In this episode, we dive deep into the concept of psychological safety and its profound impact on workplace culture. Join me as I chat with Jason Eisner of Aristotle Performance (and a number of other cool businesses), who specializes in fostering environments where team members feel safe to express their ideas, share concerns, and admit mistakes without fear of repercussion.
Key Highlights:
- Psychological Safety Day: Jason introduces the upcoming virtual event, “Psych Safety Day,” featuring renowned keynote speaker Amy Edmondson, who will provide valuable insights on leadership and innovation in the context of psychological safety.
- Research Insights: Jason cites compelling research, particularly in the healthcare sector, demonstrating that open communication significantly enhances team outcomes. He stresses the need for a culture where mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities rather than failures.
- Impact of Abrasive Behavior: Drawing on examples from Pixar’s filmmaking process and his own experiences with toxic leadership, Jason contrasts the benefits of a psychologically safe environment with the harmful effects of abrasive behaviors in teams.
- Measuring and Improving Psychological Safety: Jason discusses the importance of addressing low psychological safety scores within organizations and introduces tools like the Fearless Organization Scan to help teams enhance performance and innovation.
- Google’s Findings: He references Google’s research, which shows that psychological safety is more critical for team success than skills or social connections, highlighting a shift in organizational priorities.
- Event Details: “Psych Safety Day” is set for November 20th and will utilize immersive technology to engage participants in meaningful discussions about leadership and team dynamics.
- Mindset for Growth: Jason shares personal anecdotes from his entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of a growth-oriented mindset. He encourages listeners to take small, manageable steps toward their goals and to embrace exploration and experimentation.
- Infinite vs. Finite Games: The episode concludes with Jason illustrating the concept of finite and infinite games, advocating for an infinite mindset that fosters ongoing learning and adaptation in business.
Whether you’re a leader looking to improve your team’s performance or someone interested in personal development, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable strategies. Tune in to learn how saying ‘yes, and’ can help cultivate a more open and innovative workplace!
Links and Resources:
- Psych Safety Day - Sign up and use code Avish15 for a discount!
- For info on working with Jason to build Psychological Safety in your workplace, visit Aristotle Performance.
- For more on Jason and how to work with him one-on-one, check out his website at jasoneisner.com
Unedited Transcript
Avish Parashar
Alright. Hello, Jason. How are you?
Jason Eisner
I'm great, Avish. Nice to be here with you.
Avish Parashar
Absolutely. Thank you for having us here. I'm super excited to talk about a topic that I feel like I've only recently learned about, probably in the last year or 2, and I've really started incorporating to my work already. And then you reached out to me about something else, and we got to talking. And and then we have this weird connection, which maybe we can share with people later.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Avish Parashar
Before we get into that, for people who don't know you, why don't could you just share with us kind of the one minute sort of bio slash overview of who you are and what you're doing these days?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So Jason Eisner.
I grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, which we'll get to later, and currently live in LA. And I'm the cofounder and managing partner of a consulting firm called Aristotle Performance, and we specialize in psychological safety, training, development, awareness programs, measurement. And that kinda led me to thinking, how do we make this a more global thing? Because as you said, you just heard about it. Like, when I first heard about it, it was, like you know, it was kind of this, moment, like this little string that tied through all of my career experiences. And you get into this, and you start finding, oh, there's other people that care about this. So I created this event called psych safety day.
So it's a global virtual event, on November 20th, and it's gonna be, 4 hours, 12 different speakers, 2 stages, and Amy Edmondson, who is, to me, the the queen of psychological safety
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Jason Eisner
Is gonna be our keynote at the end of the session. So, yeah, really excited for that, and that's how we ended up connecting.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. That's fantastic.
And, yeah, then, Jason and I connected because Jason reached out to me, saw what I did, and thought it might fit in well with the, with the event. And, we got to talking. And, yes, before like, I hadn't put anything out there about psychological safety. He just saw the yes and idea, and you just thought, alright. This would probably work, and then I'm like, oh, I already talked about this a bit. So, yeah. And when when you mentioned that Amy Edmonson was gonna be speaking there, it just added this, like, massive level of credibility to your vet that you're doing an event about psychological safety, and you got Amy Edmondson presenting.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And and because we're gonna throw this term around a lot, I think it's good just to kind of define it and let people know what it is since most people won't know.
Avish Parashar
Absolutely. Jewel's gonna be in my next question, so why don't you go ahead and
Jason Eisner
do it? Jump in the gun. I mean, when you first learn about psychological safety, you learn Amy's definition because she's really the she's a Harvard Business School professor. She's a researcher, and she kind of came across this idea when she was studying hospital teams. And she was looking at hospital teams and how many errors they made versus what was the performance, what was the outcome of their patients. And so she's tracking errors and patient outcomes, and she was finding that the more errors a team made, the better their patient outcomes. So very counterintuitive.
It's like, how does that make sense? So what she actually found was that it was not just that they were making errors, but they were reporting errors.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Jason Eisner
And though that there was teams that were covering up errors and ultimately had worse patient outcomes, and there was teams that were were reporting errors leading to better patient outcomes. So it's really this idea of, do we tell the truth? And not just tell the truth, but in real time. Right? So this is like in a meeting, you wanna say something to your boss, but you're like, better not, you know, like, don't rock the boat, but you'll say something afterwards in Slack or, you know, on a coffee break, whatever, where you'll actually say what you really thought. So it's this idea of building a speak up culture.
You know, ultimately, that's that's what we're trying to accomplish here. And I think the term psychological safety is is a little bit off putting, a little bit misleading because you hear psych psychology, you start thinking this is therapy, which sometimes it can look like that, but it's really this idea of telling the truth in real time and the truth in the form of questions, ideas, admitting mistakes, challenging one another.
Avish Parashar
So It's funny that you mentioned the term, and I'm curious if you encountered this or felt this way at all. But I feel like for some people, just the the phrase psychological safety almost can feel like a little soft and squishy, like, wearing
Jason Eisner
those little feelings
Avish Parashar
and but, really, it's it's almost the opposite because it's like it's creating a culture where you are able to stand up and give feedback and and point out when you did wrong. It's so it feels soft and squishy, but it actually takes a lot of internal and team strength to really use it.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's a soft skill. Right? It's a communication skill, but the idea, if you were to be in a very high psychologically safe culture, people are giving you direct feedback.
They're challenging your ideas. You know, it's like I don't know if you've ever been a part of a team where it, like, you really hit that flow state. Right? That's what we're trying to accomplish. And so, like, being in that can be very tough because, you know, you see someone else's work and you're like, ah, do I say something? You're, like, compelled to say something. Right? We've created this culture where you have to speak up.
You have to challenge one another, and that means your stuff is getting challenged. So it's you know, it can be very uncomfortable to be in that type of environment.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And I jump ahead here. You know? Like I said, this is kind of free form conversation with something you said triggered. I think I first came across the basic idea, not from Amy Edmondson, but from doctor Linda Hill from Yeah. I'm so sorry. Watch her TED talk about creative abrasion, which is very similar, and she has a whole story.
I think she told us about Pixar and how they Yeah. When they're working on a movie, they just rip it to shreds, like, every day. But and I think some some leaders will hear that and be like, yes. That's the key is everyone needs to be tough, and we need to just, like, be willing to but they forget there's a this basic psychological safety that first needs to be in place. So everyone kinda jumps to step e f in the process and skipping. And I'm assuming that's kinda one of the things you will then work with groups on. Is that first base foundation?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. 1st, it's like, how do you build that? But then also, you know, it's not just ripping each other to shreds because what does that do for the next time? Right. Right? So I always think about, like, when you're in an interaction with someone, is the way you're behaving encouraging them to speak more or discouraging them? Right? So you can be super abrasive and challenge one another, but if it's like shutting them down, like, that's, you know if you're leading a company, you want the truth and you want people speaking up.
And if the way you're behaving is making it so it's not safe to do so, people you know, everyone looks out for themselves Mhmm. Number 1. And you should. Right? We should all we all have families to feed and, you know, that's most of the reason we have a job is because there's a paycheck. So, ultimately, you're gonna behave in a way that keeps that going as long as possible. And so is it better to keep your mouth shut and just stay quiet and, you know, don't stand out?
Or are you encouraged to speak up and is it rewarded when you do? You know, like, if I come to the problem, is it, like, why the hell are you doing this? Or is it, like, thank you so much for bringing this to me? Right? Like, there's that's the reward is
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And when I say when I was saying they rip each other to shreds, I mean, I was kinda using hyperbole. Right? It's they they they heavily criticize the day's work for the benefit of making the overall product better, and they do in a way that's very positive.
Jason Eisner
And there had to be a journey to get there where, like, we all kind of get used to this type of environment. But
Avish Parashar
Yeah. You don't throw people in on day 1 who don't know each other and don't feel safe with each other and just start.
Jason Eisner
But a
Avish Parashar
lot of groups will just dump to that. And and I don't know if you've seen this, but you'll you'll see the the person who tends to in my in my vocabulary, the yes, butter, their defense will be like, I'm just telling the truth or, you know, that's how we get better is if I give them feedback. And they're kind of forgetting that there's a whole psychological basis first.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And it's how it lands with that person. Right? So it's not just like a one size fits all. You might understand there are some people that are more sensitive. There are some people that need, you know, messages delivered in a different way. So there is you know, you do have to customize a little bit to your audience.
But, ultimately, are you in you know, are you giving them more confidence to speak up the next time?
Avish Parashar
That's great. And I I could talk about I have a whole page of little notes I took of things I could ask about, but I wanna kinda pause. We sort of jumped ahead into the content, which was great in giving people an idea of psychological safety and what it is. Well, I I'm curious about your sort of journey. I mean, you've got an interesting backstory, but we'll come back to the that part of it later. But just how did you, like, learn about psychological safety, and how did you decide to start a whole consulting speaking training business around it?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I mean, the big picture, it it kinda found me, and it was, like, right place, right time. So I, you know, got out of college, had a finance degree. It was 2,009, and not a good time to graduate with a finance degree. But I ended up where you know? My whole thing was I always knew I would have my own business. Like, just, you know, I come from 3 generations of business owners.
It was like, that is what you do. And so to me, work was to acquire skills. Like, I need all the skills I can to because I'm gonna have my own business. So I need to know sales, accounting, marketing. So I thought the best way to get there was work in a small company, you know, start ups where you have lots of responsibilities and a lot of varied responsibilities. So I worked at 3 different start ups, helped each of them grow, like, you know, 10 people, we grew to 30 people, or 5 people, we grew to 25 people. And so I took on these manager roles very early on, and it was always something I like I always cared about the culture. Right? I thought it was, like, my responsibility to set the tone for everyone.
So I'm reading all these books on psychology and, like, all the classic, like, how to win friends and influence people and 7 habits of highly effective leader, like, so many of those types of leadership books. And then in my very last, work ex or, like, you know, working for someone else experience, here's where I get into, you know, I don't think I've told you this story yet. But, so in my last job, it was an advertising agency in New York City, and we had a CEO, and then I was number 2. I was the director of operations. And I had hired everyone. I trained everyone, and the CEO was kind of this, like, classic toxic leader. You know?
Very, like, alcoholic, high expectations, and then would just, like, berate you if you didn't meet them. Right? So I had to balance that out, and I, like, kept everyone you know, kind of took care of everyone in a sense. And so a few years into the job, he starts asking me if I wanna become a partner and, you know, get, like, more invested in this business. And I I couldn't see myself, you know, getting married in a sense. Like, that's how I view business. It's like a mini marriage.
And we're out at, the Game of Thrones Symphony at Madison Square Garden. We had gotten, like, 3 tickets. And I get a call from, one of the employees, very concerned, like, in a panic, and he tells me, I was going through my memory card, like, trying to upload photos. He he manages social media, and he found these old pictures and videos from the bathroom.
Avish Parashar
Oh god.
Jason Eisner
And I was like, what? Like, this was a I was on I was on intermission at this concert. And I'm like, what?
Like, so confused. And immediately, I I kind of knew who did it. Right? Because CEO taught like, I knew a lot about this guy. So I pulled him out into the hallway, and I was like, did you do you know, did you just do something that you weren't supposed to with cameras in the office? And, like, the look on his face, like, I knew he had been found out. So that led to me reporting it to the police.
Police never did anything, shockingly.
Avish Parashar
Wow.
Jason Eisner
And then I had to let the the staff know, which let you know, company blew up, like, overnight. We went from, like, this thriving. We had tripled in the last 18 months to overnight. No one felt safe. Right? Yeah. And the solution that we found at the time was to have him leave for 2 weeks.
I came and I took over and just I came up with a plan, basically, of because these people, they live in New York City. They couldn't just leave their jobs and, like, cut their paycheck. So but they also couldn't work there. So I quit my job. I took on this role for 2 weeks as, like, interim CEO, managed a plan, and then when that was done, I thought, what am I gonna do? And because I had spent so much time coaching the employees and reading all these books, I thought I wanted to pursue a coaching business. So I did executive coaching for, like, a year, and I joined the site called NewMe, which is like a coaching directory. Mhmm. And because I've gotten so many reviews and testimonials, they reached out to me, and they said, we wanna meet you.
Like, no one's gotten this many reviews this quickly, and they invited me to their first ever psychological safety training. I had no idea what it was. Didn't know anything, but I just thought, like, you know, a lot of times when opportunities show up, it is that, you know, just saying yes to them. So I flew to Vancouver, did this training, and I was like I just decided to go all in on it. I thought, like, this is the thing. This is what has differentiated the successful companies I've been at, the ones I enjoy working at versus the ones you just, like, go home miserable and can't wait to leave. So, yeah, I just thought, like, this is the thing.
And I started the company, partnered with this guy, Neil, who I met at the training. And then we've spent the last 5 years building out a certification program, creating, like, different trainings. And now we've been all over the world, working with companies on how do you build psychological safety from the team level, at the organization level. So I would feel like crazy circumstance. You know, I don't know how I don't know anyone else that's experienced that in a workplace.
Avish Parashar
No. That's crazy.
I had not heard that story from you before. Yeah. And so was it did he just come back to work after 2 weeks and, like
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So the plan I mean, the way that we the way I structured it was I told him, you can't afford to lose all these people. Like, one, I can't believe the cops never showed up. Like, they I filed a police report. They said we have to follow through on this. They never did, which is insane. That is insane.
And then the plan that we came up with was I told him, you can't afford to lose these people. Pay them 50% more as, like, a 90 day contract. And I told them, you can't afford to leave your job right now. Why not, like, take a 50% pay bump and use this time to start looking for a new job?
Avish Parashar
Wow.
Jason Eisner
Like, that was the agreement put in place. Everyone got this big pay raise. You know, they did their tasks and stuff. He had 90 days to find new people. So the company kept running, but basically, oh, like, overturned the entire staff in 90 days.
Avish Parashar
That's that is and it's a nice, it's a nice example for you or from you of sort of this, like, third option. Right? It's like the option is, do we keep working for this guy or do we quit? But you kinda found a way that help like, it sort of saved the company, and it saved the employees. And, like, maybe no one was ecstatic with the situation, but everyone kinda survived, succeeded, and came out better than they would have otherwise.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I think in in a world where you don't have rent to pay, everyone would have just quit. Right?
Avish Parashar
Right. You get to be out of the world.
Jason Eisner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
That's the
Jason Eisner
Right. And I think and that's kinda become, like you know, the win win win has become a mantra for me. It's just like that, you know, you look at you can look at any situation and think, how do we win? How do we lose? I always try to think, like, what are everyone's wants and desires, and, like, how do we balance those so that everyone comes out a winner in a sense?
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And that's It's an it's such such an easy it's such an easy approach to think about when you're not in the thick of it. Yeah.
Jason Eisner
And
Avish Parashar
then being able to do it in those scenarios is, like, that's, I think, when the real, like, test is.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I mean, that's a time, like, you know, a lot of it's now when I was in it, it was insanely stressful. I didn't sleep for 3 straight nights. Like, it was just and, you know, now it's become a story that I can tell, but it doesn't have that same emotional Sure. Resonance. But, yeah, very stressful time. But
Avish Parashar
It's quite an origin story.
Jason Eisner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
I I I wanna get a little bit into your process if that's what you kinda when you go to work with a company, kinda what are some of the things you do that maybe some listeners can take away. Before I do that, I want you to share why you named the company Aristotle performance. I know, but, just for people who are unfamiliar with the story, kinda give us a backstory as to where that name came from.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So when I was starting the, you know, 2 there's 2 main things that put psychological safety into the zeitgeist or, you know, made it made it a a term that people actually know of.
1 is Amy Edmonson's work. So she did a study in 1999 that I talked about with the hospital teams, and then she published a book called the fearless organization. And then there was this study by Google. So Google has done these different projects. 1 was called project oxygen where they tried to figure out, do we even need middle managers? Right? Or is it or we just wasting 1,000,000,000 of dollars paying those salaries?
Ultimately, they figured out, yes. We do. And these managers need to have coaching skills. Like, that was the number one thing that made middle managers valuable. And so after that, they thought they did another project called project Aristotle, which, you know, Aristotle has this quote, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Mhmm.
Avish Parashar
And they're
Jason Eisner
trying to figure out how do we build the perfect team. Right? We're Google.
We have an amazing reputation. We can pay amazing salaries. So, like, with all of these resources, you know, what's the formula to building the perfect team? Is it, like, these certain skills, or do people need to hang out after work to build those bonds? So they looked at a 180 different teams over, I think it was a 5 year period. And finally, when they came across psychological safety and plugged that in to, like you know, they were looking at sales teams and engineering teams, so you can measure you know, revenue generated. Psychological safety was directly correlated to performance, like, higher than any other factor.
And so kind of from that, the air the idea of the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Aristotle leveraging off of Google's project. You know, I wanted to have Aristotle as part of the company. So, yeah, it was kind of a, I guess, a bit of a marketing play, but, ultimately, it's like seeing it that way of how do you build something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. So let's then get into that. So you've got this company, Aristotle Performance. Someone comes along and says, alright. We wanna improve our performance, our psychological well, that's the first question. Do you find that people who come to you, are they specifically looking for psychological safety, or is that niche enough that they're more coming to you for improved performance, retention, engagement, and then you'd sell them psychological safety?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I'd I'd say it shifted because when we first started, like, it was still a a somewhat misunderstood term or just not even most people hadn't heard of it. Right? So we're having to educate the market. And I think the 1st 8 months, because of my experience in startups, I wanted to work with startups. Ups. I thought this is who needs it.
But start ups are not the ones investing in culture, in training. Right? They wanna hit their revenue goals for the next quarter. They're not thinking about beyond that. Right? So we shifted towards these, you know, bigger enterprise companies. And, yeah, it was more of the, we want innovation.
We wanna improve retention. Now we're getting people reaching out specifically for psychological safety. So companies that do, like, the best places to work survey. Mhmm. The question on there that says, like, something directly about psychological safety. One question. And so we're getting companies saying, we're scoring really low on this. Right? But it's only one question.
It doesn't really tell you any, specifics around it. So they'll reach out to us and say, we know we have an issue with psychological safety. It could be across the organization. It could be at the department level. But we're getting more, you know, specific asks for that.
Avish Parashar
Okay. Got it.
Jason Eisner
And so let's say
Avish Parashar
how many we go ahead.
Jason Eisner
I was gonna say, ultimately, like, psychological safety is not the goal. Right? It's the means to the end. You Yeah. Still for the purpose of performance, retention, innovation. Like, those are still the things that we're driving towards. This is just these are the ingredients that go in.
Avish Parashar
Right. Right. It's kind of the means to that.
Jason Eisner
Exactly.
Avish Parashar
And it's great because it means to multiple ends. It'll like, you have that, then it really gets better and easier. Yeah. So let's say a company is where when you when you first start working with the company, what's a little bit of your process? Do you first assess the level of safety, or do you start just talking to people? Or kinda what is your how do you work with
Jason Eisner
the company? I mean, we always start with some kind of, measurement. Right? So we like we're partners with the fearless organization scan, and so that's a tool that we use. It's a survey tool. So we can measure at the team level what's the psychological safety here. We can measure at the organization level, look at it by department, by years of tenure, location.
So there's some qualitative measurement. And then we'll do focus groups and 1 on 1 interviews, and we'll meet with executives to kinda get this understanding, of what's going on here. And then based on that discovery process, we'll design an intervention. And on a very small scale, that could look like we bring those results to the team. We say these are your results. Right? We do a facilitated, usually, like, 2 hour session with the team.
And just putting those results in front of people and having them start to talk about them is, 1, it's a very different experience than they've had at work because, generally, their meetings are, what are the tasks that we need to do? Who's doing them?
Where do we need help? You know, this this is a meeting where you kind of step back from all of that, and how do we work together? How could we work better together? Right? So it's it's just a different lens to look at things through, and the conversations there usually open up, like, more about what's going on and what needs to be done. So that could lead to a team coaching journey. We've also done, like know, we have a program right now where company 500 people, we measured across the organization, and we found that the mid mid level managers, they weren't the lowest scoring, but they had the widest variance.
So meaning there's just inconsistencies, and then their teams below them are gonna be less predictable. So we're doing a training program with these 24 managers, about what are the skills that they need. Right? So each month, we roll out a new module, a new skill Mhmm. Go through the content, and then give them specific, things to go try with their team. Right? So a lot of it is just stepping out of your habits, your routines, your comfort zone, and trying new things and seeing what works.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Jason Eisner
So, yeah, discovery, intervention, and then measure again. I think the measurement is important because that's what builds accountability. You know?
Avish Parashar
Sure. Yeah. That's how you justify all this work we put in. Was it worth it? Like, do look at our numbers.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Should we scale it up, or do we change directions? But a lot of time, it's coaching, training. You know, it could start with, like, a keynote and just building awareness.
Avish Parashar
Right. Once you kind of got the assessment down, then you based on the assessment, you figure out what's the best way. Is it a a shotgun like a keynote, or do we need to work with, like, 5 people individually or whatever kind of best Yeah.
Jason Eisner
So you'll pie usually, it's a pilot. You pick some small tests that we can run and collect data on it and then try to figure out what's gonna scale. And, yes, there are consistencies that work across organizations, but there's a very different context. You know? A pharmaceutical is operating very differently than a software company. Right? Pharma, like, you're like some people that create pharmaceuticals, they know that the ideas they have now, they might not even be alive by the time these come to fruition. Right. That long term horizon versus software, you know, it's much shorter time lines.
So just kind of meeting meeting the context, is pretty critical.
Avish Parashar
Cool. I wanna dig a little bit deeper into some specific elements of psychological safety. Before we do that, there's a probably be a good chance to talk a little bit about, psych safety day. Yeah. So we talk a lot now about how you work, what psychological safety is, and why it's so beneficial. So you kinda gave us the high level overview. It's like a 4 or 5 hour long virtual conference.
But could you give a little bit more detail about kinda what's all gonna happen during that time frame and kinda why who's who's your ideal person, or why would someone want to attend this, and what are they gonna get out of it?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So the idea and I had this idea.
It was probably 3 years ago. And I start socializing it, and people like, oh, that'd be cool. That'd be cool. And I I've never organized an event before. So I was kinda hoping that if I talk about it enough, someone would be like, yep. I I could do this. You know?
Let me run with it. It didn't happen.
So, it was, like, earlier this year, probably, like, June or July, I just said, I'm gonna do it myself. So to me, if you're gonna do psych safety day, you need Amy Edmons in there. Right? So once she agreed to be a speaker, it was like, okay. We have an event. And I started thinking about, like, what type of content? What are the things that people not and not just in the narrow lane of psychological safety, but I started thinking, like, what do teams need to know?
Whether you're a team leader or if you're, like, the head of learning and development, like, what are the skill what are the ancillary skills that contribute to that sort of environment? And one of those I was thinking about was, like, if teams knew had more improv skills
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Jason Eisner
Like, that's that's what you need for brainstorming. That's what you need. You need that that sort of mindset to be able to challenge one another and and create that flow in that learning environment. So, like, that's what led me to reach out to you. I literally searched, improv, keynote speaker.
And then I'm
Avish Parashar
glad I came up.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So, yeah, we have you speaking there. And then just over the last 5 years, I've met a lot of people through this work. So some of the speakers are from organizations. So we have 2 people from Google that are speaking.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm. It's
Jason Eisner
you know, I was curious because they did this study. Well, what's changed since then? Right? That study was published in you know, it's all it's now, like, 8 or 9 years ago. So, like, what's changed since then? What have they learned since then? So we have people from Google talking about, how has leadership shifted there. Mhmm. We've got 2 people from Boehringer Ingelheim, which is a pharmaceutical in Germany.
So they rolled out this, like, 3 year long, innovation ambassadors program, which they had, like, this 5 year plan, and they achieved it in a year and a half. So, like, what what did they do that they can share with other, HR leaders, you know, in terms of how it works. Mhmm. Trying to and, I have this other guy.
His name is Michael Allison. He's like a polyvagal theory expert, which had never heard of this phrase, but it's like you know, when we experience threats or, you know, this like, even in the work environment, that idea of, like, do I speak up or not? Before you process it cognitively, you experience something in your body. Right? That's that's our initial reaction.
Your palms might get sweaty. Like, your heart starts to race a little bit. So his whole study is on the nervous system and kinda how you control that so that you can perform at your best. And he works with, like, top tennis players and NBA teams. And, yeah, to me, it's just like he's got super interesting ideas about how do you perform in the moment.
Avish Parashar
That's fantastic. So I'm I'm this is one of those rare events where I'm looking forward to speaking or presenting, but also just participating as an attendee. Because every one of these topics just sounds, you know, interesting and, a, for me to learn personally for myself, but, b, also for the cut type of work I'm doing. So
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I mean, I I hope I get to to see them all. Like, I know I'll be doing lots of, like, behind the scenes stuff, but, like, I've curated these speakers because these are these are who I wanna hear.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Jason Eisner
So to me, the audience, you know, we have about I think there's about 400 people signed up right now. We got 5 for the event, and it's a mix of, HR leaders, so, like, head of learning and development, head of talent. We've got a lot of just, like, team leaders that wanna learn leadership skills, and then you have the whole, like, coaching and consulting world who's, like, always looking to accumulate knowledge and skills that they can go and help their clients with.
Avish Parashar
Got it. So that was good.
I guess you already asked. I was gonna ask, like, who the types of people. So if you work in HR, HR leaders, HR professionals, any kind of team, manager, executive, anyone who leads people, and then, like, a coach, consultant, speaker.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And there's also a lot of, like, universe I've seen a lot of, dot e d u people have signed up. So, like, a lot of university people that wanna learn from Amy. We have another like, another guy I should mention, this guy, David Samson. So he's a a biological or he's like a he's like an anthropologist, so studies, like, human nature and all these things. I heard him on a podcast, loved what he was talking about, and, basically, Internet stalked him and got him as his like, he that was, like, kind of my proudest, speaker acquisition because it took took some recruiting, and he was just someone I listened to, appreciated, and now he's gonna be speaking. So, yeah, it's like a a really awesome list with, like, nice variety, but it kinda all ties into this, you know, topic.
Avish Parashar
Fantastic. And that's gonna be on Wednesday, November 20th.
Jason Eisner
Yep. 9:9 AM Pacific, 12 PM EST, and it's a 4 hour event.
Avish Parashar
4 hour event. And so if you want more information on that, I've got a link on my website. If you go to avishparasha.comforward/safety, that'll send you the page. And, Jason also set up a code to know where people, came from me. So it's Avish 15, a v I s h 15. Not only will that let him know that you came from hearing me here somewhere, but you'll get 15% off if you use that code, to sign up as well. So sign up for a a quick question for people wondering, it's a virtual event.
Is it gonna be recorded? Are people who maybe can't attend the whole thing live or not be able to live? Are they gonna be able to watch it afterwards if they can't?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. So virtual event, we I also got this software called VFairs. So it's like this whole immersive 3 d environment. So, like, when you log on to psych safety day dot com, it's not a normal web page. It's like this 3 d environment that you click around. So I'm hoping that that adds like a a nice element. So it's not just, like, a really long zoom.
And then it'll be recorded. There's 2 tracks. So, like, even if you're there live, you're not gonna be able to see everything. So we'll send all the recordings, or if you have to miss part of it, totally okay because you'll have access afterwards.
Avish Parashar
Oh, fantastic. Kind of a no brainer at that point. So if you're listening to this, remotely interested in this topic, or even if you had never thought about this topic, but are like, I want a stronger performing team. I want a better culture. I want more retention, engagement, innovation. And if you just wanna hear some really cool speakers, not tooting my own horn, but just a lot of other great speakers as well, check it out. Avishparasher. com/uh, safety will take you there. Alright. Cool. So getting back into this, I I could talk about this stuff for a long time, but, I would like to now selfishly turn things to myself.
A little bit about because I was I resonated so much with the idea because everything I read about it, like, oh, that's just that's just yes and. Oh, that's just yes and. Yeah.
Jason Eisner
So the
Avish Parashar
one thing I've been saying in in my keynotes when I do touch upon this topic is, you know, I I read kinda one of, Amy Edmonds' definitions about it's the belief that you can raise an idea, concern, question without being criticized or that you can take risks without being, you know, punished.
Jason Eisner
Without fear of repercussions. Like Exactly.
Avish Parashar
And then what I'll say is, in my parlance, in my verbiage, it's basically saying that you feel like you will be responded to with a yes and.
Jason Eisner
It's just
Avish Parashar
if you raise a question, concern, or criticism, instead of saying, yeah, but just focus on your own work or, yeah, but it's not a big deal, you'll be met with a, yes. Thank you for bringing up my attention, and what can we do about it, and tell me more.
Jason Eisner
And I I think this is so you bring up a kind of important point because it's like it's not so binary. Right? Like, we can look at the spectrum of yes and to yes but. Mhmm. And most most leaders, most people that have teams that are not performing well, it's not because they're toxic. It's not because they have this intention of, like, I'm gonna punish people every time they speak up. Like, it's in the it's in the nuance. Right? It's in the messy middle.
So one example of that, like, a classic phrase that you hear from managers is don't come to me with problems, come to me with solutions. Yeah. Basically, like, that is not giving people confidence to bring up mistakes, questions, concerns. Right? But the idea was, no. I was just trying to tell people, like, think for yourselves.
I was trying to empower them. Right? So there's this, like, intent versus impact.
Avish Parashar
Yes. And I love that you said the one thing with the I think it was the Google with the middle managers almost directly to that example. Like, they discover that middle managers are important, and the main thing they need is to is to coach.
Jason Eisner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
So instead of saying come to me with solutions, not problems, it's like, if you come to me with a problem, I'm gonna coach you on how to solve it or Yeah.
Jason Eisner
Come to me with a problem. Say, hey.
Avish Parashar
Alright. Let's talk about how what what do you think we should do about this, and let's coach that through.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Right. I might have the solution, but if I'm a great manager, I'm trying to get you I'm trying to guide you to get there so that you can fish on your own. Like, I'd rather teach you to fish than give you a fish.
Avish Parashar
Yes. And I love that. And and what I find with the transition from but to and and, scares if you see this when you're trying to get people to behave in more psychological say psychologically safe ways is it's always more efficient in the short term to say yes, but.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. To do it yourself.
Avish Parashar
Boom. Boom. Boom. But the long term benefits of taking that time now, just pay off in spades down the road.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And I I think that's the mindset you have to have. So I kinda talk about, like, finite games versus infinite games.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Jason Eisner
So a finite game is like chess. 2 players, a fixed board. Right? I'm trying to there's a winner and a loser. And in a finite game, like, you might not need to teach someone or do all this. Like, you're thinking short term. How do I get the win? Right? So in an infinite game, which is business, right, it's an unknown number of players, new players can enter at any time, you know, new new companies can start up.
And the the goal of the game is not to win. There's no winning in business.
It is just survival. Right? So if you're thinking like my goal only goal is to survive as long as possible, then learning is the way to get there.
Learning, adapting, adjusting. And in that case, we need to hear from people because you can't be everywhere at once.
Avish Parashar
And there are it's so it's so amazing how we as humans just operate so counter in counterproductively towards the things that will help us. Like, everyone wants to be more engaged and motivated. And, you know, there are lots of studies that say that, you know, one of the best ways to stay engaged is continuous growth improvement
Jason Eisner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
And learning. But because we're overwhelmed, stressed, freaked out, when we get an opportunity to learn and grow, we tend to say yes, but and shut down and be like, I don't have time for that. Like, it's Yeah. So counterpurpose.
Jason Eisner
Change is hard. You know?
It's like It is. Yeah.
Avish Parashar
Which is not a terrible thing for me because that's why I have a job. Same. Well, I wanna shift focus a little bit on this. Still about psychological safety. One thing I talk about I'd love to get your opinion because I don't know if I've seen this elsewhere. Because usually you talk about psychological safety, you're talking about leadership, teams. But one of the things I talk about when I kinda shift my talk into the motivation, if if I've done anything about psychological safety, is this idea of being psychologically safe with yourself.
And I don't know if this is something that is is a known thing or you talk about, but this idea that, like you know, the whole thing is, like, if I bring up an idea, am I gonna get criticized? Well, the amount of times that people will criticize themselves or beat themselves up for taking a risk. I'm just curious if this is you have ideas about, have talked about before, kinda what your thoughts are on that.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I mean, the technically, psychological safety is like a group Mhmm. Condition. Right? But there are these elements that come into play. Like, it's not just the team or not just the leader that determines whether you speak up or not. So I kinda see this interplay of it's your own stuff. Right? It's Mhmm.
How you're raised, what was your previous job experience, what is your just, like, baseline level of confidence and and all of that? Like, that for sure comes into play.
Then you have the team that you're on. Like, are people receptive to you? Does the leader encourage it? And then there's this overarching element of the context that you're in. So to give an example of that, 2 different car dealerships. Okay? One has a compensation plan where if you make the sale, you get the commission and only you.
The other dealership says, we all share in commissions. Creates a very, very different way, you know, behavior of how people are gonna act. Right? Yeah. Dealers pay. 2nd, someone walks on a lot, they, like they're fighting over them. They're telling, oh, you don't wanna work with that guy.
Like, let me take care of you. Right? So what is the psychological safety there? Super low. You change it to we all share commissions, and then it's like, we're a team.
Avish Parashar
Right.
Jason Eisner
Right? So the easiest way to change behavior is to change, like, the incentive structure, the context behind it. But, yeah, for sure, it's, you know, it's your own stuff a lot of the time.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. I think it's, it's just kinda how when I was kinda I brought my talks about saying yes, but to yourself. And it's like, if you could say yes and to yourself, like, you would be able to do a lot more, as well. It all sort of, ties in there. So alright.
This is great. I'm I'm super into the psychological safety stuff, but I wanna shift gears a little bit because in prepping for this and talking with you, there's this you have this whole prehistory. I mean, before you were basically in episode of SVU and, had some weird you know, good thing. You but you've always been sort of an entrepreneur. You know, you said you always wanna be an entrepreneur, and then then you took these jobs to learn skills. But along the way, you actually started a number of ventures. Yeah. And I'm, just without going too deep into what those are, if you could just touch upon them, and I talk a little bit about kinda, like, what was going on in your mind about, like, the because it's a big thing. Right? I talk a lot about it's all about an improv and in in it's about taking little steps and getting started and not waiting till all the ducks are lined up.
And based on senior history, like, that you're very much an example of that.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I think for me, a lot of it was, like, saying it was just saying yes. You know? Like, an an invitation comes up, and I just say yes to it, and, like, that led to things. So when I was in college, I went to University of Miami, had a friend when there was this, like, entrepreneurship competition at the school, it was kinda like a shark tank Yeah. Where, like, you pitch your your business to a panel of judges and the winner got, I think it was $6,000, which was nice in college. And a friend of mine entered.
He got selected to to first, he had to submit, like, a a 2 page thing to get accepted. He got accepted. He reached out to me. He said, hey. I wanna I wanna partner with you on this.
So I said yes. Yep. And so that ended up you know, we entered this competition, ended up winning it, and I used the money from that to start a furniture business. So I was in college in the dorm rooms, and we started building bed lofts and then trying to get sell the microwaves and the couches to go under the bed lofts. So bed loft lifting the bed 5 feet off the air with a wooden Yeah.
Avish Parashar
So just real quick about that. Was that, had that been an idea you had in your head? Or once you had this money, you just went out looking for what would be a good product and you kinda saw this problem that people had? Or, like, what was the thought process of lid? Because it's a little bit weird. Right? Why would a college student start a furniture business?
It's not you would necessarily think of.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I remember because I was a freshman, and I'm moving in, and I saw all these other people on my hall getting bedloft. And I had, like, I had had no idea, 1, what it was, how they heard about getting one. And I found out it was, like, juniors and seniors at the school that were, like, coming in. It was a way to, like, meet people, make some money, before classes started. So, yeah, it was just like I kind of saw the opportunity and thought and this was also, like, early days of Facebook. So our our marketing strategy at the time, we created, like, 20, fake profiles.
And we joined the the incoming freshman class, and we'd start these conversations between the profiles of, like, hey. Is anyone getting a bed loft? Like, yeah.
I'm getting them from
Avish Parashar
That's, like, ultimate guerilla marketing.
Jason Eisner
That's cool. You can't do that anymore, but, like, it it felt creative at the time. So, yeah, we did this furniture business for a couple years, and that helped me pay for the expensive life down in Miami. Mhmm. And then when I was, like, 24, I used to cut my own hair as another way to save money. And I ended up creating this product to help you cut your own hair because the back is always the hardest.
Avish Parashar
Sure. Yeah.
Jason Eisner
So I had this idea. There should be some kind of, like, template guard so that you can't mess up the line. So, yeah, ended up just using Kickstarter at the time, which was a way to get other people's money in because I didn't have the money to kind of fund this idea. And so that's, you know it's now been running for 12 years.
Avish Parashar
And it's still going?
Jason Eisner
Going better than ever. Like
Avish Parashar
Wow.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I'm like, it's one of
Avish Parashar
the curious. Did you see a boost during COVID?
Jason Eisner
Because, like That is boost. Like Yeah. When I first started this, I was selling, like, 1 a day, 2 a day. Like, it wasn't I I was hoping at the time it would be this, like, you know, every guy is gonna wanna do this. Yeah. No. Not the case.
COVID, the April 2020, I sold 900 units Wow. Month alone. Right? Having gone from, like, 5 a day, 8 a day.
Now it was, like, 30 a day. And it's not it's not at that same level, but, like, that boost has kind of sustained until now.
Avish Parashar
That's
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Been a it's been a nice I'm really glad I started that business, and it's super easy to run. I literally order from China. They ship boxes to the US, and I send those boxes to Amazon and just, you know, monitor So it's
Avish Parashar
all just through Amazon. You just make sure Amazon's inventory is restocked and
Jason Eisner
Yep. Super automated.
Avish Parashar
That's great. And then you did the coaching thing. Was there another one besides that or was there a
Jason Eisner
I mean, I've done a little like, I've tried a bunch of little things. Like, I I went down to Colombia for 3 months, and I wanted to start a, this was, like, early days when people were just starting to do cold brew. Okay. Have or you have hot
Avish Parashar
coffee? Hearing about it. I don't know. I I'm still fine with my, like, percolate my my basic drip coffee with full drip.
Jason Eisner
I mean, nothing nothing at all wrong with that. I, like, I got super into cold brew, and I wanted to, like, start this cold brew company. So I went down to Colombia. I met these different farmers, set up an export deal. Like, I go I, like, go through all the steps, and then I get to the finish line. I was like I decided not to pursue it because I just thought there's not a big enough, barrier to entry. You know?
Anyone can do a coffee business. It's like, do I really wanna commit?
Avish Parashar
Well, along those lines and one of the things you you sent to me was you also have a, a beef jerky.
Jason Eisner
Oh, yeah. Yeah. How did I forget that?
Avish Parashar
So I also seem like that that probably has a low barrier to entry too. So what's the difference there? Is that or is there a high barrier to beef jerky?
Jason Eisner
Well, so I went, like this was I went to South Africa for 3 months. And while I was there, I had a remote job, so I was able to, like, travel around. So I was in South Africa. The 2nd day I was there, I got invited to a rugby match, and there's these guys going through the stands. And instead of, like, you know, the beer and hot dog guy, they had a guy selling meat in a bag. And everyone's like, you have to try it. You have to try it.
And he's, you know, Bill Tom. Bill Tom.
I tried it. It was amazing. It was, like, the best. It's it's like beef jerky. It's just different texture, a little different flavor profile, but, like, was amazing. So I start eating this stuff, like, every day, going to different markets, trying different different varieties of it. So it's it's kind of a South African version of beef jerky. It's called.
And so I thought I'd come back to the US, can't find it anywhere. No one's really heard of it. And so to me, that was the opportunity. It was just bringing in, you know, a better nutritional product, better tasting product, you know, into some into a place where people already eat tons of, preserved meats. Yeah, started this built on business, became number 1 on Amazon. And yeah.
Avish Parashar
Is that still going also?
Jason Eisner
No. I ended up closing that one because so we were selling, like, 20 to $25,000 a month of this product, but the margins were kind of low. And, yeah, it
Avish Parashar
was feel like with a food product, that'd probably be a little more time intensive than the haircut one because you would have to, like
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And, like, these boxes, I would ship them to my apartment. And so now my apartment is filled with freaking boxes of meat and, like, it was just a lot of work, and I would have to go I was going to the post office every single day, shipping out orders. It was like, it became a lot of work for not enough return. So
Avish Parashar
So we're kinda coming up to the end of our time, but there it's such an interesting journey, and there's a few lessons that sort of jump out of me. I'm gonna throw a few out there, and you maybe
Jason Eisner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
Pick one that you think is worth going in deep or maybe none of them are. But number 1, obviously, the big one is your willingness just to say yes. And whether it's yes and or yes, you just like instead of immediately looking for reasons why not to do something, you're like, sure. Let me try this and see where it leads. Yeah. You also mentioned you kind of in passing that there's a bunch of things you did that, failed. And I think and I just was I was a guest on a podcast recording one earlier today, and it's one of the things I said.
In improv, you have to be willing to fail. And oftentimes, the more you fail is the more likely you are to succeed. So I think that's like, you're not afraid to fail. You tried something to work.
Jason Eisner
I mean, I don't like fail like, yeah, I think I still have to improve my relationship with failure, but I think it's just a a willingness to try. Yeah. You know? And Yeah.
Maybe willing to
Avish Parashar
try is another willing to fail might be too heavy for people, but willing to just willing to give it a try.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And it may work. It may not. But, like
Avish Parashar
And what I love is that, in your kind of along those lines in your coffee story and I say this when I talk about saying yes and. It's like, you're not setting anything in stone. You know, you took steps down the path. It's not like but at you got to a point where you're like, alright.
You know what? I decided this is not the thing I wanna do. Yeah. And a lot of people would not be willing to do that. They'd be like, oh, if I if I get on this plane to Colombia, like, I am committed in this path, and I don't know if I wanna do it. It's like, well, take the steps. Right. You can always then later, but if you never start, you can never say yes.
You just gotta get started.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And I think, you know, to me, these things, like, whether they've succeeded or fail, like, you still learn so much. Like, the fact that I started this am like, the only reason the built on business was that did that well on Amazon was because I did the other Amazon business. So it's,
Avish Parashar
like Which is the other which is the point I make, which is that, oh, man, I'm taking action. You're not going to you may not end up succeeding the way you intended, but that might be the open the next door for you or That give you the skills for the next thing.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And, like, when I started the the hair product one, like Mhmm. It didn't start as a success. Like, it it didn't make enough money for, you know, for me. It paid for lunch every day. Like, that was how much money.
Now it pays for rent. So but because I started that, I end up okay.
This isn't working. I start looking for jobs. That's that was the reason that I got hired. They loved that I was entrepreneurial and had started something. So it's like each thing, whether it works or not, it does lead to something else.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And it's just I think just doing stuff and little things. Like, I I talk a lot of, like, little steps. So you don't have to do the whole thing, but just Yeah. And I think everyone's not everyone. A lot of people just wait until they have the really big idea or until everything set up before they get started.
I think it's a great example. Like, you've tried so many different things. They all whether they whatever degree they worked or not, they all sort of led you to this point in your life where you've got, like, multiple successful enterprises and you know?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And I
Avish Parashar
think needed to be started.
Jason Eisner
Well and each one, if you would have told me, like, this is everything you're gonna have to do to get there, like, if you look at it as one package, like, you'll say no. That's too much to look at. But if it's just like, you only have to take the next step.
Avish Parashar
Yes. Get there, then
Jason Eisner
you percent. So I think that's a big thing is just being able to break down your like, what are all the components and, like, which ones are doable immediately.
Avish Parashar
And I'd like to sort of reconnect this to our listeners because some there's probably a few people listening who have an entrepreneurial spirit. I think I kinda have this belief when we didn't really get into the creativity piece. But when I the creativity, like, our subconscious directs our creative thoughts and sort of what you're focused on. I it's pretty obvious that you, from a young age, your mind was always an entrepreneurial direction. Like, you see a problem or a new product, and you're like, how can I bring this to the masses?
How can I scale this? Yeah. Right. As an improv comedian, I'm often like, what's the humor in this? Like, this the like, what's the funny response to this? Or for me, it's more about, like, how can I take this and apply it to a personal situation? And so and I'm not sure if I have a question here, but I'm just, like, scrambling to the listener who's like, I'm never going to entrepreneur.
I just work my desk job. But I think we all have something. You can see how you feel about this. We all have some direction in our our lives. You know, maybe it's entrepreneurial, maybe it's speaking, maybe it's coaching, or but it could be for you just being a a great parent or excelling at your job. But I think the same principles of, like, say yes to opportunities even if you're not sure where they're gonna lead. Take little steps. You know?
Incorporate everything to fail to make the next thing better. Like, I think go even if you're never an entrepreneur, never start a beef jerky business or haircutting machine, like, those same lessons can apply in any area.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. I I think yeah. A 100%. I mean, I think a lot of people want to be entrepreneurs. Right? Like, I've a 1000000 times I've heard, oh, I have this idea. Like, so many people have ideas, and I think people would love to have side businesses.
And I think we just overcomplicate things. So, like, I've helped probably 10 to 15 people start little side businesses. And that doesn't mean they're full time and making tons of money, but it's like it's just turning that idea into some kind of reality. And then people put just so many walls in front of themselves. Oh, I need a patent. Oh, I need, like Yep.
$20,000 and, like, you don't need that much. Right? Like, you just it's just that willingness to take one more step.
Avish Parashar
Love it. That is fantastic. Alright. Well, just by the end of our time, I got one more question for you, which I'll get to in a second. Before I do that, let's let's say people wanna learn more about you, about, Aristotle performance, maybe as an executive or HR person listening, who's like, oh, we could use some of that psychological safety in our organization. What is the best way they should, learn more about you and connect with you?
Jason Eisner
Yeah. For psych safety stuff, whether it's training, development, measurement, you can go to Aristotle performance.com, and reach out there. If you're interested you know, if if you are interested in that entrepreneurial journey and you want some help along the way, you can go to jasoneisner.com, eisner. And, yeah, I'd be happy to hear from you. Like, I really do, you know, like meeting new people. I'm not saying it's gonna go anywhere, but, you know, if if something here has interested you, happy to hear from you.
Avish Parashar
Fantastic. And, if you are interested in joining the virtual conference on, Wednesday, November 20th, that's 2,024 in case you're listening to this in the future. Go go to avishparasher.comforward/safety. Enter the code avish15, a v I s h 15, at checkout.
You get 15% off. It will be recorded. You'll be able to access it later. If for whatever reason you have to miss some or all of it, you can still access it. And real quick, I allude I just don't wanna leave people hanging. I alluded to this earlier. You found me straight through Google search, and that's our LinkedIn search or whichever. Reached out.
We got to talking. And we had our 1st call to talk about whether that'd be a good fit for psych safety day. And I'm like, oh, you're talking about yourself. You're like, oh, I grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York to which I said, well, I grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. And you said, oh, yeah. I went to a high school called Spackenkill High School. I'm like, wait.
I went to Spack and Co. So just by chance, you're in LA. I'm in Philly. When I said we've got this strange connection.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And I I calculate, like, what are the odds of this? Because, you know, you graduated with probably a 100 in your graduating class. Right? Something Yeah.
Avish Parashar
There's I think I think 129 was my graduating class.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And mine was 145. Right? So we're talking like there's only been 4000, 5000 graduates of this school. Right? We're in a country of 330,000,000 people.
Like, what are the odds? You Yeah.
Avish Parashar
And, yeah, it's it's a pretty small high school relative, and, I meet people who are familiar with the Pecan c area, maybe been around there, but never randomly met someone who went to Spack and kill. So that was
Jason Eisner
Yeah. And another random thing. So one of the other speakers at psych safety day, his name's Kyle Emmick, also a Spankham pro grad. 2000
Avish Parashar
Really?
Jason Eisner
So there's 3 of us that are gonna be part of this, which I reached out to to the Poughkeepsie Journal to, like, tell them about this, but I didn't hear back.
Avish Parashar
I was gonna say it was, like, does the Spangled High School have, like, a school newspaper? Like, 3 spanking grads are doing this. So I
Jason Eisner
mean, that's pretty cool. Right?
Avish Parashar
Yeah. That's pretty cool. Alright. Last question. I asked this, of everyone. You know, I do what I do because I honestly believe the world would be a better place if everyone started with a default mindset of yes and instead of yes but. I think that everyone I think everyone would be better off.
So I'm curious for you. What's a small thing that you think if everyone was better at or did just a little bit differently would make the world a better place?
Jason Eisner
I mean, not too like, I just think people yeah. Like, one step at a time. I guess if, like, if I had one, you know, billboard message, it is one step at a time. And I think so so often, we we put this thing in front of us, and we make it insurmountable. And that's why a lot of people don't do things. So, really, it's just breaking things down into components and just consistency is the key.
Avish Parashar
I love it, and that is a 100% right along with the improv comedy message. So great way to finish. Thank you. Jason, if you liked what he said, go out, check out his stuff. Aerostotleperformance. com, jasoneisner.com, and be sure to join us at sykesafetyday@bichpartial.comforward/safety. Thanks, Jason.
This was fantastic.
Jason Eisner
Yeah. Awesome. Appreciate it.