I’m not sure many people get scared of being too comfortable.
When I feel like I’m getting too comfortable, I know it’s time to make a drastic change.
Cal Fussman felt the same way when he was 22.
He was living in St. Louis. He loved it. But he knew he had to leave.
Even if he stayed only a few more years his life would be fixed.
“I would know everything that would happen for the rest of my life,” Cal said.
He was scared he’d never leave. He was so in love with St. Louis, he was actually scared.
If Cal never left St. Louis, this conversation would never have happened.
The moment he drove out of St. Louis is where his story begins.
Cal drove his Honda to New York City. And he worked as a writer at a small sports magazine.
He’d found a passion. Not a job, but a PASSION.
“This was life,” he said.
He woke up everyday wondering who he was going to meet and where he was going to go.
What great thing is going to happen, he’d ask himself.
“You felt like the whole city was yours,” Cal said.
He was on the ground floor. He was being sent everywhere.
‘Go to Pittsburgh to cover the Steelers going for their fifth Super Bowl ring’, his boss would say.
But only after a couple of years Newsweek pulled the plug.
Cal was devastated.
I asked him if he cried.
He needed to find a job, but where?
Anything else he found was just a job to him. There was no passion. No life.
So what was Cal to do? This is where his story gets really interesting.
He traveled. And he traveled for nearly 10 years.
TEN YEARS. I was amazed.
He went to Europe with no plan. Only an idea of what he imagined it to be.
“I had this romantic vision in my head,” he said.
And he got addicted. He was addicted to the feeling of not knowing.
He was constantly moving from place to place, and always unsure of where he was going to stay.
“I just fell in love with this idea of waking up in the morning not knowing what was going to happen. And this was 24/7,” Cal said.
He’d gotten a taste of this at the magazine, but this was so much more.
This is how Cal got his superpower.
Let me explain.
Cal woke up every morning with no clue where he was going to sleep that night. He needed people to take him home, to give him a place to stay. After awhile he got really good at this.
“I bought a ticket. And I got on a bus not knowing where it was going. I get up the steps and start walking down the aisles, looking for an empty seat. And I know this is a crucially important decision because I gotta find somebody just by reading their face,” he said.
He had to figure out in those 30 seconds who would trust him and who he would trust.
Which seat was he going to chose? He had very little money, so he wasn’t going to be able to keep his trip going staying in hotels every night.
He needed someone to take him with them. Someone who would introduce him to their friends and families. So he had to sit down and start a conversation. And most often in a different language.
“I needed that person to invite me home,” Cal said.
This was how he got passed around the world.
And he was indulging everyday in knowing as little as possible about how his experience was going to unfold.
He figured out how to superconnect.
I wondered if this was a skill set anyone could learn.
I think it’s a lot harder now, especially with the endless supply of knowledge we have.
Maybe you’re walking down that same bus aisle and the person sitting next to the empty seat has their headphones in. We’re now connected somewhere else.
We’re no longer indulging in the now.
How many great questions do we have left?
Cal Fussman is one of the greatest interviewers of all time. He’s interviewed an estimated 500 of the most iconic people.
He asks the question no one else is asking.
He gains respect. And gets the best answers.
Cal knows how to connect with EVERYONE.
Cal started asking questions to survive.
It grew into a fulfilling career.
And eventually blossomed into an expertise.
He completed his initial 10,000 hours without the world seeing. By traveling, by getting by.
I think we might be losing this…
The art of asking a good question.
What happened to the conversation?
Everything is scripted. The conversation has been replaced by the glut of media and gotcha journalism. We’ve stopped looking for the interesting story. We’re too focused on the likes and the follows.
We know all the answers now.
“If you’re looking at the laws of supply and demand the supply of answers is filled. We got answers up the gazoo, but how many great questions do we have? How many people who ask great questions are left,” Cal said.
Have we lost our curiosity?
Are we losing the ability to connect with one another?
I hope not.
Links and Resources
- Read Cal’s Esquire column – What I’ve Learned
- Listen to Cal’s podcast – Big Questions with Cal Fussman
Also Mentioned
- The Tim Ferriss Show
- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
- Soup to Nuts by Larry King
- Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson
- Ep. 211 – Sara Blakely: How to Get a Billion Dollar Idea
- Ep. 321 – Jim Cramer: Stocks – The Greatest Wealth Creator of All Time
- The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss
Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to “The James Altucher Show” and rate and review wherever you get your podcasts:
Follow me on Social Media:
The post 324 – Cal Fussman: appeared first on Altucher Confidential.
from Altucher Confidential http://ift.tt/2oHEsv5 via website design phoenix
No comments:
Post a Comment