Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: If you had found and taken this idea really seriously, like really internalized it when you were 30, what would you have done differently, do you think, if anything? Like how would your behavior have changed?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: It's a great question. I haven't done that exercise, but let me think if I -- just take a minute now to try and do the -- this is something I learned at WIRED magazine. And then there is a piece of advice in the book. It's a little bit like this. It has to do with, there's a value in articulating what you're doing because -- instead of relying on other people to describe it. And so this is kind of a part of like branding exercise in marketing, which is that you actually want to control the message rather than have people interpret it. And so what we learned is at WIRED, we actually had to tell people again and again what it was that we're doing because we couldn't just sort of rely on them kind of figuring out from reading the magazine. And so we started to do these little tags on the cover each time saying, we're optimistic. This is an optimistic view. This is what we're doing. And so I think if I was totally new to this, I would have been -- spent a little bit more time in accelerating where I was going by actually going back to Tom Peters, the brand of view, like what is my brand? That's not kind of a selfish thing. It's actually useful to other people as well. This is what I learned with WIRED, is that you kind of want to be able to tell people what it is that you're about to help you become better at it. And I think when I was 30, I had no idea. I didn't even think of those terms. Maybe I would have thought it presumptuous or vain. But in fact, it would have been better all around for everyone if I had really kind of worked on, where am I aiming at or what do I think I'm about? And that sort of I'd never really done that very seriously. And I think that would have accelerated the clarity I had of the choices that we're going to make beyond that. So that's what I would urge to people, is to think about yourself and if you have to encapsulate what it is that you're about for other people to help other people understand it and therefore to help you realize yourself what your authentic self is.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: I have sort of a wild follow-up question. So I'm an investor, and my focus is on investing in people that are doing what we call their life's work. And our definition is very simple: it's a lifelong quest to build something for others that expresses who you are. And we were wondering, like what are the natural limits of this? Steve Jobs because he was doing his life's work and look at the impact that it's had. What is the highest form of self-expression? And I wondered if it was like Jesus and Buddha, the people whose ideas or work has reverberated most through history. And you said you had never seen anyone that actually got to this definition. Do you think maybe the only ones that have are like the world's religious historical figures or something?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: It's possible that of all the candidates that Jesus was one who, the day before he died, was most authentically himself. I think you're right, that would be a good definition or a good role model. In terms of what are the limits, your question was, would the ideal person look like that was doing that. And I could be wrong, but for me, I think what we will find is that they will be themselves unlike other people. Not like a Jesus, not like a Buddha because those, again, those are niches that are occupied by them. And the whole point of being authentic is it's going to be slightly different and weird. And the way I say is, do you want to invent a new definition of success? That's what your life should be. Your life should be inventing a new definition of success. That success should have its own metrics that are going to be different from then Steve Jobs' metrics. If they aren't different, then they haven't really achieved that thing of being authentically unique. Or what I would be looking for is looking for people who really had a completely different definition of success. What I tell people is that there are a lot of people whose definition of success are very different than what we normally associate with success. And we don't know about them, and that's part of their definition of success. They may be a huge success, and maybe people outside their family don't even know who they are, but they are just incredibly successful in their own lives because fame was not part of that definition. And so this doesn't mean that everybody has become famous and quite the contrary.
· Patrick O'Shaughnessy
[00:00:00] S0: We think about often the goal here of becoming fully yourself as being so obviously true, but the reality that, like you said, almost nobody does it by definition means that the impediments are enormous, the counterforces are enormous. So what in your experience are those things that most commonly stop people from getting down this path?
· Kevin Kelly
[00:00:00] S1: I think that the #1 thing is following other people's definition of success, is being swayed by other people's definition of success. And that's so hard to let go of. It's so hard to surrender the idea that unless you have $1 million by the time you're 30, whatever it is, that you're not successful. That's a very narrow, well-trodden niche and is likely holding you back from your true greatness and your true benefit and your true authentic self and your best self because it's probably going to look very different. And so we have these role models like a Steve Jobs. So a lot of people want to be Steve Jobs. Wrong. So -- no. So first of all, he was a jerk. Having met him a couple of times, he was a jerk. He was a brilliant jerk, a genius jerk. You don't want to be him. And I think just trying to let go of and overcome the cliches, the assumed cultural biases that we have on what it is, that, to me in my opinion, has been what I see is the largest impediment to people achieving this because a lot of really authentic success may not look like that to us, to everybody else around you. You don't own a car. You're walking everywhere, whatever it is. And you're saying, I don't think that's successful. And part of it is you're educating people about that, other people so that you have the kind of support that you need or else ignoring it. But it's a very, very difficult thing to let go of and to surrender the assumptions and the prejudices that we have of what that looks like.