← The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 736: Surprise Stretches Time | Dan Heath, The Power of Moments
00:57:18
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- [00:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:29]
Jenny Ertz
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Ertz. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and today number one New York Times best selling author of six beloved business books and that these books have been translated into 35 languages. Sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Also an incredible podcaster. We're going to be talking about your podcast today, which I think is so applicable for families who are trying to guide their kids into the world of work. Dan Heath, welcome.
- [00:57]
Dan Heath
Thanks so much, Jenny. What a treat to be here.
- [00:59]
Jenny Ertz
Okay. I would like to show you that I am a super fan. So here we go. Are we ready?
- [01:03]
Dan Heath
No way. Wow.
- [01:05]
Jenny Ertz
I'm in a super fan for a long time. I can't even remember when I got which of your books.
- [01:10]
Dan Heath
That's the whole stack.
- [01:11]
Jenny Ertz
It's the whole stack. So the books are. A lot of them have these one word titles. Switch how to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Upstream the Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen. If you're listening and think, oh, these are very applicable to parenting. They all are decisive. I How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work. Reset. How to Change what's Not Working, Made to Stick. Why some Ideas Survive and Others Die in the power of moments that we're gonna be focusing on today. Why certain experiences have extraordinary impact. And last night as I was kind of gathering all the books, Dan, I couldn't find Switch. And we're. We just have a couple spots in our house where we have books and I was like, where is it? And my teenage daughter had taken it.
- [01:48]
Dan Heath
No way. Oh, wow. That's the ultimate compliment to have a teenager voluntarily choose to read it.
- [01:54]
Jenny Ertz
Yes.
- [01:55]
Dan Heath
Well, tell her thank you for that. Yeah.
- [01:57]
Jenny Ertz
So I'm a huge fan. I that these books obviously are life changing, as do millions of other people around the entire world. So could you give us a little bit of backstory? I don't know anybody who writes books with their brother.
- [02:08]
Dan Heath
I hear that a lot, actually. People are often surprised that we get along well enough to do that. I think our secret is we're 10 years apart. So I'm 52 and he's 62. And so if you think about it, when we were growing up, I mean, we barely knew each other, right? Like, he was off to college when I was eight years old. So, you know, we never developed that sort of cutthroat sibling rivalry that other brothers have. It would have been absurd. He would have beat me at everything handily. So we kind of got to know each other as adults. And, you know, we had a chance to write our first book together called Made to Stick years and years ago, and we didn't. I mean, we just thought it was kind of a fun thing to do on the side. Like, we had gotten lucky with the, with the book deal and we, neither one of us knew anything about writing books and we both had day jobs. And so we just thought, hey, this is something fun for us to do together. It'll sell 18 copies and we'll go back to our lives and we'll be proud that we did this book. And then it just kind of took on a life of its own and we got an unexpected wave of publicity and it, like, opened all these doors that I was so happy to walk through.
- [03:11]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Wow, what a story.
- [03:12]
Jenny Ertz
And that is a fantastic book. Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. So let's talk about your podcast. There is a. It's not a statistic, but there's a woman, her name's Hannah Maruyama, and she has a podcast with her husband Ryan. And it's called Degree Free. And it's about, it's not about like, it's not dissing a college degree, but it's about saying, like, do you really need it? And trying to help that sort of 18 to 24 year old figure out their life. And so she had said one time that most people, and maybe it was most kids, I think, can only name five to seven jobs. And she said that's a huge problem because if you can only name five to seven jobs, you don't have any understanding of what, what else is out there for you. And so they go through this whole thing about, like, trying to determine she has an exercise.
- [03:59]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
If you talk about the roll of
- [04:00]
Jenny Ertz
paper towel that's on your kitchen table, how many jobs went in to getting that? It was good, right? So then you start to think. So your podcast is highlighting all of these different types of jobs. I think that's so valuable. So, Dan, can you tell us where the idea came from to begin with?
- [04:19]
Dan Heath
Yeah. So the podcast is called what it's like to be. And in every episode I interview somebody from different profession. We've had cattle ranchers and homicide detectives and daycare owners and welders and tennis coaches. And we're on about our 65th or 68th episode. So we only have what, five or 600 to catch up with you. What do you want?
- [04:41]
Jenny Ertz
I know I do have a lot,
- [04:43]
Dan Heath
but the inspiration was there's a famous book written by Studs Terkel called Working and he interviewed people published in the 70s, interviewed people from a couple hundred different professions. And it was just absolutely captivating to hear people talk about their work. And I thought, fast forward 50 years, I thought, wouldn't it be cool to hear people not just read the interviews on the page? And so I kind of conceived it as this almost curiosity driven enterprise. Like, what is it like to walk in the shoes of somebody who's a professional Santa Claus? And what annoys him and what delights him? How does it feel to be a summer camp director? And what are the horrible things that can go wrong at camp? And then what I learned, the show's been out for about two and a half years now, is I kept hearing from families who said, we listen to this together. It's like the only thing we can agree on in the car because we all have different musical tastes and the mom wants to listen to true crime and the dad wants to listen to sports pods and the kids want to listen to Taylor Swift or something else. And. But we can agree on this. And so I don't want to oversell this. This is not intended to be like a career search podcast. It's not comprehensive enough for that, I don't think. But I think it's one of those podcasts where it is so rare for a young adult or a kid to hear people talking honestly about their work. And not just the boring blah, blah of what are the tasks, but how does it feel to do it and what lifts you up and what's stressful. And if you're getting in a fight with someone at work, who is it? And. And the thing that has absolutely dazzled me and has taught me a lot, honestly, is just the way that you can hear the same passion come through from a welder, from a Secret Service agent, from the first episode was with a stadium beer vendor. And it just broadens your mind because I think we're kind of taught that there's a hierarchy of jobs. These are the good jobs, these are the high prestige jobs, these are the high paying jobs. And look, some jobs do pay more than others. That's true. And it's not obvious that the jobs at the top of that pyramid are the best ones for you. And the proof is in these people I'm talking to. The welder I talk to. I would challenge you to listen to this episode. Is so excited to be a welder. He doesn't think, oh, gosh, I didn't make it to being an investment banker or, you know, a secretary of defense or something like. No, he found his place, and I think that's what's really satisfying about it.
- [07:27]
Jenny Ertz
What a cool premise for a show. There's a book that came out last year called Five Types of Wealth. The Five Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom, and that's what he talks about. Like this wealth. The actual money part is only one of the five types of wealth. And it doesn't matter then in a lot of cases, as long as you have your basic needs met. How much does the job pay? That's not necessarily the most important aspect of it. So there is an opportunity for someone to be on. You know, I know you don't take everyone, but you have a way for people to reach out, and they can either give a suggestion or they can suggest themselves. I'll put the links in the show notes. So I was curious about how many of these people that you already knew.
- [08:08]
Dan Heath
Almost none. In fact, it's. It's kind of a principle of mine is. Is I don't want to start casting my friends on the show, mostly because then I worry that my other friends who I don't put on the show will think that. Will think I think they're not interesting enough or, you know, so I'm just like, I just want to put up a wall and. And try to get out there and meet new people. So. And that is the hardest part of the show, honestly, is. Is sometimes it's a real needle in a haystack operation. Like, how do you find a daycare owner or an aerospace engineer who loves their job, who has a lot of tenure, really knows their stuff, and is good at talking about it on a podcast, which. Which is not something we're born with. You know, that is a. That is a skill. So we spent a ton of time finding the right people to be the ambassadors for their professions.
- [08:59]
Jenny Ertz
Oh, I just love it. And there are so many great questions. So here was an example of a question. What would you do? And I never would have considered this, but you. Then you get this insight into what this career is like. Okay, what do you do if you are a hairstylist and a client Comes in and says, I want a hairstyle like Taylor Swift. You know, they bring up some celebrity hairstyle, and the hairstylist knows it's not going to look good on them.
- [09:22]
Dan Heath
Mm. She was such a hoot. The hairstylist has run a salon for many, many years. And she says, you know, her clients will come in, you know, I want this. I want this Holly Berry look. And she's like, well, your face don't look like Holly Berry. And she said, you know, it's this kind of delicate operation where you have to educate people. Because what she sees in an instant, and this is what I love learning about these professions, is all this kind of, like, bone level knowledge that they build up. It's like she'll look at somebody and she'll see what's their facial shape, how big is their forehead, where are their eyebrows, are their eyes symmetrical or asymmetrical? And all this kind of weighs into the hair style that you select because it'll be flattering for different kinds of faces. And so she'll have to kind of reverse engineer and say, well, look, the thing about Holly Berry space is she has these traits and these traits, and your face is a little different. And I think, you know, what looks good for her may not flatter you. And I was just so tickled by that.
- [10:17]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. All the things that you just didn't know you wanted to know. You say it's like 100 nosy questions, but too polite to ask. Then you get to listen to the conversation. So this is a top 50 society and culture podcast. It is called what it's like to be with Dan Heath. And the ones that kind of stuck out to me. You already brought up Santa Claus. But like an Olympic bobsledder, a baker, a hospice nurse, an audiobook narrator. Even for me, I was, like, surprised. I was like, oh, I forgot that that's a job. A toy distributor, an NBA referee. When I went to college, I went to college and one of my classmates was, like, a referee for not professional level, but, like, one level less. I never know about sports for hockey. And he got flown all over the world to wrap these games, and he made a ton of money. And it wasn't even the top level, it was one level down. And I thought, oh, I would have even known that was a job. An ocean lifeguard, a piano teacher, a mystery novelist. What a thing. So do you have a whole lot in the hopper?
- [11:17]
Dan Heath
Oh, yeah. In fact, literally just an hour ago, I stopped recording with an aerospace engineer. Just this hotshot woman who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with NASA was one of the most instrumental people in landing the rover Perseverance on Mars about five years ago. Man, what crazy story. So one of the things that stuck with me is, she said, as the rover is approaching Mars, they go through what they refer to as the seven minutes of terror, because that's how long it takes to get from the outer atmosphere of Mars down to the surface. And during the seven minutes, first of all, the rover has to go through all these transformations. First, there's a bunch of miniature explosions. Is like, part of the ship that got it to Mars's orbit or jettison, so it can prepare to come in. It's going so fast that it's getting, like, over 10,000 degrees in heat. And so it has this heat shield that has to come out. And then if it survives the heat, then, you know, the landing gear has to come down and there's, like, all these stages. And here's the thing. On Earth, they don't know what's happening, like, when they hear back because they're the speed of light. It takes about 11 minutes to get back and forth from here to Mars.
- [12:34]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
And.
- [12:34]
Dan Heath
And so, like, they're not controlling anything. If something goes wrong as it approaches Mars, they can't do anything about it. The first message they get back 11 minutes later because of that delay is basically like, did this thing burn up? Is it destroyed, or is it live on the planet? Can you imagine? You've been working on this for eight years, and then you have to sit there and wait and wait and wait, and you get the message. And there's actually a YouTube video of. This is so beautiful. The moment when they get the message that it's landed successfully on Mars. And, man, talk about an epic moment. Just. Just incredible. It gives me goosebumps.
- [13:14]
Jenny Ertz
Wow, what a conversation. Oh, and what a valuable podcast, especially because we need this. Hannah called it vocation creativity, I think, or something like that. You know, it's like, we need to know what's out there so you can know what to choose, because you get one shot, you know, you get one life. I know people, you know, can pivot from thing to thing. So let's tie this to this book. It's called the Power of Moments. And I, like I said, I'm a huge fan, and I've got a stack
- [13:38]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
of all the books.
- [13:38]
Jenny Ertz
There's a New York Times bestseller. This is about why certain experiences have extraordinary impact. Fantastic for families. And talking about vocation. You do talk about vocation in this book. You talk About a company called Pivot Planet. It was originally called Vocation Vacations and now it's called Pivot Planet. But it's. I thought this is actually a fantastic idea where you can pay to go shadow somebody for a period of time to actually see if you like that job.
- [14:07]
Dan Heath
Yeah, I love this idea too, to be clear. I don't think it exists anymore, sadly. But I'll talk about what it was like when it had its run. And it was this cool idea where if you'd always had the fantasy of starting a bakery, for instance, maybe you love to bake and you're thinking, hey, maybe I could do this for my living. You could pay money to go and shadow someone in a real bakery who would kind of take you under their wing and show you the ropes. And that way you could get a feel for it without, you know, putting down six figures on a retail spot or something. You could kind of dabble in it. And I thought that was such a cool idea. I don't know why it didn't work. But what a great way to kind of reality test your fantasies, you know?
- [14:47]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, absolutely. Well, that didn't work out. So people can, I guess, just listen to your podcast and that will be.
- [14:52]
Dan Heath
Yeah, next best thing.
- [14:54]
Jenny Ertz
Yes, exactly. Okay, so the power moments. This is about becoming the author of the defining moments in your life. And so what an incredibly applicable topic for parents. I would love to just talk about
- [15:07]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
the concept of school and how you,
- [15:09]
Jenny Ertz
you say like school, Nobody really remembers anything. I mean, that's kind of the gist of it. The highlights of their childhood are the things that are outside of school. So one of the things that you talk about in this book is you say school needs to be much more like sports. Can you explain why?
- [15:27]
Dan Heath
Yes. Well, this came actually from, from a principal named Jeff Gilbert had this great quote that struck such a chord with me. He said, we run school like it's non stop practice. You never get a game. He said nobody would try out for the basketball team or the cheer squad if it was just practice, practice, practice. I mean, who would do that? It's the game that's the hook. And what is it about a game? Well, it's high stakes. You get your blood pumping, you're competing, you're, you know, literally or figuratively on stage. There's probably people there watching you, right? And you, you have the highs that come with winning and the lows that come from defeat or if you miss the crucial shot. And those kind of emotional roller coasters, like those are the elements that make moments memorable. And the principal said, we don't have anything like that for academics. And don't think test. A test is not the same thing as a game. Nobody gets dressed up to take a test. Nobody's watching you when you take a test. You know, it's a very different experience. And so he had challenged his faculty to start thinking, like, what are the games for school? And they came up with, we tell the story in the book of what they called the trial of human nature. So this was a collaboration between a history teacher and a literature teacher. And they built it around the book Lord of the flies by William Golding, you probably remember, but it's the one about the boys who are marooned on a remote island and detached from civilization, they kind of revert to a state of nature. So it's a pretty bleak commentary on what we're really like at our core. And so what they challenge their students to do is put the author, William Golding, on trial for slandering human nature. And so some of the students are asked to prosecute him to say, this is not fair. We're not like this. Some of the students are asked to defend him as his defense attorney, say, well, actually, no, look at these things. We are pretty horrible in these situations. A lot of the students become witnesses that are either historical figures, you know, Joseph Stalin, Albert Einstein, Florence Nightingale, or fictional characters. You know, even Darth Vader made an appearance at one trial. Students are on the jury. One of the students is the judge. And so for about six weeks, they prepare for this trial that when it comes, is held in an actual California superior courtroom. They rent it out. They bus students in. You know, parents and faculty members come to sit in the audience to watch, and they play out these roles. And, you know, there's an element of risk involved like that. There's a real jury there that's going to make a verdict. And sometimes Golding gets convicted, and sometimes he goes free. And there's an element of performance. And, you know, the person that comes as Darth Vader dresses up as Darth Vader. And it's just a beautiful example of what school could be like. Like, that is what we call, in the books, parlance, a peak moment. And it was something that some. Some clever teachers did intentionally for the sake of creating a moment that would. That would last with time.
- [18:29]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah. No child is ever going to forget that, ever. And they're going to include that in the highlights of their high school memories.
- [18:36]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [19:33]
Jenny Ertz
The Womb Go bikes are incredible.
- [19:35]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [22:23]
Jenny Ertz
it says school should be School needs to be much more like sports. In sports there's a game and it's
- [22:27]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
in front of an audience.
- [22:28]
Jenny Ertz
We run school like it's a non stop practice is what you were talking about earlier and you went on to write. I think it's very rare for parents to see their students work. They see swim meets, they're going to see dance performances, they're going to see plays. But it's very rare for them to see see the, you know, the highlights of the academic work their kids do. So let's take this concept of Peaks into the family. And I just think in life you talk about how as as we get older, life seems to just go by faster and it's because we don't have any of these moments that are out of the ordinary. So what are some ways that a family could incorporate Peaks into their family Existence when the kids are young.
- [23:06]
Dan Heath
It's a great question. And I think, you know, our kind of inspiration here is something that I'll call the Disney paradox, which I think everybody listening to will be able to relate to, because whether or not you've been to Disney, you've been to some theme park, and if you just kind of call up what that day was like, I've been there pretty recently, so this is very fresh for me. The reality is, if we hooked you up to, like an experience monitor, like, how you were feeling at any given second over the course of the day. My prediction is, for most of those second measurements, you would have been happier sitting on your couch at home watching Netflix. Right? Because it's. You're in. You're constantly in lines, and it's, you know, 98 degrees and humid in Orlando, and you're annoyed with what other people are doing, and you're annoyed with what your kids are doing, and it's. You're buying a $28 hot dog. And, you know, all these things that are irritants. But there are certain moments over the course of the day that are absolutely amazing. You're on a roller coaster that just makes you giggle like a six year old. And, you know, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse come over to your kid and you see them, like, unleash a smile you've never seen before on their face, and you take these photos. And so the significance of this is, this is really, in a way, the very heart of the book is the idea that there are some moments that are disproportionately remembered and disproportionately meaningful. They. They hover above the rest. Peak moments. And so what Disney is good at is creating peak moments. And the fact that they create three or four or five of these kind of golden moments over the course of the day makes you completely forget about the rest of the day. That was a nuisance and that was sweaty and that you had you waiting in lines, you know, a year later, we don't remember those things. Right? That's true. That's why all of that stuff fades in memory. And then a year later, you're like, when can we get back to Disney? So, you know, back to your question. I think the metaphor is the same. Even when we're not in the theme park business, we're in the parenting business. And that is not every moment of every day has to be special. We don't have to be, you know, running a Broadway production for our kids. Right? But if we think about it in Terms of like, what would make this week special? And if there's one thing that we can put together, that's a week well spent. You know, not every moment can be or should be as memorable as anything else. But, but we are capable of making those moments if we try.
- [25:36]
Jenny Ertz
It's a really important message. You say it's hard, it's hard to fight flatness and make moments that matter. We spend weekend after weekend with our kids, but in our memories, all those times blend together. And you wrote there's always something that seems more urgent. So this, actually, this is a great concept though, because it doesn't have to be that many peaks if you start to orchestrate them, you know, you just have, you don't need a lot. Like you said, once a week, can, can I create a peak? You say it's going to be harder than you think, but once you've done it, you're going to consider every ounce
- [26:08]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
of effort worth it.
- [26:09]
Jenny Ertz
You will have created your own definite moment. We must learn to think in moments. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish. So this is incredible advice, incredible direction for parents.
- [26:22]
Dan Heath
I've got actually one super duper practical thing that anybody who's a parent who's listening could probably steal this idea and put it into practice tomorrow. This is something that's not in the book. It's something that I learned from a reader who came up to me at a conference and said, hey, I read Power Moments and it inspired me to try something with my kids. And so I said, oh, well, tell me about it. And he said, I've got a five year old and an eight year old, five year old little girl, eight year old boy. And I challenged them to create their own perfect day. So, you know, day from start to finish. And he said, I told them as long as it wasn't full of, you know, crazy stuff like, oh, we're going to have a picnic on the moon, like if they kept it grounded in the real world, like your mom and I are going to try to make this happen for you. But he also said he wanted them to put some real thought into it. So he said he asked them to draw up an agenda for the day. Like, okay, we wake up, we do this and then at this time we do this, and for lunch we do blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh man, I have to see what a 5 year old and an 8 year old's perfect days look like. Like, can you send me those agenda? Did you keep them? He said, well, of course. So a couple Days later he emails me scans of these perfect days. And gosh, I wish I could show them to you. They are unbelievable. So the five year olds starts with a walk with the family dog and then a trip to Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which is probably on every human being's perfect day list. And then she wants to eat lunch at Chipotle. And then in the evening time they're going to watch something called the Emoji movie, which I had never heard of, but it turns out it has one of the worst scores ever recorded on Rotten Tomatoes. But of course this is her perfect day, not ours. The little boys wanted to eat breakfast at a place he liked called Rise. And then he wanted to have hot dogs and french fries for lunch. In the afternoon he wanted to play board games with his family. And this is what's so striking about these things are they are not what you would expect. They are not expensive, they are not dramatic. They are the sweetest, most wonderful, you know, activities that are eminently practical. In fact, my favorite thing at the end of the boys day, so it was like on the back of his agenda that he drew it was, I'll never forget this, it said no showers. That was the peak moment of his perfect day, no showers. There was like a little shower head drawn with a circle and a cross through it. And I was thinking, man, isn't there a lesson there for parents that we try so hard to do different things that we think are going to be good for them and if we just ask them, that's not necessarily what perfect means to them.
- [29:09]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Wow.
- [29:10]
Jenny Ertz
We are the creator of these moments. We must learn to think in moments. What a story.
- [29:16]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
What a story.
- [29:17]
Jenny Ertz
And the fact that the parents then absolutely, they can do those things for those kids. In sort of a similar vein, you talk about surprises. So in the book you talk about strategic surprises. You give an example of someone who leaves their. The little kid who leaves their stuffed animal.
- [29:33]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Joshi.
- [29:34]
Jenny Ertz
It's called like at a resort, at a hotel. And they just, they ask for the can, can you mail me my. The kids stuff the animal back and there's a surprise there. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that. But then also for parents, you know, just a little bit of element of surprise. But you say it's kind of tricky because it can't be something that then you grow to expect.
- [29:54]
Dan Heath
That's right.
- [29:55]
Jenny Ertz
You got to break the script. But you can't, you know, if you go to expect it and then, then you no longer do it then people are disappointed. So I. I love the story of Joshi on vacation. This stuffed animal, like, shattering, pretty much a free thing to do, and then maybe taking that little bit of effort and trying to insert it into our family lives.
- [30:14]
Dan Heath
Yeah. So listeners may remember this story. It went viral a few years ago. So the little kid has this stuffed animal that he always sleeps with Joshi. It's a stuffed giraffe. And so every night of his life, he spent with Joshi. And the family goes on vacation to this Ritz Carlton in Florida. Memory serves, they leave Joshie behind. And of course, the parents realize it in a panic when they get home, they're trying to put the kid to bed. And so they kind of, you know, do what most parents would do in the situation, and that's lie through their teeth and say, yeah, no, Joshi, Josh, he just decided to stay around. He was really having a good time on vacation. Josh is going to be back in a day or two, and the boy kind of buys it, gets to sleep, and then they frantically get in touch with the Ritz and say, hey, we've got to have this back. Could you please help us out? And we'll pay whatever it takes to, you know, FedEx it back. And so the staff does, and what they include with Joshi is a photo album of Joshi, like, in all these scenes around the resort, because the parents confessed. Look, we told our kid this lie that Joshi, like, stayed around at the resort. And so the staff actually paid that off with, like, photos of Joshie in a lounge chair by the pool or in the spa area with little cucumber slices over his eyes and just all these kind of magical scenes. And if you think about. I mean, you're not going to get that at the Holiday Inn Express, right? I mean, there has to be, like, a certain culture to make that possible, because think about how much time it took to rush around with this little stuffed animal and prop it up and put the cucumber slices on it. And so in the book, that's an example of what we call breaking the script, which is just. We seem to heighten the memorability of a moment when it's very surprising, when it's very unexpected. Now, the flip side of that is now the Ritz is in a situation where every parent who's on social media, you know, thinks, well, gosh, I want that Joshy treatment. And you have to believe there are at least some parents who tried to leave their stuffed animals behind to get, you know, the photo album or whatever. And so it's kind of a double edged sword where, you know, novelty really does make experiences more memorable. And you've got to kind of watch out that that doesn't just become immediately absorbed into expectation. Like, I'll give you, my father in law gave me the best piece of advice when we were just about to have kids. And I didn't appreciate it at the time or I didn't really understand what he means, but I think about it all the time now. He said with your kids, don't do something once that you wouldn't do a hundred times. Right? Because that first time you get a wild hair and you hold them over your head and spin them around like a helicopter. Like what's the next thing they say again, Again. So it's novelty is a real balance. Novelty is great for enriching experience but, but carried too far. It can just become absorbed, like an expectation.
- [33:18]
Jenny Ertz
So break the script. One of the things that you wrote is surprise stretches time. Novelty changes our perception of time. Time seems to accelerate as we get older because our lives become routine and less novel. So learn to recognize your own scripts. Play with them, poke at them, disrupt them. But then like you said, there is this balance. So that's an important thing to know. And important obviously all, all these parallels and things that you could insert into your family. This was an interesting thing that I wouldn't have considered and I didn't know. I wouldn't have considered and I didn't know. So one of the topics of conversation is that, okay, if you're a business owner, a business that instead of focusing on your happy customers, a lot of businesses will focus on the unhappy customers and trying to sort of fix their negative experiences instead of pouring their resources into the people that are already happy customers. And so there was a, it was a nine times more revenue. If you elevate the positives instead of focusing on these negatives, you'll earn nine times more revenue revenue than if you eliminate the negatives. But Most companies spend 80% of their resources on unhappy customers. Keep talking about even how you came across that. I mean, I've never heard of that before.
- [34:32]
Dan Heath
Yeah, it's, it's super interesting and in some ways counterintuitive. But I, I think what happens is we have such a negativity bias, I think in general, not just in business, but in our lives too, where if something goes wrong or if we get some negative feedback or, you know, we tend to dwell on it. As an author, you know, I read 10 reviews and nine of them can be great. And then the one is the one I'm lingering. Oh, what if I should have fixed that? Oh, gosh. So we have a negativity bias. And I think it affects when we start thinking about, well, how are we going to, you know, improve our restaurant or our accountancy or, you know, whatever it is we do for a living. We're probably thinking a lot about, okay, what are people complaining about and how do I fix those things? And what we're challenging people to do in the book is sort of the opposite analysis, which is to say it's not that solving problems is a bad idea. It's not. But we should also be going through the thought process. Like those people who were, say, a seven or eight out of ten. Like, pretty happy, not dazzled, but pretty happy. Like, what would it take to get them up to a 10? What would have given them the kind of experience that they would think about later and that they would tell friends about and maybe post a story about online? And might it be more valuable to get the sevens and eights up to a 10 than it is to get the zeros and ones up to a 5? And that was kind of the point of that study. And that's really about trying to consciously cultivate peak moments. And so, like, the Joshi story is a brilliant example of like getting someone to attend and then reaping the benefits of that. Because it wasn't just that one family that got to attend. All of a sudden it's like millions of people reading this kind of amazing story online and thinking, gosh, I'd like to have a vacation somewhere like that.
- [36:21]
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- [40:02]
Jenny Ertz
that had to do with hotel and service industry was the Popsicle Hotline. And you just read about it in the book and you think, okay, that's like not that hard. It's not super expensive. You know, most hotel experiences are exactly the same but you insert this one peak and that hotel happened to have a couple different things that they did. But the Popsicle was like the, the bigger one. So can you tell people about the Magic Castle Hotel?
- [40:26]
Dan Heath
Yes, this is one of my favorite stories in the book. So the Magic Castle Hotel is called that because it's very close to the Magic Castle Theater which looks like a castle. They have like famous magicians there. It's a well known place in la. Magic Castle is right next to it. It is nothing like a castle. It is like this ugly two story, used to be an apartment building that was converted over to use and it looks like a motel and it's bright yellow and it's gaudy and you would never give this place a second look and go look at the photos online if you don't believe me. Magic Castle Hotel. And if you look at the best rated hotels in LA at the time when we wrote the book, it was the number two rated hotel in la ahead of the Four Seasons, Beverly Hills, the Ritz Carlton. I mean just incredible clash of how could this kind of modest looking place possibly be the number two hotel? And the answer is that they've defined their entire service around moments. And you mentioned my favorite example of this by the pool that they have in the courtyard, which is not much to look at. There's a cherry red phone mounted on the wall that has a sign above it that says Popsicle Hotline. And if you pick it up, as I did when I visited, somebody answers Popsicle Hotline, we'll be right out. And minutes later somebody comes out wearing a suit, holding a silver tray, loaded up with grape and cherry and orange popsicles. They deliver them to you at poolside, all for free, just to create a moment, just to be goofy. They have a snack menu where you can walk up to the front desk and ask for Cracker Jack, Sour Patch Kids, root beer, cream soda. There's a hundred things you can get, all for free, just for asking. They will do your laundry if you bring it. They'll have it washed and folded, returned to you at the end of the day. To pay off the Magic Castle name, they have magicians that do tricks in the lobby several mornings a week. And when I paint that picture now, you can understand why a family visiting LA might actually prefer to stay there over the four seasons, right? Because it's more fun, it's more interesting, it's more innovative. And so that story kind of becomes a metaphor in the book where if we're in the business of crafting experiences, and I think we all are, I mean, we're all in the business of crafting experience for our kids and for our customers or patients or students that we serve. We shouldn't think that to create something wonderful means every detail has to be perfect. It doesn't. You know, the Magic Castle is a perfectly mediocre hotel. So much to complain about. The rooms are average. The lobby looks like the lobby of an oil change place. I mean, this is. This is a. A normal place that became extraordinary. On the Power of Moments.
- [43:16]
Jenny Ertz
Wow, Dan, I got chills when you said it. Even though I'd already read it. I was like, oh, it's such a cool idea. But I got chills because what I thought is, oh, how could I emulate that in my home?
- [43:27]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Could I put a chef's hat on
- [43:28]
Jenny Ertz
one Saturday morning and, like, do a pancake bar? You know, it just something simple to show up in a suit with a tray of all the different kinds of popsicles. And you wrote that guest reviews are rapturous. Rap. Rapturous. I don't even know if I've ever heard anybody use that word. Customers will forgive small swimming pools and underwhelming room decor as long as some moments are magical. But what you wrote is we are not very good at investing in such moments. This is a book that will really change. It will change your family culture. Most things are forgettable, but if you can make them occasionally remarkable. That's the mantra, right? Mostly forgettable, but occasionally remarkable, that it will really change the way that you look back over your life and the way that your family comes together. One of the. The time periods in life where you could really think about starting to insert. Some of these moments are around transitions. So you talked about the first day of work. You know, it's so boring. Come in and fill out your paperwork, watch the sexual harassment video, get your
- [44:36]
Dan Heath
login for the intranet and blah, blah.
- [44:38]
Jenny Ertz
Yes, what could it be?
- [44:40]
Dan Heath
Yeah, so this is a classic example in the book. We argue there are some times in life that cry out for attention. And an example of that is transition points. And we point out that some transition points we do a pretty good job of celebrating. Like, think about weddings. I mean, we pay a lot of attention to weddings. And people grouse, oh, weddings shouldn't be so expensive. I don't know, I don't think they have to be expensive, but we should fuss about them. This is a huge transition, a funeral. I mean, that is a transition that is worth fussing about. And so is a birth and so forth. But we point out, especially in the organizational world, there are a bunch of transitions that we just kind of ignore. And the first day of work is my favorite example because for an employee, this is a huge deal. I mean, remember going to a new school when you were a kid and I don't know if your family ever moved and you go to a new place and you're just torn up, like, am I going to make any friends? Am I going to sit by myself at lunch and am I going to know where to go in the school? It's just an anxiety pit. And I think the same thing is still there in an adult starting a new job. We may manage it a little bit better as adults. So this is a fraught transition for employees. But for employers, we treat it as kind of this administrative checklist like we were talking about. Get in, set up on the Internet, show them to their desk, and. And so in the book we talk about John Deere, which started a first day experience program based on this insight that, hey, if we want people to be happy here, if we want them to feel welcomed, if we want them to be loyal, like, let's start with the beginning. And it's this just incredible. I mean, listen to this. It starts before you even start. You start getting emails from a friend within your group, introduces themselves and kind of tells you, you know, here's what people usually wear and here's where we go to lunch usually. And you can park here in the parking lot. So before you even set foot through the door, you know, you already have a friend on the team. And then the first day of work, they are waiting for you at the front door with a cup of coffee. They kind of show you and say, hey, nice to meet you in person. Come on. They show you to your desk and then over the course of the day, all this amazing stuff happens. You get a video welcome email from the CEO and they have a, a little statue on your desk of the original self polishing plow that John Deere, the inventor made. And they take you out to lunch. And then in the afternoon, your boss's boss comes by to check in and it's this very conscious, very deliberate, very intentional experience that they've laid out for you. And you walk out of there saying, they seem to want me here and the work we're doing here is important. And isn't that worth the fuss too?
- [47:21]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, it sure is. So you think about all the different types of transitions and you talk about them in the book. The book is called the Power of Moments. It's fantastic. I recommend all of them, truly. I mean, I like, how did you even come up with so many different applicable, like so life applicable. I'm holding them up. I'm not even putting the video up, but I'm showing you. I'm like, all these incredible books about like things that matter to everyone. These things matter to everyone. I was just so impressed. I'm like, how do you come up with six books, topics that are applicable to everyone so you can think about your own life, about transitions? It was interesting to me, Dan, talking about transitions. You said, and I didn't realize this, I never would have thought of it. 6 out of 10 most important events happen. So talking about transitions during a relatively narrow window of time between ages 15 to 30. And then when you went on to say 15 years of our lives dominate our memories, they're full of transitions, big changes.
- [48:16]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
And I thought, oh gosh, you know,
- [48:17]
Jenny Ertz
I am in the stage of life where I'm guiding kids. Like my kids are entering that. And so for me, I'm just like kind of bummed.
- [48:28]
Dan Heath
Bummed for yourself or bummed for myself,
- [48:31]
Jenny Ertz
like, oh, it's this kid's very last basketball game that I'm ever gonna get to watch.
- [48:35]
Dan Heath
You know, it's this kid's last recital.
- [48:37]
Jenny Ertz
It's this kid's last, you know, and they're heading into this, this prime, these transitions that are super memorable and I'm out of them. So it made me think, like, should I be trying to intentionally create important events and moments?
- [48:53]
Dan Heath
You know, post 30, this is a really important and big question. So let's, let's start with why that period from roughly age 15 to 30 is so important. So this is probably the peak transitional period of our lives. So many important firsts, right? First kiss, first job, first time away from mom and dad, first serious relationships, potentially first baby, you know, on that timeline, just massive, massive life changes. And what happens naturally over the course of our lives as we start to figure out what kind of work we want to do and who we want to spend our life with and, and do we want to have a family and where do we want to be and who do we want to be close to? Those kinds of transitions, they're not as big anymore at age 55 as they were at age 25. And so there's good news and bad news about that. The bad news is it's not as memorable. And I think we all feel that, I mean, speaking as a 50, something like just the sensation that time is moving faster. And my parents tell me it gets worse, not better, as you get older. I think that is fueled by the absence of novelty. So that's the bad news. But look, there's an easy fix for that, and that is if you want to have the novelty again, divorce your spouse, move to New Zealand, raise sheep, take up drugs. The reason why we don't have as much novelty is because we've made a bunch of wise decisions. And so that's the way I look at it, is, look, we don't have to overreact here. Like they say, variety is the spice of life. But notice we don't like, have dinner with just a plate full of spices. You don't just dump out a whole container of oregano. Spice is intentionally minimal, but it goes a long way. And so I think that's the secret is we shouldn't bemoan the fact that our life is not in turmoil the way it was at age 18 or 22. Right. We've done a good job eliminating the turmoil. And we also shouldn't just let ourselves slip mindlessly into repetition like that. Variety is the spice of life. A little bit of novelty can keep us chugging and keep making memories.
- [51:17]
Jenny Ertz
Yeah, defining moments shape our lives. But we don't have to wait for them to happen. We can be the authors of them. A defining moment is a short experience that is both memorable and meaningful. This is a life changing book and this is obviously applicable for if you're a teacher, if you're an employer, if you're an employee. But really I found so many things that I could take into our family. I want to hit one more and, you know, you talk in this book about risk, and that's a big topic, I think, for kids today. A lot of them don't get a chance to risk.
- [51:44]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
You talk about risk.
- [51:45]
Jenny Ertz
You talk about courage, being contagious. You talk about community and knitting, knitting groups of people together. But as we're wrapping up, I wanted to talk about the praise and recognition. So this is something that you also talk about in the Power of Moments and how there was this thing called the recognition gap.
- [52:00]
Dan Heath
The recognition gap, yeah. So in basically every organization that I go into, there is this gap between the amount of praise that they think they're doling out and the amount that they're actually doling out. There was one study that kind of captures this perfectly. They went to managers and they said, do you frequently commend your employees for a job well done? And 80% of the managers said, yep, yep. Absolutely. Yep. Got that nailed. Mm. And then the researchers, somewhat cheekily, I would say, went to their direct reports to kind of check the logic. They said, do your managers frequently commend you for job well done? You know, how many of the direct reports agreed with that? 20%, not 80%. And so that's the recognition gap. And the point we make in the book is this is. This is borderline criminal behavior. And it kind of doesn't make any sense because recognition for 50 plus years, has been one of the highest motivators of employees. They'll tell you, I mean, just ask them what motivates you, what gets you fired up about work? And recognition is always one of the top three.
- [53:09]
Jenny Ertz
Right.
- [53:09]
Dan Heath
So they're telling you, this is super important. It is pleasurable to give someone recognition. As we all know, when we praise our kids. Right. Makes us feel good. You see your kid kind of beam, and it's so. It's like all smiles, and it's free, for goodness sakes. It's not like some elaborate benefits package where, okay, well, we're going to add health benefits, but that costs a lot. No, recognition is just an endless free currency. And yet the reality is we see this gap emerge between how much people crave and how much is given. And so in the book, we're trying to challenge leaders to fill that gap. And I think probably the same thing is true with Paris.
- [53:47]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [53:48]
Jenny Ertz
Yes, for sure. And spouse, you know, you know, your friends, people that you love, your family members. So there's just so many takeaways in this book. The Power of Moments for Families. I'm gonna. I hate asking questions that I'm sure That you've been asked a thousand times. But I really am curious. First of all, I love the titles of all these books. They're just, like, very succinct. You know, switch and Reset and Upstream and they all. Every single one of the subtitles, it draws you in. You're like, oh, yeah, I want to know the answer to that. Like, I want to know, how can I solve problems before they happen? I want to know why do some ideas survive and others die? You know, in for a lot of contexts, like I, you know, will my challenge of getting outside, like, how. How can I make that survive and not die this decisive one? How to make better choices? I'm like, I want to make better choices in life and work. Every single one.
- [54:40]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
You're like, I want that.
- [54:42]
Jenny Ertz
How did you and Chip figure out
- [54:44]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
what books to write?
- [54:46]
Dan Heath
Oh, man. And you would not believe the amount of human energy that is burned on the title, subtitle and cover. I mean, that's our. That's our display window for the shop. You know, it's like that's what's got to bring people in to make people think, huh, that might be something I could benefit from. And it's been weird over the years sometimes that we've gone from one topic to the next just effortlessly, like, between Made to Stick our first book and Switch our second. It just kind of flowed. Like we. The first book is about how do you communicate with impact in a sticky way? And so we were working with a lot of people who were trying to use communication to create some kind of change in the world. Have schools work different or have your business reach customers better or whatever. And so that got us interested in change. We were thinking, well, communication is part of what creates change, but it's not the whole thing. What else creates change? And so we start digging into change, and that becomes a book called Switch. And so sometimes it's kind of flowed organically. And then actually before the Power of Moments, we were working on a different book and we were in a real slog. It was like we had tried a couple of different ideas, and we just couldn't get excited enough about them because it's such a commitment. You know, it's like any book cycle is going to be three or four years, and that's a lot of your life to dedicate to one topic. And. And so we had gotten to the point where we'd been working on this one topic for probably six or nine months, and that starts to feel like enough work that it's really painful to Flush it. You're like, well, I don't want to just go back to zero after nine months of work. But we didn't. We weren't really feeling it either. And one Christmas we were together. We are on Opposite coast, so we're not together in person very often, but at Christmas we come together. We're in my dad's office, our dad's office, and brainstorming about this kind of underwhelming book. And then somehow we got talking about defining moments. That's how we originally conceived of it in our mind. Defining moments. Like, what makes. When you think about defining moments in your life, what does that mean? Sometimes you hear about defining moments in political campaigns. Like moments that tend to stand. Like, what is it that is being captured there? And we just start doing this kind of breathless brainstorm. We're just throwing ideas around, business ideas and politics and economics and personal. And we're just filling up this word file with a thousand bullet points. And we get to the end of this and we look at each other and we're like. Like, I think we just got a new book. And immediately we knew it. I mean, we couldn't have flushed the old book faster if we had tried. And so we kind of triumphantly come out to the family room and we start trying out some of these ideas with them. And they just look relieved because everybody else thought the old book was as boring as we did, but they were just too polite to say so. So that was the moment that spawned the Moments book.
- [57:45]
Jenny Ertz
Wow. What were you doing before you were an author?
- [57:50]
Dan Heath
Well, this might be interesting for your audience, actually. So after undergrad, I started a company called Thinkwell. I co founded it back in 1997, and from what I understand, I worked at ThinkWell for four years, mind you, and they've gone 25 years without me, so I really have no credit in their ongoing existence. But from what I understand, and they've kind of carved out a niche among homeschool parents because Thinkwell basically makes educational materials that will teach math or economics or biology or those sorts of things in a pretty canned. Not canned, but kind of bottled up way, like a bottled up curriculum. So anyway, that was my entry point into the idea of how do you make ideas stick? Because a lot of that work was we went and tracked down one of the most charismatic math teachers in the country, Ed Berger, who was then at Williams College, just a master teacher. Funny, concrete, playful. And every day in the studio, we're just all thinking about, okay, now we got to teach the chain Rule. That's the next lesson in the chain of 120 that we've got to teach. How can we make this more accessible? How can we like create a story around it or give an example or give an illustration? And so I think, you know, unbeknownst to me, I think that was kind of laying the groundwork for what would become some of the ideas and made to stick.
- [59:16]
Jenny Ertz
Ah, yeah, and it sure did stick. The company's been around 30 years and then all of your books have stuck. Four million copies sold. Incredible.
- [59:24]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
All over the world, worldwide.
- [59:25]
Jenny Ertz
35 languages. And the podcast is called what it's like to Be. I thank you so much for saying yes. Like I said, I mean, I've had your books for a long time, been a huge fan, and obviously our teens are fans as well. And so it's really, truly a gift to get to spend this time with you. We always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood?
- [59:43]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
That was outside.
- [59:45]
Dan Heath
Favorite memory from childhood outside. I'm gonna go with fifth grade field day. Field day doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. At least not for my girls in their schools. But you know, field day for us was like, it was kind of like a track and field meeting meet. And so it was usually late in the year, maybe may time frame the whole days outside and you were doing 100 yard dashes and high jumps and softball throws and relay races and man, it was just like, it was like the best that life could get. And I remember, I mean, I have a very vivid. I had on my favorite outfit. It was like this, this Adidas matching shorts and, and shirt combo with I don't know what you call them, but those like little racing striped things on the sides, blue, green and white. And it was a sunny day and you're out there with your friends and it's. There's some structure with the races and stuff, but there was also a lot of times when you're just kind of milling and doing your own thing and you have some autonomy and you know, somebody brings soft drinks that are ice cold and a. In a cooler, you know, and it was just, it was sort of like, this is. This is it. This is what life's about.
- [60:56]
Jenny Ertz
It's a peak moment.
- [60:58]
Dan Heath
It is a peak moment for sure
- [61:00]
Jenny Ertz
from my perspective because I was not super athletic, but I did like the shoe kick. Did they have that at yours?
- [61:05]
Dan Heath
The shoe? No, I don't know that one.
- [61:06]
Jenny Ertz
You would run, you would, you would untie your shoe. One shoe and you would run up to this line, and then you would fling. You would, like, kick your foot and try and get your shoe to go
- [61:18]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
as far as possible.
- [61:19]
Dan Heath
That's brilliant.
- [61:20]
Jenny Ertz
That was part of field day. And then jump rope. Rope. Jump rope was part of SHIELD.
- [61:24]
Dan Heath
Oh, that's a good one, too.
- [61:25]
Jenny Ertz
That's a peak moment for me, too, for my childhood. Yeah. It's like, how can we just start to intentionally. Intentionally become authors of defining moments?
- [61:34]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Dan, thank you.
- [61:35]
Jenny Ertz
Thanks so much for your time. Thank you for these incredible books that you've written. Some you've written with your brother, and some you've written on your own. Was it the ones you've written on your own? Were those harder, easier?
- [61:44]
Dan Heath
I think some of both. I mean, it was definitely harder because I didn't have Chip's brain and his. His legwork as part of the project. And then in some ways, it's easier because you get to say what the final thing is. You don't have to debate it out. So it's like anything else. It had its pros and cons. But listen, thank you for having me on the show. This has been such a treat. I really, really appreciate it.
- [62:08]
Jenny Ertz
Thanks for being.