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Real Coffee with Scott Adams

Episode 3115 - The Scott Adams School 03/16/26

16 Mar 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 30.448 Erica Zia

all right are we going live is it saying in three two one i saw it on x okay all right no countdown steven's there good morning steven good morning everybody morning it's monday it's gonna be a great week i can feel it can you guys feel it i can it's already a great week It is already a great week. Just the pre-show with these three people here with me has made my week great.

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30.568 - 34.698 Erica Zia

So we're off to a good start. I like the weekdays.

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35.5 - 35.64 Unknown

Mm-hmm.

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37.527 - 64.986 Erica Zia

Welcome in, everybody. Just going to give you a chance to filter in. Do you have your reframe your brain books with you for extra credit? We're going to do a reframe. Joshua Lysak is our guest professor today. We are thrilled every time he's here. I know you guys are too. And Owen and Marcella have picked out some great news stories for us to discuss in this second half of the program. Yeah.

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65.371 - 69.176 Erica Zia

So, do you think we're all in here, you guys? Do you think everyone got in?

69.877 - 72.241 Owen Gregorian

I think so. I see healthy numbers on all the platforms.

72.741 - 78.189 Erica Zia

Healthy. All right, you guys. There's something we have to do first. Grab your vessel.

79.531 - 106.206 Scott Adams

But if you'd like to enjoy the simultaneous sip, it doesn't take much. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice or stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like me some coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine to the day, the thing that makes everything better. Simultaneous sip. Go.

112.415 - 115.219 Scott Adams

That's the way to start the day. Tiger juice.

Chapter 2: How can overcoming embarrassment improve public speaking skills?

700.059 - 723.908 Joshua Lisec

And of course, in, in my unhumble opinion, I'm going to dial the ego up a little bit. It is a fantastic Ted talk. And even nine years later, I am very proud to send it off to people right now. I'm significantly healthier than I was at that time. I had been vegan for a while. And after 10 years of chronic veganism, I'm no longer suffering and enduring that experience.

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723.928 - 733.986 Joshua Lisec

So fortunately, I would say I look better now. But the delivery and whatnot are still so good that I will still share the video with people if they want to see this highlight of early Joshua Lysak lore.

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734.768 - 738.775 Erica Zia

We'd love to see it. Will you post it for us after on your page?

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739.476 - 739.817 Unknown

Sure.

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740.033 - 761.957 Erica Zia

That would be amazing. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. I'm sure the mosquitoes are all the wiser for your practicing out there. Marcella, listen, girl, I know you are a Jocko devotee, so you must be very sharp on these types of things. So are you ever worried about embarrassment or your ego? How do you handle it if you are?

763.102 - 791.532 Marcela Marjean

So I was thinking of something that Marc Andreessen just said in an interview that I wanted to share with you guys that reminds me of this is that he talked about the great men of history had little to no introspection, meaning that they just went They just go, go forward, go. And I think part of that, you know, too much thinking about things doesn't lead you to action.

792.033 - 808.561 Marcela Marjean

So this kind of reminds me of that. You just have to proceed and do it and then not think of being scared, but think of the outcome. and not the process. I think that's another reframe. Um, so that's, that's where I would focus on.

809.242 - 834.935 Marcela Marjean

Um, where I lost my embarrassment is when I started teaching and, uh, having 40 kids in front of you that don't care what you have to say, uh, are doing drugs or just like, uh, had the worst of parents and all that and grabbing their attention was my, um, Like I just focused on that and being able to get to having them not stab me.

835.477 - 844.442 Marcela Marjean

And so that you lose your embarrassment very quickly when you're teaching people. And that's where I lost my embarrassment.

Chapter 3: What storytelling framework can enhance communication?

1042.316 - 1056.788 Owen Gregorian

And I think the whole structure of it gets people out of their shell. They, they, you get more comfortable with it just through practice. by getting up in front of people you don't know and giving a talk but you know, at the end of it, they're going to say something good about it. They're just going to point out what you did right.

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1057.449 - 1064.998 Owen Gregorian

And so you can work on improving in an environment where there's no critical nature to it. There's no negative feedback at all. And that really did make a difference.

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1065.318 - 1084.123 Owen Gregorian

I was no longer as quiet and I don't think anyone would necessarily describe me as a quiet person now, but I still am, I would say an introvert and probably, you know, quiet most of the time when I'm around my wife and, you know, things like that. But, you know, it made a big difference. And I think it really helped my career from that point forward.

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1084.183 - 1102.388 Owen Gregorian

And then from there, it was probably just going through all these client experiences where I was expected to be the expert. So of course I had to talk a lot and I had to lead them through all these processes. And sometimes they were very stressful. Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes things aren't what you expect and you might have difficult people you're dealing with.

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1102.568 - 1125.044 Owen Gregorian

And I had some clients that swore at me and I had clients that were ready to tear down every idea I had that were Harvard MBAs. And I had to engage with them and convince them that I was right when they thought they knew better. And that particular client, because it was basically all Harvard MBAs and the culture of that client was they were required to disagree with you if they didn't agree.

1125.846 - 1131.655 Owen Gregorian

And you had to respond to the challenge. And if you didn't win the argument, then

1131.972 - 1157.76 Owen Gregorian

you lost like and if you didn't win early on apparently i would have been probably booted out of there and i got through that and i i survived it and i you know was able to deliver everything we were supposed to deliver and and basically outsmarted a bunch of harvard mbas um and and that gave me a lot of confidence from that point forward i mean honestly every challenge after that it was like yeah this is easy yeah i don't i don't you know it's nothing like what i've been through

1157.74 - 1173.794 Erica Zia

Well, that's like what Scott wrote in the reframe, like just start doing the things. And each time, like you feel that little bit of embarrassment and you push it away, you're just toughening yourself up. And the next time it won't be like that. And the next time and the next time, the next time. And before you know it, you've pushed it away.

1173.855 - 1199.181 Erica Zia

And I think I want to turn it over to Joshua for his lesson for us. But I just want to challenge everybody. Thank you, Owen. And you guys should know that Owen is actually really freaking funny. I've known him for a very long time. And don't let that stone cold look on his face, that expressionless face fool you. He's very funny. He has a good sense of humor. He can be a little wise ass himself.

Chapter 4: How does Joshua Lisec prepare for high-stakes speaking engagements?

1735.246 - 1752.233 Joshua Lisec

How is it different? How do we defy expectations? You see, the how is a lot of fun. So in this case with our hypothetical postman story, let's play with how a little bit here. So how is this different? How is this unusual? How do you know he was happy?

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1753.124 - 1769.547 Erica Zia

want me to tell you yeah hypothetically just running with this yeah okay because he was singing a song that it was his last day on the job and he was retiring because um something about a book he wrote with joshua lysak just hit the charts and was doing really well

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1770.843 - 1795.619 Joshua Lisec

fantastic excellent and then so what what what song was it um he made it up it was just like i'm retiring today and he was like skipping around it was great cool cool and if it's different if it's if it's different kind of story we could have it be he was singing i don't care by iggy pop as he was crashing over all the mailboxes by the side of the road true That's a different kind of story.

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1796.08 - 1816.59 Joshua Lisec

Rather funny. You see how the how explanation allows us to go off in a number of different directions and can tell a specific type of genre story. You know, you could turn it into a Western. You could turn it into a murder mystery. You could turn it into a sci-fi fantasy. But the setup is so key.

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1817.011 - 1844.435 Joshua Lisec

And we see this with usually first-time novelists, debut memoir authors, where they will not give you a setup. They'll try to recount details. They'll give us the autobiography of their life. So I was born here at this place. So these kinds of parents and... that gives your autobiographical details, and then they'll really zoom in, wink, wink, on early life section, let's say.

1845.437 - 1866.595 Joshua Lisec

And again, who really cares, okay? That's not getting you much of anywhere. So even in the age of AI, when I'm brought in to work with someone on their memoir or their autobiography, I will focus in on the how dimension, meaning what kind of story is it that you're wanting to tell? What sort of lessons do you want to communicate? How do you want to be remembered?

1866.996 - 1891.35 Joshua Lisec

How do you want to add value to people's lives? How do you want people to recommend your book to others? And it's like, oh, you mean I have to be useful? Oh, yes. Scott Adams here. And therefore, depending on what the how they want to communicate is, then we'll focus on this setup of it. What was the inciting incident of your life that sent you into your how, so to speak?

1892.022 - 1907.504 Joshua Lisec

So then the first chapter might be one of the most important or significant or life-altering episodes of their life. And we communicate it in these dimensions, who, what, when, where, and why. And then the rest of the book now teaches out the how, let's say.

1907.845 - 1917.118 Erica Zia

So if you're writing a book, Joshua, you might start with like that kind of a setup for the first chapter. It's all about this buildup.

Chapter 5: What unique insights does Joshua offer about personal branding?

2032.551 - 2056.978 Joshua Lisec

And there's different dimensions of that, right? And so you can imagine the scene. You can visualize it. You can, with your mind's eye, you can hear aspects of it in your mind's ear. You can feel aspects of it. And then the why is, oh, well, that makes sense. Why are you telling me this? Why are we doing this? What's the purpose for this? Get to the point. What's in it for me?

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2057.431 - 2084.204 Joshua Lisec

That's communicated by the fifth dimension, which is why. And then what's unusual about this? How did it turn out? How did it go? You know, my son, his stories, you know, we practice almost daily. And his stories will be like, let's see, I was playing, let's see, so we got the who and the what, at a playground this past weekend. It had been a while since I had seen my aunt, let's say.

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2084.224 - 2108.767 Joshua Lisec

So now we have the five dimensions. And then I would ask like, how did it go? It was fun. How did you know it was fun? Well, because, and then he tells a three minute anecdote, right? So the how is a repeatable question. But I included that with my little TEDx example here of how the talk went. How did it turn out?

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2108.807 - 2133.253 Joshua Lisec

How did all the stuff that I told you before with the setup, how did it actually go? Now, this can become a full-fledged book just from this one little anecdote with these five points in just a couple of sentences. You can unfold it out from here. So you can sort of scale this up or scale this down depending on how much time that you have. So I could expand, for example,

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2133.875 - 2151.274 Joshua Lisec

on who it was that I pitched this TEDx talk to. Perhaps I was nervous about this. In the one example, I could talk about how, and I'd given you these details earlier, which I had sort of followed the expanded version of this, an unfolded, longer version, scaled up version of this.

2151.854 - 2162.646 Joshua Lisec

When I originally told you this anecdote, this is a scaled down version, which I communicated in roughly three to four sentences. Whereas the first time I told you earlier in the show, it was closer to three to four minutes.

2163.387 - 2163.527 Unknown

Mm-hmm.

2163.845 - 2179.102 Joshua Lisec

And also, if I wanted to teach this, this exact same story, I could expand it into a three to four hour workshop following all the dimensions of this without any deviation. That's why I love this and I call it the easiest storytelling because anytime you need to tell a story, what's the easiest way to do it?

2179.582 - 2192.957 Joshua Lisec

Whether it's three to four sentences, three to four minutes, or a frigging workshop, three to four hours. You come back to these six things every single time and you just add more details to each of them to expand it given how much time you have allotted.

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