The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Power of Intellectual Curiosity in Life & Business

Episode Date: February 10, 2020

The Power of Intellectual Curiosity in Life & Business

Hi folks, Chris Voss here from TheChrisVossShow.com, TheChrisVossShow.com. Hey, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. I love when people run up to me and they're like, TheChrisVossShow.com. They just like sing it to me. I'm like, okay, man. All right, dude. I don't know who you are, but you love the show, so awesome on your part.

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contact us at Chris Voss. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, pretty much everywhere on the universe of social media, at Chris Voss, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, let me know what you think or what you want to do or what you're up to, or just say hi. You're welcome to just say hi to Chris Voss, The Chris Voss Show. So there's that. So we're going to talk about an interesting subject that's really close to my heart. And let's get into it. Let's find out what it is.

Today we're going to be talking about the powerful vehicle. Is that the right word? I don't know. I'm suddenly at a loss for the correct word for this. The power of intellectual curiosity, being intellectual and curious about the world, about business, about people, about other things, everything else. One of the great things that we have is when we grow up as children, we are naturally intellectually curious because everything in our world is new. And it's a very beautiful thing because you know everything we see is new like even when i've gotten my baby puppies and stuff it's it's fun

to watch them go through the new period and recently um my niece and nephew kind of reached an age where you know they're 18 19 they're reaching that age where they've got to go out in the world they've got to leave their parents home, move out, start making their own incomes, making their own lives and stuff. And I got thinking to myself, what would I impart to them? Because I remember what my life was like at 18. I started my first company and became a serial entrepreneur, got the drug in me of entrepreneurism that, man, once you get hooked on that drug, it's hard to get off

it, man. And it's hard to go to work for somebody else really after you've been your own boss for a long time. So I got thinking, I'm like, what would I have wanted someone like me, their uncle, to tell them at age 18? I didn't unfortunately have any good guidance as a child. And I didn't unfortunately have any good guidance as a child And I didn't have anybody who was successful at being an entrepreneur Or being successful at life or business or whatever And so I thought, what can I impart to them? So I sat down and I thought about some different concepts That we'll talk about in the coming weeks over the podcast But one of the things I, I, uh, I made a poignant, uh, uh, uh, advice to them

was to be intellectually curious. They're starting a journey and it's a very long journey. Uh, and I think, I don't know, in looking back as far as I'm concerned, it's much longer than what you think it's going to be. Uh, and of course, when you're, you know, at that age, you're immortal. So, but you know, you know, at that age, you're immortal. So, but you know, I remember back at that age, I would wake up in the morning. I'd be like, Oh my God, a whole day. What am I going to do with all these hours? You know, now I wake up and I'm like, what a year went by. But, uh, so I sat down and I, and I, I kind of explained to him some basic concepts of, um of the importance of intellectual curiosity. And this is one of the things I've always had in life.

I've always been a people watcher. I've always been a business watcher. I collect things. Even now I collect things. Years ago when I was running two companies at the same time, I was having problems with anxiety and massive ADD, ADHD, which I had from my childhood. And a lot of CEOs have it. They call it the CEO disease because it's this manic thing that we have that makes it

so that we collect lots of data, we process lots of data, we do things probably at a level that isn't healthy. But it propels us sometimes to incredible business situations and positions and stuff. But there's a real balance because I've seen it be very destructive not only in my life where there's a huge amount of creative side but a huge amount of destructive side. But in other CEOs' lives as well. If you look at Steve Jobs' life with the yin and yang of it all and what he created and then his destructive parts of it um there's a good side and a dark side but being intellectually curious is super important so let's talk some more about the power of being intellectually curious let's talk about a few different things though in the concepts of what it means uh i'm going to quote a few quotes here

albert einstein if you want to take his word for it, you know, he may have been intellectually curious and did some things. He has it quoted as saying, intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death. Voltaire says, judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. William Lyon Phelps said, one of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute. William Arthur Ward, curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning. Now, being intellectually curious means we don't approach things with a prejudice because the beautiful thing that we have as a child is everything is new. And as we get older and we see more of life, we see more of everything, we start to get jaded. We start to adopt prejudices and we go, oh, you know, I know what that is. And, and many times

we don't. And the beauty of going through life is learning things like I, and I wish somebody sat down with me and told me this early, the beautiful, the, the beauty of life is collecting stories, learning things, lessons, things that you do. Unfortunately, people didn't teach me. Somehow they just wouldn't talk to me, or at least in a format that I adopted or could understand the relative basis for why it was important for its usefulness. But being intellectually curious, I always have been. And I think a lot of it came

from being a, growing up in religion as a child and being told, you know, by a cult of religion that I grew up in, where it was like, you have to think this way. And this is, and then I would ask questions and it'd be like, no, you just have to be faith. You have to, you can't ask questions. And I'd be like, well, that doesn't make any sense. And I tried to adopt to it. So let's talk about what intellectual curiosity is. Um, so we can kind of lay a foundation if you will, for what it is. According to Wikipedia, intellectual curiosity, also called epistemic curiosity. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly is curiosity. It leads to an acquisition of general knowledge? It can include curiosities about such things as objects are composed of,

the underlying mechanisms of systems, mathematical relationships, languages, social norms, and history. It can be differentiated from other types of curiosity. Does not lead to the acquisition of general knowledge. This is curiosity about intimate secrets of other people. It is a facet of openness. It's Monday. To experience in the five-factor model used to describe human personalities, it is similar to a need for cognition and typical intellectual engagement.

So, you know, when you approach something, look at how you approach what you do in your life. One of the interactions that I've been having with a good friend of mine is I've introduced him to a couple of really cool, valuable people that have changed my life and that have had an impact on me. And initially their reaction has been, I don't like those people. And I'll be like, well, why? I'm like, I don't know. I just don't like them. They're like, well, you don't even

know anything about them. I've just introduced you to them and you've looked at their pictures and stuff. And I've told you kind of they're cool people, but you instantly made this decision. You don't like them. What is that about? And, uh, you know, the set, that's the sad part about growing up as children. We have this, uh, intellectual curiosity. We look at the world and we go, wow, this is interesting. You know? I mean, you probably did what I did when I was a kid where me and my brother, we actually took apart our father's watch cause we wanted to see how it worked and we were like this is really cool this watch thing let's open it up let's see what's inside the magic of the time you know being kept

on this little device and so we opened it up we took it apart we were just enthralled with the gearing and the tiny screws and everything else and then when we got it apart we were so enamored with our uh curiosity we realized that oh shit dad probably wants his watch put together and then we tried to put it back together and that became a whole new intellectual curiosity sort of engagement because we were like how where does the screw go again need Needless to say, we did put it back together. The problem was we had leftover screws. And it did not work. And it was my dad's fair watch.

He was very angry with us. Which probably was a whole new level of intellectual curiosity and learning how angry you could make your dad. Which we did a lot as children. Which I think, I don't know, I suppose that's some sort of childhood thing. But I would say, um, embrace intellectual curiosity. Maybe ask yourself, am I intellectually curious? Am I like a child? You know, I see people posting all the time. You know, I need to start looking at things from a child's eye. And one of the things that I had at being an entrepreneur, one of the key things I used to teach people is, uh, I created an environment and a culture in our office and we had a rule that I made the only, there's no stupid questions. The only, the only stupid question is the unasked question. And I got to tell you over

the years of being in business, the one time, the times that employees were afraid to ask questions and we tried to create an environment, a culture where it was okay for people to ask questions. That was the reason we had the rule. The only stupid question is the unasked question. Um, the employee that would never ask questions like, Hey, I don't fully understand the training on how this works would be the person who wouldn't ask the questions of like well uh how does it work exactly and i need just more information which is true people process information differently and some need more some need less some some kind of acquisition acquisition some kind of choir better than others um and uh and some need more some need

need different ways of learning tactile some need just like an intellectual or visual some need audio some sometimes people need a tactile sort of learning curve so those would be the employees or whatever decisions they would make with their limited knowledge that would break things and cost me sometimes a lot of money. They would just break stuff and cost me a lot of money. And so having a rule, having a culture in the office, the only stupid question is the unasked question was an attempt to get people to ask questions, to be curious. And this is really important. This is important in business and life. And I got to tell you, I try not to be prejudiced about a lot of things.

And of course, growing up, I grew up with a lot of prejudice because of what I was taught from religious cults. And then I had to overcome that because I would ask a lot of questions. People like shut up and just have faith. And I'd just be like, no, I really want to understand how this works. And I want to make a logical connection to it all. I want it to be to make sense. And because I can't buy it if it doesn't make sense. I can't be a blind follower. So this is really important. I mean, if you really think about your childhood,

getting back to your childhood, being like a child, where you look at the world with new eyes is really important. One of the things we used to do in my business when I would try and look outside the box, even when it came with concepts or processes or business functions that I would take and create that would try and innovate and save us money, I would sit down with what was at the time a very small board and say, okay, guys, here's my concept or idea. Tell me what you think.

Tell me what's wrong about it, what's right about it. Let's take this baby apart. Is this the right thing to do? And we'd challenge it, and I'd ask to be challenged. I'd ask for my ideas to be challenged. I'd be curious about why we did things the way we did. Even when I created processes, I would go back and review them and be like, why do I do things this way?

Why did I make these decisions? Are these decisions still valid? And being curious about stuff is so important if you take a look at your mind and when you meet people whether they're people of different races people different religions people different cultures um people that aren't like you um ask yourself am i knee-jerking into um prejudices where i just go oh that person's person's that way, or that person's this way. Oh, that person, you know, a lot of people have, oh, that person's rich. They must be an asshole and have stole it from a lot of people. That person's poor. They probably just don't work

much. You know, there's a whole endless supply of prejudices you can do. And what prejudices do is they close off your mind. They make it so that you're not intellectually challenged. I saw a recent, I've been a big Neil Peart fan of the band Rush, and he recently passed away, rest in peace. And I was watching something that he was talking about recently that kind of comes into what's going on in our culture. And he was talking on Bill Maher's show from like way back. It was the first show Bill Maher did, which I think was PC, Politically Incorrect,

I think was the name of the show or the variation of the name of the show. But Bill Maher was on. He was on. He was talking about things, and he said, you know, one of the problems that people have is they don't like things that challenge them. Because challenging makes you very uncomfortable when you're challenged, when you have to learn something new. It's uncomfortable because you have to go outside of your mindset. You have to go outside of your knowledge base.

And you have to learn something new. And it's a challenge because all of a sudden, you know, what your paradigms are, what your belief systems are sometimes get challenged because you learn something new or you're trying to learn something new and you find out, whoa, what I thought before isn't correct. And, um, wow. And so now I'm being corrected with more information and you're presented with a choice at that point where you can go, I'm not going to adopt that information. You know, I'm being corrected with more information and then you're presented with a choice at that point where you can go, I'm not going to adopt that information and I'm going to stick with what I know, my belief systems, my paradigms, my scotomas, my blind spots to reality, or you can embrace the new intellectual data that you're learning, different things that will help you expand your mind.

And that's really one of the points that we have. You know, you've heard people talk about how we only use 5% of the potential of our brains. You know, if you've ever met people that, you know, they know five languages, they know really complex languages like maybe Mandarin, uh, different Chinese languages that are complex. Russian, uh, has some complexity to it. Um, but you meet people like that and they're like, wow, man, those people are really taking advantage of their brain. And so I think it's real important that we do things like look at, look at your, look at how

you, uh, approach life or people or new things or new information. Do you immediately jump to prejudices? Do you immediately shut them down, shut them out, and go, oh, I don't want to be challenged by that information? So Neil Peart was talking on, whatchamacallit, was talking on Politically Correct Bill Marshall, and he said, you know, one of the things that people have is they tend to be intimidated by high-minded stuff that's kind of above their thinking level or beyond their realm or sphere of collected knowledge.

And they love stuff that's below them. Like one of the things I used to do when I would get depressed is I'd watch cops and I love cops. And every now and then I watched Jerry Springer and Jerry Springer, you know, got real popular. Um, and,

uh, people like it because it doesn't challenge them. And the other thing is you're looking at someone who's dumber than you are. And we're seeing that in our politics today. We're seeing that in different variations of our life. We like collecting shit shows and car crashes because we go, wow, I'm pretty smart compared to those people. I used to like watching cops because I'd watch people doing, you know, I get kind of in the dumps and I get a little depressed and be like, my life sucks. It's awful. Then I watch cops and I'd be like, holy shit, my life's doing really good right now. Like I'm not getting arrested ever. And I've never, never been to jail

and I don't have a drug problem. And, and, uh, wow, here I thought my life was awful, but after watching cops, my life's pretty damn cool. I can not wear a shirt in my house and not get arrested. You know? So, but the problem with some of this data is, and you see it in people and what they collect in social media, what sort of news sources they go to what sort of stuff they collect a lot of times they collect information that just reinforces what they know and so they don't challenge themselves by like oh look at that information or what that information and then the other thing you have to challenge yourself is sometimes

when you look at stuff and you're encountering prejudices, you need to have some self-awareness and go, why does that bother me? Why does that challenge me? You know, for me, I would go to people and I'd be like, hey, here's my ideas. Let's take this apart. Let's kick the tires. Let's kick it around. Let's make sure that it has a tendency to be a successful idea. And being open to that means you're going to get criticism. And the sad part is,

is many times as we grow older, we don't handle criticism that well. I'll give you another example. Years and years ago, I was ignoring LinkedIn and I was like really successful in social media i was like in the top 1000 on twitter and the first you know when twitter first started and um and i was you know i was powerful on all these different platforms except for linkedin i just could not get linkedin linkedin was annoying yeah you couldn't game it like i could the other things so you couldn't put automation into it like you could with other things and i remember someone wrote me and they said they said i don't understand i was bragging you know about how successful i was at the time and this is like 2010 i think

uh 2009 2008 something like that and someone wrote me and she was like a LinkedIn pro and she'd been successful on, on LinkedIn. And she wrote me privately and she says, I don't understand how you claim to be such a social media success when the one thing you haven't mastered is LinkedIn. And it's one of the most important platforms you can do. And at first I was angry. I was angry being challenged. I was angry at being angry. I was angry being challenged. I was angry at being criticized. I was angry at someone, you know, stepping on my little soapbox and telling me, you know, blah, blah, blah and whatever, whatever.

And I remember being angry about it. I remember seeing it. It's very vivid in my mind. And I remember being angry. I don't know. I was probably angry for about two hours. And I thought, you know, I should write her hateful, you know, email back. Like, who the hell are you?

So then I decided, well, clearly she feels that LinkedIn is valuable. So then I thought, you know what? I'm going to look up this girl's numbers. Because that's what I do. If you challenge me, if you give me crap on social media, if you tell me you're a rock star or whatever, and you kind of come on my radar, I get curious and I go look at your stats. And you better have great stats. Because if you don't, like if you're telling me how to run my feed and you have like three followers on Twitter,

yeah, man, keep that to yourself. Let me know when when you get big as i do or bigger and whatever and a lot of times when i'm trying to follow people that are successful or trying to figure out how to be better than myself i go find people that are more successful than me but a lot of people a lot of times that approach intimidates people they don't want to find people that are more successful than them. So I got in like she curious. So I'm like, I'm going to look at her stats. So I went to look at her stats.

I was like, wow, she's really good. She's really successful. This she's, she's doing really well. And then I got angry and I was like, you know what? I'm going to learn how to be like her on LinkedIn, and I'm going to be better than her. I don't know if I was better than her, and it doesn't really matter if I was better than her.

So I went on LinkedIn, and I got intellectually curious, and I learned everything I could about LinkedIn. I started A-B testing it with all the different tricks and things that I do, and, of course, that's what I do. I A-B test stuff. I created multiple accounts, multiple groups. I built my own group over there from zero, uh, started, made it, uh, took it from zero to 135,000 people. Um, and, uh, just kind of intellectually curious about how it works and what it does. The same thing that I applied during their session to Twitter and Facebook on how to market it, be successful in it, get traffic, get clicks,

all that sort of good stuff. And that's what I did. And so I built a huge following on LinkedIn. I think I'm maxed now, usually at about 30,000 at any given time, which is the max connections you can have. And I think there's another 30,000 or 25,000 that follow me. I have the 135,000 group. At one point, I was like, I went from being a nobody on LinkedIn to within, I think, a

year or so to being the top 1% person to search for on LinkedIn. That's how much of a difference that made. And so basically, the lesson here is instead of being prejudiced, instead of going, I don't want to learn LinkedIn. I don't want to have to learn something new. LinkedIn sucks. And I still see this with a lot of my successful social media friends that they still have this attitude like I had back in there. Like LinkedIn sucks. I don't know LinkedIn because I don't get it.

But I know everything else. And certainly it's more complex than was to learn Twitter for that matter. Twitter really wasn't that hard to learn. It wasn't that hard to learn a game actually either and market too. So what a difference that has made. I can't tell you

how much money I've made over LinkedIn in the last 10 years but it's pretty epic. The things I did with my group, the people paid for ads, the sponsors, uh, the business relationships I've gotten off of it. Um, I, I, I can't even financially track it or equate it because, you know, a lot of my stuff mixes together, but it's huge. It's very huge. And in fact, at one point for LinkedIn for, I think almost five to eight years, um, I made some really good fricking crazy, stupid money off of it. Um, and, um, and of course, social media is changing. The

things are evolving. I mean, now you've got Tik TOK and Instagram and all these different things. And, you know, so you got to be intellectually curious. And so this is the importance of intellectual curiosity. You've got to be open to learn new things. You've got to take a look at what your prejudice is. Like I've met people that go through life and they have an attitude about everything. And you ask them about anything. What cars do you like? Oh, the Ford mustangs are the best

cars um what uh you know what you know what's the truest religion not this religion is a truest religion assuming there is a true one um you know and and anything else that isn't what they believe in their belief system intimidates them and makes them angry and, and they close themselves off. You know, and once you, once you reach a point in life that you're not learning anymore, that you're not learning stories, you're not learning lessons, you're not seeing new things, you're not discovering new things. Um, your life becomes really fricking boring and really fricking sad. And it probably is very comfortable because you're not being very challenged by yourself. You're not challenged by life and stuff.

And then what's even harder for you is when life does change around you. And I remember there's this Kansas line from a song, the world began to change around you. And you stayed in one room and didn't learn anything new, basically was kind of the gist of the song. And life can pass you by, and that's what happens to a lot of people. They get stuck, and life passes them by.

Change keeps happening, and change is never constant in the world, and so we've got to constantly be intellectually curious about what things are, the new adoptions, the new adaption to life, what the new things are, how things are changing. You know, I've certainly had a change over my life. I've certainly had different attitudes about the workforce in the 80s. I watched the dissolution of unions and the auto industry and the economy the ability to have a job for all your life with a gold watch at the end the stock markets kind of taking over

the world from investor things junk bonds there's a lot of things that i've seen over my lifetime and being intellectually curious, being able to ask questions and go, why are things these way? Um, are so important. Like, what does this mean? Like, what is it? Like, why is stuff changing? I remember going through the me too era and trying to understand it as a man and some of the things I've seen. And for me, like, a hard part of it was is I don't treat women that way. I don't send dirty pictures to women that I don't know, or I don't send dirty pictures at all because I don't want that stuff to be someday abused and be like, look, here's Chris Voss naked.

No one wants to see that. Trust me, folks. But, you know, I grew's i grew up uh not understanding people who are gay or lesbian or lgbtq um since then i've acquired a lot of friends um when i grew up my parents were against uh busing and they had issues with busing and i didn't understand what that dynamic was i I grew up in California. So thank God I grew up in a melting pot of racial diversity. And so all my friends were from every race in the world.

And I just thought that was normal because that's the way I grew up. And that was my world. And no one told me otherwise. And so these are important things. So when you look at your life, when you're presented with new ideas, when you're presented with new information, technology, relationships, people ask yourself, why am I approaching it that way? What am I feeling challenged? Do I feel emotionally or mentally challenged? because usually if you feel challenged or or under attack um it's it's you go into fight or flight mode you go into protection mode you close off your mind

and you go i don't you know that idea challenging me and really what you need to do is ask better questions instead of going i'm just gonna lock myself in my little box and not get out of it and i'm just gonna go do my world. And the rest of the world is crazy, so I'm not going to go out there. So you have to sit down and go, why is that challenging me? Why do I have a prejudice about this thing or the other thing? And why is that such a big deal so these are some things that are really important um that you need to approach in life and in your business too being

intellectually curious is really going to help you when you have um when you have uh different business ideas you want to take and do because one of the things I found in business is a lot of times when I look at different business stuff, I look at, okay, so here's how we can make this work. Here's how we can make this process work and everything else. How can we make a difference with it in either saving us from losing money or becoming more profitable or coming up with a system that works that's more efficient, etc., etc. And so that's what we do. And being curious, you've got to look at different things.

Like, you know, you've heard the old analogy people make where someone goes, why don't we do it this way? I don't know. We've always done it this way. There's the old thing that you probably heard the old story, and you can Google this. It's the turkey Thanksgiving story of the newlywed. And I'll just try and tell it real quickly here because I know I'm going long in the tooth on this, and I appreciate you guys staying here.

But the turkey story was a newlywed guy marries his wife, and he tells her, you know, it's Thanksgiving. So they make, she's going to make a turkey. So she, he watches her making the turkey. She cuts off the two legs, throws them in the garbage and just puts the body of the turkey into the oven. And he's like, holy crap, the legs. I like dark meat. The legs are the best part of the turkey.

What are you, what are you doing? She goes, I don't know. My mom did it this way. So they call up the mom. He's like, why did your mom do it that way? She goes, I don't know. My mom always did it that way. So they call up the mom and mom says, I don't know. My grandmother always did it that way. So they call grandma and great grandma is still alive. And grandma goes, I don't know why great grandma was doing it that way. So they call great grandmother who's, you know, who's probably close to hundreds. And they say, great grandmother, why did you always cut the turkey legs off and put the body in the oven?

And she said, well, back in those days when they first came out with stoves, there wasn't enough room for the whole turkey. So that's what we did. So that's an example. And you see a lot of this in business. You see a lot of this in life, but in business, you know, you ask questions like, why do we do it this way? This way seems kind of stupid. When I first go into businesses or business situations or concepts to consult with, the first thing I do is I look at the way their makeup is

and the way they're utilizing their process from beginning to end of how they process the customers, their products, whatever the case is. And I go, why do you do it this way? And you, when you look at it from new knowledge, you've probably seen that if you, when you first go to work for a company or when you go to a new company, you're like, why did they do it this way? So being intellectually curious is super important.

Hopefully I have espoused that concept to you, but look at your life. If you're constantly being challenged in life, if you're constantly, um, you know, feeling attacked because of new ideas, new information, new things going on in your life, new people, uh, whatever the case is, maybe you should open your mind. Cause I gotta tell you, I've had times in life where people come to my life and I've gone, I don't like the way they look. I don't like the way that person acts. I don't like their attitude or their accent or their culture or whatever.

And I've had times in my life where I've done that. And I've thought to myself, you know what? I'm really going to get to know this person. They seem like they have some good qualities and I seem to have some prejudices about them. But I'm going to try and make an effort to be intellectually curious and find out more about them. And I got to tell you,

some of those people have changed my freaking life. Like my life would be severely less from what over I learned from those people, what they taught me. And some of them are some of my greatest friends I still have today and just approaching it from the same way, the same way I approached the, um, gal contacted me from LinkedIn who first challenged me and criticized me. I've done that with, uh on YouTube, starting to make these videos, reviews and stuff. And someone wrote a really kind of, I can't remember if it was mean, but it seemed mean to me because that was what was being challenged. And someone wrote, I can't believe, you know, someone who's supposed to be as professional as you are and you have this horrible audio and you have this horrible, you know, you sound awful.

And I was like, yeah, screw that person. I hate that and then i got curious and i went hmm maybe they're right and uh so then i started listening to my videos and i was like holy crap this audio really is bad and i started comparing with people at good audio and like wow okay so i need to get curious about getting better mics a better audio setup and so then i did, and I'm constantly always working on that. And, and sometimes it's a budget thing where you're like, I could get the best mics in the world, but you know, uh, how much, how many kidneys do I have to sell? Um, but for the most part, being curious and learning new things, and then I had to learn

how mics worked and better editing for software worked and, and just learning what was better out there. And so coming from a learning sort of mentality where you're intellectually curious about stuff, why it works is so important. I don't go through my life being challenged by data anymore. I don't get life challenged by people. Um, and I'll give you a concept here as we round up the show. Here's how I look at people because one of the problems you have, especially with people is you, is people tell you who they are and it's not like sometimes they lie to you. Uh, I always joke about how when I'm dating or going to relationships, the first six months, you're just kind of meeting the PR agent. You've heard some comedians, comedians plug that line.

And it's very true. I mean, sometimes you meet people and they're pathological liars. I mean, we have some people like that in politics right now. And you don't really know what to believe. And so what I do is I get intellectually curious and I treat people like a Polaroid. This is what I tell people. Because I'll meet people and they'll be like, yeah, here's who I am. And they go, do you believe me? And I'm like, sure. Yeah, I believe you, man. I mean, I'm not like totally believing you, but here's how I look at you. I look at you as a Polaroid. And I grew up in the Polaroid era of film where you took physical pictures and you

had to wait for them to develop or take them to a photo mat to get developed and so i look at people as a polaroid and if you remember the old polaroids you would take a picture with a polaroid camera then you have to wait like 10 minutes or something for it to develop some people thought that if you shook it somehow that would make it form faster i think there's some scientific proof that proves that isn't true but you know we were living in a very interesting age of unenlightenment so uh you know some people felt it was better i don't know maybe the air waving it made it uh develop faster so um so i treat people's polaroids so now i'm just intellectually curious but i kind of let you develop your stuff because no matter what you tell me when I first meet you, I'm going to find out later as I get to know you who you really are. And I'm going to find out if those two stories are consistent. And instead of putting all my stock in the upfront

part, I just go, you know what? I'm just going to be intellectually curious and I'm going to watch you develop and you're going to be a Polaroid. And over time, I'm going to get to know you better, who you are and what you're about and, uh, what you're doing. You know, I meet people all the time that come up to me and they go, you gotta, you gotta believe in this person. This person is great. They tell me all these wonderful things. I just met them. And they're just like, they're just like a God of information or knowledge or management or business or whatever. And, and you're just like, you, you met them five minutes ago and you believed everything they told you and whatever they impressed you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they're the best. And I'll be like, well, how do you know? And then sometimes I'll, you know, sometimes it can be fairly quick where I'll be like, have you Googled these people and done a background check on them at all? Or, you know, I'll start start my bullshit meter will start going off where i'm like this person is putting up telling you so much about how great they are because they're full of shit so um me instead of instead of jumping to conclusions i just kind of let people

develop themselves and in their relationships with me and building relationship, whether they build a relationship with me or not, whatever. Um, I'm just like, man, it's up to you to develop, you know, we'll either develop into some sort of picture and interaction with each other or we won't. So that's the approach I take to it. Um, and it keeps me intellectually curious because I'm constantly going, who is this person? What are they about? I'm not jumping to prejudices where I go, Oh, this person must be are they about? I'm not jumping to prejudices where I go, oh, this person must be that way because clearly they're from this culture or they're from a different race or they're from a different country or they're from, you know, some sort of other avenue of thinking that I don't respect. Um, so this can help you with a lot of information.

It can help you with your business. If you're an entrepreneur, I highly recommend you learn to be intellectually curious as an entrepreneur. I collect things. Years ago, I think I segued off of this, but years ago when I was ADHD, my psychiatrist said to me, he goes, you collect things and you count things. And I go, yeah, I count ways business works. I watch other people's business. I try and figure out how they make a things and you count things. And I go, yeah, I count ways business works. I watch other people's business. I try and figure out how they make a profit and what they do. I count billboards. I count things.

And I count, like, franchises, how many they have, how well they're doing, how many they're expanding to. You know, I'm a numbers person. I look at balance sheets and I try and see, okay, where are you going year to year over year? And it was kind of funny. He said to me, he goes, you know, if you weren't using this for business or for a purpose, the fact that you're counting at the level you're doing, you're keeping a library of data in your head to a point that your ADHD and you're pretty much insane.

He goes, we would have you committed to an insane asylum because that's just, if you were collecting this data and not using it for something, that would be a problem. But clearly you figured out a way to use your ADHD to collect this data and utilize it in business. And that's made all the difference in my life, I can tell you, in all my businesses, being intellectually curious. And throughout my time of being in business, I would meet people

and they would have hardened ideas about, well, we have to do it this way, why do we have to do it this way? Because that company does it that way. Well, what if we do it differently? And any successful company you've seen emerge from out of nowhere. I mean, I remember when Barnes & Noble used to run all the bookstores in the world, and Amazon beat them online and got online quicker and adopted and started running virtual stores they're just like we don't need bookstores we can run virtual and sell on the

internet and Barnes and Noble finally got in there but they just could not get the uh they could just not catch traction as much as Amazon did and Amazon ate their lunch and eventually you know they weren't a business or technically they're out of business these days. I think there's still some around, but I can't remember if they filed bankruptcy or whatnot, but that's a state where you can't rest in your laurels. You know, if you're resting in your laurels, if you're resting on the information that you've learned, you're not learning anything new. You're not reading any new books.

You're not expanding your mind, you're not watching movies. You know, the beautiful part about this world is it's immense on the adventures you can go on, all the different things you can learn. And I'm not sure anyone can really learn everything there is, see everything there is in this world, experience everything there is in this world in a real experience of a lifetime, I don't think you can take everything in. And if you cut yourself off from so much beauty and so much experience in this world and so much adventure, your life is far less for it. So don't be that sort of person. Be intellectually curious. And if you feel yourself being emotionally challenged and being upset and pissed off about someone who's trying to feed you some new ideas or new people you're meeting or cultures, be open to it. Be intellectually curious about what life is and what life is about.

And it will help you in your personal life and it will help you in your business. And never let that get old. Always go back to that childhood curiosity, the love for knowledge, the ability to be curious, the ability to ask questions like, why is this important? Why is this challenging me? Why is it, uh, whatever, you know, one of the problems we had as children, you know, when we used to ask questions, sometimes we get shushed and people would be like, don't ask so many questions. Don't do this. Don't, don't question reality. Just do what we tell you. You know, we get that in school. We get that in business. We have their religion, you know, don't, don't ask questions. I used to have people when I go to,

uh, to look at their business as a consult, I'd be like, why do you do this way? They're like, don't ask this. This is the way it works. And you're like, well, there's always a better way to do something. That was the other premise that I used to have in my business and my thinking for my innovation in my business. I would say to myself, there's always a better way to do something. What is that way? And that will lead me on a journey to finding that knowledge. And it made me intellectually curious because I'd be like how is there a way that i can do this better instead of thinking my way is the only way and it's the best way because i made it

and i decided this is the best way so there is no other better way ever again and i made those mistakes in life and sometimes it's cut me off from learning so there's the importance of it anyway be sure to check it out uh make intellectual curiosity one of the top priorities in your life. If you're young, I highly recommend you stay close to those things that you used to do when you were young, where you used to ask questions, be interested, be curious of what's going on, collect stories. You know, I go through life and I collect stories and I tell stories because I'm curious about why people do. Why do my interviews? I'm really interested in the people in my interviews.

Like, who are you? What brought you here? Why did you decide to make these decisions that brought you on this journey? How did you arrive where you are? Where are you going for that matter? Where do you think you're going? Being curious about people. Um, that was one of the things that I learned. I think Larry King talked about it and why he's such a

good interviewer. He goes, I'm really curious about people. I'll sit next to them on the plane. I'll ask him who they are and what they're doing. And a lot of times, sadly, we spend a lot of time just talking about who we are. Oh, I'm this and I'm that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead of learning about other people and other ideas and other concepts, cultures, worlds, nations, you know, everything. Being curious about all sorts of things in life. And so this is just so important. So make intellectual curiosity a top priority for you in your life. And if you're an entrepreneur,

I'd say this is something that can make a huge amount of difference in your business and what you're taking, doing your approach. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you guys. If you love this show, we'll do more like it, or I'll just take concepts and talk about them,

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