Ep. 26: Polina Pompliano, Founder & Author, The Profile

Hello Everyone! I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day weekend! Boy, am I excited to share my next conversation with The Profile’s Founder and Author, Polina Pompliano. Did I mention today is her book release too? Her new book, Hidden Genius, is available for sale. If you’re not subscribed to The Profile, it’s a weekly original and curated digest of profiles of amazing humans — entrepreneurs, celebrities, politicians, motivational speakers, the list goes on and on. Polina has been focused 100% on growing The Profile for the past 5 years. Previously, she spent 5 years working at Fortune Magazine running their regular startup newsletter, The Term Sheet. It was around this time she started The Profile more as a side hustle because of her passion for writing original pieces or profiles on interesting people. “I didn’t just want to curate profiles, but in order to do that, I would have to work on it full time. So that’s kind of when I started toying with the idea of what The Profile would look like if I dedicated 100% of my time of it instead of just doing it on the side.” - Polina Pompliano, Founder & Author, The Profile Whether you’re interviewing or profiling someone on a show (or podcast!) or in Polina’s case, the written word, it’s interesting to understand the common thread that ties people together. “[I] definitiely think that one of the pieces is they are people who have either gotten burned by something external, therefore, they’ve been forced to tie their identity around something they control, or they’re people who are constantly seeking ways to bet on themselves and take risks that lead to growth in learning.” After years of profiling who we believe to be remarkable people, Polina complied mental frameworks readers can employ from reading her new book, Hidden Genius. “But when people ask me like why ‘Hidden Genius?’ And I’m like,’ because the people I choose to include in the book and also feature in The Profile are not people who are, who you traditionaly think are geniuses.’ They’re people who have a certain view of the world, a certain like framework in the way that they solve problmes that that’s what makes them unique and uniquely prepare to solve certain problems and that is why they each have a hidden genius like many of us like I think all of us have some sort of hidden genius. It’s just a lot of us haven’t discovered it yet.” There’s a chapter in Hidden Genius on ‘mental toughness and mental resilience,’ which many of us can relate to in our daily lives. One example Polina points to is ultra-athlete, Navy Seal and Army Ranger and motivational speaker, David Goggins. While mental resilience and toughness is necessary to face the kinds of physical pain that David Goggins endures, I asked Polina about emotional anguish and stress caused by uncertainty from the rise of Ai, Silicon Valley Bank imploding, untamed inflation, etc. What sort of mental model should we be tapping into? 🎧 to her response and advice: Polina dispenses many more 💎 during this conversation which are expounded upon in Hidden Genius. 🎧 to the full conversation from wherever you listen to podcasts or 📺 the full conversation on YouTube. 🔗 👇🏼 Links: Watch the full conversation on YouTube Come to Polina’s book launch event at NYC’s P&T Knitware this coming Saturday Subscribe to The Profile This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit worthyforthirty.substack.com