Michelle: Alright Mark, I'm going to say a book title, and you give me your gut-reaction, one-liner roast. Ready? The Bold Ones. Mark: Sounds like a self-help book for people who wear capes to the office. "Be bold! Ask for a second donut in the breakroom!" Michelle: That's hilarious, but you're not entirely wrong about the 'bold' part. Today we're diving into The Bold Ones: Innovate and Disrupt to Become Truly Indispensable by Shawn Kanungo. And what's fascinating is that Kanungo isn't some guru on a mountaintop; he spent over a decade as an innovation strategist at Deloitte, so he's seen corporate inertia up close. Mark: Ah, so he’s seen the soul-crushing PowerPoints. He’s lived in the trenches of "let's circle back on that." Michelle: Exactly. He’s seen why big, successful companies—and people—stop innovating. And his core argument starts in a place you would never expect: a 2016 hip-hop radio show. Mark: Okay, now I'm intrigued. From Deloitte to hip-hop? Let's go.

Michelle: The scene is New York City, at the legendary radio station Hot 97. The show is 'Ebro in the Morning,' hosted by Ebro Darden and Peter Rosenberg. These guys are industry titans. They are the gatekeepers of hip-hop. If they say you’re hot, you’re hot. Mark: Right, they're the tastemakers. Their opinion can make or break a new artist. Michelle: Precisely. And their guest that day is a young woman who’s mostly known for being an ex-stripper with a huge social media following and a spot on the reality show Love & Hip Hop. Her name is Cardi B, and she wants to be a rapper. Mark: Oh, I can already feel the skepticism through the microphone. Reality star turned rapper. That’s a tough sell for industry purists. Michelle: You have no idea. The interview is 41 minutes of thinly veiled condescension. They question her background, her body, her language. And then Ebro, the expert, listens to her rap and says, "We gotta work on that." He essentially pats her on the head and dismisses her. Mark: Wow. "We gotta work on that." That is the most polite, corporate-sounding rejection I've ever heard. It’s brutal. Michelle: It’s the kiss of death from the kingmaker. But here’s where the story gets good. The very next year, in 2017, Cardi B releases a song called "Bodak Yellow." It doesn't just become a hit. It becomes a cultural atom bomb. It goes to number one, and she becomes the first female rapper to do so with a solo song in nearly two decades. Mark: Hold on. So less than a year after the industry’s top expert told her she needed work, she completely conquered the industry? Michelle: Conquered it, and then rewrote the rules. By 2018, she broke Beyoncé’s record for the most simultaneous top-10 hits. By 2019, she won the Grammy for Best Rap Album—the first solo woman ever to do so. By 2021, critics were mentioning her in the same breath as Lauryn Hill. Mark: That is an absolutely staggering level of being wrong. Ebro wasn't just a little off; he was on a different planet. Why? Why do the experts, the people who should know better, miss these things so spectacularly? Michelle: That is the central question of the first part of Kanungo's book. He calls it the "Pitfall of Success." The better you are at something, the more successful you become, the more you create these mental shortcuts based on what has worked in the past. Your expertise becomes a set of blinders. Mark: So your success builds a comfortable little box, and you can't see anything outside of it. Michelle: Exactly. Kanungo calls this being an "Ebro Expert." You become so confident in your proven formula that you're automatically resistant to anything that doesn't fit it. Cardi B didn't fit the formula. She wasn't a "pure" lyricist from the underground scene. She was a loud, unfiltered reality star. She was a joke to them. Until the joke was on them. Mark: I see this all the time in the corporate world. It’s the person who says, "We tried that ten years ago and it didn't work," or "That's not how we do things here." They're the Ebro of the marketing department. Michelle: And Kanungo’s own story at Deloitte backs this up. He talks about how, early in his career, he was told to use "best practices"—basically, repackaging solutions that worked for other clients. He’d bring the same PowerPoint decks to new clients, and the initiatives would just fail. They weren't tailored, they weren't fresh. He was being an Ebro. Mark: That’s a bit of a scary thought. The very thing that makes you valuable—your experience—is also the thing that can make you obsolete. It’s like the Russell Westbrook trap Kanungo mentions. Michelle: Tell me more about that. Mark: Well, Westbrook was famous for getting triple-doubles in basketball. It was his identity. He was the triple-double king. But as the game changed, his teams started losing. He was so attached to his old way of succeeding—getting those stats—that he couldn't adapt his game to actually help his team win. His past success became his biggest liability. Michelle: That’s a perfect analogy. You become a cover band of your own greatest hits. And Kanungo argues that this is where disruption comes from. It doesn't come from the people at the center of the industry, the ones playing the hits. It comes from the fringes. It comes from the people who are being ignored. Mark: Okay, so if being the established expert is a trap, what's the alternative? How do you actually disrupt things if you're not supposed to rely on what you know? Michelle: Well, this is where the book takes another fascinating turn, away from the modern world of hip-hop and all the way back to the South China Sea in the early 1800s.

Mark: From Cardi B to 19th-century pirates. I am loving this intellectual whiplash. Michelle: Kanungo's answer to your question is what he calls the "Paradox of Piracy." The idea is simple: to go broad in the long run, you have to start by thinking incredibly niche in the short run. You have to build a small, loyal, almost cult-like following first. You need to find your crew. And his prime example is the most successful pirate in history, a woman named Ching Shih. Mark: Wait, the most successful pirate in history was a woman? How have I never heard of her? Michelle: Because history is often written by the people who get defeated. Ching Shih started her life as a prostitute in a floating brothel in Canton. She was an outcast, at the absolute bottom of society. But she was brilliant. She caught the eye of a notorious pirate captain, Zheng Yi, who led a fleet of ships. She didn't just marry him; she negotiated a contract for co-leadership and a 50% stake in the business. Mark: A pre-nup for a pirate empire. I love it. She was a Bold One from the start. Michelle: Absolutely. But then, her husband dies. By all rights, the confederation of pirates he built should have fallen apart. Instead, Ching Shih stepped up. She knew the pirates were all alpha-male captains who would never follow a woman out of respect. So she didn't ask for respect. She created a system. Mark: What kind of system? Michelle: A ruthlessly efficient and strict code of laws. All loot had to be registered and was distributed systematically—the crew got 80%, she got 20%. Any pirate who disobeyed an order was immediately beheaded. Any pirate who raped a female captive was immediately beheaded. Mark: Whoa. So she wasn't trying to be their friend. She was creating order out of chaos. Michelle: Precisely. She was inspiring the underdogs—the disorganized, warring factions of pirates—by giving them something they'd never had: a stable, predictable, and profitable organization. She united all the outcasts. And her fleet grew. And grew. At her peak, she commanded 1,800 ships and an army of 80,000 men. For comparison, the legendary Blackbeard had four ships and 300 men. Mark: That is mind-boggling. 80,000 men. That's not a pirate crew; that's a nation-state on water. What did the government do? Michelle: The Chinese Qing dynasty sent armada after armada to destroy her. She defeated every single one. They were so humiliated they eventually had to call in help from the British and the Portuguese. Even then, they couldn't beat her. In the end, the government offered her a deal: surrender, and you and all your men can keep your loot and retire with a full pardon. Mark: You're kidding me. They paid her to stop pirating? Michelle: They had no choice. She negotiated the greatest retirement package in criminal history. She died peacefully in her own home as a grandmother. Mark: That is one of the best stories I've ever heard. But how does a project manager or a graphic designer apply the 'Pirate Queen' strategy? We can't exactly command a fleet and demand tribute from the government. Michelle: It's not about the ships; it's about the strategy. Kanungo breaks it down. First, "Inspire the Underdogs." Ching Shih didn't appeal to the powerful; she organized the powerless. In today's world, that means finding a niche audience that is being ignored or underserved. Rihanna did this with Fenty Beauty. The beauty industry was ignoring women with darker skin tones. Rihanna served them, and they became her fiercely loyal crew. That loyalty then spilled over into the mainstream. Mark: Okay, that makes sense. Find your niche. What's next? Michelle: "Create a Halo Effect." Ching Shih's strict code and military victories created a reputation. She became a legend. Everything she did was viewed through this halo of success. For us, this is about building a personal brand. Do one thing so exceptionally well that people start paying attention to everything else you do. Mark: So it’s about becoming known for something, even if it’s small, and then leveraging that reputation. Michelle: Exactly. And finally, "Understand the Paradox of Piracy." To go broad, start niche. Ching Shih didn't try to conquer China. She focused on dominating the South China Sea. She owned her niche completely. Once you have that core, devoted following—your "one true fan," as Kanungo puts it—they become your evangelists. They spread the word for you. You don't need a massive marketing budget if you have a thousand true fans who would follow you into battle. Mark: It's a powerful idea. It flips the script. Instead of trying to please everyone at the top, you go to the bottom and build an army that the people at the top can't ignore. You become your own center of gravity. Michelle: And that brings us back to Cardi B. She wasn't a pirate queen, but she followed the same playbook. She was an underdog. She built her loyal following on social media when the industry gatekeepers were ignoring her. She created a halo effect with her personality. And when she finally dropped her music, her army was ready. She didn't need Ebro's approval; she had already built her own kingdom.

Mark: So when you put the two stories together, the pattern is incredibly clear. The 'Ebro experts' of the world, the ones sitting comfortably at the center of their industry, are actually the most vulnerable. They're focused on protecting their status quo. Michelle: While the 'Bold Ones,' the ones like Cardi B and Ching Shih, are starting on the absolute fringes. They're dismissed, they have nothing to lose, and they build their power by uniting the other outcasts and serving the needs no one else sees. Mark: It’s interesting because when you look at the author, Shawn Kanungo, his career reflects this. He was an insider at Deloitte, but he made his name by being the 'weird' guy who made film documentaries for clients instead of PowerPoints. He was chipping away at the edges. And now he’s got this bestselling book, a streaming special... he built his own platform from the fringe of the consulting world. Michelle: He practiced what he preaches. And it’s why the book has resonated so much, getting praise from places like McKinsey, even if some readers find the pop-culture examples a bit like 'TikTok wisdom.' The underlying strategy is timeless. Mark: So the lesson isn't just 'be bold' in that generic, motivational poster sense. It's 'be wary of your own success, and look for power where no one else is looking.' It’s about finding your small, loyal crew first, before you try to conquer the world. Michelle: Exactly. So our challenge to you, our listeners, is this: what's one 'fringe' idea or skill you have that you've been ignoring because it doesn't fit the "best practices" of your job or industry? What's your inner pirate waiting to be unleashed? Mark: We'd love to hear about it. Find us on our socials and share your story. Let us know what your 'Bodak Yellow' or your pirate fleet would be. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.