Vikas Shah - Ep #36
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Professor Vikas S. Shah is an award-winning entrepreneur, strategist and educator who has built businesses in diverse sectors around the world for almost 20 years.
But the real reason we wanted to speak to him is that he’s got coolest side-hustle you've never heard of: interviewing the most incredible people on the planet.
In 2007 Vikas realised the missed long-form interviews that he loved so much and decided to do them himself. Since then he has interviewed the CRAZIEST list of people you can imagine: Maya Angelou, FW de Klerk, Buzz Aldrin, Usain Bolt, Ai Wei Wei, Sir Richard Branson, Moby, Melinda Gates, Penn Jillette, and a ton more.
We spoke about what he learnt from his subjects, and from over 10 years of working on the mother of all side-projects.
Here are 3 Key Takeaways.
1) Purpose vs Purposefulness: we live in a world of purpose porn. Vikas doesn't think it's healthy for everyone to wave their massive missions around. His solution: Do purposeful work. You don't need to seek a life purpose.
2) The real depths of forgiveness. Vikas shares a story from one of his favourite interview subjects, Holocaust survivor, Iby Knill. In an age of instant judgement, hearing that Iby forgave her captors blew my mind.
3) Life and Death are intertwined mysteries. We need to get more guests on to talk about life and death. We're the Lifefulness Podcast because we're all about life, and this pod digs into it. We need more of this.
You have to get his new book 'Thought Economics' which collects and collates these interviews. It's the ideal loo book.
Instagram: @thisismrshah
Twitter: @MrVikas
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