Good morning, friends!

It’s Thanksgiving week, and I hope you are all getting to catch up on some reading. If you need some good material to read (or watch/listen to), then I can help.

Over the last week, I put together a comprehensive list of some of the most interesting interviews I’ve done since I founded The Profile.

These interviews contain insights and ideas that I believe you’ll find valuable.

(If you prefer to listen, you can check out The Profile’s podcast page here.)

I’ve organized them by each person’s key lessons, along with my reflections on how their wisdom has shaped my own life.

Here’s a short excerpt:

1. Robert Hoge on how to design a beautiful life

Out of all the interviews in my entire career, this one has probably been the most impactful.

Robert Hoge was born with a large tumor in the middle of his face that pushed his eyes to the sides of his head and two severely mangled legs. His mom refused to take her baby home because she was worried about how his difficult upbringing would affect her other children.

When she and her husband returned home without their newborn child, his mom kept second-guessing her decision. So she decided to give her kids a say. During a family meeting around the dinner table, she asked them to take a vote on whether they wanted Hoge to join the family. His siblings all voted that they wanted his parents to bring him home.

In the beginning of our interview, Hoge pulled out the journal that his mom kept in the first days of his life. In it, she wrote, “I wished he would go away or die or something. I just wanted to be finished with it all.”

After he read me a few passages from it, I asked, “What did you make of these words as you were growing up, and what do you make of them today?”

What he told me is something that has almost become a mantra for me: “Not everything has to be okay, all at once.”

“It was a bit difficult to grapple with when I was growing up, but not overly difficult. The way I like to explain it was that I knew the story had a happy ending.

“Now, more so than ever, I think a lot of people expect things to be perfectly formed, perfectly mature, and wonderful on arrival. But they’re not. You don’t go from the first scene of a movie or a book to the last scene of a movie or a book. That journey in the middle is really important.

“But certainly, my mom didn’t want to see me when I was born. So for the first week or so of my life, the doctors and nurses would say to my mother, “Come on, Mary, let’s go see your son.” Because other than my deformities, I was perfectly healthy. I was just in the nursery, but my mom kept refusing day after day. She just kept saying no.

“Then a week after I was born, she finally changed her mind, came up, and saw me. And as a coping mechanism, she decided then and there that she didn’t want me. She just said, “No, I don’t want anything to do with this baby. I just wish he’d go away. Wish I didn’t have to deal with the problem.”

“And I do reflect on that a lot. Because when you can actually understand, you can see it as quite a reasonable and normal reaction to that kind of shock. And I don’t find it particularly distressing as an adult.

“I do know that it might have taken my parents a month, but they took me home. And they were incredibly loving, wonderful, and caring parents, who equipped me with an awful lot of really important and useful strategies to get through life.

“But I think there’s an underlying lesson, and this is something that served me really well throughout my life.

“Not everything has to be okay, all at once.

“If you can accept that and work through some of the challenges, and perhaps understand that getting to clarity and getting to an outcome you want often involves a whole lot of messiness along the way, then that’s actually a really valuable thing.”

I put together 12 more practical lessons you can learn from bestselling author James Clear, NFL Legend JJ Watt, U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, and more. Check it out below:

How to Generate Better Ideas, Master the Art of Suffering, and Design a Beautiful Life Polina Pompliano · Nov 23 Read full story

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PROFILES.

— The architect of the future [**HIGHLY RECOMMEND**]
— The founder who revolutionized online shopping
— The least known operative in America
— The basketball star taking on Nike
— The Twitter alternative experiencing some growing pains
— The beauty brand devising a comeback

PEOPLE TO KNOW.

The architect of the future: Elon Musk is singularly focused on “saving humanity” by creating a clean energy future, colonizing Mars, and attempting to expand the breadth of human consciousness. For more than three years he’s been one of the world’s richest and most powerful men. Now, he has moved into the realm of politics, headlining rallies, steering government appointments, shaping the agenda for the next President of the United States. What role will Musk play in the new administration? (TIME; For more on Elon Musk, read his Profile Dossier here.)

“You have people finally feeling like, OK, I can hold my head up and say: ‘I’m not ashamed to vote for Donald Trump.’ The reason, in her view, was [Elon] Musk.”

The founder who revolutionized online shopping: Amber Venz Box is the president and co-founder of LTK, one of the most popular influencer platforms in the world. Box, 36, usually keeps a relatively low profile: She lives on a ranch in Texas with her co-founder, CEO, and husband Baxter Box and their four kids in a location she won’t disclose for privacy reasons. She’s one of the richest self-made women in the U.S., with Forbes estimating her net worth at $315 million in 2021, she helped pioneer the modern influencer economy by building a bridge between content creators and advertising dollars. Here’s how she revolutionized the online shopping experience with her company LTK. (TIME)

The least known operative in America: Susie Wiles not just one of Trump’s senior advisers. She’s his most important adviser. She’s his de facto campaign manager. She has been in essence his chief of staff for the last more than three years. She’s one of the reasons Trump is the GOP’s presumptive nominee and Ron DeSantis is not. (You know I don’t normally include political profiles, but I am making an exception for this one because as Trump’s chief of staff, she’s now one of the most influential people in his administration.) (Politico)

“There is nobody, I think, that has the wealth of information that she does. Nobody in our orbit. Nobody.”

The basketball star taking on Nike: NBA star Jaylen Brown wants to rethink the way athletes do business with footwear giants. He created his company 741 in response to his displeasure working with the sneaker giants. After his five-year contract with Adidas ended in 2021, he couldn’t bring himself to sign another deal, even though it meant leaving $50 million on the table, he says. “Athletes get paid a lot of money for these sneaker deals,” he notes, “but they have very little creative control, no input, no say over the direction of how they want things to go with the brand—more endorsement, less partnership. I can’t accept that.” Here’s how he plans to steal market share from the footwear giants. (Bloomberg; alternate link)

“I knew the shoes had to be the best, because these are the shoes that I’m playing in.”

COMPANIES TO WATCH.

The Twitter alternative experiencing some growing pains: Bluesky is a social network trying to serve as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter). Over the past week, Bluesky’s growth has exploded, more than doubling to 15 million-plus users as people seek alternatives to X, Facebook, and Threads. It has rocketed to the top of Apple’s and Google’s app stores as the most downloaded free app. Its ascent has been so rapid that the company has been forced to grow up practically overnight. It hasn’t all been easy. (The New York Times; alternate link)

“We as a team take pride in our ability to scale quickly. But there’s always some growing pains.”

The beauty brand devising a comeback: CoverGirl was a brand built on decades of glossy magazine ads featuring stars like Christie Brinkley, Tyra Banks, Taylor Swift and Rihanna. With sales sliding for drugstore makeup brands, its growth hinges on thousands of social-media influencers. Can it make a meaningful comeback? (Wall Street Journal; alternate link)

“I want to be the most agile among beauty giants.”

✨ The rest of this newsletter is only available for premium members of The Profile, whose support makes this work possible. If you’re not already a premium member, consider upgrading your subscription below for access to an additional section of weekly audio + video recommendations. ✨…