Courage vs comfort: Is it finally time to pursue your dreams?

This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Imagine for a moment that you’re in the midst of an existential crisis. Everything you’ve been doing professionally for years—the thing you’re best at, the stuff you’re known for, your brand—it no longer feels right. And imagine, despite huge success over the years, that the market is also changing around you. You sense that not only does your work no longer feel right…but also, there are little warning signs blinking, making you wonder if what’s been successful all along might stop working. What do you do? 

Now imagine that on top of that, you’re in the business of giving advice to others about the thing you specialize in, so now, not only are you wondering where the meaning and fulfillment has gone, but whether all this expert advice is really so expert any more? Then what?

That’s the uneasy situation author, podcaster, and speaker Todd Henry found himself in last year.

Clip from Daily Creative

Todd Henry: I think there comes a point in most people’s career where they have to confront the question: Am I proud of the work I’m doing? And I was no longer proud of the work I was doing. There was nothing wrong with it. It’s fine. But I knew it wasn’t at that unique confluence of my aspirations, my skill set, my audience, and the good that I hope to do in the world.

Elaine Appleton Grant

Todd spent much of his career as a creative director. He could have been promoting, say, ketchup, in which case this search for meaning would have been hard to stomach, but not earth shattering. But that wasn’t the case: Todd built a brand around being “the arms dealer for the creative revolution.” For the last 18 years, he’s been inspiring and guiding creative professionals and leaders on how to be, quote, brilliant, prolific and healthy. He took his own advice so well that he was able to produce his podcast, The Accidental Creative, continuously for 18 years. He’s the author of seven books, including the bestseller The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, and Daily Creative—which is on my desk.

But what was so incredibly challenging about this moment in his life was that he was finishing up work on his latest book, The Brave Habit. Maybe it’s impossible to write a book about bravery without looking in the mirror. At least, it was impossible for Todd. He found himself questioning what would it take to upend his life, his very brand, if he were to apply bravery to this existential crisis? And how might that force him to change all of the storytelling strategies he’d been relying on for years?”

We’re about to find out, as we deconstruct “The Curious Death of Todd Henry,” an episode from Todd’s brand new podcast, Daily Creative. This is Sound Judgment, where we explore just what it takes to become a beloved audio storyteller by pulling apart one episode, at a time, together. I’m Elaine Appleton Grant. 

Before I jump in, it’s one thing to hear new strategies and another to try them out in community. We’re solving that problem with a handful of new, affordable, interactive workshops. Coming up on April 5th: Mastering the Art of the Interview. Interviews are the foundation of all good storytelling, but we don’t get much instruction on the art and science of them. I’ll give you ten proven transformative strategies that you can apply to your own work right away. On April 11th, join us for a workshop on the thing that gives us all headaches: how to curate great guests, and what it takes to be a phenomenal guest yourself. This one’s gonna be really fun, because I’ll share with you how NPR producers book guests, and how you can set yourself up for success no matter which side of the mic you’re on. So check out our current and future workshops at podcast allies dot com slash workshops. That’s podcast allies dot com slash workshops. You don’t need to jot that down, though; the link’s in our show notes. I can’t wait to see you there.

The Brave Habit, by Todd Henry. “You are a person of consequence. Be brave.” “The belief in a better possible future doesn’t imply that you have certainty about what the future holds. It’s more like operating with a functioning compass than dialing up GPS directions.” Act One: The Backstory: Searching for Clarity.

Before we begin pulling apart this episode of Daily Creative, I need you to know two things. First, The Accidental Creative, the podcast Todd started in 2005—sometimes it’s just him talking, giving five tips on how to generate ideas, or seven ways to keep the creative spark going. Sometimes he interviews authors and other thought leaders about their nine tips for living what Todd called a brilliant, prolific and healthy life. I mean, his guest list includes authors like Seth Godin and Steven Pressfield. I’d love to sit at the dinner party Todd could host with all of his guests. 

Second, there’s a new character who walks onto the stage of Todd’s creative life. When you decide that there’s no way not to upend your life, what then? Well, all kinds of things happen. One is that maybe you start to realize it’s impossible to make the kinds of revolutionary changes that are insistently knocking around in your head without an infusion of an entirely different way of thinking. Self reliance won’t cut it any more: You need a creative partner.

Enter Joshua Gott, stage right. He’s Todd’s producer and, quote unquote, the Daily Creative story architect. As we’ll get to later, he’s also the host of the episode we’re about to pull apart. We begin with him, with Dr. Seuss, and with a conflict that could have ended Todd and Josh’s partnership before it had a chance to get off the ground. 

Todd Henry

So we have—we both live in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, and there's this house that everybody calls the Dr. Seuss house, that's in Hyde Park. It's this like crazy—this architecture professor who built these really wild structures that look like a Dr. Seuss type house.

I'm that sort of: Let's do a Dr. Seuss—you know what we really need? We need this giant, top-heavy conical structure that can—whatever, because that's good. And Josh is like, no, no—yes, but no. You need a supporting wall, here, and you need to put this here and this has to be there. I call him a story architect, because I feel like what he's really great at is building the infrastructure that's necessary to support that creative story.

And one of the struggles we had, I think, early on, working together, is I'd be like, great! Love the topic. Here are 17 things I want to say about it. And Josh would be like, no, we have one supporting wall for this episode. And here's how we're going to simplify it. And you're going to do one thing. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Josh, there's a one-liner on your website: “I help you find creative ways to explain complicated ideas.” Can you give me an example?

Josh Gott

I think of myself as a smart person, but I get confused really easily. And I think that’s sort of to my advantage. Because people will say: you know, duh duh duh talk talk. It doesn’t take long for me to go, what are you saying? I don’t understand it. Say it again. I have to get it really simple even if it’s just for my own benefit. And then there’s something about whatever the process is that I went through to get myself to understand it, that’s the breadcrumb trail. Oh, that’s how I understood it. Let’s just recreate that journey.

Todd Henry

If we get rid of all the complexity and all of the things we could do, what should we do in order to really make this point come home?

Josh Gott

He and I will have conversations, numerous times, where—okay, you've given me a million different inputs. Is this what you're saying? Is this the idea that you wanna get across? Or is it this other thing? Oh, it's the other thing? Okay. We try and really crystallize it in that moment. And then it's as though we've identified the moral of the story. Now I need to reverse engineer the story for which that is the moral. But we always know the point. 

Todd Henry

There's a great quote by Sherwood Schwartz, who created Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch, right? And some of these classic TV shows from my childhood. And in all of his shows—I don't know if you guys remember this—but in all of his shows, they would always tell the entire backstory in the opening of the show. So it would be like—come sit right back and you'll hear a tale. They'll kind of walk through, oh, then they went in the storm and they ended up on this island!

Clip from Gilligan’s Island

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip that started from this tropic port aboard this tiny ship. 

Todd Henry

And the Brady Bunch is like, here's this story, right? And they told like the entire—of a lovely lady!—and they told the entire story of how they ended up as a family. And somebody asked him one time, Why do you do that at the beginning of every series that you produce? And he said one line. He said, confused people don't laugh. And I thought, man, that's a really great response. Because no matter when you show up to the show, you can watch the intro to the show and you know exactly what we're talking about. And I think the same principle applies to storytelling. Confused people don't get the moral of the story. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

And just to be clear, these guys, they're artists. And there's the practical side, the money side. 

Josh Gott

A lot of the work that I do is more in the corporate space and brand space, and the translation there is: Confused people don't buy things. We're here to solve problems for people. A lot of times we'll be talking through content. That's always the recentering questions. Like, okay, cool. Cool. How does this solve a problem for me or for the listener or both? Cause if I don't know what that is, I just—I feel like I'm just—I don't even know what I'm doing here, you know? But once I know what problem I'm trying to solve, it's like, Oh, okay. That's like the organizing principle that we can now align everything to.

Elaine Appleton Grant

And they would soon have some huge problems to solve. But the thing is, they didn't know each other very well. Todd and Josh, they were the kind of casual, professional friends who live near each other and run into each other at the same conferences; the parties thrown by ad guys, branding agencies, the Procter & Gambles and other Fortune 500 companies that dominate Cincinnati’s business world. They’d have coffee now and then. But now, they run into each other, get to brainstorming and decide: Hey, let's try making one podcast episode together. And something about that will push Todd out of his long-established comfort zone. But I'm getting ahead of myself, because something else has to happen in Todd's brain—actually, in his heart—first.

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. It is impossible to pursue comfort and great work simultaneously. You can experience comfort while pursuing great work, but you cannot chase both at the same time. Act Two: Rising Action. 

Storytellers, by this time, Todd's legacy podcast, The Accidental Creative, has been downloaded 18 million times. Soon, Todd will make a radical decision about this show. And eventually this decision will lead Todd and Josh to determine: the old Todd and the thriving podcast? They have to die. 

The process of writing the book, The Brave Habit, transformed you in some profound way. 

Todd Henry

Yeah, so one of the uncomfortable questions that I challenged people with in the book, and that I was challenging myself with as I was finishing up the book, was if I were to start over again with Accidental Creative, with the podcast, would I be doing it the way I'm doing it? And the uncomfortable answer I came to was no. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

But why? 

Josh Gott

Yeah, Todd, why?

Todd Henry

I think there comes a point in most people's career where they have to confront the question, am I proud of the work that I'm doing? And I was no longer proud of the work I was doing. There's nothing wrong with it. It's fine. But I knew it wasn't at that unique confluence of my aspirations, my skillset, my audience, and the good that I hope to do in the world.

I felt like I was on a content hamster wheel where, okay, I'm doing podcasts maybe not so much because like, Oh, there's something really cool and unique that I want to put into the world, but more because, Oh, so-and-so has a book coming out and I interviewed them and so we need to get this interview out. But that didn't feel like it was meshing with what I feel uniquely called to do in the world. So there was that sort of uneasiness combined with the fact that podcast audiences have changed significantly. The way that people are learning is changing. The way that people are interacting with media. My hunch was, we're missing out on a significant number of people who want something more. They just don't maybe know what that is. And if we can draw them in with story, then we can help them find what they're looking for in a much more meaningful and cohesive way than me just throwing a bunch of authors out at them or a bunch of solo episodes and saying, here are seven questions to ask yourself about how to find your purpose in your work. 

So it's kind of those two things converging. The changing podcast audience combined with my dissatisfaction of the way that I was doing the work. But for me, it just didn't feel like we were hitting the mark and I wasn't willing for things to just be fine.

Elaine Appleton Grant

I don't wanna skip over—you said, I didn't feel like I was doing what I was uniquely called to do. So what is that? 

Todd Henry

At the heart of it, I think my core gift is teaching. I think I'm called to be a teacher, but the way that I teach has always been through—and the most effective parts of my talks have been—my ability to tell a story and sort of drive home a point through a story. And yet ironically, in this platform I have, this podcast,I wasn't really doing that. I wasn't leveraging that teaching and that kind of storytelling ability in my podcasting in the same way that I did with my speeches. And then the next obvious question is, well, then why are you doing it that way?

Elaine Appleton Grant

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. In your moment of testing, what will be revealed about what you truly believe? Not what you espouse because it's personally or politically beneficial to you, but the foundation of what you truly hold to be reality. Act Three: Premeditated Murder. 

In all good plays, our main character has to encounter conflict. He has to want something. The stakes have to be high. We need to feel him wrestling with obstacles, and we need to know that there will be sacrifice, no matter which path he chooses. So now Todd's thinking that this creative product he's been making for almost two decades, it's wrong. And he's thinking, I'm preaching storytelling as the path, I'm doing it well in my keynotes, but I'm not doing it on my podcast, which is far and away the thing that people hear from me all the time. So maybe I need to utterly transform this podcast into something new and different, something far more difficult and expensive to produce, and something I have no experience doing. Enter an even bigger problem: the conflict between heart, conscience, and—you guessed it—money.

Todd Henry

We had an audience, a significant audience. We had sponsors. I mean, I had sponsors at the moment I was making these decisions. I had agencies and sponsors saying, we want to sponsor a year's worth of shows. Like here's the contract, just sign the contract. So we're talking significant sponsorship deals, advertising. But as you know, when the entire back catalog goes away, that's a significant number of downloads that go away along with it, right?

Elaine Appleton Grant

Remember the quote I read at the beginning? It's from chapter four of The Brave Habit. Todd writes, “The belief in a better possible future doesn't imply that you have certainty about what the future holds. It's more like operating with a functioning compass than dialing up GPS directions.” 

At first, Todd has this growing sense that he can't continue the old Accidental Creative. Picture the proverbial little white angel on one shoulder and a miniature red devil, complete with evil grin, sitting on the other. This devil is not giving up without a fight. 

Todd Henry

We want to sponsor a year's worth of shows. Like here's the contract, just sign the contract…

Elaine Appleton Grant

The only way to beat back that devil is to come up with something that could actually fulfill Todd's desire for that better possible future. But what would that be? This is where the two of them, Todd and Josh, cook up this richly textured, hard-to-make, expensive narrative podcast. They do have one asset in hand, one enormous asset. In Todd's virtual vault are hundreds of those interviews with the famous thought leaders I mentioned. But now, rather than simply serving up an author with the latest book release, Todd and Josh imagine that this new narrative podcast will explore big, driving questions. They'll use storytelling, sound, and metaphor to pull the audience along on a journey. And they'll dig into that vault for the voices that can combine to answer that one big question. Remember, Josh is the simplicity guru. In his bio, he even says he's worked with organizations like Procter & Gamble, Anthem, Nestle, Dropbox, and many others to make sense out of nonsense. So, he insists, Todd, we cannot answer 17 questions in each episode. Just one. 

Todd actually is better at this than he says. And so now they're all happy about this new creative challenge. The devil is backing off and this future is coming into focus. They're getting really excited, until they realize something else will have to happen. And that is, it's not just enough to murder Accidental Creative and leave the body there.

They have to find shovels and bury the entire back catalog, a backlog of hundreds of evergreen episodes with inventory that can be sold to advertisers again and again and again. 

Todd Henry

To Josh's point, it would just be confusing. Why are some of these interviews and it's called Accidental, and some of them are Daily Creative? So I had to make a hard choice of: We're just going to basically completely pivot. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Close your eyes for a second, storytellers. You have put your heart and soul into your unique creative work for so long that it is your identity, not to mention a lucrative living. What would it take for you to burn it all down? Most of us can't make these kinds of hard decisions on our own. After all, we have to pay the mortgage, buy the broccoli, and keep Luna in dog food. 

Did anybody try to stop you? I mean, you know, family? Pople who are familiar with your work? 

Todd Henry

No, actually, I have an incredibly supportive wife who—the only thing she ever wants to know and understand is, why are you doing this and do you have a plan? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

To be transparent, those old episodes won't wind up buried terribly deep in the ground. They'll go into a new app behind a paywall. But that will mean no advertising money and a very insecure, probably much smaller, revenue stream.

Todd Henry

And she 100% agreed with what I'm doing—even though it costs us in the short run—but she understood what I was trying to do. I'm trying to re-root myself in my calling. I'm trying to reclaim some of that initial passion I had when I first started doing all this years and years ago, when there was no money on the table. I wanted to get back to that place again, where I'm doing things because I love them, not because, well, I've got this thing I've built and I got to keep it going. I think so many people spend years of their career running on that hamster wheel, where they're just like—they're filling containers that they made just because they made the container, instead of because they feel like they have something to fill it with. And I just did not want to be in that place anymore.

Elaine Appleton Grant

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. Every day you build a body of work that stands as a testament to your time on Earth. Act four: A Play Within a Play.

So, Todd finally beats the devil off of his shoulder and decides that the old and new podcast cannot live in the world side by side anymore. The next question they confront is, how do we let the world know? The knee-jerk way would be to send an email. Hey, you're going to see something new on our feed, no big deal. Or maybe announce it on the old show. 

Josh Gott

That is an episode that very easily could have been the most boring public service announcement you've ever heard. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

So that's out. Not to mention that Todd's entire existential crisis is about whether he can and will walk his own talk. Whether he is brave enough to take the kind of bold leap he advises in the book that will be out in the world any day now. And if he doesn't, and people read it and see how safe and conventional he still is, how screwed up will that look? And how will it feel? So now what? 

Josh will come up with an answer. And his idea will force Todd to confront yet another new high-stakes dilemma. But we'll get to that in a minute. First, the curtains are closing on Act four. But the line in the lobby is too long to get that glass of chardonnay, which isn't good anyway. So sit tight.

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. In order to develop the brave habit, you must believe that you have your hand on the controls. Act five: rising action, a better possible future. 

Todd and Josh decide to go big, like this, a passage from episode four of the new show, once again titled, The Curious Death of Todd Henry.

Clip from Daily Creative

Josh Gott: It's sort of a cross between a sports bar, a boat dock, and a Jimmy Buffett concert. It was actually my uncle Steve who purchased the Yacht Club back in the late 90s when it was nothing but a glorified houseboat and a few slips. But over the course of 23 years, he worked tirelessly, seven days a week, to build the Yacht Club up into the icon it became. Year after year, expansion after expansion, the Yacht Club grew. More seating, better menu, live music, expanded boat slips and dock space. It was a floating paradise of the people every night of the week, and it was glorious. Until the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 2, 2019. A massive barge that had been traveling up the Ohio River through the night, plowed through the middle of the Ludlow Bromley Yacht Club. This wasn't a close brush or an unfortunate side swipe. The captain of the barge had fallen asleep at the wheel. Literally. And the scouts who were supposed to be watching the front of the vessel weren't at their posts. It was a perfect storm on perfectly calm waters. The barge plowed right through the center of the yacht club, scattering boats and sections of the restaurant and sinking others to the bottom of the river. Thankfully no one was injured, but I mean, what are the odds? That thing travels hundreds, even thousands of miles of shoreline. Fifty yards in one direction or fifty yards in another and it's nothing more than a close call. But no. It manages to run ashore at the exact address of the LBYC. In less than five minutes, 23 years' worth of tireless day in, day out, seven days a week effort is sunk.

Now, it's one thing when someone else is at the wheel and obliterates your hard work. But in Todd's case, there's an even more shocking twist. He owns the bar and he's the one steering the barge. What causes someone to willingly drive a perfectly good barge through a perfectly good yacht club? 

Elaine Appleton

At this point in the play—I mean, come on, it's act five. You know the reason why Todd would drive this barge through the yacht club.

Todd Henry

Because it is a kind of death to self, right? It's a death and a rebirth. It's a resurrection of the brand. But in order to resurrect, you have to go through a death. And the death part of it was, we're gonna put the old ways behind us. We're gonna put them to death and we're gonna be reborn in a new form. In fact, here's a passage from the introduction to that same episode. 

Clip from Daily Creative

Josh Gott: And on today's show, we're gonna put our very own Todd Henry under the microscope to look at some of the eyebrow-raising decisions he's making right now as a creative pro—while wrestling through perhaps the most challenging death of all: the death of Todd Henry as we know him. If you're someone who's confronting fear, uncertainty, reluctance to change, a longing for purpose, or a desire to reignite your passion for your work, stick around. Chances are, you've got some brave decisions brewing, and we'd love to lend you some courage as we explore The Curious Death of Todd Henry.

Elaine Appleton Grant

The whole thing, this new form, would need to work on multiple levels. I mean, I have no idea if Josh is a chess player, but he seems like one. This was a chess move. 

Josh Gott

Could we tell this story in such a way that we slip the message past their defenses, and along the way we actually challenge them at a personal level to think through how this affects the way that they're living their own lives and making their own decisions?

Todd was a sort of stand-in character for the—hopefully—for the audience to go, hmm, that's interesting. He's making those decisions. What sort of decisions do I have? At the end of the day, a story that unequivocally was about somebody other than the audience winds up feeling like it was exactly about them.

Todd Henry

People don't need more information right now. I think what people want is insight. They want to feel something. They want to feel connected. They want to feel like they're not alone, but to do that, they have to sit with you for a while. If we can get people to sit with us for a while, then they might get what they didn't realize they needed after 10 minutes of sitting with us. And suddenly something really profound has happened. And that's the power of story, is that it keeps people with us and it keeps people from immediately checking out. So if we can get people to listen to Daily Creative because they just love the storytelling and the hooks and the I didn't know that, and then in the midst of that, they have a transformative experience—I think we've done our job.

Elaine Appleton Grant

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. You know which direction you may be going, but you may not be certain of how you'll get there. Many people exist in a state I call purpose paralysis. They won't move until they feel a deep certainty that they are doing the right thing. Act six, our hero isn't home yet. 

Of course, the hero always faces more obstacles on his journey. And since this is experimental theater, let's introduce character number three. He looks familiar, but he's sort of washed out, like a shadow. Enter Todd Henry's ego, downstage left. 

Oh, and here's a note I see from the playwright. The ego's character has two motivations, to pump us up falsely and to scare us. Now, there was something else different about the passages you heard a minute ago. Something you wouldn't know to look for—unless you've been a long time fan of Accidental Creative, that is. We'll get to it in a minute. First, I want you to hear a passage from episode three of the new show, Daily Creative. Consider this: yet another character is on stage. We barely noticed him enter, from upstage right. He crept in, and he's really small. In fact, he's tiny. It's five-year-old Todd. Remember, adult Todd's ego, his shadow, stands downstage left. Compared to Little Todd, he looks hulking. Adult Todd is still on stage two in the center. He's looking over his shoulder at his ego. We can feel the anxiety, the electrical field around him. Adult Todd and his ego are frozen. But Little Todd has climbed onto a chair. He's upside down, pretending to swing by his legs on some monkey bars in a schoolyard. He's yelling.

Todd Henry

Hey Jenny, look at me. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Little Todd is in love. And as only a five-year-old boy does, he's showing off. Sure, his daring stunt will make her fall for him. But then he notices how far away the ground is, and he freezes. He's paralyzed with fear. A teacher has to get him down. 

Stage right, Todd's ego smirks, points at Little Todd, and looks at us in the audience. And then—silently, scarily, he laughs hysterically. 

The spotlight moves to adult Todd. Once again, we don't notice little Todd silently sneaking back off stage. Adult Todd turns directly to us, the audience. 

Clip from Daily Creative

Todd Henry: There's a term used to describe why I wound up trapped in that moment: brachiation. It's a term used by childhood development to describe the ability to swing from one hold to another. Letting go of one bar while simultaneously grabbing a hold of another is a skill, just like any skill that has to be developed. That is, unless you prefer living in a perpetual state of needing rescued, which I don't recommend. 

At this point in your development, you've probably mastered physical brachiation. But psychological brachiation can be much more difficult. Brave decisions can quickly turn into moments of indecision, clenching two different rungs with both hands. And before you know it, you're just like five-year-old me, unable to let go of the way things have been and move on to something new. Paralysis. And if you've ever felt like this, and maybe you feel like this right now, the first step to learning how to brachiate is accepting the fact that if you want to move forward, you have to let go of something. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

Which Todd now has to do. He has to let go of being the host. And he's a little bit frozen. Little Todd left the stage, but Todd's ego? He's still there. He stopped laughing, but he's still pointing. Did you notice it's Josh who told the story about the barge? He's the host. 

Todd Henry

Nobody else in the history of the podcast in 18 years has ever hosted the show. Josh was the first person ever to take over hosting duties. And so there's this giant question mark of, how are people going to receive this completely new person hosting the show? Right? Who's never—they've never even heard—they heard his voice in episode one, but kind of as an interview subject. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

It's a legitimate question. After all, what about that parasocial relationship? You know, the audience comes for the topic, but they stay for you? Change the host at your peril. But you can, of course, strategically. The key here is, it's not strategy that's making Todd worry. It's his ego. And it's one more thing too. Todd's still center stage. And he's come full circle from where this play has started. He's changed. He's more self-aware, and he has something to tell us about what he's learned. 

Todd Henry

Often the enemy of bravery isn't some oppositional force. It's just sheer inertia. It's comfort. It's that things are fine. And I realized, oh, I've got a vision of a way things could be better. The thing that's keeping me where I am is comfort. And then I realized, and I have the capacity to do the thing that I see in my head. But what's standing in my way, really, is the past. It's all of this stuff that I've been doing for 18 years, and the way I've been doing it and an audience I've built and people who are connected to the thing I'm doing. And what I realized was: for me to be an authentic voice challenging people to do brave work, I need to be an authentic voice doing brave work. So I need to be willing to step out of that place of comfort, to let go, and to move in the direction I believe is right. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

And so, in service of the story, he steps out of the spotlight. A stage manager softly steps on stage and places a chair under the light. Josh enters stage left, brushing past Todd's ego, who is walking offstage, never to be seen again. Josh walks briskly to center stage and sits in the chair. He has a mic in his hand, which he raises to his mouth. He is the host. He freezes. The play has ended. The audience rises. A standing ovation.

The Brave Habit by Todd Henry. Bravery is about making investments now that may not pay dividends in the immediate term, but that you believe will pay off huge in the long run. Act seven: epilogue. Do you remember what Todd told us earlier about his calling? 

Todd Henry

At the heart of it, I think my core gift is teaching. 

Elaine Appleton Grant

And so in the epilogue, he feels called to share some lessons he's learned, in hopes that we will too.

Todd Henry

Josh being the host was—for me, that was maybe one of the bigger question marks, was like, how are people who have been listening for even a year going to respond to somebody completely different hosting the show? And it worked really well. As a matter of fact, disturbingly well, to me, because people were like, man, Josh is amazing. I'm like, oh, yeah, he is. Absolutely. What’d you think of my parts? 

Elaine Appleton Grant

In order to live into our calling bravely, we are going to not know when to let go. We are going to have to engineer our own deaths and our own rebirths. We are going to be unsure how to introduce our new selves to the world. But we will know that however we choose to do it, it will have to be big and different and maybe weird. And we are going to come face to face with our own egos. It will be scary, but we can, in the end, send them offstage in the service of a better possible future.

Thanks to Todd Henry and Josh Gott for playing along. The two of them make the podcast Daily Creative, which I highly recommend that you follow. Who hosts it on any particular day? Your guess is as good as mine. 

Todd Henry is a keynote speaker and the author of The Brave Habit, his latest of seven books. Joshua Gott is a messaging strategist and creative director, helping companies simplify their brand message so they can tell a better story. Links to Todd's books and to their websites are in the show notes at sound judgment podcast dot com and on your podcast app. If you would like to up your storytelling game, sign up for a Sound Judgment Workshop at podcast allies dot com slash workshops. There are workshops coming up very soon.

If you enjoyed this episode, follow Sound Judgment and share it with a friend. Next time on Sound Judgment, we go behind the scenes with Lauren Chooljian and Allison MacAdam of the multiple award-winning investigative series, The 13th Step. Do not miss it. 

Sound Judgment is sponsored by Podcast Allies, LLC, a podcast production and training company that helps you become a better storyteller in audio and beyond. Thanks to Tina Bassir for podcast management, Audrey Nelson for production assistance, and Kevin Kline for audio engineering. Sound Judgment is produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. See you next time.