Josh Spodek on Leadership Step by Step.

Josh Spodek is the author of Leadership Step by Step.

Josh is an independent professional who:

• coaches individual clients
• teaches leadership and entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at NYU
• does speaking engagements
• runs online courses in leadership and entrepreneurship on SpodekAcademy.com

Josh is a guest on Episode 25 of Unleashed-How to Thrive as an Independent Professional.

For the show we met at Josh’s apartment in Greenwich Village, and in the first part of our conversation we discuss the blackboard in his room and the new course he is currently developing, which is sketched out in chalk.

We also talk about what Josh has learned from blogging every single day since 2011, the impact on his fitness from doing 90,000 burpees over the past few years, and how he fits four months of garbage into one tote bag.

Josh’s approach to teaching leadership and entrepreneurship is very experiential and organized around a series of exercises. We discuss several of these, including what you can learn from three raisins.

You can learn more about Josh and take his online course at https://spodekacademy.com/

Will Bachman: You keep a blackboard in your apartment. What’s the story behind that and what do you use it for?

Josh Spodek: When I was about to get my PhD, I thought that I was leaving academia. My dad asked what I wanted as a gift and I asked him to get me a blackboard. On the left is my kettlebell routine so I can remember what weights I’m doing and how many reps of each to do. There are certain things that I do every day that are on the board. Every morning and every evening, I do burpees — I haven’t missed a day in that since January 2011! I write on my blog. I started doing cold showers because it trains you to do what you said you were going to do. In the upper right corner of the board is a keynote talk I’ve prepared. There are my marathons. On the middle of the board are exercises for a course I’m creating on healthy living, good life.

Can you tell me about the courses you teach?

I have courses that I’ve been offering at NYU and now through my site, SpodekAcademy.com. There’s one on leadership. There’s one on entrepreneurship. There’s one on sales. There’s one that combines all of those called The Fundamentals of Hustling. All my courses are sets of exercises.

What types of exercises? Can you give me an example of how a course would be structured?

My courses are always based on giving people things to do. So for the class on healthy living good life, the first exercise is to get eight hours of sleep per night through the whole course. After each exercise you have to write up your reflection. You get to read other people’s experiences and people get to read yours. The second exercise is to add burpees to your daily routine. A burpee is literally where you drop down from standing up, do a push up, and then jump up. It’s very low risk of injury. You don’t need equipment. In September, I’ll hit 100,000 burpees.

Next is no food packaging, no fiber-removed food. It turns out that not eating packaged foods has led to a total renaissance in my eating and health. I’ve never eaten more deliciously, more conveniently, more cheaply, or with more connecting with people.

Next on the list, get rid of half your books. I went through this process. I got rid of a bunch of books, then when I got rid of them I looked up on my shelf and got rid of more. Most people say this apartment doesn’t have much stuff in it, but I feel like there’s still a lot of stuff in it. Getting rid of stuff has been a tremendously valuable experience for me.

Next is no news or social media. Go for a week and do something else. My courses are built on getting you to do things and learn by doing, and the experience of doing. There’s no substitute for doing that. Then are cold showers, and then SIDCHA, which stands for self-imposed daily challenging healthy activity. It’s about habit formation, but a SIDCHA is a little more than a habit, because it must be challenging.

Next is get rid of half your clothes. The rule of thumb is if you haven’t worn it in a year, it’s probably worth getting rid of. It’s just getting people to aggressively prune their stuff. Then next is gratitude emails. There are a lot of different forms of this exercise. One is to write down three things you’re grateful for before you go to sleep. Another is to write 10 emails per day for one week to people, gratitude emails. It’s an exercise that grows and grows.

Finally comes authentic voice. It’s an exercise from my leadership book, Leadership Step by Step, Become the Person Others Follow. You write down your inner monologue. Not what you’re thinking about, but what you’re thinking, the exact words. It gets you more attuned to your inner monologue and the voices in your head. What I find is that people are scared at first. As you practice, you get better. This is a big example of a way of leading yourself that leads others. It’s a matter of integrity and openness and candor. The more you practice it, the more natural it becomes, like any skill. We all had trouble walking at the beginning. We fell down many times. It was very physically painful, but most of us walk pretty well now.

Has there been anything that you’ve found surprising in your efforts to get rid of stuff?

The relationships to the people around me. It brings me in touch with my community. Especially, food, because I’m going to farmer’s markets and I’m getting to know the people. I go out to the farm, and I never did stuff like that before. I think community is one of the things we’ve lost. There are people who are traveling all over who say, “I’m part of the global community.” My feeling is, “You haven’t talked to the people. You’ve never seen them face to face. You’ve never made eye contact with them.” For me, this is better.

How did you arrive at using exercises for your practice?

It’s not just exercises, but it’s a progression of exercises that all fit together. I went to business school and I took leadership classes which were based in case study and lecture, reading psychology papers, writing papers, analytical papers. Out in the world I would try to lead and it was almost as if I was starting from scratch. Then I was watching Inside the Actor’s Studio and I noticed a couple things about the actors. On the social and emotional side they were off the charts. They’re incredibly skilled, well beyond any MBA that I’d ever met.

Method acting is a style of learning and a style of practice to develop skills. After I studied it more I ended up taking Meisner technique classes, a subset of method acting. You begin with a repetition exercise and gradually work up. Each exercise is a little bit more challenging than the one before, and so on, and so on. I took that structure. You learn theory by doing it.

You’re writing a book on entrepreneurship. What’s your basic premise?

A lot of people I speak to say they want to start a company, and I ask them why they don’t start. The most common answer is ‘I don’t have a great idea.’ The world is full of successful people who start off with not great ideas. I think more valuable than a great idea is an okay idea plus listening, plus the skills to do something about it. Listening to the market, being flexible, iterating. I put together exercises that walk you through understanding what your interests are, finding places in the market that have holes in them, unmet needs in the market, and creating relationships with people around you. I give you scripts to follow to take your okay ideas and develop them into more constructive ideas, things that people will pay you for and in the process to develop relationships with people in the market so that you become a peer with people. I do this with undergrads, and by the end of it, they’re talking to CEOs.

One of the hardest things about blog writing is sticking to it. How do you stay engaged?

I asked my friend Sebastian, who set up the page, ‘How often do you post? Is it like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whatever?’ He said, ‘Every day. If you miss one day, you can miss two. If you miss two, it’s all over. The web is littered with blogs that are people writing for a while, then they don’t write for a little bit, then it’s gone.’

People look at what I do and they think I must be super disciplined. The reason I habitualize these things is because I’m lazy, because I’m full of excuses. I just do what it takes to take away those excuses and make it easier for me to do what I value.

What’s one of your favorite exercises that you teach?

The Three Raisins exercise. It’s a mindfulness exercise. Every year I assign it, and my students say, ‘This sounds weird.’ I’m like, ‘Is it really weird?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s kind of weird,’ and I say afterward, ‘Was it weird?’ And they go, ‘Yeah, it was kind of weird,’ and I say, ‘Should I not assign it next year?’ And, they’re like, ‘No, definitely assign it. This is a really great exercise.’

You get three raisins. You put them in front of you, and clear off your schedule for an hour. It’s not going to take you an hour, but just clear it off so you’re not going to be distracted. Turn off the phone. Put away the books. Turn off the computer. This is you and those three raisins.

Eat the three raisins one at a time using all your senses, as if you’ve never seen a raisin before. Don’t start the second one until you’ve completely finished the first one, until it’s completely down. It can take a while to do this. If you pick it up, you feel it. Look at it. Each raisin is unique. They’ve got this iridescence to them. Sometimes they’re one color. There are green ones. There are brown ones. Then, maybe drop it on the table. What does it sound like? It sounds different from a ping pong ball. Then, does it have a smell? Put it in your mouth. Now, roll it around, then bite into it. This might take a while. Move on to the next one, and eventually the next one, then write up your experience.

When I did it the first time I started picking up all these sounds and noises around me. I live in an apartment building and I could hear the dogs down the hall. I started noticing other things. But the big one is that I noticed the flavor, a flavor that I hadn’t paid attention to since maybe the first raisin I ever had.

You start thinking, if I wasn’t paying attention to raisins, what else have I not been paying attention to? For me, it was people, facial expressions, tone of voice. Since then, I eat less because I’m savoring more.

Do you have a theory on what makes a great leader?

I can tell you, there’s no leader who became great because they read more books and analyzed and wrote more papers. It’s all because of stuff that they did. The stuff that’s unique to you. If you want to take a leadership role in things, if you have the skills, you can do it. If you don’t have the skills, these opportunities will pass you by.

If you want to take on a leadership role, what I’ve done is I’ve gotten exercises from the practice of leadership and given you exercises that are what you’re going to be doing later, what successful leaders do. There’s great value in doing anything experiential, anything active learning, anything method-like. It’s going to take you in a direction.

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