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- [00:00]
Lindsay Anderson
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. I'm so excited for today's episode. We're talking about the joy success cycle and I'm talking about that with today's guest, Mr. Kevin Surice. Now, Kevin is well known for his work on Alexa. He's done a lot of AI work, but where his real passion lies right now is the joy success cycle. And in this interview, he, he shares a really powerful strategy for finding the joy in all of the tasks. Because let's face it, if you approach these tasks and you can find joy in tasks, you're going to end up doing them better, you're going to end up enjoying yourself more, and ultimately your life will be more joyful. So he shares so much insight on this episode. It reminds me on what I tell individuals that I coach and consult with about social media. When you're going on social media and all you want to do is say, I hate this. I don't want to do this. The last thing I want to do is pull up the camera. Then the video on the other side is certainly going to be reflecting that, where if you show up to do your social media and you're ready and you're happy and you find joy in that, those videos are going to be 10 times better. And so this joy success cycle applies to everywhere in business and in your life. And I'm so excited to interview Kevin and I'm so excited for you to hear this awesome interview with Kevin.
- [01:34]
Are you ready for next level growth in your business? Welcome to the Lindsay Anderson show where we pull back the curtain on the exact strategies, tools and mindsets that build million dollar empires. If you're hungry for more time, more freedom, and a whole lot more impact, you've come to the right place. Buckle up because we're about to ignite your business journey. Now here's Lindsay.
- [02:04]
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. I'm so excited to welcome today's guest, Mr. Kevin Serait. Now, Kevin is a renowned entrepreneur, innovator and speaker focused on technology, AI and sustainability. As the former CEO of Sirius, he led breakthroughs in green building materials. Now he explores the connection between joy and success, shaping the way we think about achievement. Today he's going to answer the question, how can I connect joy with success? I can't wait to dive in. Welcome to the show, Kevin.
- [02:40]
Kevin Surace
Thanks for having me on, Lindsay.
- [02:42]
Lindsay Anderson
You're welcome. So tell us just a briefly, a little bit more about you. Is there anything else that I missed there?
- [02:47]
Kevin Surace
I'm Mostly known as the father of the virtual assistant. I invented everything that became Siri and Alexa. I have 94 worldwide patents. More than a dozen are in the virtual assistant space and voice user interface space.
- [02:58]
Lindsay Anderson
Very interesting. But today you're not talking to us about AI or technology. It feels like your real passion is how to tie joy in with success.
- [03:07]
Kevin Surace
Well, and, you know, this actually came from people asking me the questions about how is it that you've got. You talked about clean tech. How do you have patents in all of these different fields? And I said, well, you have to have an open mind. And this goes back 20 years. What do you mean, an open mind? You have to be joyful enough in all your tasks to have an open mind, open enough to find the problems, to then solve them. How do you do that? And I really started to put a program together that became part of do about 40 keynotes a year around the world. A lot of them are in artificial intelligence, of course, and a lot of them are on the Joy Success cycle. And the Joy Success cycle tries to convince you that in order to reach your maximum success, you actually need to find joy in every task throughout the day, your maximum success. That does not mean you wouldn't be successful without it. But if you want to reach your peak success, peak success is achieved by looking at every single task and saying, what is the joy moment in this task? So I'll give you an example, right? I could look at a task of appearing on a podcast and go, oh, I got to do another podcast. And so could you, by the way. You don't, because you're doing it with a smile. You're enjoying it. But, you know, there could be days, and that will never be anyone's best podcast, just won't, because you're entering it where you can't maximize the success in that moment and in that task. So if you want to maximize the success of your career, of your family life, of your tasks, we need to find the joy in all of them. Another example, I'm running a company. I have to fire people. Because when you run companies, you hire, and by nature, sometimes you let people go, right? And you could look at that and go, oh, this is so hard. I've got to do this today. It's going to be terrible. The whole mood of entering that task is wrong. The flip side of that is you could say, look, it's not working out for that person and it's not working out for us. In the end, a separation is better for them and better for us. They will find a better career or a better task or better job, and we will find a person who will do better for this company. Everyone. Not in the first hour, but probably in the first year, we'll be happier. And so you can approach the task that way. And finally, there's tasks that maybe nobody likes to do. Oh, I gotta fold the laundry. Well, that's one way to look at it. But here's the positive with doing that. The positive is just getting the task done. So sometimes you have to look at a task and say, the only positive I can get from this is to check it off my list. And I like to make task lists. My to do list is right next to me here. You could just look at it as the positive and the joy of finishing a task, which is wonderful.
- [05:34]
Lindsay Anderson
I like that. So you're ultimately saying that no matter what you're doing, in order to get the very best, the most out of it, you got to approach it with joy and find the silver lining in every task you're doing every day? Essentially, yes.
- [05:48]
Kevin Surace
And in conjunction with this is what I call the positive quotient. The positive quotient. I'm working on this book that will hopefully be out late this year, but the book is called the Joy Success Cycle. A couple of things. Mentally, we want to, first of all, tie joy and success together. So it gives you a reason to say, I actually have to look at these tasks with joy. I have to find the joy moment in each of them throughout my day. Second thing is, we have this joy quotient or this positive quotient. And basically, you want to keep it from 0 to 10. You want to keep it at a 10. And so every time you find a joy moment, which leads to more success with leads or more joy, that's the cycle. You get a point. And so immediately, I want to be at 10, and I want to stay at a 10 all day. But when you have complaints, every internal or external complaint takes away a point. Okay? And it takes. And now you're at zero. And what you've got is this feedback loop that's taking you downward rather than upward. Now, here is my task for all your listeners. I want everyone listening. The 3 million listeners who are listening to Lindsay's podcast this week, I want all of you to do the following thing. Tomorrow when you get up, count the number of complaints or negative thoughts you have throughout the day, internal or external. Many of them you will vocalize. You don't realize you're doing it, but you're going to verbalize it, right? Verbalize it or vocalize it. And some of them are just going to be internal. Okay, Count them throughout the day. I could tell you right now it's over a hundred. You will have over a hundred complaints all day. Now, every time you have one of those complaints, you're digging yourself a deeper hole, further away from your maximum success. So after you've counted them and you find out for you, it's 132 the following day, here's your goal. And the rest of your life, you get one complaint a day, only one. And when you get up in the morning, you go, oh, my knees. You have used up your complaint of the day. And this is a mental exercise of training your brain to say, I only get one. I could still have one. I better save it up. I better really save it for the real complaint of the day, whatever that is, right. I crashed the car. I guess I get to complain about that. Even though there's a joy moment in that, that if you're not hurt, you could probably get a new car. So there's always different ways to look at these things. But this is an important mental training exercise that over some weeks actually gets your mind trained. Out of looking at everything in the negative, which humans naturally do, we find the negative and everything. And do you know why we do that? Because. Yes. Because thousands of years ago we were trained. And why we're here today is because our ancestors, your relatives, were trained and successfully saw the lion coming at them and ran. And so you were trained for survival, to look at all of the worst case scenarios of where you are. It's dark, something could eat me. There's something maybe around the corner that I could be out of food. I could be. Maybe no more food will grow. Maybe it won't rain, maybe it won't, right? Worry, worry, worry, worry, worry. Forced revival. Well, today we have a grocery store around the corner. It's unlikely we're going to run out of food at the grocery store, right? It's unlikely we have to worry about a lion eating us, Right. There are cases where you don't want to be out three in the morning in a particular part of town. But in general we don't have to worry about that anymore. And yet we were pre programmed to worry in that way, and that's unfortunate. So we have to unprogram all of that and say, I don't need to worry about those things. What I need to do is find the joy in every task, not the negative and not the complaint about every task. And everything that's coming at me during the day, and I assure you, you will be a different person in weeks than you are today if you follow this program.
- [09:34]
Lindsay Anderson
I love it. And it's interesting you call it a program. Now you have AI behind you, and I have found that what you're teaching here is the human brain is very much a computer program, and you're just inserting new programs. Is that what we're talking about here, Kevin?
- [09:47]
Kevin Surace
Well, sure. Who controls the way you feel about any given task? Like I have to call this person after this on my list today. I could feel many, many ways about that. But who controls how you feel about it, Lindsay?
- [10:00]
Lindsay Anderson
You.
- [10:01]
Kevin Surace
That's right. Yeah, I control it, period. Full stop. So if you look at something in the negative way and then the next thing you look at is a negative, the next thing you look at is a negative. They're all complaints. You also control that you made that choice once I've given you the plan and the program, you've now made a choice to ignore that. And you've made a choice to say, I don't want to be as successful as I could have been. I'd rather just go through life complaining about my life and complaining about every task. And so it's your choice. Nobody's bringing that to you. It's your choice to live that way. And much of this. I'll tell you a funny story. A good friend of mine is Goldie Hawn, the actress. And Goldie, many, many, many years ago, we're working on a program together. And she said, kevin, you know, you're one of the only people like me that seems to have unlimited high dopamine. Like, we wake up and it's high dopamine. Well, probably if we measured our actual dopamine levels. Doesn't work like that. Right. Brains are probably not that different. But it seems like I've got high dopamine because I approach everything with excitement and with fervor and with joy and with wanting to learn from it and with curiosity. So I can approach everything with curiosity. I gave a great. Again, maybe it was a lousy. But I gave a keynote to a major company recently on Joy Success. And they had me come in because they said, we reorganized all of these areas of our sales organization. Now everyone is on different teams, and they're very upset about it, and it's driven the productivity down, it's driven the sales down, and we just don't know what to do. And maybe your Joy Success cycle can help them. So I went in and said, I understand there's been a reorg one. And, you know, by the way, first of all, let me start with this. Companies reorg just comes with the territory. So get over yourselves. Okay, It's. And you go to another company, they will eventually reorg and they'll lay off some people and hire some other and put you on different teams and get over it. That's the first thing. The second thing is this. I know you loved your old teams and you love the camaraderie and you love what you built there over five or six or seven years, and you don't have that anymore, except you could. And it could even be better. So why not look at this team as opposed to, oh, they're new people and I don't like them. Why don't I get to know each person and be curious about what makes them tick. Be curious about learning about their backgrounds and why they're there and what they want to do and how I can work with them. Here's this platter that's empty that you can fill with beautiful fruits, vegetables, and meats that you didn't have in the old team because you already knew all those people. You were done learning there, and now you have a chance to open your mind and learn again and learn anew, and what a great opportunity. And so I gave them the challenge, which is, starting tomorrow, you're going to count all of your negatives and all of your complaints in the following day. You're limited to one and that's it. And they talked to me a couple of weeks later and said, this was a miracle. Not everyone followed it, but the people who followed it totally changed their attitude about everything. They started going to lunch and breakfast with these people. They started to learn about them, and then they stopped having complaints because they were limited to one a day. And you didn't want to waste your one on, oh, I ate this tea. Don't waste it on that. Go waste it on something useful. Right? That's not useful.
- [13:14]
Lindsay Anderson
I like it. And I like how you started the talk with, hey, this is reality, guys like you. Being upset isn't even going to change this. This is just the way life is. So accept it and make the most of it. Kevin, has it always been this way for you? What inspired you to start talking about this? Was there a time in your life that you weren't like this?
- [13:33]
Kevin Surace
That's a very good question. Maybe I was always like this, but I didn't understand the reasons why or the purpose or how I controlled it. Right. So not everyone does this, and certainly sometimes to my wife, I probably drive her crazy because I'm Mr. Joy. How can you be so joyful? It's pouring out. I go, yes, but we needed the rain. Isn't that lovely? So it could be aggravating, I suppose. But the truth is, we get to choose to live our lives both at work, which is probably half our life, and at home, in the way we choose, in the way we control fully we control it. And you absolutely can choose to get down this spiral of negativity, and you won't achieve the maximum success. So, yes, I think mostly I was joyful, but I didn't understand the reasons why I was looking at every task. And once I started to put the program together, I could say, oh, this is what I'm actually doing in my mind. My mind naturally is gravitating to this. I should write this down because other people are asking me, how is it that you do that? And I didn't know at first. And then I start writing it down. I go, well, this is actually what I'm doing as a human. I actually look at that and say, what is the joy component of this task? Well, what do you mean? You got to fire someone. There's nothing joyful about it. Yes, there is for them and for me. They just don't know it yet. Even though I'm going to tell them this is a joy moment and that a year from now they're going to thank me, but today they're not. And I understand that. I accept that. Right.
- [15:03]
Lindsay Anderson
I love that. Now, I find it interesting that you use the word joy. I think it's a real underutilized word. But how did you end up with the word joy?
- [15:11]
Kevin Surace
It's great question. Happiness is kind of a state of being, and there's lots of books written on happiness. There are some things written on joy, but I'm looking at these as joy moments. It's not about the joyful life. It's about joy moments. I need to find the joy, the positiveness in every moment from my normal workday. Now, let me separate that from you've had a death in the family or someone got diagnosed with cancer. That's not what I'm talking about. I understand there's a whole cycle you have to go through of pain and understanding and caring and disappointment and all those things. Do those. Right. So we're really talking about the other 99% of your time on Earth, which is we pretty much get up and do our day. Right? That's our day. And so this is about that 99% of the time. It's not about the time when the relative has passed away. And it's a very sad time. And you need to live that and own that and then come back out of it and get back on the program. Right. So just like AA is a program that you learn the program, you do the 12 steps and you live those 12 steps. This is kind of like that. It's like, I'm going to change my life. And this isn't about drinking or smoking or drugs or something else. It's actually more important at some level because it's how do I control how I look at everything? And do I need to look at everything the way I was when I was a caveman or is this a modern world and I can look at it quite differently now?
- [16:36]
Lindsay Anderson
I love it. I love it. What is the biggest myth around joy that you've encountered?
- [16:42]
Kevin Surace
Yeah, I think first of all, people tie it to happiness and I think they're very different. Right. Again, happiness is a. I'm happy in my life. That's great. That could be that you've married the right person. It could be you love your children. It could be. That's great. That. But you could be happy in your life and still complain about every task during the day, which will lead you to maximum success. So I think you have to look at joy as tiny little things. A little bit of joy leads to more success. It's fine. They don't have to be these huge, massive wins. You don't have to win the million dollar deal to say that's a joy. No. You could sweep the floor in three minutes, finish that task and say, not only is it a cleaner floor, but I finished a task which means I was successful at the task, which is bringing me more success throughout the day by checking things off my list. Right. Tiny little moments of joy need to be respected and honored and loved and cared for and you start to live. I live by business that way. Every piece of my business. It isn't that we don't have hard discussions. It's not that you don't have to still manage a team or manage a team member, but I try to do it with joy. I was on an exec staff call today at one of my companies and I said, look, I'm going to be a little harsh here, but boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But I don't want people to think that I'm not bringing joy to this desk and that I'm not a nice Human and that. But here are the facts. We're gonna have to deal with the facts and execute, but we're gonna do so with joy in everything we do.
- [18:11]
Lindsay Anderson
I love it. Wow. What a great interview, Kevin. Like you summed it up, what we're supposed to do every day. Can you just speak briefly about the momentum that's created when you just start doing this a day at a time? Do you see that it can start eaping into all the areas of your life? Can you tell a story or share some more about that?
- [18:28]
Kevin Surace
Yeah, that is exactly right. It's easy to talk about the things at work, but it's just as important as it eats into everything at home, too. I'll give you an example. I don't know if you have kids, but if you've got kids, there are moments where you go, oh, my. But you actually have to look at all of those as joy moments as well. Even if your kids did something wrong or something dumb or they put peanut butter on the rug or whatever is going on. Right? They're learning, and that's joyful. That is how they learn. And we did that too, right? We may, as kids, you call your sister names. You put peanut butter in a VCR. There's no VCRs anymore. But you get the point. These are the things kids do. They spill their things. And of course we want to yell at them. And I get that. But the point is there's actually joy in them learning those things because they have to do those things to learn that it's not acceptable to do those things. And that's how we parent, right? In the end, it's not that we accept them. Like, they can keep doing it. No, they can't keep doing it. But they need to learn. That isn't right. Almost anything at home with how you work with the people in your life, including your spouse or significant other, how do you interface with them? Do you really want to complain about all the things that are different in what you could? It usually leads to divorce, right? It's not going to end well. You were attracted to those differences at one time. This is true with every marriage and every relationship. And then over time, those differences kind of gnaw at you. You don't want them to know at you. You have to honor those differences and say, wow, not the way I do it, but how joyful it is that I get to watch someone else do it that way. It's right for me. Or not right for me, but it's right for them. And it worked for them. I like to say this. It hasn't killed them yet. It's not how I do it, but I'm going to cook the fish this way. Okay, well, it hasn't killed you yet. It must be okay, right? It must. I was talking to someone yesterday and they said I was doing business with this person. And then we went out to lunch one day and the toast came slightly too over toasted, and they kind of lost it. And they called the waiter over and they said, I can't believe you've toasted this toast too much. Well, first of all, how would you even give a temperature for toast? Nobody knew what their preference was, but they asked me, how would you have dealt with that? I said, oh, it's easy. This is an opportunity for me to try toast in a different way than I would normally do it for myself. And I might find that I like it better or I might find that I don't like it as much, but it's still food and it's just as nutritious. And unless they kill the thing and burned it to death, if it's inedible, just get some joy from it that you're learning something new and doing something different than you would have done yourself. So again, it's all how you approach it. Even with the waiter. Do I really need to yell at the waiter? Does the waiter even know where the toaster is? Is probably not, right? Someone in the kitchen did it and they had no way to communicate that. So don't yell at the guy or gal or whoever to eat the toast and enjoy the difference that you're feeling in your taste buds with that.
- [21:23]
Lindsay Anderson
I love it. I'm going to teach this to my kids. They're going to get sick of me saying joy moments to them. Kevin, it is a real pleasure talking to you. Before I let you go, let everybody know how to find you and anything else you want them to know. Kevin.
- [21:36]
Kevin Surace
Yeah, it's super easy. KevinSourace.com is my website and my LinkedIn is there as well. I do answer my DMs on LinkedIn. I'll talk about. We didn't talk about AI today because AI is the big topic these days. I'm so glad we got to talk about the Joy Success cycle because that AI is going to come and AI is going to go, and AI is just part of our life every day. And it's part of your life, Lindsay, because you're a podcaster and you are not going to personally summarize this podcast. AI is going to do that for you. And it's going to write the transcript and it's going to do all and think about the time that's saving you and how much joy it brought you so that you can focus on things that are more important.
- [22:11]
Lindsay Anderson
Oh, Chat GPT brings me so much joy, Kevin.
- [22:13]
Kevin Surace
It does. Yes, yes, yes. I like to say with chat GPT and all of these, stop playing and start doing. Because I talk to so many audiences that go, oh, I'm playing with it. I go, that's not what we do at work.
- [22:25]
Lindsay Anderson
Use this, guys.
- [22:26]
Kevin Surace
Use this for everything. What should I say to my. What should I send to my kids when. And it gives you all new ideas. You go, I wouldn't have thought of it that way. That's a good idea.
- [22:37]
Lindsay Anderson
I dyed my son's hair pink with the help of Chat GPT.
- [22:40]
Kevin Surace
I'm saying, of course.
- [22:42]
Lindsay Anderson
Yeah, it's great.
- [22:43]
Kevin Surace
You are a cool mom.
- [22:45]
Lindsay Anderson
Well, I also had to ask ChatGPT how I felt about it, so. And it was fine.
- [22:50]
Kevin Surace
And it was fine. It was fine. Hopefully it's the washout pink.
- [22:54]
Lindsay Anderson
It's joy. Yeah. But it brings me joy to look at it his cute.
- [22:57]
Kevin Surace
It does. Because he's enjoying and he's enjoying showing himself in a certain way.
- [23:01]
Lindsay Anderson
Why do I care what you wear? Your hair. Okay, now we've gone to a parenting loop, but I sure appreciate you being on the show. Kevin, what a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time.
- [23:09]
Kevin Surace
I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much, Lindsay.
- [23:13]
Lindsay Anderson
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. My calendar is currently open to book a complimentary social media strategy session. If you're struggling with social media, you're sick of putting social out there. You're not getting those conversions that return on your investment. And social media seems like a real time suck without an ROI. Make sure you head over to Lindsay a.combook-now and apply for a free social media strategy session with me. During the session, we'll look at your social media, who you're talking to and where those gaps are. That could really help help you make social media more successful for your business in less time. All you need to do is head over to Lindsay a.combook-now, apply for that session and we'll see you on that call. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Lindsay Anderson Show. Cheers to you and your success.
- [24:16]
That's a wrap for today's episode of of the Lindsay Anderson Show. If you loved this episode, don't forget to subscribe leave a review and share how you're leveling up your business.
- [24:27]
Kevin Surace
Want more?
- [24:28]
Lindsay Anderson
Connect with Lindsay Anderson and get the tools you need to crush your goals@lindsay a.com until next time, keep pushing, keep growing, and turn those business dreams into reality.