662: Nicholas Thompson - The Atlantic CEO on Growing Up With a "Precariously Insecure" Genius Father, Hiring Leaders with an Edge, How Running Builds Discipline, and Why Moving at an Uncomfortable Pace Built a Million-Subscriber Media Empire

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Haugh. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now onto tonight's featured leader, Nick Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic, an author of one of my favorite books I've read in years called The Running Ground. During our conversation we explore why stretch goals force you to move at an uncomfortable pace and Nick talks about how doing this running also applies at his place for work. Then how running through cancer treatments made him stronger, super emotional part of the conversation. He talks about the must have attributes he looks for when hiring leaders at The Atlantic, including one that really surprised me. And then Nick shares what his brilliant and chaotic father taught him about ambition, discipline and the fine line between the two. This one is enlightening, so good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversations with Nick Thompson. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insight Global.com slash learning leader today to learn more. That's Insight Global.com slash learning leader. I didn't realize when we booked this that it would be such a big day. You ran the New York City marathon yesterday. Man, how you feeling? I feel fine. I feel okay. I got through it. And I'm back out of today. I did a book event a couple hours afterwards. So I'm crazy. You are absolutely nuts. You know, my best. You know, the funny thing is I had to like hustle back because I thought I was going to have to take my kid to a soccer game. So I like speedwalked off the finish to the subway. You think after a marathon, you would kind of block the day, but no, it was just like all block a few hours and then it's time to get back to regular life. Time to get back to life. Yeah. You're crazy. I want to jump into your book. Specifically, there's a million different places to start, but I read this quote and it blew my mind and I want you to react to it. Scotty Thompson is the kind of young man that comes along only once in approximately 10 years. I cannot recall ever having known a student who possessed the same combination of intelligence, creativity, energy drive and dedication. He has attempted more, achieved more than anyone we have studied, including some who now hold high office. He is generally conceited among those who have observed the student body since World War II to be the outstanding leader of the era. I think it likely that in the entire history of Stanford campus life, he has had no near rival since Herbert Hoover as an undergraduate. Man, who is that guy? That was my dad. That's the kind of recommendation you want when you're 21 years old. That was the Stanford Provost in about my father in his recommendation for the Rhodes Scholarship. I wrote to the Rhodes panel when I was working on this book. I was like, can I see the letters recommendation written for my dad? I'm like, sure, here you are. I was like, oh my god. I knew it was a good student at Stanford, but that was something else. That was in some ways the high point of my dad's life and career, but he had a ton of promise back then. He also got, I think you or somebody talked to Tracy Bennett, a female graduate student. She said he was flamboyant, gently endearing, annoyingly arrogant, piercingly intelligent, entertaining and more. I'd never met a man, Nora had a professor who was clearly so brilliant at the same time, so precariously insecure. So we hear some of the amazing things about your dad. Now we're starting to hear some of the not so amazing things about him. It would be too broad of a question to say what has he done to impact you, but I would just love to hear in your words to tell more stories or the story of your relationship with your dad. Yeah, so he grows up in Oklahoma and then his father, my grandfather, was initially a missionary and then rose to a position of high prominence on the Baycone University campus. My dad grows up there. That's not real happy. It doesn't like his father. It feels intimidated. He gets out. It goes to end of her. It goes to Stanford where everything is amazing. Windsor Road Scholarship comes back all of this promise, all of this potential. And then his insecurities, his complexities, it's very hard to have a gold star put on your forehead the way he did back when he was so young. And for everybody you know, I think you're going to be president of the United States or Senator because then when you don't live up to it and when things start to get unraveled, you can feel it like age 27 that you're a failure. Like this is a problem that a lot of road scholars have where my father was photographed by Life Magazine when he was 21 years old and it comes back. He's got his PhD, but he's a professor. He's not really publishing that many books. He's certainly not a senator. Things aren't really going right for him. And I think it leads to a lot of emotional insecurities and he starts shrinking too much and he has a lot of problems. I'm born in 1975. My father is in the house. We love playing with him. He teaches me to run. We go running when I'm five or six. We run around the block. We run a mile. We might even have run two or three miles. I wish he was still here so we could fact check that, but I've certainly remembered that. You know, then right about that time you have that quote from Tracy. It comes out of the closet. It leads my mother, most of DC. And it's like everything in his life just becomes a blazing bonfire. He's so smart. He's so interesting. The personality that was described in that Stanford letter is always true, but he can't hold on to anything. He can't balance his checkbook. He can't pay his taxes. He's drinking all the time. He's got a crazy sex addiction. His house is absolute madness at all moments. Just stuffed me in the throne all over the place. And then as he gets older in his 60s, you get more madness and less control. So he'll come to visit me. He moves to Southeast Asia. He'll come back and visit me and he'll show up and he'll just like take his suitcase. It's just all battered and frayed and just like open it, dump it right on the floor when he comes in. And like out pop all these like pill bottles of like stuff. He's bought off-market in Singapore to like help him go to sleep or help him wake up. But like bottles of moisturizer and like flasks of alcohol and like crumpled bills. You're like, you have a room over here. Like put your suitcase in the room and deal with your room. It was like a metaphor for his life at that point. So complicated man. Wow. I mean, it's still probably your hero. But then like a lot of people, the more you get to know them, they have their flaws, their humans. The world's not black and white. It's very gray. How do you combine this thought of him being your hero? And the guy you look up to and he's so brilliant and smart and gets letters written like the one we just talked about from Stanford. He's a Rhodes scholar. But then he also just made some horrendously bad choices for many, many years. Yeah. How does that affect? I mean, you're still living it. You're you're the dude. It's so strange. It was so weird because in some ways, he was like my intellectual hero. I felt like he knew everything. Like you could talk about any book. You'd have an interesting theory to it. Braddock carefully. You'd have something smart to say. You're a great taste and already love music and identify any piece of classical music. But by the time I was in my 20s, it was like I was the dad and he was the son. You know, you got to get this done. You got to get this organized. You got to finish this. Like stop picking up people and do Pond Circle, right? Like settle down. And so we called it a reverse father son relationship where I was trying to keep him in line. And so in a way, the traditional dynamic flipped because I'm the kid and I'm a responsible one and he's the adult and he's the lunatic. He basically spent his 50s, 60s and 70s. He passed away when he was 75, living like he was a 19 year old college student who like wasn't really doing his homework. It was partying all the time and recruiting guys off man jammer and he also got you into running. And I want to focus a lot on running because the funny thing is I'm not a distance runner. I like running sprints like one 10s. I have football player of background. So our conditioning tests were 18 110s with 30 second break, right? That's what's your 40 time? What's your best for your time? My best 40 time was in the low 4.5. So and not bad for quarterback. Yeah, I can't even run yet remotely close to that right now. But that was back in my protein. It's got that low 4.5. That's killer. Have you timed your 40? And there's no way it's under six, but that's not true. Yeah. Dude, you run like sub 230 marathons. You got my 40 time is garbage. Like I time my kids and my kids run like 61. I time all the time. How old are they now? 15? 11 and 15, right? So they're right around. I mean, having time to probably this is when they're 10 and 14. They're big into soccer. They're getting a soccer. Great soccer players, right? But they can both destroy me in sprints. So I've got like, there's no way I'm under six. Anyway, maybe my peak has like high fives. Okay. I bet your kids are going to be like mid-force coming up as they get a little bit stronger and older. Oh, yeah. They're like, they're getting fast. And like the middle one just ran a sub five mile. The little guy has 11 just ran a sub six mile. So they're like, they're good. This is a crazy question. But how much of running is because like you are a more of a slender frame. How much of running is genetic versus if you're like, hey, dude, just get your mind right. You could go out and run a sub three marathon. If you really, really wanted to like, how much is it nature versus nurture when it comes to running? So there's this fundamental thing which is like what percentage of your muscles are slow twitch versus fast twitch? And that's mostly genetically determined. And you can shift it a little bit. But my guess is that you're mostly fast twitch. And I'm mostly slow twitch. Right. And then there's a little bit of your genetic component which determines like, you know, basically, are you bulky or are you skinny? Right. And it's related to fast twitch slow twitch. But you know, the skinny you are the more likely you are to be able to run a good marathon. The sort of the bulky you are the better. More likely you are to run up fast 100. So there's that component. Then there's the component of like how likely you are to break down, which is a huge part of marathon training. Right. You've got to be able to go 16 weeks running 50 miles a week, 60 miles a week, 70 miles a week without your body breaking. And so whether you're like aligned properly and your is one leg longer than the other. So there's like all kinds of genetic components than that. And then there's a genetic component of how well you improve, which people under appreciate. And everybody knows there's a genetic component of how fast you are when you start. But you can have two people who start at the same place to the exact same workouts. One gets faster than the other. And that's genetic, which is pretty interesting. So there's a real mix of stuff in there. Okay. Let's get more into running first and foremost. This is something you've become one of the best in the world at what you do. Like running long distances really fast. And now in your age group, you're setting records, you're winning and you can get into all of that. What is it about running? Right. What is it about the discipline of training, the discipline of getting better, of waking up early and running regardless of what the weather is, regardless of how you're feeling, you're going to get out there and go, what is it about running that you feel has made you a better leader? I do think that what I learned in running is very much the way I approach work and everything else is if you go out there every day, seven days a week, maybe six days a week if you take Sundays off, but you're out there pretty much every day. Couple days a week, you go really hard. And if you do that, you get faster. Right. And there's like, there's no two ways about it. And if you don't do that, you don't get faster. And so to improve, you just really have to go out there and push yourself. And it's not like if you go out there and you just sort of jog and relax five miles a day, you'll get a little faster, but you won't get much faster. But if you go out there and every day and three times a week, you push yourself hard, it just happens. And so it's a very good reminder that you can get a lot done and you get a lot of really good things done. If you just go and if you just do it and if you like a lot sometime to pushing yourself and if you look at your to-do list and you identify what is the hardest thing? What is the thing I don't want to do? And you just start working on it. And you learn that through running to have kind of a stoic attitude towards everything in life. I'm just going to go, I'm going to try. I'm not going to complain. And because if you complain, you're like, oh, it's too cold. I don't really want to run. It's too hot. I don't really want to run or you won't get faster. And if you go out and you say, you know what I'm going to do it, you do get faster. And I apply that to everything in life. You ran a 1048, you're sophomore year. And it feels like this was a pivotal moment and inflection point in your life. How did that 1048 impact you? How did it impact your confidence? You're the most insane thing ever that race. There's a two mile race. And so I had gone to this new high school, Garnish Philips Academy, I never. Great high school, super smart kids show up. I'm in a weird dorm. I'm not that popular. I'm like, I'm not nothing's going that great for Nick. Winner of my sophomore year, I started as a sophomore. So I've only been there three months. I show up and I try out for the varsity basketball team because I was captain of my grade school basketball team. I don't make the varsity. All right, I'll make the JV. I don't make the JV. I'll make the JV to right. Of course, I don't make the JV to right. Like, Nick's. Nick's not doing very well. And so you have to do a sport. And so I'm like, well, I guess the only sport you can still join takes a while to get cut from three teams. You know, so a lot of the teams have closed. So the only one that's open is indoor track. I go over there, coaches like, all right, welcome. The season I'm like, tall and skinny puts me in the two mile. And I run the first one in 1143, which is not that good, but it's not terrible. And then I run, you know, the rest of the season, I'm running like 1135. And it gets time for the New England championships. Coach enters me, which was sort of surprising, but he enters me. And my goal was to run in 1130. And my track was 150 meters, 150 yards, a lap. And so I think it was like, I had to run between 21 and 22 seconds, a lap to run at 1130. I was like, that's what I can do. And then I go to this new track at Moses Brown, Rhode Island, but it was 160 yards. And so I go out there and I'm like, running the first lap in 2122. And I don't realize it, but I'm going a lot faster than I thought I was. So I thought I was chugging around at 545 pace. And I go through the first mile, and they're like, 523. I was like, what? I didn't quite believe it. And I thought I would be in like 10 for 12th place. So I was in third place. And so I ended up finishing the race in 1048. Hey, it was a lesson that I've held with me. And sometimes you have to kind of trick yourself into believing you can do something, right? I, if I had known how fast I was going, there's no way I would have been able to go that fast. But I had known that I was running 523s. I would have shut down. I would have been scared. My body would start to hurt. There would be all kinds of phantom pains. If I had known what was happening, I wouldn't have been able to do it. And secondly, you know, I succeeded. I ran this time in 1048 is good. It's not amazing, but it's good. And like suddenly I was cool, right? And there's like an article in the school paper about this sophomore who set the indoor class record and did it despite not having shown any promise yet. All the like super cool kids in my dorm. I'm like, wow, this is awesome. And so suddenly I had an identity, right? And when you're in high school, it's really helpful to have an identity. That's something you're good at. That's something that people know you're good at. Running was that for me. What happened from there is it led to more self confidence. And I started to embed our classes. It's been true throughout my life. Like when I run well, everything goes well. And I don't know which way the causation works, whether like when things are going well, I run well or whether when I run well, things go out. But certainly at this moment in high school, it was a situation where running well made everything go well. Running has been taken away from you at one point in your life. Yeah. Outside of your control, right? And medical diagnosis has sidelined you. What impact, not only having cancer, but what impact did it have the fact that you couldn't run for a bit, or at least again, it involuntarily sidelined you. That was a really dark, profound, and ultimately sometimes bad things happened to you in life. It turned out to be really good in the long run. This was, I'm, you know, I'm blessed that this happened to me. It's hard to say that, but I am. So in 2005, I ran the New York marathon in 243 and felt great, right? That's a good time. You know, I'd run much slower times. It was a breakthrough for me. Right afterwards, like a week afterwards. I go in and see the doctorate puts his hand on my throat. He's like, I see something there. And that leads me down this cycle where you're like, you know, I don't know if you've been through this, but where you, like, it's not going to cancer. They're going to test. It's a nodule. There's a cyst, right? Okay. They come into a test. It's like, okay, well, it's not what we want, but there's still a chance. Okay. And you go, you go through like five or six different steps. And in each one, you're like, it's not going to be cancer, right? It's going to, like we're going to see it's not. And then eventually, it's like, oh, it probably is. And so then they have to do surgery. They open up my neck. They take out half the thyroid. And they call me up. And they're like, we took out half your thyroid. Turns out you don't have cancer. It's great. And they call me back a week later. Like, sorry, we misread the slides you do. And they have to open it up again, take out the rest. And then it's this like you with your radiation treatment. You're on this synthetic hormone. It's got completely wiped out. And it was so tied in my mind to running because I've been so proud of this 243 and so excited and so happy. And so as I got through it and as I like came out on the other side of the treatments, I felt like I really needed to run again. In fact, I really needed to run fast again. So I started it up and slowly got back. And then amazingly, two years later, 2007, New York marathon, I ran another 243. And in fact, ran 13 seconds faster than I had before I got sick. And so it was a that was a pretty profound moment of my life. I love it. This idea of setting a stretch goal, a tough goal, a goal that you're not guaranteed to hit. I think there's application far beyond running. Again, we're going to talk about your business stuff here in a second. But I would love to hear what you've drawn from setting stretch goals and hitting them or setting stretch goals and not. And how it impacts you again as a leader, as just someone trying to make a difference in the world, someone trying to leave a positive dent in the world. How a setting stretch goals helped you. It's so important. You know, you have to sometimes say, you know what, we're going to like, there are two things that I like to think about. One is like two lessons from running. One is that you have to move at an uncomfortable pace. You don't get anything you want by being comfortable, right? And if you're working in a way that feels easy, and if you're setting deadlines that everything seems smooth and there's not a problem, you're not growing, you're not learning, you're not getting there, right? And that's like, that's a lesson from running. And it's a good lesson for work, right? You know, if I look at what I have to do and I look at what my goals are, like, you know, I can do this. Let's just get there. Then what's the point, right? And then the second is that sometimes you have to really set a audacious goal and then focus and say, we're going to lock in and get it, right? We're going through that right now at the Atlantic where we're setting like two extremely big goals, one for advertising side, one for the consumer side. And our projections don't suggest we're going to hit them, right? But the same was true the last time. I said, we're going to get the profitability and we're going to get a million subscribers. And we're going to do that in three years. I'm like, no, that's that's pretty hard, right? We're losing $30 million a year. We, you know, and we've got there. And sometimes having a really big goal, you know, motivates you, focuses you and you end up making all the tough choices you have to make and you get there. Sometimes it doesn't make, you know, I don't know. I had a, I had a whole set of goals for the marathon yesterday. I made up a whole set of plans based on how I felt and gotta say I missed every single one by a large margin. Why? What happened? Well, I think yesterday was a weird race. I went in and you, my goal at the beginning of the summer is I'm going to run a 230 marathon. I'm going to win my age group. And I had these like, sort of races along the way and I hit them all and hit all my markers. And if you'd ask me like mid August, I was like, I'm on track to run 230 with my age group. But ran this 100k during the summer and it kind of fried me in a little bit and started having some injury problems. So things were a little bit off and then I must have gotten some kind of respiratory infection because the last two weeks my resting heart rate has been skyrocketed. Like 15 beats of up where it should be. My HRV has been a third of what it should be. My respiratory rate has been like 20% higher than it should be. Like everything has been off. And I didn't feel sick and looks it, but something was wrong in my body. And so when I went into the race, I was like, well, I don't know how off I am. And I don't know how it's going to affect my running because sometimes you can you you can have a cold, you can feel terrible and you still run great, right? Or you know, Michael Jordan scored 42 points with a temperature of 103, right? Like, sometimes that you can play through it. Sometimes you can't. And so I made a sort of a set of plans for the race, but like I basically agreed. I was or not agreed. I rode a plan. I was like, okay, I'm going to run the first five miles at 630. And I'm going to see how I feel. And if I feel good, I'm going to go faster and faster and try to break 240 for the marathon. I don't feel good. I'll just hold 630 and run 250. And I ran the first five at 630. Next five ran a little quicker. And then it was like, oh, God, I'm not breathing right. And so from that on, it was, I would have said myself, continuous forward motion, continuous forward motion. And I finished in 306, which was, you know, 16 minutes worse than what I thought the worst case scenario was, but whatever, still finished. It's so fast still for most people, almost everybody. But how do you know when to say, oh, I don't know if I got it today versus Nick, let's go. We got to go, man, let's go. Push, push, push, push. Because I'm sure you've had days where you've done that where you're like, I'm not feeling it, man, but I'm pushing. I'm going to go anyway and you go 243 or do whatever. How do you balance that out in your head? Yeah. Every other time I've done it, my finish has been within a pretty tight range of what I expected, right? And I'm always able to kind of push through, push the pain aside. And I have a very good sense of my body. Yesterday was the first time where I didn't have it. You know, and I tried a couple of times, right? So once I start realizing about mile 10 or 11 that something's off, I tried different strategies. And I was like, okay, you know, stop looking at your watch, just like look at that person ahead of you, right? And like, stay on that person's shoulder, right? If you can stay on that person's shoulder for the next five miles, you'll do great. And then I got wasn't able to stay on that person's shoulder for like 20 feet. All right, let's just like meditate, right? Like, I'll sometimes do the same where I'm like, okay, right foot, left foot, right, left foot, right? And I would try to kind of focus on my meditation pattern. And then like that didn't work. And I was like, okay, I'm going to get reset my goals. I'm just going to run 650 per mile. Like I'm so look at my watch. I'm going to run 650. I'm not going to let it fall off from that. And I just couldn't like I couldn't lock into any of these goals. And I just kept sort of sliding back further and further. And then at a certain point, I can remember exactly. And it was like mile 14 or 15. It made me was going up the Queensborough bridge. I was like, you know, if I keep trying to like push myself or if I keep trying to like set some goal, if I keep trying to like keep going fast, I might not finish. And all the matters is that I finish, right? Like I'm here. I'm really finished. And so now my goal is to finish. And so there's a really interesting thing actually, a marathon running where in a race, what you don't want to do is to like slow down like 10 seconds a mile. I'd be like, okay, I'm running 620s, but I feel bad. Okay, now I'm running 630s, now I'm running 640s, now I'm 60s, now it's 710, 720, right? And you sort of, you can see this sometimes in marathon, when you look at somebody's like paste chart, right? It's just like every mile gets worse. Once you realize you're not going to hit your goal, it's better to kind of like make a full drop. Be like, okay, I'm now going to run 30 seconds per mile slower, but I'm going to hold that, right? Like identify how far there is and identify what pace you can run. Think of it as like, okay, I'm now at mile 17. So there's like a nine mile race. What can I run for these next nine miles? And that's sort of what I did yesterday. I was like, okay, I'm just going to run 730s and I'm going to run that for the last nine miles. And I pretty much held onto that and did okay. So I had a couple of mental resets yesterday that were complicated, interesting, but it was totally new terrain for me. How do you feel about that? Does that bum you out? Were you upset? Or is it just look at it as something to learn from? How do you respond to missing a goal like that? Something to learn from. If I thought, oh my God, like 50 years old, man, I've gotten slow. I really got so quickly. But I know that's not the case because I like literally, I ran a 50 mile race in April where I ran the first 26.2 miles, like 15 minutes faster than I ran the whole marathon yesterday. Like, that's crazy. I'm not cut. Just like it was just a bad day. You're listening to your kids. Dad, you're cooked. That's what my kids say to me. Right. Like I like four or five times this year, I've gone off and ran 26.2 miles as part of some workout faster than I ran the marathon yesterday. So like I'm fine. I just need to get over whatever was wrong with my breathing. So yeah, my son, you know, mocking me. It's like you got to bury that and turn another marathon, which well, let's see how I recover. Maybe I'll get out there and do another one before the end of the year. I love it. I saw that you read a book called The Warrior Athlete. You said I kept the book called The Warrior Athlete close to the end. What is it about The Warrior Athlete? How did it help you? I don't remember a ton about The Warrior Athlete. This is back when I was like 18. I remember a couple of things. I remember there's a great line in the book where it was, it's like this, it's this coach explaining the mentality of people he'd coach, some of whom I could want Olympic medals. And there's an amazing line in it that will always stick with me where the guy says, people sometimes ask me, do you have your athletes meditate before competition? And he's like, no, I have them meditate in competition. And I just loved that. I love the notion that like when you're competing, you're in a meditative flow state and I've held that with me, you know, throughout my life. The point in the book I was making there, it's, you know, that's a lesson I've held with me. Like that is a lesson that like 18 year old Nick has for 50 year old Nick. There are a bunch of other things I did at 18, which were insane. You know, I would lose a race and I'd go run sprints immediately afterwards. Like, don't do that, right? You know, the dumbest thing I did, I guess this is when I was 16. I'm like, you know, I should have better stomach muscles. And so I like, I watched dances at wolves at home. I think it was over Thanksgiving or something. And I'd like try to do sit up the entire movie, right? And that is a long movie, right? Like Kevin Costner, he'd be on and on in that movie. But I did sit up to the entire dances with wolves. And then of course, I pulled the muscle and it might happen then shortly thereafter. So, you know, it was a pretty headstrong kid, like just trying to like charge through it all. Probably like my 15 year old is now. Even though I try to tell him to like chill out sometimes. So I hinted at that I want to talk about the business side of things. So you're not just a runner, even though your times and how you win, you would think maybe that's all you did. But you're the CEO of the Atlantic, right? And I read that when Lorraine Powell jobs, right? This is Steve Jobs widow and David Bradley announced you as the CEO. They said, Nick is singular. Interesting. We've seen no one like him and that he brought, quote, a surround sound coverage of relevant experience. Man, that is awesome. What did you do to get Lorraine Powell jobs to say, Nick is singular. And by the way, what does that mean? Well, I think what it meant for them is that I had like a mix of talents that was rare or a mix of experiences that was rare. And what they were looking for in the CEO, like there are a lot of people who've been much more successful in business than I've been, right? They've run bigger companies. They've turned things around that were harder. But what I had was I had been a real journalist, like a serious journalist. I'd worked in the New Yorker for six years. I'd written important stories. I'd written a book. So I had journalism and then I had tech experience, right? I'd covered Silicon Valley. I'd started two startups. I, you know, I understood how Silicon Valley worked. And then I had business experience, right? And it was the combination of those three things that they liked and they hadn't seen them sure they had candidates who were stronger in each of those categories. But I don't think they'd seen anybody who had strengths in all three. And so it was just they wanted someone who could kind of pitch in place, second base and, you know, steel basis, right? Like they want it like some combination. They want to show Hey. Well, not, I mean, not quite. Because show Hey is like the best in the world at hitting, right? It would be like if show Hey was like a 270 hitter and at an ERA of four 20 and stole 20 bases a year, that's what they're like looking for. Was it by design that you tried to develop all of these different skill sets or was it you just kind of tackled what was in front of you? It's the way my personality works. And it's the always been my strength and my weakness, right? You know, if you go back and you look at the people who've watched me most closely, they have always said including my father, including my best bosses, including my college advisors, right? Like the thing that Nick is best at is you know, it's tons of energy and does lots of things and cares about the mall. And the thing that we wish we could get him to do is to like really lock it on one thing. And you know, like I had three majors in college, but probably each of my advisors across those three majors wishes I have like really focused a little bit more on whatever that major was. And so it just turned out that I have like done lots of different stuff. And so it worked out well for the Atlantic CEO job. So you think that's more of just how you're wired and you're still this way? That's how I'm wired. I like to you could see it in this marathon, right? Like where I ran a marathon, ran a pretty good marathon, but would have done better marathon if I really focused on it. My favorite comment after my the marathon was a friend of mine who one of the like most legendary New York City marathoners, you put a note on my Strava. He ran like 20 consecutive New York Marathons at sub 240. And he's like Nick marathon gods don't like it. If you're not fully focused on the marathon, even if what you're focused on is promoting a book about the marathon. So it's just my nature. I like to do I like to do things. I like to be moving around. I like to talk to lots of people. I like to have lots of different projects. And so the trick for me is making sure that I'm putting enough attention into a small number of things that really matter. So that's something I'm always trying to get right. So I told you before we started recording, but your book The Running Ground, it's one of my favorite books I've read in years. That's awesome. That's awesome. I could not stop. That's so cool. I'm so glad to hear that. Did you read in like a day? A couple days. Because I tried so hard to make it like readable in a short period of time. Well, it started with you put an excerpt and a number of friends of mine, my smartest friends were sharing it on Twitter and other places. And I was like, man, I got to read this. And the excerpt as I got into the book was actually different pieces of the book because I was like, wait, I've seen this. Oh, so we pulled different parts and put it all together and one thing, which was brilliantly done, by the way, that that alone is awesome as well. I think it's the first thing you ever published for the Atlantic. Is that right? Here is like, despite being a CEO, never wrote for it. Yeah, which is wild. But anyway, the reason I love it is because it's written almost like it's a fiction story, but it's a real story. And it's a kind of a memoir and you're very vulnerable, but not a cheesy or a weird way to like get clicks, but just in a genuine way. You're obviously a beautiful storyteller and an incredible writer. I'd love to hear just what you were thinking and how you did it, how you put it all together to go there and tell the truth about your dad and about your insecurities as a father and trying to be a good dad, but we're all trying to figure it out. What was it like as you're trying to put that book together because it's so personal. It's very personal and it was a very hard book to write for a couple of reasons. Took me five years, obvious because I'm CEO of the Atlantic and I've busy job. But I would just say, I'm going to spend 30 minutes on it today. I'm a set of timer and I'll work 30 minutes before my kids wake up and I'll work on it. I'm going to work on it 30 minutes tonight after the kids go to bed. Right. I'll just figure out how I'm going to get a little bit of, just make steady progress every day. It doesn't matter how long this book takes as long as I'm getting there. Kind of like running steady progress every day. Totally, exactly. And that would like, I literally like had a box and like how many consecutive days have I worked 30 minutes or more on this book, right? And it was basically every day for years. What was hard about the book were a few things. One is the structure is really complicated. I knew I wanted to tell my story. I knew I wanted to tell my story of how I went from being a good runner to being a very good runner. I wanted to tell my father's story about how running helped him hold his life together a hard time, how he had dealt with his father, how he passed his gift to running to me and then his later chaos. And then I wanted to tell the stories of some other runners in part because I wanted to universalize the experience of running and I wanted to get in people who could teach you things that my life story can't teach you, right? And can show you things that my life story can't show you. But I didn't want to just pick people off with Capedia or read runners world. And I wanted to find people who I knew, right? And who crossed paths with me so that it would fit into my narrative. So the first part of the project was like calling lots of people and talking lots of different runners and trying to figure out their life stories and figuring out who I'd put where. And then once I had that, I had the challenge of how do you put it together in a way that's smooth, right? And so how do you make it chronological? Because my life and my dad's life, if you tell them chronologically, my dad's life all happens before my life. And that doesn't make sense because then the reader will get lost. Like why are we reading a book about Scott Thompson? It's supposed to be a book like Nick Thompson. Then like how do you fit the other runners in? Like you want to put them in chronologically, but they're born at different times. And so I had this puzzle that took me a couple of years to figure out of where I would put the other runners where I put myself. And there are a couple of decisions I made that made the book work. So one is I decided that the first chapter would be a description of everything that happened in my mind during one race. And I did that because the book is really about the mind of a runner. And like what goes on in a runner's head. And I wanted to make it clear to the reader that this is not a biography. It's not an autobiography. This isn't essay about running and what it means. I wanted there to be an emotional connection between Nick Thompson and the reader immediately. And so that was a very good choice. Then I had a hard time figuring out which race it should be. Like should it be my best race should it be the worst race? Ultimately chose the 2007 New York Marathon because it's hiding so closely with my cancer diagnosis. So I did that. Then that allowed me to kind of fit pieces together more chronologically. And what I did is I would overlay my life and my father's life. So it was like my dad's time. We went to the same high school in college. So it was my dad's time. I never met my dad's time. I never met my dad's time Stanford. My time is Stanford. And once I'd done that, then the pieces all fit together. And so then I was able to chronologically make a structure as able to introduce the characters when they enter my life. Then the book worked. And so the hardest part was you know, right about my dad was hard writing reading his diary. So it's hard thinking through like what it means to expose all the sort of negative stuff of his life as hard. But what was really hard is turning it into a coherent hole. And that was what I spent the most time on. You are an exceptional storyteller. Again, you move me to tears multiple times through the beauty of the written word, which I so admire the craft of writing and written some books. I'm always in the process of writing the next one. It's really hard. You question yourself. You'll wonder is this any good? You get writers envy all the time. I hope you do even though I don't know how because I don't know who you would read to envy. But I definitely do. Especially reading your work or reading like Morgan Housel or some of my other friends. I just love to hear your overall philosophy on storytelling. I know you've done it for a long time, right? You're in this world, you're the CEO of the Atlantic. But just the craft of storytelling, I think this is a skill that leaders need. It's a mandatory skill for leaders to get good at and not enough of them study it and try to improve at it. If you were teaching a class of CEOs or senior leaders, and it's just about storytelling, right? So these are like business people. What are some of the elements of that class? What are some of the must-haves in that class of storytelling for leaders? Yeah. So one is like, I think of it as the cocktail party test. And if you were to describe the thing you're writing or the senior writing, and you were to start talking about it at a cocktail party, when people come towards you or people walk away. And if people would walk away, then you don't have it. You know, I can start talking about like my 2005 cancer diagnosis and the 2007 New York Marathon and people lock in. I start talking about my 2009 New York Marathon and no one cares. And so you can kind of test with your friends and sort of see like what has emotional resonance, what post people in. I also sometimes think of it as like the movie test. Can you visualize and can you run a movie in your head about what I'm writing about? Like, can you see it? Can you feel it? Because that's what's happening when somebody's reading a book. They're visualizing it in their mind's eye. And so if you can do that, then I'm succeeding. And if you can't, well, then it shouldn't be on the page. And so those are two tests that I like to use. And then another thing that's so important is every extra word, every extra thought, every extra detail that doesn't propel the story from where you are to the next spot or to the finish. It needs to be removed because every detail is an opportunity for distraction or opportunity to leave. And so you have a sentence or you have a name, right? You have the name of a person that's put in there. If that name is not essential, that name is potentially going to lead the other person out of the story and out of where you want them to be. This book is like 75,000 words long. And there's like 60,000 words that I cut. I just went through and I was like, is this sentence absolutely essential to the story? No, it is not. It's gone. You know, it went through with the running. There are a lot of races I've run in my life that I care a lot about and that means something to me. And like one out of every 20 of them is mentioned. And you're just taking stuff out non-stop. And that's a really important part of storytelling. But really it's like it's that first question of if you're to say it orally, will the people emotionally connect? Let me just say one thing about writers and because I get that a lot too. There are a lot of writers who I just think are amazing. I wish I could be like. And what I do with that is I read their work out loud. And so I will take a piece by someone who I think is a great writer. And let's say it's David Remembers. I say it's like it's Larissimic Farquhar. And this is amazing New Yorker writer. I will like read her stories out loud and think about what is she doing? How did this work? And then it helps me I think become a better writer. Let's get really tactical. Okay. What are some tactical kind of things? Somebody could implement. Let's say they're not very good. But at least they have enough awareness that they're willing to work on it. Yeah. What are some tactical? I could implement it right now for my next town hall or my next meeting or my next quarterly business review. And it will make it more entertaining. It will have the people kind of scooting to the edge of their seats. And I'm like, Oh, I wonder what next about this set? You know, what are some of those things people could do right now that maybe if they self-analysed, they're like, I don't have it yet. Take whatever you've written and like legitimately look at it and say, will people be able to visualize a movie in my mind while I say this? Right. Am I just saying like a bunch of words that you can't possibly visualize? I'm talking about tactics and OKRs and KPIs. And like, will they have an emotional connection to this? And if they won't try again, right? If it's important, right? Sometimes you should just go with your KPIs, your OKRs. And do you like what do you do when you're talking OKRs, KPIs, all these acronyms that not everybody knows even what you're talking about? How do you do that as a CEO? As a guy leading leaders? What do you do? A, like, I try very hard to like make sure there's an emotional point, right? Like, this is why this matters. Like, we are here today because we are trying to accomplish XYZ. Like, try to like, make it clear. This is, this is important, right? This is the magazine that Ralph Waldo Emerson started to create conversations to prevent American Civil War, right? And you try to tell a little story. The other thing that is so important, right? And one of the things I do in the book is like, if the reader can't visualize it, like, help them visualize it, right? So, I don't know, let's say I'm talking about Ralph Waldo Emerson, because I'm trying to make a point about the heritage of the Atlantic. OK, well, this is, you know, this is a magazine that Ralph Waldo Emerson started in a little house in Concert, right? A little White House in Concert, right? And you can go into that house today and you can see their Atlantics in the attic. And Emerson, you know, would walk there and you'd walk around Waldo and Plenty. Like, you kind of like, make it so they're there with you and can visualize it, right? And then you're building the movie in their head so they can see it and they can feel it and they can hear it, right? Like, when I write about these characters in the book, I'm trying to give you a sense of them physically. I'm trying to give you a sense of the space. I'm trying to give you a sense that like, you're reading about Tony Ruiz, my coach, and like, you can hear his voice, right? You can feel it. You can see him, right? Even if you've never seen a picture of him, at least that's what I'm trying to do. And so, when I'm talking to the staff, I'm doing a little bit. I don't want to overdo it, because then you see you're cheesy, right? You want to be getting across and helping them visualize what you're talking about and understanding, like getting a real emotional connection to the goal. I could talk about storytelling all day, but you're again, you're also the CEO. And so I'm fascinated by the people that make up a company because they're everything. It is everything. As a CEO, what are some of the must-haves you're looking for someone to hire? Well, let's say you're a part of the hiring process for any leadership role or any role at all within your company. What are those those must-have attributes to say, yeah, I want them to be on my team. We have this sort of this slogan at the Atlantic, spirit generosity, force of ideas, sense of belonging. And the first two are like crucial when you're hiring. Do you say this again? Spirit generosity, force of ideas, sense of belonging. Like, that's what we try to call to they here. And spirit generosity means like, can they work with people? Are they going to come in here and be territorial? Or are they going to say like six months later, actually, you know, I think the consumer team should report to be or I think that actually like, you know, this new unit, that's mine, right? Or are they going to like figure out what's best for the org, figure out how to like pick up the slack? Are they going to work with folks? If you don't have the spirit of generosity, it's not going to work, right? And then force of ideas, like, are you smart? Are you sharp? Are you going to bring things? You know, I take those two things as a starting point, I think work ethic is so important. Like, are you the kind of person who I like people who are just really driven and hardwired and I like edge, right? I like a little bit of like anxiety about how we're doing. You know, I want like reductively paranoid. Yeah, a little bit. Productively paranoid is a very good way to put it. There are too many people who are a little too comfortable, right? And who come to the land or her come to journalists is such an amazing prestigious place. And you know, then they get here and it's doing so well, right? And they're making money and they're owned by a billionaire. Like, it's okay, right? It's going to be fine, right? And it'll take care of me. And well, no, what I want is like, okay, did this get done? Let's get the next thing done. This gets on. It gets the next thing done. And you don't have to work, you know, I don't need people to work 100 hours a week, but I do need, I do need an edge. And I really like that in people who you just feel it. They're kind to everybody. You know, they're good to work with, but they're not, they're not complacent. So that's super, super important. And then, you know, teamwork, like filling in the gaps, like I have an amazing leadership team. We've like almost no turnover in the last three years. Came in and they're close. Some, some people who, you know, didn't work well with me, whether that's my fault or their faults. You know, so we made a whole bunch of changes. And now it's been smooth sailing. And that's I think one of the reasons why it's been so successful last couple of years or any of them big time runners. I don't think we have any other big time runners here. There are a lot of journalists who, a surprising number of people are like elite runners in journalism. Like the New Yorker, George Packer, one of my favorite writers in the world, right? Like a two 46 marathon 40 years ago. And Goldstein, you ran a copy desk at the New York Red Run, like a three 10. She's like 70 years old. Then like there are things that you are like a little nerdy, a little cerebral. And those things kind of over index and running. They kind of have to be a little nuts to run as fast as you do for as long as you do because that means you have to be insane about your training. Yeah. I mean, the reasons why there's certain mental skills that are certain habits of mind that come from running that I think help in journalism and helping life. And there's the, you know, there's kind of the dedication. There's the understanding of pacing, you know, there's a kind of like a mental clarity that comes from being outside all the time and being in your own head. There's a little bit of like understanding your own philosophy. There's some like really positive habits and there's some negative ones. Like if you run really fast, you probably train a lot. It takes a lot of time. It can also make you self-absorbed to get make yourself as right. You like you spend all this time focusing on yourself. And you have to push those things aside. So, you know, everything you do reinforces your personality and makes you who you are. And so there are a lot of ways being an intense runner helps you in the steal. And there's some ways where it doesn't. This is something I maybe should not say, but I'm curious to hear from you. Definitely say it. So I'm a like a workout every day guy. My background is sports football leadership positions is quarterback. So I like to lift weights. I like to do running, but in different ways than you. I want to be in shape. I sometimes struggle when I'm with other leaders or leadership positions of people who don't seem to be that disciplined. They let themselves go physically because I feel like you could let yourself go mentally. So maybe they look way out of shape or they're not disciplined with what they eat, whatever. Again, this is a judgmental thing and I like being curious, not judgmental like Ted Lassa, right? How about you, man? Like you're psycho. You're disciplined. You're nerdy. You're all these things. You're super smart. You run really, really fast for very long distances. How do you manage that or do you? Do you find yourself being judgmental at times when you see people who aren't disciplined like you? Well, the discipline can come in so many different ways. You know, I think about some of my best colleagues. I don't know. The guy I work with the most, the editor in chief of the Atlantic. Has he ever run a mile like that? Has he ever lived it away? I mean, yeah, sure. I guess when he was young and he was in the military, but like the last 25 years, no, is he disciplined? Hell yeah. Right? Works all the time. Right? It's all the time. Like puts his life on like focused on every sentence at the Atlantic. The military background, though, seems like a guy would have that as a fundamental part of this life. Yeah, but just doesn't have the physical like the physical thing is gone. So I don't mind people who don't worry about their physical discipline as long as they still have the mental discipline. Gotcha. I think you can definitely have one and I've had great. Really? Yeah. So do you think they can be completely separate? Like I can be super focused and disciplined here. But over here, I'm just I don't care. I don't I don't know. Like what do you think? I think you can. I think they're definitely people who can be. And also like sometimes you you just need to get different things. So like the most one of the most interesting people I've ever met, this guy who was friends with my father, of course, and they'd met at Oxford. It was this man. He's still with us actually in his mid 80s. And he had like the most incredible mind. You know, who would read you go to the library and he'd read like multiple books a day, speed, read them. Good. Remember everything. You know, could multiply six digit numbers by each other in his head and could like talk to you about anything. Right. I remember once I wrote a book on the Cold War and I like I read it out loud to him. And he fact checked it as he went along. He's like, no, Dean Atterson was not born that year. He was born this year. And he didn't work at Covington. He worked at Sherman and Sterling or the other way around. Like the guy was incredible, right? And he had the most remarkable discipline for his memory and his mind. But he also like couldn't dress himself. He had like one change of clothes weighed like 200 something pounds and drank only diet coke. And I once went to his apartment and like there was just like a mattress with no sheets and like cases of diet coke and books, right? And the world is full of people who are different and interesting. And like one of the things that I try to cultivate is like being able to get the most out of different kinds of people. So I actually brought that guy on the Washington Monthly where I worked where I worked in the fact checking apartment. You're just like no one else in the office could handle him. So we didn't have him coming to the office because he's like too loud and too crazy. But we'd send him every story and hit this like read it and be like wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And he always knew everything. He was he was basically chat GPT in a human brain before we had chat GPT. He would come into my dad's house and he was just like, there'd be like a jug of Carlo Rossi wine like the stuff you got for like 499 and my dad would like buy these jugs all the time. And he would just like take one bill but you plus his mind assists. Oh man, I love the clothes with something about parenting. We started with your dad. I like to end with you as a dad. You wrote nothing makes me more worried about failure than parenting. Parenting is suffused with regrets, confusion and mistakes. But when I run by I know my children are rooting for me to succeed with infinite love and enthusiasm. Man, how does running and parenting go together for you and how are you striving to be a great dad? You know, I strive to be a great dad by like really like trying to pay attention to what my kids want and trying to help them out and support them and never push them too hard and never force them and never try to not make the mistakes that my grandfather made try to not make the mistakes that I made. I know I'll make my own mistakes and they'll be intimidating in different ways. You know what my dad gave to me is just constant love like he was chaotic and caused all kinds of hell and I sure as hell hope I'm not like bankrupt in Southeast Asia begging my kids for money in 30 years. So maybe I'll have different problems. And so I tried you have three boys. I tried to very much be there for them with running. You two of them run with me. You know, one of them really wants to run a marathon. He's the 15 year old, right? He's the yesterday I ran that marathon. Everybody else was like, great job. Necky killed it and he was like, that sucked. Is it the best at keeping you humble aren't they? Yeah, he was so funny. He's like, I come home. He's not there. He's off like practicing practices all the things off at the park like playing pickup soccer with adults. And he comes back and he's like, whoa, dad, he's like, dad 306. He's like, let me tell you something. Do not put that on Strava. Do not tell anybody you ran. And like, you had to go out there tomorrow and run a marathon by yourself and do better. It's like, thanks, man. That's the best. You know, he's awesome. Like the kids, all three of them are just they're amazing, wonderful people. And I, one of the nice things I love spending time with them. Like I just I have so much fun. So that's good. I love it, man. I know we got to run, but one more before we run, you're meeting with somebody who's, you know, just finishing up at Stanford or some other university and they want to leave a positive dent in the world like you are doing. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd say to that person? Well, you know, for someone who's just finishing up college right now, this is like the hardest time. I, you know, it's always a hard time to finish up college. The world has always changed. It's always complicated. This is the hardest because of AI and the uncertainty about what the world will look like. You know, my advice is find the things you're passionate in and like really focus on them. Lean into stuff you love and sometimes they can be harder to determine what it is you love and what you're passionate about. Sometimes they can lead you astray. I spend some time with this in the book, but my 20s weren't great professionally. I found a career I loved who was journalism, but I wasn't good at it yet. But like find something you love and work at it, right? And like keep pushing and always work hard and like eventually things will, will turn out for the best. You know, I mentioned this earlier when sort of the stoicism and running, but I do feel like this for young people too, which is, you know, find a thing you love and keep going and keep working at it and have faith that over time, like what you want to happen, what will happen and things will be okay. So good, man. The book's called The Running Ground, which there's a great, I just learned it when I was rereading this morning about the reason behind the title, which we get to later, but the Running Ground, a father, a son and the simplest of sports. By the way, again, from someone who is not a long-distance runner, the beauty of the writing and the storytelling is why you will love this book. It's one of my favorite books I've read in the last years because of the craft of the storytelling and how it moves you emotionally. I could absolutely feel that movie in my head, whether it was with you, your dad, your kids, your wife, the characters you write about. It was amazing. So thank you, man, for being here. I would love Nick to continue our dialogue as we both the rest, man. Totally, Ryan, I was so great to talk with you. I'm so happy you liked the book, Love Chatting, and thanks for having me on. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleater.com. I mean, well, you learned from this great conversation with Nick Thompson, a few takeaways from my notes. Stretch goals should make you uncomfortable. Nick said the best goals force you to move at a pace that doesn't feel sustainable. That's the whole point. This doesn't just apply to running by the way. Growth happens when you're reaching beyond what feels natural. If your goals are comfortable, they're not big enough. Then great storytelling, man. I could have went on this forever. Great storytelling requires emotional resonance and visualization. Nick asked himself, can the readers see the movie in their head? Can they feel it? Whether you're writing a book, pitching an idea, or leading a team, if people cannot visualize and feel what you're saying you haven't done the work. Then afterwards, remove every extra word. Each one needs to move the story forward. All of us would be better doing this. I like talking about the people he hires at the Atlantic. They share four must have attributes, a spirit of generosity, a force of ideas. Gotta be really smart. They're relentlessly hard workers and they have an edge, kind of an anxiety about getting great work done. A productive paranoia, as Jim Collins might say. That last one really, really stuck with me. The best people, they're not just talented. They're driven by some sort of productive anxiety to do work that really matters. Then they want to do the next one and the next one and the next one. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling your friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Nick Thompson. I think it'll help people become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. You also go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show rate. It hopefully five stars. Write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Stay away.