Ep054: Science-based advice on achieving career success and happiness with Eric Barker

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TalentGrow Show ep054 Science based advice on achieving career success and happiness with Eric Barker and Host Halelly Azulay

Many of the answers we look for, that we think are big puzzles, actually already have solutions but have been tied up in the long, dark corridors of academia. This is what Eric Barker, the blogger behind “Barking up the Wrong Tree”, sought to change with his blog that brings science-based advice for everyone on how to achieve success and happiness. In this episode, we discuss Eric’s brand new book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong and some of his most interesting research-backed insights for leaders. Eric shares a powerful exercise to determine whether a goal is realistic or not, explains the science of why daydreaming saps our motivation, dishes about how to be a Giver without being a doormat, and shares an actionable tip for starting each day on the right foot. This is definitely a must-hear episode so check it out, subscribe, and share!

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

Listen to Stitcher
  • What Eric realized about most of the maxims on success (3:37)
  • When is quitting actually really helpful? (9:47)
  • Eric explains the steps of the WOOP (Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan) method, a powerful exercise to help us go from mere dreaming to actual accomplishment (10:32)
  • Why daydreaming saps our motivation (11:20)
  • How the WOOP exercise can help us determine whether a goal is realistic or not (12:54)
  • How Halelly reacted to the chapter in Eric’s book that starts by describing the many benefits of being a jerk (Hint: she was relieved when it eventually rounded a corner and made the case that it’s ultimately better to be nice) (14:22)
  • What drives Eric crazy and why? (15:20)
  • What factor is critical in determining whether or not a person is good to you? (16:23)
  • Why is Moldova the “unhappiest place on Earth”? (18:00)
  • What we need to do if we want to maximize people’s ability to feel safe and behave ethically (19:06)
  • Eric explains Adam Grant’s research on how to succeed as a giver (19:47)
  • In what environment are you “dead” if you’re a giver? In what environment is being a giver wonderful? (21:39)
  • What condition can result in an enormous amount of value produced in a given organization or group? (21:52)
  • Eric shares one of his favorite quotes (23:49)
  • What do we normally discount but actually has enormous power over us? (24:11)
  • Eric sums up the focus of his new book and explains why he’s so excited about it (25:26)
  • Eric shares an actionable tip for starting each day out on the right foot (Halelly loved it!) (26:25)
  • The best way to stay in touch with Eric (27:47) 

RESOURCES

ABOUT ERIC BARKER

Eric Barker’s humorous, practical blog, "Barking Up the Wrong Tree", presents science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life. Over 290,000 people subscribe to his weekly newsletter and his content is syndicated by Time Magazine, The Week, and Business Insider. He has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Financial Times. Eric is also a sought-after speaker and interview subject, and has been invited to speak at MIT, Yale, West Point, the University of Pennsylvania, NPR affiliates, and on morning television.

Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.

Halelly: Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and this week I’m happy to have Eric Barker, who is one of my favorite bloggers who has a brand new book out called Barking Up the Wrong Tree. That’s also the name of his blog, which I’ve been following religiously for several years now, and he has been trying to take a lot of the maxims and advice out there about success and happiness and figure out if the research really bares it out. So in this conversation, we talk about some of his most interesting research-backed insights for leaders, like you. He shares a great exercise about how to figure out whether a goal is realistic or not and whether you should pursue it or maybe quit. He explains the science of why daydreaming can zap your motivation, actually, and what to do instead. He gives you a great tip for how to start everyday on the right foot and lots and lots more. So, I think it’s going to give you lots of insights and a jolt for action, I hope, and I’d love to hear what you thought about it. So here it is, Eric Barker, on the TalentGrow Show.

Welcome back. This is Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and this week I have one of my favorite bloggers on. I’m so happy to have Eric Barker with us. Eric is the blogger behind Barking Up the Wrong Tree, which is very humorous and practical blog that I’ve been following for years that presents science-based answers and expert insights on how to be awesome at life. There are over 290,000 people that subscribe to his weekly newsletter, including me, and I love his content. He’s been syndicated by Time Magazine, the Week, Business Insider, he’s been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Atlantic Monthly, The Financial Times. He’s been featured on NPR, on West Point, Yale and MIT as a speaker and morning television. Eric is a really interesting curator of content, and I’m really happy to have him on with us, because we’re going to talk about his brand new book that just released a week ago called Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Eric, welcome to the TalentGrow Show.

Eric: Thank you so much.

Halelly: We always start with a journey down memory lane. I want everybody to hear a little bit about your professional journey. Where did you start, how did you get to where you are now, and then we’ll start talking about some of the ideas in your book.

Eric: had a very unconventional career path, and that’s kind of what led me to start the blog and to write the book. I graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a degree in philosophy, so I was really only qualified to climb a mountaintop and contemplate joblessness. But then I moved to Los Angeles, I was a screenwriter in Hollywood. I wrote for Disney and Fox and after about a decade or so of that, I also got a Master’s Degree from UCLA Film School, but after 10 years of the ups and downs and insanity of Hollywood, I went and got an MBA. I worked in videogame marketing for Nintendo and for Rational Games, and one thing I just realized is that a lot of the maxims that we have about success, they’re not as kind of one-size-fits-all as you’d think. We hear a lot of stuff that may or may not be true about how to be successful and get what you want out of life. I had such an unconventional career path that a lot of things didn’t really apply to me. After I graduated from business school, I was a little disillusioned then. I was looking for answers and I figured whatever I found, I would start sharing with other people. That’s when I started Barking Up the Wrong Tree, the blog. I just started looking at research papers and science and started realizing that a to of the answers that we look for that we think are big puzzles, there are actually already solutions for, but they’re tied up in the long, dark corridors of academia. I started talking to experts and I started building the blog as I was working a full-time job. It just kind of grew and grew. Then I left the job to focus on the blog and finally I decided to attack these success questions directly and that’s really what the book is about.

Halelly: Wow, so you’re right. It has been a very interesting path. I’m really curious, just a little bit before we get into some of the ideas in your book, because I always like to bring on guests who seem to be really successful at navigating this dual career path, and you did that for a while, right? It’s a great problem to have that your blog has grown so successful that you’re able to quit your day job and just do that full-time and just be writing. But when you started it, it sounds like you were following your own curiosity and then this sort of need to share it with others? And you did that while also obviously having a successful day job. Tell us a little bit more about how did you decide to do the blog and then how did you manage that dual career?

Eric: Started largely on a lark, where I was curious about the internet, curious about social media and like I said, I was disillusioned and thought a lot of advice and maxims that I had gotten on success and a lot of areas of life – from happiness to productivity to whatever else – and just went to what seemed to be the most trusted, legitimate source. That’s the thing about the internet, there’s no shortage of information, but trying to find good, reliable information is beyond the needle in a haystack. So what I concentrated on was just finding information that was beyond reproach or at least the best that was available at the time. Like I said, I was curious about it myself. There wasn’t any immediate motive for fame or wealth or anything like that. I just started posting these things up and initially I was just posting the abstracts to interesting studies. Then I started finding trends and cobbling those together as longer pieces and then I started interviewing the people behind them who had written the books or done the studies. Yeah, it was a big challenge to do that at the same time as a full-time job. I remember there were a few years there where I would wake up at 6:00, I’d work on the blog until 9:00, I’d be at work by 10:00, I’d work until 7:00 or 8:00. Hours at the videogame industry are a little bit different than your standard workforce. They come in a little bit later and they work a lot later. But I’d wake up around 6:00, work on the blog for around three hours, I’d shower and get to work. I’d work from like 10-7 or 8:00, I’d come home and basically I would read until I went to sleep, so that I would have something to write about the next day. That was generally about six days a week.

Halelly: Oh my gosh. Well, good. I’m glad you described this, because I think it really helps people get the sense that this is not something you do lightly on the side. You’re driven, you’re passionate and you’re really investing in it. I know that I’m pretty sure that I’ve read in a couple – at least in your blog, I’m almost sure it was in your blog – about how successful people really focus on sort of that one thing and then really pursue that by saying no to others. It sounds like you really model that.

Eric: On one hand I try to be as objective as possible, and on the other hand, certainly, everything that I read and look at that I post is getting filtered through me. Either I relate to it or I know I’m making that mistake and need to address it. Also I’ve learned from these things, where I read some of the stuff on productivity and stuff like that, and I start trying to implement it in my life and it’s funny, because I’ve seen myself to go from not being as productive and then screwing up the work/life balance issue. It’s always a process, over the years kind of learning and correcting one mistake, making another, but you’re kind of tic tacking back and forth like a boat and hopefully after a certain number of cycles, what you come to resembles a straight line.

Halelly: Cool. This is really related to one of the concepts I do want to talk about from your book and your blog, and that’s knowing when to stick it out and knowing when to give up. You call that grit and quit or grit or quit. Of course you need to get a copy of this book. It was just released. It’s so huge and full – it’s not huge, I shouldn’t say that. That sounds scary. It’s so full of interesting stuff that I actually really had a hard time narrowing down what we’re going to talk about in this 30-minute podcast, but you should definitely get it, because it is written in such an accessible and funny way, with lots and lots of stories and examples. What I love about what you do in your blog and obviously you’ve done that in your book is that you sort of summarize it at the end. There’s just re-following up on everything that you talked about in a particular chapter, with the golden nugget. So it just helps make it even more accessible. Let’s talk about grit and quit. You have this method, whoop method, which is so much fun to say, that is a very clever way to help us decide when should we keep going when it’s hard and when should we quit?

Eric: It’s really interesting, because the issue of grit and resilience has really caught on, and understandably, because a lot of people struggle with that, but the problem is that it’s not as simple as, “Oh, we should just be more gritty.” If we never quit anything, I’d still be playing t-ball and watching cartoons and doing everything I did when I was 5. There are things you need to quit, and quitting is actually very helpful, because if you want to become an expert at something, if you want to be the best in your field, if you want to get that “10,000 hours of expertise,” you can’t do everything under the sun. The more things you quit, the more time you free up to apply grit to the things that really matter. So, that of course begs another question, which is, well, how do you know what to be gritty on and what to quit? Gabriele Oettingen, she’s at NYU and she found a really simple exercise that the research showed really helped people figure out when it was time for grit and when it was time for quit. Yes, it has the cute acronym of WOOP, and what it comes down to is that’s an acronym for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. And so the first step is quite fun and it’s something we all do on a regular basis. It’s wish. What is it that you want? And you can be as general as possible. You can say, “I want to be successful.” The problem is if we just stay at the wish stage, your brain is not really good at distinguishing between what you’re thinking about and what is real. And so when we stick at the wish stage, that actually doesn’t motivate us. In fact, it zaps our motivation. Your brain can be fooled into thinking you’ve already accomplished it, and that’s why when we daydream about goals too much, we often don’t end up doing them. So you need to second that.

You already wished. Now you need outcome. That is, what is the outcome you want? Rather than just, “Okay, I want to be successful,” how are you going to be successful? You might say, “Oh, I want to be a vice president at Google.” Okay. That’s doable. Then you need, the trickier, the third step which is obstacle, which is what is in your way? This is where the rubber meets the road. What is the problem here that has stopped you from doing it thus far? So if you say to yourself, “I don’t know anyone at Google,” that’s certainly an obstacle. And the fourth is a plan. Where you say, “Okay, how can I address this obstacle? I’m going to go on LinkedIn and I’m going to see if I do have a connection at Google and if not I’m going to see if I’m one degree out from someone. I’ll reach out to them and see if they can give my resume to HR.” So now you’ve gone from a wish to a specific outcome. You’ve addressed the primary obstacle and you have a plan for how to handle it.

Not only does this help people go from just dreaming to actually accomplishing things, but there was another fascinating result that was found in the research and that is that after doing the WOOP exercise, I people felt energized and then it was very likely that this was a realistic goal. That it was far more likely. This was a realistic goal and people would feel energized and they moved forward. If it was an unrealistic goal, if the wish was, “I want to be successful,” and then the outcome was, “I want to be King of France by Thursday,” then all the sudden people went through the WOOP exercise and they kind of felt not so good. So it was almost a barometer or a litmus test for how realistic this was, and it provided the motivation for people to move forward. So WOOP is something that can help you in the initial stages figure out whether something should be filed under grit or quit.

Halelly: Fabulous. I think it’s easy to understand and easy to remember. Listeners, I hope that you’ll give this a try. Again, there’s so much more in the book of course. One other thing I want to talk to you about from your book was the idea and the role of trust. You talk a little bit about the role of trust in society. You talk about the role of trust in organizations, in relationships at work, certainly at being a leader, and one of the chapters you have starts by describing all of these benefits of being a jerk. And it was like, I was making notes, I was reading and underlining, making noes in the margin, arguing with you. I don’t like this chapter at all! And I was so happy that we sort of rounded a corner and we started making all this case for why nice guys actually do finish last, I guess, or no, finish first? In the end. Like at last, they finish first. So it’s a very interesting kind of dichotomy that says maybe there are some quick wins being a jerk, but in the end, it destroys trust. You tie this to the country of Moldova. And you keep saying, “Don’t be a Moldovan.” So, let’s talk about it. Why do you think that is, that jerks do have a lot of success and why do you say that in the end, it’s better to be a nice guy?

Eric: What I was trying to do, with each chapter, I treat it like a court cast. I try to give both sides of the story, because frankly, it just drives me crazy when you read these platitude riddled books, just saying, “Oh be nice and everything will work out.” Because every one of us knows that's not true! Every one of us knows a jerk who got ahead. Every one of us knows that it’s not just enough. At least in every circumstance. We’ve got plenty of examples around us, so to me it’s disingenuous to be like, “Oh, just be nice and everything will work out.” We all know martyrs who work too hard, who try, who do too much, who get abused and taken advantage of. I just think people are in denial when it’s just, “Oh, boy, everything will be fine.” We know that’s not the case. And we all love to get hope and I try to definitely do that. But first and foremost, it’s like we’ve got to address the elephant in the room, is that bad guys sometimes do fine. The critical distinction in a lot of the research is short-term versus long-term. That is really the biggest distinction, is in the short-term, being bad can be very good. I’m not advocating that. But, who is likely to be very bad to you? A used car salesman. Why? He’s going to sell you the car and he’s probably not going to see you again. Who is likely to be good to you? Your family, your parents. Why? Because hopefully, likely, they’re going to be with you the rest of your life.

So the time horizon issue is enormous when it comes to issues of morality and that is critical and actually one of the strategies, where the longer you can extend the amount of time you’re going to be dealing with someone … if you meet somebody on the street and you’re going to interact with them in some way or whatever, okay, you might behave one way and they might behave one way. If this is someone who is introduced by a very close friend of yours, and a very close friend of them, I think you would behave very differently. Like I said, you wouldn’t want to upset your friend, you have a connection that is going to be ongoing. So in short-term elements, you see a lot more cheating and zero-sum gains. In other words, where me winning means you losing, where you winning means me losing. There is no opportunity for value creation. We can’t work together and actually make the pie bigger. Every nickel that you get is a nickel I lose. You’re going to see a lot of issues there.

The reference to Moldova is actually from a book by Eric Weiner, which is funny. He traveled all around the world and looked at the unhappiest places and the happiest places on earth. The unhappiest place on earth according to the research was Moldova. It’s simply because it’s a black hole of trust. No one trusts anyone, and there’s no opportunity for value creation. There’s no opportunity to make the pie bigger in situations, and so because of it, almost everything seems like or is perceived as zero-sum gain. There’s just envy, jealousy, everything you get is something I’m losing. So, nobody wants to help anybody and when people don’t help each other, and you don’t create value, it just becomes a downward spiral. It was enlightening to see just how bad it can get. But Moldova is the type of example that extends. You can have a workplace that has that kind of black hole of trust. You could have a group of friends that can happen to and sadly that can even happen to family. So we need to be thinking about what we can do for others, how we can contribute, how we can make sure things aren’t zero-sum gains. How we can create value. And, we need to extend the timelines of our relationships if we want to maximize people’s ability to feel safe and to behave ethically.

Halelly: And you have so many examples. Like you have those computers that are playing the prisoner’s dilemma against each other, and how their programs are, some of the computers were programmed to take advantage and some of the computers were programed to just be tit for tat and some of the computers were programmed to be very generous and forgiving. It was interesting to see the results in the end and also you talk a lot about Adam Grant’s work with give and take. So, in the end, if you are more on the generous side and more giving, but not all the way to the point where you’re doing it with no discrimination whatsoever, then you will be ahead, overall. You will be ahead by being a generous, abundant-minded person, as long as you don’t act like a doormat and keep serving people who clearly take advantage.

Eric: Yeah, I mean, that’s what it really comes down to. When you look at Adam Grant’s research, the first thing Adam found was that givers, people who give to others without thinking about reciprocation, came in at the dead last in terms of success metrics. That was very depressing for Adam until he looked, he asked himself, “Who is at the top?” And he found that it was bi-modal, that givers were all the way at the bottom and they were all the way at the top. And matchers, who try to keep a balance of give and take, and takers who try to get as much as they can without giving anything back, were clustered in the middle. I think that reflects what a lot of us see, because we all know some people who are total martyrs who do everything for others and get taken advantage of or taken for granted, and we also know people who are very kind, very generous, and we will do anything they ask of us. Because they have always given for us and we feel a debt of gratitude and we want to feel good. So over the long haul, if those people who give can not be martyrs, then they do very, very well. And there are a number of strategies that Adam has suggested for making sure of that.

One of which is actually … the first critical thing is context. And you saw this with the prisoners’ dilemma algorithm challenge that Axelrod talked about. It’s basically context. If you’re a giver in a sea of takers, you’re dead. You’re in a really bad place. And if you’re a giver surrounded by givers, then it’s a wonderful, wonderful place. But the truth is, even a small percentage – they found this out in the algorithm challenge – even a relatively small percent of givers, if they’re connected to one another in an organization or in a group, can produce an enormous amount of value and protect themselves. The problem is when they don’t know each other, when they’re split up across an organization, or when there’s just so few of them that they’re constantly taken advantage of. That, and the other key thing is givers getting to know matchers. Not only do matchers believe in personally keeping a balance of give and take, but matchers also, there’s a strong theme of justice that runs through matchers. They feel that the world should be balanced. So, what Adam has seen in his research is that when givers are surrounded by a group of matchers, the matchers will protect the givers. Because the matchers do not feel it is right that the takers take advantage of these good people. So there are a handful of strategies, like I said, by looking at the makeup of the groups you’re in, if you’re a giver headed into a company surrounded by takers, that’s a really bad sign. And another thing is, just to make sure there are other givers or matchers around that can offer help and protection from the evil takers.

Halelly: And I wish we had more time to get into all of the content that you have about networking, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. I’m working on a book on networking. But there’s a lot of suggestions you’ve seen in the research that say that when you look to be surrounded by others who are like you, all boats rise. You all benefit from that. That sounds like a strong suggestion which is if you feel like you’re surrounded by the wrong people, put yourself in a new situation, and/or seek to connect with other people who can help you feel lifted and help protect you.

Eric: Yeah, one of my favorite quotes was Bob Sutton, a best selling author and a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He said whenever you are interviewing at a company, he said go out and look around at the people who work there. Because you’re going to become like them. They’re not going to become like you. Context, influence, peer pressure. We discount those enormously and we shouldn’t, because they have enormous power over us, whether we realize it or not and we can be dangerously ignorant to how much we are influenced by those around us. And I think the research bears this out. I think it’s very true. Look around, because before you take that job, you’re going to become like those people. They’re not going to become like you. And what Bob said is, if that’s not aligned with your goals, if that’s not aligned with who you are and who you want to be, then you shouldn’t be there. You shouldn’t’ take the job.

Halelly: Very smart advice. Well, Eric, we need to start wrapping up, and before you give everyone something really specific that they can take action or do today, this week, to ratchet up their own success, their own leadership and personal success, what’s new and exciting for you? I know you’re now in the throws of book launch mode and that’s a big deal. Is that what’s got you excited these days? Or is there anything other than that?

Eric: I’m always trying to read good books. I’m always trying to talk to interesting people. So I’m very lucky in that I’m usually pretty stimulated. The book’s focus is taking these maxims of success that we’ve all heard, like nice guys finish last and it’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and quitters never win, winners never quit, and putting them to the test. I’m just really excited about getting that information out there because I think there are a lot of people who appreciate these pithy slogans, which may or may not be true. And it’s really great to get that out there and get the reaction from people and hear what they have to say. Just to kind of spread the word about what the research, what the experts really say about these things. I’m enjoying the whole process.

Halelly: And thank you for your work, because I think you have already and will continue to help a lot of people, because most of us don’t have the patience or the time and frankly maybe not even the inclination to pour over the academic papers and help convey those to laypeople terms and translate them to what everyday people can use. So you’re doing a great service and thank you.

Eric: Thank you.

Halelly: You’re welcome. All right, what’s one specific action that listeners can take today, this week, to ratchet up their own success?

Eric: I would say in terms of overall feeling better, I would say gratitude exercise is really fantastic, before you get to work. Just send anyone a thank you text or a thank you email. Gratitude is, positive psychology has just shown that gratitude, taking the perspective of gratitude is one of the best ways to boost your mood. When you feel better, you often do better in many areas. That’s been shown as well. It’s as simple as sending a thank you text or email to someone who has done something good for you. The best part of gratitude is unlike a lot of happiness exercises, gratitude is infectious, because by sending it, you’re making someone else happy as well. The thing I would say, good first step, is get yourself in a good mood. You can do that by making somebody else happy. So just sending a gratitude text or email first thing in the morning, everyday, is a great way to get yourself started on the right foot.

Halelly: I love that. Giving value to others and yourself at the same time. And start your day on a great way. Cool. Thank you for sharing that, Eric, and I want everyone to go and grab a copy of this amazing book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. The link is in the show notes and Eric, how else can people stay in touch with you and follow what you’re doing?

Eric: The URL to my blog is a little crazy and there’s a long story behind that, so the best thing to do is just Google Barking Up the Wrong Tree, or my name, Eric Barker, and check out my blog, and I’ve got a weekly newsletter, one email per week, that sums up the latest stuff I’ve been doing, my latest writing, and offers a lot of other bits of useful productivity, happiness, etc., advice from legitimate sources. So I would say google Barking Up the Wrong Tree, google Eric Barker, sign up for the weekly newsletter is probably the best way to keep up with what I’m doing.

Halelly: I can tell you, I come across so much information on a daily basis, and it’s easy to get sucked into the vortex of too much information. I actually only follow a couple of different blogs regularly, religiously, and yours is one of them, because it is always high value. So I personally recommend that you do that and sign up for Eric’s newsletter. Eric, I really appreciate that you took time from your very busy schedule to talk to us and to share your insights with the TalentGrowers. And I hope that you make today great.

Eric: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Halelly: Hopefully, as soon as you’re done driving to wherever it is you’re going, or as soon as you get back in from your jog or walking your dog or whatever it is that you do when you’re listening to the TalentGrow and when it’s safe – don’t text and drive – I want you to take out your phone or go to your computer or grab a piece of paper and write that first thank you note that Eric suggested. He said that you should start your day that way and I love that suggestion. But let’s just do that today, even if it’s not first thing in the morning. I think that will get you some momentum and get you a nice little spike in mood, and also getting you moving toward action. Deal? Let me know.

Now, just a reminder, the TalentGrow Show has been selected to be part of the C Suite Radio network of high quality business podcasts. Check it out, on c-suiteradio.com. And, if you’re not yet on our Facebook group, this is where listeners can have a discussion, support each other, help each other out, along their leadership development journey. It is a free group, it is private. All you have to do is go on Facebook, search up TalentGrowers community, and then ask to join the group, and then you’ll be in. Join us, please. And while you’re on Facebook, go ahead and “like” the Facebook page of the TalentGrow Show podcast, so that’s a separate thing. There’s the Facebook page for the podcast and you just “like” it and you get some news there, and also go and join our community, which is a Facebook group.

Go to iTunes and leave a very short, but so helpful, review and a rating. A recent reviewer said that, Terry Gross of NPR has to watch out because of me. Ha, that’s so funny, it’s sweet. And you know, the reviews on iTunes are not for my personal gratification, although I do read and savor every single one of them and appreciate them so much. The reason that I am asking you to do it is because I’m putting in all this work to create this free resource. I’m interviewing amazing people and creating this resource in the world, but I would love for more people to discover it. The way that the search works on iTunes is that the more reviews a podcast has, the more that their algorithm features it in search results. So if someone is looking for a podcast to listen to on the topic related to things that we cover here on the TalentGrow Show, I would love for them to discover the TalentGrow Show so that they can get benefit from the shows that we put out. Please help me out, just a short review and it makes such a huge difference, and I really will appreciate it. That’s it for this episode. I am Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist and I thank you for listening. I appreciate you. And until the next time, make today great.

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Ep032: Maximize, don’t compromise -- Self-leadership and life lesson from the gym to your job [solo episode]