This week in The Biz Dojo, we chat with Andrew Hall - co-founder of Mealshare, as well as a new venture - No Story Lost.
Andrew shares his experience starting Mealshare, an incredible non-profit that seeks to combat food insecurity for our youth. We'll talk about the excitement of starting a business and connecting with purpose, the impacts of a pandemic, and the reinvigoration of a burning desire to give back to the world.
We also dive into some really great conversations about how we are time billionaires, and should use that time to invest in ourselves by stealing forward some time from retirement.
So, practice your retirement now with a nice warm cup of Biz Dojo Coffee (Masters Medium - OR - Dojo Dark), and let's get into it!
You can also visit us at the links below to join the discussion:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter
Check out Newsly (https://newsly.me) and use promo code B1Z2021 to get a free month of premium description.
The Biz Dojo - Podcast, Production & Professional Coaching
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter
This week in The Biz Dojo, we chat with Andrew Hall - co-founder of Mealshare, as well as a new venture - No Story Lost.
Andrew shares his experience starting Mealshare, an incredible non-profit that seeks to combat food insecurity for our youth. We'll talk about the excitement of starting a business and connecting with purpose, the impacts of a pandemic, and the reinvigoration of a burning desire to give back to the world.
We also dive into some really great conversations about how we are time billionaires, and should use that time to invest in ourselves by stealing forward some time from retirement.
So, practice your retirement now with a nice warm cup of Biz Dojo Coffee (Masters Medium - OR - Dojo Dark), and let's get into it!
You can also visit us at the links below to join the discussion:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter
Check out Newsly (https://newsly.me) and use promo code B1Z2021 to get a free month of premium description.
The Biz Dojo - Podcast, Production & Professional Coaching
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter
Hey, you should be listening to us on the news liat. Just visit newsleave.me to download today and listen to the entire internet, including podcasts like this one. You can also check out our conversation with founder Jani season three, Episode Eight.
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JP Gaston:So just coming out of Giving Tuesday and heading into our giving holiday season ahead of us
Seth Anderson:is the season season of giving. Best of lights, family, all those kinds of things. Turkey, Turkey, maybe perhaps ham, I think, Hey, Mikey,
JP Gaston:it might be a very Turkey filled holiday season over here. Actually, this past Yeah, this past weekend, I smoked turkey, I got a I got a smoker. So I tried smoking in Turkey. And it was delightful.
Seth Anderson:For those of you at home, we're gonna you know, we're gonna try to get through this intro really quick. But we have an exciting holiday episode of chopping it up coming. We got a book that JP with Elena Jordan, because I can't wait to talk about food for an hour at all of our favorite holiday meals.
JP Gaston:Yeah, there is. There's going to be a lot of drooling involved in that. Yeah, so
Seth Anderson:that'll be coming the week in the week before Christmas. But to your point, tis the season giving, you know getting presents for people. How's your holiday shopping? Coming up? Where are you at in the whole process?
JP Gaston:If you think I've even started the tradition in my family passed down from my father, to all of us, is December 23. Long
Seth Anderson:line? December 23. Shoppers? Yeah, well,
JP Gaston:the best thing about that is you have ideas in your head about what you want to get someone and when you get there on the 23rd. And there's nothing left but one of the items on your list. That's what they're getting. All your decisions are made.
Seth Anderson:I think of the Santa Claus when they go to the Denny's and like they're out of everything kids is sick and like that's shopping on December 25.
JP Gaston:Yeah, you know, Steph usually gets pretty mad at me. Mostly because I do my shopping inside, like three hours on the 22nd 23rd Sometime in that, you know, last couple of day range. I get out. Yeah. And uh, you know, meanwhile, she's been shopping for three and a half months and you know, still hasn't gotten much.
Seth Anderson:I'm not gonna lie. I'm on a bit of a different vibe this year. Well, not this year. This has been something that's been percolating in the back of my mind for a while now is like, what is the best way to give in the holiday season? You know what, I've really landed on presence,
Unknown:not presence. But presence. I don't
Seth Anderson:know what you think of that. But I think the best present we can give to our loved ones is like undivided attention and presence and like love and support and just taking the time over the holiday break. To just be with people and be fully there and listen and laugh and like, to me that's worth way more than any material gifts.
JP Gaston:Oh, absolutely. And it's something that I don't think I did last Christmas but I'd certainly you know, I certainly did the the one before also giving time and presence. Instead of you know, just buying a bag and throwing it in a bin which is also a good way to give to those who are less fortunate in the holiday season but actually going and spending some time you know, in a soup kitchen or at a at a shelter. Just being there for someone during the holidays, even if it isn't family or friends can mean a lot and tell you you take probably way more away from it even than they do and they take a lot from spending that time.
Seth Anderson:Here's the two things I remember about last year Christmas I got Caitlin a robe, and it happened to coincide with that SNL video.
JP Gaston:Here's two things number one.
Seth Anderson:I get reminded of this almost daily, I feel like for a whole year so that's like that's a gift that keeps on giving think of all the laughs yet. Anyway, there's that. But the most impactful thing we did last year Christmas was he actually went downtown. We got some backpacks, filled them up with basic supplies, toothbrushes Tim's card, you know, just just a bunch of stuff. And we just went and handed them out me my kids, Caitlin and The team member for work, we just went and handed them out to all these people in need. And my kids still talk about it a year later, they don't talk about the presence they got. They don't talk about any material item they received Christmas last year. But they still talk about that experience of going downtown, and helping out others. And just that feeling of giving people those backpacks and the smiles and just that full experience. And I've never done that before, especially not with my kids. And I don't know how I could go through a holiday season now and not do something like that, because it was just so impactful.
JP Gaston:And in that vein, this week, we have Andrew Hall, from meal share, a very giving company, a company based on gifting. That's the whole premise. Yeah. Another just incredible conversation with a person who's doing something a little, who's been doing something just a little bit different.
Seth Anderson:Yeah, it's just really inspiring to see, you know, someone and say, generally in our age range that had an idea
JP Gaston:that's ever expanding, hmm, just slowly, oh,
Seth Anderson:it's a big range. It's within suppose in a decade, but nevertheless, I think it's cool to see like, what him and his partners and that whole team was able to create, again, out of an idea that was, you know, rooted in giving back, but also, like, a pretty effective business. And, you know, then hearing the story of how COVID Basically, destroyed, it is not the right way to say it.
JP Gaston:I think it destroyed the industry that it relies on. So it effectively decimated everything that they were working on. You know, there's still there's, you know, still some some operational things there. But it was it was definitely a hard time. And there were some tough decisions that needed to be made for, you know, a company that was doing really, really well, you know, a nonprofit that was doing really, really well and giving back so much to the community and, you know, to go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows when it comes to how much you're you're having an impact. You know, that's got to take its toll.
Seth Anderson:Yeah, so for those of you at home, I mean, get ready for a story about, you know, resilience, battling through adversity, and then, you know, just coming out the other side of it. And you know, Now Andrew is gonna be pursuing some other ventures slash adventures, and we're gonna dive into that all in the episode. So let's get into it. This week in The Biz Dojo, we're joined by Andrew Hall. Andrew, welcome to the dojo.
Andrew Hall:Thanks for having me guys. Speaking and conferences and stuff. I've been on a bit of a hiatus. I haven't done anything like this for a long time. But I'm stoked to chat.
JP Gaston:You've managed to avoid zoom successfully for for a little bit.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, obviously team meetings and stuff. But I haven't done too many like zoom events or, you know, speaking and stuff. So I have managed to avoid it as much as possible.
Seth Anderson:Well, as it turns out, we have a mutual friend. And that's really how you ended up on the show. So Lauren, Lauren rose, as it were, she was on our what was she? JP, the second episode we ever
JP Gaston:did. Yeah, something like that. It was, it was early.
Seth Anderson:It was early. So very, very early days of The Biz Dojo, we had Lauren in the podcast, and I was chatting with her the other day and, and mentioned that we were, you know, trying to figure out these last couple of episodes for this season. And she brought up your name, and here we are.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, that's wicked. Yeah, we went to business school together. And I guess Yeah, being that I'm also from Alberta. Maybe that was a bit of a connection too. But yeah, stoked to have that connection. And it's cool even though it's been been a year since our be caught degrees, just staying in action. It's kind of the beauty of, of those classes, but also social media and kind of falling what each other are doing. So yeah, stoked to be here.
Seth Anderson:Awesome. So why don't you you know, we're we're just getting to know you, but also for the listeners. Maybe just share a little bit about yourself like who is Andrew Hall?
Andrew Hall:Yeah, good question, existential. I grew up in Calgary and had a pretty happy healthy normal childhood there. finished high school and registered for two universities only chose classes for one wasn't sure where I was going to go. And then it came time for the first day of school. So I just packed up and drove to Victoria and moved into my grandparents basement for one semester. So definitely, at that time, no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but took some just general classes and really fell in love with my Commerce class, my intro to business class. So applied to the business program at UVic. And graduated there in 2011 with a specialization in entrepreneurship, which was super fun, did a couple of co op terms, did a semester abroad, and then graduated and got got a job in consulting with delight. So throughout business school, I did some case competition stuff. And so kind of the business analysis type stuff was always really interesting to me. And doing consulting felt like a good fit wasn't the best fit. You're strange. It was like, yeah, it turns out, I think the like, the type of work and like doing business analysis was good for me, but kind of the clients and the big company vibes didn't really fit to all with me. So you probably hear this navel a lot on the on the episode today. But my cousin Jeremy and I are best friends grew up together. And he was kind of feeling the same way. He was at PwC accounting, so he kind of had those dream jobs with the big companies. But they weren't our dreams.
Seth Anderson:Yeah, I mean, I assume, you know, a lot of people go through that you can see sort of you get through the school, you get into the big company or in your early to mid 20s. When did you know, like, unequivocally this was not for you and sort of make that decision that, you know, there was a different path ahead for yourself? Yeah,
Andrew Hall:good question. It wasn't like there was like a huge moment where I was like, you know, this feels totally around, it was more of being in there and never quite ever feeling at home. So I mean, the first couple of days, just getting sent to the client side and meeting the new people on staff, like, I think there's a little bit of early young professional nerves and kind of wondered, like, oh, you know, settling in, and that sort of thing. But it never kind of kind of never got that feeling where I was like, Okay, I'm like a member of this company. I'm like, under the wing of this person, I'm like, this is the perfect place. For me. I always felt like, Okay, this is a good job, like I should be, should feel fortunate to have this great job coming out of school, but never felt I never felt like okay, it's just like my calling. So kind of like an absence of a feeling versus like, you know, it feeling so terrible that I had to leave.
Seth Anderson:No, that's interesting, though. Like, the fact that you were able to kind of tap into that at such a young age, though, because I think a lot of people in that age range, I think of you know, JP, and I and many others who do work for big companies. And there's a lot of benefits, a lot of pros, a lot of great things about it, but you kind of go through these cycles, and it feels like you're missing something. And maybe you need to go find something, but in your case is trying to kind of like drive together like you were able to just know, like, you know what, this doesn't feel 100% It's good, but like, I think there's better
Andrew Hall:Yeah, yeah, kinda like catching what you're saying without being able to completely pinpoint it myself, either. But yeah, I guess the other half of that other side of the coin maybe was going through be calm at UVic there's a big focus on sustainability. And so we lot, watched a lot of films and talked a lot in classes and had a sustainability course before it was cool. I've thought a lot about the world. And so like one movie that really hit me hard is called the corporation. And it talks about just like all the big and wonderful and not so wonderful things that corporations and that like legal entity has been able to do over the past couple 100 years. And at the same time, we were seeing the outbreak of some cool companies like TOMS Shoes, where they were, you know, they had to buy one get one model or companies that were really leading in CSR initiatives. And so I think that really got ingrained in Jeremy and I am thinking about, okay, business kit is super powerful and super interesting to us, but it can make really big positive impact. And so I think being in a big company that's been around for a long time, just being a big company and making other big companies bigger and more efficient, like didn't have that inspiring element. But looking at these companies that were coming up with cool new models, we were like, this is something that we want to get ourselves into and so we saw the TOMS Shoes model and we're like that's awesome, they're great leaders, they're providing shoes to people there was like obviously some articles questioning the validity of that or not the validity but I guess like the value of that but we asked ourselves, okay, like what is super important like what it is real basic needs that need to be covered to help people around the world and wondered if we could do something to help with food or water or some of those basic needs with this like cool bio and get one model which is yeah, that's kind of the dichotomy between like we're seeing passion elsewhere and something that would be really awesome to do and look back on and be proud of and to do ourselves together. And again, like that absence of that that I was finding my day to day job
Seth Anderson:and and thus meal share was born is it sort of that kinda boy there Yeah,
Andrew Hall:yeah, like frighteningly quick for me because I was at the company for a year and yeah, it was definitely raised with you know, values of Got a good job, you know, take care of yourself kind of think just coming out of school. So then there is feelings in that first year and like thinking about leaving Deloitte, where I was like, awesome, so I'm throwing my life away perfect. To start a startup nonprofits like 23. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.
Seth Anderson:That's amazing.
Andrew Hall:Yeah. Thanks. I met him looking. Looking back. It seems crazy now. But yeah, we've been there for kind of nine years ish. And yeah, it was, we graduated at, I guess, I would have been 22, and then did about a year at Deloitte. And then we were already starting meal sure on the side and had that, that spring, where I was super busy with consulting, obviously a pretty demanding job, and then running meal share in the evenings trying to get it going. So I didn't see a lot of my friends or, or any, anyone at that time, it was a busy summer, but then yeah, left the job in September of 2013,
Seth Anderson:kind of a trip when you like, get to this age range, right? You're sort of in 30 Plus, and you look at someone who's like, let's say, 23 to 25, right now, and think back to when, you know, we were that age, and in your case, you're starting, you know, a nonprofit kind of going off and doing your own thing. I was thinking, just in my life, you know, getting married, started jamming, a hockey team went on this journey, like I was talking before, we got on the call here of you know, getting into the corporate world and rapidly moving through the ladder. And like now, when I think of someone being like, 23 to 25, and like other kid, they don't, you know, you get this bias, but then it's like, oh, shit, we were doing all this cool stuff. And like, where do you think that comes from? Like, is it just like a lack of fear? Because you don't really know what's going on around you that you're just more willing to jump in at that age? Or what do you where do you think your mindset came from?
Andrew Hall:Yeah, I think that's a first of all, sort of on the like, meta concept. It's interesting, like when you're 2223 10 years ago, like you were a kid, like your literal kid, and literally, you grow like your brain grows so much over that time, you learned so much over that time. So it's easy for us to now like Psalm 32, to think back like 10 years, like, oh, well, 10 years ago, I was Yeah, but actually, like, your brain is pretty fully formed, I guess, at 2324. So, you know, people at that age are incredibly capable. And we as we've seen people do amazing things like, as young adults. So like you said, it's kind of a trick to look back and like, well, look at what we're doing when we're so yeah, I've been so done. But also like, I always think about the whole, like, everyone's faking it till they make it. And in 10 years, I'll hopefully look back and like, oh, 32 I was a kid. And I didn't know what I was doing. You know. So as much as I think we're learning and growing and stuff. Yeah, we are always growing and evolving. And then yeah, I totally believe in that naivety being a gift at that age, right? Like, there's certain things that we've probably all been through that we've been like, if I knew how hard that was that mountain was about to climb, I wouldn't have started. I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend that to anybody. Right, but you don't know what's coming. So you climb that mountain and get over the first lip and look up again and say, Okay, there's like a whole bunch.
Seth Anderson:That wasn't the mountain at all, actually.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, exactly. False peak for sure.
JP Gaston:I think the opposite can be true, too. Like sometimes you. You look back and you think, Man, I wish I would have started that 10 years ago, because I don't want to start this mountain climb now. Yeah.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, that's partly just like, the benefits of compounding, right? Like if you would have just started something and put in the effort put in the time 10 years ago, like where could it be now. So and that applies to all things in life. But
Seth Anderson:there's a quote I heard and something in the vein of wheat, often as people overestimate what we can do in one year, but underestimate what we can do in 10. Totally.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, looking back, Gabrielle share, it was like we had these huge, big dreams at the start. It was like, Okay, let's let's get some independent restaurants on we'll do this launch of, you know, 1520 restaurants, and then we'll start approaching chains after that. And yeah, the start was like for partner restaurants barely launched in Calgary and Edmonton. To much fanfare as you can imagine. Yeah. And that first year was like a total grind. But now looking back in 10 years, it's like, if you do do the right things, get the little things right over a long period of time, and just be consistent every day. Crazy how far you can push them.
Seth Anderson:What did you learn from that first year grind? Like you said, you kind of went into it with grand ambitions and thinking. I'm sure you're thinking all sorts of amazing things. But what did that that first year grind teach you about life, business,
Andrew Hall:all of that. I think the big realization for me like at 2324 The age we were, you kind of feel like going up through school or going through university. You've got your curriculum, you do the tests, you do the projects, you do the things you're like, living in that world and like the outer world and companies and products that you use are a different world, right? Starting a wheelchair and figuring out as we went. It hit me after about that first year. time you're asking about like, Okay, this is just like doing a big school project that just keeps happening and running for a long time, it's not actually that different, you can incorporate that thing and start building or even just start building before you incorporate. And if you stack those things on top of each other, and those meetings and efforts and new products, or whatever else, like you can just build things. And it's actually like, the worlds out there for you to go grab. So I just messaged a friend yesterday who just launched something with one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs, which I'll paraphrase, but he said, like the moment that you realize that you can, like poke the world, and something comes out the other side, like you can shape the world, you can mold it, you can actually do things, you'll never be the same after that. So the first time you launch your podcast, or you, you know, start a company or something like that, and you actually see like, Oh, my products, like in that store, like there's people going in there and they're buying my thing. Like, once you realize you can do that, then you can sit down and ask like, what do I really want to do? Because I can really go affect the world. I can do things. I can be a part of it, not just like a viewer.
JP Gaston:Yeah, like I was just thinking about the first time we got notification that we had listener from, I think it was Paraguay, or Brazil. There's France or so yeah, France is first but but France, we thought it's a bot. Yeah. It's got to be some sort of
Andrew Hall:couldn't be. Yeah. Yeah.
JP Gaston:Not not possible. And then yeah, I think we got one in like Brazil or something. Then we started like really looking. And we're like, man, we've got people across six continents. And we're, you know, we're still pushing to get that Antarctic listener. It's really how there's like 30 people. Yeah, that's, that's true. Yeah. If we can get all seven, we're really in it. But yeah, when we started getting, you know, people across all six and different countries, and we started seeing like, like, how many places are we actually touching? Especially when you start out thinking? And I'm sure this is true for products, too. But like, yeah, my friends will buy this. I'll have
Seth Anderson:my, my grandma will listen to this, like, I like the bank on, you know, listening.
Andrew Hall:Seven listeners for sure. No question, you get the first seven.
Seth Anderson:But I think like, what I really am sort of jamming on in my head about what you just said, there was like figuring out, once you see that, once you see that sort of cause and effect, or that, that ripple in the world. And you start to tap into like who you are and what you want. It's like, almost like overwhelming to a lot of people, I think that you have that much power or influence. And like, I think a lot of people get scared of that. And they don't necessarily know what to do with it. So what was it, you know, 2324 25 year old Andrew, you're like, Oh, this is cool. And I want to I want to move forward with it. I want to like, multiply it and make that big impact on the world. Like, what do you think? What do you think drove you that way?
Andrew Hall:A couple thoughts come to mind. So firstly, kind of the caution. Once you go do one of those things is like if you're a dedicated person who who wants to see the success of what you started, you're kind of in it for a long period of time. Like, of course, you can always quit or move to something else. But I've actually found that the ability to quit a job is a lot easier than to quit your baby once you've started something, right? Especially if there's people relying on you and you're creating jobs now. And there's restaurants running the program, like the thought of shutting me down after three years is like not even a thought in our minds. The one thing to think about is like choose really carefully because when you go out to try to help the world and do your thing, you'll probably be into it for 357 years, you know. And then at that time, so say we're talking two years into wheelchair and you realizing that then it's just like, okay, cool, we've we haven't made it but we've done it, we started something that's happening, then it's like Okay, time to grind and grow it and see how far we can push it that let us take meal share national and operate in a whole bunch of cities and grow into pre COVID. And that's a bit of a red herring. But like 500 Restaurant partners across the country operating in tend to kind of 15 cities that we had some kind of presence in. I've dabbled in the US a little bit. Yeah. Once you make that realization, then it's like, okay, if I'm in one that I want to push, like, then it's the type of grind.
Seth Anderson:Looking back now you're on this trajectory, which sounds very like Jay curve, in terms of sort of where you are, and then you hit this fork in the road, which there was nothing you could do about the COVID and impacted the whole world. Yeah, it's always hard to say but like, obviously that set a course that puts you guys where you are right now, which definitely part of what I want to talk about here. But like, how did you navigate those initial weeks and months when that that all went down?
Andrew Hall:Yeah, it was it was super intense. So to give you a bit of an idea, Emil share was providing about 80 or 90,000 meals a month in In March 2020, working almost strictly with restaurants, we had a few non restaurant partners and receive some grants and stuff. But really, restaurants were most of our bread and butter. And then, with all the news, the shutdowns and everything, we dropped, I think under 10,000 meals a month in April. So just like complete off the cliff. So, putting out fires, like, I feel like we put out fires from April through the fall of 2020. It was just like, we call it I think it's from Ben Horowitz, maybe but we call it like peacetime CEO and wartime CEO or peacetime and wartime and like, obviously, we are so much more time at that time. So get away from operational stuff and aspirational and fuzzy stuff and goal setting and get into like, Okay, how do we survive? So the first few weeks were like, Okay, we have to temporarily lay off everyone on our team. And then at the end of the day, call each other my co founder I'd lay ourselves off to, and then quickly respond to CRB coming into play. So like subsidies from the government and C, Ws and like, figure out those programs, make sure we're running those correctly, and then start to like, slowly rehire people, even if it's like part time. So the really cool part of that was we laid everybody off and said, Hey, if you want to volunteer for meal share for a while while you collect Serb? Great, and let's keep this thing going, and if not, we totally understand. And all 17 people showed up to the Monday morning, call the next week, and, and volunteered for a long time after that. So that was amazing. Yeah. And then the following months were like, how do we carefully try to pivot and bring in revenue from other sources while still realizing like, yeah, spring 2020, summer 2020, like COVID was really real. And it almost felt like too soon to try to pivot. And also, there's always the uncertainty like, Okay, we don't want to pivot completely away from who we are, and like, change, what we'll share is and, and then restaurants come back, and we're not there anymore. And we had 500 clients, it being our restaurants that we wanted to support, who are going through, maybe even more held than we were. So yeah, the first six months was nuts. And we had some fun brainstorming meetings like blank canvas saying, like, were 15 or 17, passionate, changemakers sitting at home, like what can we do? Or how could we pivot meal share, and we kind of flipped over every rock, and we could get bought by for profit, we could roll it to another nonprofit, we could pivot to other industries, blah, blah, blah. So did a little bit of that, you
Seth Anderson:know, a being, I guess, on the other side of all of that now, and he talked about wartime and peacetime CEO, having gone through the wartime phase, if you were to go back and coach yourself, and in February or March of 2020, what what would you tell that version of of Andrew,
Andrew Hall:I think we did a really good job of putting our team in our restaurants first, and really taking care of the people side of things. So making sure we didn't bog our restaurants to join the program, again, after a couple months, asking them how you can support talking about them on social when they rolled out door service where you could come pick up food or whatever. And then our team like just trying to be really responsive to, for example, the moms on the team who had their kids at home for the first time like that was wireless. So a lot of stuff I think went really well. I would probably a coach to try to pivot faster and just start the like plant the seeds of the things that might have worked a little bit faster, even if that was only part of our time each week, just because like some of the pivots we spooled up or like partnering with delivery companies and grocery stores and stuff. Some of those were super long sales cycles that didn't come into effect and help us for a long time. So like I had the day to be like, Oh, I should have done this better, because it was such a wild time. But I think that's kind of the angle is like, Could you at least put part of your time into laying some seeds in case you know, we have to make this pivot because restaurants aren't bad for two years. But you've ever
Seth Anderson:imagined that being the case. You know, go on about your life. January, February. Hey, there's gonna be no. Like it sounds crazy even saying yeah,
Andrew Hall:yeah. Well, we thought so much about like, oh, how do we differentiate and like Calgary has gone through some boom and bust during the time that military has been around. And we're like, well, we've got like Vancouver and Toronto, like we're well spread out. But we were totally not diversified across. Oh, it's now illegal for people to go to your customers, restaurants and support. You're like, we're not ready for that. And like nobody wants but we also Jeremy and I wrote down COVID predictions every quarter from like, April 2023. So I haven't looked back at them in a long time. But we were not predicting that it would still be scelera
Seth Anderson:Interesting. So you guys, like as you're going you're trying to think like a vision exercise. What's the next three months gonna look like?
Andrew Hall:Yeah, yeah, it was like, Okay, this is a wild thing. We'll remember the rest of our lives. Interesting to see how our perspective will change over the course of it. So like, we made ourselves a little survey is like, what do you think the next time is that you'll go to the US Do you think you'll actually be done in a restaurant when you get vaccinated, and at that time, like we didn't know anything about vaccines at the start? So some probably some wildly wrong guesses, but fun to like, test your perception of crazy event like that and work on that like prefrontal cortex like ability to see what's happening and predict the future, which nobody's gonna. But yeah, pretty interesting to look back on
JP Gaston:the business model like that. Like, did you have any emergency plug classic? I can't imagine there's a lot of emergency planning that goes into supporting a restaurant industry that's, like, been there for 1000 years.
Andrew Hall:Literally 1000s of years? Well, we talked to like one of the most successful restaurant tours in Canada years ago. And they were like, You know what? To good business. Because when things are good people are spending money buying food, and when things are bad, people are sad and buying food and you know, people are always eating. Yeah, you just, even if things slow down, you'd ever predict that, like restaurants go away
Seth Anderson:through that whole process, I guess. And I mean, leading up to where you're at right now, did your personal priorities change? I mean, I think everybody's dead a little bit. But did you have any, like, major shifts in terms of what, you know, the next phase of your life was gonna look like? Actually, luckily,
Andrew Hall:I remember, in the year two, leading up to COVID. I think just based on some reading I was doing, and I don't know what else, I remember thinking to myself a few times, like, this is an incredible time, like, we're in our late 20s. We're all like, have good jobs. We're making money. Now we can travel whenever we want. And I just remember focusing so much on appreciating all of that. So that when it hit I was like, Yeah, wow, I wouldn't have seen this coming. But this is the kind of thing that you just Yeah, The Black Swan you never predict and completely shakes your whole life up. So it was cool to have experienced trying the gratitude thing, the practice that's, you know, pretty popular in terms of like the morning journal and stuff to practice gratitude. And then to see it and like, I'm really glad that like a we did those things, but then be like, I really appreciated them. And when I had them kind of thing. Looks like we got to do some traveling again soon, which is cool. And I know this year, I think everyone's felt that feeling of Wow, the first time I got to play team sports again, or the first time I got to go to a friend's house for dinner again. We're so so cool. Yeah, those things we kind of took for granted kind of a cool reset for everyone to do those things for the first time again. So yeah, I think it like reinforced all those things to just really think about when you get the opportunity to do something that you love, like just take a second and really appreciate it. And it's funny love so for me like playing Team sports is a huge one. So the first time I went back out to play beach volleyball with friends, it was like, I had no idea how important that was for my mental health. Like I knew I missed it. But then when I got out there was like a stupid grin on my face the whole time. I was like, I'm with friends and laughing playing a sport like endorphins are flowing dopamine is just the best. And it's such a good reminder like you asking this question right now to that. I played two weeks ago soccer and had a mini game and went home grumpy because of like a bad call and how soon we forget that like how much we should just appreciate and love all those moments. So yeah, working event, so we can't remember every time but I guess in the thing I was doing before and it definitely going through COVID Like really trying to double down on that and go into each those opportunities and really appreciate them.
JP Gaston:Yeah, I'd say like I play a ton of hockey. And I played a ton pre COVID. And now post COVID It might be more just because I missed so much of any team that needs a goalie. I'm there.
Andrew Hall:See if you've played again. You haven't? Obviously. Yeah. Your first time on the ice like
JP Gaston:I'm so glad I was wearing my mask because like it was just ear to ear grin. Like the entire
Andrew Hall:streaming jacket. Exactly.
JP Gaston:But like even before, you know, I've always been the type of person who's like I'm playing you know, low div barely cocky, like, I'm gonna go home and just enjoy the fact that I got to play a sport, but so much more. So now when I like when I leave the ice and like even when I see people arguing or whatever on the ice, I'm like, man, it's like we're like div 10 or whatever. Like, there's nobody in the stands and you think there's a scout or like what like why are you still with me here? It's not that big a deal. Like we're all getting exercise. That's what you're paying for. But I think I've seen a shift pretty much across the board on on the teams that I play on on the competition we play against like everybody is just happy to be back like it's, I'm sure eventually it'll slowly turn back into the grind in the corner and guys yelling at each other because it just happens but right now you know a couple guys trip each other and they get up and they're like UK, UK they high five and like it's just been Weird. There's a weird difference now that
Andrew Hall:that somehow, like, that'd be incredible. But yeah, like you said, it's slowly slowly fading but yeah, it was it was a great reset for sure.
JP Gaston:Did you continue the gratitude journal? Or is it something that you still do? Or was it just kind of an exercise you did at the time? Yeah,
Andrew Hall:I had the journal for a bit. And I stopped using that. Like anyone, I've tried a whole bunch of different routines. And you know, some just don't click for you. So what I'm rolling with right now is my team is going to laugh when they hear this, but I have like a morning Excel sheet that I open. And that's like, where I do my morning routine from. So I've got like, five or 10 things I want to try to get done each morning, and then record a couple like sleep statistics and stuff. And then yeah, try to write down like one to three things I'm super grateful for. And then visualize the day a little bit. Write down the top 123 things that would make a successful day work less like, what's the one thing I want to accomplish? Inevitably, it turns out two or three things but so good to get that key focus in and Yeah, a few other things. So that's what's working for me right now isn't a big gnarly Excel sheet. Let's conduct classic
JP Gaston:morning Excel. There's so many, like, equals seat two plus before. It's my
Seth Anderson:baby. We have a new gratitude practice in our house. So my daughter made a candle in her aftercare program. And it looks like it's got like stained glass on it, but it's like paper mache or whatever. And she brought it home. I don't know, this is a few weeks back. And she decided that every night we usually before dinner, we will do like what are you thankful for, and just kind of go around the table. But she decided that we were gonna have a thankful count candle. So we light the candle. And then we all hold the candle and say what we're thankful for. And it's turned into like this little family thing. And then they fight about who gets to blow it out. And it's a whole thing. But the funny part was is like she's five and she came up with this whole plan on her own. And I was like, that's pretty cool.
Andrew Hall:That's awesome. Nevermind liking how cool it is what we do, and we're 23 She's just crushing the game five in terms of psychology, philosophy.
Seth Anderson:There's another one with her too. We talked about this on the first podcast this season JP where I'm gonna say maybe it's my coaching that is rubbing off on her but we went for a walk you ever done the or I guess if you ever done the tea house hike and like,
Andrew Hall:not me. I've done a bunch of BC hiking, but not too much in Alberta. Yeah,
Seth Anderson:long story short, we're coming down this spot. And it was, it was a lot for a four and nine and three, four year olds and a nine year old with us and coming down this hill. And I was like, Oh, well, this was not good planning on my part. Like we're like staring down a rock face. And my nine year old, he knows what's up and he's like, if I fall down there, I'm gonna die. And so he like starts crying. And then all the other kids are starting to freak out because he's freaking out. I'm like, Alright, just are just gonna kind of crawl down we'll be okay. And so we get to the bottom of this rock face. And I asked Jovi, my daughter, I'm like, so was that scary. She's like, it was a little bit scary. But I just took a couple deep breaths, and I was fine. And I was like, you can teach a class. That's wicked. But to
JP Gaston:hear one of the things that I started doing recently, just since we're on the topic of things that we're doing is, at the end of the day, actually not doing a gratitude thing, but doing how did I show up today? And what will people remember me as today? Like what are what are the things people will think to me to take away about me today? That is not what I want them to take away. And man, when you think back on your day, and I think I'm a pretty even keeled person, there are some people I can think of off the top of my head who really need to, you know, probably follow this process, and take a real hard look at themselves and how they showed up in a day. But when I look back on the day, I'm like, wow, I had this one interaction that I you know, didn't didn't particularly like, and I'll reach out to that person and we'll, we'll have a good conversation about it. So it's, it's kind of changed the way that I connect with people. It's, it's, it's a good one for me.
Andrew Hall:That's awesome. I'm I'm a little bit late on the reflection phase. Right now I have the evening portion of my sheet that just always gets left blank. But if you do like,
JP Gaston:equals before, it will just Yeah.
Andrew Hall:Yeah. But that reminds me of. So my friend, Derek, who has worked with us wheelchair since basically the very start as well. And you guys might get a chance to talk to him too. He runs a retreat program called Elysium retreat. And one of the activities in there is about personal values. And so he asked you to think deeply and write down what you think your top 10 values are. But then he says, Now imagine that for the last week, there's been a camera crew following you around for a documentary and recording everything you do. And at the end of that they're supposed to write down what they think your top 10 values are. And then you honestly ask yourself like what would people think my values are versus what I want them to be so very similar to your exercise there but on a big You're macroscale. And it's pretty telling to like, Oh, I think people would actually say my values are like, yeah, efficiency or like something that's like not the dream thing you want to put yourself out there as. So I love that. I love that daily aspect of it. And I, I love the showing up thing. I love that trace, like, how am I showing up? So I do that in the morning and set myself like showing up reminders before something like this or like going out to sports. Like remember, you're in Dev 10? Like, don't worry about it have fun? Yeah, so lots, lots of residents there.
Seth Anderson:I really like the top 10 thing. And I think it would have a similar process in our intake just starting to work with clients on the coaching front. Like if you ask someone, what are your top three priorities, hey, people get really uncomfortable for some reason. But then they list off three things. And it's like, okay, now if you think of your time as money, and you're investing it everyday, you've got that 18 hours, how much of your time went to those three things that you say are the most important things. And almost inevitably, for most people, it is out of sync, like they're not actually putting near the investment into the things that they say are most important. It's just, it's interesting, because you don't actually like it a little bit, you just kind of get caught up in the grind of the day to day that you don't think about that. Or it's like this lofty goal that you set in front of you. But you're like, if I work hard now, then I'll get there. Yeah, I don't know what the answer is necessarily. But it's just interesting. There's often a disconnect between those two things.
Andrew Hall:Totally. A lot of people write family first, right? That's a really common one. And you're like at work, and then you're commuting, and then you're doing whatever else and like how much time do you spend focus time with your family? Or how often do you see your parents amazing article by Tim urban called the tail end talks about, he realized that age 30, he's in the tail end already of his relationship with his sister and his mom and dad, because you spent all this time with him growing up, he's gonna spend whatever it is total guess. 10,000 hours with each of those people. He's already spent 9000. So like, is he making an effort now to see them every year, because family is so important to him. And he's into his last 40 times, he's gonna see his parents because he sees them twice a year, three times a year crazy mind blowing article,
Seth Anderson:just sort of in that vein, you guys have made the decision with meal share that you guys are moving, moving. Moving on. And, you know, we've talked a lot on this podcast is faster, especially this season, and just in life in general, I think JP around things and everything ends. Like we'd like to think things are gonna go on forever and ever. But inevitably, everything ends. And I'm just curious, like, how did you guys, you know, land on the decision that you did? And how's that all coming together?
Andrew Hall:Yeah, we joke with our team. When we're talking to them, we say, well, we're hoping that he'll be here for the next 90 years working from your chair, but in the event that you ever need to leave or whatever. Yeah, so yeah, if you asked me this, in year one to seven and wheelchair, the vision always for us was like, do I see a runway for the next two years where I'm learning lots, I'm still the right leader for meal share. I'm enjoying myself. Things are still going well. And always always, it was like, Yeah, I see that happening. Happy to stay here for a couple more years towards, you know, your seven, eight, I think there was some element of like, yeah, you want things to go on forever, but also, to the start of our podcast today. Like if we can help the world and do things that are cool and affect it, like, maybe I'd like to do a couple other of those things than just doing the same thing for 50 or 90 years. So that was like maybe into our heads a little bit. And then yeah, through COVID. I mean, that just destroyed me AllShare and has been a really big challenge last couple years, I think actually great that we stayed around for it and took a lot of hard lessons and difficult times through it. And also, we just like weren't willing to just roll over and give up and let it die. We think that wheelchair can be around for 50 plus years. And I think if the wrong people left wheelchair in 2020, it would have just died and gone, which would have been such a shame. And then coming through COVID and like getting it back getting military back on its feet into a place where it's going to survive now and just have to play some catch up for a while. There's a lot of rebuilding to do and repeating to do things we've done. So I think that's one element of like, do we want to like grow we'll share back from 150 to 500 independent restaurants again, like there's different ways it can be growing borophene pretty beat down. And then that aside, like fresh blood is good. Like there's lots of things that Jeremy and I have always felt are good things for meal share and things that we felt aren't good fits. And some of those things could be wrong. And so a fresh perspective and a new leader I think could bring a ton of energy to meal share. So I totally get the feeling that you know we want things to go on forever. And it's like finishing it's like going your high school grad or finishing university or moving on like it could be really Sad and then you start to have all the fields and reflect on on the memories. But yeah, thanks, do things do you wrap up and that's okay. And it's time for the next adventure.
Seth Anderson:Speaking of the next adventure, and you got a couple things in the hopper, you're gonna give it a try, like a little mini retirement is that yeah, best way to describe it? Yeah, sabbatical
Andrew Hall:mini retirement, something like that. So a couple of thoughts there. A big book for me really early on in my career was reading The Four Hour Workweek. And Tim Ferriss talks about taking mini retirements, rather than just okay, I'll just work my ass off for 40 years and then retire at the end, there's like not a lot of things in life. In the micro that we do that for, like, usually things are more balanced than that. Like, you know, you wouldn't say I'm going to work all 200 of my days this year in a row, and then take off, you know, from September to December. So similarly, like nice to take vacations throughout the year a little bit. So cool. It's a cool thought, I think to take a year of your retirement, borrow it from when you're 68. And take it when you're 32. Certainly, if you're that age, he would like kill to be 32. Again, I think a lot about like, time and money. Another thing I had written down to talk about was someone else's thought about the fact that when you're this age, you're at time billionaire, you have over a billion seconds left in your life. So using some of those seconds on on things that you might not be able to or may not want to do when you're older. And thinking about like, right now anyone who's working 80 hours a week is like selling their 20s or 30s. away for money, which is fine, but later on in your life, you can't buy those days and weeks back for the money that you have. So certainly I don't want to just like become a vagabond and like, be free. Like, my entire 20s. Yeah, exactly. A little stick in my sack. Not quite to that level, but just trying to find a bit more balanced between, like, do we need to work 4050 hour work weeks? Like is that what I certainly want to do? Like, could I find a way to provide enough value that I can earn a good income and take more time for myself or my family or my friends are those areas you talked about, like finding more balance and one of the most important things in my life. So that's the thinking behind it. I still have like crises where I'm like, these are my prime earning years, I should be putting away money, money compounds over time, like doing that now is very important. So there's definitely balanced with all that. But I feel like it's the right call. And then yeah, cool to just test like, what Where does my brain go when it's unoccupied? Like similarly, like, I'm not just gonna take a year off and sit on the couch and watch the office. That only takes a week. So then I'll have to do is curious driven people like, very cool to see what happens when you aren't locked into the existing thing for 40 or 50 hours? And where what what do I pursue? What do I want to spend my time on? So lots of big questions to answer this year.
Seth Anderson:It's interesting, that Tai Chi, we could have a whole podcast just on that whole time billionaire concept. I know earlier this year, I've wrote down how many hours or minutes there are in a week. And like, people are asking me like, how do you have time to do all this stuff. I'm like, I actually feel like, especially earlier this year, I felt like I was wasting time like I wasn't, you know capitalize on it. So I actually wrote it down like this is spreadsheet worthy, if you please scan it. But there is like there's 10,000 minutes in a week, I think is what I have on here. And we spent 2900 of them well, so let's say three round up to 3000 of them sleeping. So that's 7000 minutes, that were awake every week. And like, you can jam a lot into that if you're like focused and you have a plan or if you're present. And so I just started figuring out like, Okay, well, where do I want my time to go? And I'm not perfect by any means. But like, if you think of time in the same concept that we think of money, would you spend it differently? And I think almost everybody would.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, there's another great quote that says like, almost everybody protects their money so carefully, but fritters away their time. If you could see it in a giant hourglass on your wall or something like maybe you treat it differently, but I totally agree.
Seth Anderson:So that's cool. Um, I'm envious. I mean, I'm 35. And I have not had an opportunity to take a one year retirement. But you know what, though? It's crazy, though. Because like, in some ways, the way that it shook out for me with COVID, like we moved out to Redwood out into nature, working from home, being with my family, starting things like the podcast, you know, I still have my day job in there. And that's still a huge, you know, time commitment. But in a lot of ways I've set up my lifestyle in a way that would have been more like, oh, we'll do that when we're like 50 and we don't have kids anymore. We just kind of made that more of a priority now. So it's kind of in the same vein where our lifestyle changed in a way that never would have without COVID.
Andrew Hall:Yeah, that's great. It takes takes you back to your question right like that was gave everyone a chance to re evaluate things.
Seth Anderson:So your, your new project that you're working on? We talked about a little bit off the top, what do you share with the listeners? What you've kind of got on the horizon there? Yeah, sounds really cool. Just reading about it.
Andrew Hall:Thank you. Yeah, so that'll take up some of our time next year for sure. So that's called no story loss. And what we do is help families capture their loved one's life stories while they're still around. So I think for the most part, from what I've heard from my friends, most families have this like, oh, yeah, we should write those stories down sometime kind of mentality about their loved ones who are who are aging, and it's just one of those things that gets away from us. So, five years ago, or so I sat down with my grandpa, because our family had this mentality. And I was like, I'm just gonna actually do it. I need to write these down. And so I sat there and listened to him talk and just typed furiously while I listened to him, and got down to the stories. And so Jeremy, as I mentioned, is my cousin and has the same grandpa. So that was kind of mutual family for us. And then his dad actually got diagnosed with cancer around the same time. Luckily, he's still with us. But he that caused Jeremy to take a pause and ask, like, Hey, I've had so many great memories with my dad, but like, what don't I know? And what would I want to ask him just in case like, it doesn't go the way we want. So they went on this hike? And he I think he brought like, 100 questions that he found somewhere to ask. So he wrote all those down, and just found so much value in that. So we thought, you know, what's a way that we can bring this to other families and provide this opportunity so that everyone gets over that hump of we kind of should do this or worse, you know, we wish we would have done as well, we had the chance, and help people get ahead of it a little bit. So the models a little bit better than me sitting there with my laptop and typing now, should we interview the family member over the phone and record it and send it off for transcription. And then our amazing writers take those stories and kind of organize them and put them in order. And then we produce a beautiful coffee table book at the end full of photos. And they choose their color palette and everything. And they're really incredible books, we've got our Instagram that you can take a look at. But yeah, that's been kind of a side thing for us for a long time. And COVID opened up a little bit of space for us, just not having as much to do during some of the darkest times of meal share, as we just kind of have to wait it out. So that's been really cool. It's been interesting trying to run two things at once. And know story loss gets the kick to the side pretty often when pressing wheelchair stuff comes around. But kind of like you mentioned, like thinking about what you can do in 10 years, I think we're really happy that we just got no story loss started a couple years ago. And now we're certainly haven't grown into anything huge yet, but it's just got some time under its belt, and we've learned some things and stuff. So yeah, it's been fun. It's been really cool. It's totally different from meal share. But we'd like to think it's still producing good for the world. And there's some incredible stories. Every family will come to us and be like most parents, like, you know, I had a pretty boring life. And then you read the first chapter, and oh, yeah, I was living in England and a bomb came through our roof and landed in our living room. So we had to move out for a week. While they like dismantled this bomb in the living room, is crazy. So everyone's got good stories for sure.
Seth Anderson:That's really cool. So that like thinking like Humans of New York kind of vibes with that, like,
Andrew Hall:yeah, it's just a couple, you know, not related things, but just kind of the same. Yeah, to the Humans of New York thing. It's like gathers people all around you with incredible stories that you'd never know, just by walking past them. So this is a similar but different kind of thing. And obviously, one of the funnest parts for clients is reading stories they've never heard before, because they've never thought to ask those particular questions. Even if they know the life story. Like, they don't know what was what was bugging them as a kid on the school ground or whatever story it happens to be. So yeah, it's pretty cool.
Seth Anderson:Super cool. What? So next year, is it sort of just developing and just sort of working on it? Are you have plans to expand it and grow it? Are you just going to kind of play it by ear? Yeah. So
Andrew Hall:we'll work full time through February and we'll share and then I think into March, we'll start to kind of ask those questions. So I think no, sorry, loss could be any of keeping it super quiet next year to running it similarly to how we have and enjoying that sabbatical to like trying to blow it up and grow it a lot bigger. That's a question. I think we'll we'll check out in March. We've got some time to take a breath and figure it out. So yeah, similar to the start of the conversation, like it's so cool to think that we could probably push it and you know, whatever it is raise money and grow it bigger or just run it as like a lifestyle project or whatever else but in the meantime, it's there's custom Jumping on here and there and it's kind of puttering along. So that's, that's good for now. Good for the next few months.
Seth Anderson:So on the on the way out of here, just last kind of wrap up question we usually get into is, what are you working on for personal development? And how are you feeding your mind these days?
Andrew Hall:And I have the same question for you guys. Well, you know all about the great Excel sheet. So that's great. Yeah, so yeah, I love that analogy of, you know, business people tell each other, like you got to work on the business, not just in the business. And that takes the form of like an annual retreat and quarterly meeting and a one page strategic plan. But do we think about that for ourselves? Do we think about working on your life, not just in your life? Yeah, so actually, I kind of mentioned the retreat earlier. So I do Derek's annual retreat each year, which is like a really cool reset. So I just headed over to my parents place on Saltspring island a couple of weeks ago, and did a whole series of exercises to set the macro, I guess, and think about the five year vision and what 2022 will bring. And then that kind of breaks down into I do quarterly goals and review those every three months. Obviously, they should feed into accomplishing those annual goals. And then yeah, I found the I always find it hard to do like the Sunday night review, or the monthly review. But the Daily Star has been working really well. So I don't get to that every day. But that just kind of keeps me on track with those monthly ones. So that's my pretty structured like personal development stuff. And then feeding feeding my brain. I've got like, too many podcasts to listen to all of them as they come out so big into Tim Ferriss. I've been liking the all in podcast with the billionaires in the US there. And then I use a library app actually, that lets me basically do audible but for free. So you just get any book that the library has what's called an audio book. It's called Libby. Ally, BB one. Yeah, just connect with your library membership. They don't have every book, obviously. But it's nice to be able to grab those and listen to books. So yeah, between the two of those, I do a lot of reading and podcasting while I just do chores or whatever. And then got a paper book going at all times kind of thing as well. But yeah, those are
Seth Anderson:any good Recent Reads or anything that's really captivated your attention lately.
Andrew Hall:Yeah. I'd be popping open here. Of course, it lives in an Excel sheet where everything in my life lives. I just actually read Purple Cow for the first time. It's a really old book. It's actually funny to listen to now, as he talks about trends in the early internet and stuff that Seth Godin, I loved greenlights at the start of this year came out Matt McConaughey, I read that at the start of the year. So good, just good to hear his voice when things were dark, you know? Yeah, I've got tons I keep. I keep a book list. I'll send it to you guys. Those would be a couple recent ones. Do you have like an earthquake book The saying the earthquake book is like the one that shakes the world for you because he didn't read it at the right time. And it was huge for you. For whatever
Seth Anderson:reason, at the time that I read it. Shoe Dog really hit home for me. So getting one on the Nike founder like okay, just I think it was just connecting the dots of like Nikes like the biggest conglomerate huge company and like, it was created. Basically a guy went over to Japan and bullshitted his way into a company and then like it almost collapsed on itself 100 times so I just Yeah, I don't know I love that one.
Andrew Hall:There's that side of it. How do you like did the fake it till you make it and also the fact it was like, just people at a university like using a waffle iron to make shoes can start so scrappy and small and just be so big. And that book also is like such good business advice and such inspiring travel like he just like went to Hawaii for a while. went to Japan for a while. So good. One adventure.
Seth Anderson:Yeah, I really love that one. Chatter. That's one that I really liked. Dr. Ethan cross, so it's on basically, your inner voice and how to manage it more or less. It's got a really cool use case that he goes through with Rick ankiel, he was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. And he like this is like early 2000s. And he was Rookie of the Year. He wouldn't Rookie of the Year, one of the best pitchers in the league. He went out in the playoffs and he threw seven. I think it's seven straight wild pitches. And
Andrew Hall:I did all this summer. That's
Seth Anderson:so like, imagine like your rookie of the year you're one of the best pitchers in the game. He goes out he throws like seven straight wild pitches. And for all intents and purposes, he never pitched another game again. Crazy. He ends up reinventing himself as an outfielder and coming back five years later. Yeah, but it just gets into like our brain and the inner voice and just mechanisms in which we can kind of manage it. And one of the cool takeaways from it is this concept of self talk where you actually like if you're coaching yourself, you say your first name When you're doing it in your head, because it acts like you know, if you were on the sports field and someone's like, hey, Andrew do this thing, it would resonate. Same thing for yourself. Like, if you actually go through the act of saying your first name, it's more likely to stick and they've proven it scientifically. So that was that was a that was a book I liked quite a bit,
Andrew Hall:you should check out inner game of tennis if you haven't read it. In terms of like sports. I
Seth Anderson:have it on Audible. And I got like a couple chapters in but I gotta go back to that one for sure. Yeah, one last one for you, too, is the little book of clarity. by Jamie smart, we actually had him on the pod. I think it's three or four episodes ago. And it's a best selling book in England. And it's just all based on like the human operating system and how what does he call it subtractive psychology where we think we need to add stuff, but we actually just need to, if you just take away stuff and get to like the base operating model, we know way more than we think we do. And so it's got a lot of again, just really good tips and tricks and reminders about getting into your own inner wisdom and where your thoughts come from that kind of stuff.
Andrew Hall:At the risk of just listing books for an entire hour, a couple other good short ones. The debt by Seth Godin is awesome. It's maybe 100 100 pages or so it's not as new one or pretty new. It's like maybe a year or two old. He basically says like as you take on a new activity or sport or whatever. There's like this reward curve that goes like this. And then you go into the dip, and then certain things you need to push through the depth to get to like the great rewards, basically, and you should quit at the dip or before. If you're not going to pursue that really far. Anyway, it's awesome. And then anything you want by Derek Severs also pretty short book. So great. That was when I read in university, and it kind of fueled that same inspiration of like, cool, you can go do things and build things. He's just like a great modern philosopher has lots of great little Maxim's to learn
Seth Anderson:from. That's awesome. I feel like I'm heading into a call it like an information gathering phase. Like, over the holidays. I have like two three weeks off. So I'll be loading up on books for sure. Yeah, you
Andrew Hall:can do the Bill Gates reading week for yourself.
Seth Anderson:I was gonna say that, like, I've never actually fully done that. But I think at some point, like, if it works for him, it's got to be,
Andrew Hall:it's got to be good. I've never like I don't think read a whole book in a day there. And he must just be crushing a book every day during that time or something, or skimming
Seth Anderson:them or something. I don't know. Yeah. But it's interesting. I mean, one last question or one last thought to pontificate on was I went to a Seth Godin like seminar earlier this year where he did his thing for an hour and a half. And one thing that has stuck with me ever since that he's like, authentic leadership is bullshit. Like, it's not a real thing. And I can't remember all the rationale, but I just keep thinking, it's basically like, there's no such thing as being authentic. And it was like so like, contrary to like everything else that's out there that it's just like this little nugget stuck in my brain. I gotta go back and revisit it because he had like a whole rationale for it. But I don't know if you'd ever heard that or I haven't heard that
Andrew Hall:one. But I should check that out. Because it sounds I don't know. sounds paradoxical almost to start, but but I love the like the contrarian stuff is the most interesting, right. Peter Thiel has got some good stuff on that. Yeah, also, I mentioned Ben Horowitz. But the hard thing about hard things, he started off like in the first page, he's like, I don't care about all these other business books that say it's hard to create the right culture or it's hard to do this. He's like, I'll tell you about when I have some real trading problems. Like when you got two weeks of cash left, you're not going to make payroll and new greatest partnerships. Anyway, he has some like, really real trenches stories and similarly is like, it breaks the mold of what everyone else is saying about business problems. And he like these are the real problems. These are the actual hard thing. Very cool. Yeah. Awesome.
Seth Anderson:Really appreciate you making the time today. Andrew, this was great. Yeah, it's
Andrew Hall:been fun really engaging. I've got like tons more like to ask you guys I want to connect, connect offline and ask you guys some more stuff, but thanks for having me. It was awesome.
JP Gaston:Thanks for coming in Andrew. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. Of course, if you're interested in coaching, send us an email to coaching at the biz dojo.com