Ron Friedman | How the Best in the World Reverse Engineer Success

Srini Rao

Ron, welcome to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Ron Friedman

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Srini Rao

Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. So I found out about your work by way of one of our mutual friends. And at this point, I can't even remember who it is because so many people that have been guests have referred to other ones. I think it might have been Dory Clark, but she told me that you had a new book out called Decoding Greatness, which is all about the science of reverse engineering, all of which we will talk about. But as you know, from having heard the show, that is definitely not where we're going to start. So I thought I'd start by asking you, what did your parents do for work?

And how did that end up shaping and influencing choices that you've made throughout your life and your career?

Ron Friedman

Well, my dad is a neurologist and my mother is a pharmacist. And how their decisions and their careers ended up shaping my life is that when I was about seven years old, I just turned seven, my dad decided to move the family from Israel to New York because there were better career opportunities in New York City. And so I was an immigrant, didn't speak the language and was placed in a religious Jewish school, a Shiva.

And I was not, I didn't come from a religious upbringing. And so that led to a sort of double outsider status where I didn't speak the language and I didn't fit in culturally. And it was an interesting experience. It was not a happy experience, but it did teach me the value of kind of just taking risks in the sense that I didn't, I just kind of accepted after a while that I wasn't going to be

I don't want to say liked, but just accepted as one of the more popular kids. And that enabled me to take some risks and just be like, all right, well, that's not going to happen. So I'm just going to pursue the things that I find interesting. And it really kind of flipped around high school, where I had kind of identified what my interests were and wasn't concerned about what other people thought of those interests. And what I found to be really interesting, and I've been reflecting on this a lot.

recently because my daughter has just this week entered high school. And so it was around early high school where this flipped and people just started respecting the idea that I was not concerned with their opinions. And it wasn't like in their face, like, haha, I don't care what you think. It was like, I just kind of had, uh, identified interest and was willing to invest in those interests. And that I think is a unique differentiator, particularly at that age.

Srini Rao

So what I wonder is most people at that age are incredibly concerned about what other people think about them, particularly seventh, excuse me, seventh, eighth, ninth grade. People are incredibly concerned. They're worried about how they're being perceived by their peers. And you made this conscious decision to let your interests guide you without letting that influence what those interests were.

Why do you think that you were self-aware enough to have that realization at such a young age? And why don't other people?

Ron Friedman

Yeah, I wouldn't say that I was self-aware. In that it was conscious, I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to make this, this is kind of me reflecting right now, looking back at what was happening, you know, with my understanding as a social psychologist, of what people go through and how they make their decisions. But I think ultimately what it came down to was identifying a different group with whom I wished I would belong. And that is a really key...

Srini Rao

No.

Ron Friedman

indicator kind of like a just a direction and an arrow of where you want your life to go is who you identify with and who you long to be what which groups you long to be part of and so it no longer was my peer group in high school in The case in my case in at that age it was more of musicians That was the that was the group that I identified with most closely and later on It was probably motivational thinkers

as high school kind of developed. And so I'm thinking of, you know, this was growing up in the 1990s. For me, it was Pat Riley. So Pat Riley was then the coach of the New York Knicks. I was really into the New York Knicks. New York Knicks went to the championship in 1994. That was my junior year of high school. That was a big factor in my life at that point. And so I started reading his books, or book at the time, The Winner Within. That was his book that he became known for. And there were a lot of really interesting motivational ideas there.

And that had a big influence on me in terms of like, thinking that I could achieve certain things that I never really had considered before, and then also being willing to take those risks and fail and utilizing the feedback that I got on those failures to improve in the future.

Srini Rao

So one other thing that I wonder about is you mentioned that you moved from Israel when you were seven years old. And I'd imagine as a seven year old, the idea of culture shock is probably not as prevalent as it is when you're an adolescent. So for example, I moved right after my freshman year in high school and I've always thought that was a really disorienting experience that made it such that I don't really have fond memories of high school for that reason. But I wonder if you know.

Ron Friedman

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

when you are able to reflect on it as an adult, what did you see as sort of the differences across cultures when you came from Israel versus here in terms of value systems, in terms of beliefs, and in terms of how people are socialized?

Ron Friedman

You know, it's an interesting question. I haven't had an opportunity to really reflect deeply on this, but one thought that immediately jumps out is, and I don't know if this is a cultural difference that I would necessarily generalize to all of the United States as compared to Israel, but certainly in the community in which I was placed, the focus on money and status was really palpable. And I remember the first memory I had of this.

I think this was like third grade and some of the other kids were pointing out that my parents did not have a good car it was I think it was a Dodge Aries if I recall correctly and It just never dawned on me to even consider what type of car they had a vehicle supposed to get you from point A to point B And this was a very wealthy Jewish community and you know There was all BMWs and Mercedes and if you had a car that wasn't a sign of status it

indicated and this is something that I learned really quickly is if you didn't have a brand name associated with who you were you were not a successful person and I Rejected that for a very long time Particularly as it led to my decision to pursue a degree in psychology academics Don't necessarily make a lot of money most of them do not and I was a hundred percent Okay with that because it was a way of rejecting the ideas that had essentially rejected me

Srini Rao

So the funny thing is I think that there are a lot of similarities between Indian culture and Jewish culture just based on the conversations I've had with podcast guests. I think the joke was that somebody basically said, somebody gets elected president and the son is, somebody basically is a vice president who happens to be Jewish and his mother's there. And she says, see, that's my son. He could have been a doctor. He's the vice president. So I wonder, based on that,

Ron Friedman

Hehehehe

Srini Rao

you know, did your parents encourage any particular career paths? And also, you know, I think that whole idea of status is very prevalent in the Indian community as well. It's one of those things that basically, you know, the narrative is you go to the most prestigious college you can get into, you get the most prestigious job you can get that looks as impressive as possible on a resume. And I think that to me, there's this great emphasis on, you know, what David Brooks in his book, The Road to Character talks about.

as resume values, the things we were just talking about, status, money, prestige, and there's very little emphasis on character values or what he calls eulogy values, which I don't think we start to really think about until we get older. Why do you think that is and how do you begin to unwind that narrative within a culture? Because I think it leads people to a great deal of unhappiness.

Ron Friedman

I love that distinction that Brooks raises of the eulogy versus resume values. And I do think it does certainly contribute to a great deal of unhappiness, particularly since I think a lot of people when they do get sick towards the end of their life, they look back and they feel like, wow, I wasted a lot of time pursuing things that really didn't matter a whole lot. And I should have invested more in family, etc. Why that is, is I think,

Ron Friedman

pursue some of those things that impress other people. There's a certain short term, it's a certain short term benefit that you get from impressing other people. Whereas you don't necessarily impress other people because you have a really stable family and you have strong relationships and pursue some of those things that make you truly happy. And I think that is generally driven by insecurity.

The fact that we are such an achievement-based society is driven by the fact that we long to be accepted and it feels to us like the best way of gaining acceptance is to impress other people with our achievements. Ironically though, there's research on this, that when people hear about your achievements,

They're intimidated by those achievements often, and it takes a certain type of person to truly be impressed and not be intimidated. And so we think, you know, but people go on LinkedIn and they talk about how honored they are, and these sort of like humble brag emotions, and then go on to announce their latest achievement. They think people will like them more for that, but in fact, they like them less for it. And it's the people who are kind and who are open.

and willing to embrace others, those are who tend to be liked the most. So ironically, in pursuing greater status, we undermine our relationships.

Srini Rao

So you mentioned earlier that you chose to pursue the things that interested you, regardless of people's opinions. You mentioned you have a daughter that is going to high school. So naturally, I had to ask you, for parents listening to this who have kids who have weird interests that are not typically socially accepted at school, like playing Dungeons and Dragons or things like that, what would you say to those parents about kids who are in situations where they feel they're not accepted by their peers because they have these bizarre interests?

Ron Friedman

I think it's really difficult to predict where the economy is going and what jobs are going to be valued in 10 years. I think we have some sense that it's the folks who are better at relating to others who are going to be able to do the things that computers can't do. But in many cases, the things that don't feel like they are achievements at this age actually can set you up for success later on. And I'll give you a great example of this, which is my daughter, which is my daughter is, you know, kind of had a really tough year during COVID.

was a good student before then, was not a great student during COVID, is now going back to school. We have high hopes for her this year. But she's really good at connecting with others and she really prioritizes social relationships above academic success. That's really troubling for my wife. I'm a little bit more willing to be patient and to see where things develop because academic success doesn't necessarily mean life success. Whereas being really

effective at connecting with others and being able to talk to anybody and to build strong relationships may in fact be the best indicator of someone who's going to be successful later in life. So I would just urge people to be a little bit more patient with their with the people in their lives, particularly over the last year, given the circumstances and how unusual those were.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned that your dad was a neurologist, your mom was a pharmacist, and you ended up becoming an academic. Yeah, which is, it's funny because my dad's an academic, he's a professor, and the narrative around our house, which I've heard is kind of standard around Jewish houses too, is doctor, lawyer, engineer. Those are your career paths. Which one are you gonna choose? So what did your parents encourage in terms of your career paths, and what was the trajectory post high school that brought you to where you're at today?

Ron Friedman

Well, okay, the second part of that question is a lot more interesting than the first. And it's because I don't really remember my parents encouraging me to do much of anything. I think they were really focused on making it, you know, that just moved from Israel to America. It was tough financially. My dad was working really long hours, as was my mother. I don't think that I was the focus. I'm not faulting them for that. It was a tough time. And I can certainly appreciate all that they were going through, especially now at this age, looking back at how difficult that experience was. It really kind of remarkable to just at the age of

um you know mid-30s just pick up move to a different country and hope that you make it that's truly remarkable. In terms of my career trajectory it was not at all one that was destined to be to move into academics. I uh after uh high school I was not a particularly good high school student in part because I didn't fit in so it was tough for me to and also because half the day was devoted to Jewish studies which I didn't relate to.

So I was, I just kind of accepted that school was not my thing. I was thinking about going to music for a while. And then I got to college. And then that's when things switched a little bit in that I became a really good student. And it was because I was able to choose the topics I wanted to study. So the autonomy part of, the autonomy aspect really kicked in and that enabled me to become a much better student, which changed the trajectory of my career because now I was hanging around with different, a different cohort.

And that cohort was one that was focused on achievement. And whereas previously in the high school, I was kind of with the outsiders, the folks who had just given up on making it. That was really critical. So I get to college and I start reading different, about different topics, going to different classes. I became interested in politics a little bit. This was around when Bill Clinton was running for reelection against Bob Dole. I watched the convention, got really into it.

And so I took a political science class. In the political science class, my political science professor is a volunteer, is not a volunteer, he's associated with the Hillary Clinton camp in some way. This is a little bit later. So we're getting a little closer to the year 2000. And so, yeah, 2000. So at this point, I ask him, how do I get into politics? He says, go to your community board, see if you can meet some elected officials and ask them to volunteer. So I follow his advice, I do that. I end up connecting with

Ron Friedman

elected official, I volunteer to work in his office and I really just hit my stride and do really well. Within four months I'm running his re-election campaign for City Council. A year later he runs for Congress. I work on that campaign and that he wins in a very tight race and takes over for Chuck Schumer who gets elected to the Senate. This is 1998. And so I

become his chief of staff. So I'm 21, I am leading this district office for a member of Congress, million dollar budget office of 15 people. So it really kind of changed everything, but then 9-11 happens. And after that, I get to see, okay, wait a second. I am kind of, you know, this is now three or four years later, I'm kind of reliving the same year every year. I'm not really learning anything anymore. I kind of kind of-

figured out the role, the guy who I was working for, the congressman, was going to be re-elected for the foreseeable future. There weren't going to be any interesting races, and I decide I'm going to go into psychology. And so that is what led me to academics and how I joined the University of Rochester, where I studied with Ed Deese and Richard Ryan. These are the guys who were covered in Dan Pink's book, Drive. And that...

just changed the trajectory of my life. I then become really focused on psychological needs, write my first book, The Best Place to Work, and we could talk about how that led me to this new book, Decoding Greatness.

Srini Rao

Well, so a couple of things come from this. So you mentioned that you discovered what it is that you wanted to do in college, and that autonomy made you a better student. And that contrasts so dramatically to my college experience, where I had the autonomy, but I think I'd been so conditioned to think about college as the path to what I was gonna do with the rest of my life, that I made every choice based on what I thought would get me a job. And so I wonder, why do you think it is that some people actually...

discovered what you did so early on and why is it that so many others seem to miss the boat?

Ron Friedman

For me, the contrast between not being allowed to study what I wanted to study and being allowed to study what I wanted to study just changed everything because it empowered me to then pursue my interests. I was not focused on my career at the time at all. There were no long-term thinking. So you might categorize this on the downside of having long-term thinking is that you put a lot of pressure on yourself to be successful.

Which isn't to say that long-term thinking is effective. I'm a big fan of long-term thinking. But in this case, early on, where there's so much pressure put on you to figure out your path, that can be really debilitating. I didn't have any of that pressure because, again, my parents weren't providing me direction. They were just happy that I wasn't failing out of school for once. So that changed my view. So for me, that contrast was really stark. I think, to your point, one of the challenges of having parents who are really involved...

and are really invested in your career is that places an implicit pressure on you to be successful and that can be really hard for folks. And so one of the unexpected benefits of having parents who were so consumed with their own lives in my case was that I really was free to just explore what I wanted to explore. The other thing I'll say is that one of the first professors I had in my first year at City College said something to me that was really eye-opening.

And it was, you know, as I mentioned, it became interested in psychology. And I'll just mention just for clarity sake that I was going to school while I was working as the chief of staff. So I was able to do both. And so I was interested in psychology. And so I went up to one of my professors and I said, hey, would you consider teaching a class on positive psychology? I'm really interested in it. And he said something that really opened my eyes, which is he said, why do you need a professor to teach you about a topic?

why don't you just get some books and read them on your own? And I remember the quote, he said, why do you need some asshole standing in front of the class telling you what he read in the book? And I'd never considered that before, the idea that I could just go get a book and read about a topic I was interested in. Today, obviously, that's ridiculous because you've got YouTube, you've got all these resources that you've got the net, right? Like there was no email back then. So that...

Srini Rao

Thanks for watching!

Ron Friedman

really opened my eyes to the idea that I could just kind of self-educate and pursue my own interests.

Srini Rao

Well, as somebody who has been through academia, who has basically been brought through our academic system, there's no way that you and I can get out of this conversation without talking about the education system. And this is something I seem to want to ask every academic I talk to, and that is if you were tasked with redesigning the education system and bringing it into the modern era so that it's updated and it leads to its intended outcomes for people to actually thrive

of work and you know in their life what would you change about it?

Ron Friedman

Well, it's a huge topic, but I mean, the first thing I would argue is that we're misusing classroom time. And where much of what happens in classroom time is that a teacher lectures at students and students write down their notes and then they are asked to basically regurgitate what the teacher told them. Where I think we could do a lot, a much better job is have the lecture portions recorded so that people could watch them.

anytime they wanted, from anywhere they wanted, at whatever speed they want, and use classroom time for discussion so that people get to sharpen their critical thinking skills. Because having a school system that's based on memorization isn't serving anybody, whereas people can use critical thinking skills in other parts of life. The other thing I would suggest is having classes on decision making.

There's so many tools that we now have and understand about how we can make better decisions, yet very few of those skills get passed on to children. That's a tragedy. And obviously basic life skills. I mean, it's remarkable to me that we are still teaching trigonometry, but we're not teaching people the basics of how to manage their bank accounts.

Srini Rao

Absolutely. Before we get into the book, there's one last question I have about this, and this is your time about your time in politics. So this is something that I always wonder. I feel that often politicians don't make decisions or shape policy that's actually in the interest of citizens, and they're often shaping policy that has no direct effect on them. Kind of like Steve Mnuchin making treasury policy and, you know, dealing with unemployment benefits.

is that makes no sense to me. It's kind of like, wait a minute, you have $300 million in the bank. The policies you're making do not affect you in the least. And I also know that I'm not seeing it from the inside. So what is it that you think people in the public eye have that are misperceptions about what is happening in politics? What do we not see?

Ron Friedman

I can't speak to Steve Mnuchin, but what I will say is, you know, in fairness to Steve Mnuchin, I don't think you necessarily need to be somebody who is struggling financially to make better decisions about the economy as a whole. So just because he's been successful financially, I don't think we should fault him for that. We should fault him for other things, plenty of other things, but maybe not that. What I will say about politics that I think would, I don't know if this would solve all the problems, but I think is a critical piece where people may not necessarily

appreciate, which is that the political system really went off the rails when fundraising went online. And part of it also is where that in connection with the 24-hour news cycle in all of these news channels, because what ends up happening is that if I say something remarkably controversial, I am going to be rewarded financially for making that

controversial statement in a way that is exponentially larger than if I said something that was reasonable but uncontroversial. In other words, it doesn't stand out, doesn't make waves. And it's because of the connection, the linkage between me going on a news channel saying something crazy and then people being able to find me online and send me money for my campaign. And so the system now rewards people who stir up controversy financially.

They're more likely to be successful if they say crazy things, whereas the moderates are not rewarded financially because nobody gets excited, nobody wants to send them money. In fact, they get upset with them and they want to unseat them. And so until we correct that problem, until we correct the reward structure, we're not going to get any sort of traction in a way that really benefits the country, or at least it'll be much more difficult. And so that's, I don't necessarily have a solution for that, but I think it's a...

critical piece that people need to appreciate about why the political system is broken.

Srini Rao

Absolutely. Well, let's get into decoding greatness. So you mentioned there was a first book. What led you to writing this book as the next book and why write it now?

Ron Friedman

Yeah, so my first book is called The Best Place to Work, The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace. And that book came out of my experience of leaving academics and joining the corporate world. And in realizing that there was a massive divide between what we know from the science of what leads people to be more successful, more productive, more engaged in how most organizations are run. And it's everything from the way that companies hire to the way that managers motivate, to the basic layout of the modern office.

just a massive gap between the two. So in the best place to work, I translated over a thousand academic studies into plain English. So regardless of whether you're someone who leads a company or is thinking of starting a company or is just someone starting out, you have access to the best science about how to elevate your performance and build a great workplace. But there was something missing in that book. And what was missing is that even within the best workplaces, there's a range of performance levels. Some people are top performers.

others are not. And so I was curious in this book, Decoding Greatness, what is it that top performers do differently than everyone else? And what I discovered in doing the research is that the stories we've been told about top performance are wrong. There are two big stories that we've been told throughout our lives about what it takes to achieve at the highest levels. The first story is that greatness comes from talent. This is the idea that we're all born with certain innate strengths and that the key to finding your greatness is

finding a field that allows those inner strengths to shine. The second big story is that greatness comes from talent. This is the idea that if you just practice hard enough and you have the right practice regimen, you have enough discipline to do this for years and years and years, that eventually you'll rise to the top. But there's a third story, and it's one that is not often told, yet it is the path through which a remarkable number of top performers in all kinds of fields, from inventors to entrepreneurs to artists.

have risen over the course of their lives. And that path is reverse engineering. And reverse engineering simply means finding extraordinary examples in your field and then working backward to figure out how they were made and distilling down the lessons that you identify in the works of others to create something entirely new.

Srini Rao

Well, so I appreciate the fact that you just said, you know, that it's to identify parts of what you see in the work of others to create something entirely new. And obviously, as somebody who wrote a book called Unmistakable about why only is better than best, one of the things I talked about is how often what ends up happening is reverse engineering leads often not to modeling, but to mimicry. So how do you...

Let's start there before we get into the actual frameworks. How do you make that distinction between the two and prevent yourself from using it? Because I can tell you, I had a friend who was a guest on the show who sent me a list of a dozen clients of hers who all were potential guest recommendations. When I put their websites all up next to each other, I said, all of these look exactly the same. And I have no idea what the hell any of these people do.

Ron Friedman

Well, first I just want to congratulate you on your subtitle. I really love your subtitle. Why Only is Better than Best. That's fantastic. And I really appreciate it when it came out. So I thought that was great. I think you're asking a great question. And this is one of the concerns I had, frankly, about writing this book, because I know that

Srini Rao

Thanks.

Ron Friedman

reverse engineering is how a lot of people learn. It's how I've learned to write academic journal articles, how I learned to write books, it's how I learned to write articles, how I learned to give speeches. I've been using it every stage of my life. And I know from talking with other entrepreneurs that they do the same and yet no one talks about it. And the reason I think no one talks about it is because there's a huge concern that if all I do is learn through reverse engineering, if I share that with others, then people are gonna think I'm a hack or that I'm stealing ideas. But the truth is that

This is how learning happens, is by understanding why someone else is successful, you can distill down the strategies that made them successful and apply them in new ways. Now, applying them in new ways is really critical, and I think this is the point you're hitting on, which is there's a key difference between mimicry and evolution. And in the book, I talk about why simply mimicking others is likely not going to be successful. And there's two major reasons for why that's the case.

One is that audience expectations shift with time. So if I mimic the particular layout of this show, right, if I do it exactly the same way as you do, I'm probably not going to be as successful as you were. And it's because when you started doing this, audiences were expecting a particular type of show and it was unique, right? And now you've built an audience doing it this way.

Today, if I were to copy this show, it would likely not be particularly unique. In fact, there are many shows that are using a similar approach. A second reason why simply mimicking others is likely not to be successful is because I don't have the skill set that you have. So what often happens when you try to mimic someone else is that you have different strengths and different life experience and different personality than that person who you're modeling off of.

And so what I argue in the book is what you're trying to do is not simply reverse engineer in order to mimic, it's to reverse engineer to identify what makes something work. Because unless you're doing that hard analysis of understanding why something is successful, you're missing an opportunity to improve your skills. How we get to evolution is by combining formulas from different people and different models. And it's in those unique combinations. And you can.

Ron Friedman

hit upon something new and those models can come from all sorts of different fields. It doesn't have to come from the same field. So for example, if I wanted to reverse engineer this show and maybe reverse engineer Aziz Ansari's stand-up comedy, I might come up with something genuinely unique by combining what makes those two distinctive. And I think we often conflate originality with creativity. Originality often fails and it's because we as a species are distrustful of the new.

And there's research on this showing that the most novel ideas tend to get rejected. People are just really uncomfortable with novelty. They don't know what to do with it. It makes them uncomfortable and they tend to ignore it. Whereas formulas that are similar to previous iterations but slightly different, those tend to be a lot more successful.

Srini Rao

Well, so there's one sort of follow up to this. When we talk about, you know, modeling versus mimicry and looking at models and applying them in different ways. And that's context. And you brought up podcasts, which is a perfect example. There's a lot of people who teach courses on podcasts. And often one of the things that happens to your point is people just try to copy the format of the person teaching the course, and then they don't get the same results. And one of the reasons I realized is because they ignore context. They don't consider.

You know what that person's gifts are what assets that person has in place that they don't so for example There are certain people are these huge shows who are encouraging people to start podcasts And the funny thing is they all have massive email lists and the and so their podcast would be successful No matter what but people forget that context or they just ignore that context completely Why do you think that is and how do you think they can stop? You know ignoring context

Ron Friedman

Yeah, I think that's a great point. And I'll tell you that I often work with authors on developing their books and everybody wants to be James Clear. And they assume that the book is what made James Clear successful and it was a really good book, Atomic Habits. But that's not what made James Clear successful. What made James Clear successful is that he invested a really long period of time putting out original content and developing his mailing list. And when you have over a million people, a million subscribers,

Srini Rao

Hahaha!

Ron Friedman

selling 10,000 books your first week is not all that hard, right? You can do that with a couple of emails. So I think you're raising a really good point. And I think that we often, you know, I mentioned earlier that we conflate originality with creativity. Another thing I think we conflate is commercial success with quality work. And reverse engineering is about what makes a work distinctive. It's not about what is it that made it successful, right? So that's a really important distinction.

your job in understanding why, what it is that someone is doing differently is going to help you illuminate the factors that resonate with you. If you apply those in a completely new context, there's no telling how well that will do. However, it is a methodology that allows you to get a little bit clearer on what it is that resonates with you so that you can start applying that to your work. And just why, you know, one of the first things that I recommend

as part of this process is not to start by reverse engineering, but start by simply starting a collection. And what I mean by that is, any time you encounter work that is remarkable or distinctive in some way, capture it. You can do this online by bookmarking certain websites that resonate with you. You can start a Pinterest account to capture images that you consider important.

You know, I think when we think about collections, we think about physical objects. We think about things like stamps and shoes and wine and maybe artwork. But that definition is too narrow. I can tell you that I know all sorts of copywriters who collect headlines. I know designers who collect logos. I know the presenters who collect presentation decks. And the value of having that collection is that when you have that collection of work that stands out for you.

It's really easy to identify commonalities and compare the objects in your collection against objects that didn't make your collection. It's almost like playing Spot the Difference, that game we played as kids where you have two images side by side. Your job is to figure out what's different about one image versus the other. Here, your job is to play Spot the Difference with whatever category you're interested in. And it becomes really easy to identify the ingredients that make a word compelling when you're comparing

Ron Friedman

the ordinary against the extraordinary, meaning the items that are not in your collection against the items in your collection. You can identify some commonalities, you can see what makes them unique, and all of a sudden it becomes a lot clearer to figure out what it is that makes work compelling.

Srini Rao

So one of the things that you say early on in the book is that studies indicate that it's novice entrepreneurs who focus on novelty, more experienced entrepreneurs, those who spend decades leading successful businesses and reliably launch profitable ventures every few years focus on something completely different, viability. And I really appreciated you said that because it reminded me of this Dan Kennedy quote that he talks about in one of his wealth attraction seminars where he says, he said, you know, businesses have to be market driven, not personal passion driven.

I'm passionate about betting on horses, lying in a hammock and eating pizza. My passion for those things could multiply and nobody would pay me to do them. But I think that, you know, this sort of follow your passion narrative has caused people to ignore viability. And I'm just curious what your view is on all that.

Ron Friedman

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think that, you know, I was thinking about this again in the context of my daughter and the better advice is figure out what you're good at that comes easily to you and see how you can really invest in that as opposed to seeing what it is that you are passionate about, which in her case would probably be Netflix. Right. So one of the things I discovered while doing the research on this is that entrepreneurs are really good at identifying patterns. And the

Patterns that they're especially good at figuring out are the patterns that make certain businesses successful. So an example of a pattern that a smart entrepreneur might notice is that the success of companies like Starbucks and Chipotle rely on the same underlying principles. So at first glance, those two examples seem like they have very little in common. One sells drinks, another one sells food, but Starbucks and Chipotle were built on the same business strategy.

And that business strategy is find a customer experience that works somewhere else and import it into your hometown. So in the case of Starbucks, Howard Schultz goes off to Milan, sees the espresso bars that are so popular in Italy and thinks, hey, I wonder if this can work in the U.S. and he brings it back to Seattle. In the case of Chipotle, Steve Ells is in the San Francisco area where he identifies that burrito bars are everywhere and he thinks, hey, I wonder if this can work in Denver. And he builds Chipotle.

That sort of approach to thinking about why certain businesses succeed empowers entrepreneurs to generate new business ideas quickly. So it seems to someone who's not an entrepreneur, like this person could just, you know, come up with an idea on a dime. And the answer is they can. And it's not because, you know, they are have just a wealth of ideas, it's because they're thinking in formulas. And that's what reverse engineering allows you to do is it allows you identify the underlying formula within.

That's buried within a work and you can do this for anything. You can do this for successful websites. You can do this for successful TV shows. You can do this for successful Ted talks. And in fact, in decoding greatness, I do that. I show you how to reverse engineer one of the most popular Ted talks of all time. And I show you what that pattern is that's actually driving it and critically, once you are get good at reverse engineering and identifying underlying formulas, you can turn those

Ron Friedman

those underlying formulas into templates. So rather than staring at a blank screen the next time you're writing an article or an email or a presentation, you have a kind of mad lips where you can just plug in what needs to go in order to get your start. Now, you may not end up using that formula, but it certainly will give you a lot better direction than if you were just starting from scratch.

Srini Rao

So this raises another question about formulas. And this is something I've thought a lot about, is this distinction between formulas and frameworks. Because in any formula that somebody applies, there is one variable that is inevitably going to alter the results of that formula, and that's themselves. And we see this all the time, where people, again, that takes us back to context, where people overlook the most blatantly obvious variable that will throw off every single formula for success. So how do people make sure they're aware

enough of the fact that they're going to be the variable that throws off the formula and treat that formula like a framework to use what you call the last step in this pattern recognition component, which is to generate predictions.

Ron Friedman

Well, first of all, I would say that sometimes that differentiator, meaning you can actually work to your advantage. And it's a great example of this in, um, in the book where I talk about how Malcolm Gladwell developed his writing style and I'll just share that story quickly. So he had spent years working as a science reporter and then he moves to the New Yorker where he's asked to write these really long, elaborate stories.

And he struggles with this. He doesn't have the confidence to do it. He's not sure how he's going to fill the space. And so what he ends up doing is he ends up telling stories and then interlacing academic journal article summaries inside those stories. And he finds a way of making that work. He weaves them together. That style is now known as Gladwellian. It's how almost every nonfiction book is written. Everyone wants to somehow write the next Gladwell book. And

His approach to writing wasn't an intentional approach in that, in other words, he did not set out to develop his own distinctive style. He was compensating by trying to recreate a formula and somehow stumbled on this new iteration that ended up being wildly successful. And so the lesson there is that sometimes you don't need to try and recreate everything in order to be distinctive.

Sometimes just leaning into your distinguishing attributes can actually help you come up with something that is completely new.

Srini Rao

I mean, so that sounds to me like the concept of what you call reverse outlining. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Ron Friedman

Well, reverse outlining, and let me just explain that idea. So reverse outlining is one of the tools that can help you reverse engineer written works. And so everyone's heard of outlining. Outlining is the idea of bullet pointing what you're planning to put in a finished piece. Reverse outlining is taking someone else's finished work and then...

going using it to work backwards and figure out what bullet point what's going on in the piece so you if you're looking at it at a book for example you can bullet point what's happening in each paragraph if you're doing for a television show you can bullet point what's happening in each scene you can use for a movie if it is for a podcast the type of questions that are being asked you could use for this show in fact and that tool reverse outlining forces you to gain some distance and see the totality of

program or a piece of product or an artwork all at once. And that view of zooming out, of taking everything in at once, helps you understand the progression of a piece and see it in a way that you simply can't when you're reading it word for word or listening minute by minute. And it's a tool that's remarkably effective because it forces you to take something like a Gladwell article and reduce it down to 10 bullet points.

And all of a sudden you can understand, okay, this is Gladwell's blueprint. He's telling the story at the beginning, then he's connecting it to this article, then he connects it to a different story. All of it in the next section, he's connecting the two stories and now he's got some kind of actionable recommendation. I don't actually think he has. He doesn't, he doesn't do actionable recommendations very often. But the point is, is that you can, you can see the formula and once you understand the formula, you can either choose to embrace it. You can choose to evolve upon it. You can reject it.

but it's a different framework for viewing that work. And it's a tool that helps you see the totality of it, see the formula and learn from it more quickly. And you contrast that with how most people try to study Gladwell, which is they read Gladwell pieces or they'll take a Gladwell course. And I would argue that reverse outlining a Gladwell piece will help you learn more about Gladwell style than any of those other options.

Srini Rao

So let's talk about the other three components of this framework, which are, you know, questioning, feedback, and metrics. And you talk about the types of questions we should ask experts. So let's start with questioning. How do we use that to, and how do we use that and apply it to the process of reverse engineering?

Ron Friedman

Well, first thing I would say is that one of the things you need to realize when you're talking to an expert, you're trying to learn from that expert, is that there are tremendous limitations in the way that experts communicate. And so, for example, if I somehow managed to get in a conversation with you for an hour and try to understand the art of podcasting, chances are I'd be up against some pretty difficult barriers. And it's because experts...

suffer from the curse of knowledge, meaning that things that are really obvious to them are not understood by novices. And so they tend to speak in a way that is harder for novices to understand. So the curse of knowledge is defined as the challenge that people, that experts have in appreciating the novice's mindset, because knowing something makes it impossible to imagine not knowing it. And so...

If you've ever in the book, I talk about if you've ever had a conversation with a doctor or a Home Depot or executive a Home Depot salesperson or a garage mechanic and everything they said went over your head. The curse of knowledge was the problem. It's not that they were trying to be deliberately evasive. It's just that they have a hard time communicating with somebody who doesn't have their knowledge. The second big barrier when communicating with experts is that.

Experts apply shortcuts that they're just not aware of. And so if I ask you what it takes to record a really good podcast, some of the things that are really important may not even make it to the list because you just kind of do them automatically and you don't think about it. And so there's research showing that experts leave out 70% of the steps that goes into their thinking.

Srini Rao

Hahaha!

Ron Friedman

And they're not even aware of it. But there's a solution to this, by the way, which is interview multiple experts, and chances are that number will go down to as low as 10%. But so the point is that you're up against it when you're talking to an expert, and it's, again, not because they're trying to be difficult, but because there are limitations to the way that they communicate, and so you need to come prepared with the right questions. And there are three categories of questions that I talk about in the book, and I give you examples of all these questions so that you can go into your next interview expert and really get some great information.

Srini Rao

Right.

Ron Friedman

Those three categories are journey questions, meaning you want to understand the expert's roadmap for success. You want to start by taking them back to where they first started, and then ask them step by step how they went about it in order to better understand their journey. The second type of question is process questions. So that means drilling down on the specific steps that the expert applies to bring their work to life. So for example, if I were interviewing you, I might say, OK, how do you choose your guest? How do you research your guest?

What type of questions do you ask? What do you do next? What do you do after that? Just really kind of making you go step by step by step. And then the third type of question is discovery questions, which has to do with unexpected revelations that you realized along the way. So an example of a discovery question might be something like looking back, what was the most surprising to you? And so then kind of just try and get you to focus on things you weren't expecting, because often it's in those unexpected insights

the best actionable recommendations. And so this is a, you can use these questions when talking to experts, but also when trying to reverse engineer your career by talking to the people whose work you want to emulate, getting a better understanding of how they go about doing their work. These questions will help.

Srini Rao

It's funny to hear you talk about this out loud because I feel like unconsciously, this is literally the exact framework that I use for how I do interviews with people.

Ron Friedman

Uh-huh. That makes sense. Listen, you've been doing this for a long time. That makes complete sense. And it escaped your attention because it's part of the 70% you wouldn't have told me.

Srini Rao

Right, exactly. Well, it's funny you mention that because, you know, sometimes friends will say, hey, will you teach me how to surf? And there's one thing that any surfer will tell you is there's literally nobody worse to teach you how to surf than your friends who surf because the minute there's a good wave, there'll be nowhere to be found. And to your point, it's incredibly hard to deconstruct.

Ron Friedman

Mmm.

Hehehehe

Srini Rao

the entire process of popping up on a wave, because it's so second nature, after you've done it a thousand times, that you can't even think about it as a series of steps that happen in sequence, because they just all happen automatically.

Ron Friedman

And there's an assumption that someone who's successful knows what it is that made them successful, but often that person doesn't know. They have a different idea about what makes them successful. And so that's why it's often not the experts who make the best teachers. I have the example of Marlon Brando in the opening story of that chapter on experts and why experts make terrible teachers.

And Marlon Brando, obviously very famous actor, very successful actor, he tried to put on a workshop for other actors and it was debacle. People walked out and it was actually quite embarrassing. There's some really funny stories about that I share in the book. Like, for example, he tries to pull homeless people off the street and teach them how to act in full view of all of these other luminaries who are in the audience. He asks them to act.

out scenes and then he interrupts them, constantly yelling at them and berating them. And when he doesn't like a scene, he doesn't say, try doing it this way. He just screams out, lies, because I guess they weren't authentic enough. So the point is, is that the people who are often at the top of their field are not going to be very good at explaining how they got there. So you need to have come in, come prepare with the right questions.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk a bit about metrics and feedback. I think that it kind of brings us almost full circle in a way to something we brought up at the beginning of our conversation, is that we live in this very achievement oriented world in which people are very metrics obsessed. They measure their self-esteem and by the value of how their business is doing, they get caught up in vanity metrics like followers on Instagram, followers on Twitter, retweets.

So how do you actually make effective use of metrics without causing those metrics to make you lose your fucking mind? Because metrics can be like a huge source of anxiety. I mean, you know this probably as an author. When your book comes out, you're obsessed with book sales. And I realized that constantly checking how many copies my book had sold was basically just a recipe for disaster. It made me miserable.

And Cal Newport even told me recently when I was on his podcast, he said one of his biggest secrets as a writer is that he basically never figured out how to use the author portal at our publisher and never looks at it.

Ron Friedman

That's funny. You know, so you're making a really good point, which is that metrics are really powerful. And that's there's this chapter in my book called the scoreboard principle. And in that book, I talk about how if you want to get better at anything, the fastest way to do that is to start developing metrics that hold you accountable to the specific actions you need to take in order to achieve your goal. And it's because metrics

are incredibly powerful at capturing our attention. And there are all sorts of evolutionary reasons for why this is the case. We evolved to pay lots of attention to numbers, and it's because it helped keep us alive. So an example of this is when you encountered a tribe in the savanna, quickly getting a determination of the size of that group told you whether it was important for you to try to ally yourself or to try to overtake them or to try to run away, right? That was critical.

There are all other, I go through a whole bunch of other examples. There's actually specific neural mechanisms that help you evaluate numbers quickly. And it's an unconscious process. It's one that you are just completely delved into. Social media apps have taken advantage of this. It's why games that have no reason to have scores, it's not a sport game. They will give you a score and you'll see your score rise when you take actions that the app wants you to take. It's because they know.

that will help addict you to the app. This is why Instagram, Twitter, all the Facebook, all of these apps have numbers associated with how many likes you got because they know those numbers will keep you interested. So there's a lot of value in metrics if you harness them correctly, but there's a lot of danger in metrics because unless you select the metrics that you wanna hold yourself accountable to, you are apt.

to fall prey to some of these other traps, like the ones you mentioned, meaning social media and in the case of authors, looking at your sales. And so you ask, how do you prevent that from happening? And the answer is it's really, really difficult. And it's difficult because we are so easily captivated by numbers. The solution I've come up with, and it's one that I argue in the book, is that unless you develop metrics for yourself, you're in danger to falling prey to someone else's metrics.

Ron Friedman

And so the critical thing is to take some time to think about what is it that makes me successful in the long term? What is it that I'm hoping to achieve this year? What does that successful day look like? And to develop a scoreboard for yourself that you can harness to keep yourself on track. And so an example of this, and you mentioned Cal Newport, I'll also cite Cal Newport on this, he keeps track of his unfocused minutes at work. And having that metric of

how many minutes have I spent on focused work, meaning no distractions, just knocking out whatever was the most important at that moment. That number holds him accountable and also makes him face up to the fact that maybe he hasn't had very many focused hours at work over the last week, and that sparks shame, right? And motivates you to reinvest and be more successful in the future. And so developing your metrics is...

a really powerful tool because it sets you free from other people's metrics. And so you might consider, you know, if you're a writer, it's how many words did I write today? How many uninterrupted minutes? I kind of like that one. So I would value that. If you're an entrepreneur, it could be how many minutes that I spend working on the business versus in the business. And so the more metrics you have that are genuinely attuned to what it is that makes you successful, the more successful you'll become.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, one other thing that I want to talk about is something that really struck me that you wrote about, and this was the idea of visualizing a process rather than an outcome, because I think that flies in the face of a lot of the new age nonsense that we get about sort of law of attraction and vision boards, which I think leads to a lot of delusional optimism. So why is it that visualizing a process for how you achieve something is much more effective

achievement.

Ron Friedman

It's because when you visualize process, you anticipate obstacles and can start solving for those obstacles before you get in the moment. And so just to make this concrete, there's a study I talk about in the book that was conducted at UCLA where they had introductory psychology students come into the lab, they divided into three groups. The first group was asked to visualize themselves achieving a high score on the test. So that's the visualizing success condition. The second group was asked to visualize themselves studying

for the test. So they were asked to think about when and where they'll be studying, you know, how they'll prepare, really get into the moment of visualizing that studying process. And the third group was simply asked to report how much they studied. And what they found was that the group that visualized the process achieved the highest score by far, whereas compared to the control group, the group that just talked about how long they spent studying, the group that visualized success actually achieved the lowest score.

And it's because what happens when you visualize yourself succeeding is that you're temporarily sated. You get that emotional boost in that moment of seeing yourself, achieving that high score, and then you're actually less motivated to do the work necessary to be successful. In contrast, when you visualize process, again, you're anticipating obstacles, you're solving for those, in the case of studying, it might be, okay, where am I going to do this? Oh, I'm going to need to bring, which books do I need to bring? Oh, yeah, that's right. I need to bring these three books. Where am I going to put my phone?

you know, what snacks am I going to bring so I can stay focused for two hours? That sort of thing. But you're also giving yourself an emotional preview of how you're, you'll feel when that time comes so that you're prepared to take action. So for all of those reasons, you don't want to visualize success. You want to visualize process. And in the book, I talk about how visualizing success.

just has gotten really kind of a little bit out of hand. You hear about all these success stories, like Jim Carrey talking about how he wrote himself a check for $10 million when he was a struggling actor. And right before that check was about to expire, he got his role in Dumb and Dumber. Bianca Andrescu, a famous tennis player, won the US Open a couple of years ago, talked about how she believes that we can control reality with our minds because she visualized herself winning the US Open, in fact, also wrote herself a check. And a few years later, lo and behold, it came true.

Ron Friedman

What we don't hear about is the thousands and thousands of unsuccessful tennis stars and unemployed actors who also visualize success we didn't achieve a fraction of those results in fact bianca dress who just got knocked out from the us open last week. And i'm sure she did a lot of visualizing obviously didn't work and i'm not this i'm not trying to rag on either jim carrey or dr sko i have to like both of them. But i think that.

Srini Rao

Hehehe

Ron Friedman

we're looking at a sample size that is not reflective of the true population. So don't waste your time visualizing success. You're far more likely to achieve the results you're looking for if you visualize process.

Srini Rao 

Let's wrap this up by talking about feedback, because I think particularly for creative people and entrepreneurs, you know, receiving feedback is one of those things that takes a lot of time. And receiving, being able to separate, you know.

feedback on your work, you know, from feedback on you as a person, I think is one of the great challenges a lot of people have. I know this just from having worked with a writing coach who gave very, very brutal feedback in the writing process. And it took me about a month before I realized she was doing the job that I hired her to do.

Ron Friedman 

Well, I think that getting good feedback is really hard. And it's because there's generally two types of feedbacks that we two groups of people we ask for feedback. One are people who are close in our life and those people are incentivized consciously or unconsciously to protect the relationship above helping ensure that you're successful. Right. So it's really hard to get good, honest feedback from people who are your friends.

Beyond that, they may not be your target audience. And so you may be getting honest feedback from a group that isn't reflective of who you're trying to reach. So for example, if I had my mother read Decoding Greatness, the feedback might be good, might be bad, it would be irrelevant. She's not a business book reader, right? And so you wanna be careful about who your target audience is. So I mentioned that the people close to your life is one group, the other group is people online. And online, people prioritize looking smart.

over being helpful. And the best, I mean, the easiest, not the best, but the easiest way to look smart is to attack someone or to find fault with some work as opposed to like genuinely offering helpful advice. And so what we need to do is we need to train ourselves and the people around us to give us the feedback that we need to improve. And so I have a few tips in the book on how you can train the people around you to give you better feedback so that you can improve more quickly.

And I'll just give a couple of these tips, which is one is you want to ask about, you want to ask specific questions about the type of feedback that you want. So don't ask, what do you think? Or do you like it? Instead ask, does this opening paragraph draw you in? Alternatively, you can ask for advice as opposed to feedback.

at all. One of the best recommendations that came out of doing the research from this book is that people are more likely to offer you helpful actionable recommendations when you ask them for advice than if you ask them for feedback. And that's because when you ask someone to give you advice, they compare you to what your potential might be.

Ron Friedman 

Whereas if you ask them to give you feedback, they're comparing your performance against your past performance. And so they're less focused on finding actionable recommendations than they are if you ask them for advice. Don't ask for feedback after advice. The last thing I wanna share is the last tip is that you wanna make it easy for people to give you negative feedback. You may not wanna hear that negative feedback as in the case with you and your writing coach. And I can appreciate that. It's feedback, negative feedback is not an enjoyable experience, but it does help you improve.

And you want to make it easier for people to give you that negative feedback. And so one of the great questions that I found while doing the research in decoding greatness is Mike Birbiglia's question, the famous comedian and playwright, he at, when he shows friends, something he's working on, he doesn't ask them, do you like it? He asks them, when were you bored? And in that question, he makes it easier for them to identify.

specific areas that he can improve. And so you want to frame your question in a way that actually makes it easier for others to criticize you in a way that is helpful.

Srini Rao 

Well, you have just packed this with so much actionable insight and wisdom. So I want to finish with my final question, which I know you've heard me ask. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Ron Friedman 

It's being able, being willing to pursue the things that genuinely resonate with them. And this is kind of the reason I wrote this book, is I wanted to give people the tools to better understand what works in the examples that they find impactful. And when you can figure out what it is that resonates with you, and you have enough trust that if it resonates with you, it'll resonate with others, that's a recipe for creating unmistakable work.

Srini Rao 

Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom and insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book and everything else that you're up to?

Ron Friedman 

Well, the best place to go to find about me is ronfriedmanphd.com, or you can go to my company's website, which is Ignite80. And the reason it's called Ignite80 is because 80% of employees are not fully engaged at work. And so our mission at Ignite80 is to teach leaders and their teams, science-based strategies for helping people become healthier, happier, and more productive. And obviously decoding greatness is available at bookstores everywhere.

Srini Rao 

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.