The Identity of Success | Polina Marinova Pompliano on 'Hidden Genius'

[00:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Boy, I had a really fun time talking to Polina Pompliano, the author of the new book Hidden Genius.

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And she also has this newsletter called The Profile where she's profiled hundreds or thousands

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: of the most successful people of all time.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And she put together a book, an excellent book, Hidden Genius, about all the things

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: she learned.

[00:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to learn them too.

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So I read the book, but I still had lots of questions.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00]: So I called her up, she came on the podcast and she answered my questions about what

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_00]: it takes to unleash your Hidden Genius.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

[00:00:46] [SPEAKER_00]: This is the James Altucher Show.

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you can see like there's tons of like bookmarks throughout the whole

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_00]: thing, like...

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh so you've read the whole thing?

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, of course.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a podcast unless I read the whole book.

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome, Jay.

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So that means the world.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_01]: You and like three people have read the whole thing.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Can you tell when you're doing an interview, like let's say you're on someone's podcast,

[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_00]: can you tell if the podcaster has read your book or not?

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: 100%.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's nuanced questions and then the ones that haven't read like the chapter names

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: and I can tell.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and the other question is, because this is an interesting thing about interviewing

[00:01:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and look, you're an interviewer.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: You've done lots of interviews for your newsletter over the years and that's expressed so well

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_00]: in this book.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: But this is a big philosophy interviewing, like does it disappoint you if you're on a

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00]: podcast where the interviewer hasn't read the book?

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I understand some people are just super busy but to me as somebody who does

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: so much research, I could never not read it before interviewing someone.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_01]: But you know, it's okay.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I get my points across.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I was having this discussion the other day with Cal Fussman who used to be really good

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: friends with Larry King when Larry King was still alive and Larry King of course had

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_00]: an interview style where he on purpose never read the book or never studied up on his

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: interview subject because he wanted to be there with the audience and be just as

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: curious as the audience like, who is this person?

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Who are you?

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And learn from scratch during the interview.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And I could see the logic in that too.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Like sometimes when I've read the book, my curiosity is different than the listeners.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm kind of jumping three steps ahead and so sometimes I have to pull back a

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_00]: little and figure out where I am with the subject so that I'm not revealing

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: too much or skipping ahead too much.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: That's, I think that's totally fair and it's definitely a strategy that some

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_01]: people have.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I remember my coworkers and journalism.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I would be the person that has to read everything that my subject has done before

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_01]: interviewing them, but a lot of my coworkers were like, I don't want to read

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_01]: anything so that I come at it with fresh eyes.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's what you're kind of getting at here.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, when you've read the book, you kind of have a little bit more

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_01]: context than the listeners.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So your questions may be a little bit more in depth.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's two things there.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: One is, A, the whole reason I do a podcast is because I want to learn to

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: make my own life better.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So I might as well read the book.

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So then when I actually am talking to the subject in this case you, if I had

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00]: questions on what you said in the book, I could learn even more by asking

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_00]: you directly now what a pleasure it is for me.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Our brains work the same way.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So of course the book is called Hidden Genius, The Secret Ways of

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Thinking That Power the World's Most Successful People.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You really organize the book in an interesting way because like Hidden

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Genius, that can mean a lot of things.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: It could mean, oh, I'm like amazingly creative or I'm like great at math and

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: science.

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Like those are the, I would say math and art are the two areas that people

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: think of when they think of genius and people think of prodigies and youth.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: How would you describe Hidden Genius?

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think when I was pitching the name to my publisher, there were a

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_01]: little hesitant exactly because of that.

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_01]: They were like the connotation with the word genius is that it's some sort

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: of like polymath or you know, like somebody who's, they've studied

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_01]: this subject and they're a genius at this one thing.

[00:04:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's sort of like that but not at all because it's not the

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_01]: traditional way of thinking about a genius.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_01]: It's that the way I define it is everybody has a hidden genius.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Many of us just simply haven't discovered it yet.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But the way I think about it is it could be a small piece of wisdom or

[00:05:01] [SPEAKER_01]: something transformational that you know because of all the experiences

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_01]: you've had that led you to discovering that hidden genius.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And it could be a skill, piece of wisdom, anything that differentiates

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_01]: you that differentiator that makes you exceptional.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And do you think everybody in them has in them the seeds of genius?

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, 100%.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting because you know there's lots of ways and you talk

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: about this about manufacturing genius.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's lots of ways to kind of bring out the genius inside of you.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: One thing that was intriguing to me is like towards the end you talk

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: about identity and people's relationship with their own identity.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned for yourself, you had when you were working it before

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: you started your excellent, excellent newsletter, The Profile,

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_00]: which I read every issue of you were working at Fortune Magazine

[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_00]: and you kind of identified your identity as someone who works at Fortune Magazine.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And was it hard for you to quit and then start the profile newsletter?

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: It was because status is an addicting thing.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of us when we get a taste of some sort of status,

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_01]: in many cases a job title, we get addicted to that feeling

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_01]: that it gives us when we walk into a room and we can say,

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a reporter and editor at Fortune Magazine.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Like immediately you get some respect.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: People are like, ooh, I wonder what she does.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_01]: That kind of thing.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I knew that I was going down a dangerous path

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: because this was something that something external

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_01]: that I had tied my identity around that could be taken from me.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I could always get laid off.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I could get fired.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I could lose my job for whatever reason.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And suddenly I am no longer reporter and editor of Fortune Magazine.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So in 2017, when I started the profile,

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like this one thing is just something that I do solely for myself.

[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't start it with the idea of like, how is this going to make money?

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Is this going to be a business and my one day going to quit my job for it?

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_01]: But of course, you know, it kind of organically evolved into that.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And then in 2020, when I was making the decision to leave Fortune

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_01]: in my full-time job for this newsletter, I was terrified

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_01]: because I was like, OK, so suddenly my email is not going to have

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Paulina at fortune.com.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It's now going to be at readtheprofound.com.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Are people going to be as willing to engage with me

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_01]: if that status symbol isn't there?

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And what did you find?

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely they were.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So I found that the biggest lesson I learned from that is

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: relationships don't evaporate if you've done it the right way.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: As a reporter, I always made sure not

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_01]: to like burn people.

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I always gave them a chance to explain a quote that maybe where they misspoke.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't like, oh, yeah, that's going to bury them.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, let's put that in there.

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think people earned people's trust

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_01]: and they learned that they could trust me over time.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when I emailed Melinda Gates,

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_01]: his people after I had interviewed her at Fortune,

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_01]: maybe they said no to an interview with the profile,

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_01]: but they always answered my email.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think like, regardless of what you do,

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_01]: the relationship aspect of it is the most important part.

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: It's really true.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Like it reminds me of so I had a similar experience as you.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I was working at this was in the 90s.

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_00]: So a long time ago, I was working at HBO

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_00]: and I left to start my first company or actually just like you.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I had already started it, but I finally felt the need to do it full time.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember my boss was really disappointed

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_00]: at that point when I told him I was leaving

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and he said, no one's ever going to return your calls again

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: because you won't be James Altucher from HBO,

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_00]: which I really did tie my identity to.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And he was right in the sense that people who would have returned my calls

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_00]: because I was at HBO, they did not return my calls.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_00]: But people who over the years,

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I had just gone that extra length for and given to,

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: they returned my calls.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And then it made me, it changed my identity,

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_00]: realizing who was responding to me.

[00:09:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, it made me become more of me,

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_00]: like the positive attributes of me because that,

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, contributed to my success as opposed to being James at HBO.

[00:09:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I had to drop the HBO part and become more of me

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and learn who you are.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. And you know, you bring that up when you do you,

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, throughout this book,

[00:09:33] [SPEAKER_00]: you're taking snippets from the various profiles you've done over the years

[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and it's contributing to the different chapters.

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: But you talk about Matthew McConaughey and what he said about identity.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And it was very fascinating what he said,

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00]: which was have an identity elimination diet.

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And and I was trying to figure out like what that would mean for me.

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Like basically he was saying, if you associate yourself

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_00]: like Matthew McConaughey, the actor,

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: what does it mean to eliminate that from your identity?

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a tricky thing.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Like like if you were doing an identity elimination diet right now,

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: what would you eliminate?

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that's that's what's so fascinating is like

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: when I graduated from college.

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So that this is when it all started.

[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_01]: When I was in college,

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I had completely tied my identity around titles and what I in perceptions.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So in college, I was the editor-in-chief of my college paper.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I was an intern at CNN in USA Today.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I had done all these things.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So then when I graduated and I got zero job offers,

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, Oh my God, who am I?

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the ultimate like I had nothing else.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I was living at home in Atlanta on my mom's couch.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I was the cliche.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm a Lanna. Yeah, it's great.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_01]: But but it's just that like I had no identity,

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_01]: so I had to build it up again.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that experience taught me for the rest of my life,

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_01]: never attach your identity to something external.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, when people ask me what I do now,

[00:11:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I really struggle with it because I mean, I write,

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_01]: but that's like an action.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not who I am.

[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm also a mother.

[00:11:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm also an entrepreneur.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm also like all these things.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_01]: So I can't really pin it down.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just Paulina.

[00:11:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think like for me, it's the opposite now where it's like,

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I am myself.

[00:11:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I do all these different things

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and I have all these different interests, but I am not one thing.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_00]: It's again, so I'm going to just play

[00:11:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and devil's advocate to push back and see if there's.

[00:11:37] [SPEAKER_00]: So so on the one hand, identity also helps focus

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_00]: what your goals are.

[00:11:44] [SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, there's various definitions of success,

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_00]: like, and you mentioned them later on, like some people say,

[00:11:49] [SPEAKER_00]: oh, being a good parent, being a good friend,

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_00]: contributing to the world.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00]: But at any given moment, like when you're writing

[00:11:56] [SPEAKER_00]: an issue of the profile, at that moment,

[00:11:59] [SPEAKER_00]: your definition of success is probably I'm going to write

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: a really good successful issue of this newsletter.

[00:12:06] [SPEAKER_00]: There's lots of definitions of success

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_00]: could even change throughout the day.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And so having an identity that's dependent on the fact

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: that this is what you do, you're writing this book

[00:12:16] [SPEAKER_00]: hidden genius, you're writing the profile,

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_00]: that helps with kind of honing in

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_00]: on what's success for you at that moment.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. No, no, no.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So OK, yes.

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So here's what I you know that saying

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_01]: strong opinions loosely held.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_00]: No.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, OK.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a saying, like strong opinions loosely held.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_01]: You should have strong opinions,

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_01]: but you shouldn't be so attached to them

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_01]: that you cannot like argue the other side

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_01]: or change your mind or whatever.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the same with like identity,

[00:12:46] [SPEAKER_01]: strong identities, but like loosely held.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So when, for example, yes, I am

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_01]: when I'm writing the book, I am a writer.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a goal, like I'm going to get this in

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_01]: before deadline, whatever.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not that attached to this.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm not that attached to being, you know,

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. Right now I work with Fortune

[00:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: and I moderate panels.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not that attached to being a moderator

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: and interviewer or whatever.

[00:13:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I think with Matthew McConaughey,

[00:13:14] [SPEAKER_01]: the elimination diet of identity for him

[00:13:16] [SPEAKER_01]: is that he's so attached to being an actor

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: and a movie star.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He says that he has to go on this like trip

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_01]: is separate himself from society

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_01]: and it takes him like two weeks

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_01]: to start being like, oh, yeah,

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: like, this is just the regular person.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not my job.

[00:13:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think it's like, yes,

[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_01]: you should have identities,

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_01]: but the way I think about it is more

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_01]: have a multitude of identities

[00:13:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and don't just like attach yourself

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: so tightly to a singular one.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to take this concept

[00:13:46] [SPEAKER_00]: a little further because I feel like

[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_00]: a large part of your book actually

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_00]: is about identity.

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So earlier on in the book,

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_00]: when in the chapter on mental toughness,

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_00]: you talk about assuming

[00:13:57] [SPEAKER_00]: an alter identity and alter ego.

[00:13:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So you describe how Beyonce,

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, because she was raised

[00:14:03] [SPEAKER_00]: in a very conservative upbringing.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes when she's on stage,

[00:14:06] [SPEAKER_00]: she has to be Sasha Ferris and Kobe Bryant

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_00]: had to be the black mamba

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_00]: when he was dealing with his legal troubles

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_00]: and his basketball career at the same time.

[00:14:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And you even, you know, spoke to Frank Abagnale,

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_00]: the catch me if you can guy

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_00]: that he'd assume identities

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00]: and so on to play these different roles

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_00]: in his con games and so on.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, also there's

[00:14:27] [SPEAKER_00]: the concept of identity and relationships.

[00:14:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, later on in your chapter

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_00]: on relationships, Elon Musk,

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: he his identity is wrapped up with

[00:14:35] [SPEAKER_00]: a little bit with what woman

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_00]: is he sleeping next to?

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Because he said he couldn't be happy

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_00]: unless he was sleeping next to somebody.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise he'd be lonely

[00:14:45] [SPEAKER_00]: and that's an identity as well.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of a lot of this genius

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_00]: in your book is about giving up

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_00]: on who you maybe previously thought you were

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_00]: or who your brain was trying to convince you you were.

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_00]: David Goggins, for instance,

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_00]: had to kind of refer to himself

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: in the third person so that

[00:15:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Goggins would be a more intense,

[00:15:09] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, quote unquote Goggins

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_00]: would be a more intense version of himself.

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_01]: OK, so OK, you have clearly read the book

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_01]: because this is a theme that I

[00:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think anybody has picked up on yet

[00:15:38] [SPEAKER_01]: until just now.

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_01]: But if you look through the whole book,

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_01]: there's kind of an undercurrent

[00:15:43] [SPEAKER_01]: of playing with perspective

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_01]: which in turn becomes playing with identity.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a chapter on how like

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_01]: you're the unreliable narrator of your own life

[00:15:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and how maybe sometimes to give yourself

[00:15:55] [SPEAKER_01]: distance from a problem,

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_01]: you should try to write about the problem

[00:15:58] [SPEAKER_01]: from as if you're like a third party

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_01]: looking on the outside or a different

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_01]: character in your life.

[00:16:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I like playing with

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_01]: perspective and playing with identity

[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_01]: because none of us are like this

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01]: this solid rigid thing.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like you're constantly evolving.

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_01]: If I asked you right now, like,

[00:16:18] [SPEAKER_01]: are you the James of today?

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that your real identity or is your

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_01]: real identity from five years ago?

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Or is your real identity who you're going to be

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_01]: from 10 years from now?

[00:16:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just like we're constantly

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_01]: like morphing into these different things

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_01]: and it gives you confidence that the person

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_01]: you are today is not who you have to be in the future.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_01]: That's the alter ego effect.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_01]: David Goggins was unhappy with who he was

[00:16:42] [SPEAKER_01]: when he looked in the mirror.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So he was like, I'm going to become

[00:16:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Goggins like this aspirational self,

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_01]: this idealized version of me.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to start acting today

[00:16:52] [SPEAKER_01]: like this aspirational self.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_01]: He says he likes to say that he was built, not born.

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just I hate the idea that we're static

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_01]: and we're born into this one identity

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_01]: and we cannot be other things.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's that's kind of like why there's

[00:17:10] [SPEAKER_01]: so many kinds of contradictions

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_01]: and maybe it's different here and there.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like the whole point is that identity morphs

[00:17:17] [SPEAKER_01]: and you can be an active participant in that process.

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. And by doing that, it allows you to unlock

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_00]: and I think this is kind of your conclusion in the book.

[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, not the only conclusion, but kind of where all this discussion

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_00]: is aiming towards is that by having this

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_00]: constantly changing identity and being able to be creative

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_00]: about your definition of identity and by eliminating

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: kind of things you've attached yourself too much to.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_00]: This is how genius is unlocked.

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So you describe the chef from Elinia.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_00]: I forget his name now.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Akitz. Yeah.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. So as he was losing his sense of taste,

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_00]: which reminds me of Beethoven, losing his hearing.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00]: But as this world famous chef is losing his sense of taste,

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_00]: he has to change his identity as a chef.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_00]: He has to kind of systematize in a different way,

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00]: constructing new dishes and that unlocks this amazing creativity.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the irony of being one of the most innovative

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_01]: chefs in the nation and losing your sense of taste,

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_01]: making you realize that actually you can manufacture creativity

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: and that taste isn't just your taste buds.

[00:18:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Actually a large portion of taste comes from comes from visual

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_01]: aspects of you looking at the food, but also smelling it.

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And he realized that and he was able to become even more creative

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_01]: because of that realization.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like like take someone like the historically famous novelists

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_00]: from last century, Joseph Conrad, who wrote Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_00]: or Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote Lolita and the defense and other books.

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Both of them English was their second language.

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So they had to eliminate their knowledge that they were going to be

[00:19:10] [SPEAKER_00]: enormously fluent in the language they were going to be writing in.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, they both wrote works that were in English,

[00:19:15] [SPEAKER_00]: even though English was not their first language.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And these books that they wrote because they had a limited set of tools

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_00]: that weren't as fluent as other speakers,

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00]: that unlock their creativity in this interesting way.

[00:19:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, isn't that interesting how like constraint can unlock creativity?

[00:19:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I often think about so I've loved writing my whole life.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So when we moved to the US, I obviously didn't speak English,

[00:19:39] [SPEAKER_01]: but we had this class in fourth grade where as class was beginning,

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_01]: we had a journal and every day there was a prompt on the board

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_01]: and you just have to like journal on the prompt.

[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But with my limited English, I like was constantly in my brain

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_01]: searching for words that didn't intuitively come.

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think because I spent so much time in my head searching for words

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_01]: and rearranging sentences and trying to figure it out,

[00:20:06] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that that helped me become a more original writer

[00:20:09] [SPEAKER_01]: than if English had been my native language.

[00:20:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I definitely think that's true.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I also wonder if in this book you also mentioned we often become

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: the words we use.

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And so every language has its own peculiarities,

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_00]: its own ways of expressing things and its own metaphors and analogies

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_00]: that people use to describe certain events and objects and so on.

[00:20:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if bringing the metaphors of one language

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_00]: into your new language also makes you think in a different way

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_00]: in a more almost poetic way in that language when you're writing

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00]: in that language, the new language.

[00:20:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. And I've actually written about this before a few years ago.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about how when I speak in Bulgarian and when I spend

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_01]: some time in Bulgaria, I feel like I'm more logical and less emotional.

[00:21:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And why is that?

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that like the nature of the language or is it the culture?

[00:21:04] [SPEAKER_01]: It could be a mix.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But then I thought about in English how much of the time when I talk,

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I start my sentences with I feel like instead of I think or I believe

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: or something like that and I feel like as a very that's emotional language.

[00:21:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It's about feelings, it's about emotions,

[00:21:22] [SPEAKER_01]: and it probably unlocks a different part of your brain when you're talking.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's really interesting to think about how speaking in different languages

[00:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: could alter or bring out different sides of your personality.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, so we in Bulgarian, I don't know what language I actually

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_00]: spoke in Bulgaria as a Bulgarian.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in Bulgarian, do they not say I feel? Do they more say I think?

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, or it's just it's just more direct.

[00:21:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. And usually it's yeah, I think if you're talking about something,

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_01]: it's like I think this, I believe this, but it's like much more to the point.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of I feel like sometimes and, you know, it's less.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder, I think that's kind of true for most of Eastern Europe actually

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_00]: is that it's very they're very direct, they're very blunt.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And I wonder if not being so direct, not being so blunt is a luxury of being American.

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_00]: But related to language, though, you also have the way you form these chapters

[00:22:20] [SPEAKER_00]: is a roadmap of how what you think of as genius.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And I like your chapter on the importance of storytelling

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and learning how to be a good storyteller because

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER_00]: doesn't matter how smart you are, doesn't matter what you're a genius in.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you don't have an ability to convey your ideas and thoughts,

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: then it's all worthless.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And so storytelling is the way to convey something.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't just list a bunch of facts and people will remember you have to

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_00]: convey through storytelling.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And it seemed like you quote many different storytellers and it's all

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_00]: amazing stories and profiles, but I like this concept of but except.

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And then like you want to describe that.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So so Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the social network,

[00:23:06] [SPEAKER_01]: he talks about to tell a compelling narrative.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_01]: You need conflict and intent.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So what is the conflict and what is the protagonist willing to do to get what he

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_01]: wants? And he's like, I don't care if it's like he wants to get to California.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to get the girl.

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He wants to get whatever.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But like how is he going to get there?

[00:23:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And even better than he wants it, he must need it.

[00:23:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just like, I mean, his stories are brilliant because there's usually

[00:23:32] [SPEAKER_01]: the protagonist has many different paths to where he could go.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But there's always conflict.

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_01]: There's always some sort of I need to get there like a like a maniacal

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_01]: desire to get to an outcome.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what makes it so compelling.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, you don't have a story unless you have but except in conflict.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And so so OK, let's look at the social network.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So Mark Zuckerberg wants to create a trillion dollar company,

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_00]: social, you know, the biggest social network in the world.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But there are two different groups suing him based on the origin of the whole thing,

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00]: except they might be wrong and that's what the movie kind of and then

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_00]: these things happen to kind of push those two,

[00:24:22] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, the butts and the accepts or

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_00]: OK, let's pretend we're writing like a romance novel.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So somebody wants to meet the love of her life.

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know at her job is some

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_00]: main person she deals with is she just really doesn't like except he might have

[00:24:41] [SPEAKER_00]: some hidden charms that she's starting to fall for.

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they're thrown into a situation where they have to work

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00]: together closely and blah, blah, blah.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. And also, also,

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_01]: in parallel to this conflict and intent,

[00:24:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Aaron's working also really he says that he's not interested in an ultimate truth.

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_01]: He's interested in conflicting narratives that may all be true.

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_01]: He was like, you know, with the social network,

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_01]: there are three different versions of the truth according to three different

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_01]: perspectives. So it's like it's

[00:25:17] [SPEAKER_01]: he knows that his viewer is intelligent enough to pick up on that and decide for

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_01]: themselves what they think.

[00:25:23] [SPEAKER_01]: But he's never he never beats you over the head with this is how it is.

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: This is the only ultimate source of truth.

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And I love that as a storyteller.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. And you mentioned a quote.

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I am maybe was Aaron Sorkin who said or maybe was someone else.

[00:25:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned a quote.

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_00]: There's three versions.

[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_00]: There's always three versions of the truth, your truth, my truth and the truth.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_01]: There's always three sides to the truth.

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Your is mine and in the truth.

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I like that.

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And this is why this is why I think this book is important because I feel like

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_00]: as a society almost where we have this sickness where

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'm an optimistic person, so I'm not saying this sickness is is incurable.

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But the sickness is is that we as a nation have been,

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, everybody has been sort of caught in these identity traps like,

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_00]: oh, I'm a Republican.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Democrat.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a Maga.

[00:26:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a woke, you know, and it's like we have this menu of identities.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And once we pick something off that menu,

[00:26:25] [SPEAKER_00]: we have to subscribe to everything that is in that identity.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, like an example being like someone who's a Republican may feel

[00:26:34] [SPEAKER_00]: like they have to be both for lower taxes and pro life, even though those

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_00]: two issues have nothing to do with each other.

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_00]: But you fall into this identity trap,

[00:26:43] [SPEAKER_00]: you have to pick all of it now if you're going to be that identity.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's one illness.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_00]: The other is I think, you know,

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_00]: this whole idea that we've had these past few years of fake news or misinformation,

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_00]: it kind of assumes there's only one truth.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is like you said,

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_00]: there's there's multiple truths depending on context and,

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, who you are and what you believe in your background and so on.

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:27:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's probably one of the reasons that I'm so obsessed with the idea

[00:27:13] [SPEAKER_01]: of identity, because I've never been a person who could subscribe to one

[00:27:21] [SPEAKER_01]: truth or one sort of identity and stick with it.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I find just contradictions

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: amazing, but I find them all the time within myself and within others.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think it has to do with the fact

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_01]: that we're immigrants.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I came to the United States from Bulgaria.

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_01]: We lived in Georgia, which is notoriously conservative, conservative ideals, values,

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_01]: whatever, and then I moved to New York City, which is the opposite of that.

[00:27:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And I've seen so many different perspectives and I've lived so many

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_01]: different perspectives that like I don't just see the world through one set of eyes.

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I kind of get why these people believe that.

[00:28:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of get why these people believe that.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's really fascinating to me to see these like culture wars in that

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_01]: people cannot be empathetic for one second.

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_01]: It blows my mind.

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I know and it's really disturbing when I see people say basically imply they wish

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_00]: someone else was dead because of something they believe.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you know, all the time people will say, oh, this person and that person

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_00]: is usually some anonymous stranger to them should just die because of what

[00:28:29] [SPEAKER_00]: they believe or think, which is so ridiculous because all of this,

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_00]: all of these beliefs are so temporary.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just the nature of like a new cycle.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Everything's so temporary.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Facts are basically temporary right now.

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, and the other thing is that having too focused an identity,

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, in addition to preventing you from finding your hidden genius is

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_00]: often a source of misery.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Like you were saying you were at Fortune Magazine.

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_00]: What if you had gotten fired?

[00:28:59] [SPEAKER_00]: If you identified too much with being, you know, a reporter from this big famous

[00:29:03] [SPEAKER_00]: magazine, you would have been depressed.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, which is why you see so many Fortune 500 CEOs who suddenly lose their job

[00:29:12] [SPEAKER_01]: as CEO and they've identified that way for so long that they usually have

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_01]: some sort of crisis.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I was reading this book Oprah wrote and she said something like,

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_01]: don't ever attach your identity to something you can lose in the blink of

[00:29:28] [SPEAKER_01]: a board meeting.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of people do that, unfortunately.

[00:29:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Look, and Oprah speaking from personal experience, like when she had her first

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_00]: struggles, you know, with holding down, she knew she was talented, but,

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, sometimes people didn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and let her run a show and so on.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_00]: So she had her own initial early struggles.

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And it reminds me of like the first time I sold a company, made some money.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I identified so much as the kind of person who made a lot of money and had a lot

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_00]: of money that when I lost that money, it was, of course, you get depressed no

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_00]: matter what when you lose a lot of money, but it just hit me to the core

[00:30:09] [SPEAKER_00]: of my identity, like I really felt worthless.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's that's how you saw yourself.

[00:30:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Incidentally, that perception had to change.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:30:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And so but I think these techniques you describe in the book for kind of

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00]: unlocking genius are ways to get out of the identity trap or to get out of depression

[00:30:32] [SPEAKER_00]: or, you know, or to cure yourself of loneliness, for instance, which,

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_00]: interestingly, you have a chapter about loneliness in a book about genius.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to go through some of the questions you say at the very end that

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_00]: people should ask themselves, like the chef, a chef who built Alinia,

[00:30:49] [SPEAKER_00]: who lost a sense of taste.

[00:30:50] [SPEAKER_00]: He says, what is the biggest, boldest, most original endeavor you can conceive of?

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:30:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's an interesting question because, OK, I can conceive of building

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_00]: maybe a time machine, but I'm not going to do that.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I guess, OK, I can't if conceived means actually mean realistically be

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_00]: able to do that.

[00:31:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I won't say that.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_00]: But like, what's the most creative thing you could think of right now

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_00]: that you could do in life?

[00:31:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Me completely disrupt.

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so yes, and it could be that when I say like audacious, most bold, original,

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, given your interests and skills, right?

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_01]: So for me personally, it would be to completely reinvent what people think

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: when they think of a profile, because I think like right now,

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_01]: when I say the word profile, a lot of people just think text based

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_01]: in a magazine long form about a person.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, how can you completely disrupt that?

[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Because something like Humans of New York,

[00:31:48] [SPEAKER_01]: that's a profile, even though it could be a Facebook post, just a picture

[00:31:52] [SPEAKER_01]: with a few lines underneath.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I think most people think they have original ideas only to find out

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_01]: that it's not that original.

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably derived of something else.

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So the reason I asked that question is just like, you have to continue

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_01]: to break it down, Grant, when he was like, oh, I thought I was being original

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_01]: until he kept asking why, until he got to the bare bones of in the dining experience.

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, why do people eat with a fork and a knife?

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_01]: What if I disrupt that?

[00:32:24] [SPEAKER_01]: What if suddenly there's no forks, there's no knives, there's no plates,

[00:32:29] [SPEAKER_01]: there's nothing, instead the tablecloth looks like a giant scale painting

[00:32:34] [SPEAKER_01]: and suddenly food, instead of doing this motion and right now for those who are

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01]: listening, I'm taking some sort of utensil and bringing the food to my mouth.

[00:32:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Instead of that motion, what if the food floats to you and you eat it with

[00:32:49] [SPEAKER_01]: your mouth without your hands?

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like things like that are what makes you original.

[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's breaking down the very basic, obvious things we take for granted

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_01]: and putting that on its head.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_00]: So so it's interesting you say about how, you know, you want to change the

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_00]: definite concept of profile, you did that a little bit for me.

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, first off, your newsletter always does that for me.

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_00]: But in this book, you mentioned how

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_00]: a very kind of like almost the the the concept of a profile started with

[00:33:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Gay Tileses' profile Frank Sinatra in the I guess it was the mid sixties

[00:33:27] [SPEAKER_00]: where he could Sinatra was sick.

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_00]: So he couldn't actually talk to Sinatra.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_00]: So he ended up interviewing a bunch of people who knew Sinatra and built

[00:33:36] [SPEAKER_00]: the profile out of that.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And that was fascinating because I recently had an experience where I was

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_00]: trying to get someone on the podcast and for whatever reason, it didn't work out.

[00:33:46] [SPEAKER_00]: But I was talking to so many people.

[00:33:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I realize now I missed the opportunity to just talk to those people about the

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_00]: person I was trying to get on the podcast.

[00:33:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And that would have been the podcast about this person is talking to those

[00:33:58] [SPEAKER_00]: people about the person.

[00:33:59] [SPEAKER_01]: That's that's a beautiful example.

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly and the Frank Sinatra piece,

[00:34:05] [SPEAKER_01]: the reason it was so innovative and he actually ended up pioneering

[00:34:10] [SPEAKER_01]: a new form of journalism with it, which is narrative nonfiction is because

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_01]: it wasn't your straight news article or news profile.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_01]: It was he used elements of fiction into a news nonfiction article.

[00:34:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And he talked to so many people and usually nobody would publish a profile

[00:34:32] [SPEAKER_01]: without the central figure being interviewed.

[00:34:34] [SPEAKER_01]: But he found a way to talk to everybody in his orbit to paint an even better

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_01]: picture than if he had sat down with Frank Sinatra.

[00:34:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And I could see the influence that I sat on you because so for me,

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_00]: for instance, if I want to quote unquote profile someone, which for me at

[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_00]: this point means have them on the podcast, I feel like I have to have them

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_00]: on the podcast, but what you've been able to do so well is,

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_00]: OK, maybe sometimes you interview the person you're profiling,

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_00]: but other times you write about all the things you've learned and from all

[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_00]: of your research about a person.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes that could be more valuable actually than straight interviewing someone.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes that leads to an interview.

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Robert Hoge, who I first only wrote a dossier where I did not

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: interview him, I just studied him.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I published that.

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And then because of that, he saw that I genuinely had done my research

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_01]: and taken key takeaways about a story he was willing to do an interview.

[00:35:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Another time, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, I worked on a dossier on him

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_01]: that never interviewed him.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And then he liked it so much, which is like the ultimate compliment.

[00:35:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Usually people, if somebody doesn't talk to you and they synthesize

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_01]: what you've already done, you might think like, oh, that's not me.

[00:35:55] [SPEAKER_01]: They would never know.

[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But he actually thought it was accurate enough that he shared it with his network.

[00:36:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like moments like that that you can't plan simply happened

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_01]: because I was curious enough to learn from these people, which is how I learn

[00:36:09] [SPEAKER_01]: anyways, why I'd be doing this anyway.

[00:36:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just publishing it for all my readers.

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And again, like

[00:36:17] [SPEAKER_00]: getting detached from the idea of what is a profile allows you

[00:36:23] [SPEAKER_00]: to unlock your hidden genius, for instance, in terms of writing this newsletter.

[00:36:28] [SPEAKER_00]: For the chef, detaching himself from what he traditionally thought of as

[00:36:33] [SPEAKER_00]: a dining experience allowed him to unlock his creativity.

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_00]: For Aaron Sorkin, detaching himself from the concept of we must tell the truth

[00:36:42] [SPEAKER_00]: in a movie, there must be one truth that defines a story allows him to tell

[00:36:48] [SPEAKER_00]: a story from many different perspectives.

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Now I was going to say that's so cool.

[00:36:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I hadn't I had never actually thought about it that way.

[00:36:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's the same way you kind of say, imagine even looking at yourself

[00:36:58] [SPEAKER_00]: and telling your own narrative from the points of view of other people who know you.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's very valuable.

[00:37:04] [SPEAKER_00]: So like, you know, you have a whole chapter on relationships,

[00:37:06] [SPEAKER_00]: which I think is could be a book by itself about relationships.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_00]: But whenever you're in an argument and as you point out what Esther Perrell says,

[00:37:15] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, an argument has kind of this typical form.

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Someone raises their voice, someone rolls their eyes, someone storms out or whatever.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_00]: But you say this one thing where really after within 10 seconds

[00:37:28] [SPEAKER_00]: of the beginning of an argument, everybody's just trying to formulate

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_00]: what their response is going to be.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_00]: So the only 10s, the only the first 10 seconds of the argument is of any value.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And then the rest is just everybody defending themselves.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_00]: But again, detaching themselves from the core of this, like you mentioned

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_00]: with Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler, how they'll be in an argument.

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Sarah said, well, there'll be an argument and Jesse will just stop

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_00]: and like slow dance, take her hand and slow dance with her.

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's all about kind of this detachment from these decades built

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_00]: ideas that you could unlock creativity, unlock genius and so on.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. Wow.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_01]: That's so yeah, that's perfectly put, James.

[00:38:09] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, this is probably the problem with reading the book

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_00]: because then I can't be astonished as you tell me these things.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_01]: No, this is me.

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_00]: I already was astonished because I read the book.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.

[00:38:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Somebody told me recently that up until the book is published,

[00:38:24] [SPEAKER_01]: it's yours and like you wrote it with one intent.

[00:38:28] [SPEAKER_01]: But then once it's out and people are reading it,

[00:38:30] [SPEAKER_01]: they'll derive their own conclusions and suddenly like it becomes theirs

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_01]: and it's no longer yours.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of like that because the things that you noticed may not be the

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_01]: things that my mom notices when she reads it or may not like, for example,

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I knew that I wanted perspective to like run through the whole book.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01]: But I never actually thought about like detachment is the key to

[00:38:54] [SPEAKER_01]: unlocking creativity or relationships or anything else.

[00:38:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like that's so true because if you're not,

[00:39:03] [SPEAKER_01]: to be or do then it unlocks this whole world of freedom and creativity.

[00:39:24] [SPEAKER_00]: I know for myself in both business and say writing,

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_00]: giving up on what my initial goals were is often the key to business success

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_00]: or writing success.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_00]: If you are trying to create something in your life that you're writing about

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_00]: and you have a certain goal and then you feel like you could write the book

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_00]: after you achieve that goal, perhaps the most creative thing that could happen is

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_00]: not achieving that goal and then writing about that process.

[00:39:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you heard, do you know Louis Capaldi?

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_00]: It sounds familiar. I don't I don't know from where though.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's I recently wrote about this.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01]: He's a Scottish artist and he wrote his first album in 2019 and it it just took off.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And he became literally a sensation overnight and overnight success, if you will.

[00:40:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But he he felt so so he did that every single song was a hit.

[00:40:26] [SPEAKER_01]: You I didn't know his name, but I know every single song.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And then suddenly he was like, OK, well, I have to write a second album.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, how am I going to do that?

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I feel so much pressure and that pressure became physical for him.

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_01]: He developed like an involuntary shoulder shrug as a tick.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_01]: He got so depressed.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_01]: He is just he basically crumbled under the pressure of having to write a second album

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_01]: and it not being as good as the first one.

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And he was like he was like, it's so funny.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm more successful than I have ever been, but I've never felt so insecure in

[00:41:04] [SPEAKER_01]: my entire life. And it's just like it's so interesting because I think pressure

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_01]: to do something great a second time, a lot of it is anticipatory.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you're like, oh my goodness, like how am I going to do this?

[00:41:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And you start leaving your destiny and other people's hands almost.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He was like, it wasn't until he realized that nobody else could do this for him.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It had to be him that writes these songs.

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't until he sat down and kind of released all that and was like,

[00:41:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just going to write for myself.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_01]: He had to consciously do that.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And then once he started writing, it reminded him that, oh, wait,

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I do have the skills and I am good because I wrote it was me who wrote that first album.

[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I feel the same way.

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm always really nervous before I have to do the thing.

[00:41:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But then once I am doing the thing, I'm not nervous at all.

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, with his case, I bet you there's a third dimension,

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_00]: which is he wanted to write it and create an album that would be

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_00]: just as successful as the first album.

[00:42:04] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's one extra dimension to that, which is that the first album was a success

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_00]: because there was a wide audience that viewed it as a success.

[00:42:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. So now instead of him just writing for himself or writing for the general

[00:42:16] [SPEAKER_00]: world and then having it find an audience, he already found an audience.

[00:42:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And so there was this extra pressure.

[00:42:22] [SPEAKER_00]: He had to write something that would be he felt like he had to write something

[00:42:25] [SPEAKER_00]: that would be successful for that same audience.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Like I know for myself when I started writing about all my failures,

[00:42:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I developed a big audience around this.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to see what what other failures I had.

[00:42:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I felt like this pressure to always write about me failing and me losing

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_00]: money or me just getting depressed or collapsing or whatever.

[00:42:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And you only have so many things you can write like that.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Like

[00:42:53] [SPEAKER_00]: and it took a long time to kind of get over that.

[00:42:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I had to keep feeding my audience.

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_00]: The audience in your head turns into a monster that you have to keep feeding.

[00:43:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of respecting and loving my audience and trusting myself,

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I kept creating this monster in my head and trying to feed it.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Can I ask you because I'm genuinely curious how other people do it?

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But how do you after having so many episodes and, you know,

[00:43:22] [SPEAKER_01]: interviewing so many people, how do you continue to do this craft for

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_01]: yourself and not think about like the expectations of the audience?

[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's really hard.

[00:43:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, and again, my main thing was I've been a writer ever in 25 books and I've

[00:43:38] [SPEAKER_00]: written a lot about myself and in a narrative nonfiction way.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's really, really difficult.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So the way I tell myself is to I encourage myself to always say,

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_00]: what's my experiment?

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_00]: What am I experimenting with here?

[00:43:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And I have to have a little bit of fear

[00:43:59] [SPEAKER_00]: before I, particularly with writing,

[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_00]: before I hit publish on anything, I have to be a little bit afraid that because

[00:44:07] [SPEAKER_00]: of some new experiment I'm doing, the audience will not like me.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And I like that really drives

[00:44:14] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, me publishing something and with a podcast,

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_00]: like right now we're having a very kind of conversational sort of interview.

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a little nervous about that because

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_00]: people sometimes say, oh, you should just interview, you talk too much.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we want to hear the other person.

[00:44:30] [SPEAKER_00]: We already heard you.

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, there's only a small minority that criticizes like people.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And most people enjoy conversations.

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_00]: They don't want to see just an interview and because they learn from,

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, I hope they learn from everything.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_00]: So I try experimenting.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Like sometimes I try being more conversational.

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I try with the format, like more storytelling focused.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I'll bring on a bunch of people and we'll just laugh and tell stories

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_00]: as if nobody's listening.

[00:44:58] [SPEAKER_00]: So the audience feels like a fly on the wall of an interesting or entertaining

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_00]: conversation. You've inspired me for one experiment, which, you know,

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_00]: again, this is related to Gay Tilesi wrote that 5000 word profile

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_00]: of an obituary columnist, like somebody who nobody knew.

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think maybe in one podcast would be

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I just tweet on Twitter a zoom link.

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_00]: First person who gets on the zoom, that's who's I do the podcast with.

[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's cool. I like that.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought of that while reading your book.

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's awesome.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But that's like a scary thing too, right?

[00:45:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Because who knows what you get.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But you're what you say in the book is that nobody's boring.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Just the questions are boring.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So how do you find that you reinvent yourself, you know, in the process?

[00:45:42] [SPEAKER_00]: You've written, you know, 1000 of these profile newsletters.

[00:45:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I recently have started seeking out.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_01]: In the beginning, it used to be more of like, who do I want to learn from?

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Like in a more aspirational way, like, who do I admire so much that I want to kind

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_01]: of learn their techniques and skills now?

[00:46:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of like, I'm very curious about people whose lives I don't

[00:46:08] [SPEAKER_01]: necessarily admire or want, but I think there's so much to learn there.

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_01]: One example is I recently did a dossier on Danielle Steele.

[00:46:18] [SPEAKER_01]: She's had a crazy life.

[00:46:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things is that she writes, but her writing is more so of an escape

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_01]: from her life because she lost the child a long time ago.

[00:46:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And and when he died, she kind of was like, I cannot sit here and be in reality,

[00:46:39] [SPEAKER_01]: basically. So she started working like 20, 23.

[00:46:43] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's insane.

[00:46:44] [SPEAKER_01]: She doesn't leave her desk and that's why she's been so prolific.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_01]: I think she's one of the most prolific writers out there and publishes book after

[00:46:54] [SPEAKER_01]: book and while the audience gets great pleasure in reading her work,

[00:47:00] [SPEAKER_01]: it's the process that I'm like, oh man, I don't I don't know if I want

[00:47:04] [SPEAKER_01]: that life, you know what I mean?

[00:47:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Can I ask you what what is it about

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Danielle Steele that you didn't admire at first?

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I did not admire.

[00:47:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because you said you took someone you didn't admire.

[00:47:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So what I did not admire is the escapism aspect of I'm going to work myself to death.

[00:47:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I think she says that like she doesn't even sleep in her bed.

[00:47:23] [SPEAKER_01]: She'll just write and then sleep on the floor and then go back to writing.

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_01]: It's it's it's absurd her process.

[00:47:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like that's not what I want.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to be that deep in my work that I have no life or time for

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_01]: reality, but I could only learn that by reading about her life and then kind of

[00:47:43] [SPEAKER_01]: synthesizing it and realizing also that I do the same thing.

[00:47:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a tendency to be like Danielle Steele when I am when there's something

[00:47:52] [SPEAKER_01]: dark in my life or I'm really stressed about something or worried about

[00:47:56] [SPEAKER_01]: something and I don't want to think about it.

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I do my best work.

[00:48:01] [SPEAKER_01]: It's really ironic and stupid, but that's how it is.

[00:48:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that if there's something going on in my life,

[00:48:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I will sit down and I will focus so 100 percent to not allow these other thoughts

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_01]: that like I end up doing really good work.

[00:48:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And so yes, like it's easy to fall into that spiral,

[00:48:21] [SPEAKER_01]: but it's like recognizing myself in that and be like I don't want to be like that.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that's a real valuable technique actually for unlocking genius

[00:48:32] [SPEAKER_00]: is to kind of take the things that for some reason your instinct is to not like

[00:48:39] [SPEAKER_00]: this person or this idea or whatever and a questioning why is it I don't like this?

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And because in this case, it might be because you were scared of finding it

[00:48:50] [SPEAKER_00]: in yourself, this like capacity to do infinite amount of work

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_00]: while ignoring everything else.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_00]: But but also there's plenty to learn from the success of people we don't admire.

[00:49:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like for instance, take E.L.

[00:49:05] [SPEAKER_00]: James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey.

[00:49:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And I just think of her because it reminds me of Danielle Steele a little bit.

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Fifty Shades of Grey, if you read it,

[00:49:14] [SPEAKER_00]: it just seems like an horribly written book.

[00:49:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like the worst.

[00:49:18] [SPEAKER_00]: You can't read more than two pages and you just think this is like the

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_00]: worst writer on the planet.

[00:49:22] [SPEAKER_00]: But then when you study her story and you study the process by which it's

[00:49:26] [SPEAKER_00]: became the most successful book of all time, you have to question yourself.

[00:49:30] [SPEAKER_00]: A, it's a successful book of all time for a reason.

[00:49:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And B, what did she do that was different?

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_00]: That catapulted it to success and that's worthy of studying that.

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's exactly, you know, describe Charlie Munger's

[00:49:42] [SPEAKER_00]: invert that you talk about in the book.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So he says basically a lot of times instead of solving our problems

[00:49:49] [SPEAKER_01]: going forward, we should flip them and try to solve them going backwards.

[00:49:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And he says that instead of trying to be additive,

[00:49:57] [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of times you flip it and you go in reverse.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, for example, if you are like, how can I improve my marriage?

[00:50:06] [SPEAKER_01]: It may be more valuable to say what bad habits can I stop doing instead of

[00:50:11] [SPEAKER_01]: what else can I do to be a more valuable partner?

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's actually you can have a greater effect taking the inverse and being

[00:50:20] [SPEAKER_01]: subtracting all these things instead of adding.

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_00]: So what's what's a, you know, it's interesting that, you know,

[00:50:26] [SPEAKER_00]: you use the relationship example with invert like the way I think of his invert is

[00:50:32] [SPEAKER_00]: take an opinion you have and argue the exact opposite side so strongly that

[00:50:40] [SPEAKER_00]: that's how somebody should argue against you to, you know,

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_00]: just like if you're if you're pro-choice or if you're pro-life,

[00:50:47] [SPEAKER_00]: take the other side and argue it so well that, you know,

[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_00]: how would you argue the other side as passionately as you argue the side you're

[00:50:56] [SPEAKER_00]: on? And that's that's the real way to come up with, you know,

[00:50:59] [SPEAKER_00]: see both sides of something.

[00:51:01] [SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting that you took the relationship angle on that,

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_00]: like looking at your habits or your things you do in a relationship.

[00:51:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And instead of thinking what you can improve,

[00:51:09] [SPEAKER_00]: think about what you could eliminate.

[00:51:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll have to, this inverts my idea of invert.

[00:51:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, no, I mean, that's one example.

[00:51:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And his example of the beliefs is that that's how he says he is wary of becoming

[00:51:21] [SPEAKER_01]: a slave to his beliefs.

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So to not do that, he never shares a belief unless he can argue

[00:51:28] [SPEAKER_01]: the opposite side as well as the people on that side.

[00:51:33] [SPEAKER_00]: It's really that one principle has helped me so much.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Not only in being like tolerant of people who disagree with me and then

[00:51:41] [SPEAKER_00]: really kind of, you know, figuring out why they disagree with me.

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_00]: But also it just allows me for better or for worse,

[00:51:48] [SPEAKER_00]: not to get engaged into the whole, you know,

[00:51:51] [SPEAKER_00]: back and forth that's been going on in this country for for the past decade

[00:51:55] [SPEAKER_00]: about all these issues that really have two sides.

[00:51:58] [SPEAKER_01]: More than two, they have like 18 sides.

[00:52:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, like you,

[00:52:04] [SPEAKER_00]: like I'm sure I agree.

[00:52:06] [SPEAKER_00]: You and I have the same thoughts and beliefs on guns and gun control.

[00:52:09] [SPEAKER_00]: But you have a story in the book where you're sitting down next to somebody

[00:52:12] [SPEAKER_00]: who you misheard that you thought they were from the NRA.

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_00]: And then they were asking you all sorts of questions.

[00:52:19] [SPEAKER_00]: They're very nice to you.

[00:52:20] [SPEAKER_00]: They seem really smart and you found it wasn't NRA.

[00:52:25] [SPEAKER_00]: It was David Stern from the NBA, who had basically like recreated like,

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_00]: you know, basketball is, you know, what it is today.

[00:52:32] [SPEAKER_00]: But what if he had been from the NRA?

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Why would you be so surprised that he was nice to you?

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[00:52:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I think a lot of us have these like

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_01]: underlying beliefs or even judgments based on what people look like.

[00:52:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, it wasn't that he wouldn't be nice.

[00:52:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It was more like, oh, you know,

[00:52:56] [SPEAKER_01]: he looks exactly like how I would have thought the whatever person of the NRA is

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_01]: instead of the commissioner of the NBA.

[00:53:06] [SPEAKER_01]: But but I think it taught so.

[00:53:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So after that, I watched this TED talk with all these people who looked completely

[00:53:14] [SPEAKER_01]: different, one of them had a tattoo on his face.

[00:53:17] [SPEAKER_01]: The other one had a really weird voice and they were all in the dark room.

[00:53:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And in the dark room, they all said what they did.

[00:53:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, I study meditation in yoga or I whatever.

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm in I'm in the NRA and then the lights come on and they had to guess who it was.

[00:53:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It was just like it was not the people that you would have guessed.

[00:53:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that speaks to the identity judgment,

[00:53:44] [SPEAKER_01]: like just because your skin color is a certain color does not mean that you

[00:53:49] [SPEAKER_01]: haven't had these awful, awful experiences that you've had to overcome or whatever.

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think right now, especially on the internet,

[00:53:57] [SPEAKER_01]: it's really easy to judge other people

[00:54:01] [SPEAKER_01]: superficially without getting to know them.

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's really what's like, that's a really separating energy.

[00:54:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree.

[00:54:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's hard to control your own bias.

[00:54:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, you think it is a hard thing to really say or talk about.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_00]: But do you find any that you have any bias against any kind of cultural group

[00:54:20] [SPEAKER_00]: or ethnic group or political group?

[00:54:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, is there anything where it's really hard for you to control your

[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_00]: your bias against a particular group?

[00:54:29] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I just I don't know.

[00:54:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I I know so many.

[00:54:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So no, like I have so many different types of friends and people that I grew up

[00:54:40] [SPEAKER_01]: with that like when we moved to the US, we in Atlanta,

[00:54:44] [SPEAKER_01]: we lived in a really, really bad quote unquote bad area

[00:54:50] [SPEAKER_01]: that a lot of people would consider a bad area.

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_01]: But to me, those people were actually

[00:54:56] [SPEAKER_01]: the down to earth like real people that I see myself like.

[00:55:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So in a way, like I've always felt like an outsider,

[00:55:05] [SPEAKER_01]: whether it's when we first moved here and I didn't speak the language or later

[00:55:09] [SPEAKER_01]: when I moved to New York City and I had no money, but like all my friends

[00:55:13] [SPEAKER_01]: were working in finance, I felt like an outsider.

[00:55:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Or even now, when I go back to Bulgaria,

[00:55:19] [SPEAKER_01]: you would think that that's where I feel feel almost like an insider.

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, actually, I feel like an outsider because I've grown up in the US.

[00:55:27] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like I never look at people and I'm like, oh, you,

[00:55:31] [SPEAKER_01]: you don't know what life's all about or something.

[00:55:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why actually in the book and we talked about it on our last podcast

[00:55:39] [SPEAKER_01]: that we did together, but my favorite interview and dossier that I've ever done

[00:55:44] [SPEAKER_01]: to the point where I included him in the book is Robert Hogue.

[00:55:47] [SPEAKER_01]: He was born with a deformity on his face,

[00:55:51] [SPEAKER_01]: a giant tumor on the center of his face that moved his eyes apart, his nose,

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_01]: everything to the point where his mom didn't want to take him home because she

[00:56:00] [SPEAKER_01]: was like, oh, my baby is quote unquote ugly and he will have a really hard life.

[00:56:05] [SPEAKER_01]: He'll make life hard on us and his siblings.

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_01]: He dealt with so much stuff as a kid being called names and bullied and all

[00:56:13] [SPEAKER_01]: this stuff that he took the word ugly and he reframed it.

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, what I've learned in growing up and always being an outsider

[00:56:22] [SPEAKER_01]: is that beauty is subjective.

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, I'm OK being ugly because I've lived a beautiful life.

[00:56:30] [SPEAKER_01]: It is just like that's how I think about it.

[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not I find that the people who are not perfect and who are flawed in some

[00:56:39] [SPEAKER_01]: way that society would deem flawed.

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the most interesting people to me.

[00:56:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I think entertainment.

[00:56:47] [SPEAKER_00]: I think it was Carrie Fisher who said no one wants to read a book about rich,

[00:56:51] [SPEAKER_00]: beautiful people who succeeded everything like it's the flaws that create

[00:56:55] [SPEAKER_00]: entertainment also because they create the buts and the exceptions.

[00:56:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's also relate to I think most than perfection.

[00:57:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, what's the what's the there's a Japanese word for

[00:57:08] [SPEAKER_00]: finding beauty in the imperfection and in small imperfections?

[00:57:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I forget what the word is, but if there's a whole kind of like a whole art form

[00:57:16] [SPEAKER_00]: revolves around it, which is to kind of even create imperfections in your art

[00:57:20] [SPEAKER_00]: to make it even better.

[00:57:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Wabi Sabi is the view or thought of finding beauty in every aspect of

[00:57:25] [SPEAKER_00]: imperfection in nature.

[00:57:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's it.

[00:57:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know that.

[00:57:28] [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to go over some more of the questions at the very end.

[00:57:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because these are sort of your

[00:57:35] [SPEAKER_00]: questions that for you drive, hit and genius.

[00:57:39] [SPEAKER_00]: This is a relationship one, but it's something I've never really thought of as

[00:57:43] [SPEAKER_00]: asking myself this is a question at the end of the day.

[00:57:46] [SPEAKER_00]: How many positive interactions have you and your partner had today?

[00:57:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's really good because then you live the day knowing

[00:57:54] [SPEAKER_00]: you're going to ask yourself that at the end of the day.

[00:57:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And as you point out in the book,

[00:57:57] [SPEAKER_00]: kind of your perspective on life and yourself is often depends on your

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_00]: closest relationship.

[00:58:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:58:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And another undercurrent in the book is that I want people to realize

[00:58:08] [SPEAKER_01]: that the extraordinary is actually found in the mundane.

[00:58:13] [SPEAKER_01]: The way I think about this is, you know how

[00:58:17] [SPEAKER_01]: throughout life we seek out all these extraordinary moments.

[00:58:21] [SPEAKER_01]: But then when like a close person to us dies, we're like, man,

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I would give anything to hear, you know, the fridge slam again or

[00:58:30] [SPEAKER_01]: something like that used to annoy me, but now I would give anything to hear

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_01]: that one more time.

[00:58:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's like

[00:58:37] [SPEAKER_01]: that exact example, that question, what positive interactions have you had today?

[00:58:42] [SPEAKER_01]: John Gottman, who's a psychologist and he's a couples therapist,

[00:58:46] [SPEAKER_01]: he talks about how he measures relationship quality based on whether

[00:58:51] [SPEAKER_01]: on the five to one ratio, have you had five positive interactions

[00:58:55] [SPEAKER_01]: to every negative?

[00:58:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And if so, you'll be totally fine.

[00:58:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's because he measures those

[00:59:02] [SPEAKER_01]: interactions as the mundane things we do throughout the day.

[00:59:05] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not like, did you buy your spouse flowers today or some grand gesture?

[00:59:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It's more like when they were talking to you, did you put your phone down

[00:59:13] [SPEAKER_01]: and actually listen like those tiny moments that show respect and

[00:59:18] [SPEAKER_01]: acknowledgement to the other person?

[00:59:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the things that he's saying, like five to one,

[00:59:23] [SPEAKER_01]: five positive interactions for every negative.

[00:59:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Where do you think that ratio also applies?

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Like, let's say you have some other sort of negative experience.

[00:59:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say you get a call and you have some bad news like, oh,

[00:59:38] [SPEAKER_00]: let's say you wanted one of your your articles to appear in a magazine,

[00:59:42] [SPEAKER_00]: they call you and say, oh, it's not going to appear today.

[00:59:44] [SPEAKER_00]: So so you're disappointed.

[00:59:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And do you think you can have five other positive experiences to balance

[00:59:50] [SPEAKER_00]: that negative or like would you seek out five other positive experiences?

[00:59:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I think when you said that to me, it's like I would seek out five other

[00:59:59] [SPEAKER_01]: opportunities to make it successful or put it in another magazine that I may not

[01:00:03] [SPEAKER_01]: have if I didn't receive that call.

[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a great technique.

[01:00:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to start using that.

[01:00:09] [SPEAKER_00]: What I used to do when I was like 20 years ago,

[01:00:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I was a day trader and I would sometimes of course have a day where I lost

[01:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: money and then I would try to diversify my experiences that day.

[01:00:19] [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe I would play a game of cards and try to win or hang out with my kids

[01:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and have that be positive.

[01:00:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Although that was hard after losing money, it's hard to then hang out with anybody.

[01:00:30] [SPEAKER_00]: But I would try to diversify the status ladder I was on in some sense so

[01:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: that losing money didn't like make me feel horrible.

[01:00:40] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think it was like it was like a five to one sort of thing where I

[01:00:43] [SPEAKER_00]: needed five other good things to balance that one negative thing.

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. And they don't have to be like big grand things.

[01:00:50] [SPEAKER_01]: It could be, you know, the small things like with your kids that

[01:00:54] [SPEAKER_01]: is like you realize what is actually important instead of that one.

[01:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And so here's another question.

[01:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: What is something you can create today that allows you to tie your identity to your name?

[01:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not actually sure I totally understand that question.

[01:01:08] [SPEAKER_01]: OK, I would love to help.

[01:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: OK, so well, it's hard to explain it to you because you're already doing it.

[01:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It's called the James Algetra Show.

[01:01:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that's true.

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Most people, when they are in a job that they find satisfying.

[01:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: When I was a fortune, I loved my job.

[01:01:26] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not like I was like, oh, I hate this.

[01:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I hate getting out of bed like what?

[01:01:29] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I genuinely was excited to go to work.

[01:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But I didn't have anything that I only did for myself that I truly

[01:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: enjoyed that couldn't be taken away from me.

[01:01:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, what is something that you can create?

[01:01:44] [SPEAKER_01]: It could be a hobby or a podcast on the side for your full time job or something

[01:01:50] [SPEAKER_01]: where you're doing it solely because you enjoy it.

[01:01:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think as we get a little bit further in our careers,

[01:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: we forget that we have other interests other than like consulting or day trading.

[01:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's probably not what you were born with.

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, damn, I'm going to be the best day trader in the world.

[01:02:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what are those interests that are the threat of your life?

[01:02:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And find one that you can just do on weekends or I was excited, even though

[01:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: when I was at Fortune at one point, I was writing articles.

[01:02:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I was writing a daily newsletter called Termsheet every single day of the week.

[01:02:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I was also writing the profile that would publish on Sunday.

[01:02:33] [SPEAKER_01]: So Saturdays were the only day I wasn't publishing anything.

[01:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But even though like I was working very hard at Fortune

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: on the weekends and in the evenings and on the way to work on the subway,

[01:02:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I was genuinely excited to work on the profile.

[01:02:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's like finding something like that that you tie to your name that nobody

[01:02:52] [SPEAKER_01]: else has anything to do with that you can't get fired from.

[01:02:56] [SPEAKER_01]: That's very meaningful.

[01:02:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know, Polina, there's so many things that you write about in your book.

[01:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I could talk to you forever about all these things.

[01:03:05] [SPEAKER_00]: But what a great book.

[01:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's it's a relatively short book.

[01:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: It's 250 pages, give or take.

[01:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And there are so many ideas, issues, people, interesting people,

[01:03:18] [SPEAKER_00]: fascinating people that you write about.

[01:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: I really loved reading it.

[01:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's again, it's a it's a quick read, but I got so much out of it.

[01:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And James, the book is Hidden Genius.

[01:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: It's by Polina Maranova, Pompiano House House.

[01:03:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Anthony doing he's great author of a great newsletter.

[01:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm on crypto.

[01:03:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's great.

[01:03:38] [SPEAKER_01]: He's he's reading my book as we speak, even though I read it out loud to him.

[01:03:43] [SPEAKER_01]: When I was writing it, I was like, you have to read the final thing.

[01:03:46] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the same.

[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's what he's doing.

[01:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And how's Joe Pompiano, who's author of the newsletter, the huddle up.

[01:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: He's also been on the podcast.

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: How's Joe doing?

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I was killing it.

[01:03:56] [SPEAKER_01]: He's doing really, really well.

[01:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: He's becoming like one of the leading voices in sports business,

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_01]: which is really cool to see.

[01:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wonder where that could lead to.

[01:04:04] [SPEAKER_00]: There's probably various spokes that could lead from that wheel, that core.

[01:04:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I know, I'm excited.

[01:04:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I love that you've had all of us on your podcast.

[01:04:12] [SPEAKER_01]: That's incredible.

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Pompiano family is my good guess of the podcast.

[01:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So well, Polina, thanks so much and thanks for writing this book.

[01:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm looking forward to the next book, but yeah, you got to write

[01:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: like 500 more profiles to get that.

[01:04:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I know.

[01:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: But thank you again.

[01:04:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for coming on the podcast.

[01:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

[01:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I loved it.