The No-BS Secrets of Success
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Summary
Jim Vande Heide didn t have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told him he wasn t cut out for college, and he went on to get a 1.4 GPA at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found two of the biggest modern media outlets, Politico and Axios. He shares how he started moving up the rungs of success and building a better life for himself in his new book, Just the Good Stuff: No BS Secrets to Success No Matter What Life Throws at You.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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Jim Vande Heide didn't have an auspicious start in life. His high school guidance counselor told
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him he wasn't cut out for college, and he went on to confirm her assessment, getting a 1.4 GPA
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at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and spending more time drinking beer than planning
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his career. Eventually, though, Jim turned things around for himself, going on to co-found
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two of the biggest modern media outlets, Politico and Axios. Jim shares how he started moving
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up the rungs of success and building a better life for himself in his new book, Just the
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Good Stuff, No BS Secrets to Success No Matter What Life Throws at You. Today on the show,
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Jim shares the real-world lessons he's learned in his career. We discuss the importance of
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matching passion to opportunity, making your own luck, surrounding yourself with the right
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people, keeping the buckets of your happiness matrix filled, understanding the difference
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between wartime and peacetime leadership, harnessing the energy of healthy revenge, and more.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash goodstuff.
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So you are a journalist, and you're also the co-founder of Politico and also Axios. But you
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got a new book out called Just the Good Stuff, and it's an advice book. An advice book about family,
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career, and life in general. So why did a journalist and media operator decide to write a life advice
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Yeah, I never thought I would. But I've started and I've run two big media companies, so Politico
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and Axios, as you've mentioned. And I guess what's unique is I was a journalist for most
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of my life before becoming an entrepreneur. So when I became an entrepreneur and became
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a CEO, I took very close notes, usually of all the things that I was screwing up or that
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other people were screwing up around me, to learn how to do things better. And so I kept
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these notes. I started writing a column. The feedback to it was very positive. And so I wrote
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this book. Because if you met me when I was 20, smoking camels and drinking and getting crappy
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grades, you never would have said, oh, that dude from Oshkosh is going to go start a couple
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companies, interview presidents, write a book. And I think I have some obligation to sort of
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give back, especially to people who might be thinking about career changes or thinking
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about how do they make the next big move or how do they navigate a difficult situation.
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So I hope people find it as a really handy user's guide to life.
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No, and the way you wrote it, the format, it follows that Axios style. You get to the
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point, it's nicely organized, it's easy to read. So I really like that as well. And as
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you said, you've had a lot of professional success and personal success as well. But you
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mentioned there, you started off life pretty mediocre and you kind of admit that. Well, you
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admit that in the book. You're like, I was kind of a screw up. Yeah. So what were you like
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I mean, I think I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin. I was like a normal small town
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Wisconsin kid. Like I drank, I misbehaved. I occasionally went to school. I got crappy
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grades, you know, graduated the bottom third of my high school class, could barely get into
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college, had to go to a two-year college to get into four-year college. Four years took
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me 5.5 years. At one point, I was on academic probation with a Sterling 1.491 grade point average.
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So it really wasn't until I found journalism and politics and really got excited about a potential
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path that I really got my head out of my butt and started, you know, thinking about like how to go
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get a career and how to go do stuff that I might be good at. And so, you know, it took me a little
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while to get there, but I moved out to DC, became a journalist, turned out a lot of the things that
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I did when I was misbehaving actually helped me as a journalist. I used to gamble a lot, play poker,
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teaches you how to deal with people. I used to go to dive bars so I could deal with people from any
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kind of walk of life. And, you know, I was curious. I love to ask questions, love to talk.
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And those things worked awesome as a reporter. And in Washington, where it was kind of a lot of
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elite kids from Harvard and other hotshot schools, I didn't know any better. So I just, you know,
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kind of stirred up mischief, wrote stories, and ended up being pretty good at it.
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So was that the thing that got you out of your passive mode when you were a kid,
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just finding something you were passionate about?
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A hundred percent. Like the minute I found something that like, oh, I'm a good writer,
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I like politics, and I learned that I could get paid for it, I became obsessed with it.
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And I think that's true for most of us. Like the moment you can match a passion with an opportunity,
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you're going to be on fire naturally. The advice I always give young people now or even old people is
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do something you would do for free. Like I love what I do. I love writing. I love leading.
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I love starting companies. I love covering presidents. I love writing about AI.
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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,
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I think really magical things can happen. And it doesn't just have to be at work. It could be in
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a relationship or personal hobbies that you have. But I think that's the good stuff of life.
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You know, it's funny. I didn't even really realize I was that into politics until I was like,
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I would come home. I'd go out to a kegger and I would come home, you know, drunk at two in the
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morning. And I would sit and watch C-SPAN hearings on the agriculture committee or on a health bill.
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I was just fascinated by it. I was fascinated that I could watch this. I was fascinated about how
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a bill became a law. I was fascinated about how people use power, how they communicate.
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And so that got me hooked on politics. And then when I was trying to figure out what to do,
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I figured out I was a pretty good writer. And I went to a newspaper and asked him,
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hey, I know a lot about sports. Could I ever be a sports reporter? I was dumb enough to do that,
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having not even taken a journalism class. And the guy I happened to go to was nice enough to be
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humored by it. He said, I'll give you a writing test. And I did the writing test. And he's like,
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that's actually pretty good. I'll give you a job. And so I covered high school sports and it was kind
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of off to the races from there. And I'd say most of my career has been these kind of serendipitous
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things that are either courage or luck or some mix of the two that have put me on a course to
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do things I just didn't think I would otherwise be able to do.
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Yeah. You got a chapter on luck. What role do you think luck plays in success in life in general?
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I mean, a ton. I hate these people who are like, oh, look how damn smart I am. And look at me.
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Yeah, you might be smart. I might be smart. But if other people aren't putting you in positions to
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have opportunity, you might just be a smart person who had no success or no accomplishment. And so I
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think being ready for those moments of luck is really, really important. I think now, especially,
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I think a lot about my health, my diet, my mindset, my morals, my relationships to make sure that when
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luck comes, I'm really ready to pounce on it. But yeah, I mean, again, going back to college.
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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
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want to do sports. I literally picked up a piece of paper of every newspaper in the state of
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Wisconsin. I'm like, I'll just call every one of them and ask if I can work this summer and I'll
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work doing something else at night. I'll do it for free. So I called and Brilliant News was one of
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the top ones on there. I happened to call a guy, Zane Zander, who answers the phone, who runs the
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paper. And he's like, hey, could you come here today? And I'm like, what? So I drove, it's only an hour
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away. So I drove up there and the guy's like, I explained to him, I've not really taken any
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classes. I'm a good writer. I like journalism. He goes, I don't care. He goes, well, you run my
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newspaper. And I'm like, dude, like I've never really done anything. Like you really shouldn't
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hire me to run your newspaper. He's like, yeah, well, my editor just told me he's quitting if I
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don't give him three months off to go to Finland. He goes, I'll teach you in one week how to run a
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newspaper. And I said, okay. And he gave me a pay package. I'll never forget this. $300 a week,
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which was a lot back then. And a place, he had a cabin on a lake filled with large mouth bass.
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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
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you. And I'll always have your refrigerator full of beer. I mean, it was like the best executive
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package I could possibly have dreamed of. And I ran a newspaper for three months and learned more in
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three months there than I probably learned in five years of college. So I mean, the trick there to
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getting more lucky is just putting yourself out there, I guess. Yes, for sure.
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I think you make your own luck, right? The more you put yourself out there, the more you put
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yourself in uncomfortable situations, the more you ask questions, the more people you get to know,
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you just vastly increase your odds of luck coming your way. If you just sit there passively eating
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Doritos on your couch, you're probably not going to make a whole hell of a lot of luck for yourself.
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So there's a combination of effort into really making luck this magical thing.
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So you got a chapter on constructing greatness and use Tom Brady, famous quarterback, as an example of
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someone who did that. What can we learn from Tom Brady about constructing greatness?
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Yeah, I used him in that chapter because Sally Jenkins is a pretty well-known sports writer at
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the Washington Post. And she had had this quote that really stuck with me about how Tom Brady
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constructed greatness. And he basically was this very mediocre athlete coming out of Michigan.
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There was nothing that said to anyone that he was going to be the greatest quarterback
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of all time. And he willed it into existence. He constructed it and he did it through what he put
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into his body, how he treated his body, how he treated his mind, his preparation, his work ethic,
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and really stuck with me because I think we all control more than we think we can control.
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I think so often people just feel like, oh, whatever, it's serendipity or man, life just
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dealt me a bad hand. Well, no, that's not true. You actually control every moment, like what you're
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going to eat, what you're going to drink. Are you going to work out? Are you going to have a healthy
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relationship? Are you going to compliment somebody? Are you going to accept a compliment? Like all day is
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just a series of things. Just keep track of it in one day. Just write down all the different things
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that you could control and the decisions that you made. And you could realize, man, there's a lot
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that we control. And when you start to realize that you look at life through that lens, you can
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construct your own greatness. You can have, hey, this is where I want to go. These are the things that
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I would need to do to be the type of person that I want to be or to achieve whatever goal I'm trying
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to achieve. And it just takes on a life of its own once you do it. Like, yes, we're not going to be
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Tom Brady. We're not going to be Michael Jordan, but we can probably be a hell of a lot more than
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we are right now if you adapt that mindset. How did you start doing that in your own life?
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You know, it was really an evolution. You know, when I was young in my 20s, like I just enjoyed being a
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reporter even to my young 30s. Then I had this idea, you know, to start Politico and I became an
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entrepreneur. And then I realized, oh my God, I might be, I'm actually a pretty good leader. I
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never thought of myself as a leader, but I've got pretty good morals, values, and I'm confident
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enough to make decisions. And so I taught myself how to be a CEO. And I just learned that with each
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of these things that I never thought I could do, once I did them, it opened my mind to the
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possibility, well, wait a second, like there's probably other aspects of my life that I could change.
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Why can't I be a runner? I didn't run in years. So I ran a quarter mile. Then I started running
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half marathons. Or why can't I go from, you know, being unhealthy and eating pizza and cheeseburgers
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all day to somebody who's really thinking about what do I put into my body and how does it make
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me feel? And how is it going to affect my ability to perform long-term? And so I became, I'd say,
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almost addicted to that now, this idea that there's things that I can do to keep making myself
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better at the things that I care about. I want to be a really good fly fisherman. I'm getting
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pretty good. I want to be a golfer. I suck. But at one point, hopefully I'll be decent at golf. I'd
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love to conquer different sort of workout things. I'm really into core power now. I'm not naturally
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flexible. So it took me a long time to get flexible, but now I'm more flexible. So I just,
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I, your mind, it almost becomes a drug, but like a healthy drug.
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So you got several chapters in the book about avoiding jerks, a-holes in life and in business.
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Why so many chapters on that topic? Probably because we meet too many jerks and a-holes,
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right? Because I, I just, I hate it. You know, I, I've had so many interesting professional
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experiences where like the job was great, but then you're working next to a person who just
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sucks the life out of you. Who's either bitching and moaning all the time or gossiping or being
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competitive, like in a super unhealthy way. And I just realized, you know what, just like I can
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control what I eat or I could control whether I work out or I could control my job. I control who
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I'm around. Like I can decide that if someone's a jerk, I don't have to have them in my life.
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I could either freeze them out, not pay attention to them or, or get away from them, whether it's
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in a personal relationship or in a professional relationship. And so by the time we started Axios,
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which was seven years ago, and now we have about 550 people, the first thing we put on a piece of
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paper is we're never again going to work with people we don't like. That doesn't mean we're not
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going to work with super high achieving, ambitious people, which we do, but they're going to be good
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people. And if they're not good people, no matter how talented they are, we're going to fire them
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because we don't want to be around bad people. And guess what? We're 550 people and I don't have
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any bad people around me. So once you've proved to yourself that you can do that and you tell
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others to do the same, you can have like a pretty magical work experience. And if you think about it
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for your listeners who are in a place where they're dealing with a jerk or they're in a business or
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a company, the culture that they don't like, they don't feel it's on the level, just think about
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all that negative energy. Think about how many hours of the day you spend either complaining
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about it or thinking about it or trying to do something about it. It's all wasted energy. Like
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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
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people that I like, that's going to make a difference. And when you take on that mindset that that is
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something that is attainable, it's not attainable every day, it's attainable a lot more often than
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people think. Did you have any moments in your career where you kept working with somebody,
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you kept a hire that was super, you know, they were a jerk. They were just a complete jerk,
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but they were extremely competent at what they did. But that ended up biting you in the butt.
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Yeah. That was my weakness when I started Politico. I was enamored with people who were brilliant
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and I overlooked the fact that they were bad people, that they were cancerous, that they were
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either, they're mean, they're narcissistic, whatever it was. And I had one person in particular who I put
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into a position of power and a brilliant person, but just not a good leader, not a good effect on
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other people's human psyche. And you know what happens is people start to hold me accountable for
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that. They're like, Jim, you're the leader. You're supposed to protect us. Like, why would you allow
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someone like that to bedevil me? That's just not right. And they're right. I was wrong. I made a
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mistake and I had done that several times. And I decided after seeing that, you know, that I don't
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ever want to do it again, that I'm not going to make the deal with the devil. I'm not going to take
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like extreme talent that comes with a baggage of bad values. And I jettisoned it. I stopped doing it.
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But yeah, for a long time, I made that mistake. And I'd say almost everything. I think I'm a
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pretty good leader now. I mean, it sounds a little cocky, but I think I am. But it's only
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because I was so bad at it at the beginning because I'd never been a leader. I didn't know
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how to hire people. I didn't know how to create a culture. I didn't know how to get rid of jerks.
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I didn't know how to figure out a diverse set of people who complement the skill set I have.
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I just knew once I knew I could outwork anybody. That's basically what I knew I could work
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as hard or harder than anyone. No one was going to outwork me. Well, that's not
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really a great leadership style. How do you hire to filter out
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the jerks? Do you have any criteria or heuristics you use?
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For sure. We've gotten quite good at it. And part of it is like a screening process of
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one, really trying to talk to people who aren't on the list of people that they tell you to talk
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to for character witness. Try to find people who really work with them. And were they a good
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colleague? Do people like them? Do they light up when you say that person's name?
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When you're interviewing the person, some red flags are if they say anything bad about somebody
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else, that's like a disqualifier. Like you just don't want people who talk crap about their current
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or previous employers. And then the other red flag is people who say, I, I, I, who are just seem to
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be very self-focused, taking credit for things that you probably know were a group effort. That's
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another big one. And so, you know, and then being very clear with people, I say all the time,
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like, listen, you might be the most talented person, but if you're a bad person, I'm telling
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you, we'll fire you. And you've got to do a gut check before you come here. Like if you've had
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problems in the past being narcissistic or being self-focused or not being able to put the cause
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above your own selfish ambitions, like we will reject you. And so you do those things. And, you know,
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some people smuggle themselves across the border on this one, but most don't.
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Yeah. And when you do find one, I imagine you just fire quickly.
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Yeah. Yeah. The minute, you know, you got a problem, you got to get rid of it. And again,
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it's hard. It's a human being. We're not cold and it's never easy to fire somebody, but
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I don't really find it that hard firing people anymore. I mean, especially if I'm telling people
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along the way, here are the things that you're doing that you got to change or you can't work
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here. Like the problem with firing is when you're not being direct with people, you're not giving
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them blunt feedback. You're not giving them an opportunity to change.
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There should never, by the time you fire someone, they should know when they're coming
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through my office door, they're here to get fired. They've had enough conversations with
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me. I've been crystal clear with them. They know they haven't improved and they know the
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Besides avoiding jerks, you got a list of different types of losers you want to avoid. Who are these
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Well, you want to avoid people who are super self-focused. You want to avoid people who are blaming other
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people. You want to avoid people who don't sort of carry their weight, right? So like
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obviously a spit on the ball there with the loser thing, but it's just like it's people that are just
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drags in life. They're not honest. They're indirect. Hate people who are indirect in terms of like you
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know that they're mad about something, but they can't tell you what they're mad about. You know that
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they're unhappy with you, but they won't explain why. And so, you know, it's really trying to find people
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who are high achieving. Like you should never be apologetic about trying to find people from the
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right gene pool. People who are just super duper spectacularly talented at what they do. You should
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never be apologetic for that, but you got to find people who are like they're life enhancing. They're
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fun to work with. They lift you up. They make you feel better about yourself. They make others feel
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better about themselves. There's a humility to them even if they're exceptionally talented. And I've been
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lucky. I've been around a lot of those people and that's rubbed off on me in a very positive way.
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And I just, I like good people. I love good people. Yeah. You have the list here. They're all Ws. You
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want to avoid whiners, whisperers, weasels, wannabes, and wonderkins, which you define as someone who
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brags about their own credentials or brainpower. You know, they say they're smarter or better than
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someone else when deep down they fear they're not. Yeah. That's a, there's a pretty good five Ws.
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Yeah. You know, no one wants to be around people or whining or whispering gossip, but it's just not
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fun. Life's too short for that kind of crap. Yeah. So if you see some of those things in
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yourself, maybe you got to do a gut check and be like, I got to be less of a mope, less of a whiner.
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For sure. And if you're surrounding yourselves with people like that, you got to be like, man,
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is that rubbing off on me? You really are. Like, think about it. You're sitting at work for eight
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hours with a group of people. Like, don't kid yourself. You might be the strongest person in the
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world. That stuff rubs off on you. Good and bad. We're going to take a quick break for your words
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from our sponsors. And now back to the show. Well, speaking of stuff rubbing off on you at work,
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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
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little bit of a screw loose, so I don't think people have to take it maybe as far as I do. But
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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
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
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
00:23:01.780
require a whole lot of intellectual engagement, or do it with my wife, or whatever. Just do something.
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
00:23:26.160
No, I suck at that. I really do. I'm really bad at that work-life balance thing.
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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.
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
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
00:35:54.160
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
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
00:41:30.020
decisions on your terms, as opposed to having them imposed by some damn robot.
00:41:35.420
So you got a chapter on healthy revenge. What is healthy revenge?
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
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00:45:46.100
the continued support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay reminding you to listen to the AOM podcast,