65: How Millennials are Changing the World

is Taylor Chris. I am the executive producer of The Psychology Podcast, and today I psyched to be guest interviewing my friends and just just a really interesting guy, mister Jared Kleinhardt. Jared and his ripe old age twenty one, has crafted a pretty stellar resume for himself. I'll read a little bit to you now. Jared is an entrepreneur, a ted and keynote speaker, and an award winning author

who's been named USA Today's most Connected millennial. His first book, Two Billion Under twenty, was voted the number one entrepreneurship book of twenty fifteen, and his new book, three Billion Under thirty explores how top performing top performers in the millennial generation have achieved exponential success and impact in record time. He's been featured by almost every major media outlet, including Mashable, Fox, ABC, Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune Fast Company, and others, and the

United Nations has named him a Champion for Humanity. I'll give that a second to sync in. And I've been on the podcast before, so I was on with you. Scott was interviewing me last time. That was a really funny episode. I think we were talking about naked rabbis or something like that. So we maybe have to give a link to that past episode. But you and I we jam well together. So thanks for thanks for having me on again. Most absolutely, dude, this is our pleasure.

I just gave that episode to re listen, by the way, before this one, and I was cracking up the whole time, sitting on Philadelphia sept to Transit cracking up. Or we probably thought I was a little nutty, but I was having a good time. I don't even know if we spoke about anything substantial. I think we just made jokes the entire time. But hopefully I can I can balance a little more this time with you know, super practical info but also some amazing story. Yeah, man, let's dive

into it. You know, first of all, I just got to say, like, good on you for accomplishing a fair amount, having just reached the age of being able to drink a beer. Thank you man. Yeah, it's astounding. In your new book details some similar stories of all of these just impactful individuals are doing wonderful things on an exponential level, all under the age of thirty. Yeah, about thirty thirty two. We snuck a few old people in there, but no,

it's just been a super humbling journey. You know. I've spent probably the last four years identifying, befriending, and sharing the stories of top performers in the millennial generation. And I hate to use the word millennial, but I'll only want to use it for the sake of stereotyping by age in the conversation. I think, if you want to

stereotype anything else, we can stereotype better. But you know, it's just been humbling to bring together everyone ranging from the founder of word Press to two time defending fittest woman in the world Patrine Davis Dodor to a Syrian war refugee, and all this different stories and ideas in between from all these different cultures. Just been a very humbling experience. But it's also you know, I think this book is a lot better than two billion under twenty.

We just really focused on making a world class product with the first book. Everyone was twenty and under a time of sharing their stories, and they were still olympians and still singers and actors and scientists. But with the extra you know, up to ten years in living and building careers and having impact in the world. There's just all these different storylines that are covered. We've parents in

this book. We have people who are married, we have people that have gone through a new election cycle, people that have been victims of a or survivors of a civil war. So just all these more relevant things that have been going on, and you know, I'm just really excited to s the research with it. You know, all the inspiring stories, the practical takeaways from the info, all in one fancy, fancy book. We're excited to hear about it. Man. I got the the reader edition beforehand, which made me

feel very special. Thank you for such a special Oh you're sweet. We like you, We like you. Jay. One of my favorite things about the format of it is that at any moment, if I just need a little kick in the pants or some form of inspiration. I can just open to a random page and get some incredible story of some of the wonderful things their millennials are up to you nowadays, which is a great thing I think for me to get to interview you right now.

At any moments, I can always just say, like, hey, Jared, tell me something really incredible like go but says that a prompt was that, you know what, Let's yeah, let's run with that. How about a prompt. Have you got like maybe one or two of your favorites? I you know, you just mentioned a few about some wonderful athletic achievements and technological But what's one that really resonates with you

or you think might resonate with the audience. So if you want to talk about positive psychology and things like having gratitude and sort of going after your goals in life from a place of positivity, I think the last story in the book is my favorite in that lens, and it comes from a Syrian war refugee. I keep

referencing that vignette, but disease. D'ab was in Syria growing up and all his life he wanted to go to Germany to study at university, and he also wanted to study mechatronics in order to work in aeronautics in that world. And throughout his K through twelve education as we would know it here in university, he kept getting installed by different parts of the war. He eventually to Aleppo for

probably like three to six months to study. That got stopped because the war moved there and he had to leave his family behind and leave the town and the country in very Holocaust like situations, you know, meaning being packed into a truck with you know, fifty other people with a tiny hole to breathe in at the top, and then after that, you know, going on to apparely inflated raft to get you know, to cross the sea, and then going through multiple countries, eventually making it to Germany.

That's where he is now, and he's a refugee there and because of his goal earlier in life, he'd actually started studying the German language and now he's he's one of the people who translates between other Syrian war refugees and the German community there. He's studying in university. He just got into a pretty prestigious school there and is

studying megatronics. But his piece in the book. The book is broken down into five parts Start, Risk, Journey, Learn to Succeed, which I would say are five steps to finding and acting on your passions in life. His story, which is the very last in the succeed chapter and the book therefore, it's just like, if you're breathing, you're successful.

You know, like if you're alive, you're successful. You know, he had to see a lot of death and horror and tragedy, even you know, a soldier shooting his guitar and like saying there's no music allowed here before he left town. So yeah, that just kind of puts it in perspective when you're done reading all these stories and kind of going through the ups and downs of everyone's journeys, and he comes down, he's like, you know what, if

you're breathing, you're successful. I think that's just a really amazing way to end the book and also a great place to come from. You know, really, the obstacles we face on a daily basis are not that bad compared to what some others are going through, and even those people find a way to be grateful for certain things in their life and find a way to contribute and have meaning in what they're doing, so I think we should all be doing the same for the best of

our ability. Well put Wow, it's powerful. Yeah, I almost tear up every time I've emailed the dude understandable. I have a friend who's a mindfulness expert by the name of Corey Mascara, who's actually going to be on the show pretty soon. But he'll start off a lot of his guided meditations just by saying, pay attention to your breathing. And when you stop to appreciate that, just that you're breathing, there's probably a lot more that's right with you than

wrong with you. I think you're so right. We about first world problems nowadays and gets so anxious and and upset to the point of depression over you know, we didn't get that absolute number one maximize new job that we wanted, or you know, the best new iPhone, And it all sounds a little silly if you stop to just think about some of the experiences that people have encountered in human history, and it draws you back to just a place of appreciation and thankfulness for we're sitting

here right now having this conversation. Man, It's like it's a wonderful thing. Yeah. And another story that comes to mind as far as the practical application of mindfulness and that sort of stuff, is of Katrine Davis Stoter, who's the two time fittest woman in the world winner of the CrossFit Games, which is what gives her that title. And she grew up trying out multiple sports. She was a big gymnast soccer player, but she never really found

her athletic calling until she tried to CrossFit. And she grew up in Iceland where the sport is huge and kind of their original hero who is now her current training partners like Annie thorist Oder who had won the Games a few times. And you know, Kasheene starts practicing CrossFit.

Within a year or two of getting into the sport, she already was making regionals for CrossFit, which is sort of the competition before the big Games that happens in California every year, and she training for that regional event.

She was crushing it on all these different parts of the sport because there's all these different exercises you have to do, and like that, it's a compilation of your scores and all that that allows you to rank and move forward, right there was this like rope climb that she kept writing because she wasn't that great at it, and so she built it up in her mind that

she was fearful of this rope climb and whatnot. And turns out when she gets into regionals that year, probably in twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen, she got on the rope climb, got one of them done out of maybe six or seven, and then completely broke down and what like, was leading the pack and she just starts crying in the middle of her competition and could not regain composure, and she ended up not making it to the national

or international stage. And you know, after that kind of mental breakdown, she had it in her mind that she was going to really invest in not only becoming the best athlete, but also conquering her own mental gym, and so she brought on a coach. She really worked on affirmations and looking ahead into the future and kind of picturing what it would be like to be successful. A lot of the stuff that you guys to teach a patent,

I would imagine. And the next two years she was you know, she won not only regionals but also the international competition. So it just goes to show you, you know, what the power of that sort of mindfulness is. You know, it could take you from if you're an athlete, you know, your your regional, your local level, to potentially winning a

championship at the highest level of your sport. Maybe in business, it might allow you to add a zero or two zeros behind the value of your company or the paycheck you're getting. It might allow you to survive a terrible, you know, experience like a civil war, or there's people in the book who have been survivors of rape and sexual assault and cancer. But yeah, I think Katrine's story is really interesting about that mental toughness and how she

really applied that that mindfulness to her everyday practice. You know. The thing that popped up, I think most often just the way that I was reading the book was just the use of strengths human virtues, that which is best in us, kindness, creativity, persistence. You know, every one of these people is really a paragon on some level. And the demonstration of something amazing that humans can do in

that way, it's incredibly inspiring. It motivated me to like get out and do some things I've been fearing myself, but like what so I forget her crying. Yes, you know, public speaking, And it's very funny that we're actually kind of doing this right now. I guess there's always something that absolutely terrified me, and I know that's actually fairly common.

I think public speaking from some surveys has been shown to be right up there with some of the more horrifying things that you can think of, Like I wish I could remember something else on the list, but they're akin to like kind of attacked by a shark. Yeah, like hyping, Yeah, another big one. Yeah. She was a performer in competitive spelling piece. Yeah, does this ring a bell? I mean there's seventy five of them. That's harder. There

we go. Yeah that sounds right. Yeah yeah. Listening to the way that she was able to conquer, I mean she literally had an anxiety attack on the stage from when I remember like she could barely need to let alone spell the word, the spasm that she messed up. Really, that seems apps somehow, you know, you read this and it's basically a self efficacy boost. You see that other people can conquer their fears, that they can achieve incredible things.

I found it especially heartening that someone who could reach such a high level experienced that kind of dread and anxiety, because I think a lot of the time we think people like Richard Branson or Steve Jobs just sort of I wouldn't say floated through life. Obviously they worked very hard, but they were born with some innate talent or some ability that the rest of us mere mortals just don't possess. Kind of thing. So there's actually a story in the book.

It kicks off one of the sections. I believe it's learn or I think it's the Learned section where Jack Deloso is one of the biggest entrepreneurs and thought leaders

and coaches for other entrepreneurs in Australia. He got to go to Necker Island during the same week that virgin lost one of their pilots in like a test exercise or in a scheduled launch, and so he got to see Richard Branson at his lowest point and having to deal with global press attacking him and calling for resignation or closing the company and all that sort of stuff.

And that's the entirety of his piece in three Billion Under thirty Jacks pieces that you know, these people, these rates in history are just like us, and a lot of times they you know, if you study them on a day to day basis, or if you study them from their origins, you know, they still have a lot of the same problems or issues or challenges that we do. And it is really interesting to know that, you know that they aren't these perfect figurines or they're not to

be put on a pedestal. They're just really good at finding their strengths and then acting on that wholeheartedly. Oh yeah, that one stuck out in my mind. Actually, I remember it was. It was just funny to hear that you walked out and found him on the beach, like sitting in his board shorts, you know, just looking kind of upset like any other person you didn't know is Richard Branson. Yeah, by himself like staring into the abyss. Yeah. Huge self

efficacy boost. Yeah, And I think that's you know, one of the big things with everyone in the book is that they do have this growth mindset about their work and about the impact that they want to have in the world, about what accomplishments that are chasing, because everyone's

chasing something different. You know, someone listening to this might want to become an author themselves, or speak publicly and build a career there, or run a nonprofit and give it back to a certain cause, or have or build a business, or do something else, maybe become an entrepreneur.

But a lot of the takeaways in the book they all stem around these seventy five outliers and how they've been able to accomplish more in their world in six months or a year or three years than most people in previous generations were able to do in entire lifetimes. And so I think that's the big takeaway from the book.

You know, regardless of your age, regardless of the industry let you operate in, you know, this could give you some mindsets to use, some tips as to how to achieve that exponential impact, and a lot you know that could be growth, the benefits of a growth mindset. You could say, what a growth growth mindset can allow you to do. So it definitely ties into a lot of that.

The books are cornycopia that way. So you just used the term a moment ago that I just I had never heard before, And I'm sort of fascinated by what is an interpreneur someone who applies entrepreneurial tendencies to like within another organization. And so I believe that millennials, if you want to keep stereotyping, I actually hate staring stereotyping like that. But it is shown that like millennials are the most entrepreneurial generation yet, although that isn't necessarily in

the form of business ownership or creation. And so these entrepreneurial tendencies a lot of times are taken with someone into another organization. So you're like, a, you're an entrepreneur within this podcast, and yeah, you're you're one of the

people that put it together. But you know, as you're going day to day, like you're applying entrepreneurial tendencies to your work or even in your your studies, you know, you could possess entrepreneurial tendencies such as you know, resourcefulness or future planning or you know, risk assessment, like all the things that make entrepreneurs great. If you apply it within another organization, I would deem it as entrepreneurial. I love the term. I'm gonna add it to my business card.

I think, yeah, yeah, so I'm gonna have trouble with this name right now, but I think I remember a person in particular. This all really applies to is Nim Disswart. Yeah, I'm speaking with her after this call. Actually really funny man serendipity. Yeah, I remember she was talking about basically bringing entrepreneurial tendencies into working with several different companies, but

Bacardi in particular. Yeah, yep. She's the Global Millennials Manager at McCarty and she works directly under the CEO there, who's Michael Dolan, I believe, and her job is twofold. Internally, her job is to better retain and engage millennials and help the company do that across the board. And so she's been starting with a select group of rising stars within McCarty where every year they're selecting, you know, thirty or forty millennials from across the world who work at

McCarty to be a part of this program. And then from there, you know, she wants to coach them and make them, you know, amazing entrepreneurs and then have them go back to their markets and provide the same training resources inspiration to their colleagues. So she is on a mission to help baccarty as an organization better retain and

engage their young talent. But then externally she's also working with futurists and working with the leaders and psychologists and all that to figure out where the market is going. You know, from an external standpoint, where are their customers going to come from in the future, What are they going to want, What problems are they going to have that McCarty might be able to help solve, hopefully through

responsible drinking. But that's her, that's her gig. It's it's pretty cool, And I purposely chose to include entrepreneurs as well. I didn't just want to have an entrepreneurial party with all these different founders. I wanted to also showcase people in the corporate world, people and athletics, people in worlds you would never even think existed, Right, Yeah, I think that there's some you know, at least thirty stories that any person can really find it would resonate with them.

That one resonated with me. In particular, I had mentioned strengths a second ago. She had said something to the effect of that, like every person kind of has their own secret sauce, and she said that she's got these secret weapons that she likes to apply, which were positivity, patience, persuasion, and authenticity, and as a positive psychology type that really

gets me geeked out about it. Well, you know, so I actually do some coaching also, and strengths work is wonderful just because a lot of us are spending so much time trying to fix what's wrong with us, you know, like I were just better at this, if I were just better at that. But a strengths approach, we move from what's wrong to what's strong. Wow, yeah, right, it might belong to someone. Maybe I have to pay some royalties out for having set it out right. It's a

wonderful thing. I mean, you can do. You can do so much good work here, and there have been some studies from like Tom Wrath and people who do positive organizational scholarship showing that actually coming from a place of strength, like working more on what you're already really good at, is oftentimes a better way to be more effective than

always trying to fix what's wrong. And it's also it just feels better, you know, it's exciting to talk about what we're good at and what we value in ourselves and others. A huge thing that I really enjoyed about your book, And I'd be curious if you picked up on any strengths in particular that seemed to be super prevalent with all of these people. Are there maybe some strengths that kick more planet? Yeah, well, I would say

the first is curiosity slash creativity. So all these people looked at whatever institutions they had to face, you know, whether it was a traditional model of doing business in a certain field or just like you know, traditional career paths or traditional ways of doing politics, or like any sort of institution traditional way of thinking, and they stepped out of that for a second, and they didn't like burn the I mean, some of them burn the ships

behind them as they were trying out new experiments and stuff. But a lot of them sort of set up these like low cost or low time intensive ways to test their ideas and their new inventions or new ways of doing business. And so an example is you know WordPress, if we want to keep going back to the ones I originally you know mentioned at the beginning of our chat. You know, they had this way of thinking where they were going to make open sourced software instead of what

everyone else was doing, which was closed software. And closed software is like Apple, you know, they are able to control the terms of conditions if you want to use their stuff. You have to sign away your life or whatever. The terms of conditions say that none of us read and you can't duplicate that software. You can't turn around and sell it, you can't rename it, you can't modify it, all that fun stuff. With open source, you can, by the rules of how open source works, copy something and

call it your own. You can sell that new invention, you could modify it, all that fun stuff. And so at a time when all the content management softwares were predominantly closed systems, Matt decided to actually build upon a pre existing open sourced platform and make it better, call it WordPress, and then exponentiate that. And so that was

just a different way of thinking. I mean, he put a lot of time into it, but on a grand scale of things, it is maybe only three to six months of plugging away behind a screen to test his idea. And some people. There's a snapchat influencer in the book. Her name is syreene Q. She was actually working at Horizon and building her following on Snapchat. So she didn't actually leave what was traditional until she knew that her

you know, creative output was working. But all these people found ways to test a new idea and kind of put themselves in a place where they could have exponential rise. Because if you're in the traditional model, like there are probably some outlets or ways you can have an exponential rise to success or to impact, but it's gonna be a lot harder than if you reinvent and you create a brand new industry or a brand new way of

doing things. And so all these people sort of had the creativity to step out into the world and try something new, and I would I would suggest this to anyone, but do it in a way that's a low cost and low time sort of thing, so that you can see if it's gonna work or not, and if it's not going to work, then be able to replicate that process until you find something that is working. So creativity slash curiosity, it's like a big one, you know in

the middle. I would say, what's the one that's closest to collaboration? Is that like a social intelligence sort of thing? Yeah, probably social intelligence, so's I mean, you know, one could argue that they are not infinite or probably some kind of finite them out. But there are many human virtues, the ones that are studied by like the values in action organization. There's twenty four of them, but I think, yeah, social intelligence sounds like it would ring most closely to that. Yeah,

so I want to get towards collaboration. That's kind of where I'm trending. But a lot of you know, most people in the book, and kind of the second step I would say to having exponential success and impact, the first of which being a step outside the ordinary system and set yourself up for success. The second is to

out collaborate the competition. And so a lot of the examples that you see in three Billion under thirty and in this research found ways to collaborate in a world where you know, our parents, our grandparents were all about these capitalistic ideals and really kind of getting your own rather than collaborating, which I think today and a lot of our peers would agree that you can collaborate and get ahead faster and rather than just get your own.

And so a lot of these people agree and they've really applied it, whether it's you know, social media influencers doing collabs with other social media influencers to grow their following quickly, or setting up media platforms that have contributor networks like we have. The co founder of Elite daily feature of the book, and they were one of the first to have a contributor network, or you know, Mogul does that now, which is another media platform geared towards women.

You know, there's all these different examples of setting up collaborative environments and actually making that a strength of yours. And you know, I used it to make this book. We had probably we had over one hundred people like touch this book, whether it was someone like who spent a lot of money and a lot of time to make it, or a team member of mine who spent maybe less amount of time, but it's still a very

big amount of time. You have the contributors who gave us three to five pages of their own writing and or at the very least topped on a thirty minute interview for us to transcribe their words into their own writing. And then you have people like Scott actually, who I emailed and asked for introductions to the most admirable twenty

somethings out there. So I had people like Scott Seth Godin, Tony Shah, James Altacher, all you know, in three second responses point me into the direction of you know, admirable young people I should be identifying, and so at the end of the day, you had like one hundred plus people touch the project, and that makes for a much more powerful and interesting book, I would think than an author who just sat there by themselves with a computer

and didn't bring anyone else into that creative process. So we're you know, I've been eating my own dog food throughout the whole research process. I can dig that even going back to the first step. You know, there's a traditional publishing world that I stepped out of. The first book we did was traditionally published with a big publisher in New York, and then we decided to set up a new company for the launch of this book and

did that for a gazillion reasons. It would take me over an hour to just like walk you through the entire thought process. But I made that decision because if it doesn't work for some reason, I can always go back to the traditional publishing world with future books, or you know, go to traditional media outlets and try and

share message that way. But if it does work, I'm going to financial financially incentivize myself over time to share this research further, which is a win for me financially, it's a win for our organization and build an audience. It's a win for our contributors and getting their message out to the world further and getting more readers involved in this idea. You know, it's just a win and win for everyone. So that was kind of our you know, step away from a traditional system to even set us

up for exponential success. And then we've collab we've out collaborated our competition by researching in the way we have. But I would say those are the first two steps if you want to have this sort of exponential impact in your own world. I think that's one of the really admirable things about the human species is that we're tribal creatures and we can collaborate to achieve something that's

that's greater than any of us could do alone. And there's a lot in the book about how to network in a way that's honest and authentic and draws kind of like substances together and combines energies and creates forward momentum into creating actual movements. It really starts to get work done across the globe. We're talking about individuals affecting millions of people across just about every country on the planet,

especially given technology and globalization. It's a wonderful thing to behold. Yeah, and for episode number two and seventy three, you know, we're going to be talking about how all the humans work together to fight off aliens and that that uber collaboration. Amen, Sir Hashtago. Nice. So you know, I have a list of topics here and we could basically go on forever, because it's a joy to talk to you, and there's so much to chat about, you know, in terms of

research and just the wonderful stories in the book. But we're millennials, and we're talking about a lot of wonderful millennials here. But sometimes millennials get a bad rap. There's a lot of talk nowadays about how we are lazy and titled that we like social skills. I could go on, I guess I would ask, what are some strengths that you think we can build on? Yeah, there are some things that we could use some work in, you know.

So I that's that's sort of why I was saying, I hate using the word millennial, and I only want to stereotype by age for that conversation. But when people are you know, bashing millennials, I don't think they're necessarily bashing every single human age eighteen to thirty four. I think they're bashing you know, people in that age range, but within a certain industry or within a certain set

of life experiences. You know, maybe middle class, the affluent young people who have college paid for maybe you know, or or have access to universities in the first place, and come from well to do families who aren't performing as their parents or grandparents have yet. You know, maybe that's like a better you know, stereotype or segmentation of our age. So that's I just stopped answering those sort of questions when it comes to like, oh, millennials are lateizy, entitled, narcissistic.

You know. That's why I push this research towards more age agnostic and industry agnostic takeaways. But you know, as far as trends that they've seen among at least educated or you know, at least like K through twelve educated young people in the leading countries of the world, or you know, in first world countries, maybe even second world is that and the third world is like, we just

have a very entrepreneurial cack about us. And part of that is because the world is increasingly unpredictable, and in order to survive and to move further, we're going to have to have resourcefulness and sort of a assess risk and all that. But that could be applied, you know, as as an entrepreneur in organizations and can really change how the corporate world works. That could also be applied to how our political system works. That could be applied

to our education system and really reshaping that. I think our generation has that entrepreneurial kick that's really going to both have to and be forced to solve big, pressing problems in society, and so I think that's something we could build on. We also have the ability to leverage technology on like ever before, and not only like the ability to do that, which you know, in fairness to previous generations, we just simply haven't had the tools that

we have now. And you know, the generation after us will have tools like we never imagine. So there's always increasing leverage and possibly increasing in exponential fashion. Historically, I don't think it'll slow down anytime soon. But we also have the awareness of how to use those tools that most generations don't. And so yeah, you can find a fifty five year old senior vice president who knows how to use social media to share messages just like an

eighteen year old. But on average, you'd probably the younger generations know how to leverage the technology better. And so these are the sort of the things we bring to the table when we're talking about how to solve problems, whether it's in a job or at home or anywhere. I don't think we should bash older generations either. I think, you know, if you want to talk with the strengths

they bring to the table. They bring an amazing adaptability to the table, like they've had to reinvent themselves over and over and over and over and over again and learn how to use all these new technological tools that they didn't have ten years ago, twenty years ago, you know, thirty years ago when they were really starting to build their personality and skill set and all that. So we got to tip our hat to them to be able

to adapt the way they have. And also, you know, a lot of older generations are really good at processes and scaling, scaling different ideas because think about all the different institutions we have, these gigantic companies, these amazing schools, uh, you know, nonprofits, our government or governments in general, Like, all these different gigantic systems were really built without the technology we have today, and so to do it in a way that was sustainable and to do it in

a way that made sense really took some some systems. And so the fact that these older generations were the ones who engineered those systems, I think speaks a lot to their ability to scale the good ideas or to to scale ideas, you know, whether or not you think they're good or bad. And so now you start bringing everyone to the table, you're like, Okay, you guys got these this entrepreneurial tendency to kind of look at the world and which we live and find new solutions to

problems that maybe the older generations haven't. You have, you know, the ability to implement technologies that we haven't thought of leveraging before or creating those technologies. And then you have the people that might be able to scale those new solutions and also help us adapt the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things, or push back against maybe two idealistic thinking that sounds good at first, but it may not work in our current

real world. And so I just think that's a much better way of approaching problems than like, you know, intergenerational bashing as a whole, like that gets nothing done. Hey, you are a collaborator, aren't you, Jared. It's a great strength. That's that's my big strength. That's like, that's my only strength.

I think you get tons you're chalk full of a friends to of course, but no, that's that's definitely my superpowers is bringing together different people and ideas together to accomplish these sort of bigger amplifications for society, these different systems, etc. That's sort of my go to. We're grateful for it. To use another strength. Bam. Well, so I had at least one more topic I wanted to gloss over, and it's one that is near and dear to my heart.

I am especially invested in trying to help college students younger people deal with a existential crisis that's become prevalent in our modern world. Of all of the stories that I read in your book, it didn't really seem like many of them like, oh, I just sort of accidentally did this incredible thing. You know, I don't know I was that into it. It just sort of happened. Blah.

They're very passionate about what they're doing. They have an overarching, long term goal that's important to their identity, with some contribution they want to make to the world. They have a purpose, they have meaning, And I've seen countless studies right now, actually wrote about it for my thesis. The researchers like Nathan Muscaro and David Rosen, William Damon, They've positive that there's a great deal of suffering that comes from the lack of direction and aimlessness that seems to

be prevalent in college students nowadays. And you're a curious type, and I think you're fascinated by people, and I'm sure you've spoken to tons of college students in that sort of place, and I know I have myself where they're just like, I want to know what I should do with my life, and I have no idea. I don't know where to start, and it causes a lot of stress.

You can really see it. So I'm wondering if there was some advice that you'd gleaned from hearing from all of these incredible people and how they found their purpose or their personal meaning. Yeah, if you had any to hand over that we could do a lot of good Bye talking about that. Sure, so you guys are know more of the hardcore research on it and maybe the systemic ways to change this. But from an individual basis, I normally suggest using a practice or an idea called

the zone of genius. I think we were talking about this when we originally met a few years ago, and you guys, you know, at pen we're finding this pretty interesting. But I would think of and if you have paper and pen, you know, pull it out and do this with us. But think of making three circles in a ven diagram. In one of them you have your passions. And so I would just start listing out, you know,

things you're really excited about or interested in. I'll get to like what to do if you don't know about what you're passionate about in a second. But in the second bubble I would put your skills. You know, so what you think you're you're good at, or what you're objectively good at. And then in the third I would put like what the market values or what problems are out there that you need that you see needs solving

things like that. You know it's from a more capitalistic stamp would be like, you know, market opportunities at the center. That is your zone of genius, or an articulation of a specific strength or skill that you can apply to a lot of different things and possibly find a purpose for yourself. So I actually just articulated mine a second ago when I said that I bring people and ideas to you know, together to accomplish bigger things for society.

Like that is that is literally the zone of genius that I pulled out of this exercise back when I did it at seventeen with a with a mentor of mine who taught me this. And so it's really powerful because once you know that you can apply it to working with others, you can apply it to your own skill sets and your own learning journey. You kind of have a strength of mind and how you know, then you can find places on where to apply that strength and find out a purpose for doing so. So I

think it's a really powerful exercise. And if you don't know what you're passionate about, then I suggest going back to that first step I was mentioning maybe twenty minutes ago of experimentation and just try a bunch of things out.

So if you've ever like you know, for me, I'm a huge basketball fan, like I would like maybe figure out different experiments in the basketball world to try out, like either shadowing a coach around for a day, or going to play around with the stats for NBA games and figuring out like a career path that lines up with that, or otherwise just finding like short experiments that you can run without a ton of investment of time or capital to see if you're actually interested in those

things for skills. I would There's a few books out there and resources. One is The Strings Finders two point oh. I would take that. I would take that's great. I would take a call the A Index. Kathy Colby's made that. And then there's a book called unique Ability that I

would read. But in unique Ability, it pretty much, you know, comes down to like asking some peers of yours, some friends, mentors, et cetera, to like pair it back what they think you're really good at, because maybe you're blind to what you're good at, or you like you keep your room clean, but you don't necessarily consider that organizational ability as a skill. But if you ask others and you know, twenty people

get back to you, intend say the same thing. That's something to look into, you know further and kind of dive deeper into but between Colby as Strengths Finders and unique Ability as a book which states that little practice of asking others, like I think you'll find more skills if you don't know what you're really good at already. And then as far as market values, just look all around you and find problems in your munity, find problems in society or in our economy. If you're in a

particular industry, go find some holes there. You can also kind of look at objectively, you know what opportunities present the most upside, whether it's like VR in that industry, or artificial intelligence, or you know, maybe there's in a nonprofit world certain causes that should be getting more you know, finances allocated to them, or should be getting more attention. But aren't you know that's kind of where all your

market opportunities would got. That's probably the easiest to look at and then look at look in the middle, find some sort of one or two sentence z energy needs you can take out of it and start focusing on that, and it could change. You can always go back and do this exercise again, and you should, you know, over time. But I found that to be a really powerful way to figure out what it is I should really be spending my time on and what sort of purpose I

should have moving forward. That's lovely. I remember you'd written a bit about that in your conclusion, and hey, man, the research bacsia diving really deep into this topic, I came across something very similar. I mean, even if people wanted to pick up a book called Are You Fully Charged? By Tom Rath, he has a picture of event diagram that's basically what are you interested in? What are your strengths,

and what is it that the world needs? Because essentially that puts together something that would excite you because you know, even if you're good at something in the world needs it.

I don't feel like you should suffer personally just drudging through life your strengths because you want to play towards an area where you could probably do the most good personally with your own your unique setup and then contributing to the world is listed over and over again in the research is one of the most highly you know, greatest way to find a sense of meaning in life.

And another thing I think that you were saying that is ridiculously important and is going to help a lot of people in that state definitely helped me is just to act, to start doing. I think that there's a tendency when we're talking about something so high flutent as like meaning in life or purpose, you want to just sort of sit in an armchair and like think your way onto the truth, work top to bottom, and like have the answer so that then you can go out

and achieve that. But the research shows that that's really not how people find their purpose in life or engage in a kind of job crafting. Instead, it's more bottom up, where you go out and you try a wide range of different things with an open exploratory mindset, and you start piecing together like, oh, well, you know, I like to write that's interesting to me, and yeah, like the three sixty interviewing, maybe some people say like, hey, man,

I think you're a good writer. So now you're starting to get onto what you like and what you're good at, and maybe you have an interest in positive psychology also, And it turns out great need for positive psychology in the world, And at that point you've found something to

at least go experiment with. As you were saying, you know, get out and start writing spartacles, try and get better at it, see if it does some good, and see how it feels overall, and you might just find that elusive thing we're all looking for, which is a calling in life and the sense of meaning and purpose. Yeah, well said, Oh thanks, Hey, all right, very cool, Jared, trying to be mindful of your time. If there's any last words that you'd like to apart, or you know

something that you'd wanted to promote, please feel free holler. Yeah. So I think you're gonna put up the book at the psychology dot com or the Psychology podcast dot com slash Jared, is that where you're putting at? That's exactly right. Yeah, we're going to try and set it up there the check it out. It just came out. I'm really pumped about it. We spend a lot of time, energy, the dolphness making it for you. So I would say go

check that out. Please the copy if you're so inclined, and you know, if you found anything interesting, valuable, or there's any questions remaining, feel free to email me Jared at three billion under thirty dot com. I actually didn't give you the third step to like achieving exponential impact, so I just want to touch them that super quickly. But the first is like getting out of the traditional system,

and the second was out collaborating your competition. The third is to actually build your own distribution network for your ideas. So build up your social media following, build up an email list, build up a blog that you can share ideals with, or just build up some sort of influence in your community or wherever you are your industry, because then you don't have to rely on other people to actually share your strengths and to share your impact with

the world. It's becoming both increasingly easier to do and increasingly more meaning to do, because I would say distribution

is becoming democratized. You know, it used to be where we had to go to a major pillar like a news channel to get information, but then like the Internet happened and now everyone can have a certain level of influence at a micro level or even at a macro level if you piece together enough of them, so that actually gives you more leverage to both run more experiments and collaborate with more people, because if you know, the biggest social media stars are doing collabs, the other big

social media stars are you know. Podcast guest wants to interview another or podcast host wants to interview another podcast host and share ideas with their audiences. So there's a lot of power that comes with building your own distribution, and it'd be a shame for all your hard work to not get out to the world. So there's your one, two, three just to complete it. But other than that, you know, check out the book. Email me with any questions, comments, feedback.

I would love to hear from you and know that any of this was well received or not well received. And that's just share it at three billion under three dot com. Book again for Taylor is going to put it up at the Psychology dot The Psychology podcast dot com slash Jared right on. For my part as the executive producer, I should say that we are going to post a link. We're trying to get some quick surveys about our demographics to hone our craft and improve the

show for everybody. We'll have that on the podcast notes. It takes ten seconds and it asks your email address, but you don't even need to put that in there. It would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance, Jared. It has been magical talking to you man, always a pleasure. Oh wow, I mean, it's just true. I get positively energized chat with you. That's a good thing. Yeah, I pix so cool. Well, I mean you know, I'll probably talk to you tomorrow and have a good day. Yeah,

thank you for this. I really appreciate it. Always do well, Jared. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with Doctor Scott Barry Kaufman. I hope you found this out episode just as thought provooking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or here past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com