The Jordan Harbinger Show - 719: Reid Hoffman | Adaptability Is the New Stability

Episode Date: September 1, 2022

Reid Hoffman (@reidhoffman) is a co-founder of LinkedIn, investor at Greylock Partners, host of the podcast Masters of Scale, and co-author of the fully revised and updated bestseller The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. What We Discuss with Reid Hoffman: Why you should think of your career as a startup — from the perspective of an entrepreneur rather than an employee. What it means to evoke a permanent beta mindset in which you treat every day like day one and commit your life to personal growth. Why it’s important to continually generate professional opportunities even if you're happy where you are. Why you should ignore hacky influencers who tell you to "begin with the end in mind" when it comes to your career (and what you're better off doing instead). The soft and hard assets you should be tracking to make yourself, as friend of the show Cal Newport has famously said, "so good they can't ignore you." And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/719 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! If you missed our earlier two-part interview with Reid Hoffman, don’t panic! You can catch up by starting at episode 207: Reid Hoffman | Mastering Your Scale for the Unexpected Part One! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy med yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

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Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. And so yes, there's a part of it. We said, well, I just want stability. And it's like, well, but adaptability is the new stability. And so this is the way that you need to do it. And trusting in large scale mechanisms, which might be volatile. We're living in volatile times. Look around you. Having some ability to have that kind of knowing that you can rely upon yourself and you can rely upon your colleagues and friends and network, you can rely upon the way you've invested in your career, that gives you. gives you the adaptability that then gives you the basis by which you can be stable and safe.

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills are the world's most fascinating people. We have in-depth conversations with scientists and entrepreneurs, spies and psychologists, even the occasional mafia, drug trafficker, neuroscientist, or hostage negotiator. And each episode turns our guest's wisdom into practical advice that you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better thinker. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, I suggest our episode starter packs as a place to do it. These are collections of our favorite episodes organized by topic that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything that we do here

on the show. Topics like disinformation and cyber warfare, persuasion and influence, China and North Korea, scams and conspiracy debunks, technology and futurism, and more. Just visit Jordan Harbinger.com Start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today, some career advice from none other than the founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman. He's also a billionaire investor. That's probably worth mentioning. If you're retired, you can go ahead and skip this one. But before you do, share it with somebody else so you know who's in the labor market,

either at the onset or the middle of their career or in a position to share with others who are at that place in their career. Word of mouth is huge for us, and this information could very well be life-changing to somebody starting or in the middle of a career. In the past, the career escalator was pretty predictable. You just had to show up at work and you'd move up. This is no longer the case. It's getting harder for older people to retire, middle-aged people to ascend, and for young folks to join in. Global trade and tech replaces workers and radically changes careers and the required skills for jobs. Those who don't keep up are in some kind of trouble.

The long-term pact between employers and employees where you both stick around for each other for the long haul, that is gone. Now, performance-based tours of duty, which are up for renegotiation by both sides every year or so, pretty much the norm. Again, this is a career-focused episode, so if that's not you, go to our playlist at jordanharbinger.com slash start. You'll find some suggestions there for other episodes you can listen to. But if you're ready to take some elite-level career advice and gain an advantage moving in, up and around the corporate ladder, then stick with us here and enjoy this conversation with Reid Hoffman.

The book's premise is that we should think of our career as a startup, as an entrepreneur and not as of labor. And that in itself is kind of unusual because usually we're a cog in the machine. We're not actually reinventing the machine. I find that that's a unique perspective from any career book. So I think part of the thing is what traditional careers, colleges, other places want to do is, hey, hey, you kind of choose your path and the past is like a ladder or an escalator or something else. And you don't have to worry about it. You don't have to fret about it. You just get this natural kind of go-forward basis. And the thing is, is the world has, massively changed and not obviously just because we have a, you know, kind of a Ukrainian

conflict, not just because we have a pandemic and not just because there's a explosion of different changes of technologies and therefore industries. The world has changed because now as opposed to a career escalator, it's much more like a career jungle gym. And so even you say, look, all I want to do is get some good stable jobs and I want to know what I'm good at, I want to get good at it. You still have to apply the entrepreneurial mindset. You still have to apply the, I own my own career. I'm the owner of my own work life. Because even if you, you know, find it, employers says, well, I'd like to do the employer when you're 21 and you work with me until you're 65 or 70, like the industry may change in a way even the employer doesn't actually

dissipate. And so that's the reason why you have to approach it with a notion of being the owner, being the entrepreneur of your own life and career. And then like, okay, what does that mean? That's, of course, what the book is about. My dad was an auto worker. He retired after probably 30 years, I'd have to ask him. My mom was a public school teacher. That was a little bit more stable because public school teacher is almost, I mean, it's government job adjacent. Really, it is kind of a government job in a way. Auto worker was very similar in Detroit, right? There was, you had a pension. You didn't have to worry about really saving. I mean, we did, and he did, thankfully, but a lot of guys, he's like, no, they haven't got a pension. What am I worried about? They weren't worried about getting fired because

you'd have to show up. You'd have to dance on the assembly. line naked and drunk he had fired from Ford in the 80s. It was like impossible. Then that all went away. And people who worked at auto suppliers, their pension evaporated because the supplier declared bankruptcy or something like that. And this is America. There's no government safety. Not a real government safety net. If you've done nothing for yourself, there's just nothing for you. And being from Detroit, I've seen mass failure of even what little safety net we do have happen rapidly and on a mass scale. and it's just not pretty. 100%.

And, you know, by the way, I think, you know, personally, I'm supportive of how we as a society get a more general safety net because we're a wealthy enough society in order to have some of that. That's totally great. But nevertheless, even with that, don't rely upon that. And by the way, thinking of yourself

as the entrepreneur of your own career, the startup of you, is not just a way of surviving, but it's also a way of thriving. It's a way of having a much more fun, more learning, more fulfilling, more meaningful, more exciting kind of workspace. And so yes, there's a part of it. We said, well, I just want stability. And it's like, well, but adaptability is the new stability. And so this is the way that you need to do it. And trusting in large scale mechanisms, which might be volatile.

We're living in volatile times. Look around you. There's volatility all over the place. Having some ability to have that kind of knowing that you can rely upon yourself and you can rely upon your colleagues and friends and network, you can rely upon the way you've invested. your career, that gives you the adaptability that then gives you the basis by which you can be stable and safe. I like that theory, or that piece of wisdom. For example, my original point with my dad working to Ford for 30 years was if Ford said, hey, we really need you in our Florida something, something for the next couple of years, you didn't go, well, I'm just going to work at GM then. You just went, you packed your crap and your family, and you went to Florida, and then they moved

you to Seattle and then they move you to California and then they moved and he'd go on business so we didn't move but he went on business trips where he was gone I want to say at least a month and it's like wow dad's just gone now can you even I mean you and I probably can't I can't even imagine a business it's like we're going to need you to leave for a few months maybe if you work in an oil company you have to go to Saudi Arabia and you don't want to take your family that's one thing but very few companies in the United States are like we need you to move to New York for a year with your family because they know that people will go, you know what I think of that? I'm going to work for the competition and taking a bunch of knowledge with me because I don't feel like uprooting my family

all the time. And you have that ability to do that now if you have done what we're going to talk about in here, which is create a network, skill stack, things like that. And I've heard you recommend that people stay in permanent beta mindset. What does that mean? What it means is that you're always learning. You never feel that yourself, your skills, your soft assets, your hard assets, that's never a finished product. You're in permanent beta. You're always, it's supposed to shipping the 1.0 version of Jordan or the 1.0 version to read. You're the 0.8 version and you're learning and iterating and adapting. That kind of permanent always be learning mindset, that always be improving mindset is part of where you get the adaptability, but also part of where you get some of the

joy, discoverability, sometimes amazing opportunity. And so having that kind of always be improving mindset. Like, you know, we get the end of the podcast, say, hey, what could we have done better? And you're always doing that. And that's part of how you improve yourself and improve your prospects. I think this is important because, you know, look, young people, especially in Silicon Valley, they're looking at that and they go, of course, always be learning. It's kind of a theorem that everybody lives by. I get a lot of email in my inbox where people say, you know, I don't need the networking stuff that you do because I'm in sales and I know all this stuff. I'm thinking, that's funny because when I teach this to MI6 guys and gals or the Central Intelligence Agency

or the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, they don't go, dude, we know this stuff. They go, wow, we're going to get 1% better at catching spies or doing this thing that we do. And I'm like, so these people whose lives depend on networking, they're loving this stuff, but the person who's been at a job for eight months is like, look, Jordan, I'm good here. I don't need your drills and exercises. And I always find that so interesting because it really does show a difference in mindset versus a real difference in knowledge or experience. Yeah. And if you ever really feel that you've stopped learning, start thinking of yourself as a dinosaur. Just exactly as you've said, you can always learn. I mean, here I am, 55, done a bunch of entrepreneurship companies, done a bunch of investing.

I'm still asking myself a question, how do I invest better? How do I entrepreneur better? How do I found companies better? What's going on in the technology landscape? what things do I need to know that I don't know yet? Because by doing that, A, I find it fun, but B, the world's changing and you're adapting with the world. It would be shocking to me if an investor didn't try to learn about Bitcoin, even if they think it's a bunch of absolute crap. Look at Ray Dalio, right? He's an older guy super sharp, and he's learning all kinds of things. Warren Buffett is another good example, right? These guys are always just devouring stuff. And even if I disagree with some of their thoughts on blockchain technology, you got to hand it him. My dad, he'd probably go, I've never even seen a Bitcoin, right? He would never, he doesn't

know and he doesn't care. And it's just a different mindset. And that's one of the reasons why guys like you and them are so successful. Common advice is follow your dreams or follow your passion, whatever it is. I know you agree with me that this is horrible advice, but I want to hear why. So the presumption, which is kind of the old school 70s, what colors your parachute, you know, kind of college advice, et cetera, is that all that really matters is what's inside you. what you find a passion about. It's like, well, doesn't the world matter? Doesn't what the landscape of opportunity matter?

Doesn't what competition looks like? Doesn't what the career path and the economic results might be like? Don't all those things matter? You don't discover those by like sitting in meditation and going, Eureka, I've discovered my passion. And so you have to bring all of those things in. And obviously we simplify it to thinking about like, well, okay, what are your passions, but what is also the market realities and what are your competitive edge in terms of how

do you play this to be able to think about it as opposed to, you know, 15 variables to only think about three. But if you're not thinking about those ways, you're bound to get super unhappy. Because, for example, he said, well, I discovered my passion and I'm going to be an artist. And you're like, well, but actually you're going to be an artist and lots of other people are going to be artists and there's no economics in it. And after five or ten years, you're going to feel like lost in the desert and you're going to be super unhappy. And if you said, well, actually, in fact, well, 80% of this is actually, in fact, I'm going to be a really great graphic designer that's going to be working in the ad industry, well, all of a sudden,

it's like, oh, well, actually, in fact, I'm not quite as passionate about all the art stuff. I have to do some stuff on the sides of it, but I'm applying these skills and I am differentially really good at them. I'm playing this pattern by which then I have a career in economics and a life and I can afford my vacations and I can afford my house and I can get married and all of that kind of stuff. And that's the intersection. Now you say, well, maybe graphic designer in the ad industry, the competition's too much and maybe it should be something else. Maybe it should be in the tech industry. Maybe you should be in the financial industry.

You know, all of these different kind of ways of doing it. That's why you bring all these things together. And if you just simply go, what's my passion? You're flying blind. And flying blind can be very, very dangerous. Now, of course, if you say, well, passion doesn't matter at all. It's like, no, no, it's your life. Yeah.

You got to enjoy it. You got to feel like what you're doing matters and that you enjoy doing some of it. So it's a factor, just not the only factor. The same advice is it kind of dovetails with like, what do they say, begin with the end in mind or decide where you, want to be in 10 years and then work backwards. But when I think about where I was 10 years ago, or even 15, because I'm 42, maybe some of the people that this applies to are in their 20s or even

in their 30s, although I would argue that it applies to everyone, but most of the people who are going to see the heaviest weight on this are going to be in their 20s and 30s. If you'd ask me when I'd started in law in 2007, where I wanted to be in 10 years, I would have said, well, I don't know, maybe I'm still a lawyer, and if so, I'm a partner at a law firm in Wall Street. And it's like, what are you talking? Like, look at that guy. And I go, what are you talking about? You'd be miserable by now if you even got there. More likely, I would be definitely doing anything but that, I think, at that point. You don't know what the end is, so you can't really begin with the end in mind, because if you start working backwards from something that you realize a few years in, you're not really interested in.

Well, great. You just laid a ton of groundwork for something that you might not have done. And there's nothing wrong with building or learning skills that you don't end up using for the purpose you originally acquired them for. Fine. Maybe you'll learn Chinese because you thought you're going to work in China and you end up in Taiwan. Okay, fine. But if you decide you're going to be a partner at a law firm and you start learning a whole bunch of skills specific to that, you could have learned a whole bunch of other skills and ended up somewhere where you're actually happier and then stacked those skills.

But we see this advice in some form everywhere. It's probably the top advice we see in here from, well, one, bullshity influencers online and two, college commencement speeches. And it's really disappointing, Reed, because those people should, well, the influencers, they don't know better. But the commencement speech to people, it's like Mark Cuban will go up there and I don't mean to throw shade at him because he's just a good example of somebody who gives speeches, not somebody with bad advice.

But he'll say it and everyone goes, oh, well, Mark Cuban said it. And it's like, no, anybody, don't listen to that. He doesn't mean it. It just sounds good because he has 12 minutes. That's it.

It's not really advice. No, exactly. And that's part of the reason why competitive differentiation is a key thing. Now, most of us don't need to be unique amongst the 7 billion people in the world. And in fact, very few people are. But depending on which game you're playing,

what degree of competitive differentiation do you need? And to be successful, you need some. Now, sometimes you say, look, I'm just going to be a really good barista. My differentiation is, I actually am here, and I'm a really good person who happens to be here. Right. And that can be fine for that period of time in terms of what you're doing. But then it can give you like, well, if you're going to say, okay, well, I'm going to figure out how to do investing. Well, a lot of people like to be successful investing because the rewards are, you know, magnificent, you know, huge in terms of your remuneration.

And so then you're like, well, okay, now I have to really have an edge and what is my edge? And the general view is if you can't state your edge, it's a little bit like the poker table. If you can't state why you have a differentiated edge, you're the sucker at the table. That makes a lot of sense. I think you're right. You can differentiate yourself by, there's probably a few factors here, geography, right? If you made coffee in Italy in 1960, you probably were one of very many people who could make a good cappuccino or an espresso in Italy.

but if you went to Ethiopia and you did that in 1960, there were probably only a handful of, or maybe in the 50s, there were only a handful of cafes, most of them didn't have the right equipment. You could have been the guy that every expat goes to to get a decent cup of coffee in this whole area and you're well connected and you're rich and famous. And at the end of the day, you just made coffee. You just happen to be in the right place at the right time. So I understand what you're saying about investment, especially when you're talking about rewards being astronomically high and kind of obviously so, the competition gets more. strict. And in your book, you mentioned that Cal Newport says, and I'm paraphrasing here, what combination of abilities do you possess that are both rare and valuable and thus impossible for the market to ignore? And that's your ticket. And I think that's from his book so good they can't

ignore you. Is that where that's from? 100%. Exactly where it is. And it's great advice. And then, of course, you figured out relative to your competition, relative to the market demands, relative to what the market treats as valuable. Now, valuable could be money, but value could also be autonomy, fame, prestige, you know, a bunch of different things that matter to people. That's the coinage, which in competing for valuable things, then you need the competitive differentiation for that. There are two types of assets that you talk about in the book. So we'll track those here, soft and hard. Soft are things you can't trade directly for money. Hard is what property, cash in the bank, and possibly a lack of debt, student loans or home equity or whatever it is.

Exactly. Let's talk about those because I think everybody knows that money is. an asset, right? Or maybe cash in the bank, sure. Lack of debt is an interesting one because most people don't think about what they owe to somebody else, but if you have a lot of debt, you limit your freedom. Soft assets, though, almost overlooked by most people, your brand, your network, skills, things like that. And almost always the more valuable thing over time, right? So people will say, look, I'm going to, I'll save, and by the way, it's great to save money, but it's like, I'll save $10 a week. And you're like, okay, well, saving $10 a week, you end up with, you know, in 10 weeks, you end up with $100, and that could be valuable.

But if, for example, what you said is I said, well, actually, in fact, what I'm going to do is I'm going to take an interesting person out to coffee once per week. Maybe in one of those 10 weeks, someone says, oh, well, there's this interesting job opportunity over here that could be really transforming into your career. Or, you know, this new thing, Bitcoin just came on, and people are buying it for $10 a coin, because Bitcoin was once upon a time, $10 a coin. And then you go, next week, I'll buy one Bitcoin, which then, of course, today is $20,000. And so the soft assets are your skills, your knowledge, the people you know, the alliances that

you have as you go out in the world. And those can be amazingly valuable in serendipitous ways. And so investing in those can be great. It's a little bit like you say, well, well, that person went and learned how to do coding of web pages for, you know, four weeks. Well, then all of a sudden they were on job for the tech industry. And they started doing coding web pages. Then they ended up with a more senior position. then they got a job at a startup and then their stock options were worth something. That kind of thing all comes from a set of soft assets. And the most often one that people do, because, you know, solo book careers, you know, it's part of the reason why we say in startup review, the view,

that view is both singular and plural and you should think of life as a team sport, so it's eye to the we. And because it's like, everyone goes, well, okay, well, I'm going to learn, you know, Python. And you're like, okay, learning Python is great. It's a soft skill. By the way, don't forget meeting other people. Don't forget, who are my friends who are, like, really active and thinking about this in the same way, where we could be trading tips and knowledge and opportunity with each other and get into some really interesting things. And those are also soft assets. The idea that hard and soft assets can combine to form a little Voltron here makes sense too, right? Because if you don't save any money and you can't manage to take a job that maybe pays less,

maybe you leave Microsoft and you join a startup and you take a 30, 80 percent, who knows pay cut, but then you get those stock options, maybe you really believe in what they're doing or they're going to teach you a bunch of skills and invest in you a bunch, whereas maybe you're just doing something at Microsoft that you've been doing for a while and you kind of getting salty on it, you can't afford to do that if you've got no runway. So I think that's pretty smart to combine all of these. I know it's easy to say like save money, but really what we're talking about mostly is maybe pay off your debt because you don't know when the current gravy train is going to stop and you need that freedom or that flexibility to make a jump. I love that you say go all in on soft assets because I do think

that those are overlooked a lot of the time. If I had to put this on a chart, I would say soft assets are growing a lot through college, right, whereas you have no money. But then as soon as you get into your job, I notice a lot of people, they sort of stop making connections outside the office, they stop making friends outside the office, they stop learning skills that have nothing to do with their job. And you start to almost calcify, if I can use that term. A hundred percent. And by the way, in terms of the soft assets, which school of all sorts is a great way to get, you know, like, I came back from Oxford. I was like, okay, I don't want to be an academic. How do I figure out how to join industry? I went to the career center. I read books about it.

The thing that actually ultimately really worked, like I could have short-circuited months of work on this and delay is I just started calling my friends going, hey, look, I think actually, in fact, creating software with a focus on this new online revolution that's coming could be really great. Who do you know that might be working on an interesting project that maybe I could go and figure out how to work there. And so eventually, like a really good friend of mine, his roommate, who I knew lightly said, oh, we're working all this stuff at Apple.

And, you know, look, you don't really have the right skill set. So you'd have to start as a contractor. So you'd have no job security, of course. Not that there's a ton of job security in the world generally anyway. But you'd have to do that. And you'd have to learn some skills really fast. But if you're willing to do that, sure. It was like, great.

I'll go down to Apple and I'll, you know, I had some terrifying weekends because they're like, oh, you need to use Photoshop in order how to do this. I'm like, let's Photoshop. And they're like, yeah. Oh, here's a book. Here's a CD-ROM. Most people on this podcast won't know what a CD-ROM is.

50. Go figure it out. Oh, man. And Photoshop has a lot of little buttons on it, man. That was a full summer for me as a kid, downloading a bootleg copy of Photoshop, learning how to make, I won't say fake IDs,

but you in theory could have totally made fake IDs using Photoshop back in the 90s. But I would never do that. One could have. One could have. Yeah, someone who is not me could have done so. Even when they give you the dummies book that you can't search, you just have to manually flip through and find things using the index.

Oh, my gosh. Like when I look back, I should have just immediately when I landed boots back on the ground, got back from the UK, I should have just started calling people and saying, hey, I'm here, right? I'm looking at stuff like this or just what do you know that's really interesting? Because, you know, part of what happens is it wasn't Stefan who knew something. He was working at McKinsey, but it was his college roommate, Jesse, who was working at Apple. And great, let's go make that work.

and being willing to be a little adventurousome and try things out. That's why internships can be valuable, all kinds of things. And like, for example, one of the things when I look back on my career is, like, probably I should have begged my way in the Netscape because it was a central action. Like, thinking about going to where the action is, where the network is being centered and things are evolving, like better to be a janitor there than a product manager at a product that doesn't matter and is going in a different direction. Because you can iterate through and make those soft connections and learn what you should be

thinking about and what the world is moving towards. And that's the thing. The world is not static. The world is changing faster and faster. It used to be that industries would change roughly at a human lifetime or a career lifetime. And now they're changing within decades. So, you know, industries change. Just look at how much the industries have changed in the last 10 or 20 years. And, you know, most people's careers are, you know, 40, 50 years. And well, that's multiple industry changes in that time. That's a good point. And I know someone's going to say, hey, what's wrong with being a janitor. Actually, I don't think you were being facetious, right? It really is better to be close to the action. And frankly, there's probably a lot of multimillionaire janitors who got stock options

cleaning desks off at Mozilla in 1994 and went, huh, I wonder if this retirement thing they gave me is ever going to pop off. And it's like, oh, yes, I'm done working and so are my grandkids. Exactly. So it is true about getting close to the action. Another misconception that people have is they try to hyper-specialize where they go, okay, I'm going to be really, really, really, really good at this programming language or this particular bit of tech. But the mistake they make is they do that at the exclusion of everything else, right? No network, poor social skills, potentially, no skills to stack alongside it, no sales skills, whatever it might be. And that can work for a short period of time, but you're really not very bulletproof because as soon as the

wins change and they go, you know what, we don't need COBOL anymore because AI can write it. You just need to know Python to do it. Now you're at the bottom learning Python to program the AI to write the language that you used to be really good at. And now you're screwed. Yep, exactly. And that's part of the being in permanent beta, like learn, learn, learn, learn new things. And the skill stacking is, you know, generally speaking, you know, people say, well, I should be like the Olympic gold medalist. That should be the top person. It's actually, in fact, that's super hard. It's very difficult, very difficult to win Wimbledon. Like, there's a bunch of dedication, but even amongst that dedication, there's a bunch of luck and fortune that comes into it.

it's much easier to say, hey, I'm a combination of, I know technical skills and I know writing. Where can I put those two things together in a ways that suddenly by being top 10% in each, not top one, much easier, then all of a sudden I can be spectacular and really useful in a venture community, or I can be really useful in influencing leading within an industry. I could be joining interesting AI companies because they need people to be talking about, like, what is this transformation coming and how do other companies, other industries, other individuals use it for bettering their lives versus feeling vaguely alienated by it. And so all of those kinds of things are when you combine a set of interesting skills,

all of a sudden you can get highly unique, very differentiated, very fun, and very rewarding careers. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Reid Hoffman. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great folks for the show, it is because of my network. It's a lot of the same stuff that Reed is talking about here. I made a course that made it into Reed's book. You can get that course for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. The course is about improving your networking and your connection skills,

doing it in a non-gross way, either for career or personal reasons. Again, free at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. And most of the guests you hear on the show already subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, back to Reed Hoffman. This is something that Scott Adams has talked about on our show years ago, episode 273 and I think maybe 546. He kind of, I don't know if he coined the term skill stacking, but his example was he originated Dilbert, right?

So it's a popular card. But he's like, I'm not the best artist drawing wise in the world. And I'm also not the best humorist in the world. And there was a couple of other things that he wasn't the best at, but he was in the 90th percentile, 80th percentile. But that's made for a multimillion dollar career as a cartoonist. And I would say when I started this show, or even now, right, I'm not the funniest podcaster. I'm not the most technically savvy podcaster. I'm certainly not the most intelligent podcaster.

But if you take, okay, I can study a book and get really good notes out of it. And I can broadcast fairly well. And I can keep people entertained to a certain degree. Okay. And then take a little bit of marketing skills and put those in there. And it's like, all right, this guy's got a decent career. Whereas if I was hyper-specializing as a finance attorney, I mean, maybe I should just become a janitor at Mozilla because I probably would have been.

better at that anyway. Yeah. And that combination is where a lot of magic can happen. And so, you know, skill stacking, I don't know if Scott Adams invented the term, but I do think that it was kind of, it's that combination. And by the way, it's also what gives you more fun because as opposed to going, well, I have to be the absolute best screwing of screws of semiconductor chips. Like, oh, God, like maybe somebody really, really, really likes to do that. But it's much better to have a set of things that give you a broader palette for where you can navigate to. I think also generalists, or I don't know, is generalist even the right word? Probably not, but somebody who uses a skill stack, they often have more to offer their network. And we'll talk

about that in a little bit, but they hit more than one target for being valuable. So if you know sales, you know marketing, you know web design, you know online content, you'll have an easier time being in a room with a variety of people, unless you're at the semiconductor, screw, or international convention, then you're a rock star. But everywhere else, it's like, what is this guy's an alien? So you do really need to be able to relate to different people using those skills as well. And of course, you want more than one key in this economy especially. You mentioned that there's different seasons of your life that are better for learning versus earning. Can you speak to that a little bit? Well, it may be different for different folks, but generally speaking, learning early is the thing

that will unlock much more remunerative job paths, industry connections, and so forth. So you want to focus while you also want to always be learning, you want to extra invest in learning. That's part of the reason why, for example, frequently go to school, go to an interesting university or someplace where you're going to pick up skills in a network. And too often people are like, well, really, like my first job out of college, I'll take the one that's offering me $70,000 versus the one that's offering me $60,000 or the one that's offering me $100,000 versus the one that's offering me $92,000. And you're like, that's not the really most relevant variable. Because the really most relevant variable is what do you think you're going to be

doing at five years and at eight years. And what is that job going to look like? Because if the one that starts paying you $100,000 a year in five years is 130, and the one that started paying you $70,000 a year in five years is 300, right? It's an entirely different, you know, thing. And so you want to focus a lot on, that's a little bit of the comment that I was making about like going and being a janitor or anything, you know, an assistant, you know, technical assistant, whatever, at a central company like Netscape or Mozilla versus. is like, oh, I'm going to go get a little bit more money and so forth, but it'll be a backwater. It's not going anywhere.

And that's part of like the seasons of it. Now, obviously, at various points, you say, well, I'd like to get married now. I like to start having kids. I need money for that. You need to pay off the debt because, you know, paying off debt is actually enormously freeing in variety ways. And so you say, all right, well, focusing on and it doesn't necessarily is only one than only the other, but I tune it up some because I go, okay, no, no, this is a time to actually be really good

at making a bunch of money, but always be thinking about with that compounding long term, with that change of the game in what your opportunity set could be, make sure you're thinking about that, you know, all the way through your career. I think also, to your point, when you're young, even if you have student loans, unless they're absolutely crippling on the monthly amounts, you have less responsibility most of the time, right? You don't have any kids, probably. You're not married.

You don't have somebody really counting on you. When I first got out of school, I maybe should just speak for myself. When I first got out of school, I had a lot of debt. I probably owed like 168,000, which now, now college students are like, are you, I'd kill for only $168,000 worth of debt. Because I went to law school, so it was expensive. This is graduated in 2006 or so. But I remember joining the finance firm, the law firm I was with, and then the economy

tanked, and it was like, you know, I'm doing this podcast. I've got this coaching company. It's fun. I like it. I can afford to pay my loans if I can live like a college student, which was just a couple years ago where I was doing that. it's fine. I can split an apartment with four or five dudes and just lie to the landlord and make it look like there's only one or two of us here. No problem. I mean, I'm used to this, right? Day old pizza,

no problem. I've lived on that stuff. So you can do that for a while and you can afford to take a bigger risk or maybe a more modern example would be, look, if IBM wants to hire you for 100,000 like you said, but Dropbox is in the market and they're going to pay you 70, but they might IPO. Well, okay, you're learning a whole bunch of new stuff about the cloud, whatever that is. right in 1999 or whenever they did 2007 but also you're on a rocket ship your employee number 20 if you're at ibn you're employee number 20 000 maybe you know i don't know how big the company is 200 000 yeah so yeah you're there's multiple zeros behind you this is some kind of opportunity but it's really easy to say but i owe all this money i should just make as much as i can and manage

that and it's easier said than dumb when you're in that position but you're right if you look at the If you game out the long term possibilities, sometimes it really does make way more sense to learn versus earn, especially early in the game. Actually, almost always really, that's part of the learning, investing in soft assets. It's almost always less tangible, but more valuable. It's that great opportunity that you possibly get to that can be transformative. Like I said, this is part of my own learning. I went to the Career Center and I studied job listings and I looked at my CV and I said,

well, man, I need to read these books. And I was like, well, actually, in fact, the most useful thing is soft assets, calling a bunch of people. And sure, I didn't know anybody out of the people I was calling said, oh, I have an opportunity right here. And I didn't know that Stefan would say, no, no, talk to Jesse. He's doing something interesting. And Apple sounds, you know, what they're doing with E-World sounds like it could be interesting

for the kinds of things you're thinking about. Go talk to him. That is the entire industrial path of my move from academia into industry in one phone call. We talked about skills a little bit. as well, what about specializing in a new and rare skill? You know, we said we don't want to specialize too much or hyper-specialized, but man, what if you knew marketing on social media in 2012? That would have been a very rare and useful niche skill.

Now, of course, it's nothing. Now it's AI and machine learning on the blockchain, something, something, something. Yes, exactly, something, something, something. Yeah. But exactly right. And part of, by the way, what's useful at your network is recognizing when, oh, my God, time is now. This is a huge opportunity, and I should go into it.

So I like, oh, I have understood influencer marketing with social media, and it's just starting, and I can go do that. I mean, it's like, for example, you know, part of how Ashton Coucher branched out beyond not just being a great actor with an awesome Hollywood career, but also a really interesting technology investor and a venture fund. Because he was like, oh, I'm going to be the first person with a million followers on Twitter, and I'm going to be using that to be in the tech industry. And part of what I'm going to be doing is going to be investing because people say,

hey, will you invest in us? Because then you can talk about it and promote it. He was like, great, I'll do that. And, you know, he had good judgment investing. But skill stacking, putting those things together, he got picked because, you know, he could help these companies tangibly rise out of the noise and kind of being recognized as the interesting new product or service that they are. And so that, you know, kind of thing is the kind of thing we're recognizing an opportunity

and then, you know, 10xing down, going all the way down. And sometimes a specialized skill, like marketing in the beginning of social media or machine learning right now is applied to, you know, language or coding or other kinds of problems. Those are the kinds of things that where the breakout opportunities can be there and you can be ready for them, but you have to be able to recognize them. You have to be able to see them. The seeing is usually through the lens of your colleagues, your friends. By the way, and people frequently go, well, network is like the two people I know at work, right? And you're like, I don't know. Like, you got a favorite aunt or uncle. That favorite aunt or uncle knows people,

or you got that buddy that you used to go carousing with back in your sophomore year, right? He's still talking to, you know, that's the breadth of a network is if people that you like and they like you and you trust each other, sometimes that's very surprising where all the help can come from. One of the little exercises in our six-minute networking courses is a free course we have on our website at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Everyone's heard me bump in a million times.

But one of the exercises in there is to make a list of the 10 people you would call or write to if you got laid off tomorrow, and then reach out to them now when you're not begging for a job because you're about to be homeless, right? Because if you have an agenda, it's a different call. And the other drill I recommend people do just now is go to the bottom of your phone texts where all those old, old, old threads are. Skip the X's. But then catch up with five or so people at the bottom there. Just send them a text. What are they up to? What you're doing? Don't ask them for anything other than purely a social catch-up. And you'll find, I do that every day with one or two people, I find opportunities just come out of the woodwork. Oh, hey, Jordan, I'm going into a meeting,

but actually we need a keynote speaker. Do you do speaking? I noticed you're doing this podcasting thing. Seems really interesting. So I get speaking gigs. I get consulting from it. And then months later, some of those same people will still write me and go, hey, you know, right off the back of our previous conversation, I was wondering if you knew anyone who did X and I can introduce them. And it really does reactivate these people who I would, frankly, never would have heard from again in my entire life, most likely. Those are great networking tips. Because part of the thing is life's a team sport. Be active with your team as you're going through it. And part of like, who are the 10 people you'd call if you're laid off? This is part of my team. Go be with your

team before you're laid off, not just because of the agenda point, which is a great point that you make. Right. But because, whoa, that's interesting. That could be something I'd learn or something I would do. Or like, for example, how do you elevate within your current job? Well, you learn something that's really interesting that your group doesn't know, your manager doesn't know, your executive doesn't You bring back and say, hey, we should really be thinking about, like, mobile is going to totally change the world, or social media is going to totally change the world, or AI is going to change the way language and images are working, the following way. And people go, oh, that's really great. You're important because you're out looking at the world about how we should be navigating,

and you brought something really good in. That's a way that even in your current role, your current job, your current group, people go, we appreciate you. You're important here. The more inputs you have from smart, creative people, the better your output tends to be. So I'll be sitting around kind of killing time, waiting for somebody, and I'm at the bottom of my texts like that drill I just mentioned. And someone will say, oh, yeah, I'm starting an ad agency that only does advertising for companies that are bringing manufacturing back to the United States. And I was like, what a random niche that is. But then we started talking about semiconductors and PPE, you know, masks and things like that. And I actually ended up with a client who sponsored the show because they have a card where you get cash back for spending on things that are manufactured.

United States. And then he ended up getting an intro to someone else who ended up introducing him to, I think it was how I built this podcast, which is huge, did a profile on his PPE company. And I was like, you're welcome for that. You know, I didn't see that coming, but that worked out really, really well for my friend because that's a pretty big show to get profiled on in the business community. So this kind of serendipitous stuff happens all the time, but kind of only if you have those wires firing, which they will do even when you're asleep, as long as you're working the network. You mentioned AI. We joked about blockchain and things like that. What do you think are rare but useful skills today besides AI? One thing that's also very important, which we haven't mentioned, so I'll quickly mention it, which is the timeless and essential skills. So it's really good to be able to collaborate well. It's really good to be able to make decisions well, basic communications are useful, crossing other things. So it's really important to have this kind of basic essential go through anything kinds of skills. So that's one thing. But then the next thing is when you get to these kind of specialized skills, it tends to be like, where is the world about to change where there's going to be huge demand for his talent. So AI is obviously,

over the last five to eight years, there's a whole bunch of things within crypto, because crypto has been interesting as kind of reinventing, you know, what is the identity or value or money layer for the internet? I think that some of the stuff that's happening right now is like various forms of synthetic biology. Like if you think about like, well, okay, we've just been living through this pandemic, which is going to continue in various ways and we're going to have new pandemics. That's part of what's going to happen. Well, MRNA and how do you do that? that all of a sudden people go, oh, that's a really important skill.

Yeah. And part of it is you're looking for where you are. And you go, oh, that one right close to me is something that's about to be in massive demand. And then part of that massive demand, you know, I can work at interesting places, create interesting companies, create interesting startups, create interesting products. And that's like really key. And that was part of, like, for example, all the way back to the beginning of my industry careers. I went, oh, this online.

And we didn't even call it internet then even though I'd have exposure to the internet. The online. revolution was about to happen. And, you know, probably many of our, the listeners of this podcast are like, you know, I'll say, and cyberspace was about to happen. And I'm like, what's cyberspace? Yeah. So, you know, now, because it's kind of all the internet. But recognizing that early and heading towards it is what then creates a sea of opportunity, not just one, but a sea. You know, I think other kinds of specialized skills are like, well, how do you think mobile is going to evolve in various ways? What are they going to be the kinds of service? that are going to be on top of that. I think it may be a little early for AR, VR, VR, but obviously Facebook is betting the farm on this with, you know, renaming it meta. You know, so there's a stack, but AI is, you know, co-founded a company inflection in it, because I think that's going to be huge. Just released a whole bunch of NFTs off Dolly, which is an image generator because, you know, that's another area where the Web 3,

I think is going to be an NFTs. I think are going to be persistent in various ways. Anyway, so when you identify the areas, there's a set of skills around them that can be really key. Synthetic biology, you mentioned, we've had some folks on the show like Amy Webb and Jane McGonagall, and I've heard a show where somebody said you could store pretty much all the data in the known universe, or at least the planet Earth and more, in a shoebox if you stored it on DNA, which I thought was really interesting, because apparently you can store terabytes and terabytes, whatever's bigger than that, on pieces of DNA that are basically invisible in terms of size, and they're stable. The whole world of computing is coming to

synthetic biology like gene drives and encryption and information storage. And there's definitely a massive amount of information within DNA. Now, it's probably not all the information of the universe. Yeah, I thought that was a hyperbolic subject line. Don't we have an infinite number of things? How can you store an infinite number of things in a finite space? But I didn't want to argue with somebody who's a obvious genius. That's never a good move for me. But the point is, a ton of information can be stored there. You know, as we get to more macro levels in the university say, well, okay, we've got 7 billion people on planet. What's everyone's names? A bunch of biographical information. Well, all that's pretty easily stowerable in a compact form with DNA and

sort of. It's just when you begin to get to all of the quantum states about like how light is moving around the universe. Like, no, that doesn't fit in a shoebox of DNA. I thought about that. Like weather patterns? No way. Not possible. Yeah. But the point is nevertheless the same, which is it is a new computing paradigm where like I've seen things that are like, oh, well, how do you, like there have been earlier stories written about like nanobots. It's like, well, what if you had DNA nanobots that were there where when you go, oh, I just caught this disease. And what you do is they print you a little pill. You take the pill and it's unlocking all the DNA genetic nanobots in your bloodstream and go, oh, we're fighting this disease for you now.

You just essentially sent the control in through the biological mechanism. And that's what a universal vaccine for all kinds of things now looks like. all this stuff is now line of sight visible. It may take a while, but people have a pretty good sense about how to try to build it. That's symbiostuff, both terrifying because we could 3D print, essentially, or DNA print, crazy diseases and things like that. But also, you could have a global pandemic that gets printed by a bad person, and then good people say, all right, everybody go to your local pharmacy. We're printing out bespoke medication. That's a vaccine for this particular thing, you're all going to be vaccinated probably within 48 hours.

These things, infection incubation period is two weeks. We're all fine. Just show up at some point and take the thing. That to me is incredible. Or cancer cells? Sure, no problem. We have nanobots that you're going to be ingesting that are going to find every last one of these things, nuke them, and then shut down, run out of battery, and be excreted

in less than 48, 72 hours. And it's going to just be, I can't believe people died of this back in 2025. It's unbelievable. What sort of barbarians were you where you didn't have this sort of technology? And so the companies where you see these things that, like you said, are line of sight visible, 6G, faster this, speedier that, better syn biotech with this, those are the places where it seems like that's where you want to study, right? That's where you want to go.

The low-hanging fruit is electric cars instead of gas-powered cars, right? The higher-reaching, you know, if you're 12 right now, go for the SynBio. you've got all the time in the world to get there. Yeah, and generally it's go with where the tide is going, go with where the wave is going, go where the network is going, go where the future is going. Now, sometimes you can say, well, I don't think anyone's recognized. This is where the future is going yet. I'm going to go there and be contrary and right.

That can be really spectacular. Very rarely, very few individuals create their own waves. Mostly it's the wave is going there. You know, for example, my recognition that the consumer internet is going to be this, you know, huge, an ongoing, compounding thing. So I just went there and I stayed with that wave, you know, my entire career. But that's the thing that you're looking for. And that's why, you know, your friends are like a network of sensors that give you

intelligence and perspective about how to do that. Obviously, you read the internet and all the rest. But you do all that as a way of coming that judgment of like, which way is the wave going? And how do I surf that wave? How do we know if a skill we're learning is something that is going to be useful in the future. I mean, I know it's impossible to definitively say as much, but how do we know if we're on time or we're way too early? And the example I think that you mentioned in the book is, everyone thought

we'd be riding around on Segway scooters by now. And how do we know if we're inventing the segue, which people are like, what's that? They're going to Google it and be like, I've never seen this. Or are we inventing Uber in terms of the skills we learn and want to deploy in our career? So part of the reason to always be learning and always be flexible is you're going to sometimes try things and they won't be right. And you've got to have to pivot. You're going to have to adjust. So you go, oh, I think everyone's going to be, I think we're going to have a whole universe of everyone having their own segue, and that's how the future mobility is going to be. Oh, wait, it's too expensive. It's $10,000 per. It doesn't give people the kind of range. And, oh, look, Uber

is the right thing. You pivoted that. You recognize I've got this thesis. I'm trying it, but oh, the thesis isn't working. I pivot. Don't try to have your strategy guaranteed on being 100% right, because that's dangerous. You know, could be foolish in all kinds of ways. Then the next thing is to say, well, if you begin to realize this is where this, like the internet is happening, like if you were like, ooh, the internet's happening, then a whole bunch of people moved to Silicon Valley, started working at internet companies, started saying, okay, here's how I bring my skill stacking to get a really interesting job in an interesting internet company and say, well, for example, in the mid-90s to 2000, Yahoo was the most interesting internet company. Yeah. Not the most

interesting now, but that's okay, because you go, okay, it's not the one forever. It's the one that really amplifies you. All kinds of interesting entrepreneurs and VCs and other kinds of things came out of Yahoo. And you're like, okay, that's one of the central places where the wave of the internet. I'm going to go work there. I'm going to go get a job there. Google is another one, you know, where that one is still continuing. In the early days, like, well, those people run your really good technologies to understand search. But it's like, no, this is now generated a business model that's funding massive innovation in multiple industries. Oh, that's really interesting. I'm going to go do that. And then add infinite.

Microsoft and Apple and Amazon and obviously interesting startups. And so that question about which skills do you know are, well, is there a trend already going in that direction? For example, if you look at the last five years and people say, well, I'm going to really invest in virtual reality and augmented reality. It's like, well, the trend wasn't really there. Yes, there was a lot of people who were going, oh, it's now here and this is going to be awesome. Whereas if you invested in large language models and AI, it would be like, oh, yeah, we've one-tenth of the people we want, and we're desperately looking to build the products and services of the future using this. And so then there's huge demand.

This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Reid Hoffman. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to the show. All of the discount codes and the URLs, I know those can get complicated and kind of annoying. You don't have to write anything down. They're all listed at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. You can also go to Jordan Harbinger.com and search for any sponsor right there in the search box on the website. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Reed Hoffman. It's always tricky, right? Because we're sort of looking at the crystal ball and that doesn't always come out on top. I do like your emphasis on practicals though. I think in the book you'd said

something along the lines of markets that don't exist at all don't care how smart and brilliant and talented and skilled you are. You still have to have the rubber meet the road of market realities at some level. Yep. And you can take a hypothesis like in venture industry, the ideal thing is to invest in something where you look like you're crazy at day one. And then at year one to three plus one to three years, it looks obvious. Those are the sweet spot massive investments. And you can make that kind of judgment and career. But if you say, okay, well, I'm going to try that risk.

I do day zero. And a year one, everyone's like, nope, that's still crazy. And a year two, everyone still that's cruel crazy. And that's true. Time to pivot. So it doesn't mean you can't do it. But the market reality is ultimately what plays this out. And it's not that the idea sounds great.

It's that people are responding to it. where there's a wave happening in society, happening in consumer demand or in market demand. And that's the thing that you're trying to get to in how you're navigating your work life. I love the idea of something looking crazy and then obvious. I remember when I first saw Uber because it was just for black cars. And I thought, I do see those guys sitting outside my law firm not doing anything. This is a pretty good move. And everyone else said, how much demand could there possibly be for empty?

And I said, well, you know, they can expand this to any cars. It's not just these guys sitting outside skyscrapers in Manhattan. And if I were smart, I would have found out who the hell was running that and been like, take my money. And maybe they wouldn't have. But if they did, we'd be having this conversation on my yacht. Exactly. Although, didn't you also say Uber wasn't going anywhere? I mean, I think I'm in good company, right?

You turned them down at some point, too, right? I didn't invest, but not because I didn't. It was other mechanical reasons. Okay. I actually always thought that they would be a valuable company. It's just kind of a question of what's the culture of the company. So I was worried about the things that were like, oh, it's too hyper-aggressive. Got it.

It may be bad for its drivers. It may be bad for its policies around, you know, harassment in the workplace and that kind of thing. That must have been so obvious even back then, not that you don't spot things well, but I'm saying that company came to you a long time ago. And if you saw it then, then people who were there for that long have no excuse to not know what's going on, but that's a different podcast, I think. Yeah, well, by the way, this is actually one of the things,

but it relates to actually an important part of advice here, which is, One, what's the culture of a company? If you're going to go work there, is the culture help you thrive, help you learn, build strong connections with people around you. And so part of what I always look at in investments is how great is the culture of the culture of the investment of the company? So like, for example, part of the reason I was an enthusiastic leader of the Series A investment in Airbnb was because it was like, oh, Brian and Joe and Nate, they're creating a great culture. They really care about this stuff. And that really matters as part of it. Now, the subtle part of that that people frequently too often mistake when they are thinking about the early phases of their career. Like they've just graduated, you know, high school, college, maybe it's a second job. Actually, in fact, choosing a manager who you're working for where that manager, you form a good rapport, that manager respects you, cares about you, et cetera. That's a real amplifier in a career. And you go, okay, well, I could go to great company X where the manager does, like I'm paying the attention doesn't give a shit. I can go to, call it 80% great company Y, but I'm going to have a really tight relationship with manager, that can be super helpful because that manager can recommend you

other jobs, make sure you get a bunch of opportunities, you're stretching, you have the opportunities to do really interesting things. And that is also really important about it. So choosing your manager can be very important. And that, by the way, that's obviously correlated with the company culture. Yeah, that goes back to learning versus earning, right? I'm thinking of my wife, she went to a community college for two years and then she transferred to UCLA and she's like, it's not even close. Community college, the professors cared, they knew our names, they taught us things. UCLA was like this giant auditorium where I'm watching a TED talk from a chair and then I've got to go do a bunch of stuff and if I don't understand, I'm basically just out of luck.

And then maybe a graduate student instructor can possibly answer some questions during office hours. It would be like getting a job as a writer for a mid-sized newspaper in a mid-sized town in the middle of America versus going into the New York Times as an intern. You're going to get a lot more attention and fostering and hands-on care with a newspaper that thinks maybe she'll be here for a while versus an internship in a giant building where they say, oh, yeah, this is class number 87 of interns. Don't bother learning their names. They're going to be gone by September. And they're going to make you some coffee. That's all we care about. Yeah, but it's usually bad. So just go to Starbucks. Yeah, exactly. I've also heard you say pick an industry, not a job. What do you mean by that? That's actually probably a really good idea for people starting out

especially. Because again, it's go with the tidal wave. Go with the tide, the where it's going. And that's a little bit of like, as opposed to going working in some random job, go be a janitor at Netscape during the birth of the internet. If you go, well, this is an industry that's really going to go. It's like, sample. You said, well, I'm going to go into tech industry of a wide variety. I'm going to go into the AI part of it. Or I'm going to go into the, even the graphics design and art part of it with Figma or any variety of them can all work. He said, no, no, what I'm actually going to go is I'm going to go into retail banking.

Well, retail banking is not dead, but like all the growth. even in banking is going to be in online services, it's going to be on mobile and it's not going to be the, hey, but I became the regional manager of Wells Fargo or Bank of America. And it's like, yeah, that's just not really going anywhere. Now, maybe if you said competitive differentiation, that's the place where I could do that other people can't and that was the one that works for me. Great. But generally speaking, when you're like looking at which industries will be two Xing in size, which ones will be presenting all kinds of new opportunities, which ones will be thriving companies 10 years from now. If you're in those industries, you have a wealth of possibilities, options, opportunities, economic increase, stability, all of that comes from picking an industry. So you go, well, I could go be a product manager on a really interesting but decaying camera line, or I could go be a technical assistant in a smartphone company where the smartphones are completely eating the photography industry, oh, I'll go be the technical assistant there, and I'll work my way up from it because that will be the industry that's transforming everything.

Lots of people ask me what I would do if I had to start from scratch again, and I've told them some variation of this, and I was really happy to see this in your book, because there's not many shortcuts, but this is one of those things where I think might qualify as a shortcut, and it's being close to the crown, right? Being the right-hand man or woman to the leaders of a company, where maybe you can work your way up from the bottom of the chain, like you say, technical assistant, or even just being in the room as the guy painting a mural or the janitor at Netscape, right, that example. But if you can say, hey, it's my first year out of college, let me book your flights, I'll go with you to every meeting. I have nothing else to do because I'm not married. I don't have kids. I can travel with you in your car.

I can pick you up in your car. I can go on your plane. I can stay at a place for a month and just entertain myself and take notes in your meetings. That type of assistant job, puts you just right in all the action. You're in the meetings. You know how every element of this business runs. That's the closest thing I can think of to a shortcut. And you mentioned that there was somebody that did this that you knew. And I'm wondering how people get those kinds of jobs in the first place.

Because it would be very tough to come in and say, I want to be the assistant to the CEO. It's like, calm down. It's almost always through references of trust. Okay. So, for example, Matt Kohler, who, you know, is a general partner of benchmark. started that way. He had got a great job as being an analyst in McKinsey. He had learned Chinese, you know, from earlier things and he was doing this. But yet he knew somebody, Tara Tolliger,

that I knew, and Tara said, Matt is just the bomb. He is super smart. He's flexible. He's hardworking. He's ambitious. And he understands how to play the wing person job, the lieutenant job. And so I met him and we spent some time. And he was like, great, I don't really believe this whole LinkedIn thing as much as you do, but you seem to be a really good person to be working with. And this will be great. And Lee Hauer was another person who's now a VC. Actually, there seems to be a pattern here, but it's now a VC in the East Coast at next view. And it's like actually, in fact, when it's a close personal reference, because one of the things that really matters is trust of work ethic, trust of integrity, trust of the learning curve, trust of the ability to make good judgment.

I've got, like, for example, it's very important to say, oh, I don't know this. I'm not handling this well. What do I do? Great. Okay, fine. Like, as a, to like blowing yourself up, identifying it early. And so those folks are platinum for these senior executives, for people like me, but it's almost always on a reference. And part of it is you need to have, which like Matt and Lee and other folks have, you need to have the ability to submerge your ego for a number of years because you're like, well, but I'm just being the assistant job. I'm not doing the, I'm the VP or I'm the, you need to have these three people working for me. I'm going to play this job just totally excellently.

And by the way, that's part of the trust going both ways is it when Matt came to me and said, hey, I've got this offer from Facebook. What do you think I should do? And I was like, you should take it. Right? It wasn't like, you should keep working for me for the next next year. Of course is what is in my interest. But part of it is we have this alliance.

It goes, no, no, no, you've already got a bunch of stock from LinkedIn. You've already bought a bunch of learning. and Facebook is this really interesting rocket chip, you should go there, right? And, you know, let's continue to work together and be friends and do a whole bunch of things. But, you know, and I always had to go hire somebody else. But that's the kind of thing where it's, again, lifetime relationships doing these things. And that's the depth of trust you want on both sides. So the guy has stock in LinkedIn and Facebook. That's pre-IPO? Pre-Series A in both LinkedIn and Facebook.

No wonder he's a VC. He just wrote a check to himself. And that was the end of that. There you go. Good for him. Exactly. One concept I've never heard before other than your book is A, B, Z planning. You know, I got Plan A. I've got Plan B. What's Plan Z? It sounds like a very unfortunate occurrence.

Well, by the way, every chapter in the book is advice that I give entrepreneurs of companies like Airbnb and PayPal and Facebook and everything else, and they're distilled to individuals in their life and career. And A, BZ planning is a flexible planning network. So you go, okay, I have a strategy. I have a plan A. This is how it's going to work. This is what my investment thesis is.

is this is the way I'm going to put these tactics together in order to accomplish this really interesting result. Now, the frequent mistake is like, they go, oh, and what's your plan B? And it's like, a plan B is usually a mistake. It's plans B. It's like, well, if this part of plan A isn't working out, here's something we could change. We could change the goal a little bit. We could change the way we're doing it. We could change, you know, the following configuration of things. So you have a multiple set of plans B that are off your strategy and off your investment thesis for plan A. All of that, very useful, flexible adaptive planning. But one of the things you also need to figure out is what happens if you're just on the wrong path is not going to work. Your company's not going to work.

Your theory that it was going to be virtual worlds all the time in 1993, which is one of the times where I first saw virtual worlds. You know, that's 30 years ago. And, you know, now we're doing virtual worlds again. Maybe it'll be the time is now. But, you know, how does that play out? And you go, this isn't working. Well, one of the things that allows you to take risk is to have a plan Z, which is really understand when it's a bridge to nowhere. It's not working. And And how do you reset to getting another plan A? Like, what's the thing you can do? Like, for example, my plan Z when I started my first company, was to say, well, I called

my dad and said, look, you got a spare guest room still. I know you generally don't want me living with you. But I'm going to go really trying to make the startup work. And if it doesn't work, I'm probably going to need to live rent free for a number of months while I have a job and I'm working back up off my debt and working and paying back up some, you know, getting some savings. Is it okay if I do that given that I'm trying to do something that could be really big and valuable. And he said, yep, that's fine. And so I had a plan Z, which is move back in with

my dad, get a job in the tech industry. And by having that, that allowed me go to the edge in my risk, you know, to literally send months with, you know, no salary, burning expenses, trying to build the company because it was, okay, I've got a play to do that. And having a plan Z is reassuring, rational, and allows you to take higher risks. It's a privilege to have that kind of position, but also I think people can plan for that sort of situation as well. It sounds like what we talked about earlier with maybe making sure you don't rack up a ton of debt if you can avoid it or deferring the debt that you do have or instead of spending on something that's really nice for yourself in your 20s, you build yourself a little runway because now you've got an opportunity and you want to

lean into it. It helps if you don't have 30 grand in credit card debt at 21% APR. Exactly. A lot of people make pivots in their career, I've noticed that a lot of people think of pivoting as throwing a dart or a bowl of spaghetti on the wall and just going towards whatever happens to stick. And that's not really what pivoting is supposed to be, right? No, pivoting is, again, strategic, right? So, like, example, the plan A, the plans B, those are pivots. And then part of macro pivots, like to a totally new plan A, possibly through plan Z is, all right, my investment pieces isn't working. So, like, when I start a company, I want to invest in company. I have a list of things that say,

this is what I think the world's going to be. This is why I think this product service is going to be amazing. This is why I think we can pull it off. This is how I can measure whether or not I'm on it. Now, as you get into the world, you adjust your investment thesis.

You go, oh, I was wrong about that. Oh, I was wrong about that. Oh, I was maybe a little bit more right about them than I thought I'm going to pivot more towards that. Now, sometimes the macro thesis is wrong. Like, so, for example, when I did my first company, Social Net, it was the, I'll just create a really good space by which people could use

anonymous profiles to find each other, not just for dating, but for also roommates and also for sports activity and also for work networking. And it's like, okay, my problem was it's a universe of temporary engagement from anonymous profiles, which of course can still work and Tinder and other kinds of things. But it was like the real mistake of the design was not being real name and not being lifetime. And that's part of how LinkedIn comes about because I go, okay, that was a mistake. I need to change from that. And so you realize what your mistakes are, what you're learning about, what works, what the world needs, what other people need, what the entrepreneurial game looks like. How do you create an initial product? How do you create a deeper product? And they say, okay, now I'm

going to try that in a different way. And that's, those are the kinds of things that lead to pivots. Now, surprising big pivots are, I think Sony electronics started as a hot water bottle manufacturer and eventually got to an electronics giant. So it can be big, huge shifts for companies as well as individuals. I like your suggestion to set aside one day a month or if you can one day a week. And as you mentioned before, the coffee meetings with four or five people in an industry that you want to get to know, whether that's your industry or a totally different industry doesn't really matter. And then that one day a week or a month, you work on your plan Z. Even if it's just sort of laying the foundation for it or maybe that means the money you make from that hustle goes towards your, in case I need

to live in a sleeping bag, you know, fund on someone's basement. I really do appreciate the fact that you get a lot of freedom from lowering debt and making sure you have appropriate runway. There's a lot of people that I think had really great ideas, but they just couldn't get them off the ground because they had a ton of credit card debt, student debt, or they just had unfortunate circumstances. They had crappy parents that were kicking them out all over the place and they were moving around so much. They couldn't even hold down a regular job, let alone get their company off the ground, despite the idea and the talent being in place. The ability to take smart risk is really important and you need to put yourself in the position and some of us are lucky. Like I was very lucky that my dad could support it,

but otherwise you have to work towards that and you have to be able to take the smart risk you can because that's usually one of the places where you can have a huge competitive advantage. Too often people just try to avoid risk versus taking the smart risk. Let's talk for a bit about the benefits of having an online brand, even if you work in a regular career where it seems like that might not matter. Because I think people who want to be influencers or some kind, it's self-explanatory. But how do we go about building this in a way that's appropriate while under the umbrella of an employer? I think a lot of people are afraid. They're practically afraid to update their LinkedIn profile because they're like, I don't want my employer to think I'm trying to out

to out of the company. So they just kind of vanish. And then they, when they get laid off, they update their resume and it start from scratch. Look, and generally speaking, employers want you not to be as discoverable because that allows them to have you as a lower priced asset. And so there's all this impression of, like, oh, you know, we're going to think of you as disloyal if you update your LinkedIn profile. Whereas if you say, hey, look, I'm updating my LinkedIn profile because it makes me more capable in the world. Interesting opportunities may come in for our company or our group. I may learn interesting things through it. I'm creating this because part of the thing is, is the people who are being native to the internet, making

connections to people, learning things, understanding what the future looks like, understanding what the changes of technology look like. Those people are highly desirable. And by the way, I'm one of those people. And that's part of the reason why I update my online brand. I might do a podcast. I might fill in my LinkedIn profile. I might do these things. And those things are actually, in fact, very helpful, not just to me, but to any effort or group that I may be working with or working alongside. By the way, if you don't want B2B modern and current with the internet, going to where the world is going, maybe this isn't the place I should be working. The second book, the alliance, you're looking for this alliance where it's a great mutual benefit. And that's part of the

reason. And one of the things that people frequently mistake in the updating your online profiles, like, oh, it's too much work. It's like, well, sure, if you're going to create an amazing podcast like yours, Jordan, it's going to take a huge amount of work, as you know. But like, for example, updating your LinkedIn profile takes you about 10 minutes. You know, maybe even five, maybe 15 if you're putting extra work into it. And then all of a sudden you're discoverable in interesting ways. Maybe actually, in fact, adding some things where it's like, oh, I've got this hobby of creating art in Dolly with Open AI. Great. I'll do a little bit of that. Put that in the LinkedIn profile. Put that somewhere else as a way of doing it. And those kinds of things can then suddenly bear a lot of fruit because one of the

things that people don't realize is part of the internet age. It's not just you searching for information or other people, but there is billions of people who are searching. Right. So being findable by the right person that could be that right opportunity for you, for your company, for something interesting. That's huge. And lots more people are searching possibly for you than you're searching for other people. That's a good point. One caveat to this, I would say, be careful about using company time to start a podcast about your industry or your company or pretty much anything like that. I've heard, I've had people email me and say, hey, I was doing a podcast for my tire, whatever, company and then it started to become about business and I started to get all these connections.

And now I'm leaving and the company says that it's their podcast because I did it from the conference room during the company's working hours. And I was like, oh, they're probably right. You need to negotiate that IP on your way out and you might have to give up severance or whatever it is or some kind of other things that you were going to get in order to take that IP. And even then they might not agree. So you have to be kind of careful. The other, of course, downside is if you're doing something that looks like it's only for your benefit on company time, they might consider it time theft. Like, hey, we don't pay you to create YouTube videos that promote yourself as an expert in this area. We pay you to help customers with our product and nothing else.

So you've got to be a little careful with that. Yeah, it's very good to get clean on that. You're totally right. Get clean on that. And either the company can support you, in which case, by the way, maybe they do own it and so forth, or the company says, that's your own time. You're like, great, and then I own it. Maybe I'll do it on my lunch break. And then you can, maybe you even get a, hey, look, this is some benefit to the company, but it's time you're not paying me. Do you mind if I use the conference room? And they drop you an email saying, no, no, no, it's fine. You use the conference room while you're doing this because we get some benefit from it, even though it's not paid time. You look great, but being clear about it up front is very helpful.

Right. Yeah, get that in writing. Don't just ask him if you can use the conference room, because then when you're in your court case about that your million dollar podcast, they're going to say, that's our conference room. Exhibit A, last, or almost last, you advise to never be all sizzle and no stick. And I love this because there is nothing but smoke and mirrors online sometimes. You know, there's a joke, and I'm sure you've seen this meme where it says reality, the guy's unemployed, lives with his parents or something like that. And it says, but LinkedIn, relationship experts and senior VP of, you seen this meme? Yes. The reason that's funny is because so many people are doing that. Yeah. And also it can lead you in very bad directions and people might

buy into the sizzle and then all of a sudden feel very burned. And, you know, part of the Part of what you want is you want something where he says, look, you're selling to what you can do, but you're selling to what you can do. You know, to some degree, if you're just all sales, then, like, for example, if you find a VC who's invested in an entrepreneur is doing that, then they feel burned. They're like, well, you said you could do all these things. You can't do them. You don't have the experience. Someone hires you as an employer as a contractor. Same thing.

So what you want to do is you want to say, look, I have really good capabilities. I can bat well. But, you know, look, I also, of course, describe how amazing it can do. be if I'm batting for you. I really like the, you gave an example of George Clooney being proactive and being bold, reaching out to people before interviews and things like that. And nobody does this. Let's end on this sort of fun-ish note. Well, let me parallel just from George Clooney to another fun one that I had on the Master's Scale podcast, Tyra Banks. Oh, okay. Part of how she became a supermodel was not just because she's amazing and smart and beautiful and all the rest. What she did is she approached

supermodeling as a job. So when she was out in Paris, she'd look at, like, oh, I'm about to go to a photo shoot with someone like this. They like this kind of style. And before she got in, she would change into that style. She'd change your hair, she'd change your clothes, and she'd show up already. And so what happened is she became a huge favorite of all of these designers such that she became the most booked fashion model, right?

And then, of course, well, she's the one who's gorgeous across all of these things. And of course, she's gorgeous, but she was strategic in it. And by the way, of course, similar things with what we did in the book, you know, describing George Clooney, which is, you know, being proactive about it, learning about what the requirements are, doing that, building a relationship, you know, being in advance. That kind of thing is super important. And it's a little bit like, look, what's the best way to find a job is already have relationships with a number of people who would be very interested in hiring you when working with you, right, as opposed to the, oh, I see a job description here. I'm going to send in my

LinkedIn profile along with the other 2,000 people. Be a little proactive to what you're doing. And sure, it's some extra work, some wasted work. But then once you get to the next job part of it, it's much more magical. Well, Reid, you're the Tyra Banks of Silicon Valley. And I'm grateful to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for doing this. Jordan, always a pleasure. And remember people, I'm going to have a lot more practicals in the show closed. So stay tuned for that. Coming right up. If you're looking for another episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show to sink your teeth into, here's a trailer for another episode with Reid Hoffman. He drops by the show to discuss how we can tell

when we're informing our intuition with the best available data or if we're just procrastinating to avoid making important decisions. And why never give up is terrible advice and how to separate our winning instincts from our losing ideas. A piece of advice I most often give entrepreneurs

is don't just work on the product, work on your go-to-market. It's a huge world. It's 8 billion people. How do you stand out against 8 billion people? Actually, in fact, that's kind of challenging. Yeah, that's a good point. Are we at eight already?

Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh, I build this thing in a corner, no one sees it. It may be the best thing ever, but no one sees it, so it's never used. That's the problem on the entrepreneurship side. So network, one key component. Another one is, which is you have a plan A, you have plans B, which is how to think about,

like, well, if A is not working out, maybe B will work, or maybe B will be a different path, or you know, that kind of thing. And then you have a Z plan, which is, it's not working out at all. What's my lifeboat plan? I'm going to row to a different set of plan A and plan B's. There's always luck. There's always timing. The game is not so much, can I be one of the heroes that's written about in the next

hundred years? But the game is, can I do something that where I started from, I can make something interesting? You're playing your own game. Yes, your passion's important, but you should be paying attention to market realities. You should say, well, what do the opportunities look like? What does competition look like? What's the best match for me to what the opportunity landscape looks like? You could always say, well, more data is useful.

The test is what's the minimum set of data that you would actually, in fact, make this decision on? We need to separate our winning intuition or instincts from our losing ideas. More often than not, greater than 50% of time, you're going to have to give up on that idea. Everyone loves to tell these narratives of, well, when I was two, I knew what I was going to do when I was 40. Yeah, it sounds good. And it was a straight line that was kind of smooth sailing. The wind was at our backs. It was kind of unproblematic.

It's always fiction. For more with Reid Hoffman in a two-part mashup that includes cameos by the founder of Spotify, the CEO of Yahoo and more. Check out episode 207 of the Jordan Harbinger show. Love these kind of practical conversations from people that actually know what they're talking about. It's important to remember that career inflection points, and unforeseen changes, those are now a foregone conclusion. They're inevitable. The best thing we can do to prepare for these are to shore up our soft assets, especially our network, and of course,

also have some hard assets to fall back on just in case. If you've been listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show for a while, you know that my network was one of the most important determining factors in the success of the show early on, in the success of the business over the long term, especially after leaving my past show, my previous show, and my previous business. It really was and continues to the best insurance policy that money could never buy. In your career, it's not just other people competing with you that you need to worry about. It's also that the rules of the game are constantly changing. People whose careers peter out, they think they're playing chess, which is a closed system with static rules. This is not the case with your career. The landscape is much more open,

the rules are much more open and flexible. So a lot of the practicals here are very, very important. The stuff in six-minute networking, of course, but also some of the practicals in the book, such as in the next week, set up a coffee meeting for somebody who used to be in your industry, but pivoted to another line of work. Deconstruct what they did and how they got there. Was that a good move? How did they know that the time was right to make a move? Write down that exercise.

Do that this week. You'll thank me later. Reid also says it's better to invest in the low end and the high end, but not the middle of your knowledge base. What does that mean? Don't work to just get in the middle of the pack on most skills. If you've got low skill in an area, shore up that weakness. Like if you don't know anything about something, get to decent competency, sort of low middle.

If you have a high level of skill in another area, then get world class at it. I could spend a lot of time farting around in the middle on certain skills, and that would have gotten me relatively nowhere. But instead, I choose to shore up things where I'm really weak and focus on what I am actually really good at. That has made for a top, let's say, one percentile in podcasting and media. and there are outsized rewards at the top. Being in the middle is less useful

because you're not much better than somebody with newbie skills and you're certainly not world class. So moving around the middle area of competence in any skill, it just doesn't do as much for us. And on that note, make a plan to learn one more useful skill this year

that's transferable to what you do now in your career in some way. Maybe it's a foreign language, maybe it's some programming or coding skills. Who knows? Give yourself a year to make some headway in that skill and set up a calendar note to evaluate that progress in 12 months from now.

Also, hey, if anyone wants to learn Mandarin, I'm happy to refer you to my teachers. Just email me for that. They take new students all the time. It's been great for me. I've been studying for a while, and yeah, I can speak Mandarin now. Go figure. You put in the hours over time, and it actually works. You can learn just about anything.

Also, last but not least, it's important to continually generate professional opportunities, even if you're happy where you are. I hear this all the time. People say, oh, I don't need a network. I'm happy where I'm at. I don't need to do this. I'm happy where I am now. You just never know what kind of opportunity will come your way either right now or in the future due to these connections, due to these professional opportunities that you're generating. Two, it keeps opportunity muscle memory fresh,

so you are constantly good at it. You're never going to get rusty if one day you do decide you need the skill to generate opportunities and or go somewhere else. You've got backup plans. And three, you never know when you're going to have to pivot to plan B or plan Z because it happens sometimes quite unexpectedly, and the last thing you want to do is be caught off guard, then have to figure all this out, and then execute on it. I get this question in my email inbox all the time. I didn't dig the well before I was thirsty, and now I'm thirsty. What do I do? Well, you start over like everybody else. This is the thing. There are no shortcuts here to this particular set of skills. Continually generate professional opportunities, even if you think this is a family

business, I don't need it. I'm never going to quit being a teacher, whatever it is. Those excuses don't hold water. People who make those excuses end up in hot water. And if you're applying through a job through the front door and sending a resume to HR, you're doing something wrong. That at the very least should be your last resort. There's a lot more in the book about assessing risk, making connections. The book has a lot of overlap, again with our six-minute networking course, which I was glad to see. Looks like their researcher actually found the course and was able to incorporate much of it, which is a nice compliment. And you can find that same course at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Learn to dig the well before you're thirsty, folks. I can't say it enough.

Big thank you to Reed Hoffman. Links to all things read will be in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com. Books at Jordan Harbinger.com slash books. Use our website links if you buy books from guests. Please, it does help support the show. Every little bit helps. Transcripts are in the show notes. Videos are up on YouTube. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals, please consider supporting those who support this show. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or connect with me right there on LinkedIn, which Reid himself founded. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millie Ocampo, Ian Baird, Josh Ballard, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

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