The Hidden Genius with Polina Marinova Pompliano

0:05Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

0:38Anyways, let's get to it.

0:47Hidden genius. Do I have a hidden genius? Do you have a hidden genius? It might be hard for us to locate mine, but if anybody can help us, it's Paulina Marinova Pompliano. Lots of syllables, lots of vowels. You know I'm already in love with this person. Paulina is an incredibly curious person and has spent her career studying thousands of the most successful and interesting people out there. Her new book is overflowing with insights into the minds of successful people. It really gets to the heart of their stories, and it's a fantastic read.

1:25So joining us now on Open Book is Paulina Marinova Pompoliano. I mean, what a name. You know I love that name, right? I mean, what's not like about the Pomp name? You are the founder of The Profile, and you've written a book which is about to be a bestseller called Hidden Genius, The Secret Ways of Thinking That Power the World's Most Successful People. That's pretty cool. Okay, and obviously, both me and Holly had a chance to read the book, and I love the book, actually. I'm a big self-help book person, and a lot of times I didn't really even find it to be self-help, as much as I found it to be a historical analysis of what works and why it works.

2:06So let me rephrase it that way. But let's go there. Okay, congratulations on the book. You said you dreaded history class until you studied people-focused learning. Is that correct? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You were at Fortune, where you and I met. Then you went to launch The Profile. So take us through that rite of passage for you. Perfect. So first of all, thank you for having me on. I'm really excited. I love that you love books. So we're going to get along great. So I worked at Fortune. I started at the very bottom when I joined in 2014. And then I worked my way up to become like the lead tech reporter covering startups and venture capital.

2:43And I did that up until 2020. So when I was at Fortune in 2017, you know how media goes through all their cycles where people get laid off and then there's a lot a clickbait and then there's whatever sensational journalism. So in about 2017, there was a lot of that. I wasn't feeling very fulfilled. I was really like, is this it? Like, is this what we're doing? So in my free time, I was like, I'm going to start. I don't know. I didn't even call it a newsletter. I just called it an email that I would send to family and friends with really high quality, long form journalism that actually has nuance in context.

3:19And I would just curate like eight profiles of people because I like learning about people and I would send it out. So I started doing that on weekends. I was working on it on weekends and on the subway on the way to work and on the way home. And that was in February of 2017. I started sending it every Sunday. Still haven't missed a Sunday since then. But I was doing that for three years for free. And in the process of writing this newsletter, Substack came around and they were like, you can add a paid layer to your newsletter. And I was like, who would pay me for this? But I was curious. So I tested it out in 2020 in January and enough people were like, I'm willing to pay where it made it interesting.

3:58So I was like, obviously with the profile, I want to do original interviews. I want to do original content, but I can't do that while still working at a traditional media company because there's a conflict. So I started just like thinking like, what if, what would the profile look like if I put a hundred percent of my time and effort into this versus kind of splitting it and just working on the weekends. And that question led me to put in my three weeks notice. And then my last day at Fortune ended up being March 20th, which is when the whole world shut down 2020. That was a risk I had not foreseen in all my planning.

4:33But it was honestly the best thing ever. I love working for myself. I love working on the profile. And now I wrote a book. So COVID helped or hurt? at the time it helped because a lot of people had a lot of time on their hands and they were willing to spend money and read higher quality content after they had exhausted all the junk that was like love is blind and that tiger king tiger king all of that they were right they were willing to like pay for high quality uh content okay so let's let's go over this and let me see if i have your recipe right according to your book i mean this let me see if i have this right you're going to check my work, there's an organic table to success.

5:13And so what do I mean by that? There's one part mental resilience. There's one part creativity. There's one part fostering relationships. There's a leadership quotient to this. Can you lead people? And sometimes leading people requires collaboration more than it requires being a bossy pants. I think we know that. And there's this sort of mosaic, if you will, or a pie chart of those ingredients. And if you have those ingredients mixed in the appropriate manner, you can ultimately become very, very successful. What did I get wrong? No, that's exactly right. I actually really like how you put it, that it's ingredients as part of this larger whole.

5:49I think the reason that I structured the book like that, which every chapter stands alone, so you can read each chapter individually without having to read the whole book. But if you do read the whole book, the thread that goes through it is identity and perspective. And I think like most of us get lost in one of those ingredients. Either we identify as super creative, but not an entrepreneur, which is kind of how I used to think of myself, or we identify as like, I'm a leader and that's all I do. Then if you lose your job as CEO, you're kind of in for a treat where you're like, who the hell am I?

6:23Right? So I think identity is shaped by all of those different ingredients. And if you work on each one individually, you can ultimately find what I call your hidden genius. But okay, I want to push back a little bit. Yeah. There's an X factor in there though, too, isn't there? I mean, I can be creative. I can be a leader, but what's the X factor? There's something that you know, there's like lightning in a bottle. Paulina, what is it? Okay. You have it. Anthony Pompliano has it, your husband. What is the lightning in a bottle? The lightning in the bottle is like that. The way I define hidden genius is like your framework or your unique view on the world that you've gotten through the experience that only you've had or that only I've had.

7:08And you're able to bring that together and then share your learnings with other people. I think like that's the thing, that's the X factor that differentiates people. Most people don't know what their hidden genius is or what their X factor is. Okay, fair enough. And I want to move to the, I want to move to the relationship side of this now. Okay. Because what makes good and healthy relationships and how do you create them. How do you go from zero to hero with somebody? Well, a few things. One is that there's this framework that I love. I heard LinkedIn founder, Reid Hoffman say this on a podcast once.

7:46He said, trust equals consistency plus time. And this is something that can help you with any relationship, whether it's personal, professional, business, whatever. But it's like, you don't trust people who consistently break their promises. So when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. But not only do I do it once, I do it over a long period of time. It's the idea of that trust compounds. The more you keep your promises, the more trust interest that pays off. Toby Lucky, the founder of Shopify, he has a similar thing that's called a trust battery is the way he visualizes it. So when you meet somebody, your battery is at charged at 50%.

8:24And every single interaction with that person either charges it a little bit more or discharges He's like, aim to be a person whose battery stays at over 80%. The other thing that I learned when writing this chapter is that John Gottman, he's a psychologist, he's brilliant, and he can predict whether couples will divorce or succeed with a really, really high degree of success. And he's found something he calls bids. And he's like, on a daily basis with your partner, you do what's called like a bid for attention. So I might be like, hey, look at this funny meme on my phone. And then if the other person looks, it's like that basic.

9:03If the other person looks, then he's like, that's good because they answered your bid for attention. The dangerous part is when you're constantly having these bids and they're constantly being ignored. And it's not like one big blowout fight that will destroy a relationship. It's like those tiny things because it shows a lack of respect for the other person or whatever they're trying to get your attention on. So in that chapter, he has a number of techniques, but that's probably the one I think about the most. Okay. I find all of that fascinating. I think about that in the context of our very distracted world.

9:34Certainly, if my wife is showing me something, I got to pay attention. Otherwise, she's going to whack me over the head with something. You have people in the book, Beyonce, Kobe Bryant, the Holocaust survivor, Edith Eva Egger. Yes. Tough people, right? I mean, they're strong people, right? What makes them tough? What makes them strong? What makes them resilient? Okay. I think it's this idea of the overarching idea is victimhood versus being victimized. So Edith, who's a Holocaust survivor, she talks a lot about this idea of like, in our lives, we will be victimized in some way. I think she says like, you know, the neighborhood bully, the spouse that hits, the boss that yells, like you will be on the receiving end of some sort of victimization.

10:18No, no question. Everyone's going to get hit with that. Everyone. I agree with you. Exactly. So so everyone's going to be on the receiving end of that, but that's external. And she says victimhood is what comes from the inside. You can make yourself feel like a victim and only you. And she realized this when she was she her sister and their mom were on the train to Auschwitz. And her mom said, by the way, no matter what happens in the coming days, just remember that you are responsible for what you put into your own mind. And that stuck with Edith throughout the whole thing as she was on the ultimate receiving end of victimization.

10:52The other people that I highlight. So, for example, in the mental resilience chapter, I talk about David Goggins, who's this former Navy SEAL turned ultra athlete. He's, you know, the epitome of like strong, savage, mentally tough. It's interesting that he creates it. It's like voluntary suffering. He talks about the dark room. You go into this dark room where you face yourself and you're honest with yourself. He goes into like the bathroom, looks at himself in the mirror and he's like, you're fat, you're lazy. Like, what are you going to do about it? Then there's Courtney Dahlwalter, who's also a long distance runner.

11:28She talks about the pain cave and she's like, you know, during her runs, by the way, she's insane. She's gotten like a bleeding head injury. She's like broken a bone. She just keeps going. She hallucinates. And people are like, how are you able to overcome this barrier of pain? And she's like, oh, that's because I know that I'm in control of when I enter the pain cave and I'm equally in control as when I leave. And she literally visualizes herself like going into this place that she knows is going to suck. But then she also knows like she will get out eventually in these like hundred mile races.

12:01And then, though, I was like, I don't want to just include people who are these ultra runners. Like what happens when you are involuntarily suffering? Because life will present that as well. And then do you know Anthony Ray Hinton? Have you heard of him? I have. Yeah, but tell our listeners who he is. He wrote a great memoir called The Sun Does Shine. But basically his story is he was in the, I think it was in the 80s. He was a black man in Alabama and he was wrongfully imprisoned, put on death row. For 30 years, he was on death row and he watched like 54 people walk past the cell to get electrocuted.

12:37So he, for 30 years, was in this tiny prison cell at times in solitary confinement. And he talks about how when he was in solitary confinement, in order to not go insane, he would use his mind to travel to England, to have tea with the Queen, to like marry Halle Berry, things like that. He was like, I never used my mind for garbage. I just used it to get out of some really lonely times. And I think it's interesting if you think about this idea that pain and suffering can exist as a place. So there's Courtney's pain cave. There's David Goggins' dark room. And then there's Anthony Ray Hinton's solitary confinement cell.

13:16And I think about this a lot, this quote by David Goggins. He says, when you go into this dark room and face yourself, if you don't break, you'll transform. So I kind of love the idea of pain as a place. It's like a place of metamorphosis. You go in one kind of person and you come out the other side a different person. I mean, it's fascinating stuff. And obviously, I've read David's books and he transformed his body and he went through the pain of all that and created these new habits. And you and I both know that habits are super important in making your life better. You are what you eat and you are what you consume.

13:53Am I wrong? I mean, if you're reading, if you're scrolling, doom scrolling Twitter or Instagram or you're reading, you probably have different thoughts. Am I wrong? Absolutely. No, totally. Tell us a little bit about what you are, what you consume. Yeah. I developed this idea of like how we all have our diets, like what we eat on a regular basis, but we also have a content diet, which is kind of to circle back to what you said in the beginning. It's like a pie chart with all these different parts inside. And if you look at your life as like, I need a content strategy and you conduct an audit and you're like, what do I listen to?

14:29What do I watch? Who do I hang out with? I think is a big one that people don't often think about as part of their content diet because those conversations turns, turn into thoughts, which then turn into beliefs. But like all these different things, read, listen, watch, talk to people about they're part of your content diet. And in the book, I talk about like David Brooks, he's a New York Times columnist. And he wrote this speech, a commencement speech too honest to deliver in person. And he wrote a column about it. And he said, like, have you ever noticed that people in their 20s are kind of like more interesting than people in their 30s, those same people.

15:05And it's because when you're in college, you're forced to grapple with really hard material. You have to write essays on things you don't, you would never read on your own. You have to debate topics you probably have never thought about before. And you read like really hard literature. Then when you get out of college, you're just like on your own and you're scrolling and you're reading clickbait and just, or just headlines or tweets, you don't take the time to really dive deep into something difficult. So he calls it the theory of maximum taste. Like what is your level in your brain? Special for high quality content tends to lower as you get older.

15:39And it's like, I talk about the idea of a content diet because the way that you, what you consume essentially becomes how you see the world. So when I was in my early twenties, I would watch a lot of crap, like Love is Blind and The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. And I started seeing the world through a lens of only relationships. What do they think of me? Are they talking about me? Are they mad at me? Like all this stuff. And it's like, it's garbage content. So when I started the profile, I was kind of like forcing myself to put more interesting ideas into my brain. Then I would send out in this newsletter and have people to have conversations about what.

16:15So I just love this idea and I think about it all the time. You know, I wanted you to share it with everybody because I think it's brilliant. I also want you to share becoming a mom and how it's changed you. Okay. How old is Sophia, by the way? One and a half. Okay. Well, congratulations. Thank you. How did it change you? oh my gosh in in weird ways when when she was born I was like oh my god I have no time to do anything yet all of a sudden I wanted to do more I was like I barely have time to write the profile let alone like do anything else but then when she was like three months old I was like maybe I should write a book but that only happened because I was like I need to do I need to take 15 minutes a day just to do something for myself.

17:03And that to myself was writing. So, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there turned into a one section, then into a chapter, then into a book. But I think A, it's forced me to do that. And B, it's forced me to like, my parents were really young when I was born. My mom was 19, my dad was 24. And they always tell me that their biggest regret, they were getting their master's degree in college. And they were like, our biggest regret is that you spent so much time with family and not with us when you were like a baby baby. So I had always thought, I was like, I want to be here for these moments.

17:35And I actually dedicated the book to Sophia. And I said, every moment with you is extraordinary because I realized that like these ordinary things with time, I'll look back and be like, damn, like I really missed that. Like that was really extraordinary. You know, I think it's beautiful. I wanted to share, share with people. Let me, let me step back for a second and ask you something. One of my best coaches said to me that we are the sum of the people that we hang out with. You're the weighted average of the five people that you spend the most time with. Do you think he's right? Absolutely. And so there's a chapter on clarifying your thinking and how so many of us have blind spots and biases and like we're just unwilling to change our beliefs.

18:19Even if our beliefs are ridiculous, it's really, really hard to get people to change them. And they're like, why? And it's through research. And a lot of studies have found that basically, because you're surrounded by people who share those beliefs, and they reinforce and validate them time and time again, it's hard to change your beliefs, because that also means you need to change your friend group. And James Clear says that the reason it's so hard to change our beliefs is because we're not asking people to change their beliefs, we're asking them to change their tribe. And I think that's that's really interesting.

18:55I remember one time Tim Urban, who's the author of the blog Wait But Why, he said, you know, if you're wondering whether you're in an echo chamber at the next like family gathering, say, I've been thinking about the points that the other political party that you normally support has been making. And I think he may have some valid points and see how people react. And it's that reaction that keeps us locked into these tribes. And it's really hard to get out. So ultimately, like if you look at your group of friends as a cult, you have to think like, do I agree with what with the cult members and like the beliefs that we share?

19:30Yeah. I mean, I think it's that. And I think it's also we've tunneled into our confirmed biases now. You know, when you talk about being in your 20s, my 20s are very different from the 20s of people that are being raised in the 2020s. You know, if you were born in the year 2000, you're 23. Your prism of looking at the world is different than mine because we had a couple of networks. We did have cable television. We certainly had no Internet, no social media, and we were all getting the same information. So we could have disagreements, disagreements on politics or policy or ideas or way to live.

20:09But we weren't really disagreeing on the facts. Now, because of all the tribalism, you know, we're sitting around. We can't even have the argument because we don't even agree on the facts. You know, one person's version of the facts is coming from Fox. The other version is coming from MSNBC and there's nobody meeting in the middle. Yeah. You know, it's probably not a great question to ask you because you're, you know, not in politics, but I guess it is a good question to ask somebody that studies relationships. How do we bridge the gap? Is it possible anymore to bridge these gaps, Paulina? Well, I think so.

20:44It's just it would require a lot of people moving to rationality instead of just like dogmatic beliefs, which is where I think we are at now. I think that changes with perspective. I think a lot of the people that you talk about who are very, very tribal haven't had a lot of experiences. I think the reason that I don't see the world so black and white, and I know that my beliefs are very grayscale, is because I was born in Bulgaria. We moved here. I went first and second grade there. We moved to Atlanta, Georgia, of all places, when I was eight. And then from Georgia, I moved to New York City as an adult.

21:16So, like, I've seen three different, completely different perspectives. And I've always kind of felt like an outsider in every group that I've been in. So I'm never like I 1000 % like agree with this belief because I just know that that's not how some people see the world or it's not. Even if I go back to Bulgaria, like I'm too American and I see their things completely differently. So by never feeling like you're in the in group, you can have more of a varied belief system. But I also think like what you're talking about, like people can't agree on the facts. Like those aren't even facts. Those are just beliefs presented as facts.

21:55I think Robert Evans, like the Hollywood producer, says there are three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth. Yeah, right. Exactly. You know, there's also somebody said to me once, a great litigation attorney. He said people have a tendency to remember things the way they need to, Paulina, not the way they actually have. Exactly. So that's another that's another big issue. Your journalism professor had a great quote, right? Right. No one is inherently boring. Right. They're only boring because you haven't asked the right questions. So what did I miss, Paulina? What should I have asked you?

22:30No, I think. OK. The reason my professor told me that is because I was doing an assignment. I had to write a profile on a fellow classmate and I was like, oh, I have to I have to change the subject. Like this person is the most boring person in the world. And so he was like, no one's inherently boring. you just haven't asked the right questions yet. That means that everybody has a story. And it just means that like you haven't found a way to get the good stuff. And I think like a sign of a great interviewer isn't necessarily about like the questions that they're asking. It's about listening and learning or paying attention to the subtext.

23:05So it's like, what's the subtext of this conversation? You asked me a question that nobody ever asked me, which is how has being a mom changed you? And not only did you know that you also knew like the name of my daughter, which is also rare, but it's like, it shows that you went beyond just like, what's her book about? Let's just talk about that. It's like the subtext of all of that. How does that all tie together? Well, I know your old man though, too. I mean, I want to just tip everybody off that I do know Mr. Anthony Poppliano. So I do know a little bit about your life. I'm not a, I'm not stalking, but I do know a little bit about your life.

23:39Obviously a huge fan of the both of you. Thank you. This is sort of a big picture question. How can we discover who we really are? How do we know? You know, how do we find ourselves? There's so much mystery. I mean, people are really being honest. There's just so much mystery to their own selves. You know, sometimes I'm going to react a certain way to something and I don't. And other times, you know, like I interviewed Robert Greene, who wrote the 48 Law of the Power. And he said something so brilliant. He goes, we think the bad guys are the other people, but we have bad in us. We're all roughly the same.