October 7, 2026 – Add then Multiply David Horne and Emotional Dictionary Doug Johnston

00:04 Intro 1: In the AM, radio network, broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning School for Startups Radio, while we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion, Jim Beach.

00:22 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there riding the roller coaster life of being an entrepreneur. My goal is to provide you with a mosaic of interviews on every single topic that we can think of remotely related to small business. Not every interview is for you, but we have an incredible index and table of contents and all that kind of stuff. Great search. And so we make it easy for you to find the five or six amazing interviews of the thousands that we have done. Today, I’m excited to add 2 more great interviews to the mix, and I mean that. These are some of my favorite interviews. They are just both amazing. First, we have David B. Horne. He is with Add Then Multiply, and has built a venture capital source for women, and tomorrow on the next show we post, I have two women who are experts on raising money, and we discuss it from the other side. Absolutely fascinating. These 2 interviews paired together are just great. Doug is, I mean, David is amazing with what he is doing to help women as well. And so we’ve got to give him kudos for that. After that, we have Doug Johnston. This is one of those interviews where if you’re not happy with yourself, you don’t want to listen to, I guess, or maybe if you’re unhappy, you need to listen. He is with ChoosingEmotions.com and has a new encyclopedia of emotions that he has put out. There are 272 emotions that humans feel and that just blew me away and we get into a discussion on how important it is to choose your emotions. You’re in charge of your mental state, and I have not hidden that I have had some depression and mental unhappiness issues in the last several years, lost both of my parents, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And so it’s just fascinating to discuss our emotions and how we are responsible for them. And some of the emotions that we don’t even think about that we are experiencing, and we discussed a great section on how to choose and make it so you are happier. And so anyway, if you are unhappy, maybe this is the perfect interview for you to listen to, to make yourself happy. And I, as I don’t know if I say this in the interview or not, if you’re unhappy, get busier. Work is the ultimate solution. Anyway, great, great show. Thanks for being with us. We’re gonna get started in just a second, right after you buy my real environmentalist book. It was a finalist for the IPPY Awards, by the way.

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03:51 Jim Beach: Thank you. We are back and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome David B. Horne to the show. He is the founder and CEO of Add Then Multiply. It’s a really great idea that to be an entrepreneur. You don’t have to start a build, a business. You might just go out there and acquire one. He has a face method, the FACE method, which helps us do that. And so I’m excited to learn that from him. He has raised millions of dollars for other businesses, a hundred-and-something million dollars. I think I saw $125 million. He has had some companies that have grown from $1 million in revenue to $27 million in revenue in just three years. He has a book out called Add Then Multiply: How Small Businesses Can Think Like Big Businesses and Achieve Exponential Growth, and it won a business book award. He is also the, I’m going to have to take him to task on this whole thing too. He’s founder of Funded Female Founders and the founder of Funding Focus, which is a social enterprise to raise money for women. David, welcome to the show. How you doing?

05:06 David B. Horne: Thank you very much, Jim. I’m very well looking forward to this.

05:15 Jim Beach: Shouldn’t women be in charge of a women’s organization raising money for women?

05:18 David B. Horne: Well, you know, I’ve had that conversation with people a few times. It, um, it all came about 7 years ago when I was speaking in an event about fundraising, and a woman asked me why so little funding went to female founders, and I said, I don’t know, but I’d find out, and I was shocked by what I found out. And I looked at what was going on around and I just thought, maybe this is a calling for me to do something that’s just different. And I, I’ve done a lot of introspection over the intervening years and I, I look back on, a couple of key events. One of them was, I grew up in the 60s and 70s and my mum was a bit of a feminist. She would have hated being called that, but when I was 7 years old and I told my mom I liked chocolate chip cookie, but I wanted more. She taught me how to bake. And when I was 15 and I had my 1st girlfriend, and I said to my mom, I, I, I thought I looked smarter wearing shirts than iron. So she taught me how to iron shirts. And then when I was 17, I met my wife. And um, yeah, I’ve just, I’ve, I’ve grown up with strong women all my life, and just, so I just felt, this is the universe pointing me in a direction.

06:48 Jim Beach: Okay, I still think that a woman should, I, I, I think it speaks poorly of women that they’re not doing this themselves. Um, and I’m not sure that I agree that there’s a lack of funding for women, the VCs would love to.

07:06 David B. Horne: The lack of investment funding going into female-founded businesses. In the United States, less than 3% of all venture capital money goes to women. In the UK and Europe, it’s less than 2%.

07:17 Jim Beach: I’m going to argue that that’s the women’s fault, not the VC’s fault. The VC would love to fund women if they came in with a good idea.

07:29 David B. Horne: I disagree with you.

07:30 Jim Beach: What, you think that they turn all, turn good ideas away?

07:32 David B. Horne: I think that a lot of VCs are very narrow-minded, uh, very focused on, um, what they know and they don’t necessarily understand female led businesses. Um, there is still evidence of misogyny. There is a lack of women in senior investment roles in venture capital firms, and just the very fact that, you know, the latest statistics show something like 7% of all of the pitch decks submitted came from female founders, and yet less than 3% of the money goes to them.

08:01 Jim Beach: Okay, that’s the best stat in your behalf that I’ve heard that 7 and three. Do you think that this is any bit of an Elizabeth Holmes leftover thing, you know, there was the movie that they made about… I mean.

08:19 David B. Horne: It’s a tricky one. My, you know, my counter to that would be, well, well, look at, um, look at we work. Look at how much money, uh, the WeWork people, which were all men raised and completely burned. So I, I know there’s the Elizabeth Holmes story and she was a crook and she’s in jail. Um, but there have been a lot of stories about men who lied and raised a lot of money and some of them got caught in her in jail. I, I don’t think it’s a, a, an overhang on that. No.

08:57 Jim Beach: Okay, the Hulu movie argued that the Stanford professor that originally busted her before even she started, this Stanford woman professor said, what you’re doing is not going to work and it’s just not scientifically true or possible. And she, at the end of the movie, that series had quite a strong point, argument that you’re going to hurt other women. Other women are going to be hurt by you. And so I’m interested to get your feedback on that. All right, let’s move on from that, David, get back to the most important stuff. Tell me about Add Then Multiply, please.

09:33 David B. Horne: Okay, so Add Then Multiply is a consulting firm. We, pardon me, we support entrepreneurial business leaders in two areas. Um, my background is finance. I’m a qualified CPA or chartered accountant, um, trained with PWC many, many years ago, and then I worked in industry for about 25 years and decided to leave and set up on my own. And uh, we do, we do 2 things. We put fractional finance teams into entrepreneurial businesses, and we call it insourcing. So we become the client’s team and support them and give them really strong, solid finance management because one of the things I’ve discovered over many years of working with entrepreneurs is they’re pretty good at marketing and selling whatever it is that they do, and they’re pretty good at the operational delivery of whatever it is that they’ve sold, but they’re not very good at managing the flow of money.

10:30 Jim Beach: I would agree.

10:31 David B. Horne: And so we put people into their business who become part of their team, in effect, and support them so that they can get reliable, useful financial information as opposed to what they might get from their external accountant, which is just quarterly compliance.

10:48 Jim Beach: Yes.

10:49 David B. Horne: And then the other thing that we do as they grow and scale is we implement our face methodology, fund acquire, consolidate, and exit that allows them to grow much, much faster. And you mentioned in the beginning the example of the one company where we grew from $1 million to $27 million in three years.

11:09 Jim Beach: Yes, very impressive. So, should we go through the face methodology?

11:13 David B. Horne: Sure, sure. So there’s, there’s, there’s 4 steps. The first one is fund, so that’s raising money. That’s finding investors to support your business, to back you and your team, and to support you on your growth journey. Then there’s acquire, and most of acquire is going out and buying other companies, but it might also be acquiring some important assets. It might be, um, finding other people who are key to support your growth that you might have thought up until now you can’t afford. And and really looking at, how can I use this money to scale my business? What are the key assets that I need? And then the next step, C, is consolidate, so that’s putting the things together. Whether that’s bringing in the asset, bringing in the people, or indeed bringing in a whole company that you’ve acquired, you build up, and then you reach a point where it’s time for exit. And that’s the last stage. In a nutshell.

12:15 Jim Beach: All right. Wow, we can compress 20 years of work into a minute and a half. That was easy. When you talk about acquire. Are you also talking about buying—you said, you know, technology—but is this also acquiring other companies in your industry and consolidating, as in buying all of the diaper companies that are not named Pampers?

12:41 David B. Horne: Exactly. Exactly. Or, you know, it might be, it might be that you buy a small paper mill so that you’ve got a dedicated supply of what you need to produce your diapers.

12:54 Jim Beach: Okay.

12:56 David B. Horne: So it could be, or it might be that you buy into a distribution company that has distribution around the country or around the world of pampers. Oh, sorry, of diapers. Right. Um, so it’s, it’s really, there are a wide range that you can look at. You can either go out and expand geographically and buy up a bunch of diaper manufacturing companies around the country or around the world, or you can look more across the supply chain and how you can scale with that.

13:26 Jim Beach: So horizontally, vertically, backwards and forwards.

13:28 David B. Horne: Exactly.

13:29 Jim Beach: All right. Is it true in the UK and in Europe that you’re facing the same demographic drop off that we are, that you have literally millions of businesses owned by 65 year olds who can’t figure out what to do with them? Is that a… Okay.

13:47 David B. Horne: Oh, absolutely correct. And and it’s really interesting, Jim, because there are a number of players here in the UK and internationally who are running programs teaching people how to buy companies for no money down and basically try and get these companies for cheap. I’m 64 years old, and I’m sort of sitting here thinking, I’m at the tail end of the baby boom. I was born in 1962. And I’m thinking maybe my role is really to support the baby boomers who are looking at these things to identify how they can maximize the value of their companies. A lot of them, for a lot of founders, they never really think about selling their company until all of a sudden they’ve decided, right, I’ve had enough, I’m going to sell. And that’s the worst time to sell. In in reality, to maximize the value of your company, you need to spend. I typically say you need to spend three years preparing the company so that you can maximize your value.

14:51 Jim Beach: Doing what? What do I do in those three years? How do I get ready?

14:58 David B. Horne: So the 1st thing that we do is we would come in and do a comprehensive assessment of what’s going on in the business. What’s your customer base like? Do you have an overly concentrated group of customers? Do you have one that accounts for 50% of your revenue, for instance? If that’s the case, then what can we do to diversify that? Because that’s a big, big risk, especially where that large customer might have been a customer for many, many years, and so it’s a personal relationship, and when you, the founder, leave, that personal relationship is gone. So for the buyer, that’s a big risk. So that’s one of the things that we do. We also sit down and work through your financials and help you build a financial plan because we want to be able to demonstrate that your business is growing. Nobody likes to catch a falling knife. They like to buy, they like to buy growing companies, and so we look at what do we need to change in the business to enable growth. We look at who’s on your management team? Are they the right people? In many founder-led companies that have been going for a long time, I see typically the founder makes all the key decisions and has a bunch of people around them who do what they’re told to do. And for a buyer coming in, that’s again a really dangerous thing because once the founders gone, there’s no decision makers in there. So let’s look at what’s the right structure of the business in terms of the team and the organizational structure that allows you, the founder, to sort of step back a bit and take an overview, but have a team of people who are executing. And again, I often say, as I said, before with the sales and marketing approach to, and then the operational delivery and then the finance, you want to have good leaders in each of those functions. Anything that, anything that reduces founder dependency increases the value of the business.

17:08 Jim Beach: Sure.

17:09 David B. Horne: And then beyond that, there’s a lot of legal preparation, making sure you’ve got all the right contracts in place, with customers, with suppliers, with employees, that you’re compliant with all of your legal requirements, that all of your filings have been done properly, that all of your taxes are done properly. There’s a whole bunch of things that are designed to de-risk the proposition for the new owner coming in, so that they’re buying a clean, growing company as opposed to coming in and buying something that, you know, Joe Bloggs has been running for the last 40 years and everything’s in Joe Bloggs’s head. Um, and and and nobody else knows what’s going on.

17:53 Jim Beach: Do you have the situation there? You know, here in the United States, We run a business so that we pay as little taxes as possible, right? So we might do things differently to minimize our taxes and… You know, like show as little income as possible, for example.

18:08 David B. Horne: Absolutely.

18:10 Jim Beach: And so, but I’m, you know, taking some money on the side and it’s paying for my car lease and, you know, we make money on the road. And my wife’s car and my kid’s car.

18:23 David B. Horne: Exactly.

18:24 Jim Beach: But then, when we get ready to sell— And in those three years, that stuff gets cleaned out.

18:31 David B. Horne: Yes. And and the founder will have to, you know, bite their lip and pay a bit more in tax because the, the, the whole idea is if you can demonstrate that the company is profitable and growing, the purchase price of the company will be based on a multiple of your earnings. And so, the whole philosophy changes from, how do I minimize my earnings so I don’t have to pay any tax to, how do I maximize my earnings so that I can maximize the value that I get when I sell the the company.

19:10 Jim Beach: Exactly, yes. Some people find that really hard. All right. How long do you think that? If I only have 6 months, can I get ready in 6 months?

19:17 David B. Horne: I mean, 6 months is better than saying I’m going to sell today because I can’t stand it anymore and you can take steps, but in an ideal world, you just needs the time to get it going. You just need the time to work through those things. So 6 months is better than nothing, but it’s not ideal.

19:40 Jim Beach: All right. And I’ve seen that seminar also on how to raise or how to buy a money or let me start over. How to buy a business with no money. I’ve seen that seminar. And it includes a lot of major assumptions like the seller will take terms and you have $50,000 in inventory that you can sell off immediately and a lot of other things that it just sort of assumes. It looks almost like a game. I don’t know that I believe that you can really buy a business for 0 down that you want, you know? You can find it, you probably don’t want that business if you could find it.

20:22 David B. Horne: And that’s my response to those kind of things because I always, I always say to people, well, if specialists in turning a business around, then go for it, buy something cheap. I’ve never done this before, and, it, it’s just much, much more challenging, and, and one of my favorite quotes from Warren Buffett is that it is far better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price than to buy a fair business at a wonderful price.

20:53 Jim Beach: That’s good advice.

20:54 David B. Horne: Yeah.

20:55 Jim Beach: Yeah, one’s got to love that. Yes, I’m sad to see him step away, but my goodness, he worked until, what is he, 91 now?

21:04 David B. Horne: He’s 96 now.

21:05 Jim Beach: 96? Oh wow.

21:09 David B. Horne: And and he’s still the non-executive chairman. He still goes into the office every day.

21:11 Jim Beach: And he replaced himself with a.. 50-year-old. Is that true?

21:14 David B. Horne: Yeah, Greg Abel.

21:18 Jim Beach: Yes, that’ll be interesting to watch to see if he can maintain the same standards without Warren there and without Charlie Munger.

21:25 David B. Horne: I’ve been an investor in Berkshire Hathaway for many years, and I follow it very closely. I think what Greg Abel is doing is really good, but, oh my, those are big shoes to fill.

21:40 Jim Beach: Yes. And how much money do they have sitting on the sidelines right now? That kind of bothers me.

21:47 David B. Horne: More than $300 billion.

21:49 Jim Beach: How much again?

21:50 David B. Horne: $300 billion.

21:51 Jim Beach: Right. That’s that’s the GDP of a small country. Right. So you’re only getting inflation on that part of the asset. I think that they should deploy that. Why, what argument do they make for not deploying that?

22:05 David B. Horne: Warren’s argument was that he couldn’t find anything that was going to create the right kind of long-term value, and so he just puts the money into T-bills. At least he’s got a hedge against inflation.

22:18 Jim Beach: Right, yes.

22:21 David B. Horne: Greg is starting to invest a bit more. Greg has already made several acquisitions. They’ve taken a $100 million stake in Google, or Alphabet now, which is the parent company. They’ve bought 3 home building companies. Uh, I think one of them does like prefab homes and the other 2 are more traditional, um, and they’re looking at energy investments. So, so, he’s, he’s quite actively uh, looking at ways to, to, to spend that money, which I think is great.

22:51 Jim Beach: Yes. Well, Also, Apple is sitting on 500 billion, I think. I don’t understand that either. That’s called a dividend, buddy. Give me some of that.

22:59 David B. Horne: Yes it is.

23:02 Jim Beach: I don’t understand why the tech companies aren’t thinking that they need to give a dividend.

23:04 David B. Horne: Yeah, I, I think it’s one of those long running things, it’s almost a, it’s almost a leftover from having been a bootstrap startup company where you hung over every dollar that you had, um, and, but yes, you’re absolutely right. You’re absolutely right. There comes a point where you don’t need any more money in the bank.

23:29 Jim Beach: Is AI Scare stories taking over the British media right now here this week in particular, we are getting, we all die in 2 years.

23:37 David B. Horne: Oh, yeah.

23:38 Jim Beach: It’s the Terminator all over again.

23:41 David B. Horne: Yes, yes. Yeah, yes, yes, we’re we’re getting exactly the same thing. It’s a it’s a global phenomenon. Um, I, I personally, I think it’s media hype. I don’t think it’s. That serious? It’s it’s definitely something that we need to look at, but some of the conversations about shutting down AI and all that, you’re not going to stop technology. That’s that’s the challenge. The AI is getting smarter and smarter. What whether the AI has that kind of evil thing where it’s going to take over and destroy humanity? I don’t know. I suppose it would be our fitting end. You know, the dinosaurs had the meteorites that crashed into the Earth and caused global blackouts. Um, maybe maybe we’ve created something that’s going to cause our own demise. I hope not.

24:31 Jim Beach: I kind of think some of the CEOs want that to happen. They want to go use the crazy bunkers that they’ve built in New Zealand. You know, I think some of them are starting to look like real James Bond villains, you know?

24:47 David B. Horne: Well, the next James Bond movie writes itself. You know, all you have to do is follow Sam Altman around for a day or two. Exactly.

24:59 Jim Beach: Who do you think the next James Bond should be, David?

25:01 David B. Horne: Oh.

25:02 Jim Beach: I’m pretty good for it. What about you?

25:04 David B. Horne: No, no, no. I mean, I, I, I still, I still like Connery.

25:09 Jim Beach: Yeah. Well, he died, so.

25:13 David B. Horne: Yeah, I know he did.

25:14 Jim Beach: It was a long time ago. Even more important, David, are you on Team William or Team Harry?

25:19 David B. Horne: Well, I mean, William’s going to become the king when Charles died. I think, When you when you look at it, William has been groomed to, in the knowledge that he will be the king, and Harry was sort of the insurance policy, if you will. Which is why Harry called his book Spare, because the idea was when Charles and Diana had their children, William was called the heir, and Harry was called the spare. I think, I think Harry’s kind of overdone it with his media stuff. No, I, I, I, I like William. I think he’s I think he’s good, then he’ll be a good king.

26:01 Jim Beach: Well, we’re so glad that Harry is gone out of the United States. All of us just hate him. So. Looks like a real idiot from where we stand. Anyway, David, great information. I love your philosophies. I love the face methodology, and I’ll even give you the VC for women. They need more, but again, I think that I just wish women were doing more for themselves in that respect. Anyway.

26:26 David B. Horne: A lot of them are.

26:32 Jim Beach: Yes, yes.

26:33 David B. Horne: But not enough, not enough.

26:34 Jim Beach: How do we get in touch with you? Find out more. Give us all your URLs, please.

26:39 David B. Horne: My URLs. So my company URL is addthenmultiply.com. A-D-D-T-H-E-N-M-U-L-T-I-P-L-Y, addthenmultiply.com. My LinkedIn is David B. Horne. B is my middle initial. My Twitter is David B. Horne, and my Instagram is David B. Horne.

26:53 Jim Beach: Excellent. Dave, thank you so much for being with us. Great stuff, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

27:02 David B. Horne: Wonderful, thank you, Jim.

27:03 Intro 2: Well, that’s a, that’s a wonderful classic, actually. Oh, my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question, and I don’t have a great answer. It has a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for Startups Radio.

27:44 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest to the show. Please welcome Doug Johnston. He is author of a book called Choosing Emotions: Thinking with Your Head and Acting with Your Heart, such a good idea for all of us. He has raised over $5 billion in transactions for various businesses. He has worked in finance and other areas related to that. He has always, though, been relating or interested in the language that people use to understand and describe their emotions. He has, and this blew me away, identified 272 different emotional states and actually has put them all in the book, which is called an Emotionary. Is that how do you say that? Like dictionary, but emotion: Emotionary. Is that the right way, Doug?

28:35 Doug Johnston: You got it. Thanks, Jim.

28:40 Jim Beach: Emotionary. How you doing?

28:41 Doug Johnston: I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me.

28:44 Jim Beach: You’re also a world champion sailor. What did you sail?

28:46 Doug Johnston: Uh, I sailed just about anything. I was dragged by my three older brothers to sail as a boy, and eventually I got decent at it. So I’ve sailed and actually taught on most different types of boats in the course of my life.

29:03 Jim Beach: Interesting. I sailed across the Atlantic on a 125 foot schooner when I was 18 as crew.

29:08 Doug Johnston: What an experience. I’m envious. That sounds fantastic.

29:11 Jim Beach: It was. There were 25 of us and we went up to Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and then we were in one of the parades in the harbor at New York.

29:22 Doug Johnston: What a blast. I can only imagine how much how those memories would go.

29:29 Jim Beach: I also got my first kiss there. Tell us about our emotions, Doug.

29:34 Doug Johnston: Well, thank you. The background on the book, choosing emotions, thinking with your head and acting with your heart, grew out of my, uh, experience as a multi-time, um, corporate executive and entrepreneur. I became a, what’s known as an expert witness and a professional researcher, uh, and one night at dinner, my daughter who was eager to earn money. We created a game, Jim, where I would ask her research questions on any topic, and if she got the answer right, I’d give her $2. She loved it. And I loved it. But one night she came to father-daughter dinner with her own question, which was what was depression. And I was a deer in headlights. I didn’t really have an answer, and I said, sweetheart, your dad is a great researcher, but I need to do some homework, and I dug in the following 2 weeks into all sorts of books, articles, Barnes and Noble, Amazon laptops, into understanding what depression was. She was 15 years old at the time. And so, uh, I came across 3 quotes, Jim, that were extremely helpful about what an emotion, in this case, depression felt like rather than what it looked like. So the 1st quote from a 1950s writer and PhD by the name of Rollo May was, depression is the inability to construct a future. And I thought, wow, what a what beautiful insight. Then I came across a quote from J.K. Rowling, the famous author of the Harry Potter series about Depression, Depression is that absence of being able to envision you will ever be cheerful again. It’s the most unpleasant thing she’d ever experienced is what she said. And then thirdly, a 3rd quote about depression from a writer named Haley Cornell. Depression lies. It tells you you’ve always felt this way and you always will, but you haven’t, And you won’t. And so there I was sitting at my desk. My daughter was back in school from a lengthy absence. And I decided I’d text those 3 quotes to her, and minutes later, she responded back, thank you, dad. I’m crying. This is really helpful. Well, what it was Jim was understanding that emotions which I knew so little about were best expressed through the quotes of people who’ve experienced them. And so one word, one emotion, depression, became over nine years 272 different emotions as described by 8,000 quotes of thought leaders across history. So I became a researcher in depression and the book choosing emotions is now known as the most comprehensive reference on emotions in the English language, which shocked me when I was told that, but I think the research holds up.

32:18 Jim Beach: Doctors haven’t done this before. There’s not a medical directory of all of the emotional illnesses and such.

32:23 Doug Johnston: You would think so. And I certainly thought so, but what happens in academia is that the various academic fields stay in their lane. They stay in their silos. Psychologists typically don’t communicate with neuroscientists, who don’t typically communicate with psychotherapists, who don’t typically communicate with psychotraumatologists. They all stay in their lane. And I decided to take a very broad view of it, including not only the sciences, but also the arts, what, what, what painters, what dancers, what writers all said. And so my approach was comprehensive across all disciplines, that’s the part that has never been done before. And, interestingly enough, of the 272 emotions that I document in the book, 25% of them, Jim, are not included at all as entries in the top two dictionaries of psychology. So I created a different approach, specifying, emphasizing quotes. And as you mentioned, we call it an emotionary because it’s a dictionary, but it’s a lot more than a dictionary.

33:25 Jim Beach: What was the weirdest, not weirdest, most? What was 272?

33:31 Doug Johnston: Well, 9 years into it. You know, we went, started with my my daughter’s immediate issue and she recovered from of depression and moved to anxiety and codependence and uh, and uh, onto happier, um, things like curiosity and uh, wander and zeal and enthusiasm. But the one that was the end, the last one, number 272 was ego for me. And here I was researching late at night with my little dog curled at my feet. And, you know, I looked up ego and I realized that I had a fundamental personal misunderstanding about ego. I thought that ego was a good thing and in digging into the research across many different fields. Ego is a false front. It’s a it’s a fake you that you put in front of of you to keep the world at bay. It’s not the real you. And when I realized that ego, which I had been taught to think was a good thing and which I so greatly prized in the corporate world was really a bad thing. I really had a moment. I mean, I really, literally put my head in my, in my hands and I thought, wow, I’ve got lots of people to apologize for. The leading quote that changed me about ego was from Carl Jung, the great analytical psychologist. Carl Jung’s quote about ego was: ego is something a man spends the first half of his life building up and the second half of his life understanding how important it is to dismantle it. And Jim, I must have read that quote a dozen times before I realized that I had been on the wrong track with ego for most of my career.

35:14 Jim Beach: Well, I don’t understand yet. Ego. Okay, ego, there are good components of ego and bad components of ego and we have words for the good components, right?

35:25 Doug Johnston: Thank you. That’s beautifully phrased by you. So ego is more an emotional state than an emotion, but it was necessary in the book also to include emotional state. So ego includes, you know, a good appreciation for accomplishment, of course, but it then can veer badly into arrogance and to simply putting people off. And so it’s a, it’s a combined, uh, emotional state, incorporating several other emotions, we tend to adopt an ego when we see that it’s a, it’s a, a projection that works for us, but it sort of sneaks its way into your life. There’s another widely regarded, highly regarded speaker, I’m sure you know of Eckhart Tolle, whose works have reached a million people. He identified ego as often a big issue, but quickly solvable. And in fact, he said, you know, the moment you realize that you have been inserting a false front between you and other people. The moment you realize that you tend to minimize your ego and you realize, gee, I’m not going to be fooling myself anymore. This is sort of sled slid into my dialogue, but it’s not the real me. And the point being, you’re going to be happiest when you are the real you.

36:44 Jim Beach: Us entrepreneurs have to make it till we fake it. Oh, wait, is that how we do it? Make it till we make it? You know, the expression? That’s a well-known expression in Hollywood, as you know.

36:56 Doug Johnston: Yes.

36:57 Jim Beach: And so you have to have a little bit of ego to do that, don’t you?

37:01 Doug Johnston: Yes, you have to have a little bit of ego to be an entrepreneur, a little bit of the ability to say, I can do this. You have to have confidence and you have to have ego. And that’s why—Eckhart, pardon me—that’s why Carl Jung said a man spends the first half of his life building it up because it’s necessary to build it up. But once you realize that it can go to extremes and really be unhelpful in your relations with other people and in some cases destructive to them. Then you realize, wait a minute, I’ve taken this too far. And certainly in my life, I had taken it too far.

37:44 Jim Beach: Well, I’m still in the 1st half of my life then because I’m still building my ego. So I have another 60 years to go. That’s a big route.

37:56 Doug Johnston: Well said.

37:57 Jim Beach: Yes. I was just, the other day asked if I wanted to be on Wikipedia. And you have to say yes to that, right?

38:05 Doug Johnston: Of course.

38:06 Jim Beach: So egotistical of you, Doug.

38:07 Doug Johnston: Of course you need to be on Wikipedia. The world wants to know more about you, and truthfully, it takes an ego to identify what you’ve done and to report it to Wikipedia and get listed. Uh, you know, ego is not all bad, but in excess. It’s bad, and it’s especially bad. If you don’t realize you’re doing it. If you if you are of a mind, Jim, where you say, you know what, I have an ego and I’m happy with it, well, that’s okay. But it’s where ego merges into being destructive of others and not really being the real you at your best or at their best. Uh, that’s where it’s time to phase it back.

38:51 Jim Beach: Well, most entrepreneurs, all real entrepreneurs have had a down period as well. You know, they’ve had a period of financial problems as well. I think any entrepreneur that’s been an entrepreneur for more than 20 minutes should also have had some negative experiences as well. You know, I had a corporate bankruptcy at 31. And I’ve sort of joked to other entrepreneurs, you haven’t had a bankruptcy or just not trying hard enough then. You know, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough if you haven’t had a bankruptcy. You know, you’re not even trying.

39:26 Doug Johnston: If you’re on the cutting edge as an entrepreneur, you’re going to make mistakes, we all do. I’m a 6 time entrepreneur, I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes and obviously making mistakes, teaches humility, and then it all becomes a balance, but, um, if you’re on the leading edge, you’re going to make mistakes and that teaches humility.

39:48 Jim Beach: Well, I don’t understand how an entrepreneur can be egotistical because every entrepreneur I know has faced really, really tough times. And they may be egotistical on the outside, but Usually on the inside, they’re kind of, Oh, mushy and gelatin and stuff.

40:05 Doug Johnston: Well, it certainly helps to have a high level of confidence and most entrepreneurs understand that, that you have to get, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, get back on your horse and ride.

40:18 Jim Beach: Yes. Yes. All right, let’s talk about some other emotions. We’ve talked about depression and ego. What other emotions stuck out in the book?

40:26 Doug Johnston: Another one that really stuck out for me was trauma, which is another emotional state. It’s, it’s often uh, extremely underappreciated what trauma is, and certainly I had my own confusions about it. If you had asked me 10 years ago or 5 years ago what I knew of trauma, I would have said something vague, like something to do, trauma has to do with an accident, an ambulance, in an emergency room. That’s really about all I would have been able to articulate at the time. Uh, trauma is actually extremely important in my view. It effectively is a full or partial shutdown of your emotional system, and you might say, well, gee, your emotional system shuts down, you’re overwhelmed in a car accident, you’re knocked unconscious or whatever, and you simply restart. But restarting a human emotional system isn’t so easy as that. It isn’t like rebooting your computer, restarting your emotional system means after trauma means that you need to fit words to what happened when you were overwhelmed. And that’s the operative thing. The recovery from trauma is to fit words to what happened when you were overwhelmed. And, you know, you and I have each known people who’ve been obsessed with, um, problems of being a victim. Maybe they were raped, maybe something other terrible happened to them. The operative recovery from trauma is fitting and putting words to what happened when you were overwhelmed. And when you can do that, you restore a bad memory that became trauma, you restore it as simply a bad memory, but it’s no longer fearful or debilitating. So when you put words to the emotions when you were traumatized, you can recover.

42:07 Jim Beach: I guess I’m not recovered yet then.

42:13 Doug Johnston: Well, we are in various states of issues. But the issue of putting words to your emotions is now at the forefront of psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, traumatology, and the like, all of those disciplines, and in fact, 19 total disciplines across the arts and the sciences all agree that when you can put words to your emotions, you’re going to be calmer. And happier, there’s a very successful clinical psychiatrist associated with UCLA. His name is Dan Siegel. And he said something almost like what you said minutes ago. His famous quote, five words, is: “Name it to tame it.” Um, and that’s a synthesis, a summary of of lots of clinical testing and the like, but name it to tame it really beautifully phrases the importance of putting words to your emotions. Most people lack words to express what they’re feeling, and that’s what I’ve helped to do in putting together the book.

43:06 Jim Beach: If you’re crying while you’re naming it, you get credit.

43:12 Doug Johnston: I think you get double credit if you’re crying while you’re naming it because you’re closer to what really happened. And oftentimes in traumatic episodes, let’s assume that the horrific circumstance of a rape, you need to revisit it and put words to what happened. And when you can put words to what happened and put it to rest, it takes it out of the fearsome compulsive memory and simply says, you know what, that’s a bad memory, but I’m ready to move on. And that is clinically supported across multiple disciplines. Both the arts and the sciences.

43:48 Jim Beach: Well, as I said, I’m not ready to move on then. I’m still recovering from my father’s passing. He died in my office. Um, and, uh, You know, he had a DNR and all that stuff and I just wasn’t ready for it, apparently.

44:05 Doug Johnston: I am I am so sorry for that circumstance and your your view of it. I can barely imagine what that would be like. Grief has its own process, as you well know, and grief is one of the 272 emotions that I’ve described. Under the entry grief—and the book is arranged alphabetically—you’ll find 20 different quotes from people who have been through similar episodes to what you went through and how they dealt with it, and there’s often relief in seeing how other people handled difficult emotions like grief. I sorry, Jim, for that.

44:41 Jim Beach: I understand. You know, it wasn’t as much him dying. It was the way the family responded to it. Certain family members decided not to go to the funeral, for example, and it tore the family in half. We still have not recovered from it. We still have people not speaking to people because of it.

45:00 Doug Johnston: There’s a fascinating aspect of the book in current cutting-edge research, which addresses your inner voice. So you and I and everyone has an inner voice. That’s good. That’s the way we think. But oftentimes the inner voice, the voice that we hear in our head when we’re alone in our bedroom, alone in our car, otherwise, what is helpful and therapeutic is often to say out loud, what’s on your mind? Um, simply say out loud. I’m deeply disappointed in my family members. I’m deeply grieved that my father passed away in my office to simply put outwardly in spoken words what is circulating in the inner loop of your head, the cutting edge of science, Dr. Ethan Cross from the University of Michigan and others, talk about self-distancing. Take it out of the silent inner loop of your inner voice and put it out in the world. In vocal words. Simply speak it out. What’s troubling you? Why? Who’s troubling you? Why? And the moment you take it out of the silent inner voice of your head and speak it, it’s very therapeutic. Um, that’s cutting edge. New York Times-bestselling work of Dr. Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan, a two-time New York Times bestseller.

46:18 Jim Beach: So you just have to say it to start getting over it.

46:23 Doug Johnston: Say it to weigh it and then start to get over it. Um, the, the 1st step is to say it to weigh it. So often we all, whether when we put our head on the pillow at night, we think about what went wrong that day. Well, you’re quietly laying on your pillow and you’re thinking, well, what went wrong? Well, that’s in part because humans have an inherent negativity bias. We prioritize bad news. That’s well known at Nobel levels. We prioritize bad news. But we don’t have to. By simply saying something out loud half the time or percentage of the time, we’ll even laugh. For example, a friend of mine, I was explaining this issue of vocalizing what’s in your inner voice. And he said, well, gee, I’ve, you know, I think a lot about my boss. And I say, well, what do you think about your boss? She said I’m afraid my boss is going to fire me. And he said, I’ve been thinking that. And then he starts to laugh. And I said, why are you laughing? And he said, well, I just said it out loud. My boss is going to fire me. He said, there’s no way my boss is going to fire me. This has just been in my loop. My inner loop. My inner voice for months. I’m doing a great job. There’s no way my boss is going to fire me. And by saying it out loud. He actually chuckled because he realized, Jim, that it was really, it wasn’t valid. So when you articulate what is sort of unexamined in your inner voice, Sometimes you get instant clarity. Gee I don’t need to worry about that anymore. That was preposterous. Why was I even thinking about it? On the other hand, you may find, as you talk about your family and your father’s death, that simply putting it on the table and vocalizing it helps you address it as something you can work on rather than something you’re just mulling over.

48:30 Jim Beach: Interesting. Work on versus mulling over. That’s a big difference.

48:31 Doug Johnston: It’s big difference. You externalize it. You can look at it as a thing rather than something that’s silently in your inner voice troubling you. And the moment you take it out of being in it to looking at it, you are more in command.

48:48 Jim Beach: Say that again, Doug.

48:52 Doug Johnston: The moment you take it out of the inner voice of being in the emotion. I’m in grief. I’m disappointed. The moment you take it out of your inner voice where you’re in the emotion, you speak it aloud. You write it down. You speak it aloud and you say, well, now I’m looking at it and it doesn’t look so fearsome. You know, I can pick up the phone. I can do this. I can, you know, suddenly you are looking at it objectively rather than mulling and stewing on it, having it swirl around in your head. That can be very helpful.

49:28 Jim Beach: The objective people that I have spoken to are much harsher in their solution than I am.

49:32 Doug Johnston: Well, you can you can mix up the people you’re talking with, but sometimes just simply saying it out loud and writing it down, it changes your viewpoint.

49:44 Jim Beach: I polled 25 people on the situation that I’m in, and every one of them has said, walk away and never speak to those people again. And that’s hard.

49:56 Doug Johnston: And there you have your, and there you evidently have your answer.

50:00 Jim Beach: Well, I don’t know. I’m still looking at the hitman solution. Can you help me on that as well, please?

50:05 Doug Johnston: I’m sorry for laughing, but that’s the humorous remark from Jim Beach.

50:10 Jim Beach: That’s the what?

50:12 Doug Johnston: Remark. That’s it. That’s a funny remark you just made.

50:19 Jim Beach: Why?

50:20 Doug Johnston: I mean, I take it half seriously that you’re looking for a hitman. Perhaps you are, perhaps you’re not, but it struck me as funny.

50:25 Jim Beach: Okay. I think Hitman as an entrepreneurial profession really need to advertise better. You know, because I don’t know where I would go to find a hitman.

50:37 Doug Johnston: Well, you know where you go to get drugs. You know, I just, you can enter it in the search bar. Hitman? Who knows?

50:47 Jim Beach: Directly to the FBI when you type in Hitman?

50:49 Doug Johnston: I think it would be there almost from the moment you finish typing it.

50:54 Jim Beach: Yeah. So, um, I’m obsessed with that Hulu family, the Adelsons out of Miami. Have you followed that? It’s a Hulu movie now.

51:02 Doug Johnston: I’m familiar with the Arison family and the cruise business, if that’s who you’re talking about.

51:10 Jim Beach: No, no, no. This is uh, a Miami, uh, dentist who had a dentist son and a daughter and the daughter decided she didn’t like her husband, so they were going to kill him. And now, basically, the whole family is in jail except for the daughter. So.

51:26 Doug Johnston: Well, they I guess they went down together. What a shame.

51:31 Jim Beach: Oh, it’s just disgusting. You know, um, 80-year-old mother’s in jail now for life and the other son’s in jail for life and oh, it’s just a tragedy. But they, you know, they got a hit man. See how hard it is to find a good hitman, Doug.

51:48 Doug Johnston: Oh, well.

51:49 Jim Beach: That’ll be I’ll start an easy hitman business. All right. Doug, how do we find out more and get a copy of this book? I tell you, I, there are certain books that you just have to have. Like the birthday book that tells you what your birthday says your personality is like, this is one I think you just have to have. This will be the greatest party book ever.

52:16 Doug Johnston: It’s every bit of that. It’s extremely entertaining, and many of the entries are laugh out loud, funny. You would be surprised at the number of people who’ve experienced difficulty and who could put it in words that made you laugh or enlightened you. The idea of my book is that our brain thrives when we give it words that match what we feel. And by reading the phrases and quotes of top leaders across all disciplines throughout world history, it’s extremely helpful, you’ll be happier and calmer when you put better words to your emotions. So the book is choosing emotions, thinking with your head and acting with your heart. It’s available in paperback, hardback, and Kindle. It’s available at Amazon, Ingram Spark, Barnes and Noble. Walmart, many different places. The website is ChoosingEmotions.com. It’s an exceptional website on social media. We’re at on Instagram at choosing emotions. Um, it’s a, it’s a wonderful read and it’s been described humorously as the best bathroom book in history.

53:18 Jim Beach: Exactly. I was thinking. That is exactly what I was thinking, Doug. There it is You nailed me. I’m so embarrassed that I was thinking about bathroom books and you said it first. I’m going to buy it, Doug. There’s absolutely no doubt about that. I appreciate you being with us, and we’d love to have you back. It’s great stuff.

53:40 Doug Johnston: Love to come back. Jim, thanks so much for having me. Really appreciate your having me on the show.

53:47 Jim Beach: We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow. Be safe. Take care and go make a million dollars. Bye now.