Hello and welcome to the You Know How To Live show I am Kate Hammer and in just a moment we will have author Todd Henry here with us to chat about building processes that lead to everyday brilliance and how to learn about and leverage your unique motivation code to tap into your best work wherever you're listening or watching from I'm so glad that you tuned in and are hanging out I hope you are ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a little bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in Todd Henry Todd how is it going today thank you so much for being here and joining me on this show I'm doing great thanks so much for having me it's good to see you awesome yes okay so I came across your books when a good friend of mine who's also a creative professional recommended you to me with this context he said I know you like to binge read authors and I have somebody who's written a handful of books for you and I said all right lay it on me so I grabbed them all scooped them all up and just went to town and had an absolute blast I love your work big fan well thank you thank you very much that means a lot actually it's you know sometimes people will kind of dip into my books maybe later in the game you know like like some of my later books and they don't even realize I've been writing books for a really long time so that's encouraging to hear that you've actually you've actually made a deep dive into the entire uh repertoire so thank you yes absolutely yes five books and ten years is quite an accomplishment really writing pretty quickly I would say uh so most recently I read the motivation code but before we get into that one I'd love to hear from your perspective what is the best order to read your books so that's a great question thank you for asking that so um so I kind of consider the first four books to kind of be a sort of a a box set if you will for creative prose sort of following them through their journey so the first book The Accidental Creative is really about how to position yourself to have ideas when you need them most under pressure so how do you organize your life to have ideas at a moment's notice because we all have to do that consistently the second book is about great so you've got ideas but how do you actually execute on the right ideas how do you make sure you don't get stuck on your journey which is the book Die Empty and then the third book is Louder Than Words which is about how do you then get people to actually pay attention to your work you know attention for your work is not a birthright so uh you know at some point if you want people to interact with what you do you need to find a way of communicating in a way that people can can receive it and that's the book Louder Than Words the fourth book Herding Tigers then is about okay all of this that we've been talking about that's great but how does this apply to a leadership context let's say you have to lead talented creative people what do they need from you and how do you apply all of these other principles to help you be a more effective leader and to be the leader that creative people need so those four books kind of go together and they kind of follow a person through their journey from you know organizing your world to doing the right work to getting people to pay attention to your work to then okay now you may have to lead other people and be in the capacity of authority over others you know what does that look like so those four books kind of all go together so I recommend reading those straight through The Accidental Creative Die Empty Louder Than Words and then Herding Tigers um the fifth book as you mentioned is The Motivation Code which is a definite right turn for me uh it's very different from the other books that I've written it's mostly because it's based upon research that a team of PHDs has been doing for 50 years really um into what drives us and so uh it's a very different kind of book for me I'm actually writing another book right now that is kind of back to more of the creative professional community but um and that will come out next year but The Motivation Code was definitely kind of a right a right-hand turn for me yes absolutely and I hope to ask you a little bit more I'm not sure what you're willing to give away about what is in the works but of course we would love to hear what's going to be coming online soon so one way that you have described motivational themes of which there are 27 separated into six different family groups that someone will determine about themselves when they read this book and take the quiz you have described understanding your motivational themes like getting the combination to a padlock instead of smashing it to open the lock right yes so I love that visual can your experience shape your motivational themes or does your code determine your reaction and engagement with your experiences yeah this is sort of the uh you know are you born with it or is it shaped in you over time question and I think the answer is a little bit of both um so just to back up and talk about these motivational themes and kind of where they came from my colleagues and then really their predecessors um have been doing this research for 50 years interviewing people from all walks of life doing really in-depth biographical um research into people their their moments of achievement uh moments of deep gratification with life and work and they listened to how people told the stories of achievements so they analyzed over a million achievement stories over the course of the last several decades and what they discovered is there are 27 unique ways that people describe why certain moments in their life are uniquely gratifying and those ways that they describe it are connected to what they did in the moment so what exactly did you do in order to achieve whatever you achieved how did it make you feel in the moment who else was involved in in the process of of doing it so there were all these kinds of questions that were asked and what they discovered is that there are 27 unique ways that people describe it and the language is eerily consistent within those 27 so you could almost take what somebody said verbatim and just plug it straight into one of those 27 and so over time my colleagues developed The Motivation Code Assessment we call it your motivation code your top three to five motivational drivers what we call your motivation code um everybody has one there are 17,550 possible combinations of top three motivations so everyone is likely to be very unique in terms of how they're driven motivation code is persistent meaning that it tends to stick with you through easy times through difficult times through different seasons of your life it tends to be something that's irresistible to you so you're drawn to satisfy this motivation these motivational drivers uh through any work that you do you know when when we talk about motivation often we talk about it as a blunt instrument right we tend to think people are generally motivated the same way so we use two or three different methods to try to motivate people we encourage them or we give them money or we give them flexibility or we give them a promotion you know and those tools are fine but the reality is what those specific motivators mean to the individual is going to be very different depending on how they are innately motivated so you know you probably have heard all of us have probably heard and sorry I'm like a wind-up Chatty Kathy doll just keep going so just cut me off at any point but what you've probably heard um over time when you think about motivation when you've heard people talk about motivation is there are two kind of basic types of motivation there's extrinsic motivation yeah which are these external forces that motivate us things like pay raises and and promotions and things like that uh and then there's intrinsic motivation and you know the work of Deci and Ryan in self-determination theory said autonomy mastery and relatedness or even in his book Dan Pink called it I think purpose autonomy mastery purpose um are these kind of inner drivers well the reality is the research shows that internal and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not discrete they actually modify one another so the way that I react to an extrinsic motivator it's gonna be very different from the way that you do we might both be motivated by that extrinsic driver but the reason we're motivated is going to be very different depending on what our motivational drivers are so that's basic that's sort of the basic background of these motivational drivers now why it's important is because once you understand what drives you you can explain a lot of the behavior in your life maybe that was a mystery to you before you can you know explain that element in particular absolutely yeah yeah so so for example you know there are areas of conflict within teams sometimes and it's funny I was just I was talking with one of my one of my business partners the other day and he said there was a there's a conversation in his company and they were all arguing about this specific project and he said you realize right now you were each you were arguing out of your core motivation right now you're arguing out of your motivational drivers you know one person is arguing because uh you know they are driven to collaborate and they didn't feel like it was enough of a team project another person's arguing because they see the potential in this thing we have to do this now because they're driven by achieve potential you know and I'm making that up by the way I'm trying to generalize so I don't give away really but it's really interesting because uh once you understand what makes you tick and what makes the people around you tick it changes how you interact with them because you can see that their behavior isn't just difficult behavior it's that they're trying to satisfy an emotion or a motivation that is not being satisfied and once you understand that you can have a more meaningful conversation with them yes absolutely and you describe very well through each of those 27 exactly how to interface with someone who has those drivers and so if you're in a setting where you are operating a team or working with a peer who's willing to go through the process of taking the tests and and determining their code then you can break down those conversations in a very different way and get to the root of issues much faster so I found that particularly compelling I definitely had that reaction when reading of wow I love reading about my own but wait like who else do I want to have do this um you also recommend in the book to have a peer-to-peer conversation once you determine your motivational code and that is super smart because man oh man do we miss what is right in front of us sometimes so much easier to describe others than ourselves so yeah well we need others to see ourselves completely you know there are a lot of people who who sort of go into themselves to try to figure things out and um and that can be valuable to some extent but the reality is we need others to see our place in the world to see how they receive us what they see in us I mean that's a significant part of self-awareness and self-knowledge is seeing ourselves through the eyes of others and so having those conversations about where our motivational drivers are playing out can be really really helpful really valuable I mean I'll give you an example from my life um one of my top motivational drivers is meet the challenge which means I love discreet tacklable challenges I need I need something to feel like a challenge to me in order to trigger my engagement um if it's not challenging it's very process oriented or something of that nature I tend to check out I'm not really all that interested well a lot of life is process right you know it's sort of just maintaining things it's organizing things so what'll happen sometimes is I will put off some of those more mundane tasks until the last minute because that will make them feel like a challenge now I have to do it in record time in order to get it done well that means sometimes things don't get done because part of the shadow side of my motivation is that I will procrastinate until I need to uh until I have to do it because then it feels more like a challenge to me um so what I've learned and often through other people um telling me hey by the way you realize that you're kind of we really need you to be more on the ball with this right we need you to get this to us quicker what I figured out is that I can instill challenges in my life to help me satisfy that motivation and also stay on track with my work by establishing little many challenges throughout the process so I mentioned I'm writing a book right now I just wrote a book that is twice as long as any of my books and I did it in a third of the time because of the way the deadlines worked for this book um which is crazy crazy crazy I will not do it again but the only way I got through that was by setting little mini challenges along the way I had Monday through I worked Monday through Friday I had Monday through Friday challenges every day to write a certain number of entries for this book um for over the course of three months and I went screeching across the finish line right like right on the day of my deadline I turned it in but but I finished it you know I finished it because of those little mini challenges so um that's just one example of how a knowledge of your motivational drivers can be beneficial but how seeing yourself through the eyes of others can help you identify ways in which maybe you're trying to satisfy those motivations in unhealthy ways yes so as you're going through this process of writing this book and you're creating these mini challenges for yourself what sort of tools and habits were you putting into play to make this happen so there are a couple are you talking about productivity tools yeah do you have systems that you use tools that you use apps I do I do yeah so um a couple of things number one a big big believer in time blocking um you know when you have to do deep creative work um you know my friend Cal Newport talks about the importance of deep work and and making sure that you're you're putting time on the calendar to do deep work not just trying to squeeze it in so I time block I mean I sit down I plan my days I have my own little daily planning sheet that I created I use my iPad for my iPad Pro for that and I will block out my time for the day um I have recurring time blocks for different kinds of functions on my calendar um and so that that's one thing is I believe that if something is important especially creative work it has to be planned you have to put it on your calendar you can't just you can't just work when you feel like it you have to work when it's time to work and then inspiration shows up in the midst of it you know um Steve Pressfield talks about you know the importance of turning pro you know amateurs work when they feel like it pros work because it's time to work um and so that's that's an important um principle for me that you know every day I work and I produce regardless of whether it's good or I feel like it or not I produce every single day um I use uh Scrivener to write my books um it's a little bit like uh that old question what kind of pencil does Stephen King use you know like everybody wants to know like what tools do people you know and it's like well you know you could you could write a book on a legal pad with a BIC pen if you want you know um but but I found that Scrivener is helpful to me because I tend to write books in a non-linear fashion I tend to write from the inside out so using Scrivener I can write whatever section I want to write on any given day and I can move those sections around later if I need to to organize them differently into chapters and it also does a great job of tracking word count and and targets for projects which is great uh for for the writing process because uh on a normal book I will write no more than 500 words a day that's all I do um and so when I get to 500 words if I'm in mid-sentence I stop right in the middle of the sentence because I know exactly where I'm going to pick up the next day which is always the hardest part right is is getting started so um on normal books that's what I'll do on the book where I'm writing a book twice as long and a third of the time I did I didn't do that I wrote I took a different approach because it's kind of a different book so yeah absolutely and I think we are just really fascinated with these things like what tools do you have what what's your morning routine what habits do you have and you're right they don't necessarily apply universally but what I like about what you did is you found a tool that matches with how you're motivated and that's the most important thing you know you you know your tools exist to serve you your systems exist to serve you not the other way around um your processes exist to serve you not the other way around I think sometimes people are looking for the the golden system that's going to unlock everything for them and the reality is every system gets stale over time every tool grows stale over time um and you need to that's why you need to routinely step back and reflect on what's working right now what's not working right now what do I need to shake up um what needs a refresh um there are a couple of consistent practices that have been in my life for 20 years I mean one of them is getting up and having an hour of study in the morning um Monday through Friday I get up I go to my home office and I study um actually on the chair right behind me um and uh you know that that's a great way for me to stay engaged stay mentally active to commune with great minds that Steven Sample from USC called it um you know it's just a great way for me to stay fresh in my in my life am I creating my work you can't have creative output without input you need stimulus in order to produce and so that's one way that I do that for sure and that's the been a regular practice I have dailies that I track every day I have a list of dailies that I track on my daily planning sheet you know so every day I have I think eight different things that I check off my dailies list um and I get them more days than not some days I don't do a couple of them but um you know I try to do them more days than not so again this works for me because it's um kept me consistent I know my tendency is to drift if I don't have guard rails and then my tendency is toward comfort and laziness um if I don't have disciplines in my life and so that's why the disciplines are so important I don't have them because I'm disciplined I have them because I know I'm lazy at the root um and if I don't have them then I'm gonna go off the rails but the great thing is I know if I just do the things I need to do if I hit my marks every day I can be lazy around that all I want to as long as I hit my marks every day right um because I know that's what's gonna move me forward so it's almost like earned laziness in a way right if I like I just got back before this interview I got back from a long walk I tend to do that in the middle of the day it's one of the ways I kind of structure some laziness into my day is to take a long walk but the reason I do that is because it gives my brain a chance to reset between my morning creative work and my afternoon like administrative and and um and like interviews and and coaching and things like that so yeah yes so one thing that you reveal in the book is that you don't actually love writing right yeah but that what it allows for is to connect with these points of motivation that you have so there is something within what you're producing that allows you to get all these things accomplished that you want to get accomplished so can you speak a little bit more to that because I think you know oftentimes when people are whether it's in a job or in something they're first doing as an entrepreneur that there are there are parts of what they need to do that they don't love right so what does that look like for you yeah um one of the worst pieces of advice ever given in the history of humanity is find find work that you love and you'll never work a day in your life it's terrible advice it is awful advice I'm sorry if if you or anybody you know says that but it's it's awful advice because you're going to work a lot if you care about something you're going to work a lot and you're going to spend a lot of your time and effort in blood sweat tears to bring it to be because you're committed to an outcome that's more important than your enjoyment of the tasks now it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the tasks and hopefully you enjoy some of the tasks that you do um and this kind of gets back to the the thing I talk about often which is the root of the word passion the word passion in its original form comes from the word pati which means to suffer or passio in in Latin um we tell people all the time follow your passion right follow your passion what they hear is follow the thing you like to do right follow the tasks that you enjoy and so when somebody suddenly realizes oh I don't I'm not enjoying my tasks in my job anymore I should leave my job because I want to follow my passion well no that's not what it means what it means is follow your suffering that's the original meaning of the word meaning follow the thing that you're willing to suffer for even when it means walking through temporary suffering because the outcome matters so much to you that you're willing to walk through that temporary suffering in order to get to the outcome that matters deeply to you so how does this apply to what we were just talking about um I don't enjoy writing but I love the outcome of having written I love the impact because by the way one of my top motivations is also make an impact right it's one of my top top three I love the impact that I get to make through my writing that matters more to me than the temporary suffering of sitting down and going clickity clack on the keyboard I don't love to do that now there are times when I'm in the midst of writing something that I find myself enjoying it for sure but I don't sit around all day thinking boy I can't wait to sit down and write I get you know and so I think for people who for people who think I want to be a writer because I enjoy writing there has to be something more than the process that draws you into writing there has to be an outcome that you're aiming for some kind of impact that you're aiming for your work isn't for you your work is for other people your body of work isn't about you it's about other people so you know for me that means walking through the temporary suffering following my passion means the outcome that I'm trying to achieve means walking through temporary suffering sometimes in order to get to that outcome but we don't we don't talk about that we don't teach that we teach you know find something that makes you feel tingly and go do that well and that's fine but that's that's called a hobby that's not you know necessarily a passion or an outcome that you're that you're pursuing so um anyway so that and by the way I could be accused of being a curmudgeonly old man for saying that I get that um but you know we're we're in a place where we have more tools at our disposal more opportunities more choices more freedoms than we've had in the history of humanity I mean we're the top .00001% of all human beings who've ever lived in terms of opportunity and and freedom and and by the way I'm not just talking about the people who are listening to this if you're listening to this right now or watching this um you know you are in the top 0.001 of all humans who have ever lived but I'm talking about everybody on the planet we're being lifted globally we're being lifted in new ways out of poverty in ways that never that are unprecedented right so people have opportunities because of new telecommunication tools and the ubiquity and uh expensiveness of technology and all of these things obviously poverty is still an issue right but but globally we're seeing people lifted out of poverty poverty huge in huge numbers and so what what's beautiful about that is more people have the opportunity to pursue things that are actually making a difference in the lives of other people rather than just focusing on subsisting um and so when we talk about passion I encourage you to think about what is the outcome I'm committed to what is the difference I want to make and what is it going to take for me to get to the place where I'm making that difference uh so anyway I don't mean to take us down the rabbit hole but that's that's kind of how I tend to think about that advice follow your passion yes yes I love that I remember this from Die Empty you had me hooked immediately um and I love that you actually speak to hobbies too in your books that it can actually be a part of what edifies your work your creative pursuits outside of what you actually get paid to do so do you know to that point do you have anything right now that you're pursuing hobby-wise I do I make music um I was in my I call it now my misguided 20s but uh in my early 20s right out of school I was a musician full-time musician for a handful of years and traveled around and played shows and did the whole thing um it was a lot of fun I mean I enjoyed it it's really really hard to make a living as a musician especially you know back in the 1990s it was like you know kind of uh maybe even more so because we didn't have the distribution channels and all of that but um but to this day I still love making music as a hobby so I write songs and record them and the funny thing is there's so many tools now that oh yeah and like back I do things now in an evening in my home office that I would have spent five grand to do in a studio 25 years ago you know so it's like it's crazy what what we have at our disposal um today so it really is no excuse for anyone but this hobby thing kind of is important I think for us to realize that you know your body of work isn't just your job you know your body of work encompasses more than your job and your job can never contain the sum total of your creative engagement if you're looking for the perfect job that you can channel all of your creative energy into you're going to be disappointed you are because no job can meet that criteria you need to instead build a portfolio of passions in your life so for me like there's not a place out there for me to make music as part of my job it's just not what you know I'm like a 50 year old man right nobody wants to hear a 50 year old man making music but it's fun for me to do um it's really fun for me to do and but at the same time so I get to channel my creativity there but the primary place where I focus my creative energy is on my clients it's on my writing on my books on my teaching you know that kind of thing so it's it's a portfolio right of passions and so I think we need to also recognize listen you might work a job your entire life that does nothing but provide you with the resources you need to be able to pursue the thing that you really love which might be a hobby that you never get paid for and that's perfectly fine there's nothing wrong with that you know I think we again we also tell people your job has to be your identity and the sum total of what you know maybe your job is just a job that's all it is it just provides you with the resources you need to be able to go do the things you love Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he developed the the Theory of Relativity right I mean the Wright Brothers were had a bicycle shop when they invented airplanes you know I mean these are a couple just a couple of examples of people who were pursuing side projects just for fun kind of pursuing these side projects and ended up changing the world as in the process didn't intend to maybe but they did so you know I think we need to release the pressure valve a little bit too of like having our job be the end all be all of what we do in the world absolutely you know I talk about hobbies a lot because I think we sometimes feel like if we're going to do something we have to be excellent at it and hobbies is a space where that's really not true you can do it just for the sake of the time you spend how you enjoy it in that moment you don't need to be the world's best watercolor or you don't need to be you know recording music that could be played on the radio tomorrow as long as you're getting something out of it then that can really be enough it doesn't feel like attached to a set of goals or whatever or it can be like if that's the way that you enjoy pursuing things than great but but it can just simply be a time for you to do the thing that you want to do yeah for sure for sure yeah all right so we're going to do two quick segments the first one is called This or That and I'm just going to ask what you tend toward between the two options okay all right okay read a book or listen to a playlist uh read the book I am who I am or I'm always evolving I'm always evolving go on an adventure or stay in and relax stay in and relax re-watch favorites or search for a new show you watch favorites the more the merrier or more fun with fewer more fun with fewer and here for humor or please be serious uh let's stay here for humor actually hey all right okay and then the second part is called Rapid Fire so I'm just gonna ask you some quick questions just give me a quick answer great all right so something you've read lately I'm reading a book right now called How To Be Like Walt uh which is about Walt Disney um I have behind me up over my shoulder um a copy of the Walt Disney business strategy from 1957 um I really love the Disney business model because it all centers around the creative ideas of the studio and I think at the heart of it we we all have an idea factory that we have to protect and so that's there to remind me to protect the idea factory I love that expression protect the idea factory you need to put that on a mug all right something you've watched lately well back to our conversation about uh re-watching favorites I'm actually in the midst of re-watching The Sopranos again um I like to go back and re-watch like classic series um you know I've seen a couple of those classic series multiple times because I think there's something you gain from studying the greats um you're studying story arc and there's a reason why they're classics and so that's um that's probably why I go back and re-watch things so often is because I'm not just watching it for the sake of entertainment I'm watching it because I'm absorbing it and trying to understand what makes it so great yeah I gotta follow up on this so do you ever find as you're watching a tv series that there is something to glean that you can put into your work oh for sure oh all the time yeah absolutely yeah no question I mean really any everything is fodder for your creative process um you know you could be reading something completely unrelated to the problem you're working on and you can find a parallel that can help you delve deeper into a problem and so yeah that that happens pretty frequently where I'll be watching something or you know experiencing something that has nothing to do with my work and I'll have a sudden spark of insight as a matter of fact it's one of the things I do I'll go for a walk and listen to unrelated podcasts when I'm working on book ideas I was doing that today um working on an outline for another book and um you know kind of had that uh you know I look for stimulus out there not I'm not taking those ideas and applying to my work but things that spark me to think in new ways and often you know that happens when watching a tv show or something of that nature yeah so did I just hear this right you're working on ideas for a seventh book I am yes I'm working on the outline right now actually all right all right always something cooking okay well that's um you know again Steve Pressfield said uh he finished his first novel and he went to his mentor's house and knocked and ran in and like slapped the manuscript down and said I finished my book and uh his mentor said okay great start the next one tomorrow right and so I think I'm sort of in that same mindset like if you're gonna be a writer you write that's what you do and so you know the moment I turned in this manuscript this last manuscript last week um I took a couple days off and then I started on the next book because I feel like that's what writers do you don't have the luxury of sitting around and waiting to be inspired you have to just kind of keep plowing forward so interesting way of thinking of it and I like your narrative too about when we are consuming it's a it's a perception thing we can think about it like we are just getting the entertainment or we can think about it like we are collecting potential inspiration right that's right project I love that okay what is a favorite thing for you right now could be a product an app a tool just something that you've come across that you find yourself letting your friends know oh you gotta try this hmm that's a great question uh we just discovered Coke Zero with coffee which is a new product there's a Coke Coke Zero vanilla with coffee um so that's that's a new thing I just discovered and it's kind of hard to get right now but that's one thing I would say um I mean the the I sing the praises of the Apple Watch all the time it's changed my game in terms of fitness and yeah fitness and um uh you know just the ability to go out and like be without my phone and kind of still be connected to reality but without the having that appendage of the the cell phone with you all the time um so yeah so that's probably my that's probably my most used tool actually is my Apple Watch yes okay then I have to ask you when you do these afternoon walks do you track them on your watch oh yeah for sure I track everything it's my fact it drives my family crazy because we'll be you know like walking around like we will go to the mall or something like hold on let me I'm on the track I want to get this I want to track this uh these steps right I want to make sure I track it as a workout or whatever just so I get I can sort of more easily access it later yeah yeah absolutely okay what is one thing that your readers and listeners would be surprised to learn about you uh well I mentioned earlier that I was a musician back in my 20s um and uh the thing that I often don't talk about is I was actually a country musician I sang um sort of West Coast Bakersfield kind of like rockabilly country music um and we opened shows for the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney and um played some big festivals in front of you know tens of thousands of people and like so got to play some really really fun big shows and also played some like really like tiny little dive bars but got to do some really fun really fun work so um that would probably be surprising to a lot of people um especially in my industry like because there's sort of this weird kind of um stereotyping of like country music but the the kind of stuff that we played was what's kind of termed the Bakersfield country so it's sort of like uh it's kind of like hipster honky tonk it's kind of what we were playing which is wow yeah that's quite a line there yeah that would be interesting um I can imagine you as yourself now tapping on like 22 year old Todd's shoulder you know behind stage or whatever just saying guess what this is where we're headed buddy right well the funny thing you never know yeah the funny thing is like you know the difference of you know being on stage in front of people in a at the time smokey you know club and you know playing music for people and stuff like that and now it's like I get on airplanes and fly to cities and speak in theaters and and large venues but it's like a totally different vibe right like I it's it's so much easier I'm not you know um you know I'm not going down the road with six sweaty guys sweaty smelly guys you know in a a metal tube um but I just kind of get on airplane I guess so it's it's funny because I'm still doing kind of the same thing like I'm I'm in front of people I'm entertaining them I'm teaching them I'm sort of like um capturing their attention but just doing it through a different medium yeah yeah this resonates a ton for me I was a music industry minor in college and I used to play too it it is a similar feeling and it's funny how these parts of ourselves that um that evolve into something else it comes from the same place so yeah so as you described as a callback back to the beginning of the interview you know we talked about how as you think of your stories um of success things that you've overcome or accomplished when you are taking the quiz for your motivational code um you realize how there are these threads that reoccur like the motivation is the same the activities may change or evolve but the motivation is the same and I certainly noticed that for myself when I took it yeah for sure yeah all right well Todd thank you again so much for being here I appreciate it yeah thank you so much for having me on have a great day thanks you too you heard me mention to Todd today that I have read and loved all five of his books including the one we talked about most today The Motivation Code with his sixth book coming out next year now is a great time to swing by toddhenry.com to choose a book and catch up on Todd's podcast The Accidental Creative thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share the episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats with top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week I'm Kate Hammer and You Know How To LiveHello and welcome to the You Know How To Live show I am Kate Hammer and in just a moment we will have author Todd Henry here with us to chat about building processes that lead to everyday brilliance and how to learn about and leverage your unique motivation code to tap into your best work wherever you're listening or watching from I'm so glad that you tuned in and are hanging out I hope you are ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a little bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in Todd Henry Todd how is it going today thank you so much for being here and joining me on this show I'm doing great thanks so much for having me it's good to see you awesome yes okay so I came across your books when a good friend of mine who's also a creative professional recommended you to me with this context he said I know you like to binge read authors and I have somebody who's written a handful of books for you and I said all right lay it on me so I grabbed them all scooped them all up and just went to town and had an absolute blast I love your work big fan well thank you thank you very much that means a lot actually it's you know sometimes people will kind of dip into my books maybe later in the game you know like like some of my later books and they don't even realize I've been writing books for a really long time so that's encouraging to hear that you've actually you've actually made a deep dive into the entire uh repertoire so thank you yes absolutely yes five books and ten years is quite an accomplishment really writing pretty quickly I would say uh so most recently I read the motivation code but before we get into that one I'd love to hear from your perspective what is the best order to read your books so that's a great question thank you for asking that so um so I kind of consider the first four books to kind of be a sort of a a box set if you will for creative prose sort of following them through their journey so the first book The Accidental Creative is really about how to position yourself to have ideas when you need them most under pressure so how do you organize your life to have ideas at a moment's notice because we all have to do that consistently the second book is about great so you've got ideas but how do you actually execute on the right ideas how do you make sure you don't get stuck on your journey which is the book Die Empty and then the third book is Louder Than Words which is about how do you then get people to actually pay attention to your work you know attention for your work is not a birthright so uh you know at some point if you want people to interact with what you do you need to find a way of communicating in a way that people can can receive it and that's the book Louder Than Words the fourth book Herding Tigers then is about okay all of this that we've been talking about that's great but how does this apply to a leadership context let's say you have to lead talented creative people what do they need from you and how do you apply all of these other principles to help you be a more effective leader and to be the leader that creative people need so those four books kind of go together and they kind of follow a person through their journey from you know organizing your world to doing the right work to getting people to pay attention to your work to then okay now you may have to lead other people and be in the capacity of authority over others you know what does that look like so those four books kind of all go together so I recommend reading those straight through The Accidental Creative Die Empty Louder Than Words and then Herding Tigers um the fifth book as you mentioned is The Motivation Code which is a definite right turn for me uh it's very different from the other books that I've written it's mostly because it's based upon research that a team of PHDs has been doing for 50 years really um into what drives us and so uh it's a very different kind of book for me I'm actually writing another book right now that is kind of back to more of the creative professional community but um and that will come out next year but The Motivation Code was definitely kind of a right a right-hand turn for me yes absolutely and I hope to ask you a little bit more I'm not sure what you're willing to give away about what is in the works but of course we would love to hear what's going to be coming online soon so one way that you have described motivational themes of which there are 27 separated into six different family groups that someone will determine about themselves when they read this book and take the quiz you have described understanding your motivational themes like getting the combination to a padlock instead of smashing it to open the lock right yes so I love that visual can your experience shape your motivational themes or does your code determine your reaction and engagement with your experiences yeah this is sort of the uh you know are you born with it or is it shaped in you over time question and I think the answer is a little bit of both um so just to back up and talk about these motivational themes and kind of where they came from my colleagues and then really their predecessors um have been doing this research for 50 years interviewing people from all walks of life doing really in-depth biographical um research into people their their moments of achievement uh moments of deep gratification with life and work and they listened to how people told the stories of achievements so they analyzed over a million achievement stories over the course of the last several decades and what they discovered is there are 27 unique ways that people describe why certain moments in their life are uniquely gratifying and those ways that they describe it are connected to what they did in the moment so what exactly did you do in order to achieve whatever you achieved how did it make you feel in the moment who else was involved in in the process of of doing it so there were all these kinds of questions that were asked and what they discovered is that there are 27 unique ways that people describe it and the language is eerily consistent within those 27 so you could almost take what somebody said verbatim and just plug it straight into one of those 27 and so over time my colleagues developed The Motivation Code Assessment we call it your motivation code your top three to five motivational drivers what we call your motivation code um everybody has one there are 17,550 possible combinations of top three motivations so everyone is likely to be very unique in terms of how they're driven motivation code is persistent meaning that it tends to stick with you through easy times through difficult times through different seasons of your life it tends to be something that's irresistible to you so you're drawn to satisfy this motivation these motivational drivers uh through any work that you do you know when when we talk about motivation often we talk about it as a blunt instrument right we tend to think people are generally motivated the same way so we use two or three different methods to try to motivate people we encourage them or we give them money or we give them flexibility or we give them a promotion you know and those tools are fine but the reality is what those specific motivators mean to the individual is going to be very different depending on how they are innately motivated so you know you probably have heard all of us have probably heard and sorry I'm like a wind-up Chatty Kathy doll just keep going so just cut me off at any point but what you've probably heard um over time when you think about motivation when you've heard people talk about motivation is there are two kind of basic types of motivation there's extrinsic motivation yeah which are these external forces that motivate us things like pay raises and and promotions and things like that uh and then there's intrinsic motivation and you know the work of Deci and Ryan in self-determination theory said autonomy mastery and relatedness or even in his book Dan Pink called it I think purpose autonomy mastery purpose um are these kind of inner drivers well the reality is the research shows that internal and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not discrete they actually modify one another so the way that I react to an extrinsic motivator it's gonna be very different from the way that you do we might both be motivated by that extrinsic driver but the reason we're motivated is going to be very different depending on what our motivational drivers are so that's basic that's sort of the basic background of these motivational drivers now why it's important is because once you understand what drives you you can explain a lot of the behavior in your life maybe that was a mystery to you before you can you know explain that element in particular absolutely yeah yeah so so for example you know there are areas of conflict within teams sometimes and it's funny I was just I was talking with one of my one of my business partners the other day and he said there was a there's a conversation in his company and they were all arguing about this specific project and he said you realize right now you were each you were arguing out of your core motivation right now you're arguing out of your motivational drivers you know one person is arguing because uh you know they are driven to collaborate and they didn't feel like it was enough of a team project another person's arguing because they see the potential in this thing we have to do this now because they're driven by achieve potential you know and I'm making that up by the way I'm trying to generalize so I don't give away really but it's really interesting because uh once you understand what makes you tick and what makes the people around you tick it changes how you interact with them because you can see that their behavior isn't just difficult behavior it's that they're trying to satisfy an emotion or a motivation that is not being satisfied and once you understand that you can have a more meaningful conversation with them yes absolutely and you describe very well through each of those 27 exactly how to interface with someone who has those drivers and so if you're in a setting where you are operating a team or working with a peer who's willing to go through the process of taking the tests and and determining their code then you can break down those conversations in a very different way and get to the root of issues much faster so I found that particularly compelling I definitely had that reaction when reading of wow I love reading about my own but wait like who else do I want to have do this um you also recommend in the book to have a peer-to-peer conversation once you determine your motivational code and that is super smart because man oh man do we miss what is right in front of us sometimes so much easier to describe others than ourselves so yeah well we need others to see ourselves completely you know there are a lot of people who who sort of go into themselves to try to figure things out and um and that can be valuable to some extent but the reality is we need others to see our place in the world to see how they receive us what they see in us I mean that's a significant part of self-awareness and self-knowledge is seeing ourselves through the eyes of others and so having those conversations about where our motivational drivers are playing out can be really really helpful really valuable I mean I'll give you an example from my life um one of my top motivational drivers is meet the challenge which means I love discreet tacklable challenges I need I need something to feel like a challenge to me in order to trigger my engagement um if it's not challenging it's very process oriented or something of that nature I tend to check out I'm not really all that interested well a lot of life is process right you know it's sort of just maintaining things it's organizing things so what'll happen sometimes is I will put off some of those more mundane tasks until the last minute because that will make them feel like a challenge now I have to do it in record time in order to get it done well that means sometimes things don't get done because part of the shadow side of my motivation is that I will procrastinate until I need to uh until I have to do it because then it feels more like a challenge to me um so what I've learned and often through other people um telling me hey by the way you realize that you're kind of we really need you to be more on the ball with this right we need you to get this to us quicker what I figured out is that I can instill challenges in my life to help me satisfy that motivation and also stay on track with my work by establishing little many challenges throughout the process so I mentioned I'm writing a book right now I just wrote a book that is twice as long as any of my books and I did it in a third of the time because of the way the deadlines worked for this book um which is crazy crazy crazy I will not do it again but the only way I got through that was by setting little mini challenges along the way I had Monday through I worked Monday through Friday I had Monday through Friday challenges every day to write a certain number of entries for this book um for over the course of three months and I went screeching across the finish line right like right on the day of my deadline I turned it in but but I finished it you know I finished it because of those little mini challenges so um that's just one example of how a knowledge of your motivational drivers can be beneficial but how seeing yourself through the eyes of others can help you identify ways in which maybe you're trying to satisfy those motivations in unhealthy ways yes so as you're going through this process of writing this book and you're creating these mini challenges for yourself what sort of tools and habits were you putting into play to make this happen so there are a couple are you talking about productivity tools yeah do you have systems that you use tools that you use apps I do I do yeah so um a couple of things number one a big big believer in time blocking um you know when you have to do deep creative work um you know my friend Cal Newport talks about the importance of deep work and and making sure that you're you're putting time on the calendar to do deep work not just trying to squeeze it in so I time block I mean I sit down I plan my days I have my own little daily planning sheet that I created I use my iPad for my iPad Pro for that and I will block out my time for the day um I have recurring time blocks for different kinds of functions on my calendar um and so that that's one thing is I believe that if something is important especially creative work it has to be planned you have to put it on your calendar you can't just you can't just work when you feel like it you have to work when it's time to work and then inspiration shows up in the midst of it you know um Steve Pressfield talks about you know the importance of turning pro you know amateurs work when they feel like it pros work because it's time to work um and so that's that's an important um principle for me that you know every day I work and I produce regardless of whether it's good or I feel like it or not I produce every single day um I use uh Scrivener to write my books um it's a little bit like uh that old question what kind of pencil does Stephen King use you know like everybody wants to know like what tools do people you know and it's like well you know you could you could write a book on a legal pad with a BIC pen if you want you know um but but I found that Scrivener is helpful to me because I tend to write books in a non-linear fashion I tend to write from the inside out so using Scrivener I can write whatever section I want to write on any given day and I can move those sections around later if I need to to organize them differently into chapters and it also does a great job of tracking word count and and targets for projects which is great uh for for the writing process because uh on a normal book I will write no more than 500 words a day that's all I do um and so when I get to 500 words if I'm in mid-sentence I stop right in the middle of the sentence because I know exactly where I'm going to pick up the next day which is always the hardest part right is is getting started so um on normal books that's what I'll do on the book where I'm writing a book twice as long and a third of the time I did I didn't do that I wrote I took a different approach because it's kind of a different book so yeah absolutely and I think we are just really fascinated with these things like what tools do you have what what's your morning routine what habits do you have and you're right they don't necessarily apply universally but what I like about what you did is you found a tool that matches with how you're motivated and that's the most important thing you know you you know your tools exist to serve you your systems exist to serve you not the other way around um your processes exist to serve you not the other way around I think sometimes people are looking for the the golden system that's going to unlock everything for them and the reality is every system gets stale over time every tool grows stale over time um and you need to that's why you need to routinely step back and reflect on what's working right now what's not working right now what do I need to shake up um what needs a refresh um there are a couple of consistent practices that have been in my life for 20 years I mean one of them is getting up and having an hour of study in the morning um Monday through Friday I get up I go to my home office and I study um actually on the chair right behind me um and uh you know that that's a great way for me to stay engaged stay mentally active to commune with great minds that Steven Sample from USC called it um you know it's just a great way for me to stay fresh in my in my life am I creating my work you can't have creative output without input you need stimulus in order to produce and so that's one way that I do that for sure and that's the been a regular practice I have dailies that I track every day I have a list of dailies that I track on my daily planning sheet you know so every day I have I think eight different things that I check off my dailies list um and I get them more days than not some days I don't do a couple of them but um you know I try to do them more days than not so again this works for me because it's um kept me consistent I know my tendency is to drift if I don't have guard rails and then my tendency is toward comfort and laziness um if I don't have disciplines in my life and so that's why the disciplines are so important I don't have them because I'm disciplined I have them because I know I'm lazy at the root um and if I don't have them then I'm gonna go off the rails but the great thing is I know if I just do the things I need to do if I hit my marks every day I can be lazy around that all I want to as long as I hit my marks every day right um because I know that's what's gonna move me forward so it's almost like earned laziness in a way right if I like I just got back before this interview I got back from a long walk I tend to do that in the middle of the day it's one of the ways I kind of structure some laziness into my day is to take a long walk but the reason I do that is because it gives my brain a chance to reset between my morning creative work and my afternoon like administrative and and um and like interviews and and coaching and things like that so yeah yes so one thing that you reveal in the book is that you don't actually love writing right yeah but that what it allows for is to connect with these points of motivation that you have so there is something within what you're producing that allows you to get all these things accomplished that you want to get accomplished so can you speak a little bit more to that because I think you know oftentimes when people are whether it's in a job or in something they're first doing as an entrepreneur that there are there are parts of what they need to do that they don't love right so what does that look like for you yeah um one of the worst pieces of advice ever given in the history of humanity is find find work that you love and you'll never work a day in your life it's terrible advice it is awful advice I'm sorry if if you or anybody you know says that but it's it's awful advice because you're going to work a lot if you care about something you're going to work a lot and you're going to spend a lot of your time and effort in blood sweat tears to bring it to be because you're committed to an outcome that's more important than your enjoyment of the tasks now it doesn't mean you can't enjoy the tasks and hopefully you enjoy some of the tasks that you do um and this kind of gets back to the the thing I talk about often which is the root of the word passion the word passion in its original form comes from the word pati which means to suffer or passio in in Latin um we tell people all the time follow your passion right follow your passion what they hear is follow the thing you like to do right follow the tasks that you enjoy and so when somebody suddenly realizes oh I don't I'm not enjoying my tasks in my job anymore I should leave my job because I want to follow my passion well no that's not what it means what it means is follow your suffering that's the original meaning of the word meaning follow the thing that you're willing to suffer for even when it means walking through temporary suffering because the outcome matters so much to you that you're willing to walk through that temporary suffering in order to get to the outcome that matters deeply to you so how does this apply to what we were just talking about um I don't enjoy writing but I love the outcome of having written I love the impact because by the way one of my top motivations is also make an impact right it's one of my top top three I love the impact that I get to make through my writing that matters more to me than the temporary suffering of sitting down and going clickity clack on the keyboard I don't love to do that now there are times when I'm in the midst of writing something that I find myself enjoying it for sure but I don't sit around all day thinking boy I can't wait to sit down and write I get you know and so I think for people who for people who think I want to be a writer because I enjoy writing there has to be something more than the process that draws you into writing there has to be an outcome that you're aiming for some kind of impact that you're aiming for your work isn't for you your work is for other people your body of work isn't about you it's about other people so you know for me that means walking through the temporary suffering following my passion means the outcome that I'm trying to achieve means walking through temporary suffering sometimes in order to get to that outcome but we don't we don't talk about that we don't teach that we teach you know find something that makes you feel tingly and go do that well and that's fine but that's that's called a hobby that's not you know necessarily a passion or an outcome that you're that you're pursuing so um anyway so that and by the way I could be accused of being a curmudgeonly old man for saying that I get that um but you know we're we're in a place where we have more tools at our disposal more opportunities more choices more freedoms than we've had in the history of humanity I mean we're the top .00001% of all human beings who've ever lived in terms of opportunity and and freedom and and by the way I'm not just talking about the people who are listening to this if you're listening to this right now or watching this um you know you are in the top 0.001 of all humans who have ever lived but I'm talking about everybody on the planet we're being lifted globally we're being lifted in new ways out of poverty in ways that never that are unprecedented right so people have opportunities because of new telecommunication tools and the ubiquity and uh expensiveness of technology and all of these things obviously poverty is still an issue right but but globally we're seeing people lifted out of poverty poverty huge in huge numbers and so what what's beautiful about that is more people have the opportunity to pursue things that are actually making a difference in the lives of other people rather than just focusing on subsisting um and so when we talk about passion I encourage you to think about what is the outcome I'm committed to what is the difference I want to make and what is it going to take for me to get to the place where I'm making that difference uh so anyway I don't mean to take us down the rabbit hole but that's that's kind of how I tend to think about that advice follow your passion yes yes I love that I remember this from Die Empty you had me hooked immediately um and I love that you actually speak to hobbies too in your books that it can actually be a part of what edifies your work your creative pursuits outside of what you actually get paid to do so do you know to that point do you have anything right now that you're pursuing hobby-wise I do I make music um I was in my I call it now my misguided 20s but uh in my early 20s right out of school I was a musician full-time musician for a handful of years and traveled around and played shows and did the whole thing um it was a lot of fun I mean I enjoyed it it's really really hard to make a living as a musician especially you know back in the 1990s it was like you know kind of uh maybe even more so because we didn't have the distribution channels and all of that but um but to this day I still love making music as a hobby so I write songs and record them and the funny thing is there's so many tools now that oh yeah and like back I do things now in an evening in my home office that I would have spent five grand to do in a studio 25 years ago you know so it's like it's crazy what what we have at our disposal um today so it really is no excuse for anyone but this hobby thing kind of is important I think for us to realize that you know your body of work isn't just your job you know your body of work encompasses more than your job and your job can never contain the sum total of your creative engagement if you're looking for the perfect job that you can channel all of your creative energy into you're going to be disappointed you are because no job can meet that criteria you need to instead build a portfolio of passions in your life so for me like there's not a place out there for me to make music as part of my job it's just not what you know I'm like a 50 year old man right nobody wants to hear a 50 year old man making music but it's fun for me to do um it's really fun for me to do and but at the same time so I get to channel my creativity there but the primary place where I focus my creative energy is on my clients it's on my writing on my books on my teaching you know that kind of thing so it's it's a portfolio right of passions and so I think we need to also recognize listen you might work a job your entire life that does nothing but provide you with the resources you need to be able to pursue the thing that you really love which might be a hobby that you never get paid for and that's perfectly fine there's nothing wrong with that you know I think we again we also tell people your job has to be your identity and the sum total of what you know maybe your job is just a job that's all it is it just provides you with the resources you need to be able to go do the things you love Albert Einstein was a patent clerk when he developed the the Theory of Relativity right I mean the Wright Brothers were had a bicycle shop when they invented airplanes you know I mean these are a couple just a couple of examples of people who were pursuing side projects just for fun kind of pursuing these side projects and ended up changing the world as in the process didn't intend to maybe but they did so you know I think we need to release the pressure valve a little bit too of like having our job be the end all be all of what we do in the world absolutely you know I talk about hobbies a lot because I think we sometimes feel like if we're going to do something we have to be excellent at it and hobbies is a space where that's really not true you can do it just for the sake of the time you spend how you enjoy it in that moment you don't need to be the world's best watercolor or you don't need to be you know recording music that could be played on the radio tomorrow as long as you're getting something out of it then that can really be enough it doesn't feel like attached to a set of goals or whatever or it can be like if that's the way that you enjoy pursuing things than great but but it can just simply be a time for you to do the thing that you want to do yeah for sure for sure yeah all right so we're going to do two quick segments the first one is called This or That and I'm just going to ask what you tend toward between the two options okay all right okay read a book or listen to a playlist uh read the book I am who I am or I'm always evolving I'm always evolving go on an adventure or stay in and relax stay in and relax re-watch favorites or search for a new show you watch favorites the more the merrier or more fun with fewer more fun with fewer and here for humor or please be serious uh let's stay here for humor actually hey all right okay and then the second part is called Rapid Fire so I'm just gonna ask you some quick questions just give me a quick answer great all right so something you've read lately I'm reading a book right now called How To Be Like Walt uh which is about Walt Disney um I have behind me up over my shoulder um a copy of the Walt Disney business strategy from 1957 um I really love the Disney business model because it all centers around the creative ideas of the studio and I think at the heart of it we we all have an idea factory that we have to protect and so that's there to remind me to protect the idea factory I love that expression protect the idea factory you need to put that on a mug all right something you've watched lately well back to our conversation about uh re-watching favorites I'm actually in the midst of re-watching The Sopranos again um I like to go back and re-watch like classic series um you know I've seen a couple of those classic series multiple times because I think there's something you gain from studying the greats um you're studying story arc and there's a reason why they're classics and so that's um that's probably why I go back and re-watch things so often is because I'm not just watching it for the sake of entertainment I'm watching it because I'm absorbing it and trying to understand what makes it so great yeah I gotta follow up on this so do you ever find as you're watching a tv series that there is something to glean that you can put into your work oh for sure oh all the time yeah absolutely yeah no question I mean really any everything is fodder for your creative process um you know you could be reading something completely unrelated to the problem you're working on and you can find a parallel that can help you delve deeper into a problem and so yeah that that happens pretty frequently where I'll be watching something or you know experiencing something that has nothing to do with my work and I'll have a sudden spark of insight as a matter of fact it's one of the things I do I'll go for a walk and listen to unrelated podcasts when I'm working on book ideas I was doing that today um working on an outline for another book and um you know kind of had that uh you know I look for stimulus out there not I'm not taking those ideas and applying to my work but things that spark me to think in new ways and often you know that happens when watching a tv show or something of that nature yeah so did I just hear this right you're working on ideas for a seventh book I am yes I'm working on the outline right now actually all right all right always something cooking okay well that's um you know again Steve Pressfield said uh he finished his first novel and he went to his mentor's house and knocked and ran in and like slapped the manuscript down and said I finished my book and uh his mentor said okay great start the next one tomorrow right and so I think I'm sort of in that same mindset like if you're gonna be a writer you write that's what you do and so you know the moment I turned in this manuscript this last manuscript last week um I took a couple days off and then I started on the next book because I feel like that's what writers do you don't have the luxury of sitting around and waiting to be inspired you have to just kind of keep plowing forward so interesting way of thinking of it and I like your narrative too about when we are consuming it's a it's a perception thing we can think about it like we are just getting the entertainment or we can think about it like we are collecting potential inspiration right that's right project I love that okay what is a favorite thing for you right now could be a product an app a tool just something that you've come across that you find yourself letting your friends know oh you gotta try this hmm that's a great question uh we just discovered Coke Zero with coffee which is a new product there's a Coke Coke Zero vanilla with coffee um so that's that's a new thing I just discovered and it's kind of hard to get right now but that's one thing I would say um I mean the the I sing the praises of the Apple Watch all the time it's changed my game in terms of fitness and yeah fitness and um uh you know just the ability to go out and like be without my phone and kind of still be connected to reality but without the having that appendage of the the cell phone with you all the time um so yeah so that's probably my that's probably my most used tool actually is my Apple Watch yes okay then I have to ask you when you do these afternoon walks do you track them on your watch oh yeah for sure I track everything it's my fact it drives my family crazy because we'll be you know like walking around like we will go to the mall or something like hold on let me I'm on the track I want to get this I want to track this uh these steps right I want to make sure I track it as a workout or whatever just so I get I can sort of more easily access it later yeah yeah absolutely okay what is one thing that your readers and listeners would be surprised to learn about you uh well I mentioned earlier that I was a musician back in my 20s um and uh the thing that I often don't talk about is I was actually a country musician I sang um sort of West Coast Bakersfield kind of like rockabilly country music um and we opened shows for the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney and um played some big festivals in front of you know tens of thousands of people and like so got to play some really really fun big shows and also played some like really like tiny little dive bars but got to do some really fun really fun work so um that would probably be surprising to a lot of people um especially in my industry like because there's sort of this weird kind of um stereotyping of like country music but the the kind of stuff that we played was what's kind of termed the Bakersfield country so it's sort of like uh it's kind of like hipster honky tonk it's kind of what we were playing which is wow yeah that's quite a line there yeah that would be interesting um I can imagine you as yourself now tapping on like 22 year old Todd's shoulder you know behind stage or whatever just saying guess what this is where we're headed buddy right well the funny thing you never know yeah the funny thing is like you know the difference of you know being on stage in front of people in a at the time smokey you know club and you know playing music for people and stuff like that and now it's like I get on airplanes and fly to cities and speak in theaters and and large venues but it's like a totally different vibe right like I it's it's so much easier I'm not you know um you know I'm not going down the road with six sweaty guys sweaty smelly guys you know in a a metal tube um but I just kind of get on airplane I guess so it's it's funny because I'm still doing kind of the same thing like I'm I'm in front of people I'm entertaining them I'm teaching them I'm sort of like um capturing their attention but just doing it through a different medium yeah yeah this resonates a ton for me I was a music industry minor in college and I used to play too it it is a similar feeling and it's funny how these parts of ourselves that um that evolve into something else it comes from the same place so yeah so as you described as a callback back to the beginning of the interview you know we talked about how as you think of your stories um of success things that you've overcome or accomplished when you are taking the quiz for your motivational code um you realize how there are these threads that reoccur like the motivation is the same the activities may change or evolve but the motivation is the same and I certainly noticed that for myself when I took it yeah for sure yeah all right well Todd thank you again so much for being here I appreciate it yeah thank you so much for having me on have a great day thanks you too you heard me mention to Todd today that I have read and loved all five of his books including the one we talked about most today The Motivation Code with his sixth book coming out next year now is a great time to swing by toddhenry.com to choose a book and catch up on Todd's podcast The Accidental Creative thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share the episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats with top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week I'm Kate Hammer and You Know How To Live
