CHAPTER 8

HOW TO ENGINEER A HOT STREAK

“Honey, you have to see Hasan’s special!”

I joined my wife on the couch to watch the comedy special, Homecoming King. Soon I understand exactly why Hasan Minhaj had captivated my wife (and thousands of others). His wit is quick, and he’s charming. His political analysis is irreverent yet sophisticated. He incorporates popular culture, and he’s uncommonly genius. That’s why his Netflix show, The Patriot Act, had reimagined the late-night talk show.

The Patriot Act focused largely on somewhat sophisticated political commentary, but with a whole lot of hilarity and a hip technological setup. Think Stephen Colbert meets Tosh.0. Minhaj is a South Asian North American. I am too, so I understand the disruptive game he was playing. He was criticizing American politics as an American but also as a first-generation immigrant. And he was doing it against the backdrop of a political climate that was two years into Donald Trump’s presidency.

Within our culture, being a comedian isn’t on the table. Or on the wish list. As Minhaj put it, “South Asian parents are highly open with their kids. You can be any kind of doctor you want!”

Minhaj might as well have asked to join the circus as an intern. Sure, his parents may have been proud of him on the opening night of his new, live-audience political comedy show, but all the adventures he had to take to get there weren’t exactly smiled upon.

For eight years, he did stand-up at comedy clubs, auditioned for TV pilots, and produced his own content online. Most of this effort came with little return. And then a legitimate opportunity arose when Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show asked Minhaj to come in for an audition. Stewart himself interviewed and hired Minhaj (it would be the last hire Stewart ever made for the show). That gig allowed Minhaj to continue pursuing his stand-up dreams in the mecca of comedy, New York City. Ironically, though, Minhaj came to an existential realization—he wasn’t the best comedian.

Minhaj would watch other comedians own the rooms and absolutely crush it. He performed well but never stirred up the same level of commotion as the greats in his field . . . until he layered in storytelling with his comedy. That’s when he found a golden “in.”

He took his unique blend of storytelling and comedy to the clubs of New York City. Audiences loved his raw accounts of growing up as an Indian in California, tempered with his comedic hot takes on politics.

With newfound confidence, he created an off-Broadway show. He begged his wife, Beena Patel, to withdraw $27,000 from their joint bank account to rent the Cherry Lane Theater. He called the show Homecoming King. He put all his eggs in his storytelling basket and went to work. Within a month’s time, the show was starting to sell out.

He took out another $25,000 to shoot a video trailer for Homecoming King. He was unabashedly attempting to turn some heads at Netflix to get a nod for one of its coveted specials. He caught their attention, and they filmed his special and slated it for release.

But then things got really interesting.

Remember, Donald Trump was president. White House and press relations were a bit . . . “strained” to say the least. For the first time since the 1970s, the president publicly boycotted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which generally had been a time when the press and the pres would come together for an evening of comedic solidarity. It was a well-respected tradition, a one-night truce before getting back to the “us versus you” mentality that plagues politics and journalism. But Trump wasn’t having it. He wouldn’t be going. Then James Corden famously declined his invitation to go as well. The upcoming evening quickly became a symbol of the nation’s divisions. As Corden’s and Trump’s responses indicate, many were gun-shy about even showing up. But not Minhaj, who was approached to host the evening. When many weren’t putting their hats in for that job, he took advantage of their hesitation. It was risky—one wrong joke, and the president, the media, and/or either half of the country may laugh at him, not with him. But Minhaj made a bold bet on himself and hosted.

He wasn’t just successful. He was a showstopper.

Minhaj later commented that even those who disagreed with his beliefs thought he did an outstanding job as he comedically highlighted that one of America’s longstanding values is freedom of the press. The public heralded his performance, and he made headlines globally. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect—Homecoming King dropped a couple of weeks later, exponentially compounding the spotlight that was already shifting onto him. His star was rising.

And that’s when Netflix called (again).

Watching Minhaj’s popularity rise high, Netflix wanted to know what else he could do.

Minhaj went back to his wife and asked for another swipe at their life savings. He rented out a recently abandoned state-of-the-art studio. Over one weekend, he and some stage designers and writers built and shot a proof of concept, a sort of pilot episode for what could be a new show. When Minhaj came in to give his pitch to Netlix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos and their team, he played the concept video. Netflix signed him for 32 episodes (a contract they later extended).

Minhaj had successfully jumped through a series of hoops all at once, and for just a moment in time, Netflix, his own talents, popular opinion, and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner all aligned perfectly. In one moment, he leaped through a decade of hurdles. Having cleverly said yes to the dinner when others said no, he enjoyed a moment of popularity that may have otherwise cost years to earn.

LIGHTNING STRIKES

If you’ve ever surfed, you understand perfect timing. Something about catching a wave just right feels like music. The momentum swells and carries you. All the effort, all the trying, all the crashing is suddenly worth it. Studies show something fascinating: Pro surfers spend upward of 95 percent of their time doing everything but surfing—paddling, waiting for the next wave, and watching the horizon. Only 5 percent of their time is spent riding a wave.¹

If we pretended, for a minute, that pro surfers have a nine-to-five job on the waves, that means, out of their eight-hour workday, they’re only spending 24 minutes actually surfing. Still, they’re willing to spend the other seven-plus hours waiting because they know that catching a wave just right is glorious.

In this chapter, we’re going to discuss your waves, your moments, your windows of opportunity to strike and strike big. I call these “Lightning Strikes”—when all the hoops align perfectly, and your risk will have outsized returns. Nail this Lightning Strike moment, like Minhaj did, and you’ll land a promotion, start a company, or become famous.

How can you prepare for these strikes? And how do you keep them coming? That’s what we’ll be discussing this chapter:

1.   UNDERSTAND HOT STREAKS. If a Lightning Strike is a moment in time when everything aligns for maximum impact, a hot streak is getting multiple strike opportunities in a row. Science shows that not only are these possible, but you’re likely to experience one in your lifetime, predictably after a period of intense exploration.

2.   PREPARE FOR THE STREAK. What can we do to prepare ourselves, like Minhaj did, for a hot streak of Lightning Strikes? We can stack our gifts, apply them to unique opportunities, and reflect on what’s unique about ourselves. All these activities help us to capitalize on our moments, the windows of time that are made, seemingly, just for us and our unique abilities.

3.   ENGINEER THE HOT STREAK. Some say you can’t make your streak happen, that it’s all left to chance. I disagree. In fact, later in this chapter, I give examples of companies that are doing exactly that—engineering their moments.

UNDERSTAND HOT STREAKS

What’s interesting about Minhaj isn’t just that he had one big hit. It’s that he had a series of back-to-back-to-back smashes. He started heating up when he landed his spot as a writer with Stewart; soon after that, he discovered that his true genius is storytelling combined with comedy. Next, he had a hit with Netflix, followed by the opportunity to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, then another opportunity came along with The Patriot Act. They all came in rapid succession, in a hot streak.

Hot streaks have been well studied in sports. In athletics, a hot streak typically occurs in a single game after an athlete heats up, and for some reason, that athlete enjoys a few minutes or even hours of insane success: A point guard scores crazy three-pointers in a single basketball game, or a pitcher throws a nine-inning no-hitter. Video games emulate this phenomenon. In many role-playing games or first-person shooters, your character will “charge up” after a few minutes in the game. Then, for a limited amount of time, you get seemingly magical powers, allowing you to defeat opponents with ease.

In life outside of athletics and video games, hot streaks also happen, though usually they occur over the time span of a few years, not within a single evening. An unknown scientific researcher releases one good paper, then another, then another. For a few years, their work is included in every book about the subject, and every media outlet is talking about their discoveries. In music, an artist suddenly releases one big hit. Then their next album wins multiple Grammys, and then, for another couple of years, they do collabs with the hottest producers and artists.

Dashun Wang, a professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, has been obsessed with understanding these hot streaks for decades. After studying how these occur, he concluded that people have at least one hot streak in their life. Wang initially suggested that the streaks appear somewhat arbitrarily out of nowhere As he told Kellogg Insight in 2021: “Hot streaks seem to happen for most everyone. . . . But it seemed like they come about by ‘magic’ or just randomly.”

While interesting, there’s not a lot we can learn from such an analysis. But then—with a little help from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam—Wang started theorizing that maybe, just maybe, there was a bit of order to when those hot streaks appear. He dove back into the research, examining the careers of over 25,000 artists, movie directors, and scientists along with their aggregate millions of pieces of work. After putting all the data in, he teamed up with some hot researchers and sprinkled in some cutting-edge AI analysis. He wanted to see if, beneath the seemingly random occurrence of hot streaks, there is a trend. Here’s what he came up with:

Hot streaks are not random.

He put together a two-pronged framework to encapsulate how streaks occur across every industry for every individual:

PRONG 1—EXPLORATION. For those individuals who experience a hot streak—an extended period of incredible momentum—there’s first a period of unadulterated exploration, in which they simply discover and “play.” The soon-to-be hot streakers first allow themselves to charge up by experimenting in a variety of areas, with varying degrees of success. Maybe they head to the French countryside (like Van Gogh did) and try their hand at different types of art, taking in the ambient sights and sounds. Perhaps a researcher will just let their mind wander, and they tinker around with a variety of seemingly unconnected experiments. This period is a critical precursor to what comes next.

PRONG 2—EXPLOITATION. After exploration, the individuals then prune back their efforts, laser-focusing on what they’re most talented at. And then they execute. The result is a series of disproportionate successes that often have more impact on their field and legacy than the rest of their career combined.

We can put these prongs together so that we can actually anticipate our hot streaks.

PREPARE FOR THE STREAK

Here’s what we want to do: We want to enjoy the period of exploration and prime all the goodness we can out of it so that we prepare for what comes next—exploitation.

The goal during a period of exploration is to find convergences—to identify what you’re great at and how that interacts with the marketplace. You need to spend this time discovering, trying, and failing. You should focus on playing more than winning.

By the end (which has no real defined date) you should understand what you’re great at and how all of your unique qualities can be pointed at the marketplace.

Your hidden superpowers can arise at the intersection of your role and an intangible: Perhaps you’re a financial advisor who can excite people with numbers. Maybe you’re a salesperson who listens well, which you find differentiates you among the usually extroverted, fast-talking people in sales. Or perhaps your superpower is buried within your hobbies and has seemingly little to nothing to do with your job. Think of your knowledge of social media, your interest in Bitcoin, your charisma, your self-reflection, your intuition, your design skills, etc.

When you find the intersection of your uniqueness and marketplace demands, you’re set up for exploitation—applied science, if you will.

Want a hot streak? Find what makes you hot. Here’s how:

STACK YOUR GIFTS

You can combine multiple gifts, just as Minhaj did, in what’s called “gift stacking.” Simply put together a few areas you’re good at, so you can create a super-niche in a particular skill set where only you can truly excel.

I’ve studied the great comedians and others who know how to work a crowd. I’ve learned from them, and copied them. By combining what I learned with my skill set of the visual arts, I’ve created a virtual keynote experience that I believe is truly superior. Together, I’ve created a niche at the convergence of keynote speaking, comedy, and disruption.

Rupi Kaur is another person who’s mastered gift stacking. She delivers poetry at live events in addition to being an Instagram artist and a visionary. She’s not the best in any one of these categories, but she’s managed to combine all of them to create a following of millions on Instagram and across the globe.

APPLY UNIQUE GIFTS TO UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES

Sometimes you can learn a new skill and combine it with a current one when you feel the tide turning. A journalist, traditionally a “writer,” may consider the convergence of writing and electronic media and decide to learn web design and computer programming, creating a desired set of skills in storytelling using both written words and website design. Elsewhere, a logo designer may realize that with the uprising in voice, it would be wise to learn how to create “audio logos.”

Perhaps you’re a lawyer who’s also an avid sports card collector, and when NBA Top Shot was thrust into the limelight, you capitalized by delivering legal counsel to those who own and trade NFTs. Or maybe you see a convergence of technologies that appeal directly to your role, your interests, or your experience, and you feel a wave. In any case, when the right wave builds, ride it.

PRACTICE ON SMALL WAVES

Taking advantage of your window in time, jumping straight through when all the swinging hoops align, is a matter of practice, repeated attempts, and continual progress. I don’t have an exact answer for when your moment will come, but I can tell you this: You need to be ready when it does. So, I’ll say it again: Place small bets. Exercise your innovation muscle and build your tolerance for risk by taking every opportunity you can to bet on yourself.

You can’t go all-in all the time; but you can and should bet on yourself in doses. Therefore, it’s important for you to continually place small bets on yourself. For example, instead of changing from your insurance job to a videographer role, perhaps you ought to consider asking your boss if you can use your videography skills within your insurance role. Minhaj made incremental bets by experimenting with the storytelling medium and by accepting the invitation to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. They weren’t easy decisions, but they were bets that helped him learn more about himself. You should always be on the lookout for chances to take, for opportunities to place bets on yourself. Remember, you don’t have to re-create yourself in a day; you just need to dent the outside, to chip here and there.

Exploration happens before exploitation precisely because you aren’t trained and focused on one area. You must let your mind explore and your skill sets expand. Give yourself the space and time to explore your passions

Then you’re ready for what comes next: exploitation.

WAIT FOR ENGINEER THE HOT STREAK

In 1968, Robert K. Merton, Harriet Zuckerman, and a few others wanted to understand why a small number of scientists and researchers attracted a disproportionate amount of attention from their peers.²

They wanted to know why those specific people continued to receive all the press, grant dollars, and prestige in their community, while thousands of other academics were left to split what little remained.

Merton and company discovered that when researchers had a few early successes, they would get cited more often. Then these early citations would parlay them into future successes, because as others cited their work more frequently, they were able to garner more attention and more grant money. With more grant money, they were able to do more research, keeping them in the spotlight and monopolizing necessary resources to keep their research going. Plus, because others had cited them, more researchers were disproportionately likely to cite someone who already had plenty of citations. It’s the same reason you’re likely to go to a restaurant with 100 positive reviews rather than a restaurant with only 10 positive reviews, or why you’ll buy an item on Amazon that has 10,000 reviews over one that has only 5 or 10. Once a researcher, a restaurant, or a product has a certain amount of early successes, that particular entity will continue to distance themselves from the pack as others rely on those early votes of confidence.

Merton coined this discovery the “Matthew effect,” from which we derive the concept “the rich get richer.” Scientists and philosophers have since applied the Matthew effect to nearly every field. Essentially, some people enjoy more fame, popularity, money, or success because they’ve enjoyed an amount of it previously.

A young soccer player who can dribble, pass, and shoot just one or two notches better than their peers will attract better coaches, who will likely spend a disproportionate amount of time helping them develop their skills. With more skills developed, they’ll likely get more playing time. With more playing time, comes more attention from scouts. With more scout attention, they’ll have a higher likelihood of landing a scholarship at a good school. With a scholarship at a top university, they’ll be exposed to the best practice fields, toughest competitors, and a highly paid coaching staff, all helping them develop into a world-class athlete. The same effect occurs in every field, from science, to music, to innovation.

While I was at Deloitte, there was a policy that ensured every staff member was assigned a mentor, someone who was essentially responsible to look out for a newer employee and advocate for their career success. One of my mentees was Samuel, who wasn’t originally on my team; instead, he was blasting away at a large-scale ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation project. All the while, his real passion was blockchain. He obsessed over it, while the ERP project was sucking the life from him.

Samuel eventually moved onto one of my innovation-related projects, and with that one small step, he came alive. Others in the firm began to network with him, and he took on more and more projects in blockchain. Eventually he left Deloitte and became a strategist at a blockchain-related firm. Then he moved again, becoming the vice president of growth at a blockchain-based application company called Moves. Each success inspired the next. The rich got richer.

But let’s take this concept one step further and show how your riches change others’ expectations of you.

As David Robson pointed out in his book The Expectation Effect,³ scientific evidence suggests that when someone expects X to happen, X is indeed more likely to occur.

So as people witnessed Samuel’s success in the blockchain space, they naturally developed an expectation that he would succeed in the future, increasing his odds of success. With every added advantage, his chances of success increased.

Of course, notice that all of this is dependent upon an initial success. Note that it’s “the rich get richer.” If you want your efforts to multiply, you’ve got to start somewhere. In other words, do something that will give you this initial success.

While Wang thought you couldn’t directly impact when your period of exploitation occurred, I don’t buy that. I can show you how some businesses are forcing their own success, creating, at the very least, the appearance of their own hot streaks. They’re using the Matthew Effect and the Expectation Effect to essentially force their own periods of success.

Take the company MSCHF. The company has driven massive results and sales by engineering multiple Lightning Strikes in the form of “drops,” specific releases of items on certain days, usually about every two weeks. You sign up via their app, and then on the day of the next drop, the company reveals the piece of clothing you can buy, the standardized test you can take, or the weird video you can watch. Yeah, it’s that varied. The company’s goal is simple—create anticipation around a big moment in time.

MSCHF is odd, for sure. It’s the company behind the infamous Lil NAS X Satan Shoes, in which they put a bit of blood into Nike Shoes, then sold them for about $1,000 apiece (Drop # 43). Before that, on Drop #7, they sold “Jesus Shoes,” footwear with 60 ccs of “holy water” from the River Jordan (where Jesus walked on water). Drop #45 was a cookie contest—whoever accepted the most website cookies won 100 pounds of tangible tasty cookies. (User WELP competed and won, with over 140 million website cookies accepted.)

MSCHF has mastered the art of creating its own Lightning Strikes, one after the other. Instead of waiting for “the moment” to jump in, MSCHF engineers it.

So if you want a hot streak, engineer a big moment. Then follow it up again, as often as possible. Here are six steps to make it happen:

1.   SET A DATE AND PUBLICLY COMMIT TO IT. Whether it’s telling your partner, team, friends, or social media following, if you publicly commit to a time or day where you’ll make a Lightning Strike, you’ll be more likely to commit.

2.   CREATE INTENSITY. I got this idea from entrepreneur and podcaster Shaan Puri. It’s the idea of training your mind to be intense about a particular task. By taking a massive action with force, you immediately convince yourself and others that you will do anything to make your ideas happen. So be really, really intense about your drop date. I mean, seriously, be just a tad overkill about how awesome this thing is going to be. Tell others; post about it; send a press release to your friends in journalism—do anything you can to drum up buzz and excitement.

3.   BUILD A BIGGER SPOTLIGHT. This is where you can bring the idea of “cosigning” into the mix. Did someone help you on your project at all? Build the momentum by saying, “Hey, this person helped with this, and we’re stoked to be releasing it!” One of the reasons MSCHF does so well is that they always co-brand with other exciting entities. Sharing the spotlight really just builds a bigger one.

4.   PROMISE MORE THAN YOU SHOULD. We often play it safe, by undercommitting and overdelivering. But if you promise more than you should, and still push yourself to overdeliver, you’ll create extraordinary momentum for yourself.

5.   VISUALIZE YOUR IMPACT. Visualize your work having a massive impact on others. If you know that what you’re doing is a big, good thing for others, then you’ll have the motivation to pull it off.

6.   REPEAT. If you can engineer one Lightning Strike, then you can engineer another, then another.

Here’s an example of creating a Lightning Strike for yourself in action.

Let’s say that you want to start a podcast about how to create audio logos. You start by inviting a bunch of industry experts in both audio engineering and branding onto your new podcast. You conduct some initial interviews, and then send out the first few episodes to your podcast editor.

Now put a launch date on it. Pick a Friday, a Tuesday, whatever you need, but make it real. Commit to it; then blast out a social media post and/or an email, letting everyone know, “Hey, August 1 is the day!”

Now sell it—build that intensity like your Lightning Strike moment depended on it. Talk about how awesome your guests are, how amazing your intro music is, whatever you want. Remember to bring in as many cosigners as you can think of—anyone who helped you on this podcast. Tag everyone you can, as publicly as you can, and make it big. Throw the audio engineer, your guests, cohosts, anyone you can think of a huge shout-out. Thank them and praise them often.

Then overpromise. I get it; it’s scary to say, “This is gonna kill it!” but honestly, half the battle is in your excitement. If you’re excited, and you think it’s going to do well, people will too. It’s like hosting a party—tell everyone how amazing it’s going to be, and people will show up; act like you’re unsure if anyone will come, and no one will.

Finally, visualize how much this is going to help others. An audio logo podcast? I mean, come on—that could be hugely valuable to brand marketers. Likely they’ll learn a ton. Focus on whom you’re serving with your drop, and you’ll be more excited about bringing them value than you will be nervous about your acceptance.

Now, for the final step:

The hot streak. Take that new podcast you’ve created, hype it up, get everyone involved, overpromise and overdeliver, and then do it again. Keep striking; keep building. Create your own momentum, and make that hot streak appear, whether it wants to or not.

DON’T BE A HODAD

Your big moments won’t always scream, “Hey, now’s the time to jump in.” In fact, sometimes the seemingly worst possible times are the very instances you should jump in.

In 2020, the world stood arrested as a pandemic shook humanity. I had given a few keynotes already that year, but soon I watched as the ecosystem for keynote speakers was entirely disrupted. What would I do next?

Other speakers turned to a poorly produced virtual avenue, with a spotty digital platform and a talking head appearing over a grainy laptop camera. That was the best most speakers came up with—plenty just canceled altogether.

I saw the moment as something that could be huge for me. I could just feel it: Video, digital, and charisma are all in my DNA. No one else was seeing the opportunity to create an enhanced virtual keynote experience, but I was seeing the confluence of the world’s needs and my natural abilities.

So, I asked my team, “Can we create the greatest livestream experience ever witnessed?” Was it a big question? Sure. But I wanted to elevate the game.

My team didn’t disappoint. They said “yes, and,” bringing their own ideas in. Soon we rented the 700-person Myer Horowitz Theatre. We bought Hollywood-quality digital cameras, and we tripled down on our video production game. My team and I carefully plotted how to capture my charisma on stage and transport it across a digital platform.

After a couple of virtual keynotes that my team rocked, other conferences heard that I was available and prepared to go fully digital. They called and booked me. More and more weekends started filling up. By the end of 2020, I’d spoken at more conferences than I had in 2019. And in 2021, I had my best speaking year ever.

I can give you strategies and pro tips all day about engineering your own hot streaks, but in the end, it’s up to you.

Surfers have a name for those who hang out on the beach all day and have all the trappings of a surfer—they have the suits, the music, and maybe even the cool hair, but they never actually jump in. They’re called “hodads.” And you never want a surfer to call you that.

After consulting with dozens of CEOs and frontline workers, large firms and small companies, tech unicorns and stodgy enterprises, I’ve concluded that the only behavior that truly distinguishes between disruptors and the disrupted is this: Some jump in, and some don’t.

So here’s your invitation:

Jump in.

Start preparing for your streak as if it’s inevitable. Grab all your skill sets, and point them at the market in the most ferocious way you can. Disrupt the conversation with your excitement. Make people pay attention.

And when it’s all said and done, take the leap.

SECRETS OF THE BOLD ONES