christian-busch.mp3

[00:00:00] Serendipity is all about this idea that we can, in a way, see something the unexpected and then connect the dots and do something with it. These kind of moments where we turn to something that is unexpected into some kind of positive outcome and make an excellent meaningful. But also what I'm super fascinated by is how we also cannot make accidents more meaningful, but also create these kind of accidents, those kinds positive coincidences. And so that's what it's all about, this kind of positive, unexpected outcomes.

[00:00:42] What's up, everybody? Welcome to the artists Data Science podcast, the only self development podcast for Data scientists. You're going to learn from and be inspired by the people, ideas and conversations that will encourage creativity and innovation in yourself so that you can do the same for others. I also host open office hours. You can register to attend by going to Italy dot com forward. Slash a d. S o h. I look forward to seeing you all there. Let's ride this beat out into another awesome episode. And don't forget to subscribe to the show and leave a five star review.

[00:01:38] Our guest today is an internationally known expert in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship. He holds a Ph.D. in networks and entrepreneurship and an MASC in management, both from the London School of Economics. He's currently the director of the Global Economy Program at New York University's Center for Global Affairs, where he teaches on purpose driven leadership, impact entrepreneurship, social innovation and emerging markets. Today, he's here to talk about his latest book, The Serendipity Mindset, which develops a science based framework for individuals and companies to help prompt and leverage positive accidents. So please help me. Welcoming our guest today, a man whose presentations and workshops at companies have impacted over one point two million people. Dr. Christian Busch, Dr. Busch, thank you so much for taking time in your schedule to come on the show. I really, really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for having me. So I'd love to get into a little bit of your background. So let's talk about what kind of kid you were in high school and what did you think your future would look like? Well, while you were in high school.

[00:02:51] Yeah, well, I was just kind of rebellious kids who, you know, try to push every boundary you can push. I had to repeat in high school. In fact, I had to change schools, as they called it. A suspension is expelled. And so I didn't find real ways to channel my energy. And so I still have so much respect for my parents in terms of, you know, during me during that time. And I think, you know, we had a conversation yesterday about how much, you know, parents obviously shape our mindsets. And I think my parents, you know, despite me being the kind of rebellious kid, always gave me this feeling of worthiness and kindness. And so I think there's a lot that that's stuck with me throughout the years.

[00:03:25] And how different is life now than what you had imagined it would be when you're that age?

[00:03:32] Extremely different. And, you know, I think I mean, I had an experience early on in life when I was 18, I got a car crash that kind of completely changed how I looked at the world. I think before that, it was essentially great. Let's listen to the day. Let's enjoy everything and go out and party and everything else. And then I had that kind of conversation and I realized, wow, a life can be over at any point. I can run in front of a car every day. And so it put me on this intense search for meaning. I'm trying to figure out what is life all about, what can I do in this world that is somehow meaningful? And so if I would ever again run in front of the car or have any other kind of accidents, it probably would have been worth it forever.

[00:04:07] And and, you know, after you went to that accident, did you kind of get your act together? Like what was the journey like from from that rebellious teenager to now Dr. Christian Church? What happened in that period?

[00:04:21] I started reading a lot lot of Viktor Frankl. So he has this wonderful book, As Men Search for Meaning. And I got extremely inspired by it because it has this idea of finding meaning in every situation, finding meaning, especially in crisis. And so it kind of really got me onto this, OK, trying to find my own meaning, my own purpose. And I realized what I enjoy doing the most is bringing people together, connecting ideas, connecting things and ideas and thoughts. And so, you know, I started out as a community builder and then over time, kind of entrepreneur, social entrepreneur, and then when academia and all of this was all about kind of how do we try to understand how to connect, but also enable others to connect those in meaningful ways.

[00:05:00] So speaking of connecting dots and seeing how things connect, let's jump into serendipity. How do you define serendipity? What is this thing?

[00:05:09] So serendipity is really this kind of smart luck. So it's very different from the blind luck. That's all about the idea of essentially inheriting something, being born into a good family. That's kind of things we can't really influence. Right. Is the kind of passive happening to us like that? Serendipity is all about this idea that we can, in a way, see something unexpected and then connect the dots and do something with it. So, you know, this kind of quintessential situation, if you have erratic hand movements like me, you spill coffee all the time, right? So imagine yourself being in a coffee shop, spitting that coffee over someone next to you and you sense that kind of connection. You sense that might be something there. And now you have two options, right. To react to this unexpected situation. You could either say, oh, I'm so sorry, here's a napkin, and then you walk outside and you're like, oh, I should have talked with this person. I should have, you know, kind of continued some kind of conversation. Or the other option is, you know, you say something like, oh, I'm so sorry, I was kind of so focused on my own X, Y, Z, but could have just been reading and Bova and you start a conversation and see where it leads. And maybe that's where you find your love or your co-founder or something else. And so it's really these kind of moments where we turn to something that is unexpected into some kind of positive outcome and make an excellent meaningful. But also what I'm super fascinated by is how we also can obviously make exigence more meaningful, but also create these kind of accidents, those kinds of coincidences. And so that's what it's all about, this kind of positive, unexpected outcomes.

[00:06:32] So the there's like that that dumb luck, blind luck, which you can have no real. A little bit, and then there's the luck that comes from the unique character and unique actions that you take, that kind of just kicking up dust and you are there to take advantage of all that dust that you've kicked up. So that that's kind of what serendipity is. Exactly. Exactly. So you talk about three different types of serendipity in your book. If you're able to try to share that, that those three types of things, that would be awesome.

[00:07:03] Yeah, I mean, it's really about the question of am I already looking for something or is something completely different? And so what does that mean? Imagine some kind of situation where you're like, you know, you're looking for a job, right? So you're looking for something out there already. And then you bump into someone in the coffee shop who tells you about a new job. Coincidentally, that person you spilled the coffee over, maybe it might be that person. And so, in a way, you already had a certain problem out there that you that you wanted to do something with. But actually then kind of something unexpected happens and you related to that bigger problem. So that happens a lot of times. And companies, for example, let's say you have a bigger purpose where you try to go for some kind of sense of direction. Then you bump into someone and, you know, still where you want to go. But in a way, it kind of changes how you get there or what you do about it, which is very different from the kind of, you know, let's say you're strolling around and you're actually quite happy in your life and then you bump into someone who tells you about something completely different.

[00:08:00] Hey, look, I just opened up a shop in Nicaragua, and you want to come over and spend your life there and you're like, oh, OK. You know, and so you kind of related to that. Your brother maybe wanted to anyways build a business there and whatever it is, and that serendipity happens. And so the three forms are really all about the question. Did you already imagine somewhere where you want to go or did you kind of think about something that, you know, came completely random? And I think the reason why, you know, it doesn't really matter which type of serendipity happens, but what matters is I think this idea that a lot of times, especially when you're in companies or when you're kind of having some goal in mind, it does help us to connect dots better and smarter, because it kind of helps us to imagine what we could relate something to versus just kind of wandering around and searching around.

[00:08:46] So it sounds like these different types of serendipity that they share some core characteristics. So does serendipity have an anatomy? And if so, what does that anatomy look like?

[00:08:59] Yeah, that's a great question. And it really comes to the point of when we think about it as something active, we see that as essentially a process. Right, as something where something unexpected happens. So this kind of trigger, the serendipity trigger like spilling the coffee or whatever, but running into a person at a conference, these kind of things. And now it's all about doing something with it, connecting the dots. So in a way, that kind of active element of it. But then also it's about having the tenacity to actually do something with it and turn that into something. Right. So if I run into you at a conference and you tell me about your great podcast and how great I'm doing this, like I still then have to, you know, say, oh, my God, such a coincidence. I just wrote a book about, you know, little coincidence or we should connect. And then again, it's up to both of us to have the tenacity to follow up on this making it happen. Right. And so a lot of times we can miss every step. We might not see it in the moment, or we might then just not follow up on it and then kind of get distracted and not get there. And so I think that's the beauty of it, that then at every step we can do something, we can create more of these triggers. We can learn how to connect the dots, but also we can work on our grit and our tenacity.

[00:10:04] What artists I would love to hear from. You feel free to send me an email to the artists of Data Science at Gmail dot com. Let me know what you love about the show. Let me know what you don't love about this show and let me know what you would like to see in the future. I absolutely would love to hear from you. I've also got open office hours that I will be hosting and you can register like going to Bitly dot com forward, slash a d s o h. I look forward to hearing from you all and look forward to seeing you in the office hours. Let's get back to the episode and talk about this really interesting concept.

[00:10:50] Actually, the first time I heard this, this concept, this word, the Bar Association. So can you describe that to us? And how is it similar or different to then in association?

[00:11:00] Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, in the end, it's all about connecting dots, right? It's all about saying, what is that kind of moment where, like you bring to potentially previously disparate things together. Right. And so I think a lot of times we think of this as like one moment where, you know, this eureka moment when you're like in the shower on on a Sunday and like you, you're like slightly like something connects and you're like, oh, my God, it's like such a coincidence that this is connecting. And so what what's happening? There are places in your brain, kind of different synapses and others, other things kind of connected and like literally dots. Right. And that's the same in like real life when we try to connect some information to some other information. We're bringing them together and merge them into into something, and the reason I'm excited about it is because if you think about everything from creativity to how new ideas emerge to like how up to 50 percent of inventions and innovations happen, usually it is because people are able to connect us to something. And so take an example like Viagra, where researchers look for something completely different. They gave people medication against angina. They realized there was some kind of movement happening and male participants trousers. And then instead of just saying, oh, my God, this is kind of embarrassing and this is something we should ignore or find a better way to cure angina, they said, you know what, like they buy associated. They connect the dots. They said, you know what? There's a lot of people in the world who might have that problem. So why don't we, like, make a medication around this? And so that kind of connecting the dots is really what's what's what's exciting about it.

[00:12:29] It seems like the key to doing that is having that that open mind to be able to look at things not just from a tunnel vision type of perspective. What would be some of the biggest barriers were blockers to prevent us from thinking in this way?

[00:12:47] Well, I mean, if you if you think about it, I mean, all of us have had quite a few biases, right. I mean, if we want to or not, I mean, I, I realize I'm kind of going on this journey like how many assumptions I have that are just not true. Right. So, for example, the one being we constantly underestimate how probable it is that the improbable happened. So how how how the unexpected happens all the time. All the time there. And I think it probably is like the biggest reminder of this, right. That like, there's only so much we can plan. And if you look at your CV, for example, you might tell us a story where you went from this job to this stop to this. So, yeah, but you know what? If you really look at it and probably you run into someone who told you about something, then you jump somewhere else. And so it's really this kind of thing where we constantly underestimate the unexpected and how often it happens. And what it does then is a, we don't realize a lot of times when it's there and so we don't do something with it, but also when it happens, it doesn't fit into our stories. And so we and a lot of times kind of try to make it into a story where we control more than we actually did. And so one of the things that I'm super excited about is this question of how do we get away from this idea of rationalizing everything or we try to kind of, in a way, always pretend that we had it all mapped out and then tell the story as if we all had it all figured out, which in a way maybe makes us all lie to each other.

[00:14:03] Right. Because if you look at the CEOs do right, they go to their board and they say, oh, great, like this was my plan. And I did exactly what I wanted to do. And everyone knows that, like, they couldn't have known all of this. And so one of the reasons I'm so excited about this idea of cultivating serendipity is that in a way, what you're doing is you're taking away the illusion of control. You're taking away this idea that you can plan everything out. But what you're doing is you're saying, you know what, give us a sense of direction. Give us an idea of where we're going, but at the same time, create a culture that allows us to be ready for the unexpected, because then essentially you're not losing control. Quite the opposite. You're incorporating the unexpected into everything you're doing. And so I think then essentially, once we overcome this bias to not underestimate the unexpected, we can create this muscle. That's the muscle that allows us to essentially make the best out of it.

[00:14:50] So one thing I really appreciated about in your book was the fact that you're so open and vulnerable with your story, talking about the struggles he had as a rebellious high schooler, and then you're not so linear path to where you are today. I really appreciate that. It actually has given me courage and strength to really talk about my story more openly, because much like you, I was a very rebellious high schooler. Like I didn't initially graduate high school. And then I had several missteps along the way. And, you know, anybody that lands on my LinkedIn page looks at it just it looks like a clear just story. Right. But there's so much that happened in between there that this is it's just not there enough just because of, you know, I've just been been more open to embracing that that part of my history. Thank you for that. Speaking about being able to see the connections and being able to see those things happen, you've got this concept in your book about alertness. So talk to us a little bit more about alertness and how this promotes serendipity.

[00:15:45] Yeah, and obviously I'm really excited to hear that. But somehow, I mean, one of the hopes I have with this kind of book is really to say at the end of the day, we all have a certain narrative of self, but at the same time, we also all go through similar struggles from time to time. Right. And and it's perfect. I mean, I so I work a lot at the moment, and especially with kind of high school kids and others around the question of how do we make sure that everyone feels it's OK to wing it at times, it's OK to not always be perfect. It's OK to. And so I'm really kind of I'm grateful that you say that because I feel it's it's one of the biggest hopes that with the book to say we can all in a way, we all feel like impostors at times will feel like, you know, that we haven't figured it all out. And that's fine. Right. But that's kind of really something. So, so so that's really very close to my heart with regard to alertness. I mean, something that I. And so I'm a big fan of this experiment, maybe trying to bring that point home where people took so according to people who self identify as extremely lucky and people who are self as extremely unlucky. And it took one of each and I said down the street, going to the coffee shop, grab a coffee, sit down, and then we'll have an interview at some point. What they didn't tell them is that there's hidden cameras across the street, that there's a five pound note in front of the door.

[00:17:00] So so there's money in front of the door. And then there's only one table in the coffee shop next to this extremely successful businessman who can make a lot of ideas and dreams. And so now the lucky person walks down the street and sees the five pound note, picks it up, goes inside the coffee shop, has a conversation with a barista, sits down next to the businessman, has a nice conversation. They exchanged business cards, potential opportunity coming on. We don't know that part. The unlucky person just walks down the street, steps over the five pound note, goes inside the shop orders. The coffee sits next to the businessman. The other person ignores the businessman. The lady asked both people. So how was your day to day? And so the lucky person says, it was amazing. I found money in the street, made new friends and potential to become relevant. We don't know that like a person just says, well, nothing really happened. And, you know, that's kind of like a lot about this idea that a the quote unquote lucky person that frames the world as something we're potentially good things can happen, actually sees those unexpected things more because they expect them to potentially be there. And so it opens our idea of, OK, there are things out there that could be there and there are things we can talk about this later. How we then once we are there to these kind of things, we see opportunity in diversity and adversity and so on.

[00:18:15] But I'm a big, big fan of this idea that at the end of the day, in every situation, there's always something in there, even if it doesn't seem at that moment that over the long run can potentially trigger some kind of serendipity or at least something that that can be positive. And so I've done a lot of work and I'm very close with people who have lost kind of people around them or who have had very bad luck. And the interesting thing is, a lot of times those moments that are the moments where either those moments frame the person or the person frames the moment in their life. And I think that to me is like a biggest thing, because obviously we can never blame someone for bad luck and we can never know all of us. I think about life at some point have bad luck under structural constraints. There's a lot of different things that we cannot influence. But one thing we can influence is our reaction to the unexpected. And I think what I'm really curious always about is to see how do we train ourselves to see something in the unexpected, always, especially if it's bad luck that we can turn into something positive. And so that's really about this kind of being alert to these kind of opportunities that are in the unexpected. Being at a five pound note on the floor, being a, you know, this kind of different types of potential triggers that could be there.

[00:19:27] It's interesting how much self talk can influence these type of opportunities and influences the way you perceive things like like what's the importance of of that self talk when it comes to to creating our own good luck to create your own serendipity.

[00:19:42] It's interesting because, you know, if you think about so if I think about my own life, but also the life that I've seen a lot of people leave, I will not forget I had a wonderful conversation in London with a gentleman at some point who asked him, how often do you have serendipity? And he works like in a restaurant and he's a great guy. And I asked him and he was like, well before I was twenty five, never. And after I was twenty five all the time. And I was like, what changed for change. And it was like well before I was twenty five, I never acted on even if I saw something unexpected that could be positive. I didn't act on it because I didn't feel worthy, I didn't feel ready, I didn't feel all these different things. And then I went through a journey of surrounding myself with people who were more optimistic because the people who also told me, look, you don't have to be in that idea. That's because he grew up in this environment where his parents will tell him people like us are not supposed to work in X, Y, Z. People like us will always be in service like we are not the kind of people who do X, Y, Z different. And so and so there was this kind of whole idea in his head.

[00:20:50] I'm not worthy of this kind of opportunity. I'm not worthy of X, Y, Z. And so then kind of he went through this journey of both surrounding himself with people, with different people, but also kind of telling himself and starting to really go into this journey of building his own self-confidence. And what was fascinating was that people would always like he used to work as waiter and people would always tell him about like things and always say, let me introduce you to this person so and so and so on. So he would always say, no, no, no, I'm not. I don't want to. And once he started doing it, then because of this kind of journey you went through, it started to happen. I think that kind of like, you know, I've seen a lot of these kind of stories and patterns where in a way, again, there's structural constraints a lot of times. And I think we have to be super aware of that. And then I think a lot of times especially. For for us, right in our surroundings, there is a lot of times this kind of self limiting beliefs also in terms of how to, you know, not go. And so I think this kind of full importance of also seeing ourselves creating a new narrative of self the Supreme Court did.

[00:21:53] Do you think that the relationship between the reticular activating system in the brain and in serendipity, that makes it possible for us to see these opportunities, like if we're constantly talking to yourself in a positive way, we're constantly having good, good thoughts and then just thinking of ways that we can connect things and we're just going to see see more opportunities to connect things in the outside world.

[00:22:17] It's a great question. And what I found fascinating on this journey of kind of diving deep into those themes is that in a way, sign says, you know, everything from kind of neuroscience to psychology to to quantum physics to spirituality increasingly say the same thing right. Then in a way like when you kind of put yourself into a certain motion and then essentially like something becomes a problem, just like entropy, like the bicycle ride. If you don't ride a bicycle, it falls. And so, like, you have to constantly, continuously go and do something about it. And the same would like in psychology, to your point. Right. If you if you visualize things, if you literally manifest things in your in your mind and kind of start doing it, you you start seeing more things that could relate to it. You start seeing things kind of like going to that way and again then energetically similar. Right. Once you kind of like back then people react to energy. Right. And so it's kind of I think like to a question that I think the beautiful thing is that all these different perspectives all say the same thing. But yes, like in a way, once you put yourself on a trajectory like this, even if it's tough, right. I mean, I did look, I had covered in March like it was a really bad period. I couldn't breathe. I had nine more on speed dial. It was really like it's the kind of period where you're like, yeah.

[00:23:36] Is it just a good energy? Was it. But what do you do when you're in a really bad place? But I regret the Victor Frankl writes and this guy, he survived the Holocaust. He was in a concentration camp. And even in that kind of moments, he still kind of found this way of saying, hey, look, I will still everyday talk with at least one other person to make them feel better about themselves. And by doing that, that gives me meaning. And I think that kind of reminded me, right, that in every situation you can always reframe something. You can always still do something. And at that moment, it was about, OK, if I'm sitting here in my bed and I can probably breathe, can I then like what can I do with this? Is there something that can I can really anchor myself in with the meaning that I had last time when I had an incident like this, which kind of short we have to step into and so on. And so I think, you know, in a way to your point, that I think we if we can use these moments to to to remember that in a way we can frame the world in a certain way, that probably helps us. I mean, since then, like I've been, again, on a kind of day, like I want to shape the world again, because again, it was a reminder of how quickly life can be over.

[00:24:43] I'm so glad that you recovered from that with no ill effects. It's it's definitely a scary time. And I cannot imagine the suffering that any arbitrary goals answer for me. Excellent. Excellent. Read highly recommend it to anybody that's listening. That was kind of like my introduction to, like, stoic philosophy and stoicism. And it got me really deep into into that and just absolutely beautiful operating system for life, to put it plainly, I guess. So I know something that my audience is really going to be interested in is talking about the importance of the why and how we can do a better job at defining problem statements.

[00:25:26] Yeah, and that's an interesting question, both in terms of, you know, if you think about individuals and then if you, let's say, build your startup or if you kind of create a team or in a way the collective within the individual wide, because, I mean, if you think about it, why are we so if we look at it in terms of both in a way the bigger way in terms of like is a sense of direction, it's like a way of how we can then understand how to connect something with, you know, Pullman has always been really good at this.

[00:25:58] The guy who has been ran, Unilever for a long time, you know, he had this kind of idea of the reason I'm here in this world is because I want to help other people help themselves if they're exposed position. And so if people would come with new projects, you would always think about, OK, does this project really relate to this? If it doesn't relate to this, it doesn't work. And so the why gives us a beautiful filter to filter projects, to filter ideas and to also avoid distraction. Right. Because too much serendipity can can really distract them. But also to your point of problem statements, I think what's interesting is that a lot of times if we over specify problems or over specify things, in a way, we're probably. Decreasing the potential of 20 states, right, because if I tell you I don't know, decrease costs and we just have to kind of like, you know, make more money than you think in those terms. And you think about how can I fire people? How can I do X, Y or Z? But if I tell you our bigger purpose is X, Y, Z, and they'll find me every way to either make more profit or to cut costs or make more revenues or cut costs or whatever it is, and you become much more creative. And I think it's these kind of things where a lot of times it's a question of how do we make sure that people know why they're doing something, but also how do we not over define problems in ways that then limit how people can think about solutions to whatever problem we define for them through that portion of the book.

[00:27:20] I was a really, really insightful thanks for digging into that for the audience there. So jumping now into a kind of, I guess more maybe the anatomy of serendipity, this concept of the serendipity trigger. Talk to us about what that that means, what that trigger is and how it comes down to asking two basic questions.

[00:27:44] Yeah, well, it's interesting because, I mean, if you think about like, how do you essentially put some kind of thoughts out there that essentially potentially could create serendipity? Because, again, triggers a lot of times happen and we can influence that, right? covid we can influence if a volcano breaks up, we can influence as the hurricane happens, we can influence events. It's mostly our reaction to that. But I think the part that I'm most excited about is how do we create dots for us and promise? And so one example, just to show how that is and practice is is setting hooks. Right, or casting hooks where essentially what you would do is something like, hey, look, there's this amazing entrepreneur in London, Audibert. And if you were to ask him something like what do you do? You know, the dreaded question we get at conferences and wherever we are, he will tell you something like, well, look, like I'm a tech entrepreneur, but recently started reading into the philosophy of science. But what I'm really excited about is playing the piano. And so what he's doing here is he's giving you three potential dots where you could be like, oh, my God, such incidents. I just started playing the piano, let's hang out and do a piano or such. For instance, my brother wrote a book on philosophy of science and is looking for a new person to help them out, whatever it is. The point is that he gives you three potential dots that he can connect, that you can connect for him. And so in a way, you can see these different triggers out there and have others connect the dots. I think that was one of the things that I was most surprised by when when doing that work that I always assumed connecting the dots and kind of seeding things is up to us. But actually, if we see a couple of thoughts, others can connect the dots for us. And so it's the teamwork of giving people excuses to connect the dots for us as well.

[00:29:26] I absolutely love that part. And I started including in some correspondences with the with different publicist that I talked to him behalf of getting get on on the podcast, the sort of thing not just into Data science people. Actually, these are the other type of topics I like to talk about. And I just started doing that and just more people started coming to the funnel. So that's pretty awesome. So I really like this quote you have in the book. I don't know if you recall it or not, but it's information is at the core of life's opportunities. I thought that was such a very beautiful quote. Talk to us about what that means.

[00:30:06] Yeah, well, it's interesting because, you know, a lot of times I think about this from the perspective of introverts as well, because, you know, we always like assume that that extroverts are favored when it comes to serendipity. Right. Because as an extrovert or more extrovert. I mean, let's assume it's a continuum. And some of us are more extrovert. Others I'm a closet introverts. I'm the kind of person or you know, I give a speech on the night in the toilet afterwards because know it's too much at some point and says these kind of things where as a closet into one of the things I've been thinking a lot about is where does serendipity really happen? And like serendipity happens. Yes. When you bump into people, when you put yourself out there, when you keep in touch with people. But a lot of times it also comes out of silence or religious information. That might be a book. It might be information that is kind of like, you know, that you create because you see something in a kind of window shop window when you take another street. And so I think that the beautiful thing about serendipity is that a lot of times it's about connecting pieces of information in unexpected ways and really making sense out of them. And so I think what I am super excited about is exactly how do we essentially, you know, puts kind of informational pieces out there. And I think especially, you know, if you think about coders, when they think about or, you know, you talk about Data scientists, I think it's so much about how do you smartly give people pieces of information that they can do something with that they can that helps them connect the dots versus just kind of like, you know, I'm putting an. So I think the core idea is really that it's not only about knowledge, that's power, but it's really kind of informational things that people get seated where then you can create knowledge out of it, unexpected that they absolutely love that part because I just like putting ideas into my head.

[00:31:52] So just reading books, listen to audio to anything I can get my hands on that just to get some good. I guess it's like fertilizer for the garden of the mind, I guess if one way to look at it. So I'm also very, very much an introvert. I mean, I do this podcast plus doing office hours from my network of twenty five hundred mentees and it becomes very draining. I've no energy to truly engage in any social interactions. By the end of the week, it becomes harder. Now because we live in this covid world, what can we do to put ourselves in situations where we can find people to connect with?

[00:32:36] Yeah, that's a great question. By the way, is I mean, that's you can be proud of that, right? I mean, that's pretty impressive, but yeah. I mean, you know, it's interesting because I feel a lot of the things that we can do in offline life, we can go online as well in terms of how do we respond to questions by sitting different types of information, how do we ask questions? Different days sometimes of when you are on and call and meeting your person, you know, like how do you understand their interests and motivations versus just like, OK, what do you do in all these different types of things? But also then in a way, you know, I'm a big fan of kind of social roulette, for example, where startups have started to connect people randomly across the organization. You don't know each other yet. So essentially you put like, yeah, I'm free on Friday at ten o'clock and then another person's free. They just match them up, give them inspirational question and they they meet for lunch. And so that's kind of the typical watercooler moment. Right. Which doesn't happen at the moment. But you can create that online a little bit like like that. I'm also a big fan of literally like like using every conversation, every interaction to think proactively about, OK, everything that someone tells me, how do I not take it on at face value, but how do I constantly think about what is behind this? What are the assumptions and how does this relate to someone or something? I know.

[00:33:58] And so something that I've seen with myself and others, we create the most serendipity when we think constantly about how does this relate now to something different, to something I talk with, with a friend and how can I introduce them to someone and something? And so I think they're getting with this mind of constantly connecting dots can help everywhere, because then everyone calls. Every conversation becomes something that can be fun because you're like, oh, I thought I talked with this person a hundred times, but by slightly changing how I how I go into this, there's so many new things that are coming out of it. You know, there's a lot of tactics and strategies. And I'm sure I'd love to you, by the way, which will be your favorites. Arbon from from, from the book. But I think in general, you know I'm a big fan of not adding something to our guitar and not adding and we all busy. We all have to do a lot of things but it really kind of like slightly reframing how we have our day to day conversations, how we connect with people. And I think that's that's where a lot of the magic happens.

[00:34:56] I really like the the flipping the networking on its head where instead of saying, oh, what did you ask one of these more interesting questions like, oh, what are you currently inspired by? You know, I recently, very recently, after reading a book, switched up the questions to my random round because the ones he had in there in the networking section were just like, oh, my God, this is amazing. You know, what are you most excited about right now? What are you currently exploring? What are you inspired by? A really, really great questions. I never thought about ever going beyond that. You know, what do you do some really good tips in there for for the people like me who are not good at small talk. I really appreciate that. And the thing is, you don't even need, like a large network in order for you to find people to connect with. Right. And that find meetup groups online. You could join groups on LinkedIn, just find some way to connect with people. Now, another thing that I really, really enjoyed in the book was this concept of a disjunction, strategies that we can use to foster serendipity. There's that remixing, rebooting, deconstruction. One of the wonder if you can get into those us like that concept of remixing man it aligns so well as my world view. A few months back, I read this real book by Austin Kleon still like an artist and kind of helped foster my world view of everything being a remix. That's what was really cool to see that in your book. But can you share that with the audience for those three concepts? Remixing, rebooting and deconstruction?

[00:36:35] Yeah, it's interesting. And I love that you kind of directly have the new life happening, and because obviously, I mean, you know that the whole idea is, you know, how do you learn from things like filmmaking and and the arts to, you know, take different types of perspective on things? And I think, you know, the thing that I've been most excited about is I've seen that a lot when I used to work in startups. Right. We we kind of thought we would work on something and then from time to time, go into another coffee shop or going to somewhere else just to kind of have a slightly different kind of setting that then kind of inspire a slightly different. And so, you know, these three strategies are just about the degree of how much you essentially, you know, radically change your perspective or a story or a narrative and everything else. But what I always found fascinating is, in a way, how you can create exactly those moments. Right. And how you completely shift perspectives, how you you know, of this kind of a friend of mine told me yesterday about how they you know, I I haven't been that much into this kind of kind of superhero. What's the name of this kind of, you know, like, well, the superheroes come together and The Avengers. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, I find it fascinating because, you know, this idea of like that you you have these different narratives and then you you have a meta narrative.

[00:37:51] And then depending on this, you kind of like reinvent stories of people or the history of someone. But also you get that core narrative of someone. And I find it fascinating because if you think about your own life and how often, you know, we in our lives, when you go through a mid-life crisis, how you quote unquote try to reinvent yourself. But how do you do that? Do you keep the core right, which would be kind of the lesser type strategy where you say, oh, I'm keeping my core, my core values and everything else. I'm just adjusting, you know, going from banking into into consulting or something like that, or do I completely kind of like frame everything and do I become a new person and something like this. And so I think, you know, like in the book, it's three different strategies, but I think it's much better probably I think of it as a continuum in terms of saying, like, how much do you want to change something up and how radical are you ready to to let go of something that you have and embrace that. And I think I've been a big fan doing that personally, but also in companies, you know, how much of your legacy do you have to let go? How much of your story, quote unquote, do you have to rewrite in order to kind of be able to get somewhere where you want to be? But I drifted off to hear, like, how you how you experience that.

[00:39:03] And someone very interesting, I guess, when it comes to remixing one. One thing I do constantly in Data science right so I work currently in a manufacturing industry, but previously I worked in e-commerce, I worked in insurance and I worked in pharmaceuticals all as statistician Data scientist type of roles. Right. So just being able to step away from the minute details of the problem and say, OK, wait, this thing that we're doing in e-commerce, for example, this churn analysis, this reminds me of something I was doing as a biostatistician. It's looks a lot like survivor analysis. Right? So making those connections between these different problem statements in different domains, like they might use different words and their colloquial type of language to describe what's going on in their world. But there's parallels to what you're working on. And if you could see those, then you can remix a solution, remix your methodology from one domain and apply it to your domain and apply to your problem statement. And that's the big thing that at least for remixing and also just even when it comes to just like writing stuff for me is like definitely a remix. Right. You know, I'll be doing reaction pieces to some of the books I read and parts of it will come from the actual book I'm reading.

[00:40:31] Parts will come from another book and it's just like all kind of mixed in together. And it's just me eating it up, digesting it, regurgitating it out in with my own kind of voice. So that's the biggest way I've seen the remixing stuff or even just taking like taking like the quote, graphics and pictures and combining them together for a promotional piece for the podcast. Like I was colliding these different ideas together. I think that really is like the foundation of creativity is just taking things that don't look like they belong together and just smashing them into each other. I think you might be familiar with Dr. Camilla paying. She wrote the book so she knows she's on the podcast as well. Release an episode with her a few weeks ago and she does that very well. She takes ideas and just smashes them together and just explain something in such a new, fresh way so that it's definitely everything's a remix. Everything. I think I think by now most of my audience knows that I have a deep affinity for for the Stoics and stoic philosophy. And I was really happy when you mentioned one of my absolute favorite Stoics in your book, Seneca. So what can Seneca teach us about serendipity?

[00:41:50] Yeah, you know, it's interesting because if you think about the kind of key virtues, rittenauer, like wisdom, justice, courage, like, you know, this kind of key things that are the core of it. One of the things that that I think is is obviously interesting about serendipity is how much it is about being able to be courageous in some way. Right. We talked about things like, you know, even vulnerability. I mean, I'm a big fan of being brown about how in a way, you know, the most courageous thing you can do is to be vulnerable. And I think when you think about this and reframing now, obviously the Stoics probably would stone me to death to to kind of go into that direction. But but I think I mean, serendipity is all about somehow sagacity and it is all about kind of seeing something in the moment and making sense out of it, but also then again, having the tenacity to to go through with it.

[00:42:44] But I want to kind of take that to to Brene Brown, because I think maybe particularly for your listeners, I think that's that's the kind of thing where if you think about. So we just did a study with 40 of the top CEOs in the world that run companies like MasterCard, Procter Gamble, like really big companies. And, you know, we essentially tried to understand what do they all have in common. And a lot of them actually have a couple of things that go on. A lot of them are practical philosophers. So they ask why all the time like there comes comes to be kind of like why, why, why? Questioning assumptions all the time and then kind of real wisdom actually coming out of the idea that, hey, at the end of the day, nobody has really figured everything out. So we have to constantly question assumptions and go about it, but also then be kind of like a lot of times they don't know what a good word for that is, but they have the courage to be not always right in the sense that they create an environment of psychological safety where they say, OK, at the end of the day, you know, we have this sense of direction here, but also we have not figured it all out. And so there's a slight element of vulnerability of we are not perfect, we're not all here, but that it gives people the excuse then to kind of come up with new ideas that help them kind of shape the strategies and everything else, I think, in our own lives also. Right. That's at the core of all of these kind of life experiences of saying, you know, we can't have all this, this this figured out, but we can certainly kind of somehow develop a mindset for four for them being able to cope with it and not seeing it as interaction.

[00:44:18] And I think that to me or seeing it or seeing imperfection as something that actually can be positive. And I think that to me is that a lot of these kind of at the core of a lot of these conversations are on saying at the end of the day that if you see everything, I think habitually who is the former chairman of West Point, he had this beautiful thing around meeting a mom, Criden, and he met that monk. And the monk essentially told him, you people like you are so brutal to each other because you you always want everything to be perfect. But this is very inhumane because essentially everyone was not perfect then becomes a problem because you you say it has to be perfect. But this is why when you allow for a little bit of imperfection and don't see that as a problem, that's actually when you start seeing something unexpected and turn them to depressed outcomes and rephrasing that in a way that the mom probably wouldn't be overly excited about. But the point of being that I think the courage that comes from being vulnerable and the courage that comes from admitting that you haven't had it all figured out then empowers other people as well, because it gives them the license to come up with new ideas and so on and so on.

[00:45:24] So what tips that you have then for someone who is like on a team environment and maybe they're scared of looking like they don't know something, but they don't want to openly communicate this? What would you tell somebody who's in that mindset?

[00:45:41] Yeah, it's interesting because I grew up in a country where, you know, we get trained in the idea of avoid uncertainty, avoid ambiguity, plan everything. So I'm from Germany and we were kind of like, you don't play especially as a guy, right? You don't grow up saying, oh, you admit kind of these kind of things. Right. And so I think one of the things I found extremely helpful for for myself also to think about, like what is what is that kind of degree that I feel comfortable? Like what is what is it that what are the areas where I'm OK to feel out of as what are the areas where I don't feel like to be vulnerable? And I think in my case, for example, I feel much more comfortable with being vulnerable in areas where I'm really good at, because essentially what I can say is like, hey, look, here's my vulnerability. Here's how I overcome some of this and here's a quote unquote, success around this and everything else, you know, in areas where I don't have. That I'm like, yeah, let me talk about it once I kind of get to the other side of it. And so I think one of the things is I think a lot of times, to give an example, one of the organizations I admire is reconstructed living next in South Africa. It's essentially former drug addicts and others who kind of extremely vulnerable people potentially, but who said, OK, we will develop a low income education solution here that we can take into other communities, and that enables people like us to become teachers and to do like these five steps of how to use social media.

[00:47:10] These are five steps of how to build a business. And so essentially a very simple way to quote unquote, become empowered and then to become a teacher and to become who you can become. And what I found fascinating about it is that just this idea that in a way you see the potentiality of what could be and you bring that into different contexts. I've seen that with myself as well. Like as soon as I realized there is potentiality, I reframe situations away from, oh, I'm just X, Y, Z, or oh, like I'm not supposed to do X, Y, Z to. Oh, wow. Like this potentiality there is beautiful. And you know, I will never forget the first time I got there, I went into some Bridgton, which is the part of the Cape Flats in South Africa and Cape Town, which is kind of like very crime ridden and high unemployment and so on. And the like is mostly kind of black community that lives there. And there's obviously a big racial divide in South Africa. And I will never forget when I came there the first time and I asked one of the kids, so, hey, you know, one day will you be at the University of Cape Town, like on the mountain, you would like to look up and they would be like, no, no.

[00:48:23] That's called the white people. I guess it's not for us. And so that broke my heart. Right, because you're like, wow. Like there is this kind of idea that, like, this is for some part of the population, this for the other part of the population. And what I found fascinating about the reconstructed living model is to say, no, we start imagining how it could be that some of us could be there. And then we kind of like work with the government to remove some of the structural constraints. And we work with other partners to do something around this. But actually, then at the end of the day, we in a way, what was fascinating to see is how the University of Cape Town comes to them, because they found an amazing kind of model model of doing this. But long story short, what I really appreciate about them was the community driven. That's where it really came from, from from from from kind of like not the government coming in and pushing things on people, but people being the ones who shaped it and working together with the government. I think, you know, to to me, that idea of us in a way seeing what is already here and then kind of working based on this with others versus like, you know, I I feel like, you know, I mean, this is it's a very long answer to your question.

[00:49:32] But, you know, one of the things that I've always kind of dreaded was, you know, especially when you come as someone from a Western context. And I started working in Kenya 10 years ago. And when I went the first time to Kenya and South Africa, I asked one of the the the guys who work with this organization, what should I never ask us as the kind of white kid coming into your context here? And they said, well, never ask us what we need, because if you ask the first question, because if you ask us what we need, you put us in the position of a victim, of beneficiary of someone who needs something from you. First, if you come in and say what's already here, what can we do together? And then we can still talk about resources later. But essentially this is much more symmetric. And to me, that's always stuck because it's about this idea of how do I how do I essentially enable, like, this idea that we can we have agency, we have some kind of agency, and we have to to to to do something with this agency, but then obviously also being part of removing structural constraints. And I think that really starts in childhood, you know, in terms of how we can can do something about this. But that was a very long answer to a very short question, I think is very good.

[00:50:44] And also you kind of lay the blueprint and foundation for what to do if you are trying to cultivate psychological safety on your team. I think there's a lesson to be learned and applied as well. So thank you very much for that. I really appreciated it. So let's talk about networking events. Right. We touched on a little bit earlier, but just to make it extremely clear for the audience out there, suppose we're at a networking event, what can we do or how can we change the way that we speak to ensure that we're opening ourselves up for this serendipity?

[00:51:19] I'm a huge fan, especially if one is more introverted to start to to at the beginning, talk with the host, talk with the key people who are the kind of key multipliers, because if we can seed an idea with them, if we can see something with them, they will talk with so many other people. So they can become our ambassadors, so let's say we have a new business idea or something, we want to sit in the room and that's a lot about saying, OK, let's talk about the key people who could then talk with other people. Then we don't have to do it ourselves, but obviously we always have to in either way. But I'm also a big fan of focusing on really developing meaningful relationships, because I think a lot of times people focus on this. Let's meet as many people as possible. Let's kind of maximize X was Z, but that's not how you actually develop really interesting things. So I'd really interesting things take time for interesting relationships, take time. And so I'm a big fan of you know, I've seen that with myself and others, that when you go into a room, you you energetically see. Right. Which are the people who kind of have green energy, quote unquote, the red energy.

[00:52:23] And I think when I was younger, I forced a lot of time speaking with those with red energy because I was like, no, but I still want to convince everyone I want to be everywhere. I mean, as someone who is, you know what, like the real serendipity happens, talking with the green energy person or someone who really kind of where I feel there is some kind of resonance because that people will probably know someone else who might have exposed that anyways. And so the point being that I think at networking events, kind of forcing oneself to speak with people, that that that that is important. But also, I think I'm speaking with those that we feel really kind of a resonance with us versus trying to force stuff that that that doesn't make sense. I think we talked about the kind of questions asking questions differently and getting away from just asking what do you do to asking things like what did you find most inspiring about presentation before? Or just something that opens up that opportunity space where you could be like, oh my God, such, for instance, can can really help you.

[00:53:19] Thank you very much for that. For those listening, the energy that I believe that's from the disk profile of the AC. So definitely check that out. I'll leave a link to that last formal question before we jump into a super quick lightning round. And that is it's one hundred years in the future. What do you want to be remembered for?

[00:53:36] It's a great question. I'm a big fan of Mark Twain, who has this whole thing around you. Do you regret the things you haven't done, but also this kind of idea of that? In a way, when you look back, you know, you should always come from that perspective. I love the question of really kind of thinking about why are we here in the first place. Right. And I think to me, you know, I think the next ten, twenty years of my life will be around this kind of content, around the serendipity mindset has become my life, philosophy and a daily practice. And I've seen I've gotten so much joy from it, so much enthusiasm. I've seen it work in most contexts around the world. And so I think if I can, in a way, get that into curricula, if I can get that to as many people as possible, especially those who might not to be in that kind of mindset and who might, you know, kind of believe that luck is something that you can't really influence and things like that. I've seen how quickly when you do small nudges and small kind of behavioral changes, how quickly people can get into that rhythm, and especially those who are like, oh, my God, this is not me, actually, then get almost addicted to it.

[00:54:46] Oh, my God. Like my life. That's so much more jointed. So I think if if know if it can be around saying, like, this is someone who helped us turn anxiety towards the unexpected, into kind of making the unexpected in L.A. and making uncertainty in L.A. rather than a threat, I think then then that would have felt meaningful to me, and especially I think of those contexts where we don't have the kind of, you know, I mean, a lot of my work is in low income context. And I think that is where I feel I want to focus a lot of my energy also on how we can influence government policy and other things around. How do we think about societal opportunity spaces that allow people to have higher serendipity? So because I feel that's where there's a lot of the kind of real development will come from, where people can create their own luck once we remove the barriers to them actually creating it, which is what a lot of unfortunately such inequality does.

[00:55:38] Thank you very much for that. It was wonderful talking to you. Will go to real quick random. I know we are short on time, but everybody go get this book. Speaking of the book, where can people find it.

[00:55:50] It's on w w w the serendipity mindset dot com. It's everywhere. Amazon bookstores, the serendipity mindset, the art and science of creating. Good luck. And I'm on Twitter at PhD.

[00:56:03] Awesome. So quick a real question here. What are you currently reading?

[00:56:07] Well, I've been rereading Victor Frankl like literally the third time because I feel there's always, you know, you reveal all of the time. I've also reread the book Attached, which is a wonderful book around attachment styles. And I just got into a new relationship. So trying to understand how to make sure that it is is a wonderful one.

[00:56:27] What song do you currently have on repeat?

[00:56:30] Good question. Good question. You know, I'm really bad with, like songs and everything else. I love you too. And the kind of beautiful day. It's kind of both the emotion and the and the kind of in opposition ness that comes from it, but also the kind of tragedy that is and I love it.

[00:56:46] So last question here. We're going to go to a random question generator. All right. Who are some of your heroes? Wow, that's great.

[00:56:58] That's a cool thing, by the way. Obviously, I love randomness. That's fun. But so I definitely I always loved the idea that micrometeoroid around that small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. So we stop that kind of idea. But my biggest hero definitely is Socrates. I would love to hang out with him back in the great days. And, you know, he was obviously framing a lot of questions that we still ask. Why do we do things? How do we do things? And so I feel Socrates is definitely one of my biggest heroes.

[00:57:39] What was your best birthday?

[00:57:41] That's a good question. I mean, I'm grateful for every birthday I have, you know, being aware of how quickly you might not have a birthday anymore. But I think my my third year was great because it was that kind of, you know, being with good friends. I was 19 at the time, which was beautiful inside of nostalgia related to Dr. Beach.

[00:58:01] Thank you so much for taking time at your schedule to be here today. I really appreciate you coming on to the show.

[00:58:06] Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for the great energy. I mean, I love the kind of grounded positive energy. Fantastic. Thank you.