Humanity Over Talent, Every Time
The director Tommy Kail (Hamilton, In The Heights, Freestyle Love Supreme, and more) likes to say of his approach to casting actors, hiring for his production company, and choosing collaborators: “Humanity over talent, every time.” “Life is hard,” he explains. “The creative process is hard. Going to work is hard. I don’t want to make these things harder by bringing in someone with negative energy, someone who isn’t kind or thoughtful. I’m just not interested in it at all. I don’t care how talented they are. Humanity is more important to me than talent. If there’s a choice to make, I’ll go humanity over talent, every time.” Humanity over talent—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Have A Good Past
In 1993, Jensen Huang pitched a startup idea to his former boss, Wilf Corrigan. After Jensen’s pitch, Wilf said, “I have no idea what you just said. That was one of the worst pitches I’ve ever heard.” Wilf then called the renowned venture capitalist Don Valentine, and said, “Don, I’m going to send a kid over to you. He’s one of the best employees I’ve ever had. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I think you should give him money.” As the founder of Sequoia Capital, Valentine—the so-called “grandfather of Silicon Valley venture capital”—had made early investments in companies like Apple, Atari, Oracle, and Wilf Corrigan’s LSI Logic. Walking in to pitch the most sought-after investor in Silicon Valley, Jensen (at the time, 29 years old) was nervous and intimidated, and therefore, “I did a horrible job with the pitch.” “Against my best judgment,” Valentine said, “I’m going to give you money because Wilf says to give you money. But if you lose my money, I’ll kill you.” With funding from Sequoia, Jensen and his co-founders, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, started Nvidia—initially, a company focused on improving the quality and efficiency of computer graphics. It would go on to become a force in the technology industry, revolutionizing not only computer graphics but also pioneering advancements in artificial intelligence, data centers, autonomous vehicles, and more. At the time of this writing, Nvidia is the 3rd most valuable company in the world, worth around $2.2 trillion. Asked about Valentine giving him money despite the terrible pitch, Jensen said, “The thing I learned from that is your past is more important than your ability to pitch, interview, or anything like that. You can’t run away from your past. So have a good past. Try to have a good past.”
And To Think That I Saw It On Madison Avenue
After the last of twenty-seven rejections for his first children’s book, Theodor Geisel left the office of a New York publisher and headed to his apartment on East 96th Street where he was going “to burn [the manuscript] in the incinerator.” As he was walking up Madison Avenue, Geisel ran into a guy he went to college with a little over ten years earlier. The guy, Mike McClintock asked about the manuscript Geisel was carrying. “That’s a book no one will publish,” Geisel said. “I’m lugging it home to burn.” As it turned out, earlier that day, McClintock had been promoted to editor of children’s books at the publishing house, Vanguard Press. Unlike other publishers who were predominately evaluating Geisel’s work, McClintock considered his past. In addition to knowing Geisel to be a good guy, McClintock thought back to when they worked for their college’s humor magazine—Geisel was so obsessed with the work, maniacal about writing and revising, that he would often be found “asleep in the magazine office with his head facedown on the typewriter.” Maybe Geisel wasn’t the most talented, and maybe his first children’s book wouldn’t be a breakout success, but McClintock trusted that Geisel’s drive and obsessive commitment to his craft would eventually pay off. McClintock acquired Geisel’s manuscript, and Vanguard Press published it with the title And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street and under the pseudonym (since Geisel had a full-time day job as ad-man, he used a pen name to maintain anonymity and keep his seemingly unpromising children’s book writing career separate from his primary career) Dr. Seuss. McClintock was right that the Geisel’s first book might not be an immediate hit and that Geisel would persist and eventually be successful: Dr. Seuss is the bestselling children’s book author ever. If he’d been an asshole in college or if he’d been walking on the other side of Madison Avenue, Geisel said, “I would be in the dry-cleaning business!”
He Gotta Go
Spike Lee went to film school at NYU in the early 1980s. At the time, all first-year students spent their first year making an original film. At the end of the year, each student’s film was screened before the entire faculty. After the lights went up on each student’s film, the faculty collectively determined if the student was talented enough to merit continuing into the second and third years of the prestigious program. “It was like the Roman Empire,” Spike said. “Like at the Colosseum—’thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down.’” If the faculty gave a student’s film a “thumbs down,” the student was immediately dismissed from NYU. After Spike screened his first-year film, The Answer, the faculty gave a decisive “thumbs down.” “They were like, he gotta go,” Spike recalls. But then one of the faculty members said, “We can’t kick Spike out.” Another said, “Why not? His film was terrible. He gotta go.” The other replied, “We already gave him a teaching assistantship for next year.” Spike got the teaching assistantship “because I worked in the equipment room, and I was the hardest working motherfucker in that equipment room. I was busting my ass in that equipment room…That’s how I got to stay for the second and third years.” That’s how he got to develop his talent as a filmmaker. In his third year, Spike’s student film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop, won the Student Academy Award before becoming the first student film to be showcased in the Lincoln Center’s New Directors/New Films Festival—a platform that helped launch Spike into the professional film world after graduating from NYU.
Some Secret Freelancer Knowledge
In Make Good Art, Neil Gaiman talks about what it takes to survive in a freelance world, “and more and more of today’s world is freelance.” “I’m going to pass on some secret freelancer knowledge,” he says. “People keep working in a freelance world because their work is good and because they are easy to get along with and because they deliver the work on time.” You don’t always need all three, he explains. “People will forgive the lateness of the work if it’s good, and if they like you. And you don’t have to be as good as the others if you’re on time and it’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”
Character is Fate
There is an old Greek saying: Character is fate. “Your character is creating what happens to you in life,” Robert Greene elaborates. And other people’s character creates what happens to them, “so you want to find people who have a strong character to associate with.” If there’s a choice to make, go humanity, character, a good past, over talent, every time.