#217 Christina Wallace - 哈佛創業教授：AI 時代最危險的，是只做一份工作，人生的技能投資組合、說故事的能力

Being able to tell a story is the number one job for the next era.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, we can see OpenAI, Anthropic, all of them are hiring storytellers. They're all hiring content and editorial and all of this. And a lot of it is because you have to be able to make meaning in order to stand out, in order to have any sort of edge. You have to be able to tell a great story.

Yeah.

And that is where the value is going to be for everyone. You do work, you have to connect it to everyone else's work.

Yeah.

I have some students like me who came out of business school are coming out with a lot of debt, and they're like, look, I just need 2 to 3 years in banking or private equity and I, I will have it gone.

Yeah.

You know, I'll put my head down, I'll work really hard, and it will be gone. And then And then I have options, right? And I say to all of them, I get that. And what I want to make sure that you keep in mind is that it's really easy to build habits in the course of 2 to 3 years. So you can go in thinking you're going to leave the second your debt is paid off.

So true.

But in the course of 2 to 3 years, you're also going to get used to Expense accounts.

Yeah.

I want you to start thinking now about what you're doing after, so that you're not just walking away from money; you're walking toward that thing that you are really excited about. Do you听加速中，请握扶手，站稳踏地。 The escalator is speeding up. Please hold the handrail and stand forward.

Hi, I'm Jackie.欢迎收听《天文体操》周边。让我们一起自我成长，离开舒适圈，做最好自己，更好的我们。Today we have a huge honor to welcome Christina Wallace to the show. Christina is self-described as a human Venn diagram. You have an incredible life and narrative as a human across art, business, and technology. And, you know, just starting off on a high level, you are a Harvard Business School lecturer on entrepreneurship, author of 2 books, 4 Tony nominations as a Broadway co-producer, and I think 13 marathons under your belt. You originally came from Michigan, now live in Cambridge with her husband and 2 kids, whom she met on a zero-date method she shared in her TED Talk in 2018. She went to art boarding school, playing the piano, cello, singing, and then to Emory University, did a double major in math and theater. Her career started from working at the Met Opera in New York City, and then went to Boston Consulting Group before becoming a student at Harvard Business School. And after Harvard Business School, she co-founded a women's clothing startup called Quincy Apparel, which is now a well-studied case at Harvard Business School after it ended in about 2 years. She also has an entire chapter on failure in her book, The Portfolio Life, about this story, and we can get deeper into that later on. In 2013, she was a founding director of Startup Institute. 2014, she built an edtech program called Bridge Up for high school girls inside a museum of natural history. 2014 to 2020, she had a podcast called The Limit Does Not Exist on Forbes and iHeartRadio for 3 seasons and 125 episodes and talked about why science and creativity are better together. 2017 to 2020, she was the VP of Growth at Bionic, which was acquired by Accenture. And she also wrote a book during this time in 2019 with her then CEO, New Too Big: How Companies Can Create Like entrepreneurs invest like VCs and build growth operation systems. In 2020, she started at Harvard Business School as a senior lecturer on entrepreneurship and also leads the Harvard Business School Startup Bootcamps. In 2023, she launched her book, The Portfolio Life, her second book on how to future-proof your career, avoid burnout, and build a life bigger than your business card. Some key tenets are you are more than your job, how to diversify and rebalance. Yes. And we'll talk about the 4 pillars later about identity, optionality, diversification, and flexibility. In 2023, she founded Enoughing Venture Productions to allow the new tech world investors into the Broadway industry fractionally, has 4 Tony nominations as a co-producer of Romeo and Juliet, Water for Elephants, Stuffs, Suffs, and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, and also has a FI factor capital for early-stage tech. Now you're working on the 3rd book. called Storytelling and Narrative Leadership in the Age of AI, something along the lines, and a new course online in Taiwan, which is super exciting. We'll talk a lot about that today. And these are all linked in the show notes with a discount code JackieAI for 350 NT discount. If you want to learn more about Christina, you can go on her Instagram, @cmwalla, Christina Wallace, and also on christinawallace.com, which are all linked in the show notes. Welcome, Christina.

Thank you so much. You did your research.

Quite a story.

I have to I got my 5th Tony nomination last week.

No way.

For Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. So the awards are in a couple of weeks. We'll see if this one actually turns into a win. Fingers crossed.

That's incredible. Yeah, your story is so exciting and so many different angles. So I'd love to dive—

Some might call it chaotic.

Yeah, I can't wait to dive deeper into all of these different you know, pivotal points.

Sure.

And I think the first question I want to ask you is, for the audience to get to know you a little bit better on a personal level, how would you describe yourself in 3 words, 3 adjectives?

Oh, tall, loud, and full of energy.

Full of energy. I love it. I want to ask you about, you know, you double majored in math and theater. Yeah, it's very interesting. And, you know, growing up, as in your childhood, I think you mentioned this in your book too, right? To look back in your childhood for signs. What were some early signs in your childhood that led you to become, to believe, to want to do math and theater at the same time?

Yeah, so I loved math from the beginning. I joke that I speak 3 languages, math, music, and English. I started them all at the same time. I was about 4 years old when I started piano lessons, and I just took to math just natively. I don't really remember a time in my life where I wasn't doing math. I went to a really small Christian school that didn't have great teachers. And so they didn't know what to do with me. I was ahead of my classmates, so they just stuck me in a corner with a textbook and said, teach yourself. And I did. And I was like 3 or 4 years ahead of my grade level. And so I just ran with it and I taught myself. I didn't have a math teacher until calculus. When I was in 11th grade.

Oh, wow.

I was self-taught all the way through. And it was amazing. I just, I loved it so much. It made sense and it was fun. And I could see how all of these pieces fit together. So math was always just the obvious piece. And it's actually the reason I didn't go to conservatory. So the theater thing we'll get to in a second, 'cause that came out of left field. But my life all the way up through senior year of high school, the assumption was sort of that I would go to music Conservatory. I was classically trained piano first and foremost, and picked up cello a little bit as my midlife crisis in middle school. I wanted to play in an orchestra, and there's only one pianist in any orchestra. And meanwhile, there are like 8 cellos. So I was like, I'm going to play a cello. And then I sang in the choir. I had taken voice lessons and just really, like, singing was for me. Singing was fun. And so I ended up going to this arts boarding school, Interlochen Arts Academy, to be very, very intentional and serious about this training. And it got all the way up to the point where I sort of had to make this choice of like, am I going to conservatory? Am I going to go audition for Juilliard and, and for all of these other training programs where all you do is music? And I, I didn't want to. I was like, first off, I don't want to stop doing math. But secondly, I don't want to spend six hours a day in a practice studio by myself working on these like two measures of Beethoven. Like I just, I don't want to. And I looked at so many of my friends at Interlochen and they did want to. And I was like, they should. And I, I'm gonna go to college instead. So I. I went off to Emory University knowing I was going to major in math and knowing I still wanted to do music, but I didn't want to major in music.

Okay.

And when I got there, I needed a job. I was one of the scholarship kids. And one of the work-study jobs they offered was as a stage manager in the theater department. And all of the fun kids at boarding school were all the theater kids. So I hung out with them. The musicians were all very serious and slightly boring. The theater kids were the fun ones. And so I was like, I'll just do this. I'll get paid to hang out with the theater kids. This will be great. And so I started working as a stage manager on their productions. And it was within a semester, they're like, you know, you could be one of us. You could major in theater. And it was kind of eye-opening because at Interlochen, no one actually said this, I think, but it was sort of the understanding was like, if you hadn't been doing your craft since you were 6, it was too late, right? Like, the ship has sailed. You cannot start anything new. You are who you are. And so it was this kind of revelation that at 18, it wasn't too late for me to start something, which we all now know is insane.

Wow.

But I was like, really? I could still start and be a beginner at 18? And so I picked up a theater major and got to be a director. And part of the way that Emory approached theater education was, rather than this very narrow conservatory approach, it was a liberal arts degree. So I could specialize in directing, but I still had to learn playwriting and acting and design and technical theater. And I was a better director because of it. I had to learn all the other pieces. And I actually made money. I worked jobs in professional theater during school doing all of those other things. And that sort of understanding of like the hustle of be willing, be humble enough to do what needs to be done. And in doing so, you sort of start to build a really diverse network and income streams, right? Like that was always sort of at the root of the artist's struggle.

Hmm.

That was built in from the beginning. And I still was able to do music. I minored in music And physics and political science. So I still got to do kind of that other piece of my life. And music is still in my life today in a much less serious way. But theater was my new exposure. And then I got to keep math, which I still love.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Yeah.

So connecting back to you, right? The music to math and back to you, the core of that is, I feel like it's creativity.

Yeah.

Um, so you were a creative person ever since you were a kid. Mm-hmm. And you described yourself as a, maybe a misfit, right? I think you described that somewhere. Uh, did that ever bother you growing up that you're maybe, you know, different, uh, in a good way, right?

Yeah.

You excelled at many different things and you had your own curriculum compared to your peers.

Yeah.

Um, did that ever like, you know, make you feel, you know, how hard were you?

Yeah, I was definitely a weirdo for sure. Um, no, it was hard. I didn't fit in in a lot of ways and it wasn't just because I was, Really smart. I grew super tall really young. So head and shoulders above the boys and obviously above the girls too. I've been 6 feet tall since the 7th grade. Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, wow. And I went to a really small school. So I had, I don't know, maybe 14 kids in my entire grade. And they're with you from like 5th grade through— like, if you say something stupid when you're 8 years old, they will still remember and taunt you about it at 15. Oh, that's just terrible. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And so, um, and there were a couple of girls that hated me and just made my life hell early on in the 5th grade. I was kind of overweight, I was definitely not cool, and I was too smart and had no social skills. And, um, and so they just decided that I was I was going to be the annoying weirdo in the corner with her math books.

Oh my God. I know.

And so part of me was kind of like, screw you. I'll lean into that. Fine, let me be that stereotype. And it definitely sucked. I have found the journals from those years being like, I have no friends. I'm never going to be anybody. And I am so grateful for the opportunity to go to boarding school when I was 15, because that was my first chance to start over. And I showed up at 15. I had literally no friends until 15. And I show up to boarding school and suddenly I have friends and I'm not a loser. And I was like, oh, I just needed to—

Friendship.

I just needed a fresh start of people who didn't see me fart on the playground in the 3rd grade. You know what I mean? So, I'm really grateful now, actually, for the fact that there was no chance for me to try to ingratiate myself with those kids. Because I think if there had been—

Wow.

An opportunity to be like, oh, well, if I just try to be a little quieter, to, you know, not show off how smart I am, to suck it up a little bit, I think I probably would have tried in order to fit in. But it was so far from being possible that I was just like, it's cool. Me and Nancy Drew are going to go in the corner and read. I don't know if you're familiar with the Nancy Drew series. It's like a series of mystery books featuring this heroine. They were published in like the '50s. They were my mom's books. Basically read them in the bathroom on lunch breaks. So I didn't have to sit by myself. Me and Nancy Drew, we made it through several years together. And because of this, I built the muscle of going my own path.

Yeah.

And of not checking in with what everyone else was doing before making the decision that I wanted to make.

Oh, wow.

And I really value that because in college, when deciding what to study, when deciding what to do after college, when figuring out that I wanted to move to New York, when figuring out what to do after business school. Like, I have never had the instinct to say, well, let's see what everyone else wants to do first.

Right.

I've been a bit of a loner and kind of for good. And in some ways, I had to learn how to be a really good partner when I met my husband. Like, there was some skills I had to learn there. But I so value that ability to carve my own trail. Yeah. Um, and so I thank Katie and Joelle for being mean in the 5th grade.

Boom. Um, I dunno if you, I dunno if you read the book, uh, Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham.

No, I should though. I've heard a couple of people recommend it.

Yeah. It talks about, one chapter talks about the, the era of the nerds where like nerds are the actual true Like back then it was like the, the, what do you call them? The jockeys. And then now it's like being a nerd is like the coolest thing.

Except now I think the nerds have taken it a little bit too far and they're like, we're in charge and we're going to hold it against, you know, like you got to get over it. Yeah.

Fair.

Like, I know you have power. Let's take it down.

Yeah. Especially now AI, anyone can be a hacker. Uh, but yeah, Hackers and Painters. I love that book. Uh, and then I think back in the age of like when computer science, smart people were into math too. really find your voice and find your influence. And the reason I bring up this book is because, you know, as entrepreneurs, like Paul Graham is someone that we hear a lot about, talk about. When did you start noticing your entrepreneurial, like, gene in you?

That's such a good question. Um, it's funny because I didn't know the word entrepreneur and I didn't really know the, like, I, the idea of the business of it and the business model for it until business school. Like, it really wasn't until I went to Harvard. And I truly, um, I started at HBS 3 weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial crisis kicks off.

Yeah.

And at that point, there are no jobs for any MBAs, and career services at Harvard kind of freaks out. And so they make this total pivot and say, have you guys heard of entrepreneurship?

No way.

Like, everyone go start companies, because if you start companies, then we can call you employed when you graduate, which is a really important metric for all of the rankings.

No way. That's crazy.

So before 2008, like, you didn't go to Harvard Business School to go into entrepreneurship. You went to Stanford.

Oh.

You would go to HBS to go into consulting or finance or PE.

Okay.

And then from 2008 onward, we just have this huge, just complete shift in this focus of entrepreneurship. Now it's like 40% of our students are focused on entrepreneurship.

Wow.

But it was right then that it— so right place, right time.

Right.

So I started hearing all about this thing, entrepreneurship. And I was like, oh, I recognize this. This is like making theater.

Okay.

You get an idea, you have like $7 and a roll of duct tape to your name, and you've got to convince a bunch of people to join you to execute against this vision. And all it is is a vision. You've got a script, you've got an idea, but like nothing more than that. And you've got a deadline, you've got opening night coming up. And so you work together to make what is first a really bad version of it in rehearsals. And then you put it up in front of an audience and you try to see if they laugh at any of your jokes. And when they don't, you go back and fix it the next day in rehearsal. And you keep iterating on this. until finally you get to opening night.

Wow.

And then it's there. And I was like, this is exactly the same thing. I know how to do this. And because I was a math major, I took coding. I know how to make stuff. Like, yeah, I can do this. What's this called? A business model? Okay, I got this. So that was the first time I had heard of it. But it's funny because then as you look back, at who you are as a kid, you start to spot, you're like, oh, I've always been this person. I was absolutely the kid in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I remember writing a script for, I don't know, my history class. This wasn't an assignment. This was just something I decided to do.

Okay.

Opportunity, you pursue the opportunity. I wrote a script about, I don't know, On the Prairie or something. I picked out a couple of people, I assigned them roles. I then told my grandmother that she was going to be making costumes. And she did. Like, people listened to 8-year-old me. I then went and grabbed cardboard boxes and like painted sets in the garage, and then convinced my mother to let me bring the sets and costumes to school without telling my teachers. This was not cleared with anyone. I just showed up one day with all of this. And I said, Mrs. Mitchell, today we're going to be performing a play for history class.

No way.

And she said, oh, okay. And then we did. And I was like, oh, I've always been—

Wow.

That girl in charge who was like, I got a great idea. I'm going to get some people on board. Let's make it happen. I've been the producer. I've been the head of every club I've been a part of who finds the idea, grabs the vision, rounds people up and says, let's make it happen.

Love it.

I was like, oh, this is me. And now I look at my kids.

Yeah.

My daughter, I'm already getting calls from school.

Oh, really?

My 6-year-old. My 6-year-old has recently got into Pokémon.

Oh, boy. Okay.

So she likes them. They're pretty. She's very artistic. She likes to draw. She went to school and she's in the first grade. And one of the third grade boys told her that Pokémon cards are really valuable. So she's like, oh, they're valuable. So she draws 3 of her own original Pokémon cards.

No way.

Then she convinces the 3rd grade boy to help her sneak into the school office and make color copies of these 3 original artworks that she's made. She makes 10 of each. Now she has inventory. She cuts them out. She waits until the after-school program. And as the parents are coming to pick up the kids, she hits up the parents to see if anyone wants to buy a Pokémon card.

The parents?

Uh-huh. Because they're the ones with money. Kids don't have any money.

Of course.

She actually sells one.

Wow.

She sells one, which is how I get a phone call being like, Ms. Wallace, we need to talk to you about your child at pickup today. Um, yeah, she hits up one of the parents and, uh, he pays her $5 for one of her Pokémon cards. And so I have to keep a straight face to be like, that was a bad thing you did. And then we get in the car and I was like, actually, I'm very impressed. Um, and I was like, Arden, how did you decide To charge him $5. Also, who was this parent? She's like, I don't know. It was just a parent. I was like, it wasn't one of your friends? And she's like, no, I asked everybody. I was like, you're good at sales. No, she said, I asked him what it was worth to him because we had been talking literally the week before. She's like, I think this is $20. And I was like, well, it's whatever it's worth, whatever they're willing to pay. I asked him what he was willing to pay.

Wow.

And he said he was willing to pay $5. And I was like, man, she's good. I gotta watch out for you.

Wow. That's a masterclass right there.

So apparently the DNA runs strong. Yeah.

I love it. Okay. So after getting to business school, mm-hmm, it's 2 years. Mm-hmm. I presume. And after business school, I remember you started a startup with one of your, uh, business schoolmates.

Yes.

How does it feel you know, actually doing a startup versus learning about all the different business cases, studies? Like, where are the biggest gaps in your understanding, expectations, or preparation, any of that?

So I, I sort of joke that I was counting down my days at BCG to get out, but I also really appreciate that year because it was a bit like a finishing school on the MBA program. Because you're in the classroom, you're reading 500 cases, you're discussing all these things, and it's entirely theoretical. You're not responsible for any of these decisions.

Right.

And because I had never worked in a business, BCG was a really good boot camp for business, for how these things work. I never made a slide. I didn't know slides were called slides. I had a lot to learn. I had to make a financial model. There's some gaps we had to fill. So I'm really appreciative for that year. And also, I didn't have a lot of the bad habits that come from staying too long at whether consulting or big companies or anything else.

Right.

So I left to go off to build the company. And the early, early days of entrepreneurship, I recognized those feelings. I was like, I know what this feels like. I've done this. Like, zero to one, I'm really good at. And I think that's one of my superpowers, 'cause I look at a lot of my friends and classmates and other entrepreneurs, and 0 to 1 is like the most terrifying time for a lot of those founders. Like 1 to 10 is okay, 10 to 100, they're really excellent at, but 0 to 1, it's kind of like, don't make me go back to those days.

Wow.

And I'm like, yeah, bring it on. These are amazing.

The best days, right?

Kind of like, okay. I'm the only one here. What am I doing today? What's the priority? What are the questions I need to answer? Should I get out of bed? That's question number one. And there's a million things to do. And so you've got to prioritize and you've got to decide who to talk to and which advice you want to listen to. And when there's more work to do than can possibly be done, there's a lot of judgment calls that come into play. Like, how do I prioritize the most important work? And a lot of times that comes down to like, what are the biggest assumptions of this business model that if they're wrong, kill this opportunity?

Yeah.

And so how can I get more information? How can I like run an experiment or get a test done here to see if I'm right or to redirect as quickly as possible if I'm wrong? And you can redirect 3 times in 1 day at that point. So there's a lot of beautiful chaos in the early days when it's just you and a co-founder. I think where it started getting really unfamiliar and kind of uncomfortable and the gap started showing up for me is once we started hiring people.

Oh, yeah.

I had never hired anyone in my life. And no matter how much you read about hiring or listen to podcasts about hiring or ask for advice on hiring, it's not the same as the practice of hiring.

100%.

Yeah. I think it's one of the only jobs that you just can only learn by doing.

And you can't even delegate it that much because— Yeah.

And so I was really bad at the beginning. We made some bad hires, and the only thing that can fix bad hiring is being willing to fire. And I didn't do that fast enough either. So the friction of now carrying the wrong team members, they weren't bad team members, they were just not the right ones.

Yeah.

While also still trying to keep up a lot of things, that was where the rubber hit the road. You study all these things about get the right people in the right seats and you can talk about them in case studies and then the actual doing of it. The people skills of it all is where the big gaps really showed up.

I see. Wow. If you were to do it differently, you know, going back to Quincy Apparel, you know, your startup, what were some of the biggest lessons? I know hiring is one. You know, you got, as an entrepreneur, we've all been there. You got to deal with co-founders, investors, customers.

There's a couple of things. My co-founder Alex and I, we were very, very close friends at business school, and we are still good friends to this day. We were not good friends in the in-between years because we weren't the right co-founders for this business.

Okay.

We just overlapped too much on skill sets.

Oh.

And then we both had these gaps that neither of us could fill. And we weren't willing to bring on a third co-founder.

Right.

But these were gaps that we couldn't just hire for. The difference between an employee and a co-founder is pretty huge.

Huge.

And so we just didn't get that difference. And there were too many places where we were undoing each other's work or stepping on each other's toes, and far too many places where we didn't know what good was supposed to look like, and we couldn't get the best out of it. I mean, it's a little bit like, not to to bring this around to my course, but it's a little bit like when you try to use AI to do things that you are not an expert in.

Yeah.

Right? If you don't know what it's supposed to look like and you can't QA it properly, then you can end up with mediocre stuff, and you don't even know that it's bad until you put it out there and it doesn't work. So we weren't the right co-founders for this business. We also took venture capital for what was ultimately a retail business. Now, in 2011, if you had gone to Stanford or Harvard Business School and you were starting any company that involved a website, you were building a tech startup, which meant you took VC money.

Sounds like AI today.

A little bit. It was just the pattern matching at the time. VCs were chasing after these MBA grads who were in New York or San Francisco, who touched anything with a website or mobile, and throwing money at them. And so we took VC money, and this wasn't a VC business. Like, it's just not— the economics are not the right thing. The early days, the experiments are different. And so our investors didn't fit what we needed. They didn't—

Oh.

We had the wrong signals for what they would be looking for. And when we hit early trouble, they weren't willing to kind of help us get through that trouble because to them, they're kind of like, I don't know what's going on, so I'm going to just cut my losses and skedaddle. And also, I think if I were to do it all over, I don't know if I would build a fashion company. So basically everything, Jackie. If I were to do it all over, I would do everything different.

Oh my God, I love it.

And also, I would do everything the same. Like, those 2 years, I learned more than my 2 years of business school. Yeah, I bet. And I am so grateful for that opportunity. And it's what I talk to my students when we do the case study. It's why I was so open about being willing to do the case study on the failure, that even in failure, the learning curve for my co-founder and I accelerated our careers. The next job that we both stepped into, or the next startup that I was able to build as a result of that experience, it accelerated us like 5, 6 years of experience because of how tight the decision-making loop is in startups. You diagnose a problem, you make a plan, you execute on that plan, and you see if it was the right decision. Right? You get that judgment loop fast, over and over and over again. And you know, was that a good decision, a bad decision? You do it a million times really, really quickly. You're at a big company, you might only own one piece of that loop.

Yeah.

And even if you can see how your piece fits into the whole loop, it might be ages before you get the feedback of, was that the right call or the wrong call. You go into something like consulting, you might never see the loop close. You give the diagnosis, the plan, and they may choose to never execute. And so the way that you get better is to develop this judgment. And it's to run this decision loop, run this judgment loop as many times as you can. And entrepreneurship is where you get to do that.

Yeah.

So much faster.

Yeah, I could not agree more. I used to also work in big tech and also gone through the VC funding route, you know, for like about 2 years also where I was deeply involved. So I feel like doing a startup or any entrepreneurial activity is the fastest way for self-improvement and self-reflection of knowing who— what you're really made of. Yeah. What are your flaws? What are your gaps? What are you good at also?

Yes.

Yes. And I love you shared about how after Quincy Apparel, you did about 70 coffee chats with people asking them, what do you see me the happiest? What do you come to me for? What do I shine at against my peers? I love that you did that. You also shared how you did like 70 podcasts when your book came out. You seem quite an overachiever at times.

I'm incapable of doing things halfway. It's good and bad, right?

Yeah. Um, I love that about you. I think it's very, um, you know, you go all in and you, every strategy you do, you execute it all the way. Yeah. And you really, you know, emphasize that all-in-or-nothing approach, at least in the early days. And then later on you had different approaches of 85%. And, you know, um, yeah, but, you know, after Quincy Apparel, those 70 coffee chats when you ask people those 3 questions. How long did that take, and what were the biggest learnings you had during those 70 coffee chats in that time, you know, overall?

Yeah, so I had to do all of those in 30 days.

Oh wow.

Because I was broke when Quincy shut down. Um, I put all of my money into the company, which was not that much money in the first place, and I had postponed— I deferred my student loans While I was building the company. So I owed more money at this point than I did when I graduated. It was like $170,000 just hanging over my head. And I had like literally $0.00 in my bank account. So I had to pay my rent with my credit card.

Oh, wow. That's scary.

And so it is. And so at that point, I was like, I have a month before I have to pay my rent again.

Mm-hmm.

So I need a job in a month. There has to be a job. So let's get moving. Like, let's figure this out. And so I did those 70 chats in 30 days. That's more coffee than any human being needs to drink. I did toward the end, I did shift to be like, you know, we don't have to get coffee, we could go for a walk, I could do your errands with you, you know, like, we tried to start Mixing it up a bit. I also had to clarify they had to pay for the coffee because I was so broke that not only was this going to be a meeting about me, but also they had to pay for it. Thank God my my people love me. So what did I learn from this? A couple of the things that really surprised me, and what surprised me was how consistent these answers were because I was talking to people who had. who had known me across a lot of different chapters of my life. I was talking to some folks who I'd gone to high school with, to boarding school, and others that only knew me from the startup world, which means they'd maybe only known me for a year, and others from college, from the opera, from, right, all these different kind of settings. And one of the things that kept coming up was that they had really seen me happiest when I was in charge of my schedule. In charge of my calendar.

What?

Okay. No one used those words exactly, but the way that they kept describing it was, it's not that I don't work hard, I obviously work hard, but when I'm not in control of when I'm working hard. And this came out most explicitly in my year at BCG.

Okay.

Client service means you are at the beck and call of your client. So I would try to sing in a choir, I would try to go to a friend's wedding, I would try to go on a date, and I would have to cancel everything because of something. So they're like, you don't care about working hard, you just want to do it on your terms. So as you think about— this is one of the reasons entrepreneurship is so appealing to you, because you are the principal. You are in control of your calendar. And at 28, there aren't that many jobs out there where you are high enough in the pecking order to be in charge of your calendar, right? You have to be sort of VP, SVP level at a big corporate to get to call the shots on your calendar. And even then, you don't really get to fully call the shots.

Right.

So I was like, okay, I think I probably need to stay in entrepreneurship or startup land more than like, Going to big corporate. Also, I would be terrible at big corporate.

Basically saying you're not unemployable.

You've known me for 45 minutes. I say what I think far too much to work in corporate. So I'm happy when I am in charge of my calendar. What do they come to me for? They come to me to find the story. So I get a lot of friends come to me when they are doing career switching, when they're trying to connect the dots of their story, or when they're launching a product, when they're expanding in some way at their company, they come to me to find the narrative.

Oh, interesting.

Which, again, all of this makes sense once you say it out loud. But I was like, oh, okay. So like a marketing communications storytelling function makes sense. Okay. So this is super helpful as I'm trying to like home in on what exactly do I have to offer? Because remember, at this point I am a theater director, cryptography student, opera girly with a failed fashion startup who hates consulting, right? Like, what exactly am I supposed to do next? And then when we got to like, where do I stand out against my peers? One was my comfort in that 0 to 1 stage.

Right.

Another was the strength of my network in New York. Like, I know everybody. And not because I'm out like pounding the pavement, passing out my business card. In part, it's just because I know everybody. Like, I just, like, I just do a lot of things. This is true. Like, I know everybody in my MBA class. My MBA class is like 900 people, and somehow I know basically everybody.

Wow.

Because I do different things.

Okay.

I do orthogonal clubs and interesting kind of— I don't just sit in specific circles, I straddle them. And so I end up sort of knowing everybody. I'm not besties with anyone.

Yeah.

But I kind of know everyone. And I know them in a way, because I've helped them. In a lot of cases, I'm giving out favors and offering support long before I need it.

Right.

So it's not really a transactional relationship. It's just like a, hey, how can I help?

Right.

So I have a really strong network. I'm comfortable early stage. And, oh, the last one, which again, obvious, I'm really good at public speaking.

Oh.

Like, give me an audience of 1,000 and a microphone and a stage and like, I'll be out there in half a second. And apparently that's just not true for everybody.

That's a superpower.

And this was the first time that I had really stopped to think about that, that this was a thing that I was good at and that I enjoy.

Yeah.

And so they were like, yeah, you got to think about roles where you can be like a spokesperson You can be a teacher, you can be like, as a CEO, it really was a good fit where I got to go out and really represent the company, the customer, the product. They're like, this is a thing that you do well. Make sure that whatever you do next, this is part of it. And so it was really helpful to kind of get these components. Like, none of those gave me a job title.

Mm-hmm.

But they gave me pieces where I said, okay, Whatever I do next, I'm probably going to stay in early-stage startups. I need to stay in New York because that's where my strength is. And I either need to look for marketing roles or I need to look for opportunities to build a new business or launch a new product for a company that is already existing somewhere else. I can open their New York office. I can expand their New York operations. I'm too burned out to start another startup right this second, so let me go find a startup elsewhere who wants to come to New York. Let me be New York for them.

Yeah.

And that was— I was like, now I've got the playbook. Now I can go and ask who's looking for someone who's Christina-shaped.

Yeah.

And then it was like 2 days and I found exactly Startup Institute, which was only in Boston at the time, wanted to see if they could scale.

Yeah.

And I got to be the founding director of Startup Institute New York. And then once I expanded there, they grew to Chicago, Berlin, London. Like, I got to write the playbook for how do they grow once they wanted to go into multiple cities. Oh, amazing.

Um, I want to ask you about your second book, The Portfolio Life. At this point, your career trajectory, your roles have changed a lot. You've gone through a lot of ups and downs. And one of the core pillars is identity.

Yeah.

Right. And I can imagine your identity has shifted throughout this time through different seasons. Yeah. Into, you know, yeah, the season of teaching also, right?

Yeah.

It's all different seasons. How have your identity transformed beyond your titles at the core?

It's interesting because, you know, I start the identity piece in the book with a story about where kind of this idea of the human Venn diagram came from.

Yeah.

Which was while I was fundraising for Quincy Apparel and needed to figure out how to tell my story a little bit faster to, you know, a bunch of VCs at a networking dinner and just sort of came up with it one night while slightly inebriated. But it worked. It sort of stuck. And it's been the first line of my bio ever since. Like, I haven't used my job title to introduce myself since 2011.

Wow.

And so as I have changed jobs and, you know, through all of these things, the first line of my bio has not changed.

I love that.

So there has been a lot of consistency there. But I think it really hit home for me how important it was not to tie my identity to my job when Quincy failed. Yeah. Because we shut down the company. And I went home. And I curled up on the kitchen floor. And I started sobbing. And I was like, who am I?

Hmm.

Especially because during those 2 years that we were building that company, I really had pared back all of the other things that I love. I didn't have time to sing. I wasn't taking care of my body and exercising. I didn't have time for friends. I wasn't dating. There really wasn't anything else.

Yeah.

I sort of really was the all-in that VCs tell you they want you to be. And I'm like, that's easy for you to say, you're diversified.

Yeah.

And it was that moment where I realized just how risky it was to be all-in on one thing.

Wow.

And I had that, I was like, never again, never again. And this is, I was all in on my own thing. This wasn't even like I was working for someone else and they fired me and the rug got pulled out. Like, I pulled my own rug out from under me. And it was just so destabilizing. Like, I poured myself into bed and didn't stay, didn't get out of bed for 3 weeks. So it was so, just mind-body world-altering, trying to remember who I am and what I would be able to offer the world. The fact that I had to talk to 70 people to have them tell me who I am, because looking in the mirror, I couldn't see it.

Yeah.

Is the testament to why you shouldn't tie your identity to your job. Again, I went maybe a little bit deeper than most other people would. I do things in the extreme, but that's why. And so from that moment on, I was like, I do my jobs. I am a human Venn diagram. So even now, yes, I'm a professor at Harvard Business School. I'm also an author. I'm also a Broadway producer. I'm a mom, I'm an investor. Like, all of those are equal to me in terms of, like, rank.

Oh, man.

Because none of them are— like, some of them pay better than others. Mom doesn't pay very well. Um, but, uh, you know, it will in the long term.

Still gotta sell my Pokémon cards.

Yeah, it, uh— but those are all Those are all just, uh, components of my portfolio. Like I'm just naming like the slices of pie in my portfolio.

Mm-hmm.

I'm not naming my identity there.

Right.

Right. My identity is my Venn diagram.

Mm-hmm.

So it's, it, it's the power to not put your identity in anyone else's hands.

Yeah. Is this sort of the, you know, tying your identity more on your Your why, your character, more than actually what you are actually physically doing.

Yeah, for sure. Because you— I mean, this is certainly true in the US where we are so productivity-focused, attached to everything. And I say this, but I don't always believe it myself, and it's hard, but you exist whether or not you do anything. You have value. You are a person whether or not you produce something. So your identity is not what you do. And so figuring out sort of what is your fingerprint? How do you see the world? What is the combination of things that make you you and that how you show up in a room? I speak nerd, but I also create. And then I figure out how to turn that into money.

That's the hard part.

I take up a lot of space and I tell a good story. Like these are all elements of who I am regardless of what paycheck I got this week.

Yeah. I think especially in the day and age of things are changing so quickly on a day-to-day basis. Like your identity, what you tie yourself to, like instead of saying, oh, I'm a great programmer, you say, oh, I'm great at solving technical problems.

Yeah, exactly.

Then anything that comes your way, you can solve that.

That is 100% it.

Yeah. And if you're tied to like, oh, I'm a software engineer and get laid off, who are you now, right? Yeah.

Or if like, imagine software disappears.

Yeah. Right?

Like 10 years from now.

Very good. Yeah.

Like software might just be a thing that we talk about the way I tried to explain fax machines to a 14-year-old at dinner the other day. She looked at me like I was an idiot. I was making like the modem connection sound in the middle of a very fancy restaurant. And I thought they were gonna kick me out. Anyway, like writing code may not exist anymore. And so that can't be who you are and what your job is. But if what you do is solve problems, understand, you know, how technology gets put together.

Yeah.

How to create and connect all these kind of different pieces of technology in a way that invents something new for people. Like, that job will always exist.

And if you tell a good story on top of that.

Yeah. Honestly, this is my next book. Being able to tell a story is the number one job for the next era.

Yeah, 100%.

I mean, we can see OpenAI, Anthropic, all of them are hiring storytellers. They're all hiring content and editorial and all of this. And a lot of it is because You have to be able to make meaning, to be able to move people, to be able to connect emotionally, and to stand out in a world where a lot of the content now, the slop, is sort of reversion to the mean.

Right.

You're getting the average of everything. In order to stand out, in order to have any sort of edge, you have to be able to tell a great story. And that is where the value is going to be for everyone. You do work, you have to connect it to everyone else's work. You make something happen using your suite of agents, connect it, tell the so what. I learned that at BCG. So what?

Oh, yeah.

You ran your analysis. So what? Right? It's the, like, what's the takeaway here? They're annoying, but they're right. Like, don't tell me what you did. Tell me why it matters. Oof.

Love that. Yeah. Like the 4 pillars you talk about, identity, optionality, mm-hmm, diversification, flexibility.

Mm-hmm.

I think those are so important. And you wrote that in 2023.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I think even ChatGPT—

I actually wrote it in 2022 and I turned in the manuscript like 3 weeks before ChatGPT was announced.

No way. Yes. Oh my God. You're like, dang it.

It could have been— There was definitely a moment that I was like, you know, this could have been a lot But it was so applicable in this ChatGPT cloud age. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I think, you know, optionality, if you're able to master different elements, different disciplines, the principles, you can connect different associations. The thing I want to ask about is flexibility. I think diversification is very important, right? You want to put your eggs in different baskets. You know, flexibility is the part where you rebalance your portfolio. Mm-hmm. Your portfolio. Yeah. How are you tracking your portfolio in the first place?

Mm-hmm.

Um, and how often do you need to go back to review them?

Mm-hmm.

And then decide, oh, is this a time for rebalancing? Right? 'Cause sometimes we can over-optimize, like, yeah, yeah. Oh, I need to like refactor this.

There's no Oura Ring for your portfolio, right? Like, I'm not, we're not doing a daily tracker. You don't need a quarterly update, um, with KPIs. No.

Yeah.

I am not like that. So. My sort of high-level gut sense for when is it time to rebalance is when is there sustained friction in your life that didn't used to be there?

Oh.

By which I mean, this used to work. I was happy with this job. I had friends and had time to see them. I was able to keep all these balls in the air. I was feeling creatively fulfilled. I was making enough money for taking care of my, you know, my needs and my wants, right? Whatever that thing was, like, this life worked.

Mm-hmm.

And now, like, I hit a speed bump. And then I hit another one. And then I hit a third one. And maybe I'm getting, like, some health issues that the doctor's like, you seem to have stress in your life, and you need to make a change, right? Like, I'm getting multiple signals. And a couple of these things, like, I can fix, but more of them are kind of adding up to the point where, like, I don't know if this is working anymore. Like, what was working is not working now.

Okay.

That's usually a signal. that you need to take a bigger look to rebalance.

Gotcha.

Right? Those are the types of rebalancings where you're like, maybe I need to change my job. Maybe this is like move to a different city kind of thing. If you have a family, this might be the like, this is we have to sit down and decide like, how are we going to balance the childcare, the routines, all these things? Like, these are the moments I have some friends where this is the moment when they're like, oh, each kid can't have 3 sports. And both of us working full time. And, right, like 17 other things, we're going to lose our minds. Right. Right. And so this is where sometimes you see them start to think it's not just about an individual portfolio. You also have to think about your family portfolio. And maybe we have to design this so we have a family system that works.

Oh, Venn diagram of Venn diagrams. Yeah.

So friction that sort of doesn't go away is one. Another way is, I talk in the book about my personal balanced scorecard. It's sort of the tool that I use to make sure that I'm not over-indexing, usually on career. That's the one that all ambitious people do, where at the beginning of the year, and my— I live on an academic year. So my fiscal year, I'm such a nerd. My fiscal year runs July to June.

Right.

And it literally has since I graduated from college. I have like a spreadsheet where every tab has been my cash flow budget since 2005. And every year my fiscal year starts July to June. Anyway, I start my personal balance scorecard at the beginning of the fiscal year and I set my goals and they have to be like measurable.

Yeah.

I have to be able to say, like, yes or no.

Right.

It can't be a maybe. It's like, yes or no.

Okay.

And I pick them for professional goals, for financial goals, for my health and relationships, my family, my friends, you know, especially a lot of my closest friends don't live in Cambridge, don't live around me. It's the cost of being middle-aged. So, like, how am I making sure I get to see my closest friends. And then some of my independent creative projects, right? What are those and what are they— what's my investment in them going to be this year? So I make these goals and then you get to kind of look at them holistically and you have to be like, is this insane? Is this collectively too much for one year? Does this seem reasonable? So you get a little assessment. On a holistic level. And then, over the course of the year, you just kind of keep track. Red, yellow, green, you get a little dashboard. Am I on track? Am I behind?

Is that like a monthly thing where you—

Yeah, you can. It's just sort of, you keep an eye on it. And it's not going to be linear, right? You're gonna have months where some are shoot ahead and others behind. And I keep little notes to myself, a little like, good job, you know? And sometimes it's like, you haven't made any progress. Do you really care about this one? At 6 months, I'll go in and do a mid-year assessment just to see where I am. I'll let myself update the goals at 6 months to be like, is it working? Do we want to change anything?

Right.

And then at the end of the year, we just do a yes or no, just straight up. And we get a little report card. And at the very bottom of this report card, is one question. It's like a checksum on a financial model.

Okay.

And the question is, are you happy?

Ooh, damn. I wasn't expecting that.

I know.

Okay, tell me more.

Yeah. And it's just a yes or no. And the definition for me of are you happy is, did you have more good days than bad this year? And it's not like I— again, there's no Oura Ring here. I didn't like keep a tally.

Right.

It's more of a vibes thing.

Wow.

But did I have more good days than bad? And if the answer is no, it does not matter if my report card was amazing. It doesn't matter if I met every single goal because I was kind of miserable doing it.

Right.

Right? Like, that means we got to change something. It means I'm acing tests that don't matter.

Right.

Which ambitious people are really good at doing. And if I failed my report card, but I am happy, then there's like a little chat with myself about like, so why are you setting goals that you're not actually working toward? Like, what's going on? Why? What's happening here? Like, we have a little therapy session with ourselves. And then we set goals for the next year. Me, myself, and I. And so that's how it works, right? And typically, I find that these, these like major rebalancings really do come in sort of moments of transition, right? Like my last big rebalancing was when I had children.

Right.

I expect my next rebalancing will probably be around the point where my kids are really sort of like both elementary age. I still have one in preschool. That's a very different vibe in terms of what they need from me and how much I have to be able to give them.

Right.

How much they touch me at every given moment. But it also could be, there could be a moment where I'm like, I just feel like I'm not growing anymore as a professor, and I want to take on a different challenge. I don't know. It could be a personal thing and not a family thing that triggers the next chapter. It could be my husband's career. He's a public servant right now. He runs a town. And yeah, it's like the mayor. And, you know, we've got eyes on like, does he go run for governor?

Right?

We might have a very different life.

Yeah.

If he's a governor, right? Like, yeah, Collectively, as a family, we might be rebalancing a portfolio. And he moved to Boston for me to be able to take this opportunity as a professor. It's my turn to be able to support him in the next big transition. So this all— it's all fluid.

Yeah.

And the big takeaway that I hold on to Is number one, these are just seasons.

Yeah.

It's not like you give up something forever and it's gone. I had to give up singing when the pandemic happened because spitting into the air next to someone else was like the most dangerous thing you could do for a while.

Right.

And then I had my second child, did not sleep. Freaking cutest kid you've ever met, did not sleep until he was 3 years old.

Oh my God.

I nearly died. I probably shouldn't have been driving. It was rough. So I was in survival mode for a very long time. There was no space for me to go join a choir. And it was really hard. Like, all I was doing was Elmo at bath time, you know? But I finally reached this year, this moment where I was like, I have space, I can bring this back. That allocation can go from zero back back to 5, 10%. So everything is just a season.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. And another pillar in the book, diversification. I think this is extremely important. I want to connect it to this point and also to like, you know, your course on today's AI age. And when I saw the word diversification, it reminded me of the concept of antifragility. I'm not sure if you like that concept or not.

Yes, I do.

But being able to withhold, withstand all Changes very rapidly.

Yeah.

Yeah. So maybe you can touch on that a little bit, like diversification from your book.

Yeah.

Also to the course of like, how do we be antifragile?

Yes.

Through how we identify ourselves, through the optionality that we have and all that. Yeah.

So diversification is actually what helped me first kind of anchor on this portfolio framework in the first place. I was working for myself to kind of come up with a way to measure my life. This was the question that Clay Christensen had asked me and my, my fellow students. as we were graduating. And I was like, I need a model. I need a framework. I love little businessy frameworks. And as I looked at how I had always been, I grew up in a working-class family. And then I went into the arts. And you don't get to go into the arts unless you're willing to hustle.

Yeah.

And so I've never just had one source of income. You've always sort of like, Put all of your irons in the fire, work your tail off, and diversify. I didn't have that word at the time, but that's what it turned out to be. The more you diversify, the more you can trust that something will work out. And so the diversification idea was like, oh, I remember we learned about that in finance class. That's just portfolios. And then I backed into, wait, that model works for this whole thing. So the diversification piece, I think, works on several layers. It works from a financial point of view for sure, and it doesn't require you to have multiple income streams like I always do. You could just have one job, but if you have these other things like hobbies or volunteer gigs, or maybe you're an active part of your community, by doing that, you're also building other skills. You're cultivating other networks that are orthogonal to your day job that you can activate in a moment where that job might get pulled out from under you. You're not all in on just one direction, right? So you've got some diversification there. But as you pointed out, you're also diversifying your identity.

Yeah.

Right. So I can remember very vividly one day, where I was having a terrible day parenting my children. Everything was going wrong. I was trying to do the gentle parenting that is popular now and be like, I hear you, I validate your feelings, and 2 things can be true. We're not gonna have more TV, right? It wasn't working. And they were screaming and we were having meltdowns. And I was like, find your inner calm. And in this moment that I was like, you're a terrible parent, terrible parent. I said, yes, but you're a Tony-nominated parent. Right? And it was this tiny little moment that I was like, I might be bad at one thing, but I have these other things that are part of me. And damn it, I'm good at those. And it was just that perfect example that helped me remember this kind of diversification of identity works too. This emotional buttressing can be really useful. And I did, I wrote this whole book before ChatGPT came out and certainly before AI blew up everywhere. But I feel like I just met the moment in a really useful way. I developed this framework literally just for me. I never really planned to write it into a I mostly just used it as a way for me and kind of to explain to my mother what I've been doing with my life. And then as I was writing about it and talking about it on my podcast, I had a lot of people reach out and say like, oh, I'm like that too. Will you tell me more? Like, so I can use this framework. And I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. And then at some point I was like, I can't be doing these one-on-ones. Like, let me just turn it into a book. And so what felt like this tiny little niche of the weirdos turned out to be sort of right on time for this moment of disruption.

Yeah.

Because we've had disruption. We've been in this world that's changing fast for ages. But AI is this type of exponential disruption, this sort of platform shift that feels at a speed we haven't seen before. And that speed, it almost feels like it's faster than we have evolved to be able to process.

Yeah.

And so that speed, I think, is more of what is feeling unsettling for people than necessarily the technology itself. It's like you're trying to figure out What does this mean for my job? What does this mean for my identity? What does this mean for all of these other things? And you're trying to hear what your boss is saying or understand how this changes the competitive landscape if you're an entrepreneur. There's just so many potential changes as a result of this. And you literally— it's like that scene with, or the meme with Julia Roberts with all the math floating over her face.

Yeah.

I can't calculate it all at the same time. That's what it sort of feels like right now. It's just a lot. And so part of what I'm trying to offer in this model is this portfolio and the Venn diagram. They give you an opportunity to understand your unique fingerprint. What do you offer the world that isn't just coordinating and pushing data around and writing? Because there's a lot of your tasks that absolutely will be easily taken by AI, and we want them to. Those are the drudgeries of our jobs. We complain about those at happy hour, so let's give them away. But what that leaves is the onus for us to figure out, what is my unique contribution to the world? And that's the piece where we kind of have to go back and excavate a little bit of, what is my fingerprint? What are the things in my Venn diagram or the other elements that I can bring forward to show how I see the world or what ideas I can connect or what I can bring forth? And then, What else might need to be in my portfolio to diversify? Mm-hmm. And how can I find some agency in this model and not only feel like the world is happening to me? Ooh.

Yeah. I've actually tried this practice before too, where I like did a little Venn diagram of like all the different things that I'm currently doing.

Mm-hmm.

And I try to find the common patterns.

Mm-hmm.

And what's in the middle and like, ah, interesting. This is the one that has the most commonality between all my diversifications.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think this is a very great framework for anyone who's trying to— I think a lot of times we get stuck into doing but not in the thinking. We don't stop and think about, wait, but why?

Yeah. Yeah. It's actually ironic because I describe these exercises in the book of like, well, write these all on sticky notes and then kind of cluster them and try to find the themes. And now I'm like, just use AI. Just go use an LLM and give it all of these data points and let it tell you who you are. Yeah.

I'm curious, as an entrepreneur professor, in this season of your life that's going on for 6, 7 years, right? And now you're seeing AI emerge.

Yeah.

And then all these theory of like how to build a business, how do you validate an idea, how do you find product market fit, how do you do things that don't scale, and how do you scale things, every—

all of that.

And seeing how AI has been able to empower or, you know, shortcut a lot of these. What's your take on how AI affects, you know, starting a business today? And also the personal question to you is seeing all that happening while teaching, do you ever feel itchy? Like, do your hands get itchy sometimes?

My hands are itchy. All the time.

I bet.

There are so many days where I just have to be like, do not say I should just quit my job and build this with you, which is an impulse I have on a regular basis. I also have like a long list of ideas always.

Oh my God.

I'm like, I could do that. I mean, this— it helps for me to have a lot of active research projects, building courses, writing books. Like, as long as I'm being creative, It keeps me from going off and launching businesses, which is why my husband is like, yes, go to Taiwan for 2 weeks. I'll watch the kids. It will be fine because it prevents me from building a business.

No.

So I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen, just material change to entrepreneurship, is how much you can execute on for virtually no money and in no time.

Yeah.

Right? So, I mean, we saw this, you know, I started building in the 2011 era where we had Shopify for e-commerce and we had, you know, Amazon Web Services for hosting. And all of the dot-com era entrepreneurs were like, well, back in my day, we had to build that infrastructure, you know, and they were all talking about it was $1 million to start a company. We could do it for $100,000. And they were so cranky about it. And, you know, 5 years ago they would be like, well, you know, it's not $100,000. You could do it for $10,000, $15,000 to get up and running and sort of all these pieces together. And now you can do it for like $500, right? Between the tools that you need and registering your domain. Right. So it's kind of crazy how fast you can move now, and how many experiments you can run, how much evidence you can get before you need to get resources outside of what you can bring to the table. So that has meaningfully shifted who has access to entrepreneurship.

Yeah.

Right? So certainly my students, more of them are finding the the willingness to give it a shot. And I think not all of them are suited for it, but let them find this out on their own.

Mm-hmm.

It also means we're gonna see other folks who don't have access, like Harvard Business School students, might not live in Silicon Valley or New York or the other ecosystems, who have expertise in an area, who have a great idea, who now are able to build a prototype and get something up and running. who can, which I love. The flip side to that is everyone can build something now. So that used to be the signal of sort of fidelity and commitment and like, oh, they're legit, you know? Skin in the game. And yeah, now it's the signal of like, you spent an hour thinking about this.

Yeah.

And so now the bar has been raised as to how much you have to do to actually show value. So it's not just that you can build a website. Also, everyone's websites look exactly the same because you're all using the same AI design coders. It's not just that you can put together an app. Now the question is, what's your proprietary insight?

Hmm.

What's your proprietary data?

Hmm.

What do you have access to that makes you the person to build this company? Because if it's just that you spotted an opportunity, everyone who spotted that opportunity can build what you are building. There's nothing defensible in execution.

Yeah.

So now the why you of the why you, why now, is it big enough trio of questions that we always ask, founders, the why you matters so much.

I heard a saying that in this day and age, everyone will become a founder of some sort. Entrepreneurship will be for everyone because everyone's productivity is going to be capability, at least firepower will be up there. Yeah. And it really comes down to who's able to get the distribution, who's able to tell the right story. And I think this is also interesting is You know, I could just go on cloud and like, you know, spend the day, build out this actual business plan and like implement it and like test it.

Yeah.

And should I be in a classroom and, you know, study theory compared to in practice? How do you balance that theory that's taught in business school? I know this is a little bit of speaking to your own, like, you know, what you're doing right now. So it's a bit of an unfair question. No, no, no.

I mean, we ask this question of ourselves.

Yeah.

Like, we've had our own, like, are we being disrupted? Will there be an MBA in the future?

Yeah.

And the conclusion we've come to is both, we think the case method, which is what we uniquely teach from, right? We don't lecture.

Yeah.

We don't have books that you're just reading straight through and then being tested on. It's not about facts. We teach case method, which is, read this story and look at this evidence from a situation, put yourself in that leader's shoes. And now I'm going to ask questions and you're going to debate for 80 minutes what decision should be made. And the entire point of case method is to develop judgment.

Wow.

It's to learn how to diagnose, Make a plan, execute, and learn from the outcomes, and do it again. And you do it 500 times over the course of 2 years. Like, you are honing that skill of judgment. So we think of all of the forms of learning, case method is the most resilient in the age of AI.

Really interesting. Okay.

It doesn't mean we haven't changed how we teach, because our students can just plop the case and our prep questions into Claude and get answers so that they're ready for the cold call. We have to teach very differently than we used to. Now we have to come at it from sideways and ask different questions. We have to follow up 3 more questions. Yeah, a number of our faculty are like, this is exhausting.

Oh my God. That's so exhausting.

Some of them were like, we just learned Zoom. I'm tired. Most of us are super excited. But also, we're adapting to this real, real pressure that entrepreneurship is relevant for everyone.

Yeah.

Right? I agree with you. I think everyone is going to be the founder of their own life in some way or another. And so we already have about 40% of our students coming in interested in entrepreneurship. We have a ton of learn-by-doing courses that are not just sit and study other people's stories, but build your company while you're here at school. And your company is the homework. Like we're doing, I teach a course called Startup Operations.

Oh.

Where literally we build everything except your product. You're building your product in other places. We are gonna build out your operations, your financial model, your hiring plan, your legal systems. you got to build a company, not just a product. So that's what my class is for. And that's what we're doing. And I get to remake that whole course this year because we're doing it on AI. Of course, you're not hiring people anymore.

Yeah.

Your first operating system is going to be agents. So we're doing it from the beginning. So there's lots of opportunities to do and to build and to learn in a very practical way at business school. But even then, we are continuing to build out and innovate what is becoming like a founder track at business school. So you can come in if you already have that appreciation for and that awareness that I want to be an entrepreneur. You can focus early, you can find your community early, and you can sort of self-direct. What I am sort of more interested in and where I spend a lot of my time is grabbing the people who don't self-identify as entrepreneurs and helping them realize that actually they could be and probably should be learning about and interested in and considering entrepreneurship. Because that was me. I did not come into business school expecting it.

Right.

And it was only because of luck And a global financial crisis that I got to experience this. And then once I did, it was like, oh, that's me, I can do this. And I think so many of my first-year students, because we have a required first-year course, we're the only top business school that has a required course in entrepreneurship.

Oh, okay.

So we make everyone take this class, whether or not you're like, I'm already going into banking, leave me alone. You all have to take it.

Wow.

And what I love about this is so many students come out of this being like, actually, I was like, another one bites the dust. So, uh, so we're, we're getting more and more start to realize that this is a mindset. Yeah. It's a way of looking at opportunity. It's a way of approaching, even if you go into a job, it's a way of approaching your career. And it keeps you in the driver's seat. And I think that's part of when I say the most dangerous thing you can do right now is to stay in one linear job. Part of it is because it's not diversified.

I have 2 questions I want to ask.

Sure.

One is we talk about choosing a stable path, right? And then it might be riskier. Yeah, but there's also the seasons of people's lives, right? Some people have the seasons of something seemingly stable, seemingly not risky. Yeah, I don't know if this is a question, but that's interesting thing to point out. And a second question I want to ask is, you know, in this day and age where people who might not be able to go to YC, you know, might not be able to go to Harvard Business School, they might not be an entrepreneur, they might not be tech adjacent or familiar. How can they prepare for Kind of this age of disruption that's happening?

Great question. So I completely hear you on the first one. I like— there are seasons. Yeah, there are seasons where you need to double down on what pays the most. Yeah, I have some students like me who came out of business school are coming out with a lot of debt, and they're like, look, I just need 2 to 3 years in banking or private equity and I, I will have it gone.

Yeah.

You know, I'll put my head down, I'll work really hard, and it will be gone. And then, and then I have options, right? And I say to all of them, I get that. And what I want to make sure that you keep in mind is that it's really easy to build habits in the course of 2 to 3 years. So you can go in thinking you're going to leave the second your debt is paid So true. But in the course of 2 to 3 years, you're also going to get used to expense accounts and really nice hotels and people being impressed by your job title, living in a nice apartment. And once you've paid off your loans, the very next paycheck, you're going to have a really big cushion of free cash flow. And it's going to be really hard to not be like, well, if I stay for 6 more months, now I can And build a nice little savings cushion. And then once 6 months pass, you're like, well, 6 more months, I'm going to get bonus season. And now you've been there 4 years. Now you're about to get promoted. You're always one little stint before you're ready to leave.

The lifestyle inflation.

And then you've got 2 kids going to private school and whatever it is. And then you become a managing director and you're coming back to your reunion miserable And you don't know how you got here.

So true.

So I was like, I hear you about the season. But if that truly is what you want this for, I want you to set a date in your calendar for when you're leaving. I want you to write your resignation email and schedule to send it on that date. I want you to start thinking now about what you're doing after. So that you're not just walking away from money, you're walking toward that thing that you are really excited about.

Yeah.

And so it's the same idea. And I think of seasons, like a lot of my friends who maybe downshifted when they had kids, right? They had really young toddlers just because the cost of childcare is unbelievable in the United States. And it was just cheaper to stop working than to—

Oh my goodness.

Keep a paycheck and send their kids to childcare. I mean, in New York City or Boston, it's in the range of like $30,000 to $40,000 a year per kid.

Yeah.

Per kid. And so, you know, they downshifted to a part-time job or to fractional something, or you get to something like parents needing elder care.

Right.

They get into this. And again, for that season, they start to kind of morph into this identity loss, where they went from being, like, really ambitious and really entrepreneurial and kind of loving that about themselves, to becoming kind of the glue and the caregiver. And they love that about themselves, but they lost the identity from before.

Mm-hmm.

And as that season ended, there's always that moment where you, you sort of want to pull them aside and say, hey, either of these 2 options are fine. Whether you want to stay in this caregiving identity, or whether you want to go back to this really ambitious professional identity, I just want to call out that you have the option to make that choice. Because now this is a transition point. And so just being, I think, more cognizant about when the seasons are shifting, and not letting habits perpetuate because they're habit.

Yeah, that's smart.

I think that's where we get into these sort of midlife crises or these ruts or these moments where you're like, this isn't working for me. And you're like, of course not, because this was designed for a different season, and you just kept doing it.

It's so hard to do.

It's really hard. I know. It takes a lot of carving out both the time, but also just the mind space for it, which is also why I can't start my new year in January, because December and January for working mothers, Is disaster time. In December, you have a million kids' parties and concerts and teacher gifts, and then they're home over the holidays and you have no childcare for 2 weeks. And they're going crazy because it's winter and they're eating a lot of sugar because it's Christmas.

Yeah.

And then you go back to work and everyone's like, great, First of the year, let's get going. Yeah, like, I— there's no time for me to sit and be reflective. Whereas the first week of July, like, no one's answering their emails then. It's quiet. I have plenty of time to take a step back.

Yeah, I want to ask about this take a step back part, because, you know, you have this concept of give it 85%, not 110%.

Yeah.

Um, and also the great example you brought up in how factories run their machines and maintenance. Maybe touch on that a little bit. And I want to also ask the question on top of that is that, how do ambitious people like you, like us entrepreneurs, dial it back when they're supposed to? It's, it's almost harder to not. I had this idea in my head that you don't know what a full-time job is once you quit your full-time job.

Yeah.

Because then you're working all the time.

Yeah.

How do we stop ourselves from going 120%?

I know this is more of an aspiration than something I've achieved exactly. But so the idea of the 85% came from research I came across in operations management from factories where the best-run factories in the world don't run at 100% capacity. They literally schedule in downtime so that they have the space to do maintenance on their machines, to redo an order if someone messes up, or to do a surge order if they have a customer that's like, oh, I completely forgot, can you squeeze? They have the space for that. So they're not having to work everyone overtime. They recognize life happens and we're going to make space for life to happen, which seems so obvious, right? Again. And when I came across this, I was like, oh, that's genius. Because I have this terrible habit of scheduling my life at 100%.

Yeah.

And then life happens and then everything falls apart. And then you try to squeeze things in and now you're at Yeah. So part of what I try to do as I think about the portfolio is I allocate time in my portfolio to rest.

Ooh.

I know.

Revolutionary.

I know. It's like 5%. That's crazy. Yeah. I also allocate time for working out.

Yeah.

Which I didn't used to love, and now is such an important part of my rest, of my, like, taking care of me, right? And so that's part of running at 85%. I schedule in that downtime, and I literally put it on my calendar. Like, I don't schedule naps necessarily, but like, I know Saturdays and Sundays, My kids used to nap. They've sort of grown out of it both. But we have just gotten in the habit that kind of from 1 to 3 on weekends is quiet time. And so they go to their rooms, and they make messes, and I go to my room, and I take a nap. And it's amazing. It's amazing to wake up without an alarm.

Yeah. Oh my God.

Right? It's so delicious.

Yeah.

And then I schedule my workouts. I get them on the calendar. My assistant knows that they can be moved, but they can't be deleted. They take up space. It's easier to protect things that exist than to make space for things that you want to exist, but don't actually exist yet.

Ooh.

Right?

I like that. Yeah.

Like, no one is going to protect your time for you. So you have to put it on there. And then you can make space for it. You can move it around. But then you can visualize, like, this is what I've already committed to. This became a big thing for me, the calendaring of everything. Some people probably find it very deeply unromantic. But like, I calendar my dates, I calendar my time. We have a joint family calendar. Like everything, if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist. And so we see, we can see, are we at 100%? Like you can literally see it.

Yeah.

Are we at 85%? Are we at 65%? And we can also see over the course of our year, because I do this not just on a daily basis, I also look at a sort of month-by-month Gantt chart, if you will. I love me a Gantt chart of sort of our big commitments, our big deliverables. Right? Like, when are we going to have these stressful moments? And do our stressful moments line up?

I heard you on a podcast say that only one of you could write a book at the same time.

Yes.

That was so funny.

Only— my husband writes novels. I write nonfiction. Only one of us gets to write a book at a time. time. So he finished his novel. Now it's my turn.

It's on a Gantt chart.

Yes, it is. 100%. It's legit on a Gantt chart. I'm not joking.

That's epic.

So we have these things where you can plot out, like, this is where he has a legislative session where he is in every night from 6 to midnight for 2 straight weeks. Where the legislative body is debating their new laws, and it's kind of insane. And so I'm solo parenting functionally every single night. So, like, I can't have anything crazy during those times. And I know that it's on the calendar.

Oh, wow.

And so when I'm saying yes to extra things, to speaking stuff, to coming to Taiwan to create a course, like, I schedule that during other times. I'm aware of when crazy crunch time is at school. I know when the times are that my kids are going to get sick. Like, I know the virus calendar. It's pretty repeatable at this time.

Wow.

So, we can map this out. And then sort of individually, I can make sure that I am not overbooked. And then collectively as a family, I can make sure that we're not overbooked. And this is where I heard, I think it was Brené Brown was on Tim Ferriss's podcast, and she said that she and her husband have this agreement.

Yes.

Yes. Where together they have to equal 100%. But she'll come home from work and one of them might say, like, I only have 30, and the other one will be like, okay, I got 70 tonight. Like, I got it.

it.

We're good. And so it's fine. Like, they still equal 100. But they know, like, too many, too many days in a row of, like, one only being at 30, they know that, like, at some point they gotta, you know, the other one's gonna step it up and they're gonna pull their share. And no one's keeping track. We're not— there's no tally marks. But, but they know that, like, you can't both be booked such that you show up home and you're both trying to be like, I'm only at 30.

Oh, yeah.

And so this is where kind of like the energy management really comes into play, because there are some things I do that give me energy. So this is where— I mean, it sounds like I've got 17 different models going on at once. I promise it makes sense in my head. And I think that's the big thing I keep saying over and over in the book, like, take what works for you and throw out everything that doesn't. Don't feel like you got to use everything that I'm giving you. If you're like, this doesn't make sense, great, ignore me.

Yeah.

But for me, these systems allow me clarity and give me a way to operationalize what is otherwise a rather complicated life where we've got Cash flow and estimated tax payments and multiple kids having different schedules and all these moving pieces. And we're like, no, we've got systems. I've got a version where I'm thinking like a CFO and I've got the whole financial systems and I'm thinking like a COO. And now, I swear to God, I'm using some agents to build out systems Yeah. To run my life with AI.

Yeah.

I'm not giving it any data that I don't want Russian hackers to have access to, right? Like, you don't upload your taxes, you don't give them your Social Security, but my cash flow statement over the course of the year, it's probably on the black market anyway. So.

Yeah, I think it's really fascinating. You know, you wrote the book New to Big, and that was before AI.

It was.

And a lot of that book was about operations, right? Like growth operation systems. I'm curious, like, and maybe this can connect to your course that we should talk more about.

Yeah.

If you had AI now and you were to rewrite that book, would that book be vastly different, or do some of the principles still fundamentally apply? Do any of the course material that you're doing right now kind of connect to that narrative? Yeah.

I mean, what feels really good is that both of my books still hold up in the AI era. Yes.

Yeah. Fundamentally sound.

I don't have to be like, actually, guys, don't read that one. So New to Big, at its core, is about portfolios, but in big companies.

Oh.

It's trying to get this mindset of innovation in large organizations to stop saying, like, big companies saying, I have an idea for a new product, a new business model, a new unit. Here's this idea. Let's work really hard to make happen. And then they follow this sort of linear development flow that sort of— they're trying to make fetch happen. Did you watch Mean Girls? I don't know how well that translates in Taiwan. It's a deep cut.

Oh, yeah. Took me a second too.

So thanks. They sort of follow this linear path that says, okay, we're going to figure out the R&D of it, and then we're going to figure out the marketing of it, and then we're going to launch it to the world. And we're going to kind of make this thing happen. And they get really stressed about, like, we got to be really— we got to do it right. We have to do a lot of market research, and then we have to come up with this strategy. It's a lot of hard thinking, a lot of PowerPoint decks.

Yeah.

and then they like make this one thing, and there's a lot riding on that one thing. And so whatever evidence they get along the way that might point to like that one thing not being the right thing, no one's willing to hear that evidence because—

All the resources.

Like we've poured a ton of resources into this. No one's pulling the plug, and no one's career is betting on this thing. Like everyone's gonna rotate to a new position before this thing launches anyway. So, and then you launch the thing and it, it flops. And so sort of this key idea from VC world and from startups, which is like create a portfolio of bets. Like if you think that there's opportunity in this particular space, this idea, this customer problem, this technology, go place a bunch of bets. Go like give small amount of resources to a bunch of teams. to run experiments against a lot of different ideas.

Mm-hmm.

And then treat it like VCs do. And we call them growth boards. Like, have the teams go to the growth board, present their experiments, present their evidence, give more funding, give the next round of funding to those that are worth continuing to give resources to. and kill the ideas that need to be killed and thank the teams that got that evidence that says this idea isn't it, right? You're gonna reward that productive failure. You're not penalizing them— I love that word. For not doing this. You're like, thank God we didn't launch that thing. And you helped us figure that out in 3 months. Amazing. And so it's like, you don't have to be right. You just have to have enough shots on goal and let the universe tell you which one of these is right. Let it get pulled out of you by customers. We call it the commercial truth. And so we spend a lot of time teaching them both this kind of portfolio theory and the mindsets that require them to shift from having the right answer to asking the right questions. And then at the individual worker level, teaching them how to be really diligent and intentional about their experiments.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the piece that with AI now, I think, can be like turbo mode. The ability to run these experiments at scale and get so much better information, like higher fidelity information faster, could allow them to have even more bets in a given opportunity area for even fewer resources that I think could be really beneficial. One of the risks, though, is that a lot of the early ideas, they were bad at killing.

Yeah.

Because the resource amount was so low in comparison to the rest of their budget. that the idea of killing something, they felt bad about it. And they're not used to killing things. And so they're like, well, what's 3 more months? What's $100,000 more? You know, it's not that much.

Yeah.

And so we had to really kind of teach them that like, it's good discipline to kill something early. It allows you to not just money, but focus. And so maybe the flip side of being able to run more experiments and be able to take more shots on goal is the fear that they'll be like, great, let's do 100 times as many experiments and we can run them for longer because they don't cost anything. But I think there's a lot of opportunity now to really get quite far. And the thing that large enterprises have that startups don't is data. They have proprietary data, they have distribution, they have the trust of customers. These are all the things that startups fight for. If they could get out of their own way, enterprises could have an advantage here.

Yeah. So I feel like people need to have a portfolio of who they are and what they're about, And then when they do jump into a business, they can apply the principles from New to Big and really put steroids on it with AI to get that faster iteration. And being able to hire quickly, fire quickly with people and also ideas is also very important. For people who are asking, who am I? What do I need? And what do I want? What's your advice for them in the context of the AI age?

Who am I?

What do I need?

What do I want?

I mean, on the one hand, this is like, I think I heard you say this on another podcast as well.

Like, take yourself camping and think hard. Like, this is, this is like an existential question. Yeah. And, um, like, I can't tell you. Nobody can tell you, right? This is the, like, YOLO. You only live once.

Mm-hmm.

And it would really be a shame if you were living a life that other people were impressed by, but that in no way Was what you wanted to do. So, I mean, you certainly could go and ask people to tell you what they see.

Yeah.

You know, do the method that I did with the coffee chats. That's a really great starting point to get some information, get some data. You can also do that sort of self-reflection yourself. I love going back to childhood and finding those stories and sort of excavating that color that we had before we carved that off and put it away so that we could grow up and be serious people. Because we've always been who we've always been. So bring that back.

Love that.

And then I think there's always just run experiments. This is my favorite one for people who are like, I don't have any hobbies. I don't know what I like. All I've done is work. I was like, your first hobby could be trying hobbies, right? I literally had a CEO that I did this with for a year where every week his hobby was to try a new hobby. Oh, that's awesome. And if you really liked the hobby, we could come back to it later. We didn't do it 2 weeks in a row, but we could come back to it. But his job was just to try a whole bunch of hobbies. And at the end of the year, he could pick a hobby. But until then, try some hobbies and keep track. And it was really fun. And the stakes were super low, and he didn't have to be good at any of them, which is always a big risk for very ambitious people, because you're bad at being bad at things. Right?

Yeah.

Hobbies are meant to be embodied. Don't do things that require you to do more of the stuff that you do in your job. If you think a lot in your job, do something that requires your body. If you're If you're doing something analytical, go have a hobby that's creative. Look for something orthogonal. And honestly, if you're asking this question, you're already halfway to the answer, which is the great thing. Now, how do you do this all in the age of AI? You take my course. Yes.

Linked in the show notes.

Linked in show notes.

And the last question I have is, What is your definition of success, happiness, and love? I just squeezed 3 questions into one.

Oh, you did.

You did.

I think my definition for happiness, I talked about this earlier, is sort of more good days than bad.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you that also. What do you define as a good day?

Yeah.

Because sometimes the struggle is beautiful too. And that could be a bad day in some lens. Yeah. But on a bigger scheme, it could be a good day.

It's sort of, it's hard to put into words necessarily. So you can imagine the difference between the struggle of, let's imagine you're doing a really hard workout.

Yeah.

You're a gym buff. You're doing a really hard workout.

Okay.

And it hurts. You're exhausted. You're being pushed to your limit. You've got a coach who's screaming at you, and you're kind of annoyed, and you kind of want to punch him. And everything hurts. And you get to the end of the day, and you can hardly walk as you pour yourself into bed. But you think, that was a good day.

Yeah.

Right? You struggled. Everything hurts. But that was a good day. Now, imagine you get hit by a motorcycle going too fast, and you have to go to the ER. and nothing's too busted up. Maybe you get a cast on your arm or something, but you come home and you struggle to walk to bed and everything hurts and you pour yourself into bed and you're thinking, that was a bad day.

Yeah.

Same feeling, but a very different sort of vibe out of both. I don't know. I live on vibes. So for me, I think it's the same idea and it kind of averages out, right? Like, I could have a really rough day at work, but come home and have like a really good dinner and bedtime routine with my family and go to bed and be like, you know what, on balance, that was a pretty good day.

Hmm.

So I don't have a good definition for this. I just think happy for me is more good days than bad.

Okay.

Success is a harder one.

Like, if you've gone to the, you know, if you win the Tony, would that be as a success in—

But no. Like, I would love to win a Tony. Obviously, I would love to win a Tony. But I made beautiful work this year whether or not I win a statue.

Yeah.

And I wouldn't change any of the projects I worked on If you told me I'd get one for doing that or not get— it doesn't change at all how proud I am for that. It's just like, that was fun. I know this sounds kind of Pollyanna-ish, but I don't know if I care much about success.

Oh, all right.

I'm 42. I cared deeply in my 20s what other people thought of me. And in my 30s, I cared about whether what I was doing was impressive. I cared if I liked it too, of course. But I wanted to do things that were like, that met my potential. You know, everyone's like, live up to your potential.

Yeah.

You know, I can't— I gotta do something that meets my potential. And now I'm just like, I want to do things that I want to do. And if you think that I'm doing the wrong things, you can keep that to yourself.

Yeah.

Is it working for me? Is it making me happy? Is it paying my bills? Then shut up. Yeah. I don't care much about success. If I did, I would have optimized for a lot very different choices earlier on in life. Love.

This is a big one.

That is a big one. What do other people say? Can I crib from them?

I don't want to bias your—

How do I define love?

What's the first thing that comes to you, maybe?

So I think about one of the things that What my husband and I say to each other often is that we want to talk to each other all the time. Like, he's my favorite person to talk to. Oh, wow.

That's amazing.

About everything. And we care deeply in our marriage about ensuring that we don't only become people who talk about the kids. And talk about the logistics of the kids, which is easy to do.

Yeah, a lot of people fall into that trap.

A lot of people. And then the kids leave, they go to college, and then they grow up. And then you realize you have nothing left to talk about. And that's when some people end up getting divorced. And so very early on into our marriage, we said, like, we want to make sure that we We don't make our entire relationship based on the children. And also, like, you're fascinating. I'm fascinating. Like, we're amazing together. I just want to make sure I'm talking to you. Like, you're so interesting. And I always want your thoughts on these things. It would be such a shame if I only got to talk to you about who's picking up the kids on Tuesday after swim lessons. So in some ways, I think of love as like, who do I want to talk to all the time?

That's beautiful.

Of course, there's always the, like, who would I sacrifice everything for, right? The love of a mother. And I would throw myself in traffic for my children. I love them both. They're so amazing. And they're So it's so crazy to think that I 3D printed them, and I pushed them out, and now they're actual humans with personalities and opinions. And I really don't get input into any of that. As a parent, I sort of can influence, but they are whole people.

Yeah.

With or without my influence. And I love that. I don't know.

I think you nailed it.

I just— I feel so lucky to have this relationship and this family. This was something I cared deeply about. I did not have a functioning family growing up. And I would rather be alone than be in a non-functioning family as an adult. And so that was part of the design of the work that I did. It's why I built my sales funnel to find my husband. And so—

Great TED Talk, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you. It was never meant to go on the internet. It was just—

Really?

Yeah, it was a— it was They wanted to do a fun, lighthearted hour to break up the seriousness of TED. It was Wednesday afternoon, and everyone's kind of depressed because TED is so serious sometimes. So they're like, do something funny. It won't go online. Don't worry. I was like, okay. Now 3 million people have seen the first message my husband ever sent me on the internet.

Yeah.

No, it's something I've worked really, really hard for because having the right life partner is the most important choice you're making.

100%.

It's about love, yes, but it's also about partnership. And it's about having someone who cares about their own sort of self— not just self-improvement, that sounds so quantified self, bro. But Development and curiosity and sort of all of those things. You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. And so it really matters who that person is. So I worked hard for him, but also I'm pretty lucky.

That's beautiful. I think a lot of people say, oh, I mean, Tim Ferriss said this, that your goal for your metric should be how you spend your average Tuesday instead of that glorious vacation or that— it's like the everyday moments, right? You know, coming back from work, you know, talking to your partner, uh, taking care of your kids even when they drive you crazy. Those are the moments that really define the love you feel every day. Yeah, yeah, those little moments. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Wow. Yeah, this has been amazing.

It has. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, Christina Wallace. That was incredible. Yeah, I mean, we talked about across art, business, technology, all the things you talk about as, you know, the human Venn diagram. And then your background is so unique. I think people who are able to really excel at different disciplines and connect the dots, that's a superpower. To be good at one thing, but if you get many things and connect them together, that is a huge superpower. And especially in the day of— Of, uh, the age of AI, like, that is more needed than ever to be able to connect the dots. And so many of the things we are able to do on the skill level could be replaced, but now the, um, telling the story, you know, having integrity of who you are, having authenticity of showing up how you are, telling the world about who you are, what you're trying to— value you're trying to bring, um, you know, create community, uh, create content, all these things that's tied to AI. And then, and of course you talk about You also very candidly shared about, you know, what it was like to— how you found your way to business school. A lot of zigzagging. And then, you know, your startup that didn't end well on paper, but you learned so much, you know, lessons. Yeah, I think those are just priceless lessons. And like you said, that these are the things that kind of propel you forward, launch you forward in your next so many other ventures that have done really well. successful on this objective level, but also to you deeply meaningful. And that's what maybe what truly successful success means to you is doing the things that are true to your portfolio, true to who you are.

Yeah.

The right reason, the right people, and the right vibe, as you might say. So yeah, this has been amazing.

Awesome.

And I hope you win that Tony. And yeah, everyone, And to find more stuff about Christina, christinawalla.com, Instagram @cmwalla, and also check out the new course, Storytelling Leadership in the Age of AI. And yeah, thank you, Christina.

This has been great. Thanks for having me.

And anything you wanna add or?

No, I think you covered it.

Okay, amazing. And also, yeah, I think the part about love is it's very touching too, the way you're describing what love is in a very concrete and day-to-day level. I think that really touched my heart for sure. I think many people also feel the same way. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Jackie.

Thank you.

Peace out.

Okay, bye-bye.