Transcript
Replacing Direct Teaching With Shared Personal Experience
00:00:00 Jeff Sarris
We have a new rule right now: no teaching. Let's talk about that.
This is a personal attack. Welcome to Useful Not Famous. This is a show where we share things that we find interesting with you because maybe you'll find them interesting, too.
I'm Amara.
Amara with one name. Anyone have a last name?
Okay, I'm Jeff, last name.
Not yet. Hey, hey, hey! Didn't adopt me yet.
Isn't that funny? Marriage is almost like an adoption. I'm adopting you into my family.
This is what we're talking about today, so…
I never thought… Anyway, shower thoughts, but on a more…
What does that mean? What is like why is that something for us, and why has it impacted you specifically today?
This has been quite an issue for me because I love teaching. Like I love teaching people new things that I learn, like all the time, no matter what. But the problem is when I'm trying to make content—and I don't know, maybe you struggle with this, too—but when…
You being me or the listener?
Everyone in the world. Yeah, you, royal listener. I am bowing to you.
Anyway… I didn't realize what I was doing, but I go so hard on teaching because I realized I hate when people make a video and there's no resolution at the end, meaning there's no like cut-and-dry next steps, because I don't think that's valuable, inherently. Like…
Yeah, like I don't feel like that's useful. It's like a lot of people live in the theory of, "Well, here's how you could think about doing it," but then there's no actual like, "Here's what to do," or, "Here are some actionable steps," and that drives me bonkers. But I think, personally, I go too hard the other way where it's like, "Only do this or else I'm going to kill you." And it's hard because I like teaching.
Like I have been a teacher, and I enjoy that part of it.
Yeah, college level. Ooh, I'm drinking bone broth, and I have a little phlegm. College level, professor.
I still love sipping your bone broth, by the way. Sorry, not sorry. What?
So, yeah, college-level teaching. So, I'm used to being the one in the authority position that has all the answers. But life, and ultimately being a good teacher, is about not always having…
What are you doing?
Sorry, I almost knocked my laptop off the table.
Which is what we're recording to.
But life is about becoming like, still being an ever-long student. Like, forever, just always be a student, and you don't have to have all the answers. And giving up that authority has been difficult.
And also, contrary to what I'm doing on this podcast—this is like a, this is a very meta podcast—I'm not used to talking about myself at all. I talk about ideas or where we're moving forward or strategy. That's it.
That's all we talk about. So, talking about myself is very, very weird, and it feels foreign to me because I want to focus on other things. So…
So, I think the thing is, so this shift now, it's a big shift into being more effective at teaching, but the rule is no teaching, so what does that actually mean?
That is more that instead of saying, "You should do this," or "You need to think about this," or what you just recorded, like, "Look in your closet right now. Da-da-da-da-da." We're not as engaged in things like that. For us, like that's…
Your dad calls us "efficiency experts," which is like funny, but it's also kind of sort of correct.
Yeah, because he doesn't understand what we do because he's 82 years old almost.
And he understands more now, but he had said that. And he's like…
And we're just like, "Ha, idiot!" And then now we're like, "Oh, that actually is like exactly what we do." So, he can see through the bullshit. As an insurance man, he can see through it.
But, effectiveness and concisitude. But, it is funny because on True, our WordPress theme, I had put a little tagline. "With True, the…" Do you remember what it is?
No, I just remember concisitude.
I put,… I used the word elaboratelessness. And I thought that was funny.
It's very concisitude. Much concisitude.
Anyway. Anyway, but it's about efficiency and effectiveness and how we can achieve as much as we can in the shortest period of time possible. But that's not what we enjoy learn- We don't enjoy learning in that way.
Like there's one book that someone who wrote a trilogy of books, and we loved the first two. They're storytelling and teaching. The third one is basically a textbook.
It's like, "If you want this, do that. If you want this, do that." Which is where we lean in how we convey things.
Framing Instructional Content Through First Person Narrative
So, this shift now is teaching, but through the lens of you, sweetie across the table.
I'm sweetie across the table? You're the sweetie across the podcast!
But it's at/from you because I've learned, like, how we can convey this is, "I've learned this. I just discovered this. I just…" Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.
We never say "I." Like in our normal lives, we don't talk about ourselves, like you said. But that's how we can take people along on a journey and have them feel something. Because we've talked about that a lot, where the entire point of everything you create is to make people feel something.
Preferably something positive, but if it's negative, you're going down a different path than we would, but it's effective, too, as we can see.
And also the negativity is temporary a lot of times, or people will sort of just forget about you. So, I always like to think that negativity online is very temporary. Like it's gone within 24 hours.
Like even if you try, you'll still find people that absolutely love you and love what you're doing in the midst of having negativity. Like we have a friend, very big platform, hated by the… I've never seen so much hate and vitriol for a person in my entire life, like in their comment section.
But there are people in there who are like, "Love your content! This was so helpful." Like I've never seen anything like it. And I showed it to you and I was like, "Holy hell!"
Well, and it's attention. Yeah, like, but if you're if you're striving, and they don't want to like actually make a point of that. If there's negativity, it's one thing.
Like that just happens, we all get it. But if your goal is, "Make people feel something. I want to make them feel angry." That's a different, that's a completely different thing and not where we think the value is.
Like people have built platforms like that and a few of those people have made good money and built something from it, but is that what you want to feel all day, every day is just hate and negativity and like feeding sort of the troll world and just living there?
Well, yeah. You should build a community on like positivity and joining more so.
See, this is teaching. "You should." And this is something we're going to try to do. We don't like this.
Like, I don't want to feel…
I know. I don't want to feel the negativity. I don't want to live in that.
I want to be surrounded by positive people.
Who are doing things, like you. Who are motivated and driven…
I mean, that wasn't on my list for the show, but I wholeheartedly agree. But, but doing things. Like that's, we get energy, like we get energy from people who are driven and motivated and doing things.
The negativity is something we just completely avoid. We don't we don't feed into it because it doesn't feel good to us, and we don't want to perpetuate that.
Yeah, as soon as somebody brings up anything negative, we do sort of just shut down a little bit, and we're just like, "Okay, how do we navigate through this to get to the other side?"
And like not even that we're… We're not actively trying to shut it down, it's just… Okay.
How Rigid Mindsets Cause Online Negativity
I am. Because I'm like, I don't… Negativity is tied up in identity, and it's when people are so held to their beliefs, like they can't see anything past what it is they've always known…
"I'm right, you're wrong."
Exactly, that's what it is. So, that's like, truly, like I believe that's where negativity comes from, is the lack of openness of thinking of different things. Now, you don't have to believe anything else, but that is why negativity is so strong, because it's attached to your identity and your belief system….
Well, and like we've been learning a lot just about like different cultures and sort of how religions operate, too. And there's sort of, there's a whole set of religion, I don't want this to be about religion, so I'm not going to say which ones or anything, but there's a set of religions where it is about belief and you cannot question anything.
And then there's other religions who are about questioning everything to further your connection with it, which I think is it's a fascinating dichotomy of how different those two approaches are and the type of people who come out on the other side from them.
Yeah, it's about learning and constantly growing versus just, "Well, you do as I say, and that's it." Like it's a very authoritarian perspective versus the, "Well, no, like you should be growing as a human being on this earth." But, yeah, we won't go down the religion route.
Well, and that nothing is right.
Like everything is perspective. So, what's your perspective on it is valuable. And like, so the negativity, we'll we'll let sort of people's perspectives in, but we're never refuting them.
We're never like, "Well, now let me tell you and let's let's argue back and forth."
Debate is beautiful because debate isn't positive or negative, it's merely expressing ideas and diving deeper through another perspective.
Yeah, and that's how it should be, which would be amazing, cause that kind of conversation I can have all day, every day. Like, I'll 100% hear your thoughts and maybe not agree, maybe be like, "Oh, that actually is interesting. Like, I didn't think about it that way." But so many people approach it now as just like, exactly like you said, like, "I'm right, you're wrong." And that's it.
And like there won't be any discourse further, or if you do ask people, "Oh, well, why?" There is no conversation at all. It's just like, "Oh, well, I got to go." Like there's there's no further reasoning why, because like you haven't thought about it.
Yeah, it's, "I consumed this…"
Yeah, or, "This is what I've known forever, this is what my family does."
"…news, social media," whatever it is, yeah. And it's like, "I consumed this. It's true.
Argh!"
Yeah, which… There's nowhere to go with that. So, that's that's the type of conversation where I just shut down and I'm like, "Okay, we're not going to have a conversation.
It's me listening to you vent about whatever." And that's fine, like we all need to vent, but I don't know, it's just…
And this is sort of us venting. So, like I actually feel like swinging this back around, because that is, like we are we're actually, it's so meta, we're sort of in a negative spot talking about it.
And it doesn't make you feel good, but…
Science of Storytelling Book and Narrative Psychology
No, but the book that I'm reading right now is actually really good, which is what I wanted to swing back around to. It's about… So, I've been reading a lot of things about storytelling, which is how we've gotten to sort of not teaching in content as much, but being more personal and story-driven.
And I just want to add one more thing: again, to clarify, teaching, but not teaching in the way that we inherently do, teaching using story.
Yeah, cause I teach very fact-based, like, "This is this, that's that, black and white, no." Which is exactly what we were just saying with people, where it's just like, "This is this, that's that." So, very meta.
Yeah, and like this show is Useful Not Famous because we think usefulness above everything.
Like we don't care how many people are listening or out there, but we want this to be useful, and I think we sort of in a meta way have been doing this on the show lately, because we haven't gone in with a, "We're going to teach you this,"
…but I think it's still useful because we're exploring these things that are helpful to us. But we're going to get better at it, but keep going with your book.
That is interesting, though, cause that's how we started this show. On our other channel, it was three parts, because also, behind the scenes, I needed to make it easy for me to edit the clips. Now we're not doing clips, which we should.
We're going to figure that out. But I had a very like systematic approach, and it was very like, "This, this, this." Like all teaching. Barely any personality in there.
Now this is much more just relaxed and basically how we talk off camera, too. So yeah, I don't know. That was an interesting little insight.
But yeah, and then in the book, storytelling.
Yes. So, the book that I'm reading right now is The Science of Storytelling. I forget what the guy's name is.
I think it's Will Storr, S-T-O-R-R. Such a great book. It combines the research of why we love stories, and what it is about them, and why like the psychology of our brain.
So, why certain things stick, and then just like a deep dive into how the human brain functions. And there are tons of examples. I'm like trying to distill this whole book down, but it's it's difficult for me.
What…
What are you taking from it personally? Isn't that funny, though, because you want to distill it down, but it's like, what's How are you feeling about it? How does it sort of affect your brain?
It's such a good book, cause I like having the scientific data in it, too, to back up what he's saying, and then now I can sort of take that and use that to look at maybe things that I'm seeing or feeling in a different way. And then he's also talking about like the chapter that I'm in right now is about characters, and having the main character, the protagonist, and then you always have the antagonist.
So, it's whoever the protagonist is sort of fighting against in a way. That's been so helpful to me to get into like quote-unquote "main character energy," cause I just want to be the facilitator always, of like, "Here's the knowledge," and like that's sort of what I learned—not sort of, that is what I learned going through grad school and college and everything.
You were very good at that.
Yeah, because that's what you're supposed to do as a historian, is be very like, take yourself out of it and just present the facts. Like, "I'm just the researcher, this is what I've found." That's what you're supposed to do. That's what I spent years doing.
That's what I was very used to, and even as an archivist, like you take- there's no personality. It's just da, da, da.
Well, for MAVEN, too. Like this is what we do, is we live behind the scenes, and we make people better. That's the whole purpose.
Exactly. And this is what we've been telling people to do, which is like the most ridiculous thing, is be yourself on camera. Like tell people more things.
Like some of the questions we would ask are like, "Would you rather jump off a building or eat a shark?" Not that ridiculous, but almost. Which would you rather do?
I'm just That one is That's such a weird example to come up with!
I don't know, it was just in my head! Anyway, moving on. But doing that stuff to be like, "No, we need to see what your personality is," and it's more storytelling, and it's more who this person actually is that you bond with, and it is vulnerable being yourself.
Like as soon as the camera turns on for me, I'm not myself. So, I'm trying to change that. Like on my other secret platform, I'm very much myself.
"On my other secret platform."
Yeah, I'm very much me. I feel so relaxed because it's stuff that I feel more passionately about, whereas my personal, I've always struggled with, because I don't know how to be me, which sounds so ridiculous. I'm 32 years old, I should be me by now.
Well, I think… Who's that?
… But I think it's it's the "because." So, this is a little inside baseball. Amara never used social media for the longest time until…
…right before Not right before we started MAVEN, but part of why we started MAVEN is she started using it, built a big platform on TikTok, and built the skill set to do things like that for others. A big platform being all relative in a very specifically for art history, and again, wasn't about the size of the platform, but connecting with people.
But it's easy to say built a big platform because it that is sort of a credibility thing that people like, but it's not the purpose on our end.
Yeah, but that does speak to a lot of people because everybody wants the big platform and it's like, okay, but what does it do for you? It doesn't do anything.
And that went a little off topic there. Your personal stuff, it was always the "because." "Why am I making this? What am I doing with this?"
Balancing Analytical Thinking With Creative Problem Solving
I'm analyzing it too much. Yeah, I'm I'm I am shockingly analytical, and I didn't realize it until I met you. I always thought of myself as very creative, but I do have like…
Yes. That's true. It's not a "but," it's an "and."
With no analytical skills. I never thought of myself as analytical. I fucking hated math, I hated science.
Well, I liked the ideas of it.
This was the thing, like we talked about this so much. I'm like, "No, you are one of the most analytical, mathematically thinking, logical brains maybe the most I've ever met." But you're like, "I hate math." And I'm like, "No, you hate the idea of being a person who likes math."
I know. And that, but that's the thing. That's what you learn sort of in school is like smart isn't cool.
Well, when you move 27 times as a child, you're like, "I can't be with those fucking nerds. Like, I have to be with the like cool kids, so fast-track."
But there's the two bits of it, too, though, because then you're like, "Oh, math, analytical, that means I'm not creative," which is not true.
No, I know. And the more I've learned about the world, the more I've realized that some of the most creative people on this planet are highly analytical. Like I thought it was just the people that just exist in the fucking ether and they're not even on this planet, they're like so out there.
But it's the people that actually understand the base principles of like analytics, like not even just analytics, not like Google Analytics, but just…
Know the rules so you can break them. Art is breaking the rules.
Exactly. Yeah, and like Leonardo da Vinci, I would argue, one of the most brilliant people of all time.
I don't think you have to argue that.
Well, yeah. But like extremely analytical. Like that's all his art is, is math and science.
That's all it is. And it's like this beautiful, harmonious marriage between the two disciplines, three disciplines.
Yeah, I was going to say interdisciplinary. I think I feel like my emphasis was on a weird spot, but…
Which is perfect, and we need to like go back to that, cause that's how you get to the people. Exactly, like that's… Like Elon, I would only think of him as being super scientific and analytical and mathematical.
Also, though, complete creative. Like you have to be. You can't have one or the other, cause either if you only do math, you're a Harvard professor.
But no, even that, there is beauty in creativity in finding out I'm just talking myself into a fucking hole, but like…
Well, no. So, this is the thing, though, it's not you're analytical, therefore you're creative. I think that's something important.
So, if we take the Elon example, he is very analytical, he is an engineer, he is maybe—I don't know enough about his like practical engineering, even though it sounds like he does a lot of it…
He could be one of the most brilliant engineers currently today and one of the most outside-of-the-box creative people that you'll ever encounter. Like Steve Jobs, highly creative, but again, if you think about how he was creative, he was creative in creating products that people would buy, creative in creating and doing the things, it will build a huge business.
Well, that's analytical. That's that's thinking about like the numbers and who's going to like this. "Well, but wait, but it's the art side." Yeah.
It's both. But then the Harvard professor could be like I don't I think it's a drive thing, maybe a competitiveness. There could be a Harvard professor, brilliant math mind, he just wants to teach.
And I think I think it's possible that person that there's a person like that who is not creative.
I think we're all creative to a degree, but not in the degree that we're talking about.
Right. I know. I was thinking of my uncle when I said that, cause he was a Harvard professor, and I don't think he was very creative.
Well, and he's much older.
Brilliantly smart, like stupid smart. So anyway, so back to storytelling, though.
Oh, I just wanted to say one thing.
Penn Jillette, from Penn & Teller, his definition of art is whatever we do after the chores are done.
Which I think can connect because the chores are the analytical, sort of stuff.
This is the, "We have to do this." And knowing that we have to do this, we can creatively do this and creatively apply it to our art, we can There's so much more possibility. And I think the challenge becomes when someone says, "I'm creative," and then they're like, "That means I'm not doing any of that, and I'm not thinking about any of that."
But you're missing, that's the full Like, arguably you're not creating art, then.
Maybe. If the If we feel this definition holds, that art is what we do, whatever we do after the chores are done, then it's like, well, if you're not doing the chores, like the whole "starving artist" mentality, "I'm not doing the things to make money, because my art should speak for itself and make money."
Yeah, well, that's such a loaded quote. Like that's very interesting, cause also I'm thinking about, too, a lot of famous artists, they would do commercial work during the day, because that's how you make your money, and then you do your like fine art, quote-unquote, at night.
And I don't know, that's that's just very interesting, cause you can take that so many different ways. Anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.
No, you didn't, this is this is it. It's like, are you an artist without success? Success being sort of base needs.
If you can't fulfill your own base needs, can you even be an artist? I don't know.
Yeah, and I would argue, actually, that you're not very then not very creative, then.
Cause like part of, which I've learned from running a business now, and like just being in your space, is running a business is an art. Like there is a system to it, and just trying to figure out, like problem-solving is an art, and I never would have thought of it that way, which I know that's related to like math and science.
And I just want to say, we make systems and that's creativity, but there's rules.
So, the rules exist, and then our systems work within the rules.
Framing New Products Using Relatable Reference Points
Yeah, so that's like the Teller quote that you just read, is understanding the systems and the science of it, and then putting your own little art on it. There's a quote that I have in my Readwise app, which I love, by the way. You need a Readwise app if you read a lot, and you want to refer to things.
There's a quote from, I believe, it's Hitmakers. Really great book, also, where it's, "If you're trying to make something unfamiliar and new, make it familiar. If you're trying to make something familiar, make it new or unfamiliar." So, it's if you're trying to make something that everybody's done already, add a little spin to it, a little bit of flavor: gold.
If it's something completely new that none of us have any idea what it is, make it something that's familiar and like we know we have a touchpoint of like, "Oh, okay, so it's kind of like this." Like we need to explain that in our heads.
"1,000 songs in your pocket."
The iPod alone wouldn't work if we had no frame of reference for what it is.
It's like, "Oh, it's a hard drive that you carry around and can plug headphones into." It's like, "That's weird. Why would I do that?" But it's all it was a hard drive in your pocket.
So, you didn't have the computer. So, but what do we understand? We understand music, like a Walkman or a boombox or whatever.
You know, like, sort of, "her, back in the day." But it's like, what did you listen to music on? Well, now you have actually just all the songs in your pocket. It's not even a radio anymore, you're in control of it.
And we understand that, even though it's so beyond anything that anyone had experienced before.
Exactly. And I was just thinking about the Steve Jobs keynote where he unveiled the iPad and took it out of a manila envelope, like the thing that's in like every office ever, and he just pulls it out, and he had it with him the whole time. I can't remember if it was in his pocket or on the desk.
I think it was just on the desk.
So he pulled it out on the table, yeah.
That is so brilliant, because it's like, "I know how big that envelope is, about. It's like maybe 9×12 or whatever it is. You know how big that is for scale.
So, then you're like, "Wow, that's so cool! Like we're in the future!" And it's something that's familiar, yet unfamiliar. I don't know, I find that endlessly fascinating.
That was probably one of my favorite books I've ever read my entire life. That and the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
Okay, good. I always mess up his name, and I don't know why.
Oh yeah, Walter White. You started down the wrong path.
Oh wait, it's not that guy? But that was such an amazing book. Like that's one that I've heard people say that they reread books every single year.
That's one that I'm going to reread every single year. Like that was so good, so, so good. I don't know, if you're interested in literally anything business-related or just want that like creative spark, that book, it was like every single chapter, I was like, "Oh, we should try this!
Oh, we should do that!"
So, how did they teach, how did Walter Isaacson teach you in that book?
He didn't, it was a personal story. Oh my god, it's like being a human is like rewarding or something.
And that's something we're trying This is what comes back to like how we're shifting things is, this is how you teach, not how we teach.
And we're like, "Oh, that is more effective." If it was data, if it was just, "Steve did this, this, this, so you should do that,"
…it's just not interesting. It doesn't It doesn't mean anything, because all of this, all the teaching is really us taking in new knowledge, new information, new whatever, and reframing it with our creative minds into something new that's ours. That's all that we're learning for.
And we love stories, like as a human species. That is what I've learned from this book specifically, from all of the data, which is helpful. Like, literally, that is what our mind is wired for.
We're wired for the story, we're wired for human connection. Like that's how we survive and have lived forever. Well, not forever, you know what I mean.
Well, way longer than any lifetime that we can comprehend.
Yes. And I don't know. It's just been really interesting and fascinating to learn so much more about story.
But again, now I'm in my analytical phase, where I'm breaking down everything and I'm like, "Okay, well, why does live streaming work so well? And why does this work so well?" And like just I've also struggled with telling myself that is the work, because to me, I'm like, "I'm just watching fucking YouTube. Like, how is this work?" But I'm actually figuring out the mechanisms of why certain things are working, and it's it's this perfect little It is a system.
The more you look at how people have built big platforms or become public-facing figures, it truly is just a system, and knowing which levers to pull when, what to do, how to be… I don't want to like talk so nebulously, but there is like an exact formula, which is so fascinating. It just changes with the medium.
Well, and I think it's rules, again.
Rules versus a system, where rules The rules are in place and they're always in place, and you can craft a system within the this rule set. And it might be a new thing, like live streaming was new not that long ago,
…and now it's just like very grown up.
It's very like it's to where it is. AI is new. There's rules of AI.
There's rules how you can use it, what you can use it for. But now the art, the creativity is figuring out, "Okay, I understand these rules. How do I use this?
What systems can I create to have this benefit me, improve my life, whatever it is, or help others? How can I use this to help others?"
And like that's all, all it is.
I think what's important, too, it's hard because I don't want people to only be talking about themselves, because that's like That's a very important distinction.
We need to talk about this, for sure.
Like, so for us, we don't talk about ourselves in life. We talk to each other, mostly our deepest, mostly our the entirety of our deep conversations are with one another, rarely with others, because like we listen. That's We're wired to listen.
And this is why this is something, talking about this, is very much an us problem. How do we How do we inject ourselves more into our teaching, rather than data? For a lot of people, that's The problem isn't injecting themselves, their problem is listening.
But this show is for us. Like, this isn't about anyone else, this is about us, and I think that's something I'm glad you said that, something very important to make the distinction is almost like to understand who we are is step one before we decide, "Now we need to talk about myself all the time."
Right. And that is something that most people do very well, is talk about themselves. But there's a limit where I don't know how to approach this, because now I'm saying, "Well, no, like I need to talk about myself more," but it is also for a purpose.
It's for storytelling or sharing information, like…
Building Audience Connection Through Authentic Personal Sharing
Yeah. Like what I just posted was about synthetic clothing. That's something that we've been whole hog on lately.
We've just been going like hard on it and looking through all of our stuff, so then it was like, "Okay, how can I share this with people in a way that doesn't feel like, "Well, you should do this." And that's what I did on my first two takes. Like it took five takes, I think, but that was what I did on the first couple where it was very teachy, and that's just That is my mode right now.
So, if you're making content about you, we are tuning into your story, but it should… See, I'm doing it again. I feel like it should have some sort of benefit for the viewer, cause like I don't care that your kid got a medal.
Like, what the hell do I care, unless I'm like related to you? But if there's some story like I don't even know, I don't even have an example, but if it was like, "I'm so proud because they worked so hard." Like that's more of a story versus just like, "Look at this, and listen to me." It's like, "Nobody knows the behind the scenes, she was practicing 75 hours a week and doing all this and blah, blah, blah." I don't know.
Well, because I think, and I don't know if this is true, but for us, it's true.
We sound like aliens, also. We're just like, "How do I talk about me?"
Yeah, "Aha!" like I don't know if this is true, but for us, we don't talk about how we feel. We talk about how we feel to each other since day one.
Oh yeah. Nobody knows my feelings ever.
Like we know each other completely, but we don't convey how we're feeling about something or the…
The infallibility, like you sort of said that before.
What makes something interesting is the story. I wrote this down the other day, and I feel like we'll dive into this specifically on another episode, but we love seeing someone or something achieve something, to go from not successful to successful. And this is why sports are so powerful.
We see a team, let's let's say the 1990s New England Patriots, a football team who hasn't won a Super Bowl in so long. They've made it, like they played the Bears in '85 and the Bears destroyed them. They just, that team just can't figure it out.
And then they get this rookie quarterback, Tom Brady. They go to the Super Bowl and win it in his I think in his rookie year, which is like, "Oh, look at that! That's fun!" Then they win again and again.
And we start to hate them for succeeding. The problem with how we teach is we're like, "We've learned this, let me teach you how to do this." But nobody wants, unless you're a Patriots fan, you didn't want to see Tom Brady and the Patriots win again because they've done it. I want to see someone make it there, that's what we care about.
As soon as they're good at it and keep going, it's just like, "Boring. I don't care." And we live in the, "I've figured this out, let me convey to you what you need to know." But really, the magic is, "I just figured this out." Like if I can, and we've said this to people, like this has been something for a long time, if I'm one step ahead of you, I can better teach you, because I was where you are now yesterday, last month, last year.
But if I'm 10 steps ahead of you, I'm telling you what you should do, but there's no connection there. And that's a challenge.
Audience Perception of Underdogs and Continuous Striving
I just read this in my book, and I was going to bring it up to you, but I figured I'd save it for the podcast. But it's the whole underdog thing. We all love an underdog, and that is actually an interspecies phenomenon.
So, there was a study done on chimpanzees where…
I like how you said "panzees." Chimpanzees.
Where it was very similar with humans, where there's an underdog, we all feel bad for the underdog, and we want them to succeed. But as soon as you succeed too long, which is what you just said, you're taken down the pecking order. Like in the chimp world, there will be a leader of the pack, or whatever it's called, I don't know, I'm not a fucking zoologist.
But whoever the leader is, they only have maybe two or three years at the top before they're taken down by the next chimp, because people, people! Because the other chimps disdain that chimp by that time. Isn't that interesting?
Yeah, and that's the stars.
That like you, if you're going to have this Stardumb moment, you have about three years max, universally, every famous, successful person throughout history has those three years, and then they taper off down to they're just sort of the people that they've connected with.
Yeah, unless they're reinventing themselves. So, that's that's the…
That's the trick, and that's the goal is, you can't be too successful or you can't be outwardly too successful. You still need to have the share of like the underdog, the humility.
I actually want to just sort of push back on that. You can be completely successful, but you still need to be striving and showcase the striving.
Like Elon trying to get to Mars. Like he, at many points, has been the richest person on the planet. Yet, that story of him trying to get like the human species to Mars, is that story of striving, and it's like, "Well, this is exciting.
I'm going to dig a hole under LA, so we can have a tunnel that you just go at rocket speed to San Francisco." And it's like, "Well, that's exciting." But if it's the other side, we don't find it as interesting.
That's a good point. Yeah, that's a really good point, cause then he would be…
So, success isn't the problem.
Yeah. Cause he would be on his villain arc then, if it if he wasn't doing anything else and he was just like, "Nah, I'm good." But, yeah, that is an interesting point.
Yeah, we like striving, we like story. We can relate to someone striving for something.
We cannot relate to someone who only wins. We can relate to it depending on sort of how you feel inside, but you don't like it.
But also there's something in you where you're just like, "Okay, I don't care." There's no conflict. There's no… You don't feel like you want to cheer that person on anymore.
It's just like, "Oh, okay, you did it. Like, you just keep winning, like I don't care." Just like Tom Brady, it's like, "Just stop it!"
Well, and I like to And I want to zoom forward then to the Chiefs, too. Like, the Kansas City Chiefs, I don't know if they won before 8, 10 years ago when they started winning. I don't remember.
I don't know if they had won a Super Bowl since like Super Bowl II, which is, now we're on 60. Many years, and then it's exciting. "Oh, this Patrick Mahomes guy, Andy Reid, all this stuff!" And then all of a sudden it's like, "Okay, let's like not have them in the Super Bowl." And this year they're not even in the Didn't even make it to the playoffs, and people are like, "Yeah, they're not there this time!"
Yeah, somebody ambushed them with Matt Nagy, that's why. Somebody hated them!
I like I like that this is the second time Matt Nagy has come up.
So, if you don't watch football, Matt Nagy was the offensive coordinator of the Chiefs, became the head coach of the Bears. Year one with the Bears did very well, and his whole thing was, "I haven't even installed my offense yet, just wait." Well, guess what? He didn't know what he was doing when he installed his own offense, and they were awful.
And then he went back to the Chiefs, the Chiefs haven't been as good since he's been back, now he's gone, and he might get a head coaching job again, which is weird, but one of his things was "be you." So, whenever we say "be you," you're always like, "Be you, Matt Nagy."
Yeah, which I like the "be you," but yeah, I wasn't a big fan of his, horrible offensive…
Well, he knew better. Well, also, it's hard to So, this is football talk for a second. It was crushing to see his vision of what a quarterback should be, and he destroyed two careers: Mitchell Trubisky and Justin Fields.
Both of them were very, very talented quarterbacks in their first season. But as soon as he changed everything, like for Justin Fields, he literally was changing which foot goes forward when he's like having his… And this is These are people who got to the NFL because they've played football a certain way.
They've played football very successfully since they were children all the way through college, which is very competitive, especially Ohio State where Justin Fields came from. And now, "Oh, you know what? You shouldn't do it that way.
Oh, you shouldn't run around. Like, you need to stand right here, because I want you to be Dan Marino and how he played in 1987." And that's just not what it is anymore. But that's why we have a little bit of a disdain for Matt Nagy, because I feel really bad for Trubisky and especially Justin Fields, cause he is Caleb Williams if he had the right coach.
Caleb survived season one, and now he has the right coach, and now people are like, "He's like top 10, top 5 in the NFL."
Yeah, it's just ironic with the "be you," and then it's like, "But I'm going to change everything about you except your name."
Exactly, and that was the tough part.
It was "be you" to himself.
Exactly. So, anyway, on that note, "be you."
Yeah, this was good, this was fun. Okay, we'll see you next week.
