IAM1085- Author Helps People Find the Power to Choose What They Want

Patrick is a venture capitalist and the author of Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice. Patrick coined the term FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), as well as the related term FOBO (Fear of a Better Option) in a 2004 article in the student newspaper of Harvard Business School. FOMO has since been added to the dictionary and FOBO has become an increasingly popular framework to describe choice paralysis. He has been featured in The New York Times, Politico, The Financial Times, The Guardian, and Inc., and gave a popular 2019 TED Talk on FOBO and decision-making that has surpassed 1.5 million views. Originally from Maine, he has visited 103 countries and now lives in NYC. More at patrickmcginnis.com.

• CEO Hack: Apps- Oak and Habit Share
• CEO Nugget: Be professional and make it as easy as possible when it comes to emails
• CEO Defined: The ability to decide what you want to do and where

Website: http://www.patrickmcginnis.com/

www.fomosapiens.com

IG – @patrickjmcginnis
Twitter – @pjmcginnis

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00:40 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

01:07 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Patrick McGinnis of Patrick McGinnis dot com. Patrick, it's great to have you on the show.

01:16 – Patrick McGinnis

Hey. It's great to be here. Thank you.

01:18 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on. Before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Patrick so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Patrick is a venture capitalist and the author of Fear of Missing Out, Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice. Patrick coined the term FOMO, fear of missing out, as well as the related term FOBO, fear of a better option, in a two thousand four articles in the student newspaper of Harvard Business School.

FOMO has since been added to the dictionary, and FOBO has become an increasingly popular framework to describe choice paralysis. He has been featured in the New York Times, political, the Financial Times, the Guardian, and Inc, and gave a popular twenty nineteen TED talk on Fobo and decision-making that has surpassed one point five million views. Originally from Maine, he has visited one hundred and three countries and now lives in NYC. Patrick, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:09 – Patrick McGinnis

I am totally ready. Let's go.

02:11 – Gresham Harkless

Let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you guys started, what I call your CEO story.

02:19 – Patrick McGinnis

Oh, boy. Well, I was, I was I had a lot of FOMO in college, and everybody was becoming an investment banker. And I'm from a small town in Maine. I never even knew what that was, but I knew it paid a lot of money. So I became an investment banker. I was very bad at it. Probably the the least talented investment banker at, JPMorgan at the time. And then, I was gonna leave, actually, and I got an opportunity to interview to be in the venture capital group, which I did do. I loved it. I thought it was really cool. I joined that group, and that set me off on a path to eventually start my own business. So there's a long and winding road, but that was the beginning of my journey.

02:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you for sharing that, and I feel like, you know, most, you know, journeys are long and winding. There are probably a lot of ups and downs, potholes, and really high highs as well. But I love that you kinda talked about, you know, that, and I think it kinda gives us, you know, I guess, appreciation for the journey in each of the steps of the process because I think so many times we can forget that. A A

03:16 – Patrick McGinnis

A hundred percent. I mean, I think if you would ask me at the time when I was doing these things, like, I kind of knew that I wasn't particularly good at being an investment banker, and I didn't particularly like it. But I would have never admitted that to you. Right? Because so much of my self-esteem was caught up in it. So now it's much more liberating to be like, yeah. I was that was not the right thing, but, you know, you learn. I think a lot in those first jobs, it serves you later on. So I think it's good to just sort of, you know, recognize that maybe this isn't meant to be for you forever, but there are tangible skills you can build. And so, you know, try to focus on the good.

03:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I think it's, definitely, I think empowering as well too is some so many times when we're not in the right lane or in the right spot or doing the right thing that there is something that might be there. We may not necessarily, you know, hop on a podcast and say it at the time, but it's empowering to know that it is a journey. And even, you know, people that are having a tremendous amount of success go through those times where a lot of times those things that don't fit sometimes propel them into the things that do fit a lot better.

04:14 – Patrick McGinnis

Hundred percent. And I gotta think that also people listening and I'll just tell you my own experience. Every I mean, my friends from college were really successful, smart, great people who've, you know, gone to great schools and worked at great companies and whatever, all of them, with no exceptions, have had, like, a massive career disaster, and, you know, several of them have had, like, personal things too. So there is no I can't think of the guy anyway.

Well, maybe a few people, but very rare in the example of somebody who doesn't, like, completely just, like, ram into a wall, like, in a hard and painful way even though, you know, you know, we see them now and they look like they're so successful or whatever, and they always have the plan. I think it's very it's not that you need to do that. I mean, like, wouldn't it be nice to just succeed without failing? But it just feels like that's kinda hard to do.

05:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I say most of the time, if you really drill down and look at somebody's, you know, journey and what has led them to success, it looks a lot more like a plate of spaghetti and not as probably delicious, but definitely a windy road where it goes literally, you know, everywhere. So, I appreciate you for sharing that, and I wanted to drill down more into the business that you started in the book that you read. Could you take us through a little bit more about what we can kinda learn from you and how you work with the clients you work with?

05:30 – Patrick McGinnis

Yeah. Sure. So you know, what happened was, I was working on Wall Street. Everything blew up. In two thousand eight, I was working at a division of AIG, and so I decided to leave. I didn't know what I was gonna do. Thankfully, I'd saved a lot of money because I'm from Maine, and we save in Maine. We, like, never live above our means. That was, like, drilled into my head as a child. So I saved and saved and saved. So I was like, I have, like, a decent amount of money in the bank. I can actually live for a decent amount of time. So I took a sabbatical, and I just kinda unwound a little bit and sort of let myself decompress from the stress of being right in the middle of a financial crisis and having my stock and my company fall ninety-seven percent. I mean, it was just a crazy town.

And so when I did that, then I came back, and I was very lost because I wanted to go get another job and finance or something. But every time I would interview, I was like, oh, god. I can't do this again. Like, this is just these people are not my people, and I don't like this. And I'm not even that good at it. And, like, this is not what I meant to do. But I didn't know what I was meant to do. And I have friends. I knew people who, like, were doing what they were meant to do. There's a guy I don't know if you've ever heard of a company called Bonobos, which is this pants company clothing company that was sold to Walmart. The founder, Andy, who's Andy Don, who's not somebody I'm super close with, but I knew him socially a little bit.

And he was, like, starting this business that was reflected with who he was, and I was like, ah, Andy has sorted out, like, he's cracked the cracked code, and I'm here miserable. And so that kind of inspiration, actually, him and other people that I knew, kind of convinced me that I should try to figure that out, but I didn't know what that was. And, frankly, I stumbled into what was meant to be my path, which is that, you know, I started just doing side projects, investing in things, starting things on the side. Eventually, I've done more than twenty. Two of the companies I've, been an early investor in have become, you know, unicorns worth over a billion dollars.

And so I've built this portfolio of investments that I've started or gotten involved with, and I wrote a book about it called The Ten Percent Entrepreneur, live your startup dream without quitting your day job. And then that opened up a whole new set of things that I do, which is like speaking and writing and I have a podcast called FOMO Sapiens. So, you know, it all started from this search to figure out, like, what I wanted to do with my life and then being very experimental and treating everything like kind of a laboratory and diversifying my bets so that if I failed, you know, it wasn't gonna be, like, the end of everything. And that's how I kinda got where I am today.

07:49 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This can be for yourself personally or the business or the combination of everything you've been able to build. What do you feel kinda sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:59 – Patrick McGinnis

Yeah. I think it's that. I think listen. It's a combination of, diversification, number one. Number two, being very choosy about what I do, understanding being ruthlessly rigorous about only doing things that correspond to what I like to do and what I'm good at. So if something isn't enjoyable, I'm not gonna focus on it. I'm gonna avoid it. Like, I know that. There are certain things I should be doing right now that are always in my inbox. Like, so you know that email that you never raised? I'm talking to you, Suzanne, my IP lawyer. I know you're emailing me. I know I have to do things, but I just don't enjoy it, and so I don't do them. Right? So if so that's, like, a great example.

Now at the same time, if I'm not good at something, why should I be doing it? You know? It's not the highest and best use of my time. And so maybe I'm doing something because I wanna build knowledge and skills, and that's a cool way to go about things. But in general, like, if you're good at something and you like it, that's where you should focus. And then finally, I'm good at sort of really good at, figuring out who I know who can help me. So I am not afraid to ask for help. I ask for help all the time. I also try to make sure that the people who help me have some sort of upside for themselves. But I just have, like, this kind of very my brain is like a big file cabinet inside, or I guess that's a very outdated way of thinking about it. It's like some blockchain.

09:16 – Gresham Harkless

There you go.

09:17 – Patrick McGinnis

It's a big blockchain, and encoded on all of the tokens is, like, what people are good at and what and I know, like, who to call. I just I've I've always been really good at that. And I think as I've gotten, you know, more experience, I've also become less afraid of asking for help, which I used to be terrible at. And so that combination of diversification, you know, knowing what I'm good at, what I like to do, and then figuring out who can help me, that that that's the trifecta that makes things work for me.

09:44 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's huge. And, obviously, being able to kinda see that within yourself, but also see that within others and see how those pieces fit together, create those win-win scenarios is one of the big things. Because I think so many times, even if you're willing to ask for help or you kinda get over that, which I think we all definitely especially people that are givers and making an impact, you kinda struggle with, you still gotta make sure you're asking for the right thing.

And you can recognize what somebody else is able to do to so to be able to kinda blend all that together. I think that's a phenomenal recipe for a secret sauce if I say so myself. Thanks. Awesome. And so I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:25 – Patrick McGinnis

Oh, there are so many to choose from. What's the one I'm gonna choose today? I think the one, thing that sort of makes all the trains run on time for me is I meditate ten minutes a day. So I use an app called Oak. It has a little timer on it. And then I have another app called Habit Share, and I have a buddy who also meditates, and we keep each other honest. If we don't check in, then we say, hey. You missed your meditation. I've been doing it for three years now, around. And, it just made it's made me a much more calm and focused, regulated person. It's one of these things that, like, I knew it would be good to do, but then I just never managed to do it. And now that I do it, I noticed what an impact it has. So I think that for anybody who wants to just sorta, like, keep their head together and not freak out all the time, it's a very valuable thing to do.

11:16 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And I imagine with the number of things that you're involved in as well too, the more that you, you know, tie take on and start to invest in and start to do, you probably need to lean into that even more and more and more to make sure you're, keeping the trains running as you say so well.

11:31 – Patrick McGinnis

Yeah. I think, listen. The world is gonna bet crazy in the next couple of months. Right now, the world is reopening. I can feel it. I feel it myself. Like, I feel the busyness and the stress coming back, and it's like, I don't want that. I mean, I know what that is, and I had a break from that. It was a different type of stress, obviously, during the quarantine and all that sort of stuff. That was, like, you know, just bad. But I'm glad to be busy again. But I also when you start to feel like you're spinning out of control, you have to just sort of you have to stop. And I think that meditation is a very powerful way of kinda getting out of your head and focusing on, you know, reality and just breaking out of that kinda monkey mind and getting to the monk mind as my friend Jay Shetty says.

So, yeah, that's that's I think everybody, like, I'm telling you, I've written a lot about this. Like, in fact, there's a great podcast episode I did with Jay Shetty, who if you don't know him, is kind of this amazing, very huge, well-followed, influencer kinda guy in that space. And we did two episodes that I recorded right before the quarantine, actually. It was crazy. Like, we didn't even like, we we were like, what's gonna happen?

12:40 – Gresham Harkless

Good time. You know?

12:41 – Patrick McGinnis

I remember it was just like, I was on the subway going to interview him, and there was, like, nobody on the subway. And I was like, this is weird. Yeah. So, anyway, that has just been really helpful to me. And I think, you know, if you wanna learn, it's very doable.

12:56 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that that aspect too in in having, like, a, a meditation buddy, so to speak, to keep you accountable and having that back and forth to make sure that you are staying true, to that as well. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something from your book or something you would tell a client, or it could be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you would tell your younger business self.

13:19 – Patrick McGinnis

You know what? I'm just gonna this is like I don't know if it's a nugget, but let me just tell you something, which is, I notice that people ask me all the time, can you please introduce me to this person? And I'm generally happy to do that because I like people. If you're a good person, I'm delighted to introduce you. I mean, I have six marriages under my belt and people I introduced, many a business deal, so, like, I'm happy to do it. But then people make it really hard for you. So I'll be like, yeah. Just send me an email that I can forward. So they responded to my email with all of the back and forth that we had for the last three weeks. Like, how are you today? Oh, I'm good.

And then they're like they send something that I have to then go in and edit and start doing it. And, like, I always write back and I just say to them and I put this in my first book, so I was like, maybe you should read chapter eight. I'm I'm an entrepreneur. But it's sort of like, this email is not this is not what I said. And I don't mean to be difficult, but, like, if I'm doing three of these a day, that's, like, twenty minutes of my day that are lost. And, frankly, now I'm a slightly tiny bit annoyed with you. So what I would say is if you ask me to do a favor for you, please be extraordinarily professional and make it as easy as possible because, otherwise, they may just erase your email and not do it.

14:30 – Gresham Harkless

And so, wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote, unquote, CEOs on the show. So, Patrick, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:39 – Patrick McGinnis

Well, I mean, because I sort of work for myself and run my own thing, I think it means, you know, the ability to decide what you do when, how, and where. So that's that's it for me.

14:49 – Gresham Harkless
Yeah. That makes so much sense. And I think that speaking to that freedom and the ability to make those decisions, and as we kinda talked about in the beginning, understanding that when you figure out what you wanna do, what you wanna lean into, you get to kinda create the world that you wanna create in the way that you wanna create it and do it, of course, where you wanna have it, is absolutely huge and empowering. So truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get a hold of you, find out about the books, the podcast, all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:22 – Patrick McGinnis

Yeah. So well, thanks for listening. And I would say if you're intrigued and interested in learning more about how to be a part-time entrepreneur or ten percent entrepreneur as I call it, you can actually head out to, there's a new I just created an audio course at Himalaya. So go to Himalaya dot com slash part-time. Use the code part-time, and you get, I believe, two weeks for free. And, of course, I'm super proud of it. So that was something that I always wanted to experiment with, and we just did it.

So that's number one. Number two is if you wanna reach me or find me, you can go to Patrick McGinnis dot com. I'm on Instagram with Patrick J. Mcginnis. Go to fomo sapiens dot com, which is the podcast, website, and check out the show there. Tons of great interviews with, you know, everybody from Andrew Yang to Blake Mycoskie, the founder of Tom's, to Stacy who founded Stacy's Pita Chips, to many others. So check it out, and, and, yeah, we'll be in touch.

16:09 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, I truly appreciate that, Patrick. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well. I love, you know, that experimentation piece and how you remind us of how important it is. There are so many times we think that we have to wait for it, but really, the actions that we take and the experiments that we have are really what are gonna ultimately lead us to where we wanna be. So thank you so much for embodying that and reminding us of that, of course, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:30 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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