Polina Pompliano: The Power Of Putting Yourself Out There l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 46

0:00Erica Wenger: Today on the show, I am so excited to be joined by Polina Pompliano. Polina is the founder of The Profile, a modern media company devoted to the art of the long-form profile. Each week, she dissects the lives, decisions, and inner wiring of the world's most extraordinary founders, investors, athletes, and cultural leaders. The people worth studying, because as she puts it, understanding exceptional people is one of the highest leveraged things you can do. Before launching The Profile in 2017, Polina spent years at Fortune, where she wrote more than 1 ,300 articles, and ran Term Sheet. the magazine's flagship daily newsletter covering venture capital and private equity.

0:33Erica Wenger: In that seat, she interviewed some of the most influential power players in business, Melinda Gates, Richard Branson, Chamath, Alexis Ohanian. Then she left to do one thing well, profile the most extraordinary people in the world. Since then, she's built the profile into one of the most read newsletters for founders, investors, and operators. She's also the author of Hidden Genius, a book distilling what hundreds of the world's top performers have in common, the hidden X factors that make them exceptional, and how the rest of us might find our own. Today, her work reaches millions of readers who tune in to the profile for ambitious storytelling about ambition itself.

1:03Erica Wenger: Let's welcome Paulina. Thank you. That intro sounds like I did a lot, but it doesn't feel like that. You know what? I honestly think we could have just left it in for 1 ,300 articles and that would have been enough. Like, I think I've done, I do like five or six a year, maybe seven or eight if I'm really lucky. and that's like no erica i live through the through the media cycle of like right right right short form short form and the daily i mean the daily daily posting daily newsletters is just i have so much respect no no no bowing down appreciate it the real writer in the room um okay so before we get into the meat of the interview we do like to start every uh interview with a bit of a fun icebreaker okay and we're getting right to the heart of it so it's a bit maybe than you would expect.

1:51Erica Wenger: What has been the hardest part of your journey so far? It can be personal, it can be professional, whatever comes to mind, but I'd love to hear more about the part that almost broke you along your journey. That's a great question, because I could answer it in a few different ways. I think that I am a first-generation immigrant. So I moved with my parents from Bulgaria to Atlanta when I was eight. And to me, having a stable, comfortable, predictable career was the goal. Like my parents worked jobs to pay the bills, paycheck to paycheck, never really like a steady, steady job or career. So to me, it was like when I was at Fortune, I was like, I've made it.

2:36Like there's nothing else that I can do that would make sure that I'm good long term than this. However, however, I think people who move here as kids or the kids of immigrants know this well. It's like you realize there's no ceiling. You can just do more. And I was someone who hated uncertainty, who wanted to feel safe. And at Fortune, I felt that, although, you know, people who work in media, there are cycles, people get laid off. There's just it's so unpredictable. So trying to create certainty in an uncertain world and in media is nearly impossible. So when I got to a certain point where I was like, I'm learning, like I've learned, I learned everything I knew at Fortune, but I hit a wall where I was like, I'm writing about these founders.

3:33I'm writing about these entrepreneurs every single day via this newsletter on dealmaking. But I myself have never built a company. I've never done anything. And here I am like analyzing these people's businesses and like criticizing founders. And it's like, part of me was curious about it, you know, talking to people, seeing how visionary they were. And I wanted to create something of my own, but I didn't know what, but I also hated unpredictability. So it was hard. So then eventually when I made the decision to leave Fortune to do Substack full time, I believe I was the first legacy media reporter to do that.

4:11So there was no blueprint for me. I just kind of jumped. That was really scary because suddenly I left this really safe situation that I thought I had to do something that could 1000 % fail. And I did it in the middle of a global pandemic. There was just like no safety net. And I think the hardest moments in my life and also the best moments in my life is when there's no safety net, but I just jump anyway. And that lights a fire under you that you have to succeed and you have to make it work. And I think that that's that immigrant mentality. So probably one of the most uncertain but best times for me was leaving Fortune to work on my own business full time.

4:53It's so interesting.

4:54Erica Wenger: And it's also I mean, it's clearly worked out, right? You can always see it in hindsight. But in the moment, I can only imagine. Yes. I've done it too, right? Like full time bet on yourself. Yes. What did your parents say when you told them you were going to be a full-time entrepreneur. They were a thousand percent like behind it. I was really surprised because I thought they want, you know, like health insurance and benefits and they were like, if you fail, you can just get another job. Like they knew that I wouldn't just sit on my couch and like relax and be unemployed. So I think the question that was circulating in my mind was if I stay at Fortune for another five years, will I learn more than if I leave and try this thing for five years, it fails miserably.

5:34And then I go back and get another job. Like the answer is probably leave and do the thing. You'll definitely learn more. And also makes you a better applicant.

5:41Erica Wenger: Like this is a psychologist. Meg Jay talks about identity capital and this idea that like you're just supposed to do things that make your resume, make your life more interesting because that'll actually make you more likable and appealing to future jobs, which I think is kind of an interesting approach. Like it's not it's about like what's fun to do, but it's also actually it's going to add a new dimension to you. When if you've maybe just always been, you know, an incredible writer, now you're a founder and a writer. I love that. And so that adds like an element of like, oh, wow, maybe a whole new category of jobs open up to you that previously didn't.

6:11Yes. Yes. And you have more experience. You've seen that chart. It's like you go up, you fail, you go up, you fail, but you actually end up getting more experience than the person who's just like linearly doing the same thing. Totally.

6:22Erica Wenger: One thing I've learned talking to GPs on the show and in my own experience as a GP, your back office is a signal. How fast you close deals, how clean the LP experience is, how your K-1s land, investors notice all of it. The more buttoned up you are, the more likely they are to give you more money in the future. That's why I want to talk about Sidecar. Sidecar is the SPV platform built for fund managers who want institutional quality execution without hiring a full back office team. They'll review your deal within hours, handle full secondary transaction support, and give you transparent pricing up front.

6:54Erica Wenger: No platform carry. Also, your LP relationships stay private, which is super important. It is not a marketplace. If you're running a professional fund, your infrastructure should look like it. Sidecar makes that possible without the overhead. Check them out at sidecar.io slash partners slash trailblazers. Okay, so we're going to go like pandemic is happening because this is like, from what I understand, that March month was really when you made that change and you decided Substack full time. Did you speak with anyone on the Substack team about monetization? I mean, now it's so obvious in hindsight that there are so many of these newsletter platforms we love beehive shout out they sponsor the podcast and also you know i use them for my stuff um but there's there's there's companies like subsec and like beehive who really help these like newsletter creators solopreneurs make a totally i mean total killing quite frankly um did you know that that was possible did you speak with the team like i just that's either you had crazy hindsight to know that that was where it was going or they gave you some sort of assurance i'm curious to hear more about that well there was okay here's here's what happened So it was January of 2020.

8:00I had been writing my personal newsletter, The Profile, since 2017. And I had been sending it every single week for free for three years now. So the Substack team, when they were starting the company, reached out to me and said, come join. It's a new email platform. We'd love to have your newsletter. At the time, I was on MailChimp. And I had changed three different email providers. I was like, I'm not doing another one. And it's just, you know, I'm familiar with the game. It's just another startup, blah, blah, blah. So I didn't. I didn't want to move from MailChimp. It was like the devil you know.

8:36But then my husband started a newsletter and I was like, check out this sub stack thing. Try it out and tell me if you like it and what the deliverability is like, because that's all I cared about. Is it getting into people's mailboxes? And he he tried it. It worked. It was easy. I'm not a designer and I liked that it was you. You're just right. It like looks the same. It feels the same. I don't have to tinker with a bunch of stuff like MailChimp. So he did it. He used it. And I was like, OK, fine, I'll do it, too. So I moved over. I think it was end of 2017, I want to say, or maybe beginning of 2018.

9:09Moved over to Substack. And then I had been doing it on Substack for two years. So I knew Hamish. I knew the founders well. at some point I read an article that said the rise of the passion economy. And this is before we had a word for the creator economy. So it was like the rise of the passion economy. And I was reading how you don't need that many true fans. It was like Kevin Kelly's idea, but you don't need that many true fans if you have a hundred and they pay a hundred dollars and all this stuff. And I was doing the math and I was like, based on how many subscribers I have now, if I add a paid layer, maybe there would be some interest in, and then it'd be a nice like side thing that I do.

9:54However, I was working at a media organization. I don't know what the rules are around like monetizing other ventures that you have. So I just never did it. I was like, I don't want to do this. I'm already doing a newsletter on the side. Like I don't want to ruffle any feathers. And then in January of 2020, but like, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was like, but what if, Like, would people actually pay for my work? I don't know. So I decided to just like beg for forgiveness instead of ask for permission. So in January of 2020, I turned on the paid layer. And I said. And how many subscribers did you have at this point in like January of 2020?

10:26It was probably 10 ,000. OK. So I was like, let me try and see what percentage of people convert. I just wanted to see. And I said it really high. I said it at$100 a year. And the only thing that people would get is like two new sections of things I'm reading and things or things I'm listening to and things I'm watching. So video interviews, podcast recommendations, in addition to the profile recommendations I was sending.

10:51Erica Wenger: I thought that much extra work. Yeah, like an extra, you know, six links basically per week. OK. And I was already listening to the stuff. So I was like, I'll just throw it in there. People converted, but not as many people as I thought. And then but a lot of them wrote in. And the thing that you learn even early on, especially early on when you have those super loyal, super hardcore readers or subscribers or viewers, is that they are not shy about giving you feedback because they want to make you better. So I got a lot of responses that said, I'm not going to pay$100, but I will pay$50. So I was like, perfect, great.

11:25Lowered it to$50, it exploded. And I was like, interesting. So then, obviously, the people on subsects saw on their end what was happening. So Hamish reached out to me. He was like, what if you just like left Fortune and did this full time? I was like, absolutely not. But then after a few months, again, I couldn't stop thinking about it. A lot of people were leaving. Things were happening. I had been doing term sheet for a long time. And I was like, ah, what if, what if I dedicate 100 % of my time to this thing? Would it grow exponentially faster than me just doing it on the side? So I decided to leave in March.

12:05And it was funny because I made a pro and con list of like, what could go wrong if I leave? And it was like, we're at the end of a 10-year cycle. There could be a recession. What would I do? All this stuff. Global pandemic, nowhere on that list. No one saw that coming. No one saw that coming. Not even me with my little list. And then what I realized, though, in making that is when you're making a decision to, let's say, leave your job to do something entrepreneurial or something else, you think that people care more than they do, A, like your boss and whatever. But also it's a short-term scary decision.

12:43The short-term scary is telling your boss, telling your family, actually doing it. That's short-term scary because you have to have the conversation. It's uncomfortable. all this stuff. But then once it's over, it's over. You're good. Long term dangerous is staying in a job you hate or not hate. You're just not growing in. And then looking back and being like, damn, I really should have started that thing. Like that's that's really dangerous. So I knew that I kept telling myself like short term, scary, short term, scary. Once I told everybody I gave fortune like a month in advance notice. And then and then because I told them in February and then March is when everything kind of fell apart with the pandemic.

13:24March 20th was my last day at Fortune, which was the first day of shutdowns in New York City. So I spent my last day at this place that I had been for the last half a decade on Zoom being like, bye, guys. Like, oh, this is so weird. You didn't get your proper report? Nothing. No, but it was fine. So yeah, so I did the Zoom goodbye.

13:42Erica Wenger: That's like a crazy transition time. I mean, yeah, for it to have worked out that way after all this time. It's crazy. Yeah. So that was the beginning of the profile. So you've obviously interviewed so many people in your life, so many at Fortune, so many before that, so many with the profile. What are the characteristics that you look for that you think make a very interesting profile? Okay. First of all, I think the people that have a public persona that people think they have a strong opinion about, I love. any time that somebody's like, ooh, I love that person or I hate that person. I'm like, give me the story.

14:18Because I think there's always way more to the story. We all have nuance. There's layers. We're not like this binary thing. And I love people who appear one way and then you spend time with them and you're like, you do not even understand what's going on behind this, like whether the persona is manufactured or I just I just love getting to know the misunderstood people who everybody thinks that they understand. I love that. And honestly, as you say that,

14:49Erica Wenger: I have like a list of like 10 already. You know, we all have those people that are so polarizing. So I absolutely understand. Who's the person that shocked you the most so far that comes to mind that you maybe everyone thought they were either really amazing or really not. And you uncovered this thing that was unexpected? It was actually Ryan Serhant, who is this real estate mogul in New York, who's expanding through the nation with his real estate business. He has a Netflix show called Owning Manhattan. He used to be on Bravo's Million Dollar Listing. He, if you follow Ryan online, he has this like golden retriever energy.

15:26He's super charismatic, super likable. So I went in thinking I would get this like over the top energizer bunny type thing. And then I met him and he was actually quite silent and introverted and introspective. And I was like, wow, this is not at all what I was expecting. And then when I started talking to him, it was very clear that, yes, like he was in theater, so he knows how to perform for the cameras, obviously. But beneath that, he is driven by revenge, which is something much, much colder and much more calculated than I'm just motivated, motivated by ambition and success. Like he's motivated by revenge, which is a really powerful driver, because if you want to prove people wrong, it's actually more powerful than proving yourself right.

16:18You know, it's so interesting.

16:20Erica Wenger: How do you get to that root driver? Like that is something that I'm always trying to uncover, even when I meet founders, Like, what's the thing? What's the chip on the shoulder? What's the reason here? Because money's money. I mean, sure, if you want to get rich, but that feels almost like a lofty, not so motivating goal. Yeah. So how do you get to that? Or what questions do you ask? So I do a lot of prep work. So I read his book. I read old profiles. I like tried to talk to old teachers that he had in theater school. I really try to meet people before the person was the person. I want to know what they were like before.

16:54And what's interesting is like I read an article from his college newspaper when he kind of went on Bravo and was like famous for the first time. And they were like one of his quotes was, you may not remember me on campus because I was like very shy. I didn't have a lot of friends. And I was like, what? And I think things that make me go, what? And also, I know it's cliche to spend time on like your childhood, but I do think a lot of people something happens then that you have this wound or this like chip on your shoulder that you spend a lot of years trying to correct or achieve or prove to yourself or to other people that they were wrong.

17:36And I noticed in the way I really pay attention to two things. One, what people avoid talking about and what they constantly repeat that they really want me to know. Because obviously I'm there like writing an article. They know that. So they're like really like, what are they really trying to push? And it's interesting. When he was talking, I kept noticing him saying, when I was a kid, I was bullied. When I entered the real estate world, nobody wanted to hire me. And then when I finally broke through, they bullied me. And I was like, this bullying thing was like kind of a focus. Yeah. And so I think like that is really, really potent.

18:16Like if you feel like you were the underdog as a kid, you got bullied, you're going to prove to everybody like you're going to be better than them. And then when he went into this industry where he felt like an outsider, he did the same thing. And I think feeling like an outsider is actually probably one of like the commonalities between mean the people that I interview and that I profile because people who achieve big things at some point probably were an outsider and broke into a world that they disrupted.

18:49Erica Wenger: It's so interesting, too, because it almost feels like an oxymoron. Like you have whatever, 10 million followers. So by definition, you're like an insider, but you feel like an outsider. And so that dichotomy is also very interesting. Yes. Whether it's true or not, like Anthony Scaramucci, very much an insider, but he sees himself as an outsider. it outside it's all like when you look in the mirror yes reflecting back quick thing on the childhood stuff have you heard of the hoffman process yes have you been no okay i have multiple friends who have done it but i haven't i just got back wait i saw this very recently um by the time this episode comes out it will have probably been like a couple months ago but it's very on my mind but so much of what they discuss is how so much of your core identity and your patterns come from childhood so i everything you're saying i'm like wow this is like deja vu because that's a lot of what they talk about is like you know uncovering what you learned in childhood what patterns you got from your parents to figure out who you truly are under it because like if this let's say let's use ryan as an example like this bullying narrative almost like takes over yes and it's this like trigger response of like i've been bullied before i hate being bullied i hate being othered i hate feeling like an outsider so i'm gonna do these things to compensate you think it's your personality right but actually it's not your personality it's your lived experience and your patterns.

20:00Erica Wenger: So who are you under that? And you know what's really interesting? Ryan, which I don't even think he realized. I didn't even realize until I published the article. And I was like, I should have included that in there. But he said that he turned 40 and he started seeing a therapist. And the therapist said, you are a human doing, not a human being. You get all your satisfaction from achieving external things. You are not comfortable with yourself just being Ryan. And he said that that was like really revolutionary to him. And then literally like a question later, I was asking him about being a dad.

20:36And like, you have a daughter now, like, how are you thinking about her and her success? Like, what do you like doing with her? And he said, the most gratifying thing to me is seeing her like master the monkey bars, like finally, like she got it and she did it. And I'm like, oh my God, wait, wait, wait, this is a cheat, Like this is the doing, you know? So it's really interesting. Like, yes, we have these patterns, but also maybe like we also pass them down in a way or like it's very, very interesting. One hundred percent you pass them down.

21:06Erica Wenger: And that's what so much of this stuff is, is figuring out your stuff so that your kids can be their most authentic selves versus having your stuff thrown on them. And it's so funny you say this do versus be thing, because that's like a core part of Hoffman. I did not know. It's this order. And they'll be fine with me saying this, I'm sure. but it's this concept that a lot of us live our lives in a do have be order so i'm going to do this thing to have money and then i'm going to be happy instead of be do have i'm going to be happy so then i'm going to do the things that authentically align with myself and then i'm going to have money or whatever i want but it's like a byproduct of being you correct and the be comes first not the be comes last and um i think that that just that simple phrase has been so interesting for me to reevaluate like are the things that i'm doing rooted in achievement or they rooted in who I want to be because that comes before the do.

21:54And you, if I'm remembering correctly, you wrote that you went to Hoffman thinking you didn't have a lot to work on. Correct.

22:00Erica Wenger: Well, like not in a way that like in a couple of ways. One, I've like done a lot of work on myself. Yes. I think I'm very self-aware, but also I'm like a pretty happy, grateful person. Like I love my fiance. I love my friends. I love my life. I love my work. Like, yeah. So, you know, you kind of are like everything's going well. Right. So why'd you decide to do it? Why did I you're being an interviewer look at you you can't help yourself so um i know it is interesting i'll tell you that and then we're gonna get back to you okay okay okay i decided to do it because a lot of people in my life had done it and i was kind of curious because it's very secretive and i thought i want to know what the secret is i i love i love control i love a good secret very nosy um so that was it and then i think also like part of being a self-aware person is like knowing that there's always more there's always more layers and i'm not afraid to like go deeper and go deeper and go deeper.

22:48Erica Wenger: And I would say maybe the third thing is when people say something's life-changing, you've got to listen. Even if you don't know, unless you feel like I really don't want to do that. Like for me, that's always been plant medicine is not something that I feel pulled to do, even though some people call it life-changing. But this felt to me like a very all-natural way to kind of go a level deeper. Let's talk about the messy middle of building an audience. You've got your newsletter in one tool, your podcast in another, your website hosted somewhere else entirely, and your community is scattered across multiple apps.

23:16Erica Wenger: You have to pay for four different subscriptions and then they still take a cut of your earnings. Does that sound familiar? Beehive has just fixed this with their latest update. It's one platform where your newsletter, your podcast, your website, your paid subscriptions, and now your community can all live together. Everything talks to each other because it's finally under one roof. And here's the part creators like myself love most. When you earn on Beehive, you actually get to keep all of it. So there's 0 % taken from your subscriptions, 0 % from your digital products, and publishers on the platform have actually made tens of millions in revenue and kept every single cent.

23:49Erica Wenger: So if you're tired of stitching tools together and ready to actually own your audience, go to beehive.com and use the code TRAILBLAZERS30 for 30 % off your first three months. That's beehive, B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com, code TRAILBLAZERS30. So I have a confession. I used to be a compulsive note taker. Every single meeting, I'd be half listening and half scribbling and still leaving with gaps on next steps, details that were shared, and more. But Granola completely changed that for me. It's an AI-powered notepad for meetings, and it's connected to every single call on my calendar. Before each call, it shows me a well-researched brief so I know who I'm meeting with and the full context going in.

24:25Erica Wenger: During the call, I jot down whatever stands out, maybe it's a keyword or a decision I make, and Granola handles the rest. It'll transcribe in the background on the call and then turns my rough notes into clean, structured takeaways the second we hang up. There's also no bots joining calls, it just works in the background. I use Granola for several things. If I finish a meeting with a potential investor in my fund, I'll ask Granola, what could I have done better to get my point across? If I'm meeting with a founder I like, I'll ask Granola to point out any major green flags or maybe red flags I may not have already caught.

24:55Erica Wenger: For people with a lot of meetings and decisions that require endless context, Granola is a game changer. Actually, we're running Granola on today's episode, so you can read the full show notes at granola.ai slash trailblazers. New users get three months completely free. That's granola.ai slash trailblazers. Do you want to hear one very quick, crazy story about Hoffman? I would love to hear. This is when I first heard about it. Yeah, tell me. My friend went through a breakup and went to Hoffman. And there she met a guy and they were like, do not think that, you know, this is a very intense process.

25:27Oh, yeah. You're not allowed to do anything. Right. Like, don't think you actually like someone because whatever. It's just very intense and emotional. So I don't think you were allowed to like. You're not. You're not allowed to do any sort of like. Contact. Yeah, nothing. thing so they left Hoffman they did not contact each other and then finally she found him and contacted him and they're now married how crazy that is so epic yeah I will say I'm very convinced

25:51Erica Wenger: when you go through those kinds of like real small intense like you know it's even like all these reality tv shows where like they all get married to each other like a big brother or like biggest loser like there's all these shows where it's like a small group of like 20 people or whatever but there's a lot of couples that come out of that shared experience that only the other person understands yeah um okay we're going back okay okay okay you're getting an interview mode can't have you in interview mode um so you talk about like uncovering a lot of this like deep stuff like ryan we'll go back to the ryan example of just like being driven by revenge having this bullying narrative yeah um have you ever interviewed someone where they were like wow please redact this please take this out i didn't want people to really see me because i think that's something that is such an interesting part of media is a lot of people do it for ego and achievement and to look good like hey like my fund launched in fortune's term sheet right like yes i was like oh like fortune like yeah term sheet like that's cool um but if they had said something that i didn't like i've been like ali change that yeah so i'd love to hear like if there's any times where that's happened to you and how you've handled it um not really i i think that it's really hard to read about yourself and i think it's hard to read about yourself from how how other people see you.

27:08Because if you see yourself that way, it's okay. But if you realize like, oh, shoot, like other people see that about me, it's hard. I haven't had like, somebody be like, that's not, you know, I'm not that person, or I'm not like that, or whatever. So far, knock on wood. I'm sure it's coming. But yeah, like, if you read my profiles, they're not like, flattering. I mean, there's, I'm sure. Well, that's why I asked, because a lot of them are like, You get to it.

27:37Erica Wenger: You get to the heart of the people. And that's not always pretty. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's just hard because I think I put a lot of pressure on myself going in that I want to see the mask drop and I want to like destabilize their like talk track a little bit. But sometimes that doesn't happen. And it's hard to like, OK, I have a good example. I did one on Jake and Logan Paul. I know you've interviewed Jeff. They're really, really smart. And I was in the car with Logan and I could tell that he was speaking in full sentences and like he was very eloquent. I was like, OK. Investor hat on. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

28:20So I knew that there was a performative aspect to them. You have to be. They've been doing Internet video since for 20 years, which is crazy. More than more than half of their lives. And I was curious when they perform and when they don't. So I thought if it was just me and Logan in the car, he wouldn't be performing. But at one point, I'm like, are you performing right now? And he's like, yeah, kind of. And I think disarming people being like, I know what you're doing and calling them on it helps a little bit. So I got a little bit of him, but then he had to go into a podcast and perform again.

28:55So it's like getting those small moments to see who they are when they don't have to perform. it's also hard because there's like a meta level of like they're performing for me totally and

29:06Erica Wenger: they don't want you to see all of them necessarily and you have to build that trust quickly yes which is not easy to do um there's a lot of founders who listen to this podcast and who probably want to in their dream world get profiled by you oh my god how epic to be in that list you know next to Kevin O 'Leary and the Paul brothers and all the other insane people that you've interviewed I'm just naming the few recently what's your advice to a founder that's excited to get profiled and And what do you think makes them appealing to media these days? Not necessarily legacy media, but like really, you know, thoughtful, highly subscribed newsletters like yours.

29:38Aim to live an extraordinary life. I think what you said earlier about doing things for the experience and the lesson is often more rewarding than just doing things for the resume. the people that I find fascinating are the people whose lives were kind of like a winding path of trial error lesson coming back up reinvention the classically like I get pitched all the time on these like classically like traditional corporate people and I'm like yes but I need more like I need the person underneath and I think people I mean it's a scary thing to do I think like anybody who's ever gone on Oprah knows like it's scary to be out there for people to see the the ugliness or the imperfections of your life.

30:28And we all have them. So my goal with every profile is to humanize these people. Like, I don't need you to like them with Kevin O 'Leary, for example. It was very interesting. People feel very strongly about him to the point where he gets death threats on a daily basis. And I now understand publishing this like, I mean, I got just a tiny percentage of what he gets. but people feel very strongly about him. And because they do, they already have an opinion going into it. So people before I published said I had a few people reach out and say, I really don't like him. I really I don't know if your article will make me like him.

31:07And I was like, that's not the point. And you probably won't like it probably won't change your opinion, but you'll see the real person underneath the persona that you hate. So that's my goal. Like, I think the biggest compliment that I can get is A, that was accurate and B, like you saw the real version. With Anthony Scaramucci, for example, a lot of people said, I went in thinking I wouldn't like him and I came out actually kind of liking him. So like changing perception, I mean, that's like the highest compliment. so if you're a founder and you think that people see you a certain way but you're not actually like that like i i find those stories really compelling totally well i think what's really

31:52Erica Wenger: eye-opening about what you're saying is that these moments of hardship are actually so much more interesting in this concept of like do it for the plot like whenever i go through something that's hard instead of being like no no no everything's perfect i'm just achieving achieving achieving i'm like oh make some more interesting story one day you know it's true it's for the book and it's for the plot and i think a lot of people i was i was talking with a friend yesterday who um on social media all she posts is perfectly curated i mean she's a beautiful person she's extremely brilliant and she's got like a good amount of followers but not a crazy amount of followers and we were talking a little bit about like the role of vulnerability and now actually you're almost like capping yourself because people kind of get bored of the like cookie cutter perfect well-rounded person they want to root for the underdog and the only way they see you're an underdog so true is if you're like wow I really messed this thing up yeah wow I like still feel like a failure or whatever and so how do you encourage founders or encourage people to like get comfortable with that because even as I say it now like I'm like but like I still don't want to like really go there yeah um it's it's hard and I have found that like older people entrepreneurs who have been around for longer periods of time, it's so much easier for me to do my job because they don't care at this point.

33:10Like, I mean, O 'Leary told me some crazy stories about like living a life of debauchery and like he was like doing crazy stuff. And I was like, oh my God, why are you telling me this right now? But it's like to the point where you understand, actually, Anthony Scaramucci said something interesting that I've never forgotten. He said people connect with the flaws and the failures much more than they do with our successes. I so co-sign that. And I'm sure you feel that in media, like even in terms of the articles that do well, like you have analytics behind that. I feel like I do too with content and media.

33:45Like that's the stuff that actually does well. It's the most counterintuitive thing. As a founder, you think if I can just get the perfect article, the perfect portrait of me, that'll do really well. But in reality, it's the thorny, how did you get out of that impossible situation stories that do much better than the perfectly polished PR. Yeah.

34:07Erica Wenger: No, I mean, I think people hearing it from you, hopefully they'll like be convinced. Maybe once and for all. I mean, probably not, Erica, but I know we can hope. So I'd love to hear. So obviously you go through a lot of like windy roads and loops to find these people. We were talking a little bit before we started recording on how you were able to contact someone. what's like the craziest get you've ever gotten and you were like i cannot believe that this came through but i did this and i did that or this person pulled some strings um i mean again you've interviewed thousands and thousands of people so many big names what's been the craziest get so okay this is this is a good one because it's i have not actually gotten him yet okay maybe this podcast i will make a shout out and we'll try so okay so this was um the day before christmas 2020.

34:51Erica Wenger: So it's like eight months into you doing your own thing. Yes. Yes. And I was publishing these profile dossiers, which were I didn't interview the person usually. Sometimes I would use the dossier to get to the person. But I would write a really like like a deep dive on someone who I wanted to learn something from. So like, you know, Sarah Blakely, I would do one on like I want to learn about like the grittiness of early entrepreneurship, things like that. So I would take an idea and then find a person. And then I would do like a quick mini profile of them without talking to them. But like I would listen to podcasts, watch interviews, all this stuff.

35:29And I did one on Dwayne The Rock Johnson, but I was like, this one seems too like inspirational. Like usually I have a little bit more, I don't know, it just like it felt more like inspiring than like a true profile. So I was like, I don't think this will do well, but it's okay. I'll just publish it the day before Christmas. You know, not a lot of people reading, whatever. So I published it. And then I took the 10 seconds to put it on my Twitter and I tagged The Rock. And then I went on a walk with my dad. so then we're on this walk and my like um my watch keeps buzzing but i'm not looking because i'm on a walk with my dad i'm like disconnected and i'm like oh my god and this was 2020 so i was like dad i have to check this because i think i may have gotten canceled or something because i got so many texts i was like i did something wrong yeah yeah so i look in the first text that i saw was my husband being like the rock just shared your article and i'm like what is what so what happened was i don't know if he does his social i don't know i don't know who but um because i tagged him he saw no he saw that i was about to publish it he was like oh can't wait to read this or something then i published it then he shared it on twitter with his like millions of followers then he shared it on instagram on facebook on all christmas too and everyone's kind of like offline though and like seeing stuff my like thing there were like 200 people reading at the same time.

37:02I was like, what is happening? It was really cool. And then he followed me on Twitter, still follows me on Twitter. But I was trying. Yeah, it's a long story. The Rock, if you're listening, give me a call. But basically, it was really interesting because I once heard David Perel say this. He said, everything you put out into the world is a vehicle for serendipity. So you never know where that one thing you publish will go, whose eyeballs it's going to and in front of. But there's an added element to like attracting serendipity, which is that I could have just published it, not shared it on social, not tagged The Rock.

37:41But like that 10 seconds that it took to tag him made all the difference. Probably like I got for free what people would pay millions of dollars for that sort of like marketing. I ended up on Bulgarian national television. Like I was all over that Christmas period. And then the following year, he like wished me a Merry Christmas and then a Happy New Year. Like, and it's really interesting. I understand now why he's so likable is that he really takes the time to make the other person feel special and seen. And like psychologically speaking, a lot of studies done that if you want to generate closeness with someone, you give them a nickname, even if you don't know them that well.

38:25Yeah. So he's like, Happy New Year, P. Hope you're doing well. Like when my book came out, I was like, why are you doing this? But it's just, you know, it's like the brand. So I think my big takeaway is you can get close to some of these people by accident, by taking the 10 seconds that it takes to do something extra. And then that taught me, every time I publish something, I always email people who may be interested. I know somebody's working on a Netflix documentary of someone I'm profiling, I'll send them my article. Just in case, you know?

39:00Erica Wenger: You never know. Yeah. Because one of those opportunities changes everything. So you might as well just plant the seeds. You recently posted something about James Clear had an article or had a quote about this. Do you remember what it is? I just screenshotted it before we chatted. It was about like luck and serendipity and putting yourself out there. You attract, you can attract luck or serendipity just by telling people what you're working on. Yes. Yeah. I don't know how I just remember that. Wow. But you just pulled that out. I don't know where that but I saw that and I was like it's just that simple.

39:32Erica Wenger: It's like yes you could do all this work and do an article which is so powerful and that's amazing but also like just literally informing people of what you're working on like even like the Netflix people like hey these are like my next 10 people like FYI you know like not even because I think some people forget to do that they like work in these silos. Yes. And like no one reads minds. But also you never like it's not just being opportunistic and telling people who may help you. I believe I listened to a podcast and somebody fact check me if this is completely wrong because it's been years, but I think the founder of Super Goop.

40:06Okay. The way that, yes, the way that she blew up is she went to some convention. They stuck her in the wrong spot and she was with like the, I don't know, nutrition. I don't know. She was in the wrong spot. She's like, I'm not supposed to be here. I was supposed to be upstairs, And she was sitting next to someone she didn't know. And she started talking about her product. And then that ended up being the founder of Burt's Bees. And it's like that kind of sparked everything. And I'm like, you just never know who may be listening, who may have a connection or things like that.

40:39Erica Wenger: Yeah, that's it's just putting yourself out there and not being afraid to like make the ask and do the thing on the Dwayne stuff. And then we'll move forward. But we interviewed Jason Pfeiffer. Do you know him? No, he's the editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. Oh, no. Well, yeah, I know entrepreneur. I didn't know Jason. Yes. OK, so Jason, I interviewed him on the pod and he was talking all about I asked him something about like his most exciting interview. And he mentioned Dwayne, The Rock Johnson. And he knows him. And he was saying this amazing story about how, you know, he's so introspective.

41:08Erica Wenger: And Dwayne was saying, I guess I'll call him The Rock. The Rock was was saying hi to people, but he was kind of rude. And so he had to circle back and make it right. And wow. And there's all these things. And then I think Dwayne might have told him something about how he repeats backstories or something. Like, I think to your point about giving people nicknames, he's very good at making people feel safe and seen and heard and all that. So anyway, maybe Jason can be your in. Well, we can discuss after the pod. Jason, the back reference. The 2026 primaries are taking shape. And if you have a strong opinion about how they're going to go, Kalshi lets you actually trade on it.

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42:46Erica Wenger: It probably took you 10 minutes, maybe even 20 to get it right. Now imagine you just said it out loud instead. That is the whole pitch for Whisperflow. Whisperflow is voice to text that actually works in every app on every device. You speak naturally and it outputs clean formatted text that's ready to send. No setup, no integrations, no fixing weird transcription errors. And it works across Gmail, Slack, NoShan, Claude, iMessage, wherever you type. And unlike the built-in dictation on your phone, Whisperflow removes all filler words, mid-sentence corrections, and jargon. What I personally love about it too is that it perfectly matches my style.

43:19Erica Wenger: So I often type in all lowercase letters, so it'll type like that. I also say things like LMK, which means let me know in shorthand, and it'll auto-adjust it from let me know to LMK. Like many of you, I also do a lot of brain dumping into LLMs. So instead of typing it all out, I actually just speak my windy train of thought into Whisperflow, which is infinitely faster than trying to get my fingers to keep up with the pace of my thoughts. If you do any serious writing or just send a lot of messages and emails, using Whisperflow is a no-brainer. Get one whole month of Whisperflow Pro completely free at ref.whisperflow.ai.

43:51Erica Wenger: So let's maybe switch gears a little bit to AI, which is very timely right now. And specifically AI at the intersection of media. There's a lot of sloppy, sloppy slop out there. A lot of people using AI to sometimes edit, sometimes completely write. their their work um what's your take on what does it look like for the future of writers the future of ai i'd love to hear if you have any perspectives for those people who either are you know writers and want to maintain that connection with their readership in this age where there's a lot of slop and a lot of content or people who maybe want to write more and want to use these tools and are optimistic about it but don't want to be perceived as fake inauthentic all the things Okay.

44:33So I think there's like, I see a lot of sides to this. And I think people try to make it binary and it's not. To me as a writer, if you're a true writer, why would you ever replace the one thing you find the most pleasure in, which is writing, with something that could just does it for you? Like, that's what I don't understand. Like, if you're a true writer, you use writing to know what you're thinking and what you believe about things. That's how I use writing. When I start, I don't exactly know where I'm going, but through along the way, I kind of like I clarify my thinking through writing. If I stop writing and just use AI, basically, I'm like outsourcing my thinking, not just my writing.

45:16I think that the way I use AI is a tool. So I'll write. I'll take my draft. I'll type.

45:24Erica Wenger: I'm like a big whisper flow. Like I speak. Okay. Oh, no, I do not speak. Oh, I'm not there yet. You type. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first of all, the things that I do, which is I go shadow these people and I spend time with them and all this stuff. And I pick up on human cues, like what somebody has on their bookshelf, how they like recoil when I ask about something difficult, things like that, AI doesn't cannot do. It can write a profile based on like public information, but it cannot observe and at least not yet. I'm sure that day is coming. Yeah, world models. Here we go. Yeah. So the thing that I set out to do is, A, I'm going to write long form.

46:05B, I'm going to spend time with humans, notice their human behavior, and then translate it for the reader. Just out of complete curiosity, I was like, when I was working on the Ryan piece, I told, because with Ryan, there was a lot that nobody would have known unless you spent time with them. So I was like, chat, can you write me a profile on Ryan Serhant? Make it really clicky and readable and whatever. The thing that it came up with was so very obviously AI. And also it was very generic because it's a LLM. It was pulling from things that are out in the public. A, it wasn't interesting. B, it wasn't human.

46:47C, it was just bad. So the way that I use AI is I'll do everything. I'll take my draft and I'll say, am I missing anything based on what you see here? Are there any blind spots? Does anything not make sense? Like I'm using it kind of as an editor, even though I do have a human editor. So it's the editor before the editor. I'll kind of do that. It'll say like, oh, you're missing Kevin O 'Leary's political career. I'm like, I don't care about that. Whatever. So it's like it's almost like give me what I'm missing. and it's a research assistant. And then I'll take my draft, send it to my human editor.

47:23The human editor will read it and edit it. And it's just like, I don't know, I believe in the human aspect of creative work if that is what you enjoy doing. Or if you are upfront with your audience about, hey, I think Alex Heath talked about this. He's like, I'm world-class at getting scoops. AI can like write the rest, but I'll get the scoop, you know?

47:44Erica Wenger: Because he also has the relationships. Like that's so much of it too. Yeah, the relationships, exactly. Yeah, because AI isn't going to get net new information. So you have to have the human to have the person to connect you to ask the question. Yeah. So I think like the way people are using it is great. I, you know, I'm sure there's people just using AI, writing everything and then passing it off as their own. But to me at this point, it's so obvious. It's the sentence construction. It's the type of word used. I'm like, OK, like I get it. But I hate having to scan and figure out if it's a human or a robot.

48:15Yeah, well, soon enough, I mean, we're already starting to see this.

48:18Erica Wenger: There's like a lot of tools that can tell you if it's like AI or human. Yeah, but sometimes you're like not always accurate. Right. Yeah, that's hard. That's the problem with a lot of this slop. It's like slop creates more slop, creates more slop, creates more slop. And you kind of have a hard time articulating and understanding what's real and what's not. And there's also an element of the humans, because we're all reading so much AI slop. We start writing like that. Yeah, because we mimic it. But you know, it's super interesting. So one of my favorite profile writers is this woman, Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

48:45She used to be at the New York Times, GQ. She wrote a bunch of celebrity profiles that are just amazing. And I was joking with my friend. I was like, look at this article from 2017. She wrote on Gwyneth Paltrow. And I was reading it and it sounded like AI, like the sentence construction, like it's not this, it's that. She loves that sentence construction. But funny enough, the models are trained on writers. so like now the hallmark elements of ai actually mimic some of the greatest writers and it's like

49:17Erica Wenger: it's a mind pretzel you know what it's it's a total mind pretzel but it's also this concept that like with everything in life we go really to one side of the pendulum and really back so like what used to be you know her writing is like the gold standard now that we train all these llms oh that's just like super sloppy right and now it's like we got to be different than that you know so then now you go over here but then but maybe it'll be the other way around because it's going to train on that writing and it's just always fluctuating yes i mean and it is changing how i write i hate that it is but it is like anytime i want to say quietly i can't because i'm like they're gonna think this is ai but i actually everything is real everything is real yeah like or the the colon and it's just it's really annoying but i'm trying to not do that so people don't think i'm ai i know it's just crazy again mind pretzel um i do have one final question before our lightning round so let's say we live in a hypothetical universe okay and there's some other person who has created the profile built it the way that it has grown and they come to you and they're like paulina we want to write an article about you oh what is the headline of that article

50:24Erica Wenger: huh um the headline it can even be like what is it about what is yeah yeah yeah what's that message because you spend so much of your time uncovering other people's deep thing, their chip, what they're driven by. But like, what is yours? I think that ironically enough, I say this a lot, the thing that people talk a lot about usually is the one thing they don't do or they do and they're trying to hide by whatever. I think that for me, it's like I really want to get to the heart and the depth and like the grittiness of all these people. But I myself really dislike that. Like I don't like people knowing my business, although it's really interesting.

51:03Like the second the second you're vulnerable, the second that like people really connect with you and they really like it. I learned this recently because I've been writing the profile for what, since 2017, almost 10 years. and I try to keep it centered on other people because I don't want to be the center of attention but sometimes when you share little things like for example um I had twins in September we went through this like I know I for a second there boys or girls or both two boys but I also have four kids I saw the four but I didn't realize there was a twin in there the twins yeah at one point we had four kids under four.

51:50So that was a lot. But I never share like things that maybe are going wrong because I'm like, maybe people don't care about me. They're here to read profiles. Right. But recently, my husband on another podcast shared this like really terrifying, traumatizing experience we had when I found out I was pregnant with the twins where a doctor misdiagnosed me and it was a really scary thing. And when he said, I mean, it's gone like super viral and i'm like wow like people actually want to hear this stuff i just have a really hard time knowing how much they want to hear so i just self-censor i mean i can tell you're doing that

52:26Erica Wenger: right now yeah very meta of you can you tell us a little bit about what happened this is an exercise okay you working through this what happened when um yeah you you heard out you found out you're pregnant with your twins yes and this is actually a really nice um connection with the ai conversation we were just having. AI literally saved their lives. No. So I was pregnant with what I thought was our third child. And then we went to the doctor. She was like, oh, my God, it's twins. And I was like, what? And then she was like, you know, scanning, scanning, looking for something, searching for something.

53:02And I'm like, what is she searching for? And because they're identical twins, it's already high risk. But she said that there was no membrane separating the twins, which makes it ultra high risk. The only higher risk pregnancy than that is conjoined twins. So it's like the one that I got diagnosed with at the time was twins in the same sack, sharing the same placenta, sharing everything. Their cords could get tangled. Like it's really scary and dangerous. So she was looking, she couldn't find it. She turned the lights on. She was like, we need to have a serious conversation. And I'm already shaking because I'm like, this is not what I expected today to be.

53:45And she said, I cannot find, I just spent 15 minutes looking for it. I cannot find a separation. Here's what that means. And then she said one sentence that like literally still haunts me and I have nightmares about. She said, at this point in the pregnancy, many people consider terminating it. So I looked at my husband, he looks at me, he's like, and I was like, so, so anything else she said, I just like kind of feel like my brain was spinning. She said something like your best case scenario is you get to like 20 something weeks and then you have a super long stay in the NICU. But then there's neurological problems.

54:21There's like all sorts of problems that could happen. So I'm like, I have PTSD telling the story, but I'm already getting hot. My head is spinning. I don't know what's happening. So I managed to say like, well, maybe like maybe it's too early because it was really early in the pregnancy. I was like, maybe it's too early. Could maybe we see it later, like the separation? She was like, probably not. but go see another doctor or all this stuff. So she hands me the ultrasounds. I leave the office. I think it was a sunny day. I could not tell you. All I saw was gray and just fog. And so we walked back to our apartment.

54:58I was so upset. I took the ultrasounds and I shoved them in a drawer and I sat on the couch and I was just sitting. And I don't know, Erica, I don't know what it was. It was something, not me, something like in my head was like, go look at the ultrasound again. Like it was, I don't know why I got off that couch. It was like some bigger thing. I got up, I walked over to the thing, I pulled it out and I'm just like staring at the ultrasound. And all of a sudden I see with my human non-doctor eye, I see like a really, really faint line on every single picture. In between them. Yeah. Like it's not in between them, but it's like a circle around them.

55:42Erica Wenger: And I'm like, there's no way she didn't see that. She looked at it for 15 minutes. There's no way I can see this. It's probably some glitch in the ultrasound. That was my explanation. So then I'm like, okay, fine. I'm not going to do anything. Then it kept bothering me. So at the time, this was in the beginning of 2025. So I personally wasn't really using chat GPT. And I can send you this, but I have, I messaged chat GPT like, hi, exclamation point. Like I didn't know how to talk to it. I took a picture of the ultrasound. I uploaded it. And without any context, I said, hi, what do you see in this ultrasound?

56:19And it said, I see twins, what appears to be a twin pregnancy separated with a membrane. Yeah. And I was like, huh. The key was not giving a context too. So it could just be really fresh. Yeah, like I wasn't like, do you see or whatever? Yeah. So just like, what do you see? And that's what it said. And I was like, okay, still people say don't trust AI, trust the doctor. So again, don't do anything. But then I can't sleep all night. I was just thinking, thinking, thinking. And I was like, okay, yesterday was the most horrific day of my life. I'm going to take this. And like at 3 a.m., I on my phone drew an arrow, like the biggest arrow you've seen to the line that I saw in two of them.

56:58and I uploaded it to the portal. And I was like, just out of personal curiosity, what is this? If it's not a membrane, what is it? And I thought she would say like, I don't know, something with the machine, whatever. And then I get a call from the doctor and she's like, I don't know what I was looking at. I don't know how I didn't see that. And like, you know, in that moment, I'm a very forgiving person. I'm very empathetic. I'd like to think when somebody makes an honest mistake, Like, totally fine. But the only thing I remember thinking when she called me is you ruined the best day of my life.

57:34Like, that was horrific. And also, also, saying that to someone who is pregnant, you don't know what mental state I'm in. You don't know. Like, that is a really serious thing to say. So I was like, okay, thank you very much. I went to another doctor. The pregnancy was totally fine until the very end. Then the birth was kind of traumatic. But the point is, they were not that. They are now 10 months and healthy and nothing is wrong. I know. Crazy. But the beginning of that was just like so wild. And what would I have done if, let's say like I didn't have AI. I didn't do that. I mean, maybe eventually they would have caught it.

58:11But I would have like lived in fear for a very long time. You would have not slept for days.

58:15Erica Wenger: You would have had to see another doctor. Hopefully you would have been able to get that answer. Yeah. But crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And thank you so much for sharing. Of course. And I can feel like for what it's worth, I can feel your energy and I can feel we've talked about a lot of really interesting things. Yeah. We've mentioned a lot of big names. You do the coolest work. You're on this podcast for a reason. You're so inspiring and interesting. But I feel most connected to you now. Yeah. You know, because I can just see like I'm a twin myself. No way. I'm a twin. Identical. Fraternal. Fraternal.

58:46But we're girls. Okay.

58:47Erica Wenger: She's my best friend. I didn't know that. I think twins are like the greatest thing that the universe ever created. because you come into the world with someone and twins are always complicated. It's always hard. It's never easy. It doesn't matter. They're either born small. They're born with some complications. And so I hope you know, if you take nothing away from this interview, I feel so connected to you now hearing that. And I think it's a good reminder for all of us to be open and to be more vulnerable and be okay being like, yeah, these are like the messy parts of life. You know, like your career is insane.

59:19Erica Wenger: It's buttoned up. Yeah, of course, maybe there's little things, But this is the stuff that I, as a human, am like, wow. And it's also like, thank you. And it's also like what happens behind the scenes. I think on paper, you could see this and you could be like, oh, look, Paulina writes the profile since 2017. She's never missed the week, blah, blah, blah. But in like that's what's going on in between all of that. And I think, yeah, I think sometimes I just read a profile on Bill Ackman and how his daughter is dealing with a brain hemorrhage and he's trying to save her life. And it's like you really never know what like private battles these people are fighting.

59:52Erica Wenger: And by the way, if you really get down to it, the Bill Ackman, the use of the world, like all you really care about is your family. That's true. I mean, everything else pales. Like, let's say there was some crazy opportunity to interview The Rock. Yeah. The day you got this news. Oh, yeah. You're like, I actually couldn't care less. I want my babies to be OK. And so it's funny how we in like the press and in our Instagrams, we talk about the thing that we care about, we focus on. But when it really comes down to it, it's the Bill Ackman story. It's what you're telling me now. It's all the real human stuff.

1:00:22Yeah.

1:00:23Erica Wenger: And it's a good reminder for all of us, you know, because like that's the real good stuff in life, too. Totally. Be, do, have. Is that right? Be, do, have. Look at you coming full circle. Full circle. So here's a problem I hear constantly from operators. The data exists. The answers are somewhere in there. But getting to that, actually pulling a useful insight without bugging the data team or learning SQL takes way too long or just does not happen. Hex solves that. Hex is an AI analytics platform where anyone on your team can ask data questions in plain English and get real answers, backed by your actual business context.

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1:01:24Erica Wenger: It's a great tool. Trailblazers listeners get an exclusive 30 day free trial at Hex.ai slash Trailblazers. OK, well, I am going to ask you some lightning round to kind of like lift up the energy to go back into professional mode. Let's. Yes. But feel free to take it any direction you want. Okay, so book in hand or podcast in ears? Oh, book in hand. I feel like this is like a shoe in for you. Yes, I love, and I love a physical book. I think, I don't know, I like seeing the progress I've made. I listen to audiobooks, but it's just like, I like being like, okay, I have this thing. It forces me to disconnect from everything else.

1:01:59And I like book in hand.

1:02:01Erica Wenger: You know, it's so funny. I got a Kindle thinking it would be better for like my back because I always carry like five books everywhere. And I don't like, I haven't been using it. I'm just like a physical, I'm the same way. I want to feel my progress. I want a physical reminder. I totally hear you. And we didn't talk about this enough, but you have an incredible book, Hidden Genius, with so many gems in it. Shout out. Shout out to you for writing that. I know there's a lot to talk about, but yeah. Yeah. The paperback is coming out on August 11th. So it's very soon. It'll be around probably when we release this.

1:02:30Erica Wenger: Perfect. Maybe a little after. We'll discuss. Perfect. But I saw some crazy gems on the internet as well about like quotes and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Um, hire slow or fire fast? I would say hire slow, hire slow. Okay. You really have to make sure you know who, like, you're dealing with. I also think that applies to, like, relationships and everything in life. Like, you know that quote, make reversible decisions quickly and irreversible ones deliberately? it's like the reversible ones yes um you could like get a job you hate leave the job get another job that's a reversible decision you probably learn a lot by doing it irreversible decisions like having a family who you marry hopefully that's irreversible it's like almost irreversible um that that you should make really slowly and really deliberately getting a face tattoo um no But like like having children, once you have kids, you will forever be a parent.

1:03:33So that is not a decision that you should make quickly. I love that line.

1:03:37Erica Wenger: And Jeff Bezos has a lot of things about like doors. He uses like, you know, like two way doors, one way door. I think that's a Jeff Bezos quote. Yeah, it's right around there. Yeah, very true. Ten small wins or one big moonshot. Ten small wins or one big moonshot. Yeah. Ten small wins that lead to one big moonshot. I'm a big believer in like doing small things really really well and that ends up compounding into something instead of just aiming for one thing hoping you get it if you miss like it I hear you I hear you everyone's different it's always interesting to hear being early or being right wait so if you're early you're gonna be wrong it's tbd oh it's tbd but if you're right you're definitely right but you might be right when everyone else is right you know more of like consensus right well in a lot of my life like i have been early so okay so yes i would say being early like right now i think we live in a world of tiktok and short form and everything is like 10 seconds or less i'm doing the thing that i know is not popular at the moment which is really long form 4 000 word article um with photos and a video and all that stuff but i'm investing in that because I really do think that's the future when AI comes from all the short stuff, short form stuff.

1:04:56Erica Wenger: Totally. And even like, I mean, that's why we do the podcast, right? It's this idea that like we're two humans having a conversation. We are not AI. Maybe people think we are, but we're not. Yeah. We're real humans. Shocking. Exactly. And like, yeah, leaning into the thing that you think will outlast whatever's in the moment. I resonate with that a lot. Yes. And I do think that sometimes like doing the contrarian thing could be completely wrong, but sometimes it's not. So try it, be early. Even if you fail, you can do the next early thing. I love that. I love that. Okay. What is the best teacher, a mentor or a mistake?

1:05:32A mentor, a mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It can transform you into a completely different person. It's that lived experience. Yeah. Yeah. I hear you. Is the future of AI abundance or chaos, according to you? Abundance. I'm not a, yeah, like I really do believe AI, like the story I just told you, like that is a net positive. My dentist just, I realized, uses AI. Like they can tell my bone density down to the whatever. I think using it in concert with the human is going to be so much more abundant. I think when I hear people like, like, AI is the whatever, it's going to burn our world down, also reminds me of the people who are like Y2K and like the internet and all this stuff.

1:06:16Yeah, totally. It's a time will tell question.

1:06:19Erica Wenger: We shall see. But it's great to hear your take. Killer product or loyal niche audience? Loyal niche audience. That's like what I think. But I built my whole thing on you. Totally. VC or bootstrapping? Bootstrapping. It depends on what, obviously. But I do think like if you can bootstrap and prove product market fit way before you raise money, those are the most resilient companies. And if you look like the Amazons, you know, it's funny. I was working on an article about Kleiner Perkins and I was reading old articles and then Jeff Bezos was quoted in one of them. And it was like it was like said Jeff Bezos, owner of online bookseller Amazon.

1:07:00And I was like, wow, like that's what it used to be. You know, it's pretty wild.

1:07:05Erica Wenger: And also when you go back in the archives and you see like what people's names were, what their quotes were, and you compare that to now. Completely. I know. Mind blowing. Totally mind blowing. OK. Never post on social media again or never fundraise another dollar again. Never fundraise another dollar. I think so for me, especially the reason I do not want I mean, I wrote about venture capital. I think I think VCs are so helpful if they can provide something really tangible to your business. Raising money for money's sake is obviously never a good idea. But I do think like with the tools that we have, social media, everything, you can get pretty big.

1:07:47You probably can't get massive without outside investment. it, but you can reach scale, especially if you're just starting out. Like I have friends who are like, I want to start a startup and I want to raise all this money. It's like, don't do that. First of all, start, see if it works, pivot, and then maybe raise money. Love it.

1:08:06Erica Wenger: It's always fun to hear people's take that also do not have investing as their day job. And like, because you have actually boosted your own business, you use a lot of social and writing. So to hear your take on fundraising is very interesting. Yeah. Okay. Last question. Okay. Is AI overhyped or underhyped? okay so i've been writing since i was like in high school like writing articles um i remember multiple ai bubbles before now like i remember i think it was 2016 or 17 ai had a moment ml was yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it always was my different names you know especially with like climate like it's always had a different name yes but it's always been there and it's always a bubble So it's a bubble.

1:08:52But I don't think so. I thought that newsletters were a bubble in 2020. I was like, there's so many. I literally applied to work at the SCIM in 2014. And I was like, it's 2014. Now it's 2020. Newsletters are definitely a bubble. But here we are. no I don't I think that AI is under hyped I think there's so much more that'll come out of it and I hope that you know humans really shape it the right way

1:09:21Erica Wenger: yeah that's so much of the question now right and hopefully what you're profiling is the people that are steering the ship yes Paulina thanks for being here of course thank you Erica I loved it thank you thanks so much for listening to the Trailblazers podcast if you found this conversation valuable please follow along on socials share with a friend leave a review all the things Most of all, please subscribe to our channel. It helps more contrarian builders find us and supports the work we're doing here. To learn more about what we're doing, you can visit trailblazerspod.com or my venture capital firm parkrangerscap.com or just follow along on socials at Erica underscore Wenger.

1:09:54Erica Wenger: Until next time, keep trailblazing.