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Welcome back to the game. This is a guest spot on diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett.

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This is going to be a two-parter and so part one is a little bit more on the

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wet or the key decision points for making pivots in a career. Number two is what kind of fuel

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you use in order to make basically to continue to drive on after you've seen success. Number three,

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how to get other people to do stuff for you either within the business or if you were the entrepreneur

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running the business, some things that we found that increased the likelihood of compliance with

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requests, which is just the fancy way of saying the same thing I just said, which is get people

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to do stuff that you want them to do. Enjoy. If you want to make more money, you might want to

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consider doing this. So number one is hold that thought just a second because the thing that comes

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before the math is this growth. Oh god, this is the entrepreneur life cycle and there are six

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stages. Now the vast majority of people get stuck on stage three. That means some of the biggest

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career mistakes at this point and you end up living the same six months for 23 years, suffering

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until you learn how to break free from it. I want to go through the whole thing. This is going to be

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f**king awesome. Alex Morbosi is the master of business strategy, an artist in styling companies

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into the millions and a leading voice in how to craft your way to success. He's an entrepreneurial

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powerhouse. Whether you're starting out or want to go from one million to ten million,

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there are certain behaviors and actions that will increase the likelihood of success that we're

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going to go through. But here's the really hard truth that a lot of people don't like talking about.

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Entrepreneurs must be willing to make impossible choices, have the courage to be willing to be

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wrong, have shame by failing at things in front of people whose opinions they care about. And that fear

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keeps people stuck in a job and a life they don't want for years. And that was my path. I had a

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white college job condo overlooking the city, everything's according to plan, and I remember thinking

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I didn't want to be alive. Because I was so afraid. But once you get over the fear,

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it unleashes this whole new realm of possibility of being able to do what you want. And that is when

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you can learn the real game of entrepreneurship, such as knowing that business ideas typically

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come from one of three pieces. You only need one of those three. And then there's the four hours

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for customer success, how to learn new skills, quickly, how to stand out in a competitive market,

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the winning strategy for 2025, and so much more. So wishless time.

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If someone's just clicked on this conversation and they're considering listening for the next

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couple of hours, based on everything that you do, for the millions of entrepreneurs that follow

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you, that read your books, can you tell me exactly why you believe they should stay and listen?

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And who should stay and listen? At acquisition.com, we scale businesses.

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The content that I generate that we put out, conversations like this,

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helps people who are going from zero to one, just getting off the ground to helping people go from

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one million to ten million, to helping the entrepreneurs going from ten to a hundred,

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either get there or exit along the way. And there are frameworks that cross all three of those

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that I consider both deep and wide that help any business navigate whatever strategic

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decision is in front of them to get the highest potential return for their time. And so if you were

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listening or watching, then if one of those frameworks applies immediately to your business and

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allows you to pull five years forward in your career, I would say that's a pretty good return on time.

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For the people that are zero, right? Yeah. What is it that they're typically coming to you

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to help them with? So if you are one of them, what is it that they want from Alex?

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Amazing. I think there's what they think they want and what they actually need,

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which are two different things. And so I think what they think they want is some tactic that's

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going to immediately help them start a business. What they typically actually need is

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the courage to be willing to be wrong and to be willing to have shame by failing at things

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in front of people whose opinions they care about. And I think that's, if we were one of the

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clock for me, it was probably one of the hardest things that I had to get over. And so I think that's

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why maybe my message resonates with a lot of people is because it was so hard for me to get over.

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And what's interesting is basically anybody who's listening, the harder it is for you to break free

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of whatever kind of mental prison you've made for yourself, whether that's real or just in your head,

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the more compelling your story will be when you break through it. Because it will resonate with

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even more people. For the people that it was easy, that their story doesn't have a lot of like,

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I was a media entrepreneur. I wasn't like that. I had a job when I was in high school. I had a job

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immediately out of college. Some people were like, I was selling lemonade out of the back of my thing

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when I was 13. I didn't do any of that. School failed me. I actually was pretty good at school.

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I didn't have any of those issues, you know what I mean? And so I had a pretty clear career path.

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And so I had what many would consider like, I had a real opportunity cost. So I had a white

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color job. And I had a GMAT score above Harvard's midscore. And so I had a really clear path

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on my life. It could look like in the next 20, 30 years. And it was fairly well defined. Like,

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I'll go to Harvard or Stanford or one of the top business schools. And then I will either go back

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into management consulting, I'll go into investment banking, and then eventually end up in private equity.

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And that would be the path. And then all the flowers would be set at my feet. And you know,

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everyone would say, we approve of you. You're an excellent person. But when I saw the people

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who were 20 years ahead of me, I really didn't want their life. And then it started making me look

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at my life. And I was like, I don't even know if I really want my life. And so the big decisions

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that I've made in my life, unfortunately, have almost always come at the doorstep of a parent death.

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And I think maybe in some ways that makes me a coward for having needed death to make decisions.

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And so operationalizing that has been something that has helped me move faster to make decisions

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that I know I need to make, but don't. And so like the first big kind of like what felt like a

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death decision was I was a consultant, 22 years old. I had a paid for condo that I bought

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overlooking the city. And I remember thinking like, I really hope I don't wake up tomorrow.

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And that, and I don't mean that to be melodramatic. And just for a period of time, I just always

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just like, hoped every night I was like, I just really hope I don't wake up tomorrow. Like I just

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don't want to do this. And what was difficult about that was that at that time was one of my father

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was most proud of me because I was doing everything that was according to plan. You know, he could

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talk about like his son who graduated in three years from Vanderbilt had the had the good job like

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everything was we're following the plan. And it was upon realizing that my ultimate expression

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of living out his dream was me feeling like I didn't want to be alive. And so in and it took me

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time to get to that point to even articulate that because obviously you never want to kind of like

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admit failure of like I have really messed something up here. But I was living my life to win

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someone else's game. And when I realized that I realized that one of our dreams had to die,

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either his or mine. And when I realized that his dream must die in order for mine to live was a

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statement that I kind of crystallized when I was at that point in my life. Like I had to keep

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repeating that like his dream has to die in order for mine to live. And so to put this in

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perspective of like how afraid of my father's judgment, I was I left the state and drove across

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the country halfway through before calling him to tell him that I was gone. And so I bring this up

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because I don't I'm not trying to be dramatic here, but I'm saying that if you feel a lot of

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pressure, I get it. Like I tried to leave the job that I was at to pursue just literally anything

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that wasn't that just I wanted to start a business at some point. I didn't know how I was going

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to do it. I just knew that what I was doing was not the path I wanted to be on. And everybody around

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me wanted me to be on that path. And so I went to go be like, Hey, I'm thinking about doing

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something else. And you know, it would always be that, ah, you know, don't later later. Like

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everything's good later. You know, and I remember when I called my dad and I told him that he said

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understand why don't you come home like come home. Well, I didn't tell him that I was I was going

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yet. Like I said, Hey, I want to go pursue this fitness thing. He said, cool, come over for lunch.

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We'll talk about it. And I was like, I'm already gone. And then obviously his tone changed the

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life. And and our relationship struggled for years after that. And I also bring that up because

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sometimes there's this illusion that like, you know, you get on the on the Oscar stage or whatever

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it is. And you're like, Hey, I just want to think, you know, my mom, my dad, my friends are always

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supporting me. And I can't say that. And I wish I could. And you might not be able to say that

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either. And I also don't think that's a reason not to do it. And so we did trouble for years after

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that to kind of like, because I was basically living as what was once his prodigal son goes and

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takes a minimum wage job as a personal trainer to gym, like, you know, cleaning floors and stuff to

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learn just to learn the gym business. But that was ultimately like how I broke free literally,

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you know, physically leaving the area. And, you know, mentally, but I think that I had to accept that

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there was a there was a timeline where my father would never talk to me again. And I had to be okay

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with that to pursue what I wanted. And I think that when you asked the original question, what are

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the people from zero to one really looking for? I read tons of business books at that time.

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But I couldn't use any of them because I was so afraid. And what's crazy is that like I think about

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it now in retrospect. And it's like, it's crazy how large the perceived monsters can appear. And

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Laila has this quote that I love, but it's, um, fear is a mile wide and inch deep. And so you look at it

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and it looks like this ocean. And then you take the first step and you realize you don't drown because

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it's like, oh, there's ground underneath of this, right? There's other people who are more on my path.

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And the friends you lose, you gain new friends, right? And so, um, that fear

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was the hardest decision that I've had to overcome in my entrepreneurial career. And I think of all

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the, all the split paths in my life, that was the one that if I had many timelines or many

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universes that existed, that was probably the one that is the most likely that I would not have

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parted from. So I think in like 90% of universes that Alex Ramozi exists, I'm just a consultant

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somewhere. And so, um, I'd encourage you if you do feel that you're not going to die. Like,

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you won't die. And you might just live. It's so interesting because I think everything you've

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said is just absolutely spot on, but you're right in the way you say that if you'd asked an audience

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member listening now why they haven't started yet, they wouldn't say fear. They would say,

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I haven't got the X, I haven't got the Y, but actually it is such an emotional thing. And we

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don't talk about that enough because uncertainty is, humans seem to be allergic to uncertainty,

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and they'd rather the certain misery of that current situation typically than uncertainty.

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And I think, um, and I used what I consider a very non-palatable word of coward purposefully

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because no one wants to say they're afraid because if you say you're afraid, then it means you're

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a coward. And I think that it only means you're a coward if you don't, if you allow that fear

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to change your behavior in an aversive way as in it, not towards what you want.

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And so, you know, the inverse of that, many people have heard it, courage is not acting without

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fear, but despite fear. And I think that when you act, when you allow fear to change your

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behavior the wrong way, that is when you can give yourself that title of coward. And I think that

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that is a title that I have feared my whole life. And that label is almost a more afraid of that

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label than the label of failure. I'd rather be a failure than a coward.

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Is there a framework for knowing when to quit? So I think there's the, there's like the math behind

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it. And the math I think is pretty straightforward. So like, when do you quit your business? I like,

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you've saved up three to six months of personal savings. Number one, number two is that you have

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started something, because now it is in the digital age, you can begin a business on the side that

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can generate income. And that income in the small amount of time that you're not working replaces

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or at least matches the existing income you have from your, your current job. And you've been able

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to do that or demonstrate that income for like three to six months. If you do that, that's a very

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like math way of approaching it. That also is basically never the reason that people are quitting

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their job. That's a really set, like I have, I have, I have backlog. I have matched my current income

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with my part-time work. And if I just put my full-time work, I would probably make more very

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reasonable, but never actually the reason that people don't do it. I was, I was thinking about the two

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sort of reasons why someone might quit something or feel like they want to quit. And one of them is

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clearly because it's hard. And that's obviously not reason enough to quit. And then there's another one

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which you were speaking to there, which is it's not moving me towards a meaningful goal.

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Irrespective of how hard it is, like a marathon, you're raising money for a charity you care about,

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it's hard, you don't quit. And then there's maybe if you're running a marathon for no apparent reason,

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you know, there was no charity, there was no on-watching, there was no like fitness benefit,

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then that's a good, I guess, moment to consider quitting. My story mimics shores in a way that I

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didn't realize. I didn't realize you went through a similar thing in terms of the parents'

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dishonorship, no real great option to flee to, but feeling like the current path that would have

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led me to be, I don't know, business management student was significantly worse on balance than

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taking the risk. But I think maybe a point of distinction is it didn't, I was so naive that it

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didn't feel like a risk. So what's really interesting about that is the guarantee. And so a lot of

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times we don't, we don't look at what I call the don't, which is like the alternate path. And so

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if I had played out my existing path, I had a guarantee of outcome I didn't want. It was just

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added delay. Whereas here, there's a chance that I can make it. And so one of the final kind of

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frameworks for making the decision was guarantee bad chance at good. And I was like, well, I might as well

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take a chance. And I strongly encourage thinking about playing it out. And so what I mean by that

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is like, I think fear exists in the vague, not in the specific. And so when you say, I'm going to

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quit my job. And then what if this doesn't work? I'm going to failure tons of fear. If I say,

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I'm going to quit my job. And then I'm going to try and start a business. And if the business

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doesn't work, I'll probably have a compelling story that I could tell for a business school if I

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wanted to to show that I had some entrepreneurial slant. In the meantime, I could use that experience

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plus my job experience to probably get another or maybe even better job in the meantime and match

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or or supersede my existing income. And the actual loss would be maybe the savings that I'd

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saved up. But if I'm younger or I haven't made as much money as I want, then that's never been

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the amount of money that would be material anyways on the grand scheme of what I would like to make.

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And in terms of living situation, I will worst case go back to my parents house with my

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tail between my legs or sleep at a friend's couch because I have enough people that would be

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willing to put me up in a garage if I had to. And so it's like, okay. So my actual worst case

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scenario is just like, I have a cool story and maybe some shame that I is self-inflicted.

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Because it's not like no one else cares really. But it's self-inflicted shame and maybe a detour

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or a different story that I have to tell later on in my career. Not as much fear there,

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right? But like the first one, like, I'll fail. Everyone will hate me and I'll die.

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The first one sounded like it was written by your like amygdala, like the fearsome. And the second

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one was pure like prefrontal cortex. It was all logic. And I'm wondering, you know, as you're going

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into that decision, obviously fear is going to lead it. So of course you're going to go for option

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one where you just think about the downside. Maybe there's a practice that allows you to get into

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prefrontal cortex into logic. And I think that's actually, so I think you nailed it and said it way

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better than I did. But I think that's, I think going from vague to specific basically disengages

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your amygdala because it can't reason the logic chain of causation and causality of what's going

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to happen next in a chain of events. And so when you get into the specific of it, all of a sudden

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you're like, okay, I'm not going to be homeless and then shamed and die. I might live in

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inferior living conditions, for sure, period, which by the way, when you're later on in your life,

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you'll look back and think of as the good old days because I can't believe I was couch surfing. I

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was pursuing my dreams, right? It's only like in the moment that it feels bad. When you look back,

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like even I find this hilarious, like, like how long after you do something embarrassing,

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is it funny? Right? Like at some point, from us all of us, with enough time, the shameful

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experience becomes funny. And so if it is going to become funny eventually, it might as well

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become funny now. Yeah. It's just like pulling the time horizon up. But all of that's prefrontal

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cortex decision making. And so, no, but I think that's exactly, like I think that nailed it because when

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I thought about this decision, obviously I had my very emotional statement around, like his dream

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has to die from my to live. Yes. Also, logic downside risk here. I'll have a story. And I can

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always get my job back. Okay. And if I can't get that job back, I will have other ones that will

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be available. Fine. And if I have a downgrading and some people think that I'm not as successful

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as them, okay, I'll not stop though. And so I think that that demystifies a lot of the fears. I

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think that applies not just for entrepreneurial fears. I think applies for any fear. Like I'm

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going to talk, like I can't tell this person is bad news. All right. Let's play it out. I say

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something and then they're going to kill me. Probably not. So what's going to happen?

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I'll say these words. And then they'll flip the table. They'll flip me off. They'll maybe just

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feel hurt. And maybe they'll cry. Maybe they'll shout. Okay. Okay. If they shout it at me, what I do,

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like, and you just kind of play it out and you're like, okay, I think I have like most of these

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conditions prepared for it. And then all of a sudden, you can like have those things.

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What you also said is that in the face of guaranteed misery, any option is better.

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Yeah. I like that's real. You get some new ones. Yeah. So like why would guaranteed misery be

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better than any available option? It's the latest counting. That's what's crazy is

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the latest counting happens both ways. Like, so like you say you're alarmed for 5 a.m. at night,

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and you're like, I'm going to wake up at 5. But that's because you're delaying the pain of waking

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up. And when it's immediate, when I have to quit the job, like I'll quit my job tomorrow for 20 years.

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And so it's just like we always we don't we delay the fact that we're going to be miserable

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into the present to it like us. Like we massively discount what a whole lifetime of misery would be.

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Amen. When you're thinking about what to pursue. So say you've left the job, you've quit the thing.

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When you're thinking about what to pursue, how much of that is a decision derived from self-awareness?

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Because, you know, though, someone will look at you now and be like, I know Alex did this. So I'm

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going to start a acquisition.com, you know, or they'll say, I want to I saw Steve Jobs did that

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thing with the computers. I'm going to start Apple. What Elon, I'm going to do the spaceships.

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How much do you have to know thyself to know what to pursue?

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I mean, that's a really good question. So there's a tweet that I love by Andrew Wilkinson,

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which is every entrepreneur ever colon. Here's the winning number for my lottery ticket.

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And so it's like every entrepreneur will say, here's the winning lottery ticket. But it's like

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that game already, that drawing already happened. Okay. Yeah. Right. And so like you can't cash

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that ticket in. It's already done. And so people say the word first principles, no one really knows

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what it means. I mean, some people do. But I think far more people say it than know what it means.

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And so basically there are foundational truths of business that exist. And the conditions of

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the environment will change. And so you have to apply those truths to whatever the current condition

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is. And so that's what I try and tease out with the books and the stuff that I that I put out

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in content. But at the end of the day, you have an input of time, like zooming all the way out.

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If the goal, assuming that your goal is to make money. Okay. Like, and this is just a purely

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economic business goal. Then you have time, which is the primary currency that you trade it,

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and you make dollars over a period of time. And so I tend to reject the idea of like never,

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you know, never trade time for dollars or anything like that because everyone trades time for

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dollars. It's just some of us are more efficient at it than others. But even exchanges that occur

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that just are not denominated in time still occur over time. And so you have this foundational

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unit of time, which you're going to give in. What we're seeking is the highest return on that time.

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And so there, you know, within a business context, there's kind of three levels of things that

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after current business, you have to, you know, attract attention. You have to convert attention.

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And then you have to deliver something for that attention. And in each of those things,

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you want as much leverage as possible. So you want as little time as possible,

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required to get the most output. And so I have built acquisition.com on basically two primary

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theses, which are in the logo, which is this is a full-crum for leverage for people that

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can say it's like a triangle. Yeah. So it's like a triangle or the Illuminati because that always

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gets brought up. All right. So we've got the full-crum for leverage. And then inside of it,

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you have supply and demand. And I see those are the two foundational principles of business. And so

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which is you need supply and demand to have a business and then leverage to get as much out of it

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as you possibly can't. And so when you're looking at the assets that you have, assets can also be

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skills, resources, what you have available to you. Now, if you have nothing, then all you have is

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your brain, your hands, and the time that you have that you can put towards learning something,

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which is why I'm a big fan of skill acquisition as one of the primary things that you can do is

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educating yourself and not formally educating, but informally or alternatively educating yourself

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on super taxable things. Once you get over the fear, then you start asking, okay, how do I let people

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know about my stuff? And what do I let them know? Right. And so you have to have something to sell,

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which is the offer. And ideally, you want the offer to have as much leverage as possible. Like so

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if you sold software or you sold media, those are things that you can cut once, sell a thousand

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times. If you have a conversion mechanism, it's like you can't have it be automated, like a checkout

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page or some sort of video sales letter or something like that where people just buy without a

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phone salesperson. If you add a phone salesperson, there's less leverage. Not to say this wrong,

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but you want to have the highest leverage opportunity. And then from the deliverability perspective,

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I kind of talked about deliverability first, but from the advertising perspective,

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if you reach out to people one on one, that's lower leverage than being able to make one piece of

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content that a million people say. Right. And so over time, you go from low leverage to high leverage,

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where you have the same inputs, but you just get significantly more fear output. And that

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fundamentally is like, if we're reasoning out from first principles, how do I get the said differently,

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the question that someone I think is really asking is how do I get the most for what I put in?

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And you have to reason within your current context of your skills and your resources and your assets

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in order to derive that solution for you. So if someone walks up to you in the street and they say,

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Alex, what ideas should I pursue? I just quit my job. Yeah. Right. So I would say business ideas

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typically have come from one of three piece. So it comes from a pain that you're currently experiencing,

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a past profession. So the thing that you just quit or some of the jobs that you just quit or a

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passion. So something that you're inherently interested in that you would spend your time doing

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anyways, some skill that you learned while you were in the workforce, which by the way is one of

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the most proven ways of making money because the economy has already showed you that people are

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willing to exchange money for that specific job. And so in the world of gig economies and solar

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printers, every business can be dismantled into just jobs being done and all of those jobs can be

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fractionalized. So anybody like, we look at any business you've got sales, you've got marketing,

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you've got customer success, you've got customer support. If you want to differentiate that,

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you've got product, you've got design, you've got web pages, there's so many different components

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to a business, you just need to learn one of them. And then it's like, boom, you have a skill

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that you can trade for money that you don't have anybody else to report to. And then pain is

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usually, I think in some ways, sometimes one of the biggest drivers is like, you had an eating

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allergy and you couldn't find pancakes that dealt with your specific eating allergy. And you bet

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that there's a decent amount of other people with that allergy that also like pancakes. And so

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then you make pancakes that are delicious and amazing that also cater to people with that

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food allergy and then all of a sudden, like, you have a business based on pain. And why,

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why does that matter? What part? The pain pop. What leverage an advantage? Does it give you

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for the next five years? I think that deep knowledge of the prospect is paramount or very important

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for creating exceptional products. And you can either do that by doing a ton and ton of research

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or by being the prospect. And there's a certain amount of like visceral feel that you'll note,

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like if someone wants to make a nose product for breathing, I have tried every product since I was

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in eighth grade. So it's been 20 plus years, 30, whatever, a lot of years, that since then,

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and I've tried everything. And so I know the pros and cons of every product that exists in the

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market. And I can, because, and I've done, it's not like, oh, I tried it for a day. It's like,

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I'll try things for a month at a time. And so I have so much time exposure to this problem

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that I have a lot of nuance in my opinion on what's wrong with the solutions.

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So I can formulate a way better hypothesis on how to fix it. And that hypothesis will be for an

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investor so much more compelling because you lead with a story as opposed to logic. I met the guy

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who invested in regal cinemas, which is probably the biggest chain in the US. And it was when

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it was, there was a guy who had just one theater. And it became the Benavius COVID has disrupted

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that business. But, you know, for 20 years, whatever they crushed. And he said, it was so

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weird to say that, oh, cinemas are going to make a comeback because they've kind of been on a

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downturn or something like that during the time that he was making the investment. And he said,

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the reason I decided to invest in it was because this guy knew everything about the business

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down to how much the cost of kernel of popcorn was. And he just knew it's so like the back of his

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hand that he was like, this guy can't fail. He just knows too much about this business to not have

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it work. And soon investing and making gazillion dollars. And so, but I think that that steep

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understanding, and if you look at all of these, the passion things will have deep understanding

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because you're spending all of your discretionary time pursuing this passion. The pain you have

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a deep understanding of the problem and the prospects going through it because you've experienced

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it probably for years. Now, the professional one, I would say is a bit of a shortcut because if

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you're quitting the job, because you don't like it. And then you say, I'm now going to do this

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for myself. Well, you're okay. I mean, well, the one proven point about that is that

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down is proven to work from an economic perspective. You will be able to make money doing that,

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because you already have made money doing it. These other two are less proven, but sometimes

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have a significantly more upside. When you were talking about the breathing example with your nose,

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it's funny, because if you had sat down and said to me, Steve, I've made these like breathing

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nose strips. They are better. They're 20% more durable. They spend your nostrils by 20%. It is

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multiples less compelling than you telling me that story you just said about being a kid,

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having breathing problems, trying to solve this problem for yourself. And it's funny because that

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that story you told versus the sort of rational, logical approach or the benefits approach is

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your marketing campaign for the next five years on TikTok and Instagram. I had a problem,

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I solved it, I tried everything and solved it for myself. There's almost like nothing more

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compelling and believable. We see that in Dragon's Den. It will be sat there listening to these

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pitches all day that someone will come in and say, I had ADHD. I tried energy products. They all

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made me crash. So I went and solved this problem for myself. And we're on edge because we almost

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can't argue with it at that point, you know? Yeah. So Bezos has this great framework where he talks

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about missionaries and mercenaries. And so it's kind of like you have the guy who says, okay,

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I looked at market trends and this is a growing category. And I surveyed people and this was the

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result that came back. And so I believe that if we time this product right at this point in the

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market will achieve huge, you know, a mass adoption, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like

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lodging your way through and it'd be fair. Some people do, you know, do make it work. But the

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missionaries, the ones that end up making the most money because like they do it for the money

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because the business has to have some economic engine behind it. But really because they viscerally

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experienced this problem and don't want anyone else to solve to deal with that problem either. And so

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like I've ordered to tell that story like you're saying, like when I was in eighth grade, it was the

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first year that I started really noticing I couldn't breathe at night. And so I learned how to fall

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asleep with my hand on my face like this so that my nostril would so I could fall asleep in my

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hand would stay because there's no actually other because you can't hold it because you fall asleep,

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right? And so if I fall asleep with my hand like this, right? Like I'm on the cap and I fall asleep

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like that. It keeps my nostril open and I can fall asleep and it doesn't move. And so that's how I

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learned how to sleep for years before founding like just like simple nasal strips and things like

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that. But there's tons of problems with with those solutions that exist right now that I won't

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get into. But maybe some doll make a nasal product. I think if you put if you put every product

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in front of me that exists right now, I can tell you what's wrong with it because I've tried,

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I've tried literally all of them. Not like I'm pretty obsessive. And so like I've tried all of

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them. You might think of an opportunity here on it. I've tried I've tried the ones from Europe.

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I've tried the one like not just US like I've tried I've tried every product that exists on Amazon.

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I've tried all the ones from foreign countries every every fan or follower who sends me a product

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that is a nasal company that's new. I will try the product. I still do. And there has yet there's

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there's yet to be one that has truly solved it. I mean you should I mean I think in some ways

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so this is actually a really good meta concept here which is that if you want to be compelling

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a demonstration or a model is always more compelling than anything else. And so

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me even going through that entire narrative right is taking everyone else who's been listening

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to this on some journey. And it's like if you want to make a compelling pitch for business

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it's like we pretty much just kind of went through one. And so that's that's really what it comes

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down to which you're like well what do I do with my business. It's like create your narrative

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of why you're even doing this. And if you can explain to somebody why why they should care about

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this problem or more specifically why you care about this problem. I'll tell you this more investors

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will like I might be like I don't care about kitchen utensils but this girl certainly does and

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I'm sure there's other women who do too. And what everyone wants to see is obsession and unfortunately

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in like some of the world I know more in the UK than the US now like that kind of perspective of

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like just being all in obsessed with stuff has almost been like bastard like you know been

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chastised. And I but the people who are obsessed with the ones who changed the world at least

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changed their world. And and I think that so a very close friend of mine did all the Olympic teams

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nutrition and supplementation stuff for a country overseas. And he said you know the difference

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between champions and everyone else and I was like what. And he said everyone always looks at them

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and says what do champions have that I don't have. And he said it's they have it backwards. He said

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it's what do champions not have that I have. It's what do they lack. And it's an off button.

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They just don't stop. And so in dealing with the gold medal say he's like they just never stop.

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They just can't stop. Everything in their life is geared towards one goal. And so finding that

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thing and they approach everything in their life that way. And I think that that level of obsession

375
00:32:20.960 --> 00:32:27.360
around like everything that you touch on a daily basis is required for really getting to where you

376
00:32:27.360 --> 00:32:35.200
want to go. So interesting because as we spoke there about the reason why the story was so much

377
00:32:35.360 --> 00:32:40.480
compelling. It was back to the amygdala. It was back to emotion. Right. And it's funny because we

378
00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:43.600
said a second ago that when someone's thinking about quitting a job they're like so in their

379
00:32:43.600 --> 00:32:48.560
amygdala humans run mostly on their amygdala. So when we think about pitching we should really be

380
00:32:48.560 --> 00:32:52.320
aiming at the same part of the brain which is what you did when you showed me that you're sleeping

381
00:32:52.320 --> 00:32:56.480
as a kid with your hand stretching across your face. I immediately felt sorry for you. It felt

382
00:32:56.480 --> 00:33:00.320
empathy. And I immediately believed that if anyone's going to solve this problem it is this fucking guy

383
00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:03.840
who's been through that pain. I've had two surgeries. Both of them didn't really work.

384
00:33:03.840 --> 00:33:08.960
It's like I mean like I've got the story. My girlfriend's the same. Two surgeries which is coming

385
00:33:08.960 --> 00:33:12.480
up to her third one now. We've tried all the nose trips. I saw you wearing one. I bought that one

386
00:33:12.480 --> 00:33:17.440
for her. Yeah. And so there's a lot of people watching right now and there's something going on

387
00:33:17.440 --> 00:33:22.080
with these bloody fucking like noses. Yeah. People shouldn't like yeah. We're doing something. I

388
00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:26.320
think I feel like I've made a pile of some of the nostril stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

389
00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:31.520
Making it cool. Pain, profession, passion. Yeah. Ideally you have all three.

390
00:33:31.520 --> 00:33:35.520
If you have all three then you're yeah I mean my god you're set. Like if you if basically pain

391
00:33:35.520 --> 00:33:39.360
created in a possession and for some reason you also are doing something like that in your work

392
00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:43.360
like I feel like the likelihood that you don't succeed is almost nothing. You only need one of

393
00:33:43.360 --> 00:33:47.920
those three. You just pick one. Like if you just had one pain that you had that you wanted to overcome

394
00:33:47.920 --> 00:33:51.760
or one passion that you were just inherently interested because sometimes passion is nothing to

395
00:33:51.760 --> 00:33:55.040
like you might be really into model cars. It's okay. Well there's a lot of businesses that you can

396
00:33:55.040 --> 00:34:00.080
build around model cars. It's like you can you can manufacture model cars. You can have services

397
00:34:00.080 --> 00:34:03.760
around model cars making them faster because some people race model cars. You can be a collector

398
00:34:03.760 --> 00:34:08.320
start flipping model cars. Like you can just make media around how to build them and then have

399
00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:12.640
a media company around it. Like there's so many different components of any obsession or interest

400
00:34:12.640 --> 00:34:18.000
that you can make. I was talking to on one of the future episodes of Mosutank that's coming out.

401
00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:24.720
We have a guy who's he loves Dungeons and Dragons. So he's an IT. He's an IT guy and just loves

402
00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:29.280
Dungeons and Dragons. And he was like I just want this to make enough money that I don't have to do

403
00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:34.560
IT. And but it was so pure. You know what I mean? And so I was like we're going to help you do

404
00:34:34.560 --> 00:34:39.120
this. And so we kind of walk through the business plan for it. But like is he going to be a billionaire?

405
00:34:39.120 --> 00:34:43.440
No, but I also don't think that's his goal. And so I think being really clear on what you want

406
00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:47.440
is important. So if you're like I want to be the richest person in the world. I think it's a

407
00:34:47.440 --> 00:34:52.880
terrible goal. But if you want that great. Well you have to have a multi trillion dollar idea

408
00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:58.000
because now because by the time that occurs there's already multi trillion dollar companies now.

409
00:34:58.000 --> 00:35:03.040
So you've got to be looking at like deck a trillion dollar opportunity. And so believe it or not

410
00:35:03.040 --> 00:35:07.040
basically the bigger the goal the narrower the scope of the path to get there. If you're like I want

411
00:35:07.040 --> 00:35:11.680
to make 10 million dollars. I'm like you can literally do that in almost any business. You want to

412
00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:15.280
make a hundred million dollars. Probably still almost any business. You can do it on a long enough

413
00:35:15.280 --> 00:35:19.680
time horizon. You can do it. A trillion or deck a trillion. It's going to be some sort of tech.

414
00:35:19.680 --> 00:35:24.160
It's probably going to have some sort of AI. And so you get basically the bigger the goal is the

415
00:35:24.160 --> 00:35:28.080
narrow scope of how to get there. But the vast majority of people are like I want to be the

416
00:35:28.080 --> 00:35:31.200
richest man in the world just because they don't know how to like really think through it and be like

417
00:35:31.200 --> 00:35:36.720
all right well after like a hundred there's really nothing you can't do except buy more big things.

418
00:35:36.720 --> 00:35:41.200
But like in terms of your actual consumption maybe even 20 is like you can only eat at restaurants that

419
00:35:41.200 --> 00:35:44.000
go so expensive. You can only stay at the best hotels. You can only drive the nicest cars. You

420
00:35:44.000 --> 00:35:48.640
can do that with about 25 million. Well what you think the cheat code is then. So I've got my idea.

421
00:35:48.640 --> 00:35:55.600
What do you think the cheat code is in 2025 to win at the game of attention? Like there's

422
00:35:55.600 --> 00:35:59.360
got to be some new rules here because we've got AI. We've got new platforms. We've got new media.

423
00:36:00.720 --> 00:36:05.840
You know I'm giving you a hypothetical business idea. I'm going to be a personal trainer.

424
00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:10.640
Okay. I picked that because everyone can do it and it's saturated industry. If I'm a personal

425
00:36:10.640 --> 00:36:18.480
trainer in the 2025. How should I be thinking about building attention? So I'll tell you what I wouldn't

426
00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:23.760
do first which is I don't think I try and outsize the science people because like unless you have

427
00:36:23.760 --> 00:36:29.600
some PhD there is a PhD guy who's already jacked who's making content and so he's more knowledgeable

428
00:36:29.600 --> 00:36:34.320
and more jack than you. So you're not going to win there. And so I think in the game of attention

429
00:36:34.320 --> 00:36:39.200
it's trying to find what is unique right and so how do you how do you quote stand out when

430
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:46.880
everyone's loud and this is going to sound trite but your fingerprint is unique literally

431
00:36:46.880 --> 00:36:52.880
from a biological perspective. But so is your life and your experiences. And so there's real

432
00:36:52.880 --> 00:37:00.880
alpha or benefit to be had above normal level of effort by leaning into you. And so what makes

433
00:37:00.880 --> 00:37:06.160
every person unique is what makes their content unique. And so trying to be like oh I want to make

434
00:37:06.160 --> 00:37:09.440
content like Alex is probably not the best way to do it because you're not going to beat me

435
00:37:09.440 --> 00:37:15.280
at being me. But you'll beat me at being you. And so it's basically your flavor of media. So like

436
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:20.400
for me it's like you know what is you know my brand to model this. It's like well I have elements

437
00:37:20.400 --> 00:37:25.360
of philosophy that are in my brand. Well do I need that? No but that's like kind of me. I obviously

438
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:29.360
talk a ton about business marketing and sales promotion conversion. Those are all things that I

439
00:37:29.360 --> 00:37:33.680
spend a lot of time thinking about. And so a lot of my contents about that fitness is a component

440
00:37:33.680 --> 00:37:38.320
of my life. And so there's light sprinkling fitness in my content. Also I come from background

441
00:37:38.320 --> 00:37:42.880
of fitness with the with Jim launch and the companies that I own before that. And so

442
00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:47.360
that would make sense that and I have my wife Layla. And so that sprinkled in. And so like those

443
00:37:47.360 --> 00:37:51.600
are basically the components of my life. And so that's what kind of shines through my content.

444
00:37:51.600 --> 00:37:54.880
I consume a ton of comedy. And so sometimes you'll see some dry humor and dark humor that shines

445
00:37:54.880 --> 00:38:01.440
through. But that's me. Now you have all of those little buckets of you and not only are those

446
00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:06.640
buckets unique but also the proportions of those buckets will be different. And so maybe your

447
00:38:06.640 --> 00:38:10.080
philosophy is way bigger or maybe fitness part is way bigger. But I think what makes the truly

448
00:38:10.080 --> 00:38:17.360
unique personal trainer fitness brand is leaning into people being interested in you for being you.

449
00:38:18.240 --> 00:38:24.080
And then being like, by the way, I have fitness stuff if you want to buy it from me. And I think

450
00:38:24.080 --> 00:38:30.240
the key part is the vast majority of products and services are commoditized. You're not you're

451
00:38:30.240 --> 00:38:34.400
probably not going to be significantly better than other trainers just being real. You're probably

452
00:38:34.400 --> 00:38:42.560
aren't. But you will be different than them. And we want to lean on I want to buy fitness from

453
00:38:42.560 --> 00:38:47.280
somebody. And so I might as well buy it from her or I might as well buy it from him. So you're

454
00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:52.560
taking basically the audience that would buy from anyone. But your brand premium gets them to

455
00:38:52.560 --> 00:38:57.120
want to buy it from you. We think about prime, for example, with the drink the drink company. Like

456
00:38:57.920 --> 00:39:01.600
it's a it's a drink that there's other products that already exist in the marketplace that

457
00:39:01.600 --> 00:39:06.160
satisfy the same thing as prime. But if you are agnostic to that brand and you have brand

458
00:39:06.160 --> 00:39:11.040
affinity with that predict that that creator, then you're like, well, then if I have two things that

459
00:39:11.040 --> 00:39:14.880
are basically equal and I just like this guy better, I'm just going to as long as the prices are

460
00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:19.760
comparable, I'll just vote with my dollars here. And so I think that if you're a personal trainer

461
00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:26.800
in 2025, it's going to be long term. It's going to be building the content short term. It's going

462
00:39:26.800 --> 00:39:31.760
to be outreach to people that you know and making a compelling offer to get people to try to work

463
00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:36.400
with you. The so overarching point you said there about being yourself, as I was thinking about it,

464
00:39:36.400 --> 00:39:40.000
I was thinking, gosh, do you know what? The thing that all of my favorite creators and the really

465
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.720
successful creators have in common is they all have, I'm going to use these words intentionally,

466
00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:50.800
the courage to be themselves. Yeah. Because I tell you what, when I was starting out as a content

467
00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:54.480
creator and I look back, I was showing one of my team members the other day, the things I used to

468
00:39:54.480 --> 00:40:00.640
post. It was like everything happens for a reason. It was pretty cliche. And it took me several

469
00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:05.760
years to almost relax into just realizing that the game here was to get to the point where I could

470
00:40:05.760 --> 00:40:10.160
be myself on the internet. And actually, that was the most high value because of what you said.

471
00:40:10.160 --> 00:40:16.240
It's the uniqueest part of me. But the courage to be yourself. And it's it is the winning strategy

472
00:40:16.240 --> 00:40:22.720
for 2025. And it's I think it's leaning into it. And the thing is is that everything

473
00:40:22.720 --> 00:40:27.760
you want to not do that. I'm not really sure why. But I was having a conversation with Leila,

474
00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:33.920
I want to say two nights ago or three nights ago. I got a bunch of flak for some ex-posts that I made.

475
00:40:34.400 --> 00:40:41.200
And she just looked at me and she was like, never dilute yourself. Because I was like, maybe,

476
00:40:41.200 --> 00:40:45.120
I was like, maybe I shouldn't talk about this stuff. Like maybe I should just like, you know,

477
00:40:45.120 --> 00:40:50.720
I'll just lean off and she was like, never dilute yourself. Like, there are so many more people

478
00:40:51.520 --> 00:40:56.880
who need that message than people who are hating that message. And she was like, and if you're

479
00:40:56.880 --> 00:41:01.440
actually going to make a difference in a lot of people's lives, there's going to be an equal

480
00:41:01.440 --> 00:41:06.800
on opposing force of people who want to reject that. Hey guys, real quick, this podcast only grows

481
00:41:06.800 --> 00:41:09.440
from word of mouth quite literally. There's no other way to grow a podcast than word of mouth.

482
00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:13.440
If there's some element of this that you think somebody else should hear or be relevant to them,

483
00:41:13.440 --> 00:41:17.920
it would mean the world to me. If you shared this via text, via Instagram, via DM, via whatever

484
00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:20.240
way you like to share stuff with the people you love. Thank you.

485
00:41:22.560 --> 00:41:27.360
And she's like, this just comes with the territory of like how big of an impact you want to have.

486
00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:30.960
And it was just such a great, you know, life talking to husband, you know, conversation.

487
00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:34.640
That I guess for me at the end of the day, I'm like, as long as she thinks I'm cool, like,

488
00:41:35.600 --> 00:41:43.120
you know, I'll keep doing it. But yeah, it's just, because the diluted down version all of a sudden

489
00:41:43.200 --> 00:41:49.600
becomes everyone else's stuff. Well, you said a second ago, you're not sure why that is.

490
00:41:49.920 --> 00:41:55.200
But by very definition of it being unique, that that means that there is no blueprint. Yeah.

491
00:41:55.200 --> 00:42:00.640
There is no person that's come before you and proven that it works. So the courage of being

492
00:42:00.640 --> 00:42:04.560
yourself, there's only one Stephen Bartlett. So if I'm truly myself, it's never been done before.

493
00:42:04.560 --> 00:42:08.480
That means that the risks are unknown. They're upside also unknown. Yeah. But so again,

494
00:42:08.480 --> 00:42:13.600
going back to our hate of uncertainty, it makes much more sense for me to try and copy you,

495
00:42:14.320 --> 00:42:18.880
because I can see a blueprint there than to run the risk of being yourself. And you are someone

496
00:42:18.880 --> 00:42:23.280
you have to say who is running the risk of being yourself. And actually, as someone who's

497
00:42:23.280 --> 00:42:28.640
observing you, now I know who you are and I now know who you're not. And it's important for me

498
00:42:28.640 --> 00:42:33.920
as someone that follows your work that actually I see consistency because I've established

499
00:42:33.920 --> 00:42:38.320
Alex and Moses values. Yeah. And anything that diverts from that is actually less valuable,

500
00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:41.920
because as you say, it's more like everyone else than the things I've had before. But it's also,

501
00:42:41.920 --> 00:42:47.760
it wouldn't feel true anymore. Yeah. And this is something that even as a creator myself,

502
00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:52.640
I have to fall back on is my audience knew who I am now. For better or for us. Yeah.

503
00:42:55.840 --> 00:42:59.760
You know, it's really interesting. It's never getting the gray. And so there are

504
00:43:00.640 --> 00:43:04.720
contradictory ideals. And this is what I kind of come back to when I'm when I'm like,

505
00:43:04.720 --> 00:43:09.120
worried about these types of things, which is like, you've got mercy and you've got justice.

506
00:43:11.040 --> 00:43:16.880
They are somehow opposed and they are both ideals. So how can we believe in justice and also

507
00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:21.920
believe in mercy at the same time? And so, and I mean, there's another you can have

508
00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:26.080
variety and consistency. Like there's there's there's tons of examples of this, right?

509
00:43:26.640 --> 00:43:32.080
And so we have these diametrically opposed ideals, which means that if you ever say, by the way,

510
00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:36.480
I'm a little bit more of a justice guy. Like, I understand they had a hard time,

511
00:43:37.040 --> 00:43:40.400
but at some point you got to take your own personal accountability. So like, no, you're not going

512
00:43:40.400 --> 00:43:44.320
to get out of the speeding ticket. You're going to get like, that's what's just. On the other hand,

513
00:43:44.320 --> 00:43:49.840
it's like, hey, single mom gets pulled over for driving too fast. You know what, maybe we let her

514
00:43:49.920 --> 00:43:56.720
off today. Both of those stories, fair, but you're going to get attacked by the other side that has

515
00:43:56.720 --> 00:44:03.200
an ideal that all humans try to strive for and it will feel terrible because they are right. And so

516
00:44:03.200 --> 00:44:09.280
what? And so I think that like, understanding that that conflict will always exist between two

517
00:44:09.280 --> 00:44:14.800
apparent ideals that, and this is fun, this is foundationally what politics is, right? Is that

518
00:44:14.800 --> 00:44:19.680
there are two apparent ideals that bet all of us, I would say, 99 percent people would say,

519
00:44:19.680 --> 00:44:24.480
justice is good, mercy is good, variety is good, consistency is good, right? Respecting values

520
00:44:24.480 --> 00:44:30.000
is good. So is innovating and doing new things. How can we have both of these contradictory ideas

521
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.400
and at the same time like navigate that without conflict? You can't because how much becomes

522
00:44:34.400 --> 00:44:40.320
the question. And so I think that your thumbprint as a creator is that when someone presents a scenario

523
00:44:40.720 --> 00:44:47.840
and says does Alex choose mercy or justice in this scenario that your audience says gets it right.

524
00:44:48.800 --> 00:44:54.480
And so I think about branding in general as basically a mosaic that you get to create. And so

525
00:44:54.480 --> 00:44:58.880
like each piece of content is a little tile that has a single color on it. And if you just see

526
00:44:58.880 --> 00:45:04.080
one piece of short content of Stephen Marlin, you don't really have an idea who Stephen Marlin is.

527
00:45:04.080 --> 00:45:08.000
But if you see a thousand of them, all of a sudden you zoom out and you get to see the whole picture.

528
00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:13.280
And I think that the colors that are in those mosaics and the proportion of how many yellows,

529
00:45:13.280 --> 00:45:18.320
how many reds, how many greens, and where are they is what ultimately creates the brand. And so

530
00:45:19.280 --> 00:45:23.280
because people want to try and turn this into, okay, so I make one post about family, I make one

531
00:45:23.280 --> 00:45:28.560
post about finances, I make one post about whatever, right? And it's like, I don't think that's how it

532
00:45:28.560 --> 00:45:34.320
works. I think you just be you. And then those proportions will naturally shake out. And also

533
00:45:34.400 --> 00:45:39.360
over time, you will change. And so it also makes sense that your brand will change. And that was

534
00:45:39.360 --> 00:45:43.280
also another thing that I had to reconcile, which is like, wait, I don't know if I agree as much

535
00:45:43.280 --> 00:45:46.640
with some of the things that I said 10 years ago, because the thing is in the digital world, like my

536
00:45:46.640 --> 00:45:54.720
first podcast was 2017, July of 2017. Wow. Episode eight is called Stop Branding.

537
00:45:57.280 --> 00:46:03.760
I have changed my views on branding to be clear. Yeah. But that first podcast is 90 days from

538
00:46:03.760 --> 00:46:09.520
when I lost everything. And so the entire, the entire, like, hermosy journey, if you want to call

539
00:46:09.520 --> 00:46:16.880
that from zero to billion, is actually documented 90 days from zero. It's all there. And so you can

540
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.440
see how my views on business have changed and like what I was thinking about at every kind of

541
00:46:21.440 --> 00:46:27.760
portion of my life. And so I had to just be okay with the idea that like, I will change my mind

542
00:46:27.760 --> 00:46:31.040
because I will get new information. Because let's take the alternative stance. If I get new

543
00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:34.880
information, do I just keep parroting what you did before? This is also an issue with politics.

544
00:46:34.880 --> 00:46:39.040
Yeah. But it's like, he's flippy floppy. It's like, so they're not allowed to learn. Yeah.

545
00:46:40.080 --> 00:46:43.120
You've been in politics. What are you like, you haven't learned anything like no

546
00:46:43.120 --> 00:46:47.200
stances change? Like, I feel like we should be able to do that. Obviously brands don't work that

547
00:46:47.200 --> 00:46:52.000
way. So it has to be gradual over time, which I think if you are always you at all times,

548
00:46:52.000 --> 00:46:56.320
it will be gradual over time. Yeah. I don't know. I think a lot of the time we end up

549
00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:00.720
over-focusing on unreasonable people, which is a war we can never win anyway.

550
00:47:00.720 --> 00:47:05.440
Yeah. Because you say that to me. I think, I think I was like, I had this guy, the therapist

551
00:47:05.440 --> 00:47:09.200
on my podcast, where I then spoke to after the podcast. And he basically broke it down to me. He

552
00:47:09.200 --> 00:47:13.360
was like, there's 20% of people that just absolutely love everything you will ever do. Yeah.

553
00:47:13.360 --> 00:47:15.920
Like, you could say anything, you could change them. They're fucking, they're just super fans.

554
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:19.680
Yeah. There's 80% of people that are actually like, they said there's 60% of people that are

555
00:47:19.680 --> 00:47:22.960
really reasonable. Yeah. They don't speak. Yeah. They just watch, they're like,

556
00:47:22.960 --> 00:47:26.560
reasonable. Yeah. And then there's 20% of people with no matter what the fuck you do,

557
00:47:26.560 --> 00:47:32.720
they're like, don't spend your life focusing on the 20%, the quiet majority, the 60%,

558
00:47:32.720 --> 00:47:36.160
they don't tweet. They don't tweet. They don't just chill. And then they're 20%, you know,

559
00:47:36.160 --> 00:47:41.200
they're evangelists. But, you know, I find myself falling into the trap of the, so what's

560
00:47:41.200 --> 00:47:45.600
interesting about the 20% is that like, I was thinking about this today, the, you were,

561
00:47:46.160 --> 00:47:50.880
so no matter who you are, you're going to be disliked, period. Because no one's liked

562
00:47:50.880 --> 00:47:54.320
by everyone. So we just have to like, let's, if we can accept that as a premise, right? No one's

563
00:47:54.320 --> 00:47:57.680
going to be like, by everyone, you might as well be disliked for being you than being somebody else.

564
00:47:57.680 --> 00:48:00.800
Amen. Right. That's the most basic level. Yeah.

565
00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:09.120
You, the being disliked is a fixed cost. And I think to, to, to take the opposite perspective,

566
00:48:09.120 --> 00:48:12.880
I think it is far better to be disliked for being who you are than love for someone you're not.

567
00:48:12.880 --> 00:48:17.360
Yeah. And one, one of the great entrepreneurs I interviewed on the podcast said to me,

568
00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:20.560
when it comes to marketing and branding and this sort of attention conversation we're having,

569
00:48:21.280 --> 00:48:28.720
she said to me, that in order to reach your 80%, you have to piss off your 20%, or at least be

570
00:48:28.720 --> 00:48:33.040
willing to piss off your 20%. It was Jane Warren, who's the founder of Demological Global Beauty

571
00:48:33.760 --> 00:48:38.800
and I think hundreds of thousands of people. And she sat and said, to get to your 80%, you have to be

572
00:48:38.800 --> 00:48:43.280
willing to piss off. No, actually, fuck. She said to get to your 20%, you have to be willing to

573
00:48:43.280 --> 00:48:49.840
piss off the 80%. And from the branding perspective, it makes so much sense because when you stand for

574
00:48:49.840 --> 00:48:55.840
something clearly, which you do, you inadvertently stand against. I have to. If you draw a line,

575
00:48:55.840 --> 00:48:59.200
there's, there's a side on either side and you have to say, like, I'm on the side.

576
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.720
Did you see that mic you had? Dude, I was just going to say that. Yeah. I was just going to say that.

577
00:49:04.720 --> 00:49:08.320
Yeah, the willum defoe ad. Yeah. Like what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine. Yeah. Yeah.

578
00:49:08.320 --> 00:49:12.720
Just like, it was actually the first time that I'd seen something from like you in a long time that I was

579
00:49:12.720 --> 00:49:18.080
like, this is what built the spread. And I think they have, they had lost their way for a while.

580
00:49:18.080 --> 00:49:22.880
Yeah. With like the wokeism and all that stuff. And I think it's like, Nike means victory,

581
00:49:22.880 --> 00:49:27.440
which means people have to lose. Yeah. And they were willing to say that for the first time ever.

582
00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:33.200
Right. I posted it on my LinkedIn and it was 50-50. Yeah. I'd say it was actually more like 80% of

583
00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:39.600
people were either neutral or pissed off. Really? Yeah. And 20% of people were like, that is me.

584
00:49:39.600 --> 00:49:43.040
I am a Nike person. And for me, when I saw that, I thought I want to buy some Nike shorts.

585
00:49:43.040 --> 00:49:46.080
Yeah, it was, I mean, it was the first time I actually felt like I'd posited brand affinity

586
00:49:46.080 --> 00:49:51.360
towards the brand in a long time. How important in this game of building and starting is people?

587
00:49:53.520 --> 00:49:58.160
Very? A hiring question. Yeah. I'll tell you why I asked this question because when I look at my

588
00:49:58.160 --> 00:50:03.760
portfolio, early stage first founders never seem to understand the importance of hiring in people.

589
00:50:04.640 --> 00:50:08.160
Yeah. And I'd bang my head against a wall trying to convince them that actually the game they're

590
00:50:08.160 --> 00:50:14.400
playing is pretty like a company group of people. Yeah. So I would, I'll start with one thing and

591
00:50:14.400 --> 00:50:19.440
then I'll enter the question. So I was talking to a mentor mine. And he said, when I was in my 20s,

592
00:50:19.440 --> 00:50:23.200
it was all about the destination. He said, when I got to my 30s, I realized it was all about the

593
00:50:23.200 --> 00:50:27.920
journey. He said when I was in my 40s, I realized it was about the company. And I was like, I can't

594
00:50:27.920 --> 00:50:32.480
wait till you're in your 50s. The next one, right? But I thought that was such a, like such a

595
00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:36.000
profound shift in terms of how he thought about his business success because he was like, I don't

596
00:50:36.000 --> 00:50:42.720
need to be a decabillion area. It's like, I'm cool where I'm at. And now I just want to do it with

597
00:50:42.720 --> 00:50:51.920
people that I like. And so to the question about people overall, I believe that the potential

598
00:50:52.640 --> 00:50:59.040
of an organization is directly correlated with the aggregate intellectual horsepower of

599
00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:06.080
everyone contained within it. And so if you are the smartest person in the business,

600
00:51:07.040 --> 00:51:11.360
then, and you can do everyone's job better than everyone in your company, then it means that

601
00:51:11.360 --> 00:51:15.040
the limit of the business is purely based on one person's horsepower and one person's life

602
00:51:15.040 --> 00:51:21.600
experiences. And that will be the cap. And basically, it doesn't matter how smart you are,

603
00:51:21.600 --> 00:51:25.200
you can't live 100 lifetimes. Like you can learn quickly. Sure, there's some people who can

604
00:51:25.200 --> 00:51:28.880
learn faster than others, but you're not going to be able to live a thousand lifetimes. And so

605
00:51:31.040 --> 00:51:36.640
as a business grows, more expertise is required. And I think the easiest litma test for this is,

606
00:51:36.640 --> 00:51:41.280
if you look at the richest people in the world, almost none of them own 100% of their business.

607
00:51:41.280 --> 00:51:45.600
Said number one, most of them don't even own 50. Like most of them are small percentages.

608
00:51:45.600 --> 00:51:52.880
Jensen weighs at 4% for NVIDIA. Basis is at 7 or 9% for Amazon. I think Elon's at 20 for Tesla,

609
00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:59.040
like small percentages. And it's because it takes a lot of horses to take a chariot to the moon,

610
00:51:59.040 --> 00:52:07.680
right? And so basically, as you put in more intellectual horsepower, the potential peak of the

611
00:52:07.680 --> 00:52:12.720
business goes so much, so much higher, so much faster. Keith Robloff from, he's one of the

612
00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:16.720
original PayPal Mafia guys, has a really good analogy for this. And he talks about it in terms

613
00:52:16.720 --> 00:52:22.320
of barrels and ammunition. And he says, so as soon as you get some product market fit, the business

614
00:52:22.320 --> 00:52:26.160
starts to grow and you say, okay, we need to start shipping things faster. And this works the same

615
00:52:26.160 --> 00:52:30.000
with the services business, physical products business, software business, the concepts the same.

616
00:52:30.640 --> 00:52:35.360
And so what happens is you then hire a lot of people and you assume that your throughput is going

617
00:52:35.360 --> 00:52:39.440
to increase proportionally. So we have 10 people, we hire 50, we should 5x or output. And then you

618
00:52:39.440 --> 00:52:45.120
quickly realize that that is not the case. And so what happens is there are people who are rate

619
00:52:45.120 --> 00:52:49.440
limiters for an organization and those are the barrels. So I think about like a civil war barrel,

620
00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:54.080
you know, old cannon and you've got these cannonballs next to it. You said most people are ammunition.

621
00:52:54.080 --> 00:52:58.480
And so you bring more ammunition, but you're still going to be limited by the one barrel capacity of

622
00:52:58.480 --> 00:53:04.080
how many shots can get taken by the barrel. And so you need to find more barrels. So you have to go

623
00:53:04.080 --> 00:53:08.240
from one barrel to two barrels, two barrels to three barrels. And that becomes an increase in capacity

624
00:53:08.240 --> 00:53:14.240
or throughput for the organization. And there are very few of those in a different, I can't remember

625
00:53:14.320 --> 00:53:19.120
the law, but it's some organizational law. But the square root of the number of people in a company

626
00:53:19.680 --> 00:53:24.800
generate 50% of the work. So if 100 people in an organization, 10 people are responsible 50%

627
00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:29.360
of the value that's created. Right. Right. Anybody who's been in, like, you're like, like,

628
00:53:29.360 --> 00:53:36.720
preach. And so the thing is is I think the real game of entrepreneurship is that your standards rise

629
00:53:36.720 --> 00:53:42.160
over time. And it's unfortunate because we hear things that other entrepreneurs tell us, it's

630
00:53:42.160 --> 00:53:45.920
all about the people stupid. And then you're like, sure, but look at my, and it's like, not,

631
00:53:45.920 --> 00:53:49.440
you're not hearing it. And I don't know. There are some, I think Williamson talks about this,

632
00:53:49.440 --> 00:53:54.480
how there's like some lessons that for some reason, it's like, we have to learn for ourselves.

633
00:53:55.200 --> 00:53:58.640
I still believe that it was like, we can operationalize this at a lower level so that we don't have to

634
00:53:58.640 --> 00:54:06.000
learn for ourselves. I'm convinced I haven't figured it out yet. But so everyone can can resonate with

635
00:54:06.000 --> 00:54:12.240
this, which is every business that I've started, I've gotten to the success of the business prior

636
00:54:12.240 --> 00:54:19.360
way faster. And I kind of liken it to a video game where it's like, you beat level one and then,

637
00:54:19.360 --> 00:54:22.880
you know, you get to level two and it's like, you spend months trying to beat this boss and you

638
00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:25.680
finally figure out how to beat the boss. And it's like, great. And then you spend another three

639
00:54:25.680 --> 00:54:29.680
months getting beating boss three. And let's say you start the game over with a new character,

640
00:54:29.680 --> 00:54:32.640
it's like, you just zoom through level one, two, and three. And then you get to level four and

641
00:54:32.800 --> 00:54:36.480
like, no, I got to spend time. It's like, virgin land. Like, I don't know how to beat this yet. And so

642
00:54:36.480 --> 00:54:43.200
I think that that happens for archetype finding for skill and talent within an organization. And so

643
00:54:43.200 --> 00:54:48.640
say that again. So if you have functions across an organization, there are people who are going to

644
00:54:48.640 --> 00:54:54.000
drive results within that function. And the first time you hire a salesperson, for example,

645
00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:58.480
you don't know what you're looking for. And so you just hire a human who says they can sell. And

646
00:54:58.480 --> 00:55:02.320
maybe they can, maybe they can't. And then you cycle through, you try to train them,

647
00:55:02.320 --> 00:55:05.680
that doesn't work, does work, whatever. And then finally, let's say you cycle through three sales

648
00:55:05.680 --> 00:55:09.200
guys and finally you find a killer. And then you have this pattern recognition, you're like, okay,

649
00:55:09.200 --> 00:55:12.960
that's what I'm looking for. And then all of a sudden, you try and approximate that person or

650
00:55:12.960 --> 00:55:18.080
that archetype as much as you can. And so when you start your second company, you're like, oh,

651
00:55:18.080 --> 00:55:21.440
I can quickly staff up sales because I know what I'm looking for. But then you're like, shoot,

652
00:55:21.440 --> 00:55:26.000
I've never really nailed sales manager yet. And so then you cycle through, you start, you start

653
00:55:26.080 --> 00:55:29.760
whacking away at the boss and then you have to end up firing the boss at level because you're like,

654
00:55:29.760 --> 00:55:33.280
oh, God, that's didn't work. And then six months are gone because you had to find the

655
00:55:33.280 --> 00:55:36.080
recruitment, my hire and train them and then find out they sucked and then start over again. And

656
00:55:36.080 --> 00:55:40.480
maybe it takes 18 months to really find the right sales manager. And then you're like, okay,

657
00:55:40.480 --> 00:55:44.240
I know what that looks like. But I still don't have a director of marketing. What does that look like?

658
00:55:44.240 --> 00:55:49.360
And so it's basically developing this pattern recognition across all functions of the business,

659
00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:55.360
so you know what exceptional looks like. And then over time, what happens is as a business grows,

660
00:55:55.360 --> 00:56:01.040
your ability to attract talent increases. And so then your standards also grow. And then you find

661
00:56:01.040 --> 00:56:05.280
out that there's even more nuance to this, which is that there's a director of sales at a one to

662
00:56:05.280 --> 00:56:10.640
$10 million level, which is a different looking person from 10 to $100 million level. And it continues

663
00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:18.160
to go all the way up. And so it's basically building this repertoire of identifying patterns. And

664
00:56:18.960 --> 00:56:22.640
if you talk to, I would say more experienced entrepreneurs now, they don't talk about building

665
00:56:22.640 --> 00:56:27.280
businesses. It's like assembling them. You just assemble the pieces and you just know that this is

666
00:56:27.280 --> 00:56:33.440
how it's all going to flow together. And that fundamentally is basically what I try and do code

667
00:56:33.440 --> 00:56:36.720
within the content that I have. So that it's like, here's a pattern for how you recognize this.

668
00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:41.040
Here's a pattern for I recognize this so that you can just move faster through the levels

669
00:56:41.760 --> 00:56:46.160
to get to where you want to go. And so to loop back to the original question, which is how important

670
00:56:46.160 --> 00:56:52.000
are people in an organization? People are the organization. And so if you ever want to build enterprise

671
00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:56.720
value, it's building the collective consciousness of the organization, the skills and how they collaborate

672
00:56:56.720 --> 00:57:01.920
together towards a specific outcome. And so knowing how to staff that up is the job.

673
00:57:03.840 --> 00:57:08.320
I think the reason why first time founders feel like they have to learn this lesson themselves is

674
00:57:08.320 --> 00:57:11.520
because everything you've just said is an unknown unknown. Like they don't even know that they don't

675
00:57:11.520 --> 00:57:15.680
know it. So they stumbled, they hire the sales guy because they were their friends in my school and

676
00:57:15.680 --> 00:57:20.480
then fucking. And then they go through the pain. And I say this because I'm so unbelievably passionate

677
00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:24.720
about it. I went through the same BS. I hired my friend who worked at Prada to be our account.

678
00:57:24.720 --> 00:57:29.280
I hired a guy I met at a rap battle to be my marketing director who he was literally playing

679
00:57:29.280 --> 00:57:34.640
video games for a living at 30 years old. And I went through this whole thing and then at maybe

680
00:57:34.640 --> 00:57:38.080
three, four years into my first business, I accidentally hired someone great.

681
00:57:39.840 --> 00:57:44.720
Through no intention of myself accidentally. I saw the net impact they had and I thought, oh my god,

682
00:57:44.720 --> 00:57:48.640
over the coming years, I learned that the game, the fundamental game here was as you said,

683
00:57:48.640 --> 00:57:53.440
assembling the best group of people. How, if I'm the first time founder,

684
00:57:54.320 --> 00:58:00.720
can I put a system in place to make sure that even though I don't know what a good salesperson

685
00:58:00.720 --> 00:58:06.320
looks like, even though I don't know what an ex good person looks like, I still attract them to

686
00:58:06.320 --> 00:58:14.240
my company. The simplest way of doing it, so the simplest way of attracting somebody to your

687
00:58:14.240 --> 00:58:20.240
business when you don't know how to do the job or know who to look for is to unfortunately do the

688
00:58:20.240 --> 00:58:26.560
job yourself. And then once you can break down the job, we follow three days, which is document

689
00:58:26.560 --> 00:58:31.200
demonstrate duplicate. That's how we train anybody. So first, you have to document everything that

690
00:58:31.200 --> 00:58:37.200
you do to successfully do the job. And that's step by step into a checklist. Then you demonstrate.

691
00:58:37.200 --> 00:58:42.000
So you do this checklist in front of the person that you're trying to bring on. Then they duplicate,

692
00:58:42.000 --> 00:58:46.160
they do the checklist in front of you. What's interesting about that three step process is that

693
00:58:46.160 --> 00:58:50.800
you'll often find when you try to demonstrate following the checklist, you don't follow your checklist.

694
00:58:50.800 --> 00:58:54.640
And so then you have to adjust the checklist until you actually follow the checklist. And then when

695
00:58:54.640 --> 00:58:58.640
you can consistently follow that checklist and get the output, then you can have them do that checklist.

696
00:58:58.640 --> 00:59:06.240
And so I think this is why bootstrap founders, I think oftentimes will find they tend to know more

697
00:59:06.240 --> 00:59:11.520
about more things because they had to learn them in order to teach them. Now what's really

698
00:59:11.600 --> 00:59:15.760
interesting about what you said about accidentally finding that that star at three or four years in

699
00:59:15.760 --> 00:59:19.280
is that I think that happens to almost everyone. Well, hopefully it happens. The people who end up

700
00:59:19.280 --> 00:59:24.080
making it, it happens to almost everyone because then you realize, oh my god, like if I had four of

701
00:59:24.080 --> 00:59:29.040
these people, like we could change the world, right? But there's something as well. The other epiphany

702
00:59:29.040 --> 00:59:36.240
revelation I had was the star hired stars. And so I think her name's Katie Leeson of the 10

703
00:59:36.240 --> 00:59:40.320
people she then hired. Nine of them became the best people on my company. And also I'm not going to

704
00:59:40.320 --> 00:59:46.720
miss a his name, someone else in my business, a see plan of the 10 people he hired. He and

705
00:59:46.720 --> 00:59:52.480
everyone he hired was fine. So one of the it's so as you go up in the organization with hires,

706
00:59:52.480 --> 00:59:56.480
the risk and reward goes up. And so that's something that a lot of people don't like talking about.

707
00:59:57.280 --> 01:00:02.720
But I will. Which is if you hire somebody and let's say that they're not a cultural fit,

708
01:00:02.720 --> 01:00:07.360
maybe they have the skills or they are a cultural fit. They don't have the skill fit. And they're a leader,

709
01:00:08.160 --> 01:00:13.360
what you find often in its sucks is that everyone it's almost like it's like a tree that has an

710
01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:19.120
entirely rotten branch. And it's like you end up having to scoop out three quarters of what was

711
01:00:19.120 --> 01:00:23.040
underneath because you realize that they were ineffective or they just were against the actual

712
01:00:23.040 --> 01:00:29.760
mission of the business. And it's it's harrowing and it's horrible. But I try to give this analogy

713
01:00:30.480 --> 01:00:33.840
to my team because we've had to do it in every business. We like it happens. It's just part of

714
01:00:33.840 --> 01:00:43.440
business is if somebody goes to the bar and you're at the club and somebody racks up, you

715
01:00:43.440 --> 01:00:46.960
know, it's just ordering shots for everybody shots, shots, shots, shots, shots. And then that guy dips,

716
01:00:46.960 --> 01:00:53.760
that guy leaves. We all have to pay the bill. In the moment when we pay the bill, when we scoop out

717
01:00:53.760 --> 01:01:00.480
the deadwood, when we scoop out the rot from the organization, it feels horrible. But that pain

718
01:01:00.560 --> 01:01:06.400
isn't because the scooping out the rot is bad. It's because we planted it on bad ground or because

719
01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:10.160
that guy ordered all these shots, but couldn't afford it. And I have a different analogy because I

720
01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:14.160
really want to drive this on because I think it's important is that in the in the relationship world,

721
01:01:15.040 --> 01:01:22.400
if one spouse tells the other spouse, hey, I cheated on you. I had an affair. That moment is

722
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:28.400
incredibly painful for both parties. And so what it makes you think is, oh, this was wrong to tell

723
01:01:28.400 --> 01:01:34.240
the truth, but it's not wrong to tell the truth. What's wrong was cheating. When you tell the truth

724
01:01:34.240 --> 01:01:38.640
is when you make it right. And so the pain that you often have to encounter in the organization

725
01:01:39.440 --> 01:01:46.160
feels wrong, but is right because that was your writing a wrong and that's where the pain occurs.

726
01:01:46.160 --> 01:01:50.800
And that's why so many businesses stay stuck is because they have this affair. They have this

727
01:01:50.800 --> 01:01:55.200
person and they're unwilling to have that hard conversation or multiple in order to make it

728
01:01:55.200 --> 01:02:02.000
right in this dish stuck for years. This is another quality of really successful founders that I've

729
01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:05.440
noticed, which is what you've just said is the ability to have the hard conversation sooner.

730
01:02:05.440 --> 01:02:11.440
And in my first in my portfolio where there's first-time founders, they're coming to me. And in our

731
01:02:12.400 --> 01:02:17.200
monthly meeting saying, God, there's this guy who's running the e-com division and he's so bad.

732
01:02:17.200 --> 01:02:21.600
And I'm having to do the job for him. What do I do bad? What do you mean?

733
01:02:22.000 --> 01:02:25.360
But then they come back to me two weeks later and they're like, he's still there.

734
01:02:25.360 --> 01:02:28.080
Yeah, right. And a year later and you're like, it's still John.

735
01:02:28.080 --> 01:02:29.760
And you're like, what are we talking about here?

736
01:02:29.760 --> 01:02:34.000
I remember asking in one such meeting, does John know that you're unhappy with him?

737
01:02:34.000 --> 01:02:34.880
Oh, yeah. No.

738
01:02:36.320 --> 01:02:40.480
So there's this quiet dissatisfaction, which I think is a virus, right?

739
01:02:40.480 --> 01:02:44.800
Right. And what would no one wants to discuss is the fact that everyone else knows John sucks.

740
01:02:44.800 --> 01:02:51.280
Amen. And that that becomes the minimum standard for what is acceptable for excellence in the organization.

741
01:02:51.280 --> 01:02:56.320
And so I think like, so if brand is what your reputation is externally, I think culture is kind of

742
01:02:56.320 --> 01:03:00.720
what reputation is internally. And so I define culture operationalized because I think culture is

743
01:03:00.720 --> 01:03:04.080
very fluffy word. What does that mean? Right. It's the rules that govern reinforcement with

744
01:03:04.080 --> 01:03:09.600
an organization. What do we reward? What do we punish? And so the thing is that there's realistically,

745
01:03:09.600 --> 01:03:15.360
there's like people have values because they're bundled terms that ladder up many behaviors.

746
01:03:15.360 --> 01:03:21.040
If I said, Rolls Royce probably would have some value that's quality over speed probably.

747
01:03:21.120 --> 01:03:25.280
Right. And so they would have that, but somebody would have to say like, well, what does that mean?

748
01:03:25.280 --> 01:03:31.440
Right. Well, we hope that we use this as a decision-making filter for how it affects behaviors on

749
01:03:31.440 --> 01:03:37.040
every situation so that when you're in the should I go fast or should I make it right? You make it right.

750
01:03:37.040 --> 01:03:42.160
And there are other organizations kind of like the speed justice and mercy, speed and quality,

751
01:03:42.160 --> 01:03:46.880
both of them are important. And sometimes they sit diametrically opposed. And so if we have to

752
01:03:46.880 --> 01:03:51.120
say, where do we sit in the gray so that we can duplicate decision-making across the organization,

753
01:03:51.120 --> 01:03:56.880
so that we can maintain the culture. And so culture, you know, laylessness is a lot, but culture,

754
01:03:56.880 --> 01:04:01.760
I think this is a darker quote actually, culture trumps strategy like twice a week and every

755
01:04:01.760 --> 01:04:05.760
day on Sunday. If you have a mediocre strategy, but an unbelievable culture, you will crush somebody

756
01:04:05.760 --> 01:04:09.840
who has a great strategy and a terrible culture. Because culture ladders up to performance and

757
01:04:09.840 --> 01:04:14.160
execution in almost every business is limited by execution, not strategy. Most business strategies

758
01:04:14.240 --> 01:04:17.440
isn't that complicated. Like let's do a really good job, so good that people tell their friends

759
01:04:17.440 --> 01:04:21.200
about us. And as long as we have enough gross margin, we'll make money. It's not that hard,

760
01:04:21.200 --> 01:04:27.440
right? It's just that the doing it is the hard part. So when we have these, they are the spoken

761
01:04:27.440 --> 01:04:32.000
and unspoken roles mostly unspoken. If someone shows up three minutes late to a meeting and there's

762
01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:36.000
10 people in the meeting and it's supposed to be a marketing meeting on there, if I don't say

763
01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:40.720
anything, I have now said we have an unspoken rule that if someone shows up three minutes late to

764
01:04:40.720 --> 01:04:46.800
a meeting, it's okay. I have reinforced that rule. Now, if I have reinforced it by not punishing

765
01:04:46.800 --> 01:04:52.480
the behavior or at least calling it out, on the flip side, if someone comes in and I berate them,

766
01:04:52.480 --> 01:04:57.840
that's also a way of changing behavior. Maybe not the right way to do it. But I could then

767
01:04:57.840 --> 01:05:04.560
like, what do you do in that situation? Someone shows up three minutes late. First off, you would

768
01:05:04.560 --> 01:05:09.280
probably sideline with that person and be like, hey, I don't know if you don't realize that you

769
01:05:09.280 --> 01:05:15.120
were three minutes late. What happened? And they're like, I was on a client call. It went late.

770
01:05:15.120 --> 01:05:20.720
I'm really sorry. Or I was on a sales call. For me in my organization, clients and sales,

771
01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:24.480
like we'll take priority. So if you have a meeting and you're on a sale and you're about to close it,

772
01:05:24.480 --> 01:05:31.120
close the sale. But if you were just doing nothing and we have this meeting, then this is the

773
01:05:31.120 --> 01:05:35.200
priority. And so the next time we hop on, I'll be like, hey guys, I just want to address something.

774
01:05:35.280 --> 01:05:40.560
John was late. He was late because of a sales call. Or when I DMed him right as he got on late,

775
01:05:40.560 --> 01:05:43.840
I would say, hey, make sure you say that. And they'd be like, hey guys, sorry, I was late. I was on

776
01:05:43.840 --> 01:05:48.080
a sales call. And then I would say, that's fine. You're good to go. Always go make money.

777
01:05:48.800 --> 01:05:53.760
And then I'm reinforcing the right thing. Yeah. Right. And so I think we're very big on rapid

778
01:05:53.760 --> 01:05:59.440
feedback in the moment because that's how you train behavior. So if you look at, if so there's

779
01:05:59.440 --> 01:06:03.840
tons of studies on this. But basically if you want to train a dog, right? And you want it to sit.

780
01:06:04.480 --> 01:06:10.080
If you have it sit and then immediately give a biscuit, it learns really quickly. If you have

781
01:06:10.080 --> 01:06:15.280
it sit and then wait 10 seconds before you give a biscuit, it takes like three times as many

782
01:06:15.280 --> 01:06:20.400
repetitions for it to learn that the sitting gets the biscuit. If you wait more than a minute,

783
01:06:20.400 --> 01:06:25.120
it never learns. Really? You can see the learning curve, the amount of repetitions just skyrockets

784
01:06:25.120 --> 01:06:30.160
until eventually there is no amount. But here's where it gets crazy. That biscuit is still reinforcing

785
01:06:30.160 --> 01:06:34.400
something, just not sitting. It's reinforcing the thing that just came before it.

786
01:06:35.120 --> 01:06:39.040
So if we want people to do something, we have to change it in the moment. And so when we train,

787
01:06:39.040 --> 01:06:43.040
and I think that we're a training organization, we're very good at training, whatever skills,

788
01:06:44.400 --> 01:06:52.480
is engineering ways to give many feedback loops in a short period of time around specific skills.

789
01:06:52.480 --> 01:06:57.280
So I use sales because it's one that everyone understands. If you're training a script with someone,

790
01:06:58.000 --> 01:07:03.520
if you let someone read through a script, and then at the end you say, hey, here's the things

791
01:07:03.520 --> 01:07:07.360
you could have done better. This is how 95% of people train. It also doesn't work.

792
01:07:08.880 --> 01:07:12.560
We set the premise with, you're going to read through the script. And in the first 30 minutes,

793
01:07:12.560 --> 01:07:16.400
we might get through a third of it. And I'm going to probably stop you like 30 times. And if that

794
01:07:16.400 --> 01:07:19.760
happens, it means we're doing it right. So we set the premise that I'm going to interrupt you a bunch

795
01:07:19.760 --> 01:07:24.720
of times. And as soon as you say the first line, I'm going to stop, sit again, sit like this,

796
01:07:24.800 --> 01:07:28.800
go again. And then they're like, okay, and they say it. And I'm like, awesome job. Do it again.

797
01:07:29.520 --> 01:07:33.680
Awesome job. Do it again. So I reinforce it as many times as I can. Okay, go to the second sentence.

798
01:07:33.680 --> 01:07:37.600
Right. Now do first and second. Right. Do second and third. And you keep working your way through

799
01:07:37.600 --> 01:07:41.120
until eventually they just say like a whistle. They can sing it because they've also had so many

800
01:07:41.120 --> 01:07:45.280
repetitions and so many feedback loops that they're like, this is what it sounds like when it's right.

801
01:07:45.280 --> 01:07:50.160
And I think that the vast vast majority of organizations have no idea how to train. And their

802
01:07:50.160 --> 01:07:56.640
entire training, their, their way of getting talent is just let's hire 10. And we'll just see

803
01:07:56.640 --> 01:08:00.960
who works out rather than being able to take someone and level them up. And I think that the

804
01:08:00.960 --> 01:08:05.680
ability to train is one of the largest alphas that exist in organizations because if you can buy

805
01:08:05.680 --> 01:08:12.320
talent at, at B skill and get them to A plus, then you net the delta and profit between what you

806
01:08:12.320 --> 01:08:16.720
had to attract and pay the person to come and what they perform at. If you have to use a picking

807
01:08:16.720 --> 01:08:21.600
strategy, then you have to pay for ex for current market rate of the skill. And so you actually

808
01:08:21.600 --> 01:08:26.160
eat in the margin because you don't know how to train. There are advantages to speed. And sometimes

809
01:08:26.160 --> 01:08:31.120
it still makes sense to bring in the talent because maybe the training requires so much time

810
01:08:31.120 --> 01:08:35.520
that it's not worth it. And so from a hiring perspective that we were just talking, this is the theme.

811
01:08:36.640 --> 01:08:41.760
We always want to hire for the smallest skill deficiency. And so in low skilled labor, for example,

812
01:08:41.760 --> 01:08:49.200
if we have a cupcake bakery and I need somebody to work the counter, that is pretty low skilled labor.

813
01:08:49.200 --> 01:08:54.000
And so if there's a number of skills that are required, being able to be on time, smile, be nice,

814
01:08:54.560 --> 01:09:00.240
those things are bundled terms that have many skills underneath of them, right? Whereas teaching

815
01:09:00.240 --> 01:09:04.800
someone how to use the register might take like 30 minutes. And so it makes sense to hire for

816
01:09:04.800 --> 01:09:11.520
attitude and then train aptitude when you have low skilled labor. When you have really high skilled

817
01:09:11.520 --> 01:09:18.960
labor, I can't teach someone 10 years of being a CFO for M&A. This is an extreme example, right?

818
01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:25.600
And so in that instance, we still hire for the smallest skill deficiency, but I can probably teach

819
01:09:25.600 --> 01:09:31.040
someone to be nice under these circumstances faster than I can teach them to be a CFO. If they

820
01:09:31.040 --> 01:09:35.200
have everything that I want here, obviously you would want both, but the world is imperfect. And so

821
01:09:35.200 --> 01:09:41.600
we just try to hire for the smallest skill gap and attitude is a series of skills. And so instead of

822
01:09:41.600 --> 01:09:45.600
thinking of things in attitude and aptitude, just think of everything as skills and then we hire

823
01:09:45.600 --> 01:09:51.600
always for the smallest deficiency. The thing that's easiest to train up. Yeah, okay. One of the things

824
01:09:51.600 --> 01:09:57.520
that's so central to that is we were saying about giving people feedback and I wrote down most

825
01:09:57.520 --> 01:10:02.560
companies and most entrepreneurs and founders are scared to give petty feedback. Because if

826
01:10:03.680 --> 01:10:09.200
I might notice you're making a slight error, but it feels petty to point that out. It feels like

827
01:10:09.200 --> 01:10:15.600
I'm some kind of redictator. Yeah. Why is that so important and how do you create an environment?

828
01:10:15.600 --> 01:10:20.080
Totally good. Yeah, a lot of people aren't. I have lots of managers on my teams and they don't

829
01:10:20.080 --> 01:10:25.280
want to offend people. Their central focus is too much on being nice and it's kind of nice.

830
01:10:25.440 --> 01:10:29.760
It's one of our, one of our, one of our cultural, you know, I wouldn't say it's not the one on the

831
01:10:29.760 --> 01:10:34.240
site, but things that are repeated internally all the time, Kahnat Nice is one of the big ones,

832
01:10:34.240 --> 01:10:38.720
which is that you're actually being unkind to someone by not maximizing the likely that they

833
01:10:38.720 --> 01:10:44.400
succeed in their role. And people don't lose jobs because typically because of one thing,

834
01:10:44.400 --> 01:10:49.120
it's usually 100 small things. And so if we can immediately fix those 100 small things, most people

835
01:10:49.120 --> 01:10:54.000
want to do a good job and most people want to succeed and most people want to move up. And we can

836
01:10:54.000 --> 01:11:00.640
maximize the likely that those things occur if we help them. And this is where the culture is

837
01:11:00.640 --> 01:11:04.480
there. If on that first day, like I said, we say, we're going to work through the script and we're

838
01:11:04.480 --> 01:11:07.280
only going to get through a third of it. I'm going to stop you 30 times to correct you. We've already

839
01:11:07.280 --> 01:11:13.040
kind of set the expectations of how things go here. Like we will fix things and we will fix them fast.

840
01:11:13.040 --> 01:11:17.120
And it's understanding the difference and I, we teach our teams this is what is the difference

841
01:11:17.120 --> 01:11:23.360
between an insult and criticism? So criticism is a discrepancy between actual and desired. So you're

842
01:11:23.360 --> 01:11:29.280
supposed to be on time and this week you were late twice. And so that is discrepancy. And your

843
01:11:29.280 --> 01:11:35.840
lazy is the insult. And so the judgment that's associated with the discrepancy is insulting someone.

844
01:11:35.840 --> 01:11:40.480
Pointing out the discrepancy is purely criticism and that's objective. And so if you want to improve

845
01:11:40.480 --> 01:11:46.160
the team, remove insults, focus on criticism and tell them what to do instead. And so the easiest way

846
01:11:46.160 --> 01:11:53.280
to think through this, I think, is stop, start, keep. So I'll tell you a real story. So we had,

847
01:11:53.920 --> 01:11:59.280
we had a, a director level, so a relatively high person in the organization who was having

848
01:12:00.320 --> 01:12:08.480
behavior issues. Said differently, everyone thinks you're a dick. And so he ended up making his rounds

849
01:12:08.480 --> 01:12:13.360
of the executive team and having a sit down with all of them because he was really proficient

850
01:12:13.360 --> 01:12:17.520
at the skill. He's high performer, like good at what he does. Just no one liked him. And so

851
01:12:18.560 --> 01:12:23.040
he talks to four different executives and the behavior didn't change. And so he finally came to,

852
01:12:23.040 --> 01:12:27.440
to my office and he was like a little bit worried and he was, and he was like, am I going to get fired?

853
01:12:27.440 --> 01:12:31.280
And I was like, no, HR will fire you if you're going to get fired. What are we talking about?

854
01:12:32.320 --> 01:12:38.000
But when we sat down, I said, okay, I want to be clear. I want to decrease the likelihood that

855
01:12:38.000 --> 01:12:41.840
people call you a dick in the future. I was like, does that sound like an agreeable goal? And he said,

856
01:12:41.840 --> 01:12:47.440
yeah, I don't, I want that. I was like, okay, good. I also don't care if you are a dick. I just care

857
01:12:47.440 --> 01:12:51.600
that everyone else thinks you are. And so I just want to minimize the likelihood that I get drawn

858
01:12:51.600 --> 01:12:58.080
into this ever again. So the reasons that they are calling you a dick, we need to dive into that.

859
01:12:58.080 --> 01:13:01.440
Because every other conversation you'd had with, you know, some of the leaders was just like,

860
01:13:01.440 --> 01:13:06.160
hey man, it's not being a dick. And the thing is is, what do you do with that? Nothing. You just

861
01:13:06.160 --> 01:13:12.560
get insulted. And then you have nothing to do. And so instead, it's like, okay, when you cut people

862
01:13:12.560 --> 01:13:20.560
off when they talk, stop, start, keep doing. Do this instead. Shut up. So when someone also is

863
01:13:20.560 --> 01:13:26.000
talking, wait until they finish. And if you're not sure, ask if they're done. It's like, okay,

864
01:13:27.280 --> 01:13:35.280
when you give unsolicited advice on how they should run their department, don't or ask if they

865
01:13:35.280 --> 01:13:41.600
want it. If they say no, don't say anything. And so we identified three or four behaviors that he

866
01:13:41.600 --> 01:13:47.040
was doing. And I said, just do this instead. And literally the next week, we were like, what happened

867
01:13:47.040 --> 01:13:51.840
to him? He's like a new man. And the thing is is that he wasn't a dick. He just didn't know how to

868
01:13:51.840 --> 01:13:58.400
behave. And so if you want to teach, teaching has to come from conditions and a behavior. And so

869
01:13:58.400 --> 01:14:01.840
if you're trying to get someone to be different, you have to give them the conditions under which

870
01:14:01.840 --> 01:14:06.480
they need to change. So when someone says this, if this occurs, there's a condition. And then this

871
01:14:06.480 --> 01:14:11.280
is what you need to do. And so the vast majority of training that exists does none of that. It's just

872
01:14:11.280 --> 01:14:16.080
people shouting at each other, insulting them and saying, hey, you need to level up. You need to get,

873
01:14:16.080 --> 01:14:21.840
you know, you need to increase your performance. What does that mean? And so I think one of the easiest

874
01:14:21.840 --> 01:14:26.320
ways to identify the actual behaviors, that's actually the tough part is like, why do I think he's

875
01:14:26.320 --> 01:14:32.480
a dick? Why do I think she's lazy? Because I want to insult them, but that's not. So how do I help her?

876
01:14:32.480 --> 01:14:38.080
It's like, okay, why am I describing her this way? Okay. So when I slack, she tends to be slow

877
01:14:38.080 --> 01:14:41.680
in her response. So sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes maybe three hours. I'm like, okay, so I'm

878
01:14:41.680 --> 01:14:44.800
going to gather that data and be like, okay, so when I talk to her, I'm like, I'm going to have this

879
01:14:44.800 --> 01:14:51.520
branch of data. The next thing is when I get stuff, you know, projects from her, they're incomplete.

880
01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:57.040
I feel like they're not all the way fleshed out. I'm like, okay, that's a second bucket. The next

881
01:14:57.040 --> 01:15:03.440
one is that when she shows up on Zoom, she looks disheveled. I'm like, okay, so now when I talk to

882
01:15:03.440 --> 01:15:08.320
Sandy, I'm not going to say, hey, Sandy, you look lazy. Need you to level up a little bit here.

883
01:15:08.320 --> 01:15:11.840
Otherwise, we're going to have issues and have to put you on a PIP performance improvement plan.

884
01:15:11.840 --> 01:15:15.920
Right? Instead of saying that, just put her on the performance improvement plan without saying

885
01:15:15.920 --> 01:15:22.480
it's performance improvement plan. And just say, when you show up on calls, change your background to

886
01:15:22.480 --> 01:15:27.520
like the standard company setting so we don't see your bedroom, right? And make sure that from the

887
01:15:27.520 --> 01:15:32.560
waist up, you look professional. And what do I mean by look professional? Have a collared shirt

888
01:15:32.560 --> 01:15:36.640
and put your hair back, okay? Now, some people were like, how does that work in

889
01:15:36.640 --> 01:15:40.400
woke politics? No idea. Do it in your country. But like, you should have a culture where you can

890
01:15:40.400 --> 01:15:44.880
say stuff like that. The second thing is that right now, I need you to turn on Slack notifications,

891
01:15:44.880 --> 01:15:50.160
and I need you to respond within within 10 minutes, okay? During work hours. After work hours,

892
01:15:50.160 --> 01:15:53.840
fine. But you know, nine to five, you have to respond within 10 minutes. Do you think you can do that?

893
01:15:53.840 --> 01:15:57.680
Yes. And so the end goal here is like, I will get everyone to stop calling you lazy.

894
01:15:58.720 --> 01:16:01.680
It's interesting because it goes back to something you were saying earlier where you were saying

895
01:16:01.680 --> 01:16:06.160
specifics versus vague. Yeah. Prefrontal cortex versus amygdala. Like an insult is amygdala.

896
01:16:06.160 --> 01:16:11.280
Totally. Kind of anything with that. Yeah. But if you make it specific, then action is more likely to

897
01:16:11.280 --> 01:16:16.960
occur and useful action is more likely to occur. On this point of a person who's listening now,

898
01:16:16.960 --> 01:16:20.560
who's an entrepreneur, they've got a business and they're thinking about making those first highs,

899
01:16:20.560 --> 01:16:24.240
I wanted to throw a proposition at you to see what you thought of this. One of the things that

900
01:16:24.240 --> 01:16:29.680
I think can help you not fuck up in the hiring process, especially early, is if you just live it

901
01:16:29.680 --> 01:16:34.400
with the permanent assumption that you are bad at hiring. So I live with the permanent assumption

902
01:16:34.400 --> 01:16:38.320
that I'm bad at hiring because I've got biases, there's things I don't know about certain things,

903
01:16:38.320 --> 01:16:42.480
etc. And when you start with that assumption that you are really, really bad at hiring,

904
01:16:42.480 --> 01:16:47.520
you try and decentralize the decision making. So one thing I say a lot to start at founders is

905
01:16:48.240 --> 01:16:52.560
if you're hiring a salesperson, create an interview process where there's five people

906
01:16:52.560 --> 01:16:57.520
and one of them might be you and the other four are the best salespeople you've ever encountered

907
01:16:57.520 --> 01:17:03.040
in your life. Like who sold you your house? Yeah. And ask them to be part of the interview process.

908
01:17:03.840 --> 01:17:07.920
How does that sit with you? I think it sits great. And I think that the amount of

909
01:17:07.920 --> 01:17:12.400
references that you go for is proportional to the importance of the role. Okay. So stay on

910
01:17:12.400 --> 01:17:17.040
the co-founder of school. So he was a non-technical founder. Who's school? What is school? Sorry.

911
01:17:17.040 --> 01:17:22.080
So schools, school.com's a platform for building communities. Right now it's online but we have an

912
01:17:22.080 --> 01:17:26.000
in-person component so that people can meet online and meet in person. It's awesome. And so that's

913
01:17:26.000 --> 01:17:32.160
the only investment that I've publicly associated myself with outside of acquisition.com. So it's

914
01:17:32.160 --> 01:17:36.000
a very big deal. So then I believe in a lot because it's education. It's for education and media

915
01:17:36.000 --> 01:17:45.440
meat. So Sam is the founder of school and he is not technical. And so he knew that's a building

916
01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:53.440
exceptional software product. You need world-class talent. And so he interviewed 600 developers to

917
01:17:53.440 --> 01:18:00.960
find Daniel who would become the CTO of school. And he asked everybody to know who the best coders

918
01:18:01.600 --> 01:18:05.040
were. And then he talked to all those people. And they asked them who the best coder they knew

919
01:18:05.040 --> 01:18:08.720
was. And he talked to those people. And then he asked them who they thought the best coder they

920
01:18:08.720 --> 01:18:14.320
knew was. And eventually like Daniel's name came up as like God tier. And he's like if you can

921
01:18:14.320 --> 01:18:21.040
never get this guy, he'd be amazing. And so he ended up finding a way into find Daniel. And then

922
01:18:21.040 --> 01:18:26.880
he ended up becoming a co-founder of school as well. And what's interesting about that process

923
01:18:27.680 --> 01:18:34.240
is that it actually ladders into rapid learning. And so when I was a consultant, you know,

924
01:18:34.240 --> 01:18:39.200
I was 22 years old. And I would go and have to give presentations to four star generals right

925
01:18:39.200 --> 01:18:44.640
about about weapon systems that I knew nothing about because I was you know, chugging beers like

926
01:18:44.640 --> 01:18:51.040
12 months earlier, right? And so how do you sound intelligent in front of somebody who has 30 years

927
01:18:51.040 --> 01:18:55.520
more experience than you do? And so this is the consulting process for rapid learning.

928
01:18:56.800 --> 01:19:02.720
First is you find five experts. So you ask the one person you're like, hey, tell me the five

929
01:19:02.720 --> 01:19:06.320
people you know were the best at this thing. And then you ask them who are the five people you know

930
01:19:06.320 --> 01:19:10.800
who are who are who also know a ton about this thing. And for each of the interviews you take all

931
01:19:10.800 --> 01:19:13.840
of their their information down of like, what do you think about this? What do you think about this?

932
01:19:13.840 --> 01:19:16.080
What do you think about this? What do you think about this? And what happens you start mapping kind

933
01:19:16.080 --> 01:19:20.480
of like the information ecosystem. And the reason you talk to experts first is that there's no lack

934
01:19:20.480 --> 01:19:24.160
of information like you can Google whatever you want. The problem is there's too much. And so the

935
01:19:24.160 --> 01:19:28.720
filter becomes where the highest point of leverage is. And so experts have spent years filtering out

936
01:19:28.720 --> 01:19:33.360
for what's important. And so then you basically rapidly consume the most filtered information.

937
01:19:33.920 --> 01:19:37.520
And then you reorganize the information. And so this is what a typical analyst will do as a

938
01:19:37.520 --> 01:19:42.640
consultant is like, I would start for the space inside of a project that I did. I'd with 600 pages

939
01:19:42.640 --> 01:19:47.280
of notes from all the interviews that we did. First step is you recategories all the news

940
01:19:47.360 --> 01:19:52.160
by category. So it goes from raw notes to categorized notes. Then from there you just still in

941
01:19:52.160 --> 01:19:59.360
consolidate notes into where the where the truths are the the most distilled beliefs that we have

942
01:19:59.360 --> 01:20:04.480
about these particular in this case weapon systems. But it could be whatever. And then from there

943
01:20:04.480 --> 01:20:09.680
you're able to generate your inferences for what the what it looks like when it's right. What the

944
01:20:09.680 --> 01:20:14.160
problems are, what potential solutions might be. And then that's fundamentally how you say this is

945
01:20:14.160 --> 01:20:18.400
what we need to do next. That's if you're trying to learn something. But in talking to all this

946
01:20:18.400 --> 01:20:23.280
people, it actually works the same way because the interview process, the higher up that talent is,

947
01:20:23.280 --> 01:20:27.920
the more I would encourage entrepreneurs to use it as a learning process as a consultant. And so

948
01:20:27.920 --> 01:20:33.200
I present somebody who wants to come in for this role, the actual problems of the business for

949
01:20:33.200 --> 01:20:37.280
which they would have control over and say, how would you solve these? And so then they tell me all

950
01:20:37.280 --> 01:20:40.560
the things that they would be considering what they're thinking about. And then I'll ask the next

951
01:20:40.960 --> 01:20:44.080
guy what he thinks and what he thinks and what he thinks or she thinks. And then all of a sudden,

952
01:20:44.080 --> 01:20:49.840
one, I get free consulting, which is amazing. But secondly, you can tell by how the quality and

953
01:20:49.840 --> 01:20:55.360
quantity of metrics that someone tracks how good they are at a particular scale. And so this is

954
01:20:55.360 --> 01:21:00.080
fundamentally what separates beginners from experts. And so beginners typically have binary thinking

955
01:21:00.080 --> 01:21:04.720
in terms of outcomes. Either a worker didn't work. An expert, for example, for a marketing campaign,

956
01:21:05.440 --> 01:21:10.320
isn't going to say, oh, marketing doesn't work or ads don't work. They're going to say this

957
01:21:10.320 --> 01:21:14.160
particular campaign didn't work because our click-through rate was too low or because it was

958
01:21:14.160 --> 01:21:17.280
sending traffic that wasn't qualified and we weren't converting enough on the page. Or we didn't

959
01:21:17.280 --> 01:21:22.080
have enough people who were taking the second step in our four steps. And like they can break down

960
01:21:22.080 --> 01:21:27.120
any part of those, any part of that continuum. If I'm interviewing a salesperson and the person

961
01:21:27.120 --> 01:21:32.480
says, and I say, okay, how are you going to affect these metrics? What behaviors are you going to

962
01:21:32.960 --> 01:21:37.360
do? So to the same degree about vague versus specific, if they give me vague things back, I'm going

963
01:21:37.360 --> 01:21:41.200
to dial in and say, no, what are you going to do that's going to change that? And by the way,

964
01:21:41.200 --> 01:21:46.240
this is a wonderful way to teach in the organization how what they do makes a business money. And so

965
01:21:46.240 --> 01:21:51.200
if you have like a customer support rep, for example, and you say, hey, how do you make our company

966
01:21:51.200 --> 01:21:56.960
money? If they can't explain it to you, they probably aren't doing it. And it sounds as simple as

967
01:21:56.960 --> 01:22:01.840
it is. But if someone says, well, you know, I answer customers questions. And it's like, how does

968
01:22:01.840 --> 01:22:07.360
that make us money? Now, if they're able to say, when I answer customers questions, I increase the

969
01:22:07.360 --> 01:22:11.040
likely that they refresh other customers. And I increase the likely that they stay and continue

970
01:22:11.040 --> 01:22:15.600
to pay for us. So I help us get new customers by delivering an amazing experience. And I get the

971
01:22:15.600 --> 01:22:19.920
customers that we have to continue to pay us. And if it makes sense, I recommend other products and

972
01:22:19.920 --> 01:22:24.240
services that we have that I can introduce them to sales guys who can explain that so we generate

973
01:22:24.240 --> 01:22:28.160
even more revenue from them. I'd be like, one, if you can articulate that, you're probably not

974
01:22:28.160 --> 01:22:34.000
just a front like us. You're probably a director, right? And so that level of nuance, the specificity

975
01:22:34.000 --> 01:22:41.840
is what shows expertise. And so when I look for and I'm interviewing for candidates, I first,

976
01:22:41.840 --> 01:22:46.080
I want to gather as much information as I can, I want to drain as much as not as possible. But I'm

977
01:22:46.080 --> 01:22:51.360
also really looking for the quality and quantity of metrics they track and behaviors that they do

978
01:22:51.360 --> 01:22:56.160
to influence those metrics. So in the hypothetical problem that let's say we're trying to solve,

979
01:22:56.160 --> 01:22:59.920
we have low click-through rates. I'd be like, okay, this is the problem we have. How would you

980
01:22:59.920 --> 01:23:05.280
approach changing it? And then that actually gets me to understand what they would do in the

981
01:23:05.280 --> 01:23:09.280
organization. Because it's very easy to say, I'm going to come in and let's say a sales director.

982
01:23:09.280 --> 01:23:13.040
I'm going to come in and I'm going to improve the sales team. I'm like, okay, cool. What are you

983
01:23:13.040 --> 01:23:16.560
going to do? You know, I'm going to coach the guys up. I'm like, okay, what does that mean? And

984
01:23:16.560 --> 01:23:20.400
so just continuing to ask, what does that mean? How do you do that? Until they're like, okay,

985
01:23:21.200 --> 01:23:24.640
well, I'm going to meet with the guys every single morning and we're going to roleplay.

986
01:23:24.640 --> 01:23:28.240
All right. Well, how do you roleplay? Well, we're going to start with the script and we're like,

987
01:23:28.240 --> 01:23:32.000
the more detailed they get, the more I believe they can do it because they've actually

988
01:23:32.000 --> 01:23:37.120
explained what actions they will take. If someone can't dial it into actions, then it's very

989
01:23:37.120 --> 01:23:41.920
unlikely that they're going to take them. And so what I just outlined is basically three core things.

990
01:23:41.920 --> 01:23:46.000
So one is the quality and quantity of metrics that they track. The second is the behaviors that

991
01:23:46.000 --> 01:23:50.880
they're going to do to influence this metrics and then laddering up to third. How do those metrics

992
01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:55.120
and these behaviors influence the revenue and the business? If they can explain that clearly,

993
01:23:55.120 --> 01:24:02.880
you have a winner. All of that is requires them to know if the person's not bullshitting.

994
01:24:03.920 --> 01:24:07.280
And also to know like what metrics matter, right? Because someone could send an interview for my

995
01:24:07.280 --> 01:24:12.720
first time founder, say a bunch of big complicated words. It sounds good. I hire them. And that's

996
01:24:12.720 --> 01:24:17.360
really what I'm trying to mitigate here is how do I not let a bullshitting pass me? I think

997
01:24:17.360 --> 01:24:23.280
having them explain it as though you were a fifth grader. And so I always, I make the same joke,

998
01:24:23.280 --> 01:24:27.440
because you know, you do this enough times you make the same joke. It's like, hey, I need you to

999
01:24:27.440 --> 01:24:32.320
explain this to me like I'm a golden retriever, which is a brand, a type of dog. So assume I know

1000
01:24:32.320 --> 01:24:40.880
nothing. Let's start there. What do you think customer service means? And so if someone really

1001
01:24:40.880 --> 01:24:45.440
has expertise, so Richard Feynman was famous for the physicist, which is if you can't explain it

1002
01:24:45.440 --> 01:24:49.520
to a child, then you don't understand it well enough. And so if they do confuse you, then it means

1003
01:24:49.520 --> 01:24:54.160
that they don't understand it or they're doing it purposefully, neither of which are good scenarios.

1004
01:24:54.880 --> 01:25:00.320
You said something during during that explanation. You said you were talking about your like

1005
01:25:00.320 --> 01:25:06.240
your founding partner at school and you said that he was pursuing a CTO and he said, if we can get

1006
01:25:06.240 --> 01:25:11.680
this guy, he'd be amazing. So many entrepreneurs that are starting in business have that thought

1007
01:25:11.680 --> 01:25:16.320
sometimes. They think if I could just get that guy from that amazing company to come join our

1008
01:25:16.320 --> 01:25:23.200
garage where we're building this new startup, it would change our fortunes. But how, how do I get

1009
01:25:23.200 --> 01:25:28.800
a truly exceptional person who is being paid shit tons of money, who has a comfortable job,

1010
01:25:28.800 --> 01:25:34.480
who has security to come join me in my bedroom? Well, I think there's there's there's the soft

1011
01:25:34.480 --> 01:25:39.760
in the hard side, right? So the hard side is that is compensation, maybe you don't have as much cash.

1012
01:25:39.760 --> 01:25:44.320
So it's like you're going to have, you know, a few levers at your disposal. So you have, what do you

1013
01:25:44.320 --> 01:25:48.240
pay them in cash? What's their upside if there's equity or shares that you're going to give them?

1014
01:25:48.240 --> 01:25:52.000
This is obviously if it's software business. You can, and you know, it's probably worth segmenting

1015
01:25:52.000 --> 01:25:55.840
this. So if you're not in a software company, which is probably the vast majority of people listening

1016
01:25:55.840 --> 01:26:03.920
to this, there are four elements within equity that exist. You have control. So who gets to call

1017
01:26:03.920 --> 01:26:09.920
the shots? You have risk. What happens if everything goes wrong? Who's liable? You have profits,

1018
01:26:09.920 --> 01:26:15.040
which is the cash for the business, who gets distributions, and then basically sale or enterprise

1019
01:26:15.040 --> 01:26:19.760
value when we sell or if we sell, who gets to participate in that upside? There's kind of the

1020
01:26:19.760 --> 01:26:25.600
four elements of equity. Now, the thing is is that you can obviously grant shares or you can give stock

1021
01:26:25.600 --> 01:26:30.960
in a company. That's one way of doing it. But you can also basically contract around any of these

1022
01:26:30.960 --> 01:26:35.600
things. Now, most of the times they don't want the risk. And they probably won't get the control

1023
01:26:35.600 --> 01:26:40.480
if it's your company. So you really just have profit and you have, and you have upside in terms of

1024
01:26:41.600 --> 01:26:46.080
a sale. And so you can contract these things and there's lots of structures. So I'm not going to

1025
01:26:46.080 --> 01:26:50.800
get into the legal around this. But asking somebody, what do you want? Sometimes it's just a very

1026
01:26:50.800 --> 01:26:55.680
powerful way of beginning this. And my favorite question for these types of scenarios is asking,

1027
01:26:55.680 --> 01:27:00.320
what would it take? So when you have this guy, it's like, man, it would be amazing. Like,

1028
01:27:00.320 --> 01:27:04.400
how do I sell this guy? I just ask him, what would sell you? So I say, what would it take?

1029
01:27:05.600 --> 01:27:10.640
Because I don't know. He'll tell me. And I love that frame because it assumes, yes.

1030
01:27:12.320 --> 01:27:18.960
It assumes you're going to come. So what would it take? How many of the books that you write and

1031
01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:23.200
so much of the content you make centers on this idea of sales? Yeah. And it is a sale, isn't it?

1032
01:27:23.200 --> 01:27:28.480
Totally. And I always think about the Steve Jobs quote where he met with, was it John Scully?

1033
01:27:28.480 --> 01:27:32.960
Who was working at like Papsini said, you want to continue selling sugar water for the rest of your

1034
01:27:32.960 --> 01:27:37.440
life? Would you want to come change the world? Yeah. How does that sort of emotional psychological

1035
01:27:37.440 --> 01:27:41.360
element of the sale factor into persuading someone exceptional to come and join your mission?

1036
01:27:42.000 --> 01:27:45.760
I think it's the amygdala story that we started with the nasal strip thing, which now has

1037
01:27:45.760 --> 01:27:50.160
actually reared its nose multiple times, poked its nose in a few times here. But I think that

1038
01:27:50.240 --> 01:27:55.200
pitch that you're giving to a potential co-founder or potential early hire who's going to be a leader

1039
01:27:55.200 --> 01:27:59.920
is the same more or less that you'd give to an investor. It's almost the same pitch, except instead

1040
01:27:59.920 --> 01:28:02.960
of investing capital, they're investing time, they're investing their life, they're investing their

1041
01:28:02.960 --> 01:28:06.880
expertise. But fundamentally, you're asking for investment. I'm just asking you.

1042
01:28:08.720 --> 01:28:12.480
There's also this weird question, which I've actually never asked anybody. But

1043
01:28:13.760 --> 01:28:19.440
found is often struggle with do I hire naivety? Because that's going to probably create new

1044
01:28:19.440 --> 01:28:25.760
solutions to old problems like the young scrappy kid that gets ticked off. Or do I hire experience

1045
01:28:25.760 --> 01:28:31.040
which is going to be more expensive, more conventional and safe? And I see some companies lean too far

1046
01:28:31.040 --> 01:28:38.160
either way. Yeah. I have actually fairly strong opinions on this. Oh great. So I actually think it's

1047
01:28:38.160 --> 01:28:44.560
now talking to the CEO of Butcherbox about this particular thing last week. I think it's a barbell

1048
01:28:44.560 --> 01:28:49.760
strategy where you have people on either ends and very little in the middle. Interesting. So

1049
01:28:50.480 --> 01:28:56.400
I love lots of young, hungry people who are here for growth and want to learn and are ready to

1050
01:28:56.400 --> 01:29:04.640
work long hours and just go all in. And the people at the call at the back half of their career

1051
01:29:04.640 --> 01:29:09.280
that are here that they've made enough money, they know they can get a job wherever they feel like.

1052
01:29:09.840 --> 01:29:15.280
You're not doing them a favor by giving them a job. And they're not what I term I hate, which is

1053
01:29:15.280 --> 01:29:20.400
careerists. They're not obsessed with their title. They're not obsessed with their career path,

1054
01:29:20.400 --> 01:29:24.560
what their promotion plan is going to be. They basically have a litmus test, which is like I have

1055
01:29:24.560 --> 01:29:28.960
to have make about this to get to come in and do this with you. But they actually just really love

1056
01:29:28.960 --> 01:29:35.520
the work. And so these people are learning. So the young people are learning and over compensating

1057
01:29:35.520 --> 01:29:39.600
with tons of hours and reps. And these people are bringing their experience to the game and

1058
01:29:39.600 --> 01:29:44.560
creating significantly more leverage with strategy. The people in the middle are the ones that tend to be

1059
01:29:44.560 --> 01:29:48.640
pain in the ass for everybody. And I don't think and be clear here. I don't think this is actually

1060
01:29:48.640 --> 01:29:55.200
an age thing. I think it's a perspective thing. So it's just are you here for growth or are you

1061
01:29:55.200 --> 01:30:01.200
here to share what you know? And I think that it's the people in the middle that are like well I'm

1062
01:30:01.280 --> 01:30:06.960
bringing something but I need some it's like this kind of tit for tat relationship that I would say

1063
01:30:06.960 --> 01:30:12.560
the vast majority of people that don't work out are in that bucket. And what role does naivety play

1064
01:30:12.560 --> 01:30:17.200
in innovation here? Because the kids that don't know the rules are more likely to stumble across

1065
01:30:17.200 --> 01:30:24.960
nuances, right? I think yes. You can fundamentally you can disrupt any industry if you don't know

1066
01:30:25.040 --> 01:30:30.960
how it's supposed to go. And so but that's I think that really teases out something that we said at

1067
01:30:30.960 --> 01:30:36.400
the very beginning, which is starting from first principles, which is what are the few things I know

1068
01:30:36.400 --> 01:30:41.680
to be true? And then basically forgetting everything else. And when you build from those assumptions

1069
01:30:41.680 --> 01:30:45.440
up, you end up building lots of different paths of the mountain that may or may not have been

1070
01:30:45.440 --> 01:30:49.600
trotted before. I think one of the one of the one of the most corroborating things that can happen

1071
01:30:49.600 --> 01:30:53.920
sometimes is that like you read arrive a solution that already works and you're like okay well now I

1072
01:30:53.920 --> 01:30:58.800
know why this works, right? But I think that's actually then you have more confidence in the path

1073
01:30:58.800 --> 01:31:02.000
and you're like okay that's fine. But now I know why we're doing this not just because other people

1074
01:31:02.000 --> 01:31:06.560
did it, but because I understand why it works. And so I think it just comes down to what are the

1075
01:31:06.560 --> 01:31:12.160
few truths that I know to be true? And going all in on those things like I know that if customers love

1076
01:31:12.160 --> 01:31:16.400
my product, they are more likely to tell other people about it than if they hate it that I feel

1077
01:31:16.400 --> 01:31:20.880
very confident. So then we say okay what are the things that must occur in order to get someone

1078
01:31:20.880 --> 01:31:24.720
to quote love my product, aka increase the likelihood that they tell their friends about it or post

1079
01:31:24.720 --> 01:31:29.040
about us. And so now there's and you can break this and again this is where quality and quantity

1080
01:31:29.040 --> 01:31:33.760
of metrics matter. So it's like how how much more nuance can I break and break this up into small

1081
01:31:33.760 --> 01:31:38.880
pieces? So it's like okay at what time do we deliver these messages or around what experiences

1082
01:31:38.880 --> 01:31:44.000
that have high likelihood of them posting? Can we decrease the friction around them sending friends?

1083
01:31:44.000 --> 01:31:48.080
How can we make it both easy and how can we incentivize it? And so all of these components whether

1084
01:31:48.080 --> 01:31:51.360
it's a service business, a physical products business, a software business, it still works the same

1085
01:31:51.360 --> 01:31:56.640
way is you know and for each customer for example as we're taking someone through this I have four

1086
01:31:56.640 --> 01:32:02.640
milestones that I look for which are the four ours. So how do I get them to review my product? How do

1087
01:32:02.640 --> 01:32:08.160
I how do I writ well in order to be how do I retain them immediately? How do I get them to review

1088
01:32:08.160 --> 01:32:15.360
my product? How do I get them to refer somebody? And then how do I resell them? And so they're basically

1089
01:32:15.360 --> 01:32:18.480
those four ours is what I try and take every customer through. It's a very simple framework.

1090
01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:22.800
What do you think? I was like oh man customer success what does it mean? It's just like well these

1091
01:32:22.800 --> 01:32:27.680
are the four things that I want to occur and so all I'm trying to do is reverse engineer what activities

1092
01:32:27.680 --> 01:32:32.880
increase the likelihood that each of these four ours happen.