Speak Easy

Mike Kelly
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​[00:00:00]

Tyler Sellhorn: Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Selhorn and welcome to another episode of Speak Easy, the podcast where we discuss communication, productivity systems, capturing our thoughts, and how we share those thoughts with our future selves and others. We believe that managing our brains is core to 21st century work, and we're here to learn how to do it better than we did yesterday.

Thanks so much for listening. Speak Easy is brought to you by Cleft. The easiest way to collect your thoughts with our cross platform applications. You can simply capture your ideas wherever you are and paste them where they belong. Later we are blessed to be learning out loud with Mike Kelly. Mike is the founder and CEO of team on up a company dedicated to recapturing value for companies by accelerating productivity and performance for each employee. is the author of Meaning is the Mission, a book about understanding the symptoms of success and how to get dreams done on purpose. With over 20 years in senior leadership roles within [00:01:00] the credit union industry, Mike's strategic and visionary approach has been instrumental in building organizations that achieve key outcomes. has a reputation as a thought leader and subject matter expert in his field, and he is a sought after keynote speaker. Mike lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife and their three children. Mike. Thank you for being on the podcast today. Is the way we are, we work working? are we spending more money than ever to make work better only to see it get worse?

Mike Kelly: Tyler, thank you for having me on. It's a great pleasure to be with you. Is the way we work working? Sometimes. It seems to me that largely the answer is no, because the facts of the matter are we're spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to make work better. And Tyler, it's getting worse.

And so when you're trying harder than ever, and I think I want to believe, although we have to also look at the facts of the matter, add some facts to go along with our feelings that we're going in reverse. And so when that happens, I think we're [00:02:00] wise to slow down. And say, are we understanding what root cause issue is?

And so the outcomes prove it's not working. And so then we can visit with one another and be curious about, huh, is it working? It's a very personal, very intimate question. I ask CEOs. Is the way your company working very few of them tell me? No, especially in a crowd. Of course it is. But then you look at the numbers and you're like, huh, it doesn't really seem robust.

And then each 1 of us individually and as teams has to ask the same question is the way I work. Working because people make up companies.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. So you've answered the question with sometimes, and I guess maybe I want to drill into the, you know, you mentioned root causes. What are the root causes for us to say, no, this isn't working or yes, it is working. What is it that we're going to be looking for? And when we do that reflection that you've invited us into, what are we trying to identify?

[00:03:00] What are we trying to look for to say, aha, Mike agrees with me. In fact, I feel that same way myself, right? How do I. Identify when things are working and when they're not.

Mike Kelly: Excellent question at the company level, I think first, what are the things we're trying right now? And there's a vigorous conversation and Tyler, you are in the midst of it. So I I'm a LinkedIn fan of yours

Tyler Sellhorn: Thanks, Mike.

Mike Kelly: talking about remote work and how we learn and these things that are vital and crucial. I think it is a symptom.

Not a cause it's an outcome and yet just to pay attention to that conversation a lot. It is like religious level fervor and Very little in between which this kind of where we are. It seems as a culture

Tyler Sellhorn: you know, feeling that same sort of thing for me. And the thing that I've been starting to say to myself and to others is that I want to embrace the spectrum of ways of working instead of this squabbling about where work happens, right?

It's all trade offs all the way down, right?

And I think the [00:04:00] invitation is more so to be purposeful And to be intentional. And there isn't a wrong answer of how we show up in the way we work. But there definitely are, as you, you've identified Outcomes that are being achieved or not achieved. And so let's respect the thing that we're trying to do here. And let's do work in the ways that are impactful to those outcomes that we're trying to seek as a group.

Mike Kelly: right now. Usually there are. I love your answer. I would conclude, concur with you that we're so focused on where we're working instead of why or how on what does it actually matter? Am I just busy? You know, things like this. So I want to swat away. I think so. You and I see that the same way. AI is another one that's where we're feeling like that is root cause problem and it's not, it's a head fake.

And I think interestingly, from afar, now I have more to learn here with you today about what you're up to with cleft, but it's like AI seems like we want that to do our thinking for us. And it's like, well, is that [00:05:00] possible? You know, there's a group that's like, oh, it's a friend, you know, kind of inevitable.

Let's just get on board. Let's not think too hard about it. It's going to be fine. I don't want to people will say I only I'm choosing to view only the positives. It's like, well, good for you, but we also have to think about the whole picture here and what are the consequences. And then there's a group that is for sure, well, this is doomsday.

The apocalypse is coming right at first brain chip implementation. And again, we're at odds squabbling to use your words, which I like as well. And so I think root cause is if work is not working and it's up to the leader who set the standard of success, that's really the answer to, well, what were you trying to accomplish?

Standards of success come out in vision, mission and values, at least these are decision frameworks. It's in your balance sheet in your income statement, and it's in your scorecards balance sheet is reality. Your budget, which is also in there is your hopes and dreams. And then your income statement off often.

Tyler is a nightmare. And so [00:06:00] it's like, what were you trying to accomplish? And then are you moving towards your results? And when people like me show up on the scene, I already know it's not working, or I wouldn't be interesting to you. And so what we're trying to get at and offer into the consideration is that, and this is actually what intrigued me to join you today because we're very focused on our brains and our minds.

And so, at company level, at team level, and then at individual level, it's almost like, if we could just get our thinking straight, all will be well. And Tyler, my new friend. You are not a brain on a stick. You're a human being, not a human doing. You are a human being. And so I feel like we're losing the plot on that part of it.

And instead we're so focused on mindset. Mindset is another one of those things. And I do this with CEOs. I do some keynote work. Six months ago, I was in a room with a thousand CEOs and we were talking about this very same thing. And I defined growth mindset and fixed mindset. Growth mindset is largely.

You know, the world is abundant. I'm here to participate in it. Let's make the future better. You seem like an optimistic guy to me. And [00:07:00] so curiosity usually signals growth mindset is kind of who you are, I would imagine. And then fixed mindset is the world sucks. I'm getting punished for being in it.

It's happening to me, right? Broadly I'm being characterizing these things, but you get the point. Thousand CEOs in the room, 400 more online. And I say, you want your teams to be fixed to be growth mindset, right? And they're like, yeah, right. I'm really getting them warmed up. And I'm like, okay, in this room, how many of you are fixed mindset?

Please raise your hand, Tyler. I sit there for 20 seconds with my hand raised. Guess how many people had their hand raised? Zero phony bolognese.

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah.

Mike Kelly: And so I think 90 percent of us are in fact fixed mindset. You get punished at work. You get the scarlet letter for admitting it out loud. And so, you know, Hey man, I've got paycheck and career path risk.

Inside this company and in my work life. So I'm going to holster that sometimes hallucinate that I'm actually not fixed mindset [00:08:00] and talk myself into this and just show the things that are supposed to be showed, which, you know, you can get away with that for a minute, but it's not root cause.

And so even this mindset thing. It's crucial. We can't ignore it, but I don't think it's root cause. And so when I'm thinking and coach what I want to contribute to the conversation is, and you mentioned earlier in our conversation about ideas and dreams and how they come to life. And there's a, I'm intrigued by this software level you have on top of your brain.

I didn't quite, I want to learn about that. But I think your deepest thinking and deepest feeling is actually done in your heart and language can't capture. What you know to be true and yet in your deepest in your bones and in your bloodstream, you're like, Hey, I know this is true and language. In fact, is unsatisfactory to capture it.

Even when you pick the exact right words that you have available to you.

I think it's the epistemology of love and we are losing the plot on what it means to be a human being. And so I want to say it's first heart set. If you could get your heart [00:09:00] set in position. Now, I do not think you can do this alone.

Can you get your heart set your deepest thinking and deepest feeling going in the right direction and let that feed your mind? Tyler, it's hard to be in the world. It's hard to be at work. It's a competitive space. It's fun. You get to be creative. You're facing outcomes. You're taking wins and getting losses, so, but it can't stop at mindset.

And then you have to let that build your skill sets, both power and technical. Another thing we're losing the plot on Tyler, how many times you've ever seen a resume? With wisdom on it.

Tyler Sellhorn: None.

Mike Kelly: Zero. And yet, who do you want to work for?

Tyler Sellhorn: definitely want to be in community and, creating alongside people that care. The phrase that I use often is that turns out that giving a shit is really high leverage.

Mike Kelly: Yes.

Tyler Sellhorn: I think that's part of what I'm hearing you say is people who are creative or are creators.

I know that you've, you're an author, right? So you've seen the blank page with the cursor blinking back at you, [00:10:00] right? And I think that's the space that we are trying to embody our software at Cleft, right? Is to say, okay, there's very often This reflective moment where you're not sure, but you know, there's something there and we want to invite you to just ramble, right?

And if you let the computer be a teammate to you, to listen for what it is that you really are trying to say, it'll come back with something that's 80, 90, 95 percent of the idea in a structured note that you can share with yourself in your journal or in your note system, or with a teammate, when you've got something you're collaborating on, It turns out that referencing ourselves against a shared reality, obviously in the AI LLM space, right? This is like the corpus of like the open internet all of that text. You're able to take new ideas that are coming from your mind, from your brain. And then use that as a tool to be like, okay, yeah, that is what I meant to say. Or that's almost what I meant to say. And I'm going to edit it [00:11:00] this way, that way, this way, before I send it off to where it belongs. And I think the thing that I'm really reflecting on as we're, communicating.

I think there is this. Misunderstanding of AI as this like thing that is other right than what we've used before, right? It's software, right? It's not like this magical other being as we're talking about right here it's really just a an improved or a different mode of being able to, get better using software.

And so

Mike Kelly: How do you know that? So

Tyler Sellhorn: because of my own experience with it? Because when I think out loud and I record my voice and transcribe it using cleft, it gives me back things that are very like what used to be a whole set of tasks that I would do, where I would have a voice draft where I kind of talked out loud about something. And then I got that down to, into a first draft of something that I could, share with somebody else or. Put into the document. I get to that like in a 10th of the time that it used to take me because of, that [00:12:00] blinking cursor, is staring at me, I don't have to like, get my fingers to go.

I just talk right. And it gives me back something that I can get started with.

Mike Kelly: where is the point? So by the way, I use one of those tools, like a freak, like a freak. But, uh, and I listened to one of your earlier.

Tyler Sellhorn: your process. Like how do you get your ideas out?

Mike Kelly: Yeah, so I'm right with you. So I'm a single function design tool person. So I have an alarm clock. I do not wake up to my phone, newspaper, pen, paper, like these things do one thing,

Tyler Sellhorn: Yes.

Mike Kelly: according to their design.

Tyler Sellhorn: here, but I, I've got, for those watching on video, I've got a pen and paper too.

Mike Kelly: Well, I think what we're actually talking about is part of being human is the creative process. I think it's part of how we're designed. It is inevitable. The shakers in Pennsylvania making furniture were creative. We're all creative. You're creative. You're creating something. What is it? And so, writing forces you to think.

And I'm for, and just go log on to X right now. I don't want to hear your thoughts [00:13:00] out loud. You need to hear your thoughts out loud. Please get them organized and give me the best of them so that we can share your thinking. I didn't say this. Somebody said this about writing a book. Writing forces you to think.

Sharing your writing is sharing your thinking. And then when you ship, you better be ready because you, now it's out there. And now I have to take the heat of what's my crisp. Am I contributing to the conversation? Is there no reaction? So I start small sticky note. I might go to a bigger sticky note.

Maybe I have one, two, three, four. Then I go to a whiteboard. Then I go to outline. Then I might go longer form writing. And at this point in my maturity, if I nail that intro and I have a good outline now, I'm just rocking and rolling. And like the form of a book is very intimate. And in the book, part of which is the root cause problem.

I'm talking a lot about imposter syndrome, which I think is the thing that's hidden in front of this big issue. Cause you're like, yeah, meaning in the mission, that's not news. Like we all know that there's something else in front of that. And the [00:14:00] form and format, like if I'm doing a board planning presentation or strategy document that has to get below the one page, it needs to be high level.

The format of thinking out loud over my outline. Over a presentation document that is summary is like perfect. But I wrote a book so that we could be in an intimate conversation together. I could share the thoughts that I have with you and you just consider it like when you read deeply, which we're also losing the plot on, which is also diminishing our ability to focus and have deep work done.

We're giving up the booty Tyler to these muscles. That are critical to being in the world, and so I think it depends on your use case. What are you trying to do? What's the thing that needs to be created? Is it a movie? Is it a book? Is it a blog? Is it a tweet? These are different modes and you need a mix of tools that you understand how to work best for your learning style, [00:15:00] creative style.

And then print it and deal with it, it's

Tyler Sellhorn: Well,

Mike Kelly: a crazy talk. Am I hallucinating?

Tyler Sellhorn: you're right on. I want to rewind to the little sticky note and the big sticky note and the whiteboard. And then it becomes something you write down. When do you choose the small sticky note versus the big sticky note? And when do you know it's time to go to the whiteboard?

And when do you know that it's time to start writing? Like, how do you think in that space where I'm still ideating and it's going to end up here or there or how, that work for you?

Mike Kelly: Good question. So I keep my wife likes to kid me, but she appreciates it now because I have pens and pads of paper all over the house in various sectors and Tyler, it makes me crazy. Now I've hidden pens near my pens of pad because inevitably somebody scoops up the pen and takes it.

Tyler Sellhorn: I

Mike Kelly: I can't.

Tyler Sellhorn: favorite brand of pens that, that

Mike Kelly: too.

Tyler Sellhorn: have a home that has other people in it. That, that, that steal my pen. So yes, I'm right there with you. Yes.

Mike Kelly: And so I don't know when they're coming. I just know they're coming. So the, one of the gifts I have been given is idea [00:16:00] creation. Now I'm also mature enough to know I need 10 percent of them to be good. And by good, I mean, worthy of work. And so I'm a volume idea person. And so I'll just catch it on a sticky note.

I like the constraint of it's so low pressure and it's a constraint. I love the idea of leveraging constraints. I just have this little sticky note now. Often if I'm rolling, I'll have like five in a row and then one of them gets crumpled up and then I'm sequenced. And then I'm in, I'm immediately in outline mode cause I just know this is the process.

So I'm a big time blocker. I have seven egg timers sitting right by my desk, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60. There's a 20 minute and a 90 minute. And there's a great book out there. It's called flow. It's on my bookshelf back there. And I did not fact check these authors, but it resonated with me that the best of us can stay in deep work mode for 90 minutes.

Like if you're the Michael Jordan of deep work, you can hang in there for 90 minutes, but it takes us 17 minutes to get into the state of flow. [00:17:00] And yet we have all this crap distracting us from it. And so that's what I like about this. All I have to do is. Get a thought. And I think Tyler back to heart set.

This is the whisper of your heart. Where does it come from? I think it's a gift from God and it's like, oh, and usually I'm in the shower in my car, which is why I can't stand all. I don't need my car to be by mobile phone. I need to think. And so I have a thinking job. And the more time I defend against distraction in my day, The better and more productive I am.

It's so beautiful and so enjoyable. I'm like almost Amish at this point. And Tyler, I have a software company. That's how I make money. And so it's like this beautiful, how do you think, how do you create, how do you do, how do you execute, which is actually the most important of all this. How do you create results?

What modes matter and then what are the tools you're using to create them? It's all in the book. I wrote how to do that, but you got to get to root cause [00:18:00] challenges first, or like the best of it is going to be compliance and Like burdensome effort and like just it'll only be okay and sometimes terrible

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. So you've gotten to this state where you are almost Amish, in the way that you just operate in your day to day, as you think, I guess maybe I'm curious to learn like where, us a journey from like previous Mike to Amish Mike. Right. Um,

Mike Kelly: That's gonna be my next book title almost amish.

Tyler Sellhorn: I think that

Mike Kelly: It's a good thing The amish will never listen to this podcast or they'd be offended

Tyler Sellhorn: I live in Amish country in northern Indiana, and there's plenty of Amish that, that get distracted by their cell phones.

Mike Kelly: Yeah

Tyler Sellhorn: you'd be surprised just how Amish you are. The thing that I'm wanting to live in the space with you a little bit is you have not always been this way. And I'm curious to, for you to tell us a little bit of the story of your journey to how you came up with this system that has your post its and your white boards and your, I'm an author now. And [00:19:00] that kind of journey, give us, go back to the beginning or like you, there has to be some sort of a seed to this fully grown tree of knowledge that you have. How did you get started?

Mike Kelly: it was a performance review with my boss, a guy I loved. I loved working for him kind of a loony bin, but he but quiet confidence like just I loved my time under his wing and he gave me a performance review and it was not a good one. So I was mid twenties. I was so busy at work and I was happy to be busy at work and he gave me this performance for you and I was like thinking, man, this son of a how could he possibly be telling me this?

So I leave the room and he gave it to me and on the one hand, he was right. On the other hand, it was because, and I was thinking this while he was telling me, I'm like, this is because I'm doing your freaking work. And of course I didn't say that because I had paycheck and career pathways, which, you know, just naturally, you know, all the posturing and all the, this is a safe space.

That is a bunch of horseshit, like that, all that is garbage. And it was this performance [00:20:00] review and then I went back to my cube. Which I love my cube world at a bullpen with three teammates. And I really reflected and I was like, you know what? I don't know how I'm spending my time. And so I bought a mole skin.

Do you use mole skins?

Tyler Sellhorn: I am a Chicago made field note field notes person.

It's not right next to me, but I also am a big fan of the sidekick note pad from Cortex brand like it's, it, and all of that is really just the first layer when I need to write something down. Like it's not like a system inside of those spaces. Kind of like you've got your post its and all that sort of stuff. I don't if it's going to be something that I returned to like over time, it's going to end up in the computer for me.

Mike Kelly: Okay. So here you go. So I didn't have the old saying a pot or a window, the same, but I bought a mole skin and it was like 24. And I remember thinking this is an outrageous amount of money to spend on a notebook. But I thought it kind of looked professional. I could carry it with me and my mentor then told me everything you do communicates where you park, what you wear, how you prepare for a [00:21:00] meeting.

And so I had already been thinking about that. And I just started and I decided in that moment. Okay. Anything that takes me 15 minutes or more is going to get an individual page in my notebook. So that was my organizing principle. And then after the first week of that, I just indexed, how did I spend my time?

And so now I say, you need some facts to go along with your feelings. So the feeling I had exiting that meeting was one of frustration. And this son of a gun is taking me out to the woodshed and my performance review, and I'm doing his work. No acknowledgement. I mean, I was doing good work. I just wasn't doing my work.

And so he was right in that way and I wanted to own it. And so what I, that first list, so this is 2008, I'm an individual contributor at a big global company. And I was shocked at how I spent my time and I was like, Oh my gosh, I am all over the map. And so I just, I didn't do it day by day because I wanted to see the result just in my flow, what was actually happening.

And that was 118 volumes [00:22:00] ago. And now anything I do goes in my notebook. There's 120 pages in each of these notebooks. I number them. And so my page today has a speakeasy with Tyler and I had goals on my left side of the page. And then the right side is just, The notes I have taken since I've been chatting with you Oh, that was interesting.

I wonder what about the software thing above our heads. We still haven't talked about that, Mr. And uh, then I started to index them. And so I index every single one of these volumes. So I've thought about my title. So if you and I talk six more times, which I know we're probably not going to do, but I would be able to capture each of those.

And then I have the little smaller, thin moleskin that goes in my little leather binder and it's my execution notebook. So I have to do it. It does not go off into the ether, which is what you just described. I migrate it and I have a little to do list in there and I have a monthly goal list. So it's getting ready to turn the month.

I'm already thinking about, okay, there's 20 business days in October. What are the things that I have to do [00:23:00] to move my business forward? Turns out Tyler, those things are on repeat. I have a revenue goal. I have a customer goal. I have a financial operations goal. There's nine goals at my company. I did that at the beginning of the year.

I do it each month. And so I'll use seven or eight notebooks a year. I've done this from individual contributor to the corner office of running a CEO as a CEO of running a 420 million business, pen and paper, my heart, my head, my hands and my feet in relationship with the people I am there to serve. And what I love about it is it forces you to focus.

Not everything actually matters. And so thinking that we can do it is a beautiful thing. And I love the tool you're creating. And I use one just like it and all these modes of help me capture it. Don't let it get lost in the ether. But part of it is I wanted to get lost in the ether because it's not worthy.

I don't want to be in a muddle. I want to be in the left lane of this highway, steady Eddie, 65 miles an hour. I don't want to be over in the right lane. And I'm working with a teammate who loves all the tech and tools. I love this cat [00:24:00] and he's a mature grown man. Tyler, he is lost in bumper to bumper traffic because all of his tools are getting in his way.

It's dude, get out of that lane. Get clear. What am I supposed to do? Think about it. Set your plan. Goals are just good objectives with actions listed. That's it. What are they? Get it up. Get it out. Lead and lag measures. Write it down. Now that's the software we built to if you have to communicate it, put it in the software.

So it's got to migrate so that we have a shared common definition of success. Understand your job description, your gifting and your gaps and go rock and roll, baby. Go do it. Go be who God made you to be. Get out there. That's how we do it. So that migration pattern, the beauty of pen and paper and your heart and your head, for that deepest thinking and feeling works and it is timeless.

And AI is never too late. Going to be able to do that. It'll help. It's a good tool, but I feel like we're in a little bit of a hallucination [00:25:00] when we act as if there are no consequences and we act as if we are not atrophying your ability to think. Don't cede that position. Don't give it up. You're uniquely you.

We need one Tyler in this world. Correct? Don't give it up. Now, once you're done thinking, let it package it up and create your format and all that kind of stuff.

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah we don't think we've arrived, right? We are in progress, right? In terms of, us building the layer that is beyond our fingers if we're writing or beyond our voice, if we are speaking and transcribing, right? There's not. A perfect end state here. We are just trying to drive towards the opportunity for us to be thoughtful and considered and reflective in ways that survive the moment because that 10 percent that you're talking about needs to end up on the right post it note that ends up on the whiteboard that ends up in the book.

Mike Kelly: Correct?

Tyler Sellhorn: The thing that we're trying to do is to help you have that 10 [00:26:00] percent grow, right? We, using the tool and we'd also like to say that just, just keep talking, keep, keep thinking, keep speaking your mind, right? And allow for that 100 percent to even get out of your head, right?

Because so often it'll stay right there in our mind and it never leaves. So that's what we're trying to build. I guess

Mike Kelly: Don't you think that's another problem though? Don't you think that's another problem? Like why are you not getting it up and getting it out? I met with a guy the other night has had a lot of outward success and yet this guy is crippled by the burden of, Oh, I have so many ideas that I just can't get out.

Tyler Sellhorn: we're trying to do is we're trying to invite people into that space where you should take a walk with your headphones on and the way I like to talk about how I use cleft is that I do capture, capture, capture, and then later on paste, paste, paste. And some of those things I don't paste. Some of those things, stay where they were, cause it turns out that wasn't a great idea or actually, you know what, this, this needs to merge with this other idea that's already in my system. And, you know, I just was repeating [00:27:00] myself. I think that the thing that I want to like, invite you to conclude for us is to help us get into that space.

Cause you're talking about something that I think is really important to me, is that trigger to be in that headspace, that heart space. That you mentioned that performance review, right? You're starting to think about who you are and how you communicate, like what you're about. Like you're buying expensive notebooks to say something about yourself to yourself and to others. And I guess maybe I want to get into that heart space that you're talking about where it's you know what, I do actually want to make a difference. I do want to make an impact on the mission. I want this work to be meaningful to me and to the others that I'm working with. How do we get into that space where we're saying to ourselves, okay, this is how I'm going to choose to be like, Okay. For myself, I always think about, my identity stack, right? Who am I from myself as a professional, right? I am a spouse. I am a parent. I am a youth sports coach. I'm a believer. I'm a learner. I am a software nerd. So yeah, outside [00:28:00] looking in, I might look like a traffic jam of tools to you Mike. But I guess maybe for me, Like that is part of who I am and like how I express, what is excellence and what is success. Us get into that space where we're saying, you know what, I do want to have a system that is going to help me find success and find the meaning that I was seeking.

Mike Kelly: I love it. Can I just drop back to one thing we were ending on in that last one, the company that helped me publish the book taught a vomit draft. And so their whole point is you got to just get it up and get it out.

Tyler Sellhorn: Cleft is here for your vomit.

Mike Kelly: Right.

Tyler Sellhorn: will clean it up and give you back a bucket.

Mike Kelly: But the insight that I didn't want to lose here is that they taught that your creator brain gets stomped by your editing brain. All day, every day. So when you're in creative mode, they taught this volume. So, for one hour after I wrote my outline and I understood all the mechanics of what I was doing for one hour, every morning, 6 30 to 7 30 AM egg timer, I just wrote vomited.

And in 30 days, I wrote 68, 000 words, no [00:29:00] editing, no rereading, no nothing. And I would literally, if the egg timer went off, I'd stop mid sentence and walk away. Cause I got to run my business. I'm married. I have my kids. We have our kids, you know, all the things. The book published has 28, 000 words. And I hope mostly the good ones that would be of service to somebody doing their work.

So in this creative process, which I love that you're thinking about this and offering part of the conversation. The editor brain and the creative brain. It's editor all day, so don't try to do both at once. Just create and then edit and have the courage to finally ship. Is that crazy? Worked.

Tyler Sellhorn: It's, it's exactly how we are trying to build cleft for those that are editing themselves too much, right? Cleft is there to clean you up, right? And you're like, you can be like, yeah, you know what, actually I wanted the whole vomit, right? And you can go back to the transcript if that's what you want. But for the most part, like you're going to end up in the space where it's, you want, this is something I can put into an actual draft that I save and iterate and build upon, whether [00:30:00] it's 68 to 28, right. K words. Right. I think we're definitely in the space of, you know, 15, 30 minutes of talking, right.

Is going to give you back something useful. And you don't have to stop to think and type and then not type and just walk and you're talking to yourself, right? Well,

Mike Kelly: Yeah, I'm here for it.

Tyler Sellhorn: give it gives you something back.

Mike Kelly: Okay. So I think so to conclude with your good question here, one, I think for the group that's editing themselves too much. I think there is a big bucket of fear. That is actually the root cause problem there. And so there's a group and I put this all under imposter syndrome.

So Tyler, I think there's a group of us Who are perfectionists? And unless and until things are perfect, you don't feel good. And so I see CEOs. I know I suffered from this. We took our business from 300 million to 420 million in four years. Phenomenal growth and Tyler. I was still not happy. I was still sucking my teeth.

I'm like, eh, we could have done four 50. We exceeded the goal. What beyond wildest dreams. And I was lost. I lost the [00:31:00] plot. Of what I mean, I was keeping success at a distance and ultimately some of that is really good and productive and those perfectionists are incredibly productive at work because they're never satisfied.

You recognize that profile, then there's a group that are also keeping success at a distance, but I call this group the posers and the posers sound beautiful. They have all the right words and you're in a meeting with them and you're like, Oh my God, we are going to solve world hunger here. This is amazing.

And then you come back two weeks later entirely. You're like, Oh my gosh, I don't even think we ate dinner. I thought we were solving world hunger. We barely, we're almost going to starve. The poser is dealing with something. They don't want the report card. They cannot handle the results. They're doing all kinds of things to deflect accountability.

It's like, friends, this isn't how it works. Both of them are a parody. And then Tyler, the one to watch out for here, is the Ponzi artist who is out for self aggrandizement at all costs. They're like at an elite level ability to identify your weakness as a perfectionist or as a poser [00:32:00] and roll you up. And that, all of that, I think is what's in front of unlocking some of these concepts for people, because I think heart set is actually really intriguing.

And I hope that's what breaks through and what I can contribute to the conversation because I know it's true in my bones and in my bloodstream. I know it's true. Because when I tell you, why do I love my wife, Jessica, because she is beautiful and funny. And she always takes the other side of the argument, whether I like it or not.

And the way she loves me and our children is like, and Tyler, those are unsatisfied. Like I, I still am like, Oh, I wish I could say this. But I know in my deepest being, because that's the expression of love. It is an attitude of action done in someone else's best interest done in a way that they understand it as love.

And so when we think about these things, identity, which is what you were talking about, All these hats we wear. It's fun. It's life. [00:33:00] You're capable of a great many things. Don't put yourself in that one box, but identity of the day. You are a human being. I am a human being and you said it. So I'll continue it made in the image of God, the best creator who in Genesis 219.

Right. Eve hasn't shown up yet. Says to the man, Adam, God's having fun. I'm going to create, I'm going to do this. And he's creating mountains and animals. And he brings those animals to the man. And he's like, Hey, how about you name them? It's like, whew, wait, what? We love, we love to skip right by that part of the Bible creating animals.

Is image bearing it's how we're designed and it's so beautiful. And so identity issue of the day, you're a human being, not a human doing. You're not a software nerd first. You're a child of the Most High God, me too. And it's man, so that I can love God and love my wife and love my neighbor and love my enemy.

That one's so hard. I don't want to love my enemy. My enemy frustrates me, but I'm supposed to do it. I have to do it. And I've been given the [00:34:00] power to do it. And so the meaning and the mission for me is that we try to recapture what it means to be human. And understand the gifts we have been given are for a specific purpose and that it's we get to be on this playing field right now, living and doing and being joyful and going through the agony of life together in relationship.

And we are not built to go through it alone. We're supposed to be in relationship. We're supposed to be doing deep work. We're not just supposed to have a life of leisure. Like we're here to get it done. The project is rolling out, you know? And so the the possibilities are endless, but in so many ways, we're losing the plot.

And so I just want to help contribute to the conversation of let's keep track of one another and try to go for real, interesting, hard conversation and not shy away from that because, you know, we're worried about hurting each other's feelings. Let's just be compassionate towards one another and try to go for it and learn together how we're designed.

Tyler Sellhorn: I think that's an awesome way to conclude of just [00:35:00] reminding ourselves to ask the question of, like, it is that we are and who do we want to be? expressing love, right, in the ways that we answer those questions, right? And I know for myself, I am excited to be a co laborer on this project with you. Thank you very much for the opportunity to learn out loud with you, Mike.

Mike Kelly: Tyler, your delight. Thanks for having me.

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