We live in an age in which we often only see the best aspects of the lives of others. People share their successful destination, but not the (often difficult) journey they took to get there. This leaves many people thinking there's a missing "manual" that everyone else has but they somehow overlooked.

Today's guest is Josh Peck. His new memoir Happy People Are Annoying shares his journey from child star to acting alongside some of the biggest names in the industry. We discuss why growing up as a child of a single mother impacted how he thought about business, great advice he received from Sir Ben Kingsley, and why love of craft is about more than just a feeling but is a deeper sense of connection to the work.

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Twyla Tharp once wrote “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.” If we want to succeed, we need good habits.

On the flip side, Warren Buffet said “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken”, meaning that our bad habits often don’t seem that bad until they get to the point where we can no longer easily break them.

So if habits are that important, understanding how they are formed, changed, and broken is crucial if we want to be prolific, brilliant, and healthy in life and in work.

On today’s show we have a guest who can help us better understand the habits that form the foundation of our success or failure. His name is James Clear, and he’s released a book called Atomic Habits, which is about the small changes we can make in our daily life to create big change on the other side. It’s a guidebook to healthier habits in life and work, and our conversation with James is coming up in just a moment.

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What is a “culture”? We hear that word tossed around in organizations all the time, but it’s often difficult to know what people even mean when they say that word. Worse, managers often talk about building or growing a great culture without a full understanding of what a great culture might even look like.

Today’s guest is Daniel Coyle. He’s spent many years studying culture and has written a few best-selling books on the topic, including The Culture Code. On this episode, he shares his definition of culture and offers practical tips for building a great one from his new book The Culture Playbook.  

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What does it mean to be successful? I wrote in my book Die Empty that how you define greatness defines you, meaning that what you aspire to - even if you haven’t clearly articulated what it is - will shape how you go about your days and determine your priorities for you. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what success actually means to you, it’s possible to spend your entire life chasing vapor.

Today’s guest is one of the most respected coaches on the planet. Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is the author or editor of 41 books, which have sold over 2.5 million copies, been translated into 32 languages and become listed bestsellers in 12 countries. He is one of a select few executive advisors who has worked with over 200 major CEOs and their management teams. His new book is called The Earned Life: Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment, in which he discusses the patterns of people who grow a life of meaning and purpose. In this episode, we discuss the nature of an “earned life” and how to be more purposeful in life and work. 

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You have four finite resources to spend on behalf of what matters: focus, assets, time, and energy. How you allocate these four resources will often determine your success or failure. How intentional are you about making plans to spend them in the right places?

On this episode, I share a simply 5-step method for planning your day that I've been using for years:

1. Plan your week
2. Review your goals and "main things"
3. Plan your day
4. Review your day
5. Reveiw your week

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When you create, you likely aren’t doing it just for yourself. You are probably making things - whether a product, a message, a work of art, or even a strategy - for someone else. You create in order to get some kind of response from the person who experiences your work. An emotion.

This is especially true in the world of brand strategy. Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s the impression - the emotion - it generates in the person experiencing it. On this episode, former Nike CMO Greg Hoffman shares how you can craft strong, compelling creative work that resonates deeply with your audience. His new book is called Emotion by Design. 

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It's one thing to perform at your peak ability, but another thing altogeter to sustain that performance over time. How to peak performers continue to produce great work over long periods of time?

Today's guest, Alan Stein, Jr., is the author of the new book Sustain Your Game. In this conversation we discuss how top performers think about time and opportunity, and how they develop mental toughness.

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The words “love” and “work” are rarely used in the same sentence. Work is comprised of those tasks we have to do in order to make a living, while love is used to describe those activities driven by passion. But what if love and work don’t have to be mutually exclusive? What if we can discover what we love through our work, not in spite of it?

Today’s guest is international best-selling author Marcus Buckingham. He believes that love and work are not mutually exclusive, and that you can - in fact - do your best work when you understand what you love. We discuss why work is not just about a job, how to discover your “wyrd”, and why George Clooney’s sister doesn’t act. 

Marcus Buckingham’s new book is called Love And Work.

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Whether you realize it or not, you are constantly sending signals to everyone around you. These signals tell others whether or not you are interested, whether or not you are interesting, whether you truly believe what you’re saying or if you’re just faking it, whether you’re confident or insecure, and whether or not they should hire or do business with you.

Today’s guest, Vanessa Van Edwards, calls these signals “cues”, and she argues in her new book of the same name that we can actually learn to identify them in others and even shape our own cues to better connect with co-workers and friends. In this episode, we discuss the role of charisma in life and work, and how cues affect our communication and effectiveness. 

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Ten years ago, Austin Kleon released his book Steal Like An Artist. Over the past decade, it's become a must-read classic for anyone wishing to produce great creative work. In celebration of the release of the 10-year Anniversatry edition of the book, we invited Austin back on the show to discuss what he's learned since the release of the book, how creative pros should respond to culture, why we all need editors, and the hidden dangers of success.

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