PODCAST EPISODE 146: THE EXCITEMENT TRAP WITH DREW KNOWLES

Paul Adams: Hello and welcome to Your Business Your Wealth. I am Paul Adams, CEO Founder of Sound Financial Group and I have with me Cory, the shepherd Shepherd. If you are looking for somebody to help you with your finances, and you need some shepherding, coaching, and awareness that you didn’t have before, Cory Shepherd is his own name’s sake with that last name. Cory, I’m so glad you could be with us and you’re joining us from a lounge in an airport today.

Cory Shepherd: I am. And I do prefer “The Good Shepherd” for the record. If you’re gonna use the… Please use the full title.

Paul Adams: All capitalized. All capitalized. Got it, from now on. From now on.

Cory Shepherd: If that name sounds familiar to anybody, it is correct, it is one and the same. Yes, so… Who you’re thinking of is right here. Yeah, I am traveling around today. Really, just really grateful for what we’ve put together in technology, in the life that we get to have and it’s just fun that you’re north of Seattle, I’m south of Seattle, and our guest today, Drew, who we’ll introduce in a second, is way south of Seattle, so it’s…

Paul Adams: He’s a little west of here.

Cory Shepherd: Yeah, just a little bit next to you. Yeah.

Paul Adams: Well, good, yes. And I look forward to having Drew today. I am really, I gotta say, excited about our guest today, because not only is he vice president and partner with Influence Ecology, literally the person that at one point was responsible for 100% of enrollments or nearly 100% of enrollments in Influence Ecology worldwide.

Paul Adams: They have students participating inside their membership, which is this online and in-person learning community and study that has people participating right now from over 15 countries, hundreds of students and members worldwide. 22 years of experience that Drew Knowles has, specifically in the areas of human performance and behavior. And writes articles for the most prestigious men’s magazine in New Zealand. Drew Knowles, welcome to Your Business Your Wealth.

Drew Knowles: Thank you Paul and Cory for having me. It’s so great to be here all the way from Auckland, New Zealand.

Paul Adams: New Zealand, that’s right, a Kiwi. Thousands and thousands of miles away joining us today. Now, I kinda wanna kick off based upon the title of this episode, Drew, which is the idea that excitement can be a trap. And you rattled off this really like one sense that I thought was so powerful. Would you just kick off with that and we’ll let that be the beginning of this conversation.

Drew Knowles: Absolutely. Well, first thing is, I’d just like to say I am actually excited. I think… Are you guys excited about this episode?

Cory Shepherd: Drew…

Paul Adams: Not me, not me, not after the title of this episode, no. I’m just…

Cory Shepherd: I’m particularly excited. I’m selfishly excited because Drew… We have a similar kind of personality in general and so selfishly to hear how you’ve come up with some ways to probably manage your own excitement are just gonna be great for me. It’s always been a treat for me to learn from you and your experience, so I don’t care who else is listening, I’m just here… I’m gonna pick your brain. We’re gonna go at it.

Drew Knowles: And it’s so good because if you just… It’s so easy to get excited. That’s where we’re gonna start to get into. And how I spoke about it earlier, Paul, is the idea that your well-intended enthusiasm, your inspiration, your excitement may be, in fact really can be, a danger to you in the marketplace. That’s what I mentioned earlier.

Paul Adams: Now, you say marketplace. And I think inevitably just because of our audience and the way that Cory and I process information, we will be talking about it as it relates to investments and money, but when you say marketplace, you typically are referring to people’s careers, their business, the opportunities in front of them and their family. Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Drew Knowles: Yeah, I think the simplest way to think about the marketplace, you could just say your life. All the different areas of your life that trigger you getting into the state of excitement, which we’ll get into more, but there’s so many things in your environment, people in all the areas that really get you into the state of excitement. And what I wanna start to point out as we get into it, is that it may be a danger to you. You may not have even thought it could be.

Paul Adams: Yeah, I think for the most part, people relate to excitement as if it’s great news. I’m excited about this, I’m excited about this… In fact, what you hear most often when people wanna compliment somebody else is, “I’m excited to be here to see you speak,” or “I’m excited to hear about your… ” It’s so ingrained as a wonderful thing. And I remember a coach, actually a teacher, that both myself and one of the co-founders of Influence Ecology listen to, and he really drilled down on excitement and how it could be a very problematic mood as it relates to achieving the aims that you’re after in life. So maybe we could just start with sharing with our audience about what’s the biology behind excitement? And what does that begin to cause?

Drew Knowles: Yeah, absolutely. And just to frame it a little bit, Paul, I, as you know before my role, global role with Influence Ecology, I specialize in the area of stress and worked with a lot of CEOs and executives from some very large companies here in New Zealand, and wrote a lot on the topic of chronic stress and how to fix your brain and your mental performance. And one of the things I started to notice the more I studied Influence Ecology’s work and the impact of your environment, is it’s really easy to see and actually know, I think we’re all taught, if you’re really agitated or upset or angry, it’s best not to jump into action. I think as kids we’re taught watch your mood, don’t lash out. Just as our co-founder Kirkland says, “Don’t let the lizard press send, when you’re about to send one of those angry emails.”

Paul Adams: Amen.

Drew Knowles: And that makes sense. It’s really easy to observe that like, “Well, I just should take a breath, walk out of the office, calm down.” But what I’ve seen is so unusual to actually look at as a problem is, what about the opposite side of agitation and upset, and when you get angry and frustrated, what about the brain getting hijacked by excitement and inspiration and enthusiasm? ‘Cause that is just out there in the world coming at us in droves. And there’s a particular chemistry or neuro-chemistry that I’ll say really simply in the brain. There’s three main things that I like to point to.

Drew Knowles: There’s one called dopamine, which is when your interest gets piqued, it’s when you… It’s like your reward sensor. So anything that stimulates that, “Oh I’m gonna get a reward”. And then there’s your serotonin, which is the kind of happy mood and fluffy feeling you get when you’re in that good mood or like you do exercise, you get endorphins. And then there’s this other one that I kinda call the social double whammy, which is oxytocin. And oxytocin is looked at as the trust molecule, the love molecule, it’s what induces… My understanding is, it induces birth, it has a mother and baby bond, so it’s a very powerful neurochemical. And so, look and I’m not bagging excitement, you know me. Corry, you and I are cut from the same clothe, we love getting excited about anything, and it’s not bad but have you ever had that experience where you’ve gone to a sales training, a seminar, or a weekend course.

Paul Adams: A good sermon?

Cory Shepherd: So many.

Drew Knowles: A good sermon. Hello, I’ve been to some amazing sermons where you’ll just watch a room of people or I’ve been in sales meetings where everyone just gets so motivated and so excited. But the problem is, the brain gets hijacked by all those wonderful neurochemicals of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin. And why I say oxytocin is kind of a double whammy is it can be bad enough just something exciting you by yourself and then you leap into action, like suddenly you’re gonna be able to take over the world and do all these things that you couldn’t do before that moment. But oxytocin gets present in social groups.

Drew Knowles: So when you stick a room of people there and they’re all hijacked by the buzz of serotonin and the interest of dopamine and the reward, and then you get oxytocin levels rising because we all love each other and we could all do this together and “come on man, you can do it” then you run out of those places totally deluded about what you really can accomplish. And that’s the problem. ‘Cause nothing changed nothing changed when you sat in that sermon for an hour an a half or you’re in that meeting, not… Literally, very little changed in the physical world, it’s just you now feel so excited and positive about what you can accomplish and it can be really problematic.

Paul Adams: And I see that Corry’s got something, but the thing I don’t want us to have stepped over first, ’cause I wanna come back to it if we have time, ut the idea that you should watch going into action while excited as closely as you would your anger. Except I think it’s sticky enough that you’d have to count to like 100, not count to 10 before going into action.

Cory Shepherd: Well. That’s what exactly what I’m like… I laughed a couple of minutes ago because it just, it’s like, it’s hiding out in plain sight. Everyone tells us not to jump into action when we’re angry. But also men, like men in particular, are known to make poor decisions when they’re… Let’s call it romantically…

Drew Knowles: Excited.

Cory Shepherd: Activated. [laughter] Yeah. That’s exactly the same…

Drew Knowles: Romantically Activated.

Cory Shepherd: It’s no different, fundamentally, what you’re saying, Drew, in our brains being in a group of people at a conference all getting ra-ra together. It’s just later they’re…

Drew Knowles: Well, the thing about that, I didn’t… What I didn’t say, Cory, ’cause I don’t want this to be X-rated. Not, that it will be, but the other thing that… The other thing…

Paul Adams: We haven’t had an explicit episode yet, Drew, so it’s always a possibility.

Drew Knowles: The other thing about Oxytocin is, it’s at its highest levels right after sex. And so, I sometimes joke and I think I’ve stolen this from, I think, it’s Dr. Paul Zack who’s kind of the king of Oxytocin, but a one night stand, people who have one night stands. I always joke, I say, “Just watch what you say afterwards,” because [laughter] whatever promises you make, “Oh yeah, I wanna see you again.” And the worst thing is, for my understanding scientifically is, for men, oxytocin levels drop way quicker. And for women, much slower. So it’s you should just watch what you say ever afterwards because you’re hijacked, your brain is not operating at a accurate thinking kind of level with any of those drugs, basically, that are in your brain after you get into that real state of excitement.

Paul Adams: And you mentioned, we got a bunch of founders and entrepreneurs that listen to the podcast, and how easy it is and this is the one that I think I’m more likely to do in just my general orientation to the world, is that if I’m not careful, I get excited about something and then I start getting other people excited about it. And not because I get enthusiastic, although sometimes I do, but I usually will go through just being a rational mind. And say “This is the direction we should go, and this is what we should do,” and then I come up with all the facts to back that up. And then I’m delivering the facts… And Cory’s nodding right now like, “Yep, I’ve seen him do this.”

Cory Shepherd: No, sorry. My neck was just… I needed to stretch it out a little bit, that’s all, nothing more.

Paul Adams: Well, but the idea being that we put ourselves in the position that we start to engross other people in our excitement, effectively disabling their ability to help us check our own thinking or judgements because we’re excited, we infected them. That’s something about anger that doesn’t happen is, usually if you’re angry and you go out and get angry about something, the other person’s angry, but at least they’re angry on the other side of the issue. The problem with excitement is you get other people excited, people that work for you, they depend on their paychecks from you, they’re customers, etcetera. And now you get them excited too, and none of them, naturally, none of them are gonna check you because they work for you. But secondarily, they’re not gonna check you because you infected them with the excitement and they also are disabled from being able to think rationally.

Drew Knowles: Absolutely. Yeah, it spreads. And the other thing is, Paul, if you’ve got a little bit of authority and you’re the person that they’re looking to for direction, they’re toast because they’re not necessarily gonna stop you and go, “Hey dude, you need to check your excitement right now.” Which is a saying that I’ve got in my own brain, that I say to myself like, “Woo, just check your excitement.” The other thing is, as you’ve mentioned Paul, we teach a very specific four-part model around personality called transactional behavior, that rests on our transaction cycle. Which is about human exchange and influence and how to really know what is your most dominant predictable behavior in social groups, and how do you maximize that, and not have your liabilities be so much of a liability. And you’re speaking to the one that you know about, we call it the inventor. The very subjective, future oriented, they know how it’s gonna go. But we have that other thing, and you made me laugh, is we call it the arsonist trait.

Drew Knowles: And they light fires with their good ideas, and the problem is they’re so excited about their good ideas, they grab a handful of people, they put the carrot in the future of how it’s all gonna turn out ’cause they really know in their mind exactly how it’s all gonna go. And if all you idiots just did what I had in my mind, it would all turn out. And you do it in such a way that seems so compelling that people do get swept up in it. And it can really, it seems like sometimes it will have results happen faster, but as you know, and we know, it can be really problematic later ’cause people are just unsure of exactly… When the excitement subsides, is kind of what I say, when the actual neurotransmitters subside, and they will, we’re all left looking around going, “How did we get here? I don’t even know what I’m doing.” What’s the intent?

Paul Adams: Right. And all the smiling on my face is our entire audience just learned why Cory likes to keep me in the studio [laughter] and away from all the rest of the employees…

Cory Shepherd: And on a leash. In summary, it’s: Paul’s always shooting for the moon, but it’s a paper moon and he’s handing out flares left and right. [laughter] That’s the arsonist trait. With that, it’s a perfect time to take a quick commercial break to hear a message from Sound Financial Group. So we’ll be back in just a moment.

Speaker 4: Hey everyone, this is Jeff Miller, Vice President of Client selection at Sound Financial Group and we wanna thank you for listening to another episode of Your Business Your Wealth. I wanna let you know that I am interrupting this podcast for a good reason. If you’re someone who is enjoying this podcast, if our philosophy is helping you better think about money, then this offer is for you. We’ve designed a financial inquiry call for listeners of Your Business Your Wealth. This is a 15-minute conversation where one of our team members will ask some key questions, understand your concerns, and if appropriate, schedule you for a philosophy conversation with Paul or Cory. If you email us at [email protected], with “Inquiry” in the subject, we will reply with a link to our team calendar, so you can schedule the call at the time that is least invasive for you. Even if now is not the right time for us to work together, we will point you towards resources to help you in your financial journey. Now back to your podcast already in progress.

Cory Shepherd: Welcome back to Your Business Your Wealth with our special guest Drew Knowles. Paul, at the break you were just chomping at the bit to ask Drew a question.

Paul Adams: Oh my gosh, yes, this… One thing that we talk with our clients a bunch about are the kinds of commitments they can make that… We did a podcast a long time ago that was, “Watch what you say, it could cost you millions.” And the idea being, one easy one is people have their baby, they’re deeply in love, to your point, Drew, they’re excited, the oxytocin is coursing through their veins, and it’s like, they promise, “I’m gonna pay for your college.” Or, Cory, you’ve seen some instances where groups of people have all gotten excited about an investment.

Cory Shepherd: Yep, lots of clients have stories where it’s one little step at a time, “This thing sounds great, but I don’t know anything about it.” But I’m mentally making the commitment on the front end because of that excitement, and then I find out more, and more, and more, but I’m able to rationalize all the pieces about it, even though more and more data comes out. If I had known that part at the beginning, I never would have gotten down that… Yeah, happens all the time.

Drew Knowles: Yeah, of course it does.

Cory Shepherd: And Drew, people think that it’s, “Oh, I’m getting excited, so I just gotta manage myself better.” But I think, and that’s in our public narrative, but you might suggest that it’s not the self, that’s the dead-end street these days we’re taking. Can you tell us more about that?

Drew Knowles: Yeah, absolutely, I’ll kind of jazz around a bit. Firstly, if you think about history in the last, I don’t know, 20 or 30 years with the different movements we’ve had. One of them in particular, being the personal growth self-help movement that is still reasonably entrenched, although an article I wrote recently, I read marketresearch.com, which is pretty reputable, a company talked about that people are demanding more accountability now, for the kind of over-promising and under-delivering, of a lot of the… Some of the personal growth self-help stuff. Like more practical, more pragmatic, because it’s notoriously been either individuals or environments that people get into where that excitement is actually looked at as the thing that you need. Like, “If you’re not motivated in that Ra-ra, if you’re not excited, if you’re not inspired, then how are you gonna have results happen?”

Drew Knowles: If you’re not positive, how are you gonna have results happen? And I can tell you, again, this is one of those personalities we teach about the skeptic. I know a lot of really rich, wealthy, and happy total skeptics, who to get them to act in a positive excited way is like getting blood out of a stone. Like not much excites them at all. So it’s a flawed… My opinion is, it’s a flawed concept that we all should look at the world from a glass half-full, we should all be positive. And I think it’s even flawed that just being positive equals you’re gonna be more happy and successful in life. And again, I’m not against being positive. It’s a good mood but sometimes, for us, we need to be skeptical, critical, confront the facts like on the front end. And so that’ll lead me into this thing, Cory, of one of the things that getting into this hijacked state of excitement does to us, is it has us commit to things that we don’t actually know how to fulfill. You said it before, Paul’s a shoot for the moon. That’s a narrative actually in the market place where, “Don’t worry about it, just throw your head over the wall, you can do it. Don’t worry if you haven’t got a plan, you don’t have the resources, you don’t have really any strategy. You’re just a special child, Paul Adams, you can do it, you’re amazing.”

Cory Shepherd: Well, don’t they specifically say, “Set a high goal and tell everyone you know, so you have no choice but to figure out how to do it”. Like, “I have no plan in mind, but I’ll figure it out along the way”.

Paul Adams: There’s currently international training courses that do that and make it a cornerstone.

Drew Knowles: I was gonna say, Cory, all you have to do is fall flat on your face ’cause that’s often what would happen and again, the real problem is of course…

Paul Adams: But that gets expensive, is a way to unwind this, right? When it happens.

Drew Knowles: Yeah. Expensive, expensive on your own self-worth, self-confidence, ’cause if you keep making these ridiculous promises.

Paul Adams: Public identity.

Drew Knowles: Yeah, public identity. You tend to start going, “Oh, it didn’t turn out again, but I was promised that if I really just manifest it and go for it, it would all just work out. Now I’m in like another 20,000 behind.” It creates overwhelm, is often common because you, again, you get into an environment, nothing really objectively changes that much other than a massive flood of wonderful, happy chemicals in your brain, and then you commit to things you really haven’t thought accurately about, and then suddenly you’re overwhelmed, you don’t know how to fulfill it. And not using your environment to kinda do more of the actual heavy lifting for you, which is where this focus on the self comes in, Cory. We’re definitely, I think as a society, especially ambitious professionals, the kind of people you guys work with, we’re pretty ambitious and there can be a real tendency to do so much work on ourselves. Which is not a bad thing.

Drew Knowles: Sometimes it’s good to work on your psychology, your past behavior… We’re so steeped in it. And all this work on ourselves get to a point. And I can say this, ’cause I had almost a decade of my life teaching people all of this stuff at a very deep level, and did it on and practiced on myself, but eventually it kinda got to the point where I went, “Certain things are still not… Just not working out.” Which is where this idea of: What about your environment? What about your ecology, so to speak. What about understanding that you’re actually just an aspect of a whole environment or ecosystem going on around you of many, many, many series of exchanges that are happening.

Drew Knowles: And what if you got really clear about your lane. Like you and I, Cory, for example, we’re the gregarious people-oriented relational-type personality, really good at dancing in the moment, you just kind of wind us up and put us in situations and we perform. But what are we like when you give us a whole bunch of spreadsheets and details and 20,000 emails we’ve gotta respond to? I can’t bear it sometimes. So what if… And I’ll give you this great example, John Paterson, our CEO, he’s like you, Paul Adams, so good at inventing and creating. And I thought, the process for me of writing articles, I do get excited about it, but I struggle with the kind of invention part. And I went… “What if I got my environment?” This really brilliant guy could John Paterson to actually… ’cause we’re already collaborating about it. He’s the CEO, he has to talk about my article. Yeah. Go on.

Paul Adams: Something you said there, that I think is key, “The environment is not just the objects, it’s also the other people.” I just don’t want our audience to miss that bit, that all our environment…

Drew Knowles: It’s your social ecologies, in fact, that say… You could say almost more importantly today, because we have to be so connected and rely on people… It’s your social ecology. And John and I were working on this article already together, and I thought, “Why don’t I seed him with the ideas of this article? And then I’ll set up a meeting with him like five days later”, which we already planned, “to then go over it.” And I know he loves solving puzzles, I know he loves creating, I know he loves doing… Now, he surprised me.

Drew Knowles: He came to that meeting having already written 1800 of the 2000 words of the article, and it was brilliant, and he banged it out in three hours and said he had such a good time. And then, I was two weeks ahead of my deadline for getting this article done, which Cory, you and I, we’re like… We scream in at the last minute.

Paul Adams: So those last 200 words were written two weeks later?

Drew Knowles: Yeah, but the great thing yeah… Well, actually, Paul, that’s exactly what happened, but this is a work in progress. But I didn’t have that much to do, and more than, John said, “Great, it’s… I need you now had totally edit it and bring the story and narrative and make it communicable to people.” So, we’re just… We’re about to have this article come out in July in this great magazine and it’s this collaborative co-constitutive process where it was done with so much effectiveness and so much ease. And there’s just… There’s so many examples I could give you of where the focus on self kinda leaves you with trying to squeeze the last amount of juice out of this human… Limited human organism. And there’s only so much excitement and only so much of those positive brain chemicals that are gonna get you toward certain aims. You have to start utilizing and building and maintaining what we call “Influence Ecologies.” And you guys might even wanna talk about that ’cause just the fact that Paul and Cory, you’re in business together, is just this perfect dynamic of, how do you say? Like you said earlier, to check both of your excitement sometimes before you might go mess up.

Cory Shepherd: I think some of our most wonderful creations, and when I’m having the most fun, is when I don’t have to come up with the seed. Like Paul has an idea and he doesn’t go run with it, he comes to me and he’s like, “Hey, this is a thing that we can create.” And then I don’t have to create from scratch, which takes so much energy for me, I get to add on something, but then I come up with something that wasn’t in the original formula and we’re kinda throwing it back and forth. So, I can absolutely see that Drew.

Drew Knowles: And you can also… Which is so good ’cause you’ve got the authority with Paul is, you can go “Hey, let’s just slow down a little bit.” In fact, “Paul, walk me backwards a little bit ’cause you’re already 20 years out, now.” So… And bring that to a narrative where people can actually understand. And in that process, it starts to give time for the potential trap of the excitement to subside.

Paul Adams: Yes. And as I’m listening here, in just a few minutes we’re gonna wanna kinda give everybody, ’cause you’ve covered so much territory, I wanna make sure we give some people…

Drew Knowles: I am sorry about that.

Paul Adams: Who are listening just great practical… No, it’s just, we’ve just packed a ton in, but I want everybody to know that as we complete, Drew has been super-generous. He’s gonna share some of these articles that he’s been referring to. And he’s gonna share his contact information, also. We’re gonna have all of that up at yourbusinessyourwealth.com/147. So you can get all of this content, it’ll take you right to the episode page. So you can go in, be able to download some of these articles, if this is just hitting dead center for you and the way it impacts you and your team, or maybe you have a spouse that gets very easily excited about things. And then, how can you both be in a shared strategy of, how we check each other’s excitement without upsetting one another? We wanna make sure we check our excitement but not kill the oxytocin in our households.

Cory Shepherd: Exactly. [laughter]

Drew Knowles: And look, Paul… Paul, that’s a good point of, it’s sometimes you… What I do with myself is I go, “Oh God, this just feels so good being this excited.” But mentally, I’m like, “And I’m just gonna hang out in a little bit and enjoy it.”

Paul Adams: Yes.

Drew Knowles: But I’m not… But I ain’t doing anything, I’m not gonna do anything with it. Or I get on the phone, like today, I’m gonna get on the phone with my accountant and wealth planner. There’s much more on that skeptical side, because I have an opportunity that’s just being given to me that I got super excited about yesterday, and it’s gonna cost me a fair bit of money, which probably isn’t in the cash flow that I had planned. And I’m hoping he either talks me off the ledge and curbs my excitement or he can get on board and go, “No, no, no, you’re totally fine to be excited about that. In fact, let’s do it.” But I, literally, called him two minutes after I got off this meeting yesterday ’cause I went, “Oh you’re about to… You’re about to just jump into something that is potentially not gonna be good.”

Paul Adams: Indeed. Well… And Drew, just before we kinda go through, here’s the things that we’d want people to most take away. One, thank you for being here, but so that nobody forgets or can reach out to you. What are the best ways for somebody to get in contact with you in “Influence Ecology”?

Drew Knowles: The first thing would just be to go to www.influenceecology.com there’s…

Paul Adams: Just like it sounds…

Drew Knowles: Yep. There’s a ton of resources on there. Paul, you can even do a 30-day guest access and do a little bit of a study module. You can also go to drewknowles.com, which has all those articles that I’m talking about, you can download them for free. And on our website, there’s the phone numbers that you can get to call me or you can call the office ’cause, obviously, I’m over here in New Zealand and our office in Southern California is where most of our staff are. So you can call them. That would be the simplest way.

Paul Adams: And I’ve gotta say, I don’t think Cory and I could say enough good about the education that you guys offer. It certainly put us in a position where we have this location independent practice, where Cory is able to record from an airport and this is not as a result of them teaching “Be location independent”, but one of the things they teach, one of the very first programs, is that things like our career and business should serve the aims of the life that we want to lead. Whereas, certainly, society programs us to say that what we ought to do is just submit our life and sacrifice it on the altar of our career until we “retire,” which those of you that are listeners for some time know, we certainly don’t like that as a narrative around money either. And as we kinda close out today, Cory, one of the things that’s sitting with me, that is probably… Like if we’ve got the excitement, “Beware, treat it maybe like you would anger,” in terms of not hanging out enjoying friends, not having your cocktail or two, but the idea that you wanna pause before you make any commitments while excited.

Paul Adams: Just like you wouldn’t make commitments when you’re angry. Let’s take that same thing from kindergarten. And second is to think about when we’re excited about things like a new investment. And what I might have everybody consider is if excitement is part of the pitch for any investment that you would potentially execute on, give it enough time that the excitement fully wears off before you commit. In nearly every investment meeting you could have, keep one of Drew’s articles link ready at hand in your email box and say to the person, “Hey, I read this great article from one of the top men’s magazines in New Zealand, run by this guy named Drew Knowles, who I heard on a podcast. One of the best podcasts I’ve ever heard my entire life.”

Cory Shepherd: Yes. Absolutely. [chuckle]

Paul Adams: Drew Knowles was on, and what he shared with us was, my wife and I shouldn’t make any decisions while we’re still excited, so we’ll need two days to make our decision. Everybody will still accept your money in two days, anybody that says they won’t, that is made up. You can do it in two days, it’ll be fine. But I think that’s one of the biggest things we could take away. And then maybe lastly, for all of our founders and entrepreneurs on the podcast today or watching our show on YouTube, I’d really have you consider how much we get our… And I’m speaking from the heart here, having seen the, not damage, but the cost it can create. Drew mentioned earlier about people following an enthusiastic leader with authority, and then all of a sudden picking their heads up and saying, “How did we get here?” And it leaves them afraid, unconfident, unaware of their future, and it leaves them with less trust for us in our future leadership.

Paul Adams: So to not only be careful about where we get excited before we jump on something, but where our excitement, if it’s untempered and not well thought through, could have other people get excited and commit to a plan of action that wasn’t appropriate. And how much better will our identity be as founders if what we can do is consistently and predictably only be excited about those things that we know we’re gonna be able to execute on, that we know we have the resources for, that we know we have the strategy for, then we can go out and demonstrate our excitement after we’ve done all the hard ground work, so that people know that each time we get excited, it’s about something that has the best possible likelihood of moving forward.

Paul Adams: So Drew, thank you again for being here. Cory, so glad you could make arrangements to be with us despite literally being about to fly across the country. So here’s what I’d most like everybody to be able to keep in mind as we close out today. So thankful for both Cory and Drew being able to do what they’ve done to make it onto the show despite being in an airport and literally in New Zealand.

Paul Adams: But for all of us there’s a few things we should be aware of. One, think of that idea of relating it all the way back to kindergarten, that just like you wouldn’t make a decision or a set of commitments when you’re angry for fear that you might say something that would not serve the future that you’d wanna create. That right there, the wait before you make a commitment, just like you would if you’re angry, and apply that to excitement.

Paul Adams: Second, to be aware of where investments and exciting opportunities can get us a little bit jacked up and use other people in your life to check that thinking to put you in the position that you don’t end up getting out over your skis with an investment or making a set of commitments. The thing Cory and I talked about earlier, we’ve literally seen people who got excited about something and they’re with other people they knew, they all got excited about it, and when they got excited, what did they do? They all committed to something, moved forward with it, and then none of them could back out and they all ended up in terrible investments or inside of terrible strategies accidentally.

Paul Adams: And then third, what I’d like you to think about, especially for all of you that are leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, where you’ve got teams and people working for you, be careful about your ability to create the excitement, infect them, and then none of you are able to think appropriately about strategy. But we don’t know that. We just throw ourselves behind it and try to make it happen. Often the sacrifice of appropriate work-life orchestration and the ability to work together as a team, we burn people out. That what if, instead, you held on to the excitement, you were able to go back, look at your resources, look at your strategy. Is this the thing that’s gonna work? Bounce it off a few confidants and make sure that it’s going to work before you roll it out to the team, then get them excited. Get them excited about something you’re proven. Get them excited about something that you’ve thought through. Get them excited about something where you’ve already built the strategy because then how different is the relationship over time if each time they see you excited, they know that there’s this enormously high likelihood of success because you never let them see you excited without having all those things in place.

Paul Adams: As a reminder, you’re gonna be able to get all of the resources, the articles that Drew’s done, all at www.yourbusinessyourwealth.com/147. And right there is gonna be the episode page, you’ll be able to get the show notes, you’ll be able to get those articles that Drew just spoke about. And as always, get you in a position if you need to talk to us, you can get a hold of us. I’m so glad all of you could be here and we hope that this has been a contribution to you to be able to design and build a good life.

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