WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 Welcome back to the game. Today I want to talk about hard work and what it actually is, 2 00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:11.440 not the pseudo manifesto bashing your chest, but what it really feels like tactically in the 3 00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:15.200 world of an entrepreneur. The hardest work is the work that you don't know how to do. 4 00:00:15.920 --> 00:00:21.600 And the reason this is so tough is that the vast majority of the time, if I said what would it 5 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:25.360 take to grow your business? If you only had one thing you could do by the end of the year and make 6 00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:29.920 sure that it was accomplished, that if you just did that one thing, all of your other goals would 7 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:34.640 get accomplished. What would that one thing be? By the way, that one thing is what we call a priority. 8 00:00:35.200 --> 00:00:40.160 Now, the thing is that you might not know how to make that one thing happen. So it could be if I 9 00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:45.280 had to make a brand by the end of the year, all of my other issues would go away. It could be if I 10 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:49.760 didn't have the turn issue that I have by the end of the year, all my other issues would go away. 11 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:53.440 If I had a good sales director that could scale a sales team, all of my issues would go away. 12 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:58.160 Many businesses have one thing that if you think about it long enough, have enough downstream 13 00:00:58.160 --> 00:01:03.040 effects that it would accomplish many of these other goals that you have or more likely make them 14 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:08.720 irrelevant. And so what we do oftentimes as an entrepreneur is we solve the problems we already know 15 00:01:08.720 --> 00:01:13.040 how to solve. And so we like doing those because we have fast feedback loops because it's rewarding 16 00:01:13.040 --> 00:01:16.800 because we know how to solve it. And so it's basically like going back to level two when you're 17 00:01:16.800 --> 00:01:20.800 at level three and you don't know how to beat that boss, you just keep beating level two again because 18 00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:24.800 it feels good. But the thing is is that the level three boss hasn't changed and he's still sitting 19 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:30.720 there bowser, you know, with his fist and his spikes sitting there ready to wreck you. And so the 20 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:36.240 thing is is that the hard work of entrepreneurship is the failure that you're inevitably going to 21 00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:43.200 encounter by not knowing what you're doing and then taking action steps despite that with the idea 22 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:49.200 that you will eventually succeed if you don't stop. And so we as entrepreneurs have to accept that 23 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:54.560 that is what hard feels like. It is confronting the unknown that we don't know how to do and realizing 24 00:01:54.560 --> 00:02:00.560 that we're going to take our best shot and probably be wrong for five six times in a row. And yet 25 00:02:00.560 --> 00:02:05.520 that single priority has not changed. If we still built the big brand, if we still hired that 26 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:10.240 really good sales director, if we still fix churn in our business, if that thing were solved, 27 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:15.280 it still doesn't become less of a priority. But what happens is the entrepreneur fails once, 28 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:18.960 fails twice and then decides, you know what, I'm going to go back to level two and beat that 29 00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:23.680 to feed my ego and feel good about myself. But most of entrepreneurship is eating glass. And that's 30 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:28.000 why I said earlier, growth is stressful, stagnation is stressful, decline is stressful. Because in 31 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.000 each of those scenarios, you're still doing the same thing, which is that you're solving a problem 32 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.720 you don't know how to solve yet. And so the actual doing this in all three of those scenarios is the 33 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:41.600 same. And so that's why when you want to when you want to say stress is the problem, it's not the 34 00:02:41.600 --> 00:02:46.480 problem. Stress is the fact that occurs when you solve problems. And if you're solving problems, 35 00:02:46.480 --> 00:02:51.280 you don't know how to solve. Welcome to the game. If you knew how to do everything, you'd already be 36 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:57.760 Elon Musk. And so the whole journey of entrepreneurship is turning the unknown into the known through trial 37 00:02:57.760 --> 00:03:01.680 and error. There's a company that was thinking about investing in that has a consumer package good, 38 00:03:01.680 --> 00:03:07.680 CPG product that I asked the founder. I said, how hard is system manufacture? And he said, it's 39 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:11.600 actually a lot more complicated than I thought it would be. And I was like, that's amazing. And he 40 00:03:11.600 --> 00:03:16.560 just looked at me cross side. And he was like, why is that amazing? I was like, because that's more 41 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:20.880 things that anyone is going to try and copy us is going to have to overcome. And if we can bet on 42 00:03:20.880 --> 00:03:25.440 the fact that we're more perspicacious, that we're more relentless, that we're more unyielding, 43 00:03:25.440 --> 00:03:31.120 in our desire to keep solving the problem and keep bashing our heads against the rock until the 44 00:03:31.120 --> 00:03:36.240 rock gives way, then we will be able to be the winners. And any single thing that you have to 45 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:41.760 overcome to be successful is what anybody who behind you wants to compete with you will also have 46 00:03:41.760 --> 00:03:46.880 to solve. And so I like to think about it like, there's this big rock that I have to figure out 47 00:03:46.880 --> 00:03:52.160 how to move with rope and some duct tape and a lot of sweat and a few guys with me. And on the other 48 00:03:52.160 --> 00:03:57.040 side of that rock is a big bag of money. And the bigger the rock in general, the bigger the bag of 49 00:03:57.040 --> 00:04:00.800 money. I mean, I use this frame all the time at it. One of our other portfolio companies, we have a 50 00:04:00.800 --> 00:04:04.400 software that we've developed and has now gotten really, really good and is generating a lot of 51 00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:08.080 revenue. And there's this next big feature that we have to build out. And he's like, this is 52 00:04:08.080 --> 00:04:11.680 going to be really complicated. I said, well, the good news is we're going to get paid $150 million 53 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:15.040 when we solve it. And he was like, well, when you say it like that. And I was like, well, it is 54 00:04:15.040 --> 00:04:19.920 like that. And so when you think about these things, whether it's, I need to add a second acquisition 55 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:25.440 channel or I need to learn how to hire, manage, and train a sales director. Each of these are hard 56 00:04:25.440 --> 00:04:29.840 things that you have to figure out how to do. But if you can quantify how much more valuable your 57 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:34.800 enterprise or your business will be as a result of this change, then you can ascribe a value to it. 58 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:39.760 And if I said, hey, man, if you hire that sales director, I'll pay you $5 million. Guess I'm 59 00:04:39.760 --> 00:04:44.000 motivated. You probably be more motivated. But the thing is, is that your business will pay you $5 60 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:48.320 million when you solve the problem. And so if you frame it that way, it stops being this woe is me, 61 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:53.200 people are hard. Man, life is stressful. It's, we get compensated for our ability to do 62 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:57.520 with that stress and take action despite it. One of the biggest unknowns that I had when I started 63 00:04:57.520 --> 00:05:02.480 a few years ago is how do you run a family office? So I went from an entrepreneur building businesses 64 00:05:02.480 --> 00:05:11.600 to I have to manage cash added at portfolio and allocations of resources in capital across multiple 65 00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:15.920 businesses and different industries. How many resources do I allocate in terms of man hours to each 66 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:20.240 of these companies? Is it proportion of the capital? What kind of deal structures are going to be the 67 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:23.680 things that are going to mitigate risk, but also give us the most upside? These are all these things 68 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:28.000 that I had no experience with. And so I just got on the phone with anybody who'd give me time and 69 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:32.160 ask them as many questions I possibly could and then guess what happened. Once I started doing it, 70 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:36.400 I learned way more than I did from all those conversations and I developed my own thesis of how 71 00:05:36.400 --> 00:05:41.040 this works. And so the thing is is that every time you start on something new, whether it's starting 72 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:45.600 a business to begin with or learning how to run paid ads or learning how to sell, it always feels 73 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:51.440 like this big amorphous thing. But once you take your first phone sale, once you run your first ad, 74 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:57.520 once you hire your first person, all of a sudden you're like, oh, okay, I kind of wrap my arms 75 00:05:57.520 --> 00:06:01.760 around it and now I can see all the holes that are there. And so in my experience, the faster I can 76 00:06:01.760 --> 00:06:06.800 get to me just wrapping my arms around me actually taking the first action, you learn a hundred times 77 00:06:06.800 --> 00:06:13.040 more from your first hundred phone sales than you will from 10,000 hours of reading books about it. 78 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:17.120 And so my goal with a lot of the content that I have here is if I can just shrink the time between 79 00:06:17.120 --> 00:06:21.840 you thinking about doing it and doing it the faster you're going to get to your goal. Because learning 80 00:06:21.840 --> 00:06:28.400 is same condition, new behavior. If you have not changed your conditions and your behavior remains 81 00:06:28.400 --> 00:06:33.840 the same after this video, you have learned nothing. And you can measure how intelligent someone is 82 00:06:33.840 --> 00:06:38.160 by their rate of learning, which means by the rate at which they change their behavior given 83 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:43.440 the same stimulus. So if I say, hey, pick up the phone and answer it. Someone picks up the phone, 84 00:06:43.440 --> 00:06:47.440 they say blah, blah, blah. I say, great, I want you to read the script now, pick up the phone. 85 00:06:47.440 --> 00:06:52.000 Now they pick up the phone, they read the script. Same condition, new behavior, they've learned. And 86 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:58.400 so right now in your life, there are conditions that probably remain unchanged. And so if your 87 00:06:58.400 --> 00:07:04.240 behavior does not change, you learned nothing. And you can measure every video, every piece of content, 88 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:10.720 every book that you or every sales exchange, every meeting you have as to will this change my 89 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:13.520 behavior. If it didn't, it was a waste of time.