks that require a bit of brain energy, shall we say, or some that require a bit more social energy. So trying to match the kind of energy tend to have on specific days or specific times of day can be really powerful. I find that really helpful. I know that often on Monday morning, i have got a lot of that energy to show up and interact with people.
00:12:03
Speaker
Midweek, I need a bit more energy. A bit more quiet time, a little bit more time to to really focus on my own work and work the more independently. So two tasks in that way is one when I think that you can make the most of the energy you have.
00:12:18
Speaker
And like you say, it's not about manufacturing ah certain energy for every single meeting. If you can batch some of that, it's a lot easier to generate and maintain And she also talks about how these things work in different parts of your life. So she actually talks about how how you are with say partner or your children or in the office or when you're doing sports and whether you are doing these ones.
00:12:42
Speaker
And she also talks about how you can't possibly be a hundred percent for everything. You just will never have the energy to be truly showing up for all of these things.
00:12:53
Speaker
She actually goes through prioritizing things and whether, they say, you want to be truly there for work or truly there for your children and which which ones are you going to decide belong in which priorities. That's quite that's quite powerful, actually, and something I think we should consider.
00:13:11
Speaker
So instead of being sorted yeah sort of sort of showing up or barely there for everything, we choose where we're going to make the most impact. So i I think it's good that she admits you can't really do everything.
00:13:26
Speaker
i felt, on the whole, i i agree with the premise, and I think she's really right about trying to do these things. Janay, she actually, there's a chapter in here where she's like, um I was going to write a chapter about how I did my best to show up to everything for a month.
00:13:47
Speaker
And she was like, but the chapter doesn't exist because it was just too hard. Good luck. So, um yeah, it's like, I think it's the final chapter and she's just like, yeah, it's actually just really hard to try and do this all the time.
00:14:01
Speaker
And that's a bit like, well, it's honest of you to actually put that in the book, but it does sort of detract from the message. I think what's really interesting about that though is that when we're showing up, we are giving, we're giving our energy out, almost transmitting I suppose. Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
00:14:21
Speaker
But i think there's a real need to recognize that, firstly, even for extroverts, we can't just give our energy all the time. You actually do time to recuperate, to plan, to have downtime.
00:14:37
Speaker
you know We need downtime to do our best thinking a lot of the time. if That's true. constantly showing up in a really intense way, either putting stuff out there or really intensely taking information in.
00:14:54
Speaker
Where's the time for ideas to just sit and percolate and swirl around in your mind and combine with different things. And then you have a totally new fresh idea.
00:15:06
Speaker
So I think actually you wouldn't want to show up all the time. ah It's more about choosing what really needs that energy and that attention versus what can you realistically give in a sustainable way?
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, you're actually right. You don't really have the energy to to do these things all the time. In fact, there's something about the way the book is written that just doesn't speak to me. And I just I wonder if it's something to do with being an introvert, actually, because, um yeah, it just doesn't feel like it hits and I could achieve this for me.
00:15:46
Speaker
Almost for introverts is even more important because you have even less people energy. that's probably fair actually. Yeah, that's true. So I probably say it's even more important for those people. all I think there probably are things you can do. Like said, grouping tasks by energy, for example, trying to limit the number of meetings.
00:16:05
Speaker
If you find meetings very energy sapping or you know that meetings are the place that you are barely there most often. Don't go to fewer of them, how and whatever it is, delegating, get the info in an email, whatever it is.
00:16:18
Speaker
And I do wonder whether, wish that there are times when as a group, as a community, we are barely there. yeah And I think, for example, if you're in the office at three o'clock on a Friday, most people,
00:16:35
Speaker
are not giving their most intense, yeah less than ever done energy. Yeah, that's true. So what can you do instead that uses the energy that people are most likely to have at that time?
00:16:50
Speaker
Friday at three o'clock or five. I've once been invited to Friday five o'clock meeting. Yeah. that required a lot of intense energy and about this big modeling work stream. And I was like, that's not the energy that I'm giving out right now. I'm not, that's not possible for me.
00:17:06
Speaker
So I think there definitely is a ah thought around try and match the energy people will be likely to be giving out then. That's something we can all do, whether you're a manager, whether you're an analyst, particularly if you're a senior leader though as well.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's definitely true. Where I think the book is weaker is when it comes to how to actually improve these things, because they are hard. So you can measure yourself against these areas, but actually getting better at them is difficult.
00:17:38
Speaker
She's quite honest about this in the book. So it's almost like the foundation at the start of this is a subject to me. it now needs possibly her or other people to run with it and start putting in place the exercises and the things you can actually do.
00:17:52
Speaker
to to improve your showing up. So I'm going to say that I'm not going to recommend it for a pricing person because I don't think just for pricing you'll get much out of it.
00:18:02
Speaker
But if you are a person that's into self-help generally, i think it's worth a read, but be aware that most of the work will be on you. So she's going to open you up to these concepts and ideas of these things that you probably haven't really realized as things and you ought to be better at.
00:18:20
Speaker
But I don't
Systemic Issues in Self-Help: Sharon Podobnik's Critique
00:18:21
Speaker
feel it's going to be the one that you need to actually improve at these things. I really like the concept though of showing up. I don't think shared this before, but my mum had three values that she always used to tell her.
00:18:33
Speaker
Her mum died a couple of years ago, for people who don't know. And the three values were show up, work hard, help others. And she was would always drill a drill into us that you always show up. I remember a time I was probably like six, six or seven or something.
00:18:55
Speaker
And my sister was few years older and my sister wasn't that good at math. She was behind the rest of the class. And the teacher had said to mom and dad, like, you need to make her some extra maths books. Just try and just get her to back up to average.
00:19:10
Speaker
And, you know, they did every single day. And I ended up having do it too as well, because that's what younger siblings do, right? So the older one has to do some extra math. But we both had these daily math books that we would do.
00:19:22
Speaker
And after, i think it was a term or two terms of doing it, my sister, Sija, had said to my mom, yeah, she's that average. She's on track. You don't need to worry about the extra math. And...
00:19:34
Speaker
My mum said to my sister's teacher, she said, but she's now, she's gone from being behind to being on track within term or two. Why on earth would we stop now?
00:19:48
Speaker
Oh, wow. That's very good, isn't it? Wow. And so i've we've always had this feeling, you know, that... actually showing up to do to do the work made such a ah big difference.
00:20:03
Speaker
yeah So that's always just been one of my my values. And they're the three values that I try and instill in my kids, but also in my own life as well. I am sorry about your mum, Tatrin. She does sound like she was was an awesome woman.
00:20:19
Speaker
i i I really respect the idea of showing up actually. There's a saying that decisions are made by those that show up. And it it's just a way of saying that if you actually get involved in things, you can be the one that's really making a difference and making things happen.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, i I actually like the concept of energy. It made me think about the energy I bring sometimes. um i but I would like to think that most of the time I'm truly showing up, but I certainly would say ah lot of the time for work I am, I'm very engaged.
00:20:48
Speaker
There are times when I'd say I'm just showing up and I... If I'm honest with myself, there maybe are times when I'm barely there and that's not something nice to admit to. So it does make you think about how you behave in the world.
00:21:00
Speaker
And just that, I do think the best advices I took from it is the readiness one actually. And I think a lot of us could do with that. So you know that you're going to XYZ meeting today.
00:21:10
Speaker
Have you read the agenda? Have you looked at the slides? Are you prepared if you thought to yourself about the questions you might ask before turning up? And with less than sort of five minutes to go and then arriving and being like, oh, this is on the agenda today. Oh yeah, i actually i need to engage with that, but I'm not prepared, which is a genuine thing that's happened to me before. I think the concept of being barely there is interesting as well.
00:21:32
Speaker
I think the real question, if you're barely there, is where are you? That's fair point, yeah. And we've all done it, right? We've all gone to a meeting that we don't think is going to be that valuable for us, that we don't think we're going to have to say anything to simply so that we can get half an hour of uninterrupted email time.
00:21:53
Speaker
Because if you're in a meeting, then no one can stab you further, right? So, um you know, we've all we've all done that. and So I think when you're burning there, it really should just but just spark that in your mind.
00:22:04
Speaker
Where are you? Where would you rather be at this time as well? Sounds like some really interesting ideas. And the third book that I chose, actually, i this didn't jump out to me from the list of award winners specifically before the event.
00:22:18
Speaker
But while we were there, got talking to the wonderful author oh It's Not All Your Fault, Sharon Podobnik. And she just had a wonderful energy about her. So I absolutely had to pick up her book.
00:22:31
Speaker
at the event and it's so funny that we're talking about self-help books today because her book is I mean it says on the back it says this could be the last self-help book you ever read it's ah so it's it's it's really quite witty um it's basically I would say systems thinking for self-help in some ways is the antithesis of the self-help genre.
00:22:55
Speaker
And it does focus a lot on societal narratives told to and about women. So it definitely has a real gender lens in it She does kind of recognize that bias.
00:23:08
Speaker
Katrin, what do you think about self-help books?
00:23:13
Speaker
not big fan of them, actually. i i often find that you go to it with a problem and it just gives you a long bucket list of actions that you need to do in order to solve the problem. But actually, a lot of the problems that I face are because I don't have enough time or because I already have way too many actions.
00:23:32
Speaker
And so i think that sometimes... they They don't work for me particularly well. And what Sharon does so wonderfully is in some ways actually addresses the question that the productive perfectionist book didn't answer. You know, why do so many women specifically call themselves perfectionists?
00:23:54
Speaker
And is just telling women to lighten up, go hula hoop, just be less of a perfectionist, network better, is that really the solution?
00:24:05
Speaker
Or should we look to treat the source of the problem, which is really the societal narratives of women? So, Katrin, did the book make you think at all about times you've maybe used systems thinking?
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah, we talk about quite a lot of work, don't we, systems thinking? And I know a lot of teams might use something along the lines of the five whys. So if something's gone wrong, ah deployment maybe has gone wrong, and um you might say, why did it go wrong? Well, because of bad communication. Why was there bad communication? Because so-and-so was on holiday didn't, you know, whatever it is.
00:24:42
Speaker
So it's actually a really powerful tool that we use in other areas, but we don't tend to use it on ourselves when it comes to self-help. So i thought that was a really interesting take. It is a little bit long. So while i definitely recommend the first kind of 70%, the last bit of the book, she just gives you some ideas on the kind of issues that you could go out and tackle. yeah But yeah, we met Sharon at the event. She is such a breath of fresh air. love talking to her.
00:25:14
Speaker
Like say, the book is not terribly relevant for pricing, um so I won't recommend it. But I do want to give it a special shout out, especially if you're someone who is reading a lot of self-help.
00:25:27
Speaker
She particularly calls out Brene Brown and Cheryl Sandberg, and she calls them out as they are well-meaning. But... they are perpetuating the narratives.
00:25:39
Speaker
I did really, really enjoy this book. And thank you very much, Sharon, for giving the copy. So yeah, really interesting take from self-help. And also perfect for deep thinkers. I think a lot of us in pricing really don't like just to tackle the surface level thing.
00:25:55
Speaker
We like to go deeper in our
Preview: Inclusivity in Business Environments for Women
00:25:57
Speaker
thinking. So I think this would be great for anyone in that situation.
00:26:03
Speaker
Awesome. Okay. So next time we're going to be talking about win-win, which about making business work better to attract women. So thank you for joining us. And I'm really looking forward to seeing you next time.
00:26:22
Speaker
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