The Producer's Guide: Todd Garner & Hollywood's Elite

Transcript

This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altiger Show. Once you start looking at the world in terms of teams and the collaborators that had to come together to do anything, then you kinda see it everywhere. Your most recent book is basically how a team could come together to create optimal performance. How does an individual benefit from reading this book? Well, everything is about teamwork, everything in life, right? So you don't just need people who think differently, who can push each other, who can have that great friction. You also need the ability to change. So intellectual humility is this virtue. It's 4 things. It's being able to respect someone else's viewpoint, not being overconfident intellectually, so not being too sure that everything is right, It's being willing to revise your viewpoint and being able to separate your ego from your intellect. If you can do those 4 things, then you're kind of the ideal person to be working with. If everyone in your group has those things, then you can be almost unstoppable. I have Shane Snow on the podcast for for the the third time, but it's been a while since you've been on. And and it was it was over 2 years ago. Maybe, like, when did when did Smartcuts come out? 4 years ago. 4 years ago. So I remember I read it, and I didn't know you then. And I contacted you right away and said you gotta come on the podcast because I thought Smartcuts was a great book. Now your, most recent book, is called Dream Teams Working Together Without Falling Apart, and it's basically how, you know, how to I would say it's about 2 things, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. It's, a, how a team could come together to create better than or or optimal performance. Like, many teams come together and are are lesser than the individuals combined. Like and you mentioned many examples of you could have a team full of all stars, but it'll be a horrible team, whereas, you know, the all stars are great as individuals. But you you then mentioned some teams where, individually, they're not necessarily the best. But as a team, they win every everything. And I'm not just talking about sports. I'm talking about business, relationships, every industry in in in life. And then also as an individual, how individuals can build a team around them to to basically create optimal performance. Is this is this roughly I like hearing the pitch from your mouth because I've been you know, the last few months have been just constant, working on book marketing. Right? The books are done, and so now I'm just talking about it with people. I like that way of framing it. That's how I benefit from the book because, you know, we have a let let's just take this podcast as an example. We have a team. So I'm just saying, I think, how do I benefit from reading this book? Or how does an individual benefit from reading this book? And and some people might not be on, an official team, but if they start thinking in terms of this, they can improve their lives, and we'll get to that in the in the podcast, of course. Well, everything is about teamwork, everything in life. Right? We everything that you do, the things that you're using, we're all made by people, and you could consider that all part of your team. Everything you're working on is building on a off of other people's work or working with other people whether they're employed by you or not. We can kind of look everywhere and well, so the analogy I like is when I started skateboarding when I was a teenager, suddenly everything looked like a skate park. Drive by in the back of my mom's van, and there's an Arby's. I'm, like, oh, I could skateboard on that. Once you start looking at the world in terms of teams and and the collaborators that had to come together to do anything, then you kinda see it everywhere. Well and it's interesting, you know, just skateboarding in general. And so, you know, we've had Tony Hawk on the podcast, world champion skateboarder. And just going through his life story, skateboarding on the one hand is this very, like, punk individual activity. Like, when you're on the skateboard, you're either gonna fall or not and no matter who's on your team. But skateboarding competitions revolved around teams. Like, it still was a natural thing for people to form teams, and you and you learn from the other people on your team and so on. You learn new ones. Made the bearings and someone coached you on how to do this trick, you saw someone else do that trick and you figure out how to do it. Yeah. It's all everything that we work on is related, and we get better because of other people. And and in one of the last chapters, or maybe the last chapter, you kind of suggest this is not just some artificial self help thing. This is, like, biologically imprinted in our brains for maybe a 1000000 years. You have what this last chapter is called oxytocin or one of the last chapters. Is it the last chapter? That's the last chapter. Yeah. Oxytocin, a love story where basically this neurochemical that increases our level of well-being and happiness is essentially released in our bodies when we do something to increase the trust of the team around us. So we're rewarded biologically by being a good team player. Yeah. That's part of how we survived. We we had these great brains, but, you know, we're kind of weak compared to the saber toothed tiger. So we had to survive by working together, and our brains figured out that if you can get someone else to care about you or if your brain could care about someone else, then you'd be more likely to band together. And together, you could beat off this saber toothed tiger, or you could beat the storms, the hurricanes, you could build things. And so our brains developed this ability to generate this little empathy drug, this oxytocin, which makes you feel good, and, it's released when someone shows you a kindness. You have a positive social experience. Someone gives you a hug, but, also, when you learn someone's story, when you watch someone who's in danger, who's in a situation that you can relate to in some way. And, yeah, our brains basically develop this ability to, to basically cause us to want to work together, to band together because that was useful, but it also feels really good. I thought I you know, and I've actually so I've I've written in one of my one of my books about oxytocin. I've also had on, one one neuroscientist who talked about oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, and all that stuff. But I never made the connection between oxytocin and storytelling before, which I thought was very interesting. That basically storytelling can convey, as opposed to fact telling, can convey more empathy, which then increases the oxytocin potential. So I thought that was I thought that was interesting. I I actually I think I ended up writing about this. It was around the time I was finishing up the last draft of the book. Yeah. I did put it in that last chapter. I actually had went to a neuroscientist's lab about this. And had them basically scan my brain chemistry while showing me kind of heartwarming videos. And the one that I wrote about is the video of this father who, you know, kind of has a s**tty teenager and Yeah. And you watch him trying to be a good dad, and and sort of the end of the story is this big twist that makes you cry, basically. And, and I was in this lab hooked up to this equipment watching this video trying to hide the fact that I was tearing up. You know, the scientist was like, pointing to this chart that shows that, you know, we're actually measuring the brain chemistry in in your brain changing and showing, having an emotional empathetic response to this guy who's not like you. I'm I'm not a dad. I, you know, I I don't have a s**tty teenager. I have no reason to, you know, believe that this guy's real. I know it's a fictional thing, and yet I had this emotional response where I wanted to give him a hug. And and I should measure it. And and because of that emotional response, because of that oxytocin spike, my guess is and you're you're not a dad. You've never been a dad, but at some point in the future, you might be. My guess is because of the high, spike in oxytocin, when you're actually involved in a parenting situation that seems difficult, you'll you're more likely to remember this story because it triggered this, spike in your brain and then act accordingly because you you were able to even though you can't relate to this guy right now, some part of your brain did relate and has now changed the wiring in your brain a little bit, and that increases your ability as a a future parent. Yeah. And, also, I think I just am a little bit more sympathetic to other people who are parents who I run into. You know? It's not easy, and I understand that a little bit better now. Well and I'm gonna go all over the place, but but there are concrete things here. I I just wanna I wanna I'm gonna just take a stab every time we say something concrete that I think, is helpful, which is that, basically, if you're trying to get people on your side and on your team, tell them a story, and just don't show them facts. So that's one one potential concrete thing out of this. Another concrete thing is reading is great, which you point out in the book, because then you hear more and more stories. Reading fiction is great because you hear more and more stories that you could potentially, be used to rewire your brain. You you you get to borrow someone else's life enough to get these oxytocin spikes, and that helps you as well. And then, actually, the secondary effect of that is it helps your brain train itself to be more intellectually humble. I I I am gonna get to that. Okay. So because intellectual humility was a big part of this. I meant to take the you have a test for intellectual humility. I meant to take it. My I'm not gonna this is not gonna sound humble, but I think I do score high on something like that, but that doesn't sound humble when I say that. So I can't hear it. 95% of Americans think that you yeah. We Well, it's a it's a think that we're above average. It's all it's like it's like the it's like the driving statistic. 9 out of 10 people think they're above average drivers Yep. Which or let's say above median drivers, and I I'm the one out of 10 who knows that he's a below average driver. But, maybe in the show notes, you can post your score. Yeah. I will. That's a good idea. I wanna I wanna I I feel like this is a great extension to to your book, Smartcuts, which was which is a great title because because, obviously, it's a riff on shortcuts. And and, you know, there's there's this whole kind of philosophy that, you know, life is pretty complex. And, combined with the fact that we don't always get the best education we don't necessarily have the best educational system. So so there are life hacks to kind of, you know, do increasingly complex things in a much faster way than was previously thought. And and Smartcuts, while not quite exactly a book about life hacking, it it it gives you kind of a framework for how to approach complicated decisions in your life or or or learning new skills or being more creative. Smartcuts was is a way to kind of take shortcuts around the traditional system. And and you focus on something you called, you know, lateral thinking to to increase innovation, productivity, and, essentially, you know, do kinda, you know, hack the system a little bit. Maybe describe describe lateral thinking and smart cuts a little bit because I do think it it it it leads right into dream teams, which is an excellent book, by the way. Thank you. Yeah. I'm I'm By by the way, I just wanna say about your dreams. Sorry to interrupt before you get to that. Just in terms of writing style, by the way, it's like it's like, you tell all these great stories ranging from, you know, the Russia hockey team to, an assassin you know, political events that I thought I would have known about, but I didn't know about from Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson. You talk about the Wu Tang Clan. You have study after study that from scientists and also studies that you've done, which is kind of a rare thing. You know, I hardly ever see, you know, writers do their own, scientific experience. And you have this very, Malcolm Gladwell style of telling the story, which is you tell part of the story, you leave us with a cliffhanger, then you get into kind of the science and research, then you get back into the story, and you're interweaving all these things to make this grander point. Anyway, I think this is a really well written book. It's it was such an enjoyable read. But now smart cuts and lateral thinking. Well, think I I feel like don't sponsors usually have to pay money for that kind of endorsement? I'm just saying what I honestly what I honestly feel. So I appreciate it. I that's Otherwise, we would've believe me. We've done this. We've canceled people on the morning of the podcast when I didn't like the book, and I've lost friends over that. Wow. Well, appreciate it. So, Smartcuts is about this idea that you don't make breakthroughs by playing the same game that everyone else is playing. Same game meaning, you know, let's say one version that is college, then you start from the bottom. You rise up in the in the, you know, promotion promotion promotion and blah blah blah. Right. Yeah. That's one, very practical example of we have this system. We have this game that you have to play where you have to climb through certain steps in order to get to where you wanna go. You're not going to do that faster or do that better or make a new way to do that by playing within that framework. And in fact, your your point in the book is and you give a great example. Your point in the book is is if you do do that slow methodical path, you probably won't get to the top. So as an example, you gave the US presidents, and you you you which is really interesting now with the most recent election actually proves the point that I Right. Have made. Right. In in in in one way, and we'll see about the other way. But, your point is that many presidents, Obama, Eisenhower you get you give a whole list of presidents. They actually had the shortest, runs in public service before they became president as opposed to many US senators who would like to be president, but they'll never get there. Even if they have, like, 40 years of dedicated public service, it's it's the people who took these smart cuts who became president. And you and you give one counterexample who turned out to be one of the worst presidents in history, which is Andrew Johnson, did the traditional route and became this horrible president. So the interesting thing when you break down the, say, the challenge of becoming president of the United States, you would assume, based on the way the system's set up, that the way you become president is you get elected in a really small office, and then you slowly win elections to bigger and better offices until you become president. Andrew Johnson is a great example of that. First election trying to think of I mean, what's what's another example that, I'm trying to I'm going all the way back. John f Kennedy. Oh, no. Lyndon b Johnson, but he he got there by because Kennedy was assassinated. Right. But John f Kennedy was, you know, congressman, then senator, then president. He moved through that really quickly, and he started young. He also had he had this sort of war hero experience. He had this, you know, family with this legacy. He was a Pulitzer winner. He had all these things that well, so this actually helps make the point. The point is not the kind of the, the thing that you see on the outside. The point is that underneath all of this stuff with the president election thing is the fundamental question of what what is the reason someone votes for someone for president or for a leadership position like that? It's not actually that experience. It's the the statistics show that it's divorced from the amount of experience you have. It, is actually people vote based on perceived leadership qualities. So, therefore, the question is, if you want to become president, how do you gain the kind of perceived leadership qualities that will get people to vote for you? And is there a faster way or a better way than climbing that traditional poll political ladder? So Kennedy was interesting, but he had these perceived leadership qualities because he came from this family with his legacy. He was great looking. He had risen very quickly, and that momentum actually gave him this perception of, you know, he's been a congressman, all these things, and he's only 40 years old. That made him seem like this great rising leader. It turns out that, yeah, you look at the stats and and the surveys, and people will vote if they take a look at you and they get, you know, 10 seconds of your bio, and they say, that sounds like a leader to me. So someone who's a war hero, very likely to do well in an election versus someone who has been sitting there in congress for 30, 40 years. And, and But that's interesting, though, because the person who's been in congress for for 30 or 40 years, their narrative is, I'm a leader because I've been a leader in public service Mhmm. For 30 or 40 years. Your congressman is a leader of some sort. You know? They're not actually leading anything, but they can call themselves a leader. Yeah. So there's, there's sort of 2 parts of being president or becoming president. 1 is the problem to be solved of getting elected, and the other is a problem to be solved of being a good president. And so the case that some politicians will make is, hey. I've been in Congress for 30 years, so, therefore, I will be good at the job of being president. But it turns out that those 30 years in Congress do not actually correlate with people wanting to vote for you. It's not a kid it's not an argument that works. Is that because people don't perceive you as a leader? If you look like a leader and you've been in congress for 30 years or you can sort of do something to convince them besides the experience argument, then maybe. And that's how people like Lyndon Johnson get elected, when he got elected vice president, right, which is even, you know, maybe kind of, still making this point. But if you're a businessman who is very, very famous and who on TV for the last 10 years has had this persona of, I know how to run a room. I know how to run something. You seem like a leader. People knowing very little about you will be inclined to vote for you. Well, it's very interesting because if you look at I mean, first off, governor is a better route to presidency than senator. Because senators and congressmen actually don't really lead their states or the district, but a governor does is is an executive. So they can make their narrative is I was a leader. And I guess you're right. War hero. Also, the interesting thing about Kennedy was because of his, back pain, he was taking, cortisone, which, fleshed out his face. He was very thin just a few years before the presidency, but then his face became very puffy. And that probably just then and that was the fur those were the first televised debates, so people saw a more leadership looking He got he he It's like he got fillers. He added some years to his his face. He added some maturity to his face. Interesting. Look like a teenager. Yeah. When he first got, like, the descendant, you see pictures of him. He looked like he was a teenager, practically. That probably did help a lot. So yeah. So there's the if the problem to be solved is get people to think you appear like a leader, then there's lots of routes to that. So that's what Smartcuts is about is figuring out the way to solve the problem that's not the the assumed way. So there's there's 2 things then. There's one is, what's the actual solution to the problem? So, again, with with the president's with with every situation, people assume most people assume there's kind of a normal path is the best solution to the problem. So it's the congressman to senator, to vice president, to president, or whatever. But then so so figuring out what the actual solution to the problem is, and in this case, with the presidency, it's perceived leadership qualities. And then there's, how do I get how do I construct my narrative, my story, so that I have perceived leadership qualities? So war hero, Pulitzer prize winner, do a good debate on television against Nixon, who clearly had a narrative of leadership at that point Mhmm. But just wasn't enough to beat Kennedy in in 60. What what what was another area you spoke about in in the book? Again, I read the book 4 years ago, so just try to remember. So I what I try to do is attack a different myth about success and in each chapter and use that as an, sort of a wedge into this idea of someone thought differently, someone applied lateral thinking, or, you know, what I would call smart cuts to this situation. Here's another way to kind of employ lateral thinking. So the president says about hacking the ladder. One thing I would wanna say is at the end of that, if you're breaking down the fundamental problem to be solved, winning the election is not the only problem you should worry about. The worst thing you could do is win the election and then be s**t at the job. So that's that's something to kind of consider the long term view of, of what problems you're trying to solve. And, by the way, in dream teams, I was fascinated by your knowledge of kind of the obscure more obscure stories of various administrations and presidents from the past. I had no idea Thomas Jefferson was such an awful president. He was, like, the worst president in history. He's a great example of this, actually. He was a great writer. He's a great revolutionary. He was really good at getting people, you know, riled up for the shared purpose of creating this country, right, and devoting themselves. He was a leader. He got consensus around his written declaration of independence. Yeah. But then once he was president, he made some of the dumbest decisions. He his reaction his response to the British, basically robbing US ships while they're out in international waters to kinda pay themselves back for the war, his response to that was to just make imports and exports illegal, which, you know, kinda ranks in the high up in the list of the dumbest decisions the president has ever made. He bankrupted America with this decision. Yeah. He he did a lot of things as president that were not smart, and I think in part because he was fairly stubborn, but also in part because we we voted for him because he was this great hero of the revolution, not because he was necessarily a good administrator. But other than you, I've never read that story. So I, I had always perceived him as a great leader. We love him as a statesman, but yeah. But then we And so history has ignored stuff. History has ignored. Like, I I took history all through high school and college. Like, history books have ignored, basically, this crucial factor. Mhmm. And, you know, it's funny. This is totally off off topic. But just if you look at the history of the presidency, anybody who, you know, president has ultimately very few constitutional powers, but anybody who gets in the way of international trade, ends up causing economic collapse. So, like, Thomas and I didn't know Thomas Jefferson was in that category. Certainly, Herbert Hoover Herbert Hoover was. We'll see if Trump's gonna be with his current tariff war, but, anyway, this is off topic. Yeah. So other things that that I tackled in Smartcuts were well, one of my favorites was, the story of, basically, pro surfers. So I like surfing. I'm not good at it, but I like surfing. And so I I took a look at what makes the difference between world champion surfer and just a good surfer. It turns out that it's not how many years you've been practicing. There are people who have been practicing surfing as long as all the world champions that are not better at it. It might have a little bit to do with the kind of practice, the kind of coaching you've gotten. But the, when you get to a champion surfing championship, the difference between the person who wins and the person who loses the championship is not how strong they are, not how good a shape they are, not how good a swimmer they are. It's how good they are at studying the waves. So pro surfers, world champion surfers will show up to the beach at 6 in the morning and sit there and watch the water. They'll watch the waves, and they'll try and and basically figure out how the waves behave at this particular spot on today. And, so that they can predict, they can sort of use pattern recognition to predict what sort of waves they should go for and in what spots they should be. So you still need some years of experience, though, to take advantage of you have to know what patterns to look for. There's this there's a threshold where you need to you need to be proficient enough in order to do that. But it's, yeah, the the surfers that are better at studying the waves are the surfers that are better at winning the championship. So it's kind of you're seeing that people are solving the wrong problem. Just working out your shoulder muscles is not gonna help you be the champion. At a certain point, your shoulder muscles are gonna be sufficient. It's figuring out which ray waves to pick is what makes a difference, and that is about a different kind of studying. So those are the kinds of things that I I did in Smartcuts, and it it kind of amounts to I mean, the thing that led to sort of the dream team's thing is recognizing that if you wanna change the game, you wanna play a different game, often, you have to think differently. And, often, that different thinking is not just gonna boil up inside of you from nowhere. Right? So so I wanna I wanna I wanna, talk about how, again, dream teams is almost like a a form of master smart cut. But I but I I wanna I wanna stick to the concept to, a little more of smart cuts because I think it's so innovative, and which is why I was so so eager to talk to you, and then we got to to know each other through the years. But, how would you learn in in a given industry, how would you learn what your smartcuts are? So for instance, you're in the content business. You're, you you know, you're the cofounder of a great company called Contently, which creates, I I don't wanna say content marketing for companies, but you basically create, very original, unique content for companies that they can use to, express their brand on in social media and other forms of media. And it's it's a it's a a great company that you that you've built up. So so so you know a lot about storytelling and writing. How, for instance, would you use smart cuts to, you know, get bigger on social media or become a better writer? Like, what's let's just pick random random things and and try to apply smart cuts to it. Alright. Let's talk about one of the things you mentioned. You like the the way that I did the cliffhanger endings in the stories in this new book. So, I learned from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography that his process for becoming a better writer would be to take a great magazine story from The Spectator, which was like, you know, the New Yorker of his day. Take the story, and then he'd take notes on it and rewrite in his own words what the story was about, like, very detailed on his own sort of piece of paper. He put the magazine away, and he'd come back to just his notes a day later, a couple days later, and then he'd try and rewrite recreate the original magazine story just from his notes. So sort of this game of telephone to see if he could do as good a job. Then he'd compare his news story to the original magazine story, see what he did differently, see what the magazine did better. He'd do this over and over and over again until he decided that he was a better writer than all these writers at The Spectator. So I thought that was a pretty cool process. So I, what I liked about that and my insight into that is he he's trying to figure out how to be a better writer, so he drilled into kind of the really teeny tiny details in a very systematic way of how the best of the best kind of did this thing, and that helped him to become a better writer faster than going to school for writing, basically. He found his own sort of hack for getting better at the things that matter. So I decided I wanted to do that with my own writing, my own storytelling style in particular because I think that a lot of business books are pretty boring. I'm writing about topics that are are mostly sort of they're like business adjacent or pop business stuff. Well, I think I think most, books are not written by good writers. So Yeah. It's, yeah, it's it's rare. I think especially in nonfiction, it's tough. So I wanted to be the kind of fiction or nonfiction writer who people actually wanted to read whether or not they got anything out of my work. If it was entertaining enough to talk about anyway, then great because there will be lessons inside. There will be things that can help you inside of it. So I thought about, well, who do I break down? Whose writing do I break down like Ben Franklin did so so that I can get at the things that make for a great sort of captivating storytelling sort of style? And first, I I did go to to folks like Malcolm Gladwell, or my favorite is Gene Weingarten. He's a Washington Post feature reporter. I think the greatest story to ever appear in a newspaper is one of his. It's called The Great Zucchini. You should read it. It's it's amazing. Anyway, so I I went to some of my heroes like that that write nonfiction journalism and did the same thing, broke down a spreadsheet. Here's how they structure their stories. But then the thing that really helped me is I I'm a big, you know, television fan, and I, in particular, love Alias. So, you know, that's the show that I've come back to the most. I love JJ Abrams. I love Alias. So I decided to start breaking down episodes of Alias in the same way. What's the way that JJ Abrams structures, you know, this story about Sydney Bristow and the CIA or whatever? And, and so little things that he does is sort of a matter of habit in that show, and I think in many of his movies too, were kind of amazing cinematic storytelling that I decided, well, if I apply this across to, you know, nonfiction science business writing, maybe I can Like, what's one thing you learned from that? So he loves to start his episodes in en medias res is what it's called. So, basically In what? En medias res is Latin for kinda like in the middle of things. Okay. So he starts the episode at the most intense part halfway through the story. And then, you know, it'll be whatever. She's being tortured. You know, blah blah blah. There's a scary bad guy. And you're like, oh my god. It's all gonna fall apart. And what is even happening? And then it'll stop. It'll say, 3 months earlier. And then it goes, and you develop the story. And this is the thing that he does to prevent people from, you know, getting up to pee, instead of watching the the show. So, so you'll notice that there's some of the the stories in the book that, that kind of start that way. So my favorite opening to a chapter let's see if I get it right. The chapter about the War of 18 12, which is where Thomas Jefferson has made this terrible, decision and and caused a war, basically, and and this huge sort of rift in American society. We're trying to decide whether to join the British or to fight them. The British wanna take us off. That was a great start, by the way. And in fact, you even congratulate yourself after you write the first sentence. I wanted to write you say I wanted to write that sentence. Yeah. So I think it starts, general Andrew Jackson was fresh off his latest massacre when he got the call to lead an army of pirates, American Indians, free slaves, lawyers, and w***es to save America from destruction. Yeah. And then I say, I was really excited to write that sentence, but let's back up. So that's the JJ Abrams move. You you have 15 seconds of some really dramatic thing, and then it's like, okay. Now we're gonna find out the story. And it's like, you have to keep going after that point. I don't know. I did I get that pretty close to No. No. You you're right. And that that's so interesting. And it's so a couple of things I gather from that. One is, again, reading was incredibly useful for developing that smart cut. Like, you read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and took this point that was relatable to your own life. And instead of spending the 10000 hours he might have used to, come up with these techniques to be a better writer, you were able to just do it right away, but then use a you using modern, storytelling techniques, like, from cinema. It's funny because I've done something similar using some of my favorite comic books. So I I just how they begin and how they end, sometimes they're very, not not like superhero comic books, but I like kind of these black and white autobiographical comic books that are very, beautiful and and visual and not heavy on, poetry, but heavy on storytelling. And so so any anyway but it's it's interesting because it reminds me of that of of that idea. But, I I like that. Because if you know, my goal the problem I was trying to solve is be as entertaining as possible. Right? And so who's as entertaining as possible? I think, you know, a a cinematic storyteller like JJ Abrams, why not rip off his decades of developing that and apply it across to an industry where that doesn't happen that much? And voila, much more entertaining way to, to tell a story about what ultimately is kind of business than than I could have if I start with, alright. We're gonna talk about core values. And are they good or are they bad? And where do we misunderstand them? Like, shoot me in the head. Right? Yeah. And I think so many, like you know, I don't wanna just say self help books, but just, like, nonfiction books start off like that, like, where they don't it's sort of like just some guy lecturing from a stage about facts, and it's not again, as you point out in dream team, storytelling is a much more effective way to, you know, spike up the neurochemicals that are gonna leave an imprint on the brain. Get you to care. Yeah. And if you if you care about something and if you and if something makes you happy, it's it's like you sort of said, you know, almost self deprecatingly, like, even if they don't get value out of the book, they're still gonna recommend it because it was so entertaining. That's another thing I like to do in writing, which is to, give people multiple reasons to like something. So maybe it's the story is well written. Maybe it's, something they learned. Maybe it's one specific quote, where I try to give multiple reasons for people to to like either even in social media, this works. Like, for an Instagram post, maybe it's the photo. Maybe it's the the caption or whatever. So I like that. Well, again, it's it's sort of boiling down. What's the thing that you're trying to accomplish? Right? You're trying to get as many people as possible to enjoy this share, whatever it is. And you can then break whatever the, you know, best practice is and say you know, people say you gotta focus on one thing. You could say, no. My goal is to get as many people as possible, so I'm gonna do something for everyone in this, and that could actually work in that case. Well, I'll give you I'll give you an example which is which of a reader of yours, which is me. I would have read this book regardless of what the topic is, regardless of all your other stories. I would have read this just for the Wu Tang Clan story. Because in my in a previous life, I did, in the nineties, I did all their websites. Oh, I remember you telling me about this. So yeah. So I was, I was, you know, really into them and really into them. A fan. Could what did their website look like in the nineties? I mean, it was all very just basic. Nineties was a weird time for websites. Oh, the website design was completely different then than now. It was very heavy, almost, like, much more artistic than it needed to be, because it's very heavy design and and not necessarily user friendly. Like, there was not the kind of science of web design that there is now. But and then we also did, the enhanced CD. Back then, there was enhanced CDs. So there would be the CD with their music, but then if you put it in your computer, there would also be games or whatever. So we would do that we would do that for them. And, and we did all of Loud Records stuff, and they were they were signed by Loud Records after Protect Your Neck Yep. What became a hit. And I love that you you described the genesis of that song Protect Your Neck. Again, I would have read this entire book just for that story because I love that's, like, my favorite song of theirs, which is their first big Yeah. Song. So That yeah. I mean, I'm I'm a huge fan of those. The point that you're making is actually something that I was very thoughtful about in creating this book where, similar to you with your Instagram example, I wanted to expose these ideas to as many people as possible. So, therefore, I chose the stories and the characters and the genres of stories very carefully. I'm not really a sports guy, but there's a couple of sports stories. There's there's, you know, it starts with a sports story, and there's a a story about, little Jewish soccer kids in Argentina that's also in there. That's not as much of a sports story, but kind of interesting. But I noticed the chapter headings all are in different languages. So chapter 1 is the only one that's in English, and chapter 2 is in German, chapter 3 is in By the way, I did not I did not notice that. So each chapter has that little Easter egg, and what that different language represents is the I I don't you know, that might not be in this, It's it's not in the table of contents. It's once you so I'm probably unsure you didn't wanna confuse people with the table of contents when you get to the, yeah, chapter's point You know, I just didn't notice that, actually. I wonder why I didn't notice that. It's it's a little hidden. Some people will notice it, but what that is because is there is a major character in each chapter from a different country who speaks a different language, and they kinda did that on purpose. Okay. But it's deliberate about, you know, kind of the matrix of there's plenty of stories that, you know, you can use to tell about the principles that I'm talking about, but I wanted to provide something relatable to as wide a group of people as possible. So if you're into sports, got it. If you're into music, got it. If you're into Yeah. The business. History, if you're into business, if you wanna you know, you're at a huge corporation, if you're at a startup, if you're at an ad agency, there's stories in there that, that you'll be able to relate to, which may very well be the part that that gets you hooked or the part that you pay attention to first when you hear podcasts like this, for example, but that is the entry point into sort of the broader set of ideas. So that was purposeful. Even, you know, who goes on the the cover. Right? You're you have a a galley, which doesn't have kind of the final thing, but, you know, the names of the people that I chose to ask to do endorsements, on the the back cover of the finished book come from kind of every industry possible. And, you know, the director of, the Second City Comedy School is on there next to the CEO of The Muse, which is, you know, the human resources and hiring site, is next to a neuroscientist, is next to a, you know, Pulitzer Prize winning science writer. And and then, of course, you have at the bottom of the cover here, a special afterward by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. Like, that was a huge get. Yeah. They were they were amazing and both really brilliant and sweet people and and a really cool example of a team, sort of a a team that you wouldn't initially expect. But, hey, if a book's called Dream Teams, you might be, forgiven for thinking it's a book about sports. But if at the bottom, you have 2 of the greatest sort of business thinkers, that are out writing right now, then you'll say, oh, this can't be just a sports book. This has to be about something deeper than that. So all of those decisions kinda went into that. And, you know, you work with a publisher and and you start to tell them these things. You know, I wanna put this and this and this person on the cover, I want the chapter titles to say this, and I wanna tell a story about that and that. And they start to say, but that's not how books are done. And, and then, you know, you have the debate, and and and I win this time. But, but that's all part of kind of that same idea with Smartcuts of breaking things down to their fundamental problems and finding alternate better ways to do things than have been done traditionally. What what does the phrase lateral thinking mean? It means approaching a problem well, my definition is approaching a problem from a new or different angle. And how do you train yourself to think that way? So in Smartcuts, I talk about each of the chapters is, basically leads to a a way to sort of trick yourself into doing it. So how do you think in a way that you wouldn't think of? Right? This is fundamentally impossible. But you can push yourself. You can trick yourself into doing it, through, in a part, working with other people, getting inspiration from other people, or in part, there's sort of a series of things I talk about. For example, questions that you can ask. What if we had to do this 10 times better? That's the the thing that a lot of technologists talk about with 10 x thinking. But if you ask the question, what if I had to make a book that's 10 times a business book that's 10 times funner than your average business book? That's a really hard challenge, but you can't answer that question by just doing more of the same. You can't just make it 10 times longer in the traditional way. You have to fundamentally reinvent the approach that you're taking. So that question sort of kicks you out of normal mode and forces you to assess the problem from a lateral ankle. You might not come up with a good answer to that, but you're now primed to come up with a different answer, which could be good. So that example from Smartcuts of 10 x thinking and lateral thinking applies directly to stream teams. It's a really great point you make where, often dream teams have a dissenter, and it doesn't matter if the dissenter is right or wrong. Like so so everybody might believe, like, oh, we have to, you know, let's say it's politics example. Again, everybody might believe we have to go to war with some country for x y z reason. And then there might be a dissenter who says, no. I don't think we should. Here's why. Doesn't matter if he's right or wrong. What you showed is that having a dissenter improves the overall importance of the team because it forces everybody to think a little bit more deeply about the problem. So they've done studies with juries where they'll take the jury, and the jury is all agreed, all in agreement on this is the verdict. And then they'll throw in a new person who's like, no. I disagree. And even if that person is wrong, the jury will spend more time deliberating, and they'll make a more accurate assessment. They they've done a whole bunch of studies with kind of brainstorming to this effect. My favorite is, is simply the example of journalism as part of you can think of, you know, the press as sort of a member of the team of, the government in America. We all often call it the 4th, you know, kind of branch of government that, you know, we set up this system of government in the United States where there's the executives, they do s**t, the legislators, they make rules about s**t, and then the judges that oversee and make sure that we're doing things correctly, and they kinda keep each other in check. But the press, their job is to show you what you don't wanna see and to show the public to get the public angry enough to push the government to do the right things. The press's job is to expose things that are wrong inside of the government. And so it's basically like this dissenter kind of system we set up we sort of built into team America, where if you have a team of people or, you know, big team of teams if you're running a government, and no one is kind of saying the hard thing to hear, then you kinda get stuck. It's easy to get stuck, or it's easy to get corrupt. You have a team of of people working on a a project, and, and and someone comes in and and says, you know, I don't think so. They're either gonna show you what needs to be changed and you're gonna have to face that hard truth, or everyone's gonna stop and have to argue with them and have to, basically, make sure that they're right about things. And and in all of these scenarios, whether it's at the grand level sort of with the press and, sort of this whistleblower effect or it's inside of a jury or it's even you know, you're coming up with ideas for a costume party. If someone comes in with a bad idea or an idea that's just really far afield, everyone kinda, like, turns their heads or, you know, if if people that are collaborating are, you know, are good and, not super stubborn, they turn their heads and they look at the other thing. And in between where you are and where this bad thing is or this thing you don't wanna see is, is a land of possibility that the whole group has not considered yet. So this has been shown in, you know, mathematical proofs and studies from all of these kinds of things from the press to to juries to brainstorming exercises. But it's, I think it's really important that, you know, the people that we want as part of our, quote, unquote, team are not just people we like, are not just people who agree with us. And, and so that It's almost like the the the role of the court jester in in medieval times. Like, this is the one person the king can't kill because he he he's just gonna say what's on his mind. It's interesting. I was surprised you didn't use that as an example in the book. Well, that's a a bit of history that I'm not real familiar with. What what was the the reason for having that court jester? I actually don't know if it's if it this is true or not. This is always in mythical stories. But, the role of the court jester is basically to be the one person who can't be a yes man to the king. He has to be a voice of descent. Interesting. Well, it And the king can't punish him for that. I I love that because if a king is smart, king's gonna wanna know when they're wrong. But, you know, the court jester is interesting because maybe I don't know. I'll have to look into this. But you don't really want the people who are in the running to be king to kind of show you up. So maybe the court justice is not in the running to be king, and they can say the thing that you can they can then spark you thinking a little bit differently and coming out with your proclamation next week or whatever without you being worried that, oh, now they are gonna kind of usurp your throne. So how can how can someone make use of this in their own life? And and, like, thinking about it, I could think of, you know, some of my biggest failures is usually when I didn't listen to any dissenters at all, and it didn't expand my thinking. So I just was single-minded. No. I'm right, and then I jumped off a cliff. I I mean, I think taking the more inputs we have into our decision making process, the better. So not being afraid to show the thing or to have the debate about the thing with as many people as possible. But I'm gonna challenge you on that from an example in your book where you basically say, often, brainstorming is, you don't use the phrase, but it's a form of groupthink. It can actually lead to poor performance. So and you give a specific example, which I thought was an interesting study. If people are told to shout loudly, by themselves compared with when they shout loudly when they're within a group, even if they think they're shouting more loudly in the group, they're actually, on average, 74% as loud as when they were by themselves. Yeah. There's tons of studies about that. They have that in the tug of war. So so groups in general perform worse. So so so if I'm an individual and I wanna perform better, should I be an individual, or should I ask for a team? The distinction is don't don't grab a group of people to all sit in a room and, you know, get chummy and come up with ideas about what you could do with your project or whatever. Go 1 on 1 and have debates. So the the research, you know, there's a 1,000,000 brainstorming studies. The research shows that most brainstorming groups are gonna come up with fewer ideas and fewer good ideas than those same people just brainstorming alone in their bedrooms. But what's better than brainstorming alone in your bedroom is brainstorm alone in your bedroom and then come and debate what you've brainstormed. You can then refine those ideas. What's even better than that is do all that, come and debate, and then bring in a wild card, someone who's kind of outside of your field, to have them debate. Or bring in someone who's, you know, legit crazy, or set up the debate or the session to kind of toss around these ideas with a really extreme idea that's so far out that you shouldn't do it, but is far enough out that you now have permission to discuss things that are kind of outside of what you would deem normally safe. I like your phrase you used earlier. You wanna essentially, you want you're you're you're by doing this, you're expanding what you call the land of possibility. So this is just a technique for expanding the land of possibility for yourself. Hey. Find someone different from me or has some extreme view or crazy view or I would not have expected this view, and listen to him or her debate. And that in a in a in a weird way, that's kind of building a team Mhmm. And, getting that team's input. And then now you've expanded your ability to you you have a bigger land of possibility to to explore. Yeah. And I think doing it 1 on 1 is especially powerful because, say, you're that king. Right? You're the king. You don't wanna be embarrassed. You don't want, you know, whatever the vice king the prince. You don't want the prince to, you know, decide that he can take over and throw you in jail. So you're working on something, whatever king problem you have. Go 1 on 1 to your advisers and get their honest input, you know, and make them feel like you're not gonna chop their head off if they say something wrong. Don't have all the advisers get in a room together because they'll be too scared to say what they really think oftentimes. And in a group setting, even with groups of people who love each other, who are not gonna get their heads chopped off, we have this need, the psychological subconscious need to safely kind of be accepted by the group. So you might have a thought pop in your head that you push away, consciously or subconsciously, that could be useful or maybe not, but it's it's too far outside of the boundaries of what's safe for the group that you won't express it, or you won't kind of continue thinking about it in your head. You know, the groups of people shouting less loud, that one's sort of an interesting one because it's your brain I I don't quite know what the conclusion is, but your brain is doing this. You're not consciously doing this. Your brain is saying, I don't need to shout quite as loud because the group it's safe not to or the group is good or whatever. But you're not gonna not shout at all because then you won't be accepted in the group. So there's this weird thing that happens when we're all together in a group. But 1 on 1, if you and I feel really safe with each other, like, we have full emotional personal support, then we can have a really intense debate and not be afraid that someone's gonna catch us, you know, on camera and then, you know, call us something in social media and ruin our lives. We can actually go much further down the intellectual path, if we're in that safe sort of one on one environment. And, I mean, this is related to some of your other examples, like, let's say, the the sports team examples that that you use, the, like, the Red Army The hockey team. Hockey team and, the Wu Tang Clan example, which is that they it's not like a team of all people with the same skills. The this is a team these are teams specifically picked for differences in order to create a land of possibility, and then there's other techniques that you talk about throughout the book for coalescing that into a team, into a team framework and a team mindset. So so RZA, the the the guy who started the Wu Tang Clan, kinda selected for the differences, but then used other techniques, like, for instance, storytelling to kind of create a vision to bring them together as a team. Even Even though some people were from Brooklyn, some people were from Staten Island, some people didn't trust each other. You know, they all argued. Right. They had very different rapping styles, but he was able to create music out of it. You mentioned they sold together and and, individually, they've sold 74,000,000 albums. And, again, it's not it's it's it's it's this 2 step approach. He used differences to to create, it's almost like what you were saying, 1 on 1 with each person because of the differences. And then maybe it's storytelling, which you mentioned in as part of the oxytocin. Maybe it's intellectual humility, which we'll talk about in a second. He he used various techniques to create them into a team. I, tell me if if you think this analogy works. This is the first time I've you sparked this for me. You're gonna make a cake, and so you have all the ingredients that you need for the cake. You're not just gonna have flour, flour, and flour. Right? You need eggs and sugar and milk and whatever. But you don't just mix them all together at once either. Right? You don't just dump them in a in a bin and dump the bin or the bucket into a microwave. Right? The what you do with the ingredients next once you have them, you you set up the ingredients that you think are gonna maximize the most delicious cake, and then you go through a process of making sure that they interact in ways that that maximize their effectiveness. So a little bit of that, I think, in in what RZA did, you know, the way that he guided kind of the Wu Tang Clan. And, yeah, the overarching purpose of that group was to to make, you know, groundbreaking music. The overarching purpose of the flour and the milk and the eggs is to make a delicious cake, but it that makes it okay for them to be different, and it makes it okay to not have to do it all in the sort of round table where everyone holds hands and, you know, makes all the decisions together. There can be the leader, the baker, the sort of clockmaker orchestrator as part of that process. I don't know if that does that analogy seem to work? Yeah. I mean, but I think I think there's more to it with the Wu Tang Clan, which is that their differences actually created a unique style because you had kind of the really gruff voice of, Old Dirty Bastard. You and you had, you know, everybody had kinda like their own style. So altogether, again, there was you gave listeners multiple reasons to like a song. Yeah. Somebody might like Method Man. Someone might like ODB. Someone might like might like the combination of all the voices. Someone might like RZA's production skills. So it's, like, multiple reasons to to like something. And they they brought out I mean, RZA said that it was like sharpening each other's blades. Right? They brought out the best in each other, and they they forced each other to kind of get better. But there's also the contrast that's interesting. Maybe in the cake analogy, more like cookies. If you add salt to chocolate chip cookies, they taste more delicious even though salt and chocolate sound awful together. That that combination actually yeah. That was I think it was missus Fields. I think that was her big kind of innovation. Add salt to, or someone like it's either her or one of those famous cookie makers. They add salt to the chocolate chip cookies, and it makes them better. And you would not think that. That combination is super interesting, and part of that was at play with the Wu Tang Clan as well. He you know, RZA had to kind of play this negotiation game, but there was also every week or day or whatever, they showed up to the studio. It was 1 on 1, bring your best material, and whoever had the best material, they get that part of the song. And so you came back with new stuff trying different things and and kind of pushing each other's boundaries. That was a big part of the dynamic there. Well and and their first hit song, it was basically, you know, RZA's production, which is basically kind of repetitive for each one. And you have these 9 rappers or however many there were, basically rapping their part by themselves and then stepping back and then the next one going. And that all and I guess they were it was somewhat competitive, kinda like you were mentioning the story of how hip hop began be as being competitive against DJs. It was kind of this, you know, reminiscent of the history of the whole that whole musical genre. And that that competition feeling allowed them to create this, you know, huge hit song, which launched, you know, this mega this mega group. Yeah. And changed music and culture. And Plus, he had the kind of business acumen to say, stick with me. I you didn't mention this part as much in the book, but stick with me, and I'll make you all individ you mentioned it a little bit. You stick with me, and I'll make you all individually stars with different labels. And that was another big part of his storytelling to them, to keep him as a as a team, is that he was gonna focus on their success too. Well, I think there was some brilliance in there also that you know, knowing that if they get really big and then they're all on the same label, the competition is gonna start to the ego will creep in. And if he forces them to be on different labels, they might not be happy about that, but you're not competing against each other with your solo stuff as much, which is actually a good way to prevent the relationship from kind of boiling over into a place that you don't want it to go. But I think I mean, I love that story so much because I think it is kind of a meta analogy for the way that kind of every great innovation kind of ever happened is by mixing different ingredients in interesting ways, and it is, agnostic as to whether the people got along at first or whether they even knew each other or whether they even remain on the team. Like, think of the Wu Tang Clan again. It's easy to conceive that at different points, different members could have just dropped out by keeping the same basic philosophy. They could have brought someone else in, and Yeah. Boom. That still would have been a successful rap group. By themselves, I don't think anyone would say any one of them individually was the best rapper ever. No no way. Yeah. And, you know, post kind of Wu Tang's heyday, they all did pretty well, and some did more well than and some did better than others. But, yeah, if they just start if it just started out as the RZA, putting out Protect Your Neck by himself, no way. Are you kidding? Yeah. I I think that there's something interesting there. There's there's a level of humility, again, that had to happen in the beginning of that that led to all of that success. So now let's talk about the intellectual humility part because I think I think this, is such a great story in the book, and I think it's the one that probably most can can most easily be applied to the individual trying to get better and build their own team and philosophy of life and and so on. But you give the, one example of intellectual humility is Malcolm x. So Malcolm x, we kind of if if you only barely know who he is, you almost think of him as the violent Martin Luther King. Right. So, like, he came off saying, you know, just like, you know, he he was originally a follower of Elijah Muhammad, who started the Nation of Islam. And they had a kind of more violent approach to, civil rights and, you know, how to fight for it, literally fight for it. And Martin Luther King had more of this Gandhi approach. But then Malcolm x goes off. He becomes disenchanted with Elijah. And this I'm just retelling your story. Goes off and go you know, goes on a journey to to Mecca, comes back, with a new philosophy that, you know, not about, necessarily I don't know. I'll let you describe it. He comes back basically with a more just it doesn't matter what we get. Just respect us. And it's a story of love more than a story of hate. Right. There there's a reason why Malcolm x went down in history as one of the great civil rights pioneers, and, and it's because of this story that you're telling of what happened to him. If he had died 2 years before, we wouldn't have that story. He was anti civil rights movement for most of his life, for most of his adult life. He thought that Martin Luther King was an idiot. He when Kennedy was assassinated, he said he had it coming. You know, he was not known for being this, sort of loving, kind civil rights leader that that we know him as, and that's because he had this huge transformation. So the story of Malcolm X is, is one of basically, the question is, how do you change deeply held beliefs? How do you change your mind about something that's important to you? And not only that, that you're that you're you know, there wasn't the notion of a personal brand then, and maybe there shouldn't ever be the notion of a personal brand. But, certainly, Malcolm x's followers and listeners looked up to him for this violent stance. And so you have to have a so he had this investment in in this per this character he had created for himself. He had this enormous investment in that. Yeah. So it's not only kind of, intellectual humility in in changing, your mind, but there was great, risk. Ultimately, of course, he was sassy, but there was there was great risk to your reputation among your followers, the people who were closest to you, when you when you change minds like that. Well, and your life work too. Yeah. So the the thing key ingredient that you need in a team that is more than the sum of its parts, you don't just need people who think differently, who can push each other, who can have that great friction. You don't just need disparate inputs. You also need the ability to change. You can have the battle. You can do all that, but then if everyone goes home and and doesn't change their mind about anything, you're not gonna move further past what you would on your own. So intellectual humility is this virtue that, that has been studied a little bit, but over the last couple of years, there's been some big kind of developments in being able to actually measure it. But it's four things. It's being able to respect someone else's viewpoint. It's not being overconfident intellectually, so not being too sure that everything you know is right. It's, being willing to revise your viewpoint and being able to separate your ego from your intellect. If you can do those 4 things, then you're kind of the ideal person to be working with, assuming that you're smart and you're bringing something to the table. If everyone in your group has has those things, then you can be almost unstoppable. So what the Malcolm X story is is, I think, one of the greatest examples in history of someone who had every reason not to do those things, every reason not to change his mind, not to respect other people's viewpoints. You know, he he was the victim of systemic and personal racism his whole life. His father was murdered by the KKK. His house was burned down by white supremacists. He grew up in this really hostile environment. He'd have a reason to, you know, to be bitter about, race and about racial issues in in the United States. And then he went to jail when he was pretty young, and when he was there, he had this incredible transformation that was sort of the first hint that this is a guy who can change his mind, but he was still very young. He converted to this nation of Islam, this this religious group that was sort of cult y at the time. It was like 400 people. He converted to that. He stopped cursing. He, you know, he started doing all of these, you know, kind of healthy things, got out of prison, and then became this preacher for this movement. And he helped turn this movement into this massive thing. And then, yeah, at the end of his life, he, had another huge change of heart where he decided that this movement was incorrect. He changed his religion again and then became this great civil rights hero who I say that he was kind of a crucial part of the team that helped us, you know, win civil rights in America, make the civil rights, you know, movement happen because you had this nonviolent movement with Martin Luther King and, you know, and Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin is sort of this less known figure who's a former communist that that was kind of on the the far left of this movement, but they were they were very much about this nonviolent protest, which is very novel and and interesting and cool. But there was an element of what, Malcolm x preached that was actually pretty important. And towards the end of Martin Luther King's life, people said that he started to sound like a nonviolent Malcolm x. Malcolm x preached about self respect. And, and as opposed to talking specifically about, specific solutions like segregation and integration and all that, he kind of he kind of made it more broad, which is that, respect for for African Americans would be would would would ultimately provide the solutions. Yeah. And so, so a lot of Malcolm x's philosophy ended up translating into and becoming a a part of, you know, Doctor King's philosophy and and helping the movement. And he also was this great public face that, that a lot of Americans, Black and White, were very afraid of for a long time because he was a sort of violent fringe preacher. And then he had this huge transformation. He could change religion, but, also, you know, he's the leader of this super violent group. Talk about a risky move. So the question I had is, how does someone do that? What what allows you to do that? And the answer is intellectual humility. And the story the short version of the story of how he did that is when he basically went to Mecca, did a pilgrimage, met other people, put himself out of his, you know, homeland where all of his ego and his ideas were attached to him. Right. So your your point is is that that traveling and immersing yourself in a completely foreign environment will help you with that. It'll detach your ego from your intellect. And then he went and he lived in Africa for several months, and his daughter said the more he traveled, the freer he became. And and you make the point in the book. It's not only the more countries you've been to, but the more time you spend in a specific country, like, living in a country will also increase your intellectual humility. But if you don't have the money and resources or time to travel, you mentioned that reading lots of books will also do it. Watching lots of Netflix. Right? Taking in stories of people So I watch binge watch Netflix every night? Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Taking in stories of people who are not like you is a good way to reinforce the neural pathways in your brain that basically say there's more than one right way to do things, and that's okay. I think that's also a way to basically like, people always say, find what you're passionate about, And people don't have the time or the resources to try lots of things to see what they're passionate about, but they do have the time to read. And you could read a lot about different things and different people and different perspectives, and some things will catch fire inside of you, and that's what you become passionate about. Yeah. And so, clearly, Malcolm X, through a combination of reading and traveling, mostly traveling, but but certainly a lot of reading, found he was more passionate about this other philosophy and how it applied to civil rights than the original philosophy he was part of. Yeah. And, I mean and that's super hard to do. And I think it says something about who he was, that he was able to do that. But, you know, what you're just talking about, there our our brains are malleable. You know, we can become more intellectually humble, and there's things that we can do. They've done studies brain scans of people who are monolingual and multilingual, and they find that multilingual people's brains actually look different. And some of the things that happen in your brain when you learn another language is your brain learns there's more than one right way to say something, And so you can hold those 2 things 2 different ways to say something in your mind and not freak out. And this actually forms neural pathways that or reinforces these neural pathways that transfer to other kinds of thinking. So if it's there's more than one right way to say a certain word and that's okay, your brain over time trains itself to say, well, hey, if someone has a different idea than mine, maybe that's okay too. Maybe I can respect that. Maybe I don't have to agree, but I can respect that. Maybe if that idea is really compelling, maybe I can change my mind and not feel bad about that because it turns out that thank you and gracias are both okay, so why not this? So, that's why I think actually teaching language in elementary school should be required if we we wanna make a small dent in, you know, not hating each other and being so polarized. Well, what's another way? Because, like, for instance, I'm not multilingual. Sure. And I'm never going to be. Well, so the the 2 that you talked about are the the ones that were the most highly correlated in the the study that I did for dream teams. Actually, starting to work on another study to kind of tease out more things. But living in other cultures so I actually did this this year, the 1st 3 months of this year, on purpose because of this research. Because I took the test that that you'll take, and it turns out that I am, the nice thing about the 4 factor intellectual humility test, you add a a 5th factor, which is openness to experience, then it gives you sort of a full picture of open minded. I found out that I am less open minded than I thought, and it's along a couple of the dimensions. I'm open to trying things. I respect people's viewpoints. Turns out I'm really bad at separating my ego from my intellect. So I can How can you test that? So this this assessment that you can get on my website and take action What's an example question? Oh, what are the questions? They're like these these personality assessment type of questions. Like, when someone tells me something I disagree with, I am likely to be upset. Scale of 1 to 5. 5 really upset. Scale of 1, not at all. And so based on what you put, and most people put, you know, 2, But, it turns out that, basically, when you pit everyone against each other, everyone will will score pretty well, but, but there's sort of the threshold. It's not 50% on these tests that makes you intellectually not humble. It's, like, 80%. So, yeah, so there's those kinds of questions. It's like a 40 question quiz, but it fills out these 5 factors, intellectual humility and openness to experience. Turns out that whatever the questions are that lead to ego and intellect for me are hard, which means that if you convince me I'm wrong about something, maybe I'll swallow it, but I will feel terrible about it. And, and my ego will be hurt, and I might actually try and find another way to disprove you later after I've thought about it. It reminds me of marriage, by the way. So, and Jordan Peterson has this example in his book, 12 Rules For Life. If if you're married, you're gonna be in lot gets in lots of arguments and bickerings with your wife over a long period of time, you know, or husband or whatever. And his point is, you know, you could the the you're always trying to prove that you're right and the other person is wrong. But if you're right he he says that if you're right a 1000 times in a row, chances are you're no longer married. So better to go for peace than to for a right. Well, you know, if yeah. So a thing that, that I decided to do based on this research is the 1st of this year, in the cold, terrible, dreary, depressing New York winter, I went to Mexico City. And I got an Airbnb, and I stayed in a couple different neighborhoods, but I lived in Mexico City. And I met people, and I spoke only Spanish. And I I have decent Spanish, but, they speak a lot of English there too. But I lived in Mexico City, and I just worked at coffee shops and wrote. And because the research shows that if you live in a culture that's not your own for a couple of months, that's the threshold when you start to develop more intellectual humility. So living in Mexico City, someone else's culture, learning that I'm wrong about things and it being okay, it's reinforcing in my brain this, these pathways that can hopefully help me to be a little bit better at separating my ego from my intellect. So that's one. So if you have 3 months that you can take a sabbatical, go live somewhere else. Don't just travel all over the world, you know, 1 week at a time. Actually, stay put. That that, turns out, is quite quite correlated. If you don't have money to travel, then I would suggest taking in a more diverse array of fictional television. So don't just watch the procedural mysteries. Also watch, you know, the medical stuff and the, you know, whatever. Watch Lost. Watch Alias, actually. Watch that one. I I would recommend Lost. That was one of my all time favorite shows. But, and JJ Abrams' first big hit. But, I would also add to that, don't go on social media. Because if you look at your Facebook feed, the way the algorithm apparently works right now is you're only gonna see the people you agree with all all the time. Reinforces what you think, and that's not good for training yourself to think differently. You know, it seems like there's there's a there it this has happened much more recently that which is that you're really not allowed to disagree with people anymore, or they will, quote, unquote, unfriend you. Yeah. You know, that's the it kinda it speaks back to what we were talking about. It's sort of depressing to me that we we had this Internet, which was the ultimate place where you could be a misfit, and now much of the Internet is no longer safe to explore your ideas and to, know, I can't talk on Twitter about something that I'm not sure about yet because I don't wanna risk being having my life be over because I said something that offended someone and then got turned into this mob. It's tricky because I I've definitely been subject to mobs a few times, and it's very painful. It's hard to recover. Yeah. And you're more resilient, I think, than a lot of people out there who and then then what are we left with? We're left with less dialogue, less debate, less of that cognitive friction that's gonna lead us to come up with better ideas. That kinda sucks. So what's, so I feel like I feel like intellectual humility, which you talk about quite a bit in the book, is really the most important part, not only for teams, but for the individual because that could lead then to, understanding the concepts behind, you know, building a great team. I also wanna mention having a good leader is also really important. Like, you know, some of these sports teams have a great leader. And when when the various sports stars of the team go off to other other teams, they don't have the same leader. They no longer perform well. And so the leadership is also very important. What what do you think makes a good leader? Well So, obviously, intellectual humility makes a good leader. Well, so the one of my favorite bits on that and, again, not a sports guy, but I love learning about the history of sports and learning about kind of the data behind sports because it's sort of this new territory for me as sort of a curious person, I guess. Really great book called The Captain Class by this guy named Sam Walker. Yeah. You mentioned that book in the in the I referenced him. Yeah. He He was the editor sports editor for The Wall Street Journal for many years. He wrote this book about what are the greatest teams in the world greatest sports teams ever in history. He had all these criteria. He boiled it all down to these, like, 11 teams or something like that. And what he decided is that the thing that makes a difference between the teams that have all the potential and don't turn into dynasties and the teams that do boils down to certain characteristics that you can see best in the captain of the team. And one of those is that the captains that have a lot of humility that lead from the shadows rather than from the front tend to be better at making their teams great. So these team captains that are not the star themselves are the ones that empower the rest of the team, the ones that show that it's okay to change your mind, it's okay to do things differently, the ones that kind of take the bullets for the rest of the team. So one of my favorites is this, one of Sam Walker's, teams is the team that I start the book Dream Teams with, which is the old Soviet Red Army hockey team that from, like, the late fifties to the nineties, basically, was the greatest hockey team. Huge dynasty, and there were different groups that kind of, you know, in different decades were sort of the king team, out of the Soviet Union. But there's this one co captain that they had in the seventies eighties, who was his name was Valery Vasilyev, and he did not even he was not even a good skater. He was he was not the best individual player. You know, he'd score. He'd he'd skate. You know, he'd defend. He'd do all that. But if you looked at his stats, you'd be like, no way. Should this guy be the captain? It should be, you know, Fitasov who can, you know, makes, like, a 1000000 points a year. But this guy, when he was on a team, the team was the greatest it ever was. And when he was not there, the team did a little bit less well. And he did all of these little things to, to kind of enable the team to be good. And there there's a couple that actually tie directly back to what we've specifically talked about. One is he played at the margins of the rules. So he he knew, and and at the time, this was not common. He knew that, it was legal to get thrown out of the game and, and, you know, to get the penalties or whatever on purpose. So if he did something that got him thrown out on purpose or that got him in the penalty box on purpose, it was still legal. It was okay according to the rules. But people didn't do that at the time. So he would throw himself in front of whoever he wanted to take out, get thrown in the penalty box, and it didn't matter because he'd done some damage to the other team. He would do things like that at the margin of the rules to help his team do better. So so he would take make this, valuation that if I do this, my team will have one less member for a while, but the the positives of me doing this, will outweigh the negative. Right. Which is laterally legal to break the rules because there's a there's it's like a contract. There's a punishment. Right. You break the rules. It's part of the game. Right. It it reminds me actually, I just wanna give as an example. Let's say you have credit card debt, and you don't wanna have credit card debt anymore. Just don't pay it. Because then, yes, there there it's it's it's you you kinda you know, you the society is set up to feel like you have to pay your debt, but, actually, there's a contract. You'll have your credit score will go down. They could potentially go after you years from now, but maybe the short term benefits is you have enough money to get your feet back on the ground, like, because you maybe you just lost your job and, you know, you can bring the price. But you're that's part of the contract. Yeah. I mean, I think right. You're not gonna as long as you're not doing something that is outside of the rules. Right? You're playing within the rules. In that case, there's a punishment, and you accept that. Right? So I think playing at the margin of the rules, it's it's lateral thinking. It's figuring out what is the real goal. The goal is to win. And there's all these ways that we can do it, but everyone says, you know, you only get the penalty if you make a mistake. But the rule is not that you can't do it on purpose, so he did it on purpose. He also he went to bat for the players with their coach. They had this there were kind of 2 coaches that were instrumental in this team being great. One was this guy that made them learn, like, ballet and dance moves and kind of train to be hockey ninjas. The other was this guy that was just, like, this taskmaster that they all hated. He forced them to practice harder than any other coach did. And, they hated him, and he was also a huge jerk. But they needed him, but they kind of also needed their captain to push back on that guy once in a while. And so that guy would get in physical fights with the coach. And both of them, the strange thing would be is they'd they'd get in a physical fight. He choked the guy on the bus one time, you know, his own coach, and then they'd show up back to practice the next day as if nothing had happened. They had this crazy relationship where that was part of the push and pull of, of how they could get bring the best out of the team. And the coach had to have the humility to handle that. Yeah. He he coach saw that as a positive too, which is you know, it takes a special relationship to be able to do that. But the greatest team captains in history, according to Sam Walker, and I think you can see this in business as well, in other areas where there's teams, they're the kind of team captains that show through demonstration that the purpose of what the team is trying to accomplish is more important than their own personal purpose, and they're willing to find alternate ways to get there. It's interesting because so it's, it reminds me of Nassim Taleb's skin in the game book a little bit. Because you take the example of Malcolm x, Elijah Muhammad, he got disenchanted with because Elijah was buying mansions, buying big cars, seemed to be taking this really important historical cause and using it for personal gain at some point. He may he might not have started that way. I don't know. And Malcolm X got disenchanted and basically put skin his own he took risk by putting his own skin in the game in terms of advancing a a bigger picture than his personal advancement, which was the picture of civil rights, by changing his opinion even though it created this great risk. So so the idea is you have to Yeah. You have to have both risk and reward, in your decisions. And you know who will do anything for a team that they're on? Is someone who sees their leader do that. I think there's a lot of people in the civil rights movement that saw the risk that he took and the price that he paid for that that got more on board with doing what needed to be done in order to make that movement happen. You think of, like, the classical, like, war movie that the lead the the leader of the troop will go out on the front line Yeah. To to lead his troops. Yeah. So I think, you know, when you ask what are the characteristics of a leader that can help make a dream team, they're the leader that will show that all these things that we're talking about. You need the differences. You need the friction. You need the humility. A leader that demonstrates that is the kind of leader that that will create a team to be better than it could be. So even though this is a book about teams, I think we've talked about, like, I don't know, 5 to 10 different things where an individual can constructively use these ideas and stories to better their life. And part of it is thinking about the people around you and how they form a team. Part of it is about how you create expand your own, you know, land of possibility, of ideas you could pursue, and that makes you more creative, which makes you more productive and innovative and so on and and have greater chances of success. So, again, I think this is like like a a a massive, massive smart cut is what is is sort of thinking in terms of dream teams and the techniques, either individually or as a team, to form a dream team. And, so that's why I like it. I think it's a great, almost sequel. I know you have, the other book in the middle, the book about story that you wrote with with your team. But this is this is such a great sequel to Smartcuts. I really encourage people to listen to to to read both. One thing I was thinking of, you should write, like, a new Profiles in Courage. Speaking of John f Kennedy earlier, that's the book he won the Pulitzer Prize of. Think about, like, Malcolm x and and that example of intellectual humility. That's like a real profile in courage. In fact, he he died for it. What other examples not mentioned in this book do you think represent that level of of risk and intellectual humility? Profile. That that profile encourage. Yeah. Oh, it's a really good question to think about on the spot in history. I'm thinking about because hardly any major historical figures admit that they're wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, we we always sort of lionize these great business leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. Story that comes to mind that I heard from someone who worked for Elon Musk is actually it's it's gonna sound s**tty, but it's, to me, kind of a courageous move. Elon Musk is known as, you know, he's the most brilliant guy ever. Right? He has these companies, brilliant people who work for him who burn out very quickly, which, you know, we can talk about whether that's a good strategy or not from a team standpoint, but he's really good at convincing people to to work with him and to to work towards, you know, getting to Mars or, you know, clean energy and all these things that he's working on. And, my buddy said that he watched this engineer who'd been working, you know, 80 hour weeks on this thing. I believe it was at SpaceX. Some component, that, you know, he was there. It's part of the mission, building this component for the satellite, whatever it is. And, and he he said he watched Elon Musk come by the guy's desk and say, I know you've spent the last year working on this thing, and thank you for your hard work, but we're not doing this anymore. I need you to work on this other thing. We're no longer doing the whatever satellite thing. And, he's like, I'm sorry. Do this. Thank you. You know, we'll talk more later. And he leaves. And my buddy who reruns the story is like, you could just see the, you know, the depression sort of settle on this guy who'd just been doing that. But, there's kind of 2 things there. You know, one is it takes a lot of guts as a boss to be able to make the kind of decision that takes all of this investment and effort that you sunk into working on something and just say, we're not doing it anymore. We're doing this other thing. It takes a lot of courage to be the kind of leader who can say, even though we spent all this time and and, you know, and you've worked on this so hard, we're going in another direction, that that's pretty courageous. The other thing that I think it says about this is being able to then have that person not quit and convince them to, you know, work on that next engineering project. That's It sounds like, Elon Musk, though, was in that the way you told that story, it sounds like he was pretty passionless, the way he just like, how did he convince the guy to stay? I'm I yeah. I don't know that part of the story. It does sound part of the broader narrative of SpaceX, which is that we have this this broader mission. And then he's part of that broader mission means Elon Musk sees sees more of it than you know, more angles of it than everybody else. So he so you have to trust him as being part of the narrative of the story that following his decisions will, you know, accomplish his mission. Yeah. You know? So that's that's an example. And the other one that I can think of that's from have you seen Hamilton? No. I haven't. Alright. Alexander Hamilton's awesome. Right? And the musical is proof of that. It's also a brilliantly written piece of art, which I think actually combines a lot of what we've been talking about, the different you know, integrating hip hop into a story about the founding of America on Broadway. This is super I I think it's it's a combination of disparate elements that really worked, and and that's why it was amazing and brilliantly done. But in that musical, it tells a little bit of the story, that I think the full story is, you know, is super worth looking into. But, but, basically, Hamilton could have been president. He was that was the track he was going on. But there were a few other guys who were kind of in the running, and at one point, Hamilton would be president. There's a point where, basically, he throws his political support behind the guy he doesn't like because it's the best decision for the country. And I'm gonna get it wrong. I believe it was Jefferson. He and Jefferson did not get along. They they did some great work together. Well, they were on opposite sides. Right. But I think Hamilton and, again, I didn't see the show, but I think Hamilton didn't like, what was it, John Adams, what were they called? The sedition, acts. Yeah. Right. I believe that's what it was. He also didn't like Burr. Burr never forgave him for kind of what he he did to him, but he was willing to throw his political support behind his rival so that the bad guy wouldn't win even though he personally, you know, hated the idea of Jefferson being present, and maybe for good reason. Well, Hamilton was more financially savvy. Yeah. I mean, Hamilton started the 1st bank in the country. Right. Yeah. So, you know, that's that's a pretty brave thing to do. You know, we're talking about courage and very publicly viewed courage. Right? You know, Thomas Jefferson owes the presidency to this guy who had the the guts to stand up for him even though he hated him. And, you know, and there were ramifications around that that, you know, were very impactful and very important. And and his personal some of what the musical also shows is that, you know, history kind of glosses over the the uglier parts. You know, Hamilton had this affair that he had that he then came clean on, which he could have tried to bury or hide or kind of be s**tty about and and ruin other people's lives about it, but instead he came clean on that, and that ended up sort of syncing his political prospects in the future after, you know, he could have been president after Jefferson. But I think he made a very brave decision there by telling the truth, in that case even though, you know, it was over for him. Those are that's thinking historically and and kind of on theme. That's a a couple of cases where, yeah, it takes some humility to be able to do that, especially when you know how smart you are. I think, maybe an artistic one is you look at Bob Dylan switching from, just kinda like what he calls his regular guitar to electronic at one point. All his fans booed him the first time he he played at a massive concert and took out an electric guitar. And, you know, I don't I don't know if you can call his profile and courage in the same way, but, you know, he he basically lost his entire fan base at least for a small period of time. Interesting. Yeah. So I think there's I think there's a book there. Yeah. There's, you know, there's this big piece in The New York Times yesterday or 2 days ago about the intellectual dark web. I don't know if you saw this thing. No. Basically, there's, there there are academics, intellectuals that are starting to say things that sort of go against the grain, both on the left and the right on certain issues. And this profile was a story of these professors who had said these controversial things, even though it meant that they would lose their professorships at, at these colleges. And, you know, some fairly complicated characters there, but that story itself, I think, is is worth looking up. I think there's a number of ones. You mentioned Jordan Peterson who's been on Okay. Jordan Peterson certainly, went up against his whole academic establishment. Was he University of Toronto? Yeah. University of Toronto. Nice. Yeah. So I I think that that in today's era of when we're talking about how you can be decimated by the Internet, being willing to stand up whether we agree with you or not, being willing to stand up for a viewpoint that is not being given airtime that could be important for us to consider, I think that takes a lot of courage. Well, maybe that'll be your next book, maybe not. Do you have a next book lined up, or you're just so so focused on marketing this book? You know what? I think it'll be a while before I do another book. I wanna do some television stuff next. What what kind of television stuff? You know, fun stuff. Like writing a script? Like Alias? I well, I'm particularly interested in just how, you know, indie movies have happened, but indie television has not quite happened except in sort of short form. And a couple of examples, like high maintenance being, you know, one where it's so cheap to create content now, video content, versus, you know, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. I like the idea of getting into either making something or writing something or or backing some, television projects that go outside of the typical studio production system. Well and it's so easy to do because if you can back and make something that is good, then there are so many venues now to sell it to, not just Netflix or Amazon, but there's, obviously, Hulu, iTunes, YouTube Red. There's Vimeo. Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a a ton of play basically, any site that has a lot of traffic could have original programming on it. Yeah. So I've been thinking, I haven't really been talking about this, but thinking about how do I I take what I I love and I I think I'm getting good at, which is writing, and then take the principles that I've been writing about, which is lateral thinking and teamwork. How could I apply that to a different thing than, you know, than books? And applying that to television sounds interesting. Maybe there's other ways to other areas where I could do that same thing. But I like the idea of sort of putting into practice, what I've been learning and and sort of adventuring into, but as a creative person in a different way. So that's I I I love this. I can't wait to see the the first outcome of that. So, Shane, once again, thank you for coming on the podcast. I've really enjoyed spending time with you ever since the the first podcast we did. We've we've we've hung out several times, including playing ping pong. I've been on your podcast. I've hung out at Contently, your your company. This book is great. I highly recommend Dream Teams Working Together Without Falling Apart, not only because just the great stories, but I think there's so much in here where and and this and, actually, in our discussion, this came to light to to this came to light for me even more. There's so many things in here which can be used by the individual to improve themselves, and I really think it's a a natural extension. You don't have to read Smartcuts, but I think it's a natural extension to to that book as well and and shows your style, Figgy, as you've built a great team and a great company. I mean, Constantly is a big a big and unique business. So well. Thank you. Yeah. So Dream Teams by Shane Snow. Thanks so much. Thanks, James.