Gratitude for Changing Our Minds: Business Books that Go Down Easy

Some things never change, and this includes our appetite for business self-help books. This holiday week, we're sharing a special episode with Joan and Michelle, discussing leadership-development propaganda from days gone by. What do concepts of success and decision-making look like in the rear view mirror, and what, perhaps not surprisingly, still holds true?

Spend some time in this cozy conversation with our Proofing Stage hosts as they carve out some of these perspectives and serve up some of their own. It's the ultimate "proofing" episode just in time for your Thanksgiving trek, prep, to-do list, or downtime. 

This week, we're exploring:

• The industry of business self-help books
• What's changed (and hasn't) about who's qualified to share expertise
• How conceptual models can provide guidance and bust our blocks
• Where the House of Woo has moved to (and from)
• The cultural and environmental barriers at play in our work and in our minds

We are thankful for you! 

Books:

• Everybody's Money by Sharon Stark, et al. 
• The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson, M.D. with Miriam Z. Klipper
• Winners & Losers by Sydney J. Harris, illustrated by Nicole Hollander
• Six Action Shoes by Edward de Bono
• Conceptual Blockbusting: A Pleasurable Guide to Better Problem Solving by James L. Adams

*Check out book covers and artwork at proofingstage.com

Credits:
Theme Music by Thorn Haze

Additional Music: Dance All Night by alanajordan (via Pixabay)

Podcast Cover Art by Lisa Orye

Produced by Joan Kanner and Michelle Bond

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Transcript

Michelle Bond (00:00)
Ahem.

Joan Kanner (00:00)
Michelle, we're recording on our own. This is a very special episode of Different Strokes. Just kidding, of Punky Brewster. Just kidding, of Proofing Stage.

Michelle Bond (00:14)
Heaven help us.

Joan Kanner (00:16)
I think heaven's busy. It's like giving you  that dial tone we used to get back in the day. Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please try again, never.

Michelle Bond (00:23)
That's right.

Please hang up and try to call again.

Hello everybody and welcome to this Thanksgiving week episode of Proofing Stage. I'm Michelle Bond.

Joan Kanner (01:45)
and I am Joan Kanner

Michelle Bond (01:48)
And you've got the two of us today discussing some things that we wanted to touch on for a while, wouldn't you say, Joan?

Joan Kanner (01:57)
I'd say for a good long while and folks who have heard the pod before know I am quite the fan of the other podcasts. that I am not on Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon. And they often will have diet books that they go ahead and they tear into. So my inspo for today's episode

was getting something I like to call a business self-help book. And recently a friend of mine, she was clearing out some of her parents' stuff and she came across these really interesting books and they were all meant to be in that genre. So things that help you as a person, like deal with work settings and there a lot of different flavors of them. And I thought, well, if people are going to be like cooking or driving or otherwise just want to have like...

a different type of reprieve from other stuff going on. And I know a lot of our listeners actually do like these kinds of books. Then you're gonna really appreciate this episode. I'm gonna go into first the ones that I did not choose.

Michelle Bond (02:58)
Aha. No, it's a great idea. It's like a transitional week, right? Maybe or maybe folks are trying to just like bang out a couple more things before they start their holiday, which I hope that they get with the people that they want to spend it with and not with the ones they don't. But no, this is great. So tell us about your process for kind of vetting them and deciding

Joan Kanner (03:15)
Thank

Michelle Bond (03:20)
what you would choose and maybe just like what stuff just didn't track even from a title standpoint from whenever it was written in the 70s or whatever.

Joan Kanner (03:29)
Well, just as Aubrey Gordon on Maintenance Phase chooses books, usually they're like from the from way, way ago, in the 70s and 80s, because you know, they have some things that did not age well. These are from the 70s. And I was like, okay, well, I've got to understand some things for here the parameters for any of these books. There's gonna be a lot of he/him pronouns, right? Probably have male authors.

He him pronouns, right? That doesn't mean that like it's a garbage book. It just means that just expect it, right? Like just take that in consideration. and I also thought there may be some things in there that are kind of less logical, defy a reason and were put out there almost like a cult leader would - that they make no sense, but people would take that up and like run with it. I've heard of none of these books. So...

Michelle Bond (03:56)
Of course, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Joan Kanner (04:23)
they did have a time of popularity, they certainly did not continue on till today.

Michelle Bond (04:29)
Got it. And I mean, as somebody who, I mean, my father was reading these, you know, seven tips of highly successful people, road less traveled, like all these things and like, you know, this like Dianetics era or whatever. Right. But actually I think the second pod we mentioned Dianetics in recently, which is crazy. But yeah. And did you have any association with beyond, you know, the inspo from Maintenance Phase? mean,

Did you grow up with these like paradigms of kind of like business slash self-help slash like this? there's another pod that I listened to where there's a term for it, but it's the sort of these like redemption narratives that are also built into, know, having the like moral character and fortitude to be quote unquote successful in business and i.e. life.

Joan Kanner (05:20)
I call it like individualistic stuff too, right? Like you can do it on your own type thing. I personally did not. You know, I grew up like reading whatever was assigned and I would also like the encyclopedia Browns and the Nancy Drews of the world. Maybe that's why I dig true crime so much. I put it on them for being so interesting. Or I would read things like Sniglets and all the Garfield and all the comics I could possibly get. Every single joke book I could get my hands on.

And as I got older, it was more like assignment type stuff and things that were more philosophical in nature, especially in undergrad. So I'm really grateful for those honors classes, which I mentioned not as a humble brag. They literally like were the classes that I had the best books to read. So I think that focusing on the theoretical and philosophical stuff is interesting to me, but there was certainly nothing like this, like a pop science, like pop psychology thing on the docket for me.

Michelle Bond (06:18)
And I feel like part of your interest in aside from like seeing what tracks and doesn't over time, as we've done with the pod and in terms of unpacking things like the meritocracy and some of these hidden obstacles in what kind of dominant culture myths of successful business look like and who's embodying that.

I feel like.

part of the genesis to do this isn't also just like, it's a fun thing to do a book report, but also to look at like how some of those myths are upheld culturally in some of these types of formats.

Joan Kanner (06:57)
And these authors, I was like, where are they from in the world? Because my thinking was that I could get some pass them with a more cringey references But I really want to be mindful of like how Western the thinking was. And by that, I individualistic.

which definitely comes up in entrepreneur world, you making it on your own, even though no one wholly does that. Especially a nepoooo babyyyy.

Michelle Bond (07:21)
No, of course. And these are some things that we're only even starting to debunk now, which is like what, 50, literally 50 years later. I also will say that there is literal construction going on next door to me in the wall that is shared with this room that wasn't on the docket for when I first sat down here. So I'm trying to mute as much as possible. So I am very engaged.

this dialogue but sometimes you might hear silence and sometimes you might hear banging. Sorry about that y'all.

Joan Kanner (07:51)
And I also have some of that same construction. I promise you, I do not live next to a dental office or hip replacement place.

Michelle Bond (08:17)
Do want to talk about some of the ones that didn't make the cut?

Joan Kanner (08:20)
Right, because they have their own level of enjoyment. So it was a box full of books, everyone envision that, and some of them were sublime in how they came across. I really have to like wonder how they connected to their audience. If they ever gave a shit about their audience or target audience.

Michelle Bond (08:39)
Right, they knew who it was even, right?

Joan Kanner (08:42)
I have to wonder how it could have gotten to the hands of my friend's family. If I think too much about it, honestly, I'll get a brain freeze. It'll be like having a Slurpee too quickly. So I'm not gonna do that.

Michelle, are you ready for these titles? All right. The first one is called, Everybody's Money: Who are you? I love a good title with a colon. Sometimes we do that for our pod episodes. So Everybody's Money: Who are you?

Michelle Bond (08:55)
I am ready. Hit me.

Joan Kanner (09:10)
I'm not sure why the cover had a...

Michelle Bond (09:12)
Like, who is the money?

Joan Kanner (09:15)
Honestly, I don't know if it's about if.... Michelle's gonna... see we have fans next door to Michelle getting a little bit of whoop [Joan is referencing the "whoop" from a construction workers you can hear in the background of Michelle's audio.] So the cover is more of a booklet, by the way. So I feel a little bit robbed in that case, and then paying for it by so feel robbed this for a smaller booklet. And it's really talking about your personal finances. So for me, kind of bordered on self help as it relates to how you spend money.

And also was a turnoff. I don't know why it was like this, but the cover has like a Victor Victoria, know, cut and have like a person, a human, one side male presenting, other side female presenting. It even reminded me of a garbage pail kid called Half Nelson, which should be well canceled.

Michelle Bond (10:01)
goodness. Is this like an attempt to just be more inclusive in who you're speaking to?

Joan Kanner (10:07)
Honestly, in terms of the packaging of it, I really think it was meant not to be offensive, but to just think about dualities that people have in their thinking. That said, I couldn't look at it for more than a couple minutes. So that one is out. That's the answer to who are you? Yeah, who I am is someone who can't finish reading that shit. Next. And we will definitely have a photo of all the books laid out for everybody in the show.

Michelle Bond (10:23)
All right, so who we are with our money. Yeah, that's okay. All right, next.

Joan Kanner (10:36)
just for, because saw some of these covers were chef's kiss. This is all before like AI was making your images. So a person or two came up with these things. The next one I also bounced out quickly called The Joy of Working.

Michelle Bond (10:50)
do you want to say more? Okay. All right. All right. No joy in working.

Joan Kanner (10:54)
No, that was really it. It completely turned me off.

No, and I was just like, started with that, so if I don't feel it, I'm supposed to feel like judged for not feeling that way? Or is it like, it's supposed to be an end goal once I read this, but also what are my goals for having a job? What are you doing?

Michelle Bond (11:10)
Or was it like just about like finding, like we were talking about in an episode yet to come out about being in flow and about like finding, you know, that whole like, if you love what you do, you don't work a day in your life. Yes. But like that idea, that idea.

Joan Kanner (11:23)
Right, and I should have vetted the author to see maybe they actually work for like Walmart or something. That's a way to get in your head to have you continue on with a dead end thing.

So that also out. And don't forget Michelle, as in life, I have unlimited strikes. All right, so let's go.

The next book was called Winners and Losers.

Michelle Bond (11:48)
Okay, all right. Are you going to apply one of your unlimited strikes to that one as well?

Joan Kanner (11:50)
I will, but first let me say that this book was tempting to read simply because it had the most illustrations and the least amount of words, which I like.

Michelle Bond (12:02)
Take note, picture book authors.

Joan Kanner (12:05)
Picture book. So that was pretty cool. And it actually more of like a morality type thing, which I think was actually a secular morality. So I thought that was cool and inclusive. And it was just like, let me give an example. Being kind to somebody who may have not been nice to you. You're a winner. Being unnecessarily cruel to someone who has like less than you like less power or whatever. You're a loser.

Michelle Bond (12:26)
okay.

Joan Kanner (12:32)
And I'm like, cool, like kind of simplistic. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but this seemed to be more like basting in the stuff I believe myself to be doing, even though I probably do it 90% of the time, 100% of the time. So that book was quickly bounced, the illustrations actually are very cool and blow up-able, to poster size, they are cute.

Michelle Bond (12:41)
Mm.

What are you illustrating as you're talking about like a secular morality? Are these like, what's a, what's an example of one of the illustrations?

Joan Kanner (12:59)
They're, I want to say like figure, they are like cartoon drawings of human beings, but they're not like trying to use like an animal to be in a way diffusing some of these subjects. And they'll just show a person who looks like crinkly and awful, who was lousy to a person. And the person who is nice is like arguably more conventionally attractive, but they're little scenarios.

Michelle Bond (13:21)
So this is very like Saturday morning cartoon inserts. feel like, like very like Davey and Goliath or what were those other ones that they're not quite infomercials, but they're like.

Joan Kanner (13:27)
but not cutesy.

Gumby and Pokey had a little bit of a Jesus vibe.

Michelle Bond (13:37)
Right, or like yeah, the Latter Day Saints, you know, Be Kind to People commercials, which are fine. They're like a lot after school special, but...

Joan Kanner (13:39)
Hmm? Yeah.

Yeah, and again, somebody drew them and I hope that they ended up getting royalties for having drawn.

Michelle Bond (13:49)
Right. Alright, so those are out.

Joan Kanner (13:54)
All right, so we're down three. The next one I also booted abruptly. Didn't even have good illustrations and I had too many words. Another thing I don't care for. I do a lot of audio books, kids, just so you know. So this one was called The Relaxation Response. And it was like a level of woo when I entered it. I didn't get past like the introduction and the first chapter. Like I just couldn't. I'm like, response to what?

Michelle Bond (14:12)
Huh.

Joan Kanner (14:24)
I do like when a title kind of pulls you in or the images like a bottle of wine.

And this shit had neither.

Michelle Bond (14:32)
Okay, all right. Yeah, so in case there's ever any doubt that you spent too much time in the House of Woo, we know now that that's actually not true.

Joan Kanner (14:41)
No, no, under advisement of counsel. No.

Right. That was number four. And there's eventually the book that I selected. But the one before that, which was like really a trip and a half and a trip to the liquor store, when I say that, is by an author from the UK. Still a dude. And it's called Six Action Shoes. Michelle, want to guess what the hell that's about?

Michelle Bond (14:45)
Alright, so what are we at? That's number five that didn't make the cut? Okay.

shoes, like on your feet shoes?

Joan Kanner (15:10)
Six, six, action, shoes.

Michelle Bond (15:15)
Like trying to be clever instead of saying steps.

Joan Kanner (15:18)
No. no, she'll go more literal, my friend.

Michelle Bond (15:22)
Like are we talking stilettos and construction boots, Uggs and you know, whatever else.

Joan Kanner (15:26)
Kind of, kind of. And then going over this book, the author, I didn't necessarily, I need to like re-examine it to see whether not they're focusing exclusively on shoes for women, or they meant generally, people who should wear them, but literally shoes you wear based on the activity that you must go through at work.

Michelle Bond (15:52)
And it's Six Action Shoes is the title.

Joan Kanner (15:55)
Right, so there's only these six shoes that you need to cover most of the strife and other things that you need to go through in a work setting and to succeed at them.

Michelle Bond (16:05)
So the shoes are literal, but the actions at work are symbolic. Can you give an example?

Joan Kanner (16:07)
Yes.

Sure, and I'd say just generally, this book was a little too simplistic and on the nose for our Proofing Stage listeners. Yes, it lists six shoe types and delves into quote, "a brilliant new way to take control of any business or life situation." And there's not just a shoe type that the author suggests, but a specific color for each shoe.

And I was gonna say, Michelle, I once had a supervisor, you know who I'm talking about, who would have loved this book. She wore very expensive what she called "fuck me shoes" and boots. But I bet this book would have, yeah, I know. But I

Michelle Bond (16:43)
Okay.

as explained to you by your supervisor?

Joan Kanner (16:49)
Yeah. There are other things that are questionable too. I she wanted more of a friend than like a colleague or a team member to knock stuff out. Let's not go there. So I bet this book, even though she liked those fuck me boots and shoes, I bet this book would have had her wearing orange gum boots on occasion.

Michelle Bond (16:52)
All right.

So that's like one of the pairs of shoes that could get you through a specific business situation.

Joan Kanner (17:16)
Precisely and to be clear for folks who are listening who are not from the UK or have not traveled there a gumboot is the UK term for rubber rain boots and Why orange you may be asking or maybe you're just stuck on me saying fuck me boots, which is fine But about these orange gumboots that the author is suggesting. Why orange? Of course orange is worn by hunters, emergency responders, I doubt they're talking about Baltimore Orioles fans, but you get the idea

You get in the mindset of like, I'm going into battle here, going into danger. I'm knocking it out. Got my orange gumboots.

Michelle Bond (17:51)
You know, this is oddly intriguing to me, not because I think it has like a one-to-one application, but it's a really interesting way of going about, you know, it's a different way of looking at roles and personas and masks that you put on and take off and, you know, for, for various situations.

Joan Kanner (17:54)
Mm-hmm.

Actually, that part is true. There was no citations or scientific connections, anything this person said. I do believe that sometimes even like for me, like if I'm presenting publicly based on the audience, may dress up more edgy or be more colorful, whatever, to also get myself into the mindset, not just about the people that I'm speaking with. You know, and hey, you're supposed to wear this specific boot when you're in action mode.

They're meant to be worn under obvious clear-cut danger, also means the reader needs to consider what those situations are.

Michelle Bond (18:44)
Yeah, and it's very much of that same ilk, right? That it's about the hero's journey. You know, it's about being the hero. It's about the doing. It's about the acting. There's never a moment of pause or reflection or asking for questions or feedback. It's about like putting on the uniform and going, which certainly like situations call for, for sure. But, you know, I don't know, maybe I'll steal that one off your pile just for my own interest and enjoyment. But

Joan Kanner (19:11)
Yeah, I definitely encourage people to look that one up to get a sense of the other shoes that are offered.

But I would be remiss if we didn't cut to the book I selected for today's book review.

Michelle Bond (19:40)
Totally. And all the other ones we'll list, we'll have some photos and we'll have authors and titles, right, available for folks.

Joan Kanner (19:43)
yeah.

Good, bad, or indifferent. Do with that information what you will, but it'll be there for you.

Michelle Bond (19:50)
Alright, yeah, so tell us about what you chose and why.

Joan Kanner (19:53)
I chose Conceptual Blockbusting by James L. Adams. And the book is from 1974. So are business books from the 70s good? From what I can tell, remains to be seen. Are people from the 70s great? I am living proof and you are Michelle. Gen X all the way. So this book Conceptual Blockbusting appealed to me the most.

Michelle Bond (20:13)
I would say, yeah, unanimously.

Joan Kanner (20:23)
because one, I could use a thought plumber, which is my term. It's my term. I can use some like blockbusting and unclogging in terms of my thoughts sometimes. And two, the subtitle is a "Pleasurable Guide to Better Problem Solving. So the pleasurable part, yeah. So that reminded me of course, operations expert Veronica Yanhs who we've had in the pod and the problem solving part.

Michelle Bond (20:29)
Is that a term you made up or that they use?

Okay.

Joan Kanner (20:51)
led me to believe that we're working on solutions together rather than just naming what was wrong with the reader, which sometimes these books do.

Michelle Bond (21:00)
Yeah. And it's interesting too, because a lot of the, many of the very, very small businesses or like solopreneurs that I've been reaching out to and working with. This is the part that they love the most, you know, is the problem solving of being an entrepreneur. as much as it's really hard, there's nothing about, there's nothing like having a tangible, solution to a problem that is an actual barrier. So,

Yeah, I'm interested. All right.

Joan Kanner (21:31)
That's true, Michelle. think that's one of the benefits, even though you can look at the other side and go, well, like all the, all the consequences that come upon you. Well, as someone who's worked for larger institutions for a long ass time and like other businesses, I can tell you that having all the responsibility and limited control is like very difficult. So if you have to make a decision on your own, not do it by committee for the most part, right.

unless you have a board or other structure. mean, that's really like some of the benefit to working for yourself. And I, know, separately the book, I appreciate that there are definitions of the terms that they use. There's examples, there's exercises when it comes to thinking throughout the book. So it makes it more interactive. You can like take a pause before reading it cover to cover, you know, and they also, what really surprised me is that the images were not like those bizarre drawings.

with those other books, but they included works from two of my favorite artists, Magritte and Escher. So to be honest with you, that made me think, okay, this is like a thinking person's book that's like really drawing from a lot of different genres and drawing from the arts that really help you think about these things and not just talking at you.

Michelle Bond (22:30)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it's talking about models for essentially like adjusting your thinking to address problems in new ways or is that like, how is it positioned in terms of support for business decisions?

Joan Kanner (23:00)
It makes you look at your blocks. And another thing I will say that, you know, a lot of these books, which I didn't say, not the shoes book, but the other books, like they tried adding in some really non-scientific dietary stuff sometimes. I mean, it was like literally that level of apple cider vinegar can help you fix everything in your world. And that, know, right. And like, I understand that Katy Perry believes in that. Yeah, she owns part of Bragg's.

Michelle Bond (23:19)
Always apple cider vinegar, man, all the way.

Joan Kanner (23:29)
I'm just saying. And trust me, like I use it when I cook. I mean, it's delicious, right? But I don't think you should spray it on you like Windex in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and it's gonna solve everything. So I really appreciate how this book really takes you through different things that could be a block. It characterizes the different blocks you may experience when comes to thinking and gives you a sense of potential solutions. So Michelle, let's focus on just a few of the blocks that this book covers.

Michelle Bond (23:30)
I dunno, alright.

Joan Kanner (23:56)
What say you?

Michelle Bond (23:56)
Okay, yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I'm all ears. Hit me.

Joan Kanner (24:01)
Yeah. Yep. Good for that plumber. So the book starts with perceptual blocks. So if you can't clearly perceive of a problem from jump, then you're not going to be able to solve it. You might be putting your efforts into resolving the wrong thing. And you don't have extra effort to piss away. Am I right? So I liked how they broke out different types of perceptual blocks.

such as a tendency to delimit the problem area too closely.

So when I say that, what they mean is sometimes it's hard to isolate a problem. And in this case, you might be defining it too narrowly. You're not seeing the entire scope of something. So what if you spilled oil on your home kitchen mat and you didn't pick up the mat to see if any oil leaked through the floor, then you wouldn't be getting the totality of the spill, the totality of the problem.

That may be my example, but the book is really good at giving these like really concrete examples you can extrapolate to more of the thought work that you might be doing in your in your business or your job.

Michelle Bond (25:05)
And on that idea of not delineating the problem, I guess, widely enough is a different way of saying it. Is the the risk there that you're not solving the whole problem or that you're solving the wrong problem or that you might not understand the context that could help you? I guess I'm I guess that's a different way of asking the same thing. But I'm curious as to whether it's about scale.

or it's about specificity.

Joan Kanner (25:36)
Those are any of the errors that can occur when you limit your thinking like that. And I'm using the word errors. Actually, the book is not very, know, errors may seem negative, but it is what it is, right? The book does not use that language. It's like you're missing the whole picture and you might be missing what's contributing to it. You may not be fixing whatever needs to be fixed. And even when you're really busy as an entrepreneur, the desire to like tunnel and just fucking deal with it, just put on those orange gumboots and deal with it.

Sure, do that if you absolutely have to, but then you have to have that cycle of like pulling back. Or what's even more critical is you may want to just act really quickly when there's absolutely no need to. And the book really speaks to taking your time, to make a decision. You have as much information as possible and not be rushed, which I know we talked about in the pod a lot, but people really need to hear that. You owe it to yourself. A lot of stuff can happen when you rush into a decision.

Michelle Bond (26:33)
Yeah, that idea of false urgency and in your subbalance, because there's also, you know, I've been listening to a lot of things about as one who tends to like take in a lot of information and want to process it and want to understand the context. There is value to being decisive. And I think there's that fine line between gathering enough, like would another two days of gathering information or context or picking up that mat really change the outcome?

You know, and it depends on the situation, but I think it's a good reminder of the need to balance those scales of like, yes, in business, we're taught probably more so to be decisive than we are to, you know, decide whether this is actual, an actual urgency or a false urgency. But, when you put it in the frame of being able to assess the full scope of a problem by taking a beat, and that's what that allows you to do. I feel like that's a much more tangible.

way of showing what the value is to doing that.

Joan Kanner (27:35)
Because what's rewarded in Western culture, no matter who you are, is just like pew pew pew very quickly, like coming to a decision and then standing by it even if it's wrong.

Michelle Bond (27:48)
Yeah, for sure, for sure. Okay, all right, so that's perceptual blockbusting.

Joan Kanner (27:52)
That's perceptual blockbusting. That's a really great chapter. I've got like a few more if you can stick around everybody. The next one I thought you'd have a lot to say about Michelle and there's a whole section about cultural. Here we go. It's about cultural and environmental blocks. And right. So I'm not an interculturalist. I didn't go to school for that. Michelle did, talk to her more about it offline. But when I saw cultural blocks, I said shit again, right? Like right off the bat.

Michelle Bond (28:04)
okay.

Joan Kanner (28:21)
on thinking about the lens and the author seeing the culture through. So Western, white, male. And while that speaks to who the writer was, I found that was mostly expressed in the tradition and change section of the chapter. But really this person had a really good sense of in the 70s, which we might be kind of culturally back to anyway, at least the 90s, the person actually was really astute observations about US culture.

I think a lot of people can speak to, can see if you don't 100% agree with it based on the frame of reference that you may have. But I was still more open in this chapter, given the framing, than I thought I would be.

Michelle Bond (29:01)
Okay, yeah. So, yeah, please go ahead.

Joan Kanner (29:02)
Can I read your passage?

So the author said of the United States, quote, "ours is a self-conscious culture. New religions, forms, social movements and styles and dress, talk, entertainment and living crop up continually. Age and experience are venerated only if quote unquote relevant and long apprenticeships are rapidly becoming extinct. A very high value seems to be placed on innovation. Yet strangely enough, many individuals value tradition

more than they do change."

Michelle Bond (29:37)
Well, here we are in November of 2024 with that tug of war between change and tradition,

Joan Kanner (29:48)
No, for sure. I was glad to receive that even though that synopsis, that's the way things were at that time and certainly are now. And I just want to, to end some of this thinking through the author of quote, "the problem arises when individuals become so universally in favor of tradition that they cannot see the need for and desirability of change in specific areas."

So acknowledging the culture around you, knowing that it's something to be aware of and the author is not like full-throated, all your energy and try working against this. This author is trying to tell you to like be mindful of the obstacles and the terrain that you're up against. And don't be surprised when certain barriers come up, which I thought was actually very thoughtful.

Michelle Bond (30:37)
Yeah, and this is something that

you know, isn't just a given anymore that, a culture is a certain way and I'm an oddball for seeing things differently, or I can't fit here or, you know, more and more, I have friends and colleagues who are wrestling with this challenge themselves, but ultimately seeing that if they are somebody who is trying to enact

change, even at it, even just within their sphere of influence, if they're in an environment that is resistant to that change, or just more, more valuing tradition, whether that's, it's always been done this way, or just some of the values that maybe came about, you know, when when the founders or when the leaders were, most, you know, establishing certain aspects of the business or whatever.

But more and more people are asking themselves this question and ultimately making a decision to move on. If innovation and creativity and challenging not only the status quo, but what those traditional values may be or the way that those values are manifested, you have options. It may be hard. I transitions are hard for sure, but it's interesting that I've found

Many, I mean, many people we both know who've made big moves in the last couple of years, primarily because of this reason. They love the work they're doing. They love the end users that they work with, but the actual culture within an agency or business or organization does not really allow for the transformation that's necessary to move the needle. And some people can see it really clearly. Other people can't see it. Maybe you just feel it. Maybe it's like a...

a stifling feeling or something. But it's also like, there are also systems that these traditional ways of thinking are very efficient, like they get what they need to get done. And that's clear. And so I think it's a matter of identifying what your priorities are. And if you're a small business owner, you know, what, does success mean to you and who are you serving? Who are your customers? And then like, what are the environments in this case, maybe of the people that you do business with?

or the culture that you create within your own business that's going to allow for, you know, the getting further along on those things that you're trying to accomplish.

Joan Kanner (33:00)
No, think well said Michelle, think obviously the author is talking about these super like macro constructs. But I've not been any workplace that has not had to deal with them. Some variation of it with different players within it. I mean, they've all had to deal with like certain things that represent the world outside.

Michelle Bond (33:21)
Yeah, and we, you know, not so jokingly refers to these people sometimes as dinosaurs, right? Like, there are movements afoot. And while there is backlash to kind of bring people back to quote unquote safe places, or what feels like what they know, or makes them still feel relevant, or all of these things. Those are very natural feelings. People want to feel like what they do and what they're good at is valued. And if they feel like that was valued once, and it's not valued now, maybe there's a pushback or whatever.

But like, ultimately change happens, right? And it's like where you want to be in relation to that change. Because I think the best leaders, and I haven't always been good at this myself, like are able to see that it's afoot, deal with the discomfort, and then bring some other people in on how you can still hold true to the things that, you know, are your vision for an organization, but then make room.

for these different ways of doing things that are going to lead you someplace that you couldn't have gotten to if you were just holding on to your traditional perspective.

Joan Kanner (34:39)
So the cultural stuff we talked about, other things we talked about so far, I feel like listeners, and also like the transcript readers may have their, you know, maybe if you can adjust your shoulders back, or if possible, like your spine is up straight, you're feeling good, you're like, I got these things, I'm aware of them, I am moving through even when they're tough, I got these. This is where it's gonna start to hurt.

when it comes to some people who are listening. Yeah, it's a little bit, this is gonna be a little bit cringe, because you may see some of this with yourself, picking on no one in particular, because we have so many people who listen in. So environmental blocks. This includes trying to work in a cluttered space and or with distractions. And I really appreciate when the author points out that

Michelle Bond (35:02)
Okay, content warning.

Joan Kanner (35:27)
When a problem is presented, we sometimes seek out distraction. Saying this in the seventies, by the way, there's a lot more ways to be distracted now. He shares about this tendency with himself, which I also appreciate about the author. So he shares about this tendency with himself, but no surprise, he also talks about how he's avoided distractions by getting up early. So as we know, smartphones, tablets, other devices that we have now, not to mention the internet as a whole, provide a ceaseless stream.

Michelle Bond (35:33)
Hmm.

Joan Kanner (35:54)
distractions at any hour. So that part of the book is dated if you live in a place where you have access to the internet readily available. But I really appreciated the author pretty much head on was just like, this is a problem for me. When I need to write or get some stuff out, this is a faculty member as well. This is an engineer. This is like when I go in and do stuff. There's like less people seeking anything from me. No one wants anything from me phone not ringing. This is when I do stuff.

So it's about like being aware of those things, being aware of your own tendencies, maybe seeking some of these things out and having a plan for avoiding them whenever you can.

Michelle Bond (36:31)
Yeah, I was immediately thought about discipline, which is interesting. And maybe just in relation to the early rising to be able to get some things done, which I know lot of, you know, that's one of the habits of effective people But I do wonder about that in the environment of, you know, remote working now, especially because for many,

where people are like, "I'm much more productive at home because I'm not getting constantly interrupted" and all those things. And I think that is true. Although, you know, you do also have other distractions at home, whether it's kids or, "I'll throw in a load of laundry, I'll do this or that." I mean, so, I do wonder, I do think it has to also do with the kind of work, you know, sometimes there's deep work and sometimes there's kind of more administrative box checking work. And I do think.

environmental distractions really vary based on the type of work. Like sometimes, you you'll want music or something to help you focus, whereas other times you are, you know, really just need to be completely uninterrupted.

Joan Kanner (37:34)
Yeah, I think that Michelle, you're touching on or we're bleeding into some other aspects of the books and then jump ahead to those.

So supportive environments and there is unsupportive environments. I'll start with the unsupportive. Obviously, it takes a little bit less to define that, right? Unsupportive environments include those that are characterized by a quote, "lack of cooperation and trust among colleagues." I'd also add that this happens at home, not just work. Michelle, I know you touched on.

So that said, supportive environments can be any that work for you so that you can recreate them. So a modern example would be listening to a focus playlist or curling up with your Snuggie and a pot of tea if you're working on something that you can do...

in a stationary fashion, although I would do a focus playlist when slicing lox. So think about those things to be able to enable a supportive environment and the ability to like put those things on. And sure, those environments make sense when you're solving problems like a writing assignment. But I also believe that they could be helpful when mentally working through or sketching out a solution to a problem that requires a physical solution. yes, some things, you know, like if there's a layout for commercial kitchen that you're trying to figure out for yourself.

You can just take some photos of it, bring that elsewhere, just be in that environment and then give yourself the greatest amount of focus you can to be able to solve that problem. Cause again, just because something has to have a physical solution, doesn't mean that the thought work doesn't have to happen. So try to think about that environment in your head and what will be most supportive of it. Breaking through to come up with a solution.

Michelle Bond (39:06)
Yeah, and so in this case, the solution would be whatever that supportive environment is, right? Like related to what the goal is for the type of work you're doing.

Joan Kanner (39:19)
Yeah, and just knowing that's not always possible. It's not always possible to be able to like steal away your time, but sometimes the environment you're thinking in doesn't have to be the same that you're solving something in.

Michelle Bond (39:28)
Mmm. Yes.

Joan Kanner (39:29)
your prep work can be different.

Michelle Bond (39:30)
Yeah, absolutely. there are, you know, and that's, it's interesting. I was at a conference last week and there was a, there was a point made about just time for like having a structure for the way that certain work gets done. And so, and it was within the context of, you know, maybe like a team asking a manager for something whenever they see them versus like going through the, the

kind of mental filter of like, is this, what's the urgency level of this? What's the, you know, and so just even establishing methods of communication that are like, you know, okay, if you text me, this is like some urgency, but it's not immediate. If you call me, it's immediate. If you send me an email, I can get to it tomorrow. Like, you know, whatever that is for the culture of your workplace.

It is kind of like, even sometimes if it's hard because people have certain habits, everything's an emergency, establishing what the supportive environment would be for you in terms of your communication or in terms of, as you're saying, like if I'm doing work that is required for a physical space, allow myself a time to be in that space to do some initial thinking, but then I really need to go back and kind of step away and take it to the next level.

Joan Kanner (40:52)
And I'm sure a lot of like what we're both talking about involves, it takes so much time, right? Anyone listening to this or reading the transcript will just go, that's not impossible. But really like it's going to benefit you in the long run. And a lot of times, at least speaking for me, right? Like totally projecting onto you folks that I will create an urgency or, I can't be in this space. I need to make sure I solve it right here, right now. When no one's really asking that of me. And if they do ask that of me, it's...

reasonable to push back and say, no, I need to step away from this. I feel like I'm staring at the same thing. So maybe I go out for a hike. Maybe I do that load of laundry. Maybe I pop in, you know, another podcast or something. And sometimes literally it just means sleeping on it.

Michelle Bond (41:35)
Yeah, absolutely.

Joan Kanner (41:38)
So Michelle, there's also a non-support section. It's all on the environment and it's smack dab in the book. And it reminds me a lot of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. And it speaks to quote, "the lack of physical, economic, organizational support to bring ideas into action." And I don't know what episode we have touched on that doesn't speak to that in some way.

Michelle Bond (41:43)
regarding environment.

Okay.

Yeah, having your basic needs taken care of so you can do some higher level stuff.

Joan Kanner (42:11)
No, absolutely and there's even a reference in the book that I would liken to the angel and VC community to the investment community basically, "quote, even after the ideas fleshed out into a believable and complete form, it must be sold to an often skeptical world." quote, and who runs that skeptical world in this case, and in that case, I would say angels and VCs.

The section goes on to talk about corporate investors versus self-funded inventors and who has that support advantage.

Michelle Bond (42:42)
Yeah. The first thing I thought about was though, who should not be part of that skeptical world? Your customer, right? [laughs] Like that's just what I just thought. I was just like, well, remember like you're not selling, sorry, just total tangent, but I'm just thinking about like the aspect of business that is filling a need, you know, that is identifying a problem. And so you shouldn't have to sell people on what the problem is.

Joan Kanner (42:49)
Ooof...

Michelle Bond (43:06)
you should, you know, selling people who are going to back it, selling people who are going to help you scale it because it often involves risk is a different thing. But anyway...

Joan Kanner (43:15)
Yeah. And look, I come from an environment working with grants and contracts where we're getting the at university level, right? You have the scientists and other researchers and people in the community coming through the office that I was in and wanting to get that "yes" from the sponsor, from the people, the feds or the company making the pills or whatever the hell, right? Either corporate or state or federal [dollars] and coming through the office that meant like people had to earn, like I saw it.

I saw it [my role there] as like me having to be there to say, "dear person submitting, earn that 'yes' from me," because I wanted to toughen you up, next wave of stuff. And I think that there's certainly like a "Sharktankification" of crowdfunding and other things where other people just say, "Oh, you got to prove to me because I'm gonna give you my 50 bucks." And sometimes I want to have people take that $50 bill, roll it up and shove it up their ass.

Michelle Bond (43:51)
Hmm.

Joan Kanner (44:07)
Like that's, don't, you know what mean? Like having to earn something that, having it be so difficult, really, for that amount? Shut the hell up.

Michelle Bond (44:14)
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that's, I feel like, I mean, I guess that's always been the case, but I do feel like that's where quote unquote selling an idea, even, you know, that's like social media and it's like, you're, you have to earn, earn space, like earn being in front of people or being in their ears or, you know, it's like, there's so much noise to cut through that. think it has become this.

over importance of, you know, it's imbalanced. There is an overabundance of meaning placed on

the ears and the eyeballs of things that can sometimes I think lead to that, like show me, prove to me. And not to say that there isn't value in like making sure you have a good idea and making sure that it's been tested, but for every encounter there is that transactional relationship, which is a shame because it makes it really hard to filter through those circumstances and decide where you can best put your efforts. Because that's like a constant thing that needs to be fed.

Joan Kanner (45:25)
Yes.

The outside importance placed on the person who has some dollars, but may or may not have the ability to help you scale or have the technical information to help you, does show you that we have things messed up because when people - this came up from one of the people who actually does do some of the casting with Shark Tank. He spoke in Baltimore last year and we were there for that discussion that he had.

He's like, "Yeah, people can be like that. However, when you think about the how many X return you can get on investing in a product or a small business, it's much higher than you putting something in, like a CD account. And it's also way more exciting to be able to do that. So don't get it twisted."

If you can't bring value except for like some dollars, maybe step aside, maybe realize your money doesn't make you the expert in everything.

Michelle Bond (46:17)
Well, yeah, and it's everybody has a role to play. Like, you know, there's a role for just having the capital, the money to help support something. There's a role to having a certain level of expertise in something that, you know, you need help with. There's a role to having good feedback about the product in terms of like, you know, who's consuming it or what's important to you as a customer. So there are, you know, levels and lanes within which those opinions do matter, but they're not necessarily all tied together, I think is the thing, right? It's like this $20 does not allow you to tell me like to change my business model or you know what I mean? Or you can tell me all you want, but you know what I mean? It's up to the founders and leaders to be able to take in the information and then, you know, run it through whatever process makes sense for deciding whether it's a mission fit or a, anything else.

I'm sure people would appreciate some actionable items, even if their shoes are not the right color.

Joan Kanner (47:44)
Or type - must be both the right type and right color. Okay, so onto intellectual and expressive blocks. Simply not having the correct information is one type of intellectual block. It might sound obvious, but I believe it bears stating. How many times do you attack a problem without making sure you're basing your next moves on the right data? 

And in this section, the author talks about incorrect information, contaminating your results, which I think is a clear way to look at things. And certainly a motivator when it comes to taking the time to fact check, because truly what are you observing? And how much of what you're observing and what you're measuring comprises the problem at hand?

Michelle Bond (48:27)
Hmm. Yeah. So can you break that down with, do you have an example? Maybe cause the thing that I was thinking was like, how does this differ from the perceptual blockbusting where you're just trying to make sure that you have the full scale of the problem. This is a more specific piece about information to help you assess that.

Joan Kanner (48:47)
This is really so incredibly data-driven. This is a just the facts portion of once you assess things...

Michelle Bond (48:49)
Mm-hmm.

Joan Kanner (48:54)
Let's say you're having a problem with a backed up sink in your house.

And you don't like the fact that it's backed up. It smells, it's gross. So it's like something to be prioritized. You need to have that sink running. And other people want to tell you what's wrong with it to resolve it. And I've actually had this happen before. It may sound maddening to you, but I remember expressing that to a neighbor. And just being, "it's so annoying." 

"How you doing?" "Okay. Well, my sink has blocked up, blah, blah. Really annoying." And the person's solution, the data they found to be important was, "Hey, have you thought about cleaning your gutters? I can do that for you." 

Now, this is like an old phrase from one of my bosses and I really appreciate it: "Do you walk to school or carry your lunch?"

Michelle Bond (49:43)
Mm. [laughs]

Joan Kanner (49:44)
So in the case of " do you walk to school or carry your lunch?" at first your brain is just like, kids carry lunch to school, am I walking or wait? There really isn't a connection. You're trying to make things, to unite things that aren't. And I've actually had people in that moment who are around go, I think that guy is right. Yeah, maybe your gutters are clogged. Your gutters are not connected to any of your indoor plumbing.

That is data that's completely false relative to the problem. But to him, it was very relevant because he wanted to get money to clean out my gutter. So who the hell knows what that would look like? This guy was a mess. But that's completely illogical. Do you walk to school or carry your lunch? My sink is blocked up. "Hey, there's something that water passes through, I guess, sometimes on the outside of my house." So to me, that's the example I would use about intellectual blocks.

Really, like what are we talking about? Like what am I observing? What am I unable to observe? And do I have enough data to make a decision based on stuff? And that was not a proper solution [meaning cleaning the gutters to fix the clogged sink].

Michelle Bond (50:51)
Yeah. Well, and the thing that comes to mind for me is also just being mindful of your own biases that would cloud the ability to get that information because of what your, because of what your motivations are. I mean, there's nothing wrong with trying to make money, right? So this person, you know what I'm saying? So just, it's, it's a good reminder that when you're trying to gather more information to alleviate an intellectual block, make sure you're checking yourself. In that process to see that you're not going down a road that is actually not connected because you have motivation, you know, because there's a specific result that you may be talking about unconsciously, unconsciously trying to get to or consciously, but.

Joan Kanner (51:38)
Michelle, you're leading us to a specific place that we need to be.

Michelle Bond (51:42)
That's what I do.

Joan Kanner (51:43)
It is, you're speaking about conscious blockbusting, which includes understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan and examining the solution obtained. And this kind of hearkens back to our episode, again, of referencing our time with Veronica Yanhs and operations. But I think documenting this process, turning something into an SOP if applicable, is rarely done by folks, especially bootstrapping That especially goes for examining the solution obtained, because you know that with an industrial dishwasher, here we go - another like plumbing problem. When it's unclogged for now, or the walk-in refrigerator is now back up running to temp, the laser printer is working again.

But did you buy new toner for when the printer needed to be reset? Are you examining what the problem is? Are you defining the actual problem? What led to it? And correctly solving it in a way that that could be replicated? So think about how they could be replicated by your team, let alone yourself. Because ideally, yes, you might have other people to be able to deal with the walk-in refrigerator that's not up to temp, the clogged industrial dishwasher, the laser printer not working, which I at home just experienced this morning. So I'm a little touchy about that. But you want to be able to not just say like, okay, I got in, I dealt with the danger, dealt with the annoyance. This is who I call, this is what I did. That very well could happen again, if you're dealing with these same items, you're same situation. So did it work for you? Was it the best solution? You can look back and go, "ugh, that wasn't that cost effective, but...

Man, we had squirrels running around that kitchen and I just had to pay whoever would come up immediately and deal with that. But in the future, let me go ahead and work at that same pest management company to see if we can like patch up some of these holes." 

So it's really, yes, it's acknowledging the fact that you have to like act quickly and decisively, but then it's so important to be able to document that process - whether or it worked, see what the breakdown was. And if it did like work out, great, that's wonderful. Make sure somebody else can handle that in your absence.

Michelle Bond (53:49)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's where growth really comes in. Right. Because you've got somebody you can, you can save your bandwidth. You can save your labor. You can empower someone else to do it. And you can also, scale, you know, once that process is in place, it can be used by hundreds of people. and that's the way, like, that's something we talked about. Like, you know, we knew that that was a necessary thing to do, but most bootstrapping people don't stop to do it until they absolutely have to. And I think it's a great thing to do early on when you're still trying to get clients, when you are hustling, but you're not maybe producing all the time. Or, you know, when you have just a little bit of breathing room, when it probably feels too early to do that because you think the process is going to change, that's the time to do it. You can always edit, you can always update.

But the hardest part with that kind of stuff is getting started and just like, like you said, like change the toner, fix the walk-in, just make a couple notes in that second. And then like at the end of the day, just review what you had to do and just schedule a time to just like knock out a simple SOP about it.

Joan Kanner (55:00)
And also, Michelle, as you were talking, you reminded me that when I have done those things, it's really kind of, using that word again, rightsize, it's rightsized that problem. It's made me feel more empowered. "Yeah, I did do that by going over that process." It hasn't taken forever, by the way. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just make sure it's something you can share, Google Drive or ClickUp that we use or something like that. And it really puts it into perspective. You can be like, "yeah, we did deal with that squirrel up in the attic. That was nuts."

But this is how we dealt with it. This is who you talk to. this is really by addressing it quickly. This is like what we save.

Michelle Bond (55:33)
No, absolutely.

And is that list of items that you went over kind of the steps to follow to move yourself towards conceptual blockbusting, at least in the eyes of this author?

Joan Kanner (55:43)
Yeah, so everything again, let me just, it definitely bears repeating. So in this section, conscious blockbusting - you're working to understand the problem, advising a plan, carrying out the plan, examining solutions, examining the solution that you obtained or that you created for yourself and seeing whether or not is replicable. And I just like the fact that this book has those steps at the same time, you know, lot of what we're not covering today are chapters that are even too woo for me and out there. And let's say they don't have merit.

like most of the emotional blocks chapter and I do have a psych degree people may not know this I've been master's in clinical psych and for me I'm just like okay I don't... we're not gonna go over this today I mean do we need to bring up Freud and Carl Rogers right now my god I mean that was a little bit whatever and like you're like: "well, Joan you're fine Abraham Maslow." I'm just like "yes, and that is my bias." But yes there's other parts of the book as well and I...

Michelle Bond (56:27)
Always, I mean.

Joan Kanner (56:39)
I don't know, Michelle, if we're at the point where I can just say how I felt about the book or what your thoughts may be as we wrap things up.

Michelle Bond (56:46)
No, definitely. I mean, I think it is important to think about those unconscious and emotional pieces. And I think we've touched on those with some of our guests in many different ways, depending on the topic. And it's something that maybe we can circle back to if people express interest in like really zeroing in on those. But I think you're right in terms of taking some of these timeless things that I mean, again, a 50-year-old book and, you know, seeing the ways that they apply in the environments that folks are working in now.

Joan Kanner (57:16)
No, for sure. What I what I really value about this book. I didn't expect to feel this way. And when I was choosing I was like, it's a bunch of like, winners and losers. Well, this book is, relatively speaking, a winner. But I feel like it's a kind of book where if you sat down with the author, you can argue with him. You know what I mean? Like, there's a lot of stuff I mentioning, none of the book is meant to be gospel - "Follow this and you're going to be successful." It challenges your existing thinking...

Michelle Bond (57:28)
Ready?

Mm.

Joan Kanner (57:44)
And there's gonna be some parts that you're actually gonna be like, "hell yeah, that's me" or "I can get something from this." Some parts you're gonna say like, like for me, I'm just like, "I can't deal with the woo right now." I love it. Do I have like emotional blocks? 100%. I'm not really there. And I don't see it as something you have to read like from front to back to be able to get something from it. And I do envision coming back to this book with certain chapters, be somewhere I'm at. So that's something I really value. So overall, if you can find...

Michelle Bond (58:09)
Mm-hmm.

Joan Kanner (58:13)
... a copy, like a used copy of this book at a local bookstore. See what I'm pushing for here? Pick it up. You have a specific challenge, start reading a chapter. It's interesting to you. I don't know it's going to be any library, to be honest with you, which is not a diss. I just want to be practical. And I, you know, I don't think you would lose much by not reading the book linearly. And if you decide to read it from front to back, go ahead. And again, like return to specific chapters, PRN - that's as needed. See, we just recently had a pharmacist on the show and Team Harmacy. Yes, I want to have like a reference of that. So PRN - I also have a lot of nurse friends - so that's it. So yes, I'm suggesting you don't need to read this book cover to cover. I'm removing a cultural block. You don't need to finish it.

Michelle Bond (58:49)
There you go.

... by doing so nice. And again, one more time, it is called.

Joan Kanner (59:06)
It is called Conceptual Blockbusting: A Pleasurable Guide to Better Problem Solving. Again, I love that second part of the title.

Michelle Bond (59:12)
Excellent. And the author?

Joan Kanner (59:16)
The author is James L. Adams.

Michelle Bond (59:19)
Who you could have a beer with and bat around these ideas.

Joan Kanner (59:23)
I think you may need to, if I think in order to do that, you'd either would need a Ouija board, not pushing for it... I don't know if you have that in your budget. Perhaps you can borrow one from a friend or I don't think, I don't think Tarot is for that. I don't know if he's living, but these words live on. Thank you, el señor James.

Michelle Bond (59:28)
Hahahaha

Right. Metaphorically.

They do. No, wonderful. Joan, thank you for doing that homework and for bringing this idea. And I would love to know if people have found it valuable. We'll be doing some of these interstitial type of episodes in between. We are back with a guest next week for an interesting, very interesting session actually about how we make our spaces work better for us. I'll just say that and...

Joan Kanner (1:00:11)
Whoa, that's one hell of a teaser, Michelle. We better follow through on this. You can't just drop that shit and be like, "well, sorry..."

Michelle Bond (1:00:13)
No, we do. It's in the books. It's done. but until then, I hope everyone has a wonderful, holiday week. hope you get some time to recharge and reconnect with yourself and others. and again, thank you for being a part of the proofing stage community. Joan, thanks for all your good work on this. again, if you like the show, please drop us a review wherever you listen to your pods and hopefully we can get more people to be a part of the conversation.

Joan Kanner (1:00:43)
Michelle, I am thankful for you. James L. Adams, I'm thankful for this book. I am thankful for me. I'm thankful for having the abilities to be able to like read and process this stuff. And I'm thankful to you, Proofing Stage pod listeners and also transcript readers. You're out there.

Michelle Bond (1:01:01)
We see you. All right. Take care everybody.

Joan Kanner (1:01:04)
Byeeee.