In this conversational interview, Sophie Amelia Wasik (Speaker A) and a co‑host (Speaker B) explore how curiosity ignites passion, purpose, and ultimately a life path. The dialogue begins with examples of creative geniuses like Da Vinci and Elon Musk, emphasizing that nurturing curiosity at any age can spark transformative change. The conversation then shifts to Sophie’s first book, The Genius Within, describing its purpose—to help high‑performing leaders uncover their deepest genius. She outlines the book’s genesis, rooted in coaching leaders and using multiple personality frameworks (Wealth Dynamics, Myers‑Briggs, DISC, Kolbe, Enneagram) to identify natural talent profiles. Sophie also highlights the role of life experiences (e.g., her own baseball career and her wife’s mental‑health battle) in shaping awareness of trauma, the importance of key relationships that energize or drain, and the alignment of values and passions. The discussion introduces a four‑pillar model for self‑discovery: personality tests, defining life experiences, key relationships, and values/passions. Further, they discuss peak‑performance principles—mindset, skillset, and habits—illustrated with sports anecdotes about Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, and youth baseball coaching, underscoring the power of deliberate practice, listening, and work ethic. Throughout, the speakers advocate a “progress over perfection” mindset, encouraging listeners to nurture curiosity, feed what they want to live, and starve what they want to die, thereby opening new chapters of opportunity.
Chapters
You look at Da Vinci, one of the greatest creative geniuses of our time. Elon Musk, boom, always starting things. They're driven by the first thing, curiosity. And in curiosity, most of us— I was coaching someone earlier today— most of us ignore some of our curiosities. And that should be— we should have nurturing curiosities always. Okay, I don't care if you're 80 years old, nurture some curiosities because there might be something that's birthed out of that. A curiosity often becomes a a passion. Passion often becomes a purpose, and a purpose often, but not always, becomes a path.
I mentioned your book, The Genius Within. Genius Within.
Yeah, right.
So, first book. You mentioned you wrote it in the first trimester, right? So we're gonna talk about that book, but first, where can they get the book?
You can get a free copy at thegeniuswithinbook.com or go to Amazon, of course, we have it on there. Yeah, but it was driven by a quest to help high-performing leaders find their deepest area of genius.
Let's talk about that book just a little bit because writing a book is one of the next chapters See what he did there? It's one of the next chapters in my journey.
Yeah, cool.
And we're working on spearheading some signature keynotes around, to mirror some books. So talk to me a little bit about your, one, I'd love to know just your experience being an author for the first time, tackling something like that. And then for me, the mission is what's gonna drive the work. You know what I mean? It's not something, I don't wanna write a book to write a book. It's something I feel called to put out.
Yeah, and likewise, I felt a call that I needed to birth this into the— and mainly for learning, the learning journey. I was like, this is not gonna be my bestseller, was how I framed it and thought about it. And I was like, we were early in the depression battle, so I was like, my life, internal personal life, was chaos. But I was like, I know I have something here. I know I have something the world needs and that will change people's lives. And I just embraced that, hey, this is gonna be about progress over perfection. So that helped me relax knowing that, you know, as a first-time, you soon to be a first-time author, I was like, I know I can go back and rewrite this if I need to. But I'm really proud of the first version too. So I started, what was really the genesis of it was I was guiding some leaders and high-performing leaders and masterminds, and I was like, all right, They come to me advice, which should my next business, career step, whatever, what's my right role within my new entity or business? I was like, everyone is different. And I remember I've had, you know, over 400 leaders take a bunch of different personality tests and they come out different and they'd have really 4 different key areas. Your unique talents. So I have people take 5 different personality tests. My favorite is the Wealth Dynamics for entrepreneurs because it shows you your natural pathway to build wealth out of 8 profiles. Okay. Because Warren Buffett built his wealth very differently than Elon Musk, right? Less risk. You know, Rockefeller and Carnegie built theirs very different than Warren Buffett, right? You know, and, and so you learn these different profiles and figure out which one I am, because you're going to be more in alignment instead of resistance internally on your wiring. Uh, then the second thing is— and then of course I did Myers-Briggs, DISC profile, Kolbe Index, uh, Enneagram, etc. And the second thing is you're defining life experiences. So like You know, you, you played pro baseball. Um, I played college baseball. That was an ex— defined life experience as well. But then my wife's mental health battle helped me become hyperaware of how trauma shows up, because I was not aware. I didn't recognize it. Now I can see where leaders are unconsciously stuck with some trauma, and it might not even be from them or their lifetime, right? But it's a, it's a cloud over them. And, uh, so now I want to help people get through that battle. Like, that's a passion to get them free.
Yeah.
Um, third, uh, is your key relationships. Like, who lights you up? Who brings you life when you're around them? And then who brings you death? Avoid them like the plague.
That's a big one. Yeah, that's, that's huge, man.
Yeah. And when I, when I wrote— started thinking about this like probably 10 years ago, I was just in real estate. I started— I had a few other businesses, but I was primarily in real estate. I was like, I love being around authors. That's— and why do I have so many bestselling authors as friends? Now I have like a Mark Victor Hansen as a friend. He's sold 500 million books, him and J.K. Rowling.
Only crazy. Yeah.
Well, who am I? Like, I hadn't even written a book.
Thought I was—
didn't even think I was going to write a book at the time. And then the fourth thing is your values and passions. What do you stand for? What do you stand against? And your passions. So like, you look at Da Vinci, one of the greatest creative geniuses of our time. Elon Musk. Boom, always starting things. Um, they're driven by the first thing, curiosity. And in curiosity, most of us— I was coaching someone earlier today— most of us, um, ignore some of our curiosities. And that should be— we should have nurturing curiosities always. Okay, I don't care if you're 80 years old, nurture some curiosities because there might be something that's birthed out of that. A curiosity often becomes a passion Passion often becomes a purpose, and a purpose often, but not always, becomes a path. So, but like, Elon Musk was curious about space as a 10-year-old. He was reading all these books and encyclopedias on space, right? You were probably curious about pro baseball. I was as well. But then I realized at 19, uh, that's not enough of a passion to carry me to the next level, right? Um, So you figure out some— I've been curious about peak performance since I was like 17 or 18, more initially for the athlete. How do I get myself like to perform better? That's where it started. And then, then success in business. So if you feed those, feed what you want to live and starve what you want to die, you'll, you'll stoke the flames of some next chapters and some very interesting opportunities for you.
You know, even in, even in business, um, you find that the, the higher levels that you achieve as you're working your way to the top, to the, to the bit around the best, you learn that the, the talent level, it basically just goes like the differences in talent just disappears. Everybody's really good. Yeah, yeah, at that place. And then you find out that usually, like, you know, everybody that got to a certain level at the highest standard has usually had really good, um work ethic along the way. So like, you know, something that, that Brad, that Bradley taught me that I use all the time, the 3 key ingredients of all success is mindset, skill set, habits, you know. And so like, even as a player myself, I got to, as an elite athlete, I got to an extremely high level. Yeah, but not the top level. Like, so like, again, this is how important your mind is, folks. My goal was to play professional baseball. Which is what I did. My goal wasn't to catch for the New York Yankees, and if it had been, maybe, who knows, right? But if you think about it, I got to a place where, um, you know, mindset, skill set, habit. So my skills— I was an elite athlete, it got me there. My habits— I worked my butt off, right? My mindset was the piece that I just— that I lacked thereof, right? Because my goal wasn't specific enough, and, and I got as far as I dreamed I could go. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? So, um, and that's— it's the same thing that I found in, in business. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's the mind that's so powerful.
You know, you remind me, I just finished reading, um, Michael Jordan's, uh, biography, A Life, and I heard about it on this other podcast where it goes through biographies. And you know what he loved? That all— and when he was astonished when he, uh, was on the Dream Team Yeah. He was shocked because none of these other guys loved practice. Right. He loved practice.
Yep.
He's like, these guys are coasting on their talent.
Yep.
And their raw skills. And yeah, they worked a little hard and they kept themselves in shape mostly, but he loved— like, and Phil Jackson said, this astonished me when he said this, he said Michael Jordan was the greatest listener he ever coached, right? He was a sponge. He wanted to be coached. He wanted to get sharper. He was driven, that mindset, always getting better. And when he— even when like he came back to the Washington Bullets or Wizards at the time, yeah, and they— these young players, he was abrasive because he was like, these guys are coasting.
Yeah.
And he didn't understand that they were not bought in to practice.
It's, um, it's crazy how You know, I coach my son's baseball team and they're 14 this year. And even about 12 is when it really started happening. All of a sudden, like, you know, doing the right thing is not the cool thing. You know how that gets when you're a teenager, you know?
Yeah.
And it's exactly that way in practice. And one of my favorite things about The Last Dance documentary with Michael Jordan, there's when there's a clip in there where they're showing Phil Jackson talking to the team and everybody's got their heads down except for Michael. And Michael is staring ahead or staring a hole through Phil Jackson's face. He's so, um, intense, intently listening to learn. Folks, anytime— like, uh, anybody that wants to truly be a champion of any type, they're always looking for ways to get there, right? It's not necessarily shortcuts, but maybe it is. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah, um, they're looking for ways to get there. So, um, you know, two ears and one mouth. Yeah, Phil Jackson's arguably one of the greatest coaches of all time, and Michael's like, you know, even if he wasn't Phil Phil Jackson, he might say something that I can use that's going to help us win.
Exactly right.
So why would you shut your ears off?
Yeah.
And not, and not be in that moment? Because you might get that gift. You never know what shape, what the gift looks like until you have it.
