When it comes to what one needs to be successful, many people might offer the following checklist: a degree from a prestigious university, a job at a reputable organization, a strong sense of ambition and a determined work ethic.
But John and Rock Positano say there is something else required: being street smart.
In their 2022 book, “Street Smart: The Primer for Success in the New World,” the brothers lay out how a sixth sense for identifying, seizing and creating your own lucky breaks is just as important as “book smarts” when it comes to achieving success. Especially in the post-pandemic era, they write, younger generations are in need of such a guidebook on making it today’s world.
Both based in New York, John is a lawyer and writer, and Rock is a doctor and co-director of two departments at the Hospital for Special Surgery. Together, they also authored “Dinner with DiMaggio: Memories of An American Hero,” a memoir about the baseball legend Joe DiMaggio and the unlikely friendship he developed with Rock after the doctor treated his heel.
After discussing how their own childhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City endowed them with street smart skills, John and Rock profile 37 different “street scholars,” offering case studies on notable people such as infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and American filmmaker Ken Burns. Each of the short memoirs ties the leader’s background to the qualities that led them to success, which John and Rock link to their street smarts.
U.S. News spoke with the brothers this summer about their inspiration for the book and what they learned while writing it. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What inspired you to write “Street Smart”?
John Positano(COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS)
John: Basically we have noticed that one of the things which younger people do not have now is a rudder or a booklet to go forward in the new world. No one has been showing them how to navigate the various potholes and obstacles in life. It certainly isn’t taught in school. It certainly isn’t taught at home. So we thought that from our own life, we would be able to tell younger people how to seize the most of luck or how to not fall inside of a pothole. That is why we decided to write this book.
Rock: This is not a self-help book. This is far more than that. John and I feel that there’s a whole new definition of what success is and we find that, especially post-pandemic, the new definition of success is survival. It’s all about that. That was one of the things that Johnny and I wanted to sort of factor in on. What we wanted to do was to get the opinions of a lot of successful people that we respect. John and I pretty much said, “Let’s get the list of people who for a million dollars would not want to sit down at the same dinner table and break bread,” which means the perspectives would be very, very different. It’s a book that’s written about real-life experience, about philosophy, taking from people’s history of their lives, their upbringings and the things that they learned.
For those who haven’t read the book, what does it mean to be “Street Smart” and what does it have to do with success?
John: It’s almost like a psychic hunch. It’s a hunch about the people and places and certainly the circumstances with which you’re dealing with at that present time. It is reading somebody, but beyond reading their body language – because everyone’s really been using body language for thousands of years – and sort of getting a feeling about what this person really means and what they really, really want. I think that is the critical part of being street smart.
Rock Positano(COURTESY OF THE AUTHORS)
It’s not something that is taught. And it’s not something that you have missed because everyone – every single thinking human being – has used street smart. And what we try to bring out in this book is there are actually a lot of folks from all walks of life who have a way of pulling things out of circumstances. Those people are street smart. They tend to be people who seize a lucky break or use their street smart to duck an unlucky break. That’s exactly what street smart is.
Rock: Everyone is so focused on artificial intelligence right now. But AI can’t read a face or body language, which are skills that can only be honed and developed in the real world. And also, AI is not capable of instinct and intuition. It does not have the ability to have that sixth sense that John and I are talking about. Johnny and I even called it a form of extrasensory perception, like maybe it’s a form of being able to predict what’s around the corner. And I think in that respect, humans will always have that advantage over artificial intelligence because of our ability to interact, to look for a facial expression, a feeling, a gut instinct, a hunch. These are things that we are undervaluing, and this is an important part of what street smart is about, especially in the world of leadership.
You spoke to 37 different “street scholars” for this book. What were some of the common threads you saw in each of their success stories?
Rock: The one common thread was focused on trusting your instincts and intuition – staying with an idea, working with that idea and never backing down. We found that to be a common thread throughout all of these biographies. It’s about learning how to deal with adversity and obstacles. But it’s the balance that we’re talking about here: book smart and street smart. If you marry the two, you have a very formidable combination that’s going to be difficult to beat. So that was the whole purpose of why we wanted to integrate these different types of opinions from different people, as well as their own experience growing up.