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

27:40He's interested in conflicting narratives that may all be true. He was like, you know, with the social network, there are three different versions of the truth according to three different perspectives. So it's like, he knows that his viewer is intelligent enough to pick up on that and decide for themselves what they think. But he's never, he never beats you over the head with, this is how it is. This is the only ultimate source of truth. And I love that as a storyteller. Yeah. And you mentioned a quote, maybe it was Aaron Sorkin who said, or maybe it was someone else. You mentioned a quote, there's three versions.

28:14There's always three versions of the truth, your truth, my truth, and the truth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There's always three sides to the truth, yours, mine, and the truth. And I like that. And this is why I think this book is important because I feel like as a society almost, we have this sickness where, and I'm an optimistic person, so I'm not saying this sickness is incurable, but the sickness is that we as a nation have been, you know, everybody has been sort of caught in these identity traps, Like, oh, I'm a Republican. I'm a Democrat. I'm a MAGA. I'm a woke. You know, and it's like we have this menu of identities.

28:59And once we pick something off that menu, we have to subscribe to everything that is in that identity. And, you know, like an example being like someone who's a Republican may feel like they have to be both for lower taxes and pro-life, even though those two issues have nothing to do with each other. but you fall into this identity trap. You have to pick all of it now if you're gonna be that identity. And so that's one illness. The other is, I think, you know, this whole idea that we've had these past few years of fake news or misinformation, it kind of assumes there's only one truth. And the reality is, like you said, there's multiple truths depending on context and, you know, who you are and what you believe and your background and so on.

29:44Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's probably one of the reasons that I'm so obsessed with the idea of identity because I've never been a person who could subscribe to one truth or one sort of identity and stick with it. I find just contradictions amazing, but I find them all the time within myself and within others. But I think it has to do with the fact that we're immigrants. I came to the United States from Bulgaria. We lived in Georgia, which is notoriously conservative, conservative ideals, values, whatever. And then I moved to New York City, which is the opposite of that. And I've seen so many different perspectives and I've lived so many different perspectives that like, I don't just see the world through one set of eyes.

30:34I'm like, I kind of get why these people believe that. And I kind of get why these people believe that. So it's really fascinating to me to see these like culture wars and that people cannot be empathetic for one second. It blows my mind. I know. And it's really disturbing when I see people say, basically imply they wish someone else was dead because of something they believe. You know, all the time people say, oh, this person and that person is usually some anonymous stranger to them, you know, should just die because of what they believe or think, which is so ridiculous because all of these beliefs are so temporary.

31:14It's just the nature of a news cycle. Everything's so temporary. Facts are basically temporary right now. And the other thing is that having too focused an identity, in addition to preventing you from finding your hidden genius, is often a source of misery. Like you were saying, you were at Fortune Magazine. What if you had gotten fired. If you identified too much with being a reporter from this big, famous magazine, you would have been depressed. Yes. Which is why you see so many Fortune 500 CEOs who suddenly lose their job as CEO and they've identified that way for so long that they usually have some sort of crisis.

31:55I was reading this book Oprah wrote and she said something like, don't ever attach your identity to something you can lose in the blink of a board meeting. And I think a lot of people do that, unfortunately. Look, and Oprah, speaking from personal experience, like when she had her first struggles with holding down, she knew she was talented, but sometimes people didn't want to give her the benefit of the doubt and let her run a show and so on. So she had her own initial early struggles. It reminds me of the first time I sold a company, made some money. I identified so much as the kind of person who made a lot of money and had a lot of money that when I lost that money, it was, of course, you get depressed no matter what when you lose a lot of money.

32:43But it just hit me to the core of my identity. I really felt worthless. Yeah. Because that's how you saw yourself. And suddenly that perception had to change. Yeah. And so, but, but I think these techniques you describe in the book for kind of unlocking genius are ways to get out of the identity trap or to get out of depression or, you know, or, or to cure yourself of loneliness, for instance, which interestingly, you have a chapter about loneliness in a book about genius. And I want to go through some of the questions you say at the very end that people should ask themselves, like the chef, a chat soup, the guy who built Alinea, who lost a sense of taste.

33:27He says, what is the biggest, boldest, most original endeavor you can conceive of? Yeah. And that's an interesting question because, okay, I can conceive of building maybe a time machine, but I'm not going to do that. Well, I guess, okay, I can't, if conceive means actually mean realistically be able to do, then I won't say that. But like, what's the most creative thing you could think of right now that you could do in life? Me? Completely disrupt. So yes. And it could be that when I say like audacious, most bold, original, I mean, given your interests and skills, right? So for me personally, it would be to completely reinvent what people think when they think of a profile.

34:11Because I think like right now, when I say the word profile, a lot of people just think text-based in a magazine, long form about a person. And it's like, how can you completely disrupt that? Because something like Humans of New York, that's a profile, even though it could be a Facebook post, just a picture with a few lines underneath. I think most people think they have original ideas, only to find out that it's not that original. It's probably derived of something else. So the reason I asked that question is just like, you have to continue to break it down. Grant, when he was like, oh, I thought I was being original until he kept asking why until he got to the bare bones of in the dining experience.

34:55He's like, why do people eat with like a fork and a knife? What if I disrupt that? What if like suddenly there's no forks, there's no knives, there's no plates, there's nothing. Instead, the tablecloth looks like a giant scale painting and suddenly food, instead of doing this motion, and right now for those who are listening, I'm taking some sort of utensil and bringing the food to my mouth. Instead of that motion, what if the food floats to you and you eat it with your mouth without your hands? So it's like Things like that are what makes you original. It's breaking down the very basic, obvious things we take for granted and putting that on its head.

35:39Yeah. So it's interesting you say about how you want to change the concept of profile. You did that a little bit for me. Well, first off, your newsletter always does that for me. But in this book, you mentioned how almost the concept of a profile started with Gay Talese's profile, Frank Sinatra, in the, I guess it was the mid-60s, where Sinatra was sick, so he couldn't actually talk to Sinatra. So we ended up interviewing a bunch of people who knew Sinatra and built the profile out of that. And that was fascinating because I recently had an experience where I was trying to get someone on the podcast.

36:20And for whatever reason, it didn't work out. But I was talking to so many people. I realize now I missed the opportunity to just talk to those people about the person I was trying to get on the podcast. And that would have been the podcast about this person is talking to those people about the person. That's a beautiful example. Exactly. And the Frank Sinatra piece, the reason it was so innovative and he actually ended up pioneering a new form of journalism with it, which is narrative nonfiction, is because it wasn't your straight news article or news profile. It was he used elements of fiction into a news nonfiction article, and he talked to so many people.

37:06And usually nobody would publish a profile without the central figure being interviewed, but he found a way to talk to everybody in his orbit to paint an even better picture than if he had sat down with Frank Sinatra. And I could see the influence that has had on you because, so for me, for instance, if I want to quote unquote profile someone, which for me at this point means have them on the podcast, I feel like I have to have them on the podcast. But what you've been able to do so well is, okay, maybe sometimes you interview the person you're profiling, but other times you write about all the things you've learned and from all of your research about a person.

37:45And sometimes that can be more valuable, actually, than straight interviewing someone. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes that leads to an interview. Robert Hogue, who I first only wrote a dossier where I did not interview him. I just studied him. I published that. And then because of that, he saw that I genuinely had done my research and taken key takeaways about his story. He was willing to do an interview. Another time, Dwayne The Rock Johnson, I worked on a dossier on him that never interviewed him. And then he liked it so much, which is like the ultimate compliment. Usually people, if somebody doesn't talk to you and they synthesize what you've already done, you might think like, oh, that's not me.

38:32They would never know. But like he actually thought it was accurate enough that he shared it with his network. So it's like moments like that that you can't plan simply happened because I was curious enough to like learn from these people, which is how I learned anyway. So I'd be doing this anyway. I'm just publishing it for all my readers. And again, like getting detached from the idea of what is a profile allows you to unlock your hidden genius, for instance, in terms of writing this newsletter. For the chef, detaching himself from what he traditionally thought of as a dining experience allowed him to unlock his creativity.

39:14For Aaron Sorkin, detaching himself from the concept of we must tell the truth in a movie, there must be one truth that defines a story, allows him to tell a story from many different perspectives. Yeah, I was going to say, that's so cool. I hadn't ever actually thought about it that way. And it's the same way you kind of say, imagine even looking at yourself and telling your own narrative from the points of view of other people who know you. And that's very valuable. So like, you know, you have a whole chapter on relationships, which I think is, could be a book by itself about relationships. But whenever you're in an argument, and as you point out what Esther Perel says, you know, an argument has kind of this typical form, someone raises their voice, someone rolls their eyes, someone storms out or whatever.

39:58But you say this one thing where really after within 10 seconds of the beginning of an argument, everybody's just trying to formulate what their response is going to be. So the only 10, only the first 10 seconds of the argument is, is of any value. And then the rest is just everybody defending themselves. But, but again, detaching themselves from the core of this, like you mentioned with Sarah Blakely and Jesse Itzler, how there'll be an, Sarah said, well, there'll be an argument. and Jessie will just stop and like slow dance, take her hand and slow dance with her. And so it's all about kind of this detachment from these decades built ideas that you can unlock creativity, unlock genius and so on.

40:42Exactly. Wow. That's so, yeah, that's perfectly put, James. By the way, this is probably the problem with reading the book because then I can't be astonished as you tell me these things. No. I already was astonished because I read the book. I love it. Somebody told me recently that up until the book is published, it's yours. And like you wrote it with one intent. But then once it's out and people are reading it, they'll derive their own conclusions. And suddenly like it becomes theirs and it's no longer yours. And I kind of like that because the things that you noticed may not be the things that my mom notices when she reads it or may not.

41:20Like, for example, I knew that I wanted perspective to like run through the whole book, but I never actually thought about like detachment is the key to unlocking creativity or relationships or anything else. And it's like, that's so true because if you're not, if you're detached from what society tells you you have to be or do, then it unlocks this whole world of freedom and creativity.

42:01I know for myself in both business and say writing, giving up on what my initial goals were is often the key to business success or writing success. If you are trying to create something in your life that you're writing about and you have a certain goal and then you feel like you could write the book after you achieve that goal, perhaps the most creative thing that could happen is not achieving that goal and then writing about that process. Have you heard, do you know Lewis Capaldi? It sounds familiar. I don't know from where though. Yeah, he's, I recently wrote about this. He's a Scottish artist and he wrote his first album in 2019 and it just took off.

42:51and he became literally a sensation overnight, an overnight success, if you will. But he felt, so he did that. Every single song was a hit. I didn't know his name, but I know every single song. And then suddenly he was like, okay, well, I have to write a second album. Oh my God, how am I going to do that? I feel so much pressure. And that pressure became physical for him. He developed like an involuntary shoulder shrug as a tick. He got so depressed. He is just, he basically crumbled under the pressure of having to write a second album and it not being as good as the first one. And he was like, it's so funny.

43:36I'm more successful than I have ever been, but I've never felt so insecure in my entire life. And it's just like, it's so interesting because I think pressure to do something great a second time, a lot of it is anticipatory. Like you're like, oh my goodness, like how am I going to do this? And you start leaving your destiny in other people's hands almost. He was like, it wasn't until he realized that nobody else could do this for him. It had to be him that writes these songs. And it wasn't until he sat down and kind of released all that and was like, I'm just going to write for myself. He had to consciously do that.

44:12And then once he started writing, it reminded him that, oh, wait, I do have the skills and I am good because I wrote, it was me who wrote that first album. So it's like, I feel the same way. Like I'm always really nervous before I have to do the thing. But then once I am doing the thing, I'm not nervous at all. Well, you know, with his case, I bet you there's a third dimension, which is he wanted to write it, create an album that would be just as successful as the first album. but there's one extra dimension to that, which is that the first album was a success because there was a wide audience that viewed it as a success.

44:49So now instead of him just writing for himself or writing for the general world and then having it find an audience, he already found an audience. And so there was this extra pressure. He had to write something that would be, he felt like he had to write something that would be successful for that same audience. Like I know for myself, when I started writing about all my failures, I developed a big audience around this. They wanted to see what other failures I had. And so I felt like this pressure to always write about me failing and me losing money or me just getting depressed or collapsing or whatever.

45:24And you only have so many things you can write like that. And it took a long time to kind of get over that. I had to keep feeding my audience. The audience in your head turns into a monster that you have to keep feeding. And instead of respecting and loving my audience and trusting myself, I kept creating this monster in my head and trying to feed it. Can I ask you, because I'm genuinely curious how other people do it, but how do you, after having so many episodes and interviewing so many people, how do you continue to do this craft for yourself and not think about like the expectations of the audience?

46:09I think it's really hard. Like, and again, I've, my main thing was I've, I've been a writer. I've written 25 books and I've written a lot about myself and in a narrative nonfiction way. And, uh, I think it's really, really difficult. So the way I tell myself is to, I encourage myself to always say, what's my experiment? What am I experimenting with here? And I have to have a little bit of fear before I, particularly with writing, before I hit publish on anything, I have to be a little bit afraid that because of some new experiment I'm doing, the audience will not like me. And that really drives me publishing something.

46:53And with a podcast, like right now, we're having a very kind of conversational sort of interview. And I'm a little nervous about that because people sometimes say, oh, you should just interview. You talk too much. We want to hear the other person. We already heard you. But there's only a small minority that criticizes. Most people enjoy conversations. They don't want to see just an interview because they learn from – I hope they learn from everything. So I try experimenting. Sometimes I try being more conversational. Sometimes I try with the format, like more storytelling focused. Sometimes I'll bring on a bunch of people and we'll just laugh and tell stories as if nobody's listening.

47:35And so the audience feels like a fly on the wall of an interesting or entertaining conversation. You've inspired me for one experiment, which, again, this is related to Gay Talese. He wrote that 5 ,000 word profile of an obituary columnist, like somebody who nobody knew. And so I think maybe one podcast would be, I just tweet on Twitter, a Zoom link. First person who gets on the Zoom, that's who I do the podcast with. Oh, that's cool. I like that. I thought of that while reading your book. That's awesome. But that's like a scary thing too, right? Because who knows what you get, but what you say in the book is that nobody's boring, just the questions are boring.

48:15And so how do you find that you reinvent yourself in the process? You've written, you know, a thousand of these profile newsletters. Yeah, I recently have started seeking out. In the beginning, it used to be more of like, who do I want to learn from? Like in a more aspirational way, like who do I admire so much that I want to kind of learn their techniques and skills. Now I'm kind of like, I'm very curious about people whose lives I don't necessarily admire or want, but I think there's so much to learn there. One example is I recently did a dossier on Danielle Steele. She's had a crazy life. And one of the things is that she writes, but her writing is more so of an escape from her life because she lost a child a long time ago.

49:09And when he died, she kind of was like, I cannot sit here and be in reality, basically. So she started working like 23. No, it's insane. She doesn't leave her desk. And that's why she's been so prolific. I think she's one of the most prolific writers out there and publishes book after book. and while the audience gets great pleasure in reading her work, it's the process that I'm like, oh man, I don't know if I want that life. You know what I mean? Can I ask you, what is it about Danielle Steele that you didn't admire at first? I did not admire? Yeah, because you said you took someone you didn't admire.

49:51So what I did not admire is the escapism aspect of I'm going to work myself to death. I think she says that like, she doesn't even sleep in her bed. she'll just write and then sleep on the floor and then go back to writing. It's absurd, her process. So it's like, that's not what I want. I don't want to be that deep in my work that I have no life or time for reality. But I could only learn that by reading about her life and then kind of synthesizing it and realizing also that I do the same thing. I have a tendency to be like Danielle Steele. when I am, when there's something dark in my life, or I'm really stressed about something or worried about something, and I don't want to think about it, I do my best work.

50:38It's really ironic and stupid, but that's how it is. And I know that if there's something going on in my life, I will sit down and I will focus so 100 % to not allow these other thoughts that like I end up doing really good work. And so, yes, like it's easy to fall into that spiral, but it's like recognizing myself in that and be like, I don't want to be like that. Well, I think that's a real valuable technique actually for unlocking genius is to kind of take the things that for some reason your instinct is to not like this person or this idea or whatever. And A, questioning why is it I I don't like this.

51:23And because in this case, it might be because you were scared of finding it in yourself. This capacity to do infinite amount of work while ignoring everything else. But also, there's plenty to learn from the success of people we don't admire. Like for instance, take E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey. And I just think of her because it reminds me of Danielle Steele a little bit. Fifty Shades of Grey, if you read it, it just seems like a horribly written book. It's just like the worst. You can't read more than two pages and you just think this is like the worst writer on the planet.

51:59But then when you study her story and you study the process by which this became the most successful book of all time, you have to question yourself. A, it's a successful book of all time for a reason. And B, what did she do that was different that catapulted it to success. And that's worthy of studying. Describe Charlie Munger's invert that you talk about in the book. Yeah. So he says, basically, a lot of times, instead of solving our problems going forward, we should flip them and try to solve them going backwards. And he says that instead of trying to be additive, a lot of times you flip it and you go in reverse.

52:38And it's like, for example, If you are like, how can I improve my marriage? It may be more valuable to say, what bad habits can I stop doing instead of what else can I do to be a more valuable partner? It's actually, you can have a greater effect taking the inverse and being, subtracting all these things instead of adding. So what's a, you know, it's interesting that, you know, you used a relationship example with invert. Like the way I think of his invert is, take an opinion you have and argue the exact opposite side so strongly that that's how somebody should argue against you. So if you're pro-choice or if you're pro-life, take the other side and argue it so well that how would you argue the other side as passionately as you argue the side you're on?

53:33And that's the real way to come up with, see both sides of something. But it's interesting that you took the relationship angle on that, like looking at your habits or your things you do in a relationship. And instead of thinking what you can improve, think about what you could eliminate. I'll have to, this inverts my idea of invert. Well, no, I mean, that's one example. And his example of the beliefs is that that's how he says he is wary of becoming a slave to his beliefs. So to not do that, he never shares a belief unless he can argue the opposite side as well as the people on that side. it's really that one principle has helped me so much yeah not only in being like tolerant of people who disagree with me and then really kind of you know figuring out why they disagree with me but also it just allows me for better for worse not to get engaged into the whole you know back and forth that's been going on in this country for for the past decade about all these issues that really have two sides.

54:35More than two. They have like 18 sides. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Like I'm sure you and I have the same thoughts and beliefs on guns and gun control, but you have a story in the book where you're sitting down next to somebody who you misheard that you thought they were from the NRA and then they were asking you all sorts of questions. They were very nice to you. They seemed really smart and you found it wasn't NRA. It was David Stern from the NBA. who had basically like recreated like, you know, basketball is, you know, to what it is today. But what if he had been from the NRA? Why would you be so surprised that he was nice to you?

55:18I don't know. I think a lot of us have these like underlying beliefs or even judgments based on what people look like. And to me, it wasn't that he wouldn't be nice. It was more like, oh, you know, he looks exactly like how I would have thought the whatever person of the NRA is, instead of the commissioner of the NBA. But I think it taught. So after that, I watched this TED Talk with all these people who looked completely different. One of them had a tattoo on his face. The other one had a really weird voice. And they were all in a dark room. And in the dark room, they all said what they did. Like, you know, I study meditation and yoga or I, whatever, I'm in, I'm in the NRA and then the lights come on and they had to guess who it was.

56:13It was just like, it was not the people that you would have guessed. And I think that that speaks to the identity judgment. Like just because your skin color is a certain color does not mean that you haven't had these, you know, awful, awful experiences that you've had to overcome or whatever. But I think right now, especially on the internet, it's really easy to judge other people superficially without getting to know them. And that's really what's like, that's a really separating energy. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's hard to control your own bias. Like, yeah, you think, and this is a hard thing to really say or talk about, but do you find any, that you have any bias against any kind of cultural group or ethnic group or political group?

57:00Like, Is there anything where it's really hard for you to control your bias against a particular group? No, I just, I don't know. I, I know so many, so no, like I have so many different types of friends and people that I grew up with that like, when we moved to the U S we in Atlanta, we lived in a really, really bad, quote unquote, bad area that a lot of people would consider a bad area. But to me, those people were actually the down to earth, like real people that I see myself like. So in a way, like I've always felt like an outsider, whether it's when we first moved here and I didn't speak the language or later when I moved to New York City and I had no money, but like all my friends were working in finance, I felt like an outsider.

57:53Or even now when I go back to Bulgaria, you would think that that's where I feel most like an insider. But again, actually, I feel like an outsider because I've grown up in the US. So it's like, I never look at people and I'm like, oh, you don't know what life's all about or something. And that's why actually in the book, and we talked about it on our last podcast that we did together. But my favorite interview and dossier that I've ever done to the point where I included him in the book is Robert Hogue. he was born with a deformity on his face, a giant tumor on the center of his face that moved his eyes apart, his nose, everything, to the point where his mom didn't want to take him home because she was like, oh, my baby is quote-unquote ugly and he will have a really hard life.

58:42He'll make life hard on us and his siblings. He dealt with so much stuff as a kid, being called names and bullied and all this stuff, that he took the word ugly and he reframed it. And he was like, what I've learned in growing up, you know, and always being an outsider is that beauty is subjective. Therefore, I'm okay being ugly because I've lived a beautiful life. And it's just like, that's how I think about it. I find that the people who are not perfect and who are flawed in some way that society would deem flawed, those are the most interesting people to me. Yeah. And I think entertainment, I think it was Carrie Fisher who said, no one wants to read a book about, you know, rich, beautiful people who succeeded everything.

59:31Like it's the flaws that create entertainment also because they create the buts and the exceptions. And it's also what we relate to, I think, most than perfection. Yeah. I mean, what's the, what's the, there's a Japanese word for finding beauty in the imperfection and in small imperfections. I forget what the word is, but there's a whole kind of like a whole art form revolves around it, which is to kind of even create imperfections in your art to make it even better. Wabi Sabi is the view or thought of finding beauty in every aspect of imperfection in nature. Oh, that's beautiful. I didn't know that.

1:00:05So I want to go over some more of the questions at the very end, because these are sort of your questions that for you drive hidden genius. This is a relationship one, but it's something I've never really thought of as asking myself this as a question at the end of the day. How many positive interactions have you and your partner had today? And I think that's really good because then you live the day knowing you're going to ask yourself that at the end of the day. And as you point out in the book, kind of your perspective on life and yourself often depends on your closest relationship. Absolutely.

1:00:41And another undercurrent in the book is that I want people to realize that the extraordinary is actually found in the mundane. The way I think about this is, you know how throughout life we seek out all these extraordinary moments, but then when like a close person to us dies, we're like, man, I would give anything to hear, you know, the fridge slam again or something like that used to annoy me. but now I would give anything to hear that one more time. And I think it's like that exact example, that question, what positive interactions have you had today? John Gottman, who's a psychologist and he's a couples therapist, he talks about how he measures relationship quality based on whether on the five to one ratio.

1:01:30Have you had five positive interactions to every negative? And if so, you'll be totally fine. And that's because he measures those interactions as the mundane things we do throughout the day. It's not like, did you buy your spouse flowers today or some grand gesture? It's more like when they were talking to you, did you put your phone down and actually listen? Like those tiny moments that show respect and acknowledgement to the other person, those are the things that he's saying like five to one, five positive interactions for every negative. Where do you think that ratio also applies? Like, let's say you have some other sort of negative experience.

1:02:10Like let's say you get a call and you have some bad news. Like, oh, let's say you wanted one of your articles to appear in a magazine and they call you and say, oh, it's not going to appear today. So you're disappointed. And do you think you can have five other positive experiences to balance that negative? Or like, would you seek out five other positive experiences. I think when you said that to me, it's like I would seek out five other opportunities to make it successful or put it in another magazine that I may not have if I didn't receive that call. That's a great technique. I'm going to start using that.

1:02:46What I used to do when I was like 20 years ago, I was a day trader and I would sometimes, of course, have a day where I lost money. And then I would try to diversify my experiences that day. So maybe I would play a game of cards and try to win or hang out with my kids and have that be positive. Although that was hard after losing money. It's hard to then hang out with anybody. But I would try to diversify the status ladder I was on in some sense so that losing money didn't make me feel horrible. And I think it was like a five-to-one sort of thing where I needed five other good things to balance that one negative thing.

1:03:24Exactly. And they don't have to be like big grand things. It could be, you know, the small things like with your kids that is like you realize what is actually important instead of that. And so here's another question. What is something you can create today that allows you to tie your identity to your name? I'm not actually sure I totally understand that question. Okay. I would love to help. Okay. So, well, it's hard to explain it to you because you're already doing it. It's called the James Altucher Show. But I think most people, when they are in a job that they find satisfying, when I was a fortune, I loved my job.

1:04:03It's not like I was like, oh, I hate this. I hate getting out of bed. No, I genuinely was excited to go to work. but I didn't have anything that I only did for myself that I truly enjoyed that couldn't be taken away from me. So it's like, what is something that you can create? It could be a hobby or a podcast on the side for your full-time job or something where you're doing it solely because you enjoy it. And I think as we get a little bit further in our careers, we forget that we have other interests other than like consulting or day trading? Like that's probably not what you were born with.

1:04:42Like, damn, I'm going to be the best day trader in the world. It's like, what are those like interests that are the thread of your life and find one that you can just do on weekends? Or I was excited, even though when I was at Fortune at one point, I was writing articles. I was writing a daily newsletter called Term Sheet every single day of the week. And then I was also writing the profile that would publish on Sunday. So Saturdays were the only day I wasn't publishing anything. But even though I was working very hard at Fortune, on the weekends and in the evenings and on the way to work on the subway, I was genuinely excited to work on the profile.

1:05:25So it's like finding something like that, that you tie to your name, that nobody else has anything to do with, that you can't get fired from, that's very meaningful. Well, you know, Polina, there's so many things that you write about in your book, and I could talk to you forever about all these things. But what a great book. It's a relatively short book. It's 250 pages, give or take. And there's so many ideas, issues, people, interesting people, fascinating people that you write about. I really loved reading it. It's, again, it's a quick read, but I got so much out of it. And the book is Hidden Genius.

1:06:06It's by Polina Maranova Pompliano. How's Anthony doing? He's great. Author of a great newsletter on crypto. Yeah, he's great. He's reading my book as we speak, even though I read it out loud to him when I was writing it. I was like, you have to read the final thing. It's not the same. So that's what he's doing. And how's Joe Pompliano, who's author of the newsletter, The Huddle Up? He's also been on the podcast. How's Joe doing? Joe is killing it. He's doing really, really well. He's becoming like one of the leading voices in sports business, which is really cool to see. Yeah. I wonder what that could lead to.

1:06:41There's probably various spokes that could lead from that wheel, that core. I know. I'm excited. I love that you've had all of us on your podcast. That's incredible yeah the Pompiano family is regular guests of the podcast so well Polina thanks so much and thanks for writing this book now I'm looking forward to the next book but yeah you got to write like 500 more profiles to to get that I know but thank you again thanks for coming on the podcast thank you I loved it

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