The Tim Ferriss Show - #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans

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Starting point is 00:03:15 from various disciplines across all industries. And today we have Brandon Stanton, who is the creator of the number one New York Times bestselling books, Humans of New York, Humans of New York Stories, as well as the children's book, Little Humans of New York. In 2013, he was named one of the 30 under 30 people changing the world by Time Magazine. Brandon has told stories from around the world in collaboration with the United Nations and was invited to photograph President Obama in the Oval Office. His photography and storytelling blog, Humans of New York, is followed by more than 25 million people, plus me, on several social media platforms. He's a graduate of the University of Georgia and lives in New York City. You can find his work on Instagram, at humansofny, as in

Starting point is 00:03:56 New York. On Facebook, humansofnewyork, humansofnewyork.com, and a video series based on the blog recently became one of the first pieces of original content acquired by Facebook. So you can find that as well, Humans of New York, the series. Brandon, welcome to the show. Thanks, Tim. I really appreciate you making the time. And I've been following your work for quite a few years now. And I'm excited to have a chance to pick at some of the earlier days and explore questions that have been on my mind for a few years now.

Starting point is 00:04:33 Take away. So the first question I wanted to take a stab at is actually one I'm borrowing from another Georgian, and that is Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb, who likes to ask this question. Do you remember the first time you got in trouble or one of the first times you got in trouble? Oh, God. The first time I got in trouble. Or a notable time that you got in trouble when you were younger. A notable time, I remember, I was sitting in, my mom used to take us to the grocery store a lot of times after school. And, you know, she was just going to run in for a few minutes and grab something. And so we were just supposed to sit in the car. And i think i was like you know nine or ten um and i wasn't supposed

Starting point is 00:05:28 to touch anything but there were all these like buttons on the dashboard and things like that and um i remember she came back out and i think you know the alarm's going off and then the keys the steering wheels locked and and you can't move the. And I remember that one very vaguely because I wasn't allowed to go to the fall festival at the school that year, which was my favorite thing to do because they had carnival games and things like that. So going back in my mind about a painful early time of getting in trouble, you know, that comes into mind. As I was doing homework for this conversation, I was reading up on some of the, I suppose, earlier days. And the particular sentence that I wanted to explore was in a previous interview of yours. And it covers quite a bit, but it said after having flunked out of college and later going back and graduating as a history major with straight A's, and then it goes on to say a number of other things, but did you get into a lot of trouble as

Starting point is 00:06:36 a kid or what, what led to the flunking out of college? Right. Well, I mean, I always say that a lot of my early trouble was coming from this thought that I had to do something really big in the world. And I'm sitting in class all day, and I'm learning these kind of very minute details about things like the Magna Carta and the compromise of 18-whatever. And none of this really seemed important at all because I felt that I was – my purpose had to be much greater than this, and then how am I going to use any of this in life? And so I spent all of my time – back then I was smoking a lot of weed and just like trying to think about what my big idea and what my contribution to the world was going to be. And instead of going to class, I was doing that. Instead of really kind of working to improve myself, I was, you know, pontificating and then just like thinking all the time about, you know, what my contribution to the world was going to be. And that was the time that I flunked out. And, you know, things really started moving forward

Starting point is 00:07:56 for me was when I threw in the towel, you know, I waved the white flag. I said, you know, I'm going to stop trying to figure out, you know, what the big thing I'm supposed to accomplish is. And I'm just going to start doing what I was supposed to do. And, you know, I started riding the bus and started going to community college, Georgia Perimeter College. I got my grades back up. I went back to the University of Georgia where I flunked out of. And, you know, I focused on becoming a disciplined person and, you know, putting one foot in front of the other every single day, it began to propel me on the journey that ultimately led to Humans of New York, which was something bigger than I could have ever imagined when I was hitting the bong

Starting point is 00:08:58 in the Creswell dorm at the University of Georgia. Now, this preoccupation that you had with your big contribution to the world, I don't know how common that is. I didn't have that preoccupation. Did that come from parents? Did that come from a book you read? Where did that come from? Psychedelic mushrooms might have had a little something to do with it. I can see that. I can see that. It's just like, I spent so much time, you know, I had a very intelligent group of friends and, you know, so much of, you know, my 16, 17, 18,

Starting point is 00:09:40 19, 20, um, was just, uh, I guess partaking in these recreational activities, trying to figure out what is truth, you know, like what is the things like calculus and algebra and, you know, verb conjugations in French and, you know, all these subjects I was being forced to do in school seemed so minor and not useful to what I really wanted to understand. And, you know, alongside these kind of like big questions about, you know, why are we here and what is this all about, came this kind of feeling. And, you know, I think some sort of kind of vague spirituality was wrapped up in it as well, that, you know, this world is so amazing and the fact that we're here is so amazing, and doing anything less than something amazing is kind of squandering me down this path that I was – my time was too good and my thoughts. The space in my brain was too precious to fill it up with all these little – this homework and this stuff that seems so unimportant.

Starting point is 00:11:22 And so instead I just spent all my time just kind of grappling with these, with these bigger things. What was it like growing up in Marietta, Georgia? Am I right? Yeah. And were you born in Georgia also? Yeah, I was born in Georgia. I mean, I am somebody who has liked everywhere I've ever been. I liked my school. I liked my college. I liked the community college I went to after I flunked out of my college. I liked Atlanta. I liked Chicago.

Starting point is 00:11:55 I love New York. I'm generally somebody who appreciates the place that I'm in. I tend to find that people complaining about where they live, not always. I mean, it's not, you can, there's always some place that you can be that might be better for you. But if you hate the place that you live, if you kind of just despise it, I find that a lot of times a new environment is not the key to your happiness, because I find it a lot of times that people that are complaining about one place, when they move to another place, then, you know, if they live in Atlanta and the answer is New York, then when they get to New

Starting point is 00:12:38 York, you know what? New York's dead. The answer is L.A. When they get to L.A., oh, the American values suck. Need to get to Paris. You know, when they get to Paris, oh, you know, the West is so, you know, to be unsatisfied everywhere. I'm kind of the opposite. You know, I've loved every place that I've lived. I've loved the people, you know, that I've met in every place I lived. Marietta was Starbucks and Barnes and Noble, but I had a great, great group of friends. And, you know, I enjoyed growing up there. I'm just piecing the connective tissue together as I go, because I'm really interested. I don't know why this is the case, but particularly in the last six months, I've been more and more fascinated by the earlier stages with almost everyone I've been chatting with. The history major, you graduate with straight A's and then you end up,

Starting point is 00:13:44 and I know you've, you've, you've spoken quite a bit about this. We won't belabor the point, but you get a job as a bond trader in Chicago is my understanding. And it was the right, the first time that you weren't embarrassed in front of family and friends about where your life was going. You get this, this prestigious job. How did, how did you go about choosing that job or finding that job? Or how did it find you from history, right? Right. So, I mean, the whole reason I became, I mean, to give you, to catch you up a little bit, you know, when I first went to the University of Georgia, I was majoring in business. That's when

Starting point is 00:14:19 I wasn't going to class. I flunked out. And then when I decided to go back to college, you know, I thought to myself, well, I'm just going to study something that I enjoy anyway. So it's not this kind of, you know, major force of effort to go to class and to do my work. At that time, I had developed a reading habit. That was really when my life kind of turned around because remember, I stopped thinking about these kind of big problems I wanted to solve, and I started focusing on monumental routine that I ever established and decision I ever made was that I was going to read 100 pages a day, mostly nonfiction. And whether the book was The Little Prince or it was something like The Wealth of Nations, whether it took me an hour or whether it took me eight hours, every single day I was going to read 100 pages. And I did that for years. Even when I went back to school, in addition to my schoolwork was going to read 100 pages. And I did that for years. Even when I went

Starting point is 00:15:26 back to school, in addition to my schoolwork, I would read 100 pages. What catalyzed, sorry to interrupt, but what catalyzed that decision? I mean, was there a feeling? It's like this, it was this feeling, I mean, psychologically, you know, it was like this feeling of being, you know, maybe behind, you know, I remembered, I remembered, you know, I remembered – one of the very first books that I read was this autobiography of Ben Franklin, and you know he has all these kind of – he did the Poor Richard's Almanac, and he has all these kind of sayings. And I remember, first of all, Ben Franklin himself was kind of the pioneer in getting self-improvement down to a science. You know what I mean? And so his example, first of all, of how much effort he put into improving himself and moving himself forward. And then I remember he had this one quote that uneducated genius is like finding silver in the mine.

Starting point is 00:16:26 And it kind of – it made me think that I had spent all this time kind of thinking and kind of pondering, and I thought that I was – that school was beneath me and school was boring. And because of that, I really hadn't been imbibing much information. And at that time, something kind of flipped. And I felt like I've missed out on probably the last four or six years of education because I was just doing the minimum. I was just getting by and writing my papers before class. I was probably looking at the person who's next to me's paper a few times. And so it's like even though I was making OK grades, I really wasn't taking in a lot of information and educating myself. And so, you know, I think that at that time, I decided I was going to become extremely educated. And, you know, I did, I did become an extremely educated person. But, you know, 95% of that education was outside of school, you know, 95% of that education was over the course of seven or eight years, saying, I'm going to read 100 pages of nonfiction

Starting point is 00:17:46 a day, every single day. And I did it for seven or eight years. I'd say 60% of that was biography. Uh, I would say another 20% of it was history. Uh, and then, you know, I didn't, that wasn't, I would read fiction too, you know, when I was absolutely tired of eating my vegetables. And I – that's what I would call the most boring books, the really kind of conceptual one I just viewed as vegetables. It was sometimes hard to get through. The fiber of knowledge. Yeah, but it grows and it kind of develops you. But yeah, you know, so biographies were the ones that I was really, really drawn to. And so, you know, at the time,

Starting point is 00:18:36 you know, I started like kind of reading all these biographies, and I was loving it. And biography is just history. You know, biography is the best form of history, if you ask me, because it cuts through the theory. It cuts through all the speculation of the author, and we get down to the nuts and the bolts of the decisions that people made in their lives. And I think that is the purest form of education that you can get, and it is the advice that I give people who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Pick somebody that you admire and read their biography. Read their biography. If you really want some sort of guidance in your life, pick somebody who's done things that you want to do and that you really admire and read a nice, fat 800-page biography of their lives.

Starting point is 00:19:22 Find out the struggles they went through. Find out the twists and turns of their lives and the decisions they made. And I mean, I don't think there's any better actionable roadmap, actionable education than getting down to the granular level of somebody's life and finding out how they navigated it. If someone wanted to, let's just say that they are having a lapse of concentration and can't think of people they admire who have biographies, if you were to recommend any, let's just say one to three biographies as gateway drugs into that world, are there

Starting point is 00:19:59 any that come to mind? It depends upon what you want to accomplish in life. If you're just flagging and you don't know what you want to do, start with Ben Franklin. Start with somebody who is very disciplined and programmatic in figuring out how to develop themselves. advice always to people who are stuck is quit looking at the big pictures. People get stuck because they want to accomplish two bigger things and they don't know the right step to take. So, you know, I always say just kind of instead of focusing on the year, instead of focusing on the arc of your life, focus on the 24 hour period. And nobody mastered the 24 hour period more than Benjamin Franklin. So it's like if you have no idea what you want to do, start there, I would say. If you know what you want to do, you've got to pick the person that you admire the most. Do you want to participate in social movements? Pick Martin Luther King. Do you want to be president of the United States? If you want to be president

Starting point is 00:21:02 of the United States, I would recommend Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson, because he was probably the president that was given the least in his life, except for maybe Abraham Lincoln. He didn't go to Ivy League. He wasn't necessarily a great looking guy. he went to San Marcos Teacher College. He, you know, basically, and again, this is if you want to be president, I don't want to be president. He, you know, worked his way up through understanding how the levers of democracy work, the levers of power in our government work. And so he is a fascinating character sketch on how to be president. If you want to read a Lyndon Johnson biography, you should read the four-volume biography by Robert Caro, which is the best of those. But other than that, it all depends upon

Starting point is 00:21:58 what it is that you want to do in life. There's just no biography that every person should read. They should pick the person they admire the most and read the biography of their life. With Ben Franklin, would it be a biography like Walter Isaacson? The Isaacson one was the one I read, and that stands out the most because it was the first. The person that I've read the most biographies on, probably Theodore Roosevelt, just because his life is so fascinating. Probably Adolf Hitler, probably Stalin. And it's not because in any way these people are admirable, but like as a history major, to me, it wasn't the individual them themselves that was fascinating. To me, it was

Starting point is 00:22:47 how does a group of people, you know, Germany was a smart, industrialized country. To me, the big philosophical question that fascinated me and the reason that I've delved so much into the lives and the practices of dictators is, you dictators is how is it that a group of such educated, smart, well-meaning people were able to be organized under the premise of committing such evil? And that to me has always fascinated me because I believe that people are inherently good. And, you know, I've traveled to 30 or 40 different countries. And, you know, it's funny, every place has a reputation. Oh, don't go to this city. People won't talk to you. You know, so many times when I land in a place, they say, you know, this isn't going to work here. You know, people aren't open here. People aren't friendly here.

Starting point is 00:23:47 And, you know, I find one-on-one people all over the world, you know, are very – they kind of share, you that means anywhere something like this could happen. Anywhere people can get pulled into this crowd psychology and direct their anger and their hatred and violence towards people in a way that would contradict their morals if you met them one-on-one. And, you know, because of that, the lives and the periods of history that have always been most intellectually interesting to me—again, it's not something I admire, it's not something I'm looking to duplicate, of course, have been these periods where a very driven ideological individual has managed to mobilize a group of people towards ends that, looking back from a historical perspective, were brutal and violent and absolutely unexplainable. And I think it's important to understand these things to keep it from happening again. Do you remember you asked about bond trading? Oh, I do.

Starting point is 00:25:11 I took questions ago. I never even talked about it. And I think, you know, I started talking about histories because bond trading was really an anomaly in my life. I was really kind of wrapped up in all these things that we're talking about now. I was really kind of wrapped up in history and biography mainly. When Obama, it was, God, what was it, 2008, 2007? I think it was 2007, he was in the primary, and I was – I really became fixated on this campaign. And I was going to knock on doors, and this was during the primary when he was going up against Hillary. And I was knocking on doors. I was going to different states and knocking on doors. And I was reading every article about the delegate system and superdelegates. And there was this point where I was just absolutely positive he was going to win. This is the primary. I was just absolutely positive he was going to win. And I was broke at the time. This is not something I would ever do today.

Starting point is 00:26:27 But I took out $5,000 in student loans, and I actually bet on Barack Obama winning the presidency. Where does one bet on something like that? Back then, it was an Irish exchange. It has since gone under. It was called Intrade. And I think they had him at like 40% chance to win at that time. Um, and he had like a 70% chance or something. And so, you know, I, I didn't make a ton of money off of it because it took me like a week to wire my money to, um,

Starting point is 00:27:00 Ireland. And in the time that I was wiring my money, he had won a couple more times. The odds changed. Exactly. And so, you know, I ended up only making, I mean, I made like, you know, $1,000, $1,200, which for me as a college student was all the money in the world. But more fatefully, I was telling that story, just like I'm telling it to you, to a friend of mine who worked in Chicago. And he was a trader. He was a bond trader. And I was telling him that story. And he told me, you know, the one differentiator between successful traders and unsuccessful traders in our office is their, um, their comfort with risk-taking. Uh, and based on that story, um, you know, I would like you to talk to my boss. Um, and so based on the extreme prudence

Starting point is 00:27:56 you've demonstrated with that story. Um, well, yeah, it's the, you know, I think, yeah, it's the – I think it was kind of the comfort with risk-taking. And so at that time, I was – I didn't know what I wanted to do again. I just studied history because I enjoyed it and I really enjoyed it. And so he got me an interview with his boss and it was scheduled. And I mean this is somebody who went to an Ivy League school and, you know, he had studied finance his entire life and he had gotten this job. So I thought this was an opportunity I would not have any other way. And I wasn't sure what I wanted to do at the time. I was a history major. And so I had like a month to prepare. So I read about 20 books on the market. And then I then I went into the interview and, uh,

Starting point is 00:28:48 at that time I was very well, um, versed on how markets worked and, uh, that's how I got that job. Good thing you had all that reading practice. Go. What was your first week as a bond trader like? Um, well, I mean, and see, this is the, and I always try to say when I – I mean, if somebody has just listened to this interview up until this point, I think it's – we talk about bond trading and dictators, which really has nothing to do with my life now. But I – and I think the narrative that people in interviews always try to put on me is that – because I mean it's a fun narrative. Oh, chasing the money, doing this soul-sucking finance job, and then cut the rope behind him to pursue his true passion, which was taking photographs and art. And I mean, there's a kernel of truth there. But the real story is that markets were fascinating

Starting point is 00:29:54 to me. I'm still fascinated by markets. They seem so tangible when you're watching CNBC, and you're seeing these numbers and it seems all so mathematical. But in reality, markets are nothing but a bunch of people arguing over what something's worth. It's just like it's a market. If you remove the computer and go back 50 years, a market is a crowd of people haggling over what something that is impossible to value is worth. And the number that comes out of it is really based on psychology. And it's based on this back and forth over what these numbers mean. And that was always so interesting to me. And it remains very interesting to me. So I was

Starting point is 00:30:45 philosophically very interested in markets. And I was fascinated by bond trading. And, you know, I was obsessed with it, to be honest, for two years. And it was a type of bond trading, we were very highly leveraged. And so, you know, it was a type where bond trading. We were very highly leveraged. And so it was a type where there was just huge gains or huge losses every single night. I compare it to playing a very high stakes game of poker every single night. And so it was extremely, I don't think I could do it today. I was in my early 20s at the time. It was just – there was It's almost like crack where it's just all you can think about at any given time. on the path of humans of New York. And what led me to kind of pursue this life that was outside of books and outside of computer screens was that after the end of two years when I lost my job, I kind of looked back at the time that I had spent that two years. And it wasn't the physical time that was lost that was

Starting point is 00:32:28 most concerning to me. It was that I had spent two years using all of my intellect and all of my creative energy trying to figure out how to be the most effective relative value trader in fixed income securities in the Asian markets. It was something – it was just something that was so narrow and so myopic, and I couldn't even talk with my friends about it. And at the end of two years, that was – we had gone through the financial crisis. I'd lost everything I'd ever made. When I lost that job, it was a very lucrative job potentially. But when I lost that job, I was broke because I'd lost everything.

Starting point is 00:33:11 Why did you lose the job? What happened? Well, I mean, it depends upon most protective of the ego is that we had a type of, but late 90s to 2008 were periods of historically low volatility where the type of trading that we were doing worked. And during – when the financial crisis hit in 2008, volatility went through the roof. Long story short, the type of trading that we were doing stopped working, and the company that had been around for over a decade was out of business about a year after I left. That's the way of explaining that avoids the most personal responsibility. If I was to explain it in the way that makes myself the most personally responsible, markets changed and I wasn't adaptive enough to figure it out. I kept banging my head against the same things that used to be working. I refused to fully embrace the fact that what worked for me

Starting point is 00:34:46 extremely well for a year had stopped working. And because of that, the risk calculations had changed. And instead of making a lot of money every night, I was losing a lot of money every night. And I eventually got to the point where I was no longer a productive member of the firm. And so, yeah, it depends upon which story you want to tell. I think the truth is probably somewhere in between the two. But regardless, I ended up without a job. Well, thank you for telling or sharing both versions of that. And no, I think that that also reflects a level of, this may not be the right word, but sort of objectivity or an ability to detach and observe that has always fascinated me about you, quite frankly, which certainly translates, I think, in a very empathic way later. And we'll get to

Starting point is 00:35:46 that. But I want to talk about the finance world and markets for just a second, because as you noted, it's very tempting for someone who's trying to weave a narrative of your life into this soul-sucking period, sees the light, cuts the tether, burns the ships off into the arts and true passion. But the markets, as you noted, are really fascinating. And I was chatting with someone I've just gotten to know, actually, in the last few weeks, a, let's call, I suppose you could call him a wealth manager, but 75% of what he does is invest in bonds. He probably wouldn't call it trading, but in effect, I mean, that's what he's doing. And he said something to me that has stuck in my mind for a while now, which is,

Starting point is 00:36:35 you know, I learn more in the first two to four hours of sitting down and talking to someone about money than their therapists have probably learned over the last two to four years. And getting to see how people respond to money and loss aversion and the possibility of making money is in and of itself fascinating. Then you add in thousands and millions of market participants, it gets even more interesting. And then when, at least in my limited experience, when I read something, my exposure to bonds is very limited. But when you read something like Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis, which I think is a fantastic book, and the part that stuck out to me where I was like, okay, I need to be very careful about playing this game because I'll get my face ripped off is there's some part and I'm going to get all the details

Starting point is 00:37:23 wrong. But there's some guy who's nicknamed like fat tony and he's a big wig at solomon brothers and he bets his buddies that the markets for whatever double a bonds and x y and z are going up and he's he bets them and it's this dick measuring contest and he puts 50 million into the market and it and it goes down and uh and so his friends are busting his balls and he's then they're like ah market's going up huh and so instead of putting 50 million and he's like fuck it and he puts 500 million in and like all the other market participants panic thinking that he has information they don't and so the market goes up and he says see i told you

Starting point is 00:37:59 the market was going up right right and i was like oh God, this is not nearly as clean as the textbooks would want you to believe. Well, I would, I would, um, you know, I, as somebody who's interviewed 10,000 people, I would say that, you know, talking with somebody about their money and how they choose to use their money will give you a insight into a very limited, uh, a, and I, I mean, maybe, maybe I'm, I'm wrong, but like a, a very limited aspect of their mean, maybe I'm wrong, but like a very limited aspect of their personality, which is their comfort with risk. And, you know, I think there's, I think our approach to money and our approach to trading and our approach to markets are very much kind of driven by like our animal spirits, you know, greed and fear and things like that. But, you know, I feel that the, you know, kind of the, there's a huge, a huge portion of people's lives and kind of thought

Starting point is 00:38:54 lives that are, you know, kind of separate and, you know, isolated from that, those drives, you know what I mean? Those very kind of primal drives of of wanting wanting more and being afraid to lose i mean that's that's really what what drives the markets is is the is the greed and the fear uh is and you know i think i think talking you know with somebody about their you know their those those two drives and where their greed comes from or where their fear comes from, it'll give you some insight. But to me, the markets, they can only tell you so much.

Starting point is 00:39:41 And they can only – it's such a, it's a part of human existence, the drives that control a market. But, you know, there's so much that people care about outside of that. And I think that was what was so dangerous about just being a trader, is that, you know, you're burying so much of your thought energy into just the desire for more and the fear of losing. You know what I mean? The kind of narrow animalistic drives that push a market up and down, and you're kind of tethering yourself to that. And you just kind of miss out on so much of the life that's going on around you. And this is me. This is me. I think it's part of my personality that once I dive into something, I do it to the exclusion of almost everything else.

Starting point is 00:40:36 One of the reasons Humans of New York ended up becoming so successful. I did know, you know, some of, you know, more the exception than the rule. There are people who are so in control of their emotions, or maybe they don't have the same emotional range as other people that are able to turn off their computer every single day, go home and not think about the markets and kind of completely leave them there. But, you know, for me, it was something that, you know, was kind of all consuming for me. And, you know, when I made the decision to pursue something more artistic was when, you know, I had kind of lost my job. And I was looking back at the two years of my life, and I was thinking, God, you know, and after I lost my job and I was looking back at the two years of my life and I was thinking, God, you know, and after I lost my job, you know, I was so scared of that day, you know, during the two years

Starting point is 00:41:33 when I was obsessing over markets and then things started going bad, you know, there was nothing I was more afraid of than losing that job. And then on the day that it happened, it was surprisingly a good day because I remember taking a walk that day and I started asking myself things like, what do I want to do? You know, like, what do I want to do? Things, something like, if I could do anything with my time, what would I do? And I had been for two years so focused on keeping that job that I had never – I didn't have years of my thoughts focusing on this game, this game for making money, which was fascinating and philosophically interesting. But when you boil it down, it's a game. And I said I'm going to spend the next foreseeable future instead of my spending my time trying to make money. I'm going to try to make just enough money to where I can control my time and just do something that I enjoy doing for no other reason than it is nourishing in the moment.

Starting point is 00:43:00 Not that at the end of the day I'm going to have a profit, but because it's nourishing in the moment. And at that time, it was photography. And the whole reason – I think one of the best – the kind of neatest things about Humans of New York is that over the past eight years, Humans of New York has become largely the most followed photography project in the world with I think 25 million on social media now. And it's eight years old, and I think one of the coolest things is I just started photographing about eight years ago. I started taking photos during this time that I'm talking with you about. And the whole reason I started taking photos was because I was trying to create some space in my mind away from work. I was desperate for something to do on the weekends that would give me this foothold in my brain where I had a sense of purpose and a sense of identity outside how the markets were doing every single day. And so I bought this camera.

Starting point is 00:44:08 I started going to downtown Chicago and photographing just everything, and I loved it. And not long after, I lost my job, and I made the decision that I was going to be a photographer, not because I was very skilled at it at the time, you know, not because I thought it was an angle towards success and not because I thought it was an angle towards an audience, is that I just loved doing it in the moment. It was nourishing in the moment. And so I found this thing that was nourishing in the moment that I enjoyed doing. And I said, you know, I'm going to try to structure my life around creating as much time for this as possible. I want to make the minimum amount of, I just, I want to make just enough

Starting point is 00:44:52 money to where I can pay my rent, eat and photograph all day long. And the journey that ended up creating Humans of New York was my attempt to create that space in my life and that space in my head to focus on something that was very nourishing in the moment. How did you cover your expenses in the very early days of that experience? This was 2008. We had, I believe, a record amount of time that you could get unemployment. And I had just lost my job. And so I got $620, I think, every two weeks from the government because I was unemployed and I had worked for two years. So that was enough to

Starting point is 00:45:47 basically just pay my rent in a sublease that I found on Craigslist in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That was enough to pay that and maybe have peanut butter jelly sandwiches and eggs. Assuming that you needed no other expenses, that you wore the same clothes and the same shoes, that was enough for me to just eat, sleep, and photograph all day long. Um, and once I got to have a, you know, a decent level of skill, and I mean, just a passable level of skill, uh, if anybody would pay me to take portraits for them, I would do that. I, somebody hired me to do their wedding. Um, and, uh, I basically, I just, I, I didn't spend money on anything. All I did was photograph all day long because I knew that I was like, I was making this pivot in my life to where I was going after kind of a lucrative career towards, I was going towards just wanting to spend my time doing something all day long.

Starting point is 00:46:58 And so, you know, and I became obsessed with photography in the same way that I was obsessed with markets. I mean, I just, I loved it. I just loved it. that I was obsessed with markets. I mean I just – I loved it. I just loved it. It was like a treasure hunt. I mean just going out. It was so different than trading too. I mean it was – I'm outside. I'm interacting with the world.

Starting point is 00:47:16 I'm having conversations. I'm having these little adventures and discovering these new things. And I was just hooked on it. I was just obsessed with it. And I knew I was making a lot of sacrifices to be doing this in my life. So I didn't do anything else. I didn't go to concerts. I didn't go out to restaurants. I really, I didn't spend much time with friends because I didn't really know anybody in New York. I mean, that's another crazy detail about Humans of New York is that Humans of New York is an eight-year-old photography project based on people in New York City. I took my first photograph eight years ago, and I went to New York for the very first time in my life eight years ago. So it was, you know, all, it was all just very new and all

Starting point is 00:48:07 very driven by the desire to photograph all day long. Was the move to New York related to the desire to take photographs or was it something else? So, I mean, what I did is, so I got fired and I started, my goal was like, I got was I want to find out how to be a photographer. I love photography. How am I going to create a life where I can support myself and photograph all day long? And so I was just out doing it every single day. And then I started kind of along with the graffiti and along with the architectural shots and along with the nature shots, I started photographing people. And I noticed that these – out of everything I was photographing, the photographs of people were the most unique.

Starting point is 00:48:58 They're the ones that least resembled everything else I was seeing being put on Facebook and stuff like that. And so I decided to kind of focus on that. And then while focusing on that, I started stopping people on the street and asking for their photo and kind of taking a portrait of them. And because of that extra layer of difficulty of having to approach a stranger, the portraits that I was taking of people were more different than the candid photos I was taking of people. And so I started focusing solely on that. And that's when I kind of started having an idea that even though I hadn't been photographing so long, I was heading in a direction that was pretty unique because I was stopping random people on the streets in a very – I know some people will do series, but I was doing this every single day, and I was getting quite a collection. And this seemed like kind of a new, a kind of fresh type of photography, so it's all I did. And then I started traveling to different cities.

Starting point is 00:50:09 I went to Philadelphia, just stopping people. Then I went to New Orleans. I went back to Atlanta and did this, and then I traveled to New York and I was stopping people and asking for their photographs, I realized that New York, if you were going to try to do this type of photography, was the best place to be. I mean mainly just practical reasons, that you don't need a car in New York. I didn't have a car, and I couldn't afford a car. You can just ride the subway everywhere. You can walk everywhere, and there's so many people. I mean there's so many people. I remember coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel the very first time and looking down, and I couldn't even see the sidewalk because it was rush hour and it was just – there were so many people and I thought if I'm going to do this type of photography, this is the place to do it. And I wasn't doing any interviews at this time and I mean that's the thing. It's like the Humans of New York that I moved to New York to do looks nothing like the Humans of New York that later became successful. I mean it was really just the impetus to get me on the ground working every day to kind of figure it out along the way.

Starting point is 00:51:29 You know, my very first idea for Humans of New York was I was going to photograph 10,000 people in New York City across all five boroughs, and I was going to plot their photo on a map. That was my idea of how I was going to make a life out of being a photographer. I was going to be the guy who did that. And that was kind of what got me on the ground, got me out on the streets every single day, approaching hundreds and thousands of people, and put me in the situation where I could kind of innovate and I could start having conversations with these people, which turned into questions I was asking them, which turned into eventually seven years later, the kind of 90 minute to an hour and a half long, very kind of probing and therapeutic and psychological interviews that I have with random strangers every single day, the result of which and the output of which became the stories that I think people are so connected with and the stories that

Starting point is 00:52:43 really make Humans of New Yorkork humans of new york how are you getting better at photography uh during this say first let's just call it six month period since you certainly seem from all indications to be someone who goes for total immersion and whether it's reading 10 to 20 books on the markets before an interview, you go 100% into whatever subject matter you choose. How are you getting better? What books were you reading? Who are you studying? What were you trying? I mean, I was too addicted to taking photos to ever stop for a second and learn about photography. I have, I have one memory. I have one memory of going to Barnes and Noble cause I can afford to buy any books. Uh, I have a one memory of going to Barnes

Starting point is 00:53:33 and Noble one night and flipping through some photography books and, and enjoying the photos. But, uh, I just, I, I just wanted to be out taking pictures, you didn't really want to be studying how to take a correct photo. I just wanted to be out photographing. It was the act of it, the act of discovery. And I had a very amateur view of photography at the time, where if you get something or somebody interesting in the frame, it's a great photo. I don't care how many points of perspective it has. I don't care about the rules of thirds. I honestly don't really even care about white balance or focus or any of these things.

Starting point is 00:54:13 I was just looking for wonderful people and wonderful moments that were happening. I was still doing a lot of candid photography of people. And if I captured that, that was a good photo. And that's all I cared about. And that was what was driving me for these first several months and this first year, year and a half when I took thousands and thousands of pictures. And I was getting better slowly. I mean, I'm not necessarily bragging about that kind of aversion to formal training as if it was some sort of badge of honor. It was just the way my psychology was hardwired. And because of that, I might have improved more slowly than somebody else.

Starting point is 00:55:00 And in fact, I might have improved so slowly that I'm sure a lot of professional photographers look down on my own style. I innovated my own type of work that later on people have introduced me to Studs Terkel and people introduced me to these wonderful photographers of the past who took these – Jacob Reese and who took these wonderful photos of regular people that my work kind of grew to resemble. But I mean any resemblance just came out of being on the street and doing it all day long and just – and figuring out what it was that I liked the most. And without any education of what a correct photograph was. And I think if Humans of New York has original elements, if Humans of New York is original in any way, it was because I was just so addicted to taking photos that I never stopped to learn about photography. And because of that, you know, I just, I was figuring it out as I went along. Well, it seems to me also that there are many different facets of photography, one component of which is the technical knowledge, but certainly another component of which is choosing the subject matter, right? And thinking about the story that an image tells.

Starting point is 00:56:48 So you were learning about photography, but you were doing it vis-a-vis the sheer volume of experience that you were gathering behind the camera and walking through New York City. Right. Well, I was just, you know, I was looking for anyone who, anything that captured my attention or curiosity at all got photographed. I mean – and that's one of the beautiful things about digital cameras is, I mean, you can just take a thousand photos every single day. And so you don't have to worry about conserving film. Like you can just photograph everything. And so anything that caught my eye got photographed. And then when you go home and you load your thousand pictures on the computer and you start going through, and because you don't know how to photograph, you photograph that person 50 different times.

Starting point is 00:57:33 And you're looking at your 50 photos of each person, and you're finding the one that you think looks the best. And then you're going and you're doing it again and you're doing it again. And suddenly you're not taking 50 photos of each person. You're taking 40, then 30, then 20, and then 10 as you start to get an idea of what it is that you think is a great photo and what it is that you like. And that was kind of really how I was honing in on my style again, which might still be considered primitive. It still might be considered unschooled by a lot of people. But I was just honing in on what I liked about a photo. Um, and that's, that was the process. What were you, what were you doing with these photos in the, in the beginning? Or maybe a better question is when you first started putting photos online, what did that look like? Um, at first I was putting the, I had one of my main kind of weaknesses and blind spots in the beginning was not understanding the importance of daily content because, you know, I never had a blog before.

Starting point is 00:58:36 And so I kind of had this great and I mean, it kind of mirrors my my journey as a college student where I was like trying to do something huge instead of focusing on doing something every single day. And so I was – I had this huge kind of sweeping project of I was going to photograph 10,000 people and plot their photos on a map. I was dumping about 30 or 40 of these portraits every single day onto this website that I had that nobody was going to. And the numbers, I even had a counter on the top of the website counting up to 10,000, because that's all I cared about was the end. I was going to get 10,000. I was going to create this sweeping photography project. Was it called Humans of New York at the time, or what was the name? It was called Humans of New York from the very beginning, yes. And nobody was really paying attention, and I was taking hundreds and thousands of portraits. And things really started to get traction when I started posting the photos as I got them onto social media, mainly Facebook. That is when things really started to grow. And the focus of Humans of New York moved away from this giant sweeping project

Starting point is 00:59:55 that was going to cover the entire city of New York and be some sort of representation of New York City. And it switched much more to about the individual. Who is this person that I'm meeting each day? And it became something more personal and immediate. And that's when things really started growing. Brandon, I'd love to ask you about the Green Lady, if that rings a bell. Could you please describe for folks the experience of the Green Lady, if that rings a bell. Could you please describe for folks the experience of the Green Lady? So, I mean, I'm in New York, and I've been trying to make this work for about six months now. And six months in, you know, that time of my life was probably the equivalent about two years of

Starting point is 01:00:47 work because I worked every single day I worked on Christmas I worked on Thanksgiving I didn't go home all I did was photograph all day long you know I would go out I would I would just photograph people I'd come home I would take a nap and then I would go out at night and try to get some more photos. And so I had gotten thousands of these portraits, and not many people were paying attention. I think I had just kind of started posting my photos on Facebook. And I photographed this woman, and she was dressed all in green, and she had green hair and green makeup. And I remember it was a photo that I didn't like. I thought it was a very bad photo, and I wasn't even going to really post it on the blog. But then I remembered that she had said something to me. She had said,

Starting point is 01:01:46 I used to be a different color every single day, but then one day I was green, and that was a great day. And so I've been green for 15 years. And I remember thinking to myself, well, I don't really like the photograph, but I'm going to try putting this quote above it that she said. And I posted it onto Facebook. And suddenly, it was the most engaged with photo that I'd ever posted. I think we're talking like 67 likes at this time there was not a lot of people following my page um and it really it was kind of a eureka moment because it really made sense that you know in this during these months and almost a year of doing nothing but approaching random people on the street and asking for their photograph. The thing that strangely I had gotten to be an expert at wasn't the photography,

Starting point is 01:02:55 but it was the approaching strangers and the walking up to random people, getting rejected a lot of times and not letting that affect my mood. And then once meeting somebody in a very short amount of time, making that person comfortable. And kind of the eureka moment was if that is what I've become good at, if that is what I have to offer the world, shouldn't I, now that I've gotten over this fear of approaching a stranger, use that opportunity to learn a little bit about this person with other people who might be curious of the people around them but were too afraid to ask uh you know ended up being hundreds then thousands and then tens of thousands and millions and then now tens of millions and you know from that moment on humans of new york stopped being a photography project i don't even view myself as a photographer. You can write a three-page essay about why I'm a horrible photographer, and it's been done many times. And it doesn't really bother me because I stopped viewing myself as a photographer a long time ago.

Starting point is 01:04:43 The photography is really secondary to Humans of New York. You know, Humans of New York is my effort in as short a time as possible to make a random person on the street comfortable enough and seem like somebody's interested enough in their lives that they'll share their story with me. And they'll share something deep and vulnerable and real and honest about their lives. So that I can share that with millions of people every single night. And Humans of New York over the past six years has been my effort to get as good at that as possible. This, this is a perfect segue to asking about the approaches and questions, which is. Which is a really important thing. I've spent the entire, I feel guilty because I spent the entire.

Starting point is 01:05:42 If you look, I have not posted a picture of myself on Humans of New York in years. I don't do it. I find that Humans of New York is best when I'm the most invisible. I feel that the less Humans of New York is about Brandon Stanton, the more influential Humans of New York has become. So yeah, it's... It feels very unnatural to have spent

Starting point is 01:06:15 an hour talking already and talk nothing about myself. So please, fire away. Ask about the work. So I'm going to ask about the work and you can talk about yourself in third person if it makes it feel better, but I will have to involve you in this. I know. What do you say when you cold approach someone on the street? Assuming that now, of course, you could use humans of New York and a lot of people

Starting point is 01:06:45 would recognize it and you could break the ice that way. But with it early on when nobody would recognize that, how did you, how did you open? And then what, what did you use to break the ice in the first 60 seconds? Uh, first thing always is, do you mind if I take your photograph? Um, that was the first thing always is, do you mind if I take your photograph? That was the first thing. And I mean, these are all little things I learned is you don't walk up to somebody and ask, do you have a minute? You know, because that immediately puts somebody on defensive, because especially in New York City, people are walking up to you all day long, trying to sell you something, asking for money. So people are naturally very defensive.

Starting point is 01:07:26 So I don't want, my goal is to get into it as soon as possible so people realize that this is something a little bit different and I'm not looking for their money. That's the main thing. You know, I'm not looking for their money. So I normally walk up and I say, do you mind if I take your photograph? I run a website called Humans of New York. And basically what I do is over the past several years, I photographed about 10,000 people on the streets of New York City and around the world. And I just learn a little bit about everyone I photograph. And so I was just wondering if I could take your photo and ask you a few questions. Now, before you had the 10,000 and went around the world,

Starting point is 01:08:10 when it was maybe the 100th person or 200th person, was it the same pitch minus that stuff? Yeah. I was trying to give you actually the pitch that I used to give in the early days. Now, I pull out my cell phone to number one New York Times bestselling books, 20 million followers on Facebook. And the whole reason of that, even though it kind of sounds like boastful and braggy, is that especially if somebody hasn't heard of Humans of New York, you know, I want to convince them in as short amount of time as possible that it's something real. One, that's important. And that it's something that, you know, is a lot of people know about and a lot of people follow. It's not a joke. It's not a joke. It's not a prank. You're not going to be embarrassed.

Starting point is 01:08:48 You're not going to – my goal is in as short amount of time as possible to kind of make the person feel comfortable. And these days, a big part of that is kind of explaining how big the block is because then it's like, oh, this person is not trying to hustle me. This person isn't trying to scam me. But, you know, to be honest, you know, in the early days, my success, you know, the amount of people who let me take their photo wasn't that much less. Except back then, I wasn't a best selling author. I was just a kid, you know, who was, you know, trying to make an art project and, and, you know, people wanted to help. And so, you know, the, I think a lot of people think that, you know, one of the reasons so many people are willing to talk to me is because Humans of New York is so well known, especially in New York now. But, you know, I, the, my, my rate of people who would talk to me was not all that different when I was just getting started.

Starting point is 01:09:49 Are there any other nonverbal keys to that? Oh, God. I mean, there's tons of them. But, I mean, again, these aren't things that I like. These aren't things that, you know, I planned or read about, you know. It's not that I— You had a lot of trial and error. Well, they were burned into me by being rejected so much. And some rejections on the streets of New York aren't always polite.

Starting point is 01:10:14 You know what I mean? It was hard. In the early days, I mean I remember there were days – I mean the hardest part about it was – I mean especially when I got started and Humans of New York didn't have any fans and it wasn't made into any books. And my family didn't believe in it and my friends thought I was crazy. I had no photography experience. I'm in New York City stopping random people and asking them questions and I'm feeling insecure. And when you walk up to somebody and you ask them if they can take your photo and they respond like you're some sort of freak or that you're weird, it's hard to not internalize that because you're so insecure at the moment about, you know, whether or not what

Starting point is 01:11:05 you're doing is weird. And if it's something that, that, you know, it, it, am I, am I weird, you know, for, for asking these people for their, for their photographs. And, you know, I'd go out some days and 10 people in a row would make me feel like I'm some sort of freak. Like, do you know what city you're in? You can't be stopping random people. Like, get out of my way. Like, what are you doing? Like, no, you can't take my photo. Like, get out of here.

Starting point is 01:11:33 You know what I mean? And like, during my formative and like impressionable, you know, early days when I'm trying to figure this out, you know, five reactions like that in a row when nobody's paying attention to your work and you've been trying for months and you can't figure it out. I mean, psychologically it was very tough and, you know, there'd be days where that would happen. I just couldn't do it anymore. And I would just go home and, you know lay in bed uh you there yeah yeah yeah you're right um yeah well I mean it's just like the that was that's the hardest part about doing it uh what what did you what did you I mean what would you say to yourself during a period like that i mean it sounds so to me at least i mean the picture that it's painting having uh experienced some dark periods

Starting point is 01:12:33 in my life that have been maybe catalyzed by various things it sounds really soul-crushing i mean that sounds really i was just that was all you just – that was all – it was all like all of the doubt and not know like all the tough shit was uh and like the loneliness too like i didn't know anybody in new york like there was like i knew like two people and because and you know like there was a christmas break where those two people went home. And for two weeks, I didn't see anybody that I knew. Jesus, yeah. And I remember I spent Christmas Eve alone at a diner. And then I just went out and photographed you know it's like because it

Starting point is 01:13:46 was just like the only thing it was the only thing that could like that would keep me from like thinking about how like unlikely it was and you know whether how how stupid of an idea it might be, like the only thing that I think kept me from thinking about the possibility of failing was doing it, was just photographing. And so like whenever I started to think, is this going to work? Is it not going to to work uh i just go out and photograph you know like that was my my only way of like keeping those wolves away of you know is this ultimately going to be a success uh am i wasting my time am am i am i am i stupid like uh the only Am I stupid? The only way to keep those away was to go out and work. And so that's what I would do just all day long and do it and do it and do it. And so these negative things like the rejection of people and people saying no that I was talking about, like all of the negative stuff, like the thing that was like counteracting that all the time was just loving it so much. I just loved it so much.

Starting point is 01:15:16 And so yeah, it was just kind of the same way I was obsessed with markets. I was obsessed with taking photos. And so that's kind of what carried me through it all. I mean, listening to this story, it makes me want to ask you, when I look at Humans in New York, and think about how many thousands of people you've humanized and how much empathy you've created traveling to other countries, helping to paint a more complete picture of humanity instead of allowing sort of mass media distortion to create us versus them mentality or counteracting that at least to a very real degree and helping millions of people who have been exposed to your work and the interviews to feel less alone. I mean, are you, that's a huge fucking deal. And I,

Starting point is 01:16:13 I, it just, it pains me to hear a story like this, but it's so helpful for you to share it because I wonder how many people have ended up like in that diner alone and just quit, right? They just stopped. Well, I mean, it's not even about stopping, you know? It's just like, I think humans of New York, it's not about like goals or like mission or, you know, I had a goal and I had a mission, but people just feel alone, period. You know what I mean? It's like, that's why Humans of New York has succeeded. And I'm not even talking about the people reading it. I mean, the number one question that people ask me is how do you get people to share with you? And, you know, I think, you know, for, for most people, and they're not just if you

Starting point is 01:17:08 follow Humans of New York, you know, like I was yesterday, I was talking with a woman who, I mean, I, she had not heard of Humans of New York. This is a perfect example. You know, I, I, she was catching a train. She had 30 minutes. She had never heard of Humans of New York. We start out with me kind of showing her the blog, and 30 minutes later, the place that we ended up at was – she was in this purgatory where her husband was depressed and an alcoholic, and he wasn't doing anything that was ultimately so bad. He didn't beat her, he didn't cheat on her, but she wasn't getting fulfilled. And she was wondering if she was living her best life by staying with him for the kids. And she came to this place where she admitted that she was kind of secretly hoping that he would do something bad to make the decision easier on her. And like that sort of like honesty and that sort of truth and that sort of rawness, I mean, I don't know if she even admitted that to herself before.

Starting point is 01:18:28 And people ask me, and that happens all the time, Tim. Like, that's good humans of New York. I mean, some of it's just pictures of kids saying cute stuff, and some of it's cute couples talking about their relationship. But good humans of New York is when we get to that moment, you know, when me and somebody are thinking through something or on the street, there are two threads running through their head at any given time. And one of them is this kind of fear of being exposed, this feeling of being vulnerable and discomfort. Who is this guy? Like why is he asking me these questions? And on the other hand, there is this appreciation of being heard that even though I don't know this guy, this is the first person who has taken such a focused and detailed interest in my problems. And the feeling of having somebody focus so

Starting point is 01:19:51 intensely, not on the sports teams you like, or the music you like, or any of the other kind of trivial things that we get asked on a daily basis, but these real things that you're struggling with, maybe not even on the top of your mind, but like in the back of your mind that you're not even really bringing to the surface, being heard like that is such a validating thing. That that's why people always share. And I tell people at the beginning of every interview that these questions are going to be hard, and anything you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer. And we talk about when they got molested as a child. We talk about them cheating on their husbands. We talk about their alcoholism. We talk about how they don't love their child as much as they expected they would. We talk about all these things, and almost never do people say, I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to talk about that. And I think the reason Humans of New York works isn't because the people who are reading it feel alone. That's a big part of it, is that people, when they see somebody being vulnerable in a way that they're afraid to be vulnerable themselves, they connect with that person.

Starting point is 01:21:18 But it really works because the people on the street that I meet are so thankful to have somebody really listen to them. That in that bubble, in an hour and a half where I'm sitting with a stranger on the street, this magic happens. Where they're willing to kind of let me into a space in their mind or their soul or whatever it is that they don't really let other people into. And it's that place that I think connects with so many people. That's, uh, an incredible gift slash talent that you've developed that allows you to make people comfortable enough to open up to that extent in 30 minutes. I mean, that is incredibly impressive to me. Even given the fact that perhaps one of the elements underpinning it is how, how heard they feel, which is absolutely, I'm sure the case. I think about questions a lot and you have much

Starting point is 01:22:22 more experience than I do. And that just blows me away that you're able to get there in such a short period of time. What are some of the other ingredients or aspects of it that help you to questions perhaps that help you to get there? It's not the questions. I have about three or four entry questions that I use. What's your biggest struggle? How has your life turned out differently than you expected it to? What do you feel most guilty about? But really, the planned questions are just kind of springboards into a conversation. And how you get to that deep place with a person is absolute presence. It's being 100% there. You're not thinking in the framework of an interview. You're not looking at a list of questions. You're not thinking about your next

Starting point is 01:23:13 question. You're not thinking about how this person fits into your idea of them and what you know about them. You're 100% there and you're 100% listening to them, and your questions are 100% coming based on curiosity about what they are telling you and nothing else. And why it is that I think Humans of New York is special and I think Humans of New York is something, and I think Humans of New York is something that is precious and maybe difficult to replicate, is that I've spent seven years in these conversations with 10,000 people, and it's not necessarily that I have gotten so good at asking questions. It's just that I've gotten so comfortable in the presence of a stranger and so comfortable in the presence of somebody that I've just met that I can sit there with them without an ounce of self-consciousness and just be and just be there with them and listen to them and be curious about them. And there's this energy that happens there that this doesn't feel like somebody that's interviewing you. It feels like somebody who knows you and cares about you is really interested in what's going on in your life. And it's very subtle and hard to describe, but I think it's that energy and that presence and that being there. And it's something I had to earn. It's the same thing like public speaking. When do you really get good at public speaking?

Starting point is 01:25:01 It's when you've done it so much that you can be yourself on the stage. And there's only one way to get there. And that's to be on stage scared as shit over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And I think the only way to get to that place where you can have that rapport with a stranger is not by studying interview techniques. It's by sitting with thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of strangers until nothing feels strange about it anymore. And you're able to be in that calm, present place. And what happens is your energy transfers to the other person. And they get to that place too. If we were to pick up the example that you gave just a few minutes ago about this woman talking about her relationship with her husband

Starting point is 01:25:53 and his depression and alcoholism and so on, how did you, if you remember, how did you end up there? In other words, do you recall how the conversation headed to that point? Oh, yeah. I mean, it can – well, let me give you another example since I already – let me give you an example of somebody I talked to in the Philippines a few weeks ago. Same thing. I've traveled to 30 different countries now. I've done the exact same work.

Starting point is 01:26:23 I've been to Pakistan. I've been to Iran. I've been to Iran. I've been to Iraq. And I work with interpreters. And the process is exactly the same. I just walk up to people, random people, and get into these conversations with them. There was a woman in a park in the Philippines. And I started asking her, I think one of the first questions I asked her was, what is your biggest goal in life? And she said she wanted to have a good family life. And so I thought that that was the story. And I started asking about that. And I learned that she wanted to have a good family life because when she was young, her family split.

Starting point is 01:27:07 And she was forced to go to the courthouse with her mom and her dad at the age of nine. And the judge made her choose which parents she wanted to go with. And so I thought that was the story. And so I started asking questions about that. And then I found out that the reason she ran away was because her stepfather was abusing her and that she had never told a person in her life, including her mom, until that moment that that had happened. And that's how we end up in those places is I just – I am just curious about what's going on in there. I'm just curious about what happened.

Starting point is 01:28:11 I want to know the story, and I just ask and I ask and I ask. And if something is not quite making sense, I want to know why. And so I ask more and I ask more, and it's like you can't – I mean somebody can choose eventually to not tell the truth by saying I'm uncomfortable with it. But it can't really be concealed if somebody is really, really, really, really curious. You know what I mean? You can never get to the point. Humans of New York interviews don't work. I always say it's not because somebody doesn't have an interesting story. Humans of New York interviews don't work when I reach a place when somebody's uncomfortable

Starting point is 01:28:59 with the process, which is absolutely fine. That's completely understandable. I'm a random person. I'm sharing these stories with 20 million people. It's 100% fine if you don't want to share. That is nothing against you at all. But those are the interviews that don't make it on the blog. It's not that people aren't interesting. It's that Humans of New York really kind of thrives on this kind of honesty. And if somebody's willing to be honest, I mean, everybody's got an interesting story. And so it's like the I hit dead ends, not because somebody's boring. It's because somebody isn't comfortable with disclosing. And so that's, that's kind of what defines, you know, the, the Humans of New York interview, or what is usable

Starting point is 01:29:54 of the Humans of New York interview. How often when people disclose, when they do go there, and disclose these very vulnerable stories, or things they've never told anyone else, how often do they ask that you not use it or express concern that it's going to cause some type of problem for them? Well, that's one thing that I am very principled about. I give the person agency every step of the way. I tell them anything you don't want to answer. First of all, they don't have to talk to me. Okay, they have that decision. Once we start talking, I say any question you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer. If you tell me something

Starting point is 01:30:40 during the course of this interview and you change your mind afterwards and don't want me to share it, that's fine. At the end of the interview, if you would like me to photograph your hands or your feet instead of your face, we can do that. In fact, if it's a very vulnerable story, I will normally insist on that to protect the person or protect somebody that they're talking about. If after I've done the interview and before it's posted, at any time you change your mind and you don't want me to share it, I give them my email address. And after the photo is up, for any reason, at any time, if you become uncomfortable from all the attention and would like me to take the story down, I immediately will. And so people have control of it every step of the way. It's very important to me that nobody ever sees Humans of New York as something that was done

Starting point is 01:31:36 to them. I always want it to be seen as something that was done with them. And, you know, have I failed at that sometimes? Out of the 10,000 people have I interviewed, you know, have there been people who were, didn't expect me to share a certain part of their story or was surprised by it, or it was a negative experience for? There have been a handful, you know, but I can only say that those are the, those are the worst moments for me. When Humans of New York was a negative experience for somebody, because that's who I really care about is the people that are on the blog. You know, because, I mean, they're the people who kind of I had that moment with, you know an hour and a half with them, and we got to that place. And I just – if they are hurt by it, you know what I mean? Or if it's like – especially if they were really kind of vulnerable, then that's when I feel the worst about myself because I know how much pressure that spotlight can be.

Starting point is 01:32:46 And I know how difficult it can be under having 20 million people look at you. And so if I ever feel that I may be accidentally misrepresented or – that's when i feel the worst how do you think about money as it relates to humans of new york uh ostensibly you want to probably eat more than peanut butter and sandwiches and eggs now at the same i mean it's yeah yeah go ahead I was just going to say in terms of what you do with advertising or partnerships or projects, because you have such – also such sensitive – not always, but you have such potentially sensitive subject matter. And it's so personalized for these folks in many cases. How do you think about that? Right. Um, well the, you know, right now, obviously, so humans in New York, I think we sold a million and a half books.

Starting point is 01:33:52 Um, the, you know, the, the television show, you know, Facebook, you know, and Facebook, there's more than one person interested in it. And Facebook, they compensated me well for the four years of work that I worked on the television series. So I'm very comfortable right now. I mean, Humans of New York has made me a – let's just say I'm not worrying I'm not working about worrying about peanut butter and sandwiches. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm very comfortable. Um, with that being said, uh, I will say that humans of New York has raised, I've, I've made, I've made a fraction of the money with Humans of New York that we have raised for charity, a small fraction of the money that we've raised for charity.

Starting point is 01:34:51 I have turned down maybe more money than I've made from people who want to use my brand to partner with their brand. You know, um, big brands have offered me a lot of money to do humans of, and I'm just going to make up some names, you know what I mean? Like humans of Mercedes Benz, humans of, you know, humans of China sponsored by Virgin Airlines. These are all fake things that I'm making up right now, but had resembled offers that have been made to me. Where I make the dividing line is that I'm willing to make money as Brandon Stanton. A big part of my income comes from speeches. I give about 10 of these a year. Um, and, uh, that is a big part of my income. Uh, I have sell books as Brandon Stanton. Um, I don't sell the name humans of New York to anyone. I don't rent my brand to anyone. Um, and cause I never want any piece of content that I share to have a single motive.

Starting point is 01:36:09 I've never broken that seal and you know, it's been, it's been so tempting, but I just know if I break it once, I'm never going to get it back. Um, so I, for seven years, I've never been compensated for a piece of content that I've posted on my blog. And that is the main delineation that I make between what can be monetized and what can't. And because of that, like I said, I'm not worrying about peanut butter and sandwiches anymore. But there is a little bit of an insecurity. Am I going to look back in 40 years if everything suddenly goes away and Facebook and Instagram nobody are using anymore? Am I going to be like, oh man, I'm working the night shift now. I had 20 million followers 20 years ago. Maybe I should have tried a little harder to make some money, but that's how I view it now.

Starting point is 01:37:11 Should have done those humans in New York lunch boxes while I had the chance. There you go. So you mentioned the book. I'd like to chat about that for a second because it's been the books at this point, certainly. But at least as I understand the first book so millions of copies certainly more than a million was it easy to find a publisher for that first book no um i i i barely did um the Barely did. The Macmillan, God bless them. So, like, at the time, you know, I think when I sold the book, I had a few hundred thousand Facebook fans, and it was growing so fast. You know, there was so much energy, you know, things were really taking off. And I just thought, oh, my gosh, you know, everybody's going to want to publish this book. And there are six big publishers. I'm sure you know all this or seven or something like that. And the goal is to get all of them interested.

Starting point is 01:38:15 And so – and then in the perfect world, all of them are interested and then they bid against each other, right? And so I – only three of them would meet with me, or four of them maybe. And during those meetings, I thought that I killed it. I thought, oh, man, like, oh, man, I described it so well. I presented so well. They're all going to be very interested. And so we had an auction. And the bids were due by 12 o'clock noon on one day. And it's like at 11 o'clock, I hadn't heard anything from my agent.

Starting point is 01:38:59 And I was just like, well, what's going on? So I texted him and he goes, oh, the first three dropped out. They didn't make an offer. There's still one that we haven't heard from yet. And I'm just like, oh, my God. Because that book was my life raft because I didn't have any money at that time. I was hoping to get a little bit of a book deal so I could pay my bills. And I just remember I went to the YMCA and I just

Starting point is 01:39:25 ran like five miles because I thought it was going to be the worst day of my life. And then when I got on the treadmill, I found out that Macmillan had made a small but respectable offer. And that's how I got a book deal by the skin of my teeth, which I think was lucrative for all parties involved. And what were some of the reasons for not meeting with you or not putting in an offer that they gave? Because there's two types of books that have a history of not selling well. Well, there's a lot of types, but mine fit two categories. It was a photography book. Photography books don't sell based on conventional wisdom. And it was what they viewed as a regional

Starting point is 01:40:13 book, where it is a photography book centered on a single city, therefore nobody's going to want it. That was the argument against publishing humans of New York. Oops. Yeah. Yeah. This is, I, I love these stories because they are the rule and not the exception for so many things that turn into something. Well, things that are not derivative. You know what I mean? Like, in my mind, in my mind, like, the most valuable idea is the one that nobody's ever seen before. Like, that's when you've got the gold.

Starting point is 01:40:54 But you've got a better chance of just choosing something else that's good and making something derivative on it. Because then when you go into these places and you pitch, you can say, oh, this is 50 Shades of Grey, but with furries. I don't know. It's funny that for me as an artist and as a creator, the last thing I ever want to do is be describing my work as it's this, but with a twist. You know what I mean? Like I want to be creating something new. However, in the marketplace, the things that have most likely chance of getting bought are things that people can peg to other past successes. And so when you walk in with something like what I thought was Humans of New York's greatest value, which was there really wasn't anything else like it at the time, they viewed it as a big detriment.

Starting point is 01:41:58 But what are the comparables? You're like, that's the whole point. There aren't any comparables. Right. Comparables. That fucking word. I mean, are you kidding me? I just like – and the same thing when I was making the television series, like the same thing.

Starting point is 01:42:14 It's like as an artist, I want this to be like nothing else that's been – that's like the only thing I care about is making something that's really unlike anything else. Like that, that is, if it's like something else, it's, it's, I don't really want to obsess over it for three years trying to make it. You know, my goal is to, is to make something new and something fresh. And when you're trying to get compensated for your work, you know, the thing that you care about the most as an artist is often the thing that's held against you the most because people are risk averse and they want to see something comparable that has also done well. What's next for you? I mean, if you do you have five year plans, three year plans and so on at this point? Or is it still 24 hours by 24 hours? What's next for you? I do.

Starting point is 01:43:10 I'm having a baby. So that's going to be new. Congratulations. That's a big deal. Thank you. Having a baby in July. So beyond that, which is going to be new, for, the, like for, for me right now, the biggest kind of artistic tension, um, is knowing because of my experience on social media, um, the

Starting point is 01:43:38 past seven years, knowing, knowing how social media works, knowing the importance of output and content and daily content and engagement and things like that, knowing how to build an audience on one hand, and wanting to push myself as an artist on the other hand. And what I really want to do as an artist is I kind of want to withdraw from the daily output model. I want to work on things that have longer timeframes, that are more polished, that are maybe longer but take longer to produce and more resources. But that – in order to do that, that requires me to kind of disappear for a while and, you know, go spend a month filming a documentary on somebody because I love documentaries and I want to make a documentary. That is very interesting. So that might not be what's best for business or best for growing audience or best by social media

Starting point is 01:45:21 metrics, but that is what is exciting to me. And it all comes back to that moment. It's like, I, it's so funny. And I think you're probably the same way is that we have these mantras and these things that we've learned, uh, that we stand on stage and we, and we say, and we, and we think about, you know, don't wait for the perfect idea. You know, it's never going to seem perfect. You just got to go after it, choose, you know, don't wait for the perfect idea. You know, it's never going to seem perfect. You just got to go after it, choose, you know, what is nourishing in the moment, things like that. And if you're like me, like, I have to preach to myself, you know, a lot, you know, and tell myself the same thing that I'm telling other people, because it's so easy to kind of, you know, fall back into what everybody else is struggling with as well, because you never truly escape it. And so, you know, one of the things that I do is, you know, I go back to that moment when I lost my job and I was walking in Chicago and I asked myself, you know, if nothing mattered, but how I was spending my time. You know, what would I be doing?

Starting point is 01:46:28 What would be most nourishing for me in any given moment if it was – if nothing else mattered except for how I spent my time? And, you know, I'm trying to remind myself of that, you know, the same thing I tell other people. And right now I want to go to the Philippines and I want to make a documentary and it might not be best for business and it might not be best for humans of New York, but it's what Brandon wants to do. And so that is, uh, that is the North star that I'm trying to follow. Good for you, man. I'm excited for you to disappear for a little while. that may come off the wrong way but I think you get the sentiment behind it

Starting point is 01:47:09 yeah exactly and I have a random suggestion which is if you have not read Cryptonomicon which is a book by Neil Stevenson who also wrote Snow Crash so Cryptonomicon part of the through line one of the narratives takes place in the philippines so that could be

Starting point is 01:47:33 okay cool that could be fun to pick up but brandon thank you so much for taking the time today this was really a wonderful experience for me and thank you for being vulnerable also. And I'd be telling, filling in some of the color in the, the story of your life thus far. And it's, it's been, it's been really nice to get to know you a little better in this conversation.

Starting point is 01:48:00 Well, thank you so much. Hope, hope some of that's usable. Yeah, I think it is. Is there anything else you would like to ask of people, suggest to people? Any closing comments before we wrap up?

Starting point is 01:48:14 No, I think that's okay. I think that's it. All right, awesome. Well, once again, really appreciate you making the time, particularly how much you think about how you spend your time to chat with me and with everybody today. And for everyone listening, you can, as always, find links to everything that we have spoken about to all of Brandon's projects, as well in the show notes at tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, do what is nourishing for you in the moment, or at least ponder the question. And thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is

Starting point is 01:48:58 five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun for the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #321: Brandon Stanton — The Story of Humans of New York and 25M+ Fans

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.