The best way to grow authentically is to consistently provide value and continuously show up. You can watch the entire video above, as well as read the edited script below.

“Nardwuar! (bud da bum bum ba bum bum) Nardwuar! (bud da bum bum ba bum bum)”

Platinum-selling rapper J. Cole got pretty into his conversation with Nardwuar the Human Serviette, ending the interview by singing the radio host’s theme with enthusiasm.

Nardwuar has always had a talent for posing oddly specific questions to everyone from Jay-Z to Cardi B to even Justin Trudeau. So how did this goofy, music-loving canuck become the internet’s favorite interviewer, growing to over 2 million subscribers on YouTube and even having a holiday named after him in the process?

Part I — The 10,000 Hours Rule

In Essay 2.1, we talked about how the ideas of “hustle culture” can oftentimes lead to burnout, and when setting strong foundations for our businesses and careers, we need to prioritize things like community and collaboration.

But that doesn’t mean hard work isn’t important – it is! There’s simply more factors at play when it comes to being successful.

Whether it’s your favorite athlete, an award-winning chef, or a tech billionaire, there’s a decent chance you’ve heard them talk about how it took 10,000 hours to master their craft.

This concept was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 New York Times bestseller, “Outliers.” In it, the author analyzes the stories of people who exist at the outer edge of what is statistically possible.

Longtime journalist and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell

His purpose? To demystify the conception that in order to “make it,” you need to rely solely off of smarts, ambition, and hustle.

Gladwell opens by citing the ages of elite Canadian hockey players, noting that their birth dates often fall earlier in the year. This is because when competing in youth leagues, the oldest children in their divisions are usually the most physically mature, starting a cycle where they get more coaching and opportunities to join elite hockey leagues.

Throughout the book, the author consistently brings up the importance of family, friendship, and culture in molding these anomalies. Bill Gates, for example, was always going to make it in the professional world due to his intelligence, both logical and emotional. But it was the unique, consistent access Gates had to a computer beginning in middle school that – along with enthusiastic friends and a wealthy upbringing – that led him to start Microsoft when he was only 20 years old.

If you have time on your side and are placed in the right environment, Gladwell says, success in any field is pretty simple: you need to practice a specific task that can be accomplished with 20 hours of work a week for 10 years…or 10,000 hours.

In the years since Outliers was published, Gladwell’s ideas have spread like wildfire, evolving into less of a thesis and more of a doctrine. For most of us, it’s pretty cut-and-dry – when you’re focused on improving your skill set over a long period of time, you tend to become pretty good at it.

Enter Nardwuar:

“Every interview I do, I prepare because I know I’m gonna keep doing them over and over and over again. I put the same amount of research, the same amount of seriousness into every single interview I do.”

So who was this guy, speaking at an event in his hometown of Vancouver, running around on stage while quoting Gladwell?

Part II — The Legend of Nardwuar

In 1985, Back to the Future dominated the box office, the first Internet domain was registered, and a rather infamous wall still stood in Berlin.

It’s also the year when a 17-year-old Nardwuar recorded his own debut interview, organizing a concert at his high school with a punk band, Poisoned, and talking with them after the show.

Born John Ruskin in Vancouver, British Columbia, his father was an engineer. But it was his mother, a high school history teacher, who ended up inspiring his career the most. She brought her son along to local historical society meetings, where together, they’d dig into the city’s prominent figures from the past and unearth interesting facts about them.

When talking about his mom, Nardwuar told The Outline:

“She proved to me that the next door neighbor had just as interesting a story as the celebrity…
In other words, it is the interviewer's job to make the interviewee look exciting. Afterwards you can't go and say 'oh that person was boring.' No, it is up to you to bring out the best in that person.”

Two years after picking up the mic for the first time in high school, Ruskin became a radio host for CiTR at the University of British Columbia. And just like that, Nardwuar the Human Serviette was born, running the same show for the last 35 years.

Nardwuar at his studio, *CiTR,* located in Vancouver

In developing his style, Nardwuar would play a variety of music while weaving in his own conversations with artists, as well as commentary on the music industry as a whole. His interview format has even stayed true to this day. He told GQ in 2017 that some of his trademark catchphrases – such as the “doot doola doot doo” ending – comes from cutting his teeth in radio:

“Whenever you listen to call-in shows, the host never says goodbye to the person phoning in, they move on. They just dump the caller…I like to end properly and treat them with respect.”

The young interviewer started making inroads with the local punk scene in Vancouver, but it wasn’t long before his eyes started to wander – sometimes past music entirely. For example, in 1993, former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev was on a panel when a relatively-unknown Nardwuar walked up to the mic and uttered another one of his catchphrases: “Keep on rockin’ in the free world!”

Of course, Nardwuar being Nardwuar, he delivered the line in Russian before asking a question that befuddled local news stations:

“Of all the political figures that Dr. Gorbachev has encountered, who has the largest pants?”

Nardwuar has always played up this uniquely silly persona, yet interestingly enough, there’s not much more information out there when you try to dig deep into his story. After all, he’s usually the one asking the questions!

What we can pull from, however, is the vast treasure trove of video interviews Nardwuar has steadily uploaded to his YouTube channel since 2006. And when you go down that rabbit hole, that’s where you start to see the magic come out, as his talent for bringing out the personality of his interviewees is near-unparalleled across the industry.

Part III — Punching Up

There’s a saying in journalism: Know the person you’re interviewing better than they know themselves.

Whether it’s because of press tours, paparazzi, or fans, artists and celebrities are used to being bombarded with questions. So as an interviewer, when you show up prepared, pushing your subject through insightful queries, they tend to remember.

In his 2011 Ted Talk, Nardwuar told the story of how he managed to interview Kurt Cobain at a Vancouver concert several weeks before the singer’s tragic passing.

After showing up several hours early to the venue, Nardwuar snuck into the backstage area only to be kicked out by security. He did, however, manage to leave a cassette tape without being noticed:

“What’s on the cassette tape? The cassette tape contains an interview I did with Courtney Love, Kurt’s wife. So I was hoping that Kurt would find the cassette tape, take it home that night and listen to it in a hotel, and the next day would know who I was…”

Nardwuar wouldn’t receive a phone call that night. But the next day, while trying to get in through the media entrance at the venue, he noticed Cobain and his wife walk in by mistake. Love recognized the interviewer and invited him backstage, telling security, “That’s my cousin, Nardwuar!”

As it turned out, Cobain and Love had actually found the cassette tape and listened to it in their hotel room. Love raved about the interview, and before Nardwuar knew it, he was talking with one of the most famous artists at the peak of his powers.

This is a common thread for Nardwuar: impressing his subjects through his extensive research, leading to others asking for an interview. For example, in 2008, Nardwuar wowed Pharrell Williams so much that Williams called who else but Jay-Z, “like, a hundred times,” according to Hov.

Not long hours, Nardwuar packed his bag and drove twelve hours round trip, all to get five minutes with the rapper. The rapper began the interview by mentioning Pharell:

“He knows that I appreciate people that, no matter what you do, whether you paint art or you make records or you do interviews or you a writer, if you’re really, truly good at your craft…he knows I’m excited by that type of shit.”

When we’re punching up, attempting to collaborate with individuals or brands that are typically hard to access, we need to provide value in our own way. For Nardwuar, that meant creating his own style of interviewing, a one-of-a-kind experience that took years to perfect.

By digging deep into his subjects, he’s able to reference key formative moments from their lives and hand them obscure gifts. More often than not, this leads Nardwuar’s interviewees to break out from behind their fine-tuned PR masks, astounded by the bespectacled man who clearly did his homework. These priceless reactions have even spawned an entire genre of YouTube supercuts.

In the age of social media, it’s become easier for celebrities to bypass the old guard – the press – and engage directly with their audience. Nevertheless, Nardwuar’s commitment to his craft over the course of three decades has quietly upended this modern power structure – for a lot of up-and-coming artists, you haven’t “made it” until you’ve gotten your very own Nardwuar interview.

So we know who Nardwuar is and how he became a beloved figure in the music industry. But as creators, what can we take from his journey and apply to our own careers?

Part IV — Leaning In

A decade after publishing Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reflected on how his 10,000 hours argument has trickled down through popular culture over the years. He pushed back on the notion that talent doesn’t matter at all, while also stating the number isn’t an all-encompassing, governing rule:

“It symbolizes this fact that the amount of time necessary to develop your innate abilities is probably longer than you think. So it’s a metaphor for the extent of commitment that’s necessary in cognitively complex fields.”

It’s probably a good thing Gladwell offered that footnote, because a whole host of accomplished individuals don’t fit the neatly-constructed bill, anyway – Nardwuar included.

The interviewer told GQ:

“Malcolm Gladwell is brilliant, but I'm glad I didn't listen to him because I would have quit a long time ago.”

When do we know if we’ve officially mastered a skill? The truth is, we don’t. It’s not an exact science; rather, it’s more a leap of faith.

So much of our culture is based around immediacy, yet when we’re building our worlds for the long run, it’s hard to fully appreciate our day-to-day improvements. This is painstakingly relevant for most entrepreneurs working in rapidly-changing industries; as one creator recently told me, it’s not like there’s a textbook for the creator economy.

Nonetheless, while we can’t control our environment, we can control how we react to — and operate within — it. In this writer’s opinion, the best way to do so is by consistently showing up and providing extraordinary value to the stakeholders we deem necessary to accomplishing our mission.

The city of Vancouver officially recognized “Nardwuar Day” in 2019

As for Nardwuar, the man has become a living legend. Through two life-threatening medical emergencies, he’s persisted, joking that when he eventually grows old and winds up in a nursing home, he’ll still be asking the nurses about their favorite punk bands. That persistence was recognized by his hometown in 2019, when the city of Vancouver officially named September 29th Nardwuar Day in honor of his three decades working in music.

Even with the millions of followers and viral moments Nardwuar has accumulated on social media, though, clout is the last thing he’s chasing. He’s on the record saying that what he’s really looking forward to is meeting Canadian Rockstar Neil Young one day, then — in his words — “dying a happy life.”

Because sometimes, it’s really just that simple. As I type these scripts and pursue my vision, I often feel like a crazy person, working long hours without always seeing tangible results.

But I think what we always gotta remember is that over time, we’ll meet our idols and build our unique worlds – we just gotta fall in love with the process first in order to get there.

Coverage from Creator Mag.2 continues on! Plus, follow along with our video essays by subscribing to our channel.

Essay 2.2: Nardwuar, Master of Interviews

Our world, delivered