Some marketers submit to challenges, while others eagerly hunt them down. How does our ability to persevere affect our approach? In this episode, we continue the story of Gregory Burns as he takes his first steps away from his conquests and toward a vast unknown. We explore the research of thought leaders in grit and the growth mindset such as Dr. Carol Dweck and Professor Angela Duckworth to see if perseverance is an act of faith in success, or a readiness to fail.
[00:00:00] Hiromi: There are times when we submit to challenges and then times when we eagerly hunt them down. How does our ability to persevere affect our approach? In this episode, we continue the story of Gregory Berns as he takes his first steps away from his conquests and toward a vast unknown. Was his perseverance an act of faith and success or a readiness to fail? We're going to explore the research of thought leaders in grit, to learn how we can develop this quality ourselves. This is a podcast about B2B marketing and the account-based mindset. This is Reach. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Jerome and I'm here with CEO and Agency Founder Jason Thorgalsen.
[00:00:48] Jaycen: Hi, glad to have y'all.
[00:00:50] Hiromi: And Chief Creative Officer Garret Krynski.
[00:00:52] Garret: Nice to be here.
[00:00:56] Hiromi: So, Garrett, you were away for the last episode but, did that first chapter resonate with you? Because, I thought Gregory's origin story had a lot of nice takeaways.
[00:01:04] Garret: Totally. And, I appreciate when he was really young at the grocery store. He had this major turning point in life. And, his sum of it was, "I struggled. I made it. I moved on." And, it's such a simple lesson. You know, his mom gave him the confidence. You got this. It looked crazy to onlookers. And, I think this could be a guiding principle for this entire mindset.
[00:01:26] Jaycen: I thought that, that bit of the story was really gut-wrenching. [laughs] In a way, visualizing that moment, Gregory on the ground at this grocery store and his parent just kind of, like, leaving him, and what others may have been thinking. And, it got me wondering, is his perseverance, is this quality that he exhibited, brought about due to the way in which his parents parented him, based on these experiences? And, in her book about Grit, Angela Duckworth said, Exemplars of Grit grew up imitating their parents and emulating them. If you want to bring forth grit in your child, first ask how much passion and perseverance you have for your own life goals."
[00:02:09] Hiromi: Mm-hmm [affirmative]
[00:02:11] Jaycen: And, that was interesting. Think about Gregory's parents. They're very accomplished individuals. They had passion in what they did.
[00:02:18] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:02:19] Jaycen: And so, not only was he maybe put through some of these circumstances that were challenging, but also observing his parents and their passion to commit to something, to endure throughout it, what part did that play in him developing into the person who he is today?
[00:02:37] Hiromi: Yeah, there seems to be this lingering nature versus nurture question in the story that we need to maybe explore a little bit further. Cause, like, so far in this story, Gregory's parents have subjected him to circumstances that demanded his perseverance. Like you mentioned, the grocery store, uh, the surgeries, the public school. But, in this next chapter we start to see a shift as Gregory starts to set his own goals and starts to demand perseverance from himself.
[00:03:03] Gregory Burns: I graduated from UC Santa Barbara in the summer of 1980. I had a lot going for me in California, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't fulfilling me. On the external, I had a place to live, I had family nearby. I was taking art classes. I was checking all the boxes. But, I wasn't pushing myself. And, at 1980 was the year there was no Olympics, right. Boycotted because of Afghanistan.
[00:03:30] Speaker 5: The Olympic Committee voted to boycott the Summer Olympic games in Moscow.
[00:03:32] Gregory Burns: But, Holland volunteered to do the Paralympics. And, I, you know, I tried to go to Holland. I was training and I didn't make the team. And, at that moment, all the wheels fell off the cart. A bunch of the things that were solid in my life disappeared. It was one of those crisis moments. It wasn't just that I graduated from college and didn't know where or what I was gonna do. I had been living in a home near the beach which I had found. And, I got roommates and stuff and one of them was my girlfriend. And, we ended up getting a new roommate who was a guy. And, shortly thereafter, he and she became an item while we were still living in the same place. I had to move out. I couldn't stay there.
[00:04:21] So, I didn't only lose the girl, but I also lost my home. I was getting some support from the state but that all went away because I was gradating. So, I had no insurance. I had no money. Uh, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. At the same time, I learned about something called Post-polio Syndrome, which is the potential for people with Polio, that previously unaffected muscles become weaker in the muscles you already have. So, here I was, you know, I got this. I, I can run around the world on crutches and braces. I swam. I can do this. And then suddenly, it's like, well, maybe not. Maybe you're gonna lose your mobility. And, at the age of 20, that freaked me out.
[00:05:12] I discovered that when things went South, when things went [inaudible 00:05:16], if I retreated to the forest with my sketchpad and tried to make sense of the chaos in the forest where water fall and lizards and geckos and trees and leaves. If I drew or painted that in my sketchbook, they calmed me. Okay, now I can deal with these issues. So, I had a ton of art classes and I was just following my muse. Twelve hours a day I'd get up, breakfast, go to school, come back at 10 o'clock, eat something, go to bed, and repeat. I was just doing massive amounts of airbrush painting, Chinese painting, calligraphy, fashion model design, painting, acrylics, oil, whatever.
[00:06:00] And then, I saw this program at San Jose State to study Chinese painting, calligraphy, seal carving, art history and, and eventually language in Taipei, Taiwan. And I thought, "Now, that's kinda cool." But, from the same time, Peace Corps had offered me a job to go to Marrakesh, Morocco for two years to run a home for children with Polio. And, that was pretty inviting, to be honest.
[00:06:24] But, it was the fork in the road in my life because it really came down to Peace Corps, maybe security, whatever you wanna say it was, or art. What do you wanna do? And, I said to myself, "Don't be afraid to give up what you have for what you might become." And, my life got so big because I let go of that little nugget. I think that led me to the road less traveled and I've been on that road ever since.
[00:06:56] So, I went to Taiwan in August and it was like, what have I done. It's terrible. It's humid. It's raining everyday. It's gray. When I went there, this is 1984. It, it was a city under construction and I just left the beach of Santa Barbara, Cal. I mean, I just left, you know, muenster cheese or avocado sprouts. And, here I am in Taipei eating carrots and tofu from the local market. Living in a home with the students, dripping pipes, and a spring bed. I was near the Fine Art Museum. I've been there about a week in this underpass with all these people walking by. And, I just literally stopped and I said to myself, "This sucks."
[00:07:42] And, yes, I could've backed out of Taiwan, but I knew the pain of letting myself down would've been bigger than the relief. So, I said, "Give this a month. Can you do that? You give it 30 days. You try and you see if you can do it. And, if after 30 days you wanna walk away, you're free to go. Okay. I'm gonna stick it out for a month and see." And, within that month, things turned around. You know, by the end of that month I was up and running.
[00:08:09] And, that reminds me of something I called the rubber band theory. When we leave a place, there's a rubber band that keeps us tethered to that place. And, as we go farther away and spend more time and have more interactions and experience, the farther you stretch that rubber band. There's a still pull to come back to California, to home and heart, to mom and dad, apple pie, whatever. But, eventually, if you stay long enough, go far enough, that rubber band breaks and you're now free. That tendency to go fall back to where you once were is severed and you're now able to really be here and now where you are.
[00:08:49] I believe the rubber band slowly snapped over the course of a week or two. I became engaged. I ended up moving in with a Chinese family and I was learning that, wow, in Taiwan, you take your showers at night before you go to bed. You drink your soup after the meal. So, I became a part of where I was and I stopped fighting this feeling of going back. And, I was finally going forward. I began doing Chinese painting classes once a week from two to five, and then I would just stay in the classroom and I'd paint, you know, until seven or eight o'clock. I became so passionate about learning these Chinese arts.
[00:09:29] I really embraced the otherness of it. I ended up backpacking around China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Pakistan, for 16 months, taking trains and buses, and going into Buddhist Temples all over the country, and sketching, and painting, and drawing. I slept in a lot of train stations. I slept in a lot of ashrams in India, [inaudible 00:09:50] and stuff like that. I met good people. I got support. I got friendships and communication and became a part of something that was different. And, that's what broke the rubber band. I thought I was only gonna be in Taiwan for a year and I've been gone in Asia for the last 30 plus years.
[00:10:11] In the Summer of 1990, I went with my girlfriend at the time to America for my sisters wedding in California. Prior to going to the wedding, I had this vision that I wanted to sail around the South Pacific with a purpose. I didn't wanna be a tourist. And, on the way back to Taiwan, we decided to stop in Tahiti, in Bora Bora in fact, for a week. And, we were gonna have a vacation there together. We were living in a hut on the ocean. On the third day, I saw this boat on the horizon which looked a little bit like the African Queen, you know, with Humphrey Bogart.
[00:10:45] That night, I'd gone to the jetty to sketch the sunset and while I'm sketching, two girls come up to me and they say, "What are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm, I'm painting the sunset." "Oh, can we watch?" "Sure." And, I found out these girls lived on that boat that I saw come into the harbor. I said, "What are you doing on that boat?" She said, "Well, this is a boat that is organized by a Danish organization, a bunch of teachers. They bought this 125 foot Danish lightship, they put a motor on it, and they sailed it around the world. And, what were they doing? They had a crew about 10 people that were making television documentaries and the program and the boat was called, "The Return of Marco Polo."
[00:11:25] It turns out their long term was to get to China and go back all the way to Denmark. So, I, speaking Chinese, was suddenly an asset. You're hired, basically. So, I sheepishly went back to my girlfriend that night and said, "I'm really sorry, but I'm, I'm getting on this boat." And, she was very understanding. It was too big a cherry to pass. And suddenly, here I was on a boat with an international crew of 10 people sailing from Tahiti basically to New Zealand, which took nine months. We were very slow, making a 30 minute television documentary, meeting locals, asking them, you know, "How do you dive for pearls? How do you, how do you grow taro? What are your courtship rituals?"
[00:12:09] Hello everybody and welcome to Micronesia. Today, the Marco Polo is in the Republic of Belau. Now, we have spent a lot of time in Polynesia, and Melanesia, but this is our first and our only visit to Micronesia. Palau is an archipelago made up of about 200 islands.
[00:12:30] Lots of interesting stuff. And, I was painting the whole way so it was a magical moment.
[00:12:41] Garret: A personal note, it seems like Gregory is someone with purpose.
[00:12:45] Jaycen: Yeah.
[00:12:46] Garret: You know, Dr.Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford, she says, "Taking on challenges, persisting in the face of obstacles, figuring things out, capitalizing and learning from failure," she said, "Isn't that the meaning of life?"
[00:12:59] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Garret: Which is interesting, right. When you look at Gregory's story, it's like he's kind of found through perseverance this purpose that continues to propel him forward.
[00:13:10] Jaycen: Yeah. He was a passionate individual. That's what I'm learning about Gregory and his story. And, that passion is driving him to do different things but also to, to face these challenges and overcome them.
[00:13:24] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Jaycen: There's a quote here from Jeff Bezos where he said, "You'll find in life that if you're not passionate about whatever it is you're working on, you won't be able to stick with it. And, you see that reoccurring theme, to me, in Gregory's story, he wants to be challenged. He wants to expand. He kind of followed his passion and that led him to new opportunities.
[00:13:48] Hiromi: Yeah. I, I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying is, pertains to Gregory's story in particular. Um, I have to admit, though, whenever I hear the advice to, like, follow your passion, follow your dreams, follow your heart, it doesn't always sit right with me. Um, Mike Rowe, who's famous for, you know, Dirty Jobs, he was known for calling that out. This is, this is what he said.
[00:14:10] Mike Rowe: Look, if we're talking about your hobby, by all means, let your passion lead you. But, when it comes to making a living, it's easy to forget just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean you won't suck at it. [laughter] Staying the course? That only makes sense if you're headed in a sensible direction. And, while passion is way too important to be without, it is way too fickle to follow around. Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you. [laughter]
[00:14:43] Jaycen: I think, I think that's that self awareness piece, right. It's not having unrealistic expectations, but having the mindset that you know who you are, what you're strengths and weaknesses are, and challenging yourself to go above and beyond.
[00:15:00] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:15:01] Jaycen: Not being fixed in time, not being fixed in who you are. But, also being aware of how, how can I stretch myself?
[00:15:11] Hiromi: Right. And, that's basically the concept that Professor Carol Dweck advocates in her book on mindset, right. Is that, she says that she has always been kind of puzzled to see how some people with all this natural ability wilt in the face of challenges while all these other people with much less, thrive even when they fail. This is what she said.
[00:15:31] Carol Dweck: What we found was that some people believe their talents and abilities are just these fixed traits. You have a certain amount and that's it.
[00:15:39] Garret: Mm-hmm [affirmative]
[00:15:40] Carol Dweck: But, other people believe talents and abilities can be developed through hard work, good strategies, good mentoring from others. We found that having a fixed mindset led you to be afraid of challenges that might unmask your deficiencies. Made you withdraw in the face of difficulty because you felt stupid and you didn't wanna feel stupid. You didn't want other people to think you were stupid. Whereas, having this growth mindset, the idea that your abilities could be developed made you think, "Why waste my time looking smart when I can be getting smarter?" Growth mindset doesn't mean everyone's the same, that they don't differ in talent and abilities, it just means everyone can grow.
[00:16:27] Jaycen: Right.
[00:16:27] Hiromi: Mm-hmm [affirmative]
[00:16:28] Jaycen: That's where I think this idea of perseverance, to me, is interesting, is people that typically are more self aware, do have more of those growth mindset. They're willing to test. They don't think they're fixed in terms of their capabilities. But, at the same token, they don't think they're Beethoven-
[00:16:45] Hiromi: Right.
[00:16:46] Jaycen: Or that they can become that necessarily. They just think, "I don't know what I could become if I don't continue to stretch myself and strive to pursue something."
[00:16:58] Hiromi: Right, and I guess what's interesting is, you know, contrasting your observation earlier about Gregory's parents, in more recent years this idea of follow your passion is often tied to the notion that because you're naturally gifted, you're a genius, you can do anything. But, Professor Dweck is saying this, this false sense of self esteem is actually kind of disempowering.
[00:17:20] Carol Dweck: In the 1990s, the Self Esteem Movement took over the world. Uh, we were told to tell everyone how fabulous, brilliant, talented, special they were all the time. This was to motivate them and boost their achievement. Instead, as you said, it was a complete disaster. It led to the acceptance of mediocrity. It didn't challenge people to fulfill their potential, and our search showed telling people they're smart actually backfires. It makes them afraid of challenges. It makes them, uh, fold in the face of obstacles cause they're worried, "Oh, does this not look smart? Am I not smart?" The whole currency is built around smart.
[00:18:10] Garret: Mm-hmm [affirmative] I found interesting, too, in contemplating this idea about passion. We can get fixed in our idea of what our passion is. And, we can pursue that in the same way that Carol Dweck talked about being fixed with regards to talent. She gives this example of how she was number one IQ in her classroom and how that ruined her. I feel like we can get that way about passion. "Oh, I'm passionate about this. I must pursue it at all costs." But, in Gregory's story, he hops on this boat. He has no idea what, what it entails if there's something to be passionate about, but he's willing to grow and find that. We could say, "This is my passion," in the same way that we could say, "Oh, this is my talent." And, that maybe limiting to us as well.
[00:18:55] Hiromi: Yeah. Is my passion about adventure and exploration and growth? Or, is my passion about riding a boat and translating documentaries into Chinese?
[00:19:07] Garret: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:08] Jaycen: I think the shared passion is a passion for learning.
[00:19:13] Hiromi: Mm-hmm [affirmative] Yeah.
[00:19:14] Jaycen: If you have a passion for learning, you're going to have some new experience. For him, it meant leaving the comfort zone of what home was to be in another culture. And, despite it being challenging, being hard, I love this idea for the rubber band that it, over time, you stretch yourself so far that you become in this place, you know.
[00:19:38] Hiromi: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:39] Jaycen: So, he's continues to stretch himself, be passionate about learning which has exposed him to new experiences and being able to endure throughout different challenges.
[00:19:48] Garret: In an article by Anna Schaffner, she made an interesting point. She said, "If we did not persist with our efforts to speak, walk, master a bike," you know, and she goes on, uh, "We would all remain stuck." And so, what I found interesting about that is we persevere as infants. Uh, and we push through without necessarily an intellectual thought of why we're persevering to just continuously learn, right. But, somehow as intelligent, reasoning adults now, we adopt this mindset of, uh, this is just where I'm at, so just recognizing we have that potential. We've done it before, I thought was interesting with regards to perseverance.
[00:20:34] Hiromi: Yeah, it seems like what you're both kind of saying is that in order to perseveres, we need this growth mindset. And, this growth mindset naturally leads to a diversity of experiences and focuses, right. And, that's kind of interesting to me because in my conversation with Gregory, I just kept catching myself trying to narrow his focus. Like, of course I know we're all diverse. We all have complex interests and we're complex individuals, but as a brand identity, I kept wanting to put him in a box. Like, you know, what are you Gregory? Are you, are you an artist first and foremost, or a swimmer, or an explorer? But, I think what we're all coming to terms with here is that his passion is his brand and you can't really put that in a box.
[00:21:21] Jaycen: I thought that was a good observation Jerome made, that we often try to put someone into a box. And, as we're looking at people that are high achievers, right, usually their known for something. And, it's like, "Oh, these people are just gifted people and their known for one thing." And, we overemphasize this success and maybe just kind of that persona. And, what we're finding in Gregory's story is that, yeah, there's a level of talent, but it was how much that passion pushed him to continue learning, to show up in the effort that he made, and that's working into various achievements along the way.
[00:21:54] Hiromi: Yeah.
[00:21:55] Jaycen: And, he's known for many things, like-
[00:21:57] Hiromi: Right.
[00:21:58] Jaycen: Accomplished Olympian swimmer, accomplished speaker, accomplished painter. We could go, the list is on and on and on, you know. And, it started from a young age, too, just being faced with a reality of, like, he's very limited in terms of what people thought he could do, right. They probably put him in a bucket of, like, "Oh, you're not gonna be able to go to school." He was able to overcome that. He put in the, he put in the time, the effort, and that's just one example.
[00:22:25] Hiromi: Absolutely. Yeah. And yet, it is a delicate balance too, right. Because, as Professor Duckworth says, you know, we can't allow ourselves to be like a dog chasing squirrels all the time. That's, that might be passion-
[00:22:38] Garret: Yeah.
[00:22:38] Hiromi: But, it's not necessarily what she often refers to as grit.
[00:22:42] Angela Duckwort...: I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and I study grit, which I define as this combination of loving what you do, passion for what you do, and perseverance, working really hard and being resilient about what you do. And, the thing that makes grit different, I think, than, you know, just being a conscientious person or a self controlled person, is that you have this passion and this perseverance for the long term.
[00:23:16] If we only think about talent, then we maybe forget about effort and energy, about passion and perseverance. In my research, I find that grit and talent are hardly correlated at all, and sometimes they go in opposite directions so that somebody who's a little more able may be a little less gritty in certain samples. I find that grit predicts achieving things that you care about especially.
[00:23:42] So, for example, if you are in, uh, a sales company and you're a sales person, grit predicts whether you will stay in your job versus drop out and do something else. Grit is also linked to practicing really hard on things that you can't yet do as well as you'd like, but would make you better at what you do. That's called deliberate practice, and gritty people do more of it. That's one reason why they may be world class if they stick with things for a very, very long time.
[00:24:15] Hiromi: My art teacher always told me that. You know, I thought it was interesting. He would say, "You know, if you look at any kid, like a, like a young, young kid, they'll hand you a, a picture that they drew of, like, an egg. And, they'll go on to describe in detail, "Okay, so this is what's happening here. There's this dinosaur and it's, you know, it's eating this other dinosaur," just on and on, it's obviously not there on the paper, but they see it. Its, they're excited about it."
[00:24:40] But, then at some point, 90% of us look at that paper and we say, "This sucks. I'm not an artist." And, the other 10% of folks never stop dreaming about what's on that page. And, and, it's just they're not being discouraged. That causes them to keep practicing and continue to get better at drawing. And, that was his theory as to how our artists are born. But, we see that in real life, to some degree, right.
[00:25:05] Jaycen: So, so are you saying, Hiromi, there's a chance for all of us? I mean...
[00:25:09] Hiromi: I think so. [laughs]
[00:25:10] Jaycen: That, if we keep on persisting in what we're doing, we have passion for this, that we can, we can succeed cause we are not a talented bunch. [laughter]
[00:25:20] Hiromi: Well, I don't know about that, but let's give credit to all the talented folks that contributed to this episode. Thanks to Dr. Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, Anna Schaffner, and Mike Rowe for sharing their observations, their research. We've certainly learned a lot about the mindset of perseverance and the diverse experiences that growth mindset can lead to. But, we haven't yet quite drawn a practical line between perseverance and distraction. This is something that Gregory would draw from in his own experiences in the years ahead.
[00:25:49] Gregory Burns: Here I was in 1992 swimming faster as a 38 year old than as an 18 year old. What happened? I think what had happened was I was focused.
[00:25:59] Hiromi: In our next episode, we'll follow Gregory to the Olympic games, marathons, and iron mans, all in the pursuit of excellence. We're also going to speak with The Sasha Group President and Veney Media Veteran James Orsini along with Global Growth Marketing Director at Reachdesk, Amber Bogie, on how this quality of perseverance relates specifically to market initiatives. All this and more, next time on Reach.
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