Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Worst Advice I Ever Got. I'm your host, Sean Taylor, along with my producer, jb and today our guest is Joy Ewell. Joy's story is remarkable.
She started college at 14. She finished her master's degree by 20, was on track for a PhD and a life in academia. She was told the path to success was to become an expert. But Joy's journey took some surprising turns.
Joy, thanks so much for joining us today.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Joy, I'd love to know what the worst advice you ever got was.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the worst advice I ever got was to become an expert.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Okay, all right. Where did the advice be? Become an expert. Where'd it come from?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Yeah, so I grew up in an academically driven environment. It was. I was very early on kind of put on a track of becoming an academic. Started college at 14, graduated at 18, was in a master's program, finished that by 20.
It was pretty much assumed I was gonna, you know, go into getting into my PhD and moving into a professorship. So that was really the goal. Right. Was to kind of figure out what my specialization was going to be, what my thesis was going to be, and what I was really going to become an expert in. And I just don't think that, for me personally, that ended up being what I think would turn out to be a fruitful and fulfilling life.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Wow. So college at 14.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: You got, like, sort of gloss right over that. Sort of. I'm thinking Big Bang. I'm thinking Doogie Howser. Like, what was your being a teenager like in that young adult world?
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there are definitely groups of people like that. I know it sounds like there's, like, a fringe, but there are cohorts of people who are, you know, in Mensa, you have a high iq. It's just.
It's not as maybe fringe as you would think. Like, there are just groups of people who are on that path and who are classified that way.
I mean, it's a little freakish, I guess, but, yeah, we just.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: We. We.
[00:02:14] Speaker C: Our audience would have been like, hold on. What did she say? Like four, season 14. Yeah. We just want to make sure we heard it right.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: But. Yeah, I was having bottle rocket wars when I was 14. Running red. Right, Sure.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: I mean, there has to be. I guess you have to be kind of. Yeah. I mean, you go into Mensa or you go into some kind of organization, and then you get, you know, you have to have probably the right kind of parental encouragement. And things like that to be funneled into that path. But yeah, I mean there are people who do it.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Did that sort of play into, you know, the worst advice, everything where it's like, you know, because you're pushed into this, you're super rigorous academ kind of career, fast tracking your things, is that where it's like, okay, cool, now we already know you're smart. Now get really specific with how smart.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: You'Re going to be.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: I mean, I would liken it. I don't think it's that like I think for me it was academics, right? So it was like go in, figure out your course of study, figure out what you're going to get your PhD in, do your thesis on, do your research on, whatever. I think it's similar like people who are driven to go into engineering or go into medicine or go into law. Like, I mean, I think there are a few different versions of it. Probably for me it was just academics and I mean, I think deciding on that hyper specialization early in life does kind of shape the way you think about yourself. And so I think for, for a young person it really becomes then hard coded into your identity to say, I'm going to go through life and I'm going to go into the world and I'm going to enter every room being the person who has the answers.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Tell us more about maybe what you lasered into at that young age.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: I ended up studying a branch of philosophy called phenomenology, which I am really glad I did. Right. So phenomenology is all about the phenomenological field, which is essentially the concept of the relativity of human experience. And I think it really relates to the idea that I kind of did depart from this idea of being an expert because I think that it's the idea that every single person in this conversation is experiencing this conversation differently because you're experiencing it from your own phenomenological field, right? You're experiencing it from your day, you're experiencing it from your life, you're experiencing it from the way that you define everything that has gone into who you are, right? The sum total of your human experiences. And that has inherent worth and value and is separate from everybody else.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: That's so. So we start focusing on phenomenology. If I said that, Frank, literally I was today years old when I even knew what phenomenology was. Tell me about your pursuit of phenomenology and just tell me a little bit more about that.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: So I think like a lot of young people who pursue academics early, you kind of like fast track into adulthood. And I'm not going to say all of us hit a wall, but I think most people do, right? Because you kind of like check all these adult boxes and then you kind of aren't yet an adult, but then are kind of left with like, okay, now what? And I was like, I don't want to just go straight into my PhD. I've been in school for my ENT life.
So I ended up taking a work trip with the UN over to Africa and went into Sudan. So at that time it wasn't north and South Sudan, it was just a unified state and worked with child soldiers. And so it was this like incredibly immersive, incredibly intense experience. Right.
Totally not academic, obviously. Extremely.
Yeah. I mean, it was dramatic. Yeah. Lots of human rights stuff. Lots of very kind of intense long days, long, very foreign experiences. Right. Which were really eye opening and all of that. You know, when you're very hyper academic, you have all of these very tidy boxes in which to fit human experience. Right. And you say like, X equals Y. Right. And you have all these nice kind of equations for what makes sense. And so I think I kind of came back from that and went, none of this fits anymore. Like this makes sense. And also like, what's the point of any of this? So I have all of these like, tidy accomplishments and now I've witnessed something that feels so much more important.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah. It sounds like you were working really, really hard at a young age. And it's probably hard to, to for those two to connect. Right. And find harmony, I would imagine.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: And I think, you know, so much of the pursuit of expertise, there has to be a measure of pride in it. Right. There has to be a measure of self importance in it because there is a stratification. Right. You have to, in order to pursue expertise, you have to be saying, I'm the best. Right. And so when you go into an environment where everything you've sought to achieve is pointless to a group of people, it's humbling in a very good way.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Why should the expert part, like, where do you draw a line between like knowing a lot and being an expert?
[00:06:46] Speaker A: It's interesting because this past weekend one of my best friends was here and he's in Yale Law School right now. Yeah, Yale Law School is the best law school in the world.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: I watch you get more girls.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
I mean, but it's the direct line, right, to anything. Really kind of, of, you know, really great repute in our legal system and all that. And we were talking about the difference between being a. Wanting to be a knowledgeable person and wanting to be perceived as a knowledgeable person. And I think that the motivation difference between wanting to be an eligible person and wanting to be perceived as an eligible person is similar to the difference between wanting to be the expert and wanting to be an expert.
Ultimately, about your identity, right? It's about how you want to be perceived in the world. Do you need to walk into a room and be the person who's giving answers, or are you willing to walk into a room and often be the person who's looking for answers? Right? Do you want to be the person who is discovering things? Do you have enough humility to want to walk through the world and also learn joy?
[00:07:53] Speaker B: This, this disruption that happens, right? It sounds like it created a fork in the road where you stopped pursuing this expertise and went in another path. What did it have you do versus this pursuit of expert in your field?
[00:08:08] Speaker A: So what I was going to do next, it was just going to be this like, very short diversion, right? And I thought, okay, it's going to look good on a resume. I'm doing something humanitarian. All the things right after Africa, I was like, I can't just go back. Like, there's just some things that you go through in life and you're like, I. I can't. I can't just forget that that happened. Like, I need.
There has to be a different version, right? You know, I could, I could have gone anywhere, right? It was well accomplished. I had plenty of open doors.
I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Wouldn't it be better if I was just useful? Like, what if I was just useful? What if I could just tell people stories, right? If, if phenomenology is true, like, if I'm a genuine philosopher and I genuinely believe that this is the way the world works and the way that human beings think, and this is the best description of the human experience, then wouldn't the best utility or the use of this philosophical construct be for me to create expressions, Right. For people?
I actually ended up moving to Switzerland to a commune called Labri, which was developed by a Swiss philosopher called Francis Schaeffer, and ended up spending a year there with a bunch of other philosophers and doing a bunch of different research projects and basically reworked ultimately how I could be useful in the world. And it completely changed the trajectory, ultimately, of what I would become and what I would do. And what I would become and do has ended up being extremely random and general and going from. I was a journalist for Several years. I ended up going into education publishing. I ended up, now I own several businesses.
Yeah, it's been a totally different life.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: It sounds like a real about face. Like you went from really being narrow in your focus, laser focus, in this very specific field and being an expert in it, to being a bit more of a generalist from expert to explore. If we can sort of use that, that analysis, what did you start to find?
[00:10:16] Speaker A: I think one of the best things that has happened is that when you are very young and you are noticed for being exceptional, it affects your identity and it affects how you're perceived and it affects how you behave.
And I think it took decades for me to shed that and become the person who didn't need to be anything special. I don't need to walk in a room and be noticed. And let's be clear, like I spoke at a conference last week. I speak at conferences all the time, right? Like I am widely seen as an expert in certain things, right? Like I'm well known for AI, I'm well known for SEO, I'm well known for growth, like all these things. But I don't need to be right. Like it doesn't feed anything in my identity to be identified as such.
And I'm always hungry to learn more. And I'm very open, right? My leadership style, right? Like I don't have to be the person who has all the answers when I lead my staff, when I lead people, when I go in and do consulting projects. Like I'm very, very open minded to the idea that I could be wrong.
Like this is what I think with all the information I have, with all the, you know, inputs, with all the knowledge, with all the things. But I'm not the end all be all expert, right? There could be flaws in my thinking and I'm open to the collaboration, the input, the growth that we can all offer each other.
And I love it. It's just been such a better version of life than I think I would have had if I had stuck with I'm going to be the one on the side of the table or the side of the lecture hall that has all the answers.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: What's the crossover between the two, between expert, an expert in something and a leader.
And how do you mirror up this maybe I could be wrong mindset that you talked about.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: You can spot an immature leader a mile away because they're the ones who have the puffed up chest, have the insular mentality, have the I have to be absolutely prepared at all times and can never admit I'm wrong and I'm the one people come to for the answers.
It's the person you don't want to sit next to at a dinner party, which is a competition.
Right. They always know a little bit more than you. Right.
[00:12:39] Speaker C: You bring something like, I'm actually people.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: I'm actually.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: But did you know that whales and you just. No.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: You know, like on my trivia team, outside of that, we're good. Right? Right.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: But it's that idea of like, there's no laterality to it. It's all stratification, it's all hierarchy.
And I just don't think that that helps anybody. I think it's a very old school mentality and I think it's, it's very damaging. It's very immature. I think that mature leaders understand that, you know, it goes back to the, like the Socratic method of learning. Right. Where we simply create the environment and then we ask questions. Right. By which we spark learning and understanding in the people we lead. Right. We allow people to come to their own conclusions, to go through their own thought processes. We're not just feeding information like that's the lowest form of learning. And retention barely happens. Right. Or rarely happens in that form of knowledge conveyance.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: In the world that we're in now, it feels like a lot of people want to get hyper specialized in something to really separate themselves from the crowd of people. There's AI and there's new technologies coming on. There's these things I have to be so, so good at one really specific thing, and that's how I'm gonna be wildly successful. What would you say to somebody who's, you know, coming up right now we get a lot of college age kids listening to the podcast thinking I have to be hyper specialized or I'm going to be a failure.
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Or to their parents who are pushing them to find your thing, find your expert thing. What would you say to the parents and, or these young people?
[00:14:20] Speaker A: This is, this is the time to look at philosophy and epistemology, which is the study of knowledge, and look at what futurists have said, because futurists and epistemologists are in agreeance that this is the con, the age of convergence of disciplines. You are. We have never seen the convergence of disciplines like we're seeing it right now. We're talking medicine, engineering, mechanics, law.
The convergence and overlap in that we're seeing because of technology and because of the rate of artificial intelligence is unprecedented. The future is going to belong to people who can ingest, process and Relate knowledge. And so it is not about what you know, it's about how you can connect bodies of knowledge.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: More important to know a bunch of things.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's a mistake to hyper focus on one thing because, I mean, you think about it, like when we were in school, we like, we had to memorize stuff, right? It had to do with knowledge retention and we had to like, actually be able to recall. That does not happen and that doesn't exist. And that's not going to exist for upcoming generations because they have knowledge that they can just access.
So think about it. Their skill is going to be in the orchestration, the connection.
Right. Understanding what's relevant, what needs to be applied, that kind of stuff.
So this is a very, very different skill set and way to think about knowledge.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: Now we'd use the Dewey Decimal system.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: You're aging yourself so bad.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Algorithms are too biased. I still go to the library and I sit on the floor and I pull stuff off the shelf.
[00:16:01] Speaker C: You still can for sure.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Hey. Hey, Joy. With two parents in the academia world and you sort of diverting, what's their take on your, on your pivot?
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Both of my parents are extremely, extremely smart.
My older brother is smarter than I am by a lot.
And so, you know, I think I was taught how to think. And so I'm always going to appreciate that because I think that that's the key, right? If we can teach people how to think, they're always going to have access to better understanding. I mean, I think our kids are always going to feel a little bit alien to us, right, because they're going to have different experiences than we do.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: But I'm grateful you talk about learning and staying curious. What are you, what are you focusing on right now? What are you learning right now? What are you sort of digging into? For the first time, it sounds like that's something you're trying to do.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: I speak on AI a lot, right? And I get asked. So I, like 10 years ago, I got asked to consult with a team out of Japan on LLMs, large language models because I was a journalist. And so it was just like, as a language consultant. And so now I get asked to be, you know, speak about AI, But I'm like, okay, but I'm being positioned as like an AI expert. But. But I'm not like, I'm not like a technical AI expert. So I'm like, what do I need to actually know to be an AI expert? And I'm like, things that really are either limiting or freeing about the future. Of AI really have to do with like chip technology, energy, data. Okay. But like I said, I think that any, like digital research I think is really suspect right now. Even like Google Scholar because of algorithmic bias and things. So I'm like going to the library and reading about the history of chip technology and I'm like pulling stuff off the shelf and sitting there and reading about the history of the development of chip technology, the development of data centers, data storage, data lakes, so the digitization of data storage. And then ultimately what we think the future will be. And not just the energy constraints of data, but the actual physical resource constraints. So what minerals and mining and things like that. Resources, the physical resources that are going to be needed to create long term data storage capacities. So that's what I'm reading about right now.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: And again, you can become really well versed in that and know a lot and be somebody who people want to talk to and have them on their panels, everything, without having to worry about becoming the expert in this thing. And then that's because it's all consuming and it does a thing. So back to, you know what the worst advice was for you? That's what it is. It's just like not becoming all consumed by one thing and letting that take over your whole life.
Yeah.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Well, I think that's a really great theme for our podcast is connectivity. Right? Stories connect us all. And that's one of the reasons we created the podcast was the worst advice people get. Create stories that other people can relate greatly to. And I think a lot of people can relate to the story of being driven towards something and having a moment that has them pivot into something else and really just being thankful for that. And our listeners are going to be thankful for you, Joy. Thankful for sharing your story.
And this has been a really great conversation. So I really appreciate you coming on the episode today with me and JB and sharing the worst advice you ever got.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: Thanks, I appreciate it. It's a good time.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Well, jb, that was definitely one of the smartest people we've ever had on the pod. And it was a fascinating conversation.
Gosh, what stood out to Joy's point about the difference between being knowledgeable and being the expert? One's about growth and humility and the other is about ego and identity. I think she said.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the ego part really kind of sneaks up on people. You know, you get told, hey, you're smart, you're talented, go specialize, get deep. And before long your whole identity is tied to being, you know, the person with all the answers. Joy's story showed what happens when you kind of let that go and realize curiosity and openness can actually carry you further than any kind of expertise ever will.
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And look, there's a degree of ambition in all this, right? I mean, she was starting college at 14. How ambitious do you have to be to start college at 14?
But it's not that ambition is bad. It's about asking what the ambition is serving. Right. And she reframed it around being useful, telling stories, connecting ideas, helping people.
That's such a different definition of success.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: It's because she didn't box herself into, you know, one identity. She let her skills, like, move across into different areas. And that's a lesson a lot of people need right now. You know, she talked about how people, you know, really need to move across disciplines and bring things together, and that's where the opportunity is going to be moving into the future.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I mean, machines can hold knowledge, but only people can interpret it, connect it, and apply it with a value system.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker C: And honestly, it made me kind of reflect on my own path, you know, thinking about how I've never had one thing that I was the expert in, but maybe that's actually not a weakness, it's an advantage. So great to hear.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it is great to hear because a lot of our listeners, I'm sure, feel the same. Joy gave us permission to keep learning, keep evolving, and not to let expertise ultimately define our worth. So a big thank you to Joy for sharing her story, and thank you to all of you for listening. Look forward to being with you next time on the worst advice I Ever Got.
