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>> Kirsten Wiley: Good afternoon. My name is Kirsten Wiley, and I'm here today to
introduce and welcome Gina Rudan, who is visiting us as part of the Microsoft Research
Visiting Speakers Series. Gina is here today to discuss her book "Practical Genius: The
real smarts you need to get your talents and passions working for you." What if you
could tap into a practical genius that will unleash your full potential and bring fulfillment
to both work and life? Find a sweet spot between your skills and your creative passions
to change the game and become extraordinary.
Gina has been a guest lecturer, trainer and strategist for organizations including Fannie
Mae, the Sterns School of Business at NYU, and for The Endeavor Organization.
She was awarded the 2009 March of Dimes Women Living to the Fullest Award, and
was recently selected as one of Poder Magazine’s top “20 Under 40” Hispanics in the
U.S.
Please join me in welcoming Gina to Microsoft.
[applause]
>> Gina Rudan: Hello. Does anyone want to move closer? I promise I won't bite. Are
we good? Everyone's comfy in their corners? Okay. So this will be a nontraditional
experience. You'll hear a New York accent. So let's get that out of the way. I am from
New York.
I live in Miami. And I'm humbled and grateful to be here. This is a huge honor. So
thank you for having me. My first book debuted two weeks ago. So I'm riding on
excitement. This is my West Coast tour.
And in 30 minutes I'm going to inspire you to consider some alternatives to how you're
working and living and playing and creating. So enjoy the journey, and then we will have
a discussion with a Q&A. So are you ready?
Okay. Before we begin, I want you to turn to the person next to you and say:
Regardless of what my ego says, I see the genius in you. [laughter]. Regardless of
what my ego says, I see the genius in you. Now, it's interesting doing that at Microsoft,
because you all are card-carrying geniuses.
So I'm going to redefine genius a bit, but I like to start with that so that everyone gets in
the framework that I'm arguing that genius is a choice and we all possess it.
So entertain that concept for the next 30 minutes. Before we begin, because this is
R&D, I thought let me do some research. I write about the history of genius. So I'm just
going to speed through where this beautiful word begins.
Originally the Latin root word for genius was genie, to born with spirit. And I thought that
was a wonderful definition. And the Greeks were on to something believing that each
one of us innately is born with great spirit. I couldn't agree more. But then they these
guys came along and they decided to redefine genius. Joseph Addison was a writer,
and he wrote the first paper on geniuses in 1711. And he argued there were two kinds
of geniuses in the world.
The first, those that were born with an extraordinary ability. And he argued that
Shakespeare was an example of true genius. Of course, a writer, I recognize his bias
there.
But he really did also argue that people could learn to become genius. And he used
Aristotle as an example of someone that worked hard to become what he defined as
genius.
Now, Sir Francis Galton, who was also Darwin's half cousin, he really did us in, in that he
argued, and the definition has pretty much remained the same, that anyone born with an
extraordinary ability, particularly in the areas of IQ, had a genetic advantage. And he's
the one who coined the phrase "nature versus nurture," and he argued that it's all about
nature.
And his obsession was to improve the breed of man. He also was the creator of racial
hygiene, which is a whole other talk. Sir Francis Galton, in my mind, had some issues.
But, again, we're not going to go there.
But he really -- he also invented the fingerprint. He was obsessed with
compartmentalizing and grouping people based on genetic makeup.
Fast forward, and I've decided I'm redefining genius. People ask me: Gina, you can't
just go around and redefine genius. And as a writer my answer is: Of course, I can. But
I'll give you the back story, the personal story, the real story of why I've set out to
redefine genius.
For 15 years I was a corporate global marketer. Huge, wonderful success. I worked at
Avon. I launched Avon in Español while I was there. Then I went on to be a senior
director with PR Newswire and ran their global marketing division for ten years. And four
years ago I went to have a pretty routine corrective eye surgery and got a rare infection
and I lost my sight.
And it always takes something radical like that, a life change, to get you to reflect on the
life you really want and the work that you really want to be immersed in.
And for four days I was blind. Slept in a guest room, away from my son, my husband
and my cat. And during that temporary blindness, all I could do was listen to TED talks.
How many of you are TED fans? Of course, every single hand. Love it.
So similar to yourself, whenever I get a free moment, I would listen to tedtalk.com.
When I lost my sight that's all I could do. And I realized if I got my sight back I would quit
my job. I had listened to, I don't know if you've ever watched Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's talks.
Her talk is called Stroke of Genius. Highly recommend it. It was a life-changing talk for
me.
After listening to her talk, in particular, I knew if I got my sight back that I would quit my
job and dedicate my time, my passion, my energy to my writing. I was a literature major,
but everyone advised me: Gina, don't become a writer, you'll be broke.
Gina, the only way to get out of the Hood is to put the writing aside and get a corporate
job. My mother worked in a mailroom for 37 years on the upper west side of Manhattan.
The mailroom, though, was in the basement of Columbia University. So I grew up on
that campus. And I knew that I wanted to be on many campuses.
So fast-forward, I'm not going to digress, I got my eyesight back, thanks to a wonderful
surgeon. And four years ago on the first day of the recession, I quit my job, with no
writing experience, had never even published an article and set out to do research,
which for me consisted of over 100 interviews, one-on-one interviews, across five
industries, focus groups and surveys on redefining genius. So one so that more people
can honor their passion and not compromise a passion for a skill, which I had did as a
corporate executive.
And to encourage people, especially young people, to realize that we all do possess
genius and everyone has an idea worth sharing and why can't I inspire more people to
step up on to that TED stage.
In 2010 I spoke at Ted Global. Imagine that, here's someone, no experience, quits her
job, sets out to do some research, writes a book -- and I'm going to go through my
definition of genius -- and ends up speaking at the conference that inspired her to risk it
all.
So that's the credibility, guys. Because a lot of people will ask: What gives you the right
to redefine? That's what gave me the audacity to redefine this beautiful word.
Here's my definition. It's simple. I've redefined genius in a way. My definition is
practical genius and it's based on six simple ingredients. And to make it really easy for
folks to understand, I've divided the six ingredients into two buckets. The first bucket are
the soft personal assets. This is who you are on the weekends.
These are values, creative abilities and passions. Second set are your hard professional
assets. This is what got you here to Microsoft, your strengths, your skills, your area of
expertise.
I believe we've all been conditioned since probably the third grade to focus on the hard
assets. But maybe we've compromised the soft assets. How many of you have feel that
you have tilted too far towards the hard assets? Throughout your life? More than half.
How many of you feel that maybe you've tilted to far towards yourself. Not at Microsoft.
Some organizations they're like play heavy the advertising agencies, well, Gina, I don't
know about this I think I've tilted too far to the soft, so that's interesting.
I believe that genius resides at the intersection between the hard and the soft. And that,
I mean, is simple -- I've been up here what five minutes. That is the simple hypothesis
that I'm offering today is that we all do innately possess genius. A lot of us don't know
where to find it.
I provocatively write about this as your other G spot. And that was the title of my TED
talk. But this G being for genius. I can't hide who I am. I'm provocative, so I speak the
language that I'm comfortable with. Even at Microsoft.
And that's part of my expression of genius. Whatever your expression is, I'm
encouraging you to consider what life and work looks like, not tilted. More than half of
you raised your hands and said I've tilted too far toward the hard assets. So I'm going to
encourage you in the next 20 minutes together to really consider what life and work
would look like if you did not compromise the values, your play, your passions or
creative outlets.
So how can I prove that this hypothesis is true? Last week Fast Company -- did you
guys see this article? So just last week Fast Company put out this great piece on just
highlighting folks that have dropped out of high school or college and have done really
well and have shared genius.
For me, a lot of these examples are practical genius, because IQ does matter. I'm not
knocking that. But I think emotional intelligence matters as well.
And that's what the soft assets do if you find the time to cultivate them, is that you're able
to grow and harness and build upon your emotional intelligence. All of you have
phenomenal IQs, I'm sure of it.
How is your EQ doing? How is your EQ doing? So neuroplasticity in preparing for my
book tour, I had dinner with the principal of my son's school who is doing research on
neuroplasticity. How many of you know about neuroplasticity? There's a lot in
education; there's tons of research available, but I encourage you to get a taste of this
simple premise that the brain is able to grow and create new neuro pathways through
learning.
So neuroplasticity argues: This is how children learn. So traditional science has argued
that the brain doesn't change over time. And once you become an adult, that's it, that's
what you've got; can't really change it.
But, thank God, I consider this to be yummy science. Neuroplasticity has proven that
the brain can change. But two things impact the change: Environment and experience.
So this is another piece of research to just encourage you to prioritize the experiences
you have outside of work or in between work.
And to consider diverse environments, because it really does help create additional
pathways. So that's a proof point. In general, when people say: Gina, what is the
purpose; why did you set out to write this? I think it's because many of us have allowed
life to de-genius us. Bucky Fuller was an architect, an amazing futurist and engineer.
And he said don't let life de-genius you. How many of you work 80 hour weeks? 70?
We're in denial.
We're hiding it. I know. I know. Life as an entrepreneur, very similar. You really don't
shut off. So what de-genius us? Routine, we need to watch the routine and change it
up as much as we can. Information stress.
I interviewed Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, and I said what is your biggest fear?
And he said: Information overload. And he even believes that some of us will get
terribly ill because we do not manage the amount of information we consume.
Whether you agree or disagree, I really encourage you to watch how much information
you consume and recommend shutting down. Even if it's just an hour before you
transition from work to play. So after speaking to Chris Anderson, and also David
Rowan, who is the publisher of Wired Magazine in the UK, he also wrote significantly
about information stress. So starting to highlight it.
Life without passion, play or creativity. How many of you are going to play this
weekend? Scheduled play. Great. Okay. We are in Seattle. I like it. This area, I saw
the soccer field yesterday and I said: Okay, maybe they are playing here. Some cities I
go to, there's no play.
Can some of you just shout out what your play source is? How are you defining play?
>>: Sports.
>>: Dancing.
>>: XBox.
>>: XBox, excellent. Yoga.
>>: Karaoke.
>>: Poker.
>>: Poker. I'm impressed. Children.
Spontaneous play: That's hard. Silence.
So Dr. Brown, who is a play expert, that's another good TED talk, argues that
spontaneous play similar to how animals engage in play really is healthier than
scheduled play.
And I really have to push back on that because I'm like if I don't schedule the play it
doesn't happy. Yesterday, I scheduled play throughout Seattle and enjoyed the
sculpture garden and went to Pike Place Market and loved that and I had to schedule my
day of play. I'm traveling with my husband and my 5-year-old but thank God I scheduled
it because I got to play and it was wonderful.
So scheduled play is good, but if you can find some spontaneous play, do it. Checking
half of yourself at the door. I think many of us live a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde approach to life.
And as soon as we get on this campus we may be checking half our identity at the door.
It could be we're hiding the playful side, the creative side. It could be hiding parts of our
ethnic identities. And I'm saying let's stop that identity crisis and begin to bring the whole
self. As Daniel Pink would say: Leveraging the whole mind, the left and the right, from a
place of identity is so key.
Sleep, I'm not going to talk to you about sleep, but I hope you guys are getting some. So
with "Impractical Genius," the book, I just had five -- I go through the model in five areas,
which is how to identify the six ingredients that contribute to your own genius; how are
you expressing it? Who are you surrounding yourself with? How are you feeding your
genius, and how to market. Again, I want to focus just on soft assets. So this is a
picture of the Orpheus Symphony. The Orpheus Orchestra is based in New York. I saw
them three weeks ago. They are the only conductor-less orchestra in the United States
and they're phenomenal. I highly recommend seeing them. They do tour.
But in spending time with them, I realized that one of the great things about hanging out
with musicians is they're so creative; they improvise their experiences. They improvise
with their work. But they also problem solve, and they synthesize a great deal. So one
of my recommendations in getting you to agree, so this would be your first homework, is
to take on a creative outlet. How many of you have a creative outlet. So we talked
about play. But what about creativity. Could you share what your creative outlet is?
>>: Flowers. Floral design.
>> Gina Rudan: Wonderful. And gardening. And other creative outlets?
>>: Writing.
>> Gina Rudan: Excellent. How many writers? Usually in R&D there's a lot of writers.
Yeah. Are we writing?
>>: Me? Oh, yeah.
>> Gina Rudan: I'm an executive coach and obviously a trainer, but for homework I'm
going to ask each of you to find a creative outlet. And if you look at me and say: Gina, I
really have no idea where to begin, you get permission to taste different creative outlets
that you may be curious about. So for me it was painting. And I took a painting class
and loved it. I sucked at it, but I loved being able to say that I tried it and I engaged in
my creative side. Writing for me, that's my greatest passion. So whatever it is I'm giving
you a pass to taste different creative expressions so you that can cultivate. We're all
sold here on why creativity matters today in business. I don't need to argue that.
So Barbara Debreeze, I wanted to share a case study around practical genius to give
you an example of what practical genius looks like. This is a funny picture of Barbara.
She's actually a fashion designer who is also a big advocate against plastic.
And Barbara celebrated my 40th birth day with me this August, and we went out, and
she's a major plastic activist in Miami. She ordered a stew. And it was supposed to
come served basically in parchment, but they served it in plastic. I took this photo,
thought about the paradox. Go out to eat with Barbara, and she's like the plastic queen
and here she is. Barbara's also a good friend of Margo. Here she's being served in
plastic. But I'm going to use here as a case study because how she began her
obsession with plastic is she would vacation every year in the Bahamas. And she
started cleaning up the beaches and picking up plastic. As she started to pick up plastic,
which was again an expression of her values, soft asset is wanting to clean up beaches.
She one day decided to bring the plastic into her studio. She's a clothing designer, but
created this. And she created this, what I'm wearing.
So she took her hard assets as a designer and a business woman and launched her
own company. It's called Plastic is Forever. And Barbara for me is a great example of
practical genius, because she's honoring her values as an environmentalist. She's
reducing the plastic imprint on many beaches. And she's creating something
commercial and beautiful out of it. So I call her my great example of how to take, how to
move from trash to treasure. So that's Barbara.
This is how Barbara expresses her genius. How do you express your genius? This is a
picture of me speaking at Oxford University. And I share this story because I was an
audience speaker. How many of you have been to TED? Homework, guys, everyone
should go to TED at least by 2013, if it's sold out this year.
But when you apply to attend TED and you're accepted, maybe three weeks later they
send out an e-mail to all 750 attendees and ask: We're going to accept someone from
the audience to share a paper or an idea worth spreading. And all of my friends thought,
well, we're not going to submit; we'll never get picked, this is Ted.
And I said: You know what, I'm going to submit an article. And I submitted, and I was
selected. And I thought: I cannot believe that I'm speaking at Oxford, okay, sharing the
redefinition of practical genius. And it was a phenomenal experience.
They gave me just three minutes. And I spoke after three neuroscientists. Yes. Okay.
Puerto Rican from New York City, first woman in her family to go to college, passion for
writing, ends up speaking after three neuroscientists. Talk about scary. This is a little
intimidating but that was really scary.
The point I want to make is all of you, each one of you should be sharing what your
genius is and speaking on stages or at least on panels. How many share your research
internally are able to present it, take it externally to other departments?
About 25 percent. Can I encourage everyone to please, even if it's just writing or a white
paper, but once a quarter I recommend that everyone should be finding a platform to
share and express their own genius. If I can do it, everyone here in R&D can do it.
Third recommendation is surround yourself with genius. So when I quit my job,
everyone thought I had a nervous breakdown. Everyone thought that blindness had like
messed me up.
My husband thought I lost my mind. My parents definitely thought I went crazy. And I
had to prove to them that this is going to work. And what I did is I made a list of 25
people I wanted in my life. The first one was Daniel Pink. Do you know Daniel Pink?
He's a great author. Wrote a book, most recent book is called "Drive," but "A Whole
New Mind" was a book that I read right after I got my sight back. It changed my life.
I called him and I said can I meet with you and interview you, I'm quitting my job because
of your book. He said, oh, some crazy Latin woman is on the other line but I'm
concerned. So he invited me out to DC. I flew out to DC. I have a great relationship
with Daniel. He mentored me through my writing and helped me with my manuscript.
But you have to take risk, figure out who do you want, if I ask who is on your top 25 list,
who would that be.
And I went after each one of them and I basically set out to surround myself with
interesting minds, designers, scientists, writers, thought leaders, executives, CFOs, a
couple of graffiti artists that I looked up to when I was a kid.
I diversified that list. And I went after them. I encourage other people that are cull
innovating and expressing their genius in a traditional nontraditional way to think about
who you're walking with.
So types of relationships. I think everyone needs a yoda. Yoda is basically our mentors
and sponsors, especially within this environment, I hope every one of you has someone
that has your back. Again, this is someone who will give you that candid feedback on
your projects. A yoda is critical. Ambassadors are connectors, people that are
constantly introducing you to other people and are your cheerleaders. Ambassadors
matter. My favorite group are fat brains.
So I define fat brains as digital natives. These are young people under the ages of 30
who also should be mentoring you. Some people call it reverse mentorship. I have a
board of advisors from my small business. They're all between the ages of 18 and 30.
How many of you are under 30 in here? So we have about 10 percent fat brains right
here available. Those of us over 30, find a fat brain to mentor you. I'm sure you
surround yourself with fat brains in your personal life, but at work I think fat brains
matter.
This is an important fat brain in my life. His name is Barrington Irvin. I advise him. He
advises me. He's the youngest pilot to fly around the world, and he did this when he was
23. He grew up in Liberty City in Miami. And he has a great story, because he had no
resources and he set out to do this. He had met a pilot who mentored him.
He got his pilot license and decided, he's 26 now, but when he was 23 to fly around the
world. Example of practical genius, because he accomplished that. He has a Guinness
Book of World record. But when he came back, he realized the greatest result of that
flight was inspiring other young people to consider STEM and to consider aviation.
So what Barrington is doing today is he's an Andrew Flight Simulator, a Microsoft
product. He's basically, he started a program called Aviation, Experience Aviation, and
he teaches young people through, especially in financially deprived communities,
through flight simulation, how to embrace aviation. He's building a plane right now that's
equipped to fly around the world again. And he's partnered with NASA so that he can
reach about 1200 schools while he's flying.
And again his mission is STEM. And I use him as another example of marrying and
living at that intersection between what he's good at and what he loves. And, of course,
all the airlines, everyone has sought him out. I even heard rap artists were offering him
millions to be their private -- they wanted Barrington to be their private pilot, but he
turned down all of those opportunities for his commitment to teaching young people and
pushing STEM forward in the U.S.
Practical genius. We're almost there. Sustain your genius. This chapter of my book,
the premise is that you have to fuel the body. You have to fuel the mind. How many of
you are taking time to eat? Lunch breaks? This is not rocket science. You guys know
this.
The body, the mind, you need to fuel it. One new recommendation I have for all of you,
though, is to fuel your genius before you fuel anything else. So I especially when I work
with executives, I encourage people to create a morning ritual. How are you starting
your day off? Are you just grabbing a coffee and maybe a half toasted bagel and hitting
your laptop? Start off in a healthy way. Create a morning ritual and feed yourself first.
And consider what content you're consuming and reading in the morning.
Last recommendation around fueling is I took this at the W Hotel. I thought this was so
funny because I talked about shutting down. Stress management is a choice; design it
your way. This is an executive who allowed me to take his photo. He said this is my
way of dealing with stress. He loves his Kindle. He's in a pool. I say it's okay.
Design it your way. This is Luca. This is my 5-year-old in Coney Island, three weeks
ago. Again, I'm just going to stress the power of play.
How many of you have young children? Yes. Don't they remind you of the importance
of play? Take the time. Get on the floor. Travel with the Legos. Yes, they drive you
crazy sometimes. My son almost got lost at the market yesterday playing
hide-and-go-seek with mommy. But it's a reminder that play is a powerful indicator for
genius.
And this is a closing visual around marketing paradox. So, again, my premise is that
dwelling in the intersection between your mind and your heart is a great place to live.
And marketing that is a great starting point. I think we all possess paradox, and instead
of trying to be something we're not and to live a kind of conditioned safe routine life of
conformity, I'm saying out those differences within you.
This is an architect in Miami who plays guitar. He loves to skateboard. He used to tag
up when he was in high school. And he shared that with me. But he's an amazing,
amazing mind. And also a mathematician and loves numbers. And he's a great
example of leveraging both sides. I'm encouraging all of you to leverage and to share
and to market both sides of who you are, the mom alongside the researcher, the
engineer alongside the chess master, and father alongside the business leader. Bring it
closer together. And service. I'm the founder of TEDX MIA. This is my thank you to
TED for helping me through my life change and I put on this even two months ago. How
many have been to a TEDX event? Do you know what TEDX is?
>>: In Seattle like two weeks ago.
>> Gina Rudan: That's wonderful. Please support them. So TEDX event, there's 2,000
TEDXs around the world, and it's a volunteer effort where people basically take the TED
brand and put on talks worth sharing in local communities. If you're ever traveling on
business or vacation, there's a great map where you can end up catching a TEDX event
in the city you may be visiting.
So in summing up, don't let life de-genius you. IQ matters, so please pay attention to
emotional intelligence. Find where your heart and mind intersect well. I promise you, it's
an interesting space when you dwell there. Consider identifying someone half your age
to mentor you, find a fat brain, fat brains that are here.
Mentor a yoda. Fuel your genius before you dare fuel anyone else's. Leverage that
paradox of who we are. And live out legacy. So my big message is an inspiring one. I
don't have hard evidence on why legacy matters. But I just feel that it does today more
than ever.
I had my life change. I'm asking all of you to consider Practical Genius as a lifestyle
option so that you don't have to wait for something horrible to happen to make a shift in
how you live and work and play and create and innovate.
So that is my talk. I hope everyone stays in touch. We'll have a Q&A now. This was a
huge honor, and I'd love to continue the conversation with all of you. It's not every day
that a girl like me gets to speak to an R&D team at Microsoft. So thank you for this
opportunity.
[applause]
And I stayed to 30 minutes. Questions? Comments? Conversation? Yeah.
>>: Thanks for the talk. It's really inspiring in a lot of ways. How does the practical
aspects of living life, say, like being able to confidently explain yourself, fit into your
passions. I have hobbies, not quite a profession, it's that initial finding out that sweet
spot in order to do that, or do you have to find the pursuit and see where that goes?
>> Gina Rudan: I have two recommendations, one is curating the opportunities for
experimentation. So in interviewing a lot of young people, I always encourage them to
bring the passions to the work or bring the work to the passions. So in some cases
that's possible. In others, it's not. I bet you here there are ways for you to bring those
hobbies, I hate the word "hobbies" because it seems like hobbies are not important
when I really think they are. So I would encourage conversations around them. I would
encourage you to figure out ways to bring it into the workplace.
I coached a CFO who also played in a band on the weekends and didn't let anyone
know at his French company that he was in a band on the weekends until he decided to
bring -- it was a tech company, to bring some of the technology and marry it in his music
and then use his stage presence ability into the boardroom. And he ended up outing
that he was in a band on the weekends. People embraced it. And his team came to see
him perform. He ended up writing and delivering talks on how he was able to use his
ability as a performer and bring it into the boardroom. So there's ways to bring the soft
side into the professional space, but you have to experiment to see where it works and
where it doesn't work.
But to test and play and take risk. And it starts with conversation first. Questions,
comments?
>>: So, Gina, it seems like such a scary thing to do to make such a change. Like to quit
your job and, bang, and you're on a whole new path; you have no idea whether you're
going to succeed or not.
With hindsight, it's a great story and everything. But was there a time when you thought,
wow, this might not work or are you ->> Gina Rudan: Oh, yeah. Every month. Every month. So I did set myself up for
success in that I had business advisors. I did set myself for success in that I had
coaches to help me with the fear who taught me that fear a lot of times is false evidence
acting real. It's not easy going from safe corporate cocoon into entrepreneurship but if
you surround yourself with the right people and are really relentless, you can sustain
success, I believe, with the right relationships, incredible amount of bravery and risk, and
just being diligent, being really, really diligent.
How many of you -- I don't know what the policies are here. Some companies, some
people are not allowed to start side ventures. At Microsoft, are you able to explore side
ventures or no? Or there's not even the bandwidth or the time to do that? Right, you're
like side ventures, are you crazy?
So I encourage people to scratch entrepreneurially within their projects and within their
ventures and to give yourself diversified experiences internally. You don't have to -- I
met my CEO afterwards. And I write about this. And he said to me: Why didn't you tell
me that you wanted to write; you could have continued to work on your manuscript and
stayed here; you didn't need to leave. And he was absolutely right. So a lot of times you
can reinvent yourself in the context of the organization. You can explore other
opportunities in the context of this campus.
A lot of it is taking risk, trusting yourself, aligning yourself with the right people, and
making a good strategic decision on what is the best place for you to exercise your
genius. It's obvious that this was it for me.
>>: I liked how you talked about how you connected with Daniel Pink, how you listed 25
people you wanted to connect with. So tactically was it a lot of picking up the phone,
saying this is who I am and come mentor me?
>> Gina Rudan: It was scary. I'll admit -- I'll talk about Kevin Carroll. How many know
Kevin Carroll? He's in Portland. You should have him. Kevin Carroll, similar to Dan
Pink, first began with an e-mail. I was too scared to pick up the phone. First, it was an
e-mail and then it was a phone call. Some people don't have that fear and just are able
to reach out. But, absolutely, everyone I reached out to, and the list goes on, Kevin
Carroll wrote a book called "Rules of the Red Rubber Ball" and he's the catalyst for play.
He was an executive at Nike for many years. Brilliant. Highly recommend his book. He
lives in Portland. I reached out to him in the same way. You just have to come from
what I call a nontransactional place. I wasn't asking. I didn't need anything from them. I
wasn't asking them to hire me. I was only asking for an interview. So, one, you will have
absolute success because you have this brand also alongside you. If you enter these
relationships with these amazing thinkers from a nontransactional place, people that go
in with a this is what I need from you, this is what you can get from me," that's a limited
relationship. So as I went through the 25, I really approached it in a nontransactional
way. And I also got to -- I wanted to spend time with Oprah Winfrey's life coach. Her
name is Martha Beck. I don't know if you guys know Martha Beck. She writes a column
that I love. And she was speaking at a conference. And I snuck back stage with my Flip
camera and said: Can I interview you, I'm writing, working on a manuscript on genius,
and I really love the work that you've put out. I interviewed her. She gave me a
5-minute interview. And at the end she grabbed my arm and said why don't you come
with me to Arizona?
And I said: Oh, shit. Oh my God, we're taping. Sorry guys watching. My language. I
went to Arizona, basically, and spent four days with Oprah Winfrey's life coach. And she
was curating a genius weekend for her 12 friends and it was phenomenal. And from
there I just continued with this relentless determination, and what happens is all you
need is one win. My win was Daniel Pink. After that every one was cake.
The trick, though, is to sustain the relationships. And I do. So I send them articles. I
send them cards. Dr. Christian Northrop. Chris Anderson who I love. I can go down the
list. But you really just identify who you want, approach them from the heart, not the
mind, and in a nontransactional way, commit to sustaining the relationship, and it's a
simple model that works.
And you just have to take that first step.
>>: So knowing what you know now about the area of success you've found in this
niche, would you, looking back, if you could go back, would you have done that a lot
sooner?
>> Gina Rudan: Absolutely. Why did I wait to go blind to write? In college, I got a
scholarship and studied at Regents College in London. And I loved literature. And I
could have started this path so much earlier, but I just didn't. I just didn't. And you're
absolutely right. You have to listen to that intellectual curiosity. You guys know this as
researchers but do you do it in your own life? Do you do it in your own life? Sometimes
it's great to kind of turn the lens on thy self so that you don't let time pass. Absolutely I
should have did this much sooner.
>>: Obviously you had a lot of your own anxieties about taking the big step and divorcing
yourself from your past to go on a different one, how did you handle your spouse's
reaction to that? Because I imagine, they too, were full of anxiety and fear and all that
so how do you bring a spouse along?
>> Gina Rudan: My husband is from Croatia. So just to give you context. We have a
nontraditional relationship to begin with.
It was really difficult in the beginning. And I'm not joking when I tell you that he thought I
was having some type of emotional breakdown and that this would go away. That my
curiosity and desire to write would go away. He realized it wasn't going to go away
because I used to wake up prior to that I traveled all over the world. I would write at
night. I would write in every city I was in.
So to prove my point, two weeks after I resigned from PR Newswire I printed 600 pages
of writing, and it wasn't journalling. I had basically written summaries of every trip. Just
for my own pleasure of basically summarizing my experiences.
So when he saw the writing that had been going on our entire marriage without him
knowing, he realized: Oh my God, who are you? Why didn't you tell me about this?
And I've met so many other writers that are closeted writers and we just don't share the
writing because we think it's not good enough or not smart enough or how can I find
space for this. So you're absolutely right. The conversation was a candid one. And
today it's -- I mean right now he's at the visitors center with my 5-year-old. He ended up
quitting his job last year so that he could travel with me and support Practical Genius.
So we go from not understanding to resisting, to not only do I understand and get it, I
love the message, let's live and kind of curate our life in a nontraditional way and I'm
going to do this with you.
So it's great when you have a -- supportive spouses matter. They do. And, ladies,
at-home dads rock. Prerequisite for success. Any other questions? I can tell it's
research. You guys have such great questions. Are we good? That was a lot. So each
one of my modules is a two-hour training. So we just like speed coach through, but I
really appreciate it. I'm going to sign books. And we can continue the conversation. I
would love to continue the conversation. Anyone want to contribute to the model? Any
feedback? No? We're good? Thank you.
[applause]