Livestream: Rush of blood to the head: How a Wall Street high-roller rediscovered her mojo via disruption

Who would imagine a Wall Street equity analyst chucking her decade-long jet-setting life of doling out investment advice, to switch on to a completely varied chapter in life? Johnson says, “I would say, when that happened, I was working with Wall Street, 15 years ago, as an equity analyst, building financial models – stocks to buy, to sell…” Then a book called The Innovator’s Dilemma, proved to be a turning point for Johnson.

Like wireless disrupted landlines, and Netflix busted movie-going, Johnson figured why not apply a disrupting agent to people. It is here that Elkins poses the quintessential question – So what was the disruptor for you? Johnson tells us: “Personal disruption for me… surprised me over the intervening years… I am the telephone and the telegraph; I am the Toyota and the General Motors; I am the Netflix and the blockbuster; either I stay here or do something new; basically disrupt myself; that’s when I started looking at S curve; the top of the learning curve which looks like a wave or a roller coaster.” Johnson, author of Dare, Dream, Do went on to write Disrupt Yourself, using real-time experiences as the narrative.

She shares, “I studied music in college, but I didn’t feel love for it. For many years, I accompanied and I thought about doing classical, dabbled a bit with jazz (which was overwhelming). Then it was a gospel piano phase. I started watching YouTube videos of Dave Horn, and played it in every key. It was so much fun learning by rote and little bit by ear; it was a whole different genre but there was no expectation and none of that baggage.” Allowing disruption implied a burning desire to learn and go beyond the feeling of being “stuck.” “Everything looks good and in general everything works fine, but there is a piece of you which says, I got to do something that is new… the nerve signs of ‘why you have to’ is when your brain is not learning anymore,” she says.

Just like the cycle of life which has spring, summer, winter and fall, it is the desire to be at the top of learning curve or the ability to dive to the bottom and start all over again decides an individual’s growth trajectory.

She advocates a simple exercise, you could try this with any other passion as well: Take piano lessons for 15 minutes a day for a whole year. That’s 90 hours of painstaking labour that could possibly turn you from an amateur to a promising artiste.