Why Most People Stay Stuck and This Mindset DOESN’T | Nir Bashan

What this episode is about

The main topic centers on the importance of shifting one's perspective from immediate work frustrations to viewing career and life as a long-term journey. Nir Bashan emphasizes that success may lie in the impact one has on others and the community, rather than solely on the tasks completed in a job.

Key takeaways

• Shift focus: Treat your career as an adventure, not a series of endless Mondays.
• Impactful workplace: You might be there to uplift people, not just complete tasks.
• Creative roadmap: Everyone’s a problem solver; even accountants have an artistic side!
• From philosophy to action: Creativity isn't just theory; apply it and drive results.
• The human tool: Creativity is the Swiss Army Knife for life's unforeseen challenges.

Who speaks in this episode?

• John R. Miles (Host) · 24 min speaking
• Nir Bashan (Guest) · 29 min speaking
• Jim McKelvey (Guest)
• Robin Steinberg (Guest)
• Steve Shirley (Guest)
• Douglas MacArthur (Guest)
• Harry S. Truman (Guest)
• Gary Vaynerchuk (Host)

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: The Creator Mindset, Mattering, Ner Bashan, Square
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Solution mindset, The Solution Mindset, Mattering, The Creator Mindset
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Google LLC, Titoan Bennock, You Matter Luma
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Idea Flow
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Bureaucracy, Harry Truman
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Bureaucracy, Solution mindset, Idea Flow, International Paper
7. 30:00 – 35:00: International Paper, Steve Shirley, Dory Clark, Robin Steinberg
8. 35:00 – 40:00: Recidivism
9. 45:00 – 50:00: Burn the Boat, Comparison trap, Solution mindset, The Solution Mindset
10. 50:00 – 53:31: Amazon

Notable quotes from "Why Most People Stay Stuck and This Mindset DOESN’T | Nir Bashan"

• Beginning the journey and I was so honored to have you back then to discuss your first book, The Creator Mindset.

  about The Creator Mindset · at 1:54

• Can do at work. They can do in their communities. They can do I know that mattering and doing things in life that are important not just for commerce but important for…

  about Mattering · at 4:09

• Was there a consistent problem that you realized that there was a gap that led you to writing the solution mindset and what was that gap?

  about Solution mindset · at 5:13

• Different reasons. One, there was a book that came out a couple years ago from the Stanford Design School called Idea Flow. Yep. And what you're describing right there is that…

  about Idea Flow · at 19:29

• Right? That sound familiar? It's the very familiar bureaucracy of a government and a bureaucracy of an organization. So he said, Guys, no, we're not doing this.

  about Bureaucracy · at 23:09

• Right? And I found two incredible companies. One was a bourbon company, the other is International Paper, right?

  about International Paper · at 29:06

• Worthwhile. Thank you, Mir for sharing that. When I was at Lowe's, one of my peers, Steve Shirley, used to who was in charge of strategy used to always say to our CIO, Steve…

  about Steve Shirley · at 33:32

• Yes sir. So, it's on Amazon, Target, Walmart, anywhere you can buy books. My name is Near Bashan. There's another Near Bashan somewhere there on the internet uploading Minecraft clips. So,.

  about Amazon · at 52:17

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Steve Shirley — Person · 2 mentions · first at 33:38
• Jim McKelvey — Person · 2 mentions
• Ner Bashan — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:27
  I am so excited today to welcome my friend Ner Bashan back to Passion Struck. Ner, it is so awesome to see you. I'm so excited we could do this live here today in St. Pete, Florida.
• Titoan Bennock — Person · 1 mention · first at 10:03
  Things with the environment and this guy it is Titoan Bennock for Titoan. Yeah, Tito. and he's out in the Tahiti, surfed every day, was a prolific surfer and it still is. One day his friends all pull together some money and.
• Harry Truman — Person · 1 mention · first at 21:48
  Interesting time. We are an incredible nation and we made the decision then with Harry Truman who was in office to not punitively punish our enemies. We did that in Germany and…
• Dory Clark — Person · 1 mention · first at 30:56
  Reminds me of Dory Clark's work on the long game in many ways is oftenimes we think of things in months and years we don't really think about legacy right.
• Robin Steinberg — Person · 1 mention · first at 34:18
  Exactly what Steve Shirley was talking about and I had a guest on the show last year. Her name is Robin Steinberg and Robin is really focused in the United States. She's an…
• Douglas MacArthur — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

• The Creator Mindset — Book · 5 mentions · first at 1:58
• The Solution Mindset — Book · 5 mentions · first at 5:19
  Was there a consistent problem that you realized that there was a gap that led you to writing the solution mindset and what was that gap?
• Idea Flow — Book · 2 mentions · first at 19:32
• You Matter Luma — Book · 1 mention · first at 12:03
  Couple different things. So I have a children's book coming out in a few months and this called you Matter Luma and this is exactly one of the things I was trying to showcase…
• Burn the Boat — Book · 1 mention · first at 48:05
  Goes back further than that. So I was talking to Matt Higgins who wrote the book Burn the Boat.

Companies & orgs

• International Paper — Company · 3 mentions · first at 29:10
• Amazon — Company · 2 mentions · first at 52:17
• Dell — Company · 2 mentions
• Square — Company · 1 mention · first at 4:41
  Opportunity to interview Jim McKelie and for those of you who don't know who Jim is, he's the co-founder of Square. Okay.
• Google LLC — Company · 1 mention · first at 10:43
  And he goes on Google. Hey, what can I do to help with the oceans, help with coral reef? Hey, he gets a few ideas. He goes and talks to these scientists, right? And they tell him, Dude, you're.
• CVS — Company · 1 mention
• Mindvalley — Company · 1 mention
• Stanford d.school — Company · 1 mention
• The Optimism Company — Company · 1 mention
• VanMoof — Company · 1 mention
• VaynerSpeakers — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• Kentucky Owl — Product · 1 mention · first at 28:38
  The stories to illustrate this. And for those who are watching, the bourbon brand is Kentucky Owl. And this is a brand that has a long history, but that history was one that needed a rewrite.
• VeeFriends — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Solution mindset — Concept · 6 mentions · first at 5:19
• Bureaucracy — Concept · 5 mentions · first at 23:12
• Mattering — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 4:13
• Health care reform — Concept · 2 mentions
• Recidivism — Concept · 1 mention · first at 35:38
  And we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world. And what that basically means is the rate of somebody who gets incarcerated gets out and goes back in. It's something like 70%. I don't know. I forgot the stat.
• Comparison trap — Concept · 1 mention · first at 46:59
  Optimism company or Mine Valley. But I always thought that there's this issue when you get into a comparison trap that can halt creativity and halt solutions and this is…

Places & events

• St. Pete, Florida — Place · 1 mention · first at 1:35
  Struck. Ner, it is so awesome to see you. I'm so excited we could do this live here today in St. Pete, Florida.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 for people. I highly suggest that somebody's frustrated at work, things aren't happening. I highly suggest that you step out of that like laser focus of what's going on that minute, that day, that week, and start to look at your career and start to look at your life as a long-term trajectory, right? Is it how you treat other people? Maybe you going to work at that particular place, John, isn't about the work that you do. maybe about how you're touching other employees there and how you're helping them through their problems, how you're making an impact with your community.

0:37 Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators scientists military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become Passion Struck.

1:25 I am so excited today to welcome my friend Ner Bashan back to Passion Struck. Ner, it is so awesome to see you. I'm so excited we could do this live here today in St. Pete, Florida. Great to see you again.

1:39 Thank you, sir. Thanks for having me. This is incredible. I'm so happy to be on the show. I heard just in the other room that you're on episode 600. It's hard to believe when I had you on it was episode 36. We were just beginning the journey and I was so honored to have you back then to discuss your first book, The Creator Mindset. And I wanted to start today because I think that's a great launching point. You came out with this book five years ago, 2020. And when you look back at the creator mindset, is there a core idea from the book that as you've now taken this five years into the future that still resonates as much today or even more as it did then?

2:25 Yeah, definitely. It's good to be on. I kind of want to take some credit for the fact that you're on episode 600. The creator mindset was all about using creativity to solve problems. And the through line has been always about how to be more creative, how to be more innovative. And it's something that I think it is still relevant as it was five years ago. Wow. That's a long time ago. That was during co

2:51 it. Yeah, it was. So I actually waited a little bit to start the podcast because of co not knowing what was going to happen. But I launched February of 2021 and wow,

3:02 it's hard to imagine we'll turn the page on 700 episodes here pretty soon. Amazing.

3:08 Well, after the release of the book, what question or struggles did you feel like you were consistently hearing as you were bringing the creator mindset up into audiences, companies you were working with?

3:22 The creator mindset was a wide ranging book. It focused on a lot of issues that people were having on a broad scale and a lot of the feedback that I started getting John is okay this is great we understand the background we get the philosophy of why we're trying to solve these kind of wide ranging issues but then people are like well how do you do it all right and the creator mindset had some tools in there and it had some techniques but the new book focuses really on taking those wide-ranging ideas with good storytelling and different elements of people throughout the world that are solving problems, but then I give people concrete things that they can do right away to become more creative and innovative. Those are things that people can do at work. They can do in their communities. They can do I I know that mattering and doing things in life that are important not just for commerce but

4:18 important for relationships and important for the world are are something that you're really focused on working on. And so this book, the new book has a lot of kind of wide-ranging stories, but then it gives people those actionable things that they can do no matter what they want to accomplish. I remember a number of years ago I had the opportunity to interview Jim McKelie and for those of you who don't know who Jim is, he's the co-founder of Square. Okay.

4:44 And as we were talking about the Square journey and he's a repeat entrepreneur, I was asking him like what is the biggest thing that you coach entrepreneurs about? And he said well there's always an inherent problem that needs to be solved. So, as you were giving these keynotes and you're a real prolific keynote speaker and congrats on now being part of the Passion Struck speakers bureau. Love having you.

5:12 Thank you for that. Was there a consistent problem that you realized that there was a gap that led you to writing the solution mindset and what was that gap?

5:23 100%. So, the gap is really around trying to apply creativity every day. People knew that they wanted to become more creative. They knew that it's something that was important to do, but like physically applying it every day. Connecting the rubber to the road and making it go was a concern. It was something that people were like, "Hey, Ne, I like the keynote. I get it. I'm inspired by the creator mindset. I'm an accountant, so what does that have to do with me?" Or, "I'm a supply chain manager at a manufacturing plant. How does that impact my day-to-day life? And it really is about connecting the dots for people and letting them understand that creativity is something that is inherent in every human being on earth.

6:10 It's like a gift that God gave us to be able to go out in the world and solve problems as they come up instead of reacting to them or coming up with contingency plans. This is the one thing that I've found consistently throughout my entire career to work in circumstances that no other solution has worked in.

6:34 Man, I love that. And anytime I I write a book, I try to think of the audience for it. I try to think of the approach. In the solution mindset, you end up coming up with 10 superpowers, but I imagine there's always a multi-year cycle that goes into writing one of these. When you were creating this, were you thinking at first, this is for individuals, this is for companies, and how did you arrive at 10 superpowers? This book is really all about individuals, right? I've worked with a lot of companies over the years, a lot of different associations. I wanted this book, John, to get people excited and I wanted to plant that seed very early on that this book is really about a tool that anybody can use to become more innovative and more creative, especially if people didn't think that they were creative to start with. And that's the catalyst. So, it is written for the individual. The beauty that companies

7:36 and different associations, people who read it, people have bought copies to give to their entire workforce, it has been about spreading that individual hope and optimism and positivity and allowing people to own their own journey, be happy, be thankful that they get the opportunity to solve problems, which is an incredible thing. Most of us spend our entire life running away from issues, right? But this creativity gives you that power to take on those problems head on and solve them once and for all.

8:13 Well, in my work on mattering, one of the things that I have found is that superpowers are innate in everyone, but I think what ends up happening, why people oftenimes don't feel like they matter is because they remain dormant because we don't know how to turn them on.

8:31 Yeah. How did you go about showing that in the solution mindset that these weren't just superpowers, but they're superpowers that you don't just have, but you actually can use 100%. So, I looked around the world at the 10 most pressing issues that I can find. all kinds of issues from pollution to overcrowding of jails and how we treat prisoners to health care in Japan and all kinds of issues that we are having as a society. And I looked at those issues and said, "These are things that are able to be solved simply by putting in the effort to go out and solve them."

9:15 And I found people that are doing just incredible things that we never hear about, right? Because the media won't report on it. They just won't report on it.

9:26 So these are in some cases everyday heroes who are doing amazing things. There are organizations who are trying to tackle big hairy problems that the world is facing. So it's surprising that people aren't reporting on them. Was there like one or two superpowers that jumped off the page first as the biggest barriers for leaders and organizations?

9:49 One of the most incredible superpowers is the first chapter in the book and that talks about just start. It follows an incredible person doing amazing things with the environment and this guy it is

10:03 Titoan Bennock for Titoan. Yeah, Tito. and he's out in the Tahiti, surfed every day, was a prolific surfer and it still is. One day his friends all pull together some money and they buy a boat, right? And it's like a rickety boat. It's got holes in it. It's barely gets them to their favorite surf spot or whatever and they notice there's no surf, right? They go, they've been surfing there since they were kids. They noticed there's no surf and they're like, "What's going on here?" Right? This is the weirdest thing. So they dive down and they notice that the coral is bleached out. It's not, you know, what it used to be. There's no fish anymore.

10:41 So he runs home like all of us would do. And he goes on Google. Hey, what can I do to help with the oceans, help with coral reef? Hey, he gets a few ideas. He goes and talks to these scientists, right? And they tell him, "Dude, you're 16. You got to get a PhD. You got to go to oceanography school. You got to There's all these things that you have to do before you get out there." And he told them, and I remember in the interview, it was very specific. He basically told them that I love you guys and I love science and it's very important to have those scientific backgrounds and to have that wonderful schooling, but it is far more important to just start to just get in there and dive into an idea. John, you know this, you've run tons of companies. You're an entrepreneur. You're a serial entrepreneur. you know that the first step is just getting in the water, just getting to do it. And so he went and

11:37 just got a bunch of rope, got some coral, and tried it and it failed. And then he tweaked it and he tried it again and it failed. And then he kept tweaking and tweaking and today he's got the largest coral restoration company on Earth. And some of those scientists that told him, "Hey buddy, go to school or whatever are now his employees." It's an amazing story because I it shows a couple different things. So I I have a children's book coming out in a few months and this called you Matter Luma and this is exactly one of the things I was trying to showcase in the book is that you don't have to be Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or the president of a country to make a huge difference. What you have to do is just start. But oftentimes, even with me, we recently started a podcast network, but I actually thought about doing this four years ago, and sometimes that just starting is the hardest thing. What gets in people's

12:36 ways before they have that courage drop moment that they can start? So, I am very lucky to be one of the most viral authors on psychology today. So, I have an answer for you, right? It is the fact that we get in our own way. We self-doubt. We get in our minds too much. We start to doubt an idea and we overthink it. Then we underthink it. Then we're like, "Oh, somebody must have done it by now if it's a good enough idea. It's probably out there in the world somewhere." And then that turns into more self-doubt and more, oh, do it tomorrow. and then tomorrow never comes and next week turns into next month and next month turns into next year. We have to just start and John it doesn't matter how we just start. We can be just a baby step for you with the network. It could have been maybe a call with some people who are doing it or just sending an email out to somebody saying hey this is an idea that I have. Those little steps

13:37 have an amazing chain reaction when we look at creativity happens when very little things become really big things. But it doesn't happen overnight. It's an evolution, not a revolution. I think everyone's looking for that big moment. Yeah, I got this idea and it's going to be the next big thing. But those stories seldom happen. It's the little steps along the way that lead to greatness. I think for me, one of the things that was really getting in my way was I was part of Stitcher, SiriusXM. So, one of the most prestigious podcast networks that is out there and I was making good money from it. So, the barrier was I had this prestige from being with what I thought was this big brand. I'm making great money, more money from the podcast than I had before. So part of it was my confidence level in would I be able to replicate the revenue from my own thing.

14:34 But what I realized with them was that I was in the big scheme of things out of all the different brands that they have a really small fish in a huge

14:45 ecosystem. And so I didn't feel that inherent push to help me increase my brand.

14:54 Yeah. to help it grow, to help it become stickier. And I didn't really see this magnifying effect that I could take this on to help other people do what I was doing. And it was because of those additional layers that I thought if I could have more control, then this tiny one show could start impacting people when you start adding other voices who help magnify it. But uh once you start at as you say in this story about coral reefs where you end up ends up becoming a different place completely because you end up hitting different creative barriers that you have to find solutions for

15:38 which is why I love the whole premise of the book because you need to have the creativity but you also need to come up with the solutions to come up with the barriers in novel ways.

15:47 Yep. So, you fast forward and there's another superpower I want to talk about, which is how to untangle complexity. And I am a huge bicycle enthusiast. I love to ride, whether it's outdoors or on a spin bike. How did you hear about Van Moof Printing and having them solve this bicycle shops issue where I understand they kept delivering bicycles but they kept on coming damaged like how did you even hear about this story?

16:22 Yeah, so this is uh I have a small and modest research team and we're constantly generating new reports, new studies. I read so many of the latest research studies more than just the summary and the abstract. I'll read, oh, chart page 622 has a chart in here. And when I first started, I could barely read it. Now I'm like, oh, look, this is really interesting, honey. Check this out. What are you talking about? Like, this is really interesting. It one of those studies came in and it was fascinating. It showed that there was a bicycle manufacturer that kept getting their bikes damaged on delivery and they were the kind of manufacturer that people loved. They were like, "Oh, I love this bike. I can't wait. I'm so excited to get." It wasn't a basic bike.

17:11 It was something that higherend riders liked and this kind of stuff. So, when it came, people were really excited and it wasn't the basement bargain either. So, they were excited. It was an investment. It would come, they would open the box, right? really pumped and like the fork would be bent or some part would be damaged in the shipping. And so this manufacturer said, "We got to solve this problem." So they started by, "Hey, we're going to put more padding, right? We're going to put more padding and we're going to get bigger boxes cuz that's going to solve everything." And so they did the padding, they did the boxes, and the stuff kept getting damaged. And they loved it. They It was a handmade bike, and a lot of love and attention went into this thing, and it still showed up damage. So, one I one day the group got together and this is something I talk about in my keynotes quite often, which is the 15minute silly

18:02 idea meeting. I tell people all the time, executives at some of the best companies in the US, I say, "How often are you guys practicing creativity?" They're like, "What? We're just waiting for an idea to come in." What do you mean practicing? I'm like, "Well, it's something you got to do every single day to get better at, right? You can't just show up and expect creativity to happen." So, I encourage people to have this 15-minute meeting. In that meeting, everybody gets in the room, right? Or a teams or however you're doing it, and you come up with a with an idea, and it could be a silly idea or it can be a brilliant one. Well, this company did it. This bicycle manufacturer did it.

18:37 And somebody said, you know, on the boxes, instead of more padding, instead of spending all this money, instead of triple packing everything, which was the prevalent wind, we're going to paint the picture of a TV on the side of the box, right? And we're going to put fragile. And in that, hopefully when it gets shipped and handled and the different vendors are delivering it to our customers, hopefully they'll be more delicate with it. And it worked. And it literally cost nothing to a little bit of extra printing cost, but they were able to recoup all of those costs that they put into extra shipping and better handling and all of that stuff. It turns out that all they needed was a slight creative hack to make people think that it was a TV and then everyone handled the bike with care.

19:27 And I love that for a couple of different reasons. One, there was a book that came out a couple years ago from the Stanford Design School called Idea Flow. Yep. And what you're describing right there is that whole idea flow process. Just let people shoot out different ideas, whether they're crazy, whether they're not, and find the ones that are the stickiest. So, I I love that in this example, they approach the whole solution in a very non-complex way, just treat the packaging differently. And what were the end results? How much did it end up changing?

20:06 I think the last study that we saw was 90% improvement in the bikes arriving without breakage. Really great results in customers were happy. They were happy because people were treating the bikes in better shape. The world is full, John, of these really simple solutions, right? But we're too afraid. We're, oh, we're doubting. Oh, we're really successful. So why would we take a risk on something and we devoid and lose that ability to solve these incredibly pressing problems? In this case it's shipping in the other case it's coral reefs on earth in the waters of the ocean simply because we don't take a chance on those ideas. And it was the results were incredible and the shipping improved, the damages decreased, all because of a an image of a TV and people thought that there was a TV in the box.

21:02 I want to stay on this theme of untangling complexity because we took an example of a bicycle shop. Yeah.

21:09 But one of the things I love about what you do in the book is you're not only talking about small issues. So, we were talking about coral reefs, which is a big issue solved by an unsung hero. We talk about a bicycle shop, a small business, but you also highlight big issues. So, here in the United States, we really need healthc care reform in a big way.

21:33 Big time. Turns out they needed healthc care reform in Japan, too. Yes. The end of World War II was a very interesting time. We are an incredible nation and we made the decision then with Harry Truman who was in office to not punitively punish our enemies. We did that in Germany and we did that with the Japanese. We could have easily have said, you know what, we're putting in a government. We're done with you guys. Kick out the emperor, the whole deal. But we took a very measured, disciplined, and incredible approach there. General MacArthur was a the steward of the Japanese islands for seven years. Seven years. He said, "Hey, this is about building roads. This is about getting back the Japanese people back to where they can contribute to the world and and not become a fascist or a Nazi state. This is about rehabilitation."

22:30 And that decision was made. But the actual work, right, the rubber meeting the road got really bad. Why? because he got people together in Japan and said, "Okay, guys, we have to rebuild this road." And they were like, "Great, that's a committee that meets Tuesdays." So, he waited till Tuesday, went to the committee meeting, and he said, "Guys, we got to build this road." Oh, yeah. Yeah, but that's on Thursdays. That's a national road. This is a local road. There's a jurisdiction that handles both the roads. And he was like, the complexity was insane, right?

23:02 Everything had a committee. Everything had all of these layers that took an immense amount of time to get through. Right? That sound familiar? It's the

23:11 very familiar bureaucracy of a government and a bureaucracy of an organization. So he said, "Guys, no, we're not doing this. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to simplify this whole dang thing. Okay? When we're going to do this road, these three committees, you guys get together and you figure out how to make one decision once a week on Tuesdays, okay? This isn't we're not hopping back and forth for three months." And they were like, "Well, we can't." He's like, "Figure it out." And they got together and they figured out ways to lower and to minimize the bureaucracy so that stuff can get done. He touched healthcare, too. And he said, "Hey, if you break your arm in outside of Tokyo at the little local hospital, let's say it's $100 to reset. I don't know the exact numbers, but let's say it is $100 to reset. If you go to the fancy, really nice hospital in Tokyo, it's $300.

24:02 There's no difference in resetting your arm, right? You broke it, you had a fall, whatever, you break it. The two hospitals are going to reset it the same way. They put the cast on the same way. They take the same x-rays and all of that stuff. So, he made a system in Japan that had one cost per incident, no matter what it was. That system still exists today. And it's incredible. They get together once a year and the pharmaceuticals and the equipment manufacturer and everybody always battle for the prices, but once they're set for a year, I think or two, and people have predictability in that cycle, they know that the medicine will cost this much no matter where they go. They know that their health care, no matter where they go, will be consistent. And they've gotten the the fees down. They've gotten the expenses down. And I would love to do something like that in this country.

24:55 Well, when you think about it, and my wife is a primary care provider, so it does a lot of prescriptions. I always thought it was just and still is crazy that you can go to CVS, you can go to Walgreens, you can go to Walmart and you have three completely different pricing architectures for the same drug.

25:16 Wild. And go across the country, they're probably a hundred. So wild. What you were describing in Japan is they set one price and that is one price for the entire country.

25:26 One price is one price is one price. That's it. And it helps the bureaucracy of healthcare. All the paperwork and the forms and the communication. It helps control their costs. They're actually a nationalized health care system. They take it out of everyone's paycheck every month and it's set at a reasonable rate. it really that idea of eliminating clutter and focusing on the goal itself rather than letting the clutter become part of the solution.

25:57 The reason I wanted to focus on this is because coming from big Fortune50 companies,

26:02 I've seen this firsthand. When I was at Dell, we were in the middle of I would argue the largest transformation of the company. It had historically been a hardware provider. People knew it for enterprise servers and your personal devices, but Michael and the board knew that wasn't the long-term destiny to make money. So, they needed to become a solutionsbased which solution mindset company. But in order to do that, it meant you started to have to take these new ideas and you had to get them out of the mothership. So when I was there as they were unearthing going through this idea flow type of concept new creative ideas they would actually not only take the idea and assign it to a vice president or director and let them run with it. They mandated that it would go outside of the local area. And even when we were in Austin, there was another building that just housed Dell startups because they didn't want the bureaucracy

27:08 of the big business to get in the way of them being able to be agile in the way that they were coming up with these ideas. Do you think that's a way that large companies could innovate without them getting stuck with coming into the slowness of the bigger mothership type of thinking process?

27:25 100%. And I think that's one of many ideas of how to get really good ideas out of these big companies that that in a way the bureaucracy has been set by the company's growth and the company's success. But yeah, there definitely ways there's having that type of separation between the mothership and the the startup. There is coming up with mergers and acquisitions and acquiring that talent on. There is cultural shifts that can happen even in a bamoth company with tens of thousands of employees that just shifts the paradigm a little bit. Again, it's not everyone's always looking for the big kind of, oh, this is going to revolutionize everything and change everything tomorrow. But sometimes it's those little ideas, the little movements that can create incredible ripples down the line that are some of the most powerful impacts ever.

28:21 So, I want to switch gears with you and another one of the superpowers that you have in the book is to embrace the routine. And what I love about this is that you use a bourbon brand as one of the stories to illustrate this. And for those who are watching, the bourbon brand is Kentucky Owl. And this is a brand that has a long history, but that history was one that needed a rewrite. So, what did that rewrite have to do with embracing that consistency and establishing a routine? How do those two intersect?

28:57 Definitely good question. In my book, The Solution Mindset, I looked at a company dedicated to the long run, right? And I found two incredible companies. One was a bourbon company, the other is International Paper, right? Out of all the companies, everyone thinks the liquor and cigarette business, oh, they're the worst. And even worse than them, the paper industry, right? They're clear cutting forests everywhere. And it turns out that is like completely not true. What really is going on is that people are making in the bourbon industry and this company in particular are making choices for the long run, right? Not about, hey, you know, what trend will come and go.

29:42 How do we make this bourbon last and take the trip so that when 18 years, 25 years, 30 years later, when we're all gone, hopefully not, but some of the people who work on that bourbon are 70 to 80 years old. They won't be around in 30 years to taste what will come out of that. But their dedication, the quality, and their investment in that long term is incredibly important. So it it really is about looking at what we do and distancing ourselves from those short gains, John, and start looking and planning on making those long-term gains because in my opinion, those are the really important gains. But we're surrounded these days by social media.

30:27 We're surrounded by the apps and everybody. Oh, look at me. I've got a Maybeck BMW or Mercedes and I'm riding around. Look at me and I'm taking selfies. But that is not real long-term wealth. That is not real long-term goal generation. That is not real long-term creativity. So breaking that down and understanding that the these bourbon companies that are making things aren't in it for the initial gain. They're in it to make really good products to last. reminds me of Dory Clark's work on the long game in many ways is oftenimes we think of things in months and years we don't really think about legacy

31:08 right so when you think about this topic and you take this to a human level how could someone apply this concept into their personal life you have yeah because you have two great brands here you got a bourbon brand you've got international paper but I also think that this one really applies to us personally 100%. So for me it is about recognizing that success comes in long and measured steps. It's not about showing up one day coming up with an idea and having it hit just because you know you wanted it to. These are really long-term investments.

31:44 In the case of International Paper, this is an incredible organization. They literally plant stuff now that they'll harvest in 30 years. and they rotate the land so that they can get the ground, the soil to be fertile, to be able to support that kind of thing. They have wildlife plans. They have all kinds of things that help spread the growth long term. And for people, I highly suggest that somebody's frustrated at work, things aren't happening. I highly suggest that you step out of that like laser focus of what's going on that minute, that day, that week, and start to look at your career and start to look at your life as a long-term trajectory, right? Is it how you treat other people?

32:32 Maybe you going to work at that particular place, John, isn't about the work that you do. maybe about how you're touching other employees there and how you're helping them through their problems, how you're making an impact with your community because you got this company to invest in doing some work with some charities. People always look at what's going on in the minute and make quick judgments. Oh yeah, it's not going well. Oh yeah, it's going great or whatever. But when we start looking at bourbon companies that 30 years to mature, when we start looking at these amazing forests that take all of this time to grow properly before they're harvested, we start to look at ourselves and find that sometimes the goals that we've set out to accomplish are really touched tangentally by an amazing connection to the world, to other people, to our communities that is incredibly worthwhile. Thank you, Mir for sharing

33:34 that. When I was at Lowe's, one of my peers, Steve Shirley, used to who was in charge of strategy used to always say to our CIO, "Steve, we need to focus on failing fast and failing often." And our CIO used to always go to Steve and say, "I cannot believe you're saying that. What we should be doing is winning fast and winning often." and he's well you win fast and you win often by failing fast and failing often. So one of the superpowers that you highlight in the book is the need to fail successfully which is exactly what Steve Shirley was talking about and I had a guest on the show last year. Her name is Robin Steinberg and Robin is really focused in the United States. She's an attorney on prison reform and specifically what she is trying to look at is mass incarceration and how it is not only flooding the system with too many inmates but we keep the inmates in far too long for many of

34:42 the things that they do. And this is something that you tackle in the book, but you tackle it through another country who has looked at this and seen that there is a way to completely rethink in a creative manner about how do you take these inmates and reform them in a really amazing way. So, I was hoping you could walk us through that because I thought this was a great example of how you reform a large system, but specifically how does the fail successfully come into play here in Norway? Yeah. So, Norway's prison system is amazing. It's like kind of an incredible thing. And what's going on there is the rehabilitation, the focus on rehabilitation. Right? In the US, our prison system is lock them up, throw away the keys, and hope for the best.

35:36 And we have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world. And what that basically means is the rate of somebody who gets incarcerated gets out and goes back in. It's something like 70%. I don't know. I I forgot the stat. I got to look at it, but it is incredibly high, and it shouldn't be high. So we have a lot of creative decisions being made to improve that. In Norway, right, for instance, there is more common sense in dealing with a a prisoner even if their prison even if they've committed some very serious crimes, right? There is less of a focus on punishing, more of a focus on rehabilitation. Incredible things like, hey, you get to go home for the weekend.

36:22 Imagine that. Imagine a prisoner in the US for grand lararseny or whatever they're in for going home on the weekend and you say to yourself, well, why would you do that? It's because our prison population's insanely high. There is no real focus on rehabilitation and there should be because there's millions of people who can benefit from whether it's schooling or coaching or just given opportunities that they've never had to reintegrate into society and become contributing members. So what has been done in Norway is people focus on all of these little decisions along the way.

36:58 Again, it's not, hey, we're going to do some big thing. It is about these little decisions along the way. How long do we incarcerate? What about the weekends? What about a spouse, a wife or a husband? What about your kids? How do those how do all of these things come together in order to make proper punishment decisions, but also proper rehabilitation decisions? And I'm gonna take it from Norway to a movie. So let's talk Shaw Shank Redemption for a second. When I think about that and the Morgan Freeman character, Red, he's So here's a guy who's in for killing someone when he was 18 years old. And he keeps going up for these hearings so that he could go back into the general populace. And every time he gets denied until he finally says, "I wish I could go back and tell that 18year-old how stupid he was." And often times a lot of these it's happening to young males overindexed I think over female research

37:58 I've looked at. But if you look at what Tim Robbins, the other character in the movie did is he was trying to create a library. He was trying to create different ways to educate the populace at Shashank because he saw that was the best way to rehabilitate. Why do you think that has been such a thing in the states that were not focused on?

38:26 Man, that's a good question. I really don't know. I think that we've institutionalized the process and we've demonized the other instead of being really creative and innovative and thinking, okay, this is a problem. How do we overcome it? We've gone back to the the Austral the English Australia model where we're just going to put them away, right? We're just going to send all the prisoners away. And we do that today. Instead of sending them away to a different country, we just lock them up. But there's there's people in prison right now that are on drug charges.

38:58 There's nonviolence. There's all kinds of reform that we could be doing. And I advocate for using creative and innovative solutions to improve not only our lot, but everyone's lot on Earth. It is all about finding new ideas and taking chances on them to improve life. When I think about it at a more macro level, it leads to another one of your superpowers when I was thinking about it, which is we should really be questioning the data and looking at it in a different way. If we are having decades and decades of mass incarceration increasing and we have repeat offenders time and time again,

39:37 then ultimately the data is telling us something. And if you keep where I want to go with this is if you keep treating the data in the same way and you keep getting the same answers and they keep getting worse then you got to change the way that you're looking at the inputs that are causing the data to be where they are. Which is my way of getting you to explain why is questioning the data so important.

40:01 It's so important. It's so important. We need to look at data in new and different ways. Right? People look at data like it's the best thing ever, right? Oh, I've got an Excel that shows me a certain thing and it must be true. The problem is that yes, there is a lot of analytic data that shows there's re recividism and people coming in and out of prison, but there's also a lot of data showing that there's very focused programs that are working incredibly well. Some of them are faith-based. Some of them are like workbased where prisoners learn a certain tool, a tr tech technique, an appro approach, a vocation, and they go out there and do really well and those are underfunded and the ones that don't work are overfunded. Right. It's about getting creative with the data and looking at it and going, "Okay, cool. This is an indication of something, but it's not the full story."

40:55 Yeah. And a great story of this from my time at Lowe's was when I took over the IT operations group. I knew I was given a huge issue to solve. We had just come off the largest hacking incident in retail history. And so I was being asked to lead the charge on overcoming that. But I will never forget I go to meet our head of HR. Her name was Meen. and I think we're going to be talking about this and maybe what I need to do on the bus to to put in new talent. And she ends up saying, "We didn't talk about this during the interview process, but we recently did an employee engagement survey where we looked at every single organization for the first time in the company." And in addition to everything else you have to solve, your group was ranked worse in employee engagement in the entire company. And Lowe's at that time had 350,000 associates, 18,000 stores, 1,800 stores. Wow. This huge supply and I have got the worst

41:59 performing group. So where I'm going with this is there are many ways that I could look at the data.

42:04 Yeah. But instead of looking at it as, oh, I've got the worst group, I started to look at it as what did this employees data show? And so the number one thing I found was that repeated in their comments was they had no idea how their jobs and what they were spending their time doing, how that impacted the company strategy or a typical customer walking into a low store because they couldn't see the correlation between sitting in a security command center or operations command center or data center or call center to solving a customer's needs.

42:47 And so when I started to look at that data, I started to look at it. Well, I need to give them a line of sight between why they're coming into work and their impact on a customer having a better shopping experience. So that I just wanted to give for the audience that that is a clear way that you can look at it that involves both your books because there's a creative angle to that and then there's a solution angle to that

43:12 100%. And that's so important to do connecting the dots. Like most people would go, "Oh, I've got the worst report in. Woe is me. This is the worst thing that's ever happened." And they give up or they fade into themselves and work out something for another few months while they're sending resumes, right? But you looked at that and said, "Hey, wait a second. What can this data do to improve? What can I do to take this worst scenario and look at ways to improve?" And you found it. you found improving. And hey, it's really about connecting the narrative. The work that you're doing here in this department is really important to that mom and dad in Kansas City who are going and shopping to do their baby's room with paint and all this equipment because these three things that connects and all of a sudden you you've energized somebody. 100%. The data is there not to just depress you.

44:04 It's there so that you can work on it. It's there so that you can come up with solution. But the data alone without creativity, without innovation won't take you to where you want to go. I work with companies all the time and they're like, "N, this is the data set and we're a car manufacturer that I work with, the EVs aren't leaving the lot, so what do we do?" I'm like, "The EVs not leaving the lot is the best thing that could ever happen to you guys." And they're like, "What? What do you mean?" And I said, "You're taking a you got to make opportunities. You got to make lemonade out of all these lemons." They're like, "Great. Well, how do we do that?" I was like, "Let's come up with ideas, right?

44:42 Maybe it's a micro lease program where somebody leases the EV for a month." They're like, "How would that work?" I'm like, "I don't know. Let's figure it out. Is that like a decent idea?" They were like, "Well, yeah, maybe we'll do a three-month program. Maybe there's something we could do with the rental car company." And that generates all kinds of ideas. I think most people when they get this bad data or negative data or tough to deal with data with the prisoner system, they oh that's how things are and that's how they've been yesterday. That's how they'll be tomorrow. That's the way it is. I've made a life out of questioning that.

45:17 I've made a life out of working with people very and sometimes in in a very intimate way, sometimes with tens of thousands of people on saying no. The acceptance of hey this is the way it is not indicative of your creative and innovative potential. Listen we were born with genes that are turned on and off by creativity. Literally it was a study came out about a year ago that found that we are wired for creative and innovative solution. But somewhere along the way we kind of lose it. We fall in love with analytics. If we go to business school and it tells us look at the Excel's got everything you want in it

45:57 every private equity company right ever right so the problem is that's not true and we've been led to believe that it's true we need to balance creativity and analytics together in order to get where we need to go near earlier today I recently hired a new PR firm and one of the areas that they put a ton of focus on is who are your competitors who do you compare compare yourself to as passion struck. And I always hate this question because I don't necessarily I'm not trying to be compared to someone else. I'm trying to create my own new category. But they like insisted. So I said, well, in some ways you could think of the ecosystem that Gary Vaynerchuk built with Vayner Media, Vayner speakers, his V friends. You could think of Mel Robbins and what she's trying to do. You could think of Simon Senic and his optimism company or Mine Valley. But I always thought that there's this issue when you get into a comparison trap that

47:02 can halt creativity and halt solutions and this is actually one of your superpowers. So how does this comparison trap come into it? So, I think we live in an unprecedented world where we can literally pull out a device and see what a competitor is doing down the street. We could see real time what is going on around us and it literally leads to nowhere good. Literally leads to nowhere good. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others and saying, "Oh, you should have done this and these guys did that." And what ends up happening is we lose that sense of creative and innovative problem solving that we are innately born with. The beauty of having creativity in your DNA is that the way that you solve problems is not going to be the same way that I solve it. And it's not going to be the same way that Gary Vaynerchuk or whomever. Do you remember when he was doing wine online?

48:00 Yes. That's how it started. Well, it goes back further than that. So I was talking to Matt Higgins who wrote the book Burn the Boat.

48:06 Yeah. People don't realize it, but Matt Higgins through his efforts was the first person who put money into the whole Vayner Media ecosystem, but Cass and Mike, can't remember their last names, they developed a company that they ended up selling to Salesforce. And Gary actually begged them, could I have a conference room to use in your corporate headquarters? And he ended up overtaking their conference room, but that's how he got his start.

48:34 Got it. and he positioned from getting that foothold in the wine industry to then realizing that media was going to shift and getting ahead of that and it's very similar when you back into it of Jeff Bezos. So Jeff realized he wanted to create the everything store but he needed a starting point. So he thought what better than books to try to disrupt and so he developed a new creative way to do it and then implemented the solution mindset in order to do it.

49:04 Yep. But they're two very good examples. Yeah, it's incredible. So when you think about the impact that you want this book to make, this isn't just about changing companies. This is about people themselves choosing a different solution mindset that they walk not only into their work life with, but their family life.

49:26 Yeah. So what do you hope that people who pick this book up will take away from it? I hope that people who read the book get energized and realize what a special gift it is to be alive today in a country like this where we are have so many opportunities and so much ability to do what it is that we want to do and realize that you have the potential to solve any problem on earth. There is no problem that is bigger than our ability as a humanity to solve it. I believe that 1,000%. And I've been on a mission now for several years to speak in front of different audiences to write books like this to get people really excited and energized about being able to solve problems. And part of that is selfish, right? because I want people to go out there and solve pollution issues and all the problems that we're having today that affect my life because I know if I get people really excited and thinking

50:31 in a new and a different way that our lives will all be better. Mirror, last question for you before we wrap up is you are on Passion Struck. You are obviously passion struck about what you're doing yourself. So my question for you is what does it mean for you to be passion struck?

50:50 Being passion struck for me, John, is all about really taking ideas and making them happen and energizing people and getting them excited and getting them knowledgeable about their ability and their role in this world. I think far too many of us have been beaten down by the news, by the press, by what we read and see out there in society, which is all bad news. And what I am trying to do is I'm trying to amplify the good news, which is 10 times, a hundred times, a thousand times more prevalent than all the bad news we're believed this world is to be. There is so much good happening. There's so many good people like you, sir, doing amazing impact and helping people every single day just become a little bit better and you should be on the cover of the magazines.

51:43 You sir should be talked about in the news and yet we talk about the fringe cases. We talk about the cases that don't really matter. For me being passion struck is recognizing what it's really important and what is really important is adding positivity is making things matter is making your life this short time that we have here on earth really matter and that that is what being passion struck means to me.

52:09 I love that answer near and thank you for those plugs. If people wanted to learn more about you and the new book and where they can pre-order it where are the best places for them to go?

52:17 Yes sir. So, it's on Amazon, Target, Walmart, anywhere you can buy books. My name is Near Bashan. There's another Near Bashan somewhere there on the internet uploading Minecraft clips. So, that's not me. There's not that many of us on Earth. I think there's three or four. The My website's nearbashan.com. Nirban.com. The book is on Amazon now. All of the fine retailers available for pre-order. So Wy and son's book an incredible book and I hope that it gives you the gift of realizing how important and how incredible your ability is if you just tap into it and get it out into the world.

52:56 Near thank you so much my friend for being here it I was so glad we were able to do this in person and thank you and congratulations on writing such a fantastic book.

53:07 Thank you so much. I think this is an amazing complement to what you did with the first book and really brings the two together. So, congratulations.

53:16 Thank you. Really appreciate it.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Why Most People Stay Stuck and This Mindset DOESN’T | Nir Bashan"?

John R. Miles (Host), Nir Bashan (Guest), Jim McKelvey (Guest), Robin Steinberg (Guest), Steve Shirley (Guest), Douglas MacArthur (Guest), Harry S. Truman (Guest), Gary Vaynerchuk (Host).

What is "Why Most People Stay Stuck and This Mindset DOESN’T | Nir Bashan" about?

The main topic centers on the importance of shifting one's perspective from immediate work frustrations to viewing career and life as a long-term journey. Nir Bashan emphasizes that success may lie in the impact one has on others and the community, rather than solely on the tasks completed in a job.

What is mentioned in this John R. Miles episode?

33 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Solution mindset, The Creator Mindset, The Solution Mindset, Bureaucracy, International Paper, Mattering. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Why Most People Stay Stuck and This Mindset DOESN’T | Nir Bashan"?

The episode runs 54 min; the transcript is about 9,109 words in 91 timestamped sections.

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