The Jordan Harbinger Show - 52: Cal Fussman | How to Ask Big Questions for Big Answers

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Cal Fussman (@calfussman) is a writer-at-large for Esquire Magazine known for his interviews with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to Muhammad Ali to Jeff Bezos to Barbara Walters to Tom Hanks to Serena Williams. Make sure to check out his weekly podcast: Big Questions with Cal Fussman. What We Discuss with Cal Fussman: How November 22, 1963 got a young Cal to start asking big questions. How Cal learned to build rapport fast during a decade of travel. What creates and maintains the kind of curiosity that drives an epic interview. Cal's approach to interviewing and how it differs from that of a journalist. Why listening is actually an art form and how we can hone our skills to get the best out of others and ourselves. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'm often asked, Cal, if you've interviewed all the icons of the last century, what similarity do they have? Is there some thread that runs through all of them? And the two that I've noticed, one, they all pushed out of their comfort zone. Not anybody who achieved something great would tell you, no, I stayed in the same place, stayed in the box. They all went out of the box. and two, they all got knocked down and they all got back up and took it higher than where they were the first time.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DePhilippo. On this episode, we're talking with my good friend, Cal Fussman. Many of you know Cal. He is a writer at large for Esquire magazine and he's known best possibly

for the What I've Learned column where he interviews leaders in various fields. Sounds pretty plain, Jane, but let me tell you who he's talked to, just a sample. Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Welsh, De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Springsteen, Dr. Dre, freaking Pele, Serena Williams, and even Muhammad Ali. There's a huge list. I'm just not going to, let's save some for the show, right? You get the idea.

The man's got stories, but more importantly, he knows how to get stories. And by the way, this is a long episode. You're going to want to listen to this in chunks. I'm just going to throw that out there. Normally with an episode of this length, we would cut it way, way down, but Cal's got a lot of great stuff, and we just didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This episode is a deep dive into what creates and maintains curiosity of the type that elicits some of the best from other people. Today, we'll discover how to build rapport with people fast and how Cal had to do this during his decade of travel in quite a surprising way that is near and dear to my heart, as you'll see for various reasons based on a past life, which I think you all appreciate,

especially if you've been longtime fans of the show. And we'll explore Cal's approach to interviewing and why it's different than a journalist. Again, fans of the Jordan Harbinger show and of us for years past, we'll see a lot of overlap between Cal's style and my own, and we'll learn why listening is actually an art form and how we can hone these skills to not only get the best out of others, but get the best from ourselves as well. Don't forget, we've always got worksheets. There's one for today's episode.

That's how you make sure you solidify your understanding of the key takeaways here from Cal Fussman. My Worksheets team actually fought over who got to do this one. That should give you an indicator of how much people loved this one. The fee for this show, as always, is that you share it with friends when you find something useful, which should be in every episode, and that's what the worksheets, and that's how we make sure of that. The link to the worksheets is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right, here's Cal Fussman.

What did you want to be when you were growing up, when you were younger, Do you remember? I always want to be a writer. Mission accomplished then, I guess. It wasn't even a question. That's what I was. It only became a question now as I start Act 3. Because now I'm speaking.

Sure. And there is a difference between writing and speaking. One of the great things about it is speaking is a lot quicker. It's sort of the difference between acting in a Broadway play and acting in a movie. We're talking now. If I screw up my next line, everybody's going to hear it. Well, I'll edit it out and make you look good. No, no, don't do that.

A lot of people aren't that kind. Jason will edit it out, right, Jason? Thank you, Jason. But you don't have to. You don't have to. I'm on the Broadway stage here. And if I flubbed my next line, I flubbed my next line, everybody's going to know it. Now, if I'm in a movie, I can screw up that line 89 times.

Give me another take. Yeah. hopefully until they fire me yeah yeah as a writer you have that same situation you're alone in a room it's three in the morning you put your words down you look at them i can make that a little better do it over look it again you know that's not really the way i wanted to say it let me take a different whack at it and you can get lost in eight hours until finally ah that's it yeah that's what i wanted So how do you know when you're done writing something that if you can revise it in unlimited amount of times based on your mood? How would Michelangelo know when he looked at the David?

Maybe he ran out of steam. There's just a point where even with a dentist filling a tooth, putting in a cat, how does he know? Yeah, I just shave that just right. there's just a feeling that you get, okay, that's right. And it's the same thing with writing. And also you're going to send it into an editor who may say, no, can we think about this part? Or we got to cut a third of it out because the magazine didn't sell enough ads.

Oh, man. And they choose that third to cut? It depends on the situation. Fortunately, after working for almost two decades at Esquire, you know your editors, you know your researchers. So you're working together on it. And that actually is helpful. Yeah, the collaborative aspect. Because if we're going to take the David metaphor or analogy, I guess, I never know what those two things are.

If we're going to take the David analogy, I basically chip the interview out of the marble and it comes. kind of looks like a person, right? And then I hand it over to Jason and then he polishes it all up. And then it looks like a David, maybe. You know, it's more collaborative. And maybe I chip more away than I think. But there's definitely an element of collaboration where I think we can both blame one another if it turns out poorly.

And that's the way we like it. Well, you know, this is you're a master. You've been doing this for 11 and a half years. I was going to say 12. But thank you for rounding up. Okay. You've been doing this for 12 years. Sure. When you started, did you have that same process?

In the beginning, we were in a basement and we recorded it and then we would cut off the beginning in the end where we were fiddling around with the controls and touching the microphones. And then that was it. That was the whole show. Now, how long did it take for that to evolve? It was pretty quick because I started to edit out all of the things I didn't like about it. So I would go through and listen and I would go, oh, I said like 48 times.

I'm going to cut out all those. Or I said, um, instead of pausing. Or I started the last few sentences with the words so. I'm going to cut those out. And I stopped using filler words for the most part and started just pausing when I needed to think. And that's the opposite of a live radio broadcast habit where you go, well, and you hold it because you want people to know that you're still there. but on a podcast you can actually pause.

Nobody's changing the dial. It's a little bit more intimate. The pace is a little slower than FM, for example. It's a very good point. I haven't fiddled with that yet. I notice I have certain phrasing that I repeat. Oh, yeah. And I'm conscious of it.

So now I think, how am I going to alter that? It's tough. I used to say absolutely 48 times in a show. That was my default word. You'd say, I have this, absolutely. Well, I've been doing this for long to absolutely. And you know what? Here's the thing about it.

The people listening, they become friendly with you. And they become friendly with that absolutely. You may not like it, but they may like it because that's you. Yeah. But doesn't everybody want to get better at what they're doing all the time? Yeah, I hear you. And I think I've only done one season. Oh, yeah.

And I just put out my first greatest hits. There you go. After one season, we did it kind of as a joke. But going back over everything, it was really funny to hear myself and just see the rookie mistakes that you make. Even I've been interviewing all this time, not so much with the interviews, but more in the openings, in the ads. where I was just charged up. And heading into season two, I think I'm going to be a lot more relaxed.

More relaxed, yeah. I think so. Although here's the thing, I've been told by a lot of people that when they listen to podcasts, they skip through the ads. Sure. They may be in the gym,

on the treadmill, and they have access, just press a button. Shoot, it's gone. So I felt like, I got to, do something wild and crazy with these ads to make people want to see what's he going to do this time. Right.

Yeah. And so that was my approach. And it got varying results because some people said, that's amazing. I always stay on to hear, just to hear the ads. And other people were saying, man, like, it's so over the top. We know it's not you. your whole brand is based on authenticity, and now you've created this character that's so over the top

to tell you about zip recruiter and Squarespace, and I'm realizing that, well, they were both right in a way, but I got to evolve. Yeah, and you've got to find the middle ground, which is hard to do. I'm understanding that you wanted to be a writer for the whole time, but did you know you wanted to interview people and write about it, or did you just think I'm going to write about events, places?

For me, it started on November 22nd, 1963, sitting in my second grade class. Miss Jaffe, the teacher walks out the room, comes back in, wearing the same clothes, but looking completely different. It's really pale. And she starts talking in a voice so calm, it was eerie. And she tells us that President Kennedy has just been shot. Oh, wow. And we're all at home.

Everybody goes straight to their television, and we find out the president's been assassinated, and new president's been sworn in. And a new president, his name is Lyndon B. Johnson. And I just keep thinking about this guy because I figured being in second grade, it was the middle initial that helped you become president. Nobody else was called by the middle initial except the president. So if you had a name like Lyndon B. Johnson, you were kind of destined to be a president. And that made me think, all right, hold it.

This guy's probably wanted to be president for a long time. Is he happy that he's president? Or is he sad that he's president? Because the only reason he's president is because of the assassination. Oh, or maybe he's scared that they're going to come after him too, now that he's the president. And so this thought actually came to me at the kitchen table after my parents had called me over to try to let me know that things were going to be okay. Because I just turned seven years old a week before. This really was my first confrontation with death.

And they wanted to make sure I'd sleep okay. And so they reassure me, tell me, look, tomorrow morning, you're going to wake up. You have breakfast just like normal. Things are going to return just the way they were. Don't worry about it. Our government's got this system in place that elevates the vice president. And everything's going to be fine. So after they go away, I'm sitting at the table and I just have any thoughts about this guy, Lyndon B. Johnson.

And I can't figure out what he's feeling. Is he scared? Is he happy? Is he sad? So I picked up a pencil. piece of paper and I wrote to him. I'm like, dear President Johnson, how does it feel, brother?

Please tell me you wrote brother. No, I'm just having a good time here. That would have been great. Well, it was very hard. Yeah. It was a letter sincere. Yeah, of course. Right from the heart.

And I folded it up, put it an envelope. I knew where the stamps were and I addressed. Back then you lick the stamps. Sure. Do we not do that now? It's been a minute since I put a stamp on. Yeah, they stick on. They stick on?

I think that's wise, yeah. And so I dressed the envelope, President Lyndon B. Johnson, the White House. And next day, didn't tell anybody, went to the mailbox, dropped it in. Two days later, three days later, my parents were right. Things slowly returned to normal. Obviously, you had the funeral and that's all anybody was talking about. But certainly, a month later, at Christmas, a new year, and I basically forgot about the letter.

Then five months or six months later, end of May, my mom comes racing up the steps of our apartment in Yonkers, New York, holding this envelope in her hands. It's from the White House, dressed to meet. And I got a letter from the president. What was your mom thinking at that point? Have you ever asked her as an adult, like, hey, what did you? How did you react? She was overwhelmed with excitement.

She's passed on now. But I still feel good remembering her coming in with this envelope because she, I don't think she had any idea like what's going on here. And back then, getting a letter from the White House, it was a big deal. I think it still is, probably. Well, I noticed my daughter wrote to Obama and she got back a letter. but you could tell it was a letter that a lot of kids got. Yeah, yeah.

Whereas this letter was written by his personal secretary, Juanita D. Roberts. And I knew that my letter had obviously worked its way up a chain to get to her. I don't know if she brought it into his office. It said, like, what do you want me to say to this kid? But when I was interviewing Robert Carrow, who... That's right. He basically spent a good chunk of his life research in Lyndon B. Johnson and writing these tomes. Like, basically, this guy's life is divided into books as a size of phone books.

And I'm telling him about this letter. And he says, like, who wrote the letter? And I said, well, this personal secretary, Juanita D. Roberts. And he says, I need a D. Roberts. Yeah. And it made me realize that the letter had a drift up to a certain point for her to respond to me. And what it taught me watching everybody come up to hold the letter, the principal of the school wants to see it, was a basic question could get you to the most powerful person on earth.

And from that moment on, I knew that's what I was destined to do. Have you been chasing that dragon ever since trying to get the top? I imagine early on when I went to journalism school, I was very competitive and chasing. And then the more accomplished I became, the less I started to chase. And I don't know what's going to happen now because you have already interviewed the icons who've shaped the last century. I've spoken and spent a week with Muhammad Ali and was with Mikhail Gorbachev and Jimmy Carter and De Niro, Pacino, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos. And so now I'm actually in a podcast looking in a day. different direction.

So I don't know where it's going to take me. I'm very curious to find out. It's fascinating to me to be doing it through my voice. Do you find it easier or more difficult? Because now you don't have to edit it, right? And you can say what's on your mind and you don't go, that doesn't look right. That doesn't look right.

Exactly. Larry King was telling me this story. And we just came from breakfast with Larry. Yeah. He was wearing a cool other jacket. I'm like, who's shopping for Larry? He didn't buy that himself. Larry, he can look pretty cool.

Yeah. But underneath, of course, were the suspenders somewhere, probably, right? He doesn't wear the suspenders unless he's working. By showtime only. Yeah. It's like his alter ego. Throw the suspenders on business. And I remember him telling me when he did his first CNN show.

So here's a guy, I'll just back this up a little. He starts in radio in Miami Beach, very small station. And then he slowly moves up the ranks to the big station in Miami. And then he gets a call from the mutual radio network. Because it's back in the late 70s, the guy running that network, guy named Ed Little had this idea that if I put somebody on all night, I could get the whole country to listen. Because before then, it's hard to remember.

but every little town had its own radio stations and its own man or woman, mostly a man, especially at that hour. Yeah, sure. And everyone told this guy, Ed Lidlittl, you're crazy. People in Natchez, Mississippi are not going to be listening to Larry King. People in Anchorage, Alaska are not going to be listening to Larry King. But Ed Little knew that there was something in Larry King that was universal. And when he put him on, it immediately worked. And basically, Larry was on in front of the country for five or six hours every night.

And then Ted Turner started CNN. And he asked Larry to come on at 9 o'clock Eastern. And Larry said, you know, I want to go to the baseball games. He's going to ruin my life. Yeah. And Ted was embroiled in a contract negotiation with the person who was on at 9 and basically wanted to get rid of them. And so he just said to Larry, look, just give it a shot. Do it for a year.

And if you don't like it, fine. No problems. And so Larry tried it. And this is at a point. This is 1985. The studio is in Washington, D.C. there is no cable in Washington, D.C. So he's actually...

No cable TV. No. But they're recording this CNN episode with Larry King. The first episode, New York Governor Mario Cuomo is the guest. And you can't watch this in Washington, D.C., because they haven't installed the cable. Cable, when it was first brought in, was done more in rural areas than it was in the big cities.

And Larry said he is doing this interview with Cuomo, and it's just got a radio microphone in front of him. And he said as soon as he started talking to Cuomo, he said, this is going to be big. I can feel it. And I felt a little of that when I did, I started to do these podcasts. I was sitting down with Kobe Bryant in his office, and it was so relaxed. And I was basically doing everything I've been doing for decades, except the advertisements and the lead-in. That was where it was all new to me. And that's where I was reacting like I was just starting anything.

But the actual moment where I'm sitting down with Kobe or sitting down with Tim Ferriss completely relaxed. And I knew this is what you should be doing. And it's felt so natural from that point on. It's almost hard for me to believe. How did you first start learning the craft of interviewing other people? I know you did a lot of traveling or on buses and things like that. You had a little game you would play called Let's Not Be Homeless Tonight. I mean, that wasn't the name of the game, but that was kind of what you were doing.

Yeah, what happened was I was working for a magazine in New York. After I got out of journalism school, I worked for a couple of newspapers, and then I got this amazing opportunity to work for a magazine called Inside Sports. And in fact, I was reminded of it yesterday. I was driving down the street, and I saw on a marquee some lettering, like a sign. when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, Hunter S. Thompson. And he was one of people who would write for this magazine. And he would show up in New York and we'd all go to the cowboy bar and I'd be throwing back shots

with him. And it wasn't only Hunter, like some of the best writers in America. And so I had this ideal job. I'm like 22, 23 years old. And going off to interview to Steelers while they go for their fifth Super Bowl. bowl ring, it's come back, shots with Hunter, David Halberstam, Pulitzer Prize winning journalists, sit you down, tell you stories. It's amazing. And then, in one day, in a finger snap, all disappeared. Because this magazine inside sports was an artistic success. It was a monthly

created to compete with Sports Illustrated back in the days when Sports Illustrated was the bomb. And as good as it was, it was not a commercial success. Washington Post had funded it and pulled the plug. And I'm looking around and I'm thinking, what am I going to do now? And like, wherever I go to work, it's going to be a job. It's not going to be like this. Right. Every day it was an adventure.

So I just started thinking about it. And it actually became sort of a life crisis because I didn't know what to do. and I wasn't going to go back and work for a newspaper. I needed to go somewhere else. So I thought I would take some time off and just travel a bit. I had hardly any money. And a bunch of guys, good friends, decided that we meet in Europe, just spend a few weeks.

That's how it started. One of the guys' name is Gary Smith, and he later became a award-winning. writer. He's probably one more Best Magazine Award than any other writer for long-form journalism. He went over first, and I said, I'll meet you over there. Some mother joined us. But when he went over, he was in Italy, and he bought a ticket on a bus, and he didn't know where it was going. He just had it inside him that he just wanted to be curious. And it might have led him to a train or it might have been the train to a bus, but both times he was just buying the ticket.

Where's the next one leave at him? And then he got off and he starts walking and a car drives by and stops, picks him up, and takes him into this little town called Castle Viscardo. And he's a hero. He's an American guy. It's very rare that a guy would just show up in little Castle Biscardo. and everybody immediately loves him. And so when it's time to meet me in Germany for October Fest, he does, and he says, he's like, you've got to come back to Castle Viscardo. So we go back. And as soon as we walk in, he's like, Gotti!

And he said, this is my friend Calvino. And the pasta comes out. No wine comes out. And we're picking grapes and just having a great time. And he explained, this is how he did it, just buying a ticket for the next destination. And so I said, you know, I'm going to try that too. And that led me around the globe. Because even though I didn't have much money, I became very good at walking down the aisle of a train and looking at empty seats and trying to figure out,

all right, which one of these people could I get into an interesting conversation with? So interesting that by the end of the Rye, they're going to say, oh, you've got to come home with me. And I get really good at it. It sounds like every young guy's dream to go look on a European train and find someone that they want to go home with. But something tells me you're not talking about meeting women. Well, here's the thing. This is where, and this is confusing to me to this. day because I would walk down that aisle and I would see beautiful women and I would see empty seats

next to them. But I would always walk by them because you just look at me. You know, they're not taking me home. They're not taking cow home. So I walked by all these beautiful women and I didn't sit down next to them, right? Fast forward must have been 15 years or so. and I'm working for Esquire, and I get a call to do an interview with Petron Nemcova, who is big-time fashion model. You might remember her because she was involved in the tsunami in Thailand. Oh, right. And she survived, but her friend didn't or something like that?

That's right. And so I show up for this interview. It was at a bar, and it was at night. I think it was supposed to be maybe. 7.30 or something. And she's late. And so she shows up maybe 8, 8, 15. And like, are you, Cal? Yeah. And she sits down. We start talking. Immediately we hit it off. I mean, like, just like that. And we're talking for three hours. And if you're supposed to last, like, hour and a half tops. But it's not, it wasn't an interview after 30 seconds. It's just a conversation. And at the end of it, I say to her,

You know, I got to make a confession to you. And I said, this really bothers me because here I am, I'm walking down the aisle of the train. And if 15 years ago you were sitting in a seat next to an empty seat, I'd have walked right by you. I would have said hello to you. And look at what I would have missed. We just had a great conversation. And what she did was very cool. She looked over to me and she grabbed my hand.

And she said, don't worry, Cal, yeah. Well, tonight, I sat next to you. Oh, now she's got game. There's an addendum to the story. So years later, I'm telling this story to Kat Graham, who was the star on Vampire Diaries, beautiful woman. And same thing. I sit down with her, and we just immediately hit it off.

If I would have known her when she was, 19, 20, 20, we'd have been friends for life. And I admit that I would have passed her by too. And she says to me, you asshole. I said, what do you mean? You asshole, don't you understand? So I'm sitting on the train. There's an empty seat next to me.

You're walking by. We can have a great conversation. but you keep walking and we never meet. And then, three minutes later, some real asshole comes over, sits in the seat and tries to pick me up for the next two hours.

Great, Cal. Yeah. Great moves. That's the story of every woman's life, though. You're not the only one who's to blame, right? We all, a lot of good guys walk past beautiful women and then a lot of women say, why is it only the jerks that approach me?

Why is it only the gross ones that approach me? It's because we're all too scared. The thing about it was, I wasn't scared. It's just that I knew they weren't taking me home. It was, there was a real, in my mind, this trip was sort of glued together by these experiences of meeting people who took me in and passed me on. And so sitting next to a beautiful woman in my mind is only going to break the chain. You don't want to break the chain. Now, if it's a 92-year-old grandma, great.

So you had a lot of those? Grandmas, top of the list. Because grandmas will be thinking about things like secure it. Like he can't speak the language. Is he going to be safe here? I better watch out for this guy. You're triggering that maternal instinct as hard as you can. Right.

And maybe I'm hungry. Maybe it would have been triggered by a beautiful young woman. Yeah, who knows? Petra is a woman. She could have cooked you some food or kept you safe and warm. Who is to know where a conversation leads you? Nobody knows. So why not have it?

Why walk by the conversation? Now, it may be different these days because people got earbuds in and so it's harder to strike up a conversation with somebody. You literally have to ask them to take something out of their ears. But you can still do it. I would say that, yeah, for sure. Just signal, just do that nonverbal signal to take the headphones out. Most people might say what, and then as soon as you start talking, they don't care anymore.

There's that and there's something else, which if I had this when I was traveling, I'd have been the ultimate piece. I'd still be traveling now. Nothing. Well, I shouldn't say that because I met the woman who became my wife on a bus, and that was a beautiful woman, and it did stop the trip. So there you go. There you go.

There you go. It proved my boy. That's right. It proved my boy. They had to grow through that. Yeah. But now you got couch surfing. Yes.

Now I can get on the Internet, and wherever I go, all I got to do is hit a few keys who is in Brussels. And there are people in Brussels who are looking for somebody foreign to come in and delight them with stories. That's why they got on couch server to begin with. And those people love to show where they're from. And those people love to show the local delicacies. For somebody now, it's completely open. And not only that, and I haven't done this couch surfer, but I think there are ratings attached.

There are. Yeah, you can review people. Yeah. Couchesurfing.org, and we'll link it in the show notes as well if people want to sign up. I remember, I was one of the first 500 members of that website in 2000 out of the early aughts maybe. It's great. It's phenomenal. You can immediately have a friend on the ground.

I'll be at the train station at 1 a.m. Don't let me get killed. And depending how it goes, if you really strike up a friendship, basically now every time you go back to Brussels, you're covered. You got a home base. Yeah. I mean, this is like, this is like, remember that game, risk? Yeah, sure, sure.

Yeah. But your guys all over the world. Yeah. You can establish an empire, an empire of people and places that want to see you and hear about your next adventure. And you know, what's kind of interesting that I found starting this podcast is I was interviewing the CEO of Soul Cycle. Oh, wow. Okay. Melanie Wheeling.

Yeah. And here's the thing. I've never run a business. This is really the first entrepreneurial thing that I'm doing. Don't know anything about business. So I'm asking her, like, well, what do I do? And she tells me something I never would have expected. She says, well, when I look at our competitors, I'm thinking Netflix.

And I'm like, soul cycle competing with Netflix. But then you realize she's right. because if people are sitting on a couch watching some great programming, then they're not going to be on a bike. Right. And that shows you how smart she is. And so I'm really paying attention. And she said, you've got to think about how your audience, your listeners, are spending their time. Now, for a business person, I think that that's probably 101.

But if you're Cal, I'm not, I go out to spend a week with my, Muhammad Ali, I'm not thinking where is the Esquire reader going to be when he reads this? What time is he going to pick it up? It's like not even, there's no room in my brain for that. But when she said it, I thought, oh my God, I don't know who my listeners are. Yeah. So I started to ask the listeners to send me a photo of where they're listening. And it's wild. You get pictures of people who are sending chickens in the coop saying,

I listen to you and I'm doing the chores in the morning. And I got photo from Belgium. And then I was going to Brussels. And I emailed him back. And let's get dinner. And he wouldn't let me buy the dinner. And so I'm realizing that one of the great things about doing a podcast, may be setting up this network, this empire of friends who would want to see you if you were traveling to Hong Kong, if you're roaming around Thailand. And this has got me, remember I told you, I felt exactly how Larry King felt when he did that first CNN interview. It's deeper than just the broadcast. This is linking me back.

to those moments where I was traveling around the world. And now my kids, two of them are in college. The third one is getting there. Yes, sir. We're going to hit the road again. So when I say how great I feel about doing this podcast, it's really hooked into something in my essence about traveling, curiosity, going out to meet new people.

I don't know where it's going to take me, but I feel this is what I was meant to do. Why do you think you're more curious than other people? Or why do you think other people's curiosity gets muffled if you think we're all equally curious? Most people don't realize that their curiosity is getting buried, shovelful after shovelful of experiences. It happens in ways. Look, I'll give you a classic example, all right? When you're four years old, studies have shown that you can ask your parents 400 questions a day. Wow.

I can't wait for that. And lovely Jen here is smiling. She's going to take the brunt of them. Don't worry. Oh, I know she's going to pass him off to me. It's only about, hey, Jordan, junior's got 84 questions about how the TV works. It doesn't work that way. She is already asking me 400 questions a day because she's naturally.

very curious. Oh man, you're going to get 800. But it's okay because the kid is going to be like hugging her leg and saying, mom, mom, mom, why, why, why. And the only thing she could do is hand the kid over to you and then you'll get it. Great. Sounds about right. That's how we're thinking when we're four. Now think about what happens in next year. You're five. You go to kindergarten. You still got all those questions in you. But one of the first things you learn is it's the teacher. It's the who asks questions, you're there to give the answers. That's number one. Number two, if you got a question, you can't just blurt it out.

No more, mom, mom, mom. You raise your hands and I will call on you so you can ask your question. So already in that little scene, you have just seen how curiosity has been stifled, even though obviously you need to do that in order to make a classroom function. Right. But now the Y, why, why is, should I ask that? Should I raise my hand? And that starts this process that by the time somebody's in junior high school,

you ain't going to see any hands going up. And if somebody puts their hands up and asks a question that the rest of the class deems ridiculous. Oh, yeah. Like in my day, you were completely made a fool of. Now, with a cell phone, somebody can type it into the internet and you're a buffoon around the world. Yeah. Or you could type your question in and get the answer. Okay.

But most people aren't doing that. And this carries through to point where people take a job. Now they're early 20s and they're in a group setting and something needs to be done. It's their responsibility and they don't know exactly how to do it. But they're a group of people there. Are they going to announce, you know, I really don't understand this. How does it work? Or are they going to take that question and shove it down so that nobody will know that they

don't know how to do it? And maybe they'll figure it out on their own or they'll pull somebody else aside. And you just got this continual shovel after shovel after shovel of dirt that's burying curiosity. And people aren't even aware of it. And then you have a kid. And now your kid's asking you 400 questions and you just need some sleep. And you got no time for curiosity then. You just want to get some sleep.

Yeah. And so why did I stay curious? Number one, that moment with the president taught me that my strength is in my curiosity. And so I'm never going to tolerate a shovel of dirt coming on it. There's just too many questions coming up. It's just constantly fresh. So no matter how many shovels come down, I'm just sweeping the dirt away. And then I never evolved into a position where, like, I had a job, an actual where I went to work.

There was only a couple of exceptions. I was always a writer who was out alone. And the one time when I took a job, I had just gotten married to the beautiful woman. I met on the bus. And kids were coming. And it just seemed like a good time to stop in a place, get some good medical insurance. Yeah. And so for, I think it was, I worked at this place maybe a year and a half at a newspaper.

And I immediately instructed the assistant, the secretary of the department, because I knew I wasn't going to be at the desk to just, when anybody came over and asked, like, where's Cal? Say, he's out in the field. So I was never really in a place where I was put in a situation where I didn't know something. and I was too scared to bring it up. I just kept asking the questions. And so I think my curiosity is as high as it was as when I was four years old. What if someone feels like they're stifled or they can't start these conversations and engage their curiosity?

How would you recommend they fix that? How about this? Because I just talked about learning this going around the world. And that's kind of another example. You get on a bus and you can't speak the same. language is other person. Now you're in a game of charades. And now you're curious because you're trying to figure out everything. In this case, let's say the person's not traveling. How could they bring the world to them? Well, why not get two friends and say, all right, we're going to have

dinner on Saturday night. But the rule is everybody has to bring over somebody that I've never met. And And this dinner is going to function so that the three of us who know each other are going to be finding out about the three of us who nobody has ever met. And we're going to look at it like this. These three people, maybe they come from a different city in the United States, maybe they come from somewhere else in the world. And the conversation will go like this in your mind. You are going to convince yourself that this person that you meet from a different city or a different country, they just happen to be from the place that you need to move in two weeks. So whatever questions you have about that place, where to go, what to eat, how are the schools, crime, you're just, you have to find out as much as you can just to protect yourself.

You just have a nice dinner that way. And I think just by going in with those questions and continually imagine into yourself, I need to move there. What else do I got to think about? Where am my kids going to go to school? Where's the best place for my kids? Or I'm single. Where's the best bars to go to meet somebody? However you're thinking, that's the thing about this.

And I'm glad you honed in on the curiosity because so many people email me, call me up, I give speeches, and at the end, they want my questions. Oh, the actual questions. They want the actual questions. And that is part of the problem. Yeah, it's the wrong question to be asking. Because what they really want is my curiosity. But I can't give them my curiosity.

I can give them an exercise like that that says, okay, you may have a lot of dirt on top of your curiosity that you're going to have to start shoveling away yourself. So just put yourself in that place where you need, You desperately need to know about the place this person comes from and see where it takes you. Don't stop after one question because if you were moving there, you wouldn't. You would really want to know stuff because you'd have to add a self-preservation. So there's just a very simple exercise.

But if you don't go at it through curiosity, then everything. else you try is going to be much more difficult and maybe even impossible. Because you have to kind of fake it, which is why people say things like, Hey, Cal, what's your favorite book? Where's your favorite place that you've traveled? Where's your, how do you like podcast? Because they don't really care. They just want to engage in a dialogue of some kind.

Because you're approaching these interviews as if you're sitting on that train as opposed to you're a journalist trying to get some facts from someone. Right. From the sound of it. That's exactly it. But in that exercise, I'm basically adding a component where you need something. So it's not just curiosity for the sake of curiosity, which in my case, it was. If I meet somebody, if I meet a cab driver from Ethiopia, I'm curious about Ethiopia.

and if I meet a cab driver from Belgium, I was just in Belgium. Now, we may talk about Belgian beers for the next, as long as a ride's going to last. It really is a case if you feel like your curiosity has been stifled. It's not getting certain questions, although I can give you certain questions, that will open people up. I mean, here's one, for example, that I use in workshops where I have people interviewing each other. And one of the questions that they have to ask to each other is, why is your best friend, your best friend?

Now, that's a question that you can't really fake. You certainly can't fake the answer. You don't really need to either. If you're not curious, well, and you use the question, it's. the question is powerful enough to make the person you've asked think, why is my best friend, my best friend? And that curiosity enough inside the person who's asked will be enough to generate a revealing, genuine response.

So you can't really go wrong with that question. But if you ask it with full sincerity, then you've got this an added level of curiosity because you're going to be paying attention to the answer, which is then going to take the conversation to a deeper place. So there are questions, and I'm going to write a book showcasing these questions. When does that come out? I just finished.

Put the finishing touches on the proposal. We'll see what happens. But there are certain questions that will be enough to ignite the curiosity and the listener so that even if you feel, oh, I don't know how to really start this conversation. I don't feel comfortable. If you ask this question, it will open things up. And then you're relying on your curiosity and you're listening to push things forward.

Now, if you can't listen, it's really not going to make much of a difference because they'll be talking and you're not hearing. Right. It's a one-sided conversation. In many ways, almost not even a conversation at that point. Larry King once told me a story about being interviewed by some grand, um, interviewer and I think it was in Texas who came with a pad and had their questions written out like,

it was a TV interview. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And asked the first question, Larry gives the answer and notices she's not listening at all to what he's saying. asked the second question and then she's whatever this is the days before cell phones but she was just on autopilot and so he starts answering the questions like completely different than the question calls for right sure just ridiculous out of left field kind of answers yeah and so if you're asking questions and not paying attention to the answers it all this is meaningless

You've got to be curious and deeply paying attention. Would you say that if somebody feels like they're not curious but they're doing a podcast or they're doing some kind of writing that maybe they're in the wrong line of work or do you think they just haven't done the work to develop the requisite curiosity to do the job? Well, look, podcasts are different. Somebody can do a podcast and just go on and start talking. Sure, yeah. Yeah, we can do them by ourselves if we need to.

Yeah. And so I guess a lot of the, that question revolves around, is this person doing a podcast because they want to be well known or because they want to sell something as opposed to doing interviews that reveal the essence of their guests? If they're doing those kind of interviews and they're not really curious, my, I've tuned into a few. and after 30 seconds, you know, it's over. Yeah. It's kind of sad, really. Yeah. Well, it's a waste of everyone's time.

And also, it's just such a wasted opportunity for both people, honestly. Well, you know what? And this brings up a good point because I just got an email this morning from an old buddy, a journalist named Steve Fishman. And he just put out a podcast called Empire on Broadway. Oh, right. You were talking about that at breakfast. Yes, number one rated podcast now on Apple, at least this morning. These things move quick.

Yeah, they do. So don't look for it at number one now, but you can find Empire on Blood. It'll still be there. Yeah. And so basically, Steve has been an investigative journalist for must be definitely more than three decades. and he finds out about this guy who was accused and convicted of a double murder on the streets of the Bronx. But the guy was a drug dealer. The guy brought crack to the Bronx. And he did not commit the murder, apparently, but he was in jail. And somehow he got connected to Steve and got a thousand pages of court documents to Steve. And it picked Steve's curiosity because Steve thought, you know what, I don't think this guy's guilty.

And for seven years, he worked on this. And finally, it came out that the guy was not guilty. And the guy got out of jail. And so Steve had, like, hours of tape talking to this guy. And he was able to bring it over to some storytellers and producers. And they put it together into a podcast. There must be six or seven episodes about an hour each. And I haven't, I just got the email.

I haven't had a chance. to listen, but apparently it's amazing. And so what's going to happen, I think, is you're going to find all these journalists who were working at magazines. Now, Steve had that story. He's working on seven years. Couldn't sell it to a magazine. A magazine would buy it. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Unbelievable. But the thing of it, the magazines are getting thinner and thinner and thinner. Younger people really aren't reading magazines there. Not the physical. magazines anyway. If they are, it's on the internet. And so the magazines are getting thinner and thinner and thinner. And that leaves them with very little room to run a long

piece of journalism. And so what I think you're going to see is a lot of the journalists saying, oh, I can ask questions. I can tell stories. Maybe I should be there. And so I realize the market It has been flooding with people, everybody who wants to have a voice. But now you're going to have a lot of people who are trained to get answers and trained to tell stories. And so I think it's going to be harder for a podcaster who isn't curious and can't ask the questions that are going to get stories or good tools out of their guests. and podcasting is probably going to be taken to a higher level. That's great news, though. I'm only in this now for one season, but this is just my short take-up thing.

Sure. Sure. I believe that. I'd love to see that because I think that podcasting dipped into a sort of a phase where everybody has one, but some people are just doing it because they want to build a name for themselves. They don't actually care about the craft or anything like that. And maybe I'm just being a hipster. about it, but I feel like there's no value in creating something just so that you can say,

oh, I'm a influencer. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. Yeah, and I can understand why a lot of those people do it because they tie it to their business. Yes. And it's just an extension of what they're selling. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah.

But it's going to be harder and harder to compete because, you know, I'm looking around this office here and you're seeing so many podcasts are coming out. And not only that, but many of the podcasts are now being done by celebrities who do have an audience. People are flocking to them just because they already like the person. So while I think this is going to keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, because even when I was listening to a trailer for this empire on blood, I was able to realize immediately, wow, this is much better than if it would have been written in print. you're hearing the voice of the guy who was behind bars.

You're hearing somebody set up a sound system in a courtroom in the Bronx. And these are things that would, they just can't fit into print journalism. So I think podcasting's biggest days are right around the corner. Fingers crossed for that, of course. I'm ready for it. I'm excited about that because of the position that I find. myself in, find you in as well. And I think it's going to be great. I also think that it makes it more accessible for great content to come out. And I want to pick one interview that you did a

long time. Actually, I don't know when you did this with Gorbachev. This must have been quite a while ago. You said the first question in an interview should go to the heart, not the head, and then you can get to the soul. That sounds great, but what does that actually mean? Because if we're talking about head questions where it's what's your favorite book what kind of things do you like to do the sort of fact-based what do you what's a heart question something like well a favorite book could be a question to the heart if you if you love harry potter and i come at you with the first question about harry potter that is going straight to your heart my point is to open up with something that you believe the person's going to be passionate about or deeply care about

If you, even you're a salesman and you show up in somebody's office, you could immediately say, well, I sell copiers. What kind of copier you got? I just want to know so I can tell you how the copier I sell is going to be better. Or you can walk into the office and spot a picture of the person who resides in that office with their family. see that they got seven kids. And you, seven kids.

What's this little one's name? Straight to the heart. And then also, you can't afford this copy or I'm out of here. You got seven kids. There's no way you're going to be able to pay this thing off. I can understand that. Go to the heart, not the head. And are you thinking about this kind of first question consciously when you go into an interview?

You just kind of snap to it. No, what happened is I didn't even know this, that I was doing this. until I was asked to give a speech about decoding the art of the interview who was on a cruise of entrepreneurs. I don't know. Do you know Summit very well? I do. I went in 2010, which I think was one of the ones right before they did the ones on the boat,

which I believe you went to, the one on the boat. That's right. So I'm invited to this cruise ship, and I know I got to give this speech. I never really spoke for an hour before. I was a little nervous about it, but they had some. so many events going on simultaneously on this ship that I'm thinking, look, you know, 17 people are going to show up. Sure.

I'll just talk about my interviews, tell some stories. And I got a nice weekend in the Caribbean. Yeah, can't beat it. Yeah. And I show up, and a room's packed. I mean, beyond packed. There are every seat's film, there's standing room only to the back. I got CEOs and billionaires sitting cross-legged in the aisles.

and a long line out the door that can't get in. It's like the iPhone. What? How did I become the iPhone? Me, I don't know anything about technology. So all I could do was just get up and tell my stories. And when I'm done, there's this long line of people. And remember, they're all entrepreneurs in a way.

They're all running businesses. And they want to know, well, like, what questions. Can they ask that will improve their hiring? So that makes sense to me. Sure. But there's also a guy, his name is Roman Sunder, runs an organization called Patow. Plan to take over the world.

It's like the foremost marketing conference in America. All the top marketers are there. I never heard of it, so I'm obviously not part of that plan to take over the world. I'm left out of that one. He's a great guy. and he had a conference coming up, and he asked if I would be the keynote speaker at his conference. And there's a little backstory to this.

I almost started laughing when I heard about this because I remember interviewing Jack Welch, right? When he stepped down as CEO of General Electric. So nobody was bigger as the CEO than Jack Welch at that time. Yeah. And we sit down in this place in Boston, and we have a great conversation. He's telling his stories. I start telling him mine.

It's only supposed to be an hour and a half where two and a half in, and he doesn't want to stop. And he said, you know what? Cal, let's go get some lunch. I said, great, Jack. So we're about to head out the door, and he stops, and he turns to me, and he says, you know, Cal, if I was still at GE, you would have never gotten out of this room without joining our marketing team. Really? Now, a lot of people might have taken that as a compliment, which is the way he intended it.

Sure. But me, a guy who's like going around the world and writing and sort of fantasizing or seeing himself as a cross between Marco Polo and Hemingway. Sure. You know, you here join my marketing to me, a marketer. Right. I just got done with Gorbachev. I'm not going to market for General Electric. Well, I'm looking at him like De Niro and taxi drive.

You know, like, are you talking to me, Jack? You're talking to me? And he laughed. He saw that he kind of hit a nerve. And he said, hey, I've been doing this a long time. This is what I do. I know when I see something. you belong in my marketing team.

And so it became this, it became comical. Any time I heard somebody brought up marketing, I kind of laughed and remember Jack Welch. And so now, here I am, I just get my first speech. And the head of the foremost marketing conference in America comes over to ask me to be the keynote speaker right in front of Mayor Bloomberg. And he did two great things. So on the ship, I told his stories about Mikhail Gorbachev and Donald Trump and Muhammad Ali, Larry King. And it lasts for more than an hour.

He says, I want you to do that, but you only got 17 minutes. Oh, wow. Yeah. So right, my jaw hits my knee. Like, there's no way I can do this. Right. Like, no way. But I go home and I'm really trying to, like, condense this.

And what enabled me to condense it is he said, just do your heart, head and soul approach. And I said, like, what heart head and soul approach? And he said, you know, you told the story about Gorbachev, that's the heart. Told a story about Muhammad Ali. That's the son. And I said, oh, my God, he's right. I do have a head, heart and soul approach. And I got a speech down to 22 minutes. I was never proud of myself in my whole life. I mean, if I had cut one more word at this speech, it would have started to bleed. Yeah, sure. So now I got to go back and rehearse it for room. I show up to rehearse it for him.

He's got a team of people. And he pulls out a big timer. I get up and I start talking. He hits the timer. Give the speech. It goes 22 minutes. At the end, everybody's applauding. Great, great.

And he says to me, only one thing. Cut out another five minutes. It was a great thing that he did. It really was because it just made me refine and refine and refined. And at the end of it, I did have a heart, head, and soul. Which he made me, first he identified it. And then he made me refine it to a place where I thought, yeah, this is what I do. And so now I'm trying to do that with everything about the way I interview so I can help others who would want to try and understand it for whatever reason.

Maybe they want to hire better. If they want to sell more, maybe they go out on a date and they want to immediately be able to tell. Is this the one? Maybe they want to talk to a parent who doesn't open up very much. There's a million reasons where people want to learn how to ask questions, interview, have a conversation in a meaningful way. And so that's what I'm doing now. I'm really refining all these things, understanding and then boiling down to the essence,

all these things I've been doing over decades so that they can be useful to people. You have said that listening is an art forum. I would love to hear what you mean by that. you get a listening exercise for the listeners here? Start with meeting somebody that is in a comfortable place because some people, they don't want to walk up to somebody they don't know. Sure. I wouldn't advise if you're a woman to walk up to some guy and do this because they may not

know what's going on. The intent could be a little confusing, yeah. Right. Sure. But. So if you're a woman, you could walk up to another woman and do this? You could do that, but some people they don't like to walk up to somebody they don't know. Most people don't like that.

Right. But what are we saying to that, Tufikisha, do it anyway? No, what I'm saying to that is, let's find a middle ground. Let's find a person who maybe works for the same company that you don't know. Now you have something in common. And also there's some accountability. This person isn't going to do anything bad to somebody. who's working for the same company.

You're not going to get a harsh rejection from somebody in the HR department. That's right. So now you're safe, which is the first rule of interviewing. Make the person feel safe. How do you usually do that? If you try to do an interview in a place where you're doing it on an edge of a cliff and putting their chair right. Right to the point where if they lean back, they're going to go over.

You know, it's not a safe place. It's a very good point in that now I'm going to go back home and I'm going to really think about that because you ask a question. And to me, it's common sense. You look at the person. Do they look like they feel safe? But no, maybe I have to go back and think. how do you make somebody feel safe? Yeah, because, okay, for example,

I would love to interview, and I was talking with his assistant for a long time, or his publicist, David Copperfield, right? I was thrilled about this. I was almost going to happen, and then this sort of scandal thing came out, and then it was just like, look, he doesn't want to do any media.

And the reason is because he thinks this is going to come up, they're going to try to trick me, don't feel safe doing it. Yeah, there you go. I don't want to do it anymore. That's right. The problem is,

that you probably weren't dealing with him. You were dealing with his manager. Right. Not even. Some assistant publicist. And then when I tried her email recently, it bounced. She's gone. It's over.

Yeah. So that person's job is basically to say no. It's a wall that he's got up. And so that person will never say yes, no matter what you do. Because basically that person is. scared that after being told your job is to say no, if they come back with, well, you know, I told this guy maybe, and she's not doing her job. Now she's scared. She's going to get fired. So you just made her feel unsafe. Maybe that's why she's gone. She said, sure, someday maybe.

Fired. No, I don't know. But to the point, you would basically have to get to David Copperfield. say this is what I do. I know your situation. I would like to talk to you. What circumstances might make you feel comfortable? You don't have to use the word safe. If you use the word comfortable, it's a more comfortable word to use. Yeah.

It doesn't say, well, I wasn't thinking about safety, but now that you brought it up, maybe I do feel unsafe. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're now making a judgment that, well, I know you feel unsafe. Nobody wants to feel that way. Right. So basically, if you just say I've reached out and I really would love to do this,

can you tell me how we could do this so that it would be the most comfortable to you? Now, just by the fact that you use the word how in the question, there should be an opening for a long response. because if you say, how could I make this the most comfortable for you, there's no yes or no answer. Right. It's an open-ended question. That's right.

And so now they have to think positively unless they're going to say, well, Jordan, to tell you something, I'm just, I'm not in a comfortable place right now. And I just not going to feel comfortable doing this with anybody. It's nothing personal against you. You got to respect that. Sure. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. You can't change discomfort in somebody else's belly. I mean, I have, and you can. But if somebody up front is saying, I don't feel comfortable, I'm not going to do this, it's pretty hard to change their mind. Right. You're not even going to get in the room with them. If you're in the room and they feel uncomfortable, you can probably make

them feel at ease, which is something that I think every interviewer is done. But if they won't even sit down with you, you're facing quite a challenge that maybe the timing is not quite right. Unless you can get to one of their close friends or relatives. There you go. There you go. And then it's got to be positioned to him through a sense of safety. If it goes to his brother, then his brother can say, hey, I know this guy, Jordan.

He's a good guy. He's got a history of doing his podcast. for 11 years, you can listen. And that might sway David Copperfield. I hope it does. I hope you meet somebody in his family. As you get older, how is your interviewing style or skills? How have they changed?

Or have they changed? I would like to see video of me. And I didn't. I mean, yeah. I didn't have it taken. Some reel to reel? I have very old tapes of some, and not only that, but the tapes wear out. I don't know why.

Tapes wear out. Oh, yeah, they do. I don't know why. Like, I'm losing. Something with the magnetic. Yeah. The old ones are being lost. It always amazes me to hear an old tape something like 50 years old and it's clear.

I don't know how they did it. I think they probably restore them digitally somehow. Well, the little micro-cassette tapes that I was using, they must not have been of a high quality. And I suppose I can go back and listen. And certainly I could, from maybe 2009 or 2010, that's when I went digital. So I can go back and listen to those.

I would probably think that I'm much more. relaxed, which makes me much more conversational. I probably treat it less like an interview and more like a conversation, but I started out treating it like a conversation. So that's sort of my style. I don't think people that I interview think they've been interviewed at the end. They just feel like they're in a conversation. I like that style, but I'm torn between making sure I get actionable takeaways for the listening audience and having a conversation that's just free flowing and comfortable. Yeah. That business crowd, man, they love them takeaways.

They love the takeaways, man. And that's kind of what I'm known for. Otherwise, it's like if I'm just having conversations, do I commoditize myself as an interviewer? They want the tools. They want the tools. Well, this is something that I'm thinking about. And, okay, I can respect that. They're the listener.

Right. This is what Melanie Wheeling was trying to tell me. They're my boss, man. I can't just tell them I want to do what I want to do. It's their time. That's right. I have to earn these minutes of attention. Every single one.

That's right. And that's the way I'm starting to think now. So this is a huge shift for me because I never, ever, I always thought more like an artist. Like, this is my song. We do it. We have a play in my art. way. Yeah.

And I understand now why you have A&R people and why you have labels because they know, or there's certain people who immediately they hear something and they know that's a hit. It's their job. They're the tastemaker or the taste finder, I guess. Yeah. And they can listen to a song and they get goosebumps and they know, all right, there it is. Remember that song by the Korean artist, Si? Sure, of course. Gang-in style? Yeah.

Okay. So this thing comes out, right? And it gets to the desk of Scooter Braun. Justin Bieber's manager. Right. Yeah. Adam Brown's brother. Right. If you've heard him on mine or your older shows. And Scooter hears this. And he thinks about that song completely different than just about everyone else because everyone else heard it and oh it's getting like nice nice beat but it's in korean nobody's going to listen to this song in korean and scooters said they're going to listen to this one because he knew he just knew and he went and he talked to sigh and rest of history but that's a rare talent and you got to respect that because he understood the art and he

understood the audience. I had no idea he was involved in that. And he really is amazing at the identification and also with the outreach, the ability to reach millions, billions of people. So this is why my evolution is taking me to this whole business. own because maybe when I listen to your podcast, I want to take a voice too. Maybe you're thinking, come on, Jordan, get to it. I don't, I need to learn this stuff. I don't know anything about business.

And now I got one. Yeah, that's how you learn about business. You get a business and you learn through those mistakes, that's for sure, or hopefully from other people's mistakes, but usually your own mistakes. And so I guess what we're told is make them as fast as you can. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Make them as fast as you can, and then you can learn from it. And I'm actually quite interested in as well.

You're a great storyteller. You're known for that. How would you suggest other people hone their storytelling craft? Does it come from practice, or are you, do you think you're a good storyteller because you write your stories out a lot of the time where you started doing that early? Well, I think it probably starts. in the construction. So when you've written for many, many years, you understand there's going to be a beginning

in a middle and an end. And for a story to work, there's got to be some kind of vulnerability. So a big mistake that somebody could make in business is taking something that's successful, and just coming out and saying, we're successful. We're great.

We're great because of this. That's not a story. A story is we had this idea, and it came at four in the morning when somebody was in the shower, and then this person tries to transmit the idea, and nobody will listen to it. And then finally, finally, one person listens and says, you know, if we did it this way,

and then it goes on a life of its own and you're seeing all of the drops and the lifts in a way that you don't know what's coming next. and then it reaches a conclusion, a successful conclusion, that's a successful story. Because you started it and you were hooked in by the vulnerability. You, like, you knew something good could come, but the person who had the idea was vulnerable and they couldn't get it to that final place without several things happening. And now people have to follow the trail. and that trail has to have the ups and downs just like in a movie. Right.

Because without them, there's kind of no reason to listen. You just can't walk out and say, we're successful. I mean, that's like a PowerPoint display in two numbers. We started here. We finished here. Right. A story has to have people pushing to the edge of the, their seat, how is this going to work out?

And if you don't have it, you don't have a story because you're not going to have any listeners. And I think people are afraid to take the listener down that rabbit hole of vulnerability because, one, they're afraid to be vulnerable. And two, maybe they're afraid that that vulnerability makes them look weak or will soften the impact of what they're trying to do, which is maybe sell themselves, their business idea, or their company. That's a great point. I think that's the business person's dilemma.

Yeah. I got a manager. Every time I start a story with vulnerability, you could literally see him cringe. Really? Yeah. Because his way of seeing the world is for his clients to be the top of the world. Right, right.

He doesn't want his client seen in vulnerable moments. He wants him seen at the top of the job of the world. charts. And so it's interesting and it really has forced me to understand. You know, Cal, you're a storyteller, but you also are in business. And maybe if you tell a story about some big mistake, a company that might want to hire you for a speech is saying, why should we hire that guy? You see that boneheaded error he made over there? Right. But I think also most people in business know you're going to make a lot of mistakes. And it's the people, and here's something very relevant to you. I'm often asked in your situation, I'm often asked, Cal,

you've interviewed all the icons of the last century. What similarity do they have? Is there some thread that runs through all of them? And the two that I've noticed, one, they all, they all all pushed out of their comfort zone. Not anybody who achieved something great would tell you, no, I stayed in the same place, stayed in the box. They all went out of the box. And two, they all got knocked down and they all got back up and took it higher than where they were the first time.

Look at Steve Jobs, classic example. And I'm sure that's what you're going to do with this podcast. And so when you realize that, you understand it's okay to be vulnerable. People pay money to go to movies to see characters that are vulnerable. They don't pay this. They even make Superman vulnerable in the movie. That's why they created Kryptonite. Without kryptonite, is there a Superman movie?

There's no story there. No. No. So if you're going to rule out vulnerability, then you're not going to have a very good story. Simple as that. Mandatory ingredient. Well, thank you, Cal.

Jason, what did you think of this one? I mean, I know, look, a two-plus hour-long edit, not your favorite. I mean, he's an amazing storyteller. That's all there is to it. And I learned a lot. You know, I want to put a lot of this into action. I really want to get better at listening. And he really gives us some practicals on how to do that.

So that's why I really enjoyed this one. If you enjoy this one as well back at home or in your car at the gym, don't forget to thank Cal on Twitter. That'll be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Tweet at me your number one takeaway from Cal Fussman. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you just heard from Cal, make sure you go grab the worksheets.

Those are also in the show notes, Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. If you want to hear clips from the show, shows you've heard, shows you haven't heard yet, and some of the key takeaways. We also have our Amazon Alexa skill, which you can install by going to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa or installing it in the app on your phone. Just search for my name there. And you should have it installed.

It's a little daily briefing, a little daily dose in addition to your regular podcast feeds. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo. Show notes, those are by Robert Fogarty, booking back office and last minute miracles by Jen Harbinger. And I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Throw us in iTunes review. If you use iTunes, throw us a nice little written review.

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