{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Very True by Verissimo ","title":"Why the Multi-Sport Kid Wins - Nick Greenfield on range, burnout, and the case for working too hard young","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1695,"description":"Alex sits down with Nick Greenfield, one of his oldest friends, for the first of three conversations recorded in a single sitting. They met at Stanford in 2008 through their randomly assigned freshman-year roommates and have stayed close through nearly twenty years, several cities, and a lot of career moves. This episode is about the early part of a career and the things that never show up on a resume. Nick shares how a DC baseball camp coach shaped his approach to work and life, why growing up as a multi-sport kid mattered more than going pro would have, and why choosing Ultimate Frisbee over a job in Brazil set the course for his twenties.\nAlex and Nick dig into range versus spikiness and whether early specialization actually builds better brains or just burns kids out. They compare notes on what really prepares you for investment banking (a rocket science class, it turns out), why looking for work-life balance at 23 is the wrong goal, and whether San Francisco's hustle culture 15 years ago looked anything like the one people talk about today. Nick closes with advice for founders who have already raised: be impatient with your business, patient with the journey, and remember that almost all the value shows up in the outer years. The three episodes stand alone, so start with whichever one grabs you.\nGuest: Nick Greenfield, CEO of Candid.\nEpisode Highlights\n\nCoach Mac and the Wheel of Success: Nick traces his approach to business and life back to Home Run Baseball Camp in DC, where the coach rewarded fun, safety, hustle, and doing it the right way over how hard you threw.\nRange vs. Spikiness: Alex brings up the Tiger Woods and Roger Federer contrast from David Epstein's Range, and Nick makes the case that nobody actually has the data to prove single-focus specialization builds better brains.\nBurnout Is Real, Even for Kids: Nick describes burning himself out on baseball young enough to take a year off, and why he's letting his own kids try everything well into...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/57OvVMJPURacY2oSlK5Y2MLrhZTAZ_pp8q-BCnv84D8/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS80MzBk/N2QxOGUzMzA1ZjQz/MzhkNTg3NTQzYjE0/NjQ2NS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}