Why Most People Fail at Change (and How Jason Feifer Fixes It) - Episode 145

If we do not understand our transferable value, the thing that we always have that other people always need no matter what changes, if we do not identify that, then we will feel anchored to the things we can't control. But when you understand where your ground is, how people always need the thing that you have, how it can move through industry and through moment, now you have the foundation of value. Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you, that your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleep walking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up, let's rise up and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. We have this fun segment that we do that is called What I Like About You and it gives me a chance to actually sit back and say, why have I asked this person on the show and do I like them and what I like about them? And what I found out is that I actually do like some things about you, quite a few. So I had the chance to meet our guest today, Jason Pfeiffer at the Limitless Live event and I had known who he was before, you know, heard his name quite a few times and you know, there's a couple of crossing of paths and stuff. But what I didn't know was what it was like to be in his presence and it just immediately stood out and that was one of the first things that that was the dragon first took note of him. And his presentation was polished and insightful, but way, way more than that. He just had this genuinely different vibe about him. And one of the things that I noticed is that typically when you walk into a seminar or some sort of a convention and you hear someone speaking, you look up on the stage, but when Jason Pfeiffer is talking, you won't find him there. So he's just out there and you know, not talking at people. I got the feeling right away that this is a guy that likes to roll up his sleeves and be with the people, which could be very, very risky at times, you know, to just go out and let people just shoot from the hip and ask questions. But you could just tell that he was a master of his skill sets and his systems and everything like that. Also thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed his time out. That was one of the things that I said, however it's going to happen, I got to meet this guy. But more importantly, and this was something that I've kind of progressively learned about him and something that I'm very much in alignment with is his obvious love for his wife and his family. You know, I just recently saw him basically recap a year or several years and it was just all about, all about family. And we don't always get to see that side. You know, a lot of people hide that element of their lives. But you know, you could just tell that whatever he's out there doing and doing masterfully, it's got a Y behind it. And I really enjoyed that. Welcome to the Dragon's Lair. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. JC podcast. Mr. Jason Pfeiffer, it's good to have you here. Dude, that was the nicest intro I think anyone's ever made for me. I really appreciate that. It was real. It came from the heart. You know, I mean, like I actually stopped and thought about it. There was no chat GPT involved in that. And unless I'm actually AI, you know, these days, it's hard to know. So my first question for you is, what's it like to be Jason Pfeiffer these days? Oh, what's it like to be Jason Pfeiffer these days? It's busy, I guess. It's great. I, you know, I don't know. Look, I'm just really fortunate. I, like you said, I have a great family who I love and I have built a work ecosystem of things that I love. And really what it all is anchored on is this sense of connectivity that the thing that I love to do more than anything is to just get out there and connect with people. I draw my energy from other people. I know introverts like my friend, Vanessa Van Edwards, who also spoke at Limitless Live, you know, they'll go and meet a lot of people and then need to turn off the lights and lay on the floor for a while. I'm the opposite. If I spend a whole day talking to people at the end of the day, I'm like, are there other people? Where are the other people I want to keep going? And so I've just built a world and built a life that is truly oriented around connecting with people. And what I've been really fortunate to do is find ways in which I can make that a business as well, so that I'm always doing what I love. I love that. And it was so apparent to see that. Our friend Jim Quick is one of those introverts as well. I've known him for 25 years and I always just crack up. We have breakfast every week and I always say, how did you end up being somebody that everybody likes to be around? It was like his biggest nightmare. I just want to get the quick kind of somebody comes up and just quickly asks you this question because I'm trying to figure this out. But how did you become the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine? It now suits you and everybody knows that about you. But how did that happen? Oh, well, it didn't make any sense to start. It made absolutely no sense. And this, I think, is a really important thing for anyone to realize, which is that the greatest opportunities are almost certainly not going to be the ones that were on your original roadmap. I didn't know anything about Entrepreneur Magazine when I started, nor did I honestly know anything about entrepreneurs when I started. And the journey instead just came through traditional media. I was a media guy and I had worked at a number of different magazines. I started in community newspapers and then I was at Men's Health and Fast Company and Maxim. And when Entrepreneur came on my radar, it was honestly because they were looking for a number two and they needed someone who just had good magazine making experience and could bring some kind of editing chops and whatever. It was just kind of basic stuff. And when I got to Entrepreneur, which is a bit of a journey, but when I got to Entrepreneur and then nine months later, the editor in chief left and I made a play for the role and I got it, honestly, I still saw it as a media job. My job was to just make a good product. But the more time I spent getting to know entrepreneurs, the more in which I started to change the way that I think. One of the biggest moments for me was in 2018. So I became editor in chief in 2016. In 2018, my wife and I wrote a romantic comedy. It has absolutely nothing to do with entrepreneurship whatsoever. It was called Mr. Nice Guy and it was a romantic comedy and we had been working on it for years long before I had started at Entrepreneur. It got published by St. Martin's Press. And anyway, I got two very different reactions to that book depending upon what part of my world that person was from. If it was a media person or a writer, then what they said was, wow, congratulations, that is so cool that you and your wife wrote that book. And if I was talking to an entrepreneur, they said something different. They said, oh, that's interesting. What are you going to do with it? And I didn't understand that reaction for a while until eventually it clicked for me that what was happening was that entrepreneurs think vertically, which is to say that they think that the only reason to do something is because it is the foundation upon which the next thing will be built. And that is not how the rest of the world thinks. Most people think horizontally. And that's how I had thought. You do something and you move along and you do something else. Then you do something and you move along and you do something else. And you're always kind of at the starting line again. And I would work for different magazines and I would do work for them. And then they would own that work and I would move along and I'd have a different audience to serve and I would write more stuff that wasn't mine and so on. And these entrepreneurs were saying, oh, you wrote this book? Well, that's interesting. How is that the foundation for the next thing? It's a romantic comedy. Are you guys going to teach romantic comedy writing now? Are you going to open up like a series of workshops? What's going on? And the answer was that I didn't have a plan, but I became very attracted to that way of thinking. Well, okay, what do I have access to right now? Wow. Well, I have access to an audience. Why can't that become some of my audience? Why can't I listen to what those people are asking me and thinking about me and seeing me as an authority in and try to build something that's ownable for me that I can build upon because of my relationship now with entrepreneur? It just, it was a radical shift in the way in which I thought. And once you start doing that, you can't stop. Suddenly you see opportunity everywhere because you see, what do I have available to me? What would it mean if I seized upon that even though nobody is asking for that? And then what new opportunities will that create as well? JC, one of the most impactful things that anybody has ever told me was when I had a conversation with Malcolm Gladwell, who said self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. That if you have too narrow an idea of what you are, then you will turn down all of these opportunities around you. I think I spent too much time in my career having a narrow self-perception and this experience with entrepreneurs opened that up and it changed everything. Oh, God. Well, first of all, for anybody that follows Jason on his social media, now you officially know that that's what he's actually like. I love the energy that you bring. And it kind of validates how you found yourself as editor-in-chief. Like you were saying, I learned this from the guy that Kiyosaki, what he wrote, Rich Dad Poor Dad, the Rich Dad character was making reference to this guy named Marshall Thurber. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. In any case, he mentioned that. That was the first time that things don't typically come from where you're focused. They come from over here. And that's a different way of thinking. And it seems like a blessing for all of us that you started to get access to entrepreneurs because it created this fascination. But as you know, one of my favorite quotes is that learning and knowing is just another form of distraction and the absence of action. I mean, there's a lot of people that listen to this and say, wow, I'm jazzed, but they're going to hit a block. So I noticed that a lot of the stuff that you do and a lot of your passion is about kind of unlocking and unblocking people. I kind of want to dive into that a little bit because I know that the majority of people listening to this want and need and also have must haves in life, but it just can't seem to get it. So you talk a lot about studying people and the concept of how people have to adapt to change. So from your vantage point, do you think that the society that we live in, this is something I was excited to ask you, the society that we live in, do you think that we're facing a change problem or is it more one of a perception problem? Oh, that's an interesting question. Well, first, let me challenge the premise of the question, which is that phrasing the society that we live in. I actually think that pretty much every time period, at least in modern history, is roughly exactly the same. I realize that we are going through what feel like distinct and radical changes. AI is a massive change. If you zoom out a little further, I mean, I'm old enough, I'm 45 to have seen the absolute dawn of the internet age and what that has done. So those all feel like distinct changes, but look, there was a time not that long ago in human history when we were able to communicate globally for the first time or when Samuel Morris invented the first commercially viable telegraph and it was the first time in human history that information could move faster than a horse used to be. In fact, I don't know. It's a fun fact here, but you could really argue that the very dawn of the things that we live through right now, the internet, AI, all that started with the telegraph, the first time in which you could send information along a wire. And the reason that Samuel Morris invented that or developed it, he wasn't the only one, was because he had been traveled down to DC for work and then a little while later got word through a guy who had to ride a horse down with a note that his wife was gravely ill. And then before he could even get back to her, he got another note that she had died. Now, had he been able to get real-time information about his wife, he would have been able to get back home to see her before she died. But they couldn't at the time because information didn't move faster than a horse. And he said, I have to solve that problem. And he did. And it's funny, at his retirement, they threw a big party for him at his retirement, somebody stood up at that retirement party for Samuel Morris, who revolutionized the world. And they said, you know, you have done great things, but also you have sped up life. I used to be able to leave work and go home and nobody would bother me. No information about work could come to me. And now it does. And now I have information coming to me from everywhere all the time. And I have to respond to it. And I don't like that. Life has moved too fast, he said. And so did many people at the time. Now, of course, here we are, and we're saying roughly the same thing about our time, that, oh, life was different before, and now we live in some kind of different time. So I would challenge it, JC, actually, because I don't think that we live in a different time. I think that we live in the same time. It's just our version of that change. So what kind of thing are we looking at? Partially, it's a perception issue, which I just could have just discussed. We're actually not really shifting the way in which we live. We're just perceiving that we're shifting the way in which we live. And then part of it is absolute reality. We are disrupting structures that we're familiar, and we're in the process of building new structures. That is a cyclical process, and it feels very strange, and it can be extremely disruptive. Let's just take AI as one example of this. I think of AI as a microwave oven. And the reason that it's a microwave oven is because everybody has a microwave oven at home. It is incredible revolutionary technology. Try to explain a microwave oven to somebody from 100 years ago. You just can't. It's wild, but we don't cook everything in the microwave. We don't make everything in the microwave. We realize that it's good for some things, and it's not good for other things. It's good for reheating pizza, and it's bad for making a steak dinner. That's because we've had decades of experimentation time with the microwave to figure out what it's for and what it's not for, and what it's replacing and what it's not replacing. And we are not yet through that process with AI. We're just at the very start of it. So we're trying it on everything, and we're saying AI can do this, and it can do that, or maybe it can do this, and maybe it can do that, and everyone is saying, oh my god, it's going to replace this, and it's going to replace that. And it's not, because what's actually going to happen is that we are eventually going to figure out, just like we have with the microwave, what it's for, and what it's not for, what AI is really useful for, and the experiments that didn't really work, and how it can supplement our work, and how it can help us pursue other things. And that will be an exciting moment when we're back to that time that we have with the microwave right now, where the experimentation is done, or at least part of it is done, and we have a better understanding. But right now, we're in that moment of disruption, of change, of questioning, of experimenting. And what we need to know is that that doesn't go on forever. Part of that is perception, and it's cyclical, and we will eventually get to the place where we know more than we do now, then we can truly act with intention. Thinking about Wayne Dyer, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So it's kind of both. It's whatever you think it is. And it's funny, listening to you say that, I love the way you answered that. A lot of people think for one thing that AI is like some sort of like final countdown of change. But you know, I'm looking at right now, when I grew up, and we first had the internet, and I had to connect through a phone line, like for me, that's the horse. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the horse. So if you think about the change that's taken place from then till now, even before AI became a big thing, and how we adapted to it, just imagine what's coming after AI. So we're constantly adapting to that. And I know that you speak and study a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and such in the sense of problem solving. So my question is, as we move deeper into this AI, the inevitable, I speak to Rizwan Verk and Donald Hoffman, and we're going to get to this place, we might even be right now. I mean, I cannot prove that Jason is actually a real person right now. I've met him. You know, we might be some form of advanced AI, who knows. But as we go deeper and deeper into this in 2026, in your observation and from your experience, what would you say is the number one adaptability trait that you're seeing with leaders that are actually thriving? So it's not something having to do with AI. It's something that's really fundamental. And Jason, you saw me talk about this on stage at Limitless Live, Jim Quicks event, but I want to share a brief version of it here because I think it's so foundational to being prepared for change, which is that we anchor our identities to the role that we occupy or the tasks that we perform. Imagine someone coming up to you at a party and asking what you do. The answer that you're going to offer is some version of being anchored to the things you do every day or the role that you occupy. And that's fine, but the problem is that stuff is so changeable. So if my answer is I'm a magazine editor, that's my identity. That's how I'm actually thinking about myself. That's how I orient my sense of self. Well, boy, that is so changeable. I mean, I work at a magazine today. I might not tomorrow. Who knows anything could happen. I could get call. My boss could be calling and firing me right now. You know, I do a lot of stuff entrepreneurially. I own my own companies. I sit on a lot of advisory boards, but at entrepreneur, I'm just an employee. It's not my company. I'm just an employee. So if my identity is I'm a magazine editor, I'm one phone call away from losing my identity. Terrible place to be. So instead, what we need to do is we need to build what I call the thing that does not change in times of change. And I would challenge you to do this. Consider the following statement. I, and now try to describe yourself in words that are not anchored to something easily changeable. I, what do you do that's not changeable? So here's an example. It's the difference between I am a magazine editor, deeply changeable, and I tell stories in my own voice. Seven words. I tell stories in my own voice. Think about that. I tell stories. What an incredibly important word because I can tell stories anywhere. I can tell stories on this podcast. I can tell stories when I get hired by companies. I can tell stories when I advise founders. I tell stories in all the work that I do podcasts and newsletter and books and so on. I have full control over that. People always need that. They always need stories. And then in my own voice is me setting the terms for how I want to operate at this stage of my career. When I challenge leaders to do things like this, to come up with that mission statement, they say the most amazing things. They say, I help teams achieve greatness. I solve the most complex problems. There was a woman in Chicago who told me that she had recently left her consultant. She put her consulting business on hold. It was thriving, but she just had a child. She wanted to stay home and raise that child. And she did not identify with the phrase, stay at home moms. She didn't really understand how to identify herself in this moment. But what she came to through this idea was the following statement. I help people become the best versions of themselves, which is just as relevant for the consulting business as it is for raising a child, as it is for anything else. I hear the most impressive entrepreneurs say versions of this just naturally. So it was the founder of a baking mix company who said, I don't sell baking mixes. I bring joy to people with sweet baked goods. It was the president of a cosmetics company who said, I don't sell cosmetics. I help people reclaim their sense of self. The reason why this is important and the reason why I'm sharing this in response to your question, JC, is because if we do not understand our transferable value, the thing that we always have that other people always need no matter what changes, if we do not identify that, then we will feel anchored to the things we can't control. But when you understand where your ground is, how people always need the thing that you have, how it can move through industry and through moment. Well, now you have the foundation of value no matter what, and any new thing that comes to you becomes just a new opportunity to do the thing that you already do best. This is what I see the most impressive leaders and entrepreneurs be able to do. They understand their transferable value. I love that. This is so much better than I even hoped it would be as a student. I love so many things about that because it's kind of like the dichotomy of control. One of the things that I do with my book and with my work is help people reclaim control by understanding the aspects that they do control. I hear you talk a lot about when you look at founders and who succeeds and who doesn't, it's not really a matter of who's the most intelligent, but I hear you talk a lot about cognitive flexibility. That would be not just having the ability to change with the times, but like we said from the beginning of this conversation, think outside the box. It's interesting because I think what I just heard you say is that successful leaders are not consciously thinking outside the box. They just think outside the box. They think in a different way that other people do. Other people would have to go to a class and take an online course about this stuff. Here's a question. I'm just going to go with what I know about humans and all the people I work with. They'll know that this is what they need to do, but they'll still find themselves blocked or struggling. How does someone train themselves to switch perspectives quickly, especially when their identity now more than ever is wrapped up in what's going on? I always take note of the fact that we live in a world that is unknowingly or unconsciously doing the thinking for us, especially if you're engaged in social media and news and all of that stuff. You might think that you're coming up with ideas and that you're in control of your life, but you've got your foundation of your mother, father, teacher, preacher casting you off into this world, and now this world is just grooming what you consume and that's what ends up being what you assume. How do you take somebody that says, yes, Jason, I know this and I want that, but I have trouble executing? How do you help somebody make at least the initial shift? You'd use the word train. How do you train yourself? I don't know if it's training yourself so much as it is proving to yourself. This is certainly what mattered to me was putting myself in circumstances over and over and over again and doing something that felt a little risky or a little unnatural and discovering that it actually worked or that it didn't turn people off or that it wasn't crazy. It really helped to build a network, a network of other people who think like that, who you can draw inspiration from, who you can draw strength from when you're not sure if you're feeling a little crazy or doing something that's a little crazy. It helped me so much to start to find people who thought similarly, who were just a little bit ahead of me, who I could talk to and just, you know, I came up with this phrase, which was calibrate my way of thinking. That's what I needed to do to calibrate my way of thinking, to be surrounded by people who do something and think something that seems a little nuts to everybody else, but in this group, it's normal. I see this now all the time, JC. It's so interesting where my wife comes from media like I do, but she has basically stayed in media and she does amazing things. She's written books and she's, you know, written for national magazines and newspapers and very, very accomplished, but she also has a very kind of rigid way of thinking about how things should be done or structured, right? She doesn't like the idea of trying 20 different things, knowing that 19 of them are going to fail. That just feels really uncomfortable to her. She's like, no, I want to know which of these is going to work so that I can do that. Or she was thinking about starting something. She's been thinking about starting a venture of hers and she's been looking around for funding. And the thing I said to her was just do it. Just like, just throw it up there. Just do it. It probably won't be what you want it to be and it'll be a little messy. Then you're going to learn from how people react and even what you produce. And she's like, but I've worked so hard to be at this stage of my career and somebody should be paying me to do this work. But, you know, and I appreciate her perspective. I really do. But from the community that I'm now a part of, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs who say things like entrepreneurship is like jumping out of an airplane and building the parachute on the way down. Or actually, it's not quite like that. It's jumping off a cliff and building the airplane on the way down. Or Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, who says, if you aren't embarrassed by your first product launch, you launched too late. Or the way in which I see so many entrepreneurs just start a company by throwing a little bit of money at making a thing unsure of what kind of return is ever going to come back. But knowing that the only way to know whether or not they are on the right path is to get something out into the world at the moment in which nobody else believes in them. And that is a really hard thing to do. But it's a lot easier when you're surrounded by a lot of people who have also done that or who understand the value of that or who get to tell each other the stories of them doing it or other people that they know who did it and how it worked out. And even if it didn't work out in the way in which people want, it taught that person something that they brought into the next venture. You do not think this way unless you are surrounded by those people. So I challenge you to go find those people, to build a network of people who think like you need to start thinking, to calibrate your way of thinking to them. This is the reason to go to live events. And this is the reason why I love speaking at live events and I love speaking to people like you who run them because these are the opportunities to draw everyone together so that they can create those networks so that they are inside of a community that thinks the way they need to think. It's not about training yourself, it's about proving it to yourself. I love it. Now it totally makes sense why you obviously love to get out into the crowd. It's not like Phil Donahue maybe or who knows, maybe that's why Phil used to do that as well. But it's like taking that idea, not that you're braggadocious or think too much of yourself, but if you're going to deliver the closer you get to people, the better. And I can tell, you can look at the people's faces because there's video footage of it when you're out there and they're having fun, but it's special. And I would assume that like you said, getting amongst other people that are thinking the way that to help you evolve into the version of yourself that will get the results that you want and think the way you want, the closer you can get to those people, the better. And mentorship is one thing, not always easy to find, not everybody can afford that, but it could be a proximity thing. And I think it's time for people to probably recognize this is not really transferable through the internet. This conversation that I'm having with you and my admiration for you did not happen this way. I knew about you before I met you, but I saw you speak on stage and then I interviewed you when you came out and you were like still fired up. And that's why I want that guy, but you seem to have some more on that. Go for it. I appreciate that you recognize this thing that I do and they're talking about it. So let me give some context. When I give a keynote talk, I mean, I started on stage, but there are moments throughout the talk in which I want the audience to engage with my ideas. And what I used to do is I used to have a mic runner, you know, somebody with a microphone who would run around the room and I would call on people and they would say a thing and I would stand on stage and speak back to them. And then one day, just before I needed the mic runner, the mic runner wasn't there at this event. That was a great day for all of us. Oh my god, it was a great day for me because the mic runner wasn't there. And I thought, well, I'll describe the mic. So I grabbed the mic and I jumped into the audience and I just felt the energy rise up. And people were so engaged and it was so distinct that I was out in the crowd. And it reminded me of the first time that I had seen that, which was that the first keynote talk I ever gave was, I opened up from Marcus Lamonis and the prophet and the fixer. He spends most of his talk offstage walking around and I was so impressed by it because it communicated expertise that he was so competent that he was able to walk away from the visible structure of authority, right? When you're on the stage, you're the authority. But to walk off the stage, to give that up and be in the audience and still be in command of the subject and the room, way more impressive, I thought. I also thought this is distinct. Anybody has seen a lot of people stand on stage, but you rarely see somebody get off the stage and it makes it more memorable. And it's a good reminder, by the way, that oftentimes the greatest competitive advantages in business don't seem like the things people compete on. So trust can be a competitive advantage. Conversation can be a competitive advantage. The ability to engage people and have a nice conversation that goes beyond the transaction is a competitive advantage. It's not all just competing on price and quality. In fact, oftentimes everyone has the same price and the same quality. So you've got to be looking for other things. For me, I realized when I jumped off that stage for the first time, I realized that I'm giving people something that they'll remember. I'm actually seeming more authoritative by giving up that position of authority and I create a stronger connection, which is ultimately what I think people are looking for in those moments. It's the reason that somebody comes out to an event. It isn't to sit there and listen to somebody passively. It's to be part of a shared experience and being off the stage and moving around and prompting people to talk and then sharing my thoughts back while I move through the audience is a way of creating connection because the next thing that happens, of course, is that I get people talking and then after my talk, they go and they connect one on one. So I started to do this more and more and now I lean into it to the point where I'm starting to wonder, should I do the entire talk offstage? I'm not quite there yet, but I think it's really important for us to think about what can we do in every situation to make it feel a little more unique, to make it feel a little more like we're going out of our way to be there for people because I guarantee you in every system, in every structure, there are these opportunities to do that and when you do, you disrupt people's expectations of what you are and you get them to look at you anew and to think, well, maybe this person has more than I thought they did. Maybe this is somebody I should look even deeper into. This phrase I picked up from Robert Herzlick from Shark Tank, which is disrupt the narrative. Whenever you can disrupt somebody's narrative, somebody's expectations of what you are, the more in which you have them, you have their attention, you have their energy, you have their respect and they remember you and that's why I do it. Man, there's so many things that I've spent eight years compiling in my book that I just resonate with this so much. For one thing, it's visceral. Neuroscience is kind of where I geek out. What's interesting about the way the human brain works is that for the most part, whether you think you're making conscious decisions or not, your conditioned mind and your program is kind of running the show. But when you disrupt the pattern or even just ask them a question that they're not used to being asked, like the first question I asked you today, I said, what's it like to be Jason Pfeiffer these days? When that happens, it forces the person and this is what I think you do for people and this is where the connection happens, is you give them this opportunity that they don't have most all day to think for themselves and that's in the prefrontal cortex, the only part of our brain that we actually control. So I just absolutely love this. Now I'm going to use the P word that everybody is like just getting so comfortable with the word panic, but you talk a lot about and you've written about what you refer to as the panic phase. I know this all too well because that's kind of where my journey started is I used to struggle massively with anxiety and I just like a fool decided to just face it rather than run from it. It brought me here now, but I started getting big speaking gigs and I remember I got an email one time from this organization saying congratulations, you've been chosen to be a keynote speaker in front of 15,000 people and the old version of me would have been like sweet, but I just began to die. So this panic phase, when entrepreneurs hit this phase, because I love what you say about this, their nervous system is like kind of in a freeze mode like I just explained, but from your lens, because you've got a really interesting lens in entrepreneurship, what do leaders understand about fear during moments of disruption? Two things to share. Number one, the reason why we panic during moments of change is because we equate change with loss. So decades of psychological research have confirmed what's called loss aversion theory. Loss aversion theory holds that our human brains are programmed to protect against loss more than to seek gain. So when something new happens in our work or in our lives, the first thing we do is we think about the comfortable, familiar things that we have and how we're going to lose them. And then because we want to know what's going to happen next, we start to extrapolate that loss. We say, because I've lost this, I'm going to lose that, and then I'm going to lose this other thing. And that feels like everything is getting stripped away from us. And that is the panic. So you asked, what do leaders not understand about fear? And that's a really wonderful question. Here's what they don't understand about fear. There are two kinds of fear. And we are often anchored to the wrong one. Tell you a story to bring that to life. Just before COVID shut everything down, March of 2020, the last time that I went out to a social event before the end of all that was my friend, Nicole Appen's birthday. Nicole and I host a podcast together called Help Wanted, which helps people with their trickiest work problems. And Nicole just had a couple of friends out for dinner. And so I went, there were maybe, I can't remember, 10 of us around the table, I was sitting next to a woman named Megan Asha, who has since become a friend. She was at the time she had founded, and has since sold a company called Founder Made. And Founder Made was a trade show company. So she was a live events business. And I said to Megan, as COVID is starting to come, and we didn't know what it was, and everyone's sanitizing their hands, but the NBA is starting to shut their games down. I said to Megan, it looks like live events are going to be canceled for a while. How do you feel about that? Are you freaking out? And she said this crazy thing to me. She said, you know, I am not actually fearful of this. And the reason for that is because we have all of these ideas for new lines of business for Founder Made. And we never get to them because we're so busy putting on the live events. But if live events go away for some time, that gives us the opportunity to explore all of these other ideas. And at the time, I thought, this is a person without fear. I have never met such a person. But the more I thought about it, and the more I saw other people react in COVID, the more I realized that that's not correct. Megan is not a person without fear. Megan is a person who focuses on the second, better kind of fear. So like I said, there are two kinds of fear. Fear number one is the fear of losing what we had. And that is a fear that causes us to want to hold on dearly to what we already have or what we see disappearing. It is a fear that holds us back. It is a backwards looking fear. And then there is the fear of not finding the next thing fast enough. And that is a hopeful fear, because that is a fear that is premised on. There is a next thing. There is something that I can do. There is something that I can move towards. There is a way to pivot whatever it is that I have or step into some new opportunity. I know that it's there. I just need to find it fast enough before other people do. And I love that fear because that is a fear that pushes you forward. That is a motivating fear. You cannot get rid of fear. If anybody tells you that you can just squash the fear, that you can set it aside, that's ridiculous. You can't. We have to live within the emotions that we have. If you're a perfectionist, you can't just stop being a perfectionist. It doesn't work that way. So instead, you have to utilize your perfectionism. And the same is true for anything else. You cannot not fear. So instead, how do you utilize the fear? And to utilize the fear is to figure out how to live inside the fear that pushes you forward. I love that. I think we just evolved from fail forward. I think we just created something else like fear forward or forward fear or something like that. That makes a lot of sense. The Stoics, if they were still around, I know that we have the new age ones, but they would be like, this is some good shit, Jason. This is really good. We should throw this at meditations. It sounds to me like some people naturally have this, but I want to speak to the general public that says, yeah, yeah. And then they say, but they just love to bring their butts in. It sounds to me like it's the difference between a real threat, identifying a real threat. I mean, the car's coming at the fuck out of the way, but also a perceived danger that's maybe created by something like uncertainty. How does somebody distinguish the difference between those two things? Because that's probably where they're falling short. Well, a great starting point is to just consider what the worst case scenario really looks like. We're often operating from the position of trying to avoid the worst case scenario. I told you a moment ago, loss aversion theory. We are oriented around not losing instead of winning. We are oriented around not losing. It's fascinating. If I could just double down on that for a second. One of my favorite loss aversion theory studies was from a number of years ago. What they did is they had groups. They did this in America and Italy, which is sound notable in a second, because what they did is they had these two groups. The idea was to have them build the perfect pizza. So they put people together and one group started with just a plain cheese pizza and options for what to add to the pizza. So they said, come to the decision amongst yourselves of what to add to the pizza to make the perfect pizza. The other group was given a fully loaded pizza, a pizza that already had every possible topping on it. Then they were instructed to remove things to get to the perfect pizza. One was, here's a plain pizza, add things, make the perfect pizza. The other was, there's a fully loaded pizza. You have to remove things to get to the perfect pizza. The outcome of these two groups was startlingly different. The group that started with the plain pizza had a couple toppings on it. The group that started with the fully loaded pizza ended up with roughly a fully loaded pizza. Why? Because the group that had the fully loaded pizza could not figure out what to remove because everybody is afraid of losing things. So you're oriented around what you keep, what you hold on to that you already have. Whereas the people who started with the plain pizza got to just think about what to add to it. And as it turns out, you didn't need to add that much to make the perfect pizza. Isn't that fascinating? So once we understand how we really are anchored down to this sense of keeping the things that we already have, we realize that what we need to do to move forward is to start to engage with the idea of losing all of it. Not all of it your family and your house and everything, but in any decision that you make and any decision that you're pursuing that you're standing in front of that you're unsure what to do, you are in many ways being controlled by your fear of it not working out. So why don't you start by engaging with the question of what it would actually look like to not work out? Oftentimes, the worst case scenario really isn't all that bad. Maybe somebody says no, maybe you feel a little embarrassed, maybe you lost a little bit of money on something. But it's probably not nearly as bad as you think it is compared to the possibility of what happens if it goes right. I think about this all the time, where I start from the question of what would the worst case scenario be, and then let us measure that against what the best possible option is and the effort required to test it out. And what I find over and over and over again is that generally speaking, the worst case scenario isn't all that bad. It's worth trying. It doesn't mean that it always works out, but I can live with the consequences of that. So don't try to avoid that worst case scenario, stare it directly in the face until it seems less scary. And if I was to share a little bit of my life experience, every best case scenario I've ever had came after a worst case scenario. So I've kind of learned to somewhat get excited. I mean, I'm not looking for a worst case scenario, but it's just every story is the same. It's wonderful. Can I just say what I feel? Yeah, yeah. So I've had so many moments where I wrote the text or I wrote the email, the thing that was going to set something in motion, the thing that was going to test whether or not this relationship was going to go to the next level, whether this person was going to say yes to this thing. I was going to test something. I was going to put myself out there in some way. And I write it and then I walk away from it for a little bit. Does it still feel good? Does it still feel like it's there? I come back to it. And then I say, I always do it. I say the same thing, out lied every time. I just say, fuck it. Say fuck it. And I hit send. That's what I do. Fuck it. You know what? Because let's find out. Like, I am standing at the moment in which I'm going to learn whether this works or not. I'm standing at that moment, but I will never actually cross that moment unless I just fucking hit that key. And so that's what I always tell myself. Fuck it. I mean, I did it literally last week and it doesn't always work out. I've never ever got a hitting set. I'm almost thinking we should call this episode. Fuck it. I love that. Fuck it. This is just so, so profound and probably so helpful for people, but people will still find themselves getting jammed up in the heat of the moment. What's interesting about what you're talking about, and this is some of the work that I do, I'm very fascinated how we come up with these ideas. Like, for one thing, people just seem to unconsciously always need to be right. And to your point, we always feel compelled to never be satisfied and always want more. And one of the things that we struggle with the most is, as I say, unwrapping the present, you know, to actually live in the present. And it's really funny, as somebody that works so much with entrepreneurs and being one yourself, we live in a nation that is driven. I mean, there's a lot of books that talk about how to unleash your drive. And everything is focused on the not now. And I always say, that's why I love these questions, like, what's it like to be you these days? What's it like on Planet Jason these days? Those are always my opening questions. And the reason why people have to think about it is because they haven't been thinking about the way things actually are. And my wife and I are unique in the sense that we have progressively as we become more successful financially, we recognize this idea that you're never going to be satisfied at any stage in your life unless you could be satisfied right now. So we've become minimalists. If you come over to our house for dinner, we have a certain amount of plates, certain amount of forks, and there's just a lot of vacant space. Because we just get rid of all shit that we don't need, because we're just recognizing that here in the moment. And this is why I aligned with your family stuff. If you can't stop and say, I am happy. You know, this is one of the things I love about Gary Vee as well. He reminds people that that you've got everything right now in the sense of potential and opportunities and stuff. So I love this. You know, so number one is one of the more impactful conversations that I've had, just a casual conversation with a friend of mine who is a therapist, which is probably why she was able to isolate this moment. But we were talking about what we do. I do so much. I do so many things. In addition to running Entrepreneur Magazine, I had alluded, I have other companies, I work with so many companies, produce a lot of stuff. And she said, what do you actually want? What are you working towards? I gave her this answer that I had come up with that I was using for some period of time, which was what I want is full autonomy of my time. That's what I want. I said, I want full autonomy of my time. I don't want anyone to be telling me, you know, basically what to do, or that I need to be somewhere at a certain time, unless of course it's a commitment that I've made, and then I'm very happy to do it. But I want to feel like I have full control over my day and how I use my time. And then she said this crazy thing to me, which was she said, but don't you have that now? And it took me back because I realized, I mean, I don't have it fully. You know, I work at Entrepreneur. There are times in which I've got to get on the phone with people or there's this staff meeting that I got to be at. But, you know, largely speaking, it's true. At this point, I actually do mostly have full autonomy of my time. I didn't even recognize it. I didn't even realize it because I was so focused on the amount that I don't have. I was so focused on, oh, I got to do this meeting. That means I don't have full autonomy of my time. But what about all the other time in which I do? We don't step back and appreciate enough what we actually already have. Without doing that, it's hard to know what we're actually looking for or working towards. We can create this sense of muscle memory where we're constantly searching for something that we might actually have, which was wild. The other thing that I wanted to add was, you know, your question, what's it like to be Jason Pfeiffer, which you use. It's a fun one. It's not something that I had been asked before. I'll tell you, it threw me a little bit. And the reason is because I have trained myself to think of myself as only a stand in for the listener. So the only time in which I talk about me is when my experience is relatable to your experience. And I'm going to talk about me as a way of talking about you. And then I'm going to talk about something that I found as a way of giving you something to think about. That's how I do it. And so I just, I go into everything thinking, nobody actually cares about me. They care about them. And I have found every which way in which people ask me some question about me to very quickly pivot it back to them. When you asked me, what's it like to be Jason Pfeiffer? Honestly, the first thing I thought of was like, I don't know a way to answer this without just talking about myself. And actually, like, I don't, I don't, I don't want to. But why don't I want to? What I do, the reason I don't want to is because I have this anxiety that people don't actually care about me. What they care about is themselves. And that's not something that I feel bad about. I think that everyone should care about themselves. I think that the reason to listen to a podcast like this is not to hear you and me, but rather to see if you and I together create something that's going to be valuable for the person who's listening, right? Everyone's looking for ways to build or improve themselves as they should. And I want to be a servant to that. So I've found this weird way of using myself to stand in for others. And it means that in these little moments, when somebody pins me down and tries to just get me to talk about me, I almost feel insecure about it because I think, oh, they don't care about that. So anyway, it was, maybe people can go back and listen to how I probably stumbled my way through that question. But it's because I was so not used to it. Well, I like you more. I just continuously like you more. Thank you. This is what I like to do on this show is allow people to meet the real person, you know, and because in light of what you're saying, it's not going to be helpful if somebody just listens to all these wonderful strategies and tips that you have figured out without figuring out who you are behind it. One of the tenets of the work that I do is that I say it's who you are that determines how well what you do works. And a lot of people misinterpret that as well, then I have to become this somebody else in order to get the results that that guy has. And what I say is, well, maybe you already are who you need to be, but you've just forgotten because you've been so not now focused, you know, and you know, you're a parent. My biggest concern before I slide into home is that my kids are equipped, armed and equipped. And I understand that they have to navigate all of these changes in AI. We've been talking about that. But at the same time, I try my best to just remind them that they're fucking awesome, just the way they are, right, without anything else. And I see that, unfortunately, it looks like it's becoming increasingly difficult for people. I think that the pull to the future and the fear of what's to come has people so focused on the future and then worried about who they are based on their past. I recently saw a lecture and I'm sure you saw this, it was Steve Jobs, and he was talking about connecting the dots. And he says, think about it, you can only connect the dots in the past. He says, you can't connect the dots in the future. So if you think about it, right now is a dot. And and what dots do you want to connect in the future with it is going to be determined by how you do this. I've heard you refer to yourself. And I've seen this in action as a nonstop optimism machine. So as a fellow optimism machinist or mechanic, I am a very, very big fan of the biology of hope. So let me ask you this, where does optimism become a strategic advantage? Because sometimes people like you can be foolishly optimistic. But where does optimism become a strategic advantage rather than just a personality change? It's the difference between saying, this will work, and I'll be able to figure it out. Both of them are optimistic statements. But one is blindly optimistic, this will work, which means that you could end up chasing something forever, expecting that it will work. It could mean that you focus yourself too narrowly on one vision of how it'll work. But I feel confident that I can figure it out. That leaves open the reality that the thing that you're working on probably won't work in the way in which it was originally crafted. But actually, this is going to be a much longer journey. And therefore, the thing that you're betting on is external, not internal. It's about not betting on something external that you can't control, but rather on betting on something internal. I, I frankly just came up with that phrase, nonstop optimism machine at some point and just started putting it in my bio and my social media bio. And then it's funny, here's a hot tip. If you put something in your bio, people will say it out loud, and then it kind of becomes true. So I was putting it in my bio and then people would say it on stage when they introduced me, they would nonstop optimism machine, and then people remember it and it just became this phrase that people now use and it's great, but I just made it up. I like living in optimism. That is not to say that I am a blind optimist or frankly that every day I feel optimistic. I don't. I think that you have to choose optimism every single day. And I think that when you do choose optimism, what you are really doing is you are choosing to figure it out. What you are choosing to put yourself out there, you are choosing to know that you have options, availabilities, exciting things in your life, exciting things that you can create in your life. You don't get that unless you choose it. And I think that the greatest thing that optimism has done for me is that it has created an optimistic internal narrative. So that when I'm just talking to myself, when I'm just thinking about myself, I'm telling myself a pretty nice story about how I can think through that, about how instead of maybe thinking after we record this about all the things I could have said or could have said better or I stumbled on some of them, on that point, I'm going to walk down the street as soon as we're done with this, I got to run into the city for a meeting. I'm going to walk down the street to the subway and I'm going to be thinking about all the things that I said that were really good. And I'm going to think, you know, I said that thing about the difference between this will work and I can figure it out, which I just came up with that like a minute ago and I'll be like, that was really good. That was really smart. That was smart. That was really smart. You should do something more with that. What should you do with that? Well, you should write a newsletter about that. And then once you do that, I don't know, maybe you develop that and maybe that becomes part of a keynote. I don't know. That's just what I keep telling myself, because ultimately, the choosing of optimism has created a worldview in which I can do more things. The more I feel optimistic about the world, the more I feel optimistic about myself and vice versa. And again, I just need to emphasize it's a choice. And as we close out, I just want to do a couple of quick rapid fire questions. On the topic of optimism, it's that choice to be problem focused for solution focused, that choice to look at the bright side of things, say, how is this happening to me or for me? Once again, choice, choice, choice. The only person that doesn't like an optimist is a pessimist. Right? Or an optimist that has a big ego. If somebody today, I don't know if just we happen to know somebody that feels overwhelmed by how fast everything is changing, what would you say is the very first internal shift that they need to make? If you are overwhelmed by how fast things are moving, the first thing that you need to do is take an assessment of what feels too fast and what do you not feel like you are able to accomplish because of that. I think that oftentimes, we either recognize a problem without thinking about the solution or realizing what kind of problem it actually is for us, or we just parrot things that other people say that then become true to us without really considering whether or not and how they impact us. The first thing that you need to do is take an honest assessment of what that actually means for you and looks like and how you are impeded. Then you start to solve that problem instead of trying to solve the whole world. You cannot slow the whole world down, but what you definitely can do is figure out how to get what you need. This is a big question to ask Jason Pfeiffer right now. What's one belief about success or change that you wish more people would let go of starting today? That success looks like one thing. I want to thank you. You have just entered what we call the dragon's lair and you've done fantastic. And like I said, my like and love and appreciation for you have multiplied. You now officially have a friend named Dragon. If you ever talk to Gary Vee again, say, hey, I was on Dragon's podcast, he'll crack up. If somebody actually wants to initiate becoming a Jason Pfeiffer fan or reach out to you, how would they do that? Well, first of all, I really appreciate you having me on. This is such a fun, thoughtful conversation. It's been so great to connect and get to know you better. I would say it's very simple. Yeah, you could find me on LinkedIn or you could find me on Instagram. I'm very active on either. But what I'd really love for you to do is go to one thing better.email. That is a web address. One thing better.email. That is my newsletter each week. One way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company you love. It's me sharing the lessons that I have drawn from the thousands of entrepreneurs that I get to know and I share the best with you. So one thing better.email is how to get the best of me. And honestly, if you hit reply to any of those emails, it goes to my inbox, I will reply to you. I'm actually somebody that has gone there and I get that as well. Oh, thank you. Jason, thanks so much for being here. It's just been an honor and a privilege and, you know, just so excited about what this world has in store for all of us knowing that you're a participant in it. So thanks for being here. Hey, thank you. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.