Below is an interview with Leo Laporte on what success is to him.
Haegwan Kim (HK): As my research is on the law of success, what is your personal definition of success?
Leo Laporte (LL): I think success is the opportunity to pursue your dreams, to pursue the things that are the most important to you, without hindrance or having to worry about how to survive. To be able to focus, not on survival, but the things that really matter to you.
HK: The life without fear of survival is interesting point.
LL: Many times people focus on survival, and of course, in Maslow’s hierarchy, survival is the lowest level, and I think he got it right; success ultimately is actualization; it is realizing your highest self; but in the meanwhile, it’s pursuing things that help you move along that path.
HK: Let’s talk about your professional side of success. You’ve been in the field of technology for a long time; can I ask, at first, why did you join the field of technology?
LL: Well, technology, for me, was at first fun; it was toys, and I started with video-gaming and then fell in love with how computers worked in the early days of personal computers, and programming and things like that.
That was my hobby, my application. My vocation was, I always thought and saw myself as a journalist, or at least always aspired to be a journalist; as somebody who covers what’s going on in the world. And I realized in the early 90s that the two things could come together very well, because in fact, the most important changes that were happening in the world were happening around technology; it was really changing our world to a huge extent, and there was, I think, a great need for people who had an affinity for technology, who understood it, but who could also communicate it better.
A lot of the people who are doing the important work in technology are not so good at communicating. It’s a little bit of a different skill set. So, as somebody who, I think, had a pretty good, deep understanding of technology and how it works, but also the ability to communicate, I thought this was a really good niche for me.
HK: I realize that your works are specializing for pod-casting or as you call, net-casting; tell me about the biggest change and lesson in this field?
LL: After it started?
HK: Yes.
LL: Well, I think the big change we’re going through right now, when I started it was audio and it was audio you would download, and there’s some real advantages to that. It’s inexpensive to produce, it’s inexpensive to listen to, not only in cost but in time; you have lots of time when you can listen to stuff that you couldn’t watch stuff, for instance, like when you’re driving a car.
In the early days, what we did was really all about audio. I think the big change that’s happened in the last few years is we’re doing more video than before. We still do audio, but even more important than that, live, real time. It turns out that it’s a lot of work to listen to a podcast; more work than I’d like it to be; you have to find the show, you have to figure out how to download the show, you have to figure out how to do it on a regular basis, you have to figure out how to listen to it; and if you’re going to listen to it on a portable device, how to get it onto that portable device, how to hook up the portable device.
It’s way too complicated, if you compare that to turning on a television, or turning on the radio, it’s just too much work. More and more I think, I believe, that the idea that you could just join something that’s already in progress; go to a website and listen or watch and things are going on, is so much easier, and I think ease has a lot to do with success in the broadcasting world. It has to be easy to get. So, that’s the big shift for us.
HK: There are tons of other podcasters and netcasters; I am wondering what made you famous; what made you so successful; what differentiates you from others?
LL: I think because I was known before podcasting; I was known as a tech broadcaster; that helped. I started on tech TV, I did shows on technology and I worked for six years before podcasting existed. I have a radio show that’s heard all over the country, that helps promote me. I was lucky, I found an audience before podcasting, and I brought that audience to podcasting. Now, we’re still building, but it sure helped to have that audience to begin with.
HK: Do you think technology has power to enable us to achieve success?
LL: Well, technology is very neutral; technology is just something that wasn’t invented when you were born. Technology doesn’t do anything by itself. It’s how we use it. If you ask me, does digital computer and the internet change media; absolutely, because it democratizes it; it means that anybody who can afford a computer and has access to the internet, and that’s about a billion people today. That’s pretty amazing, but I think that’s just a function of technology.
HK: If, all human beings can afford to buy PCs, more people will be successful?
LL: That’s interesting one; yes, computers are definitely a tool that can change peoples’ lives. A hammer is a tool that can change peoples’ lives; a water pump is something that could change peoples’ lives. But is it sufficient for success? No, it’s just a tool, but it’s certainly one of the most powerful tools that humans have ever invented, and if your notion of success, if what success means to you is the chance to be heard, then yes, clearly it’s the most powerful and democratic publishing medium ever invented.
I spoke in Dubai, at TedX in Dubai about a year ago and the message that I wanted to get across at my speech there was, particularly to the Arab world, was right now in the west, your story is being told by other people, and sometimes not very flatteringly. What the Internet and new media provides for you, is an opportunity to tell your story yourselves and have your story be heard, and this is a very important thing, a very important opportunity for you that you must take advantage.
There are going to be people in the west who will demonise people from the Middle East, who will say that anybody who is a Moslem is a terrorist; so it’s very important that you counter those voices with your own voices, because the best way to fight hatred and bigotry is to get to know one another, and that’s what the internet, and that’s what this technology provides us the opportunity to do.
HK: That’s fantastic opinion. As time moves on, this is the final question; can you tell me what would be your advice to achieve success, if possible with the power of technology?
LL: Okay, so in that respect, technology does provide you with a real opportunity. Of course, if your idea of success is to become the greatest brain surgeon ever, it’s not merely technology that’s going to help you do that.
You’ve got to find teachers, you’ve got to find a place to learn and work, and you’ve got to have a lot of energy on your own. But for a lot of people, having inexpensive tools available, relatively inexpensive tools, like the internet and computers, available, opens up a huge opportunity, a huge world.
For instance, if your definition of success is starting your own business or making a good living, then I think technology gives you a huge opportunity. Right now, it’s never been easier to start a computer or software based business; if you’ve got a great idea for an internet site, if you have the next Facebook in mind, you can do it so much more easily than even Mark Zuckerberg could seven years ago.
100 years ago, if your idea of success was to become a great industrialist, to start a business and build cars, it would take huge amounts of capital and energy. Now, I think you could start a business and change the world out of your living room.
HK: The world changed so much.
LL: All of this comes from the fact that technology is just a lever, so to get back to my original answer, technology by itself has no real value – pro or con; it’s neutral; it’s a lever that can amplify your efforts. To me, that is the definition of success in some ways; is that whatever direction your efforts go in, if you are better able to express yourself, better able to create, if you have a tool that can amplify your voice, then that really is a huge opportunity.
That’s really what technology is; it’s a lever, it’s an amplifier, it’s a way to take what you do and make it much more important, much more significant, global, to have your voice be heard, to have your inventions be seen; that’s what technology can do. Just look what you do with this; there is definitely the initiative on your part to go around and talk to people and interview them, and to find them and track them down and talk them into doing an interview; but because of technology, that effort that you put in is amplified 1000 times, because those interviews, instead of getting stuck in a thesis somewhere on a library shelf or in a box in your bottom drawer, go on the internet and immediately are readable by a billion plus people.
That’s the amplification I’m talking about. You still have to start; you still have to do the initial effort; you still have to go out and create, but your creations now can be seen and heard by so many more people, and that’s extremely powerful. So, technology, does it give you success; you still have to do the same things that you had to do before, but it does take what you do and bring it much further along than you ever could have before. And to me, that’s a very, very important effect of technology.
The above interview was conducted by and transcribed by We Blog the World contributor: Haegwan Kim.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
