How does Cindy Gallop not give a fuck?
To do anything bold or ambitious, you need to not give a fuck of what other think — and Cindy Gallop is the best person to talk to about this.
Welcome to the first episode of Build your Superpower! We’ll look into how people have become uniquely good at something — so you can do the same.
“Cindy Gallop is my spirit animal”
That’s what Tom Woolfe said when we posted we were interviewing Cindy — and for good reason.
Cindy Gallop is the godmother of the sextech industry and founder of MakeLoveNotPorn. In a previous life, she was an advertising executive.
We talk with Cindy about:
How not to give a fuck about what other people think about you
How living and working her values allows her to turn obstacles into motivation
Why fear is a dangerous emotion and how she handles it
How she approaches negotiations — and why everything in life is a negotiation
Why sexism is far from over and what to do about it
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What we loved
“Live and work [your] values”
Always be true to yourself. I am living and working my values— because my startup is all about and came up from my values.
This is what I say to people who want to start businesses or be entrepreneurs. It is extremely important that you only start a business if you feel absolutely passionate about what you want to do.
Because as a startup founder, you are going to go through absolute fucking hell.
The crux of Cindy’s idea is to align what’s important for you with your work, especially if you want to start a business. But even for other people, finding this alignment means being more engaged and by extension more productive over the long-run.
Devil’s Advocate
There’s also the case that engagement is largely driven by our personalities (Is Employee Engagement Just a Reflection of Personality?). This would suggest that for some people aligning your values or passion might not lead to more productivity — it isn’t a silver bullet.
Don’t make decisions with fear
Decisions made out of fear are always very bad decisions.
Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralysing dynamic in business and in life, you will never own your future if you care what other people think. And so when people think they're failing, it's because they are applying other people's standards and what constitutes a failure.
When I talk about the importance of managing your own mind, that means to be able to acknowledge the mindset you're getting into, and being able to change it.
There’s a good case that extreme emotions like fear do not drive good results. In our upcoming episode with workplace expert Bruce Daisley, he points to scientific evidence that workers under extreme stress (a derivative of fear) are on average less creative and effective.
Devil’s Advocate
In next week’s episode with Guy Kawasaki, he recounts how Steve Jobs used fear to drive excellence when he worked for him as Apple’s Chief Evangelist. You can tell Guy felt the fear, as he himself says it.
The nuance Guy makes is that people were motivated to do the best work of their life, which suggests things are more complicated than just fully avoiding fear.
This echoes a quote from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises:
How you can fight longer than possible, jump further than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit. the fear of death?
The crucial distinction between these two is that using fear in the workplace, like Jobs did, is external. Bruce Wayne’s fear of dying was internal — the fear of dying. Similarly, we can be driven by the fear of failing to meet our own expectations — but that’s a very different kind of fear from a boss who berates you.
You can also read another take on how Steve Jobs used fear in this article of a rare Apple event — MobileMe’s (now iCloud) failed launch.
Don’t missnext week’s episode withGuy Kawasaki, who talks about what he’s learnt from Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Melanie Perkins, and gives a pragmatic take on how to focus your career.
References
Find Cindy online
Books and People mentioned
Her former advertising colleague Dave Trott, who ran the creative department by “encouraging creative competition”
“I recommend everyone listening” to check out Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World
Dive deeper
Read Cindy’s Harvard Business Review (HBR) article 7 Leadership Lessons Men can Learn from Women (co-authored with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic)
Pairs well with Tomas’ article on Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (which is one of the most popular HBR articles of all-time)
The World Economic Forum on why the business case for diversity is overwhelming
Hiring for Culture Fit Doesn’t Have to Undermine Diversity (HBR)