Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: We're going to talk a lot about applying some of these principles to the world of building companies or making things. One of the very first things I can remember you teaching me is something to the effect of everyone focuses on the new when trying to tell you about their thing, but that the right approach is maybe only 20% new and 80% familiar or something like that. Can you say more about this principle of storytelling or of delivering a message or conveying something to people, that the trap we fall in of trying to just focus on the exciting new thing?
· Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S1: The interesting thing about this whole world is that there are no rules to it. Everyone gleans and tries to come up with rules for themselves sometimes that seem to work more often than they don't work. But there's no book on this, really. Raymond Loewy, the designer, had a similar rule around 80/20. The most tolerable amount of ‘new’ before the human mind rejects it as incomprehensible. With the idea of originality and creativity, there's a sort of tension. Even that of itself is a story. There's this tension, especially now. Originality is highly prized. And there's sort of this belief that only the very new is truly novel. And with storytelling especially, but I even think, maybe this is confirmation bias, but I even think in business or in innovation, the new is really just the obvious uncovered through systematic trial and error over a certain period of time. So that by striving to stay within the obvious and trying to find a variation on the obvious, I think you have a higher chance, at least in storytelling, of discovering something novel that will still feel intelligible enough to categorize in the world. Some people have an ability to see something truly new and immediately categorize it. Those people tend to be very successful investors, for instance. But generally speaking, I think the idea of original is overrated. And the great filmmakers know this, great novelists know this, that you can begin with something very familiar and make it feel totally new incrementally.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Tell me about the short film that you like so much that's nothing more than a camera panning back and forth. [00:00:00] S1: It was a project where simply there's a camera installed in the room, and the camera would move back and forth across the room and each time uncover a little bit more of the room. And nothing else happens. There's no payoff to it. But the suspense of seeing a little bit more information about the room is absolutely riveting. Even just this tiny amount of new information being given creates enormous suspense. Because somehow we're good at anticipating. We're really always anticipating. And each new piece of information gets put into some kind of puzzle. So by the end, the suspense is unbearable. [00:00:00] S0: If you think about the power of communicating by starting with the familiar and the known, how would you encourage CEOs, companies, people talking about their thing, use that truth? What is the method that you've seen the best explain accepted reality before trying to explain their new thing? Is there a method that comes out of this that you think is useful to founders especially? Is the group that I'm the most interested in. [00:00:00] S1: The reason storytelling to me is so effective is because you have a subjective point of view that an individual can relate to because it's imitating and processing the character's point of view. So it's subjective in that way. The subjective access to storytelling would be a universal truth, but that can be only accessed subjectively.
· Wolfgang Hammer, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: The reason storytelling to me is so effective is because you have a subjective point of view that an individual can relate to because it's imitating and processing the character's point of view. So it's subjective in that way. The subjective access to storytelling would be a universal truth, but that can be only accessed subjectively. [00:00:00] S0: Does that mean that in trying to reach the mind of a customer, let's say, the right thing or allocation of time for the founder is to spend most of their time understanding the story of the customer as it currently exists versus how it should be and then build off of that?
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Wolfgang Hammer
[00:00:00] S0: Does that mean that in trying to reach the mind of a customer, let's say, the right thing or allocation of time for the founder is to spend most of their time understanding the story of the customer as it currently exists versus how it should be and then build off of that? [00:00:00] S1: I think that's exactly right. Someone called me, I hadn't heard from them in a while, and they said, we realized we've been selling to the wrong level. We have to sell to C-level as opposed to frontline manager level. And the sales pitch didn't work to the C-level. It was because they had not changed the framework, the subjective personal philosophy. The C-level has a very different worldview of what's happening in company than the line manager. And we worked on it and it was like magic. It was like magic. All of a sudden closing huge national deals with huge companies because they understood the psychology of the C-level manager business. I think it's easy to forget that you're dealing with human beings who have a human experience at the same time as having a professional experience, and story is really good at seeing these two layers at the same time. There's subjective experience that a human being has, and then there's the professional experience on top of it. And I think you want to combine these two and understand you're dealing with human beings first and foremost. And I think the greatest founders and the greatest builders understand this instinctively.
· Wolfgang Hammer, Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S1: I think that's exactly right. Someone called me, I hadn't heard from them in a while, and they said, we realized we've been selling to the wrong level. We have to sell to C-level as opposed to frontline manager level. And the sales pitch didn't work to the C-level. It was because they had not changed the framework, the subjective personal philosophy. The C-level has a very different worldview of what's happening in company than the line manager. And we worked on it and it was like magic. It was like magic. All of a sudden closing huge national deals with huge companies because they understood the psychology of the C-level manager business. I think it's easy to forget that you're dealing with human beings who have a human experience at the same time as having a professional experience, and story is really good at seeing these two layers at the same time. There's subjective experience that a human being has, and then there's the professional experience on top of it. And I think you want to combine these two and understand you're dealing with human beings first and foremost. And I think the greatest founders and the greatest builders understand this instinctively. [00:00:00] S0: What did you learn running studios? You've made or been a part of making so many things, so many movies.