Clint Murphy  00:10

Welcome back to The Growth Guide. Today we have Polina Pompliano on the show to discuss her latest book, Hidden Genius: The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World’s Most Successful People. Polina is the founder of The Profile, a media organization that studies successful people and companies. She spent five years at Fortune, where she covered technology and venture capital. After five years of writing The Profile, she has studied hundreds of successful people and examine how they reason their way through problems, unleash their creativity, navigate relationships and perform under extreme pressure. This conversation isn’t your typical book about celebrities and geniuses. It doesn’t purport to idolize any single individual, because, as we talk about in this episode, if you idolize someone, you have to accept everything, their darkest spots, warts and all. Instead, what we talk about in the book shares are attributes, behaviors and skill sets possessed by these high performing individuals that we can take for ourselves and make our own. Whether it’s the mamba mentality of Kobe mixed with the pain tolerance of Amelia Boone and David Goggins, we can take the best skills, attributes and mindsets from some of the greatest athletes, creators and thinkers and make them our own. This was one of the most fun conversations I’ve had on the show to date. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Polina, welcome to The Growth Guide. We’re here to talk about your book, Hidden Genius. And I apologize the first question is a little long. You may recall, I tweeted out that I was reading your book in the airport last week, and it was very interesting, because on the way to the airport, I was in Colorado with some new people that I’d met, and you were having a conversation about idols. And what I threw out was that I’ve never really had individual idols. Instead, the way I’ve always looked at it is I’ve taken individuals and I’ve said, what attributes do those individuals have that I admire, so that I could copy those attributes and make them my own? So when I was reading your book and I saw a bit of that flavor, it really jumped out at me. And so I’m talking about three things here. I’ll toss like a three parter at you, and then I’ll give you the reins. I’ll step out of the way for question one. It won’t always be a TED talk, I promise. So it comes to it made me realize that that I also took a bit of a people focused learning approach. So what is that? How does it work? How does that tie to Hidden Genius in this idea of idols? So I’m going to pass that over to you, and we can play with that.

Polina Pompliano  03:17

Perfect so to say, first of all, thank you for having me, and I’m glad that you read Hidden Genius while you were at the airport. It’s a great read while on traveling.  So I came across this idea that I named people-focused learning. It’s it’s now, you know, you can find it online. People talk about it, but I definitely didn’t know that that is a way that you could learn, but it is the way that I learned. So when I was in school, it was very much like history class was, remember facts, remember dates, remember names, remember like historical events. I had such a hard time because I just can’t memorize stuff like that. I need a story. I need a person at the center of that story, and I need to be able to like, empathize with them in their life, in order to remember and later in life, I learned that basically, the way the reason stories are so powerful is because stories often elicit emotion, and emotion is often what triggers your memory. So when somebody asks you, where were you on 9/11 you’re probably able to remember that exact moment because it was such a strong emotional event. So I started being like, okay, wait, hold on a second. I can’t memorize the events and the dates and the names, but what I can do is kind of like tell myself a story from the eyes of the key players in this historical event. The example I use in the book is around the French Revolution. You know, there were so many things that happened, but I was like, Who are the the main players here? One of them was Marie Antoinette. She was a very kind of young queen and who was accused of all these things, of living a life of excess, whether it was true or not. You know, the tabloids, there were rumors going around, she lost custody of her only son, like horrible, horrible life, until she was eventually executed by guillotine at age 19. So, you know, reading this, you you’re like putting yourself in her shoes, and you’re imagining what your life would be like. Then you put yourself in the shoes of a, you know, someone living in poverty in France at that time. How they saw the Royals, how they saw their circumstances. So it’s like same set of facts, same set of events, but totally different views on the world and totally different perspectives. And I have an entire chapter on like storytelling and kind of it all depends from which perspective you’re looking at the world. You know, there was a global pandemic. It was wildly different for you, for me, for my neighbor, for a mom with three kids. So you we can all be living through these historical moments, but have totally different perspectives and ways it affects us. So I learned that okay, if I use people focused learning, if I can put a person in the center of the story, I can learn. So that’s how I kind of went through school and then through life. Whenever I wanted to learn something, I would look at that thing through the eyes of the person who is best capable of teaching me, even if I didn’t know the person. And then after doing this, I realized that I mean, and again, my whole life was journalism, so I was interviewing people alongside doing this all the time. Yet I never I realized that I’m not one of these people that’s like, star struck, and I’m never like, idolizing the people that I’m learning about or the people that I’m interviewing. And the reason for that is that if you read enough biographies, if you read enough memoirs, and you watch enough documentaries, you know that, um, it’s not all perfect. And if you truly idolize somebody, you have to be able to accept the you know, their missteps, the ugly parts of their life, the things they missed out on and gave up in order to have the success. So, like you, I’m always trying to take parts of their life and learn and apply it to my own. Instead of being like, I’m gonna be like David Goggins 100% of the time. That’s that’s unrealistic, and also probably not a life you want.

Clint Murphy  07:38

Yeah, and that is, is largely how the conversation got there. Because one of the guys, for example, was saying that when he was younger, he idolized, let’s say, Kobe, and then the situation with the trial happened in the sexual escapades. But why can’t you still idolize Kobe’s workout mentality? You don’t have to idolize him as a human but you can say, wow, nobody works harder than him. And if we use him as an example, what I’m hearing from you is someone can tell us, oh, Kobe worked out really hard. And we’re like, okay, well, I don’t really know how to file that away. Kobe could be interviewed and he could say, yeah, like, if I were, if I get up and I work out early and I work out four times in a day, and everybody else only works out three times, I get more workouts in. Okay, that’s a bit better. I can kind of get it. But when his teammates interviewed, and his teammate talks about the one time he got up at five and Kobe was in the gym already, and he worked out with him, and then he said goodbye, and he went back to the hotel, and he came back to the gym for the team practice, like four hours later, Kobe was putting up some shots, and he was like, Oh, when did you get back? And Kobe was like, I haven’t left. And he was like, holy shit. This guy is different than us. You know that third one you fuck like, I filed that one away for life. It’s like, Whoa. That is what it takes to be the best is that? Is that resonating Exactly?

Polina Pompliano  09:21

And it’s, this is such a good point, because that’s something that stuck with you from Kobe’s story. Somebody else may look at what happened with, you know, the sexual escapades, and take that away and be like, I never want to put my marriage in jeopardy like that. And learn from that. For me, with Kobe, the biggest thing I learned is like, wow, look at this person who was never done reinventing himself. He went from athlete to investor to entrepreneur to he became a storyteller. She won an Emmy. I think at one point it’s like the love bass. Basketball, short story, film, but, but it’s like he did so many things, and he was never just one thing. And if there’s like, a theme in my book, it’s that identity is very slippery, and people love putting you just like in one box and be like, you’re this type of person. But if you continue to reinvent, then you, you know can become a much more well rounded person, but also somebody who’s like on the and I think this was a Kobe thing, like a constant quest for learning and improvement,

Clint Murphy  10:32

Yeah, and that’s one that I definitely want to, want to get across with you at some point in the conversation. I loved how you wrote about not being put in a box as something that we can do to live our fullest life. I’ve spent most of my life trying to not let people put me into a box because it’s the last place that you want to be if you’re a hardworking individual with a reasonable amount of intelligence, there really is no box that you should be in. There’s an ability to, as you say, reinvent yourself and say, This is what I want to be, not what someone’s going to label me. And you talk about labels as one of the things we want to be able to avoid, to not be in that box you want to dive into that now or get to that later. What’s your preference?

Polina Pompliano  11:29

Yeah, I’ll just, I’ll just quickly say something, and then we can dive more deeply later. But labels, I read somewhere that it’s like when you give it to yourself, it’s like how you want people to see you. But if somebody else gives you a label, it can be a lifelong prison sentence because they are labeling you as some type of person, and you can’t escape that kind of prison cell with with, for example, idolizing. You end up worshipping a perfect version of an imperfect person. Ie Kobe, everybody’s imperfect, right? But because we so want to be like this is this type of person we’re willing to suspend belief about the rest of their life. And I’ve written at ad nauseum in The Profile about how people have been with me reading my newsletter for the last seven years, and to a certain extent, although I write all sorts of things, they have to kind of suspend belief to allow me to exist in their lives. Is this one type of person that they imagine me to be? They don’t see me when I’m like, super sick or super impatient, or I lose my cool, you know what I mean? So, but, but I do do that, and I am imperfect, so it’s like, so I do think like what you said about it when, When we label someone, it’s like us projecting what we want them to be versus who they actually are.

Clint Murphy  13:02

Yeah, and when you talk about it, when you say it, it presents so many challenges in our lives that we have to overcome because we have a vision of who we want to be and how we want to get there, but the people around us often don’t share that vision. And in the sad part, and you likely see this as much or more than anyone in the people you work with, is the people that tend to see it the least are the people that are closest to us, right? They, to some extent, there’s this holding up of a mirror. So if you achieve a lot, and you become a much better version of yourself, those people who were with you from the beginning to some extent, you’re shining a light or a mirror that they are capable of changing who they are, but if they don’t want to do what it takes to change who they are, they would rather not see you succeed at changing who you are, then see you succeed, see you become bigger than which then takes away their excuse for staying less than.

Polina Pompliano  14:22

Yes, there’s an element of like, jealousy, insecurity, things like that. But for example, I’ve been very good at seeing that quickly, and I always have loved surrounding myself with people who know more than me, who are more ambitious than me, who are very good in their respective industries that I know nothing about. I have a friend who’s incredible and a really, really big deal in the wine industry. I cannot tell you how many things I’ve learned from him, just from like documentary suggestions to just the way he thinks about things. And it’s like I have nothing to do with wine, but I can learn from that world as well. And I also think there’s something to be said if you find yourself stuck in a place with people who want to label you a certain type of person, or don’t want you to succeed at whatever you’re doing, or you just don’t have people to share ideas with that you’re interested in. Then I always think about what James Clear said once, he said something like, you know, join groups where the like your your aspirational behavior is the normal behavior. So, yeah, you don’t want to be somewhere where ambition is frowned upon, where people are like, oh, well, we don’t know anybody who’s started a company. Go into places and join groups and go into communities online of existing entrepreneurs. There’s no question whether you should start a company. The the norm is you are starting a company. So it’s like that. Do something where your desired behavior is the normalized behavior, and from there, you can share ideas. You can think bigger all this stuff. It’s all about kind of who you are in relation to the people around you.

Clint Murphy  16:15

Yeah, it’s a perfect example and it’s one of the things that I love the most. And this may come across as crazy to people who are listening, but one of the most powerful aspects to me of social media, and whether it’s Twitter or whatever platform you’re on, that ability to connect with like minded people who are on that same journey in life. I mean, even when we talk about that Colorado trip, there was eight guys on the trip, a bit of a bit of a retreat, slash mastermind. I’d never met any of these people in real life, like that was the first time I met them on that trip.

Polina Pompliano  16:56

What did you have in common?

Clint Murphy  16:58

Financial independence.

Polina Pompliano  17:00

Right.

Clint Murphy  17:00

So it was some of the biggest writers and podcasters on financial independence in the world and one of them happened to know everybody. So they were people that he thought he curated a group that he wanted to bring together for that trip. And so he was the central link. And the ability to go there, a lot of people think, Well, you can’t retire early. And then you’re sitting around with seven people who have, and some of them have started businesses.

Polina Pompliano  17:32

The normalized behavior.

Clint Murphy  17:33

Normalized behavior. And all of a sudden you’re like, wait, I can do this. And, you know, the crazy part was we didn’t even talk about how to do that, because it was taken as a given that that was something all of us really knew about. So it was more like, hey, how do we be a better father? How do we be a better husband? How do we be a better person? How do we get stitter? You know, it was all things unrelated to the thing that brought us together. Because, to your point, that thing was just normalized. It was like, Hey, we all get that. We all know how that financial independence shit works. Like we’re not going to talk about that. We’re going to talk about the rest of the stuff that we all want to get better at, knowing that we all already have this together. So we’ve already got that done. Now let’s talk about because we have that. Let’s talk about how we can be more fit and better people. It was just, it was absolutely amazing. Okay, so you were right. Those words of digressions. Let’s bring it back to hidden genius, although I know we are kind of talking about concepts that are central to the book, but where, where I thought we’d go is you take a number of stories across a myriad of different areas, is to maybe deep dive a few of those areas and then leave the audience, if they want to get the rest of the areas which are also good, to go grab the book and get them. So I thought where we could start was this idea of creativity, and I may get the pronunciation wrong. You talk about a chef named Grant Achatz, and with him, you tie it to this idea of Leonardo da Vinci and the concept of connecting the unconnected, which I kind of tied to this idea that’s being talked about more finally of a T-shaped generalist versus a specialist. Can you take us through all of that, and we can kind of tie it all together with a bow for the audience,

Polina Pompliano  19:43

Yeah, by the way, just to connect the unconnected, um, just like how your retreat was. You know, we all have this one thing in common, but we’re talking about different areas of our life that we want to improve at. The book is kind of structured like a retreat in that each chapter is a different topic, creativity, relationships, leadership. But the common theme is that these are people. You are a person who wants to learn and improve and grow. So somebody who is really, really good at relationships might be able to learn something from the leadership chapter. So it’s like, it’s that kind of thing. With creativity that this is one of my favorite chapters. Is the first one I wrote. It’s in the beginning of the book. For me, creativity is not this, like romantic, you know, creative process, just like Grant says. But in chair, you get to work and the ideas will come. The thing is that a lot of times we go through our days and we don’t even realize that we’re making connections as we move through the world, and if we become more conscious of that, we’ll become more creative. So what Grant does is he is a chef, a one of the greatest chefs in the world. His restaurant, Alinea is very, very innovative, cutting edge, and it was named the world’s best restaurant a few years in a row, I think. So he the way he gets ideas is he goes out and he may be at the park and he’ll see like leaves falling from the tree, and he says, whoa, like that might be an interesting idea of how I can apply like this to the dining experience. Or he once was listening to a song by Rage Against the Machine, and he was like, Why is this so captivating? Oh, it’s because of all these peaks and valleys and the in the song. How can I apply that to the dining experience? Maybe I can make it like a story. So instead of you just sitting down having a meal, maybe I can fill it with peaks and valleys and tie the food in that way. Or he was at a museum and he saw a large scale painting and he was like, I want to eat off of that. Why can’t I eat off of that. So what he did is when you sit down, there’s no plates. It’s just in the beginning the table cloth looks like a giant scale, like painting made with chocolate and vanilla and all these different sauces, so that you literally feel like you’re eating off of art. He’s taking ideas from different industries and tying them to what he knows. And he calls this the kaleidoscope of food. So if you move through the world and see it to a kaleidoscope of whatever, you’re able to generate ideas from the most unexpected places,

Clint Murphy  22:39

Beautiful. And you hinted at it a little there in that it’s not necessarily this idea that just strikes you.

Polina Pompliano  22:49

Right? It’s rarely that.

22:50

Hard work, right? And you point out a quote from Grant in Stephen King, you also point out a similar quote, and we hear it from a lot of creative people, this idea that people like to think the creative processes romantic. The truth for me, at least, is that creativity is primarily the result of hard work and study. So for you with creativity, when you read what these people are doing, how do you then look at well, how am I going to be creative? What does that process look like, and how has it changed through studying people like this?

Polina Pompliano  23:33

Yeah, so let me give you an example. I definitely used to think that I had to be in the right mood at the right time to generate an idea. But then I was like, I read this, and I was like, This is so interesting. What if I moved through my day looking at the world through a kaleidoscope of people focused learning, or people, people being at the center of everything. So the way, for example, that I generated an idea in 2020 when the whole world shut down. I was living in New York City, my husband and I went on a walk, and every single business was shut down. Instead of thinking, oh, man, like, what are the business? Whatever dynamics here, I thought, Where is the human? The human is behind this business? I wonder what they’re feeling right now, what they’re thinking right now, how they’re going to make this work. So then I chose seven or eight businesses, looked up who the founders or the business owners were, called them, and did a mini series for the profile on, you know, the faces of American business right now, and just kind of capture them in that exact moment, March of 2020 when everything shut down. There was so much uncertainty. Nobody knew when they would have to reopen. People were like, one of the guys I talked to, he had an indoor golf facility, and he was like, I mean, you have to be in person. I you know, you can’t. I can’t run my business remote like they. Have to come in here. It’s all based on in person interaction. So he was like, I’m just gonna pour myself a glass of scotch. And just like, try to forget about it. He was so he was so down. And it was just like hearing those stories came as a result of me walking down the street looking for the humans. And it’s kind of like how you know, how people say, if you want to become more positive, or like, more of an optimistic person, walk down the street, or take one day and just start to notice all the positive interactions you see. So somebody holds the door open for somebody else, somebody like buys a coffee, or like gives money to someone on the street, something like that, like, you start to notice all these acts of kindness, and therefore it starts to color your day in a different light. Whereas, if you’re just walking around, like, Oh, almost got hit by a car, that taxi driver’s crazy, like all this stuff, it’s a totally different day. Even though you’re having, you’re walking the same street,

26:02

Yeah, it’s similar to the idea that I’ll often preach it, if you want to be the noun, then do the verb. So like, if you want to be a runner, run. If you want to be a writer, right? If you want to be a creator, create. If you want to be positive, look for the positive. If you want to be around x, look where that behaves. So, search it out, absorb it, be around it in your moral you know, if you want to be more fit, let’s go watch a bunch of fit people, watch what they eat, watch how they exercise, watch how many steps they take in a day. Say, Oh, that’s a lesson.

Polina Pompliano  26:50

Exactly. And in a small note here, creativity is all, like you said, just connecting unconnected things, but it’s also a lot of observing and observing behaviors that you want to kind of not replicate, but like learn from and become. So when I wanted to be a better interviewer for my job, I would literally just watch hours of the best interviewers on the planet, and whether you like it or not, whether you’re conscious of it or not, you kind of, as you watch more and more, you start to become and you start to for example, Kobe Bryant was so good on the court, and it almost looked seamless and magical because of that hard work that he did every single day. So by you are such a good interviewer, and you pick up on slight cues that most people would miss, because you’ve observed a lot of people interviewing and because you’ve interviewed yourself, so it’s almost like, it’s like a pairing of connect unconnected and also observe the desired outcome that you want. And you kind of start to become,

Clint Murphy  28:02

Yeah, and you start to become because you take that behavior or that trait and you make it yours. And then once you’ve made that trait yours, you pick a different interviewer, and you say, what’s one or two traits that they have that I want to absorb? So the question for you on this, and it’s fun, because you’ve probably experienced this the same way I have. You know, your family starts to say, Well, wait, there’s you, and then there’s podcast you, there’s you, and then there’s interview you. And what’s interesting is, slowly, over time, you becomes more like podcast you, yes, and because we’re talking on camera, because the mics picking us up, we speak a bit slower, we enunciate, and often we may even speak a bit deeper in that process. And you may have a different pattern that you’ve absorbed. Do you find that you in real life has shifted pretty materially, like if you watch a video of yourself 10 years ago and see how you spoke and see your speech pattern, your speed, your depth, your tone, your annunciation, are you a much different speaker today than you were that?

Polina Pompliano  29:17

Yes, and it’s all result of just practice. As cheesy as that sounds, but it’s also something I talk about later in the book, about alter egos and the way that you know, people are like people say alter egos, the way I like to think about it is like more of your aspirational self. So if your aspirational self is who you are when you’re recording a podcast, because you listen better, you talk slower, you ask more questions, you’re more curious, then that is kind of the type of person you’re moving towards. And of course, it’s going to be reflective in your personal life. So for instance, Beyonce used to be really shy and introverted, and she is not. A powerhouse that you would see on stage, she would need to create literally, a different persona in order to be able to perform in front of, you know, hundreds of 1000s of people. But then so she named this person, Sasha Fierce. She’s like, that’s my alter ego. But then over time, because she kept doing it, she felt more comfortable and confident doing it. She said, Actually, I’ve now killed Sasha Fierce. I am now her. Like she, she, I am we are one in the same. So you kind of become this person until you no longer need the psychological crutch of an alter ego. Kobe Bryant did the same thing with the Black Mamba. When people were booing him, when he would go out on the court, he would say, I’m not Kobe right now. I’m the Black Mamba. And even have this image, it gives you a little bit of like a psychological distance from your real self to who you have to be when you perform. Recording a podcast is ultimately a performance. You know that you’re doing this so people will watch when you’re doing that. In your personal life, you’re not doing it because you think people will watch. People will watch, but it slowly starts to become you as you become more confident in this persona.

Clint Murphy  31:10

In the alter egos, is mental toughness and where you go there anyway. So let’s play with that a little. So part of what you talk about with this alter ego is this idea that we may even start to talk about ourselves when we’re in that alter ego in the third person, yeah, like, like David Goggins as an example that you use in the book. So why do we use that third person, and how does that create some of that separation and ability to say, Okay, well, now I can behave differently because I’ve put a bit of a separation between me and the person I want to be in the moment.

Polina Pompliano  31:49

Yes, so it’s something called Illeism, which is referring to yourself in the third person. I did not know that as I was writing the book, I was doing more research, and I found out that a lot of it’s used in a lot of like PTSD therapy approaches, where they encourage the person to tell their story in the third person, because it adds distance between the self and the story. So like we were talking about, it’s all about kind of context and perspective. If I can tell my story from the viewpoint of someone else where, if I can kind of see myself as separate from my thoughts and feelings and chaos all the time, then maybe you can be a little more rational and a little less emotional about what you went through. So you know, David Goggins often talks about how he was built not born. So he says he was born as David, and he refers to David as this weak, scared, insecure kid. Now he’s Goggins, and he built that he built that person or that persona. So it’s easier for him to kind of separate those two selves and talk to himself in the third person, almost like a coach. There’s, there’s this idea that, you know, we have, we all have, like, an inner voice. Many of us have an inner voice now. There’s like questions about some people may not have an inner voice, which is wild, but, but it’s like, if you have an inner voice you are, you can either listen to yourself, or you can, like, hear yourself or talk to yourself. So there’s there’s like, you can listen to what they’re saying. You’re weak, you’re insecure, you’re scared, You’re horrible. Or you can turn that and become a coach and talk to yourself as if it’s somebody else coaching you. A lot of athletes do this. David Goggins does it. It’s a really interesting technique in moments where you really need someone to hype you up. You know.

33:56

Yeah. You really threw me for a loop with the inner voice. It just would be so extraordinary to to and maybe sad, this idea of not having an inner voice, even though a lot of work that I’ve had to do in life to improve myself and become better really stemmed to not shutting off, but taking control of that inner voice, so not letting the voice control me, but instead saying I’m in charge, I’ll use you when I need you, if that makes sense.

Polina Pompliano  34:32

Yes, definitely, yeah. And it’s almost like I forget who it was. It was a it was an NFL player, and they like, played the video of him talking to himself right before a play, and he was like, you’ve worked your whole life for this. Like, this is the moment. Like, this is everything you’ve worked for. And you literally get goosebumps listening to it, because it’s like, you know, he’s talking to himself as if, yeah, like hyping him up for this one big moment.

35:01

I think it’s one of the defensive ends for the LA Rams, and he’s one of, he’s, like, the most decorated defensive player ever, but he retired last year, and they were, they were playing the clip of him talking to himself, and you were like, holy shit, like he is legit pumping himself up, yeah, before he goes out there like a gladiator and does his job.

Polina Pompliano  35:23

And the fact that he’s vocalizing it. It’s not just in his head. He’s saying it out loud because his ears hear it, then his mind registers emotion, memory, etc. I think, I think it’s very powerful.

35:36

Yeah, I believe it was Aaron Donald. It was an amazing clip, and he’s a physical behemoth of a human being, and has done the work, so that makes sense. Okay, so let’s stay on dog on Goggins. In when we’re talking about Goggins, part of the alter ego is this idea of, how do we bolster our mental toughness? When you talked about Goggins, I left you had three rules that that he has. Two of them were, I thought, valuable we can share with the audience. One of them was the this idea of the 40% rule. I wasn’t quite aware it was 40, but that was interesting. And the other was doing something that sucks daily. Do you want to tackle one or both of those and share with people how they can use them to bolster their mental toughness.

Polina Pompliano  36:26

Yes. So David Goggins, to me, is a very, very interesting person because he truly, like, has lived through hell. Um, forget about his like Navy, you know, a hell week situation, but also just growing up. Racism, his father would abuse him, drugs, alcohols, everything. At a really young age. He grew up in a bad situation, and he was able to take control of his mind and not go down the path that he was destined to go down and really, like, take a hard right into a different path. And it’s largely due to his ability to take control of his mind, which is so difficult. The 40% rule basically states that, and I believe it is from the military, where it originated with Navy SEALs, but it’s basically like, when you think that you’re done, you’re really only like 40% done, or something like that. So when your mind is telling you stop, you actually have so much more to go. And I, I was in a yoga class once it was getting really hard, and I remember the the yoga instructor said something like, right when you’re about to quit is when miracles happen. So like your voice is screaming at you and it’s like, okay, stop you. You cannot shake. Your legs cannot shake anymore. Like you are done, quit, if you are able to, like, push through that and just like, wait 10 more seconds this crazy. People call it a second wind. People call it, you know, all sorts of things, but this inner strength comes in, like an inner calm goes through you, and you’re like, I can do anything. People who have been through childbirth will know that you can push through insane pain, but, but it’s like, it’s like this, this idea that the pain is not the end, almost, because the way Goggins describe it. Describes it. It’s, it’s almost like, when a car, a car can go like, I don’t know, 150 miles an hour, whatever it is, it has a governor, though, so it won’t let you go past a certain thing. And then if you push past the certain speed, you can actually go through that. But we all have like mental governors that are like, Okay, let’s stop now. Let’s conserve some energy for later. But if you can push past that, you can finish the marathon. You can, you know, all sorts of things.

Clint Murphy  39:00

Is it fair to say, when you start to look at that and you start to say, Well, wait, I can, I can do more of this thing physically. I’ve always referred to it as building your get shit done muscle. I like for people to use physical trials to build it, right? So you can start small with walking around the block. You can grow it to an ultra marathon or an Iron Man, whatever you want. But this idea that if, if I can continue to complete the physical and I can continue to realize that I can achieve these hard, physical thing. Then that teaches me, it’s almost, it’s almost like James clear. That starts to teach me that I am the type of person who can complete things. And then if I, if I can do that ultra marathon, or I can do that Iron Man, or I can where I can do, I can run it. Every single day for one and a half years. Well, then shit, I can start a business. I can, I can get promoted in my career, right? Like I can take that physical and I can take what I learned from it and bring it to the mental.

Polina Pompliano  40:12

Yes, I do agree that I think a lot of physical feats actually bleed into the mental because you can’t you have to talk to yourself through those moments of pain. But David Goggins talks about this is almost like callousing the mind. In order to be more mentally resilient, you need to introduce friction in your life. What most people do on a day to day basis is they don’t have enough friction, so they allow their mind to go to dark places, because it needs friction, it needs a challenge to overcome. And then, if you’re like me, I am very, very prone to worry about things that will likely never happen, but because I don’t have something, I that’s where my mind goes. So in order to take charge of that. I need to truly be like, okay, I’m gonna run a half marathon. I do a lot of physical things in order to, like, rein that in. But it doesn’t just have to be physical. For example, if you are really, really afraid of public speaking, say yes to giving a speech at your friend’s wedding. Little things like tiny moments of adversity in your day that will you know when the big moments come, you’re ready. So when you asked me, when I first started interviewing, I interviewed Frank Abagnale, who’s the man that was portrayed in the film, Catch Me If You Can, by Leonardo DiCaprio. I interviewed him for Fortune on camera. It was my first interview on camera, and I was so nervous. I was red. My voice was shaking. You could tell I was nervous. It was horrible. I watched that raw footage, and I was like, never again. I started putting myself in situations where it was very low stakes, like, low stakes panels, moderate this, interview this person, we would have, like, a book club, like talk in the book club, things like that. Where I really, before that, hated having the attention on me, suddenly, I had to get comfortable with it. If you’re someone who is nervous about, let’s say you want to start a business, you have to negotiate business deals all the time, but if you don’t know how to do that, you’re gonna fail in the big moments. So what can you do today? Sell something on Facebook marketplace and negotiate like force yourself to do little, tiny things of adversity in your daily life so that you don’t buckle when the big moments that matter actually come.

Clint Murphy  42:37

And that’s so important, how you finished up right there is we take these micro examples of the macro behavior that we want to adopt, and we just start small and we incrementally grow that skill set until, and I believe you tweeted about this recently, you know, like, for me to be able to interview like this, yeah, had to go through all of this, right? There was a path to where I am today. You see where I am today, but you don’t see the years and years and years of work that it took to get here type thing.

Polina Pompliano  43:18

Like, we think of the greatest interviewers of our time is like Larry King and Oprah, maybe Joe Rogan. I think Larry King had interviewed 60,000 people. Oprah, 20,000. Joe Rogan only, like 2000 on his podcast so far. And we still think like, that’s a lot of people. So it’s like, it’s like, it’s just, it’s just reps.

43:40

100% because if you go back and you look at yourself on, as you said, interview one, or I go back and look at myself on interview one, it’s totally different human being. And every 100 is an exponentially different human and then every 100 more is even more. And we’re going to talk about, talk about this idea towards the end, but I look at it, and it’s one of the reasons why anyone who I talked to about a podcast, I try to say, listen, the podcast graveyard is 14 episodes. So if you’re going to do this, set a minimum number that you’re going to do before you stop, and ideally that minimum number is at least 100 and don’t judge yourself. Don’t judge yourself off episode one. Watch it and learn from it and figure out how to use it. But judge yourself after episode 100 after you’ve had 100 conversations, how are you at doing this?

Polina Pompliano  44:45

Yeah, I encourage people to look up this speech by Ira Glass of NPR, This American Life podcast, yeah, he said that it took him 10 years to kind of make something that he actually thought was good. So he said. That when you first begin, you have really good taste. Like, let’s say you’re like, I know what makes a good podcast, I know what makes a good newsletter, I know what makes a good book, but your skill is in there. So there’s a huge gap between taste and skill. And as you keep doing it, every single day, you start to close that gap. The problem is, most people quit before that gap is closed, because they’re like, Oh, I’m just never going to get there. And it’s like, it might take 10 years or 100 episodes or whatever it is, to kind of like, narrow that gap. But once you do, and the taste and the skill are both there, you have a really high quality product.

Clint Murphy  45:37

And for those lame members in the audience, like me, who love pickleball. It’s very similar in that that you get to this stage where you start to see the court and you know where the shot should go, like, I know that’s an open spot, but you don’t yet have the skill to put it there, right? So, so you know the shot’s there, but you can’t hit it. And then it’s putting in the reps, in the years, to hit that shot. Then by the time you hit that shot, you realize, Wait, that wasn’t the shot. I thought that was the shot, but the shot’s actually this. And so getting that skill to line up with, with the vision and being able to achieve what you want to achieve, although that, as you say, it’s years and years of reps, and part of that you’ve mentioned a couple times, this idea of pain, and you talk about a woman who amazes me, because I love obstacle course racing, although I haven’t done it yet, I intend to do it. It’s on the list. Is Amelia Boone, and she talks about this idea of making friends with pain. What does that look like?

Polina Pompliano  46:57

Yeah. So what I found fascinating in a lot of these ultra athletes is that they tend to almost personify pain as if pain is a thing or a person or a place that exists outside of them. So for example, Amelia tough, motor racist, she’s been through a number of injuries. When something starts hurting in the middle of a race, she’ll start talking to it as if it is a real thing, but separate from her. So that, like we talked about distancing yourself, all this stuff coming together. It’s, um, it’s to add psychological distance between her and the pain. The way she does It is like she’s like, Oh, foot, you really hurt right now I’m so soft, like she’s talking to it, like it’s like a separate thing from her. And for some reason, it makes it feel external, rather than like I am in so much pain right now, I don’t know how I’m gonna go on. So it’s like the same thing, but a different narrative. Courtney Doll Walter, who’s an extreme she does like, 200 mile races. Yeah, she does something similar with the pain cave. She pictures pain as an actual place. So the second that things in her body start to break down, she’s like, Okay, I know exactly where I am. I’m like, about to enter this pain cave, but I know that I’m gonna come out on the other side of it. So she’s like, waiting for it to end almost she’s like, I know this is just temporary. The idea of making it temporary and making it separate is really, really, really.

Clint Murphy  48:30

Oh yeah. And for people who haven’t been in the pain cave, it’s a whole different experience. And generally, in any ultra, ultra endurance event, you tend to end up in that pain cave at some point and that’s where, that’s where you get to make the decision, yeah, am I going to finish or am I going to quit? And these two women have come up with amazing ways to get to the other side of the pain cave. That’s beautiful. I love it.  So, everything we’ve been talking about to so far in the conversation and in how you the world is through storytelling. So, so let’s, let’s spend a little time on storytelling. And I’m going to share a quote that that you’ve given by one of the most powerful storytellers, Aaron Sorkin, and hand it over to you on what that means, and then also tying it to this idea of because we hear of all the time with writing, with storytelling, is this idea of showing versus telling. And Aaron says when inhabiting a character, or he speaks about Al Pacino. When inhabiting a character, Gino says he looks for the thing that him on an emotional level, it’s not just that he knows what his character is saying or even why his character is saying it, but how he feels when saying, Why is that so powerful in our storytelling?

Polina Pompliano  50:04

Yeah, I mean, well, because in order for something to be believable, I think you have to become that person for a short period of time or whatever. For example, if you were sitting here interviewing me, and you were just you not, you know, being an interviewer, not seeing yourself as a podcaster, it would be a very flat conversation, and it would be very superficial. You have to embody the person that you want to become, whether it’s for acting or real life. So the reason Al Pacino is so masterful is because he knows that there is no good or bad person The Godfather. Like, you know, it’s like he Yeah, he’s a big, bad mafia boss, but he’s doing it in the name of love in his family. So there’s multiple layers to all of us. And Al Pacino has said that the way he envisions a character is like, I want him. I don’t want him to be the stereotypically like good guy. There’s always going to be something wrong, and it’s he brings so much to the role by doing that that we see ourselves in that character, you know, because they’re not just the perfect version of what we want to see. We’re like, Oh, damn. Like, he’s jealous, he’s angry. I feel those emotions too. So it’s like, if you can connect on an emotional level with the character, then that character will connect on an emotional level with the audience.

Clint Murphy  51:40

Yeah, and do you think that’s why you know, if you if you look at a show like The Wire, you look at a show like Mayor of Kingstown, a book or, I guess most people will relate it to a TV show of Game of Thrones. Why those ones resonate so much with the audience? Because it’s this idea that there are characters that, if we were talking Harry Potter, these characters would be evil, but you like the character, because even though they’re the bad guy in quotation marks, they actually have a lot of good attributes. Or even though they’re the good person, they actually have a lot of bad attributes. And so it’s this recognition of either a soul or a flawed human being, and that we’re not one or the other,

Polina Pompliano  52:35

Right? And I love stories where you see somebody, you expect them to be the bad guy or whatever, and then they flash back and you see what happened in their childhood, and you’re like, Oh, damn, I get it, you know?

Clint Murphy  52:47

Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah. As one of my side things that I do, amongst many i I’m writing a fantasy series with my sister, and we’re finished book one, and in the arc of the series, I write like, I’m taking the characters and it’s like, okay, these are the characters from book one, so you have a vision of where they’ll be by book five, but like, you’re ignoring the fact that the reason this kid was a bully was because his dad beat him. His dad was a bully, and like, he was just scared little kid. So maybe by book five, he’s actually a hero. And how does his arc change? And how does the guy you thought was going to be the hero in book one become dark and twisted, because what happens on his journey? And so making sure that they’re not they’re not black or white. They’re gray characters that are going to evolve and arc throughout the books and give the reader to your point exposure to what made them who they are and how they become who they’re going to become

Polina Pompliano  53:53

Aaron Sorkin actually has a really great framework of thinking about storytelling, which is he says, you don’t have a story until your character, like has conflict and intent. You can’t just have conflict without intent, because if you’re basically in to get what you want in life, in a movie and whatever, a character goes through some sort of challenge, but that challenge is laced with intent. What does the character want to achieve? What’s on the other side of that? So with with The Social Network, which was based on Facebook, Facebook’s creation, there’s Mark Zuckerberg. Mark is an interesting character because he doesn’t care about money. He’s not incentivized by girls. What does he want? And then you realize that he wants. All he wants is, like, social acceptance and social status. When he is denied entry into this, like, prestigious social club at Harvard, he’s like, I’m gonna burn this thing to the ground until I prove that I am worthy of this. So from that perspective, then you see him embroiled in a number of conflict with his business partner, Eduardo, with the Winklevoss twins, with Harvard as an institution. He burns everything down until he builds Facebook into this behemoth, and he thinks he will get social status or acceptance or things like that. It’s like you cannot underestimate what people will do to get what they really want. And a lot of times, the thing isn’t money, it’s not, you know, success, it’s something very, very basic. And I think the reason Aaron Sorkin is such a good storyteller is like he shows you three different versions of the truth, and he doesn’t commit to any single one, and it’s up to the audience to kind of interpret and decide on their own.

Clint Murphy  55:59

You make me wonder if that’s what Mark is still going after, and that’s why we have these new images with the, you know, the new hairstyle, the gold chain, riding a wakeboard while drinking a beer, carrying the American flag. Like as if that isn’t like, tell me five years ago, or even 10 years ago, you would have eventually pictured Zuck on a wakeboard, surfing behind a boat with an American flag in one hand and a tall can of Budweiser in the other. Like, come on. Like, while wearing it tux I think? Like, best image of all time. And finally, people are like, Oh, that’s a cool dude. Yeah. Like, yeah, for the first time in that guy’s like, even when he built Facebook, everybody thought he was evil. And then the movie came out, and they thought it was and now people are like, Hey, he’s a pretty cool guy. Like, it took all that time to get what he wanted.

Polina Pompliano  56:51

I recently read a profile on him and something like, like, the interviewer says something like, oh, like, how does it feel to be considered cool now? And he says something like, Oh, I’m not cool. I’m 40, but like, it’s so obvious that he’s like, complimented by that it’s so.

Clint Murphy  57:07

Exactly, exactly. I’ve been searching for this for 40 years, and I finally have it. I’m gonna go build a big statue to my wife in the garden. Okay, all right. So when we think about the storytelling you’ve talked about Aaron’s framework, I love it. The other thing that I really appreciated from you in this chapter, because when you think about this podcast and what I’m doing talking to authors, or even what I say with people on the street, is this idea that we can learn something from everyone. Everyone has a story to tell. And for you, a bit of a turning point in your life was when a journalism teacher said to you, no one is inherently boring. They’re only boring because you haven’t asked the right questions. And that was a bit of a turning point in your life, in your approach to interviewing or journalism, if you will. Why was it so important, and why did it change your life so much?

Polina Pompliano  58:11

Yeah, it really, really did. Because I think it really it colors the way that you see the world, and I am incredibly disappointed with the state of journalism and media at the moment, just because I think that very few reporters are approaching a situation from I’m going to see where this leads Me and who this person really is without some preconceived notions about who they are. This may be like old school, but I do believe that even if you are not objective, you can approach it by trying to be objective, and at least you’ll end up somewhere closer to the truth than if you go in with, like, this person’s evil and I’m gonna get them. So when I was in college, I took this, like journalism class. It was an intro class, and one of our assignments was do a profile on like someone in the class. And so I chose a student, and I started asking him questions, and I was like, Oh God, he was he was just so checked out. He was giving me one word answers. He was not very interested. And I was like, Does he not know that? Like, I’m supposed to be whatever. So the next day, I go to my professor, and I’m like, can I just like, switch my person? I promise I can write this. I just like, need a more interesting person. This is, I think I said this is the most I’ve chosen, the most boring person in the world. And my professor was like, yeah, no, the point of this is that you are supposed to do your job, which is to ask questions and, like, hit on something that’s really interesting and you understand why they are who they are. So then I was like, oh, wait a second, so you’re saying the onus is not on them to entertain me. The onus is on me to find the story and find the essence of who they really are. So it’s like, I I’m sure you’ve done so many conversations at this point that you know sometimes you have to ask a lot of different types of questions to hit on something, or ask a question in a different way that will, like, register with the person you’re interviewing where they’re like, Oh, actually, I do have a story about this. Or, like, I did used to think this way, but a lot of times we’re just like, not that introspective. So we’re not constantly thinking about our childhood or what happened or whatever. So it’s up to the interviewer to tease that out

1:00:38

And then tying to that is, is I can have my preconceived notions of the questions I want to ask, but when I see your eyes light up at something I’ve asked, it’s like, oh, wait, like, there’s a direction we should spend more time on. We should chew on that more because you seem excited about that, and if I stay with what you’re excited by, we’re going to have a deeper, more meaningful conversation, because that’s an area you clearly want to talk about. So why change and go in a different direction if you seem to really love this area?

Polina Pompliano  1:01:15

Yeah, that’s like expert level interviewing, where it’s I have my questions loosely, but then I’m actually really, really deeply listening. If you say something, if I see it like a thing of slight emotion, I’m gonna go in that direction. I did that with I interviewed the former G, former CEO of GE, and he had a really hard time as CEO. The shareholders were all pissed at him. The Jack Welch was calling for his like, death on CNBC. It was crazy. And I was like, God, like, that seems really tough. And he said something like, you know, so many people hated me in that period of time, but it didn’t matter, because one person loved me, and that was my wife, and that’s all that mattered. And then he kept going, and I was like, hold on a second. That’s crazy what you just said. And you could tell his voice cracked a little bit when he talked about his family. So I was like, let’s, let’s talk about this. He had never talked about that before. It was clearly something very personal. It’s rare that executives who are under such duress and in the public eye, their marriages stay tight and together, and so, you know, like, it’s like, if you pick up on the emotion, then it resonates with people, because they’re like, how on earth were you able to be a human being? And I think that that’s ultimately the my the essence of my work is, I want to humanize you. No matter who you are, you are human first. You have faults, you have things that you wish you could change, regrets, all this stuff. How can I humanize you for everybody else to learn alongside us?

Clint Murphy  1:02:55

And was that Jeffrey Immelt, that you were you were speaking with? And how, long would you say? Because I I’m gonna digress for a second. Even, even with the show, you know what, I’m probably on episode roughly 150 and I still feel like the evolution in the cast will be when I’m able to do what you just talked about more. And so when I’m able to read the book, have you know, 20, 30 questions in the back of my mind, and then just jump on and have a conversation about it with you. Like, when did you feel in your journey, whether it was years, whether it was reps, when did you feel you really started to grasp that ability to go in any direction based on what was being said in the moment. Because the other person that really jumps out at me, as you said, 2000 interviews, is Joe Rogan, like that dude will take the conversation wherever the heck it goes.

Polina Pompliano  1:03:57

Yeah, um, frankly speaking, I was my, I was a, I was a, like, an over preparer. I would have my questions. If I derailed, I would freak out. I’d be like, Oh, my God, we didn’t get to my, like, super important question number 11, 12, and 13. It’s, it’s um, I think that what ended up happening is that, like you said, you start noticing body language. Also, after doing it for so long, you start to pick up on, like, you start to have, like, an intuition. I don’t know how to explain it, but I think it’s basically, because you’ve done it so much, you subconsciously pick up on things that you’re like, oh, that’s something that they would rather not talk about. Maybe we could explore that. And you think it’s intuition, but it’s actually just pattern recognition over a long period of time. Maybe I twitch a certain way or something, and you notice that. So what’s happened to me a lot is like, I’ll ask just a random seeming question, and they’re like, I can’t. Believe you brought that up, and I’m like, I have no idea why, but I think it’s because of that and also I think it’s just after doing so many you, like, I noticed that with I interviewed JJ Watt, who’s like, an NFL legend. The first 20 minutes were kind of awkward, like you are still getting to know each other. He’s trying to decide whether he can trust me or not. All this though, I know that your podcasts are on the longer side, which is good, because if the first 20 minutes, or just like figuring out, can I trust this person? Then the next 35, 40, whatever, you can actually really deep, dive deeper into things, and it gets so much better. So with the JJ interview, if you watch the beginning, like, ah, and then it gets much better. And the way I build intimacy quickly is you did this in the beginning. You if you feel the other person is a little more reserved, you give you offer something personal yourself, and if you offer something personal yourself, then they’re like, okay, okay, okay, let me tell you about my you know, it becomes more conversation than just like a question after question.

Clint Murphy  1:06:18

Yeah, in I love that, and I hadn’t even realized that, so I’m filing that one away right now. The other one that I’d heard that I loved, that I’m wondering if it’s come across to you, is because I interview authors, what someone said they will generally do when they’re interviewing authors is they’ll look for somewhere in the book where the author, in an example, would be for you, they’ll look either in the acknowledgement, yeah, or someone who they mentioned from their childhood, who impacted their life, where they might even start with in your example, that journalism professor who changed your life, and say, hey, you know, like, where I’d love to start is, can you tell me about so and so? And then the person on the other side is like, oh shit. Like, you’re like, I love that person that you’re asking me about, you know, and I can just get off on the right foot it. Then we’ll go from there.

Polina Pompliano  1:07:12

A really good example of this, I wrote a whole thing. The reason I’m so passionate is I wrote a whole thing on interviewing techniques, and one of them is, like you have to be very methodical about the first question that you ask, because that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the interview, whether it’s a job interview you’re doing or a podcast or any anything, any conversation. Um, Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg was on Tim Ferriss podcast. Now, normally Mark, when he is interviewed, people often start with privacy concerns, misinformation. What are you doing about so and so? It’s always a kind of an attack, or like he’s on the defensive. He has to answer for himself or his platform. When he went on, Tim Ferriss, Tim’s first question was he asked him. He was like, I didn’t know you were a fencing champion in high school. You really love fencing. And Zuckerberg goes, this is the most interesting place I’ve ever started an interview. And from there, you can tell he softens. And so then it’s easier for Tim to later ask about misinformation, privacy concerns, all that stuff, instead of starting it at first, you know what I mean.

1:08:25

Yeah. And then Tim, adding that he he talks to every guest in advance and says, Hey, listen. You get you’re gonna hear this whole interview before it goes there, and you get to cut anything you want. I listened to that interview, and my perception that was one of the one of the starts to my I don’t think I ever saw him as a villain, but I listened to that interview, and I probably became a bit of a fan. He was, he was super, right? It humanized the hell out of them, like it was a phenomenal, phenomenal conversation to humanize Mark. More than the guy on the wakeboard. But then you started adding in those elements, and you’re like, not only is a human, he’s a total bro,.

Clint Murphy  1:09:20

So, going in a different direction. You talked about, GE, you talked about Jeff Immelt, I was thinking of of skipping the leadership chapter, but then I started reading it, and I was like, oh, there’s way too many goodies to let this one go. The one of the first things you talked about, and it’s, it’s been near and dear to my heart, I’ve always had these things that like were on my list that I wanted to do. Like for a long time, I wanted to take the there’s a master’s in servant based leadership that’s taught at Gonzaga University that was always on my list to take. So when I saw you right in the leadership one of the first things you wrote about was this idea of flipping the pyramid and and having servant based leadership. I thought, Okay, well, like that is fundamental to how I’ve lived my life as a leader. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur slash podcaster, I was a CFO for kind of the last eight to 10 years of my life. So running a team of 30 people or so, and a big part of that was serving the people that were on the team. So can you take people through like what does servant based leadership mean when you talk about it in a book, and what are some of the examples of why it’s been successful.

Polina Pompliano  1:10:42

Yeah. So this idea of servant leadership was kind of pioneered and popularized by a man named Robert Greenleaf, and then it was kind of controversial at the time. It sounds very good. It’s very hard to execute. So the whole idea is, leadership is normally, we picture it as a pyramid, the leader at the top, everybody else on the bottom, he says, What if you flip the pyramid so that all the the leaders on the bottom and everybody that they are supposed to serve, all the constituents are at the top. And so it’s not top down, it’s bottoms up. And one of the more interesting examples that I include in the book is Daniel Ek, who’s the founder and CEO of Spotify. He had this, like, engineering team, so Daniel loved the idea of servant leadership. He was like, This is great. You know, I want to do this. It, um, it’s easy to do when the company’s small, when it’s a massive global behemoth, it’s very hard to do because suddenly you have so many stakeholders in your business. And it’s easier to say, this is the directive, this is what we’re going to do top down. Everybody implement it. But he was committed to this idea. So there were a lot of different types of like, almost committees or groups working on different projects, and they would bring them to Daniel, and he would express, you know, enthusiasm or not, but ultimately, his role was to enable this creativity and and kind of put resources and things that was that he was the enabler. He wasn’t the yes or no person. So there was this group of engineers that were working on a new feature for Spotify that would allow people to have personalized playlists when they logged into the platform. He heard it. He was like, I mean, this is cool, but like, why are we spending all this time on this? Like, I feel like we could be doing other things, like, it’s not that revolutionary. Even despite his like, lack of enthusiasm for this feature, the group continued to execute on it until they shipped it to the public. And I think, like Fast Company, there was an article on this new feature for Spotify, and Daniel Ek, the CEO of the company, learned about it that it was available to the public through this article. He read an article in the news, and he was like, Oh my god. He said that his his first thought was this, oh my god, this is going to be a disaster. And so then, you know, as we all know, this became kind of like the most beloved, like iconic feature of Spotify, is that I could have a different playlist than you because it’s personalized, etc. It was a massive success for the company. But think about the type of person it would take, or the type of culture it would take in an organization for you to not tell, not only not tell your boss you’re continuing to work on this after they told you, you they don’t know why you’re doing this, to shipping it publicly, getting it in a news article, all this stuff without alerting him. It means that you’re not afraid of your boss. There is a culture of innovation and brainstorming and like resources being given to bring life to your ideas, and then you’re respected. And you’re not afraid to get fired if you do something like that. So that is a really, really tough thing to build, but when you build it, it is like the pinnacle of innovation, and it really prevents one bad decision maker at the top shoving their directives down, even if it’s not what needs to be done, because the people on the ground are the ones who use the thing.

Clint Murphy  1:14:28

Yeah, it’s this idea of my job as as a leader, is to enable you to remove roadblocks that may be in your way and then get the hell out of the way. I think even is is a line that you have in the book, and so it’s the opposite of what many of us experience with leaders who want to micromanage or really push down. This is what you have to do. And I think an example you give is like when we tell people, this is what you have to do. We’re almost taking, like, a process or a systems thinking, versus just saying, Hey, here’s the outcome we’re trying to achieve. Yeah, like we want to get here, we’re very you can, you can figure out how to get here, yeah, and tell me how you’re going to do it, and then we could talk about it. But I’m not going to tell you exactly what you have to do. Does that resonate

Polina Pompliano  1:15:24

Exactly. And I think like it’s human nature, right? Like when you’re the CEO of a company, or like you’re really high up, you want to prove that you’re indispensable. This company cannot run without to the board, to your stakeholders, whatever, but that’s all ego driven. If you actually care about the organization, you actually do want it to be able to run without you if something happened to you, or if, like, you move on or retire, or whatever, you want it to be self sufficient enough that you are not the key man of the company.

Clint Murphy  1:15:55

Yeah. Well, I’ll give you an example, right? I’ve recently started a real estate development business, and there’s four partners, you know, we each have our respective areas, and we’re very hands on with each other’s areas to make sure that, you know, that’s one of the benefits of doing it, is the labels removed, right? I’m no longer the finance guy. Now. I’m just a developer, and I get to touch copywriting and marketing, design and architecture. But if 10 to 15 years from now, the company is dependent on me to get a project through its life cycle, I have utterly failed because then essentially, I’m an employee, right? Like you shouldn’t need. We need this business. We need we need to grow it, scale it, hire the right people, train and enable them, get out of their way, and then at some point be able to sit down with with the partners and say, Hey guys, like we built the ship. It can run without us. You know, maybe me first, because I’m the oldest, you know. Can I move from being an active manager to an active shareholder? Right? Like, if you don’t get there, you’re just like, you’re an employee and writing yourself your own check.

Polina Pompliano  1:17:20

Exactly, so good.

Clint Murphy  1:17:23

The last one I want to, want to focus on with you is this idea of content audits. So you talked about doing one for yourself in 2019. So the question is, what is a content audit, and what did your content audit teach you?

Polina Pompliano  1:17:45

Yeah, so I actually am doing one currently as we speak. I hadn’t done one in a while, so what a content I came up with. This thing where I was like, I mean, we’re all talking about, like, how well we should be eating, but what about like, the content that we’re consuming and putting in our brains is just as important as the food that we’re eating for our bodies. So at the time, I was watching a lot of reality television, it was a lot of like, that kind of stuff, and I noticed my thought patterns were very I was looking at the world through a lens of relationships. I was like, I would get a text message from a friend. Be like, Is she mad at me right now? Like, did I say something like, it’s not that’s not like me. And I know there was a direct, like, you know, correlation between what I was watching and what I was thinking. So I started, like, part of the reason I created the profile my newsletter is because I wanted to put more high quality content into my brain. And I was reading these really well reported profiles of interesting people and companies that gave me ideas. It wasn’t junk food content, you know, it was like, good, solid, hearty meal. And then as I was doing this, I was like, I’m going to do a content audit. What percentage of my time do I spend and like reading, listening, watching certain things, where are the thoughts in my head coming? I realized that, because it was a lot of reality, trashy TV, maybe that can be a sliver of it, but a smaller percentage than the podcasts I was listening to or documentaries I was watching, I it completely changed my life. And don’t discount the people you surround yourself with, because they say things too, and then that goes into your head as well. I read something that Elon Musk said, and he said, like, be very careful of the of your mental firewall, because oftentimes what you let in there, you may not even remember who said it, and suddenly it’s your own thought, even though it may not be your own thought. So the reason that I’m doing the same thing and conducting an audit right now and for this week, I deleted Twitter and uh, Instagram and all those social media off my phone, is because I wanted to, kind of like step back and listen to my own thoughts, because I found that the more I was scrolling through Twitter, sorry, the more I was scrolling through Twitter, the more I realized that there were so many different voices that I would see an idea, and then I would kind of like, it was like, a bad, negative thought patterns, and I would start thinking about, I’m like, Oh, I don’t want to think about this thing. And it just kind of like took over my brain. So right now I’m just working on, working on the profile, working on a few other projects all that deal with high quality content that I seek out. It’s not just like, thrown at me and all these different voices that are that I just scroll through. I just want to, like, focus on my internal self and then introduce but I’m really, really, really loving not scrolling right now.

Clint Murphy  1:21:03

And for those who are listening, even if you keep the social media apps there’s, there’s such an important point to make for people is like, you curate your feed, yeah, you get served what you spend time on. And there’s always the ability to hit the three dots and say, Don’t show me this stuff, right. So, how does this tie to this idea you talk about, of maximum taste? What is that? How does it tie to your content on it?

Polina Pompliano  1:21:33

Yeah. So this New York Times columnist, David Brooks, he came up with this, like theory of maximum taste. And the idea is that, like, when you’re in college or in school, he’s like, have you noticed that those people are way more interesting than some like 30 or 40 year olds? You know, that’s because they’re forced to put difficult ideas into their head that they don’t agree with, and then maybe even write, like essays on whether they agree or disagree or proving it, disproving it. There’s a lot more debate encouraged, and you’re reading things that you don’t normally may not think you find interesting, but you’re sitting there and you’re forced to contend with difficult material, and like I ideas that you have no idea you have to decipher. You have to understand, maybe they’re kind of, like controversial. You have to sit with it, and you have to make up your own mind and do research and find things that support or deny it. Versus when you get out of school, nobody’s making you read, you know, Tolstoy or whatever. So you’re just like, on Twitter, consuming these bite sized things, and you’re like, I’m informed I know everything. And then we all end up having the same opinion, even though, like, it’s probably wrong, but also because you haven’t actively sought out any difficult material to put into your head so that like you can you can have you can be a more interesting person by reading all this stuff that’s hard to ingest

Clint Murphy  1:23:12

So our maximum taste doesn’t have to plateau if we choose to not let it. You know, don’t be that person that graduates high school and then says, I’ve never read a book again in my life.

Polina Pompliano  1:23:27

Exactly. It’s those types of people, I don’t have time for a book. What do you mean? You don’t have time for a book?

Clint Murphy  1:23:33

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It’s like, pretty sure you do. So I found so many coincidences through the book, and one of the later ones that made me really laugh was two weeks ago, while we were in Osoyoos where our cottage is for the summer, my my sister was up with her family, and I was talking to my niece, and she’s going to the local community college that I went to 27 years ago. And she told me she was taking philosophy class, so I threw a question at her, not even remembering what the name of the paradox was, but I said to her, Hey, JC, if you were a ship and or if you had a ship, and we replaced every single board on that ship over the course of, let’s say, two to three years. At the end of it, would that ship still be the same ship, and you indicated in your book you brought it back to light as the Ship of Theseus paradox. So can you share what that is? And then it’s, it’s interesting, because what I tried to say to her, and I believe you highlight as well, is part of the thing is for the ship. But this also goes back to what we talked about very early in the show with labels. Because every certain number of years, I still had in my memory that it was seven, I think you say somewhere in the neighborhood of 10. Every seven to 10 years, every cell in our body is gone and they’re all new. And so what is, what is this paradox, and how do we tie it to our allies?

Polina Pompliano  1:25:22

Yeah, the paradox is, like you said, like, if you replace every plank of a ship after whatever amount of time, is it still the same ship and or is it a brand new one, totally different from the one it was before? So in, in what you said, like labels, you know, let’s say you and I were living in this town where they were redoing this ship. We may say, oh, that’s just that old ship that they’re like repairing. Suddenly, it’s no longer that old ship. It’s a brand new one. But we have this label. This is just the old ship. This is why you find a lot of people who move to cities like New York City, they’ll refer to certain buildings as their old names, even though it is now like the JP Morgan tower, but it used to be the Pan Am Building or whatever. So, um, so it’s it’s interesting, because, like, yes, physically speaking, every seven to 10 years where, you know, like, we have regenerated most of our organs and skin and whatever. But if you think about it mentally, like you and I said, Are you the same person you were five years ago or like, if I ask you, who is the real Clint? Who do you say? Do you say, me right now, me five years ago, me five years in the future. Like, who is the real you? It’s very hard to pin down, because there is no real you. It’s you. You know, the evolution of you. So it’s like, I’m definitely not the same ship that I was five years ago, because I have changed my beliefs. I’ve changed a lot of things in my life. So looking at that person, I’m like, but what is the same? The commonality is like my evolution there. It’s like everything, you know, it’s all it’s all just temporary, and we’re evolving, and it’s very hard to pin down. That’s why identity is slippery. That’s why it’s dangerous to put yourself in a box, because you will not be this very opinionated person, maybe in 10 years.

Clint Murphy  1:27:25

It’s such an important point, because it’s how we define ourselves, right? And we’ve talked about through the show, is you combine multiple of these. And, for example, you combine this idea of the theory of maximum taste, and you combine the mental toughness and changing our persona, or even just you go back to the very beginning of the conversation when we talked about this idea that we both seem to take attributes from people and make them their our own. This would probably resonate with you in that I’ve always said that if you knew me five to 10 years ago and you haven’t seen me set, and you think you know me today, you have no idea who I am because, who I am today is an entirely different human being, like not even, not even close to the human being I was five years ago, let alone 10. That is exponentially a different human being, but everybody wants to still view you as the person they knew.

Polina Pompliano  1:28:32

Exactly, so true.

Clint Murphy  1:28:35

So you know, let’s wrap up with one, what is your hidden genius and how to and for the person who’s listening, how did they unlock theirs?

Polina Pompliano  1:28:45

Oh, so good. I think my hidden genius is that I’m endlessly curious, and I think that I have a very good understanding of kind of like, yeah, this, like, this, this weird. What makes you you thing by asking questions, but not for me, but for the other person. I think that I pride myself in after having a conversation with someone, did I make them realize something about themselves that they previously maybe didn’t know? I think that that’s a very niche, specific hidden genius. But I do think that is what mine is. And you can in the book, in the last chapter, I have, you know, discovering your hidden genius. I genuinely believe every single person has one. It’s just that we haven’t been curious enough to explore it. And I think like, if there’s one thing I want to leave people with after this conversation is think about how you answer the question, Who are you like? Who is Polina? Who is Clint? How do you answer that question, depending on your answer, take some time to reflect if it’s something external. So if it’s, if you say, I’m the CEO of a company, I’m a marketing executive, whatever. If you lead with your career, know that that’s something that can be taken from you. And it’s really, really scary, because it’s like when you tie your identity around an external thing, like a possession, you know, a career, a job title, even a relationship sometimes, and so and so’s life, even, like all those things, if something, God forbid, happens and lose that title and the way you see yourself, it’s a recipe for, like, psychological disaster, because suddenly you don’t have anything to tie your identity around. The best thing you can do for yourself is take your identity and be like, What do I enjoy doing? It doesn’t have to make money. It doesn’t just literally be knitting. What do you enjoy doing? And make sure that you have space in your life to do that thing, so that if everything else collapses around you, you’re left standing with that thing that nobody can fire you from, can’t lose it, can be taken from you. For me, that was starting a newsletter, I didn’t started to for it to become a business. I didn’t start, started so I could write a book. I genuinely just started it because I liked reading long form profiles. And I was like, I’m just gonna write an email to family and friends. We can talk about them. That thing changed my entire life. So it’s, you know, just do something for yourself that you do for no other reason other than you enj