EP824: Eric Koester - Stop Asking For Permission
"Stop waiting for a mentor — instead, ask them to collaborate on something you're working on. That collaboration proves you're actually pretty great." — Eric Koester
Eric Koester started his first business at 14 — building research reports for environmental consultants in Asia — before he could even drive himself to the library. He wasn't trying to be an entrepreneur. He just didn't know he was supposed to wait for permission. That early instinct, and a later mentor who nearly crushed it, set the course for everything he's built since.
Today Eric is a serial entrepreneur, a professor of entrepreneurship at Georgetown University, and the founder of Manuscripts.com. His research into more than 6,000 Forbes 30 Under 30 honorees led him to a finding that cuts against most conventional career wisdom: school prestige and job titles barely register as predictors of breakout success. What 80% of high achievers shared was the completion of what he calls a public collaborative project — a book, a podcast season, an event series, collaborative research — something finishable, public, and mission-driven rather than purely commercial.
The mechanism behind it is the Grit Growth Flywheel. Finishing something genuinely hard changes your own belief in what's possible, while simultaneously raising others' confidence in your capacity to take on bigger things. Both shifts compound. The same logic applies to mentorship: the relationships that actually reshape careers rarely begin with a formal ask. They begin with an invitation to collaborate on something real.
Eric closes with three concrete steps anyone can start today — starting with one that reframes daily collaboration as a diagnostic you can run on yourself right now.
Expert Action Steps:
1. Ask for feedback every single day. If you haven't asked today, it's a sign you're either not collaborating deeply enough or not open to input — and either problem is worth fixing.
2. Let fun be your compass for new projects. The most impactful projects tend to start as things you were genuinely thrilled to do. If the new thing feels like more of the same work, keep looking.
3. Don't lower your ambition to match your current results. If you're struggling to close the gap, fix your process — not your ceiling. Aim high, start small, repeat.
Learn more & connect
Eric Koester — https://www.erickoester.com
Manuscripts.com — https://www.manuscripts.com
Resources mentioned:
Super Mentors by Eric Koester — https://www.erickoester.com
Signaling Theory (Michael Spence) — search "Spence signaling theory" for academic papers
Growth Mindset research by Carol Dweck — https://www.mindsetworks.com
Forbes 30 Under 30 — https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30
Manuscripts.com — https://www.manuscripts.com
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