The Power of Play with Mike Montague

Intro: 0:36

Welcome to Story and Horse, a podcast where we hear stories from creative lives. Meet new people, hear about their challenges and triumphs, and get inspired to move forward with your creativity. Now, here's your host, Hilary Adams.

Hilary Adams: 0:58

Hi, thanks for joining me here on the Story and Horse Podcast. I'm your host, Hilary Adams. I'm a coach, theater director and founder of Story and Horse, where I work with people to help get their creativity out into the world. Today, we're joined by Mike Montague. Mike is a game show host public speaker and podcaster. He's also been a radio DJ, web designer and Karaoke Host, you might thanks so much for joining me here today.

Mike Montague: 1:24

I'm excited to chat. This is one of my favorite topics.

Hilary Adams: 1:27

I'm excited to talk with you too. start us off by introducing yourself and telling us about you and what you do.

Mike Montague: 1:36

Sure, I have a long, crazy background, I've never had less than two jobs for my whole life. So during the day, I do sales training for large companies around the world and do marketing and podcasting and hosting stuff for Sandler, a worldwide sales training company. So most of my day is spent behind a microphone or camera, or onstage talking to large groups of business leaders. And then for fun, I host a podcast called Playful Humans, which I interview people who play for a living like artists, magicians, rappers, foley artists for movies, all kinds of types of creative and playful people. And it's been super fun for me and I host game shows at playful humans. So there's a live component where you can come in, it's kind of like an escape room model. You rent it for an hour. And I host a game show for you. There's producers and lights and sound and it's super fun. And then I do virtual ones all around the world. I've done game shows for Facebook, and Google and Qualcomm, large, you know, huge companies out in California and for anybody else that wants to do a fun team building exercise and break. But since the people listening here are listening to podcasts, the How to Succeed podcast is for sales and business leaders. That one has a well over 2 million downloads. I've been going for like seven years. But if you're into sales and leadership, you'll love that one. If you're just looking for something fun and creative, or you want to hear how other creative people create their career and their life around their creativity than Playful Humans podcast is probably the one that you would like.

Hilary Adams: 3:16

Love that. So for for the game show, can you give some example of what one might the theme or how it might run?

Mike Montague: 3:26

Yeah, there we do four basic games usually. So there's the friendly feud, where you know, we survey 100 people, and you try and guess what the top answers are. And we can write custom questions for companies and stuff, which is really fun. We try to stick away from the trivia and in the, you know, Jeopardy style stuff, just because that seems to be less fun. And it gets more competitive, or it's hard to balance the difficulty of the questions. So we go with the more creative ones like the few the wheel. We do the pricing games, which are always fun Minute to Win It challenges are always fun. And then there's a really creative game that I kind of borrowed from taskmaster, have you ever seen that show it's from now nobody has, which is great. But basically, it's a team building competition, where we give you a really vague task, and you have to use your creativity to solve it better than the other teams. And then we rank the teams from one to five or whatever. And the first team would get five points, and the last team would get one point for the task. And it's super fun. That one is my favorite one. Because it's a great comfort zone challenge. You have to figure out how to throw a paper ball, you know, crumble up a piece of paper into a ball and throw it into a trash can. And the furthest distance wins. And so the teams each get, you know, five minutes to design how they want to do it and then come back and show everybody who can do the task or something like that. That's really fun. Do you

Hilary Adams: 4:56

give them props? Or do they just get to use whatever is in the room?

Mike Montague: 4:59

Depends on what we're doing in the game show battle rooms when I do a live I'll bring the props but when it's virtual, obviously we have to use something they have around the house.

Hilary Adams: 5:09

Alright, so let's talk creativity. So how do you define creativity?

Mike Montague: 5:15

There are kind of two aspects for it for me, the first one I think is the creative part which for me, I like divergent thinking I like problem solving or are combining things that normally wouldn't be combined. But those are kind of my two favorite definitions of the creative part of it. The second part of it, for me is really about the playful expression of it. Obviously, that's what I'm about with playful humans and everything. But I think it's when you're your authentic self, and you are present in the moment, and you're really, you know, firing on all cylinders, and you're not overworking it. I think it's really hard to be creative. When you have the pressure of a job or somebody else or even comedians, right. People say, quick, say something funny. Well, that's really hard, right? You have to give yourself space and freedom to let your your brain explore and play. So I think it's half attitude for me, and then half like technique of either combining creative things or finding, you know, different solutions and problems than what is the typical, obvious right answer to something.

Hilary Adams: 6:29

So you work with companies to help them help the teams be creative together? Is that correct?

Mike Montague: 6:38

Yeah, I would say I focus less on creativity and more on that environment that allows for creativity. Because I found, like I just said, you know, when there's too much stress, and there's too much pressure, you're it's a biological thing, your body freezes up, your brain focuses on one answer that will allow you to survive the situation. And it's not programmed to think creatively. So you have to have this environment of playfulness, of creativity, of supportive structure that allows you to maybe take some risks and fail or share bad ideas that might not work. But somebody else could make them work on the team. And that's really what I focus on with the team building exercises is get people to lower the bar, take, take the pressure off, do some things that are just for fun. So you can practice your creativity skills and your team building skills, and then really reconnect with why you're doing it and what your personal strengths are. Because I think that's also what causes people stress is when you make it a job and somebody's paying you for it all of a sudden, it's not fun anymore. And that, that sucks all the play out of it. And it sucks all the creativity out of it. Because now you're a robot in a machine trying to accomplish the next work order rather than somebody who's thinking about how to make a really cool, authentic impact in a way that nobody else can.

Hilary Adams: 8:03

Hmm, the term authentic impact. Yeah, the container for creativity is so important. And I'm curious, you're talking about the actions that people are taking inside this container? Do you also work with the physical environment in terms of creating a supportive physical structure to contain, to inspire to support the creative process?

Mike Montague: 8:28

Yeah, that's interesting. Not so much. I haven't dove in to that a lot. But I do love it, obviously, you're looking at my background, and the people can see it. I try to create creative environments for myself and things that make me happy and things that will spur ideas and stuff, one of the ways that I found to be creative is I like to get all of the information, like do all the research upfront throw 1000s of ideas into my head, if I'm gonna go give a talk, I'll watch like hours of stand up comedy or other people giving TED Talks and fun things. And then I step back away from it. And I let my self process that I'll go for a walk, get out of nature, or just go to sleep or get in the shower and let your brain kind of process all of those crazy things and create new combinations of of stuff for me. And so I don't know, I do think there's something to be said for boxes and not freedom when I just feel better when I'm outside and their space above my head. It feels like I am more open and free than when I'm in a box of a room. And there's no colors or nothing on the wall or anything that that seems to struggle for me. But I know other people that would see that as a distracting that all the stuff I have on the shelf. By me. We create distractions or shiny objects for them to to not do their work.

Hilary Adams: 9:50

Well now we have to talk about what's behind you because we've now we've now to start listening to last. Yeah. So can you describe what it is? I'm looking at what's behind you?

Mike Montague: 10:02

Yeah, so I have three shelves of eight boxes each. So there's 24 boxes, and I filled them with the things that make me most happy or inspired. So I have a comedy album that's autographed from Steve Martin music album from the Barenaked Ladies. I have an old school Lego Nintendo and Lego artwork that I created with over 10,000 pieces, a lot of Star Wars stuff, some A Lego Adidas shoe. And what's one of my other favorites down here? Oh, the Douglas Adams books. That's another sci fi nerd thing. But it sounds like you might know who Douglas Adams is the end of the universe. That's one of the things that I was just in awe of his creativity when I was in middle school, probably like eighth grade. And so he's one of my personal role models. I tried to write a book like him one time, and it was the worst thing I've ever had in my whole life. But I'm definitely inspired to take risks be silly, do unexpected things like Steve Martin, the Barenaked Ladies or, or Douglas Adams.

Hilary Adams: 11:06

How did that start for you? Like when you were a little Mike, when you were young? How did how did all this get going?

Mike Montague: 11:16

That's my favorite story to tell. It's my grandmother, Grandma Lynn was an awesome lady. Her mom was a piano teacher, and she just is a super cool lady. And she's 91 Now I think. And she said up we call this the term was creative nerdery that like me, and my cousins would go in the back room, find some toys and come out and put on a show or we would record and our tape recorder things and, and do different radio shows. She introduced me to Mr. Bean and Monty Python on on PBS and stuff. And oh, the other offer I have back here, Dave Berry. Dave Berry is one of my favorite comedy authors. And she introduced me to him, the office and all kinds of things that she was just a really fun, great sense of humor lady, but also really smart. So I think those are the people that I love. If you look at the examples I've already given like Dave Berry, Steve Martin, the Barenaked Ladies are all intelligent. The Barenaked Ladies can write a song about the Big Bang and make it scientifically accurate, and still be really funny at the same time. And I love that about Steve Martin and some of my other role models. So I always think it came from grandma Lin, she was the creative nerd that inspired all of us. And my brother was a stand up comedian. He's now a PhD and a pastor. But I have cousins that were designers and artists and musicians. And that side of the family was all super creative. My dad's side of the family was the opposite. They're all business people, entrepreneur, I'm like the oldest money without a million bucks in the bank. They're all about business and sales. And they were four boys. My mom was the one of three girls. And so it was like just yin and yang. there for me growing up, but we had a really cool, supportive environment that allowed us to play and be silly and to be ourselves. And that's what I try to create for other people now, because I realized that I'm blessed. And I realized that the older you get, the less people are able to do that. And it's, it's a shame.

Hilary Adams: 13:28

Do you know, about Grandma Lynn? It sounds like she had such an eclectic taste a wonderful taste of comedy, and, you know, and types of creativity that she's interested in. Now, I'm curious about her background. Do you know how that started for her?

Mike Montague: 13:47

I don't, other than her sisters and things were also silly. So I think it it was fun. They played this prank where my great aunt gave my grandma a really horrible, ugly, like Christmas present one year. And so next year, my grandma re gifted it back to her the next year, and so every year, they would include a piece of this ugly gift in their actual gift to the other person for decades, I think. And my grandma was born on April Fool's Day, so maybe that's where it started for her. But she would steal her neighbors paper when they were you know, papers were out on the front door, keep it for the whole year and then the next year, switch it on April Fool's Day. So they would get last year's paper every year for for like, again, decades, and just super funny, but her life was a ton of struggle. I don't like you know, sharing her story that much. I don't it's hard to tell but rough childhood, you know, pretty much anybody born back then four, had a rough childhood, an indifferent environment that all of us but you know, she got divorced and raised three girls on her own and she has severe back pain. She said a pacemaker. Since I was in high school, and she's had hip replacements for so long that she's had the hip replacements replaced a second time. And so I don't know I think that people when they go through those struggles can have one of two responses, right? You either have to laugh or to cry again a thing. I think it's really cool that grandma Lin was Olafur.

Hilary Adams: 15:24

Thank you for introducing us to Grandma Lana. It's nice to meet her through Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's interesting, I was struck by struck by the fact that you combined the two sides. So you have the sales and business side of your family and the creativity side. And you're doing both now together, which is creative, mashing those together.

Mike Montague: 15:47

Yeah, well, I do talk a lot on my podcast about playful careers and how to combine these things. One of the things that I discovered in my career is much like creativity is if you have one right answer, that's okay, that's, that's valuable, it's not bad to have one solution to any problem. If you have two options, that's even better than that, usually, you know, gives you something to pivot to. And I found in my creative career, when I was on the radio, I also designed websites, and I built over 200 websites. So that was my nerd side. And then the creative side was the radio. But I found if I did just one of them, it wouldn't work that I would get burnt out. And I would run out of energy. And I need to like focus and do a website. Or if I was doing websites all the time, I'd have to go out and do karaoke, or do something playful to change my energy a little bit and recharge. But also, if one of them wasn't paying the bills, if I wasn't getting websites, or I wasn't getting work as an entertainer, I could fill in with the other thing. And that made it a lot more valuable. And then when you add in my dad's background, he became a sales trainer with Sandler like 28 years ago, and I took sales training when I was in high school before I had anything to sell that that background of over, you know, 20 years experience now for me, gave me a third thing. And when you get three things together in a combination, that's where you start really separating out from everybody else. And it makes you extremely valuable. So yes, there are some people that can make websites. Yes, there are some people that can perform on camera or on a podcast. And there are some people that know about sales and leadership principles. But there are very few people that have all three of those. So I got hired by the Sandler international team to create their online learning where I created videos on sales training in a virtual learning management system that required programming and stuff. So for them, using all three of those things in combination allows me to solve problems that other people can't solve. And also, I always give young people especially a hint, I get paid about six times what I made in radio, but about what you would do if you combine all three of those salaries together, because I have I essentially am doing three people's jobs.

Hilary Adams: 18:06

And I love the number three, it comes up a lot in all sorts of arts and painting composition in structure of plays. There's something very powerful about three, maybe it's because it's a bit of a, it brings an outlier into something stable, because two feels like you could draw a line between them and you drop a third thing in and suddenly you get the triangle, suddenly you get the disruption.

Mike Montague: 18:35

Yeah, Sandler has the success triangles. By the way, if you want to succeed in anything, it's attitude, behavior and technique. So you have to believe you'll be successful, you have to do the actions required to be successful. And then you have to get good at whatever you're doing with the technique. So we have a lot of threes in there as well. I think that's another thing that we underestimate sometimes is how biological we are, we forget that we're really just big dumb animals on a on a planet here. And so our brains don't remember lists longer than four. So three is a nice easy number where you can remember three things when you start, I always tell my wife, if she adds a fourth thing to the grocery list, she's got to texted to me, because I'm gonna forget one of those things by the time I, you know, get to a completely different place and get distracted by all the other shiny objects in the grocery store.

Hilary Adams: 19:25

Yeah, it's funny, isn't it three feels, I don't know how to describe it. But for me, it feels both. It feels settle. Now that's not the right word. It feels stable. But it also feels dynamic. So it feels like it has potential inside of it still, as opposed to like we think for it feels more settled somehow. Yeah,

Mike Montague: 19:46

you actually triggered something for me there. I mean, one I thought, you know, triangles are supposed to be like the strongest shape and in nature or something like that. So I think there is something to the strength of it and in the order. But one of the things that I discovered in playfulness is there was this really cool definition of play that it's the movement between order and chaos. And I think that three gives enough options that you can create unlimited patterns, basically and you can create some chaos out of it. But it's also not so much that there's no order to it. So there is this like, sort of magic mix of my human brain and emotions can process and play around with three ideas at the same time. But if you start throwing in 568 10, I'm gonna get cognitive overload and, and stress out. And I find that with creativity a lot, too, if you have some creative constraints, if you're trying to combine a few things, it's a lot easier than I have this one thing I want to say, or I want to say everything. And then you don't know where to go on either.

Hilary Adams: 20:53

Yeah, absolutely. We're better with boundaries on our creativity, structure and our creativity, for sure. I was when you were just saying that I thought, you know, moving between order and chaos, I was thinking, yeah, it's, it's like a movement inside, squeezing something like in and then out, and it has like a brown, it has like a breath to it. And I think sometimes when we get stuck in the creative process, we're stuck in sort of trying to either expand or head into more order, or we end up in too much chaos. And it doesn't have that flow, that expansion, contraction, expansion contraction, which is a natural process and movement.

Mike Montague: 21:34

I love that that's really what I'm trying to go for in my life, I found a couple of things that might be good examples for everybody. One is the way we experience time and fulfillment in our life is also very much tied to that it's all order. And it's all sameness, like in the pandemic, when we're all quarantined. Time flies, you can't remember, like, we all have to add two years to our memories now, because we didn't make any new memories in that time. So in the moment, it seems really long and boring. But when you look back on it, you didn't create any new memory. So it seems like it just flew by. The opposite is true. When you have chaos and a lot of novelty experiences. It feels like Time flies in the moment, you're like, Whoa, this is crazy. You're at a concert or something, it feels like it was 30 minutes instead of three hours. But when you look back on your life, and you're like, Oh, we went to this concert, we saw this awesome show, we took this trip here, you creating more novel memories, so it actually makes your life feel longer and feel more fulfilling when you do that. So I think the key is this movement between order and chaos that when and that's also what makes things funny. So comedians, create an order, and then they break the pattern with a positive response. So it's the the chaos, that brings the funny part to a joke. But it's also to our life, if we're sitting there as machines doing the same thing, and we're just working on an assembly line, it's really boring, we're not fulfilled, we're not creating new memories or challenges for us. But also, if we're living in complete chaos, it becomes overwhelming. We don't have any structure, it's really tough to be successful in that. So I try to think for myself now is not balanced. Because I think balance is the wrong word balanced is like quick, Nobody move. You know, I got everything balanced, it's gonna throw off. But how do I use it more like a teeter totter of like, how do I feel more of the extremes. And that, to me has been really fun to explore. Because that does mean you're gonna have some bad days, that does mean, you know, Craps gonna happen, and you're gonna have to feel bad stuff if you want to feel really good stuff. But I think too many people are going for safe, they're going for boring. They're going for six hours of Netflix or taking drugs or alcohol to numb themselves. So they don't feel one extreme. But they don't get to feel the other extreme, either. Does that make sense?

Hilary Adams: 23:58

Absolutely. Let's talk playfulness for a little bit here because I I love people humans and I love playfulness. And I am with you on how important it is and what you just said to me links that because I think that like as somebody who's been in theater my whole life, this chaos to order is part of the theatrical process. Like that's, I'm in that all the time. Like, I suspect that you're comfortable in that too.

Mike Montague: 24:26

We don't have a word for it in English, but I think the word you're looking for is this boondock or in Portuguese is the moment when you feel your inhibitions drop in during play and you're kind of just fully present you're you're aware of yourself but you're not self conscious and thinking about what you're doing. You're just present and I love that because you're right in a play. It's live there's people out there something could go wrong, you could trip you could forget something something's gonna happen different but for me that's what makes it fun. If it's a movie if it's pre recorded, we already did it we got as many shots at it as we want and then we go out and play the movie for an audience there's no risk there it it's fun for them because they don't know what's gonna happen but you know what it is you scripted it and everything so, for me, I You're right. I love improv. I love being in the moment. I love being on stage and I've had some crazy things happen. So I'd love to share some of those with your audience but I'll give you a handle one of mine. I was fired live on stage by Billy Idol in front of like 4000 people And I tell that story on every podcast they come on because that's the moment it made me bulletproof as a performer like you don't prepare for that I didn't have a plan for them shutting down the lights shutting down the sound and me having no control onstage in front of 4000 people I look over and they give me the throat cut sign, and then like you're done, like, Okay, well, I guess I gotta lessons learned here. But that made me bulletproof. Now, when I go on a podcast like this, and it's virtual, what is going to happen to me that is worse than that, right. And it's the magic of trying to figure it out, all along the way. And so I've done 1000s of performances, I lost count, but somewhere over 3000, probably close to 4000 performances, and I've been maced on stage by police. I did a show on 911. I've done you know, I did a live gigantic conference with 1500 people on March 7 of 2020. So that was like, the week before everything shut down. And I said China on stage on accident, and I panicked. I heard an audible gasp from 1500 people, because I said there were people from China here like right at the beginning of the pandemic. And I like blacked out. I don't remember the rest of mine. Because I was just thinking like, don't say China don't say China don't say China that I said it. And it was like those experiences to me are what makes life worth living those that are memorable stories, we get to tell if it was all safe and boring. It wouldn't be worth doing.

Hilary Adams: 27:06

You don't have to answer this if you're not comfortable doing so. But I'm so nosy. I have to know what did you do to get fired? Live on stage?

Mike Montague: 27:14

The short answer is I played KC and the Sunshine Band, do a little dance. Make a little love and get down tonight. And apparently, Billy Idol is not a fan of disco. But the longer version is they said I was on a Retro Radio Station at the time it was e 105 Playing music from retro to right now. And they said play whatever you play on the radio. Don't play any Billy Idol songs. But it's a rock show play mostly rock music. And so when they said rock music, I thought like 80s rock like Billy Idol, right? The crowds, all soccer moms. I was like I got this. These are my people. So I'm playing Jessie's Girl, Jenny 8675309. And all of the I love the creative part of that too. Because I'm making connections. You know, I'm like, Oh, that would be fun. I play those and they come on. And the manager comes out and says, we said play rock music like The Rolling Stones. And I was like, Oh, they think they're a classic rock show, not an 80s Rock Show. And I immediately panicked because as a club DJ, this was when I had CDs, there was no Wi Fi. I couldn't download new songs. So I had the songs that I brought. And there's like two rock songs you can dance to you shook me all night long and pour some sugar on me. So I played those two. And then I found like one other Rolling Stone song. And then I was like, Alright, I played three rock songs, I can probably go back to a retro and I could not that was it. They just shut off the music and, and said you're done. I didn't collect $200 That didn't pass go. I just blinked out the back and now I get paid. paid for that show by telling the story over and over.

Hilary Adams: 28:48

It's a good story. Thank you. Um, so somebody is listening to this. And they're like, Okay, playfulness. You know, like, I'm an adult. What do you mean by a playfulness? If it's not if I'm not in a career where I feel like like I can say, Okay, I'm in a rehearsal room. I'm playing around. But if that's not my world, like what is playfulness? And and part two? Because I know you're so such a pro, you could take two questions, same time. So part two is what are some things that people can do to get playful? To get their playfulness on?

Mike Montague: 29:22

Let's start with what is playfulness and some of the benefits because I think playfulness inherently is getting into that moment of flow and freedom, where you are in the moment with with no stress and no goal or objective outside of what is your doing in front of you. Right. So there's lots of different types of play, just like there is creativity. So on my website, there's a quiz, you can go to playful humans.com/quiz and find out which playful personality maybe is dominant for you. But you could be an athlete, you could like to play sports. You could be a gamer, somebody likes board games, table games. You could be an explorer, somebody that likes to go travel and walk outside and do things like that. You can be a puzzle solver. Somebody likes Sudoku and crossword puzzles and stuff. You could do creativity like painting and creative writing or I love the performing but also there's is a personality type called the producer, which really, I think fits me best where I love facilitating fun for other people, I think I felt like a little bit of an outcast as a kid and teenager. And so I feel most included are valuable when I'm having fun with a whole bunch of other people are making it fun for them. Because they're like, oh, Mike, so much fun. We want to have him back or we want to have him you know, play with us next time. So it doesn't it's really more about the attitude than it is any physical skill set. It's about putting yourself in a position where you're doing a hobby, that's, that's low stakes. It's just for fun. And it's something that you really enjoy, it creates a positive joyful feeling in your life. So I think the best ways to reconnect with that really are to think about going about what made you happy as a kid What did you love it? Did you love space and astronomy? Or astrology? Did you love drawing and coloring? Did you love building things with Lego blocks? And other stuff? Did you enjoy playing sports or board games with other people? Like what was your thing that really made you feel alive and made you feel the best version of yourself, and then go do more of that? I think the crazy thing is that if you serve a and they've done scientific studies on this, that third graders, 80% of them have genius levels of creativity, that we are naturally born to be playful, to be creative, to be expressive and to enjoy life. But somewhere around puberty. Now, kids, over 80% of kids quit recreational sports by the age of 13. Because it's not fun for them anymore, it becomes a job and it becomes about playing AAU basketball or trying to get a scholarship or make a team or tryouts and other things. And it's not, it's about winning. And it's not about playing the game anymore. But the same thing happens for everybody else in school, we get rewarded for the right answers, not the most creative answers we want to fit in, we hit puberty, we want other people to like us. And so we started becoming less of ourselves to try and fit boxes for other people. What I think people don't realize is that system was set up over 100 years ago when they needed people to be machines. So Henry Ford needed people to work like robots for eight hours a day and do one thing over and over again. So they needed schools, to train people to be boring and do one thing over and over again. And then they created the idea of retirement that oh, you could play and you could stop working at the end of your life as a reward if you work for, you know, 4050 years of doing the robot work that was invented by the Nazis in Germany in 1900s. So that's probably not what we want to model our community after, right. But now look at where we are. Now, in our age, we don't need robots, we have robots. What we need is creative people who can solve problems that robots can't solve, that can communicate and connect with other human beings that robots can't do. And we need people to bring added value of themselves in something different than what we can get from everybody else on the internet and stuff we can, we can find an answer to everything we can find somebody who's doing something boring and safe. We have millions of people doing that we need people who are weird, and who are outcasts and who are are playful and creative and building a culture that we want to live in. And so I think, especially the that are a little bit older, but even still, in our school systems, those industrial systems aren't set up. For us to live our best life in today's world, or weren't really ever set up. To live our best life as a human being it was to be a profitable robot and a cog in the machine.

Hilary Adams: 34:30

Can you tell us a little bit about the difference between finite and infinite games?

Mike Montague: 34:36

Ooh, that's a good one. That's one of my favorite topics as well. I think finite games are games that you're playing to win. And infinite games are playing games where you're playing to keep the game going. So if you think back to your childhood, when you're playing tag with your friends, your goal isn't really to win tag. Your goal is to not be it. So it's to make sure that everybody's having enough fun so that the game keeps going and we can all keep laughing and having fun and exercising. When you think about traditional sports, a lot of times it is about winning so a game of tennis can be one that's a finite game and has a score and things but you can't win the game of tennis. You can't win. You can't ever be like okay, well you know Rafael Nadal so good. Nobody else is going to play. It's Over, like, the idea is to come back again and play next time. And so the infinite part of that is, well, let's, let's go practice, let's get better. And let's come back and try again. And I think that's what we need to focus on in our life and careers is, how do we keep the game going, when I interviewed playful people on my podcast, that's the biggest thing is you don't have to be Tom Cruise in Top Gun to be a successful actor, all you have to do is make enough money to get to do it again next time. And as long as you get to keep this game going, it can be an infinite game for you. And I think people miss this content creator, but also this other middle class thing where you don't have to scale every small business, you don't have to become the next Google, you can make a nice lifestyle business for your family, you can keep the business going, you can pass it on to your kids, and you can create something that's infinitely valuable. Without trying to win the market be number one, get more sales, get higher revenue, it's a definitely a different game. But it's one that is much more sustainable, and much more fun to play.

Hilary Adams: 36:38

Thank you. When you're looking at the if you look at game if we're talking about sort of game of life, and I'm not trying to use that in a pedantic way, but who creates the rules do you think

Mike Montague: 36:52

everybody does for themselves, which is the crazy part, Steve Jobs said, The everything in this world was made up by somebody, essentially no smarter than you. So other people took their best guess at how to create a money system, a monetary system, how much you need for retirement or whatever. But it's all made up. And there are other people with 7 billion people on the planet, somebody is doing it differently. And they're able to survive and have fun. And my favorite people that I talk to are the ones that have that flipped model that when you're young, you should actually be retired, you should play while you have the strength and energy and physical capabilities to do it. And you should work when you're old when you need to stay busy. When you need to challenge your mind. There's all kinds of research that's been done out there that playful people can stave off Alzheimer's, they are more physically fit, they're happier, they're healthier, they have better relationships with their family and friends. They make more money salespeople that are playful, sell 30% More than people that don't, you smile more you have more sex, it's really across the board. There's no negative side effects to this. What I think people mess up is they start paying attention to other people's rules, somebody told you, you had to make a certain amount of money to feel successful, or somebody told you, you had to be serious to get ahead, and that person was doing what they thought was best, and what's best for what they thought was best for you. But that doesn't make it true. And that's the hard part. So I really try to challenge people to think about what is true for them, and what kind of life and rules they want to create for themselves. And it's hard when you're in a family or you have other people around and a business and coworkers and stuff to get other people to buy into unusual or creative rules for things. But it's super fun. And I found that that's actually where you find more success that if you follow everybody else down a path. It's like following everybody else's treasure map, well, somebody else is gonna get to the treasure first. But if you create your own map, there's a lot better chance you find a treasure that nobody else has found yet you create unique value for yourself. And so it's actually the opposite. When people think they need to fit in, they're becoming less valuable when they think they need to stand out or do something different. They're creating more value in our culture. Can we end with one of my favorite quotes? Oh, please. Howard Thurman, a former Supreme Court justice said Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is more people who have come alive. And I think we're really seeing that right now. And it's such a powerful quote to me, because we don't need more people, you know, trying to climb the corporate ladder or something. What we need is somebody who is trying to move the ladder to a completely different wall. We need somebody that can entertain people that can live their best life and inspire other people to break out of that mold too. And I think that's the fun part of

Hilary Adams: 40:12

thank you if people want to reach you. I know you mentioned you mentioned the playful humans website earlier. But if people like to connect with you, what are some ways that they can do that?

Mike Montague: 40:21

LinkedIn is my primary social media accounts. You can find Mike Montague on there, search playful humans and then you'll you'll find me as well. Playfulhumans.com has all the links. There's a YouTube channel there and podcast is on all the podcasts stations. For the sales training stuff. It is sandler.com and the How to Succeed podcast. I like sharing that one. It's been really fun and I've gotten to interview some big guests on both podcasts. So go check them out and find ones that are right for you. You don't have to listen to all 600 of them. Just Just pick one that. That sounds like it'll speak to you and try it out.

Hilary Adams: 40:58

Oh, thank you, Mike. It's been a joy to talk with you. Thank you for celebrating playfulness and creativity with us here today.

Mike Montague: 41:07

You bet.

Intro: 41:09

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