Interview with Chris Ullman
Chris Ullman is a four-time international whistling champion who runs a communications firm that works with billionaires and other highly successful clients.
To Life and the Dead
Contents
Max Raskin: So I know you just got back from a drive — what did you listen to?
Chris Ullman: We listened to a spectacular version of “Comfortably Numb.” It was Pink Floyd minus Roger Waters. It was live in Pompeii and Gilmore did what I was always hoping he would do, which was take the second great solo from that piece and drag it out and drag it out and drag it out. I mean, it was just spectacular.
My daughter, who's a big Pink Floyd fan had never heard that version of it, and she was blown away. So I said, "Hey, listen, let me play another great live version of a song called ‘Morning Dew’ by the Dead from Cornell 1977." And she had never heard that version either, and she was blown away by that as well. It is just so spectacular.
Actually, around a week ago, I sat and listened to 10 “Morning Dews” in a row. I went to the internet and I typed, "Top Morning Dews." And I listened to every one of them. Cornell is right up there.
MR: What else was on the list?
CU: The Europe '72 version is hard to beat. There's one from '87. Then Winterland '74. Jerry brings the tempo down markedly so, and it is as delicate and beautiful as I've ever heard “Morning Dew,” and his voice is in pretty good shape. I love doing things like that where you hear the nuances, how it changes over the years.
MR: There’s an Allman Brothers version that’s great.
CU: Yes, I listened to the Allman Brothers version. The Dead do it better than anyone. Even though it's about nuclear war, it's still an amazingly beautiful and uplifting song.
MR: Did you get your daughter into the Dead? How did you raise your children musically?
CU: Classic rock, show tunes, and Christian praise music.
MR: What's your first show tune that comes to your mind right now?
CU: “To Life.”
We listened to Fiddler on the Roof on the way home this morning, and it is just so amazing.
MR: There’s a really great video of the guys who wrote it showing the evolution of the song “Tradition.” It’s based on this book Life is with People.
CU: That song has one of the best lines in all of Broadway in it, which is, "How much more can we be joyful when there's something really to be joyful for?"
It's a fairly complex concept that I apply to how people reacted to Covid. We stuck our children in airtight chambers to keep them away from the mystery disease even though it had minimal impact on children.
So, in the future, what would we do if a disease actually were taking out whole swaths of children? And that's why that line in Fiddler on the Roof in “To Life” is so powerful. How much crazier would we be with Covid if there was something really to be crazy about?
It's a very interesting concept. Is joy relative or is joy absolute? And so I love that song.
Whistling “Happy Birthday”
MR: So you just wrote a book about what you learned from billionaires (and a parking attendant). As a world-champion whistler, I imagine you have your own quirks and way of living your life that is likely distinct from how other people expect you to live.
After doing your research for the book or after being around the billionaires and the world they inhabit, have you adopted any of their habits or hobbies or anything like that?
CU: Oh, amazingly so. I grew up in middle class Long Island, a little town called Massapequa Park. I actually know the Gilgo Beach serial killer. We went to high school together, but that's a whole other story. I grew up in contented mediocrity. It's kind of the minor leagues. And my father said that he stopped trying to excel in his early fifties, maybe even late forties, because he achieved more than he ever thought possible. So my parents loved me and wanted me to do my best, but they weren't really pushing. There wasn't this emphasis towards excellence and striving on an ongoing basis.
But then I get to Washington and my first project at my first job was running a meet and greet for a presidential candidate, Pete du Pont, when he ran for president in 1988. And I was 24 years old, and my boss said, "This is it. You are going to run the whole thing." I went from the minor leagues of Massapequa to the big leagues. For the past almost 37 years, I've been exposed to this range of superlative thinkers and doers, and it's had this gigantic impact on how I think and behave, and it's all about being your best.
So when it comes to habits, it ranges from being generous to being disciplined to being industrious. Here's an example. In the book, there's a lesson called “The Power of Transactional Thinking.” And Dave Rubenstein is really good at staying focused on what he needs to accomplish. So he will downplay emotion and focus on and emphasize logic and not get distracted.
I've seen so many times, myself included, especially earlier in my career, where I would get off track because someone or something frustrated me, and it's so easy to stray from the goal, go down the rabbit hole, and waste a lot of time just being hyper-emotional about things. And Rubenstein is the exact opposite of that. This way of de-emotionalizing has had a huge impact on my ability to destress and get things done.
MR: What time do you wake up in the morning?
CU: During the school year when my daughter has to go to school, at 5:30. During the summer, around 6:00, 6:30.
MR: I'm interested in how these people maintain the relationships that they have and how. Do you have a really big Rolodex or phone book?
CU: I have the freakiest way of keeping in touch with people — I whistle happy birthday for them.
MR: Really?
CU: I whistle happy birthday 650 times a year, and I do it because I want to honor their lives. I do it because it makes me happy to hear them be happy. But it's a great way to stay in touch with people. I have stayed in touch with so many people who I would have lost touch with.
I have three happy birthdays today. They're at the top of the calendar, and it's persistent, so it just every year comes up. That's how I keep track of it. I even whistle Happy birthday for Jay Powell, the Chairman of the Fed.
MR: He’s a Deadhead — I bet he’d appreciate you whistling “Morning Dew.”
If you really want to impress someone with your whistling skills and show them what real whistling is, what would you whistle?
CU: If they were a little older, I would do “Take the ‘A’ Train” by Duke Ellington.
And if they were younger, and especially if they're college girls, I would do “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast. So they're very different from each other.
MR: If someone has never heard you whistle, where would you point them?
CU: My TEDx talk.
MR: Do you find yourself whistling when you walk down the street?
CU: I do. I whistle all the time. I have a gig coming up with the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra in December. So I've been whistling a lot to get my lips in shape. There's this French word “embouchure”, which has to do with the shape of your lips and the conditioning of your lips to play a wind instrument, or in the case of a whistler, to whistle.
Because your lips are muscles and a pucker is not a natural shape for your lips. To extend them out and to be able to sustain the shape for a while is difficult, and your lips would get tired very quickly. I’m whistling all the time. I whistle anything that has a tune.
Amateur Structural Engineer
MR: Do you have any other hobbies?
CU: I am a serious cyclist — I road bike a lot.
MR: What's your favorite road bike?
CU: I have a Seven Cycle. It's a custom titanium frame made by this boutique shop outside of Boston. It’s all Campy [Campagnolo] Record, one of the premier component manufacturers. This is my forever bike. I got it seven years ago. It cost more than my first car.
It’s a spectacular bike. It rides like the day I got it. It handles like a Ferrari. It is my joy. It makes me so happy.
MR: Any other hobbies?
CU: Yeah, I do carpentry and woodworking as a hobby. I put skylights in my roof years ago. They've never leaked, which I'm very proud of.
I called up a dear friend who's an architect, and I said, "Hey Rob, I'm going to put two skylights in my roof, but I have to cut through several joists because they're really big skylights.
And he said, "Do not do that. Call an engineer right now."
I said, "All right, whatever."
So I decided I would just spend time in the attic. I literally sat in the attic studying the joists to understand the load and how the loads were distributed. I finally figured out how it worked, put in my little buttress type things, cut the joists. It's been 17 years. It's been fine. No problem.
MR: I have this theory that the more serious someone is about their hobbies, probably the healthier they are as a person. Do you think that’s true? Do you find that the powerful people that you've surrounded yourself with, do you think they have hobbies?
CU: Yes.
I think it's good to have hobbies, however you define them. If just sitting there reading books is your hobby, that's fine with me. It's more of do you take your hobby seriously and are you intentional about it? There's a section in the book about being purposeful, like having an “it.” What's your thing?
Super successful people are intensely purposeful about their day jobs. And what I have found with the very successful people I've worked for is that there is no separation between the day job and everything else. It's like a cosmic soup. It just blends together for decades.
Happy?
MR: I don't know how to put this in a diplomatic way and maybe we can edit it afterwards, but you seem much healthier than a lot of super successful people. Why do you even deal with them?
CU: I'm curious of how you define healthy.
MR: Emotionally. Mentally healthy, joyful.
CU: Well, that's a super interesting question. Well, life is complex, so I try to surround myself or work for people where I can add value. Now, Dave Rubenstein is a mad scientist genius. I have no idea what his IQ is, but it's probably as high as you can get. That's how smart he is. And I've learned an immense amount from him. 20 of the 50 lessons in the book are from him.
But even though I'm a mortal and my IQ is nowhere near his, I can add value in his life. There’s a cool lesson in the book about helping him become a better public speaker. First, he put the work in. But I helped, and I'm really proud of that. So I'm very content being the helper, helping David Rubenstein, helping Adena Friedman, helping Bill Conway, or Orlando Bravo, being their trusted advisor. I like that.
When my kids played with Thomas the Tank Engine, it was this whole notion of being a useful engine.
MR: Did you ever think about being a therapist?
CU: Not until fairly recently, believe it or not. Actually, my wife laughed when I said this, but I said fairly recently, I could have been a good therapist. And she laughed because she thinks I'm too logical and not emotional enough.
But in all of my time advising clients, billionaires and CEOs and chairman of this and chairman of that, I have found that empathy is 20% of it, but logic is 80%, and that is often what they need to hear. And it's very much a “what do they need to hear” versus “what they want to hear.” And I think that's the best kind of therapist you can have.
MR: Do you think you would have a second career?
CU: So I'm 60 now, and one of the reasons I wrote this book was to create a tool that for the next 10 years of my life I will use to mentor people in how to be their best. I'm selling books of course, but I printed up a thousand books and I'm giving them to young people. Any time I meet a young person, I hand them the book, say, "Look me in the eye right now, and if you read this book, it will materially change your life."
Materially. This is not marginal stuff. That is how powerful the lessons are in here. And it's not because I'm a genius, I've just worked with these spectacularly successful people, paid attention, and through anecdote have been able to capture their ways of thinking and behaving that lead to success.
MR: How do you thread the line between needing to make money off of what you do and just wanting to do it?
CU: Thankfully, I'm in a position right now where I'm financially secure and I can do whatever I want. Some of it makes money, some of it doesn't make money. I had a potential client just recently, and I just realized I don't want to work for this person, so I just said, "I'm too busy. Let me send you to someone else."
MR: How much of your lessons can be learned or how much of it is innate?
CU: Well, that is the great existential question. When I give talks to interns, I actually say to them, "I will help you if you call me." Five to seven percent of them accept the offer. Those are the people I want to deal with.
Most people just aren't working that hard and they're not trying to be their best. Really the two key things are: be humble and be open-minded. And if you look at someone else who has succeeded, then you can learn it. Some people, it's natural, but I don't think it's natural for most people. But it can be learned if people are open-minded, and that is central to success.
Smoothies, Not Psychedelics
MR: Are you religious?
CU: Yes, I'm a devout Catholic.
MR: Did you ever experiment with psychedelics?
CU: Zero. I’ve been to 25 Grateful Dead concerts. Never smoked a j, no psychedelics. No way.
MR: Why not?
CU: I am naturally happy. I have all these thoughts about degrading the body, and you shouldn't do things to your body like that. No tattoos, no piercings.
MR: What do you do for exercise?
CU: Power walker, and I have a trainer who helps me stay limber and maintain some upper body strength. And I bicycle. Short, fast rides...usually 11 miles.
MR: What does your diet look like?
CU: It could be better. A fruit smoothie, homemade every day.
MR: What kind?
CU: Strawberry, blueberry, cherry, banana, pineapple, flax, ice, and yogurt. Those eight things. That's my smoothie every day for the past 15 years. I just love it. My wife also makes me an egg sandwich most mornings.
MR: Do you have any other rituals? Do you have any other things that you say, I've done this every day for the last X years?
CU: Well, I put on Chapstick because I'm addicted and I'm a whistler.
I make my wife's coffee every day since we got married, 22 years…every day. And I don't even drink coffee.
MR: How do you make it?
CU: We have a Ninja drip machine, so it's three scoops of coffee, seven cups of water.
MR: What kind of beans do you use?
CU: They’re from a place in Old Town Alexandria called Misha's. Beans are from Antigua, Guatemala.
CU: She's very particular about her coffee, and I'm very proud that she boasts to her friends that her husband who doesn't drink coffee, makes her coffee every day.
MR: Do you have any interest in pushing boundaries and being outside of your comfort zone?
CU: Yes, but that manifests itself for me in doing things that either I'm scared to do or that I am lazy about or that are just really difficult. I've done two TEDx Talks in Washington, D.C. And it is really difficult to do a good TEDx Talk because the moment you say yes, you now have three months to write a talk, memorize it, and knock the cover off the ball. And that is a big task. I've counseled people on how to do it, and I never downplay it because it is a big task. So that gives me immense satisfaction.
MR: Was that something you were scared of?
CU: Oh, totally…to get up in front of an audience, no notes. So it’s 19 minutes of talking and whistling with no notes. And to do it right the first time. You don't get a second chance.
I did a second one on how to improve race relations, which was a tense topic, and it was really scary, but I just said, “I am going to make myself do it.” So that gives me the biggest high imaginable.
And physical feats have also really opened up my brain and excited me. I rode 200 miles on my bicycle. I was 17 years old. But I've done a whole bunch of centuries, which are hundred-mile bike rides.
Those things, you dig so deeply into wellsprings of reserves that you hope are there, and it is the biggest high imaginable. It’s one of the reasons why I'm not into drugs. It is just such a lazy…it's almost like a cop out. It's easy to do. Inject the thing, snort the thing, put a tab in your mouth. I mean, it's easy. Who wants easy?
MR: Do you drink at all?
CU: No, I don't drink alcohol.
MR: At all?
CU: At all. Never have.
MR: Why?
CU: I've had a drink. I drank one beer in my life because I lost a bet, and it was a very horrible experience. But I don't like the taste. Social experiences can be awkward, but I learned how to be social, and I always thought alcohol was a crutch and I didn't want that.
MR: What do you do when you take communion?
CU: When I take communion, the first thing I do is I look at the cross and I bless myself because in Catholic churches, there's always a crucifixion with Christ on the cross. And I look at that and it's a reminder.
MR: No, no, I mean with the alcohol.
CU: Oh, with the wine. I'm not an alcoholic, so if there was alcohol on my tongue, it's not going to affect me. I used to do this silly thing when I lived in a group house. Every time we had a wild party, I would do one shot of tequila. It was to entertain my friends because they knew I didn't drink alcohol. It was a horrible experience. I hated it. But it didn't affect me at all.
But everyone said, "All right, Chris, let's do your shot." Because they just knew it was so weird, that I didn't drink, but I would do a shot of tequila.
MR: That's funny.
CU: And then my wife will have a glass of wine and she'll say, "This is really good. Try it." And I taste it. I'm like, "Oh my God, that's horrible."
MR: Do you have any regrets? You don't seem like someone who's easily peer pressured.
CU: There were a couple of mean and mischievous things I did as a kid, like taunting this girl when I was probably 15. To this day, I regret it. It was so mean, and it was just everyone disliked her and I jumped on the bandwagon. I did apologize at the time to the girl and her family, but I still feel bad about it.
I'm sure she still remembers it. If she heard this podcast, she'd say, "That guy's a total fraud, because he was so mean to me 45 years ago.” But I remember it. And I feel bad about that.
MR: Do you think you have a mean streak in you?
CU: That is very interesting. So from a psychobabble standpoint, I would say I actually have, I'm not sure if I'd call it mean but there's a slight anger part of my personality.
Red Light, Green Light
MR: Have you ever done therapy?
CU: Yes.
MR: Was it related to a specific issue or something more general?
CU: It was for marriage counseling and it was amazing. It was kind of situational, and it was very fruitful.
MR: You seem happy and healthy and I think part of being healthy is to have anger at times and deal with it properly. When was the last time that you felt angry or out-of-control angry?
CU: When my father died, my wife and I got in this fight over something so stupid, but I was very, very upset and angry. There was cursing and yelling and I hardly ever use foul language.
And then I had this other one where I got into this screaming battle with a reporter from the New York Times, because I do media relations for a living. The reporter was so wrong, and he was completely unresponsive to my factual concerns. He was unresponsive to my rising emotional pitch. And then after the fact, years later actually, I realized that he shut down. Me getting more and more upset was not the right way to handle that situation. So it's pretty radically affected the way I try to solve problems now in an emotional situation.
And I've learned a lot of it from Rubenstein. It's this whole de-emotionalizing thing. And I know it's a spectrum. You never want to be all logic and zero emotion. I try to go for like 80 logic, 20 emotion, so the emotion is a leavening factor and it's a balancing factor. But facts and logic are so powerful, and as long as you don't sound like a frigging robot, you can actually get a lot more done.
MR: But do you think that you miss something when you can't just tell people, "You know what? Screw you. That's not right, what you just did there. I know that I could convince you if I put on my logic hat, but I don't care. It wasn't right what you just did." Something like that.
CU: Well, I used to do that a lot when it came to crazy people on the highway. They're tailgating you, they cut you off, they beep at you at a red light because you don't go fast enough when the light turns green. And I would flip them the bird and tailgate them and flash my brights and be an a-hole right back at them.
And then I realized it is completely unproductive. It feels good, but it scares the people in your car. It actually endangers everyone and accomplishes nothing. I mean, you could say it accomplishes the release of your tension, but that should never be at the expense of someone else's peace of mind or safety.
MR: Do you have any marriage advice?
CU: I have a lot of marital advice. I would say the most important thing is put your spouse first. That sounds painfully obvious, but we are selfish creatures and it's really difficult to do on a regular basis. And I struggle with it literally every day, but like a north star, that is the key.
I have a friend whose wife died of pancreatic cancer two years ago, and he routinely says to me, "You are so blessed. You have a loving spouse, you have children, you're successful career-wise." He said, "Every day is a gift. Do not forget that ever, ever, ever." And so don't let the small crap cloud your thinking when it comes to what really matters. So those are probably the two biggest things. Put your spouse first and stay focused on what actually matters. The chaff, forget about the chaff. Focus on the wheat.