Getting Past the Learning Cliff w/Stephen Mostrom
Episode Overview
Join us on this week's episode of Making Better as we welcome Jill Schulman, an inspiring former Marine Corps officer and expert in applying positive psychology to leadership development. In our enlightening dialogue, we delve into the essential components of fostering a thriving workplace—asking for help, helping others, and nurturing positive connections. Jill shares her transition from the pharmaceutical industry to becoming an advocate for evidence-based mental fitness strategies. We discuss key distinctions between evidence-based positive psychology and non-scientific self-help, debunk myths surrounding the field, and explore its impactful role in driving organizational results. Tune in for an engaging talk that offers practical insights on implementing positive psychology for sustained peak performance and well-being.
About Stephen Mostrom
Stephen Mostrom, Founder of Develop Daily, spent 10+ years building talent development programs for companies like Bank of America and Silicon Valley Bank. Now, he's writing Develop Daily, the growth guide for busy professionals. Stephen's content focuses on the intersection of learning, career growth, and productivity.
Follow Stephen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/smostrom/
Check out the Develop Daily Substack: https://developdaily.substack.com
Make sure to take a look at Stephen’s book recommendations:
Atomic Habits: https://amzn.to/3Rvtohv
Decisive: https://amzn.to/3ND43RC
Full Transcript
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Stephen Mostrom [00:00:00]:
Reinjecting the human element into talent development. It's not that we're not robots. We're not AI. We don't just absorb information in kind of this vacuum. It's like it happens within the space of our everyday lives and our humanness. And so I think there's a little bit of an opportunity for us to inject a little bit more humanity into some of our talent development.
Matt Gjertsen [00:00:24]:
Hello, and welcome to the Making Better podcast, where we talk about making ourselves, our teams, and our organizations better. Whether you are a business leader, a talent development professional, or an individual contributor, I guarantee this show will give you actionable insights to help improve your own performance and the performance of those around you. Our guest today is Stephen Mossrom. Steven has spent over ten years building talent development programs for companies like bank of America and Silicon Valley bank. And now he's writing develop daily, the growth guide for business professionals. In today's episode, we talk about how to decide if you want to leave the corporate world and go out on your own. What Stephen calls the learning cliff, and why a growth mindset is the number one skill to succeed in your career. Before we get into the discussion, I want to remind everybody that if this is your first time listening to the show, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a future episode.
Matt Gjertsen [00:01:21]:
And if you are already subscribed, then I would ask that you share this show with just one other person, because that is how we grow. I can't tell you how much it means to me. So with that, let's jump into the discussion. So, Stephen, I think we have to start by opening the addressing the elephant in the room and the fact that you had a front row seat to a very large story in 2023. What was it like to have a front row seat to Silicon Valley bank and everything that happened there?
Stephen Mostrom [00:01:54]:
Yeah, Matt, it was, in a word, eye opening. At the time that Silicon Valley bank collapsed. I mean, there's really no other word for it. I'd been in the banking industry for almost 15 years at that point. I had processed mortgage applications during the great Recession at Chase and seen just really, like, the most difficult side of that time period in our economy. And so I thought I had seen everything when it came to the banking industry. And the banking industry gets a lot of news and a lot of attention when things are not going right, but when things are going well, it's kind of a very stable and often even boring industry, because that's just kind of the nature of the beast. And so my experience with SVB was one day, everything is totally normal.
Stephen Mostrom [00:02:48]:
We're humming along as l and D professionals. We're thinking, six months, twelve months, 18 months into the future, what are these programs going to look like? And then all of a sudden, there starts to be this little bit of chatter, this little bit of noise. Our CEO pulls us together for what seems like a pretty innocuous all hands call. He's talking about finance elements, like we're cashing out on some securities that we've held for a while. To be honest, I was sort of like half paying attention to that call and half working on some of my projects.
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:21]:
Yeah, because this is all via Zoom.
Stephen Mostrom [00:03:24]:
It just seemed like an everyday thing. And so to then after that call closes to start, I got texts from friends of mine. They're like, SVB is in the news. What's going on? And I'm like, yeah, I don't know what is going on?
Matt Gjertsen [00:03:35]:
What is going on?
Stephen Mostrom [00:03:37]:
And I remember very distinctly my wife asking questions about, I'm saying this, should we be worried? I said, I don't really know. Let's give it a little bit of time. And that evening, I jumped on Twitter because I wanted to see what's the buzz? And I remember seeing a handful of really prominent names saying, you need to pull your money out of SVB right now if you're a tech startup. And that was the signal that, uh oh, this might actually be something to worry about. And so what followed was really unprecedented in my experience working anywhere, essentially just a time period where nobody had answers to anything. I mean, I remember joining calls with very senior level leaders at the company. And really the call was, we know nothing. We have nothing to share.
Stephen Mostrom [00:04:21]:
We're just pulling you together to tell you we don't know anything. And so there was this very bizarre series of events where we really just had to sit and wait and see what was going to. So, you know, that played out over a couple of weeks. And then, as most folks know, the FDIC stepped in and that created a whole different, unique series of challenges. I technically worked for the government for a bit while I was at SVB under the FDIC. And then eventually first citizens acquired us and then began to go through their process and layoffs and all that fun stuff. And so eventually I was caught in that layoff cycle. But honestly, by the time that happened, the writing had been on the wall for so long.
Stephen Mostrom [00:05:05]:
And that gave my wife and I this unique opportunity to really kind of consider how do we want to move forward? What do we want to do? And so I've now had about six months to reflect on the SVB experience, and maybe I'll just share two kind of takeaways that I've had from that. The first is that I'm a big believer in control, what you can control, and let go of the things that you can't control in life and in work and all of that. This was just one of those situations where I couldn't control anything. Unprecedented bank run, the kind that we haven't seen since the great depression of the know who can anticipate that that's going to happen. You just can't control things like that. The point where I remember my wife and I had a vacation scheduled for Portugal for like two days after all the SVB stuff happened. And we were talking, we're like, we need to cancel our trip. What are we going to do? And I remember telling her, there's literally nothing we can do.
Stephen Mostrom [00:05:57]:
We might as well just go to Portugal, have an amazing. So that's my one takeaway, control what you can control, let go of everything else. And then my other big takeaway and, and ultimately what led me to the path that I've been on for the rest of the year is prior to SVB, I had this image of the corporate nine to five as the stable career option and starting your own or something entrepreneurial as this high risk career option. And I think a lot of us have seen that whether it'SVB collapsing overnight or even just the mass wave of tech layoffs over the last two years, that the corporate nine to 5 may not be as risk free as a lot of us thought. And in fact, stepping into an entrepreneurial space, there are ways that you can mitigate risk. And so I think it's changed the balance for me a bit. And that helped me feel confident moving into what I'm doing now, which is running one business with my wife and then trying to diversify that by running develop daily and a separate business. But now being fully in the entrepreneurial circle.
Stephen Mostrom [00:07:01]:
And so I've actually had an opportunity to talk with a number of really interesting folks who either went through layoffs or have just been considering their own business. And seeing everything that's happened in the last two years has been eye opening for them as well. They've really seen that maybe the nine to five is not as risk free as we thought it was. And maybe if risk is really the thing holding you back from taking that big entrepreneurial leap, maybe it's worth reconsidering. Like, are you really as safe as you think you are in a nine to five. Maybe you would be in a better position if it's the right kind of situation for you if you took that entrepreneurial leap. So anyway, those are my two big takeaways around control and sort of this risk dynamic within the workplace.
Matt Gjertsen [00:07:44]:
It's a really interesting point. The risk dynamic, I remember, I don't know, a couple of years ago, so now it's been approaching two years since I went fully out on my own. And even long before that, I would listen to a lot of entrepreneur people, like Gary Vee on YouTube and Instagram and that kind of stuff. And I remember seeing a talk or seeing a little meeting that he was having with somebody where he was talking about risk and entrepreneurs. And most people think of entrepreneurs as, like, risk takers and they're going out there. But in many cases, entrepreneurs are the most risk averse people that there are. It's just kind of like you said, it's like changing your view of what is risky. And that's really how I think about it now, because when you are, you are the exact case in point when you're working for a company, you have so little control over so much of your destiny.
Matt Gjertsen [00:08:37]:
That is a very big form of risk now. When you're doing it all on your own, you control everything, but now you control everything. You're responsible for it all. So it's a different kind of risk. And it just kind of depends on how you think about yourself, how you think about the world, kind of your situation in life as to which represents the truer risk to you, I suppose.
Stephen Mostrom [00:09:06]:
Yeah. No, I think it's such an important topic for folks to think through. And one area that we really started to think of in terms of risk as well was what's the risk to our values and our lifestyle and the things that we really hold close. And I remember sitting down and thinking, if I take this entrepreneurial leap, we have two children. We have a three year old and a four year old. Is this going to put them financially at risk if we take this big career step? And I remember my wife saying something to the effect of, what's the risk if you go into a job you don't like, or all of a sudden you're working these long hours and you don't get to spend time with the kids, there's that family risk or that relationship risk that comes into play. And so I remember feeling that balance much more strongly rather than just thinking in terms of dollars and cents. It's like, what's the full picture what are the risks of stepping into an entrepreneurial journey versus the risk that I don't get to see my kids as much as I want to see.
Stephen Mostrom [00:10:06]:
And for us, that became clear. Like, we're going to take this step forward because like you said, when you are running your own business, you can set the hours, you have that ownership, you have that control. So I can step away and go hang out with my kids more or take them to the park or go to an event, I can set my own hours, that kind of thing. And for us, in the stage of life we're at, that's just so important. And so I remember factoring that in almost as a risk. Like, if I don't do know what is going to be the impact to these people that I cherish so much.
Matt Gjertsen [00:10:36]:
Yeah, I think that's a huge know, when I was still working, both when I was in the Air force and when I was working at SpaceX, in the corporate world, I always joked, mean, it was kind of on a recurring cycle of every two to three months, I'd have this existential crisis or just this mental breakdown from stress. And though, since going on my own, I'm still trying to grow the business. So I'm investing a lot in the business, so I'm definitely still taking home less than I was in the corporate world. But I'm not having those existential breakdowns anymore. And so I wasn't planning on going down this road. But we keep hearing, especially in the learning development industry, there's always that saying that learning is the first thing to get cut. My wife's in marketing, and so she would say marketing is the first thing to get cut. But it's probably one of those two.
Matt Gjertsen [00:11:30]:
I don't know about you. I keep running to a lot of my contacts, a lot of my friends, they're getting laid off. They were laid off a while ago, and it's taken them forever to find a new role. Some people are picking up work. You made the decision to say, like, okay, I'm going to stop looking for a new role and just do my own thing. You've reflected on it a little bit, but I guess if you could get a little bit more specific about for someone who's in that position, we happen to be in a world that lends itself to side hustles, and it's really easy to get laid off and then just start looking for work. But there's a decision to be made of, like, are you doing it as a side hustle, or are you making a commitment to try to do this for somebody who's sitting in that world of trying to decide which way they would want to go. Do you have any other thoughts on kind of, like, a couple of things to think through for making that kind of decision?
Stephen Mostrom [00:12:29]:
Yeah, absolutely. And it is, to be perfectly honest, it's probably been the hardest career decision I had to make, just because it felt so enormous. And again, having kids, my wife and I joke, we're like, if it was just the two of us, we could survive on beans and rice and whatever you need to do. But once you have kids, the equation feels like it changes a little bit. I remember sitting down with my wife and having these very long conversations of what direction do we want to go, what do we value, how do we want to structure our lives? And I think it was maybe one of the first times since she and I met in grad school, we had been on this trajectory of taking these different roles and pursuing these different career paths. My wife's also in marketing, and so it was really this opportunity for us to kind of pause and reflect. And so my first recommendation is always try to know yourself as well as you can. And if you have a partner or someone that you're living life with, try to make sure that you understand and know them the best you can as well.
Stephen Mostrom [00:13:30]:
Because in my experience, building a life around the things that are really, really essential to who you are is one of the best ways to avoid those existential crises and burnout and all of that. And so for us, it came down to family. I mean, that was really, like, the number one thing. We wanted to spend time with our kids. And so we really started asking the questions, how do we get there? If that is our end goal, how do we get there? And entrepreneurship seemed like the most direct path. The other thing I would say is, I was fortunate that my wife and I had been building a separate business, a marketing business, for six to seven years. And it had really kind of hit a nice velocity right as SVB was happening. And so a little bit of that was circumstance where my wife landed the biggest client she'd ever landed a few weeks before SVB went down.
Stephen Mostrom [00:14:20]:
And so we had this little bit of safety net. And part of that was circumstantial, but part of it was also strategic. We had been doing this where I had the corporate nine to five while my wife was building a business. And then it worked out very well that as her business was really hitting a nice velocity, then I was needing to step out of my corporate nine to five. And so I feel like all the hard work that we did over that six year period, which often required not only her working full time on the business, but me, that was kind of my side hustle was I was doing my nine to five, but I was also contributing to her business and helping her grow her business. And so by the time that kind of took off, then we were in a good place. And so I was able to step away and then continue to work in her business, which was bringing in money while building up, now develop daily, which is my business, and getting that up and running and it takes time. I'm now six months in and you're several years in, and it takes time to get something up and running and to get to that trajectory that you really want to be at.
Stephen Mostrom [00:15:19]:
And so I've been fortunate to be able to continue to work with my wife on the marketing agency and bring in the money that we need to bring in there while also building out what I'm really passionate about in develop daily and bringing that to my audience on LinkedIn and companies and things like that. And so there are some very smart people who talk about this idea of portfolio approach in entrepreneurship, and it's kind of this idea of taking the same investment portfolio approach that you would take, like, let's diversify. Let's make sure we're not putting all our eggs in one basket and kind of bringing that to the entrepreneurial world. And so there are some different ways that you can do that. You can do that through having kind of a stable nine to five and then doing a side hustle. Or if you have a partner, one of you does the nine to five, one of you does the side hustle, something like that. And now what we're doing now that we're full time entrepreneurs is we're trying to diversify our income from these different businesses. And so trying to make sure that we don't just have one stream of income, we don't just have one giant client that we're relying on.
Stephen Mostrom [00:16:19]:
Instead, we're going to have multiple clients for the agency and we're going to spin up this other business. And hopefully that's going to give us a little bit of protection from just the natural ebb and flow of running your own business.
Matt Gjertsen [00:16:31]:
Yeah. One thing that really came out from that whole story, I 100% agree with everything that you're saying. And I think kind of that lucky timing that you mentioned, it's like, what is luck is preparation meets opportunity. And I would say kind of back to that question of how to make this decision of am I just kind of doing some freelancing to get me through this time or really committing? Everybody's got to do what they need to do. Everybody's in a different situation. But I would tend to say, because I did something like you, where I was like you and your wife did, where better day studios existed for several years as a side hustle and then kind of slowly grew and grew and grew until I went part time at my corporate job, and then I just completely left my corporate job. And again, everybody's in their own situation, but unless you've spent some time tinkering in the background, the moment you get laid off probably isn't the moment to decide, okay, now is the time to start fresh because you're just always going to be, you're starting from this need point of view where it's like, oh, I need to get clients today. So you say yes to things you shouldn't say yes to.
Matt Gjertsen [00:17:51]:
It takes time. And so everybody encourage you to do what you got to do. You got to pay the bills, you got to do the stuff. But if you have an opportunity, Jordan Harbinger, who's a podcaster who talks about a lot of things, but a lot about networking, he always uses the phrase dig the well before you're thirsty. And he talks about that mainly from the point of view of networking, of don't wait to start networking. When you need to find a job, you need to be networking all the time. But I think this is true, too. If you have any inkling of thinking about wanting to start your own company or go your own route outside of the corporate world, I would highly encourage people, start while you have that corporate job so that you can really spend time thinking through this stuff.
Matt Gjertsen [00:18:35]:
And then maybe you just decide, now is the time for me to step out. Or maybe like in your situation, there's just this moment that is kind of pushed upon you, but now you're ready.
Stephen Mostrom [00:18:47]:
For that moment, right? Yeah, exactly. In my experience, the seed for develop daily, which is now what I'm running forward with, started more than two years ago. I had this idea of what I wanted to talk about and how I wanted to structure the system and all of that. And so because I was working a nine to five and I was helping my wife run this other business, it didn't make sense for me to really invest a ton of time and energy in there. And so what I landed on doing was I just started posting on LinkedIn. I just thought, well, I can take some of these ideas and just start experimenting with them on LinkedIn and see if they connect with an audience, see if I'm able to refine my messaging a bit there. And I've now been posting daily on LinkedIn for almost two years. And that's given me an opportunity to connect with people like you who I might otherwise not have come across.
Stephen Mostrom [00:19:35]:
And it's also given me an opportunity to really kind of refine my messaging, figure out how I want to present it, all of that. I had that opportunity to spend so much time thinking about this concept because I started really early, like you were saying, and I didn't have that financial pressure of I need to turn develop daily into x number of revenue overnight. And so I've had the time to really let it breathe. And it's, I think, allowed me to arrive at a better place, especially because it's so thought driven, it's so system driven, that having the time to really invest in how I want to structure it and how I want to present it to people, it's just been really helpful. So I would completely echo what you're saying about if you have that spark of I want to try something, even if you're working that nine to five, see if you can carve out even an hour or two a week to find a good avenue. And personally, I think writing is such a great avenue to start thinking about what you want to do because you get some of those thoughts out there and begin to connect, et cetera.
Matt Gjertsen [00:20:35]:
Yeah, absolutely. So let's go a little bit deeper to that. Since you mentioned develop daily, sounds like it's been kind of in the back of your mind for a while now. How has that process been? What was the original idea? And then as you've been able to kind of crystallize it, how has it crystallized now?
Stephen Mostrom [00:20:51]:
Yeah, absolutely. And I've had the privilege of working with thousands and thousands of people over my lnd career and my teaching career to help grow their skill sets and their knowledge base. And so through that time, when you interact with enough folks, you begin to see trends and you begin to see where are people getting stuck in their career journey, in their development journey, where are they sort of hitting this plateau or kind of flatlining and really seeing their career kind of stall. And that can be one of the most frustrating things for a lot of people, is I worked really hard, I got my career to a certain point, and all of a sudden it feels like I can't move forward. And I've heard that time and time again. And so that was really a problem that I began to see pretty frequently as I was running l and D programs. I was always teaching in the college system. And so I started digging.
Stephen Mostrom [00:21:45]:
I was very curious, like, we have so much access to information, we live in the information age. We have so much access to technology. Why is it that so many folks feel like they're just completely stalling out? And what I riped at was sort of this challenge that I think almost all of us run into at some point. And I've started to call it the learning cliff. And the way I would describe it is, I think for most of us, we have this education that we receive through the first 1824 years of our life. Depending on if you're going to college, if you're going to grad school, you're going to have this kind of formal time of your life where you are focused on learning to a very large extent. And behind the scenes of all that are these institutions, your schools, that are essentially telling you what to learn, when to learn, in many ways, how to learn, and you have to do the work, but they are giving you everything else. They are giving you the full system, the full structure, everything you need to be successful.
Stephen Mostrom [00:22:50]:
You show up, you do the work, and you'll get the grades, and you'll be able to move forward. And then this learning cliff happens. As soon as you are done with your formal schooling, you enter into the workforce, and all of a sudden, there is no institution standing there doing much of the heavy lifting for you. You might be fortunate to work for a company that invests heavily in l D and has some structures in place, but even at the largest companies that I've worked for and I've worked for bank of America and JP Morgan Chase and some of these behemoths, they will really prop you up during the new hire phase, and they'll come along with different programs. You'll have access to information, but you won't necessarily have systems, coaching, support, everything that you would have had in college, for example. And so that's why I call it the learning cliff for so many professionals. They're used to having this institution really prop them up, and all of a sudden they're in the workforce and they don't have that anymore and they don't know how to grow consistently. And so their growth becomes sporadic.
Stephen Mostrom [00:23:51]:
It becomes, I'm going to read a book over here, I'm going to attend a conference over there, I'm going to take a course, maybe I'll go back to school. But it's very inconsistent. It's not this steady climb like it is when we're in school. And so for a lot of folks, what this leads to is as life gets busier, as you have kids, work demands become more important and take up more of your time. Development really falls by the wayside. And a lot of folks begin to sort of flatline in their skill sets. Their skills can even atrophy. They can run into real challenges of, I'm not keeping pace, I'm not learning all the things that I need to learn to be successful.
Stephen Mostrom [00:24:28]:
And then if you pair that with the age that we're living in right now, which is just this explosion in the speed of skills changing, I mean, we've all seen the AI revolution over the last twelve months or so. All of a sudden, this is a new skill that folks need to be able to jump on very, very quickly in order to stay cutting edge and competitive. And so you have this combination of folks don't know where to go and how to kind of develop their own system, and skills are changing faster than ever. And so what that leaves is a lot of folks wondering, where do I go? What do I do? And so seeing that problem, I began to think about, how do we solve that problem, especially for folks who are mid career professionals. Maybe they have kids, maybe they have all these other demands. It's not like they can carve out hours and hours and hours each day for learning. You'll see some folks on Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever saying, oh, I read 3 hours a day. It's like, that's great.
Stephen Mostrom [00:25:23]:
I have two kids, I can't read right. It's just not realistic for most folks. And so develop daily is the system that I came up with to address this problem. It is built on the idea that 15 minutes of development every single day is going to help your career so much more than these sporadic bits of development. And it's so much more realistic than trying to cram in 3 hours of reading on a daily basis. It's grounded in basic principles of learning, like spaced repetition. If you space out your information, you can increase your learning by as much as 47%. And it's also grounded in human habits and sort of the human side of things.
Stephen Mostrom [00:26:02]:
And the fact that if I build this consistent habit, then I'm going to show up more regularly. And so that's the develop daily system. I started off talking about it on LinkedIn. I now have a newsletter that goes out on Sunday where I share different learning tactics and things like that.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:16]:
Awesome.
Stephen Mostrom [00:26:17]:
And in 2024, I'm going to be rolling out a pair of workshops, one for leaders within corporations to help them not only develop their own system, but also roll that out to their teams, and also for individual contributors to help them really take advantage of the built in skill sets and knowledge they have. There's so much untapped potential within companies, and I feel like if we can arm folks with the right system to move forward with learning, then they're going to be able to just explode with all their built in potential plus this really consistent flow of development.
Matt Gjertsen [00:26:50]:
That's awesome. And I think something that I've been thinking a lot about recently is in some ways develop. Because we're used to school, where we take years developing these broad, kind of overarching, hard to even call them skills, attributes or something. Learning a new skill, moving into a new role, can feel really intimidating. And that's why I always say if I ever write a book, it's going to be called Lower the Bar. Because I really think people underestimate if you think of skill in any skill, like the skill level in any skill. On a scale of zero to ten. Yes, getting to ten is a near impossible feat.
Matt Gjertsen [00:27:39]:
If you want to be the best in the world at anything, it is going to take just absolutely just maniacal focus for years in order to make that happen. But if you want to get to an eight, it's surprisingly easy. And we can all debate on, like, what's an eight or what's a nine or whatever, and that's not the point. The point is to become pretty good at something, to go from zero to six or zero to eight, to become pretty good, to become conversant, to become competent in a lot of things takes surprisingly little effort. And I think that's the difference between where you have the Malcolm Gladwell esque, like, 10,000 hours rule. And I get that's not really a rule. It's a very broad spectrum. But it's still thousands of hours.
Matt Gjertsen [00:28:31]:
Yeah, to get great at something, it takes thousands of hours, but then I forget who the book's by. But there's a book called 20 hours where it's like, to get decent at anything takes about 20 hours. And I think to anybody that's like, oh, man, I don't have time, I'm so busy. I got to believe that the developed daily kind of has some of that of just like, look, you're not trying to win the gold medal, but just a little bit of effort and you're like, you'd be amazed at how much that can change you over a pretty short period of time.
Stephen Mostrom [00:29:02]:
Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. To your point, I mean, if you can get to an eight out of ten, especially across a couple of complementary skill sets, it's amazing how much that can boost your career. If you can be well spoken and a good communicator, plus have a nice little pool of technical skills, you're going to stand out so much in the workplace. And to your point, it really is, I feel like this bar of genius status or expert status, we've framed it as so almost unattainable for the average person, and in many ways, that's not really, I think, what most folks should be aiming for, being the number one expert in an area, unless you're something like a tenured professor, where that's really all you're meant to focus on. But if you're in the corporate workplace, the folks that I've seen be most successful are adaptable. They're shifting from this department over to that department. They're building their network. They're expanding their skill set.
Stephen Mostrom [00:30:04]:
I had leaders at every company I've worked in step into roles in areas they knew nothing about and had to upskill quickly. But they were given that role because they were a strong leader and they were adaptable and they were able to take it and run with it. And so I would 100% agree. I think that focusing on becoming the world's best at anything is probably not the best target for most folks. It's how can I build this really competitive and complementary skill set that's going to help me stand out in the market and either land a promotion or land that new opportunity that I'm looking for and really trying to meet folks where they're at? I teach at a community college, and so I'm not at Harvard, I'm not at Yale. I'm not with students that are able to give just this 100% undivided attention to their education? In many cases, I'm working with students who are either coming back to school later in life or are young people who are coming from very difficult, either financial or life circumstances. And school is what they can squeeze in in between a part time job and taking care of their siblings and all these other commitments. And so for them, it doesn't work for me to come in and be like, you need to invest 10,000 hours in this topic to become an expert.
Stephen Mostrom [00:31:13]:
It's, how do I get you to the point where you're proficient and you can talk knowledgeably about this. And you can use this bit of knowledge to help transform your economic life by getting a good job and being able to move know the corporate ladder or whatever it is.
Matt Gjertsen [00:31:28]:
Yeah. That focus on real actionable skills. And then I don't know if you've read David Epstein's book range, he talks a lot about what you were just saying of know, we're really fascinated by these stories of the Tiger Woods's, of the world that they're like in the crib with a golf club kind of thing. But the research shows that really the majority of people, both who get to pretty top but just who do really decently well, are the reverse where they're not that single minded focus for their entire life. It is bouncing around quite a bit more. So I think there's a lot to that. I would definitely agree there.
Stephen Mostrom [00:32:12]:
Yeah.
Matt Gjertsen [00:32:13]:
Awesome. Well, as we kind of round out the show, I'm sure you have a lot of recommendations here, but do you have a book or podcast that you would recommend everybody to listen to or read to kind of help them with this kind of develop yourself journey?
Stephen Mostrom [00:32:33]:
Yeah, absolutely. It is a tough ask, asking a learning professional to recommend a book. I feel asking a movie buff to recommend their favorite movie, it's like, oh, there's so many good ones that I want to recommend. But I feel like the book that I recommend to people more than anything else is atomic habits by James clear for anyone who hasn't read this book. And hopefully it feels like it's gaining quite a bit of traction. But I feel like this is the universal book. Every single person could benefit from this. And it's amazing when you look at your personal day, how much habit formation and these consistent habits really impact your ability to get work done, to structure your day.
Stephen Mostrom [00:33:15]:
All of that. And James just does such an amazing job of breaking habits down into very practical knowledge and systems. So understanding how do my habits work and how do I move forward with building stronger, better habits? I just think he does such an amazing job talking about that. So I would highly, highly recommend atomic habits. And then if I could do just a couple of quick honorable mentions, the book decisive by Chip and Dan Heath is another one of my favorites. It's all about decision making and how to be more effective at making strong decisions, which again, is something that's just really applicable to everyday life. And then on the podcast side, I'm a huge fan of deep work by Cal Newport. And then I'm also a big fan of the Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday.
Stephen Mostrom [00:34:03]:
I just think those two podcasts are just really great ways to get plugged into good productivity systems, good ways of thinking, some nice stoic philosophy, that kind of thing. So those would be a couple of recommendations.
Matt Gjertsen [00:34:15]:
Awesome. I'm also a huge fan of Cal Newport. He has been ever since I read the book. Deep work changed my whole way of thinking about the very, very big fan, for sure. Awesome. Okay, so then, speaking of yourself, when you look back, you've had quite a life. We didn't even get into stuff that I thought we were going to get into.
Stephen Mostrom [00:34:35]:
Like, you have a JD.
Matt Gjertsen [00:34:37]:
Come on. How do you get a law degree? And now you're in l and D? We didn't even get into that. But when you look back at your career, what are the biggest skills that have most helped you be successful?
Stephen Mostrom [00:34:49]:
Yeah. And I'll try to weave in just a brief mention of the law degree journey into this question because I think it's applicable. But looking back on my career, I have noticed that growth mindset is the number one skill tool, whatever you want to call it, that I reach for on a regular basis. And for anyone who doesn't know, growth mindset comes from an amazing book called Mindset by Carol Dweck. She's a Stanford psychologist, and she differentiates between this idea of a fixed mindset, which is where you view challenges as these kind of immovable barriers or obstacles, versus someone who has a growth mindset. And that's where you view challenges as opportunities, and you essentially back yourself to be able to figure things out on the go. And when I look back at my career, whether it's making the pivot from this kind of trajectory towards a law firm into more the business world, then being in, I was in a sales focused role, like sales consulting, then having this l and d opportunity open up and just going, okay, I'm going to take that jump. I'm going to go into this field that I don't know anything about, but I'm going to back myself to be successful in there.
Stephen Mostrom [00:35:57]:
And so growth mindset is really what's kind of propelled me forward from this kind of very twisty and windy career journey. And I even see it as I was making the transition out of Silicon Valley bank and into my now entrepreneurial journey. Having that growth mindset of man, being an entrepreneur is scary, but I trust my skill sets. I trust my ability to go figure it out. And so I'm going to make that dive, and I'm going to really give it a go versus allowing fear and sort of the six mindset to get in the way. And so the nice thing about growth mindset, it is something that you can invest in. And so if you hang out with me on LinkedIn, I talk about it all the time. But one of my favorite little tools is growth mindset affirmations, just these simple statements of growth mindset that you can weave into your morning routine journaling.
Stephen Mostrom [00:36:46]:
If you're doing like a gratitude practice in the evenings, there's a lot of little ways to just plug in these growth mindset affirmations and begin to form that very strong kind of mental foundation that's going to help you so much moving forward.
Matt Gjertsen [00:36:59]:
Awesome. I couldn't agree more with that. That's a great growth mindset, and it feels like it's becoming more important as the world just gets more and more chaotic.
Stephen Mostrom [00:37:09]:
Absolutely.
Matt Gjertsen [00:37:10]:
So we spent a lot of today talking about kind of the personal journey and how individuals can learn more, improve themselves. But obviously, you've spent a lot of time in the corporate world as well. So when you kind of combine those two things, when you reflect on the corporate world, what is one thing that you think would help? What's one biggest opportunity for talent development teams in organizations to get better? Maybe that's kind of connecting this, helping bridge this gap of where people are hitting that learning cliff, what are some things from this personal development world that talent development folks can pick up and run with?
Stephen Mostrom [00:37:48]:
Yeah, absolutely. If I had any advice for anyone in talent development, my number one thing would be, you have to spend as much time as you possibly can, either with the folks that you are working to help support or in the mindset of the folks that you.
Matt Gjertsen [00:38:03]:
Great. Yeah.
Stephen Mostrom [00:38:05]:
So in every role that I've been in, shadowing and spending time with my target audience is something that I don't compromise on. I have to spend time with the folks that I'm going to be supporting because then I'm going to be able to understand where they're getting stuck, where they need to develop, what their day to day flow looks like, where they can squeeze in time. For example, I used to work with a lot of sales managers and I would spend time with them and I'd be walking around with them from meeting to meeting, going from one branch to another branch and doing that for one day. It becomes crystal clear. I can't roll out a three hour training for these folks. They don't have the time. Right. I need to go with a micro learning approach.
Stephen Mostrom [00:38:44]:
I need to be able to break this up, something that they can squeeze in in between meetings something like that. I wouldn't know that, right? If I'm just in my little l and d bubble, I'm going to think about, oh, what's the best way for this knowledge to get through? It's going to be this three hour block training. But if I'm spending time with my audience and I really understand who they are, what they care about, and what their day looks like, then I'm going to adapt my program and it's going to be that much more successful because folks are actually going to be able to capitalize on it. So I just think there's a tremendous amount of opportunity for lnd to be embedded within the audiences that we serve and making sure that we are capturing not just the learning side of things, which is so important, but also the human side of things. These common challenges that folks run into, whether it's time constraints or work life balance or anything that gets in the way of grabing a learning program and using it to grow your career. And so, yeah, just really reinjecting the human element into talent development. We're not robots. We're not AI.
Stephen Mostrom [00:39:49]:
We don't just absorb information in kind of this vacuum. It's like it happens within the space of our everyday lives and our humanness. And so I think there's a little bit of an opportunity for us to inject a little bit more humanity into some of our talent development.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:04]:
Absolutely. Awesome. Well, fantastic. I'm so excited that you were here today. I think a lot of people, I got a lot out of this. I'm sure a lot of people listening, like I mentioned, there's plenty of people that I'm sure we both know who are worried about their job, looking for a new job, on the fence about figuring out what's next in their career. So I think there's a lot here for them. We're going to make sure to put in the show notes, all the ways to connect with you, whether that's getting in with develop daily, finding you on LinkedIn, all that stuff.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:35]:
We'll make sure that's below. So if you're listening, check out the show notes and you'll get links to sign up for all this great stuff. Thank you so much. We're recording right before the holidays, so thank you for taking the time. Hope you have good holidays. Good end of the year. Anything final words you want to leave the listeners with?
Stephen Mostrom [00:40:51]:
No, just. It's been great. Matt, thanks so much for having me. And folks, enjoy your holidays and keep learning.
Matt Gjertsen [00:40:59]:
Awesome. Have a great day.
Stephen Mostrom [00:41:00]:
Thanks.
Matt Gjertsen [00:41:01]:
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you liked the discussion, make sure to hit like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. As a reminder, if your team is struggling keeping up with the training development demands of your organization, we want to help. Better everyday Studios is a full service instructional design team that can help you with everything from ideation to actual content creation and delivery. Please reach out to us using the link in the episode notes below. Have a great day.
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