#165. Gabor Holch: On The Beach
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All right, I want to be on a beach in my suit. Yeah. And just shed all of that. Banter.

It's funny because we do. So much banter. Oh yeah, bantering and bickering. We talked about banter, yeah. I know. I think we broke new ground in the sense that we started unpacking like total nerds, like how we actually bicker with one another. Yeah. Right? To the point where now guests are actually serving as like doing group therapy of like what we're doing to each other. We broke the fourth wall in this episode, right? That's true. Yeah.

Yeah, and ultimately, I mean, his job is just to help people really reflect as human beings, tap into their own consciousness, and then help them do the things that they want to do so they can have a better life. Life, evolution, how it affects our decision-making in both personal and business. Absolutely. Your life only makes sense if you can do deep reflection. I think that's my biggest takeaway in that.

mindset of, well, where are you now? And how does that compare to where you want to be? I thought that was a huge takeaway and a great reflection point. Anyway, this was a wonderful conversation. Our guest is the author of Dragon Suit, The Golden Age of Expatriate Executives in China. He is an intercultural leadership coach, coaching some of the highest level executives. He is a consultant, author, and speaker specializing in East and West business relations.

He was an expat since the ripe age of four, a former diplomat, and based in China since 2002. He has advised and coached leaders for hundreds of clients in over 25 countries, and now splits his time between Shanghai, Asia Pacific, and Europe. So, without further ado, please give it up for Gabor Holch. ♪ She's living in a little lullaby ♪ ♪ Pulling what she can't pull ♪

Cheers, Gabor. Welcome back to the show, man. Thank you very much. So nice to be back. It's great to have you back. Now I've been present for 50% of the times that you've been on the show. The first two times, I wasn't. Yeah, and the first two times were the best episodes because of that very reason. Well, that's what I deduce from it. I didn't have to do any work. I didn't have to do any work, and I got to listen to him.

Great. It's great for me. How you been, Gabor? I've been okay. Thank you very much. Awful happening in all aspects of life. Yeah? Yes. What's like most top of mind for you right now?

Of all the things happening. Of all the things happening is a difficult time for the family for lots of different reasons, both in, you know, my wife is from Shanghai, so Chinese family, Hungarian family, and our little family. All of us had our hard times for completely different reasons. And I think...

One of these things would have been a hard time, but combined, it has been a very, very hard time. So gratitude is a thing that I have to consciously practice because otherwise it's just like you reach, I'm one of these people and there are many of us who reaches a certain level and then you check the box and you say, fine, and then you start thinking about the next thing.

So all of these things is kind of, that's why I was in crisis and then recovery mode for a long time. - I see. - But yeah, so I also, how do you say, I'm also an aesthetic. So I used to study philosophy, I also write. So there is some super ego in me that sees these things as a narrative, as a fiction narrative. And then that makes it much more acceptable.

- Yeah, it makes it a lot more interesting, right? - It makes it much more interesting because you know, it's one thing to have a cartoon cloud over your head. It's another thing to think about it from the outside as if you were the observer. And then it gives you a kind of perspective. One of the great things about being self-employed is you really do what you want to do and take the responsibility and suffer the consequences or enjoy the consequences, depending on what the consequences are.

So that kind of silver lining is you really, if you don't want to do something as a self-employed consultant, all you have to do is not be proactive about it. And then it just kind of leaves your life by itself. On the flip side of it, if you really want something, you have to work hard for it, right? This was really therapeutic in a way.

Because it means that you can really sort out in your life what you want it to be and what you don't want it to be. And that is all silver lining, in my opinion. It's like the power of neglect, right? At least the choice to neglect things you don't want to put attention to. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. So all of those things that you have to be, it's like, I don't know, I think many things in life,

Many things are not, like you have a kid, for example, our kid is already grown up. So you cannot do this with a kid. - Yeah, I don't have the choice of neglect. - Exactly. - Well, maybe I do, but is this like, but then you will suffer the moral consequences. - Come back to you very, very soon. Yeah, exactly. But there are lots of things in life and basically you are in full charge of it. But that also means that if you don't do it, then it just kind of vanishes.

And that has been great. So I was often thinking if I had a boss, then would it be easier, would it be harder during this difficult time? I haven't made up my mind. Most of the people I coach have bosses and they go through this process. And then sometimes the way bureaucracy happens is that when a system starts doing some people's job. Today it's AI.

it used to be what do you call databases and then before that it was on paper bureaucracy and even before that it was people who had the patience and the consistency to to act like that um

But eventually technology takes over some people's jobs. And when that happens, then it tends to accumulate and become the kind of bureaucracy that we hate. I see. Is AI at all a factor in your profession right now? Oh yeah. Well, it's a factor everywhere. It's a double factor, so to speak. So on one hand, and let me put it in the order of importance. First of all, it changes the universe of the people that I help. Corporate leadership, corporate management, entrepreneurship,

It changes that. And then number two, it changes my own profession as well. How so? There are tasks everywhere that AI can do better than humans. And then we have a huge responsibility to stop and consider if AI does that for humans, is that the most ethical, the most responsible, or even the most effective way to go forward? I will give you an example.

You know, we have these pop-up ads on YouTube and then they try to figure out what you're interested in. And for some reason, because I wrote books and now I also watch interviews with people who like Simon Sinek and so on, who are both consultants and authors.

So the AI assumes that I am interested in writing books. And one of the ads that keep popping up is, dude, did you know that there is this AI application that writes entire eBooks in minutes? You just have to put in the topic and a couple of key thoughts. And look at this. This is amazing. This is a whole eBook with text, with illustrations, with table of contents, with references and everything.

Now, this is a very good example of putting the cart in front of the horse, right? Because this is exactly, I mean, if you are, let's say, a lawyer or a consultant or even a doctor, and you want to write a book to promote yourself or to help humanity, to educate people, this is the part you want to do on your own. You want AI to do your accounting, but you don't want to write books you have never read. You don't even know, you cannot take responsibility for it.

If somebody says, "Oh, you know, man, that story I absolutely loved in your book. So where did it come from?" I think very few people was like, "I have absolutely no idea. It's just something that AI pulled off the internet somehow. I have through a process I don't really understand, but I would like you to read my book." Right? - Yeah. - So this is how AI actually changes everything. It also makes us reconsider, is this something that I want AI to do so that I can do the real thing or is this the real thing? - Yeah.

A little bit like people outsource other things in their life, which they shouldn't. Can I tell you another story? - No, go ahead, please. - So I was coaching a C-suite executive. It's a married couple with two kids. One of them is an executive. The other one is a very successful lawyer. And then once we are talking about vacations,

And then we start talking about Thailand. And then this person says, well, actually we have a beach house in Thailand. Wow, that's wonderful. She said, vacation. So how much time do you spend there? He says, I don't spend any time there. Really? So what, your spouse is there with the kids? Oh, come on, my spouse is a very successful lawyer and neither of us have time to go. So who is there? Well, the nanny with the kids. So this person got confused.

And then they are doing exactly the reverse of what we dream about when we are 10 years old, right? They do the work and they outsource the fun. And very often AI, with AI, we do exactly the same thing. We get a little bit confused. And it's almost like AI saying, "Listen, I will go on vacation and you just stay in the office, will you?" - Yeah, I can resonate with that so much because that's the same conversation my wife and I are having about getting a nanny to help watch the kid.

And we were kind of going through and she has her concerns. And the concerns are, well, what kind of nanny do we want to get? Do we want to really get a full time, a part time? What responsibilities do we really want to pay this nanny for? And in the beginning, because I think maybe we were so tired and stressed in the beginning, we were like, oh, well, we wanted to do everything.

then what are we doing as parents? What quality time are we actually spending with our kid? And what things do we never want to give up? And this is why life goals are so extremely important because then everything organizes around the goal. The problem with life is if that place is empty, if you do not have the vision or do not have an idea who you want to be or who you are, then life will give you one.

then it will spontaneously arrange itself around whatever comes up. It can be AI, it can be your boss, it can be the economy, and then things will start organizing. Your life will start organizing around something that you never chose. Yeah, and probably you never even notice it's happening. Exactly, and this is how burnouts come. This is why midlife crisis happens.

This is why people get divorced. This is a lot of horrible things in their life happen because at one point people, how do you say? They struggle, they struggle, they struggle. They use tooth and nail to climb that mountain. And when they are on the top, they realize I never wanted to be here. - In terms of having clarity and vision of like what your goal is or who you are,

Do you think that's just something some people are fortunate enough to have?

Or do you believe that there is a methodology you can take to find out what that is for yourself? - There is a methodology, otherwise I would be out of a job. - Okay. Well, what is that methodology? - I deal with the leadership aspect of it. I'm not a life coach. - Because I need to know. - Yeah, but so there are a couple of things. So basically if you look at the human being from now conceptualizing a human being from this angle,

then there are certain things you will never be able to change and there are certain things that you can change. So you will never be able to change the genetically determined facts of how your body is, for example, but it goes beyond what we usually think because, of course, your body includes your neural network.

So it is not just how tall or short you are, how good your eyesight is, that already limits your options, right? So I cannot be a pilot because my eyesight is bad. I couldn't be a basketballer either. But it goes beyond that because things like patience,

risk tolerance, how sociable you are, your emotional stability, attention to detail. - Or even like a concept of neurodiversity falls into play, like where you may land on certain spectrums. - It depends on what neurodiversity means in this context. So there is certain neurodiversity which is genetically programmed. You cannot change it just like you cannot change your height. And there are certain things that you can train yourself to cross over, but you have givens, right?

And then it already determines your life path in a certain way, right? The best examples are when, and I'm going to use air quotes here, when somebody is born in the wrong culture, right? So for example, you are, and I'm thinking of a concrete example, you are a disruptive, impatient, loud person who is born into a dynasty of watchmakers, right?

Actually, this is the story of the family that made the watch I'm wearing right now. And then what happens to you is you're a horrible watchmaker. So you experience a lot of failure until you figure out you're really shit at making watches, but you're really good at selling watches.

So this is one thing, this is exactly, this is the almost predetermined part where who we are limits who we are going to be in the future. This is number one. But number two, there are certain factors that you can change. I don't want to make the answer too long, but in this case, for example, if you're born in that dynasty of watchmakers, which was in the area in Germany called Glashütte, where everybody's a watchmaker, you can just leave.

You can go to Silicon Valley or you can go to Italy or you can go to China and then you are surrounded by a different kind of environment. Or suddenly you make a friend who is a standup comedian and then you say, wow, that's it. Make a living out of this. This is amazing. And then you can follow that path. - I think the two parts that you described

almost can also work in conflict with each other because I think the first part is, you know, there are certain givens about you, right? And so what that tells me is that there are, it doesn't necessarily include things, but it definitely rules certain things out. The first one, yes. Right, yeah, the first one. It rules certain things out. So in that aspect, it kind of takes your wants and your desires out of the equation, right?

Because even if you wanted to do something and you're not built for that, then you just can't do it even if you want to do it. - You're forgetting the other side. And the other side is there are certain wants and desires, which in this kind of situation, you're currently repressing because you consistently got negative feedback about it, right? So for example, if I'm born to be a standup comedian, but I'm born in a watchmaker's family, they will constantly shush me. They will say,

Lower your voice, will you? Sit still, pay attention. Whereas your desire and your talent lies in turning things upside down and laughing at them and sharing the joy.

So there is that part, which doesn't just limit you, it liberates you. But you would be surprised, even mid-career, high-level professionals, C-suite executives, entrepreneurs, and so on. A lot of my coaching job is about liberating that part that had been closeted for a decade, right? Somebody who thinks thinking freely, somebody who thinks humor, somebody who thinks being a perfectionist is a flaw.

because they were in a kind of environment where the feedback was constantly negative. It can be because it was your home country or home village or what you studied because everybody studied that. Or for example, in my region, I'm Hungarian, but I work a lot in places like Austria, Germany, Italy. There are entire cities where one company is the main employer. So everybody works there, but you know that company belongs to an industry.

And then it limits the possibilities. And people don't even think the problem is with the industry. The problem is with them. So Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, I remember that when I... One of the things I have to go is that they have to do is that they have an internal leadership development program. So as a coach or as a trainer, I have to go there to the headquarters, right?

which is Leverkusen, a small town in Germany. And then in order to certify for this program, they gave us a tour and the lady who showed us around

Every time she stopped to show us something, she put her feet into this typical ballet stance. Do you know what I mean? It's like, I don't know what it's called. In ballet, everything has a name. But when you- - It's kind of like, yeah. - Yeah, exactly. - The feet are like perpendicular to each other. - Yeah, you put your feet together, but not the natural way, but the other way when your ankles are on two ends of you, like ankle to toe and toe to ankle. Every time she stops, she put herself into this. And I said, this is a dancer. So what is a dancer doing PR in Bayer, right?

So once when we went from one corridor to another, I said like, that is a dancing stance, is it? And she said, oh, yes, yes. And I keep doing this with taxi drivers, with everybody. So how did you end up in this job? She says, you know, I was born in Leverkusen. Everybody works for Bayer. I wanted to be a dancer, but there is not much dancing around here. So I wasn't that successful to go to a big city and pursue my dream.

so eventually uh i i said okay then i will go for and work for buyer as well and then i what's the funnest job that i can do in the company and they offer me a pi job i'm sorry a pr job public relations job a communicator which is as close to entertainment as it's possibly uh conceivable in a pharmaceutical company yeah so it it limits you but also it shows your way i have a few um

a train of thought in terms of questions but i'll i'll just ask them sort of one at a time and see how it goes my my first question is more personal what do you think what conditions were present or was it just sort of dumb luck that you were able to you know move into a space that tapped in and amplified the things that you were good at and wanted to do and you didn't have to sort of take maybe a more securitist path or maybe you did take a securitist path

But I'm just curious, like what conditions were in place that allowed you to make that realization fairly early on where there's more alignment? - Right. There are two things in life which we constantly juggle and try to find the balance. One is control and the other one is human relationships. So in an ideal case, we would have full control of what happens to us. And we would also be popular and loved and take care of others.

But in life, very often you have to kind of balance out the two. So you have more control, but you're not popular or you are very popular, but you don't feel like you're deciding about what's going to happen to you. Parenting is also like this, right? And my parents were the kind of parents who chose relationship over control. Now, I think most healthy people blame their parents when they grow up.

So there are certain- We never do that on this show. Eric never brings up his notes. We never do. Howie never does that. You blame each other. Well, I mean, as an aside, I do it less and less because I'm trying to be, you know, just more mindful.

And I find that- - Has it been less and less though? - Yeah, it actually has been less and less. And Howie and Justin do it more and more for a good reason because as they become fathers and they've started reflecting on these things probably more and more as well. - I'm going to answer your question, but may I just interject something? I mean, I love listening to your podcast.

And I love listening to the parts when you start bickering with each other. It feels a little bit like when I was little and I accidentally overheard my parents argue with each other. So we sound like an arguing couple? Yeah, you do. You really do. And it's constructive, but also you know the pain points, you know? Where to... We know where to poke. Well...

Since you mentioned that, not to take this too far, but I think one element of that is that it comes so naturally at this point because we know each other so well. But I guess we've just learned not to take it too personally. But sometimes you think about it and you could take it really personally. And we've had a couple of shows where we did take it really personally and that show ended abruptly or we had a show that...

you know, talked about the time that it escalated to the point where like we walked out on each other, that kind of stuff, you know, but anyways, but I think it helps us. Like another, on a positive note, it reflects the,

that we also think differently. And because we naturally think differently in some areas, then that is part of, I think, the dynamic of the show. Because if we all just thought the same way, then we wouldn't have a show. - Completely agreed. But like going back to like, I think the earlier conversation as well, it's like, there's also a big cultural element too. I think probably in some cultures,

people wouldn't do that. Even if they knew each other really well, they wouldn't, it just wouldn't be culturally appropriate. And us having grown up in America, like taking jabs at each other. I mean, that was very part of, I guess, like what we thought was pretty normal and okay to do. - Right. - Yeah. - Right. - But then we get some people like you, well, not you, but we get some other guests that also comment on our bickering and they feel like it's way worse than it is, at least to us.

Yeah, they're like, oh, wow, you guys really go after it. So they're kind of like shocked by it. That could be cultural. Yeah, that's right. Right, because they're, I would guess that they lack the full context and what they're seeing is just the tip of the iceberg and maybe they're sensitive to begin with. And so they sense that tension. So I can imagine myself being in an environment where people are bickering and be like, oh my God, like this feels really uncomfortable without knowing that that's the norm part of the culture. And Justin, to your comment,

My sense without sort of any evidence behind this is that probably in most cultures, if you're close enough, you do bicker. But I think the difference, what you're calling out is that in some cultures,

or our dynamic in particular, it's okay to bicker in public. Yeah, publicly. Publicly bicker. And that's just very, like, we just, you know, take the piss out of each other. But I think there's a lot of Western cultures where it's okay. Whereas I think in Asian cultures probably would be, you know, sort of frowned upon, you know, but probably behind the scenes, they're like busting each other's balls. And I would be curious if you were to go into the language, the lexicon of each

are there phrases like taking the piss, busting balls in every single language? Like what would that sound like in Chinese? What would it sound like in Japanese? If you went to Africa? Yeah, I remember because my native language is Hungarian.

And I remember when I was, I learned English quite early because I was an expat kid. And I remember the first time that somebody asked me to translate the word banter, the British word banter into Hungarian. And there is really no equivalent to banter, right? Yeah. There are, you can kind of shoot around it.

And then it's either much milder, much gentler than banter. And it emphasizes the bonding, but not the challenge. Or you raise the heat and then it emphasizes the hurt, the mutual challenge, but not the bonding. And if you ask me to, like, I was just thinking right now off the top of my head, how do you define it? And I-

I couldn't sort of come up with anything concise, so I just looked it up. So the New Oxford American Dictionary says, the playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks. Right. It's the fact that we do raise the heat a little bit and that there is a seed of truth in our jabs at each other.

is what makes it so fun for us. Otherwise it wouldn't be fun, right? - And we do banter. - Yeah, there is a difference between bantering and bickering, right? Because both of them are feedback and both of them feedback is always, feedback always aims at changing behavior. Now bickering, it doesn't want to go, sorry, bantering, it doesn't want to go deep. It just gives you pressure to test your loyalty. So it deliberately picks up on things that you are sensitive about.

but doesn't want to change those things. So if, let's say things like hair, and it's a very masculine thing to do, by the way, to banter. So it's either masculine people, not necessarily men or not masculine cultures. So bantering is like, I pick up on your hair, I pick up on your mood, I pick up on anything, a possession like your watch or your shoes or whatever like this.

But then if I use it to banter...

and I say something about your hair today, it's not with the intention of changing your hair. It's just with the intention of testing your loyalty. So I will see how you react to the hair, but then actually just imagine we are in a bantering culture. Let's say we are in the gym or we are physical workers or we are in the armed forces. And then your hair looks a certain way. Let's say you did some highlights like blue highlights in your hair.

And then we use it to banter. Then the next day you come and the highlights are gone. You made it worse.

Yeah, because it shows it got to you. Exactly. Yes. Whereas the bickering is in a different context. Let's say it's a married couple or it's very good friends or somebody who genuinely care about each other. And let's say somebody that comes to the office with blue highlights, but it's a very traditional law firm. So we think it's genuinely inappropriate to have that kind of hairdo. And then if we bicker about that, it's with the explicit aim of

the hairdo. And then if you come to office next day without the highlights, that's the right thing to do. So this is the difference. Banta doesn't want to go deep. It doesn't want to actually aim too deep. It's just a constant test of your loyalty. And I really like what you said about the test of the loyalty. That's a very novel angle. And I think there's also just the more conventional way

which is it's just for fun, right? It's just like to pass the time because you're together and...

It's awkward sometimes to have a lot of silence. It's just to amuse yourself. And when I'm looking at just the verb bicker, it's interesting. They have a very different take here, which is argue about petty and trivial matters. And so in a way, we bicker and argue about petty and trivial matters. There is a flavor of that, but we're also doing it very intentionally as well. Because sometimes bickering is just...

almost like unconscious. Like you're bickering, you don't even realize it. Right. You know? And I think ours is a little bit, it's like a mix of banter and bickering. It's like both. Like we're fully aware of how trivial it is. Yeah. And we're doing it on purpose. Like we know it's very trivial. Yeah. Because sometimes you're just, like we're actually doing it to mess with each other. There's an intention to it. Whereas a lot of times bickering is like, you know, you just spent 30 minutes bickering with your wife and you're just like, oh, why do we even bother doing that? Right. Ours is like a, it's a mix of banter and bicker.

But I can't believe we just talked about this. Well, listen, it started from the parenting styles, my parents and the way you can parent people and the way you balance control in relationships. So both of my parents gave us freedom in order that, so they basically, they prioritized relationship over control.

And that means that answers your question. They gave us a lot of freedom with my sister to experiment and find out what we want to do. There was very little interference. And I want to emphasize, whatever happens to you in life, you will blame your parents.

So people who had freewheeling parents like we do, then you look back when you're 40 something years old and then you say, you know, this is why I didn't learn the piano or this is why I didn't become a world champion in anything because my parents didn't give me enough pressure. And some people can- - I'm guilty of that. - You are guilty of which side? - Of exactly your side, what you're describing right now. Because like you, my parents gave me, I would say more freedom than,

much more freedom than your average Asian American kind of family would. And then actually on one of the shows that we did, we were talking about this and I actually...

I actually criticized it by saying like, oh, like I didn't have enough structure. So therefore I didn't develop certain skills in life that I think I need now. And so it's exactly like you're saying, you know, no matter what, there's no, it won't be perfect and you'll end up blaming them for something. Well, exactly. Yeah. So let me, I want to zoom, I want to zoom out and zoom in on this one. Justin, you just made this comment, right? And I wonder if there's a distinction as well.

again, which is that you have different personality types. Now, like, you know, let's assume that there's not like 8 billion different personality types. Like just for simplicity, let's say there's, you know, some- Four to eight. Yeah, whatever archetypes there is, right? And I'm wondering if,

in a way that you were fortunate that your parents, based on your personality and your archetype, right, gave you the level of freedom that you needed to discover what you wanted. Whereas, you know, for Justin, maybe he needed a slightly different parenting style, you know? And so it's not just like one parenting style that's gonna absolutely, like this tension between control and relationship. Right.

it's a spectrum or a range, but I have to imagine that that sweet spot like is dependent on the archetype and how do parents even know that? Right. And so I think, so it's, so it's really like a, like a lottery. It is, it is. And, and,

I'm not sure because I'm not a parenting expert. If I look at teamwork and leadership, then most of the literature would say there are no winning or losing combinations. But each combination creates certain potential or certain opportunities that you either take or not take.

So somebody, what you mentioned is like, you know, I really would have needed more structure. Sometimes I coach people with, who lean to either side. So they really discover the experiment. They have the freedom, but they don't have the structure. They don't have the goal.

And there are other people say, I'm doing fine. I'm on the right path. I'm walking in the right direction. But meanwhile, I'm wondering who the hell I am. Yeah. And it's not going to sort of produce sort of an optimum outcome, even its best case on all dimensions. You know, and what I mean by that is,

So I think in some cases, like you, like my wife, the parents gave a lot of freedom, which then intersected that combination with that. Because I think her personality might be a little bit similar. And so it produced this entrepreneurial spirit, like really can get shit done, had the freedom, got the freedom, and then now is very independent. And you see sort of...

And I think it sounds like you appreciate that. I know my wife appreciates her parents, right? On the other hand, there's probably deficits in some dimensions sometimes as well, right? And so sometimes I'll see something, some facet of her, and maybe I'll share my observation or whatever it is. And I feel like I can link that back to sort of the pros and cons. Although overall, it's very, very, very positive, right? But on the flip side, right? So I spent...

a long period of my life thinking that it was not a good combination. I wish my parents were not as controlling, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, right?

you know, like I would blame them for a lot of different things. And it took a long time for me to then adopt and reframe it essentially. And then I realized that, why there's so many positive aspects, although it was, you know, very traumatic in a lot of areas and they probably could have done better because when, if you go to extreme on either side, it's going to produce traumatic results too. You have to kind of stay in the middle, a little bit more in the middle. But then I realized, wow, like a lot of the things that I'm maybe exceptionally

you know, distinctively good at is, is the result of that. And then what I realized was that, well, you know, if I can reframe this, it's really not their actions that dictates, uh,

- True. - Right? You eventually reframe it in a positive way, but the most important thing is however you get there, you've gotta take this sort of positive framing, otherwise you're fighting yourself. - I perfectly agree with you, but I also think for many listeners, we took it to a very high level of obstruction.

So let's use storytelling as a tool. And imagine that there is a place like in Miami or Southern France or Xiamen here in China, there is a beach with a kind of walkway next to it. We can all imagine it. And let's imagine it's 10.30 a.m. And there are some people in the sun who are, you know, this kind of outdoor gym.

And they are working out, they are doing pull-ups and push-ups and things like this. And then past walk a couple of people wearing a business suit and they're carrying a briefcase and so on. So if you, human beings, they are, especially now in modern times, they are conditioned to want everything.

So whatever you achieved, you automatically create a need for the other side. So this man or woman who wears a business suit and walks with a briefcase in the sun at 10.30 a.m. to another meeting looks at these people working out in the sun, half naked and obviously not in a hurry for anything, and says, isn't that amazing? I wish I could do that. And then those people working out, they look at her or him

And they say, isn't she lucky?

Because it could happen that those people, let's forget it maybe, it could happen that those people just took their tech company public, but most of the people in an outdoor gym at 10, 30 a.m. are not like that. They are unemployed, they are students, they are doing a night shift or why are they there, right? So they're looking at this person, well-dressed beefcase, obviously going somewhere important and then they are missing that half. Whereas the person, the business suit, they are missing this half.

So it's always, we create the other side of the story that we are missing, just like in the parenting case. And then a coach or even a grandparent who wants to help, what they would advise is pause the movie right there and right then, right? And ask yourself, because there are two different answers to this dilemma. One of them is, do you want that?

Stop what you're doing here and walk over there, right? You want to be an important person who has a business, you stop working out at 10.30 in the morning. You just try to look for a job or talk to somebody who can give you an important job like that. On the other side, if you really wish that you could work out at 10.30 in the morning, yeah, just get a job that allows you to do that. This is one. And the other one is a mindset change.

stop missing the other half. And this is something we can all do. We can stop musing about where we are not when we are sitting in front of our computer, especially if you make it a habit. Yeah, and I appreciate what you're saying to me

to make it more concrete right and if we want to use the common sayings like the grass is sort of the grass is greener thing but when we unpack that a little bit is you know there's there's a couple of layers one is you only see that snapshot and so when you're wearing that you know that that hot suit and you have to go to a meeting right you wish in that moment that you could be on the beach hanging out right but the reality is that you know that

if you were on the beach all the time and you didn't have the job, right? You'd be missing out on that as well, right? So it's just that in that moment, like you're only looking at that snapshot, but you actually have to play it out. You have to play the movie out. You have to look at the whole movie to the very end and vice versa. It's like, oh, I see the business suit, but what if you were in 10 meetings every single day? So people only look at in that moment, I wish I was different, right? But-

what are the actual consequences of having to do that sort of long-term? And then going back to, I think this very, very, very profound point that you, that you've made sort of in the show today, which is basically you're, you're the sum of your decisions. But if you outsource those decisions to society, to a company, you know, to,

whatever it is, then you no longer are really living your own life. And so what's really important is having a very clear idea of what your purpose is

and then building your life from that, rather than, again, what you're saying is our life sort of organizes itself spontaneously if we don't have a point of view on it. And I think that's really powerful. - Unless that's what you want. I mean, there are drifters who are really happy, but what we need to know is that the wind, the sea, the road always takes you somewhere. And then we just have to decide if this is where we want to be or not.

And the interesting thing is, for example, my example about the outdoor gym is I brought that up because I do go to a gym like that where I live in Europe now.

And I budget my time very carefully because I work both in Asian time zones and European time zones. And I figure out when I can go to that gym. And then I'm trying to do certain exercises. You know that I'm athletic and I always like give myself a goal, including these frames that I want to do this exercise and that one like calisthenics right now.

And then all these other people, they are doing it and they are really, you know, they are pulling themselves up and turning around, things like this. Oh, that's so cool. Until I start talking to them, I figured out two thirds of them are unemployed, really. And that's why they are working out all day. What's the trade-off? What's the trade-off? What's the trade-off?

The interesting thing is that we are really living in momentous times right now. And this is the very interesting thing, that apart from very young people who have no memory how life was before the pandemic, apart from them, the rest of the world's population has been given an amazing opportunity

because the pandemic just stopped the clock. Put everybody back. You know exactly what you do when your kid did something wrong. Lock them into a room and say, "Think about what you did." - Time out. Yeah, it's like a time out. - Exactly, like a time out. So we all got this opportunity and sat on sofas for hours and hours and hours, figuring out what it is that we really wished we could do. And of course,

by extension that also told us what is it we don't want to do. Now life goes back to normal and it's fascinating to see how people respond. - I just had this image for a moment, just as a kind of a non sequitur. So I had this image, right? Where, so Gabor basically is in this suit.

and he's literally walking on the beach and he's scheduled this time perfectly. So he's gonna be meeting a CEO, but it's not for like an hour and a half. And he goes to that same spot in the beach and people see this, all the people working out see him, it's like, wow, what a badass. And then he literally just takes a suit off, takes his thing off and then underneath he's like in a tank top and he's got all his workout gears and he just goes and do his like crazy calisthenics.

And then all the business people walking by is like, who is this dude? And then he goes back, right? He puts his stuff back on, right? And then he goes to the meeting. Tom Ford sunglasses. And yeah, I like this. I like this. Yes. But it feels like,

is part of the human condition just to miss the other side and going back to this grass is greener effect. We have this tendency just to assume, automatically assume in the moment that whatever we're missing has to be better than what we have now. Is there some evolutionary advantage to that? Like, why is it that that's so common for us? And why is it such a part of the human condition to

Is there, like maybe going back, there was some advantage to feeling that way. What do you think that is? - It is, and especially because you have a two-year-old, as you told me. So the human brain is, it choose information the way rodents choose something to keep their system going. So we are conditioned because those primates that were not particularly interested in what's happening in their environment,

they died out for obvious reasons, right? And rustle in the bushes, strange noise in the sky, something glittering in the sand. Those primates who were not particularly interested, they were chill, they didn't survive. And then our ancestors were the ones who started running the other way around when there was a rustle in the bushes and started going into a shelter when there was a strange rumble in the sky. And then if something glittered in the bushes,

in the sand then they went there and they picked it up and they found something that was useful for them

So we are constantly seeking this kind of input that feeds our mutant brains, basically. Because in the animal kingdom, we don't need this size of brain. We don't need this kind of brain capacity. But we have it. And just like a little kid, we are constantly entertaining ourselves. And then at the beginning, it's about learning, playing, competition. And our professions are like this. This is why we choose something that we are interested in.

So this is the reason why we keep seeking the input. And we turn it into activity. This is why we punish people on all levels by withdrawing these toys for the brain, right? That when you're little, you get a timeout. When you're bigger, you go to jail.

So it's not just a physical punishment or it's not just for separating somebody from the rest of society. It's also a psychological punishment because people know to be disconnected is bad. And this is why we are this way. And then the next question is, what do you use this capacity for? So how do you, in order to, there is old English saying that the devil finds work for lazy hands.

So if you don't particularly have anything to do, or if you're not under control of how you use your hands and your brain or your eyes, then you will find something idiotic to do. Get yourself in trouble. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, the funny thing is that that quote, right, in a way, I think actually...

parallels what you were saying earlier about your life spontaneously organizing around you if you're not intentional. It's exactly what it's saying. Essentially, it's saying if you're not doing anything intentionally, then you're just going to get into stuff. And typically, it's maybe not really good stuff. And I think it's actually the same thing. Going back to Justin's question,

it's, it's interesting because they're this, this, our system one, right. This ability to sort of notice something and then react to it. Right. Like, I mean, you know, social media and your phones and all that stuff sort of, you know, tap into it, right. That, that digital sort of that digital drug or whatever. Right. And it's interesting though, there's multiple angles to this because the question you asked Justin was, well,

if we notice something that we're missing, an alternative sort of experience, then sometimes we have this grass is greener thing, right? And I imagine one evolutionary reason for that

is that maybe there's a better source of food. Right. Or there are better resources. So if we weren't curious about and sort of even almost envious, then we'd always be... We wouldn't progress. We wouldn't progress, right? But there's another angle, like sometimes we select for information when we see something and then we're very judgmental and really critical. So I think that piece is like...

the lion or the tiger and something that's quite different. And then it registers as threatening and then we run away. So I think there's like this instinct in both cases, but in one case, it's like we find better resources and we progress. And the other case it's sort of survival, but both of these are sort of hardwired into our brains. And I imagine there may be, those are just two examples. There might be other types of reactions. - Yeah. And also, how do you say, there is a hierarchy to these needs.

what you're describing is true to a certain extent, but only, how do you say, only fairly primitive animals, when they eat their fill, they just go to sleep. - I do. When I eat, I just go to sleep, so I guess I'm pretty primitive. - Yeah, well, that makes sense. - Yes, of course. - Okay, so let's put it this way. There was this behavioral psychologist that worked with animals called Conrad Lorenz.

design these kind of experiments that he played with pigeons and rats and so on when he created like a lever or a button or something like this and then the animals got food the animals didn't just play this game when they were hungry

they played it way past hunger and already they didn't want the food, but they wanted to figure out how the button worked. And human beings are like that as well. So I work with high-level managers. If these kind of high-level managers, let's say when they ask them when they are 18 or 22, how much money do you need in the bank in order to be comfortable? And then when they reached that point that they stopped,

then the world would be a completely different place. Then Elon Musk certainly wouldn't get up in the morning anymore. - Well, it's a hedonic treadmill effect as well, right? The hedonic adaptation is like, once you get used to a new norm, that becomes your new baseline. And then I was just thinking about, again, like the grass is greener kind of thing, right? So then I was thinking, well, what's the connection with emotion? So, because we know there are lots of different emotions, right? I mean, we probably experience at least 10 every day

every single day. So there's envy, right? Which is the seeing people on the beach thing. Then you have fear and then you have like love and then you have disgust. And it's almost like all of those are like software in our brains. So we recognize something and then the output is one of these emotions. And that emotion has some type of biological evolutionary advantage to your point earlier.

But it's really interesting because you can't, first of all, because emotions in general are fairly consistent, right?

like everyone experiences anger, envy, or fear, or love. If you just think about the top 10 emotions and you know, inside out the movies, right? The Pixar films is really interesting, right? Inside out one and two. And then it's like, okay, was that emotion an evolutionary response to like a survival tactic basically, or it is a survival tactic in and of itself? - Yeah. - Well, right now it's a little bit the other way around. So since we assume evolution is what explains human life,

So we assume any emotion that got this far must have an evolutionary use. - A utilitarian impact. - Exactly. And then we reverse engineer the whole thing. Like guys who wear crazy beards, what could the evolutionary, yeah, that's right. I mean, it's like there is an evolutionary,

explanation for that because they say, you know, males in many species, they were like peacock feathers and so on. They basically advertise this to the environment. I have so many resources. I'm so awesome. I'm so virile that I don't give a damn about this. I can just drag this stupid tail around and I'm still going to survive.

And if you wear a crazy beard or if you, I don't know, you dress up in a certain way, it means I have enough free time and I have enough resources to waste, to stand in front of the mirror for half an hour every day to craft this crazy beard. Which is why in many cultures, crazy beards were like a military,

thing to do, you know, like the cavalry officers and so on. So it's exactly a peacock feather. Well, just like in olden times, being overweight was an attractive feature. Exactly. Because it meant you had enough wealth to eat to be overweight in the first place. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then there are, out of the emotions that you mentioned, some of them are extremely easy to prove what the evolutionary benefit is. One of them is disgust. Disgust is one of the most basic

human emotions that come from the animal kingdom, we know exactly what it's all about. So if our brain judges that something could be bad for you, exactly. Yes, it could be poison, but then we transfer it to other things. So for example, I'm an intercultural leadership coach. When human beings see behaviors that they strongly disagree with,

then they feel disgust on the gut level, right? And then this is why a lot of behavioral changes is not just cognitive. You cannot, for example, diversity, inclusion, intercultural behavior. You cannot just

how do you say, you cannot just explain to people that that behavior is acceptable or even desirable because what they feel is on a very, very deep gut level, right? And if you, I don't know, if you interview people who work in a culture that is very new to them, they are not going to go on a very high abstraction level, what is their problem with that culture, but they will just mention something that repels them.

We can control it as human beings, but it's still there. Some others like envy, much harder to explain. And so going back to, and then this kind of nuanced point. So is it so that, let's say that there's this thing called emotion. So was there...

based on your understanding, was there a period of time where there were people that were not wired for envy or not wired for fear? And then those people ended up like dying out because they didn't have

you know, maybe in the very beginning, like no one really had any emotions, right? And then somehow like the genetic variation and then some people were wired just like inside out with like different emotions. And then over time, the ones that didn't have anger, they just all died out or the ones that didn't have love that just died out. 'Cause you're saying that basically the emotions appeared first,

as some kind of cognitive sort of mutation. And then that became an evolutionary advantage. And then those ended up surviving. It's sort of, you know, like a chicken and egg kind of thing. I cannot answer this question, but I can contemplate this question because you would really have to go and talk to somebody who has scientific accolades

to even begin to answer this question. But even they, those people don't know. This is theoretical because no one can know. Well, we'd have to ask, right? Maybe they did the research. We don't know where the research sits. Exactly, exactly. They would respond and they could even give answers that we don't understand. So, you know, they studied some genes and they do the comparative analysis over half a million years, things like this. One of the things that I really love doing wherever we are with my wife is we,

we visit natural history museums. And then in some natural history museums, they are really good at reconstructing early humans, right? So they show you what an Australopithecus looked like or what a Neanderthal looked like. And I cannot help but stand there or sit there if it's possible when you have this good 3D reconstruction and just stare at those beings and wonder exactly the question,

that you asked me about, were they envious? Were they in love? Were they angry? Were they curious in the same way we are or the way they were curious is more like the way our cat is curious. It's an amazing question to ask. I don't think we know the answer

to these questions, but it is a very important part of just understanding ourselves. - Yeah, if we could find some science, like, I mean, we should think about this. The other thing is, if you look at,

the animal kingdom. So there are obviously many creatures today that may not have this full range of emotions because they're less evolved. So what also would be interesting is if you look at creatures that are less evolved or are simpler,

what range of emotions do they actually have? You know what I'm saying? Because then you could actually look at like creatures today, like an insect. So does an insect have anger and disgust? Maybe a more limited- Not in our sense. Yeah, it's more limited range. And then I think you could probably learn from that. That's an interesting thing because it offers a different perspective to look at things. You know, oftentimes we think of our own human success in terms of survival, in terms of what we deem as

markers of success. We can build technology, we have AI, we're building these cities and infrastructure and all these things that we think are marvels of our human intellect. But meanwhile, from a natural perspective, if you look at insects, back to what you're saying, you could make the argument that insects in terms of survivability and reproduction are way more successful than humans are, right? In terms of from an evolutionary standpoint, not from a survival standpoint, right? So far, yeah.

And so, I mean, obviously we're going to be very biased in terms of leaning towards the human bias, I guess. But I think if we're just looking at the natural order of things, you know, insects, assuming they don't have all the same or feel all the same emotions that us humans do, right?

are just as successful or if not more successful in terms of surviving up until a very long time, right? So it's like- Well, it's like almost, like it's a very interesting point you make because it's almost like as humans develop intellectual capacity, then we need to evolve other cognitive abilities just to keep up with the challenges that arise from us leveling up as humans. Because if we're just sort of like

not as sophisticated, we don't communicate, then maybe we won't even have conflict. And so the fact that we can even communicate, it creates the capacity for conflict. - We can destroy ourselves because of these emotions that we have and because of our ability now. - Well, with humans, everything starts and ends with reflection.

This is why when we want to solve a problem in life, like the ones that we mentioned right now, I don't really know who I am. I'm having a midlife crisis. I don't know what kind of parent I should be, what kind of profession. We always sit down and we start with reflection. Why? Because even though starfish and scorpions also have the kind of hormones that cause our own emotions, they have testosterone, they have serotonin, they have dopamine, they have all these kinds of neurotransmitters.

but they don't have emotions as long as they don't have reflection, they don't have consciousness. So if authors like Daniel Dennett, they analyzed behavior

like in a way there is addiction in insects, right? But you cannot call it addiction because there is no reflection. They are not aware of their own emotions. So a starfish can have dopamine, but you cannot say then the starfish is happy. It's just a biological function. So this is one thing, but because everything starts with this kind of reflection, so everything,

Everything, your life goals, your family, your choices only make sense if you can reflect on them. This is why very young children are not human beings yet because they cannot reflect. They don't know if they are happy. They don't know what's wrong with them. They don't know why they like certain situations. This is what your son is learning right now. Because it is all about reflection and introspection, it is also extremely subjective.

So you know what matters for human beings is what matters for human beings. Look at the fear of global warming right now. I think it's fascinating because we keep being afraid of destroying the planet. Actually, we're not destroying the planet. We have no choice. We have no chance of destroying the planet. We are just destroying ourselves.

except for some kind of doomsday sayers, very few human beings say, well, listen, if the oceans rise and temperature rises, we will all die. - Right, the earth itself is- - But the starfish and the scorpions will be fine, so it's all good. - Well, the earth, well, I mean, there is,

Unless the earth sort of like blows up and becomes a ball of fire, right? But the incremental temperature change is really interesting. What you're saying is that we're causing or the things that we're doing across, you know, arguably, right? At least most of the scientists believe that it's causing the temperature change. And if the water rises, the earth is not itself in that sense dying, but we might.

And at the same time though, if we do a lot of toxic stuff to the earth, then that would, so some of the stuff is sort of in the context of like our survival environment. And then some of it is like actually harming the planet. Well, yes, but it's only harming the planet as far as we are concerned.

So it is harmful if it's harmful for us. Even toxic, yeah. Even if a planet is... Because there's plenty of planets probably full of uranium or something. Yes. But we don't... I mean, the planet is more resilient than we might think it is. And it almost recovers. I mean...

the planet has been hit with catastrophic asteroids way back in the day and made the entire world basically on fire. And it eventually over thousands or if not millions of years recovered and we see the planet as it is today. Yeah. So I think I'm, I'm just echoing what you both are saying. Like we come from this doomsday scenario. It's doomsday from a very human centric point of view. Yes. Doomsday for us. For life. Yeah. That doesn't mean it's not important. Obviously it's important to us.

but from the planet's perspective, the planet will be around long after us. - And it's the same game that we play with our own life in leadership, in parenting and everything. So when a parent says,

"Gabor, give me some advice because my daughter is becoming an insufferable brat." It's from his or her own perspective that this behavior will change. So it's not saying it's, of course, this person is worried for the daughter, but because this person has a trajectory in mind and that other human being is,

digressing from that trajectory. Or if a CEO says, my company is not going the way I want it to go, my team is not behaving the way I want it to, it's extremely subjective. They have either a direction or a range of directions in mind. And what they are really saying is those people are not going in the way where I want them to go. And then we

we freak, then we panic. - Right, it's the controlling nature in us to want to control things a certain way towards what we expect it to be.

And any sort of deviation from that, depending on how controlling you are, feels like, oh my God, everything is falling apart. - Yes. - It's based on the expectation. - It's based on the expectation. And in that moment, it's very easy to panic and then to look at the other side of the grass that is always green, right? To stop with that briefcase, to look at those people who are working and I said, "What am I doing with my life? Am I crazy? I'm sweating my balls off in this suit."

It's a mixture. So it's a very subjective thing. And I don't even know how we got here. I hope it's useful. No, I think there's a point. Yeah, I mean, I think like...

Donald Trump's not the only one, again, that can do the weave. - The weave, yeah. - We can do the weave. - Oh, dear. - So I've had this arc in my head that I've kept, and I think I wanna go back to the role that you play with the coaching, the executives piece, right? Okay, so we've talked about a lot of human tendencies, like biological tendencies, cognitive tendencies, right? And then the end result is that a lot of these things, these expectations, this subjectivity causes us to,

experience suffering. Like experience things in a way where we're not feeling joy, we're not feeling the emotions that we would consider like happiness and contentment and all that stuff, right? And then we end up wasting our life. So I wanna go back to the executive. So how do you, like, so what do you do with them, right? I mean, because this is so, it's not just the company's performance. This is tied to like,

their life and their family and all this stuff. What does a first conversation even sound like? What are your objectives? - So the first coaching conversation looks like taking this person into a vault, locking the door, assuring the person that what we talk about will not get out.

Especially if you work in a large organization, this is one of your number one fears. And this is why confidentiality is one of the core values of executive coaching. So you close the door

you say, whatever you say stays between us. I can report to your HR about your progress. Like we are going well, we are not going well. We talked about this, we talked about this, but I'm not going to tell them what you said and what you promised and what commitment you made or what you complained about. That is not getting out of the room. Now, if you take somebody into the vault and close the door, immediately becomes an echo chamber.

So basically whatever they say out loud is they are going to stop, start hearing themselves. Basically the question is, where are you now? And how does it compare with where you want to be? And that already starts an amazing conversation. And this is why questioning like active listening, opening with the right questions is one of the skills that they train coaches to do.

Because when you open your mouth and then you say something, you add value as Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most famous coaches in the world says, then you influence the other person. Whereas if you ask open questions, you don't influence the other person. You just invite the other person to add more content themselves.

And you have, this is the fascinating thing about it because a coach is like a personal shopper for a rich person or like an interior designer. You have absolutely no idea when you walk into the conversation where that other person wants to get. You have no idea. They don't have an idea either, right? So somebody, let's say bought this space and I am the designer. The coach is like this. I walk in and I will start asking you questions.

And very often, if you're a good interior designer, the questions are not about kind of bricks and wooden surfaces. It's about your life. How do you live? What do you want this space to do for you? So it's the same kind of thing about the organization.

Sometimes it happens very often actually where it happens is that the person feels they were promoted too quickly. So their skills didn't catch up with their responsibilities yet. There is anxiety. If you want it, you can call it an imposter syndrome. It interferes with that decision-making and so on. Then we look at that.

In other cases, there is a little bit of refusal of responsibility. It's like, don't fix me, fix my team. Then we look into this a little bit deeper. In some cases, a person has a very strong personal vision and they are wondering if this position, this job, this country is going to take them where they want to be. And then I could give you half a dozen more. So there are different scenarios. Then what's the difference between this kind of executive coaching versus coaching?

life coaching because sometimes the output of the life coaching arguably might be even more important than the executive coaching piece because if you don't have the right frame for your whole life, you might be doing something that you're miserable at.

- Well, there are a couple of differences. There is this funny saying, every profession has its funny self ironic sayings. And then in executive coaching is that every coaching is live coaching after the third session. And actually it can go quite deep. A couple of differences. Number one, executive coaching is typically paid by the company, right? So there are certain,

life related issues that the company is not interested to fix, so to speak. So burnout, yes, it's absolutely our business.

Mental health, absolutely our business. Clarity about decisions, absolutely our business. Parenting, not so much. Exercise, not so much. Diet, not so much. So an executive coach must know if we verge into these topics, where does this lead? So for example, I was coaching a very senior executive

And then one session, two sessions, very expensive these sessions are. So if you don't deliver, then you feel guilty as the coach.

And we just really didn't get anywhere. So basically his attitude was, all right, let's do the coaching because the company wants me to do the coaching. Let's check this box already. The way you would go into a feedback discussion that you don't want to have or a sales discussion with somebody who obviously will not buy. And it was very difficult, very difficult, very difficult. And then once, I think it was, we were third session, the beginning of the third session. And we were talking about leadership and he had this half sentence, ha ha.

He said something like, you know, leadership, I don't know. I think I got my success because I'm a good technical manager and a good financial manager and I get the bottom line, things like this. And this whole leadership thing is like, how could I be like a superstar leader when I even find it hard to manage my own family? Half sentence. And then he expected us to glide on from this, but for the coach, it's a huge red flag.

And he said, aha, okay, you have to tread extremely carefully here. But suddenly you realize there is, you know, this like you cannot go into life coaching then. You cannot say, well, let's look at your family, shall we? But you have to uncover something because you can see here the experience with the family spills over to corporate leadership. So this person basically thinks there are these three people at home.

that I would really like to move in a certain way, but they refuse to move the way I want them to move. And then I'm coming into the office where I'm responsible for 350 people. So- - There's an irony to it. - How the hell am I supposed to manage the 350 when I just failed with the three? And this kind of mindset can really spill over. Finally, we did have that breakthrough.

And it's sometimes ridiculous how smart people, extremely smart and driven and highly trained people can get stuck on a simple issue like his son's career choice. And then how relatively easy it is to get unstuck with that kind of perspective change. And the 50%, the remaining 50% is called habits because it's much easier to decide what you're going to do than to actually do it. Much, much more difficult.

So if we only got a dollar every time, we stumbled onto the right trajectory in our lives and careers and so on. But didn't follow up, we would be much richer than we are. - Yeah. I'm thinking, I wanna make a little pivot now because I'm thinking about the fact that you said you spend 1/3 of your time in Shanghai, meaning 2/3 of the time you're outside of Shanghai traveling.

You just mentioned that you're working with all these high-level executives abroad who might be stationed or positioned in different countries. What is your sense now from the outside looking back in, what is the perspective from the outside about China in general? That's a fascinating question.

And when I'm back in China, so some of the listeners might not know that last year I published this book called "Dragon Suit," which is about foreign executives in China and how they go through this expat experience. It was a very weird thing to publish this book in 2023.

because some authors, they go through this process where life can change the topic of your book at any moment, right? So I started researching this book during the pandemic and then it got published in last year.

It was throwing back and forth, back and forth, this topic of foreign business and foreign executives in China. It's based on a couple of interviews. Most of the people I interviewed who were in China at that time, now they are out of China and the perceptions keep changing. Now you come back here and just like in anything else these days, I feel a huge polarization. And I think that's the name of the game these days that,

The world splits into two camps and those two camps stop listening to each other. So unlike smart camps who know what is happening in the other camp. So this is why this is not a new Cold War because during the Cold War, both sides were very interested in the other side.

But now it's a kind of mental tribalism where we don't even want to listen to the other side. - What are these two camps that you're talking about? - Right now, the two camps are I come back to China, I speak about the book, I speak about the future of foreign business in China, I speak about international expat careers and so on, especially on the executive level. And people who are in China right now, and especially if they weathered the pandemic through in China,

first of all, they are convinced that the world rotates around China for a number of reasons. And then when anybody suggests otherwise, they get a little bit defensive and aggressive, right? So if anybody says, well, look at how India is coming up, then they have this kind of

vibrating voice full of emotions there, but look at India, it doesn't have the high-speed trains. I don't know what it is. - And who are these people? - They are either, well, I mostly move in corporate circles. So they are either long-term expats, you know, came here on an expatriate, classic expatriate contract. - But they're foreigners, not Chinese? - They could be foreigners, or they could be people who are building very strong local careers.

And there are certain things that they will tell you as inevitable. Obviously, China is way ahead of the West in terms of technology. Obviously, the next decade will belong to China. Obviously, the current difficulties with investment, GDP, real estate, and so on, it's just a temporary glitch, right? We are almost over the hump.

Obviously Belt and Road is working, all these kinds of things. And then you go back to Europe and especially Western Europe. I haven't been in the US for a while, but you go back to Western Europe and it's the opposite hysteria and the opposite way of denial. So I sit down in places like Munich and Paris

I sit down with high-level executives who want to send somebody to China or they want to send a delegation to China to negotiate. And they are asking me questions like, do you think there is a danger that they will be arrested? They are sending people into China with burner phones and burner laptops, which are like brand new. And they don't keep proprietary information because they are terrified of being hacked. And very importantly for China,

If they can, they avoid visiting the PRC. And it's very, very difficult because especially if you spend time here or if you spend time in and out, you know, both sides are ridiculous. Both sides are completely ridiculous. But for a number of reasons, one of them is the pandemic because it undermined people-to-people exchange to an absolutely unprecedented extent. I think China and the rest of the world hasn't been so isolated since the 70s.

This is number one. And number two, because digitally China is inapproachable, it's completely bulletproof. So if you're sitting in Paris or in Boston or in Tokyo and you decide, I want to open a company in Brazil or in Congo or in Myanmar, you can go online, you can reach out and you can find somebody on social media and you can ask them, look around, what's the weather like there?

I'm trying to provide this kind of service. Have you got it there? Do you have bottled water there? Do people want chocolate con churros in your country?

In China, it's from the outset, it's completely impossible to do. It's like a one-way mirror, like in a police station or like FBI interrogation. I don't know because I don't, you know, it is, you contemplate this every time you visit China and then you have to switch on and off the VPN, things like this, but I'm not sure why it is. It's now it's...

A lot of young people, they think it has been like this all the time. They think it's some remnant from a previous era. They don't know it started in 2008.

but it makes it very, very difficult for the rest of the world. So the interesting thing is almost every week I open some online publication, including like Forbes magazine or Wall Street Journal, and I read an opinion piece by somebody who is ethnically Chinese or even mainland Chinese saying that,

Foreigners, they oversimplify China, they stereotype China, they think China is a monolith, they should understand us, they should nuance their picture. Who will give them a chance to do that? Where would the information come from? And then unfortunately this situation perpetuates. And you know it's a little bit like whatever great or horrible thing you imagine about China,

it is going to bounce off the echo chamber and get infinitely magnified, right? So if you are one of those YouTube influencers who basically says on your channel, the last 25 years have been a reality show and China has won in all fields. You can say that and people will follow your channel because they don't have the opposite side of the information. It's like the new...

- Netflix. - Yes. - So all of these are just these semi, you know, historic, not historical, but semi-fictional accounts. - Right. - And, you know, and then there's different channels and you're just basically watching different dramas. - Yes. - Of people sort of trying to paint a narrative. Well, I am curious, right? So it sounds like there's this one frame of

I wouldn't say blind optimism, but let's just say like runaway optimism from one camp. And then the other side, it's this fear and anxiety and skepticism frame, right? Of the people who are in these camps, do they...

ever travel back and forth? Like, is it like, if you do travel back and forth, would you still hold those frames? Or is it more just the people who, because of that frame, then just refuse to travel? - Yeah, so one smart thing by the Chinese government has been this visa-free entry for selected countries, right? I think that was a well-chosen tactic because it makes people actually visit the country, which is always a good idea.

um and and then people who people who who travel to china and see it for those two weeks that are allowed on this visa-free entry they they obviously return to their country with a completely different picture with a more nuanced picture then obviously if you think that china is a i don't know that china is a wonderland which is like a futuristic city some something something that you can see in science fiction everybody's

bloody rich because one of the misperceptions about Chinese people in other places is that everybody has a lot of money. Why? Because it's the affluent who immigrate.

or emigrate from China and emigrate to other countries. - Oh, so that's interesting. So the perspective from the outside, obviously we're talking in generalities, but is that a common perspective from the outside that everyone in China is rich? - Absolutely. - Really? - That's so crazy because that in itself just should give us optimism. 'Cause I mean, back in the day, everyone thought people in China were poor as fuck, right? - Of course, yeah.

- Because that's what I thought the stereotype would still be today. For some people, they think this is just like the country is about to collapse. Everyone's just like bored. - If you go there, if you go to these places where people have this stereotype, then it's where the economic immigration took place. So that is where people went from Wenzhou, went there and then they started up a shop which sold sunglasses, something like this.

worked very hard or a noodle shop or a laundry or something like this, saved every coin, send their kids to school and so on. But now it's the affluent middle class that sells a flat in a city like Shanghai or Beijing or Shenzhen. And then they go over to a place where they are absolutely rich. 'Cause if you, let's say, if you look at square meterage on square meterage, you sell something here in Shanghai that's three or four times

okay, it's not Paris or Barcelona, but if you go to a mid-sized city, you can buy whatever you want. And plus you buy a BMW SUV. And then this is what local people see. You know what's funny? It's a little bit like you hold a certain currency, like the dollar, and then you go to like Indonesia or like whatever. And it's like one to a million. You're all of a sudden, you're kind of rich. It's like always how we thought about the peso, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yes. And I think,

Obviously, this differs in different parts of the world, but I've talked to just anecdotally a few people in the US and I think...

we're always slightly defensive. Like we try to stand up for like, oh, it's really nice over here. It's super modern and all that stuff. - You mean here in China? - Yeah, so like when I'm talking to people in the US, I try to, I kind of play it up a little bit because I just, I'm afraid that people might have a negative. - Because you assume what you're gonna be up against. - Exactly. I think you- - Are you familiar with the concept of cognitive dissonance? - Yeah.

That's what it is. So basically it would reflect on you badly and it would cause internal conflict if you say bad things about what you chose to live. - Yeah, and also you just wanna stick up for like what you know. - No, but I don't think, I get your point and it makes a lot of sense, but I think at least I'll speak for myself in my situation is that rightly or wrongly, if I talk to someone who hasn't been here and is let's say living in the States,

My default is that I assume that they have a certain perspective of China. - Right. - Given the media they're reading there, or what I think they're reading there, given the rhetoric that's happening in America about China, given how basically China is the enemy, full spectrum, full stop in America, you know, that's what the politicians are saying anyway.

And so I go in assuming that's what they believe already. And now I could be incorrect. I could be wrong in any given situation, but that's my assumption. So when I talk, I'm already like bracing myself for like some sort of argument from them. You already have a higher level of awareness than most people.

Because most people don't expect this kind of pushback because just look at the most viral, the most biased influencers online, how many times they use the word the facts.

They love using that term. - Right, right. - The truth, the facts, the shocking truth. There are these influencers, every single video is called the shocking truth about this and that. - They're just trying to send a message they don't care. - What you wouldn't believe. But that's also just playing the social media algorithm game because you have to be kind of polarizing extreme to get any views and clicks in the first place. - Yes. - So it's a lot of it, I think is just part of the ecosystem of social media. - If you're the consumer of that kind of media,

And then you make this kind of discovery and then you go into that kind of situation. You don't expect the opposite, if you see what I mean. You already brace for the counter opinion, most people don't, right? Most people just believe what they see online or what they read in a newspaper. And then they come in and they are shocked it's not exactly like that. So I talk to people who are on short-term visits here and then they come back and then most of them are short-term business visitors.

Then I meet them here or on a short-term visit, or they go back to Europe and they say, "Wow, it's interesting. So, you know those people I see in China who buy all the apartments? So they are not the typical Chinese people, are they?" Because I remember that they took us, you know, the Shunda or somewhere. And we are looking out of the minivans window and then not, people seem to be struggling, are they? Or some of the factory workers who work in our factory, they are worse off than our workers in the German factory.

The level of understanding is still very low. Well, there's a full spectrum, right? I think what you're talking about is you're talking about a certain... Because that's why I was shocked by, oh, everyone thinks people are rich in China? Because the Americans that I talk to think everyone is poor in China. So that's the point I want to address, right? But I actually want to zoom out on that one, right? Because I think there's lots of different data points, right? So I want to build on that because I...

I do something similar to what Justin is. And the reason is that, so I've been here for a long time and I see the good and the bad, right? And for whatever reason, I have this assumption that maybe other people are not as knowledgeable or aware of how, especially the good things, because I view it here more good than bad. Right. But I'm a realist as well.

And so what I do, and I have a bit of a sales personality. So what I'll do is I'll brace myself. But even before bracing myself, I'm going to like posture. I'm going to sell people and it's like, did you know? It's actually, you know, and I'll sort of like sell it like it's really quite amazing. And recently, and this is very limited data points, the response generally is like, oh, I know.

Right? And so I'm totally building on your point, but it's a different response. It's like, oh yeah, like, and I'll sell for like, you know, 30 seconds and I won't go too hard just to test. And then their reaction would be like, oh yeah, I've seen like, I mean, it's crazy in China, man. I can't wait. That's like the number one place on my bucket list. Wow. Right. And so-

Of course, there's some potential reasons. One, it might be like selection bias, right? Like just maybe naturally the people that I talk to, right, maybe based on my whatever environment or like that, or maybe because the type of person I am, people, maybe they want to please me or whatever it is. But I think whatever it is to collect sort of all of our sort of collective thoughts is that

we don't know the level of understanding and it really depends on sort of the person. - Right. - Right? And so there's probably a range, but it sounds like more and more people are sort of aware and the characters, caricatures appear. So there's probably some people that think that people are poor as fuck.

But that narrative continues to change. We've talked to Frank Tai about this as well, like perception of- - And there's also a seed of truth in either extreme. But it's when we paint with a broad stroke and just use that one extreme to characterize the whole thing, that's when it becomes a problem. - So it just shows the opportunity for not making a lot of assumptions and having conversations just to like,

rather than trying to advocate or explain is actually to try to understand first. And then once you understand, then you can actually have a dialogue. - The real point here is, are you curious about the other side or are you just happy that the conversation ended here? This is the very important thing. So in daily life as well, let's say you are contemplating between a Samsung phone and an Apple phone. You are going to choose one way or another.

Or you can just infinitely collect information about it and then do a PhD in electronics and you still cannot choose a phone because information is infinite. But the question is, once you kind of made up your mind that you're going to buy an Apple phone, do you still compare it with a Samsung phone to look at what the advantages of an Apple phone are? Or are you, you know, did you first decide on an Apple phone and then

just say to everybody who listens that Samsung phones are shit. And when they tell you, well, but actually the battery lasts longer. I don't know too much about it, but then you just attack them. - Yeah, well, it's being open-minded. Like it's having a point of view. - I'm curious, yeah. - It's having a point of view, but being,

continuously open-minded and like constantly refining your view of the world rather than having a set. - To do yourself the favor that you know the other side of the argument, whatever you think. So you think it with a reason. And this is what's going away. And this is why it's so difficult to have a conversation, right? Because then it very easily turns into an emotional argument.

by the dinner tables and also online. And here in China, and when I go out to China, I feel this very, very painfully on both sides. So you can, you know, any consultant will hit you with a two by two matrix. So you can find people who are in China and love China

or they are committed to China, pro-China, let's say. And there are people who are in China and anti-China. And there are people outside of China who believe China is the future. And there are people outside of China who think China is hell. But what I don't see these days is any kind of information movement between these camps. And that is extremely hurtful. Well, it sounds like there's limited information, especially across China.

the people, first of all, outside of China versus in China, and then between the love China and don't love China. I also think what you're describing, this lack of information shared or even willingness to understand between both sides, going back and forth between both sides, really describes

almost any divisive political ideology we can talk about right now, right? We can talk about any conflict around the world. You're gonna have two divisive sides who are just stuck in their ideology and they've already decided, like you said, that's what I'm gonna believe. And there will be no communication. The only communication you will see is to try to discredit the other side. - And this is very interesting because if you think like that

And if you refuse to see the other side of the argument, you are not going to be able to make responsible decisions. - And you're not gonna grow. - Not just grow, responsible decisions. Because if you make a tangible decision, very often it will turn against you because you just didn't prepare for the risks because you didn't see the other side of the argument, right? And maybe this is why so many young people just want to be influencers rather than decision makers.

because this kind of mindset doesn't prepare them for making decisions where you have to see the other side of the picture, right? So if you're a doctor, you can say this person is healthy, but then reserve the possibility that they have a dysfunction and follow up on it. Or this person may have this kind of illness, but let's look at the other side. Let's look at maybe this person doesn't have this. So keep gathering facts.

Whereas now the zeitgeist is that take sides emotionally and just gather facts that support that argument. Now, the people who are most successful here in doing business with China are obviously the ones who see both sides of the arguments, right?

They are definitely, they are the ones who say, yes, multinational companies in China, they are in trouble. Yes, many policies, they make it more difficult to do business. Yes, I'm not going to get so much support from my headquarters because they are freaked out and they are listening to Western media and they are biased, right? It's important. But on the other hand, there are certain opportunities that the pessimists don't see. So if you see both sides of the coin, then...

you can connect places that otherwise don't talk to each other. - I think maybe echoing what you've hinted at also is maybe too many of us want to be heard, but don't want to listen, right? And I feel like in some ways I need to remind myself of that because I love the analogy that you made with the phones and technology, because

Technology, as we know, evolves and changes so rapidly. And that also symbolizes, I think, the state of the world. Certainly countries and the dynamics between countries and within the countries themselves are rapidly changing. And I think our tendency so often is,

Because it almost takes work to arrive at a certain conclusion and belief system. And once we arrive at a certain belief system, we feel like, aha, we finally arrived here. I'm going to hold on tight to this belief system. I see. And I think in terms of this discussion, consistency is almost the enemy because life is not consistent. There is nothing about life that is really all that consistent. So when we hold something to be either always good or

or oh is bad, we know there's something wrong with our belief system because that is not reality. And therefore, we need to constantly assess from the other side if our opinions or our feelings hold true. But the problem with that is that takes a lot of work and that takes...

- Letting go of ego. - Then you have to use empathy with the other side's viewpoint, right? So just imagine you're truly and profoundly believe in something. It can be a supernatural being, it can be a political party, it can be a principle like inclusion and equality. And imagine that somebody tests it. It could be your empathy.

it can be your family member, it can be your kid one day. They grow up to the age when they say, well, listen, mom or dad, you know, they challenge God or they challenge your political beliefs or they say, well, men and women are not really equal, are they? Right? And then that's the moment of truth because you have the authority to punish the other side emotionally or even physically.

And stop the conversation. Basically just make it easy for yourself and make them stop asking these questions. Or you can stop and think, well, listen, how did you get to this conclusion? You try to mentally recreate that side of the argument, or if you're in the position, even ask them, what, to me, what makes you say that, right? And then you can continue the conversation and respond. The easy way is just stop the conversation because it's uncomfortable for me. Yeah.

But then now I understand what you said when you said it will make you stop growing, especially if you have the authority to stop the conversation, which is a CEO, which is a politician, which is a parent. - And I think what makes it so much more complicated, I think in my experience, what keeps reoccurring when either I'm too stubborn about a certain position I have, or when other people are too stubborn usually about certain positions they have,

I think typically it's when morality gets involved into the equation and they hold on to certain political beliefs because they feel it's morally the correct position to have. And maybe for good reason, but I feel like once you attach morality or your morals onto something, then it becomes almost impossible to move away because morally you feel you are in the right.

Whereas if it's something that really doesn't have to do with morals and you're talking like, oh, I think this brand of whiskey is the best whiskey. And you're like, no, I don't think it's the best whiskey. Have you tried this whiskey? And I try that whiskey. I'm like, you're right. That's even better whiskey. Like I'm not so attached to it anymore because there's no morals involved. But so often when we're talking about things

especially politics, inevitably morality gets tied into the situation somehow. And it's painted in this picture of good and evil, right and wrong. And so that really tugs at, I think, the core of

our strongest human tendencies to latch onto things. Because what is stronger? I mean, we see this with religion all the time. Why is religion and religious beliefs so powerful and why has it shaped the world? It's because of the morality attached to it. And morality moves so many people so intensely. And we've seen that throughout history. And so I think that

complicates a lot of the discussion sometimes. - So let's simplify it again, because morality is a big word and it doesn't necessarily help people to make the right decisions. So let's look at it this way. And I would like to go back to two concepts that we already talked about. Number one, life sometimes takes you to directions where you don't want to go. George Michael sang, "Suddenly my life is like a river taking me places I don't want to go."

And the other one is what makes us human is consciousness, awareness, reflection, right? So...

I still remember when I was a, I was not a consultant at that time. I was an interpreter. This is how I first met very powerful politicians, CEOs, and so on. One thing that thoroughly impressed me about those people, although they had more money, more power, more clarity, higher education, that's not what impressed me. What impressed me is when they didn't know something, they just said, I don't know.

On lower levels of the same hierarchy, people were afraid to admit they didn't know something. But on the top of the hierarchy, somebody asked somebody a question. It could be a factual question, like what is the GDP per capita of this country? Or it could be something about the future. If we do this, what will be the consequences? And these powerful people in the meetings I interpreted said,

They gazed out in distance and then said, I have no idea. I will ask Bob or I will look it up or I will think about it. And it was, to me, it was a revelation. Was that consistent? Like, did you ever find...

to that? Like, was it like every single powerful person had a very clear distinction? No, no, no, some, some. Okay. It makes sense to me, right? If I think about the frame again that you hold so that if you are very clear about what you really know, because obviously these people are powerful, right? So if they're always like, I don't know, then they would never have gotten there. But clearly there's, you know, an area, a circle of competence there

that they're very confident in and they're able to weigh in on things. But when they don't know things outside of that perimeter, they're asking questions. And that mindset then reinforces a behavior. The behavior is asking questions and so their perimeter grows over time

And if you're constantly saying, I know everything, that damages probably your credibility as well, because people then realize that, oh, you actually don't know really about that other stuff. That's why philosophers are obsessed with humility and morals, because the more responsibility you have, the more often you have to ask yourself that question. What I am saying right now, am I really sure about that? You know, just look at something very simple, like money.

right if when you're young you have little money on your own so mainly what to do with my money you you have to ask yourself every now and then uh of course maybe maybe you saved a little bit shall i spend it on a vacation or shall i buy a new desk because because now i got promoted and and i spend more time at home working but

But the more money you have, the more often you have to ask this question. Is this a good investment? Is this responsible? Is this moral? Do I need this money more or does my cousin or my daughter or my mother or whoever it is? So it is more and more. And this stop and then reflect as a parent.

as well. We parrot certain things, but then we have to ask ourselves, wait a minute, listen, I don't know, my little son or daughter, lying doesn't get you anywhere. You should never do it. It's like, then the kid will come back to me and says, no, no, it's not true. The teacher just asked me, did you do your homework? I said, I did, even though I didn't, I was off the hook. It solved the problem. Then I have to ask myself some very serious questions.

If you're a corporate executive, this can escalate to an absolutely ridiculous account where basically every hour you have to stop and ask this question a couple of times. Where is this taking me? Am I sure about this? How do I explain to somebody else to whom it is not inevitable? And then it makes you reflect on

One reason why people don't do that is because it undermines your self-confidence. It's so much easier to feel self-confident. This is why ideologies, religions, kind of ready-made systems of thought work so well.

because it gives you a certain kind of self-confidence. You are sure it's like this because somebody said it's like this, or it's written, or this is the procedure. You don't ask these questions. But the more responsible you are for yourself and for others, the more often this question is necessary.

- Right, and it's Spider-Man, right? It's Uncle Ben. - I was just gonna say, I don't understand either of those references. - With great power comes great responsibility. - I was just about to say. - Uncle Ben is one, not the food brand, is it? - No, no, it's from the Spider-Man story movie.

You have to explain it to me. - He has Spider-Man, he has his uncle called Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben got shot and died. And that's kind of like part of Spider-Man's origin story. And one of his last words, I think to Peter Parker, who is Spider-Man is with great power comes great responsibility. It's a famous quote in the comic books of Spider-Man. - I heard it, I didn't know it comes from Spider-Man, but you know, we very often underestimate the power that we have. You don't need superpowers.

You just have to be in any kind of position to make decisions over other people's lives. - Well, and I think that goes back to the morality piece. And by the way, the phrase I think was originally coined by Voltaire, but you know- - With great power comes great responsibility. - Yeah, I think so. - Ha, I will look that up.

And the same about everything else. Like for example, look at how stars like pop stars or a standup comedian, what kind of responsibility they have to take. They poke into some very sensitive issue and then suddenly either they influence thousands of millions of people to do something that is undesirable and then they have to take the responsibility or they damage themselves. I mean, just imagine these are all human beings.

CEOs, astronauts, pop stars, they're all just human beings. Just imagine, what you always wanted to do is run certain kind of projects. You wanted to build airplane, then you were interested in the sourcing, the financing, the investment thing. This is what you're interested in. Or you're a pop star, you just wanted to sing songs, right? And then suddenly somebody comes in microphone and says, "So which candidate should we vote for?" Or, "What's your position on abortion rights?"

Why is this my bloody business? That's not what Elon would say. It is my bloody business because I'm basically the real vice president. Something like that. Like seriously, right? Like Elon's like, I am the real president. That's why they keep saying like Elon is like the real winner in this election. Something in me is afraid he's right.

Yeah, yeah. We are beginning to live in a James Bond movie, guys. Oh, Spectre. Well, he just made how many billions of dollars? I mean, just from the market cap increase, it's crazy. I don't even know what this means for anybody, including him. I think he's... I mean, it's scary. We'll see how it plays out. But he went from being in the top pantheon of technology...

of innovative people in the history of humankind to now like next level, the James Bond level stuff. That's the scary part. - Yeah, yeah. That is the kind of crossover between business and politics and technology. I don't know how a single human being can deal with this like Starlink in the Ukrainian war. - That would be like, that's like if DaVinci

I know I'm conflating the time periods, but that would be like Da Vinci taking over the Medicis. - Okay, there is a counterfactual for us there. - Yeah, they're probably not in the same era, but literally Da Vinci then ends up taking over everything. - Maybe. - Holy shit. - Yes, maybe with similarly disastrous results. But my dilemma is even more simple. Like for example,

Just imagine all of us have 24 hours in a day. And he is ahead of how many, six companies? I talked to somebody who provides some kind of services like cryonic chambers. And he says, you know, this is the cryonic chamber that Elon Musk uses. Like when?

So how do I imagine- - Like that he personally uses? - Yeah, because apparently there is this fad that you sit in a cabin, which is terribly cold. - Oh, cryotherapy, right? - Yes, exactly. It triggers some response from your body, which is good for your immune system, things like this. And then- - Very popular. - All of the rich people use this. And I said, "Do I imagine this guy walking away from his daily duties and sitting in this cabin for an hour? Or do I imagine him in the hour and like five different advisors,

Louis XIII's court and in the meantime they are reading stuff through the wall of this chamber and then him giving instructions maybe he does spend a lot of time on X yeah so this is weird like it'd be like a full-time job just to read it literally a full-time job just to read like you know maybe a half-time job just to read all of his tweets yeah right yeah does he write them

Personally, do you think he writes them? He's gotta, right? He has to. I just watched a video about a team who worked for Elon Musk telling him to put his phone away. And then when he didn't, then taking his phone from him and putting it into a safe.

And apparently in the middle of the night, he called hotel security to get his phone out of the safe and started tweeting at three o'clock in the morning. And then his team went over. It sounds familiar. I didn't know it was related to Elon, but I remember hearing some stories. Yeah, it was about Elon, as we know. Yeah, I mean.

Since we are among friends and nobody else will hear this, I will tell you, I doubt that you can get to the top of any global hierarchy being a fully functional, healthy human being. I don't think so. So it goes to cage fighters,

the political establishment of one of the biggest countries in the world, CEO of a global company. So sometimes I watch an interview with some of these global CEOs and they look suspiciously normal and I wonder what the story behind it is. But when, you know, they...

You can read a book and you can read about an event where they got into the same room. People like Kissinger and Mother Teresa and some Olympic champion and a very famous writer and things like this kind of understand each other. And I think we know why.

Because in their own way and in completely different fields, they are all this kind of shrewd politicians who looked at the top place in whatever they did. And they said, you know, I want to be up there, whatever it takes. If you're like,

the top one out of a hundred in terms of, I don't know, playing the piano, you know, public speaking, you know, playing football, whatever it is, you're already pretty talented. Right. And look at one in a thousand, one in 10,000, one in a hundred thousand, one in a million. Once you get to like one in a billion or one in 10 billion or one in 20 billion, I mean, it's hard to even fathom. 20 billion? Well, if you look at historically, like, right? Okay.

I mean, if Elon can put someone on Mars, then he would be sort of in a very elite company, that kind of stuff, right? And then you just think about the habits of that particular person. - Just doing the mass Carl Sagan style, that's one of the things you look to look up on your iPad, how many human beings have ever existed? - Yeah, like 50 billion or something like that.

But anyways, and then you just think about like, let's just take athletes because I think that part is a little bit, there's a little bit more transparency, right? Do you expect them to spend their time the same way as an average person? Probably not. Probably wouldn't take them there. No way. I mean, of course, 24 hours is sort of the bound, right? But the way they spend their, how much time they spend, the way they spend their time, the type of training, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, you're thin slicing to a point where it's almost unimaginable how they could differentiate their performance sort of at that level. And then going back to the, you know, if you had a collection of all these historically significant people, it's almost, it reminds me of like the, like an X-Men, you know, the X-Mansion.

And so essentially it's like, even though they have their own different disciplines or areas, essentially they're all mutants. They all specialize in being a mutant. And the fact that it takes the form of being a politician or it takes the form of being a technologist, that's secondary. It's like they actually specialize in being a mutant. That's their shared crazy is the mutant. This discussion is personally extremely important to me.

because I work with a lot of high performing individuals. I'm personally not a workaholic, but I'm curious. I'm very interested in what I do. So that's why I spend so much time on it. But going back to that,

a business suited person passing the beach outdoor gym, right? This is why it is such an important moment because that person looks at the people at the gym and says, "Screw this, I'm not going to be a slave to the corporation." Or this person says, "Well, that's what it takes," right? So this is how we make those decisions every single day. I would even venture to every single hour.

So next step, next step, next step. Is it still worth it? Do I still have to make this sacrifice? It could be anything. It could be diet because we all want to eat different things from the things we should eat. So is it still worth it? Do I still put in that effort? And then the next step again and again and again. And this is why a lot of very powerful people seem so graceful.

because they really want that kind of level. And this is what I'm trying to explain to a lot of executives that I work with who are clenching their teeth and they are just trying to go to the next level even though they don't genuinely enjoy it. I tell them, listen, be very careful because chances are you are competing with somebody who is genuinely enjoying this race and that's not a good thing.

So put in the late nights and saying, well, listen, one of the things is I actually spoke at Frank's event in China Crossroads. And then we came to executive careers in China. And one of the very, very conclusive results of research is that now if you want to build a healthy international career in China, an expat career in China, you need to be functional in Mandarin.

And then the audience just looked at me with this big eyes and it's like, that's a little bit unfair. You know, when we came to China, let's say five years ago, 10 years ago, this was not a requirement, but somebody who really wants that, you know, that banana hanging from the ceiling, they just don't sleep. They just do Mandarin lessons or they listen to Mandarin lessons when they jog or they replace something that they would really love doing like family with the Mandarin lessons. And then in a year or two, they are proficient in Mandarin.

because there is something in them that likes the challenge, that wants to figure it out. And then somebody who really, really doesn't want to learn Mandarin is there trying to do the same thing. But since they don't enjoy it, they have the psychological resistance. - There's always gonna be that one.

Of course. Because it's just, it's natural selection. Well, there's always going to be someone competing harder than you. Yeah, because... Yeah, sorry. Like, if you just look at the whole population of people, like, ultimately, you're just selecting for that one in that environment that is at the top. Right, right. And so there inevitably is going to be someone that enjoys not sleeping, learning Mandarin, learning everything. There's going to be that person. And so we all sort of fit in some ways within a range on the hierarchy. And that's...

there's lots of mobility up and down, of course, in that range. But that range itself is fairly fixed because there's a lot of people in the world. Well, that's one thing. And the other thing is,

Again, there are people who are built for that, not just physically, but mentally, and they just want to figure it out. And they are just like a kid. Friedrich Nietzsche said, you get really mature professionally when you do your work like a kid plays.

you know forgetting about everything they call it flow um forgetting about everything just just wanting to do it and you can you can do that in in corporate accounting you can do that in cage fighting you can do that in investing you can do it in anything you just want to figure out how it works yeah and then at that point if somebody who just wants it for the promotion or for the bonus

uh competes with you it's a really unfair competition it's really really unfair unless that person is driven by trauma um maybe yeah yes yes and i i think it's still on yeah i mean i mean they don't they can't they can't hate it yeah they can't hate it but what i'm saying is that like the trauma drives them like the the competitive vast tip drives them like that you know

I would have to think about this. It reminds me of a quote. Um, I don't know who originally said it, but in college, uh, someone I knew had it hanging up in their dorm room and it was like, um, do something you enjoy so much that you would do it for free. Yeah. But do it so well. People will pay you for it. Exactly. Like Forrest Gump called the grass. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I perfectly agree with it. Cheers, Gabor. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. Hmm.

I always look at my watch horrified. Is anybody going to listen to it? Gabor, where can people find you now if people want to connect with you? My full name is probably going to be in the show notes. That's the easiest way to find me because with this combination of Gabor and Holschutz, I'm the only one. But also, as I mentioned, I rebranded all my businesses, brought them together under this brand called EastWest Leadership. So that's another way to

probably name is easier. Awesome. Gabor, one more time, thank you so much for being here. It's always a pleasure to sit down and catch up with you. Likewise. Love you, man. Talk to you next year. That was Gabor. I'm Justin. I'm Eric, and I never wear a suit. Be good. Be well. Peace.