Andy Gray: I’m taking today to Srini Rao, who is the host of the very popular BlogcastFM podcast and the author of the new book called The Art of Being Unmistakable.

Srini, welcome to A Congruent Life.

Srinivas Rao: Hey, thanks for having me.

Andy: So, maybe, can we start by having you introduce yourself briefly to our audience?

Srini: Yes—to make a long story short, I went to business school; graduated. My life didn’t go according to plan. I did everything that you think you’re supposed to do. I checked all the checkboxes, I was a Berkley undergrad. I worked at all these startups. I think then and thought that getting an MBA was going to be the answer to all my prayers and that I would be promoted and I would have this 90K to 100K starting salary. And of course, my timing is impeccable. I graduated from undergrad. I won the first dot.com bubble burst, and I graduated from business school in April 2009.

So, nobody sits down at the beginning of their life or at the beginning of their college experience and says, “You know what? Let me make a plan to graduate into, not one, but two massive recession.”

Andy: Great timing.

Srini: Yes—it was exactly. So, as a byproduct of that, I have an inherent distrust in anything corporate— and that doesn’t just come from that. There’s extenuating circumstances as well, which largely have to do with me as a person. What that started was this whole idea of not choosing from the options that are in front of me.

I think that we go to school, and we’re presented with a handful of options—in my case, become a doctor, investor, banker, lawyer, engineer; or go work at a startup, or become a managing consultant; and that was it. It’s really silly, right? You go to college, and that’s essentially what everybody in the world does. There are no other careers outside of this, and that people who do anything artistic or creative—that’s just dumb luck they ended up there; don’t ever take this path. Go to the right and true path, because at least, you’re guaranteed a safe and secure life—which even that is no longer true.

Anyway, to make a long story short, that started this intensely creative period in my life where I started my blog The Skool of Life, a weekend series with upcoming bloggers eventually led to the formation of what you know me for today—which is BlogcastFM—and that has led to other bunch of things, like writing books, speaking, talking about creativity, inspiration; all these other stuff.

And really, I guess, in a lot of ways, it’s been a voyage of self-discovery because what the whole process revealed to me, when I started to really examine it, was that I was the ultimate corporate misfit. What I didn’t realize in all of those jobs—

Somebody once told me about relationships that don’t work out—that you should go back and examine them—and I said, “Look what the common thread is between all your relationships that don’t work out—and it’s you.”

I was like, “F*ck! Oh, man.”

I mean, that makes you cringe a little bit, but at the same time, it also makes you realize you are the one who’s in control of all those choices.

So when I went and looked back at all the jobs I had, I was like, “Wow, I’m the common thread between all the jobs I was terrible at. I’m forcing square pegs into round holes.”

That has lead to this very interesting and unexpected life, where I am the host of a show where I’ve interviewed 400+ people. At the end of this year, it will have been four years. I’m writing books. I’m speaking at conferences. I’m planning my first in-person event. That, in a nutshell, I guess—your show is called “A Congruent Life“—I wasn’t living a congruent life, and now I’m on the path to living one, I guess you could say.

Andy: Which is fantastic; that’s exactly why I wanted to talk with you on the show. It’s because this process that you’re going through—you are so public about the process of self-discovery that you’ve been going on. You’ve been sharing that journey, and some of your essays are remarkable insightful about—”What is this about this life that I’m living, and what do I need to do differently? How can I live this in a way to really be true to who I am and what I want to be in the world?”

Srini: It’s interesting—you bring this idea of being true to who you are, right? Because being true to who you are isn’t encouraged. The system is not designed to say, “Being true to who you are is the highest, most respectable thing you can do. The most respectable thing you can do is you can go and do something stable, safe, secure, and make sure that it all works out.”

That’s the combination of a lot of factors—parents, peers, society; all have good intention. It’s not that their intentions are bad. It’s funny—I’m echoing a lot of sentences from a conversation I just had. The thing is that their intentions are for you to be safe, for you to be secure, and for you to be okay—not to thrive necessarily. Because the thing is, to thrive means that there is the possibility that you’re going to fail abysmally; I mean really, really fail—like hit-rock-bottom fail.

Nobody wants that for you. Nobody, who cares about you, wants to see you suffer in any way at all. But, it’s often that suffering becomes necessary to live what you call a “congruent life” because that’s often where a lot of your self-discovery happens. Sure, for the most part, we sleepwalk through life. We’re born sort of curious and crazy, and there are these endless amount of opportunities for self-expression. Walking to a kindergarten classroom—it’s chaos and creativity just bursting from the seams.

It’s funny—I saw this when I was walking through the local section of the Barnes & Noble. I wanted to see if my theory on this was true. I was looking at how the curriculum changes as you get older, and by the time you’re a senior in high school, the curriculum is set. Conformity is encouraged and rewarded. There are no opportunities or very limited opportunities for self-expression. And so, as a result, we stop living a congruent life. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes like a mid-life crisis or therapy for you to get back to living this congruent life that you speak of.

Here’s the way I would sum it up. And, I’ve taken some of that—that I could have said in a very short way, and made it really long—but what I would say is this: “Nothing of great significance is achieved by playing it safe.” You could say that, “Oh, the tried and true path is safe when it comes to guarantees,” but even that is no longer questionable

So here’s what you say; it’s, “Okay, what’s the difference between the two paths?”

One has a significant upside; the other one doesn’t. And, I’ve just chosen to basically take the route that I think has a significant upside.

Andy: So, how did you get to that point, Srini? You were living a “traditional life”—going to college and getting a degree and working in these corporate jobs—and at some point, you needed to come to this realization for yourself and take that scary leap and say, “You know what? This doesn’t work for me. I’m going to do it differently.”

How did you come to that point? Where did that courage come from?

Srini: I wouldn’t call it “courage” as much as I would call it “necessity”. I’m still scared every day. I’m 35, and I live at my parents house to make this work. And then, there’s a part of me that’s like, “Holy shit! I can’t believe I’m doing this. It’s not normal. Why is my life not normal?”

I have the same fears, the same doubts. I have a lot of the same insecurities as any person, who is not in my shoes. But, here’s what I would say—and this actually was a very recent realization, believe it or not—I always had sort of one foot outside of my comfort zone. What I realized was that if I really was committed to this path, I wanted to make sure that I was never going to end up back on the other one. I had to let it go completely. That’s why I call this “The Year of My Career Suicide”. Because, I think that in order to become somebody else, you have to let go of who you were before.

What most people do is out of fear that becoming this new person might not work out, they don’t fully let go of the person they were before—and I did that. Even the first two to three years of this journey were largely that. Some time, I think in 2011—when I returned from Costa Rica—even though I was running BlogcastFM, I was actually looking for a day job, and what I was starting to realize is when I would go in, it was a very hard sell for me.

One—because I didn’t believe in the bullshit that I was trying to feed somebody; I was pretending to be interested even though I wasn’t. And then, the other thing is that all the things I was doing on the side were pretty clear indicators that if they showed any sense that they were going to pan out—it was pretty clear; I was at the day job because I was going to take the money and run right after I didn’t need it anymore.

Somebody called me out on it, and I said, “Yes, you’re right. I have no interest in being here long term. I’m not interested in building a career here. Because—you know what—this is not my career-defining opportunity. I’m making that one on my own.”

Of course, on the side, BlogcastFM was growing. It’s reaching lots of people. But, I think one of the significant turning points was when I decided, “You know what? I’m going to put both feet. That’s my comfort zone. I’m going to let this go, and I’m going to tell this story in full transparency. I’m going to tell the parts that are dark. I’m going to tell the parts that are scary. That’s in fact how you and I reconnected.”

The things that I thought were going to be truly—I was like, “This is going to be career suicide. I’m never going to be able to go back.”

It’s a bit like taking the red pill. In that scene in The Matrix, Morpheus is like, “You couldn’t go back if you want; even if you could go back, would you want to?”

And, I think for me, once you pull those feet outside the comfort zone, you realize there is no going back and there’s no playing it safe; because if you play it safe, you won’t reach your full potential.

Andy: It’s like one of these trap doors that you go through, right? It’s like once you taste it, you can’t really go back.

Srini: Yes, yes, exactly.

Andy: You just published this book, called “The Art of Being Unmistakable“, which is a great read by the way. I finished it yesterday. I really enjoyed it.

One thing that I want to talk a little bit more about is the subtitle, which is “A Collection of Essays about Making a Dent in the Universe“. I think that’s a beautiful image. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by making a dent in the universe?

Srini: Yes—it’s interesting, right? That gets thrown around a lot by a lot of people who are inspirational. There was a guy in Twitter who commented and said, “Yes, it’s like inspirational psychobabble,” which I’ll admit to some degree, this book is.

I guess for me—one, it’s going to mean something different to every single person. I think that we all have it in us to do it. And, I think it’s our birthright, should we choose to claim it, to do—like what I say—what is making a dent in the universe. I guess for me, what that means really is that the world is different and better because of something that I’ve done. I’ve molded it and shaped it in some way—that basically, the world would have been extremely different if I hadn’t been here or if I hadn’t done the things I’ve done, and that what I did mattered; and what I did was live with intention and purpose and did something meaningful and affected somebody’s life. If you affected one person’s life in a profound and meaningful way, you’ve made a dent in the universe, as far as I’m concerned. You don’t have to be Steve Jobs to make a dent in the universe.

I think that we get this idea in our head that making a dent in the universe is reserved for the select few and special. But the difference between the people who make a dent in the universe and those who don’t is that the ones who do choose themselves—as my friend, James Altucher, would say—and they claim their birthright. They live very intentionally. Making decisions that aren’t in-line with your end goal of making dent in the universe is a habit, and once you break the habit, you start to move towards that.

I realize that’s sort of a vague answer—but here’s the thing I would say about this, and I talk about this in the book as well—it’s that, to make a dent in the universe, you have to use a compass, not a map. I can’t give you the step-by-step formula because it’s going to be different for everybody, like what you find meaningful might be different from what I find meaningful.

Andy: So, what’s the dent that you want to make in the universe?

Srini: [laughs] That’s a good question. I wish I could define it very clearly, and maybe that’s part of what I’m going through right now—it’s finding that.

Here’s something to think about—a lot of people who have been on my show, who have been part of my world, by almost all measures, are far more successful than I am. If we’re deciding how to measure—let’s say we look at revenue or any metrics, and we can talk about what’s worth measuring in your life and not later on.

I guess, I realize for me, the biggest dent I could make is if other people went out and did amazing things as a byproduct of my work. That would be the ultimate dent—that the more people go out and change their lives because of something I’ve done, the more rewarding that would become. I think that has exponential implications. The potential for that is exponential. Whereas, if it’s just me trying to do my thing and make my difference, I don’t think it’s as powerful.

Andy: So, Srini, the point of this show, A Congruent Life, is really about exploring authenticity and telling stories about authenticity and the people that are defining that in different ways, and then really living into that in the world. What does living authentically or congruently mean to you?

Srini: I think it just goes back to just something I was saying earlier. One, I think you have to understand what your values are and what is important to you. And then, you have to basically draw a line in the sand and say you won’t compromise on that—and that’s not easy. It’s easier said than done.

Sometimes, it’s going to feel like you have no choice and your back is up against the wall, and that you have to compromise on something that you value in order to survive. The truth is sometimes you have to go through pain in order to live this way; but in the end, you’ll know that you didn’t compromise.

Living authentically—I think, in a lot of ways, I call it the “no-BS version of who you are”. It’s about stripping away all these layers that have been piled up on you over the years that caused you to put on a performance, that basically is designed to live up to what other people expect of you rather than what you expect of yourself.

Andy: I think one thing that’s interesting in your writings—and you talked frequently in your conversations about the importance of surfing in your life. Can you maybe talk a bit about that and how that serves as sort of a grounding element for you in your life and in your creative work?

Srini: Yes, yes, absolutely. You can get me to talk about this for hours.

Surfing is strange because I’m not genetically predisposed to anything—I’m Indian. Funny thing is I’ve never been athletic in my life or anything. But, I think part of what drew me to surfing was the fact that it taught me how to be present.

Presence is a very, very important thing. It’s very talked about but I don’t think really understood. It’s a very surreal feeling to be completely present, because it’s not something you experience very often. It’s intense, and it’s joyful, and it’s exhilarating. There’s nothing like a sense of extreme presence.

Funny thing is that people ask, “What are you thinking about in that kind of a state?” Your thoughts really don’t stop ever. The idea that thoughts come to screeching halt is a little nuts. Even if you’re like a Buddhist monk, that does not happen. What’s interesting is that true presence is when the only thing you’re thinking about is exactly what you’re doing in the moment. Only a handful of activities that provided that for me—one is sex, and the other is surfing.

The thing is I think what that does is—generally, what we do is we live in the past, and we worry about the future. We dwell on our past, and we worry about the future. And, to do effective work, to live a congruent life, you have to have some sense—you have to have something—that allows you to let go of that. Because when you let go of that, it loosens up a lot of things. It basically opens the floodgates to do really amazing work.

It’s not to say that you’re never going to think about the past, and that you’re never going to worry about the future. I think the idea that those will just completely dissipate is crazy. Even the most wildly successful people are thinking about, “Okay, what’s next, or what’s in the future?” It’s this constant balance, I think, between living in the moment and keeping your eyes on the horizon.

That’s why surfing is such a perfect way to think about it—because when you’re in the water, you have to be present, but you also have to keep your eye out on the waves that are coming, if you’re going to catch a wave. Interestingly enough, what surfing did—in addition to teaching me how to be present—is it thought me how to take care of my body, like it completely changed my relationship.

You’ve had Meg Worden, here, and she talks a lot about these bodies are your containers for your souls. I realized, in general, I was putting a lot of crap into the container—like mental crap, as well as physical crap. What surfing became was a way to cleanse in a lot of ways. And then, also, it changed all my other habits.

Habits are really interesting because you can start really small, or you can start with one thing, and it will bleed into every other aspect in your life. One of the things, I think, that gives me the discipline to sit down and to write everyday and to create is the fact that I’m a surfer, so I’ve had to learn how to have the discipline of showing up even when I don’t—

Here’s the thing—when you’re a surfer, if you want to take advantage of the conditions when they’re good, you have to show up when the conditions suck. You’ve got to take a few beatings. You’ve got to earn your spot in the lineup. That means taking waves in the head. It’s a brutal beat down sport when you first get started. But the thing is you get past that, and it becomes the most joyful thing in the world—and I think life is very much the same, especially when you want to get on this path to living a congruent life. You have to go through some pain; it’s unfortunate.

I’d love to tell you, “You know what? You’ll make this wonderful decision, that you’re going to start living a congruent life, and then out of nowhere, magically, everything just works out.” I don’t know about you and the guests you’ve had in your show, but I can’t tell you a single story about that. Nobody I know has had everything work out for them without experiencing pain.

Andy: Sure. You do have to go through that eye of the needle to get to that place. In fact, one of my recent guests, Don Samuels, actually compared it to the analogy of childbirth. [laughter] That’s a really painful thing that you’ve got to through, and it’s kind of worth it.

Srini: And, that’s the thing, right? In the end, it does end up being worth it. That’s the real thing. You’ve got to say, “Is it worth is to play it safe, or is it worth it to take the risk?” because again, it goes back to that whole idea—one is going to provide a significant upside; the other is going to keep you exactly where you’re at.

Andy: Yes, we seem sort of wired to seek comfort, and not wander out into those uncomfortable places.

So, you’ve talked to hundreds of people on your show, some pretty amazing people that you’ve had the opportunity to connect with. Of course, it would be quite impossible to try to distill that into some grand message. But I wonder—are there some stories or some key insights that you maybe could extract from some of those experiences that have had a big impact on you personally?

Srini: Boy, I’ve got 400—yes. There are tons. So much of what I’m telling you has probably come from a lot of those. You had Meg here obviously, who is another person—she has had a profound impact on me.

What it boils down to, I think, is that what we do is we find models of possibility and positive outliers on our show. What I see over and over again are people who, despite incredibly difficult circumstances, accomplish mind-blowing things.

I guess the easiest example I can think of is my buddy, Greg Hartle, who is my co-host on BlogcastFM Backstage. When you see something like that, here’s a guy who has really been through hell; he really has. He has had a kidney transplant in his life. He almost died when he was younger. He has lost everything. He’s been buried up to half a million dollars in debt. He pulled himself out of it. And then, he walked out of his door with $10 and a laptop. He does with that what most people, with their 60,000 or 75,000-dollar-a-year salary and their comfortable cubicle life, will never do in this lifetime.

What that teaches me is that we grossly underestimate what we’re capable of, and that’s largely the byproduct of the fact that—like you said—we’re wired for comfort. We seek comfort. And, if we continue to seek comfort, I don’t think we’ll ever stretch and we’ll never see what we’re made of. Whereas, if we go out of our way—and Greg goes out of his way to put himself in very, very uncomfortable situations; ones that I can’t even fathom. I mean $10 and a laptop—that’s kind of insane. How do you survive with that?

The other thing is in moments of adversity. One, we don’t put ourselves in difficult situations, so we underestimate what we think is possible. I’ll give you another analogy.

I was surfing on an unusually large day in Nicaragua, like way bigger than I’m capable of surfing. The waves we’re just getting bigger and bigger and bigger—you might have seen this picture on Facebook. It eventually got to be probably about a 13-foot wave, which was way too big for me. There are certain places you want to be. When you’re surfing, there are certain places you don’t want to be, and one is known as the “impact zone”. That is not where you want to be. That’s where the wave actually breaks.

I saw a wave coming, and I was like, “Wow, there’s nothing I can do. I am about to get just hammered by a 13-foot wave, and that’s a lot of water.” Some of these waves are powerful enough that they could tear you down like a small cottage. So, imagine, your body is in this space, and you’re like, “Oh, shit!” I thought, “Wow, I’m going to die. This is it. And, I had just been fired the day before from a job, and I was like, “Well, I guess this is an okay time to die.”

Those are the thoughts that run through your mind, but one thing that’s interesting is your survival instinct kicks in. In that moment, you realize, “Okay, I’m going to do everything I damn well have to, to make sure I get out of this situation alive.” I got tossed around; it was like being inside a washing machine. But, I came up on shore without a bruise. I lost my shirt, literally, and my friends were like, “Where’s your rash guard?” and I said, “I think it’s in the ocean—but I’m done for today. I’m going to have a beer.”

Our capacity for dealing with adversity is far greater than we think it is, and that’s one of the big lessons that I’ve taken from all the people that I’ve talked to—because often, almost every journey starts with some sort of adversity.

These people are positive outliers and are remarkable people, who do extraordinary things, despite their circumstances. In fact, it’s these awful circumstances that were the catalyst for all the amazing things they do.

Andy: So, what’s going on in your world now, Srini? What exciting things are you pursuing to make your own dent in the universe?

Srini: You mentioned The Art of Being Unmistakable, which just came out this week. I don’t know when this is going to be out. But by the time people will be listening to this, it will have been on Amazon for probably about a week or two, so that’s been really exciting. I’m doing a lot more writing.

But the thing that I’m really, really excited about, which I can’t stop talking about—you’ve heard me talk about it on BlogcastFM—is this event that we’re doing, called The Instigator Experience. Literally, I think the goal of the event is to help people make their dent in the universe. The theme is “How Do You Bring a Bold Idea to Life?”

One of the things that we did—I realize, one of the things I have is access to a lot of people that the average person wouldn’t have access to, because of the way I built platform. When you have 400 people to choose from, you can choose just about anybody; but I was very intentional in that I wanted people who I felt had a very, very profound impact on our audience. And I thought, “Well, individually, if they have that kind of impact,” and it was never who you think it would be; it was never like the Tim-Ferrisses of the world.

I thought, “Well, if you could pull off something like this, if individually this people had such a powerful impact, what would happen if, collectively, we brought them all together and we let them tell their stories?” We basically gave them the stage and said, “We want you to help these people make their dent in the universe, or help them bring a bold idea to life.”

And so, now we have this event called “The Instigator’s Experience”.

I told a friend the other day—I said I want it to be like the Cirque du Soleil of business events. Because it’s not a conference; it’s a theatrical storytelling experience blended with a content of a conference. It’s not going to be your typical business conference, because let’s face it—typical business conferences are boring. Nobody wants to sit all day in a room, under florescent lights, eagerly anticipating happy hour where they’ll actually get to have some fun—and that’s what’s so many events are like. We are very adamant that this won’t be like that. We’re blending all these different elements.

You asked about my guest influences, and again, my guest influences are making their way into this. We had a guy, named Erik Wahl, who was a graffiti artist. One of the things he told me that really stuck for me was that he said his work is about creating epic audience experiences. He said that you watch live music and live performance. He said, “Live music has engaged participants. Keynote speaking has passive consumers. There’s room to bridge the gap between those two things.”

With that in mind, we’re exploring. What can we do? For example, I’ve met a friend who was in theater in high school, and I’ve been talking to him about stage craft, like, “How do we make multiple set changes during that?”

People don’t do things like that at a business conference, typically. And, the other part of what’s interesting is that it’s intentionally being kept small. We’re designing it in a way that it could never scale, and that’s very much on purpose.

My friend, AJ Leon, has been a big influence in my life. He talks a lot about this idea—that infinite scalability leads to something getting watered-down, and it becomes sort of a washed-up version of the original thing that it was when something becomes infinitely scalable, and I really appreciate that.

When you think about things that are infinitely scalable—part of why I don’t appreciate some things like that is there’s a lack of craftsmanship in things like that. We’re talking about the sort of the direction that my show is going and how I’m going out of my way to find people, who are not what you would expect on the show and not the normal usual suspects.

Part of it is because there are people, who are lingering—maybe sometimes in obscurity—who do amazing work that isn’t infinitely scalable, but there is such a sense of craftsmanship to what they do that it’s inspiring.

The truth is—we’re talking about this dent in the universe thing—if we approach what we do with the goal of being masters of our craft rather than building something infinitely scalable, then our dents on the universe will be made on their own.

Andy: Srini, how can our listeners engage with you?

Srini: As you mentioned, you can find me at BlogcastFM. You can find it in iTunes by searching “BlogcastFM”. You can also find me on BlogcastFM.com. And, I guess these days, I’m doing a lot of my writing on Facebook, so Facebook.com/SriniRao is how you find me there.

Andy: Great. We’ll link all that up in the show page, as well as The Instigator Experience. So, Srini, is there a final thought that you’d like to leave our listeners with, specifically about authenticity?

Srini: Yes—don’t play it safe, because when you play it safe, you’re actually not being authentic.

Andy: Well, Srini Rao, thanks so much for taking the time to talk today, and thanks for BlogcastFM. It’s really a great gift to the world. I know it has benefited a lot of people.

Srini: Thanks. Thanks for having me.