Being the last person standing is not the only strategy for becoming successful, but it certainly has a high hit-rate.
I'm running through the surrounding neighborhoods today and this came up on the podcast I was listening to. It's hot and muggy, but I think it's late enough in the day that we're past the worst of it.
I'm that weirdo who will listen to the same guest's appearance on multiple different podcasts. Usually, within short proximity to each other, too. Quirky, sure, but it's to see what they do differently. I've been doing this little experiment for something like 10 years now, and I've learned a TON from it. I find it completely fascinating. And, it's a study of the interviewer as much as the guest. Between the questions they ask and the way their disposition impacts the person throughout the conversation, the topics discussed can vary quite dramatically.
A while back I wrote about listening to Alex Honnold on The Rich Roll Podcast after he free-soloed the Taipei 101 tower live on Netflix. Today, I listened to one he did with Steven Bartlett on The Diary Of A CEO. They're both long-form multi-hour interviews.
But they were completely different.
I love it when that happens.
Podcasts have sort of become the new Late Night in the sense that when people have something to promote, they go on a "podcast tour" instead of a traditional press tour. Sometimes, people give the same rehearsed soundbites or tell go-to story from their arsenal. More often than not, though, they just show up and share what they really think. As someone who produces and hosts a long-form podcast, I can tell you firsthand that knowing it'll be edited is a mental relief. It frees things up and helps you speak more naturally. At least it does for me. And the magic of that usually creates a conversation that doesn't have to be edited all that much. Good hosts can pull that off really well, and I'm always looking to improve.
Anyway.
I'm skirting past people walking their dogs on the sidewalk while fighting a particularly nasty cramp. I never cramp. Well, I guess not never. But hardly ever. So I'm thinking this is kind of weird, but then realize it probably makes sense given the heat. I realize I'm dehydrated. And just a bit distracted.
But then Alex snags my attention through my earbuds when he says he was never aiming to make a ton of money. Not at first, anyway. He said that he just wanted to climb. So that's what he's been doing, five days a week, for the past thirty years. He even spent a decade of that living out of a van in his twenties on just a few hundred dollars a month before realizing he might be onto something.
If he just kept climbing... that made him a climber. And if he just focused on getting better at climbing, and not trying to monetize it, he'd become the kind of person who could climb some pretty insane stuff, with no ulterior motive. Basically, he said that he realized that the money tends to find people who can climb really insane stuff anyway.
Well shit.
I'm not running anymore, but I'm not home yet either. I'm stretching because I'm worried this cramp might actually be killing me. With a big, huge, intentional exhale, I admit that was one of those things I needed to hear. And I think it that showed up right when I needed to hear it, too.
It's not something he talked about on the other podcast I listened to of his... so my own strategy's working as designed.
What are you willing to be the last person standing for?
onward.
For more on this daily column and The MAP Year Project, read the backstory here. And if you know someone who'd appreciate this, pass it along.