Speaker 1If this was a VHS tape, it would be labeled Sean Hardcore Part 2.
Speaker 2People would not be getting what they thought they were getting. You're just an Indian guy at his desk screaming about management hacks. CEO. What I want to talk about is basically, if you're a CEO of a company, if you're running a company right now, which I think a lot of people listening to this are, there's a good chance you're not being hardcore enough. And what I want to talk about is like six or seven real anecdotes, stories of what CEOs do, moves that CEOs do that sound wrong, sound almost illegal, but they actually work. The idea being when you're a CEO, there's no CEO school. There's no CEO training. There's nobody there to manage you. You're the one managing everybody else. And most people don't even give you like real, real feedback because you're kind of their boss. You're in charge.
Speaker 1Is this like famous examples or your friends?
Speaker 2I have a mix of examples you'll know. Examples I think you won't know, but they're of famous companies. And then one or two from my friends. Okay, so I have, I have one, two, three, four friends. I have like seven.
Speaker 1And whenever you come up with ideas like this, which you do all the time, they interest me. But what also interests me is why do you care? Why do you care right now?
Speaker 2Well, two things. One is in general, like I want to be better at what I do. And so if I ever hear of somebody else doing something that I think could be either I haven't tried or I think like, wow, that sounds kind of crazy, but I guess I see how that might work. It's like I kind of found a new move in a video game. And I like to know that. But the other is we talk a lot about almost to the point of it being obnoxious. This phrase frame breaking, which is you see the world a certain way. And it seems like there's a, there's a border. Everything about the world fits inside that frame. And then you'll hear this story that will just be outside of the frame. It breaks the frame. The frame has to expand. Now incorporate this new information. And I don't know why I love it. I love it. Like dudes love Pokemon cards. I just want to collect as many of those frame breaking ideas and stories. And the reason why is if you've ever heard that story of like the elephant who has a young age, like the tether them to the stake in the ground and then he grows and now he's so powerful. He could easily rip out the stake, but he doesn't. There's many examples in my life. Where it's feels like there's the illusion of control that like I'm limited by something that in actuality I'm not limited by at all. The stories I'm going to tell you are sort of like elephant in the state things where you're like, Oh, I couldn't possibly do that. Why not? Why can't you do that? Before I go into like kind of the famous stories of people, you know, doing this, I'll tell you the guy who I was having breakfast with that told me a story like this that got me thinking, got me paying attention to these. So I was getting breakfast recently with this guy, Martin, who will come on the podcast. Martin basiri. Now, Martin was. He was like the one that got away for me, the very first angel investment I ever wanted to do 10 plus years ago, I started making like a little bit of money. I think I was making like, I don't know, 160 grand a year, not even that much money, not enough money to be. I would say an angel investor, but I wanted to be, I was sitting in San Francisco and I thought that would be the thing to do. I should start angel investing. And I had this kid who was like this 13 year old kid who was using one of our products and he always used to hang out in the tech rooms and hang out on tech things. He emailed me and he said, Hey, I'll be your. Scout. So here I was, this guy who had never made an angel investment. And now I got a scout and he said, I'm going to send you three companies a week and you know, you don't have to invest in any of them, but it'll just be great practice for me. If you just give me feedback on those, I'd love to learn. What age are you at this time? I'm probably 24, 25, maybe. Yeah. All right. He sends me this email with the first, first company. And he goes, this guy, Martin was here. He's in Canada where I live. And already I'm like, I'm not trying to invest in a Canadian company. I want to invest in Silicon valley companies. He's like, what? He's. Doing is really cool. He's got this company called apply board. And what apply board was doing is very simple. They were letting international students who, you know, if you've ever lived internationally, the dream of most international students is to come to school in the United States to go to university here. But imagine just being like a kid in Malaysia with Malaysian parents. And it's like, great. Why don't you apply to, um, whatever UC Davis? And they're like, what, what is UC Dave? Where is that school? How do I apply? How do I fill out this form? Like, is it very, like, there's a huge gap between. Where you are and where you're trying to go and you need a bridge and apply board became that bridge. They basically made it very easy for foreign students to apply to us universities. And what they did, they realized it was very smart. Was that us universities absolutely rip off foreign international students. There's a reason they love international students is because they charge them three times the price to go to school and this to the same school, get the same education. So if you're a state school, you'll obviously charge less for in-state tuition, out of state tuition. And then there's a third tier called international tuition. That's crazy. Three times higher. And so he went to the schools and he got the schools to say, yeah, I'll pay you five grand or 10 grand per student that we admit, like as a, as an affiliate fee, as a bounty. Yeah, this is like an incredible, but, and the international student is dying to go there. So it's not the hardest sell in the world. They just needed a bridge. So I hear this, I'm like, dude, this 13 year old might've actually sent me a good company. And I'm like, okay, I was 13. The scout was 13. Wow. Okay. And so. So he, I'm like, dude, I think I'm going to do this deal. And so he, he comes out, I meet him in San Francisco and I agree on the spot. I'm going to invest 25 grand into this company.
Speaker 1And I said it very confidently, which is a huge amount of money, by the way, your annual savings in San Francisco on $170,000 was $20,000.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. I was basically putting all of my like post-tax disposable income into this one random Canadian startup. Well, guess what? It's a day later. Your boy's got cold feet. I'm like, oh man, that was a lot. I shouldn't have said that. I felt stupid coming down. I was like, do I go back to him and say five grand, 10 grand? That felt stupid. And you know what I did? I didn't back out, but I just didn't say anything. And like, I didn't follow up and he didn't really follow up. And some time went by and then I got unavailable. And anyways, I missed out on this deal. Apply board today. I think it does over like a billion dollars a year in revenue or something crazy. It's like a multi-billion dollar company. It's insane. I don't know the exact numbers, but I know it's multi-billion dollar company. So huge miss for me on that. That's for the very first possible. Angel investment. What was his valuation back then? Oh, dude, it must've been like, I don't know, $10 million or something. Yeah. Five, six. I would have been the first investor in it. It was like the first Silicon Valley investor in it. Yeah. There was, it would have been amazing. So last week I'm having breakfast with him and I've now invested in his new company, Passage, which is doing some amazing things. But I'm saying like, dude, how's it go? I was like, how is it? Like, how do you operate? I was like, tell me, like, we're having breakfast right now. You're going to go to the office. What are you doing? He was like, I work pretty hard. And he's like, I was like, okay, what does that mean? And so he's telling me his work schedule. The guy basically is like, I drop off my kids, you know, 8am. I'm in the office at 830 and I'm there from 830 to, you know, midnight, every night. And I'm like, midnight, Jesus Christ. I was like, are you the only one there? He goes, I used to be, but not anymore. I was like, well, what do you, what do you mean? Like, how'd you get people to start staying so late to work like extra like that? Like, what'd you do to inspire them, motivate them? He goes, option drop. I was like, what? And he's like, option drop. I said, what's an option drop? He goes, at any time in my company, if anybody does something awesome, I just say, option drop, 50,000 options. I just give them share options at the company on the spot. Like if somebody has a great idea, they go above and beyond for a customer. They solve a problem in the meeting right there. Option drop.
Speaker 1It's like Dana White giving out a bonus.
Speaker 2It's a bonus, but stocking the company on the fly. And he goes, and then. And at night he goes, if I'm there 10 PM and if there's like, let's say 12 people there, I'll just say everybody here, option drop, 20,000 options. All of you. He's like, I don't do it every night, but I'll do it once every, you know, 50 days. And guess what? It got people to start doing the things that I cared about. They know if I solve a big problem, if I unlock some new growth, if I solve a customer's problem, if I'm working really hard, that's how I get more options, option drop. And I was, so I'm sitting there and I'm like laughing. So I'm laughing at him first. Cause I'm like, that's just hilarious. Just the phrase and the way he said it, I just was cracking me up. And I was like, well, of course, of course that wouldn't work. Of course that would reinforce behaviors rather than saying, well, I put our company values on the wall once six years ago. I sure hope they're doing it. You know what I mean? Like obviously a in the moment incentive, positive reinforcement for a behavior, the more specific, the more concrete and the more immediate a reward, the more, more of that behavior you're going to get. That's kind of basic behavior. So I was like, okay, I guess that does work. And I was like, is that legal? Could you, I was like, I don't know. I just can't feel like you can't just throw around options like that. He's like, why not? Yeah, you could. He's like, I just sent a message to my assistant option, drop these people, this amount, and then it gets papered. That's it.
Speaker 1Well, and it's an option, meaning they still have to buy it. Right. So it's not like it's free money.
Speaker 2Um, yeah, like this day has a strike price. Yeah. So you can exercise the option if you, if you so choose, but there's that exercise window. You don't have to buy it right away. You can, you know, you can wait if you want. So, okay. So obviously a way to, um, incentivize the types of behaviors that you want right there on the spot, using your company's share options. Can I give you the next one? Keep going. This is exciting. Any, any, you want to rate these? Maybe give me a, uh, you know, give me a, you have a very simple, let's do gladiator, thumbs down, lukewarm, thumbs up, or double thumbs up. That's your options.
Speaker 1Um, not a double thumbs up. So just one, one thumb up. Okay. Yeah, that's, that's very effective. Good. Not that, like, extreme. Do you do it? I don't do options. But because, yeah, like I just give money.
Speaker 2Okay. Do you do that on the spot?
Speaker 1No. But I'm also not the CEO and I'm also not extreme. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not playing that game.
Speaker 2What, the game of trying to win? What do you mean? Of course you are.
Speaker 1Not at the price of being there at midnight. No, I'm more of a like.
Speaker 2It doesn't have to be midnight, right? Like that's one. You just decide of the things I care about. Do I on the fly reward the behaviors I want?
Speaker 1We do it via having a gong in the office. And when someone does something awesome, we smack a gong. So, well, it's just like, because everyone stares at it. And you're like, we're going to like celebrate what is happening right now. But no, I don't give up money.
Speaker 2Okay. Here's the next one.
Speaker 1Hey, everyone. Really quick. If you're enjoying this episode on CEO stuff, so delegating, having hard conversations with your team, hiring, then I've got something for you. So the team at HubSpot, they actually went and put together a bunch of best practices that Sean and I use in our own companies. And they put it together in something that's really easy to read and understand. And so if you want to just save yourself 10 years of headache and heartache, then you should check it out. I wish we had this a long time ago. It would have helped me a lot. But there should be a QR code on your screen that you can scan or a link in the description. So check it out. It's totally free and totally awesome.
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Speaker 1And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description.
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Speaker 1And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description.
Speaker 2And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description.
Speaker 1And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description.
Speaker 2And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. And if you're interested in learning more about the company, you can go to the link in the description. content, you create content that converts. check out hubspot.com the agentic customer platform for growing businesses all right what's the next one all right next one comes from peter teal okay so peter teal famously at when he was the ceo of paypal he had this thing that i really loved which he goes we are going to be a single tasking company you are not going to be a multitasker which is great because paypal is full of some of the biggest brains in the world right max levchin elon musk reed hoffman the creators of youtube the creators of yelp the creator obviously like a bunch of big brains in that room you would think if anybody could multitask it'd be those people well no peter's take was this everybody has one big problem that you're trying to solve at any given time like you might be fighting fraud from the ukraine right now and you might be trying to optimize virality of the paypal button on ebay and this other guy might be trying to you know um lower our you know processing fees with the banks right so everybody's assigned one problem and his thing was this they go well you know how do you get people to actually do that right because sounds good in theory right focus is always a word everybody nods and agrees on but we were all pretty bad at focus so how did you get your teams to actually do it and peter teal's answer was oh if if they tried to talk to me about anything besides their problem i would just simply walk out of the room and the non-verbal communication was pretty clear how i felt and people like did he really do that and keith you know keith reboy was like yeah he would literally do that he would if you tried to bring up anything else besides your problem he would do it he would just turn around and he would just walk away and then you got a signal of how important that was and if you wanted to be valued by the ceo you would stay on task of your problem
Speaker 1he would just do like the autistic clomp just your feet just clomping away at the door
Speaker 2did you think he's wearing shoes no chance that he was wearing shoes in that office
Speaker 1so no dude he's a loafer guy because he's the type of guy where you just hear it clomping around i
Speaker 2focus is convex unfortunately i'm too stupid i don't know exactly what that means but it sounds very provocative and i've used it three times since um the good news is nobody else i work
Speaker 1with knows what it means either i don't know what this has to do with focus that's what
Speaker 2looks like he goes if you are 80 focused on a task that will only be half as good as if you are 90 meaning the jump from 80 focused to 90 focus will double your impact and so you really want this the last mile of focus the last level of ruthlessness about your focus will will double you know you'll get one or two more doubles in the output um which kind of makes sense like if you look at any field right if you're the 80th percentile swimmer nobody knows your name and you work at a tire company if you're the 90th percent swimmer you know people in your county might know your name but you still you manage the tire company if you're the 99th percentile swimmer professionally but if you're the 99.9999 right like the final it's that last leg you're michael phelps and you know you get all the gold medals and the millions of dollars and so on and it's basically like your use of focus that the last mile of it the last level of obsession is what gets you like a disproportionate amount of the rewards so what's point number um three
Speaker 1or are we on four on sean's hardcore if this was a vhs tape it would be labeled sean hardcore part
Speaker 2two people would not be getting what they thought they were getting indian guy at his desk screaming about management hacks ceo
Speaker 3put the o in ceo uh all right here's where we got what's left i got i did one two three four
Speaker 2five i got five i got three left all right jack welch ceo of ge when he ran when you run a big company it's very easy for you know all the people that are in the industry to be able to all your children are sort of not equal they're not loved equally all the different business divisions and ge was in very a bunch of different business divisions and he had two simple rules when he was running ge one was every division you need to be number one or number two in your market otherwise you have one year to fix it sell it or close it that's it we will trim the business divisions unless you can be number one or number two which is an incredible forcing function because it's a sort of darwinian pressure to survive and the other darwinian pressure he applied was every year jack welch would fire the bottom 10 percent performers in the company every year and so a continuous culling of the herd which sounds i mean i'm sure people interpret that different way some people will think he's an asshole for that when i first heard it i was like oh that's that doesn't sound that hardcore but then you go try to do it go try to do that every year it is incredibly difficult or go look at your own track record how much low performance have you tolerated because you don't fire people until push really comes to shove you don't fire
Speaker 1i think jack welch is i think he's controversial we actually should do a deep dive one day on him because people say that he was a horrible ceo because if you look at like ge it was kind of became this like amalgamation of like a bunch of like nonsense and it like owned a bunch of stuff that ended up not working out but i don't know enough about jack welch to know if that was his doing or what happened but but i know that he was well loved as a leader but at the same time i hear smart people say the exact opposite about firing like jensen from nvidia he was like he's like i'm gonna smother you in greatness i'm not gonna fire you like it's so funny how great people assuming they both are great have different opinions on firing as i mean as well as everything else
Speaker 2like it's like total opposite right yeah and you will find that for every single one of these you will find people who are very successful doing the polar opposite which is not meant to say that this is the way to be great it's just meant to say damn i thought these stories were pretty hardcore huh that's really kind of all we're saying and that there are it kind of pushes the boundaries of your thinking of what is acceptable tolerable and potentially um effective you know i think firing your low performers is a pretty i would say logical thing to do meaning yeah i could see why that works i could definitely see why that works and i'm i'm in support of that one but yeah i think others you know like like i think jensen when he made that point he was like yeah i don't fire him but i turn up the intensity so much that you either become great or quit right which is more of a sink or swim version of like yeah they quit instead of getting fired but either way you weed out the low performers one way or another so last two um all right let's skip this last one i'll tell you i don't even really like it the ford ceo this guy comes in this guy alan becomes the ford ceo they had just lost 17 billion the last year and he came in and they did like the business review where they go through all the different business like projects and how they're all going to work and they're going to on track or off track and it was like color coded like green is on track yellow is at risk and red is off track and everything was green and he's like guys we lost 17 billion last year how's everything green and uh he realized they had like a culture where you know people were sort of afraid to admit failure and so he's like you can't be afraid you have to be honest and so the next week they're all green again except for one was red and he stood up and started clapping and uh changed the uh the culture around failure and i was like it sounds a little bit like a disney movie to me yeah that sounds like some cool running shit yeah it's a i think we're gonna i think we're gonna thumbs down alan together here nice try alan consider me uninspired today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at mercury uh they make the world's best banking product i think you know this already i use mercury for all my businesses i think i have like maybe seven or eight businesses we use mercury as our business banking across all of them and now they actually just launched a personal bank account so i have my personal account there i moved off of and chase i'm just all in on mercury why uh i like products that are easy to use i like products that get me and the problems that i have so like very easy to make a joint account with my wife very easy to spin up virtual cards uh one click and i get savings yield it just has all the stuff that i need in one place so if you're looking for the best banking product on the market it's definitely mercury i will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more mercury is a fintech not an fdsu insured bank banking services are provided through and call them na members fdic all right the last one comes from jimmy aka mr beast which was i think you were there when he described his cloning strategy which we were like so dude how do you train your employees they're all really young seems like they're all new you're growing so fast like do you have like i'm just curious like you don't you know you never went to college or business school or anything like that like what do you do for your like kind of management and he's like oh i just do cloning and we're like that sounds illegal what does that mean and he's like well if i hire you in one of like kind of the key roles you just follow me everywhere like you literally shadow me every single place i go and i think the guy who initially was doing it was like sleeping at the same house that he was in like it was like that that hardcore like from morning to night like the i remember one guy he hired he was also jimmy's alarm clock like he would go wake him up and from the moment jimmy woke up they were together till the moment jimmy signed off to go to sleep and he would do that for six months and he's like by the end of six months you know exactly how i think because you've been with me everywhere everywhere you know you saw every decision i made so essentially you're like a proxy for me like i can now be in two places at once because you know exactly what would jimmy do in this situation and yeah cloning works great and i remember there was like a room full of ceos like multi-billion dollar ceos as he was telling us this who were like i think that's awesome and illegal like what people don't like get weekends he's like no you come here to you come here to win i don't know if he still does it but in the
Speaker 1How is that going? It's interesting to hear about people and how it ends up like if they, if they soften it when they have kids and stuff, it appears as though Elon is not a guy who has softened at all as the company has gotten bigger and has, he has had more kids. I wonder if that's happened with Jimmy and what's it called? Beast Enterprise or I don't know what it's called. Beast Industries. Yeah, I think both, right? I think
Speaker 2he matured, right? When we met him, he was probably only like 25 or 24 years old or something like
Speaker 1that, right? So like, yeah. He matured like 30 years. Hugely from year over year. Yeah, you're
Speaker 2going to mature and his rate of learning, like he's, you know, pretty obsessive about learning from smart people. And so he, his, the slope of his line is pretty crazy, right? So I'm sure a lot has changed. At the same time, if something's working and that's your edge, you got to be pretty careful. You don't just dull out all your edges. And so, yeah, he does have a CEO now, Beast Industries. I'm sure they have more people and they're less like kind of business malpractices. You know, you do in the early days when you're kind of rough and tumble and figure things out. But yeah, dude, I think they still go pretty hard and try to win. And I think that, you know, I think a lot of the fundamentals are probably still there of the stuff that works, right? Like, like anything, the stuff that's working tends to survive and the stuff that's ineffective tends to get pruned out over time.
Speaker 1I am not, compared to these guys, we're not even in the same ballpark in terms of being like hardcore. I don't know where you are, but I know that when I hear this, I'm like, it sounds like a lot of work. I'm not into that. I don't, I don't want the same outcomes. And I had a story for you today that is the exact opposite of hardcore. I didn't mean for this story to be a matter of hardcore or not. More so a matter of there's money everywhere. Can I give you an anecdote that like supports
Speaker 2what you're saying about the other side of the coin here? David Perel, friend of the pod, had Kevin Kelly on the podcast. And Kevin Kelly is this guy who I really like and admire. He had a really eclectic career. He like started Wired Magazine and he wrote A Thousand True Fans, which really shaped kind of my thinking.
Speaker 1Is he like a, was he, I know he's like a thinker and a writer, but was he a successful business person too?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think he's done well. Like he's, I think he's done, done very well compared to normal standards, but like, you know, not, not like some crazy, whatever billionaire type, but I don't think that was ever his goal, but he's just done a bunch of really interesting projects and his projects have been very successful. He asked him a great question about this. He asked him something like, like, what's been the cost of being Kevin Kelly? Like, what have you given up to be Kevin Kelly, the way you, the way you have? And Kevin's like, you know, that's a great question. To have this life I have, I had to give up on greatness. And he goes, what do you mean? And he goes, well, I think the cost of greatness is some level of being extreme. And I just never wanted to be extreme. I didn't want the costs of extreme. And so he's like, I surrendered to the path of, I'm not going to be as great as I possibly could be. Had I been obsessively focused on one thing, had I been more extreme, had I given up certain parts of my personal life? And he goes, I give you, I'll give you a very specific definition of greatness. And he goes, let's just, for lack of a better word, because I could say greatness and it means two different things in our heads. He goes, let's say greatness is being remembered by people other than your family, more than one generation from now. And he goes, I don't think I will be remembered for anything more than one generation from now. And he goes, I don't think I will be remembered for anything more than one generation from now. More than one or two generations from now from anyone outside of my own family. And he goes, to be, to be able to be, he goes like a gadfly where I just kind of float from thing to thing. And I, I get to dabble and explore and like kind of see different projects and bring them to life in little ways, but I don't own any of them. Not any of them became the biggest thing in the world to be the gadfly. I had to surrender and give up on the path of greatness. And I'm, I'm perfectly happy with that. And I thought it was just a very, I never really heard anyone say it that way. Like I kind of respected his thinking on two levels. One, I don't think people ever define the words, what they mean. I just liked that he started by being like, I can't give you this answer if I don't define what this word means to me.
Speaker 1Was it grandchildren or great-grandchildren?
Speaker 2So let's just say grandchildren. Yeah.
Speaker 1Okay. That's actually interesting. I've always, I've had a similar definition of greatness, but it's always been way longer where it's been like 120 or 150. Which I guess would be a couple more, add a few more generations to that. But that's actually an
Speaker 2interesting way to define it. Yeah. Like you could, I mean, I don't know who you would consider to be great, but like whether it's, you know, Steve Jobs on the business side, right? Like you could go into like, you know, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and like people who did great in terms of their civic actions or people like Houdini, people who are great artists and great creators that way, right? Like there's all these kind of people who are great. If you look at them, very few of them live very
Speaker 1balanced lifestyles, right? Like there ain't normal people on the top of Mount Everest. Like you're not going to find a well-balanced people. I actually think about that all the time because I love history and I'll see street names and it's clearly named after someone. And I'll go and research who that person is. Like for example, Fort Greene is named after Nathaniel Greene. Fort Greene's a neighborhood in Brooklyn and it's a, it's a park. And it's named after Nathaniel Greene, who was a big shot in the American Revolution, one of the key generals. And it's like, does remembered mean his name is named after a park in which no one even knows that Fort Greene was Nathaniel Greene? And I'm like, this guy was one of the key top 20 people in the American Revolution, which was one of the most consequential, consequential revolutions of all time. And I don't even know him. And when you think about it, over the last 500 to a thousand years, of the billions and billions and billions of people who have ever existed, the ones who do, who we remember more often than not, it has nothing to do with money. For example, if you and I do the best that we will ever do when it comes to business, the likelihood that we will be with it, like, maybe there's a world where we'll crack the top 5,000 or top 10,000 living Americans in terms of wealth. Maybe that would be obviously 0.00001% of like that. Right. And yet even that is not going to get you remembered for 500 years. You can't name who the AD of the United States is. It's not going to get you remembered for 500 years. richest person was in the 1930s. 50 years. Yeah. Yeah. You can't. So that's like, so therefore,
Speaker 2who's that person today? You don't know now. Yeah. You don't know. And so, and then you're
Speaker 1like, okay, so I won't know that. Okay. So money can't really be it. And then it's like, okay, what about business? It's like, well, there's some companies that have lasted that long, but like, it's basically when you really think about it, it's like humanitarians, a handful of amazing like leaders or politicians, which would also include like the mother Teresa's of the world, like someone who did something really special. And then it's like inventors. Like it's like, or an artist, like occasionally artists. And I'm like, so when I think about that, I'm like, well, the odds, if I defined greatness as me being remembered, like, let's say 150 or 200 years, I'm like, A, I'm doing it wrong. And B, the odds are so low. And then I was like, therefore, maybe I just shouldn't care. Right. Like, I felt like,
Speaker 2you're just working through this. Can I tell you where I landed with that same idea? Being remembered or legacy types of never really appealed. I think I was pretty quick to shed that one. In fact, there's a great Hormozy once said something that I really loved. He was like, you know, the queen died six months ago. And guess what? She was the queen. And I bet you haven't thought about her since she died. I was like, oh, that's so true. That's the queen, you know, the queen of England after a hundred years, you know, dying. And so I never really cared about the legacy stuff so much, but I wanted to achieve greatness. And when I thought about achieving greatness, it was some version of success or, you know, building something that mattered in the world, or, you know, like the number one of something being the number one of something. And what I've realized is that achieving greatness was sort of like, not, not for me, it would be a fool's errand for me. It's not what I'm wired to do. It's not what I would enjoy to do. It's it comes at a cost that I would not be willing to pay once I knew the cost, but there's a big difference between achieving great and being great. I know a lot of people who are great. Our buddy Ramon is great. He's a great friend. He's a great dad. He's a great guy and he's a great hang. And he, you know what I mean? He, he is good at being great. You, you'd mentioned Ben Wilson. Ben Wilson right now is being great in handling such a difficult circumstance with absolute, you know, class and courage. And there's just being great. And my trainer is a guy, he's just great. He's, he's a great guy. He's a great uncle to my kids. He's a great, um, you know, great trainer. He cares about people. You know, he's so fun to be around. He's, he's always in a great mood. He's that's called being great. And so I realized like being great, the active tense, the day-to-day thing, that's the thing to chase. Cause you could do it right now. And in the moment, how you're showing up, you could be great right now. And you could also fall out of being great. If you lose track of that and you should get right back on the horse, try to be great again. And I think that was the, where I landed. I was like, okay, I think I, that resonates for me. I feel, I feel comfortable with that. And it's a, it's a far more holistic sense. It's you can be great when you're exercising and you're in the last three reps of the set. And you have to decide if you're going to put the reps, put the weight down, or if you're going to push yourself and try to really like, see what you're made of. That's a moment of being great. I mean, you know, you could just be courteous and kind to somebody. That's a moment of being great. You know, like sometimes I'm with, I'm at the park and there's other kids and they're kind of like, you know, talking to me and I'm kind of just like, I don't know why this four-year-old is talking to me. And sometimes I brush them off and I just want to be on my phone. I don't really want to talk to the stranger kid about like, you know, this caterpillar that he found. And sometimes I indulge them and I'm like, no, I, you know, I'll say something to them that plays back into them. Cause that's how I would want someone to treat my kid. It's a moment. where I get to choose if I'm going to be great or if I'm not going to be great. And I'm not always the best at that, but increasing that hit rate is the goal. And that's one I can kind of get behind.
Speaker 1What's the phrase again? Say this again. I think this is good. Instead of building something great, be great.
Speaker 2Yeah, don't try to achieve greatness. Like just be great right now. Like just being great.
Speaker 1Did you see the guy who went viral this week on Twitter where he was like saying like, someone was talking about like hard work and he was like, I think you should work hard, but there's this age between like three years old and 13 year old where your kids don't dislike you yet and they're willing to spend time with you, you know, past 13, that doesn't happen. And they're out of diapers. So they're a little bit easier and they start having opinions and they can think. And for a lot of men who are ambitious people, what they notice is that their ambition goes away or dials down during this period because they love being around their kids. And it doesn't happen to everyone, but a lot of men do. And what I've noticed is that the people who are fearful of this, I just want to let you know that it tends to come back. Ambition does come back. And the reason why this went viral is because I'm experiencing this and I think maybe you are and a lot of our folks listening are. But like there is this moment where you start like experiencing these things with your kids when they start having opinions and they still like hanging out with you. And you're like, I don't know if I care about the same things like ambition or these other things where I dedicate my life to them. I guess I'm not willing to pay that price. And frankly, I find it to be, kind of a pain in the ass because you're like, life was so much simpler. Just climb the ladder, make money. You know, it's like F checks and get money. Like it's so much simpler that way. And then you have kids and you're like, shit, everything I thought to be true, it's not true right now. And the poster was like, but it becomes true again later on. Like it does come back. But I remember reading that last weekend and it really hit with me because when you're talking about these like guys who are hardcore, I'm like, I don't want, I'm not staying till midnight right now. Yeah, no.
Speaker 2My chair has lumbar support. I don't think I'm going to be here till midnight.
Speaker 1That ain't happening.
Speaker 2No option drops for us. Yeah. Dude, I gave him a great idea at the breakfast and he option dropped me. And I was like, yes. Immediately like hook, line and sinker. I was like, wow, how do I get that again? That was a really, I like that reward.
Speaker 1Um, I was going to bring up another story, but I'm not going to anymore. I think that was perfect.
Speaker 2Yeah, that'd be a little too hardcore for us too. Yeah. We're going to chill out at 55 minutes and not go to the 60th.
Speaker 1No, I think this has a good bow tie to it or bow tie, a good, you know, whatever that phrase is about.
Speaker 3It's going to a gallon.
Speaker 1Rapid presents and rapid shit. It's all done. I don't know. All right. That's it. That's a pod.
Speaker 4Be what I want to put my all in it. Like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.
Speaker 2All right. Let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about marketing school. It is a podcast that is part of the HubSpot podcast network and it is run by Neil Patel and Eric Su. And these guys are both marketers who are running businesses. And so if you want real world tactics from practitioners who are actually out there in the field doing it, this is the podcast for you. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts.
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