Eric Gee just dropped his new book The Power of Personality. It’s fitting. He has a lot of it, and I say this having just done an email interview. Yep, I got all that by just sharing words via gmail. Words can be funny without emotion. How many times have you sent a text, and then the receiver of said text got hurt by the “tone” of your words even though you didn’t mean it the way they took it? Amirite? Back to my first sentences. Gee has a big personality. You get that even from an exchange of questions and answers via a publicist. Ooooh, another layer! Anyway, Gee is a personality expert/life coach. (He can probably get a sense of mine just by the approach I took from this article.) His coaching program has been used in companies like Disney, universities and a boatload of schools. He has a successful education company that uses his method to enrich the lives of students, teachers and parents, and created the Youtopia Project, which I’ll ask him about in a bit. Actually, let’s just get to it now. I’m not going to rehash a press release, though it’s really well put together. I’d rather get to the dude. He’s pretty wonderful, and I say that not knowing him. I’m going to talk to him on The Westchester PopCast, too. Seems to be someone worth talking to for real. In the mean time, some links to click after reading this: www.projectyoutupia.com, www.youtopiaproject.com, and buy his book.
Before we get into any of your personality stuff, please tell me about your magician and piano skills which your piano glances over…
I started playing piano when I was five, but not in the stereotypical Asian, tiger mom kind of way. My parents simply asked me if I wanted to learn because “your sister plays it too and its fun.” A quick “yes” led to many years of playing (though not practicing as much as I should) with average technique but excellent expression (according to my teacher Mr. Kline, who wasn’t exactly known for easy compliments). Fitting for my Baboon personality type; we always trust our intuition more than what is “certain” (like always hitting the right notes!) Obligatory classical nerd name drops: my favorite composer’s Chopin, the most difficult piece I’ve ever had to perform is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”, but the piece I make my own–with my own weirdly unique rubato–is “Moonlight Sonata” by Beethoven.
The same can probably be said for my magic skills: average technique but excellent expression (a large part of magic is the talking/misdirection). To be honest, I only have like three or four tricks (all close magic with cards) in my bag, but they’re good ones (one of them was made popular by David Blaine performing it on the Dallas Cowboys). When I owned my education company, we used to attend these recruitment fairs where we would talk to parents and kids to persuade them to sign up for our program. Since receiving extracurricular tutoring isn’t exactly the most exciting prospect for a kid, I would entertain the kids at our booth with magic. The look on their faces when I passed a card through their hand or transported it from one person to the next? That was magic.
OK, now into Youtopia Creativa. What is it, why is it, and how is it?
Youtopia Creative is a shared workspace located in Culver City, Los Angeles. Warmer than WeWork, more social than the library, and less poseur-ish than working at a Westside coffee house, it’s a place where people can meet other creatives while working on their own projects. And it’s organic networking. There are so many feedback groups a person can join in Los Angeles, but how can you trust the creative feedback you’re receiving and vice versa? The best way to earn that trust is to work next to someone at least two or three times a week. At the very least, you’ll know that the person giving you feedback is serious about their craft. And you can make a friend in the process!
Discuss how The Power of Personality came about.
Personality type theory is a subject I’ve studied for more than 20 years. Not because I’m a great student; more so, because I needed a justification for not caring about being a good student. Learning about personality types not only helped my intrapersonal skills (discovering what I truly want), but it was also perfect for strengthening my interpersonal skills (appreciating that what I want might be different than what other people want).
That and a piece of advice my dad told me when I was seven:
“If you really want to know a person, remember two things: One, don’t just believe what they say, especially when they’re talking about themselves. People lie all the time, especially to themselves. Two, look closely at what a person does but look closer at the reasons why they do it.”
Now for the CV portion of this answer (you did say you wanted specifics): I graduated from UCLA, where I studied English literature and screenwriting. I’ve worked as a starter at a golf course, coached high school basketball, was an assistant scoutmaster for a boy scout troop, taught a course on communications, co-hosted an internet radio show (a lo-fi podcast ancestor) from a dilapidated studio in East Hollywood, and built an education company that served a thousand-plus students and parents and forty-plus school districts a year. I also created The Youtopia Project, a personality-themed website that featured many of the ideas (animal personality types, deviant roles, etc.) that would later find themselves in The Power of Personality.
Dr. Seuss should’ve named his book Oh The Places You’ll Go (and the People You’ll Meet), because every single one of the things above allowed me to meet tens of thousands of people, and you can’t write a book titled The Power of Personality without meeting a lot of personalities. It also helps to have a little push…
In 2018, I decided I wanted to pursue screenwriting, so I shuttered my education company and started writing TV pilots. I was able to meet some very cool people and make some very cool friends, and I remember one time we were at a bar in Brentwood when we got to talking about my animal personality types. It was like conversational wildfire. It was at that moment a friend said, “You need to write a book about this!”
Of course, I didn’t listen, and continued writing scripts about things like Father Time and sex-addicted rabbits. That is, until that same friend parodied my animal types on the TV show she writes for, Mythic Quest. That was the push I needed.
How’d you decide the animal breakdown for the book?
Not to get too far into the details of The Power of Personality, but there are four main packs of people (Gatherers, Hunters, Shamans, and Smiths) and four animal types within each pack. The four packs evolved from centuries of philosophical theory (a chapter in the book is devoted to this). I also wanted the terms for each pack to give historical context as to why their numbers vary in the population. Historically, we only needed one person to tell the village when it was about to rain (Shamans make up less than 10% of the population), but half the village to sow the fields and gather the harvest (Gatherers make up almost a majority of the population and, as such, their values permeate society).
People in the same pack share the same core value, but that doesn’t mean they go about achieving it the same way. That’s where the animal types come in. They help us deepen our understanding of the smallest nuances in a person. Plus, animals are fun and easy to remember. Foxes love being Foxes. Pandas love being Pandas. Even Spiders love being Spiders (if anyone can appreciate the underrated strength of a spider’s near invisible webs, it’s a Spider personality type). And Beavers… okay, well Beavers usually think being a Beaver is boring. But three for four ain’t bad.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Another one from my dad (describing life): “Just do what you want to do and don’t worry about what people think. Because, you know, at the end of the day, no one really gives a shit.”
Not all personality types need to hear that–in fact, some need the opposite advice–but for me (and my dad knew this), it was perfect, then and now.
What’s the best advice you’ve shared?
“Just do what you want to do and don’t worry about what people think. Because, you know, at the end of the day, no one really gives a shit.” I work with a lot of students who need to hear it too.
What’s the best advice to ignore and to accept?
Buy The Power of Personality … actually, don’t ignore that.
Lastly, I pride myself in my obscure 80s/90s pop culture knowledge. How have you kept your fountain of useless information intact?
What do they say about a foreign language? Use it or lose it. Not a day goes by without me randomly referencing the intellectual detritus floating around in my head. Today, it was Black Rain (and not because of the second season of Tokyo Vice).
Most important of all, who’s the most underrated person in pop culture history. I’ll start – Rick Moranis.
Rick Moranis! The Sandy Koufax of comedy. Also a reason why you should never buy name brand meds when you can get the generic stuff for way less.
Mine’s Martin Yan. The guy made cooking shows fire (literally) and Yan Can breaks down a chicken in less than twenty seconds.
