 How can we take a high level concept and make it really practical for the audience to put into their life, to put into practice? I think a lot of the books that we get talk at a high level and give a lot of science and data and reasoning behind the strategy, but sometimes can fall short and how do you actually apply it in your own life? So that's really the angle that I'm always trying to think through as I'm going through the book or the lens that I use when I go through the book. One thing I wanted to talk about that I think many in the audience over the last decade have asked us is, you know, which guests do you get nervous for? And obviously we've had some big in-person interviews over the years with COVID. It's been a little trickier to get guests in studio, but this year we definitely had some guests that were making us a little nervous or anxious. And that's why it was so fun to cover anxiety and have on so many experts around anxiety and use some of the tools that we've learned over the years from Ethan Cross to overcome that chatter in your brain to keep you focused on the interview. And we started the year with one of my favorites, BJ Fogg, love all of the work he's done on habit formation. It's one of the books that we recommend for all of our clients when you're looking at removing bad habits from your life but also creating space for new healthy habits. And that was a very exciting episode that we kicked the year off with. But I know Johnny, we were both talking about this. And one of our big goals this year because we're such huge fans of his work was to get the opportunity to actually talk to Joe Navarro. We've been covering body language in our boot camps for over a decade. Much of that work is based on his books and the work that he's done as an expert in body language both reading and understanding what we're communicating in our own body language. And that episode made me extremely nervous and the lead up to that, I had so many questions buzzing in my head, so much excitement to finally get a chance to sit down with him and have that chat. And of course, once you hit record, it all goes out the window, right? You rely on some of the prep but it was fun at the end of the episode to really have some moments to deeply connect with Joe in a meaningful way. And really now I consider him to be one of our resources for the show and he's been so generous with this time after the show as well. It was really a remarkable moment for us. Yeah, and I had been following him and messaging him back and forth on Twitter for a while now just in some of the things that he posts and some of the books that he will discuss. And so for me, there was already a little bit of a personal relationship leading up to that. So it gave me an extra layer of nervousness. But when you're dealing with somebody who knows a subject to the caliber that he does, it's always intimidating. I mean, I feel very acquainted and familiar with a lot of the guests because we read their books before they come on. And there are certainly preconceived notions that I have about how they might be in the interview because of their books. Those are not always as quite accurate as they turn out to be when it actually starts. It's always very surprising. It's definitely true. You get an opportunity not only to read the book but then to unpack what they were thinking as they were researching the book, what was the genesis of the very point of writing the book and sharing a bit more of the backstory behind that than of course can be included in books. I know for myself, I was so fired up after reading Tim Grover's book and excited to have that opportunity to chat with him. And the one thing that I took away from that episode was his idea that balance is bullshit. Because I think so much of my life, I'm in this constant state of chasing balance. I just wanna have this work-life balance and I want everything to be in harmony and really hearing him share both Michael's journey and Kobe's journey to greatness and really the understanding of mentality of what it takes to perform at such a high level year in and year out as a professional. It was just so refreshing to hear him, no holds barred, explain, listen, balance can go out the window. And if you start to look at your life in seasons, you start to think about where you're really putting your focus. It's okay if at times things feel out of balance. That's normal. That's a part of the process. Reading his book, I felt it was a bit dry. I wasn't really sure what angle that he was coming from. And I was nervous about the interview because I wasn't sure how it was going to go. However, the interview was so good and I felt so comfortable talking with him. And then the book made a lot more sense to me. It's sort of like one of those things that all come together. As a musician, there's bands that maybe you listen to on record and you don't quite get and then you see them live and it all comes together and the records are so good afterwards. It was much in the same manner as that for me. I think one of the more rewarding things about doing the podcast over the years has been the fact that we get a lot of these books pre-print, meaning before they're actually published, we get to see the author's thoughts in a lot of unedited format and uncorrected proofs. So we see sort of how the sausage is made in building a lot of these best-selling books and also the fact that we actually read the books. And that's been such a powerful takeaway in my own personal life and something that many of the guests have shared with us off air is just how surprised they are. Of course, when it comes to podcasting, authors go on a lot of shows to sell books to talk about their work. And of course, I don't blame a lot of podcast hosts for not getting a chance to get to all of the books, but it is something that I really pride myself in getting an opportunity to sit down to really read the author's thoughts and then get a chance to really interrogate them a little bit around those thoughts, those ideas that they've crafted and spent their whole life working on. It's really rewarding. And I know for me, some books are absolute page turners. Jonny and I will laugh in the prep. Okay, that was a really easy one to read. Or we'll reaffirm a lot of what we teach in our programs. And then sometimes the books can be really dry, but the guests can be really exciting and vibrant. And you almost wonder, how did you write that? How is the tone so dry in that book? But here we are having such a great conversation. Well, think about that. So the authors that we're reading are the best in their fields and they've spent a lot of time in doing research for these books. So by the time it goes from their brain on the paper through the editing process, you can see where it could be very academic. You can see why it would be kind of dry, especially when they're going from cited research to cited research. So having them and speaking to them about it and for a lot of them, you see and get to hear the passion that comes through about the subject that they have been researching on and realize that some of these books, they had taken a decade to write in the research that they were going over and their passion for that subject comes through in the interview. That's the disconnect that I find a lot of times. So that when you're reading this research, of course it's going to be a bit dry. And of course I'm gonna start to worry about how is this going to come off in the interview? And then we hit record and they light up because they're talking about their favorite subject that they've been researching for 10 years and now all of that work is finally out and it's finally public and they get to share it. So they're fired up. So I have a question around your process when it comes to going through all of those books because it is a massive amount of books that you have to go through, sometimes on short notice. So what is your reading practice? How do you take notes? What questions stand out for you that you're then going to ask the guest? So I think number one, I try to get started as soon as I possibly can get my hands on the book and you hit the nail in the head. Sometimes we get pre-print books matter of days before the episode. Sometimes we'll get the books far in advance. But one of the first things that Johnny and I both share is a love for the physical book. Yeah, so I really don't like digital prints. I don't like spending more time on screens as we talked about with Brian Primak, one of our guests. One of the things that I'm really focusing on is trying to remove screen time from my life as diligently as possible. So I love a physical book. A physical book for me, number one, allows me to fold pages. I crease pages to go back. So as I'm whipping through a chapter, if there's something of real interest or something that sparks a thought, I'll fold a couple of pages in that chapter. So by the time I make my way through the whole book, I can start to create a compendium of thoughts, ideas, questions that I wanna unpack with the guests. The second thing that I'm always looking for is how can we take a high level concept and make it really practical for the audience to put into their life, to put into practice. I think a lot of the books that we get talk at a high level and give a lot of science and data and reasoning behind the strategy, but sometimes can fall short and how do you actually apply it in your own life? So that's really the angle that I'm always trying to think through as I'm going through the book or the lens that I use when I go through the book. And then what I'll do is I'll jot down some questions that I have in a separate document, I'll mull them over, I'll go on walks with Puppers and Amy and talk about some of the concepts in the book as they relate to me. And then when I feel good about my questions, I put them in the shared document with Johnny and then typically we will digest together and walk through, okay, what are some thoughts and some things that we really definitely wanna cover in the episode and then allow space and time for it to be a little bit free-flowing as well. I think that's part of the fun of it for myself is that we're both reading these books on our own time through our own lived experiences and when we put our questions on the shared Google doc, I get to see what things that you had taken interest in on the book and then of course my notes of the interests that I had taken. Sometimes they line up, sometimes they're wildly and widely different and that's always entertaining to me. And then so then when we get together an hour before the show, we talk about what are the points that we wanna hit and it's quite interesting, especially because we're also viewing a lot of these books as you were talking about the lens that you were looking at them and reading them, where we're also tied to the company together. So a lot of times the ideas that we're getting from the books or our takeaways are directly applied to the business that both you and I share which is also an interesting dynamic as well.