The School of Greatness - 998 Turn Passion Into Profit (The Psychology of Money) w/Adam Davidson

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

“Marriage is hard, but I think business partnerships are really really hard.”Lewis chats with Adam Davidson, award-winning business journalist and host of The Passion Economy podcast, to figure out how to make it in our evolving economy. They discuss how to create a successful business doing what you love, why so many people have complicated relationships with money, and the crucial entrepreneurial skills you need to develop as our world continues to change.Daymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod

This is episode number 998 with Adam Davidson. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Steve Jobs once said,

innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. And Albert Einstein said, not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. My guest today is an award-winning journalist who has been part of the podcasting world since it began. Adam Davidson co-founded NPR's Planet Money, and he is a contributing writer to The New Yorker covering business, technology, and economics.

And there are few people on earth who have studied money in all of its forms more closely than Adam. And now Adam is out with a new podcast called The Passion Economy, which examines entrepreneurship in the modern world and how you can make a living from whatever you love. And in this episode, we discuss why we shouldn't be scared of the evolving economy, how you can take your passion project and make a living out of it, what the first steps are for a budding entrepreneur, the one thing about personal finance that we should all know about, and so much more

on money mindset. Make sure to share this with someone who needs to hear it as you have the power to change someone's life when they get one piece of wisdom out of this episode to help them in their personal life. And quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness, as well as give us a rating and review. And coming right up, this is the one and only Adam Davidson. Welcome back, everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest today. His name is Adam Davidson. He is a longtime podcaster, co-founder of NPR's Planet Money, and he's got a new book out called The Passion Economy, which I'm super excited about. A couple of things, which is passion and money. That's what we're talking about today.

And you've been studying this for some time now. And I'm curious, my first question for you is, why are so many people afraid to follow their passion and afraid to think about how to make money? Why is it like for some people it's super easy and they're excited about it, other people they're afraid about money, they're afraid about going after their passion. Why do you think that is? I think that there is actually, based on American history and world history,

there's a well understood, but wrong, or no longer true, it used to be true view that pursuing money meant surrendering yourself to the market, to a boss, to, you know, to a corporation, whatever it might be. And I do think that was fairly true for much of the 20th century, that there were people who were able to both live their passion and make money. But for a lot of people, certainly my parents, my family, it was binary. You could live your passion on your own terms, or you could put that away in a little box and make a living. And in my view, the economy has changed in a way that puts them together in a way that hasn't existed ever in human history. It's great. And now I think there are more and more people getting it,

but there's a lot of people who haven't quite clicked into that yet. They're still operating according to outdated models. Right. You said that you believe that passion is the key to success, but there's a lot of people that might say, you know, really, is it possible to follow your passion? I think Cuban has a quote, Mark Cuban, who says, everyone tells you follow your passion. But he says, that's bad advice, because you may not excel at what you're passionate about. Should we go follow what we're good at or what we're passionate about? One thing I've learned, because I've been, you know, I have the book, The Passion Economy, I have the podcast, The Passion Economy, I've been talking about passion obsessively. And I

realize it's a word that means different things to different people. And the way I see the podcast, The Passion Economy. I've been talking about passion obsessively, and I realized it's a word that means different things to different people. And the way I see it is you have your unique bundle of things, both the things you love and want to do and the things you're good at, which aren't necessarily the same. Hopefully there's some overlap. And then separately, there's a marketplace

of potentially passionate consumers, whether that's people who want to buy the product you make, or if you're an accountant or a lawyer or whatever, providing your services in a different way, people who are passionate about what you uniquely have to offer. And it's finding that mix. It's finding out who you are and what makes you different, but then it's finding the customer. And it doesn't mean it's going to work immediately. And it doesn't mean it's going to work for every single thing that you do. You do have to listen to the market, listen to your customers, adapt and adjust. But I would strongly disagree

with the idea that if you're good at something and you don't like doing it, that's a good path. I don't think that's a good path for just human satisfaction reasons, but I also don't think it's a good path for money reasons. Yeah. Well, I think Steve Jobs has a famous quote from an interview he did. And he said, you need to have passion for what you do, because if you don't, it gets really, really hard and any rational person would give up. And I'm paraphrasing that, but he said like, you've got to have passion because it's going to be hard to launch anything. It's going to be really hard. There's going to be so many challenges, adversities that you're going to want to give up whether you love it or you don't love it. So you might as well love it and deal with the pain as opposed to,

you know, 10x the pain if you don't enjoy it. Exactly. I mean, I think a lot of times when you talk about having a passion career or a passion business, people think that what I'm selling or pitching is a self-indulgent, easy life. But I think it's the opposite. If you're doing stuff you really care about, and it really truly matters to you. I mean, I'm running a podcast company right now, and I care a lot about podcasting. Is it super easy for you to launch? It's not. It's not. I am worried more than I've ever been. And I'm up at three in the morning, stressed out because when things don't work, it doesn't work on the business side, but it also, it like speaks

to my like core and my heart and my soul. So I don't think- What's it telling you personally when something's not working or getting the results you want? How does it make you feel? Is it like, I'm not good enough or maybe I was good here, but not here. Yeah, all of it. I mean, it actually like somehow goes back in time and finds past successes and undoes them. Because I mean, I've never, I'm the CEO, I have a co-founder and the two of us really run the company. It's our vision.

And I've always worked for other people. And so I always felt like I knew what I was, like if they only listened to me, then everything would go right. And if there was something not going well, I could always had that out in my brain, like, oh, well, if only they listened to me. But now, it's all on me and Laura Mayer, my co founder. And if it's not working, it's because we didn't foresee something, we didn't do something. Now, I do think there are days where I take that really hard and I'm

really discouraged. Of course, part of starting a company or just living a life is integrating those hard lessons and realizing that's how you grow and learn. But sometimes on the day of the bad news or the surprise, dark surprise, it's not easy to remind yourself that you're learning and growing. What do you, I mean, how have you, from all the people you've, you know, interviewed on your shows about this and from your own personal experience of launching this and dealing with failure and letdown, what's the best ways to manage letdown on a daily basis? I do think that something consistent in the people who I admire and the people I see successful is to know that core thing. And sometimes what, what are the core things you won't give up on

and that you really fundamentally believe in? So like, for example, with the podcast we do, you know, we really believe that podcasting can create a profound connection between the host and the listener and amongst the listeners. And we want shows that aren't just, and I think I would guess you feel the same way, they're not just a generic true crime show that kind of paint by numbers, but something where there's a real passion from the host and a passion in the audience, and they work together. And we know that, like to the point where if we were, we have been offered opportunities with celebrities and others who wanted to do shows that we decided didn't have that. And even though we might've made money, we said no. And we've even said like, if this company fails because

of that core value, that's okay. We're okay with that. And I think knowing that then there's a million applications. Like what do we do today about this show? What do we do tomorrow about our marketing plan? What do we do about this or that? Those things can, you know, you can be more nimble and less, you know, strict about those things because you have that core. And that is something I see in folks. Sometimes the core, it takes a while to define it. I still think ours might be a little vague. I think we know what it is in our hearts, but it might be a little hard to define it with precision to others. So that to me is really important to know what you want. I also think, I mean, you mentioned wanting money. I come from public radio. I grew up in

subsidized housing for artists in Greenwich Village. So I grew up in a world where pursuing money was explicitly evil. It was bad. It was bad. You could do whatever you wanted, sex. How dare you go make money? But if you make money, it is evil. Why is that with artist mindset of like, no, you have to be this pure artist and not receive money for your craft? Where does that mindset come from? I mean, first of all, I do think that for a certain kind of artist who has, who is truly fed by a genuine vision and has made a choice, I don't want to compromise my vision and I'm willing to live with less. Like I'm, that's fine. You get to decide that. To not be a sellout essentially. To not be a sellout and also to not make money. You know, I will tell you being the child of such a person

as I was and other people I grew up with were, is a challenge. It's hard to grow up. And I mean, my dad's an actor, he's a great guy and a loving father, but we didn't have what other kids had, but you know, I'm glad my dad did it. It made his life much more meaningful, but I do think that for a lot of struggling artists, it, it's a dodge and an excuse and it's not an excuse for what to take responsibility or to have structure in your life to actually make earn a living. Yeah, I mean, you're taking me down a path I wasn't thinking about. And I'm but I'm excited to go down that path. I was having this conversation today.

I mean, as a writer, I value feedback. I value people telling me when my writings, what they think of my writing. I value editing. I think that in my view, less secure artists don't want feedback. But if you really have a core vision, you can listen, you can hear, you can be doubtful. So I think it's a bit of a dodge in, I would say, more cases than not. I know a lot of artists. I grew up where literally every grownup I knew was an artist. And a lot of the kids I grew up with are artists. And I would say there's a mix of what I would think of as people really living, you know, like deciding to live a religious life. You know, they're making a choice and they should live and be well.

That's great. But others, I think more than half are, there's like a self-righteous denial that comes in putting on the fake armor of, I don't care about money. What are people really saying when they say, I don't care about money? I think what they're saying is, I don't know how to manage my own sense of self when other people are valuing what I'm offering. The process of bringing something to market, whether it's an iPhone or a painting or your own abilities as a young person starting out in the world. I'm a believer

in capitalism and I'm a believer that price contains signals and signals of value. And it can be a loud but subtle message what price is conveying that you, you know, you go to a workplace, you graduate college or whatever, you have all these thoughts about who you are and you're making $23,000 a year and you know you're smarter than the other people, but you don't know how to make more money. You don't know how to do better. And the answer is you need to prove yourself. You need to kind of de-risk the investment that your bosses might make in you.

Or if you're starting a company, you're an entrepreneur, whether a garage entrepreneur doing something fairly small or a big venture-backed entrepreneur, you have to know how to communicate the value that you bring, how to listen to what the marketplace is saying about value. And I find that once you click into that, it's actually, it's fun. It's art and you can go in a lot of different directions. It's freeing and joyful. Making money is an art in itself.

Money and listening and presenting is an art in itself. And yes, there's a sellout version of whatever you want to do. There's a short-term version of whatever you're trying to do. But there is an integrity-based but more lucrative version of what you want to do. But there's that barrier to just getting there. Because the first signals, when you're first entering a market when you don't know how to communicate your value when you don't know which market you should be selling to it's going to be ugly like if you're if you're the greatest 24 year old whatever and you're just

like getting a job they're going to be like i don't know we got a thousand 24 year old bright kids you're not worth i don't need you haven't proven anything yet. You haven't proven anything. Yeah. So that first message is terrible. And you could respond and say, Oh, I hate that messenger. I hate the message. And so I hate the messenger. Or you can respond and say, huh, I don't like that message, but I can tell other people are getting different messages and getting different price signals. How do I do that? And once you figured that out, it's, I find it's really fun. It's exciting. In your new podcast, you say that the current economy is terrifying. I mean, everyone's losing their jobs. Businesses are folding. Who knows what's going to happen in the next two years? Why should we not be scared? You should

be scared, but you should not be scared to think in a different way, I guess. So, I mean, I think that there's a mega trend happening, like a big kind of once a century kind of trend. And then in addition, there was the financial crisis and now the COVID-19 crisis. There's these specific crises, but in a sense, I mean, COVID-19 is its own thing, but they're part of this overall crisis. So the way I would put it is starting in, say, the 1880s, we see a massive shift from agriculture to industry in some countries and eventually more countries. And that is a total ripping apart of the very fabric of how society works, how family works, how cities work, how politics work, and how you make money. And for quite a while, like 50 years, it was hard to understand the opportunity broadly. You had a feeling of crisis and difficulty, like this great institution

of the family farm is falling away. And how are we going to make money? Only a small number of people are making money and our kids are going off to the city and they're not marrying the neighbor kid. They're marrying some strange person. And it very fear-inducing. But by the 1920s, we really see the development of these new institutions, these big corporations with sort of this whole new thing, it never existed before in humankind, set corporate jobs, a career path, the very idea that like at 18 or 22, you'd start on a career path and you would like at a regular interval go up that path that you would pretty much as the normal order of things, make more money at 50 than you did at 20 and make more money than your parents did. All of that was a new thing, but it was built on the back

of mass manufacturing, mass production, massive scale. And that economy didn't care too much about who Lewis is or who Adam is, and what makes you unique. It was the opposite. You didn't go to become a draftsman or an accountant at Procter & Gamble in 1953 and say, but I have my own unique song to sing. You know, you had to do the job. I would say what we've been seeing since the 1980s, but rapidly evermore, is anything that can be clearly defined, anything that can be reproducible, is done by computers, robots, or is outsourced. And we're seeing that climb and climb and climb up into, you know, what we thought of as uniquely human white-collar jobs. And that path, which probably you, certainly me, were brought up thinking, that's just how the economy

works. That's just normal. It turned out that standard path was a blip. It was like this little moment in human history that's dying. And I think that's scary. It's scary for a new system to appear. And it definitely has caused real pain. But it means there's this new thing, this new thing where there's a vast number of people who can find their own path in this economy, listen to the market signals, craft a unique way of being in this economy. And I think increasingly, it's not just you can, but you have to. You're screwed increasingly if you think, oh, I'm just going to play by the rules. I'm just going to do the thing that my college degree told me or my boss tells me. We don't need that person so much. Maybe some of them, there'll always be some of them, but there's more value. So I think if you click into that, you can have

a more successful, more playful, more joyful career or business than anyone has ever had. It's amazing. It's a great time. You feel like anyone can invent their dream job or can turn their passion into money? Or is this just for half the people? Or maybe is it seasonal? Maybe this season of your life, you need to develop skills until you can then execute it two, three years later? Or is this available at any time for anyone? I think it's available to a lot more people than realize it. And I don't know if it's available even to half the people, to be honest with you, but it's certainly available to anybody who's like pursuing podcasts about how success works or even asking the question. We used to have a joke at Planet Money that if you're worried

about your place in the global economy, you're fine. If you're not worried, then you're totally screwed. And what we mean is if you get that there's something to be worried about, if you get that there's something about how you're framing your life that's scary and not working, just follow that a little bit and you'll be okay. What I worry about, and I have family like this, is people who only often only have a high school degree who really are not understanding that the economy has changed. And a key thing is you need some capability for risk. That doesn't mean you have to be a billionaire or a millionaire's son or daughter, but it might mean that, you know,

you got parents who worse comes to worse, you can sleep on their couch, that you could go a couple months or you could invest in education. You know, some people seem to think what I'm talking about only applies to the very rich and the very privileged. Definitely not. It applies to a lot more in my book and my podcast is almost all people who are not born rich or not born privileged. What are the skills that these people need to have or need to develop in order to go out and launch their passion and potentially to make it successful enough to make a living? What are the mindset skills? The terrible thing about now is that whatever you do, someone else or a computer can do it

faster and cheaper. The great thing about now is all the crap you don't want to do, a computer or someone else can do it faster and cheaper. And so if you and I like right now came up with an idea for a toy or a new kind of calculator or whatever, like literally within weeks, we could have a company in another country prototyping it. We could have a drop shipper shipping it to people. We could hire a marketing person. We could do a Kickstarter and raise and sell it before we even have it.

Before we even have it. Exactly. And we can hire an accountant or do it automated in an automated way. Like we, there's not a lot of those hard skills that we would desperately need, but what we would need is that mindset. And I'd say the mindset is there's some like passion and curiosity. So I speak a lot of colleges, the kids who just have a million questions often are the kids who are the most like tortured with self-doubt and worried. But I'm like, I'm not worried about that. Like if you're constantly, you know, puzzling over stuff, that to me is a hugely positive sign. An ability to leap a bit, you know, it doesn't mean you have to like go to Silicon Valley and pitch your billion dollar startup,

but like challenging yourself to like, okay, so we have this new toy. How's that going to work? Who's going to want it? Is it that good? Can we test it? Can we explore it? And that the iterative, the kind of lean startup stuff, I think is also really crucial. The kind of, it's a weird combination in my mind, the mindset. There's, on the one hand, there's this confidence that like, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out. But there's profound humility that I'm going to need a lot of information. I'm going to need to gather a lot of data. So for example, I don't know why I'm thinking about toys, I guess, because my eight-year-old son's going to come home soon. And I'm thinking about toys. If we came up with the idea of a toy,

we could go to all our parents and friends and put hundreds of thousands in, or we could, you know, throw 500 bucks in each, get 30 of them and go- Test it. And test it and see what kids like and what they don't like. And then we could test another version and then we could start with a website

and then we can use Facebook ads to start figuring out which kids respond to this. And that iterative process of giving and listening, giving and listening, that to me is part of the real special sauce of now that you don't, you don't need that huge startup cost before you find out. So I think it's that mindset. That's a combination of confidence and humble listening. What if you don't feel like you're a good, um, you know, leader or number one, and you're more of a number two, three,

or four, you know, for me as a, as a football player and an athlete in the past, I was just telling my producer before we jumped on about how I didn't feel confident leading, and I wasn't the vocal leader. Even my senior years, when I was like the all-star on the team or whatever, I still didn't feel confident leading the team because I was a receiver on football. So I was just like, hey, just throw me the ball, let me go make a play and be the hero. I don't want to have all the other responsibility of like managing everything because it's a lot of pressure and everything falls on you, whether you win or lose, essentially, if you're the quarterback or kind of the lead on the team. And for me, it was more about a necessity of launching like my first business because I didn't have any money. It was

2007, 2008 when the economy crashed and I was trying to figure out what else to do with my life. My dad, the main factor for me is my dad had gotten in a really tragic car accident the year prior where he had a brain trauma, was in a coma for many months and he's still alive today, but he's never fully recovered. So he's emotionally not and mentally not all there the way he used to be. And I always had him as kind of like this backup, like, okay, I'm going to go play football and go for my dream. And then when I'm done, I'm going to work for him and his insurance company. And, you know, he'll give me the business one day type of mentality. When that was gone as an option, I was like, I got to go figure this out. Otherwise I'm going to be, you know, sleeping on

my sister's couch for 20 years, waiting for someone to give me the opportunity. And that's when I, and I think right around then 2008, 2009, it was when social media started to come around where I was able to see, oh, I can promote my passion online. And it was working. You know, I used LinkedIn early on. Now it's like, everyone sees the opportunity where you can build a following and do this. But 11 years ago or 12 years ago, I was like, okay, I'm going to use social media because I understood it as being one of the college, first college kids on Facebook. And just like being in that space, I was like, okay, I'm going to use this to promote all day long, my passion. And it worked. And I was like, oh, okay, let me just figure out now, how do I hire someone? How do I build a team? And I failed along the way, but it's what's allowed me to get here 10 years later.

So how do people do this if they don't feel like they're a leader or they are number one, they're more of a role player? Like how does someone build that skill, that confidence skill or that leaping ability? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a great question. That's something I struggle with personally. I'm now leading a team. I think I have some leadership skills, and then I have lots of major leadership deficits. Like now I'm desperate to fill it in with other people and with other resources, but even just to acknowledge it, to listen to your own staff, but not over listen to your own staff, because sometimes if you give them everything they want, you know. So I would say a few different things. So one thing I would say is you cannot outsource your vision. That is something that I think is really important. That core piece of how you want your life to be, you can outsource helping on it. You can outsource

defining it. You know, I think there's some great coaches and peer groups of other leaders. You know, you can have people challenge your vision, but you can't outsource your core vision, but you can outsource almost everything around your core vision. And when it works and it's working wonderfully for me, a good partnership, I think is a wonderful thing. So my partner, Laura Mayer, we share like to a shocking degree, such a similar vision for what we want to accomplish to where I have no problem with, you know, her responding to a podcast I've never heard, because I know I'm going to agree with whatever she says. But we have really complementary skills. And partnerships are very, very hard. I mean, it's like, I would say, my partnership with her, my partnership with Alex

Bloomberg, I created plant money with, I was gonna to say it's right up there with my marriage. I think my marriage is easier. You know, like marriage is hard, but I think business partnerships are really, really hard. But you might not be that natural genius leader, but it's worth putting the time in to acquire those skills. Yeah. Or at least to get out of your own way of those skills. Like I'm not an expert finance spreadsheet guy,

but I know enough not to bankrupt the company. The other thing I would say though, is we're still in the early stages of what I call the passion economy, this new economy. And that means we're still developing the institution. So if you think back to that 1880 to 1920, like 1880, the world is still a lot like it was in the middle ages

or even in the ancient Sumerian times. You know, most people lived in villages. Most people knew almost everyone who they would interact with in a marketplace. The biggest companies were maybe a couple dozen people. Maybe there were factories, new factories that had 30 people working for them. But you had, you know, the world existed. I mean, there was the beginning of rail and telegraph, but it wasn't everywhere. Those were like special cases. And it's really the 1880s, you start getting ivory soap and Hershey's chocolate and these mass produced consumer goods, these huge companies that, you know, where your economic life is in this much bigger context where, you know, your boss's

boss's boss might live in another city you'd never visit, you'd never meet that person, you'd never really know anything about that person. And it takes two generations, at least, to start figuring this all out. You know, it's a fascinating history. And then there's a reaction. There's labor unions, there's anti-child labor laws, there's all this new stuff that comes in to kind of soften the harsh edges. I do think that we're seeing very rapidly, I mean, you just pointed out that just in a decade, our economic lives have been transformed probably more than in almost any century before, or two centuries. So I think we're going to see more and more resources for people who have a great idea,

but don't know how to do all the pieces. We're going to have outsourced management tools and outsourced corporate hierarchy tools. You're already beginning, you know, there's business plan management software. And so I think this continues to get easier and easier over time, just like app design. You don't have to be a coder to do an app. You just can kind of create an app fairly quickly. If it's easier and easier now, why is it still hard for people to launch their passion? It is hard to find your passion. It is hard to refine your passion to really hone in on it. It's hard to find an audience. It's hard to, you know, a buddy of mine was saying like, imagine you didn't know what love was.

it's hard to you know a buddy of mine was saying like imagine you didn't know what love was and then someone's like so starting around 12 you have these like overpowering feelings and then you like spend years and years like meeting people where you like feel so weird you don't even know how to interact and you cry and your heart is like ripping apart and then you start like hanging out with them and like getting in a relationship with them and they're just mean to you and wrong and they cheat on you. And then after 20 years, you finally are with someone and you're like, okay, I'm going to just decide you're the only one. Like it seems insane. Why would anyone go through all of that? And I think you're not born with a passion. You don't get a passion on your 18th birthday or the day you graduate college. It's

something you have to work at. It's something you have to refine. And once you start knowing your passion, you're not granted, okay, and here's the audience that loves your thing the most and is willing to pay the most. That's like a whole other thing. So yeah, it's hard. It's easier in a lot of ways to be 18 and go down to the plant where your dad works and get a job just like your dad and your grandpa. And maybe if you're lucky, you know, get become a supervisor when you're 30. And like that, there's fewer questions, there's fewer, there's less uncertainty, you know, just like maybe getting an arranged marriage at 18 or 16 was easier in some ways than falling in love. So yeah, it's more time. It's more uncertainty. There are periods where the thing you love most

in the world doesn't love you back. You know, the market isn't there. The audience isn't there. You have profound, deep self-doubt. So I'm definitely not pitching a bed of roses, but I am saying that, and you don't have to, it's not all or nothing. You can follow a career path. I mean, what I tell, like, because college kids get obsessed. I don't know what my passion is. Just go to any, get a job that's kind of like something you think you might like. And pay a lot of attention. That's step one.

Just pay a lot of attention to what parts of the job do you like? What parts do you hate? If you can, if there's some cooler, older people who you can talk to, just try and get a sense of what you seem to be good at. Because it's often we don't even know what we're good at and what you seem to be bad at. And it might take a decade. I mean, I think I was 38 before I could really define my passion with any certainty, although I was working all along and making steps, some good, some bad. I had some bad years where I hated my job and don't know how much I learned, but, but overall I was moving in a direction. So. Yeah. I feel like what just came up for me when you're sharing this is I feel like launching your passion, you could be a fan of football

or whatever, a fan of soccer, basketball, and watch it and enjoy watching it. But actually launching your passion would be similar to saying, and trying to run a business and be like, okay, I'm actually going to be the starting quarterback for the team that I love the most. And be thrown in on day one to say, okay, learn us, snap the ball, run the play, manage the team, know when to replace people, know when you have to cut someone, inspire people, don't be too hard. And, you know, manage the salaries of everyone who's coming in, buy new, you know, all this stuff. It's like trying to be the quarterback or the head coach of a team when you've never played the sport. You never played. But we also, this is the big thing I think we're only developing, and hopefully I and you are part of this, is a language.

So we have a language. Like my son is a, he doesn't have a sport yet. He kind of likes a lot of sports. He kind of doesn't like some, he doesn't have a sport yet. But we have a language for that. And you can have a sense that at some point, maybe he'll have a sport and maybe he'll have two sports. We'll see. And then at some point, there's kind of a sizing, like, is this going to be a big thing or is this not going to be a big thing in his life? And then, you know, I have a couple cousins who they were good enough to think about being pro basketball players, but not good enough to actually be pro basketball players,

but you have that moment and we have a language around that. And we also have a language around like, you could be a sports fanatic and not be the quarterback for the Patriots. You could be, you could be a sports commentator. You could open a sports bar. You could be a sports commentator. You could open a sports bar. You could open a sports memorabilia store. You could be a sports agent. And I think we need to develop that language

so that when your kid's 26 and you kind of are embarrassed that they don't, you know, it's like, oh, they're figuring out their passion. They figured out it's in this kind of area, but they haven't quite nailed how that's going to work. But you're exactly right that you're accumulating skills and abilities. It's just we don't all need to be the quarterback of the Patriots. My family's from New England, so sorry to bring it up. I don't know.

There's lots of ways to be. And I feel like my audience, the audience I care the most about are people who can have a really good life, but somewhere between say making 200 and thousand and five million a year, that kind of, which is a lot, that's great, that's way above average. But I'm not thinking of like the future CEO of Microsoft or something. Like they have other books, they have other ways. I think there's a huge opportunity to have like really good,

rich lifestyle businesses, but still businesses that are rooted in principles and values. And you can make real money there, but you don't have to just be Steve Jobs. You could be a lot of things. Sure. When should people launch their passion, whether it be on the side or all in? Is there a timing of this that they should know? Like now is the time? Is it a feeling? Is it a necessity? When do you think that is? I can only think about it in two ways. I think there's probably things in the middle.

So there's the kind of baby step version I did, and there's the all-in version. So the baby step version I did is I was a reporter at NPR, National Public Radio. I was a business reporter, and I felt like everything I did was so boring. You know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.6% today on late trading out of Asia. And I was thinking about like my parents and the people I grew up with. And I was like, they don't know what that means. They don't care about what that means. And I find business and economics so fascinating and so compelling, but I'm not doing it.

I'm not, it's not in the work I'm doing. And I talked to some older people I work with, some mentors, and they were like, yeah, your work is really boring. And, but when you talk about it with us, you're really interesting. So you have the ability. And I just started sneaking in little moments of excitement, little tiny things, just in my radio reports. I just try and put a joke in or an observation slowly at first. It took like years. But over time, I had more life in my stories. And I came up with this idea of Planet Money, but I didn't like run out and start my own company. I like sort of built a coalition at work and allowed it as a little trial project. And it took years and years to build it into something real. I think that can work if you work at a place that can support that.

But I'm really jealous of and think it's probably, like I look at kids that when I went in, I graduated college in 92. I worked in public radio. There's no podcasting websites, nothing. Like the only way you could communicate to the world was to convince someone who controlled one of the very small number of radio stations to let you talk into a microphone.

So I'm so jealous of the kids today. And I find it exciting to meet a 24-year-old who's on their third podcast. So I guess what I did worked well. I mean, I always had a job until I was confident enough at 48 to start my own business. until I was confident enough at 48 to start my own business. But I think if I was giving advice to a bright, curious 23-year-old, I would say, don't worry about money for the next couple of years, if you can, if you can, and just hone that voice.

Don't, don't, that combination of confidence and humility. I think that it just, I just think you'll learn so much more by trying and failing and trying again I don't know what do you think I think I mean for me that's not everyone has that opportunity when I was 23 24 I was just got done playing arena football which paid 250 a week but it was my passion my dream then I was like I'll do this for free essentially because I love it and I led with that passion and I I pursued that because I knew that I didn't want to live with regret and saying, oh, I wonder what would have happened if I would have actually tried to go for it. And I went as far as I could until I got injured. And then I

had to retire that dream, essentially, which was devastating to retire the dream that I'd had for so many years. But I had about a year and a half to your window where I was on my sister's couch for a year and a half. Then my brother's place, I paid 250 bucks a month to live there for six months, about two years where I had minimal expenses, some support of like, okay, you're not going to sleep on the street and you can eat the leftovers for two years where I got to test things constantly and try things. And I had, I've reached out to mentors.

And it's also a period of my life where I was like, okay, school was miserable for me. Miserable. The only reason I was in school is so I could play sports, but I was just horrible at everything. Then I said to myself, what are all the things I actually need to learn for my life now? In public speaking, I remember someone saying, you need to learn how to communicate your vision. If you don't have that ability, no one's ever going to believe in you and buy into whatever it is you're trying to promote, whether you're trying to get married or whatever, meet new friends or be in a boardroom of an office you're working at, or you start your own thing. And that was my greatest fear at the time when I was 24 was public speaking. So I said,

now that I have this free time, let me go find a public speaking. I found Toastmasters. I went there every week for a year and overcame the fear and developed a skill at the same time, which became a very useful tool later in my life. And I just said, what can I learn? I started devouring every blog I could on online marketing and reading all these books about online marketing and just like human psychology and human behavior. So I just researched everything and then I would test it on LinkedIn, on Twitter, Facebook, and I would just try stuff out. And that two-year window was my real schooling. And it hasn't stopped. It hasn't stopped. That was like the beginning baby steps of like the last eight years of, okay, how do I really master this? And I still haven't stopped because I haven't

mastered it. So it was a period of, okay, I have this time. Not everyone has that time and flexibility or opportunity to do that, where I was willing to live off of nothing. And luckily had a family member that allowed me to stay there. So I was willing to sacrifice and look stupid, I guess, or not look cool in order to learn and build something. And I think that's, it was a decision I made just because I was like, I'm already at the bottom. So let me just at least learn while I'm down here. I mean, to me, that is exactly why I hope that there comes a language, a language of that that's a productive time. That's a really productive time. And the word adolescence was invented literally in 1904 by a professor at

Clark University in Worcester, Mass. And it wasn't an idea, like, you're on a farm, most people in America didn't go to high school. So like, you know, start working on the farm a little bit at seven or eight. And by the time you're 13, you're just a crappy grownup, you know, you're just and, and then as we started industrializing and realizing that you weren't going to essentially apprentice with your parents and just match your parents, that there was a whole suite of new tools and new skills you needed to develop. This idea of a period of exploration, of chaos, of mental chaos, as you shift from being dependent on a family group to being an autonomous person needed a name and the name was adolescence he

actually said it was 14 to 24 he extended it much longer than we do probably took me till I was about 30 till I started to figure out who I was so yeah and I think that's the age I think like 30 maybe you if you're if you're nowhere near it maybe maybe you should start feeling worried but at 26 like you you should be deep in the search and we should feel, parents should feel comfortable with that. And like, I actually think you should almost be uncomfortable with the 23 year old who knows exactly, I want to do this. I want to be worried. I had these buddies in college when we were graduating, we're really worried about, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what to do. And a bunch of them became

lawyers and kind of got, one of them became a doctor, but it wasn't out of love. It was just, I want to know what I'm doing. And that's a guaranteed thing. I just go to school. I get that. And then that's what I am. And I don't, not to say there aren't happy lawyers and doctors, but well, there's not a lot of happy lawyers, but there are happy doctors and some happy lawyers, but that's the wrong move. But I think we do need a language for it. I think it's the language we have now is like, you're a loser. You're lame. And it's not, it's productive.

It's awesome. I mean, also in society, it's like you hear all these women who say, I just want to meet a guy who's got a steady job. It's like, if he's got a steady job, then he's a great candidate. And so you think you hear this all the time. You know, I've got, I've got a relationship and it's not something I think about, but it's like, okay, well, no girls want to be with me because I don't have a real job.

And if I'm going after my passion, it's not a real thing. And will anyone love me? Will anyone want to be with me? So there's a lot of fears of society. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying there's a lot of fears that society has around money, jobs, launching. Absolutely. And they'll say, oh, he's an entrepreneur. They'll say like, oh, he must not make any money or he's super rich, right? It's like an extreme.

If you think of the agrarian world, like you meet someone at seven and you kind of know how rich or poor they're going to be for their whole life because you just look at the family they come into. And of course, there's the occasional occasional exception but as a general rule there was very little mobility across generations so so and and family marriages tended to happen sort of in kinship groups like you know you you know sometimes your cousins but often just just, oh, that's the, we marry that family, but we would never marry that family. Then you enter the 20th century and that falls apart. If you read the literature of the 1890s, early 1900s, it's obsessed with women wearing pants, women out there, like this idea that like young men and young women are somehow hooking up,

getting married and there's not like a system, a family system controlling it was freaking people out. It was like terrifying. And the whole idea that young people would form their identity, form their economic opportunity, completely unmoored from their family context. That was completely confusing.

Now today for most of us, I spent time in Iraq as a journalist where arranged marriages are very common. And we look now at arranged marriages or family-based marriages as horrifying, but our great-grandparents felt the opposite. I think you're exactly right. I think you've keyed in on something I hadn't been thinking about. But this idea of family formation, of self-identity. In the 20th century, it wasn't at seven that I knew what you were going to be, but certainly by 25, I probably could, in most, not every case, but in most cases, you could sort of figure out where someone was going to be at 55. But you can't do that now. I mean, it's going to be more volatile. And weirdly, as we were just

discussing, it might be the person who's passionate, unsure who is a better bet than the person who's calmly, confidently certain. Right. That's true. I'm curious. You've been through, it seems like three stages, I would say, of money economy, where you grew up from what I'm hearing you say in this kind of rent-stabilized, self-deprecating artist mentality, neighborhood environment of don't be a sellout you know just work on the craft and the art or the acting type of mentality then you went to good school you got a great job you worked at the job for many years and kind of played in your lane in that role of making money and then you ventured off and said let me go do my own thing and

try this experience it's kind of three different levels of money mindset. In your opinion, what's the one thing that you wish you would have learned about money growing up in school that they don't teach us about personal finance or money mindset in general, based on these three levels you've kind of been through? Yeah, no, I love that question. I think it's this idea that making money is an understandable thing, that it's something you can play with, you can learn about. I think a side effect of being raised by people who reject money is that money actually gains far more power. It's just this force out there deciding who will have stuff, who won't, what gets to happen, what doesn't get to happen. And it just feels big and untouchable and unmoldable. I mean, I worked in public radio,

I worked at the New York Times, I worked at the New Yorker. And journalistically, I feel so proud and lucky to have worked in all those places. But these were struggling businesses, you know, media has not, journalism has not done very well. And it was a similar, like, money was this scary force that just meant you couldn't get what you wanted. And I'm now learning, it's not like, if anything, my money life is harder than ever. I mean, I'm actually responsible, not just for myself, but for a team of 20 people and a whole business. And we have investors and commitments. And so, like, in a certain sense, the pressure has never been bigger. And it's not like I'm a master. I mean, you know, I'm afraid I'll screw the whole thing up. And I certainly make plenty of mistakes here and there. But it's, it's playful. Like, I remember in my

30s, I finally took a cooking class. And I learned that like making a good meal wasn't this like mysterious skill that only a small elect have. Like I probably was never going to be a Michelin star chef, but I could grab a piece of meat and some salt and pepper and some spices and make a decent meal. And I wish that definitely how I want to raise my son is like, definitely my son's like, I want to be an artist and I don't care about being rich. Great. But still be playful with the money. Still know that you can control your financial destiny more than you realize. And I don't know that that's true for everyone. There are people in America who really are living on the margins, but I think it's true for a lot more people than feel that.

Money is simple. Money is actually simple. It's infinitely varied, but it's simple. And that's the other thing. It's fun. It's not just evil. It's also fun, but it's simple. And that's the other thing. It's fun. It's not just evil. It's also fun. But why do people put so much pressure on themselves in terms of making it, saving it, investing it, spending it the right way? Why is it such a pressure-filled thing if you're telling me now that it's fun? I think that we were trained that way. Before this phase I'm talking about in the 1880s, 1900, basically everyone who ever lived, except maybe a small number of like kings, lived directly on the margin. They lived and died. They consumed calories based on what the weather did, based on constantly changing and immediate

variables that they were, they didn't have a choice. They weren't deciding to respond. They were just fully responding. And, you know, the money economy in the middle ages or pre-modern ages was fairly tiny. I mean, we're talking about single digit percent of people who actually like traded goods or made goods for sale. Most people were farmers, but those people really lived and died on a day-to-day basis. There wasn't very hard for the vast majority of people to make long, you know, it's like this whaling voyage either will sink or will bring money. This bread I'm making today, if it goes bad, I'm screwed. Or if the wheat prices go way up, I'm screwed. It's this weird period, the 20th century, where we had these large corporations that really buffered us, shielded us from those constant fluctuations in

the market. You get a job at DuPont or Procter & Gamble or General Motors at 22, you don't have to think about the price of steel or who's buying toothpaste. Like you just got your salary. It was untied to the day-to-day fluctuations. And then we had this kind of benign growth in America. And, you know, we had a couple of world wars, a depression, but generally you see life improving for the vast majority of people in developed world. And this fiction that like the natural order of life is like you're kind of on an upward escalator and you sort of have to screw things up to fall down. I think our brains got confused.

We misunderstood how the world works. And so in a sense, we're reverting to that norm. I mean, take podcasting. I know some people at NPR who are among the greatest radio talent in the world works. And so in a sense, we're reverting to that norm. I mean, take podcasting. I know some people at NPR who are among the greatest radio talent in the world, and they're still making whatever it is, 120,000 a year, whatever they make. And the other people, I'm like, you will definitely, definitely make millions. Like, no question. You are above the level where people are making millions. And they just can't take that step. And I really do wonder about that. This, this kind of conservatism, but I see it.

I feel, I see it less than younger people. I feel like. Right. They're more willing to take the risks. I'm already broke. So who cares? Might as well. Exactly. Might as well go for it and try it out. When you have the responsibility, you've already paying the rents. You've got your kids, you've got whatever. It's like, well, it's hard to leave something that's already good. That's taking care of the things that I need to take care of. I spent 30 years in the 20th century. Like I was raised in that old world and it took me like 20

years of covering this changing economy to finally believe the reporting I was doing and take the leap. But, but I think someone who's 20 now, 22, I like to think they're more ready. I hope they are because if they're not, it's going to be a tougher life for them. It's interesting. At the same time, I just see a lot of late teens, early 20s just fixated on bad addictions of just being on their phone all day mindlessly as opposed to putting it towards something that they're excited about in order to create a transaction around money. And that's the worry that I have as I'm seeing a lot of the youth interacting with them just

consumed by the addiction of what the passion economy has allowed for so many to go launch something on a social media app or TikTok now or whatever it may be, instead of using it to make money, being used for someone else to make money. No, I agree with that. Because of the addiction loop that it's causing. And it was just like, it's so easy to be entertained on a loop. And then four hours go by and you're like, what did I do with my life?

So you've got to be willing to like, get yourself out of that. But your whole, your podcast is all about this. The Passion Economy, it's based on the book with the same name and explores how individuals from all walks of life have overcome these kind of professional and financial roadblocks and then created new paths of fulfillment with this entrepreneurial endeavor that they might have. So people can check out your podcast, The Passion Economy, if they want to learn more

about this. Got some really cool stuff there. And you're over on Twitter as well, Adam Davidson. Are you on Instagram also, Adam? I think I have an account, but I never use it. I think it's at Davidson Adam, I think. Twitter's your main tool. Yeah. I like that. That's where I go to town. Yeah. Where you go to town. Yeah. I mean, I encourage everyone to go check out the podcast because you do a great job of really showcasing how people can do this on their own and following that process. With concrete examples. That's the goal is here's someone who did it.

Learn from them. Step by step. I like that. I want to ask you a couple of final questions before we finish. The first one is, it's called the three truths. So I want you to imagine a hypothetical scenario for a moment that it's your last day on planet earth, not planet money, but planet earth. It's your last day.

And you have accomplished everything you want to accomplish. And you've seen your family grow into an amazing family and accomplish what they want to do. All the things that we want to do, they came true. But for whatever reason, it's your last day. And in this hypothetical world, you've got to take all of your content with you. So everything you've ever put out in the world, written, audio, video, it's got to go with you to the next place. So no one has access to your information. But you get to leave behind a piece of paper and a pen where you can write down three things you know to be true about all of your experiences. And this is all we would have to remember you by. What would you say are these three big lessons you would leave behind or what I like to call your three truths?

Wow, that is awesome. And you're giving me two months to come up with them? Two seconds, yes. Two seconds. This sounds maybe trite, but that real satisfaction comes from a connection with people, which starts with your family, but can extend much broader. And incidentally, that's tied to why I think making money in an authentic way is actually a deep and profound human spiritual engagement, if not always, but it can, it really can be. I've known some narcissists in my life, and I've come to see the tragedy of their life,

not focus on the pain they've caused others, but they didn't get that. They didn't get to feel that joy of connecting with someone. I think that life can be playful. Like there are very few rules that you have to follow. You can play in the broadest sense of the word. So if those count as two, engagement, play. And the third one, I guess you're going to everything up a lot. Sorry. Can I say that? You're going to mess everything up a lot. That sucks, but it's okay. Those are powerful. That's right. It's good. Yeah. Yeah.

I want to acknowledge you, Adam, for your incredible courage to continue to evolve yourself throughout these kind of three stages of your money life. And it's really hard to break a mindset that you've been around for many, many years. So to have the mindset that you grew up in, that was your whole belief system. That was all you knew until you realized like, okay, this isn't what I want. Let me go and follow this different path. And then that became your life for two, three decades or whatever until you realized, okay, there's something else. And most people stop with where you're at a few years ago.

They don't actually take the leap and constantly keep taking new leaps. So I really admire you for not only researching the things that you're excited about and curious about, but then also saying, you know what, I'm actually going to take the leap myself and do this and set myself up to win and show myself that it's possible to continue to evolve your mindset to be the symbol you want to be for your child, your family, and for your listeners and readers. So I really acknowledge you for constantly being a curious mind and taking the leaps. People can go listen to the podcast, The Passion Economy.

They can get the book. They can follow you on Twitter. And the final question I have for you is what's your definition of greatness? I think when I've seen greatness, I think of my friend Adam McKay. I worked with him on the movie The Big Short, which I thought was great. I've worked closely with Ira Glass and the folks at Serial who've done great work, worked at the New Yorker where you would see real greatness. And I think what I note is it's not about a genius hurtling greatness out of them. It's about

just a tireless pursuit of something that's out of your grasp. And, but just staying, you know, in these cases, writing and rewriting, but trying and retrying, trying and retrying. And these are all people who are, I mean, they're, they're self-confident, but they're also certain that they will never achieve the full greatness that they can imagine. It's, it's always just out of their grasp. And that's what I really admire. And I'm grateful for what you said, because I do take pride in, I've met some people who achieve greatness at some point in their career and then rode its coattails for decades. And I find that tragic and just heartbreaking. That just seems awful.

And all the people I talked about are people who continue into their 50s and 60s to pursue that greatness. I guess it's a pursuit. I guess you have to achieve something, at least approaching it every once in a while, but you never nail it fully. Sure. Amazing. I appreciate you for being here and for sharing all your wisdom, Adam. Thanks so much. No, this was a joy. You're awesome, man. You're really good at this. You've been doing interviewing a lot longer than me, so I'm just trying to learn from the master. No, this felt like a freaking psychological,

intellectual, emotional journey. It was awesome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Again, if you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. Just text a couple of friends right now, post it on your Instagram stories, post it on social media,

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