The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 415: Suneel Gupta - How To Get People To Take A Chance On You

Episode Date: April 18, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Suneel Gupta is on faculty at Harvard University. He's the author of Backable - The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take A Chance On You Notes: Let's start with the obvious -- when lots of people are applying for the same spot, you have to find a way to stand out. You can't just check a box, you have to leave an impression.  (But backable people "go beyond Google" and dig for insights that other people interviewing for the job may not find. They talk to customers, they attend shareholder meetings, they test-drive the product. (But backable people "go beyond Google" and dig for insights that other people interviewing for the job may not find. They talk to customers, they attend shareholder meetings, they test-drive the product. ) Suneel comes from a family of highly backable people—including his mother, Damyanti Hingorani, the first woman engineer for Ford Motor Company, and his brother Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN. Reid Hoffman recruited Suneel to Mozilla... Name someone early in your life who backed you. Call them and say 'thank you.' Hire "high ceiling" leaders: Suneel was a speechwriter in 2004. He was backstage at the Democratic National Convention. There was a State Senator from Illinois. Suneel watched him speak from behind the curtain. "He created an electric wave of energy when he spoke." It was President Barack Obama. After that, Suneel became obsessed with following the work of the State Senator. He studied President Obama's history and learned that he went from a dry speaker to inspiring through preparation and practice. He worked on his skill to communicate and got better. The "It" quality -- People get a job because others want to take a chance on them. They're backable. Specifics to make this happen: Play exhibition matches -- Prepare, practice, rehearse They develop a level of mastery so that they don't have to think when it's time to perform. Their preparation allows them to flow Ella Fitzgerald performed in Berlin... She forgot the lyrics and improvised the words for the next half of the song. She rehearsed a lot. That allowed her to perform even when she forgot the words. Confidence comes from believing something will go wrong and that you've practiced enough to be able to handle it. "Build your recovery muscle." Surround yourself with great people - Early adopters need to feel part of the build.  Steer Into Objections. Anticipate three key objections to your idea. When pitching, don't avoid those objections; steer into them. Don't Pitch Prematurely. Instead of sharing an idea before it's ready, nurture it until you're ready. It's not charisma that convinces people, it's conviction. Don't Overshare. Share what it could be, not how it has to be. Share just enough to get the essence of your idea across, then open up the conversation. Build Your Backable Circle. Don't rely on just one person to help you with your pitch. Surround yourself with a trusted group of people who bring different perspectives. Humans are not risk takers - We do whatever we can to avoid a loss. You need to neutralize that fear. "Don't just talk about why it's new, but why it's inevitable." "Backable people convince themselves first. It's not charisma that convinces people, it's conviction." "Most new ideas are killed inside hallways. We share too early. Before they're ready. Nurture your ideas behind the scenes. They need an incubation time. Write it out. Draw..." Quiet time is so important to hone ideas. It's critical to the creative process "Ken Robinson was not that charismatic, but you believed everything he was saying." He believed it first. He had conviction. Storytelling - "You need to cast a central character." "Re-write the book for on person as the reader... 'I'm writing this book for my daughter to read.'" "Don't talk about the market, talk about one person." Life advice: "Figure out what makes you come alive. I left Groupon and created a list of ideas."

It's not charisma that convinces people. It's conviction. And in order to build conviction, you have to spend the time to convince yourself first. And the reason that's hard for people is because we get it really excited about a new idea. And we immediately want to share that. We immediately want to go to the people, even friends and family, and we want to start talking about it. But the problem with that is that oftentimes we won't get the reaction. that we're looking for because we don't know how to describe it.

We don't know how to explain it in a way that gets other people excited. And when we don't get the reaction we're looking for, when someone gives you sort of that lukewarm, like, hmm, kind of interesting, huh? Sort of lukewarm response. It could be really deflating because new ideas are fragile and so are we when we have a new idea. We tend to be very fragile. This episode is brought to you by a very special advertising partner for me.

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show presented by Rixie and Meyer. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 4-4-222 in order to be part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other leaders from all over the world, will receive a note each Monday morning that's carefully curated with the most useful articles, video. books, things on my mind to help you start your week right. You'll also receive details about how my book, welcome to management, will help you become a more effective leader. Text learners to 4422. Now on tonight's feature leader to the great Sineal Gupta teaches an innovation course at Harvard an author of the new

book titled Backable. This explores how to get people to believe in your ideas and his message is rooted in his journey from first-time entrepreneur to being named quote the new face of innovation by the New York Stock Exchange a few of the topics we discussed so Neil shares the concept of the hidden step which is the critical moment between idea and execution then he gives us a tangible takeaways and ideas on how to make a more memorable first impression. Followed up by how to better manage risk. And then he shares the four keys to making yourself more backable.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Seneil Gupta. Sineal, welcome. Great to have you here on the Learning Leader Show, man. Ryan, great to be here. So to get us started, you, you, you made a request to me, which is rare. And so I'm going to let you have the floor to get this one going. Yeah, Ryan, you know, I'm wondering, you know, before we get into this topic of how to make

yourself backable, I look at your career, I listen to your show. You've got this really unique path. You've gone from, you know, leader to athlete, speaker, host. You've got all these sort of different things. And there's no doubt in my mind that there have been people along the way that have been part of that journey with you. And so the question I have for you is, you know, Who took a chance on you?

Is there someone who specifically comes to mind as they took a chance on you when you weren't quite ready to step into the role you stepped into? I think of a few people. So is it okay if I say more than one? Of course, yeah. There's been a lot. So when I was in eighth grade, Seneal, I played quarterback and I was fortunate to start on the eighth grade team. I did hit a little bit of a gross spurt. going into my freshman year and the two coaches at Centerville High School, Ron Allory and Bob

Gregg believed in me in July of eighth grade year going into my freshman season and said, if you keep doing what you're doing, you have a chance to be our starter on the varsity team this year as a freshman. And I played at Centerville High School, which is a big school, Division 1 in Ohio, which is the biggest, the biggest division. And that came true. I became the starter after I threw the game-winning touchdown pass my first game in my freshman season and they took a shot and and there was a returning starter who was a junior and then

a senior and they moved him to another position to play me and so I'll never forget the belief they had in me and that in the fact that their confidence in me gave me more confidence that I had in myself and it reminds me for for all these points in my life that if you believe in somebody tell them tell them why and and and back them and support them and be there for them because you may be able as a leader you may be able to lift them to a level that they didn't even think they were capable of so i i guess without making the entire podcast about people who have helped me i'll just name two and that's ron allery and bob gregg and it started early in my life early in my career and gave me more confidence and

belief in myself than i ever had up to that point and and i'm forever grateful to those i i i i have actually got to record with Ron Ulrey. And we talked a lot about that and his, his just genius as a coach and what he did for me. He's, he's the reason that I got a college scholarship, the primary reason I would say. And so I'm, I'm very grateful and lucky. Now that you ask me that, I have to flip it and ask you the same thing. It wasn't on my list of questions here. I have a bunch of other things with your new book, but, but I love the thought of, and this may be a question I actually add to my repertoire. So I'm already learning to Neil. So thank you. But who would that be for you? Or who would those?

few people be for you. Maybe maybe you find someone earlier in your life as well that that took a shot that that said I believe in you Soneal even maybe when you didn't believe in yourself fully yet. Yeah. Yeah. Well you know there there are a few people that come to mind for me as well. The one I want to tell you about in just a moment is Reid Hoffman founder of LinkedIn and you know just really somebody who had you know no reason to to recruit me to at that time to Mozilla. I was right out of grad school. I did not have, I was coming out of a joint business law program. I did not have any real experience as a product manager. But at that time, he was chairman of Mozilla and recruited me

to the company to serve that role. And, you know, I want to talk about Reed in a minute, but I got to say, Ryan, like, couple things that really popped from your answer for me. One is that I've now spent years studying, you know, exceptional people from Oscar winning producers to celebrity chefs to iconic founders to senior executives within really exciting companies. And I've asked them all the same question. And there's a lot of patterns that that started to form. And your answer, I think, fits into a lot of that. So the first thing is that oftentimes they'll actually name somebody from their childhood. It will often be, you know, it will often be. a teacher. So it'll be, it'll be someone in their career as well, but, but oftentimes the first place that people go is a teacher. And I ask a follow-up question, and it's not to be, you know, a jerk or anything like that, but I'm just curious. Like, I ask most people, have you gone back to that person and thank them? And just let them know, like, hey, this was all possible because of you. And overwhelmingly, the answer to that is no. We typically don't. I mean, I think,

think that in the professional world we do, hey, thanks so much for giving me the shot at that role. But we're going back in thanking teachers is actually quite rare, at least in my experience in all the research that I've done, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about just given the past year and how overwhelmed teachers have been during the pandemic. And I think just sort of, I think us collectively realizing how underappreciated they can be. So that was one thing that really occurred to me. The second thing that you said that was really important. is that, you know, by someone taking a chance on you, they can give you more confidence than you even have in yourself. And I think taking it one step deeper is just going back to

people who have taken a chance on you and just simply asking them why. What was it, what was it, you know, I wasn't qualified for that role. What was it that made you decide to take a chance on me? And so getting back to Reed Hoffman, you know, as I was doing this recent, I realized I hadn't done that. I hadn't gone back to him and asked him that question. So I did. And what what he said to me was that, you know, even though I had a gap, there wasn't, I wasn't a clear fit for a role like that. I was I was showing a level of sincerity and hustle that was really, really important. And I had shown through the work I'd done in the past that I was able to take on roles that I was not qualified for, at least on paper, and had found a way to make those things work.

And so while he, you know, he wasn't, the reason that he took a chance on me is he wasn't necessarily looking at the bullets of the qualifications for the role, but he was looking at the pattern that he had seen from my past career. And maybe you can relate to that because you've made. made a lot of jumps yourself. And so if you wanted to go do something completely different right now, Ryan, someone might say, well, Ryan doesn't have the experience to go do that thing. And yet, we've seen him jump from leader, from athlete to leader to speaker to host. So we know this is certainly the type of person who can make transitions well. And therefore, we're going to take a chance on him on this new thing. So really interesting stuff that came out already from you.

What patterns do you think, because I had a mentor early in my life who actually all, actually offered me a job that would have been a step up at one point earlier in my career. And he said, I more than experience, I look for people who have had success, and this is the key phrase, in multiple life categories. Like, interesting. What do you mean? And he said, well, if you can go, go do well on the athletic fields. And then you can go into a sales environment where I initially want when I got done playing, which was pound the phone, smile and dial one of those types of tough jobs. not like boiler room, but, you know, kind of. And then go and lead a team.

It's like, okay, we have three distinctly different areas of life where the result ended up being the same. Now, it didn't happen immediately. It took some time. But when I see three, that's a pattern. That's having success in multiple life categories. To me, that means I'm placing my bet. I'm on my hands here, moving my chips to the middle of the table.

I'm placing my bet on people who have done it in three. three completely different arenas. So what do you think Reed, Saul, and you to say, I'm seeing some patterns in Sineal to say, doesn't have the experience yet, but I would call them very high ceiling, high potential person. So I'm going to place my bet on him. Yeah. I mean, you know, when before I applied for that role, you know, most of my experience came from the political world. And, you know, I had written, you know, as an intern at the White House, I was a speech. writer in 2004. You know, I remember with Reed, one of the experiences that we ended up talking about, which ultimately ended up shaping, I think, a lot of what I believe for this book, for Backable,

was in 2004, I was working backstage at the Democratic National Convention. And, you know, when you're working backstage at a convention like that, most of the people you see backstage, you sort of recognize, most of the speakers. But there was one person that I didn't. And he, you know, was a state senator from Illinois. No one really knew his name. And he gets up on stage and he gives his keynote address. And I got to watch Barack Obama deliver that speech from behind the curtains. So I'm watching this like electric wave of energy just rip through the crowd.

And it's something that I've just, I had never, I'd never seen before. It's something that I don't think I've really seen since to be a part of that moment. It was like parents were lifting their children under their shoulders. I saw camera operators sidestepping their tripod just to see this speech with human eyes because I think we all knew that there was something happening there, something that really mattered. And the reason that I bring that up is because I became, you know, that night, I think one of millions of young people who became obsessed with, you know, Barack Obama and his story. And so one of the things I decided to do was really to kind of go back in time, figure out where did this all be in.

And what I saw really surprised me, you know, and you may know this story, Ryan, but maybe some of your listeners don't, which is that in 2000, Barack Obama ran for Congress, not for president, he ran for Congress and he lost. He lost by a two to one margin. So it wasn't close. And, you know, one of the things that is most surprising about that is not the fact that he lost, but what people were saying about him at the time, how they were describing him. He was seen as, is, is a very important. He was seen as, is. is a boring candidate by many, many voters. In fact, there was a journalist named Ted McClelland, who was on his campaign, who said that Barack Obama is so dry that he sucks up all the air out of the room. And then four years later, he is this embodiment of inspiration and of hope and of energy, at least for millions of people. And so, you know, if you go back and you try to figure out what happened in those four years in between, I think that a couple of things start to start to become apparent.

Number one is that, you know, a lot of it comes from preparation and practice. You talk about this a lot, right? There's a lot that can happen. But the second thing is that, you know, we often assume that people who are inspirational, people who are really persuasive, convincing are just kind of naturally that way, right? You know, if we look at an athlete, like a Michael Jordan, you know, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, to ourselves, like, that person is clearly the product of lots and lots of practice and training. You work to get that way. But oftentimes we look at Mother Teresa, but we look at a Gandhi or we

look at somebody else like that. We think to ourselves, well, they're naturally that way. But the reality is that they went through the same struggle and practice that an athlete would go through. And that was certainly true of Obama over those four years. So, you know, the book, the book is really about that effect, which is like, you know, there are certain people who seem to have this it quality, this ability to go inside a room and really, really charm us. And they'll get the job, they'll get the role, they'll get the promotion, they'll get the investment, because we really want to take a chance on them. And I got fascinated with this it quality that I call being backable. But what was really surprising to me was that most people who are about,

today did not start out that way. They were not actually naturals. And I think Barack Obama's story is a really good example of that. What are some of the things he did in the four years between getting crushed in 2000 to the electric wave that you actually felt from being in the room? Because I think the combination of what makes these episodes good, these conversations really go is the stories are memorable. And then in addition to the stories, we get a little science, maybe as well as then practical application because somebody saying, well, so what? Like, who cares? I want to know how I can do that. How could I go from being boring to being, to lighting a stage on fire in a positive way? What can I do? What are some of the practical takeaways? Let's talk about some specific techniques.

And so let's begin with one that is simple. I think really applies to that Obama four years, which is what I call playing exhibition matches. So playing exhibition matches before you go into the real, before you go into the real thing. And, you know, I'll tell you a quick story and then we'll get into the science and we'll get into the substance of it all. You know, I applied for a job with Jack Dorsey shortly after he started Square. And I was really excited about this opportunity. By that time, I had years and years of product management experience. It was a product manager role. And so I thought I was qualified for it. But when I got into the interview, I completely tanked it. there literally was not a question that he asked me,

and I feel like looking back, I answered in a competent way. And what, did he ask any crazy, weird questions, or was it straightforward and you just bombed it? His questions could not have been more straightforward and generous. And his demeanor was so warm. And it was,

it was a complete softball interview, the kind of thing I should have knocked out of the park. And I fell completely on my face. And again, it wasn't because I didn't have the substance. It wasn't because I didn't know the information. But later on, I found out it was because I really did not practice for that interview. And so let's unpack that just a little bit because this is something that I really struggle with.

There is a difference between preparing and practicing. And with preparing, I think that we sort of, you know, we take notes, we do research, we jot down our questions before an interview. but practice is something all, you know, very different, which is that we're actually rehearsing what we're going to say or we're having somebody give us a mock interview. And what I found is that backable people go through lots and lots of these exhibition matches before they get into a room. And there's a couple of things that are really important to keep in mind

when it comes to these exhibition matches. The first is that no venue is too small, meaning it could literally be a spouse, it could be a partner, it could be a friend, It could be anybody sort of giving you this mock interview and asking you these questions or preparing you for an investor presentation, whatever it is. No venue is really too small. The second thing is really I was surprised by is how many times backable people tend to practice before they get into a room.

And what I found is that most of them average 21 practice rounds, 21 practice exhibition matches, before they get into a room, especially when it comes to new content. So if you're applying for a new type of job, a new type of role, where you're now starting to talk in a different way, where you're starting to share new types of information, where you're pitching a brand new idea, 21 times is really what it takes. And you might look at that number the way that I did and say,

like, well, gosh, I mean, first of all, that seems like overkill. And second of all, if you've rehearsed something 21 times, isn't that going to make you sound really robotic, like just not natural? And what I found was actually the complete opposite, which is that when you get to that level of master, And I think you get this, Ryan, because you're big on preparation. I want you to finish, but I have a comment about this. Go ahead.

Yeah, no, I want to hear this. You know, it's really that, you know, if you have that level of mastery over the material, what it allows you to do when you're inside the room is to no longer be focusing on, well, what am I going to say next? And then what am I going to say next? Which is typically how our mind works. But when we have that level of mastery and comfort with the material, what that allows us to do is be fully, fully present with the other people inside the room.

So we can start to now really listen. We can start to take in the nonverbal cues. We can start to react and adapt to what's actually happening. And there's plenty of science behind this as well. I know you've had Jim Collins on the show and he's talked about this too. But that level of mastery when you have that gives you that ability to really navigate what's unexpected. Because let's face it, when it comes to getting what. what it is that we want from our career, from these backable moments when we're inside the room.

Very rarely are they a monologue. It's very rare that somebody hands you the microphone. You go and then you end and then they kind of make a decision. It's a series of interactions. Those interactions may be what you expect, but they may not be what you expect. And it's only that level of mastery. It's only that rule of 21 that really gets you to that point. It reminds me.

So Jim was one of them because he said this is why he prepares like a football coach with his play chart because you do this such a deep level of of prep it makes it so you can just react and use your instincts and go and then the other person is tom peters right in search of excellence and i had tom on i asked him what you're he's given tens of thousands yeah he's a legend tens of thousands of speeches and i said what's your process the night before what your process the morning of and he told me the night before he struggles to sleep and he stays up late practicing and i said well what you mean because it's a brand new speech he's like no i've given this speech a thousand maybe 1500 times like almost the same exact speech and yet and yet he's practicing for hours a speech he's

already given a thousand times and so this is like a keynote speaking thing i remember when i was new doing it i would talk to some of the best of the best and they would ask me about how much i'm practicing how much are you doing it for a small crowd doing it by yourself preparing and i'd say oh you know I'll read over it a few times, which means basically like I'm looking at my slides. I'm looking at the pictures. I'm kind of saying a few things. And they go, no, standing up doing the talk, the actual exact opening, the transitions, the closer, like how many times? And, you know, you kind of lie. You just make up a little bit of a dude, you need to practice it hundreds of times before you go and do it. And that sounded crazy to me until I get up there and you fumble around or you get

nervous and yet the practice of over and over and over makes it seem like like you you know you've seen a great stand-up comedian they make it seem like they're there just telling jokes ah yeah you know like they're having fun they're telling they've told those jokes a thousand times yeah so good they're they're so prepared they're so ready that they make it seem easy and they make it seem like oh i'm just up here talking they're not they're so scripted but they're so good and so prepared It doesn't feel like it's scripted. I think that's the magic. Yeah, yeah.

It's such an unnatural process to think about that actually makes you a natural. Yeah. And, and, you know, it reminds me a lot of a great story that I heard about Ella Fitzgerald. Elefitts Gerald was performing in Berlin. And she was performing the song Mack the Knife. And it was a big moment because it was a famous song. And it was the first time that a woman was performing. it on a big stage like this and everybody was really excited.

And in the moment, she ended up forgetting about halfway through she forgot her lyrics. And what happened next, you know, I think musicians sort of consider it to be this moment of magic because what happened is she improvised literally the lyrics for the next half of the song. So she just made the lyrics up as she went. And, I mean, that recording has now become, you know, I mean, it's a famous recording it ended up winning a Grammy and ended up really sort of defining, I think, a lot of who Ellis Fitzgerald was. But if you kind of go back and you unpack that story, you ask like, why did that happen?

Was it because she wasn't practiced? Like, did she forget her lines because she just was winging it? And the answer is actually quite the opposite. She actually rehearsed a lot, but there was so much happening in that moment. And there was so much being thrown at her that she forgot it. But it was the hercing. It was the practice that gave her the ability to really impromptu and wing it from there and to pull off this just stellar performance.

And it kind of reminds me of what another jazz musician has told me, you know, he's an award-winning musician. And he says, look, when I go up on stage, I go in with a lot of confidence. But that confidence doesn't come from believing that everything is going to go right. The confidence comes from believing. that everything is going, something is going to go wrong, but that I have practiced and I've rehearsed enough to be able to recover from that. And I think when we do these repetitions that you do and that I do, Ryan,

I think back of what we're doing is we're really building this recovery muscle. It allows us to, you know, be able to bounce in and out of situations in a really, I think, just flexible and fluid way. So we're talking about how you go from being dry, and boring to electric and bringing a crowd to their feet within four years and how that applies the people. And the first, first key learning here, Seneal is essentially practice and get the reps and get the reps and get the meaningful, purposeful practice. Is there another one or two that you could add from a practical perspective for someone to go from being not very good to excellent?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of it has to do with surrounding yourself with a, with the right circle of people. So one of the things that continue to come up, as I talk to backable people. And again, these are not founders. They're not just founders. These are activists. These are leaders inside big companies. One of the things that I think, you know, is a pattern for any new idea or for anything,

any type of change you want to make, even with your own career, is that it all begins with a few select people who decide to sort of get behind you, right? A few select people that decide that they want to sort of be on your team, advocate on your behalf. So these could be the first employees inside a brand, new company. It could be the first team members to join your team inside a company. It could be the first people you recruit to a brand new initiative. These are the first few people. And the question really is when when things are early and what you're trying to do is unproven, how do you get those

first few people to buy into the idea anyway? How do you get them to join you? And it's something that I call flipping outsiders to insiders. And it's worth just taking a moment to go back to the to the 1940s, just to share this quick thing because I found it so fascinating, which was in the 1940s, brands introduced instant cake mix to the market. And they thought it was going to be a huge, huge bestseller. And what they found is that sales were really abysmal. And so they hired this, they hired this psychologist named Ernest Decta to go out into the field and to figure out, like, what is going on here? Why aren't these instant cake mixes selling? And what he found was that they had made the process of making cakes too easy, too simple.

They made it so simple that when you popped, all you had to do is pour the cake mix into a pan and add some water, put in the oven. They made it so simple that when the cake came out of the oven, you really didn't feel any sense of ownership over it. You didn't feel like you had done that. So what doctor recommended is what happens if you remove one ingredient, just one.

And so what they removed was the egg. So now, if you bought the cake mix, what you had to do is you to crack in your own fresh egg, you to stir it in, pop into the oven. And now when you pulled it out, you actually felt like you were part of that process. And the reason that I bring that up is because oftentimes when we think about these early people, whether you're talking about somebody like a Reid Hoffman or a Barack Obama, and whomever it is in whatever context, those early people have to feel like they're part of your creative process. It doesn't feel like they're actually part of what you are trying to build.

You know, since then, researchers have called this the IKEA effect, right? And you may have heard of this, which is that we place up to five times more value on something that we help build than something that we simply buy. There are plenty of people out there that have poorly made futons that they'll never let go of because they feel attached to it and they were part of building it. And so whenever it is that you're trying to create something new, you have to make people feel like they are a part of that process. You know, Jimmy Page, you know, one of the lead guitarists for Led Zeppelin, there's a great story about him that I was told by Davis Guggenheim, who was creating a documentary on guitar players. And Davis Guggenheim, you know, he's done Inconvenient Truth and a couple of other great films.

But, you know, Jimmy Page, he really wanted to be a part of this film on the electric guitar. And the problem was that Jimmy Page was just not, he was not available. like he was not the type of person that took part in documentary films. So Davis called his manager and was like, hey, is there any chance? Is there any chance that he could be a part of this? And the manager said, look, if you want to fly to London from L.A. And you want to sit down for, you know, an hour or less with Jimmy and try to convince him, be my guess.

But I don't think he's going to do it. So Davis Guggenheim takes the flight. He gets out there and they sit down for breakfast. And Jimmy Page looks at him and he says, all right, well, you know, what's the pit? What do you got? And Davis looks at him and he says, look, Jimmy, I actually don't know what this film is going to be. I don't, I'm not quite sure. But let's tell this story together.

Like, let's create this film together. And it was just that line, like literally that line that was able to convince somebody who hadn't done a film like this to do the first film of his career, first big film of his career. So again, it comes back to this idea. I think, Ryan, of like flipping outsiders to insiders, you know, bringing people into your creative process, handing them an egg, letting them crack it into the mix so that when you pop it into the oven, when you pull it out, they feel like they were a part of it too. I love that story. Okay, you have written in your book, Backwell, you've written a few ideas that may be

counterintuitive to, that are some techniques. And so I'm going to relate it maybe to something a little bit differently. So let's say you're a person. Let's get real for a second. Let's say you're a person and you're going for a job. You applied and now you're interviewing for a job that is probably beyond your experience level. So it's a stretch. So you've got to really bring it in order to get it.

And I want to bring up some of the things that I have the notes I've taken from your work. And then ask you to expand on them and make it practical for someone. who may be going through this exact experience right now. So one of the first things someone who is backable does is that they have a willingness to steer into objections. So this person anticipates potential objections. And instead of being scared of them or running away from them or hiding from them, they actually steer into them.

Can you share more why this person who's going for a stretch job that is outside their current level of experience, maybe there's other candidates that have the precise experience needed, but this person doesn't, and why they should steer into the objections, maybe what that would sound like and how they could do that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I feel, I feel like we, we've talked a lot about Reed Hoffman in this, in this, in this, in this, in this, podcast, but, you know, I have to bring him up again because he is the, he is the one who really sort of turned me on to this idea. And, you know, he, it was something that he used when he was pitching LinkedIn in 2003 when, you know, the, the bubble had just burst and investors weren't

very interested in investing in dot-com companies. And LinkedIn wasn't making any money at that point. And so one of the things he did is he talked in the first few minutes of the meeting about the fact that they're not making any money, but here are the three ways that they could. And so he went straight into the objections. But I thought there was actually a more interesting story that Reid told me, because a lot of us know the LinkedIn story, but, you know, Reid actually started out at Apple. You know, early on in this career, he's working at Apple. And he wanted to make a shift into the product management group at Apple.

The problem was that a lot of people wanted to make a shift in the product management group. And Apple's a product company, and that's where, you know, it seemed to be very, very exciting. And so he was trying to figure out how does he stand out from all of these other people that want to make the same shift? And one of the things that he told me is he went straight to, the head of product management. And instead of saying, hey, look, you know, I'd really love to do this. You know, I really think I'm qualified for it. And, you know, he steered directly into the objection. And he said, look, I know that I actually don't have a few things that you're looking for. Let me put that on the table. But I think I can handle this. And here is why. Here are the two or three

sort of things that have been relevant in the past that I think could actually work. And further, let me give me a shot. Let me design a product. for you. Let me just take a shot on my own time at creating a product specification document that I can give to you. And if you like it, then maybe we can talk more about the role. And if we don't, then that's okay. So he stirred directly into the objection. And I think it really gets to a much larger concept here, which I think, you know, has been proven over and over again. Daniel Connemon, who's a Nobel Prize winning economist, talked about this, which is that, you know, as human beings, we are actually not inherently risk takers.

We don't like to take risk. The pain of losing is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. And so we will do whatever we can to avoid a loss. What that means for somebody who is trying to convince someone to take a chance on them when they don't have, they could be a potential bad decision,

is that you can't just excite them with the possibility. You have to neutralize their fear. you have to neutralize the negative. And look, the reality is that the person on the other side of the table already kind of knows what that is. If you're applying for a job and you actually don't check off a few of the things on the list, that's going to be apparent. Right. And so instead of just kind of letting that hang out there and ignoring that, not just owning your strengths, but actually owning the weaknesses gives you an opportunity to actually talk about that stuff head on. Now, your answer may not be perfect. And oftentimes it won't be, right? You know, oftentimes you don't have great answers to this.

But just the fact that you address it, we'll take this thing that is nagging at the person across the table and at least neutralize it enough for them to pay attention to the stronger parts of your pitch. And show you have some confidence, too, I would think. Oh, yeah. I mean, confidence and empathy, right? I mean, oftentimes aren't what we looking for is somebody who actually understands what it is that we are where we're coming from, right? And so if you can, if you can walk into a room and say, look, I know, I know some of the things that you're thinking about for this role are probably this. And maybe one of the things is that, you know, I don't have, you know, you're looking for five years of sales experience. I have two and a half. Maybe that's

one thing that might be on your mind. Let's talk a little bit more about how some of my other experience is really relevant to that. And so you're opening up this conversation. You're addressing it head on. And I found this to just be just, you know, something that that backable people really, really tend to do. It also, Ryan, relates to one more thing. And I'll go, I'll go right into it, because I know we really want to get into sort of the practical, which is like, you know, we have to, in some ways, when we're pitching new ideas, not just talk about why that idea is new, but talking about why that idea is inevitable. Why do we know that the world is actually headed this way? So, you know, Oftentimes, I think when we look at companies, especially startups that, you know, sort of came out of nowhere,

we often give credit to the founder for saying, you know, coming up with something that, you know, didn't exist before. But if you go and you look at the way that those ideas were pitched, oftentimes the pitch wasn't, hey, this idea is new. The pitch was this idea is inevitable. And let me give an example. You look at Airbnb, you know, Airbnb was a relatively new concept when it came out. But if you look at the way that that slide deck was developed, you look at slide four, for example, what it has is that the fact that there are tens of thousands of listings right now on couchsurfing.com. There are tens of thousands of listings for temporary housing on Craigslist.com. And so what they were really building was a case of, look, this isn't necessarily a new idea.

The world is already headed in that direction. And, you know, the reason that that's important is because I think backers, people know, that you can lose with action, but you can also lose with inaction. And the argument that they were making was, look, you know, this is a, this is a boat that's already moving. The train is already leaving the station. And you have an opportunity to get on it because it's going to happen. I'm going to talk about a person who may seem as though they are non-backable.

And the reason I want to talk about this person is because it used to be you. Now, but if you look at it. look at what you were on paper and your resume, you would be kind of the epitome of a backable person. You went to Northwestern, you did their JD MBA program, right? So you had all of the, all of the education boxes checked. And yet something was missing. And you weren't necessarily backable, whether it was getting a job you wanted or getting investors to support you to back you. What was it? Like talk a little bit more about yourself. And while you checked the boxes from an education perspective and yet struggled.

And it's obvious by listening to you talk, you could, I would imagine you had to be impressive in the meeting of knowing your stuff. So I'm, I'm kind of perplexed as to what, what the issue was as to why people didn't see you as backable. Yeah, you know, I mean, I guess I was perplexed as well. I mean, I think, I think I'm not a naturally backable person.

You know, I feel like I had the resume. I feel like I had the qualifications. But you're right. I mean, something, something was missing. I was applying for jobs that I felt qualified for and I was getting rejected. When I decided that I was going to, when I decided I was going to go start my own thing, I went out and I pitched over a dozen investors and every single one of them said no on this new idea, which I thought would really work.

And ultimately it did work. But when I was in the room, I wasn't having much luck. And I think that part of what it is is, I mean, this is really the foundation of what of the book for me. I wanted to go and find out, all right, well, what is it that people who seem to be having a lot of luck in these rooms, what are they doing? How do I reverse engineer their process? You know, and I think that some of the, looking back on it, some of this is so simple and yet non-obvious, or at least it wasn't obvious to me at the time. You know, and I think, for example, one of the things that I find, you know, backable people tend to do is that they really tend to convince themselves,

first before they try to convince other people. And, and, you know, what I have found is that it's not charisma that convinces people. It's conviction. And in order to build conviction, you have to spend the time to convince yourself first. And the reason that's hard for people is because, you know, we get really excited about a new idea. And we immediately want to share that. We immediately want to go to the people, even friends and family, and we want to start talking about it.

But the problem with that is that oftentimes we won't get the reaction that we're looking for because we don't know how to describe it. We don't know how to explain it in a way that gets other people excited. And when we don't get the reaction we're looking for, when someone gives you sort of that lukewarm, like, hmm, kind of interesting, huh? You know, sort of lukewarm response, it could be really deflating because new ideas are fragile. And so are we when we have a new idea. We tend to be very fragile. One of the interesting things I did is I went out and I looked at the way that innovation works inside of companies. How are our new ideas spread?

How does a junior level or a mid-level manager get an idea sent all the way to the top and shepherd it all the way to something that actually comes into existence? And what I found was that most new ideas inside companies are not killed inside the conference room. They're killed inside hallways. They're killed around the water cooler because, again, we sort of rush out and we share these before they're actually ready. And so if you look at sort of backable people and you look at the way that they behave, they're constantly nurturing ideas behind the scenes. They're building conviction before they go out and take it to others. They're doing what I call taking incubation time, taking incubation time for their own ideas.

that could be spending time writing about it in the mornings. It could be drawing it out. It could be whatever it is to start taking the idea outside your head, putting it down on paper, and accepting the fact that a lot of what you write about and a lot about what you draw will end up being throwaway work. It won't be stuff that will actually be used and that's okay because it's all sort of part of a process. There's a great story that I love from the book, which is about a chef named Andoni Adjjjavis. Ruiz, who started a restaurant called Mugritz restaurant in San Sebastian. And what was fascinating about his story is that, you know, after it became a Michelin Star restaurant, it burned to the

ground, completely burned down. And so, you know, it's a devastating moment for him and for his team. And they find out it's going to now take four months to rebuild a restaurant. And so, you know, what he decided to do during those four months was to rent a test kitchen. And he took this notebook of ideas that he had been collecting into this test kitchen. And he started really experimenting with brand new stuff. All these new recipes that he had in the back of his mind, he started experimenting with. And what happened was just magic for him because he realized that he was so excited about all this new stuff that when the restaurant reopened, he was able to sort of reinvent the entire menu. He reinvented the entire experience.

And it took the restaurant to another level. What where it gets really interesting is that, you know, another eight months go by, the restaurants now reopened, he decides to shut the restaurant down again willingly for another four months. Despite the loss of revenue, the loss of customers, he says, look, that was such an important period for me. That incubation time was so critical for me. Then I'm going to go take another four months and do that again. And he has done that every year since. He shuts that restaurant down for four months so that he can go and incubate his new ideas. Again, the point is when you have something new, you know, sort of resist that urge to go out

and share it right away. I know that that's what we want to do. But take some time to really build conviction so that when you go out and you explain it to people, even friendlies, you're explaining it with somebody who really has built some belief behind it yourself. It's such a great point. People get excited and want to tell everybody versus the ones who can have the combination of patience and discipline to work on it in their off hours, to work on it on their own, to kind of hone their craft. And then when it's time to go, they're ready. They're much more ready to go, whether it's

with a chef or with anyone in a business with an idea that that, and then that that becomes kind of their reputation. And what they're known by is when they speak up, it's time to go. I, sometimes it's not a perfect analogy, but we call this like a tight, aggressive poker player for anyone who plays poker, a tight player doesn't play many hands, but when he or she decides to play a hand, they're in there raising and re-raising and raise. They're not just calling. They're aggressively doing it. I sense that is the person who has the patience and the ability to, to wait, to work

on their craft. And then when it's time to let everybody know, okay, we're going to go 100 miles, like your book, right? You're working on this book probably quietly on your own. You're talking to people. You're interviewing people to try to learn, to try to get the man. manuscript done and you work on it on your own and then all of a sudden it's time to promote it and here we go now it's time to share the idea and I think that's a similar way to to hone and craft

the ideas in quiet in a way and then let's go big with it so once they're ready to go I think I think that quiet time is so important it's so important and it's so underrated because and again I think it's because you know we we collaboration is very important important and we use that term a lot. And it is critical to the creative process. But so is that quiet time. So is that time when you start to build conviction yourself so that when you're in the room with others and you're getting those first initial people excited about it, you're coming from a place of conviction. You know, Ryan, one of the things I assumed that was wrong was that when I, when I was going to go out to backable people and I was going to start studying all these people

from different walks of life that had gotten to the top of their field, I assume that there was going to be a certain style to the way that they spoke. They were going to be highly charismatic. They were the types of people who used hand gestures and made eye contact and pacing was perfect, but nothing could have been further from the truth. In fact, a lot of the battle people that I spoke to and a lot of the backwell people that I studied were not sort of what you would consider to be charismatic people. And a really good example of that is just just anybody, can just go look up right now is go look up the the most popular TED talk of all time. And Robinson?

It's a guy. It's a guy named Sir Ken Robinson at this moment at least. And he's giving a talk on schools and creativity. But it's just not what you would expect. It's a very untead-like presentation. He sort of has a hand in his pocket and he's slouching. And, you know, he's not very scripted. He's kind of meandering a little bit.

It's an insanely powerful. speech because you believe everything that he is saying. There's no doubt in your mind that he believes everything he is saying. And so I think that more than charisma is the common denominator amongst the style of backable people, which is that they take the time to convince themselves first and then they let that conviction shine through whatever style it is that feels most natural. That's a great point. because I immediately start envisioning those in my life who you can tell are most convicted

by their ideas and they've spent time. They've certainly spent time honing that and thinking it and iterating and tweaking it. And you talk to them and I know, I don't know about you. Like I am attracted to those types of humans, the ones who you can tell whatever it is, whether it's I'm convicted about living my core values or I'm convicted about this new idea that I've thought about. And that's a question I often have. ask myself are the people that I find myself gravitating to, wanting to spend time around,

wanting to have deep one-on-one conversations with trying to unpack what it is about them. And then I want to be more like them. I'm not trying to, I want to be authentic, but I also want to learn what it is about people that I want to spend time around because that's how I think you can kind of level yourself up. As you mentioned earlier in our conversation about having those people around you is studying what it is that makes people attracted and then seeing how that could be a part of your personality, because I think that's the way you can accomplish some really big things, is being regularly being surrounded by people who lift you up. Yeah. And those people can be in your field,

and they can be outside your field. And there's so much, there's so much you can learn. One of the things I talk about in the book is the importance of casting a central character in your storytelling, right? And in your ideas or whatever it is that you were trying to get people on board with casting a central character. I didn't learn that from, you know, other people in tech. I learned that from Tim Ferriss. And I was pitching Tim on my idea for a new company called Rise, which was a one-on-one nutrition service. So you got a nutritionist right over your mobile phone. And I was pitching him on the idea and I was really bummed when he passed and he did not invest.

But he told me a story that really stuck with me, which is that when he was writing his first best selling book, the four-hour work week, he was turned down by 25 publishers in a row. Every single publisher said no. So he got the advice to rewrite the book. but instead of trying to rewrite the book for the masses, rewrite the book for one person, just one person. And he did. And what that did is that made his writing so much sharper and more compelling and stories he was telling so much better

and friendlier. There was a real sort of tone to what he was talking about that publishers ate it up. And of course, it became a mega sensation. The reason that he shared that story, and again, back to the point of you can learn from anybody, is because when I had pitched him, I was pitching this service, and I was talking about sort of the market a lot. I was talking about the raising rate of obesity and of diabetes and hypertension and how many millions of people could use a service like this. And then tucked way at the end of my presentation was a story about my dad. And the story about my dad was that, you know, my father had his first triple bypass surgery when he was in his early 40s. And I remember we left the hospital. we got a sheet of paper and that sheet of paper was all about how to change our lifestyle at home.

And it was things like, you know, eat broccoli, eat Brussels sprouts. We're an Indian family. We didn't eat broccoli. We didn't really eat Brussels sprouts. And so it was through the help of a nutritionist, which we were lucky that insurance helped pay for, that we were able to customize our diet into something that really fit us. And that's how we ended up all sort of, I think, turning our lifestyle around. My dad, knock on wood, wood is still with us today. And that That was over 20 years ago. And the reason Tim told me that his story about him is like, why not take that story and move it up front in your presentation? Talk about that first.

Rather than talking about the numbers, get people interested in a central character, that one person that you're trying to serve. And then talk about the numbers. They're both important, right? You need the substance. You need the facts. You need the figures. But people aren't generally attracted at first to concepts. they're attracted to stories.

And if you can tell that one story of the one person that you're trying to serve, then you can zoom out to the numbers. It just ends up being a much more powerful presentation. To stay personal for a second, Seneal, and maybe to end, your family is very backable. And your mom was, I believe, the first woman engineer at Ford Motor Company. Is that accurate? Yeah, that's correct.

What's your mom like? What did you learn from your mom? You know, thanks for bringing her up, man. I really appreciate it. I mean, I think about her a lot, and especially as I was writing this book. And the reason I think about it is because, you know, I think we're all the product of a backable moment. Like our careers are, but so is our existence. Like, Ryan, I bet if you go back and you look at sort of your parents and their parents,

somewhere along the lines, people took chances on them that made your story even possible. I think that is true for all of us. And it certainly was true for my mom, who, you know, was a refugee on the border of India and Pakistan, grew up with no running water, no electricity, but just had it in her mind that one day she was going to move to the United States. She was going to go to Detroit, Michigan, and she was going to work as she was going to work at Ford Motor Company as an engineer. And, you know, Ford was literally the only company that she had heard of at that time. You know, I mean, this is a village with access to no information before. It was like, it was like the Google of its day. Like, everybody knew of it. And so that's what she wanted to do. And her parents saved up every penny they had to get her on a boat to the United States. She got an education.

She got a scholarship to Oklahoma State University. The day after she graduates, she drives to Detroit, Michigan. And she applies for a job and she gets herself in front of a hiring manager. But the problem was that this hiring manager looks at her and he says, I'm sorry. We don't have any female engineers working here because this is the 1960s. And while Ford Motor Company had thousands of engineers, not a single one of them was a woman. And so my mom is deflated. She picks up her resume.

She picks up her purse and puts it around her shoulder. She gets prepared to walk out of the room. And then in this last moment, she turns around and she looks this guy straight in the eye. eyes and she says, she tells her story. She talks about all the struggle, everything that had to happen in order for her to be in this room, in order for her to be in this moment. And then she says to him, look, if you don't have any female engineers, then do yourself a favor and hire me now. And that's how, you know, that's why a middle manager from suburban Michigan decided to take a chance on a refugee from the other side of the world.

she becomes Ford Motor Company's first female engineer and that's that's the only reason that I'm here to be able to talk to you right now. Wow. I love it. What a story, man. It's so cool to hear about some of the unimaginable circumstances, the people in our lives that they come from. My parents don't relate to that at all.

But I mean, just that the things that they went through in order to make our lives so much better, that perspective helps me be more grateful. So I appreciate you sharing that story because we just have it so easy in comparison to them. We just really do. Totally. You know? One more question, Sunil. And this is completely off topic, but I think it could apply.

I love hearing from people who are at the beginning of their career. I'm fortunate to get emails from these young kids who are just graduating school. They just blow my mind. Like it makes me feel so positive about the future because they're just light years ahead of where I was and I was 22, 23. And they write these really thoughtful emails. And I would like for you to speak to one person. And that is the person who's a recent college graduate. And maybe they don't fully know what they want to do yet.

But they do want to make a positive contribution in the world. They do want to do good. They do want to support people, right? They want to make a difference. What are some general pieces? of life advice you would share with that person. Yeah, it's such a great, I mean, such a great and important question, especially now and like, you know, what would it be like? I often think about what would it be like, you know, I teach right now at a university and I think to myself, like,

what would I feel like if I was entering the world that we're entering right now? What subject do you teach? So I teach innovation and I teach at Harvard and, you know, and it's a cross section of students from different schools, you know, including the med school and the business school. And, and, And I think to myself, like, if I was graduating in 2020 or, you know, even 2021, like, what would that be like? What would that feel like, given what we've all sort of been through? How uncertain things feel right now. And, you know, one of the things that I think is important, you know, pre-pendemic, during the pandemic, post-pandemic, you know, is that you really got to figure out, you know, what it is that makes you come alive. And I want to unpack that because

that may seem like very obvious advice. But I'll tell you, when I was leaving, I worked at Groupon for a while. I was one of the first product managers over there. And when I was leaving the company, I was pretty intent on doing something on my own. I wanted to run with my own idea. And so what I did was I created a list of ideas and a spreadsheet. And I had, you know, in that spreadsheet were all the columns that you might expect from somebody who, you know, has a business back. I have market size and competition and, you know, all this is a very business school

like exercise. And I went to a mentor of mine and I shared this spreadsheet with her. I said, here are all the ideas that I'm considering. And she looks over the spreadsheet and then she looks at me and she says, let me ask you a question. Which of these ideas make you come alive? And I look at the spreadsheet, you know, thinking the answer is here somewhere. And I realized that none of them really did. You know, I'd spent the past few years working in e-commerce.

And so a lot of these ideas were e-commerce related. You know, they were based on the expertise that I'd sort of been building and what I'd been working on. And it was my current day world. But it wasn't really necessarily what made me come alive. And so she tells me this story that maybe you've heard, which is that, you know, Martin Luther King, when he was sort of deciding whether or not to really, step into his leadership role. He was very, very young. He was in his early 30s when he became

the leader of the civil rights movement. And it wasn't obvious that he would be the right choice for the role. It wasn't obvious to him that he should take it on. And he went to go visit a mentor of his, a guy named Howard Thurman. And he said, look, I mean, this is obviously very important and the world needs this. And his mentor looked at him and he said, look, don't just ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs right now is more people who have come alive. And so that would be my first piece of advice is that oftentimes when we think about ideas, when we think about careers, we're often thinking about the market.

And you have to, right? And especially now when things are tight, you have to think about the market. But equally, you have to think about what it is that really makes you come alive. Because in any career, you're going to be on the receiving end of doubt and rejections and all the things that come with with a successful career is all the things that go wrong. And to sustain that and to feel that fire in you, it really has to be something that I think continues to make you come alive. I love it.

Sineal, thanks so much, man. The book is called Backable, the Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on you. It applies in various fields, whether you're trying to get a job, you're trying to get funding, you're really selling anything. I say that in the most respectful way because selling is one of the most noble professions in the world because we all have to sell ideas, sell ourselves, sell in order to make things happen.

And I think that's what I take in when I relate it to myself, that your work is certainly really meaningful. I'm grateful that you're putting it out into the world and that you've invested your time with me today on this show. Ryan, thanks for having me. on and you're a living example of what it means to be backable. So thanks for having the conversation. It means a lot, man. I would certainly love to continue your dialogue or our dialogue as we both progress, man. Let's do it. What a kind leader. So thoughtful, giving, super intelligent. I fully intend to

continue my conversations with Sineal moving forward. Taking a look at my notes, a few key take The difference between preparation and practice and why it's worth it to rehearse before big moments. Let's say you have a town hall meeting you're leading or you're kicking off your team meeting and it's on Zoom. Practice actually set up your Zoom beforehand. Do it with a friend. Share your screen. Get a light. Get a microphone.

Make sure you honor your audience by practicing and rehearsing so that when you're When it comes time for showtime, you are ready to go and have this become a regular part of your routine for all of your meetings. And then when he said, it's not charisma that convinces people. It's conviction. Backable people convince themselves first. And then their conviction is what convinces others. I love that part. And then nurture your ideas behind the scenes.

Remember the importance of having incubation. time. Write it down, dream, think about it, reflect. Maybe you get with your closest board of advisors before taking your idea more broadly, but that quiet time is so important to hone the idea. I want to say once again, thank you so much to you, the loyal listener of the Learning Leader Show, because you continue to spread the word and tell a friend or two, and because you write a review on Apple Podcast, rating the show hopefully five stars. You continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so much. Talk with you soon. Can't wait.