# Breaking your own rules after 15 years

- **Episode:** [181](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/181.md) (2025-03-20)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** breaking-rules, change, adaptation
- **Time:** 32:58–37:13 (start 1978s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/181?t=1978](https://truthliesandwork.com/181?t=1978)

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[32:58] Steve Carse: There's a lot of, there's definitely a lot of stories. So I think that's kind of the backdrop of each of the lessons is the King of Pop story. My favorite is about kind of getting outside of your comfort zone. I was at a a drive-in movie theater festival for, I don't even know how to explain it. It's called the Drive Invasion. It's a, it's an interesting festival. A lot of, a lot of tattoos, a lot of kind of Betty Boop type folks. Uh, it was on a parking lot and I was running out of pops. I'd gotten dropped off by, um, with my friend and, um, it, the pops were, uh, in the early days, you don't really know how dry ice works very well. It's a mysterious being. Um, but it basically, um, evaporates over time and dissipates based on all kinds of conditions. And, uh, I was there, the dry ice poof vanishes, the pops are starting to melt. I had about 500 of them. It's probably, you know, 10,000 people at the festival or something like that. I can't afford for these to melt. Um, I'm used to just like sitting at my cart and waiting for people to come to me, but I have to sell all these probably in like the next 2 hours. So my friend and I, who I'd kind of coaxed to come and hang out with this interesting festival with me, we went on like this, you know, journey. By the end of it, there was a parrot that was kind of with us on my shoulder. And we had like just a ragtag group of people that were like kind of cheering for us on this escapade of trying to sell all of our Pops and wheeling and dealing. And we kind of sold the last one at, I don't know, we, they didn't melt. We didn't lose any. We probably didn't sell them all for full price or whatever, but It was this super, super hard, physically hard, out of my comfort zone experience that was like my favorite moment of the year
[34:52] Al Elliott: I love it. I love it. So I think I've read somewhere, I'm going to just check I'm saying this right, that there's a quote by you always trying to slow down, enjoy the ride, and realize these are the good old days. Is that something then, I mean, is that what you are telling your employees? Do you call them employees and team members? Is that what you do? Do you say, oh, just slow down? Or are you like, oh my God, these are gonna melt. You've gotta sell these today
[35:15] Steve Carse: Yeah, I thought I came up with the phrase. I've got it written on my wall behind me, as you can see there. And after saying it, it came to me like a couple years into the business at one of our field days, which is like a, we have just a party at the end of the year to give away all the Pops we had left that we couldn't sell. In the early days, it's kind of evolved a little bit, but I just had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that what I was in right then was amazing. And usually we're looking forward to something in the future, or we're kind of, you know, thinking about, oh, that last year was amazing. I just felt it in real time. And I started to realize like, And it's hard. Like, I have a hard time with this because the truth is when you're in a weird time, whether it's a weird time personally with what you're going through with yourself or your family or your friends, or your country is in a weird time and politically it feels like everything's coming undone. We get so much news. We're a part of all of these things that it's hard to sometimes give yourself permission to like, feel like you can enjoy what you're going through. But the philosophy that I've adopted is like, this is my life that I have gotten. And it's at this, I think, pretty special time in the world. And I want to appreciate that rather than only hope for something better. Yeah. Just, I think it's just a little bit of a reminder. You gotta be grateful and appreciate where you are right now. Not looking forward too much for the future, not kind of fetishizing or overvaluing the past, but living in the present
[37:05] Al Elliott: You mentioned there Zingerman's and they said no to a standard Disney. Is there, have you got a kind of a Disney thing where you are just going to say, we are never doing that?