Disrupt Yourself Podcast With Whitney Johnson

In 1988, college student Jonathan Bush climbed on top of a pile of wooden slats in the middle of an unfinished housing development and looked out over a gathering of political volunteers, “Okay,” he announced. “Here’s how it’s gonna go. My name is Jonathan Bush, and we in the next four days are gonna win this election.” “This election” was for his uncle, George H.W. Bush, in his first campaign for president. Jonathan didn’t think much of the speech at the time; he’d given thousands of such stump speeches to volunteers before, and would go on to give many more before the campaign was over. However, months later, after the White House had been won and his uncle sworn in as President, Jonathan had more than one person tell him that his speech was a seminal event for the campaign. “I mean I did everything wrong. But I had been allowed a little bit like Gladwell to have my ten thousand hours of speech giving, and then it mattered all of a sudden and I was on top of this pile of sticks that I had created…I had gon