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The Daniel Tiger SOP
How to Regularly Do Hard Stuff
Brian Scordato
August 02, 2024
The Daniel Tiger SOP - How to Regularly Do Hard Stuff
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Why This Episode Exists + Nerdy Stuff Not In The Pod 💡
Today’s episode is about my favorite item from the Always Work and Never Work List - the Daniel Tiger SOP.
SOPs, or Standard Operating Procedures, are ways to standardize and scale how you react in certain situations. We use two types of SOPs at Tacklebox - Repetitive SOPs and Uncomfortable SOPs:
Repetitive SOPs - Used to scale tasks that don’t need your brainpower. So, an SOP for how you respond to certain types of inbound emails might be something you build over a few weeks, then either automate or outsource. It makes sure you aren’t thinking “how should I respond to this?” every time something hits your inbox.
Uncomfortable SOPs - Used to help you act against your instincts. Your natural reaction to anything uncomfortable will be to avoid it. This means, we’ve got to build a system to make sure you act counter to that instinct. The uncomfortable path is always the less traveled one, which will lead you to a more interesting endpoint.
The Daniel Tiger SOP is an Uncomfortable SOP. It’s especially effective when you’ve got functional freeze -when you know you should do something, but just can’t bring yourself to do it.
The power of the DTSOP is that it makes any task accessible. It comes from a song in my son’s favorite show which helps kids navigate scary stuff. Going to a dentist? If you talk through exactly what’ll happen, it’ll seem less intimidating.
We talk through a few examples of how this works in the pod. And here’s the DTSOP stack of questions:
What do you want to do?
What’s uncomfortable about it?
Walk through the individual steps you’d have to take to make this happen?
What’s the worst case?
Is the worst case actually harmful, or just uncomfortable?
What’s the absolute best case?
Does the best case seem way better than the worst case?
What’s the small first step and when can you do it?
When you run into something uncomfortable, toss it into the Daniel Tiger SOP. It’ll make it less intimidating and give you momentum.
Pod References
Email [email protected] with sub “always work never work” to get the lists
Pod Timestamps:
00:35 Intro - Always Work and Never Work Lists
02:55 The Most Useful Item from the Always Work List
03:55 What Makes People Happy
06:45 You’ll Never Sprint Again
08:12 Repetitive SOPs and Uncomfortable SOPs
09:30 The Daniel Tiger SOP
11:13 Email Scam Detector Startup
16:30 The End: Our Brains Are Dumb
Transcript - Feel Free to Read it Like a Long-form Article:
Today, we’re going to help you surprise yourself. To do things you didn’t think you could. And, we’ll do it by digging in on my favorite item from the Always Work and Never Work lists we talked about a few weeks back.
If you didn’t listen to that episode, or to jog your memory, the Always Work and Never Work lists are exactly what they sound like - two lists I’ve compiled over the past decade or so of working with founders, running my business and living my life - one has things that always work, one has things that never work.
The items on the always work list are things like “a super healthy meal after an unhealthy to break momentum,” “one hour of reflective journaling in a coffee shop with no electronics,” and “make a list of the 5 things the best CEO in the world would do on day one if they took over your business.” Conversely, the never work list has things like “looking at engagement statistics when I don’t need them for an immediate decision,” and “adding something to my life without subtracting something else.” There are dozens of items on each list.
For a while, I just haphazardly added things that worked and things that didn’t as they smacked me in the face, but now the lists, and the process, are structured.
I’ve got tags for problems I run into regularly - things like lack of momentum, prioritization, or unsure of my north star - that I attach to the things that never work and always work in those situations.
And since I’m an even bigger dork than you thought, I’ve got journal entries under a bunch of these problem categories. So, I can see that in 2017 I was struggling with the direction of Tacklebox. I’d lost my north star. I’ve got a brief run down of what I tried, what worked, and suggestions for the next time I’m feeling like that.
The reason it’s so effective is I’m a human. I think every situation is new even though it usually rhymes pretty strongly with something I’ve done before. I need to remind myself to remove myself from the situation and see what it calls for.
I think of these lists as my personal operating manual - if this happens, do this. A way to remove unhelpful emotions.
It’s like a guidebook for my brain, similar to that old Epcot ride Cranium Command where the cadet gets put in charge of running the brain of a 12 year old kid. He has to navigate things like forgetting his homework and avoiding bullies and bumping into the girl he has a crush on. Jon Lovitz is in it for some reason. That’s an unbelievably deep cut but if you know what I’m talking about then you know what I”m talking about. Also, I just googled it and apparently it inspired the Pixar writers to create Inside Out. So, there’s that.
Anyway, the episode on always work and never work lists got a bunch of traction and emails, so I’m figuring out the best way to make it accessible for whoever’d like to see it. Email [email protected] with subject line “always work never work” if you’d like them once I figure it out. If you didn’t listen, I’ll pop it in the show notes.
Todays episode will focus on one of those emails.
It came from a guy who seemed to be doing his best Gary V slash cartoon villain impression, and his email read, quote, “I definitely don’t have time to listen to all 25 minutes of that episode - but can you please summarize it in one bulletpoint and respond to this email with that summary?”
I started getting ready to summarize the post then realized hey, I don’t work for this guy, and the podcast is free, so I drafted a response telling him to go step on Legos barefoot, but then I deleted that email because I realized it I actually loved the question. And it led to about 10 hours of me digging through that episode and through the lists and through the database of our founders and the blockers they hit.
What came out the other side was this episode. The single most useful item from the always work and never work lists for early stage entrepreneurs.
The reason I chose it, is happiness. Specifically, your happiness.
—
A year or two ago I spoke with a happiness expert in preparation for a podcast series we never ended up airing. The whole thing was fascinating, but her description of happiness is a thing that’s always stuck with me:
“Happiness,” she said, “is when you surprise yourself.”
She continued:
“It’s when you do something you didn’t think you could. Think about the happiest moments in your life - when you propose and someone says yes, when you have a kid, when you score the winning goal, when you get accepted into a prestigious place - you’re always doing something that’s past what you’d expected for yourself. The harder you work for that thing, the happier you are.”
She went on.
Happiness is the difference between expectation and reality, so the formula is to, first, lower expectations, and second, figure out ways to beat those expectations.”
As I said, this definition has stuck with me, and eventually I decided a piece of the equation was missing - you have to put yourself in situations where the outcome has the potential to surprise you. Where you’re doing something you maybe don’t believe you can do. This means lofty goals and a system for reaching them. Which most people don’t have.
In 2018, I ran the NYC marathon. Before it, I hadn’t ever run more than 6 miles. But I vividly remember the sign that said one mile left. I’d hit the bottom loop of the Central Park path, there were thousands of screaming fans, and I realized I was going to finish. And, I cried like a baby. Which surprised the hell out of me, but I couldn’t stop. I was just so happy. Because running 26.2 miles in a row was unexpected. And I’d worked really hard to be able to do it. And that made me happy, and so I cried. And then someone from the crowd looked at me and screamed “Hey! Stop crying and finish the damn race! Christ!” - I love New York so much.
Maybe not coincidentally, the always work and never work lists started while I trained for that race. Because I needed to get an output that I wouldn’t get from normal inputs.
So, that’s what we’ll talk about today. The answer to the question posed by our fake Gary V.
My favorite item from the Always Work List. The one that sets you up to surprise yourself.
The Daniel Tiger SOP.
And yes, if you’ve got a toddler, it’s named after that Daniel Tiger.
And we’ll get to it - with a few examples of our founders using it to surprise themselves - after… a little smooth jazz.
You’ll Probably Never Sprint Again
If you’re over the age of 30, and according to my podcast listener data that’s a decent chunk of you, there’s statistically a 90% chance you’ll never sprint again.
Not like run a design sprint - like actually throw on some sneakers and run as fast as you can in a big field.
Which is a joke in my house right now, because the little guy seemingly hasn’t learned to walk. I’ve only seen him sprint. He sprints to Ruby in the morning and to the door when someone knocks and in circles around the kitchen chanting WAFFLE while his breakfast heats up in the toaster. About 40% of the time he ends up tripping during this sprint and tumbling across the floor like those old charlie brown dust clouds with feet and hands sticking out in every direction, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He pops back up and sprints again.
But, at some point - apparently when he’s 30 - that’ll stop.
The older we get, the deeper the ruts in the road that we drive our wagon on get. And getting out of those ruts gets harder.
Now I don’t really care if you ever sprint again - but I do need you to have a system to get out of those ruts. Because the only word that matters for a startup is different. How meaningfully, obviously, purposefully, usefully different are you? Different is the goal.
And different doesn’t come from the path everyone takes.
It comes from doing something new. And new is scary.
Which brings us to the Daniel Tiger SOP.
If you don’t know, SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure and we use them a ton at Tacklebox. The basic idea is to create a clear procedure for situations you want to standardize. Startups require you to do an enormous number of things, and removing thought from the ones that don’t need thought is critical.
We have two types of SOPs - Repetitve SOPs, and Uncomfortable SOPs.
We’ll start with an example of Repetitive SOPs.
When you start getting emails from customers, it might not be the best use of time to think up a response from scratch for each. So, you craft an SOP while answering the first 50 or so, then you hand that SOP off to someone else or you automate it.
Repetitive SOPs exist to create sound process that gets something off your plate.
The other type of SOP exists to make sure you don’t respond to uncomfortable situations with your instincts. Your instincts will always be to avoid discomfort, but the path to different comes from leaning in to it. Quickly and repeatedly.
The cold water doesn't get warmer if you jump late.
The aggregate of the repetitive SOPs and uncomfortable SOPs becomes your business. The systems that scale and the approach to problems.
The Daniel Tiger SOP helps you navigate uncomfortable situations, and itcomes from a show my son watches called Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. It’s a cartoon that has one or two core lessons each episode that they make songs out of. My favorite song is called, quote, “when we do something new, let’s talk about what we’ll do.”
Whenever Daniel has to do something new - like go to the dentist - they sing the song and talk about exactly what’s going to happen. The dentist as a concept is scary, but broken down - get in the car, drive to the dentist, park, walk in, wait in the waiting room, go into the dentist room, sit in the chair, open your mouth, get your teeth cleaned for five minutes with a water squirter, etc. It seems totally manageable.
The Daniel Tiger SOP exists to do the same for entrepreneurs.
It consists of a stack of eight questions I’ll read now, then we’ll show how they work in practice:
Here are the questions:
What do you want to do?
What’s uncomfortable about it?
Walk through the individual steps you’d have to take to make this happen?
What’s the worst case?
Is the worst case actually harmful, or just uncomfortable?
What’s the absolute best case?
Does the best case seem way better than the worst case?
What’s the small first step and when can you do it?
If you want the list without pausing and frantically writing in your notes app, head get gettacklebox dot beehiiv dot com to get the emails with episode details.
Ok. Let’s dig in.
Email Scam Detectors for Boomers
A podcast listener reached out the other day and mentioned that they’d had an idea after their parents had been scammed online. Basically, they’d received an email that looked like it was from their bank that said they’d been hacked and needed to reset their password. Her parents went to a site that looked exactly like their banks site, then proceeded to make a new password that got stolen, then the hackers took a big chunk of money.
This has become a bit of an epidemic.
US residents lost more than $4.6 billion to scams in 2023, and lots of scams go unreported, so that number is probably higher. And, it’s growing.
The founder wanted to make AI software that sat on top of people’s email and scanned for possible scams. It’d have an up to date library of current scams and could tag the emails or even just delete them altogether.
She listened to the pod and knew she needed to speak with customers, but had been stuck for weeks. She just couldn’t make herself do it. It just seemed so uncomfortable to talk to a bunch of older folks about how they were ripe to be scammed. It seemed a bit presumptive and cruel. So, her plan was to just avoid it and launch without speaking to customers.
This is the perfect scenario for the Daniel Tiger SOP.
We hopped on a quick call and I asked the eight questions.
What do you want to do?
She responed with “Reach out to my customers - specifically people over 65 - and learn how they think about and protect against scams now”
What’s uncomfortable about it? I asked
“I don’t know how to reach out to these people without seeming insulting. I also don’t really know how to find them”
Ok - let’s walk through the individual steps you’d have to take to make this happen?
She thought for a moment here, because she’d been stuck on the idea that it’d be uncomfortable and hadn’t really gone through this before.
Well, she said, I guess I’d have to figure out the best way to get in touch with these people. So, maybe I’d start by emailing a group of my friends and seeing if they’d connect me to their parents? So the steps would be,
Create a list of my closest 25 friends
Write an email asking to speak with their parents about a startup idea I was working on
Create a calendly for them to schedule time with me
Create a list of questions
Then, just, have the calls over a couple of weeks
What’s the worst case scenario? I asked
Uhh - no one wants to speak with me? I guess? Or, maybe this isn’t a problem they think about? Which is something I’d really want to know anyway, so not really worst case.
Is the worst case actually harmful, or just potentially uncomfortable?
Potentially, lightly uncomfortable.
What’s the absolute best case? I asked
I learn how they think about scammers and get a bunch of first customers I can run tests with
Does the best case seem way better than the worst case?
Yes - wildly better. I could have customers immediately.
What’s the small first step and when can you do it?
Create the list and write the email, and I can do it tonight after dinner.
And that’s that. The Daniel Tiger SOP.
The key points are to walk through exactly what’ll happen to show yourself the worst case scenario isn’t bad at all and the best case scenario is likely transformative. Humans instinctively protect downside and ignore upside - we need to fix that.
Now, if you haven’t started a startup before this might seem silly. She should just speak with her customer, right? Well, ask anyone who’s started a business how many times they run into scenarios where they’re functionally frozen. Unable to do what they know they should because it’s new. And new is uncomfortable.
And, in case you were wondering, our founder sent this email, had 20 conversations, and realized the real customers were the adult kids. And, the inflection point was after their parents had been hacked or had a close call.
Change only comes after pain.
So, marketing directly to the kids with language like - “your parents were scammed and you want to make sure it never happens again,” got them to sign up. They’re always the ones who install software or sign into icloud anyway, so they wanted to manage this software for their parents. The company is humming along and mid concierge test.
In the past month we’ve had founders use the Daniel Tiger SOP to reach out to a dozen manufactures to learn about the viability of a new deck umbrella, to speak to 25 scientists to learn more about the best approach for sustainable commercial fishing, and to execute a concierge MVP that helped restaurants source local produce.
When I run into something that my instincts immediately push me away from, I now say “let’s daniel tiger this,” and I run through the eight prompts. It’s magic.
Mostly, because our brains our dumb.
Which brings us to the end.
The End - Our Brains are Dumb
For how smart we are, our brains are really dumb.
There are two reasons this is wildly helpful for you.
First, our brains love those well-worn ruts. The known path that everyone else is on.
Our brain’s first instinct, in every scenario, will always be to move away from discomfort. If you stick with this first instinct as an entrepreneur, you’ll never get anywhere interesting.
So, the origination of the always work list for me was to find things that always worked to get me out of that well-worn rut. To move towards discomfort so that I could get somewhere interesting. It’s Graham Weaver’s idea that everything worth doing will make things worse first before they get better. They’ll start as hard and uncomfortable then lead you somewhere interesting. This isn’t in our nature so you’ve gotta bring in a system to do it.
So our brains being dumb in that they’ll always push away from discomfort gives people who can navigate that an advantage.
The second reason our brains being dumb is helpful to you is because they’re really easy to trick.
There’s a great nate bargatze bit I’ll pop in the shoe notes about how dumb are brains are. He talks about how if you’re in a bad mood you can just fake smile and your brain immediately thinks you’re having a good day, even though it’s in on the trick.
The takeaway is, you can trick your brain.
If your consistent reaction to something uncomfortable is to toss it into the Daniel Tiger SOP framework to tease it out and make it less intimidating, that’ll start to be your default reaction. It won’t be to shy away, it’ll be to figure out how to make a seemingly uncomfortable thing comfortable. To make it much easier to get out of the rut.
To sprint again. Which just entails throwing on your shoes, heading to the track, warming up, then sprinting for a while. And realizing that the downside is you look a little silly, and the upside is there’s no better feeling than sprinting.
Just ask my son.