Introduction to Positive Disruption
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 564 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Patrick Leddin, co-author of Disrupt Everything and Win: Take Control of Your Future. Ready? Let’s get started.
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
Melina Palmer: Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Have you ever heard of James Patterson? Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell immediately, I’d bet money you’ve heard of or read some of his work. Along Came a Spider, Kiss the Girls, or the Alex Cross series to name a few. He has sold more than 400 million books worldwide and, along with J.K. Rowling, is one of only two authors said to have earned over a billion dollars from book sales.
But here’s what might surprise you. James Patterson didn’t become a full-time writer until he was in his 50s. Before that, he had a wildly successful advertising career, including serving as the CEO of J. Walter Thompson North America. He disrupted a life most would call peak success to pursue something even bigger. And that’s the heart of today’s conversation. Disruption isn’t just about chaos or change being thrust upon you. Sometimes it’s something you choose on purpose to live more in alignment with who you are becoming.
My guest today is Patrick Leddin, who co-wrote Disrupt Everything and Win with James Patterson. He has also lived a few lives himself and embraced disruption, and he’s going to be sharing more about that. Change is all around us. Sometimes we’re disrupted in a way we didn’t want; other times we’re needing the confidence to disrupt something good for what could be great. And it turns out that there are some rules to help you disrupt more and create a life you love really quickly. Now, let’s jump right in.
The Many Lives of Patrick Leddin
Melina Palmer: Patrick Leddin, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
Patrick Leddin: Melina, thanks so much for having me. Glad to be here.
Melina Palmer: Oh yes, I’m super excited to be chatting with you today. For everyone who doesn’t yet know you though, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
Patrick Leddin: Absolutely. So I guess career-wise I would break my career up into a few buckets. I spent my twenties in the army. I grew up on the south side of Chicago and the army was my way to get to college. I joined the army and then I was kind of good at it. So next thing you know, you just kind of keep going up in the military. I jumped out of planes and ran around the woods.
And then from 30ish to mid-40s, I built a business. It was mostly a human capital consulting type of firm. And I exited that when somebody acquired us, which we didn’t see coming, but when it came along we decided to do it. So we exited there and then I decided to put that doctorate I’d earned along the way to use. I went to the university and became a full-time faculty member at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and I was also director of undergraduate business at the university.
Melina Palmer: Amazing. In so many times where it’s like you really have though lived like three—or if you guess have the childhood, they’re like very distinct lives over time. Right? Lots of change and shifts in things.
Patrick Leddin: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that each of the opportunities that came along, it was just kind of the right time to move. I didn’t expect to sell the business, but it made sense. I didn’t expect to leave the university until recently, but it made sense to go on a leave of absence and maybe never look back. We’ll see what happens.
Defining Disruption as Opportunity
Melina Palmer: Well, so leaning in, I guess in that way as you talk about disruption and disrupting—and like your path was disrupted multiple times along the way—how do you think about disruption and disrupting?
Patrick Leddin: Well, Melina, you’re right. I mean, it’s a word used everywhere. We can all relate to varying degrees, probably with some of the global disruptions around even things like Covid, to economic shifts, to whatever’s happening in the job market, all the way down to very personal things like a result on a medical test.
So we operationalize it in the research pretty broadly. It could be something small, it could be something big. It could be something that appears positive or negative at face value. Essentially it’s something that stops you in your tracks, might throw you out of your normal routine, and also opens up an opportunity for something maybe new and different.
Melina Palmer: How did you get interested in disruption enough to write a book about it?
Patrick Leddin: I’m teaching at Vanderbilt, and when Covid happened, the university asked if any professor would be willing to teach a class to 100 students or more online. I just saw it as an opportunity to say, “I’d love to teach a class about leading business through crisis.” There was one section we were doing of the class that was very guest speaker focused. In walks Doug Parker, the CEO of American Airlines, and Sara Nelson, the president of the Flight Attendants Association. They sat down and talked about how the airline industry would work together through times of disruption.
One person who was speaking in the class was a gentleman named James Patterson. James Patterson earned his master’s degree in English Literature at Vanderbilt, and he agreed to speak to the class. He came in and started off by saying, “Hi, I’m Stephen King,” which is a funny opening line. What’s funny in retrospect is James Patterson has sold more books than Stephen King and John Grisham combined.
James Patterson’s Path to Living a “Good Life”
Patrick Leddin: He starts off by asking the students, “Are you living a good life?” He said, “Or are you on one treadmill only to get on another treadmill… and then that’s your life?” He said, “I’m living a good life, and I’d love to share with you how I went about doing that.”
He talked about after he graduated Vanderbilt, he went to New York City to work in marketing. He went through the process of applying for a job where you would create a portfolio of ads and leave them behind. The first week he brought in a portfolio, the second week a whole new portfolio, and the third week a whole new portfolio. They hired him, and then he became the youngest creative director. Then he became the CEO of J. Walter Thompson. In fact, James Patterson wrote the tagline, “I’m a Toys R Us kid.” He was very successful, but he had a passion for writing, so he started writing a few books on the side.
From there, he decided to quit and disrupt himself and leave the CEO job to focus on writing. Since then, he has sold 475 million book copies. There’s only two people I understand on the planet who’ve made a billion dollars writing books: J.K. Rowling and James Patterson. He went through this process of telling this story, and by the time it was over, I was just really intrigued with how people take the curveballs thrown at them. For example, he was engaged to be married in his 30s, and the woman was diagnosed with brain cancer and passed away. That was a massive disruption. But he figured out how to continue moving forward. So I decided to start studying how certain people, in the face of disruption, choose to move out in ways that help them live a better life.
Collaborating with a Literary Legend
Melina Palmer: Such a fascinating story. Did you pitch him on the book or did he pitch you on the book? And what was it like even to write a book with the person who sold like the most books ever?
Patrick Leddin: What he talked about just really spoke to me at a core level. So, yeah, I pitched the book idea to him first. Honestly, it was like the world’s worst sales pitch. I sent him a note that was like, “I like you, you like me. Let’s write a book together.” He did not respond to that at all.
Then I followed up with another note about 10 days later. In the new message I was much more strategic in thinking through what would matter to him. I knew he hadn’t written in the business space or the self-help space—this kind of straddles both—and I knew there was an opportunity maybe to do something kind of unique. He responded to the second email. He called me up and said, “Okay, let’s do it.” He said, “We’re partners, let’s work on an outline together.”
It was about nine months to get the outline right. He’s a very outline-driven writer. Once we got the outline figured out, we knew what direction we were trying to go with it.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, that’s a good lesson in book writing. I’ve always been kind of the, like, “I know I generally want to talk about this and I’m going to just see how it flows.”
Patrick Leddin: Yeah, exactly. If I’m doing something more academic, I tend to think it through. Other times I’ll just kind of start writing and see where it goes. This is my fifth book. The reason I say outline specifically is because his first book he wrote, he got to a point where he had a 300-page outline and he was like, “I’ve got the book.” So when I was thinking like this guy would like an outline, I’m thinking an outline. I sent him a 37-page outline that was a starting point.
Melina Palmer: That’s good advice for everyone. Most people don’t even write one book, let alone five.
Patrick Leddin: One thing that he taught me: the idea has to be big enough for the book or the project. He would say that whether you do a project that’s a little project or a potentially really high-value project, each of them takes about the same amount of time. So if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do something where the idea is big enough to offset the investment. If you’re going to write a 300-page book, the idea has to be big enough to go through 300 pages.
After about nine months on the outline, he called me up and said, “This is it, we’ve got it.” He said, “We need to interview a lot of really good people.” We ended up interviewing 350 people on the qualitative side. Each one was like an hour and a half long. Most of the people written about in the book are unsung heroes; people don’t know who these people are. But their stories are just so compelling—where they got hit with the disruption and what they did with it.
Fueling the Fire: The Five Roles of Disruption
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. I love that y’all have the lens of being a positive disruptor and thinking about the opportunity that comes with disruption. Can you share a little bit about those five roles and how that applies for people in life and business?
Patrick Leddin: Yeah, absolutely. So we do use the analogy of a fire throughout the book. The idea is that all of us have a fire inside of ourselves. You could call it your purpose, but it’s where your passion intersects with your talent. Every disruption that comes your way could be potential fuel thrown on that fire. But to do that, you have to approach disruption with the idea that disruption’s fertile ground.
The first thing these people tend to do instead of just reacting is they discern. They sit back and say, “Okay, thinking about the fire inside myself, what do I feel compelled to do with this disruption?” Imagine a two-by-two block where one axis is change and the other side is stability, and the other side is independent or collaborative.
The book is called Disrupt Everything and Win, but that doesn’t mean change everything. It just means don’t fear disruption at face value. Sit back and discern what you’re going to do with it. The opportunity might be in the face of disruption to go toward change. Or you might say, “That’s really interesting, but we have a lot going on already,” and you go toward stability.
Each of those four quadrants has a title to the role:
- Trailblazer: If I go toward change independently.
- Torchbearer: If I go out toward change collectively with others.
- Firefighter: If I decide to go toward stability on my own.
- Fire Chief: If I lead a movement of people back toward purpose or stability.
Then there’s a fifth role that sits in the middle called a Tinder Gatherer. A Tinder Gatherer role might be, “I need to spend more time thinking about this.” Or you might take on a role where you help other people do things in these other roles.
The Story of Rising Tide Car Wash
Melina Palmer: That’s so great. If you were going to pick a story or two that helps make this feel real for people, what might you lean into for that?
Patrick Leddin: There’s two stories that I noticed really resonate with audiences. One of them is a guy named Tom D’Eri. When Tom was 22, he was graduating college and planning to get a job in consulting in Manhattan. But Tom had a 20-year-old brother named Andrew who was on the autism spectrum. Tom was thinking, “I know where I’m going to go, but what’s my brother going to do?”
It was really disruptive to Tom, so he decided, “I’m not going to do the job in New York. I’m going to work with my brother.” They decided to open up a car wash. Fast forward to today: they have three car washes in southern Florida with 100 employees, 90 of whom are on the autism spectrum.
I interviewed him in person and talked about his choices and how challenging it was. He said he would go to bed at night and say to himself, “I just got to survive tomorrow.” Then there was a switch in his mind to “What are they going to throw at me tomorrow?” He started to realize, “The problem isn’t with my team members, it’s with me as a leader.”
I looked back at him—he was sitting there in a red polo shirt that said Rising Tide Car Wash on it—and I said, “Tom, one last question. What would your 22-year-old self say if he saw your 35-year-old now self?” And he said he would say, “I’m in the exact right spot.” If you want to live a good life, you have to realize you have to define what that is and then live it out in the face of disruptions.
Melina Palmer: Which category is he then? The Firefighter vs. Trailblazer?
Patrick Leddin: The thing about the roles is they’re not static; they’re dynamic. I would say early on he was trailblazing, trying to figure out what the business opportunity would be. Over time, he was taking on more of the torchbearer role where he was leading a group of people toward a change. In that way, he’s leading more of a movement, showing people what’s possible if you just give someone a shot. So I would say he went from one role to the other.
Choosing Disruption Over the Status Quo
Melina Palmer: In that case, he chose the change and chose that disruption to his life path. He’s kind of looking around and saying, “Is this still what I want to do or should I do something else?”
Patrick Leddin: I look at it like this: we’re all the disrupted. He was disrupted when looking at his brother’s schooling, but then he chose to become a disruptor. We have to make that choice.
Melina Palmer: Knowing our brains are wired for predictability and the status quo, it’s so easy to be in that stability side. Do you have advice for someone to know which disruptions to pursue and when to not let it distract you?
Patrick Leddin: There’s value in the ability to run on autopilot; our brain likes that. But one thing we wanted people to realize, we called them the “four fundamental facts”:
- The status quo is a deceptive little devil. If you try to cling on to things just the way they are, they won’t stay that way.
- It’s okay that things change because you’re wired to disrupt. We have big brains that can envision a different future. We’ve gotten back up through experiences and learned what we’re capable of. And we’re wired through our resources—connections and technology.
- Relationships are headwinds and tailwinds in life. Some relationships lift us up, some hold us back. One of the most disruptive things you might do is care enough to invest in a relationship and say, “I feel like things aren’t right.”
- Your time here is finite. Make it count in ways that matter.
We interviewed Marlon Wayans, the actor. When he was 21, the phone kind of stopped ringing. He said to his older brother, “What do I do?” His brother said, “You better learn to do more than act. You better be able to write, produce, and direct.” To him, that was something he decided he needed to focus on.
The point being is you should have your radar up and paying attention. If you hear it multiple times, or it really stops you to the core, those are the ones you probably need to pay attention to.
Alignment with the “Fire Inside”
Melina Palmer: Well, it feels like the core question of “Are you living a good life?” can be a lens. But if you don’t take the time to understand what a good life means to you, you can’t use it as that filter.
Patrick Leddin: You’re right. We decided not to get into putting our thumb on the scale as far as what is positive and what is not positive. We said if it’s in alignment with the fire inside yourself, then you’re moving up from that perspective.
What tends to happen is we have this relentless pursuit of comfort and this fear of taking action because it could cause us to lose what we already have, even though what we have is not that great. We just want to be a voice that encourages people to realize they can live a good life.
Melina Palmer: I love a short, punchy chapter. And you have a lot of those where you get that bit and keep on ready for the next.
Patrick Leddin: I gotta give credit to my thriller-writer co-author. He believed that a lot of guys aren’t going to sit down and read a really long book. If you read a chapter and it doesn’t apply to you, just skip it and keep moving. We give people a tool at the back to help them think about it.
Applying Disruption at Work
Melina Palmer: If we think about how we’re going to improve performance at work, what advice would you have for people applying this to their work?
Patrick Leddin: It has tremendous applicability at work. A company called Franklin Covey partnered with us. They built a course based on the book called Innovate for Impact.
We interviewed the two gentlemen who founded Harry’s Shave. It started with Andy Katz Mayfield walking into a convenience store realizing razor blades are expensive and branding doesn’t speak to them. He’s like, “There has to be a better experience.” That led to a $2 billion business. So where is the opportunity in your industry?
As we were going through it, we uncovered 16 positive disruptor strengths. Melinda, there was no combination where it’s like, “If you have number 1, 7 and 12, you got it made.” But I’ve never been in a room with five people or more where every behavior doesn’t show up somewhere. You have positive disruptor strengths. You might be really good at casting a vision or listening to understand. Surround yourself with people who do the things you are not good at. A great team is interdependent, where my weaknesses become irrelevant because of your strengths.
Melina Palmer: And I really love that for these 16 items, you did a really good job of breaking this down where it doesn’t feel like 16. You organized them around the anatomy of the body.
Patrick Leddin: Yeah, we organize them around the “anatomy of a positive disruptor.” Brains, eyes, ears, mouth, heart, guts, hands, feet. Each has two behaviors. It helps me remember them, too.
Melina Palmer: It’s a very applicable, useful book, and a fun read.
Patrick Leddin: It isn’t a dense, cumbersome book. It moves pretty quick, and we wanted people to keep ruminating on it.
Melina Palmer: And if you need some inspiration, you can go read a couple of stories about it and move on.
Patrick Leddin: Exactly. I am Patrick Leddin, and you can find my work by searching my name. I have a podcast on disruption and a newsletter that comes out every week. Ultimately, I just want to help them live good lives.
Closing Thoughts and Reflection
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Patrick Leddin for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing as you listened? One thing I keep circling back to is that core question: Are you living a good life? It isn’t about being perfect; it is about a life that actually feels good and true and aligned for you.
I also really appreciated the breakdown of those five positive disruptor roles and the fire metaphor. Remember, you aren’t a specific type in every situation. Leverage disruption by embracing the right role—whether it’s the firefighter, torchbearer, trailblazer, fire chief, or tinder gatherer—to help you live that good life.
What does a good life look like for you? And when you know that, what’s one small disruption you can choose today that will move you closer to living it? Come share it with me on social media.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the Brainy Business website.
