Michael:

I am very committed to being me professionally. For a long time, I was the CEO of this business, that was my job, and I was Michael from Sub Rosa, and now I just want to be Michael. And some days, that means researching an idea or a premise. Some days, that means writing. Some days, that means speaking. Some days, that means working with other people and their teams. And it's just nice to have that diversity in my day and also, some days, to be able to just say, "I don't have anything really pressing today, I'm going to go take a longer walk with the dogs."

Chris:

I'm talking to Michael Ventura. He's the entrepreneur and CEO of award-winning strategy and design practice Sub Rosa, which he exited out of. He shares how empathy, the ability to see the world through someone else's eyes, could be what your business needs to improve, innovate, connect, and grow. And here's something wonderful that Ariana Huffington said about his book, Applied Empathy, "With Applied Empathy, Michael Ventura shows us how to unlock our ability to design solutions, spark innovation, and solve tough challenges with empathy at the center."

Michael, now it's becoming a trend that we're speaking to several people who spoke in Australia at the NO/BS conference. You're just in a line of many great people that I want to talk to. First, for people who don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit of your story?

Michael:

Sure, yeah, and thank you for inviting me to have a chat. I've been looking forward to chatting with you as well. I started my story, I guess, by saying, typically, that I am a lover of ideas and I am a big fan of helping move the block that stands in the way of you getting where you need to go. And, throughout my whole career, I've spent my time doing that, whether I ran design firms or strategy consultancies, writing books about empathy and leadership and then teaching it academically, as well as teaching it in organizations. All of this stuff ladders up to the same thing for me, which is what are you trying to get to, what's standing in the way, can we diagnose that, can we understand it and can we help you get around it or through it so that you can get where you need to be?

Chris:

Just out of curiosity, what is your background? What did you study in school?

Michael:

I applied to 11 colleges because I was a masochist, but also because I wanted to keep my options open, and I applied to some big schools, but I also applied to a lot of schools where I could play D3 basketball because that was a thing I really loved to do at one time in my life, and still love to play basketball, just less competitively. And so, through a weird set of college visits, I ended up at a school called Babson, which is the number one school in the country for the last 20-plus years for entrepreneurial business educations. And so I went there, you can only major in business there, so everyone graduates with a business degree with some form of concentrations, and mine was a self-created one that spanned strategy, design, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

And so I thought, when I graduated, that I would go work for a consulting firm, and I graduated in the dot-com bubble's burst, and so there weren't a lot of jobs for people with zero experience. And I ended up in a marketing and advertising firm instead and learned a good deal pretty quickly being a utility player on their team. And, after about a year and change, was no longer there and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and started a digital agency in 2004, doing a lot of flash microsites and things like that that people wanted in the first wave of interactive sites like that.

Chris:

What a wild meandering path of different things of interest. I'm just blown away that you had the wherewithal to focus on business and entrepreneurship and thinking about being some kind of management consultant, because that is not even a term that I was aware of well into my thirties and forties. What was it about your specific background, your parents, how you grew up, maybe your friends that you knew, that your mind was even trained on things like this?

Michael:

That's a good question. My folks are a big influence for sure. My dad is now retired, but ran the second generation of a small family business in New Jersey, which was a home heating and fuel oil business, light blue-collar job in many ways. It was a small team that he had. He would work at his desk and do the business management side, but he was also out in the field at times visiting customers when he needed to and things like that, so real entrepreneurial, not afraid to get his hands dirty kind of guy.

And then my mother was in education, she's also now retired, but has been in education her whole life. Started in early childhood development, then moved into being a teacher, and then moved into the administrative role in schools, particularly around social work and guidance, so not in high schools, but more in grade schools, which was more about making sure people had the right path and the right support at home and all of that kind of stuff. I guess, if you put the two of them in a blender, so to speak, you'd find someone who likes to care for people and their needs, likes to learn and teach and communicate ideas, and is a builder of something and likes to be on the ground floor managing folks, but also getting my hands dirty. And that's, when you pour that out of the blender, that you get me.

Chris:

It's amazing sometimes, when we learn about what our parents are, who they are, what they do, that we wind up becoming the synthesis of these two people and these influences in our lives. And sometimes for people it's like they got nothing to do with their parents, and it's random, at least on the surface, but as you explain your parents and who they are, everything that I see from you now makes total sense, from writing books, from teaching, producing videos, from lecturing on stage, just your general energy.

Now, if you're listening to this on a podcast, you may pick up on some of Michael's energy, but I want to describe it to you from the perspective of an audience member seeing Michael for the first time walking on the stage. He is a tall guy, lanky, athletic build. He's bearded. He's got a wavy dark hair, but he has this energy that is both like a person who knows what he's talking about, but is very warm and inviting and pulls you in it. It's the voice, it's the body language, it's the choice of words, and I think we're going to hit on a bunch of those topics today.

Michael:

Thank you.

Chris:

Couple things I want to ask you about. You graduate from a business school that is top 10 or top 20 in the nation for entrepreneurs. What are some of the big lessons you learned from going to this university for this college?

Michael:

The first two years you go there, they don't really let you pick very much in the way of your course load, and so 50% of your course load is going to be business every year. And, in that first two years, you have to take everything. I have to take intro to accounting and intro to marketing and intro to management and a whole host of different things, because they want you to walk that buffet line and they want you to see where your interests lie. And I sucked at accounting, which may not come as a surprise to anybody, but I'm really glad I took the class because it allowed me to be conversant.

And I think that was the point with the method that they brought to the students was you may not choose to pursue a career in accounting, but if you're going to be in business, the ability for you to sit down and look at a P&L, to be able to understand how a balance sheet functions, to be able to have those kinds of meaningful conversations will help you whether you're a CEO, a COO, a CMO, it doesn't matter, somewhere down the line.

Yeah, I guess that's probably a big thing that it taught me was that diversity of knowledge and that breadth before depth was important. And I've always been a big believer in the idea of T-shaped people and this idea that you've got to be good at your downstroke, and if you can be good at the downstroke, you can go wide and you can go wider into other interest areas and other lateral places you can play a role. And I've always tried to cultivate that in folks I've worked with where, as long as you're exceptional on your downstroke, I have no qualms with you going as wide as you like. It's just, if the downstroke suffers, you've got to tighten your breadth.

Chris:

There's an expression that some people will be familiar with, instead of going a mile wide and an inch deep, where you have surface-level knowledge, go a mile deep and an inch wide. And you're saying, once you have that depth, you can go as wide as you want because there's always going to be that core part of the T, the vertical stroke, as you talked about, that's going to be your foundation.

Michael:

That's right.

Chris:

For me, it was graphic design. What is your vertical stroke? Can you describe that?

Michael:

Yeah. I think it's management. For me, that's the perfect intersection of leadership, ideas, vision, problem solving. That's what I like to do the most. And it's funny, I don't have a team at the present time after 20 years of running teams, so management's a funny word to use, but it is, it's the management of ideas. It's the management of bringing things into reality. It's the management of time, which all of us struggle with. For me, knowing that was a strong suit, and I've always believed the best CEOs are the ones who do for the team what the team can't do for itself, and so, as a leader, what I always tried to do was not solve everyone's problems every day, but give them the tools and resources to solve their problems and support them on their journey.

Chris:

Were there any instructors that stood out, looking back, that really shared something with you that you hold dear to this day that you think is a profound lesson that you learned?

Michael:

You'll perhaps find this funny, knowing how we met. For the vast majority of my life, I was, up until getting into my own businesses, I was deathly afraid of public speaking. And so there was a teacher at Babson named Michael Bruner, and Michael taught rhetoric, and it was a class that I took in my freshman year. And I walked in and I told him, after the first class, "I just want you to know I am terrified about this. I figured out a way in high school to run for class president without having to give a speech. I convinced the school's principal to let us do speeches over video into homerooms so that I wouldn't have to stand in front of a couple thousand kids in the school, because I was terrified of doing it. I've gotten gotten away with not speaking in public for a while, but now I know you're going to make me."

And he goes, "Oh, we're going to make you, that's for sure," but he goes, "I want you to know what we're going to really do is help you find your style and find how you speak, not the way everyone else speaks, but what works for you." And he stands out because, as I've grown as a communicator, I've learned that you've got to be able to feel comfortable in your own skin even when you're not terribly comfortable with the material, and you have to know how to deliver information in a way that's digestible and understandable and adoptable. And you do a great job of that too, Chris, and so I know that it's something that you've got in spades, but, for me, it was something I really had to learn and practice.

Chris:

That is so fascinating, Michael, that a person who's on stage, who seems very comfortable up there, and you and I have this in common where, in high school, I did everything I could to get out of public speaking, and I'm not even as ambitious as you for running for class president or anything. I'm just talking about the oral reports that you're required to do. I would pick the last day and I would have nightmares and lose sleep up until that moment, heart racing, pounding out of my chest. And I also figured out a little cheat and asked the teacher if I can give a video presentation so I can be off camera narrating something, using my design skills and very crude editing skills by showing things in front of the camera and talking about it, and got away with that.

What was interesting was my teacher actually gave me extra points for doing extra work and being creative when I was like, "I was just trying to get out of this. This is neat." It's fascinating that you did the 10X version of that by broadcasting into the homerooms and becoming the president. Were there any practical things, exercises or something, that your instructor said to you that you're like, "Wow, that was really good and I would share that with someone else," or was it just the general experience of the class?

Michael:

I think probably one of the early lessons I learned was that negative space is okay. And I think, when you become comfortable with a gap, it's not that you're lost for words or something else, it's just that you're giving some space. And we all tend to have what's called filler. Some people use ums, some people say sort ofs, and they just use it to fill the gap, or kind of, like I just did there. And I had a friend who is a great speaking coach and I was talking with her about this once. We were referring to a particular colleague of mine who used sort of as his filler word for a lot of stuff. And she said to him, "What if I told you you're sort of going to get a raise next month? How much confidence does that inspire in you versus I said, 'You're going to get a raise next month?'"

And so when you realize that that filler is actually deteriorating your integrity as a speaker and you can instead step into a comfortable pause so that you can gather your breath, you can swallow if you need to swallow, you can do whatever you need to do, it gives you a little more permission to play with the meter of the delivery.

Chris:

I think, in modern culture, we're so uncomfortable with those moments of silence where we're looking for the exact right word that we feel like we have to fill it up with so much stuff, when in fact, by just breathing, giving yourself time to think and process and choose your words, you add emphasis to things that you're going to say versus the things that you're saying all the time. That's pretty wonderful.

Michael:

100%. And there was a study, I can't remember who did it, but someone did a study about different cultures around the world and how little time there is between someone finishing their sentence and someone else saying something, and Americans are among the fastest, where it's less than a full second between someone finishing and someone else saying something. But, then when you look at Indigenous cultures around the world, also some Eastern cultures, long pauses are very much part of the conversation, and to not have a pause where there's some space for ideas to land and people to process feels less thoughtful.

Chris:

Okay. I'm thinking where we take the conversation next is based on some of the things I've learned about the concepts you shared in video, on stage, things you get asked about a lot, which is from your book Applied Empathy, and there's something there that you talk about that we mostly live with this Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is a pretty good standard to begin with, everybody, and if you could hit the Golden Rule, I'm really happy. And the Golden Rule, as most of you know, and I learned this from my dad, is treat people the way you want to be treated. But I heard you talk about the Platinum Rule, which is treat people how they want to be treated because what you want has little to do with them.

I'll share a personal story, kind of embarrassing. I used to be a terrible gift giver for birthdays, for important dates and moments, because I got people what I wanted, and this sounds terrible. One of my friends from school, Robert, invited me to his birthday party, and he was one of the cool kids, and I was so excited to be there. And I was thinking about what should I get Robert? And I was really into robots and Japanese anime and manga, so I got him a model kit of this super cool robot that I would just die for. I wrap it up, I'm super excited, and then you can almost see the blood drain from my face when he was opening up one present after the other, how off my present was. He was into cars and sports and things that I was not into at all. And then, by the time he was going to open my present, I wanted a redo, but I couldn't. This is in junior high. And then he opens it up and he gives this expression like, "Oh."

And then it just really hit me, what I want has nothing to do with what he wants, or what he wants has nothing to do with what I want. And applying empathy has a lot to do with that. And so, having said that, normally I lead these conversations, so I'm going to try to apply the Platinum Rule as you've talked about. You and I are talking. What do you want to talk about that's going to be valuable to you, that's going to fill you up today? And I would like to construct the rest of the conversation based on that.

Michael:

Oh, wow. That's beautiful. I love that. I think one topic that's always interesting to me and is something that no matter where you are in your career journey, you're always thinking about at points and perhaps struggling with, sometimes accelerating through, is aligning yourself to a purpose that feels meaningful. And it's something that I've particularly spent a lot of time thinking about these last few years as I've moved into a different stage of my own career and understanding and digging into the idea of what drives us from a purpose standpoint and how to dance with that as it evolves, as we grow older and learn more, is something I'm keen to chat about If you are.

Chris:

I am. Let's go there. First of all, the word purpose has a lot of weight to it. How would you define it and how do we know if we're getting close to it or if we're actually really far away from it?

Michael:

I would define it as the thing, the mark you want to leave, as succinct as that, the mark you want to leave, the thing you want to be able to have done and done well. And that doesn't mean solving world hunger, maybe that is, right, but it might just be being a great dad, and all of those things matter only as much as you put strength and weight on them, so you can have a lot of different pursuits.

And this is a thing that I think a lot about because I'm someone who is more of a generalist than a specialist, and so I have a lot of stuff I spend time doing, but they all ladder to something we said at the very beginning of this conversation, which is helping you move forward, helping you move through a moment of transformation, finding that block and moving through or around it to get you where you need to go. And so, whether I look at my consulting work, my public speaking stuff, things I'm doing on boards, alternative medicine stuff that I do, all of these things, is about pushing through the growth moment to get you or myself to the other side.

Chris:

Is that the purpose? Is that your purpose to help-

Michael:

That's mine, yeah.

Chris:

Okay. Long after Michael's expired, the legacy he leaves behind is the people he's able to help move forward and how they're able to help other people move forward. Is that about right?

Michael:

Yeah, I would be very happy if that's the way I'm remembered.

Chris:

And is there a metric in which you'll measure this against? Do you want to help your family and your friends, a bunch of strangers? How deep and wide do you want to go with this?

Michael:

Part of why I have chosen, despite my earlier childhood tendencies to not speak publicly, to do public speaking and to write books and to share my thoughts more candidly is because of its ability to help scale some ideas and some frameworks and some tools and some mindsets that, ultimately, I think will allow more people to practice this kind of work. And the fact that I've tried my best to bring it into a realm of language that's accessible in a business context was very intentional because, as a human, I am a little more on the spectrum of candles and sandals than suits and wingtips. And so-

Chris:

I like that.

Michael:

... but I know that you can't be candles and sandals in the Goldman Sachs boardroom and be taken seriously. And so to find ways to bring these ideas, which are more EQ-driven, which do have emotion and vulnerability tangled up in them a lot of the time, is not something that is readily accepted at every corporate culture. Finding ways to have the secret handshake that lets you into those rooms by using language that does feel, quote-unquote, business appropriate, lets you bring these ideas to a place where they can scale to hundreds of thousands of employees.

Chris:

Okay. Some quick questions, and then maybe some deeper questions for you. At what age do you find this is your purpose, your reason for being, other than money? I'm just curious in terms of Michael's timeline here.

Michael:

Yeah. I think it's a difference of something I've always enjoyed doing versus something that I could articulate. And there's actually a pretty interesting McKinsey study that came out a few years ago about this that says 80-something percent of the people they surveyed, which probably is biased toward more white-collar jobs given the fact that it was done by McKinsey, but nonetheless 80% of the people they surveyed said they have a purpose, but only about 60% could tell you what it was. And so I think that's true for a lot of folks is that we have a sense, sometimes it's an intuition, of what we're here to do, but if push came to shove, could they put it in a sentence?

And so I think I've always known that I want to help and that I am a helper and that I want to support people through the work they're doing, but it really wasn't until probably about five or six years ago that I realized that was my management style, that was what was governing the choices I was making in the pursuits I gave time to. And, ultimately, as I stepped away from my time running the consulting business that I had been running for the last decade or so, started to really think about what it is that I want and how do I leave the world in a better place? And I had to go through that work for myself to find that language that made sense to me.

Chris:

Okay. I'm going to do my math here without revealing your age. I'm going to say probably in your early forties then?

Michael:

Yeah, I'm 42.

Chris:

Okay. Oh, you're 42 now?

Michael:

I'm 42 now.

Chris:

Okay. You're younger than I thought, so maybe in your late thirties then, because you're like five to six years ago.

Michael:

Yes. When that clicked, yes, I was in my late thirties.

Chris:

Yes. Okay. My math was a little bit off. I was trying to figure out the college dot-com bubble, all that kind of stuff.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah. You were close.

Chris:

I'm a little bit older than Michael, just a little bit, 10 years, something like that. This is wonderful. Okay. Here's some things that I'm thinking about. I believe everybody's purpose in life, as you're using the word purpose, I use purpose slightly differently, is to discover their gift. And whether you believe in God, evolution, energy, whatever it is, stardust, I think each one of us is such a unique combination of different variables, from the way that we look, our height, our width, our hair color, or lack of hair, that we have some kind of unique combination that makes us very special. I refer to it as a gift or your superpower, and to discover that, it's your life's purpose to find that. And I find that, the more in alignment that you are with your gift, the happier, the healthier you'll be, and sometimes the more successful you'll be, whatever dimension you want to measure success on. And that the opposite of that, being out of alignment, creates depression, anxiety, frustration, and probably low financial success too.

Michael:

I couldn't agree more. I think you're 100% on the money. And there's a phrase that I have talked about with folks along these lines where I refer to it, and I mean this in a funny way, but I'll explain it, it's like it's my tuba savant theory. What I mean by that is you might be, Chris might be a tuba savant, but have you ever tried to play the tuba? Maybe not. And so, if we don't try enough stuff, if we don't experiment, if we don't get out of our comfort zones, then that purpose, that savant gift, that thing that comes naturally to you that doesn't to a lot of other people, may go undiscovered. Everyone's got some dormant laying savant gift inside of them. It's just a matter about exploring enough to find out what it is.

Chris:

Yes. And, in very practical terms, I have two boys. My oldest, when he was much younger, he would only eat foods that are white. He'd only eat white food, rice, bread, butter, cheese, nothing that had color in it, and he limited his palate, and it's created some problems for him now. But, all of a sudden, when he went to away to high school and then to college, he experiments with other foods with his friends, because it's cool to eat it with your friends, but not with your parents. He comes back eating all kinds of things. He deprived himself for a big part of his life by not even be willing to try. Part of this whole journey in life, as you say, is try more things because you'll be surprised sometimes what you like and what you're good at.

Now you said something which is a clue, because if you're listening to this, my feeling is some people spend their entire life never finding their gift, never figuring out what their purpose is, and they'll go to their grave not knowing. Some, as you say, will kind of feel it, but they won't know how to articulate it, and that's a problem too. And then an even smaller group, they can articulate it, but they don't have a strategy or a plan of action so they can achieve it. We're talking about many rungs on the ladder towards understanding your gift and then being able to share the gift because, like all gifts, it's meant to be given.

The clue that you said was you always knew it because you enjoyed doing it. That's going to be a clue there, because I felt the exact same way. If somebody is listening to this and thinking to themselves, "My gosh, what they're saying is really important. I'm vibing with this. I get it. Sandals and candles and all, I get it all," what are some tips on how we could possibly find what it is that we enjoy doing so that we can then articulate it to someone? Let's take them back to step one.

Michael:

What are you doing when time doesn't exist, when you're in that flow state, when you look up and you're like, "Oh, shit, six hours have just gone by. What was I doing there?" And that's a clue. You should definitely pay attention when those things happen, when you lose time in the immersion of a particular thing. I know a lot of designers who will just look up and realize five hours went by and they went deep down the rabbit hole of something, and that means you're onto something, right?

Another thing is what ... one of the phrases I love is your complaint is your calling, and so what's the thing that you see the flaws in really naturally? I have a friend who's an exceptional architect, and if you walk around the city with him, he will point out all the flaws of every building that he walks around, not because he's like a whiner or because he likes to complain, but because he's like, "Oh, you see how they did that? If they had just done it like this ..." or he sees the problems he's drawn to fixing. And, in the inverse, what problems land on your desk? What do people come to you with help for? What do they say, "Hey, can you help me out with fill in the blank?" They might see something in you that you don't even recognize in yourself yet. All of that stuff's good data.

Chris:

Excellent. Those are super practical. I've often described what a designer, to my non-designer friends, what does it mean to be a designer? And the way I explain is you notice things that no one notices. You geek out on weird stuff. If you're really into designing typefaces, well, that's what you care about. The ear of the letter form, whether it's a two story or a single story G, those are things you geek out on and that's what makes you really special and unique. These are good clues.

Many of us will suppress these things because we field it in our heart, but for whatever reason, our parents, our culture, our education system, told us that's impractical, do not do that, that's the path towards misery. At least, that was my case. Being an artist and a designer meant being broke and starving, and I didn't want to starve or be broke. And it wasn't until I saw someone else doing it that I allowed myself permission to pursue this thing.

For you, you already have two great examples right in front of you from the time in which you were born, an entrepreneurial father, an educator and a mom. It explains so much about your love for teaching and sharing and writing and helping others that it makes perfect sense. When did you give yourself permission, like "This is it. I have this thing in my heart I know. I can articulate it now. I'm ready to go?" Was there anything that happened that opened that door for you, that final step?

Michael:

I don't know if it was a switch as much as a fader, and the fader for me really started around the time that I began to unlock this idea of empathy as a central cornerstone to the work I do. Because, up until then, I was running strategy and design shops that were doing good work, but our work was being held up against other strategy and design shops who also did good work, and so it started to feel like a commodity business in some way. It's like, as a buyer, as a client, it was like, "Who does the best work at the most affordable price? And I will take that partner and I will go make this thing with them." And that felt like a race to the bottom in terms of being able to feel empowered to do our best work if we were just always going to be cost cut by someone who could do just as good for a little cheaper.

And so we realized, and I realized, at that point, if we were going to be successful and be able to continue to pay people market wages and grow and all of that other stuff, that we had to have something more than just the commoditized side of our work, which gave us something unique that felt meaningful to the client and to us, and that's true in any business and in any pursuit. There's always going to be a tier where you're all good and looking at each other as peers, and then there's a couple people that have a philosophical approach or an aesthetic that they've specifically leaned into that people come to them for that. And so, when we started to unpack empathy as that, for me, it started to show me that my work wasn't just about the output, it was about the process and it was about this stuff that I want to do that's bigger than this strategy deck that we've created after six months of getting to know this client's culture or this brand that we've created that is inspired by all of these things we've learned.

But it was the method and the process that we went through that was scalable in a sense, way more so than the work itself. And, when I got to a point in the business where the business had been acquired, we were finishing the time there, and I started to think about, "Well, what do I do next?", There was this really clear dotted line off of my job as CEO to be doing what I'm doing now because it was just an extension of it. It was doing it for more people and in a different way, but it was still doing the same thing. It was practicing empathy as a tool for leadership development, problem solving and growth.

Chris:

You talked about flow state, and it's eerie to me how you describe things and how I think I've described things in the exact same way before, really, so there must be some universal truth. We're both tapping into, the speed force, if you will. What are some funny things that you lose time doing? I just want to know a little bit about Michael, the human.

Michael:

I'm very happy to answer that. There's a couple things that I do virtually daily, if not absolutely daily, where I lose time. One of them is cooking. I make dinner every night for our house, and it's something I love to do. It's something that gives me just a lot of peacefulness to just be methodical. And I'm a more jazz, less orchestra kind of cook, so I'm not really going off of a recipe. I'm looking at what we have, what we feel like eating, and then something comes out. But that, to me, is a great way to decompress at the end of the day.

In the beginning of the day, another thing that I do every day and haven't missed a day for over 15 years, is I have a Taoist meditation practice that I do every morning. And, for me, that practice, which includes qi gong and Tai Chi and some meditation is it went from a thing that you had to do, because it was a thing that I was trying to get better at doing, to a thing I must do because it was a thing I was trying to really get rigorous about, to a thing I do. And, once it flipped into a thing I do, time stopped existing and I can spend 25 minutes, 45 minutes, in that state in the morning and feel like it was five seconds because it's somaticized and it's a part of what makes me happy.

Chris:

Wonderful. And I'm going to assume too, playing basketball, were you like, "Hey, I could play all day?"

Michael:

I could play all day. There's a little court not far from here. When the weather's a little nicer, I am out there doing it. Another one, too, is just walking the dogs, man. There's nothing better. We have two big dogs and they've been a part of my life for a long time. And you get out and you're looking at them smiling and, I call it taking them to read the paper, because them sniffing everything and reading like, "Oh, Joe was walking by here earlier," all of that. You see that and you drift away.

Chris:

I think there's a common pattern that I'm hearing from what you just described. I'm going to throw it back at you-

Michael:

Yeah, please.

Chris:

... and, if you don't like it, throw the ball right back at me, like, "No, try again." Cooking, Taoist meditation, Tai Chi, qi gong, playing basketball, walking the dog, I think all those things are physical things that you do to clear your mind. They're all forms of meditation, self-reflection.

Michael:

I'm 100% with you. You nailed it. That is, because my job is so cerebral, these things are not in inherently cerebral for me. They're intuitive for me.

Chris:

Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.

Speaker 3:

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Chris:

Welcome back to our conversation.

I'd like to share some of the things that I do where I lose track of time. They're not as admirable as yours are. I'm just going to throw it out there. Here's where I'm like, "Oh, my God, what time is it now?" I'm on Pinterest. I go down that visual black hole that I just can't get out of. I'm on Midjourney just testing different prompts. Oh, my God, I just can't stop.

Michael:

Oh, so much Midjourney these days. Yeah, I love it.

Chris:

Right? It's so amazing, text to images and directing the machine. I lose time. I hate to say this, just watching TikTok videos. I just can't stop. I'm like, "Okay, one last pimple-popping video and that's it. One more blackhead, that's it, I promise, that's it." And then it's 3:00 in the morning, I'm like, "Oh, my God, I have a call in four hours. I got to go to sleep now." They're not as admirable as yours, but those are things that I lose track of time doing. That's a clue for everybody.

Michael's thing was, "Let's talk about how to get in alignment with our purpose," and that's such a big heavy word and, many of you are going to start to just feel stressed out immediately just hearing that, like, "Oh, I'm not close to my purpose. I don't know what it is." Relax, look into what you enjoy doing, where you lose track of time. Those are really good clues.

Michael:

And, if I may, I would also say if purpose makes you feel a kind of way, replace it with meaning. Where do you feel a sense of meaning in what you're doing? And sometimes that feels less intimidating than capital P purpose, but it's still in the same zone.

Chris:

Here's a wild question that no one can possibly know the answer to, but it's more just eliciting your opinion on. Of the people that are working in America where they have some choices to what jobs do they work at, how many people do you think are working at something that gives them meaning or they feel connected to a purpose?

Michael:

Fewer than we would think probably. There's a couple of responses to that. that same McKinsey study I mentioned earlier, actually asked a question similar to that, and it found that Gen Z and millennial workforce members look to their jobs to deliver on their sense of purpose more so than their older generations. My parents' generation, taking my dad, because we talked about him earlier, running a home, heating, and fuel oil business was not his purpose. He had other things that drove his life forward. That was his job, and that job provided for a family, which he cared about, and gave us a life that he wanted to give his children, and all of those other things. And so that was more his purpose, to grow a family and take care of ... and couldn't tell you what my dad's purpose is in a sentence, but I know that's a part of it for him. He wasn't getting that in his job. And I think that's true for a lot of folks. And, if you do, you are among a privileged few who get to align work and purpose because not everyone does.

Chris:

If companies are in a space where they need to attract Gen Z, millennials, they need to really think about what their purpose is and how they're communicating that to prospects who would choose to work for them or someone else. That's really important, and I hear this all over the place, so I don't think this data's off at all.

Michael:

Yeah. I think it's people vote with their feet. And so, if you are a person who is in a younger generation who knows that your life is going to be precipitously more impacted by climate change, what is the likelihood you're going to go work for an oil and gas company? Probably pretty low, versus if someone asked you to come work at Patagonia or a solar business or something else. If you were weighing those options, you would feel pulled toward one versus the other because it has your destiny entangled in it in a better way.

Chris:

I think this idea, from a leadership point of view, is true whether you're a two-person company or a 200,000-person company because let's face it, your time is not infinitely scalable. Your ideas are. That means you need to attract people to you who want to show up and give you their best and you want, of course, the best versus anyone who's just showing up for a job, a J-O-B. And so understanding the purpose, and your purpose, communicating that, will give you a competitive advantage whether you're hiring your first employee or your 1000th employee,

Michael:

100%. And, as a CEO or as a leader at any rung, because I don't think leaders just have C's in front of their titles, it's also incumbent upon you to question that over time and to grow with your organization and your team and yourself and to say, "Is my purpose still what I thought it was? Has that changed? Has new data forced me to see this in a different way?", which hopefully the answer is yes. We should be growing and changing.

Someone told me, years ago, and I've stuck with it because it just really resonated with me, said, "If we're not living on the edge, we're taking up too much room." And I loved this idea that, yeah, you got to push. And he was an 86-year-old guy who I met at Burning Man, okay, and he was the dad of a friend of mine and he's a former dentist. And it was just like we were having this deep chat about life and parenting and fatherhood and I was like, "What's the secret, Norman?" And he goes, "You got to live at the edge. If you're not, you're taking up too much room." And I loved the simplicity of that. You got to keep pushing because that's where the gold is.

Chris:

Okay. As I asked you before about getting in alignment with your purpose, is there anything else you wanted to share with our listeners and the viewers today, another tool or question to help them get more in alignment?

Michael:

Yeah, I have one that comes to mind immediately. It's one of my favorite exercises. And, actually, we did this when we were together in Melbourne, so it'll be familiar to you. If you're interested in knowing about this, I want you to legitimately take a piece of paper and a pen. Don't do it in your phone or on a screen. I want you to write down a list of people in your life that you feel are heroic, your heroes, and I want you to write them down, maybe you got two, maybe you got five. They can be living, they can be dead, they can be fictitious, they can be real. Put them down.

And then, after you write those names, I want you to write next to those names, what is it about those people that makes them heroic? And you're going to see attributes emerge. This person is confident. This person is trustworthy. This person has vision. Whatever it is, there's going to be stuff that you see pop up. That stuff are the building blocks of what's inside you in terms of how you will realize your purpose. You see it in them because you know it's in you too. You recognize it. It may not be strong yet, maybe it's a muscle you need to develop, but those skills are in there waiting to be brought to life. And, if you value them in other people, it's because you value them for yourself.

Chris:

Those are good clues, and as Jim Rohn said, "Success leaves clues," and if you pay attention, you can actually teach yourself and be an autodidact. I'm going to ask you a question. It's a little bit meta. I want you to imagine yourself in a position where someone that you've admired for a really long time, someone that you've looked up to, there's a weird chance encounter, you're both in the elevator at the same time, completely random, and the elevator breaks down, and you have this golden opportunity to ask him any question that you want. What question do you ask and who are you in that elevator with?

Michael:

Great question. I love that. I think it would be David Byrne, who I have just loved from the moment I've come across him and for so many reasons, but I think the question I would ask is, "How do you cultivate the bravery to do what you do?" And here's the question that I ask myself in thinking about that. He might not see it as bravery. He might see what he does as a necessity or as just fun, but, to me, the way he creates and the way he puts himself out there would take such a feat of bravery for me to show up in that way that I wonder how he sees that.

Chris:

How do you think he would answer that question?

Michael:

I don't know. He might just laugh. It's hard to say because I don't know what his relationship to his work with bravery is. I don't know if he views it as brave or if he views it as something else, but, to me, it's brave.

Chris:

David Byrne is one of those rare artists that is referenced a lot by different people outside of the genre in which he works in as a person who's a pretty free thinker, who tries crazy ideas and makes them work somehow, and he's admired for that. I want to ask you this question, Michael, how do you calibrate the bravery to do what you do?

Michael:

A question I often ask myself is will I regret it more if I do or I don't? And, usually, that answer gives me the answer I need to make a decision. And sometimes that has been hard things because the thing that I will regret doing is a thing I really don't want to do, but I know is the right thing to do. And so, when I ask, in the twilight of my years, when I look back, will I regret doing this or not doing this more, and then that forces me to take the leap typically.

Chris:

And, besides public speaking, which you've already shared with us, something you don't want to do, but you did it despite it because you knew it was going to lead to growth for yourself, tell me something else that you don't like doing, didn't think you would like doing, but just went for it anyways. It doesn't have to always have a positive outcome. You could try it and it sucked or tried it and it worked.

Michael:

Yeah, I still haven't found my instrument, I'll tell you that. I've tried a lot of musical instruments. My tuba is still out there on that front. I took piano lessons for many years. It's probably the one I'm most passable in. But, yeah, I think I have a desire to have a way to express my artistic side. And I've been a creative director in organizations. I'm a creative human. I know what good looks like, but as a tactician, it's harder for me to do some of the work that other people do very naturally.

Same with music, I know what good music sounds like, or at least what good music to me sounds like, and I know the difference between this or that, but to make it is harder, which actually goes back to a thing you mentioned earlier. With Midjourney, I've been having so much fun because it lets me create with ideas and words, which are my first creative language as a writer, as someone who cares about language, and I have these pictures in my head and the game is like, "Can I find the right assortment of prompts to actually get to that dopamine squirt in my brain when I see this thing?" and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I've been imagining." And so it's been fun to play with that.

Chris:

That was a very visual way to describe that, the dopamine squirt. It's like you cannot not think of a visual when you say that. What you're saying, when you talk about this, about regret and not regretting, is if you want to be successful in life, I believe this, is you're willing to do the work that no one else is willing to do, right? That's what separates you from everybody else. But I would take small issue with you that you haven't found your instrument yet because I think your instrument is your voice-

Michael:

Oh, thank you. That's nice.

Chris:

... very what you play. Your ideas get transformed through your vocal cords, and singers will describe themselves as, "This is the most valuable instrument that I have," and that's, for you, your words and your ability to articulate.

Michael:

That's beautiful. Thank you for that. That's a really nice. That's sort of great reframe. I like that.

Chris:

Anything else you want to share that gives you pause or fear where you're like, "Oh, do I really want to do this?"

Michael:

I guess I'm getting to a place where editing choices starts to become more important because time, and I've got a lot of runway hopefully, but time is getting shorter for all of us. And so I think the tendency to follow every shiny object is something that brought me a lot of joy early in my life and gave me a lot of clues to get more focused, but shiny objects don't stop coming once you decide to get more focused, and so you've got to get a little more rigorous about saying no to some of them so that you can use your time wisely.

There was a guy I saw give a talk a few years ago where he did one of those online life expectancy tests, where, "I'm a smoker. I'm a non-smoker. I'm this body weight and this height," all this stuff, and it spits out a life expectancy. It says you're going to die at 82 years old. He goes in his calendar and he just seeks forward to the year he'll be 82 and he picks a random day and he writes dead. And then he says, "Okay, if that's the day, thereabouts, that this machine is telling me I'm going to die, how many books do I read a year? I read 15 books a year. That means I only have 200 books left to read."

And he looked at his whole life that way and he saw the finality of all of these choices he's making where, today, picking up this book versus that book might not mean too much, but when this is one of 200 left, that choice is so much more important. I think, to answer your question, there's a sense about my choices now that have gotten a little different where now that I know what I want to leave here as a mark, I want to make sure that I make my choices wisely.

Chris:

That is an excellent way to look at your life and to be able to prioritize what's important to you. Neville Medhora wrote a book, I think it's called You Will Die, and he did some studies, and I believe he said the average age of a healthy American male is 87 where you'll die, so plan your life accordingly. The other person who smoked, maybe he only shaved two years off his life. If you love smoking, maybe it's not that bad. I don't know. I'm not a proponent for it, but I'm just saying. And so now you say, and when you look at the finality of it all, that if you can only read so many things, experience so many moments, you're going to be a lot more careful about what you pick, and start to ask yourself those big questions about what is the meaning of my life and what is it that I want to leave behind?

I was in the Philippines, and this gentleman who's super soulful, he's one of the few speakers who shared what he did and what he wanted to do with his life. That nearly brought me to tears. I had to fight them back, because I was going to speak two speakers after him. I was like, "I got to pull myself together." But he said he heard this idea about people always tell creative people, "Find your passion. Do your passion." He goes, "It's a complicated thing to understand," and he said, "If you look at passion as an anagram and you mix the letters up a little bit, same letters, it's I pass on. What is it that you want to pass on?"

And so we know what you want to pass on, Michael. I'm curious, you're 42, you're going to get hit by a truck tomorrow. Have you done what it is that you set out to do or do you need a few more years to accomplish whatever it is that you want to do?

Michael:

There's always more work to do, but I feel that I have used my time wisely, by and large. There's certainly some years in my twenties that were squandered, but who hasn't? A big part of my morning practice that we talked about, one of the things I do in that practice, is a death meditation to actually bring in some memento mori, which is Latin for, "Remember you're going to die, because it's a helpful reminder, not in a macabre sense to ponder death every morning, but more to remind myself of the importance of choices and my actions and that everything's finite, and you've got to be precise, to the extent you can, with your choices. And so, if that were to happen, I would lament that, well, I wouldn't do anything because I wouldn't have the opportunity to, in that sense, but I would feel that I've gotten out a good deal of what I want to do, and also that there's a lot more to still share.

Chris:

When I was traveling more, and I get into these periods where I'm speaking all over the place so I'm on the plane a lot, and I see a reaction usually from people around me when there's turbulence, and even before the plane takes off, you can see some people are white knuckled, gripping onto their armrest. I'm like, "My gosh," and the story that I tell myself is they're afraid today is going to be their last day. They believe their best days are still ahead of them, that they haven't done what they needed to do, whereas I'm sitting there cool as a cucumber, and I say a few things to myself. One is I think about my parents, I think about my children, I think about my wife, and I just think about how much I love them, how grateful I am for them. And I know that, if the plane were to go down, hey, I couldn't do anything about it so stressing out over it's not going to do anything.

But, B, if that was the last day, I lived a great life and I've done as much as I can with the time that I was given, and I'm content. I'm just 100% content. I don't want to die. Everybody just, please-

Michael:

I get it.

Chris:

... don't want to die, but if that were the moment, then that's the moment and my ticket's up. And so maybe this is a clue for everyone where, if you imagine yourself on that plane and you're going to die and there's things that you want to do, don't wait for tomorrow, do those things today. Whether it's about mending an old relationship or looking into the eyes of somebody you really care about and telling them truly how you feel about them, how appreciative you are of them, and whatever it is that you wanted to do, an adventure you wanted to go on, a book that you wanted to read, do it today so you can be on that plane and be very peaceful with your untimely demise.

Michael:

I love that. As dark as that might feel for some folks, it is a perfect ... and I have been on that exact same situation where the plane starts rattling and you see all the different versions of humanity emerge. I love the way you put that. Thanks for sharing it like that.

Chris:

Thank you. I think there are so many parallels. The reason why I'm like, "Hey, we're going to vibe and connect to this the more we talk is there's a lot that's in common between the two of us." Now I know you worked at an agency, I know you ran an agency, and you mentioned you're not in that state right now. As we're kind of winding down on the hour here, what is the next move for Michael Ventura?

Michael:

I am very committed to being me professionally is the idea. For a long time, I was the COO of this business that was my job, and I was Michael from Sub Rosa, and now I just want to be Michael. And my pursuits may be slightly different and the ways I show up might be dialed up a little more here or dialed down a little bit more here. This is the first time in my professional life that I've not had a team to manage, that I've not had overhead to meet the needs of on a monthly basis, and that instead it's just me doing my work. And, some days, that means researching an idea or a premise. Some days, that means writing. Some days, that means speaking. Some days, that means working with other people and their teams. And I've decided that I'm not rushing to go build a new thing where I've got to run the business because I actually really enjoy helping other people run their businesses right now.

And, if I can prevent you from stepping in a pothole that I stepped in five years ago, let's do it, because I would rather see you get where you need to go and be a support system to you. In the last 18 months, I've joined eight startup boards and I'm helping their founders move through stuff, working on a second book, still doing speaking, have a couple advisory clients, and it's just nice to have that diversity in my day, and also, some days, to be able to just say, I don't have anything really pressing today. I'm going to go take a longer walk with the dogs.

Chris:

I'm curious about this, if I may ask this question, one of your superpowers, your T-scale, is management and leadership. Without a team to manage or to lead, are you effectively taking away your superpower?

Michael:

No. I think that I'm just broadening the team definition. It's not my team anymore. It's the capital T team. It's all of us. And so, some days, my management and leadership is about sharing an idea to an audience. And, some days, it's about doing one-on-one work with a CEO that I believe in that I want to see succeed. And, some days, I'm my client and I'm the one who needs management. And I'll show you a real perverse thing, but this is how I manage my life, and I've done it this way for 15 years, and there's no Trello board. I just turned my camera to a bulletin board full of index cards because that's ... everything that's on there is stuff I'm working on. And they're in various stages of completion and they're in different verticals based on what they fall into. And, for me, that's where I'm focused right now, and those things up and down as the day goes on.

Chris:

It's old-school Trello. It's very Silicon Valley. It's several columns of things, I imagine with sub-things, that you need to get done for each parent thing, and it's mind-mapped right there. It's super clear. It's a lot more organized than my mind. I have a follow-up question, which is, if you're imagining the team, I thought you were going to say the team in the companies that you advise for, but you're talking about humanity is the team, right?

Michael:

All of the above. Sometimes it is the team that I'm working with at an organization, and my job is to help them work through a moment. Any consulting work I've always done, I've always believed it's my job to create the fastest path to my own obsolescence. How do we help you to such a degree? It's the teach a man to fish thing. How do we teach you how to do this so that you don't need the consultant to help you guide yourself through it the next time? In that regard, yeah, sometimes it's a team, but sometimes it's just gen pop and it's like me sharing an idea and seeing what sticks.

Chris:

And where are you finding the most enjoyment, a platform or a format where you can actually reach the masses, the big audience?

Michael:

I think there's two platforms that I probably have the most fun with. One is Substack, and so I write a pretty long-form read, typically a 10-minute read. Try to do a couple a month, generally speaking. It probably hovers around 12 a year because they're pretty researched and sometimes they take more time. Could probably get better at popping out little shorter ones in between, but right now, that feels manageable, and it's also fun. It's stuff I like to write about. And then the other is Instagram, which I don't really share my writing there as much as I share my thoughts and ideas. And I've often described my juxtaposition between my LinkedIn and my Instagram as LinkedIn is weirdly professional and Instagram is professionally weird and somehow they both coexist together for me.

Chris:

If people want to find out more about you, Michael, besides ... well, why don't you just tell them where to go? I know there's a book. It's called Applied Empathy. I know there's the Instagram account and wherever else. Tell us how to get more.

Michael:

Yeah, sure. The best way to track my comings and goings is at consolidatedeggs.com, and the reason for that is because I needed a place to put all of my eggs in one basket to describe all of these diverse things I do, and so that was the cheeky URL L that I bought to tell that story. And so it's just an ongoing, ever-changing block of text of stuff I'm working on today, things I'm working on that I'm interested in, ways to get in touch, so on and so forth. It's a good place to find me.

Chris:

Nice. Unlike most people, Michael's putting all his eggs in one basket. I love the metaphors. It's very visual, everything that you say. I love that. Michael, it's been a real pleasure talking to you today. I really felt like I met a kindred spirit and I just appreciate what you do and the energy, and I wish you the best of luck in what it is that you're trying to help people with. And I think it's noble to help provide tools, frameworks, and ideas so that other people can be aligned with their purpose. It's wonderful. Thank you.

Michael:

Thank you, Chris. I appreciate chatting with you too. More to come.

My name is Michael Ventura and you are listening to The Futur.

Greg Gunn:

Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur podcast is hosted by Christ Do and produced by me, Greg Gunn. Thank you to Anthony Barro for editing and mixing this episode, and thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music.

If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris, and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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