How to build a career you actually love | Bill Gurley

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu.
Most of us have been told to follow our passions. Author Bill Gurley spent six years researching the people who built extraordinary careers and has come to believe we may be fixating on the wrong thing.

**Bill Gurley** (0:23)
You see, passion doesn't invoke work. You could be passionate about the Cincinnati Reds and sit in a chair for three and a half hours drinking beer.

**Elise Hu** (0:32)
In this talk, Bill shares what that research uncovered, making his case through the stories of people who found what they were meant to do, often because someone in their life asked the right question at the right moment. He shares the story of Uncle Richard, a man who sat down to dinner with his nephew Danny and said exactly the thing that needed to be said.
That one conversation changed the course of everything that followed, and it's the kind of moment Bill believes most of us are capable of creating for others.

**Bill Gurley** (1:01)
Maybe all the world really needs is many, many more Uncle Richards. And I hope there's a bunch of you out there in the audience today.

**Elise Hu** (1:08)
And stick around after the talk, we caught up with TED's Head of Media and Curation, Helen Walters, who shared a few more thoughts about Bill's idea and what it was like to work with him behind the scenes. That's all coming up right after a short break.
And now, our TED Talk of the day.

**Bill Gurley** (1:35)
I'm gonna start with a story, a good story, a true story. In 1983, my friend Danny was 25 years old. A few years earlier, he had graduated from Trinity College with a Poli Sci degree. Bounced around for a while, but fell into a really cool job in sales. He sold those doohickeys they attached to clothes in the department store so you can't steal them. He's good at it, he's making a lot of money. But as a Poli Sci student, he'd always planned to take the next step, law school. So the night before the LSAT, he's out for dinner with his Uncle Richard, a place called Elio's on the Upper East Side. And Uncle Richard can tell something's not right. Danny, what's eating you? Ah, I have to take the LSAT tomorrow and I don't really want to. Uncle Richard probed. So why are you?
I'll get back to Danny and Uncle Richard in a minute, but let me tell you why I'm here. I spent the past six years studying what drives career excellence. A co-writer, a researcher and I combed through over a hundred biographies. We talked to some of the leading academicians in the field, looked at their research and we even did our own survey with Wharton. We turned that into a book. What did we find? There were many common traits, but one thing stood out above everything else, continuous and obsessive learning. They were all lifetime students. They knew the history of their field. They understand the nuance of their field, the thing that separates great from good. They know the edge of their field. That's where innovation lies. And they studied throughout their entire career, beginning, middle and end. I'd like to think they thought about their craft as an artisan, with an artisan mindset. And I've come to believe these artisans exist in every field. Here's a fun example. In 2015, at the annual chess competition in Iceland, they did something fun. They held a history trivia contest. Guess who won? Magnus Carlsen, the world champion. See, he's not just great at chess, he knew the history. But if you study Magnus Carlsen, you know this to be true. It's very low likelihood that he got to a place in his career where he says, oh boy, to be even better at chess, I need to study the history, I'm going to go do it. It was a different mechanism. And this is my key point, the key takeaway right here at the beginning. Obsessive and continuous learning is not an input, it's an output. It's not the cause, it's the effect. What's the cause? What drives someone to learn for a lifetime? In 2024, Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, gave the commencement speech at Duke University. And after making fun, of what he's good at, making fun of the phrase, follow your passion, he came up with a different word, a better word, a more precise word. He said, you should follow your fascination. I really love this distinction. You see, passion doesn't invoke work. You can be passionate about the Cincinnati Reds and sit in a chair for three and a half hours, drink a beer.