The Art of Manliness - The No-BS Secrets of Success

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:12.040 Jim Vande Heide didn't have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told

00:00:16.420 him he wasn't cut out for college, and he went on to confirm her assessment, getting a 1.4 GPA

00:00:21.080 at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and spending more time drinking beer than planning

00:00:25.360 his career. Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found

00:00:30.420 two of the biggest modern media outlets, Politico and Axios. Jim shares how he started moving

00:00:35.740 up the rungs of success and building a better life for himself in his new book, Just the

00:00:39.880 Good Stuff, No BS Secrets to Success No Matter What Life Throws at You. Today on the show,

00:00:44.920 Jim shares the real-world lessons he's learned in his career. We discuss the importance of

00:00:48.920 matching passion to opportunity, making your own luck, surrounding yourself with the right

00:00:53.160 people, keeping the buckets of your happiness matrix filled, understanding the difference

00:00:57.260 between wartime and peacetime leadership, harnessing the energy of healthy revenge, and more.

00:01:02.080 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash goodstuff.

00:01:16.380 Jim Vande Heide, welcome to the show.

00:01:18.720 Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:01:20.280 So you are a journalist, and you're also the co-founder of Politico and also Axios. But you

00:01:26.400 got a new book out called Just the Good Stuff, and it's an advice book. An advice book about family,

00:01:32.000 career, and life in general. So why did a journalist and media operator decide to write a life advice

00:01:39.700 book?

00:01:40.960 Yeah, I never thought I would. But I've started and I've run two big media companies, so Politico

00:01:46.860 and Axios, as you've mentioned. And I guess what's unique is I was a journalist for most

00:01:51.800 of my life before becoming an entrepreneur. So when I became an entrepreneur and became

00:01:55.920 a CEO, I took very close notes, usually of all the things that I was screwing up or that

00:02:00.580 other people were screwing up around me, to learn how to do things better. And so I kept

00:02:05.320 these notes. I started writing a column. The feedback to it was very positive. And so I wrote

00:02:10.300 this book. Because if you met me when I was 20, smoking camels and drinking and getting crappy

00:02:16.200 grades, you never would have said, oh, that dude from Oshkosh is going to go start a couple

00:02:20.580 companies, interview presidents, write a book. And I think I have some obligation to sort of

00:02:26.200 give back, especially to people who might be thinking about career changes or thinking

00:02:29.820 about how do they make the next big move or how do they navigate a difficult situation.

00:02:34.140 So I hope people find it as a really handy user's guide to life.

00:02:37.040 No, and the way you wrote it, the format, it follows that Axios style. You get to the

00:02:41.360 point, it's nicely organized, it's easy to read. So I really like that as well. And as

00:02:46.720 you said, you've had a lot of professional success and personal success as well. But you

00:02:51.060 mentioned there, you started off life pretty mediocre and you kind of admit that. Well, you

00:02:55.320 admit that in the book. You're like, I was kind of a screw up. Yeah. So what were you like

00:02:58.800 as a high school or in college student?

00:03:01.120 I mean, I think I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. I was like a normal small town

00:03:05.420 Wisconsin kid. Like I drank, I misbehaved. I occasionally went to school. I got crappy

00:03:10.080 grades, you know, graduated the bottom third of my high school class, could barely get into

00:03:14.520 college, had to go to a two-year college to get into four-year college. Four years took

00:03:18.320 me 5.5 years. At one point, I was on academic probation with a Sterling 1.491 grade point average.

00:03:25.360 So it really wasn't until I found journalism and politics and really got excited about a potential

00:03:31.540 path that I really got my head out of my butt and started, you know, thinking about like how to go

00:03:36.480 get a career and how to go do stuff that I might be good at. And so, you know, it took me a little

00:03:41.520 while to get there, but I moved out to DC, became a journalist, turned out a lot of the things that

00:03:46.680 I did when I was misbehaving actually helped me as a journalist. I used to gamble a lot, play poker,

00:03:51.360 teaches you how to deal with people. I used to go to dive bars so I could deal with people from any

00:03:55.840 kind of walk of life. And, you know, I was curious. I love to ask questions, love to talk.

00:04:01.340 And those things worked awesome as a reporter. And in Washington, where it was kind of a lot of

00:04:06.420 elite kids from Harvard and other hotshot schools, I didn't know any better. So I just, you know,

00:04:11.900 kind of stirred up mischief, wrote stories, and ended up being pretty good at it.

00:04:16.320 So was that the thing that got you out of your passive mode when you were a kid,

00:04:20.360 just finding something you were passionate about?

00:04:21.960 A hundred percent. Like the minute I found something that like, oh, I'm a good writer,

00:04:26.280 I like politics, and I learned that I could get paid for it, I became obsessed with it.

00:04:31.100 And I think that's true for most of us. Like the moment you can match a passion with an opportunity,

00:04:37.260 you're going to be on fire naturally. The advice I always give young people now or even old people is

00:04:41.840 do something you would do for free. Like I love what I do. I love writing. I love leading.

00:04:47.180 I love starting companies. I love covering presidents. I love writing about AI.

00:04:50.700 I would do this for free if it weren't my job, but I get paid to do it. So when you can do that,

00:04:57.420 I think really magical things can happen. And it doesn't just have to be at work. It could be in

00:05:01.840 a relationship or personal hobbies that you have. But I think that's the good stuff of life.

00:05:07.600 How did you discover politics and journalism?

00:05:11.040 You know, it's funny. I didn't even really realize I was that into politics until I was like,

00:05:15.700 I would come home. I'd go out to a kegger and I would come home, you know, drunk at two in the

00:05:21.040 morning. And I would sit and watch C-SPAN hearings on the agriculture committee or on a health bill.

00:05:28.340 I was just fascinated by it. I was fascinated that I could watch this. I was fascinated about how

00:05:33.220 a bill became a law. I was fascinated about how people use power, how they communicate.

00:05:37.840 And so that got me hooked on politics. And then when I was trying to figure out what to do,

00:05:42.400 I figured out I was a pretty good writer. And I went to a newspaper and asked him,

00:05:45.760 hey, I know a lot about sports. Could I ever be a sports reporter? I was dumb enough to do that,

00:05:50.240 having not even taken a journalism class. And the guy I happened to go to was nice enough to be 0.97

00:05:55.100 humored by it. He said, I'll give you a writing test. And I did the writing test. And he's like,

00:05:58.800 that's actually pretty good. I'll give you a job. And so I covered high school sports and it was kind

00:06:03.380 of off to the races from there. And I'd say most of my career has been these kind of serendipitous

00:06:08.540 things that are either courage or luck or some mix of the two that have put me on a course to

00:06:16.060 do things I just didn't think I would otherwise be able to do.

00:06:19.120 Yeah. You got a chapter on luck. What role do you think luck plays in success in life in general?

00:06:24.640 I mean, a ton. I hate these people who are like, oh, look how damn smart I am. And look at me. 0.97

00:06:30.600 Yeah, you might be smart. I might be smart. But if other people aren't putting you in positions to

00:06:36.200 have opportunity, you might just be a smart person who had no success or no accomplishment. And so I

00:06:42.220 think being ready for those moments of luck is really, really important. I think now, especially,

00:06:47.200 I think a lot about my health, my diet, my mindset, my morals, my relationships to make sure that when

00:06:54.580 luck comes, I'm really ready to pounce on it. But yeah, I mean, again, going back to college.

00:07:00.080 So I take a class, I start to take a journalism class and I say, you know what? I don't know if I just

00:07:05.140 want to do sports. I literally picked up a piece of paper of every newspaper in the state of

00:07:09.580 Wisconsin. I'm like, I'll just call every one of them and ask if I can work this summer and I'll

00:07:14.460 work doing something else at night. I'll do it for free. So I called and Brilliant News was one of

00:07:18.940 the top ones on there. I happened to call a guy, Zane Zander, who answers the phone, who runs the

00:07:25.320 paper. And he's like, hey, could you come here today? And I'm like, what? So I drove, it's only an hour

00:07:29.860 away. So I drove up there and the guy's like, I explained to him, I've not really taken any

00:07:34.460 classes. I'm a good writer. I like journalism. He goes, I don't care. He goes, well, you run my

00:07:38.460 newspaper. And I'm like, dude, like I've never really done anything. Like you really shouldn't

00:07:42.780 hire me to run your newspaper. He's like, yeah, well, my editor just told me he's quitting if I

00:07:46.840 don't give him three months off to go to Finland. He goes, I'll teach you in one week how to run a

00:07:51.460 newspaper. And I said, okay. And he gave me a pay package. I'll never forget this. $300 a week,

00:07:57.500 which was a lot back then. And a place, he had a cabin on a lake filled with large mouth bass.

00:08:03.760 You can live here. And part of your pay comp is I'm going to let you have a car that I'll rent for

00:08:08.860 you. And I'll always have your refrigerator full of beer. I mean, it was like the best executive

00:08:14.020 package I could possibly have dreamed of. And I ran a newspaper for three months and learned more in

00:08:19.180 three months there than I probably learned in five years of college. So I mean, the trick there to

00:08:23.300 getting more lucky is just putting yourself out there, I guess. Yes, for sure.

00:08:27.500 I think you make your own luck, right? The more you put yourself out there, the more you put

00:08:33.040 yourself in uncomfortable situations, the more you ask questions, the more people you get to know,

00:08:38.580 you just vastly increase your odds of luck coming your way. If you just sit there passively eating

00:08:44.960 Doritos on your couch, you're probably not going to make a whole hell of a lot of luck for yourself.

00:08:49.640 So there's a combination of effort into really making luck this magical thing.

00:08:54.620 So you got a chapter on constructing greatness and use Tom Brady, famous quarterback, as an example of

00:09:02.140 someone who did that. What can we learn from Tom Brady about constructing greatness?

00:09:05.760 Yeah, I used him in that chapter because Sally Jenkins is a pretty well-known sports writer at

00:09:09.960 the Washington Post. And she had had this quote that really stuck with me about how Tom Brady

00:09:15.160 constructed greatness. And he basically was this very mediocre athlete coming out of Michigan.

00:09:19.980 There was nothing that said to anyone that he was going to be the greatest quarterback

00:09:24.600 of all time. And he willed it into existence. He constructed it and he did it through what he put

00:09:32.440 into his body, how he treated his body, how he treated his mind, his preparation, his work ethic,

00:09:38.580 and really stuck with me because I think we all control more than we think we can control.

00:09:45.620 I think so often people just feel like, oh, whatever, it's serendipity or man, life just

00:09:50.080 dealt me a bad hand. Well, no, that's not true. You actually control every moment, like what you're

00:09:55.440 going to eat, what you're going to drink. Are you going to work out? Are you going to have a healthy

00:09:59.180 relationship? Are you going to compliment somebody? Are you going to accept a compliment? Like all day is

00:10:03.680 just a series of things. Just keep track of it in one day. Just write down all the different things

00:10:08.040 that you could control and the decisions that you made. And you could realize, man, there's a lot

00:10:13.140 that we control. And when you start to realize that you look at life through that lens, you can

00:10:18.900 construct your own greatness. You can have, hey, this is where I want to go. These are the things that

00:10:24.180 I would need to do to be the type of person that I want to be or to achieve whatever goal I'm trying

00:10:29.500 to achieve. And it just takes on a life of its own once you do it. Like, yes, we're not going to be

00:10:35.040 Tom Brady. We're not going to be Michael Jordan, but we can probably be a hell of a lot more than

00:10:39.260 we are right now if you adapt that mindset. How did you start doing that in your own life?

00:10:45.120 You know, it was really an evolution. You know, when I was young in my 20s, like I just enjoyed being a

00:10:50.840 reporter even to my young 30s. Then I had this idea, you know, to start Politico and I became an

00:10:58.280 entrepreneur. And then I realized, oh my God, I might be, I'm actually a pretty good leader. I

00:11:02.540 never thought of myself as a leader, but I've got pretty good morals, values, and I'm confident

00:11:07.100 enough to make decisions. And so I taught myself how to be a CEO. And I just learned that with each

00:11:13.520 of these things that I never thought I could do, once I did them, it opened my mind to the

00:11:18.140 possibility, well, wait a second, like there's probably other aspects of my life that I could change.

00:11:22.620 Why can't I be a runner? I didn't run in years. So I ran a quarter mile. Then I started running

00:11:26.900 half marathons. Or why can't I go from, you know, being unhealthy and eating pizza and cheeseburgers

00:11:32.340 all day to somebody who's really thinking about what do I put into my body and how does it make

00:11:36.660 me feel? And how is it going to affect my ability to perform long-term? And so I became, I'd say,

00:11:42.020 almost addicted to that now, this idea that there's things that I can do to keep making myself

00:11:48.140 better at the things that I care about. I want to be a really good fly fisherman. I'm getting

00:11:52.820 pretty good. I want to be a golfer. I suck. But at one point, hopefully I'll be decent at golf. I'd

00:11:58.820 love to conquer different sort of workout things. I'm really into core power now. I'm not naturally

00:12:03.500 flexible. So it took me a long time to get flexible, but now I'm more flexible. So I just,

00:12:07.740 I, your mind, it almost becomes a drug, but like a healthy drug. 0.97

00:12:12.940 So you got several chapters in the book about avoiding jerks, a-holes in life and in business. 0.99

00:12:19.320 Why so many chapters on that topic? Probably because we meet too many jerks and a-holes, 1.00

00:12:24.860 right? Because I, I just, I hate it. You know, I, I've had so many interesting professional 1.00

00:12:30.160 experiences where like the job was great, but then you're working next to a person who just

00:12:34.160 sucks the life out of you. Who's either bitching and moaning all the time or gossiping or being 0.99

00:12:39.440 competitive, like in a super unhealthy way. And I just realized, you know what, just like I can

00:12:45.160 control what I eat or I could control whether I work out or I could control my job. I control who

00:12:49.860 I'm around. Like I can decide that if someone's a jerk, I don't have to have them in my life. 0.99

00:12:55.340 I could either freeze them out, not pay attention to them or, or get away from them, whether it's 0.99

00:12:59.920 in a personal relationship or in a professional relationship. And so by the time we started Axios,

00:13:04.860 which was seven years ago, and now we have about 550 people, the first thing we put on a piece of

00:13:09.520 paper is we're never again going to work with people we don't like. That doesn't mean we're not

00:13:13.580 going to work with super high achieving, ambitious people, which we do, but they're going to be good

00:13:17.760 people. And if they're not good people, no matter how talented they are, we're going to fire them

00:13:21.500 because we don't want to be around bad people. And guess what? We're 550 people and I don't have

00:13:26.440 any bad people around me. So once you've proved to yourself that you can do that and you tell

00:13:30.400 others to do the same, you can have like a pretty magical work experience. And if you think about it

00:13:36.320 for your listeners who are in a place where they're dealing with a jerk or they're in a business or 0.96

00:13:41.020 a company, the culture that they don't like, they don't feel it's on the level, just think about 0.96

00:13:45.660 all that negative energy. Think about how many hours of the day you spend either complaining

00:13:51.900 about it or thinking about it or trying to do something about it. It's all wasted energy. Like

00:13:58.700 I want to design my life in a way where 90, 95, 98% of my time I'm doing things I'm good at with

00:14:05.600 people that I like, that's going to make a difference. And when you take on that mindset that that is

00:14:10.460 something that is attainable, it's not attainable every day, it's attainable a lot more often than

00:14:15.040 people think. Did you have any moments in your career where you kept working with somebody,

00:14:20.700 you kept a hire that was super, you know, they were a jerk. They were just a complete jerk, 1.00

00:14:25.320 but they were extremely competent at what they did. But that ended up biting you in the butt. 1.00

00:14:31.360 Yeah. That was my weakness when I started Politico. I was enamored with people who were brilliant 0.99

00:14:36.680 and I overlooked the fact that they were bad people, that they were cancerous, that they were

00:14:41.640 either, they're mean, they're narcissistic, whatever it was. And I had one person in particular who I put 0.90

00:14:47.680 into a position of power and a brilliant person, but just not a good leader, not a good effect on

00:14:55.860 other people's human psyche. And you know what happens is people start to hold me accountable for

00:15:01.840 that. They're like, Jim, you're the leader. You're supposed to protect us. Like, why would you allow

00:15:06.120 someone like that to bedevil me? That's just not right. And they're right. I was wrong. I made a

00:15:12.360 mistake and I had done that several times. And I decided after seeing that, you know, that I don't

00:15:18.400 ever want to do it again, that I'm not going to make the deal with the devil. I'm not going to take

00:15:22.260 like extreme talent that comes with a baggage of bad values. And I jettisoned it. I stopped doing it.

00:15:30.840 But yeah, for a long time, I made that mistake. And I'd say almost everything. I think I'm a

00:15:35.200 pretty good leader now. I mean, it sounds a little cocky, but I think I am. But it's only

00:15:39.160 because I was so bad at it at the beginning because I'd never been a leader. I didn't know

00:15:43.880 how to hire people. I didn't know how to create a culture. I didn't know how to get rid of jerks. 0.83

00:15:48.580 I didn't know how to figure out a diverse set of people who complement the skill set I have. 0.99

00:15:53.680 I just knew once I knew I could outwork anybody. That's basically what I knew I could work

00:15:57.260 as hard or harder than anyone. No one was going to outwork me. Well, that's not

00:16:00.820 really a great leadership style. How do you hire to filter out 1.00

00:16:05.440 the jerks? Do you have any criteria or heuristics you use? 0.99

00:16:09.480 For sure. We've gotten quite good at it. And part of it is like a screening process of

00:16:13.980 one, really trying to talk to people who aren't on the list of people that they tell you to talk

00:16:20.320 to for character witness. Try to find people who really work with them. And were they a good

00:16:24.420 colleague? Do people like them? Do they light up when you say that person's name?

00:16:28.880 When you're interviewing the person, some red flags are if they say anything bad about somebody

00:16:34.320 else, that's like a disqualifier. Like you just don't want people who talk crap about their current 0.95

00:16:40.960 or previous employers. And then the other red flag is people who say, I, I, I, who are just seem to 0.92

00:16:46.880 be very self-focused, taking credit for things that you probably know were a group effort. That's

00:16:52.900 another big one. And so, you know, and then being very clear with people, I say all the time,

00:16:57.840 like, listen, you might be the most talented person, but if you're a bad person, I'm telling

00:17:01.480 you, we'll fire you. And you've got to do a gut check before you come here. Like if you've had

00:17:05.920 problems in the past being narcissistic or being self-focused or not being able to put the cause

00:17:10.920 above your own selfish ambitions, like we will reject you. And so you do those things. And, you know,

00:17:16.900 some people smuggle themselves across the border on this one, but most don't.

00:17:20.720 Yeah. And when you do find one, I imagine you just fire quickly.

00:17:23.220 Yeah. Yeah. The minute, you know, you got a problem, you got to get rid of it. And again,

00:17:26.960 it's hard. It's a human being. We're not cold and it's never easy to fire somebody, but

00:17:32.240 I don't really find it that hard firing people anymore. I mean, especially if I'm telling people

00:17:37.440 along the way, here are the things that you're doing that you got to change or you can't work

00:17:42.340 here. Like the problem with firing is when you're not being direct with people, you're not giving

00:17:47.160 them blunt feedback. You're not giving them an opportunity to change.

00:17:50.720 There should never, by the time you fire someone, they should know when they're coming

00:17:53.740 through my office door, they're here to get fired. They've had enough conversations with

00:17:57.480 me. I've been crystal clear with them. They know they haven't improved and they know the

00:18:01.620 end is here. 0.99

00:18:03.220 Besides avoiding jerks, you got a list of different types of losers you want to avoid. Who are these 0.99

00:18:08.640 losers you're talking about? 0.99

00:18:10.660 Well, you want to avoid people who are super self-focused. You want to avoid people who are blaming other 0.91

00:18:19.060 people. You want to avoid people who don't sort of carry their weight, right? So like

00:18:23.540 obviously a spit on the ball there with the loser thing, but it's just like it's people that are just 0.63

00:18:28.260 drags in life. They're not honest. They're indirect. Hate people who are indirect in terms of like you

00:18:34.580 know that they're mad about something, but they can't tell you what they're mad about. You know that

00:18:38.660 they're unhappy with you, but they won't explain why. And so, you know, it's really trying to find people

00:18:43.800 who are high achieving. Like you should never be apologetic about trying to find people from the

00:18:48.900 right gene pool. People who are just super duper spectacularly talented at what they do. You should

00:18:53.660 never be apologetic for that, but you got to find people who are like they're life enhancing. They're

00:18:58.920 fun to work with. They lift you up. They make you feel better about yourself. They make others feel

00:19:03.120 better about themselves. There's a humility to them even if they're exceptionally talented. And I've been

00:19:09.620 lucky. I've been around a lot of those people and that's rubbed off on me in a very positive way.

00:19:14.600 And I just, I like good people. I love good people. Yeah. You have the list here. They're all Ws. You

00:19:19.060 want to avoid whiners, whisperers, weasels, wannabes, and wonderkins, which you define as someone who 0.98

00:19:27.080 brags about their own credentials or brainpower. You know, they say they're smarter or better than

00:19:31.460 someone else when deep down they fear they're not. Yeah. That's a, there's a pretty good five Ws.

00:19:37.960 Yeah. You know, no one wants to be around people or whining or whispering gossip, but it's just not

00:19:43.420 fun. Life's too short for that kind of crap. Yeah. So if you see some of those things in 0.99

00:19:47.520 yourself, maybe you got to do a gut check and be like, I got to be less of a mope, less of a whiner.

00:19:51.580 For sure. And if you're surrounding yourselves with people like that, you got to be like, man,

00:19:55.000 is that rubbing off on me? You really are. Like, think about it. You're sitting at work for eight

00:19:59.520 hours with a group of people. Like, don't kid yourself. You might be the strongest person in the

00:20:03.320 world. That stuff rubs off on you. Good and bad. We're going to take a quick break for your words

00:20:08.820 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, speaking of stuff rubbing off on you at work,

00:20:19.400 your job can be incredibly stressful, incredibly intense. How do you avoid bringing that stuff home?

00:20:27.320 Yeah. I mean, it goes to controlling the parts of my life that I can control. I've probably got a

00:20:33.760 little bit of a screw loose, so I don't think people have to take it maybe as far as I do. But

00:20:38.080 I'm super religious about what I put into my body. I really try to be careful with drinking, even though

00:20:43.840 I love drinking, but I try to curtail it. I work out every day. I very rarely miss a day. I try to have

00:20:50.800 a lot of diversity in the type of workouts that I do. I try to have a lot of really good relationships.

00:20:55.720 I've been married 23 years. My wife's my best friend. I've got three kids. I have this thing

00:21:00.580 I write about in the book called my happiness matrix, which my wife is always giving me crap 1.00

00:21:04.580 about. But it is my way of keeping real. I think of my happiness matrix as these buckets. I have my 0.80

00:21:12.900 faith, my family, my work, my friendships, my hobbies, my health. And if I'm off, or if I'm stressed,

00:21:21.900 or if I'm tired, usually it's because one of those buckets is empty. I've not been paying enough

00:21:26.760 attention to my parents, or I haven't had meaningful one-on-one time with my kids, or

00:21:30.660 I haven't been as healthy at night as I should be. And it's just a good way for me to keep inventory

00:21:37.680 of the things that I know make me feel good about myself and help me perform better, because it is.

00:21:43.160 We run a company, and we also have a family, and I wrote a book, and we do TV. There's a lot that we

00:21:50.120 do, and I love doing it, but it could be terribly stressful. I don't find it stressful. I find it

00:21:55.880 very energizing. But if I didn't do those other things, if I didn't have my faith and my mind in

00:22:03.500 the right place, I don't know how I'd do it. I think I would be grumpy, and I'd be worn out,

00:22:08.800 and worn down, and bitter. And I just don't want to be that way.

00:22:13.740 All right. So just focus on making sure you're filling up all the buckets in your happiness

00:22:17.140 matrix. But what do you do? Let's say you had a really crappy day, right? Something happened at

00:22:22.540 the office, and there's all these fires to put out. And then you're going home, and you're just

00:22:27.740 in this pissy mood. Do you do anything to decompress so you don't take that out on your family?

00:22:33.120 Yeah, work out 100%. I'm super into core power right now, which is basically high intensity,

00:22:38.660 yoga with weights, in a hot room, right? So you sweat, but you're also working quite hard.

00:22:45.680 And something like that for an hour, where I'm pounding for an hour, and I'm sweating,

00:22:50.180 and I can't think about anything other than the moment, I find that to be extremely therapeutic,

00:22:55.900 extremely therapeutic. Or then after that, come home and just watch something stupid that doesn't 0.99

00:23:01.780 require a whole lot of intellectual engagement, or do it with my wife, or whatever. Just do something. 0.99

00:23:06.980 Because in the old days, I would just come home and have a couple of martinis, which is like,

00:23:11.460 that helps too. But then that sets me back the next day. So it's always a trade-off.

00:23:15.820 I mean, your business is online, and it's the news business. It's constantly going on. Do you set

00:23:20.640 hard boundaries where you're like, well, I'm at home. I'm not going to check my phone. I'm not going

00:23:24.700 to see what's going on. Do you do that?

00:23:26.160 No, I suck at that. I really do. I'm really bad at that work-life balance thing. 0.99

00:23:31.220 Mainly because I really do like it. I'm always curious what's going on. I've basically integrated

00:23:37.440 work into my life, which allows me to travel a lot, or I can go fishing and then come back and

00:23:42.420 engage really heavy for a couple of hours, go out and fish for another hour or two.

00:23:46.780 And so I'm not great at just shutting off. But at the same time, I think I do enough stuff to offset it.

00:23:53.360 And I try definitely if I'm with my kids, my wife, my parents, friends, I try to be very focused and

00:23:59.620 present in that moment. But then the minute that's done, like, yeah, I'm checking my phone. I'm

00:24:03.700 doing a call. I'm listening to a podcast. Like, I definitely am not great on the discipline around

00:24:09.580 that. So you talk about that the skill of quitting is something you need to learn. So why is quitting

00:24:15.220 an important skill? Because I think there's like a stigma attached to quitting. But like sometimes

00:24:21.780 quitting is the best thing you can do. If you're in a bad relationship, quit it. You have a bad

00:24:26.460 habit, quit it. But I mainly talk about it at work, where, listen, if you, and it happened to me, I

00:24:31.820 started Politico. I'm 10 years in, seven years in, really, because it was a three-year ordeal. I didn't

00:24:38.100 get along with a guy who bankrolled the company. We had different values. And it was starting to suck

00:24:44.440 the life out of me. I went from 80% or 90% of my time doing things I enjoy with people I enjoyed

00:24:49.580 to spending 70% of my time trying to clean up other people's messes. And I hated it. And my wife was 1.00

00:24:56.200 just like, you got to quit. You just got to quit. Even though you created the company, get the hell

00:24:59.900 out of there. Like, this is no way to live. And I quit. And I started another company and created

00:25:04.540 that more in the image of the company that I wanted the first one to be. And sometimes you have to do

00:25:09.800 that. You have to quit managers. You have to quit companies. You have to quit relationships to give

00:25:15.360 yourself a chance to sort of reset on things that make you feel a lot better about yourself. And

00:25:20.500 I think, I mean, maybe it's because I'm getting old. I'm 53. Like, I think, you know, you start to

00:25:25.040 think about your own mortality. But like, it's not that long, man. Like, we just don't have that long

00:25:30.640 of a run on earth. And I just want every single day or week or month to be better than the ones before

00:25:39.060 it. You want to make a difference. You want to be around people that you love and admire and that

00:25:43.260 love and admire you. And if you can stack your life that way, you can extract a lot of joy. And

00:25:48.940 then when the bad parts of life hit you, and they do hit you, man, they hit you hard. But if you've

00:25:54.300 kind of fortified yourself for it, you know, you'll be all right. We'll persevere.

00:25:59.640 Any advice to people who they feel like they got to quit something, right? Maybe it could be a job,

00:26:04.580 could be a business. But on the surface, it's a success. But they're miserable. How do you go

00:26:10.180 about quitting something that is a success? Like political, that was a success. Like, you know,

00:26:14.540 it was, everyone knows what political is, right? Did it take you a while to finally get the gumption

00:26:18.900 to stop that? Yeah. I mean, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was like,

00:26:23.260 I had to leave my baby. Like, I was literally there. I was there at birth. I birthed the damn thing.

00:26:28.460 And here I had to quit it because I didn't really own it. I had shadow equity. Someone else owned the 1.00

00:26:32.720 company. But we were incompatible. And like, the way you do it is you just have to have that

00:26:38.640 hard conversation with yourself. Like, are you mostly unhappy? Like, if you're not,

00:26:45.280 like, we should all be trying to, you know, spend 80, 90% of our time in a good place,

00:26:50.500 in a good headspace. And if you find yourself at work with a manager or a job or a company

00:26:55.540 where most of the time you're demoralized and you're angry or you're bitter or you're just

00:27:01.520 bored, you got to get out. Like, that's the universe telling you it's time to move on.

00:27:07.080 Not everybody can. Like, sometimes we got these obligations in life to take care of other people.

00:27:11.100 But I think more often than people realize, you have agency, man. You can, you want to quit,

00:27:16.600 you can quit. You can go find something else. And the truth is, we all worry way too much about what

00:27:22.260 other people think about our success. People are really, they're too busy. They're focused on their

00:27:26.540 own life. They don't give a hoot about yours. And so you got to live up to your measurement,

00:27:31.600 stick for yourself, not what you think other people are expecting of you.

00:27:35.300 We had Annie Duke on the podcast a while back ago to talk about her book, When to Quit. You know,

00:27:40.040 Annie Duke, famous poker player. She's a psychologist now. And one of the bits of advice was if you're

00:27:46.220 trying to figure out whether you should quit something is you want a quitting coach.

00:27:49.520 And that's basically someone you can talk to, third party, that can talk to you through all

00:27:54.760 the different factors about why you should quit or maybe you shouldn't. It sounds like your wife 0.97

00:27:58.840 might have been a quitting coach for you.

00:28:00.940 Yeah. I mean, I think we all have to have, whether it's a quitting coach, but I'd say like a life coach.

00:28:05.940 Like you just need, and I've got, I'm lucky, I've got about a half dozen people in my life who like

00:28:10.540 really know me, know the good, the bad, the ugly, care about me, and will be blunt to me.

00:28:17.740 Obviously my wife is at the top of that list and you've got to be able to have those conversations 1.00

00:28:24.060 with people. I think, let's be honest, especially for dudes, like it's hard. It's hard for us to

00:28:29.060 open up. It's hard for us to have, you know, even the word intimate relationship with another guy.

00:28:33.600 You're like, whoa, what's that? But you got to have that. You have to have like these friendships

00:28:37.660 that go a level deeper. You have to force yourself to really get to know at least a small group of

00:28:43.580 people so that you have somebody to call you out or to tell you, man, now's the time to go. Now's

00:28:49.740 the time to quit. Or man, you shouldn't have done that. You look like a real jerk. You are a jerk.

00:28:53.960 You got to apologize. You need those people in your life. And it doesn't need to be six people, but 1.00

00:28:59.760 you need at least one. And I would argue you need a couple as an insurance policy.

00:29:05.720 So you got a chapter called excellence over success. What do you mean by that?

00:29:08.960 Yeah, it's interesting. It was from right the chapter around this coach, Messiah University,

00:29:15.480 which recruited one of my sons to play soccer, Christian University in Pennsylvania. And I went

00:29:21.520 to listen to him talk to the team. And I realized he spent two hours and he never talked about soccer.

00:29:26.940 And he has these, I think he's the winningest coach in the history of soccer, certainly the current

00:29:30.620 winningest coach. And he talks about, it's not about trying to be undefeated, which they often are

00:29:36.600 close to it. It's about each person being excellent. Like really like having a measure

00:29:42.220 for yourself, for your team to truly be awesome, which is different than success because you could

00:29:48.840 be awesome at something. You could truly achieve excellence, but you might fail. But I would rather

00:29:54.600 achieve excellence. Know I gave every single thing I had. Know that I maxed out on my ability

00:30:01.200 and failed than to have like a success that I really wasn't that responsible for. And I kind

00:30:07.020 of lucked into it. And really it was somebody else. And I think really striving for excellence. And

00:30:12.280 really, again, it goes to like excellence is measured by you. When we start measuring ourselves

00:30:18.240 against other people or magazine pictures or other folks who are doing what we're doing, you've lost.

00:30:25.480 You have to say, okay, who am I? What am I capable of? How can I exceed my current expectation of

00:30:31.720 myself? So like, I'm not like a naturally gifted athlete and I've really had to force myself to

00:30:37.900 become pretty good at working out. But one of the things at 53 I try to do is like every year I try

00:30:42.000 to be able to lift a little bit more than I lifted the year before. And it's probably in my own psychotic

00:30:46.480 way. It's, I think I'm trying to reverse aging or something. But like, you know, if you think about

00:30:51.400 that and like, yes, I'm not going to be benching 250 or 300, but like, can I lift a little bit more

00:30:56.980 each year so far? Like I can. And like, that's measuring me against me. It's not me against my

00:31:03.460 nephew or my son or my friend. And I just think it's a healthier place for us to be.

00:31:09.260 I mean, I love this idea in theory, but how do you balance, you know, pursuing excellence, but also

00:31:14.540 the need to deliver the goods and get paid? Maybe take like a writer. Writer writes excellent stuff,

00:31:19.680 but it doesn't get noticed and they're not getting paid. You got to make a living. So

00:31:23.920 do you have any, have you had to struggle with that at all?

00:31:26.960 I mean, listen, like at the end of the day, we have basic needs we need to meet. And so there

00:31:31.220 might be areas that you want to pursue excellence in that you can't monetize or they become a

00:31:35.980 distraction or they become a hindrance to you doing like the basics of life. Like I'm never advocating

00:31:41.500 for anyone to abdicate the responsibilities of, of life. But I just think when you're looking at

00:31:47.100 success, success is often in the eye of other beholders. Whereas excellence, I think is

00:31:53.720 something you can see and that you can feel and that you can measure. And that doesn't mean you're

00:31:59.500 trying to be Wordsworth, right? Or you're trying to be Michael Jordan. It's you trying to just be a

00:32:05.880 little bit better than you were before, establishing your own level of excellence. And I do think you can

00:32:09.940 apply that to most situations. Like even if you said, okay, I have to just be a regular writer

00:32:14.860 to provide, well, how can you be the very best version of the writer that you have to be

00:32:20.660 to put food on the table? And how can you be better next month than you are this month? Like that's

00:32:25.200 always possible, always possible. Otherwise, like I just think it may be, not everyone's wired the same

00:32:31.520 way, but like just the idea of stagnating just sounds so boring.

00:32:35.980 So you have a hire at Axios named Kathleen Halpin. And you say, if you want to have success in your

00:32:43.280 career, you need to be like Kathleen. What did she do in her career that made her stand out? 0.99

00:32:47.920 You know, she was a young woman who worked for us in the early days of Axios. And she just had a

00:32:52.900 personality where she stood out. And, you know, she ended up going to business school and I ended up

00:32:58.600 talking to her a little bit and ended up writing a chapter about her because she was one of these

00:33:02.820 people who, it's a great lesson for early in work. Like she was 23 or something like that.

00:33:08.400 And she just was the kind of person who was in first, left last, no matter what the job was,

00:33:14.300 get someone coffee or do a research paper or help strategize a new product, raising her hand,

00:33:20.560 enthusiastically throwing herself into it. Always made people feel better about themselves,

00:33:25.820 was naturally a funny person. So like lit up a room. And I just think it's such a great lesson

00:33:31.820 for those people. I think a good, the book in some ways is really good for college grads. It's

00:33:36.720 like just realizing that, just like go in there in the basic values of life, work harder than other

00:33:43.380 people. Be honest, try to have a little bit of humility. Like those things make such a difference

00:33:50.980 and they're simple things that all of us are capable of. And as she really exemplified that.

00:33:56.100 Yeah. Yeah. So volunteer. I love that. Raise your hand for every little task. Sometimes when you're

00:33:59.580 at a job, you're like, ah, that looks, that's, that's donkey work. I'm not going to do that. 1.00

00:34:03.460 No, you should do that. Cause you don't know what you're going to learn by doing what you think is

00:34:07.100 a donkey job. Or who you're doing it for. Maybe that person you just did a research thing for that 1.00

00:34:12.600 you didn't have to, turns out to be the person who hires you and promotes you and pays you more

00:34:16.900 than you ever thought was possible. Or maybe that person goes on to be CEO of the company. Like

00:34:20.600 you'd ever, you never know. It's again, like throwing yourself out there,

00:34:23.960 taking advantage of opportunities, increasing your chance for luck because you've put yourself

00:34:29.200 in these situations that other people aren't putting themselves in. And it makes you stand

00:34:33.240 out. You talk about how you encourage your kids to play poker, like an actual, like play for money

00:34:38.820 poker. People would be like, that's bad parenting advice. Why would you tell your kids to play

00:34:42.140 poker? One, I love poker because I think you learn so much about humanity at the poker table.

00:34:48.440 You learn so much about risk-taking and calibrating risk-taking. You learn so much about bantering

00:34:56.720 conversation. You learn so much about reading people. How are they gambling? Are they reckless?

00:35:03.420 Are they careful? Do they have some weird twitch? You get a feel for the rhythm of numbers,

00:35:09.960 a rhythm of momentum. And so I look at the poker table and I just think back, man, I learned a lot

00:35:15.900 by gambling a lot. And I'm not advocating to gamble recklessly or anything like that, but I'm saying

00:35:21.180 there's just something about it that just teaches you about people. And most jobs are people. People

00:35:27.460 are people, right? Like no AI, no robot. They're not going to replace our species. And we're, you know,

00:35:32.900 a complicated, nuanced, idiosyncratic species. And so being at a poker table or being at a bar or being

00:35:40.220 just in a place where you got to read people and you got to start to sharpen your emotional

00:35:45.080 intelligence and combine that with some actual intelligence, like that's where you start to

00:35:51.520 really sharpen your repertoire.

00:35:54.160 So I'm sure people have heard there's these poker games that go on in Washington, D.C. with

00:35:58.600 journalists and politicians. Is that a real thing?

00:36:01.960 You know, it is. I mean, I played in a bunch. I don't know how much they still do. I don't know

00:36:06.200 of any going on right now. But yeah, I mean, I used to, man, before 9-11, they've really locked

00:36:11.060 down the Capitol since then. But I used to grab a 12-pack of beer, walk into the Capitol

00:36:15.460 late at night, sit in a congressman's office, and there'd be, you know, six, eight, ten people

00:36:21.180 playing poker. Not like high stakes, just playing like for fun and playing for a little bit of

00:36:25.260 money, but used to do it all the time. There's a couple games we used to play in right off

00:36:29.680 Capitol Hill where, you know, some congressmen and journalists would play. And I love it. I love

00:36:34.520 the banter more than anything else. And just being around and, you know, talking smack and

00:36:39.800 playing cards. It's not a bad thing to do. Yeah. I know when Harry Truman was vice president,

00:36:44.540 that's all he did pretty much. He just played poker. He just played poker. Not a bad way to

00:36:48.740 spend your time. Yeah. All right. You talk about in a career, there's a difference between wartime

00:36:54.520 leadership and peacetime leadership. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I think about it a lot in terms

00:37:00.520 of starting a company. Like when you're starting a company or you're trying to radically change a

00:37:05.180 company, it's wartime, right? And during wartime, you're not really worried about casualties. You're

00:37:10.940 not worried about niceties. You are in survival mode, meaning you're willing to break things, do it in

00:37:16.560 a sloppy way, take risks you might not otherwise take, be a little maniacal because it's life or death.

00:37:24.340 And to be honest, like I always have found myself to be a better wartime leader than a peacetime

00:37:28.720 leader. I just, I thrive in that environment. I love the energy. I love the high stakes. I love,

00:37:35.200 you know, kind of being creative on the fly. That's different than, you know, once your company's five,

00:37:40.660 six years in, or you work for an adult company and you're a peacetime leader, which now when you're a

00:37:46.400 peacetime leader, you've got a little bit of stability and your job is to manage the success you

00:37:52.180 have. It's to create processes. It's to find people who are good institutional managers as

00:37:59.480 opposed to kind of radical risk-taking cowboys and cowgirls, right? So it's a totally different

00:38:05.440 mentality. And, you know, you've got to be comfortable that you might be good at one and

00:38:09.020 not the other. And I think, you know, I think I, I know I'm a very good wartime leader. I now I'm

00:38:14.780 kind of a mix. There's a little bit of war and a little bit of peace. You know, peace is harder for

00:38:19.720 me. It requires, like, I don't care that much about process and I don't really like the status

00:38:25.000 quo. I like change. And so there's always a tug of war inside of me internally. And there's probably

00:38:30.500 a tug of war for any of us, anybody listening who's in a position of leadership, but just realize

00:38:35.060 there's different attributes and different people that you need around you in moments like that.

00:38:39.300 You're in the online content business. Is artificial intelligence causing you to shift back into

00:38:44.520 wartime leadership mode? For sure. Mainly because you can just see like media is a tough business to

00:38:51.000 begin with, but just the nature of how we get information and how we run companies is going to

00:38:57.140 change profoundly. I think AI will look back and artificial intelligence will be as big of a deal as

00:39:02.040 a creation of the internet. I really believe that. I just think it's going to fundamentally

00:39:06.040 change the nature of how we live, how we do our jobs. And for me and running a media company,

00:39:11.680 how people get information. And so it's my job to sort of get back into that wartime mindset,

00:39:18.200 which means, okay, what does this mean? How is it going to disrupt my business? How do we

00:39:22.000 make changes to make sure that the humans that we hire can do things that no machine could replicate?

00:39:28.480 How do we think of this technology not as a threat, but as an asset? How do I use the improvements

00:39:34.560 that we're starting to see with these large language models and integrate them into the work

00:39:38.380 that we're doing? And like, I love that stuff. You know, it worries me sometimes that it might make

00:39:43.520 my job harder or the industry more complicated, but I like the dynamism of having to solve a problem

00:39:51.080 that's evolving, that's new in real time without the real obvious, no one really knows which direction

00:39:58.720 to go. I find that exhilarating. Yeah. So I imagine you're trying new things that you otherwise

00:40:03.540 wouldn't have tried maybe five years ago. For sure. And really trying to think about,

00:40:08.500 okay, I always try to think about, okay, let's assume that AI is even better than people think

00:40:13.120 it's going to be. Then what would that mean for information consumption? And for me, as somebody

00:40:17.740 who runs a media company, who has hundreds of journalists, the thing that I know no robot will

00:40:22.680 do is they're never going to be a subject matter expert that has human sources that can capture the

00:40:29.720 nuance of human conversation and break news and tell people things that they did not know.

00:40:36.520 So I'm very much reorienting our company around that. I want more of those people and we'll use

00:40:42.040 machines to make those people stronger, but the machine is not a threat to those people and therefore

00:40:47.240 to us. And, you know, every business is going through this or will go through this. And media is

00:40:53.160 just a harder business in general. It's a complicated business, but it's also like a very public,

00:40:58.600 fun, interesting, dynamic business. And so, you know, this is just a, you know,

00:41:04.360 people who don't pay attention to AI are nuts, crazy. Like you're basically, you know, the world's 0.99

00:41:09.460 about to change. You're getting like a preview of it in real time, but through open AI, Anthropic,

00:41:15.140 Google, Amazon, character AI, you name it, like pay attention to what they're doing because that is

00:41:20.340 the future and it's going to affect you. And we all have an obligation to be smart about the world

00:41:25.060 around us and get smart about the world around you and control your own destiny and make the 0.99

00:41:30.020 decisions on your terms, as opposed to having them imposed by some damn robot. 0.99

00:41:35.420 So you got a chapter on healthy revenge. What is healthy revenge? 0.99

00:41:39.300 You know, I got a little revenge streak in me. It can become all consuming, right? Like someone

00:41:45.960 screws you and you want to like get back at them. And for me, like healthy revenge is like,

00:41:50.920 give yourself a little bit of revenge. And maybe that revenge is just like, you know,

00:41:55.220 being a better company or showing that the person who screwed you over that you're going to do better

00:42:00.840 than them. And so like, don't say you're not going to have any revenge or you're not going to think

00:42:05.000 about it at all, but don't allow revenge to be the thing that just animates your activities and

00:42:11.180 consumes your mind. There's a lot of, a lot of research out there that, that really pollutes your

00:42:16.100 mind, pollutes your decision-making capabilities. So, you know, having a little bit, you know,

00:42:21.220 thinking about it a tiny bit, using that energy that comes from it to just be better at what you

00:42:26.300 do. That's a way to have like a little bit of healthy revenge. I like that because I, I think

00:42:31.880 sometimes we're a little too down on revenge. You know, we're always telling ourselves, you got to

00:42:37.420 be stoic, just let things go. There's that quote, you know, the best revenge is to not be like the

00:42:43.060 person who wronged you, but sometimes I think it's nice to try to outdo the other person who wronged

00:42:49.440 you. And I think as long as you keep it within healthy parameters, you know, having a little

00:42:54.520 bit of a chip on your shoulder can be an animating force. So you also have a chapter about a wall

00:43:02.180 street journal reporter named David Rogers and what he taught you about quiet greatness. Tell us about

00:43:09.820 that. So David, thank God he's still alive. He lives here outside of DC. I still see him, you know,

00:43:15.720 try to see him every month or two for lunch. He was my mentor at the wall street journal and he was

00:43:19.920 on Capitol Hill, covering Congress. He was a legend. Like he is very few people would dispute. He's

00:43:25.020 probably the best congressional reporter of our generation, but like he wasn't on TV and he wasn't

00:43:31.480 writing books and pounding his chest. He just was quietly way better than anybody else did way more

00:43:38.760 homework than anyone else understood the institution so well that members of Congress would routinely

00:43:44.000 call him to ask him, what are the rules of the house? What is the history of this legislation? He

00:43:50.760 was just encyclopedic. And what he taught me was you're never going to really be excellent at anything

00:43:56.940 if you don't really have a real deal mastery of your subject. Like he really taught me to do the hard

00:44:05.120 work to master the craft or master the beat in that case that I was on. And he was tough, man. He was a

00:44:12.560 tough guy. He was gruff. He would, he could be brutal in his assessments of my work, but he cared.

00:44:18.780 And despite the gruff exterior is a really sweetheart of a guy and has become one of my best friends and

00:44:24.060 mentors and it really changed my life. It was hard, but it was just a big, big reason. I think I am who I am

00:44:30.200 today. I think that's really one of the best pieces of life advice. Just find yourself a great

00:44:35.700 mentor. You know, they're worth their weight in gold. Well, Jim, this has been a great conversation.

00:44:40.340 Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work? I can get it on Amazon. Just the good

00:44:44.680 stuff. If you're looking for the book, axios.com is where I write in the company that I run. It's all

00:44:50.860 about getting people smarter, faster on topics like politics, business, AI, media. Check it out. It's free.

00:44:57.900 Most of the products are free. The idea is to help you better understand the world. So I appreciate

00:45:03.120 conversations like this. I appreciate all the work that you do. Well, thanks so much, Jim. I really

00:45:07.400 appreciate that. It's been a pleasure. Take care. Thank you. My guest here is Jim Vandeheye. He's the

00:45:13.100 author of the book, Just the Good Stuff. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

00:45:17.220 Check out our show notes at awim.is slash good stuff. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic.

00:45:27.900 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:45:33.260 artofmanliness.com. We find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we've written

00:45:37.420 over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And while you're there, sign up for our email

00:45:41.240 newsletter. It's completely free and there's both a daily and weekly option. As always, thank you for

00:45:46.100 the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast,

00:45:49.760 but put what you've heard into action.

00:45:57.900 Thank you.

The Art of Manliness - May 01, 2024

The No-BS Secrets of Success

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