Challenging Conventional Notions: How to Align Purpose, Profit, and Mission In Your Career With Arun Gupta

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I think 7% of government work tech workers are under the age of 30, right? Think about that 7%. We have four times as many tech workers in government over the age of 60 than we do under the age of 30. The average age at Google is probably 32, 33. Like we're upside down, right? And then so when you start to unpack the question as to like, why aren't there more young tech folks going into government? There's probably not many people in the engineering departments at any of these schools that have been in government before, right? So there's no one saying inspiring these kids to think about starting their career there. And the government agencies aren't showing up to recruit because they don't have the resources. So we need to think about like, you know, is there a role for a not for profit or something to help bridge that in some way, shape or form? Right. And rebuild that infrastructure. We've got an organization called Noble Reach that's doing that. I think that's where it starts, you know, that's how you rebuild trust at a foundational level. Is getting more cross collaboration between these sectors.

This episode is sponsored by ZipRecruiter. If you need a change and are looking for a new job, or if you're looking to hire for your small business, please check out ZipRecruiter today. Their smart technology matches the right candidates to the right jobs and sends new opportunities right to your inbox. They make finding a job or hiring the right person easier than ever. ZipRecruiter the smarter way to hire. Try ZipRecruiter for free today by going to ZipRecruiter.com and tell them I sent you. Arun, welcome to the Break podcast. I am so happy that you were able to share some time with us today.

Thanks for having me, Mike.

So I want to kick off this conversation by reading a student testimonial from your website. And hopefully this tees up the rest of the conversation and drives it in a good direction. And if it doesn't, we will just make sure we go wherever our talk takes us. But here it is. So this book and the person is referring to your upcoming book, Venture Meets Mission. This book presents a simple but powerful message for anyone in my generation looking for meaning in their work. Rather than thinking about your career decisions as a series of trade offs between profit and purpose, look for mission opportunities where you can have the most catalytic impact. So this way of thinking, you know, seems to be so backwards from what we're sort of traditionally taught or traditionally funneled into, into ways of working. I wanted you to start off with just how do you define sort of a mission driven career and what are the key principles or characteristics that make this distinct from a traditional career?

Yeah, so great question, Mike, and appreciate the quote. You know, look, I think especially for young students, what I've seen, you know, look, I was a VC for 20 years and I started teaching at Georgetown and Stanford. And what I would see is, you know, I'd have students come up to me and ask, I want to go do good, but I also want to go make money. And they presented it as this artificial binary choice. And as I would unpack it with them, you realize we've given them this artificial vernacular where it feels like a binary choice. For profit, not for profit, public sector, private sector. One is about doing good, one is about making money. I think when you think about folks that come onto campuses and recruit, we funnel them into these categories, right? Whether it be investment banks and consulting firms, or big tech firms, etc. And so I think students are really wrestling with this. And so what I've tried to do in the class that we taught and hopefully try to elevate in the book that we've written here, is that a lot of things that are inspiring them where they want to go do good, whether they care about climate, whether they care about national security, whether they care about health care, whether they care about food security. Today, there's never been a time where you can align people, purpose and profit around those missions, but in a for profit way, like you can go build companies to go do that. And we now have, you know, a decade full of success stories that are now attracting capital into this world. And what I've seen is that in teaching is these companies don't come to campus, right? So students aren't aware of what they see are the traditional big recruiters that come to campus. And so a lot of what we're trying to do is elevate for the students that these kinds of companies are getting support, they're getting funded, they're entrepreneurial and they're solving mission oriented problems, but they're solving those mission oriented problems in for profit ways. And that's okay. You don't have to only be doing something not for profit to be doing good. And so that's what we talk about and that's what we're trying to inspire these students to think about.

What do you view as responsible for that notion that there's a Difference between purpose and profit. You obviously mentioned that certain companies are not coming to campus necessarily. But there seems to be a little bit broader theme with, with the stigma of making money and, and doing good as different, I guess.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And you know, look, I think some of it starts in our academic system, in our silos, right? In that we don't have enough cross interdisciplinary classes. You know, what I saw in the class that I was teaching is that folks coming from the public policy standpoint, government, they're kind of in a silo where folks look at doing something entrepreneurial or something for profit in a disparaging way. They're looked at as selling out if they go down that route. And when you're chatting with folks that are coming through the engineering standpoint or a business standpoint, going and doing something that felt purposeful, where you were prioritizing purpose, there was a little bit of a condescending tone to it, like, okay, that's good. But when you really want to go do something real, you can come back into whether that be the banking consulting realm. So I think there's been a socialization that's taken place and I think part of it is we don't put words around what is this thing in the middle that you can go, do we have associated doing good with not for profit activity. Right. And I think there's a level of, you know, and I think, you know, there's a more systemic question here that leads to some of the polarization that we have. Right. We don't have people moving back and forth between these sectors and solving these problems that way. And I think we have a different way of looking at folks creating these ventures. I'll give you an example, Mike. When I would bring in CEOs that have created mission oriented ventures, there's a good number of my students that would view, because they are now leading unicorn companies, that they are socially extractive capitalists. But when they spend time and talk to them, they realize they were actually going after a mission. The, the, the capital followed them. Right. That wasn't what they were chasing. And so I think it's about storytelling, honestly. You know, I think, you know, in, in a world where we're about, you know, things fitting in a tweet and Twitter, yeah. We aren't able to unpack what's the real story. Right. So what we've developed is a lot of ill informed biases and that's what we try to talk about. Right. And I think in what we are writing about and what I've seen in the classroom is you need more humanization around this, more storytelling.

Interesting. So, you know, in my line of work and what I see, you know, I have the view that, you know, there's. So there's infinite possibilities for us where. Whereas it would always be, you know, okay, you come out of college, you get a job at a company you work for for the rest of your life at that company. That was our parents generation or our grandparents generation. And today it's like you can build a set of skills and you can lead with a purpose, and you can figure out how to make money in a number of different ways based on how you define success and what you want. And so I see that from my end and I think what you're saying is from the innovator, the entrepreneurial, the venture capital world, we also are in a situation where company, entire companies are being built around mission, and we have good data from the last 10 years or so that that is completely viable. What do you view as special or unique about this time period that is seeming to unlock or allow for mission and profit to kind of come together?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. And the why now? Is an important question. Right. And I think there's multi layers to that. The first, and we talk about this at the end, you need to have these sectors that are really going to emerge and become meaningful that are around mission. And I think we're seeing that today. Look, we've had existential threats with COVID so everyone understands healthcare and bio. We clearly have geopolitical threats. And so the investments that we're now seeing around defense tech and national security is meaningful. These are also. We're fighting our first digital wars, right? And so the investments around cybersecurity and drones and things of that sort are meaningful. But then you look at the overarching, probably the biggest threat of them all, which is our climate threat and environmental threat. And so the way we get through that is through innovation and ventures. And know what I see there is that, you know, we're at a tipping point where you've got one the demand side. Second, though, you need then, you know, students that want to participate in this, right. You. And I think this generation. And I had one of my students frame it this way for me, Mike. And it was, you know, it was a powerful kind of hit me on the head. He's like, look, professor, like, we're more mission oriented than any previous generation because we've had numerous existential threats in a short period. Of time. We had Covid in 2020. We've had geopolitical threats with Ukraine. We've got a climate threat, we've got a great power competition threat with autocratic adversaries. We want to serve, we want to go do something. And I think that timing's important, is really important, because I don't know if people felt that way five years ago. I don't think they felt that same intensity. And I see it in the classroom. I see my students wrestling with this a bit more, where even my business school students that were first rushing, they just get to Wall street, are now thinking about, like, I want to do something meaningful and purposeful. And I think Covid was a little bit of a reset button in that context. So that's the second layer. I think the third look is you need examples of success. You need examples of people creating these ventures and being ultra successful around them. And I think we have that now. Whether you have, like, you look at a Palantir or an Anduril or a Ginkgo Bioworks and you start looking at these companies and you say, these are massive companies that are getting created that didn't exist 10, 15 years ago. And then the fourth layer is, and this is my previous ecosystem, it's the investors. And look, as much as one wants to call venture capitalist risk takers, a lot of times we're followers. And so once we see something working, the capital flows in in a meaningful way, right? And we're starting to see that now, right? And we're seeing that even on the energy side and what's happening there with companies like Commonwealth Fusion raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's what's required. And so the why now to me is that I don't think these sectors or I think these sectors are now at a mature enough point where the only way we can compete is by innovating into them. I think we're seeing enough examples of success there that's now drawing more capital to the story. As more capital comes in, better talent is coming in, and better talent comes in, you're seeing more collaboration. And look, in a weird way, Mike, this is the story of the Valley, right? This is how the Valley got started. You get that virtuous cycle moving and then more people want to come into it. And I think we're at the early innings of that. And I think that's the why now. Because I think if you look at geopolitically, where we are socially, technologically, the change is so rapid today, right? That I think there's an acknowledgement that, like, the way we solve these problems needs to come from an entrepreneurial mindset because entrepreneurs are the ones that are used to flying the plane while they're building it. Right. And that's the world we're in today.

Yep. Very interesting. Your Layer two example, it sparked a, a question in my mind. So the description was, professor, people in our generation are more mission driven than ever. And, and I would characterize it as sort of like a realization of yolo, you only live once. Because, because we've been through some of this stuff now. My generation, so my generation, people a little bit older than maybe the students that are, that were going through your class, lived through, came out of college and during the, you know, 2003 bear market. Right. We're trying to find jobs in that recession and then we're just starting to get our, our legs under us career wise and we get the great financial crisis and, and I. It feels like almost there's an abundance of risk mitigation in amongst my peers and then to hear people on the, in the lower generations kind of saying whatever, like those things aren't risks to us. The risk to us is really not following my purpose or not following my mission. It's interesting to me, like how fast that seems to have changed.

Yeah, look, I think, I think the common thread there is. I think both generations have started to feel like large institutions have failed them.

Yes, right.

Both, both generations feel like, hey, it's not about us depending on someone else to do this for us. And so I think the common thread in that and an accelerating thread in that. Mike, if I was to carry it forward, is that your generation started with this like, hey, look, we're not going to depend on the big banks and the big, you know, like big institutions to help us. And I had a student say something similar to me, you know, like around that. And I think what's accelerated now is so I think you've seen the spur of entrepreneurship start to happen and that's your generation. Look, I was at BC during both down cycles, both the up and the down, and I think when you talk to our top entrepreneurs, that's what was motivating them was that, look, we can go build this ourselves. It's not any riskier than me being at a big company because I could just get laid off tomorrow. Right, right. The idea of a big company being safer was starting to lose its. I think the thing that I think is changing now and I think Covid and what's happening in Ukraine Et cetera, is really from a communal standpoint, is how do I do, how do I deploy those entrepreneurial energies around these bigger problems? How much do I really need at the end of the day? Right. What is my work life balance look like? You know, what is my mark? And I don't know if those were questions people were deeply asking before. Right. And I do think this period when we all retracted a bit has forced some of that introspection at an individual level, at an organizational level and a societal level. Right. That's why you see, you know, a number of folks in your generation and this younger generation thing, you know what, I'm not doing these certain jobs anymore because I'm not getting purpose out of them. Right. I'm working 80 hours a week. I'm getting a good paycheck, but that's not enough. And so I think that's the only difference I see. But I think the notion around entrepreneurship being not as risky relative to what was seemed to be stable started exactly during those two downturns that you outlined.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and it seems to be actually a kind of central part of the why now? Question. Right. Of the forces that are driving that change, which is a very interesting one. You have a few, you know, the big changes that we all experience, you know, living and how they change the direction of how a generation thinks is really interesting. You mentioned the sort of erosion of trust, if you will, perceived or otherwise as a big one. And I know you acknowledge this in your book in terms of. This is sort of one of the big question marks or big problems when we think about using entrepreneurship in the private sector to help solve, you know, geopolitical, governmental problems and the what we need those sectors to come together with. What do you. I'm just curious as to what you think helps create more trust.

Yeah.

With those institutions to get people on board, you know, that are chomping at the bit to do something, you know, more with more meaning, but maybe are wary of giving too much of themselves to these institutions or these areas that they think have let them down.

Look, it's a really complex question and I, you know, but it's the right question to ask and, you know, I'll start with that. Look, I think trust still is built by people. Right. And so it requires interaction. Right. I think people can be prejudiced to groups and organizations, but that prejudice melts away when you're dealing with individuals. And so what do I mean by that? I think the way you start to rebuild trust is by having people be in these different silos, break down the silos. Part of what I think we try to write about is that we have a system right now where people go into government and they stay in government. And we have people that go in the private sector and they stay in the private sector. And the private sector can throw their stones at folks that are in government and likewise, they get thrown back. But for the folks that have actually been on both sides, they actually understand there's a level of empathy there, of saying, look, I understand the constraints of the way government operates and it's different, but there's a reason why that is. And so within those constraints, how do we collaborate? And I think likewise for those that go into the private sector, you know, they understand or, sorry, those that are in government understand why the private sector has certain constraints in which they operate in and how do we find shared common ground? And so I think the first piece of rebuilding trust is starting to try to, you know, rebuild the infrastructure whereby we get more talent crossing these silos. Right. You know, a good example is, you know, you know, we talk about in the book how today less than, I think 7% of government work tech workers are under the age of 30. Right? Think about that 7%. We have four times as many tech workers in government over the age of 60 than we do under the age of 30. The average age at Google is probably 32, 33. We're upside down. And then, so when you start to unpack the question as to why aren't there more young tech folks going into government, there's probably not many people in the engineering departments at any of these schools that have been in government before, right? So there's no one saying inspiring these kids to think about starting their career there. And the government agencies aren't showing up to recruit because they don't have the resources. So we need to think about like, you know, is there a role for a not for profit or something to help bridge that in some way, shape or form. Right. And rebuild that infrastructure. You know, we've got an organization called Mobile Reach that's doing that.

Right.

But, you know, I, I think that's where it starts. You know, that's how you rebuild trust at a foundational level is getting more cross collaboration between these sectors.

You're listening to the Break podcast powered by Career Cl. This episode is sponsored by ZipRecruiter. If you need a change and are looking for a new job, or if you're looking to hire for your small business, please check out ZipRecruiter today, their smart technology matches the right candidates to the right jobs and sends new opportunities right to your inbox. They make finding a job or hiring the right person easier than ever. ZipRecruiter the smarter way to hire. Try ZipRecruiter Recruiter for free today by going to ZipRecruiter.com and tell them I sent you. Can you describe for the audience what Noble Reach is all about and what you guys do there real quick?

So, so yeah, sure. You know, so once we, you know, as we wrote the book, we were able to start a foundation called Noble Reach. We have about a half a billion dollar endowment, so we have meaningful capital to kind of put some of this to work. And you know, in the book we write about, you know, if we're going to do two things right in this country, we need to get better talent around government and better innovation around government. And that talent is in the academic centers, right, or higher ed system. And that innovation, you know, we argue is in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, our top innovation. And arguably, you know, I would, you know, say that two superpowers in this country of this liberal democracy, and I've been the beneficiary of it, is the entrepreneurial ecosystem. It still orders a magnitude better than anywhere else in the world in our higher ed system, our ability to create talent. And we just need to. But we've kind of let a thousand flowers bloom, but we haven't aligned that in any way around larger government ambitions and mission problems. And so what we're looking to do at Noble Ridge is actually the way we talk about ourselves is rebuilding the infrastructure or modernizing the infrastructure may be the right way to put it, to connect that talent and innovation around government while also building the scaffolding to support them. So what does that mean? Taking a top student out of an AI student or a bio student and just dropping them into an agency may not be enough success. We need to provide them the scaffolding to support them. Mentorship, you know, learning modules on the outside, cohort based networking and, you know, and, and start to, you know, rebuild that respect. And so that's what we're doing on, on the at Noble Reach and we're doing that with the entrepreneurial sector as well, where we're trying to collaborate and connect them to, you know, the best innovation that we have inside of government.

So what are some challenges that young professionals face when they're trying to align their careers with their personal missions and values? I mean, like, you know, just, even just describing The. Your work of Noble Reach there, there's sort of a glaring hole in terms of an incentive which has a dollar sign, you know, on it. And I'm sure a lot of. A lot of young folks, they want to go with their mission and purpose and all of that, but that, that dollar sign.

No, you. It. It. You know, really great point, Mike. And I didn't, you know, I didn't touch on the other piece that we're trying to pull to the table here, which I think addresses some of this, and that is as a not for profit, sitting outside of government, we can collaborate with the private sector in a different way. Right. And we can create a coalition of partners that are, you know, the usual recruiters on a college campus, you know, whether it be investment banks, consulting firms, big tech firms, you know, larger employers. And the reason that's important is what we're trying to do is really create a program whereby students feel like it's a career enhancer. And look, the best program I see out there that does this well is Teach for America. Students feel like they can go do that for two years, and when they come out, it's not about the dollar sign for those two years, it's about the career trajectory over the next 30. Right, right. And it means something and employers value it. And, you know, I think that's what we're looking to do with what we're creating at noblereach is create that so that students feel like starting my career in government can only enhance my future prospects going forward. But you've hit on an important piece of this. Right. A core part of our thesis, in theory, on the case is people shouldn't feel like to do good, they have to be poor. Right? Right. We've created this socialization that. That needs to be the case, and it doesn't. You can do great work and instill benefit in a monetary way.

Makes sense. I want to back up a bit and, and get into a little bit of your. Give you a chance to tell the folks a little bit about your story. I mean, I'm really interested in how your background and upbringing and the things that you have done in your career has sort of led you to. You be. Be very passionate, purposeful about this type of work. So take us to whatever, whatever you want.

And Mike, you'll appreciate this. As we were chatting before we got on, on the podcast, like, you know, One of my CEOs has a quote that my career makes sense looking backwards, but it didn't make sense going forward. Right. And you know, And I think that's, you know, I say that because I think we also want to hopefully leave this generation with a sense that to embrace non linearity Like I do think we condition students today to think very linear about their career. You know, it's almost the anti 10,000 hours outliers motive. Right?

Yeah.

Go in deep and then just do something really narrow and do it really great. And I just don't know if that's really how life plays out. Right. So to answer your question though, look, I grew up in D.C. my dad works for the U.S. navy, immigrated here. He's been there now over 40 years. So government's been in our family. He's still working at Naval C System Command, God bless his soul. And so you've seen the purposefulness around that. I went away to college in business school, but then came back to the region and had the privilege of getting involved in venture capital. Started at Carlisle and worked at Columbia Capital which was founded by Senator Warner, but had a great group of colleagues there. And look, what I loved about venture capital was you were around a bastion of optimus because you're around entrepreneurs want to change the world. And if you're going to be an entrepreneur you have to be an optimist because if you're not an optimist you're not going to get out of bed. And that doesn't mean it always works, but it was definitely where you got the energy from and then did that for about 18 years and started thinking about what's the next act look like and retired, started teaching and a great group of folks at Columbia that gave me the flexibility to do that and started teaching at Georgetown, started teaching at Stanford and look, I think the next bastion of optimism is college campuses actually. So when I connect the thread of why I've enjoyed what I've done is I think it's around being around optimists, it's around being around people that are thinking that the world can be different and that they want to do something about it. And there's not a college kid that doesn't think that they can change the world. And there isn't an entrepreneur that believes that. And so that's a little bit of the common thread. And then the class I was teaching at Stanford was called Valley meets Mission. And it was really taking a lot of what I had experienced in my second half of my career in venture which was around investing at the intersection of mission tech and entrepreneurship, solving mission oriented problems. So the early stages of cyber dual use tech in government and What I saw, you know, which was this sense of, you know, look, it's hard, right? Collaborating with government was hard, but when it worked, it was magic. But the people in the ecosystem that you're around were very purposeful and very mission oriented. You know, they cared first about the mission and then second about the, the profit. And you know, inevitably the profit followed the mission. And you know, once you get into that world, it's hard to go back to just doing like a Candy Crush 3.0 investment. Right?

Yeah.

Where you're like, all right, this is ne, but you know, what's it about? And so in my class, that's what I would, I would talk to my students about, right. Was, was essentially sharing with them, you know, that notion and saying, you know, don't waste your energy on Candy Crush 3.0, but you know, think about solving these big problems. But how do you do that in a for profit way? And also that like, if you're going to do it with government, you know, if you're going to really want to scale this, you know, on the biggest of problems, climate, healthcare, cyber national defense, food. Government's got a role there because it's still the institution that's got the biggest reach. And how do you take the velocity of the entrepreneurial sector and tie it to that? Look, I think what I noticed in that and what was really inspiring for me, and they say when you're teaching, the teacher probably learns more than the students. And I kind of felt that way was seeing how these students perspectives changed. And I would bring in, you know, leaders from government to come speak and talk about the purposeful nature of what they did. I would bring in folks financing these businesses and then folks building these businesses. And Mike Morrell, who was former CIA director and who was coming into my class would say it well, which is what I love about Your classroom is 40, 40% of the students hate government and the other 40% hate entrepreneurial capitalism. And you're trying to land the plane by the end of the class that we need both if we're going to solve big problems. And we got there. And I think the reason we got there and you were touching on this is because when these students would actually interact with these folks, I think they found that their biases started to kind of get challenged and they would realize that, you know, there was a different way of looking at the problem. And that's what led to writing the book honestly, because I saw these students were sending their banking consulting offers, wanting to go into this world, right of Mission oriented entrepreneurship, joining companies that are out there today, going into government opportunities. And look, I firmly believe like, you know, and I've got two kids in college and I say to them like, if I was going to make a multi decade bet on my career, I would bet in this world because I just think there's a lot of good to be done. This is how these problems are going to get solved. And you know, in the process there's going to be wealth that's going to be created. And we've created, you know, a vernacular in our culture right now where it's one or the other. And you know, I think what we're trying to propose is an and and not an or. Right, right. Like it's, you know, just because someone is doing X doesn't mean they can't do Y. And you know, I, I think as we started to see that take place and look, you know, I've watched friends of mine that have gone into government and go and have very successful careers in the private sector. And I think what, what I realized in, in, by, in the class and then in, in, in the ecosystem of folks that I was, you know, had built relationships with is these are so many untold stories, right? And I still think that's probably the biggest gap we have is the negative stories propagate quickly, but we don't tell the positive stories. We don't tell the stories of like, you know, the great work people are doing in these various sectors. And that's a bit of how we tried to write the book then, was to get these stories out there. Because I think that's what inspires folks, right, Is when they see models of folks that they want to say like, I want to be like that person. So I think that's where it comes from is wanting to be around an optimist, honestly. And then, you know, hopefully bringing that optimism then around this world. Sometimes it feels pessimistic. But you know, I think you can get students around that and entrepreneurs around that. You can start to change the discourse.

A couple of comments from that that I hoping to bring together.

You know.

What stuck out to me was how you described your course and the student makeup, right? And when you take two different sectors and you're able to create a Venn diagram of them, what's interesting to me is that that the, the subset, the middle of the Venn diagram doesn't actually represent specialization. It actually unlocks a whole new alternate universe of perspective and opportunity and options, which is really interesting to me. And I think Working back in your, in your story. This, the idea of embracing non linearity and the sense of looking back, you know, your career doesn't make sense unless you're looking backward. It to me, non linearity at the personal level and career level is about the intersection and it's about figuring out what the parts of you and whatever skills you build and whatever else happens in your life and bringing that intersection, you know, focusing on that intersection, but then watching that unlock a ton of opportunity for you. And it's not that you're going deep into 2% of the world, it's actually that you're creating a whole new opportunity set. And so as a person that always felt if I looked at my resume, I was like, I don't know what I would get. Writer's block. I don't know, I don't get this. It doesn't tell my story, it doesn't tell me. But when I started to focus on my intersection and really think about the intersection, but boom, that's where like my future.

Yeah.

Unlocked. And so I just. Bringing that all full circle to what you're teaching in your class, I feel like that's, it's, it's interesting that those three points in your story have kind of come together.

Yeah, yeah, Mike. I mean that's the essence of it. I mean, look, there's, there's two ways to look at the world with David Epstein and range. And then there's Malcolm Gladwell and outliers. And we're, we're probably falling more on the Epstein. You know, we're a thing of range where big problems are going to get solved at the intersections. Right. And you know, we profile. You know, I think Tony Townes Whitley says, you know, build a diagonal or you know, create a T shaped career. Like you want to have skills in some depth, but you quickly want to go horizontal, right. So that you understand the terrain of what's out there. And I think, you know, back to the conversation we were having earlier, you know, I think these big problems, you know, a lot of it's just connecting the dots, right. And creating a shared vernacular in a shared language. And you know, I think, you know, my own, you know, I call it a little bit of a random walk between doing stuff in the private sector and government and academics has only highlighted that. Right. Because it's not that I feel like I'm saying anything new or earth shattering, but you're just kind of translating so that people understand how the other folks are thinking. Right. And I think we need more of that, right. I think we just need a lot more of that and that hopefully, you know, with the, what we're trying to do with NobleReach is kind of create a convening place, a place where folks and you know, we talk about that want to be triathletes, right? Or tri sector athletes. This is where they come together, right? Like hey, look, if you really want to specialize in your sport, that's great, go do that. But if you want to really run a triathlon with your life, between academic, government and entrepreneurship, this is the place to kind of be. And this is a core group of people that view the world that way. Right. And you know, I, I fundamentally believe that's how we're going to solve these bigger problems. And you know, is that the intersections and. But we need to start creating systems and organizations that value it, right? You know, currently some do, some don't. And that's, that's what keeps people from doing it, right? Because there's that, there's that concern of like wait a second, will I be able to. When someone looks at my resume, will they know what to do with me? Right, right. And so then you go like, well let me just go do this because then that's a very linear thing and people know what to do with me. And so that's the tension and that's going to be there. Right? But I think again, folks creating these mission oriented ventures, I think by nature are those individuals and they actually respect that, they want that.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. You see a lot of people in the entrepreneurial world, especially in the early stage, right? Hire for the utility player, hire for people who have kind of multidimensional experience because they're agile. And I think you described a balance really well. I describe it as like this tension between resilience and optimization and efficiency optimization on one side and foundation and resilience in a skill set that you can build off or take anywhere with you. On the other hand, and I do think there's a balance there, right, because you get the shiny object syndrome of oh, I could do anything on one side and you have specialization on the other for folks that are may maybe thinking l linearly. And I'm, and I'm thinking about professionals, young professionals, espen especially. And they're listening to this and they're like, oh man, I need some more non linearity in my life. Do you have any tips or ways of thinking about how to, how to build more of a resilient or foundationally based skill set or Get. Or getting multiple experiences that. That make sense.

Yeah. So, I mean, two frameworks that I use in my class to. To help, you know, my students think about this. You know, one is design thinking. Right. Which you alluded to earlier. You know, I think most people fall in the trap of making decisions based on where they're standing today.

Yes.

And finding what's the next closest step. You know, as you know, design thinking is much more about where do you want to be in 10 years. Right. And then not only have a singularity around that, but pick two or three scenarios of where you think you could be happy in 10 years and then work backwards from there. Right. And I think that's a really important exercise because it'll help you then filter out. Is the next step I'm making helping me get closer to one of those three outcomes, or am I just doing what's easiest? And as obvious as that is to say, I'm telling you, when I see it with my business school students, they end up doing what's easiest. They'll tell you, I know I don't want to go to this consulting firm. I know I don't want to go to this investment bank. I want to go do abc, but I'm going to go do this now, and then I'll figure it out. And all they're doing is kicking the can down the road because they don't want to do the hard work right now. And I try to tell them, like, it's never going to be easier. Like, you know, do the work now and figure out what that is. The other framework I use, and we mentioned this in the book, is Ikigai, which is a Japanese framework where, you know, you ask five or four questions, you know, what do you think you can be good at? You know, what do you think the world needs? What do you think you love? And what do you think you can get paid for? Right. And pick out five or six things that fall into each of those categories, and hopefully there's some overlap. And it's a really powerful way to start thinking about what do you want to do? And I'll say in a personal level, the way I saw that I did the design thinking exercise when I was a vc. They had folks from Stanford, were out here for a workshop and attended as alumni. And I did it. And one of the things I wrote was like, hey, look, if whenever I felt like I was financially set or whatever, I'd want to go teach. One of the things I wrote there was teaching. And I actually think that that Got me thinking a lot more cognitively about like, hey, look, going in and teaching in that environment. Right. And otherwise it's very easy to be reacting to things that are coming to you. And I've seen this in my business school class now at a 25th reunion. And you know, the theme around it was really the second act, like, what's your next thing? And I think there's something to that. Right. It just kind of replenishes you. You get re. Energized when you start thinking that way, but left to its own accord if you're not intentional about it. Mike. I don't think it's easy to do that. Right. Because so much you just start reacting to things. Right.

And you get. Yeah, it's, it's sort of the information overload. Too many decisions. Yeah. I think, I think of Jeff Bezos says, like, you know, I, we want, I want to make a very few, a few number of high quality decisions and big decisions. I don't need to be, if I'm thinking on a long term timescale, like I don't need to be making a thousand decisions a day because we make less quality decisions. But that idea of intentionality, you know, I think you, you discuss it somewhere. It's either on your website or in the book itself. It's discussed as kind of a way to break conformity and pursue a mission driven career. I mean, talk to us a little bit about how you set that intention as a young person and not kick the can down the road. I mean, how do we get people in that mindset?

Yeah, look, it's not easy, right? And I say it's not easy because I think largely if you're young, what I've seen, you're influenced by, you know, your family. Right. So it starts there, honestly. Right. It starts with how you're, you're raised. It sounds, it starts with what your parents value. You know, unfortunately, I see a lot of students making decisions based on what they think their parents would value. Like when they go back and tell them, hey, I'm doing XYZ company or I got hired by Google, they know they'll get positive validation for the latter. Right. That's not to say that's not good or bad, but just understand why you're making that decision. Right. So I think that's the hard part is that like this needs to be more of a conversation that happens earlier. I think also, look, our academic system kind of has created a. We ask kids to almost silo in pretty quickly. Right. Are you A math science kid? Are you what this kid? You know, like, how do you get into college? What's your expertise going to be? What's your differentiator? And so we don't reward experimentation in the same way, right? And so, you know, folks feel like they can't, you know, arguably, you know, we need to, we needed some of that needs to change. Having said that, look, I think once they're at school and once they're at college or, you know, wherever they may be, you know, you can't change family, but you didn't need to have these honest conversations, right? I. I'm struck many times, you know, at especially graduate schools, we don't talk about the human element, right? We're so busy teaching cog, you know, like, here's the skills you need to learn, here's what you're going to do, you know, but we don't talk about the these kinds of topics. Like, this is a class, right? To get people to really be thinking about it. And when you do create these classes, which many universities are now doing, they're really oversubscribed. So, I mean, students are looking for it, right? So we need to create those venues to have these discussions. Because what I find is that it's reassuring for the students when they hear someone in a position of authority validating the feelings that they're having, right? Which is like, hey, you don't have to do what the herd's doing, like, right? In fact, you're better off if you don't over the long term. In the short term, it may feel uncomfortable, but over the long term, let me show you models of why you're better off, right? So I, I'm not sure if that's directly answering your question, because it is a complex question, but the more mentors and role models that you can have talking about it and being vulnerable about it with students, I think the more connection that gets made.

You're listening to the Break podcast, powered by Career Cloud. This episode is sponsored by ZipRecruiter. If you need a change and are looking for a new job, or if you're looking to hire for your small business, please check out ZipRecruiter today. Their smart technology matches the right candidates to the right jobs and sends new opportunities right to your inbox. They make finding a job or hiring the right person easier than ever. ZipRecruiter the smarter way to hire. Try ZipRecruiter for free today by going to ZipRecruiter.com and tell them I sent you I Asked it selfishly because that is a topic that's on my mind all the time because I deal with folks that are maybe, you know, late 30s, 40s, who have kind of a come to Jesus moment that they are on the wrong path and they need to do something else. Yep. And they're much easier to get to be intentional because they have this sort of like view that they, that they did, that they sort of made a mistake back, back in the day. And, and what I try to do, a question that I've used with them is I say, hey, is it, is it fair that you're to put the burden on your 18 year old self for choosing your career? Like, do you think it's fair that that person should be tasked with, you know, creating the trajectory of, for the rest of your life? And they're like, oh man. No. I'm like, all right, well, well, great. Okay, so let them off the hook and start today with figuring out what you actually want to do and be intentional about that. And I want to drive that downstream to the younger, younger folks, you know, so that they're not 40 and make that mistake.

And you know what's powerful about what you just said, Mike, is, you know, we tend to show examples of success all the time, but it's actually equally powerful to show, have people that come in and say, when I was in your seat, I wish I had done this differently.

Right.

That's actually more powerful to say, hey, look, I was in your seat and I made this decision. And I know that's what the career center is probably edging you towards, but here's why it didn't work for me. And you know, we don't have enough of that. Yeah, and having that out there, look, that's hard. You know, people want to have to admit that they made a, you know, a decision that they weren't happy with. But I completely agree with your assessment that you shouldn't be holding your 18 year old self to having figured it out. What I would say is at the very least we should be holding our 18 year old self to feel like in fact they don't have to have figured out, but to be comfortable with being non linear with that and that whenever it doesn't feel right that it's okay to pivot. I think what happens is we don't give them the agency to think that way so that when it doesn't feel right, they feel like they got to keep plowing forward and then they end up 35 or 40. But they knew probably when they were 30. It wasn't. Right. Right. And I think the, the issue isn't that at 18 you had to figure it out, but it was not having the agency at 30 to feel like, okay, now it's time to move. That's where I, that, that's probably how I'd reconcile the two.

Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. The 18 year old self empowered to make mistakes and you don't have to have it figured out. Unfortunately, we pushed from high school to get things figured out, but to also then empower. I think one missing component is empowering that 18 year old self with a system to explore and to update knowledge along the way. You know, who am, who am I today and what am I interested in? Okay. How do I go about exploring these three paths that may seem good to me and how do I decide when to stop and when to start up something else, when to circle back? It's, it's all a design thinking and entrepreneurial problem of, of experimentation and following signal and all of that kind of thing. So that's kind of, that's the stuff that I'm interested in is how do we drive, you know, a, a better system for people to.

Well, you know, it, it, Mike, it. It. To your point, it. And we write about this in the book. That's why we try to personalize entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

You know, I, I have students go like, I don't want to be an entrepreneur, it's too risky. And I'm like, no, no, no, you don't understand. Like, entrepreneur isn't a thing, it's a mindset. Right, right. Like the way. Your point's exactly right. Like the way you manage your career can be entrepreneurial. Right. You know, we argue in the book like, shit, you know, the biggest, the most entrepreneurial activity you may do is starting a family.

Yeah.

You know, that's a pretty entrepreneurial thing. Like, you know, you have a co founder, you've got a family, you're, you're, you know, you, you launch products, you're trying to figure out the right product market fit. You're going to have to pivot and figure this out. You don't know what the end state is going to look like, but that's a mindset. But there are folks that say they're not taking an entrepreneurial mindset when they're raising their kids and they're saying this is what you're going to go do. That leads to different outcomes. And so I think it's also extracting entrepreneurship as not being a activity or a profession, but abstracting it into being much more of a mindset, which is about always testing and learning, of always acknowledging that conditions are changing around you. And so what you thought you wanted to do, when you get there in five years, those conditions may change. You might want to do something else, and if you do, that's okay. You don't need to feel locked into something. Right?

Yeah.

And I think that's the more pervasive thing that I hope we're able to teach is how do you be almost your own personal entrepreneur? Right. Of how you manage your own journey through these social, personal, and then professional interactions.

Yeah. I love it because it's such a framework to. When you develop those skills. It's a way of not only managing and mitigating downside risk, but jumping on upside opportunities and, and being flexible. So I, I love that. I think, I think your. Your description was. Was very, very good and very helpful to our audience. I mean, while we're on this topic of, you know, diverse. Diverse career paths.

Yeah.

Non linearity, there's several sort of individual career journal journeys that get highlighted in some of the. In some of the book and some of the excerpts. I'm thinking, like, I actually read, you know, sort of Nate Fick's transition from military to nonprofit to for profit, and.

Yeah.

What key lessons can young professionals draw from these diverse career paths? Like from seeing somebody who's gone all over and done zigzag, like, what should young professionals be pulling out of those experiences?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, look, I think what young professionals can pull through this is that while these different career paths look very different, the skills inside them can be very common. There's a commonality to it. Right. In Nate's case, it was leadership. He was a great leader. And you can apply that when you're in the military. He could apply that when he went into the national security realm and managed a. Not for profit. And then look, when we brought him on board at endgame to be our CEO, it was because he was a great leader and he understood, you know, national security things. So you do want to create domain expertise in some area. Right. But you want to also have a functional expertise that can, that can transfer across silos. Right. And that gives you the range. You know, in his case, you know, the functional expertise was around national security. Right. He had been in the Marines. He. He went to cnas, which is a national security, not for profit. He came into a cybersecurity company, which is a for profit but also in the national security realm. Right. So he was able to take a domain expertise, and this is the T kind of model that. Or, you know, or living a life that's at the diagonal, which is, you know, build a skill somewhere or a domain expertise, but then don't limit yourself to one silo. Think about how you can apply that across different domains. Right. And that would be what I would take away from Nate's experience. Right. And now look, you know, he's gone back into government. He's the first ambassador we've had, you know, for. For tech and cybersecurity in our nation's history. And it's a culmination of those activities. Right. It's a culmination of his expertise of being on the front lines of knowing how to collaborate as nation states, but also knowing, you know, how to. How to collaborate with the private sector in a meaningful way. And, you know, he's a great example of someone that's a, you know, a triceptor athlete. Right. In that context, and it's what makes him unique.

Very cool. So I want to talk a little bit more specifically about the book before I let you go. And I got your time here. I know, I know you're on a time schedule. You're a busy guy. But give us. We've talked about various aspects of the book and your class a little bit, and hopefully we've given some good examples and context of that. But if you were to give us your description of the book and why somebody in our audience should read that book, what would that be?

Look, I think if the reason someone in your audience should read the book is to be optimistic about the future, I think right now we're in a time where all we get at is, you know, and we open the book this way, you know, we have the ability to be, you know, the last generation or the best generation. And then, you know, that quote was actually a quote 60 years ago by John F. Kennedy. Right. He said it in actually 1963.

Wow.

And the reason that's poignant is that, you know, I think we feel this level of uncertainty in where we are today, but it's to recalibrate that. We've been here before. Right. Every generation has this moment. And for me, I think you read this book where you're saying, hey, look, this is our. This is our generational moment to go solve big problems. Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty around us. Yes, there's a lot of change, but we have the agency and we have the tools in this country to go solve these problems. And so we write the book and we, you know, we created an overreach with a very optimistic and aspirational sense, which is probably counter to 90% of what people are seeing today. But that's why you read the book. You read the book because you want to believe that there's a place for you in that aspirational, optimistic scenario of solving these big problems and how you fit into that.

Excellent. Love that, love that characterization. And so the book emphasizes sort of this importance around shared values and empathy when con. When pursuing mission driven work. This idea of empathy, I think, is central to solving a lot of problems that we experience right now. We talked about the polarization of Twitter and government and politics and all of those things, right? But how do we sort of gain a different perspective, use empathy to gain a different perspective within this mission, Mission driven ecosystem? Like, how do, how do we do that and bring people more together using empathy?

Ironically, my wife's a psychiatrist. She could probably look into that better than I can. And look, I think again, it starts with people, right? It starts with people interacting from different walks, right? It starts with, you know, if you're a startup trying to collaborate with the government on mission oriented problems, having folks that have been on that side of the table before and, you know, listening, you know, these are basic blocking and tackling things, right, that, you know, we need to create these convenings or we're getting people together though, right? These aren't debates that you have over Twitter. These aren't debates that you have, you know, online. All seem very old school, and I'm very analog in this way, but I think this is a people problem, right? And you've got to get people together around these things and, and talk about it. You know, look, I. What I've been most heartened by, Mike, is we've done the book, talked about the book. But Noble reach, whether it be academic university presidents, CEOs of major finance institutions, consulting firms, big tech firms, or even senior government leaders, everyone kind of acknowledges, yeah, we need to do it differently. So everyone wants to. We just now need to start creating that dialogue to think about how and what that looks like. The reason we stick around getting better talent and better innovation around government is the other thing I've been hardened by is that, like, it's not a R or D issue, it's just a country issue. Right? Right. It actually is one of the things I've sat down with plenty of Rs and plenty of Ds and they say, yes, we need to do this. Right? And so I think starting with that also is helpful. Right? Like who's going to argue that we can't, we shouldn't get better talent around government? Right, Right. Like who's going to argue that we shouldn't get better innovation around government? Right? And so, you know, we can debate the hows, there'll be different ways to think about doing that, but at least we, we start with something that we can start talking through. So I think that's where the empathy starts to kind of play through. But look, I don't think there's any silver bullet on this one, right? But I do think it does come from more in person interaction dialogues like this, right? Where you bring people together. Look, we did an event where we did a national case competition with HBCUs. We brought over 10 teams from across the country together and we had Stacey Dixon, who's the second highest ranking, you know, and highest ranking black female intelligence officer ever. And she said, you know, she, before she talks to the audience, she says, I know how many of you and these, you know, all these 100 students. How many of you know much about the intelligence community? You know, a few hands go up, she goes, how many of you trust the intelligence community? Nobody's hand goes up. And she goes, well, this is great. This is why we need convenings like this. Because let me walk you through my journey having been in your seat and how I got to being the second highest ranking intelligence officer in our nation's history. And it was a really kind of like goosebump, poignant moment for me, going like, this is what we don't have enough of, right? Of people interacting in this way. Because I can tell you, we change people's minds after that interaction, right? People view government differently. And, you know, that's what a lot of what we're trying to do with the Scholars Program is get people going into government for a couple of years knowing that we're not telling them. What we say is, many times government is selling careers and they're selling jobs, but students are really buying experiences and they're buying mission, right? So we're not saying, hey, you need to go in for your career, but we're saying, go in for a couple of years, see what it's like and know that coming out of it, you'll have all these great opportunities around you and then we can see where we go. So I think that's how we start to build empathy again. Because I think, you know, when I've Seen people separate out, even when they think. When they say, like, I don't like government, right. You go, like, what does that mean to you? Right. Like, how do you humanize government? Right. Because what is government at the end? It's not some opaque thing. It's a collection of individuals. And politicians are different than civil servants. People don't even get that different. Right. Because no civil servant gets interviewed on any of the talk shows, talking head shows. But these civil servants are going to work each day trying to do their best. They have positive intent. That doesn't mean everything goes the way you want it to go. But, like, you know, I think that's what we're trying to. What we need to start to rekindle a bit. And we're trying to do that, do that in our own way with the foundation. But the more of that we can start to kind of perpetuate the better.

So events face to face, people on people, nuanced discussion and storytelling.

Look, I think storytelling, yes, I think storytelling is really important. I really do. I don't think we get enough positive stories out there. We need to think about how to do that in a bigger, better way. It's something that we're going to embark on at noblereach. But I think, look, we need to get the stories out there, and they're there. We just don't tell them.

Are there any examples of people, organizations, companies doing. Doing it well to sort of bring empathy and dialogue at scale?

I had answers for you until you said at scale.

Okay, well, let's. Let's take the scale out of it.

No, because I think that's the issue. No, but you're hitting on the issue like it happens in small pockets. Right, right. But the question is, how do you scale it? Right? Like, how do you scale these messages? We write about it in the book. There's an organization called Partnership for Public Service. They've been running a program called the Sammy's Awards where they try to show empathy to, you know, government civil servants by basically running a thing at the Kennedy center called the, you know, it's the Oscars for federal workers. And the stories that you hear there are phenomenal, right? Yeah. Like they. They blow you away. How do we do that at scale is the question. Right. How do you get those stories out there more broadly? You know, and that's something that we're. We're kind of wrestling with. But, you know, there are organizations trying to do this. Right. And, you know, Conscious Capital is an organization that is, you know, creating chapters and Trying to promote, you know, the ability to do really good work in mission driven ways. We just need more of it and get it into the mainstream. So there's definitely a number of organizations out there, not for profits, that are doing this, but, you know, it's the at scale piece.

Yeah.

Right.

All right, I've got some rapid fire questions for you. We're going to close this thing out. I really appreciate you being so generous with your time, and I think this has been, I mean, for me, it's been an amazing conversation and I think it's going to be very valuable for our audience as well when it's, when it's ready to be released. But here's my rapid fire questions that I kind of ask most of my guests when, when we're on here. So is there a recent author or thought leader that you've come across that has caught your attention? You think people need to know more about Arthur Brooks.

So I, I'm a big Arthur Brooks fan. You know, if you read his articles in the Atlantic, if you read his recent books, you know, the way he talks about what second careers look like, what is, what's the importance of a second act? You know, the idea of, you know, being on the achievement treadmill. Right. As a dopamine hit, as an addiction.

Yeah.

Talking about achievement as an addiction is a very powerful concept. Right. Which gets back to the notion that we were talking about, about, like, what keeps people from being nonlinear. What keeps them from being nonlinear is they, they, they get good at something and then they get addicted to each of this, you know, validating steps that happen when they're good at it. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean that's what they love doing, but they, you know, each thing is like a dopamine head.

Yeah.

And that straying off of that is tough, but like any other addict, you do need to stray off of it. And how do you wean off of that? So I think Arthur Brooks would be someone that I would put high on that list.

Excellent. Yeah, there's a sort of a level of personal creative destruction that has to happen, you know, to break these cycles. And again, that's why the podcast is called the Break. All right, so besides Arthur's book and besides your own book, what book are you reading now or have read recently that's had a really big impact on you?

Look, you know, I think David Brooks's book Second Mountain, you know, which is also similar to Arthur's book Strength to Strength, this idea of a second act. Look, I think that's been powerful for me. You know, the other one is probably design your future, you know, which is all about thinking about your career, of what you want to do next. But, you know, I think in combining those books, as I read them, it really influenced how I thought about what I want to do in this, you know, next chapter. And, you know, with David Brooks, it's about, you know, we go up the achievement mountain, but then you've got your legacy mountain right in there. It's about character and values and things of that sort, and what do you want to be remembered by? And I think those are, those are important. Right. And, you know, I think all those, you know, especially Arthur and David, you know, both talk about the importance of civil discourse. Right. And thinking about things at a very. At a deeper level about the introspection around what really drives you as opposed to where do you get validation from?

Okay, excellent. Sounds great. I'll be checking out all of those. Last one I'm going to go with here is, you know, there's a lot of discontent in the world, a lot of fear. We've talked about optimism and the optimism of being around entrepreneurs, but what's got you excited about the next 12 months?

Wow. You know, over the next 12 months, look, what, what's got me excited, obviously, in a personal level, is, look, we're launching this book. We're launching Noble Reach. And I didn't, you know, for me, that entrepreneurial endeavor has got me really excited. When I look beyond what I'm involved with, what's got me excited for the next 12 months is what I think is the rapid change around us right now. Look, I'm a vc, so I view change as opportunity. And so, you know, I think we're in an environment right now where the velocity of change is only accelerating. And look, I understand there's threats and there's. It's uncomfortable, but I think that's got me excited. The most excitement, though, that I get over the next 12 months, honestly, is watching how students are reacting to this. It is watching this next generation, you know, that gives me the most excitement because I really do believe that they've been through a pretty traumatic period of stress between some of the existential threats that we've talked about, and they're coming out of it with a restored energy to kind of co. Try to solve these problems. And so the more our generation can provide them the infrastructure, support, and platform to do so, I, you know, I think the better off we are. And so I think that's where my optimism comes from.

That's a great place to leave it. Ladies and gentlemen, he is Arun Gupta. And his book, Venture Meets Mission will be out soon. You can find it@venturemeatsmission.com book and Arun, thank you so much for being with us. We'll have links to all of the all of this stuff in the show notes, anything we mentioned, any other books we mentioned, like, I like Arthur's book. We'll have all in the show notes for you to check out@careercloud.com Arun, thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom with us. I really appreciate it. I got a ton out of this conversation, and I'm absolutely positive our audience will as well.

Well, Mike, thank you for your time, and thank you for what you're doing. And it was a pleasure to be on here with.