 Hi, this is Dr. Jed McCosco at Wake Forest University and Academic Influence and I have with me today my dear friend George Cow who I have not gotten to talk to in probably 20 years but Fate has brought us back together today for this little podcast and I'm excited so It's good to see you and yeah, it's good to be To have you and your and your thoughts Going over to my audience and I'm excited for you to put this also on your channel Yes, totally here The things that we talk about so I want to do a quick intro of you Dr. Jed because last time we were together you weren't Dr. Jed yet So and now you've gotten so much academic experience and and beyond that and I just so for those who don't know Jed was One of my college roommates and dear friends And he had a really profound Influence in my life there was one particular summer that I was I was really struggling with depression and Jed was just I feel like Jed kept me alive really so I've always I've always been so grateful to you for all your support and and just beyond that we you know Jed and I worked on some projects together at at UC Berkeley We were Co-teaching a class called like how to find your calling, right? And And you know so so back then we were already We had this kind of joint passion for helping helping young people and Anybody who's kind of like looking to to do to have a career. They love how to how to make that make that work Yeah, and that's kind of where I wanted to start our half-hour conversation is just yeah start right from How a guy like you had many talents many gifts many interests As a young person. I think you probably were 19 or 20 when we first met It was very clear to me right off the bat that you had Uh an interest and a passion and a talent for helping people achieve their true potential Like right from the beginning and yeah, it's wonderful to see that 25 years later You are doing that as your career as you're calling And so I wanted to sort of revisit the steps that happen between then and now So that your audience can appreciate a little bit more about your origin story For some people, I know you're a superhero. You've transformed their businesses help them become the solo entrepreneur that they want to be Um and uh, and this will maybe help them realize that you you had these gifts way back when so Yeah, so and one other thing that you had back then was you loved technology and loved Um, that's you know being a bit of an evangelist for new technologies that can help people And I'll never ever forget or be able to thank you for um buying me You know with with the original crowdsource funding like you went around the the dormitory and asked people for money Uh, you bought me a palm pilot so that my life would not be in shambles And that palm pilot transformed my my existence because it organized. Uh, what was very disorganized So so you're helping people back then and now tell us tell tell the audience tell both of our audiences like how you how you went from being a Undergraduate at UC Berkeley. Yes. Uh, how how your major played into your you know, you're learning. Yeah, that's interesting Yeah, just give us a little background I know and I and I hope that those you know the the young people listening and the parents listening will will find this inspirational in some way I You know, I I remember there was a When I went to graduate school later after UC Berkeley, I got a business degree but graduate degree and One of my mentors there the founder of that graduate school actually he said something I never forget he said George we we can really only accurately look at our discover our calling by looking backward And I was like that was so profound because we usually try to plan ahead to say Okay, the direction of my life is I'm going to get this degree and then I'm going to work in this field and I'm going to You know have this job or whatever And yeah, it may come it may come to pass that way or It may go in a different direction or have some kind of combination of other interests and talents that that you had that Creates a role that you couldn't have imagined from the start Certainly not for for undergrads and even grad students, you know still still early days I'll tell you all, you know, like it's still very much early days. So so looking back I mean that's the question you're asking me and I want to ask you the same question too Like looking back at kind of connecting the dots. Like you said, I had an early love for evangelizing technology just showing people. Hey, this is a new device or this is a new Website, you know or tool or whatever and that's played in Very centrally to my career now because I help, you know entrepreneurial people learn technology to You know to to activate their calling essentially and then my degree One of my favorite courses in high school even Was, you know, my English courses, right? And then my degree wasn't UC Berkeley was in English and I've always struggled with writing But I'm so glad that those classes kind of forced me to work with ideas and to put them on paper and to Deliver them on time or as close to being on time as possible And that's what I do is a big part of my career now. I write a lot I've written now five books but saw published five books and I could not have imagined it because I mean as an As an immigrant, I mean my family immigrated immigrated from Taiwan to the United States when I was still learning my first language Let alone now learning a second language. So I've always struggled with communication and writing But my my English degrees folks focused me on on that and And then being part of you know, you know college fellowship And you know having the opportunity to learn how to lead Learn how to work with others has been huge of course now in my career of collaborating with others and leading my students and clients You know in a in a way that helps them collaborate with each other. So um, I guess the last thing I'll say is you know, like the Yeah, it's just back to that quote of we find our calling by looking backwards I think it's I think there's two things there one is it's really important to continually journal, maybe you know write in the journal or discuss with a friend or a mentor What are some of the highlights and lowlights of your skill building and experimentation with different areas of life Uh, and what might that what might some of those hints be for your future career? Um, you know all of their your hobbies interests passions quirks things that come that are so Come eat more easily to you than other people and things that energize you more than other people and also things that You know you find harder to get into Compared to other people You know and and then the second thing is like okay look look back and notice but the second thing is to Be willing to experiment With as many fields and areas of interest as possible because you won't ever know You know what that combination for you will be if you don't have more ingredients To play with you know, so So, uh, but so what about you jet? I mean as you look back on your I mean that's that's the thing is Looking back. I have always enjoyed public speaking Communicating to people in a verbal way And so it is uh, no surprise that I followed my father's footsteps and became a professor Getting to stand up in front of and family influence is another thing too. You know because my dad was an entrepreneur, right? Yeah, so you're an entrepreneur too. That's that's great. I didn't know your dad I know your mom a little bit better because she was more involved in your life But I did not know your dad was an entrepreneur. So that's really cool Um, yeah, so that's looking back, you know as a kid. I liked speaking like acting performing And I saw it in my dad's career The exact Sort of pattern of what I wanted. I wanted to travel. I wanted to write. I wanted to speak and so Since I was a little kid, I wanted to be a professor and I really set my mind on that And it was all going well until I got to UC Berkeley and and you were there In my midst of my troubles I don't know if I shared them with you because of course we were talking about your troubles And I was the older of the two of us. So maybe maybe you didn't hear all of my troubles But I had a lot of troubles because getting a phd Is so different from getting an undergraduate degree or I think even I mean my wife got an MBA recently and You know getting an MBA is a lot more like getting an undergraduate degree than it is like working on a dissertation That's right Time after time day after day and trying to do it all on your own and not seeing a lot of people So phd life is difficult and it really didn't suit me And as soon as I got my phd, I desperately wanted to get a job as professor and applied to over 40 different job Wow and I had a huge party to celebrate my phd And you maybe remember that I invited you and your friends to be the band for that party And you know, I I was so glad you guys Agreed to doing it and your music made the the party fun But the placemats at the table where people were sitting and eating They were Original letters from all of the rejections that I got my mom thought this would be fun Right, so so people would be setting their paper plates down on these rejection letters I got as many rejection letters as I had sent out applications And I got didn't get a single job interview And that's the way it is I mean, I I kind of knew that but I wanted to see for myself that you cannot get a job as a professor Straight out of your phd program unless you've done something absolutely insanely good So even though I had many publications many citations. I still had to do what they call the postdoc And that's uh, you know that that lasted actually five years in my case and then that's pretty typical So after five years of post-doc-ing I finally landed a few job interviews and one of them produced a job here in Winston Salem, North Carolina Wake Forest University offered me the job and I said, yes, I'm finally a professor Yay, I've arrived But it wasn't so simple because getting tenure Oh, wow is in the same sort of Uh realm as getting a phd. Oh my god, and as I as I had trouble with getting a phd. So also I had trouble getting tenure I really had to cry out to my higher power. Yes, which I know you encourage people to do Yes, um, and and that came through for me in my third year. So now third year as a professor you got tenure No in my third year things turned around right. I was um, I was basically Nose diving as a professor like I started off people had high expectations for me And each year in the first three years I just got did you thrive in doing I thrived in teaching. I was gonna say but as you were always anybody can tell you yeah Yeah, I love teaching as anybody can tell you Teaching is not enough to get tenure at any of the major universities right and wake forest Is in the top 30. Yeah ranked national universities at us news and world report year after year Yeah, um, so there's no way that they were going to let somebody who couldn't get The research aspect done Get tenure they were going to kick me out after six years. Wow So, you know, that's where I was really struggling and fearful and anxious and crying out And finally it all came through and I really released all of that Worry and all the what if this happens, then I won't get my dream right released it all to my higher power Which which I know is something you would probably recommend people who are in that same state of anxiousness like what if my Venture doesn't work out. This is what I've been wanting. Yeah, since I was a little kid. Yeah, you know And then once you release it Uh, better things can happen. And that's when everything turned around. That's amazing Now how many years Total did you take you to get your tenure and how how did that how does that compare to the average you might say or is there an average? Well, the the thing is there is an average. Um, it's always six years And it's the same at harvard wake forest and the smallest little university. It's always a six-year clock And then one extra year For you to find a job if you don't get tenure. So it's a seven-year contract Uh, and that's the typical way it's always been done and and seven years is kind of a A golden number for people at universities. They call it sabbatical when you go away for a year after seven years Yeah, um, so there's that sort of biblical number woven into that's interesting academia. Yeah It's changing very quickly. So many universities don't even give out tenure because They want to be like more of a business and if you're not performing you're out of there, right? Other universities may have like a two-year clock Um, and it resets if you're doing well Yeah, but they can get rid of you before the seven-year clock is that um, and then some universities of course allow you to Delay the clock if you are a woman and have a baby right now. It's very, you know, very gender non Non discriminatory so if you're a man you have a baby you can also yeah Yeah, you can take a you know a little paternity leave and extend your clock a little bit So yeah, and then during covet a lot of universities said look we're gonna push the clock out So wow six years was the magic number for everywhere and I knew I had six years and in that Third year things were looking grim. So I could see the writing on the wall. I wasn't going to get tenure I was going to have to leave very soon and that was just really hard I mean I knew how hard it was to get a job that In some ways is harder than getting tenure Except for at the very elite universities. So right getting a job at harvard Is is easier than getting tenure at harvard But getting a job at wake forest is harder than getting tenure So the the real rate limiting step is finding that first job And it's easier when you're fresh out of your postdoc To get a job at a good university Um, it would if I hadn't gotten tenure My only hope would be to get a job at a lesser university It was not it was not like I could not get tenure at wake and then go to one of wake's Similar schools, you know, uh, you know co-enrolling schools schools that are sort of matched with wake forest And hope to get a job there and I certainly couldn't go above it So I would just have to go well below a few tiers below wake forest and hope for a job So you can see that, uh, you know, I was nervous I I didn't want I had gotten a job at a great university and I did not want to lose that opportunity And I knew everything was sort of in my own hands or I thought I knew that But it was only until I let go of what I thought was in my hands that things started coming through. Yeah, and I I think this is a good segue into Maybe we could share with and with each other. Um, a few of the I guess productivity Uh tips that have really helped us Um, because I mean you've accomplished so much, uh, and the academic world is is can be brutal as we know And um, what I've accomplished is in a I mean because like the academic world is has a very clear track, you know, there are several clear clear Where it's like what I've been doing, uh, there is there's no clear track at all. It's like No, you're making it up as you go along, right? Completely and and and it's like if if you had asked me if if I if I presented my current job Quote-unquote to my Undergraduate self the one when when we knew each other I would have not known that that was a possible quote-unquote job, right? I mean so much has changed in society technology, but I I want to just you know, um Uh, so so I think this is an interesting kind of like dichotomy we have here because on the one hand Like I give a few tips about people who are just like all right. I'm going to create my own career You know and also this I mean in in in this day and age as we all know With social media being so important to people's um Quote-unquote personal brand, uh, you might say I I tell people listen. There's no, um You almost can't start early enough to learn that kind of technology and learn how to Learn how to here's the thing express yourself Um In and in your skills and your experiences your passions your learnings Like I I tell people to start as early as possible because it's like to really well to thrive in any field You have to be really good. Obviously you have to be above average obviously in Yeah, it's just above above average skillfulness compared to others in your field and To be uh successful in well, I I think certainly in entrepreneurship, but I think in just about any field The ability to communicate yourself Um through verbal or writing uh is huge and so it's like social media is a wonderful opportunity I I call it like a sort of like this Venn diagram between Learning to express yourself and on the other hand Learning to make an impact on the world and noticing what aspects of your expression Are more impactful than than than other parts and so I I tell people like creating content Is something that I feel so urgent to me Um on a on a daily basis because I know that it's like every day or every week I I'm not saying everyone has to create every day, but it's like every week There's an opportunity for me to practice or to not practice Uh my my my you know learning how to express myself more effectively and to Observe what the market is responding to or not like every every time we create content put it out there There is an update that's an opportunity. Well like data, right? Like you're you're making experiments to say hey Does this work? Does that work? And of course since you've recorded so many podcasts episodes, you know Hey this episode worked that episode didn't work that and then why is that like what what's the pattern there and so Uh, I just you know, whatever social media platform Uh interests the the you know the listener the watcher Start using it to express your learnings. Like what are you reading? What are you watching? What's some peak experience you've had in your life that you that had some kind of lesson there to share with the world Share those things because um that will make you much That'll make you just a better communicator of a time and just make your as you grow your clinical personal brand um Sometimes and I would say oftentimes Your career opportunities Can arise from your network or your audience and the people who have been following you even in the beginning It's just friends and family following you But like they see you grow over the years as you learn to communicate yourself and share your learning They're much more likely to give you career opportunities But uh, but yeah, yeah, what about you? What's what's been really useful to you in terms of like is there a technique or a mindset that helps you to get So much done and and be in touch with so many students and colleagues and and be able to like Handle all that Yeah, well I like this one Talk that I heard. Yeah, it was in reference to the apostle paul getting shipwrecked Oh, yeah in the Mediterranean sea And the people he was on the boat with there were hundreds They ended up throwing things into the ocean That at first was like, okay, they're throwing the cargo in okay That's going to be a big financial hit But then they started throwing in the actual tackle And things that you need to sail the boat They were throwing the ropes in the pulleys in everything. So now the boat Could not even sail. So I mean they they threw in everything To do what to save the people's lives that were in the boat and that was obviously the thing that was most valuable So they had this this list of things in their mind that were you know more and more and more valuable starting with the cargo Then what you need to sail the boat and then the people and And just the idea of just throwing everything out into the ocean Except for the thing that's most important when you're in a crisis. Yes, that helped me a lot I really appreciated that that word of wisdom It was just you know like one talk one time and I listened to that and I thought you know I need to really just throw a lot of things out To focus in on what's most important in my life And so that was after I got tenure. Okay, and I think obviously You know, it worked out well if I had heard that talk and tried to throw everything out Before I got tenure. I would not have gotten tenure Because what was most important to me? Was it my job? And my career and what I had longed for since I was a kid. No, that was very important But what's even more important is my family, right? Yes, my wife my kids, right? So, um, you know, if I had felt That I needed to throw everything in the ocean when I was going through that crisis in year three I probably would have thrown in all of my work in the lab all of my research Thrown it away Focused in on my family and maybe I wouldn't have gotten tenure now I've heard like my podcast co-host he wrote a book and in it he talked a lot about his own personal experience getting tenure at Duke University And he talked about how he was spending 70 80 hours doing research Wow And it didn't bother him because he loved it. Yeah, he's like a he's a geek. You know, he loved his work and he enjoyed it But he was sitting Watching a video on a couch and the video was a home video of him his wife and his one child And as he watched that video He looked over to his right and saw his daughter Over there And he looked at the video of him Laughing and playing with his daughter on the couch and he looked over there at the daughter He didn't even know her anymore. Wow, and he decided right then I am definitely Going to drop down the number of hours I spend at work and spend more time with my family. Yeah, so he balanced Okay, whereas in my case and again, thankfully it was after tenure I had to just kind of throw things into the ocean. They were gone. Right, you know, they were not balanced They were gone. So I think it it really depends on You know sort of your life circumstances A phase exactly so so but I I would definitely recommend one of those two Things probably has to happen in most people's lives They either have to balance things that have gotten out of whack Or they have to just throw things into the ocean that Um that are not part of what is absolutely most essential to them and it depends like you said depends on the phase Um, but I've definitely used that latter one in the in recent years And I feel like I am being very productive In the sense that I am changing My heart and my life faster than I ever could have if I just try to bring things into balance By throwing things into the ocean. I am the most able to change Deep down issues and deep down heart things than I could have ever been It's still painfully slow. I would say it's like Glacially slow But it's better than if I hadn't like thrown everything into the ocean. Um, so And uh, yeah, so I'm being very productive. I feel like as as best I could be With changing my way of handling things. I mean at berkeley, for example I remember hearing through one of my friends that other people were saying about me. Oh, well That's just jed, you know That's just the way he operates and You know when I Heard well, what were they talking about like being completely out of control Promising things and not following through on them You know just you know going from one conversation to the next talking to you then looking over your shoulder while you're still talking to me And looking for the next conversation I mean just stuff like that. Those are the kinds of things that I don't think I could have changed And I am slowly changing them if I hadn't thrown everything into the ocean So that whole throwing things into the ocean is an important Step if you want to be really productive about one thing that's most important. Yeah, beautiful. Wow And just like that our 30 minutes. It's just about the end and I really I know right we could talk for hours I'm glad you're watching the time and I'm glad that That we had this chance to hang out. It's been really fun. So grateful. Thank you. Thank you for Yeah, I'm just glad that we we've stayed in touch And that hasn't been true for most of my college connections. So I I'm really grateful that we're back together again And thank you for thank you for sharing with them in the stories with my people And I hope whatever I said has been somewhat You have for a few people out there. So Thank you so much Jed. Okay. Well, it's Good to see you. Goodbye. See each other again. Yeah