Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Sustainable Success: The Long Game for Work, Family, and Beyond with Jon Acuff

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 273

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Jon Acuff is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books, including his most recent, All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential.

Published in more than twenty languages, his work is both critically acclaimed and adored by readers. When he’s not writing, Acuff can be found on a stage, as one of INC’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. He’s spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges and companies around the world including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, Nokia and Comedy Central. Known for his insights wrapped in humor, Acuff shared the stage with an American Icon when he opened up for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium.

For over 20 years he’s also helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including The Home Depot, Bose, and Staples. His fresh perspective on life has given him the opportunity to write for Reader’s Digest, Fast Company, The Harvard Business Review and Time Magazine.

He lives outside of Nashville, TN with his wife Jenny and two teenage daughters.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “If you want a kind 16-year-old, give a six-year-old kindness and then 10 years to practice.”
  • “Another thing I’m thinking about is how do I be interruptible for a small number of people. I’m highly interruptible for three people: my wife, and my two daughters.”
  • “I’m learning to hold two opposite thoughts at once: one is that you’re doing better than you think, and the other is that you’re more capable than you realize.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


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Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have Jon Acuff, and he is a New York Times best-selling author of 10 books, including his most recent, ‘All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential.’ Published in more than 20 languages, his work is both critically acclaimed and adored by readers. When he's not writing, Acuff can be found on the stage as one of INC’s top 100 leadership speakers. He's spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences, colleges, and companies around the world, including FedEx, Nissan, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Chick-fil-A, Nokia, and Comedy Central. Known for his insights wrapped in humor, Acuff shared the stage with an American icon when he opened up for Dolly Parton at the Ryman Auditorium. For over 20 years, he's also helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including the Home Depot, Bose, and Staples. His fresh perspective on life has given him the opportunity to write for Reader's Digest, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and Time magazine. He lives outside of Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Jenny, and two teenage daughters. Jon, thank you so much for joining me. What's not in your bio that people need to know?

 

Jon Acuff  1:14 

It's so long. That bio is obnoxious. You know what I was thinking the whole time? I gotta shorten this thing. Gotta trim this thing down. Geez. Yeah. My daughters aren't teenagers anymore, that's what I should say. I need to update it to, “Two daughters,” because one's 19 and one's 21, so life comes at you. You could say that. What's not in my bio? My kids are older. They're older since that bio was written. 

 

Scott Allen  1:36

Collegiate.

 

Jon Acuff  1:37

Yeah. They're in your world. They're out there mixing it up with professors and tweed coats and elbow patches. You get to sign that, right? at the front door. “Here's your pipe, Scott.”

 

Scott Allen  1:48 

(Laughs) “Here's your pipe, and your shoulder pads, your tweed jacket.” 

 

Jon Acuff  1:51 

Yeah. It'll be kind of chalky. You don't even use chalk anymore, but you're still going to be a little chalky. 

 

Scott Allen  1:57

No, you still use the chalk just because you can. 

 

Jon Acuff  1:59

Oh, I don't know. I think you guys are all doing whiteboards now, and like… You're all on Slack, every test is online. Yeah, you guys are living, you guys are like Tron over there. 

 

Scott Allen  2:09 

Oh, geez. Hey, you know what? I'm really, really excited for this conversation, Jon. And I said this to you last summer, we were doing some work at Lexus for their Elevate conference, which was so much fun, and got to see you speak. Of course, I'd had a session participant recommend your book ‘Finish.’ So, participant recommends it, I download it, I listen. And as I said to you last summer, I will, literally… There's no other author in the world that I will pull up and listen to their work multiple times. And when I need to be picked up, when I need a little bit of motivation, I will turn on one of your audiobooks. And I love listening because, again, like your bio says, you need to keep this in there. You bring this really light-hearted, funny, hilarious approach to the work, but your insights are just so sharp. They're right on target. And you synthesize some of these things. And literally, just the other day, I was writing up my goals for 2025 and I cut one of them in half. 

 

Jon Acuff  3:11

Oh, nice. Nice.

 

Scott Allen  3:13

Yeah. So, again, how you're communicating, and how you're thinking, and how you are synthesizing, sometimes, some of this complex content, it's just awesome. 

 

Jon Acuff  3:23

I appreciate that. 

 

Scott Allen  3:24

Yeah. So, I just want to say, first of all, thank you for your great work. For listeners, do not buy his books, buy the audiobook and listen to that, and you will laugh, you will learn, and you will walk away feeling motivated. What I'm really excited to kind of explore with you today is it seems like you've been thinking a little bit more about family, and leadership, and kind of reflections on raising children. And that's always been a part of your work in your writing, but talk a little bit about some of that work because I think it's a topic that often is not highlighted enough. I'm not putting this on you right now, but this whole domain of leading family, and leadership in family, and all of the lessons baked in there, it's a treasure trove if we choose to look at it that way.

 

Jon Acuff  4:13 

Yeah. I think, for me, part of it was I didn't want to write about it until I felt like I was at a good stage of it. I always joke, like,  “If you write a parenting book and you have a two-year-old, you haven't parented yet. You've protected.” Parenting a one-year-old is just protecting, it's just mostly keeping sharp objects out of their hands. And then, the joke I do with marriage is, like, “If I can still smell the sunscreen on you from your honeymoon, don't write a marriage book. Don't tell us what you've learned about marriage.” So, I had this general sense of, like, I would share family stuff, but I wanted to be in a spot where… By no means do I consider myself a parenting expert because I keep learning so many new things where, just even sending both kids to college, it's not over. There's this part of you that's like, okay, they've been released into the world as if some degree of parenting is over, it just changes. You start to go, “Okay, well, how do I help…” Like, the other day, we helped a daughter navigate a job situation, and you're like, “Oh, okay, so that's a new…” So, I didn't want to write about it until I felt like I had experienced it, a generous amount of it. Because I can look back in my life and say there are opportunities I've had now that, if you asked me 10 years ago if I was ready for them, I would have been like, “I'm so ready,” and I was not, and I would have butchered it. And I would have been so sure that I was ready, and I just really wasn't. And so, I'm just learning to kind of settle into the pace of life too so that as I learn something, when it's the right time to share it, I share it. But I don't, out of my enthusiasm, share it before it's really helpful. 

 

Scott Allen  5:45 

Yeah. Well, so what are some insights right now as you think about it, as you reflect on that work of parenting? What are some things that are top of mind for you? Because, again, I just love not only the humor, but the sharp point you put on certain things when it comes to just any topic that I've heard you speak on, whether it's setting a goal, or ‘Soundtracks’. Love that book as well. Kind of our mindset and what are those soundtracks that help or hurt us? What are some ways you're thinking about family and leadership right now in parenting?

 

Jon Acuff  6:17 

Yeah. So, one of the things we say a lot in our family is if you want a kind 16-year-old, give a six-year-old kindness and then 10 years to practice. And so, if you want that, even when they're two, you're practicing what they're going to be doing when they're 12. What a generous gift to give them 10 years to settle into that. What a cruel thing to deny a kid the word ‘no,’ until they're 25 and a boss says it. So, we're very much, like, how do you live in the moment, but how do you play the long game? So, we're always going, “Okay, well, what does this long game look like? How do we set our kids up for success?” Even little things like one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot lately, I've had other dads say to me, “I'm sending my kid to school in a junker car, they got to learn the value of $1,” and I think that's ridiculous. Why would I send my most precious resource, asset, whatever word, person, my 18-year-old daughter, down the highway in a car that'll break down because I want to teach her a lesson about the value of hard work? Dude, she's 18. If she hasn't learned that yet, the piece of junk car where she's broken down in a bad neighborhood and is in danger as a female isn't going to drive that lesson home. I bought a great, good car for her. If that's the one thing that's going to swing her into being entitled and spoiled… So, there's all these things I'm learning that really successful people don't parent as. So, there's all these kind of almost middle-class beliefs of “No, they've got to scrape for every dollar, and it's got to be terrible.” And my wife and I were like, “Well, we've really talked about money their entire childhood, and the value of it, and how to work for it, and the car isn't the lesson.” We want our daughters in a safe, reliable forerunner. We didn't buy her a Range Rover, I think you can take anything to the extreme. But we weren't going to say, “No, you have to struggle and have a 22-year-old Civic to learn how a dollar matters.” And that's just, for me, the really successful people I look to don't do that kind of thing, and they help their kids. They help their kids far more than the middle class understands. Like, where you go the Kennedys had a compound. When you look at generationally successful families, they take care, and encourage, and they work together. There's not a “It's all on you now, we've launched you.” And so, I'm really looking at parenting that way, like, what does generational success look like? And then setting long-term goals. I learned from my own in-laws, build a place that your kids want to return to. So, I watched my in-laws be very deliberate about retiring to a mountain community, and then allowing us to visit that 20 summers in a row, 15 summers in a row, and now my kids can't wait to get there. So, a great financial flex is I want the financial freedom someday to have the kind of place that my kids want to return to. Oh, okay, people don't talk about that in finances, but that, to me, is very much… Or a real financial flex is I don't want to be a financial burden on my kids when I'm old. That's not a sexy financial flex, but, man, is that a good one? Because I'm seeing the opposite. As somebody who's almost 50, I'm seeing parents who had no plan. One of the largest go-fund-mes right now is for funerals because people are so unprepared for their death that they make their kids kick start their funeral. Can you imagine, dude, your mom and dad pass away, and then the first thing you have to do is get online and be like, “Hey, if you guys want to kick in on this casket, let me know.” Like, “What?” So, I'm looking ahead. So, I think a lot of parenting is looking ahead and going, “What's the type of life I want for my kids?” “What's the type of life I want for me as a parent?” “What does that look like?” And then another thing I'm thinking about is how do I be interruptible for a small amount of people. I'm highly interruptible for three people: Ellie Acuff, McCray Acuff, and Jenny Acuff. And then there's degrees of interruptible, and they expand out. But when my daughter was home for college in the summer, she said, “Hey, can you play pickleball tomorrow at 8:00 A.M?” And it was a Monday morning. And you and I are similar, we have plans on Monday mornings. We are definitely in go time, and I cleared my schedule. And there were times when I didn't have that freedom. Like early in my career, I wouldn't have had that freedom. If somebody doesn't have that freedom, no shame there. But that's a good long-term goal for me to work toward where I now have the career freedom to be interruptible. To go, “Wow, what's the rare thing?” When it comes to family, I say choose the rare. It's rare that an 18-year-old says, “Hey, would you go get coffee with me?” “Hey, would you play pickleball with me?” “Hey, would you hang out with me?” So, when they make a request, I want to clear my schedule and be able to honor that because that's rare. So, those are the kind of things that I'm kind of swirling around right now.

 

Scott Allen  10:50 

Yeah. Well, and there's this really, really wonderful concept called social learning theory. So, social learning theory is Albert Bandura, psychologist. And it's just a fancy way of saying we learn from our environment. And, to your point with the long game, if we have been modeling gratitude from 5 when they can start to write a thank you note, to let's go 15, when they can write a thank you note. And we're coaching, we're nudging, but we're building that habit of mind and that pattern of behavior, then we are a family that expresses gratitude. Much more readily than if it's not happened. Or curiosity, if we are a family that says, “Well, we'll figure it out, let's keep…” Again, these soundtracks, like back to your book ‘Soundtracks,’ those soundtracks that we as a family, which is just a small team or a community, these soundtracks that we build. So one soundtrack, my wife will often say to the kids… They kind of rush up and something's a little amiss, and she'll say, “Every problem has a…”  And they'll say, “Solution.” (Laughs).

 

Jon Acuff  11:56

That’s great.

 

Scott Allen  11:57

That's the mindset, and that's what's been modeled. And then it's hilarious because my wife goes to work and things are kind of a flutter there, and she says, “Every problem has a…” And they say, “Solution.” Then they start going into problem-solving. But what's being modeled, whether it's gratitude, curiosity? How we model difficult conversations or boundaries and friendships or relationships, that's all being baked in. And, to your point, it's hard to teach that lesson at 18. (Laughs)

 

Jon Acuff  12:26 

No. And, Scott, part of what happened was I saw people my age, like maybe my mid-30s, where their parents would go to counseling for the first time and then try to have a heart-to-heart conversation. And the kid, rightfully so, at 34 is like, “What? What? I'm sorry, where have you…  It's nice to meet you. We've had 30 years without you having heart-to-heart conversations and now you want to skip 50 intimacy levels because you read a book about emotional intelligence. And we've stayed surface our entire family, and now you want to ask me about my heart needs. No, that's going to take some time.” And so, I love that idea of practicing it, especially, what a great soundtrack that there's a solution. One of ours that we say is there's money on the ground everywhere if you're willing to pick it up. And so, we do kind of rolling lessons. We're having conversations where we're like, “Here's how we would have handled that differently.” So, my wife, one day, we're driving by the high school, and the high school had the road redone, and they gave everybody the same mailbox for 50 mailboxes in a row. And five years later, they are all faded, and they were kind of ugly. And my wife said, “A high schooler could knock on 50 of those doors and probably charge 50 bucks a pop to paint the mailbox, and people are more likely to say yes to teenagers than they are 42-year-olds.” And then we'll tell our kids that, like, use your age as a benefit. An 18-year-old who's hustling to me is very different. A 58-year-old who says, “Jon, I'd love to pick your brain.” I go, “Yeah, I got a lot of books, why don't you read some of those books?” An 18-year-old who says, “Hey, Mr. Acuff, I know you're busy but I really want to start my own business, and you run a business, can I…” So, we're constantly pointing stuff out like that. And then, also one of the things we did one summer was we paid them to read books. We felt like there were a lot of books they were no longer reading in their high school education, and so we made a list, and we made the list with them, and then we paid them that summer to read. And it was super fun for me to see one of my daughters at the pool with ‘Catch-22,’ or ‘My Ántonia,’ versus TikTok. I definitely felt some dad pride, like, “Let's go.” And some people were like, “Why? You shouldn't have paid them.” I'm like, “Did you get paid at work this week? Did you get a salary? Stop it.” “Well, you shouldn't have paid them.” I want them to know their time has value. I want them to know that I appreciate that. So, I would say another thing that's big in our family is gamifying things. How do we make this fun? How do we make it a game? How do we have a conversation about it? How do we see the good side of it? So, that was an example of us, instead of just saying, “I wish you read more.” That doesn't help anybody. Or, “You should read more,” even worse, we said, “Okay, let's come up with a list together. Let's knock it out. You'll get paid and let's figure out how to make that a fun game that you do all summer.” And then they got into a rhythm. And they could quit books if they didn't like it. I think one of my daughters quit ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ She was at the pool, like, “Ughh. Hawthorne is killing me.” So, she dropped that one. So, it's not that we're rigid with it. That's the other thing with parenting is I think there's a great degree of planning, there’s a great degree of flexibility because you have to be… I've learned I have to be open-handed. My hands only have to open wider and wider and wider the more my kids grow up because I control less and less and less. When your kids are 6, you can almost control their friends because you do play dates and you go, “Oh, it's so weird that he's at the park at the same time we are. What?” “It's so weird I said yes to this sleepover, no to the other one.” But the older they get, the more open-handed you have to get because you don't control where they get to sit at the lunchroom as a sophomore girl, that's a big deal. And so, as a parent, you have to open your hands. And I used to say I didn't know as a control freak, I just thought I was a fan of certainty. And so, I think you have to let that go as a parent.

 

Scott Allen  16:05 

And so, another one is modeling failure. It's such a wonderful… I think probably a couple of years ago, we were at the dinner table and I just said, “Yeah, I had a paper that was rejected by a journal today.” And my kids were kind of in awe. They were like, “Wow, sometimes you fail?” And I'm like, “Yeah, I got rejected. Now that doesn't mean I'm not going to…” And I kind of then talked about, “Okay, here's the process of how I pick up and move forward.” And if we're there to help them kind of work through some of that failure, model failure, and model failing well, then that's what they're learning. “Oh, my gosh. Okay, if I'm going to go somewhere new, I'm going to put myself out there.” And so, the Carol Dweck growth mindset stuff where it's like, “Look, we're going to praise the process and say, ‘good job for putting yourself out there.’ That means you're pushing yourself, and that means you're doing it. You're making it happen.” And none of us are always going to get what we want, or have it go the way we want to, but how we kind of respond to that makes all the difference. And, again, if we're modeling that for let's go 10, 12, 14, years, well, now, by the time they're 18, they're much more likely to put themselves out there. They're much more likely to understand that failure is a part of growth. And it's a no-brainer. But I don't know that ‘What to Expect When You're Expecting’ covered that. 

 

Jon Acuff  17:24 

Well, I just think part of it is kids, if it goes well, they naturally shave off your selfishness. They have to. So, even when you're a single adult, you get to think a lot about me. When you get married, it becomes we. When you have kids, it becomes they, like, all of us. And so, for me, that wasn't easy. I remember I threw a huge tantrum the first time they dropped their naps on a Saturday. So, I wanted to write. I had in my head now I got to write…” And I said to my wife “I'm going to go write.” And she's like, “No, they don't take naps anymore.” And I was like, “Did we get a vote? Was there a family vote on that? Because I think they should still…” And that was just over. And I remember being kind of a big, immature baby about it, but it was one of those moments where it's like, “Oh, okay, in order for me to reflect what their schedule is, I'm going to need to change mine.” One of the reasons I started getting up early, I was always a night owl, but I started getting up early because my kids got up early. I started to watch less TV because there was less time for free time to write, and so their presence and my desire to be part of their presence changed my work schedule. And ‘What to Expect When You're Expecting,’ it wouldn't have said “Hey, by the way, you're going to get up at 6:00 A.M soon, get half an hour up before they get up. And, by the way, half the time you do that, they'll beat you downstairs. They'll already be up.” I always say, if you want to see your kid early, set a morning goal because that's going to be the days, like, “I just felt like getting up early today, just don't even know why.” And you're trying to do some headspace meditation, and then you always end up yelling at them during the calming meditation, like, “I'm trying to center myself here,” and you're yelling at your kids. So, I think the modeling thing, and then also being in community with other parents so they can model it back to you. And say “Yeah, we went through that thing. It was hard.” We're like, “Yeah, this is a challenge for us.” Because I think parenting can be pretty isolating, and so I think you need other parents that are helping you. And you just have to push back on things that people just… I think it's such a broken soundtrack for people to go, “Oh, your teenagers hate you.” I remember when I had 11-year-olds and 12-year-olds, they'd be like, “Oh, do your kids hate you yet?” It's such a self-defeating, self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course, your relationship changes, and they're more emotional, and there's all the stuff, but I don't accept that your kids have to hate you. That's such a weird, broken parenting idea. 

 

Scott Allen  19:45 

Or that the twos have to be terrible. I remember that as well, “Oh, are they in the terrible twos?” “No, actually we’re doing pretty good. Yeah. There's some moments where I have emotional outbursts, but we’re doing great.” (Laughs)

 

Jon Acuff  19:55 

Yeah. Mostly me. That's so true. But, again, like the modeling failure, I think it’s a really good one too. And so is learning how to apologize and be like, “Hey, I did this wrong, and I overreacted, and here's what I was afraid of, and I'm sorry that I reacted that way.” And that's not easy, but I think it does teach them, like, “Okay, Mom and Dad are human too, and they'd rather be in relationship with a human than an idea.” If you don't apologize, you're just an idea. And I think they'd rather be parented by a human. 

 

Scott Allen  20:31 

Yeah. Well said. Very well said. So, what else are you thinking about right now? Your mind is always cooking. I see your posts on LinkedIn and I always enjoy those, but what's top of mind for you right now as you kind of [Inaudible 20:45] the landscape of either business or some of the presentations, or maybe some of your writing, what are you thinking about?

 

Jon Acuff  20:51 

Yeah. So, I'm totally thinking about, really, what does it take to have a long-term successful life? So, I would say I'm really in study mode. I'm working on a new book right now, so that always has me thinking extra. I'm reading a lot. I try to read 100 books a year. I'm a big goal nerd. I always have a bunch of goals going on. I'm learning to hold two opposite thoughts at the same time. One is you're doing better than you think, and one is you're more capable of what you think. So, you're doing better. You're doing it, you're going great, but also there's a lot of room for growth. So, how do you kind of have those two tensions? But, yeah, I would say I've just been really fascinated by talking to what I would consider successful people and asking them, “How do you stay you? What are the things you're doing to do what you're doing?” And so, I'm no longer impressed by the guy who had a successful YouTube channel for a year, or the author who had one book pop off other than James Clear. That man is unbelievable. 

 

Scott Allen  21:49

That was the big book.

 

Jon Acuff  21:49

There's no need to ever write a follow-up, like, “Son of Atomic Habits,” or whatever. Yeah. Why would you… But the flash in the pan stuff that we often celebrate, I'm not curious about. What I'm curious about is that leader that's 20 years, 30 years deep into their leadership and hasn't blown it. They haven't had a series of affairs. They haven't embezzled. They haven't been fired for anger issues. They've had a 20-year, 30-year, 40-year, or 50-year run, and they're finishing well. And so, I've just been finding people like that, and asking them questions, and taking notes, and going, “Oh, here's how that could look at my life or here's what's different about that.” I would say, if you broke my life into eras, and I think about that because I went to Taylor Swift's tour, is the first was from like 18 to 34 was employee, and then 34 to 48 was solopreneur, and then 48 on is leader. And so, I'm like, “Okay, what does leadership look like going forward?” Because I'm expanding the team, and I'm expanding what we do. And so, yeah, I'm asking a lot of questions right now about what does it take to be long-term successful, and are there consistencies in people that I look up to? And if you're on your ninth marriage, I want a full spectrum success. If your kids don't talk to you, that's not where I'm trying to aim. It that sounds judgmental, I don't mean it that way, it's just I think it's kind of like leg day. If you have amazing triceps, but the rest of your body is spindly, I'm not going to be like, “I gotta figure out what this guy's doing.” Like Joe Tricep, I don't need that advice. So, I'm trying to be deliberate about going, “Man, the business is [Inaudible 23:32] but their family life's a mess,” or, “Their health is a mess,” whatever. What does it look like to have a full spectrum successful life, and how do I do that? 

 

Scott Allen  23:41 

Yeah. A friend of mine, Martin Gutmann, he has a TED Talk that has kind of blown up, and it's called… One of the phrases you can search on YouTube is ‘Good leadership is boring.’ Some of these individuals, it's just been this incredible sustained success. I think of, like Chris Connor who was at Sherwin-Williams, just beloved. Just took that organization to the next level. But it's not flashy, it's not self-promotional, it's just a consistent, sustainable, good human being knocked it out of the park and from all accounts on from multiple dimensions and metrics. Yeah, such an interesting phenomenon when you find these individuals. Has anything stood out for you as kind of ingredients that are becoming themes?

 

Jon Acuff  24:34 

Yeah. So, one is that they're always doing more than you know. They're always playing a million games. So, I'll talk to people and I'll go… And it takes a little time for them to open up, but I'll say, “Well, what are you doing to stay you?” And they'll go, “Oh, not too much.” I'll be like, “No, really, what do you…?” And then I'll keep asking, and sometimes they'll say, “Ah, this will make me sound entitled, or this is going to make me seem weird.” And so, a lot of it is they are doing weird things because success is abnormal. Average is average because average is average. So, by definition, successful is abnormal. So, it has a degree of weirdness to it, and that's my favorite thing is when I go, “Okay, well, tell me about this…” And they'll go, “I don't buy my own clothes. 10 years ago, I decided I hate picking up clothes. It gives me decision fatigue. It gives me no joy. I'm a public figure so I found this a service. I have a personal assistant, whatever. I haven't shopped for clothes in 10 years.” And to an average person that might sound weird, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that's amazing.” I talked to somebody the other day, and I asked him, and his thing is time-saving. He's a machine at figuring out how to save time. I was like, “What's the weirdest one you did?” He said, “I lasered the hair off my face so I could save time-shaving.” And I was like, “That is extreme. That is.” And I was like, “I'm not going to do it,” but I loved hearing that because he had kind of taken it to that degree for him. So, that's what I would say, is what I'm finding is that they're out there. They often won't share it at first because it is abnormal, but it's a really big part of their success where they're not casual about their time, they're not casual about their relationships. They're doing a lot of… They're playing games to stay motivated. The way I say it, I love that idea of leadership is boring. I often say excellence is boring. I wrote three thank-you notes yesterday, it was boring. I hate finding addresses. You would think I was writing the Magna Carta based on how much huff I gave. Like, “Ugh, I gotta write these thank you notes.” And it's for things that people have done for me that are kind, I should… You know what I mean? I would love to tell you that's out of the wellspring of my heart, but I'm like, “Nah, this is the right thing to do.” And so, that was boring, but they're also finding ways to make the boring things more interesting. They're going they got a checklist, or they've got an app. For me, one of the dorkiest things I did this year, I found an app that allows you to walk, it tracks your walking all year as you return the ring to Mordor. And it doesn't say, “Mordor,” it says, “The fiery mountain,” because, of course, they don't have the rights. But, dude, I totally did that. I threw that ring in that fire on November 17th. I got it there early. I don't want to say I out-Frodoed Frodo, but pretty much. And so, an average person would go, “Dude, that is ridiculous.” And I go, “I don't care.” Things that are hard for me, I try to make easier. So, if I know lots of apps, lots of tricks, lots of tools, lots of conversations, I'm going to use as many as possible because I want it to be as easy as possible for this good thing to happen. And so, that's what I keep consistently finding is they have a lot of things they're doing, and they're very custom. They're very à la carte. I haven't met a single person that said, “I did this exact program from this other person perfectly.” What I found is they'll go, “I pulled this piece from ‘Getting Things Done,’ and I pulled this piece from this professor, and did it,” and then it's kind of like they made their own. That's what I've seen. What would you say you've seen in successful long-term people?

 

Scott Allen  28:06 

Well, okay. So, love what you just said because, yeah, I think part of the puzzle is that we have to figure out what's going to work for us. And that's not… Growing up, my parents were like, “Go upstairs and study in the quiet of your room,” and it was deafening. I wilted as soon as… And it wasn't until I was in college where I started learning, “Oh, okay, I need to be in a coffee shop with people all around me, music blasting in my ears, and a big cup of coffee, and then I can concentrate.” I've figured out I know how, and you know how to do this as well. I'm confident, but I know how to get myself into flow, but that's kind of a messed up process if I were to actually verbalize it to you. I need the Grateful Dead playing. It's a whole thing, but I can get there and I figured out the recipe. Here's another one, Jon, it's hilarious. I've never taken a sleeping pill, but have taken Tylenol PM, but I figured out my Ambien which is space videos. So, you travel a lot, I travel a lot. I'm trying to fall asleep in the Marriott, I can put on… There's a whole genre, it's called ‘Three hours of space documentaries to fall asleep to.’ Well, it's amazing. If I need to fall asleep, I turn that on, and this guy goes “Saturn's moon IO is a geological wonder.” And I'm just like, “Tell me more,” and I just start slowly falling asleep.

 

Jon Acuff  29:26 

Oh, that's so good.

 

Scott Allen  29:27 

So, for all these different areas of our lives, I think the puzzle is the fun. And getting these little hacks and creating ways to save time and to do the work better, I think that's just part of the mindset. That's part of the soundtrack. This isn't working, I don't have energy for this. How do I get around this? Or how do I shift the soundtrack? Sustainability. So, I've had a lot of conversations recently, and this woman, Amy Elizabeth Fox that I had on the podcast, she used the phrase ‘performance ready,’ which I thought was really interesting. And so, I had three professors from the Naval War College on as well, and they were talking about spiritual readiness as something that the Naval War College is focused on. So, you have these individuals who are going to be incredible sailor soldiers. You have these individuals that are going to know their job, they're going to be physically fit, but are they as a person whole? So, I think, at least, something I come across fairly often is that you have an individual that is anchored to either family, their faith. Authentically anchored to family, faith, or to some other element that helps them be performance-ready. It's not other habits, like alcohol, or whatever else. Those are actually things that are going to diminish your ability to be performance-ready. But, at least, a theme I see is that. That those individuals who are kind of approaching the work in a sustainable fashion, they're performance-ready but they've actually done the work to be performance-ready. That that foundation is solid. Does that make sense? 

 

Jon Acuff  31:03 

Yeah, totally. 100% it's interesting. I think about that from sports, like, you always feel better about a long-term success for an athlete based on the people they're surrounded with. So, if you go, “This is Trevor Lawrence's high school sweetheart,” that's different from, “He's dating a series of reality stars in LA, I hope it works out. I hope it's not distracting.” And you go “Okay.” Anytime you're an NFL player and you're involved in a story that has a sentence, “Outside a bar at 2:00 A.M.,” you weren't helping homeless people. There was a fight. And so, I think part of that foundation of, like, wow, they have the people around them. They have a strong family structure. It certainly doesn't mean you can't do it even if you don't have. There's a lot of successful people that came from broken families, but I think when you find somebody in their 30s and they don't have a foundation, whether it is a faith, whether it is a family, whether it is a mission, they've got a calling that they're dedicated to, that's an interesting one for me. Because faith is a big part of my life, and family is a big part of my life. So I feel like I've been fortunate to have both of those as structures where some of the traps aren't appealing to me because of what they would cost. And I can go, “Oh, that's not a good trade-off.” If I had the chance to do 150 events a year right now, I wouldn't do it because that'd be divorce city. I wouldn't know any friends, and I certainly wouldn't know my wife. So, that's a natural limit for me of, like… And I think long-term, that's healthier for me. 

 

Scott Allen  32:37 

That's part of the sustainability, I think, is that, to your point, you're also carving out that Quadrant 2, that Stephen Covey Quadrant 2 time, which is important but not urgent. You could be hustling and you could be doing 150, 200, you definitely could be, but you're carving out time, and you're keeping your North Star, your North Star, and also replenishing yourself with new content and new research and new writing. And that seems to be, at least, for me, a much more sustainable approach to be that person that's doing it 20 years from now, still evolving, still creating, still growing, and still interested. 

 

Jon Acuff  33:16 

Yeah. And it's why, I think, part of it, I would say the word ‘limit’ has a bad reputation, but it's a great word. It's part of the reason I don't do ultra-marathons because I want to be running at 75, I don't want to be hurt at 52. And so, I'm a pretty compulsive person by nature, so one of my wife and I's agreements is I stop at half marathons. The furthest distance I run or train for is a half marathon. There's a part of me that maybe would like to do a marathon, but I don't feel like I have to for it to count as a runner. So, I actually feel kind of some freedom in that. But she knows if I did a full, I would be doing 50 miles in the woods before you knew it. There's a race in England called The Tunnel, which is 200 miles back and forth in a one-mile tunnel. And another thing is there's certain doors I won't open because I know what they would cost. I don't own an Xbox or a PlayStation, I would love to. I know there's a part of me that would genuinely enjoy that, but I know how I am too. I would be playing eight hours. I would be all in. And I said to a friend the other day, and I was like, “Well, again, no shame on anybody that plays 15 minutes a day and does it for relaxation.” He was like, “Have you ever met a single man in the world that plays 15 minutes a day and goes, ‘Well, there's my timer. That's enough Call of Duty today,’ and then shuts it down?” He was like, “Dude, what are you even talking about?” So, for me, there's certain things where it's like… Gambling, I know where I would go. Video games, I know where I'd go. So, long-distance running, which none of those things are… I'm not trying to put a moral cast on them, but I know for the way I perform, the best performance doesn't involve them.

 

Scott Allen  34:53 

Yep. And that self-awareness, I think that's another part of that sustainability, that longevity, is that having… Again, all of these, it's not the same combination for everyone. I think it's a different combination because, for Ray Dalio, he'll talk about meditation being just transformational and foundational for his success. Great. Awesome. Transcendental meditation was a big piece of his formula, but I think the most important piece is finding out what it means for you and what it is for you, and… 

 

Jon Acuff  35:23 

What's something you've tried that wasn't for you? Like, a bunch of people were like, “This is amazing,” and you tried it, and you’re like “Not for me.”

 

Scott Allen  35:29 

Oh my gosh, that's a great question. My wife and I walk every morning. We walk every morning, and probably, Jon, I think, in the next few years we will have walked the earth over the course of our… You go into the mountain. 

 

Jon Acuff  35:47 

Yeah, I was doing it for Middle Earth, you do it for yourself. I'm not saying you're selfish, whatever.

 

Scott Allen  35:51 

We're going around the earth. So, we walk three miles a day, every day, rain or shine, and I love that exercise, but I haven't…  I have friends who got really into CrossFit, and hit training, and Pilates, and, for some reason, I have not tapped into… I didn't walk out of Pilates and say, “Well, that was awesome. That was incredible.” (Laughs)

 

Jon Acuff  36:16 

That's fun. Yeah, that's a great example.

 

Scott Allen  36:19 

And I wish that it was easier for me, or I wish that I did get that adrenaline from that. Now, I get that from walking with my wife. And then, again, earlier this afternoon, I knew that I was going to have an afternoon of conversations and meetings, and so I went on another half-hour walk. I love that. But when it comes to, for some reason, Jon, running, for instance. I know you love to run, it just never clicked. But I wish it had, it hasn't yet. And so, I'm constantly trying to figure out, well, what is that for me like walking that can be that. So, that would be one. Friends of mine that are like, “Oh, you gotta come to the gym. It's the best. It's 5:00 A.M. and we're blasting ‘90s music about thongs. You'll love it.” The Thong Song at 5:00 A.M, it's not...

 

Jon Acuff  37:06 

One of Sisqó's best. Probably top three Sisqó, if I had to list them. 

 

Scott Allen  37:10

Not how I want to wake up. (Laughs)

 

Jon Acuff  37:12

I have a friend who I love who always wants me to play pickleball at 5:00 A.M., and I'm always like, “Dude, I get up early. I do. I get after it. That is not what I'm doing. There is no world where I'll wake up in the 4:00 o'clock hour to get to pickleball. That's just…” And I tell him that all the time, and he's like, “Alright.” He's like, “We're out there 5:15 A.M.” I'm like, “I'm not.” But it's great for him. I think that you're right, that is the magic of kind of figuring out your own dials. 

 

Scott Allen  37:39 

Yeah. And I think that's part of the fun, that's part of the process. And then, the only other thing I'd say on the sustainability thing is, who are your thinking partners? It could be your spouse, it could be a therapist, it could be a coach. But who are those individuals who are your thinking partners? I think that's part of that performance-ready piece. At least, it could be as a part of someone's equation. But, yeah. It's so much fun. Well, as we begin to wind down, Jon, so thankful for your time. And I always conclude with this question, which is what have you been listening to, streaming? What have you been reading, listening to? What's caught your attention? It might have something to do with what we've just discussed, it may have nothing to do with what we've just discussed, but I know you're an avid consumer of books. So what's caught your attention recently?

 

Jon Acuff  38:28 

Yeah. So, ‘The Inner Game of Tennis,’ I just love, I think. I've read it multiple times, that's one that's kind of a classic for me. I read ‘War of Art’ probably once a year, Steven Pressfield. I like that. That's another one that I just… For me, I feel like every line is on purpose. And then there's a writing book that I've really liked called ‘Take Joy.’ Very few people have read it. I think I found it from Annie Dillard’s ‘The Writing Life.’ I just went on a kick where I read. You know how it is, you find a topic and you read a couple of writing books. And this book, ‘Take Joy,’ I thought was great. And it wasn't big, and it was kind of obscure, but it just was so… The way she wrote about writing was so great, and it was super readable. Sometimes books about writing, oddly enough, are boring, where you're like, “This makes me want to not write.” Or they're too flowery and it's like, “Writing is like being in a field with a ribbon,” and you're like, “That's not… No. A lot of times it's salt mine for me.” And I just felt like she hit a really good middle ground. So, yeah, ‘TakeJoy,’ I thought was really good. And then, yeah, I've really just enjoyed conversations, and finding people, and asking them questions, and then practicing listening. I think, for people like us that are good at talking and enjoy talking and good challenges, how often this week did somebody say, “What do you think, Jon?” Have they ever had to say that? A lot of times, I've gone whole years where no one's had to say, “Jon, what do you think?” Because I've already told them. So, learning to listen and be like, “Oh, what can I learn from that person?” So, the more I turn situations into learning opportunities, it comes with a degree of respect for the person automatically because then I'm not there to teach them something. I'm there to go, “Oh, man, what's going on in their life? What are they…” Like a great example, a friend of mine named Lori, we were at an event and she was one of the event planners. And she had a camera with her, this really beautiful fancy camera and I was like, “Oh, I didn't even know you took photos,” because I knew she was an event planner but she was also taking photos there. And she was like, “Oh, it's a new hobby.” And I was like, “Oh, how did you… Did you do a ton of research? Did you deep dive to figure out what camera to get?” And she looked at me kind of puzzled, and she said, “No, I asked the smartest photographer I know which one I should get, and he recommended one, and I got that one,” And I was like, “Oh.” And what I heard there was people are the best shortcut. And I had this very myopic way of going, “Well, in order to pick the best thing, you must have had to do 30 hours of grinding through product reviews on the Internet, and reading manuals, and signing up for…” I just had this very limited understanding. And she asked one person who she trusted who had vetted all the cameras probably, and then she bought that. And so, I wrote that down in my journal. I was like, “Oh, that's a great…” And I didn't go into that going, “Today, I'm going to find out something about people,” but I was open enough to hear Lori's story and curious enough to ask her, and I got to learn. And so, I would say those couple books I mentioned, but also just going, “Wow, people are really fascinating.” And one of my soundtracks is everyone's the CEO. As someone who's spoken at events, I'm sure you've had this experience where you meet somebody and you have no idea they're the top leadership. They're often humble, and they're asking you lots of questions, and then you find out, oh, that lady's the billionaire. And so, I want to have a heart position of everyone's a CEO of their own life so treat them like that, versus going... I don't want categories where I go, “Oh, I treat the CEO this way and I treat a vice president this way.” So, I'm learning to be like, no, everyone's a CEO of their own life. What can I learn from them? How can I honor them? How can I encourage them? And so, people… And I would say I'm an introvert by nature, so there's a lot of extroverts right now that are probably like, “Duh.” But, for me, being open to people is kind of a newish experience because I can get really isolated if I'm not careful.

 

Scott Allen  42:24 

Mmm. Well, and you have a podcast, I have a podcast, that's been one of the great joys is just, every episode, there's something that's phrased a certain way where I'm just like, “Wow, that is awesome. That is incredible. That slices through to a really beautiful point.” Some concept, like my friend Jonathan Reams on the podcast once said leaders create the weather. And just that visual… And it just came out of his mouth and I'm like, “Wow, that is incredible.” And that one phrase, Jonathan's probably listening right now, has kept just my mind cooking, and it just hits. 

 

Jon Acuff  43:05 

It's so good. You love words and ideas the same way I do. This is dorky, but the other day we were listening to the Christmas music and the radio station said “Today's hits, yesterday's favorites.” And I was like, “That says everything. That's so good.” It's four words. Four words. It didn't change my life, it wasn't a leadership principle. But as somebody who communicates for a living, I thought they really nailed that. Today's hits, yesterday's favorites. That's it. You got all the music, and you said exactly like… I've seen and you've seen multi-billion, billion, billion-dollar brands who don't say something that perfectly, and you go, “Oh, their mission statement is 42 words.” And it's just a noun salad and they're words everybody could use. And somebody gave me once the thumb test when I worked at Home Depot corporate they said, and I don't think they had created it, I'm sure many people have said this, but they said, “We know we've created a good Home Depot ad if we can put our thumb over the name ‘Home Depot,’ and it could only belong to us.” They said, “If we put our thumb over the logo, and it could be a Lowe's ad, it can be a Ace Hardware ad, it's not us yet.” And they said, “Nike, you can cover the swoosh mark on a Nike ad and you know it's Nike. Apple, you put your thumb over you know it's Apple.” And that always, as a communicator over… If somebody stole your slides, would they still know it was you? If somebody covered your name on a book, would they still know it’s you? And it's just the thumb test, and you get it immediately. So, stuff like that. I think what you and I, there's a lot of overlap we have but one is that I think we collect good ideas and we use them to make our lives, and hopefully, the lives of a lot of other people better. 

 

Scott Allen  44:38 

Yeah. It's a wonderful skill to have and you have it. I've listened to your books, I know that you are very, very good at that. And I couldn't agree with you more, those well-phrased… And another one that I'll often use; who you are as how you lead. Boom. That one just… Okay, there's a universe underneath that. 

 

Jon Acuff  45:00 

There’s a book in that. There's a book. Yeah. 

 

Scott Allen  45:02

There's a book. There's a two-day seminar. 

 

(Laughter)

 

Jon Acuff  45:07

Yeah, so true.

 

Scott Allen  45:08 

Well, sir, thank you so much for your time.

 

Jon Acuff  45:11 

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's always fun to catch up.

 

Scott Allen  45:13 

Yes. Be well, and I look forward to our paths crossing again soon. 

 

 

[End Of Recording]