Just Press Record: Grace and Peter Atwater

Vulnerable. I thought I knew what it meant. I kind of did. 

It started when Grace Nikae (music prodigy turned professional musician turned Chief Marketing Officer) asked Peter Atwater (hedge fund industry consultant turned teacher and author) to differentiate confidence in terms of authenticity and vulnerability.

Peter jumped at it - “I love your distinction between authenticity and vulnerability, because authenticity is a choice.”

Vulnerability, as he sees it, is not.

I already know that “authentic” means: self-genuine. You have control. So it’s a choice to be, or be aligned with, something genuine to yourself.

I started googling.

The internet says “confident” means: feeling or showing or believing that one can rely on someone or something, and

“Vulnerable” means: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.

I’m grasping Peter’s point - it’s a matter of being able to rely on yourself versus being at risk as yourself.

Which is when Grace points out vulnerable’s etymology. 

How vulnerable is derived from vulnus, which means wound. 

That brought it home. 

How if you are being authentically confident, you have information you can choose to rely on. 

Confident means you have breathing room.

But if you are being vulnerable, you are either wounded or at risk of being wounded, and there’s no confidence in that state.

There’s no truly vulnerable breathing room.

Your confidence, and your decision making abilities from various points, changes.

Which is exactly what I was hoping to be talking to them both about.

I invited Grace Nikae and Peter Atwater to come on Just Press Record to talk about decision-making. 

Grace has a marketer’s mind with a musician’s ear. She’s gets framing and rhythm like few others I know. It’s a special combination of skills. 

Peter has market-analyst’s methods for making sense of sentiment. He’s found ways to plot confidence on a graph and measure how it moves over time. He calls it The Confidence Map, and it’s a special combination of concepts.  

I was here to find out:

What happens when you ask a professional musician turned marketing expert and a former-hedge fund consultant turned cartographer of confidence how they think about decision making in life and work? 

Hold on to your Brene Brown-isms, because we cover a ton of ground. From career changes, to parenting advice, to how to practice discomfort. Do me a favor, and whatever your current status, choose to press play on this one: