Jon Levy || The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence

You're Invited, The Art and Science of Cultivating Influence. John. So great to chat with you today, Scott. This is such a treat. This has been like a year in the making. I'm so excited to be here and we're gonna have a ton of fun. So where should we start today? Oh boy, it's a good question. How about we start with a little bit about you, you know, curious in your own sort of journey here, because you know, how does one get in such interest in this topic influence.

I believe around age twenty eight is kind of a point in where you were starting to get super super interested in this topic and the research around it. Right, So I was I think I was the stereotype for not living up to their potential. It was so ridiculous. I was insanely in debt from college. I was overweight, I wasn't dating very much. I felt like I was kind of, you know, not having the life I wanted. I felt like I had a lot of potential, but none of it was being realized. And I came across

a study by these two guys, Christacus and Fowler. They were curious about the obesity epidemic. They were curious, does obesity spread from person to person like a cold or is it a percentage of the population like Alzheimer's And what they found was absolutely startling. It turns out that if I have a friend who's obese, my chances increase by forty five percent. My friends who don't know them have a twenty percent increased chance of obesity, and their

friends have a five percent increased chance. So we have an effect three degrees out or anything from happiness, marriage and divorce, rates, smoking habits, voting habits. Literally, our life is heavily influenced several degrees out by people we don't even know exist because of the decisions that they make. And so I wanted to figure out, Okay, if that's the case, how do I surround myself with the people or the best at what they do, the ones that

can have the biggest impact on the things I care about. Yeah, that was really ie opening reading your book and learning about just how much the people around us really can help us influence our own goals, but how much networks can help to make the world a better place. So I really was quite eye opening about that. So you're around twenty eight twenty nine and you decide to start this thing that you called the Influencers Dinner, right, but it it's an interesting twist. Can you kind of tell

our listeners all about the rules of this dinner. It's kind of a little bit different. So I wanted to figure out how to connect with these highly influential people, and I realized I needed to do something completely out of the ordinary or they would never notice me. So I invite twelve people at a time, but they're not allowed to talk about what they do or even give their last name. They cook dinner together, and then when we sit down to eat, we play a ridiculous game.

We try to guess what people do professionally, and then we find out we're sitting with bell laureates, olympians, editors in chiefs, celebrities, Grammy Award winning musicians. I've hosted over two thousand people, ranging from like the world's foremost expert on infectious diseases, to members of royalty and even the voice of the dog from Who Let the Dogs Out?

Who want to Grammy for the song? Like just ridiculous people, right, And it's grown into by the largest community of its type in the world, over two thousand members, two hundred and twenty seven dinners, ten cities in three countries. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of silly. Sounds pretty awesome. Not silly, it sounds awesome. And you know this idea, you know what it's turned into. It seems like it's a little bit different than what it arisally started to. Your original goal

wasn't necessarily to like change the world. It was to bring together awesome people, is what you say in your book. Yeah, it's I figured that. You know, I didn't want to be a networker. When you look at the research on networking, people absolutely hate it. I mean, it's just miserable. It makes us feel dirty. But I realized doesn't make us feel dirty is making friends and being a part of a community. So I figured if I could get these people not just to connect with me, but with each other.

Their lives would improve and so would mine in the process. So that always was my focus. It's not just about knowing somebody, but for them to know people that I know, and as many of them as possible, so that everybody's better off. Yeah, so they were. This is very interesting because the word influence cannotes something different to me than

the word connection. Yet your book really is about meaningful connections, and so it's kind of you're kind of reframing the whole idea of influence, because I have to be honest, the word influence itself makes me cringe. Before I met you, it made me cringe, and you've kind of changed what it means, what it could mean. But usually you know, before I met John Wedde, the idea of influence to me is is not something that really stood with my own values in the sense it felt like a manipulation

in some sense. It felt like a sort of tied more or the need for power and control than the need and than the need for meaningful, authentic connection. Can you tell me how you're seeing the relationship between influence and meaningful connection be really quite intimate with each other. So it's interesting. I when I first started looking at this stuff, there was no use of the word of

influence in our culture. And Robert Sheldein, he had written a great book about it, but nobody discussed it back in two thousand and eight. It wasn't until Instagram became popular that we started using this term influencer. And it's rather unfortunate because influence is the ability to have an impact or effect on a person or an outcome. Now that's really different from power. Power is using force, it's cajoling, manipulation, threats. Right, the type of stuff that was very accurate to human

history less important. Now when there's open communication, influence is something we opt in for. It's because I'm your friend and enjoy spending time with you. I'll have an open conversation with you, and in that conversation you'll put out ideas or suggestions and that will influence me, that will potentially guide my thinking. It doesn't guarantee anything because you're

not using force. So my general premise is that our influence, our ability to create an impact, to affect the things we care about, is a byproduct of who we're connected to. Because it's near impossible to impact people we don't know how much they trust us, because the reason that you have influence on me is because I trust you. If I didn't trust you, that I wouldn't listen to a thing you said. And then if we're both part of the same community, if we experienced a sense of belonging,

that influence is expanded dramatically. And the reason for that is that if we're part of the same community and you have an idea, then that will not only reach me, but it will reach your friends, and if we share the same friends, it'll reach me again. So it begins to reach these critical masses. So by being part of a community or having a sense of belonging, our influence is expanded. Right, there's more reach and sustainability to these ideas.

So I'll be honest, I probably should have used a different subtitle for my book, but yeah, but the point still remains that we all really care about influence. I would say for the most part in this stage in our culture, we avoid trying to use manipulation or power or force. And unfortunately the word influence has gotten a negative connotation in certain circles. Yeah, I mean, it's a good thing to have positive influence on the world people. I mean, people really want to make an impact as

much as they want to have connections with others. If you can have both needs satisfied in a synergenistic way, then all the better. All the better for humanity and for yourself, you know, right. I think one of the big things right now is that people's ability to influence their own lives has probably reduced a lot, in the sense that you know, in nineteen eighty five, the average

American had three friends besides family. By two thousand and four, just nineteen years later, the average American had just about two friends. Now, that's pretty crazy, losing fifty percent of your close social times as a country. Yeah, And what really worries me about this is that we like to blame social media, but I think the culprit is people moving for work and after school, because when you relocate, you reset your social ties. If you've ever have you

ever moved? Yes, this where I am right now was an unexpected move. All right? So where are you, California? I moved from New York and so my hunches. I mean, you may have already had a bunch of friends in California ahead of time, and that's why you move there, but for the most part, you probably have a lot of social ties in New York and then when you reset your location, you're kind of beginning from scratch level.

It felt only for sure. And so if that's the kind of experience that you you have, and people are staying less and less time at companies and moving more and more often, then it suggests that we're going to end up lonelier and more isolated. Now, my concern with that is that if you look at the research on human longevity, it's not like eating lots of kale and doing yoga that will predict your life expectancy after your genetics. Number two is strong social ties, right, the thing that

we just saw has reduced dramatically for Americans. And number one is social integration, this idea of being part of a community or having a sense of belonging. And so what really worries me is that loneliness is on par with smoking a packa day of cigarettes in terms of its health impact. We are lonelier than ever, especially due

to this pandemic. We're more isolated. And when we talk about influencing our life, whether that's having healthy habits, exercising, pushing our career in the direction that we want whatever it is. That means that we are having less and

less influence over the things that we care about. Absolutely, And I really like this connection you make between influence and building trust quickly, Now, I assume you mean building trust in not manufacturing trust, but building authentic trust, giving a person a real reason to trust, not not like sales shark salesman kind of trust. So I'd argue that the way that we relate to like used car salesmen, right, which are like every so often people do studies to

rank what's most and least trusted. H And I would agree. I think it's like car salesmen are near the bottom of the list. Yeah, And so I think the question is why. And when you look at research on trust, there's this kind of funny thing that happens. So if I ask you, okay, that's the most important aspect of

a relationship, always that everybody says trust. And then you ask a person great, what is trust and they're like, well, it's I don't know that you'll risk something, and like eventually they get to this idea that you're willing to be vulnerable, right. Vulnerability means that you're at risk of something. I say, great, Then what is trust made out of? And no one can ever tell me, but researchers have been able to tease out that it's mostly gree It's

made out of three things. The first is competence, your ability to do something. The second is honesty or integrity, you're truthful, and then the third is benevolence. You have my best interests at heart. Now, what's really weird is that, yes, those are three critical pillars, but they're not all equally valued. So if I hear that you had an interview and the interview just bombed, do I go, oh, Scott's like,

I can't trust him, he's incompetent. No, I say, like, he probably got his second COVID shot and was tired, and you know, we all have an off day and the next interview is going to be great. So a slip up in competence not such a big deal. But here's a question for you. If you find out that somebody lied to you, would you say, oh, that was a one off or would you begin to doubt everything

that they have said or things that they say moving forward? Yeah? Right, I mean that would that starts to cast a bit of a shadow. Right. Yeah, so like a breach in honesty is a big deal, much bigger than a breach and competence. But here's a really weird loophole. So the two of us are hanging out. We're apparently in California now where you're living, and we're walking down the street and I say, hey, do you mind if we stop my friend's house. I want to pick something up real quick.

You go, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem. So we we walk to my friend's house. We walk in, and forty of your closest friends jump out in scream surprise, and we celebrate your birthday. It would be very, very strange if you've turned to me and said, John, you just lied to me. We can't friends anymore. Yeah. Yeah, it's a really good point. There's a sort of well intention certainly matters, And so that's because we value benevolence. I misled you for your best interests at heart, right, I

value that above honesty and honesty above competence. So this kind of now points to the car salesman problems. Right, Because I trust a nurse because I believe she's benevolent. She didn't go into the practice of medicine to make a payday. Right, you don't deal with people who are that grumpy, upset and ill hopefully unless you care about them. Right, your benevolent You believe that the nurse is honest. There's also a whole lot of checks and balances in there

to make sure that they remain truthful. Right, and then as far as competence, there's minimum requirements and all that, and so we feel that they fulfill all three characteristics. Whereas the salesman, you do not walk in there and think a used car salesman is benevolent. You do not think, oh, that person has my best interest in that part, and

they'll give me the exactly the car I need. So this is all to say that what's interesting about people is that we lead with the competence most of the time, like, oh, I can do this job, I'll be great at it, rather than leading with benevolence, which is what we really care about. Maybe instead to be leading with it seems that you really care about the outcome of this project. If I did my job exactly the way that you were hoping it would go, what would you what would

your experience of it be? Now, I've very clearly put myself into the other person to choose and express that I'm concerned with what matters to them most. No, I really really like that. It's something that an idea occurred to me. I wanted to talk with you. So it seems like a big part of having influence is being able to be in a position to help others have influence. So, you know, so not just bringing together people who already have influence, but giving the voiceless more of a voice.

I'm wondering, what ways are you helping to give people who don't have influence already but that you see potential in them? Because I know, John, you're such a caring person and you have such a desire to help the world to be a better place. In what ways do you help the voiceless kind of have more influence? So I think that that's first of all, a really complex problem that you can attack from many angles. You know, there's this funny thing called the Dunning Kruger effect, which

I'm sure you've come across a lot of times. In general, the less you know about something, the more confident you are about it, and the more you know, the more you realize the complexities of these things, and so you know, in my case, there's two ways or three ways that I really support those who are under voiced, let's say undervoiced. Yeah.

So the first is that if you believe this idea that who are connected to how much they trust us and the sense of belonging the experience can define your influence. The first thing I do is kind of vet a few people or causes, and then I connect them with others. Right, so I say, okay, you really care about adoption, let me introduce you to a bunch of celebrities who adopted their kids, and let's see if they can amplify your message. Right,

And introductions don't cost me anything. They cost me time, which is obviously a commodity that we all have limited supply of, but still five minute email world of difference for people. The second is that I've made it my life's work to bring people together, and so as I bring people together, I provide a platform during those events or experiences for people to share their messages and ideas. And so every other week now it used to be every week, I host about one hundred and fifty to

two hundred people at a digital salon. I used to do them in person when but I didn't want anybody to dive COVID. We went online and at these we have several speakers, usually pretty high profile people, but we always leave a spot open and one of the three speaking slots at minimum for social cause, and this could be anything. Most recently it was this we explore the topic of stop Asian hate, and at other times it was about the Black Lives Matter movement, and yet at

other times it was about literacy. And what we do is try to curate the people in the room so that the right people are hearing this message, the ones that can be the biggest support. So listen, I'm clearly not the wealthiest person in that room every time. I'm clearly not the smartest, especially when there's like two or three Nobel laureates, right, But what I am is probably

the best at connecting people. And so that's how I use my superpower, because I can allow people to connect and can put them in a situation where they can build trust quickly. And there's a bunch of little hacks to building trust. If you want, I'm happy to discuss those.

You're very good at building trust. You're a mega connector for sure, and and something else that strikes me is that the people that you've introduced me to, or just people that I've talked to, who it turns out we both find out that we know you, that we know we both know you, people have nothing but good things to say about you. So it just makes me, Yeah,

you should know that. But so it makes me think about the important importance of reputation in this whole equation as well, Like it really peas to not be an asshole in this world as much as assholes don't. They don't realize it, like assholes don't tend to realize that, But it is important to not be an asshole, right, It's I think the way I describe it is that, And I kind of joke around with my best friend

about this. My best friends is Guiding and Alexander, and we joke about how I'm always after the long like I'm going to become best friends with him, spend the next ten years supporting any project he does, so that the moment he's not looking, I will take three dollars from his wallet and I could finally have those three dollars.

But like in the sense that when it comes to human relationships, they are their own benefit, Meaning most of the people that I connect with have zero business case for my career, right Like I'm not going to work on a project with a Nobel laureate. I don't know enough about particle physics. You never know. I mean, like sure, you never know, but like realistically, you know, my business is on the marketing and sales and company culture side of SOUFF. It's in the human connection zone. And same

thing with Olympians or even Grammy Award winners. I'm not going to suddenly go into the music industry at age forty and start dropping beats or something like that. I don't know. Relationships are their own award, not the contract I can hopefully get from any one particular person. And so I really look at our relationship as a long term investment into a great life that I don't know what the what the benefit of causing trouble or being

dramatic like it. If I look at our friendship as something that's going to be seventy years long, then it changes the context versus if I'm just trying to get a transaction out of somebody, and then you behave completely different And I think that's kind of the context that I try to form my relationships from the other is that Adam granted this wonderful research project where he looked at In his book Give and Take, he talks about this,

people who are givers, those are generous, people who are takers, those that are let's call them selfish, and people who are matchers, those that mimic other people's behavior. And he asked the question, who are the least and the most successful? And I believe he looked at like medical students and salesmen and a few other groups, and to everybody surprised, the least successful were the givers, those who are generous. And what was really strange was that the most successful

were also the givers. And the difference was the givers that knew how to draw the line versus as it didn't. So if you give so much as a medical student that you're not spending any time studying the material you need to you just help everybody else, you're going to do terrible on your tests, so you'll be at the bottom of the class. But if you can be generous and support people, then the givers will also support you,

and so will the matches that they make behavior. And then you can also still focus on the things that you need to freak south, and that puts you in the best situation. So it turns out that the best strategy in general is to actually be generous, and it gives you the best chances of success at anything you care about. So I think that that the upside of being generous is way more positive than the downside. Like, sure, occasionally people take advantage, but if you know where to

draw the line, you can make sure you have healthy behaviors. Yeah, and generosity doesn't always have to be a strategy. It can just intrinsically be enjoyable, just for nothing else other than the feeling to feel like you're a good person. Yeah.

I was recently in a clubhouse room and I have a pretty high speaking rate, but every so often I'll be asked to give a talk that I kind of want to, but the rate isn't huge and see, and so what I'll do is I'll tell the the organization listen, I'll consider doing this, but I want all of the money to go to charity. And those actually, those talks give me a huge amount of satisfaction because let's be honest, like when we earmark our own money, we would have

never earmarked that for charity. But knowing that, okay, it's a win for the company and then it's a win for this charity that makes me incredibly happy. Yeah. Yeah, Because it depends like how one defines success, right, I mean, if you define success as positively impacting the world and touching the lives of others, inspiring others, then there's the intrinsic reward is right there, you know. Yeah, So I would love to give your listeners a fun little behavioral

HACKBA to help them connect more deeply with people. If that's okay, Heck, yeah, of course, of course, So let's do this. Here's the funniest thing that I like. As I kept going through all the research and everything continuously, what drove me crazy was that every strategy mostly companies take, but also often just people in their social relationships take

to build trust with people doesn't actually work. So two second version, if I give you a swag bag at a party, what do you do with the swag bag? I probably throw it away immediately, Yeah exactly. It's essentially saying, hey,

could you throw this out for me? Now? They spent hours and tons of money to try to win you over to get you to like them more, or if you get taken to like some crazy business dinner right that's super expensive more often, and then not, you're going to be stuck talking to people you don't necessarily want to talk to, and so winning people over with gifts there is a scenario it could work, but it would be like if I know that you're a super fan of Harry Potter and I get you like a first

edition signed right or something like that, because that's like a very intimate gift that's specific to you. But in general, what really works is the exact opposite of gift givings, and it's called the Ikea effect. So human beings disproportionately care about their Ikea furniture because they had to assemble it, Meaning anything we put effort into we care about disproportionately.

That's why people care about their own kids, right like not other people's kids, or why adopted children are loved just as much as those who were born to the parents. It's because we care about what we invest effort into.

Now here's what's absolutely insane. When people try to win others over, they try to buy them stuff or they won't accept favors, so they'll say, oh, I can help you with this, and they'll say, oh, I wouldn't want to bother you, or they'll do things like oh, I don't want to bother that person by asking their opinion or a favor. But it turns out that if we get people to invest effort into us, they'll care about us more. We're actually harming our relationships when we don't

allow others to contribute. You are literally saying yeah, I care about you, but not enough for you to invest any effort. And that's really, quite literally the opposite of what we should be doing. And when I tried to figure out why this is the case, it turns out that the process by which human beings build to trust

is actually traditionally seen as through microactions. So I ask you about how your parents are doing, or how you know, how's your dog or something like that, and when that kind of stuff happens, then it says, oh, John really cares. He's aware of my life. And that's because of something called a vulnerability loop. And it works like this. So let's say Scott, the two of us are walking down

the street, right it's after your birthday party. You're surprised birthday and I say, oh my god, I'm so overwhelmed in that moment, I just put out a signal of vulnerability. Now, if you make fun of me or ignore it, trust will be reduced. But if you say, god, I've been so overwhelmed this week too, what's going on with you? You've just signaled vulnerability back at the same level. And now we've demonstrated that we can trust each other at

this higher level of vulnerability. Yeah, And that's how trust is created. So this means two things. One is, when we apply the psike yeah fact at my dinners, we do it by getting people to cook together. Then it opens and closes a bunch of these vulnerability loops as I say, hey, can you pass me the you know, tomatoes or whatever it is, and when you do, it

opens and closes a loop. But it also means that when we're interacting with people, we want to be on the lookout for when they put out a signal so that we can close it. It also means that sometimes we need to be the ones to start by putting out our own signals. That way, it gives people an opportunity to complete the loop and increase trust between the two of you. I love that. I'm trying to think on the spots, think really clever way to respond to you,

to indicate that I am signaling trust. But nothing I mean immediately came to mind other than maybe just that joke itself increase trust. I'm being vulnerable. I'm being vulnerable at a meta level by saying that I couldn't come up with anything super clever right in that. Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah, that's that's actually perfect. You know. It's what's interesting is that I think that a lot of people right now are a little concerned about social interaction because they feel

like their muscles have atrophied. And yeah, and my recommendation has been okay, let's just lean into that. Let's tell people I have not been out of the house in a year. I have no idea how to have a conversation anymore. Is there anything you want to talk about? Because I literally don't have a clue. Yes, I read an article about that. I think it was yesterday as

thing came out. But what if my personality has changed, you know, I know, what if I'm a neurotic introvert now, you know, And yeah, we all kind of feel like neurotic introverts during the pandemic. Let's all bond over that. Let's all bond over that. Yeah, I think that's all it takes. Right. One of my favorite historical moments from a community perspective was when in World War Two, when

Germany started bombing cities in England. Then you know, the locals of London fled to the bomb shelters in the subways, and there was this fear that fighting would break out at the shelters. But what's pretty amazing is that when you put human beings under high levels of pressure in groups in general, we do really well. Like there was no major breakouts of craziness. People self organized and act

with the group's best interest. When stress is really high, like there's very actual little like looting or things like that that end up happening. And when Katrina hit, it was mostly people supporting each other and saving each other's lives and putting themselves at personal great risk to help one another. And I think that that kind of demonstrates why our species has been able to survive, is that

we are fundamentally driven by pro social behaviors. Especially when things go wrong, you've really you've kind of you've you've cracked this code in such a beautiful way, you know, and and just even your argument in your book that connection is not the same thing as networking. I mean, that's that's going to be a revolutionary idea to a lot of people in Silicon Valley, you know it kind of thing. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. It may depend on, uh, you know, how good they are picking

up on social cues. That's true, so like, listen it. But but regardless of anything, if we're really honest, what we connect over and I could be wrong about this, right, but if you really look, we connect over activities, interests, and culture. Right. So like in a culture could be U the high Jewish holidays, right, or her Chinese New Year or something like that. Right, So there's a culture that you're a part of that engages in certain activities

and that's what has you connect. An interest would be like, oh, I really, I'm really into martial arts. So I go to a martial arts school, I become friends with the people there, and an interest would be like sorry. An activity would be you know, I have a friend Daniel Laken, who runs something called Urban Surpass, which is a group of people who just walk and what like he'll just design a walk, like we're walking across three bridges today, and it's a group of people, and it's not like

a hobby or anything. Walking isn't exactly a hobby, but it's an activity. He plans an activity, and people actually end up bonding and connecting over it. And that's because to human beings, putting us in front of each other for an interview is terrible. It's not natural for us species. We survived because we worked together. So give us something to do together and we'll like each other more. Let's go on a hike, let's go paint to painting or draw mural or something. But don't just sit me down

in front of somebody with some alcohol. Like it's it's awkward for sure, but look, you probably weren't a lot through trial and error. I mean, can you tell me about some of the early days of these meetings. There must have been awkward moments, right, I mean, and you learned and grow. Yes. Oh wow, So in the early days, tell me some stories. Yeah. At the first dinner I hosted, it was probably like in summer and the air conditioner broke. So imagine you have twelve people in a confined space,

no air conditioning and an oven on. Everybody was like sweating through their clothing. They were like, you know, trying to chop salad, but there was no physical space to move like. It was just a train wreck. And in retrospect, you know that this concept of type too fun, like things that are fun in retrospect, but not really at the moment. So the in retrospect, because it was such a train wreck, it was actually really great in the

sense that I was very honest with people. I'm like, I'm trying to figure this out and I want your help, And it created vulnerability loops and the types of people I invited. They weren't the impressive people I invite these days. They're wonderful, they're great friends, they're super interesting people. But I just, you know, I didn't grow up knowing fancy

award winners. So but I think it allowed for the vulnerability loops to build it early, and for people to want to support more and then recommend their friends because once they went through such a crazy experience, they were more open to their friends having or they were interested in their friends sharing in the experience. That's kind of like the early days. I had no idea what I was doing. I wo'd walk up to complete strangers at parties that I heard were like successful, and I'd pitch

them on it, and I'd get it wrong. The way that I pitched it was awkward, and they'd be like, what are you even talking about? And I'd try to I embarrass myself. I'd go home kicking myself, being like, oh, how could I mess that up so bad? To be honest, I don't remember who those people were anymore. I just remember the feeling of awkwardness, and I just kept trying different ways of explaining to it until it kind of fell on something really that worked. And then I did something.

I kept redesigning parts of the dinner, so like by this third or fourth dinner, I'd lay out all the equipment that people needed so that they didn't have to search the kitchen for I gave stations, I assigned people to work together, and bit by bit it got, you know, really really like organized and functional. And there's something very fun about feeling the improvement from time to time. And then what ended up happening was the dinner started really succeeding.

So there were ridiculous moments. One of my favorite was this rather tall woman was making guacamole with a black gentleman about like six six 's one and they're talking about her Division three basketball career. And when they sat down to guests, everybody ended up finding out that she was a journalist, a reporter on a television I think I'm like MSNBC or something like that. And everybody was guessing what he did, and they thought was a businessman

or a musician or something. And eventually he said, my name is Isaiah Thomas. I'm a twelve time NBA All Star. And then you talked about all the championship and all that, and and she literally took her napkin put it on her face and was like, Isaiah Thomas, I was bragging about my Division III basketball career to one of the greatest basketball players of all time. And like she sank in her chair, and I think she refused to talk

the rest of the time. But like, those kind of moments are so absurd, Like you can't design that, you can't plan that. It's just kind of silly. And so we've had a few moments like that throughout the years. One was a guy turned to the person sitting next to him and said, after all the guessing and before he said who he was, the guy said, there's no way you'll remember this, but fifteen years ago I emailed you asking what I should do with my career, and you told me to go into research. And now I'm

one of the top, you know, super respected neuroscientists. And you know, this guy's published in Nature. He's my my research partner. His name is Moron Surf. And the person he said it to was Nobel Laureate Dan Connoman. Oh. I love that it was just on his podcast. He was he was the prior guest on the pod. He was the prior guest on the podcast. Danny gun Man. That guy's the coach, the greatest of all time, hands down. Yeah. So yeah, that's the Well you're in good company, buddy,

You're in good company. That guy's a legend. Well, John, look, you're you're awesome yourself. Now, at what point do you like do you do you feel like did you ever feel imposter syndrome, like like in the early days or something, Because I mean, you're you're awesome. You shouldn't have question, but I'm sure you're adorable. If you think, I still don't when there's literally like an Olympic gold medalist here

left and a Nobel laureate. You're right, the only person that could make you feel important is your eighty year old Jewish mother. Like the here's the the issue that when you're really embedded in scientific knowledge and research, I think a bit of imposter syndrome is really healthy because our objective isn't to be right. Our objective is to find out how quickly we can that we're wrong, because that'll actually get us to where we need to be right. And if I'm not feeling a bit, I don't think

imposter syndrome is the right word. But if I'm not doubting things at least on a somewhat consistent basis, I don't think I'm doing my job well. And so my objective isn't to be as impressive or as successful or as rich as the people who attend. My objective is how quickly can I bond them and how strongly can I build a community. And for that, imposter syndrome is unassociated because if there's anybody out there who's better than me at it, I just want to learn from them

and happen suck of everyance of knowledge. Because the objective is independent of me. It's something probably most people never associate to me. It's how close you feel to the next person is my metric of success, and that will likely never be directly tied to me. That'll be tied to that person. Yeah, for sure. I mean I was going to respond to you if you ever feel imposter syndrome, I would say, I don't. I personally, my personal philosophy is I don't use the worth of a person the

extent to which they've had public achievements. You know, I really do consider character and the ones being versus doing more important to me. I really appreciate your being, John, and I just want to leave today with this quote of yours. You say, the difference between us needing to pop Azanix, overeating or hiding our problems and us finding

a solution is our relationships. Thanks for the great work you've done in this world to increase meaningful relationships and to create these networks that then have a life of their own and go out there and make the world a better place. So thanks so much for doing that and for being on the podcast today. This has been an absolute pleasure, and thanks for making this so fun my pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of The

Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.