October 5, 2025 • 30 mins
A reading from a famous director's memoir sparks a discussion about a key trait for gaining traction: boldness coupled with the ability to get things done.
Show notes:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jorge (00:00):
It's not just enough to have chutzpah.
(00:02):
It's also the,"You know what?
I'm gonna go and knock, eventhough it's the middle of the
night, I'm gonna go to thatneighborhood and I'm gonna knock
on the doors."
Narrator (00:14):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:24):
Hey, Harry.
It's good to see you again.
Harry (00:26):
Oh man.
Thanks for, thanks for breakingup my day with something fun and
something I'm gonna learn from,I'm sure.
Jorge (00:34):
This is an audio only show, so folks can't see us.
But, right before we joined, Iwas saying that I was very
surprised when your video imagepopped up and you're wearing a
t-shirt that I also own.
Like, I own the exact t-shirt.
I feel like you and I are soaligned in so many things, it's
funny.
Harry (00:52):
That is funny, although I guarantee you mine is larger
than yours.
Jorge (00:55):
Probably a little bit.
But anyway, I'm excited aboutthis conversation and as usual,
I've brought a reading.
And this reading is a little bitdifferent from others that we've
done in the past, in partbecause I think I need to set
the stage before I start readingthis.
Harry (01:18):
Oh, interesting.
Jorge (01:18):
At least a little bit.
And also because I think thateven if you haven't read the
book, you're probably gonna knowwho it's by before I'm done with
it.
So maybe there's not gonna be asmuch suspense in this one as
we've had in other ones.
(01:39):
I'll say also, right before weget into it, that this is a book
that I'm reading right now and Ihaven't finished reading it yet.
I've definitely read the partthat I'm gonna read now, and as
I was reading it, I was like,"Ohmy God, I love this, and I'm
gonna bring it to Harry eventhough I'm not done with this
(01:59):
book." And by the way, I'mloving the book, so I can
wholeheartedly recommend it whenwe get to which book it is.
Harry (02:08):
I can't wait.
Jorge (02:09):
So this book is a memoir by a filmmaker.
The part of the book that I'mgoing to read, they're
discussing the production of oneparticular movie.
Harry (02:25):
Okay.
Jorge (02:27):
Alright, so here we go.
"If you look at the film fromthe point of view of today's
"production values," then, Icontend that no one would touch
the project for anything lessthan$50 million.
(02:47):
The filming was done on threebarely accessible Amazon
tributaries, and the main actorwas the maniacal wild man, Klaus
Kinsky.
We were constantly in financialstraits, and the cashflow from
Germany was not functioning.
Transfers often took weeks toarrive.
(03:09):
One night, when we were reallyup against it, Lucki went to
Miraflores, the affluent suburbof Lima, and went from house to
house offering a deal.
Because practically everyonethere had a dollar account in
the States to keep money hiddenfrom the Peruvian tax
authorities, they wereinterested in getting outside
(03:32):
money directly funneled into theUnited States.
Lucki said he needed$50,000worth of Peruvian Soles right
away.
In return, he would have thatsum wired from Germany to the
United States with an extra 10%on top as a reward for so much
(03:52):
trust.
The sum would arrive within 48hours.
People in Lima had read about myproject in the newspapers, but
who was going to sign up for itin the middle of the night in
response to someone knocking onthe doors?
Lucki, though, had a naturalgift for creating trust, which
(04:13):
he knew better than to abuse.
A very young entrepreneur, JoeKoechlin von Stein, took him up
on the offer.
He needed dollars because he wasplanning a rock concert with
Carlos Santana.
With no more guarantee than ahandshake.
He handed Lucki the Soles thenext day, and the project was
(04:35):
saved for the time being."
Harry (04:39):
Man, that sounds like what happened next?
I haven't read this and I'msuper curious to hear what it
is.
I don't know.
Jorge (04:53):
I guess a little bit of context I left out is, he
started by saying that todaythis a project like this would
be$50 million.
I think they had a budget oflike tens of thousands.
So it was very little money.
This was in the early 1970s.
The director is Werner Herzog.
Harry (05:12):
Okay.
Jorge (05:12):
And this was while they were shooting.
The movie Aguirre, the Wrath ofGod, And I'll say the book, this
is from Herzog's memoir, whichis called Every Man For Himself
and God Against All, which is agreat title, right?
And before we discuss it, I'llsay, I'm really enjoying this
(05:38):
book.
I'm listening to it as an audiobook, and if you've ever heard
Werner Herzog speak, so he has avery famous voice.
He's done documentaries, whichhe narrates.
Anyway, I highly recommend thisbook, it's just a hoot.
But I wanted to bring thispassage in particular because I
(06:01):
thought it a wonderfulillustration of know if to call
it an attribute, but acharacteristic of people that I
think is perhapsunderappreciated.
And it's certainly somethingthat I underrate in myself and
(06:25):
don't take opportunity todevelop.
And it's gumption.
Harry (06:29):
Ah.
Jorge (06:30):
By the way, the Lucki that they talk about is Herzog's
brother or half brother, who wasassisting him with the financing
of the movie.
And this notion that they are inthis crisis situation where
they've run out of money, andthis dude has the idea to go
(06:53):
around in the middle of thenight into a rich neighborhood
and start knocking on doors totry to secure financing for the
film, and he actually does it,to me is just astonishing.
And it's the sort of story thatI associate with gumption.
(07:13):
And when I read that, I waslike,"Oh my gosh, there are
times in my life where justgoing for it, going for some
kind of like crazy long shotthing with boldness has paid
off." And I wanted to talk aboutgumption with you because it
(07:35):
feels like something that wouldhelp people gain traction.
Harry (07:39):
Oh, I love that.
And there were two things thatcame to mind immediately.
The first was, I never was a bigJerry Seinfeld fan.
I didn't watch his shows, but Ihave to say in my top favorite
movies of all time is adocumentary that he put together
on the creative process.
(07:59):
We might have talked about thisat some point.
And the movie is called TheComedian, and it's how he
returned from his show back tostandup comedy.
And it is an object lesson ingumption.
But I didn't really have theword for that before, and I
think to my second point, Ithink the reason I didn't have a
(08:22):
word for it is, I didn'tactually know what it meant.
Because I grew up in a culturewhere the word chutzpah was the
primary word that can tried toconvey that kind of energy.
But even though they're probablyrelatively synonymous with one
another, I don't know if thatmade sense, but the chutzpah
(08:44):
somehow seems more base and moreridiculous.
So I'm curious what you think,if there's a difference between
gumption and which leads youdown the Forest Gump trail to
the chutzpah perspective.
I.
Jorge (09:03):
Again, folks can't see this.
I'm smiling because this is yetanother synchrony.
So, when I was thinking throughthis subject and bringing this
subject to our conversation, Ihad a little chat with ChatGPT
about gumption.
And I asked ChatGPT about therelationship between gumption
and chutzpah.
Harry (09:24):
Okay.
Jorge (09:25):
Because that word also came to my mind.
I was like, why gumption?
Gumption, first of all, feelslike an old-timey word, right?
Like, it's not a word that is incommon use.
And it felt to me like, it's notexactly chutzpah, but I've used
chutzpah more.
(09:46):
And I wouldn't say that it'sthat chutzpah is more base, and
this is something that ChatGPThelped me arrive at, is that
gumption is somehow like thecombination of initiative and
chutzpah.
It's not just enough to havechutzpah.
(10:06):
It's also the,"You know what?
I'm gonna go and knock, eventhough it's the middle of the
night, I'm gonna go to thatneighborhood and I'm gonna knock
on the doors."
Harry (10:13):
It's chutzpah with a plan!
Jorge (10:15):
It's chutzpah with a plan, but it's chutzpah also
with the actually doing itright?
Like, the actually getting outthere and knocking on the doors.
We can have all sorts of bravethoughts, right?
"I could do this, or I could dothat." But it's something quite
(10:37):
different to actually get in thecar or whatever and start
knocking on doors.
And I think that's the missingingredient.
Like you can talk a big game,but going out there and doing it
is something else.
Harry (10:51):
Okay.
And now it's my turn to smile,which of course you all can't
see, and the reason for that isI have a chutzpah story, but I
think it's actually a gumptionstory.
I'm going to be a littlehyperbolic about this, but the
gist of it's roughly true.
Back in the year 2000, right?
(11:12):
The heady year 2000, with all ofwhat was going on in Silicon
Valley, and the rise of the nextgreat internet opportunity,
which of course burst a fewyears later, but we're not gonna
go down that path.
And I came up with this idea.
And this was the idea for mycompany, which I called Public
(11:33):
Mind.
That was the name of thecompany.
And it really was a derivativeof the company that I was a
co-founder in called VirtualVineyards, which became
wine.com.
And in wine.com, we were reallythe very first people to have a
secure, usable, and very simpleshopping cart, which I am
(11:56):
extremely proud to say Idesigned.
And I didn't build it, the wholething, but I largely put it all
together myself with the help ofmy illustrious co-founder Robert
Olson, who built the backend.
And we put out there, welaunched live in January 1995.
And from that point forward, wewere selling wine online, and
(12:17):
then eventually specialty food.
And what would happen is, Iwould get these emails and phone
calls and people would ask forthings we didn't have.
And at some point, I realizedthat's a demand signal.
So I started keeping file cardsof these things people wanted,
and I kept the contactinformation for the people that
were requesting these things.
And so I had a whole table fullof what I would call request
(12:41):
groups.
And the request groups wentfrom,"Here's things I want," and
then somebody would say,"Hey, Iwant that too," to eventually
questions and complaints andsuggestions.
And so, I had these fourcategories of things all over
these tables.
And when I got enough of them, Iwould eventually work on solving
them.
Or especially, in the case oflike sulfites-free wine, right?
(13:04):
So a lot of people are allergicto sulfites in wine.
And so, we were getting a lot ofrequests for wine without
sulfates.
And when we finally hit, I don'tknow, 25 of them, I put together
an email list and I sent it offto folks and said,"Hey, I'm
gonna see if I can work with theother co-founder Peter Granoff,
who was the cork dork," he wasthe guy that sourced all the
(13:24):
wines and worked with all thewineries to procure the
sulfites-free wine"if we can getit, are you willing to prepay to
get ahold of this?" And so, thiswas turning a request group that
was manually managed into anaction group.
And remember, this is 1995–96,right?
(13:46):
That's a long time ago.
And, and at some point, so a fewyears later, I left that
startup, which was my firststartup, and I joined Hewlett
Packard in an internalconsulting group there.
And it dawned on me that thisnotion of managing request
groups based on demandaggregation was a thing, and it
(14:08):
was gonna become key in theonline interaction models that
people were to would see.
And this was like 1999, I thinkmaybe late'98, I don't remember.
But, so I came up with thismodel for building out request
groups, action groups.
And I designed the system, andHewlett Packard was incredibly
(14:31):
kind and gave me the time off togo work on it without declaring
ownership over any of theintellectual property rights,
and this is where the chutzpahstory comes in.
So here it is, like early 2000,and I'm thinking to myself,
"Self, I have my time off fromHP, but I don't really have any
money to go build this thing."And so, I started reaching into
(14:53):
my network, and I didn't knowthe first thing about being a
startup founder, right?
I'd been on a founding team, butI was the guy behind the scenes
designing and building thewebsite.
I was not the guy that was onthe front lines dealing with
investors, legal, board all thatgreat stuff.
And so I started calling all myfriends and people at Apple that
(15:14):
I knew'cause I'd worked there,and people at HP'cause I'd
worked there, and othercompanies and so on and so
forth.
And eventually found a guy thathad sold his company to Apple
and he was a good friend of afriend of mine, and he said that
he had money to invest.
And I was like,"Yes!" I'm gonnawithhold his name'cause just out
of, protect the innocent and allthat good stuff.
(15:35):
And so we met at UniversityCoffee on University Avenue in
Palo Alto, which I don't eventhink is still there.
It was a beautiful, big coffeeshop.
I had a 400 square-foot officefor$219 a month.
Think of that, in Palo Alto onUniversity Ave.
It was amazing.
At any rate, so I met with thisguy.
(15:55):
He agreed to meet with me.
And I thought of this ideapublic mind as this
world-changing idea to demandaggregation, right?
You could join a request group,a private request group, and you
could engage the world to getsomething made or get something
(16:16):
procured, and the more peoplethat would join the group, the
less the price could ostensiblybe, because I could then start
discounting.
And so I had this beautiful ideafor this thing, I told people
that demand aggregation, thisidea that you could get people
into request groups, was gonnabe the future of the internet.
And I was very secretive aboutthis idea.
(16:39):
Because in effect, it was avoting system, right?
And people weren't doing thatyet on online, not in a way
where outcomes could begenerated from the up votes.
And, and so this investor satdown at University Coffee.
I got my double espresso.
And he goes,"So tell me youridea." And I said,"I can't." He
(17:01):
goes,"What do you mean, youcan't?" And I said,"I think it's
a world-changing idea.
And if I tell you the idea andyou don't invest, then I'm out
my idea," right?
"You're gonna go tell people,they're gonna go build it, and
I'm gonna be sitting here with aspoon in my hand and very sad."
And so, he got really upset.
His face turned all red, and hesaid,"Are you telling me I drove
(17:22):
all the way down here from SouthSan Francisco or wherever it
was, and you're not even gonnatell me what the idea is?
And I have a checkbook with me,and I'm willing to help fund
your company.
This is insane.
Are you mad?" And I said,"No,I'm not mad.
I'm just scared." I said,"Look,here's the deal.
I need$100k to get this off theground." And he goes,"I'm not
gonna write you that check." AndI said,"Write me half that
(17:44):
check." I said,"Write a checkfor$50k, and if you really like
the idea, you can write theother check." And he goes,
"That's absolutely absurd, butI'll do it." And so he wrote a
check out for$50k and he handedit to me and I told him the
idea.
And he goes,"That's a greatidea." And he wrote the second
check.
And that's my chutzpah story.
(18:05):
That's how we got that companyoff the ground.
Jorge (18:08):
Oh, that's great.
Nowadays there are NDAs, right?
But it might have been too shortnotice to fire up an NDA, but...
Harry (18:16):
I didn't know enough about it to know how durable an
NDA was, and I didn't have anymoney to pay an attorney, and so
on and so forth.
I mean, sure.
Jorge (18:24):
But I think that with that story, you've hit on what I
think of as another, aspect ofgumption, which is the ability
to think on your feet, right?
To make lemonade with the lemonsthat you have, right?
And that's a part of this aswell.
In the spirit of what we'retrying to do with this podcast,
(18:47):
which is to help folks gain moretraction, I think that the
question that I'm strugglingwith, and one of the things that
I was hoping to discuss with youhere, is whether you think that
these I'm gonna call'em traits,the ability to do what you
(19:14):
described, what you did, theability to do what Lucki did, is
that something that people areborn with or is it something
that we can develop?
Harry (19:27):
A fair and very important question.
And certainly, if I were tryingto answer that question,'cause I
have my own beliefs and I'llanswer that in a minute, but if
I were trying to answer thatquestion in an operational way,
in a way that I felt wasdefensible, I would turn to Rich
Diviney's work on theattributes.
(19:49):
And Rich, he used to be incharge of training for the Navy
Seals and individual assessmentsand team composition.
And he has a book out thatdescribes these characteristics
and attributes that really helpyou better understand yourself,
(20:11):
and he has a very strongperspective on this.
I highly recommend the book.
He has a very inexpensiveassessment, which I have taken,
which really pissed me off whenI had to read it,'cause it told
me something about myself Ididn't wanna read, I didn't
like, but I knew it was true.
And it kinda set me back alittle bit in terms of my
(20:34):
confidence, but since then I'vedone a lot of thinking about it
and I think it was the net-netwas quite valuable.
I wanna say that a lot of thiscan be learned, but I'm not sure
you can just go learn it like anew skill.
I think there are certainaspects of it, which you have
propensities toward thesethings.
(20:55):
And then I think your life'sexperience either reinforces
those propensities or diminishesthem.
And I think in the case of thisthinking on your feet, I think
for Diviney's work, he callsthat adaptability.
And literally a week or two ago,he had a LinkedIn questionnaire
(21:16):
about whether adaptability wassomething you could learn.
And I don't recall what theanswer was, because I would like
to think that the propensity isnot something you can learn.
You kinda come out the chutewith that propensity or not.
But I think you can haveexperiences which support that
and ultimately allow you to getbetter and better at it.
(21:38):
Kind of real-life simulations,if you will.
Or the opposite, and things thatcause you to be more internally
reflective and cautious,risk-averse, so on and so forth.
Jorge (21:49):
My sense is that there is an aspect to this that might be
innate in the sense that youhave to have a certain
personality type to be bold likethat.
I don't think everyone is.
But on the other hand, thatmight be wrong.
Somebody might be so convincedabout their project or the thing
(22:12):
that they're working on thatthey just plow ahead.
Diviney has come up before inour conversations, you pointed
me to his book, Masters ofUncertainty.
Harry (22:22):
That's right.
Jorge (22:23):
Is that the book you were thinking of?
Harry (22:25):
Oh, no.
Masters of Uncertainty is hissecond book.
The Attributes was his firstbook.
Jorge (22:30):
And the reason I'm circling back to Diviney is that
when I was thinking about thisquestion about,"Can we develop
gumption?" and thinking,"I don'tknow, because it does feel at
least some of it might be tiedto your personality," but I
think that as a team, theremight be ways...
there might be ways to structurea team or an organization so
(22:54):
that people can be more bold.
And the top idea that came to mymind when thinking about this
was a concept that comes fromthe military, this idea of,
command intent, right?
Where...
Harry (23:06):
Oh yeah, commander's intent.
Jorge (23:08):
Exactly.
And you might know more aboutthis than I do, but as I
understand it, the idea is tomake goals very clear and the
reasoning for achieving the goalvery clear, and then allowing
the people who are going to beexecuting in the field to make
decisions on how to achieve thegoal, rather than micromanaging
(23:32):
their way up the hill orwhatever.
So that might be one.
Another might be, you brought upthe word"confidence," and I
think that it would be prettyhard to demonstrate gumption to
do the knocking on doors atmidnight or the asking for the
(23:56):
50% if you didn't truly believein the idea.
Harry (24:00):
Yeah.
Jorge (24:01):
So I think that having self-confidence, that might be
something that might be apersonality trait, but having
confidence on the project and onthe thing that you're doing is
something that you couldprobably work on, right?
I've developed more confidencein my life as I've developed
expertise in certain fields, andI feel like I can be more bold
(24:23):
now at the stage of life thatI'm in now, I can be bolder than
I was when I was much youngerand didn't really know what I
was doing.
I think back to the story, Idon't know if you've heard this,
but there's a story of a12-year-old Steve Jobs wanting
to build some kind of electronicdevice and not having the parts,
(24:47):
and he looked up Bill Hewlett inthe phone book, the founder of
Hewlett Packard, and he calledthem up, right?
And he said,"Hey, I need theseparts." And, he actually...
like he got like an internshipor something at Hewlett Packard.
And that story is one of thereasons why I think there must
be some of this that is innatebecause having the
(25:07):
self-confidence at twelve toactually do something like that
is not something that all of ushave.
But it is possible to developconfidence in your abilities as
you develop mastery over asubject domain, a practice, or a
field or what have you.
Harry (25:27):
Yeah, this is such a rich topic.
There's so many different placesthat we could press on this to
go further.
And it's so tied, so deeplytied, to so many of the other
things we've spoken about.
Because it's not just aboutconfidence in yourself and your
skills and your ability toexercise those skills, but
sometimes it's about the beliefthat you have in the thing that
(25:51):
you're representing and the moreclosely that's tied to your
identity, the easier that'sgonna be to feel confident in
it.
And so it's easy, if I find atool, for example...
Okay, so here's a great example.
You can't see this...
Well, you can, but most peoplecan't see this pen that I'm
holding up.
And this is the most amazing penever.
Like, I have been on a hunt forthis pen my whole life, and it's
(26:15):
this whole story we don't havetime for today.
But I bought every singleremaining pen from the people
that made this.
It's no longer made.
And I bought their entire stockof these so I could have the
rest of them for the rest of mylife and give them away as
gifts.
And Jorge, I'm gonna send youone.
And it's a custom-made,Kickstarter pen that holds a
(26:37):
Fisher Space Pen cartridge.
It's magnetic.
It's short.
It's incredibly well-weighed.
It's like this perfect pen.
And it is tied to my identity asa communicator, as an explainer,
as an author, as a designer.
And not only do I believe inthis product, but it is so tied
(26:58):
to who I am that I can easilysell this pen for$500.
It's nowhere near what I paidfor it, but I want to keep all
the ones I have.
But if you're willing to pay me$500, I am willing to show you
every reason why this is thebest pen in the world and I'm
willing to demonstrate anextreme level of chutzpah in
saying,"Look, I'm not gonna sellit for less than$350.
(27:20):
I don't care that you can getsomething like it for$40 U.S.
The fact is, you can't get this,and I know how awesome this is."
So, I don't feel like I'm beingbold or ridiculous.
I just know that there's onlytwelve of these left in the
world, and I've got one of'em.
(27:41):
And so when I lose this oneagain, there'll only be eleven
of them left in the world.
So it's, I don't know...
I could just go on about this,'cause I think there's a
difference between beingconfident in the skill of maybe
selling versus confident in thething that I wanna sell.
And the more tightly coupled itis to who I am and what's
(28:03):
important to me and what myvalues are and how I see myself
in the world, the easier it isfor me to show up.
And I think that's the thingthat's that Steve Jobs did when
he was twelve years old.
Jorge (28:14):
It's almost like an existential confidence, right?
It's like this thing is...
this means everything to meright now.
And you communicate that whenyou're on fire with an idea,
that comes across in some way.
Anyway, I think you're right,this might be a springboard for
(28:36):
further conversations.
I I just wanted to bring thesubject to our topics here,
because the more I learn aboutpeople who are high achievers,
the more I'm reading aboutpeople who have gumption, who
have this trait.
And right now I'm in a WernerHerzog bender watching Herzog
(29:00):
movies and listening to hisaudiobook, and he's someone
who's the patron saint ofgumption.
Like he does these things that,I think he established a
filmmaking school where he sayshe teaches two things, how to
forge shooting permits and howto use bolt cutters, which is
(29:24):
the"Best to ask for forgivenessthan permission school" or
something like that, right?
Harry (29:29):
That's awesome.
Oh yeah, and I have a boltcutter story.
I'll save for another time.
Jorge (29:33):
But I think those are the people who do things right?
The people who actually getthings done, oftentimes are
people who have this trait.
So anyway, it was greatdiscussing it with you, Harry.
Harry (29:44):
Yeah, a lot of fun.
Thanks for bringing this up.
And I have a road trip coming upin a little over a week, and I'm
definitely gonna get a copy ofthat audiobook and listen to it
on the road.
It sounds fabulous.
Jorge (29:53):
Oh, it's a treat.
Narrator (29:57):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.
It's not just enough to have chutzpah.
(00:02):
It's also the,"You know what?
I'm gonna go and knock, eventhough it's the middle of the
night, I'm gonna go to thatneighborhood and I'm gonna knock
on the doors."
Narrator (00:14):
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
Digging In to Get Results withHarry Max and Jorge Arango.
Jorge (00:24):
Hey, Harry.
It's good to see you again.
Harry (00:26):
Oh man.
Thanks for, thanks for breakingup my day with something fun and
something I'm gonna learn from,I'm sure.
Jorge (00:34):
This is an audio only show, so folks can't see us.
But, right before we joined, Iwas saying that I was very
surprised when your video imagepopped up and you're wearing a
t-shirt that I also own.
Like, I own the exact t-shirt.
I feel like you and I are soaligned in so many things, it's
funny.
Harry (00:52):
That is funny, although I guarantee you mine is larger
than yours.
Jorge (00:55):
Probably a little bit.
But anyway, I'm excited aboutthis conversation and as usual,
I've brought a reading.
And this reading is a little bitdifferent from others that we've
done in the past, in partbecause I think I need to set
the stage before I start readingthis.
Harry (01:18):
Oh, interesting.
Jorge (01:18):
At least a little bit.
And also because I think thateven if you haven't read the
book, you're probably gonna knowwho it's by before I'm done with
it.
So maybe there's not gonna be asmuch suspense in this one as
we've had in other ones.
(01:39):
I'll say also, right before weget into it, that this is a book
that I'm reading right now and Ihaven't finished reading it yet.
I've definitely read the partthat I'm gonna read now, and as
I was reading it, I was like,"Ohmy God, I love this, and I'm
gonna bring it to Harry eventhough I'm not done with this
(01:59):
book." And by the way, I'mloving the book, so I can
wholeheartedly recommend it whenwe get to which book it is.
Harry (02:08):
I can't wait.
Jorge (02:09):
So this book is a memoir by a filmmaker.
The part of the book that I'mgoing to read, they're
discussing the production of oneparticular movie.
Harry (02:25):
Okay.
Jorge (02:27):
Alright, so here we go.
"If you look at the film fromthe point of view of today's
"production values," then, Icontend that no one would touch
the project for anything lessthan$50 million.
(02:47):
The filming was done on threebarely accessible Amazon
tributaries, and the main actorwas the maniacal wild man, Klaus
Kinsky.
We were constantly in financialstraits, and the cashflow from
Germany was not functioning.
Transfers often took weeks toarrive.
(03:09):
One night, when we were reallyup against it, Lucki went to
Miraflores, the affluent suburbof Lima, and went from house to
house offering a deal.
Because practically everyonethere had a dollar account in
the States to keep money hiddenfrom the Peruvian tax
authorities, they wereinterested in getting outside
(03:32):
money directly funneled into theUnited States.
Lucki said he needed$50,000worth of Peruvian Soles right
away.
In return, he would have thatsum wired from Germany to the
United States with an extra 10%on top as a reward for so much
(03:52):
trust.
The sum would arrive within 48hours.
People in Lima had read about myproject in the newspapers, but
who was going to sign up for itin the middle of the night in
response to someone knocking onthe doors?
Lucki, though, had a naturalgift for creating trust, which
(04:13):
he knew better than to abuse.
A very young entrepreneur, JoeKoechlin von Stein, took him up
on the offer.
He needed dollars because he wasplanning a rock concert with
Carlos Santana.
With no more guarantee than ahandshake.
He handed Lucki the Soles thenext day, and the project was
(04:35):
saved for the time being."
Harry (04:39):
Man, that sounds like what happened next?
I haven't read this and I'msuper curious to hear what it
is.
I don't know.
Jorge (04:53):
I guess a little bit of context I left out is, he
started by saying that todaythis a project like this would
be$50 million.
I think they had a budget oflike tens of thousands.
So it was very little money.
This was in the early 1970s.
The director is Werner Herzog.
Harry (05:12):
Okay.
Jorge (05:12):
And this was while they were shooting.
The movie Aguirre, the Wrath ofGod, And I'll say the book, this
is from Herzog's memoir, whichis called Every Man For Himself
and God Against All, which is agreat title, right?
And before we discuss it, I'llsay, I'm really enjoying this
(05:38):
book.
I'm listening to it as an audiobook, and if you've ever heard
Werner Herzog speak, so he has avery famous voice.
He's done documentaries, whichhe narrates.
Anyway, I highly recommend thisbook, it's just a hoot.
But I wanted to bring thispassage in particular because I
(06:01):
thought it a wonderfulillustration of know if to call
it an attribute, but acharacteristic of people that I
think is perhapsunderappreciated.
And it's certainly somethingthat I underrate in myself and
(06:25):
don't take opportunity todevelop.
And it's gumption.
Harry (06:29):
Ah.
Jorge (06:30):
By the way, the Lucki that they talk about is Herzog's
brother or half brother, who wasassisting him with the financing
of the movie.
And this notion that they are inthis crisis situation where
they've run out of money, andthis dude has the idea to go
(06:53):
around in the middle of thenight into a rich neighborhood
and start knocking on doors totry to secure financing for the
film, and he actually does it,to me is just astonishing.
And it's the sort of story thatI associate with gumption.
(07:13):
And when I read that, I waslike,"Oh my gosh, there are
times in my life where justgoing for it, going for some
kind of like crazy long shotthing with boldness has paid
off." And I wanted to talk aboutgumption with you because it
(07:35):
feels like something that wouldhelp people gain traction.
Harry (07:39):
Oh, I love that.
And there were two things thatcame to mind immediately.
The first was, I never was a bigJerry Seinfeld fan.
I didn't watch his shows, but Ihave to say in my top favorite
movies of all time is adocumentary that he put together
on the creative process.
(07:59):
We might have talked about thisat some point.
And the movie is called TheComedian, and it's how he
returned from his show back tostandup comedy.
And it is an object lesson ingumption.
But I didn't really have theword for that before, and I
think to my second point, Ithink the reason I didn't have a
(08:22):
word for it is, I didn'tactually know what it meant.
Because I grew up in a culturewhere the word chutzpah was the
primary word that can tried toconvey that kind of energy.
But even though they're probablyrelatively synonymous with one
another, I don't know if thatmade sense, but the chutzpah
(08:44):
somehow seems more base and moreridiculous.
So I'm curious what you think,if there's a difference between
gumption and which leads youdown the Forest Gump trail to
the chutzpah perspective.
I.
Jorge (09:03):
Again, folks can't see this.
I'm smiling because this is yetanother synchrony.
So, when I was thinking throughthis subject and bringing this
subject to our conversation, Ihad a little chat with ChatGPT
about gumption.
And I asked ChatGPT about therelationship between gumption
and chutzpah.
Harry (09:24):
Okay.
Jorge (09:25):
Because that word also came to my mind.
I was like, why gumption?
Gumption, first of all, feelslike an old-timey word, right?
Like, it's not a word that is incommon use.
And it felt to me like, it's notexactly chutzpah, but I've used
chutzpah more.
(09:46):
And I wouldn't say that it'sthat chutzpah is more base, and
this is something that ChatGPThelped me arrive at, is that
gumption is somehow like thecombination of initiative and
chutzpah.
It's not just enough to havechutzpah.
(10:06):
It's also the,"You know what?
I'm gonna go and knock, eventhough it's the middle of the
night, I'm gonna go to thatneighborhood and I'm gonna knock
on the doors."
Harry (10:13):
It's chutzpah with a plan!
Jorge (10:15):
It's chutzpah with a plan, but it's chutzpah also
with the actually doing itright?
Like, the actually getting outthere and knocking on the doors.
We can have all sorts of bravethoughts, right?
"I could do this, or I could dothat." But it's something quite
(10:37):
different to actually get in thecar or whatever and start
knocking on doors.
And I think that's the missingingredient.
Like you can talk a big game,but going out there and doing it
is something else.
Harry (10:51):
Okay.
And now it's my turn to smile,which of course you all can't
see, and the reason for that isI have a chutzpah story, but I
think it's actually a gumptionstory.
I'm going to be a littlehyperbolic about this, but the
gist of it's roughly true.
Back in the year 2000, right?
(11:12):
The heady year 2000, with all ofwhat was going on in Silicon
Valley, and the rise of the nextgreat internet opportunity,
which of course burst a fewyears later, but we're not gonna
go down that path.
And I came up with this idea.
And this was the idea for mycompany, which I called Public
(11:33):
Mind.
That was the name of thecompany.
And it really was a derivativeof the company that I was a
co-founder in called VirtualVineyards, which became
wine.com.
And in wine.com, we were reallythe very first people to have a
secure, usable, and very simpleshopping cart, which I am
(11:56):
extremely proud to say Idesigned.
And I didn't build it, the wholething, but I largely put it all
together myself with the help ofmy illustrious co-founder Robert
Olson, who built the backend.
And we put out there, welaunched live in January 1995.
And from that point forward, wewere selling wine online, and
(12:17):
then eventually specialty food.
And what would happen is, Iwould get these emails and phone
calls and people would ask forthings we didn't have.
And at some point, I realizedthat's a demand signal.
So I started keeping file cardsof these things people wanted,
and I kept the contactinformation for the people that
were requesting these things.
And so I had a whole table fullof what I would call request
(12:41):
groups.
And the request groups wentfrom,"Here's things I want," and
then somebody would say,"Hey, Iwant that too," to eventually
questions and complaints andsuggestions.
And so, I had these fourcategories of things all over
these tables.
And when I got enough of them, Iwould eventually work on solving
them.
Or especially, in the case oflike sulfites-free wine, right?
(13:04):
So a lot of people are allergicto sulfites in wine.
And so, we were getting a lot ofrequests for wine without
sulfates.
And when we finally hit, I don'tknow, 25 of them, I put together
an email list and I sent it offto folks and said,"Hey, I'm
gonna see if I can work with theother co-founder Peter Granoff,
who was the cork dork," he wasthe guy that sourced all the
(13:24):
wines and worked with all thewineries to procure the
sulfites-free wine"if we can getit, are you willing to prepay to
get ahold of this?" And so, thiswas turning a request group that
was manually managed into anaction group.
And remember, this is 1995–96,right?
(13:46):
That's a long time ago.
And, and at some point, so a fewyears later, I left that
startup, which was my firststartup, and I joined Hewlett
Packard in an internalconsulting group there.
And it dawned on me that thisnotion of managing request
groups based on demandaggregation was a thing, and it
(14:08):
was gonna become key in theonline interaction models that
people were to would see.
And this was like 1999, I thinkmaybe late'98, I don't remember.
But, so I came up with thismodel for building out request
groups, action groups.
And I designed the system, andHewlett Packard was incredibly
(14:31):
kind and gave me the time off togo work on it without declaring
ownership over any of theintellectual property rights,
and this is where the chutzpahstory comes in.
So here it is, like early 2000,and I'm thinking to myself,
"Self, I have my time off fromHP, but I don't really have any
money to go build this thing."And so, I started reaching into
(14:53):
my network, and I didn't knowthe first thing about being a
startup founder, right?
I'd been on a founding team, butI was the guy behind the scenes
designing and building thewebsite.
I was not the guy that was onthe front lines dealing with
investors, legal, board all thatgreat stuff.
And so I started calling all myfriends and people at Apple that
(15:14):
I knew'cause I'd worked there,and people at HP'cause I'd
worked there, and othercompanies and so on and so
forth.
And eventually found a guy thathad sold his company to Apple
and he was a good friend of afriend of mine, and he said that
he had money to invest.
And I was like,"Yes!" I'm gonnawithhold his name'cause just out
of, protect the innocent and allthat good stuff.
(15:35):
And so we met at UniversityCoffee on University Avenue in
Palo Alto, which I don't eventhink is still there.
It was a beautiful, big coffeeshop.
I had a 400 square-foot officefor$219 a month.
Think of that, in Palo Alto onUniversity Ave.
It was amazing.
At any rate, so I met with thisguy.
(15:55):
He agreed to meet with me.
And I thought of this ideapublic mind as this
world-changing idea to demandaggregation, right?
You could join a request group,a private request group, and you
could engage the world to getsomething made or get something
(16:16):
procured, and the more peoplethat would join the group, the
less the price could ostensiblybe, because I could then start
discounting.
And so I had this beautiful ideafor this thing, I told people
that demand aggregation, thisidea that you could get people
into request groups, was gonnabe the future of the internet.
And I was very secretive aboutthis idea.
(16:39):
Because in effect, it was avoting system, right?
And people weren't doing thatyet on online, not in a way
where outcomes could begenerated from the up votes.
And, and so this investor satdown at University Coffee.
I got my double espresso.
And he goes,"So tell me youridea." And I said,"I can't." He
(17:01):
goes,"What do you mean, youcan't?" And I said,"I think it's
a world-changing idea.
And if I tell you the idea andyou don't invest, then I'm out
my idea," right?
"You're gonna go tell people,they're gonna go build it, and
I'm gonna be sitting here with aspoon in my hand and very sad."
And so, he got really upset.
His face turned all red, and hesaid,"Are you telling me I drove
(17:22):
all the way down here from SouthSan Francisco or wherever it
was, and you're not even gonnatell me what the idea is?
And I have a checkbook with me,and I'm willing to help fund
your company.
This is insane.
Are you mad?" And I said,"No,I'm not mad.
I'm just scared." I said,"Look,here's the deal.
I need$100k to get this off theground." And he goes,"I'm not
gonna write you that check." AndI said,"Write me half that
(17:44):
check." I said,"Write a checkfor$50k, and if you really like
the idea, you can write theother check." And he goes,
"That's absolutely absurd, butI'll do it." And so he wrote a
check out for$50k and he handedit to me and I told him the
idea.
And he goes,"That's a greatidea." And he wrote the second
check.
And that's my chutzpah story.
(18:05):
That's how we got that companyoff the ground.
Jorge (18:08):
Oh, that's great.
Nowadays there are NDAs, right?
But it might have been too shortnotice to fire up an NDA, but...
Harry (18:16):
I didn't know enough about it to know how durable an
NDA was, and I didn't have anymoney to pay an attorney, and so
on and so forth.
I mean, sure.
Jorge (18:24):
But I think that with that story, you've hit on what I
think of as another, aspect ofgumption, which is the ability
to think on your feet, right?
To make lemonade with the lemonsthat you have, right?
And that's a part of this aswell.
In the spirit of what we'retrying to do with this podcast,
(18:47):
which is to help folks gain moretraction, I think that the
question that I'm strugglingwith, and one of the things that
I was hoping to discuss with youhere, is whether you think that
these I'm gonna call'em traits,the ability to do what you
(19:14):
described, what you did, theability to do what Lucki did, is
that something that people areborn with or is it something
that we can develop?
Harry (19:27):
A fair and very important question.
And certainly, if I were tryingto answer that question,'cause I
have my own beliefs and I'llanswer that in a minute, but if
I were trying to answer thatquestion in an operational way,
in a way that I felt wasdefensible, I would turn to Rich
Diviney's work on theattributes.
(19:49):
And Rich, he used to be incharge of training for the Navy
Seals and individual assessmentsand team composition.
And he has a book out thatdescribes these characteristics
and attributes that really helpyou better understand yourself,
(20:11):
and he has a very strongperspective on this.
I highly recommend the book.
He has a very inexpensiveassessment, which I have taken,
which really pissed me off whenI had to read it,'cause it told
me something about myself Ididn't wanna read, I didn't
like, but I knew it was true.
And it kinda set me back alittle bit in terms of my
(20:34):
confidence, but since then I'vedone a lot of thinking about it
and I think it was the net-netwas quite valuable.
I wanna say that a lot of thiscan be learned, but I'm not sure
you can just go learn it like anew skill.
I think there are certainaspects of it, which you have
propensities toward thesethings.
(20:55):
And then I think your life'sexperience either reinforces
those propensities or diminishesthem.
And I think in the case of thisthinking on your feet, I think
for Diviney's work, he callsthat adaptability.
And literally a week or two ago,he had a LinkedIn questionnaire
(21:16):
about whether adaptability wassomething you could learn.
And I don't recall what theanswer was, because I would like
to think that the propensity isnot something you can learn.
You kinda come out the chutewith that propensity or not.
But I think you can haveexperiences which support that
and ultimately allow you to getbetter and better at it.
(21:38):
Kind of real-life simulations,if you will.
Or the opposite, and things thatcause you to be more internally
reflective and cautious,risk-averse, so on and so forth.
Jorge (21:49):
My sense is that there is an aspect to this that might be
innate in the sense that youhave to have a certain
personality type to be bold likethat.
I don't think everyone is.
But on the other hand, thatmight be wrong.
Somebody might be so convincedabout their project or the thing
(22:12):
that they're working on thatthey just plow ahead.
Diviney has come up before inour conversations, you pointed
me to his book, Masters ofUncertainty.
Harry (22:22):
That's right.
Jorge (22:23):
Is that the book you were thinking of?
Harry (22:25):
Oh, no.
Masters of Uncertainty is hissecond book.
The Attributes was his firstbook.
Jorge (22:30):
And the reason I'm circling back to Diviney is that
when I was thinking about thisquestion about,"Can we develop
gumption?" and thinking,"I don'tknow, because it does feel at
least some of it might be tiedto your personality," but I
think that as a team, theremight be ways...
there might be ways to structurea team or an organization so
(22:54):
that people can be more bold.
And the top idea that came to mymind when thinking about this
was a concept that comes fromthe military, this idea of,
command intent, right?
Where...
Harry (23:06):
Oh yeah, commander's intent.
Jorge (23:08):
Exactly.
And you might know more aboutthis than I do, but as I
understand it, the idea is tomake goals very clear and the
reasoning for achieving the goalvery clear, and then allowing
the people who are going to beexecuting in the field to make
decisions on how to achieve thegoal, rather than micromanaging
(23:32):
their way up the hill orwhatever.
So that might be one.
Another might be, you brought upthe word"confidence," and I
think that it would be prettyhard to demonstrate gumption to
do the knocking on doors atmidnight or the asking for the
(23:56):
50% if you didn't truly believein the idea.
Harry (24:00):
Yeah.
Jorge (24:01):
So I think that having self-confidence, that might be
something that might be apersonality trait, but having
confidence on the project and onthe thing that you're doing is
something that you couldprobably work on, right?
I've developed more confidencein my life as I've developed
expertise in certain fields, andI feel like I can be more bold
(24:23):
now at the stage of life thatI'm in now, I can be bolder than
I was when I was much youngerand didn't really know what I
was doing.
I think back to the story, Idon't know if you've heard this,
but there's a story of a12-year-old Steve Jobs wanting
to build some kind of electronicdevice and not having the parts,
(24:47):
and he looked up Bill Hewlett inthe phone book, the founder of
Hewlett Packard, and he calledthem up, right?
And he said,"Hey, I need theseparts." And, he actually...
like he got like an internshipor something at Hewlett Packard.
And that story is one of thereasons why I think there must
be some of this that is innatebecause having the
(25:07):
self-confidence at twelve toactually do something like that
is not something that all of ushave.
But it is possible to developconfidence in your abilities as
you develop mastery over asubject domain, a practice, or a
field or what have you.
Harry (25:27):
Yeah, this is such a rich topic.
There's so many different placesthat we could press on this to
go further.
And it's so tied, so deeplytied, to so many of the other
things we've spoken about.
Because it's not just aboutconfidence in yourself and your
skills and your ability toexercise those skills, but
sometimes it's about the beliefthat you have in the thing that
(25:51):
you're representing and the moreclosely that's tied to your
identity, the easier that'sgonna be to feel confident in
it.
And so it's easy, if I find atool, for example...
Okay, so here's a great example.
You can't see this...
Well, you can, but most peoplecan't see this pen that I'm
holding up.
And this is the most amazing penever.
Like, I have been on a hunt forthis pen my whole life, and it's
(26:15):
this whole story we don't havetime for today.
But I bought every singleremaining pen from the people
that made this.
It's no longer made.
And I bought their entire stockof these so I could have the
rest of them for the rest of mylife and give them away as
gifts.
And Jorge, I'm gonna send youone.
And it's a custom-made,Kickstarter pen that holds a
(26:37):
Fisher Space Pen cartridge.
It's magnetic.
It's short.
It's incredibly well-weighed.
It's like this perfect pen.
And it is tied to my identity asa communicator, as an explainer,
as an author, as a designer.
And not only do I believe inthis product, but it is so tied
(26:58):
to who I am that I can easilysell this pen for$500.
It's nowhere near what I paidfor it, but I want to keep all
the ones I have.
But if you're willing to pay me$500, I am willing to show you
every reason why this is thebest pen in the world and I'm
willing to demonstrate anextreme level of chutzpah in
saying,"Look, I'm not gonna sellit for less than$350.
(27:20):
I don't care that you can getsomething like it for$40 U.S.
The fact is, you can't get this,and I know how awesome this is."
So, I don't feel like I'm beingbold or ridiculous.
I just know that there's onlytwelve of these left in the
world, and I've got one of'em.
(27:41):
And so when I lose this oneagain, there'll only be eleven
of them left in the world.
So it's, I don't know...
I could just go on about this,'cause I think there's a
difference between beingconfident in the skill of maybe
selling versus confident in thething that I wanna sell.
And the more tightly coupled itis to who I am and what's
(28:03):
important to me and what myvalues are and how I see myself
in the world, the easier it isfor me to show up.
And I think that's the thingthat's that Steve Jobs did when
he was twelve years old.
Jorge (28:14):
It's almost like an existential confidence, right?
It's like this thing is...
this means everything to meright now.
And you communicate that whenyou're on fire with an idea,
that comes across in some way.
Anyway, I think you're right,this might be a springboard for
(28:36):
further conversations.
I I just wanted to bring thesubject to our topics here,
because the more I learn aboutpeople who are high achievers,
the more I'm reading aboutpeople who have gumption, who
have this trait.
And right now I'm in a WernerHerzog bender watching Herzog
(29:00):
movies and listening to hisaudiobook, and he's someone
who's the patron saint ofgumption.
Like he does these things that,I think he established a
filmmaking school where he sayshe teaches two things, how to
forge shooting permits and howto use bolt cutters, which is
(29:24):
the"Best to ask for forgivenessthan permission school" or
something like that, right?
Harry (29:29):
That's awesome.
Oh yeah, and I have a boltcutter story.
I'll save for another time.
Jorge (29:33):
But I think those are the people who do things right?
The people who actually getthings done, oftentimes are
people who have this trait.
So anyway, it was greatdiscussing it with you, Harry.
Harry (29:44):
Yeah, a lot of fun.
Thanks for bringing this up.
And I have a road trip coming upin a little over a week, and I'm
definitely gonna get a copy ofthat audiobook and listen to it
on the road.
It sounds fabulous.
Jorge (29:53):
Oh, it's a treat.
Narrator (29:57):
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes
with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
Check out the show notes attractionheroes.com and if you
enjoyed the show, please leaveus a rating in Apple's podcasts
app.
Thanks.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!