Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Joel, welcome aboard to the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: My pleasure. This sounds like it's going to be a great casual conversation.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: I want to ask you, what is the recent thing in the work environment that kind of pissed you off?
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Okay. I literally had this conversation on a call.
How are we going to communicate with each other? We have. Can we do it in email? Oh, there's too much email. Can we do it in Slack? Oh, my God, slack is an ADD nightmare. Can we do it in WhatsApp? Well, my WhatsApp is constantly exploding. Can we do it in airtable? Well, nobody's got that open. Can we do it in Wrike? Oh, please, God, please stop. There's so many ways to communicate and they all say, oh, I'll post to each other. And so you could spend half your day just digging out from multiple communications about the same thing.
So this pisses me off because it actually causes stress, it impairs communication and we're not getting things done. We're literally just trying to get things to stop. Having a little number in the chiclet that says 5. Or in the case of my email, chiclet22392.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I mean, the psychology that there that these companies are using against us, right? Completion bias, I mean, that's borderline evil, I've got to say, right?
I mean, what is the solution? I mean, is this a cultural issue? Is this. You just need a block time to get through it? Is this a collaboration issue? How do you even see this?
[00:01:45] Speaker B: So I think we're going through an evolution, right? The companies want to own the user, and yet there's so many platforms and so many things to use that they really can't own the user. And I have actually a lot of respect for Slack because they try to be open and everything can communicate there. It's not their fault that it's an ADD nightmare.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: We got to qualify this. I've even got an H in that acronym, which makes worse.
But what does that mean? Why? And I hate Slack, I gotta say. But what is the kind of counterintuitive point about why that is a nightmare?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: So I don't have ADHD and I'm not a therapist and I'm not a psychologist. So, you know, I'm speaking as a layperson who knows a lot of people and has managed. I've probably directly or indirectly, like there's hundreds of thousands of people that I've influenced and what have you.
You have. It's. You have to learn how to intentionally Set boundaries.
So, for example, I chose when we got on this podcast, not to mute Slack. I turned it off, and I don't have it on my phone. Those are boundaries I've set because I know that when I see the little Chiclet with the number, I want to follow up. I want to be responsive, I want to be helpful. Some people have a lot of fomo. I don't have fomo. Like, if it's a group thing, like, oh, this came in a channel and it doesn't need me, I don't care. I'm done. But if you have FOMO and if you have trouble setting boundaries, it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole.
Inbox zero is another falling down the rabbit hole. So it behooves us to learn how to specify what is important and what is insecurity.
Right? That which is important. I need to engage. So with my clients, my friends, or my kids, I will say, if you need me to look at something and I haven't within what you consider to be a reasonable amount of time, text me.
And you can say, please look at Slack or please look at email, and I will go. But what I'm trying to do is be fully present with Ari right now, and I can't do that with the beeping and the bumping and the. And everything else. Nobody can. There's a myth, right? I'm a mom of three. I've worked the entire time. My kids grew up. My career took off at the same time as my family expanded.
So people would say, oh, you must be great at multitasking. Nobody is great at multitasking. It's a myth. What I am really good at is context shifting, but I know I'm losing the thread. I know I'm not as good as when I'm fully focused and present, and I don't think I'm an anomaly. So what we have to do is set boundaries. Now, maybe. Maybe generative AI is going to help us, and we're going to have an AI buddy that's watching what we do and saying, ari, stop that. You've spent enough time there. I'm shutting off your slack now. Right, and refocuses us. I don't know.
[00:05:06] Speaker A: I'm not sure if I like that or hate that I'm somewhere in the middle.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Turn it off.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: So many, so many things I love about what you just said. So, first of all, let me just call it out. You coordinated expectations with the people around you on how to communicate with you. I mean, that's delightful. I Mean, I can imagine. I can imagine everybody saying, like, look, you know, if you want me to know something, just as an fy, you don't care when I read it, you know, put it in this channel or put this tag or starting line. If it's urgent, you know, send me a text. If it's life or death, pick up the phone and call me.
So I absolutely love that because I think we definitely see a lot of misuse of channels and a lot of confusion. So that's just such a delightful, simple and easy approach.
The other thing that almost I take away from what you said is that as we're trying to get really good at multitasking, we're getting really bad at single tasking just doing one thing.
Maybe we shouldn't try to be better multitasks, but really be more just in that moment. So I thought that was delightful.
What do we do? I mean, I got three kids.
I think I've given my kids a phone and taken it away already four or five times.
I don't know what to do.
What should parents with young teenager kids, once they're 18, maybe they're on their own to decide what they do and make their own mistakes. But with the younger ages, what do we do? How do we come approach this? On the one hand, I want to say I want to give you this so you can learn how to use it and to learn how to be responsible, and I want to teach you the tools and techniques to be awesome. But on the other hand, I mean, I'm not sure I can handle it.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Right. So I think this is a moment where you have to think about what's your job as a parent.
So my definition might be different from other people. I want to raise productive, thoughtful, and intentional people.
Right? That's. That's my goal.
So I do believe it's a good idea to try to hold off on a phone as long as possible. We made it to sixth grade when they started going to middle school. Just being transparent. People say, you know, not until 13.
If you can pull that off, good on you. I think the longer you can go, the better. But I made it to 11, but I actually had a written contract with my kids. I'm a big fan of writing things down, and I'm a big fan of asking your kids to do the first draft.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: Oh, I love that.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Okay, so the agreement was the phone shall not be ever at my dinner table. Ever.
The phone shall.
[00:08:05] Speaker A: Is this mutual? Do you have to do that as well?
[00:08:07] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. I love that. I agree. If you don't model it.
Your words are bullshit. So we. I know people that do a full digital Shabbat 24 hours. We don't. But I mean, literally, people at this point show up at my dinner table, they're grown adults, and take out a phone. And my kids look at them and go, she's going to take it, put it away.
Like it is clear. We are at dinner. There is no phone.
You will not at night, before bed. If you do, the phone will live in my room or will disappear. That's not because I hate you.
It's because it's not good for you. It's not good for anyone.
And so we talk a lot about what is responsible usage. Do not get into a conversation with someone you don't know. I don't care how fabulous they seem to be. If you have confusion, come to me. And the other thing we did when they were sixth grade, and we maintained this for a number of years, I had their chat, I had access to it, and I said, I know you can use Snapchat, but I have your password. I know you can use Insta, but I have your password. And you should tell your friends that I see everything and I want to tell you a little story. There was a point where my son, my second one, got a text and I read it.
And I didn't read many of them, right? I wasn't. I have a life. I don't want to do this all the time. Right? But there was some reason. I was looking at the phone and it came up and it was basically someone saying they were thinking of killing themselves.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: And I called him and I said, what's that about? He says, they're joking. I said, are you absolutely sure?
And he paused. I said, seriously, that is not something one jokes about.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:05] Speaker B: If you're.
I'm going to trust you.
If you're not absolutely sure, I'm going to call their parents so that their parents can intervene because I am not going to be responsible for someone trying to kill themselves.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And, you know, it was a good conversation with him because he was then able to say, hey, guys, realize my mom sees this and that's not funny, and I'm fine with that. Learn how to express boundaries. So we had some rules. We had some ground rules.
And I said, this phone is a privilege. As long as we maintain the agreement, we're fine. Now, I never took the phone as punishment for something that wasn't related to the phone, because that's just dumb. Like the Punishment has to be relevant to what you did.
And kids make mistakes. And there are times for productive consequences, but they have to be productive consequences. Otherwise, you just are exerting power. And you know, when you're in a power struggle with your kid, you've lost. It doesn't matter if you win, you've lost.
So I like to establish upfront. You know, by the way, there's another thing. There's a product called Life360.
And I told my kids, part of your phone is having that on.
As long as I'm paying for the phone, this is a requirement.
I promise not to embarrass you, but if you turn it off, I also didn't give my kids curfews. If you turn it off and I can't find you, I will call all of your friends until I find you, because it's late and I just want to know you're safe.
One of them pushed that limit once and never did it again.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: You know, I had this look, it's not easy, right?
I had that same agreement with them that they knew that I could see what they were doing. And I told them it was no secret. I was not trying to, you know, entrap them.
And actually, I wasn't looking at it at all until I saw cagey behavior.
And it was like, that is, you know, the kind of behavior that you're trying to hide something. And when you're looking at the phone underneath a blanket and when I come and you're quickly like, you know, you're shrugging, the disappointment is that, you know, I've taught you better to be able to not act so weird on the one hand, but on the other hand. So, okay, so I go into the browser history and I look at Google and I'm like, oh, shit. And, like, you know, I can see what's then. Yet you decide to make these bad decisions.
So to me, this has almost changed. I'm almost thinking about this differently. And I'm like, how do I teach? And now this goes, I think, not only to children, but adults and professional environments. How do we make good decisions? How do we teach people to make good decisions? What's the fundamentals there? And you know what? I kind of come and I think about this, and I'm like, nobody ever asks themselves how they're making a decision.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: So I think that that is one of the primary things as parents we do need to cultivate in our kids. And the way we make good choices is we're informed, we ask good questions. So there Was a time. My eldest was 13. He had his girlfriend, whatever, at 13, that is over. And he opened his computer and he basically said, I saw the craziest thing. Look at this. And he showed it to her. Not for any other reason than, this is a crazy thing. And it was a hardcore porn site. And the girl was horrified. And he didn't understand. He's like, I wasn't saying we should do this. This is like.
But, you know, created a whole thing for this eighth grade, you know, a whole, whole to do.
And the fact of the matter is, kids discover porn and kids make bad decisions. It's kind of what they're supposed to do.
They're supposed to find out why bad decisions are bad decisions, and we can't protect them from that. But what I did there, you'll. You know this. My kids know this story. So I don't mind telling you it. I said to him, okay, it's normal that you're curious about pornography.
I want you to understand, and here's some things to read, what the nature of pornography is like today, and that it has nothing to do with what healthy sex looks like. And, you know, there's a couple of books, Boys and Sex, Girls and Sex, that you should read, like, every parent should read them. Because we need to normalize conversations about sex. Because I want my kids to have a great sex life when they're old enough to make good choices, because having a great sex life is a great thing.
Not when you're 13.
And so when you're 13, you're curious, and you don't know that what you're seeing is harmful. And so I said, here's the deal. If you want to watch porn, I'll watch it with you so that we can make sure it's safe. I don't like porn. It's not my thing. And by the way, you want to make porn not sexy, make them talk about it with their mother. That's fabulous.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: I need a moment here to recover.
So. So, I mean, this is. I feel like there's a lot of fault here on the parents because this is an incredibly difficult topic for parents to talk about. I was talking to a gentleman who was a DEA officer. His thing is about, look, drugs are still a problem. And he's talking to.
And this is just so much. This art of going down the rabbit hole. I had no idea we were going to get here. But talking to this DE officer, and he's basically telling me, parents don't want to hear from him, right? They don't Want to hear about drugs. I can only assume that, you know, parents don't want to hear about sex. They don't want to talk about if their children is objectively hard.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: It's uncomfortable.
But you had children. There's going to be things that are uncomfortable.
And you know, do you want them having those conversations with somebody in their friend group?
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Like that's pretty bad.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: And do you want them having those conversations with random Internet sites?
I do not. So again, and it's funny because I now have two kids. One's graduated college, one's in college and one's about to go. But the ones who've been to college have come back and thanked my husband and I for how we parented. I don't want to say like, I've got some. I got lucky, I got good kids. Right. And they weren't.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: I've prepared myself that that will never happen my mind.
[00:17:20] Speaker B: And I actually asked one of them why. And he said, well, you talk to us like adults. So when we talked about porn, I wasn't like, tis, tsk, tsk. I was like, I get it. Actually, there's a lot of people who watch porn. It's not my jam. And I also offered him a Playboy subscription if he'd look at it with his dad Again, how to make it not sexy. Right. But my point was, and I said to him, like, the reason I'd get you a magazine is that's actually a healthier way to consume porn. Here are the issues. And by the way, the kid's squirming. He's like, why do we have to talk about this?
Because you were looking at porn and we need to talk about why. Seeing a almost sadistic, weird fantasy as that's what sexual. It's not setting you up for a good sex life and it's not setting you up for healthy relationships. And so I want you to understand it's not. No. I said no, it's here's why. I don't think that's a good choice. Here's the data. You're a smart person.
You need to make some choices here. And I'm going to give you some choices that are acceptable with the values of this family. What you choose, when you're out of my house, you choose. But you will have been educated and informed and you will know how. So I'll give you another one of those stories. One of my kids, I realized, was self medicating with Pop and he wasn't. We had talked a lot about drugs and he wasn't escalating or anything else, but he did. And I said, you know, I'm not okay with that.
And he made a bunch of arguments for why I should be. And I said, you're too young. I'm not okay with that. But I know that if I just say no, you're going to just do it anyway and hide.
So here's what I want.
And you know, he had done it in a way that was.
Put one of our babysitters in a bad situation. And so he was, he was about to be grounded. And I said, so you're grounded, but you decide how long. He said, excuse me. I said, here's the deal. You're grounded until I get a five page research paper on the impact of marijuana on the adolescent brain. I'll even provide you some sources to look at.
And he starts complaining, whatever, that's going to be hard. I said, if you do it tonight, you're grounded. Just tonight. If it takes you three months, you're grounded for three months. I don't care.
I want the paper.
I still have the paper.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Very good paper.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Really?
[00:20:01] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Because he knew it had to be. This wasn't. I'm going to write some bullshit and Mom's going to be okay. Mom has high standards and knows I can write. And so I am going to have to give a thoughtful argument. And I said, you can make any argument you want. You can make an argument that it's healthy. I want it backed up with data. We can make an argument that it's okay in moderation. I don't care what argument. I care that you thought deeply about the matter.
Because teenagers don't think deeply. And my job as a parent, I'm teenagers, right? I put a pause in it and said, think deeply, choose mindfully.
And I want you to slow down and think. So here was my proof that he.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Thought, is there something there that is, I would say, almost intuitively true? Not only for teenagers in the way that we're making decisions or not making decisions, because what I'm seeing in what you did there is, I feel bad about going to social psychology, but you kind of moved him from, from brain one to brain two. You made it from this emotional thing of everybody's doing it. And, oh, I saw some anecdotal research too. I want you to think through that. And I would even argue that you're neutralizing these, you know, biases basically in that process.
Is there an opportunity here for the commercial and business environment also to change how we're doing business.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: So I actually do the same thing in business.
One example, when I took over as president of a company, I was 27. It was so stupid. But they wanted me to try to bring this company into the Internet and I was going to hire a bunch of people. One of the things that had always annoyed me was when you start a job, you kind of sit there and say, what am I doing? What am I supposed to do? Who am I having lunch with? Like, it's a very uncomfortable thing and it's a colossal waste of time and resource. So as I'm taking on this role and I hire my first person, I created a document and I called it the first day memo. And it had three elements and then I added a fourth. Over time, the three elements was this is a quick background on our company. Everything you should read. This might be now in a notion doc or you know, in a wiki, I don't care. This is where the most up to date information is about our company, how we got here, who our customers are, what our technology stack is. Here's what you need to know and you don't need to ask somebody. It's documented. Number two, and it's about 50% of the memo is here's what your first projects are, here is your job and your first projects. Here are the people you should talk to as you do it and here's any work product in flight for you. There you go. And then the last like minute percentage is here's the administrative stuff, here's how we hear the meetings we have, here's how you get your expenses approved, here's where you do your benefits, like great, like 10%. I called it a first day memo. The thing I added a little later, literally like a month later when we had more people is I'd write them well in advance, like a week in advance of the person starting. And I had everybody who was named in it read it, comment because I said it's my job to resolve disagreements and confusion about their role. Ari's new Ari gets to have a clean slate and doesn't need to wonder why Linda's mad at him. That's my problem, that's not Ari's problem. And what it turned out. I've been doing first day memos now for over 20 years and it is one of only two things when I was operational leading organizations that I said I don't micromanage but I demand a first day memo for every person you hire and something I call top three. And my point on the first Day memo is if you can't be thoughtful and intentional about what this person needs to do first, you're not going to be a good manager for them. And I don't want to endure that nightmare. So you will write this and we templatize it. And as you're going through the hiring process, you can add the projects. Like, this doesn't have to be a nightmarish project. I'm going to build a GPT to help build them for people.
But you do need to think about it and you need to share it with people and get that feedback. The consequence, there are people who worked for me 15 years ago, they still have their first day memo.
[00:24:46] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: It is a profoundly impactful thing. And what I learned from doing that I didn't have kids yet is there is a real benefit in writing down your expectations. So when we had our third daughter, I hired an au pair wonderful thing. And I created a how to be our au pair document. Now, these people don't always speak English fluently.
I wanted to be very clear on my expectations, how I communicate, how they can communicate with me and things they'd need. Like if the kid gets hurt, what do you do? Right?
And my au pairs loved it. It was a 19 page booklet.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: But they loved it. And their first day, they'd come and they'd read it. My teams, when they get their first day memo, inevitably people would say, thank you, thank you for this. I know what's expected, I know what to do. My first day feels great. Now, selfishly, Ari, I'll tell you, I was able to tell if it was a good hire within four weeks because of the first day memo.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: That's that. Hold on, I gotta stop you. That's incredibly interesting.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Why?
[00:25:59] Speaker B: Because if giving you that much context and that much of a turbocharge does not light you up and motivate you to start going. You can't teach drive. It's intrinsic. So I'm giving you the map, the car, the keys, the gas. Go if you're not going to go.
And by the way, there's different first day memos for more junior people. Like, you know, they're not like the guy. There's a guy who worked for me at two different companies, he's now a cmo. And his first day memos for me, like the second one, when he joined me at the second company, he said to me in advance, can I get it a week in advance? And I did. And it was 11 pages long because he was, you know, I was hiring an executive, there's a lot he needs to know, whereas a more junior person might get a three or four page. Right. But you knew, and you also knew if they couldn't adapt. It's a snapshot in time.
Things change, particularly in growth companies like Iled. So things change. And if you're not able to say, okay, this thing that's on the memo was actually, it's no longer important. Let me communicate. This is. I don't think this is as important. And I'm doing this instead.
I love it. Perfect.
Nobody completes a first day memo because it's a snapshot.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: I love that there's something so incredibly important about this concept of other people looking at the first day memo because there inevitably isn't alignment on what the role is and what the expectations are. And it's so easy for somebody new who doesn't yet understand the, the struggle of forces in the company to step into something that just blow off their foot or their head.
So I love that. I've gone through that pain myself. I've seen my employees go through that pain. I think that's such a good point.
Believe it or not, we're almost at the end of our time.
I think this is the first time that, that I, I say this, we need to have you back.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: Right?
[00:28:15] Speaker A: This is not, this is not, this is not. We can't finish here. But for this chapter, we're gonna say there is only one scripted question in our discussion. And it's a hard one at that.
If you had to go back to 20 year old Joel, what would you tell her?
[00:28:39] Speaker B: The good news is, because I have kids who are around that age, in many ways I get to tell her, so take risks, experiment. Maybe not with substances or porn, but you don't have to run so fast, miss things when you're running so fast. So if you want to explore another country or a different career path, spend your 20s collecting experiences and don't worry necessarily about where they're leading.
They're what's going to make you you.
And you know, I was to some extent in a rush for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't want to be financially dependent on my family.
They would have been generous and helpful. It was a me thing, not a they thing.
Two, my mother had her first bout with cancer when she was 36, and the treatment for the second bout when she was 38 rendered her infertile. Not that she wanted more kids at that point, but I didn't want to develop cancer and wind up not having a family. And so I said I have to establish myself in my career and get myself going so that when I have kids, it doesn't slow me down. And, you know, kids do change everything, but they didn't slow me down. And, you know, I probably could have taken a few more detours and explored some different things along the way. So I find I'm doing it now in my 50s.
[00:30:31] Speaker A: I love that. Joel, thank you so much for joining the show. We will definitely have you back.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: I can't wait.
