Breaking Away From the Preconceived| Zale Mednick | 441

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. So today, my guest— this is going to be interesting— is Zale Mednick. So if you go to his LinkedIn, it says ophthalmologist and podcaster and author, 3 words that usually don't appear in the same bio. So Zale is the producer and the host of the award-winning podcast Preconceived. And as an extension of the podcast, he recently published his book Preconceived: Challenging the Preconceptions in Our Lives. He's also worked as one of the doctors on the CBS hit television show Survivor for 4 years, because I guess you need glasses in the wilderness or something. You need a place to go. So let me just jump in. Welcome, Zale. Thanks for hopping on with us today.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm absolutely delighted and honored to be here. And we can— happy to tell you about the benefits of glasses in the wilderness. If that comes up.

Exactly. So let me ask you this. So here you are, you're a busy guy, you're a doctor, you're an ophthalmologist, and all of a sudden you decide there's something that's interesting to you that you want to explore. And you don't just read an article, have a cup of tea, and then move about your life. So what's behind Preconceived, both as a podcast, as a book? What started this journey?

Yes. So it was, I spent so much time in school. I was in, I mean, as a lot of people do, but I was in school for about, I did 3 years of undergrad, 4 years of med school, and then 5 years of residency and a couple years of fellowship. And that obviously consumes your life. I had some adventures in there that I was able to squeeze in with Survivor, as you mentioned, and, you know, other stuff in life. And as I was coming to a juncture in my own life, as I was about to finish my fellowship, end of my ophthalmology training, I thought to myself, I like medicine, obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have invested that time in it, but I don't want it to be consuming of my whole life. I've got other passions. I used to do public speaking and I was an actor, and I just, I like doing things that are creative. Medicine can be creative, but it's a different type of your brain, a different aspect of my life. So as I was at a juncture in my own life thinking, okay, well, how am I not just going to fall into that 9-to-5 doctor's life? How can I do something different? So I sat down with pen and paper, might have been on my iPhone, whatever. And I thought, what are some random dreams or things that I actually want to do? And I had a long list of things there. I've wanted to do screenwriting for a long time, but I thought that might be a big thing to do. So I eventually landed on the idea of a podcast, something that's easy to start. I can do it myself. There aren't too many barriers to it. And then in terms of the theme, preconceived really fit with the juncture I was at in my own life. Because the preconceived notion, in a sense, is that you have this particular path in life. You grow up, you have a typical childhood, you have an education, you have a monogamous relationship, you have a stable career, and there's this path. And as I was debating my own path, preconceived felt like a natural extension of where I was at in my life.

This is really an extension of— so the fact that you're a doctor, you can fill that in with pilot, engineer, accountant, lawyer, or whatever, you're a lifelong learner that's really, really curious and said, "Hmm, that's just interesting. Let me explore." But you did it in more of a three-dimensional way. So there's lots of ways if someone was curious about a topic, let me go read a bunch of books on biographies on Churchill if I'm curious about Churchill or whatever. But podcasts being conversational, podcasts being also not an activity that one does by oneself, right? You've got other people involved having interesting conversations. So there isn't really a business model here, but how did that start? So how did you pitch the first person to say, "Hey, I'm doing this podcast with no audience. I haven't even started it yet, but I'd like you to be a guest." Great question because it was tough.

So I started with, yes, I mean, I didn't have a business model. And the first episode of the podcast is not surprisingly, with somebody I knew, my mom. And it's called Jump In. And it's all about this notion that you don't always have to have a plan. You don't always have to know what you're doing. And my mom, she was an Oxford-trained lawyer, and she had a lot of academics in her background. And then she eventually decided to stay home for 15 years raising 4 kids, me being the youngest. And then we talked about her journey jumping in.

Favorite.

Part of course, the favorite topic. No, no, they don't, they don't, they don't have favorites. So they say, but that episode was all about how she decided 15 years later, how do I jump back into the workplace? How do I jump back into life? Not just as a mother. And that was really a good starting off point because that's how I was experiencing the podcast. So I started off by interviewing people that I kind of knew, some friends, maybe I interviewed a doctor who was a friend about, about abortion. And then Once I had a few more episodes and I felt I got lucky with a few guests who said, sure, I'll take a chance. It's not the biggest deal to spend 45 minutes doing a podcast. And then obviously 170 episodes later, it's been a lot easier as I've accumulated a better—

Wait, wait, stay there because you fast forward. So I think what happens is, and the last data I saw was like something like 91% of podcasts, and my data might not be as accurate as it was, haven't put out a new episode in 90 days, right? So one of the things that's interesting is, okay, the first one was your mother, 171 wasn't an 11th cousin, right? We didn't just keep it in the family. And I think part of the interesting thing, and I've learned this myself along the way with blogging, podcasting, whatever, is that, that, that grit that it takes to commit to far longer than it seems is logical based on the outcomes and benefits that you're getting. Because I'm sure a couple stops along the way at 50, you're like, eh, you know, at 70, you're like, eh, but what kept you going? Like, what was the, was it just the intrinsic stuff or what kept you going from zero to episode 1 to 171?

I think you phrased that really well. Yeah, it's definitely not my 11th cousin, thank God, or else I think I would have quit by now. But it did.

A lot of cousins, right? Exactly.

A lot of cousins. I did read an article earlier on that said by about episode 25, that's when a lot of podcasters stop. Doing it because they lose, they lose faith. I think what kept me going was, one, I like doing what I'm doing. I like speaking with interesting people. I also really enjoy having a project, and it's something I'm building. It's even though I don't have a business model. I mean, I have more of a business model now, right? But it was kind of like a business to me. I've never had that before. So starting something from scratch, watching it grow, and I think watching the growth has really helped me in addition to enjoying what I'm doing.

So how do you defining growth though, right? So growth could be, 'cause this is where it gets weird, where you put a lot of work into a podcast or a blog or whatever it is that you're doing. And then for a long time it's crickets. Ooh, somebody commented. Oh wait, that was actually a Russian bot. Like how are you defining growth? Is it the traditional metrics of number of downloads, number of listeners, number of whatever? Or is it the interaction and conversations it's starting with comments and stuff? Or, 'cause that's a hard thing to lock and load on.

Totally. And you're kind of reading my mind in over the past few years as I've embarked on this, this podcast and then the book, because it is really tough. I mean, I do have statistics, so I can see that the downloads are increasing. Okay. Often it's very rare that I do hear comments about a particular episode, and then they're few and far between. I just got a comment, for example, a couple of weeks ago, and it said, thank you so much for doing that episode on relationship OCD, which is a type of OCD about the anxiety of love. It really, really helped me. And I'm going to take some of the advice that your listener gave. And that meant a lot to me. But those comments are few and far between. And those comments do propel me a little bit. But ultimately, I think if I was seeing that my downloads were pretty stagnant or not growing, that would be pretty tough. And I've had moments like that for sure. And I had to reevaluate why. But ultimately, there's also— there is also a pride factor. I think the content we put out is solid. I think it's— I think it's good. And I'm proud of it. So that helps keep me going. But you're right, it is challenging. And I wish I had a more concrete answer for you.

Yeah. No, I think there's, at least for me, there's been a combination of selfish and selfless. So selfish in the sense of every time I do one of these and we're on episode, I don't even know, 450, whatever it is, I look forward to the conversation, right? Because I'm talking to somebody interesting. I love talking to people, whatever. And kind of the only difference is we're hitting record and maybe making sure I hit on a couple of points. That's the selfish piece. The selfless is might as well share it with the universe. Maybe somebody else cares about it. Now, you know, 4 and a half years later, it appears that some do, right? Like, you know, Oprah and Tim Ferriss have nothing to worry about, but it's got its own thing. And I think that's what sort of feeds you a little bit, right?

Totally. Do you find, did you find it tough though when you were, developing an audience to say, even though it's out there, you're not getting so much feedback. You might put an episode out there that you're really proud of, but you don't really hear about it.

One thing that drove me is I have a very good friend who years ago when I started blogging, and I am a terrible writer at best, and there isn't a lot of at best, but this is like 15 years ago, 12 years ago. I went to a friend that had at that point 3 or 4 very successful blogs. I said, give me the advice. And he says, well, you know, you're a CEO, you're impatient, da da da da da. Don't commit to writing 1, commit to writing 100 because you're going to look at the data and you will convince yourself at every step along the way that there's no reason to continue doing this. And trust me, do that. And he was 100% right. So when I started the podcast, I compromised and said, all right, I'll commit to 50. So I knew straight up it was a commitment to 50 episodes. Over, I think we're gonna do 4 a month, 1 a week, whatever that is. So almost a year and then watch how it goes. Or we were doing 2 a week, so half a year, whatever. So I tried not to get nuts, you know, checking out the data, checking out this and just focused on see what happens. It's, you know, doesn't take all that much time. So I think, you know, the business models are very different. For us, it wasn't about directly monetizing the podcast. Ever, right? It's about meeting interesting people. It's about elevating the brand. It's about sharing ideas with others in a way that makes sense.

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I want to pivot in a little bit of the time that we have left to— so you've got the podcast and then somehow the podcast magically turns into a book, right? So Preconceived, challenging the preconceptions in our life. So give me the— and on the COVID it's interesting, it doesn't say that you're the author. It says edited by, which is something you don't typically see on the book. So I'm assuming the book, because I've only just started it, is really just a compilation of the podcast, right?

Though it's a compilation of their original pieces. So some people, when they hear about it, they say, oh, so you just took some transcripts from the podcast and you put them together, which I think could be a cool book. But essentially I thought to myself, and this kind of was just spawned by— I like projects and I like reading anthologies. I've read some and I thought to myself, I've interviewed a lot of really interesting people. Why not try and put some of their thoughts down on paper? I think it would make a cool book. Essentially, I reached out to probably about 100 former guests, and there's, I think, 54 in there who wrote short essays, short thought pieces, short stories about their lives, about 500 to 1,000 words each. And the question was, talk in any way about the greatest preconception related to the topic we were talking about.

Got it.

That's what it is. And I had a lot of guests, some said no, obviously, because I mean, it's a commitment to do. Sure. For some guests.

So I think this is, this is really interesting in that it goes to how you define thought leadership or what your role as a thought leader is. So in this case, this isn't necessarily Zale's view of the world on what preconceived is. You're bringing together 54 people's perspective, which is really, really interesting. That's number one. Number two, there's an element of repurposing, right? So even though it's a slightly different nuance than what you might have covered on the podcast, thematically it's the same, right? You had a conversation with them for a half hour on preconceived. I would argue that probably most of the essays in there touched on some of the things you already talked about. And most people think that you constantly have to create new, new, new. And I'm always like, no, there's a time and place to create new thought leadership, but then in order to expand its reach and impact, you have to spend equal amounts of energy repurposing it into different modalities to get it to different people because I would argue that you have people that only listen to your podcast that won't read a book, and then you have people that don't even have any idea they have a podcast that have read the book, and then there's the overlap of both. And the more modalities you're in, the more audiences you reach.

Totally. And I have a couple comments there. One, for the repurposing, I used to be hesitant to repost my podcast episodes, and then I thought to myself, why am I so hesitant to do that? I'll write repost so I feel authentic, in brackets. But there are episodes that I did that I think are really good that I did 2 years ago when I had less than half of my listening base. So I think repurposing is important. In terms of thought leadership, I think it's important that it says— I mean, first of all, it is edited by me. It's not written by me. I wrote a couple of chapters in there, but I don't consider myself a thought leader. And I think that's fine. I think the words— and obviously your whole— you know a lot more about thought leadership than I do. But when I do the podcast, I think there is totally a role for podcasts where people are expressing their own opinions. But when I decided to do my podcast, I thought, I think there are maybe sometimes too many people who are expressing their opinions. And I try not to give my opinion on my podcast too much because I try to be objective in the notion of preconceived. I try to be open-minded and I'm not an expert on a lot of these topics. So this was very much so, as you say, collecting other thought leaders in their respective fields.

But that, but that there is value in that, right? So you went through all this effort because you had this thing in your head about what is preconceived and then talk to your mom, whatever. So now, X years later, you're kind of sort of an expert on preconceived or know more about the topic than most. Now, your day job is still you're an ophthalmologist, right? You're not a world-renowned academic, but I would argue you know far more than the average person on this issue and have a perspective and have a point of view and could draw from your experiences and conversations because 170 conversations, that's That's not insignificant.

Yeah, I think you're probably right. I probably could give myself a little more credit in that domain. And I think I've definitely become more of a— I think I know how to— you're right. I guess I'm an expert on preconceived to an extent. And I've become more open-minded for sure in talking with people and just in life and the way I view the world. And one of the things I say to people when they say, has it affected the way you live your life? I say, in some domains, yes, some episodes. But it's a lot easier for it to affect the way I view the world. It's a lot tougher to then implement some of those preconceptions that I'm aware of into the way I live.

So let me ask you this. There's at least the world according to me, which may or may not be correct, probably not. Totally correct. Oh, thank you. Thought leaders need to stay in their lane. If I'm an expert on resiliency, I need to stay on resiliency. Now, there are some exceptions to that. Dan Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, whatever, where they're speaking on different issues, very different issues, and they go really, really deep. You know, Dan Pink's a researcher and all that other stuff. Do you see yourself staying in the preconceived lane, or might you wake up tomorrow and say, you know what I'm really curious about, like, why do people make silly decisions, or is there another thing, or have you not thought about that?

I haven't thought about it. Well, no, I have thought about it. I think that I see myself staying in my lane, but it doesn't necessarily need to be the preconceived lane. I think where I would feel uncomfortable is stepping out and offering opinions on things that I don't feel objectively qualified to be offering expert opinions on. So right now, I don't really feel like I'm offering so many opinions. I'm happy to offer opinions, obviously, during my podcast and kind of ask the interviewer ask the questions. But I'm happy to explore whatever life has to offer to me. But I would never try to present myself as somebody who's an expert in something that I'm not. And I do think in society right now, there is a little bit too much of that, where there's so many platforms and echo chambers, and it's very easy for people to have their own—

Sounds like your thing is more, hey, I'm curious about this. If you're curious, come along on this journey with me. I don't know more than you do, but Exactly.

And some of my worst episodes that I view as worst, I think, are ones that I maybe even come in a little too prepared for because I think I'm best when I actually come in more curious and a little bit naive like the listener.

Yeah.

No, I like that. I like that naivete because the listener wants, you know, it's probably the things that they're thinking they would ask versus these very scripted, deliberate, constrained question. So interesting. All right, so as we start to land the plane, any thoughts to other ophthalmologists or anybody in any profession out there that have an itch to scratch as it relates to thought leadership or something they're curious about or something they want to go deep on?

I think that ironically, I just did an episode yesterday about career changes. And so a lot of the themes in that fit in with this. But I think that anybody who's looking to pivot pivot, but you don't have to have the prescribed route that life tells you to take. And that doesn't mean for me that after I finished my training, I said, okay, I'm not going to do ophthalmology anymore. And for some people, they might say, yeah, but for 5 years, I've been a doctor, a lawyer, this isn't for me. And that's fine. It's also fine to be creative in the way you figure out how to do multiple things and how to have multiple interests. So I'm still an ophthalmologist, but I don't practice 5 days a week. I practice 4 days a week and I do this. Will that change one day? Sure. And I would say to people, don't have that fear of jumping in, you know, or jump in afraid. That's okay. It's okay to be afraid. I didn't know what I was doing, but the stakes were low. I'm happy with what I've done and I'm excited for the next adventure. And that's what makes life exciting. And I think it's important to nurture lots of your interests and to be creative with the way you live your life professionally and personally.

Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing your journey and your experience with us today, Zell. This has been awesome. And I appreciate your work and appreciate the candor. Good stuff.

Well, thank you so, so much for having me. I'm really grateful that you took the time to have me here. Thank you.

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