Todd Herman: The Power of Identity [The Knowledge Project Ep. 182]

Shane Parrish: I think the theme of this podcast is probably going to be “How do we get the best out of ourselves?” And maybe that’s a good place to start. That’s a very open-ended question. But people come to you, and they come to you with a need, and that need is performance. I need to perform. I need to get the best out of myself, whether it’s in two days or in two weeks or consistently over a period of time. Now what? How do we do that? What does that mean?

Todd Herman: Okay, so for the long term, from my experience, the quality of your mentors and [of] the people that you have around you plays a massive role in you not stepping in stupid more than you need to. I’ve been a byproduct of mentorship. I’m a big believer in apprenticeship. I think it’s one of the things that’s been lost nowadays because so many people want to create the perception of immediate success as fast as possible, and it’s the fast-food world that we live in, and drive-through wins and things like that. But apprenticeship for me has opened up a very large chunk of the doors of opportunity for me because their Rolodex was better than mine. They’d already done it.