The great pretender (E)

0:00About 25 years ago, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, MacArthur Wheeler came up with a plan. He knew a lot about secret messages, and he realized that if you used lemon juice to write a note, you could make invisible ink that could only be seen if you heated it up. So, he realized, if he put lemon juice all over his face, he would become invisible. He was very careful. He checked himself by taking a picture of himself with a Polaroid. The picture came out blank, so off he went. He robbed not one, but two banks that day. and was astonished and upset to discover that he wasn't, in fact, invisible. Hey, it's Kevin Beach, and this is a special archived episode of Akemba.

0:56Ironically, there are no photos of MacArthur Wheeler on my show notes page, but there are plenty of links you might want to check out. MacArthur Wheeler, who then went to jail, of course, suffered from what's called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is a syndrome in which people who know the least often act like they know the most. It's easy to laugh at his plight. Of course, in case you were wondering, lemon juice doesn't make you invisible. I am now an expert on this topic. However, there's some part of us that wants to believe, that wants to be afraid, that wants to be sure that if we get a little bit too uppity, we too will go to jail for doing something really stupid.

1:48Consider the case of a friend of the family. He acted all through high school. He was really good at it. He got to college and applied for the improv troupe. The improv troupe had 11 slots in it open for new students who wanted to apply. He didn't make the cut. He came in 12th. He was heartbroken. When he told me about this, I said what I thought was obvious. Why don't you start your own improv troupe? Well, not only hadn't this occurred to him, he rejected it out of hand. The irony is not lost on me. Improv, of course, is about making it up as you go along. Improv is about being an impresario, somebody who's willing to go first, not to say no, but to say yes and.

2:39However, it's difficult in this culture and many of the cultures that came before to raise our hands, to go first, to organize. Part of the problem is called imposter syndrome. Clance and Imes wrote the definitive breakthrough paper on imposter syndrome in 1978. And in it, they described the feeling that people get, often women, but all people get, when they feel like an imposter, when they are leaning too far out of the boat, when they are saying that they are about to do something and deep down realize that they are a fraud. Well, social psychologists got their hands on this, and so there are scales of how much of an imposter you actually feel like.

3:28The Harvey scale is one, the Clance scale is another. And deep down, we all know what those feelings are. People come to me and they talk about feeling the imposter syndrome, hoping that I, someone who roots often for picking oneself, for going first, for opening the door, for leading, will reassure them and help them get through this feeling. And sometimes people are surprised at my suggestion, and my suggestion is, of course you're an imposter. Of course you're an imposter because you are describing a future that hasn't happened yet, because you are arguing for something that cannot be proven to be true yet.

4:11This is what it means to pick yourself. So of course you're an imposter, And it's good that you feel like one, because if you didn't, you'd be some sort of sociopath. That as an imposter, you are acting generously, acting as if, going to people before it actually works out to say, what about this? Let's try that. And so then on to this idea of the dissolution of the TV industrial complex. If you got a book deal in 1995 when Wheeler was busy robbing banks covered with lemon juice, well, then, of course, you weren't an imposter because Adrian Zakhine or Sonny Mehta picked you. They authorized you.

4:58They said, you need to write a book. Here is an advance. We have people standing by just waiting for you to hand in your book. Now, you might feel a little uncomfortable, but you certainly don't feel like a full-out imposter because someone picked you. But when you want to write a book on the Kindle, Jeff Bezos does not come to your house and hand you a check. You pick yourself. If you want to make a TV show, yes, maybe you need Ted Sarandos at Netflix to say, oh, I've seen your pilot. I've looked at your credentials. I've met your agent from that fancy agency. here is a pile of money, your TV show is going to be on Netflix.

5:42Or because it's 2019 or 2020, you can make your own TV show and you can put it on Vimeo. You can put it on YouTube and no one can stop you. You are listening to a podcast right now, a completely unauthorized podcast coming to you unfiltered from me to you. No one approved of its contents before you are hearing it. And the cost for you to make a podcast compared to what it would have cost you to be on the radio next to Casey Kasem on the Westwood One radio network in 1995 when Wheeler was busy robbing all of those banks, you would have needed the FCC to approve what you were saying. you would have needed an executive at Westwood One to pick you.

6:32You would have needed an entire studio of people to help. But today, if you want to make a podcast, you can make a podcast. And so here we go. If you want to do improv, you can do improv. If you want to make TV, you can make TV, radio, radio, books, books. Almost all the media we can imagine, the gatekeepers are leaving the building, and yet few people are raising their hand. I've spoken a couple times at Carnegie Hall to Juilliard students. The Juilliard students I'm talking to have spent 15 years honing their craft. They are some of the best trombone, oboe, bassoon, and flute players the world has ever known.

7:14And they are waiting after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, and who knows how many hours practicing. They are waiting for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to choose them, to pick them, to give them a permit, to tell them that they are not delusional, that the Dunning-Kruger effect does not apply to them. Because they're at the other end of the curve. They know a lot. They don't know nothing. And because they know a lot, they are hesitating. This leads us back 2 ,500 years ago to Herodotus. Herodotus was a historian of the ancient Greeks, and he wrote a parable about a messenger that was sent from a nearby city-state to talk to Thrasobulus.

8:04And the question that they wanted to ask is, do you have any advice as to how we should rule? Do you have any advice as to what we should do next? Well, the messenger reported back to the king. he got no advice whatsoever. The king pressed, well, what did he do? And the messenger said, we walked through a wheat field. And as we walked through the wheat field, Thrasobulus took his thresher and chopped off the top of every one of the tallest wheat stalks, the most valuable, most productive wheat stalks. He'd cut them off at the top. And then he left without a word. Well, Periander, the king, realized what the message was.

8:45The message was, cut down your tall poppies. Find the people in your community who are leading, who are innovating, who are doing more and asking for more, and expel them, execute them, shun them, shame them. Average down. Since then, countries around the world have claimed tall poppy syndrome, probably more accurately called tall wheat syndrome, as their own. Australians come to me and say, well, in our country. And Brits come to me and say, well, in our country. And yes, here in the United States as well. This fear that the tall poppies once seen will be cut down holds us back. Why is it so sticky?

9:32How has it persisted? I want to argue the opposite of what Max Weber said. Weber said that it might be a zero-sum game, that people may believe that there isn't an infinite amount of status and respect to go around, that innovation could get used up. And so the masses and the rulers could see those tall poppies as a threat because they are taking their spot in the hierarchy, their creativity, their innovation, their contribution from other people, better to average it all down. But maybe it's sticky because we want it to be sticky, because it's scary to raise your hand, regardless of whether or not there's tall wheat syndrome going on in your community.

10:23It's scary to say, here, I made this. Scary to say, I am starting this troop. Here is my podcast. Here we go. I made this. Of course it's scary, because you're an imposter. And sooner or later, a critic who has never had a statue built to him or her will say, hey, you're an imposter. You're a fraud. And they'll be right if we complete the sentence for now, because it's unproven, because you can't be sure. Well, if we can put our arms around imposter syndrome and realize it is a compass, It is a way of feeling when we know that we're using generosity to make things better because we are acting as if, because we are seeking to make things better by making better things.

11:13Then we can get over that noise in our head. We can organize a string quartet with our fellow students and play in the subway if we have to, without a permit, without a license, simply because we can. So when I say go make a ruckus, that's my point. What it means to make a ruckus is to generously act despite your status as an imposter, despite what some people might think of as the zero-sum game of making a difference, and despite your brush with the Dunning-Kruger effect. The thing is, when we have an open marketplace, as we do now, but maybe not for long, where people who have something to say can say it, who want to create something can create it, in this moment, we have no choice but to not waste it.

12:08We must take advantage of our chance to connect with others, to lead others, to level up, to establish a new standard for what better might be. That's my rant. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Hey, Seth. It's Maria. Hey, Seth. My name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi, Seth. Alicia from Charleston here. Hi, Seth. This is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, Seth. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey, Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey, Seth. This is Rex. Hey, Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is...

12:45And that completes my question. I love hearing from you. Thank you for taking the time. If you've got a question about this week's episode or anything from the past 100 plus episodes, please visit akimbo.link, that's A-K-I-M-B-O dot L-I-N-K, and press the appropriate button. While you're there, go ahead and check out the show notes. Hey Seth, this is Josh from Wilmington, Delaware. I work for a non-profit that's doing something completely new and crazy innovative to protect children from sexual abuse. I listened to your most recent podcast, and it confirmed for me that we need to radically shift how we think about finding funding sources for this program.

13:24For the last year or so, we've been applying for grants from these large institutional funders and getting rejected because, one, we don't have hard data on the impact of the program. It's still relatively new. And two, there aren't a lot of folks out there who fund sexual abuse prevention programming. I've long thought the better way to get our first million-dollar gift is through major donors, through individual givers, especially folks who built platforms that predators use to find, groom, and ultimately abuse children. I looked at the list of people who've signed the Giving Pledge, and there are a couple of folks, I think, who would make sense to approach for one reason or another.

13:57My question for you is this. Assuming I get a meeting with someone on the list, Mayor Bloomberg, Belinda Gates, short of playing for them your latest podcast, what can I say to get them past the fact that no one has ever done this type of work before? I guess what I'm asking is, how do I get them to invest in the idea before the outcome, with the outcome maybe not even being totally determined yet? Thanks for all you do. First, thank you for the work you are doing. It matters so much. And I know how frustrating it is to be seen for the work you're doing and to cut through so much of the bureaucracy, while well-meaning, that gets in the way of doing innovative nonprofit work.

14:37That said, this is a perfect question, not just for last week's episode, but for so many of the things we've been talking about. It affects not just nonprofits, but anybody who is bringing an idea forward. word. Here's the thing. Of the hundreds of people on the giving pledge list, many of them, most, according to Roger's Diffusion of Innovations chart, want to do something proven. They want to do something in the middle of the road. They want to do something that other people are doing, that comes with deniability that's easy to explain. This helps us understand why the largest charities stay the largest charities.

15:26It's not because they're the most effective. It might be exactly the opposite. Back when I was selling ads at the dawn of the internet age, we had a product, We helped invent online email marketing that worked better. We could prove it worked better than just about any other form of marketing. And people would ask what our ROI was. And we would say, well, what's the ROI of the TV ads you're currently buying? Well, they didn't know. They couldn't know. But they didn't need to know. Because the TV ads, the ones they were spending the bulk of their budget on, were being purchased because their bosses had purchased them 20 years ago, and doing what their boss had done before them was safe.

16:13So, what we had to do, what you have to do, is offer two other things. The first one is status. This isn't for everyone, but it might be for someone as brave as you. Not everyone will be supporting what we're doing, But you might be one of the people who can support it. Back in the early days of Acumen, a nonprofit I've worked with for more than a decade, what does Acumen do was the question. And the answer was, it's complicated. Now, some people hear it's complicated and run away. And some people hear it's complicated and say, tell me more. because they are smart people who want to do smart philanthropy with a smart nonprofit that's solving problems in a smart way, which means it's going to be complicated.

17:12The second thing to understand is that there are some people, back to Rogers again, who want to do something because it's new, not because it's proven. To say, here's the new record, want to listen to a copy, want to buy a copy? Some people will say, no, no, no, no, please play me the Doobie Brothers greatest hits instead. While others will say, yeah, if it's new, I want it. Because the thrill of doing the thing that's new is why they're doing it in the first place. So you are actually in a great position because you can go to most people, high net worth individuals and large foundations and say, If you're looking for proven, traditional, middle-of-the-road philanthropy, we can give you a list of other people who do that.

18:03But if you're looking for something that's new, something that's unproven and daring, something that's important, something that only a few philanthropists care enough to put their name on, that are brave enough to put their name on, well, that's us. bring what you make to the people who want it and shun the non-believers. Good luck with this work and thank you to everybody for listening. Go make your ruckus.