Picture this. You walk into the office on a Monday morning, coffee in hand, inbox filling up, and someone tells you there's been a restructure. Your role is gone. Suddenly, the goals you've been chasing, the comfort of routine, the identity you've built around your work, it's all gone. You didn't move. You didn't do anything wrong. But the cheese, the job, the promotion, the sense of security, it's gone. And no one left a map. If that feeling hits home, you're not alone. Change in the workplace can feel disorienting, even personal. But what if the problem isn't the change itself, but how we respond to it? Today we're exploring who Moved My Cheese? A simple fable that's helped millions navigate uncertainty with less fear and more intention. Because when the cheese moves, and it always does, it helps to know how to move with it. I'm Curtis. My pal over there is Joe, and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Kurt. What's going on, my friend?

Good morning, my pal. In times of trouble.

I was waiting for some quirky comment from you, somebody, something like. And my pal over there, who has clearly had a lot of cheese in his life, is Joe.

Oh, there you. Early morning Friday. I just didn't have the energy or the inspiration. Getting ready for vacation a long time. It seems like I haven't had any time off for a whole week since New Year's, so I'm excited. And all the little scurrying going on, speaking of mice getting ready to go, it's. Why is it so stressful, Joe?

Well, I know how important this time. Well, the reason it's so stressful is because we have a lot of stake in the game. We put a lot of stake in the game when it comes to vacations. We want to have the. We want to get there on time. We want to have the perfect experience at the perfect place with the perfect people. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have this experience. This is why I think planning for vacations can be stressful. But when all is said and done, if you just let yourself enjoy whatever happens and let the experience come to you and enjoy the moment, you'll be all right. And I know you're good at that. These vacations and this time off and is really important to you, Kurt. And I'm so happy that you're getting a chance to get some downtime in your happy place because you need it and you deserve it. So enjoy yourself, dude.

Yeah, I think I'm pretty prepared. I'M not going to let the last minute things. I try not to let them get to me any. I don't want any big change before I leave if that can be possible.

You fly out tomorrow or today?

Tomorrow morning early.

Awesome.

Yeah, perfect. Got to be ready by the end of the day as we go first thing early. Early.

Fantastic.

Now this topic that we're going to talk about. Ooh my cheese. It's a book by Dr. Spencer Johnson. Was I was reminded by this from an event at work recently where one of our senior vice presidents retired kind of unexpectedly because I think he's younger than me but good on him to be well prepared. Come to find out his degree from college, I think he has an MBA in finance. He's been squirreling away the money he needed to retire early and good on him. I don't know that this is going to be a huge dramatic impact. We will have another senior leader which can be. Could bring change to the workplace for sure. It's one of those events that can happen. Also I had a family member, I won't get too deep into it. You know the story who's had a job loss very recently and is going through this. The guy when he was retiring he had some really we had a nice hour meeting talking about his career and somewhere along the line he mentioned his wife had bought him this book recently who Moved my Cheese. And I remember that from back I looked it up. I think it's 1998 job of this book come out and you think about that's what's that 27 years ago.

Yeah. When Timeless Principles though good book but it's. It has been around for a long time. This particular book I remember when people were looking for a job or lost their job there were two books that always were mentioned. One of them is the classic 48 days to the work you love by the late great Dan Miller. We lost him.

I.

We lost Dan last year had a dramatic impact on the job search space and the process for finding a job and finding the right job for you, whether it's a career, entrepreneurial venture or something like that. And this book, who Moved my Cheese? Is always mentioned. Alongside that book is the two books. If you're looking for a job, if you're looking for a career change or life change, whatever it might be, or you've been struck with an unexpected event in your life and you need to shift your mindset, those two books are always mentioned and this is a good one. Who Moved my Cheese.

Very good. It came in a time in my life back at that time, you know, our parents, I think, didn't go through a lot of job change. You could start with a company and work your whole career and get a pension and that's the way things were. When you and I started going into the workforce, things had changed and change was something we didn't know about. And that's why this book timing was so good. You and I have experienced this throughout our entire career. The amount of change. But Joe, it's accelerated, hasn't it, over the last years because of technology.

It sure has. It sure has.

Things they're talking about now, I'm going to talk about maybe a little bit in my situation when I did know what job was going to probably be lost and the company wasn't doing well and how I prepared. I'll probably interject some of that because that was a big experience. Luckily that was like 20 years ago. Some stability over the last 20 years, which is good. Although in my job I've had different changes. But yeah, it's a book about any shift, small or dramatic, that changes the conditions of your life or work, usually without warning.

What I like about this book are two things is other than the content. Of course we like the content of this book, but the format of the book is in a. Is in parable form. Right. You can get lessons from it and it doesn't cut you so bad because it is an impairable form. But what I like most about it is it gets straight to the point. It's a short read. The nice small little book that you can get through easily in an afternoon.

Yeah, we'll overview it, but I'm going to finish up with his suggestions. There's a character in here we're going to talk about, I think his name is Ha. And how he dealt with change and we'll leave with that. But yeah, great point. It's like almost like a children's book in a way. Written but in parable format.

I love that.

Thanks for reminding. Has anyone ever moved your cheese, Joe?

Yes, yes, I've had it moved. I've had it moved a couple times and a couple times I've moved it myself and quite honestly I've moved it myself without knowing. I moved to myself because of some decisions you make and you wake up and you think, man, the cheese that I had, I decided I don't want anymore and I think I might want that cheese back. But definitely we go through. I'll speak for myself. I've been through some dramatic life changes that came As a surprise, I've had. I've started businesses based on life changes. I've closed businesses based on life changes. I owned a bar once, Kurt, for about six months.

Yes.

And I thought that's where my cheese, my cheese lied. Was in that bar. And I was going to build it and feed off of it, and that was going to be a future part of me until I. I realized that what I thought was cheese was a mousetrap. And I got stung bad. I made it out alive. But wow, a lot of lessons learned. Somebody either moved that cheese or the cheese was never there to begin with.

Yes, we're all going through this. And again, it's something that you might be helping others navigate through or you're going through it yourself because it's very prominent. One thing that's for certain is change. Someone once said, well, through this book, they do introduce four characters. And these characters are symbolic to what they represent. You got sniff. He detects a change early scurry quickly takes action. Hem resists change due to fear. And ha. He learns to adapt when he sees change and can lead to something better. The key takeaway, and everyone has a bit of each character in them. The goal is to cultivate the adaptive traits the characters. You might see others in these characters. That's what kind of makes the book fun. So the cheese is a metaphor. It represents what we want in life. A job, money, success, relationships, peace. The maze in the book symbolize the environment. We look for that cheese, the workplace, family, and society. So the key point, the cheese isn't permanent. It can move and change is inevitable. So that kind of sets the stage for the book.

Yeah. If you can recognize the actions that each one of these characters are taking. Do you want to roll through what each character means and what their role is in the book?

My biggest thing that I want to take away from this is how do you roll with this change? That's what I'm going to get to pretty quickly. And we'll go deep in there.

Let's do it.

So there's four main themes that I dug out from the book. And first one is change happens. Hey, Joe. They keep moving the cheese. Market shifts, relationships evolve, jobs change. And you gotta be prepared. I'll relate to this one. With this job, I think I had three main job changes. One I did myself, like you talked about. And then I went to this other job. I was there five years. I could see change happening. Markets were shifting. This is in the period of 2003. Joe, remember the. You always hear the economy, stories in the news, things weren't going too good. The company I was working for, an insurance company, lost a lot of money in asbestos flames. Plus they had a lot of losses in 911 too, and just poorly run company, as I've learned later. Man, they were spending money like crazy. Large UK company, one of the first insurers in the entire world, throughout the whole empire of the uk, yet their US business collapsed. So I saw it coming. I had a pretty good idea the cheese was going to move, but it still doesn't make it any easier.

Yeah, grasping the idea that change is going to happen, change has happened and change is going to happen is a good foundation, is a good mindset to have. Because if we are so rigid in our mindset, in our thinking that we don't think change is ever going to happen, when it does, you'll, number one, you'll be ill prepared and number two, you'll probably get hurt.

Yeah, exactly. So know that we live in a world where they keep moving the cheese, anticipate change, smell the cheese often so you know it's getting old. And I was doing that. I was listening, I was seeing the sign. Sometimes the executives of the company keep telling you everything's great, but do you ever have that feeling? I don't think they're telling me the whole truth. I had that feeling. You got to monitor the conditions and the trends in your environment. There was another thing that was happening that was really difficult for me in my technical expertise, which was outsourcing. Outsourcing to foreign countries was happening. It was new and big. So those were two big things happening at the same time. My company was going down. So that was scary.

Yeah, I. There's two sayings and I don't like to necessarily sloganeer my way through life, but I do quirky little sayings. Maybe I don't know what the word I'm looking for, but quick little sayings that help communicate a bigger idea. And there's two things that when it comes to anticipating change and smelling the cheese often so you know when it's getting old. One came from Ronald Reagan. That is trust but verify.

That's a good one.

Trust but verify.

Yeah.

And the other one is I learned this in some business book or some kind of whatever book that I've read in the past. But inspect what you expect. Inspect what you expect because you always have to have your pulse on what's going on in your life. This is your life. Right. And despite whether you think somebody is blessed, going to be maternalistic or paternalistic with you, you have to take care of your own life. And part of that is, is checking in every once in a while to see if your life is starting to stink. Right. If there's something in your life that needs to be refreshed. We don't want to smell the cheese, but my gosh, we're glad when we did.

Some people like stinky cheese.

Yeah. Yeah. If that's the intent, then that's fine. But usually. Usually it's not. And sometimes I remember my. I think it was my grandma or an aunt. I can't remember, but they were not well off at all. Very poor. And when their cheese would get moldy, they wouldn't throw it away. They would just cut off the mold and eat what's wrapped, eat what's left. And that's a good strategy. Sometimes you don't have to throw the whole cheese away, but if something's stinky and getting bad, you just got to cut off that mold and in what's underneath. It is still probably pretty good.

I love. You can see why this analogy is perfect. So good. I think this one's really hard for a lot of people, and you got to work at it, but adapt quickly. The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you'll find new cheese. Don't waste time resisting. But has already changed. Wow, that's a hard one. That's, I think, the crux of this whole story.

This is a tough one for me, dude. Yeah, this is a tough one for me.

How's it.

How is it hard for you?

You get very comfortable in your routines. And I like comfort. I like the comfort zone. I like the routine. I love balance. And in doing things that I enjoy, if I. Especially if I'm enjoying what I'm doing, like, that's one of the fears I have right now. If something were to change where I am right now, it would sting. But, yeah, I'm probably pretty good at this, and I think I was good in that particular circumstance. I did anticipate the change. I had done some things to get prepared. I had started reaching out to friends because I thought the job was going to go away. I was just thinking about this. In Facebook, I see someone. My first company. I see people who have a Facebook group for the old company that I worked in, which is totally. Everything is gone, but they still reflect back on that. I don't know if that's bad or good. That's fine if they enjoy that. But I have let go of that long time ago.

Yeah. I think you have to honor the past. Right. Because of the lessons you've learned and the experiences you had.

Yeah. And the people. I still would. I still have friends from that time period.

But, man, you cannot dwell on it. Things have changed, whether you like it or not. And I do like this. Adapt quickly. Point. The quicker you let go of the old cheese, the sooner you'll find new cheese. Because first of all, two things happen, right? Old stinky cheese. What is it? There's a saying that. What is it? The rotten fruit spoils the whole batch or spoils the whole barrel or something like that. You know what I mean?

That's a song by the Osmonds.

Okay.

Bad apple, don't spoil the whole punch girl.

We should plug it in that AI and see if they can do a better job singing it.

I'm sorry.

No kidding. If we're holding on to that old cheese, that old, moldy, stinky cheese, it does nothing but spoil the new cheese that's in our life right now. So not only does it impede progress, when you hold on to the past and you don't adapt and you resist the change, it spoils. The longer you hold on to it, it spoils any new opportunities that you have. It's better off just to throw it away and move on. Yeah.

I was driving past over the last couple of weeks, the old company, which is in the same town that I live, this company was the major employer of this town. Like many, I think are like that in. I don't know, in my world, it's like that. The industrial base and those kinds of things, they have leveled the building. The factory is gone. The. The corporate building I worked in is now the state courthouse. They ripped down the old corporate building. It's now a state courthouse, which is a brand new building. And then the old offices that were rebuilt from a needle plant that I used to work in there are. It's leased out to a bunch of companies. I know there's a fitness center in there and some other things. I've been in there. It's interesting. The old is kind of spooky. The old is still there from my days. I've walked through it. It's interesting. Lastly, the change. Change and enjoy it. Move the cheese and enjoy the process. If you can embrace change as a path to growth and opportunity, that's the attitude you want to have.

I agree. And enjoying the process. Enjoyment isn't something that happens to you. It's something that you choose. You can choose to enjoy the process and choose. Choose to enjoy the change and find joy in it and find fulfillment in. In the process. I think about this, that when I think about enjoying choosing to enjoy something, enjoying the process, I think about a really bad movie. Did you ever see Dumb and Dumber?

That's one of my. Wait, that's not a bad movie. That's one of my favorite movies of all time. I'm getting there.

I'm getting there.

Hey, don't offend me. In my episode, the first time I.

Started watching Dumb and Dumber, I'm like, what is this junk? I just. It was just not there. And. And I say this with many movies now, but if you watch Dumb and Dumber, understand what it is, what it's intended to do and let yourself enjoy it. If you let yourself enjoy it by understanding what it is and it's. It and its intent.

Wow.

Is it a funny movie? It is hilarious and it's a good story. It's heartfelt, it's warm. You really have empathy for these characters. And it is hilarious. And a couple surprises from it is. I'm surprised how comedic Jeff Daniels is.

Oh, he's brilliant.

He's really funny because he's known for. He was up at this point. He was known for more serious roles. But my point is you can choose to let yourself enjoy the process, Right? Let yourself enjoy the change. Let yourself find redeeming joy and happiness and lessons in it and understand that it's going to be okay as you move forward. The change.

I absolutely love that. That's such a. That's my favorite quotable movie of all time. And I saw Jeff Daniels interviewed, his manager, told him, do not take that role. Jim Carrey will just overshadow you, and this will not be a good career move for you. And Jeff Daniels, to his credit, ignored that advice and was so brilliant in this movie. Yeah, I won. Jeff Daniels, I think he has a. Does a little singing or band or something, and he was local. I would have loved to have gone up to him and said, and he probably gets us all the time. I just love this movie from you. Good on you for doing this movie.

Yeah, he's a really good actor. One of my favorite roles, not by Jeff Daniels, but my. One of my favorite acting moments is in Gettysburg, where Jeff Daniels plays Joshua Chamberlain for the Union army. And he gives a couple really poignant, important speeches in that movie. And you feel like you're listening and you're watching the real person. It just. Very good actor. I like him. But my point in bringing up dumb and dumber is I didn't like it. I didn't think I'd like it. I knew I wouldn't like it, but I let myself enjoy it and I took it for what it was. And it's right now one of my favorites.

I just going to quickly talk about some of the barriers to change, which is the fear of the unknown, comfort with the status quo. You got ego and denial happening over attachment to what worked in the past. Those are the things that get in your way from moving on. But what I want to focus on, Joe, to finish up here is the character Ha and how he overcame his fears. What was the inner dialogue that helped him move forward? First of all, he acknowledged his fear that first, Ha is stuck in fear like his friend Hem. Hem and Haw. Yeah, he's afraid of the unknown, afraid to leave the familiar, even though the cheese is clearly gone. His inner dialogue is saying, what would I do if I weren't afraid? Haven't you asked me that question before? I believe Joe.

Yeah. Michael Hyatt asked. I heard Michael Hyatt ask that question one time. And kind of a twist on it is, what would you do if you were brave?

Oh, okay.

Which is the same thing, right?

So for Ha, this becomes a turning point. He doesn't magically lose his fear, but starts acting in spite of it. Then he starts moving. Haw decides to make small steps into the maze again. Even though he's still uncertain and afraid, he laughs at himself, which helps release the tension. When you stop being afraid, you feel good. It is safer to search in the maze than remain in a cheeseless situation. These are thoughts that are going through his head. And he realizes that staying stuck is actually riskier than moving on. I love that.

Yeah, I. We talk a lot about on this show about taking action. And this is that timeless principle. Just take action, right? Move forward.

Always made me feel better. That was what I was doing when I said I thought there was something going on. I called a friend and said, hey, I know you moved on. Matter of fact, she worked with us. I knew you were over at the Hartford where I work now, and what's going on in this technology? And she said, well, we got a consultant that's working with us, so we're pretty good for right now. I said, okay, a couple weeks, I lose my job. About the same time, she loses her contractor, just says, calls me up, says, I need you. When can you start?

That's awesome.

So I started moving before I lost my cheese, which is good.

That's part of going that's part of recognizing when the cheese is going bad.

I always give that advice to anyone. If you don't like the situation you're in, start doing something. Get your resume ready, of course. Do some training. Always stay on top of your skills. Be prepared, Have a network. I'm not very good at that, but in this particular, it's always having an insider man. That's the way jobs are. That's the way you find jobs. You could not get into the company that I work for, and I've seen it over the years. Unless you know somebody, be proactive.

Well, magic happens when you take action. It does. It seems like opportunities come out of nowhere when you start taking action, when you start moving in the direction that you want to move those things that you're interested in, those things that bring you joy. When you start to move in the direction of things and take action on those things. It's crazy how magic happens. Opportunities come your way. And people that haven't been in your life for the longest time suddenly show up with something. An opportunity or ideas come into your life that will help you move forward. But it never happens. We talked about Steven Pressfield's book the War of Art, and he talks about the muse, right? The muse doesn't show up. The muse is that creative force that comes into your life out of nowhere, but the muse doesn't show up until you take action.

Yeah.

And this is the same thing. You've got to take action.

Yeah. I was giving advice to someone who was saying, I'm prepping my website, I'm doing all this work, I'm doing my resume. And I said, and they were asking me, what should I do now? Should I. What should I, like, start interviewing, start reaching out to companies. Sometimes all that little busy work is fine and you got to do it. But don't wait till it's perfect. Just get out there. One thing Ha does is he writes on the wall. He leaves messages on the maze, not just for him, but also reinforce his own growth. Some key messages that he writes that end up turning into mantras. The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new GS. Old beliefs do not lead to new cheese. And imagining yourself enjoying new cheese leads you to it. These are his mental rewrites, new thoughts to replace his old fears. Yeah, you got to change your thought process for sure. He visualizes success. Ha starts imagining himself finding and enjoying new cheese. This visualization gives him motivation and energy. His inner dialogue is imagining myself enjoying new cheese even before I Find it helps me keep going. He shifts from fear based thinking to hope based thinking. Boy, that is so true. I can remember being in a meeting with everybody who has now come to the realization we're all going to lose our jobs. And again, I talked about. We had this other. The bigger problem for us was all this outsourcing that was going on and what was the job market going to be like? Boy, if you focus on that fear and don't get out there to really find out for yourself what's going on, it stops you in your track. But if you think of, oh, wait a minute, I didn't like this part of my job. I didn't like this. What's out there, that's better. That was really helpful. Like I said, I had already reached out and started going down that path. But it was so encouraging. Not just to listen to all the problems and the fears and things that are going on, but just go out and find out for yourself.

I'm going to read my mail out loud a little bit. I know I say that a lot and I tend to, but this is a real weakness of mine is that visualizing that things are going to be better, visualizing enjoying myself, visualizing all the good that will come from whatever is happening. Right. I have a tendency to catastrophize and I continually need to work on that. So this is a fantastic reminder for me as we always go through change, even change late in life, if you want to call it. It's going to be okay, man. Yeah, it's going to be okay. It'll work out. Visualize yourself enjoying the new situation. Because when you do that, your mind finds a way to make it what you've imagined. And if something bad happens, then you can take the lesson and move forward. But I like this inner dialogue, part of. Imagine yourself enjoying the cheese even before you, even before it's there, right? How it's going to taste, how it's going to feel, what you're, what you're going to experience and the whole thing, the whole experience. Imagine that when I do it and I do it purposefully, it never fails me.

For sure. You reminded me of another part of this scenario. When I went and interviewed for this job that my friend set me up with the manager, I felt like I already had the job, quite honestly. She had talked me up quite well. But they wanted me to go in a six month contract and I had to come in with a contracting company. So I met with that person. We met at a little hotel next to where I worked. And he said something I'll never forget to me, because I was also. The fear I had was my skill in this very specific technology. Now, would I be able to find jobs in that particular technology at other companies? But he said to me something that, again, I'll never forget when he said, can you think of a problem that you had at work that you didn't solve?

That's interesting. Yeah.

And. Oh, you know, and I'm thinking in the technical space of things that have been technically challenging for me over my career, I went, no, I can't think of anything.

Right, right.

Boy, that was enlightening.

Definitely.

I would love to reach back to him. And I probably. He's probably in my LinkedIn profile somewhere. Yeah, that was always a fear of mine. But can my skills translate into another job, which I've learned over the years? It can.

Definitely.

Number five, last one. He finds the new cheese and learns the lesson. Eventually, Ha finds new cheese, but more importantly, he finds courage, confidence, and adaptability. His final reflection is noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come. So I'll summarize all this, Joe. How Ha overcomes the fear? He asks a powerful question. What would I do if I weren't afraid? He takes small steps into the unknown. He laughs at his fear, shrinking its power. He replaces old beliefs with empowering truths. He imagines success, not failure. And he reinforces learning by reflecting and writing it down.

You just brought up a neat little trick that we can all use. Makes me want to go back and reread this book again. I read it a long time ago. Like I said, laughing at fear. When's the last time that you made fun of fear? That you even maybe ridiculed it a little bit and laughed at it and shrink its power over you? Now, fear is a good thing. If you're. If you're walking through the woods and you hear, you tell you and you see a snake, and that snake is. You don't know whether it's poisonous or not. You need to back up a little bit until you can figure out the situation. But most of the things we fear never happen. Most of the things that, like I said, I catastrophize about never happen. We still have to have a healthy amount of fear. But laughing at fear, I like that concept. I like that idea to laugh at fear, to take away its power. It doesn't have power in me, you silly little fear. Silly stupid little trepidation. But you said something before, and in your last point about he Finds courage, confidence and adaptability. Courage is moving forward without, without knowing how it's going to turn out or despite fear. Right?

Yeah.

Confidence is what you have once you've succeeded in something and know you can succeed. But those things only build when you move forward. You can't wait until you have a full cup of courage and a full cup of confidence and a full cup of adaptability before you take any action. He finds courage, confidence and adaptability. He doesn't, he doesn't have it before he starts.

That's right.

I love that laugh at fear, dude.

I love it.

That's my, that's my, that's my mantra of the day.

Yeah. Just remember, change is constant. Resistance only leads to frustration. Adapting quickly gives you a competitive edge and personal and professional growth comes with leaving your comfort zone. Now. Yeah. Looking back on all these situations, like you said, the fear really wasn't warranted. I went on a six month contract. Here I am 20 years later at the same job. Yeah, I'm laughing now. Joe, there you have it. What's your win for the week?

Well, Kurt, before we go into that, I want to tell you how much I appreciate you, you bringing up this subject and who moved my cheese. I really do want to go back and reread this book. Not that I'm making any kind of dramatic career change, but these are timeless truths that clearly have stood the test of time and will open me up to new and old ways of thinking. So, yeah, this was a good one.

We're going through it right now with this AI. Yeah, the fear that AI is bringing to workers, will it replace me and how we're going to deal with that. It's why that's real right now.

Absolutely, absolutely. So my win for the week. This has been a long process for me. But back in, back in October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, maybe it's been longer than that. It's been 10 months now. But back in October, we identified the need to hire a new sales resource for the, for North America, for my North American regions. I was being, being overburdened with a lot of opportunity that we couldn't get to and we couldn't address because we just didn't have the resources. So we decided to hire a new sales resource. Actually, this was back almost, it's been about a year now actually, as I think about it, because our, the only rule that we had is they couldn't, they had to start after October 1, 2024. Okay. So we've been going through this for a Long time. And it's taken a long time to find a good sales resource for North America. And we just hired one, went through the interview process. She comes with some fantastic background, a good mindset and a willingness to learn and grow, but she has a solid foundation for what we need in this position. But I'm going to call that my win for the week that we finally filled this North American sales resource position. I got a new salesperson on my team for North America and this morning I was interviewing for a new salesperson for my European region. I think we're going to hire that person as well. Within a month or so of each other, we're likely going to hire two sales resources that we've been looking for nearly a year.

So it should make your life easier.

Yeah, there's going to be some training time and some, some onboarding time that's required. But once they're up and running, I'll be able to concentrate on a 10,000 foot view instead of a five foot view.

That's what you want to do?

Definitely.

I love that. Great job and preparing for my vacation. I love to have things in good order as whether it's in my day job, knock on wood. I'm feeling pretty good. I got one little issue I got to deal with today, but I also have this podcast Joe called Geeking on Walt Disney World. Heard of it? Heard of it. I mentioned it to you in the past and I very proud of the consistency. I've kept over 11 years, not missing a week. Well, two weeks ago I didn't have any recordings and I had nothing scheduled on a Wednesday, maybe a week and a half ago. But since then I've recorded six episodes and I've produced and scheduled three of them. One went out this week, two already sitting there waiting to come out while I'm away and yeah, I'm ready to go.

Oh, that's awesome. I'm really happy for you because that's something that can weigh on your mind as you're coming up to vacation, as you're on vacation. If you think you have to come back and oh man, I got to come back and produce a couple episodes immediately or I'm sure you did a lot of prepping in your job as well. That's similar, but fantastic. Six, six episodes in a week and a half is. That's a Herculean effort.

Yeah. At work for the last two weeks, I said don't forget I'm gonna be off the week of June 9th. And we do pretty good with scheduling. We prepping and we're doing our daily meetings. We take a look out and say, hey, who's going to be on vacation? What can we accomplish? We're pretty good with that. But yeah, I got the major stuff that can keep my team moving for what they're doing, so I'm excited for that.

Perfect. And produce three. Recording them is one thing, but to have them ready to go and produced, yeah, that's the next level.

Only podcasters know what I'm talking about. I did all the editing and got it uploaded and sitting there. It's scheduled. The two are sitting there right now. All done. Well, yesterday.

Congratulations to your. Congratulations to you. And congratulations to your audience. They won't have to miss a week of Kurt.

Yes, thank you. What's your resource or tip for this week?

Well, I read a book years ago called Fish A Proven Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results. It's about the Seattle fish market. Have you heard of this book?

I have. I don't think I read the book, but I think there's a really good YouTube video that I saw at this.

There is a very good YouTube video about this. So I would invite you to look at the YouTube video, but if you want a quick read. Fish is a fantastic quick read. It just, it talks about how to create a work environment that is inspiring and motivating and a place that not only people want to work, but people want to come to. It's funny when you watch these, when you watch this video and the video really does the book justice and sometimes it's the other way around, but it talks about choosing your attitude. Play at work. Work can be serious and fun. And when you're dealing with customers or you're dealing with fellow employees or people who report to you or. Or even people who you report to figure out a way to make their day. Figure out a way to. To be a joy and an inspiration in somebody's life. Figure out a way to make their day when it comes to co workers or customers and be present, meaning being fully engaged in what you're doing. Again, timeless principles. But I really like the way this book Fish frames it. I might do an episode on Fish. It's a really good book.

I hope to experience some of this like that Seattle fish market while I'm at Disney World. That's one of the things I love about the cast members. If they're having fun and getting involved in the story or the just the fun. Don't they throw fish like across the.

Yeah, yeah, they throw fish. They treat fish as Puppets and they talk through them with their fingers and it's hilarious, you know, and people go.

For the show not just to get fish. I love businesses that do stuff like that. That's just. They stand out, whether it's customer service or having fun like that. I like Southwest. I'll be. I was mentioning. I did a gratitude journal in my Facebook group, and one of the things I was thinking about when I fly Southwest, how the pilots or the flight attendants will tell jokes or be funny, especially near the end. That gets me in the mood. I love that.

Sure does. I like it. I like it. We talked about that a few weeks back, about creating play in your life and being a playful person and young at heart. And. Yeah, we need that. And Fish is a really good book. Check it out.

I will, definitely. I love that. Very similar to the resource I picked, which you might know. Who Moved my cheese. It's by Dr. Spencer Johnson. He's an MD and yeah, check it out. It's an easy, quick read and you don't have to have these big thick books with fancy words to get benefit from it.

I. I like it and I do prefer a quick little read if something gets too much. There's a book that I love.

But.

It'S meaty and it's thick and it's. It takes a lot to digest. It's called Influence by Robert Cialdini. It's quite an investment. I wish you would do a book that you can read in, in a couple hours, but I'm not sure you could. There's a lot that goes into that book, but I do like these short, clear, crisp books.

Let's finish up with our quotes for the week.

I love this quote, and I. I can't say I love the guy because I wasn't alive when he was. When. When he was president. But he certainly is respected and admired by his generation and by generations today. President John F. Kennedy. His famous quote is, don't ask what you do what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. I love that quote, but this one is really powerful. Change is the law of life. If that was the only thing in this quote, that would be enough, Kurt. But change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future. Yeah, I love that. That forward thinking attitude that he had. That forward thinking mindset that President Kennedy had. Took us to the moon.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. The probably the thing most famous that represents what this quote is Talking about is his desire to put man on the moon, the moonshot.

And he had an attitude of. And he'd said this in his speech. We don't. I can't get it right, exactly. But we don't do these things because we're. They're easy. We do these things because they're hard. I think something like that. It may be a misinterpretation, but it's something like that. But I. What I love about that mindset is purposefully doing hard things. I hearkened back to an early episode that we did with. Is it Toriann, Tony Ann who did the. What is it the 75? I can't remember now, but I can't get out of my mind what she said, the reason that she did it, because she wanted to prove to herself that she could do hard things.

Yeah.

Let that sink in for just a second. We can't do that if we're just. If we're living in the past or if we're just dwelling in the future, in the present, we're certain to miss the future if we don't realize that that changes the law of life. So this is a good one.

You started saying you weren't sure about John Kennedy, but I have this distinct remembering of as a kid reading a book about John Kennedy. Kid's book. But what really struck me was his experience as a PT boat captain in the Pacific War. And he's very heroic in saving lives in. When they were sunk and. Yeah. So he's a war hero, too.

He is. He is.

I was. I've always been a big fan of John Kennedy. I was a little kid. So when was he assassinated? I was born in 64. I was still little, though. Yeah. My quote is, if you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less. By General Eric Shinsesk.

So what does that quote mean to you? I can tell you what it means to me, but I'm curious what you read into it.

Yeah. Irrelevance. I don't want to be that person.

Right.

I don't want to be irrelevant.

Right.

And he's right.

In order to make any significant impact in life, in your life, in people's life, in the life that you live here on Earth, you have to be willing to change. You have to be willing to change yourself, and you have to be willing to change whatever the status quo is, whatever the way we always done it is. If we want to be significant and not irrelevant, we have to embrace change.

Yeah, I don't like. Yeah, I don't like change. I admit it. But I don't like to be irrelevant even more.

That's a Irrelevance. The word irrelevance is a powerful word. Right?

Just like you said, Significance. I'd like to have more significance in my life.

Yeah, no doubt.

Irrelevance.

Good episode, my friend.

Thank you, pal.

Good episode. I love this discussion as we wrap up. Remember, our website is dudesinprogress.com dudesinprogress.com if you want to reach out to us, you can email us dudesudesinprogress.com we're working on a project right now with our friend Clay, and we're coaching him through some podcasting work, some video work, some marketing work, and we're really happy to do that. That's part of kind of the services that we offer. If you want to find out more about what we can do for you in either your podcasting life or some coaching that you might need, Kurt and I are both here to serve you. Just reach out to us [email protected] and remember, if you need to move your cheese, you just got to make progress. It may be stinky, it may be moldy. It's time to get rid of it. You got to find better cheese, but you don't find better cheese by staying with the stinky stuff. Right?

Yeah.

Progress is better than perfection. It doesn't have to be perfect. You just got to keep moving forward.

Yeah. I want to encourage you, if someone's moved your cheese, don't get some new cheese. Have a great week, everyone.

See you, pal.