The Million-Dollar Sticky Note By R. Lee Procter

(2) Million Dollar Sticky Note book club with Author 2 25 22 - YouTube

Transcript:
(00:00) have this okay okay so you were saying okay i was gonna say most people have probably seen the movie it's a wonderful life um and if you were to ask people i sometimes we have these meetings called charettes which are meetings with clients in order to figure out what you know what we're going to do with the project um and i say what what do you think the theme of it's a wonderful life is they say i'll say well of course it's right at the very end where he says uh no one what is it no no one is a failure who has friends
(00:36) because that's what capra has the has the character say at the end of his movie but that's not actually the theme of it's a wonderful life if you watch the movie carefully you know the theme can be found in the change the character goes through um you know it's all about the character the classic one is the christmas carol the change that scrooge makes is goes from being a bitter cynical misanthrope to being a uh kind and benevolent uh friend of mankind massive wonderful change well the change and it's a wonderful life
(01:11) that george bailey goes through isn't like it's it's not about friends if you you see george's character he's about to throw himself off the bridge because he thinks his life has no value and it doesn't make any difference if he's there then of course clarence the angel shows him what the world would be like without him and he's shocked to discover all of the impacts he's had on these various people's lives including his beloved wife and so at the end he's he's he's saying
(01:45) please let me live please let me live please let me live and he wakes up and in fact he's alive and then he's so he's so um giddy about this there's a shot of him running down the street yelling i'm going to jail isn't it wonderful so the actual theme of it's a wonderful life is no man is a failure who makes a friend of himself the change in george is that unlike scrooge who makes a complete character change george's character doesn't change but his own perception of himself changes
(02:20) he stops seeing himself as being insignificant and he starts seeing himself as someone who is having a positive impact on just about everyone he meets and he knows from now on that's going to be the way he is in the world you could lose the last scene of him of him getting saved by these people coming to his home and still be a beautiful and profound movie because you know if george goes to jail he's going to be a positive influence on every single person he meets in jail you know it's that transformation that's
(02:51) the most important thing anyway so yeah that's a great perspective yeah i've never thought of it that way yeah i i didn't until i started really studying story like you know i was watching him go no wait a minute here you know it's okay yeah it's it's the great thing about studying stories and storytelling is it can it's a lifetime pursuit and you can never master it you can learn a lot about it and you can use it but it's you know it's it's like playing a musical instrument
(03:28) you'll you'll never reach perfection nobody will ever have everything totally figured out uh so in that way it's it's like a zen coan that you get to contemplate every single day and bill bill i don't i don't know what you or maybe i should ask what you're thinking when you hear a story instead of what i think of for you um i could listen to rich for hours i love hearing his perspective his life journey his stories and i can see why he's a great author he talked about how he creates these
(04:08) tours for the jamison brewery et cetera et cetera and you know through wayne's help we're trying to accomplish that through our marketing department at utility keystone is they ask you answer what's most important to the customer what's most important to the reader et cetera and then that's how you tailor your your marketing message or your story is not how great we are but what does the customer want to find what do they want to learn how can we help them so your book uh i read it on a plane
(04:48) and then i sent it to my three nephews and my two sons through amazon and i send random gifts through amazon i don't tell them who it's from they think it's from somebody else in our text group so he gets the credit but i sent him that book uh to them because i liked your book so much and the three takeaways were god honesty and forgiveness and i need to reread the book because i forget a lot but that were my those three things helped me get back on a devotional so i look at the youversion app one for the bible and then create
(05:29) some devotionals and i invite my three nephews and my two sons and we go through that and then i just sent him a 100 bucks for finishing it and they go why do you do that they said well you guys are broke because we're all three three of them are four of them are in college and i said you guys earned it and i don't feel like giving you money but you did something and here's the gift that you get for it so i just want to hear more stories from rich i find it very interesting and i've never been in the opportunity with a
(06:04) author who actually read wrote a book that i read so this is pretty cool i mean and i should have read i just signed up for wayne's books i don't even know what the topic is i usually read the stuff that it gives me but i had no idea you were going to be on this call so thanks for spending your time with us it's pretty cool well thank you i i'm i'm honored to meet somebody who who who so embodies the spirit of generosity you know they you're someone that that's that's a that's a that's one of the most
(06:33) noble and uh best of all virtues you know i mean sharing your books sharing your money with people who who need it uh you know that's that's that's wonderful i'm i'm i yes good good for you let me let me tell you a story kind of like about what i do because it has something to do with you said about it is at your business is absolutely about you know it's not if you hear if you tell your customers how great you are they'll turn off but if you if you find out you know if you can make it about them
(07:13) that's that's the key you know we did a uh job about uh this would be about four years ago uh for the milwaukee brewers baseball team uh bud selig who was the owner of the brewers who was also uh the commissioner of baseball for for quite a while was retiring and they wanted to do a tribute to bud in the stadium they wanted to have a little purpose-built theater they would hold about 20 people uh the show would last about 10 minutes and you know as with all our shows this is something that if they're gonna spend
(07:52) the five six seven million dollars they want it to be able to run for 10 15 years you know that's a pretty you know how many movies do you really want to re-watch so this one has to be a thing where every time people come to the stadium it has to be what we have to take away what we call an emotional souvenir where they want to they basically say i felt so good after seeing that show i want to go in and see it again so the challenge was um how do you do a show about bud selig people in even in milwaukee felt
(08:29) somewhat ambivalent about him because he was the man who canceled the 1994 baseball season uh when the owners got in a row with the players um they did bring that the the team back to milwaukee so and he did help build the stadium so we said okay and they said here's the show we would do and you know it's like bud was born this day and then he became he got a car dealership and he made a lot of money and then he then he bought the team and you know and he's got a great family and so on and so forth it
(09:01) was a show about but we said okay we're going to take what you've given us and we're going to make this show about the fans now the show takes place in a theater in miller park so we know the guests most likely are going to be families who are there to enjoy a baseball game together and they're going to do that because usually the parent the parent was usually brought to a baseball game by his parent here per parent as a child and they have these wonderful memories about you know what it's like to be in a ballpark on a
(09:40) summer night enjoying it together and they want their kids to have that so the show we did i was ho it was hosted by bob euchre who is the wonderful wonderful baseball announcer who is you know just a great guy so the show so our show the show we did begins with not with a butt but a montage of fans enjoying themselves at a baseball game you know reaching for a foul ball hugging each other cheering after home run and the euchre says is there anything better in the world than coming to miller park on a warm summer evening
(10:22) and enjoying a baseball game together with your family you know having fun making memories that will last you for a lifetime you know it's it's like isn't it great we have this place to come to to to have this experience well we have this place because of one man bud selick okay now we see bud and bud says boy you know something i'll never forget the first time my mother brought me to the ballpark to see the old milwaukee brewers minor league team and we're seeing footage right i haven't seen him yet at all we're seeing footage
(11:04) of of the milwaukee brewers back in the 1940s it's like i can still remember everything i can remember seeing the grass i remember hearing the players as they as they chatted each other up on the field i remember having a hot dog it was so great you know and then and then you know when i got to be like in my 20s then the the the boston braves moved to milwaukee and so we're about three we're about four minutes into a ten minute thing and all we've heard about is how great it is to be a fan and now we know bud was a fan too bud's like
(11:43) us he's just a guy who loves baseball you know and then he talks about how so the the plot beats are uh bud like becomes a huge milwaukee braves fan the braves had a great team in the 50s with hank aaron eddie matthews luber dead but then in 1965 uh some some out-of-towners swoop in by the braves and move him to atlanta at this point bud is a car dealer but bud says you know milwaukee baseball fans are the greatest fans in the world we're the smallest market and we supported the braves you know loyally and now the team was
(12:22) gone well this says you know as a fan i this was not good i i made it my business to try to get to i'm going to bring baseball back to milwaukee and then there's what he did to to do that you know and he ended up buying the seattle pilots and moving them back now what we see is all of the great moments of the first 15 years of the brewers the harvey wallbanger team you know and we see and once again we're seeing fans loving it we're seeing said boy when we brought that team back the team that the whole city of milwaukee came
(12:58) together it was like it was like the the circus was back in town it was so great to be able to walk down the street and see people enjoying themselves and talking about last night's game or whatever no no and and where this is going so the the what i call the second act climax is major league baseball tells the brewers that unless they get a new stadium they're going to move the team somewhere else and then bud says you know i i it's like i i was going to move heaven and earth in order to make sure that didn't happen
(13:31) and there's this horrendous fight he has to go to the city council and there there are three votes 16 to 15 and only on the third vote did he get the vote he needed to get the funding to build the stadium and then euchre that so that so then the state we see the stadium being built in kind of a quick montage and then we come back to fans just like the ones in the theater and then we hear bud say you know it's like it's it when i can walk around this stadium on a beautiful warm summer night and i can see all of these families
(14:07) having this great time i think back on that moment with my mom and i think back of how much baseball has meant to me and i think back of all of the great memories you're being made right here tonight that people will remember the rest of their lives and that's made everything i did worth it so you know that's that's that is an example of how we or i use storytelling to make it about the guest as opposed to make it's not about bud it's not about the brewers it's not about the stadium the message
(14:43) is we do all this for you you know people people people who see that show come out you know we always say what's the change what's the change in the guest the change in the guest there is feeling ambivalent about bud to coming out feeling really deeply grateful to him for for creating this place where they could have this these memories they're going to create today watching this game and when their kids are grown they're gonna think back on those times you know boy wasn't that remember that time he
(15:15) went to that game oh man was that fun so anyway that's that's sort of an application of what what what i what i what i do when it works right and and um bills the way i see bill and and brian his brother and his father and mom started it and that his family owned trailer dealership there's multiple stories um going on there but one of the stories is really like the the people who carry freight in our country are heroes and sure and then bill i almost picture you should have the american museum of trailers or
(15:57) something because trailers are underappreciated it's always the tractors the part up front with the diesel engine that gets for whatever future hydrogen engine or whatever it is but that always gets all the press and all the that's kind of the sexy part of it but the trailer i've learned so much from bill about like bill knows these trailers reapers and how thick the decking is the floorboards and then they've got these multiple different pieces to the dealership where somebody could get a tr
(16:24) they buy the trailer brand new they can trade it in they can get it fixed up if it's in a collision and they've got this great team of trades people that are you know blue collar hard working people and the dealership actually really cares about them and tries to make the best within what you can pay just like aida has a business model you can't in today's world you can't pay people 30 an hour to do care even though they probably should get that but there's constraints on the business owner
(16:54) yeah there's a lot to what you're talking about the story and bob euchre and that we could use rich both lots of applications sure yeah if i if i were to if you were to give me an assignment of doing the trailer museum you know the the it would be all about to be 100 about what's on the trailer that brings joy to people that they wouldn't have if there were no trailers there is what's you know we have to have trailers and trucks so we can deliver christmas presents to people so people can get the medicine they need
(17:34) so that people can bring the things that bring them joy in their own lives you know it's a service and it's like you you don't you don't think about the trailer but without the trailer you know there would be less joy in your life and you know that so and then then after you establish oh i see it's like change people's minds about what a trailer actually does then you release them into the museum and they look at trailers a different way you know so anyway that's that's a way to think
(18:09) about it that's just off the top of my head quick quick aside it's interesting pete koch is my strength coach and he does things within our community and he was if you ever watch the movie heartbreak ridge with clint eastwood he was a great great big guy named swede and he got in a fight with clint eastwood and now he's a strength coach in those videos on linkedin but he recently did a series of commercials for ford motor company where he's a truck driver hauling a trailer full of ford vehicles
(18:40) to bring joy and he's santa claus so he's got a white beard and i don't know if you caught that bill but it's so it's neat to know that like santa claus and the ford commercial and he's trucking happiness and joy in the form of ford vehicles rich could you um yes this is the part i want to get a little bit of time so the million dollar sticky note um it is such a great story and it's uh interesting i got two copies i buy 50 and want to give it out bill gets a copy and he wants to send you know three or
(19:11) four out the people that are important in his life so the book you've written here uh it's not yet as widespread as uh a christmas carol but it has some of the same it's like that it's it's a story that can help us um we step into it and and we can access these three principles that are on the sticky note so thank you for writing about this and god honesty forgiveness can you tell us a bit how did how did you shared with me this story of how it's you've stored those three principles for quite some time and then
(19:50) diligently you put the work in to write the book right let's do that sure sure sure um yeah this is about oh boy it was more than 20 years ago i know that i was driving around listening to national public radio and uh this report came on national belgrade a story came on uh and the story was about a woman who had written a book she had interviewed 400 psychiatrists and psychologists uh and about what worked and what didn't work in their practices and uh okay this is kind of interesting story and what the woman said is you know
(20:29) what's really funny um all 400 of them basically told me some version of the same thing without communicating with one another or knowing each other they all said that they started out being advocates of a certain um discipline like i'm a jungian i'm a freudian blah blah blah you know and then they said after two or three years of pursuing this they noticed that um they were abandoning and things didn't work and they were kind of moving towards the things that did work and he said the three the three things
(21:11) that all of them reported to me worked were uh first god that is in this context there is some um there is some part of the organism you know what's the right word uh there's some force in the universe that's organizing and that makes sense and that is benevolent so in other words if they can be first of the first thing that if that they need to move towards the idea that life isn't just this plot against them or or this completely random experience where you know they some terrible blow could happen to them for no good reason at all
(22:02) so that's number one the second one is honesty this is a real key one because in order to get well you have to be honest with yourself at such a deep and compelling level that it's sometimes shocking and can be harrowing but if you can tell the truth about yourself then you can start to heal because then you can you know that leads to then being able to acknowledge the good things about yourself as well and you can build on those good things and then finally forgiveness of which the most important aspect is
(22:41) self-forgiveness because people dig themselves in such a deep hole that they think of themselves as being sort of unforgivable but nobody's unforgivable you know even scrooge even ebony's or scrooge is unforgivable so he said if if if if those so they said those three things are the key to healing people if people can believe there is a benevolent organizing principle in the world if they can be honest with each other at a in a way that's deeply uncomfortable and if they can find the compassion in themselves to forgive themselves
(23:23) then there is almost a 100 chance those people can heal themselves and if they won't be honest and they can't believe there's some benevolent organizing principle and they can't forgive themselves then that that that bodes very badly for their for their spiritual and mental health so i'm i'm think i'm i'm driving along and i'm thinking you know did i just hear the the secret of life here you know i mean that's that that seems you know and then of course it's like and now the weather
(23:54) you know now we've given you everything and now now we're going to move on to a story about the new raccoon that was born in the zoo you know so so actually i put once again pulled over to the side of the road doesn't have very often and wrote those three words down god honesty and forgiveness and for uh you know i used though i got i you know made a little three by five card and carried my wallet and uh whenever i would start to get off track i'd look at that and i'd say okay what needs to be done here
(24:24) you know am i be what's happening am i being honest with myself about that i'm really angry with this person can i can i forgive that person and forgive myself for being affected by it even when i shouldn't can i you know can i proceed from the premise that there's a benevolent organizing principle in the universe well i woke up this morning there was air to breathe there was food in my refrigerator there was water coming out of my tap there is sunshine the the universe appears to be supporting me in a lot of
(24:56) really important ways and there's you know ways of finding spiritual enlightenment at my fingertips if i just look for it so i said how do i craft this into some kind of short pithy narrative that has the power of my favorite narratives like it's a wonderful life and um uh christmas carol so making and what it's about is so the the goal of the narrative was create a story about someone who is so in despair that they're about to end their lives like george bailey someone who is consid who considers himself
(25:43) irredeemable like ebenezer scrooge then have that person have an encounter the encounter in its wonderful life is of course a you know like a miraculous encounter but what if you know in my case it's a kind of a mysterious organization uh made up of people who have had this life transforming experience um and take this person on a journey like you know i really i studied deeply all of the uh transformational stories that i love how you know i really took them apart how did this work and then i was able to kind of backward engineer the narrative
(26:25) that i wanted so this person um you know encounters this force there's a lot of cynicism that comes into play he doesn't think it's going to work and the key to it is when the the money back bearing guarantee comes in because then he's you know well you know i really don't have anything to lose by doing this and you know so he does this ridiculous thing pays a million dollars for this sticky note and the it's the paying of the money that forces him to take the task seriously enough to cause him
(26:59) to you know have the second meeting with the woman in central park that takes him to the place he needs to go to have the george bailey experience where he's able to look back look back on his life you know see he's able to have compassion for himself in a way that allows him to forgive himself there's a series of dominoes that have fallen that have led him in a certain direction but after the second encounter he looks around at the you know another key is of course the einstein thing the benevolent force in the universe
(27:36) and all of that falls away and rather than walk through his life telling himself the negative narrative oh you're a piece of scum you're an like my god your daughter hates you all of that falls away and his eyes open and he's able to see the world the way it is which is illuminated as a it's a wonder it's a miracle you know every day we walk around in this in this miracle and you know he looks up and it's snowing and then he walks into the church and he hears the you know the the that beautiful
(28:08) piece of music and you know it's he that's that that's george bailey at the end running down the street screaming i'm going to jail isn't it wonderful and and then he calls his daughter and he realizes that his whole narrative he had built up in his head about she'd never talk to him again she was waiting for his phone call you know she was eager for him to contact her and so you know what he couldn't he couldn't get her forgiveness until he forgave himself so it was hearing that story
(28:47) doing a work of studying those kind of narratives and and looking for the narratives like that and then that's that's you know that's that's how i built it brick by brick essentially and my my goal you know i i don't consider myself in any way exalted uh master of literary art i'm just i'm just a guy who took all this stuff and took 20 years to cobble this thing together but i'm really happy i did it i'm thrilled and thrilled that people are getting you know i don't feel like i'm
(29:20) communicating educate like like the steve chandler thing i don't feel like i'm throwing bolts of wisdom down from mount olympus i'm just i'm just sharing something wonderful that gave me value so other people could have value the the people who have changed my life are all usually pretty modest people who basically said you know here's something that really helped me out i'd like to share it with you that's sort of what i'm doing here cooper thanks for that um i put something in the chat i want to give
(29:52) everybody a chance and to ask a question or to share something that was impactful from the book whatever these discussions always go where they should go has been experienced and stand and you haven't had a chance to interact yet so i'm going to give you a shot first i really like the book um because it was very timely very very timely not a coincidence i don't believe in coincidence anyway um because it speaks very clearly to where i am in my life right now things that i've been going through in my own life
(30:36) right now i grew up evangelical christian and over the past six or eight months i have been deconstructing my faith in terms of realizing that what i was raised with at this point in history is dysfunctional and unhealthy in my opinion and so the whole idea that that that god has a plan for us every evangelical believes that every evangelical stresses themselves out trying to find it and i mean as a college student goodness that was the big thing what's god's will for my life what's he want me to do and
(31:19) you just freak out taking the pressure off you're not supposed to know exactly you're not supposed to know don't freak out about it figure out what you're made for and go do that thing um and then honesty um that that whole idea that shadow boxing nightmare world of anger and fear fear of being rejected fear of not getting it right fear of being just so and following rules and it's not about that it's not about rules it's about living life and forgiving yourself letting letting go of those
(31:55) things and allowing yourself to have the freedom to explore and and live and there's no rejection in that there's nothing wrong with that and then and then forgiving yourself for for all the time you may have wasted or for the stress you've caused yourself or um or what have you and so it was very timely for me as a as a life coach though i look at this and i can apply this to my work with my clients i mean this is right up the alley of some of the things that i do with my clients and talk about um their limiting beliefs and you know
(32:32) those things that they've been living those ways they've been living that are dysfunctional and not helpful um and being able to to be honest with themselves and then forgive themselves and realize that the world is out there um it's benevolent it's good for you and things can go well um so i i i mean those the only thing i marked in the book were those those three places where i felt like were the crux of each step and um it it was really it was really transformative for me it was really helpful because it gave me a new way to
(33:12) think about things and uh new talking points i guess you'd say now what i like about the idea of story then is i'm thinking about my own life the story that i'm telling and then how can i how can i use that to challenge and encourage clients what's the story you're telling do you like the story you're telling is it coming out the way you want what's the emotional impact that you're wanting to have with the story of your life do you know how to change it because everybody is impacted by story
(33:49) in some way or another everyone is impacted by story and so to tie that into our lives that we're writing a story with our lives can be really impactful and helpful and just another tool another way for people to look at where they're at and what they want to create their life so it was really helpful i liked it a lot oh thank you i as i'm hearing what you're telling me um you embody certainly number two of the um of the of the three things which is that uh what i'm here i i i can imagine how tough it is to go back
(34:30) through your life and to have that that you know you you built your life on the bedrock of this evangelical faith and to the the the courage it would take to go back through that just to take the glimmering you have that maybe this is leading me in the right direction and then to go deeply into it and the grief you must experience about thinking that you know and but to be able to do that work is what gives you the ability to you know you've deconstructed your own narrative and put it back together in a way that you know you embody that true
(35:11) christian virtue of wanting to help others you know you're coming from back to the coaching business you know you found a truer and uh more a place with more integrity in order to do that it's not about rules it's about relationship yeah with people and with the world and yes it is i mean it's it's a slippery slope you ask one question and and the sweater begins to unravel and you start asking questions of everything and just being okay with the being comfortable with being uncomfortable that's that's been a thing i've learned
(35:52) you gotta learn in in business and coaching whatever you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable because that is where growth happens right that will take you to the place you need to be right and once you can do that and practice it uh more and more that makes you powerful you know that's that's that you can come from a place of honesty and integrity and that's that's that's everything and i think what's the gift in this is if we can as individuals get really clear about the honesty and get
(36:24) really clear about forgiveness and get really clear about this that's going to [Music] change us in internally that's going to change who we are and how we approach the world and the gift is that then that will be reflected to the people around us and hopefully will cause them to say i want that how do i get there what's what's new there right um and that that's really cool that's what i want to do that's what i want to do i want to live my life in such a way that that clients and potential clients come
(37:00) in how can i have what he has right right well you're getting that sounds like you're the journey you've taken so far is you know is delivering you to that place that's that's [Music] good well you can think when you think about the book thank that woman 20 years ago at national public radio who did did that story because i just i just i just shared her that that wisdom you know and it's actually not even her wisdom it's the true wisdom of all those psychologists who have discovered intuitively over what works those three
(37:35) things work you know i just wanted to create a narrative that made those things important to people and so so you know anyway yeah well good thank you for that thank you aida and we have another guest here let's see aida and bill either a question for rich or comment on the book i guess i had a quick question um richard in the book the line um that um the character finds on his on on that notepad or that napkin um don't do it what if you're wrong what what made you uh write that specific line what if you're wrong did
(38:23) that come from anything or just a line uh oh uh um you know it's just part of the narrative strategy of uh of of the the the interesting thing about you know having a character like the the hero of the book is that it only works excuse me if there's some complexity in the narrative you know he kind of like he's decided he's going to kill himself you know he's and it's taking him a long time and a lot of agony in order to do that and so there's there's a bit of like oh now i got to reconsider that you know
(39:03) and it's kind of being tugged in two directions so i just wanted to make it as hard as possible for the character to make the right choice you know because it's often times well it's like the questioning your evangelical background you just we'd rather not go there alcoholics would rather not say i'm an alcoholic it's just easier to go and have the drink you know and to release to to to go to that so anyway it's just part of my narrative strategy to try to make it as as as hard and and people
(39:37) so people could relate to the character because we're all like that you know as as my boss always says uh nobody likes change except a baby with a dirty diaper you know and um it's so anyway yeah that's is there a question behind that question aida well i i often think in that term you know when i'm trying to make a decision i i i really never i don't have strong feelings about much i i always kind of factor in my head i could be wrong either way so i'm always open to new ideas and um you know i think when you see people
(40:15) having arguments on social media or you know people are so passionate and i just don't know that i have a topic that i feel that passionate about to really have an argument with somebody about any particular topic and i always think to myself what if i'm wrong i could be wrong my point could be proven wrong later on so when you wrote that i wondered if you had something in mind um about that specific line but um yeah it just i think about that a lot you know i could always be wrong so i'm always open
(40:45) to new ideas and listening to people's point of views so um that that's where i was going with that way okay well when i when i think about your life and what you do um the thing that comes to me is that as when you help somebody in the way that you help them i think back of my father and in that hospice care center and you know the worker that helped my father caused him in the most dire circumstance imaginable to be comforted and to be happy and when i talked when i when i talked to him i was comforted and i was happy
(41:26) and i have a daughter who's now 26 years old and i i'm i'm able i i'm so moved by the compassion of that helper at that time that i'm able to be sort of calm and wise and compassionate with my daughter the good that you're doing in your own life uh will ripple through generations you know you you will you it's not just comforting the person in the moment it's call it's call you know we all when you of course it works the other way too if you do something you know malicious
(42:00) or mean or whatever that can cause ripples going in the other direction but uh you know you should you should acknowledge yourself every single day for getting up and choosing what you're doing and the way that you do it because that's powerful in the world thank you i appreciate that thank you wow and and all of your people should get up every day and acknowledge that too right yeah absolutely rich i was curious you know when did the outline of the book get in your head and how long ago was that and how long did it take you to
(42:43) write it and i'm just interested in the construction of how it all came about sure uh i would say it's kind of funny in a way um i so i i i have this book of uh wisdom that i keep i just sent to win a copy actually um that had those three words in it and i'm always looking for interesting stories that i feel would be or worthy in the world so so now it's uh let's say it's march of 2020 covet has now hit um and suddenly uh i'm i'm working from home and i've got two extra hours a day
(43:23) because i'm not commuting to and from burbank and this gives me an opportunity to you know something i've got all this time i've always wanted to try to try something like this and it's been turning over in my mind for years about how i would do this um and i just said okay you know something uh it really i wrote i wrote the uh um there's a wonderful guy named steven pressfield he wrote a book called the war of art and one of his premises is you can write a a a sheet of eight and a half by
(43:57) eleven paper is exactly the right size to write the outline for any book three acts what it's about beginning middle and end so in probably april of 2020 i said okay i'm going to do this i'm going to see if i can do this so i wrote the outline the one page outline and you know then probably took me about two weeks to write a first draft then i of course put in a drawer for a couple of months and then i brought it out again looked at it with fresh eyes and did about another week of of revisions you know it's funny i i have a
(44:34) relationship with maurice bassett because i'm such a steve chandler fan he usually sends me steve's books and i had no idea that this is worth publishing i just i sent it to maurice bassett and i said i know you probably i know you publish books like that i'd just like you to give me opinion if you think this thing is worth anything and he read it and he said uh not only do you think it's worth something i'd love to publish it i i was actually shocked because uh i've been messing around with various
(45:04) book projects for quite a while i can see on my on my on my amazon page i've got a there's a novel called the atomic bombshell which pretends to be this wild tell-all autobiography of this movie star uh over a period of uh 40 years and that book took me several years to write and uh and it has sold about eight copies but it was well worth it because i taught myself how to write and how to write that a specific book so the answer is you know i spent years writing that novel and nobody wants to read it and i've spent i took
(45:44) about overall total probably a month maybe less to write this thing but my my instincts as a writer have taught me when i was writing 60 second radio commercials uh people used to really like i would they would just they would they would they would be shocked by how quickly i could ride a 60-second radio commercial but what i could write a a good spot that would win an award in like five minutes but if you ask me how long you know if you were asking how long it took to write sticky note i would say 70 years you know i had to have every single life
(46:24) experience and all of my work in studying storytelling and all of my work in compiling uh you know uh things to heal my own life it took all of that to get to the point where i knew enough that how to be simple so that's that's my way of thinking about it yeah getting close to the end we have about seven minutes um it's been great anybody else uh questions comments thought insight you got from the book anytime nope that's okay i'm absolutely thrilled that you had asked me to do this i'm deeply honored that you would take
(47:17) 90 minutes of your day in order to spend them with me so we could talk about this and you know as i said this is just something i'm sharing some wisdom that somebody else gave me this is not something i came up with but it's you know basically things that work in the world and i would welcome you to share it with other people in the form of the book or just in the form of sitting down with somebody and who is having a crisis and talking them through it because those three things will help them i would just throw in there the lincoln
(47:56) memorial is fantastic yeah it's been several years since i was there but it's pretty amazing some very powerful moving images um really really well done oh thank you so much i got to spend five years with abe lincoln and every enjoyed every single moment you know he's an amazing person the more the more you read about the more astonishing he is and he's because he get you know it's like he's he is the uncommon common man he's us you know he's just decided every branch in the road he took the right branch
(48:33) he always went deeper into himself and found his humanity you know you talk about you know having to face your evangelical past well lincoln grew up in a white family in kentucky and and he had to he saw a slave auction when he was in his early 30s and it so shocked him if the slave auction was a uh the the father was being sold off and the the the mother was being sold off with her kids being separated and he was so gobsmacked by that that it really of the change that was his life-changing moment you know and and at every
(49:15) at every single point in his political career it would have been easier not to talk about that thing and just and but yet you know and because of that in 1858 lincoln said that we're gonna have slavery for the next hundred years and ten years later the the amendment was passed to ban slavery that's the power of someone willfully doing the right thing can have that's why that story has power because people go through that place and they think you know he isn't any different from me really i could if i if i decided to be courageous
(49:53) the way he was i could have that kind of impact in the world there's absolutely no reason why not so anyway yeah i'm very happy you liked it um great way to end it thank you everybody for being here and rich thanks for writing the book sure you appreciate it god honesty and forgiveness on a sticky note good we appreciate it so thank you so much thank you so much everybody have a wonderful day thank you thank you thank you so much my pleasure bye thanks that was awesome appreciate it okay thanks a lot you bet
(50:32) take care okay