The Idea

When Amy Edmondson was a graduate student at Harvard, she studied teamwork in hospitals and expected better-led teams to have fewer errors. The data showed the opposite: teams with stronger leadership and better relationships appeared to have more errors. She checked whether their patients were sicker. The pattern held.

Her explanation was that openness made errors easier to report and discuss, while mistakes could go unreported in teams with punitive leaders. A low error count could leave a leader with an incomplete picture of what was happening.

That finding is what makes Daniel Lubetzky’s approach on the podcast this week so practical. Daniel founded KIND Snacks, and when I asked him about building a culture where people feel safe challenging him, he said it’s much easier to say you welcome feedback than to actually hear what you’re doing wrong. His suggestion: if someone thoughtfully challenges your approach in a meeting, thank them before the meeting ends, even if you disagree. How you respond in that moment shapes whether they raise the next concern. Before taking a quiet meeting as a sign of agreement, consider what happened the last time someone spoke up.

Quote

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859

Mill was making the case that the quality of your thinking depends on how seriously you’ve engaged with people who disagree with you.

Question

Think about the last time someone at work pushed back on one of your ideas. Before that conversation ended, did you thank them for bringing it up?

Listen

Daniel Lubetzky spent ten years building PeaceWorks, a food company built on partnerships between Arab and Israeli suppliers, before it became clear the business wasn’t going to scale. By 2003, after his father’s death and a stretch of losses, he was running out of reasons to keep going. Instead of making the call alone, he brought the question of whether to try something new to his team. KIND came out of that conversation, and Mars eventually acquired KIND in a deal that reportedly valued the company at around $5 billion. The whole story of how he got from that room to that number is in this episode.

Read

Radical Candor by Kim Scott. A framework for being direct about what needs to change without making feedback personal.

If you love this content (please share it), but also check out my ​Podcast​, and connect with me on ​YouTube​ / ​Twitter​.

Scott

If you love this content (please share it), but also…

Start here > newsletter.scottdclary.com

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From the Archives:

Success Story Podcast

Check out the Success Story Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Last Week’s Episodes

Daniel Lubetzky - Shark Tank Investor | He Built KIND Snacks Into a $5B Company From His Basement

Daniel Lubetzky is the billionaire founder of KIND Snacks, which he built from one bar and a hundred rejections into a global brand sold to Mars for roughly $5 billion. The son of a Holocaust survivor, he immigrated from Mexico at 16 and has spent his career using business to bridge divides, from PeaceWorks to the Builders Movement. Today he’s a full-time Shark on Shark Tank and host of Build or Break, where he sits down with the world’s boldest builders to uncover the moments that nearly broke them.

Vivian Tu - “Your Rich BFF” & Author of Rich AF (8M+ Followers) | Why the Old Money Rules Are Dead

Vivian Tu, known to millions as “Your Rich BFF,” is a former Wall Street trader turned personal finance educator whose candid, jargon-free approach to money has built her a following of over 10 million people. She’s the author of two New York Times bestsellers, Rich AF and Well Endowed, SoFi’s first Chief of Financial Empowerment, host of the Networth and Chill podcast, a TED speaker, and the founder of Ask Dolly, an AI-powered personal finance app. Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and the TIME100 Creators list, her mission is simple: make financial literacy less intimidating and more inclusive, especially for women and young people who’ve been left out of the money conversation for too long.

Have an amazing weekend!

Scott

My Links

• Success Story (Top 10 Business Podcast)

• 10 Minute Mindset (Top Mindset Podcast)

• Newsletter (321k Subs)

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In this conversation, Daniel explains how kindness and empathy shaped the way he built KIND. We discuss creatin…

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In this conversation, Vivian explains why the old money playbook no longer fits the lives many people are li…

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In this conversation, Sam explains why hard work alone doesn’t get you promoted, how to find people who will advoca…

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In this conversation, Chervin discusses how his father’s cancer diagnoses …

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The Idea

Jesse Mecham is the founder of YNAB, a budgeting platform used by millions of people, and he described a moment on the podcast this week that I think most people will recognize. He said a typical YNAB user is around 35 years old, making more money than they’ve ever made, and they pull up their W-2 at tax time and think HR made a mistake. There’s no way they earned that much, because they feel exactly where they started. Maybe even a little worse off. And then they remember being 25 and telling themselves that if they ever made this much, everything would be solved.

That’s not just a feeling. Bank of America published data last year showing that one in five households earning over $150,000 a year is spending more than 95% of their income on necessities. A separate study by PYMNTS found that over half of Americans earning six figures reported living paycheck to paycheck. The pattern is called lifestyle creep, and it means that as your income goes up, your spending quietly rises to match it, so the gap between what you earn and what you need never actually opens up no matter how much more you make.

Jesse built YNAB around the idea that this cycle isn’t an income problem. It started as a spreadsheet he made for himself and his wife when they were broke college students trying to cover rent. That spreadsheet became a platform used by millions, a Wall Street Journal bestselling book, and a company Fortune named its #1 best small company to work for. And the core idea behind all of it is a phrase he kept coming back to in our conversation: you can have anything, but not everything.

What he means is that most people never sit down and decide what their money is actually for. So it goes out in a hundred directions and none of them feel chosen. He put it simply: when people are spending here and their values are here, that gap is where all the stress lives. All you’re trying to do is close it, so that when you spend the money you worked for on things you actually care about, the guilt and the worry go away. Not because you have more money, but because you made the decisions before the money started moving.

Quote

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, 1850

Dickens based Mr. Micawber on his own father, who went to debtor’s prison when Dickens was twelve.

Question

If someone looked at how you spent money last month, would they be able to tell what matters to you?

Listen

Jesse Mecham: The Man Who Made Millions Teaching People to Love Budgeting. The W-2 moment is what hooked me, but the conversation goes into territory I wasn’t expecting. Jesse tells a story about not being able to buy a 50-cent donut as a college student and realizing that traditional money advice had failed him. He gets into why spending feels shameful for so many people, why he needed a therapist to call him out on his own relationship with money before he could buy a car he could easily afford, and how his wife Julie has been the one constant through 20 years of building YNAB from a spreadsheet into what it is now.

Read

Happy Money by Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton. Dunn is a psychologist at UBC and Norton is at Harvard Business School, and they spent years studying why some spending makes people happier and other spending doesn’t. Their finding is that most of our intuitions about what to buy are wrong, and that small shifts in how you spend, like choosing experiences over things or paying for something before you use it instead of after, can change how satisfied you feel with your money without changing how much of it you have.

If you love this content (please share it), but also check out my ​Podcast​, and connect with me on ​YouTube​ / ​Twitter​.

— Scott

If you love this content (please share it), but also…

Start here > newsletter.scottdclary.com

Check out my Podcast, connect with me on YouTube / Twitter, and read my Weekly Newsletter

Sponsor: Huel

A packed calendar can turn lunch into an afterthought. Suddenly it’s 3 p.m., you haven’t eaten, and whatever’s closest starts looking like a good idea.

Huel Black Edition keeps it simple: 40g of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, and a full meal ready in 60 seconds. Keep one within reach for the days that don’t go to plan. One less decision between you and getting back to work.

New customers get 15% off with code SCOTTCLARY at huel.com/scott. Minimum $75 purchase.

Last Week’s Letters:

Success Story Podcast

Check out the Success Story Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Last Week’s Episodes

Sam DeMase - Career Coach & Author of Power Mood | Career Coach With 800K Followers Says Hard Work Won’t Save You

Sam DeMase is a career coach at ZipRecruiter and the author of Power Mood, whose direct, incisive approach to career advice has built her a following of more than 800,000 people. At ZipRecruiter, she draws on rich, real-time labor market insight to help professionals navigate an evolving job market with clarity and confidence. Her work challenges one of the most deeply ingrained beliefs in professional life: that hard work alone is enough to guarantee success. In this episode, Sam unpacks why effort by itself so often fails to translate into advancement, what truly drives visibility and career growth in today’s workplace, and how to cultivate the confidence and strategic thinking needed to take ownership of your career trajectory.

Chervin Jafarieh - Cymbiotika Co-Founder | Built a Supplement Company to Fix What Medicine Wouldn’t

Chervin Jafarieh is the Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Cymbiotika, a wellness brand that’s moved over 100 million supplement units and is tracking toward $200 million in revenue. He spent years studying functional medicine, Ayurveda, and biodynamic farming before a family health crisis pulled him into nutrition full-time. He co-founded Cymbiotika in 2019 to build supplements designed around absorption and ingredient integrity.

Jesse Mecham - YNAB Founder & Author | Everything You Were Taught About Money Management Is Wrong

Jesse Mecham is the founder of YNAB (You Need A Budget) — a budgeting platform used by millions of people worldwide — and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author who has spent nearly two decades convincing people that budgeting isn’t a punishment, it’s a path to freedom. What started as a simple spreadsheet he built for his own family has grown into a beloved financial platform that has helped people break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle and build real confidence around money.

Have an amazing weekend!

Scott

My Links

• Success Story (Top 10 Business Podcast)

• 10 Minute Mindset (Top Mindset Podcast)

• Newsletter (321k Subs)

• Social Media

I’m speaking at UNBOUND in Boston next week, and I’d love to see you there.

I’ll be joining Alicia and Christopher Brown to talk about how to make content that doesn’t suck. Content people actually want to watch, that gives them something useful and helps grow your business.

We’ll have 90 minutes together, including time for questions, so bring something you’re working through.

Here’s where to find us:

Friday, September 18, 2026
9:45–11:15am ET
Deep Dives, Room 104
Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center, Boston

Check out the session here:
https://unbound.hubspot.com/sessions/sess-1264

I’ll also be around filming interviews throughout the event. If you’re coming, let me know. It would be great to meet in person.

Scott

In this …

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The Idea

You’ve been in an argument where you knew, in the middle of it, exactly what you should stop saying. You knew the right move was to take a breath and let the other person finish. And you kept going anyway. You understood what to do. You just couldn’t do it in the moment. There’s a real gap between understanding something and being able to perform it, and it’s wider than most people realize.

In 2018, two researchers at the University of Chicago, Michael Kardas and Ed O’Brien, published a study that measured this. They had people watch a video of someone throwing darts at a target. Some watched once. Others watched twenty times. Before throwing any darts themselves, both groups estimated how well they’d do. The people who watched twenty times were significantly more confident. When they actually threw the darts, there was no difference in performance. The extra watching had built confidence without building any actual skill. They thought watching it a bunch of times meant they could do it.

That study was about a motor task, and I don’t want to overstretch it into a theory of everything. But Kier Gaines, a licensed therapist and the author of It All Starts When You Do, described something on the podcast that I think lands in the same territory. He used an example I keep going back to. He told me I could see his face clearly, every detail, but that didn’t mean I could draw it. His point was that this is what happens with emotional skills all the time. You can know perfectly well what not to say in an argument. You can understand that the right thing to do is pause when you’re upset. But understanding what a pause should look like is one thing. Being able to actually produce one when your chest is tight and your heart rate is up takes practice, and the only way to get that practice is to do it badly for a while in real situations.

I think this changes what it means to be stuck. When you know the right thing to do and still can’t do it, the natural move is to go find better advice. A better book, a better podcast, a clearer explanation. But if you already understand the concept, consuming more of it isn’t going to close the gap. The gap closes when you start practicing in situations where it actually counts, which is uncomfortable, and that’s the part most people keep trying to skip.

Quote

“Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.” George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

She published her first novel under a pen name. The line is about the way action shapes identity: you become what you practice, whether you chose the practice carefully or stumbled into it.

Question

What do you already understand well enough that the next step isn’t more reading?

Listen

Kier Gaines: A Therapist Explains Why You’re Still Unhappy After Getting Everything You Wanted. The drawing example is the moment I built this newsletter around, but the conversation goes much further. Kier gets into why the urge to resolve an argument right now is usually about wanting relief from your own anxiety rather than actually fixing the disagreement, and why getting everything you thought you wanted can leave you feeling emptier than before.

Read

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel. Three researchers spent years studying how people actually retain and apply what they learn. Their finding is that the methods most people rely on, rereading, reviewing, watching demonstrations, feel productive but produce the least lasting change. The book is about what works instead, and most of it comes down to the kind of difficult, uncomfortable retrieval practice that nobody wants to do first.

If you love this content (please share it), but also check out my ​Podcast​, and connect with me on ​YouTube​ / ​Twitter​.

— Scott

If you love this content (please share it), but also…

Start here > newsletter.scottdclary.com

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Sponsor: Huel

Here’s what nobody tells you about the days you eat like garbage: it’s never because you wanted to. It’s because you ran out of time, ran out of options, and picked whatever was closest. That’s not a willpower problem. That’s a logistics problem.

Huel Black Edition is the logistics fix. 40g of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, a full meal for under $5 — ready in 60 seconds flat. I keep one at my desk and one in my bag. When the schedule goes sideways, I don’t have to choose between skipping a meal and making a bad one. The decision is already made.

New customers get 15% off with code SCOTTCLARY at huel.com/scott. Minimum $75 purchase.

This Weeks Letter:

Happy Monday

Success Story Podcast

Check out the Success Story Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Last Week’s Episodes

Jasmine Elizabeth - CEO of UBC Community (155K Members) | The Faith-Based Creator Who Built a 155K Community

Jasmine Elizabeth is the founder and CEO of UBC Community, a faith-based community with 155,000 members. We talked about building something people genuinely belong to, staying grounded as the audience grows, and why purpose—not vanity metrics—has to remain at the center.

Kier Gaines - Therapist & Author of It All Starts When You Do | Why You’re Still Unhappy After Getting Everything You Wanted

Kier Gaines is a licensed therapist and the author of It All Starts When You Do. We talked about why achievement can’t fix what you refuse to face, how social media distorts mental-health advice, and what the real work of healing actually looks like.

Have an amazing weekend!

Scott

My Links

• Success Story (Top 10 Business Podcast)

• 10 Minute Mindset (Top Mindset Podcast)

• Newsletter (321k Subs)

• Social Media

Read more

In this conversation, Kier explains why achievement and positive thinking alone cannot fix what feels wrong—and…

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If you want to join live, register here:

https://selfpublishing.com/scottclary

Scott

Chandler Bolt’s free live workshop, How To Write And Publish Your Book, is happening today at 3 PM ET. This is your last chance to grab a spot before it starts.

Register here (it’s free):

https://selfpublishing.com/scottclary

Scott

The Idea

In the spring and summer of 1957, J.C.R. Licklider made himself the subject of an informal time-and-motion study. He tracked what he actually did during the hours he considered thinking. About 85% of that time was spent getting into position to think: searching for information, plotting graphs, calculating, and converting data into comparable form. Hours went into the plotting alone. When the graphs were done, the relationships were obvious at once, but the plotting had to be done in order to make them so.

Three years later, he published a paper called “Man-Computer Symbiosis” in which he laid out the division of labor that we’re still trying to get right. His argument was that the human should be the one deciding what to work on, what questions to ask, and whether the result is any good. The computer should handle all the clerical and mechanical work between those calls. Not replace the thinking, but clear the path so the thinking can actually happen.

Nirav Tolia described a modern version of this on the podcast this week. Nirav is the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor, which grew to more than 100 million verified users. At one point he shared a heuristic that’s been going around Silicon Valley called 20-60-20, and he used podcast prep as the example. The human does the first 20% to understand who the guest is, why they belong on the show, and what matters. AI handles the middle 60% by expanding themes and generating possible questions. Then the human comes back for the last 20% to choose, order, refine, and add the judgment that turns raw material into something worth saying.

Nirav didn’t claim to invent it, and it’s a heuristic, not a formula. But I think it’s useful because it gives AI a large role without giving it the final word. The first 20% is where you decide what matters, and the last 20% is where you decide what’s good enough. Skip either one and you end up with something that looks finished but isn’t pointed at the right problem. AI can challenge both of those decisions, but you still own them.

Quote

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” Michael Porter

Question

What is one piece of work this week you should make AI challenge instead of making it do for you?

Listen

Nirav Tolia: The Man Who Connected 100 Million Neighbors Says AI Is About to Make Us All Lonelier. The 20-60-20 idea is what I built this newsletter around, but most of the conversation is about how Nextdoor created trust through identity verification, why Nirav thinks AI will make genuine local community more valuable, and what it took to come back as CEO six years after stepping away and lead a turnaround to profitability.

Read

Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick. Mollick is a Wharton professor who treats AI as a co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. It is a practical guide to learning where the tool helps, where it misleads, and how to work with it without confusing a confident answer for sound judgment.

If you love this content (please share it), but also check out my ​Podcast​, and connect with me on ​YouTube​ / ​Twitter​.

— Scott

Read more

If you love this content (please share it), but also…

Start here > newsletter.scottdclary.com

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Sponsor: SelfPublishing.com

Most people say they want to write a book. Then they wait until they have more time, more clarity, or the perfect idea. That is why the book never gets written.

Chandler Bolt built SelfPublishing.com to help people turn the book in their head into something real. On Tuesday, September 1 at 3:00 PM ET, he is teaching a free live workshop on how to write and publish your book, even if you have not started writing yet.

Save your seat here.

This Weeks Letter:

The Prestige Tax

Success Story Podcast

Check out the Success Story Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

Last Week’s Episodes

Jim Kwik - Bestselling Author & Brain Performance Coach | The Boy With the Broken Brain Who Became the World’s #1 Memory Coach

Jim Kwik is a bestselling author and brain performance coach who turned a childhood learning struggle into a career teaching people how to learn faster, remember more, and unlock more of their mental capacity. We talked about the habits that improve memory, why knowledge without action is useless, and how to train your brain instead of assuming it is fixed.

Nirav Tolia - Nextdoor Co-Founder & CEO (100M+ Users) | The Man Who Connected 100M Neighbors Says AI Could Make Us Lonelier

Nirav Tolia co-founded Nextdoor and scaled it to more than 100 million verified users. We talked about why he returned as CEO, what it takes to rebuild a public company, what online platforms misunderstand about real community, and why AI may make genuine local connection more important, not less.

Have an amazing weekend!

Scott

My Links

• Success Story (Top 10 Business Podcast)

• 10 Minute Mindset (Top Mindset Podcast)

• Newsletter (321k Subs)

• Social Media