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The James Altucher Show

Ep. 73 - Adam Grant: Are You a Giver, a Taker, or a Matcher?

The James Altucher Show

James Altucher

Business, Education

4.62.7K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2014

⏱️ 66 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Adam Grant, the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School's youngest tenured professor, and author of one of the best books of 2013 - Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success - joins The James Altucher Show today.   Helpfulness is Adam's message.   James asks Adam how he got into a topic that resonates so much with people. He says it all started in his early life when he was a diver. He started giving pointers to his competitors, and eventually one of those he helped ended up beating him in the state finals.   This got him thinking...   Is giving a zero-sum game? If he wants to win, do other people have to lose?   Do you have a hard time asking people to help you? Adam talks about the huge difference between taking and receiving.     Some interviews James does make you think hard about yourself. This one takes that to the extreme ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

So I'm here with Adam Grant, author of the bestselling book, Give and Take.

0:05.2

Adam, how are you doing? I'm good. How are you, James? Good. Good. I have to, I have to make a

0:10.4

confession to you. At first I was a little reluctant and this is when I first started the podcast.

0:16.3

Someone suggested I should have you on and at first I was a little reluctant because someone told

0:21.5

me you say yes to everything and at the time I was writing a book about the power of no and

0:28.3

and someone told me a story that you even stabbed to like one in the morning replying to emails

0:33.2

because that's how much of a giver you are and it's the title of the book Give and Take. And so

0:37.9

is it true you stabbed to one in the morning responding to emails? Rarely. Okay, I'm gonna say no to

0:44.0

that. Okay, good. But like let me ask you a question and then I want to get into the to the topic

0:48.7

of the book. But like I'm sure initially when you were beginning your career and everything you

0:54.5

were probably responding to every email because you were building out your network you were in fact

0:59.2

giving because you're a giver. At what point where is the line of demarcation where the email

1:05.7

start piling up so much that you stop giving as much as you could and you address this a little

1:10.9

in the book but I'm just curious about your direct answer. Yeah, I think it basically you draw the

1:16.6

line when it starts to compromise your ability to achieve your own goals and live by your values.

1:23.6

And I guess for me that was right after Give and Take came out. I had basically only been visible

1:29.7

before that to my students and colleagues and some of the organizations I was working with.

1:34.5

And well let's just say when the New York Times writes that you never say no it invites just

1:40.8

about every taker on the planet to reach out and ask for something. And that made it a lot more

1:46.2

critical for me to set some boundaries. And then because this happens to me quite a bit then

1:51.1

did you get kind of negative feedback from that like everybody said hey I wrote you last week

1:57.2

and you never responded I thought you always responded you get kind of pushback.

...

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