Why “Follow Your Passion” Is Bad Advice — with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Support for the show comes from ODO. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting, another for inventory and other for sales, and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where ODO comes in. An all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs. Best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at Odoo.com/PropG. That's ODOO.com/PropG. Episode 412. Born to Zierikot serving Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 2012, Tinder launched. My wife I found out is actually on Tinder, so I swiped left on that cheating. I wish Tinder would adopt a Netflix feature that says, "Skip intro." What's happening? Today's episode was recorded live at the ODO experience in San Francisco with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the co-founders of Stanford's Life Design Lab, and authors of How to Live a Meaningful Life. I actually find some value in what they have to say as cynical as I am. I mostly use it for therapy. I'm a fucking hot mess. Let's bring this back to me. I dropped my son at college a couple weeks ago, and I kept it together. Why? Because I'm self-aware enough to know that my 18-year-old doesn't need to be worried about his father's emotional trauma from the cats and the cradle and the fact that I on this podcast talk about what an amazing father I am, and then review the last 18 years and think, "Okay, I was good, but maybe not great, and now it's too fucking late." Now the credits are rolling. Anyways, it's been a rough couple weeks, and in some, your world gets smaller, so there's can get bigger. I have found myself very, very into my youngest, though. I still have him. He's trapped. He's still at home for another three years, and I've been taking a ton of photos of him. I think he realizes I'm freaking out. Anyways, that is where I have found purpose the last 18 years, was trying to prepare boys for others, and I worry that I've lost that purpose, and this conversation attempts to address that, and we explore kind of that feeling of emptiness, if you will, and we had some very, I thought open and honest questions from the audience. So with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Welcome back everyone. I hope you are all, you are all ready for this next speaker. Now he wears a lot of hats. He's a professor of marketing at NYU Stern, an entrepreneur with nine companies founded. He's a, he's a best-selling author several times over, co-host of pivot, host of the prof g pod, and the voice behind a growing family of shows that millions listen to every week. Now what sets him apart is his range. He talks about big tech and the economy, but also about politics, about education, and about young people trying to find their way, and about what a good life really looks like. He says what he thinks, he backs it with data, and he's never boring. For a lot of his listeners, he has become one of the essential voices in America. He'll be recording his podcast right here, joined by his guest, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Please, everyone give a warm welcome and a round of applause for Professor Scott Galloway. What's great to be here? I should have a mic. How are we doing so far? All right. Quick show of hands. Dad joke or dick joke? Who wants a dad joke? Who wants a dick joke? This is my kind of crowd, okay, but you ask for it. So I'm at that point where my kids need, you know, the sex talk. So I took, walked into my son's bedroom with a banana and a condom, and he said, what's the banana for? And I said, well, I can't get hard on an empty stomach. You ask for it. I was just in the urinal. Just in the urinal. The guy next to me looks over and looks down and goes circumcised. And I'm like, no, that's just the wear and tear. All right, dad joke. The politically correct guy, there's like, Jesus Christ. Dad joke. So I invented a new word, plagiarism. Think about it. It's actually pretty funny. Maybe not. I only know 25 words in the alphabet. I don't know why. All right, back to dick jokes. Anyways, super excited to be here. We have two fantastic professors. How many of you like me were rejected from Stanford? So true story, rejected from Indiana. I was rejected from UT, Kellogg, and basically rejected eight or nine schools. And then UCLA let me off the waiting list. But it's really exciting to have these two guys. And I really like these guys because they're older than me and much more handsome, which gives me hope. These guys are definitely like juicing or something. You'll see when they come out. A lot of saunas and testosterone and NAD going on here. All right, let's bring them out. Today, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Stanford educators and bestselling authors of design your life. And most recently, how to live a meaningful life. Gentlemen, come on stage. Okay, so guys, do you want to just do a quick intro? I didn't do a justice. Tell us a little bit about your class and your book and what you guys do. That was the first intro with testosterone in it since we've been doing this, by the way. Just wanted to thank you for that. Go ahead. Start. Go ahead, guys. Oh, so it turns out how many of you think your life matters to your life is like a big deal for you. The rest of you talk to me later. Okay. So that turns out to be a broad consideration. Most people think their life matters to them. How many of you got really good help figuring out what to do with it? That's the issue. Okay. So we noticed that. And so we decided to teach a class and it worked and people liked it. And we sold two million books. And then you called us and we came. How many books have you guys co-authored together? We authored three. Three got it. I'm Bill Burnett and I'm still teaching full time as Stanford Dave's a little bit more part time with me. But it was the same question. We, you know, I've been in office hours for a long time with a lot of students. And, you know, Stanford kids are smart, but they don't really know anything. Yeah. They know nothing about life. They don't know how to launch. They live in this little bubble where we give them dorms and food and all sorts of fun stuff to do. So we got together in 2007 and created this class. And it's been a lot of fun because it replies this idea of design and we'll get into this idea of design thinking. And I've been in industry for, baby, I've both been in industry for a lot of our career. I was at Apple for seven years designing. If you had a, if you had a power book back in the 90s, my team probably designed it. So I've been designed a lot of stuff using these same ideas. And then we thought, well, what about people? We could design people this way, right? They're, they're an unknown thing in the future and you can't get any data. So you have to figure out how to design it. Got it. And so, sorry, we got to pay for this right now. For those listening, we're at the Odo experience here in lovely San Francisco. Odo is an all in one platform for running a business from sales to accounting to inventory marketing and operations. The idea is simple. You run one business so you should run one system. Okay. So we're going to jump right into it. We're going to ask me a bunch of questions. And then we're going to save a bunch of time for what I think is the most interesting part of these types of sessions. And that is Q&A where I hope you literally ask anything totally unfiltered. And we are all going to agree that this is a safe space. And if someone says something in delicate or in artful, we're just going to do what we should do more of. And that is for give each other and move on to I have a bunch of notes about happiness and purpose. But I'm going to just start with when I look at this crowd, I think of a bunch of young professionals who are probably in the tech scene and in a capitalist society thinking a lot about economic security, which I think despite what people tell you is pretty central, at least at a certain level, through establishing some level of happiness and purpose. I, anyways, I'll stick by that. But at the same time, you're in this city and you're in tech and you're trying to establish a life a partnership, I think sometimes in your kind of in your 30s you start beginning thinking, well okay, maybe I have some professional trajectory but maybe I don't feel as if I have a real center of purpose or meaning. Do you have a series of questions to go through around whether or not someone is tracking or not tracking around finding purpose and meaning in their life and I'll begin with you? Yeah, we do. Actually it's an exercise we call the compass so it's got three pieces first like what's the story you grew up with? You know I grew up with work hard, you know go to good school, make some money, you'll be fine. I say work and my dad said and you're gonna have to make all the money you know because that's what men do. Right. And I decided I would find a woman who made more money than me which I did and a wonderful wife. So that part was wrong but yeah so what's your story and then what's your work view? What's your theory of work? Why do we work? And then the final one is what's your life view kind of 250 to 500 words? What's the meaning of life? Put those three things together make them coherent and now you've got what we call a compass because you don't necessarily have to know where you're going. You just have to know you're going in the right direction and that gives you your center the thing you were talking about. Like now I know who I am and what I'm looking for. Right. And he thought stuff. Well just the research makes very clear if you want your life to be meaningful to you and most people do. If you can align and interconnect who am I what I believe in what I'm doing. Right. You can connect those three dots your chance to meaning making goes way up. If you can't connect those dots your chances of meaning making goes way down. You can't connect a dot you've not articulated. So the purpose of our compass exercise is to articulate what those dots are. Now what you'll notice is it doesn't answer the question what should you believe in and what should you be doing we don't should on you we don't recommend you should on yourself it's not helpful. And so you get there's some exploration you have to answer these questions. They're not easy questions to answer but once you write down the answers that you currently have you can start moving toward that and we believe the human being is a becoming you're never done you're always growing and if you're doing that over time you keep moving toward the best version of what you think is true of yourself it's going to get clear. And how do you separate happiness and quote unquote larger purpose and meaning. We'll start with you. Well we don't talk about happiness much frankly. In fact the positive psychology movement started by Martin Saligman and she had me had six and behind about 20 years ago. The first book was called Authentic Happiness and there was happiness equation and the book is largely been debunked is not particularly true. So they moved from happiness to flourishing or thriving and that's probably a better thing. We talk mostly about joy and aliveness actually. So I think if you're if you're living in such a way that's bringing generativity to you is causing you to grow is causing you to think what you're doing is worthwhile and is particularly enabling you to experience more aliveness you feel more like yourself and more here. That's a joy producing thing. Those are good indicators to look for. So that's that's the criteria we like. And talk to talk to me a little bit about dysfunctional beliefs. Well we see these all the time and it's just it's a belief that just holds you back. See they're not true or it's just preventing you from moving forward. So one of the things we hear our students say all the time is I've got to pick the right major I don't pick the wrong major I'm not going to have a good life. Yeah completely baloney 10 years out of school the data is no less than 20% of you will have anything will be doing something that's anything to do with your major major is the way you organize college is not the way you organize your life right or I hear this in you know from 30 something so it's too late. It's too late for me. I you know I'm an accountant hated I'm a lawyer I hated it's too late. It's never too late because it's it's a some class right. Economist is some class to start from where you are and design your way forward. So you know I own the other one and I think you and I agree on this is a follow your passion which is probably the worst advice you can give somebody so we're you know we teach at Stanford so we can't kind of make shit up we have to have it based on research. So there's a guy at Stanford Bill Damon who runs this I think it's Emeritus now but he ran the center for the study of adolescence. He researched this he wrote a book called Path to Purpose. Less than 20% of people have a singular identifiable passion. Eight out of 10 people go I don't know what you're talking about or I got lots of things you know where do you want to start and by the way in that 20% most of that stuff is for the arts I want to be a singer I want to be a dancer I want to be a writer and what do we tell those kids oh you can't do that that's not a real job. So anyway following your passion is a bad starting point because it leaves eight out of 10 people going I don't know what's wrong with me and go to the back of the line come when you have a passion come on up we'll talk to you so we're not into passion that's a big dysfunction belief. So how do you discern between I would imagine there's a lot of people in the audience that think well I don't know I'm not loving this I go to work it's okay it pays the bills I'm kind of doing what I think I should be doing but I don't feel really fulfilled yeah and when young people come to me and say that I have trouble discerning between well that's called work and and if you think you're gonna just find a lot of emotional and psychological reward in your work I think that's a nice aspiration but typically what I found you have to I don't want to say not hate your job but it's a grind if you expect to achieve a certain level of economic or relevance there's just a certain level of grind required at the same time you don't want to end up at the end of your life thinking God I really screwed up I just did something I didn't love because I felt societal pressure or economic pressure is there a means of discerning the difference between work and when you should pull the rip cord and do something different yes well there are a couple of things we talk about around this stuff first of all there's money making and meaning making right right so we talk about that a lot and the modern presupposition for most educated people for stealing the West I mean as in West of Athens is that I should be able to make money at what makes meaning in fact I really should make but I want to make the world a better place and I want to be fulfilled and I want to make a killing and that should all work easily in the universe should be organized around the universe is not organized around that premise the universe the world is doing what it's doing period the overwhelming majority of human history meaning making and money making were two different things you know I mean the poetry thing on the side or you did the other thing on the side and meaning making and money making don't have to be the same we call that there's the vocational lifestyle where my life is in my work I get to do one thing for all of it that's really rare it's a very modern idea if it happens to work for you if you happen to be conveniently confused so one student walks up to office hours sits down says oh what's going on with you well I'm I mean computer science I'm really good at AI I'm particularly fascinated how AI can affect the retail world and enterprise software so you know I'm kind of thinking what might I do with that what what's really convenient to be you right now next student Allison says now what do you do I'm I'm into I'm really into documentary film preferably by nature I don't actually notes I'm into doing documentary film about notes oh terribly inconvenient to be you right now you don't get to pick the you you don't get to pick the universe you know picture time so you just have to navigate the gap between how you're working and how the world is working and make it work as best you can last thing I'll say there are three ways to think about work jobs careers and callings you do jobs for money careers for professional development and callings for missionals fulfillment and values realization most people stack those vertically a job is down here a career is better calling is even better we hold those horizontally they're just different they're not better or worse I know a brains a heart surgeon who has a job he does it for the money he went to miss school to make his parents happy happened to finish really well doesn't really like that much happens to be really good at it he does it for the money he doesn't tell his patients because would make them nervous yeah he is saving lives but he actually will say I'm a better surgeon because I don't give a shit I'm just doing the work you get your ego wrapped up in this thing you get all connected to the patient you get in trouble I'm the best surgeon I know because I don't give a shit it's an interesting thing to hear from somebody so think about this stuff and decide how you want to plan it any any uh well you know it is a very modern idea you know we're all children immigrants my grandparents came over from Germany on my mom's side 1933 my grandfather got the family out of Germany in 33 because 33 was when Hitler was a like good idea to get out yeah I didn't think that was gonna go well this is Trump moment and he got the family he got the family to California somehow whoo and uh that's pandering to the crowd I know it's a San Francisco one risky thing to say it's a San Francisco crack so but so and he took any job I mean he took any job put a roof over the over the head feed the kids get them to school and that was his job he had meaning from his church from his community yeah got meaning from other things that you didn't expect to get a lot you know his sixth grade education he had terrible crappy jobs for most of his life but he had a meaningful life because the mission was get the kids so his my mom and and uncle went off the community college and got you know got educated that he didn't have my parents were able to send me to Stanford my daughter just finished P.H.D. and Cancer Immunology at UCSF here from Cornassus. And she's going to change the world and save cancer. And cure cancer. So she's wonderful. But I mean, it's all of these things, all these jobs and money and meaning thing. It gets so confused, and particularly in this generation, people want it all in one place. It doesn't have to be that one place. In fact, you might not want to get your money. I might not get your meaning on the market's terms. There's a, you inspire a couple questions. So I really appreciate your story about your grandparents leaving Germany in 1933. My mom in 1939 was a four-year-old Jew living in London. And I would say the RAF in Roosevelt, other reason I'm here. So much of what happens to us is just out of your control. It's not your fault. I would say the smartest thing I've ever did was being born a wide heterosexual male in California in the '60s. That was literally the smartest thing I could have done. And unfair disproportionate advantage. America, 30% of the world's GDP growth, 1945 to 2000. And 2/3 of that was crammed into the 1/3 of the population that looks melt and felt like me. And so much in this goes to what I often tell young people is that so much of your success in your failure is not your fault. And to be humble when you do well, I think the tech community is very good at crediting the grit and character for their success and then blaming the markets for their failure. And what I find is that people don't nearly give enough credit to things that are out of their control. And the overwhelming majority of human experience happens to you. That's right. That's right. So when you're talking to people who feel like they have a lack of meaning and purpose, and under the auspices of forgive yourself and be responsible for the things you can control and can control, when someone is struggling, are there certain means of trying to inspire an upward spiral or exercise for saying, all right, before we even get to the purpose of meaning in the promised land, if you really feel lost right now, are there a set of like go-tos or hacks to begin to build back? Well, I'll talk about prototyping. You want to talk about meaning, you know? I mean, so I go ahead. So our whole, you know, in class and the books, everything else, the philosophy, to set the bar low, clear it, do it again, do it again, do it again. You know, James Clear is a Thomas Cabot. Yeah. Start small, make small changes. What will you talk about? Designers have two mindsets that are important. Curiosity. Even if you're really at the lowest of low, there's something you're curious about, right? Yeah. And then prototyping. Prototyping is just run a little experiment. Talk to somebody who's interesting, who's doing the thing that you're interested in, or have a little experience of doing something that you're curious about. And these small prototypes build a sense of momentum and increases your curiosity. Because if you're a curious person, there's a lot of stuff in the world going on right now that's really interesting. And so if you start small, build little prototype experiments and just keep moving forward, you'll eventually find some track that fits and feels good. And that's how you get out of the sort of existential, I don't even know where to start. Question. Yeah, oh, there is no figuring it out. There's only getting on with it. Mm-hmm. So I got married four weeks ago. And right there, the darling woman in the third row, who for some reason is willing to put her-- Your wife comes to see you speak. Yeah. I am so sorry. Well, she's still under warranty, you know what I mean? You got married four weeks ago. Wait, I'm here for you, too. Congratulations. That's nice. Yeah. And she ran an art gallery here in San Francisco for 40 years, the Frankl Gallery. But 20 years ago, decided, I think there's something else I'm supposed to do, too. Had no idea what it was. So she stuck. But you just lean into what you know. Quit worrying about what you don't know. And lean into what you do know. OK, so maybe it's this. Maybe she's reading. She's thinking, oh, maybe it's palliative care. I read an article, palliative care. What's that? I think it might have something to do with that. Looks into that. Maybe it could become an interface chaplain. No, it doesn't work. I can't go to school. I'm 65 years old, have a kid, whatever it is. And then, you know, 10 years after that, she's sitting in the sun in Tucson, Arizona. And it hits her. You could help people write letters. She literally gets a calling. And she goes, yes, I could do that. What the hell is that? I don't know what that means. So she's now a letter midwife. And she assists people writing the essential letters of their lives. She's done that 800 times. She's got a book coming out in October, all about it, called "Unfinished Business." And so if you just keep leaning into it, after about 20 years or so, it starts getting clear. It's called being a human being. So if you're stuck, just identify what you are drawn toward and make a move. Even if it's a conversation or a start or reading an article or whatever it might be, you're making progress. Don't measure how I've fixed it yet. I've resolved it yet. Am I making a move? - This is the classic design thinking thing. David Kelly, who runs the D-School and IDO and is the kind of the king of all this stuff. He said, we build our way forward. Just go build something. Build a little prototype, write a couple letters. Say with somebody, it was about to lose someone they love and facilitate a letter midwife. That's a great description. Build something and see what happens. Because as soon as you build a prototype, the world that is possible just changed. I've seen this a million times. I was at Apple for seven years. We build a prototype, something we put it in a room. You know, we'd stand behind the window and the glass and somebody would start playing with it and they'd realize, oh man, if you could do this, I could do this or this and this and you're like, yeah, as soon as you have a prototype, you change the world as possible. So build something, anything, and you'll get unstuck. - We'll be right back after a quick break. (upbeat music) - Support for the show comes from Odo. If your business runs on five different apps, 12 browser tabs and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for Odo. Odo is an all-in-one business management software that connects every part of your business into one powerful, easy-to-use platform. So instead of wasting time switching between disconnected systems, your entire business works together in real time. Your team moves faster, your data stays accurate and you can actually focus on growing your business. Let one unified system run your entire business. From the first opportunity to the final payment, everything works together in one place. Whether you're a small business or managing a large operation, Odo gives you one flexible platform built to grow with you. Try today for free at odo.com/provg. That's odo.com/provg. (upbeat music) - So the question I would have is sequential versus concurrent and that is when I got out of the hospital of business in the '90s, I didn't want to save the whales, I didn't want to be a good person, I wanted to get mad rich. And because that's where I grew up with no money and it was just very important to me. And I did nothing but work. I had no purpose, I had no meaning. It cost me my hair, it cost me my first marriage and it was absolutely worth it. Yeah. And now I have the economic security to try and think about or can I find something, can I have some influence that might be positive somewhere down the road. And I would argue, one of the things I don't like about the tech community is they pretend to give a shit about the world while depressing teens so they can somewhere advertising and make a shit ton of money. And I might just come out of the closet and say you're about making money in economic security right now and then hopefully you'll go on to do something with your money. And that's what I've done. And I guess my question is, is it okay to think about purpose or meaning sequentially as opposed to concurrently? - Well sure, and especially you weren't without purpose when you were just a repacious capitalist. You had a goal and you made it and you sacrificed for it. You may have changed your mind about it later and it makes for a good one-liner. But the truth is you'd probably do it again. - Yeah. - And look, we make decisions. You optimize for one thing versus another. And this is why we had to write a third book by the way. So after the pandemic and in the great resignation, 52 million people walk off the job looking for something better. We had all either had or had sat next to somebody who went through an existential no crisis, since if the question gets raised, wow, is this good enough? Is this it? And hopeings people said, no. How many of you quit in the last five years at least once? Okay, 20% of the room, right? Not because it was going great. And so when we started hearing back from people that didn't work, we heard two things. I'm just not fulfilled. - Yep. - Or I'm not having the impact I want to. - Yep. And we're overwhelmingly heard that mostly impacts about 80, 20 impact of fulfillment. And we looked at that. And both of those are dead ends. If that's the only form of meaning making you're looking for. - Yeah. - So they're a good thing. Having a, we're trying to have an impact right now, right? We wrote a book because we hope that we'll impact people's lives. But if impact, which is a thing and you're not a thing. - Yep. - And even if it works, the glow is short-lived. And most of the time it doesn't work. So that's a dead end, that's a treadmill. And fulfillment, which is what Maslow told you you wanted to be become self-actualized, become all that you can be. And we know you can't be all you can be. Because all of us are bigger than a lifetime's worth of a person. There's more than one of you in there. So you can't manifest your whole self. That's impossible. And that's the good news. So other forms of meaning making, which occur in a place we call the flow world, the transactional world where we get stuff done, is one thing, the flow world, which is what's actually happening right now. So right now, am I thinking about, gee, I wonder if this is gonna move the needle on sales this week, and it was, is Scott gonna get this thing out digitally fast enough? Or, I wonder what's on these people's minds? And are we actually being helpful? Am I here or am I somewhere else? And in this place called here, regardless of whether or not your life is working, regardless whether or not this is the perfect career. Right here, right now, your chance to being more alive is extremely high. You can get more out of the life you're already in. While you're still trying to design a better life down the road, and there are four places we can do that, which are wonder, flow, coherence, and formative community. But, you know, that's four chapters. And so, but there are things, there are hacks, if you will, we have 21 tools in this book, describing ways to get your hands on more meaning right now. - You don't have to spend, you know, the next nine years developing a mindfulness practice. That's cool if you wanna do it. You don't have to go, you know, 40 days in the wilderness, you know, starving. It's, meaning is made in moments. Moments are made in this here and now, flow, place. And we teach people to be moment designers. - I wanna talk about partnership. - Okay. - And that is, I have found that in a capitalist society, you have to be economically viable, especially as a man. And if that offends people, I'm sorry, 75% of women say economic viability is central to a maid. It's only 25% of men. Men don't care. It's that joke that Chris Rock makes that the bouncer could work at KFC and Mary Jay-Z, the opposite is not true. And in San Francisco, hypergamy is still alive and well. Educational hypergamy has been reduced. There are now a lot of women who have greater levels of certification than the men and the partners they're with. But in San Francisco still, if you meet a couple, the man is twice as likely to make more money than the woman. Even despite the fact that in San Francisco, we now have fortunately this wonderful thing called income parity among men and women until women have kids in the corporate world, takes them down again. Anyways, I have found much to my surprise that the money was the means, but the ends was meaningful relationships with an absence of economic anxiety. That that's the point, right? And that waking up and hopefully finding that you're in a really good partnership is as I get older, I find the most, 100% of the most rewarding thing in life. And I feel as if I just got quite frankly, just really lucky. And my criteria for picking a partner was would I really like to have sex with this person? That's it. That's where it started, that's where it ended. And I ended up in a really good partnership. How can you be more thoughtful than I was? Well, that wouldn't be hard, actually. How can we be more thoughtful around picking partners that result in long-term, meaningful, rewarding lives? Like, if you're advising your kids, is there thinking about getting married or moving in with someone? Are there a set of criteria or questions that people should be asking themselves that they don't? Do it, sir. Well, it just occurred to me, there's an old saying that the best marriages are when each person thinks they got the best deal, right? Certainly, I got the best deal. My wife Cynthia is amazing. I got the best deal. I don't know why she puts up with me, but I think it's amazing. And I've asked her and she says, no, no, no, actually, I got the better of the deal because you're kind and you're nice and blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think you're looking for a situation where you think you don't deserve it, but you think that you're going to get the best deal. And that this person is irrationally attracted to you. If you got that, and it goes both ways, see, they're holding hands there, that's good. Then I think that's what you're looking for. But you have a little more current. Yeah, I mean, I've been married 38 years, so I forget why we got married. You pointed out them, so I can't help it. I'm looking at both of you. The dude got the better deal. Trust me on that. [LAUGHTER] Sorry, go ahead. That's true, that's true. They met in the lobby this morning. Anyway, the-- well, first of all, there actually is-- the truth is, there are some pretty good answers to this. I mean, the field of counseling and field of relational development has been a rough, a long time. And a strong opinion about what happened to be right. The best work on that is by John and Julie Gottman, and the Gottman Institute at a CL. And they said, we don't need to argue theoretical ideas or psychological models about this. We just need to observe what works and what doesn't. So John and Julie put together the love lab, and then videotaped people for years and evaluated relationships, and identified behaviorally what are the masters and disasters of marriage and entrepreneurship relationship. And this all been well-documented. And he's got a book called In Eight Dates. I mean, so what are the questions you need to ask or the things? It's a value of alignment, image of what your future looks like together. There are a couple of pretty rational things you can understand that will allow you to partner well. And if you miss those topics, you're probably going to partner poorly. So do the work, read the Gottman stuff and apply it. Now, that's sort of the objective side. Then there's the cosmic side, you know, in my own case, I've been married three times, you know, and well once and fabulously twice. So I was married for just 24 years then divorced. Then I married the love of my life and lost her to cancer and the second love of my life a couple of weeks ago. And my first wife and I were still friends. I mean, we raised kids really well together. We just did everything but husband and wife well. And we tried and tried and tried to fix it. And the raw material just wasn't there. We finally put the dog down kind of kindly. And so I got some thoughts on this. But in each case, the chemistry thing is unmistakable. I was absolutely gobsmacked by Claudia, my second wife, and by Frisch. She came to office hours. And I mean, it just knocked me out. She was a student of mine. It was only eight months in my junior. So it wasn't a Title IX violation. But I had to do a Title IX filing. And like, thank you for filing. It's going to be OK. If you're 16 and she's 68, it's OK. If you're 16 and she's 25, you're fired. And you should be. But the chemistry thing matters. So my late wife and I had the line, because we had a marriage people wanted. How did you guys get it? And the only line we came up with is be a healthy person who marries her partners with a healthy person by healthy. Like, know who you are, know where your baggage is, and have people in your life who can call you on your crap, you know, Bill calls me on my crap all the time. So be a healthy person who marries a healthy person for love. Love isn't enough. But if you don't have it, it's pretty tough. So between the two of you, you have 10 kids. I got three. He's got seven. Seven, so. Yep. There you go. 11 green kids, yeah. So I want to talk a little bit. Well, actually, I'll ask a question about purpose. I'll put forward a thesis. And that is, I never thought much about purpose. And what I have discovered is that purpose bubbles up from you wake up one day. I used to approach work and life in a capitalist transactional format. Am I getting more from this relationship with a girlfriend than maybe I'm giving? Am I paying this person less than their worth? That was my goal. I wanted to be on the right side of every transaction. And then as I got older, I realized that if you're constantly on the negative side of a transaction, and you still engage in it and still get some sort of a reward for it, I'll use an example. I am never going to get a positive ROI on my voice. They-- I just don't think they're ever going to be up in two a.m. worried about me. I don't care how nice the home they just-- stick me and ship me off to is I'm going to spend way more money than them. And yet every day I enjoy continuing to make this negative investment. That's my purpose. Right. And that is I think maybe someday you wake up and say I keep donating time at this no-kill animal shelter. They could build a statue for me and it wouldn't be worth the time I have invested here. I think that's how you find you wake up and say well maybe this is my purpose. That you take the exact opposite approach I took and find I continue to make these ridiculous over investments in something and it feels natural. It feels it makes sense. Thoughts on negative ROI as a means of finding your purpose. Not everything that counts can be measured. You love your boys. Of course. That's it. There's no negative positive. You love your boys. You do anything for 100 percent. You're asking the return question not the love question. So I mean you love your boys. So your purpose is walking that out. So one of the discernment questions I am the discernment lead in a social impact venture accelerator. And a discernment question I ask people all the time is to walk in your life expectantly. So be curious. Listen for longing. What do you mean by that? Listen to your own heart. What do you care about? What do you long for? What is it that makes you come alive? What are you weep for? What frankly what brings you pain? That's what you lean into. And that's what we would argue. It means to be human being. We're friends with Bob Waldinger, the final project manager of the Harvard adult study of human behavior. Longest running study of humans ever done on the planet. Three generations, 75 years. The predecessor to Bob Waldinger, George Valiant would say, happiness, it's love, full stop. Yeah, the granted. Yeah, the guy study. Yeah, the so and I've done a podcast with these gentlemen before and I use it as a chance to just get cheap therapy. My purpose, my purpose has been to raise men for others. And yeah, cool. What wasn't expecting a plus from that? And I just dropped, I just dropped my oldest off at college. And quite frankly, I'm struggling because I'm like, what's my purpose? So let's go to the other end and you find, okay, my purpose has been trying to raise good humans. And quite frankly, I did my job. I'm obsolete. I, you know, I've just figured out like that's it. What do you do when you feel like you've lost a sense of purpose? Just got very quiet. Well, you know, I did. My wife and I came to this, that sort of existential moment, a long time before they went off to college and we said, you know, there's going to be a whole bunch of times when we're not in the room and they have to make the right decision. Right. So what we got to do is teach them how to make a good decision based on how they know themselves. Yeah. So you're not done yet. You're kids at college. You know, a college is going to be all about. Yeah. No one ever goes to the reunion, a 25th reunion and says, man, I remember that chemistry final that I got a good grade on that was awesome. They don't say the thing. I remember that time when we all got drunk and fell off the roof, you know, and then we, and then we run, so that's what, that's what, hopefully, you know, your, your son is going to experience and you've trained, you've taught him to make good decisions. So you're not done yet because now he's going to make a decision about college, then he's going to make a decision about grad school, then he's going to make a decision about who he marries. And, and you get a chance to watch, to walk alongside him with that. So you're not, you know, I always say like I'm no longer really a father. I'm just a consultant. And my kids are younger than Dave's, but they're all at work and, you know, my 31, 33 and 35. They're all at work and they're all make good choices. They all picked great partners. And so my wife and I are like, yeah, high five. Good job. Dave, father, seven. Yeah, no, I think, um, I'm going to with you on, I really, I, my father died of suicide when I was nine. I didn't have a father. I really wanted to be one. I actually didn't want to be anything other than a dad. I didn't want to be, um, successful. I didn't want to be famous, didn't want to be important. I just wanted to be a good dad. You know, um, I forgot you should be a good husband first. So that's why I kind of got bad at that the first time around. Um, and learn my way forward, but nonetheless. And I remember walking upstairs and passing, going down the hallway, the week after my eldest son went to college. Um, and I passed by his room and the door was open. And four feet past his door, I burst in his ears. I had no idea why. And what if I looked on the room and it was neat, I'd never seen it that way before. Um, and I went, oh, there's something deep in me that even in my peripheral vision picks up, he's gone. Right. And I really missed that. So it's a big deal. But that's, I mean, that was purposeful. So Bill and I talk a lot about, you know, we, we're not in favor of you trying to find your purpose, like there's an it. There is no it. There's just, you learn how to live purposefully. It should be an adjective or an adverb, not a noun. There's not a purpose. You didn't lose your purpose. You succeeded at it. So first you have a party. And then you grieve the fact that I love that job. And now it's going away from me. Um, and then you start looking for the next invitation. We, you know, I think life is full of invitations. Are you paying attention? You have to learn to pay attention. Have to be present to the moment. A little bit reflective. We, you know, oh, oh, hi Scott, what do you do? I'm a professor. You know, I stopped asking me what I do. I'm not a human doing. I'm a human being. You know, um, okay, fine. Well, rather than the B due duality, we teach the B due become try circle. So rather than vicious duality, the virtue of circle, you're starting with who you were. I was there. Then you go do stuff. You raise a kid. You know, and then you become, oh, you become, you know, the parent of college kids who's got some time in a sense and that you reflect on that that becomes the new being. You do something. You go do something different. That becomes a virtuous cycle. B due become B due become that's the deal. You're becoming all the way to the very end. You know, the week she died my late wife chose not to take the end of life drug when she started really losing it. And she didn't want to die without her brain. I said, you sure, honey, she goes, no, even it gets weird. I want to stay. And she dug three days later. There might be one more lesson. And I don't want to miss it. We'll be right back. If your business runs on five different apps, 12 browser tabs, and one spreadsheet that everyone's afraid to touch, it's probably time for ODO. Your team moves faster, your data stays accurate, and you can actually focus on growing your business. Try today for free at odu.com/provg. That's oduo.com/provg. We're back with more from Villandei. I think that's a good place to move to Q&A. I don't think we can top that. So we have someone, my colleague, Jennifer's here with a mic. Please raise your hand and Jennifer will roll over and we're finding that person to shut out to your book on raising young men. Thank you. I mean, it is a crisis. Thank you. And young men need more mentorship, more everything we can give them. My son, my youngest is a son, went off to a northeastern in Boston and we later we get a call from the Boston Police. Your son is standing by me. I've had to get a attorney three times for my son to get to college. He's now chief of staff for a congressman in Washington, DC. He's doing great. But it might be there may be more parenting coming up than you know. So the key is to get arrested three times. Please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Dan from Cleveland. Hi, Dan from Cleveland. I find it interesting that all three of you had children and the meaning of that in your lives. I'm in a similar situation, so it has a lot of impact for me. For me, though, it's been about just realizing you only get this time to raise your children in the one time. And then you're done, and maybe you'll have grandchildren have some impact on them, but it's an in-between, I'm in it in-between right now. That's the best way to put it, where the kids are gone, they're doing their thing. And now it's over, right? I mean, that's the best way I can describe the feeling. There's a level of overness for me that I'm struggling with, so I don't know if you have comments on that. Yeah. Well, if my mom had been your mother, you would have had the meeting when you were 18. She sits down, she draws a circle, starts at zero, goes to 80s. She goes, "Honey, we need to have this conversation before you leave for school." Here's the way it works. You know, you're a kid, you go to college, maybe get a graduate degree, you graduate, you're 20, you work for a while, you probably get married and have some kids. You know, you have your own children, they leave, then you get older than you die. Then she fills in all the pie charts. Then she cross hatches out the section where she says, "This is when you're a parent." And then, you know, it's over when they're 18, because if you do your job right as a parent when your kids are 18, they leave. And they don't come back. I go, "I'm the youngest, go." So that's the hint, mom, she goes, "That's a hint, honey." She has to look all this over here. No kid. Don't design your life around your children, they don't last. Love them when you have them, but have something else in mind. Any thoughts? Yeah. It's a tough time, I remember saying, you know, my oldest Eliza after college, and you go and hang out, and hang, I don't know, but you hang out for a while, and pretty soon one of the people who's dealing with this starts to shoe the parents out of the room. You have to leave now. You have to leave. I'm like, "Oh my gosh. One more thing. I just got to leave. You got to leave. You got to leave." And then you cry all the way home, and we did that three times. Make it curious, build something. It's now time for you, right? Time for you to build something for your life, for yourself. And grieve the fact that they're gone, but, you know, be joyful in the fact that they're out there making really good choices, and you did a good job. Yeah. So I relate to what you're saying. I'm in that, you call it the in between times, I'm in that, and to be blunt, I'm struggling. And what helps me is actually, there was a book by, I've got to forget her name, and she has this great line in it that I hold on to, and that is grief and anxiety are the receipts for love. I think that's a little bit. So I feel like, okay, this makes sense, somewhere I should be. I had, you know, such a good experience. Next question. Hi, I'm Marie, I'm from Cupertino, California. Scott, I think I can help you out a little bit. I could use it. I am actually a recipient of your accelerator program. I graduated last May with a certificate in project management, and I'm very proud and I just want to thank you in person. Thank you, thank you for saying that. So my question is this, okay, I had to make notes. So for people like me who are kind of like at a transition career wise, can you help me in figuring out how to convince employers that we are very much someone that they should put a chance on us that they should hire us. We're still, you know, valuable to tack into, you know, we bring value. It's like, I think finding a job mid-career, early-career, you know, I've raised so much money for startups, and people say it's easy to raise money. I've never had an easy time raising money. I've never had an easy time finding a job. Even in the biggest bull economies, I never thought it was easy. And what I would say is that the secret to success is that you're willing to get out of big spoon and eat shit, and that is to call people who don't want to hear from you, to embarrass yourself and call friends and say I'm struggling. I need to find another job, can you make an introduction to show up to all sorts of social events and be more friendly than you otherwise would be, and just, you know, get after it. I don't, you know, I think the secret to success is rejections, specifically you're willing this to endure rejection. And I've never had an easy time raising money. I've never had an easy time finding the romantic partners. I've never had an easy time starting businesses. And every time the only key to success and the yes of getting hired was a shit ton of nose and my willingness to endure those nose. So I don't have like a silver bullet. What I would suggest is every day, get in front of a, you know, a virtual mirror and say I could add value to a company, I could make someone very happy and then put together a list and think of every know you get as a step closer to a yes. But I just see it as literally endurance and a willingness to mourn and move on and not lose your sense. It's like Churchill said, the key to success is your ability to move through failure without losing your sense of enthusiasm. But I've never had an easy time finding a job, finding a successful business, raising money, it's just all been really quite frankly. And I look at the environment I grew up in and the blessings I've had that were my fault. And it's been easier for me than 99.9% of everyone else. And it's still been really hard every morning. So anyways, long-witted way of saying every know you get means you're getting closer to a yes. So quick, pick it back on that. So Bell, you know, we totally agree with Scott. We had a whole chapter in our first book about how not to find a job, which is by applying. And we advocate the relational networking, you know, through people that Scott was just advocating. So we totally agree about that. But wait, you're three old white men and it's AI and it's now automatic resume screening and it's totally automated and that doesn't effing work anymore, don't you guys get that? Do you really still think that relationship stuff works, Bell? I think it's the only thing that's going to work. You know, we tell students, don't go to the job boards, don't go to LinkedIn, don't do all that stuff. If you want to put a LinkedIn profile up with a really hot portfolio, maybe someone will find you. But the way you're going to get a job is through the network of people. And it's not just people that you know. It's also what psychologists and people call loose connections, loose network connections. So somebody who knows somebody, your dad's roommates, college friend who's a lawyer, who knows a person is going to be the person who refers you into a job, get your resume out of this AI, you know, screening system to the top of the layer where a human being looks at it. I tell my students like, no, you know, you've, I have a student, I brought a hundred cover letters out, beautifully crafted cover letters before I did it all by my hand, by hand. I send in a hundred resumes, I got three responses. I said, well, then you're, that's about average, it's three to five percent. If you want to burn yourself out, you know, writing 97 letters that nobody, and the problem is, you think you got rejected 97 times, nobody read your resume, never happened. It's just a waste, oh, totally, it's the time you're going to find it through networks of people. That's where you're going to find it. It's going to be harder, it's harder, but it's still going to be much, much more productive. Next question. All right. We have time for one more. Hi, my name is Ellen Kelly, and I'm right up the road at USF, and I'm here with my team of career counselors. So we are on the front line of taking your design lab. Thank you. Really, most of the things have been talked about today, but what will you tell the student that comes to my office and has done all of these and still isn't making traction? Can you share some nuggets about resilience, please? Thank you. Yes. Have it and keep going. I mean, it's it. It's, you know, I was, we were once on a, on a talk in Angela Duckworth who wrote the book on grit was, you know, on the talk, and she was saying, yeah, you know, the school system hired me and they wanted to make the students more gritty, and so I was supposed to go look at the school and make the figure out how to make things more gritty and came back with a list of 20 things. The teacher shouldn't have to buy the supplies for the kids. The kid should have a hot lunch and a good breakfast before they start. I mean, she's a whole bunch of things that nothing to do with great. She says your school system doesn't work because not because the kids aren't gritty because you aren't giving them the circumstances they need. I'm sure you guys are giving them all the stuff that they need to get started, but it's just, it, I'm, well, I'd be with Scott, like, have you, are you out every night? Are you talking to new people? You're not going to find it in the listings that we have here at the college because those are going to be over subscribed when I was when I was at Apple We post a thing for a designer. We get 5,000 resumes in a minute, you know I mean, I'm I'm a busy manager. No, by the way when you're busy manager You don't get extra time for interviewing you have to squeeze that in so I'm walking through the hall looking at resumes going No, no. No. Yeah. Let's talk to this person. No, no, no And then somebody comes up to me and says you should talk to Jane. I go great. Jane's on the list So it got they've got to they've got to get out in the world and they've got to get and widen your nose There's a really insightful thing that a career counselor at Stanford wants to say what what makes you nuts? How much curious of people are driven crazy by she goes. Oh, it's it's the on-campus recruiting I go what's the problem? She goes the students believe the world is the collection of companies that do on-campus recruiting That's 0.01 percent of the companies on the planet that is not what the world looks like By the way, we're at the Odo conference and Odo supports small businesses How many small businesses are you looking at the ones you can't find by just reading the article in ink or looking at LinkedIn? I mean, that's what runs what what percent of the GDP's got or small businesses Well, two thirds of job creation is from smaller medium size business Yeah, so two thirds of the potential jobs you're looking for are gonna be from a smaller medium size business See you really have to widen your net. You have to necessarily lower your expectations, but just think differently about what's possible and Try harder and try harder and keep trying so it works Yeah, the The suffix on that is don't let perfect be the enemy of good when kids come to me and complain I mean, I'm why you're stirring this the average starting salary now to business school is two hundred and twelve thousand dollars And when kids come to me and complain about not getting a job. It's usually they can't get the job they want So I think the key is just to me in the game and maybe not take what feels like the ideal opportunity But just to kind of get in the game also, and this is gonna sound I think a bit unusual, but a huge unlock for me is my atheism And that is it reduces my fear of embarrassing myself or failure or doing a job There might be below what I perceive as my own ego at that point because I believe everyone in this room is gonna be dead really soon and so am I and To not take risks and to be worried about what other people think about you is just such a waste I find it an incredible unlock to just imagine I'm gonna be at the end sooner than I'd like So why am I worried about Just emailing these people or going up and introducing myself or why am I Embarrassed to take a job that I think is below my certification right now It doesn't matter everyone you're worried about what they think about you is gonna be gone really soon and so are you Thank you. Oh do Join me Join me in thanking Bill Bernat and Dave Evans Stanford education and best-selling authors of design your life and Most recently how to live a meaningful life What a wonderful time to be in a wonderful country and a wonderful city and to be Out meeting and in person it's so nice to be in IRL here. Thank you so much for showing up today Have a great rest of the afternoon. Thanks very much. Thanks. Thank you Support for the show comes from oh do running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project One app for accounting and other for inventory and other for sales and somehow None of them talk to each other. That's where Oh do comes in an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing all in one powerful platform No messy integrations no bouncing between tabs and best of all no spreadsheets Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odo.com/prop g That's odo.com/prop g