#23 - Mike Montague: How to Have Fun With the People Around You

Chris Miller: And then with that, you are officially live in the dining room studio. So hey. Yeah, you made it. Thank you for coming out, and thanks for being flexible as we experiment with the setup here. I know that off mic, we were just talking about how hard it is, despite it sounding so simple, but to get good video footage of anything, it.

Mike Montague: Is way harder than it should be. You would think that with all the technology of Hollywood and money and investments that they put into it, that you could just turn on a camera and shoot decent video. But it does not work like that at all. The light is so crazy, and, uh, white balances and all kinds of stuff. That's why I'm wearing a black shirt today. And, uh, stuff I just find it makes it easy, especially with my bald head. Everybody loves green screen. All professional videoographers that I do for all kinds of different stuff that I do are like, can you do that on a green screen? I'm like, no, I'm not losing parts of my head, and I don't want a green glow on my face that makes me look sick. So I almost always do a live background, and I'm very careful with the lighting setup.

Chris Miller: That would be funny had you come in and I had a big old green screen.

Mike Montague: Exactly.

Chris Miller: And I was like, I just want to implement it for this particular episode. And you're like, Nah, but I didn't think about that. Because whenever people do background remover or any of that editing, then it'll cut off some of your head.

Mike Montague: Yeah.

Chris Miller: Wow. Ah.

Mike Montague: Well, I mean, I think in some ways, it's better than hair, because if you have, uh, ladies with curly hair and all kinds of other stuff, there's a lot of pieces. You always catch some green, and it never quite looks right. And so, for me, it's nice that there's a smooth curve. If you have actually somebody editing real Photos in, like, Photoshop, it's not bad. But when you go to video, it always seems like there's a glow or a glare or something, and you can just tell that my bald head is in front of a green wall.

Chris Miller: It looks good today. And you got the playful human shirt on. Is that what you got on?

Mike Montague: That's right. Yeah.

Chris Miller: There we go. You're rocking playful humans. You made it yourself.

Mike Montague: I feel like we're going deep already on the technical aspects, but I did make it so that I could wear it with a blazer. And I put the playful vertical. Yeah, it's like a tie, but it frames in the jacket, because if when I went sideways, all you get is the AFOL or whatever, which is not great.

Chris Miller: It's a YF. It's funny. A lot of the questions, uh, that I've been asking lately have been solely to satiate my curiosity. And it's like whenever I get to sit across someone from sit across from someone like you, who earlier I was looking at the website and it's like, has been at 3000 virtual or live stages and I'm like, Dang, okay, well, you've done this before, so what all can I learn? And I had never thought about doing something like that. So I'm already learning. But playful humans, we're going to start there. Your LinkedIn bio says rediscovering the power of humans in the world of AI. So unpack that for me. What do you mean by that?

Mike Montague: I think technology is great, and I'm a technophile myself. So if I roll way back and give you the full answer, I think there's kind of three themes for me in my life. One is technology. Uh, my mom won a computer in a radio station contest in 1986 and it was an Apple two C computer. There were no programs or anything. This is black, no color screen. It's green text on a black monitor. And I had to learn how to program it, to use it. And so I kind of just naturally gravitated to this cool magical box that I could play games on and do cool things. And I ended up buying, uh, more programs, but a modem that would connect me to news groups. And when the Internet came out, like really discovering all of this at a really young age, it was just awesome. And that kind of led me down a, uh, path of learning tech and being a fan of new apps and social media when it came out. And I was on the radio when social media blew up, which is great because then I have a huge, uh, following. Uh, I messed that up and deleted them all. But when you get married, you don't necessarily want like 10,000 random strangers.

Chris Miller: Uh, you wiped it all.

Mike Montague: Yeah, so I just wiped it all in and started over. And I regret, uh, that a little bit.

Chris Miller: Yeah, that makes sense.

Mike Montague: I also sold off my Internet radio station, which was doing really well. I had like 30,000 monthly listeners in 2007. So if I had kept that rolling, I think now they would all have kids by now.

Chris Miller: So that's 60,000.

Mike Montague: Thanks for that. Uh, but I could have been Joe Rogan if I just kept going. That would have been huge. Uh, but I say all of that to say that the other side of that is sort of my family and communication skills. My dad is a sales trainer with Sandler and he introduced me to it in high school. But he was always about psychology and human relations and sales and how you show up for people. And my mom's side of the family were all like, entertainers, performers, very artsy like. My great grandma was a piano teacher and it kind of, uh, flowed through her side of the family that we would do fun, entertaining, goofy things and we would enjoy really being present and playful with people. And so I developed my own personal brand called Creative Nerdery which is sort of using the best of both of those. I could be a nerd, but I could also be silly, and I could be intelligent, but I could also goof off and tell dumb jokes. And so I really admire people like Steve Martin and the Bare Naked Ladies or anybody that can be really smart and scientifically accurate, but at the same time also be silly, goofy, and make it fun.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Ah. So then your grandma was the creative side of the house. Your dad was skilled in communication because he was a salesperson.

Mike Montague: Yeah. Business psychology, that kind of stuff.

Chris Miller: And then you're like, okay, I'm going to merge the two. And then what's in the world of AI? So where does that come in? Because you're techie, but particularly with artificial intelligence.

Mike Montague: As I've gotten older and again, I think I was just born at the perfect age, where I've grown up with technology. And so as I get older and wiser, so does the technology itself, right? And now we have AI, and I think that I find myself asking deeper questions about. Just because we can do it with computers, uh, doesn't mean we should. And I think that's why I love this podcast, and I love that we're recording in person. I haven't done one live in person in, like, ten years because I've been working internationally and virtually for the last eight years at least. And, um, for me, that's the same question. Just because we could have this conversation over zoom doesn't mean we should have this conversation over zoom. Right. Just because an AI chat bot like Chat GBT can write a blog post for us doesn't mean we should have it write the blog post for us. It can tell a story, but it can't tell our story. It can't connect with humor and our insight and, uh, the way we see the future or the past with the emotions connected to it. And so, for me, all of that is fascinating. Now, as technology grows bigger, faster, stronger, I think we need to make more choices of not just, is an air fryer better than a toaster oven? Yeah, great. Swap them out, and we upgrade to the latest technology. But when is enough enough? When do we need less apps on our phone than more? When do we need less technology in our communications or our lives? Ah, I feel like I'm going long, and I'm just diving right into it.

Chris Miller: Stop me anytime, because whenever I hear you talking about this, I feel a bit similar. And I've felt this way, and this may be something that I'm so myopic on. Maybe you feel this way whenever you're talking about playful humans. We can get so myopic on our niche. You want to make people have more fun, so you're thinking with that lens all the time, right? And then I am thinking about this lens, uh, of build better relationships, get around community. Everybody deals with loneliness, but how can we live a life that's better, um, with better people around us and higher quality of life? So I'll be thinking about AI, and I had this existential crisis, sort of not too bad.

Mike Montague: I have them all the time. Don't apologize for that. For sure.

Chris Miller: So I'm sitting here and I'm seeing Chat GPT, and I'm sitting on the couch and doing all this stuff. And my friend had just introduced it to me. So this is like November. I think it dropped November 30, December or something like that. So I'm looking at it and I'm typing in all these prompts blown away by how quickly it loads everything up, and thinking like, man, one, I wish I had this when I was in grad school. And then two, I wonder what all I could do with this. But there was a moment where I said, generate me 20 jokes about soccer or something. And the jokes were so bad.

Mike Montague: They are terrible.

Chris Miller: Yeah, they're terrible. So I'm reading through them, I'm like, oh my gosh. But a little tangent to that is the idea of there's this book, Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle. And that was kind of foundational with building this podcast, but she talks about how social media is good connection. No doubt it's connecting us, but it's not the substitute for Face to Face. And she goes through and lists all of these different platforms that people are interacting with, um, and also how it comes to a substitute from this right here, the Face to Face. And then I started to think like, oh man, are we going to get to a point to where we're talking to robots or machines or programs more than we're actually talking to people? And mhm then I go further down that and I think, oh man, well, then we need to have something, some structure, some program, some content, some organizations that instructs or informs people, hey, here's how to talk to people. And, uh, that may sound so foundational or rudimentary, but The Atlantic, who, they're doing their thing, big journalism, they've done a lot. Their upcoming series that they're about to drop six podcasts about is called how to Talk to People. So there's something there, I think.

Mike Montague: So I say this in the sales training that I do with Sandler, people are not becoming better communicators, right? If you look at the great performers, even from 40 years ago, compared to performers that are coming out now, or, uh, if you look at just individual people and salespeople in your life, are you a better communicator than you were 20 years ago? And I think it's really interesting, so much has been splintered and fractured in our society that we haven't quite put the pieces back together yet.

Chris Miller: Right?

Mike Montague: So I love what you said about being able to talk to computers. Well, we can do that. We can ask Alexa a question or Google a question and get an answer back, but it's not a conversation. We're not going to have a meaningful connection, or nobody's going to fall in love with Alexa. But when you extrapolate that out, eventually there will be a time where humans are raised by robots, and maybe they're falling in love with their caretaker, uh, who is mostly a robot, and it has a lot more connection, um, and empathy. And then in a place, I think it would maybe replace some of that magic. And the thing you mentioned about social media, I also wanted to bring up, because there is a connection there, and it's better than having no connection to somebody that's far away. My brother and his family live in California, so being able to have a Zoom call with them on birthdays and holidays and connect with him is better than not being able to connect with them. But having a Zoom call with my sister, who's here in Kansas City, doesn't make a lot of sense. That's not better than driving over to her house and playing with the kids. So we need to understand that these replacements really are replacements for no communication, not replacements for in person communication. And just because AI can do a chat bot doesn't mean it can replace a whole sales conversation in business or is going to be your best friend. Those are different. They're smaller use cases that are fractured. And what we've seen specifically with social media is that there's actually a scientific version of this, too, that in my play research. Great conversations, great human interactions create four different types of hormones in the body. So dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. When you engage with social media, you only get the dopamine hit, so you're missing all of that. Other serotonin is the love hormone, the connection with another human being of physical touch and being in the same physical space as other people. And the endorphin rush of doing something live. And you'll find that, like, doing a live podcast is different than doing a recorded podcast because the pressure comes off. And so there's other chemicals that don't get our needs met when we're doing everything virtually mhm and in the pandemic. That's why we see people getting depressed or they feel like there's an emptiness they're not being fulfilled in their lives and career. It's because we're only settling for, like, one quarter of the human experience when we interact with machines or have these conversations virtually.

Chris Miller: Yeah. So dopamine oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins, did you intentionally do that to where it says dose?

Mike Montague: Yes.

Chris Miller: Okay.

Mike Montague: Um, that's how I remember those. Okay, so you want a daily dose of those good chemicals and hormones. And a lot of people don't realize there's a positive version of stress, too, called you stress, which is like the flow state. And so when I've looked at kind of how to be the most fulfilled. And I've really gone a deep dive, especially since the pandemic on this of, uh, what does it really mean? What is that magic formula of when we're feeling like we're in love, we're happy, we're fulfilled, we're doing stuff that matters. It's not that there's no stress, because when you're doing stuff like we do with our podcast that we really love, like there is stress around it. Uh, but it's good stress. We're moving the ball forward. We're doing something that matters. We're putting our life's energy into something that matters. When you get the bad stress, it's when you feel like you're not making progress. You're putting your effort into something that doesn't matter. There's other people in control of what you're doing rather than you in control of it. And that's what creates stress and creates all of the bad reactions in your human body. So then your brain is getting flooded with bad chemicals that's causing it to shut down and causing it to have the emotional reactions. Like we're facing a saber toothed tiger.

Chris Miller: Oh, gosh.

Mike Montague: Instead of the positive reactions and things, uh, that actually help us think better or more creatively.

Chris Miller: Yeah, that fight or flight, we get stuck in it when it's just like, oh, we need to create a list of 15 different clients and have it to the boss by Monday. And we're like, have the same adrenaline response of a saber toothed tiger. It's so funny.

Mike Montague: Yeah. And that, ah, adrenaline is causing you to focus on one way to escape this and survive. So it makes sense as human beings that we would have this skill, right, that under pressure we go, how do I survive? How do I get out of here? And we fight, flight, or freeze, whatever will allow us to survive the next few minutes. But that's supposed to be a short term solution until we get out of, uh, the situation. And then you're supposed to get those other dose chemicals going back and letting your body reset to recover. But we've created this environment where we're not getting those other chemicals and we're at high stress, high alert all day long. So we're fighting email after email or, um, task after task from the boss and we're never getting away from that stress hormone. Yeah, and it's not good. That's what I think is creating all kinds of chronic diseases from like crohn's and colitis and ulcers to back, um, pain and all of the other stuff. It's because you're all tensed and your brain is performing poorly too. We're focusing on that one right answer. And that's where I think we see people digging in, in our society and they're like, oh, well, no, it has to be this way. Uh, because that's the one thing that's going to make me feel like I can get out of this life or death situation. But when we relax, when we play, we get into this creative juices flowing where we go, oh, there's multiple ways around this problem or this is just an obstacle. It's not a dead end that I have to blow up or freak out about. It's just something that I'm going to move around.

Chris Miller: Yeah. So, uh, you said the word play and we're going to dive in. I was reading this book by Brene Brown and she was talking about play, but she was also saying that more people, more adults need to make time to play. And there's a funny part in her book where she was like, man, I want to learn more about this. And she went and she Googled adult Play and went to images and she said she had to quickly x out because it wasn't what she expected. Meaning that there really wasn't anything out there. Like there was no research, um, there was no, uh, organizational, uh, platforms that were endorsing this. And I was reading this one study with organizational communication that said all of these managers will think of whenever you get a group together to do, to do a group project or to do a timeline, you tell them, all right, you have 2 hours, which means 120 minutes. And you have to make sure every minute of this 120 minutes goes to the task. And any minutes of you horsing around or goofing off is one less minute that could go to the task. So it's bad, but the research was like, nah, actually it makes all of the other stuff better.

Mike Montague: Yeah, there's a ton on Pack here. So ask me any follow up questions, uh, you want and we'll dive into it. But for me, I think the big thing that you said with Brene Brown is we've replaced things in our society with fake play. So I think one of the things that happens is as we get into adulthood, we start putting alcohol as our play instead of actual human connection. And so we don't need alcohol to enjoy a football game or a night out at the restaurant or other places, but we start messing with the chemicals in our brains and we start substituting that. So rather than actually getting into a PlayState and actually relaxing with our friends, we're going to numb those stress feelings so that they pop right back up as soon as we stop drinking. And it's like, okay, that didn't do what you thought it was going to do. And the second thing that I've noticed that happens in our society is we've commoditized play for adults. So it has to be this huge vacation that we spend thousands of dollars on or we have to, um television is a big one, right? We have this fake thing where we're watching other people play and have fun or do reality show competitions or game shows, but we're not doing the game show. And the NFL is the one that I bring up. Uh, it's the one I still watch actually, but when people say, oh, I love football. If you're watching football for 9 hours on TV, you don't love football. You love television. And it's very compelling television. But if you love football, you would be out throwing the football around with your friends. You'd be playing football, you'd be in.

Chris Miller: A football league, right? Yeah.

Mike Montague: And there's a big difference in your body. Think about just sitting on the couch for 9 hours watching football or throwing the football around with your friends and running around a, uh, park. Physically, you have to realize that those are two completely different activities, right? And I think we've just made trade offs as we grow up, where we go, oh, okay, I'm going to watch this, or I'm going to drink while I do this. Or uh, I'm going to slow down, or I'm going to replace actual social time with social media. And we start sucking out these real play scenarios and we start settling for things that kind of feel like play or they kind of feel like relaxation, but they're not doing what play was designed to do, which is recharge you and re energize. So sometimes even on vacation, we'll drink by the pool instead of doing a rock climbing, uh, event or exploring or, um, really learning, challenging ourselves. And, uh, it's what we call active play. When you move your body, when you go, and you go do something that's fun for you and it doesn't have to be physically active. So I know a lot of people mess that up or get confused. It could be drawing, uh, or painting or solving puzzles. And so a lot of research has been done to say that if you actually, instead of watching TV and tuning out and drinking or numbing yourself with food or whatever drugs or alcohol, uh, you feel like is going to help you recover. If instead you just took the weekend and you did a puzzle or you did a really cool painting or you did creative writing, that active production actually changes the chemicals in your body and it gives you more energy on Monday, uh, than taking a pause and not doing anything. And to me, I found that really fascinating that I just looked at myself and I thought, am I creating or I consuming on the weekend? And the types of play that we promote in our society are the things that they can sell you. It's concert tickets or sporting events or board games that they can make $20 off of, but with a sheet of paper and a pen, you can have a lot of free fun with your family with a pair of dice or, uh, playing cards for $3. Or a ball. We all speak ball. If you play with kids and a ball, you can have a whole lot of fun and nobody makes any money off of it. So it's not marketed that way. Right. The public parks are free. You can go to a park and find a jungle jam or go for a walk around a lake or something. Doesn't cost you a dime. It is better for your body. But nobody in our society is out there marketing, going for a walk around the lake.

Chris Miller: Why do you think that is?

Mike Montague: Because it's just money.

Chris Miller: Yeah.

Mike Montague: We're in a capitalist society that, um, it's nice when people do, but those nonprofit organizations don't have half the budget that Facebook and Google and, um, all the other commoditized play and entertainment has Facebook's.

Chris Miller: Like, why go to the nature park when you can play a farmville?

Mike Montague: Right. When you can stay on the phone and load this app more? Right. Don't actually go talk to your friends. We need you to take a picture that your friends can see and scroll past.

Chris Miller: Yeah. How do people engage in a play state?

Mike Montague: I think there are a few things that I recommend. The first thing is you have to somehow find a way to lower the stakes, to take the stress off of what you're doing and just do something that's just for you. It's not for the picture, for Instagram. It's not for a specific purpose or return on investment. You got to create some sort of space in your life, and I think daily, but 20 minutes a day, uh, like meditation or something, or at least one day a week. A week, a, uh, month, or a quarter. Find some space in your life where you're just saying, I'm going to go do something for me. And again, you have to be really careful about these activities. I have a cool quiz on my website, uh, where playfulhumans.com Quiz. You can find your playful personality. So if you love, like I said, hiking, or you love sports, or you love doing puzzles, or you love telling jokes, or you love social events, there's ten different ways that you could find a true play scenario and then go do that with somebody else. And I think if you go do that with another human being and you just have fun and relax and just let everything else drop away. This is what our life is really about.

Chris Miller: Right.

Mike Montague: But we've pushed this out to retirement. Well, someday in retirement, I'll be able to travel the world or hang out and talk with people that I enjoy or do things that I enjoy. Why wait? You don't have to wait until you're old. Then half your friends are gone before you try and call them up. You can do that now.

Chris Miller: I hadn't even thought about that. But we do push that off and we say, until we're 65, life's going to be grinding and hustling and no.

Mike Montague: Play, and I think even with work. So I don't know if you've ever done a deep dive into this, but I found it fascinating that the 40 hours work week was created for factory workers in the 19 hundreds. So henry Ford said, oh, we can have three eight hour shifts. People can generally stand up and do physical labor for 8 hours a day before they pass out. And then it kind of gives a little bit of a balance. They can have 8 hours for sleep, and they can have 8 hours to do their family stuff or work on the farm and other things that people still had in the 19 hundreds. And retirement was created in Nazi Germany in the early 19 hundreds as well, because they found that, uh, the retirement age of 65 was created when the average lifespan was 67. So they needed two years of people to move out of the workforce a little bit too. They needed to create some turnover and give opportunities for younger people to, uh, have jobs. And they could physically support people in retirement for a couple of years. But now we're retiring at 65 and living to 80, 90. It's a big difference. You have to have a lot more resources to live without income. And it turns out at 90, you need physical movement, you need activity. And actually, it's better if you do a reverse retirement. If you go explore the world in your twenty s, and you go have a lot of fun and you work in your 80s, that's when you need to be focused. You need mental activity, you need physical activity and stuff. And you're not in a very good place, uh, to go travel the world anyway, right? So those kind of things I think are really interesting when I look at it, is they were not designed for you. They were designed for humans to be machines and factories. And they were designed for big governmental systems and monetary systems to maximize your income potential. And it has nothing to do with happiness. And so even that American Dream and the other marketing stuff that was developed around this, I go a little bit deep into a conspiracy rabbit hole here.

Chris Miller: Come on.

Mike Montague: But all of that was designed for other people to make money, not to make you happy and feel fulfilled.

Chris Miller: Sure, that makes sense.

Mike Montague: And so when we look at modern research now, it shows that in creative jobs, work is different. You can't spend 8 hours writing a day. You can't spend 8 hours in sales making phone calls a day. You'll be exhausted, you'll burn out. You have to take time to think and prepare for those calls. So I have a lot of frameworks, uh, around this. There's five PS that I try to work in to every day, week, month, um, play, perform at your best, which is what most people want to do. They want to perform for 40 hours a week. You can't do that, uh, at least not in most jobs. Um, you have to pause. So you do need time to rest and time to think about what you're doing. So ponder is the next one. And then the other one people leave out a lot is practice. You might want a little time in your week to actually get better at what you do for a living and how you perform. So in Sales, we talk about role playing or going to sales training courses and learning more about stuff. But no matter what your job is, if you're a computer programmer, you should probably spend a significant amount of time learning more about other people's programming rather than just sitting there typing your own stuff into the keyboard. And then the last thing I'll share, and I'll give you a chance to respond here too, is there's a really cool study about programmers at Microsoft that if they worked more than 60 hours a week for more than six weeks in a row. They slowed down so much that they performed less lines of code than programmers that just worked 40 hours a week and took the rest of the time off. Um, and so with mental work, we really burn out and we really slow down. That it goes back to what you said originally, is when we take time to play, it actually makes that other time more productive. Mhm, and it allows us to think more creatively and solve problems. So rather than just beating our head against the wall, we can find another way around it. So I think I said last thing, but I have two more things. Love this debt. Um, when faced with a problem in their life or obstacle or work, 97% of people do one of two things more of what they were currently doing or less of what they were currently doing, right? We either give up and we go, okay, this isn't working. I'm going to do less of that and just give up. Or we slow down. Or we say, you know what, I'm just not making enough sales calls. I need to go out there and make ten more calls and I got to grind on Hustle and double down on what we're doing. Only 3% of people think creatively and do something else. They work around the obstacle or they change what their tactic was in order to get better results. And we found that with Play, it inspires more of that 3% thinking, right? When we're in a playful state, when we have those dose chemicals going, that's when we can think creatively and we can be flexible with our outcomes.

Chris Miller: The four P's, the personality quiz, these, uh, are things that are unique to you, right? Did you think them up?

Mike Montague: Not necessarily. I did come up with the four P's and that framework, um, but I got that from a lot of other scientific research and reading that I did. So when I'm doing my prep time and my practice time, I read like the top 24 books or more now on Play and this research and Dang Boss.

Chris Miller: So you're putting the time in and.

Mike Montague: I've done 100 interviews for my podcast where I ask other people about it.

Chris Miller: I'm just so impressed by because I've been in this world for a little bit and one of the hardest parts, one of my fears is that I'll be on the microphone talking for hours, but I'm never adding anything new in, right? So I'm just like, different person, same stuff, you know what I mean? Different person.

Mike Montague: But it's not when you got a different person, you're learning from them. So that's what I love about podcasting, is for playful humans, I've done over 125 interviews, but for how to Succeed, it's over 600 episodes.

Chris Miller: Have you figured out how to succeed yet? I was wondering that.

Mike Montague: That's good. Um, I do. I feel like I already knew it when I started, but hearing 600 other people do that, you can't help but add a little bit more education into your life.

Chris Miller: Oh my God.

Mike Montague: We're getting to a little bit of a hack of mine, but I love doing it this way because if this is my job, I'm working in, uh, those five P's intentionally, and I'm getting paid for them. So we haven't even talked about it yet. But I was a DJ in bars and clubs in my twenty S and on the radio. And what I found was on Saturday night, most people spend a couple of $100 on booze and go out to a bar and try and meet somebody, uh, that they're attracted to. I got paid $100 or more to go to the same bar and I got the microphone, so every girl in the place had to at least notice me, right? I might not have a great conversation, it might not be a thing, but I was going to meet 1000 people a week wow. And get paid to do that. That's a hack, right?

Chris Miller: That is a hack.

Mike Montague: And I feel like podcasting is the same way. I get paid to learn and I get to perform. I get to learn from other people and I check a whole bunch of boxes at the same time.

Chris Miller: I've been wondering something and it's from the, um so you work with Sandler training. That's something I know, but maybe others don't know. And you have been there for a bit. The organization's grown, so is your responsibility and you're doing well there. But you've also had a background in radio and DJing. And then did the how to Succeed Sandler podcast start with you or was it already going and then you later became the host?

Mike Montague: It started with me as a podcast. So the president and CEO was doing a thing they called the Sandler Broadcast Center, which was very similar to a podcast, but it was more like a radio show that he was doing. I think it was aired on some radio station at some point too. Uh, so it was sort of like an hour long interview, long format thing. But I created the how to Succeed podcast myself and took that public. So the broadcast center was besides the radio station, was a private thing that you had to pay access to these recordings and hear them.

Chris Miller: Wow, that's awesome that you can say that you already have a podcast, you have a career, you've done a whole bunch of other stuff. And then in addition to that, game show host, ah, you are traveling and giving these keynotes. You are writing, you're quite busy, but then you decide, I'm going to do the Playful Humans podcast. And prior to that, it wasn't called that what drove you to make that? Because it seems like you don't have that much time, but you're doing it.

Mike Montague: Two things on the time. First, uh, I don't have any kids. That helps a lot. And two, I don't watch that much television. Uh, so I try to only kind of do a few YouTubes. And, uh, I love Ted Lasso. Watched that one last night. But maybe one show and keep it to less than an hour a day and spend my time actually doing stuff right. Um, and those change over my life. In any given year, week or month or day, you might see where I need a day to rest. And so I'll just take a whole Saturday and binge watch, uh, Stranger Things or something. But I do try to be productive with my time. And I've never had less than two jobs in most of my adult life. So that's how you get a lot of stuff on the resume is I always have sort of like a full time or primary role and then some sort of side hustle or other project that I'm doing. And that started when I was really young. I just kind of found that even when I was in restaurants in college and I'm waiting tables, some restaurants are better at lunch and some restaurants are better at dinner. So if I work at the pizza place, uh, at lunch, and I work at the fancy restaurant at the dinner, I make more money that way. Right? And then I started DJing, uh, on the side doing that. And I was building websites the whole time, too, so I could get $50 an hour to write websites. And I've built over 200 websites throughout my adult life. But all of that was sort of just on the side. It was never really enough to kind of keep things going, but it was great. Additional income helped pay for college and all kinds of cool things. And I could just fill in different parts and different balances in my life to help create a balance in a sustainable way. So what happened with Playful Humans was really out of the pandemic. It's kind of a COVID baby there. When I'm doing Sandler, it's very business oriented, sales focused, and it feels very, like, revenue driven and stuff. And all of that is great. I love doing it. I get to host a podcast, do live events, public speaking. I did training for Uber and ThermoFisher Scientific, and working with really cool companies. But really cool companies also have metrics, and they have performance things and standards. And sometimes there was a lot of rehearsal, or I didn't write the stuff when I was on radio, I felt that a lot where somebody else wrote the scripts and they picked the music. And so I'm reading a sponsorship, and then I'm reading, uh, a contest we're doing, and maybe 30 seconds an hour, twice an hour, I get to do something fun for me.

Chris Miller: You get to share your personality.

Mike Montague: But that's 59 minutes of being boring. Doing what other people want me to do, and then 60 seconds of fun wasn't a great balance for me. So that's why I don't do that anymore. Now, the podcast, I get 90% of the time, I do what I want to do, and maybe 10% of the time, I'll have a sponsor if I decide to have one, or I'm featuring something that maybe, um, isn't the most fun for me, it's the work part of it.

Chris Miller: Sure.

Mike Montague: Uh, so I say all of that to say that I've really found it's about energy management for me, not time management. And if I'm only doing one thing, like with Sandler in the sales training, I was missing some playfulness, I was missing a creative outlet for my own expression, right? Where could I have my own voice and not worry about what other people think? So Sandler is an international organization. We're talking about tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a lot of times. And so even on that podcast, I'm worried about the other 200 locations, the corporate offices needs, the, uh, sponsors and partners, and balancing a lot of stuff. I wanted a podcast that was just mine, that also I could build an audience for over time. So if I decide to leave Sandler, or they decide I should leave Sandler at any point, what would be my next thing, and how could I be building that up? And so I also needed a place to experiment, and I love that with playful humans, it's mine. And so I can do whatever I want. If I want to try StreamYard, uh, to do live broadcasts, I can try that. And I cannot mess it up for the international company. I can try it there first, or even a guest. If I say, oh, this is a really cool guest. And I've interviewed people like, uh, Justin Guerini. I don't know if you remember him, he lost to Kelly Clarkson on the first American Idol.

Chris Miller: How cool.

Mike Montague: But he's been on like, six Broadway shows. And, uh, he's the little sweet character in the Diet Dr. Pepper commercial. He's the sweet one. And interviewing, uh, him was great, but he had a book on confidence, and maybe on my show that has 3 million downloads for how to succeed. I don't just take a risk on somebody I've never met before. That a lot of times, celebrities are really bad interviews because they don't have to be good. A lot of people, uh, show up for their story. Right. And they don't have to have content. But he was one that I always keep in mind because really great stuff on confidence and losing publicly in front of this is back when American Idol was huge the first season, losing publicly to Kelly Clarkson, to hundreds of millions of people. Uh, see this or hear about it? And then also she goes on to be extremely successful. That's got to shake your confidence a little bit, or it can give you confidence. I found that in my career. And so that's a really interesting story that I get to play with, but it might not necessarily fit another project I'm doing. So I've kind of just found that whether it's tech or whether it's performing or whether it's sales and psychology stuff that I love to study, I need different places where I can play with ideas and practice stuff and do multiple things. Otherwise, it just gets boring and, uh, not fulfilling.

Chris Miller: For me, that's brilliant. And that's the capacity of playful humans is it gives you, like you said, experiment, but it also gives you that chance to be you. And you've done a really good job at that. I listened to a few of the episodes, and your personality is, I mean, part and parcel of the experience. Right. And that's the brilliant part about it. But you mentioned something, and I want to circle back to it. You said with what was his name? Justin.

Mike Montague: Yeah, Justin Green.

Chris Miller: With Justin, he had talked about losing and how that overall, ultimately was able to loop back and provide him confidence for the future right. Moving forward. And you've said you found that in your career as well. So could you touch on that? What happened?

Mike Montague: Uh, you set me up for my best story of all time. So good job here. I was fired live on stage by Billy Idol in front of thousands of people.

Chris Miller: Wow.

Mike Montague: Um, like, one of those moments, if you saw it in a movie, you would be like, that would be weird. But I'm doing my thing on stage in front of thousands of people, dancing and stuff.

Chris Miller: Were you the MC? The DJ?

Mike Montague: Yeah, sort of MC and DJ. I'm playing the music and MC M before I'll tell you the whole story. But, um, just the lights come down, the sound goes off. I have no microphone, no control over anything. I look over to the side, to the producer, and the manager is like, you're done. Does the cutthroat sign? And I was about halfway through my set, and I'll tell you a couple of lessons learned, but that was the moment that I consider myself bulletproof, uh, as a performer. So even before then. I had done shows on 911 2001. I've had fights break out and I've been maced by police when I was on stage because the fight was in front of the stage. Kind of like you would see like a moshbed area or something, but they went to shoot pepper spray at the pile and it kind of just sprays all over and it goes past them onto the stage and it's me. And so I can't breathe or see. Um, I'm on stage and I'm trying to protect equipment and all kinds of other things.

Chris Miller: The wrong button. Yeah.

Mike Montague: And, uh, we eventually got that sorted out and got the show back started. But when stuff like that happens, you go, okay, I'm not worried about a technical difficulty or something, but when you get fired by Billy Idol in front of thousands of people, there's nothing that's going to happen on this podcast today that's going to be worse than that. So now I can go and be myself and I can go, okay, I can handle it. And I think that's what Justin realized in his career and other things, too, is that it's not the wins that make you more confident. A lot of people think they're like, oh, if I want to state champion, I'd be confident. But that actually breeds impostor syndrome because you go, Do I deserve this? Am I really the best player in the state? That can't be right. Like something went, uh, wrong there and you start doubting yourself because it's too easy. But when something goes horribly wrong and look, I'm blessed, if the worst thing that's ever happened to you in your life is you got fired by Billy Idol, that's a pretty good life, right? That's cush. But when something really bad happens to you, no matter what it is, and you get through that, you realize, oh, that's not that bad. I actually have the emotional and physical strength to get through this and I can be creative and overcome obstacles. That's when you get confidence and, uh, it's a little bit of a backwards law there, but you learn how to win and be confident by failing spectacularly.

Chris Miller: That's so good. It's unexpected reverse thinking. We don't want to fail, but after we fail, the future, as long as we can deal with that failure, unpack it. But our future is brighter because it equips us with that mental fortitude or the realism of, hey, I made it all the way out. I can make it all the way out again. Did you just walk off stage?

Mike Montague: Yeah, I did not. Pasco did not collect $200. Just, uh, slinked off the stage, grabbed my stuff and left. So I was going to tell you the rest of the story. So what happened was Billy Idol's opening act got sick, uh, on his way to Kansas City. And so I was on the retro radio station at the time and I did do live DJing in clubs and for weddings and stuff. And so they called the radio station and said, hey, do you have anybody that could play music for an hour so we don't have to start the show early or have people sit around for an hour until uh, Billy Idol comes on. And they asked me to do it, I said sure and I thought that this would be a really cool opportunity. So I'm shocked how many people don't know Billy Idol now. But this is like Moni, Moni White Wedding, a lot of 80s rock and the audience is all soccer moms. So I'm like 24, 25 at the time. These are my people. I'm like 80s music soccer moms, I'm going to crush this gig. I got this M. And they gave me three rules. They said, don't play any Billy Idle songs because we're going to play those later. Play mostly rock music because it's a rock show and play whatever you play on the radio, like retro. And I thought, Great, I got it.

Chris Miller: Yes, that's easy.

Mike Montague: Other thing you need to know up front is this is before WiFi. So I only have the songs available to me on CD at the time and at the place and I think I might have had them. No, I didn't even have them electronically then. This is before even M, uh, b three, like DJ mixing came in and uh, I start off and I start playing songs that I would associate with that time period like Jenny 867-5309 and uh, Jesse's Girl, Rick Springfield, stuff like that. And the audience is eating it up.

Chris Miller: Bangers.

Mike Montague: They're soccer moms, they're loving it. And the manager comes out and he goes, we said rock music like the Rolling Stones. And that's when I panicked. I realized that Billy Idol started in the late seventy s and he considers himself a rock classic rock artist, not an 80s rock artist. So I was thinking 80s rock like Aerosmith and others. And even Aerosmith started in the 70s but uh, I freaked out and I start flipping through my CDs. There's two rock songs you can dance to in a club. You shook me all night long and pour some sugar on me So fun fact for your audience, if you ever uh, need to DJ but I play those two. I'm frantically flipping through, I find like one Rolling Stone song and then again like an Aerosmith song that I kind of go and I go, okay, well I played four rock songs in a row and I've kind of kept the momentum going. I can probably switch it up now with a retro. And then I'll try to frantically find more songs. Uh, but now I'm, what are we like six songs into uh, an hour long set. So I'm about like 25 minutes in or so and I'm realizing I'm not going to make it. I don't have twelve more songs or whatever to finish this set. So I played Casey and the Sunshine Band. Do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight because I have this joke that I like to tell save the making love for the end of the night don't do it in that order feel free to get down and do a little dance but save, uh, the making love for later and I play the song and then dish.

Chris Miller: Just, uh well, you didn't even get to use the joke.

Mike Montague: No, I did. I got that out, uh, at the beginning of the song. So that's the whole Billy Idle story. But I did get to open for Frankie Valley in the Four Seasons later and I've gotten to do other big stages and fun things, so I feel like I got past that. But, um, it wasn't even that bad at the time, either. I kind of knew that I was set up to fail and that there was nothing I can do about it. I gave it my best shot and I was glad that I just as a 25 year old kid, I took the shot. A lot of people won't get on stage in front of thousands of people or won't I get to meet Billy Idol and do, uh, cool things. So I've been glad and happy with myself that in my career, I've taken that shot and I've never passed the chance to be on a big stage or on a big show or do, uh, television appearances and stuff like all those things, even if I don't do great on them. I'm just glad that I had the guts to try it.

Chris Miller: Yeah, you showed up. That's the hardest part, is showing up. I wish I could go inside your, uh, brain just to see the emotional like we talk about dose, but to see the levels of cortisol in your brain as you are doing all these calculations, like, oh, shoot, I don't have the CDs.

Mike Montague: Well, it very much was. It went from a playful experience where I'm like, I can play anything. And I've been a DJ for a long time, about six years at that point. So I knew that I could rock a crowd and that the crowd was going to be happy. I had no qualms about that. What I didn't think about was, will Billy Idol and his manager be happy? And I didn't know what would make them happy. But it was definitely a panic scenario like we were talking about earlier, where it's like, where is that one rock song that will make Billy Idol happy so I can get out of this situation and just let me finish this hour.

Chris Miller: Ah.

Mike Montague: And I was finding nothing.

Chris Miller: Fight, flight or freeze. And they chose the decision for you. It was like, all right, well, flight it is. I won't be hanging around.

Mike Montague: And here's the dumb thing before we move on. It's just for me and for fun, but they put on house music, like trance for the next 30 minutes that I was supposed to fill. So they pull down mine and they put up how is that better than what I was currently doing?

Chris Miller: And they're like, now Billy Idol. Yeah. And it's like those soccer moms don't want to listen to house music.

Mike Montague: No, it's just background, like elevator music to fill that they won't notice. But I guess, uh, that's the only part that I took offense to was that they thought what I was doing was less entertaining and more damaging to the show than just putting on background elevator music.

Chris Miller: Yeah, that would have, uh, been like it's just salt on the wound at that point. You're leaving, you're like, what the heck? You had said elevator music and I was thinking about elevator music. You were talking about how 3% of people think of something creative rather than stopping or starting or doing more. And elevator music is a really good example of that because I was reading about whenever people were making elevators there were complaints that, oh, these things are too slow. And then it's like, well and the manufacturers were like, well, if we make them faster, it's going to be like unsafe with our current safety things. But by adding music, people thought less about how fast it was going and the music just added noise, um, a variable in there that completely changed their experience. So that's a really creative thing. And you don't have to spend millions of dollars for better engineering or you don't have to have unhappy people.

Mike Montague: It's a playful solution too. That's why I love that one, is the music distracts the brain. It lowers the stress levels of people that are freaked out in tight spaces and elevators and have fears of heights and all kinds of things. So yeah, that little bit of distraction or that little bit of play and entertainment when you hear a good song, I think that's a great example of the PlayState you get that kind of goosebumps or things. Uh, I don't know what the song is for you. I'd love to hear what your song is. But, uh, this was prior to the slap. But will Smith Summertime anytime this time of year when it's like it's just getting warm and it's like that first 80 deg day. And if you don't pick it, if you're just driving around and like the station puts on Summertime by Fresh Prince, uh, and DJ Jazzy Jeff that's like it for me.

Chris Miller: It brings you there.

Mike Montague: It brings me back to that spot where I was like a teenager and I got my first freedom, my own car. I'm ah, out in the summertime playing with my friends and stuff and it gives me that playful feeling. But I think songs can do that. They're a magical they can they're time machines. Yeah. Little hacks in our brain that will allow us to change that energy change those chemicals and endorphins.

Chris Miller: Yeah. And the brain. So I'm reading this book, and I've talked about it on all these podcasts. I just need to finish this book. That way I can get a new book. Um, but atomic habits. And he talks about in this book how with more reps, it's going to ultimately build habits. And it's not about how long you do something, but it's about how often you do something. And the examples he gives are like, taxicab drivers and their hippocampus, which is responsible for spatial awareness, is actually bigger than people who are in different roles that aren't using as much spatial awareness. And then whenever they quit and they retire their brains, actually, that portion of the brain responsible for spatial awareness actually shrinks. Uh, and it makes me think about how this is with play, this is with building good relationships. This is with all of this stuff. Initially it can be hard, but if you can build a good habit of getting into doing something for yourself, like you mentioned that as a good way to engage in a PlayStation, that's a really good idea. And if you can get into a habit of, hey, just for ten minutes, I know I have this deadline by the end of this week, but if I can just engage for ten minutes a day and then that habit starts building. And then the portion of our brain that's responsible for and you've done the play research, but the portion of the brain responsible for engaging in those moments will actually grow in size. And then it will become easier to the point to where we can do it. And he uses this term, I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's like automaticity. But the concept to where we can do something without thinking about it or without thinking about every part of it.

Mike Montague: Right.

Chris Miller: You know what I mean?

Mike Montague: Yeah.

Chris Miller: Um, and it makes me think about with play, uh, it will improve the quality of your life. But it may be so uncomfortable for someone who is the just go home, watch TV nine to five. And maybe you're not working a nine to five job. Maybe you're doing some other cool stuff. I feel like oftentimes we think of nine to five as like, oh, that sucks. But you may be working with a good organization that has good play. Um, but that's a jumble here. But it makes me think of play and the importance of play, but how initially it may be hard, but if you commit to it after a while, it's going to be a lot better.

Mike Montague: I have a few thoughts there. I did love that book. I got into productivity hacks and things like that pretty hard prior to the pandemic. And then I had to make a shift. So I agree with you. I think humans are adaptive creatures, so no matter what it is, we adapt to the situation. If you really have a really hard life, a lot of stress, your body will adapt to being in stress, and it'll look for it, and it'll, uh, adapt to that level of stuff. If you have a lot of play, your body and brain adapt to that, too. So they're the same research studies that show the brain grows and you create more creative connections and things when you're more playful in your career, and a ton of other positive side effects. So people that play more have more sex, they smile more, they're rated more attractive, they're more intelligent, they make more creative connections, they make more money. It's ridiculous. All of them are positive side effects. There's virtually no negative side effects of play unless you get into those dangerous, uh, things of the fake play that I was talking about.

Chris Miller: Right, yeah.

Mike Montague: Um, but with positive communal play, that's good for you and others, there's really no side effects that are negative on that. And you can do it a lot longer and a lot more than people think. Now, with the habit part of it, I think it's interesting. I think for me, it's more about a comfort zone stretch, and that it feels weird the first time you take off in the middle of the day to go do something you love and you're like, it feels like a parent or a teacher or a boss, like, somebody should stop me from doing this. Uh, but as you get into it more, those feelings subside, and you realize, oh, no, when I go do this, I come back better and stronger and smarter than before. So this is a good thing for me. And the habit part of it is dangerous for me because I don't wear a Fitbit watch, uh, and stuff anymore, because I found that that was making me more depressed. It was alerting me during Zoom calls and, uh, podcasts that I wasn't walking. And you're like, well, thanks for that, but there's nothing I can do about it. And I don't need something monitoring my sleep and stuff. I'm not conscious. There's nothing I can do to change my sleep here. Those are all habits that I would have done. And so the one thing that I would encourage people to do is, yes, you definitely have to do this and start small and get into a routine of it, and you'll grow and find ways to mix play into your life. But also, I think we know I think it's blatantly obvious when you know that you've had a long day. You've been staring at a screen too long. Your eyes hurt, your legs hurt, your ankles are swollen because you've been sitting down for hours. And you go, I need to move. I need to stand up and go do something to change my energy. Or if you're stressed out and freaked out, and you can't bend the world to your will in this moment, go, okay, change that. Go do something else. Go do something for yourself. And if you feel like you've been watching too much TV, you probably have been. And your body and brain are giving you a lot of alerts. You just need to listen to them more. And then think about making conscious choices about what you're replacing that with. So rather than going for the pizza or the booze or the weed, go for something to call a friend and go out, uh, go bowling or go mini golf or do anything that's going to change your energy if you want to change your circumstances and the feeling that you're in.

Chris Miller: Yeah, I've been thinking about this. There's a professor who is the director of Relationships and Technology Lab at Ku. He was on the show earlier, but with the social dilemma and things like that coming out that talk about the negative, the bad side of social media, he has this research that may be a little contrarian, but one of the things that he mentions often is social media doesn't exactly make people lonely. Like we were talking about with your, uh, relative in California. It's like whenever there's nothing there, but then you get to add in video call, it's better than it was.

Mike Montague: Right.

Chris Miller: But then the communication research shows that as the mediums progress, they become more rich. The actual experience and the actual takeaway and the dose. Like when you get texting, compared to a phone call, the phone call is going to be better. Then you got video call, then you got face to face. So what he'll say is that social media doesn't exactly make people lonely, but oftentimes lonely people are driven towards social media. And most often what it is is it's time. Its use of time and its accessibility. So it's easier to get on TikTok than it is to text a friend, which is kind of crazy because texting is so easy. But with TikTok, you just hit one button and you scroll. But with texting, you have to kind of think and you don't want to sound too dumb. And even though we can delete texts now, it's becoming so much more like temporal.

Mike Montague: Yeah.

Chris Miller: Um, and then just like you were saying, it may be easy to go to the booze or it may be easy to go to the TV to watch football. Um, but whenever you actually play football, uh, that's the benefit of it there. I have a lot of connections between what we're doing.

Mike Montague: Yeah, well, what I heard there is two things. One is you're right. When you text somebody, you're putting yourself out there. When you ask somebody to go throw the baseball around, they might say no. And so there is this sort of fear and, uh, uncertainty in this where we know that if we open TikTok, there's going to be something in there. Right. And that searching creates the dopamine feeling. Um, and it avoids those bad situations. But that's what the problem is. We're losing the magic, and we're losing that uncertainty that makes life interesting, and we're losing the chance to make our own memories. So the second thing I thought about when you were talking there is, with social media, it's not that it's making us more lonely. It's making us more aware that we're lonely and we're seeing everybody else's memories. So we're comparing ourselves to other people's best curated moments. This is their highlight reel of everything they've done in their life. And we're comparing our we see all of our moments, right? So it's like, let's take our average day and compare it to somebody else's best day they've ever had. Well, of course we're going to feel worse. Uh, about that. So I think the answer for me has been not measuring my happiness and my approval and whether I'm enough by the number of likes that I get, but by the quality of the memories that I'm making and the cool stuff that I get to do. And so looking more at my highlight reel and saying, I want more highlights, I want more low lights, too. I want to do things that might not work, and then I fail spectacularly, or I feel bad, or I get a rejection for a job. Because we, uh, say this in sales all the time. If you're not getting any, no's, you're not trying hard enough. Right? If you're only selling to people that say yes, that's great, but that means you're not going outside your comfort zone at all. You're not trying to reach out to anybody else. So, for me, I think I'm trying to not numb everything and make it a neutral average. I want some really high highs. I want some really low lows. And in the pandemic, we saw this, uh, research study shows it, but I think everybody can remember. I have to add two years to all my memories now because those days were so repetitive and boring that we weren't creating any new magical experiences. But at the same time, every day felt longer and more boring because it was repetitive and we weren't engaged in this. So play is really cool. It warps time in a way where it feels faster in the moment, and it feels like time flies when you're having fun, but your life slows down because you're creating more memories and you're having more cool experiences. That when you look back ten, 2100 years later over your life, you go, wow, I did so much cool stuff. And so it goes faster in the short term, but, uh, longer in the long term.

Chris Miller: Yeah. Was there a moment in your life where you thought to yourself, like, something may have happened, or maybe you looked at your day to day life and you're like, man, I need to have more fun. I'm not having enough fun?

Mike Montague: Yeah, for sure. Um, it's happened several times in my life. I think in radio, it just got to the point where it was a job and it wasn't fun. And I was doing the same routines and I was working nights. The hours were hard and so sleep was hard. And then also I was single. So trying to date when you're on the radio from seven to midnight is really hard. You can do a happy hour at 05:00 or you can date at 01:00 in the morning, but either way, those aren't going to end very well. Um, so that was tough. And then just my sleep schedule was so off, I didn't feel like myself at all and I wasn't having enough fun there. So I created the Internet radio station and got out and tried to do more live performing. Started public speaking and stuff and, uh, changed that up. But then again, in the pandemic, it felt like all of the little extra stuff got sucked out. So it wasn't like my job got any more boring or different. And I was still kind of doing the same podcast and sales training and everything. That was during the day, but in the nights and weekends, everybody else got removed. And something else interesting that I think would be great for your research and the work you're doing is, uh, by covering up people's faces, we also sucked out these micro expressions and the smiles that you would get from a cashier or somebody at the gas station were gone. And so all of this extra stuff that is fulfilling, seeing somebody else smile and nod is powerful. We're counting all of these strokes in our happiness. And so that was the time where I was like, man, if I don't change this energy, um, I'm not going to get better here, I'm not going to find more happiness. So I really auditioned for the game show Company. Started doing it virtually first and then in live. And I just made a conscious effort to, um, go on a digital detox. Um, turned off all the social media apps, changed my passwords, stuff I couldn't remember, and said if I want to talk to my mom or I want to know what's going on with my nieces. I need to call them and ask and not, uh, settle for a text message or other things. And the third thing I did was focusing on one thing at a time. So the dopamine is so tricky and we can get so distracted and frantic, especially at work where we have email open and then our cell phone buzzes and we have slack open and we're trying to do something else. And in my free time, I'm watching TV and scrolling on my phone and eating dinner all at the same time. I'm not enjoying any of those experiences. I'm not present in any of them. I'm task switching constantly, which is a dopamine thing. So even going to the bathroom, I'm just going to go to the bathroom or I'm just going to read a book, or if I'm watching a show, I'm just going to watch a TV show. I'm not going to also be eating, or I'm not going to also be checking my phone at the same time. Brings you a lot more into the present moment and, uh, it just slows everything down to where your brain can handle it and reset a little bit.

Chris Miller: I'm so glad you made that switch. I'm so glad you made all of those switches. Because now you're able to create what you've created and it gets you to a point to where you're helping other people do that. And this is something I recognize. Maybe you recognize this as well. But when you talk to people who have, like, playful humans podcast or talk to people podcast or blank blank podcast, something happened in their life to drive them to a point to where they want to create that and dedicate the time over and over. And for me, it was being away from home for two years and traveling and being on all the planes and sleeping in hotel rooms, and after a while recognizing how my life was changing and it wasn't for the good, the consistent community that I had. I didn't realize the effect it had on me like the time I had with my wife. I didn't realize how that effect it had on me. Uh, but once it was gone, I recognized that. And then it got me thinking, like, m man, life is better. When we talk to people, we need to put more emphasis on building relationships. And I asked that question because I just knew there must have been stuff that happened in your life to drive you to consistently put the time into this. Um, but I'm really glad you are. And in order for people to build better relationships, um, they need to have fun. And one of the best ways to have fun is with the people around you. So you need relationships. So it's like, the better you do, the better I do.

Mike Montague: It's huge. I think the people you surround yourself with is gigantic, right. That, um, if you're surrounding yourself with people that are stressed and bosses that are stressed and coworkers that are stressed, and then at home in your marriage, uh, people are stressed, you're not going to be free and playful, right? So choosing who you're hanging around is a big one. But I also, um, love what you said. I think one of the things I've noticed in this is, especially in podcasting, the person that writes the Time management book was not great at time management. They're the ones that struggled with it and had to figure out that part of it. So you got to watch your gurus and watch who you idolize and also realize that they didn't start there. So it's not a little bit. It's definitely a humble brag. But when people see me on stage or a microphone and they go, man, you look so comfortable. You're a natural up there on stage. That's the only compliment I reject. And I say, yeah, right. Look, it only looks comfortable now because I've done this 3000 times. Because I got fired by belly idle, because I had rough days, because I've done crappy shows for one person in a bar who was not laughing and nobody showed up to the show and I did it anyway. Mhm. That's why it looks easy now. But when I started, I was a disaster. The only way to be good at something is to be bad at it first. But on the flip side of that, I also believe that we all have this thing that we're called to do. We have this magic spot that I was blessed to have a really playful childhood. I had great friends, I had great brother, uh, and sister, cool parents. And my grandma you mentioned is, uh, an inspiration to me that she's just funny and silly and really smart and introduced me to money. Python.

Chris Miller: What a good grandma.

Mike Montague: Yeah, all the office when, uh, it was the British office and stuff. She loves the BBC comedy. Um, writer Dave Barry. If you've never read any Dave Barry stuff, look up his and um, let Grandma Lynn be the reason you found Dave Berry. He's hysterical. And all of that stuff, I think, prepared me to be this person, to realize that play is important. And so part of me was getting connected. I also had a bad time in college, I mentioned the other two, but in college, um, I'll just say it. I basically failed out of the University of Missouri. It was just not the right spot for me. I had bad things happen. A roommate had a heart attack and died in the room next to mine. It was basically the worst semester you could possibly imagine. And in all of that there was this moment where I had a play moment with my friends and we were playing soccer and stuff and I got those chemicals changed and it came back and I go, oh my gosh, this is what it feels like to be happy. And the only reason I recognized that was because I was happy in my youth. Right? Does that make sense?

Chris Miller: Totally makes sense.

Mike Montague: And that's where I was like, I have to quit drinking, I have to quit doing drugs or any of these other replacements for happiness. And I used to feel this way all the time. And so from that moment in time when I was 20 years old until now, um, I've really focused on how do I create this and be a playful person naturally, in a way that I can have as much fun every day. And remember that feeling remember that feeling of being in a play state. Because I was lucky enough to be the person who had this blessed childhood.

Chris Miller: Right? That is awesome.

Mike Montague: Yeah.

Chris Miller: Shout out to Grandma Lynn. Right?

Mike Montague: For sure.

Chris Miller: Would you say that's been one of the most important books, or, uh, what's been one of the most important books to help you kind of grow, and once you implemented that into your life, you could tell a life change for the better?

Mike Montague: That's a great question. I've read a ton of good books, and, um, I think there's a couple of influential ones. Um, I'm trying to think of one that would maybe spur the biggest change in me. There's a great book called Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute. Have you ever read that?

Chris Miller: No, but I love the title.

Mike Montague: Yeah, it's a narrative story. I tend to gravitate most to the ones that kind of are in narrative, but also have business lessons and self help. Those are my favorite books. Leadership and self deception is amazing. It talks about this backwards law of changing the paradigm that when you try really hard at something, you're less likely to get that something because of that wall we mentioned before. You're pushing up against something that you're making happen, but when you let it go, you allow things to happen to you, and you allow other things to, um, come in as possibilities. So, examples I give are funny. Like, whenever you try to go to the bathroom, you're less likely to do that. Whenever you try to fall asleep, you're less likely to do that. If you make somebody love you or you try to sell somebody overkill, the less likely they are to do that. But when you relax and you let go and you kind of give it up to the universe, um, interesting things happen. They, uh, become more likely that those things happen. And that book is really interesting. When talking about growing a business or managing, uh, employees, or really in any type of relationship, personal growth with yourself or with the spouse is once you realize, oh, I need to get out of this box of thinking that I'm in and try something else, life becomes a lot easier and more fun.

Chris Miller: Man, I love the platform you have. Um, I think about you in college where it's sucking at the University of Missouri and ultimately fail. But that moment of playing soccer and feeling like, whoa, this is it. This is what I am like, where I enjoy life, and I would encourage everybody is find those moments and go back to them and reverse engineer what it took to be in that moment. And check out the Playful Humans podcast, because you unpack a lot of that. And that's how I discovered you. And your platform is by listening to you on a different show, but going through and unpacking ways that people can practically implement, uh, this stuff in their life. So, before we wrap up Final Message from the Playful Human himself, I am.

Mike Montague: M going to tell you one of, uh, my favorite stories because we happen to be recording here in Lawrence, Kansas, some of the jazz I just mentioned I went to come on Missouri. I got to bring it, right? Um, I did grow up on the Missouri side of Kansas City and so I was a Missou fan. It happened to be in the 80s when they had good basketball teams. Um, my dad took me to a Missouri game and stuff. So I think it was just total coincidence that my dad happened to go get tickets to see Derek, uh, Johnson and teams.

Chris Miller: Uh, that's awesome.

Mike Montague: Um, but it just didn't work out for me. The big school. It was overwhelming. It was frustrating and stuff. But I've considered myself a Missouri fan until they went to the SEC.

Chris Miller: Uh, now come on over to Ku.

Mike Montague: When, uh, I was in radio, they always talk about people being sellouts and stuff and are you just doing it for the money or do you really enjoy this and all kinds of stuff. When you're in your twenty S, you got to do stuff for the money. My first endorsement was for the Ku bookstore, so I sold out immediately for $100. I said, we got the cure for what's ailing you. Jayhawk Fever. Come on down to the Ku bookstore. And I just flat. They were playing the fight song behind me.

Chris Miller: $100 and you grabbed it.

Mike Montague: $100. But it was five minutes. I read it three times into a microphone like this. $100 for five minutes worth of work. I loved it. I took it. And, uh, my name wasn't a wanted. I wasn't personally endorsing the JX. But that was always my moment of like, this is pretty fun to get paid to do something. And um, I can still be a Missouri fan and help promote the Ku Bookstore.

Chris Miller: You can, but we appreciate you promoting the Ku bookstore. I love it.

Mike Montague: So my final thoughts are just go do it. Have fun. I never turned down a chance to be on a microphone to go have fun, to have a conversation like this, connect with other people. And that's what drives me. Go find out what drives you and go do more of that and get as much of it in your life as possible.

Chris Miller: Playful, humans. Podcast. Go check it out. I've listened to a few episodes myself and I am a big fan. I want you to succeed because the more people have fun, then the better life is going to be for all of us. So the playful personality quiz, that would be fun. If you're listening to this and as long as you're not driving, I would say go take the quiz right now. Um, but until then, thanks for being here. Mike.

Mike Montague: Yeah. Uh, I didn't ask you. We didn't do anything playful. I feel like should we tell a joke or what?

Chris Miller: Before you I want you to tell a joke because I feel like you have a whole list of them.

Speaker B: I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you have a favorite joke, I would love to hear your joke. I'll tell two of mine.

Chris Miller: I'm going to start my favorite joke. I looked this up, like, this is kind of a sell out move, but whenever we were talking, I was like, I need to come up with the joke, and I'm going to use it now. That way, I can force myself to come up with one. If we ever talk again, hopefully.

Speaker B: Well, you're going to be on the playful human.

Chris Miller: Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. Um, so what the stamp say to the envelope?

Speaker B: I don't know.

Chris Miller: Okay. I have a question for you. Um, this is not part of the joke. What happens if you actually do know the joke? Do you ever finish it for your guests?

Speaker B: No, I would never do that, but I honestly haven't heard this one. But I love that we built some tension here, because now they really want to know what the stamp said to the envelope.

Chris Miller: The stamp said to the envelope or the envelope said to the stamp? If you stay with me, then we'll go places.

Speaker B: I like that one.

Chris Miller: Yes.

Speaker B: You set me up for my favorite joke, which is, what did the, um, bra say to the hat?

Chris Miller: What did the bra say to that? Man? I don't know what you go on ahead.

Speaker B: I'm going to give these two a lift.

Chris Miller: Oh, there we go. I love that one. That's really good. We need good bras, and we need good hats.

Speaker B: Definitely. Uh, as a bald man, I need a good hat, uh, in the summer.

Chris Miller: But you don't need a in the winter. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, not yet.

Chris Miller: Yeah, not yet. Don't think you'll ever need one. All right, well, folks, we'll see you next time.