it isn't always the strongest that survived but the ones who are most adaptable to change and I would go into meetings and I'd say okay so here's what we want to accomplish and here's what I want to do and I would speak first big mistake I mean why have a team if they're gonna think exactly like you right and so I quickly shifted to
speaking less if your company is who you are that is a very fragile position how you hear feedback from others changes because now they're like calling your baby ugly it's personal it's terrible if you can detach emotionally from feedback that you get it will push you ahead every single time unless you believe in
reincarnation this is not a rehearsal almost all people who end up doing great things are unreasonable to a large swath of other people you know nice people don't have hard conversations because it's not nice to do that most people will fear failure not because it's failure but because of other people seeing them fail I will die with my
boots on I guess it'd be the way I would put it when you have an internal locus of control it puts you in a position to take more chances and risk because the only person you really risk disappointing is yourself you know whatever it is that you want to try to challenge please give yourself the opportunity to try
well hello everyone it's Jimbo Shadow see with yet another infinite Loops I am so excited for my guest today Dr Julie gerner who I have been following on Twitter forever and I love her insights she really tells it like it is she's a PhD in Clinical Psychology are you going to analyze me today Julie I'm going to try not to
but better known as an executive coach since 2009 you write the sub stack the ultra successful sub stack I want to learn about that welcome thank you so much it is such an honor to be here I have followed you also on Twitter and I think we've had some wonderful exchanges so I look forward to kind of bringing our personalities to
the table in real life yeah so do I and we made my mistake uh that I often don't make we had a great conversation before we hit record and I'm like damn it damn it I honestly I want a favor recording this but for for people who don't know about you what can you give us your origin story and and sort of what led
you down this path I find that really really interesting with high performers like you sure you know I started off very traditionally in Psychology uh performance coaching or Executive coaching was not really a thing that I knew of I was not on my radar so I went to school uh and got a doctorate in Psychology Clinical Psychology as you mentioned
um I thought that I would be going into forensic psychology uh so my emphasis was always on you know a personality theory and structure and really understanding those as well as assessing um so you know I'm kind of going down that path in a variety of different settings where whether that is you know spending some time at a super max prison
whether that is doing some forensic evaluations spending some time in academics and you know as has happens in the uh in the outside world sometimes technology companies will tap you to be an advisor on a product or you know to advise a certain functionality because you have a certain expertise in something and you
contribute and you kind of usually you know you go in and you go out of those situations and you continue on your Merry way well while I was advising a particular a company on a psychological aspect of their product The Venture firm kind of reached out and said hey I know this is really highly irregular but you're the
only psychology person we know we have a Founder in our portfolio who has just gotten an infusion of funding and has really struggled in making decisions since like just feels Paralyzed by it um and would you mind talking to him so I said sure you know I'll reach out so I reached out we had you know a few meetings but the thing that really
locked it in for me is that his problems were very clear very apparent and required very little to kind of get him back on track and as soon as I I kind of did that it felt like a hand and glove you know it just felt like oh this is what I meant to do this is such a great application of my skill set this is something I
enjoy so much um that I started to really seek out other experiences like that and felt like there was a real void that I could fill and really provide value and have impact so I started to kind of gather other clients I got great referrals from The Venture company I you know had some really good results and started to build
a reputation for myself in that space and it has been Off to the Races ever since um that's a fascinating Journey from kind of forensic analysis Etc to interacting with you know actual lived human beings that what was that weird at first or did you find that the training that you'd received kind of was like perfect for dealing with uh
individual people or groups of people I feel as though you know in forensics you're dealing with individuals who are still at the uh they're kind of outliers of their own right they're usually in the extremes you're working at a prison or you know kind of doing evaluations for courts and so you have to understand
people deeply and quickly and be able to read them well and I feel like that was a really fantastic opportunity to learn about how people move who are sometimes not like everyone else you have to also have a disposition that isn't going to be influenced or intimidated uh by others I think that sometimes that is
something that keeps people distanced from doing good work in this field and so I had those kind of fundamental elements moving into this position and then began to have you know I'm married to somebody who's in business so I've had a pretty deep understanding of how that operates uh on the side and there are you know ways in which I just
kept getting more involved through you know in companies initially kind of earlier on when you don't really have the reputation that you end up having later so I've been able to see companies really at all stages from you know preceding to you know not really requiring funding any longer having successful exits being able to go public
and so you begin to kind of get this reputation but also you gather all of this experience along the way that allows you to be effective in your seat and you see how leaders change and shift as their companies do and as I've had the privilege to follow some you know from you know certain points in their
journey to other points in their Journey so you kind of gather all of this um information and you begin to assimilate it all together in a way that I think forensic training was very helpful that's really interesting to me because in this new company that I've formed uh I I come from a very highly empirical quantitative background for public
markets um and obviously now we're doing a lot of work uh with founders with that type of personality and I'm absolutely intrigued by um the the idea of uh unpacking what makes them tick tell me a little bit about how do you approach that um if we if one of our listeners was like looking for some advice uh what you
know if they're interacting with somebody else are are there easy techniques or are they all uh learned would be my first question my second question would be are certain characteristics innate I.E um you know you're just innately better at certain things yeah I take notes while you're speaking so um I I think that one of the things that I
would say um is that there is an amount of talent that can be innate and there are skills that will always be innate that you bring to the table I love that about people and meeting people because I get to see what are what are what is this person's particular natural strength and what I kind of think about with Founders
is how can I really craft their environment to support and allow them to run and sit in those strengths as often as humanly possible because sometimes what Founders do as they move forward is they keep that kind of early stage founder mentality where I have to do like I have to do all of these things that maybe they shouldn't be doing right
so they're more engaged than they should be but how they pull out of their into a kind of their seat and pull out of things also is important because what they end up pulling out over or sitting into sometimes they have because they're not experienced and they haven't done this before sometimes is that they do it
to kind of fit a box that they think a CEO should look like or you know a Founder should look like and maybe they are technically brilliant people and they are able to they see details and they're quantitatively focused and they have all of these wonderful things maybe sometimes they're very strong with people
sometimes people management is not their strength but they try to be that kind of CEO people manager that they think they're supposed to be when maybe it would be incredibly beneficial not just to them and their energy but to the company to have somebody who helps to kind of manage that and maybe there is a CO who could be a better person to help
with that or a president who can help to manage that or a chief of staff and so then they can sit in their seat um you know as the founder or CEO and really push hard into the things that they're great at and fantastic at and move the needle and they're not perpetually drained or stressed out by
doing things in people management that they're genuinely not that great at that they struggle with that stresses them out and doesn't even position in the company as well as it could so you know they they can feel inadequate around those things but you know we can bring those skills up to average which I try to do I think
people's skills are incredibly important in communication but you don't need to be that primary person if there is an option that will better suit you in the company and allow you to lean into your strengths so at a certain point you know we can really position people so that they can lean into the things they're
you know top one percent at and that's how the company can move forward at you know quickly and and kind of dominate their space in a way that otherwise I think would be really held back yeah I think that really resonates with me I was lucky when I found at my first company uh I had made a list right and all of all the things I was really bad at
and essentially what I did was I found a person it was one of my first hires who was very good at everything that I was really bad at amazing and and that was like so helpful to me and then another thing that I did that I I found really worked well was um as part of being an asset manager of public Equity isn't holding yourself out
you've got to give a lot of speeches I did a lot of media Etc and and I would often uh send team members uh to to do speeches if I couldn't do them and and I had an instance where I I had a teammate who uh basically when he gave the first version of his speech right was he was copying me and and I was like stop right now here's
what I want you to do take all of the ideas here put them in your own words and then come back and do it so he was a big Sports nut and I am not and he came back and it was amazing the transformation because everything was a sports metaphor but I got it it fit you could you could just tell that he was in
his kind of natural flow and and so my question for you is is is it possible to make like a super intelligent scientifically minded person into maybe more of a you know gadfly like me I think that it's it's always possible to help people rise in their base level of Competency with almost anything even if it goes against their natural tendency
um in fact you know some of the most innate things about us for example our temperament highly inherited you know highly uh you know something that's very very innate is how we express our temperament but we can shape and mold that you know with effort and work and intention so with these these things you know we
we can definitely help the scientists to become better but will he be as good at that particular skill as somebody who is an absolute natural probably not so that's why I think that like I want people to raise their level of Competency to you know a nice Baseline so that they feel comfortable in areas where they have to perform but I will
always have them you know far far I will have them leaning into their strengths more often and I guess that I find that people will develop more confidence that way as well you know when people are operating in their places where they don't feel as competent it can really make them feel worse about themselves and their you know it provides kind of
this uh Pathway to a bad mental state and positioning where it takes away from them feeling as energized and confident as they could so you know if they had to prepare for an interview I think that's an opportunity where you can can bring somebody up for a specific you know performance or a way in which they have
to interact and make them feel like they're capable and competent to do it but it's not somebody I'd probably put in that place all of the time or on a regular basis if I didn't have to just because I want them to feel great about themselves and that confidence helps people make different decisions down the
line what kind of risks that they'll take how they assess situations how capable they feel can sometimes be influenced by those smaller moments you don't think of that maybe you discounted but they still kind of hang on to or insecurities that they have so I want people to really see themselves for who they are and be I think the best people
I work with are brutally honest about it I mean much like you said too I mean that you put a lit you actually put a list together and said look these are things I'm just not great at um I think that the best people I work with are similar to you and that they're really honest about it they're not going to get defensive about it and they will
find find people who can fill those gaps so that they can do what they are meant to do quite well another thing that intrigues me is uh we've been seeing an increase of companies that were doing due diligence on all the way from pre-seed to like a series a look I've been seeing more and more of them referencing the fact that
they actually give psychological tests to uh potential uh candidates for joining uh The Firm I I'm kind of a stickler about like for example you can correct me if I'm wrong this is your domain of knowledge not mine but it seems to me that the big five is kind of the only one that replicates consistently what do you think about
like Myers-Briggs or ennine grams or those types of tests they are deeply uh flawed they are unscientific in their nature and you know the Myers-Briggs it's funny uh Adam Grant wrote a wonderful article for in about the Myers-Briggs that says it's The Fad that just won't die it is unreliable it is not valid in fact I
think it's almost the mid-40s I want to say it's 40 something percent of people if they take the Myers-Briggs and then they retake it a few weeks later they're going to get a completely different profile um you know that it's just it's not necessarily a wonderful reflection but the thing about these tests is that they
make it they give us the illusion of control and they give us the illusion of insight so you can easily run them through a computer and it spits out these results and we feel like we know something about people or we have more information but it's not more information if it's flawed information so I hope that people I actually would
hope that people don't really use them um and if they were to do some type of an assessment um you know that they really think hard about the variables that they're looking for I think that there are many skit we we tend to look at skills and I think skills are useful and then there are going to be traits off page that they're
really trying to vet with these psychological exams of sorts and I just don't know that that's the proper way to vet those um those particular traits and there are probably better ways to explore those that you know you look at someone's history you talk to former employers you're probably going to get a more
accurate reflection than them sitting and taking a test I'm I do not find them particularly useful and I'm trying to find a nice way of saying that no you actually said it a very nice way I I tend to be a bit more caustic um I used to I used to joke when people would say yeah we should use you know Test X right and I'd say no no no I I
much prefer to give the Minnesota multi-phasic to the people well you know mmpi the one thing that is beneficial about the mmpi if you were able to do it is that they have a wonderful lie detection system built in that actually says if someone is faking good or faking bad and it's a much better test than maybe many others but
again the variables it would measure on would be a very little use to somebody um we gave that a particular test for those who are entering uh police the police academy uh in when when I was out in Wyoming and uh and it would measure you on things you know like psychosis and other things but it also had just some really
you know some of the traits that it looked for seem not as relevant to the job market that we have today yeah um and for those who who don't know what the Minnesota multi-basic is it it's uh searching for as Julie put it very kindly uh traits that might be a little off that you don't want in a teammate it is searching for very extremes and um
some of the psychological or psychiatric conditions that you may want to be aware of if someone were to come in the door yeah so if not tests again I'm a Quant so I'm always trying to build algorithms in my head sure um and uh so so could share with us uh what are some of the common traits if there are common traits you could tell
me that there aren't and that's fine too but are there common traits that correlate with future success or failure in startups or are they all over the map I think that it depends on the position of like if we're looking at individuals right I mean my area of expertise is in people so you know I very strongly
resonate with uh you know Paul Graham says he looks for people who are relentlessly resourceful I I think that that is a phenomenal flag of a great potential founder is that they are and they demonstrate being resourceful not just that they say it or speak they're trying to talk the talk but that they
have a history of really walking that walk and you see it in some phenomenal entrepreneurs of our time and how they were able to operate be it you know Sarah Blakely or others how they just were just tenacious and resourceful and they found a way to make things happen in Psychology we look at a past predictor our past behavior is a great
predictor of future behavior and you know some of the ways in which you can look at that is looking at things like persistence how do people overcome obstacles how do they take on challenges looking for common threads and patterns but I do think that it depends on the types of positions you're looking at the
types of role like the market that they're going to be entering into what does that look like and what type of Market is it and the types of traits you would look for in the founders of those particular companies um I do know that the the founders that I work with who find great success they are definitely tenacious they definitely have
um they are resourceful as we might say they are they have a trait of openness that I think is really interesting where they're willing to hear ideas and they're willing to explore uh unconventional things they're open to feedback they are not they have they are filled with self-belief and no one is going to knock them from that
self-belief but at the same time they're open to hearing an idea that may come from anywhere um they're not rigid in how their self-belief shows itself that rigidity I think can be a real downfall for people they will stick with something you know it's the difference really between being persistent and tenacious you know persistence
we'll just keep running and running and running toward the same you know on the same path whereas if you are tenacious you'll find a side door if you need to you will leap into a different uh area you will try a different avenue um so these are people who are tenacious rather than just persistence because persistence will have people giving up
hitting against walls trying to force things that aren't going to happen and tenacious people will find sorry my dog uh tenacious people will find Avenues of you know just finding avenues for ways of things to work yeah um and I guess the wording that I uh used was always I was looking for high agency people yes
um and uh a former guest and it's going to be on again a young man who comes up with these interesting razors uh one way that he uh tries to categorize people is uh you know when he's looking for somebody with high agency and is persistent and creative he he says think to yourself if you were locked up in a third world
prison who would be the person that you would call who first Springs to mind that would get you out I like that because it it really does demonstrate agency and all of the uh uh items that you list I I found the same two that that there is a big difference between being persistent and being pick-headed right I used to say to people you know when engineers
build a bridge that falls down they don't build it that way again they don't go let's just try it again let's just try harder and build it the same way and it falls down again right they contribute why it fell down to the body of engineering knowledge right yes and and then they they learn from their mistakes I I think that
um I'd love your opinion on that how do you as the expert coming in and interacting with people are are there tells are there tells where somebody is going to be like oh this is a person who seems like really persistent and or you know charismatic what whatever fill in the blank but there are there tells that kind of tell
you maybe this person is going to be more on the big edit side as opposed to the agile persistent side while they approach our work together often is a large tell because are they looking for sometimes I will have people who are incredibly collaborative as they come to the table they we always before we meet I always ask people you know
what are your goals and us working together because I want to align to those goals and that's also how I measure when we're finished with our work you know if you have some people will come in because they have particular problems others have particular development work and what have you but I want to know what their
goals are I do have people who will shoot me an email you know these are four things I want to work on in our meeting on Friday um and so they're proactive they come to the table with things that they want to do address they have things that they're struggling with that they're very candid about they have areas that they're
pushing forward that they're very straightforward about as well you know a lot of times I will see that I can see evidence of almost having to hold them back rather than to push them in any way and I love that I want that kind of Engagement where they are somebody who's kind of eager to grow willing to do what it
takes if I ask them hey let's try something in Vivo which we often do you know let's try out this technique in Vivo and see what happens they're on it they email me immediately hey it went great this is how things happen this is what I'm thinking you know someone who is proactive and not the person who for
example you know sometimes people will will have our meeting I will be the prompter I will be the one who brings it up I am the one who like initiates that and you know we can change that but it does give you information about how they're going to use me is probably often a microcosm of how they use other people in their organization how they
think about engaging how they're um you know using their own uh you know approaches to get the most out of people or maybe not get the most out of people and leaving things untapped so are they putting on to me a very narrow range of things that they want to do or are they open to being expansive so I agree with
you in that there is a bias to action that's kind of would I name it a bias to action they're people who are Auto didactic they love to the self-learning um and they will try to learn everything they can they're like a sponge and I think that it's why you know people end up retaining me to begin with is that at some level of
operation and I'm sure that you find this in your role like it's not about the skills people at a certain level like they have all the skills they know how to expand their skills the thing that will hold them back is just themselves and much like you would hire an engineer if your code wasn't correct you would reach out to
somebody like me perhaps if you start to recognize that about yourself so I'm fortunate that I have people who are fairly insightful to begin with to know to reach out to me versus staying in that area of underperformance to what they could be I love that uh analogy to uh you could if if you've got something wrong with
code you're going to hire a coder right yeah and and that I love that analogy because if you it it puts it into the proper perspective I think I think when it comes to personalities and things people get like very very uh they they get very touchy right uh because one of the things that I often encounter and I've tried to change the
way I communicate with people in that people take their beliefs as if they were you know truths from God yes and and I don't take my own beliefs that way at all I I kind of like I love diving down rabbit holes and you know if you if we were able to time travel to I don't know 700 years ago and you and I could find the 50 smartest human beings
on the planet and we chatted with them we'd learn that almost everything they believed was raw that's true so and so why are we any different right like keeping our minds open to the fact that we're probably wrong and and that that kind of gives you the idea that hey always be looking for a better way to uh a better mental model a
better uh way of leveling up so to speak um because I found that that's very very helpful but it also brings up the question of like bottlenecks in in high performers what are some of the other bottlenecks that that you found in all of the best addict people that you've interacted with or are there first off are there
common bottlenecks and if there are I'd love to hear what they are um but uh are they so unique that they're really specific to the person or the team that's a good question I think that the bottlenecks the pattern is common but the element is not so for example you know as uh it's almost always a flip
side of their strength the flip side of our strengths are often where we find the weaknesses that's where their blind spots are going to be so I'm looking actively with you know where are they really phenomenal because if I uncover if I lift that up a little bit I'm probably also going to see exactly what some of their weaknesses are so it is
individual but the pattern tends to be the same the strength uh kind of precedes the weakness and gives you an indication of exactly where it is so you want to look under those rocks and those are rocks that usually people don't overturn because they look so beautiful and well formed so and that's why they're missed right I mean it's why
they're blind spots so things you can uncover those and when people get feedback around it I think it's always very surprising for them because it is the place they're not looking yeah um and I I always try to be as self-aware as possible which uh one of the things I chatted with you about uh prior to uh setting a record was I was
lucky when I was a young founder of my first company to realize you know I was 28 uh you know filled with piss and vinegar my way or the highway I thought I you know I'm this is going to be the greatest thing in the world and and and I would go into meetings and I'd say okay so here's what we want to accomplish and here's what I want to do
and I would speak first big mistake because I realized after participating in just a few meetings that when I did that everyone was just like oh yeah that's a great idea yeah let's do that and so I quickly shifted to speaking less and what that unlocked was there was a lot of uh there were a lot of thoughts
from my team about why I was completely wrong and and but they I mean why I have a team if you if they're gonna think exactly like you right so we tried to put together a team where people looked at the world differently and just that one unlock just was transformative really because it let me take in all of the uh mistake all of my
blind spots right oh I hadn't thought about that and then another what it led to was you know I'm I'm absolutely obsessed with complex adaptive systems because I think like most things in life are complex adaptive systems and one of the things that you learn about them is emergence comes from below not from above
and and so that informed the way I like uh at osam uh when we were developing canvas um well you know one of the things that we did was essentially and this was more my son Patrick's idea but I enthusiastically supported it which was let's take a very limited number of clients and then let them tell us what they like what they don't like yes and
one of the things that emerged from that was the features that we thought were going to be like the ones that made that perfect Market uh uh product fit actually they didn't care about at all and and then so we were just like wow okay and so designing it that way was was very helpful how do you deal with people who like
have that my way or the highway well this is it it hits on your it hits on your comment a comment earlier about how people can't be too precious about what they feel their own beliefs and that you know like you do have to have an openness you do have to be able to um not be able to take your own ideas and the feedback you get as information
if you can detach emotionally from feedback that you get it will push you ahead every single time because you can evaluate it more objectively you can have a better perspective and it gives you more to be able to you know position your company more effectively or even your career more effectively for the
future so how you approach that is brilliant and how you would want anyone to approach it and it wasn't that you lacked confidence that you consulted with other people it's that you had an openness for refinement and doing something the best it could be done and that is exactly what we would search for if you want to
say you know what makes a good founder and how do they think that kind of openness that kind of Detachment um usually we think about people who you know make their entire business their identity and that's what it should be but you know that is a very fragile position because if if your company is who you are and that company has a
financial you know Quirk or there's something that happens with the product you have a pandemic hit um you personally now are in a terrible position to make decisions because you are influenced by that event in a way that is you know anytime you have an emotionally Laden or like kind of an emotional overlay it impacts your
decision making it impacts how you respond it impacts how you engage with employees it impacts everything so you really do want people to be able to have almost like a surgeon operating in a in a room to be able to say this is my greatest work this is something I am committed to making as good as I possibly can but that body that you're
operating on is not you you are the surgeon you are the practitioner and you know you want to go in there with precision and skill and deep investment but that thing should not be who you are or you're going to make some very bad mistakes yeah the uh I I would often when having conversations with people list
try to be dispassionate about those types of events and like people would sometimes really take issue they they would be like what do you mean be dispassionate but my passion for this is what drives me which makes me competitive which makes me want to win and like how would you do our uh is the is there such a thing as being
too passionate being too competitive I think about it like if you're an F1 driver right there is a difference between the driver and the car and you want to to make sure that you are you are the driver you're going to do the best that you can you are deeply invested you are deeply engaged and you are passionate about winning but you
have to realize that you are not the same as the machine that you're sitting in you are different and that distance that bit of distance gives you objectivity and better decision making for how you're going to steer that car how you're going to get the most out of it because once it becomes personal
everything shifts Everything Changes how you hear feedback from others changes how you uh interact with your employees or your executive changes because now they're like calling your baby ugly right like it's personal it's terrible that's a very big flag of saying you know something there's an attachment here that
could be detrimental to how the company moves forward or whether even when it's with product I mean we could say the same thing so you do want people who can have that amount of distance and be able to evaluate it and yes you know data doesn't always tell the full story but to discount it out of hand without further examination without giving it a
review without deeply diving into it that's a challenge and that puts your company at risk so so walk me through how you would engage that person um and we'll just make them a fictitious or fictitious person who who says that to you who said you you get you provide the data or someone even some a third party provides the data and they're like
they're dealing with you and they're like Julie I just don't believe this data at all yeah I would say well let's let's list out some of the reasons why the data would have to be invalid and is not worthy of further examination right so let's list out those reasons so um and then you know kind of go through that
exercise so I try to approach it dispassionately too I want to engage with them on an intellectual level about why wouldn't we engage in like let's list out the reasons I'm not going to say you're being too stubborn right because then that's a very personal engagement instead I want to take a step back and say well let's list out the
reasons and let's examine these and then we'll take each one and we'll go through them um you know it can't be true because of X well if it's not true would you still if you don't believe it's true is it something you still would like to examine could it be true what's the window of it being true is it you know
97 it's not true would three percent be enough to take a further look you know like so we really get very granular and and I try to engage them intellectually because everyone at least in that seat I know that they can be engaged intellectually about the company that they operate so I will get very specific get very granular we'll get into the
details but I will not make it personal because every button that will be pushed will be a personal one uh so I want to stay away from any of those buttons and I will push them and I think one of the benefits of being in my seat is that they know that I have absolutely nothing to gain from you know pushing them on
certain areas I don't have a a promotion I'm gunning for I have no position that I'm looking for I have nothing to at my job is aligned with them and their company doing well and so they know that despite how hard the critique might be or how much I push them it's coming from a place of genuinely wanting them and
their company to succeed and so oftentimes I think I do get a bit of a better response than if I am you know one of the executives in their company because they can always ascribe something to that person or they will find something to ascribe to that person that can discount something they don't want to hear it becomes harder when it's
somebody without motivation in that direction yeah that's interesting the ability to uh be kind of a uh a fair judge or a fair referee I've often found can be very helpful my grandfather was super successful as an entrepreneur and he used to have the saying which was you know you've won the argument when the other side starts to shout and and
essentially what he would meant by that of course was um if you if you become emotional like that's probably going to be to your detriment not to your event now not always true there are there are certain times and certain situations where being emotional is is the right response um but you know it's often you know
difficult to disambiguinate when those particular times are let me ask you how have you applied your own strategies to your seller and your own practice that's a that's a great question I think that the people that I meet with are always people who think uh in in very large terms right so they're thinking about things in ways that are expansive
always and for me I think that it has been incredibly beneficial to be surrounded even if it's in my work with people who think in very expansive large ambitious terms that don't feel particularly limited by what the average person probably feels very limited by they see that the potential of what they can do
is almost uh without range and that being surrounded by that I think really does show you what is possible I think also because you meet these people you aren't uh deterred by the mythology around people who do great things right I mean the mythology is always you know people will you know talk about someone
like Elon Musk or other people but when you meet people who are who are running billion dollar businesses who are doing uh you know phenomenal things globally they're really just people they're people who are brilliant in what they do but they're approachable when in the right setting they have um the traits that they carry they have
strengths and they have weaknesses like anyone else uh you see how they leverage what they're great at and you you understand that the people who go on to do these wonderful things in the world there are areas that make them special but they are human they're not Untouchable and they often don't fit the mythology that we hear in the media the
media picks up those with big bombastic extreme personalities um but I can tell you there are hundreds thousands that are quiet nice uh under the radar people who will never get a media headline who are absolutely crushing it out there and doing incredible things and for me those folks to be frank are far more inspirational
because they're far more relatable and they just want to have a wonderful life do incredible things that they want to do and really not for people to know who they are so they're people like that everywhere I think um so that's kind of that's how I I apply it to my life and that it makes me see my own potential as fairly unlimited
if I continue to go in the directions I want to go in and there's nothing really that I feel hesitation and taking on as long as I keep in my own skill set right like I am very ruthless about saying if somebody were to approach me and say hey we want you to um you know do our off-site yeah I'm not
somebody who's good at doing any kind of thing like that I'm good one-on-one I know what I'm good at it's a very narrow set of skills and everything else I say no to because that's just not going to benefit them it's not going to benefit me and um and so I really really stay very sharply in what I'm what I feel
very very good at and above the rest of the herd I think that's uh a great way to look at it but I as I was listening to you you said something which seemed to conflict with something else that I read that you wrote which is uh kind of the the rules of success and and one of yours was don't be nice yeah I did say that that's true so when I say
not to be nice uh I think there's a big difference between being nice and good being nice and kind and the differentiation is that nice is about pleasing other people and about other people's response right uh and so you know you can be not if nice people are often not genuine because they will do things to make the other person feel
better that doesn't isn't authentic to them right they're just doing it so that you feel okay and then they kind of move forward and I I do believe that although these are genuinely good people um they are kind oftentimes very kind people they hold lines and they'll have hard conversations and I think that's still required you know
nice people don't have hard conversations because it's not nice to do that it makes people feel uncomfortable and it makes them feel very you know put out and you have to sit with that uh if you are a kind person an authentic person and a good person good people hold lines uh and I do believe that these people hold lines
and and that's something that I feel like is authentic to them they're very authentic to themselves and I think that's the overarching trait and uh oftentimes sadly they are not on Twitter like you and I so they are not in the positions I have to deal with the uh the challenges sometimes that come with Twitter as well
what a what a lovely euphemism for the the daily assault of the hate mongers yeah um the the that has always kind of been a Bugaboo of mine uh the you know semantics between people equating nice and kind I think that they're not even in the same zip code and and I concur with your definition of nice and so I always bristle a little if
somebody says oh you're such a nice guy and I'm like I'm really not a nice guy I really try and and do try to be kind but I I think those two are very very different things um and another thing that that you wrote um which uh my researcher joked with me when he said to me he's like sound familiar and that was be unreasonable
talk a little bit about that I think that people who go on to do things that are fairly uh extraordinary or uncommon are people who have to not be reasonable compared to those uh the general expectations one might have you know at first it starts off that you grow up and it probably would not be reasonable in your peer group or your
neighborhood and then you know as you continue to grow up you are unreasonable compared to those in your class or even in business school or even you know maybe it would be very reasonable to go from you know grad school to this particular firm or this particular thing so you know Taking Chances leaving a
stable job doing things that you know starting a company after you've had something very stable look at Jeff these us you know like a very unreasonable thing to do he had a well-compensated position and he's going to start an online Bookseller right I mean everybody would say that is not a reasonable thing that he would should or would do but
almost all people who end up doing great things are unreasonable to a large swath of other people and they see the the kind of reasonableness of it and I even noticed that even within people doing great things they have they still have things on the back burner that others would say are unreasonable so I know that you have a
number of Ventures for example that people would say why is he doing this this is kind of unreasonable uh Jeff when he talked about you know he Amazon was well on its way and I remember he was in an interview and he they said well what what else are you interested in conquering and he said space and it was like a decade before you know it
ever happened but you hear the audience literally laughing during that interview and then when he did go to space and he comes back they're like what do you see on the moon what can we begin to develop you know they're asking him questions and he's talking about Transportation now in this this place and everyone's
like I don't know about that um but what I find is when people do unreasonable things once or twice they see the potential to do unreasonable things and they don't feel held back by the normal constraints others would they don't give themselves the same reasoning to not do something that they're genuinely excited about or interested in
and they know and have confidence in themselves they can figure it out and they've realized that if you can if you can trust yourself to figure it out there's so many things that become open to you as possibilities and I'm sure that you find that as somebody who's very quantitative going into very different areas I would be interested in
how you've thought about tackling those new areas and what made you unreasonable and taking those things on so how long you got um so I I uh always I I used to joke uh that I remember my future um and uh people would say what do you mean you remember the future and and so what I meant by that was I learned early
in life that for I had to write out everything that I was interested in maybe wanted to accomplish Etc I didn't treat them as like when I get X then I'll be happy or right I didn't I they weren't written in a contingent uh or conditional style at all they were written about I'm really interested in making movies for example
no not one of my verticals is infinite films I love it I I'm I'm really interested I want to be I I want to get interested in art I want to do this kind of thing so I I never I it's really interesting because I never thought about those as being unreasonable right I I always thought that like well I'm really
interested in this and you know I can give I can give it a go and I I also was very lucky and I'm fascinated by this idea of what's innate what's learned because I think that I was innately very lucky to I've never been an envious person I've never been jealous I don't compare myself to other people and like another thing that you mention
is social social validation is not important and and as I was reading the research notes that really struck me because I I realized wow like that is something that I just automatically believed from a very young age and and so I have to like take my time to think about well lots of people are very externally oriented yeah I've I've never
been an externally oriented person I've always been kind of an internally oriented and kind of felt that like the only person I should compare myself to is my past self and you know I might and am I getting worse am I getting better sometimes if you're trying to be honest sometimes I'm getting worse and then I
then I have to try to figure out like do I really want to do this or or am I just at this um but how how do you I'd like I'd love it if you could expand on how you help people with the social validation is not important because we mentioned Twitter right I mean talk about a lab for people thinking social validation is important
100 I mean the thing that strikes me about you speaking about yourself and taking on the film you know taking on film industry Etc is that you're a man who describes perfectly an internal locus of control you believe that you are the origin of what happens and what doesn't you believe to some extent you believe that you know your own
validation is what's important not others your self-referencing you're not others referencing you believe to some extent you have to believe in the capacity of your own abilities to give it a shot you don't fear failure because most people will fear failure not because it's failure but because of other people seeing them
fail you know like there is a lot more to that that when you are you have an internal locus of control it puts you in a position to take more chances and risk because the only person you really risk disappointing is yourself and that's usually very tolerable because we watch ourselves fail at things all the time
you know like a child that is learning to walk and falls down doesn't go oh well now I've fallen so now I can never stink again you know it's pretty like that sense is just not if you're self-referential it just doesn't matter um and so there is a lot that we you know if you can move with an internal locus of control external things can
happen they come and go you can take those hits very easily because you know even though you the times you would take them more seriously would be if they impact the business that you're you know building or doing but as far as you know hey I tried something that didn't work out I mean people forget that the fire
phone was a real thing that Amazon tried to develop it was a total bomb and you know we don't even really aside from me mentioning it remember it in the course of history because they've done so many other wonderful things you have the freedom to iterate to try to fail to just move forward and to do other things
so by being I I hope that we can pull people more into an internal locus of control unfortunately almost everything in society tries to make you outward facing because it benefits the algorithm it benefits you know uh how we make money you know views and all of those other things so you're working against a system that wants you to be externally
validated whether it's Instagram photos or people's businesses or people trying to sell you things um you know they are going to give you some keys to being like them uh but it is a system you have to work against and I do feel like even in my own life honestly being raised without that has been a massive cheat code I did not have
social media growing up and I am forever thankful that it isn't there wasn't there because my focus wasn't toward other people it was always toward what I was doing what I could achieve what I was studying what I wanted to learn what I wanted to do and much like you you know really seeing life moving forward as a series of you know things
that I wanted to tackle and not necessarily like there's some end point that I'm uh looking toward that like you recognize what you can do and develop and explore and it becomes very addictive in the best of ways I think yeah like the row suck the marrow out of life yes uh you know it's kind of like
well unless you believe in reincarnation this is this is not a rehearsal this is not a dress rehearsal yeah yeah it's true this is the this is your your one shot so you you better try to take it I'm fascinated also and and just talking with you it it's like I can see it you're very good at it but communication skills vital absolutely
vital yours are great thank you I think I think mine are reasonably good um how do you bring up somebody who is non-communicative by nature or quiet by Nature um what what's your plan or how do you help them move towards better communication skills I I try to find analogies sometimes initially that help
bring people forward in ways that feel like they have a model for it so I'll give you an example sometimes when I have very technical people this is a challenge because they can spend large amounts of time with data in the computer and they are you know they can go down that rabbit hole for hours and hours days maybe days and days I'm not
really sure but it can be a long time and so you know oftentimes when these people end up as managers or leaders or CEOs part of the challenge is that they are very fast in their head they can think quickly they can come to conclusions they can calculate things quickly but they don't take anyone along on the journey so they'll say this is
what like this is what this is this is what that is and everybody's like wait what how did we get here why do you think like they're not really sure and then people don't always say that because they're in positions where they don't they don't want to look stupid and so people there's this Gap where the
person has carries all this knowledge and then there's people who are not receiving the full knowledge they're just receiving kind of the end result of those internal workings of This brilliant person and so sometimes a model I like to use is to say you know let's pretend that you're a professor and you know that you are not teaching
someone but you want to bring people along for the Journey of how you got to where you're going tell me how that would change how you speak to this group of people and they would say oh well you know I start from here and I would show them how I work through X or Y and I said well so let's let's make it a
little less detailed than that and let's say let's just kind of take it in pieces and just walk them through and what's so so wonderful is that when they're able to do this and you know we have to calibrate things you're not going to get a perfect first time but when you're able to calibrate that and they see people light up as they
follow them on the actual journey of how they get there and they get it I think that becomes very uh that inspires them to do it again so you have your group of your team which feels like I don't know why but they're never getting it they don't understand it they don't seem to really understand what I want if you can walk them through your vision
or you can walk them through how you're getting to where you're at in a way that makes sense for you and feels a little basic to you but it's really important for other people and you take them on that journey and then they get engaged in it and they're excited about it and they start bringing you ideas around it
that person is inspired to share more and they feel like that's a working model they can use um so I try to make it models that they can relate to most people can relate to a professor or there are other models that I'll use as well but if you think about it the teacher in the front of the classroom even when you're very early on
the teacher that just writes things on the board and you know like you can't follow them you have no idea what they're saying most of the class is going to be silent they're going to be lost they're not going to be able to do well in their seat but if you do have a teacher who is brilliant but can kind of take you on that journey in a way that
you know still challenges you asks for your engagement you know make sure that you're on board with them you also know that that person that person becomes more approachable so you can say hey like tell me how like how does this work again or how does that work and that person breaks it down they can explain
it and you start to see uh you see them as the the expert that they are the resource that they are but you open this line of communication that becomes better so I'm not going to try to make them have you know somebody who is maybe that person I'm not going to try to give them a personality that is more engaging
than maybe it naturally might be I'm not going to change their style but people who are more in their head and doing all these things make assumptions that other people are able to do those things too because it's natural and easy for them um so I try to say okay let's let's unpack that a little bit let's make it a
little bit more relatable and let's not take you out of your Zone where I'm gonna try to make you feel uncomfortable and someone you're not uh but just unpack some of the things you're already thinking and just say them out loud and help people follow along and they see that people start to connect not just to
the material they put in front of them but to them as a person and as a thinker and it helps people anticipate what they're going to love what they're going to hate how they think about the world or their their area of expertise and it helps to build a better company what a great metaphor and so I'm going to turn it right around and say truly
I'm going to make you a professor uh and your course is what we're talking about uh what what and of course you don't have to give me the whole syllabus but but what would be what would be the kind of outline for the course that you would be teaching on performance coaching yeah so I think that the outline is you know
first to understand who someone deeply is and you do that by asking a series of questions and asking them what they are great at and how they you know kind of how they operate best in their space learn about them learn about how they see themselves learn about who they are from there understand the world in which they operate
and what it demands of them where is it hitting their strengths and where is it certainly not hitting their strengths understand how they respond when things are not hitting their strengths and how they're operating when things are in their strength because even though you may have a strength in an area you still
may not be optimal as you operate within it right you may be excluding other people like the person who stays in their head can't explain it so I do want to hear how you're operating well and poorly then I want to look at what are the opportunities in front of you what do you see of those opportunities and then how are you positioning yourself
and your company to be able to take advantage of those opportunities as uh effectively as possible how are you thinking about positioning how are you positioning those around you and how are you getting the resources together and using and leveraging those resources to put you in the best space to take advantage of of the
opportunities ahead and then I look at well what are now what is the uh the the right kind of the best next move you can make and how can I be helpful and helping to make that next best move a reality and so that's kind of like I guess the syllabus and a brief um and I guess a brief summation yeah very helpful actually
um another thing you you wrote that I actually believe in and have said often to people and and I tend to get some pushback on it which is they burned the ship's mentality um no don't have a plan B um and and I when I was starting out my my wife well being my biggest supporter was also my biggest uh uh skeptic if you would
and and and by that I mean like uh she would say but how are you gonna do that but what's your plan B and I mean what happens if this doesn't happen and and my answer to her back then which she was very unsatisfied with was uh when she would ask what's your plan B I would say C plan A [Laughter] satisfying answer for people Plan B
my perspective is that I am not a big fan of Plan B but I also recognize that that comes from a position where if you don't have one you're still going to be fine you'll figure it out so you know the people who are just starting out out there you know they still have to pay their rents or buy their groceries or
support their family so for that I always say look you want to be as well resourced as possible have something that you know like you have a solid savings have a nice runway for yourself and be able to show a little bit of traction before you take off and have that no plan B don't be the person who just I'm going to quit my job I have
nothing in the bank and I'm just gonna go for it that is not probably the great thing to do but for people who do have a solid Runway you know exactly what you want to do you do have a little bit of you have some resources I think when you have a plan B Plan B becomes the fallback when things get hard and it haunts you because you'll say well I
don't have to be doing this I could be doing X or you know like it gives you a mental waffling that you otherwise would not have and you know without that you have you have to have the fortitude to see through it to the other side so I believe very strongly you know I guess I align with you in the no plan B mentality
um but I do always make the exception just in case anyone's listening out there that I'm not saying please like put your family's whole future on the line um and you know burn all the boats because that may not work out in the end yeah and uh that comes with kind of that if we go back to be unreasonable uh one of your other it's it's like
um someone once said to me uh you know you're a lot of fun to be with but uh like damn man can can you just like slow down a little and and burn from this and and how that's another aspect of Personality that I find really interesting like um do you find that certain personality types are better suited to like if we're
gonna if we're gonna move it back to like working with Founders Etc um our our can a high energy person be a detriment to a certain type of Enterprise or or or not I think it's how they use that energy right I mean how do you use that energy the energy can be destructive or it can be fuel or it can be a real push
to the organization I love when I find people who are higher energy I think that it's always I I would have a hard time thinking of are there particular Ventures that you're thinking of where energy would be a bad thing because maybe I'm just not able to conceptualize where that energy would be detrimental yeah so
um that's an interesting question I was I was hoping you were going to tell me a couple of those um I don't know maybe um a someone where you have to do deep concentration or research on a specific domain on maybe like being the life of the party that if you are a social animal and that is where your energy comes out that can
be very destructive you know um because again we're getting to elements of social validation right we're getting to some of these other things areas about Focus distractibility because distraction you know focus is really not just about honing in it's about what you're able to block out and if you're not able to kind of block the
right things out whether it be you know social engagements other people at certain opportunities you know at a certain level you get opportunities all the time and you have to understand how like what to say no to and to say no more than you say Yes um yes should be a rarity and it should very strictly align to what your goals
are and what you want to do but early on you know people can have this shiny object syndrome where you know oh somebody wants to work with me somebody wants to do this with me somebody in it and sometimes they're great names and you know it's very impressive and it makes you feel good but you know it at a certain point it has to be about the
business business and not your ego and you have to be able to step again another opportunity to separate those out and because if it's about the business it's very very clear what aligns and what doesn't and if it's what you're going to distract even your team around and what you want it has to really meet
a certain bar so with energy I'm very much about being very specific and how you want to focus that energy and how you want to leverage that energy so that it best serves the goals that you have um but if you're someone who's out there and you want to be kind of partying or you know a social animal and you want to just even distracts your team
um yeah it's certainly not going to be great for outcomes I think also how you see your personality versus others is incredibly important because you're going to have members of your team who are not going to be high energy perhaps or maybe are a bit um a bit more introverted and they come with Incredible talents and incredible
skills and incredible uh utility to the company and sometimes those are going to be your kind of your secret sauce to how you win at the end of the day those people who can you know hone in and research and just be on fire about that and it may not show itself in ways that are conventional to you or that meet
your level of how you think about energy at the table but those people are important yeah I I agree with that and always try to be mindful of that because one of the things that I've noticed is that Charisma can be a double-edged sword and if you've got somebody who's just like what I would say naturally charismatic
um I I I've kind of trade myself to kind of say okay maybe I need to pay closer attention yes to to what they're saying it is is there a strategy that that you know of or kind of unpacking um or you know charismatic people like you're drawn to them like a moth to the flame and and sometimes that can be great depending on the Enterprise depending on
the objectives and and whatnot other times it can be like devastatingly bad do you do you have a way of of analyzing that I think about Charisma like magicians right uh that it is they are masters of directing your attention and so you always want to look at what you're not seeing where they're not directing you
and so that's I'm always looking at not just what they're saying but what are they not saying what are they avoiding you'll notice that for example in politics it's a great example um that someone will ask a question and it's very insightful and they'll say something like you know tell us why you threw this lavish party and spent forty thousand
dollars on you know your your uh city employees for this you know lavish Gathering when we're struggling to make ends meet and they'll say our hard-working city employees deserve to be recognized for the good work that they do uh but they're kind of avoiding this whole topic of the Forty thousand dollars but you know you can't they they
kind of suck people into the narrative that they're telling and you know the story that they're telling and you always wonder as an observer why aren't they challenging why are they asking about the Forty thousand dollars what happened to this you know argument that we've made the charismatic people and
are often they they are masters of how they direct attention the attention of others and so you are no um you know you're no exception to that and they are going to attempt to direct your attention as well and they will do it like a magician who is you know working a sleight of hand and sometimes you know the sleight of
hand has no Mal intent and other times you know they're really hiding the you know kind of the important elements in something that you're not able to see so I guess that you know like you when I find someone who's incredibly charismatic the first thing I'm looking for is kind of I want to be listening to their words and not their energy right
because their energy is going to be infectious and it's going to really suck you in what you'll notice is immediately they set the energy in the exchange uh when we come into exchanges we're either you know allowing other people to set the energy or we end up setting the energy of that exchange it's it's a really interesting way that people
control kind of how those exchanges happen and so they'll set the energy of the exchange but in a positive way where you want to to kind of go along with it and so you will um but you have to be cautious that in that wave the sleight of hand is not taking you in ways uh away from things that are critically evaluate uh
important to you for you to evaluate so I guess one tip I would have is going into exchanges with incredibly charismatic people is to not forget the brass tacks of the things you're evaluating them for and to make sure that you have very clear and concise answers to those things so that if you're for example evaluating a founder
and you know you're looking at you know product initial traction or strategies to monetization or you know kind of all these other things that the power of their personality doesn't overshadow the very brass tax metric that are important to be evaluating this particular individual because what I often will
hear is that people get sucked in because they'll say oh I believe they could do anything but can they do this thing that you're evaluating them to do right like that they are saying they are going to do and do they have a history of doing those things and how do you begin to kind of really break them down what did the models look like etc etc so
you know being very very uh clear about what you're evaluating for not allowing them to kind of take you off the trail into something else and making sure that you have a sometimes physical list so that you don't get kind of taken away on the train of of the charismatic personality yeah well I would it be a demerit or in
my favor that my first love was magic and that uh I was a during it when I was a teenager or professional magician I actually got paid so you understand better than most how effective and Powerful it is in how you deal with other people and how easy it is to kind of slide people's attention wherever you want it to go yeah and uh I think that's
right and I I always end up sometimes I think I ask the question too much which is why am I hearing this now why am I or you know I I like when I'm reading something I always have in my mind why am I reading this now who benefits from me agreeing with this who benefits agreeing with this and and and I found
that to be very very helpful um have you ever have you ever had a situation where you just you got engaged it looked like a great like oh you're so excited to be working with this particular team and whatnot where you just end up going in and saying I can't help you yes um in fact I probably am one of the few
people I will fire people uh and for working with me I am fortunate to be in the position where I get to select who I work with for the most part um and so engagement is incredibly important to me how I look at my work is that every person that works with me is my business card out there in the world so if I don't believe that people can uh
kind of if they're genuinely either invested or want to follow through or have the time to follow through sometimes it is that you know I'll engage with someone their fantastic fit but they're so busy that they don't really have the time to pay attention and engage or they're constantly pushing appointments or you know there's a
reason why they can't fully engage with the process you know I meet with people weekly it's a very kind of hard-line standing meeting that I want people to be able to work with and I have a lot of people who will you know will move it sometimes with travel or they'll phone in from wherever um but I do think that it's really
important to be engaged so if I feel as though I'm not going to get be able to get the outcomes that we've both agreed that we want you know I don't want to set myself up to not be in a position to be able to follow through with that and if it's on me I will own that uh but you know if it's not on me I don't want to
be in a position where somebody else will be the reason for our uh not being able to attain the goals that we've set and so I'll have that very clear conversation I'll say Hey you know it seems as though you're very busy right now I know that we've agreed on these goals um but I feel like given our Cadence of meetings or your engagement or whatever
the issue is that you know this isn't something that we can realistically achieve together at this time and if I cannot be you know kind of optimally effective um I don't feel like this will be a good this is a good fit for either of us uh in what we say we want to do so you know how do we want to address this you know
can we get re-engaged you know and be able to kind of make this work or maybe you know we take a break and maybe you can examine it when you're in a different place or maybe you're thinking about things in a different way um so I'm fine with having those conversations it's never a mean or bad conversation I want to be able to
provide value for people I have a waiting list of people who want that value and I want to be able to be engaged with people who really are seeking the outcomes that uh of the work that we can do together so I feel like it doesn't do them a service to feel like they've failed it doesn't do me a service to be engaged with someone who
isn't invested let's just call this out quickly so you know we can either remedy it or maybe we we're a better fit you know next year when you're in a different position and you have a bit more time to focus on it it's okay what a great way to present it too because I I found it very helpful where
uh you can deliver that message but then also deliver alter like you just did like you know what maybe right now is not the time that this is going to work out maybe a year from now when when there's more time I I like that because what you've done there which I think is really smart is you've given them an Avenue right yeah and you know Sun Tzu
who wrote The Art of War had a great line which is always build your enemy a golden bridge to retreat across and and and so and obviously they're not your enemy but I I love that you give okay here's a Dipper here's a different way to get there if you want that I find that uh that's a really great way to get people to like
go oh okay so she's probably right I right now is not like gonna be the best time for me that's a that's a really great way of putting it um what gets you the greatest satisfaction but my satisfaction honestly is being able to watch things move from behind the scenes that you know I'm I'm a part of the way in
which many different companies or many different uh areas of technology or whatever kind of move forward and you know the choices that people make that are high-stakes decisions and how they end up uh kind of pushing their businesses or developing their businesses or lines of businesses forward and to me it's incredibly satisfying to
watch these things move and to not be the front-facing person you know like I I've watched kind of like athletes who you know take the field or doing these things and I watch them win and to do incredible things and I feel like it's such an honor to be a part of the way in which those things move forward it's an honor to kind of sit in my seat
and have anything to do with you know being trusted enough to be a trusted kind of advisor or person who helps to be a part of these very valuable things being showcased to the world and the impact that it has so I guess that what's satisfying ultimately to me is watching the work watching the individual themselves win it whatever
they do like their victory is mine and it is um I take that is a part that I feel very proud of the work that I do and I think having pride in that work um like I'll have someone send me a quick email like oh I did this or I did that or oh this worked out really well like those things are my dopamine hits so rather than looking at you know
Technologies or dopamine hit my dopamine hits are out there in the world you know someone sends me a text or they're you know really nailed a big negotiation or things happened in the way in which they wanted them to happen or you know they had an amazing game uh on the field like to me that is the peak of of the work
that I do and their happiness and the uh it's just infectious so I think that that's the fuel that I use that will keep me doing this until I am as old as they will allow me to do it um I will always have clients and I think that it's an honor to do what I do oh I we are so simpatic over there uh I I I'm I I will die with my boots on I
guess it'd be the way I would put it yeah I will too that's wonderful um one of the things I talk about a lot is this the idea of the great reshuffle with all the changes that are happening you know old models are collapsing yeah there's new playbooks and there's people who are not yet tuned in to those new
playbooks um what do you think uh are like the biggest changes in terms of leadership and or a great founder fit uh under under the new with all the innovation without with the platforms that we have now today what's changed in your way of looking at it in in terms of now that's a great fit or a great leader that maybe
20 years ago you wouldn't have thought of that's a good question because I think that 20 years ago you still would have needed this skill I think that there is a certain uh breadth and depth of skills that you're going to look for no matter of the times but how how much importance they have kind of changes in weight
right so for example somebody who is highly adaptive is always a great trait but in times like these it's an it's an absolutely phenomenal trait you see that you know like when we talked about the pandemic or Economic Times or what have you that um being able to be adaptable when things hit and be able to quickly you know
being autodidactic begins to kind of rise up in there too is people who are self-learners who will figure it out who are not afraid to kind of jump in and kind of do those things and that rigidity that we talked about becomes even more disruptive in times like this um so I do think that adaptability when we look at you know there's a wonderful
quote about an evolution that it isn't always the kind of the strongest that survived but the ones who are most adaptable to change and I think that is true in business as well I mean real estate market for example you have to be able to adapt to change to be able to see Avenues you have to have optimism if
you're someone who is easily defeated now is not the environment for you uh if you need things to be predictable you have to be comfortable in uncertainty I think that is also something that's really important you have to be able to provide more value we see that as you know as an investor um you know what used to qualify is a
really nice seed investment now the stakes are higher the bar is higher people need to show more so you have to be willing to not be deterred by new standards that are out there but really take them on as a challenge and see them as a challenge so I think that all of the traits that are have always been important are there but the weighing of
importance has shifted with uncertain times and you want people who can really navigate uncertainty and the kind of environment of flux ahead with adaptability confidence and being able to take those things on um you know eagerly and as a challenge those people will be incredibly important and they will be as we talked
about early very resourceful great answer agility uh and the ability to to um meet the unexpected without being freaked out by it but being interested in it well Julie this has been so much fun for me um I I was so excited we're coming into this because we've we've been following each other on Twitter for a while and I
I really like your style and I love that you're no attitude you will just let somebody have it but then you're done right I think which I think is just I really admire that um so uh if you've listened to the podcast you know that we have a final question uh where we're going to make you the Empress of the world
um you can't kill anybody you can't put anybody in a re-education camp but we are going to hand you a magic mic and you can say two things into that microphone that is going to inset all eight billion people on the planet and they're gonna wake up whenever their tomorrow is and they're gonna think that they've just had two of the greatest
thoughts that they're gonna take action on immediate what what two things are you going to accept the world's population with you know what's so interesting is the things that come to mind are things that both would contribute to my work in some ways and things that are outside of it so I think that you know one of the things
that would change how everyone moves in the world that benefits us all whether it's in business or personally in life is being able to put ourselves in the positions of others you know whether it's an executive at the table or it it is a person who's walking down the street or someone who's struggling honestly so I do think that one of the
things that I would instill is the ability to try to put yourself in other people's position as you walk about the world because you will learn about you know it will make you better in business it will make you more effective in life it will make you a more empathetic person but it will also make you much more intuitively
engaged in how you move about and your relationship your life your work and I think it will make you better at what you do the second thing kind of Builds on that uh which is you know I have very much um the belief that you know whenever I talk to anyone no matter who they are whether they're somebody making a few hundred thousand
dollars a year or somebody running a very very successful company almost everyone tells me that you know uh the common thing that I hear is you know I know that I'm capable of so much more than I'm doing right now and I mean they can be the most successful I mean you would be shocked at the people who will say that it's
incredibly successful people but also people who are just starting out uh I think that I would instill in people the belief that you know whatever it is that you want to try to challenge please give yourself the opportunity to try give it everything that you've got whatever it is um so you know you're giving people the
opportunity to try giving them a bit of uh perspective taking and I think that the world would really shape and in quite a nice way because you have people looking for all sorts of things uh but hopefully doing them with a very balanced perspective that isn't um smiting out to everyone else I love both of those um the the ability to see the world
through other eyes I think is something that can be learned awesome and and so I think that's a great one and also just go for it you know it's like that that's back to the this isn't a dress rehearsal right right so what's the worst thing that can happen it doesn't work out Etc but then you're gonna learn
a whole lot of things that make you better at the next thing that you that you undertake absolutely I think you know the the ability to try uh to give yourself the chance is something that you know whether it's asking out the person or it is you know building a company that you want or it is you know having a conversation you want to have
if you just give yourself the shot you'd be shocked at how often these things actually can work in your favor and so I'm a fan of moxie and giving it a try and um and I thank you for having this conversation today I think that it was really fantastic to meet you in person you are a wonderful man and uh full of
curiosity and I love that oh thank you that's very flattering now I'm going to wonder hmm no I'm kidding I walk yes very that's so lovely of you to say and so are you let me return the compliment thank you uh this has been really really fun uh where last thing where can people find uh you uh on the web in in real life
so if you'd love to read more about the work that I do or the insights that I have I started the ultra successful newsletter on substack so I believe it is Dr gerner.substack.com um that is probably the most effective way to learn more about the work that I do or the insights that I have that you can apply to your own life if you want
to speak with me directly much like my host I am often on Twitter and so you can find me at Dr gerner d-r-g-u-r-n-e-r and I'm always happy to engage in conversation terrific well this has been a lovely and very productive conversation so thank you so much for joining me wonderful speaking with you have a good evening