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You wrote, "A trait I see in people who reach the top 0.01% is audacity." The audacity that I see in those who are at the top top percent. They don't follow the rules that everyone else seems to follow that are actually very
Dr. Julie Gurner shares insights on audacity, psychology, and unlocking extreme performance with top executives and founders.
Key Takeaways
- Audacity and a positive mindset are crucial for reaching the highest levels of success.
- Emotions like anger can be powerful energy sources if properly channeled.
- Strong psychological skills are needed to work with intimidating, high-profile individuals.
- Small impulsive decisions can have life-altering consequences, highlighting the need for emotional regulation.
- Psychology can be used not only to treat illness but to optimize performance in healthy individuals.
Summary
- Dr. Julie Gurner works with the top 0.01% of executives and founders to unlock extreme performance.
- She emphasizes audacity as a key trait of elite performers who challenge artificial rules and focus on positive outcomes.
- Her early career in a supermax prison taught her about the impact of impulsive decisions and managing strong personalities.
- Transitioning from forensic psychology to executive coaching, she helps high performers overcome psychological blocks.
- She highlights the importance of channeling emotions like anger into productive energy rather than suppressing them.
- Dr. Gurner stresses the value of not being intimidated by powerful personalities to effectively support elite clients.
- She uses research-based methods to help clients optimize their strengths and achieve outlier outcomes.
- The conversation covers how lessons from working with prisoners apply to high-stakes business environments.
- She discusses the psychological challenges faced by founders managing large funding and responsibilities.
- The video offers practical tools and mindset shifts for viewers to improve their own performance and decision-making.
Chapters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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artificial. The disposition of what if it goes right instead of what if it goes wrong. If most of us would adopt that, there's so much more that we would do.
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So if you have anger or rage, why would you suppress that? In suppressing it, you are killing a source of energy that you could channel into something just absolutely phenomenal. There's a great saying that what you don't pay attention
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to as a whisper will become a scream. And if that's you and you're listening, pay attention and kind of don't allow that to be a regret of your life.
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Welcome to 2%. I'm your host, Michael Easter. So, we recently had Brian Compliment on the podcast. Brian wrote the TV show Billions, ran for seven seasons, focuses on the lives of billionaire founders in New York City, guys that work in hedge funds. And one
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of the best characters on that show is Dr. Wendy Rhodes. She is the psychologist that all these billionaires have that help them unlock extreme performance in their lives. Well, following up on Brian, we decided to bring in a person that the Wall Street
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Journal says is the real life Wendy Rhodes. We're going to be talking to Dr. Julie Gerner. She is one of the most sought-out executive performance coaches in the country. She has a two-year waiting list. She writes the ultra
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successful Substack, which is one of the best ones in the game. In the day-to-day trenches, she is working with CEOs, founders, elite operators, billionaire types, and she is helping them unlock extreme performance. She's helping them reach the next level psychologically in
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business and unlock new performance and just live better day to day while operating at an extremely high level.
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And she's going to give all of us tools that she uses on these people that can help us unlock things in our lives. So, let's bring Dr. Julie on right now.
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Well, Julie, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. So, I want to start somewhere maybe that's slightly unexpected. Before you were compared to Wendy Rhodes from Billions by the Wall
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Street Journal, you did a stint in a prison as a psychologist. I did. What did that place teach you about humans that you couldn't have learned anywhere else?
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I think that the primary lesson I learned because I worked at a supermax facility. So it's a level five facility and what you learn is that a bad 10 minutes can ruin your life. You know, like we can one of the things that
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you know I was walking with one of the inmates and they were speaking with me and you know it over and over again you know it's not that many times they don't realize the mistakes that they've made but that sometimes these were mistakes
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made of impulse they were of rage or strong emotion and that that brief window of time changed the trajectory of their entire life you know there is nothing you can undo about the crimes that you commit when they are
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of that kind of caliber. And so that's the takeaway that haunted me, I think, is that you know those moments that you can feel overwhelmed with emotion, you can make some really bad decisions in life. And I feel like that pulls that
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thread pulls into almost every aspect of life. Not in that dramatic type of way, but you can say things in the heat of an argument. You can make decisions out of fear or impulse in business. And so, you
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know, that lesson certainly has stuck with me. Yeah. You eventually transitioned to working with founders, executives, very high performing people. How did you move from a supermax facility to the people you work with now?
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Right. I mean, it's a great question. My degree is in adult psychopathology and forensics. So it really required studying personality at a very deep level and understanding how people operate. And so that thread kind of has become very beneficial. But
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I went from there to kind of doing more traditional therapy work to working in education and doing some things in university and college work. And it was there that I was sometimes pinged to help advise on products. And when you're
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asked to advise on products, you know, whether it's with cognitive load or with email or with other types of things, you know, periodically they just tap people.
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And at one point, you know, just working in an academic kind of setting, one of the venture firms had said, you know, we have a founder, you're the only psychology person we know. Can you speak with them? They just received a lot of
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funding and they've become kind of paralyzed in their decision-making. And you know, these are young people sometimes in their 20s or 30s and they're getting millions of dollars and that strikes everyone differently. Sometimes people are very fluid with
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that and other times they feel like, oh my god, what have I done and what am I responsible for?
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Totally. And so it was really just a few meetings with this individual and what you realize is that, you know, you can get someone back on track very, very quickly and I could spot the challenge very, very quickly. And it was really in that
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moment that it felt like hand and glove. Like there are so many ways in which you can use psychology not just to make sick people well but to make people who are really healthy and functioning who kind of have these little blocks. You can see
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them very quickly and to make these healthy people more optimal and better at what they do and freer and kind of more effective. And so from then on, I just started to say, "Well, I'm going to think about kind of pivoting
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into this area of work and I started to get some referrals. I did some work with clients who got me a very good reputation." And you know, the thing about moving up in your career is that if you do a good job when you're not
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anyone special, you get referred to maybe the level up and then the next level up and you kind of build a network. And so that's really how I climbed into where I am today. Have you found that anything that you learned
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while working with prisoners transfers over one to one with the people you're working with today? Yes. I think that, you know, you work with people who have very specific and strong personalities. And I think knowing how to sit in a room with people
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who have very strong personalities and not be swayed by that, I think is a really important skill that I learned very young. So, you know, sometimes in inmate situations, people are easily intimidated. You meet with people.
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In my case, you know, I was in my 20s meeting with people who sometimes would meet with me in a glass room with a guard outside. I would have to sit next to the door. They were in leg irons
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and, you know, had their hands cuffed. And, you know, the nature of their crimes can make it pretty intimidating.
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And I think that sometimes in business, you work with people who have a big reputation. They have, they can be very intimidating to those around them and kind of not feeling the same amount of pressure is what makes you
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valuable. You know, nobody who's going to work with somebody at a top tier, they don't want to work with someone who is impressed by them. They don't want to work with somebody who is intimidated by them because then they're really not
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going to have somebody who can do the work effectively. Yeah. So I think that's a skill that really translated is being able to sit with people who can come across as rather intimidating, be it for very
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different reasons. So by sitting with people who had these heinous criminal backgrounds then when you had to go sit with the founder who just received $und00 million in funding that didn't become as intimidating. They didn't carry the same sort of cache that
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they might have with employees or something like that. True. I think
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or it is with people that I think that the majority of people would say oh you know you should treat them in some differential way instead of as a regular person. Um I think that it's been really beneficial for that for sure. Do you
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find that a lot of people that are at the top feel like everyone, for lack of a better term, kisses their ass and that's hard for them?
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True. I do think that. I think that, you know, like they can spot it very quickly also. And I think that that's a really um that's a quick skill that they've developed and learn uh to have and sometimes to use to their benefit. I
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think as well, you know, if somebody is going to, you know, help you in some way or make things more e easier for you, um, that's a skill certainly that you can use or something you can leverage.
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Yeah. Among the people you work with, I want to hear what are the traits that you see most commonly and one that I want to highlight because you you wrote an excellent article in your Substack about it. You said uh, audacity. You
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wrote, "A trait I see in people who reach the top 0.01% is audacity." What is that and how does it manifest itself?
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To me, audacity, the audacity that I see in those who are at kind of the top top percent of of those that I work with is just the the kind of the notion that they don't follow the rules that
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everyone else seems to follow that that are actually very artificial. Something I talk a lot about are kind of this notion of imaginary rules. And I feel like most people walk around with kind of, you know, there's rules that we
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learn that are good for us that are, you know, about manners and navigating the world and not getting arrested and all of those things. But I think that there are rules that we just kind of society kind of accept like that you wouldn't
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just uh try for a contract with a major bank if you are a small company or that you know there are certain things that you can't ask for because of your station in life or certain places you shouldn't go or rooms you shouldn't be
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in. And what I notice is that there is almost a complete unawareness that they couldn't try for something or they couldn't figure something out or that there is a place that they couldn't find a way to get to. And that audacity to
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kind of go for these larger things, things that no one else would think that they deserve or should be in rooms in or trying for is really how they skip steps that everyone else is still kind of walking through. We're all going, you
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know, the it's so crowded in the path that everyone takes and they just get this really kind of side path that's this little dirt road and they find a way to get to outcomes that most of us are still kind of trudging through and
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are probably eight years away from if we get there at all. And I find that just magical. It's just magical because it, you know, once you do it once, you prove it to yourself that you can do it over
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and over again in various areas of life and it works. It works a percentage of the time and even if it's a small percentage of the time, um, it's worth taking that bet.
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So, is it that they almost have a lack of an awareness at first that they have this? They're the type of person who accidentally went down the side path and then they get there and they go, "Wait, I realized I took this side path. Hey,
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next time I actually see a side path, I'm going to take that every time. And then that sort of teaches them something.
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I think that's an accurate description. I think that there are ways in which, you know, they just will do things that other people would not do and it doesn't always occur to them that they're they're doing it. It seems like, oh,
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well, why not try for this? You know, what if it, you know, one of the things that I wrote about was the disposition of what if it goes right instead of what if it goes wrong. I think that there's a
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lot of focus on the optimistic side of things rather than always looking at the things that could go wrong. It's ultimately kind of a mental way of kind of a mental framework for seeing the world is that you know what if it all
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goes right. It's an optimistic way of approaching things. And I think if most of us would adopt that, there's so much more that we would do.
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Yeah. And I think it's it's the trying, seeing what happens. In today's world, you're probably not going to die. And that'll give you some evidence where you go, okay, well, maybe it didn't work out perfectly, but you probably learned
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something along the path and taking whatever big shot it it was. Um, and if it does go perfectly, like bam, you're in a whole new realm, and you can just keep going back to the basket.
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That's very true. I mean, and and I think that we overestimate there's something that we do that that really looks at we we don't really calculate the appropriate risk. Um we we look kind of the way in which we
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evaluate situations seems to overestimate the real risk that exists in the choices that we make instead of really looking at well is this actually the risk? Is this actually the thing that would go wrong or is it something
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that we just kind of would make us uncomfortable and and we wouldn't want to have happen? Um there's usually not a lot of risk. And I think one of the things that's wonderful and terrible about social media is that you can see
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very quickly the fast cycle that even the worst things have. You know, a terrible thing could could happen and be incredibly embarrassing and probably next week no one's going to talk about it. um you know there's such a short
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attention span in the mind of people that even if you do make a mistake it's it's probably not going to be big enough that it lasts forever. So when I was a professor at UNLV, the way I used to
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talk about this, how you see it in major media is I think with the speed of media today, if you take something like uh the OJ Simpson trial, that was all that was on television for like a year. And I
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think today that whole thing would maybe be a week or two weeks and then it would just kind of get forget about it. But I could see how that would be that's a good tool to use in the context of even
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if someone is criticizing you online, whatever it might be, even the criticism you hear in the office, it's like people are just going to move on. They forget they are, you know, like someone was talking about whether or not we would
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disclose there were aliens among us. And I said, you know, at this point, I think people would shrug and move on. It would be in the in the news for a few days.
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Um, but yes, our attention is is very brief. Yeah. You also have a concept called the repetitive reflex, and it's this idea that high performers aren't great at everything. They're good at a couple things, but they're really relentless.
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Talk about talk to us about that. I think that one of the things that people assume about high performers, and we see this kind of halo effect where you'll see people who are really excellent at a few things, people assume
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that they're great at everything. They also assume that they know about everything. You know, like there's a lot of assumptions that we make, but that they are really really good at a few things and they dig into those things
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and they don't try to to execute on things that they really aren't that great at and they're very very good at kind of putting the things away from them that they're not that great at. I think a public example of this is Elon
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Musk. Fantastic at company building, fantastic at, you know, bringing public attention to some of these things. But he has Gwen Shotwell who is a phenomenal operator in SpaceX is notable for being able to do all of the things that he
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cannot do and he's not very good at doing. um being able to meet with NASA and you know iron out certain types of contracts and being really great at managing the day-to-day on the ground and all of those things while he's able
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to set vision and see where the future may go and gather the resources that can take them there and you know all of those other things that he tends to be very very good at and so I think that on
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a smaller scale you know very very good CEOs do the same that they have areas that they're very good at and areas they're not that great at and they don't judge themselves for that. I think oftent times when people are in business
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they think I'm the CEO so that means I have to be great with people or I'm the CEO and it means that I have to know X Y and Z and sometimes you're the CEO and you're not great with people and so you
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hire people who are and sometimes you're the CEO and you're you know really fantastic technically but maybe you're not the person who's best um on on some of these other variables and so I do think that the thing that they do
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brilliantly over and over again is that are okay with the strengths that they have and they know that if they lean into them, you really get outlier outcomes. If you start, you know, like if you start as above average on
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something and that and you're really gifted even at something, you know, if you put force behind it, the separation between you and everyone else is dramatic. But if you are really above average on something and you're trying to focus all the time on the things that
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you're below average on, you know, maybe you'll be able to bring those things up to average, maybe a little better, but that's not where you're going to gain leverage. That's not how you're going to get escape velocity on the things that
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you really want to push ahead. And so, because they understand that, I think intuitively, they put a lot of force behind the things that they're great at.
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And they will do that over and over again. and maybe it's, you know, M&A deals, maybe it's, you know, raising capital, maybe it's some of these other things. And, um, if they're exceptional at it, you're going to see them out
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there forming partnerships or doing those things all day long. And it really brings a lot of leverage to their business.
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I feel like that's a good takeaway for someone who isn't a executive or founder as well. It's what do you what are you talent inherently talented at? What are you good at? lean into that and then what can you maybe pass off to other
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people who are good at that? I'm sure it plays out in relationships, plays out in day-to-day work, all these different areas.
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That's ve that's very true. I mean, there are usually the it's it's really funny. We laugh in my own household that there's always someone who's great at spreadsheets and somebody who's not. And the spreadsheet person is the person
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who, you know, does all of these calculations and the other person's like, "This is what I think that I want." Like, "This is what I, you know," and the other person's always running the back end. Um, that may not always be
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true, but I think it's it's often true. And so, it's kind of funny. And you find that this even plays out at home with incredibly successful people that, you know, there are things in their lives that they're not that great at and they
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know they're not great at. Um, I had a a female CEO who I I actually I love and she said, you know, I had to decide, you know, what the things were that were important to me to like being a great
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mom and to she didn't have a lot of time and she's like, you know, it couldn't be I couldn't be making cupcakes. That's not what being a great mom is to me. To me, it's spending time with someone.
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It's really getting to know them. It's having that quality. And so sometimes people judge, you know, whether it's uh a man who's the head of a company or a woman who's the head of a company, like they're going to define their their
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roles even at home in ways that like really can lean into strengths and things that that really suit their lives.
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Yeah. Well, I can tell you that I am not the spreadsheet person of my home. That is, if my wife Leah is listening to this right now, she's going, "Yeah, you that is not you." Um, tell us about this idea
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of haunting agitation. I think that a lot of people carry um kind of this this I I call it haunting agitation because it's the thing that kind of needles at you that tells you that you could be doing more, that you
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should be doing more, that there is a place that you're not fulfilling that you could be. And there are people who kind of walk around with that all the time. I think that people at the highest levels also have it in some really
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interesting ways because they also know that they could be better, bigger, uh more successful and larger in their more impactful in their own ways. Um but I think that the average person walks around with a lot of that and uh the
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fact that it often goes unfulfilled is a is a tragedy really. I think if if you want to kind of take the temperature of that, if you go to a family picnic or reunion, I mean, we were speaking on
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Memorial Day. Um, but if you go to a family picnic and just go around and ask people, what did you want to be? What are what are the dreams you had for your life? And then you kind of get some
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feedback and start asking them, you know, well, most of them will not have fulfilled on that dream. there will be parts of it that they have like maybe they said you know I always wanted to have a family and they'll have that
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family and that's wonderful and they find a lot of fulfillment in that but you'll also hear things like you know when I was in my late teens early 20s I really wanted to work with dolphins I wanted to you know like hike
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a mountain um you know do x y and z and you'll find so many of those dreams were never fulfilled and there'll always be reasons you know that life got in the way or you know there's always going going to be a
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reason, but there is sometimes a real agitation with some people that they carry that they never did fulfill on the thing that they really really wanted to do. And um and I hope that people pay attention to those those voices. You
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know, there's a great saying that what you don't pay attention as a whisper will become a scream. And I think that's very true for many people. And if that's you and you're listening, pay attention and and kind of don't allow that to be a
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regret of your life. What do you tell people who talk about that? Like if I'm if I'm listening to this right now, let's say I'm a listener and I have a family, I have a job, I have the stress
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that okay, well, I need to keep money coming in because we have bills, but I always wanted to be X Y dolphin trainer.
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How do you square those two things? There is always a plan. And you know, like I think building a plan if it means that much to you, right? like we're talking about it being like I I mentioned the dolphin thing and it's
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probably kind of silly but like if it really means that much to you and it's something that's so important, you form a plan, you join with your spouse if you are married and you say, "Hey, you know, this is something I've always wanted to
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do. How could we get there?" And you sit down and you say, "Well, we'd need this much in reserve savings and how much would we earn here?" And you actually map it out. You know, it's an odd thing,
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but I think that sometimes people do that with life plans, too. you know, we map out where we want to go and we find a way to get there. And I don't think that's an impossible thing. Something that anyone could do is that if you
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ever, you know, think about what your ideal life would look like, like maybe you want to have a certain type of home or you want to have a certain type of life and you actually map it out, how
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much would it cost? It often doesn't cost as much as you think if you look at it from like a monthly basis. Um, and I think that that's true of almost everything. We just don't want to shake our lives up. We don't want to take the
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chance. We don't want uncertainty. We don't want judgment. We don't want discomfort to to kind of go back to circle back to one of your book's points. So, I do think that um if you're willing to make the sacrifices necessary
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and actually follow through on the actions, I think almost anything is possible. And that's really a difference too between those who end up in certain places and and those who don't is that they're they're actually willing to sacrifice um to get where they want to
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go. And it's hard because sometimes that means you move away from family and sometimes it means that you know for one of my clients I can remember him saying that you know he and his wife and his kids were living in this small apartment
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while his siblings were you know buying homes and you know having a very going on vacations every year and doing all this wonderful stuff and you know it's hard because it could easily build resentment and your life looks a lot
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different and and so like what are you willing to sacrifice? And now, you know, he's doing quite well. And not everyone's story ends up that way. But, you know, sometimes people have said, you know, your life will look like the
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amount of hard conversations you're willing to have. But I always think that your life really reflects the sacrifices you're willing to make for the thing that you say you want. And most people will say they want something and are
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unwilling to support it with the sacrifices it might take. Yeah. And I think too, if you're in a job that you absolutely hate, if you are not a spreadsheet person and you are filling out spreadsheets all day, even
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if you try, if it doesn't go perfectly, well, at least it was interesting. At least you had to figure things out. It probably killed the monotony and you got thrown into the fire and you probably learned something from that fire. And
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that's that's like an interesting part of living. It's absolutely true. I think that it is an unbelievable privilege to be able to, you know, make a jump and make a leap.
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And that's why oftentimes too, if you look at the stories of many people who get to a certain place, you'll find that they lad up with their spouses. And I know that, you know, if you you talk candidly, like, you know, you can see
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that sometimes people's wives were supporting things while they were getting things off the ground or, you know, and those are the stories that are often untold. we see the outcomes linked with specific people and we don't see kind of the journey to get there. I
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think that's a real shame because that would really be the inspiration for people to say, "Wow, my life looks like that and that was stage two, right? Like that wasn't where they ended up." Um, and so I always hope that I mean it's
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not a great social media post, but it is something that is true and I think would make people feel incredibly validated on their journey forward. Yeah, a lot of people on social media say that uh making money will never make you happy.
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You've pushed back a little bit on that. Tell us your tell us your take there.
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Yeah, I think research supports it. So that's why I I you know like I tend to I try to be very researchbased as much as possible. But you know the things that money buys people always think about it
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like oh being a Ferrari you know or some kind of beautiful estate somewhere but what money also buys is good healthcare.
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It buys the ability to get physical therapy after you have a surgery. Um, it buys, you know, the ability to support parents who may not have, uh, you know, good support or medical care or, you know, housing. It buys time, the ability
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to to just spend time with your family and not have to work three jobs. It's it buys great food and nutrition. It buys optionality. So where you live and the circumstances and the kinds of pollution you may encounter or face you know and
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it also you know one of the things we know about money is that it relieves hassle so you don't have to wait for the bus you could like you know the one thing about uh very very wealthy people is
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that they reduce hassle in their life everywhere and so you know I was talking with one client he was like yeah you know like my plane is like getting in a car you know I drive to a location I
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just get into the plane I get there. I come out. I get back into a car. I go where I'm going to go. And then he's always home for dinner. He's always spending time with his family. And that
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brings happiness. You know, if you had to have those meetings and you had to fly commercial, you're sitting in an airport for two hours, you're on the plane for hours, you're on the other side for however long that you have to
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be, you can't be home for dinner, you can't be spending time with your family.
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That's a two-day trip at least. Um, and so, you know, money does buy a lot of happiness. And I think that if you're unhappy, you know, if you're unhappy with money, you're going to be unhappy without it. And I don't think that
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that's always the reason for your happiness, but it sure does make life better. It relieves a ton of stressors.
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And um and I think that you know research shows that the more money that you have and and being in a place comfortable place financially it definitely supports um increases in happiness and we see that across the board.
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Yeah. Unfortunately the client who has the plane is not me. That is one of the great universal injustices in the world right now. Um some people though get stuck in survival mode even after they've made some money.
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How do you work? What does that look like and how do you work with those people?
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There's a fascinating interview if if people ever want to watch it with JK Rowling and Oprah and um and JK Rowling was talking about how, you know, she was still afraid even after making a billion plus dollars that somehow she's going to
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lose it all and be an idiot and she's going to end up poor again. And she asked Oprah across the table, "Well, don't don't you think about that? Don't you worry about it." And Oprah just kind of sits back and says, "No, I I realize
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I'll always be rich." And I think it was a really interesting point of differentiation because those are that was a such an honest moment to me um as someone who has met with with people in that kind of ecosystem that
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there are people who genuinely believe that it could all end tomorrow. It could all go away and there are people who understand that like look I could spend an insane amount of money every day and it just isn't going to go away. Uh I
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finally have accepted that about my life. I think when I how I work with people to kind of get beyond that is you really go the layer under which is a layer of like what do you really fear?
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What's the fear? Because it's not really about you know the fact that they could be poor again or lose it all. It's really there's a fear around scarcity and poverty and the kind of life they would have to return to or or kind of
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all of these kind of things. So there's always this kind of nervous system system awareness of the potential. You know, poverty is like a trauma. I think people don't talk about that enough. Um and it leaves kind of a residue with a
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lot of people. You don't see that so much with people who don't come from backgrounds who uh have really struggled in some way, but you definitely see it with people who have had struggle. And I think that that's the the ultimate kind
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of stain that you work with is, you know, having them truly believe that that trauma is over. Um I don't work with them as a therapist. I'm not a therapist, but we deal with the fear and we look at it cognitively like, you
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know, is this what's the evidence for this? And let's look at all the evidence that this is not true. And I think when you start to get into the evidence and you start to really look at things like
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that, people start to recognize that they're not in a space where they have to worry any longer. Um, but what's really fascinating, too, is that most people have very little empathy for people in those situations.
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Um, but it still can be a a real point of anxiety or stress for people.
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Yeah. I feel like the classic case is people who grew up in a great depression, like my grandma. It's like when she gave you a birthday or Christmas gift, you couldn't just tear it open. You had to unwrap it carefully
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because we're using that wrapping paper next year and you're just like, "Grandma, grandpa retired at like 55. We can we can tear the paper and have some fun here." Um, one thing you've said is that a lot of
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what you do is helping people not get in their own way. How does that manifest itself? I think that if you think about it, you know, my job is not to help people structure companies or do those types of things because I think the
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people I work with are far better at that. Um, but the the only thing that limits even you or me is, you know, who we are, the pe the people, the person, the decisions we make. And so we kind of
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are always pushing at, you know, they we all know what the optimal decisions are.
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most of the time, you know, if I asked you what would be the next level in your own career, you could probably tell me.
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But if I start asking you, well, why aren't you doing it? You know, what what is kind of preventing that? Well, that now we get into all the excuses, all the reasons, right? And some of those reasons might be, you know, valid and
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maybe you don't want to go on a book tour and hit every state and that's exhausting to you and maybe you're an introvert and you hate that stuff. Um, and that's totally fine. But you know there are always reasons why we're not
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doing the thing we know we could do. And so I think that that in a very simplified way is true for everyone. And so my job is really as a you know doctor of psychology is to understand where
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those barriers are and really challenge them around it. And I think that they enjoy that kind of challenge because deep down these are people who pay me because they want to be better. they want to be at that next level and they
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want to kind of hit against those walls and get through them. Um, and so that's really where I start is kind of asking them questions about what the next level would be, what's the next thing they need to do, and making sure that I'm
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very specific about, you know, aligning their goals to the questions that I ask. and then really kind of nudging them and pushing them about why these things are not happening or you know what's kind of the hold back in some of these things
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and and digging into those areas whatever they might be. I want to get into some of your um I would say contrarian takes. I love your Twitter feed. I love your Substack because you do have some takes that go
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against the grain and yet you come with receipts in the form of evidence and you also are working with people on the ground. First one, billionaires get a lot of but you say billionaires are necessary and they were they sort of
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get too much What is your take there? My take is that they provide a lot of I I I think that people get very angry at billionaires only of a certain sort. So I think that that's where my challenges
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are. Like no one is raging against Taylor Swift. Um and no, I mean they really aren't, right? and we aren't raging against athletes who are millionaires, but yet you know we so we give them a pass and yet at its very base and you
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know love Taylor Swift I I don't know her music well but like I'm sure she's a great person but she plays guitar and sings for a living right I mean that's the her contribution it's lovely but then there will be a billionaire who
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runs a company that employs two million a million people or 300,000 people and provides you know their income and their family's income, their health care, um, and continues to do that. And we think they're the enemy, right? Like, so the
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person who just is making the millions of dollars by catching a ball or playing a guitar, they're great. The person who provides jobs and, you know, security and all of those things for hundreds of thousands of people, that's the problem.
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And so for me, I always feel like there's something that's not quite right there. So, it's not that I'm defending the billionaires. I think that what I'm defending um is that, you know, we have this way of judging some and not others.
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And it's, you know, my thing that really bothers me and you'll see this everywhere if you even knew me personally is logical inconsistency.
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Like that is like the thing that is my sticking point forever. And so, if we're going to hate billionaires as a society, we should hate them all. But we don't.
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We only hate the ones that are in business that actually have a lot of societal value that we see on the ground too. And not to say the others don't. I think they all have societal values. You earn what the market is willing to give
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you and and that's fine. Um and I think sometimes, you know, if we have a problem with that, um we should kind of talk more about what that means for us and why.
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Another take is that um stoicism is really popular right now. It's kind of about suppressing emotions. But you say that that can be counterproductive because emotions can be used as energy.
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So tell us about that. Yeah, I'm a really big fan. I I think that stoicism can be useful. So I'm I'm with you on that. But where I see that that stoicism is not useful is that with everyone I've worked with, you know,
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energy to me, whether it's negative emotions or it's positive emotions, you know, it's so much energy. So if you have anger or rage, why would you suppress that? I think that you are in suppressing it, you are killing a source
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of energy that you could channel into something just absolutely phenomenal. There are so many, you know, wonderful companies, careers that are built on spite and anger and I'm going to show you energy and just, you know, f the
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world. Like there are so many people who build empires on that stuff and I am not going to take that away from people. I think that if you've been wronged and if you've been hurt, you can use that in a
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self-destructive way, you know, where you burn down everything around you, your relationships, you can get into addiction. There's so many horrible things that can happen. But you can get that same person who is absolutely enraged by the things that have happened
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in their life. And every day they're going to figure out a way to make their life phenomenal and they're going to study and they're going to work and they're going to use every resource available and they're going to work
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80our weeks if they have to or more and they're going to make something of themselves and like why would I stomp that out just because it's based in anger. Um we are to humans are total packages meant to experience a range of
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emotions. And I think to say, oh, you should only be, you know, very uh tempered in everything that you do is uh is kind of, you know, silliness. How much reaction you want to give to other people is is a separate question and I
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think worth talking about, but you know, how you experience that emotion should be full out and uh channel it the right way. And I think it's a phenomenal source of energy.
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Yeah, it's like every emotion we have, there's a good evolutionary reason we have it. And so then the question today is, are you going to use it in a way that is going to help you? And ideally, you will. I mean, it's like Michael
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Jordan, right? Like people who have a chip on their shoulder often do great things. Like that guy needed to find some perceived slight. And he would just invent stuff so we could get on the court and I'm killing this person. And
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he's one of the great. Absolutely. He's such a great example. Wonderful example. What's a good company example? You mentioned companies that have been built on. I can think of clients that I've that I've talked to who that is true for
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and I'm trying to think if there is a public example that we know of that is kind of built on spite. I know that one thing that was really interesting, there's an early interview with Jeff Bezos um where he's talking about Amazon
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and I think it was David Rubenstein. I I'm not sure. Someone asked him, well, what do you what do you really want to do? And he said, you know, one day I want to go to space. Like I want to
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build something. I want to go to space. And the whole audience laughs. It's it's a really interesting moment. They all laugh at him and he's like, "No, no, I know it's a hard problem, but like I really think that we can do it." And
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everyone's just kind of laughing and making fun. And then I remember, you know, years later, I think it's like two decades later, um that, you know, he was being coming off of his uh kind of trip the first time that he went on his ship
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that was in still, you know, high up in in Earth's pole, and he stated that uh he wanted to build infrastructure on the moon or something. And people no one was laughing. Everyone took him seriously.
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But like you you have to know that everyone laughing at him when he said that this was his goal that had to stick with him to some extent. And um and so you know Blue Origin I think would be
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really interesting to ask Jeff, hey like tell me a little bit about this. It was your childhood dream. You mentioned it publicly. People laughed at you. How'd you how'd you ingest that? I would love to know.
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Yeah. I know a guy who helped me with a lot of personal things and he said that some people need a pat on the back and some need a kick in the ass and it's like finding the right thing and you can
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use either one. Um pivot a bit since we were talking about um emotions. You recently lost your dog. I lost my dog. What did you learn from losing your dog?
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Man, my dog I lost my dog uh almost around almost a year ago. Um, and I think that for me, you know, like animals are are something really precious to me. Um, I see them as kind of, you know, they're other souls in
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this world. And, you know, I connect very deeply with the animals that I have. I'm on our farm right now. And, you know, almost every barn cat that we have, somebody dropped off on the side of the road. And the one that we
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inherited, the former owner called Satan, which was like, who calls an animal that? But nonetheless, um, we named her Felicia after the by Felicia meme because she was ne she would look at you and run away. And now Felicia is
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a a fast friend and I can pet her and she's wonderful and she loves affection.
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But losing my dog kind of, you know, I've I've lost a few dogs in my life and each one of them are just devastating. I mean, just personally devastating. They are a presence that is constant that is unconditional
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that um they bring their own personalities. U so I think you know what it teaches me is that you you love hard and then you know the the impact of the loss is just because you love them like they don't know that you're
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struggling. It has nothing to do with really them, but it has to do with the fact that you allowed yourself to connect with something that is fleeting and that is um that is going to leave you. I think that takes a lot of courage
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and it's something I hope to do again. You know, like losing a pet is is hard.
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Um how do you process the loss of like a pet like that? I reflect on just how how many good times we had. you know, it was very hard, especially my dog, we learned he had cancer and it was
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basically he's got 30 days and so you you're the clock is ticking and that definitely changed my behavior to savor those 30 days. But I also looked back and and went I didn't behave that much differently with him when I knew he was
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dying versus when he was healthy, you know, and so I could appreciate that. And I think it also colored my worldview, not only on my other pets, but a lot of other moments where you go, you know, eventually this is going the
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clock's going to run out, so this is this is what you're going to remember.
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It's like that scene in the Sopranos where they're at the diner and it's uh raining at the restaurant and he's like, "These are the good times." You know, um this is it. So, I think that would be my
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takeaway. You wrote that be humble is often terrible advice. Why is why is that?
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If most people I knew were more humble, they would disappear into the ground. You know, like if you are doing something in this world that you are proud of. You know, humble is often seen as just being modest. I think that um
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oftent times it is devaluing who you are. Uh you'll even hear people kind of talk down about their contributions.
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But if you don't kind of put forth what you're genuinely good at and kind of own that, then other people who are seeking that skill or that ability never connect with you. And I think it does the world
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a disservice when you're humble. I think it's not just doing you a disservice, which it clearly does because, you know, people will, you know, put themselves lower than they need to be, but I think it does the world a disservice because
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people who would really value what you bring to the world can't find you or they overlook you um by your own decisions and choices and the words. Um, I I think that people there's nothing more amazing than people who know what
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they're great at and you know, not being a jerk about it either. It doesn't mean that you have to be arrogant, but it having the ability to surface what you're great at and bring that to the world and other people connecting with
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it and really finding value in it. Like that's how we get the best of, you know, everything in life. I mean, like, if I have a if there's someone I'm talking with, I'm trying to find a great carpenter and he's like, "Well, I'm not
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really that good." Like, I'm gonna probably believe him versus the person who comes and says, "You know what? I built these incredible cabinets for this woman, you know, like last week. Let me show you a picture of some of the mill
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work that we did." I would be like, "This is fantastic. You are so talented." And, you know, he spent his life working on that. He's proud of it.
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To me, that's not a jerk. that helps me find someone that I would love to appreciate and bring into my life. So, I think about it like that. Um, I don't think about it in a kind of braggy kind
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of way. Yeah, that makes sense. You're you're mostly working with people high up in the business world. Um, what do you feel like are the things that you do that most scale down to everyone?
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There's a few things. One is how you frame everything is how you approach it.
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And it's all about how you think about it. So, whatever challenges lie before you, um, or I guess, you know, that's my bias, but like when you see something that's an obstacle or you see something that's a problem, if you can reframe it
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to a challenge, I think that reframing life's hardest things can do you an incredible service in your life. No matter where you're at in your career or your life, you have something that's happening, reframe it. think about it
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differently to say how could I be more productively thinking about this that is equally true um because you don't want to lie to yourself but there's better ways of thinking about things I think we get so tunnneled in and locked in that
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we don't see that there are other ways of thinking about the same challenge that could do us get us amped up get us to tackle it differently or think differently so I think how we frame things I think the second thing is to
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lean into your quirky self like whoever you are if you're kind of a weird person. I think everyone is pushing to conformity and it is the wrong path, right? Like if you are pushing to fit in to everyone else and then you're mad
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that you're just like everyone else and your outcomes aren't different, there's a reason for that. So you kind of have to wade through the the kind of backlash of weirdness to get to the the outlier good stuff. And I hope that people
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regardless of where they're at, they say like like there's a guy that um I connected with on Instagram and um I won't say his name, maybe it would be embarrassing for him, but he is this like massive weightlifter and we have
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connected on um floor tiles, vintage floor tiles and curtains. Awesome. and he is like fantastic with old homes and stuff, but like he he kind of like periodically will pepper this stuff in, but it's what makes him an
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incredible guy. He could lean into all the big weightlifting stuff, which you know he has probably for much of his career, but he also is just like such an incredible person in some of these little quirky interests he has. Um, we
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love quirky people in the world and I think that I would not want people to kind of dampen that just to be like everyone else. It makes them boring. It makes the world boring. And it it reduces the chance that you will be an
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outlier yourself. Like how we remember people is because of their quirks, not because they're like everybody else.
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Yeah. What are some of your personal quirks that you've leaned into? I have so many of them. It's probably very unpleasant for others at this time.
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Um, one of them is that logical consistency quirk. Um, it it makes me uh absolutely insane. Um, that when things are not logically consistent across the board. So, that's definitely a quirk.
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I think that my personality lends itself I'm very um I'm very introverted as a person and that's why I do great with kind of onetoone work. Um, and I have really turned down things that would push outside of that space just because
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I think that, you know, like I'm going to push into what I'm really great at and I'm not going to go outside of that very often. I don't um I really enjoy like I've built my life kind of around
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that. You know, I have a farm and I enjoy that and I enjoy animals and being outdoors. Um, and so I think that's kind of a quirk of mine that no matter what I'm offered, there's certain kind of
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things I've set up in my life to make my life what I want it to be. Um, I think that I'm also very quirky about the style that I have. I've probably been wearing similar things since I was in
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college. Um, probably hasn't changed all that much. I like just really classic things. My watch is from 1973. I like very old vintagey things. Um, my pen is even from the 70s, I think. Awesome.
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Um, you know, I I guess I'm my own kind of quirky person. I'm sure that you are as well if you're writing the books that you do.
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I I do have some of my own personal quirks and they have made it into my work and luckily I've been able to make, you know, some sort of income off the quirks, although it's not all quirks.
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Um, regarding the farmhouse, so you've got this farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Um, I saw I think it was you tweeted it's like 2026 inside the farmhouse with your work, all the tech, but then you go outside and it's like 1910 and it's in
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Amish country. What have you learned from moving out there and how's that changed you?
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Oh man, I love it so much. So, our farm our farm is a couple hundred years old and um, and it is this awesome historic farm that has been a pain renovating.
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What that's the other thing that I kind of do on the side. I renovate old properties is probably the third that we've renovated, the the hardest we've renovated. Um, but kind of having this high-tech internal world and being able
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to step outside is like such a breath of fresh air. Nobody cares about technology where I live. Nobody um talks about technology. So, it's actually a complete break from your work. And I love that. I love that I can um you know interact
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with people who are riding their horses and there's never a conversation about AI. No one cares about politics. No one really I mean it's hey how's your crop of peaches coming and you know hey you know like that hard frost was really
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tough on the trees and man I just love that because I get to have a cognitive break but also I get to connect with people in ways that are uh are genuine and wonderful and just about who we are
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as people and if you're if in my area if you're a good person and a good neighbor nobody cares about anything else about you? Do you work hard? Do you take care of your place? Do you keep it neat? Um,
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and uh, everyone really supports each other. The other day there was a woman who lost her dog and I saw it down by our pond and we were like tracking it and like that's the good stuff in life
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and um, and I don't it also keeps me reminded of the things that really matter. I think that's incredibly important. I'm a I'm really opposed to kind of ego stroking and you know thinking you're a big deal no matter who
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you are. And I think that it's great to just live in a place where you know we're a community and we all look out for each other and we care about the things that make the community great.
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You've changed a lot of people's lives u with your work. What in your work has changed your own life? Like is there a concept where you're like this thing just opened things up for me? I think that you know there's a couple it has
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happened also in in this work. Um when I was in grad school uh I grew up on a farm that was very different from this one.
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Where was this? It was also in Pennsylvania in a very different location. Um but you know the wealthiest people we knew were probably physicians, right?
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Um, and so when I went to graduate school, I went to graduate school in Connecticut and the some early years in grad school, I was, you know, you drive and you can go to the Gold Coast and see
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all these hedge fund uh people's homes and it was really eye opening and it was eye opening because the what you believe when you are are not in that situation is that wealth is rare and it was the
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first time I was able to see that like there are a lot of homes out here.
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wealth is not rare. Like you can find it everywhere. These, you know, 10,20 million homes, just gorgeous properties.
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And I remember thinking to myself like, if a few people can do this, I can do it, too. Like there is nothing special that I can't learn or I can't, you know, think about uh think about achieving.
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And uh and as I went through and later on in life, you know, now being at the place that I'm at, I get to see people who are at a very different level from that. And um and I think that there a
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good analogy for it is that sometimes you can't see what's on the other side of the door until you open the door. You know, I was able to open one door earlier in life to see what was possible. I think now speak like my day
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in who I speak with on a regular basis, doors open all the time and I'm able to see what is possible and um and I think that it changes my own range of vision.
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Um and it has for a number of years that you know the things that I think about for my own life become greater. Not that I want anything like I don't want my own plane even though I think that would be
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great. Um, but it's a more about, you know, the kind of possible impact you can have in this world. Um, there's a really there's a man that I really like, um, who I've never gotten to speak with who, but I would love to. So, if he ever
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listens to your podcast, Greg, his name is Greg Carr. Um, and Greg Carr sold uh, something to voicemail system years, 20 years ago or something, but he sold it for $900 million. and he decided he was going to redo
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um this great uh like kind of nature preserve in Mosamb beek and he made um you know created industry for people and created all this this rebuilding of society and I think you know you see people who can have these massive
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impacts in the world and even though the people I speak with are not doing the same things they're having incredible global impact they can steer that whatever way they And so you think about, well, you know, not everyone's going to make the same
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choices you are, but wouldn't it be great to be able to have more of an impact in this world and to be able to take the chance and to do the things that you want to do and to kind of
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circle back? That's why I think that, you know, when you when people denigrate those who have money, there's so much good you can do, there's so much impact you can have and you get to do it your own way, so why not? um you know so I
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that really has inspired me speaking with people that there's a world full out there of impact and have a little audacity to bring it back.
Speaker A
Yeah. And really go for it. You know why not? Why not you? I love that. And it's it's you had to have a different experience. You had to go somewhere else to have that see those first mansions in Connecticut. You had
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to start having conversations. So it took action on your part in an in an environment that was unfamiliar, probably a little uncertain, but you were willing to go there and do the work.
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The whole game is exposure, you know, once you see what is possible. And that's why I love the internet for so many reasons for people who are young because when I was growing up, it wasn't there that dates me. But the goodness of
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it is that it shows you what is possible and you can learn anything and do anything. And so I really hope that um if you're not sure about something, start exposing yourself to those rooms.
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Um I had a client once who couldn't afford to go to conferences and he would just pay and sit in the lobby of the hotel and meet all the people.
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Awesome. There are ways that you can start no matter where you're at. So I hope that everybody takes that chance.
Speaker A
I love it. All right, final question. If we sit down five years from now and you say, "I had an amazing five years since we last talked.
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what would have happened. It's interesting because I think more in terms of personal goals than like than professional goals right now. Um, so I think what would have happened if I had an amazing five years is that it's going
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to sound really odd that I have a completely uh off-grid farm. Awesome. That is finally finished and um and that I'm able to have impact in my local community uh especially through some of the animal shelters and the work that
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that happens there. and that uh our farm is known for for kind of being a real support to the community. I think that's where my impact is right now and then all of the other things in my career are
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kind of secondary to that impact. I love it. Well, Julie, thanks so much for coming on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker A
Thank you so much. It was wonderful meeting you, Michael. Thanks for checking out the show and thanks to Julie for jumping on. Please do check out her ultra successful Substack. It's a really good one. New episodes of 2%. They're going to be in
Speaker A
your feed twice a week. So, please subscribe so you get all those updates and can hit every single episode. We're always open to your questions for our Ask Michael Anything section. Send them to media twwopct.com or just drop them in the comments. And
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as always, have fun, don't die, and listen to Dr. Julie and unlock new performance.
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Kaleidoscope.
Topics:executive coachingextreme performanceaudacitypsychologyhigh performersfoundersCEOsemotional regulationperformance optimizationDr. Julie Gurner
