Make Faster Decisions and Avoid FOMO with Patrick McGinnis

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Allison: Deliberate Leaders I am your host Allison Dunn, founder of the Deliberate Leaders podcast. Each episode we feature inspiring interviews to help you on your leadership journey. And today’s guest brings one of my fate my children’s favorite sayings. Have you ever heard the or experienced FOMO, which is also the state of fear of missing out?

Our guest today Patrick McGinnis, he was the person who actually coined the term back in 2004. While writing an op ed for the Harvard Business Review magazine, Patrick has finally written a book about FOMO. The book’s title is. And boy, the book is incredibly useful.

Patrick is also a venture capitalist. He is a podcast host and author of The 10% Entrepreneur. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us here today on Deliberate Leaders.

Patrick: It’s my pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Allison: Awesome. I’d like to get this conversation kicked off with a quick question. I like to just quickly chat about what do you feel is? Or what tip would you offer as your number one leadership tip for all of our listeners?

Patrick: Oh, that’s a good one. I love it. I think the thing I’ve learned about leadership over time, and listen, I don’t know if there is I never knew to be said about these things. It’s more about remembering the core principles. So what I would say is what I’ve learned over time is that when you can lead from a place of being very genuine, because you have confidence in yourself and you’ve done the homework and you know what you’re doing. You can be much more effective.

The worst kind of leader is somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing and trying to transmit, that they actually think you know, that they do know but they really don’t And then therefore people just smell it. And I think you want to stay away from that. So if you don’t know, don’t try to lead. Listen.

Allison: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Don’t try to leave, but listen and get guidance. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Thank you. So let’s talk about fear of missing out. I don’t know when I first heard the term, but it is a term that I don’t use very often, but my son uses it pretty consistently. He’s like, Oh, my gosh, I’m having FOMO. So no one likes missing out. Right? So what is it that drives people that have that feeling that anxiety and fear about making choices?

Patrick: So if you look at what fear of missing out is definitionally there’s really two things happening. The first is we feel FOMO when we have a perception that there’s something better out there than what we’re doing at the moment. And I say perception, because it’s based on information asymmetry, it actually you know, you it may be that there is something better but it may be that it is not and you’re just sort of, you know, because of the amount of information we get on a daily basis because of social media and activity, we get so many idealized images that force us to feel these feelings.

The second thing is when you have FOMO is that you have a fear of missing out on a beneficial group activity. So it’s the idea of everybody’s doing something and I’m left out, it’s that herd mentality. And so that’s where it comes from. That’s the driver of FOMO. And, of course, these are feelings that go back to ancient history, the earliest humans were aware of what they didn’t have and maybe what they wanted or needed to survive. The difference, of course today is that now we all carry around the internet in our pockets. And so it’s so much data that drives this follow up. 

Allison: What would you recommend to people who maybe get a little stuck in that fear of missing out and aren’t making choices at all?

Patrick: Well, there’s a lot you can do. And that’s what the new book is all about that it really gets into sort of how we can deal with this, but I’ll start at the very simplest thing the most, the first place I’d start is to recognize that oftentimes we’re feeling FOMO about things that just don’t matter. So FOMO about you know, I do this all the time, I think about I really like ice cream. I’m like, sitting in my apartment, think about ice cream.

Oh, it’s sort of like, should I have it? Shouldn’t I haven’t, I don’t know what to do. Don’t waste time on the little things. I flip a coin. If it’s one side says, you know, eat the ice cream do says don’t if I’m indecisive. And I just do what the coin says. So a lot of what I what I advise people to do is not to waste precious time and energy on the things that don’t matter.

Beyond that, when you’re thinking about the important things like oh, you know, should I change jobs and go work in a new industry? again, it goes back to that definition of the perception. There’s something better out there for you based on information asymmetry, you’ve got to fill that information asymmetry with facts, you got to do your homework, have criteria, do your research and then figure out is this as good as it looks and a lot of time you know, it’s this is not, you know, magic but many of us don’t ever take the time to do that work. And so that’s a lot of the work that you need to do is figuring out what’s really happening rather than just sitting there and stewing all the all day long.

Allison: I love the idea that you kind of work out the facts of kind of what you’re looking through. If I’m more of an intuition, gut person, so I listened to my gut and what I recognize is what I may be fearing is some It’s not what you think it is. So really, diving deep into the underlying fear and anxiety over things. What life decisions, have you found that people are most hesitant to make? And how can people find the courage to make those decisions?

Patrick: So I love that question. Because it’s, everybody when you write a book about FOMO, and you invent FOMO, which is just, again, I’m very popular with the kids as you know, to your son. It’s like a party trick. I tell people this and then they tell me they’re all about themselves. It’s most fascinating thing. I’m very lucky. So I hear all about what people are dealing with in their lives and indecision and, and I also did this TED Talk called How to make faster decisions last year, that a lot of people want to talk with me as well.

I’ve learned I become this sort of, I don’t know what you say, like the shoulder to cry on about people’s decision making. And I’ve seen an interesting thing. When it comes to people talking about themselves, they talk about indecision people are pretty, you know, they talk about the big things. It’s like, Listen, you know, it’s like, I want to start a company. It’s a lot of career stuff, you know, should I start a company? Should I do that dream career? I you know, I’m working in this career that I that pays the bills, but there’s a lot of drudgery.

Should I move to this city that I’ve always dreamed about living in with high school kids, especially it’s like, which year Should I go to this college or that college? There’s a lot of stuff like that. So, you know, should I marry this person or not? Those are the big ones.

Now what happens though, is with when people talk about other people, so not about their own indecision, they talk about other people, they’re always talking about, it’s like the most smallest things ever. It’s like, Oh, my God, my wife, we turn on Netflix, and you know, we can’t, she can’t decide what to watch. And we’re there for six hours or, you know, what are we going to order at a restaurant? And so I think, equal by takeaway, and this is kind of why I bring this up is that I think that people generally think that they make the small decisions well, and that the hard ones they struggle on, but everybody else can’t deal with the little ones too.

And I think what the reality is that, and this is a lot of the work that I do is we live in a world of overwhelming choice. So oftentimes these days we spent and I do this myself, I live in New York City, I go on seamless ordering, because we’re you know, I’m living quarantine so I’m not going out to dinners. And 30 minutes later, I still haven’t decided what to eat and it’s so I feel and I talked to my parents I said I call my Parents I couldn’t decide what to eat. My mom said just like, flip a coin. That’s what you always tell people to do flip a coin.

Allison: That’s hilarious.

Allison: Oh, so if you’re missing out you also discuss a related idea which is fear of better options. And so How? How? Explain that?

Patrick: Yeah so FOMO fear of a better option is the idea that in this world of oh it kind of like the seamless example I just gave in this world of overwhelming choice because you know, we live in a time where you can buy anything you want 24 hours a day, you have unlimited choice. When it comes to basically everything in your life. You think about you know, growing up before the internet, both of us grew up in northern New England, I mean, you had like a like a Kmart in your town if you were lucky, and that’s where you got everything. Of course now we have Amazon Prime right.

And so what happens as a result is that when we are trying to select just one thing from a set of options, perfectly acceptable options. It’s very tempting to wait for something better to come along. And that’s why people never commit to plans. That’s why, you know, many of us struggle because we’re trying to optimize. And as a result, we come to believe that it’s better to wait for that perfect thing rather than to just choose one thing. And God forbid, it’s not the Tip Top Best thing.

Allison: Yeah, I recognize the fear of a better a better option. oboe, that’s a great term. Where people start to like, I don’t know, I want to make a commitment to that one person. Right. And that’s someone better might come along.

Patrick: Yeah. And in fact, dating apps.

Patrick: I mean, Tinder, it’s the swiping right, like you. If you watch like a 22 year old interact with a dating app. The amount of swiping that happens, it’s like, I’m just swiping for everybody. We’ll just see what happens. I mean, that is it’s not intentional or mindful. It’s Just haphazard. It’s like throwing everything in the wall and see what sticks. And that’s what happens when you have FOMO. Right?

Allison: I’ve never used a dating app, but I think like, I would feel like I was personally insulting someone. Like, didn’t like swiping the maturity mean, oh, you know, I can find something good in everyone, but it doesn’t mean I want them.

Patrick: Totally, totally, totally.

Allison: Let’s talk about your book, The 10% Entrepreneur. And that was that your first book?

Patrick: Yeah.

Allison: Alright. For those who haven’t read it, what is The 10% Entrepreneur?

Patrick: But it’s a book that I wrote, having lived through the 2008 financial crisis and losing everything. I was working for a division of AIG, our division, I mean, it was a mess. I had shares in the company that I bought. I thought I was so smart and they fell 97% Yeah, it was it was really intense. And so I can laugh about it now, but barely. But I realized I wasn’t diversified. And I also noticed that during the financial crisis 2008 all my friends in the entrepreneurial world, all these tech people in San Francisco, like, everything was great over there.

And it just occurred to me Wow, like, I’ve always done finance. I was on wall street because that was kind of like the sure bet and I got it wrong. That’s not the sure bet anymore. Meanwhile, All my friends are having these great experiences working with these companies where they can wear jeans every day, and they get like all these snacks, and they’re, you know, their company is going public. So I was like, I just thought about this all wrong. But at the same time, I didn’t really have the sort of fortitude or the courage to be a full time entrepreneur. So I decided to start doing entrepreneurial projects on the side either investing capital as an angel investor, investing my time in exchange for some shares in the company starting things and I started doing that.

And basically, you know, I spent 10% of my time and money on that on the side, side of it. day job. And that turned into a portfolio of over 20 different investments of my time and my money. It’s turned into a couple of unicorns. And so I just believe there’s something we all need to be doing that we all can do. And in fact, the book really profiles. You know, it’s not just about people who went to Harvard business school and work in fancy tech companies. It’s about lots of people all over the world that are just like you and me who are doing this.

And so, what’s kind of interesting, too, is now that we’re in this, this new economic upheaval into 2020 it’s, it just seems like, it’s so relevant right now. Because when it came out, the book came out in 2016. And a lot of my friends were like, Man, you’re so hung up on 2008 What is wrong with you, like move on already? And I was sort of saying like, I’d love to, but I just I fear, you know, and sure enough now we’re back in an a sort of a really tricky economic situation. And I think that part time entrepreneurship is a great way to respond to the to the challenges of the macro economy.

Allison: I think everyone has an entrepreneurial spirit inside of them. And that this is a way to do it in a way that you’re not risking everything. Right? So what types of steps would you suggest someone who maybe feels like they could and should be an entrepreneur but not quite ready to let go of the other room? Right? How does like what how would someone start? When should they be looking at or thinking about?

Patrick: Yeah, so that’s, it’s a really important process. And in the book, I lay out, it’s the book is kind of like a workbook. In a sense. It’s very practical, because I don’t know about you, but I read these business books that all sound great. The title is like, you’re like, wow, it’s going to change my life. And then you open the book, and it’s sort of like, Okay, well, nice idea. But how do I do any of these things? Right. So I try to be very prescriptive and in the book, based on my own experience, and then researching and I sort of profiled 20 or 30 different folks who were doing this, so how do you get started Well, the first thing you need to do is assess for resources, because the resources are what will allow you to invest in your 10%. So resources are money, time and knowledge and with money, it’s figuring out Can you invest anything or not? Because if you can, that opens up certain doors to you. If you can’t, that it opens up different doors to you, you don’t always have that money to invest.

Second is your time. So everybody says, Well, I’m too busy, right? I mean, everybody’s too busy, because we all carry around cell phones in our pockets that steal our time from us, like look at your phone. How much time are you spending on things that don’t drive your sort of well, being past Sunday’s report was very dramatic. I was like, 5.1 hours per day. Oh, oh, I mean, you’re doing better than me. I fell off a cliff during the last couple months. And so, we all can make time you could simply cut out some of those things, right?

And then knowledge is really you know, it’s all about combining what you’re what you’re good at With what you like to do, because what you’re good at will make you successful, what you’d like to do will make you willing to spend the time on it. But you know, what happens is a lot of times I talk to people all the time, talented people, and they say, I can’t figure out what I’m good at. Because a lot of times, we are the least successful, sort of Judge of our own talent, which is just it’s so, so unfair. And so I sort of give people a process whereby you, you look deeply at your experiences and you get people to help you out and you start identify, like, what makes me special, what makes me different than the average person and that sets you on a path to start thinking about the kinds of projects you can do. 

Allison: Excellent tips to follow that. And who are the some of the people that you’ve met? Who is following this strategy? Can you give me an example? Like I personally, I would love to hear about your unicorn like, what was the unicorn? How did you know it? When did you find out it was a unicorn like, tell me about you?

Patrick: Yeah, well, yeah, I was going say well, Serena Williams is doing this, but we’ll start with me. So here’s what happened. financial crisis hits as I told you, I’m just in a bad place, super depressed. My, one of my best friends calls me up and he says, Listen, we got to get you doing something. I am starting a little company to work with YouTube celebrities. Come work with me. I’ll give you some shares in the company. If you sell any business, we were doing like campaigns for brands, if you sell any business, I’ll give you a percentage of what you bring in. And I was like, I don’t know, this sounds scary. And I’m not good at that. And then he’s like, why not do it? And so he actually bought me a ticket to go to a YouTube convention in Orlando in 2012, or something. And I went, and I was terrible. And I felt weird being there. And I was I didn’t do a very good job. But you know, I learned something.

And I went back to New York and I started selling our product. And I actually sold a $25,000 pilot to Smirnoff because a friend of mine worked there and she took a meeting and they’re looking at innovation. And so oh my god, I’d never sold anything. I felt so excited. It just was like I could do I can do this. And so anyway, we ended up realizing that the business would never really scale the way we wanted it to. And so my friend said, Listen, I have another idea I’m going to start working on do you want to be an investor in this company? So I said, You know what? Sure, because it’s YouTube related. And I know you’re so good at this. And, you know, I believe in you.

So I invested and I remember writing that check. And it felt like a lot of money at the time. And I remember thinking like, I will never see this money again. It’s gone for good. But I know one thing, he’s not going to waste it. So I invested this company is that it’s called Ipsy. And when I invested, the company was doing nothing in revenues pre revenue. And now today, the company is doing well over half a billion dollars in revenue and it’s become the second apparently, like I the stat comes from the company, the second largest subscription service in the world. Isn’t that incredible?

Patrick: Ipsy, it’s a cosmetics service. So basically, like YouTube celebrities, Michelle Phan was one of the co-founders and so, I invested in this based on my experiences that I had learned. So it wasn’t just that I didn’t expect that since like, I had no clue. But I had worked in the industry a little bit working on our previous project. And so that went on to be a huge company. And you know, I’ve just been able to watch my investment grow and I just can’t believe it. I’m very thankful to be a part of that company.

Allison: That’s awesome. And in an industry you probably don’t have a lot of experience with cosmetics.

Patrick: No. And what was the great was that, you know, he also hadn’t been in beauty. He understood the sort of the influencer world and they partnered with Michelle Phan, and she was, you know, the number one YouTube celebrity in the beauty space. And so it was a great team and so I’ve learned a lot now I would never have You know, I’m no expert, but like, Yeah, I think that’s what you have to do is you recognize the parts that you can assess, well, like, I was like, I get this YouTube thing.

And then you recognize what you don’t know. And you fill the gap with somebody like Michelle really does know. And then, you know, as an investor, I’m not running the company day to day, but I try to add value, I made some, I introduced them to a company called Urban Decay, which was one of their early partners and because a friend of mine was on the board, so it’s like little things like that, that I tried to do to add value and but we you know, you don’t have to be it doesn’t have to be like that extreme example. It could just be that your friends opening a restaurant and you come up with a design for the, for the dining room where you come up with the menu or whatever. There’s all these ways that you can partake in these things.

Allison: What do you think is a common challenge for someone who’s also trying to become a 10% while working full time?

Patrick: I think the hardest thing to do. Number one is I think oftentimes, we can feel very overwhelmed. And so I think it’s very helpful to partner with other people and find somebody to hold you accountable and also to help you carry the load. I think the second thing is the hardest part is starting that first project, right? It’s like I remember because I felt so uncomfortable. It’s like, I remember going to that YouTube convention, and it was like all these teenagers. And I was like, you know, I was, I guess, in the early 30s. And, and I felt so out of place, and just like, what am I doing here?

And I think it can feel that way when we’re in the world of entrepreneurship. Because if you’re coming from a corporate world, and then you start dealing with people who are entrepreneurs, and they’re like, you know, that’s just a very different vibe, right? And you might feel a little out of place or you don’t know how to sort of express the value or what you want to do. Just explaining like, what your objective is, can be really hard.

What happens is, if you can just do one, it doesn’t have to be successful. You can just get started with one. You kind of put the toe in the water and then you start to learn and figure out stuff. And the great thing about this part time approach is say, what if you fail? What if you fail, the worst failure you’ve ever had? Doesn’t matter. It’s such a small percentage of what you’re doing, you’ll be fine.

Allison: I know that you kind of outlined three ways to be able to start as a 10% entrepreneur. And so I would imagine that cash is often maybe a mental roadblock for folks. What is it that you would suggest to help someone determine you wrote that first check, right? You know how much you were willing to put at risk thinking I’m never getting this back. Can you make the inner determination?

Patrick: That’s the beauty of the 10%. Because you say, I’m going to go up to 10. So this was something I sort of figured out. It’s really funny. I remember my best friend and I were walking in New York City. We used to walk home after work. And we were when I was I we had another friend, a mutual friend. And who was doing this kind of stuff, and I felt jealous, I’m going to admit it. And I was like, really resentful, which is so stupid. It just was showing me that I had FOMO, right.

Patrick: And I was like, what, maybe I should do this stuff like, but I don’t know how much to put. And so I thought, you know what I’m going to, I’m going to put 20% of my money into this stock. And then I was like, I that sounds like a lot, maybe 10%. And so I started calling it a 10% entrepreneur. And that’s where I started. And what I found out later on is now two things that are kind of fun. Number one is if you think of the concept of the tide, the tide is meant to be something that’s meaningful, but that you can do without radically altering your life and it’s 10%.

And then the average angel investor in the US puts about 10% of their net worth into projects. So what I did was I said, Okay, 10% it’s this number here, and I’m going to keep that kind of for the rest of my life. You know if this works for me, and then when I found my first deal I’ll never forget, I met this entrepreneur and I is not the story, it was a different entrepreneur. And I liked it, but I wasn’t sure. And I felt like I had to do one, you know, I was like, I going to make an investment. So I felt this pressure to invest, but I wasn’t, I just didn’t quite, I believed in the entrepreneur, but I didn’t know 100% but so I was having all this stress. And he, you know, I said, Well, how much do you want me to invest? He said, Well, you know, our minimum investment is $50,000. And I’m thinking like, that’s like, a lot. That’s like two cars, maybe I don’t know, a car you’re talking about. That’s, that’s a car anyway.

And I was like, No, I think I could invest $5,000 and he was like, sounds great. He took the money so you don’t have you know, you have to don’t feel obliged to do what you know, you need to be true to what you don’t feel pressured more on you than you feel comfortable with. And I’ll tell you that that company went to zero. I lost all my money on that. And I’m so glad now that I only invested that. I mean, I’d love to five k back but like that’s much better. It’s a tax write-off and you have to spread your bets, that’s the key.

Allison: So how many 10 percents Have you invested over? So I think it’s from 2008. To now? How many how many businesses are you involved in?

Patrick: Yeah, too many. There is.

Patrick: What happens is, so in terms of actual investments, it’s probably around, I should count around 10. And it spans I mean, if I were to tell you all the range, you’d be like, what that makes no sense. He just told us you invest in you know, things, you know, with people, you know, and it’s but it actually makes a lot of sense for me.

And I’ve done everything from I financed, importing of mining equipment to Mongolia. I’m a partner in an asset management fund in Peru, I invested in AI company that’s become very valuable, have a bunch of failed as well that I could tell you all about, if you want to hear about those. And then I also that’s investments and then on the advisory side where people actually put out asked me to be an advisor and give me shares. What happens there is people get word gets out that if you’re good, and if you help people, they start telling their friends about you. So I probably have those I’ve done at least 15 over the year. So I’m well over 25 at this point.

Allison: Wow, that is spectacular, actually very cool.

Patrick: And many, by the way, many of them went nowhere. And that’s okay, too. That’s the game.

Allison: Do you think there’s a rule of thumb that you can base it on, just out of curiosity, like people should be prepared to fail or go nowhere with a certain percentage? Like that’s just a given? Correct?

Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. In terms of the actual numbers, what percent fail, I would say probably 80%. Maybe I’ve had a better result than that because I think I’ve been very judicious. But I also would say that I tend to do the worst. The farther I get from my expertise. I mean, it’s a very obvious point, but like is important that to know that that is a causal relationship.

Allison: Yeah, that’s a that’s a brilliant thing that our listeners just I just want to make sure that you like, the further you get from what you know, the higher the likelihood is that you’ll risk the money. So that’s a great takeaway. I don’t necessarily I’m not asking you to focus on a failure, but so far in your career, and what’s been the most important lesson that you’ve learned about investment and then I also want that same question about what’s most important lesson about leadership.

Patrick: Whoo, it’s a great question. Okay, so the first one, I’ve just, you know, I have faced so many crises. And by the way, I’m healthy, and I’m happy so I’m not complaining, okay. There are people who really deal with crises like where somebody gets really sick or addiction or you name it, I mean, a natural disaster. So I’m not complaining and well, what I would say is that since I started my career, I’ve been through five financial crises because I do an international investing.

So, like I had just one of my companies like, you know, we had like a CEO, this is in the Middle East, the CEO was accused of his brother was accused of giving money to al Qaeda like that was on the front page of the paper, like, just stuff that like you just can’t even imagine. It’s like horrifying.

So I’ve been through ups and downs on the macro economy and crises in the portfolio. And then also, you know, in terms of my own experience, just you know, having companies blow up and stuff like that. And so what I’ve learned over time is number one, get it to be just diversify, diversify, diversify. It is so critical, because you know, I’ve had investments I had an investment in a company called Blue smart, beautiful suitcases that were the first smart suitcases like before away we were the first ones. We did an Indiegogo campaign and I invested small money in this company. I mean, it’s like 10 K or something 5-10 k nothing because it was like, kind of a gotten just chipped in enough money to do a prototype and our friend was a CEO. And this company did an Indiegogo campaign and it was like the 10th most successful Indiegogo in the history of the site, like they raised like $3 million. And so my investment went from it was worth like, you know, $400,000, like overnight, like it just like went crazy. And the company was killing it. And then, you know, they did another capital raise, and like, we were just off to the, to the races and doing really well and then airlines change their rules. And the bag was no longer allowed on the plane.

And we basically sold the company for very little money like a month later. Now, we did nothing wrong. Like we have thought about these scenarios, either the management team, I mean, I asked the question, but they had these guys were meeting with American Airlines, and they did all the work. And so the point is like, you can do everything right. You could have the most successful restaurant in New York City, and then a pandemic comes and you’re bankrupt and so different versification especially in this uncertain world in which we live, I’ll tell you, I sleep well at night, because I know that I’m so diversified. It just really helps me.

Allison: And you can achieve, just to give, you know, people to think you can achieve diversification and still stay within the sweet spot of what it is that you know. So just going to get creative and not do the same thing in the same market.

Patrick: Right? Totally. I mean, think about it, for example, me, I’m an investor, and I’ve invested in certain industries, but like, for number one, I go learning and so I become, I can sort of widen my area of play. It’s not that I’m just investing in like, you know, a nice thing all the time. But number two is that, you know, that’s why teams are important because you need a cross functional team where you bring a certain knowledge base, and maybe that knowledge base is functional.

It’s like I know how to build a financial model or I know how to make a marketing plan. And then you get the other person to come in and bring sort of the industry expertise. So that’s, that’s why collaboration is so critical. like nobody has a monopoly on all the stuff you need to be successful.

Allison: And I just want to I can’t let you off this podcast without actually saying this out loud because it makes me absolutely loved the title of your podcast, which is the FOMO sapian podcast, which I think is hilarious, which is, what is the focus of the show? And what inspired you to produce it?

Patrick: Yeah, it was a fellow podcaster you know, first of all, everybody, this is super hard work. Okay, so if you want to have a podcast, we welcome you to the family, but just know it’s like, it’s no joke. It’s seriously. Yeah, a lot of work. It’s a labor of love, but sometimes not. And so I did this. So people always told me you should have a podcast 10% podcast and I thought, yeah, but I won’t do a podcast, because I know how much work it is. I had friends who were in the space if unless I can, number one, be sure that I’m going to have a great quality and that I’m very happy with it.

And number two, That I have some sort of distribution partner because I just don’t want to deal with that. And so I got a call from a friend of mine who works at Advertising Week. And he said, listen, we’re starting a podcast channel, do you want to be one of our shows? So I said, sure, I’ll do a show about the 10% entrepreneur, and my agent who I was writing the book about FOMO. At the time, we’re working on a proposal and she was like, Patrick, this is great advice. Alice says to me, Patrick, you know, FOMO is the next thing you’re going to do. Don’t focus on the past focus on the future. So I thought, okay, I’ll do a show about FOMO, the FOMO show, world of FOMO, all this sort of stuff. And so I was trying to figure it out. And I put out a call for titles to a bunch of people and I just like crowd sourced a million ideas. And one idea that came to me was FOMO sapiens, which, and you know, it’s one of those things where, like, I couldn’t come up with a name I liked and I was struggling and I was annoyed. And I was like, I FOMO world that sounds terrible.

And then the minute I saw FOMO sapiens, in that moment, I knew it was the perfect title. And so I started producing shows and in you know, I just invited people that I knew and I live in New York City, so it’s easy to get them to come over. And then eventually the Dean of Harvard Business School heard about what I was doing. And he was really interested because I had bended FOMO at Harvard Business School. And they were launching, Harvard Business Review was launching a podcast channel. And so he said, why don’t you meet with those people? I did. And I had to do a whole like, sort of memo and explain why I wanted to do this and come up with a idea for the show, because I just been kind of talking about whatever. So I had to really like, you know, think about the product and how we’re going to market it and all that sort of stuff. And I did. And we launched with them about a year ago. And now we’re in you know, geez, we’re in season four. And the show is really moved up in the rankings. And it’s, you know, it’s gotten it’s like highest like the 20th highest business show in the States. I mean, it’s all over the map, but I’m really big in like Mongolia. I’m like number three there. So feeling good about gratulations.

Allison: So, but it’s just as you know, it’s such a wonderful I think it’s a wonderful way to spend time with interesting people because, you know, invite them on your show, and also, it’s a wonderful way of putting good ideas into the world because you know, there’s so much negativity out there if you can host something where you’re bringing positivity, I just makes me feel good. So I love it.

Patrick: And I get often asked what is the point of doing it and I’m like, I just love connecting with people who’ve made an impact in my life so that people who might not actually read the book, still get to meet you and get the you know, the concepts from it in a way that they enjoy it.

Allison: So, it’s more for me than anyone else.

Patrick: There you go. I think that’s a great way to look at it. By the way, I think this is a perfect format to actually have real conversations.

Allison: Deliberate conversations is the way I like to. So Patrick, I just I can’t thank you enough for one the work that you do and sharing the concepts of how, how you can encourage people to really put their toe in the water with entrepreneurship. I think that’s incredible. What is the best way for listeners to find or follow you?

Patrick: So you can go to my website, which is PatrickMcGinnis.com and there you’ll find all the links. So you know, my Twitter is at PJ McGinnis Instagram as Patrick Jim McGinnis. I’m on LinkedIn, as well. And I write a newsletter there. And of course, Facebook. And then the podcast is called FOMO Sapiens is distributed by Harvard Business Review. And you can find that, of course, on Spotify, Apple and all the other places that carry podcasts. So check it out. And basically, you know, make sure to go to my site, because there I have tons of I mean, blog posts, more than you could ever read about 10% entrepreneurship and about decision making and a link to my TED talk and everything. So if you’re interested in connecting, you know, you can send me an email and I respond, I promise, I really do.

Allison: Fantastic. Well, I promised that I will include all of the links that Patrick has just mentioned in the show notes of this episode. So look down below for that. And Patrick, again, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us today from New York. I’m glad you’re safe and well. And I look forward to seeing what you put out in the future.

Patrick: Thank you best of luck.